FT Reviews: Animals & Psychedelics

If even an ant can tell the difference between being straight and high, in this instance by sucking secretions from the abdomen of a lomechusa beetle, what does this tell us about the consciousness of something like a mandrill, which munches the intensely potent iboga root, then waits up to two hours for the effects to kick in before engaging in territorial battle with another mandrill? Equally fascinating is the fact that many animals appear to use psychedelics recreationally — and that not all individuals of a particular species will indulge, just as some humans are more partial to tripping out than others. One in the eye for the stark behaviourists, it would seem.

The main focus of my art is currently the exploration of the infinite ever-changing worlds contained within the subconscious mind. In Heaven and Hell Aldous Huxley wrote:

"Like the giraffe and the duckbilled platypus, the creatures inhabiting [the] remoter regions of the mind are exceedingly improbable. Nevertheless they exist, they are facts of observation; and as such, they cannot be ignored by anyone trying to understand the world in which he lives."

The worlds inside the mind are just as real as the world outside, but describing and documenting the inner worlds can only be done by using similes and symbols from the outside world. I see my work as symbolic representations of subconscious landscapes, creatures or events. Each work is a piece of an infinite puzzle representing my subconscious mind.

Update 2023/04/22: Link above just goes to the homepage now, but Ben Tolman is on Instagram

Cancer Anxiety Study - Easing the Anxiety of Death: “The Research & Education Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center is conducting a study designed to measure the effectiveness of the novel psychoactive medication psilocybin on the reduction of anxiety, depression, and physical pain.”

Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies: “This is the first study of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy ever approved in the 18 1/2 years since MDMA was criminalized.”

• Shamanic Verses, by Erik Davis
• Daniel Pinchbeck on iboga: "Ten Years of Therapy in One Night"
• MetaFilter: Ten years of therapy in one night
• MetaFilter: Iboga and Ibogaine
• Daniel Pinchbeck's breakingopenthehead.com

washingtonpost.com: Canadian PM Mulls Smoking Marijuana When He Retires

Chretien, 69, said in an interview published on Friday that he might give pot a try once it is no longer a criminal offense -- presumably after he retires in February. Under the new law, pot users would only pay a fine if caught with small amounts.

"I don't know what is marijuana. Perhaps I will try it when it will no longer be criminal. I will have my money for my fine and a joint in the other hand," he said in an interview with the Winnipeg Free Press.

"If I were to guess the drug trajectory of you and your friends," he says between bites of a burger in a cafe in New York City's East Village, "I'd say it was marijuana, acid, mushrooms, Ecstasy, coke, and/or speed."

Pretty close. Yet this wasn't the trajectory on which my largely middle- and upper-middle-class friends and I envisioned ourselves. Our organizing drug principles were more organic. Pot and 'shrooms were natural. Even acid, though made in a lab, seemed to be more about the mind than the body. We didn't do nasty, "dangerous" drugs like coke or meth or heroin. That shit was evil. Deadly, even. But E was different.

What I did that day should not be illegal. Adults seeking solace or insight ought to be allowed to consume psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline.

With a dance remix of Madonna's "Die Another Day" playing on his computer's hard drive, he took a miniature torch to the end of a glass pipe and inhaled the ghostly smoke, proclaiming it "the martini of the future."

originally posted by xowie

Metaphorically, the path of the wounded healer, or the journey of the shaman has very important implications for the future of spirituality. No other metaphor sufficiently deals with the journey of humanity. We are wounded, and whether we're going to be the wounded victim, or the wounded healer is our choice. We have wounded the planet. We have wounded our genes. We've wounded the coming generations. Whether we make some remediation to the environment, and to our psyches, is something that only time will tell.

