December 6, 2018

"Unlike psychotherapists... underground [LSD] guides have no accredited educational institutions, no licensing and no way to publicly market their services."

"How, then, does one make a career as a guide? Steve was one of many guides I spoke to who described feeling spiritually 'called' to do this work. Like doctors who provided abortions pre-Roe v Wade, he breaks laws that he believes are unjust; he considers legal violations a risky but necessary part of his quest to alleviate people’s pain. He charges on a sliding scale that ranges from around $15 to $50 an hour. As is the case with most guides, his own psychedelic experiences convinced him the job was worth the risk. 'During an early guided psilocybin session, I realized I’d never adequately dealt with the pain caused by my parents’ divorce,' Steve says. 'There was clearly still this 11-year-old part of myself that was like, I want to be part of a coherent family unit. During the experience, I was given this vision – there’s no way to say this that doesn’t sounds silly – but there was this mother figure who was like, half-Vedic goddess, with a million arms and a million eyes, and half-space alien, with gray skin. She was this space mother, surrounded by this space family, and she just beamed to me this incredible welcoming feeling of, this is the divine family that you stem from.'"

From "Welcome to the trip of your life: the rise of underground LSD guides/Some Americans searching for alternative paths to healing have turned to psychedelics. But how does one forge a career as a guide when the substances are illegal?" (The Guardian).

68 comments:

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Like doctors who provided abortions pre-Roe v Wade, he breaks laws that he believes are unjust

What an idiot. How many doctors in the US prior to Roe V Wade does he think provided abortions because they thought the law was unjust, as opposed to the ones that did it for the money.

Laslo Spatula said...

"... but there was this mother figure who was like, half-Vedic goddess, with a million arms and a million eyes, and half-space alien, with gray skin..."

So a full-Vedic goddess has two million arms and two million eyes.

But she will not play into this false narrative that her number of arms and eyes is mutually exclusive from her power.

I am Laslo.

TreeJoe said...

One of my niece's is a pothead. She will declare all the health benefits of THC/Pot while proliferating how dangerous pharmacology/the drug industry is (discloure: I work on developing new meds)

I ask her a simple question that blows her mind: At what dosage and frequency of THC do you get the health benefits vs. the negative side effects?

Crickets.

The ENTIRE BASIS of pharmacologic treatment is that everything is a double-sided sword. Too little can have no effect, too much can have overwhelming effects and undesirable side effects. Billions are spent dialing in the right dosage on a single drug, sometimes without it getting approved.

And yet here we are with smart people randomly dosing folks with psychedelics with no scientific basis for the dose, dose adjustment strategy, etc.

Lucid-Ideas said...

Psychedelic Space Mother's new 2018 EP - Crawling in My Gray Skin - is sick

1. Vedic Spirit Guide
2. Divine family comedy
3. Half-alien-space-goddess
4. An incredible feeling
5. Dave's not here man
6. Incoherent space unit
7. Substitute religion

RK said...

I've done mushrooms a few times in the past year -- my first experiences with psychedelics. I wish I had visuals like those in the article. I wonder how much I have to take to experience that.

I do it for fun, not as a fix-it of some sort. I feel mushrooms clean out the mind pipes and can be quite entertaining. A "guide" would be irritating. For me, it's best as a solitary experience with music.

Jupiter said...

My question is where they get the mushrooms. Eating the wrong mushroom can be the last stupid thing you ever do.

JohnAnnArbor said...

The ENTIRE BASIS of pharmacologic treatment is that everything is a double-sided sword.

The old adage: the dose makes the poison.

RK said...

My question is where they get the mushrooms.

Grow your own. Spores are available by mail to all but a couple of state. In Wisconsin, both spores and mycelium are legal to possess.

chillblaine said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
chillblaine said...

My friend Linda once told me that in the sixties, you either did drugs, or you did EST. Yeah, and all the boomers here are totally checked out.

JBP talks a lot about certain luminaries of psych, names escape, who did drugs and found them to be remarkable gateways. But, remember Paracelsus.

My channel already has a growing psych section, Reflective, etc.

chillblaine said...

Here's my video self-portrait. I thought I was sitting for a still, lol.

blainer

Mr Wibble said...

