Section 4 Reading - Assignment Example

Psychedelics Drugs In History, psychedelics played important roles in religious ceremonies and for medicinal purposes. They were substances such as plants naturally occurring such as cacti and mushrooms. In America, the drugs were used for ritual purposes when sacred ceremonies took place. Similarly as the use of psychedelics in America, other ancient cultures used them during their ritual ceremonies. Psychedelics played a vital role in the developing human society I many different cultures. According to the text, there are several dangers of use of psychedelic drugs.

In most cases, people who use these drugs do it to induce their altered mind state or sense of being which makes them feel as if they are not operating in reality. These drugs include LSD, mescaline and acid. Such people may end suffering from some serious reactions while using the drugs and also their risk of being involved in an accident or injury increases as a result of the influence of these drugs. Despite the fact that these drugs are not addictive, they pose several dangers to the user.

Another danger is that the user end up misinterpreting thoughts and portrays psychotic behaviors. In some cases, the user of these drugs becomes overwhelmed with thoughts or feelings or the manner in which he interprets external environment and end up suffering from adverse anxiety or a strong incapability to manage the emotions the person experiences. As a result of this anxiety, the person may have the feeling of attempting suicide, acting out and hurting himself. Although psychedelic drugs have bad side effects to the user as described above, the drugs have some benefits too.

These drugs don’t increase any mental problems to the user. As a matter of fact, these drugs are helpful in lowering the levels of any adverse psychological form of distress. They help to treat disorders such as alcoholism, anxiety and post-traumatic disorder of stress. The drugs are beneficial if used in a safe setting and they end up helping the user view issues in an alternative perspective point of view. Psychedelics help the user to gain insight in the challenges he or she is going through.

There are several benefits associated with holotropic therapy. Firstly, this therapy helps in doing away with drug addiction and alcoholism. Secondly, it helps in prevention of relapse in a person through in improvement in cases of adverse anxiety and depression. The therapy is very effective in improving someone’s emotions, feelings, intimacy in relationships. As a matter of fact, holotropic therapy helps to reduce stress, improve self esteem of a person and add quality to the spirituality of the person.

When drug user change his attitude of using drugs in the perspective of using the drug for therapeutic and religious reason, the effects of the drug are more likely to improve one’s spirituality and pose positive effects. In this case, the person will use the drugs wisely and in a set mind in spiritual terms and this prevents the person from overusing the drug or using it with other intentions of recreation purposes. Spiritually, drugs have an entactogenic quality which enhances empathy feelings of the person in the congregation.

The drugs causes act as an agent of an oceanic form of feeling m one feel making someone feel closer to God and God is within the person. William James an American psychologist and a philosopher too did an experiment using nitrous oxide to find out the religion secrets through intoxication of the mixture. He said that the intoxication of the mixture made him feel a very strong emotion he had never felt and that he continued to experience since then. He confessed that nitrous oxide had a real effect that influenced his thinking since then.

Grof found that there are different experiences resulting from LSD. One of the LSD experience is Abstract and anesthetic experiences which include visions originating within the eye. Secondly, psychodynamic experience which originate from the realm of one’s unconscious and in areas of the accessible personality while figuring out consciousness. Thirdly, perinatal type of experience which mostly focus on the birth, physical pain and finally death. Finally, transpersonal experiences which involve consciousness expansion beyond the usual boundaries of ego and time or space limitations.

According to Grof. A negative and positive COEX systems basically depend on the quality of the charge induced emotionally. Negative COEX systems condenses an experience of unpleasant emotions while positive COEX systems condenses an experience of good emotional experiences and all the positive parts of an individual’s past experiences. According to Grof, he realized that one can relive his or her own perinatal period in life. All this is possible when one’s experiences fall in the personal and collective unconscious.

Unconscious consists in reliving the womb life which is followed by the biological birth and the feeling that follow of the physical pain, trouble, agony and dying. Finally, the last subject in the unconsciousness is death and the death or rebirth symbolic. There are several ways in which Grof believed that Chakras, Kundalini and LSD sessions are similar because they cause similar effects in accordance to what people experience when in a spiritual crises. He feels that all these do the same task because psychology remains psychology and the results are similarly expected.

Work citedWalsh, Roger N., and Frances E. Vaughan, eds. Paths Beyond Ego: The Transpersonal Vision. Michigan: J.P. Tarcher/Perigee, 1993. Print.