Local Discussion Groups/Forums/Salons Identification Thread

[madmanintheattic]

Hello. Long time psychonaut here. New to this forum but have been listening to Lorenzo and C-Realm and others for some time. Somewhere in one of the threads someone mentioned small local groups and gatherings and that is certainly what I am interested in.

Perhaps those of us who are interested in starting and facilitating a local in-person discussion can use this thread to let people know who and where they are such that others can get in touch then get together.

I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. If there is anyone in or near my area who is interested in getting together for some chats and discussions in person please send me a message in this Forum with your e-mail address and I will get back to you and we can take it from there.

I am interested in just about everything but I find intense and lengthy discussions about crop circles and the like to be a little irrelevant considering the state of our "civilization" and the environment. Like happy sailors dancing on a sinking ship our culture continues it's dance of consumptive destruction blind to the catastrophe imminent upon us.

In addition I really don't like these forums because there is just too much room for misunderstanding and conflict. Remember, words only make up about 3% of human communication. The remaining 97% of the message is made up of tone of voice and body language which, of course, is absent in this medium. The result of that is clearly visible in the thread on crop circles. I truly hope that is not the trend here.

So send me a message, ask me what u want to know, and let's try to get together.

"There is no reason to be paranoid and little reason to be hopeful."
-Terence McKenna

[Brandon]

I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. If there is anyone in or near my area who is interested in getting together for some chats and discussions in person please send me a message in this Forum with your e-mail address and I will get back to you and we can take it from there.

I'm in Burlington VT- kind of a long drive from Calgary (41 hours by google maps).

[Brandon]

I think in a podcast Lorenzo suggested talking to everyone you can about psychedelics - I have done this in the past year or two, and it's been a slightly frustrating experience. This hasn't been because I can't find open minded people, but because people forget or discredit any open minded discussions that I've had with them about psychedelics. It's really strange and feels like I'm in the Twilight Zone or something. It seems to go like this:

Stage 1) I scope the person out: what will their reaction to psychedelics be? Violent? Closed? Open? If they seem open I procede to stage 2

Stage 2) I present a psychedelic topic to further gauge their reaction. For example, "Hey did you hear about the John Hopkins study with psilocybin?". This is usually met with cynicism, jokes about dumb stoners, and more cynicism

Stage 3) An in depth discussion about psychedelics. I have found that many people have an intrinsic curiosity about psychedelics, and if presented with a comfortable opportunity to talk about them, they will be open minded and interested. People are often amazed and enthusiastic about the current research, and the cynicism can evaporate surprisingly fast in one of these conversations.

Stage 4) At a later date I bring up the topic, and I am met with the old cynicism, and the old jokes about stoners, etc.

At this point I usually give up- I'm not really in the business of trying to convert people or anything. Because I have a passionate interest in psychedelics, I have brought the topic up repeatedly with family and friends, and over time these people have mostly lost their cynicism. But this has been over a period of years.

I guess it's just really hard for most people see psychedelics as being credible in any way.

[sancho23]

Like a good comedian, you have to come up with some good material and repeat it over and over and over!

Find some good points of view, some good oneliners, good threads for discussion, always try to use humour, and just throw them in whenever the conversation drifts towards the topic.

Talk about DMT, how it's a part of the brain. Be innocent about it, intro it like this:

"Hey how's it going?"

"Eh, another day in paradise. . ."

"Yeah, I hear that. Oh man, this book I just read, you gotta check it out man!"

"What is it?"

"It's called, um, what was it? Oh yeah! DMT: the spirit molecule. It's about this chemical that's found in our brains, everyone's, but it was made illegal before they ever did research on it. . ."

Shit like that!

[sancho23]

At all points avoid sounding like a raving raver, drugged out druggie, or just weird. Always talk with an heir on knowing, never condescending, always entertaining and excited about the topic. People listen to charisma almost as much as they listen to the latest Brittney Spears report!