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Old 02-11-2013, 11:58 AM
  # 17 (permalink)  
Gforce23
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Originally Posted by soberlicious View Post
Yes, but you can change your perception of what's real without anything external.

I don't think drugs are "bad", just unnecessary. I don't think what you described is anymore profound or surreal an experience than say, giving birth, jumping from an airplane, or being naked in front of a large group of people.

You don't know what you're really made of until you do some things completely on your own, with no "buffer". Tripping takes on a whole new meaning.
I might have to respectfully disagree with you here Sober--those things you mentioned are profound and surreal--having experienced several of them, but not really in the same way as having your "waking" perceptions so profoundly altered.

I think those experiences you mentioned are equal to, but qualitatively different than an experience on enthoegens. In fact, To be able to cross over into the Land of Death-- the realm of the Shamans, means dreaming while awake, and human beings have used those substances for thousands and thousands of years to achieve that--I personally believe that we "co-evolved" with these plants. Reading "One River" by Wade Davis is a mind opening experience when it comes to the history of indigenous use and knowledge of infinite combinations with other plant substances, which Davis says, can not be mathematically explained by "trial and error."

While I hear what your saying about not "needing them/it," I don't invalidate the former experience as being somehow unworthy, unnecessary or irrelevant,--Ayahuasca is currently being studied for it's potential to heal psychological traumas and even addiction--and Bill Hicks had an alien experience on mushrooms that actually facilitated his spirituality and his evolution as a comic. He had fervently wished for a similar experience with out the mushrooms, but it never happened. So maybe our brains can't make contact with the All One Consciousness with out assistance of some kind, whether that be psilocybin, or hours of meditation, or both. But hey, that's just my theory, so you know, it is what it is...(I'm gesticulating with my hand right now in a Jewish-grandmother kind of way)

I personally think that alcohol dulls consciousness and has the exact opposite effect as entheogens.

But, I'm kind of diverting the original intent of the thread here, (!) as my intent was to talk about being fearless in sobriety, and NOT to necessarily to defend psychedelic use and culture.

So let's talk about fearlessness, perhaps sans jumping out of planes, because I think I could go to my grave happily knowing it's something I never did.

Cheers!
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