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Articulations. On the Utilisation and Meanings of Psychedelics
Drawing upon 15 years of profound research, Articulations is an illuminating inquiry into the many different plants and compounds available in the modern day, conducive ‘mindsets’ and understandings regarding how psychedelics can be most constructively utilised.
Articulations presents an uncompromising and clear analysis of the psychedelic state, intricately exploring the origins of the visions, the nature of the beings, and how authentic healing can most effectively proceed through the conscious use of psychedelics.
Articulations presents an uncompromising and clear analysis of the psychedelic state, intricately exploring the origins of the visions, the nature of the beings, and how authentic healing can most effectively proceed through the conscious use of psychedelics.
- GenresNonfiction
216 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 9, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 19, 2021
[This is a heavily-edited, in-progress attempt to understand & integrate a series of crazy difficult, transformative psychedelic trips].
Psychedelics are weird. You swallow a pill, chew a mushroom, suck on some confetti paper, or pinch your nose & choke down some foul concoction that tastes like chocolate-coated asshole, & the next thing you know your senses are stitched together like grandma's quilt & you're conversing telepathically with candy-coloured zeppelins that transit pure meaning every time you inhale.
Journos like Michael Pollan will tell you that psychedelics help you 'change your mind'. Bullshit. This isn't Q&A, you're not tipping your head & saying "oh, yeah" to your therapist or ticking boxes on your habit tracker. This is fucking Vietnam, there's hellfire & a chopper, & your mind is a village full of innocent women & kids. Psychedelics, when used (un)wisely, will destroy your old personality as surely as firecrackers blow up plastic bottles: there's only so much changing, bending, warping you can do before you break your bounds & melt completely.
Psychedelics ain't nothing to fuck with. I ought to know. I spent months ingesting them weekly with a house full of polydrug users, like a character in PKD's A Scanner Darkly (his masterpiece/read it/it's just the very best drug novel). While in Lithuania I sampled a rare compound with 2 strangers, one an Order of 9 Angles cultist who'd just visited a White Nationalist terror cell leader & murderer in prison, the other a man who, mere weeks after our meeting, went to prison himself when (with the drug's help) he lost his mind & touched a kid. Then, when I got back home, as the foam atop my heady lifestyle brew, I solicited the help of Julian Palmer, the author of this book &, in the company of 2 dozen strangers, in a 1-room stone hut hidden deep in the Aussie bush, over 3 days & 2 nights, I ingested ayahuasca.
& I lost my mind, too
Julian Palmer claims to have invented changa, which is DMT-infused herbs/flowers/leaves. He's never worked a real job, lives out of his car, & dedicates his life to spreading/ingesting psychedelics. He's been all over the map & he's met everyone. I bet there's not a single drug he hasn't tried, & not a single drug that he's tried only once. & yet, people like Aldous Huxley & Alan Watts, who ingested psychedelics at most half a dozen times, have way more interesting things to say about these drugs than this veteran (ab)user. More on that later.
This lack of insight is disappointing, but it's something I should have anticipated. When I met the man for coffee before attending his retreat, I remember being very underwhelmed. He talked about weird shit like channelling, (discredited, Western) Tibetan yogis practicing esoteric plastic surgery, & distilling the soul essence of flowers by "charging" them with sunlight & mineral water. I thought, "This man has lost all ability to think critically", a suspicion which this book did much to confirm. But I really wanted to try ayahuasca, & I was frankly in the most troubled stage of my life & wanted answers, which ayahuasca, more than other psychedelics, is supposed to be uniquely able to provide. So I did the inadvisable & drank one of the most powerful drugs on earth, twice, with total strangers, many hours from help, at the crest of a great wave of depression.
& I endured the roughest trip of my life. I suffered hours of intense, extremely bloody & emotional imagery of self-mutilation & suicidal violence. For hours all I could see were my hands, knives in palms, endlessly slashing my own arms. I saw flesh & blood & death & killing, & I thought that any moment now I'm actually going to lose it & I'm going to kill myself & possibly other people. I had never, ever had these thoughts before. I had never wanted to hurt myself or other people. I still can't even watch most horror movies because I abhor & feel the pain of gore. I was profoundly frightened. It was far & away the most dreadful thing I've encountered. & these were just the first 2 hours of a 6-8 hour trip. For a long time, it did not get better.
