Althouse: "When it was my turn to drink the little Dixie cup of muck she presented, I was stunned that divine consciousness—or really anything

September 15, 2016

"When it was my turn to drink the little Dixie cup of muck she presented, I was stunned that divine consciousness—or really anything—could smell quite so foul..."

"... as if it had already been vomited up, by someone who’d been on a steady dieta of tar, bile, and fermented wood pulp. But I forced it down, and I was stoked. I was going to visit the swampland of my soul, make peace with death, and become one with the universe."

47 comments:

traditionalguy said...: Basically, Sorcery is a plant you should not eat for enlightenment. Drink it up and you can be transformed into another spirit.

But reversing the transformation may be difficult if not impossible. Think of it as Russian Roulette.; 9/15/16, 1:29 PM
YoungHegelian said...: I read this stuff & I'm just gobsmacked. What frightens me the most is that I suspect that the New Yorker's audience doesn't read this article & wonder "where the hell do they find these people?", but that they think "wow, there may be somethin' profound here".

I dunno. Maybe I'm being too harsh & just putting words in people's mouths, but that article seemed waaaaaaay too uncritical of such thorough-going bullshit.; 9/15/16, 1:31 PM
J Scott said...: We live in an absurdist fantasy.; 9/15/16, 1:35 PM
eric said...: Finally we discover why Democrats can still get elected.; 9/15/16, 1:36 PM
Paddy O said...: The brain is a funny organ. It allows us to live in this world and part of that is actively deceiving us. The show Brain Games gives some great examples.

Throw some drugs into the mix and the brain continues to work at rationalizing its own experiences. Curiously in ways that confirm our initial suspicions about the world and our part in it.; 9/15/16, 1:38 PM
Cornroaster said...: Sound like the Sixties of Timothy Leary and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test all over again.; 9/15/16, 1:42 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Me too. I went through that article thinking "that ayahuasca is seriously scary shit." I remarked as much to my husband reading the article last week, and he said, "Oh, the hallucinogenic hipster tea." He didn't add that people practically always vomit after drinking it, which the article did make clear. Vomiting hipsters, oh my!; 9/15/16, 1:42 PM
Anonymous said...: If you have a near death experience you may see the light.

Meditation seems more like reflection in a zen garden. The drugs seems more like reflection inside a zen horror movie. One has predictable positive change the other is more a roll of the dice with the house winning in the long run.; 9/15/16, 1:46 PM
Anonymous said...: I heard about a recent study that suggested some magic mushrooms actually helped with chronic depression.

Magic mushrooms have lifted severe depression in a dozen volunteers in a clinical trial, raising scientists’ hopes that the psychedelic experiences beloved of the Aztecs and the hippy counter-culture of the 1970s could one day become mainstream medicine.

From the guardian dot com; 9/15/16, 1:50 PM
JAORE said...: I lived through the '60s.

No thanks.; 9/15/16, 1:50 PM
madAsHell said...: I was going to visit the swampland of my soul, make peace with death, and become one with the universe.

But wait!!
That's not all!!
If you order in the next 20 minutes, then we'll throw in the steak knives. A $19.95 value is yours for making that telephone call NOW!!; 9/15/16, 1:51 PM
mockturtle said...: It's not as though a lot of people aren't already fucked up!; 9/15/16, 1:55 PM
Comanche Voter said...: Morons. Heck maybe even "deplorable".; 9/15/16, 1:56 PM
Bilwick said...: Ha! I thought the quote was probably from H. L. Mencken talking about, say, Eleanor Roosevelt and the noxious bouillabaisse of irrationalism voodoo economics, and old-fashioned State-cultism that had come to be called "liberalism" in Mencken's day.; 9/15/16, 1:57 PM
buwaya said...: "The self-help guru Tim Ferriss told me that the drug is everywhere in San Francisco, where he lives. “Ayahuasca is like having a cup of coffee here,” he said. "

Even in San Francisco, it seems this gentleman runs in some esoteric circles. This is not my experience of this city.; 9/15/16, 1:59 PM
traditionalguy said...: Seriously. Religious initiation ceremonies always throw in some chemical induced spooky crap. The Skull and Bones magic men and 30th degree and up Freemasons do it too with great effect.

Alcohol in all its forms was the original human's religious sacrament. It's Alcoholism spirit is hard to lose, as Trump's older brother told him. Don't go there.; 9/15/16, 2:00 PM
n.n said...: It's more material than moral. It could be worse.

