Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Study Shows Psilocybins Can Trigger Life-Changing Mystical Experiences

Nevertheless, CNN covertly ridicules this information by titling the article "Mystic Mushrooms Spawn Magic Event," and the researchers fall all over themselves telling people not do take mushrooms.

Consider the following:

"Two months later, 24 of the participants filled out a questionnaire. Two-thirds called their reaction to psilocybin one of the five top most meaningful experiences of their lives. On another measure, one-third called it the most spiritually significant experience of their lives, with another 40 percent ranking it in the top five.

About 80 percent said that because of the psilocybin experience, they still had a sense of well-being or life satisfaction that was raised either 'moderately' or 'very much.' "

And nobody wants that, right?

It is really no surprise that some drugs can be genuinely mind-expanding. It is fairly well-known that psilocybins fall into that category. The government has no right and no authority to tell us what we can and cannot ingest. But these efforts are even more unjust when the effects of the substance in question can be genuinely and profoundly beneficial.


America's deep-seated puritannical streak is one of its most important and harmful derangements. Facts and reasoning have steadily beaten this puritanism back, and will continue to do so. It is, after all, little more than a kind of superstition.

The reason so few people take drug laws seriously, of course, is that these laws so obviously lack moral authority. Laws against murder or theft simply enforce moral standards that all sane people recognize to be just. Laws against private actions by individuals, such as taking relatively harmless--or beneficial--drugs are authoritarian, irrational, and unjust, and fairly obviously so. Consequently, people rightly view such laws very differently--as mere obstacles to be circumvented rather than as codifications of reasonable principles.

2 Comments:

Blogger Alexander Wolfe said...

I say, hand me some.

9:36 PM  
Blogger Tom Van Dyke said...

I read another account of the "study," and well, it made me use scare quotes here.

For one, they spent 6 years rounding up 30 or so volunteers at meditation centers and the like.

Second, the post-shroom experience was followed up with to my mind leading questions about the spiritual nature of the experience.

Third, even one of the researchers himself admitted that if you do shrooms and sit down and watch "Friday the 13th," a "spiritual" experience is highly unlikely.

Another triumph for the social "science" academy. Feh.

BTW, Syd Barrett, a founder of Pink Floyd, died the other day. Spent most of his life as a burnout. Too much acid, they say.

4:48 PM  

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