Psychedelics and the 'Blindsight' Phenomenon?

[Jabberwocky]

I am interested in creating an actual/metaphorical parallel from the psychedelic state to the phenomenon of 'blindsight.' Perhaps you can help.

The psychedelic state can be characterized by a unique awareness of a reality, extra-sensory, extra-dimensional, other-worldly(?).

Blindsight is a bizarre phenomenon wherein a person has access (on a computational/unconscious level) to visual information, but is not aware (phenomenally) of it. Flash a card with a number on it in front of a person suffering from blindsight and while they are not consciously aware of what you are doing, they can still tell you, far greater than probability allows, what number is on the card. There is a bit of neuroscience to back this up. What is likely the case in these people, is that all (or most) of their early visual cortices are damaged, thus barring the possibility for them to form a visual image of the card. However, as long as other, collateral, structures responsible for mental representation/computation are uninjured (as well as the requisite visual apparatus, retina, nerve structure, etc) the person will still receive the raw data of the card (in the form of a retinal image), preform a quick (haha) operation of inverse optics on the image, translating it to a raw form of mental language, and process it through the appropriate structures (parietal cortices, thalamus, etc). What will result, of course, are mental representations of the card, only minus the accompanying 3d image of it. Thus a person sees without experiencing seeing.

Do psychedelics open us up to seeing something that we are always seeing just unaware of?

Do psychedelics allow us to use our brain structures in a way that we normally do not?

Are psychedelics affecting the evolutionary process of the human organism?

Your thoughts, please!

 

[specialspack]

Your take on blindsight phenomena is that they indicate the presence of representations (contra- Noe etc)? What form do these representations take? They are clearly non-visual and non-verbal. To clarify these experiments, subjects claim to not be able to see or describe anything in (parts of) thei visual field.

When prompted to guess what they saw, they are correct at greater than chance (how much I'm not sure). Usually in these experiments, unless I'm mistaken, the subject is informed about the type of visual experience (ie "its a number) or given a range of objects to guess from. I don't think that open ended experiments, asking the subject to guess at a random object without clue as to what it is would produce such significant results - but I'm not aware if this has been done. Methodolgy of these kinds of experiments is important to consider before drawing conclusions from them.

Do psychedelics open us up to seeing something that we are always seeing just unaware of?

Do psychedelics allow us to use our brain structures in a way that we normally do not?

Are psychedelics affecting the evolutionary process of the human organism?

1. " Seeing" meaning getting information on the external world? If that is the case, then one would expect other methods to reveal these things beyond ordinary awareness... eg technological assisted probing.

2. Of course, I think that's part of the definition of an "altered state", but this alternate use can only be value neutral, not "better" or "worse" unless you want to suggest some external scale of comparison (doomed to failure, I think).

3. I read this as "progress" not process and was about to start ranting about the nonsensical view of "progress" in evolution . Before commenting further I think you should define what you mean by the "evolutionary process of the human organism" - traditionally that would be sexual & natural selection?

 

[shoshin]

Yes, yes, no.

What a lot of psychs do is to lower your noise-rejection filters, allowing stimuli to percolate up to consciousness that would normally remain more "below the surface" (I find they always make me more honest with myself and others and make me more acutely able to pinpoint the source of problems in my life and fix them, both large and small). They increase your sensitivity to novelty (which I think is incidentally what causes the time dilation), making you notice aspects of things that you've always experienced before but were never acutely aware of. So yeah, the blindsight analogy seems good. But I have no idea how you think they could be affecting human evolution given how such a tiny minority of people even use them.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Your take on blindsight phenomena is that they indicate the presence of representations (contra- Noe etc)? What form do these representations take? They are clearly non-visual and non-verbal. To clarify these experiments, subjects claim to not be able to see or describe anything in (parts of) thei visual field.

When prompted to guess what they saw, they are correct at greater than chance (how much I'm not sure). Usually in these experiments, unless I'm mistaken, the subject is informed about the type of visual experience (ie "its a number) or given a range of objects to guess from. I don't think that open ended experiments, asking the subject to guess at a random object without clue as to what it is would produce such significant results - but I'm not aware if this has been done. Methodolgy of these kinds of experiments is important to consider before drawing conclusions from them.