Later, I experienced ego death (read this excellent Master's thesis to understand why ego death shouldn't be romanticised & instead should be treated as an acute & severe mental crisis/spiritual emergency). Man, that trip just fucking sucked. But it didn't stop there. The aftermath of that experience, which I've related here crudely & in brief, was a 3-months-long psychiatric emergency during which I fought every single night against the urge to kill myself, violently, with knives. Instead of sleeping, I sat bolt upright for hours, clenching & unclenching my fists like fleshy stress balls, trying desperately not to leave my bed. I felt literally possessed, so strong was this compulsion to painfully, bloodily die. Again, I had never endured this feeling before the ayahuasca retreat. I had never felt possessed & fundamentally not in control of myself. I had never wanted seriously to commit suicide, & certainly not with violence. The ayahuasca retreat caused my intense suicidal ideation.
It's been almost 2 years since that harrowing retreat, & I'm a completely new man. I'm stone-cold sober, no drugs at all; I've a better relationship with family, lover, friends; I'm richer financially than I've ever been; & I'm studying to get richer still so that one day I can one day raise an army of my own bubs. But I only got this way because I dealt head-on with all the shit that ayahuasca dredged up within me. Of this I'm very proud. I didn't succumb to existential terror. I fought against nihilism & triumphed. I very definitely do not want to die & now live a very regimented, energetic, healthy, fulfilling life. The yawning abyss of meaninglessness has become rather comforting: the simple pleasures of my morning coffee, a good run, solving a new maths problem, cuddling my girl, writing for pleasure, for myself--I don't crave much more than this now. I very decisively reached my limits in that stone cabin in the bush & am now very grateful to be living my small, petty, human life. I've reached a point where I'm grateful, even, to have gotten so fucked up. It taught me lots. But I will never do that again. & I will never recommend ayahuasca to anybody else. It was just too extreme.
One question remains after struggling for almost 2 years to understand what happened on that retreat: why was the facilitator so negligent? (I've owned up to my gross stupidity in attending that thing in the 1st place). There were no medical personnel on site, no medical supplies, no chance of getting help if something went wrong as we were hours from police, a hospital, a petrol station, even. The music was abrasive, which to someone in the grips of heady psychedelia is as bad mentally as being at war. The scents blown through the room were thick & choking, like acrid smoke. There was absolutely zero psychological integration. We were thrown into the deep end & left alone. There was so little room in that small cabin in the bush that I literally couldn't turn over while lying down without touching somebody, & this while we were vomiting & trying not to shit ourselves. Everything about that event was wrong & claustrophobic. Why was it such a mess?
There are many reasons. One reason, I think, is Julian Palmer's disbelief in psychedelic misadventure. Psychedelics aren't an unadulterated good. They aren't, at worst, merely pretty, shining lights, or a bad trip that you can just integrate or let go of as easily (as though therapy & psychological change are ever easy) as slipping into clean clothes after a shower. At best, they're transformative & healing; at worst, they will destroy you, mind, body, & soul. Psychedelics increase uncertainty. They leave you without a framework through which to understand the world. You don't know what to believe anymore. & without some kind of framework to guide you back to reality, you risk falling deeper & deeper into anomie, helplessness, into a world terminally void of love & light. The Bard Terence McKenna stopped taking his beloved DMT as well as most other psychedelics after a harrowing confrontation with capital-N Nihilism. Some people, even the most intrepid of adventurers like McKenna, suffer the fate of H.P. Lovecraft's 1st-person narrators & go mad with fright from their hellish visions. These people go to mental hospitals, they struggle with the urge to kill themselves, some of them are disabled for a long, long time & some of them are changed forever. Julian Palmer describes all of this--which should be treated with the utmost seriousness & concern--as 'getting your arse kicked!'
[I stopped writing this review to perform some mundane chore, and when I returned I found that I disliked what I was reading. The paragraphs above touch only briefly on the ways psychedelics have changed me for the better, and its overall tone is regretful, pained, and sad. This melancholy and lack of ownership got me thinking, and I realised that I had so much more to say and so much more to do. I envisage this turning into something rather large . . . about goddamned time!]
