Can you control your trip???

[Lost Ego]

Ever since i first began smoking pot i could play with my visuals and i enjoyed it thoroughly. it began with tracers and 2d objects rotating while zoning out and i harnessed it into more complex visuals like driving in mario kart. if i smoked enough pot i could zone out or simply close my eyes and create a colorful mario on his cart swerving back and forth on a plain winding road which would materialize as he drove. years went by of practicing this and i slowly got better, i could materialize more road and it became a bit more vivid. i found if i focused too much energy into it, it'd disappear and i'd have to start over with my visual progression (it would always progress from something simple to something more complex | ex: 2d square -> 3d box rotating) i tried controlling acid trips - didnt work. it worked well on mdma. i found i could control my visuals and trips in general the best on mxe and dxm. the last few times i did mxe i played with the visuals alot, i found that it was alot easier to control my ocular abilities and i could simulate real games - 50mg + pot = tron racing and a basic version of gran turismo (i was astounded by my ability to actually simulate a video game!), 80mg mxe @ 0:00 + 100mg @ +1:30 = after i came down and redosed i played league of legends and it seemed as if i was able to enter the game and play in 1st person. 550mg dxm = could visualize my verbal thoughts and i could type on a screen behind my eyes, was pretty fun. on dmt i remember that i became the universe and yet i could still control my visuals to some extent, which was comforting.

Idk this is just my way of attempting to control the trip. I'm wondering if anyone else is able to control their psychedelics, which of the 5 senses they harness the energy into, what is the brain doing when you're simulating a video game, what drugs have you found make it easiest to control the trip and visuals(dissociatives or no?), why does it seem to be easier to control your trip on dissociates as opposed to, say, lsd o.o?

 

[Clocktower]

Why not try Salvia?

 

[Solipsis]

I think that the more lucid and conscious a trip is the harder it will be to control. Also I think that control is always an approximation, you can get the feeling you control enough to remain calm and confident but you could never control absolutely everything because that would be like your conscious self wanting a say as well in everything the subsconscious does. That is either impossible or so strained that nobody should want it.

Wanting control is a form of desire, and as someone who believes Buddhism is on the right track regarding a lot of stuff like this I believe one can never be free as long as there are desires. Which is why IMO control is an illusion.

The only way to be free then, is to be okay with not being able to influence things. You don't have to behave controllingly to manage surviving your trip, most of it will just work out on its own. If the most unstable thing is your own confidence since that makes itself dependent on being able to influence itself, the natural solution is to let go. It takes some getting used to and in particular: faith, because we tend to be so hung up on getting peace of mind by endless controlling that getting a sort of 'ex nihilo' peace of mind creates a 'does not compute' reaction in our rational self.

So I think that while choosing drugs that are more pleasurable from being easy to control is a possibility, the really profound victory lies in realizing you can try to learn to let go of desires including the one to try and control. You can do that by meditating or starting with lower doses of LSD and slowly working your way up as you learn what I mean.

 

[casualuser]

Very insightful solipsis... to the op, I don't have much experience with dissasociatives but with cannabis and lsd I have learned a decent amount of control over each. With out a doubt there is no such thing as complete control but you can definitely guide your experience one direction or another. As far as cannabis goes it used to give me extreme anxiety but I've learned not to focus on that and turn it into a positive experience. Visuals are very rare for me even with high doses of lsd, over 500ug, though friends of my using the same batches easily achieved them. For me I think this is mainly due to my very rationaly oriented brain. Things would always look different for sure and I would occasionally experience the "breathing object" effect but I never out right saw something that wasn't there more like I saw things in a different light. I wouldn't say I was ever disappointed by this but I think it shows that there are limits to how far you can exert a conscious control over your experience.