Paul Anthony:
Hi Sohil,
I agree with you, the experience itself doesn't seem to yield much in terms of insight in the moment. For me, this brings up another problem with many of the discussions around psychedelics and dharma - there is often a total focus on the 'high' itself. But if these powerful substances affect behaviour and experience over a much longer term, then this needs to be looked at from a longer view. Also, it's apparently possible to take psychedelics at very low doses (so no high at all) and still see interesting effects.
Thanks, Paul
All of my experiences with mushrooms have been full of heavily Mayan, archetypal imagery, but the experience itself (or whatever consciousness lies behind that experience) has much the quality of "Irishness" about it; its all about the rolling hills and daffodils and the land of Fay etc. But the biggest thing that I take out of these trips has been a message about morality in its most elemental sense, deeply connected to the natural world. I find this interesting, and it ought to be studied more, potentially as a riposte to those who feel that morality is only socially constructed and also to those who think morality has naught to do with the physical brain.
I had one extremely bad trip that put me into the hospital for a month. It involved some common elements that led to bad trips in the past. These are: over eagerness for an altered state (I want it ALL, NOW), taking LSD, alone, on a whim (never a good idea), and having no intention to guide the trip. But this isn't what sent me to the psych ward. The culmination happened the next day, when I combined one of the most sacred chemicals with a deleriant in a high dose, a chemical experiment which has surely gone down in medical literature somewhere.
After that, the only things I've done are pot, some other sacred herbs, and one Morning Glory seed trip that was one of the most healing experiences of my life. I took a low dose, but I was definitely "high"; the healing took place below my conciousness as I spent the trip playing guitar and learning a lot about how to "be" the notes. That trip cleared my lingering depression for almost half a year, although I continued to take SSRI's, I found I could take much lower amounts of them and still be on an even keel, so to speak.
Now I'm only interested in altered states if they enhance my ordinary state of consciousness. I plan on going to the Amazon in 5 or 7 years to experience ayahuasca, as I've always had an interest in shamanism, and even if I'm still in DN territory aya is supposed to be good for that. In fact, I feel like all of my meditative practice, A&P and post A&P experiences, are good preparation for whatever lies behind the waterfall, but I could be fooling myself and I'll just be soul raped by elves for 8 hours. But i'm definitely going one of these days (perhaps we could organize a combo meditation retreat/aya trek for those interested).