Banana peels (for the unintiated, this was an urban legend, they have no psychtropic properties at all) ......and I went to pick up some barrels from
@thecarman today (thanks Richard). For some reason, I wound up ruminating some about acid/dmt/shrooms/mdma etc. Here is what I posted to my brother (also an ex psychonaut):
“Thinking about acid/shrooms/dmt/mdma etc. for some reason today. What psychedelics and and their ilk are really doing, more than anything, more than showing you wavy dots and geometric patterns and pretty colors, is they're putting a filter on your THOUGHTS where whatever else you think, you always think it's profound. Every thought is accompanied by a pervasive emotion of revelation. If you think about the sky, the sky seems profound. If you think about a cat turd, the droppings will seem like a rich vein of radiant insight. And perhaps they are, in some sense.
But the really wacked out thing is when, instead of all that, you make the mistake of thinking about morality. under the influence of psychedelics, the most inane moral excretions of my mind felt divinely inspired. It was like the voice of God was reverberating down the grottos of my soul. And God was saying "breathing is good All life does it." And this was REALLY REALLY fucking profound. Deep. And if you're unlucky, it sticks after the trip is over.. and here you are going around with a childlike sense of wonder at some nonsensical lugubrious bullshit that "we are all one."
That is the "harmless" side of mind expansion. The destructive side of this comes when I wandered around the shrooming meccas of the Mayan pyramids, and saw glyphs that were identical in theme to those of India, or Peru or some Egyptian artifacts. They dealt with celestial beings, ufos and were all concerned with the "unity" of all things. Everything is one, and when you are really really tripping (7 grams of shrooms or a 400 mic hit of acid for me, may be higher or lower for others), the Universe is "beckoning" you to "become one with it." I was not sure at the time what I was being summoned to, other than "open up to receive the oneness." I felt like a diver up higher than a three meter board, invited to dive in. I felt an internal fear of doing so, not quite knowing why, but knew the invite was somehow "personal" even while ostensibly it was an invite into a "sea of impersonality." Now that I am a believer, I am convinced that there were hyperintelligent malevolent beings wishing to suck my soul into themselves. "Demonic possession" is not just spastic twisting and gutteral verbal ejaculations and freaking out at a cross, etc. Lots of folk carry recordings cut into their souls from stepping into what Huxley called "doors of perception" into another dimension, and embracing what they found. For some unknown reason, I always held back.
Anyway, I went to pick up some plastic barrels today, and you now know where my wrecked psyche goes when not constrained by music or talk radio. God has saved us from more than we know. Hope you are well.”