29 points geneticdrifts 2 hours ago 9 comments
clickety_clack 19 minutes ago | parent
Given that many of our current-day subterranean environments are also covered in art and strewn with drug paraphernalia, can we really say that it played a key role in the rise of the civilization?
baxtr 18 minutes ago | parent
Didn’t mind-altering drugs like alcohol play a key role in the rise of any civilization?
LoganDark 7 minutes ago | parent
Alcohol is a poison, not a drug, but I also think so.
I honestly wish mind-altering drugs were more accessible sometimes, mostly because of safety. Millions are killed by adulterants in their street drugs.
dyauspitr 15 minutes ago | parent
So if you take a lot of psychedelics you end up with a civilization that ritually murders 20,000 people every couple of months.
Just imagine the power you could wield as a shaman with drugs like DMT and psilocybin it would look like a literal magic
TFNA 11 minutes ago | parent
Are you thinking of the Aztecs or Mayans thousands of kilometers away? Andean human sacrifice involved customs unable to provide that level of throughput.
theturtletalks 4 minutes ago | parent
I read many years ago that psychedelics are what lead to the formation of consciousness. And it’s supported by the fact that psychedelics are also a network like the brain is. And when taking them, your brain experiences plasticity and that’s what allows profound changes.
A big part of our consciousness is the default mode network (which is a default of how we operate day to day, things we think about, etc). Psychedelics allow us to change that DMN, but may it have created it too?