Drugs And Mind? Options

I was reading in some books (Yogasutras and some Dion Fortune books) that certain drugs such as marijuana, lsd or amanita muscaria awake our psychic powers like telepathy, clairvoyance, psychikinesis, materialize objects, etc. I even read on this forum that this drugs can help in rituals and magickal practice. So I wonder, why drugs have this effect on us?

I think one reason is that the magical or spiritual way of viewing the world can be very far removed from our everyday lives. One becomes accustomed to seeing and thinking a certain way, and when taking psychedelics, that way is suddenly replaced by an awe-inspiring and mind-expanding one. Thoughts, realizations, and maybe even powers one would not normally have suddenly become realized.

We have specific brain structures that respond to entheogens. We are hard wired to have these experiences. The drugs only turn on what was already programmed. I find it extremely interesting that some entheogens give the same or very similar visions to most users. I believe ibogaine and DMT both take users to other existing worlds. I highly recommend the book DMT The Spirit Molecule.
And any government that declares war on some of it's citizens who use some vegetables some of the time does not deserve to be in power.

I read that spirit molecule book a while ago. Drugs are fun but I don't feel like they help me. Also I avoid coffee and other "drugs" before doing magick stuff. And I agree, but the same would have to be said of opium and other nefarious plants.

I have done every drug you can name any way it can be done. I have had some very spiritual experiences especially on shrooms and dxm but i would not advise dxm if your not super experienced drug user shit is no joke. Lsd is defiantly not any way to go it is more party and have fun. I used to do heroin (yeah i know shame shame believe me i know) in order to meditate it slowed my mind to a halt i have a sherlock holmes kind of mine im constantly bouncing from one thing to the next always analyzing and playing out situations way before anything has even occured. Your best bet would be to just never try practice discipline of your mind and body. I tried the shortcut by taking an obscured amount of psychedelics within a matter of an hour if you ever get the chance and are interested from my experience i would suggest only using shrooms or marijuana i do not advocate the use of any drugs here though i just wanted to give my thoughts (IMG:style_emoticons/default/i_triangle.gif)

I don't use drugs in my spiritual practices myself, but there are people whom I respect who do advocate using drugs to promote spiritual experiences. Personally I use meditation and have had some amazing experiences without drugs of any sort. But I do have a lot of experience with meditation and have the skills that allow me to increase my chances of having , say, an out of body experience for example. I can't do it every time, but if I meditate in certain ways I am likely to have an OOBE, perhaps one out of four times that I try for it. I have used drugs back in my misspent youth, although ti was recreational use. I was always scared of heroin, but used LSD, magic mushrooms, marijuana--mostly marijuana. Grim I know what you mean by that Sherlock Holmes kind of mind. Buddhists in particularly developed techniques to slow down and calm your thoughts. They talk about what they call 'monkey mind' in which your thoughts jump around like a monkey jumps from brand to branch. There is actually a book called Monkey Mind that describes some of the methods that work well for this. I believe that the e-book is available in a few places online for free. I think that almost anyone can learn how to meditate and to quieten down the mind.

Using drugs to have mystical experiences doesn't require as much practice as doing so using meditation. But using meditation allows the person a lot more control over the experience. Fewer negative after effects too.

To be perfectly honest, i've tryed most illegal drugs of note, quite a bit more than just a taste for a few of them.

For the most part i'd say i've out-grown their usefulness but they are a part of the habit of my-life an on occasions i like to celebrate properly.

catalysts of state-change.
openers of eyes.
the true price and the true worth of you i will only know in the great reflections of death.
for now i will play using a rule of thumb for the sake of a possibility that needs to exist.

People will always need drugs to take them places they wouldn't have gone otherwise,
Most of the time the cost of a trip is worth the knowledge of existence it brings.

It pisses me off a bit sometimes when i see spiritual sorts flying the anti-drugs banner but the truth is drugs don't help much when you already know.
Their are loads of other ways to reach similar states of existence. Drugs are too distracting for a lot of spiritual tasks.

It only annoys me because the quality of the state of mind reached when doing them is often very reflective of the people willing to have a little faith in them.
Not just the people taking them but the attitudes of those that influence the spiritual currents intersected/hijacked by the drugy currents.

What im saying is their will always be people who's only means to experience the spirituality they need is to take drugs.
Some of the greatest spiritual paths are at first dangerous wild tracks but the best ones will become well-worn and easy because travelers take time to put up signs and make the track nicer as they pass.
It's easy to say.. 'i know where that leads, i'm not going their' but when you consider that 'where' is probably just another path isn't it sometimes wise to just pick an enjoyable walk?

