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Psychotropics: Tool or Crutch?

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LawnBoy

LawnBoy

Rising Star
I really appreciate being able to use psychotropics as tools. One can achieve wonders in a matter of hours, in what would normally take months or years of work. You can hear the phrase repeated many times, especially when using psychotropics with psychotherapy.
I know 2C-I is a wondrous tool for social bonding. Mescaline can induce an experience that "brings one closer to God." Some drugs make people feel a strong desire to be honest, loving, or even fearful and paranoid.
Psychedelics can allow one to confront death. Imagine thinking you are dead and living through it; imagine how much personal growth that would involve. People can use "tools" to induce that state or this state, almost like a portal.
For me psychotropics allow me to see the world in a completely different light. Meditation, therapy, study can do that, as well, but the more tools in the toolbox the better, right? That's what tools do; they make work easier, or they wouldn't be "tools." Why not use these tools, if we have them available?

I understand that one can use drugs as crutches. What is the line, between tool and crutch? I often find myself taking psychedelics to enhance an experience or "modify my mood." I have taken mescaline just to ensure that I have a good day. Is that "bad?" I don't feel regret or "bad" for doing it, but other people tend to look down on me. When I tell people that I have taken mescaline on a daily basis, they tend to show dismay or disdain, rather than interest.

Is it just because my ethics concerning psychedelics "shocks" most normal people?

PS. sorry about rambling, but I'm been rolling these ideas in my head for awhile, and typing them up has really helped.
 
A computer makes many things in life easier and can even make one lazier or pose a distraction, but it can also expand the capabilities of the individual if used purposefully or explored thoroughly. The things one can do and learn through a computer can open up a world of possibilities if integrated successfully. Psychedelic substances are a sort of technology in how they are utilized, I would approach them from a transhumanist perspective as sort of neurochemical supplements. They can be used to achieve states that human body simply isn't capable of, otherwise, for lack of a particular compound altogether, in the amounts necessary to achieve that state.
 
Using psychedelics has shown me, that my senses truly are deceiving yet incredibly awe-inspiring, that my mood truly is subject to the chemistry and mechanics of the body and yet I have ways of controlling and working with it, that the psychedelic experience is possible both with and without drugs, and so much more.

All of this:roll: I could have just learned in a book. It is one thing to read it or hear it, But it is something wholly different to experience this personally and on such a profound level. In this respect psychedelics/psychotropics are a tool, like a book or a sensory deprivation tank.

Completely off subject, but this reminds me of a conversation with a professor he said something to the effects of "You know, for God to know everything he has to know what it is like to swim, to swim from England to South Africa, to drown, to swim as a fish, to swim as you would and as I would. Now, think of that, and try imagine what it is like to know everything. :lol: swim

Sorry to bump my own thread, but I've been dwelling on this and had an awesome conversation with a friend earlier today. I told him how I enjoy the conversations we have together. That we often find ourselves talking about things people normally don't consider on a daily basis. Quantum physics, philosophy, social issues, etc. We have this tendency towards thinking on a "higher" or "psychedelic" level, especially when we get together. and without the use of drugs, well, we smoke pot daily.
 
"once you have gotten the message, you hang up the phone"..Alan Watts said that..but I tend to wonder, was he really thinking objectivly when he made that statement?

#1..what message is that? My life changes all the time, new things come up in my life, both good and bad..I am NOT perfect nor is anyone else. My journeys are a reflection of where I am at, always changing..always full of NEW insights relevant to my life TODAY..

#2..He(and others) tend to sort of project buddhist ideals onto entheogens, while excluding the shamanic aspects of the whole thing. Shamans are NOT buddhists. Shamanism is about states of ecstasis..not the void. Why would someone following a shamanic path drop the core aspect of shamanism? Its sort of ethnocentric that statement in itself.

#3..Most people who quote Alan Watts on that statement, seem to hold meditation, yoga etc as superior to psychedelics. The say they "move on" to meditation. But if they really believed that, then why continue to meditate? Why do anything anymore youve already done? Why rely on daily meditation to get there? or yoga? Whats the difference in the end..why wake up in the morning? why not simply "hang up the phone", since youve gotten that message already?

My point here is that alot of people that have opinions like this dont seem to really think about what it is they are even saying. People who act like thier way is better have not really gotten it. If people look down on you as if their way is better than just let them think that..it's not going to get them anywhere in the end, other than maybe self deluded. Do what works for you..not what other people tell you works for you.

Your brain is a chemical computer. Can you run windows on your computer without installing the program?..no..can your diskman play a cd without putting the cd into it?..no..Can breathetarians really survive on just breath and still maintain protein levels etc without eating protein:d ?..no. This is neuro-chemisty and meta-programming we are talking about here..it's your mind..noone elses. YOU are in the drivers seat. There are just some chemical-specific states of mind that cant be achieved by non-chemical means..we are, of course talking about a bio-CHEMICAL computer..

People always talk about how they can "do it" without drugs..but do what? I can do lots of things without drugs..I can dance in a circle as well..doesnt mean I can fly to the moon without a space ship to take me there.

Maybe you can ask those people what TV shows they expose themselves to daily..or what foods they eat daily..or if they have a daily meditation or yoga habit they rely on? Dont buy into this type of dogmatic crap thinking and self delusion, your smarter than that.
 
I’ve often encountered people saying and doing this, hanging up the phone, and none of them were very explicit about what it meant to them.

In my experience, psychedelics have a wide, maybe endless variety of ‘messages’ to impart. The most striking and the most useful to most people, as LawnBoy said, are the entheogenic effect, allowing people to challenge and redefine their religious or philosophical beliefs in a very personal and vivid manner, and the death simulator, which may in a similar way allow people to get past their fear of death and clear out their possible misunderstandings of this phenomenon.

