Psychedelics question

[BadBeast]

Nice. Threads back on track. I never did Aya but I did do DMT, with high expectations. I was left somewhat disappointed. It was intense, and there was the temporal displacement, but I didn't get any spiritual lift from it at all. But I'm not one to dismiss a drug after one go on it, so I may try it again at some point.

My absolute favourite Psychedelic is Psilocybin Semilacantea. I enjoy Acid, and other stuff like MDMA, but there is nothing that has ever come close Spiritually, to Liberty Caps. They are harmless, in the sense that there is no toxic amount that I've ever heard of, but I have never been more afraid in my life, than when The Fear™ kicks in.
But the best Spiritual kick, involves The Fear™.
When they throw you unexpectedly right in the deep end, and you know you're in for the duration, you can just sit there, on a tree stump, rocking backwards and forwards, muttering "Make it go away, make it go away, over and over until it wears off.  You can get to a point where you've just had enough, and you give up. You stop struggling, stop fighting off the nameless Horror that has been trying to utterly consume you for perhaps three hours, and SUBMIT.
At that point, you are fully aware that this submission can mean you are wiped from existence,  dragged away by some Grendel like monster of the blackest pit, to be consumed and eaten alive in it's lair. (Spiritually speaking, of course)  Sounds a bit dramatic, I know, but
It's real enough at the time.
Then you realise all of a sudden, that you had indeed been riding the correct motorcycle all along, and The Fear™ has taken you to a place you would never have reached, unless you'd really believed you'd been about to have your (suddenly very real)  Soul, sucked out and condemned to oblivion. The point you have been driven to, is ABSOLUTE SUBMISSION.  Not just Resignation, but total and abject Submission. All the Fear, and Horror, and Demonic, babbling insanity, just evaporates and leaves you empty of any recognisable emotion or feeling. You are indeed, consigned to oblivion. An empty vessel, floating in an endless ocean of nothing at all.

You know nothing, feel nothing, your senses have been stripped away, and you are no more than the tiniest spark of other.
What I know now, is this. The frightened, terrified creature that turned itself over to the tender mercies of the THE FEAR™, has gone. It wasn't you at all. It was just your Ego. Now, you are actually ready for the big one. The whole of reality snaps back in, like a cracking whip. Instead of experiencing it, from an Ego-Tagged point of consciousness called You, you become everything in the whole of creation. Every stone, every animal, every leaf on every Tree, everything there has ever been, across time, is now you. You fill every place, and your awareness is everywhere at once, and you are all there is. One with everything.
At this point, there is no longer anything you need to find out, discover, feel, or do. No imperative, no action needed, just pure awareness. Planet Earth is you, and there's nothing more to do. You know. Every Cell, every Atom, every piece of every puzzle. It's enough.

Then it all becomes nothing but light. Light with no source, or end, no shadow, no matter, no impurities. Just light. Just you. The light sucks in on itself, becomes a ball, gets smaller and smaller, until it / you are just a microscopic pinprick, tinier and tinier. Then there is nothing.

And. . . . . . . you're back in the room. The thing that rode here on THE FEAR™ is back. No longer afraid, and also, somehow aware of what you've just been through. Clean and shiny, pure and filled with what you can only describe as Grace. You welcome each other with love, and merge. You have your reconditioned Ego back. No longer disproportionate to it's place in the scheme of things, or trying to run everything, it quietly starts to tag the World again, from it's new point of you.

You have passed through something, bigger than what you previously thought of as just "Death". And literally been born, again. You were your own Mother, and the new Baby thing. And somehow, the Midwife too.  The person you were is now gone, and the person you are now, is both of you again. Or something.  And you're still tripping your Nut off, and the whole process has taken maybe 20 minutes. You feel better than you ever remember feeling. Filled with Grace, you are allowed to just reflect on what happened. You also realise that you are actully walking in the Garden again. Yup. That Garden. Et in Arcadia Ego. In fact, you realise you never really left it. It all had something to do with an Apple. And a Snake. And Knowledge.

Now you know why you were told not to eat that Fruit. So that you ate the Fucker. The Snake, the bringer of Wisdom, hadn't lied. "If you eat of this Fruit, you will become as Gods". (The Snake was also you, all along, and the Chick you remember was the same one who had just given birth to your newly enlightened arse)

I fucking love Magick Mushrooms. So much more than just "breathing walls, color trails, and incurable giggles"    

[LMNO]

Agreed.  So I'm out of this one before it turns into another crap fest.  Enjoy Lys!

