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"When i began this book, I wanted to solve a mystery. I wanted
to know why certain substances are revered in tribal societies
throughout the world, but repressed as well as ridiculed in
contemporary Western cultures. Unlike heroin or cocaine,
psychedelics are neither physically harmful or habit-forming.
Yet they are considered so frightening and dangerous that possession
of them is punished by long prison sentences."
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The visionary power of psychedelics remains a mystery, one that was
abandoned by the scientific academy when psychedelics were made illegal a
generation ago. Equally mysterious: Why should the private
exploration of one's inner reality, by chemical or other means, be
considered a serious threat to 'free society'?"
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"Repression is reflexive," notes the literary critic Frederic
Jameson, "that is, it aims not only at removing a particular object
from consciousness, but also and above all, at doing away with the
trace of that removal as well, at repressing the very memory of the
intent to repress." For over thirty years, a tremendous force
of cultural repression has been exerted on the subject of
psychedelics.
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And yet it cannot be said that our culture frowns on the use of
consciousness-changing substances. While psychedelics are
outlawed (even though ibogaine has been conclusively proven to
combat heroin and cocaine addiction, it is illegal), 27 million
Americans currently take antidepressants such as Zoloft or Prozac.
These days, most people are far more suspicious of plant compounds
safely ingested by human beings for tens of thousands of years than
they are of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or other
powerful, utterly synthetic, mood and mind-altering drugs created in
the last decades by a pharmacological industry motivated by profit.
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Carl Jung wrote: "People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in
order to avoid facing their own souls." Is it possible that
our society has unconsciously built up a vast edifice of technology
and propaganda in order to avoid that inner confrontation?
Enveloped by media and technology, we have come to prefer secondhand
images to inner experience--what Jung called "the adventure of the
spirit." The self-knowledge achieved through personal
discovery and visionary states seems alien, even repellant, compared
to the voyeuristic gaze, the virtual entertainments and hypnotic
distractions of contemporary culture.
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