Unbelievable good thread this is. A lot of thought in the posts. A lot of people here have a lot of experience with psychosis, yet are the most thoughtful, focused and detailed people that exist. I think the average joe is crazy. I got a lot of what I read and have had a few experiences myself. I have never been to a doctor or psychiatrist and have never been diagnosed with anything. Only because I hate labels. But I am sure I would have ADHD, anxiety, depression, sometimes bi polar. But never diagnosed. I am not sure what I believe there. I think the people themselves would know more about themselves than a therapist labeling them. Maybe we all just tune into different planes or channel other things. And are centered enough to just witness it and keep it where it belongs. We are captains of our own ship. Remember that and all is well.
Anyway I hope everyone is staying well. I see a lot of the same things you all do. And this world has a million facets to it.
is it normal that after weekly and bimonthly tripping to get so obsessed about wonders of life that you accidentally include bread loaf into that theme, appreciating its qualities developed over thousands of years of evolution, only to remember it is not damn fruit that falls off the tree?
I don't know why, but it seems that my cognition gets a bit messed up when tripping frequently. It is not always functional.
@Kaleida - I've never experienced psychosis (ie, diagnosed rather than drug induced at least) but I relate so much to your explanations of your general sense of the nature of dissociatives...
Specifically - random moments of extreme profundity while just watching TV shows or doing nothing in particular, check, American Dad, lol yep, also Family Guy, one of the most fundamentally nonsensical shows, to the point I've convinced myself I'm interpreting some kind of cosmic meaning in these shows and I mean, sometimes it's true, but I remember one time specifically on 3-MeO-PCP it suddenly hit me that I was "The OA" from that show The OA (I mean... a parallel reality version of the OA obviously since I didn't suddenly think I was a woman or Brit Marling specifically) which I must say is a dissociative treat but then, many shows are, and in retrospect I think pretty much all the time I'm actually just kinda "retconning" my own life and finding meaning that wasn't really specifically related to that moment. Just mostly all I ever really did on dissociatives was lie around watching shows and, most good stories do have some kind of meaning in them if you look hard enough, even less overtly serious, in a sense "sillier" ones like cartoons such as American Dad (although I still think American Dad is up there as far as cartoons go).
Also, futuristic cityscapes, lots of people being part of the background, check, that's the nature of so many of my K-holes, you're right it is dreamlike, and also yep that's highly distinct from my own dreams in that my dreams do indeed normally involve numerous if vaguely fantastical interactions with people, to a far higher degree than waking life... whereas with K holes I'm very much almost actually a part of the background myself. One thing I'll say in contrast to what you said about people being part of the background (although this is arguably functionally irrelevant and a matter of perspective) is that a lot of the time in these holes it's like I am myself actually part of the background, a confused and disoriented visitor in this strange world where everyone else is going about their business mostly just ignoring me... it can be pretty frightening at times actually and definitely became more frightening as my disso use became more dysfunctional.
I think probably you said a bunch of other stuff I related to but those were the most notable things that stood out to me... anyway although I don't have a "real" psychosis to compare it to as such, it's definitely dissos which are the drugs that have most often induced experiences that when I came down I thought damn, that felt like a drug induced psychosis, rather than "that felt like an epic/holy/terrifying trip," but not an actual psychosis as is typical of my deepest experiences with non-dissociative psychedelic drugs, even when I almost certainly completely lost touch with reality for a time.
Yes, basically, my brain wants to narrate my life, as though it were William Gibson's Neuromancer crossed with Philip K Dick's, A Scanner Darkly, with a dash of Neil Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle and a pinch of Bladerunner.
Last night I went out and for the trip home I vaped FXE. I had been thinking, "do I actually embellish these stories" but I found my mind in a similar story mode on FXE and realized, no, I'm not embellishing, not consciously anyway. My mind was pulling up all kinds strange data about this alternative version of New York City I had evidently crossed into… It's fun to get lost in a reverie from time to time…
The after-effects were disappointing! In fact, it felt a bit like it zeroed out the previous 2C-B afterglow. It was a week that reminded me that I'm very much still mending. I was a bit too enthusiastic in my post-trip exercise and paid a price for it in re-emergence of symptoms like arthritic feet, brain fog, etc. OTOH, I did "power walk" a few miles every day, and had a day of light jogging. I also did some other strength exercises and ate a fair amount more food than usual. I overdid it but not so much that I didn't add some muscle and lose some Xmas fat. The other thing is that I didn't really have anything to integrate, post-trip. In fact, the only insight I got was "take more next time".
So I did, finally today take 10 g of this T. Terschekki. This time I feel like the strength of the experience was a lot closer to what I would expect for the dose. I felt it in 20 minutes but it did little except churn my guts for the first couple hours. Really it never got above (+) until after the 4th hour. i had held off smoking as much weed to see if that had amplified my last (5 g) experience more than I thought. I think it did. Even with more weed though around the 5th hour though, I didn't feel as high as I did the first time.
I just went through basically the same thing with blue lotus, actually. I decided to try taking two of the extract capsules I only took one of the first time except that I didn't smoke cannabis until several hours in this time, unlike the first time where I smoked it through most of the trip. The experience was notably weaker, although I could still discern the same pattern of effects unfolding as the first time, just in a weaker way. However, once I finally smoked some cannabis a few hours in, I suddenly got extremely high in a way very much resembling smoking cannabis on psychedelics for me, and not being anything at all like cannabis on its own ever is for me. However, the effects of the blue lotus had waned enough by then that I wasn't really able to get the full synergy out of the combo, just enjoy the trailing effects. Next time I think I'll smoke cannabis from the beginning with two capsules again and see how that goes.
I also felt kind of anxious. So, I decided to try sitting on the floor in half lotus instead of moving on my feet. I concentrated on developing a form, which was difficult but felt very rewarding as I found better balance and could sustain it with less exertion. I then did some leg stretches followed tree pose on each leg. These activities changed the whole character of the trip. After the stretches, I felt a wave of somatic euphoria which was accompanied by a vision of ribbons of flowing color. Up to this point, the visuals had been monochromatic and quite dull, so it's like these actions helped to unlock the positive aspects of the trip. It changed monochromatic visuals to color visuals. That's amazing!
I'm not surprised this helped. It sounds like a great experience, I'm really looking forward to getting to try it myself eventually.
My P.E. credit in college was a yoga class, which I would often go to high (just on cannabis, to be clear). I specifically remember one time, I don't remember what the pose was called but it was a sitting one and everyone in class was doing it with their arms stretched up, and I closed my eyes and could still see colorful auras of the outlines of everyone's body, in that sort of stereotypical "we're all energetically connected" type of closed-eye visual. It was really cool. I really should get back into doing yoga and meditation and such again....
Then my wife came home and smoked some weed. I always let her know what I'm on, and this time she caught a strong contact high. What followed was a shared experience that I can't easily describe, nor do I fully understand myself.
The cactus isn't special just to me but to both of us. It was our first trip together which we took at a small gathering in a mountain forest setting on the day after we met. We took heavy doses, 70-75 g of this material or maybe like 600 mg worth of mescaline. I need to revise the record here. I said I did not experience ego loss on mescaline, but the other day I found some old notes of mine which stated very explicitly that I *did experience ego loss* on this trip. We began at high noon on the day of midsummer, and as the last effects wore off at around 6 the next morning, some part of me knew we were meant for each other and would be together for a very long time. We've gone past 20 years now. This past week I had a lot of anxiety over the future of our relationship for reasons I won't go into here. Tonight, when she slipped into my headspace, we experienced tiny glimpses of that first time together with the cactus. I now feel reassured, as though the cactus was reminding her and I that it catalyzed and consecrated our bond in the first place, and that this should not be forgotten.
