What is an "entheogenic" drug? (video)

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly (Wiki edit); Enlightening Channel; Samadhi Meditation

The Buddha in psychedelic colors DMT (and substances or practices that bring it out of the pineal gland) allow one to see the world as it really is undistorted by our mental defilements we accept as "normal" reality (progressivebuddhism). It's not a recreational activity.

DMT: The Spirit Molecule. See full documentary at the Enlightening Channel.

Buddha is beautiful (lilminx16/deviantart)

An entheogen ("generating the divine within") is a substance or practice used in a spiritual, religious, shamanic, or sacred context that may be natural or human made.

Some natural chemicals can induce expanded states of consciousness, whether psychological or physiological, for example, plants, toad or bullet ant venom used by the Satere-Mawe people.

Dope is not reinvention.

Entheogens can supplement many diverse practices for transcendence and revelation (unveiling of a hidden truth), including meditation, yoga, some forms of prayer, psychedelic, chanting, and visionary art, traditional medicine, psychedelic therapy (such as the careful, controlled use of minute amounts of a "magic mushroom" like psilocybin), and music including peyote song and psytrance, even witchcraft (witch comes from the word wise), magic, and psychonautics.

 

Entheogens have been used in a ritualized context for thousands of years. Their spiritual/religious significance is well established in anthropological and modern studies.

Deep in the mind during meditative absorption (jhana) a counterpart sign (nimitta) forms colored by mental defilements. This learning sign becomes the patibhaga sign. Exogenous drugs, even DMT, are not likely to help in this purification of consciousness.

 

Buddha at Thiksey (Ragg Burns Imaging)

Meditation leads to mindfulness and concentration, to sati and samadhi. A nimitta is a mental representation, a sign of concentration. If one focuses on the breath as the object of meditation, eventually a light will form in the mind as the sign of the breath; this is what one concentrates on to gain absorption. Middle Length discourse (MN) 44 tells us that one of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness is the nimitta, which serves as the cause for the eventual elimination of the Five Hindrances (sensual desire, ill will, restlessness, sloth, skeptical doubt) and, beyond that, the arising of the five concomitant mental factors (cetasikas) of the first absorption (jhāna).

Himalayan novice must focus (Dietmar Temps)

And according to AN 9.35, the nimitta as the mental representation of the first absorption is the presence of these same five concomitant jhāna factors. AN 9.35 states that this nimitta is to be developed, pursued, and established. When properly engaged, these five factors work in concert to refine and maintain what DN 9 calls a "truly refined perception of joy and pleasure born of seclusion" (viveka-ja-pīti-sukha-sukhu-ma-sacca-saññā). More

The American Book of the Dead?

Examples of traditional entheogens include psychedelics like peyote, psychedelic-dissociatives like ayahuasca (daime, natema, spirit vine), and Tabernanthe iboga (synthesized as ibogaine), atypical psychedelics like Salvia divinorum, quasi-psychedelics like [CDB-rich] cannabis and Ipomoea tricolor, deliriants like Amanita muscaria (biblical fly agaric or "manna from heaven").

Traditionally a tea, admixture, or potion like ayahuasca (a blend of an Amazonian vine, bark, and leafy plant) or bhang (a cannabis drink) have been compounded through the work of a skilled shaman or apothecary.

 

With the advent of organic chemistry, there now exist many questionable synthesized pharmaceutical drugs with similar psychoactive properties. Many were originally derived from these plants but stripped of supporting elements to presumably get at the most "active" ingredient without the help of other ingredients nature combined as limiters, enhancers, and so on.

Many isolated active compounds with psychoactive properties have been refined from these respective organisms and chemically synthesized, including mescaline, psilocybin, DMT, salvinorin A, ibogaine, ergine, and muscimol. More

(Samadhi Meditation) Isochronic tones for the natural release of DMT, the spirit molecule in the center of the brain (pineal gland), the third eye (dibba cakkhu).

Psychedlic medicine heals emotional injuries

Xochitl, Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; KPCC Health Care Correspondent Stephanie O'Neill (SCPR.org)  URBAN SHAMANISM

Altar of the Buddha in Indonesia. Theravada style, flooded in green light. The statue looks similar to one in #Borobudur temple holding Dharmachakra mudra (teaching gesture). It differs from complicated and colorful altars of Mahayana and Tantrayana (Vajrayana) Buddhism because the Buddha is not a god but inspiration for our human potential. It consists of a brass periphery for incense and candles, flowers, oil lamps, water bowls, and sacred cremation relics. May 15, 2014 prior azimuth of Moon on Vesak (Dragono Halim/flickr).

