Hi all,

One of the questions we regularly get from people who visit this forum is: "How can I help?". This thread is meant to streamline those thoughts and give people a general idea about how they can help our cause.


First I like to rephrase our current ideas about the Mission Statement of CEL:
(Please feel free make additions to that Wiki page!)


So to come back to the original idea of this thread: If you have a good idea about how people can help us then please post it in this thread. I will kick off with the first one, learned at the Mind Altering Science conference 2010:

* One thing they mentioned was that we should take a look at wikipedia articles and edit them to sound less negative about psychedelics if they do and make them more informed / balanced.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

One idea I suppose is great if you can write well, is to send letters to newspapers, concerning freedom and personal self-determination. So the idea is to engage in public discussions. Of course this needs to be done with great care. We don't want to portray ourselves as simple drug-advocates, discredit ourselves or become too controversial. Bringing psychedelics up in any open discussion with obviously uninformed people is difficult thing and I think for the phase we are in with society at the moment should not be stressed. It would IMO be better to construct an argument that does not center around psychedelics but around personal development and the liberty to chose in which way we grow without infringing on anyone's rights - and only bring up psychedelics as a possibility. A tool that has been banned and villainized.

Be scientific about the discussion when it comes to psychedelics. That is to say, use references and don't be biased. There are reasons why the general public has a bad opinion about psychedelics. One is probably that they are generally dumped into the same category as the very addictive and non-psychedelic substances and simply classified as 'drugs'.
Another is that they see kids in the streets doing them in completely uncontrolled and unsafe environments. But this is an argument that we can use against the criminalisation of psychedelics. If it was not illegal, but accepted, people could be given the chance to indulge their curiosity concerning these matters safely, based on actual information instead of propaganda and fear-mongery. And who would want to buy it off the streets if you could get it pure from your local psychedelics-center?
Of course it's not just kids that are the problem. People do get carried away, even with the use of psychedelics, and I'm sure most of us know one or two cases that have. On the other hand, the statistics concerning serious harm and alcohol are probably much worse, from the accidents and over doses to long term addictions and the consequences.

Ok, I'm going off on a tangent here... So my main idea is simply to engage in an open discussion, without trying to stigmatize or discredit yourself, but by bringing issues of personal freedom and psychedelics to attention, and by knowing how to argue for a responsible way deal with them. For me it boils down to a question of what government is really here for - and I find it is not here to govern our minds or consciousness, but rather to ensure that society can sustain itself. Personal freedom should not be exclusive to the survival of society, especially if one understands that this liberty we talk about isn't about materialism (as in I am free to own/steal/take whatever I want), but about thoughts and consciousness...

^^a lot of words for a very small idea :/

another ideas is to make videos on youtube, again using the same principles as mentioned above - not stressing psychedelics, and especially not any specific substances - but the general idea of personal freedom and only implicitly the use of psychedelics. Of course do this anonymously and as professionally as possible. We want to leave a good impression. Eventually you can get into the actual benefits of psychedelics, but initially we want to be talking to a wider range of people that those that already agree to you - otherwise you're just preaching to the quire.

I'm thinking vidoes along the similar lines as this one: RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation (btw a very cool video!)

Indeed. A CEL-youtube channel would be an excellent way of spreading our ideas and informing the general public truthfully.


I think this site would be of much helpas well:
www.thespiritmolecule.com

It's a film about DMT, based on the scientific research of Dr. Rick Strassman and friends.
It should be one of CEL's primary sources of correct information on DMT.

www.erowid.org may also prove to be a valuable source of information on Entheogens.

SWIM has convinced numerous people of the medicinal, therapuitical and exploratory value of Entheogens.
People who used to fear Entheogens and be apprehensive about it's use due to false beliefs. He has also explained many of the historical, spiritual background of the use of Entheogens to them.
This alone corrects people's distorted, manipulated views of Entheogens significantly. Many of SWIM's friends who may otherwise never taken a Psychedelic, took LSD and DMT with SWIM and were pleasantly enlightened and fascinated by them. He has even made DMT "populair" and known amongst notorious, ego-maniacal cocaine-snorting people. So through SWIM the blessings of DMT has spread far and beyond SWIM's circle of friends.

Allthough on the one hand, DMT-use becoming more "populair" and thus, more widespread is bad news ( Because it attracks the attention of the DrugWar mongers ), on the other hand it is great news.
DMT can cure people of the general Ego-disease with amazing strength and efficiency.