John Frusciante has reunited with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I'm not a great fan of their music, but I find Frusciante's struggles with substance abuse relatable and endearing. So when I heard the band was getting back together, I found myself drawn to review his life story on Wikipedia. As I read about what I and most others would call his lowest period, I was struck by his unexpected views about that time. Frusciante battled heroin addiction for 5 years. He lost all his teeth and has permanent abscesses in his arms that require constant treatment. The music he released during that period is considered unlistenable: he admitted to releasing it for the sole purpose of procuring drug money. Yet he doesn't regret that period of his life; he doesn't seem to think it was that bad. On the contrary, he feels blessed to have gone through that stuff because, he says, it helped him find himself. He does yoga now, or at least he did until his back gave out. He meditates, eats healthy food, and tries to get adequate sleep. He's rejoined the Chili Peppers, too, and is playing guitar again after a long foray into electronic music. Oh, and he's sober. Everything appears to be looking up for John.
When I read this, I was blown away by the utter lack of remorse for his behaviour. He has apparently changed his ways for good and wastes no time anguishing pointlessly over past mistakes. I thought how simple his life must be, how happy. I thought, especially when I reread what I wrote above, how unlike John I am, how nice it must be to be him. It seems to me that, contrary to what I thought I'd done, I very much have not accepted my past mistakes, I very much have not forgiven and thanked my past self and moved on. Oh, I've tried to, sure, and to some extent I've succeeded. But clearly, and in comparison to John, I still have a ways to go. Then again, maybe the kind of people who inject heroin simply don't think much at all. Perhaps my ruminations are evidence that I'm more thoughtful than heroin users. If so, perhaps my prolonged attempts at integration are evidence of some habit of thought for which I should be grateful. Nonetheless--
Psychedelics are weird. You swallow a pill, chew a mushroom, suck on some confetti paper, or pinch your nose & choke down some foul concoction that tastes like chocolate-coated asshole, & the next thing you know your senses are stitched together like grandma's quilt & you're conversing telepathically with candy-coloured zeppelins that transit pure meaning every time you inhale.
Journos like Michael Pollan will tell you that psychedelics help you 'change your mind'. Bullshit. This isn't Q&A, you're not tipping your head & saying "oh, yeah" to your therapist or ticking boxes on your habit tracker. This is fucking Vietnam, there's hellfire & a chopper, & your mind is a village full of innocent women & kids. Psychedelics, when used (un)wisely, will destroy your old personality as surely as firecrackers blow up plastic bottles: there's only so much changing, bending, warping you can do before you break your bounds & melt completely.
Psychedelics ain't nothing to fuck with. I ought to know. I spent months ingesting them weekly with a house full of polydrug users, like a character in PKD's A Scanner Darkly (his masterpiece/read it/it's just the very best drug novel). While in Lithuania I sampled a rare compound with 2 strangers, one an Order of 9 Angles cultist who'd just visited a White Nationalist terror cell leader & murderer in prison, the other a man who, mere weeks after our meeting, went to prison himself when (with the drug's help) he lost his mind & touched a kid. Then, when I got back home, as the foam atop my heady lifestyle brew, I solicited the help of Julian Palmer, the author of this book &, in the company of 2 dozen strangers, in a 1-room stone hut hidden deep in the Aussie bush, over 3 days & 2 nights, I ingested ayahuasca.
& I lost my mind, too
Julian Palmer claims to have invented changa, which is DMT-infused herbs/flowers/leaves. He's never worked a real job, lives out of his car, & dedicates his life to spreading/ingesting psychedelics. He's been all over the map & he's met everyone. I bet there's not a single drug he hasn't tried, & not a single drug that he's tried only once. & yet, people like Aldous Huxley & Alan Watts, who ingested psychedelics at most half a dozen times, have way more interesting things to say about these drugs than this veteran (ab)user. More on that later.
This lack of insight is disappointing, but it's something I should have anticipated. When I met the man for coffee before attending his retreat, I remember being very underwhelmed. He talked about weird shit like channelling, (discredited, Western) Tibetan yogis practicing esoteric plastic surgery, & distilling the soul essence of flowers by "charging" them with sunlight & mineral water. I thought, "This man has lost all ability to think critically", a suspicion which this book did much to confirm. But I really wanted to try ayahuasca, & I was frankly in the most troubled stage of my life & wanted answers, which ayahuasca, more than other psychedelics, is supposed to be uniquely able to provide. So I did the inadvisable & drank one of the most powerful drugs on earth, twice, with total strangers, many hours from help, at the crest of a great wave of depression.