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Psilocyben can treat cancer, anxiety

Research into the therapeutic potential of illegal "psychedelic" drugs to treat an assortment of mainstream mental health conditions is undergoing a modern-day renaissance.

A host of published studies in the field is showing promise for psychedelics, such as psilocybin -- the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms" -- to help treat alcoholism, depression, drug addiction, and severe anxiety caused by serious or terminal illness.

Other studies are finding that MDMA, also known as the party-drug "Ecstasy," may be valuable in treating PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

"These drugs...were researched extensively in the 1950s and the 1960s, through the early '70s," says Dr. George Greer, medical director for the nonprofit Heffter Research Institute, which raises donations for psilocybin studies worldwide. "There were hundreds of studies that were very promising."

Abuses in Medicare drug use

But the psychedelic '60s changed all that.

LSD and other hallucinogens, once confined to the lab, exploded into mainstream culture after the pied-piper of psychedelics, Timothy Leary, urged a generation to try LSD and other hallucinogens as a way to "turn on, tune in, drop out." Many followed his advice, some with bad results. And that triggered a backlash that led the federal government to criminalize psychedelic drugs in 1970.

A year later, U.S. President Nixon launched the "War on Drugs" [made famous by right wing sweethearts Pres. Ronald and First Lady Nancy Reagan].

Those measures helped to create a stigma that brought an end to the early phase of psychedelic research, says Rick Doblin, founder the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

Psilocybin treats alcoholism

"There is this tendency when drugs become criminalized for their non-medical use, their medical use then subsequently also becomes suppressed," says Doblin.

But since early 2000, a new willingness to look again at these drugs has shifted the research landscape. And thanks to the fundraising efforts of MAPS and the Heffter Research Institute, modern-day psychedelics studies are now happening at top academic research facilities, including Johns Hopkins University, New York University, the University of New Mexico, and UCLA.

"These agents have very broad applicability within psychiatry and can be used for mood disorders, eating disorders, personality disorders," says Dr. Stephen Ross, a psychiatrist and psychedelics researcher at NYU School of Medicine. "They can be used for so many things that our treatment have not improved in recent years."

But the drugs are powerful and must be used with caution, especially since it's believed they can exacerbate serious mental conditions, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. However, used in a supervised setting with trained therapists, these drugs have the potential to offer properly-screened patients much-needed new treatment options.

Psychedelic Science: E for PTSD

"We are not at all referencing our work to the recreational drug-use world, which is rife with potential risks," says Dr. Charles Grob, director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and a pioneer in modern-day psychedelics research. "We are talking about developing a new model...to be used within medicine and psychiatry."

Grob says psychedelics offer a rather unusual paradigm in which many patients are reporting relief with as few as one or two supervised applications of the drugs, used in conjunction with limited psychotherapy.

"This is very different than conventional drug treatment, which, more often than not, administers a drug on a daily basis for weeks, months and even years," Grob says.

And research into these drugs is a bit less conventional as well. Because the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) classifies these illegal drugs as "Schedule One" substances -- considered risky with "no currently accepted medical use" -- scientists must adhere to strict protocols when researching them. Those include rules on how the drugs are used, handled, and stored.

But a greater challenge remains financing. So far, the government has yet to fund research into psychedelics. That leaves private donations as the sole source of funding.

Death by HIV "prevention" meds

Scientists in this field say they believe as more evidence into the varied uses for these drugs is collected and published the government will be more likely to grant research funding requests.

And as more time passes, Grob says, the stigma brought on by the excesses of 1960s counterculture will further fade.

"The '60s are long over. As the Moody Blues used to sing, 'Timothy Leary is dead'…and many of those with whom he fought have also exited," Grob says, "It's a new world and there is a greater need than ever for more effective treatment models for individuals for whom our conventional treatment models are often sorely lacking." LISTEN

• This is Part One of a Psychedelic Science series. See Part Two, Part Three, or Part Four
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Our "brain" on mushrooms

Pat Macpherson, Xochitl, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Los Angeles Mycological Society

Giant puffball "brain" mushroom found in Angeles Nat'l Forest, March 30, 2014 (WQ)

 

Some mushrooms are entheogenic magic

Recently, we went hiking in the rugged mountains behind Los Angeles, in the chaparral of the Angeles National Forest behind one of the largest cities in the world.

