Opiates and the psychic connection
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I've been on the opioid maintanence drug Suboxone for months now, and I was on it when I first got "into" magick. Over the past 5 days or so I've begun to lower the dose. I've noticed quite a bit of fatigue and achiness, but also a peculiar lack of feeling in my rituals. Even my tarot cards feel empty, like regular playing cards. It's hard for me to now "feel" when I have to stop shuffling and I'm finding the readings lack accuracy. Perhaps a daily dose of opiate actually strengthens one's connection with the divine? Just looking for opinions on this. I think Crowley did write that marijuana and opiates can strengthen one's energies as far as this sort of thing is concerned.
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I've never touched opiates although I've experimented with quite a few other things in the past, Various hallucinogenics, alcohol and the like.
My feeling is that these substances are useful in showing you what the right feeling should be, for opening a blocked channel maybe or for quickly and efficiently changing a mood or perspective,and can be helpful in the beginning, but in the final analysis they enhance your psychic abilities in the same way that steroids enhance your physique, artificially.
Once you know that your mind is capable of reaching such states I think it necessary to teach it to get into similar states without chemical assistance, always with the prior knowledge from experimentation that such perceptions are indeed possible. I find that a drop of wine can also be helpful, but I would class this as a drug too, and therefore not to be relied upon ultimately.
One thing I have noticed though is that although I have had some success in the past with Out of body/etheric travel, it has never once been when under the influence of any drug, but always through discipline.
Another thing is that with drugs you can sub-consciously convince yourself that any results you might have were drug induced, so for me any experience I have when under the influence counts as practice, but then I'm a skeptic like that, my scientific training means that I must test for sources of error or any distortion of my results before I accept any result as valid.
The single biggest problem I have noticed with any drug is that although it can enhance your abilities quite a lot, it also weakens the capacity for control, while at the same time giving the impression of heightened control (This is because the instruments used to gauge control are themselves impaired by this point and therefore not reliable observers).
I hope this is useful
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@Frater Tenc said
"I've been on the opioid maintanence drug Suboxone for months now, and I was on it when I first got "into" magick. Over the past 5 days or so I've begun to lower the dose. I've noticed quite a bit of fatigue and achiness, but also a peculiar lack of feeling in my rituals. Even my tarot cards feel empty, like regular playing cards. It's hard for me to now "feel" when I have to stop shuffling and I'm finding the readings lack accuracy. Perhaps a daily dose of opiate actually strengthens one's connection with the divine? Just looking for opinions on this. I think Crowley did write that marijuana and opiates can strengthen one's energies as far as this sort of thing is concerned.
"As you probably know, opiates take over the body's natural pain-killing mechanism so that normal, natural pain reduction is disabled temporarily. (How long and how thoroughly varies with factors such as one's length of prior use.)
They also alter one's feeling relationship to all sorts of things. This happens in lots of ways. One is the magnification of response to sensations (sensory impressions). Another is that their removal seems initially often to lead to a "dead" period.
I don't at all think that "a daily dose of opiate actually strengthens one's connection with the divine." I do think that it can enhance how strongly one feels things overall, so that small authentic impressions become more obvious; and it also creates hallucinatory impressions. The main point, I think, is that these substances create an unnatural state - actually disabling normal brain functions for a time - and, therefore, even seeming "gains" aren't real permanent gains.
I suspect that you will need to be clean of opiate and opioid substances for a stretch of time before everything kicks back in on its own. I don't know how long that is - perhaps as little as two or three weeks, possibly 6 months or a year. Hard to say. But I think that's the process going on.
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Thanks to both of you for your helpful replies. I think you're right. I can't act like the weakened state I'm in when I lower and withdraw from the suboxone is how I'll feel forever. It could take up to six months, and meditating during that time will probably help me quite a bit with what I'm trying to achieve.
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I figured out that part of the problem was a noisy computer fan that I had just moved into my room a couple nights ago. So I turned that off and things went a bit better. Other than that, considering I took my full dose of medication today, I'll figure it's the moon phase or the weather. I'm trying not to harbor anger over the fact that I've lost some of my "feeling". Just hoping it's temporary.
