A long (possibly heroic)  post, a deep dive into McKenna's concept of the 'heroic dose'...
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For9758 wrote: how much is based on our own understanding of what we think is or should be heroic? Anyone else think the 5 gram number is just too small?
When "heroic" is used here, it makes me think of the idea of The Hero's Journey - "the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed."
I haven't read or listened to enough Terence McKenna to know if this is what he had in mind, but it seems to fit what happens in a powerful trip, even if the "journey" and challenges are purely internal. A trip is also, in some ways, like a story that unfolds. On high doses I sometimes feel like I am on a grand quest to save humanity within the trip. One of my trip journals has a random comment, just before everything spirals into the abyss, that "We fought monsters in the deep ocean," which cracks me up when I re-read it. A high dose trip can feel like an epic quest just to survive to the end of it, although at some point maybe you figure out that the monsters you are fighting are just part of your own consciousness.
This thread got me interested in finding some actual quotes from McKenna on this topic. I found a few relevant YouTube clips taken from his talks, although he might have talked or written about it in more detail elsewhere. In terms of the actual "5 grams in silent darkness" idea, at the beginning of this clip he mentions tripping in silence and darkness, then around 1:25 he says this:
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Most people who take mushrooms and claim knowledge of what mushrooms are about, are talking about the 2 to 3g level. The game doesn't begin until you reach 5 grams, and the thing to remember when you're calculating dose, and also once you're loaded, is that it can't kill you, it can only convince you that it can kill you. So, to take 6 or 8 grams is pretty terrifying.
Channel: True life Storys
Video: Terence & Dennis Mckenna 5g of Silent Darkness
So really he's talking about some kind of threshold being reached around the 5g level, beyond which things escalate into something quite different from a lower dose trip.
He uses the term "heroic" in this next clip, on a similar theme (the first quote is from 0:38)
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...so anybody who's ever taken anything thinks they've *had* the psychedelic experience and feels fully qualified to hold an opinion on it, when in fact it's pretty illusive, the real thing. You have to take a heroic dose under the right conditions to really smash through...
Around 2:05 he says:
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...The simple answer to "How do you do it without trivialising it," is that you do doses that scare you. These things are not physically dangerous, and yet they are terrifying...
...If you take anywhere above 25mg of psilocybin, I think the strongest wayfairing soul reaches for the brake pedal somewhere in there. It's amazing how we skim the surface of this, and we can't go very deep because language fails, and most of you who have done committed doses know you go into a realm where it gets weirder and weirder and weirder, then finally the machinery of explaining it to an observer fails, and then you are there with 'it' for a while, and then you descend out of that, and the language mechanism reactivates and says We are now leaving the utterly unspeakable behind
Channel: Soul Synergy
Video: Terence McKenna - A Heroic Dose (Psychedelic Notes: Part 2)
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The Blind Ass wrote: Finding your own sweet spots (yes plural - sweet spots) via appropriate (Mg / Kg ratio) for a single chemical …that’s a better formula imho&e.
It's interesting that McKenna specifically references "anywhere above 25mg" in the context of a 'heroic' dose.
This gives an interesting comparison to the doses used in one of the John Hopkins studies, where 30mg (adjusted for body weight) was chosen as the highest dose:
https://newatlas.com/johns-hopkins-psilocybin-study-finds-optimum-beneficial-dosage/18981/
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, researchers noted that the reported positive effects increased as higher doses were given, but also that there was a sharp increase in the negative aspects at the very highest dose. At the highest dose (30 mg/70 kg, p.o. - meaning "per oral" or by mouth), 78 percent of the volunteers were reporting one of the top five most spiritually significant happenings of their lives but those suffering anxiety, stress and fear episodes increased by six times, so that around a third of those participating in the study showed signs of psychological struggle.
By contrast, only one of the volunteers receiving the second highest dose (20mg/70 kg, p.o.) reported having negative issues, and all benefited from positive experiences, although with less intensity than at the highest dose. Critically, even the lowest amount used in the study resulted in notable and long-lasting positive changes in the attitudes, behavior, overall satisfaction and spiritual beliefs of the subjects during the period of study.
I seem to remember hearing somewhere (possibly a youtube interview) that McKenna's 5g figure was actually used as a basis for determining what a "high dose" would be in some study or other.
There's obviously a difficulty translating grams of cubensis into mg doses of psilocybin, but I think a (somewhat arbitrary) figure of around 6mg psilocybin per 1g dried cubensis is the kind of ballpark figure used, for example, by the Shroomery dosage calculator. This would put a 5g dose squarely on the 30mg level used as the highest dose in the study above.
For some actual numbers on cubensis potency, this old post is interesting: Re: Potency Differences Between Caps and Stems.... I looked into this a while back when I was trying to figure out the Psilocybin content in magic truffles
There's clearly some big potential potency variations, certainly if you are talking about cubes in general grown by different people, not to mention individual tolerance and body weight issues, so that talking about a "high dose" really only makes sense if you relate it to the effects present in the trip.
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Sub-Easy wrote: I don't guess there is really a "heroic dose".
I think that's just a good amount to make sure you get the full effect, as apposed to less, were you might not get the "true picture" of what they are capable of.
I think "heroic dose" is just a nice way to say "not a half way experience" like less might give you.
