It is not conducive to run a rigged slave economy if the pee-ons make time for introspection.

I go to work high every day!

[deleted]

Not every place forbids you from having a beer at lunch, and not everyone is incapable of doing a good job after either.

Your arbitrary yes/no mindset is useless and plenty of people would laugh at the assertion that they should not engage in this behavior.

This is the most succinct explanation of why psychedelics are illegal that I've ever read.

I hope you're joking, because that's 100% incorrect. Caffeine has been legal and popular in the West for over 300 years. Cannabis only started to take hold during the early 20th century, where it was slandered and pushed to be made illegal because the cotton industry wanted to push hemp products out of the business. So Hollywood started putting out a lot of pro-prohibition advertisements, cannabis was renamed marijuana to exploit racism and associate the drug with Hispanics.

Not because coffee makes you work hard and pot makes you go home. That's a child's level of explaining it.

Hearst had shares in timber plantations to pulp for his newspapers. They ran a scare campaign about how it would make your wife horny and want to sleep with black men. So bizarre but people fell for it. It worked though. Plus they had politicians in their pocket anyways.

Agree with the general point that the above reasoning is incomplete but it is historically inaccurate to suggest Cannabis only took hold in the 20th C. Hemp was everywhere in European culture. It is well established that two separate crops were grown, one in large fields for fibre and another smaller plot at home for medicine and food-seeds. There is less evidence to support a widespread culture of Cannabis smoking (though there is some!), but I find it highly unreasonable to suggest that the kilos of flower material that would have been left was just ignored. If nothing else it would surely have been thrown onto the fireplace or into meals to add flavour?

OP, great work providing all these links, thank you. Really.

One thing i must add, which i have just stumbled upon quite recently. There is a wide number of evidence gathered by gnostic media, greatly presented in a short documentary that shows that the counterculture was initiated by the CIA. I'm still not quite sure what to make of it as there are several people involved which i thought of as being sincere.

Here's the short documentary. It's called "Gnostic Media Documentary | Psychedelic Intelligence: The CIA and the Counterculture" (link to website which gives a detailed overview of the topics listed by minute)

They place Aldous Huxley right in the center of MKUltra and back it up with quite some convincing evidence. Quite disturbing as i was quite fond of Huxley and more than once listened to his talks. I urge you all to watch the documentary and be sure to have his interactive database (website)open in the background while doing so.

I am far from saying psychedelics are bad. But in light of the evidence he lays out in his "documentary", one must re-assess why they would push LSD so hard. The thing is, i still believe that, used in the proper way, these mind expanding substances can provide some form of benefit.

There is also a great series of in-depth articles (best print it out to read it as they are quite long) which provide excellent information and are sure to challenge one or the other view which you might hold.

The Secret History of Magic Mushrooms

"The role of drugs in the exercise of political control is also coming under increasing discussion. Control can be through prohibition or supply. The total or even partial prohibition of drugs gives the government considerable leverage for other types of control. An example would be the selective application of drug laws permitting immediate search, or "no knock" entry, against selected components of the population such as members of certain minority groups or political organizations.

But a government could also supply drugs to help control a population. This method, foreseen by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (1932), has the governing element employing drugs selectively to manipulate the governed in various ways."

I see your problem you are confused about who Jesus is. He is the son of God not a mushroom.

No he is not.
He was a creation of politicians looking for a new social control mechanism.

Yeah he's almost certainly fictional. Albeit, with a good message, I'm former Catholic myself, all for religion according to pragmatism and all that, just not my thing.

why they would push LSD

This is interesting... Perhaps the woo associated with LSD is all it's cracked up to be; that doesn't guarantee that what you are ingesting as "LSD" is in fact LSD. You have no real way of knowing, unless you are versed in chemistry and have made the compound yourself.

Having taken "LSD", I can state for certain that not every batch is the same. Could be a combination of various environmental factors certainly, but it could have just as well been an entirely different substance.

Not trying to detract from your points, just thought I'd share what your post sparked in my noodle.

This is interesting... Perhaps the woo associated with LSD is all it's cracked up to be; that doesn't guarantee that what you are ingesting as "LSD" is in fact LSD. You have no real way of knowing, unless you are versed in chemistry and have made the compound yourself.

