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Drug 'levels'

Why does everyone agree with dread when I wrote pretty much the same thing 2 posts up :(

I feel so small and neglected.
 
Flarestar89 said:
I don't know man, the difference between plus 3 and plus 4 seem a bit blurred.
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As Shulgin himself writes, the +4 is different from other levels in that it isn't used to measure the drug's intensity, but rather indicate the rare transcendental state. A +4 can happen at the peak of a +2 trip as well, although it is rare. I've also experienced hints of a +4 when I was coming down from shrooms; so basically you can't draw a line between a +3 and +4 because they aren't actually on the same scale. :)
 
this has been helpful. i was just kind of curious if such things even existed after seeing the DXM one a while ago. i've been to all of the places it can go as categorized by the plateau list.
i actually do have an experience journal but have neglected to write many of them down. shrooms the other day i was going to put in it but ive pretty much forgotten all of it. had never eaten that much before.
the 'dream' journal is a really great idea for anyone curious of revisiting their trips.
 
Hmm fundamentally I agree with the psychedelic experience being a continuous stream, but I also think we can try to differentiate some things and try to label them. I mean we do it all the time here, valueing stuff in one way or another. Comparing. Rating.

For instance some compounds seem to have a ceiling effect more than others. If you imagine dose-response curves some compounds just level out at some point - many compouns Shulgin invented that never really hit it off had some effect but at some point you can up the dose all you want, it's not gonna do you any good and it may even do you some bad.

One could try to superimpose multiple dose-response curves and try to compare responses or intensities. It's a bit more difficult to convert different dosages but say you take erowid's guidelines about dosage and equate small, medium, large and strong doses... then you've got something right there to estimate quantitative experience parameters.

You could say: medium dose for medium dose compound A is stronger than B. But compound B has the potential to produce far more intense derealization etc at higher doses whereas compound A could never do that.

In the end this is all just rough drafting because it's very subjective, but at least it's something.

Also check Illuminati Boy's surveys and if the PD community project for psychedelic profiles will ever complete we've got a whole new frame of reference and data points many people hadn't even considered possible, right?
 
Psychedelics are quite variable and subjective; I think its pretty silly to group your experiences into narrow, objectively definable categories. That seems like an activity that represents the antithesis of how psychedelics teach you to think. :\
 
Maybe at first glance, but if your psychedelics work well at all it should be pretty hard to bash that headspace.
If you're thinking one day: it would be nice to trip, I wanna go to the park but the substance can't be too heavy or work for a long time etc etc. So what you're doing is trying to map these substance a little based on their differences. It's a practicality and when you actually go to the park to trip you can just shake that off and feel wonderful. It doesn't mean you can't also celebrate the commonalities and seamless spectrum of potential!
Compare it to enlightenment. It's a good thing to work on freeing your mind, meditate and loosening your ego a little. But it doesn't mean you should totally stick to that frame of reference, because exactly that is the antithesis of freeing your mind.
Rather you want to bend together with the situation and adapt while realizing deep down that this is not what your true nature is. I agree that the true nature of the psychedelic experience cannot be fathomed but one can dabble, sure. Honestly though, I don't think you should rate psychedelics by something like just a number but if you would start a thread asking about the intensity of 2C's I'm sure enough people could order them. Does it have any use? Not all that much to me, but it might help someone get a better grasp of the playing field.
This view is often skewed though, because like I said before there are 2C's that are often take in relatively low doses and are called mild, even though at full doses they too have amazing potential.

As long as we realize that our analyses can't actually capture the experience we can try to label aspects and even rate them. There is a big risk here I have to admit, which is that too much emphasis is placed and that people will abuse the analyses to think they can know something they can't - most of all how a drug will turn out to act on them.

Now that I think about it some more, it would be a very hard job to try a range of 2C's for instance and use doses that are the maximum to be taking comfortably, then rate their intensities. They just lie really close (though something like 2C-E really has way more potential).

But I've never heard anyone say that 2C-B is more intense than mushrooms unless they have a significant PEA sensitivity, doses don't really matter here do they? Because the action is just that different.
This last thing just tells you it has to be untrue that comparisons and rating is pointless. How many times have people asked: what is a nice psychedelic to start with? with people answering: well 2C-B is a pretty light one!!

It's not all Taoist indefinability from every point of perspective, it's not about truth, it's about if descriptions are helpful.
 
i find psychedelic drugs to be to complex in actions to be put into these kind of levels..dxm excluded..
 
I agree that discreet plateaus are only seen in only a few substances, most give gradual response curves and overly general labels are indeed very inappropriate.

This seems to be mostly so when you don't have a point in trying this on forehand. If you have a very specific goal to do it I think comparisons can be made as long as you elaborate enough and not use something like only a 1-dimensional scale. In fact, I think this is the main occupation of PD.
 
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