I'll agree for the most part, but I don't think this is a crap fest.
I am listening to the points you have to make, and I'm not trying to argue with you so much as try and show you my side of thinking.

I respect the work you do and what you have to say, and I find it very interesting and enlightening. I do find it a bit saddening though that you're just ignoring some of the points I'm making and asking me for proof of things that I can't at this time show you.

You mind if I take a stab at it?

Erowid, leaning pro-user, treats drugs in the same manner as a magazine devoted to alcohol or cigars would.  So, it's like if I said it would be a horrible thing to mix 21-year old scotch in a glass with peppermint schnapps, but i didn't mention alcoholism or liver damage.

Many websites, because they are, you know, websites, may claim to be fair, but aren't.  Regardless of any advice they may give.  I used to belong to the usergroup Narcotichrist: In a very fair and balanced way, they discussed how easy it was to be a functioning heroin junkie (among other things).

As far as "silent evidence" goes, that still falls under the umbrella of "anectdotal" or worse yet, "statistics".  If alternative drug treatment options exist and are feasible, the only way to confirm this is through scientific study.  A website that claims a detox works without scientific evidence and only because it worked for a few people would be like saying dictatorships are a good idea because you heard that James Brown became successful because he ruled his band with an iron fist.

[Lies]

Agreed.  So I'm out of this one before it turns into another crap fest.  Enjoy Lys!

I'll agree for the most part, but I don't think this is a crap fest.
I am listening to the points you have to make, and I'm not trying to argue with you so much as try and show you my side of thinking.

I respect the work you do and what you have to say, and I find it very interesting and enlightening. I do find it a bit saddening though that you're just ignoring some of the points I'm making and asking me for proof of things that I can't at this time show you.

You mind if I take a stab at it?

Erowid, leaning pro-user, treats drugs in the same manner as a magazine devoted to alcohol or cigars would.  So, it's like if I said it would be a horrible thing to mix 21-year old scotch in a glass with peppermint schnapps, but i didn't mention alcoholism or liver damage.

Many websites, because they are, you know, websites, may claim to be fair, but aren't.  Regardless of any advice they may give.  I used to belong to the usergroup Narcotichrist: In a very fair and balanced way, they discussed how easy it was to be a functioning heroin junkie (among other things).

As far as "silent evidence" goes, that still falls under the umbrella of "anectdotal" or worse yet, "statistics".  If alternative drug treatment options exist and are feasible, the only way to confirm this is through scientific study.  A website that claims a detox works without scientific evidence and only because it worked for a few people would be like saying dictatorships are a good idea because you heard that James Brown became successful because he ruled his band with an iron fist.

Sure, I'll be responding to this tomorrow when I have some time, for now, need rest.

[BadBeast]

Agreed.  So I'm out of this one before it turns into another crap fest.  Enjoy Lys!

I'll agree for the most part, but I don't think this is a crap fest.
I am listening to the points you have to make, and I'm not trying to argue with you so much as try and show you my side of thinking.

I respect the work you do and what you have to say, and I find it very interesting and enlightening. I do find it a bit saddening though that you're just ignoring some of the points I'm making and asking me for proof of things that I can't at this time show you.

You mind if I take a stab at it?

Erowid, leaning pro-user, treats drugs in the same manner as a magazine devoted to alcohol or cigars would.  So, it's like if I said it would be a horrible thing to mix 21-year old scotch in a glass with peppermint schnapps, but i didn't mention alcoholism or liver damage.

Many websites, because they are, you know, websites, may claim to be fair, but aren't.  Regardless of any advice they may give.  I used to belong to the usergroup Narcotichrist: In a very fair and balanced way, they discussed how easy it was to be a functioning heroin junkie (among other things).

As far as "silent evidence" goes, that still falls under the umbrella of "anectdotal" or worse yet, "statistics".  If alternative drug treatment options exist and are feasible, the only way to confirm this is through scientific study.  A website that claims a detox works without scientific evidence and only because it worked for a few people would be like saying dictatorships are a good idea because you heard that James Brown became successful because he ruled his band with an iron fist.

