This is very interesting. It makes me think of how your perception tends to continually adjust to new situations. You can try to improve your life, but any improvement you make quickly loses its novelty, and becomes absorbed into your frame of reference. So you're always measuring things relative to where you stand now - no matter if you're an impoverished third-world peasant, or a lottery winner becoming bored with all the easy money, your life now is the same mildly uncomfortable existence, and happily-ever-after is always just around the corner.
Kind of like how your retinas adjust to a bright light.
And that continues until you learn to just accept whatever you have, and appreciate it for what it is.
The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the supposed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.[1] According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness.
Nuttin rog
Rappers make selling drugs sound so easy.
I wanna sell white but i cant
Cant fuck with those people anymore and last time i tried i just did it all
Id call my shit llamas
Walk around whispering
Llamas llamas
The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the supposed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.[1] According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness.
Bleh, out of benzos, need to see Doc to be rescripted, anxiety eating away at me once again. Let's just hope they weren't the only thing preventing DXM nausea, because I see dissociation in the forecast for the night.
TAC said:
Especially as I get older, I become less crazed with the ambition for grand adventure, and more satisfied with humble mundane life.
One of the earliest threads I made on Bluelight, Synthetic Happiness, was about how we might tilt the hedonic treadmill in our favor. So far as general rules for psychedelics are concerned in application to this, I think we should try to maximize novelty by giving ourselves new psychological territory to explore. By this I just mean new psychological space for the mind to expand into - a place to go. Trips are more fascinating if we're always de-patterning, learning, and experiencing new things in our sober lives (one mundane illustration of this that springs to mind from years ago is how a new summer job cutting grass *very precisely* on a golf course the morning before a trip meant my CEVs later were grass and hill themed). Because drugs themselves are subject to desensitization, moderation is of course critical to keeping things fresh.
Not surprisingly, the research indicates good physical health is paramount to maintaining a high hedonic set point. Did you know that a fit human can out distance a horse in running? Human prehistory made so much more sense when I learned that ... we just jogged after our bigger and stronger prey until it was too exhausted to fight, then we poked it to death with sticks!). Our bodies' evolved form assumes regular cardiovascular exercise by default, so, in a sense, doing anything less is taxing to it. I personally find handball to be a cheap and minimally boring way to do cardio, even if I'm alone just chasing the ball around the court sometimes.
The last practice I know of that I imagine could have a substantial impact on hedonic set point is rhythmic breathing. If you haven't seen the physiological demonstration of rhythmic breathing's effect on heartbeat regularity (which effects clarity of thought) online already, here's the theory and method (two part vid). I've only recently come across this but it looks simple enough to be legit. There's breath pacing freeware online to help you get in the habit if you're interested.
Besides all this, I know that simply acting altruistically is what has been found to be the most impactful on personal happiness.
^I do some volunteer work, it is indeed very rewarding.
Much nausea, argh. Extended dosing to help, but now I'm just stuck in a long comeup. Ah well, the fun will come around sooner or later.
A haiku for you all:
Languid summer heart
quickens at autumn's cool touch
turning with the leaves
Anyway, one of the tweakers I used to know, around whom our circle revolved, or at least we chilled at his place most of the time. This dude was in his forties, really chill, lived in an RV that he parked in various places in the northern parts of the city of P- 'round where I was living at the time. He was trying to get a computer repair business off the ground, but mostly doing tweaker shit for money. His RV served as the roving tweaker party van, go there any time for some social smoking and talking, always some porno playing on the back TV, sometimes music or movies up front. He was always ready for an adventure, accosting random people in the hood at one in the morning with me so I could score some H, picking up folks we met at the liquor store to hook them up, and then just chattin' away while we smoked with complete strangers.
This guy was always going on about his plans to get a crew together, 'cause he was captain of this ship, and they were just gonna travel around, end up in Colorado, or start there. Planned on ripping off some store to get some hard wood flooring and spiff up his place. Of course meth heads are always going on about their plans, that never come to fruition, eventually you realize we're all just on some damned treadmill and nothing good was happening to anybody. But I miss that, I miss the crazy dreams and optimism. Last I saw the guy was in late summer 2011, he was gonna go off to county for violating probation, and was likely to lose the RV, I wonder whatever became of him.
just decided to have 150ugs of LSD. Bit of a last minute decision. Don't want too intense a trip, I have an etiz on hand just in case it gets bad or too much.
