Psychedelics for Catholics?

[crumblymunky]

Coptic, that would be interesting, but I didn’t think one could simply stay at a monastery for a year without professing an interest in joining the community.

 

[LongJourney]

Coptic, that would be interesting, but I didn’t think one could simply stay at a monastery for a year without professing an interest in joining the community.

A thousand times better than a year in prison, and you would be more likely to find the benefits of prayer and the Sacraments.

 

[Novart]

I saw another post about marijuana and alcohol consumption, so I was wondering what peoples general thoughts were about the consumption of psychedelics.

I ask this because I have on and off wanted to try one, but I haven’t been able to get past the morality aspect.

I can live without it, but I would like to try them. I’ve tried marijuana and alcohol, and marijuana isn’t worth the after toke focus problems and alcohol just is dumb. Kills brain cells, ya know?

I’ve done a fair amount of research and would be able to take a low dose safely, having effects a little above marijuana, which is what I would like to achieve. I would rather ask this here than on a stoner website because everyone will tell me to do it.

Psychedelics work chemically for Catholics the same way as they do for anyone else. The question is, how does, or would, your “Catholic” mind deal with psychedelics?

A memorable passage from one of the Don Juan books, I forget which one, has Carlos, who had gone to him to learn about Yaqui medicinal lore, asking why he head been administered so many hallucinogens. Don Juan says, in effect, “You were so abysmally stupid that it took that kind of assault to break your habituated prejudices about reality.” That can be said about each one of us, a statement anyone who has not experienced a radical shift in awareness by any means, including chemical, is not qualified to comment on. And do look up the root meaning of “radical.”

But that has always been the purpose of sacred drugs, entheogens, and psychedelics since time immemorial. And very importantly, in the right setting with the right guidance. Radical inquiry and suffering under direction has been useful as well. But results are dependent on the preparedness of the traveler and the state of Awareness of the Guide. I wouldn’t recommend psychedelics taken from or in a street setting to anyone, and in fact recommend against it strongly. But if you are meant to experience a journey to the fact that your mind is not you, then that journey is inevitable, by whatever means.

Final answer? From me it is that psychedelics are relatively but not absolutely useful. There is a far more important question at hand. And few approach it, religiously or otherwise. So first find out who or what it is that is interested in having an answer to that question to begin with.

 

[Pedro_1987]

Very well said.

The answer to “What would Jesus do” in this case is certainly not “smoke weed”, as much as the South Park generation would like to believe this.

If it were legal, well, maybe. Marijuana is far safer than alcohol, and Jesus did supply wine for a wedding. So if Jesus didn’t have a real problem with recreational drinking, I don’t think He’d have much problem with recreational smoking, again, if it were legal. Weed is actually pretty safe, and impossible to OD on. The only danger comes from driving while on it, but that same argument can be made against alcohol. It can have bad long term consequences, but then, so does alcohol. Similarly to alcohol, it is very easy to take a low dose to the point of getting a buzz and being sociable without being rendered completely useless. It has even less of an effect than alcohol in that regard; even people that do a moderately heavy dose aren’t as “useless” as people with equivelent alcohol dosages.

Psychedelics on the other hand, those things scare me. Unlike pot, they can destroy your mind. I wouldn’t try it. It’s very easy to fry your mind permanently on that stuff, especially if you take it regularly. I believe tripping is more sinful than getting drunk or stoned, since it pretty much removes all of your control. Like getting black out drunk. It’s also not recommended for anybody with even a hint of mental instability to try those, since they’d push you over the edge. Unlike pot or alcohol, even if you don’t perma-fry your brain, you can still trip for literally days from a single sufficient dose. Then there’s the bad trips, from what I’ve heard, you don’t want those, and they’re impossible to avoid (you either get them or you don’t, no real way to prevent them).