[kamranjon]

Hey there, just wanted to chime in as someone who has both used psychedelics (have used all of those being discussed here) to facilitate long lasting change in my life and who also strongly agrees with the idea that there is no real enlightenment to be found by using drugs.

There was a good quote from Alan Watts regarding this that I’ve carried with me for years: “When you get the answer, hang up the phone.” - which for me is to say that if you think your work is going to be magically over after using psychedelics, it’s not, that’s just the beginning, take what you’ve learned on move on to something more instead of chasing your tail for years attempting to achieve some elusive plateau of being by phoning it in.

[sk5t]

> “When you get the answer, hang up the phone.”

To put it another way, a trip by helicopter over a mountain's summit isn't the same as climbing the mountain, but it might open one's eyes to the goal.

[pmoriarty]

"When you get the answer, hang up the phone."

I think it was Ram Dass who responded: "I don't hang up on a teacher."

And what if there's more than one answer? Or what if you've forgotten the answer?

Sometimes what you get is not an answer but an experience, or a communion with the sacred or a transcendent reality which is ineffable and can't be brought back to the ordinary world.

[survirtual]

A good reminder in general, but I don’t think it’s universally applicable. DMT no longer “works” for me, and my course & role is known. There is no tail chasing here. But “drugs” are just a tool to fix the sickness imbued by a very broken social structure present here. It won’t give you “enlightenment” or whatever it is you’re after, but it will set you on the path which would otherwise be inaccessible.

That path demands a lot relative to what we think we need to do to thrive. It requires a lot of work to become simple, a lot of resolve, and a lot of comfort with self. And you often lose course, especially when revisiting mass society for any duration — and in those cases, revisiting psychedelics are very beneficial.

Alan Watts wasn’t alone. He had community and an environment that enabled him to say those things and think that way. He was outside the prison of ordinary society and could afford to hang up. His original audience could also afford that. Most of us cannot.

People in ordinary society need reminders external. Anyone still asleep or just partially awake needs reminders, otherwise the system will make you forget and you’ll be consumed again.

Morally speaking, I don’t view psychedelics as “drugs”. I view them as respecting elders and listening to the original masters; a communion with the plants and the Earth. They all originate from the plants and Earth — psilocybin, from mushrooms; LSD from ergot (a fungi); mescaline from the cactus (a prickly desert thriver, with a warm and soft guiding soul); DMT from nearly every plant and animal alive (the truth is hidden inside all of is); 5-meo-dmt from the Sonoran desert toads and poison tree frogs…and many more, many undiscovered. Knowing these masters requires a level of species evolution and a respect for the elders, the true elders. They do not have human faces or forms, they are alien relative to us and what we have become.

Just as I would always listen to my late grandparents when they had stories to share, and my parents when they have the same, or as I listen to a monk share their story and spend time helping when visiting their temples (of any belief), listening to their lessons, I listen to the stories and wisdom of these plants. Not for fun; not for “enlightenment”; not for power; not in fear or shame or dogma or rigidity; but simply because they are speaking. And when an ancient elder speaks, you ought to stop what you’re doing for a moment and listen. They might just help you in ways you never knew you needed.