& I endured the roughest trip of my life. I suffered hours of intense, extremely bloody & emotional imagery of self-mutilation & suicidal violence. For hours all I could see were my hands, knives in palms, endlessly slashing my own arms. I saw flesh & blood & death & killing, & I thought that any moment now I'm actually going to lose it & I'm going to kill myself & possibly other people. I had never, ever had these thoughts before. I had never wanted to hurt myself or other people. I still can't even watch most horror movies because I abhor & feel the pain of gore. I was profoundly frightened. It was far & away the most dreadful thing I've encountered. & these were just the first 2 hours of a 6-8 hour trip. For a long time, it did not get better.
Later, I experienced ego death (read this excellent Master's thesis to understand why ego death shouldn't be romanticised & instead should be treated as an acute & severe mental crisis/spiritual emergency). Man, that trip just fucking sucked. But it didn't stop there. The aftermath of that experience, which I've related here crudely & in brief, was a 3-months-long psychiatric emergency during which I fought every single night against the urge to kill myself, violently, with knives. Instead of sleeping, I sat bolt upright for hours, clenching & unclenching my fists like fleshy stress balls, trying desperately not to leave my bed. I felt literally possessed, so strong was this compulsion to painfully, bloodily die. Again, I had never endured this feeling before the ayahuasca retreat. I had never felt possessed & fundamentally not in control of myself. I had never wanted seriously to commit suicide, & certainly not with violence. The ayahuasca retreat caused my intense suicidal ideation.
It's been almost 2 years since that harrowing retreat, & I'm a completely new man. I'm stone-cold sober, no drugs at all; I've a better relationship with family, lover, friends; I'm richer financially than I've ever been; & I'm studying to get richer still so that one day I can one day raise an army of my own bubs. But I only got this way because I dealt head-on with all the shit that ayahuasca dredged up within me. Of this I'm very proud. I didn't succumb to existential terror. I fought against nihilism & triumphed. I very definitely do not want to die & now live a very regimented, energetic, healthy, fulfilling life. The yawning abyss of meaninglessness has become rather comforting: the simple pleasures of my morning coffee, a good run, solving a new maths problem, cuddling my girl, writing for pleasure, for myself--I don't crave much more than this now. I very decisively reached my limits in that stone cabin in the bush & am now very grateful to be living my small, petty, human life. I've reached a point where I'm grateful, even, to have gotten so fucked up. It taught me lots. But I will never do that again. & I will never recommend ayahuasca to anybody else. It was just too extreme.
One question remains after struggling for almost 2 years to understand what happened on that retreat: why was the facilitator so negligent? (I've owned up to my gross stupidity in attending that thing in the 1st place). There were no medical personnel on site, no medical supplies, no chance of getting help if something went wrong as we were hours from police, a hospital, a petrol station, even. The music was abrasive, which to someone in the grips of heady psychedelia is as bad mentally as being at war. The scents blown through the room were thick & choking, like acrid smoke. There was absolutely zero psychological integration. We were thrown into the deep end & left alone. There was so little room in that small cabin in the bush that I literally couldn't turn over while lying down without touching somebody, & this while we were vomiting & trying not to shit ourselves. Everything about that event was wrong & claustrophobic. Why was it such a mess?
There are many reasons. One reason, I think, is Julian Palmer's disbelief in psychedelic misadventure. Psychedelics aren't an unadulterated good. They aren't, at worst, merely pretty, shining lights, or a bad trip that you can just integrate or let go of as easily (as though therapy & psychological change are ever easy) as slipping into clean clothes after a shower. At best, they're transformative & healing; at worst, they will destroy you, mind, body, & soul. Psychedelics increase uncertainty. They leave you without a framework through which to understand the world. You don't know what to believe anymore. & without some kind of framework to guide you back to reality, you risk falling deeper & deeper into anomie, helplessness, into a world terminally void of love & light. The Bard Terence McKenna stopped taking his beloved DMT as well as most other psychedelics after a harrowing confrontation with capital-N Nihilism. Some people, even the most intrepid of adventurers like McKenna, suffer the fate of H.P. Lovecraft's 1st-person narrators & go mad with fright from their hellish visions. These people go to mental hospitals, they struggle with the urge to kill themselves, some of them are disabled for a long, long time & some of them are changed forever. Julian Palmer describes all of this--which should be treated with the utmost seriousness & concern--as 'getting your arse kicked!'