There are some really nasty compounds out there that are sold as LSD, which is why I never do it. With mushrooms, you know what you're getting. There is also LSA (HWBR seeds), but the nausea from that one is uncomfortable. I took a triple dose once and laid in a pool of my own vomit thinking about all of the people I've wronged in my past. Beneficial, yet uncomfortable. Good for humanity, but you won't enjoy it until it's over.

Nitrous oxide is fairly safe. Certainly you've got to be trying pretty damn hard to do any kind of harm to yourself.

Some of these legal drugs, such as morning glory seeds, require proper extraction to be effective. To state the fairly obvious - It isn't the seeds that are getting you high but specific chemicals within them. Taking these chemicals in the presence of other impurities (as in the seeds) is likely to induce nausea, headaches etc. Check out Erowid, there are plenty of reports of extracted LSA with little to no negative side-effects.

Nicotine is not an antidote for datura ingestion...

I had the same feeling with heights. Funny. The body felt more like a spaceship exploring some kind of matrix and height was just that... vertical distance.

I've been exposed to this info before but I'm still so confused.

What was the intended goal of this dissemination of "counter-culture'?

Huxley? Sure. Leary? Sure, never really took to him and neither did Hunter Thompson actually. But McKenna?! I have listened to around 15-20 hours of McKenna lectures and my god, he makes you completely re-examine your socio-cultural paradigm and is a brilliant intellectual.

Was the counter-culture a successful project after all or did it fail and the unintended consequences of psychedelics became quickly squashed by Reagan?

I just feel as though there are not any clear, clear reasons behind this whole CIA-involvement in counter-culture, Laurel Canyon and all that.

What was the intended goal of this dissemination of "counter-culture'?

I don't think Jan (from GnosticMedia) went into that. He is/was more focused on what was actually done, which is understandably hard to find out on it's own. Finding out why, you'd have to speculate or have access to classified documents. At least that's what i think. One thing - i think Jan actually mentioned it - was to discourage people being proactive about an anti-war movement. People only caring about themselves.

But McKenna?! I have listened to around 15-20 hours of McKenna lectures and my god, he makes you completely re-examine your socio-cultural paradigm and is a brilliant intellectual.

Huxley surprised me more. McKenna was someone i haven't listened to that much. His role is also heavily defended, even by Graham Hancock, which in itself makes you wonder. But McKenna himself said that the FBI was after him, didn't he? People say when he used the word agent that he was talking about the elves. Did he use that word often to describe them? If not, this could very well be a good point for him being a real agent.

Was the counter-culture a successful project after all or did it fail and the unintended consequences of psychedelics became quickly squashed by Reagan?

Is america still involved in countless wars all over the world? Do people care about what goes on in government?

What horrifies about the thought of the counter-culture being engineered is this question: What is so bad about the current culture, that it has to be destroyed? If that is the designated goal of the counter-culture.

Thank you for the response!

Thinking about it a while, for me it would seem that it was an experiment with unintended consequences.

Psychedelic drugs and their influences on culture in the West has been immense; a proactive ecology movement, a proactive organic and health movement, amazing art and music, a common sense of humanity against oppression and suppression etc.

I just cannot comprehend how the CIA would knowingly engineer a culture with those sorts of values which promote anti-consumerism and even McKenna denounces forms of media like t.v etc unless it was all an experiment gone haywire.

Too fascinating, man, too fascinating, but I do not think it should not be a whole "kill your idols" sort of deal. It seems much more nuanced and complex than, "Your psychedelic heroes are corrupt and evil and you should disregard everything they said".

Would also recommend James Ketchum's memoirs from Edgewood Arsenal. LSD was initially investigated for the use in psycochemical warfare however it was determined that whilst it might radically alter a soldier's perception of reality, it was not sufficiently debilitating to render an enemy ineffective. This is a great (if lengthy) article on the whole concept :)

They place Aldous Huxley right in the center of MKUltra

Bullshit. Explain please.

I'm not the OP, but I've looked into some of the gnostic media stuff.

It's mostly his family ties that implicate him in the theory. He has relatives who worked in the genetics field. So he is accused of ushering this dumbing down of society by hyping up drugs.

I find it difficult to accept given that I've read his literature. His final book, Island is an attack on the opportunist in us all and actually portrays how his perfect model of civilization would function spiritually and mentally. The only book that deals with psychedelics is The Doors of Perception and he mostly writes about his own experience under the influence of LSD.