The next day people in like radioactive suits came out with tongs to pick up the poor thing. They put it in a big metal canister and took it away. Sure enough, it was rabid, and I had to go through all these shots in the fleshy parts of the stomach area, and in my back. The antitoxin that they injected me with contained dead dried duck embryo and it would leave a lump under my skin. It was very painful. I think that stopped me from picking up dead animals for awhile. (...) It was a medical school morgue, so we prepared the bodies for dissection. When a new body came in, if no one else was there, I would do a simplified Tibetan Book of the Dead ritual, calling their name, and encouraging them to go toward the light.(...) I experienced a vision where I was in a courtroom being judged. I couldn't see the face of the judge, but I knew the accuser was a woman's body who I had violated in the morgue work. She was accusing me of this sin. I said "It was for art's sake." This excuse didn't hold up under scrutiny for the judge. I was put on lifetime probation and not forgiven. The content of my work and my orientation would be watched from that point on. It made me consider the ethical intentions of my art. The motivation that moves us to creative work is critical. (...) I hope that death will be like a cosmic orgasm, where I'm released into convergence with the infinite one. Certain tantric traditions have sexual rituals to be performed in charnel grounds, and there are some pretty intense paintings of Kali astride corpse Shiva. (...) Even young children know the fear. (...) It was prior to my name change that I went to the North Magnetic Pole, and I shaved half my head of hair, in alignment with the rational and intuitive hemispheres of the brain. (...) The painting acts a portal to the mystical dimension. (...) That was an extraordinary trip that really convinced me of the reality of the transpersonal dimensions. We experienced the same transpersonal space at the same time. That space of connectedness with all beings and things through love energy seemed more real to both of us, than the phenomenal world. (...) It seems to me the universe is like a self-awareness machine. I think the world was created for each individual to manifest the boundless experiences of identity with the entire universe, and with the pregnant void that gives birth to the phenomenal universe. That's the Logos. That's the point of a universe, to increase complexity and self-awareness. The evolution of consciousness is the counter-force to the entropic laws of thermodynamics that end in stasis, heat death, and the loss of order. The evolution of consciousness appears to gain complexity, mastery, and wisdom. Lessons are learned over a lifetime-- maybe many lifetimes. And the soul grows and hopefully attains a state of spiritual awakenedness. Buddha was the "Awakened One". To be able to access all the simultaneous parallel dimensions, and come from a ground of love and infinite compassion like the awakenedness of the Buddha, is a good goal for the evolution of consciousness. The spiritual "fruit" in many spiritual paths is compassion and wisdom.

Rolling Stone: Phish Resurface

We had these jam sessions, Anastasio says one night after practice, where we drank hot chocolate with mushrooms and just played, trying to get in tune with each other, for eight hours. One of those jams, he points out, is on a record: “Union Federal,” a bonus track on the CD reissue of Phish’s 1989 independent cassette release, Junta. We used to rehearse like demons, Anastasio, 38, says excitedly, a big smile busting through his ginger forest of beard. A lot of it was mind games, challenging each other. We’d change roles: I’m always the natural leader. Page, you be that person now. We’d make Fish set up his drums left-handed instead of right: Use your mind to play, not your hands. Or we’d just play one note for an hour – weird stuff.
The weirdness bloomed in concert: in clubs such as Nectar’s on Main Street in Burlington, where Phish first played in December 1984 and honed their writing and jamming chops through 1989; then in theaters and, finally, arenas. Fishman, who turns thirty-eight on February 19th, played most gigs during Phish’s first two years flying on LSD. I still play with the feeling I got from those experiences, trying to generate wind and water, he claims quite earnestly.

Occasionally he would stare blankly into space during lengthy pauses between statements -- pauses that once or twice threatened to be endless. There were times when it seemed every sentence Bush spoke was of the same duration and delivered in the same dour monotone, giving his comments a numbing, soporific aura. Watching him was like counting sheep.

originally posted by xowie

‘In the green hour’

Take a Newport and dip it into the bottle of Juice and smoke it down. I would be on a Dust cloud floating over Queens. I was in a trance thinking about the fuzzy feeling that surrounds your brain, and then your whole body. I loved the way Juice made me feel like an animal that has just been released from a zoo. How all inhibitions left and I felt wild.

originally posted by daiichi

In one of Ram Dass' books, don't remember which, he told a story about his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, aka Maharaji. Ram Dass tried many times to give LSD to Maharaji. Nothing ever happenned. But he had some doubt that the old man was really swallowing the tabs. So the next time Ram Dass gave a tab to Maharaji, the guru made a show of placing it on his tongue and carefully swallowing. A short while later, Maharaji went wild, started acting crazy. Ram Dass was thinking, "What have I done to this poor old man?" Maharaji came immediately back to his senses and told Ram Dass, "They knew about this stuff a thousand years ago. If you take it in a meditative mood, you can visit Jesus. But after two hours, you have to come back. Wouldn't it be better to BE Jesus?"

originally posted by daiichi

Mike Gray’s Busted, reviewed by Judith Lewis.

originally posted by xowie

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the effects of the fentanyl class "are indistinguishable from those of heroin, with the exception that the fentanyls may be hundreds of times more potent."

That mystery drug? Shh. It's legal in the U.S.

Ecstasy, science and politics.

originally posted by xowie