Sure, I'll be responding to this tomorrow when I have some time, for now, need rest.

Nonsense, you need Amphetamines!

[LMNO]

Erowid says you'll be ok!

[AFK]

But maybe not you're aorta:

http://www.jointogether.org/news/research/summaries/2010/amphetamine-misuse-linked.html

Young adults who misuse amphetamines have a three-fold risk for tears in the aorta -- the body's largest artery -- compared with nonusers, Reuters reported Aug. 17.

Researchers at the University of Texas examined the medical records of 31,000 Americans ages 18–44 hospitalized between 1995–2007 and found that patients who abused amphetamines had three times the risk for aortic dissection than patients who did not, even after controlling for other risk factors.

Amphetamines are known to increase heart rate and blood pressure. Aortic tears are potentially fatal.

The research team also examined medical records of 49 million U.S. adults over age 50, but did not find an increased risk in this age group.

"Doctors should screen young adults with aortic dissection for amphetamine abuse in searching for a potential cause," said Dr. Arthur Westover, lead author of the study.

The research appears in the August 2010 issue of the American Heart Journal.

[East Coast Hustle]

Obviously, neither would I, but while that stuff is good fun, and quite distracting, if you double up what you've already taken at this point, all that illusiary stuff kind of falls away, and you can really open all kinds of shit up. It's not rare to have some kind of epiphany if you just keep chugging them down until you find a level you can really operate on. The thing is, epiphany is usually  a really personal thing, and when you try telling anyone about it the next day, you just end up sounding like you fried your brain. That's why all the ancient Mystery traditions are all couched in allegory and symbolism. You can't really convey something like that in words that other people take seriously. Our subconscious minds operate on symbolism, rather than language, so for a while, we get to read these patterns, and symbols, and their meanings, and how they act as a dynamic in our conscious mind. I'm not getting all Tim Leary here, just saying that there's fucking universes of untapped data that we can have a go on for a bit, if we're careful. And that can be really quite an eye opener. Or it can drop you splat bang into 6 hours of The Fear™. Which is still an eye opener, just not a pleasant one. That fear is the price it sometimes costs for tweaking our wetware like that. You have to speculate to accumulate, and those complete screamers, are pretty fucking hellish. That's as pineal as I'm letting meself get tonight though, before the acrid stench of patchouli starts leaching out of this thread.
Too late already? Shit like, faar out man. chill yer boots, and groove.  . . . look at the colours,

Dude, I've eaten high enough doses of shrooms (and LSD, and Mescaline, and San Pedro cactus, etc...) to get a brontosaurus fucked out of its gourd. Fer chrissake, I used to deal vials of liquid LSD when I was younger and a complete fuckup. I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I'm pretty sure that having any sort of "life-changing epiphany" while on hallucinogenics is just a trick of the synapses operating on a non-empirical mind. It's fun, but that's really ALL it is. I can't stand it when people try to tell me about how tripping "changed their whole perspective on life, man". Recreational drug use is just that, recreational. Anything else is analogous (IMO) to religion, hippie-dippy bullshit, and other forms of powerful self-delusion.

[East Coast Hustle]

Okay, I'll dig it up, find a tape player, (remember them?) and upload it in the next couple of days.

please do not upload copyrighted material to this site, especially when the copyright owner is a cop.

Thanks in advance.

[East Coast Hustle]

Ahem.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9522-magic-mushrooms-really-cause-spiritual-experiences.html

Yeah, the chemicals in your brain are the same.  That doesn't mean that they "really" cause spiritual experiences.  Like ECH said, he hasn't had a spiritual experience on them.  However he almost certainly did have the same chemicals in his brain as a saint or yogi undergoing a spiritual experience.

Well, to me there is no difference between what "really" is a spiritual experience and the chemicals in my brain.

I don't get it, you just called yourself an atheist and then you say there is a difference between a spiritual experience and a certain chemical configuration in your brain? Then what is the difference made of? Hypothetical invisible pink unicorns?

For me, I mean, there is no difference in some sense*. Cause you know those people, the rationalists that say "love" is just a chemical configuration in your brain? It's the same thing, they are right, in some sense, but IMO life becomes pretty boring if you only look at it that way. In fact, you could almost literally say, life loses some of its magic

Now, I'm not saying that if you consider "love" to be something more than just chemicals, you also should consider a spiritual experience more than just a hallucination or whatever. I'm perfectly alright with everybody having their own opinion on that.