Moksha?

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. Now I'm going to be reading more into the gnostic media accusations :/

Thats no bullshit, it is true. Timothy O'Leary, Terrence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson all had CIA connections. But why is the question... I think either to steer the discussion or to give the youth something to do which does not result in direct competition to government, or both.

Terrence even mentions the support from the CIA for his research in one of his books afaik. Hard to swallow first but you can't look for truth and then deny stuff which does make your personal "heros" look bad. At least thats how it is for me.

Oh, I thought we were talking about Huxley, not O'Leary, McKenna, or Wilson.

Huxley sought knowledge through any means.

Explain to me how this places him "right in the center of MKUltra".

Aldous Huxley is part of the same club, they were all connected to the same ties. Don't get hung up on terms like "center".

Proof then?

You can either not believe me or look up the sources yourself, like everybody should do.

How about you provide the sources (like someone trying to prove something they have proof of would do) and I investigate them.

I'm not here to spoon feed you information you can easily look up yourself. Like I said, get into the material yourself and maybe actually read a book.

However, I just spent literally 2 seconds to find an article on Terrence's CIA/FBI connection which I mentioned before.

http://www.gnosticmedia.com/McKenna-Agent

Like I said, prove Huxley not McKenna.

Edit: Looked at your source, it says McKenna was recruited in 1971...8 years after Huxley's death.

Huxley's family is in the same club as the CIA. Just lookup what they were up to since forever.

http://www.gnosticmedia.com/how-darwin-huxley-and-the-esalen-institute-launched-the-2012-and-psychedelic-revolutions-and-began-one-of-the-largest-mind-control-operations-in-history/

I read this as it was linked in the source you provided earlier.

There is no evidence of Aldous Huxley having any connection to the CIA, let alone working for them.

Stop linking me blog/opinions and provide evidence of a connection or stop spreading lies about one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.

He is your personal hero. Evidence of a connection? Have you actually taken a look at the Huxley family?

Continue with your rhetoric; I'm done with you until you provide facts.

The Huxley family's ties to eugenics and the whole club is not fact enough for you? I don't take anything away from his outstanding works. I just think that he had a reason other than a good heart to publish his works and that it might be part of an agenda.

Alright. Let's start by coming to the obvious fact that we will probably never have it in official writing that huxley was the MKUltra guy. Okay? This, however, should not stop us from looking at all his connections and what he did during his lifetime. I would like to think that Huxley is dear to you, as he was to me. If there was something fishy about him you would want to know, wouldn't you? So, i offer you some possibilities to find out more about him.

Fist, i want you to open the ["brain"](webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6FBA86B0-0C57-9FCA-5CF9-D742DA541AAA#-4411) by GnosticMedia and type in Huxley in the search and then just take a look around. Take your time.

Second, look for the "Esalen Institute" and check it out. Watch the following part of the documentary The Net, or even better the whole thing.

Third, watch this, from the starting point i linked for about 5 minutes or so.

Parts form Moksha:

"During the weeks of October and November of 1960 there were many meetings to plan the research. Aldous Huxley would come and listen and then close his eyes and detach himself from the scene and go into his controiied meditation trance, which \vas unnerving to some of the Harvard people who equate consciousness with talk, and then he would open his eyes and make a diamond-pure comment. …

183 1960 Harvard Session Report

Huxley and Osmond visited Dr. Timothy Leary at Harvard where the Psychedelic Research Project had gotten underway. The following report of a psilocybin session from unpublished laboratory notes exhibits the methodology of the Harvard researchers,and reveals Huxley as a semi-anonymous subject in a group experiment. DATE: Sunday, Nov. 6, 1960.

SITUATION: At this session the remaining members of the research group were exposed to the psilocybin experience. The session began at noon on Sunday and lasted until 8 p.m. The scene was, as in the preceding, the large and comfortable home of the principal investigator.

PARTICIPANTS: 1, 4: from previous sessions. 11: Mr. Aldous Huxley."

"The aim is to get at the words and phrases, heard by the patient at moments of lowered consciousness, and accepted by him as obsessive commands, like post-hypnotic suggestions. The sub-conscious seems to take these verbal commands literally and unreasoningly, without regard to their context. The result can be disastrous, both mentally and physically. ~ Aldous Huxley - 10 December, 1950"

Maybe the legalisation of narcotics is an attempt for new distractions for the masses

Probably, but at least it more fun than going to jail for exploring your own adult consciousness.

