The Return of Psychedelics
How Shamans, Silicon Valley and Satan Inspired a New (Old) Obsession
Steve Jobs said it was “one of the most important things” in his life. Aaron Rodgers credits it for his back-to-back MVP wins. Paul McCartney said it changed his life, and he was never the same.
Was it God?
No. It was psychedelics.
Why have so many public figures spoken about psychedelics throughout the years using such overtly religious terms? Why are billionaires pushing a variety of hallucinogenic drugs through FDA trials to get them legalized for mass public consumption? Why has “microdosing” psychedelics become the hottest new trend in health and wellness? Are psychedelics simply a tool for positive self-transformation as all the celebrities insist? Or is there something else going on?
An Era Begins
Psychedelics were unknown in America until 1955 when a man named R. Gordon Wasson went to Mexico with the goal of becoming “the first white man in recorded history to eat the divine mushroom.” Wasson met with a well-known shaman who chanted, prayed and sang until she entered a trance that allowed her to channel what she called “the holy children”—a group of spirit entities from another realm. After Wasson ate the “magic” mushroom (a term he later coined), he too was able to commune with the spirits that were present.
In an article Wasson later wrote for Life magazine, he explained, “The mushroom permits you to see more clearly than our perishing mortal eye can see…to travel backwards and forwards in time, to enter other planes of existence, even to know god.” Soon it was rumored that celebrities like Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and John Lennon had followed in Wasson’s footsteps—traveling to Mexico to meet the shaman who could help them directly access the spirit realm.
Wasson brought a mushroom back to the United States, and a chemist isolated its psychoactive ingredient: psilocybin. A synthetic version of psilocybin was then created by a pharmaceutical drug company for “research purposes.”
And just like that, LSD was born.
The advent of LSD is, of course, what catapulted a generation into the psychedelic era of the 60s and 70s. Thus, it would appear the decisions of one man—R. Gordon Wasson—forever altered the course of American history. But there was one fact about Wasson that no one knew at the time—a fact that is central to the story of psychedelic drugs and their proliferation in the United States.
Everything Wasson did was being fully funded by the CIA.
Enter Leary
It was reported that a psychologist named Timothy Leary read Wasson’s Life magazine article and decided to go to Mexico to participate in a mushroom ceremony himself. During his first experience with psychedelics, Leary claimed he learned more about the brain in five hours than he’d learned in the preceding 15 years of psychological research. Leary said he now understood that “spiritual ecstasy, religious revelation and union with god” were directly accessible. He decided LSD was the way to uncover “personal truth” and achieve spiritual enlightenment.
Leary established the Harvard Psilocybin Project where he conducted LSD drug trails with Richard Albert, later known as Ram Dass. (Dass is responsible for popularizing modern yoga in the West.) Leary and Dass insisted psychedelics had enormous potential for therapeutic use in psychology. Even when the outcome of their research trials proved that long-term client progress made with LSD was virtually no better than placebo, Leary didn’t care. He remained utterly convinced that psychedelics were the only way for a person to experience lasting, positive behavior change.
But after decades of using LSD himself, Leary wasn’t exactly the poster boy for lasting, positive, behavior change. He had been married five times and arrested 36. After Leary’s first wife confronted him about his infidelities, he reportedly told her, “That’s your problem.” She later died by suicide. Leary’s daughter shot and killed her boyfriend while he was taking a nap. She was convicted of murder and later hung herself in prison.
Leary was let go from his post at Harvard because he stopped showing up to give lectures. (He was too busy taking and distributing LSD.) Alpert was likewise fired for giving LSD to undergraduate students off campus. But by that time Leary left Harvard, he had already become the most nationally recognized figure in the burgeoning psychedelic movement. People everywhere were referring to him as “the High Priest of LSD.”
The Brotherhood
California was the first state in the nation to outlaw LSD in 1966. Ten days after LSD was declared illegal, a new “church” was incorporated in Laguna Beach, California called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love. The church’s only sacrament: taking LSD.
The Brotherhood’s stated goal was to turn as many people onto LSD as possible. The hope was that by calling themselves a “church,” these LSD devotees could eventually gain protective religious status for their favorite drug the way the Native Americans had with peyote. Timothy Leary eventually moved to Laguna Beach to take his rightful place as High Priest of the Brotherhood. He told his followers they were going to start a psychedelic revolution there that would eventually spread to every state in the country.
The revolution began with a large payment made to the Chief of Police in Tijuana, Mexico. This enabled the Brotherhood to smuggle large amounts of marijuana across the border into the U.S. (using musical instruments, hollowed-out surf boards and Volkswagen buses). They sold this marijuana so they could use the money to start manufacturing copious amounts of LSD.
The Brotherhood manufactured a potent variety of LSD called “orange sunshine” which they sold out of their “church” headquarters—a shop called Mystic Arts World on the Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna Beach. Orange sunshine could be bought for as little as five cents per tablet. (It was being handed out for free at Grateful Dead concerts.) The Brotherhood was so serious about their mission to get everyone hooked on LSD, they even had 25,000 hits of orange sunshine dropped from a cargo plane onto concert goers in a Laguna canyon.
As a result of their efforts, the Brotherhood became one of the largest drug smuggling and distribution groups in the U.S. from the mid-60s to the late-70s. Just one police raid of their facilities uncovered enough powder to make 14 million LSD tablets. The group was so powerful and prolific, they came to be known as “the Hippie Mafia.” But it soon became evident that the LSD being mass distributed by the Hippie Mafia might not be all (orange) sunshine and roses.
Though Leary and his disciples swore that peace, love and a better world were all they were after with their promotion of psychedelics, a much darker force had been at work since day one. Leary spoke of that force publicly in a PBS interview once when he said: “I’ve been an admirer of Aleister Crowley. I think I’m carrying on much of the work that he started over 100 years ago.”
Aleister Crowley was the most famous Satanist of the 20th century.
The Great Beast
Aleister Crowley was a 33rd degree Freemason who studied black magic and led the secret occult lodge Ordo Templi Orientis. He referred to himself as “The Great Beast – 666.” During rituals, he preferred to be called Baphomet which he deemed “the divine androgyne.” (Baphomet is the half-male, half-female “transgender” goat-man still popular with Satanists today.)
Crowley had his teeth filed down so he could more easily bite people during the sex magic rituals he would perform involving hundreds of men and women. Babies were known to “mysteriously disappear” while inside Crowley’s house. He was kicked out of Italy for performing human sacrifices.
Crowley said that while he was in Egypt in 1904, he met a disembodied spirit entity that claimed to be a messenger from the god Horus. He began channeling writings from this spirit, and those writings became The Book of the Law. He later developed The Book of the Law into a religion called Thelema—the Greek word meaning will. Some followers of Thelema included Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Wicca founder Gerald Gardner and rocket engine inventor Jack Parsons.
The Book of the Law said humanity was entering a “new age” (this is where the term “New Age” comes from). According to the trance-channeled spirit, this new age would be called “the Age of Horus.” (The symbol associated with this ancient deity is the one-eye “Eye of Horus” symbol. Ever seen a celebrity cover one eye?)
During this Age of Horus, every man will seek self-knowledge so he can start living according to his own will. Crowley called this a man’s “True Will” (i.e., his True Self). Crowley said self-knowledge can be attained through a variety of means such as yoga, Hinduism, Buddhism and black magic. But one of the best tools for acquiring self-knowledge is something he called “strange drugs” (i.e., psychedelics).
Crowley said psychedelics were the key to summoning ancient spirits that could then impart direct knowledge to mankind. He performed numerous occult rituals—most of which involved hallucinogenic drugs. One ritual he held by the Loch Ness in Scotland required six months of preparation. This was the ritual where Crowley attempted to summon a group of demons known as the “12 Kings and Dukes of Hell.” (Led Zepplin’s Jimmy Page later bought the house where the ritual was held.)
Crowley said, “That religion they call Christianity…it is their God and their religion that I hate and will destroy…I am the snake that giveth knowledge and delight…to worship me take wine and strange drugs…”
Yet Crowley was the man whose work Timothy Leary felt was his “duty to carry on.” Leary once said of Crowley, “I’m sorry that he isn’t around now to appreciate the glories he started.”
