Some People Should Never Do Hallucinogenic Drugs

[Octopus Garden]

And I am one. Way too overwhelming and sanity threatening for me. Schizophrenia runs in my family. That brings up another interesting point. If you have psychoses in your immediate family, drugs may be entirely unnecessary to have a sense of a more expanded reality, a sense of the invisible.

I can't even smoke pot. But I do really enjoy reading the experiences of people who have tried ayahuasca, dropped heroic doses of lsd, etc...I accidentally took a heroic dose of lsd when I was a young teen. It turned out to be a beneficial experience, but it could have gone the other way, too. So, that was it for me

[Aragorn]

As I have already said elsewhere a few times, I have never done any drugs in my life, nor do I intend to go there.

• First and foremost, as a high-functioning autistic and synesthetic person, everything is already way more intense for me than for anybody else — anything from physical sensations over sensory input to emotions and thoughts, and the latter is then basically what lays at the root of OCD, which in turn is a condition most (but not all) auties have to live with on a daily basis.

• Secondly, I am already aware of a grander reality beyond this one, and of the oneness/connectedness of everything, because I live that. By this, I do not mean that I would be hallucinating and/or seeing ghosts or anything. It's just that I have a (slightly) different kind of consciousness — among other things, I'm an empath, and I can even feel other people's physical pain before they tell me that they're experiencing pain.

• Thirdly, hallucinations are not experiences of the grander reality or the spirit world. They are called hallucinations for a reason, i.e. it is a load of neurological gibberish that the brain attempts to make sense of, similar to dreaming, but while you are awake, and considering that you are awake, the brain is fully active, as opposed to when you are dreaming while asleep.

• Lastly, as the Sidinugget keeps on telling us, "Drug is bad. Don't drug." There's a reason why those substances are illegal in most jurisdictions, which is that they are addictive and that they are known to cause psychoses, even among people not normally inclined toward psychosis.

Conversely, I also don't take any psychoactive medication such as antidepressants, because I don't want anything messing with my state of mind, regardless of whether I'm feeling depressed or whatever. If I'm feeling depressed, then there's a reason for that, and then taking such medication won't take away the reason for feeling depressed in the first place, but instead it would render me insensitive by inducing a mild form of euphoria. And that is tantamount to living a lie.

The only proper way to deal with depression is to acknowledge the problem — i.e. that which gives you reason to feel depressed — and then take it from there. And you may not be able to remedy the cause of your depression — e.g. if it's something beyond your control, which it usually is — but then at least you're not living a lie, being in denial about the problem, which is what antidepressants do to you.

Just my two Eurocents, for whatever they're worth at today's exchange rates.

[Octopus Garden]

Hi Aragorn, I take a small amount of prozac for anxiety and its helped me tremendously without side effects. As far as psychedelic drugs go, they are NOT addictive. I can't even see anybody becoming dependent on them. The drugs of addiction that affect so many homeless are meth, opioids, cocaine. You don't see anyone living in a tent, unkempt because they have an LSD problem.

I have had waking 'hallucinations' called hypnagogic imagery, while fully awake and believe me, it wasn't disorganized jibberish produced by my own brain. There was something larger and outside of myself going on.

Will finish later. Am really tired!

[Aianawa]

Where you get addictive from Aragorn ?

[Diabolical Boids]

I've met so many neuro diversity people like myself that really have no tolerance or liking for marijuana and can't understand the attraction. I rather expected it would be other way around. I don't do any drugs myself, and drink limited amounts of alcohol. I can at least understand the attraction to alcohol and maybe other recreational drugs but not marijuana. Smoke, get paranoid, get anxious, get hungry, go to sleep? Where's the fun? At least a glass of champagne may give you a giggle and an appetite for dinner. I hope people who need marijuana for pain get a better effect from it.

Not a big fan of anti psychotic drugs myself except for the instances of anxiety. Anxiety can be easily controlled without drugs but when events cause it to accelerate, or things happen bang bang bang with no opportunity to process or recover in between Anxiety can be amazingly disabling in even very strong-willed people. It's not in the mind its in the body, and feels like someone is sawing an out tune fiddle on your nervous system. I never thought I would take xanax and I never thought of myself as anxious person but then again I never thought I'd have nine bags of trauma dumped on me at once with no time to cope or process in between before the next train hit me.

Can't speak for depression but its as crippling as high anxiety people will need a step down to the point they can process and learn to control it on their own by whatever means. I think a lot of the process and therapy part of neuro science has been eliminated though in favor of simply dispensing.

