Mushroom drug produces mystical experience

[The Present Moment]

Mushroom drug produces mystical experience

NEW YORK - People who took an illegal drug made from mushrooms reported profound mystical experiences that led to behavior changes lasting for weeks — all part of an experiment that recalls the psychedelic '60s.

Many of the 36 volunteers rated their reaction to a single dose of the drug, called psilocybin, as one of the most meaningful or spiritually significant experiences of their lives. Some compared it to the birth of a child or the death of a parent.

Such comments "just seemed unbelievable," said Roland Griffiths of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, the study's lead author.

But don't try this at home, he warned. "Absolutely don't."

Almost a third of the research participants found the drug experience frightening even in the very controlled setting. That suggests people experimenting with the illicit drug on their own could be harmed, Griffiths said.

Viewed by some as a landmark, the study is one of the few rigorous looks in the past 40 years at a hallucinogen's effects. The researchers suggest the drug someday may help drug addicts kick their habit or aid terminally ill patients struggling with anxiety and depression.

It may also provide a way to study what happens in the brain during intense spiritual experiences, the scientists said.

Funded in part by the federal government, the research was published online Tuesday by the journal Psychopharmacology.

Psilocybin has been used for centuries in religious practices, and its ability to produce a mystical experience is no surprise. But the new work demonstrates it more clearly than before, Griffiths said.

Even two months after taking the drug, pronounced SILL-oh-SY-bin, most of the volunteers said the experience had changed them in beneficial ways, such as making them more compassionate, loving, optimistic and patient. Family members and friends said they noticed a difference, too.

Charles Schuster, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at Wayne State University and a former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, called the work a landmark.

"I believe this is one of the most rigorously well-controlled studies ever done" to evaluate psilocybin or similar substances for their potential to increase self-awareness and a sense of spirituality, he said. He did not participate in the research.

Psilocybin, like LSD or mescaline, is one of a class of drugs called hallucinogens or psychedelics. While they have been studied by scientists in the past, research was largely shut down after widespread recreational abuse of the drugs during the 1960s, Griffiths said. Some work resumed in the 1990s.

"We've lost 40 years of (potential) research experience with this whole class of compounds," he said. Now, with modern-day scientific methods, "I think it's time to pick up this research field."

The study volunteers had an average age of 46, had never used hallucinogens, and participated to some degree in religious or spiritual activities like prayer, meditation, discussion groups or religious services. Each tried psilocybin during one visit to the lab and the stimulant methylphenidate (better known as
Ritalin) on one or two other visits. Only six of the volunteers knew when they were getting psilocybin.

Each visit lasted eight hours. The volunteers lay on a couch in a living-room-like setting, wearing an eye mask and listening to classical music. They were encouraged to focus their attention inward.

Psilocybin's effects lasted for up to six hours, Griffiths said. Twenty-two of the 36 volunteers reported having a "complete" mystical experience, compared to four of those getting methylphenidate.

That experience included such things as a sense of pure awareness and a merging with ultimate reality, a transcendence of time and space, a feeling of sacredness or awe, and deeply felt positive mood like joy, peace and love. People say "they can't possibly put it into words," Griffiths said.

Two months later, 24 of the participants filled out a questionnaire. Two-thirds called their reaction to psilocybin one of the five top most meaningful experiences of their lives. On another measure, one-third called it the most spiritually significant experience of their lives, with another 40 percent ranking it in the top five.

About 80 percent said that because of the psilocybin experience, they still had a sense of well-being or life satisfaction that was raised either "moderately" or "very much."

[knucklebrain1970]

Seriously, I need a life transforming experience. It'd be nice to rid myself of all anxiety and fear that has plagued me for the better part of my life. Is this stuff legal?

kevin

[WalkerInTheWoods]

mushrooms are not legal in the US

Few things seem to be any more in the "land of the free".

[paint1]

Not in Canada either, but they grow everywhere.