The Desert Trip
English writer Brian Barritt confirmed the connection between Leary and Crowley when he described an experience he and Leary had in 1971 in Algeria. Barritt said Leary took him to a city called Bou Saada and drove him to the edge of the Sahara Desert, past some sand dunes until they came to a dried-up riverbed. The pair then sat on the sand as the sun was setting to take some LSD.
Barritt said this happened next: “Massive galactic spaceships blinked into being, golden vessels with the faces of Egyptian gods…gliding between life and death…through a window a woman with the face of an angel and the body of a spider was chatting me up with her eyes.”
Meanwhile, he said Leary began performing an occult ritual. He was muttering the phrase “solve et coagula” over and over. This phrase means “dissolve and conjoin,” and it is important in alchemical magic. (It’s also the phrase J.K. Rowling has tattooed on her arm.) Shortly thereafter, a whirlwind of sand kicked up in the desert, and a hooded figure appeared inside it. Barritt said the figure was holding a scroll that he understood to be written by famous occultist Dr. John Dee. (Dee channeled his writings from demons as well. He was the astrologer for Queen Elizabeth I, and he signed all his documents 007.)
It wasn’t until many years later that Barritt was able to fully piece together what had happened that night with Leary in Bou Saada. He said he eventually learned that in 1904, Aleister Crowley himself had conducted an occult ceremony at the exact same spot where Leary had performed his ritual…just past the sand dunes, right next to the dried-up riverbed.
During Crowley’s ceremony, he took psychedelics then performed sex magic on an altar to the god Pan. He did all this while wearing a hooded robe. He then used magic “calls” written by Dr. John Dee to summon a string of demons into a triangle in the sand.
Crowley is said to have left the desert that night possessed.
The Muse in Music
Jimmy Page was just one of many musicians who followed Crowley’s Thelema religion. After Crowley said, “If one follows my black magic, I can enable him to be a genius in music,” musicians everywhere began to study his teachings. Those who have admitted following Crowley include David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Sting, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Beatles and many more. Ozzy Osborne wrote a song called “Mr. Crowley.” Jim Morrison posed with a bust of Crowley for an album cover. The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band features Crowley’s photo on the front.
A man from the Brotherhood said Timothy Leary also spoke of the need to “gain control of the music.” Like his predecessor Crowley, Leary taught the secrets of “strange drugs” to numerous musicians including Crosby, Stills and Nash, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, etc.
The Beatles said it was their psychedelic experiences that inspired the album Revolver. Their song “Come Together” was actually written for Timothy Leary, and Leary was present when John Lennon recorded “Give Peace a Chance.” The Doors took their name from a book on psychedelics called The Doors of Perception. Bob Dylan, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, Hall and Oates and Fleetwood Mac have all alluded to channeling their music from spirits they met on hallucinogens.
After John Lennon and George Harrison first took LSD, they insisted fellow Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr take it too because, as Harrison told Rolling Stone in 1971, “We couldn’t relate to them anymore. Not just on the one level—we couldn’t relate to them on any level, because acid had changed us so much.”
A member of Pink Floyd’s management team once commented that the band’s co-founder Syd Barrett “turned into a songwriter it seemed like overnight.” Like many other musicians, it was only after Syd discovered Crowley’s strange drugs that people started referring to him as a “musical genius.” But while the demons he and many others had welcomed in may have granted them musical brilliance, their presence came at a price.
Slaves to Spirits
Pink Floyd band members said their co-founder changed dramatically as a result of his LSD use. He went from friendly and extroverted to depressed and withdrawn. He began having frequent hallucinations, intense mood swings and bouts of catatonia. He developed what they referred to as “a blank, dead-eyed stare.” Sometimes he’d refuse to leave the tour bus when it was showtime, or he’d walk off the stage as the first song started. His bandmates once had to pull him off his girlfriend because he was beating her over the head with a mandolin. Neighbors described hearing him shriek and howl at night while hurling things out his bedroom window. The next morning, the lawn would be strewn with broken glass, mugs, and saucepans.
Eventually, Pink Floyd kicked their co-founder out of the band. He went to live with his mother. Many years later, one band member caught a glimpse of Syd Barrett as he was shopping at a department store. When Barrett spotted his old friend, he dropped his shopping bags and ran.
Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys had a similar trajectory. Wilson said, “In 1965, I had what I consider to be a very religious experience. I took LSD…” Wilson told his wife that his “mind was blown” and he “saw god.” During that first LSD trip, Wilson went to the piano, sat down and wrote the song “California Girls.”
Wilson continued taking psychedelics for “purposes of self-development,” and by the mid-60s, he had written or co-written more than half of all Top 40 hits—including songs like “Good Vibrations,” “Surf City” and “Help Me Rhonda.” But while the drugs Wilson took allowed him to channel musical genius from the spirit realm; their use came at a cost.
In a 2006 magazine interview, Wilson said, “For the past 40 years I’ve had auditory hallucinations in my head, all day every day.” He explained that every few minutes while he’s awake, there are voices inside his head saying demeaning and derogatory things to him…things like, “We’re coming for you, Brian. This is the end, Brian. We are going to kill you, Brian.” He said the voices started “about a week after I’d taken some psychedelic drugs.”
Wilson became more and more depressed over the years until he finally stopped leaving his house altogether. He spent many months alone in his room (“In My Room”) taking psychedelic drugs. He was known for spending weeks or months at a time just lying in bed. (“I’m lying in bed, just like Brian Wilson did…” – Barenaked Ladies)
Wilson was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, depression, paranoia, mania and hallucinations. He was found wondering the streets of L.A. in his pajamas. He physically attacked his doctor during a visit. He was committed to a mental institution more than once. When he was home, he required around-the-clock psychiatric care. He regularly attempted suicide. He once drove his car off a cliff. He swam as far out into the ocean as he could. He dug a grave in his backyard and demanded someone push him in.
This is the end game for those involved with Crowley’s “strange drugs.” The spirits the drugs introduce to men often show up first as love and light, offering peace, healing and fresh perspective. But just like the original light bearer Lucifer, first appearances can be deceiving. Their long-term goal is death and destruction.
Wilson has had decades of therapy and tried countless medications. The demon voices in his head continue to this day.
Ancient Mysteries
Throughout history, the elite of society have sought to be “initiated into the ancient mysteries” by ingesting hallucinogenic substances. (Which came first—the person’s “elite” status or their initiation into the ancient mysteries is probably a question worth exploring.)
In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, psychedelic mushrooms are referred to as “the flesh of the gods” because by eating them, one could freely interact with the gods of old. During Egypt’s Khoiak Festival, the elites ate mushrooms that put them into direct contact with the god Osiris.
The Mayans, Toltecs and Aztecs consumed “the flesh of the gods” regularly and then did as the gods asked them to do. Unfortunately, the gods often requested they perform human sacrifices and engage in cannibalism. (To consecrate a single temple to one of the gods, it is believed the Aztecs sacrificed 80,400 prisoners in just four days.)
The Eluesinian Mysteries were the most important festival of the year in ancient Greece during which the elite would drink a hallucinogenic substance known as kykeon. They would then enter a large cave known as “the entrance to Hades.” What occurred after that remains a secret; (speaking of the ritual was a crime punishable by death). But we do know the goal was for initiates to commune with the gods of old—specifically Demeter and Persephone. Participants in the Eluesinian Mysteries included Marcus Aurelius, Plato and Augustus Caesar.
During the Dionysian Mysteries of Greece and Rome, wine was consumed with a psychoactive ingredient so initiates could enter a trance and invite the spirits to meet with them (preferably the god Dionysus). In India’s Vedic ceremony, a hallucinogenic drink called soma is consumed after which the gods show up and animals are sacrificed. These same steps are followed in the Samothrace Mysteries, the Mithraic Mysteries and the Orphic Mysteries (after which Yale’s Skull and Bones is patterned).
Psychedelics tear open the veil between the physical realm and the spirit realm, allowing humans to communicate with a variety of ancient deities. To this day, people all over the world still use this centuries-old process to gain esoteric knowledge. So, it should come as no surprise when we hear our modern-day elite bragging about how they too have undergone initiations into the ancient mysteries.
