Psychedelic Addiction. Hang up the Phone. Cultivate the Internal Arts.

In the last three years I have met a lot people who have created a dependency on the plant medicines (drugs) in order to gain insight into dilemmas they perceive that they have in life. Not one of these people I know who has partaken in their ceremonial experience has to my understanding gained any lesson, or knowledge that has changed their behaviour for the better. I can see that most of them have deepened their psychosis, neurosis and are even more confused than ever. There have been reports of people taking advantage of others while they are under the influence of psychedelics, megalomania, and even sex pest behaviour. I did a video in 2022 taking into account what the mystic Alan Watts said about psychedelics:

“If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes and telephones. The biologist does not sit with an eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.”

All the people I know with notable exceptions have not gone away to work, integrate or assimilate from what they have experienced, they have gone onto a hamster wheel of deepening psychosis and self-importance, spinning the hamster wheel of neurosis till they can get off and then take more drugs, attempting to gain deeper insight from their downward spiral into matter and shadow. There is in my perception a ‘cult’ being formed around the traditional culture drugs (plant medicines) in the Western cultures that weakens the resolve of many who ingest these potions. The slow integration of contemplation, meditation and introspection have been lost to twelve hours of frequency attuning between brain chemistry and plant chemistry, and purging out of the anus and the mouth. I am no stranger to plant medicines. I have ingested Terrance McKenna’s heroic dose of psilocybin mushrooms (5 dried grams) several times, I have done several hits of LSD at once, and had huge amounts of mescaline, all for the experience alone, and for ceremonial reasons. I got the message, and I hung up the phone a long long time ago. I have partaken in very small doses of various plant medicines (mushrooms and San Pedro cactus) in the last three years, but the cultivation of the internal arts through Qi Gong, meditation, yoga, pranayama, contemplation, shamanic dreaming (with a medicine drum), introspection and silence have all taken me into greater depths of being and knowledge that any of the drugs I ingested ever did. I also had the benefit of being able to integrate from the experience in sobriety for weeks, months and years later.

In traditional cultures it is rare for all members of a tribe, nation or people to ingest psychedelics. There is usually one individual who has an ally (a plant) , that they may use to talk to other realms in order garner knowledge. There are some tribes that do ingest plants to help them envision their hunts hours, or days before they hunt, but the is an obvious difference in use. The training of the Shaman to get to a place where they get the most out of the interaction between plant spirit and their own body, mind and spirit is inter-generational, spanning thousands of generations. In many cultures it is through dance, music and rhythm that they interact with other levels of existence, not with the use of drugs. When Pauline Wilson, my Shamanic teacher taught me Shamanic Dreaming it was intensive, over many many hours, deeply integrative, experiential and the work carried on for years. In late March 2020 when the planet went into insanity mode over a suspected and imaginary viral infection my Shamanic dreaming brought me such incredible insights and delivered me some of the most powerful lessons for our society that I have seen unfolding since I dreamed those dreams. I was shown by beings in both the lower and upper worlds how the solutions to the madness that was coming would begin to manifest for those who began to choose to live in their hearts, not their heads. It was so clear, so astounding and beautiful, vibrant and bewildering. The greatest lesson for me during that time in my life was the levels of integration after the trance state was over and I could assimilate and broadcast what I had learned on all the platforms I use to share this knowledge. Blogs, vlogs, podcasts and books.

It it not my intention to belittle the use of drugs for therapy and the benefit they can bring to those who are sick. A friend of mine, Robb who I had a shared a sunset and fire with at Te Horo Beach, on the Kapiti coast made some insightful comments about the nature of a lot of people we know who are indulging with drugs daily (Rape’ being one such drug) and also revolving their inner work, their shadow work around drug use. It’s an oxymoron, using drugs to heal from trauma or pain, as many of these people are addicted. He stated, ‘If it’s plant medicine that means that these people are sick. Are they?’ Great point. The overindulgence among many I know is troublesome to me. There really is no discipline in a lot of these people’s lives. Their addictions are crutches to their sense of wellbeing, and that is also an oxymoron. Robb like me is an exponent of the internal Taoist arts. He has been doing Tai Chi for over 30 years, and has a daily practice to cultivate the health of body, mind and spirit. There is a wondrous sense of ease and calmness in his presence, dry humour and deep appreciation of nature. I know this for I have the same from my practice of meditation (daily), Qi Gong (Ba Duan Jin), contemplation and introspection (done in complete stillness and silence with nature) and Shamanic Drumming. It takes work to gain deeper insight, knowledge and a greater understanding of what I am, how and why I have created the life I have, and how to go about connecting to the very force that animates this avatar called a biological man’s body.