[The Present Moment]

Seriously, I need a life transforming experience. It'd be nice to rid myself of all anxiety and fear that has plagued me for the better part of my life. Is this stuff legal?

kevin

You'd have to leave the U.S. to do it. There are retreats like Blue Morpho that specialize in this.

[WindGod]

many years ago, friends and I would gather psilocybe cubensis, the type that grows out of cow paddies after a rain or very humid weather.

There is a poisonous variety, so you have to be an expert at identifying them.

We even cooked magic mushroom omelets, (just found this site http://www.mushroomjohn.com/samui1.htm )

We were in the country-side and the experience was very smooth. (I don't think trying this in a busy city is reccomended as the concentration of human monsters is too high.)

Felt as if I could communicate, or commune with all the plants and trees, the "one-ness" feeling so to speak, and in that respect it was a spiritual experience.

However, I don't agree with:
"It may also provide a way to study what happens in the brain during intense spiritual experiences, the scientists said."

IMHO, Chemically confusing the brain cell synapse is not the path to "spirituality". For example, what do you think is more productive, taking mushrooms every day, or learning to meditate and having these experiences with a sharp and clear mind?

With that said, mushrooms could be beneficial as a providing a very temporary peek into altered consciousness, and only beneficial if it leads to the practice of meditation for example.

IMHO, a common trap is to think that these chemicals taken repeatidly will continue to help. The benefit is only a one time deal, and you have to drop it and just get to work on the real deal.

[The Present Moment]

wow, has anyone gone to that?
I wonder what it's like for a woman to go alone. .

Wonder not.

[dextro]

mushrooms are not legal in the US

Depends on the type and form of the 'shroom. I believe Amanita Muscaria mushrooms are sold all over the internet as items for "collectors" and those can certainly be as potent as the average psilocybin mushroom in my opinion.

Psilocybin is illegal though...but it isn't like you can't find some growing in huge quantities if you are in the right area at the right time.

[MisterJingo]

However, I don't agree with:
"It may also provide a way to study what happens in the brain during intense spiritual experiences, the scientists said."

IMHO, Chemically confusing the brain cell synapse is not the path to "spirituality". For example, what do you think is more productive, taking mushrooms every day, or learning to meditate and having these experiences with a sharp and clear mind?

With that said, mushrooms could be beneficial as a providing a very temporary peek into altered consciousness, and only beneficial if it leads to the practice of meditation for example.

I think the key words above are 'intense spiritual experiences', which are fairly common with psychedelic use but decidedly rare with meditation alone.
While I agree meditation as a long term solution to spiritual progress is best, meditation alone rarely produces moments of rapture and intense spiritual awakening. So as a means to study the brain during these moments, it's pretty useless. Unless you are able to find competent meditators who are willing to be hooked up to machines daily, for years on end (until such an event occurs).
Regardless of our beliefs, we cannot escape the fact that all experience is filtered through a chemical brain (even if you believe the brain is simply an interface for an external mind). So in a sense, all our spiritual experiences are chemical induced. The difference being, psychedelics are an external agent (Although in most cases they are simply a key to certain brain reactions which causes the experience, rather than the cause itself. Such as LSD being removed from the brain before the experience starts).

IMHO, a common trap is to think that these chemicals taken repeatidly will continue to help. The benefit is only a one time deal, and you have to drop it and just get to work on the real deal.

I both agree and disagree with the above. Repeated psychedelic experience might not be effective if taken in the wrong circumstances, but it can produce very long term changes if taken in the correct circumstances with the correct supervision.
If you are interested in this, then look into the experiments done throughout the 50s-60s-70s-80s which utilised psychedelics in roles from psychotherapy, treating alcoholism and drug abuse (with very high recovery rates), removing fear of death from terminally ill patients, to treating medical conditions.
I could find out references for you to look into if you are particularly interested.

