Kindest Regards, Tao!
I agree there is a difference between intentional and accidental "poisoning." .....
Unless, and this argument demands acknowledgment of a specific point of view that embraces spiritual communion like the Native American Shaman,.....
In other words, it is possible at least from a shamanic point of view that knowledge of what various natural substances could do and how to properly use them were conveyed via that connection with the underlying spiritual commonality.
First time I ever partook of the psilosybin mushroom known here as the "liberty cap" I was a naive 11 year old boy who had never so much as smoked a cigarette. I had no idea what i was playing with nor did I have any knowledge that what I was taking was considered a recreational drug. We picked and consumed them because we came across a younger boy of about 8 who's mother had taught him to go and pick them for her and he told us they were called "magic mushrooms". As I was used to picking field mushrooms, chanterelles, boletus and puffballs on collecting trips with my dad I knew some were poisonous and some were good. An adult would not send her 8yr old out to pick a bad one, so it was perfectly natural for curiosity to grip me/us and to find out "why" they were called "magic mushrooms".
Our normal little clan had 5 members and in my garden shed on a little primus stove we boiled up our first brew. And became supermen. That first night we ran. And we ran. And we ran. At least 10 miles we ran across the hilltops of the Pentlands, the hills that skirt the southern side of Edinburgh. It was the October holiday and the scout camp at Balerno was full of English Scouts. We raided their tuck shop, stealing everything we could carry, and after we had removed it to a safe distance returned to cut the guy ropes of all their tents howling like wolves as we did so. We were invincible. Our energy was boundless. And we were alive in a new and wonderful world of strange hues and shapes that brought the trees and rocks alive in a way we had never seen.
It was so good we tried again the following night but it was not the same experience. Taking mushrooms, we learned fast, is not something you can do every day. For 2 reasons, Exhaustion and tolerance of the active ingredient. But a week later it was just as good as the first night and by that time we had spread the word and there were not 5 of us but over 30. So in that year we had the first of many of what became to be called the "Mushroom Olympics". When I left home, and the neighbourhood, 6 years later it was a well established and much anticipated annual event.
Where we grew up was between two barracks, holding a garrison between them of several 1000 troops. Aside from "borrowing" the assault courses for our Olympics the relationship with the military was extremely bad. A short time before we first discovered mushrooms the Para's, (exactly the same outfit responsible for the atrocity of "Bloody Sunday" in Belfast), had got away with the murder of 2 of our brothers in the community and were, by our community, held to blame for the brutal rape and murder of two local girls in a case that was recently again in the headlines. This was known as "The Worlds End" murder after the last pub the girls were seen alive in, with soldiers, was the Worlds End.
So a group of some 50 of us all off our heads on mushrooms waited for a local Disco full of troops to wind up at a local pub one Saturday night. The half bricks, pick axe handles and other assorted weaponry was assembled and ready, and we waited round the corner for the inappropriately named pub the "Good Companions" to call time and the soldiers to exit on mass. When they did we attacked. They never knew what hit them. It was a bloodbath. Over a dozen cars were written off and torched. Soldiers lay unconscious and bloody all over the car park. We scored a payback.
As an aside it took the Police over an hour to appear, the nearest Police station was 400 yards down the hill. And that regiment was moved within a few weeks from that barrack.
So, what's my point in this stroll down memory lane? Well it is because I have experiential knowledge of what it is to take hallucinogens in a tribal setting. What we did was no different to what tribes have done since the dawn of the human race. And it was not always a search for "spirit" but either Dutch courage or a military advantage depending on how you wish to define it.
Of course it has and continues to be used for more ethereal purposes too. And back to the point we were discussing all the hallucinogens used by man have the same basic effects. Just the same as all varieties of alcoholic beverage will get you drunk in much the same way with much the effects. So I state again that the spiritual dimension that one finds while high is the same no matter where you go. And I maintain that this is an effect of the drug and not proof of access to a world of spirits. But I can understand, intimately understand, why peoples have always thought that it does.
Not all my trips were Olympic events or berserker courage. Some, the solitary ones were very, what you might call, spiritual. And I particularly enjoyed closing my eyes and engaging in a "dream trip". One of the most noticeable effects of a "correct dosage" of mushrooms was the ability to see the living aura of all things. In a woodland in the dead of a winters night, dark as dark gets, this aura was strong enough to allow me to walk by the light of these auras alone. Later in life I discovered this is how cats see all the time. But again my point is you can reduce it all down to natural explanations that require no spiritual invocation. And when you can do that, no matter where, then it is a powerful case against the concept of a spiritual dimension. I have come to see that no matter which area of spiritual belief is espoused as valid there is always but always a more rational natural explanation. You just have to look for it and its usually obvious.
You raised another point, that of misuse or addictive use of substances. I think the massive incidence of this in modern societies is a direct reflection of social isolation. In smaller tight knit groups this behaviour is neither necessary nor tolerated by the wider group. Loneliness leads to the search for oblivion. Its that simple.
Aww the best
Tao
