Psychedelic Phenomena LSD Psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs explained

Psychedelics, Technology, Psychedelics Bernard S. Aaronson and Humphrey Osmond The Introduction to PSYCHEDELICS, The Uses and Implications of Hallucinogenic Drugs edited by Bernard Aaronson and Humphry Osmond, Doubleday & Company 1970. Copyright Aaronson and Osmond. Any culture may be regarded as a ramification of a particular technology applied to the particular set of local conditions within which that culture is situated. The term "technology," as used here, refers to the entire set of devices, whether mechanical, chemical, or linguistic, by which adaptations of individuals to their environments are enhanced. Plows, clubs, radios, airplanes, fertilizers, drugs, breakfast cereals, grammars, and concepts are each implements and instances of technology, which influence and are influenced by one another. Some implements operate by directly altering the environment in response to the demands of the individual, as when we turn on an air cond...

The Exploration of Experience Humphrey Osmond an excerpt from "A Review of the Clinical Effects of Psychotomimetic Agents" Annals N.Y. Acad. Sci., March 14, 1957 Our interest [in psychotomimetic drugs], so far, has been psychiatric and pathological, with only a hint that any other viewpoint is possible; yet our predecessors were interested in these things from quite different points of view. In the perspective of history, our psychiatric and pathological bias is the unusual one. By means of a variety of techniques, from dervish dancing to prayerful contemplation, from solitary confinement in darkness to sniffing the carbonated air at the Delphic oracle, from chewing peyote to prolonged starvation, men have pursued, down the centuries, certain experiences that they considered valuable above all others. The great William James endured much uncalled-for criticism for suggesting that in some people inhalations of nitrous oxide allowed a psychic dispos...

Alas! the forbidden fruits were eaten, And thereby the warm life of reason congealed. A grain of wheat eclipsed the sun of Adam, Like as the Dragon's tail dulls the brightness of the moon. — Rumi: Masnavi I Ma'navi

We are told that, in those moments immediately preceding death, the world of our earliest infancy frequently opens up to us. We are also assured that senile reason passes readily into a state of second childhood, wherein the light of rationality is obscured by the resurrected past, experienced as fully as if the intervening years had rolled away. Normal adults occasionally dream of long-forgotten events, which have otherwise passed into oblivion. These facts, together with Freud’s rediscovery of the unconscious mind, suggest that within each of us the past slumbers on, occasionally reasserting itself in the fragments of a sudden recollection, the perception of some haunting perfume, or the unexplained appearance of an ancient face in our dreams. Most striking, however, is the fact that it is this earliest layer of the human memory that persists to the moment of death, even after the adult memory and its powers of reason are gone. Knowledge recently gained disappears, while that mysteri...

(Once on a time I lived in might vaults which ocean suns stained with a thousand gleams; their straight majestic columns made them seem as evening deep grottoes of basalt. The billows, tossing images of skies, mingled in a solemn mystic mode their music’s powerful harmonies which glowed with their sunset hues reflected to my eyes. And there I dwelt among voluptuous calms, in the midst of azure, splendor, and the waves, and the heavy perfumes of the naked slaves who cooled my forehead with slow fronds of palm, and whose only duty was to seek the hidden sorrows that had made me sick.) (“Baudelaire,” La Vie Anterieure, A Former Life) An attempt at a philosophical evaluation of the hallucinogenic drug experience. By PH.D. Eugene Seaich

. . . need I dread from thee harsh judgments, if the song be loth to quit Those recollected hours that have the charm of visionary things, those lovely forms and sweet sensations that throw back our life, and almost make remotest infancy A visible scene, on which the sun is shinin (Wordsworth, The Prelude)

During the Republican and Democratic conventions, The Huffington Post did a special series entitled "Shadow Conventions" in which writers posted on topics being neglected by Romney and Obama. Among the subjects, was one that has been gaining in media coverage: The War on Drugs. I have some ideas I'd like to share. Years ago, I read a science fiction novel in which the main character indulges in a piece of toast with hash-infused marmalade. He goes on to reminisce on how drugs were legalized and that persons wishing to use drugs are required to take a drug awareness class and pass a test in order to be issued a card for purchasing drugs. This would be a sensible approach, and teens should have drug education classes in which drug use is not demonized (nor encouraged) but presented in a manner that shows the dangers of drug abuse, and offers the suggestion that if you choose to use drugs as an adult, do so responsibly and in moderation. In order to keep persons on the mo...