I have no interest in pot, cocaine, etc. However, if I knew it wouldn't kill career opportunities, I'd consider trying mushrooms at least once.

Perhaps in another 15 years when I don't care anymore and I'm closer to retirement.

Rosalyn C. said...

When I was younger I once talked to my mother about how hurtful and damaging our family's dysfunction was to me. She surprised me by saying that I needed to "vomit it out," like the emotional wounds were something physical I needed to expel. I didn't understand that or accept it because I thought the solution was for my parents to change their behavior. Of course that didn't happen, that never happens that someone changes for someone else's benefit.

So I understand something about the healing process that the article described and why it actually is helpful. I never have taken LSD or mushrooms though, I'm not willing to subject myself to that experience in an unsupervised or supervised setting. -- Especially if it becomes mass marketed with practitioners who are less than gifted. Maybe I don't need it anymore anyway.

I did DNA testing and found that learning about my ancestry, and the realization that I am part of a much larger human family, was profound. Maybe that's what others are finding as well, without all the snake gods, etc.

Kay said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anne in Rockwall, TX said...

Thanks, no. Did enough in the 70s. All it did was make me want to give random blow jobs.

Rae said...

Like doctors who provided abortions pre-Roe v Wade, he breaks laws that he believes are unjust

Every criminal believes this.

Kay said...

I’m glad that more people are taking LSD.

Big Mike said...

My friend Linda once told me that in the sixties, you either did drugs, or you did EST.

Your friend Linda is wrong.

Bill Peschel said...

TreeJoe said: "The ENTIRE BASIS of pharmacologic treatment is that everything is a double-sided sword."

The basic rule is: everything is a poison. The question is what benefits does it have at lower doses.

For example, during the Victorian era, strychnine was used in health tonics. It's chemical makeup is similar to caffeine.

As late as the 1940s, it was still sold that way. There's a full-page ad in Life magazine showing grandma with the kids, and the headline said something like "The fruits from the Quaker-button tree."

That's strychnine.

bagoh20 said...

" Billions are spent dialing in the right dosage on a single drug, sometimes without it getting approved."

No drug produced by the drug industry will ever be tested as much as pot has been. Not in length of testing (hundreds - thousands of years) and not in sample size (many many millions).
The same goes for most naturally occuring drugs.

The reason that modern engineered drugs need tested so seriously is that they are usually entirely new compounds with no history of use, and also if you want to make billions of dollars on one, the government isn't gonna let you do that without getting its nose it the bowl.

"At what dosage and frequency of THC do you get the health benefits vs. the negative side effects?"

This is always a sliding scale of cost versus benefits. If you have pain, how much acetaminophen do you need to take to relive it. If you take a liver killing dose and the pain is still there is that a safe drug?

How much pot is a fatal dose?

bagoh20 said...

Almost everyone who has taken LSD had a guide. They used to be called "older friends".

Kevin said...

And yet here we are with smart people randomly dosing folks with psychedelics with no scientific basis for the dose, dose adjustment strategy, etc.

Oh no, the problem is they are UNLICENSED.

Somehow they forgot it's also untaxed. Licensed and taxed is the solution to everything for people who love the state.

gilbar said...

Like doctors who provided abortions pre-Roe v Wade, he breaks laws . He charges on a sliding scale that ranges from around $15 to $50 an hour.

fify!

narciso said...

well one recalls that almost all the managers of the mk ultra program, which oversaw lsd testing had consumed a portion of sane, that's why they didn't think it harmful, except possibly frank olson, who seriously freaked out and either fell or was thrown from his upper story lab,

Kevin said...

My friend Linda once told me that in the sixties, you either did drugs, or you did EST.

My friend Elizabeth once told me that in the sixties, you either did drugs, or you had Native American ancestors.

bagoh20 said...

"And yet here we are with smart people randomly dosing folks with psychedelics with no scientific basis for the dose, dose adjustment strategy, etc."

How many doctors have actual first hand experience with the drugs they prescribe? The dosage is pretty well understood by anyone with experience, who also know many other people with first hand experience. It's like saying you need a PhD in auto mechanics to drive a car. I have no doubt that such an argument could be made by some people, and they would be serious.