Very fascinating. This is the kind of experience I have not been fortunate enough to have myself, but I have heard others describe things along these lines before too. Psychedelics are very special indeed. I'm glad that you were able to get this experience out of your recent trip again.
I appreciate the revision too. It does seem like, at least from what I've read and heard, ego dissolution is not out of the question on mescaline, it's just (from what I can tell and also what I would guess) different from things like LSD and psilocin. You're really making me jealous, lol. I need to get some freaking cacti.
As for why the 5 g felt so strong, I have a few hypotheses. (1) The tiny amount of sediment in the tea (which got through a coffee filter) is mescaline rich and I didn't stir enough; (2) my body was in a heightened inflammatory state on that day which may have caused a transient sensitivity; (3) I smoked so much pot that it was really a mescaline-enhanced pot trip that nevertheless felt a lot like mescaline ought to. I lean toward (3) mostly but maybe (2) is important too. I do believe my body tends to get 'triggered" from time to time, leading to an amplification of most of my inflammatory problems at the same time, so I have to wonder if I might be hypersensitive to psychedelics on such "triggered" days. It's something I will be watching out for. I expect I will get much better after-effects this time, and I may have some trip integration to do. Hopefully my guts come out it in good shape. This mere 10 g dose felt like it did quite a number on them, and this was my only body complaint, really.
Just speaking logically, I do think I could plausibly see this being the case. The comparison I would make is to opioids, which, at least in my experience and opinion and I believe I've seen others express this view before too, seem to actually be a lot more potent when I'm already in pain. Like, I usually only take kratom when I have a headache or a toothache or something, not only for this reason, but I notice that when I do, I get way more "high" than when I just take it for no reason. Maybe if, for instance, psychedelics are actually helping clean up inflammation in the brain, having a higher amount of it to clean up will also result in a higher level of psychedelic effect experienced while that cleaning is taking place? Just something to think about, which reading this made occur to me.
Because this cactus material is limited, precious, and practically irreplaceable. I have some new T. peruvianus material that I'm going to trial and compare with. This ought to be interesting given all the other alkaloids in T. peruvianus. Supposedly T. terschekki contains only mescaline and N,N-dimethylmescaline, the latter of which is said to be inactive until 1.5 g or so when it just decreases blood pressure a bit. Most people who have heard of T. terschekii believe it to not have enough mescaline to be worthwhile. My guess is one just has to have the regional knowledge to know which cacti specimens are worth the trouble and how/when to harvest them for best results. This material absolutely delivers the goods. I estimated it to be about 0.8% mescaline dry wt, and the effect feels very clean, as I would expect chemical mescaline to feel. Other than this material, I've had two trips on T. pachnoi, but they were way too weak to form a reasonable basis for comparison. So like I said, this comparison should be interesting, and I'll have new material to use as a mainstay while saving the T. terschekki for special purposes. For example, I've combined it with ayahuasca (vine only) a few times with superb results. These were weak experiences though because I was being very cautious and wasn't noticing any MAOI potentiation (!!). OTOH, I'm not sure I even want to risk trying an MAOI with T. peruvianus or T. pachnoi because of all the other stuff in those.
Since I'm on a roll here... IIRC, Shulgin suggested that maybe T. terschekki was being used with an MAOI in indigenous practices, which perhaps made the N,N-dimethylmescaline active. I only learned of this though long after I had an actual conversation with him in which I told him of my first ayahuasca+Terschekki experiment and how surprised I was that I did not notice any potentiation. He was seemed surprised to hear this too. Speaking of weird synchronicities, on that first aya-mesc trip I took, I went hiking literally within a mile or so of the Shulgins' farmhouse. He might have even been able to see me from his property. At the time I had no idea I was near where they lived, but then one day we got invited to the 4th of July potluck and I was amazed at how they were just *right there*. (He had an amazing cactus garden by the way!) Anyway, when I spoke with him about the MAOI + T. Terschekki at a conference, he asked if I had any analytical data for the material. I did not, and shortly after the encounter I sadly forgot about it. In fact, I only recalled it a few months ago when I uncovered some old notes which jogged my memory of it. I rather regret now having forgotten because if I''d thought about it, I could have dropped some dried cactus in his hands for him to analyze during one of those 4th of July potlucks so that he could satisfy his curiosity. Perhaps some day I will follow through on that analysis to honor his memory.
Very cool that you got to know Alexander Shulgin, and I think it'd be really cool to do that in his memory too.
That is very funny about you hiking right by their property! The universe certainly is a strange place.
Again I don't think I had a lot to add because I just don't know much about these cacti, but I'd love to hear anything more you have to say about them when you do. I imagine I'm going to want to learn about them as much as I can in the not-too-distant future.
is it normal that after weekly and bimonthly tripping to get so obsessed about wonders of life that you accidentally include bread loaf into that theme, appreciating its qualities developed over thousands of years of evolution, only to remember it is not damn fruit that falls off the tree?
I don't know why, but it seems that my cognition gets a bit messed up when tripping frequently. It is not always functional.
is it normal that after weekly and bimonthly tripping to get so obsessed about wonders of life that you accidentally include bread loaf into that theme, appreciating its qualities developed over thousands of years of evolution, only to remember it is not damn fruit that falls off the tree?
I don't know why, but it seems that my cognition gets a bit messed up when tripping frequently. It is not always functional.
I don't think I've had this problem, but I when I was in college I figured out it was best not to trip during the term, except maybe near the beginning. I'm not sure the technical term for it, but I believe we have a kind of "medium term" memory, which persists over a period of days to weeks. For a computer analogy, if you have some data stored on the hard disk (long term memory), a copy of it can be maintained in RAM (medium term memory) for much faster access, but RAM is in shorter supply than hard storage. As such, the computer usually try to prefer keeping recently used information in RAM. Of course the RAM is slow compared to the cache (working or short-term memory), but the cache is is much shorter supply. Hence, the same principle applies again. My experience of psychedelics is that they tend to clear medium term memory. They don't cause me to forget anything, but after tripping in the middle of a school term, I would be slower at completing work until I got everything "loaded back up" again. In the first year major year, I managed to find a weekend here or there in which I felt reasonably caught up, but once my schedule got loaded up with hard core courses, I needed every bit of time I could get to achieve my ambitious goals. In contrast, the end of the term made for an excellent time to trip. I might give myself a day or two to catch up on sleep, and then a nice heavy trip would clear all that useless stuff from medium-term memory but leaving everything neatly filed away in long-term storage. A trip taken right before the start of a new term was also usually nice. Clearing out the RAM gets it ready for taking in new information.
I just went through basically the same thing with blue lotus, actually.
[...]
However, once I finally smoked some cannabis a few hours in, I suddenly got extremely high in a way very much resembling smoking cannabis on psychedelics for me, and not being anything at all like cannabis on its own ever is for me.
Have fun with that! Assuming the main alkaloid is a weak 5ht2a agonist (for some serotonin-like effect), and assuming that causes it to synergize with cannabis like most other 5ht2a psychedelics, I wonder how the relative "weakness" of agonism affects the synergy?
