☮ Social ☮ PD Social Tripping Thread: Tripping Past 2020

[Chris Timothy]

@Buzz Lightbeer
But so the huge O-PCE binge has renewed my old interest in chess. I had come to dislike the immense mental stress it invokes for no really good reason other than the ego stroke of victory within what one likes to forget is a game, but the drugs associate stress with fun again, and it becomes excitement. I'm even toying with the idea of joining an IRL chess club again. I could use the face-to-face contact for sure, I need to do something about my atrophied social skills at some point.

Chess clubs vary a lot, I've seen many of them as I've traveled all throughout the country and across country borders in my teens to compete with teams of them against my team. In the North of the Netherlands there's a jolly good atmosphere to be found around the board with lots of humour tossed around, in the Francophone south over here it's oftentimes drinking beer in a decrepit rural place, still counting like an upgraded pub experience. Here in the East of the Flanders it's more of an enclave of dry disorganized personalities alas, which is why I left. One iconic member there was a guy with a speech disability much more severe than ours, driving a golden-coloured car. The humanhearted people were weak, and the stronger you became at the game of chess the more you found yourself surrounded by a stench of autism.

But times have changed, and even though I don't want to see the faces of my old chess club members again, I could join another one and have some beers with some loonies?

 

[Buzz Lightbeer]

@Buzz Lightbeer
But so the huge O-PCE binge has renewed my old interest in chess. I had come to dislike the immense mental stress it invokes for no really good reason other than the ego stroke of victory within what one likes to forget is a game, but the drugs associate stress with fun again, and it becomes excitement. I'm even toying with the idea of joining an IRL chess club again. I could use the face-to-face contact for sure, I need to do something about my atrophied social skills at some point.

Chess clubs vary a lot, I've seen many of them as I've traveled all throughout the country and across country borders in my teens to compete with teams of them against my team. In the North of the Netherlands there's a jolly good atmosphere to be found around the board with lots of humour tossed around, in the Francophone south over here it's oftentimes drinking beer in a decrepit rural place, still counting like an upgraded pub experience. Here in the East of the Flanders it's more of an enclave of dry disorganized personalities alas, which is why I left. One iconic member there was a guy with a speech disability much more severe than ours, driving a golden-coloured car. The humanhearted people were weak, and the stronger you became at the game of chess the more you found yourself surrounded by a stench of autism.

But times have changed, and even though I don't want to see the faces of my old chess club members again, I could join another one and have some beers with some loonies?

Are you fluent in French? It's a minor detail but a funny one. Doesn't sound like too bad of a plan though, no harm in seeing what's happening somewhere

I had looked into joining the club I played at as a child but they almost only played official games and there were some lessons... I just wanted to play some rapid & blitz and never followed through. Don't think they'd recognize their 7x consecutive youth champion Their youth division sucked though, didn't get taught shit about chess and was almost playing the Scotch gambit almost exclusively hah with a heavy focus on tactics.

 

[Chris Timothy]

French? Never used it after school and chess in Wallonia, so no! The only French I use nowadays is reading some from this neglected child of a phone which settings on some things I can't be bothered to flip default languages of.

Oh, I forgot, then there were times I went further East, plowing through snow in Eupen to reach a shed only to test out why the From Gambit doesn't really work against the Bird's, which is obvious now but not as evident for a pre-internetarian without a pocket chess engine. And Germany of course, a border cross into correctness and efficiency and they made me do the bloody dishes afterwards because North Rhine-Westphalia apparently cared enough about community to donate a whole building to one of its chess clubs, a house which had to be run which meant chores. Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany were cooperatively organizing chess events at some point in time, but that quickly faded because while the Germans made a huge festivity out of it with little old ladies coming up each with their own decorated cakes and tourist planning keeping bored parents of chess kids away from the chess hall, Belgium just crowded everyone into a pub centering of course around Belgian beer. And the Dutchies did the very minimal effort, two coupons for sodas, or their insultingly small quantities of nevertheless urinary beer. Of course that didn't balance out. At all.

But yeah it sucks when they are all, like, military about it. I had a run-in with my old chess club in a pub a decade ago perhaps (near-blackout drunk, otherwise I would have shunned at the least sliver of sight), and the hangover consisted of not just physical pain but also (unanswered, of course) phone-calls, and a bloody visit! The bastard drove all over to my place, just to lecture me about punctiliousness and availability for upcoming tournaments, just because they took treating a drunk to a chicken dinner as consent to rejoin. Freakin' hell, I'm talking myself out of going to that creepy place again as I'm recalling everything that's happened in the Limburgian chess world. It has eventually led to meeting grandmaster 'n red psychedelic viking tiger Simon Williams in person, which I'm grateful for, still good fun to watch his videos, like standing on the shoulders of giants and all that. But yeah, perhaps it's a bit optimistic to presume IRL chess has changed all that much. It's just downright mental being surrounded by people tacitly harbouring resentment against the thought that chess is just a game.

