Have you read Metzner's Sacred Vine of the Spirit? According to his book, almost all of the members in the ayahuasca church studies were former hardcore drug addicts or alcoholics who joined the church. In my opinion they traded one habit for another. I admit aya is a better choice than harder drugs but its a church for people who once really enjoyed getting high and now get high for God. Read Benny Shannon's Antipodes of the Mind. He says that ALL of the ayahuasca studies were sponsored or conducted by the UDV or Santo Daime. He also points out that this is not widely known in the psychedelic community. Do they have a horse in the race? Do you trust Marlboro's research on cigarettes?

I have been a skeptic my whole life about everything. For DMT, I suspended disbelief and accepted a lot of the assertions of the experts and the poets. I put DMT in the same list as Jesus, Allah, and the American Dream - more bullshit. This is therapeutic, getting this out, finally connecting the dots and seeing what was hidden from me.

Is it possible you gave up searching for ultimate truth a long time ago, and that if ultimate truth was right in front of your face you wouldnt even know it?

You cant learn anything from ideas that you reject. If you instead embrace other ideas, even ones you dont agree with, you may be surprised with the wisdom you can gain from those ideas.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. DMT can certainly be meaningful to people. So can the Bible, your nightly dreams, and astrology. I just realized that for me, there is nothing there but intense euphoria followed by crashing mindfucks that magically disappear and leave me wanting to do it again and again and again like Sisyphus pushing that boulder back up the hill for eternity. That's a bitch.

Is it reasonable for us to expect the universe to make perfect human rational sense?

For those giving advice: do not forget that joebono is a seasoned veteran. To joebono: is it possible that maybe you used it too often? (refering to your weekly use...)

DMT is a hammer. A hammer can be used to build a house, or it can be used to end a person's life. But it is not the hammer tht does either of these things.

And when building a house, if the hamer rebounds and smacks you in the face, would you not be better served examining your handling of the tool than in blaming the hammer?

I wish you the best joebono and can only hope you will stay in touch. I know where you are coming from, and you and your post are in my thoughts...

JBArk

"there is nothing there but intense euphoria followed by crashing mindfucks that magically disappear and leave me wanting to do it again and again and again like Sisyphus pushing that boulder back up the hill for eternity. That's a bitch"

like sex??

Anyway..Dmt is not like the bible..thats kinda absurd. DMT is a gnostic experiene..the bible is something dictated at you you are sopposed to believe reguardless of the lackof personal experienc..

Labeling the UDV and Diame as addicts comparable to junkies is equally as biased and rediculous a comparison. You must be joking..right? I mean..come on man..

I guess we all have our own definition concerning what passes as addiction..1,2 or even 3 ayahuasca ceremonies a month doesnt cut it for me, sorry. Not even comparable to a junkie.

I never felt the urge to smoke DMT every dayat strange times, like on a lunch break. If you really had to run off and smoke DMT on your lunch breaks id say something else is going on there bud..might want to look into that..

..then again, some people get addicted to nintendo..so...

Beyond all that..who the hell do you think you are to judge a UDV member or Diame member?..or anyone else for that matter for having a relationship with a substance proven to be physically safe and not physically addictive?

You sound angry and just want to bash anything you dont agree with..Nice personality trait if I must say so..but hey if it's theraputic for you..

Why should validation be found in how many answers something yields?..Do you look for some ultimate answer or spiritual truth every time you have sex?..or wake up in the morning? Life is so ambiguous do you cast it aside as well?..

I stopped looking for answers long ago..becasue there is no meaning to life other than personal meaning. I go for elegance. Very few things I have found match the elegance of the psilocybin or DMT experience..and so I approach it as such. It's a beautiful elegant experince and I dont ask anything else of it.

The ambiguity of something doesnt negate the elegance of something.

Seriousily man,you need to realize this is way way way more about you than it is about anyone else. Worrying about the Diame or the UDV or Mr.Man down the street is pointless and the way you are comming off is judgemental. Worry about you and stop making silly comparisons to prove a point that only seems relative to you.

