Chemical Shamanism: What was known all along...

"Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug"
http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/S/SCI_PSYCHEDELIC_STUDY?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-07-01-08-59-17

Scientists reported Tuesday that when they surveyed volunteers 14 months after they took the drug, most said they were still feeling and behaving better because of the experience.

Two-thirds of them also said the drug had produced one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they'd ever had.

The drug, psilocybin, is found in so-called "magic mushrooms." It's illegal, but it has been used in religious ceremonies for centuries.

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I can confirm these findings. I'd say any significantly strong hallucinogen is going to provide the same possible benefits.

But I caution eager users...

You don't want to rush out and drop acid or whatever. It's certainly not for everyone. It can be an emotionally devastating experience and can actually amplify some negative emotions and result in what is sometimes called a "bad trip." In the right frame of mind a hallucinogen can become a powerful tool of personal spiritual enlightenment - your own party line to the divine with no pretender mediating between you and the purity of first hand experience. If you take enough of something - and here is where I recommend at least double dosages of mushrooms, acid, or DMT - hallucinogens can become the locomotive to the land of the machine elves. My machine elves looked like tiny color dots with arms and legs that seemed to be the engineers behind the movement of all things - the ultimate puppet masters of reality! I laughed, I cried, and stopped wondering why. At the end of all things I realized that nothing mattered and that we might as well make the best of things. The most useful revelation was that human culture was FULL of the most outrageous conceits and that most of us really need to get over ourselves.

Find your own machine elves!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_elf