Academic literature on the topic 'Hallucinogenic drugs and religious experience'

The purpose of the present paper was to explore the concept and experience of God in relation to recovery from drug addiction from a scientific perspective. Examination of a diverse literature was undertaken, including five key threads: the universality of the experience of God; the induction of spiritual experiences of God through hallucinogenic drugs; the nature of drug addiction from an evolutionary neurobiological perspective; the 12 Step movement as the prototype for the place of God in recovery from drug addiction; and identified ingredients for successful recovery from addiction. The diverse threads of literature examined can be integrated around the concept of higher power as an important factor in recovery from drug addiction. Higher power can be manifested in individuals in diverse ways: religious, ethnic, spiritual including the use of entheogens, as well as cognitive behavioural development, but a common final pathway for all is the strengthening of executive functions (the brain's ‘higher power’). Practical implications for assisting people with drug addiction to achieve recovery through their own experience of God/development of higher power are outlined.

AbstractArguably, the religious use of hallucinogenic drugs stems from a human search of metaphysical insight rather than from a direct need for cognitive, emotional, social, physical, or sexual improvement. Therefore, the sacramental and spiritual intake of hallucinogenic drugs goes so far beyond other biopsychosocial functions that it deserves its own category in the drug instrumentalization list.

AbstractNineteenth-century British, U.S., and European writings about the hallucinogenic drugs peyote and mescaline in anthropological, medical, and general interest journals appropriated the drugs from the context of Native American rituals. Appealing primarily to vision, which was commonly understood to be the most intellectual of the senses, and generating sensations of omniscience and self-reflexivity, these drugs became the occasion for their writers’ fantasies of intellectual transcendence and concomitant disembodiment. These fantasies tacitly promoted the imperial, raced, classed, and gendered power of the elite hallucinogenic subject. They also connected with similarfin-de-sièclepractices of consumption, including Aesthetic delight in the refinement of visual experience and in the collection of obscure global artifacts, and the passive consumption of media entertainment such as kaleidoscopes, phantasmagoria, and cinema. Although not numerous, hallucinogenic writings should be considered part of the culture of visual modernity that helped shape subjectivities at the turn of the century.

Abstract This article addresses the complex role of mushrooms, particularly that of the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) [Russian: Mukhomor], in the art of Moscow conceptualism in a broad setting. This paper explores the mythopoetic theme of mushroom-induced beliefs, which influenced the Moscow conceptualists, and employs background historical scholarship by R.G. Wasson, V.N. Toporov, T.J. Elizarenkova, and others. Aside from the mushrooms per se that were particularly important for Moscow conceptualism, this article also mentions various ethno-botanical entheogens (i.e. biochemical substances such as plants or drugs ingested in order to undergo certain spiritual experience, or “generating the divine within”). Apart from analyzing the ethnobotanical historical background of manifesting hallucinogenic mushrooms on the Russian soil (including Siberia), this article focuses on Pavel Peppershtein’s novel Mifogennaia Liubov’ Kast (The Mythogenic Love of the Castes), which was co-authored with Sergey Anufriev. As the narrative of the novel unfolds, its main character, the Communist Partorg (Party Organizer) Dunaev, is wounded and shell-shocked at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War (World War II). Partorg Dunaev finds himself deep in a mysterious forest, where he inadvertently snacks on unknown hallucinogenic mushrooms. He subsequently transforms into an exceptionally strong wizard who is capable of fighting spectral enemies both on earth and in heaven. The reader discovers the so-called “parallel war” sweeping over the Russian territory where legendary Russian/Soviet fairy heroes are locked in combat with their opponents, the characters of the Western children’s tales, and books. A heroic mushroom-eater, Partorg Dunaev joins one of the sides in this fight and gradually reaches the “utmost limits of sacrifice and self-rejection.” This article contextualizes the fungi-entheogenic episodes of Moscow conceptualism into a broader sphere of constructed visionary/ hallucinogenic reality by focusing on psilocybin fungi, particularly the fly agaric/Amanita muscaria/Mukhomor, and their cultural significance.

