Understanding Psychedelic Experience

By Robert E. Leihy

I believe that the greatest long-term benefit of psychedelic experience is that it can help to reduce mental conflict to the point where calmness, relaxation, and clear thinking can prevail more fully in ones life. Being able to relax quickly and deeply at will for as long a period as desired is a great mental and physical benefit in this turbulent and uncertain world. Inner emotional and philosophical conflicts can interfere with deep relaxation and clear thought, but psychedelic experience can provide the opportunity to gradually work on resolving these issues and finding satisfactory answers and resolutions to them at deep intuitive levels. If nothing else, even short periods of deep relaxation and peace of mind during the day can be a healthy escape from stress. It is possible to remain the stationary axle to the turning wheel of destiny even when circumstances become less than pleasant.

I believe that psychedelic experience is a learning experience. Whether the inner teacher is considered as spiritual or a mental process or both or neither, new ways of looking at things are somehow provided that can be later tested and evaluated in daily life. The harder lessons take longer to learn and to require more repetitions

To the extent that the mind can be cleared of unnecessary residual tension and conflict, direct perception can be experienced. The world can become a more vivid, significant, and interesting place, and its miraculous quality can be better appreciated.

I consider that psychedelic drugs, used with reasonable care, are quite safe and healthy when the cautions that I have mentioned are considered. Only one of my more than two hundred clients experienced any significant aftermath after taking a high dose (500 micrograms) of LSD, but she was a patient in a mental hospital who had a history of similar episodes prior to her LSD experience.

I believe that psychedelic experience could very well be of benefit for psychotherapeutic purposes, but I think that pinning too much hope on a single session is much too optimistic. One needs to learn to use the experience to his own advantage. In addition, I am quite sure that it would be of value for the psychotherapist to be personally familiar with the spiritual and cosmic concepts that the experience has to offer. I am guessing that a well-motivated patient who could choose his or her own dosage and the time interval between sessions would benefit the most. I am also guessing that either a disturbed or a healthy person could became quite familiar the experience and that he could benefit from and enjoy occasional self-exploration sessions with low or moderate doses without needing any supervision.

For some people, the low dose experience is a satisfying alternative to the more dangerous and addictive drugs used for recreation. A rock concert could be as diverting as sitting in a nightclub. A question still remains as to the extent to which the right dosages taken at the right time could gradually replace the need for alcohol. It would be interesting to give a group of people who were strongly attracted to alcohol or some other recreational drug access to quality controlled self-administered doses of a psychedelic drug and to see the extent to which the one could replace the other. The experiences are quite different, but they have in common the fact that they are both indeed altered states of consciousness. They are both highs but one is considerably safer than the others. I predict that there would be some success in such an endeavor and that having an experienced person to act as an ally during the transition would be of great help.

The moderate dose stimulates meditation, relaxation, self-exploration, and creativity. The high dose permits exploration of abstract and religious concepts as well as permitting possible resolutions of emotional, psychological, and philosophical conflicts on deep intuitive levels. At all levels t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456872533

Robert E. Leihy

The author graduated from Purdue and the Johns Hopkins universities. He has had many years of formal scientific research experience as well as informal personal experience with both natural and synthetic psychedelic drugs. He has carefully and thoroughly explored the experience from both the psychological and the spiritual perspectives. This book summarizes his observations and conclusions regarding the benefits and the safety of the psychedelic experience including the experience provided by occasional sessions with mild legal marijuana. It also provides considerable useful structure for the experience itself and explains how it can be harnessed to work toward specific personal goals.

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Copyright © 2011 by Robert E. Leihy.

ISBN:   Ebook   978-1-4568-7253-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

Overview

The Low Dose Experience

The Moderate Dose Experience.

The High Dose Experience

The Religious Experience

Other Cosmic Experiences

Summary

This book is dedicated to Dr. Stanislav Grof, my mentor.

Overview

This essay is careful not to advocate the use of psychedelic drugs but instead to describe their effects, possible uses, and dangers in some detail. After having been involved in psychedelic drug research for many years, both professionally as a psychotherapist and also casually as an explorer, I feel that I am at least somewhat qualified to make some observations regarding the nature, uses, and benefits of these experiences for both individuals and for society. I have had the privilege of acting as ground control for well over two hundred people experiencing high dose LSD sessions: normal volunteers, mental patients, and alcoholics. Over the years I have also personally explored these realms of consciousness rather thoroughly and carefully within myself with different natural and synthetic psychedelic drugs and at different dosage levels.