Yes, the point stands that there are different neural pathways for information. Some (i.e. visual cortice) process information and represent an image, others (thalamus is key) process the information in a more raw/'access-consciousness'(N.Block) form. So, the point of blindsight is that a person can 'think' about something without being able to represent a 3d image of it (dang I guess we have to abandon imagism!).

1. " Seeing" meaning getting information on the external world? If that is the case, then one would expect other methods to reveal these things beyond ordinary awareness... eg technological assisted probing.

Yes, seeing is providing a colloquial place-holder for accessing reality (the sense modality itself is irrelevant). So, you would equate psychedelics with a microscope or some other high-powered tool?

2. Of course, I think that's part of the definition of an "altered state", but this alternate use can only be value neutral, not "better" or "worse" unless you want to suggest some external scale of comparison (doomed to failure, I think).

Why does it have to be value neutral? I think it is natural for our organism to place value on certain experiences (rite of passage, etc). The psychedelic experience is nothing if not profound and personal. Can we not judge the value of this?

3. I read this as "progress" not process and was about to start ranting about the nonsensical view of "progress" in evolution . Before commenting further I think you should define what you mean by the "evolutionary process of the human organism" - traditionally that would be sexual & natural selection?

The evolutionary process, focusing on why our organism chose intelligence over all other attributes (strength, speed, size, etc) for reproductive fitness.

The metaphor is being completed!!!! 8(

 

[Jabberwocky]

Yes, yes, no.

What a lot of psychs do is to lower your noise-rejection filters, allowing stimuli to percolate up to consciousness that would normally remain more "below the surface" (I find they always make me more honest with myself and others and make me more acutely able to pinpoint the source of problems in my life and fix them, both large and small). They increase your sensitivity to novelty (which I think is incidentally what causes the time dilation), making you notice aspects of things that you've always experienced before but were never acutely aware of. So yeah, the blindsight analogy seems good. But I have no idea how you think they could be affecting human evolution given how such a tiny minority of people even use them.

This 'filtering' process is a result of evolution, i.e. our organism has selected to filter out a large percentage of stimuli in exchange for the ability to concentrate on certain things (i.e. snakes!). If psychedelics are 'unwinding' this process, allowing us to become more open and accepting of our environmental stimuli, does this not affect our (and others) future lives?

Do (some of us) live in a world where we do not need our 'snake eyes' anymore?

There's an awesome sci-fi short story 'none so blind' that you should read.

 

[skahead17]

i think psychadelics let us see the worlds true form. for instance there is energy flowing all around us all the time. that energy can never be created or destoryed and is going in and out of different forms. so on a psychadelic i believe that we can see all that energy around us, and we can see the "real" world.

 

[Xorkoth]

Do psychedelics open us up to seeing something that we are always seeing just unaware of?

I think it depends on what you mean by "seeing". I have a hunch that you meant does it open us up to perceiving something that we are always perceiving but not aware of. In that case, yes, I do think so. Although some would disagree with me, I believe that there are various forms of energy that we have not yet scientifically discovered all around us, that we are able to sense if we try and know what to look for. Children and many animals seem to be able to sense these things, simply because they haven't blocked them out yet. Our society tends to cause children to block out everything that isn't currently believed in by the "normal" population. I mean, we can sense electricity around us, but until it was discovered, no one would have known what it was or even believed that it was an invisible energy. Since using psychedelics (especially in the past few months and year), I have noticed that while on them, I seem to have access to the perception of many different kinds of energy, amounting to accessing the thoughts of others, imposing my mind state upon sober people, and so forth. Now, when I'm not on psychedelics, I can still do this to some extent because I practice it and think about it alot. It doesn't come naturally like it does on various psychedelics, but I can bring it into focus if I try.

Do psychedelics allow us to use our brain structures in a way that we normally do not?

I'm not sure, but I suspect so, simply because there are a lot of areas in our brain that we rarely or never use in sobriety (although we use some of them while asleep and probably in special situations that we're mostly unaware of) In my mind, it stands to reason that when your perception of the world and your thoughts are dramatically altered while on a psychedelic, some other areas of the brain are being stimulated. Otherwise, it seems to me that we'd just be perceiving and thinking in the same way we always do.

