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That ingrained "drugs are bad mmmkay" feeling

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brilliantlydim

brilliantlydim

Rising Star
Anyone else have to deal with that "drugs are bad" feeling that may have been pounded into your head while you were growing up. I notice I still get a "I'm doing something wrong" feeling when about to blast off and I am wondering how one can get over it. The first thing I think when I am coming back is I should hide my GVG and lighter because with it sitting around I may look like a "druggie".

I'm not even sure who I am worried about seeing it as I am in my own private home. God perhaps lol? I am certain its part of my childhood conditioning. Anyone else deal with this? Is bringing it to my awareness enough to deal with it? I know it hampers my trip and not in a positive way, it really is a crummy feeling. It must be a habitual reaction/ subconscious thing as I know consciously it's illogical.

Actually interestingly psychedelics have helped me to see these things and that gives me the chance to change them which is really cool.
 
It might be helpful to think back to specific instances when people told you drugs were bad and try to deconstruct them. I specifically remember signing a little card in elementary school that was like a promise to never do drugs. I think that is pretty funny now because it's not like that was binding or would be respected, so what was the point?

It could be helpful to acknowledge that when adults told you this when you were young, that they just cared about your safety and probably misunderstood the reality of drug use and its varied forms. Have faith that you know what is the best for your mind and body.

This could also stem from some kind of insecurity. I have felt like a "druggie" before too, but my life was not on as impactful of a track then. It might help to look inside and make sure you are secure with your identity as a drug user and that you don't believe you have any problems with it.
 
Western society is full of blatant hypocrisy.

For all its "drugs are bad" mantra, drugs are used, and pushed, fucking everywhere!

Alcohol, caffiene, sugar, tobacco... mass pharmaceutical and psychiatric drug prescriptions! Holy shit, are things bad. Government and their masters, the corporations, do NOT like competition! They want addicted zombies who just act blindly to the tune they sing, and don't think about what a fucking wreck Western society is, with its officially approved drug addictions.

So, my attitude is, fuck Western culture with its ridiculous attitudes towards plant medicines and psychedelics in general ~ I'll do what I know is best for me! Drink Ayahuasca and ingest shrooms for some profoundity, smoke a bit of Cannabis to chill out once in a while.

Meanwhile, I'm happy to let everyone else just get high on their boring drugs.

Raw cacao, without sugar, isn't a bad stimulant at all, by the way. :)
 
Valmar said:
mass pharmaceutical and psychiatric drug prescriptions! Holy shit, are things bad. Government and their masters, the corporations, do NOT like competition! They want addicted zombies who just act blindly to the tune they sing, and don't think about what a fucking wreck Western society is, with its officially approved drug addictions.
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That's a very dangerous mentality to take when talking about drugs that have literally saved people's lives. I know Trav has spoken about this, but The Nexus is NOT anti-psychiatric drug in any way, shape, or form. I know there are some of us (myself included) who have loved ones who have been helped by things like Prozac when all the 'non-Western' alternatives (mushrooms, yoga, meditation, etc) have failed.

Stigma against mental health treatment is a serious problem in the United States, and the narrative that those who seek out pharmaceutical therapies are 'brainwashed' and 'zombies,' who are addicted to their medications only makes them less likely that those suffering will choose to get the help they need.

In the case of some mental illnesses, such as psychotic or schizotypal disorders, psychopharmaceuticals are some of the only medications that work. If you try and treat your schizophrenia with LSD, it's unlikely to be successful. The history of antipsychotics is brutal, but as next-generation drugs come online, many folks who may never have been able to hope that they could live the lives they want to are being offered exactly that opportunity. One of my best friends is bipolar and for them, drugs like aripiprazole are literally lifesavers.

Think twice before you call them a brainwashed zombie addict.

