☮ Social ☮ PD Social Talk Thread: Somatic Swirly Sepia Summer Sausage Stage Set Suppository

[altitudes]

We are actually progressing at an amazing rate, tho us young people might not be as acutely aware of it. The black civil rights movement was just 50some years ago. Women in America haven't even had the right to vote for 100 years -- the 19th amendment was passed in 1920. I'll be 30 this month, 96 years wasn't *that* long ago.

Yup, although I sense some bitterness bubbling to the surface as to how quickly it's progressed in the past few years.

 

[yepyepwoah]

It seems like all the "progress" is in more or less niche areas, but as a wholr we are as / more fucked than ever.

 

[altitudes]

Well, I think the "tolerance" movement itself reeks of prejudice, but maybe that's a discussion for another thread. Funny this is happening in the PD social of all places, haha.

Honestly though, I think it pushed too much and wound up making people bitter who were already open to a more gradual change.

Not everyone is comfortable with people different and them, and as long as they're not nasty about it, that should be tolerated as well. I don't think smearing it in everyone's faces 24/7 is good for anyone honestly.

MLK and others really only made progress by forcing the issue of Black civil rights, true, but that doesn't mean this situation(s) will respond the same way.

And that's the other thing, I think people are being overwhelmed by the number of issues as well.

 

[TheBlackPirate]

SKL,

You have negative opinions of a bunch of people and groups... most of psychedelic culture.

-Rainbow Gatherings
-MAPS
-Islam
-Burning Man
-The Grateful Dead
-Liberals
-Neo-Hippies
-Gays
-Social Justice Advocates

The only people I noticed were excluded from your criticisms were xenophobic isolationist conservatives and white supremacists. Did I misinterpret you?

I admire how open and accepting most psychedelic users are. Perhaps your another type.

 

[SKL]

I love the Grateful Dead. Some of their latter day following, not so much. I have no problem with Islam per se although obviously I am of a different faith and don't align with their beliefs and practices. I would blindly wager a great deal that on a daily basis I interact with more Blacks (Afro-American, West Indian and African) Hispanics and Muslims than you do in a month, and I get along well with all, the woman I'm currently somewhag pursuing is Black West Indian. I would further wager I have had more exposure to psychedelic drugs and culture than you. I may be wrong but I doubt it. Furthwr Ihave a number of very close family members who are openly gay, coworkers as well. Politically speaking I would be aptly described as a isolationist conservative. I would not describe myself as a White supremacist/"White nationalist" (a problematic term), but I'm fluent in the literature and have certainly had friends affiliated with White organizations (mostly coming from prison) as well as psychedelic-oriented and other affinity groups. I'm just as up on my Marxist-Leninist, Maoist, feminist, social justice, etc. literature. I've read the Quran, the Gita, Be Here Now, whatever.

Don't confuse having made up one's mind and taken a side in the coming world culture clashes with having a closed mind; or knowing my identity and having strong positive identitarian convictions from holding any antipathy on an individual level with persons with different identities. I've had a pretty broad-spectrum experience to arrive at where I am now. You? Petit-bourgeois liberal with a hobby in drug experimentation? Or enlighten me. What do you believe in? Or as importantly, what don't you believe in? Open mindedness as a virtue in and of itself is a fallacy, although education in all perspectives is a virtue.

 

[altitudes]

I don't know much abut SKL, but I'm growing tired of this idea that everyone in the psychedelic community has to conform to some new world agenda.

I think "negativity" has been over-villainized over the years to this point that people can't express anything contrary unless it falls within the approved spectrum of acceptable thought patterns.

 

[SKL]

I don't have a problem with psychedelics, I used to take a lot of them. Almost all of the cultural impedimentia that surrounds them, I've grown disillusioned with or seen the man behind the curtain.

 

[Help?!?!]

I don't want to be a dick, but who's the man behind the drinking/doing herion(know your outta that one for now though, congrats!)all the time curtain?Also which ones more worth while? For myself it's hard to grasp I suppose, doing so many different GABAergics(nearly everyone being better than ethanol)to imagine drinking ethanol constantly and whilst I've done the majority of established opiates and iods I just don't have much interest, thankfully. Those chemicals are only worthwhile for checking out, for the most part(I've already done enough of that and the only way to truly check out is to die, no matter how much or many drugs you do, you'll always come down eventually and be near square one again). Yeah their great for relaxing/etc. but once you cross certain lines it only becomes the thrill of the chase/espacism. So what does seeing the man behind the curtain even mean when you still chose the thrill of the pursuit or the thrill of dulling yourself over all other things? You said yourself, your psychedelic self was a "legend", maybe it was only the "you" that was dealing but still, IME psychedelics are worthless if you can't be truthful about yourself, to yourself, let alone other things. Some people are better at being fake then others, but if it wasn't, you spent much of your time tripping as another identity. Psychedelics, although one of the worst class of drugs to be used as such, can still be escapist pursuits for certain people....