Are psychedelics affecting the evolutionary process of the human organism?

Physically? I'm not sure. But mentally? My belief is yes, that we're approaching a point of change in our race, or perhaps in the collective consciousness. I don't think this is caused directly by psychedelic, but I do think that psychedelics have provided the key and will continue to help. I also think that by using psychedelics in a mindful way is slowly beginning to affect us all. I can't even tell you how many times my trips have affected others around me (especially this weekend... I will be posting a Trip Report sometime, hopefully today).

Which reminds me - did anyone else experience a really bizarre Sunday/Saturday night? Everyone I know did. I will explain more in my trip report.

 

[shoshin]

Sorry, when you say "evolution" I think in terms of changes in genetic variation in a population over time. Certainly psychoactive drugs alter our minds and lives, but there's nothing heritable about the changes they make and thus nothing for natural selection to act on. But there is a possible way in which hallucinogens *could* alter the course of human evolution indirectly. Follw me down the rabbit hole a moment if you will . . .

General intelligence of the sort that humans have evolved as a way of dealing with a complex environment -- by being able to construct mental models of that environment, we can predict it and thus increase our chances of surviving and thriving. There's a sort of natural selection process that goes on in the human brain that acts on memes (patterns of neural information) instead of genes (patterns of genetic information), with some degree of mutation and recombination going on inside each person's mind. When someone discovers a novel idea they think is pretty good, usually they'll share it with others via language, either verbally or writing it down, thus adding it to the memepool. Human technological and cultural evolution feeds on these novel mutations in much the same way that biological evolution feeds on novel genetic combinations.

But the kinds of ideas we can generate are highly constrained by the biological structure of our brains, imposing limits on memetic variation. (Which is good: too much variation and the system spins apart, being nolonger able to cope with the amount of new material it's given. Evolution works best as a series of small steps.) This is where hallucinogens come in: what hallucinogens do is allow you to combine ideas in unusual ways, allowing you to temporarily jump outside the normal boundaries imposed by your "normal" ways of processing information. When you come back, if you're lucky, you might have found a useful new idea to throw into the memepool that might not have otherwise been possible to think of.

And if it really is a good idea, it'll probably spread through the entire culture given enough time. Which can in turn affect genetic evolution: cultural change is environmental change, and changes in environment throw humans out of adaptive equilibrium, which invites evolution to do its thing. There are dozens of ways in which culture accelerates evolution; just to pick one, if you look at the Bushmen of the Kalahari, they're short guys that hunt big game. They couldn't do that without poison-tipped arrows, and before the invention of ballistic weaponry nobody could do it -- archaic humans were much bigger and built like linebackers. But the invention of arrows and suchlike allowed big game hunting without the need for massive bodies, which opened up a selective niche for populations like the Bushmen to evolve to be smaller (saves on energy costs) while still thriving. Quite literally, the bow begat the Bushmen.

This is just one example of cultural change accelerating genetic change, and I could list dozens more. The upshot being that *if* hallucinogens are responsible for memetic mutations of large importance, they will indirectly affect human evolution by altering our environment. Whether they're likely to have been is harder to say; I tend to discount it. Though if there are any anthropologists in the audience with an extensive knowledge of hallucinogen use by primative cultures we might find some suggestive pointers . . .

 

[shoshin]

i think psychadelics let us see the worlds true form. for instance there is energy flowing all around us all the time. that energy can never be created or destoryed and is going in and out of different forms. so on a psychadelic i believe that we can see all that energy around us, and we can see the "real" world.

This kind of thing vexes me. A lot of people who try hallucinogens suddenly think that they're seeing things "as they really are" (whatever that means), but what reason do you have to believe that what you're seeing with the aid of psychs is any more "real" than what you see normally? My philosophical adjustment since I started using psychs has been in the opposite direction: it's made me *more* skeptical of my perceptions, on psychs or off. A very welcome dose of humility.

 

[shoshin]

I have noticed that while on them, I seem to have access to the perception of many different kinds of energy, amounting to accessing the thoughts of others, imposing my mind state upon sober people, and so forth.

