LSD (275 µg) + DMT + Cannabis - New Experience - Reflections / Revelations

[TheAppleCore]

(Although I claim in the title to be experienced with these drugs, this was the first time I had coordinated the peaks of all three at once.)

Most trip reports seem to be focused on the emotional aspects of the experience. This TR of mine largely ignores my feelings and perceptions, which are always transient, but simply focuses on the intellectual aspect of the trip -- the thoughts that will stay with me forever. Although it was sheer bliss, as per usual.


• Smoking a fairly sizable quantity of cannabis during the peak of an LSD trip totally defied my expectations. I expected to be plunged into a completely new realm of consciousness -- I expected a highly amplified, perhaps purified, form of the novel and dreamlike perspective that cannabis offers. The effect was rather minute in comparison to these expectations however. The LSD seemed to power through any "stoning" effect, and left my short term memory, motor control, thought patterns, and lingual abilities perfectly intact. Usually these are impaired to a degree during the cannabis high. Even the droopy-eyed look was nullified. I could have put on a flawless sober act if I wanted to. Visual activity was, however, increased, and the vibe of the experience was pushed in the "living in a fairy tale" direction.

• I finally discovered what strikes me as an apt description of psychedelic-induced visuals (of the open-eye sort, at the very least). They're not hallucinations at all, as is the popular (amongst the more ignorant) conception. They're simply the mind entertaining any number of (very unlikely / unusual) possibilities of what it could in fact be seeing. The eyes rarely lie on psychedelics. For instance, looking at the roughly textured stone tiles on a part of my kitchen wall, I suddenly saw hundreds of anime-style faces seemingly engraved within the stones themselves. I wasn't actually hallucinating the flesh of someone's face -- I was looking at the real ridges and bumps on the stone tiles. My mind was simply entertaining the possibility that parts of the imperfections in the surface of the stone were part of an attempt to convey facial images, by some artist who had carved into the stone; because, if certain imperfections of the stone are ignored or regarded as arbitrary, but other imperfections are singled out and focused upon, facial artwork really does exist in the surface of the tiling! Ironically, this resembles a hyper-awareness of one's surroundings, whereas the popular idea that psychedelics are "hallucinogens" implies the exact opposite, and this only contributes negatively to their reputation. Are you "hallucinating" when you see the big dipper in the stars of the night sky?

• Most everyday human behavior is dictated by simple neurological signals -- these signals are either positive or negative. I call them pleasure and pain, respectively. Positive signals are sought, and negative signals are avoided. These signals arise from the brain by either interpreting its environment to be conducive to survival (either of itself or others), or dangerous in some way. The danger doesn't have to be immediate and physical -- it could be the danger of losing the respect of friends or family, and therefore ultimately diminishing their desire to assist you when you're in need. (The signal, in this case, is commonly referred to as "shame", I believe.) Negative signals can be avoided, and positive signals maximized, by taking action to affect one's environment in a positive way. However, during this particular psychedelic experience, another strange and perverse way of following the "signal rule" became apparent to me: deluding oneself into perceiving one's environment to be positive when it's not, and therefore escaping negative signal generation / encouraging positive signal generation without having to take action. I realized that, to a small degree, I'd been engaging in this behavior for my entire life, as I'm sure everybody has -- some more than others. Why we even have the capability of doing this is beyond me -- it defeats the entire purpose of following the "signal rule". It's cheating. If a situation is negative, then becoming complacent via delusion obviously can only cause harm. Humans are lazy, however, and I think that somewhere along the line, we all subconsciously discover that we can use this loophole from time to time to feel comfortable instantly and effortlessly.

• During my trip, I began to question how much of my time is wasted playing the aforementioned signal game. When are the signals that enter my consciousness real and valuable -- and when are they simply animalistic and mechanistic behavioral guides? Why should I ever indulge in unhealthy snacks? I can obviously survive just as well without them. The sole purpose in reaching for a handful of jelly-beans is to pleasure myself, but if this pleasure is just part of an instinctive mechanism to drive me to consume caloric foods, and I have a refrigerator full of more healthy ways to nourish my body, what's the point? I've got to choose what parts of the human experience I deem meaningful, and truly worthy of seeking out. How about love? Is love an intrinsically valuable experience, or is that a meaningless survival tool as well? Is practicing birth control pointless, because the pleasure of the orgasm only serves to encourage reproduction by taking advantage of our natural tendency to seek "positive signals"? I'm not attempting to imply that I've come to a definite answer to any of the previous questions. That's the point, really -- I'm left questioning what I previously made assumptions about.


