[FRIAM] Acid epistemology - Eric Help!!!!

[Prof David West]

Glen,

Setting is absolutely key. A guide is a definite plus.

Hallucinogen use in cultures that incorporate same, is deeply contextualized in ritual. And it is the ritual that ensures "common" and "repeatable" experience. A visit to the Church of the Vegetal (not their actual name, but anyone in the city could find them by that) in Santa Fe embeds Ayuasca use in a four-six hour ritualistic context — as does any of the myriad places here in NL where you can experience the drug.

I do think that ritual more or less equals the protocol you talk about; and understanding the experience is a function of the protocol.

One of the issues I want to bring up with researchers at CSPR, is the effect/bias/misinterpretation of results when the drugs are taken in a clinical setting instead of the ritualized context that, I think, is essential to understanding the experience.

I don't proselytize, but I have on numerous occasions guided, at their behest, others in "tripping." I do know how to ensure that the experience will fall within certain parameters, even though ultimately determined by individual differences.

The conversation with Brigham was a one off, and came about without prior planning.  My multiple conversations with Hui Neng (6th Patriarch of Zen/Chan Buddhism) have been sufficiently repeatable that I have come to regard him as my personal guru.

I have been watching tourists come into Kokopelli's — a cool head shop in Amsterdam with a lounge area for users of mushrooms (truffles actually) and grass. Those experiencing "bad" trips and/or physical distress are those who are in it for the high and who have little experience. Exactly what you predicted.

davew


On Tue, Mar 10, 2020, at 3:54 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> A search for neurotic in my copy of the DSM V turned up a lot of 
> mentions as a "risk factor". But is there a diagnosis? As I understand 
> it, they tend to treat everything as a continuum and you only get 
> diagnosed if the tendency/trait is bad enough to interfere with regular 
> activities ... you know the things normies do. So, you may be a heavy 
> drinker, but you're not diagnosed with a dependency until you start 
> missing work or black out or somesuch.
> 
> My guess would be the *setting* in which one takes a high dose of a 
> psychedelic would strongly regulate the impact of neurotic tendencies 
> on one's trip. Since I get very antsy in crowds, I'd never load up on 
> shrooms or acid and go to a rave or somesuch. But if I had a "guide" 
> help me do it in a calm, low density, environment, I'd be all over it. 
> The thing that worries me is that my highs always involve lots of work 
> ... running, intense concentration, etc. ... more akin to 
> Csikszentmihalyi's flow maybe ... I'm not puritanical like Nick. But I 
> worry about succumbing to "cheap thrills". My friends from across the 
> pond are appalled by my advocacy of hand guns. >8^D But at least one of 
> them agrees with me. The difference being that in the US, any idiot can 
> walk into a Walmart and buy one, whereas he had to train and be 
> certified (somewhat) competent before he could take one home with him. 
> Drugs are like guns ... or should be, anyway. The point being that the 
> correlation between neuroticism and bad trips mentioned in the article 
> *might* simply be the too easily accessed high. The "work for it" part 
> can take the place of (or is in the same category as) the *ritual* that 
> helps regulate us. So, neurotics might be the most capable of efficient 
> use of psychedelics.
> 
> On 3/9/20 2:34 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> > Ah.  Neuroticism is something like a tendency to be neurotic.  Neurotic is actually a good diagnosis in psychoanalytic therapy.  It means you're treatable.  Also it's essentially universal so it's a question of degree.
> 
> -- 
> ☣ uǝlƃ
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