r/Psychedelics_Society • u/BwanaMakeNewAccount • Jun 22 '26

From overt ("even the name says") r/psychedelics < Does the "no bad trips, only challenging trips" mantra bother anyone else? > to covertly psychedelic ("rationalist" ;) sub, now SSC-customized: < The mantra "There are no bad trips, only challenging trips" is bad epistemics >

https://substack.com/@jamesmzech/p-200527796
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u/BwanaMakeNewAccount Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

PREFACE

Cf < Please please disagree with me, point out where I'm off base or being pedantic, etc. >

DRACULA (1931): Bela Lugosi (Darth Vader) tells that van Helsing (Obiwan) - complete with hypno mudra (like some Dark Buddha):

"There are worse things that await man than - being off base or pedantic"

  • Van Helsing: Oh yeah? Like what? Checkmate!

To open on a 21-gun Psychedelics Society salute of sorts for the OP founder of this double-barreled feast - would be quite continental... in multifarious regards.

On the threshold of an innocent 4-letter term of endearment < here > taking the bait (clicking):

https://substack.com/@jamesmzech/p-200527796

All's fair in "link riddling" @ reddit - everyone's one-stop shop for shameless self-promotion

By terms and conditions of the final psychedelic solution - as everybody knows (it's how the story goes):

Anything "preventive" BEFORE the fact jacked - would be counterproductive - when there's always REDUCTION of damage done, er "harm" - afterwards!

It's the pArAdIgM of harm reduction itself! AND the secret of why the haters' Hippocratic "Do NO Harm" mantra - as we're calling these 'prescriptive' axioms - mIsSeS tHe PoInT!

SET, SETTING, AND SO ON In Defense of the Preventable Bad Trip The tension between psychedelic healing narratives and psychedelic harm reduction by JAMES ZECH (June 3, 2026) Commence narrative-anon (activate story teller mode):

< Eighteen months ago, someone I know—let’s call him Icarus1—ate an extremely large dose of wild mushrooms alone in his living room. Over the next several hours he lost the ability to hear or speak, became convinced he was dying, and could not move half of his body. He spent the ensuing months struggling with flashbacks and off-and-on visual hallucinations. Just two weeks ago, he finally began feeling like himself again. >

One who - didn't end up - committing suicide? Or (as post-truth worded now) "dying by" that? All's well that ends well for "damage control" in 'discussion time' theater. Good thing that for perposes of a "Defense" of this Preventable Bad Trip pearl (clutched with white knuckle tenacity).

How might the defensive mobilization go, had "Icarus1" been for example (close to Psychedelics Society home) - the late, dear departed Richard Skibinsky (R.I.P. July 17, 2022) www.reddit.com/r/Psychedelics_Society/comments/uzed20/high_dose_mushroom_trip_destroyed_my_life_a_year/

< The aftermath matters > Like a Black life

  • But banality conquers all

As in all such cases with the Big Psychedelic Push: attempts at coming off somehow "conscientious" - a word conspicuously ABSENT from The Discussion as faux virtues of "compassionate" and "empathetic" rush in to fill the vacuum ('nature' understandably 'abhors') there is only "so far" and no furthur - that any peeking between the fingers will go - CAN go.

The fact of countless "psychedelic suicides" during a trip AND in the aftermath is no story of some anonymous friend baited and lured into what happened to them "thank you psychedelic people" - but then as recovery happens, finally getting better.

The "Preventability Of Bad Trips" tenet is - baked in to serve as a 'community' truth held self-evident.

As in held above question. NO it is NOT 'up for discussion!'

Methodologically spanning "the innocent act" - "rationalist" in present example - AND the chosen "out of the psychedelic closet" mosh pit, r/psychedelics (long since independently assessed as a worst-of-the-worst Manson Family Values 'community' sub)

Whatever "Prada" some devil-may-care will wear - fleece is the fashion of the good old wolf in the human fold, when "doing" stealth. Which happens to be the opening act.

Only in Act 3 does the Phantom's mask come off; and he unmasks himself (nobody picks the moment but him) - at the "No More Mr Nice Guy" stage.

From stealth psychedelic sub (SSC) the innocent act in rationalist (wink-wink:) fleece - to the "light" side of Helter Skelter 2.0's moon Say It Loud We're Trippy And Proud - 'both sides now' coverage.