In an ideal world people lost in the wilderness would find a guide who could see the beauty of wilderness as reason to risk getting lost.
So it's a shame when guides who supposedly know the area see wanderers as fools to be guided back to 'civilisation' when in fact some of these wanderers have been all over mountains the guide never bothered to visit.

Drugs represent an issue we have to deal with properly as a society, they need to be legalised and people need to be qualifyed to administer them, provide care and ensure safety.
I'm saying specific specialist qualifications for administering drugs that promise accountability but isn't stiffled by crossed-agendas and corporatisation.

These 'drug therapy' treatments need to be of a quality un-tainted by specific religious biast's.. It wouldn't be fair otherwise, it would give whatever religion spiritual experiences on tap and vulnerable people to exploit.
In a world where no one really trusts the religious institutes, we shouldn't hand any more power to one party or another.
It's funny really, are we waiting for science or something? Scientology is like the opposite of what is needed yet it's a taste of what might be.

It would be a better idea to treat each drug like a new religion, like an optimisation of a force in the form of a spiritual practice.
So that the paths may grow an become well tended for their own worth and not the worth seen by those who dare not.

As usual their are some fine opinions on this forum an it's been a pleasure reading them.


This post has been edited by Draw: Sep 18 2013, 04:56 PM

I've used marijuana, cocaine, mdma, lsd, mescaline, ketamine, crystal meth..I think that's about it, I may be forgetting one or two.

In my experience most of them give you the little push you need, but they will not open your mind on their own, you need to use them not as a tool, but as an aid.

Mdma will open your mind up greatly while you're on it, but you'll lose most of your realizations in the days after because of the terrible comedown. If there was/is a way to get rid of the weeklong depression there would be great benefit I guess.

Cocaine can be great if you take it while focused and manage to keep focused on expanding your mind, otherwise you'll just be like "f%*! this, let's party" and keep taking coke and having all kinds of fun until it runs out and you're mad at the world.

Mescaline will give you a great visual trip, but that's about it, once it's over you're not even sure if you were ever on it or not, it just feels like you never took it.

Ketamine would be good if you can get the exact right amount. Too little won't make you feel anything and too much will have you slipping in and out of conscience in a very uncomfortable manner (although I managed to have fun even in this stage, but it won't really help you at all).

Lsd is really really great, it changed my life forever each time I took it, not in the way I expected it to before I took it for the first time (or the way you're expecting it to if you've never taken it before), things are still so much the same, but there's a real subtle change I can't quite put my finger on. It's like my mind can really go deep on a lot of things, which I never could before lsd, it's like it has made me not be afraid to let my imagination free.

And crystal meth won't really give you any insights, it'll only give you great confidence, which can balance all your fears and inhibitions out, and your mind will never get tired while on it, you'll stay awake for 48+ hours before you're able to sleep, and then you'll wake up still energized and jittery.

And marijuana, which is the only thing I still take regularly, will make your life just a tad bit more "fantastical", and make you have some really deep thoughts, but if you don't know how to handle it, it can make you really dumb or even cause paranoia to the point of schizophrenia. At least I think that's where I was headed before my mind underwent a great change and I became interested in magick and all things occult. Also marijuana can really make you obsessive-compulsive after you develop a tolerance to it and can't get high as you want no matter how much you smoke.

But all these can only help you if you're already working on it in some way, for example I've always been a fan of daily meditation, but everybody has his own way of opening his mind up.

And a little disclaimer, I don't advocate drug use, and most of the substances I've mentioned are really harmful, so you're best off developing your mind in natural ways. Then again, everybody has his own combination of fate and choices, so do what you will, but never be too quick to decide to take a substance, give it careful thought and research before doing anything because I've seen countless people's life ruined because of them, they're not for everybody I guess. Best of luck to everybody (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I've used marijuana, cocaine, mdma, lsd, mescaline, ketamine, crystal meth..I think that's about it, I may be forgetting one or two.

In my experience most of them give you the little push you need, but they will not open your mind on their own, you need to use them not as a tool, but as an aid.

Mdma will open your mind up greatly while you're on it, but you'll lose most of your realizations in the days after because of the terrible comedown. If there was/is a way to get rid of the weeklong depression there would be great benefit I guess.

Cocaine can be great if you take it while focused and manage to keep focused on expanding your mind, otherwise you'll just be like "f%*! this, let's party" and keep taking coke and having all kinds of fun until it runs out and you're mad at the world.

