Psychedelic, definition

Many people believe that organic or natural psychedelics such as peyote, magic mushrooms and marijuana are safer or produce better trips than synthetic compounds. This is almost certainly false, since any plant material contains hundreds of compounds, many of which have a definite toxicity, but few of which have psychedelic properties (they tend to make you sick, not stoned). The various impurities or the additives (e.g., amphetamine, belladona, strychnine) sometimes found in synthetic preparations are probably no more toxic than many of the compounds found in the psychedelic plants, and like these compounds, such additives or impurities probably have relatively little effect on the trip. 

Finally, psychedelic therapy has been assailed as too dangerous. Very definitely, the evidence does not bear this out and in fact, when the drugs are administered by those thera-... 

Although no definite time estimates can be given, the Tibetans estimate that about 50% of the entire psychedelic experience is spent in the Third Bardo by most normal people. At times, as indicated in the Introduction, someone may move straight to the re-entry period if he is unprepared for or frightened by the ego-loss experiences of the first two Bardos. 

The paragraph on the left is taken from The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience by Robert Masters and Jean Houston the one on the right is part of the definition of LSD-25 in Robert R. Lingeman s revised and updated edition of Drugs From A to Z. These summaries, distilled from many descriptions of the drug s mental effects, are comprehensive and yet incomplete in conveying the quality of the LSD experience. 

But why would anyone want to cultivate the symptoms of mental illness The answers to that question are directly related to the narrow definition of Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) that arose in the psychedelic era of the 1960s. The era s radicalism was only a recrndescence of the age-old hankering for transcendence, and it is this mystical yearning that... 

There is now experimental evidence that for high levels of alcohol intoxication there is definite state-specific memory in humans 21. It is an experimental demonstration of the old folk idea that if you lose something while very drunk and cannot find it the next day, you may be able to find it if you get very drunk again and then search. Experiential data collected in my study of marijuana users 105 also indicate the existence of state-specific memory, and I have recently received verbal reports that laboratory studies are finding state-specific memory for marijuana intoxication. There also seems to be state-specific memory for the conditions induced by major psychedelic drugs. 

I combined 125 mg of harmala extract with 50 mg of a Phalaris grass extraction. This time there was no allergic reaction and the potion was defi-nitely psychoactive. Unfortunately, like most ayahuasca combinations, this was accompanied by strong waves of nausea. The experience was what Shulgin describes as a "plus-2" - there was definite activity, but not so much that I couldn t function in an emergency if I had to. The trip could have been stronger (compared with two grams of Psilocybe cubensis, for example), but it was unquestionably "psychedelic."... 

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