(* sorry but here it means exactly what I want to say)

I'm not an Atheist, I can't understand atheists at all.  I was raised pagan, in a tradition that includes direct experiences of the divine.  I DO believe it has a spiritual quality when I have a spiritual experience and I don't believe that experience can be quantified, or measured.  I know that there are a ton of variables even in the chemical side of things, and obviously ones attitude toward the substance is going to induce chemicals in their brains that are different.  Perhaps it would be possible to measure those differences, but I still don't think that if you were able to change that chemical to the same as the one for someone who did believe it was a real spiritual experience that that would make it so.  Not without destroying the person's Atheism.

To Lysergic.  I would agree that using archetypes Aya has a feminine energy.  For me it was a bit like taking a tour of another dimension, with a tour guide.  Aya (the MAOI containing plant, in this case Yage vine) was there, telling me what was going on and keeping me safe from the things I encountered.  Guided felt more accurate than guiding, she didn't tell me what to do, where I could go, how to fix my problems, nothing like that, she just explained what I was seeing, the only directive she gave me was don't do DMT powder.  It definitely did take me to another world, for timeless periods, My friend who was trip sitting said they were about 20 minutes each, but he did not have a watch, then I would be back in the "real" world, but in a very altered state.  Interacting with the fire, or the crickets, or the stars (actually, the stars did not respond to me, the fire and crickets did, and my friend saw and heard that too, although admittedly fire will respond to anyone who puts wood on it or blows on it)

Aya is certainly more "expensive" in a physical sense, it induces puking and you have to be careful about your diet or the MAOI can kill you.  I also restricted my diet for spiritual reasons for about a month beforehand (not quite as tight as the Aya Shamans, but I tried to follow their guidelines) No idea if that is necessary or not, Aya didn't really say.

Well in that sense that Aya is the taking of a tour of another dimension with a guide, DMT kinda just throws you into another dimension and leaves you to figure it all out for yourself.

I'm a natural escapist, so that is very appealing.  That's about what I have heard from other people too.  It also sounds like something that would be very bad for me.  And not something I'd suggest for all, being tossed into another dimension could be traumatic in a bad way for a lot of people.

Well, the way I think about it, if you were to ever only do one "hard" drug in your life, it should be DMT.
It'll either scare you off all drugs for life or keep you content until your next life.
Sometimes, people need a traumatic experience to "wake up", so to speak.

And as far as I know, no one has walked away from a DMT experience and thought it to be a bad thing.
A very intense, very earth shattering thing, definitely, but negative, I've yet to hear of.

I know someone who used to have schizophrenia until he did DMT. It set him straight and he never did it (or any other hard drug) again...

I did that to someone with Dramamine.  Dramamine is a deleriant, same family of chemicals as Belladonna and Jimsonweed (well, there's also atropine in belladonna, which just kills you) He wanted to try the hardest drug out there, I told him that it was dramamine in my experience, and after that he was off drugs.  It damaged him though in ways that I didn't see the extent of becuase part of his change in life was cutting off contact with me.

I haven't heard of DMT doing anything bad to people, I have seen people get some really whacky ideas after Aya trips that they took quite seriously.  Some changed their diets in ways which were harmful to them.  One became a really obnoxious born again Christian. 

I got high on Dramamine once when I was 17. Hardest I've ever tripped in my life, and thoroughly unenjoyable. About a week after I tried it, a kid that went to the high school across town from mine drowned in a mudpuddle while high on dramamine. A month after that, a kid that wen to my high school got killed by a train while high on dramamine. Needless to say, the fad was pretty short-lived.

[BadBeast]