"On second thought, let's not go to the chess club. 'Tis a silly place."

 

[Buzz Lightbeer]

I like chess players, they like to play!

I'd go, if only for the story

 

[Chris Timothy]

I suppose I can test the waters..

 

[Buzz Lightbeer]

I suppose I can test the waters..

Titrate slowly and report back!

 

[Kaleida]

 

[arrall]

Hey Kaleida! It's been a while.
Good to see you here and I hope that you had a good summer.

 

[Kaleida]

Hey Kaleida! It's been a while.
Good to see you here and I hope that you had a good summer.

Hey arrall, thanks for saying hi. I hope you’ve been doing well while I’ve been away too.

I’ve been alright. Fine, but like, just fine, mostly. I actually have a really unusual problem right now, which is that I’ve realized that after everything I’ve experienced and learned, I actually basically have no more questions or curiosities of any obvious merit. I’ve actually basically stopped thinking about drugs almost entirely because I honestly don’t see what the point would be in taking them anymore, although I still use cannabis (but that’s entirely it currently, well and a little caffeine). When I started using drugs over a decade ago I had lots of questions I wanted to answer about myself, the world, humanity, and the nature of consciousness, as well as just many crazy things I wanted to experience, and I… did. I literally got pretty much everything I ever wanted from drugs so efficiently that I ran out of things to want long before I ever would have run out of drugs.

This is a big deal for me because as much as I’ve enjoyed getting high over the years, almost everything I ever did, especially in the later years, was with a question in mind - even if it was just a question about something about how the drug itself functions. Before tripping, I would basically always have intentions for things to try to figure out or ways to try to improve either myself or my ability to trip even more efficiently. They’re so intertwined for me that the fact that I no longer really think about drugs anymore is basically a given since I don’t really have any questions anymore either.

That all might sound kind of vague but, personally I’m just so used to feeling and thinking this way, that now that I don’t have fuel for it I’m just kind of doing… nothing. It makes me miss the feeling of when life was more mysterious, but understanding the mysteries now also taints my ability to reflect nostalgically on those times.

That’s probably a bit more than you were asking for, but it’s how I’ve been doing and it’s been on my mind a lot lately. I’m mainly not around here because I don’t feel engaged in the core subject matter at all. Occasionally I try reading trip reports again but even with the craziest and most intense drugs, it’s kind of just like, “Oh yeah, that stuff…. Yup, that’s how it goes…. Saw that ending coming…. Isn’t there fucking anything else that goes on in the human brain?”

Problems of the relatively privileged. One of my biggest issues in life is that the impact of my using drugs was too fulfilling and enlightening. Now I’m kind of pissy and wondering if I’m literally ever going to experience anything new again.

I need to get out of the house more.

Things are going fairly well aside from that though, all things considered.

 

[arrall]

almost everything I ever did, especially in the later years, was with a question in mind

Sounds like the best path forwards for you is to do things (whether those are psychedelics or not drug related) simply to enjoy them and have fun rather than to answer a question that you have.

 

[Kaleida]

Sounds like the best path forwards for you is to do things (whether those are psychedelics or not drug related) simply to enjoy them and have fun rather than to answer a question that you have.

I know you’re right because there’s not really any other option than to just not be happy, but it’s just not something I’m used to. A huge part of what made anything fun for me for a long time now is having things to think about and try to figure out about what I’m doing. I didn’t realize how much I liked the feeling of not being so satisfied in that way I think in part because I didn’t expect to get to a point where I ever would. I’m just going through a lot of psychological changes right now really. I think I need to find a new way to try to find my happiness. There are other things I’ve ignored in life that I can still try, I just get very emotional about the things I’ve already been invested in.

 

[Kaleida]

 

[Xorkoth]

I need to get out of the house more.

This is the key. As fulfilling and important as looking inward is, there is a whole wide world out there. Connections with other people are, for me, what it's all about, much moreso than delving deep inside myself. Looking back, I see my solo tripping journey as almost a phase (I mean it was, but I don't mean it in a derogatory sense, it was an important part of my development). I find that life really gets exciting when I mingle with other people and throw myself into it along with others. Psychedelics, incidentally, also have a whole other side to offer, and that is the side they show when taking them with and around people. But psychedelics or not, the key to an exciting and fulfilling life is to get out into the world and do the things you love, and meet people, ideally you can meet people that also love doing the things you love.

