I can recommend a book called "The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience" for a more comprehensive look at some of the possibilities. Also, see the trip reports on erowid.org.

Psychedelics may be best for people who are naturally inquisitive, like seeing things from novel perspectives and walking in other people's shoes, are comfortable with encountering material from their subconscious, and who enjoy questioning themselves and the world around them.

People who are very set in their ways and who think they've got the world figured out might be in for a rude awakening when their certainty is pulled out from under their feet. Then again, maybe that's just what some of them need.

It's great that the author thoroughly educated himself about the effects of the drugs he was about to try, and planned his day. The world would be much better off if more people did that.

I was also very pleased to see that he tried to use his time constructively while tripping. Way too many people's sole aim in taking drugs to "party" or "get fucked up". That's a complete and utter waste of the potential of these enormously powerful substances, and borders on abuse, IMO.

The main thing I was disappointed with was that he didn't have an experienced and trusted trip guide or a sitter with him. That's very important, especially for inexperienced users. Fortunately, his decision to walk around the city by himself turned out fine. But it might not have. When tripping, you don't always make the wisest choices. An experienced sitter can help keep you safe.

There's a really great book called "The Secret Chief Revealed" about a therapist who guided hundreds of trips for his clients. One of the more interesting techniques that he used during his sessions was to ask his clients to bring a stack of personally significant photographs with them (in particular, photos of family members and loved ones). Looking at these after the peak of the trip could be incredibly helpful. That may be something to think about for your next trip.

Every person should try magic mushrooms and/or LSD. Any psychedelic drug. The problem is that not all people can afford to do so (and I don't mean financially afford it, I mean psychologically), not everyone is ready to experience certain feelings.

There is a right time to do it, and most of the people (especially the grown up ones) totally need a guide to do it. Someone who knows the stuff you're trying and know how to guide you out of any possible bad trip happening. I'm convinced that these "altered state of perception" should be experienced by the highest number of people.

Take a look at: "DMT: The spirit molecule". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4FaDMak-TQ

One of the most interesting things about reading Robert Anton Wilson's more autobiographical stuff (Cosmic Trigger? Prometheus Rising?) is that when he talks about doing LSD for the first time with Leary and co, all these guys were in their 30s!! I can't imagine how shocking it would be to have gotten that far in your life, believing and committing to the perceptions you've had, only to have them ripped apart by those megadoses (by today's standards) of LSD.

I think that is also why they made such good use of the experiences. Having more life experience, they might have been even more appreciative of the new insight.

http://www.amazon.com/Prometheus-Rising-Robert-Anton-Wilson/...

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LSD was a big deal for Steve Jobs. How big? Evidently, Jobs believed that experimenting with LSD in the 1960s was "one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life." What's more, he felt that there were parts of him that the people he knew and worked with could not understand, simply because they hadn't had a go at psychedelics.

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When Kevin Herbert has a particularly intractable programming problem, or finds himself pondering a big career decision, he deploys a powerful mind expanding tool -- LSD-25.

"It must be changing something about the internal communication in my brain. Whatever my inner process is that lets me solve problems, it works differently, or maybe different parts of my brain are used, " said Herbert, 42, an early employee of Cisco Systems who says he solved his toughest technical problems while tripping to drum solos by the Grateful Dead -- who were among the many artists inspired by LSD.

"When I'm on LSD and hearing something that's pure rhythm, it takes me to another world and into anther brain state where I've stopped thinking and started knowing," said Herbert who intervened to ban drug testing of technologists at Cisco Systems.

The title is slightly misleading as I actually believe that every person should... and here's my story why.

Liked your essay, but I think you should go ahead and change your title. Psychedelics can make you a better entrepreneur, or a better artist, or (insert role here), but in the sense that becoming a more rounded, experienced and thoughtful person will enhance your professional activities. Your specific profession is orthogonal to your scope for personal development.

Nobody should take mushrooms with the goal of enjoying more business success - a compartmentalized approach as implicitly (albeit unintentionally) suggested by your title is likely to be counter-productive when the walls of one's mental compartments start leaking. I knew a fellow who stared at a glass of orange juice during a trip with such intensity that he felt he had become one with it.* He got very upset when someone else picked it up and drank the juice.