As I have already said elsewhere a few times, I have never done any drugs in my life, nor do I intend to go there.

• First and foremost, as a high-functioning autistic and synesthetic person, everything is already way more intense for me than for anybody else — anything from physical sensations over sensory input to emotions and thoughts, and the latter is then basically what lays at the root of OCD, which in turn is a condition most (but not all) auties have to live with on a daily basis.

• Secondly, I am already aware of a grander reality beyond this one, and of the oneness/connectedness of everything, because I live that. By this, I do not mean that I would be hallucinating and/or seeing ghosts or anything. It's just that I have a (slightly) different kind of consciousness — among other things, I'm an empath, and I can even feel other people's physical pain before they tell me that they're experiencing pain.

• Thirdly, hallucinations are not experiences of the grander reality or the spirit world. They are called hallucinations for a reason, i.e. it is a load of neurological gibberish that the brain attempts to make sense of, similar to dreaming, but while you are awake, and considering that you are awake, the brain is fully active, as opposed to when you are dreaming while asleep.

• Lastly, as the Sidinugget keeps on telling us, "Drug is bad. Don't drug." There's a reason why those substances are illegal in most jurisdictions, which is that they are addictive and that they are known to cause psychoses, even among people not normally inclined toward psychosis.

Conversely, I also don't take any psychoactive medication such as antidepressants, because I don't want anything messing with my state of mind, regardless of whether I'm feeling depressed or whatever. If I'm feeling depressed, then there's a reason for that, and then taking such medication won't take away the reason for feeling depressed in the first place, but instead it would render me insensitive by inducing a mild form of euphoria. And that is tantamount to living a lie.

The only proper way to deal with depression is to acknowledge the problem — i.e. that which gives you reason to feel depressed — and then take it from there. And you may not be able to remedy the cause of your depression — e.g. if it's something beyond your control, which it usually is — but then at least you're not living a lie, being in denial about the problem, which is what antidepressants do to you.

Just my two Eurocents, for whatever they're worth at today's exchange rates.

[Emil El Zapato]

And I am one. Way too overwhelming and sanity threatening for me. Schizophrenia runs in my family. That brings up another interesting point. If you have psychoses in your immediate family, drugs may be entirely unnecessary to have a sense of a more expanded reality, a sense of the invisible.

I can't even smoke pot. But I do really enjoy reading the experiences of people who have tried ayahuasca, dropped heroic doses of lsd, etc...I accidentally took a heroic dose of lsd when I was a young teen. It turned out to be a beneficial experience, but it could have gone the other way, too. So, that was it for me

Actually OG, a psychedelic trip has been compared to schizophrenia as being similar in nature. I quit smoking pot because it made me feel beyond weird. Telepathic and paranoid because of it, overwhelmingly self-conscious...in a word extremely neurotic. I've had telepathic experiences when straight. I made attempts to verify them with a degree of success but I think the subjects might have been biased in some cases. I think I've made my clairvoyance recognizable to a number of people.

It is what brought me to these crazed alternative forums. I was looking for external validation that I wasn't just crazy. I soon realized that the boarders were crazy not me.

Someone labeled me as clairvoyant whereas I had always viewed it as precognition but yeah sometimes clairvoyant.

[Emil El Zapato]

I'm curious OG, have you ever been diagnosed as schizophrenic? Because if schizophrenia hits it usually happens early in life, it seems I'm remembering early twenties.

[Emil El Zapato]

I've met so many neuro diversity people like myself that really have no tolerance or liking for marijuana and can't understand the attraction. I rather expected it would be other way around. I don't do any drugs myself, and drink limited amounts of alcohol. I can at least understand the attraction to alcohol and maybe other recreational drugs but not marijuana. Smoke, get paranoid, get anxious, get hungry, go to sleep? Where's the fun? At least a glass of champagne may give you a giggle and an appetite for dinner. I hope people who need marijuana for pain get a better effect from it.

Not a big fan of anti psychotic drugs myself except for the instances of anxiety. Anxiety can be easily controlled without drugs but when events cause it to accelerate, or things happen bang bang bang with no opportunity to process or recover in between Anxiety can be amazingly disabling in even very strong-willed people. It's not in the mind its in the body, and feels like someone is sawing an out tune fiddle on your nervous system. I never thought I would take xanax and I never thought of myself as anxious person but then again I never thought I'd have nine bags of trauma dumped on me at once with no time to cope or process in between before the next train hit me.