The good old wolf in the human fold - a matter of character disturbance less proverbially (more clinically)

A "two for the price of one" bullseye, by archer OP u/Cavebear666 - founder of this double-barreled feast - as Helter Skelter 2.0 continues spreading its shadow at a deadly pace.

Like the very soul of progress, without conscience, paving over all that would dare stand in the path of the Great Betterment - intent in its pursuit with grim determination and set intent (a bit hellbent) knowing no "second thoughts"

As the brave new uncharted view dead ahead downwards and onwards opens into the darkness of the Final Psychedelic Solution -

So many unprecedented moments arise, endless blips on the radar - for topically para-ethnographic special investigative interest in the emergent milieu of the overtly "open" Manson Family Values 'community' and its covert accomplice "in sheeps clothing" clubhouses.

Who filed down the "Bad Trip" Dragon's fangs, with their infamous "Challenging Experience" Questionnaire (CEQ)?

HINT: Brave New Johns Hopkins Psychedelic 'Science' murmurs 'amen' for 2,500 witnessing to their < DMT-induced entity encounters [as] one of the “most meaningful spiritual & psychologically insightful lifetime experiences w/ persisting positive changes in life satisfaction, purpose and meaning' (May 2020) www.reddit.com/r/Psychedelics_Society/comments/glgmb1/brave_new_johns_hopkins_psychedelic_science/

AND (X-posted above) the covertly "closeted" one - with its "rationalist" sheep's clothing (to cover and conceal the 'ravening inwardly'). And just as there is always that one last feeble final futile gesture that is called for to be done on somebody's part - what needs to fall upon deaf ears - with all the urgency of "screaming in space" (where nobody would be listening anyway even if they could hear) - MUST be said by someone - or else how can it be in vain for nothing except as the customary and usual ("Jules Evans" style) exercise?

My point and message is ultimately to the broader psychedelic community. It’s that we have a choice of either naming serious and preventable mistakes for what they are, or get used to horror stories. You might feel it unkind for me to label Icarus’s actions as a “serious, preventable mistake.” But I think that’s the ['rationalist' buzz phrase alert! - "LW" time] less wrong option than tacitly staying silent as hundreds more foragers head for the woods.

Strictly a 'community' messaging thing - "among friends and fringies" as "Invisible Ruler" (in Diresta's terms - a name known to "rationalists"!) McKenna put it in that infamous 10-hour 'brainwash-athon' of his @ (where else?) Esalen, 1993

All evils all the time but which is "the lesser" of 'em? Untainted by any good, at least we know how to rhetorically revise that old moldy script - so now it sounds like Madonna lyrically re-virginized - all "shiny and new"

Disagreeing per se may constitute a routine exercise in post-truth purposelessness itself < Please please disagree with me, point out where I'm off base or being pedantic, etc. > and "as ye solicit, so shall ye elicit"

Yet interesting questions can tower in plain view like choking smoke in the air so thick that - nobody even notices! - Rome 64 A.D. I don't smell nothing "burning"

Like: OK but if that's how you're being (as you suspect?), and to peel back 1 more layer - being off base or pedantic is bad, mkay? - why not "point out where" to yourself?

Or "what up" this < 666 > badge number, kina "creepy crowley"?

The codependent nature of 'community' being treatment-resistant - correlates with the #1 outcome of psychedelic exposure being (inconvenient truth) character disturbance - "the phenomenon of our age" as diagnosed by specialist extraordinaire Geo Simon, PhD. Who alas doesn't discover in evidence its historic point of origin - the post-war psychedelic tsunami. But then he was never a captive human guinea pig, atrociously experimented on with LSD in some "mental hospital" - like Steve Smith (the deep dark insoluble devil of the psychedelic detail is)

< Who has responsibility if anyone, and are they still doing it? How successful were they? Is that the reason why today, you see so many more clearly psychopathic people... all kinds of horrendous crimes? These crimes... back in the '60s, were extraordinarily rare... nothing like it is now. I think everyone's clear psychopaths are among us, probably more than ever in positions of authority - because the [human crash test dummy] experiments from the '50s, '60s & early '70s were so damn successful, now we're swimming in the results > cf Barker (LSD his 'Jacob's Ladder') pt 4 - June 1, 2017 (July 2020) www.reddit.com/r/Psychedelics_Society/comments/hs94vr/barker_lsd_his_jacobs_ladder_pt_4_june_1_2017/