I'm not sure how to properly judge this, but I feel like the synergy with mescaline has been surprisingly strong. Even today, the second day after, by smoking enough cannabis I pretty much started tripping again with some pretty heavy duty mental and emotional effects. After the 2C-B, smoking a lot of weed mainly seemed to make me feel energetic, euphoric, and maybe bring some patterns back. I think with 2C-I and 2C-E, it was a bit more interesting, but the mescaline has been intense.
I'm not surprised this helped. It sounds like a great experience, I'm really looking forward to getting to try it myself eventually.
My P.E. credit in college was a yoga class, which I would often go to high (just on cannabis, to be clear). I specifically remember one time, I don't remember what the pose was called but it was a sitting one and everyone in class was doing it with their arms stretched up, and I closed my eyes and could still see colorful auras of the outlines of everyone's body, in that sort of stereotypical "we're all energetically connected" type of closed-eye visual. It was really cool. I really should get back into doing yoga and meditation and such again....
Yes! Yoga seems like it was purposefully designed to enhance tripping on psychedelics or (of course) cannabis. I noticed that when I smoked weed, I could stretch a little further without feeling uncomfortable. Since I was young, when doing stretches in gym or PE, I often felt intense discomfort before I was at my actual limit. In time, I got better at handling the discomfort when not high, and in fact, I began to notice that there was a certain psychedelic quality. Sometimes strong and difficult emotions would arise as I eased through the discomfort, and as I paused to let things relax, I could feel those emotions easing.
I should also say that when I talk of yoga, I'm not really speaking about a "competition sport" style. At one point, I was fortunate to have close attention from a very good teacher who taught me to go very slow. For example, it's normal for firm muscles to take 30 to 60 seconds to start to relax. After that time, one can often stretch a ways further.
Oh, and I don't recommend doing yoga on opiates. I know someone who strained several muscles because he misjudged his limits.
Very fascinating. This is the kind of experience I have not been fortunate enough to have myself, but I have heard others describe things along these lines before too. Psychedelics are very special indeed. I'm glad that you were able to get this experience out of your recent trip again.
I appreciate the revision too. It does seem like, at least from what I've read and heard, ego dissolution is not out of the question on mescaline, it's just (from what I can tell and also what I would guess) different from things like LSD and psilocin. You're really making me jealous, lol. I need to get some freaking cacti.
I don't know if it's really different, but I guess in so far as mescaline seems to be a much more lucid trip than the other two, the dose required for ego-dissolution may involve heavier visual and body effects than that required from LSD and maybe psilocin too.
Just speaking logically, I do think I could plausibly see this being the case. The comparison I would make is to opioids, which, at least in my experience and opinion and I believe I've seen others express this view before too, seem to actually be a lot more potent when I'm already in pain. Like, I usually only take kratom when I have a headache or a toothache or something, not only for this reason, but I notice that when I do, I get way more "high" than when I just take it for no reason. Maybe if, for instance, psychedelics are actually helping clean up inflammation in the brain, having a higher amount of it to clean up will also result in a higher level of psychedelic effect experienced while that cleaning is taking place? Just something to think about, which reading this made occur to me.
I have not experienced this, but I don't often use opiates anyway. If I do, it's almost always for pain, and then yes, it feels very nice to no longer be in pain. I make an exception for Kratom, but I haven't done that in many years. Kratom was different to me. If I start hitting the mu-crossover, that's as high as I want to be on it because any higher and I just feel horrible. That's fine by me because it was rather "fun" at low doses and worked great to relieve pain and symptoms of sickness with minimal cognitive impact. I even took a final exam on it while I had the flu.
As for psychedelics and inflammation, I can't find an example right now, but I think I've read that chronic inflammation is associated with upregulation of 5ht2a. And of course upregulation means more opportunities for serotonin or other things to bind and cause effects. That's not saying a lot though. It would be nice to know more of the details to better understand the system effects. In any case though, it's certainly possible that when my body is "triggered" that this upregulates 5ht2a in at least some places. Which ones? I have no idea. I just don't know how to explain the subjective experience, but I've learned to identify a few key triggers.
For example, I react to sun exposure. I haven't figured out if it's UVA, UVB, or just the infrared, but it triggers skin reactions together with systemtic fatigue and brain fog. It's possible this might cross over into gut symptoms as well, but I haven't note that. I've figured out that I can mostly limit sun sickness by acclimation. As long as I don't overdo it, I can become quite resistant to it, but if I do overdo it, I can have a significant reaction. Of course, I'm now seeing signs that the post-psychedelic effects also protect (to an extent at least) against sun sickness.
They finally do feel better now, but the issues did not let up until this evening. It was so bad that it kept me from sleeping for hours the night before. (This kind of thing does happen to me from time to time anyway.) Another reason I couldn't sleep were the bright, colorful CEVs and a lot of cognitive activity. I only got 4 hours but strangely haven't really felt tired today.
The gut issues were my only body complaint. Everything else felt great, and the high was so good that I carried on despite the guts for the most part. The other interesting thing though is that I was also hyper-emotional up through the time that my guts stopped being aggravated. It was quite intense at times. I'd feel all kinds of emotions, both uplifting and difficult in rapid succession with all kinds of thought patterns following along. A few times, I had feelings of anxiety that were surprisingly intense and rather disturbing. I'm used to anxiety, but something about these feelings felt unfamiliar and therefore harder to get a handle on. Thankfully these moments were fairly brief. Curiously, my guts settled rather suddenly sometime this evening, and when they did, my emotions seemed to tone down dramatically as well.
I feel like the primary effects have finally fully run their course and it's all after-effects now. I can still trip a bit with enough weed, but it's mostly just about the light show now. As amazing as my trip was, I'm glad things are feeling more solid again. My emotions touched on many themes, most of which I have identified but will need to explore more deeply in the future in other trips and probably with higher doses. A consequence of the improvement of my health is that I must now rediscover myself in the context of possessing new abilities and powers. That's damn frightening, especially because I have a very ambitious nature. This isn't the first time this has happened to me. This happened when I took psychedelics before, when I was younger, but I didn't realize to the same extent what was happening to me.
I want to leave off with something very exciting that I came across today, which is recent research showing that DOI has a strong anti-inflammatory effects in many tissues but specifically in *vascular* tissues. I presume most other psychedelics also have this effect. This is the strongest evidence I have of a potential therapeutic action for psychedelics treating Long COVID (LC). To understand why this is important, article here is an talking about recent research revealing one particular aspect of LC that presumably afflicts people with ME/CFS in general.
The microclots mentioned there which leak into muscle tissue probably leak into other tissues with a high density of microvessels like the lung, gut, kidney, and brain. Damage to the gut likely has feedback consequences as the guts leak more crap into the blood, which trigger more autoimmune activity. I've also seen it hypothesized that the damaged gut isn't able to absorb enough tryptophan to maintain serotonin levels.
So again, if an inflammation process causes damage to endothelial vascular tissues which creates microclots and tears which leak those microclots into surrounding tissues and so on..., then psychedelics may treat LC by blocking that process. Psychedelics *might* be a potent therapeutic for LC.
