“ Life is too short to be small. ” - Benjamin Disraeli

                                                 Psychedelics: Sam Harris/Roland Griffiths conversation

     "There isn't any formula or method.  You learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done."  Aldous Huxley

Sam Harris is ... Roland Griffiths is ...

Conversation link tweeted on 21st November ... 122.39 ...

 

35 min in ... MDMA/ecstasy ... yes does have a dopaminergic effect and can produce dependence?

Around 70 minutes indiscuss low dose psilocybin and meditation practice.

Around 75 minutes in ... talking about survey of 'meeting other beigns; (machine elves .. actually most commonly identified as intelligent, conscious, and well-meaning ... Roland regrets that didn't inclued MEQ too ... as it seems to overlap with God encournter survey ...

 

Addendum from 103 minutes in ... 'drugs & the meaning of life' chapter/blog/etc ... but this his first psychedelic trip for over 25 years ... 5gm of dried mushrooms (McKenna's 'heroic dose') can contain maybe .5-2% psilocybin ... maybe 25 to 100mg???  Interestingly Zamnesia's Mushroom Dosage Calculator equates 1gm of dried mushrooms to about 5gm of fresh truffles ... so 5gm of dried mushrooms is equivalent to about 25gm of fresh truffles?

"Bad trips aside, one wants to have good trips that lead to genuinely transformational insights.  As Roland pointed out in his conversation, many people have good experiences that don't change their lives very much ... so you need to approach the use of these tools seriously ... the potential of these drugs to help people is so great, even people who are otherwise well, it would be a tragedy if we lost this moment again."

111 "You are wading into a roiling ocean of meaning with the proverbial thimble"

112.30 ... reach into your right pocket with your left hand and draw out the Andromeda galaxy ...

113.30 ... how does mindfulness relate to this ... the important point is on 4 month follow-up ... on all these measures the psilocybin group looks nothing like the control ..

I definitely think my meditation experience helped me here ... but during the peak of the experience ... mindfulness seems to me like the discovery of fire ... eventually you can produce it on demand ... but 5gm of mushrooms is like being hurled into the sun ... the utter erasure of anything human about your mind ... resistance here is futile and very painful ...