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After many failed attempts to quit cigarettes, I finally learned something about myself: all of my tobacco-related thoughts/worries/fears were coming from the addiction.
(I'd have thoughts about the potential benefits of tobacco, or worries about potential losses from quitting tobacco, or other mental rationalizations)
So, a few years ago, when I quit for good, I just decided to dismiss all of those ideas for 1 full year. It helped a lot.
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Greetings!
As an ex-addict (8 years, H), I know EXACTLY what you mean. I was an addict when I got into Magick, and I still use legal opiates (poppy/kratom) anywhere from once a month to twice a week. (When drinking opiates in Tea, it takes much longer to fully manifest and there is no "rush", so unless you really hit it hard, it's difficult for experienced users to get bad off on poppies or kratom.)
The fact of the matter is, Opiates not only numb yourself to sensations on the outside so you can concentrate more on the internal/magick sensations, they give you an extra bit of awareness that comes with a price:
I will only quote our Crowley and say "Opium makes men Holy, but in a negative way."
I suspect he was talking about Buddhists/Indians/and others that employed Opium in their meditation. It works great, but unless you learn to incorporate all those feelings without using, then it is a bit negative.
Opiates are nature's way of saying "Oh, look, you've only got dopamine, enkaphalin, and endorphins to mimic my wonderful, more-evolved, beautiful poppy. I'll bestow unto you this wonderful living manifestation of sacred water, but you have to learn to evolve yourself without needing my beautiful flower."
It's like in the other forum where psychedelic are discussed. They are great for spiritual/mindful experiences, but you should incorporate as much from the experiences as possible to make yourself a stronger person without them.
I've got some keen information regarding all this, but you might want to PM me for more. I don't want to make addiction look attractive for the sake of being Magickally attractive, for younger fraters and sorors, even though the entire reason I got into Magick was after reading diary of a drug fiend and using ritual magick and meditation to remove my cravings.
Notice I said cravings and not the drugs themselves. Crowley goes extensively into this "Our ancestors made use of the lightening itself, are we to run from a packet of powder? These things must be used to strengthen humans" (paraphrasing.)
He also states it is worse to not do a dose when you need to than to do a dose when you do not need to. Although, it does state that the Big Lion urges us to use in the same fashion as he urges us to stop. It's all about evolution and becoming stronger and your True Self.
PM me for more..
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Frankps: I've got diary of a drug fiend in .txt format if you need it. I would recommend it.
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There's sanity in the prior post. I do feel, though, that I need to add a couple of remarks.
First: Crowley was an addict. Please interpret everything he said on the subject as "something an addict said." That doesn't mean to dismiss them. It just means, "Remember, this is an addict saying these things." (I suspect that's all the "tip" you need <g>.)
Second: Diary of a Drug Fiend is a very good novel with some excellent philosophy interwoven. It's also a junkie's wet dream.
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Jim, I believe that when he wrote DOADF, he had completely abolished his addictions and the book was an experience of one who had come through all of it..
.. yes I know he became an addict later on, but that was Much later in life due to respiratory illness. (Most likely from doing Magick in that wet, cold, smoggy English air for much of his career.
I cite the "fountain of hyacinth'. I details his experience comming all the way off of cocaine and heroin/morphia, and later on he wrote DOADF..
I emphasize this because even when I read this book in jail the first time, I could feel it was written by someone who had liberated themselves from the mess I was in.
Everything crowley writes he means to do so for a reason. Aiwass was with him much of his life, as well as RHK, guiding him in the "comment" with everything he wrote, including the drug literature, so others could know.
Believe me, Jim, people who are not addicts would read that book and say "Oh my god I'l never touch C or H".
Addicts would read that and be like "Oh my god, he sounds so free when he talks of the liberation of addiction, I've never read it like that before. It can't be as easy as following this by his writing."
But it surely was for me. ADDICTION, especially OPIATE ADDICTION IS WORSE THAN ANY CHILDHOOD SICKNESS/FLU, BURNING IN A FIREPLACE, FREEZING IN PURE ICE, AND THE WORST BROKEN HEART IMAGINABLE, ALL AT THE SAME TIME. -Disclaimer
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Opiates, when you have to take them, for maintenance or for other necessity, is psychically damping, as one would only absorb themselves in the world as it was.
Opiates, when you find the fortune to take them, would provide a different ground upon which to build the pyramid of your soul. That is when they are not quickly accessible, when it takes some effort, some will, to acquire.
Which is not to say that the solvent of my previous statements are any litmus test, they are purely a respective on your situation, from my own.
Surely the greatest closed eye visuals resembling half-sleep while awake I ever had was on opiates. They are of course excessively illegal in most lands, and if I were you I'd try to find some ritual, some repeating behavior pattern in the acquistion of suboxone that would give you some kind of "holy thrashing" and after which you would be absorbed into it's state, satiated and needing no more, because not only then will you be as Burroughs's said, a "master addict", but you will have acted your will over matter, some sundry weighable substance, and done a great act of Thelema.
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@ThelemicMage said
"Jim, I believe that when he wrote DOADF, he had completely abolished his addictions and the book was an experience of one who had come through all of it..
.. yes I know he became an addict later on, but that was Much later in life due to respiratory illness. (Most likely from doing Magick in that wet, cold, smoggy English air for much of his career."
You sure about that?
DOADF was published in 1922.
The first journal entry of "The Fountain of Hyacinth" is entry dated Feb. 14, 1922, and the following quote appears in the intro:
"I, Baphomet 666, wishing to prove the strength of my will and the degree of my courage have poisoned myself for the last two years[...]"
Even if he was sober when he wrote DOADF, it's kind of hard for me to imagine someone with at most a few months sobriety is not an addict on any level anymore.
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@Avshalom Binyamin said
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@ThelemicMage said
"Jim, I believe that when he wrote DOADF, he had completely abolished his addictions and the book was an experience of one who had come through all of it.... yes I know he became an addict later on, but that was Much later in life due to respiratory illness. (Most likely from doing Magick in that wet, cold, smoggy English air for much of his career."
You sure about that?
DOADF was published in 1922.
The first journal entry of "The Fountain of Hyacinth" is entry dated Feb. 14, 1922, and the following quote appears in the intro:
"I, Baphomet 666, wishing to prove the strength of my will and the degree of my courage have poisoned myself for the last two years[...]"
Even if he was sober when he wrote DOADF, it's kind of hard for me to imagine someone with at most a few months sobriety is not an addict on any level anymore.
hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib93.html"
I do stand corrected, Benjamin. I was thinking of dates wrong. He did write them very closely together. However, whether you look at his addiction as a wake up to evolution or a straight vice, you must say the man possessed all the faculties of his "thinking psychic" abilities whilst doing so. This would only make sense since the entire coming off opiates is more a psychedelic experience than anything else.. and much easier to deal with after that is realized.
Crowley was extremely versed in eating mescaline, which is about as psychedelic as it gets without combining psychedelics. All I'm saying is that I see through his writing to his thoughts, and the man was ALL THERE even when he was psychologically evaluating and testing himself as an addict. I mean, that was the entire point of him choosing to do so. He didn't get "roped in" and was first blind to the addictive and numbing potential of H and C, he took it upon himself to do this.
In fact, I believe it was later in the synopsis of six articles on drugs where he states: (paraphrasing):
'I have succeeded in acquiring a habit bad enough in Heroin to make it difficult to stop. The symptoms are severs. However, I find I can stop with no more than three or four days mild discomfort at most, now that I know how to successfully employ palliatives.'Palliatives = Pain Relief, Distraction, Healthy Eating, etc... that will not affect the cure itself, but help the pain. Nowadays, aspirin, tylenol, vitamins, etc..
