The Dangers of Psychedelics; Risk Management

     I first began my journey with psychedelic drugs about a year ago. The pretenses with which i approached the first experience were given to me by the people i had chosen to surround myself with, people who had preexisting beliefs about what psychedelics will do, what the effect is, how it will or won't change you, etcetera.

     Now, a year later, i have a pretty resolved position on what i believe the best use of psychedelics is. Alternately, in the world there's a pretty well resolved understanding of the purpose of a lighter. Same goes for a flamethrower, or a kiln. Fire has a regular, common place in day to day life for many people. But if you go back in our history, waaay back to a time when we might not consider our former selves to really quite have been "us," you'll at some point arrive at a time in life when fire was something to be feared and avoided at all costs. It destroyed woods and forests, killed animals and people alike, and left nasty scarring if you were lucky enough to have survived an encounter with it.

     Our bodies use a small and controlled amount of what one could arguably consider being under the category of fire not just on the daily, but perpetually: Electricity. Neurons fire electric messages between each other through our entire lives. There's even science fiction stretching the possibilities of manipulating this relationship between our biology and fire, like in Frankenstein, wherein a scientist uses lightening to strike enough electricity into an organic entity to bring it to life. Everything truly exists on a spectrum, and some degree of each of the elements make us what we are.

     Today, there is already a normal, regular, healthy use for DMT and psilocybin. Our own bodies produce them at birth, death, and in micro-doses through our lives. These chemicals are not terribly dissimilar from serotonin, dopamine, or endorphin. They are ever present in our lives, commonplace, and go all but entirely unnoticed by the average person.

     But much like the horror neanderthals experienced at the sight or prospect of fire, people are terrified of psychedelics. Rightfully so, don't get me wrong. Just like how a wild fire can turn an entire forest to dry dead wood and ashes, psychedelics are easily capable of inciting the end of a life, or changing a person so drastically that they become a vegetable. It's a scary thing. It's bright, and hot, and the things it touches inevitably come out of the experience different than they were before. People have never been fond of, let alone comfortable with things changing too much too quickly. Most political shifts in power happen over a great deal of time, often fueled by events and interactions accumulated over centuries. A person undergoes a great deal of changes through life, but each change is so gradual that when observed day to day, it might take a while to notice those differences.

     But when a building is condemned, or when the wooding of a forest becomes too dense or unhealthy, from time to time, fire is used to create drastic changes quickly, so that new things can begin to take their place. Even on a smaller scale, a lighter may be used to light a cigarette or joint, and as the substance burns, a perceivable change occurs in the inhaler of the smoke as they become intoxicated. Humans crave change, for as strongly as they might fear or resist it. We need things to end so new things can begin. What is born must die, and what goes up must come down.

     I sense a sickness in our culture. We are unwell, and sometimes when issues are addressed, others go unnoticed, and sometimes whie addressing one issue, ten more are generated in the process. There's no such thing as ethical consumption under late capitalism, as we have become stagnant and self-propelled. We're essentially eating our own shit in some combination with actual foods, while also emitting toxins we can't get our fingers around because it's gas, breathing it in, and forcing anyone around us to breathe it too. And we think we're great. We think we've won. We fancy ourselves modern and intelligent and better than other living creatures.

     We need a collective reality check. Fortunately, i believe the US is getting a small dose of one, considering how they have no choice but to deal with the consequences of their decisions in the form of a government they can hardly bring themselves to agree with. But based on my personal experience, there is no reality check that forces one to change like a reality check from an experience with psychedelics. I remember coming down from my first trip on acid, i'd been hanging out with my girlfriend at the time, who tripped with me, and my primary partner, who was sober.

     I remember laying on the floor listening to dubstep, where my primary had been rubbing my back and talking to my girlfriend. I felt amazing. Then i overheard my primary say something that caught my interest. It was, "But that's what scared me about them so much. Once you get there, how do you get back?" Songs by the dubstep artist we were listening to still trigger in me that same crashing sensation of realizing that i had to go back to my normal life. That nothing had actually changed, despite this whole experience i'd had being somewhere--something entirely different from what i was used to, something that it felt so much better to be than myself that i cannot do the comparison justice in words. I can't deny that if you keep your head above water, tripping on acid feels amazing. That fire lighting up your world gives you a vision of yourself and your surroundings that you'd only ever seen in grey-scale in the dark.

     If you get too close to that same fire, it can blind you more effectively than any darkness ever could. If you touch it, it can easily traumatize you in varying degrees. But it's the same fire! It's the same light, the same warmth, the same substance. It all depends on how you treat it. In the days of neanderthals, people had no idea how to handle fire, and anyone who dared wield it was a magician, someone to be revered and respected. At this time, any development was a good one. We were still fueled purely by the pain/pleasure response that motivates all evolution.

     Now, however, we've grown into something else. We've developed something that we perceive that we assume is an integral aspect of life as we know it. Fire is hot, water is wet, people live in society. We've developed culture. Language. Expectations. Social norms. Culture is a growth on our collective being that can be incredibly healthy and helpful, but instead what it produces in our lives is frustration at not meeting expectations, sorrow at the loss of anything held dear, pain and anger at any form of rejection. Worse still, our culture perpetuates these ideas that there's a certain mold you're meant to fit, and if you don't fit it, you're not being a Person the right way. There's something wrong with you. And being wrong is the worst possible thing you can be.

     Psychedelic drugs are a medicine. Just like any other substance that alters our state of being, it has a place and a purpose. Mothers milk is for babies to help them grow big and strong and to help mothers bond with their babies. When you have a cold, you take cold medicine to help ease your symptoms while your immune system overcomes the cold on its own. If you have a headache, you take narcotics to ease that pain so you can keep living the life you were going to live anyway.

