Are you tired of hearing the same pro-psychedelic dogma over and over? Dan Joy is, and he isn't afraid to take on some sacred cows

On July 15th , 1999, the Drug Enforcement Administration declared ketamine a controlled substance, adding this wacky injectable out-of-body psychedelic and veterinarian's pussycat tranquilizer to Schedule III of the Federal Controlled Substances Act, effective August 12th of the same year. With the government giving this level of notice to a relatively obscure psychedelic, with psychedelics-oriented organizations, conferences, web sites, and journals proliferating like magic mushrooms on cowshit as the new millenium begins, and with the Ecstasy-driven rave scene finally exploding into such fly-over-land bastions of tedium as Iowa and Idaho, it's abundantly clear that psychedelics are back, and possibly bigger (and some say better) than ever before.

Now, therefore, seems as good a time as any for me—as a long-time activist/writer in this area—to come out of the closet with my viewpoints on a set of prevalent but highly questionable truisms (what I'd call just plain myths) about psychedelics that remain widespread, not among the psychedelically misinformed population at large, but among the community of long term psychedelics enthusiasts. So at last I'm going to take my most neglected pet acid-related axe out of the ol' toolshed and grind it here in TRP, by debunking several cherished notions about trips and tripping that for decades have been clutched tight to the heart by perhaps the majority of those for whom tripping is an indispensable part of life.

Myth #1: Psychedelics = "Higher" Consciousness

First off, let's look at the idea that LSD and other psychedelics promote some sort of "higher" consciousness. Objectively speaking, of course, there isn't any such thing as "higher" (or, for that matter, "lower") consciousness. Who first insisted that consciousness is somehow inherently vertical—like some kind of ladder with higher and lower rungs—anyway? No doubt some power-tripping "spiritual" guru-hustler trying to sell potential followers on a particular state of consciousness because he could use it to control them, fuck them, or appropriate their funds and possessions while they were obsessively busying themselves with trying to reach said "higher" state.

I don't believe in higher and lower consciousness, only in relatively expanded/inclusive vs. relatively exclusive (limited or narrow) consciousness. And one isn't necessarily "better" than the other. Depending on one's predispositions and the life-task at hand (like paying the bills, for example), a more expanded or inclusive (and therefore potentially more drifty) state of consciousness can be the last thing the doctor (or your accountant) would order.

The mass of data accumulated from about 40,000 subjects of psychotherapeutically-focused psychedelic research conducted back when such pursuits were legal—highlighted by the work of globally-renowned psychedelic psychiatrist Stanislav Grof (author of LSD Psychotherapy)—undermines at least any necessary equation between tripping and so-called "higher consciousness." This body of information clearly indicates that psychedelics are just as conducive to entering the "regressive" states of the first and second chakras (bioenergetic centers equated by many spiritual traditions with so-called "lower consciousness") or what Grof calls the "perinatal" and "early biographical" domains of the psyche (whose contents include infantile neediness, childhood traumas, potty training, anger, rage, images of blood, guts, feces, etc.) as they are to arousing "higher" mystical or "unitive" fourth-through-seventh chakra levels of consciousness, or what Grof calls "transpersonal" states. And after all, "higher" and "lower" consciousness—like all terms rooted in models of verticality and hierarchy—are gravity-based concepts. I prefer to think of psychedelics as more of an anti-gravity, free-fall type of kick.

Myth #2: The Necessity of a "Guide"

The last thing people on high doses of acid need is a "guide," of the "spiritual," "tourist," or any other type. Having someone around trying to tell you where you're supposed to go and "guide" you there—in other words, trying to impose any kind of preset agenda or value system on your trip—has got to be the most sure-fire route to a big time bum out. All someone on a heavy trip really needs is a tolerant and affectionate baby-sitter—hopefully of the tripper's preferred gender—to handle logistics (like getting a glass of water or helping you locate the bathroom amongst the sea of writhing paisleys), and to provide a fragrantly fleshly (and in my case, preferably freckled) human pillow to nuzzle and hold onto while the universe polymorphously (and sometimes perversely) oozes around you.