While the history of psychopharmaceutical care in the US is fraught with abuses (many of them of a distinctly racialized and gendered nature), and there are many, many problems still extant, I would caution you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Blessings
~ND
 
Nathanial.Dread said:
Valmar said:
mass pharmaceutical and psychiatric drug prescriptions! Holy shit, are things bad. Government and their masters, the corporations, do NOT like competition! They want addicted zombies who just act blindly to the tune they sing, and don't think about what a fucking wreck Western society is, with its officially approved drug addictions.
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That's a very dangerous mentality to take when talking about drugs that have literally saved people's lives. I know Trav has spoken about this, but The Nexus is NOT anti-psychiatric drug in any way, shape, or form. I know there are some of us (myself included) who have loved ones who have been helped by things like Prozac when all the 'non-Western' alternatives (mushrooms, yoga, meditation, etc) have failed.

Stigma against mental health treatment is a serious problem in the United States, and the narrative that those who seek out pharmaceutical therapies are 'brainwashed' and 'zombies,' who are addicted to their medications only makes them less likely that those suffering will choose to get the help they need.

In the case of some mental illnesses, such as psychotic or schizotypal disorders, psychopharmaceuticals are some of the only medications that work. If you try and treat your schizophrenia with LSD, it's unlikely to be successful. The history of antipsychotics is brutal, but as next-generation drugs come online, many folks who may never have been able to hope that they could live the lives they want to are being offered exactly that opportunity. One of my best friends is bipolar and for them, drugs like aripiprazole are literally lifesavers.

Think twice before you call them a brainwashed zombie addict.

While the history of psychopharmaceutical care in the US is fraught with abuses (many of them of a distinctly racialized and gendered nature), and there are many, many problems still extant, I would caution you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Blessings
~ND
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Speaking as someone who quite literally lives and breathes the topics of health and disease from the perspective of a patient, scientist, as well as more esoteric perspectives in energetics and herbalism, i see your point. We can't inherently say that these things have no benefit or use to specific instances of illness in specific people in specific situations. But generally speaking I share Valmar's frustration with the pharmaceutical world. The obsession with technological medicine has done a lot to inhibit the full progression of disease management despite what it looks like on the surface. Because human beings are quite literally ecosystems and not machines, and because reductionist pharmacology and over standardization of treatment protocols can do little to restore homeodynamis in non-generalizable illnesses, treatment aims have been centered largely around symptom suppression despite that complications are often implied, sometimes being even the likely progression of the disease that's being treated (ie immunosuppressants in pathogen-driven autoimmune diseases).

As far as mental health, having suffered 10+ years of depression and fully recovered, one has to consider the value of cultural and lifestyle modifications before drug-pushing. While those are long-term processes and drugs can be life-saving in emergencies, it's in bad form to practice solely non-preventative medicine which is exactly what the west is doing (ie things like subjecting your children to the intellectual abuses of institutionalized education and then wondering whats wrong with their brains when they suddenly hate learning and can't find joy in anything. for me, reclaiming the learning process for myself was the biggest step in my depression recovery). As for refractory psychiatric illnesses like your friend with bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia, or major depressive disorder. They're not something i'm intimately acquainted with in the specific sense. But psychiatric disorders, like most chronic diseases, are becoming increasingly associated with parasitic infections such as toxoplasmosis and persistent inflammatory states. Something antipsychotic drugs can't touch in terms of causality. Sometimes psychiatric medication does have anti-inflammatory effects and of course they can be necessary for certain stages of treatment as symptom management is important, but again this comes down to the need for more sophisticated and holistic treatment approaches that incorporate mind/body/spirit therapy to its fullest extent. Herbal medicines have profound capacities to modulate immunological states, disrupt microbial biofilms and quorum sensing, regenerate neurons, protect cellular structures, etc. Positive and negative affect have been associated with altered immune regulation, as has sleep quality, sunlight, diet, exercise, indoor air quality, a number of environmental toxins and so on so on so on. So don't get me wrong. I take cholestyramine 4x a day. I have no bias against synthetic medicine. But i abhor the medical clergy and their indoctrination of the healthcare community towards these senseless treatment approaches. We don't necessarily need new drugs and more research at this point. What we really need is a substantial effort to integrate the research we already have and provide personalized medicine that incorporates all the tools we have in our tool box. In this sense, Valmar is right. The pharmaceutical industry is creating a dependency on symptom suppressing medication and very little stride towards health recovery. Since symptom management is just a small part of a sensible approach to disease treatment the criticism is warranted. People are getting addicted to pharmaceuticals and robbed of the notion that their highest capacity for healing lies right inside of them.
 