Thanks for linking to that. It was a good read. I've tried to "justify" my, that is, "our," color perception to myself before, you know, put it in order, and I started again while reading that. It's a funny process. I wanted there to be a simple mathematical description that apportions regular nanometer ranges within the spectrum to each "distinct subjective color category" in the ROYGBIV schema, or to kinda do what Newton tried and match them up to octaves in the aural chromatic scale ... something. But just look at the uneven crap -- it doesn't map up:
Here's a paragraph from a 2CT7 trip report I wrote about a year and a half ago. After rereading this exert, I'm not exactly sure what point I was trying to make and I would articulate it differently if I were to rewrite it. Regardless, my internal monologue was almost completely out of my control (more so than usual, I guess) and was embodied by strings of voices (both actually remembered and fabricated) of black personalities (mostly the Tracy Jordan character from 30 Rock) and a kind of gay/effeminate personality (though I identify as a straight male).
I also had some thoughts about popular culture as the mythology of our time and the role of the internet in shaping our psyches and identities. I have been watching 30 Rock a lot lately, and a lot of the humor from that show was a theme for the trip. However, I noticed something disgusting as well. I am a white suburban male. I would certainly characterize myself as open to all races and a firm supporter of equality. However, during the trip, my mind would constantly speak in stereotypical voices: black personalities, Hispanic personalities, and gay personalities (to be fair, white personalities were included as well). This was disturbing to me. Why was my mind doing this when I had no control over it? Why do I think that racial stereotypes are funny? Why is race funny when I am completely not racist (or so I would like to think) while sober? I use the 30 Rock example because I was constantly saying things in a black voice that was reminiscent of Tracy Morgan’s character. 30 Rock plays with race in a funny and smart way, but why was my mind talking in this way? I know that Tracy Morgan is playing a character and that it does not reflect who Tracy Morgan is in real life. This was disconcerting and it is something I have to further analyze. Maybe I'm taking this too seriously and have a poor sense of humor.
Edit: I guess I didn't really answer your question! I related insofar as my internal monologue was influenced by extraneous media/characters and then my mind adopted those personas while inebriated. I haven't really experienced it sober, though. I can't remember if this was exactly what you were describing, however.
Here's a paragraph from a 2CT7 trip report I wrote about a year and a half ago. After rereading this exert, I'm not exactly sure what point I was trying to make and I would articulate it differently if I were to rewrite it. Regardless, my internal monologue was almost completely out of my control (more so than usual, I guess) and was embodied by strings of voices (both actually remembered and fabricated) of black personalities (mostly the Tracy Jordan character from 30 Rock) and a kind of gay/effeminate personality (though I identify as a straight male).
I also had some thoughts about popular culture as the mythology of our time and the role of the internet in shaping our psyches and identities. I have been watching 30 Rock a lot lately, and a lot of the humor from that show was a theme for the trip. However, I noticed something disgusting as well. I am a white suburban male. I would certainly characterize myself as open to all races and a firm supporter of equality. However, during the trip, my mind would constantly speak in stereotypical voices: black personalities, Hispanic personalities, and gay personalities (to be fair, white personalities were included as well). This was disturbing to me. Why was my mind doing this when I had no control over it? Why do I think that racial stereotypes are funny? Why is race funny when I am completely not racist (or so I would like to think) while sober? I use the 30 Rock example because I was constantly saying things in a black voice that was reminiscent of Tracy Morgan’s character. 30 Rock plays with race in a funny and smart way, but why was my mind talking in this way? I know that Tracy Morgan is playing a character and that it does not reflect who Tracy Morgan is in real life. This was disconcerting and it is something I have to further analyze. Maybe I'm taking this too seriously and have a poor sense of humor.
Edit: I guess I didn't really answer your question! I related insofar as my internal monologue was influenced by extraneous media/characters and then my mind adopted those personas while inebriated. I haven't really experienced it sober, though. I can't remember if this was exactly what you were describing, however.
Heh. Don't worry about it. I'm always observing my own thought patterns, a practice magnified by psychedelics and dissociatives, and in my experience there's a strong correlation between the style of my internal monologue and whatever "discussion" I've been listening to lately. In my trips recently, for instance, my monologue has been taking on the cadence and inflection of a British cockney conversation. This is simply because I've been re-listening to a collection of audio files from the "Ricky Gervais Show" on XFM radio. I frequently hear "alrite," "inn ut," and "rite then," in my mind's ear. Fascinatingly, this psychological phenomena does not require one to audibly hear these discussions. I first noticed it while silently reading "The Lord of the Rings." I'd fall asleep after reading the books and my internal vocalizations would be in "Tolkienese." Stereotypical voice styles are commonly heard voice styles, so your brain is simply subconconsciously recording and remixing whatever it's heard. Also, it's natural to be subconsciously racist. Reseach shows most people are. Racism is a cognitive shortcut for social cohesion within a closely genetically related group. Everybody is bio-programmed to prefer that which is saliently more like them, you just have to monitor the way this tendency gets expressed.
Didn't know it had a name... learn something new every day.
One face I certainly missed.....