Modern Initiates
People at the top of every industry, from Hollywood to Silicon Valley, have revealed that they regularly partake in Crowley’s “strange drugs.” Author Tim Ferriss says, “The billionaires I know—almost without exception—use hallucinogens on a regular basis.”
Audiences would agree that A-list actors seem to have an uncanny ability to “channel” the characters they portray. The uninitiated hear this as a metaphor. The initiated know better. Hollywood is filled with actors and actresses who readily admit to channeling actual spirits while under the influence of psychedelics.
Seth Rogan boasts about ingesting huge quantities of magic mushrooms beginning at age 13. He says he’s experienced “ego death” on mushrooms at least 25 times. Ego death is a key component in all mystical occult experiences, and it involves a complete loss of subjective self-identity—which many believe is the key to good acting.
Shia LeBouf, Angelina Jolie, and Francis McDormand have all talked about how psychedelics prepared them for their roles. Jack Nicholson says the first time he took LSD he “saw the face of god.” Susan Sarandon is a big fan of LSD, which is no surprise since she was close friends with Timothy Leary.
Kristin Bell says she took magic mushrooms to resolve her depression, (which unfortunately, “still comes and goes in waves”). Jada Pinkett Smith credits magic mushrooms with “improving her relationships.” (Perhaps that is all that needs to be said about the end result of psychedelic use.) Jim Carrey says, “The real message of psychedelics, I think, is to reclaim experience and to trust yourself. Your perceptions are primary. Your feelings are correct.” (Is it any wonder that Hollywood birthed the #MeToo movement?)
Most of today’s musicians still use Crowley’s strange drugs to channel their music. Harry Styles says mushrooms were the inspiration for his album Fine Line. Styles admits he once bit off the tip of his tongue while he was high on mushrooms. Hip-hop artist A$AP Rocky has bragged about having multiple “acid-fueled orgies.” Post-Malone has his love of hallucinogens written all over his face.
Lady Gaga says she did so much LSD for so many years that she nearly killed herself. She says the only reason she didn’t die was because, “My father’s sister JoAnne had instilled her spirit in me.” Gaga says that spirit had a vision for the world that she was meant to finish.
Hallucinogenic drugs abound in the comedy world as well. Chris Rock describes how he, Dave Chapelle, David Letterman and Kevin Hart would all sit around, taking psychedelics before performing stand-up. “We do lots of drugs,” Rock says. Sarah Silverman recalls, “I think I was high from 19 to 21 years old.” Chelsea Handler admits, “I take mushrooms almost every day.”
Anthony Bourdain described his early days as a chef like this: “We’d marinate [magic] mushrooms in honey overnight then we’d mix them in with a big pot of hot tea, and the whole kitchen would be drinking this tea all night long…”
Phil Jackson called LSD a “liberating” experience. Mike Tyson credits magic mushrooms for getting him back in the boxing ring. Joe Rogan became the #1 podcaster on the planet only after he started talking about his love of psychedelics. Aaron Rodgers famously said he thinks the only reason he was able to achieve NFL MVP status two years in a row is because he tried the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca.
Vine of the Dead
Ayahuasca is currently one of the most popular ways for the elite to undergo an occult initiation. Ayahuasca means “vine of the dead” or “vine of the spirits.” It is a hallucinogenic that’s ingested in liquid form during a religious ritual led by a shaman (usually in South America). The shaman drinks the brew then enters a trance during which he or she chants and sings, calling forth entities from another realm.
Before initiates can meet these spirits, a “purification” process must take place. This process usually involves alot of vomiting. Megan Fox says, “You have to vomit a certain amount until they let you get back with everyone else, so you're like cheering on everyone as they throw up.” Miley Cyrus says, “The guide reached down my throat and pulled out every dead animal I had ever eaten and made me throw it up. I saw me puking up seals.”
Sting writes in his 2005 autobiography Broken Music that his ayahuasca trips were the only religious experiences he has ever had. Paul Simon details his time on ayahuasca in a song he wrote called “Spirit Voices.” Kelly Slater is on the board of an ayahuasca retreat center. Oliver Stone, Lindsay Lohan, Jim Carrey, Terrance Howard, and Penn Badgley have all told stories of traveling to South America to take ayahuasca.
Virtually everyone who takes the drug mentions meeting a serpent (sometimes they meet just one snake; other times many). The serpent is associated with the Mayan god Quetzalcoatl. In Hinduism, the serpent energy (known as Kundalini) is what’s awakened in the spine during yoga. In the Bible, the serpent’s true identity is revealed: “That ancient serpent called the Devil, or Satan who leads the whole world astray…” – Revelation 12:9
Miley Cyrus recalls her first ayahuasca ritual, “I saw the snakes right away. The snakes come and grab you and take you to the Mama Aya, and she walks you through your whole trip.” Mama Aya is a reference to “Mother Ayahuasca.” Just as Dionysus would come to meet with revelers during the Dionysian Mysteries, a deity known as Mother Ayahuasca comes to meet with those who participate in the ayahuasca ceremony.
Author Graham Hancock calls Mother Ayahuasca an “ancient teacher of mankind.” Anthropologist Christine Holman of Arizona State University says, “Some people come away from drinking ayahuasca thinking it is a very real, living entity. The people that believe in her believe that very strongly. They call her Mother Ayahuasca.”
One person who believes is actor Will Smith.
The Goddess
Will Smith has traveled to Peru 14 trips to take ayahuasca. Here’s how he describes Mother Ayahuasca in his memoir, “She is everything: lover, teacher, mother, protector, guide.”
Smith’s psychotherapist told him the entity known as Mother Ayahuasca is simply a manifestation of his “True Self.” (So, in this case, I guess she’d be the “True Will.” Hmm…where have we heard that before?) But Mother Ayahuasca is not just a mental construct in the brain of an American actor. How do we know? We know because thousands of people from countries all over the world have met Mother Ayahuasca.
South American shamans haven’t been leading people through religious ceremonies with hallucinogens for centuries because they’re concerned about the Western notion of mental health. Hallucinogens weren’t popular in Egypt, Greece and Rome because the ancients were trying to “resolve past trauma.”
If psychedelics are simply a tool to help people conquer their “inner demons,” then why is it that everyone’s inner demons currently look and act exactly the same? No matter where someone is located on the planet…no matter how old they are or what culture they were raised in, they will see the same entities as a person on the other side of the earth.
This is because they’re not seeing “inner” demons. They’re seeing actual demons.
The phenomenon of Mother Ayahuasca is so widespread that Johns Hopkins even decided to conduct a research study on her. A survey of people who’ve met the spirit being say they believe she’s an ancient deity—likely some type of goddess. If this is true, she’s a goddess who clearly still desires worship. And she’s getting it…from platinum-selling artists to A-list actors. Will Smith said this about Mother Ayahuasca: “She is all I’ve ever dreamed of, and everything I’ve ever wanted. She is my goal, my solution, my answer.”
Demon Attachments
Are the gods and goddesses people meet on psychedelics as benevolent as they first appear? Or are they Trojan horses who only masquerade as arbiters of peace and health? Could they be waiting for the right time to shed their harmless-looking exterior and wreak havoc on the poor soul who ignorantly let them in?
Even Jonathan Evatt, a “spirit mentor” who actively promotes psychedelics, willingly admits, “The number one issue I see with people who have used ayahuasca—and numerous other mind-altering substances—is the infiltration of entities in their luminous energy field. In my experience I have met very few people who have used ayahuasca who don’t have entities attached to and/or influencing their luminous body.” (He notes the same is true of cannabis users.)
In other words, like other occult practices, psychedelics make it not just possible but likely that a demonic entity will attach itself to the human host. Evatt explains, “If your sentient consciousness has checked out, something else is likely to check in. The problem is that this uninvited guest is likely to hang around even after your return.” He says these uninvited guests are usually responsible for a wide range of “intrusions” in the person’s life from that point on. These intrusions may include insomnia, paranoia, emotional outbursts, mood swings, depression, physical illnesses, suicidal thoughts/attempts and more. (See Brian Wilson.)
