Seeing God and Burning Plastic

I’ve never done the ayahuasca ritual but I extracted and freebased DMT using acid-base extraction and the whiskey bottle method back when Mimosa hostilis root bark was easy to buy online, which did “change my life” (I was in high school so life changing insights weren’t hard to come by), but I absolutely hate the woo-woo that has grown around the drug.

DMT is by far the most intense known drug except maybe datura - especially when ingested like in the ayahuasca ritual - and could possibly lead to real insights into our psyche and social conditioning, but instead it’s a bunch of celebrities and influencers peddling drugs that promise people they people can talk to god.

The most common trip report describes people talking to aliens or god, which is just so damn fascinating. I saw my life “flash before my eyes” on my trip, which is one of the possible explanations for near-death experiences (I’m highly skeptical of the original research though). There’s just so much to research here and none of it is going to get done in a Brazilian jungle.

> At the end of the hike, she told me that the best way to deal with the problem of plastic accumulating at her center was to burn it in large, ceremonial heaps. The smell of the smoke, she said, clears her retreat of bad energy.

In my mind this practically proves that these “shamans” have no actual insight* and are just exploiting the demand (good for them). By some accident of fate, the tribes living in South America discovered that combining a tea with MAO inhibiters and a tea containing psychedelic alkaloids could lead to a crazy experience. That’s it.

They’ve got no more insight into the nature of the universe or god than the first person to discover nixtamalization and make a tortilla.

> I’ve done Ayahuasca several times, each ceremony fundamentally life-changing. In one ceremony, the shaman helped heal years of abuse. One led to my divorce. The penultimate ceremony convinced me to make this film, instead of using my savings to buy a house.

I don’t know anything about the author’s circumstances beyond these few sentences so I’m not one to judge especially given my own “life changing” experience, but this reads to me like a manic response brought on by intense psychedelics. It brings to mind Arctic Monkey’s guide to Burning Man decompression. The first rule is that you don’t make life changing decisions right after going to Burning Man. The high/glow fades, the consequences stay with you.

All that said, looking forward to watching the documentary when it comes out. Thank you for reading my nonsensical rant.

* I’m nonreligious and don’t believe in anything supernatural so I never thought they did, but burning plastic to clear negative energy is beyond stupid. When does burning plastic not produce noxious fumes that should immediately signal that something is wrong? Just dig a fracking hole and bury it.

Yeah. I see the merit of using properly dosed psychoactive drugs for the appropriate length of time to help restore normative function in difficult cases (e.g., major anxiety that impedes the function of reason, or stubborn depression). However, recreational or "spiritual" drug use is a real red flag. Hallucinogenic drugs might feel like they're granting you insight, but if they're not restoring normative function, then this is pure woo and superstition, no different from treating dreams as some kind of prophetic source of knowledge. They only simulate transcendence, but like virtual reality, you haven't actually left your couch, and you're not actually getting in touch with reality.

I worry that drug use is a kind of escapism, and evasion of what's actually wrong. A person with a genuine purpose and meaning in life is generally not interested in drugs. Usually, it's boredom or misery that makes drugs look attractive to people, and there is plenty of boredom and misery in rich countries. We're materially better off than we've ever been, arguably, but focusing on material prosperity is terribly reductive. Our culture has reduced human beings to isolated, atomic, consumerist, materialist individuals. We've defined meaning out of existence metaphysically, abolishing human nature in the process. We believe in homo economicus. Of course, those are beliefs, but reality continues to exert its influence regardless of what we believe, and when denied, exacts its revenge, expressed in unhealthy and deformed behavior and impulses.

In a strange way, drugs are a way of preserving this status quo. It may feel like you've broken free of something, because drugs act on emotion and emotions can affect perception, but in reality, they just entrench or deepen the problem. But only for a time. Eventually, something will snap, and often, this is not a pretty state of affairs, both on the individual level, but also more broadly at the societal level. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, experience is an expensive school, but humanity will learn in no other.