Mescaline will give you a great visual trip, but that's about it, once it's over you're not even sure if you were ever on it or not, it just feels like you never took it.

Ketamine would be good if you can get the exact right amount. Too little won't make you feel anything and too much will have you slipping in and out of conscience in a very uncomfortable manner (although I managed to have fun even in this stage, but it won't really help you at all).

Lsd is really really great, it changed my life forever each time I took it, not in the way I expected it to before I took it for the first time (or the way you're expecting it to if you've never taken it before), things are still so much the same, but there's a real subtle change I can't quite put my finger on. It's like my mind can really go deep on a lot of things, which I never could before lsd, it's like it has made me not be afraid to let my imagination free.

And crystal meth won't really give you any insights, it'll only give you great confidence, which can balance all your fears and inhibitions out, and your mind will never get tired while on it, you'll stay awake for 48+ hours before you're able to sleep, and then you'll wake up still energized and jittery.

And marijuana, which is the only thing I still take regularly, will make your life just a tad bit more "fantastical", and make you have some really deep thoughts, but if you don't know how to handle it, it can make you really dumb or even cause paranoia to the point of schizophrenia. At least I think that's where I was headed before my mind underwent a great change and I became interested in magick and all things occult. Also marijuana can really make you obsessive-compulsive after you develop a tolerance to it and can't get high as you want no matter how much you smoke.

But all these can only help you if you're already working on it in some way, for example I've always been a fan of daily meditation, but everybody has his own way of opening his mind up.

And a little disclaimer, I don't advocate drug use, and most of the substances I've mentioned are really harmful, so you're best off developing your mind in natural ways. Then again, everybody has his own combination of fate and choices, so do what you will, but never be too quick to decide to take a substance, give it careful thought and research before doing anything because I've seen countless people's life ruined because of them, they're not for everybody I guess. Best of luck to everybody (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I've used marijuana, cocaine, mdma, lsd, mescaline, ketamine, crystal meth..I think that's about it, I may be forgetting one or two.

In my experience most of them give you the little push you need, but they will not open your mind on their own, you need to use them not as a tool, but as an aid.

Mdma will open your mind up greatly while you're on it, but you'll lose most of your realizations in the days after because of the terrible comedown. If there was/is a way to get rid of the weeklong depression there would be great benefit I guess.

Cocaine can be great if you take it while focused and manage to keep focused on expanding your mind, otherwise you'll just be like "f%*! this, let's party" and keep taking coke and having all kinds of fun until it runs out and you're mad at the world.

Mescaline will give you a great visual trip, but that's about it, once it's over you're not even sure if you were ever on it or not, it just feels like you never took it.

Ketamine would be good if you can get the exact right amount. Too little won't make you feel anything and too much will have you slipping in and out of conscience in a very uncomfortable manner (although I managed to have fun even in this stage, but it won't really help you at all).

Lsd is really really great, it changed my life forever each time I took it, not in the way I expected it to before I took it for the first time (or the way you're expecting it to if you've never taken it before), things are still so much the same, but there's a real subtle change I can't quite put my finger on. It's like my mind can really go deep on a lot of things, which I never could before lsd, it's like it has made me not be afraid to let my imagination free.

And crystal meth won't really give you any insights, it'll only give you great confidence, which can balance all your fears and inhibitions out, and your mind will never get tired while on it, you'll stay awake for 48+ hours before you're able to sleep, and then you'll wake up still energized and jittery.

And marijuana, which is the only thing I still take regularly, will make your life just a tad bit more "fantastical", and make you have some really deep thoughts, but if you don't know how to handle it, it can make you really dumb or even cause paranoia to the point of schizophrenia. At least I think that's where I was headed before my mind underwent a great change and I became interested in magick and all things occult. Also marijuana can really make you obsessive-compulsive after you develop a tolerance to it and can't get high as you want no matter how much you smoke.

But all these can only help you if you're already working on it in some way, for example I've always been a fan of daily meditation, but everybody has his own way of opening his mind up.

And a little disclaimer, I don't advocate drug use, and most of the substances I've mentioned are really harmful, so you're best off developing your mind in natural ways. Then again, everybody has his own combination of fate and choices, so do what you will, but never be too quick to decide to take a substance, give it careful thought and research before doing anything because I've seen countless people's life ruined because of them, they're not for everybody I guess. Best of luck to everybody (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Drugs CAN be an antithesis to magic. Your experience, no matter what I would wish is FAR from the definitive experience. There's really no need to do research AND come here. You could come here first, or perhaps you would prefer OC. Be my guest.