US Supreme Court approves DMT for religious use

[robertdreed]

The Native American Church used to use peyote every Sunday. I'm not sure that they still endorse that level of use. Personally, I don't think it's necessary to use peyote that frequently in order to obtain spiritual benefit. But from what I've read, the first couple of generations of peyotists apparently managed to use it 50+ times a year without suffering adverse effects within their communities. <br><br>One of the rules of the Church is abstention from alcohol. <br><br>I haven't heard much from the NAC lately...should probably look them up on the Internet. With the rise in the criminal drug subcultures, I wouldn't be surprised if they were having difficulties with their youth getting introduced to other substances before their first peyote experience. That would tend to confuse the experience quite a bit, I would think.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>

[havanagila]

RDR, What is "spiritual benefit"?<br>--<br>I am reading SOME of the materials on the Jungian shaddow, and I read some of the SHanon (the guy from Israel) on hAyasoca, and I am sorry to say that is sounds well within a subjective "trip" experience, or indeed a religious one ("I had an epiphany" so everyone has to follow me).<br>-<br>Spiritual subjective (and elitist, in the sense of "who has money and time these days to indulge in JUngian analysis or shamanic soul searches) experiences are not the kind of data I can relate to. The more common effect of drug use is people who do not seem so enlightened or busy in spiritual quests but lie half dead in the gutters. And those who push the drugs are no Jungian types but criminals who seek profits at all costs. I didn't yet see anything here that changes my opinion. <br><br>Drugs for controlled medical use are not illegal, people (very rich ones) went to Switzerland for LSD psych treatments for years, and some received it here by physicians. I don't remember there were any criminal proceedings about it. But the two cases I know of (one, a famous holocaust survivor and writer, K.A.tzetnik (dinur), wrote a book on it; and the other, a famous poet here, Yona Vollach. They both felt they had strong personal discoveries, but they didnt' get any better, in terms of their mental health) - didn't recommend LSD for public use, and I think all in all they were not too sure it helped them at all. <br><br>Anyway, this is not the point, cause there is a separate proceeding for prescription drugs. <br><br> <p></p><i></i>

[robertdreed]

hava, I don't think "spiritual benefit" is easily defined, much less quantified objectively. That pretty much only leaves subjective experience. And I think it's awfully presumptuous to tell someone who declares they've had a transcendent spiritual experience that they haven't had one, unless they show clear signs of deterioration that indicate self-deception. Even then, it's a presumptuous call to make from outside, because you're insisting that you know what would have happened to someones life path if they'd made the choices that you approve of instead of going with their own decisions. <br><br>You've acknowledged your limited background in terms of studying psychedelics and their personal and cultural effects. Why not at least study the literature on them some more, and become more knowledgable? <br><br>The Native American Church is a phenomenon totally outside of your purview. If I were you, I'd study their history before forming any conclusions about what they are and aren't about. <br><br>Furthermore, I don't follow the argument that a practice is somehow spiritually bankrupt simply because rich people exhibit a special fondness for it. The scholarly seminars on psychedelics that take place in various places around the world do cost money, but in the context of an average vacation, they aren't by any means exorbitant. They certainly don't coast any more than an average Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or a trip to the Daytona 500 race in Florida. And those are fairly commonplace recreations. Furthermore, I happen to know that when conferences on psychedelic drugs take place in stateside locations like Berkeley and Santa Cruz, it's easy just to hang around the entrances and sneak in for free ;^) The actual fact of the matter is that these conferences are calling out for serious students, as opposed to junkies and street drug losers. The actual currency of such gatherings isn't money, it's intelligence, self-discipline, diligence, scholarly achievement. But the practices are still overwhelmingly illegal, and that attenuates the value of what is being discussed, since it isn't allowed any validation in the culture at large, except in certain exceptional cases- like the Native American Church, for example. That's one of the reasons that I find the Supreme Court decision to be very encouraging, a real victory for personal, cultural, and religious freedom. And I reject the idea that it's all a commercial scam. There's no market monopoly on the delivery of the experience, and there's no indication that there's going to be a commercial market in hoasca, beyond the negligible niche market that already exists legally- a few mail-order herb shops. <p></p><i></i>

[LoganSquare]