My former hair stylist said that after she took magic mushrooms at a party, a demon attached itself to her. She would occasionally see it visibly manifest inside her home after that. Sometimes it would be hovering over her 12-year-old daughter. She was told by some friends (who were frequent psychedelic users) that the best way to remove an evil spirit from her life was to take psychedelics again—but this time in a better frame of mind. So, she did. But far from removing the evil, her second experience with hallucinogens seemed to grant the spirit more legal rights and access to both her home and child. The demon continued to terrorize her to such an extent that she eventually called an exorcist.
A man named Thomas Carroll shares on his blog that he decided to take ayahuasca because he heard it could help him stop smoking. He took the drug, and he never touched a cigarette again. But there was a catch. Carroll explains that anyone who participates in an ayahuasca ritual must first pray to the brew to ask the spirits to enter their body.
During the ritual, Carroll says he could physically feel the demonic entities entering him—some crawled like spiders, others slithered like snakes. He says that from that moment on, he knew he was possessed. He says that both during and after the ayahuasca ceremony he heard voices, screams, shrieks, groans and laughter. He had uncontrollable thoughts of stabbing and cutting himself and his loved ones. He had overwhelming compulsions to insult, hurt and degrade people sexually. He says the entities that he’d summoned taught him that “goodness” and human feces are one in the same. (The evil spirits seem to have an obsession with both vomit and feces.)
Another man said he came to understand a demon had possessed his body the night he took ayahuasca. The shaman suggested he try to eliminate it by throwing up. After he vomited, he checked the toilet and saw he had vomited up a black spider. He later learned that throwing up black spiders is a very common occurrence for people after an ayahuasca ceremony. People also regularly throw up cockroaches.
Do these sound like the things of heaven to you? Or might the spirits summoned by psychedelics hail from a different place entirely?
Hell on Earth
Megan Fox says she “descended to hell for an eternity” while on ayahuasca. A mom in my neighborhood told me the same story. She’d gone to see a therapist who recommended that she take psychedelic mushrooms for depression. Her first experience on mushrooms was so terrifying she was unable to talk about it. All she would say was that she descended to hell and saw evils she never could have conjured up in her own mind. Her therapist told her this just meant she had a lot of childhood trauma to work through and she simply needed to “integrate” her experience (a favorite expression of the therapeutic psychedelic community). He recommended she integrate as soon as possible so she could try mushrooms a second time in a better frame of mind.
I spoke to an artist recently who said he used to own two homes and a thriving business. That was until he participated in a series of six ayahuasca rituals. He’s now lost both homes and the business. He’s spent some time living out of his car. He says he’s still thankful for what the “medicines” have taught him. (Just as the label “transexual” was purposefully replaced by the label “transgender” to make it seem less frightening; the therapeutic psychedelic community is trying to replace the term “psychedelic drugs” with the term “plant medicines.”)
After hearing dozens of firsthand accounts from people who’ve taken hallucinogens, one thing is clear: the spirits summoned by these drugs seem to feed off the pain and suffering of those who take them. One woman describes her trip like this: “I went to some kind of white, massive, alien place. It was bleak, it was lonely, it was terrifying, it was cold.” Another woman says she watched as black smoke entered her body and a group of demons began working on her brain.
A man says, “I felt like the architecture of my mind was being completely rearranged in ways that might force me to spend the rest of my life in a mental institution…[taking psychedelics] completely dissolved my sense of self to a point where nothing made sense and reality ceased to exist. I was trapped in this terrifying reality-free abyss of nothingness for hours on end and thought my brain would never be the same again.” (This same man said that once he finally became lucid, he vowed never to never take another hallucinogenic drug as long as he lived.)
Singer Tori Amos described a scene from one of many ayahuasca rituals she attended, “I’ve been in a room with a woman who was literally trying to bite her own arm off. And this lasted for 15 hours…every so often, I’d say, I’m in a really rough patch. And one of the medicine women would come over and reassure me that everything was going to be alright…”
Will Smith says that on one of his ayahuasca trips he had a terrifying vision of everything in his life slipping away—his money, his house, his family, his career. He remembers hearing a voice say, “This is what the f--- it is, this is what the f--- life is.” Not long after, the vision given to Smith by the spirits manifested on a physical plane as Smith himself shouted something eerily similar to everyone at the Oscars before walking on stage and slapping Chris Rock.
Sorcery in Practice
Will Smith’s family and career both slipped away (as per his vision) after the slap heard around the world. Interestingly, Chris Rock, who’d been hosting ayahuasca rituals in his home throughout Covid, was rumored to have sobbed for 7 hours during the “ego death” portion of one of his trips. In fact, even before Rock experienced the very public blow to his ego in front of millions on stage, he had already decided to name his next comedy tour “Ego Death.”
Whether the spirits gave Smith and Rock foreknowledge of what was going to happen to them, or whether they somehow planted seeds that caused certain events to happen is up for debate. What cannot be debated, however, is that divination is one of the primary reasons people have been attempting to contact spirits since ancient times.
Divination comes from the Latin divinare meaning “to foresee, to be inspired by a god.” A divination tool attempts to uncover hidden (occult) knowledge of future events. Divination tools include numerology, astrology, tarot cards, Ouija boards, psychic mediums, etc. But one of the most powerful divination tools is hallucinogenic drugs.
The Bible has a lot to say about many forms of sorcery and about divination in particular. Deuteronomy 18:10 says, “There shall not be found among you anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes…” 1 Samuel 15:23 says, “For rebellion is as the sin of divination.” Isaiah 2:6 says, “They practice divination like the Philistines and embrace pagan customs.” Deuteronomy 18:10-12 says, “Let no one be found among you who…practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord.”
Galatians 5:19-21 says, “The works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication…sorcery…” It says those who practice such things “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” The word sorcery in this verse is the Greek word pharmakea from which we get the word pharmaceutical. Pharmakea is used several times in scripture, and it means “cutting the root of a plant.”
Shamans obtain hallucinogens by cutting the roots of plants. They then use these plants to contact the gods of old. These are the same gods the God of Israel tells his people to stay away from in scripture. In fact, he tells them to stay so far away from them that they are not to even take an object that belonged to someone who has worshipped one of those gods into their home. Those objects are automatically cursed and could lead to their destruction (Joshua 6:18).
The shamans who guide people through psychedelic rituals serve as mediums between two realms: the physical and the spiritual. These two realms, according to scripture, are meant to remain separate unless God decides otherwise. When men choose to channel the spirits using occult practices, including pharmakea, they open a portal between the two realms, giving demons permission to enter.
Leviticus 19:31 says, “Do not turn to psychics or mediums for help; do not seek them out for you will be defiled by them.” Leviticus 20:6 says, “I will set my face against anyone who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute themselves by following them...” Micah 5:12 says, “I will cut off sorceries from your hand and you will have fortune-tellers no more.”
Doctrines of Demons
The demons people meet on psychedelics have their own unique set of philosophies that they eagerly teach to humans. 1 Timothy 4:1 warns, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, devoting themselves to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons.”
For example, those who’ve met Mother Ayahuasca say she teaches them there is no right or wrong. She, like all the other fallen entities, explains that all is one, and all is love. (All you need is love – The Beatles). One man recounts his experience on psychedelics: “You get to meet god. You realize you are her [god], and she whispers to you all the mysteries of the universe. Suddenly, everything makes sense. There’s no more good; there’s no more bad. Everything just is. And all is well.”
Occultist John Dee said the spirits he spoke with got even more detailed with their doctrines. They told him that people should share their spouses sexually. Per the testimonies of psychedelic users, spirits often teach sexual deviancy in all forms. Anything outside the God-ordained male-female marriage relationship is supported and encouraged.
The demons likewise teach the gender binary needs to be done away with. Since all is one, there can never be two distinct opposites of anything. (Yes, these spirits inspired the transgender movement.) In fact, a woman hailed as “the founder of the psychedelic feminist movement” said that ayahuasca is how she first learned there must be a re-creation of the antiquated concept of gender. She said the spirits specifically told her that doing away with gender altogether was “the only way humanity could arrive at a system in which all parties, both human and non-human, can thrive.” (Transhumanism is another fundamental doctrine of demons.)