Having made up ones mind is not the same as having a closed mind, but having made up ones mind so firmly that one wouldn't change it even upon the presentation of absolute evidence because of ones of feelings (especially) is IMO. You don't strike me as having wholly reached that point yet but it seems you inch closer more posts than not.

 

[SKL]

The man behind the alcohol and heroin curtain is a straightforward capitalist whether he is the stockholder in Diageo, or El Chapo. The man behind the rainbow hued psychedelic curtain is New Age nutjob a killing spree short of being Charlie Manson, either that or he is just as much of a capitalist sitting on surprisingly vast wealth somewhere in the Netherlands. I would vastly prefer to deal with the latter in retrospect but the former in was the one made available to me during my tenure in that world. I might still prefer to deal with him, or rather his minions, today for strictly operational security reasons and for the convenience of getting a domestic product and even the opportunity to make patriotic claims about its superiority to the product coming from the East, which claim was made by Californians against me, me against the Dutch, and the Dutch against the Chinese. Ironically most of the work going around, regardless of claims, some quite extravagant, about it's provenance, was of an origin known only to those at the utmost heights of the pyramid. Anyone who has tried to cop dose work from a hippie has probably heard the kind of claims I'm talking about comma, I discussed them in short length at the post I like to it earlier. I'm talking culturally and macroeconomically here not strictly in terms of psychopharmacology or of the effects upon the life of an individual user. Once I truly believed, or I was able to convince myself that I truly believed—the difference between the two being I think may constitute a rather a profound philosophical question—in the mythology of chemical self-enlightenment. I have written about this in this forum somewhat extensively over the years in various phases of my transition. When I speak of a legend in the law enforcement or intelligence sense I am mainly referring to commercial activities. But when that leads into your social life something like half of your waking hours necessarily you lined up with profound questions regarding your own identity. Psychedelics do little to unravel that particular gordian knot, it's true, and it is quite impossible to take them in a situation that is free of an unencumbered by context of identity, culture, set, setting. This is hardly relevant to at least one of the questions at hand. I have experienced practically the full spectrum of the psychopharmacological options on offer. For the most part I partook of them with an honest desire of self improvement, except as when necessary on a practically ritualistic and fetishistic basis during the course of commerce. Perhaps it is the lengthy exposure to the commercial side which has rendered me just as cynical about this particular genre of chemical escapes then I am about alcohol or the so-called hard drugs. The notion that I posted in response to that began this discussion to which I took particular fence was that that implies experience with this drama of chemicals and chemical induced experiences should have somehow influence one's social and political outlook. This was the honestly and fervently held belief of both Tim Leary and Richard Nixon. We all know how well both of these turned out we got Woodstock, Watergate, yuppies, the so-called War on Drugs, a disgraceful end to the war in Vietnam, and the ascended neoliberalism of the world in which we now inhabit. Psychedelic swirl has been nothing but a colorful embellishment on the side. As was alluded to by one poster above people who believe the psychedelics should make people "turn on" and join some type of movement—an idea wholly discredited somewhere between Millbrook and Altamont—are making what is a cardinal mistake in science, confusing correlation with causation. Particularly with the socio-cultural baggage that these compounds contain comma they naturally attract anti-establishment types. I never was, or rather I was entirely apolitical for the most part of my career in that world, and became politicized, and indeed anti-establishment, but approaching the establishment and its evils from a different direction.