* in the sense that Van Gogh once painted a vase of sunflowers with such intensity that he became one with it. What your mind chooses to focus its attention on is not a question of value.

This post really makes me want to go out and get some 'shrooms (or LSD) and give it a try. I think I'm going to put that on my "do real soon now" list... I mean, I'm getting older, so it's time to stop procrastinating and DO stuff instead of just dreaming about it. :-(

1 - don't look at a the mirror

2 - cars are for real

3 - you can't fly

Advising everyone in a certain group of people to take any kind of drug should be frowned upon in my opinion. The fact that we are talking about a Schedule I substance, and the fact that author then admits he thinks everyone should try them, make this situation even worse.

I guess if you happen to get caught with them you'll have plenty of free time (five or more years) to fine-tune your startup idea in a federal prison.

A much better title would have been "one entrepreneur's positive experience with magic mushrooms". I'm not saying that nobody should do drugs or that psychedelics can't benefit people, but telling everyone to use a drug because you had a good outcome with it is downright juvenile.

I don't know if there's a Acid uprising in St. Louis but there have been an increase in incidences of young men tripping while out in public. One of them scared the hell out of my mom, then stripped naked and ran around yelling "I love LSD" while the police ran after him. The other almost got hit as he walked in and out of traffic. I get they want to experiment but the combination of being a male (doing risky stupid shit) and being young (thinking you're invincible) can have deadly consequences.

Please trip at home. Edit: OR at your friend's house who lives on a nice open flat farm.

I'm a bit prone to anxiety and my only experience with a drug everyone said was harmless (prescription pot) was terrifying.

he explores the next big step of evolution for humanity will probably be coming from, "programmers on shrooms" :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx6P6Nq8JoY

Its easy to confuse Psilocybe semilanceata with Düngerling (Panaeolus papilionaceus), that is growing on same meadows, but at different times. Its less dangerous to collect magic mushrooms, then to collect mushrooms for food, because most mushrooms mimic a poisonous one. If you collect magic mushrooms and pick the wrong one, then you don't have a trip, but if you collect mushrooms for food, and pick the wrong one you become ill, and might even die. But still, always collect them with someone who knows them well, because else you might pick non magic light poison mushrooms first, think you need high dose to feel something, and next time you take a much to high dose, if you got the right ones.

Do not eat them when tired in the evening, but better at the morning before eating anything else. Do not drink or take other drugs same time. I prefer to put them into a yogurt or quark. Drink a tea afterwards, wait 10 minutes after eating them, and then eat as much as you can, because you need the power, and likely are not able to eat anything while on trip.

Always take them in a small group of friends you really trust, and one of the group should stay sober, just for the case one goes crazy. Agree beforehand that you care for each other, and that you do not send anybody into a hospital, because insane asylums makes everything worse. They will put people on hard drugs, so those people become asylum addicted. Be prepared that someone might need help after a trip. Those who went crazy will become sane within a week, if you care for them at a good place, e.g. a cottage in the rural, but they might become asylum addicted for decades, if they can get no other help then those who exploit them for health insurance money.

Be prepared to go outside. Walking miles is very common on a mushroom trip. The one who is sober must ensure that the group stays together and nobody gets lost. Being alone on a trip is a very bad setting. Do not walk through the city, but through nature, and avoid places where big crowds of people are, e.g. dance clubs or festivals. The sober guy is also the mule for water, and should ensure that everybody is drinking enough.

Mushrooms do not cause addiction, but they are an anti-drug. Everybody I know who collected mushrooms in my age stopped it at some time, including me. But never try to blow up your trip forever. Never add more mushrooms to am existing trip, neither because of impatience nor because you want to continue the "fun". The only cases I know of people who got locked in (drug induced psychosis) on a trip are those who eat several times within a few days, and those who went to an insane asylum, where the trip is treated with other even more dangerous drugs.