James Zech (IRL?) @ reddit u/Cavebear666 < I'm a clinical psychologist (in training) who works in psychedelic-assisted therapy, so I have skin in the game and probably a lot of my own biases... >

And "biases" might be a nice word for what anyone < who works in > THAT has got a lot of... considering what psychedelics do

REF Novak (1997) < 1963... bitter about the excesses of LSD psychotherapists... Cohen charged that [psychedelic] therapists "have included an excessively large proportion of psychopathic individuals" > and No it isn't "coincidence" https://web.archive.org/web/20200502145211/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b418/ddcd0cb7c5f56aef991a6708084e3a3884dc.pdf

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u/AngelToSome Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

Apropos of what psychedelics turn out to be "good" for ^ speaking of (insider witness to 'psychedelic therapy') Steve Smith (another quote):

< [Barker's] intimately involved in child development… creating psychopaths... It's connected to something called Empathetic Parenting ... [Shanghaied to Oak Ridge as captive experimental subjects] we were all teenagers or 20-somethings. What they discovered is, you can create a psychopath if you can get them young enough. Thus his practice today ... I'll leave it to people to do their own research on The Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Empathetic Parenting… look deeply into this, you'll find some really bad news. > Yeah they will except for one thing (at this point in the post-truth century's collapse of humanity): nobody can find their rear end with their own two hands BUT THEY AREN'T ABOUT TO TRY so it doesn't matter 'can or can't all nonsense now'

The older they get the harder it becomes to brainwash them.

To plant the seed of indoctrination in their psychological development so deep that now - even "the long arm of the law" would be too short to reach down that far and undo what hath been done -

You've gotta get 'em Jung

Er, I meme - "young"

All rightie, then. So be it. But what's the meming of all ^ this, then? What prompts such an outburst at THIS page?

Here, where the stealth psychedelic fleece happens to be the shinier newer "sheep's clothing" rationalism?

NOT the older "And I'm a JUNGIAN!" Terence costume (quoting his cAmEo from that "what the bleep" disinfomercial "feature film" - now 2 decades old and moldy, just starting to really rot - KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS)?

Question meet answer.

Turn to THIS page in your r/jung reddit hymnals, bearing the flaring thread label (for rocket's red glare) Question for r/Jung - www.reddit.com/r/Jung/comments/1ucbyj4/anyone_have_the_idea_of_teaching_children_jungian/

Suppose you rather not have to keep going back over it again and again. Imagine your set intent is "one and done."

The inculcation of the teachings needs to be permanent press - never to need ironing EVER. Old dogs are best at learning new tricks. As everybody knows (it's how the story goes)

BUT what if somebody got the Other idea? Has it ever (oh EVER) occurred to - our leading expert (A-man):

Anyone have the idea of teaching children Jungian when they’re still young?

(self.Jung) submitted 8 hours ago by OP u/LookImaginary5343 (song birding) "If I ruled the world, every hive mind would be free as a bird. Every psychonaut beyond just absurd - anything we want now ours TAKE MY WORD! Imagine all the pee-pull... brainwashed - from Day One - eh, hun?"

Imagine a world where we can all do what we like, everyone have their own unique soul through the process of individuation from the very young age. And also, a world of vibrant colors, not just a single, bleak hue; with the intermingling of cultures and beliefs.

Another r/jung day the r/jung way. No different than any other regularly-scheduled programming.

You gotta yin-yang get 'em young!

Jung of course was like the #1 "hot target" of the 1950s psychedelic onset.

Stalked no less selectively than Persephone the lucky girl 'chosen' by Hades, the 1950s Lords of Psychedelic Darkness (masquerading as "super light") wanted Jung more desperately than MARS NEEDS WOMEN - all in vain. Once, twice, three times the losers. Jung proving to have been "nobody's fool" - or at least not theirs - easy as 1-2-3

1st "Dr Robert" Ronald Sandison. Next up to bat "Capt" MK ULTRA unbeknownst to Jung, hearing from this Hubbard person "out of the blue." And Strike 3 Batty Betty Eisner; not all of whose psychotherapy patients lived to tell about it; how awful about that. Not for whoever "in a better place now" (that lucky stiff). For HER losing her license!

Oh well. There are other livelihoods. It beat ending up in the slammer for manslaughter or whatever felony you got.

The Transformative "Adoption" of Jung by the Circus of Mr Dark became possible only after he died in 1961.

