everything is relevant... we are a product of the sum of our experiences, and every angle of life relates to every other angle in some facet...
of course we (& i mean the royal "we") are never going to agree on these subjects... it's not in the nature of the subject for excessive harmony to exist... since the beginning of "recreational" psychedelic use there have been these kinds of rifts, different schools of thought... Leary & the Millbrook folks never could really grok what was going on in LaHonda with Kesey & the Pranksters... one set was academic, one visceral... & just as in the case of us here, the true path is most likely the one that lie in between... it's part of our nature to polarize... it may be part of what we must grow past if we are to persist... the jury's still out on that one...
as far as "entertainment" is concerned, that's really too subjective of an area to say, definitively, that it's not always possible... of course it's not all elf's and love... if it were, there'd be no entertainment value to be had... when i was a little kid, late night after seeing Poltergeist in the theatre, my mother jumped around the corner in our basement with a mask on, and quite literally scared the shit out of me... that was not sunshine & smiles, but in the end it was great fun... just as some enjoy a romantic comedy, others enjoy horror flicks... entertainment comes in many forms, not all of them pretty... listen to Bob Dylan's "If You See Her, Say Hello" from the Blood on the Tracks album... the man is broken, almost dying, & it breaks me down in tears almost every time i hear it... & i hear it a lot, because i find it entertaining, even though it is sad beyond measure... to me, the overall sum of the experience is where the entertainment lies... think roller coasters, where we go to submit ourselves to one of the most basic of human fears, the fear of falling, all in the name of good.clean.fun...
another thought i'd like to throw out there is that the simple fact we have this rift is a product not of real-world concerns about the essence of the spice, but rather a product of programming we receive as citizens of the western world... we are conditioned for the most part to submit to the dogma of "you're not here to have a good time.".. work is not supposed to be fun, learning is not supposed to be fun... altering consciousness is dangerous, and shouldn't be done... all lies, all of them... the man that enjoys his work does better work... ditto learning... present a child with statistics showing that when humans pull together in an effort they can achieve greater results than they can as individuals and the child will yawn & stare out the window... set that child outside with a bat and a ball & he will band together with a team & learn the lesson you were previously attempting to teach, without even knowing a lesson is being taught... exactly what i believe is available through the spice... one man's entertainment may be reading a book, or turning on a nature program on the idiot box... he can come out of this experience with knowledge, solid concrete knowledge, when his only intent was to sit down & veg out for a while... can i not sit down with a bowl of changa, intent on just having a hallucinatory experience, and possibly gain insight from the session?.. of course i can, it happens regularly... i don't feel the need for this inherent separation of recreation & education that our world is so heavily vested in...
(note: sometimes i sound like a dick... i never, ever mean anything personal by it... like Kerouac, i feel that going back & editing my words is essentially gutting my truest, most honest thoughts, so i don't to it...i know some of what i just typed comes off condescending, it is not meant that way... i come off blunt, yes... last week i really let loose on a real-world friend, then went off & consulted the teachers about the whole thing... i received the message "if yr going to go through life talking to people like you just talked to Danielle, you may as well just jump in the lake.".. so this is one of the thing's i'm personally working on, even to the point of consulting the teachers when i'm not just blasting off for fun...
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i enjoy other substances than dmt regularly, albeit in moderation for the most part... most of them are plant-based... i consider them all somewhat sacred, guaranteed... i don't really hold dmt any MORE sacred than any of the rest of them, however... yes, it's effects are PROFOUND... but go back to the first time you ever smoked cannabis (properly, with effect.).. i'd be willing to bet that was a pretty balls-to-the-wall experience as well... unfortunately, cannabis doesn't enjoy the benefit of being non-tolerance-building, so the amazement of it wears off & it becomes just getting stoned... we're lucky that the pharmacology of dmt is different, and thus it remains a profound experience time after time... i don't think this fluke of bio-chemistry affords it any more "sacred" status than any of the other plant teachers, which are pretty much accepted as "ok" for recreational usage (namely cannabis & mushrooms)...
& yes, i do acknowledge the possibility of having a terrifying experience on dmt... i've had my share... but this can happen even when the spice is used "properly.".. of course basic guidelines of set & setting are going to be observed... as they are with any psychedelic... i love to eat acid & go see live music... but if i happen to have a sprained ankle on the day of the show, the acid gets saved for later... common sense must dictate, in all situations...
@scudge: thanks man... i think a lot of the time when trapped in a dark corner, we tend to focus on the dark... sometimes you can find a light to shine on something from a completely different direction... even if the new way doesn't work for you, it may show you the way to something that does...