I really do wish you the best of luck andhope you find what your looking for in life, I just dont think comparing things like this and trying to make such a subjective thing out to be universal is going to be any use to you.

Your reflect such elegance fantastically. Love the approach...

Hey Fractal, Metzner said they were addicts and alcoholics. And they still do drugs - ayahuasca. Those are the facts, according to Metzner.

Your relationship to DMT is different than mine. You are lucky that you didn't have the urge to use it compulsively like me. As far as looking into "something else going on there bud" to explain my compulsive behaviour, I certainly am and now I have a clear mind to examine that.

The Bible analogy is perfect. Here is something that is held in high regard by the converted, has the potential to fundamentally alter your psyche, and is claimed to be divine. Sort of like entheogens, fuck that, exactly like entheogens. I reject both.

I'm not bashing on anyone. If it gives you what you want, then I am happy for you. But I also don't think this lifestyle should be sugarcoated or as you say "proven to be safe." Temporary psychosis is not safe.

Jbark, you're right, I was doing it way too much and thankfully I got to the point where I realized enough was enough. I meant to take a break from it, but the longer I was away the clearer it became to me that it was detrimental to my mental health.

deja vu

There is no ambiguity for me. I got high, had breakthroughs for hours at a time and saw the "elegance" as a hook, luring me deeper and deeper into it. Ever notice that you just keep getting higher and higher with DMT? There is no limit to what it can do or where it can take you. It's a mind game, and you keep doing it because each time is so damn novel and fresh. The drug fits like a hand in glove to certain minds, it's the perfect drug and I suspended all logic, rational thought and judgment for two years.

My greatest epiphany in life was done sober after I connected the dots. It's a drug, it's addictive, and your mind is a sneaky fucker with its brilliant strategies to keep you on the drug.

agreed

Joe over the past year you have had a few or more very difficult experiences that have really pushed you. You have shared some of those more difficult times with all of us. I recall many on these forums, including myself, reccomending that you take more time to integrate.

Integrate.

I get the impression that every Saturday afternoon joebono was on voyage. You were on voyage when you probably, should have been taking time to reflect, to . . . . . integrate your experiences.

I have thought about you many times in the past knowing that this time would com again. Yes, again!

This is not the first time on these forums that you have thrown in the towel.

If you cant function in your own human subjective reality because of your relationship with spice, then you have not fully integrated. If the procuring, preparing, and ingesting/voyaging occupies more of your time than integrating, your life will be way out of balance.

I am sorry you have found yourself in this position. Maybe its a good thing that you are forcing yourself to do something that you needed to do long ago......

Integrate



Love and Gratitude

Thanks Icehouse. I've always had tremendous respect for you and I always followed your posts. My problem is that integration is impossible for me. I could never assimilate or incorporate the mania, the bipolar episodes, the delusions, and the hallucinations. I simply could never do anything with it except want more of it. I know you have warned me many times and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that I would reach a breaking point and I hoped that breaking point would set me straight. It did. Integration for me was always a futile effort and I am actually glad that I didn't integrate because that would have given me further cause to keep going with it.

It’s good that you recognize you aren’t getting from DMT what you had hoped to get. Choosing to leave it behind seems reasonable and prudent.

But please don’t blame DMT for bad choices and behavior on your part. And don’t blame DMT because you have come to realize that it’s something other than what you wanted it to be or imagined it to be. Also be aware that your relationship with DMT is yours alone and is not at all typical.

You say that DMT led you to “think you know it all”, but for many of us it shows how little we really know.

You say there is “no meaning to any of it”, but I think you’re confusing meaning with understanding. I believe there is deep meaning in the experiences. but the meaning is often beyond our understanding. I can show my 7-year old nephew a calculus book, and just because he doesn’t see the meaning within doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

The DMT experience is a mystery, and we become participants in that mystery. It’s as simple as that. If you saw it as anything more than that, then you were projecting your own hopes, desires, beliefs, expectations, and misconceptions onto it. You’re angry with DMT because it isn’t what you wanted it to be, so now you portray it differently, but still as something that it isn’t.

That makes absolutily no sense. You dont understand the meaning of integration it seems. Go read some Carl Jung.