Now, I need some time to look at the article I found and its citations. I'm curious about timing. It wouldn't surprise me if there's some lag between the administration of the DOI or whatever any the observed response. How long? I'm thinking a few hours, and of course the DOI keeps acting which keeps activating the anti-inflammatory mechanism until it's done, but the anti-inflammatory effect persists long after. Perhaps? I don't know. I'm just excited that there may be a straightforward explanation of therapeutic action.
Heh yeah, keto is what got our iconic local politician through her obesity too I read in the news recently. Funny how those events line up.
But I remember now. I've got this Lion's Mane powder laying around for some time now, because I've never found a good way to ingest it. It literally tastes like shit. It's a stupid blockage, I mean I've ingested things worse than shit in my lifetime. But it's just the net total of the subtlety of effect gained per salient disgust evoked that just doesn't tip towards my favour. I just never came about figuring out a hack for that.
I could take cigarette paper, fold up some powder in there and ingest it, like how tweakers sometimes like to do it. But I don't like the thought of eating glue.
Any ideas for getting dingy powder past my taste palate?
Heh yeah, keto is what got our iconic local politician through her obesity too I read in the news recently. Funny how those events line up.
But I remember now. I've got this Lion's Mane powder laying around for some time now, because I've never found a good way to ingest it. It literally tastes like shit. It's a stupid blockage, I mean I've ingested things worse than shit in my lifetime. But it's just the net total of the subtlety of effect gained per salient disgust evoked that just doesn't tip towards my favour. I just never came about figuring out a hack for that.
I could take cigarette paper, fold up some powder in there and ingest it, like how tweakers sometimes like to do it. But I don't like the thought of eating glue.
Any ideas for getting dingy powder past my taste palate?
Single-ply tissue, unbleached paper if you can find it, just twist it up in little pouches and swallow like a pill, just like you were talking about with the rolling paper. The paper will dissolve a few seconds after it hits your stomach. Just be careful not to have the parachute burst in your mouth, I've had many an awful gags following botched parachutes lol.
So, this is actually a perfect segue, I think, into something I wanted to come here to talk about today before I ever read your post. Bear with me for a moment because I promise it's relevant to the kind of thing you're talking about and not just me ignoring you to say my own thing.
(Also, the fact that I came here and saw you talking about this stuff when I already wanted to make this post is another example of the kind of thing you're talking about. )
Just over the past few days, I started watching True Detective for the first time. I know it's a popular series but I never gave it a shot before now; the reason I've started now is because my dad's birthday was recently and I gave him the complete series (that's available so far) as a present since he and my mom watched it when it was coming out and really liked it, and they invited me to watch it with them this time, so I'm doing so. (I'm also only four episodes, so if you or anyone else reading this knows how it goes, please keep the spoilers to yourself!!)
I haven't been looking into the backstory too much because I don't want to spoil it to myself, but supposedly it's based on a true story, or this first season we're watching is anyway (I believe each season tells a different story, but of course I'm not that far in yet). The very opening involves the detectives the first season is based around investigating a very dark murder scene where they specifically mentioned Satanism being involved. I also apologize if you haven't seen it yet but want to and don't want it to be spoiled too, but I promise I'm not going to say anything that would ruin anything, this is all stuff the series jumps into immediately and only happens within the first couple of episodes.
Here is the murder scene from the opening of the show, please look at it if you want to understand anything I'm about to start talking about. I'm putting it behind spoiler tags since it is gruesome, even though it's just a TV recreation of a (supposedly) real case. It's hard for me to look at personally, but it's not like gory or anything, just fucked up.
From what little of the show I've seen so far, I can tell you that detectives state that they think (at this point so far, anyway, by which I mean literally the very beginning of the show) that the murderer was trying to recreate some sort of Satanic fantasy they had in mind. It's hard to see in the first picture, but there are some effigies hanging from the tree. More importantly, the murder victim you can see if a woman who has deer antlers tied to her head.
The only other thing I want to mention from the show, which again I promise is not significant spoilers, is something that happens at the very end of episode two. I'm just going to link a short clip which covers it all, just a few minutes long. Again, please watch it if you actually want to understand what I'm talking about in full.
As you can see from the clip, the detectives are investigating a burned-down Church. The scene opens with one of them having a synchronistic experience of watching birds fly around in the same pattern as the shape drawn on the woman's back in the murder scene, which he blames on drug-induced hallucinations. While investigating the Church, he finds a painting of a woman with deer antlers on her head on one of the walls. At this point, as a narrator from the future telling his story in retrospect to other detectives, he states: "But there were other times, I thought I was mainlining the secret truth of the universe."
First of all, in my experience, this feeling that he expresses here (whether it was fiction written for TV or part of the true story of this case is irrelevant) is a common part of these experiences of this type of psychosis I experience as well as dissociatives. For instance, you can see the example in the combination of LSD and DXM I took that I described to @Vastness above, to quote myself: "One of the craziest head trips I ever had from drugs was from taking LSD with DXM. I literally spent the whole peak laughing hysterically in my bedroom thinking that I had been imprisoned by the galactic police for discovering the secrets of the universe and was trapped in an insane asylum floating in a cosmic afterlife void but also was free to explore vast dreamscapes within my own mind since I had gone completely insane from the realization so I didn't give a shit anyway."
Second, this is something I drew about a year and a half ago, long before I ever watched True Detective. It is a representation of something that I experienced as part of my psychosis.
Furthermore, I didn't actually watch the episode with the synchronistic hallucination and the "mainlining the secret truth of the universe" line until yesterday, after already having made all the posts I made here as part of the discussion about this topic before this one.
This is not the first time I've had this level of synchronicity around something that I drew in relation to my psychotic experiences, or, frankly, even the strangest.
I have a friend who I have been friends with for a long time who I actually saw relatively often (especially compared to anyone else) during the course of my most severe psychotic episode, and without going into the whole story, he was involved in a lot of the stories I had running in my head, speaking with the "second voice" I mentioned before, and so on. For some reason, he's still friends with me now, not having been scared off by how insane I was, apparently. I said some extremely out there, downright magic-centered things to him. To be fair, he believed in magic to some degree at least when he was younger and would still regularly attend pagan festivals at the time, mostly to smoke cannabis with naked people, but still.
One day, long after my severe psychotic episode but still with some stuff residually going on I think more so than now (although that's not a super important detail), he came over to my house and we were just hanging out. He was opening up to me about some strange feelings he had been having lately. He is homosexual, and for as long as I have known him, he has been the kind of guy to complain about how he doesn't always feel like he fits into the gay community and lifestyle, although he's still actively attempted to. At this point, he said something very strange to me. He said something to the effect of: "I noticed lately that when I'm hanging out with other gay guys, they're always like, 'That's hot!', whereas I'm just like, 'That's cool.'" Upon hearing this, I immediately said, "Oh, I've got something for this!" I went into my room, grabbed this drawing that I had made at least weeks, maybe months prior - I can't remember exactly now, but definitely significantly before he ever said anything like this to me - and I came back out and showed it to him.
He took it from me, looked at, and read aloud: "'That's cool'.... 'That's hot'.... 'That's hysterical!...?'"
And I replied: "It is!" while smiling and holding my hands clasped together like a giddy schoolgirl.
I took it from him, put it back in my room, and came back and happily said nothing. He said something like, "What the fuck was that?!?" and I just said, "Something I drew from my psychosis."
