I Have A Theory About How Psychs Work

[LandsUnknown]

I read that no one knows exactly how psychs alter the brain. They say that it's caused by the 5HT-2A receptor and all, and I believe it on one hand obviously. However, I feel that the effects are so profound and incredible that maybe it's true what the native americans used to say that the plants actually have spirits within them, and the spirits take you on a journey which is the trip. To be honest, they could've been right. I feel this is especially true with DMT, which likely has the machine elves as guiding the experience. I know this may get me branded as a burnout and nut, but I seriously think the effects may be part chemical, but also part supernatural like the native americans said. The same may be said for all drugs, even non psychedelic ones I think.

 

[.:Holy::Toast:.]

A lot of people hold that hypothesis but it really just isn't substantiable or demonstrable.
In fact the opposite is true, we can give rats and even humans a 5-HT2A antagonist and observe severely diminished psychoactive effects.
Think about it like this, our brain is solely responsible for every feeling and perception you've experienced throughout your entire life, it creates it solely from a mass amalgamation of sensory data and as such substances which interfere with how your brain communicates with itself could cause theoretically cause a false perception of any feeling or experience.
Honestly that's all the magic I need in psychedelics, the near incomprehensible complexity of our brain and how it generates consciousness is far more magical to me than some supernatural spirit sciencey explanation.

 

[tokezu]

How would you explain then, that people can have experiences that are just as profound from labmade compounds? Of course there is a difference between using mescaline versus using a cactus with a whole bunch of alkaloids, but if your theory is true there should be a clear difference between synthetic and extracted mescaline, no?

Oh and IMO there is nothing 'supernatural'. If machine elves (or whatever have you) do exist, then they are part of the natural world.

 

[antecedent]

You're cooked mate :D

 

[swilow]

I have a theory that plant spirits and chemical compounds are the same thing, just different names...

 

[LlewellynDrury]

I have a theory that plant spirits and chemical compounds are the same thing, just different names...

You got right to the point willow11.

When Albert Hoffman went to Mexico with Gordon Wasson to meet the famous curandera Maria Sabina, in 1962, he had a bottle of psilocybin pills he synthetized in his laboratory. He gave her the bottle, after trying it she was very impressed and said to Hoffmann he “managed to confine the mushroom spirit in the little pills”. She was also very happy to have a stash of medicine for her consultations during the dry season.

For those who don’t have a clue who those people are…well, it’s time to use google and Wikipedia to educate yourself a little bit.

 

[swilow]

I know this may get me branded as a burnout and nut, but I seriously think the effects may be part chemical, but also part supernatural like the native americans said.

You're basically saying that these drugs are magick. But, our universe operates on an unbroken chain of causality back to the big bang. Nothing that occurs in the universe is free of this. By this view, anything that occurs in the universe has a physical underpinning and is therefore 'natural'. Remember that electricity was seen as magick at first, yet it intrinisic and vital to the functioning of most things in the universe..

I like your idea and nearly everyone who has tripped has experienced otherwordly states that appear divorced from reality but reality is largely constructed within the brain. It makes sense that the effects of psychedelics which appear to be a modification of reality are actually being mediated within the brain, not from some unproven, unknowable external source.

You got right to the point willow11.

When Albert Hoffman went to Mexico with Gordon Wasson to meet the famous curandera Maria Sabina, in 1962, he had a bottle of psilocybin pills he synthetized in his laboratory. He gave her the bottle, after trying it she was very impressed and said to Hoffmann he “managed to confine the mushroom spirit in the little pills”. She was also very happy to have a stash of medicine for her consultations during the dry season.

For those who don’t have a clue who those people are…well, it’s time to use google and Wikipedia to educate yourself a little bit.

Yes, nice linking to historical event there. To my mind, both views are equally 'right'. Its semantics really. Under a certain cultural paradigm, the idea of molecules and chemicals would be nonsensical. Many indigenous cultures frame biological truths within the spiritual pantheon of their daily lives. Which is why I think that westerner's claming the same things are being facetious at best and exploitative at worst.

 

[terarc]

Recent imaging studies of the brain have shown that psychedelics activation of the 5HT-2a receptor diminishes the signalling of the brains default mode network. This the network that gives you your ego or your sense of 'you' being 'here', 'now'. So basically your brain is replacing this diminished sense of our normal egotistic consciousness with a bunch of the other shit that's going on in your brain, mapping a bunch of your subsconscious mind onto your physically perceived environment, basically.

Hoffman got the 'mushroom spirit' in the pill because mushrooms contain psilocybin and he put psilocybin in the pill.