A major part of the counterculture that emerged in western societies in the 1960s centred around the use of mind-altering psychedelic drugs such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Humans had, however, been consuming hallucinogenic substances since prehistoric times and often incorporated them into their religious rituals. Concerns over the effects of potent psychedelics like LSD led to them being outlawed in many jurisdictions around the world via the UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances in 1971. During the intervening decades, the scientific investigation of psychedelics and their potential for legitimate therapeutic use has consequently been limited. In recent years, hints that psychedelics may be effective against certain treatment-resistant depressive states like post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) have led to more concerted efforts to obtain reliable clinical data that could convince drug regulators to approve them as legitimate medical treatments.

When the link between psychedelic drugs and mystical states of experience was first discovered in the 1960s, Huston Smith challenged scholars in religion and philosophy to consider the implications. Very few took up his challenge. Beginning in 2006, hundreds of studies have linked psychedelics not just to mystical states of experience but to potential treatments for many mental health disorders. Regulatory approval for therapies is on the horizon, and hundreds of millions of people worldwide could be treated. Research findings challenge the underlying rationale of the War on Drugs, leading to decriminalization of specific psychedelic drugs or to authorization of their use in mental health contexts. Religious institutions are slowly adapting, with some referring to psychedelics as sacraments or as pathways to deeper spirituality. Religious leaders are also beginning to speak out publicly in support of careful use of these drugs, and some are training to become “psychedelic chaplains” to work alongside mental health professionals administering these drugs. Scholars in theology and religion are encouraged to engage these trends, to explore challenging philosophical and theological issues surrounding mystical states of experience in general, and to consider the long-term cultural impact of the most recent psychedelic research.

SummaryAltered self-experiences arise in certain psychiatric conditions, and may be induced by psychoactive drugs and spiritual/religious practices. Recently, a neuroscience of self-experience has begun to crystallise, drawing upon findings from functional neuroimaging and altered states of consciousness occasioned by psychedelic drugs. This advance may be of great importance for psychiatry.

The article discusses the literary search for God as given in the novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K. Dick. Religious, theological and fantastic contexts of the novel are analyzed here. The author also presents some cultural aspects of the novel. Set in late 1960s and 1970s, it is one of the novels in his Valis triptych where the search for God and His hidden essence is fulfilled through traditional theological and philosophical texts of Judeo-Christian culture and gnosis. Its main protagonist, bishop Timothy Archer, is on a quest for uniting man with the infinite divine, coping with the juxtaposition of the official interpretation of religious texts and the newly discovered fragments of Zadokite texts. Studying these texts, Archer gains knowledge of the anokhi fungus, abandons the idea of contacting with God, and focuses on the practice of hallucinogenic communion that gives him the knowledge leading to the most suitable way to avoid the final experience of death. Tracing the shift in the main protagonist’s worldview, the author shows us the dilemmas that a homo religiosus faces in his search of the divine caused by mistranslated texts. This article thus deals with the opposing phenomena of spiritual passivity and practical attitude towards the world, the religious ecstasy the protagonist seeks and the experience of narcotic trance he turns to in the end, and the manipulation of terms ‘body of Christ’ and the Fungus. Still, further research into the ecstatic experience and its role in culture is needed.

While much has been written about the life, work and influence of Aleister Crowley, relatively little attention has been directed to his drug use. This is a little surprising because, not only did he become addicted to heroin, but he incorporated psychoactive substances in his occult work, discussed their psychological effects, commented on drug-related social issues, critiqued contemporary drug legislation, published drug literature, and even translated Charles Baudelaire’s "Poem of Hashish." This article discusses his thought on drugs and religious experience and suggests that they were, largely because of his addiction, a more important force in his life than has thus far been acknowledged.