That's been my thought all along.

Nope. Mass surveillance is about opposition and control.

whats the state with the most pharmaceuticals companies?

bingo, give that man a helicopter ride and a desert.

Desert? Why? You mean dessert like ice-cream?

Psychedelics are most definitely a healing and amazing substance. They also allow people to see past the cultural programming and see the systems in place for what they really are and that is the last thing they want.

this is secret technology

It is a chemical which reduces the influence of the brain's pre-established biases. Why do you think it classes as a technology?

If theres one thing i wouldn't trade for anything in the world. That is to be able to take and have taken psychedelics.

Drugs are illegal because heroin and cocaine are extremely profitable, not taxable, able to be manufactured and trafficked under the radar, and that money used for covert CIA operations. All while we blame terrorists, drug lords, etc, for it.

plant drugs are almost always benign becuase we evolved with them.

We evolved alongside Datura but as you rightly say above it's not exactly recommended and is in fact pretty fucking dangerous. Meanwhile LSD is entirely a synthetic a semisynthetic compound yet has one of the safest toxicology profiles on the planet. This isn't about things being natural or unnatural, its just how our body reacts to the presence of a chemical within itself.

edit: Correction for LSD synthesis. Point still stands though - Your body doesn't give a crap as to the source of the chemicals it finds within itself, just what the chemicals are. Synthetic chemicals are only usually considered more dangerous because of the potential for more toxic residual impurities.

Meanwhile LSD is entirely a synthetic compound

Semisynthetic, actually.

Mb, I would have thought street LSD would be manufactured using the wholly synthetic synthesis route though? I actually have no idea how white-market ergotamine is produced, do they really grow huge batches of ergot?

edit: Interesting reference, access to ergot derivatives is tightly controlled therefore total synthetic synthesis is recommended.

What's put out there and marketed as LSD, though rushy long clickstep trips are similarly reproduced, is almost never derivative of lysergic nor paspalic.

What is out there, if it is out there, has a point of origin that I couldn't speak to.

very nice! how cool would it be to have a college course that taught you how, when, and why to use various substances? very cool, that's how cool.

Psychedelics are wonderful. I wish everybody could trip just once with a positive experience. It would honestly change the world.

Creepy people are creeping my account. Please stop doing that. I edited everything for a reason.

http://www.maps.org/books/eleusis.pdf

Spoiler alert: ergot's got one badass big brother.

404

Ty! :)

They can open doors, but only if you are ready to open the door will it be meaningful. In other words, taking mega doses of acid over a short period will show you things, but they will be will not improve your life. Let life experience be the driver of when to take the sacrament and let the sacrament show you your life experience.

Maybe, but not really my point. These types of drugs can be used for fun or enlightenment...or a little bit of both. The abuse of these drugs will only give you fun at a diminishing value the more frequently used. At least, my humble experience as a psychonaut.

What sucks( or not ) is whenever I take them for fun I tend to have an enlightenment experience.
And vica-versa.

No drugs should be illegal, end of discussion.

There are a lot of things that are illegal, but that doesn't mean they're wrong. If someone decides to smoke a little pot, who does that hurt really?

So that should make you wonder how some of these "laws" ever got passed in the first place. Make something illegal and most conformist types immediately decide that, if it's illegal, it must be wrong.

These people are confusing authority with the truth.

If there is something that harms people, that thing should be illegal. Cigarettes, for example, cause cancer and heart disease in millions of people around the world every year, yet they're perfectly legal. So again, you have to wonder about the basis on which laws are passed.

Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's harmless or right. Just because something is illegal, doesn't mean it's harmful or wrong.

I just want a drug that regrows the head of hair I had 20 years ago with no side effects. Who's withholding that from the masses?

Whether or not they are "good for you" depends upon whether it is better to be ignorant of an all-encompassing evil you can't change or to become aware of a system keeping you firmly in chains that you can't ignore. The choice itself robs you of the ability to choose. This fundamental conflict of modern society is best portrayed by Keith David and Roddy Piper in John Carpenter's They Live!

[deleted]

Come on, now....let's not go crazy and start suggesting meth is practically a vitamin.

