Heart of Space

It's been documented a ton. Google individual cases where people have ended up institutionalized because of usage. Google countless anecdotal instances where people have clearly poorer brain function and strange new neural connections which affect their behavior negatively, PTSD, hallucinations, or deep clinical depression from a neurochemical imbalance, and more. Are you looking for clinical scientific studies? As I said earlier our understanding of the human brain and our ability to study it is rudimentary. We can't measure or directly see the negative effects of many things on the brain with our current technology. Typical new age psychedelic users in denial will usually counter with the "there's no studies that directly show this," or when you show that the drugs clearly sometimes worsen and bring out life ruining latent mental disorders they'll respond with "that would have happened to them anyways." Sounds like denial to me. It's the same people that will constantly scream in your face that weed has absolutely zero negative effects and cures cancer. There's very little understanding of the negative effects from a scientific stand point, in fact, there's very little understanding of the effects in general. But, hefty personal experience and experience around people who've done a lot of these drugs shows that they very evidently do have negative effects when used too frequently, irresponsibly, or when you just happen to have particular genetics that form a brain that is not agreeable to the drugs. It's a shame there's so much woo woo, denial, and dishonesty around this aspect of the drugs. I think it harms many people. Even weed causes brain damage when used too much, now that I can show you clear study where with too much use it shrinks a part of your frontal cortex and causes more impulsivity and risk taking behavior. And that's a very new study to boot.

Yea, but he slept naked with young girls and tried to hide the fact. Then only later did he try to paint it in this really virtuous light where he was only doing it as an experiment with controlling sexual desire. I personally don't buy that at all. That doesn't strike me as fulfilling a basic human need in a healthy way. Again, it doesn't take away from anything he did. Overall good guy, who had a few weak moments in his life. He was just a man after all.

I'm not sure I buy that. From what I understand is that he actually tried to hide it at first, and then later talked about it. He did it with minors too. I'm saying this takes away everything he did, human beings and human beings after all. We are all not perfect angels.

He was also doing creepy experiments with young women sleeping with them in bed.

Texas. I'm a spiritual cowboy.

Good job, just keep it up. I'd imagine your negative symptoms will naturally subside with more practice. Do you think it's the anxiety that's the fundamental reason for the difficult session? That's a pretty natural response, but it eases and disappears with time. Don't worry about your "bad" meditation session. Relatively speaking you will always have the "bad" days, even when you're meditating 5 hours a day. Just do the best you can to get through it and don't give up.

I'm not trying to sound disturbing or scare people. I'm trying to be honest. Yes, I think initial usage if done responsibly and correctly can have a positive effect on creativity, intelligence, and so on. There are very good reasons to use these substances, don't take me for someone who only thinks bad things about these substances. I just care about people's safety and there's a lot of unsafe information out there that ends up harming a lot of people. I don't think people are often harmed from normal doses either, it's when people regularly use psychedelics, or they take large doses, that's what fucks most people up. With all that said I believe psychedelics should be used very sparingly. I'm talking like once or twice a year sparingly. And no heroic or mega dosing either. And I've been told by people that making people afraid of bad experiences gives them bad trips. This is also false as you can be deathly afraid of a bad experience up to the moment you feel the drug hit you and then have an amazing experience. I'm just trying to give people a well rounded view, that's all.

I was referring to the individuals that were in mental institutions for life. They're likely fried. I'm not sure I even believe that a perma-high is even possible considering the drug is metabolized and the high amounts of serotonin and brain activity required to create the high is not sustainable for long periods of time. It doesn't make any logical sense. I don't believe LSD has any effect on your DNA, that sounds like pseudoscience to me. It doesn't have any obvious negative effects on the brain, but I assure you that it can. It is a commonly repeated lie that you cannot cause brain damage with psychedelics. There are plenty of cases where this does happen, it just isn't obvious to us with our current limited ways of looking at the human brain with instruments. It's not as clearly apparent as, say, the damage caused by a stroke. I assure you, this potential danger should be taken very seriously. It's like if you were to go rock climbing and not consider what gravity can do to you.

Existence doesn't start or end. It's not temporal. In the same way you're not hurtling through time towards death. Your birth and death happen in the same moment. The only moment.

