DMT is the most powerful hallucinogen there is. If it gets stronger than that I don't want to know about it.
The consciousness-expanding drugs - the hallucinogens, such as cannabis, mescaline, LSD, Psylocybin - I think are useful to a writer up to a certain point. That is, they open psychic areas that would not otherwise be available to the writer. But I feel that once these areas have been opened and the writer has reached them, he is able to get back there in the future without the drug.
Did you ever consider that LSD was really one of the most dangerous drugs ever manufactured because the people who took it turned into yuppies?
In the absence of good scientific data about the effects of artificial hallucinogens it's good to stick to the natural ones.
The real justification for psychedelics is that they feed new data into your model.
When I was on acid, I would see things like beams of light and I would hear sounds that sounded an awful lot like car horns.
All of you who have been through high dose psychedelic experiences know that it's very hard to carry stupid baggage through that keyhole. In fact you're lucky if you just get your soul and yourselves through and intact.
You could almost describe psychedelics as enzymes for the activity of the imagination.
LSD was an incredible experience. Not that I’m recommending it for anybody else; but for me it kind of – it hammered home to me that reality was not a fixed thing. That the reality that we saw about us every day was one reality, and a valid one – but that there were others, different perspectives where different things have meaning that were just as valid. That had a profound effect on me.
I've tried it long ago, with hashish and peyote. Fascinating, yes, but no good, no. This, as we find in alcohol, is an escape from awareness, a cheat, a momentary substitution, and in the end a destruction of it.
Even as the nineteenth century had to come to grips with the notion of human descent from apes, we must now come to terms with the fact that those apes were stoned apes.
I've never met anybody who's had a flashback in my life and I took millions of trips in the Sixties, and I've never met anybody who had any problem. I've had bad trips, but I've had bad trips in real life. I've had a bad trip on a joint. I can get paranoid just sitting in a restaurant; I don't have to take anything.
But after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing.
I did LSD and peyote in the late Sixties, before I got into cocaine. That was concurrent with my change from a straight comic to the album and counterculture period, and those drugs served their purpose. They helped open me up.
I'm really into moderation. Too much of anything will harm you in the end. Too much sugar. Too much pasta. I'm into drugs as a teaching tool, which is why I only take hallucinogenics. I mean, it's not like I've never done cocaine, but, on the whole, if I can't see dancing elephants then I'm not interested.
We [psychonauts] are all going to go into the books as pioneers, because it's too early for us to be anything else. There's no map, no finished database, just anecdotes of the crazy, crazy stuff that goes on. That's why it's so important to try and share [our stories].
I brought something back from those experiences [with drugs] which made me softer, open to other ideas. And I've learned from listening to other people talk about their experiences, from listening to Bill Hicks or reading Terrence McKenna or Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary. But there's always some dumb cop out there who says "We don't need another legal drug and there's psychological addiction and blah blah blah."
We can't sell short the spiritual power of cannabis, especially when eaten.
I've never been a religious person. I've been a spiritual person since I was about 15, 16, when I was first introduced to Psilocybin [mushrooms]. That really opened me up to thinking about the universe in a different way, and coming to significant realizations about my connection to something greater than me.
I've found psychedelics to be keys to worlds that have always existed, that have to be talked about.
The first line (of I Am The Walrus) was written on one acid trip one weekend. The second line was written on the next acid trip the next weekend, and it was filled in after I met Yoko.
Revelations: A curious record of the visions of a drug addict.
I dream in colour, and its always very surreal. My dream world is complete Hieronymus Bosch and Dali. I love it, I look forward to it every night
I know LSD; I don't need to take it anymore. Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley.
I've tried everything. I can say to you with confidence, I know a fair amount about LSD. I've never been a social user of any of these things, but my curiosity has carried me into a lot of interesting areas.