Obviously, neither would I, but while that stuff is good fun, and quite distracting, if you double up what you've already taken at this point, all that illusiary stuff kind of falls away, and you can really open all kinds of shit up. It's not rare to have some kind of epiphany if you just keep chugging them down until you find a level you can really operate on. The thing is, epiphany is usually  a really personal thing, and when you try telling anyone about it the next day, you just end up sounding like you fried your brain. That's why all the ancient Mystery traditions are all couched in allegory and symbolism. You can't really convey something like that in words that other people take seriously. Our subconscious minds operate on symbolism, rather than language, so for a while, we get to read these patterns, and symbols, and their meanings, and how they act as a dynamic in our conscious mind. I'm not getting all Tim Leary here, just saying that there's fucking universes of untapped data that we can have a go on for a bit, if we're careful. And that can be really quite an eye opener. Or it can drop you splat bang into 6 hours of The Fear™. Which is still an eye opener, just not a pleasant one. That fear is the price it sometimes costs for tweaking our wetware like that. You have to speculate to accumulate, and those complete screamers, are pretty fucking hellish. That's as pineal as I'm letting meself get tonight though, before the acrid stench of patchouli starts leaching out of this thread.
Too late already? Shit like, faar out man. chill yer boots, and groove.  . . . look at the colours,

Dude, I've eaten high enough doses of shrooms (and LSD, and Mescaline, and San Pedro cactus, etc...) to get a brontosaurus fucked out of its gourd. Fer chrissake, I used to deal vials of liquid LSD when I was younger and a complete fuckup. I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I'm pretty sure that having any sort of "life-changing epiphany" while on hallucinogenics is just a trick of the synapses operating on a non-empirical mind. It's fun, but that's really ALL it is. I can't stand it when people try to tell me about how tripping "changed their whole perspective on life, man". Recreational drug use is just that, recreational. Anything else is analogous (IMO) to religion, hippie-dippy bullshit, and other forms of powerful self-delusion.

I'm not exactly a newcomer to tripping myself, (I've been bang at it for 30yrs) and I agree that synapses trying to operate with unfamiliar and hi-octane neuro-transmitters are directly responsible for the hallucinogenic qualities of tripping. But whether that's just what happens in your brain as a response to a different chemicals sloshing about, or the result of a Brain operating level 7 or 8 circuitry, is a moot point. 
As for the non-empirical mind, I don't have any problem with that. Shit, it's not like people are often making decisions based on Empirical data anyway. The normal mind makes most of it's decisions based on emotional,  familiar, patterns. And on data with known results. Wherever decisions are involved, the Human Animal doesn't like to spend too much time out of it's comfort zone. As for some blissed out triphead trying to explain the whole secret to L,tU, &E, I would much prefer they didn't, because I know our written or spoken language is not designed for communicating revelations from the bubbling, suddenly accessible mess of archetypical, atavaristic and Jungian impulses that seeth around in our unconscious mind. That's why it's "unconscious" deliberately running a different Operating System to the Linguistic and Intellectual Conscious mind. Any inspirational flashes delivered to the conscious tripping mind, from the Unconscious, are in a completely different language. To try and intellectualise your Epiphany, to anyone else, just reminds everyone why Hippys became stereotypical cartoon characters of themselves.

All those drugs you mention, when I take them, I take them purely for recreation. I have given up trying to solve the mental puzzles and behavioural aberrations that have always accompanied even the most Empirical of Psychedelic Gurus, from Leary, who was probably the most Empirical of them all, (but also, for a time the most zealous) & RAW, to Charlie Manson, Ken Kesey, & that hilarious Whole Earth Battalion lunatic. I don't have any desire to immerse myself in pointless pinealism.

But when I take Mushrooms, (Liberty Caps, or Flycaps) I do it as of a Sacrament, not for recreation. It's long been understood that one of the biggest factors in the type of experience one has while under the influence of these drugs, is the expectations of the user. So for "Spiritual", I use the same ones as have been used, for these reasons for thousands of years, the ones that all of the Western Mystery traditions, from the   pre-Celtic Druidic traditions, the Chaldeans, the Eleusinian Mysteries, The Bacchic and Dionysian rites, Phonoecians, Phrygians, Samothracian Cabiric Mystery Cults, Mithras, and even early Christians.

Not because I subscribe particularly to their traditions, but simply because they have been successfully producing Spiritually relevant, researchable, and historically documented, (and predictably reliable) states of mind, for Millennia, rather than just a few decades. Also, the symbolism (And also musical mathematical stuff) that has grown up around the Mystery Cults, and Religions, DOES speak directly to the Subconscious mind, and has been doing so for a long, long time.
The obsessively Language and Word based imperatives of Scienctific research in this area are pretty much like our understanding of Whalesong, or Dolphins squeaks.  Rudimentary. But the Rites, Symbolism, and Godforms of these Ancient traditions, have been mapping the same areas for rather longer, with more reliable, and accurate results too.