For what it's worth, one of the times when I was psychotic - I can't remember when exactly now, but definitely later than all the Christianity-type stuff I was describing earlier to @Vastness - God (I think... been a while now) asked me if I could try to prove to people that science and magic are actually both real and share a logical, perfectly harmonious non-dualistic existence with one another. And, because I was manic as hell at the time, I was basically like, "Sure, why not?"
Yesterday, I think I thought of a good way to explain it. Bear with me here for another moment, please....
This is the logical formula that I have arrived at for understanding why science and magic are actually both opposite sides of the same coin.
Science = "I'll Believe It When I See It"
Magic = "I'll See It When I Believe It"
I have a suspicion that within this relationship I've stated here, "Science" correlates with what we call "Reward" and "Magic" correlates with what we call "Aversion" with respect to biological science. The reason why is because "Reward" seems to be specifically correlated with what scientists refer to as the "learning pathways" in the brain, where you literally see something, and subsequently believe it, while "Aversion" seems to be specifically correlated with states that we as a society tend to refer to as "magical thinking" where you become delirious and believe something without any proof, like faith, and subsequently believe that you are experiencing genuinely magical events, regardless of whether or not anyone else can see what you see, which still seem like they made sense to you in retrospect even after the event has passed even if it becomes harder for you to relate to exactly why that was the further away from the experience you get. Basically, I think another way to think of it would be, the reward pathway is associated with scientific learning where you specifically believe something because you believe you've seen the evidence and it makes sense, creating a sense of enlightenment, where the aversion pathway is the opposite, where instead you believe something because of what we think of as being the delusional state created by aversive processing reaching its maximum expression, causing you to hold a delusion with blind faith, and suddenly you actually start seeing the thing you believed in without having to see it in the first place, if that makes sense. (I think it does conceptually but excuse me or let me know if I didn't describe it perfectly, obviously these states of mind are not simple to explain.)
The thing about being a true non-duality is that one side of the coin cannot exist without the other. Light and darkness only make sense conceptually when the other is also included in the equation. Yes and no only make sense conceptually when the other is also included in the equation. And so on. Therefore, the only way science and magic can make sense conceptually as a non-duality is if one cannot exist without the other. Is that the case? Here are my thoughts on that....
One problem I've had my whole life is that science does not seem to be able to adequately explain itself. There is one single reason for this that has always bothered me: there seems to be a problem of infinite recursion when it comes to attempting to explain itself. We know the laws of physics, for instance, work the way they do, but why do they work the way they do? If everything is scientific, doesn't there have to be a reason, an explanation, and really, a set of laws that explain why the laws of physics work the way they do? And if those laws explaining the laws of physics exist, and everything is scientific and has a scientific explanation, then what is the explanation for why the laws that govern the laws of physics exist? Doesn't there have to be laws that determine why the laws that determine why the laws of physics are the way they are are the way they are? And what about those laws, don't there have to be laws determining them? And laws determining those? And those? And those?... Ad infinitum. Scientifically, it's really not a satisfying answer, at least as far as I can determine.... When thinking about the seemingly truly infinite nature of it, it kind of seems like you eventually just have to sort of arrive at: "Well, that's just the way it is." But, doesn't that kind of seem like a magical explanation more than a scientific one?...
Now here's a problem I would propose: can magic explain itself, or is it just as limited in doing so as science is with itself? Following from above, and very much in contrast to scientific explanations, magical explanations are quite easy: if something magical is truly real, then, based on the logic of how "magic" supposedly actually works, the explanation is basically just "Well, that's just the way it is.", right? Theoretically, you could say that magic explains science in the above problem this way: maybe science explains everything within itself, but the explanation itself for science might just be "Well, that's just the way it is." which is really a magical explanation as I see it, as I was getting at above. Can you do the same thing with magic? "Well, that's just the way it is."? I actually don't think you can, for one simple reason: the only reason you can assume that magic can explain science with this kind of reasoning is if you assume a context where magic already exists. That is to say, "Well, that's just the way it is." only really seems like an acceptable answer if you're willing to accept that magical-seeming answers like that actually can exist. Therefore, you can't really prove that magic exists using reasoning that already assumes that it does, right?
Now here's the other question I would propose: to fix this, can you explain magic with science? Well, let me ask you: did I not just do that? In the explanation I gave, magic is explained by science by being the opposite of science from the perspective of how we already know how science works. That is to say, magic is when you see something as a result of believing it, which occurs (theoretically) as a result of activating the part of the brain that works directly opposite to the way scientific learning works in our brains. Now, this may not prove how the true universe actually works, magic and all... but let me ask, if that actually the question? We don't ever experience the "true" universe so to speak, we only experience the representation of reality that exists within the scope of our own subjective human consciousness. So, does it actually matter whether or not this scientific explanation explains the true nature of reality, or does it just need to explain why consciousness seems to work the way it does? And, does it not do that, specifically by explaining "reward" and "aversion" as relating to "science" and "magic", respectively?
Just stick with me here for a moment.... (I don't mean to keep saying that, I just imagine this is hard to swallow but want to try to make a point, lol.) If the things that I have proposed here are true and accurate, then I would propose that the following statement is true:
Science cannot explain itself and magic cannot explain itself, but science can explain magic and magic can explain science.
As far as I can tell, the above statement, given everything I said, would be equally true to the following statement:
Light cannot explain itself and darkness cannot explain itself, but light can explain darkness and darkness can explain light.
This all has direct relevance to the story I was specifically given of the true nature of reality by the entities in my head during my severe psychotic break. Trying to make an already long story as short as possible, basically what it breaks down to is that I was told that us experiencing this universe right now the way we do specifically with time flowing in the direction that it is flowing for us right now is the "scientific interpretation" of the universe, while experiencing this universe in the opposite of the way we do right now with time flowing backward, like genuinely starting from what we would consider the "end of time" and flowing towards what we would consider the "beginning of time" instead of the opposite, is the "magical interpretation" of the universe. The explanation I was given involved the following idea: consider that science thinks that this universe is essentially like an explosion that began with a singularity of literally everything that would ever exist being contained within a single point of the smallest possible existence, the "big bang" so they say, and while scientists still debate how it's going to end, one possibility is that that explosion will basically just "finish" itself eventually, and all of reality will evaporate into nothingness like an explosion finally fading away and totally disappearing. In this idea, the universe as we experience is now would be going from everything in a single point to nothing everywhere, and the progression from that beginning to that end works in what we recognize to be a specifically scientific way. By contrast, the theoretical magical explanation for the universe going backward would be when the universe specifically begins with nothing everywhere, and, defying all scientific logic I'm aware of us knowing but seeming quite "magical" indeed if you ask me, somehow progresses from that all the way to being literally everything in a single point at the other end.
