[steve_b]

That's pretty harsh. I bet you Huxley's original notes for Doors Of Perception were probably jumbled too. But both DoP and Mark's notes allude to the same thing: without a valve on our consciousness, we'd just sit around all day and be blown away by the creases in our jeans.

Edit: oh ya, and thanks for sharing Mark.

[hartror]

Seconded, thanks for sharing Mark. A number of friends have gone through life altering trips such as you describe, there appear to be positive things that can be gleaned from psychedelics about oneself.

That said I had one friend who didn't come back and ended up in an institution for a period of months. He had a number of underlying issues that the drug brought to the fore. It was a horrible experience for all involved.

[Radix]

Would you elaborate on this? Did he come out of it twelve months in? it's rare to find negative commentary on psilocybin on the internet. Only a couple warnings in the thread now.

[hartror]

He took some at a party I was at and freaked out. I nursed him for a few hours, he babbled the same phrase over and over until his housemates came and picked him up. I've been told since that he had freaked out before and had been fine once he came down so they treated this incident the same. Took him home and sat with him till he calmed down and put him to bed.

The next morning he was still acting strangely, not making sense etc. They kept an eye on him that day figuring he was just tired and worn out. But the next day he was worse so they got him into a psych hospital after some difficulty (he wouldn't go at first). He was put on anti-psychotics and stayed there for a couple of months.

He was released back into his parent's care, he is from the UK and this happened in Australia. So he went back to the UK and reportedly has found god and is doing fine. (apart from the religion thing ;)

[wellsaid]

Unfortunately I think the Internet is biased toward good feedback about psychedelics because those who had problems either:

- lost interest in psychedelics,

- hate to write about it,

- are not able to write about it,

- don't want anyone to know they were "mad" once