I mean, you'd have to have gone all the way through a human being's need and need to stop natural opiates to understand what I'm getting at. The man knew what he was doing the entire time. He knew how to throw himself sliding on the snow like a sack of potatoes, and he knew how to spring up at the right moment before the cliff... with Heroin, that is the ULTIMATE human achievement. I know because he led me through all of it, even through the occasional opiate use nowadays that does not produce the slightest craving for repeating.
Now someone might say "You used to be an addict, how do you know you are straight in your motives to say things like this?"
All I can say is you have to have been through ALL of that particular experience. I'm sorry to say it, but humans have to keep doing things until they realize the reason they do it and the reason they do not want to do it.. including reincarnating and doing things over and over.
Evolutionary leaps are made with the naturals, and nature has ALWAYS had it like that. Nature does not need to leap herself, she puts things here to make us do it for her and ourselves.
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@FraterAnimiLiberare said
"Good luck with Suboxone. I was on that for 4 years, I'm on Methadone now. I went to jail and had to kick Sub's in there and it was a lot easier than dope or Oxy but was still a bitch and lasted about 45 days.
Something you have to remember about Sub's is that they are half-agonist's unlike other Opiates/Opiods they will not get you high so I personally see no recreational use with them, and they really don't change anything in your body (I don't think bupe ever crosses the brain blood barrier). But yea you still get sick from them (good idea there DEA!). A daily dose of sub won't "strengthen" anything other than the length of time you are on those nasty tasting pieces of (****).
You get the pills or the strips?"
I got the strips, Frater. I know, they actually did get me high the first couple days and it was pretty amazing. Seeing that it's going to take at least 45 days of agony I think I'll get started kicking the habit now. I planned on traveling to see my girlfriend (who lives in asia) sooner than that. Guess I'll be putting that off.
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I'm just coming into the post-acute stage--the "dead" feeling--and I have this to say on the subject:
You will not overcome the withdrawals until you realize that NOTHING helps. Not until you've become a weeping, screaming, drooling piece of sh-t, cuddled in your bed with the cold sweats, crying for your mother--only then will you comprehend the virtue in opiate addiction:
As was said above, if you can kick that, and find the root of your addiction, you've mastered what is perhaps the hardest of all human trials.
NO ONE--NOBODY--will comprehend the horror of withdrawals besides another addict/ex-addict. Find clear headed friends, and create a support system. Exercise! I've blasted my endogenous morphine system for five years, and I refuse to let a f-cking molecule rule my life.
I reccomend the book "Permanent Midnight." A good dope redemption story.
The subs, loperamide, and methadone will all make it worse. Trust me. I kicked for a month--straight.
And watch out for the benzos. Unless of course you enjoy a waking nightmare for 152 hours when you run out.
I currently am in post-acute opiate withdrawal, and acute benzo withdrawal, so I'll be rooting for you, partner. This is an ordeal that few will overcome.
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P.S.--I highly advise staying away from methadone, immodium, and the subs. Especially immodium and "done," as they have extremely long half-lives. In other words, you could be in for months of hell. I got lucky this time and tapered down to 80mgs of a short acting opiate before cutting it cold. At the 72 hour mark.
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There are some advantages, but only under the most controlled of conditions.
The effect of opiates is to numb the body along with all sensations associated with it.
So one must understand that any gained perception is at the cost of one lost.As for Frater Tenc and his issue, that is most likely the result of having yet fully seated ones consciousness in the body. You have essentially been ignoring your body and the various things it has been trying to tell you. The "dry feeling" will go away once you re-learn how to communicate with your physical manifestation.
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This may be a bit late but is the maintenance being done under a Doctors supervision?
If you are going to taper do so very slowly.
Stopping too quickly or suddenly will result in a lengthy if relatively minor withdrawal period (compared to that which comes with regular opioid use).
Once you get down to .5 , you could start taking it every other day.
Then go down to .25, eventually every three days...
Until, eventually you will not require any more.
Though I would suggest keeping some around in case you ever feel the urge...