We need not fear our beloved Entheogens becomming populair and widespread, we need to clear the way for their unpersecuted use. CEL could provide the general public with all the correct, factual information about DMT and other Entheogens. THIS will provide efficient harm reduction.

CEL's got alot of work to do and SWIM hopes he can help more than just sharing Entheogenic experiences as he has been doing sofar.

maybe it CAN, but it does not necessarily DO it. This is the unfortunate fact about psychedelics. A lot of us who have had great experiences were just ready for them because of something else maybe. Then Psychs came along and we had an epiphany, a revelation, we were changed for the better. But there are so many people out there that aren't changed, that don't see or feel anything special in there. They might have fun, or they might not. Either way it's not the psychs themselves that do it. It's an interplay between a lot of factors in my opinion. Promoting psychs on this basis is naive and dangerous.




Again it really depends on what kind of popularity you are talking about. Just recently someone was telling me that in the party scene in city XY dmt was getting really popular and people were trying to sell it everywhere. Do we want this kind of usage? People at parties getting wasted from smoking spice?
Unpersecuted use, yes! But but how can we balance responsible use with that? How can we prevent destructiveness making use of it as well? Humans will always find a way to use something sublime for something depraved - so the important thing is to make it very clear what psychedelics can and can't do. After all they are not responsible for the depravity or the irresponsibility of individuals, no more than I think they are responsible for enlightenment. These things are too complex to reduce to a mono-causality.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for psychedelics, but I don't believe they are the answer to what you call the ego-disease, nor any of the other countless problems we face as a species. But perhaps they can aid in finding one, if one was so inclined to find one...

SWIM has done, and will continue to do, his part by introducing many people to the Psychedelic experience and providing them, during these experiences, spiritual guidance derrived from his own insights and those of others. He feels however that this is not enough.

What might have alot more impact, socio-politically, could be making this issue, with the viewpoints of CEL, an issue of Political debate.
Can we get a number of CEL-representatives to start a political debate with politicians about "the entheogenic question" on TV?

Now THAT would grab the public attention and enable us to show the other side of the story.

Well, seeing that it took Obama 2 years and multiple open question sessions where cannabis-related topics were the #1 issue just to stop laughing at it and make a half-assed attempt at addressing the plethora of weed-related issues from prisons to jobs to economics; and given the ubiquitousness of weed and the relative invisibility of the entheogenic community...I think that cannabis legalization should be seen as the main (or at least a truly major) stepping-stone to regulating entheogens.

I also feel this is the most logical place to start, as without a budget to go after cannabis-prohibition violators, the various police and governmental organizations would not be able to justify a fraction of their ludicrously enormous budgets. Weed is the driving force behind drug prohibition, it is through the budgets for cannabis interdiction that the rest of the War on [people who use certain] Drugs is justified.

Now to give a fun drug stat - it was just revealed that simple possession of cannabis is the number one reason for arrest in New York City

I know few people agree, but I'm going to continue saying it: the only way that people will ever be able to use entheogens legally is to create a religion that regards them as a sacrament. It is the only defense that has ever worked in US courts (UDV, Santo Daime). There's a great distaste for organized religion in our community here, but the religion can be limited to only what we all have in common: the belief that psychedelics are a sacrament. I think accepting that word, "sacrament," as a community, is probably the most productive thing we can do for our cause.

The issue with religious exemptions is that they've only been applied to religions that have some sort of established history, and even then it's not guaranteed (rastafarians have never, to my knowledge, won a court case involving weed as a sacrament, native americans are not protected against drug-test related job loss, the dea occasionally goes after santo daime members despite court decisions that say they shouldn't, etc). Legal precedent shows that creating a new religion would provide extremely shaky legal protection at best.

It's not as shaky as you make it out to be, but either way: shaky protection is better than none.

The issue isn't that the religious exemption hasn't been applied to religions without history; it's that it hasn't even been tried. We shouldn't take rastafarians as an example of much relevance because of the level of controversy and widespread distribution/consumption of weed. Weed will never be treated the same as psychedelics.

Also, native americans *are* granted protection against drug-related job loss in some fields. An example would be that they are allowed to fail any US military drug test as long as they can show that the use was from a legit religious ceremony. I've now worked with two native americans who have done exactly that and suffered no consequences.


Snozzleberry, there is no legal precedent involving a "new religion" to demonstrate that claim. It has not been tried.

I think the whole religion approach is a cop out. Its important to understand that the people who are making these policy decisions are usually Christian. On paper they are supposed to care about your religion and respect it. But in reality they think your a pagan hippy freak.

