now i know lots of ppl prob gonna disagree with me but i had revelation last night taking 2ci. I learned that this substance as well as all these chemicals: exstasy, lsd, reasearch chemicals.. do more harm than good. the trip wasnt bad until the very last 30min or so thnk god when it hit me, this is a trickster. It like all chemicals ive done my whole life- exstasy, lsd, 2cb.. lacked something extremely important and fundudamental to the psychedelic experience-the spiritual. yeh id get crazy visuals and energy, but always felt artificial and empty at the core. 2ci like all chemicals ive taken i feel aftereffects that they feed the ego, instead of healing like ayauasca, changa or mushrooms which even if have a bad trip i feel at the end that i benefited from the experience. i decided today to throw away all my chemicals never use them again and only use healing SHAMANIC plants not something made in a lab, and i highly recommend everyone to do the same, heres an old video that this reminds me of and brought new meaning to me today, this man can explain better than i or most can,

http://www.youtube.com/w...;list=PLDBC68AF4C0475A4A

I use Chemicals for fun and Plants for deep personal work - these days I lean strongly towards plants, how ever the odd night on MDMA or 2CB (or both ) can be a wonderful experience. 2CI, while highly visual, is also incredibly stimulating and gives me a horrible body load and is utterly hollow with regards to insights, and is not IMO worth bothering with.

With regards to feeding the ego, I often think that we spend too much time focussing on it being a bad thing. I think it is a GOOD thing that not all psychs erode the ego. We would all be very weak willed and flaccid if we spent all our time dissolving it, we need it, sometimes you need to remove it for a short time to look inwards, and others it could use a little boost to look outwards.

This psychedelic business IMO is a balancing act, it can be very easy to lose your footing and fall on the side of egotism / flaccidness, when in reality, we need both.

Anyhow, that is just my opinion, we should appreciate each substance for its own values and not compare it to something that is completely different, besides the pretty colors.

Blanket statements like "chemicals are bad" are rather empty, imo. I mean, 'chemicals' are in practically everything.

Organic food contains chemicals

Shamanic plants contain chemicals.

Then there's the most dangerous chemical of all, Dihydrogen monoxide



I think you might mean "research chemicals"

I've never felt empty on LSD. Also you can have semi-synthesided LSD (from ergot culture to crystal).
So do you mean there is no spirit in synthetic phens, mdma etc ?
Also I remeber this test : they gave synthetic psiocibin (hoffman and al.) to maria sabina and ask her if it was the same spirit as the one she find in psylocibes. her answer was : there is the spirit there (in the synth psilocibin cap).

Now the thing is, apart form that debate it seems like your trip showed you prettty what you have to do. What necessarly eveyone has to do.
If eveyone harvest and consume the same plants there isn't balance anymore, some plants may disapear, the soil get sterile etc..

You can stop using chemical as synthetic phens and all, and be fine with your choice. Otherwise it's like saying meat is bad or even in your case doing psyhedelic plant without traditionnal shaman guidance is bad ! you are westerner and unless you find local witches, you have to stick to alcohol which is your sacrement (in the tradition of western christian civilisation).

honestly i think RC's are whatever some are fun some suck some people would completly disagree and say that phens are more spiritual than lsd remember there are billions of people in the world everyone has diff views. quite frankly my most intense spiritual moments have been on 10 hit 2c-e or accidentally dosing on 50mg of 2c-p.


i think you should re-evaluate what you are looking for in an experience maybe your expecting too much, not every experience will you have some crazy intense revelation, alot of the time maybe but everytime would start to get a little too heavy duty

when i said chemicals are bad didnt mean all chemicals, ofcourse wasnt refering to chemicals like psiocibin or dmt.. was refuring to like i listed extasy, reasearch chemicals,lsd... not saying these cant b insightful or lifechanging but as far as true spiritual healing is conserned and like terrence says deep lasting work u cant compare them with the shamanic plants. like said these are artificial, not spiritual. that means artificial feeling, that one might interpret as real, like true happyness and forfullment through the "happy drug" exstasy for example. Ive done x myb 20 times and never came newhere close to mushroom or aya trips where feeling complete and one with nature and the universe brings a whole different meaning and that i actually feel great for days following, anything that u take that makes u feel shitty following days already is saying something.
i think theres very good reason why amazonian shamans stick to very specific plants and stay away from other things, the shaman knows not me not u. Ive never been against chemicals hell i was planning on rolling next weekend, but one must b focused in life towards directing to highest possible self, that means some disapline required, and these chemicals are just one of the million things that should b steared from like example any addicting substances, focus on materialism and money...

http://www.youtube.com/w...;list=PLDBC68AF4C0475A4A

Natural being better than synthetic is a fallacious argument.

There are thousands of natural compounds that are poisonous and bad for you, (strychnine, curare, etc). Even natural substances that are very poisonous and shamans use(tropanes from datura/brugmansia plants, etc)

At the same time many people have had life changing experiences with synthetic substances (me included, when I first dosed LSD). South african shamans prefered 2CB over their traditional plants : http://www.evolver.net/u...ns_south_african_healers

Also, you dont know whether a substance that is made synthetically isnt found naturally in plants. Take the example of DMT, it was first synthesized in a laboratory, and only later it was found to be in plants. Who knows, maybe LSD is being made in some plant

You can speak for yourself of course, and say that YOU preffer natural substances X,Y and Z over synthetic substances P, Q and R, but to base your whole judgement in whether a substance is (as far as you know) only man-made or if its found naturally, is a poor argument IMO. Specially to judge it for others, saying something is 'bad' or 'good' in absolute terms is out of place imo.