Gibran, I agree with you. I am projecting my hopes, desires and expectations on DMT. But we all do that. You believe it is mysterious and that it shows you how little you really know while others project elegance onto it. I am projecting skepticism onto it. And actually that is one of the effects of the drug on me: to imagine the opposite of what I feel. I felt DMT was the most powerful stuff in the universe and that it gave the most extreme and jarring experiences, but after applying the oppositional viewpoint to it, I neutralized it.

You're right, my experience is probably not typical. Most people will not have the affinity I had for the drug and take it as regularly as me. Or who knows? There are probably many out there who are taking stupid amounts of DMT and smoking changa all night long who can relate. Anyway it's important that there's a devil's advocate who claims the whole experience is intense nonsense.

I read Jung. I couldn't connect.

Integration for me means hanging some deep meaning, moral, or message on the DMT experience. I'd be fooling myself if I did that because I don't believe it is a window into my soul or my inner desires.

Great analogy, IMO.

Everyones arguing over a moot point here. Psychedelia to me is ultimately no more or less meaningful than everything else that life presents to me. Some people reject it because its not what they want or need in their life, like joebono. Some people gain much from as they can useful tools to heal or grow.

All in all, there's alot of animosity from both sides of the gap here. If joebono needs to vent, let him. It definitely isn't correct to say that most users of DMT use it to replace other drugs in their life, but thats nothing to get upset over. Having your own opinion is good too, but trying to argue to joebono that its just a reflection of him or whatever isn't going to do anything, he's decided that DMT is detrimental to his life/lifestyle and whether or not he goes back to it or not its no ones place to tell him otherwise.

Anyways, I suggest everyone chill out and watch some Top Gear or something. Alot of you guys were hard on House when he wanted to leave which wasn't appropriate no matter how ridiculous his reasons were. It's all about respect and support.

LOL!! OMG yes!!! There have been so many times when I wish sex drive would just go away. I mean, sometimes it just becomes so intense that it becomes like an annoyance, like a biological necessity. More like needing to expel something from you body. And sometimes the sex has been so good and so powerful that I say to myself, "OK, this is it, it's never going to get better than this. This is the last orgasm of my life. I hope after this my sex drive just goes away and stops distracting me already." But, it always comes back and I'm happy to have another orgasm. And then as soon as the orgasm is done, my consciousness changes instantly. All that passion and desire is just gone and I'm like, "Oh my God... what the hell was I so worked up about?" It doesn't make sense after it happens. Luckily, I learned to stop being ashamed of this, and stop questioning my biological desires, or any desires. I can just allow them to arise and die away when it's appropriate. It's not right or wrong, it just happens whether I personally want it to or not. Questioning it or feeling bad, or regretting won't change what has already happened.

Joebono.

I wish you well.I'm not wishing to come across as the Nexus Mullah here but your experiences remind me of the Quranic perspective of strong drink which refers to all intoxicants ie within them there is some utility for man but their harm does outweigh their benefits.

For most people, the harm becomes evident with injudicious use, be that a function of dosage or frequency.This drug cannot give you or any other user any firm conclusions on the bigger questions ie Ultimate Reality and too attempt to seek this with repeated use could end in a delusional state or simply extreme dissatisfaction with the reality you are experiencing.

I think your comparison to a junkie is incorrect-and Im talking of opiates here.The addict has a love-hate relationship with their poison and is compelled to take it to function, not to achieve a blissful state.The 'bliss' simply comes from quelling the malaise that is withdrawal and provides nothing more beyond this.The junkie is spiritually dead and knows it and he/she doesnt use opiates for a purpose as noble as expanding the mind, for if his drug-of-choice did expand his/her consciousness it would only reveal to them unambiguously what a mess they have made of themselves.The junkie knows he is mess and even this realisation will not stop them from continuing as the bodily need compels them to persist in their folly.

If DMT was a key to gnosis of the Ultimate Reality then surely all users would come to the same conclusions but I dont believe we do.

Good luck mate, maybe a break (permanent or temporary) will allow you to find a perspective that is less disquieting.