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Why does the psychedelic experience come in waves?

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Psychopathfinder

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Nov 7, 2015
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Many psychedelics tend to come in waves, as you might have experienced. I don't know if all of a psychedelic's effects necessarily have this wave-like property, or if it's just some of the more hallucinatory mind-bending effects. There was a thread about this 11 years ago but they weren't able to come to any conclusions. A question that I have is: might the wave phenomenon be explained by a dynamic feedback system of compensatory mechanisms? (Sort of like the feedback inhibition mechanisms of the endocrine and nervous systems)?

Also, is it possible that cycling of hormone secretions is in any way involved?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

By the way, I'm a first year medical student with fairly limited knowledge of the various physiological interactions between the endocrine and nervous systems.
 
Rationalizing through biology is pretty hard for a subjective experience. It kind of reminds me of the "tunnel of light" nde that isn't fully understood either.

I think some psychedelics come in waves, but some are constantly intense. The tryptamines that I've tried do come in waves, and sort of with lsd too. But the 2Cs and DOPr were not. I'm sure this varies greatly on a larger scale.

You pose an interesting question though, and a thoughtful one. it requires speculation, which I don't feel like doing, so you can always research more and have at it. Or others can lend their voice to this too. :)
 
Everything vibrates, everything comes in waves. Psychedelics only open your eyes to what's happening around you. Nothing stays absolutely still. Even your thoughts vibrate but on a high enough frequency that you dont rly notice it unless your looking for it
 
Kl519, do you think this question would be more fit for the Neuroscience and Pharmacology Discussion forum? I believe that every part of our mind/experience is so intimately tied in with our physiology that it may be possible to eventually map out and explain every minute aspect of our thought processes and visceral emotional experiences in a logical stepwise fashion.
 
I always thought lsd replaced serotonin and the waves were our normal serotonin molecules clicking into place, would explain why higher doses the ite more of a constant splash of colours rather than the visuals coming and going as the more lsd is replacing our serotonin

Just a baked theory of mine though, I could be way of the mark..
 
Psychopathfinder said:
I believe that every part of our mind/experience is so intimately tied in with our physiology that it may be possible to eventually map out and explain every minute aspect of our thought processes and visceral emotional experiences in a logical stepwise fashion.
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Your minds eye has the power to perceive this, I was reading somewhere about the 8 levels of hallucinating and the last level is what your describing but I dont believe we have the ability to express this idea with words, a picture is worth a thousand words so what about a constantly moving image of intellectual brain activity map chart thingy.
 
Psychopathfinder said:
Kl519, do you think this question would be more fit for the Neuroscience and Pharmacology Discussion forum? I believe that every part of our mind/experience is so intimately tied in with our physiology that it may be possible to eventually map out and explain every minute aspect of our thought processes and visceral emotional experiences in a logical stepwise fashion.
Click to expand...

It could be, just like with the nde example I gave. It's obviously a new-age type of study that's unexplored for the most part; the mind's
role in unusual experiences.

It would also have to explain how and why the experiences differ. Yeah, the OP's original question would be better served there. :)

Some things can't be explained though; like the Universe and its existence. There will always be more questions than answers.

Anyway, did you have a list of which psychedelics come in waves? Just curious which ones do, or if they all do or whatever. I've had some really heavy trips that were anything but wavy, at least to where my perception can catch it, but I would also say that it's near impossible in certain conditions, such as on +4 trips. Shit is fully immersive and totally does not come in waves, but like I said, it's a subjective experience.

And I'm not talking about it in the Schrodinger's cat kind of way. :)
 
Kl519 said:
Rationalizing through biology is pretty hard for a subjective experience. It kind of reminds me of the "tunnel of light" nde that isn't fully understood either.

I think some psychedelics come in waves, but some are constantly intense. The tryptamines that I've tried do come in waves, and sort of with lsd too. But the 2Cs and DOPr were not. I'm sure this varies greatly on a larger scale.

You pose an interesting question though, and a thoughtful one. it requires speculation, which I don't feel like doing, so you can always research more and have at it. Or others can lend their voice to this too. :)
Click to expand...



Ah yes thats it speculation i don't feel like doing Lol. Ya I uNDERStand what you mean i should not post or lurk the forums so tired at night but i feel the need to post if im lurking ever since i got an account now Lol.
 
Thomas29 said:
Ah yes thats it speculation i don't feel like doing Lol. Ya I uNDERStand what you mean i should not post or lurk the forums so tired at night but i feel the need to post if im lurking ever since i got an account now Lol.
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Hmm? I'm not sure what you mean. I'm not sure who you are either. :)

Are you the OP?
 
In my experience: Mescaline comes in waves. DMT and mushrooms smoothly rise to a definite peak and then smoothly recede. An LSD trip is more like a steady state after the first hour, then flashbacks come in waves.
 
FargonPsyMind said:
Your minds eye has the power to perceive this, I was reading somewhere about the 8 levels of hallucinating and the last level is what your describing but I dont believe we have the ability to express this idea with words, a picture is worth a thousand words so what about a constantly moving image of intellectual brain activity map chart thingy.
Click to expand...

I believe I'd had that experience on 8 dried grams of psilocybe cubensis. At least that's how I sort of explained it to myself after it had happened.
 
Kl519 said:
It could be, just like with the nde example I gave. It's obviously a new-age type of study that's unexplored for the most part; the mind's
role in unusual experiences.

It would also have to explain how and why the experiences differ. Yeah, the OP's original question would be better served there. :)

Some things can't be explained though; like the Universe and its existence. There will always be more questions than answers.

Anyway, did you have a list of which psychedelics come in waves? Just curious which ones do, or if they all do or whatever. I've had some really heavy trips that were anything but wavy, at least to where my perception can catch it, but I would also say that it's near impossible in certain conditions, such as on +4 trips. Shit is fully immersive and totally does not come in waves, but like I said, it's a subjective experience.

And I'm not talking about it in the Schrodinger's cat kind of way. :)
Click to expand...

I don't have a list, just personal experience, my friends' descriptions, and the numerous erowid reports that describe the intensity of the experience as sometimes coming in waves. In my experience, 25i-nbome had this quality, but interestingly only during periods of stress. I suspect that many (if not all) of our everyday experiences/emotions/feelings comes in waves, but that they are either amplified on certain psychedelics (or have the potential to be amplified), or we are just not sensitive enough to recognize them in our normal sober state.
 
Acid is like a song your listening to for the first time. Some songs you like and some you don't and some turn around on you, music is vibration, acid is music for all three eyes ( created by the government, to what purpose?)
 
Solipsis said:
Most likely this is due to the signal cascades in the nervous system. When something as potent as a psychedelic agonizes them, there is a resultant interference pattern.
In other words the effects ripple through our brain and these ripples can bounce together more or less as waveform.
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That's an interesting idea Solipsis. Could you elaborate on what exactly you imagine the elements of this interference pattern being? They could be endogenous and exogenous (the psychedelic drug) ligands, although in physics (double slit experiment) the elements that create the interference pattern are wavelike in nature (photons), whereas this is not the case for receptor activation by ligands (or if it is, then that would be the phenomenon that would help us explain the waves in the psychedelic experience, rather than interference per se).

There could certainly be something in this, I'm just not sure about the details. :)
 
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