Psychedelic Drug Culture

[RAM]

We are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what it's worth.

Many of us here and our friend Terence do not have favorable views on culture, as it socializes people to follow certain traditions and authority, and many believe that it holds back real progress and positive change. I am inclined to agree with much of this type of reasoning because so many of society's problems seem rooted in rigid cultural structures and ideologies. However, I have been concerned with psychedelic culture for a while and would like to get your thoughts on the matter.

There are some defining tenets that I have found in various psychedelic havens, such as The Nexus, Shroomery, r/psychonaut, and other psych forums, websites, and books. Some examples of what I am talking about are fractal imagery, "trippy" landscapes and colors, the idea that we are "the universe observing itself," dominant support of total legalization/deregulation of drugs (especially psychs), respect of subjectivity, ideas of general peace, love, and understanding, and so on. I am sure you are able to identify many of these similarities between drug information sources.

I do not mean to step on any toes here and claim that any of the above things are "bad" in any sense - I support most of them - but another big idea with psychedelics in my opinion is critical analysis of things that we have taken and do take for granted for long periods of time, as these form into rigid ideological structures. It is important to view these things we do with a critical lens and not get idealistic, delusional, unrealistic, etc. if we hope to enact real change both in our own lives and the lives of others, if this is a shared goal of ours.

Can you think of further example of what constitutes psychedelic drug culture? How about similar "tripping" cultures and ceremonies and structures surrounding the actual act of tripping? Do you think we need to be more careful with these ideas, and where do you think even the critical thinkers at the Nexus are ignorant at times of psychedelic ideology? Do you think there is a culture here at all, or is the subjective experience of drug usage too varied for any one underlying structure?

 

[zknarc]

Belief in the ’appeal to nature’ (most evident in anti-pharamsuticals) is common
There is a very heavy culture of spirituality in a very esoteric sense: plant spirits, evil spirits, shamanism etc.

I’m not sure these are necessarily problematic in being common ideology, all people have their own beliefs and come to them in their own way. I do think much of the ideology of psychedelics and it’s users does little to garner a serious or favourable view from the outside world though (especially any scientific one) though.

 

[Anamnesia]

Can you think of further example of what constitutes psychedelic drug culture? How about similar "tripping" cultures and ceremonies and structures surrounding the actual act of tripping? Do you think we need to be more careful with these ideas, and where do you think even the critical thinkers at the Nexus are ignorant at times of psychedelic ideology? Do you think there is a culture here at all, or is the subjective experience of drug usage too varied for any one underlying structure?

Psychedelic culture means to me the realization of the Self.
I think we will find eventually it impossible to suppress awakening on any level.
Awakening into relativity, each of us nodes, like neurons, within one realized mind.
I really believe that the ultimate psychedelic realization is that your life itself is the very trip.
The psychedelic is merely the rag with which your lens of perception is cleansed.
When one takes the psychedelic one knows beyond any doubt his whole existence begins there. One knows I never really existed before, because I was never aware of myself as also everyone around me. Everyone around me becomes a divine being. I get mad with people around me when they hate themselves. I say, don't you remember who you are? you are eternal! you didn't incarnate here to suffer, or to pretend not to be who you are or not do what you want to do! and then we continue being miserable anyway. And the only reason left is because we like it. What this means is that you realize everyone around you is doing exactly what they want to do. Which means everyone is in charge of their reality.

This kind of thinking I think is basic to most psychedelicists. If not all of it, at least some parts of it. I say this because I don't think there is any utility or benefit in trying to create some kind of culture or tradition to contain it in. The thing, the real Truth is not only self-evident, but also Timeless. That which is tradition, or culture, liking thinking itself, exists in Time. The Truth is Timeless. And therefore available to anyone who takes a dip into the lake of eternity.
Psychedelic understanding is the exact opposite of what culture tried to provide.
A shaman, and don't be fooled, we're all shamans just as we are all exactly masters of our own lives, transcends culture and ideology, simply because he has become a refuge unto himself, in the words of the Buddha.

So, I think we could generally say what comes of a mystical-psychedelic experience in terms of certain common realizations individuals undergoing this experience always seem to share. Many finding a deep peace within themselves having discarded themselves and found identification with all beings and all space and all matter and everything whatsoever. All these traits come after the transcendental experience, out of which culture blooms like a flower having found proper conditions.