Drug overdoses are not really dosing accidents. People just want too much, and refuse accept the limits they fully know. It happens with all drugs - legal or not, and regardless of their government approval. Tylenol overdoses are pretty common, despite it being widely considered and regulated as very safe, and being over the counter available to anyone in any amount.

bagoh20 said...

I never had to pay anyone by the hour to party with me.

gilbar said...

bagoh20 said... Drug overdoses are not really dosing accidents. People just want too much

respectfully, you're not a very intelligent person, are you bagoh? Or, are you just really ignorant?

RK said...

"Drug overdoses are not really dosing accidents. People just want too much, and refuse accept the limits they fully know."

A memorable part of Keith Richards' book is that once he was feeling good with a drug, he stopped consuming it. He was able to avoid an OD despite a lifetime of drug use. Instead, a lot of people keep going, thinking they'll feel even better if they take more.

Quaestor said...

How does one forge a career as an undocumented worker paid in cash rather than traceable bank transfers when such things are illegal?

Quaestor said...

Here's that Quaker Button ad mentioned by Bill Peschel

Maillard Reactionary said...

"I was given this vision – there’s no way to say this that doesn’t sounds silly..."

He certainly got that right.

Quaestor said...

According to my research, Quaker Button seeds were known as nux vomica, the nut that makes you vomit.

Well, fuck me... here I am thinking nux vomica was LLR Chuck Latinized.

bagoh20 said...

Well Gilbar, if you drive 120mph, lose control, and go off the road, is that really an accident? If you do something you know is very dangerous but over do it becuase it's fun, is that an accident? I'm not talking about beginning users who don't understand what they are doing, but most overdoses are done by experienced users who know the speed limit.

BTW, my intelligence is sufficient for my needs, but you may have overdosed on yours.

Mountain Maven said...

Spare us ann. The moral equvalence of homicide and drug use.

chuck said...

Ramanujan claimed to dream of blood drops, after which, he would receive visions of scrolls of complex mathematical content unfolding before his eyes. “While asleep, I had an unusual experience. There was a red screen formed by flowing blood, as it were. I was observing it. Suddenly a hand began to write on the screen. I became all attention. That hand wrote a number of elliptic integrals. They stuck to my mind. As soon as I woke up, I committed them to writing.”

FullMoon said...

Bill Peschel said... [hush]​[hide comment]


For example, during the Victorian era, strychnine was used in health tonics. It's chemical makeup is similar to caffeine


Strychnine is banned in sports as a performance enhancing drug.

FIDO said...

The Left is full of anti vaccers, crystal wavers, homeopathy idiots.

They certainly will think THIS has validity too. Another nice, illegal made up job.

FullMoon said...

"Drug overdoses are not really dosing accidents. People just want too much, and refuse accept the limits they fully know."

Some are, no doubt. Unknown strength of street drugs is also a problem.
Recently, three dead on San Francisco street corner, hared same package.

RK said...

If you live in Madison and want to grow mushrooms outdoors but don't want them in your own backyard, where do you go? The Arboretum! That was my first thought, anyway. I wonder if the Arboretum is full of magic mushrooms in summer.

FullMoon said...

Annie C said...

Thanks, no. Did enough in the 70s. All it did was make me want to give random blow jobs.

12/6/18, 4:26 PM


Panhandle, free Dead/Airplane concert.
If so, belated thank you!

FullMoon said...

Drug overdoses are not really dosing accidents. People just want too much, and refuse accept the limits they fully know.

They do not know the limits until they OD.
Also, after being told somking MJ makes you crazy and that taking LSD makes you jump out of tall buildings and fly, some may not accept 'limits' as gospel.

Fernandinande said...

Ramanujan was born tripping.

chillblaine said...

'Shrooms are an absolute blast, not a high, but a vivid tranquility. Have done them twice or thrice. But, the next day was like la-la land. harmless at the dosage i took which i think was a gram. in 1984 a gram was five bucks. oh no it on the internet now. oh gonna trip i am.

chillblaine said...

Mike, correct you are, she was a generalizin'

Hey, Kevin, that is very clever. Is that for real? My mom passed down a bit of Native Americana, very beautiful to conceive and hold.

later

FIDO said...