In the late Spring of 2022 I had an inclination to do a ceremony with psilocybin mushrooms out at Makara Beach when I was emphatically overwhelmed while working on a job site by a group of who had been coming and going from the protests down at Parliament where thousands had camped out peacefully looking for solutions to our fascist corporate governments (corporation) mandates and injection coercion. Their energies were yo-yoing up and down as they came and went each day and night, volunteering, networking and working at the protests. I had made my protest in 2020 when I began to understand the legal system, got more into the private and did the study to hold these public agents accountable through their own system, playing the game often at a higher level than them. I knew that the protest was not going to change a thing, only create targets on the backs of everyone there and also profile most who were there for the intelligence agencies and the Police Corporate Enforcement Agency of New Zealand. Yet, I felt the weight of these people’s energy bogging me down at work everyday and needed to clear it psychically, mentally, physically and spiritually. So, I did a ceremony and invited the spirit of the plant medicine into my body to have an experience as a man, asking it to clear all this energy away and ‘reset’ me, and protect me moving forward. I had three tiny mushrooms that day after fasting for most of the day, and it was one of the most powerful altered states I have had in living memory.

When my friend Robb said on Saturday night that he thought that the spirit of the plant (drug) was like the Zombie Fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which grows through an insect’s body, draining it of nutrients and then hijacks its mind. It then makes the ant crawl up along a twig above the ground, and the ant clamps onto a leaf at a height with the right humidity and temperature for the fungus to grow its stalk out of the insects head with bulbous capsule full of spores ready to rain down on the other ants crawling below. His comment struck me, as this was how it felt for me that night at Makara. I had lost control of my body, mind and spirit, and had completely surrendered it to the spirit of the plant, and and indeed, it felt like possession. Are we looking at a mass possession event happening and unfolding in real time in the western cultures? Does the spirit of these plants wish to occupy their human hosts causing more confusion, chaos and suffering to those who are truly sick? Or addicted to these drugs and the visions and experiences granted in ceremony? How many people have a protective reverence for the spirit of the plant? How many ‘shaman’ or facilitators are predatory, parasitical, possessed themselves? In my perspective the genie may be out of bottle, but you don’t have to give it any power. A lifetime of adventure and discovery through the internal arts makes for a truly well lived life if you choose to cultivate your understanding of macro and micro, body, mind and spirt, and your place in the multiverse.

I’ll leave you with this story from a rainy Sunday morning at Evolve Festival 2023. I was talking to a friend and candlestick maker, David at his stall when a gentleman approached me wearing Quechua attire and barefoot. He stood beneath the canopy of David’s stall and his bright, deep and shining eyes peered at me. “What’s your story?’ He asked me. I told him why I was there and then I asked him his. What I didn’t expect was how fascinating a life he had lived. He had lived in the jungle of Peru for over twenty years, owning land, living and working in ceremony with many jungle plants, and also in the Andes with other plants. He told me he done ayahuasca over 500 times and facilitated over 1000 times. You could see in his eyes the layers of surrender and vulnerability, authenticity and compassion like strata on a cliff face. He paused after relaying his South American experiences and his next comments blew my mind. ‘I have got more out of Tai Chi in the last three years than I did taking plant medicines over thirty years. The medicine kept me in my head. Tai Chi has brought me back into my body. It has been the greatest revelation of my life. Cultivating the internal arts and meditating.’ He smiled, his eyes gleaming as the rain fell around us, the puddles around his feet getting deeper. He excused himself and wandered off. That’s a clear message for me from the universe. Know your path.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3204140/ Are these drugs (plant medicines) actually parasitical beings that possess their hosts through accumulation and then use their hosts as antenna for lower astral beings? Like the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis parasite? Horrifying thought.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/how-the-zombie-fungus-takes-over-ants-bodies-to-control-their-minds/545864/ The Zombie Fungus and my Plant Medicine experience.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/how-the-zombie-fungus-takes-over-ants-bodies-to-control-their-minds/545864/ As my friend Robb said, is this happening to those who use psychedelics often? Are they being ‘possessed’ by the spirit of the plant?