And I said: Dude, have you ever aborted someone?

Perhaps morality is also an unqualified concept: negative, positive, or moderate. Principles matter.; 9/15/16, 2:04 PM
Sebastian said...: “I and my companions have been selected to understand and trigger the gestalt wave of understanding that will be the hyperspacial zeitgeist" All these trips produce the same BS. Perhaps the illusion of insight and dissolution of self derived from utter sameness is the postmodern salvation.; 9/15/16, 2:11 PM
mockturtle said...: @buwaya: it seems this gentleman runs in some esoteric circles

Wow, not only does this drug make you run in circles. It makes you run in esoteric circles! ;-); 9/15/16, 2:21 PM
buwaya said...: Well, yes it would, wouldn't it?
Anyway, even in SF these would be weirdos AFAIK.; 9/15/16, 2:29 PM
Nonapod said...: How ayahuasca, an ancient Amazonian hallucinogenic brew, became the latest trend in Brooklyn and Silicon Valley.

It's funny, nothing makes something seem less cool or dangerous than when lame people do it. Only trendseeking douchebags could make powerful psychoactive drug usage seem totally uncool and square.; 9/15/16, 2:32 PM
mockturtle said...: A lot of us did this kind of crap in the late 60's & early 70's. The first time I did acid [LSD], it was kind of fun and I actually felt profoundly enlightened. But, just as marijuana makes things seems deep or hilariously funny when they are not, so do all of these recreational compounds deceive you. And it's why some users are so sure they are 'high-functioning' when they clearly are not.; 9/15/16, 2:33 PM
caplight45 said...: “I came home reeking of vomit and sage and looking like I’d come from hell,” in order for "the gestalt wave of understanding that will be the hyperspacial zeitgeist" to spread throughout humankind.

Wow! And I thought Christians were supposed to be the weird ones:

4 For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.
5 Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was.
Romans 6:4-5 NLT; 9/15/16, 2:40 PM
Carol said...: Isn't this the stuff William S Burroughs traipsed through the jungle looking for?

He just wanted to get supremely fucked up and heroin, mushrooms and whatnot were not doing it for him.; 9/15/16, 2:47 PM
Anonymous said...: Next they need to feel the authentic South American magic of curare.; 9/15/16, 2:52 PM
buwaya said...: There is nothing South American about magic mushrooms.
This stuff is all over East Asia.
I recall one New Years night with mushroom tea, rum, a beach and we had machineguns to shoot tracers out over the China Sea.
No particular spiritual insights and I don't recommend such behavior.; 9/15/16, 3:06 PM
'TreHammer said...: Kinda reminds me of the movie "Altered States" where the character played by William Hurt seeks enlightenment from a hallucinogenic mixture of roots, berries, and his own blood. He gets off, big time, but he barfs at the end of his trip. That was awesome!; 9/15/16, 3:48 PM
FullMoon said...: Bardack listed Clinton’s current medications as Armorthyroid, Coumadin dosed as directed, Levaquin (for a total of ten days), Clarinex, and B-12 as needed

No magic mushrooms, maybe a b12 booster shot, though.; 9/15/16, 3:49 PM
Carter Wood said...: Craig T. Nelson achieved the same effect in Poltergeist II when he puked up the tequila monster.; 9/15/16, 4:08 PM
Wince said...: Wasn't there a porn movie: two girls, one cup of muck?; 9/15/16, 4:25 PM
wildswan said...: I was interested to learn that kale eaters can easily progress on to special ceremonies in which they drink muck and then throw up all over each other. This is exactly what I have always wished might happen to several kale-people I know. And now ... so easy. Just a few words about radiant inner self, Indian mystics, South America, jungle, and (most important) popular in New York City and they're away. ... And they probably will go back and do it again.; 9/15/16, 4:52 PM
buwaya said...: "Just a few words about radiant inner self, Indian mystics, South America, jungle, and (most important) popular in New York City and they're away. ...'

You know, there are plenty of things to do in this world that are more original and interesting than this. Not that anything is unique of course, because there is so much human experience someone is bound to have done it before you, but still, this sort of thing is trite. Even with machineguns.; 9/15/16, 5:26 PM
buwaya said...: One reason people are likely to muck with this sort of thing is that real, tangible achievements are blocked, precluded by regulation and social sanction.