I doubt that there's anything too unusual going on here -- human empathy is a powerful thing, and we're constantly giving off signals (and picking up on them) in ways that we're not conscious of, and it's not too surprising that you might be able to suggest certain thought patterns to them through subtle means (or maybe they're doing it to you!). I think this sort of thing is the cause of "contact highs" (assuming there's any validity to the idea at all).

there are a lot of areas in our brain that we rarely or never use in sobriety . . . In my mind, it stands to reason that when your perception of the world and your thoughts are dramatically altered while on a psychedelic, some other areas of the brain are being stimulated. Otherwise, it seems to me that we'd just be perceiving and thinking in the same way we always do.

Not necessarily. Contrary to popular myth you actually do use pretty much all of your brain. Think about it: brains are thermodynamically expensive (your brain uses up about 20% of your body's energy *at rest*!), and there'd be no point in having anything up there that didn't serve any purpose, so evolution would tend to pare down the brain until only bits that had some adaptive sigificance were left. What's more likely to be changing under the use of psychs isn't the *number* of elements active in your brain but the *combinations* in which they're used.

Physically? I'm not sure. But mentally? My belief is yes, that we're approaching a point of change in our race, or perhaps in the collective consciousness. I don't think this is caused directly by psychedelic, but I do think that psychedelics have provided the key and will continue to help. I also think that by using psychedelics in a mindful way is slowly beginning to affect us all.

I'm curious about what you mean here and look forward to seeing you expand on it.

Which reminds me - did anyone else experience a really bizarre Sunday/Saturday night? Everyone I know did.

I cleaned up my whole house, which I guess is a pretty unusual event.

 

[B9]

Do psychedelics open us up to seeing something that we are always seeing just unaware of?

Yes I think so !

Do psychedelics allow us to use our brain structures in a way that we normally do not

Yes I think so !

Are psychedelics affecting the evolutionary process of the human organism?

No I think not , at least not in any "accelerated" form.


This I will say, the psychedelic user is more likely to become aware of things which are largely intangible in the world of time + three dimensions and the 5 senses !
They can and do produce a kind of super sense , they do allow access to that which the brain filters out!
I also would assert that these "insights" are not merely hallucinatory or delusional but have a basis in genetic memories.
200 million years of information coded and stored in our heads and we open the doors to things that cannot be quantified in out framework , we interpret as best we can .
That said certain events lead me to feel that "something" is universally available for us , a kind of awareness or energy!
If we choose to try to label this or create dogma around it we may well become the new Timothy Learys of the modern age.
Take from it what you are given , choose your own way do the best you can with it !
This "need" for greater meaning is a falsity some seek after. What can it avail you to do ? Can you not do the best you can irrespective of various pet theories about all manner of unlikely named phenomena.
If you're to be ran over next Wednesday , will it make any difference if you know this ?
If you believe in preordination (I do not , although some things are inevitable) you will be well aware there's nothing you can do , you are powerless, a puppet if you will!
If you do not then that's a different story , just act the way you know you ought and don't waste your time chasing pots of gold lurking (allegedly ) at the end of the rainbow !
The rainbow is the gold.

 

[solistus]

Woo, a chance to go off on philosophic tangents about psychedelics!

My take on psychedelics is best explained by starting with my take on sober experience. I ascribe to the Lacanian theory of the Real. Basically, the idea is that there is a reality that "just is" (Zizek is fond of referring to it as "flat, stupid reality"). This is the Real.

Humyns cannot normally access or 'touch' the Real; our minds, both conscious and unconscious, function on another level: the Symbolic (i.e., language). We construct symbolic models and representations of the Real world we experience. These attempts to describe the Real are never adequate; any particular symbolic representation of a Real event will necessarily be unable to account for some pre-linguistic element of the event. A common example of this is Shoah (the Holocaust): no matter how accurately one describes the events that happened, the Real traumatic kernel of Shoah always eludes us.

The Imaginary represents our non-linguistic attachments to various signifiers and essentially occupies the space of the lack; I cannot symbolically/linguistically account for the horror of Shoah, but there still rests within my unconscious some sense of that inexpressible horror.

It is important to note that the Imaginary is not a means by which our unconscious minds can touch the Real; the Imaginary is essentially subservient to the Symbolic, as we form 'Imaginary psychic registers' around specific Symbolic signifiers (e.g., I can have some Imaginary sense of Shoah, but I can only access/understand that sense as it relates to the linguistic signifier 'Shoah' itself; I still can't transcend my dependence on the Symbolic).

