Altered Mates

This episode of the podcast features Alejandro reading two chapters from his debut novel, A Glimpse of Eternity—published in 2022, and based on his own transformational journey to South America in 2016.

At this stage in the narrative, Alejandro’s alias, “Nick”, has made his way to Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon. He is joined by his two mates, Stan & Billy, and they have just arrived at an Ayahuasca Healing Centre, named “Way of the Spirit”. Earlier in the novel, Nick undertook two very disappointing ayahuasca ceremonies in The Sacred Valley. He also fell into a downward spiral of anxiety, depression and self-loathing. Chapters 9 & 10 of A Glimpse of Eternity recount Nick’s first two ayahuasca ceremonies at Way of the Spirit and his first Tobacco Dieta.

From the blurb:

A Glimpse of Eternity is edgy, jungle-dank backpacker fiction infused with philosophy, ecstasy, and a dark sense of humour.

Nick is a twenty-seven-year-old high school teacher who has lost his way. Anxious, depressed, and frustrated, he travels to South America in search of his life’s purpose and hopefully, through the use of powerful psychedelic plants, a mystical experience.

At an ayahuasca centre deep in the Peruvian Amazon, confronted with the raw, overwhelming power of “the medicine”, Nick must learn to traverse the dangerous path on which he finds himself, or risk toppling over into insanity and despair.

This is a raw and unflinching novel about a young man’s search for a meaningful existence – a joyful, ecstatic journey of transcendence, tempered by the darkness and gut-wrenching horror of the path he must walk to get there.

The timing of this episode couldn't be better because the audiobook for A Glimpse of Eternity is now available for purchase, so if you enjoy listening to Alejandro reading the novel, then search for it wherever you get your audiobooks or check out the links below. (There's also a free version still available on the Altered Mates Patreon).

Links

Altered Mates Website

Altered Mates Instagram

Music for the show by Si Mulumby

A Glimpse of Eternity by Alejandro Tuama

It’s not always easy talking to friends and family about psychedelics. But it’s another step from discussing these powerful, life changing, spiritual experiences within the confines of our homes, with those we trust most, to making that announcement in public, to the wider population, who may not be so charitable or understanding.

Hopefully, if enough of us find a way to share our stories, and if we can listen with open hearts and open minds, then maybe we can shift the mindset of the culture at large.

In this episode of the podcast, the Altered Mates each take a turn in reading a personal essay. Both essays amount to a “coming out” of the psychedelic closet, not just to our friends and families, but to the wider community. Tobias’ piece was written in 2020 for the Thank You Plant Medicine movement. Alejandro’s piece was published in 2021, in one of the last editions of the Psychedelic Press print journal.

Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy this rather personal edition of the Altered Mates podcast.

References

Links

Altered Mates Website

Altered Mates Instagram

Music for the show by Si Mulumby

A Glimpse of Eternity by Alejandro Tuama

The Big Lez Show is an animated TV series, that premiered on YouTube in 2012. The show was created by Jarrad Wright, Tom Hollis, and Izak Whear; with Jarrad being the driving creative force of the show.

Choomah Island 2 (2015) — written and animated by Jarrad Wright — is the finale of Season 3 of The Big Lez Show. In this feature length episode of The Big Lez Show, Leslie and his mates fly to Choomah Island to blow up the Choomah’s hive and get rid of their species for good. They also find time to eat some psychedelic mushrooms they find growing in a field, and Big Lez smokes a joint of some mysterious psychedelic, given to him Sassy the Sasquatch.

In this episode we cover the basic plot of Choomah Island 2, but narrow down especially on those two psychedelic trips, expertly depicted in the film. In response to the experience of the characters during a magic mushroom trip, we take an extended sojourn into a discussion of trees… treating trees as individuals capable of communicating with us, and we discuss the power of considering a tree (and by extension the rest of the natural world) as “thou” rather than “it”, and even find a way to bring in James Cameron’s first Avatar film.

Finally a warning: if you’re at all squeamish about swearing then this probably isn't the episode for you…

We hope you enjoy our discussion of Jarred Wright’s The Big Lez Show — Choomah Island 2.

References

Links

Altered Mates Website

Altered Mates Instagram

Music for the show by Si Mulumby

A Glimpse of Eternity by Alejandro Tuama

In this episode we use James Davies’ book “Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good” as a launch pad to discuss some of the glaring issues with psychiatry and its sugar-daddy; the pharmaceutical industry.

