barrelomonkeys wrote:With Nephi's permission I'm starting this thread.
So I wanted to have a chance to hear more about Nephi's experiences with Lysergic acid diethylamide. If anyone else wants to chime in please do so.
Experience with Dextromethorphan (DXM) or any other hallucigin, please pipe up too.
I'd also be interested in knowing if your experience Nephi was before or after you converted to LDS and how that may have played a role if any.
I said I would do what?! WTF are you talking about??? Oh wait. The private message.... Duh, too many drugs, I guess... ;)
But serious, lemme answer the last question first. I did hallucinogens before being a member of the church. Since that time, though the thought has crossed my mind, I have not searched out mushrooms, LSD, PCP, mescaline, or any other illegal hallucinogens.
I have (since joining the church), tried Salvia once, and won't do that again. It is far too short of an effect to gain anything meaningful from it, and it made me very very dizzy. It (for me) is not something I can gain any spiritual experiences from. Maybe for the next man, but not for me.
Hallucinogens have given me a very expanded viewpoint of spirituality and yes, I would say it did help precipitate our joining the church. My wife also believes that hallucinogens are excellent tools for a spiritual sense, "in the same manner as crutches are for a broken leg," which I agree with whole heartedly. She also agrees that such tools helped precipitate her joining the church as well (we joined as a family, together a lil over 2 years ago, now).
Heck, let's start off in the beginning. I had my first hit of pot at the age of 15, but it was but a drag (like I was smoking a cigarette) and I did not feel anything from it. A few months later, a friend of mine (whom I shared a very tight spiritual bond with) suggested we go out for the evening w/some friends of his and smoke a "dime bag". We did, and I never had quite an experience like that before in my life. Mentally, it expanded my ideas on a whole slew of things, including ideas of science, religion, self, and countless other things. Pot is an hallucinogen, though very mild compared to some of these other drugs. It is "mind altering" and can help in certain aspects of self introspection and others.
About 6 months later this same friend of mine told me about LSD and how he had tried some a week prior. He explained all kinds of mental and spiritual ideas that came to him from using this drug once. He explained how though he had visual hallucinations with the drug, that the main thing he took from it was extreme expansion of consciousness. So, (since my parents were to be gone that night), we searched out his buddy and I bought one square of paper LSD (it was called snowman for the obvious reason that each square had a snowman design on it).
The experience was completely mind altering, and gave me my first hints that I was incorrect in my assumptions that God and purpose of life was not realistic. I did not "flip out" or have a bad trip in the slightest. I also found a whole new appreciation for music at that point. Note that I was and still am to this day a musician, but music changed from a form of entertainment to a form of communication of hard to describe concepts.
Regardless, this was my junior year of high school, and by the end of high school, I would say that I had tripped probably 50 times or so. In each instance, my main reason for doing such was to learn something, to resolve some concept, or some aspect of my own personal spirituality. Never was my reasoning just to "have a good time", though I did find many times that I would be having a good time.
Tripping LSD (if you don't know) is a good 8-12 hour process, and (trust me) you aren't going to go to sleep during that time. When one doses LSD, they begin to feel it from 30-90 minutes after dosing. There is a steady, but fast increase in the feeling and consciousness that alters as time goes on, culminating in a "peak" which normally happens around 1-2 hours after you first start feeling the trip. The "coming down" is slow and steady after the peak for the remainder of the time.
Anyhow, after the first few times I had tripped, I came to understand this concept of a peak, and could judge fairly well that my peak was coming. During this time, I would go off on my own and sit and meditate, concentrating on what I came to find an answer to, or concentrating on what I could learn from what was occurring.
Of all the hallucinogens I have used in my life, LSD was by far my favorite. It was small and very pleasant to use with hardly any "side effects" (like how mushrooms would quite often make me vomit). I would use mushrooms on occasion, and mescaline once, but both of these natural hallucinogens would normally make me feel sick to my stomach and or cause me to vomit, which isn't pleasant. by the way: On a side note during those two years of high school where i smoked pot and did LSD, I NEVER ONCE skipped school, nor did it cause problems w/my grades (in fact my junior and senior years of high school were some of my best grades in school, with several strait A report cards).
Upon entering college, I did not use LSD or marijuana for the first year. It wasn't until my sophomore year that I started to use them again. Again my reasoning was because of spiritual reasons, but at the end of my junior year, I decided to save money for a trip to Las Vegas with some friends, and stopped smoking marijuana and tripping to save that money. About a month later, I had my first epileptic seizure. This was due to the fact that we have it in my family strongly (all men on my mother's side of the family have had epilepsy at some time in their life). I came to find out that it is quite likely that I was suppressing the seizures for my sophomore and junior years because marijuana is a great controller of seizure activity. In fact, after the first seizure, I kept myself medicated with marijuana 24/7 for 3 years because the side effects of that was better than the side effects of the medication they prescribed me. Even my doctor agreed (though not officially as he could lose his license in this state).
However, I continued to use LSD for years afterwards (about 10 years in all) amounting to about (guessing) 300-600 trips in total (this is including occasional tripping using other drugs like mushrooms). Most of these trips were while camping or at shows (I used to tour Phish), however, I NEVER TRIPPED FOR THE PARTY, I tripped for the spiritual help it gave me (on a side note, I never went to Phish shows just to do drugs, and many times I had no drugs to do. I was there for the music).
What did I learn? LSD allowed (for me) greater comprehension and meaning of symbols, especially personal symbols and social symbols of spirituality. It allowed for a greater concept of God and my purpose in life. Had I to do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing. Because of this higher functioning of symbolic reasoning, I am (I believe) better at comprehending and applying spiritual concepts to my life. I am very much a universalist because I can see how each and every religion and belief system out there is true if used correctly.
So anyhow, questions questions, who's got questions?