...I really got to leave this world, before I can feel completely at ease on a trip
McKenna says something similar in the next video clip:
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The problem area lies, people think it lies in taking too much - it lies it taking too little, because if you take too little, you can resist it, you can struggle with it, and then it can turn into a real mess, because you are afraid of it, and you actually have the power to some degree to resist it. What you want to do is take sufficiently enough that there is no escape, and that the transition from ordinary reality to fully loaded is as quick as possible, because the going up is somewhat terrifying...
Channel: OutsideThe Box
Video: Terence Mckenna ~ Psilocybin
McKenna's general advice seems to be for people to dose high enough to reach what he considers to be the "real thing" at the core of the psychedelic experience, where lower doses are "...not anywhere near the bullseye, that's just dancing around the rim of it."
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Altered Beast wrote: What’s supposed to be happening on a “heroic dose” anyway?
Good question. In the clips he talks about the heroic dose as being something terrifying, something that is easily capable of convincing you that you're dying, but he doesn't seem to dwell on the idea of "ego death" or spirituality. He seems to view the experience as something shamanic and visionary, a gateway to a deeper reality perhaps.
I like his description of the come-up on this kind of trip:
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There's about a 25 minute period where your only job is to hang on. It builds - it's like watching an atomic explosion on the other side of 50ft of absolutely clear crystal glass, I mean you can't believe this is happening "in my mind" - you have the feeling that everybody from Seattle to San Diego is just crawled under their desk as this thing tore past, but it's in your mind....
I think that quote captures the awe and fear of unleashing something spectacular and terrifying which seems to threaten the fabric of reality itself. On the topic of fear, he goes on to say:
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Now this question about fear, which is a real question, because when everything begins to slide... it's more than most people who haven't done it expect... they think it's a metaphor, they don't understand...there's a tendency to clutch, to try to resist it...
This goes back to the idea of taking a dose that is strong enough that you are unable to resist. In terms of the trip itself, in the first clip Dennis McKenna talks about the difference between lower doses and a dose that sends you into 'the abyss' as he puts it.
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...they can take those light doses pretty frequently, never suspecting that just around the corner the abyss will open up if you push it a little bit...the walls will melt, creatures start coming out of the matrix, it's heavy stuff... a real shamanic transforming experience.
As for Terence, his views on what would happen with 5 grams in silent darkness are summed up quite nicely in the book Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom by Andy Letcher:
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...for McKenna, the point of taking mushrooms was solely and simply a shamanic quest for visions.
...at such high doses, he suggested two things would happen. First, the swirling phantasmagoria of ever-changing coloured lights, repeated figures and juddering visuals ordinarily seen behind closed eyelids would condense and deepen into more profound visions. That is, as at the climax of 2001: A Space Odyssey, one would be propelled into other realities, into strange, alien landscapes, futuristic scenarios or ancient cities; or perhaps through a process of death and rebirth so real that it left one drenched in sweat, gasping for air and overwrought with ecstasy. Second, clear as day and in broad English, one could expect the mushroom to speak.
I think it's maybe worth looking at exactly what is meant by Dennis McKenna's melting walls and creatures coming out of the matrix, or Terence's "speaking" mushrooms. This kind of thing sounds a bit doubtful when you compare it to mushroom experiences at typical doses.
I think there is quite a bit of variation on how different people experience "inner speech" which probably carries over into what they experience during a trip. Personally I don't experience those kinds of auditory hallucinations in my trips, but I think it's fairly common to experience some feeling of silent communication or presence during a trip.
As for 'creatures coming out of the matrix,' it's an interesting phrase. I think if most people took 5g and waitied for some alien creature to burst through the door and stomp around the room, they would be waiting in vain. But in terms of the inner visionary experience, anything is possible. If you are watching the door you are looking in the wrong place - it's as if these creatures have somehow 'got inside' your mind, an alien intrusion rather than a physical abduction. I've had plenty of trips where I've been genuinely frightened by this kind of presence within my trip, and I've seen some very cool creatures in my CEV.
In terms of general open-eye visuals, I find that my mushroom visuals tend to be relatively subdued, until they aren't. I get the glyphs on the walls, the word-soup in the carpet, the shifting shadows and colors, things happening in my peripheral vision. But when the trip shifts into a higher gear this can quickly escalate, a sign that the trip is heading somewhere deep and unpleasant. Suddenly the walls are 20ft high, the ceiling has gone, the dread sets in... I think Dennis's 'melting walls' are something you might experience in this state, shortly before you are dragged into the abyss.
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Overall I'm not keen on the idea that going this far out is somehow the only valid psychedelic experience, the "real thing." However, I do think there is a threshold, when you steadily increase the dose from trip to trip, where you enter quite a different realm within the trip, and fall into something you had been exploring the rim of, so to speak. On my first few trips I always had the feeling that there was something more 'down there' to explore, the idea of which was fascinating and frightening in equal measure.
I quite like the term 'visionary' to describe these states, it's fairly neutral and is a broader term with less baggage than 'ego death' for example. You can end up in a trip which feels highly spiritual or religious, mystical, shamanic, science-fictional, Lovecraftian, alien, like exploring the matrix, exploring a temporary state of delusional psychosis, discovering a new reality, uncovering the secrets of consciousness, meeting God, glimpsing beyond death - however you want to look at it, anything can happen, but you get a sense of awe at exploring a very deep realm in your consciousness that you never knew existed.
As Terence McKenna frequently points out, the drawback is that this can be a terrifying experience at certain points of the trip, there is no escape, and you have to be committed to the trip.
"I just can't believe how this much strangeness could lay that close to the surface..."
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I wrote that, but I meant something else
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