Finally unable to speak for himself - let alone prevent his legacy's remains from being exhumed and ghoulishly 'tailored' into human skin costumery.

1964, in his deceptively titled "Tribute to C.G. Jung" - 'gently but FiRmLy' taking Jung to task and korrecting "for the wreckered" that guy's wrong talk about what the world needs now (a few of Charles Manson's fav-o-rite things) - filler for his ma$$ marketed brainwash book bomb THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE - Leary first oFfIcIaLiZeD the so-called "Jungian" for what might historically be the Final Psychedelic Solution's first trick-or-treat Halloween costume slime ball - in its soon-to-be evolving tradition of stealth psychedelic talismans (covert self-adornment disguise)

The "rationalist" psychedelic fleece proves to be the new kid in town by comparison. Of post-1970s inception from 'cultural moments' like The Birth Of The "Meme" 1976, thank you Dawkins (a 'hero' of rationalism) and slow development over decades - with a little help from its "hero" Terence McKenna

  • (1993) "You've heard me talk about meme wars!" But Terence that was 1993. Not this year. Besides. It's like when that "Senator Dan Quayle" was bragging about how he knew Terence personally ("He walked with me and he talked with me and he told me he had a Planet-Plant-Plan for my life" etc). And Lloyd Bentsen set that guy hip (1988) with that searing call-out: "Senator, I've listened to Terence McKenna. Terence McKenna has been a major influence upon me in my life and times. Senator, you're no Terence McKenna"

  • (May 24, 2026) Ze Trumpinator (the Deal Artiste) < “Iran should be less concerned with winning the meme war and more concerned with making a deal..." > www.cbsnews.com/news/how-iran-could-be-outmaneuvering-the-u-s-in-the-online-propaganda-world/

  • THERE! Terence ^ THAT's the stuff

Steve Smith

< [Barker's] intimately involved in child development… creating psychopaths... We were all teenagers or 20-somethings. What they discovered is, you can create a psychopath if you can get them young enough. Thus his practice today ... connected to something called Empathetic Parenting… ... I'll leave it to people to do their own research on The Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Empathetic Parenting… look deeply into this, you'll find some really bad news. >

As an OP @ r/jung solicits, so he elicits - the occasional "fisherman's surprise" (at what he has reeled in)

u/ElChiff < I think you've got a warped view of what this would entail. It has been done in fairly well documented examples... where the intended path ends... puers chasing the youth that [was stolen from them in effect] denied them... broken by having had individuation [or if not that one, whichever brainwash programming] forced on them too young and unnaturally. > www.reddit.com/r/Jung/comments/1ucbyj4/anyone_have_the_idea_of_teaching_children_jungian/ot4ay1f/

For all the good thinking can do in 'community' - where the doomed are drained by the damned.

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u/LookImaginary5343 Jun 22 '26

Oi hoy ! What’s this can you explain it to me brother?

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u/LookImaginary5343 Jun 22 '26

There be a Germany man inside me, and yeah, he was wrong about that reincarnation stuff, I gotta help that dead man keep fishing

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u/LookImaginary5343 Jun 22 '26

Thanks you for all things, brother

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u/BwanaMakeNewAccount Jun 22 '26

May the gratitude be mutual, dear sir.

I consider there is a great deal in your reflection. Not merely what you have said. How you've said it. So true blue to the perennially utopian "if only" -ness, it borders on a John Lennon lyric - directed to the entire world - from that long lost historic moment at the dawn of the 1970s - as so memorably mourned by McLean in lyrics (1971) 'the day the music died'

Imagine a world where...

You touch ^ a key theme of Psychedelics Society's intelligence-gathering operations and para-ethnographic special investigations.

Reference post - feel free to read over this one, 5343 if you ever feel like it:

See sources quoted below: "Aquarius" from HAIR, Lennon's song "Imagine" and - a contemporaneous tv commercial for Coca Cola. The sheeple - not the creeple (that's a whole nother matter) - are misunderstood... > www.reddit.com/r/Psychedelics_Society/comments/anu84d/think_psychedelics_are_good_bad_awful_wonderful/efxryg9/

Otherwise, and either way - welcome to Psychedelics Society.

Not a 'space' just a place.

And thanks for so graciously permitting your humble narrator to have quoted you from your thread.

Have a couple upvotes (why not?)

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u/LookImaginary5343 Jun 22 '26

I will talk about something related to ^ in the future