• Psychedelic Drugs Welcome Guest
    View threads about
    Posting RulesBluelight Rules
    PD's Best Threads Index
    Social ThreadSupport Bluelight
    Psychedelic Beginner's FAQ
  • PD Moderators: Esperighanto | JackARoe | Cheshire_Kat

Miscellaneous Psychedelic Abuse ~ a compulsion toward escapism ~ the swirling paradigm

schizopath said:
I love ephenidine. Only had it once with a girl but Hot damn, one of the better drugs for sure. Let us both see through the hubris.

I abused psychs at heavy doses and paid the price. It eez what it eez.
Click to expand...
What happened, or what were the psychological or even physical effects of abusing psychedelic drugs at high doses?
 
schizopath said:
My psyche aint right there. I got loopy too like in paranoid schizophrenia.
Click to expand...
So you go into psychotic breaks or psychosis? Do you have a family history of mental illness, or not?

I have witnessed, in person someone who is paranoid schizophrenic and bipolar who went into psychosis, and he talked about his alternative reality and would loop claiming the same things usually that someone poisoned him, or beat him up when this did not happen at all.

He also became super angry and would have killed someone when in psychosis or having a psychotic break due to schizophrenia and mania. When he was on meds and taking them he was normal.
 
There is at least one other likely explanation for the small number of adverse reactions now being treated. Up until 1970 or so, street acid usually contained 100 to 200 micrograms of LSD, enough to assure a full‐blown trip. Since then, and especially since 1972, the typical street product has been far less potent. The bulk of it seems to contain no more than 25 to 50 micrograms. In the overwhelming majority of cases, this is not enough to bring on a full response or lead to adverse reactions.
 
PriestTheyCalledHim said:
There is at least one other likely explanation for the small number of adverse reactions now being treated. Up until 1970 or so, street acid usually contained 100 to 200 micrograms of LSD, enough to assure a full‐blown trip. Since then, and especially since 1972, the typical street product has been far less potent. The bulk of it seems to contain no more than 25 to 50 micrograms. In the overwhelming majority of cases, this is not enough to bring on a full response or lead to adverse reactions.
Click to expand...
lol up til 1970 all LSD was either 270 ug or 300 ug made by owesly nick sands and scully. After orange sunshine dried up the LSD doses were all over the place but below 200 ug. by the 90s most acid was 35-50 ug. 100 ug hits the max.
 
TripSitterNZ said:
lol up til 1970 all LSD was either 270 ug or 300 ug made by owesly nick sands and scully. After orange sunshine dried up the LSD doses were all over the place but below 200 ug. by the 90s most acid was 35-50 ug. 100 ug hits the max.
Click to expand...
I have taken LSD in super high doses, moderate, and low doses. Remember, these are averages, and the LSD dose could always be higher or lower. The first LSD myself and others took was 300ug and this was in the 1990s. My friend had them tested, and there was so much high dose LSD in the late 1990s people were giving it away for free.

If you you really think about it, LSD was the easiest drug to get inthe 1990's in my experience. I could get it easier than weed, and alcohol when I was a teenager.


www.trippingly.net

The LSD Dosage Guide | Determining the Right Dose of LSD — Trippingly

The LSD Dosage Guide. Based on the feedback of several hundred users, a guide to determining what the right LSD dose is..
www.trippingly.net www.trippingly.net
 
Last edited:
alot of always say that and when i give them a legit high dose they will the be first ones screaming down the street. LSD was not laid at high doses in the 90's and "testing" with gcms of drugs was non existent then expect by dea labs. Its still the same story to this day people lying saying they have 300 ug hits when the acid was only 100 ug. And whatever people describe to about there high dose trip is so never like a legit 300 ug.

That article u linked is fully wrong aswell it was written first by a troll called heartless bbq in 2009.
 
I bought LSD in Amsterdam in the early 90s (Smileys). From the effect I can guarantee you they were at least 250 mcg. I base that statement on my experience of ALD-25 & 1cP-LSD in recent years, as they seem roughly accurately dosed. Other tabs of similar strength was also around. In the 60s, all acid wasn't made by Owsley or Sand/Sculley. Other clandestine labs in the US, UK & Europe also made LSD. Sandoz & Czech LSD was around - likely for some time after it was made illegal in 1966. Sandoz in 100 mcg vials and 25 mcg pills.

So ALL acid in the 60s wasn't 270-300 mcg, and ALL acid in the 90s wasn't below 100 mcg.
 