The writer, James Davies is psychotherapist with a PhD in Medical and Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. He is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology and Psychology at the University of Roehampton, London.

Davies acknowledges that as a psychotherapist he could be seen as being biased in favour of the psychotherapeutic approach which can be considered to be in opposition to the ‘pharmaceutical’ approach of psychiatry. He makes no attempt to present a balanced account in this book—it unashamedly presents a series of arguments against psychiatry and its sugar-daddy (Alejandro’s words…) the pharmaceutical industry.

Overall, thestrongest arguments presented concern depression and the inefficacy of anti-depressant drugs, and perhaps he should have narrowed his argument to focus just on depression rather than extrapolate to the whole field. Regardless, he makes a number of compelling points that portray psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry as nothing short of despicable.

The main points of this book can be summarised as follows:

We also consider in this episode one of the most important chapters in the history of psychedelic culture, being the adventures of the brothers McKenna to La Chorera in the Colombian Amazon, and their encounter there with The Mushroom…

References

Links

Altered Mates Website

Altered Mates Instagram

Music for the show by Si Mulumby

A Glimpse of Eternity by Alejandro Tuama

In this episode, we use the film adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a launching point to discuss ideas around psychiatry, psychiatric wards, and the conflict between the individual and the establishment.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was originally a novel, written by Ken Kesey and published in 1962. (Ken Kesey, worked the graveyard shift as an orderly at a mental health facility in Menlo Park, California. He spoke to the patients and witnessed the workings of the institution. He also voluntarily took psychoactive drugs, including mescaline and LSD, as part of Project MK Ultra. In addition to his work with MK Ultra, Kesey took LSD recreationally.)

The novel was adapted into film in 1975, directed by Miloš Forman, and went on to win five Academy Awards.

The narrative focusses on the antics of the rebellious Randle Patrick McMurphy (played by Jack Nicholson in the film), who fakes insanity to serve his sentence for battery and gambling in a psychiatric hospital rather than at a prison work farm. The head administrative nurse, Nurse Ratched, rules the ward with absolute authority, assisted by her three day-shift orderlies and her assistant doctors and nurses.

In this episode we discuss the character of McMurphy, as an example of an “individual” who stands out from the crowd like Tyler Durden in Fight Club (who we discussed in Episode 8 — Monsters & Masculinity). McMurphy cannot be allowed to run loose in society, and so he is trapped and forced into the punishment system. One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest is about “the combine”, the machine, that forces us to fall into line. With the arbitrary rules, the opiate drugs to dull our senses, with the shame that turns us into our own police.

Towards the end of the book, one of the patients comments how they forced McMurphy to stand up for them, as they are too cowardly to stand up for themselves. McMurphy pushes the boundaries of the system in their behalf, smashing up against a machine that he cannot defeat, a machine that wants to grind everyone down into the dirt.

But despite this seemingly hopeless situation, this film (and novel) can still serve as a call to action. It can be a call to be an individual in the face of the oppressive machine. To be the one who stands, not the masses who push. Either way we are destined to be ground into dust by the machine, but to be an individual is surely a more glorious way to live and honourable way to die.

References

Links

Altered Mates Website

Altered Mates Instagram

Music for the show by Si Mulumby

A Glimpse of Eternity by Alejandro Tuama

This episode begins with a discussion of the role of dreams and quickly moves on to our issues with contemporary education in both university and high school contexts. Before long, we settle down into a discussion about Tobias’ intentions for an upcoming ayahuasca ceremony, and consider ideas of discipline and maintaining a clean and unpolluted body.

We venture into some controversial realms; for instance, thinking about whether we can legitimately call psychiatrists “glorified drug-dealers”, and whether prescribing anti-depressant medication might actually be taking autonomy away from people and preventing them from following through in a process that might lead to growth...

(As always, we remind listeners to take anything we say we a grain of salt— we are speculating here about the world around us, and we are open to be challenged and critiqued on anything we say).

Tobias reflects on the profound realisation that there might be something in the world smarter than him. And finally, after much probing and prodding, he elaborates upon what can be thought of as an “embodied” approach to plant medicines.

References

Links

Altered Mates Website

Altered Mates Instagram

Music for the show by Si Mulumby

A Glimpse of Eternity by Alejandro Tuama

In this episode, we conclude our two-part discussion on Scott Hill’s book, Confrontation with the Unconscious. Last episode we discussed Chapter 7 from Hill’s book, titled “Psychedelic Experience and Psychosis”. Chapter 8, the subject of this episode, concerns itself with an exploration of psychosis in Jungian Psychology.