Thanks for reading!

 

[TrippingBallzz]

So when did you do the DMT

 

[TheAppleCore]

Smoked it on top of the cannabis during the LSD peak. Before this point the trip had been focused entirely on dancing to music, watching the pixie dust fall from the sky, etc. Combining the other drugs marked the beginning of the "revelatory" phase.

 

[yucatanboy2]

I definitely concur with the hyper-awareness being imparted by acid. I usually get that sort of experience every time I trip.

 

[construct]

I like the positive/negative signals theory. That kind of elaborates on insights I've had on LSD.

A motif on LSD for me is realizing the degree to which I seek pleasure and comfort, even when it's not helping my overall wellbeing. These realizations are a good way to destroy passivity and regain motivation, at least for a little bit, I have found.

It can be very frightening to change an environment, so I can see why one would delude oneself into thinking a negative environment is suitable.

Anyway, cool ideas.

 

[psood0nym]

during this particular psychedelic experience, another strange and perverse way of following the "signal rule" became apparent to me: deluding oneself into perceiving one's environment to be positive when it's not, and therefore escaping negative signal generation / encouraging positive signal generation without having to take action. I realized that, to a small degree, I'd been engaging in this behavior for my entire life, as I'm sure everybody has -- some more than others. Why we even have the capability of doing this is beyond me -- it defeats the entire purpose of following the "signal rule". It's cheating.

I think we're so good at deluding ourselves because, for the majority of our evolutionary history, escaping - by today's standards - unfortunate circumstance has been far more difficult than it is now. Unconscious delusion prevents sustained depression and, perhaps, suicide.

Here's the interesting thing, though. Happiness from self-delusion may be as deep and rich as happiness derived from good fortune as judged by personal and social consensus. Evolution would not have outfitted us with such powerful tools of self-delusion if they didn't provide us great advantages during evolutionary history.

Here's a post I made years ago describing an experiment that looked into "synthetic happiness" that may shed some light on your questions:

NSFW:

Experimenters got permission from the families of anterograde amnesiacs (like in “Memento”, always forgetting) to test just how real synthetic happiness, or the happiness we create through unconscious processes, really is. The patients were asked to rate 6 Monet prints from their most favorite to their least favorite.

When this experiment is performed on healthy participants, they are told they can choose either the rank 3 or rank 4 print to keep for themselves, they all pick print 3 as they prefer it slightly. A few weeks later, when asked to rate the same prints again, almost all the normal participants rank the print they chose more highly, and the print they didn’t receive (originally ranked 4th) as rank 5 or 6. In other words, “the one I have is better than I thought and the one I couldn’t keep is worse). Most psychologists interpret this result as ego defense mechanisms at work and indeed, most of us would say “they’re just deceiving themselves, they don’t REALLY like the one they own any better”.

However, the exact same results were obtained with the amnesiacs even though the print was taken from their room while they were away and they could not remember either having owned it or having rejected the other choice. They didn’t deceive themselves; their “affective, hedonic, and aesthetic response” was fundamentally reoriented to make them happier with their circumstances.

Another example is that one year after winning the lottery or having a terrible accident, both lottery winners and paraplegics rate themselves as being, on average, equally as happy. It seems that if you’re mostly happy now you’ll always be mostly happy, and unfortunately, if your mostly miserable, you will always remain that way no matter what your achievements are or your circumstances become. Because we become accustom to almost any circumstances, the only way I can see to improve happiness is by pursuing a diverse array (so you can’t grow accustomed to them) of simple goals that cause short-term joy. Likewise, we should avoid circumstances that cause non-repetitive short-term pains or sadness. Perhaps abandoning long-term life goals that keep you from such joys will make you more truly “successful”. I’m not advocating hedonism, just disputing the importance of ambition and success as they relate to happiness.