Philosophy Now Forum

lancek4 wrote:

chaz wyman wrote:

lancek4 wrote:So how about LSD effect on thinking? Is there valid philosophy that has arisen on LSD?

Ask Timothy Leary. Turn on, Tune in, and drop out

Is that valid? Or was it, for a minute ?

I don't understand your question.

Can we discuss the the Tune in, Drop out philosophy, or is such an idea an anachronism or just plain drug induced rediculousness?

lancek4 wrote:Can we discuss the the Tune in, Drop out philosophy, or is such an idea an anachronism or just plain drug induced rediculousness?

Did you mean anarchism or anachronism.

Dropping out worked for me - when it pleased me to do so, and tuning in. I always liked turning on whether it was drugs or sex.

Problem?

I wrote chapter 22 of my book when i was really stoned on the marijuana stuff...when i read it the next day i loved it (still) but it needed to be restructured...a lot!
Hope you dont mind me posting it...but i guess my point is...i would never have captured the intensity portrayed through the character (Marlow) if i hadn't been left with some grass...!

Now Marlow has got a neural-net cap on his head and is interfaced to a cyberspace game, where reality is projected as perfectly, as, well...reality...year 2105




CHAPTER 22
The Alpha-Bet


Marlow was only three minutes into the neural-net game named The Alpha-Bet, the underworld of the Amsterdam cyber streets. Two hours and a bar stood in front of him from which to make as much money as possible. Nobody's walking into virtual clubs and taking stuff, liquids anything you want for your own personal experiment. Inviting glassware, soothing colors and the taste etched to perfection.
Marlow gazed at the strange concoction now positioned on the bar.
The barman grinned in anticipation. “You wanna fry a little, friend?” The man laughed and added, “You won’t rip from this trip!”
The drink glowed blue, swirled and sparked as if embodied with electrical static charges.
“You done it?” asked Marlow.
“Three times. Freaks the shit out of me. You know when you know,” said the barman rubbing his nose and adding, “I’m Lazareth, twenty-eighth on the leaderboard. You won’t get near that score with these other drinks. Only a FOX can get to that level.” Lazareth then held a fist up to Marlow and said, “Chin chin.”
Marlow raised his right hand, clenched his fingers and tapped Lazareth's fist. He then slowly lowered his hand and took hold of the shot glass.
“You gonna go sick! Sick!” yelled the barman unable to contain his excitement. “Pupils, that’s all we are!” he said pointing two fingers at his eyes, “Pupils of the light.”
Marlow threw the Fact-Or-X shot into his mouth, tilted his head back and swallowed. The cold came screaming through every nerve sending a burnt message. Chill factor X. His mind warped to super analysis then an epiphany. Words rang true and now he understood them. X was superfluous, beyond understanding. The chill was real and beyond death to the point of X. Like a drug, any drug—all drugs, receptors fine tuned to its perfect caress. A fatal belief in the masses, that their brain could ever fully recover, that they would one day continue, normal without its injection, satisfying aeons of evilution, the Yin. He needed Yang, more drugs or a fucking good psychstim. He'd do a job, any job—plug someone for a hit and there was plenty of work.
Space and time condensed into matter. Light such to be nothing and more powerful than anything. A fix of some kind, any kind—but seemingly impossible. He stumbled into a street that was dark, shiny and damp.
A cockney accent called out, “Fox! I got the antidote—the fix you crave—but you gotta do a job. Don't fuck it up, or you'll be craving for two hours instead of two minutes.” The man offered Marlow a gun. “Head up the street into a club called the Let’s Go, tell Tony on the door Darian sencha.”
Marlow took the weapon and did as instructed, arriving at the entrance cyber sweat dripping from his chin.
“You Tony?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Darian sent me.”
“Is that right—a FOX?” The Dutchman laughed then bent down to Marlow’s ear and whispered, “OK you got two minutes. Inside there's a bad ass, a big black mother fucker pimp called Willis, another FOX wearing a red tracksuit and surrounded by whores and muscle. You won't be able to get near him for a clean shot, you won't be able to look at him without being belted, let alone raise your piece. You clip him, you jump behind the bar and a safe will open, inside cash—forty thousand and an antidote. You got the balls?”
“Out the way…” Marlow placed his right hand on the gun and pushed through a poorly lit crowd.
It wasn't long until he found what he was looking for, another player.
“Hi Nouno Urho, I'm Liz.”
“What? You one of Willis's whores?” quizzed Marlow.
“Willis who?”
With that Marlow grabbed her by the arm and dragged her through the crowd towards a corner where he could see the likely muscle. An obelisk sized character turned around to face Marlow. Marlow caught sight of the flecks of a red tracksuit.
“I need to speak to Willis, this bitch just tried to pull one over on him.”
The muscle frowned in confusion and made a fatal mistake in stepping back and turning around to Willis. Marlow lifted the gun and shot at the tracksuit square in the chest, he then stepped backwards with the girl in front using her as cover. Bullets tore into her as Marlow dove over the bar. The safe was there, the cash and the antidote, and beside the antidote another concoction labeled, God Mode. The bar was still being shredded by bullets so Marlow drank the God Mode and gave it a test, standing up into a hail of bullets and returned fire until his piece was all that made noise. Of course it was a test, he could have just gone straight for the antidote, but that would have been game, set and match. Game over for some.
Helix, meanwhile, observed Marlow in the flesh, flinching on the sofa as if in the middle of a crazed nightmare. He watched the scene unfold on the screen, watching Marlow take himself to extremes that most men hadn't the bottle. It was only while viewing Marlow in cyberspace that Helix could ever come close to understanding what dwelt within. Years of a Fire Zone upbringing embodying a hardcore reality, for Marlow the virtual was an escape for what still burned inside.

http://www.androcies.com/cbp_art.html

Little-known fact that Cary Grant was an affeciando and said that after taking LSD

“I was literally reborn. I learned that I could control my life, that I am not a hapless victim. I was making the mistake of thinking each of my wives was my mother.”

