I'm a new member here, and I thought I'd formulate a little introduction essay. First, I'd like to say that this forum is absolutely wonderful. I find every facet of it to be even-handed, informative and the community to be surprisingly powerful. The CEL is particularly interesting to me, as I and those close to me have a genuine interest in activism by many means. I personally believe that the illegality of most hallucinogens is ill-founded at best. The United Nations' ruling on psilocin I find to be especially egregious.
I am a musician and have been since my early childhood. My musicianship evolved from my mindless tinkerings on my grandmother's old, out-of-tune piano, and now has come to almost entirely define me as a person. Everything good about my life has to do with music. Every bad trip I've (almost) had has been shoo'd away by the nurturing caress of music. The energy of a music festival; an unamplified human voice ringing through trees; the enrapturing synesthesia experienced by acute listeners, it's all fascinating to me, and it's where I find myself at home.
Psychedelics, to me, have always been the key to self-identification or normalization, if you will, and, paradoxically, the key to self-destruction. This site's expansive knowledge on psychedelic compounds and their properties I find to be DIVINE. Not only does it allow the SAFE use of wonderful, powerful, enlightening compounds, but it breaks the elitism surrounding scholarly journals and such. There are countless articles that, if I had a chemist's access to, I could greatly understand how many of these molecules behave, an important step in full understanding of a molecule and it's synthesis, isolation, extraction, pharmacology, etc. Sadly, many such articles are kept under tight wraps, or cost far more than my mircoscopic budget allows for. The Nexus, as I am now coming to affectionate terms with, is a great way to understand these molecules, their role in society and, as a result, oneself. I'm thrilled to have joined, and I hope this essay leaves as positive an impression as I intend for it to. Thanks, all!
“Through psychedelics we are learning that God is not an idea, God is a lost continent in the human mind.”
-Terence McKenna