I haven't shared my experiences with LSA, I have a handful of experiences. It's a fairly inconsistent substance I find. And my worst experiences that I ever had were on it. There's much better stuff out there that's very easy to obtain.

I'm not the spiritual community. You're not the body, so it's ok for the body to harm itself? Even that doesn't make sense. An organism with the proper understanding will not purposefully harm itself. People often don't have a proper understanding of the harms of psychedelics and they end up harming themselves for that reason. Whether you are the body or not is irrelevant. The body and mind still function on the basis of knowledge that it has of the world.

Yea, this is the likely result when you mega dose. It's the most dangerous and stupid idea out there on the internet. Partly because of Terrance Mckenna and his popularization of the "heroic" dose. Smart guy, but an extremely idiotic idea. His brother even admitted that Terrance went too deep into la la land with drugs. Regarding your friends, it's not that they never came down, as in they're still tripping. They're not. It's more that they permanently fried their brains and now they're back at base level consciousness, or maybe a bit lower, just with a boiled egg for a brain. People need to understand they have a limited amount of times they can use these drugs before they start frying you. Once you have gotten what you need out of them, quit.

They did an extraction and probably lost a significant amount of the substance. Not to mention you lose a lot of the stuff that gives you negative side effects, which makes that method a lot smarter of a way to consume. If he had actually taken 25 seeds in the way you did, he would have ended up in a hospital. Still, he was being pretty irresponsible with that kind of dosage. But he has admittedly done a lot of really dumb stuff in his life.

Why on earth would you do 13 seeds on your second try? That's incredibly irresponsible. SMH you're the second person I've seen in a week on here that has taken a ridiculous amount of a substance and had a horrible experience.

Isolation simply removes all the stimulation that distracts you. That's all.

Great report. I'm glad you had the experience that you did. Sounds like you're moving in a good direction. Don't worry about nay sayers, it seems like you had a very moving experience. I'm currently looking for time to do another Vipassina retreat. Hopefully a 30 or 45 day one for my next.

Enlightenment is already a joke because it's not a real thing.

I remember when I used to argue with others on the internet. Those were dark days. Dark days indeed.

I've been around the block with psychedelics. I've done them, I've researched them a ton, I've been around many people who've done them. They are useful for showing you something more, and motivating you to find something more. That's about it. They don't really give you really any long term growth. You lose pretty much everything you gained from tripping over time. You won't hear this opinion a lot from people who've done psychedelics, but that is because most people who use them are either new to them, or don't have a full picture of what these drugs do to you. You don't need drugs at all, nor are they a "faster" way of gaining spiritual growth. I'd recommend if you're going to do them to only do one or two trips and then hang up the phone once you get the message. You just need one good one and you will have gained everything you can meaningfully gain from these substances. Or don't use them, that's a perfectly fine path too. Not to mention many, if not most users enter what I see to be one of the nastiest spiritual traps after using them.

You can't necessarily attribute that result to mindfulness. At best there was an anti-inflammatory response from decreasing your stress hormones and that reduced swelling. Mindfulness is not magic, but it is pretty useful.

Yea, don't do that. Want advice from someone who's been around the block? Quit them permanently and concentrate on actual practice for your spiritual growth. Psychedelics have to be by far the most overrated spiritual tool. Heroic dosing has to be one of the dumbest idea's ever put forth. They should be honest and call it chemical lobotomy dosing. Sorry you had a bad experience, just steer clear of them from now on and you'll be fine with time.

I'm not sure either Leo or Alan Watts has said that, but I could be wrong. Ego is just a word for the contiguous self that you think you are. A collection of thoughts, feelings, and emotions (sometimes even body depending on the person and what they consider as part of their self). It is what you think is the observer, but is really not.

In a way yes, but that's beside the point.

Lol, you can mix techniques to great effect. That old guy is just a stubborn booger. You just have to do it intelligently and naturally. There are certain fundamentals to stick by IMO, beyond that everything is free game.

I was only making a dumb joke, homie. It wasn't directed at you and I definitely wasn't trying to discredit you in any way. Just ignore me.