The risk increases the more one has to loose that one values. We are making some headway but it's slow. It's nothing like what's going on with marijuana.

Speaking for life in USA it goes kind of like this:

Famous performer admits drug use: Expected

Famous politician admits drug use: Better be in his/her DEEP past and regretted or at least no longer continued if they wish to continue to have a career.

Highly placed scientist: Frowned upon, seen as affecting so-called objectivity, endangers funding, placement and career, especially if admitted as current.

Highly placed social commentator: Depends on who they are, their style and where they are on the political spectrum. It's a direct correlation between amount of real power or influence and saying one has not or currently does not use drugs.

Someone with an Executive Job: Job could be lost if the Board or other Executives find out about it.

Someone with a Worker Bee Job: Depends on who they work for. If use is admitted as ongoing current, even their job is at risk.

A Student on Scholarship or Loan: Funding could easily disappear as could school placement if current use is admitted.

An Unemployed and Seemingly Unemployeable Crazy Cat Lady that No One Listens To: Feel free to do and say whatever you want within limits of discretion.



It relates to how much society says you have to loose. Society says if you have a great job or are in a great education path with funding that you have a lot to loose. You might say so too.


I have NOT even mentioned legal ramifications and don't need to. The propagandists have done such a GREAT job for so many DECADES that the cops don't need us for this - our co-workers, co-students, parents, husbands/wives, funding powers, supervisors and bosses, our social groups, our religious groups, our friends and neighbors will be happy to take care of it for them.


Coming out of the closet is as dangerous in this context as it is in others. Others include things like non-majority sexual practices, non-belief in any religion, desire to live in families consisting of more than two parents, speaking up for your culture and beliefs if you are a racial minority, speaking up against BS if big blustery men who have more strength than you rule the room and you choose to speak up. The list goes on and on and ON. Culture is NOT your friend as McKenna said many times. And as Arthur C. Clarke pointed out, we are a far ways away from Childhood's End.

If you are almost anyone on this site or in the news you have a LOT to loose, then you risk a lot.

As a dirt poor, unemployable, disfigured, woman, living in a very liberal and diverse neighborhood in a super liberal town with a husband who supports me, I have very little to loose. Basically just my physical freedom and comforts and access to people and technology. And the respect and love of older relatives - I STILL to this day have not been able to tell my father and step mother that I use anything else other than banisteripsis caapi brews. Even that feels like a lot.



One awesome way to do it as many someones here well knows, is to sublimate it into media. Write about it, paint it, compose music, etc.


Yeah, so unless you can sublimate it into a socially/culturally acceptable activity, then the risk relates 1:1 to how much you think you have to loose imo.

Let us not forget that it was Jefferson who said something like "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Pandora, quite spot-on.

Decades ago during my psychedelic awakening I couldn't stop talking about it. To this day you can still dig up old magazine articles with me talking freely about shrooms. I didn't feel like I had much to lose at the time, although I suppose I did; but my excitement about the topic overpowered my fears and, possibly, my common sense. So your comments about that 1:1 ratio... How much do you have to lose? That's really what it boils down to. Now, being a father changes the whole picture in every way possible. Incarceration would suck for me but the thought of not being here for my daughter is too painful to bear. So I've really toned down the rhetoric a lot. I also don't keep the kind of diverse stash around the house that I did back in the day.

I've always been impressed by how Alex and Allyson Grey speak so openly about the subject. They did this through the critical early days of parenthood too. And so far, so good- no trouble from authorities, no problems crossing borders. They give me hope that my past indiscretions won't haunt me later on. But nonetheless I've been keeping it a subject that I only discuss privately. Last spring I was giving a lecture to a pretty big crowd and one of the audience members just straight-up asked me my opinion on psychedelics. In my profession, my dabblings are no big secret... But I suddenly found myself bathed in sweat. All I could say was, I'd be happy to talk about this privately.

Being involved with the Nexus has also made me more cautious out in the real world, possibly because of the strong emphasis on clear thinking and security.

I think the plan of sublimating psychedelic ideas and images into our culture is a great plan. We are already doing it, let's keep it up.

This is the kind of reaction that I wanted to rid myself of. I was tired of the fear, of the worry, of the what if's and could be's. One day I simply promised myself I wasn't going to allow the fear to take hold any more.

I suppose it does come down to how much you have to lose. My daughter is a lot older now and a lot more independent. We don't live in the same household. Going to prison would mean that I couldn't spend time with her in the same way I do now, but I would hope she would at least understand that what I was incarcerated for didn't mean I was a bad person. Just that I found some relief and respite from these substances. That the authorities are more to blame than I am in a sense, because not everyone fits into their rigid, unflinching system. That I do not hurt anyone by imbibing these medicines, as that is essentially what they are for someone like me.

As for Alex and Allyson I think the situation may be viewed in a different light simply because of their profession. Artists seem to almost be expected to be interested in visionary states that these substances bring about. Musicians as well. It's culturally acceptable for them to not only do it, but to speak fairly openly about it.

Im in my final year at university in england, and we had to give a 10 min presentation, more or less about were our work comes from and were its going. Needless to say i couldn't talk honestly without mentioning the psychedelic experience, and being that its my last year and i want to do well i felt i needed to be honest to have any passion behind what i was saying. I spoke fairly openly (though with little detail) about my early interest in psychedelic drugs and their continuing influence on my work.

It was something of a joke for the tutors. Not a serious crime, or a problem, but something to be giggled at and ignored. I think thats were we are as a whole really. sure the media like to stir up a storm over the latest designer drug every now and then but thats just to sell stories really, to create drama. I think the real general impression of psychedelics in the collective is one of simple amusement, something to maybe make a bad joke at and then move on to more serious matters. Its an unplanned yet potent way to make these tools impotent.

In the 60's we had nixon calling Leary the most dangerous man in america, and the papers creating mass hysteria about the youth of the day experimenting with LSD. but what did it do? i think it vilified that there was something there, something potent happening. To take a proper stab at the counterculture, it is much more effective to simply undermine the transformative power of psychedelic drugs, to dismiss their users as crackpot old hippies.

and what has this mentality done? In my view it has turned these tools into yet another consumer product. there is very little understanding about how to use psychedelic drugs, or how powerful they can be at changing people, often for the better. In undermining them to something trivial, i think a lot of young people end up thinking they are just another way to get messed up and have some fun. We have a generation that are perhaps too cynical to be open to lessons like duality or ego death, and I really think its a reflection of our communal agreement that psychedelic drugs are just some passed failed souvenir of a washed up generation of would-be radials

I'v gone off on a tangent.. back tot he topic, i think the law is still ridiculously heavy on drug trade and use, but i think in the wider social context, we are doing worse than condemning it, we are marginalising it

On the subject...

I see a lot of people posting their personal artwork on the nexus.

If this art was ever displayed elsewhere, then you've outed yourself.

Apparently a lot of us here just aint stressing it.