Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

March 3 , 2003: Playing with Spiritual Fire

"I've seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness."

Allen Ginsberg wrote this in his poem "Howl" in 1956, about some of his friends who had found creative ways of self-destructing. I've known a few of those, too.

I began thinking about this recently because I'd read an interview with Daniel Pinchbeck, author of Breaking Open the Head: A Visionary Journey from Cynicism to Shamanism.

In the interview, Pinchbeck talks about the shamanistic uses of psychedelic substances such as LSD, mushrooms and even DMT.

In the interview, Pinchbeck says:

"It is as if the normal self is a kind of planet orbiting in its usual groove, but during a shamanic crisis, the self becomes a mini-black hole, causing strange bends and wobbles around it in time and space. At the end of the crisis, you are back in orbit, but at a slightly different angle and velocity."

I've highlighted the words "shamanic crisis," because I think they're essential to understanding what happens when someone takes psychedelics. Notions of reality are challenged, and other methods of perception are opened up. But to what degree and to what purpose depends on the person.

When psychedelic substances are used by shamans in cultures around the world, they are typically used as part of a ceremony which involves preparing the shaman for the journey, whether physically or mentally or both. Sometimes the psychedelic substances must be carefully grown by the shaman for years, and the substances themselves are a sort of sacrament, representing only the final step in the journey to a shamanistic state. While there, the shaman may interact with both good and bad beings, or may reach a higher understanding of the nature of the world. But the shaman would not confuse the substance itself for the enlightenment attained.

But in America today, the most frequent use of psychedlics is recreational, with some regarding them as a quickie route to enlightenment. The problem with this attitude is twofold: first of all, people take psychedelic substances far too frequently and in too large a quantity; secondly, people who should never take them do.

The first problem initially seems more serious. After all, the conventional wisdom of drug abuse is that the danger is stepping up to more and more usage over time. Unlike horribly addictive substances like cocaine and heroin, psychedelics are not chemically addictive. But the reasons people overuse them are similar to the reasons many people begin taking more addictive substances: they wish to escape from some facet of their reality.

Those who overuse psychedelics lose their appreciation for the every day world. They could meet God in person and they'd say, "This would be sooooo much better if we were on acid."

Usually, they begin to overuse because they initially had a positive or even an enlightening experience. But then, rather than building on that knowledge, as a shaman would do, they desperately try to recapture the experience, not realizing that the experience came from within their own knowledge and not from the drug itself. As Pinchbeck says, that sort of "shamanic crisis" can force one to look at everyday life differently. But for those who confuse the renewed perception with the drug, they go back to the drug for that renewal. And the more they take, the more locked out and frustrated they feel.

Some may overuse because they're trying to have "fun," to see bright colors and wavy shapes, but they can't put their finger on why their initial experience was so "fun." Chances are, it's because they were experiencing another type of perception, a type of perception which gave new life to the every day world. And again, instead of trying to build on that perception, they confuse the drug for the experience.

While not tragic in the Hollywood sense of the world, I know a couple — we'll call them Shannon and Seamus — who became severe over users. They took LSD so often that they spent a good deal of their time sleeping off their all-night acid trips. And while they both were talented, creative people, their focus was shifted to the drug, and they lost their motivation to do anything other than trip. They began selling other drugs to support their habit and were last seen living in a van in California.

Although over users are a serious concern, a worse problem is the people who take psychedelics but who should never have done so. Again, to use Pinchbeck's words, psychedelics bring on a "shamanic crisis," a spiritual and intellectual challenge. There is no guarantee, when ingesting a psychedelic substance, what sort of experience one will have. While some come out unscathed or even with a deeper psychological understanding, others find their own fragile realities ripped away, never to return.

Take, for example, a girl I'll call Donna. She seemed a quiet, shy sort of girl in her early 20's, a little straight-laced for the hippy crowd she hung around. Perhaps she was quiet because she was already experiencing the symptoms of schizophrenia, which typically begins to show signs in the 20's. Perhaps she was clinically depressed, or bipolar, or had an anxiety disorder. Afterwards, everyone would claim that they had seen signs of her emotional instability beforehand. Nobody could be sure.

Donna took some LSD for the first time, along with her friends, on a balmy summer night. While everyone was taking a walk in a wooded area near the college campus, Donna ran off at a wild pace. Despite frantic searches by both these friends and an extended group of people who were notified about the situation, no one saw Donna for several days. When we next heard about her, she was in a nearby mental institution.

After she was released, Donna was still quiet, but her eyes had a twitchiness to them, as if she had lost the inability to focus.

And then there's a guy I'll call Ryan. For a long time, he'd been a chronic over user, but he seemed just like anybody else, hanging out at the coffee shop, weaving hemp bracelets or playing guitar. Then one night, he decided to increase the dosage, and he took a staggering amount of LSD.

Ryan became obsessed with pregnancy and was calling up girls he knew to ask them if they were pregnant. This obsession continued even after the drug wore off, and Ryan also ended up in the mental institution for awhile. He, too, has a faraway look in his gaze today.

As studies of mental illness have shown, there is often a physical element to mental disease. If something happens that affects the functioning of the brain — such as a massive amount of psychedelics — that can result in a break from reality. Or, if someone is already teetering on the brink of sanity — such as with Donna — the existential portion of the psychedelic experience, the "shamanic crisis," can be enough to result in a break.

While for some, like Pinchbeck, psychedlics are a window to a deeper, richer shamanistic understanding of the world, casual use can lead to bad, twisted pathways, a skewed maze that doesn't end.

 

More thoughts on psychedelics:

VINTAGE ENTRY: April 10, 1989 - Meeting Timothy Leary

 

Moral:
Meditation and yoga are far, far safer routes to spiritual growth.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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