I know this is an old post..But I wanted to mention this for anyone whose interested. Swim has had these 'ghost' memories come up from time to time in relation to ingestion of certain sacred and exotic substances.
The first time was while watching movies from swims childhood while simultaneously taking amanitas, syrian rue and majijuana. It opened his mind eye something fierce. Thoughts took on concrete visual forms via mind eye. Visuals were more intense and harder to distinguish from reality..Swim was scared for a moment that his hands were larger/swollen/pulsing, but witnesses swear swims hands were fine. While watching total recall no less, swim swears he could see ol' arnie swimself on screen. This was a phat trip. His face totally morphed into swimselfs, dialogue changed variously as well. Several characters similarly warped to fit the incidence of his childhood, albiet in a round about and strangely coherent way. Soon, a multitudinousness of old memories came back. Memories from when his mother was dying, from before she died when he was but a child..It was a great movie.
Swim would recommend 'time travelling' in this way to others; watch important movies from your childhood (for me, arnie was a role model or idol), or even read important BOOKS! Shit, if you liked black beauty or some shit from the fifth grade, read it again on the sacrament. Letters on page are so beautiful under the influence i might add, should you forget how to read, and it is far from impossible and very enjoyable, depending on the book, to read on the shroomage, usually from a 1g to 2g. Anything more and words will move around and swirl distractedly along with your thoughts and focus. Swim has had great times recalling ex girlfriends on shrooms...Even helping him to deal with breakups and the sordid emotional states involved.
It brought back memories like when she (my mother) was sick and couldn't take care of her kids when they were fighting. Memories like SWIM deciding not to fight with his brother over taking turns with toys because it would upset her that she couldn't do anything about it cause she was crippled at the time. Swim was 4. And even though swim was right to fight for his turn, for his toy, swim did not for sake of his crying, now disabled and dying mother, who, in desperation did what any failable woman of 26 would do; she called her mother, who, later on, beat us for our disbehavior. Swim could see how this memory/experience changed his personality. It was probably the first time in swims life he considered the needs of another so highly over swimselfs. There were other similar style altercations that came up.
Swim also remembered the night him and his brother got the chicken pox, how his mother was hospitalized. Him and his brother, in the dark of the hallway, going back and fourth from the bathroom vomiting and etc..Brother said "We'll get through this together!". It was a touching memory, indistinguishable from what might be a figment of imagination.
Swim remembered being dead, or coming into existence or something. His mother telling him things would be hard if he went to help them. Whoever they are...That he didn't understand cause he was too young. That he shouldn't go back and should go on with her. This was very strange...Like a memory of a dream, come to life and confused with reality, or maybe something more. Others were not so 'nice'. SWIM apparently remembered being molested by an aunt and various other misfortunes of childhood.
Point is, for swim...Later on, swim began to recover more of such memories, often while sober. Swim is unsure such memories, especially the recent ones while sober are at all real. Swim works in a school for special ed. Swim now has memories of going to school in enviornments like his work place, which, his parent has assured him never happened.
While smoking marijuana one day and playing guitar, swim had a similar 'ghost' memory, textually and emotionally complex of swimself being taught how to play guitar by someone nameless. It was very vivid. Swim cannot remember ever having lessons. Swim taught himself to play. Swim does not know if these memories are at all real...Of if some of them are and others not...Or some mixture of the possibilities. Swims mother did indeed play guitar. It is possible she tried to teach him before she died and he was too young to remember.
Swim did a large quantity of cubensis and salvia while peaking; swim did NOT recover memories, but had a horrific vision that he was doomed to walk the road to forever. People would follow him, and he'd tell them what it was, the road to forever. To many it sounded like a good thing......Swim tried his best to reason with them. Forever is a long time. Swim walked his road; swim was doomed to repeat this life forever. A leader without wanting to be, leading others into the chasm of infinity. Another time salvia spoke to him and said it was a god, and now that he had been there, he had stepped upon the temple, he was no longer in sway of the christian god. This was pretty bizarre and scary. I try not to take these more negative visions or memories as truths to the best of my ability for obvious reasons.
Sometimes these ghost memories are of things swims seen and witnessed happen to people in swims life, sometimes BAD things..As if having experience vicariously, swims mind filling in the blanks. This is very interesting, but potentially very bad. Swims unsure of the consequences of such assimilation. But he'll tell you, he sure does think more highly of doing onto others what he would have them do unto him...Kindness and all that jazz. Its a trip man. If swim saw someone being mugged, or if swim mugged someone, swim is pretty sure he'd have a false memory of a similar incident, replete with the emotional intensity of a normal memory.
SWIM smoked calea Zacatechichi many times. Swim has noticed now that he has a perception of 'dream memory'. That dreams from as long as decades ago are somehow still there even though they're supposedly forgotten, and fresh too. Surprisingly fresh. As if this was an important and very real happening, that, for its worth, will never go away. Calea has had him replay over old dreams, continuing or reworking them. Interestingly, the dream herb has at one point whisked him, totally conscious, in dream world through a portal of pure energy into another dimension. Nevermind that before the drugs swim used to have conversations with highly intelligent and apparently sentient beings in his dreams. Worth mentioning is the relation of dreams to memory that has been demonstrated in recent years; anything that fucks with your dreams might fuck with your memories. Swim ingested various dream herbs...This might explain his strange faculties of memory and altered sense of perceptions and experiences.
Swim took DXM a few times. The first time swim said to himself quite strangely and somehow from without "there will be a child; what if it happens to them both?". Later, he was told he impregnated a woman; that his brother did as well. Later the same night, he was told by his brother, in exact words, despite the incongruousness of the grammar, "What if it happens to them both?". Swim thinks swimself *MAY* at times remember the future; but swim tries to ground himself in reality, just in case he may be wrong and just going subtly insane.
Point worth mentioning is that swim at one point was sure he was seeing aura, and communicating with spirits etc..Megalomania is evidently a common side effect of psychedelia...Having experiences outside the range of the normal rational human one does not predispose one to any degree of normality. Especially when done often, and in high doses and in combination with various exotic substances.
So far, swim has not apparently had any real negative effects from these 'memories'. But he does take them with a slightly amused grain of salt..It can be nice to remember the past, even the bad parts...But don't search so hard that your mind finds things that aren't there. And the searching...........Grief will make you hunt..For what..Whatever it is that fills the hunger. People search all the time for things they are missing. Poetically beautiful to find such things in yourself...But as always, be careful what you wish for, and be careful where you look.
SWIM would like feedback from other posters who have had experiences like this, and would like to revive the topic as he just now found it on google.
I'll add DOC to the rapidly-growing list of things to investigate. It also sounds like I'll be trying LSD and psilocybin, though I'll be researching them in depth first to make sure they won't mix badly with my former Alice in Wonderland Syndrome.
