A serious question about a friend and hallucinogenic mushrooms.

[BarronVangorToth]

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Clearly, one of us thinks this board needs more quotes from movies about arm-wrestling.

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This sounds like someone who doesn't know the proper grip from which to have that extra edge in an arm wrestling contest.

Flex the fingers.

Flex 'em.

And come...

OVER THE TOP.

Barron Vangor Toth
www.BarronVangorToth.com

[aflaba]

You seem to know your stuff. Any more arm wrestling advice? ... I'm trying to beat this huge dude...



For the original post, that he imagined/got flashes of crazy things means nothing. He's not crazy for that.

Did I forget to say that drugz are bad?

Dude, feeling blood pumping through your muscels is waaay better and waaay underrated.

[A_C_Slater]

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Dude, feeling blood pumping through your muscels is waaay better and waaay underrated.

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Uhhhhh.... Are you talking about working out?

[cardspeak]

Kaz:

Are you wondering whether your friend has latent violent tendencies? Does he want to kill his parents? Are his visions prophetic or simply hallucinations?

I'm sort of a libertarian at heart. I feel everyone (if adult) should be free do what they feel is right, provided it doesn't involve hurting others. With drugs I wish more information was provided on the best way to use them to minimize the side effects, which can of course be anywhere from mildly to hugely negative.

IMO hallucinations should be treated exactly as that and not as any reality. They may reveal certain aspects of consciousness, but more likely perhaps how dreams symbolically access the unconscious. They are useful, if not treated literally. Your friends images of death and blood are, of course, coming out of his unconscious. I believe everyone has latent violence, or more likely in this case fears about death, blood, violence especially associated with people we love. Who hasn't feared for harm to anyone loved? Who hasn't gotten mad at these same loved ones? In a hallucinating state few people have control of which part of the brain is going to be accessed. Tripping, to use an old term, implies going wherever the drug takes you.

Certain spiritual points of view treat every image, every sensation, thought and feeling as creations of consciousness. It is the identification, the getting lost within the conviction that these creations have inherent reality that becomes a snare and a self-deception. To me, that's one of the biggest downsides to most drugs, they impair one's ability to discriminate.

Anyway, if it were me, I'd treat it as an unimportant hallucination (I understand that's not how he must feel it), but it's a choice to not elevate the images as anything more than they are, just a side effect of the drug. The only problem might be if he becomes obsessed with it. I agree with one of the other posters that this may be a signal to quit the hallucinagens. It seems the longer one uses any drug, the smaller the positive effects are and the larger the negative effects are. I'm not speaking morally here, just practically and even clinically. The fact that he's had this bad experience is likely to create even more fears to be amplified by the drug.

I hope my response is in the ballpark of your concerns.

[Kaz The Original]

Cardspeak, you hit the crux of my point here. I was not really concerned that he would have violent tendancies, but wondered what someone who knew a bit more about psychology would think.

[Seether]

Um, are you sure that those visions were from doing shrooms? I nor anyone I know has had hallucinations like that.

[A_C_Slater]

Their are many different types of mushrooms. There is no way you could get a good sample size from casual usage to make sweeping generalizations like "no shrooms are bad, dude." I however concur, that I've never had a bad experience with mushrooms ---sample size; about 8 times.

[Hermlord]

Many psychologists, including Jung and Stanislav Grof believe that self-development mirrors the birth process, or birth is the archetype for self-discovery, or some variant. The initial state is bliss, but unaware. Then comes an intense and sudden trauma, with no explanation or end (hell). Then still pain but progress, and finally birth into the new world, completing the cycle but with open instead of closed eyes. This can easily be turned into a religious/metaphysical story as well.

Now if you believe drugs have some sort of significance, rather than just creating random weird nonsense, your friend was undergoing the "hell" part of the growth process -- encountering the negative aspects of the psyche directly for perhaps the first time. This is necessary to evolve, as ignoring them will simply allow them to fester. Meeting them is painful but necessary to become a fully realized person.

Also see Joseph Campbell, especially his book Hero with a Thousand Faces. It equates the mythic archetype of the hero's journey to the underworld and back with every person's life story of growth. The underworld is dangerous but also provides access to nonordinary realms of knowledge, and must be overcome for the hero to realize his(/her) own potential.

Drugs are not bad, they are just very powerful. Your friend should not ignore this experience but caution him to stay sober for awhile until he's had time to process it.

As for dealing with a bad trip, this obviously varies but here's my experience. Finding other people, talking to them, esp. leaving the room, all help to "break the spell" but are sort of a denial approach. Some people like TV but it always gets me paranoid about The Man, keeping the masses sedated, etc. Maybe a good (non-mindf_ck) movie will work. If you want to meet it head-on, the worst thing to do is to fight it. For me, music and breathing meditation both work to subdue the by-then wildly out-of-control energy and redirect it in healthy ways, as well as discovering some really useful things about my head.

Like I said, drugs release a whole lot of powerful stuff, and it could be dangerous if not handled right. The old transcendence manuals are filled with warnings about initiating these things unprepared.

And if you think I'm a total wacko, just wait -- death is a trip for everyone. But if you're doing things right, so is life...

[Kaz The Original]

My hallucinations on mushrooms usually take the form of objects swirling, melting and conforming. Light is probably the most dynamic.

I have had "bad" trips before, but they (like most of the experience I get from mushrooms) take the form of thoughts. "No body likes me, these people are not my friends" etc.

The vast majority of my mushroom trips were not "good" or "bad" in terms of emotions, just various sensations, images and thoughts.

None the less, the friend is a credible witness to what he encountered and has had much experience with mushrooms (we've probably done them at least 40 times).

[Hermlord]

Oh yeah, I forgot cigarettes for a bad trip. Brings you back to earth and after 2 hours of mental hell, they are soooo good. Sorry smoker-haters, but they work. Man, do they work.