Zappa.com

Just our mouths?

_________________
Stay with me flagrantly and we'll have ecstasy for all eternity.

^^^^ Down the hatch with 'em, boo-iieee...

Most people would say that if it always makes you puke, then it's somewhat toxic. Native peoples who use peyote have likely built up a resisitance to whatever makes these nasty little buggers sickening. A lot of people don't think puking is fun, and I know many who found peyote to be a waste of time. It's probably not easy to get good quality in some parts of the country. I saw plenty in college, but nobody really liked it.

Shrooms on the other hand were always popular and most people enjoyed the experience, unlike peyote (got sick, didn't get high) or LSD (some people loved it and some were ruined by it).

The mushroom experts I know are Phds, scientists, professors of the subject and field experts and none of them recommend consuming amanitas for any reasons. They are all aware of apocryphal stories of people would eat them (I heard in Italy they do for food), but the risk is way more than any possible gain. Due to natural variations it is impossible to absolutely indentify differences in similar varieties in the field, without studying the spores under an electron microscope. These people I know, know mushrooms as well as many people here know Zappa, and they would never take that bet. ever. Most of the shroomers have sampled the safe hallucenigenic varieties, for academic reasons I suppose(?).

There are many safe, easy to find and identify hallucenigenic shrooms in the wild everywhere in the US, which have no risk of death or extreme illness. Like peyote I think if any people eat amanitas for any reason, they have also built up a resistance to the toxic elements over years of controlled use.

Mescaline and peyote have in fact extremely low toxicity. The emetic effects probably have something to do with the transient stimulation of the brain centers that regulate the gag reflex and gastric peristalsis. It occurs even with the sulphate or hydrochloride mescaline salts, so the effect probably can be attributed to mescaline itself rather than the quality of peyote.

And non-tolerant Indians puke just as much as the palefaces. To them, it's part of the experience. But they are dedicated to their beliefs and are willing to make the commitments necessary, whereas the typical college kid is usually doing it recreationally and therefore is less accepting of unpleasant side effects.


Traditional shamanic practices and Western academia are two entirely different career tracks. While the Western college professor would like to believe that his books, training, and credentials make him the intellectual superior to some third-world medicine man, nothing could be further from the truth.

And shamanic consumption of Amanitas muscaria isn't at all apocryphal. In fact, they can be bought over the Internet, which is probably a lot safer than picking them yourself because the companies that sell them employ experts who either harvest them in the field or grow them in controlled conditions. All of the stories you've heard involving death or near-death experiences invariably involved a species other than muscaria.

http://www.iamshaman.com/amanita-muscaria.htm

Interesting as all this anthropo-fharmacology* is, consider all the pertinent FZ material (music, interviews, etc.) and you may conclude that he found better things to do with his mind. Most such "optional entertainments" are counterproductive to serious creative activity, real work or responsible decision-making of any kind. That's the hidden message in "Cocaine Decisions" friends.

FC

* Note: the correct spelling gets flagged as *SPAM*!

^^^^ No offense, but that's a rather monocular view of the world. If it interests someone, shamanic cosmology can be just as fascinating as FZ's music.

(In)famous chemists such as Albert Hofmann and Alexander Shulgin experimented heavily with their creations, and I defy anyone's claim that their careers were not positive examples creativity, real work ethics, and responsibility. Exploring psychedelics doesn't mean you have to do it to the exclusion of everything else.

And lumping psychedelics together with cocaine is like lumping FZ together with Britney Spears.

Swaggart, you are very knowledgable about the subject; most people aren't and should be cautious.

All I'm saying is that basic magic mushrooms are much safer, easier to acquire and effective than peyote or amanitas. The shroom heads I know, spend hundreds of hours in the field annually to balance the academic, western approach, with real hands on (eyes on too) experience. The problems are not with muscaria but misidentifing one of the deadly amanitas for muscaria.

Whether you pick em' or someone else does, it's just too risky IMO. Buying anything on the internet has it's risks, especially something like this. At least there always that risk of getting ripped off.

You can buy mushrooms on the internet? What kind of twilight zone futuristic ga ga world is this?

links please

_________________
Let's hear it again for the London Philharmonic Orchestra!

^^^^ 100% agreed, brother. Just trying to spread a little info. With mushrooms the stakes can be a little higher, and while we all like to laugh about the Darwin Awards, I still feel sad when someone dies because they were a little bit stupid.