In the interest of presenting a reasonably complete overall view of the topic of the psychedelic experience, several general areas are considered to a somewhat shallow level of depth. This is not to belittle their significance but to at least reveal them as possible areas for further exploration.

Of course, many people have little interest in such experience, and the desire for any kind of artificial stimulation varies considerably from person to person and from time to time. In any case, it is still nice to know a little more about these drugs and their effects, possible benefits, and dangers. This is especially true since cannabis, which I consider as very fortunately being a gentle, safe, and benevolent psychedelic, is currently becoming more and more a part of our culture. I agree with many others that psychedelics, assuming purity and self-administered well-controlled doses, are probably among the safest of intoxicants. In fact, intoxicants is not exactly the right name for them since they have no toxic qualities whatsoever. There are no discernable health problems with them except perhaps when the drug is ingested by eating a plant with psychedelic properties. The peyote cactus and the ipomea purpurea morning glory seeds, for instance, can cause upset stomachs.

As with any psychoactive drug, there is considerable difference between low dose, moderate dose, and high dose experiences, so they will be discussed separately.

It is an extra bonus when a low dose recreational intoxicant is useful, healthy, and non-addicting. One does not have to feel quite so guilty while enjoying a little of it.

Besides being psychedelic, cannabis has been found to reduce symptoms such as headaches, nausea, depression, anxiety, asthma, pain, and the side effects of chemotherapy during the experience. I can vouch for the fact that it can kill moderate pain quite effectively. There is some sketchy data suggesting that it does not do much to relieve cramped muscles, at least during the experience. Synthetic cannabis is used legally as a medicine in a number of territories, including Canada, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Israel, Italy, Finland, and Portugal. What is not known is whether other psychedelic drugs such as LSD, mescaline, or psilocybin would have the same immediate medicinal effect. I believe that used properly and with the right intent psychedelic experiences can help with long-term stress reduction and peace of mind, so it is possible that any psychedelic drug could have medical benefits. The medical benefits of marijuana many have been noticed first because it is available and popular and is often used more than once. The previous assumption that one or two high-dose psychedelic experiences would result in lasting significant medical or psychological benefits is probably too optimistic. I am quite sure that lower doses of any psychedelic drug taken on an as-useful basis under the right conditions might prove more effective.

Understanding psychedelic experience is easier when a certain reasonable assumption is made. The drugs seem to stimulate an independent part of the brain that produces a flow of a special quality of intuitive, creative, and artistic mental material to consciousness. An inner second mind starts to present thoughts, feelings in the body, and mental images.

This feature is not quite so apparent during a low-dose experience. It starts out with the impression that one is simply mentally talking to himself. The inner voice, regardless of whether it takes the form of the first or the second party in the inner dialog, becomes a little slower, more definite, and seems to carry more authority. The mad monkey of a chattering mind starts to think with more distinct and more definite thoughts. As will be discussed later, the second party of the inner dialog can become quite vivid with higher doses. The model that I like to use is that as the intuitive material of the stimulated mind approaches consciousness, it is automatically translated by the rational mind into words, images, or creative behavior in the outside world. By paying close attention, we can notice that even in normal daily consciousness invisible flash understandings pop to mind first and that they are then quickly converted into realities.

With high doses the spontaneous material flows like an upwelling fountain. It is independent from that of the normal verbal rational thought processes and normal mental imagery. In other words, it comes from a source outside of our personal ego and sense of self while normal rational thought still continues to function nicely. It comes from somewhere else in the brain just like the sudden intuitive insights, understandings, and new ways of looking at things that we sometimes experience in daily life. Although this material can take on a wide variety of qualities, it is helpful to conceptualize that it simply emerges from a single hidden inner source. An appropriate name for this hypothetical inner source could be the spontaneous thought generator since it acts independently and at its own volition. It explains why extremely creative people sometimes say that they are only the messengers of what they create. The creative material appears in their minds all by itself. It could also be conceptualized as the source of intuitive thought, intuition being defined as it is in the dictionary: instinctive knowing without the use of rational processes. The intuitive mind and the rational mind can certainly work together, but one or the other can dominate from person to person and from time to time. The higher the dosage of a psychedelic drug, the more the intuitive mind dominates.

The hypothetical spontaneous thought generator may or may not correlate with activity in specific regions of the brain, but it is very clear that spontaneous mental material does indeed pour out from some inner source when moderate or high doses of psychedelic drugs are taken. Perhaps the different qualities of spontaneous thought such as visual imagery, verbal thoughts, enhanced perception, music, emotions, insights, etc. come