[I stopped writing this review to perform some mundane chore, and when I returned I found that I disliked what I was reading. The paragraphs above touch only briefly on the ways psychedelics have changed me for the better, and its overall tone is regretful, pained, and sad. This melancholy and lack of ownership got me thinking, and I realised that I had so much more to say and so much more to do. I envisage this turning into something rather large . . . about goddamned time!]
John Frusciante has reunited with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I'm not a great fan of their music, but I find Frusciante's struggles with substance abuse relatable and endearing. So when I heard the band was getting back together, I found myself drawn to review his life story on Wikipedia. As I read about what I and most others would call his lowest period, I was struck by his unexpected views about that time. Frusciante battled heroin addiction for 5 years. He lost all his teeth and has permanent abscesses in his arms that require constant treatment. The music he released during that period is considered unlistenable: he admitted to releasing it for the sole purpose of procuring drug money. Yet he doesn't regret that period of his life; he doesn't seem to think it was that bad. On the contrary, he feels blessed to have gone through that stuff because, he says, it helped him find himself. He does yoga now, or at least he did until his back gave out. He meditates, eats healthy food, and tries to get adequate sleep. He's rejoined the Chili Peppers, too, and is playing guitar again after a long foray into electronic music. Oh, and he's sober. Everything appears to be looking up for John.
When I read this, I was blown away by the utter lack of remorse for his behaviour. He has apparently changed his ways for good and wastes no time anguishing pointlessly over past mistakes. I thought how simple his life must be, how happy. I thought, especially when I reread what I wrote above, how unlike John I am, how nice it must be to be him. It seems to me that, contrary to what I thought I'd done, I very much have not accepted my past mistakes, I very much have not forgiven and thanked my past self and moved on. Oh, I've tried to, sure, and to some extent I've succeeded. But clearly, and in comparison to John, I still have a ways to go. Then again, maybe the kind of people who inject heroin simply don't think much at all. Perhaps my ruminations are evidence that I'm more thoughtful than heroin users. If so, perhaps my prolonged attempts at integration are evidence of some habit of thought for which I should be grateful. Nonetheless--
April 18, 2023
Great book Julian! Really enjoyed reading about your thoughts and opinions. It’s nice to have a book in my hands for a change rather than staring at a computer screen. I’m really intrigued with Acacias and my goal is to grow my own trees and make my own brews. This book has definitely provided a deeper level of understanding and appreciation for ayahuasca. Love the soft texture cover and art work too!
January 27, 2015
I loved the content of the book and found many bits very interesting but I found the judgmental negative language too much.
After 15 years of medicine I would have liked to have seen more open minded acceptance and less opinionated content.
After 15 years of medicine I would have liked to have seen more open minded acceptance and less opinionated content.
August 9, 2017
A rather fascinating book from the perspective of a seasoned trip master and user of psychedelic drugs, mushrooms and plant extracts. Based on his amazing experiences and (IMHO) twisted logic the author is convinced that psychedelics are portals to other actual universes outside the human brain. He disagrees that say DMT would be a naturally evolved defense mechanism of the acacia tree. Encouraging harvesting DMT from sentient trees feels somewhat contradictory, but he does make a point of sustainable practices. On p127 he gets brain vs gut neuron counts wrong. They are not nearly the same. Some scattered notes on probably real mental health benefits of psychedelics. As a side note, ketamine is on trials for severe suicidality and depression, and apparently also psilocybin mushrooms are being tried to cope with anxiety for terminal disease.
January 30, 2021
I really enjoyed his views, especially the view that psychedelics are never a substitute for "conventional" reality (but can be great tools for understanding to see more of it).
May 16, 2023
Really fascinating read that is very seemingly written by an authentic and open human being. Greatly appreciated and highly recommended
January 24, 2024
Excellent Book, I appreciate and respect his point of view! It is one of the few books that make you feel like talking directly with an enlightened being.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews