Further investigation

Continued from [link]

That fall, I returned to school with a topic for my ‘senior thesis’ ..I wanted to find a ‘neuro-scientific’ basis for hallucinatory experience. My academic advisors were pleased ..it seemed like I was doing something ‘grounded’ for a change. However, I had another purpose in mind ..I wanted to describe the benefits of the ‘peyote ceremony’ that is practiced in South American Indian cultures ..and suggest how it might be a useful way to understand the behaviour of people like Charlie. I was also beginning to detect a cycle in my own life. It fluctuated between a need for order and stability ..followed by fits of rebellion against order and stability. I think this cycle is universal ..and I thought that the Indian cultures had found a less destructive way to deal with it.

Humans crave information and novel experience. Our senses are receptive to an infinite number of possibilities. However, the higher brain centers are designed to narrow-down these options in order to give us a stable state of consciousness. The peyote ceremony is, in a sense, a ‘guided’ exploration into alternate states of consciousness. The active ingredient in Peyote disables the filters of the brain and allows more sensory information to pass through ..which results in an experience of extra-ordinary reality. The peyote ceremony ends with a period of guided ‘re-entry’ that allows participants to integrate these extra-ordinary experiences with the reality of everyday life. I wanted to show how these guided peyote sessions could serve as a model for treating mental illness (without the peyote of course) .. and how they could also prevent the ‘crash-landings’ ..and reduce the havoc that characterizes recreational use of hallucinogens in the US.

In the end, my instructors liked the ‘neurological-model’ I described ..however, they didn’t think much of the case I made for the virtue of peyote ceremonies. One of them did ask how much of it was based on personal experience.

See for yourself ~>[Senior Thesis].