Plant wisdom

And our Indian guide made a startling find: a giant puffball mushroom that could only be described as a "brain." It is white, with two hemispheres, cortical ridges, a brainstem fixed deep in the clay and sand soil, and an apparent gunshot exit wound out of which, had Mr. Lincoln been sporting this thinking-cap, all his memories would have oozed.

• Calendar of Events (LAMS)
• List of Natural Entheogens

Puffball skulls, UK (Nathan Lee)

The first question we had was, "Is it poisonous?" We followed that closely with, "Can we eat it?"

Like any good guide, we were taught the first rule for those who choose to snooze during survival training. As for eating wild mushrooms, "When in doubt, throw it out." This comes right out of the LAMS' playbook.

Identification

Cooking With Native Foods (Tim Martinez)

(LAMS) The fact is that there are many excellent edible wild mushrooms [and a few sacred entheogenic ones] almost anyone can learn to identify. And there are deadly poisonous species that every collector should be familiar with as well. 

Sadly, there are no simple rules to reliably tell which mushrooms are poisonous or edible. The only way to safely forage for wild mushrooms is to be familiar with the characteristics of the species one sets out to collect. Learn these characteristics by collecting with experts who can teach them those characteristics.

Haul of desert mushrooms reaching 8.5" and brain puffball (Xochitl/Wisdom Quarterly)

 

LAMS hosts several mushroom forays every season where beginners can start. Why use an expert; why not just go by trial-and-error? There is a more famous saying among mushroomers (mycologists, those who study mushrooms), and it runs: 

"There are daring wild mushroom eaters.
And there are old wild mushroom eaters.
But there are no daring-old wild mushroom eaters."

LA awash in pot as shops file to renew

These delicate fruits of the soil can be deadly. The Buddha was possibly lead out by death caps (Amanita phalloides) fed to him by a blacksmith mistaking them for a supple pigs' feast like truffles.

Beginners ought never rely solely on identifications based on a field guide -- particularly those that provide only pictures and brief descriptions

 

Find some mushrooms in need of identification? See the L.A. Mycological Society contact page. Also check the recommended reading page for Websites, books, and journals to learn to identify mushrooms in the wild.

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LA rain: showers, hail, thunder, wind, road closures Wed. (Maya Sugarman/KPCC)

Wild Mushroom Fair, Los Angeles (review)

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; LAmushrooms.org; Arboretum.org; GaryLincoff.com

Author and expert Gary Lincoff, left, led a mushroom-hunting foray at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx (Alan Zale/The New York Times).

Wild Mushroom Fair (LAMS)

It was amazing. Mycologist Gary Lincoff (New York Botanical Gardens, author of The Complete Mushroom Hunter Illustrated and other popular texts) not only led everyone on a wild mushroom hunt that turned up more mushrooms than foragers are finding in Northern California, he made known a view so radical, so unbelievable, so staggering in its implications that botanists will scoff and come around decades from now.

It has long been believed that there were plant producers, plant hunters, and plant decomposers, mushrooms falling into the last category.

It is not the case. Mushrooms "hunt," and they produce. They can lasso a nematode to source their own nitrate. And rotifers, watch out. The secret is in the mycelium and mycorrhizae.

(BBC) "The Secret Life of Plants" mushroom hunting nematodes

That is not the bombshell. Tests were done after Lincoff and others wondered how Douglas fir were getting nitrate, a necessary fertilizer not found in the unfertilized soil when they grew in nature. It turned out to be the mycelium -- the massive mushroom root network, Nature's fist World Wide Web and Internet, as pointed out by Paul Stamets (Fungi Perfecti), who is proving that environmental reclamation using mushrooms is the way to clean up oil spills and radiation hazards.

Gary Lincoff, Shroomfest 2011: The Philosopher's Stone or How Mushrooms Can Save

You Thousands of Dollars in Therapy and Free You from the Prison of Time and Space.

Goddess (Mochiunagi/flickr)

Douglas firs do not stand in isolation from their environment or each other; they are utterly interdependent. If radiactively marked carbon is placed in one, it will also end up in another. How did it get there? They did not share it via their roots; the mycelium did. The mycelium takes care of the entire forest!

Now here's the bombshell: Every expression of green plants we so prize and esteem may just be the external manifestation of mushrooms because plants so depend on mycological support as to not be able to survive and thrive in the absence of the symbiotic relationship. But, botanists will argue, there are plants that are without mycelium vastly expanding and contributing to their root systems. The secret is that there are no plants without mushroom cells inside their tissue. These cells seem to be controlling what is going on more than the plants. We know a great more than we used 30 years ago, yet we know next to nothing about how amazing mushrooms are.