Nice article in the MIT Technology Review -
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-power/

Worth a read, but the most cutting line is this, with respect to the attitude of the Chinese technologists, which rings true in contrast to my take on, for instance, the Silicon Valley experience -

"I was struck by the confidence and idealism of the young scientists working at the institute—an optimism not seen in U.S. nuclear circles in decades."

And this is true - in the US their counterparts in the physical sciences (not just anything nuclear) are crushed under a massive weight of negativity. The kids who would have joined them have been sidelined in fake professions and industries where they work on virtual pseudo achievements. No wonder so many are suckers for fake experiences of all kinds.

Real things, real work are the hated enemy of this society.; 9/15/16, 5:49 PM
Bob Ellison said...: What is the purpose of writing "dieta" when there's an obvious cognate, "diet"?

Why stop at that word? Why not write dieta de? Eventually you get to the tipping point where you get to reverse the italics, with stuff like "I thought it inappropriate to ask whether una dieta de acapella goes well with Chardonnay.; 9/15/16, 6:12 PM
mockturtle said...: Buway said: One reason people are likely to muck with this sort of thing is that real, tangible achievements are blocked, precluded by regulation and social sanction.

IMO, the main reason is a spiritual vacuum, where God's Holy Spirit properly belongs.; 9/15/16, 6:22 PM
Valentine Smith said...: For all their "enlightenment", those Amazonians are still running around balls ass naked and sticking their neighbors with sharpened tree branches. This noble savage horseshit has been kicking around since Rousseau. People need to rationalize their Dionysian urges. At least alcoholica and junkies simply say I wanna get I fucked up.

God I despise the spawn of I the upper middle class.; 9/15/16, 6:23 PM
Roughcoat said...: For a good laugh, watch "The Trip" starring Peter Fonda, 1967. Written by Jack Nicholson, directed by Roger Corman. Available free at YouTube.

Worst. Movie. Ever. Made.

Well, one of the worst. Hilariously bad.

I came of age in the 60s/70s and I "experimented" with hallucinogens. Not for long, though. Had some good experiences and some scary experiences. Very scary. So I quit. Eventually quit drinking too. I do occasionally miss the mushrooms, sort of. Mushrooms were always harmless, at least to me, and after throwing up or enduring stomach cramps from the strychnine fuzz. The other stuff -- too dangerous. Anyway, getting stoned is for douchebags. IMHO, anyway.; 9/15/16, 6:31 PM
BN said...: Escaping from reality is cool. But sometimes I do wish I could go back for a visit.

I just wonder what my real self is up to these days.; 9/15/16, 6:38 PM
Unknown said...: i want to try it one day.; 9/15/16, 7:14 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Like DFW, Dallas Fort-Worth, everything is shit.

Shit shit shit.

THat's all shit knows, all it obeys. and so the glorious masks and disguises and lies and killing.

Shits.

I met 'em. They met me. They won't forget niehter, not that I didn't kill them like Hillary wants to do to ,m,e, no, only that I met them.

I UNDERSTAND I GOTS TO BESTY BE USING <E GRAMMAR TO ALLOWQ; 9/15/16, 7:19 PM
jg said...: under-qualified non-union shamans; 9/15/16, 9:55 PM
jg said...: I highly recommend Alexander Scott's theory / literature review on shaman/mystic/hallucinogen (top-down "all is one" delusion) vs bottom-up (worst case: paranoid/schizophrenic) mental processing.; 9/15/16, 9:57 PM
Michael said...: Great article. Very amusing conclusion.; 9/15/16, 9:59 PM
Roger Sweeny said...: madAsHell,
ROTFL; 9/16/16, 8:58 AM
Roger Sweeny said...: "Overall there is a smell of fried onions."; 9/16/16, 9:08 AM
mikee said...: I, for one, recall spoofing my high-on-LSD roommate in college using a balloon full of helium and the words, "We wish to welcome you to Munchkin land!"

After I got him up off the floor and finally stopped his uncontrollable shrieking, I made him a bong out of lab glassware, he did some hash to come down, and everything was fine.

True story.; 9/16/16, 12:39 PM
Roy in Nipomo said...: I remember Terry McKenna (mentioned in the article with his brother Dennis) from high school (1964) when he was still experimenting with morning glory seeds. I'm impressed that he was able to make a living as a professional druggy.; 9/16/16, 9:36 PM