We altered mates find ourselves now almost at the end of a deep dive into the intersession between psychedelics and psychosis, and at this point is seems to be that what is happening in both psychotic episodes and psychedelic trips are what Scott Hill refers to as a “confrontation with the unconscious”, or in other words — an overwhelming of the conscious ego by the archetypal forces of the unconscious.

According to Jung’s ideas, the archetypal forces of the unconscious, or just the archetypes, “live in a world quite different from the world outside— in a world where the pulse of time beats infinitely slowly, where the birth and death of individuals count for little. No wonder their nature is strange, so strange that their irruption into consciousness often amounts to a psychosis. They undoubtably belong to the material that comes to light in schizophrenia.”

Jung argues that our alienated condition is manifested in symbolic messages from the unconscious that express themselves in a strange and incomprehensible language, which cries out for interpretation. As Jung puts it, “in insanity we do not discover anything new and unknown; we are looking at the foundation of our own being, the matrix of those vital problems on which we are all engaged.” The terrors of the psychotic are merely extreme forms of our common human condition.

Perhaps we should consider our own sanity to be traversing a knife’s edge—for anyone who's engaged in high dose psychedelic experience, this may well be a regular thought…

As mentioned in the introduction: A Glimpse of Eternity by Alejandro Tuama

References:

Links:

Altered Mates Website

Altered Mates Instagram

Music for the show by Si Mulumby

In this episode we discuss a chapter from Scott Hill’s book, Confrontation with the Unconscious. It was our intention to cover two chapters, but in the end we managed to get through only Chapter 7: Psychedelic Experience and Psychosis.

We try to wrap our heads around useful, working models of psychosis and (attempt to) determine where this troubling and mysterious phenomenon overlaps with the psychedelic experience. In the process we toss around ideas like Washburn’s Ego and the Dynamic Ground; discuss how researchers accidentally induced “ecstatic mystical” experiences and cured a group of alcoholics of their addiction; speculate as to whether a psychotic episode has the potential to reveal insights for the experiencer; and we even come up with our own metaphor to illustrate how the ego can become overwhelmed by the unconscious.

Ultimately, we agree that psychotic experiences and psychedelic experiences appear to have a common underlying mechanism that enables unconscious material to penetrate the psychic membrane and potentially overwhelm the ego, albeit in a variety of different forms and across varying durations in time.

One question left unresolved in our discussion is this: if you have a personality disorder, are you more likely to have a psychotic experience? If you have any insight into this question, please get in touch with us…

References

Links:

Altered Mates Website

Altered Mates Instagram

Music for the show by Si Mulumby.

In this episode we discuss a paper written by Gary Fisher concerning some intriguing research that he and some fellow colleagues conducted in the 1960s. This paper and our discussion surrounding it is quite confronting, as it deals with extremely troubled children who were suffering terribly. But even more intriguing than the depths of the psychoses these children were trapped within, was the profound breakthroughs that Fisher and his team were able to facilitate with the help of LSD—to transform the lives of some of these children from total horror into functioning members of society.

But probably the most confronting and disappointing aspect of this whole paper, is the fact that—as Fisher writes in the introduction—this, “research done 35 years ago is still the last word on the use of psychedelics to treat these conditions.” Indeed, we were left thinking what an outrageous and avoidable tragedy it is that the terrible suffering of children like these continues to this day because of the so-called “war on drugs” and the related cessation of research into psychedelics.

The paper appeared in the newsletter of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), Volume 7 Number 3, in the summer of 1997 (pp. 18-25). The paper is titled: Treatment of Childhood Schizophrenia Utilizing LSD and Psilocybin.

As an introduction, consider these two passages from the paper:

References

Links:

Altered Mates Website

Altered Mates Instagram

Music for the show by Si Mulumby.

In this episode we continue our foray into the world of schizophrenia and psychosis. This week we base our discussion around a fascinating paper written by Sarah Marks, titled: “From experimental psychosis to resolving traumatic pasts: Psychedelic Research in Communist Czechoslovakia, 1954‑1974”.

And… while people moving through a schizophrenia or a psychotic break often experience disordered thoughts, we too, experience a certain amount of disorder in our discussion. So we hope that our listeners are possessed of a forgiving temperament and pardon our naive ramblings.

Czech it out.

References:

Links:

Altered Mates Website

Altered Mates Instagram

Music for the show by Si Mulumby