The main trip will be 4-6 hours, followed by an activity phase of an other 6-8 hours, followed by a vibrant phase of several days, where memories of the trip come up very vivid, and feelings are very different. The complete trip takes a week most often. So never take them more then once a month. And never more then 3 times a year. Mushrooms are not a party drug, they are a sharp tool to reshape your mind. Be prepared that memories of your trip will burn deep into your mind. A trip is a lesson you will never forget. So do not take them, if you have bad feelings, in a bad group, in a bad set or setting.

Magic mushrooms are called magic for a good reason. You might encounter things that can not be explained by science. Those magic comes often together with a horror trip. e.g. my worst horror trip was when I was walking through a part of the city where lots of drug and drunk people party, and a few of them had green faces. Each of them stuck me with a horror. And the horror became even worse over the next half year, as each of them died on an overdose of heroin.

But that's like anything else - you watch a classic old movie and it utrns out to have a few (ro even many) scenes that just drag, or a book turns out to have some excellent ideas but also a fair amount of filler, a scientific paper is a theoretical breakthrough but also contains some conjectures that turn out to be wrong. Einstein went to his grave a frustrated man insofar as he was unable to articulate a theory of everything that would have made relatively consistent with quantum mechanics, but we don't think of Einstein as a failure.

Think of it like a prism for your mind. A prism allows you to see light and color in a wholly new way, but you wouldn't want to wear prisms in front of your eyes like spectacles because you would be constantly misjudging things and banging your knees. Doesn't mean that what you can see with a prism is false, it's just not optimal for continual use.

There does seem to be a subculture of people who take the visions way too seriously. They believe it's giving knowledge of an external reality. I think it's a little bit like a reset button - your beliefs and thinking patterns are disrupted, particularly the ones which you don't normally question. This may happen consciously (as it did with the OP) but I suspect a lot of it is unconscious.

I've done it just a handful of times. The most profound experience was negative-positive. I didn't take proper precautions, and I have a tendency to negative thoughts which was highly accentuated by the experience. Think terror worse than any horror movie for several hours (although with some nice parts too). But confronting your demons, literally, has its advantages. Actually more than anything else it's pushed me to try to take control of those negative thoughts.

EDIT: FYI there is no such thing as getting physically addicted to magic mushrooms. Quite the opposite, there are regular reports of people kicking addictions as a result.

2 - marijuana is a more common first "drug" than hallucinogens, for good reason. Although temporary psychotic breaks CAN happen, they are rare, and it is an otherwise pretty innocuous drug.

3- as for hallucinogens: SET, SETTING, and DOSAGE.

Negative story: taking mushrooms with a friend when neither of us were in a good place, emotionally. [bad set] Got confused at the typical 20 minutes in when you "think nothing is happening maybe they didn't work" (this thought ALWAYS occurs) both ate more mushrooms. [bad dosage] Bad bad negative hallucinations. Head on upside down. Turned in to prehistoric bird. Friend outside on the street screaming racist epithets (not normally a racist dude) Luckily ghetto neighbors did not execute him (people can be much more tolerant than we give them credit for) police came and were astonishingly restrained, brought him to hospital. Very close call.

I still concur that hallucinogens are a great thing. But it bears repeating, respect Leary's SET, SETTING, and DOSAGE.

http://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_LSD_Bad_Trips.sht...

Those people who saw the light or aliens/ghosts probably haven't done LSD or they'd realize not to trust anything their brain interprets without sober analysis. "Holy shit, that prophet ghost was a pretty sweet hallucination" instead of writing a book about it and creating a religion.

The closest analogy I can make is to PTSD; they have trouble dealing with the banality and slow pace of normal life, and seem somehow "burnt out" (cliche, but a very apt term for someone who took one trip too many.)

I've also heard #1 several times. I've also seen people break that rule. Their demeanor changes as something dramatic is hallucinated—the mirrors definitely caused immediate reactions in the people tripping, but that demeanor change was quickly replaced by other hallucinations, interests in the room, etc. The overwhelming consensus was very positive with respect to the whole trips every time I've seen it.

What would the person see?

You mean were the worth anything when considered from the perspective of the ordinary state of consciousness?