Ps. It was Government run psychedelic experience which generally started off the 60s movement. Ken Kesey who was one of the leaders of that movement (with his Merry pranksters) was introduced to psychedelics in such a paid trial.
Also of interest are the experiments the CIA carried out on unsuspecting members of the public, they dosed unsuspecting people visiting brothels and observed them. Although this sounds the stuff of conspiracy theory, details of these experiments were found in Government files through the use of the Freedom of Information Act.

Details of these things can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA

And a fascinating book on this subject is:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802130623/sr=8-1/qid=1153053358/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-8467581-2547210?ie=UTF8

[MisterJingo]

Depends on the type and form of the 'shroom. I believe Amanita Muscaria mushrooms are sold all over the internet as items for "collectors" and those can certainly be as potent as the average psilocybin mushroom in my opinion.

Psilocybin is illegal though...but it isn't like you can't find some growing in huge quantities if you are in the right area at the right time.

I'd just like to say the effects of Amanita Muscaria are very different to psilocybin (normal mushrooms). Research these things at  http://www.erowid.org to see the differences.

[Nay]

I'd like to state that the Astral Pulse does not recommend any kind of drug use.  I haven't read the whole thread but just wanted to put that out there.

[The Present Moment]

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0603/features/peru.html

I copy/pasted it into my address bar and it worked. 

Are you getting a page not found error?

[WindGod]

If you are interested in this, then look into the experiments done throughout the 50s-60s-70s-80s which utilised psychedelics in roles from psychotherapy, treating alcoholism and drug abuse (with very high recovery rates), removing fear of death from terminally ill patients, to treating medical conditions.

Yeah, research and finding treatments is good. I liked some of Leary's work with finding ways to report inner visual experiences. He enlisted a group of Psychonauts and trained them to identify colors by their frequency. So they didn't use the names of colors, rather, they were able to report the frequency of the colors numerically in a very efficient way in realtime.

Could some of these methods of observation and reporting have potential in helping people who say "there are no words to describe my experience" to communicate the inexplicable to us lowly earthly mud sluggers?

Eventually, Leary wanted to stimulate the psychedelic experience visually with out the use of the chemical with plans to develop an image projector that projects directly onto the eye's retina, creating a truly immersive simulation.

Searching for mandala imagery to create the simulations was part of this effort.

I wasn't impressed with Kesey. A writer who published a book about going on an extended binge with a party of friends, riding crosscountry on a bus covered in fingerpaintings.

And the gov'mt finding ways to use these substances as weapons? They have to, that's their job.

In that respect, they have (supposidly) attempted to use psychic's remote viewing as a way to spy on the enemy's military capabilities as well.

this is getting too complicated, I think I'd rather be like the mushroom, just feed me dung and keep me in the dark. 

[MisterJingo]

Yeah, research and finding treatments is good. I liked some of Leary's work with finding ways to report inner visual experiences. He enlisted a group of Psychonauts and trained them to identify colors by their frequency. So they didn't use the names of colors, rather, they were able to report the frequency of the colors numerically in a very efficient way in realtime.

Could some of these methods of observation and reporting have potential in helping people who say "there are no words to describe my experience" to communicate the inexplicable to us lowly earthly mud sluggers?

Possibly. But I think it would require a change in our thinking processes. Abstractions fascinate me as they plant ideas below the level of conscious interpretation (and consequently words), such ideas are allowed to grow within a persons own spheres of belief and experience. I think this could be a way of sharing direct experience without losing the detail we see with word translated experience. I have a number of projects in this area.

I wasn't impressed with Kesey. A writer who published a book about going on an extended binge with a party of friends, riding crosscountry on a bus covered in fingerpaintings.