Can't speak for depression but its as crippling as high anxiety people will need a step down to the point they can process and learn to control it on their own by whatever means. I think a lot of the process and therapy part of neuro science has been eliminated though in favor of simply dispensing.

pain pot is non-psychoactive, off and on I did therapy and always either felt let down or abandoned, just give me the drugs.

[Emil El Zapato]

I think sharing life experiences is what the world needs. I might be sounding a bit like big brother here but I've long thought that what the U.S. needs desperately is a public broadcast program for mental health, Oprah could be the host.

La Sombrero land might laugh at such a concept but that is because their need to segregate and separate the worldview from owned experience overwhelms their authenticity. (In short, compartmentalization for self-protection).


I had a teacher in early grammar school say that the way to remember how to spell despERATe was to use the mnemonic 'there is a rat in desp a rat e'

She was flat wrong. It's no wonder I didn't win the National Spelling Bee. I had another teacher give me a word to spell: Potiont/potient. I had to ask her to repeat because I had never heard the word before: she repeated potiont/potient. So I spelled potient. The word was POTION. oy vey!

[Diabolical Boids]

I think sharing life experiences is what the world needs. I might be sounding a bit like big brother here but I've long thought that what the U.S. needs desperately is a public broadcast program for mental health, Oprah could be the host.

La Sombrero land might laugh at such a concept but that is because their need to segregate and separate the worldview from owned experience overwhelms their authenticity. (In short, compartmentalization for self-protection).


I had a teacher in early grammar school say that the way to remember how to spell despERATe was to use the mnemonic 'there is a rat in desp a rat e'

She was flat wrong. It's no wonder I didn't win the National Spelling Bee. I had another teacher give me a word to spell: Potiont/potient. I had to ask her to repeat because I had never heard the word before: she repeated potiont/potient. So I spelled potient. The word was POTION. oy vey!

Another reminder that the experts are not infallible. Half the time they are barely fallible, and we have to think for ourselves. We have to be our own authoritarians. We do not have a good mental health program and the chances having something that benefits us instead of some corporation may be slim. At this point we are going to have to be our own advocates for our own and each other's care.

It's something I wrestle with, paradoxical thinking of 'it's okay/ it's not okay' thinking. I think sometimes these conspiracy theories, true or not, paranoid thinking or not, contribute a lot to opening our minds but also instilling self-limiting beliefs while we are at it. I know the whole field of alternative medicine and nutrition has set up some self-limiting beliefs, and even fears to the point I have fear based view of food and food should be met with gratitude not dread or worry. I went there to improve my health not destroy it.


A merry go round of confusion. Low carb, high fat, eat fruit, don't eat fruit, organic, inorganic, don't have licorice--over the last couple months I've been schizophrenic about food and actually my health and mental state have suffered over it greatly. Over food. Food. Not the boogie man, not if there is a heaven or hell, the NWO or if the world is going to end but over flippin' food--vegan, not vegan, vegetarian, fruitarian, guilt, shame, fear, rationalization flip flopping my eating driven by emotions. Don't eat, means lose weight. Losing weight means I'm then bound into a cycle of stuffing myself to hold my own and not lose too much. Freaking out because my weight deviates 3 pounds up or down every week. . Every meal is an agony of indecision and doubt and consequences. And I did that to myself. Consciously and unconsciously. Not because of scarcity or quality but because of little aversions and fears wrought from an excess of information--thoughts, not reality--from the input of too many damned experts and authoritarians and blabber mouths instead of taking a balanced approach. I had myself convinced that eating even anti-inflammatory carbs would intensify pain conditions and it was absolutely not true. It was the anxiety causing the increase in pain. Because anxiety was my apertif. Get all worked about about meals, then wonder why I didn't feel good afterwards.

I set all that up inside me until food and I were at war with other causing more pain, more anxiety. All over a simple thing like a piece of toast, or an egg, a pear. I even stopped eating because I was tired of the war. No appetite. Had to force myself to eat.