I think we should forget culture completely, and not try to improve on it any way. Everything you need is within you, for there is nothing in the world outside of the real you.

 

[Praxis.]

I personally have never really identified with this Mckenna quote at all, or the ways that a lot of people seem to reference it out of context--at least within the scope of how I understand "culture".

Culture blooms wherever people gather and/or communicate. It's an unavoidable and fundamental aspect of human experience, much like gravity. Connect two points and a 1-dimensional line is created 100% of the time. Connect a second point adjacent to that and you have 2-dimensions, 100% of the time, so on and so forth... Similarly, when people exchange information--whether material, sensory, emotional, linguistic, abstract, etc... a "line" is created; or in other words, culture. Culture is a logical stepping stone in the evolutionary process--to transcend it entirely is not possible unless you are very high or very dead.

Culture is not our enemy. It's quite literally the substrate we use to navigate the world and exchange information with one another, and without it I don't think we'd be able to have this conversation.

This said, I think that there are many problematic aspects of most cultures that we have seen on the planet so far; and it can be useful to "step outside of our own cultural programming", so to speak, to see the bigger picture. But as soon as these experiences become integrated, culture takes root. What about cultures that seek to integrate this "bigger picture" into their values, languages, and aesthetic? Which is, arguably, every culture on Earth that has valued spirituality or science.

To answer your questions specifically though, I absolutely think there is a collective culture of people who use psychedelic drugs. We have our own demographic (mostly well-off white folks who identify as male and who live in Europe or North America), dialect (ask any serious psychonaut about SWIM and they'll probably give you a smile), values (psychedelic drugs are valuable tools for exploring the mind and the modern world wrongly suppresses their use), philosophies (we are "hard-wired" to experience reality in a way that is not necessarily "complete" ), etc... Of course there are divergent opinions within this culture, like there are in any other--but ask a stranger about MAOIs or "hyperspace" and they will likely give you a blank stare. Go to a rave and ask about MAOI's or say the word "hyperspace" and you'll probably have a conversation about ayahuasca and DMT. And of course within this culture there are sub-cultures: There are hippies who use psychedelics and they have their own kind of new-age philosophy and respected figures, which is distinct from exclusively academic interest in psychedelics which has it's own set of "authority" figures, or the techie-crowd in silicon valley that uses psychedelics specifically for productivity and technological applications. Here at the nexus we make jokes about a frog in hyperspace we've named Kikker, while at the shroomery such a reference would go unrecognized. I could go on, but I think you all get what I'm saying.

 

[anne halonium]

its a free for all.

i would offer the whole human landscape,
including psyche culture, is changing fast across the board.

so far though, with advent of digital age,
i see it as best of times yet to come.

the community is scattered as of today beyond stereotypes.
it ranges from hippies cave style , to silicon valley smart trippers.
millions of combos, ranging the spectra.


as a cyberpunk, i see halluciongens as smart food to fuel the antics.
and i have little to do with the larger trippie culture.

thats said, computers and psyches, its a free for all,
but im not seeing the downside , culture or not.

 

[dreamer042]

I'll spare ya the rehashing of multiple Terence Mckenna culture quotes, and instead share one that Terence often liked to quote.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

Terence is famous for his "culture is not your friend" rap and often would suggest that ANY form of culture is a trap. Yet at other times he can be quoted as saying it's important to create your own culture based in "the felt presence of direct experience". Even in founding Botanical Dimensions much of his work was to preserve not only the sacred plants themselves, but also the cultural traditions around the use of these medicines. As you can see, his rap changed frequently and often contradicted both previous raps and his own actions, truly he was a man who contained multitudes.

Not to retread the Shamanism thread (may it rest in peace), but I think Terence was on point when he mentioned the Shaman is usually the person in the tribe who can see through the cultural programming and actually is very much a showman helping keep the cultural program in tact for the rest of the tribe. An example of this is when a shaman sucks out an illness from a patient and then presents them with some little token item that he slight of hand placed into his mouth during the medicine show. He well knows it's a shell game, but offering up the tangible proof to his client helps reinforce the cultural program the patient expects when visiting a shaman to have an illness removed.