There is a clear difference between a well-measured critique of the pharmaceutical industry and the role that many psychiatric drugs play in modern life, and the things that Valmar said.

Valmar said:
mass pharmaceutical and psychiatric drug prescriptions! Holy shit, are things bad. Government and their masters, the corporations, do NOT like competition! They want addicted zombies who just act blindly to the tune they sing, and don't think about what a fucking wreck Western society is, with its officially approved drug addictions.
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I do not believe, for a single second, that anyone in the government or the pharmaceutical industry ever intended for medications like Prozac or Zoloft to be addictive, zombifying agents. That is a conspiracy theory of the highest order. These companies exist to make a profit - often the way they do that is unethical, dangerous, and the long-term consequences of their actions may be severe, but let's try and keep our discussion grounded in reality.

As for your points, I actually pretty much agree with everything you said. I think it's definitely true that the modern medical approach to many illnesses (psychiatric or otherwise) is, in many ways, misguided and that we do over-rely on certain pharmaceutical drugs. We certainly should be giving more space to non-pharmaceutical interventions (including psychedelics) and I absolutely agree that preventative medicine is clearly something we should be spending a lot more time and money researching.

I also think it's not unfair to say that many things about our current socioeconomic system probably predispose many of us to psychiatric illnesses, particularly depression and anxiety, and we should be working to reform all these systems.

I think we're probably in agreement about all these things.

It's important to note thought that none of the things I outlined above are specific indictments of psychopharmaceutical drugs themselves. The system the uses them? Yes, absolutely, but Zoloft does not turn you into a mindless slave of the corporate state. Neither does Prozac or Abilify. Sometimes they're used correctly, and in good-faith by doctors who know their stuff and they can have wonderful effects. Sometimes they can be used incorrectly and in circumstances where other, less intense treatments might work just as well.

Blessings
~ND
 
I think you may have read too far into what Valmar said then. I don't think he's saying they sat there and tweaked the chemistry to be addicting and zombifying but are rather driving social addiction to pharmaceuticals in general through mass marketing, misinformation and political influence. Just as every other industry. Like you said, they are a business. And they market to us easy fixes and promises of new cures right over the horizon. They know their drugs have serious limitations and yet distract the industry from engaging sustainable and reasonable practices. Valmar didn't criticize specific drugs either, but corruption that presents itself through legal double-standards and mass overprescription
 
brilliantlydim said:
Anyone else have to deal with that "drugs are bad" feeling that may have been pounded into your head while you were growing up. I notice I still get a "I'm doing something wrong" feeling when about to blast off and I am wondering how one can get over it. The first thing I think when I am coming back is I should hide my GVG and lighter because with it sitting around I may look like a "druggie".

I'm not even sure who I am worried about seeing it as I am in my own private home. God perhaps lol? I am certain its part of my childhood conditioning. Anyone else deal with this? Is bringing it to my awareness enough to deal with it? I know it hampers my trip and not in a positive way, it really is a crummy feeling. It must be a habitual reaction/ subconscious thing as I know consciously it's illogical.

Actually interestingly psychedelics have helped me to see these things and that gives me the chance to change them which is really cool.
Click to expand...

I grew up in a very religious household where things like drugs, premarital sex, cursing, etc etc were all frowned upon and taken very seriously. So I can definitely relate to that feeling of "doing something wrong" even though we know we are not when it comes to the safe and responsible use of psychedelics.

