Originally Posted by Strewth

Admittedly, you can trip serious balls without drugs. All it takes is sleep deprivation, weird things happening around you, and a certain extra element I have yet to identify (perhaps the desire to trip balls.) but once you set yourself up to go down that road, yeah. You see things differently, clearly. You understand a lot of what's there that you don't realize consciously. This method of stressed induced epiphany state has been used in several North American Indian cultures and is often an initiation into adulthood.

It is, however, nowhere near as powerful as a chemical induced state. I'm not sure I would call LSD a spiritual "steroid"; I might suggest peyote as being more in the direction of a generally spiritual "steroid". There is a wealth of anthropological data about the use of peyote in Mexican Indian traditions, most famously the first few books Carlos Castaneda wrote. However, many many hippies used LSD for good spiritual effect in the early days of the movement. Another notable drug is ibogaine, used primarily in African tribal rituals. Many users report having relived their entire lives from the perspective of all of the other people they have ever met. They said that it completely changed the way they viewed the world, having finally experienced it from the outside and seen themselves without bias. Ibogaine has been used very controversially to help in drug rehabilitation, as it completely suspends the withdrawal process from opiates virtually instantly (several hours). The western world does not have very much solid data on ibogaine and what constitutes an overdose or whether overdose is truly possible with it, as its use in the western world is fairly rare and all deaths with an ibogaine link had an undetermined cause of death.

Hallucinogenic agents have been used in many cultures for a long time as a means towards spiritual understanding or initiation into the tribal religious life. Religions on the whole seem to highly value altered states, as it is during altered states when prophecy allegedly becomes possible. From a spiritual perspective, it's not really what you use as how you use it most of the time, unless of course it is a particularly addictive agent. I have yet to hear of someone becoming addicted to LSD, and my mother was one of those kids who ran away to San Francisco in 1965 to join the counterculture. Same goes for peyote and for mushrooms, which I do not frankly know much about. Ibogaine indeed has anti-addictive properties. Psychedelics are typically safe as far as drugs go, so long as you don't do anything fucktarded while you are in an altered state.

Originally Posted by slamminsalmon

or the whole time mayan and aztecs were building pyramids and calendars.

Originally Posted by Strewth

When I suggested that religions value the trip as a mode for prophecy, I believe that the logical step forward from that was "Jesus and all them were probably tripping serious balls at some point."

as per Mayan and Aztecs, there was an episode of Digging for the Truth on the History Channel that was interesting and had a lot to do about that. Doing any research into the spiritual and religious data we've got about the Central and South American Indians, one finds that the chemically altered state of awareness was -- and in some cases, still is -- a major part of their spiritual existence.

Originally Posted by little bozzio

Throughout history, lots of people tripped and fell, yet I believe there were only a handful in each group or tribe that actually gobbled the button. Then the starving writers wrote the journals. While the shamans and seers soared into new realms, others were applying the whips to the general masses.
Ibogaine, that's not a smooth drug. It is suited to politicians. Catatonic nothingness leading into bouts of crazed gibberish. Moving in for the kill.
But I am hard pressed to believe that your average Mayan walked down to the candyshack for their daily ration of peyote just before their shift began on the main temple. Sounds more like Cocaine. A leaf between your cheek and gum, perhaps.
As for our buddy, Christ, well, starvation. Shit, man, if I was in the desert starving and saw a burning bush, I would have killed the first snake I saw and roasted it.
Married Mary, and moved to the country.
Inner is correct, using modern standards on Christ, the man would be in a looney bin.