I actually have more respect for Kesey than Leary. Kesey was the author who wrote 'one flew over the cuckoos nest' (written mostly while on psychedelics working in a mental institution – they gave him an understanding of the mental disorders of the patients there). The book detailing the bus journey was written by Tom Wolfe, and was based on what Kesey actually did.
Kesey was a creative. He took all profits from his book, bought a bus (further), and converted it to carry a group of people. The bus was wired up with a lot of stereo and recording equipment – lots of feedback going on, such as microphones outside, under the bus, on top etc feeding back into the equipment, being looped, echoed etc and used as a creative medium to 'rap' against (creative dialogue).
He then painted the bus with a group and took it across country.
His journey was in essence a spiritual one. He saw much of what was going on at the time as being entrenched in the past, trying to relive the past, but with a modern mindset (conflict). He tried to create such things within our own mindset and cultural influences – move it to the modern mindset.
The bus journey was like an experiment into self and reality. They were pushing the boundaries of humanity, being 'out front' (not held back by their social conditioning, not getting hung up or possessed by emotion or intention etc), they were attempting to live in the moment as far as biology would allow (their being a delay in nerve transmission), and perhaps the biggest experiment of all, they were bringing the world into 'their movie'. They shot a movie of the whole trip, but it was more then that, it was a group influencing and creating their own reality. Bringing people into it to get the outcome the group desired. Literally what is talked about here (belief effecting reality), they went out on the road and put it into action.
Through trying to externalise the psychedelic experience (With light and sound devices), what we know as the modern rave/disco/nightclub was born (ala Keseys Acid Tests). Also, much of the direction the hippy movement took was influenced by Kesey. But they were always behind him, he progressed past the point, and they rode the trail he left behind.
Eventually kesey advocated moving beyond LSD, that creative maelstrom being brought into the present through natural means and our own power – this was realised in a 'Graduation Ceremony'. But many of the Heads of the time felt threatened by this as Drugs gave them their status and power, so they really sabotaged this ceremony and consequently cause it to fail.
If you are open minded on such maters, do some research into kesey outside of the mainstream media branded stuff. Also, reading that book by Tom Wolfe (The electric kool-aid acid test), if you look beyond the drug use (a means to an immediate end), you see a lot of deeply spiritual ideas and concepts.
It was so much more than I've described above, but I think I've scracthed the surface of it.

And the gov'mt finding ways to use these substances as weapons? They have to, that's their job.

In that respect, they have (supposidly) attempted to use psychic's remote viewing as a way to spy on the enemy's military capabilities as well.

I think the problem with the Government experimenting with such substances is the way they went about they. At one point, they literally dosed countless random public members with psychedelics, and literally watched them as they thought they were going mad (they didn't know they had been dosed).

this is getting too complicated, I think I'd rather be like the mushroom, just feed me dung and keep me in the dark. 

Sounds like a plan  .

[WindGod]

I actually have more respect for Kesey than Leary. Kesey was the author who wrote 'one flew over the cuckoos nest' (written mostly while on psychedelics working in a mental institution – they gave him an understanding of the mental disorders of the patients there). The book detailing the bus journey was written by Tom Wolfe, and was based on what Kesey actually did.

Oh no! it's all comming back to me now. Got my authors mixed up, my bad. 

Excellent summary of the history, thanks!

[Stookie]

I just watched a documentary on Ram Dass, who was with Leary in the early days before he went to India to find a guru. He abandoned LSD as his method of higher realities when he learned that "it's not the method, it's what's already in you".

Leary worked for the CIA...  Well, maybe: http://www.markriebling.com/leary.html

[Enoch]

All these illegal shrooms cant compare with a good night of Salvia Divinorum...lol
Its a sorry state of affairs when alcohol is legal and kills oooo many people and all the good stuff that rarely does any damage is illegal because it produces free thinkers. Noo the Gov cant have that. Meditation is bad enough...We need you to work, go home, watch the brain slayer, and go to bed and do it all over again. Just a few experiments with the right things can awaken, or at least make some fools that have no spiritual belief realize the truth. Im not saying become an addict to all that but at least let them be tried...The original Constitution of the united states aloud for the drug of choice to be used, but than it was realized to many free thinkers among that group. Shut ummm down. Such bs..Many of the best writers, musicians, philosophers and mystics used, but they new the line between abuse and occasional use. Besides anyone that dreams,ld,obe,remote views knows that those substances dont help they hinder.   