Most of Lacanian theory is built around this 'gap' or 'lack' between the Real and the Symbolic and the its interplay with the Imaginary. My interpretation of psychedelics (ah, thought I'd forgotten about that and gone completely OT, eh?) is that they temporarily disrupt the 'sense-making drive' that compels us to interpret all our experiences from the backdrop of our Symbolic understanding of the world. This is not to say that psychedelics cause us to think without language / Symbolic structures; some particularly intense moments of psychedelia may cause this, but IME psychs typically leave a Symbolic 'train of thought' going, albeit in altered form. However, psychedelics allow us to experience and imagine things that "don't add up" without this bothering us. An obvious manifestation of this would be the common experience of thinking contradictory things simultaneously.

IMHO, this is what accounts for the 'lowering the filters' effect that many use to describe psychedelics. Various thoughts and sensory inputs are typically discarded as 'junk' because they either don't fit or are unnecessary for the process of sense-making. By temporarily shattering the hegemony of rationality over our minds, psychedelics allow us to explore mental terrains that are usually inaccessible to us due to the way we make sense of the world.

In terms of evolution, I think psychedelics certainly seem to complement humyn biology quite well. Humyns have evolved a complex set of mental processes to further the evolutionary goals of survival and propagation. If we were all permanently in the tripping state of mind, our species likely wouldn't last very long. However, the trade-off is that we become more limited in the types of thoughts we can have. Psychedelics let us temporarily escape those limitations while still being able to act rationally most of the time. Others have already said pretty much everything I would want to say about how this might indirectly affect evolution and/or constitute a form of 'memetic evolution'.

 

[specialspack]

Yes, the point stands that there are different neural pathways for information. Some (i.e. visual cortice) process information and represent an image, others (thalamus is key) process the information in a more raw/'access-consciousness'(N.Block) form. So, the point of blindsight is that a person can 'think' about something without being able to represent a 3d image of it (dang I guess we have to abandon imagism!).

Not sure I agree with Block's splitting of the definition of conciousness in that way - too analytic for my continental mind! Surely blindsight shows that people don't think about the object, yet it still drives behaviour. Depending on your theory of representations, that could mean either they do, or don't have a representation of the object...

Yes, seeing is providing a colloquial place-holder for accessing reality (the sense modality itself is irrelevant). So, you would equate psychedelics with a microscope or some other high-powered tool?

Well it would be just super if we could equate psychedelics with a microscope! I was using that illustration to draw out the contrast - if it were the case that psychedelics were akin to a high powered tool, then there ought to be other tools/ways of looking at the world which revealed similar structures in ontology. But there don't appear to be. And from a reductive materialist viewpoint, this would be a problem.

If we shift to a footing of idealism, where the "world" is referent not to the absolute physical reality but rather the totality of experience that we find ourselves in, then yes - then we can consider psychedelics a tool to access that "reality". Only because science then loses its claim to priority as mode of description of the world.

Why does it have to be value neutral? I think it is natural for our organism to place value on certain experiences (rite of passage, etc). The psychedelic experience is nothing if not profound and personal. Can we not judge the value of this?

I don't mean that the experiences are value-neutral to the experiencer, quite the opposite - what I meant was that the two different kinds of experience, altered and un-altered are incommensurable - one is not "better" or more correct than the other in any meaningful sense.

The evolutionary process, focusing on why our organism chose intelligence over all other attributes (strength, speed, size, etc) for reproductive fitness.

The metaphor is being completed!!!! 8(

This is dangerous territory. In what sense did we as humans choose our attributes? No more than bacteria chose to remain single celled, birds chose to fly, or dolphins chose to stay in the sea.

Maybe I'm reading too much into your statements, but there seems to be a Lamarckian flavour to them - do correct me if I'm wrong.

Also, I don't agree that intelligence in an abstract form is the dominant attribute - physical beauty and fitness are still incredibly important in defining reproductive fitness, for instance. I tend more to think that the ability to accumulate capital gain has become the dominant attribute...

 

[B9]

tend more to think that the ability to accumulate capital gain has become the dominant attribute...