As a kid, the DARE program came to my school and did nothing but show me that there was a big, giant world of interesting substances out there and that they would probably kill you if you got anywhere near said substances. This never made any sense to me, but being a young kid, I went along with it. At the same time, it made me extremely curious about why people seemed to get hooked or engage in such activities in the first place...I mean, they must be fun or rewarding in some way, right? At least that was my line of thinking at the time.

A couple years later my brother introduced me to pot and the door was blown completely off the hinges and my eyes were starting to open about the truth behind these "evil" drugs. It was through my brother and the underground culture he surrounded himself with that I began to see that everything wasn't quite as simple as "the law" would like you/me to think.

But in relation to this post, I do feel a bit guilty about these things from time to time. Not guilty because it is illegal but guilty because I have to hide it, which implies wrongdoing typically (and having always been told that it is wrong just adds fuel to the fire). For instance, I love growing mushrooms, but I can't share that with hardly anyone and when people are in my house, that door is shut and locked so no prying eyes can accidentally find it. I'd love to share this information and throw mushrooms to the masses from my rooftop, lol, but we are a long way from anything like that...

Until the world change, we may always be stuck with this feeling. I know I'm not doing anything wrong, but society and the government likes to think otherwise.
 
I get the feeling when I blast off that I'm doing something highly illegal, and I don't mean illegal as in I'm breaking the laws of man, but like I'm breaking universal law...

-eg
 
The Grateful One said:
As a kid, the DARE program came to my school and did nothing but show me that there was a big, giant world of interesting substances out there and that they would probably kill you if you got anywhere near said substances. This never made any sense to me, but being a young kid, I went along with it. At the same time, it made me extremely curious about why people seemed to get hooked or engage in such activities in the first place...I mean, they must be fun or rewarding in some way, right? At least that was my line of thinking at the time.
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Heh. Exactly how I was. I don't think the DARE program did much good at all, even from the viewpoint of the prohibitionists. Throughout high school I remained a good kid, never doing anything questionable, but in university I decided I need to see what's so special about all these substances that there has to be an entire system for suppressing them.

Well, I have to say my experiences were very educational. ;)

The Grateful One said:
But in relation to this post, I do feel a bit guilty about these things from time to time. Not guilty because it is illegal but guilty because I have to hide it, which implies wrongdoing typically (and having always been told that it is wrong just adds fuel to the fire). For instance, I love growing mushrooms, but I can't share that with hardly anyone and when people are in my house, that door is shut and locked so no prying eyes can accidentally find it. I'd love to share this information and throw mushrooms to the masses from my rooftop, lol, but we are a long way from anything like that...

Until the world change, we may always be stuck with this feeling. I know I'm not doing anything wrong, but society and the government likes to think otherwise.
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I have a friend who has a very similar standpoint. I think the solution to this feeling of being a witch in a village of inquisitors is to find local comrades who are into psychedelics and give you a social circle to discuss this part of your life...

entheogenic-gnosis said:
I get the feeling when I blast off that I'm doing something highly illegal, and I don't mean illegal as in I'm breaking the laws of man, but like I'm breaking universal law...
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That's just "the machine" speaking (not the vaping machine, the big effing authority machine)... You're stray god-light, there is nothing you aren't fully entitled to. ;)
 
About 15 years ago or so there was a study that came out showing the DARE program actually increased drug usage among its graduates. It was of course quietly swept under the rug as the DARE people quickly backpedaled and re-vamped their program.

Just another example of the essential wrong-headedness of the war on drugs. (And it also goes to show that there is no such thing as bad publicity...)

Regarding the discussion at hand I feel no sense of 'wrongness' when tripping or intending to. What I do feel is the weight of potential legal consequences ahould the wrong people find out about it. Best to keep those boomers to myself and a carefully selected few.

In other words don't cast your pearls before swine.
 
I was brought up to see cannabis as being on a par with beer or wine. My parents and most of their friends smoked a bit of weed fairly often. Mushrooms were cool too. I never worried about telling my mum I was tripping when returning from a picking expedition.