The demonic attempt to destroy the binary extends well beyond gender. Evil spirits seek to invert and pervert every good structure God created. Here is how one psychedelic user described her experience: “I wasn’t in this universe anymore. I was in a centrifuge of terror…I emerged into the darkest of energies. The space where hatred is born. Where fear takes root. She [a spirit] showed me the energy of murder and rape. The force that causes all chaos, insanity and violence…death would have been a gift in those hours…” The woman says that just as she was “in the grip of insanity” and “begging for mercy,” the spirit who showed her these things gave her a flood of new revelation that began with the epiphany: “This too is love.”
She says the spirit helped her understand that “The most horrific night of torture turned out to be the most genuine act of love I will ever know.”
The idea that “torture is love” only makes sense in the upside-down economy of evil. The demons imparting revelation to this woman are the same ones responsible for all the actual murder, rape and torture she witnessed while interacting with the spirit realm. Naturally the entities behind such wickedness would want everyone to believe the evils they’ve inspired are somehow for the benefit of mankind.
The woman says that in her vision “Hell became heaven.” But shortly after that, she came realize there is no such thing as heaven. (“Imagine there’s no heaven.” – John Lennon.) Hell is but a construct we create; heaven as well.
Demons teach their students that lies are truth, bondage is freedom and chaos births order. Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
But what about people who claim to have met God or say they came to know Jesus Christ because of what they experienced on hallucinogenic drugs? Surely those can’t be the doctrines of demons, right?
The All One
People who experience “God” while on psychedelics will inevitably say that the universe and the divine are one in the same. They will say every plant, every animal, every human is a small part of God. As Marianne Williamson says, “We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible, divine mind.”
This is Pantheism, and it is nothing new. It is the foundation of both Hinduism and Buddhism (and Scientology, New Age, etc.). But it has nothing to do with the God of the Bible who claimed to be outside of space and time, separate from what he created. Pantheism was adopted by early the Gnostics who believed one could only know God through mystical firsthand experience (e.g., the ancient mysteries). It also traces back to Hermeticism which combined the teachings of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth.
After Hermeticism later picked up bits of Greek and Judeo-Christian thought, it morphed into the perennialism we see in progressive “Christianity” today. Perennialism teaches the world’s religions all share a single origin from which all esoteric knowledge is derived. Perennialists use phrases like “the Christian tradition” or “the Muslim tradition” because they believe one can retain the practices associated with a particular religion while recognizing all religions share the same truth.
People who say they found God on psychedelics usually adopt a set of beliefs similar to the early Transcendentalists. They revere intuition over science. They believe the common is sacred, so the divine can be experienced in any given moment. (Thus, there is no need for a literal heaven.) They believe organized religion and political parties corrupt the “purity” of an individual, limiting their potential for union with the divine. (Famous transcendentalists like Thoreau, Whitman and Emerson admitted Hinduism was the primary influence for their philosophy.)
Promoters of hallucinogenic drugs will say all religions are just different paths to the same destination. As Jim Carrey says, “I’m a Buddhist, I’m a Muslim, I’m a Christian. I’m whatever you want me to be. It all comes down to the same thing…you’re either in a loving place or you’re in an unloving place...”
Comedian Neil Brennan says he found God on psychedelics and notes, “He [God] didn’t have any rules or laws or anything.” Brennan says this “God” was simply a force, (The Force). This impersonal energy is the “divine substance” connecting all things…which makes all things, by default then, inherently good.
2 Timothy 3:4 says, “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”
Christ Consciousness
Josh Radnor, the actor who played Ted Mosby on How I Met Your Mother, claims to have become a true follower of Christ while on ayahuasca. Radnor has admitted to participating in over 100 ayahuasca rituals. (Perhaps a better title for his show would have been How I Met Mother Ayahuasca.)
Radnor recalls, “During a ceremony one night in 2009, I experienced a vision of myself at the crucifixion.” He says he saw Jesus, hanging on the cross, near death. “Soon I was in a small hut with a few people as we laid Jesus’ lifeless body out on a stone bench,” Radnor says. He claims the darkness he felt in that moment nearly overwhelmed him, but then…“In the darkness of my heart, there appeared a tiny light which began to grow and grow. I knew this light to be ‘Christ.’ This Christic light then began growing brighter and brighter, spreading throughout my heart, slowly occupying every last nook and crevice.”
Radnor explains, “This vision, I came to understand, was not about tribe or sect or religion. It was bigger and more transcendent. Christ—as Richard Rohr so beautifully maps out in his recent book, The Universal Christ—is distinct from Jesus. I saw that the ‘Second Coming of Christ’ is not a literal, material event. Rather, it will be taking place in the realm of consciousness, in the hearts and minds of human beings.”
This universal Christ that Radnor and Rohr speak of is the same “Christ consciousness” made popular by Oprah’s favorite author—people like Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle and Marianne Williamson. This concept of “Christ” has recently found a broader audience in both Catholic and Evangelical communities thanks to so-called “Christian” authors like Glennon Doyle and Richard Rohr.
Richard Rohr says he is Catholic, but he has been the leader of an occult training program called The Living School for decades. He has guided thousands of initiates into the ancient mysteries through his Center for Action and Contemplation. Rohr’s ecumenical teachings align perfectly with doctrines of demons. “Don't think of Christ as a religious concept,” he says, “Think of it as a descriptor for everything. Everything we can see.” Rohr backs up this assertion by dedicating his latest book (which Radnor referenced) to his dog Venus because “she also is Christ.”
Rohr once posted an article written by Radnor on his website. It said, “When you take ayahuasca you become the protagonist of the great spiritual drama. You are Jesus in the desert. You are Buddha beneath the Bodhi Tree.”
“You will be like gods.” – Lucifer, Genesis 3:5.
Missions for Men
After Timothy Leary said a man named Terence McKenna was “one of the five or six most important people on the planet,” McKenna shot to fame in the psychedelic community. What Leary did for LSD, McKenna did for DMT. (LSD is the psychoactive component of magic mushrooms; DMT is the psychoactive component of ayahuasca.) DMT has been called “the most powerful psychedelic on earth,” and McKenna was convinced it opened a portal to another dimension.
In Breaking Open the Head, author Daniel Pinchbeck says that after taking DMT, he found himself in a terrifying world of gothic insects, lizards and winged creatures. In the weeks that followed, he was certain he had a poltergeist in his apartment. Mirrors fell off the wall at night, strange bugs appeared out of nowhere. Even though Pinchbeck was an atheist at the time, the hauntings became so severe he called a priest to perform an exorcism.
With regards to the spiritual beings one encounters on DMT, psychedelic researcher Dr. Rick Strassman said, “I was neither intellectually nor emotionally prepared for the frequency with which contact with these beings occurred…nor the often utterly bizarre nature of these experiences.”
A University of New Mexico study described some of the beings DMT users report meeting, including insectoids, reptilian humanoids, clowns, jokers and genies. Sometimes these spirits greet the user with a loving embrace; other times they plunge them into hell where they perform grotesque experiments on them. (One DMT user says a group of reptilian entities “feasted as they made love to me.”)
But the entities most frequently mentioned by DMT users are the infamous “machine elves.” This term was first coined by Terence McKenna, and it describes a group of half-humans, half robots who live at the center of the universe and claim to be in possession of highly advanced technology.
Johns Hopkins surveyed DMT users and found that over 75% of people who say they’ve met the machine elves believe the elves are real and currently living on another plane of existence. The Journal of Psychopharmacology reported that when 2,561 adults were surveyed about their encounters with the machine elves, 81% described them as being “more real than reality.”
Over 65% of people who have met the machine elves say the elves gave them a specific mission to fulfill once they returned to our plane of existence. Based on the elves supposed access to advanced technology, it’s likely that some of these “missions” have involved bringing the advanced technology from their world into our world.
The Tech Connection
The Silicon Valley elite have long admitted that psychedelics play a crucial role in the development of new technology. Steve Jobs said he used to take LSD on sugar cubes, always while alone. Elon Musk has tweeted about DMT more than once. Mark Zuckerberg recently donated half a million dollars to legalize psychedelics in Oregon.