More on that story here.

LSD is a highly subversive topic and one which many people are threatened by. Saying that, I would not recommend its use, but I do believe that its ability to provide genuine insight is amply documented. It is also interesting to note that Albert Hoffman, who synthesized it, passed away not that long ago, at age 106, and remained a cautious advocate for its use throughout his very long life.

LSD seems less dangerous these days with some of the over prescribed mental disease 'medications' that people become unwittingly hooked on.

Bernard wrote:LSD seems less dangerous these days with some of the over prescribed mental disease 'medications' that people become unwittingly hooked on.

And what is your evidence?

Which prescription medicines are you talking about, and what harm are they?

My brother who had a schizophrenic meltdown 35 years ago and who has had a life on welfare and medication ever since is one case of evidence I could present, but this was on the box the other night too...


http://www.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/o ... al-Addicts

Bernard wrote:My brother who had a schizophrenic meltdown 35 years ago and who has had a life on welfare and medication ever since is one case of evidence I could present, but this was on the box the other night too...


http://www.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/o ... al-Addicts

My brother had a schizophrenic meltdown 35 years ago too. He is also on medications and welfare. But when he is off the meds he has no life to live.
What drugs is your brother on, and what is he like when he is off the meds?

My bro is switched to clozipine from chlorpromazine and a couple of other drugs. The Clozipine transformed his life to a point he could actually LIVE IT.
It's pointless blathering on about addiction from prescriptions when NOT taking the drugs means that you become a danger to yourself and society

Bernard wrote:
http://www.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/o ... al-Addicts

n
None of this compares to LSD. Have you ever had any??

I did once about 30 years ago. It was a mild experience because I only took a small dose. I walked home some ten kilometres along mostly unlit roads in the country with friends. There was a liquid quality to everything and sense of a fragility in all around me that was rather distressing. My thinking was rather obsessive and repetitive, which was annoying. It was not as noticeable an affect as the blue moon mushroom experience that was also unrepeated, and in quite a small dose.. . the worse thing was the headache I got, but it was much more a 'trip' experience. Again it was at night, but I was alone this time and the environment not only had a similiar and much more liquid quality than that of LSD, but also was much more a new realm in which my interaction was encouraged and forced rather than one I felt little relation to. There were very real threats stemming from creature life and geography, but moments of great brilliance, such as the light of the full moon turning the distant valley and its central mountain into something utterly sublime, undreamt of: unvisited, magical, full of living potential and unrealised possibilities of life and living things. I'd probably do the mushroom once more in my life as long as I was better prepped for possible illness. It was a much more living experience than LSD, and did serve to shake me up a little at a time I needed it.

Bernard wrote:I did once about 30 years ago. It was a mild experience because I only took a small dose. I walked home some ten kilometres along mostly unlit roads in the country with friends. There was a liquid quality to everything and sense of a fragility in all around me that was rather distressing. My thinking was rather obsessive and repetitive, which was annoying. It was not as noticeable an affect as the blue moon mushroom experience that was also unrepeated, and in quite a small dose.. . the worse thing was the headache I got, but it was much more a 'trip' experience. Again it was at night, but I was alone this time and the environment not only had a similiar and much more liquid quality than that of LSD, but also was much more a new realm in which my interaction was encouraged and forced rather than one I felt little relation to. There were very real threats stemming from creature life and geography, but moments of great brilliance, such as the light of the full moon turning the distant valley and its central mountain into something utterly sublime, undreamt of: unvisited, magical, full of living potential and unrealised possibilities of life and living things. I'd probably do the mushroom once more in my life as long as I was better prepped for possible illness. It was a much more living experience than LSD, and did serve to shake me up a little at a time I needed it.

When you do mushrooms, avoid eating the solids which contain much of the strychnine. We always used to make tea, passed through a coffee filter, from our Psilocybin srooms, and rarely got nauseous.

But on the issue we are discussing. There is a big difference between the problems gleaned from strong drugs taken for entertainment (initially) and the drugs prescribed for a reason and taken too long through lack of correct supervision, by people with addictive personalities.
The first obvious difference is the complete lack of expert supervision by those taking drugs illegally.

Thanks for the tip. Makes good sense. I guess smoking it as powder would also lessen strychnine.

I suppose people with addictive personalities are inevitably going to be those most commonly in need of medication for their addictive personalities. I doubt such people can ever be properly supervised.

Bernard wrote:Thanks for the tip. Makes good sense. I guess smoking it as powder would also lessen strychnine.

I suppose people with addictive personalities are inevitably going to be those most commonly in need of medication for their addictive personalities. I doubt such people can ever be properly supervised.

A strong rationale can help people off the drugs. The next stage is for them to limits the opportunities. Alcoholics can be saved from themselves, but this means never having a drink; similarly with heroin.
Prescription medicine is the easiest to control in this respect.

chaz wyman wrote: You can't invent anything using LSD.

Dr Kary Banks Mullis won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1993 for the invention of PCR, a technique which would allow certain sequences of DNA to be amplified for testing. This would would revolutionise DNA chemistry, making it far easier to isolate, amplify and test DNA sequences. In an interview, Dr Mullis attributed part of theorising this breakthrough to LSD:

"Would I have invented PCR if I hadn’t taken LSD? I seriously doubt it. I could sit on a DNA molecule and watch the polymers go by. I learnt that partly on psychedelic drugs."