So I go with the Fungus, and Feral, for Spiritual, and the Chemical and Electronic, for Pineal Bliss. And I consider my own judgement, on knowing the difference between the two, as good as anybody elses.   

[East Coast Hustle]

We'll have to agree to disagree (basically, I don't believe in the concept of spirituality), but it is refreshing to see someone who's stance on the subject actually seems well though-out and researched as opposed to the typical "no, man, you just don't understand the MAGIC of it!" that I usually hear. So thanks for at the very least forcing me to think through and reaffirm my own point of view on the issue at hand.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

We'll have to agree to disagree (basically, I don't believe in the concept of spirituality), but it is refreshing to see someone who's stance on the subject actually seems well though-out and researched as opposed to the typical "no, man, you just don't understand the MAGIC of it!" that I usually hear. So thanks for at the very least forcing me to think through and reaffirm my own point of view on the issue at hand.

I am split on the issue... I don't believe that "The Spiritual" as in some transcendent reality exists. I don't believe that drugs will give you a spiritual experience. However, I have had experiences both with and without drugs which can be described in terms similar to those of people who have so called spiritual experiences. To me, that indicates that there is a 'state' which can be achieved with meditation, ecstatic ritual, drugs and other tools which people over thousands of years have labeled 'spiritual'. I didn't really understand much of this concept before I read Cosmic Trigger and Book Four. In both the authors (RAW and Crowley) approach this state, not as a spiritual state, but as a state which has been considered spiritual and may be beneficial in some sense.

I've found that when I was a JW and had ecstatic experiences they had the context of that belief system. When I was studying Thelema, the experiences were in the context of that system. When I first tripped on shrooms, the experiences were interesting but not heavily  contextual... until I went into the woods... and then the experience transformed into one that was heavily influenced by 'nature' (for lack of a better term). Though shrooming with friends leads to a fun non 'spiritual' experience.

I think some drugs can bring about a state of mind which can be very useful in the right context, either the context of partying or inner reflection or spirituality or psychology or whatever...

The biggest problem I have with much of the Hippie Bullshit is that they confuse personal experience with objective facts. Objectively, I take psychedelics and have a chemical interaction. Subjectively, depending on the situation, I may have experiences which could be labeled spiritual, for lack of a more clear term.

[Doktor Howl]

I just took a really spiritual shit.  The ghost of Gandhi began speaking from the commode, remonstrating me for my evil ways.  So I flushed his ass.

To hell with spirituality.

[Kai]

I just took a really spiritual shit.  The ghost of Gandhi began speaking from the commode, remonstrating me for my evil ways.  So I flushed his ass.

To hell with spirituality.

The other day, I was doped up on Lexapro for the first time in several months. About an hour after taking it, I was sitting in class and began feeling strangely excited, like my body was in need of a long hard run, or three hundred pushups or something. Then the headache started, and the nausea, I felt my stomach slowly come to a boil as my brain melted behind my eyeballs. It was like my organs were swimming in slightly off cheese spread.

Suddenly I sprang up and ran out the door, nearly falling down the stairs. I could hear the toilet calling to me, bidding me kneel to it's porcelain beauty. This powerful feeling of internal upheaval lead me to begin my offering, a stream of steaming stomach acid. My eyes rolled back into my head, as I convulsed, and then lay on the ground dazed.

So, was that a spiritual experience?

[Doktor Howl]

I just took a really spiritual shit.  The ghost of Gandhi began speaking from the commode, remonstrating me for my evil ways.  So I flushed his ass.

To hell with spirituality.

The other day, I was doped up on Lexapro for the first time in several months. About an hour after taking it, I was sitting in class and began feeling strangely excited, like my body was in need of a long hard run, or three hundred pushups or something. Then the headache started, and the nausea, I felt my stomach slowly come to a boil as my brain melted behind my eyeballs. It was like my organs were swimming in slightly off cheese spread.

Suddenly I sprang up and ran out the door, nearly falling down the stairs. I could hear the toilet calling to me, bidding me kneel to it's porcelain beauty. This powerful feeling of internal upheaval lead me to begin my offering, a stream of steaming stomach acid. My eyes rolled back into my head, as I convulsed, and then lay on the ground dazed.

So, was that a spiritual experience?

No, that was "Tuesday night at the Meetrack".