Having said this, personally the substances I use the most and have gained most out of are, coincidentally or not, naturaly found (ayahuasca/dmt/beta-carbolines, cactus/mescaline, mushrooms/psilocin). BUT, I have also had my life changed because of LSD, and definitely preffer it to LSA-containing seeds.

I think one of the big problems with many synthetic drugs is related to their source (often coming from unscrupulous sellers and middle men, being made in chinese labs with little quality control, etc), to their purity, and to the possibility of mislabelling (if you consume a large 2CB dosage but if they made a mistake and sold you some bromodragonfly, you might die, as it happened with the owner of a research chemical company a couple of years back. Think about it, if even the owner of a company can die from such mistakes, the end users are even more at risk). Because of that, we in the nexus always suggest people have their substances tested if they have a testing organization in their country, or that they test it themselves at least with simple reagent tests which are inexpensive and unwatched, or with a bit more advanced TLC which can also be made at home if one studies a little bit how its done. All the info is in the subforum linked in my signature.

I've done X hundreds of times and have certainly had some extremely illuminating sessions involving it. Often other drugs like Ketamine and/or cannabis really help to open the space up and add the extra required depth. Also, you wouldn't want to go to a big party or rave and take mushrooms or aya - that would probably end up a pretty scary experience.

I think the main reason that Amazonian shamans stick to very specific plants is that a) they are surrounded by plants & so they are therefore much more freely available (at 0 cost) and b) they probably don't even know about half of the stuff us westerners have available to us.

I'm not saying Chems are inherantly good, or bad (some are clearly more useful than others however) but I do think that they have their place. Ecstacy really opened up a world of substances that I would have otherwise 'steared clear of' - the idea of interacting with a plant spirit would not have appealed to me had I not experienced more artificial forms of altered consciousness.

the only thing that's "bad" is the human mind, since it differentiates "good" and "bad"..
and it's made of... : drum roll:... chemicals.

but seriously, what a bad title. not well thought out at all.
It's easy to get deluded thoughts and questionable reasoning on psychedelics, but pass it off as "spiritual knowledge"

This statement can't apply to everyone. Just because you've had a changed mentality on chemicals doesn't mean they are suddenly demons, they just don't work for you and you've found your niche in enthobotanicals.

devineinmymind, I too have quite a preference for the natural psychedelics. I remember something DMTurner wrote about ketamine, something like "I now see k as a frankenstien molecules, alien to out corner of the universe and not for human consumtion". I paraphrase from imperfect memory.




Still, I totally agree with benzyme here:





Basically, I am agreeing you you, devine (in spirit), but disagreeing as well. Use paragraph breaks more often and try and argue more clearly around these parts. The sciencee guys are not going to let you get away with "chemicals are bad".

The thing about using plants rather than chemicals is also that there's "that" certain connection to nature, which seems missing when one simply takes a tiny amount of powder. Simply put, it's amazing to be able to pick some plants and use them to have a rather more biological and "earthy" experience, that sometimes CAN be more meaningful than a chemical, because plants have other goodies that a pure chemical cannot offer....?

Chemicals or plants does not make any significant difference for me. I love drugs either way,
if I can reach desired states of mind through such, or simply alter my mind set, the better.

to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Using plants in a very natural setting seems to work wonderfully, as if it was intended to be so. Chemical powders really suit the towns and cities of society, and i think reflect on the control and planning of their makeup, like towns and cities do. They are sortof made for a different kinda brain, a more rigid one, rather than relaxed one.

Can you imagine people feeling like they need to snort fat lines of drugs or inject themselves in lush natural settings, where the wonderful sounds of birds and nature abounds, and the air smells fresh and clean??
Relaxed people don't feel the need to have "edgy" encounters, and usually are operating on the relaxed vibes like nature does, and have the sensitivities to enjoy the depths of the experience that nature in all it's forms provides.

I love LSD, I think it's insightful, beautiful, and can teach loads.

I also have a love for MDMA, it's one of very few other drugs I indulge in.

I don't think it's bad

I dig what you're saying, but because I can't imagine it has no bearing on it's reality. There were a lot of things I didn't/couldn't imagine before DMT.

Thanks a great way of putting it because DMT is all about "getting back to nature" IMO. However i think it's wrong to say that "chemicals are bad", because i feel that they have their place just like electronic music does, similarly entheogens and group ceremonies accompanied by chanting, drums, etc, have theirs. Cheers, Chris!

i agree with what ur saying and devine, look at history and chemical influences on how they shaped society today: Francis Crick, timothy leary,Freud, Kary Mullis, steve jobs. all these people helped contribute to the shallow science drivin controlled material world we live in. U dont hear of plant influenced science. science is the product of the ego. Theres good technology and bad technology

Superbly said!

Which is a product of nature