The link between psychedelics and technology goes all the way back to Leary. He wrote a book entitled Chaos and Cyber Culture and spoke often about transhumanism, space colonization, life extension, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. He was also deeply interested in cryonics, and it is believed that he, like Walt Disney, had his head cryogenically frozen. He then had six grams of his body’s ashes sent into space to orbit the earth for a few years. The rest of his ashes were given to his friend Susan Sarandon to scatter at Burning Man.
When it comes to the psychedelic users’ mecca of Burning Man, it’s rumored that Elon Musk hasn’t missed the occult festival in 20 years. Musk even once made the statement: “Burning Man is Silicon Valley.”
Terence McKenna also wrote extensively on transhumanism. He lectured frequently on supercomputing, AI and virtual reality. McKenna had a plan for the future in which everyone would communicate via telepathy using a sort of brain-machine interface. (Neuralink anyone?)
McKenna spent decades studying shamanism, metaphysics and alchemy. He came to believe that psychedelics were the key to unlocking the “Philosopher’s Stone,” which is the end goal of alchemy. The Philosopher’s Stone has the ability to make men immortal.
Curing Death
The end goal for the spirits appears to be the same now as it was in the very beginning (Genesis): “You shall be like gods.”
Kevin Perrott, CEO of OpenCures, says “with enough time and enough steps” Silicon Valley will solve the aging problem. James Stole, Director of the Coalition of Radical Life Extension says, “There’s millions of people now who won’t see death if they choose.” Indeed, immortality appears to be a high priority for our modern tech elite.
Oracle founder Larry Ellison has invested $370 million in “immortality research.” (Based on his company’s name, we can ascertain where Ellison may have derived some of his own technological inspiration.) Unity Biotechnology promises to “reverse aging” and has raised $300 million from investors such as Jeff Bezos. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page spent $1 billion to create Calico Labs, a Google subsidiary that’s currently run by former Apple chairman of the board, Arthur Levinson. The goal of Calico Labs: to “cure death.”
Google director of engineering Ray Kurzweil says that by 2045 AI will have rendered mankind immortal. PayPal cofounder and former Facebook board member Peter Thiel has invested in Singularity University, a non-profit dedicated to the idea of humans merging with AI to live forever. (This could provide some context to a verse like Revelation 9:6, “During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.”)
Of course, the demon spirits men meet while on psychedelics want men to seek immortality while still in a fallen state. They first tried to make this happen in the garden, but God put a stop to it. Genesis 3:22-24 says, “Then God said, ‘See the man has become like one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil. He must not be allowed to stretch his hand out next and pick from the tree of life also and eat some and live forever. So, God expelled him from the garden of Eden…and in front of the garden he posted the cherubs and the fame of a flashing sword to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Billionaire Backing
With almost one billion people worldwide claiming to have some sort of mental disorder, the consumer market for mental health services has never been greater. The market in the U.S. alone was $384 billion in 2021, and it’s expected to expand to $560 billion by 2030.
As more people learn the truth about Big Pharma, they are losing interest in the anti-depressants of the past and seeking more natural treatments for mental health issues. A recent survey revealed that 74% of psychiatrists said they would prescribe psychedelics for their clients if the FDA were to ever approve them.
Billionaire investors like Peter Thiel immediately seized on this opportunity. Thiel (who was already a huge fan of psychedelics) began pouring hundreds of millions into German drug company Atia Biotech. Atia has now raised $362 million to manufacture and distribute psychedelics for use on depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc. Soon therapists everywhere will have the ability to prescribe psychedelics to clients in the same way they would have prescribed SSRIs.
In other words: As Big Pharma falls, Big Psychedelic will rise.
Just as we’ve recently witnessed the birth of the transgender medical-industrial complex; we are about to witness the birth of the psychedelic medical-industrial complex. The billionaires pushing this complex to the forefront include people like Mets owner Steven Cohen, Tom Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary and GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons. These men and many more have poured hundreds of millions into psychedelic “research” that will push every type of hallucinogenic drug imaginable through clinical trials to secure legalization.
Soon there will be an all-out media blitz positioning psychedelics as the all-time greatest breakthrough in the treatment of mental health. As one online store that sells magic mushrooms says, “It is only a matter of time before [psychedelics] are a staple in every household’s medicine cabinet to promote overall wellness.”
The marketing campaign for a new era of psychedelic addiction is ready to go. The men backing this campaign are the same men who own the companies peddling the drugs. Soon Big Psychedelic will attempt to recruit millions of new, life-long customers. From depressed housewives to traumatized war veterans, hallucinogenic drugs will be touted as the cure-all for everything from opioid addiction and hormone imbalances to ADHD and PTSD.
The strategies they will use have already been test-driven for several years with the marketing campaign we’ve seen for cannabis. And so far, it’s worked.
Weeding Out Lies
Yes. Cannabis is a psychedelic drug.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Lonny Weiss says, “Cannabis has been widely documented as a powerful shamanic medicine for thousands of years all over our planet—many people across the world view cannabis as a master plant or teacher.” Cannabis, like other psychedelics, is often referred to as an “entheogen”—which means it’s “a plant with the ability to reveal the God within.”
Taoist shamans use cannabis before their divination rituals. The Sufis and Rastafarians practice a religion that is intimately intertwined with cannabis. This is because cannabis has the ability to give its users direct access to the spirit realm just like all other hallucinogens. Dr. Weiss says, “Cannabis is known for its hallucinogenic effects which include distortions of time or space, loss of motor skill control, detachment from oneself or the surrounding environment and hallucinations.”
The Hindus believe the god Shiva created cannabis out of his own body. During India’s Holi festival, people drink a cannabis elixir called bhang which they believe cleanses them from their sins and unites them as one with Shiva.
Not surprisingly, the modern rebranding of cannabis has attempted to erase its spiritual roots. The idea was to get the masses to believe smoking a joint was no different than pouring a glass of wine after a long day. The “marijuana is harmless” propaganda worked. It deceived and manipulated millions into accepting the infamous “gateway drug” as just another way to relax and unwind. (And yes, marijuana is a gateway drug. A study in the International Journal of Drug Policy confirmed 44.7% of cannabis users end up eventually trying other drugs as well.)
As with LSD, marijuana seems to make life a bit better for its user at first. But, with more use over time, a darkness creeps in. Once portals to another realm are open, they can be difficult to shut. The U.S. Surgeon General has warned about a possible link between cannabis and schizophrenia. (Some experts estimate cannabis is responsible for 10-15% of all schizophrenia.) It is also a well-known fact in the medical community that marijuana users are regularly brought to the ER in the middle of psychotic episodes. The idea that marijuana can lead to a psychotic break is a fact that experts say is now “beyond dispute.”
In the book Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence, author Alex Berenson says, “Marijuana causes paranoia and psychosis…the risk is so obvious that marijuana dispensaries advise certain strains are less likely to cause paranoia.” Berenson goes on to say, “Almost no one develops a psychotic illness the first time he uses marijuana…the gap between when people start smoking and when they break averages six years.”
Perhaps this is the reason that Colorado, the first state to legalize pot for recreational use, has had such a prolific history of mass shootings. The four states that were first to legalize marijuana saw their murder rates shoot up 25%. In fact, heavy marijuana use starting at a young age is the one trait that links Aurora shooter James Holmes, Tucson shooter Jared Loughner, the Boston bomber, the Oklahoma City bomber, the London bomber and the Manchester bomber.
The man in France who plowed into a parade crowd and killed 86 people had a history of smoking strong cannabis, which led to his first psychotic break at the age of 19. Devin Patrick Kelley had marijuana in his system when he killed 26 people at a Texas church. The Columbine shooters were avid marijuana users and picked the date 4/20 for their deadly rampage.
The only real difference between marijuana and other hallucinogenic drugs is which of the ancient gods it’s historically been used to summon. As mentioned, cannabis is traditionally associated with having the ability to put users in touch with the Hindu god Shiva, also known as The Destroyer. It is also known for helping people channel Shiva’s wife Kali.
Kali is the Hindu goddess of doomsday and death.
