Drugs and spirituality

[soma]

Thank you for the welcome. The food we eat, our bodies and the world around us is made of chemicals and I think they can be a bridge to the spiritual, but once that bridge is crossed there is no need to cross it again and again. It means it is time to go on pass the bridge with appreciation that the bridge brought one to a higher path beyond the physical, beyond chemicals, and into the spiritual. There are many people on the spiritual path that crossed the bridge and there are others who took the ferry. Thank God we have so many ways for so many personalities.

[Mathghamhain]

In South America the Indians that drink a tea from the Ayahuasca vine(call by the Incas “the vine of the dead), one Medicine man said it is to show new Medicine Men were they are going. Experienced Medicine man should have no need to take it because they should be able to go there with out the drink.

Most Native American Spiritual exercises are awareness exercises, to think that they have to take drugs to be spiritual to me is like a cousin of mine that was into reading “Carlos Castaneda” & believed that when he got stoned he was being Spiritual.

As for Peyote it is brewed as a tea to & I found this from a NA forum & had a link to the McLean hospital but I can not put links on just yet.

Study Finds No Psychological or Cognitive Deficits among Native Americans Who Use Peyote Regularly in Religious Settings

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
November 04, 2005

Belmont, MA - Native Americans who use the hallucinogen peyote regularly in connection with religious ceremonies show no evidence of brain damage or psychological problems, report researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital.

In fact, members of the Navajo tribe who regularly use peyote actually scored significantly better on several measures of overall mental health than did subjects from the same tribe who were not members of the religious group and did not use the hallucinogen, according to a paper published in the Nov. 4 issue of Biological Psychiatry.

"We found no evidence that these Native Americans had residual neurocognitive problems. Despite lifelong participation in the peyote church, they performed just as well on mental tests as those who had never used peyote,'' said the study's first author John Halpern, MD, of McLean Hospital's Biological Psychiatry Laboratory. The study was funded, in part, by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Beyond that, the peyote users scored better on several measures of the Rand Mental Health Inventory (RMHI), a test used to diagnose psychological problems and determine overall mental health, he said. Among the RMHI scales are measures of anxiety, depression, loss of behavioral or emotional control, and psychological distress. Halpern emphasized that the better scores among peyote users were not necessarily attributable to the use of peyote itself, but more likely due to the social and psychological benefits of being members of the Native American Church community.

The study, which took five years to complete, looked at 61 members of the Native American Church (NAC), who regularly used the hallucinogenic cactus and had each ingested it at least 100 times as part of their religion. They were compared on a battery of tests with 79 Navajos who reported minimal use of peyote, and 36 tribe members who had past problems with alcohol but who were now sober.

The former alcohol users scored significantly worse, compared to the other two groups, on every scale of the mental health test and on two tests that looked at memory.

"Within the peyote group, total lifetime peyote use was not significantly associated with neuropsychological performance," concluded the paper. "We found no evidence of psychological or cognitive deficits among Native Americans using peyote regularly in a religious setting.''

The paper warned, however, that the conclusions should not be generalized to those who use hallucinogenic drugs in illicit settings. There are 300,000 Native Americans who regularly use peyote as a religious sacrament and are allowed to do so by law.

"This study applies only to Native Americans in this church," said Harrison G. Pope, Jr., MD, director of McLean's Biological Psychiatry Laboratory and senior author of the study. "From our data, we cannot say what the effects of peyote might be in any other group."

McLean Hospital, consistently ranked the nation's top psychiatric hospital by U.S. News & World Report, is an affiliate of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of Partners HealthCare.

[17th Angel]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

Can spritual experiences through drug use be regarded as objectively real?

Go take some DMT... Then come back here and ask that question again.....

[earl]

Originally Posted by 17th Angel

Go take some DMT... Then come back here and ask that question again.....

Can't say I ever have-or any other psychedelic for that matter. But as to DMT-ever read the book by a psychiatrist by the name of Rick Strassman? His 1 and only book published was re to his research with the drug & associated speculation. I read the thing. Here's the guy's website:

Rick Strassman

have a good one, earl

[earl]

I'd read through the guy's website a while back and it escaped my attention then. However, I just noticed an interesting coincidence in a statement he makes here:
Rick Strassman

as re his view that the fetus releases natural DMT 49 days after conception thereby marking the entry of the spirit into the form as in traditional Buddhist belief it was thought that the mindstream took 49 days to traverse the post-death bardo realms to enter into another "birth." Then again the guy had long studied Buddhism. earl

[17th Angel]

Interesting site.... DMT- Spiritual molecule lol, that isn't even close :\ DMT is just... Perfect. no wonder they say "god lives within you..." Yeah he sure does, and he calls himself Dimethltryptamine..... *bows humbly*