Finally I put foot down with myself and said, eat what is there, eat what you want (within reason) eat what is neccessary for you in this day, this moment, eat what is set before you and be grateful and be steadfast in the belief that it won't harm and your body knows what it needs and what its doing and if anyone has any comments on it, then boot them out of your narrative. Then be grateful again. So what if I lose weight, so what if I gain weight, so what if it makes me sleepy, so what if I inadvertently sedated myself with food, so what if skip a meal or am a little piggy at the next one, so what if not approved by the vegans, vegetarians, breatharians, fruitarians, carnivores, nutritionists or the American Medical Society. Eat it, love it, be grateful and fuck the rest of it. I'm not against anti anxiety medicine but I shouldn't have to take it for an everyday damn thing like food. People with real anxiety over real issues and trauma probably think I'm a GD idiot compared to what they are struggling with and I agree . Enoughs enough.


Drugs are not for me but also there may be a future point in time that it may be helpful and I wouldn't want to eschew something beneficial for me in the future but not perhaps now because I had set up a belief system against it. That's not a future I want to envision for myself having to have some mind altering drug but I also don't want to be rigid because eliminating any sort of limiting belief(s) means you are opening yourself to a future with all sorts of possibilities and different pathways which are actually created in the now. Depression is being caught in the past, anxiety fixated on a future or getting all wrought up about stuff that hasn't happened yet although in your body it seems to be.

[Aragorn]

Where you get addictive from Aragorn ?

Well, I don't know about LSD, but I've seen plenty of addiction to substances — including pot — in my social circles, so...

[Diabolical Boids]

I guess the climax to this is somewhat unrelated but relative to fear thinking that causes anxiety. Me making a better choice than the one I unconsciously would otherwise take. Or not letting the inner terrorist make decisions for me. None of it involved making a better choice than taking Xanax.

I have a profound mistrust and fear of the medical community especially after years of pharma/ doctor abuse and especially after Covid. Basically I had myself convinced if I had to go to a hospital or have a procedure I'd die of fright before the medical community got me. I am right to have concerns but I think my inner critic has taken it to extremes until its become a terrorist in my head that makes me made bad choices all unconsciously . All unconscious thinking and unself serving belief reaffirmed by conscious thoughts. Fear fear fear.

So yay, I find I have to go for a procedure since what you resist will persist. No anesthesia, told it would be uncomfortable to painful to very painful. I could do it then or wait a couple days. I chose to wait a couple days and work on creating the procedure in the now---not painful, optimal results, no anxiety, no dying of fright on the table or trauma creation, Then I went against my grain of doing things, dropping stubbornness to proceed in my way even though it wouldn't produce the best possible outcome. I took control by surrendering. Drop the mistrust in myself and doctors, drop the stubbornness, drop a bunch of shit. Whatever shit I could drop and let go of I did. I expressed a bunch of anxiety and concerns to the doctor feeling like a real weak ass and she just looked at me and said. You're tough.

Then I did what I normally would not do ever before the procedure. I took 3 ibuprofen, and a xanax. To me this is the equivalent of drinking hemlock. Committing moral suicide. But it was a different choice than what I would normally make.

Then while i'm lying on the table waiting for the doctor I did a gamma meditation breathing exercise. By the time the doctor came in I was a limp noodle relaxed and focused on staying very present even thought I was in a semi state of altered consciousness.

The procedure was uncomfortable. It was foreign and new to me. I couldn't predict what would happen. But I didn't want to either in case I was predicting something awful. But i just kept breathing, staying in the present so the immediate future would be great. It was uncomfortable but manageable, most of discomfort was about how I thought it about rather than physical pain, I kept on breathing and making my body relax when I feared the discomfort was suddenly going to escalate instead of creating those conditions i just kept breathing. I even told the doctor if she thought I was tensing too much to remind me to breathe again. The equipment kept breaking so it took longer and longer to complete and I was okay instead of panicking. I didn't stare at the equipment since my imagination would run wild and turn it into instruments of torture. I breathed, focused on my heart, told my body to relax repeatedly and to give it credit it did.

Perversely the procedure was less painful than the damned psychomatic pain I was having over the flippin food issues. I even thought "You know what. I'd rather be here than at work. I'm grateful I'm here instead of at work."

Towards the very end I did ask if we almost through since I wasn't sure how much longer I could hold that space. But I was asking a question I already knew the answer too. Clearly we were almost done. Perversely I'm suddenly starving, wanting a nap instead of a freak out or wanting to collapse somewhere as if I'd just escaped a harrowing experience. She finished up and then she wanted me to lie there because people often felt weak and dizzy afterwards. I felt fine. I was tired of lying down. So she doubtful but said let's trying sitting up. I was a chipper as a chipmonk but still relaxed. No dizziness, weakness, light headed ness, pain, or the usual expected results. So seemed sort of nonplussed but decided to discharge me then instead of waiting. I got up , got dressed, and walked around like and even tidied up my table. She was seemed a little confused but happy I was okay. So off I went. I was pretty grateful that it was over but also that I had taken control by relinquishing it.