     When in the midst of an existential crisis, i've found that the most effective medicine is a trip. Whether you take yourself to a new place you've never been before in the world or in yourself, the result is the same: Greater perspective. It becomes easier to see your self and your place in the world when you've stepped outside of that place. You can't see a painting if it's the size of the world and you're standing on it, and for as long as looking at that painting from an effective vantage point is not an option, the next best thing you can do is look at it in different places and do your best to put the pieces together. The thing is, getting a better vantage point is an option. While moving about and traveling may give you two dimensional perspectives to consider, getting high will help you see things best. It's the third dimension. The next frontier.

     Some medicines are easy to take, for example, if you're stiff and sore and stressed, it would be a welcome aching pressure to get a massage for the benefits that follow so quickly. Some pills are a little more bitter. Sometimes the medicine gives as much grief as relief such as in psychiatry wherein patients get help digging up all the trauma and hurt they've experienced and go through it again for the sake of being able to let it go. The keystone of the public resistance to psychedelic drugs is the inevitable need to surrender to them. There is no way to have a good trip on psychedelic drugs if you refuse to surrender to them. It terrifies people, especially those who have been so privileged as to experience life with a sense of control over their self and surroundings. But so many of the most fulfilling changes we go through force us to surrender to them eventually. Birth, puberty, falling in love, achieving a sense of self, death. Some of us surrender more easily than others. Some surrender too easily--they fall victim to the resistance this modern societal life forces us to endure, and they end up impoverished and forgotten. You do have to fight, but fight too hard and you could end up with less than you started with.

     The trick is to find a balance, and in my own life, that balance involves doing things that make me uncomfortable, such as surrendering to psychedelics. It's such a worthwhile trade-off. Control for understanding. And you can easily control the ratio of what you trade for what. For a short, easy trip take a small dose of mushrooms, and you'll probably come out a little more or a little less sure of yourself. If you want the answers to life, death, and the universe, take a regular dose of DMT. It all depends on how much you want to know, how willing you are to give yourself up so you can grow yourself in new ways.

     Coming back to the comment my partner made when i was coming down from acid, getting there only takes consuming a drug. Coming back is another story, and moreso, bringing what you've learned back with you. As i mentioned, being on psychedelic drugs feels amazing. you're free of all the nasty things you ever thought about yourself, or have been said about you. You're free of the aches and pains you feel in your body just from daily use and abuse. Nothing you encounter makes any demands, and if you set your trip up in a healthy way, no one makes demands of you. You're free to experience the beauty of life unadulterated. You don't have to care about anything. Nothing matters, it just feels good. And when you come back, the weight of your self-concept comes back. The burden of societal expectations. The roles you play, the tasks you feel you have no choice but to accomplish. It can easily be more uncomfortable to come down from psychedelics than it is to surrender to them. That first serious reality check i experienced was my realization of the attitude people have towards this amazing, incredible, beautiful experience i'd just had, and the substance i ingested in order to have it.

     The only words i could muster post-trip in response to this upsetting comment were, "I now have the ability to control how much i care. The singularity..." And at the time i couldn't find the words "of everything." The connectedness you feel while on psychedelics is incomparable. Everything makes sense. Everything is exactly as it's meant to be. Interdependence is apparent and obvious. And when you come back down, you're back on the level of people who do things that don't make sense, who don't understand and do things anyway, back of the level of people who can't bring themselves to step an inch outside their own worldview to get a better grip of the world we all live in. It's really tempting to just keep being high. So tempting to surrender to the pleasure again and again, until you become useless to the people who once relied on you, who trusted you to fulfill their expectations, because nothing matters and everything can feel good, and you don't have to do anything, like go to work, or sleep, or eat, or breathe. Your own death can begin to make so much sense you can be convinced you should die now. This is the blindness the fire can cause you.

     If you touch the fire, you might use the effects of psychedelics to solidify your own fears and doubts about yourself. You may be traumatized by the truths of the things you hate about yourself, or about your position in the world.

     But to allow the light of the fire to illuminate your world is to allow yourself to be carried by the experience to wherever it takes you, and to bring back what you gather and try and piece it together in a more functional state of mind. Even if you find yourself traumatized by the experience, that itself may be something you needed. I've already talked about trauma in this post and just like a bitter pill, you must allow for painful things to be so that the equal and opposite feelings and experiences can take their place. You have to be traumatized before you can heal, and i think the healing is what counts.

     It's all about risk management. You, as a human, can handle a lot, and you can come back from a lot. When you build muscles, as you use them to excess, the fibers actually tear apart in a way that's not exactly comfortable to make room for more and stronger muscle fibers to grow. Some people like to ride motorcycles, and that practice gives them a better sense of balance and how to maneuver at high speeds. Some enjoy rollercoasters, where you're strapped in and just go along for the ride. Everyone gets their kick somehow. As far as diet and matters we consume, some people smoke just cause it feels good. Some take daily medications to help them function better. Some have a diet of fast food, sweets, and fatty things. Some eat lean with only grains and vegetables. But diversity is healthy, and what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

     I must admit, psychedelics are not for everyone, but i do believe they're for more than are willing to take them. You have a god-given opportunity to alter the state of your mind and perception, to come back from it naturally, and virtually unscathed at that. It's a risk, no doubt. But one i find so worthwhile that i highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't ever had a close-contact experience with them. Light up that fire. You'll get to see so much more; The world is so much more beautiful than we give it credit for being. You have to be the one to allow it to reach you with it's beauty. Take advantage of this incredible tool we have available. Expand your world. When you come out on the other side is the only time you'll see just how worthwhile a high risk experience can be.