From the Newsletter of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies<br>MAPS - Volume 8 Number 3 Autumn 1998 - pp. 51-52<br><br>Shivitti: A Vision<br><br><br>Preface to the new edition<br>by Claudio Naranjo, M.D.<br><br>Imprisoned in Auschwitz for two years, having eluded death by the narrowest of margins, the man known as Ka-tzetnik 135633 survived the Holocaust to discover that survival alone would not end his torment. For over 30 years, through nightly dreams of terrifying intensity, the writer remained captive to the horrors of Auschwitz. Finally in 1976 he sought help from Professor Jan Bastiaans, the Dutch psychiatrist who first recognized Concentration Camp Syndrome and successfully treated camp survivors with a therapy involving doses of LSD. Shivitti is a memoir of that experience. MAPS has reprinted the Preface to the new edition of Shivitti with permission from the publisher.<br><br><br><br>I consider it a great privilege that Mr. De- Nur has asked me to write this preface to his very remarkable book, and take pleasure in feeling that I am the right person for it. I not only know but feel great regard for the three persons involved in his narrative: De-Nur himself, his wife Eliyah (here Nike), and my colleague Dr. Bastiaans. Rather than commenting any further on a book that speaks for itself, I want to end this preface with some reflection on the deliberately ignored usefulness of LSD and other psychedelics in psychotherapy.<br><br>Having been one of the very few (along with Dr. Bastiaans and Dr. Grof) privileged to receive institutional support for clinical research in this field, I had occasion to draw the world's attention in the sixties to the extraordinary potential of substances that I then proposed to call feeling enhancers (now rebaptized empathogens) and fantasy enhancers (or oneirophrenics). Having had the opportunity to ascertain that these constituted something akin to psychological lubricants that make it possible to offer therapeutic help to some beyond the possibility of being reached effectively, I have naturally been sorry for the unfortunate way in which politics has interfered with the precious healing potential of psychedelics in psychotherapy. With the enlightened exception of the Netherlands and Switzerland, psychedelics are regarded today as dangerous drugs without any usefulness, and thus rendered useless through prohibition. I cannot help but feel that in times of global crisis when it becomes clear that our very survival is endangered by our obsolete patterns of relationship to self and others, and when our highest hope lies in the human factor, we allow ourselves to scorn such a powerful and timely therapeutic resource! It is true that some individuals are addiction prone and that addiction is a sizeable social problem in our midst; yet it is no less true that addiction arises from improper drug use, and improper drug use is fostered by a social situation in which the constructive potential of drugs is thwarted.<br><br>I hope that the time comes when LSD and other therapeutically useful substances can be controlled (like morphine and the amphetamines) and yet put to good use by experts, and when schools arise for the transmission of expertise from the living few to a new generation of practitioners. Because of this I hope that this book not only conveys De-Nur's spiritual accomplishment and human understanding, but also speeds up the recognition of a form of psychotherapy that could be helping many if it were not for a questionable prohibitionism that is part of an excessively tough minded and puritanical Establishment. I consider this prohibitionism part of a truly evil aspect of our society, and I do not see great difference between the mind-set of those who persecuted Jews at the time of World War II and that of those who invoke morality to wage today's "war on drugs." Today, as ever, the foremost characteristic of the Adversary is that of pointing away from himself to say "there is the Devil!"<br><br>¿1998 Gateways Books <p></p><i></i>

[havanagila]

NIce find, thanks. That's what I was referring to. I read Katzentik's own book following the treatment, its a booklet in hebrew called "ADEMA". IT follows the "trips" he had with the LSD and attempts at a "spiritual" explanation of auschwitz, namely, god, devil, ET's and what not, its certainly an LSD type vision, of biblical dimensions. THe name of the book is a new word, that came to him during the trips, it is MAN (ADAM) with the addition of AYIN (a letter) and together it is man-tear (as in tears of crying). Again, it is totally subjective, and its alright if it satisfied him with the "answer" to why this happened to him (Shoa). There was a tiny little thing there that I thought was MORE revealing. It turned out he was in denial, for YEARS, that his sister was there with him, and was used as a whore by the camp's staff, and he used to see it and could do nothing, or didn't do enough (in his heart's memory) and this was probably something that was eating him away, during the years that followed. This sounds more plausible, and perhaps it took LSD to get the repressed memories to come out and be healed. <br><br>---<br>RDR -"limited background in terms of studying psychedelics and their personal and cultural effects " - i love it ! <br><br>ANyway, no, I am not going to dedicate my life now to studying drugs as in personal experiences. But, I didn't say that controlled use with proper safeguards is bad, and in fact as you are telling me now, it is happening. This is a case of "prosecutorial/police discretion". These things should not be prosecuted. If the NM cult is "for real", the police should have stayed off, after all, they never appear to crime scenes, murder and rape, and why do they have time for this relatively un-harmful group ? <br><br>I do always suspect that "spiritual practices" reserved for the very rich, are bogus, or worse, they are there to keep the slavery system going, under false spiritual explanations, or distract people from sane, organized political resistance to social injustices. <br><br>I don't challenge your experience, I am just saying it cannot form a basis for social policies that apply to all people, some of whome are "drug challenged" :-0 or worse.<br> <p></p><i></i>

[LoganSquare]

....<br>Sainto Daime essentially takes the ancient native Amazonian ayahuasca ritual and integrates it into a Catholic context. Its founder, Raimundo Irineu, claims that once, during an ayahuasca vision, the Virgin Mary appeared and instructed him to take the ayahuasca experience back to his own tradition. Likewise, Judeo Daime's founder, a Dutch Israeli (who, due to the questionable status of ayahuasca in Israel*, has asked me to withhold his name for the time being, and as such will heretofore be referred to as JDF) had a similar experience during his avodah (Hebrew for "work") with Santo Daime in Amsterdam. JDF has thus has taken the Sainto Daime ritual, removed all references to Jesus and Mary, and is now attempting to integrate it into a Jewish ritual context....<br><br>from Jewish Ritual on the Edge: Deconstructing the Daime Shabbat<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.orthodoxanarchist.com/2005/12/jewish-ritual-on-edge-deconstructing_08.php">www.orthodoxanarchist.com...ing_08.php</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>