That, to me, is where all the choicest pieces of the meat of life are.

 

[cosmic charlie]

Gonna blast this on my Nitrous Binge.
Saturday is gonna be fantastic

 

[phenethylo J]

 

[Kaleida]

This is the key. As fulfilling and important as looking inward is, there is a whole wide world out there. Connections with other people are, for me, what it's all about, much moreso than delving deep inside myself. Looking back, I see my solo tripping journey as almost a phase (I mean it was, but I don't mean it in a derogatory sense, it was an important part of my development). I find that life really gets exciting when I mingle with other people and throw myself into it along with others. Psychedelics, incidentally, also have a whole other side to offer, and that is the side they show when taking them with and around people. But psychedelics or not, the key to an exciting and fulfilling life is to get out into the world and do the things you love, and meet people, ideally you can meet people that also love doing the things you love.

That, to me, is where all the choicest pieces of the meat of life are.

Traditionally connecting with people has been hard for me, unless it's somewhere with a significant shared interest like here. I actually make superficial connections very easily and those don't end badly but I don't make a lot of long-lasting connections in most places off the internet. It's mostly my own fault for being too self-centered and purposefully weird, like I'm not really that selfish in the sense of being greedy or not altruistic but I mostly think about my own shit in my free time and the things I think about tend to either be too unusual or too dark for most casual conversations. Most of the time I feel like I don't really know what to say to people because I don't think they'll either get it or care. Like I said though, I'm kind of changing the things I think about in my free time right now anyway, although not necessarily in a super amazing direction for fixing this problem.... Mostly shifting from drugs to things related to psychosis which might be worse.

One thing though is that I also hate where I live and expect the odds of meeting other like-minded individuals here to be particularly low for me. Definitely part of the reason I tend to not feel like I have much in common with a lot of people around here is because in some cases that's actually true. I'm starting to think more about trying to find somewhere new to live relatively soon further away from where I grew up than I've ever gone before, and probably not focusing too much on trying to make more connections here until then, but hopefully I can end up somewhere that will feel much more inviting to me.

Right now what I'm working on is trying to not talk about my own shit so much with the friends I am still in contact with. I've made some progress. I got so pulled into my own rabbit hole over the last several years that it really felt like it became hard to think about anything but my own stuff and I just started venting to people like crazy because it was making me go crazy. I do want to connect with more people again but I don't want to start forming relationships only to handle them poorly again.

 

[Xorkoth]

One thing though is that I also hate where I live and expect the odds of meeting other like-minded individuals here to be particularly low for me. Definitely part of the reason I tend to not feel like I have much in common with a lot of people around here is because in some cases that's actually true. I'm starting to think more about trying to find somewhere new to live relatively soon further away from where I grew up than I've ever gone before, and probably not focusing too much on trying to make more connections here until then, but hopefully I can end up somewhere that will feel much more inviting to me.

That's a huge factor. Honestly, moving to a completely different place helped me to grow as a person so much... it does suck being 700 miles away from my family, especially now that I have nephews, but I reinvented myself, and I moved to a place where like-minded people are everywhere. The town I live in has a slogan "keep <insert name> weird". Tons of weirdos here and it's awesome, I meet cool people all the time. I don't think I would be who I am today without making that leap.

It's really scary, but totally worth it. I found that when you stay in the place you grow up in, all the people who have always known you affect you so much. Their expectations of how you act and think, and the roles you play for them, can get in the way of growing and being who you want to be. Or at least that was the case for me.

 

[Chris Timothy]

Their youth division sucked though, didn't get taught shit about chess and was almost playing the Scotch gambit almost exclusively hah with a heavy focus on tactics.

Not gonna lie, the Scotch gambit does sound like fun! Would you prefer positional play, then? I started out playing the English. I like its typical pawn structures, so it doesn't bore me like many 1.d4 structures do, but I do somewhat dislike the scope of responses it allows black. Aggressive play limits the response scope, and makes it a game of competitive calculation rather than a game of competitive memorization. So my white repertoire is filled with gambits. That does probably explain partially why I never reached master strength, heh. But almost no one played the theoretical refutation to my crap, so I had little incentive to hit the books on say the Ruy Lopez, or vanilla Scotch, which I have looked at, but rarely actually tried out. (I played a couple of Worrall attacks at the end of my little chess career, not really knowing what I was doing but still winning games, by sheer bluff. Oddly enough even when I was sick of chess and meticulously fleshing out variations, I still kept scoring.. mere psychology gave me about a 100 ELO point boost right before dropping out, just by letting go of victory anxiety and trusting intuition instead.)