Marriage is forming a family with the opposite sex, or also having sex or having intercourse which is a contract that causes lawful association and cooperation between men and women throughout life, whose rights and obligations have been regulated by Shari'ah law. While drugs are types of illegal drugs that cause users to become unconscious. There are many types of drugs, including marijuana, heroin, morphine, cocaine. The use of illegal drugs is severely punished by the government, and in Islamic law it is also strictly prohibited. While liquor is a drink that can intoxicate the drinker, and is forbidden in Islam. The object of this research is the informants who consume drugs and alcohol, then they decide to get married. In this study the authors tried to find out the effect of marriage on drug and alcohol users. Based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that marriage can have a positive effect on drug and alcohol users; both morally and socially because it can avoid living patterns of deviant behavior, such as prostitution, freesex, malak/nodong and stealing. Drugs and alcohol are very detrimental to health, for example, for a drug/alcohol user physically he will experience heart palpitations, hypertension and even lead to death. Marriage is able to provide good education in mental and spiritual formation and good morals for those who run it. for a drug/alcohol user physically he will experience heart palpitations, hypertension and even lead to death. Marriage is able to provide good education in mental and spiritual formation and good morals for those who run it. for a drug/alcohol user physically he will experience heart palpitations, hypertension and even lead to death. Marriage is able to provide good education in mental and spiritual formation and good morals for those who run it.

Submitted by Geyciane Santos (geyciane_thamires@hotmail.com) on 2015-05-20T15:39:38Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Orlando Gonçalves Barbosa.pdf: 3485435 bytes, checksum: f999ffbbbb167e91874c989cf5564815 (MD5)<br>Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-20T15:39:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação - Orlando Gonçalves Barbosa.pdf: 3485435 bytes, checksum: f999ffbbbb167e91874c989cf5564815 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-05-21<br>FAPEAM - Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas<br>Religious experience is presented by several researchers as a process of overcoming suffering, disease, disuse drug and other hardships factor. This research had as its central objective to understand the relationship of religious experience with overcoming drug withdrawal, according to users graduates from an institution of care (care) to drug addicts in the city of Manaus. From this, we constructed two articles, the first aimed at understanding how people who used drugs began to conceive of their relationship with the substance in focus and what were the effects of that use on their systems of belonging. The second article was to understand how religious experience is located in the path of a group of people who have overcome drug use after the passage of these for a therapeutic community and the repercussions of this disuse in their systems of belonging. Survey participants were inmates of a therapeutic community (Fazenda da Esperança, Manaus-AM) that were in disrepair for at least one year at the time of the survey. Method was used as a qualitative exploratory approach, adopting categories of systems theory to the analysis of the data, these collected through semi-structured interviews. The results point to the fact that the use and disuse of drugs and suffering related to them are tied to the user, systems and subsystems of belonging, especially to family, work, relationship with peers and religious experience ; Addiction and a ratio of responsibility that positively or negatively feeds back the ratio of use over time. Religious experience is identified as psychosocial process of organizing an identity which integrates sense of transcendence, and shall support new modes of relatedness between individuals and their social networks, in particular the family, community and religious institutions belonging. Recursion and the unpredictability present in the trajectories of use and disuse were also identified as factors that pushed the system to search for homeostasis and thus to overcome.<br>A experiência religiosa é apresentada por vários pesquisadores como fator de superação de processos de sofrimento, de adoecimento, de desuso de droga e outras adversidades. Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo central compreender a relação da experiência religiosa com a superação do uso de droga, segundo usuários egressos de uma instituição de atendimento (atenção) a dependentes químicos na cidade de Manaus. A partir deste, construiu-se dois artigos, sendo o primeiro voltado à compreensão de como as pessoas que fizeram uso de droga passaram a conceber a relação deles com a substância em foco e quais foram as repercussões desse uso em seus sistemas de pertença. O segundo artigo buscou compreender como a experiência religiosa é situada na trajetória de um grupo de pessoas que superaram o uso de drogas após a passagem destas por uma comunidade terapêutica e as repercussões desse desuso em seus sistemas de pertença. Os participantes da pesquisa foram internos de uma comunidade terapêutica (Fazenda da Esperança, Manaus-AM) que se encontravam em desuso há pelo menos um ano, na ocasião da pesquisa. Utilizou-se como método a abordagem exploratória qualitativa, adotando categorias da teoria sistêmica para a análise dos dados, estes coletados por meio da entrevista semiestruturada. Os resultados encontrados apontam para o fato deque o uso e o desuso das drogas, bem como o sofrimento a elas relacionado estão vinculados ao usuário, seus sistemas e subsistemas de pertença, em especial àfamília, trabalho, relação com os pares e vivência religiosa;numa relação de codependência e corresponsabilidade que retroalimenta positiva ou negativamente a relação de uso, ao longo do tempo. A experiência religiosa é apontada como processo psicossocial organizador de uma identidade a qual integra sentidos de transcendência, e passa a sustentar novos modos de vinculação entre os sujeitos e suas redes sociais, em especial a família, a comunidade e as instituições religiosas de pertença. A recursividade e a imprevisibilidade presentes nas trajetórias de uso e desuso foram identificadas também como fatores que impulsionaram o sistema à busca de homeostasee, portanto, de superação.