Ironically, by embracing Globalization and the Internet, the psychedelic scene has at once made it's peace with neoliberalism and in many cases with explicit elitists-libertarian ideologies just same as I referenced being found at Burning Man. Who is the man behind every curtain? Capital. Any attempt to impute social or political meaning to these drugs is a fiction or a phenomenon that existed only in the most fleeting moments and places in Western civilization, and in forms alien and utterly and forever incomprehensible to our minds and other civilizations. Recreational drugs can be enjoyed and they can even in some cases—much more rare than their evangelists suppose—facilitate a form of introspection. Most of the insights gained thereby however are nonsense. There is no Message because there is no Speaker, and to claim otherwise is the path of madness. Those who have taken that path often live in a very dark world, and you will encounter twenty broken souls for every healed one at your local festival or concert parking lot. I do believe in the possibility of therapeutic potential, but not with the practically religious faith love somebody like Doblin, who I have had met and broken bread with any number of times, and view as a lovely and brilliant man, but don't like the path his work has taken and some of his associates. The work of Dr. Griffiths and the rest of the team at Purdue, also great folks I've had the pleasure of spending time with, have the better approach and are the best if not only avenue of legitimate scientific inquiry into these questions. Most of these people lean left if they are political but that means nothing, as does the psychedelic experience itself. The experience of what I'd consider the essential psychedelic, 5-MeO-DMT, everything-in-nothing, or that of the one archetypal and most spoken of, LSD, something-in everything-in, or what primitive cultures get from their plant decoctions, is one and the same: activation or connections of certain circuits in our brains on a day-to-day basis we do not connect. Wherein there may lie therapeutic potential is to be determined, but shows promise. What it means to an individual is likely to be none more than a grand amplification of that individual's expectations. No message, no politcs, no enlightenment.

Apologies for any Oddities in the text, it was largely voice dictated on my walk home.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

I don't have a problem with psychedelics, I used to take a lot of them. Almost all of the cultural impedimentia that surrounds them, I've grown disillusioned with or seen the man behind the curtain.

SKL, I remember when I was a n00b, and you departed off to form your own more cultured and intellectual (or more authentically psychedelic) forum, and I still maintain that your reactionary utopianism is primarily the result of your individual psychology, particularly your obsession with a golden era of innocence and joy and togetherness or whateverthefuck the socioeconomic dressing you put on your impressionism (which is what you are, an impressionist)/devotion to how the world seemed to you at a previous time in your life and the exact conditions that corresponded with it. And that's not knocking you, you are knowledgeable and the case you make for your side is well informed and logically coherent. [P.S. You're more than welcome to analyze me in return! I love it when people do that, flattering or not.]

Which leads me to my point, are you an Edmund Burke fan? It seems to me like he'd be your guy more than anyone. I have a fucking 1919 edition of his speech on conciliation with America that I am willing to donate to you if you would appreciate and cherish it. Commie though I am, I love old ideas, and I was a rightist for the longest time, so I have a lot of respect for the guy (in addition to my love of old important books in general).

 

[SKL]

I love my Edmund Burke. Impressionism too. A wise man once said that the average man believes that all our problems begin with World War II, and educated man believes that all our problems begin with World War I, and a true student of History believes that all our problems date to the French Revolution (and perhaps whereby to the Protestant Reformation.) I'm fit to be accused of reactionary utopianism, but not exactly looking back on my life...perhaps to an extent, but I'd far rather react to a pre-embrionic state I suppose. As Lou Reed had it,

I wish that I was born a thousand years ago
I wish that I'd sailed the darkened seas
On a great big clipper ship
Going from this land here to that
With a sailor's suit and cap
Away from the big city
Where a man cannot be free
Of all the evils of this town
And of himself and those around
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know

 

[Cream Gravy?]

You keep mentioning 5-meo-dmt in various places SKL. I'm legitimately about to requisition me a half gram or so of the stuff, solely based on two things: You seem to believe in it's nature as a 'true' psychedelic, and I honestly think that my ability to procure it in the near future will be nigh impossible if I do not act now.

 

[SKL]

do it. it will probably cease to circulate. if you like psychedelics buy it. if you"re broke, do it anyway. do it before you buy your next book or take your girlfriend out to dinner. do it after paying rent but before going grocery shopping. definitely do it before buying any pleb shit like weed, wine or coke or whatever

 

[Cream Gravy?]

Lol, but weed/beer/coke is so fun! 8)

It's available to me in the hydrochloride form, which means I likely wouldn't be able to smoke it... I know the doses are low, 10-20mg per trip max. Would 500mg be plenty, or should I consider opting for a full gram, knowing I've never tried it before? One gram is the max I can afford, but I'm considering getting only a half because then I could afford some AMT along with it

 

[yepyepwoah]

SKL, it seems these past weeks since your return to PD you have got a new dictionary and a pulpit. Whats up man?