That's not to say I'm principally against positional play. Even with black I do prefer aggressive defenses both against 1.e4 and 1.d4. But if white insists on positional play in the Sicilian or the Dutch, then I happily oblige, and play for equality, a subsequent edge, swap queens if necessary, and try and win an endgame. On 1.c4 I also just reply symmetrically, just observing what white wants to achieve, proceeding to obstruct the inferred plans, only adopting a Botvinnik structure 'n expanding on the king's side if they pump out waiting moves.

If I could think of more positional systems that don't require memorization, I would consider playing them. But I detest (please forgive the hot take) downright insults to chess like the London system. (The Jobava London on the other hand looks more like fun, but that gets aggressive again, and the theory is fairly new, and paywalled.) And things like the King's Indian Attack look clumsy to my eyes, I do prefer some actual adaption to what black plays.

So in the end I'm happy with my collection of gambits and the practical problems they solve, even if they're stressful to implement. If you do dislike such madness I can just revert to 1.c4 if we ever play again, though.

 

[Buzz Lightbeer]

Not gonna lie, the Scotch gambit does sound like fun! Would you prefer positional play, then? I started out playing the English. I like its typical pawn structures, so it doesn't bore me like many 1.d4 structures do, but I do somewhat dislike the scope of responses it allows black. Aggressive play limits the response scope, and makes it a game of competitive calculation rather than a game of competitive memorization. So my white repertoire is filled with gambits. That does probably explain partially why I never reached master strength, heh. But almost no one played the theoretical refutation to my crap, so I had little incentive to hit the books on say the Ruy Lopez, or vanilla Scotch, which I have looked at, but rarely actually tried out. (I played a couple of Worrall attacks at the end of my little chess career, not really knowing what I was doing but still winning games, by sheer bluff. Oddly enough even when I was sick of chess and meticulously fleshing out variations, I still kept scoring.. mere psychology gave me about a 100 ELO point boost right before dropping out, just by letting go of victory anxiety and trusting intuition instead.)

That's not to say I'm principally against positional play. Even with black I do prefer aggressive defenses both against 1.e4 and 1.d4. But if white insists on positional play in the Sicilian or the Dutch, then I happily oblige, and play for equality, a subsequent edge, swap queens if necessary, and try and win an endgame. On 1.c4 I also just reply symmetrically, just observing what white wants to achieve, proceeding to obstruct the inferred plans, only adopting a Botvinnik structure 'n expanding on the king's side if they pump out waiting moves.

If I could think of more positional systems that don't require memorization, I would consider playing them. But I detest (please forgive the hot take) downright insults to chess like the London system. (The Jobava London on the other hand looks more like fun, but that gets aggressive again, and the theory is fairly new, and paywalled.) And things like the King's Indian Attack look clumsy to my eyes, I do prefer some actual adaption to what black plays.

So in the end I'm happy with my collection of gambits and the practical problems they solve, even if they're stressful to implement. If you do dislike such madness I can just revert to 1.c4 if we ever play again, though.

As a kid I didn't know much about chess, I played whatever. Somehow I won quite a bit of small-ish blitz and rapid tournaments, but everyone was just really bad. I suspect that through online play and all the info available kids are much better now. By the time I played a couple of classical games for ELO I was pretty much over chess and I was quite bad too, if anyone ever manages to find a scoresheet of mine you can probably feel the ADHD through it.

I reached 2100 blitz through grinding for a week on lichess start of the year, but lost a couple until 2080 and haven't played since, lol.

I prefer blitz and I like adrenaline so I want the positions sharp. And I really dont know much about pawn structures and stuff, many endgames are a nightmare for me, so I skate by on a relatively good intuition. I think if I'd play some games every day like 2200-2300 (online lichess ofc) would be possible eventually, but I could never commit in the past and now it seems even more out of reach.

Scotch is still my weapon, and as black I get in all sorts of cramped trouble with bizarre sicilians irrational kings Indians and other terrible things against 1. d4 . In blitz anything goes
But let's play indeed! I promised the same to arall, which I intend to keep but I'm just such an anxious fucking mess these days, time flies by at night and I end up doing nothing.

 

[Psychestim]

I‘m currently on vacation in North Macedonia and had a beautiful candy-flip experience that I felt was worth sharing. Here‘s the link for anyone interested. I will also have my first DOC experience tomorrow. Particularily excited about that and very curious to see how it‘ll play out so short after this intense LSD/MDMA trip.