It is what I do, personally. As it kills the urge, or in the need of pain relief does so without a tendency towards abuse. -
Exactly right. Everything depends on a person's metabolism, mindframe, etc. This is the first time I've stopped cold (no creature comforts), and I intend to see it through as both an experiment and example to others.
I'm reminded of the Tool song a great deal:
"This body, this burning hole in me,
Reminds me that I am not alone.Embrace this moment, remember
You are eternal, all this pain is an illusion."Such has been my mantra. It feels different this time (I've "kicked" about a dozen times since my induction into the joys of heavy, prescription opiates), as I could, at any moment, walk into my doctors office and come out with a load of scripts--but I refuse. I had a wonderful revelation while backpacking with my neighbor last week. We took a load of Salvia Divinorum tincture sublingually and set off for an 8 mile treck. I felt great and healthy and didn't even mind the wd's because I was so thrilled to be alive. He turned to me when we reached a particular summit called Devil's Peak, and he says, "Your body is a temple." His words hit me like a bullet.
I've declared war on all those f-cking little molecules that have kept me enslaved--and that is the "real" realization: enslavement of any kind, from crack to candy, is a direct intrusion upon one's True Will. Knowing this, I see this as an ordeal of initiation.
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"I've declared war on all those f-cking little molecules that have kept me enslaved--and that is the "real" realization: enslavement of any kind, from crack to candy, is a direct intrusion upon one's True Will. Knowing this, I see this as an ordeal of initiation."
This made me smile. We're all "addicts" to something or other, and your sentiment feels very empowering.
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@Avshalom Binyamin said
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"I've declared war on all those f-cking little molecules that have kept me enslaved--and that is the "real" realization: enslavement of any kind, from crack to candy, is a direct intrusion upon one's True Will. Knowing this, I see this as an ordeal of initiation."This made me smile. We're all "addicts" to something or other, and your sentiment feels very empowering."
Let us not forget the whole reason Nature put these things here for us -- to EVOLVE. I wouldn't go declare war on a substance put here to evolve me more than I'd go declare war on Typhon while I was in the Astral and try to mock all of his demons.
"Our ancestors learned to make use of lightning, shall we run from a packet of powder?" -A. Crowley on The Big Lion. (Those of us who Know)
I do understand the hatred that can build up with a human being not knowing why they do something or why they have the impulses to do it, but as our Master Therion teaches us as do the sages, you flow with these things and learn to make them your weapon, not make "war" upon them.
Now when you say make "war" on prescription drugs, you may very well mean subconsciously, almost consciously, the ones that are not natural and that nature did NOT put here, but scientists have bastardized from nature to rattle people a bit more and in a much cheaper way than the natural opiates do.
Take morphine or codeine.. even heroin, they flow through the body and feel like natural pure rain water and the tide of the sea.
Take oxy or hydrocodone, or methadone, many synthetic opiates: they feel like a disgusting, false-clean, dopeyness smacks you in the brain and leaves you stupified.
Now I will go very far as to say that the opium poppy was put here for men to learn to love, learn to come through the worst pain and conquer each other over the span of history and learn to come to grips with the horrible sorrow that is Malkuth reality.
The pills, not so much.
Just my two cents, from years and years of experience. If I had declared war on poppies or opiates, I couldn't enjoy a cup of pod every now and then. This contrasts like heaven and hell to how I used to treat myself and heroin with me. We grow, we evolve, we keep all our old friends and commune with them from time to time. Just like human contact and communication, too much is too much.
You should even have the cold and darkness as your friends by now, my experienced Brother.
Just enough is just right. You will know when you start hurting yourself on purpose. When it goes from drinking a cup of tea to having to have one to get up. When it goes from having to have a cup of opium in the morning to popping pills or shooting heroin, one should know one has really fallen far from the Tree of Life and their true path and Will.
Work for nature the way she works for you. Always treat her with the utmost respect, worship, and admiration. Never take her for granted or abuse her, or she will show you Love more tough than any human ever could.
Peace and Power to you all.