Frankly you're deluding yourself ! You may provide for the offspring but genetically fathering them is an art form honed over a half million years!
To assume that the modern way is better (yes I know your counter , don't even bother) is naive`!
Latent power is where it's at IMHO

 

[Solipsis]

Not completely ontopic, but I sometimes have 3D vision on acid. When I use this term with people sceptical to psychedelic effects, they laugh at me and say: doesn't everyone see in 3D?
Yes and no, sober you get a view from 1 perspective and kind of simulate a 3D representation of the world with only that.
On psychedelic and markedly acid in my case, your memory buffer is extremely large which often translates to tracers. The visual memory derived from many different perspectives of a certain object fits together and composes an understanding of this object, much more 3-dimensional than is a sober view. As if time is a much more flexible factor than normal, it seems possible to navigate through this 3D world without effort, where you'd normally need a constantly refreshed perspective on your surroundings.
Anyway, this is my theory on part of psychedelic vision, perhaps it can be related to your own theories.

 

[specialspack]

Frankly you'RE deluding yourself ! You may provide for the offspring but genetically fathering them is an art form honed over a half million years!
To assume that the modern way is better (yes I know your counter , don't even bother) is naive`!
Latent power is where it's at IMHO

Where did I say the modern way was "better"? I certainly don't think it is.

I'm not sure I understand your first comment...

 

[ford442]

one time i was on LSD at the river and i had to make my way from the road down to our camp in almost complete darkness - i thought i could see a sort of pink chain-link fence and i followed along it - i walked right over big jagged rocks and didn't slip once..

 

[B9]

Frankly you're deluding yourself ! You may provide for the offspring but genetically fathering them is an art form honed over a half million years!

Self explanatory I would have thought ! You assertation is that to obtain a breeding partner is more likely to have a high quality successful outcome dependent upon ones resources within the world at large !
You are wrong , you may get the girl (allegedly) but the one that will sire the offspring will be a ne'er do well that it seems girls/ladies just refuse to resist !!

Clear enough !


Genetics they call it! %)

 

[psood0nym]

This reminds me of Milner and Goodale's patient D.F, a sufferer of visual agnosia (damage to the ventral stream of visual perception). D.F. could not consciously identify/perceive a vertical slot in the wall yet was still able to “post” an envelope through it when asked to do so (optic ataxics suffer from the reverse). Their experiment revealed dissociation between contents represented in the dorsal and ventral streams of visual perception such that D.F.’s motor response was determined by the information in the dorsal stream while his or her conscious perception was revealed to be a representation of the contents of the ventral stream. (The dorsal stream likely evolved as a shortcut for when organisms cannot afford to perceive something with full awareness before reacting, e.g. falling boulders). For humans its utility is far more generalized.

The phenomenology of visual agnosia and optic ataxia puzzled me until I recalled my experiences with salvia. In the midst of a powerful salvia experience I do not see or hear anything out of the ordinary, everything in these respects is superficially as it’s always been. And though I may receive momentary visual flashes of a hallucinogenic world, the experience is predominantly one of overwhelming psychic impression. This mental impression is so imposing that it trumps my conscious perception. I walk around slaloming chairs and climbing stairs, all visibly there and properly reacted to but phenomenally far subordinate to the life narrative salvia has etched into my mind--in which I’m always leaving to go somewhere with somebody or something in an alien world completely unlike the physical environment that surrounds me. The images of the stairs and chairs are present, but their conceptual frameworks, their schemas, have been entirely overwritten. Again, I don’t see this salvia world, it is simply impressed on me that this world and its demands are what I am currently involved in; I imagine that this is what D.F. experiences when asked to post the envelope: an overwhelling impression of the location and orientation of the envelope slot. The parallel between the respective experiences isn’t perfect, but only slightly askew is satisfaction enough for me.

So, rather than showing me something that I am always seeing but just unaware of, psychedelics have shown me that I'm always seeing even when I'm not aware of it.

2. Definitely, though I think it takes a lot of experience with the psychedelic state before we can properly harness it in a way where we are using the changes it produces in our brains in a way that can be properly called conscious and intentional.