I'm not saying psychedelic experiences arent spiritual, they are, but I think this spirituality comes from US, not directly the drugs themselves. That's just my opinion, though.

 

[Dresden]

I feel that MDMA synthesized from the oil of the root bark of the sassafras tree is better than synthetically synthesized MDMA whose precursors were not natural. I feel that the spirit of the tree imparts a certain tangible flavor to the high of the MDxx synthesized from the living tree's essential oil secondary product.

 

[swilow]

I feel that MDMA synthesized from the oil of the root bark of the sassafras tree is better than synthetically synthesized MDMA whose precursors were not natural. I feel that the spirit of the tree imparts a certain tangible flavor to the high of the MDxx synthesized from the living tree's essential oil secondary product.

Would this effect be apparent in a double-blind type experiment? To rephrase your statement, perhaps awareness of the tree-spirit exerts placebo effect...

I've performed a crude type of experiment utilising extracted DMT and synthetic. My brother packed each in a pipe and let me smoke each, one hour or so apart. I noticed no qualitative difference, though I felt the synthetic was smoother on the ole lungs... The trip/s themselves were the same though. I'm of the opinion that there is nothing but a semantic difference between 'natural' and synthetic. I prefer synthetic drugs though as I can be relatively assured of potency. I see no value in ingesting non-psychoative compounds along with my trippy shit.

 

[CrypticArc]

How would you explain then, that people can have experiences that are just as profound from labmade compounds? Of course there is a difference between using mescaline versus using a cactus with a whole bunch of alkaloids, but if your theory is true there should be a clear difference between synthetic and extracted mescaline, no?

Oh and IMO there is nothing 'supernatural'. If machine elves (or whatever have you) do exist, then they are part of the natural world.

My whole take on the situation is that the spirits do not literally within the plants, but that your brain is a receiver node and psychedelics tune you out of this channel (reality) and into another channel in which the spirits are able to reach you. The drugs open you up and the teachers follow, as your ordinary state of consciousness doesn't allow for them to have a strong enough connection with them.

Mass consciousness is proven. A group of people are able to alter the results of a random number generator just by thinking about it. Is it so unreasonable to think that our minds may holds secrets we are unaware of, which are associated with the conscious mind? Or that maybe there are beings somewhere who can take advantage of those secrets in order to deliver a message under certain circumstances, such as deep meditation, isolation tanks or chemical manipulation?

 

[swilow]

Or, it could be that psychedelics make you feel like you are communicating with extra-dimensional spirits.

 

[TheBlackPirate]

They say that it's caused by the 5HT-2A receptor

Other receptors are involved in the action of most psychedelics. 5HT1 receptors appear particularly important and in fact LSD binds most strongly at 5HT1A sites.

Selective 5HT2 agonist were created such as 25X-NBOMe chemicals and DOX chemicals. Both of those groups of chemicals caused fatalities. Other chemicals are better.

A combination of various receptors including 5HT1 and 5HT2 are involved in the effects of of psychedelics such DMT, Psilocybin, and LSD. These are also the most safe.

I learned about how sweet DMT was in the end. DMT has the benefits of the aforementioned selective agonsits with an improved safety profile.

LSD is my favorite of them all.

 

[Incunabula]

All psychdelics are 5-HT_2A receptor agonists, but not all 5-HT_2A receptor agonists are psychdelics.

ALIENS

 

[TheBlackPirate]

^The same is true with drugs agonizing the 5HT1A receptor sub-type.

 

[burn out]

Or, it could be that psychedelics make you feel like you are communicating with extra-dimensional spirits.

What's the difference, really? How do you know that right now, you don't simply "feel" like you are posting on bluelight? How do you know reality isn't a dream like mirage? \

Plant spirits, entity communication, shamanic healing are all very real human experiences with effects as "real" as anything else.

 

[swilow]

What's the difference, really? How do you know that right now, you don't simply "feel" like you are posting on bluelight? How do you know reality isn't a dream like mirage?

Well, I don't. If I knew that answer, I'd have solved some of the most profound and persistent philosophical questions of human history. When we are tripping, it is the result of an exogenous agent taken into the body and effecting the brain. In my opinion, much of that experience is illusory and can be claimed as an illusion with greater ease than can ordinary, daily perception, due to the chemical catalyst being introduced. Some people do experience entity contact and the like when sober, but most humans don't seem to. It doesn't make sense to draw a correlation between the two states, given the explicit causal difference. I think one should be careful drawing such a link.

Plant spirits, entity communication, shamanic healing are all very real human experiences with effects as "real" as anything else.