No drug produced by the drug industry will ever be tested as much as pot has been. Not in length of testing (hundreds - thousands of years) and not in sample size (many many millions).
The same goes for most naturally occuring drugs.



Yes...those Turkish nomads were the very devils when it came to rigorous double blind studies, proper dosing requirements and biological and hormonal secondary damage.


Millions of people have taken pot over centuries. And most of them you wouldn't trust to let near a camel, a car or a bowl of couscous or Cheetos.

And yet this 'Golden Bowl...I mean Age of THC research' also included such medical wonders as using mercury to treat...well...everything and women sticking smoking teapots up their cooters as birth control. Because mercury was silvery, right? And you can't beat the thaumic effervescence of the Astrological Sign of Mercury to purifying people of...stuff...like...teeth...and hair...and...life...


It is nonsense like this that makes people look askance of the pro-THC crowd. Because they spout ridiculously hyperbolic nonsense.


What is the fatal dose of THC? Three tons. My cousin Louise was importing it and a skid of bales fell on him and when the DA charged the rest of them for felony homicide, the amount of Pot was 3 tons.

See how easy an answer that is? About as scientific as most THC studies.


Now, how much is a DAMAGING dose. How much short term memory impairment occurs? How much liver damage occurs?

I don't know. And frankly, the Pot Heads who are most motivated to study this stuff are as unbiased as Michael Mann is on temperature graphs, so thanks, but let's find someone serious to do this.

Howard said...

bago: fentanyl spiking at pill mills and spiking plants causes overdoses because of manufacturing math errors because the dose is 100-times stronger than morphine

Wiki"In 2016, more than 20,000 deaths occurred in the United States due to overdoses of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues, half of all reported opioid-related deaths"

I hate to say it but gilbar is right on this point.

gilbar said...

do you see what you've done?
You've got me and Howard agreeing; you aught to be ashamed of your self

Of course, now bagoh20 will say say that when he talked about 'drug overdoses', he meant specific kinds of drug overdoses; which won't make the dead feel better, on account of because of the fact that they're dead -- from overdoses

D 2 said...

Howard is right. The fentanyl story is, for some reason, still A3 or A4 news, not front page. Which is a tragedy.

If I can put on my smug know it all Canadian hat (but I repeat myself) - I have assumed a lot of the media space that goes on south of the border has to do with a way to get X legal so that government can start taxing it. Legalization is ye olde diversification of tax revenues, with the added bonus of (presumably) less funds necessary for prosecution.

Maillard Reactionary said...

"That hand wrote a number of elliptic integrals. They stuck to my mind. As soon as I woke up, I committed them to writing.”

I do not doubt Ramajunan's word that this was his dream, but he had no more idea of how he did what he did than Mozart, who tells us that he woke up with concertos or symphonies in his head, that he had only to write down.

The mystery of true genius is opaque even to those who have it.

Ramanujan, by my understanding, was faithful, possibly to a fault, with his Brahmin diet of vegetables and curd (yoghurt). He certainly did not fry his brain with psychedelics, as far as anyone knows.

Interestingly, Ramanjunan's genius, which he did attribute to a Hindu deity known mostly in his locality, delivered results without proof. These were left to (mostly Western) working professional mathematicians to figure out. I'm not sure but I think that they have all be proven true, or remain unproven.

Make of this what you will.

Seeing Red said...

Any excuse. Pot’s getting legalized and mainstream, time to push for the edgy.

JackWayne said...

Shrooms are over the South. The CW is look for Charolais cows. The season starts about mid-June and ends about mid-August. The strength improves throughout the season. Look for lavendar shrooms. They are the best.

madAsHell said...

My friend Linda once told me that in the sixties, you either did drugs, or you did EST.


EST was $150 bucks, and they would give you your own personal mantra. The reefers were cheaper.

narciso said...

Seeing as it's mostly sourced from China, although there are suggestions Mexican cartels cartels are weaponizing fentanyl as well.

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NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Didn't the left used to call itself the Reality Based Community?

This article is anti-science. It's anti-medicine. It's anti-rational.