Basically what I was told by the entities in my head is that both of these time flows of the universe are valid, and that we just happen to be living in the scientific one right now, but it's perfectly possible to be experiencing the magical one as well, and that this doesn't violate any logic because it's literally just interpreting the universe in the opposite direction of the one we're going in, which I suppose I would agree with, I don't see how you can argue with that anyway. Like, that may not be the way it's going for us now, but if you simply rewound from now to the beginning, that is exactly what it would look like, so I suppose so, right? Following from this, I was told that the "weirdness" of the universe - at least as it to relates to what we're talking about here - is specifically because of this relationship. (I almost said "bear with me here for a moment".... I'll try not to anymore but please do lol.) I was essentially told by the entities that as they recognize it, the true nature of the universe from an outside perspective is essentially like a quantum physics experiment, where our entire universe is a closed system within this quantum field, meaning that even though we experience space and time here there is no actual space and time outside of this universe's perspective, it's basically just a thing that exists as is in a spaceless, timeless domain, and the "observers" of the quantum system that cause the system to decohere into something specific with an exact space-property and time-property seen from the inside rather than from the outside are the nodes of the universe that our consciousness emerges from, or that's about the right way to say it, there might be a simpler way but I'm hoping you grasp what I mean. Basically, they're saying that our universe is a quantum system where there is no space and time but consciousness already exists as a spaceless, timeless property of reality, and if you specifically are one of those consciousnesses, you can only view the system from the inside, and since you're collapsing the quantum system into your own perspective, you actually do specifically experience it with space and time yourself.
So basically, what they're saying is that consciousness itself is fundamental to the universe and already/always existed outside of space and time, although if you are a consciousness, you can only experience the universe yourself from within the perspective of space and time. This is to say, while we ourselves would be trapped forever within the perspective of having time flow in one direction or another and ourselves being in one specific place or not, from an outside perspective, the entire universe always exists in a superposition of all of its possible states already including every single thing that happens in the entirety of time and space, so the idea of time flowing in both directions and such is not really "weird" at all from that perspective, because there isn't really "time" anyway and nothing is really flowing in one direction or another from the outside, it's just always there and always will be from "start" to "finish" no matter which "direction" it collapses into from any other perspective, and for this reason, there's not really any such thing as "past", "present", or "future", and there's nothing illogical inherently about time seeming to connect in weird, spooky ways just like there's nothing weird about quantum entanglement and Einstein's so-called "spooky action at a distance", because it's basically (supposedly) just a reflection of the way the universe actually works, and not just the specific subjective perspectives we take from our specific consciousnesses as we observe that system from the inside.
To wrap it all up and tie things together I think (if I've explained it well enough, anyway), the entities told me that these nodes of consciousness that we ourselves are can exist, from the outside perspective, in two different states, which correlates to the two following types of consciousness from the inside perspective: ones that experience what we would call the beginning of time from this "forward" time flow we're in now as the beginning of their own time-constrained existence and experience what we would call the end of time from this "forward" time flow we're in now as the end of their own time-constrained existence, and ones that are the exact opposite, experiencing what we call the "end of time" as their beginning and what we call the "beginning of time" as their end. I know this is getting a bit more complex and not just about more basic concepts like space and time, so I'm not going to get too deep into it right now, but basically, the reason they explained this to me was to introduce the following concept: essentially, they said that every node of consciousness in this universe will actually experience time in both directions one after another repeatedly forever in an infinite loop, with one direction being "life" for them and the second direction being "afterlife" for them, but which way is which changes for you depending on which of the two states your consciousness node is in, and both occupy the same spacetime collapse simultaneously; ergo, what you specifically experience as your "life", there are others who experience that as their "life" too but simultaneously others who are experiencing that exact same time flow as their "afterlife" instead, and what you experience as your "afterlife", there are others who experience that as their "afterlife" too but simultaneously others who are experiencing that exact same time flow as their "life" instead. Furthermore, they conveyed to me that essentially the way that understand reality is that the consciousnesses who experience what we could call the "backward" time flow as their "life" are actually the ones who create the structure of the universe through magic, and then they "die" and start experiencing their "afterlife" as time flips from "backward" to "forward", and everyone who experiences what we would call the "forward" time flow as their "life" explore that universe and understand it scientifically as it breaks back down into nothing, and then they "die" and start experiencing their "afterlife" as time flips from "forward" to "backward", and those who created the universe "backward" the first time become "alive" again and start recreating the universe all over again, and that that's just the nature of reality and consciousness as we go around and around in this cosmic dance forever.
This is all to say, in this interpretation of reality, "science" and "magic" are once again just non-dualistic opposites that both logically coexist within the structure of the universe. In this scientific time flow we live in where we are used to order devolving chaos, it may seem odd to consider the exact opposite where chaos evolves into order, but it doesn't really require any more logic than understanding how you can watch a TV show play out backward by hitting rewind. Again, it just makes them two sides of the same coin. Additionally, I think, proposing that what we call the "reward and learning pathways" as being scientific makes sense to me because if we really are specifically in the scientific time flow, then having a scientific experience should, I would think, correlate to our minds accurately understanding something about the reality we are perceiving, while having a "magical" experience would be correctly interpreting the exact opposite of the way things are in this time flow, although on the other hand, if we were living life in the backward flow it would be the opposite, correctly perceiving the nature of reality would result in a "magical" experience and incorrectly perceiving it as the opposite of the true nature of reality would result in a "scientific" experience instead. Using this logic, we can theoretically propose that even if one flow of time is specifically scientific in nature and the opposite is specifically magical, it could still be possible for any specific node of consciousness to have both scientific and magical experiences within the same single flow of time, regardless of which what they're going, just depending on how exactly their consciousness is interpreting the nature of reality around them at that moment, which again I think may be specifically attached to the bipolar construct of reward and aversion, or, again, in other words, "I'll Believe It When I See It" and "I'll See It When I Believe It".
Do you know what drugs activate the "aversion" pathways in the brain? Psychedelics, dissociatives, salvia, cannabis.... That's part of why they're so distinctly different from and even in some ways opposite to drugs that specifically favor activation of the "reward" pathways instead, like stimulants and opioids. At least, that's what our understanding of the science seems to suggest.
What I would propose is specifically that the reason it tends to seem like a scientific interpretation of events is more accurate than a magical interpretation of events in our universe is not actually because one can exist without the other, but rather because magical interpretations are far easier than scientific interpretations. That is to say, if you wanted to have a complete, 100% understanding of the scientific interpretation of the universe, you would have to understand literally everything in the universe in every way at once, from the perspective of scientific logic. On the other hand, if you wanted to have a complete, 100% understanding of the magical interpretation of the universe, you don't have to understand literally anything in any way ever, you just have to understand the perspective of magical logic itself: things just either are the way they are, or they aren't. Basically, science is trying to understand the way that everything works, and magic is trying to understand the way that nothing works... or, you know, something like that. The non-duality of science and magic is basically like the non-duality of everything and nothing, from this perspective, although this description of it might be getting slightly more poetic than I'm willing to continue on with right now....
Personally, I have experienced things that seem like magic. From what I can determine, it does seem like they came from seeking experiences of aversion rather than reward. They are so convincing to me that I do not personally feel like I can make a sound argument that magic cannot possibly have been involved, even though I feel like I can throw in concepts like 'coincidence' theoretically as well. I feel like I have come to accept that this is simply the nature of my consciousness, regardless of whether or not it is the true nature of the reality we inhabit - and I don't feel at all convinced that it is either, because as I have said here multiple times now, I don't believe things just because they seem like they could be true. That being said, I also don't feel like I have any argument against the possibility that the "magical" nature of reality from this explanation is genuine too. I tried for a long time to disprove it to myself, and so far have not been able to. So that's where I am right now, anyway.