But past these experiences which are common to most people, the messages can get a lot more personal and as varied as the people who take them. In other words, they can be used for psychotherapy, whether self-administered or in a clinical setting. And when personal issues are resolved, they can be further used for self-improvement and growth when healing has been completed.

Furthermore, even if one has become all they wanted to be, life changes, and people evolve, and psychedelics may be an useful adjunct in that process too, for meditating on life issues as they arise.

And when the ‘serious’ stuff can be left aside, psychedelics can finally be used as recreational drugs, to enhance life, from partying to enjoying the beauty of nature or art to deepening bonds between people. I was talking to a friend about this, saying that psychedelics help you heal yourself and then when you are ready, they give you the world in all its beauty for you to enjoy.

For a long period of time after I found psychedelics, I could only have difficult and challenging experiences, having to sort through my many issues. Even now, if there is anything bearing on my soul, the psychedelics force me to deal with it before anything else. And only after I sorted through all my baggage, was I finally free to enjoy the beautiful things I had read about, the exquisite visuals, the euphoria and the enhanced senses and perception of the world, which were all but absent before. It is as if these are the reward I get in the end for taking my bitter medicine.

I’m not sure what to make of it when people say they got the message and hung up the phone. Maybe some tripped so much they are perma-enlightened beyond everything I’ve said above and they also have permanently enhanced perception. And maybe some have got hung up on some of the aspects above and gave up trying to look beyond. In particular, some people prefer to take the blue pill when they arrive to the gates of death and when they face God, and would rather postpone these meetings for the moment of their natural death. And maybe others yet have just tripped too much in some period of their lives and got sick of it.

Myself, I see the psychedelics as drugs; that is, as aids to reach states that otherwise would be very difficult to reach. Ideally, I hope in time I will learn to reach those states on my own; this is what I’m actively trying to do, and I’ve made slow but steady progress. But I’m not sure whether I can realistically hope to ever replicate them sober; in quality probably yes, but in intensity, no, not without dedicating a large portion of my life to this pursuit. So I will probably always use them as an enhancer, just as other people use alcohol throughout their lives as a social lubricant, or coffee as a mild stimulant; just another technology, albeit a very powerful one, that can make some aspects of our life better and easier.
 
I think one major difference between crutches and tools is intent: to escape vs. to engage.

Another great criteria: is health improving or declining? Physically, mentally, spiritually, socially.
 
I've found that most psycadelics work very poorly as a crutch.

They were not meant to be a walking stick, but rather a guide if you will...the stick it up to you.
 
In other news, I played the rainstick for a friend during his second exploration of changa, and it freaked him out a bit. :evil:

Part of what I love about DMT is that, by nature, it makes anything about reality impossible for me to AVOID. I have to be SO DIRECT, straight up and honest in my everyday life, if I want to return to the spirit world, which I always invariably do because it's FASCINATING... so... it's an amazing tool to live more honestly. I do get the feeling that if I were to die and meet a white haired guy in a throne, he'd give me shit for all the things DMT and Aya call me out on now, so... hopefully I'll accomplish my full list of chores before the end. :)
 
you know its funny... always had a hard time with the term tool. In the traditions that always worked with entheogens they view these plants and dare swim say chemicals too... as people, other than human people. Very powerful people, that know much more then you do. To use one of these other than human persons as a tool is a sort of relational dynamic that is going to give you certain responses. Imagine using a really powerful and wise person that you know as a tool, or at least trying too. What would the result be like? Just imagine that... then apply the same dynamic to using a plant or chemical as a tool... as always you get what you put into a relationship... or in other words how you relate is going to dictate how what you relate to is going to relate to you.
when you stop relating to any of these plants and chemicals as a tool and start relating to them as a person.. not a human person.. but an other than human person, you start to see how indigenous people get so much from their own relationships with these plants...
your entire process changes... the magic really starts to happen then.
 
I agree with the esteemed Nexian , ms_manic_minxx , the intent is whats important here in establishing whether or not the psychotropics are used as a tool or a crutch.Psychotropics is a broad term, however, and covers many less salubrious compounds which the repeated use of will invariably end with the user needing the substance to function ie a crutch of sorts.What could initially be used for a variety of motivations ("tool" to achieve relaxation /empathy/confidence/insight ) can morph into a crutch.

With regards to psychedelics, I think it would either be pretty rare or a fairly short-lived endeavour using them as a crutch.The first (or possibly second) difficult experience would soon have the partaker searching out a more convivial, less unpredictable substance to prop them up.
 
fractal enchantment said:
"once you have gotten the message, you hang up the phone"..Alan Watts said that..but I tend to wonder, was he really thinking objectivly when he made that statement?
Click to expand...

Im not very familiar with the work of Watts, but it means to me that you 'hang up the phone', do what you have to do (integrate the lessons), and then receive and dial another number. At least, this is how it works for me. If i do not fully integrate what i have learnt, i will be confronted with it again and again (loop). This was one of the first lessons i received from the mushrooms. I cant get further if i do not integrate. I wont be let in.

Tomorrow i will be returning to a place where i have had one of my most significant trips (first time i saw god ; ) And i see now how all these years since have led to this moment, and lead me back to that place. Im very excited because i know this is the right moment, as it all fits perfectly now. Now i also know why i havent eaten those mushrooms last week, as i originaly intended to do.

Im clear, im confident, im open and im sharp. I can already feel the electricity running through my spine :)
Wish me luck :) because the setting will be a tough one (spooky forest, solo)
 
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