If you just like shrooms, hey, ok. Don't push it as medicine without proof. This is nonsense.

Had some great lines in the article, though.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

"“I knew the cops were coming for me,” Eric says. Before they arrived, he stashed a pound of dried ‘Mr E’ psilocybin mushrooms – a unique strain he had bred and named himself and didn’t want to lose – inside a hollow log in the woods.

Somehow, the police managed to find it: “That was the end, there.”"

Somehow. Lol.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

"One attendee, a stage four cancer patient, felt so healed by the retreat that she donated a year’s salary to Eric, which allowed him to quit his job at the Louisville restaurant – he had been splitting his time between Jamaica and Kentucky – to focus full-time on the center. “Now she’s in remission, traveling the country fly-fishing in her Mercedes Winnebago,” Eric says. “Miracles are becoming – not mundane, but pretty normal around here.”"

!!! What a scam artist!

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

"While underground guides tend to fiercely support decriminalization, a few, such as Jackie, say that even if psychedelics were to be legalized medically, they would continue to work underground.

“I don’t want to work under the medical model,” Jackie says. “It’s too regimented for me.”"

i.e. I wouldn't be able to hack it. Too much paperwork. Too much education.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

This is journalism? Where are the damn questions?

donald said...

The pastures on the south end of Atlanta Motor speedway are lousy with mushrooms. When it’s happening there will be literally thousands of em. It’s surreal.

Caligula said...

There might be a legitimate place for the controlled use of psychedelic drugs in psychotherapy, yet regulation makes even research on this difficult, and the 1960s drug circuses taint the reputation of any legitimate researcher who might take a look at this.

So, what can't be done legitimately is done underground. With no regulation, no controls, just you-pay-your-money-and-take-your-chances.

Perhaps it's long past time to legitimize at least some research on using these drugs within the law? Assuming the psych* associations can take their attention away from trying to legitimize surgical and hormonal mutilation of children in the name of transgender rights, of course.


bagoh20 said...

"Of course, now bagoh20 will say say that when he talked about 'drug overdoses', he meant specific kinds of drug overdoses; which won't make the dead feel better, on account of because of the fact that they're dead -- from overdoses"

That's exactly right. Fentanyl is a new thing that changes the the whole field.

That said, I do think my comment was overly broad. I was in fact talking about the standard well-known overdoses of the past like Belushi, Chris Farley, Hendricks, etc. They simply did the drugs in combinations and at level they knew very well were extremely dangerous.

My best friend died of an overdose, and I have other friends and relatives who also did. My hometown was a drug circus far outstripping it's size. The people I knew all knew how much was likely too much, but they took the chance anyway. I can't call them accidents in the way of someone broadsiding you at an intersection when you aren't doing anything dangerous.

bagoh20 said...

There is a basic question you need to ask:

Do people overdose because the drugs are too strong or do they take too much, becuase people overdose on just about anything that can be taken in fatal quantities, no matter how weak the substance. They just take more to get more of the effect until they take too much. That is not my idea of an accident. It's more like riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Nobody expects to die, but they should expect it if they do that enough.

As to pot, it may be one of the most difficult drugs on which to overdose known to man.

Narayanan said...

Overdosing ...
Why not chalk it up to "Darwin effect"?

Narayanan said...

Or is it
" Darwin award "

gilbar said...

bagoh, thank you for your correction
you're right, of course, that MOST overdoses are intentional
but i have too many memories of people that overdosed (usually not fatally) on their first dose of a batch of many different drugs (LSD comes RIGHT to mind, as does Cocaine).
Since illegal drugs are not well regulated, potentiates can WIDELY vary.
Hot shots of H have been killing people since they started calling it H

With drugs like LSD and fentanyl where the standard dose it in units like micrograms, overdoses are likelier

gilbar said...

as people's tolerances grow, the margin between just enough and too much gets smaller and smaller.

People Say that pot is hard to overdose on. By that i assume they mean you won't die; but it's pretty EASY to overdose on (since it takes minutes for for effect. Thanx to today's modern pot (,or 90's pot if you knew the right growers,) it's Super easy for a newbie with out tolerances to be put under the table in 2 hits.

{The 90's were past the statute of limitations by the way}