Clearly in one particular altered state of consciousness they were considered worth something.

So the question becomes which state of consciousness trumps which other state of consciousness? Or which one gets to decide what's worthy and what's not?

Often, people who see themselves as "hard headed realists" think it's obvious that the sober, oridinary state of consciousness is the one and only legitimate state of consciousness, and the rest are mere delusions, and not worthy of being trusted or relied upon for important decisions and the business of life.

On the other hand, there are people who think that while in an altered state of consciousness, they can see through the bullshit of consensus reality and the ordinary state of consciousness. To them, it is the ordinary state of consciousness that is deluded, or even pathological or psychotic.

Which one is right? And how are the products of and insights from these various states of consciousness to be judged? Can an insight gained in state of consciousness X be legitimately evaluated in state of consciousness Y? Do such evaluations even make sense?

I'm not sure there are any easy answers to these questions.

Or it gives you great insights that are beyond the verbal level, not something that you just can jot down to sell afterwards to have people tell you how smart you are.

That is, it lets you feel and see things differently, it doesn't put smart quotes on your mind or make you discover general relativity.

It's still possible for the substance to have some subtle, interesting effects at these doses. Things such as an increased creative ability, enhanced energy, and insight. Some people take microdoses of psychedelics to improve their problem-solving abilities. At these doses, your anxiety should be much lower than if you took a regular (nevermind a mindblowing) dose outright.

After a number of such microdose trips, it's possible to slowly increase the dosage. Hopefully, as you do this, you'll become more familiar with the territory and know what to expect, and there will be less fear of the unknown and of the novel effects you will likely experience.

That said, there can be some negative effects -- particularly nausea. Also, it's dangerous to pick wild mushrooms, which can be poisonous if a mistake in identification is made. There's a saying in the mycology community: There are old mushroom hunters, and there are bold mushroom hunters. But there are no old, bold mushroom hunters.

Ideally, you'd only partake of mushrooms under the guidance of an experienced mycologist (and after having done a lot of research yourself about proper mushroom identification).

Unfortunately, an experienced mycologist is not always available, and the mushrooms available on the black market are often dried, crumbled, and in a state that's virtually impossible to identify anyway. The potency and even the active ingredient in such samples is very questionable. They could easily be laced with LSD or some other drug and you may be none the wiser.

Some people advocate only ever taking synthetic compounds like LSD, which are at least less likely to be counterfeit when taken as blotter or microdots (because they are so small that no other drug would be potent enough to do anything at that dosage). However, some newer designer drugs are almost as potent as LSD, and are potentially more toxic. So it's not clear what should be recommended, if one is concerned about side-effects, identity of the compound, or toxicity. Perhaps growing or synthesizing one's own would then be the safest route. But, of course, depending on the laws in your jurisdiction and depending on your skills, these options may come with their own risks.

As a member of this subset, and I don't touch the stuff.

My experiences with mushrooms (and a host of other drugs) have, however, been largely positive.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

You can have a bad trip with pretty much anything. Bad trips on psilocybin are common, especially if you don't have anyone to help you redirect your mind to a better place. However, unlike pot anxiety, even the bad trips often seem valuable in retrospect.

I personally know of one person for whom the trip didn't end on schedule. She had to stay at her mom's place for a few days while she emailed dozens of poems to her friends about how much she loved them. But as far as I know she's "normal" now. You can find cases of LSD-induced depression as well, just Google it. Some apologists try to claim these cases are just "unmasking a problem that was there already", but that is cold comfort for someone who gets it. So no, it's not 100% safe.

Unfortunately, we can't really measure the incidence or tell what these effects are because the drugs are illegal - so we don't know how many people used them or what exactly they consumed.

Maybe a lower risk path is starting with yoga and meditation (and stop immediately if it appears you are experiencing a psychotic episode; avoid teachers that think this isn't possible).

I wouldn't recommend trying them alone without someone who knows the space (very well) and can guide you if your anxiety begins.

Physiologically, aside from maybe a tiny bit of stomach discomfort in the beginning, they're harmless, less neurologically damaging than a glass of wine.