A Word on Edibles
Cannabis can now be found in the form of suckers, gumdrops, cookies, granola, chocolate, gummy bears, brownies, popcorn, chips and more. Some THC-laced candy is purposefully packaged to look like bags of Skittles, Oreos, or Reese’s peanut butter cups. (Hershey’s and other companies have sued over this.) Sweet cannabis treats in colorful packaging are routinely promoted on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Tik Tok where kids and teens will see them.
When cannabis is smoked, the high is instant; but because it takes 30 to 60 minutes for an edible to hit the bloodstream, teens frequently overdose on edibles because they don’t think they are working…so they eat more. When cannabis is eaten rather than smoked, it has to be metabolized by the liver. The metabolites released by the liver make the drug far more psychoactive.
Many middle schoolers and high schoolers have been hospitalized in the last few years after consuming edibles. Yesterday alone firefighters were called to a California middle school where they found ten students (ages 12-15) were suffering from a range of mental and physical symptoms caused by an edible overdose.
Dr. Brian Johnston, a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington, says, “Despite their ordinary appearance, a single cannabis cookie or candy bar can contains several times the recommended adult dose of THC. Anyone who eats one of these products – especially a child – can experience overdose effects such as intoxication, altered perception, anxiety, panic, paranoia, dizziness, weakness, slurred speech, poor coordination, or even breathing and heart problems.”
Marijuana researcher Dr. Andrew Monte tracked 2,600 marijuana related patient visits to the ER. He sys, “There seem to be a disproportionate number of visits associated with edible cannabis products compared to other (marijuana) products.” According to Stanford Law School Professor Dr. Robert MacCoun, edibles laced with THC can produce “serious anxiety attacks and psychotic-like symptoms.”
Just 8 months after legalizing edibles in two Canadian provinces, 581 kids between the ages of 1 and 9 were hospitalized after they got into some cannabis candy. (That was twice as many kids hospitalized as the provinces that had not legalized edibles.) The Regional Poison Center in Colorado showed that two years after marijuana legalization, there was a 34% increase in children who were hospitalized for marijuana poisoning. (Meanwhile, the rest of the country only experienced a 19% increase.) The median age for receiving treatment for marijuana poisoning was 2.
A Colorado man who shot his wife in the head insists it was because he ate a cannabis edible. “For me, I know it’s 100 percent—it’s the marijuana and me ingesting it—is the reason that I did it.” A Colorado teen who bought a marijuana cookie was told to cut it into six pieces and eat only one. He did. But after 15 minutes he felt no effects, so he ate the rest. He then proceeded to jump off the fourth-floor balcony of a building where he fell to his death.
Marijuana is the most common substance found in teenagers who die by suicide. Everywhere the drug is legalized, the death toll rises. For instance, motor vehicle fatalities dramatically increase wherever cannabis is legal. Marijuana related accidents cost Canada $1.1 billion in a year. Statistics show that if marijuana becomes legal on a nationwide scale, motor vehicle fatalities will increase 16% with an estimated 4,843 more deaths per year.
Yet despite all this information, cannabis advocates press on with their attempts to legalize marijuana on a national scale. And they’ve now begun moving forward with a plan to fully legalize every hallucinogenic drug imaginable.
Rave Reviews
Thanks to Big Psychedelic, the FDA has already begun legalizing MDMA for therapeutic use across the United States. MDMA is a psychedelic amphetamine developed by the German drug company Merck in 1912. It increases serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline in parts of the brain, resulting in enhanced pleasure, mild hallucinations, an altered sense of time and a reduced sense of identity.
MDMA has been rebranded from the old days where it was known primarily as “ecstasy” and was deeply intertwined with rave culture. Almost everyone who uses MDMA agrees that while they felt euphoric while on the drug, the comedown off the drug was devastating. This is what makes MDMA so highly addictive. A person can’t go very long without taking more or severe depression sets in.
Just as Leary approached the legalization of LSD by claiming the drug could enhance the results of talk therapy, so too are the billionaires behind MDMA legalization using therapists to give the drug legitimacy. The drug is currently being promoted for people with PTSD to be used “in conjunction with talk therapy.” This was a brilliant marketing play, as it is hard to argue against anything that supposedly helps war veterans and trauma survivors.
But MDMA has been shown to cause arrhythmia, sleep disturbances, aggression, difficulty concentrating, impulsivity and impaired cognition. The drug limits cerebral blood flow to the brain, and its users show reduced gray matter on brain scans. Studies on primates and rodents found that MDMA causes significant damage to nerve cells containing serotonin. Primates even showed a reduced number of these serotonergic neurons a full 7 years after the drug had originally been used.
The person who’s done more than anyone else to legalize MDMA in the U.S. is a man named Rick Doblin. Doblin is the founder of the Multi-disciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Doblin performed the follow-up work on Timothy Leary’s LSD experiments. He is also friends with Zach Leary, Timothy’s son. (Zach currently serves as the host of the MAPs podcast.)
MAPS was created to raise money from billionaire investors so they organization could push MDMA through FDA clinical trials. They successfully raised $80 million with a plan to fully commercialize MDMA as early as 2023. Eventually the drug will be marketed not only for PTSD, but for depression, anxiety, etc. This means that millions of people will soon be seeking a regular hit of ecstasy from the nearest therapist.
The most interesting thing about all of this is, according to Forbes, as soon as legalization of MDMA rolls out globally, it will be Doblin’s MAPs organization that will be responsible for training tens of thousands of therapists to prescribe the drug. These therapists will each pay $5000 to attend a five-and-a-half-day seminar put on by MAPs. (Seminars will be held every week in cities all around the world.)
According to the MAPs website, there will be an additional leadership track offered for therapists who identify as LGBTQ or “2 Spirit.” Sexuality playing such a key role in the MAPs certification process is a bit troubling given that a MAPs therapist has already been accused of sexually assaulting a PTSD patient during the MDMA clinical trials.
MDMA is known to cause an “enhanced sexual response” in users. Yet, the current plan is for MAPs to train therapists all over the world (especially LGBTQ ones) to meet with patients who are already in a sexually charged state because they’re high on ecstasy. What could possibly go wrong?
Yet the concept of using psychedelics in conjunction with talk therapy has already begun as therapists in ten U.S. cities have already been given the clearance to start dispensing MDMA to clients. Combine this with the addition of new therapist-prescribed “ketamine” treatments, and a therapist’s office may soon become one of the most dangerous places in America for anyone wishing to remain drug-free.
The New Anti-Depressant
Elon Musk once tweeted this to his 119 million followers: “I’ve talked to many more people who were helped by psychedelics & ketamine than SSRIs & amphetamines.” Psychedelics we’ve addressed, but what is ketamine?
Ketamine is categorized as a “dissociative anesthetic,” but its effects are that of a an extremely potent psychedelic. Ketamine was traditionally used as a horse tranquilizer but has recently been approved as a “rapid acting antidepressant” and is being heralded as “the most important breakthrough in the treatment of depression in decades.” The Guardian said ketamine could be “the cure for mental illness.”
Ketamine gives the patient a dissociative experience that lasts three hours. During that time, the person completely disconnects from his or her thoughts, feelings, memories, and sense of identity. In other words, there is no “self” left to feel depressed.
I know a mom of three young kids whose therapist recommended she try ketamine to resolve her depression. I spoke to her shortly after her first treatment. She had an eerily blissful look on her face…the look of someone who’s paid a visit to the spirit realm. She said that during the treatment she left her body and was taken to a place where the secrets of the universe were shown to her (i.e.g, her initiation into the ancient mysteries was complete). She said she had now come to realize that the universe and God are one in the same. She realized there is no heaven or hell. Because of her new spiritual insight, she said she was no longer depressed. She believed the drug worked.
Yet when I ran into her a few months later, she admitted to only feeling about half as good as she was feeling the last time we spoke. She was in the process of undergoing a series of six ketamine treatments to rid her of depression once and for all.
When I saw her after her full course of six ketamine treatments, she said none of the remaining sessions were as helpful as the initial disassociation. She had recently told her therapist she was still feeling almost as depressed as she felt before she tried ketamine. The therapist suggested it was time for her to try magic mushrooms.