[WalkerInTheWoods]

I'd like to state that the Astral Pulse does not recommend any kind of drug use. 

Nor do I. Everything you need is within.

[devinEentreE]

God Is In The Magic Mushrooms
This just in: Psychedelic drugs could be very good for your mind, heart, soul. Can you believe?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, August 4, 2006

Hide the children. Pour some absinthe, fluff the pillows, take off your pants. It is time.

Because now we know: Getting nicely and wholly high on illegal but completely natural hallucinogenic drugs might, just might open some sort of profound psychological doorway or serve as some sort of giddy terrifying rocket ride to a higher state of consciousness, happiness, a sense of inner peace and love and perspective and a big, fat lick from the divine.

It's true. There's even a swell new study from Johns Hopkins University that officially suggests what shamans and gurus and botany Ph.D.s and alt-spirituality types have known since the dawn of time and Jimi Hendrix's consciousness: that psilocybin, the all-natural chemical found in certain strains of wild mushrooms, induces a surprisingly large percentage of users to experience a profound -- and in some cases, largely permanent -- revolution in their spiritual attitudes and perspectives.

Not only that, but the stuff reportedly made a majority of testers feel so much more compassionate, open-hearted, connected to and awestruck by the world and the universe and God that it ranks right up there with the most profound and unfathomable experiences of their lives. I know. Stop the presses.

But let us sidestep the face-slapping obviousness. Let us look past the fact that you are meant to react to this study's findings like it's some sort of revelation, like it doesn't merely reinforce roughly 10 thousand years of evidence and modern research and opinioneering and responsible advocacy by everyone from Timothy Leary to Terence McKenna to Huston Smith to the Tibetan Book of the Dead with yet another study to add to the pile in the Science of the No Duh.

You know the type -- studies that merely reinforce ageless common sense, that simply reiterate something that's been said and understood for eons. There have been, for example, recent studies that prove that meditation actually reduces blood pressure (no!) and that MDMA (Ecstasy) is amazing at releasing inhibition and tapping the deeper psyche (shocking!) and that marijuana is roughly a thousand times less harmful than Marlboros and nine vodka tonics and smacking your family around in an alcoholic rage. You know, duh.

Because one thing painfully redundant studies like this do provide is a nicely clinical framework, a structured context from which to view a long-standing phenomenon. But here's the fascinating part: In the case of something like psilocybin, it's not so much the astounding findings that can make you swoon, it's also, well, the illuminating shortcomings of science itself.

Put another way, they are trying, once again, to measure enlightenment. They are attempting to put a frame around consciousness, cosmic awe, God. And of course, they cannot do it. Or rather, they can only go so far before they hit that point where the sidewalk ends and the world spins off its logical axis and the study's participants cannot help but deliver the death blow every scientist dreads to hear: "You cannot possibly understand."

Witness, won't you, these revelations:

The psilocybin joyriders claimed the experience included such feelings as "a sense of pure awareness and a merging with ultimate reality, a transcendence of time and space, a feeling of sacredness or awe, and deeply felt positive mood like joy, peace and love." What's more, for a majority of users, the experience was "impossible to put into words."

It doesn't stop there. Two months later, 24 of the participants (out of a total of 36) filled out a questionnaire. Two-thirds called their reaction to psilocybin "one of the five top most meaningful experiences of their lives. On another measure, one-third called it the most spiritually significant experience of their lives, with another 40 percent ranking it in the top five. About 80 percent said that because of the psilocybin experience, they still had a sense of well-being or life satisfaction that was raised either 'moderately' or 'very much.'"

You gotta read that again. And then again. Because those statements are just a little astonishing, unlike anything you will read in some FDA report on Prozac from Eli Lily. The most profound experience of their lives? One of the most spiritually significant? Can we get some of this stuff into willy Cheney's blood pudding? Into the Kool-Aid at the American Family Association? Into Israel and Lebanon?