The way I generally behave is as if it might be true, but only if it's not in violation of my scientific understanding of reality, because as I said, this theory proposes that science and magic explain each other, and literally cannot exist without one another. I suspect that this is what people who abandon the scientific interpretation for a purely magical one miss, but also what people who abandon the magical interpretation for a purely scientific one miss. Maybe magic is real, but if my ideas are correct, it can only possibly be real in ways that simultaneously do not violate scientific reasoning. That may sound like a contradiction, but I don't believe it is, just like how watching the universe on rewind is not a contradiction because it's just the logical opposite of watching it flow forward, even though trying to analyze the backward flow from chaos to order seems "magical" in comparison to the "scientific" interpretation we have of watching it flow forward from order to chaos.
Ergo, science and magic are actually both real and share a logical, perfectly harmonious non-dualistic existence with one another. Theoretically.
(I hope that was clear enough, God.)
If you want my advice, if the idea of doing something makes you afraid, do it. Only once you face the possibility of absolute, 100% aversion and do it anyway will something truly magical happen for you.
"Truly".
( .... )
However, if the thing you're afraid of doing is something morally wrong, then don't do it. That just makes you a piece of shit who would do anything to experience magic even if it's at the expense of other people. Use drugs to simulate experiences if you have to. That's the beauty of drugs. Nothing is immoral if it happens entirely within your own head. Be warned that it might make you worse off psychologically to chase this darkness though, that's something I know all too much about as well.
If you ever hear someone unironically utter the phrase "I know now what I must do." run away from that person. As fast as you possibly can. That's my advice. Take it or leave it.
The bottom of the aversion rabbit hole is a very dark place.
Incidentally, I've had a shared dream with someone before too. Like, a creepy amount of shared detail, and they described it to me before I described mine to them, so I know it's real (real that the details were the same, that is). One time isn't scientific proof of anything, though. Try not to give into magical thinking, lol.
You and me both, brother. I'm crazy as fucking shit. Or I'm the sanest person alive. I haven't figured out which yet.
Have fun with that! Assuming the main alkaloid is a weak 5ht2a agonist (for some serotonin-like effect), and assuming that causes it to synergize with cannabis like most other 5ht2a psychedelics, I wonder how the relative "weakness" of agonism affects the synergy?
I'm not sure how to properly judge this, but I feel like the synergy with mescaline has been surprisingly strong. Even today, the second day after, by smoking enough cannabis I pretty much started tripping again with some pretty heavy duty mental and emotional effects. After the 2C-B, smoking a lot of weed mainly seemed to make me feel energetic, euphoric, and maybe bring some patterns back. I think with 2C-I and 2C-E, it was a bit more interesting, but the mescaline has been intense.
Thanks, I'm looking forward to it. My glaucine has arrived now too, heh heh.
For what it's worth, I've noticed that while there seems to be a large discrepancy in the responses people report to 5-methoxytryptamines, I have observed that it seems like a lot of the difference in psychedelic magnitude seems like it could relate partly to whether or not cannabis was added to the experience. I have generally always felt like I was actually highly sensitive to 5-methoxytryptamines compared to other people, but I would always smoke lots of cannabis while on them (and any other psychedelic). Furthermore, the difference seems... frankly fairly huge; lots of people report that these molecules often have practically no visuals and few mental effects and mostly feel like party psychedelics, and yet I personally found them to have some of the most powerful hallucinogenic and dissociative effects of any psychedelics, and I have found evidence that there are others who've felt the same too despite their general reputation. So, maybe cannabis actually can do quite a lot with what would otherwise be perceived to be "weak" psychedelics? Just a thought.
Just considering that I often see people say they're surprised at the subtlety of mescaline for them, perhaps a similar synergy with cannabis could apply here? Of course, I could propose other ideas too, like the fact that mescaline seems to have significantly higher 5-HT1A receptor affinity than most other psychedelic phenethylamines, which could produce some trailing effects. It's interesting to think about for sure.
I was just about to move on, but it considered to me to say that 5-methoxytryptamines of course probably have high 5-HT1A receptor affinity compared to other tryptamines too.... Maybe there is something to that. They do say that 5-HT1A receptor agonism in some ways actually counteracts some of the effects of 5-HT2A receptor agonism. Maybe that's part of what causes these psychedelics to seem more subtle on their own, but also something about them become unexpectedly present when brought out with cannabis perhaps because it was already more present than the user normally would have expected otherwise for the same level of other more obviously present psychedelic effects?
I'm probably going to be thinking more about this too....
Yes! Yoga seems like it was purposefully designed to enhance tripping on psychedelics or (of course) cannabis. I noticed that when I smoked weed, I could stretch a little further without feeling uncomfortable. Since I was young, when doing stretches in gym or PE, I often felt intense discomfort before I was at my actual limit. In time, I got better at handling the discomfort when not high, and in fact, I began to notice that there was a certain psychedelic quality. Sometimes strong and difficult emotions would arise as I eased through the discomfort, and as I paused to let things relax, I could feel those emotions easing.
I should also say that when I talk of yoga, I'm not really speaking about a "competition sport" style. At one point, I was fortunate to have close attention from a very good teacher who taught me to go very slow. For example, it's normal for firm muscles to take 30 to 60 seconds to start to relax. After that time, one can often stretch a ways further.
This makes a lot of sense to me. I think there's a reason that yoga is generally considered to be more within the realm of "mystical" or "spiritual" activities and not just, you know, another type of exercise. What you describe reminds me of learning to work with some of the psychedelic substances that I ultimately ended up liking a lot more than I initially expected I might, like psychedelic amphetamines for instance. The "body loads" that people often complain about with DOx for example I mean, through my experiences I found that by treating them as still just a part of the psychedelic experience I was learning to adjust to with practice, I was able to completely extinguish that discomfort from any of my further experiences with them beyond a certain point. I actually consider it a very significant part of my own personal therapeutic journey with psychedelics and have found others to find advice I gave them about treating those drugs in a similar way to be useful as well.
I'll definitely be thinking about that more in relation to yoga now too.... I appreciate the perspective.
I don't know if it's really different, but I guess in so far as mescaline seems to be a much more lucid trip than the other two, the dose required for ego-dissolution may involve heavier visual and body effects than that required from LSD and maybe psilocin too.
When I said that I was really thinking more along the lines of the trips overall being different at that point, just theoretically of course since I can't speak from any firsthand experience with mescaline. Like, ego dissolution may be the same regardless, but 4-substituted tryptamines including mushrooms have a tendency to make me feel sort of "drunk" at higher dosages in a way other psychedelics largely don't, and LSD and other lysergamides seem to tend to make my thinking feel a bit more scattered and hectic than other psychedelics, and stuff like that, whereas phenethylamines in general are often remarkably lucid for me, so I could see that applying to mescaline too even at ego dissolution dosages. I figured that might be part of why people expect less of that from it in general, not because it can't do it, but because perhaps they are conflating unrelated psychological effects from things like LSD and psilocin with ego dissolution when they aren't really a part of that, and then notice that they don't get those kinds of effects from mescaline so they think it's not producing it as much. Just a guess, though.
I have not experienced this, but I don't often use opiates anyway. If I do, it's almost always for pain, and then yes, it feels very nice to no longer be in pain. I make an exception for Kratom, but I haven't done that in many years. Kratom was different to me. If I start hitting the mu-crossover, that's as high as I want to be on it because any higher and I just feel horrible. That's fine by me because it was rather "fun" at low doses and worked great to relieve pain and symptoms of sickness with minimal cognitive impact. I even took a final exam on it while I had the flu.
