"Terences pivotal, existential crisis came abruptly, some time in 88 or 89. Everything that happened after that event was fallout. I dont know exactly when it happened, and I dont know exactly what happened; I am piecing it together from what Kat has told me, and she has volunteered few details, and I am reluctant to probe.It happened when they were living for a time on the big island, and it was a mushroom trip they shared that was absolutely terrifying for Terence. It was terrifying because, for some reason, the mushroom turned on him. The gentle, wise, humorous mushroom spirit that he had come to know and trust as an ally and teacher ripped back the facade to reveal an abyss of utter existential despair. Terence kept saying, so Kat told me, that it was "a lack of all meaning, a lack of all meaning." And this induced panic in Terence, and probably, I speculate, a feeling he was going mad. He couldnt deal with it. Kats efforts to reassure him were fruitless. After that experience, he never again took mushrooms, and he took other psychedelics, such as DMT and ayahuasca, only on rare occasions and with great reluctance.Whatever the specific content of the psychedelic experience might have been that triggered the cognitive collapse of Terences worldview and precipitated his existential crisis, what was most remarkable was that he did not see it coming."
Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary mental states and a perceived "expansion of consciousness". Also referred to as classic hallucinogens or serotonergic hallucinogens, the term psychedelic is sometimes used more broadly to include various other types of hallucinogens as well, such as those which are atypical or adjacent to psychedeli
Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary mental states and a perceived "expansion of consciousness". Also referred to as classic hallucinogens or serotonergic hallucinogens, the term psychedelic is sometimes used more broadly to include various other types of hallucinogens as well, such as those which are atypical or adjacent to psychedeli
View all quotes by Psychedelics"If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with his eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen."
"Psychotropics have never been enjoyable to me, ever. … Every single one of them was a challenge in its own way. Some would make you sleepy, some would make you nervous, some would make you lethargic, some would absolutely impair your ability to walk and talk. Everything has its own little quirks, and none of them made me feel good. I like being clear, sober-minded, and aware and conscious. That is my favorite state. And the only reason I ever did any of those substances was to get a glimpse of those spaces that are not normally available in sober, normal consciousness."
"I came of age at a magical time. … Our consciousness was raised by Zen, and also by LSD. … Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that theres another side to the coin, and you cant remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could."
"The hope that LSD-inspired mental states might ever be domesticated for science presupposes that there are certain epistemically privileged sorts of awareness. … Empirical research suggests this optimism is at best naïve. … Shuffling around syntactic tokens in our everyday mental ghetto may amount to futile shadow-chasing. So ones sense of understanding the LSD story may be illusory. The raw feels and the semantic primitives are lacking."
"The "war on drugs" has been lost and should never have been waged. I can think of no right more fundamental than the right to peacefully steward the contents of ones own consciousness. The fact that we pointlessly ruin the lives of nonviolent drug users by incarcerating them, at enormous expense, constitutes one of the great moral failures of our time."
"I have taken ayahuasca, magic mushrooms and LSD. Before I took them, I was very excited about the idea of taking them. Now that I have taken them, I am a lot more cautious."