Have You Met the DMT Jester? How Expectations Influence Entity Encounters

One of the most popular blog posts on my site is my essay on DMT jesters and tricksters (a modified version of it became one of the essays in my book, which includes a new section about my personal experiences). Several people commented on my blog post to say they have also encountered jester entities.…

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On the Stigma Against Antidepressants in the Psychedelic Community

On his site Ecstatic Integration, the writer Jules Evans published a post titled ‘Are you a psychedelic cultist?’ It features a ‘Psychedelic Cultism Questionnaire’ to help readers assess how ‘culty’ they are when it comes to psychedelics. It consists of eight statements – all in the vein of a rosy, utopian, ‘no bad vibes allowed’…

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Fire Kasina Meditation: A Non-Drug Method for Inducing Mystical Experiences

Psychedelics are typically the fastest and most reliable way to induce mystical experiences. These are the types of experiences that people often consider highly meaningful, and which they credit with causing a range of psychological benefits. However, there are also non-drug ways to induce these types of experiences, which many people will feel more comfortable…

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Psychedelics and Ontological Shock

During or after intense psychedelic experiences – typically elicited by taking a high dose, or a synergistic drug combination – one may find oneself in a state known as ontological shock. This is when reality, or one’s experience of reality, has been transformed so profoundly that it induces a visceral feeling of shock. However, this…

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The Bad Trips of Early Psychonauts

One thing that stands out about trip reports from early Western psychonauts is that they often involve unpleasant, uncomfortable experiences. Such experiences are still more frequently reported in Western countries without a tradition of ritualistic use than they are in non-Western, Indigenous cultures that do follow this kind of tradition. Julian Shea wrote an insightful…

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