I will admit that pot does not do me the same way it seems to do others. I simply wig out on marijuana. I do not get sleepy at all, and there is absolutely nothing enjoyable about it. I just feel 'dumbed down' and unmotivated, as well as confused and then paranoid. I've been more paranoid on pot that I have on mushrooms, with the exception of one particularly hard freakout that I have yet to understand.
Sonjay...I am not sure how one would stay up from mushrooms. The half-life of psilocybin is well known. He might have gone into a type of 'circular thought loop', wherein he relived his tripping experience as a method of escaping the everyday pressures that life yields. If I were to attest the effect to drug use, I would look at everyday pot use as the more likely culprit. Even 15 grams of good shrooms only has me out there for about six hours, and the show is over after ten hours every time. Of course, I will admit that I have many times on shrooms been afraid that I had done just that--gone away forever. However, when we find ouselves confronted with that notion, the way out is to simply say to oneself, "I can live with this, so be it." I have had to say that to myself at least ten times from hard trips, even trips where I have 'died'. I just remind myself that everything is a blessing in regard to the fact that I am experiencing it, so I am therefore alive.
Most paranoia comes from our fear of judgement, or our fear of solitude.
Believe me, I get as frightened as anyone else on trips. In fact, I do not take LSD anymore because it just scares me to death. And I have taken HUGE doses, just to get to the other side and see what was there. DMT finally gave me the journey I wanted, and I subsequently abandoned LSD. DMT put all of it in perspective. Everything.
Gaz--
I don't know about GHB treating schizophrenia. I have done so much GHB that if it cured the condition, I would definitely be cured by now! I must admit that I get hallucinations quite frequently without any drugs at all. Most are brief, and in fact most are conceptual hallucinations. An example would be feeling fo a minute like you are a 45 year old housewife who is writing a book and living in Pennsylvania when in fact you are in Utah, and a 35 year old man.
An interesting aspect of it (I think) is the occasional premonition. I called my father and my mother on the morning the space shuttle burned up over texas because I woke up with burning hands and a bleeding nose, after dreaming that I was piloting a ship over Texas and it exploded. I also dreamed of a black square with a number on it. It was about six in the morning. I was so frightened by the dream that I called my doctor and left a message. Now, I didn't even remember consciuosly that a shuttle was in orbit. Two hours later I saw the news that the shuttle was off radar.
P.K. Dick was schizophrenic, and he related the life pretty well. In his book VALIS, he related his experience with a pink phosgene beam that told him several things...three eyed invaders, etc., but also that his son had cancer in the brain.
It turns out that his son did have cancer in the brain. So what causes that? I believe that one side effect of schiz is the ability to exptrapolate very subtle data to its extreme. In the case of the space shuttle, it is concievable that I had overheard the launch, maybe on the TV, or maybe by actually mentally intercepting broadcast waves (a common feeling that I get anyway, like turning on the radio only to find them playing the song I was just thinking of)...anyway, and then maybe seeing a video of the launch and subconsciously detecting the foam that struck the wing (In my dream I knew the left wing broke off), and extrapolating the possibility of a breakapart, then picking up on the frantic minds that actually underwent the experience.
My doctor still has the message that I left him, wherein I described the salient points an hour before the fact. He advised me not to get excited about it, just chalk it up to intuition or data extrapolation and leave it at that, which is exactly what I have done.
Is that schizophrenia? I do not know. I can tell you that some of my core beliefs are laughable to most people, so I keep them to myself. For example, without elaborating, I know that we do not reside inside of our bodies. I feel as though I know exactly where we do reside, and in what form. When I attempted to describe these concepts in detail, as a child, my parents were understandable concerned. Obviously I had not taken any drugs before my tenth birthday!
Anyway, here I am am rambling again, sorry bout that.