Comment by itchyjunk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by itchyjunk | Hacker News Reader

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Well, if by 'in right now' you mean at least 7k - 9k years you might be right [0][1]. If you believe what ethnobotanist like Terence Mckenna [2] say, then it's much older and has shaped the hominids evolution quite significantly. It seems almost all cultures found local hallucinogens and exploited them heavily for ceremony, healing etc and was strong part of who they were [3].

Anecdotally, I think hallucinogen just highlighted mental issues that were already there. I also know some really smart people who have done their share of it with no problem (that i can see). If I could go back in time, i'd do it all again. We, as humans, were pretty open about all this not too long ago. I am happy to see a small number never stopped and psychonauts [4] though not always scientific, have kept exploring and bringing back ideas and experiences for these alternate states of reality.

Tangentially, Carlos Castaneda's [5] books were some of the best i've read and would recommend it to people.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin#History

[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928025-400-earliest...

[2] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvqqpj/psilocybin-the-mus...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entheogenic/hallucinog...

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonaut/

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda

>If you believe what ethnobotanist like Terence Mckenna Mckenna is interesting and should not be dismissed on principle but I warn people not familiar with his work not to take everything he said at face value, he was pretty "out there" and very mystic at times. He has interesting and thought provoking ideas but I wouldn't quote him out of context in an HN comment as an argument of authority.

This is exactly what we mean by "kind of forced"

For most of history people didn't have the free time to be regularly using drugs the way some people today imply. If your life is farming from sunrise to sunset you're gonna need a lot of sleep and there isn't much time left to be tripping balls. You'll probably only can justify using your available free time to do whatever your local drug is at special occasions, whatever handful of religious holidays your culture has and maybe a handful of other times every year. Yes, there's downtime in the winter and summer but depending on the size of the family you have to support there's still an infinite list of things to do. There's always a leaking butter churn or cracked axle handle that needs fixing or a cart wheel that needs greasing. The time to just sit around and toke it up does not exist excerpt but for the few who prioritize that sort of recreation over improving their material situation. Responsible adults drink a few beers (or toke it up) on Friday night (with the definition of "few" depending on how many responsibilities you have). The vast majority of people weren't sitting around getting baked or drunk every other evening.

Farming, at least for your family and not commercially is not all that labor intensive. There are daily chores, a few peak seasonal activities, but outside of harvest its much easier than say an office job.

Baseball and cricket exist to fill the empty days of summer where bees, sun and the occasional down pour automate the bounty. You basically have the whole of winter and most of summer to trip balls.

That may not be true that people used to have less time. For example this article: http://www.businessinsider.fr/us/american-worker-less-vacati... state that medieval peasant had more free time than actual american worker. Did they use this time to take drug is another topic though.

people used to have a lot more free time than today

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