That doesn't make any sense. Stuff like heart medicines are good for you and aren't illegal. Vegetables are good for you, aren't illegal.

Methamphetamine is a powerful decongestant.

Whether some drug is good or bad for you largely depends upon the person taking the drug and his/her situation etc. The same dose of the same drug could be good for a person at one stage in his/her life, but bad in another etc. Drugs and Humans are much more complex than this simple statement. We saw lots of guys who ended up just staring at their hands for years after doing LSD in the 70s. Even safer drugs can harm some individuals. Look at potheads.

Of course, a substance that allows you to take only 1 pill every six months(not to mention something that grows out of the ground) to treat alcoholism or anxiety or a number of psychological conditions is something that's a threat to the medical industry, making it in their interest to keep prohibiting it.

I wonder why? Some people have seen a few junkies or even known a few. That would make someone feeling negative about your supposition

Ibogaine for curing addiction is overhyped.

I know a number of people that have used it to get off dope, as well as west coast underground medical groups using it for treatment. It has it's uses, but is far from the miracle drug it's purported to be.

The most recent person I knew to use it reported the experience was awful, he wasn't able to make it even a week clean afterwards before he was back to using. His habit is only a six-month long non-IV habit, and this was his fourth attempt to quit (and the most extreme so far.)

A lot of the Ibogaine treatment centers are outside the US and cost $3K and more. Now I know not all junkies are homeless, but most will have difficulty raising that kind of money. It is likely those that get non-US Ibogaine treatment at such facilities have a lot of resources both in family and friend support as well as finances. I think this plays more into their recovery than the drug itself.

I think you would see much less success if you were just giving Ibogaine to homeless junkies with no other support mechanisms. You also see much less success in underground treatment in the US. Those treatments are usually affordable ($100-500), and can be sought by middle-class junkies without asking for friend and family support or having significant finances. What you're seeing is wealthy junkies with family support have lower rates of recidivism.

http://deadspin.com/5549389/mushroom-tea-murder-man-removes-friends-still-beating-heart

After he ate his friends heart he put the ham to bed and the baby in the oven at 350° for 45 minutes.

I know a number of people that have used it to get off dope, as well as west coast underground medical groups using it for treatment. It has it's uses, but is far from the miracle drug it's purported to be.

The most recent person I knew to use it reported the experience was awful, he wasn't able to make it even a week clean afterwards before he was back to using. His habit is only a six-month long non-IV habit, and this was his fourth attempt to quit (and the most extreme so far.)

A lot of the Ibogaine treatment centers are outside the US and cost $3K and more. Now I know not all junkies are homeless, but most will have difficulty raising that kind of money. It is likely those that get non-US Ibogaine treatment at such facilities have a lot of resources both in family and friend support as well as finances. I think this plays more into their recovery than the drug itself.

I think you would see much less success if you were just giving Ibogaine to homeless junkies with no other support mechanisms. You also see much less success in underground treatment in the US. Those treatments are usually affordable ($100-500), and can be sought by middle-class junkies without asking for friend and family support or having significant finances. What you're seeing is wealthy junkies with family support have lower rates of recidivism.

What was the intended goal of this dissemination of "counter-culture'?

I don't think Jan (from GnosticMedia) went into that. He is/was more focused on what was actually done, which is understandably hard to find out on it's own. Finding out why, you'd have to speculate or have access to classified documents. At least that's what i think. One thing - i think Jan actually mentioned it - was to discourage people being proactive about an anti-war movement. People only caring about themselves.

But McKenna?! I have listened to around 15-20 hours of McKenna lectures and my god, he makes you completely re-examine your socio-cultural paradigm and is a brilliant intellectual.

Huxley surprised me more. McKenna was someone i haven't listened to that much. His role is also heavily defended, even by Graham Hancock, which in itself makes you wonder. But McKenna himself said that the FBI was after him, didn't he? People say when he used the word agent that he was talking about the elves. Did he use that word often to describe them? If not, this could very well be a good point for him being a real agent.

Was the counter-culture a successful project after all or did it fail and the unintended consequences of psychedelics became quickly squashed by Reagan?

Is america still involved in countless wars all over the world? Do people care about what goes on in government?

What horrifies about the thought of the counter-culture being engineered is this question: What is so bad about the current culture, that it has to be destroyed? If that is the designated goal of the counter-culture.