There are about 400,000 species of plants in this world. Only a small fraction, perhaps 100 in number, contain hallucinogenic chemicals. Nearly a century ago, Lewis Lewin, professor of pharmacology at the University of Berlin, in speaking of drugs he called phantasticants, said “The passionate desire which . . . leads man to flee from the monotony of daily life . . . has made him discover strange substances (which) have been integral to human evolution both societal and cultural for thousands of years.” An unusual problem presents itself to me in writing about these drugs: They straddle the worlds of science and mysticism. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines mysticism as the practice of religious ecstasies (religious experiences during alternate states of consciousness), together with whatever ideologies, ethics, rites, myths, legends, and magic may be related to them. Science I am comfortable with; mysticism not so much. Yet in our exploration of the agents found in this chapter, we will encounter many persons speaking of drug-induced mystical experiences. I have attempted to get around my unease by first providing the history and the pharmacology of these agents and then touching only lightly on mysticism, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. What shall we call these chemicals? Hallucinogen, a substance that induces perception of objects with no reality, is the term most commonly encountered and the one that I have settled on for the title of this chapter. However, it comes with a caveat. Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, our prototypic hallucinogen, has pointed out that a true hallucination has the force of reality, but the effects of LSD only rarely include this feature. Two additional terms that we will find useful are psychotomimetic and psychedelic. We have already considered the former, an ability to mimic psychosis, in our discussion of amphetamine-induced paranoid psychosis in chapter 4 and the effects of phencyclidine in chapter 6. A psychedelic was defined in 1957 by Humphrey Osmond, inventor of the word, as a drug like LSD “which enriches the mind and enlarges the vision.”

Abstract This chapter considers a cross-historical selection of cases from the ritual magical traditions and discusses explanations of how such practices may produce subjectively convincing experiences of otherworldly beings on the one hand, and methodological questions of how we might best study them on the other. The chapter argues that our best model is found in the framework of predictive processing, through which magical ritual should be seen as an expectation management technology that manipulates material-environmental, sensory-motor, and ideational/conceptual processes in ways that set the practitioner up for certain kinds of perception-like experiences. The picture emerging is that magical ritual produces (hetero)phenomenologically similar experience narratives through a variety of different techniques, which include elements such as sensory deprivation, hallucinogenic substances, (auto)hypnosis, hypnagogic states, and visualization, but are always grounded in a material-semiotic dimension through which things, gestures, and sensations are imbued with meanings that point towards an otherworldly reality.

Abstract Hallucinatory experience is a broad spectrum, not confined to what medicine has called psychosis. An anthropological comparative approach can consequently be useful in shedding light on how we understand voices in psychosis and enriching our understanding of this phenomenon. In opposition to the Western biomedical context, among indigenous groups in the Americas, hallucinations are often sought and voluntarily produced, most frequently by the ritualized use of hallucinogenic plants. They are indeed valued in various aspects of social life as religious, divinatory, or therapeutic practices, which have been frequently described by anthropologists as ‘shamanic’. Yet how are the ‘voices’ described by users of psychiatric services similar to, and different from, those perceived by people who are using hallucinogenic substances in the context of shamanic and so-called neoshamanic practices? How do such comparisons invite us to take a fresh look at voices in psychosis, and what can they tell us about the attribution of a pathological dimension to the voice-hearing phenomenon? Comparing data collected in the Peruvian Amazon during ethnographic fieldwork with those of the Voices in Psychosis study, this chapter shows that the ability to control voices is one of the main distinguishing criteria between these two groups, and explores the implications of this difference for a better understanding and treatment of voices in psychosis.