A few Buddhist mushroom references

The Mushroom Matrix (karma4ya.deviantart.com)

 

Wisdom Quarterly asked Lincoff about a little known reference to mushrooms in the Buddhist sutras. Of course, everyone knows the story of the Buddha's passing from eating mushrooms -- which one of our readers suggests were likely Amanita phalloides. (Do pigs eat this deadly variety?)

In Pork? Mushroom? How the Buddha Died we wonder aloud about the Buddha as vegetarian fed bad mushrooms by Cunda the Blacksmith. Some say he was fed pork, others that it was tender mushrooms loved by pork. "What about the more likely cause being Amanita phalloides? So many Amanita muscaria tells left by the ancient Buddhists and Indo-Aryans, and yet your eyes remain closed."

Musha Cay (pinterest.com)

The more amazing reference we asked Lincoff about was whether or not mycelium is edible, because one day the ancient Buddhist monastics in one district in India were starving as a result of a famine. They had to travel far to find a meager alms offerings to sustain themselves. Then the Buddha's chief male disciple, "foremost in psychic powers," offered a solution. Maha Moggallana asked the Buddha if it wouldn't be good for him to use his miraculous powers to either make the long road very short for those traveling on it to go outside the famine area or -- and here's the stunner -- perhaps taking his hand like a giant earth mover and turning over the earth to reveal a great wealth of food growing underground.

What could this be a reference to other than mycelium? Gary Lincoff concurred that mycelium is not only edible and nutritious, it tastes good. To illustrate this, Lincoff pointed out that during a time when mushrooms were not coming up, Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup was made almost entirely of mycelium with a few bits of the fruiting body tossed in so no one would question it. The taste was great, and no one noticed. (Another apparent and more amazing reference to mushrooms and mycelium is found in the "Origins of Human Life on Earth Sutra," the Aganna Sutta.

The harm DRUGS do

Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; The Economist "Scoring Drugs" (The Lancet*)

In a scientific ranking that appeared in The Economist, based on research profiled in the medical journal The Lancet, mushrooms came in as the LEAST harmful (Wiki).

 

Iatrogenesis (death by MD) is the major killer

Researchers asked drug-harm experts to rank the listed legal and illegal drugs on various measures of harm both to the user and to others in society.

These measures included damage to health, drug dependency, economic costs, and crime. The researchers claim that the rankings are stable because they are based on so many different measures and would require significant discoveries about these drugs to affect the rankings.

Note that alcohol, despite being legal, is by far the most harmful, far more harmful than any other intoxicant listed. Not only is it the most damaging to societies, it is also the fourth most dangerous to users. Most of the drugs were rated significantly less harmful than alcohol, with most of the harm falling on the user.

The authors explain that one of the limitations of this study is that drug harms are functions of their availability and legal status in the UK. So other cultures' control systems could yield different rankings.

 

*SOURCE: "Scoring Drugs," The Economist (Nov. 5, 2011), data from "Drug Harms in the UK: a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis" by David Nutt, Leslie King, and Lawrence Phillips on behalf of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs. The Lancet, Nov. 6, 2010 [376(9752):1558-65. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61462-6, PMID:21036393].
 

Modern Medical Sickness

Big Pharma's big money makes it okay.

Iatrogenesis ("originating from a physician") is the criminally careless or innocent and inadvertent adverse effect or complication resulting from medical treatment or advice. This includes drug dispensing, surgery, and invasive treatments by physicians, pharmacists (Greek "sorcery, poisoning"), surgeons, psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, nurses, or dentists. It is not restricted to conventional medicine, but that is where the extraordinarily high numbers and irony are. Consumer beware. It may even result from complementary medicine and alternative treatments. In the United States an estimated 225,000 deaths per year have iatrogenic causes [B. Starfield, July, 2000) "Is US health really the best in the world?" (PDF). JAMA 284 (4), PMID 10904513)]. But Dr. Gary Null, who focuses on public health and nutrition, asserts that the figure is 750,000 a year or higher, making it the biggest killer in America. This means that drugs and invasive treatments kill more patients when used as directed and even when used under direct medical supervision by a doctor! Some iatrogenic artifacts are clearly defined and easily recognized, such as a complication following surgery. Some less obvious ones can require significant investigation to identify, such as complex pharmaceutical drug interactions. Other conditions have been described but are as yet unproven, such as the detrimental effects of vaccines (which can cause death, Downs Syndrome, autism, and spectrum disorders such as Asperger syndrome.