Took my grateful ass to a diner, and ate with a good appetite instead of judging my food, how I felt, the after effects of the procedure predicting or speculating. It's like I got some mildly annoying task out of the way instead of a great frightening experience I was thinking of it as before. I was pleased with myself and the work I did instead of the pit of self loathing for being an anxious mess over nothing. The waitress handed me a cup of coffee . My mind immediately started that self criticism. "Oh sure take a xanax and then have a cup of coffee that's real counter intuitive, jack your brain chemistry up and then jack it back down again....

And I told the critic to naff off, coffee wasn't the problem it and its big mouth was the problem. It shut up. No interior comments or how I shouldn't eat bread, and didn't those foods have fungus on them, and was that jelly corn syrup based? I ate in peace for the first time in years. It wasn't organic, or macro, micro, whatever. It was just food.

I finally picked up my mug of coffee daring the inner terrorist to say something when I put creamer in it. The mug had a motto on it that said "You are strong."

That gave me just an amazing moment. I just sat and stared it. Yeah I took that as an synchronization and an affirmation.

[Emil El Zapato]

As I have already said elsewhere a few times, I have never done any drugs in my life, nor do I intend to go there.

• First and foremost, as a high-functioning autistic and synesthetic person, everything is already way more intense for me than for anybody else — anything from physical sensations over sensory input to emotions and thoughts, and the latter is then basically what lays at the root of OCD, which in turn is a condition most (but not all) auties have to live with on a daily basis.

• Secondly, I am already aware of a grander reality beyond this one, and of the oneness/connectedness of everything, because I live that. By this, I do not mean that I would be hallucinating and/or seeing ghosts or anything. It's just that I have a (slightly) different kind of consciousness — among other things, I'm an empath, and I can even feel other people's physical pain before they tell me that they're experiencing pain.

• Thirdly, hallucinations are not experiences of the grander reality or the spirit world. They are called hallucinations for a reason, i.e. it is a load of neurological gibberish that the brain attempts to make sense of, similar to dreaming, but while you are awake, and considering that you are awake, the brain is fully active, as opposed to when you are dreaming while asleep.

• Lastly, as the Sidinugget keeps on telling us, "Drug is bad. Don't drug." There's a reason why those substances are illegal in most jurisdictions, which is that they are addictive and that they are known to cause psychoses, even among people not normally inclined toward psychosis.

Conversely, I also don't take any psychoactive medication such as antidepressants, because I don't want anything messing with my state of mind, regardless of whether I'm feeling depressed or whatever. If I'm feeling depressed, then there's a reason for that, and then taking such medication won't take away the reason for feeling depressed in the first place, but instead it would render me insensitive by inducing a mild form of euphoria. And that is tantamount to living a lie.

The only proper way to deal with depression is to acknowledge the problem — i.e. that which gives you reason to feel depressed — and then take it from there. And you may not be able to remedy the cause of your depression — e.g. if it's something beyond your control, which it usually is — but then at least you're not living a lie, being in denial about the problem, which is what antidepressants do to you.

Just my two Eurocents, for whatever they're worth at today's exchange rates.

I think that's the wrong impression of antidepressants. They dull the pain and thus make one more able to deal with it head on. It is the stuff rattling around in our brains unbeknownst to us that is damaging. Sigmund Freud believed that one can't squash it because it will always manifest in another way. I learned that lesson after about 25 years of suffering.

I tell you a surprising side affect of SSRI's. When I first started taking them I went to a therapist and one of his first questions was why did the shrink put me on them. I couldn't remember...the discomfort, that is, I was fully in touch with why it had been there and still am, oftentimes it comes out in my dreams. Dreams are an avenue for awareness of what is going on underneath the covers.

[Emil El Zapato]

Another reminder that the experts are not infallible. Half the time they are barely fallible, and we have to think for ourselves. We have to be our own authoritarians. We do not have a good mental health program and the chances having something that benefits us instead of some corporation may be slim. At this point we are going to have to be our own advocates for our own and each other's care.

