Psychedelic Sobriety: Is the Use of Psychedelics a Relapse in Recovery?

The 12-Step Buddhist Podcast

What is the nature of our relationship to psychedelics? As people in recovery, we've probably abused them at one time or another. Some people have taken mass overdoses and lost total control. So why would anyone in recovery consider the use, medicinal or otherwise, of something that seems pretty risky?

It's OK. You can and it'll be alright.

Let's talk about it on today's show, Episode 108.

St. Theresa of Avila "The time has come to love more and think less. Sit in a deep quiet in which love is translating you into God."

Meditation: what we're powerless to attain is attaining us in our inability to attain it inhale breathing in God, into the unresolved questions. Exhale give yourself in love.

from James Finley, "Mystical Sobriety."

The number 108 has a variety of significances across different fields:

1. Mathematics:

   • It's an abundant and a semiperfect number.
   • A tetranacci number.
   • The hyperfactorial of 3, as it is of the form 11⋅22⋅3311⋅22⋅33.
   • Divisible by the value of its φ function, which is 36.
   • Divisible by the total number of its divisors (12), making it a refactorable number.
   • The angle in degrees of the interior angles of a regular pentagon in Euclidean space.
   • Palindromic in several bases and a Harshad number in multiple bases.

2. Religion and the Arts:

   • Sacred in Dharmic Religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
   • In Hindu tradition, there are 108 attendants of Shiva, and in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, Krishna had 108 followers known as gopis.
   • The Sri Vaishnavite Tradition has 108 Divya Desams (temples of Vishnu).
   • The Sudarshana Chakra, a weapon in Hindu mythology, has 108 serrated edges.
   • The total number of Upanishads is 108 as per the Muktikā canon.
   • In Tibetan Buddhism, malas or rosaries are usually 108 beads.
   • Zen priests wear juzu, a ring of prayer beads, consisting of 108 beads.
   • The Lankavatara Sutra has sections where 108 questions are asked and 108 statements of negation are listed.

3. Martial Arts:

   • Many East Asian martial arts, due to their ties to Buddhism, consider 108 an important symbolic number.
   • According to Marma Adi and Ayurveda, there are 108 pressure points in the body.
   • The ultimate Gōjū-ryū kata, Suparinpei, translates to 108.
   • The Yang Taijiquan long form and Wing Chun wooden dummy form taught by Ip Man have 108 moves.

4. Literature:

   • There are 108 outlaws in the Chinese classic "Water Margin/Outlaws of the Marsh."
   • "Astrophil and Stella," the first English sonnet sequence, has 108 love sonnets.
   • Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" has 108 lines.

5. Science:

   • Hassium, a chemical element, has the atomic number 108.
   • The human body's vital organs begin to fail at an internal temperature of 108 degrees Fahrenheit.
   • The distance of Earth from the Sun is about 108 times the diameter of the Sun.

6. Technology:

   • 108 Mbit/s is a non-standard extension of IEEE 802.11g wireless network using channel bonding.

7. Sports:

   • An official Major League Baseball baseball has 108 stitches.
   • The Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016 for the first time in 108 years.

8. Card Games:

   • There are 108 cards in a deck of UNO cards.

9. Other Fields:

   • In India, 108 is the toll-free emergency telephone number.