Last edited:
TripSitterNZ said:
lol up til 1970 all LSD was either 270 ug or 300 ug made by owesly nick sands and scully. After orange sunshine dried up the LSD doses were all over the place but below 200 ug. by the 90s most acid was 35-50 ug. 100 ug hits the max.
Click to expand...
That's not wholly true. The first part is as accurate as you can get based on the anecdotal evidence at the time suggesting mass production of LSD was only down to a small handful of people. It's wise to note this was in the US, not worldwide, although there is plenty of evidence that points to the worldwide distribution of LSD coming from the USA and going around the world (during this very specific period of time) and it was at one point bubbling up and then disappearing globally only in certain areas of the US where these labs were, which were not many in numbers back then so that tends to lend a suggestion to who was responsible. As for production elsewhere you have Europe contributing heavily to LSD production at this time and particularly the UK which most people don't tend to accept as truth because the UK has never been known, at least in public consciousness, as a global hub for LSD production during those times, but it was. You have places like Czech Republic too which was exporting huge amounts of acid to places like the US.

Maybe during a very specific period of time that spanned no less than a year or so at most was production solely down to a few people in the US. I don't deny that it wasn't at one point like this because you can read lots of research that suggests it was. However, it's wise to note this was ONLY for a very small amount of time and does not make up the bigger picture. The synthesis of LSD was available for everybody at this point, at least those with as much knowledge and awareness of the subjects involved at the time, it was not some secret recipe only a few lucky people got to know about.

But in regards to the dosages of acid after this time period it's pretty much conjecture at this point. In the nineties acid was seeing a resurgence and this was down to the fact that the iron fist of the targeted drug war aimed at the hippie movement fought by the government had reached it's climax. The only reason there was ever a war on LSD was so that Nixon could muster support for war efforts in Vietnam and well, he got what he wanted and so there was no point to continue marginalizing particular groups in society without having a premise for doing so. I say that acknowledging these groups have ALWAYS been marginalized but during this period of time the intentions was to carve up the movements who were changing public perception about war and many of these were turning on to psychedelics at the time and compromising the steel might of the US government and these people had deeply woven connections to movements who were becoming pretty damned powerful and influential in shaping public perception at the time. The only way to stop this was to squash the way in which these groups formed and prevent them from gaining strength. The war on drugs was basically an attempt to hit the people where it hurt the most - in their neighbourhoods, and under the guise of an evil force ripping through the USA in the form of drugs, namely psychedelics and of course, marijuana as well. The first major curtailing of freedom and autonomy over the human body for some time and it set a HUGE precedent for what was possible moving forward.

This cemented the ability for the government to have a reason to smash someones door down based on the report of a substance being present at a property or being consumed and subsequently demonize and isolate members of society from their communities by demonizing their personal choices regardless of the actual harms being done to society of which were slim to none when we talk about those contributing to raising awareness for the threat of war and the heavy hand of the government at that moment in time. This is how governments have taken full control over society in the past though, by creating a strawman to attack and then attributing the strawman to the public which then allows them to cherry pick who they attack and all the while getting full support from the public who really believe these people are inherently bad.

After this the efforts reduced albeit the mainstream propaganda campaigns continued in order to keep the war machine well oiled up and to make it seem like the ever dangerous threat (drugs) was present, hence the stigma around psychedelics and marijuana at this moment in time.
The government behind the scenes though? Had greatly reduced their efforts to attack these groups. This can be seen in the first hand reports of people involved in varying communities that were involved with drugs to some extent. And so now we are into the nineties and you are seeing increased use of psychedelics. This was true around the world, namely in the US and Europe where clandestine distribution was ramping up just like it had been in the seventies. To say all the doses during this time were 35-50 and 100ug max really takes some specific knowledge of the entire worldwide production of the stuff and then analysing every tab. There is ALWAYS shit acid just like there is ALWAYS shit any other drug. It doesn't mean it's shit everywhere and for everybody. It couldn't have been that bad because public consciousness around psychedelics was taking a far more positive stance at this point, albeit not like it is today but a vast improvement from less than a decade before in the eighties and seventies. People must have been tripping and the information was getting out there that tripping wasn't all that bad. You can't do that without good acid. You talk to people and you'll see that many had good acid during those times. You can't imply that all acid is bad because of a few instances where it was actually bad acid. If anything, MDMA around this time was lower quality and this was when MDMA was in it's prime (nineties). That shows how messed up most peoples knowledge on drugs actually are, particularly when most people think if you were partying in the nineties you were chewing your jaw off and it was swinging like a pendulum. There was A LOT of bunk MDMA around at this time, LOTS. Kinda throws shit on what most people assume about that time period and really exposes the romantic vision people have of certain periods in history. If you look at MDMA pills during the nineties and shortly thereafter you find low doses and when you compare that to today it's like looking at a whole other world. Be careful to fall into urban legends, stereotyping and romantic thinking based on cultural myth and as we say in the UK - old wives tales.