Myth #3: The "Bad Trip"

The whole phenomenon of the personally apocalyptic, classic "bad trip" is, in my view, a non-necessity that has been spawned, fostered, and promulgated not only by sensationalistic government propaganda but by acid advocates themselves—the very ones, in fact, who believe in "higher consciousness" and insist on the need for "guides." Many trippers are conditioned to believe, by their "guides" or other dogmatically-inflected sources of information about tripping, that if they aren't entering "higher consciousness" but instead a state of mind inclusive of fear, anger, visions of dingleberries, or whatever (in other words, components of the psyche at least as integral to human experience as mystical bliss, though perhaps less savory), then they're either doing something "wrong" or something's "wrong" with them. It's the judgement placed on these trips and those who have them—by the trippers themselves as well as many of their fellows in psychedelic subculture—that I believe generates "bad" trips more than the actual content of such trips.

In fact, I think the very meme of the "bad trip"—a state of consciousness to be avoided at all costs as opposed to just another pool of cosmic flotsam and jetsam to float through—is often what creates "bad" trips. If there's no particular value system or agenda imposed by a guide or other source, these trips, instead of becoming catastrophes, become merely painful or difficult episodes—and can be quite hygienic for the psyche, like a visit to the etheric dentist or an application of "mental floss." The work of Grof and others does in fact show that such trips can be just as constructive as "good" or "higher consciousness" type trips from a psychotherapeutic standpoint.

Myth # 4: Psychedelic Usage Leads to "Enlightenment"

Corollary to the equation of tripping with "higher" consciousness, this is the assumption of a necessary relationship between tripping and the eventual achievement of some kind of "spiritual progress" or at least a greater degree of psychic integration or mental health. Trips may give you new information and experiences, but your "growth," however you choose to define that term, will be served only by doing the tough daily work of remembering this information and experience, selecting out of it what's relevant, and doing your damndest to integrate it into your moment-by-moment existence and behavior.

Few have the integrity and determination to follow through with this often seemingly Sisyphyean task, and those who do may benefit greatly from psychedelics. But these few will find their way whether they take psychedelics or not.

Many psychedelics enthusiasts, it seems to me, are still, consciously or unconsciously, seeking the magic molecule that will make their desired growth process automatic—in other words, the drug or drug combination that, if used sufficiently and "correctly" will, a la the title of the classic Philip K. Dick story, "Do It For You Wholesale." But to my mind, any "personal growth" process is about becoming less automatic, less automatized. So as far as I'm concerned, the very idea of automatically-functioning agencies of such a process, whether human, yogic, spiritual, technological, or chemical, is just oxymoronic bullshit.

It's Getting Better All The Time—I Hope While the paucity of significant new published work on psychedelics in the '70s and '80s may have left a vacuum of literary stimuli that contributed to the ossification of the mythology I've been debunking, the '90s, by contrast, have seen a flood of psychedelic literary activity featuring several books that may be assisting a slight but visible loosening of this formerly almost concrete understructure of presumptions. To wit: the widely read psychedelic megatomes PIHKAL and TIHKAL by Ann and Alexander Shulgin, a husband-and-wife research team whose writing evinces an extraordinarily sophisticated, flexible, and multidimensional—but nonetheless highly scientific—approach to tripping. The recent appearance of From Thanatos to Eros, by Myron Stolaroff, who conducted legal research with acid in Menlo Park in the '50s, may also be having a helpful catalytic effect by documenting the "positive" psychological results Stolaroff has won from what many would call "negative" experiences or "bad" trips.

Judging by the most recent psychedelics conferences and the other venues through which I've met and talked to many of the seemingly huge international new set of young, up-and-coming psychedelics aficionados, all of the myths I've been talking about do seem to be at least somewhat less unquestioningly accepted than they were even a decade ago. The new generation of devoted psychedelic surfers is, to my eye, a little hipper, more sophisticated, and less stodgily dogmatic than the last. It's my hope that raising my voice in TRP will, at a time of highly visible—and apparently expanding—psychedelic activity worldwide, assist in at least some small way with the eventual complete disposal of the dubious and dangerous ideas that so many trippers have about tripping.