Non-Substance

019: Interview with Earth and Fire Erowid, first half /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. Talk about tools for generating the divine within.

Today is December 9, 2015 and we are very excited to feature a special interview. This is the first half.

It is our great pleasure and honor to welcome Earth and Fire Erowid!

For context, Joe reads a quote from Michael Horowitz, personal archivist for Timothy Leary:

“Powerful descriptive writing about personal drug experiences mimics the effects of the drugs themselves. Reading Aleister Crowley on how hashish aided his meditation, or Mezz Mezzrow on playing in a jazz band on marijuana, or Gordon and Valentina Wasson’s otherworldly mushroom journey in a curandera’s hut in Mexico, or Anais Nin describing how LSD turned her body into liquid gold can be mildly psychoactive in itself. Especially so if you’d had your own prior experiences. We also collected books and studied the rituals of the peyote and mushroom cults, the history of the opium wars and laughing gas parties. We learned that drug literature is endless, and drug-taking was one of the earliest and most common activities of mankind.” - Michael Horowitz, from an interview about the Tim Leary Archives

Topics:

  • What role did the “mildly psychoactive” effect Horowitz attributed to some drug literature play in the founding of Erowid?
  • Feeling it before taking it – hours (or days) before
  • Imagination, memory, DMT, neurotransmitters, hallucinations
  • lucid dreaming
  • Oneirogens (dream generators); list of Oneirogenic substances on Wikipedia
  • dream pillows
  • Calea zacatechichi (the "dream herb")
  • the physical expression of one’s intention, e.g. the taking of a substance, can be just as powerful as the substance itself
  • What is it like having a New Yorker reporter in your home for three days?
  • Reflecting on Emily Witt’s profile of Erowid from inside the mirrored bubble
  • Kevin preaches: “drug education about marijuana was the gateway drug itself”
  • What could responsible drug education in school look like? Abstinence, fear-based approaches are the norm. What could be the alternatives for young people?
  • Earth introduces the concept of electroceuticals
  • Brad is hopeful about the psychedelic research renaissance
  • Special thanks to Earth and Fire Erowid for their tireless efforts for over 20 years, and huge thanks to Erowid’s noble crew
  • Erowid Experience Vaults: edited, curated alternative to “wild west” internet forums like bluelight.org; other contemporaries: lycaeum.org, deoxy.org
  • statistics about trip reports submitted, triaged, reviewed, and posted
  • Earth clarifies something in the New Yorker article: “we are in fact ‘the weirdos among the straights and the straights among the weirdos’.”
  • Fire live-edits the Entheogens page on Erowid to add LSD after our observation
  • corrections@erowid.org

FOLLOWUP FROM PREVIOUS EPISODE OF ENTHEOGEN, HONORING THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF EROWID:

  • Earth and Fire helped 17 year-old Brad avoid jail time
  • Earth and Fire helped Kevin get through high school and college
  • Joe got Erowid blocked from the network at his corporate job

SUPPORT EROWID!

016: Breathwork /  by Joe

This is Entheogen. We talk about tools for generating the divine within. It's October 12, 2015. We're talking about Breathwork.

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Holotropic Breathwork was developed by Stan Grof, an early researcher and practitioner of LSD Psychotherapy, as a substitute for LSD when the substance was outlawed.

Topics:

"Holotropic Breathwork"?

What is it like to experience of a Holotropic Breathwork workshop?

Yoga Nidra guided meditation

Pranayama

"Iceman" Wim Hof's method of teaching people how to control their immune system response

Further:

Pineal gland as "director" of other glands? Glands secrete hormones, which regulate mood, energy level, wellness, etc.

The importance of pH level and its affect on neurotransmitters?

Update 1/17/2018: here's an article featuring some more of the scientific benefits of yoga.

009: Founder Focus – Dr. Stanislav Grof /  by Joe

Recorded on March 16, 2015

This is Entheogen: three human beings discussing generating the divine within while still being human beings.  In this episode, recorded on March 16, 2015, we continue our Founder Focus series and discuss Stanislav Grof.

Topics:

- Grof began studying LSD in 1956 when Sandoz shipped a big box of LSD-25 ampules, with a mysterious description of the history of its discovery by Albert Hofmann, and offering two suggested avenues of research: first, to induce a experimental state of psychosis in normal people, and secondly as an unconventional educational tool, to induce this state in the therapist to better understand the "psychotic" state. Grof had been feeling dissatisfied with modern psychology and lack of results, costs in time, energy, etc., and the Sandoz box and invitation came at just the right time.

- He also agreed to have his brainwaves driven as a participant in another avenue of research that was taking place, which involved stereoscopic light – which, combined with the LSD, elicited an overwhelming experience of cosmic consciousness, and a sense of becoming everything there was.

- Grof discusses the correlation between the workings of the brain and consciousness, but points out there is no proof that the brain creates consciousness. His first psychedelic experience brought him to a state of superconsciousness that led him to understand that consciousness was a property of reality that can be experienced by humankind, but was not created by the brain.

- In psychiatry, these states are Altered States are considered pathologic. Grof realized we needed a new word and coined Holotropic: Holos, wholeness; tropic, movement toward something.

- Grof writes: The term “altered states of consciousness” commonly used by mainstream clinicians and theoreticians is not appropriate, because of its one-sided emphasis on the distortion or impairment of the “correct way” of experiencing oneself and the world. (In colloquial English and in veterinary jargon, the term “alter” is used to signify castration of family dogs and cats). Even the somewhat better term “non-ordinary states of consciousness” is too general, since it includes a wide range of conditions that are not relevant for the subject of this paper. Here belong trivial deliria caused by infectious diseases, tumors, abuse of alcohol, or circulatory and degenerative diseases of the brain. These alterations of consciousness are associated with disorientation, impairment of intellectual functions, and subsequent amnesia.

- Grof describes two modes of consciousness: hylotropic referring to "the normal, everyday experience of consensus reality" and holotropic, which is moving toward wholeness (e.g. meditative, mystical, psychedelic experiences).

- Grof developed breathing techniques (Holotropic Breathwork) as a successor to the use of psychedelic drugs, when psychedelics encountered legal difficulty in the 1960's.

References:

- Beyond Awakening Series by Terry Patten (search for Grof interview)

- The Revision and Re-Enchantment of Psychology: The Legacy of Half a Century of Consciousness Research by Stanislav Grof, M.D.

- Subjective Experiences During the LSD Training Session, a trip report by Stan Grof from 1970

- Food Fighter, New Yorker article about John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, which mentions his therapeutic session of holotropic breathing with Grof

- Mind States IV conference talks

003: Resident psychedelicists discuss entheogens vs. other paths /  by Joe

Topics:

Is the psychedelic experience "real"? Does that question have merit?

Is taking entheogens "cheating"? Why do people think so?

Is the entheogenic experience comparable to experiences achievable through meditation, yoga, shamanic drumming, etc., or is it substantively different?

References:

Interview with Patrick Lundborg: 60’s psych & garage guru, psychedelic culture scholar and author of brilliant „Psychedelia” and „Acid Archives” books

Unified Psychedelic Theory: An Interview with Patrick Lundborg R.I.P.