And you are impeccably correct when you point out that the danger of Amanitas is with misidentification. But make no mistake, people have even misidentified phalloides for psilocybin-containing species. So uninformed mushroom-picking on any level can be quite hazardous. I know for a fact I will never pick and consume a wild mushroom because I have never taken the time to learn how to identify them. If I ever attempt it I will call your mom.

BTW, from the research I've done, I have not and will probably never eat an Amanitas mushroom. I'm more a phenethylamine (mescaline) type of person. lol


Dude, you can buy anything on the Internet...

My mom joined a society of mushroom enthusiasts as a start, mainly to learn how to identify and pick delicious wild edible mushrooms. She was born and raised in Japan, where this sort of thing is quite popular. Over the last ten years she has become quite an expert, understanding how the fungi relates to the environment and plants and trees and soil etc.

It's funny because she is over 70 and she wants to try some of the hallucenigenic mushrooms because everyone else in her club has tried them. I've been steering her away from that; I'm not comfortable with my mom tripping, I guess. When she was in Amsterdam on business she bought some over the counter and gave them to her club president as a gift.

It's been a long time since I did them. Last time was in Hawaii where my friends picked them out of a cowfield. They tasted like the shit they came from but were fresh and provided a beautiful, happy experience. The setting didn't hurt either.

So the answer to the original question of the thread is - he didn't have to, all his fans did them for him.

_________________
You gotta give the people something good to read, on a Sunday

I think we may be proving your theory Calvin.

No offense taken Swaggart, but I think you have missed the monocle in your own eye. First, you assume a few things including that I know nothing of shamanic rites. I'll have you know I attended The Mars Volta concert only last week... Second and seriously:

Dr. Albert Hoffman discovered LSD and was first to synthesize psilocybin. Dr. Alexander Shulgin synthesized MDMA - Ecstasy. Both had serious jobs with huge fharmaceutical companies (Sandoz and Dow respectively) and retired rich. Their achievements were not the beneficial result of drug use - they were in the business!

So I question your examples, but I promise to keep an open monocle. Who else ya got?

FC

Fair enough...lol. And agreed that the examples are monocular as well....but it's just that I've gotten so used to wearing the thing, it makes the world according to me look so good.

And maybe I should clarify (oh god not that word). I don't think psychedelics will make uncreative people into creative ones. But I think if used wisely they can make many people happier people. I think they can enhance spiritual connections for people that are looking for such things.

They are in general nonaddictive due to the sheer commitment required to use them. Unlike marijuana, alcohol, and cocaine, most people don't use them on the job. But of course some people use them stupidly along with all the other stupid things they do in their lives.

A more valid example, Kary Mullis who is credited with discovering the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR):

In a Q&A interview published in the September 1994 issue of California Monthly, Mullis said, "Back in the 1960s and early '70s I took plenty of LSD. A lot of people were doing that in Berkeley back then. And I found it to be a mind-opening experience. It was certainly much more important than any courses I ever took." During a symposium held for centenarian Albert Hofmann, Hofmann revealed that he was told by Nobel-prize-winning chemist Kary Mullis that LSD had helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences.

One lousy example based on the guy who did a lot of work on PCR and would have probably been equally successful without the acid.

With regard to Shulgin, he was in fact let go from Dow in the 60's when they discovered the peculiar nature of his research interests. He then acquired a DEA license and spent the 70's and 80's inventing novel phenethylamines and tryptamines. He conducted psychoactive experiments on himself and a small circle of friends using these compounds, the results of which appeared in two publications, PIHKAL and TIHKAL.

The DEA was angered that he published cooking instructions along with the results of his "amateur" fharmacological research and in retaliation conducted a raid of his house/laboratory and revoked his DEA license. He is by no means rich--at least with regard to money--and the fines that were levied against Sasha and Anne as a result of the raids (bogus environmental hazard charges) were partially paid for by their supporters (of which there are many).

I guess what motivated me to get WAY too verbose on the topic was the idea of people taking FZ's views on drugs and spinning them in such a way that casts every user of any drug as some kind of degenerate. While there are plenty of affirmative examples of that, it can overshadow the fact that people can engage in all kinds of marginal or risky activities responsibly.

And I apologize for deeming your vision monocular. I can see with my own eye that it just ain't true...

