DM Turner- The Esseential psychedelic guide

PSYCHEDELIC
SAFETY
UNDERSTANDING THE TOOLS
The natural psychedelics have been in use for
thousands of years, and I anticipate that both
synthetic and natural psychedelics will still be used
thousands of years from now.
Contrary to being considered dangerous, throughout most of history
psychedelics have been considered gifts of the Gods, and have been
associated with the healing of the body, mind and soul.
History is full of shamans and shamanesses who consumed these substances
hundreds of times each year for their entire life and suffered no ill effects. 1
Likewise my thousand or so experiments with various psychedelics seem to
have done no harm. To the contrary, I feel I've received numerous benefits
from their use.
I suspect most of the psychedelic scare stories published in the late Sixties
and Seventies were generated by people pursuing their own political or
financial agendas, or by people with fundamentalist morals who were afraid
of losing their power, or even seeing people feel too good. Other scare
stories were written purely for sensationalism to sell magazines and
newspapers. Many of the stories, such as LSD causing chromosome
damage, have been proven false. Other stories, such as the CIA's dosing of
unsuspecting people who went on to jump out of windows... Well, as Robert
Anton Wilson says "They either didn't know what was happening to them,
they thought they were losing their minds, and they jumped out of the
window. Or they did realize what was happening, that the intelligence
agency of their own government was covertly giving them mind-altering
drugs..., and they jumped out of the window." A thorough review of
psychedelic history will show that problems encountered through
psychedelic use are rare, especially if you consider that in this country
alone, millions of doses of psychedelics are consumed each month.
When I discuss psychedelic safety I think it's important to separate physical
safety from mental safety. Physical safety deals primarily with the drugs and
various combinations thereof. Mental safety is a much more individual issue
and must be monitored and evaluated by each psychedelic user. This section
deals with general psychedelic safety. More information is given for specific