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I’ve done enough psychedelics, acid especially, to tell you definitively no. Not with how the CIA intended to use it, and not even on a base level of “if everyone did acid things would be better.”
I’ve seen good trips. I’ve seen bad. I’ve seen it affect different people in different ways. It’s not the miracle eye opener catch all many people claim it to be.
It can be, but the mindset needs to be there, and the differences between individuals is a huge factor.
This. I am more of a psilocybin person myself but I can echo what you say for the most part, if only from a different perspective and experience.
Psychedelics can be used for wonderful things. It’s highly dependent on set, setting and a persons willingness to change and if the drugs are used to look deep into their own behavior. To say I have had some radical experiences is an understatement.
I think one of the biggest problems with psychedelics is that people take too much and are not ready for the experience. “They say” the biggest risk of that is suicide, and having had a couple of bad trips myself, I understand why. Seeing reality completely disolve in front of your eyes can be scary and it generally doesn’t stop when you close your eyes. It can get worse.
Still though, psychedelics have some real benefits when it comes to rewiring your brain. Because of that, I am a fairly staunch supporter. My personal outlook on life has changed and it is instrumental in my continued recovery from alcoholism.
It took a fuck ton of practice and time to get any benefits. It’s not a miracle drug that you take once and everything gets fixed. That’s not how it works.
Addendum: For those who are curious about bad trips, I can only speak about my experience. For me, it’s an extreme amplification of my natural anxiety and fear. It’s like those negative emotions cycle through my brain with extreme clarity and purity. It’s not fun. However, I learned how to handle that situation when it happens and let those feelings go. Overcoming that was probably one of my best personal accomplishments and steps forward in handling those emotions in my daily life.
That’s just it. If you do it enough times and with the correct intentions then you will glean massive mental health benefits from it. But it’s work. And it’s scary. And it’s also fun.
DMT is still my favourite tho.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Though we don’t know about her own experience with the drug, Mead was surrounded by researchers and users who enthused about the nonaddictive, liberatory, insight-generating potential of acid and mescaline, and she had written about the “curative properties” of peyote two decades prior while studying the Omaha people.
Mead’s interest in psychedelics stemmed from her lifelong quest to find a way to help humanity design peaceful, culturally diverse societies full of self- actualized individuals — in essence, a utopia.
But as she and the rest of her generation navigated “the most rapid period of change in human history, before or since,” Breen explains, Mead both inadvertently and intentionally participated in government projects more commonly associated with dystopia.
Worse, immediately after the dropping of the atomic bomb, he wrote a report proposing a new intelligence agency “specializing in unconventional warfare.” This missive was later credited with spurring the creation of the C.I.A.
Though excising more tangential anecdotes would have aided narrative clarity, Breen’s investment in even minor characters, like the mysteriously disappeared artist Weldon Kees (who may or may not have been involved in the MKULTRA sub-project “Midnight Climax,” in which prostitutes brought their clients to a CIA apartment for observation after they were unwittingly dosed with LSD) is indicative of the passion he brings to his project.
Breen’s empathy is frequently on display, but especially comes to the fore when he turns his attention to Bateson, a man who, at the end of his life, described himself as a smoke ring, “a circle spreading outward into nothingness.”
The original article contains 865 words, the summary contains 257 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