It's something I wrestle with, paradoxical thinking of 'it's okay/ it's not okay' thinking. I think sometimes these conspiracy theories, true or not, paranoid thinking or not, contribute a lot to opening our minds but also instilling self-limiting beliefs while we are at it. I know the whole field of alternative medicine and nutrition has set up some self-limiting beliefs, and even fears to the point I have fear based view of food and food should be met with gratitude not dread or worry. I went there to improve my health not destroy it.


A merry go round of confusion. Low carb, high fat, eat fruit, don't eat fruit, organic, inorganic, don't have licorice--over the last couple months I've been schizophrenic about food and actually my health and mental state have suffered over it greatly. Over food. Food. Not the boogie man, not if there is a heaven or hell, the NWO or if the world is going to end but over flippin' food--vegan, not vegan, vegetarian, fruitarian, guilt, shame, fear, rationalization flip flopping my eating driven by emotions. Don't eat, means lose weight. Losing weight means I'm then bound into a cycle of stuffing myself to hold my own and not lose too much. Freaking out because my weight deviates 3 pounds up or down every week. . Every meal is an agony of indecision and doubt and consequences. And I did that to myself. Consciously and unconsciously. Not because of scarcity or quality but because of little aversions and fears wrought from an excess of information--thoughts, not reality--from the input of too many damned experts and authoritarians and blabber mouths instead of taking a balanced approach. I had myself convinced that eating even anti-inflammatory carbs would intensify pain conditions and it was absolutely not true. It was the anxiety causing the increase in pain. Because anxiety was my apertif. Get all worked about about meals, then wonder why I didn't feel good afterwards.

I set all that up inside me until food and I were at war with other causing more pain, more anxiety. All over a simple thing like a piece of toast, or an egg, a pear. I even stopped eating because I was tired of the war. No appetite. Had to force myself to eat.

Finally I put foot down with myself and said, eat what is there, eat what you want (within reason) eat what is neccessary for you in this day, this moment, eat what is set before you and be grateful and be steadfast in the belief that it won't harm and your body knows what it needs and what its doing and if anyone has any comments on it, then boot them out of your narrative. Then be grateful again. So what if I lose weight, so what if I gain weight, so what if it makes me sleepy, so what if I inadvertently sedated myself with food, so what if skip a meal or am a little piggy at the next one, so what if not approved by the vegans, vegetarians, breatharians, fruitarians, carnivores, nutritionists or the American Medical Society. Eat it, love it, be grateful and fuck the rest of it. I'm not against anti anxiety medicine but I shouldn't have to take it for an everyday damn thing like food. People with real anxiety over real issues and trauma probably think I'm a GD idiot compared to what they are struggling with and I agree . Enoughs enough.


Drugs are not for me but also there may be a future point in time that it may be helpful and I wouldn't want to eschew something beneficial for me in the future but not perhaps now because I had set up a belief system against it. That's not a future I want to envision for myself having to have some mind altering drug but I also don't want to be rigid because eliminating any sort of limiting belief(s) means you are opening yourself to a future with all sorts of possibilities and different pathways which are actually created in the now. Depression is being caught in the past, anxiety fixated on a future or getting all wrought up about stuff that hasn't happened yet although in your body it seems to be.

That's a great post and you are most correct.

[Wind]

I agree in the sense that psychedelics shouldn't be recommended for the faint of heart or people who have underlying mental issues.

Same with pot, it's not going to help people who are prone to paranoia and psychosis. Granted, I've not done pot so I don't even know how it feels. It's however known from studies that psychedelics can't get you addicted to them. At best you might just get addicted to the experience and you won't do anything with the healing or information that you are presented with. Psychedelics do that, they show you things about you and the world, they literally open your mind and allow you to see things from a different vantage point which is a massively helpful tool for some people, including for people who suffer from depression. I'd say that especially for politicians and other clowns it would be necessary for to take psychedelics so that they could learn to develop some damn empathy and common sense.

My mind is not normal either and I feel and see a lot, that is the price for sensitivity. I hardly drink any alcohol, I can't even drink coffee because any stimulants are too much for me. It makes me anxious and my body gets all weird. I guess that's my mega Virgo side (Ascendant too in it) so my stomach is very sensitive and anything I put there is going to affect me greatly. So whatever that alters my mind or consciousness, I have to usually take it less than others. I don't do "drugs", although I am open to plants. This reality is a trip.

Paracelsus, possibly the greatest physician to ever live said this;

"All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous qualities. It is only the dose which makes a thing poison."