For me, after extensive tripping on many different substances, I really don't think these things are as real as, say, my hands typing. The notion of plant spirits has no evidence whatsoever, yet the idea of ligands effecting the brain does. The reason I believe that psychedelic chemicals and plant spirits are the same thing is because lab-made, pure chemicals still have exactly the same effects as their 'natural' counterpart. It would seem that the spirit has nothing to do with the plant, except that the plant is the biochemist which synthesised it. If a plant is somehow divine, I guess a test-tube and beaker is too. I do not believe in external divinity, I think it resides solely within the brain. Far from being reductionist, this (for me) makes me realise how incredibly magical life and reality and cognition truly is. The potential for godhood is in every single human.

I don't think such idea's have much merit, but I have no problem with people holding to such a faith. Whatever floats your boat. I've experienced many delusions on psychedelics; I think such delusions are inherent to the experience; I therefore approach these things with extreme scepticism. In this realm, ideas with no evidence are too easily believed and therefore worthy of scepticism.

 

[Incunabula]

Concluding that spirits exist, because you meet or even converse with them when you take a psychedelic drug, is the same as concluding that it is the sun that orbits the earth, or that the earth is flat, because that's what it looks like to us when we look around.

That's what subjective experience is worth.

Fundamentally, at some very basic philosophical level, it is true that we know nothing, nothing at all. But if we chose to base how we see the world, and how we interact with it, on this fact, we would still be living in caves sacrificing virgins to Chtulhu in exchange for a good harvest - and all sorts of insanity.

That's obviously my opinion, I might just be a figment of your dream, dear reader, although there is no indication of it being so. Or maybe one day, some guy named Morpheus will offer me a choice of a red pill and a blue pill. Who can say, right?

What's the difference, really? How do you know that right now, you don't simply "feel" like you are posting on bluelight? How do you know reality isn't a dream like mirage? \

Plant spirits, entity communication, shamanic healing are all very real human experiences with effects as "real" as anything else.

And coming to think of it, this argument really is just another version of the Going Nuclear argument

 

[burn out]

that link says "

Indeed, those who employ this version of Going Nuclear are usually quite content to rely on reason to make their case just so long as they are not losing the argument. It's only when the tide of rationality turns against them that they reach for the nuclear button. And of course, once their opponent has left the room, they'll start using reason again to try to prop up their belief. That's downright hypocritical."

This obviously doesn't apply here because I wasn't relying on reason until I thought I was losing, on the contrary that was my first post in this thread. My purpose in "going nuclear" was to point out, most people have assumptions about what's real and what isn't and I think those assumptions need to be brought out into the open and addressed before we can have a reasonable discussion about whether x phenomenon is real or not.

in other words, how do you define real? it's not the easiest question to answer. Ever seen the South Park episode imagination land? we tend to assume to the line between real and imaginary is clear cut and black and white, but as that episodes plays on, it's actually not so. In fact, these kinds of epistemological questions have interested in philosophers for centuries.

That's obviously my opinion, I might just be a figment of your dream, dear reader, although there is no indication of it being so.

Who says there is no indication? I think there are a lot of indications that physical life is a dream of sorts we can wake up from. For example, the fact that time is relative. Heck, I would say psychedelics are one of the biggest indicators that physical reality is not what most people assume it to be. If you go on the DMT nexus its not uncommon to see people referring to their person as "my dreamer" so I am obviously not alone in seeing it this way.

For me, after extensive tripping on many different substances, I really don't think these things are as real as, say, my hands typing. The notion of plant spirits has no evidence whatsoever, yet the idea of ligands effecting the brain does. The reason I believe that psychedelic chemicals and plant spirits are the same thing is because lab-made, pure chemicals still have exactly the same effects as their 'natural' counterpart. It would seem that the spirit has nothing to do with the plant, except that the plant is the biochemist which synthesised it. If a plant is somehow divine, I guess a test-tube and beaker is too. I do not believe in external divinity, I think it resides solely within the brain. Far from being reductionist, this (for me) makes me realise how incredibly magical life and reality and cognition truly is. The potential for godhood is in every single human.

Ifyou think plant spirits and psychedelic chemicals are the same thing, I dont see how that is a denial of plant spirits. The chemical is obviously the physical manifestation of the plant spirit (or the tool/medium which allows for communication with said spirit). As to the question of synthetic compounds, according to a book on shamanism I read they have spirits also.

 

[RhythmSpring]

The internet, particularly Bluelight, has become inhospitable to the magical thinker. Reductionist, "show-me-the-double-blind"-type thinking has become the accepted norm.

It's important to keep this in mind when offering up your opinions to the nerdy masses.