Hard liquor and hard drugs such as coke and especially heroin were frowned upon. Drug education at school focussed mostly on heroin, which was a big problem in 1980's Britain, especially as the Aids epidemic was at its height at the time and sharing needles was a big cause in the spread of this disease.

Im glad the anti heroin propaganda had an effect on me and also that I was able to see the difference between more and less harmful types of drug use, rather than thinking everything illegal is 'bad'.

I try to explain this kind of thing to my own kids.
 
entheogenic-gnosis said:
I get the feeling when I blast off that I'm doing something highly illegal, and I don't mean illegal as in I'm breaking the laws of man, but like I'm breaking universal law...

-eg
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I get this feeling during my trips as well.
 
entheogenic-gnosis said:
I get the feeling when I blast off that I'm doing something highly illegal, and I don't mean illegal as in I'm breaking the laws of man, but like I'm breaking universal law...

-eg
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I get the opposite effect, at least on shrooms. The last time I was seriously tripping, I remember thinking: "this must be what Adam and Eve felt like before being kicked out of Eden."

Blessings
~ND
 
Surely "prescription" psychotropics are grossly over utilized. SSRIs are only "effective" 50% of cases, should only be taken 3-6months. Yet, in the West, might as well be candy. The preponderance of neuroleptics(anti-psychotics, typical and atypical) are prescribed by primary care practitioners. This class of dopaminergic antagonists is particularly problematic when used chronically>>tardive dyskinesia, neuroleptic induced Parkinsonism, etc.

"Opiate" for the masses aside. These meds MAY indeed have a profound capacity for functionalizing the grossly dysfunctional. Likely, @70% of individuals so medicated, are coping with "personality disorders"(neuroses). Thankfully, true psychoses and clinical depression are fairly uncommon. Without hyperbole, the majority of Western "head cases", are neurotics, well within the bell curve of human psychiatric normality.

Stigmatization of "mental illness" has always served a purpose. Of course now it's a disease in need of "treatment". Personally, I'll stick with the plants. If I require advanced psychiatric management, hopefully Lethe(or a bullet) will slake the madness.

Peace
 
Nathanial.Dread said:
entheogenic-gnosis said:
I get the feeling when I blast off that I'm doing something highly illegal, and I don't mean illegal as in I'm breaking the laws of man, but like I'm breaking universal law...

-eg
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I get the opposite effect, at least on shrooms. The last time I was seriously tripping, I remember thinking: "this must be what Adam and Eve felt like before being kicked out of Eden."

Blessings
~ND
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For me it's like this "you just ventured into uncharted terrain, and there's nobody who can help you now" feeling, it's like I'm crossing known boundaries at my own risk, and if things go wrong there's nothing that can be done...I also get the feeling that if I keep breaking "cosmic law" or "universal law" by entering these spaces, that it will draw the attention of the "cosmic police"...

All of this, like everything related to DMT, is incredibly hard to articulate with sounding (or feeling) foolish and misunderstood...

I’ve paid very close attention when these experiences were happening to me, and there always seems to be loose ends that argue against whatever hypotheses seems currently most attractive, and though Jacques didn’t mention it today I recall in his book The Invisible College he stressed the absurdity that seems to attend the contact experience. That if the contactee will truly tell the unvarnished truth then there will be elements in the story which will make the contactee look like a moron, in other words, the invalidation of the experience is an inimical part of its structure, almost as though the entities were saying, well you may tell this story if you wish, but if you’ll tell it truthfully you’ll be taken for a fool. Well there’s nothing wrong with being taken for a fool except that it does peal the phenomenon rather nicely away from the very sober ladies and gentleman who are making there careers in some branch of science. They are not interested in investigating the kinky, the anecdotal, the possibly pathological. -terence McKenna
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-eg
 
That ingrained feeling of drugs are bad is culture. When I think of culture and it's deficiencies, I automatically think of Terrence McKenna. Perhaps the man is over quoted in psychedelic circles, but I feel that is for good reason. Culture is NOT your friend.

