On the New Interest in Hallucinogens aka "Psychedelics"

There's been much in the news these days about the purported therapeutic uses of hallucinogens, sometimes called "psychedelics".   Some stories report about the psychological benefits of macrodosing.  Other reports concern the benefits of microdosing.  

Consider all the recent stories of folks who are either troubled or curious and who make a pilgrimage to South America and elsewhere to be administered a strong dose of Ayahuasca.  The psychedelic 1960s are seemingly making a comeback.

With reference to the post below, I remember having an online conversation with Addison Hart a few years ago about hallucinogens.  If I remember correctly, and I invite Mr. Hart to correct me if my memory is defective, he defended the position that hallucinogenic experience is true spiritual experience, whereas I argued that it's not only a matter of mere altered brain chemistry which is akin to psychotic and schizophrenic episodes, but that the use of hallucinogenics is connected with occult practices, and that there is accordingly nothing genuinely Christian about it.  (I believed Addison to be a Christian at the time.)  It is interesting that the Greek word for "sorcery" as used in the Bible is φαρμακεία (pharmakeia), and the Book of Revelation tells us that one of the reasons for God's judgment against unredeemed humanity is that they did not repent of their φαρμακεία.

Mr. Hart may assume I know nothing about this experientially.  If so he couldn't be more wrong.  I am an ex-hippie and "did" almost the whole panoply of drugs available back in the late 60s and early 70s, including the hallucinogens LSD, Mescaline (via peyote buttons), and even the chemicals in Morning Glory seeds (which I think was some combination of an LSD-like chemical and strychnine, a poison that is also present in peyote buttons).

My friends and I voraciously made our way through the the series of books written and published by one Carlos Castañeda, which detail his encounters with a Native American brujo named Don Juan Matus, who revolutionized Castañeda's life through a discipline of teaching and administration of various natural hallucinogens.  

One day a friend and I set off for Tucson, Arizona to use peyote buttons procured by one of our friends at the University of Arizona.  We bought a couple of large bags of them to take back to California to use and sell.

We spent one night after consuming the cacti hallucinating in the Saguaro National Park, after violently puking because of the natural strychnine warts in those cacti that we weren't told to dig out before we consumed the cacti.

Now, the Mescaline experience I had there in that desert was unlike anything else I had previously experienced with LSD.  I truly had a "Don Juan Matus" experience.

But it wasn't a good experience.  I saw the eyes of entities there out in the desert that were truly demonic.  I came to see later what Jesus meant when he said that evil spirits gravitate to "dry land", and why it was in the desert that Satan tempted him.

Anyway, we brought the bags back to California, and I'm telling you, I discerned this heavy, dark presence over us until the last peyote button was gone.  True story.  But then again, the Lord was working mightily with me at the time.  I would surrender to Christ a year or so later.   Decades later I would become a priest in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

So the long and the short of it is this:  Addison Hart, if he truly believes that the use of hallucinogens puts in greater touch with the "divine" somehow or the other, is seriously deluded, which spiritual delusion probably carries over to other issues.

I know a young Orthodox man who argues similarly that chemically-induced experiences are true and valuable spiritual experiences.  I can't name him here, but please pray for him.  And Addison too.

Comments

[Stephen]

Will pray for your friends.

[The Embryo Parson]

Thanks.