QUESTION: "What's Involved With A Shamanic Initiation?"

A lot of people are highly skeptical about descents into madness, and they maintain that it is not possible for such an experience to equate to something beneficial like a shamanic initiation.  However, I sensed that the African writer had had this sort of experience.  I had reasons for thinking so, in that I had myself had a one quarter madness experience and had greatly benefited from it in terms of insight and maturity.  Also, this African writer did not adopt conventional, revengeful motifs of race but had much deeper, more insightful things to share.  It was difficult for me to write more than notes on this topic, since even addressing it frightened me, but I wrote this:  http://musteryou.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/house-of-hunger-2/