Yeah, I consider kratom to be distinct from other opioids too, and it certainly is pharmacologically in multiple ways too including having multiple entirely non-opioid mechanisms of action that are at work simultaneously to an atypical opioid receptor activity base. I try not to use it more than I feel that I need to as a medicine, but I think it's quite nice personally. Frankly, I actually think it's an excellent antipsychotic, providing me with a clear head on a similar level to olanzapine I think without any of the annoying sedation, generally uncomfortable feelings, or side effects like increased risk of weight gain or diabetes. When I take it I almost always feel like I can think more clearly than when I'm not on it, and a lot of the psychotic type of stuff I've been describing in other posts here generally stops happening if it was going on in the first place until the high wears off.
I also don't like taking very much of it. I once took I think like seven capsules and I was constipated for days, it was awful. The high was barely even stronger than normal and not really meaningfully better too. I usually stick to only a single capsule, but sometimes I take two if I'm in more pain that normal for some reason.
I also find it to be an excellent dream enhancer, although I don't take it just for that reason (I think using it at all requires more justification than that, as nice as it is). Just throwing that out there. It's definitely been the most interesting drug with opioid properties for me so far, although having taken things like hydrocodone and oxycodone too, I do definitely understand why people find those things more addictive too. But mostly just more addictive.... I think I'd still say I think kratom might be more actually fun than those other drugs, at least for me and the way I react to them.
As for psychedelics and inflammation, I can't find an example right now, but I think I've read that chronic inflammation is associated with upregulation of 5ht2a. And of course upregulation means more opportunities for serotonin or other things to bind and cause effects. That's not saying a lot though. It would be nice to know more of the details to better understand the system effects. In any case though, it's certainly possible that when my body is "triggered" that this upregulates 5ht2a in at least some places. Which ones? I have no idea. I just don't know how to explain the subjective experience, but I've learned to identify a few key triggers.
For example, I react to sun exposure. I haven't figured out if it's UVA, UVB, or just the infrared, but it triggers skin reactions together with systemtic fatigue and brain fog. It's possible this might cross over into gut symptoms as well, but I haven't note that. I've figured out that I can mostly limit sun sickness by acclimation. As long as I don't overdo it, I can become quite resistant to it, but if I do overdo it, I can have a significant reaction. Of course, I'm now seeing signs that the post-psychedelic effects also protect (to an extent at least) against sun sickness.
That's very interesting. I'd love to hear more observations like these if/as you have them down the line. I truly do think psychedelics have the potential to be incredible medicines, and also the more reason I have to convince myself to keep taking them the better, heh.
They finally do feel better now, but the issues did not let up until this evening. It was so bad that it kept me from sleeping for hours the night before. (This kind of thing does happen to me from time to time anyway.) Another reason I couldn't sleep were the bright, colorful CEVs and a lot of cognitive activity. I only got 4 hours but strangely haven't really felt tired today.
The gut issues were my only body complaint. Everything else felt great, and the high was so good that I carried on despite the guts for the most part. The other interesting thing though is that I was also hyper-emotional up through the time that my guts stopped being aggravated. It was quite intense at times. I'd feel all kinds of emotions, both uplifting and difficult in rapid succession with all kinds of thought patterns following along. A few times, I had feelings of anxiety that were surprisingly intense and rather disturbing. I'm used to anxiety, but something about these feelings felt unfamiliar and therefore harder to get a handle on. Thankfully these moments were fairly brief. Curiously, my guts settled rather suddenly sometime this evening, and when they did, my emotions seemed to tone down dramatically as well.
I have two trains of thought going in entirely different directions here....
First of all, are you able to make any sort of meaningful comparison to pure/synthetic mescaline here? I'm curious mainly because 4-substituted tryptamines for example usually don't give me any nausea, but when I had my mushroom trip recently I definitely felt like I was getting close to puking for a while at the peak, to a point that it was very hard for me not to wonder if the difference compared to my reaction to synthetic 4-substituted tryptamines was not just from my stomach having to digest the mushroom material. This being said, I also felt that the trip was reminiscent of DMT and wondered if the nausea was not just the same kind people also tend to describe from ayahuasca. (Although, maybe that could also be in significant part from plant matter?...) For what it's worth, I did not puke, but rather managed to push forward to the point that I suddenly had a very profound peak at which point it became a lot less clear to me whether I thought it was really just the mushroom material in my stomach or not that was causing that. Still, I'm just curious if this effect might be worse for you from eating cacti, or if it's more just like a mescaline thing in general.
The other, crazier-sounding thought is that I kind of think our guts have a mind of their own... heh. I have literally talked to mine and had them talk back before. That being said, I've done all kinds of... weird shit. But, speaking from the perspective of, "Why do we experience the strange altered state things that we do?" This whole connection you draw between your guts and feeling emotions, it kind of makes sense to me. Sometimes I wonder how much stuff like this would actually just seem like commonplace aspects of consciousness to us, but maybe we've evolved to filter stuff out like that normally in a way that psychedelics have the capacity to start revealing stuff like that to us more consciously once again? After all, we definitely didn't just, you know... wake up one day the way we are now. Our mind-body connections must have gone through just as many evolutionary permutations as the rest of the totality of what we are.
I feel like the primary effects have finally fully run their course and it's all after-effects now. I can still trip a bit with enough weed, but it's mostly just about the light show now. As amazing as my trip was, I'm glad things are feeling more solid again. My emotions touched on many themes, most of which I have identified but will need to explore more deeply in the future in other trips and probably with higher doses.
That's damn frightening, especially because I have a very ambitious nature. This isn't the first time this has happened to me. This happened when I took psychedelics before, when I was younger, but I didn't realize to the same extent what was happening to me.
I want to leave off with something very exciting that I came across today, which is recent research showing that DOI has a strong anti-inflammatory effects in many tissues but specifically in *vascular* tissues. I presume most other psychedelics also have this effect. This is the strongest evidence I have of a potential therapeutic action for psychedelics treating Long COVID (LC). To understand why this is important, article here is an talking about recent research revealing one particular aspect of LC that presumably afflicts people with ME/CFS in general.
The microclots mentioned there which leak into muscle tissue probably leak into other tissues with a high density of microvessels like the lung, gut, kidney, and brain. Damage to the gut likely has feedback consequences as the guts leak more crap into the blood, which trigger more autoimmune activity. I've also seen it hypothesized that the damaged gut isn't able to absorb enough tryptophan to maintain serotonin levels.
So again, if an inflammation process causes damage to endothelial vascular tissues which creates microclots and tears which leak those microclots into surrounding tissues and so on..., then psychedelics may treat LC by blocking that process. Psychedelics *might* be a potent therapeutic for LC.
Now, I need some time to look at the article I found and its citations. I'm curious about timing. It wouldn't surprise me if there's some lag between the administration of the DOI or whatever any the observed response. How long? I'm thinking a few hours, and of course the DOI keeps acting which keeps activating the anti-inflammatory mechanism until it's done, but the anti-inflammatory effect persists long after. Perhaps? I don't know. I'm just excited that there may be a straightforward explanation of therapeutic action.
Very intriguing and I appreciate the link. With modern science being what it is, I do think there's a good chance we'll get this stuff figured out eventually, and it does seem like we're on the way there. I hope we do get there too for your and everyone else's sakes too.
Would love to hear any more insights you get about it from future research too.
I love a good long-lived psychedelic. My jealousy continues to grow....
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