Terrence Mckenna said:
Culture is not your friend. Culture is for other peoples’ convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well-treated by culture.

But the culture is a perversion. It fetishizes objects. It creates consumer mania. It preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding in the form of squirrelly religions and silly cults. It invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanize themselves by behaving like machines.
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[youtube]
 
Culture also allows us not to die young of pneumonia, to not have to suffer from dracunculus worms painfully migrating through our muscle tissue, to get enough to eat when we are hungry, to not be killed and eaten by bears or large cats...

Culture is a double-edged sword in relation to the individual, but overall the benefits far outweigh the issues. Psychedelics were probably there at the birth of culture, and may probably have played a core role in it.

Culture is just having to deal with other humans, instead of being alone. Looking at it like that, it's really not ALL bad.
 
For me it's not related to a "drugs are bad" feeling that's been programmed into me...

It actually feels like I'm doing something that I'm not supposed to be doing, and not by the dictation of man, but by the universe itself...

you know that panic that creeps up early in the DMT-flash where you think "you fool! You messed yourself up permanently! I'll never get out of this!" For me it's connected to that panic...for me DMT is death, at death I feel your conscious-being and physical body separate, this happens in the DMT flash as well, only with DMT there's some cosmic rope that pulls you back from the bardo and into the physical body from which you departed, I think the deal is, it's hard to believe you will return, I usually accept that I may never make it back (even though I know I will, however it's better to accept it than it is to fight it) and this causes a feeling of "I should not have done this"

...then for some reason during the more enlightening and euphoric journeys I always feel like I must be careful, because when you go into these spaces it gets the attention of those who monitor them, it's like, if I'm breaking cosmic law, it will draw attention of those who enforce cosmic law...

... I have encountered beings which were fairly mad to find me in such spaces, but who also seem simultaneously astonished that I made it there, it's like if your dog were caught driving a car, you would be concerned and angry but also astonished that I dog could even do.such a thing...that's a bad analogy, and it's hard to articulate this stuff without feeling foolish...so I will stop.

Again, these are fleeting feelings, and they don't occur in every flash, but it's definantly an avenue in hyperspace which I have some familiarity with.

While we are quoting mckenna, I feel he articulates the fear associated with the DMT flash in a fairly eloquent manner, his word choice definantly paints a clearer picture of the concepts at hand:

One of the interesting characteristics of DMT is that it sometimes inspires fear - this marks the experience as existentially authentic. One of the interesting approaches to evaluating such a compound is to see how eager people are to do it a second time. A touch of terror gives the stamp of validity to the experience because it means, "This is real." We are in the balance. We read the literature, we know the maximum doses, the LD-50, and so on. But nevertheless, so great is one's faith in the mind that when one is out in it one comes to feel that the rules of pharmacology do not really apply and that control of existence on that plane is really a matter of focus of will and good luck...I'm not saying that there's something intrinsically good about terror. I'm saying that, granted the situation, if one is not terrified then one must be somewhat out of contact with the full dynamics of what is happening. To not be terrified means either that one is a fool or that one has taken a compound that paralyzes the ability to be terrified. I have nothing against hedonism, and I certainly bring something out of it. But the experience must move one's heart, and it will not move the heart unless it deals with the issues of life and death. If it deals with life and death it will move one to fear, it will move one to tears, it will move one to laughter. These places are profoundly strange and alien.
-terence McKenna
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and then as I came out of it [a DMT flash] , and the room re-assembled itself, and I said "I can't believe it. It's impossible. It's im-possible." That to call that a "drug" is ridiculous. It means that you just don't know, you don't have a word for it and so you putter around and you come upon this very sloppy concept of something which goes into your body and there's a change -- it's not like that, it's like being struck by noetic lightning. -terence McKenna
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-eg
 
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