3. They affect our individual psychological "evolution" and our collective social evolution. However, unless they really do mutate our germ line genetic codes they shouldn’t affect evolution. Classical Darwinian evolution in humans is pretty slow and meandering these days (dwindling isolated and stable environments/most everybody survives and breeds). At least compared to the changes we’ll probalby be affecting on ourselves through biotechnology in the future.

 

[nbsp]

edit at 3:13am on october 7: knowing the future is kinda like recognizing faces in movies. All it ends up being good for is my own amusement.
---

I've had my share of bizarre, somewhat unexplainable psychedelic experiences.

one time a while back I was on a third-plateau dose of DXM along with maybe a few hits of acid. I experienced strange phenomena such as binocular vision (I zoomed in to maybe 10x magnification and saw the address and name on a distant mailbox that was later corroborated up close), subtitle vision (subtitles literally appeared below my visual spectrum in what I presume was spanish as people were speaking; I however do not know spanish and the legitimacy cannot be proven), and picture-in-picture vision (a smaller vision window appeared in the corner of my ordinary vision, allowing me to see things outside the range of my human eyesight in vivid clarity. Its accuracy was proven via a series of experiments in which I perfectly detailed what friends were doing behind my back with their hands). Basically...I became a TiVo box, or a fuckin dvd player, or something similar. Pretty strange, pretty unexplainable.

another time, also on a third-plateau dose of DXM, and also on a few hits of acid (this combination is just fucking magical, I guess), I had an even more outrageous experience. I was sitting on a swingset in some random playground with a friend, and suddenly floated out of my body. My body, in its original position, continued as normal, as did the body of my friend; both appearing grainy and almost holographic, like static, projected images. I found it very hard to control my movements at first, and began drifting away from this playground, almost as if being swept by a current, towards a cluster of townhouses nearby.

I was whisked through the walls of homes, witnessing families engaging in ordinary day-to-day activities as if I weren't even present. Everyone I saw retained this hologram-like appearance. I remember one family in particular, with a young teenage daughter, and an even younger son, with autism. The father was a paraplegic autism activist of some sort, in favor of his son, and the mother was seemingly an alcoholic. They were arguing about this and that; just random trivialities that helped paint my overall picture of this family I'd never before seen in my life. Eventually I got my bearings, and headed -- through walls, like a ghost -- in the direction of a friend's house in the same apartment complex, a few blocks down.

as I approached the door, I had a very casual realization that I was no longer the lost spirit I was two seconds earlier. I knocked on the door instead of simply warping through it. The woman who answered -- the mother of my friend who lived there -- was corporeal, and not a hologram. She invited me inside. Her daughter, my friend, was not home, but the mom was really casually friendly with everyone who'd stopped by, and I knew her pretty well, so this was pretty customary.

I sat down next to her on the couch as she folded laundry. She offered to make me a sandwich, but I declined. I very briefly alluded to my wildly intoxicated state, and she voiced disapproval, so I dropped the subject. Instead, I sat there, mindlessly engaging in very general conversation and halfassedly watching this episode of 7th Heaven that happened to be on the television. To this day, it is the only episode of the show I have ever seen. I saw nearly the entire episode before I felt a sudden, strange shift and was magically transported back to my body at the playground.

naturally, I was freaking the fuck out at this point. I told my friend in really broad terms what'd just happened to me, and we of course came up with the idea of going back to this girl's house to see what was up. Upon doing so, the mother again answered the door. The daughter was not home, but we were invited inside. The mother was still folding laundry. She offered us both sandwiches, and we both laughed, because shit was getting totally fucking ridiculous at this point.

I proceeded to tell this woman what had just happened to me. She's cool like that, she wasn't the type to kick us out of the house for admitting we'd just eaten acid, etc...so yeah. Told her the whole story. She, now, firmly attests to my never having originally shown up at the house. She can offer no explanation, but confirms every specific detail about this episode of 7th Heaven I watched with her beforehand, and was generally perturbed as fuck from the weirdness of this situation. No conclusions were reached that day.

there's more to the story too (for example I met up with the teenage daughter of this other family years later for the first time, and confirmed specific details like her autistic brother etc...fucking insane), and more stories, but goddamn I don't even feel like typing anymore. I think this will suffice.

so yeah, pretty much, I trip out and transform into dvd players and play transdimensional hopscotch at random. I'm all ears if anyone cares to explain this, because I can't.