More Horsing Around
A man named Tom Robinson writes that his therapist recommended ketamine for depression. “The first infusion took me on a frightening psychedelic trip but did absolutely nothing to alleviate my depression,” Robinson says. “By the time I went back for the second treatment I was in mental agony…”
He says after the second session, he experienced a manic episode. “[I was] literally flying around at a million miles an hour, believing that I was some kind of biblical prophet or disciple, blessing people with holy water…” He was admitted to a psychiatric ward.
After his discharge, he spent 18 months in a catatonic depression, barely leaving his room let alone his house (ala Brian Wilson). Robinson said suicidal thoughts dominated his every waking moment. So, his therapist suggested he try a higher dose of ketamine…which he did. “I would experience a horrific ‘k-hole’ where I was completely detached from every human concept,” Robinson said. But the depression still wouldn’t lift.
Robinson recalls, “All the other patients that were undergoing treatment alongside me reported no benefit from ketamine either, and we would return week in week out totally demoralized and in suicidal crisis despite our continuous trips for more downing of the revolting horse tranquilizer at the hospital.” Robinson said his brain was irrevocably damaged by these treatments as “virtually every natural neurotransmitter and chemical it previously contained was systematically obliterated.”
Ketamine changes your brain chemistry so dramatically that (like cannabis) it carries with it a high rate of psychosis. A study at Brown University showed that ketamine blocks an important neurochemical called glutamate. This blocking can result in psychotic hallucinations. There are already plenty documented cases of ketamine-induced psychosis in medical literature. (One patient ingested petrol and set himself on fire.) Yet Ketamine is being sold as “the cure for mental illness.” Once again this is because there is big money to be made by those selling it.
A series of ketamine injections for a mood disorder like depression will cost a patient $4800. A series of injections for “pain management” costs $12,000. A new ketamine “spray” made by Johnson & Johnson is now available for purchase. A one-month supply costs $7,000. A one-year supply costs $32,000.
A Macro Level View of Micro
In 2015, LSD spiked in popularity…again. This is because a study on microdosing psilocybin found it may improve mood, increase energy and productivity. (Microdosing is taking 5%-10% of the full dose of a psychedelic drug.) After Rolling Stone and Forbes featured articles on the study, interest in microdosing exploded. As if on cue, online courses and “microdosing coaches” began popping up all over the internet.
A man who says he took an online microdosing seminar bought a microdosing starter kit for mushrooms with the hope of treating his depression. He quickly found it was hard to live without psilocybin in his system. “If I felt a little sad, I’d microdose. If I had something to write, I’d microdose.” After a while, he started experiencing serious anxiety.
More than any other symptom, microdosing has been shown to cause severe anxiety in those who try it. It also causes problems with sleep, digestion, fatigue and migraines. It leads to paranoia and, when it continues for more than 90 days, it can cause serious heart disease.
There have been no long-term studies conducted on what a daily small hit of hallucinogenic drugs does to a person’s body or brain. Suffice it to say, it can’t be good. Yet just as the Brotherhood dumped 25,000 hits of orange sunshine LSD on a group of concertgoers, hoping to get as many people hooked on LSD as possible, so too will the rising microdosing trend try to hook millions who would otherwise give psychedelics a hard “pass.”
Most people who microdose become psychologically dependent on psychedelics. Once they’ve experienced a daily heightened state of awareness, a fully sober life just doesn’t cut it anymore. And microdosing very rarely stays “micro.” A user often ends up requiring more of the drug to achieve the same results as they got the week before.
One man who says he spent months microdosing describes taking his regular, mini dose of psychedelics during the day and feeling fine until, “Later that night I’m lying in bed going to sleep and BAM, I get a rush of adrenaline panic. My eyes shot open like ‘what…was that’…the next morning a similar event happened. And then later that night, again. I’d feel so high, I’d look at my arms and legs and feel like i wasn’t attached to this body. I was just a viewer in a movie…” The man says he now experiences derealization and depersonalization on a regular basis because of mucrodosing. “My perception of reality will change suddenly to ‘dreamlike’ mode,” he says. “If i could go back, I’d say I wish I never even touched mushrooms.”
Final Thoughts
The psychedelics industry is forecasted to reach $7 billion by the year 2027. Countless patents have been filed by biotech companies preparing to cash in on their share of this market. If you do an internet search on psychedelics right now, you will only get glowingly positive reviews of these dangerous drugs. (The billionaires who own the biotech companies also own Google.)
Though countless people all over the world have told stories about how they were forever traumatized by hallucinogens, the people invested in selling these same drugs have too much to lose to let the truth be told.
It’s all eerily similar to what we saw with the transgender movement. Big psychedelic backers have made sure all online data about their movement has been curated to show only the research studies they’ve funded. They’ve employed bot armies on social media to give rave reviews on everything from mucrodosing to ayahuasca retreat centers. They’ve created algorithms to target depressed and anxious individuals with ads for cannabis or therapists who are able to prescribe MDMA.
Joe Rogan is one of the loudest voices helping to evangelize the public with the psychedelic gospel. He has interviewed people like Dennis McKenna (Terence’s brother), Rick Doblin of MAPS fame and plant-based diet guru turned psychedelic author Michael Pollan. Rogan talks continually about his own use of psychedelics, and he’s managed to bridge the political gap by showing how people on both sides of the aisle recognize their benefits (e.g., Tim Ferris, Peter Attia, Sam Harris, Aubrey Marcus, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, etc.).
Those who promote psychedelics may sound intelligent, but the doctrines of demons they end up ascribing to in the end are predictable and trite. Theirs is a religion that’s been explored ad nauseum over the centuries. It’s New Age 3.0.
The “experts” currently claim psychedelics have the ability to “cure” addictions to substances such as alcohol, cocaine or heroin. But everyone who uses psychedelics for this purpose just ends up trading in old addictions for new ones. Psychedelics promise freedom but deliver slavery to strange spirits. Talk to anyone who’s taken ayahuasca or DMT. They become obsessed with returning for “one more journey” with the shaman. People gush about cannabis like it’s a dear, old friend. And in some ways, it is. The spirits one meets through psychedelics are very real entities, and, as many have admitted, these entities sometimes “call” on them to return for a visit.
Aaron Rodgers admits that ayahuasca will likely “call” him again at some point. “Once you sat with the medicine one time you kind of know what that feeling is that more lessons [need] to be learned,” Rodgers says. “Some people sit 100 straight days and still feel called years and years down the road to keep on doing it. I had such a beautiful experience I'm pretty certain it won't be my last.” (Rodgers says that during his first ayahuasca ritual, he felt 100 hands of his ancestors on his body. No word yet on how those hands may have affected his hands—i.e. passing record—this NFL season.)
The Bible speaks over and over about curses that befall men who willingly choose to engage with the gods of old. Sometimes those curses don’t manifest until months or years down the road; but they always show up. For those who’ve already dabbled in psychedelics, there is hope. Many people have shared testimonies about recognizing how they participated in the occult practice of pharmekea. They say they found true freedom once they repented of previous choices and stopped looking to other gods for health, peace and happiness. Exodus 20:3 says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Exodus 22:20 says, “Whoever sacrifices to any god, other than the Lord alone, shall be devoted to destruction.”
It’s easy for people to see that playing with a Ouija board or holding a séance might open a portal to the spirit realm. It is sometimes more difficult to see that partaking in any activity rooted in the occult can open the door to evil (e.g., abusing alcohol, watching pornography or trying psychedelics).
Scripture implores people to remain sober at all times. 1 Peter 4:7 says, “The end of all things is at hand; therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded.” 2 Timothy 4:5 says, “As for you, always be sober-minded…” 1 Thessalonians 5:8 says, “But since we belong to the day, let us be sober...” 1 Peter 5:8 says, “Be sober minded and watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around lie a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
Aleister Crowley said, “This serpent SATAN is not the enemy of Man, but he who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil. He bade, ‘Know Thyself!’ and taught initiation.”
The only people who should be dabbling with Crowley’s “strange drugs” are those who want to follow Crowley’s god.
Your articles are always well done. It would be very helpful if you also included your sources.