But this is the amazing thing: Here, again, is hard science running smack into the hot cosmic goo of the mystical. Here, again, is science peering over the edge of understanding and jumping back and saying, "Holy crap." It is yet another reminder that our beautiful sciences have almost zero tools with which to quantify something like "transcendence of time and space" or "a feeling of sacredness and awe." And watching them try is either tremendously enjoyable or just depressing as hell. Or a little of both. It all depends, of course, on how you see it.

Here then, are your choices. Here are the three ways to look at the effects of magic mushrooms on the consciousness of humankind. Which angle you choose depends a great deal on how nimble you allow your mind, your heart, your spirit to be. Or maybe it's just how much wine you've had.

The first way is to simply presume that the lives of the study's participants had obviously been, up to their psilocybin joys, tremendously mediocre. So bland and so limp that something like hallucinogenic mushrooms could not help but be, in contrast, as profound as being licked by angels.

This is a clinical interpretation. The gorgeous experience itself means nothing except to say that normal life is terribly drab and crazy drugs temporarily scramble your brain in occasionally positive and interesting ways, but never the twain shall meet, so oh well let's go back to work.

But you can also take it one step further. You may conclude that the study underscores the harsh fact that we as a species are so divorced from deeper meaning, so detached from the mystical and the divine and the universal in our everyday instant-gratification lives, that it takes something like a powerful hallucinogen to show us just how meek and limited and far from merging with God we still very much are. This is the pessimistic view. And it is, by every estimate, a very primitive and sour place to be.

Ah, but then there's the third way. This is to suggest that it's exactly the other way around, that perhaps at least some of us are, as Leary and his cosmic cohorts have suggested for decades, just inches from the celestial doorway, already on the precipice of realizing that we are, in fact, the divine we so desperately seek. Problem is, we can't see the edge through the tremendous fog of consumerism and conservatism and quasi-religious muck.

But even so, every now and then we manage to take a tiny, unconscious, clumsy step ever closer to the edge, stumbling toward ecstasy without really knowing or understanding that we're doing so. And ultimately, sly entheogens like psilocybin are merely nature's way of clearing the fog for a moment, of letting us know just how close we are by smacking us upside the scientific head and tying our cosmic shoelaces together. And doesn't that sound like a fascinating way to spend the weekend?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/08/04/notes080406.DTL

[Enoch]

    Yes why yes it does...And some Absinthe too. Lol havent had that since i was in the service   wooo good stuff.

The shaman uses these and calls them Ally...we use them and get arrested and tossed in jail...But than i can choose to drink until i cant remember my name and as long as i dont drive...im good to go.

[jub jub]

Shrooms can be an enlightening experience, but if you want to see God, Morning Glory seeds are the best. At least that what some friends have told me. 

[Sharpe]

I have tried shrooms once... it really does change your life, though i had a very bad trip, with faces in walls and eyeballs in glasses... i felt... illuminated. I started thinking straight, every thought gave an immense feeling, like: you know when you have such a good idea that it makes solves the problem you were dealing with, or just a perfect idea... Every thought u have feels like that, every idea you get (mostly very smart idea's) are just... incredible. However, the bad side is the hallucination, you can get very scared, the last thing you want to do is give it up and start to panic, if you panic... you'll probably enter hell for a few days.

[EqualThoughts]

why are you scared.....
or is it that you're just conforming to what society wants you to think/do/say/act
make your own decisions about these things, dont rely on the opinions of others, people use drugs all the time, doctors prescribe countless drugs to people--why are these the only ones that are deemed "acceptible," you have to wonder why only the strongly consciousness altering ones are illegal.

[Enoch]

Thats not actually true salvia is legal. Alcohol is legal and very strong very altering. The thing is you dont need drugs to get to an altered state. They actually hinder any processes of dreaming and recall.

[EqualThoughts]

yeah but you cant buy it in the grocery store so it pretty much is