When it comes down to it, the bit of Terence's rap that was consistent and his general allusions to culture referred mainly to mainstream modern industrialized material-based propaganda-fed western capitalist culture. I think it's pretty apparent to everyone at this point that this culture is a kamikaze dive into species extinction. This is a form of culture that is quickly destroying and homogenizing every other culture into a nice uniform landscape of brand named strip-malls and billboards.

So where do we stand? Is it even possible to opt out anymoar? Finding our own culture bereft of value, can we look to other less destructive cultures for guidance, or is that cultural appropriation? How can we work to preserve a dying culture when the last remaining vestiges of that culture are more enchanted by iPhones and high rises than hunting techniques and plant preparations?

Culture isn't necessarily a bad thing, as mentioned previously in this thread. A culture based in respectful communication and harm reduction such as the culture we've created here at the Nexus has proven itself quite beneficial in safely bringing awareness of psychedelics to a global online audience. Yet in many ways our own values are insulating us from the realities of the wider drug culture. Thus I would suggest that the most sensible course of action for the observant psychonaut embedded in psychedelic culture, and internet culture, and mainstream culture, is for each of us to ourselves take the position of the previously mentioned shaman and work toward creating and preserving a culture that benefits the entire tribe while remembering that no matter how fine the emperors new robes appear to the rest of the village, he's really just parading around in his birthday suit.

 

[Chan]

^^^

Bang on, Dreamer!

But careful, saying stuff like:

I think it's pretty apparent to everyone at this point that this culture is a kamikaze dive into species extinction. This is a form of culture that is quickly destroying and homogenizing every other culture into a nice uniform landscape of brand named strip-malls and billboards.

tends to get shot down as pointless negativity, fuelled by conspiracy theory...

IMO, too many relentless-positivists need to peel back the wrapper and see what their progress is actually made from. And how many creatures, human and non-human, are forcibly dispossessed in its pursuit...and how vast an underclass is necessary to sustain it.

Forgive me if I can't see VR porn as a mile post on the road to transcendence...

 

[Ufostrahlen]

But careful, saying stuff like ... tends to get shot down as pointless negativity, fuelled by conspiracy theory...

Yes here, I do it:

Forgive me if I can't see VR porn as a mile post on the road to transcendence...

I can't see smelly drum circles and getting f'd up at Burning man as a mile post on the road to transcendence, as well. But if the VR porn addicts and the smelly hippies get a shower and aclean head, they might build something wonderful. The only ones we can't count on are the folks who want to go "back to nature". "Back to nature", back to famine, illness, predators and low life expectancy.

We are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what it's worth.

I think he meant culture as a whole thing. Be it the local tribe culture, the family culture, company culture, Western culture, Islamic culture, Hindu culture, DMT-Nexus culture etc.

 

[Chan]

Glad you're able to stock up on genomes cheap, though, along with lazy, irrelevant stereotypes.

 

[Ufostrahlen]

Glad you're able to stock up on genomes cheap, though, along with lazy, irrelevant stereotypes.

Threat =! extinct. And definitely THE time to pick up a book on genetics than wasting time at a drum circle. Or shopping mall. Whatever stereotype one might prefer.

I'm sure we see cheap cloning/genetic editing at a certain point of time. Extinction then will be only a matter of irrelevant DNA. I'd like to see some glowing birds in the night. Also changing my skin color would be fun.

 

[dreamer042]

Apologies I should have been moar clear for the semanticists. What I was alluding to was the extinction of the human species.

 

[Ufostrahlen]

Apologies I should have been moar clear for the semanticists. What I was alluding to was the extinction of the human species.

At a certain point of time we all have to die. And maybe at a certain point of time the human form is obsolete as well. If we become cyborgs, homo sapiens futurus or just energy balls, IDK.

 

[Koornut]

There's a metaphoric rainbow luminescent mud that drips off a few groups of psychedelions i've come into contact with, it's thick in air around them. It's rainbow, which is fantastic...but it's also....mud, which gets heavy when you have enough of it on you. Not as freeing as one would suspect given the subject matter.
I prefer-me-dude a little hermitude when it comes to enjoying psyches. Big groups get sticky.