 

[SKL]

A different perspective is nice, no? Or am I disrupting an echo chamber I helped to create? The dictionary thing, I dunno, I guess I've been spending my time not spent tripping reading? I'm told it's good for you.

 

[yepyepwoah]

Yah mostly I am just pissed I only understand half your big words through context and the other half I am too lazy to look up. I spend most of my time reading fantasy/sci fi...

Ya a different perspective is nice. Its better to discuss things than not. I think I am jealous of your long post, now I know you voice dictate to phone maybe I can catch up. You seem to be a good dude regardless so fuck me and keep it up ;-)

 

[Bluuberry]

Oh my god, SKL, that "harm reduction guide" was hilarious. You are the person that the true heads see from a mile away and turn the other way. So obsessed with making profit off of medicine, jeez. The festivals I like, it's impossible to sell anything because everyone is just giving everything away for free. Guess it's just a bunch of new age weirdos! Im curious, what is your actual DOC? The real you, not the mythological version of you. I've only read you say what you dislike. Btw not trying to start internet beef with you, I just got a good laugh out of the read. I would probably shoot the shit with you at a party or whatever but I distrust people with the profit-based viewpoints that you have. Probably why I'm living in poverty. Damn ideals..

240sx, have you ever done DMT? I have not tried 5-meo but a friend did long ago. He said he liked it but not as much as n,n DMT. I think it's the best thing since sliced bread personally.

 

[SKL]

So, bluu, you headier than me?



(credit to someone here I think for turning me on to that, it's hilarious)

The harm reduction guide is meant to be genuinely good advice for the outsider with a touch of parody for the experienced. The profit motive is in earnest though. The sorts of festivals you like I've been to quite a few of, but there's not a great deal of money to be made (although deals go down behind the scenes aplenty) and usually the music isn't all that great and I don't really like hippies, or most of their music, with the exception of the Grateful Dead, Phil, DSO, etc (never really like RatDog/Bobby's later output all that much), which I really genuinely love, that was never a put-on; most other hippie shit doesn't do it for me, musically or in any other sense (I especially hate most hippie music while on drugs.) The "old heads" are just basically full of shit in my book, although I've known some who weren't, some who were, the ones fullest of shit, of course, were the "tree-thugger" ghetto lot kid types, young or old. If you're picturing me as one of those you're pretty afar off.

Anyway if you are in the Northeast our paths probably intersected at this point, and no, you would not see me from a mile away, if we needed to meet on a professional basis, you'd be introduced to me discretely, get a good quality at a good price with good customer service, or you'd get something from my kids while I relaxed in a canopy doing whatever the hell I wanted to while getting envelopes passed to me a few times a shift. And those heady ass festivals where there's no profit motive and stuff? Your fun, either way, is being provided, even if once removed (seldom more), by people with "profit-based movements." Otherwise maybe you'd turn up your nose at me as a capitalist interloper but it's not 1967 or even 1977 (Ithaca!) anymore, brah.

The commercial bit is the American dream, writ small, illegal, and tie-died and if you ask me one word to associate with the GD, it would probably be "America," and that includes the freewheelingly capitalistic "temporary autonomous zone" on lot. But if I met you at one of these things enough that I'd want to chill with you, you'd want for nothing, drugs, girls, whatever, I'd sort ya. I always showed love and gave back to the community with free spinnings, etc., each time I worked a large festival. Often this took the form of a gallon or two of "prankster juice" that we would just sit on the hood of a car handing out (which, in case you don't have a cynical bone in your body, is not only altruism, but advertising.) I would go to these festivals and see the GD-related headline act(s) and otherwise pretty much chill and carry out business. Later on I moved upward and onward a bit and didn't go anymore anyway but for a show or whatever. It's too fucking hot, anyway. As I wrote elsewhere in a post about how I hate summer—God how I hate summer—

