And I commented on that response, hinting that it may not be a fair assumption. There is no research on Salvinorin usage and triggers of psychoses, so we should be on the safe side and assume the potential is there. It is not a scare tactic, much more a warning for the user to closely pay attention to any possible hallucination that may occur in the future in the absence of any use, so they can help themselves.



Absolutely they can. The way I understood your post, it seemed as if you made the claim that any deviation from normal behaviour could be attributed to cultural reasons, social constructs etc. All I suggested was that when there are organic manifestations, one is recommended to look into it further, instead of relying on good mood to make it "go away".

It was not my intention to scrutinise every single word, just a heads up on the seriousness in someone expressing concern over developing a form of psychosis from psychedelic use.

Hello friends - some really interesting discussion here. I think I agree with everything, even the bits that seem to contradict each other

I really get the idea that people can be considered crazy because they are unwilling or unable to conform to the majority culture, and that madness is a relative term, relative to what is considered normal. But I also agree that there is a level of madness that goes beyond this, where it is not relative madness, but mental illness.

Many many years ago I shared an apartment with a guy who had a history of schizophrenia, although when I met him he had been completely well for many years. He got hold of a couple of sheets of acid though, and ate the whole lot back to back over a period of about a couple of weeks; didn't come down once. Over the next few months he developed an intense Christ/Bodhisattva/Krishna complex, thought he was some kind of modern day prophet. He grew his beard long and walked around the city in yellow robes smiling benevolently and handing out flowers and wishing people peace and love. Did society think he was crazy? Absolutely. Was he? I've no idea, personally I thought he was beautiful. We spent hundreds of hours talking, discussing enlightenment, madness, reality, God, Maya ... He strongly believed that spiritual enlightenment, psychedelics and insanity were all linked, different views of the same perception of reality. He had magnificent visions and visitations and was never really sure what was real and what was not. You know that song "The Whole of the Moon"? well that still reminds me today of our friendship.

But...

After a while he seemed to go too far over that line. Our discussions became one-sided sermon/rants, he became impossible to talk too - if I expressed any point of view, or even just asked him if he was ok he would scream "get thee behind me satan!" and throw me out of the room. One day I came home and he had completely trashed the apartment and tried to set fire to it. Almost everything I owned was smashed or thrown out the window. He had gone missing, and it took me about a month to track him down to a local mental hospital. This I think was mental illness, not living outside the culture of our society.

Anyway, gone off on a bit of a tangent there. I don't know the answer to the question in the original post, but take care anyway all you lovely people

Much love

HPxx