In other words is the religion conflicts with the established law they will always view it as an illegit religion. Or an excuse to get away with breaking the law.

The issue should always be framed from the perspective that its my life my body and at the end of the day it doesn't really harm society when its properly regulated.

Just me 2 cents on framing this argument from a religious perspective.

Kartikay, it's actually shakier and less likely than I initially presented and, imo, shaky protection isn't protection...if anything it usually creates a system whereby people who think they're protected eventually end up getting shafted by those in charge.

I can post cases documenting that the issue with Rastafarians goes beyond the issues of cannabis use in America (if you'd like me to, just let me know) but it is a more minor point given the other areas we are discussing. Even if I accept your claims about cannabis (which technically shouldn't carry any water in a case regarding religious exemptions from CSA statutes outside of the potential for non-sacramental/external use qualifier) there are still issues with your other claims...


Perhaps the military provides limited job protection, but in the private sector, this is not the case...I would direct you to the 1990 Supreme Court case of Employment Division v. Smith. As there have been no subsequent rulings on peyote use as protected by RFRA, I would posit that regardless of military exemptions you may have encountered, the status quo is that there is no protection. Even if the military provides protection, no one else does, and this is with government sanctioned use of their sacrament. That strikes me as fairly alarming and telling of the current legal climate with respect to "peripheral protections".


This is patently false...it has been tried numerous times. I would direct you to the case of United States of America v. Judith H. Kuch as a good starting point for such cases (this was the one dealing with the Neo-American Church). If you would like me to present more cases of new religious organizations that tried to use RFRA or other claims to legitimize religious exemption for sacramental drug use, let me know and I'll gladly pull more. Afaik, each attempt has failed, leading me to again conclude that the "create a new religion" route carries no water within the US legal system.

If you want a serious debate, Snozzle, then get your history in order. The case you listed was nearly 30 years before the very law that would be used as defense was enacted. You don't get to list "more" attempts to use the RFRA as a defense because you haven't even listed one.

As for peyote: it applies to all federal jobs, not just the military. There are restrictions, but it's a solid protection for bona fide members of Native American tribal groups. It's not shaky. It's set it stone and isn't changing. You can learn about it at this link, although the site is geared toward the DoD: http://www.deomi.org/DiversityMgmt/Peyote.cfm

I also would like to comment about drug tests, since you mentioned them as a concern in the private arena. Drug tests aren't the enemy of psychedelics. Most psychedelics, including the big three: LSD, DMT and psilocin, are nearly impossible to detect. Only extended drug tests even bother to test for LSD and psilocin, and even those can't detect them unless you've used them in the past 48-72 hours. You'd have to be extremely unlucky to get caught. DMT isn't tested for at all: it's endogenous! Drug tests shouldn't be a big concern for us, it's being able to speak freely and not get arrested that concerns me.

The private arena will always be allowed to limit who can work for them, to a ridiculous degree. Some businesses are even banning tobacco smokers from their organization... it's getting absurd, but that's the private arena for you. NYTimes "Hospitals shift from Smoking Bans to Smoker Bans"

More on line with the OP: I think that editing wikipedia articles is a fantastic idea. Thanks for sharing that, Trav.

CEL should rise beyond the whole Right to Religious freedom-issue.
I think it's important to emphasise CEL wants to protect and expand freedom of Individuals to Explore their consciousness. Religious groups aren't the only ones who deserve such freedom.
Powerfull Psychedelic substances should probably not be available freely to just anyone, just like painkillers and sleeppills shouldn't be. But like Sleeping pills and Painkillers, they should
at least be accessible to people if they could help "digest" traumas, dissolve barriers and inhibitions, mend relationships, cease addiction cravings, revive creativity and joyfullness.

Right now there is no such medication in psychiatry, and no extensive treatment models(allthough I believe there are some). Psychedelics are still hugely repressed in Psychiatry and therapy.
This could be a point that CEL could re-open for discussion.

If CEL feels that the current drug laws and policies are wrong, then perhaps could they offer a new model of drug laws and policies that are better than the current ones?
Perhaps CEL can do more research and collect data from other researches in the field of Psychedelic therapy, addiction-cessation and Spiritual experience & growth.
Perhaps CEL could perform valid reseach, by interviewing a large number of people all around the world about their Psychedelic experiences and emphasizing the Therapuitic value, The dissolving of emotional barriers and emotional/psychological resistance, objective, ego-less introspection and so on.