When I used to be a kid on lot, the summer, of course, was primetime. Lots of festivals and concerts to go to, lots of money to be made. But you know what? It sucked. On the lower levels of the corporate ladder, especially; you sweated your way through 12, 14 hour days making the rounds. You were probably dressed fashionably for the scene which wasn't the most accommodating to the weather, whereas your girlfriend might be wearing nothing at all, [and guys are always sizing her up and stuff.] You're making good money for low man on the totem pole, depending on your skill and your product, at least a few hundred dollars an hour and possibly more, so consider yourself well compensated by the trouble, but then there's the tents, the travel, the dehydraton ... it all sucks. (That's why your boss is staying at a hotel room with a regular shuttle to lot.) Speed or coke might help you work, but will dehydrate you and risk collapse, get too obviously opiated and it effects business, get anywhere near nod torritory and you'll probably do it and risk a horrible sunburn. Beer is a diuretic. Psychedelics and dissociatives tend to invite heat delirium. After night (post-music) is when the real weirdos and the occasional scary fuck comes along. And to top it all off, the music sucks. Usually two or three acts worth going to and usually they put on a decently workmanlike show but the best shows I've heard have all been off-season. And, deducting expenses, you'd spend all that cash on some work to take home and make more money there than you did at the festival. (This, and perhaps many jobs in this field, are apparently is no longer necessary due to yet another infelicity of the young Mr. Ulbricht's inviting the end user. An outsourcing cunt like all the rest.) So there's that. So much for festivals.

And besides, the ticket prices and outlay costs on most large festivals are not insubstantial so to go without working there somehow is not within the means of many people. In the very beginning I was just more or less breaking even but then I got smarter. Burning Man is even more outrageous in these terms (although I haven't been.) And don't get me started on Rainbow Gatherings. Veneer of rainbows and gift economies and hippiedom, vast undercurrent of gangsterism. Shanti sena, shanti sena! Or whatever they say.

Idealism is a very dangerous thing, not only for the idealist but for the world around him.

My drug of choice is heroin, has been for about 20 years and opiates have been since I was 12 and first broke a bone. I'm not on dope right now solely because I can't afford it due to a rather unfortunate confluence of economic circumstances. I have a very good job but make less than I did dealing—did both for a while at once, that was too much. The constant anxiety of doing illegal shit all the time was getting to me anyway. So I'm glad I quit. Basically waking up every day knowing I'd eventually wind up in prison for a decent span of time (or become a turncoat) but not knowing when. But now money's tight, too tight for dope at least, sometimes worse than that: I had family expenses, bills expenses, got sued, owe money to the tax man, lost some shifts and some facilities, etc., which knocked me off my axis quite a bit to the tune of like a 50% paycut. So now it's Suboxone and prescriptions. I'd be deliriously happy to continue on heroin for life if I conceivably could, financially and in terms of not winding up losing my license, though. My secondary drug of choice, barring other opiates, is booze or maybe ketamine, although I haven't done ketamine in a long time. Speed and coke are OK. I used to love acid, most substituted tryptamines, 2C-D, and 2C-T-7 and -21, DOC and DOM, and as I always going on about, 5-MeO-DMT. I'm in no place in my life to use psychedelics these days and even during the last year or two of my involvement in the "psychedelic movement" (which never really moves anyhow, we go to festivals for the same old bullshit and go to conferences to see the same old song and dance from the same people...but I digress) I preferred something lighter, like say some 2C-D (ideally, given i.m.) perhaps paired with a bit of dexedrine, or maybe 4-AcO-DMT. I never trusted plant drugs. I grudgingly used pot socially for years until I realized that I hated it.

 

[Xorkoth]

a true student of History believes that all our problems date to the French Revolution (and perhaps whereby to the Protestant Reformation.)

Are you really saying that you think all of our problems come from protestantism? Because if so, that's mind-boggling to me. Problems have existed such as to cause the downfall of every major civilization. In my mind the problems are inherent in human nature. They are an intertwined coupling of two things:

- Some people have the type of personality where they are obsessed with accumulating wealth/power over others in a sociopathic way. These people are attracted to positions of power and through those positions of power they undermine the effectiveness of the governmental system they're in by corrupting it to build their power over, and off of, the people.
- The majority of people look to something else to tell them what to believe (ie, "sheeple"). And additionally humans have a propensity to form an "us vs them" mentality, which causes divisions and hatreds.

I won't even get into catholicism vs protestantism since we have discussed that before. All I'll say is, religion is a social framework tool to keep people in a general format so as to form societal bonds among vast groups of individuals. it has its place and I'm not sure it could realistically be done away with, but they're all ways to get to the same place. I can't buy that any of them are correct and all the others are wrong. They all bring good and bad things into the world. Largely the bad things are the result of my first point above, corruption by sociopathic power-seekers. This affects Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and every single other major religion that has ever been and ever will be.