The Spiritual Use of Entheogens

[Monica]

I have yet to use any psychedelic drugs, but I am very positive to the idea. A friend of mine, who lurks these forums and never posts, has invited me to try LSD sometime, which I look forward to.
I acknowledge the risk, but the risk vs reward experience seems worth it in my eyes, as I feel it might act as a catalyst so unlock a feeling of mine I've been looking for.

Following Ali's advice, I'll likely only do it once. Or at least attempt to.

Ah, I totally remember feeling that way. I swore I'd try pot only once, out of sheer curiosity! But of course I ended up getting high every day for 6 years, until age 21.

Then I swore I'd never do any other drugs...in fact broke up with a boyfriend because he did stuff other than pot.

But later, a different boyfriend told me of the spiritual awakening that could occur with LSD, and I became absolutely fascinated by the idea. Again, 'just once' of course!

(I hope I'm not sounding snarky here...I am chuckling because I can so completely relate to the appeal of hallucinagens! There is a reason you feel drawn to it...there is substance there. The question is: is it worth it?)

I only tripped (acid) 5 times, and did mushrooms only once. The 1st time I did acid, I understood all the secrets in the UniVerse. The veil was completely lifted. Thoughts rushed thru my mind a million miles a second. I didn't remember the knowledge later, but I remembered having the knowledge. To this day, I consider it an authentic experience. That knowledge was REAL! The acid just helped me to access it.

Skeptics would say that the experience was drug-induced and therefore 'only in my imagination.' Heh, they say the same thing about NDEs. What I experienced was akin to understanding calculus at age 3, multiplied by a million. I understood why I was here, why everything was the way it was...the secrets of the UniVerse were revealed to me!

While many people hallucinate while tripping, my experience was mostly intellectual, though I did see everything moving. It was as though ordinary life was a photo and my expanded awareness was a movie.

To this day, I treasure that experience. Whenever I've had doubts about life, I could always go back to the knowing that I was an eternal being. I knew this because I experienced it.

I couldn't wait to do it again!

But, the 2nd trip was as horrible as the 1st was wonderful. I literally saw demons and was in a state of extreme terror. I was terrified of everything. My then-boyfriend kept trying to play music but everything he played terrified me. It was as though his album collection was alive and out to get me. Each note of each song stabbed at me like a knife. I couldn't stand being touched - my skin crawled - so he was helpless to comfort me. If I saw 'heaven' the first time, this time I saw 'hell!' Paranoia doesn't even begin to describe the intense terror I felt. Think of the most scared you've ever been, and then multiply that times a million, and you'll begin to get a taste of what it was like. Nothing helped. There was no way to come down off the trip. It was like being on a terrifying roller-coaster when you have the flu, and you just keep puking and screaming but no one ever stops the roller-coaster. Everyone else is laughing but are oblivious to how sick you are, and it goes on for not a few minutes, not a few hours, but all night and most of the next day!

We dropped acid at around midnight, and I didn't come down until 3pm the next day, when my ex-boyfriend threatened to take me to the hospital if I didn't snap out of it. I must have been nearing the end of the trip, because suddenly I became more terrified of going to the hospital and getting locked up for being insane, and I finally came down.

It took me a YEAR to get over it! I could easily have ended up in a mental hospital.

Over the next year, I wasn't the same. It's hard to put my finger on what changed, but I became withdrawn, insecure, and emotionally unstable.

Incredibly, I foolishly tripped 3 more times after that, because my ex-boyfriend convinced me that I'd just gotten bad acid. Those other trips were relatively uneventful. I was simply unable to recapture the wonder of that first trip.

That was almost 30 years ago. There's no way I would ever trip again now.

The problem with any synthetic drug is that you just never know what you're getting. I was told my bummer trip was because we got bad acid. Maybe so. Or maybe it was the mood I was in when I dropped the acid. I'll never know. But there's just no way to really know exactly what combination of chemicals are in that tiny pill, or how it will affect your own individual circuitry. Being sold on the black market makes it even more difficult to trust what you're getting. But even if it were legal and dosages regulated, as Q'uo pointed out, each person responds differently. Having the veil rent isn't the same for everyone! There's a reason that veil is there in the first place.

I'm incredulous that I did it. It blows my mind to contemplate doing something like that now.

I don't feel as strongly about the natural plant allies because at least they're more consistent. I think the synthetics are cheap facsimiles, actually.

The only way I personally would EVER consider doing any hallucinagen would be in a Native American ceremony, with some elders guiding me as a spiritual experience. I have a friend who did peyote as part of a spiritual ritual, and she had a beautiful experience. It changed her in a positive way. Done that way, there is an attitude of reverence and attuning to the positive. Plus, you have guides to help you along the path.

My friend invited me the next time, but I declined. Somehow, for me, the time is past. I don't want to risk whatever degree of clarity I've gained.

I think I would have been a lot better off if I had done something like that when I was younger, instead of just wanting to party to Pink Floyd back then. I had no idea what I was getting into, and it very nearly cost me my sanity. God knows what it did to my aura and circuitry, as Q'uo mentioned (see the thread in 'Sessions' linked to in previous post).

Speaking of which, I think Q'uo nailed it in that session. Very well explained!

Seriously, I hate to sound preachy, but there really is a lot at stake now, with this being the end of 3D...there really are some nasties out there who will polarize if they gain control of an STO entity...I know this from experience. I think there are a lot of ways to explore that are much safer. I'm grateful for the positive experience I had, and I'm also grateful that I didn't go totally insane after the bad trip. It's sort of like playing Russian Roulette.

My advice would be: If you do feel drawn to doing some sort of hallucinagen, stick with the natural ones, and make sure it's in a positive environment, with an attuning towards the sacred.