CEL should gather evidence of the healing, therapuitic nature of the large variety of Psychedelic compounds and present this to Politicians, Policemen, Drug rehabs, Psychiatrists and the general public. This could be done with Lectures, Conversations with politicians, Youtube videos, the CEL website, Documentairies, Visual art, Music..etc

I was thinking: Really good Documentairies/Movies about Ayahuasca and other Entheogens should be made and distributed. Movies/Documentairies that truely represent the Entheogenic experience.

I make visual art and an art gallery I know is willing to hang my paintings there. I want to paint a series of Psychedelic Inspired paintings of Etheogenesis and the Introspection, Healing, Cleansing, Extacy, and Inner Peace it brings. This way I will expose many people to the blissfull and healing side of Psychedelics, that otherwise might never have seen this side of the story.

I would like to suggest that all of us should learn about the rights we already have. We also should encourage others to 'know'. US peyote law is very interesting. There is a lot to learn about it because federal laws are vague and state laws vary widely. To make matters worse, many laws are written in a way that seem racially discriminating.

In 1994, Congress and Bill Clinton spoke clearly regarding the peyote rights of Native Americans. They have generous rights to consume peyote. Various states have written additional laws since then. Texas (the only US state where peyote grows naturally) is a notable example because the state law requires 25% Native American blood to partake in any religous ceremony involving peyote.

Over the years, several states have enacted laws that grant some rights to people regardless of race. Fortunately, two states have passed laws so that anyone with "sincere religous intent" may partake in a peyote ceremony. These two states are Arizona and Oregon. A bit of internet study will reveal WHY these two states enacted these laws, and I will not elaborate.

To repeat, the situation is such that the federal government has given rights explicitly to Native Americans and several states have given rights to all. Is this bulletproof protection? No. Seekers would be much better off never having to be in a situation where they needed to defend themselves, but, the fact that the state laws exist means law enforcement is less motivated to 'pick a fight' with a sincere participant.

There are other states that grant rights regarding peyote use. These states are: CO, ID, IA, KS, MN, NV, NM, OK, OR, SD, TX, WI. A link describing these rights are here: peyote_rights_link

The states that allow all race peyote use within a bonafide religous context are: AZ, CO, MN, NV, NM, OR

This means that 10% of US states offer protection for peyote use, regardless of race, within the context of a bonafide religion. To me this is a remarkable situation. After ~500 years of (mostly Christian) persecution of peyote users, there are some pockets of reason in America. It appears there is a widening respect for peyote as a genuine tool for spiritual use. Recent studies have shown that peyote users are (if anything) mentaly healthier than non-users (harvard study). I believe the process will be slow, but additional states will adopt reasonable rules for sincere use of peyote over time.

What does it mean to have 'sincere religous intent'? That is a very subjective question and the authors of the US Constitution knew that non-mainstream religions needed protection. For me, the majority of attitudes expressed by this community would seem to fit the essence of sincerity and that would seem to grant us certian rights.

Unfortunately, there are those (such as Justice Antonin Scalia of the US Supreme Court) who have compared the spiritual use of peyote to the custom of "throwing rice at a wedding". The bottom line is that we do have certain rights but it is best to never have to exert them. Be informed, be aware. Peace to us all.

(No one involved in writing this post is a lawyer. This post is not offered as legal advice. Your mileage may vary. All offers subject to approval. Send for a prospectus before investing. Force Majeure renders this post invalid. Please don't get busted!)

For some reason the idea of allowing psychedelics only in a medical or religious context leaves a bad after-taste in my mind. Perhaps it's a good first step to create awareness for the benefits of usage, but ultimately I would like to see them become available to people regardless of their religious inclination, and even if they are mentally healthy...

I'd be all for something like a psychedelic license much like a driving license where before you can legally acquire them you have to visit a course and learn about safety, health, some neuro-chemistry, some psychology etc... This would mean you would have to invest time, which means you would have to be to some degree serious about it, you would have to have some degree of dedication.

What I don't want is to sign up to some kind of institution (religion) or prove to some medical doctor that I am in *need* of *help* through psychedelics. This is not freedom and I would rather go on getting them illegally than by submitting myself to something like this. My intentions are based exploring and developing and neither of these fit into religion or psychology, but could potentially still be beneficial to me and those around me. But by focusing on religion and psychology/medicine we exclude this kind of use, which I think is sad, because I firmly believe there is much to be gained from venturing into psychedelic experiences as a healthy individual outside of a religious context, simply for the potential of growth that lies within. Trying to create a justification for use because of mental conditions is IMO the wrong approach - it indicates that something has to be *wrong* before you can use it. Justifying it through religion puts it into the *superstition* drawer in my book... it just looks like some quirky-cult kind of thing.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm more interested in creating an awareness towards actually appreciating these things for their entire potential rather than just allowing them because some *crazy psychiatrists* and some *religions freaks* (as they could be perceived by the uneducated public) found them to be useful for whatever it is they are brewing behind closed doors. I want an openness towards all the possibilities, that doesn't exclude any kind of positive application thereof (of course I understand the problematics of how to judge what is positive and what not).