It's been pointed out Frank was smoking 5 packs of cigarettes a day! And drinking enough caffeine for a telemarketing enterprise. Frank used drugs heavily. he probably knew he was an addictive type and refrained from more "harmful" or "illegal" ones. he was already doing enough drugs to keep him going. One reason may have been that he didn't want the kind of thing to happen to him like the allman bros. (being busted for coke) and whatever else. It would be a huge expense if the band got busted and would have blemished his image and career and he didn't need that. So there are plenty of reasons to avoid illegal drugs. i think he truly felt like they were harmful to his health/work. Some people do think psychedelics can help their creativity. I beleive ken kesey got the idea to write one flew over the cuckoo's nest on acid. i'm not anti drug but i do think they can be used to fill a void sometimes. it is said that 1/10th of a dose of lsd is the best cure for depression. marijuana can be good for boredom. I'm feeling bored right about..............NOW!

what brand of cigerettes did frank smoke?

_________________
Stop Plate Techtonics!!
http://www.myspace.com/originalfacelift
http://www.balkanmusic.org/
http://thesurfonics.com/index.html

winstons! take a look at the inside of the hot rats lp (cd pics are so hard to read) or the inside of sheik yer bouti. full, rich tobacco flavor! *coff, coff*

_________________
One two, buckle my shoe!

because he was a ultra-contrarian and liked to be the complete opposite of what people thought he was... many people who didn't know any better thought he was 'that dude on the toilet who once ate shit on stage and must be totally off his head on drugs to make that weird music'

and because he was what people might call a 'control freak' and probably didn't like the idea of relinquishing control over his mind/body

and because drugs aren't usually very useful when your main thrill in life is producing complicated music that requires lots of concentration

makes sense to me... caffeine and nicotine are mild stimulants... they're not harmless but they don't get in the way of staying up late all night in the studio making music... they help, in fact

_________________

http://www.thescottthuneseffect.com/

"Oh that's one of those dope fiend devices, take it away."

_________________
Centerville...it's a real nice place to raise yer kids up!

drugs drugs drugs...you must understand that in order to compose the little intricate tiny notes on paper- maybe employing ten or more parts- you have to be on the ball- you have to be top of your game,& not compromised by recreational habits,The same applies to performance protocol- the more lucid you are- the better- forget about the story of a certain baseball pitcher pitching a perfect game on LSD- drugs DO NOT AID the spectrum of being onstage... alot of people who -for some reason or another- think they have to perform, which brings on stage fright.If you're high then the said stage fright does not apply...

_________________
http://home.earthlink.net/~zurch/ http://www.tunecore.com/music/zzyrch
http://soundclick.com/darrelfranzzzyrchclark
http://music.download.com/darrelfranzzzyrchclark

Not that it's a real big deal but watch C Santana in the Woodstock performance he was peaking on LSD, given to him without his knowledge, he sounds good.

_________________
Confusion will be my epitaph

Well I guess the key word here is: habit...And some musicians think that drugs per se give vent to a rise in creativity &/or performance...& maybe to some extent they do.But also you might end up dead because of an heroin o.d.,or become a semblance of the fictional main character as seen in 'The Wall'... -Being in L.A.,I'm sure Zappa saw too many instances of wasted individuals who were talented but severely compromised by continual use of any kind of drug.And to be my own devil's advocate,you could say that Poe or Samuel Taylor Coleridge or Charles Bukowski wouldn't be the writers they were without some kind of chemical enhancement...But writing words,like art,is in the domain of imagery,hence,right-brain activity.Composing music is left-brain,the logical side.In other words,if Vincent van Gogh was a composer,he'd have to stop the absinthe.

_________________
http://home.earthlink.net/~zurch/ http://www.tunecore.com/music/zzyrch
http://soundclick.com/darrelfranzzzyrchclark
http://music.download.com/darrelfranzzzyrchclark

Agree. It seems like he was the kind of guy that would not use drugs only to prove that you can freak out and do amazing stuff on your own. And it's true.

I think the best way to explain it is to use the quote he used to explain why he named his kids the way he did: "because I wanted to."

_________________
Centerville...it's a real nice place to raise yer kids up!

ink

_________________
"bit of nostalgia for the old folks."

i cant find the quote at the moment, but zappa didnt like how it made people act. peoples attitudes would completely change when on these "drugs".