But like I said, perhaps starting with religion and medicine is the only way to get there...

cheers & love
Enoon

Kartikay, no need to get so ruffled...RFRA applies retroactively to all cases falling within its scope...the actual wording as found in Boerne v. Flores states, "RFRA applies to all federal and state law, statutory or otherwise, whether adopted before or after its enactment." Therefore, the Neo-American church case does fall within the scope of RFRA.


Ok, so even if it applies to all Federal jobs, we are agreed that it does not apply to private sector jobs, which is a HUGE issue. This still means that there are large swathes of Native Americans who are not protected. Additionally, one should not need to get a Federal job to protect themselves from fall-out related to their religious activities, imo, this is kind of ridiculous.


I don't think I did...

Ultimately, I have to say, I agree with Enoon and burnt and whoever else that entheogenic civil liberties must be applied in a more broad sense than religious or medical context. Kartikay, I know you feel the only way this will happen is through a religious route, but personally, I just don't see that happening. As cker pointed out, the qualifier of "sincere religious intent" is a very subjective one and I simply don't see it being favorably applied to a religion seeking to establish an entheogen as sacrament (especially given the arguments made in the past by the Neo-American church). Whether or not it's valid, it's still a viable legal case through which any opponent to this new religion could mount a fairly easy attack, imo. Additionally, if psychedelics are legitimized through creating a religion that can be viewed as an excuse to "do drugs" or relying on some new-age nonsense scripture to create "sincere religious intent" thereby allowing for use of psychedelics, I would posit that this creates potential, not only for negative/alienating views from society at large (which we already have enough of) but also for foxholing ourselves within some bizarre religious landscape while we fail to engage people in more meaningful arenas.

As I already stated, I feel the most likely candidate for legalization of psychedelics is ending cannabis prohibition and following the path created by that action. Otherwise, there's far too much risk of entheogens becoming tied up or restricted in another system that ultimately obscures their true potential. There is plenty of evidence showing the safety of these substances, the main issue is the atmosphere created by prohibition. By shifting this atmosphere through ending cannabis prohibition, I feel you open the door to legalization of psychedelics. It's a matter of shifting cultural opinions/understandings/taboos and this must happen incrementally, otherwise you run the risk of alienating the people you are trying to reach out to

Snozzle, it doesn't matter one bit that the RFRA applies retroactively. The case opened, occurred and closed nearly 30 years before the RFRA was enacted. The RFRA doesn't have a magical time machine that changes the outcome of cases a generation old. Even if it did, The Neo-American church was a joke, literally. Their religious text was "The Boo Hoo Bible." It was quite literally satire. I can't imagine why no one took them seriously...

I poke fun, but seriously, the RFRA was not part of the Neo-American court decision. That case played out nearly 30 years prior.

I completely agree that we should work on changing the social culture surrounding psychedelics and weed (which gives a whole new meaning to the term "gateway drug", but you won't win this battle without taking on every angle. The RFRA is a serious weak spot in the armor of US drug law, and it's incredibly foolish not to use that.

I also agree that the private sector job issue is enormous. I still can't believe that it's spreading to tobacco use. Drug testing for nicotine... I think the cigarette industry can hold their own, though. I'm interested to see how this plays out.

Wait...what? I read some article on hospitals, but other than that I hadn't heard of anything going on with this. What's happening where?

Oh, and I hear you on the Boo Hoos being satiric, my point was more that someone could have attempted to apply RFRA to that argument, but again, given their satire, sure, probably not the best example. The interesting thing with RFRA is that in the recent ayahuasca cases, I'm pretty sure there was a ruling along the lines of RFRA being unconstitutional in some sense, but I can't remember what the ruling was...it was along the lines that would have invalidated Employment Division v. Smith, but they used backwards logic or something so it didn't contradict. I can't remember off the top of my head, but I'll see if I can find the articles I was reading.

Also, sorry to have missed the drug testing thing, didn't mean to be an ass...spaced out brain...need more zzzzzzz's