I will accept though, there is substance to what you say. If you read up on the history of psychedelics you will see that the picture painted is often a picture of a select few individuals leading the way. It's wise to point out these individuals are not ALWAYS leading the way. Often their images can immortalized while the world keeps going and they still get the limelight because it was all down to them. Perhaps they made waves but this DOES NOT infer they were always making waves. Once the ball starts rolling you can't simply attribute the ball continuing to roll to the first person who pushed it. It's only natural others get involved and this often involves society on a far larger scale. During a specific moment in time, yes, LSD production and distribution was nuanced to specific people, movements, groups etc. But the wild ride didn't go on forever and so you have to continue to chase the leads and here you find that it goes off into other directions and involving other people until you find you've now branched out into looking at not just a few individuals but as a societal level.
 
Last edited:
Really interesting thread, I admit I haven't read all of it and meant to chime in a lot earlier, for sure have a lot of thoughts on it although most of my thoughts have already been said in some shape or form in enough detail that I don't have too much to add.

Psychedelic abuse obviously is a real phenomenon although an underreported one. I'm hesitant to say if I've ever personally experienced it since I've never had a real compulsion to keep using psychedelics to the point of causing damage to my life, really, and find most of them easily self limiting. But because of their spiritual aura and potential as a tool for personal growth, as well as, obviously, their unique magic amongst mind altering substances, it's very, very easy IMO for self-described therapeutic or mind-expanding usage to actually just be an excuse for pure hedonism. Perhaps the prevalent social stigma against psychedelics and indeed most other mind altering substances plays a big part as people are more inclined to frame their usage as beneficial or in pursuit of spiritual growth rather than, simply, a desire to escape reality or purely hedonistic intent, not that there is anything wrong with usage for these reasons - but I think many people subconsciously internalise prevalent cultural stigmas and therefore avoid admitting these reasons even to themselves, allowing them to believe that psychedelic overuse is actually a more pure path than overuse of almost anything else. Not that it isn't potentially a more enlightened form of substance abuse, in some ways, but self-delusion about one's reasons for using any substance is almost always a dangerous path to go down.

It was touched on earlier in this thread also but although I often see people talk about how psychedelics have enhanced their lives in some way - this kind of discussion very often is kind of vague, unverifiable, not backed up by any concrete examples of people who had a powerful psychedelic experience and really turned their lives around. Not that these latter events don't happen - but, IMO, they are by far more likely in less frequent users than those who keep on coming back... It reminds me in some ways of the nootropics community, where new substances almost always come with a slew of reports on how it changed people's lives for the better, that actually read as lightly manic and possibly placebogenic and skewed perceptions of whatever is really going on... ie, "colours look brighter", "verbal fluency enhanced", maybe lesser anxieties and a new appreciation of life... the latter 3 things obviously may well be real - especially the last 2 I think are demonstrably real and studied - but they're still so subjective, and not generally backed up by reports of how, specifically, someone's life was changed for the better by these effects. Did that increased verbal fluency land them a better job, a better partner? Did that lack of anxiety and gratitude for life give them the courage to do what they really wanted to do in life rather than whatever their status quo was before? Maybe, sometimes, but this follow up, concrete information about positive changes resulting from subjectively improved experiences of life moment to moment are sorely lacking.

Dissociatives of course I don't think are real psychedelics but they take all the negative, unverifiable positives and ego-enhancing negatives and turn them up to 11. Dissociatives mostly are flat out addictive and easily abusable, and any psychedelic abuse I've done is invariably coupled with unhealthy usage of their darker cousins.

Something else that came up earlier was the idea that "hanging up the phone when you get the message" is kind of dumb, and I agree, because that phone will keep on ringing and it probably won't be the same message. It's also not a requirement that one is even looking for a message - there doesn't need to be a justification to do a drug more than once just as there doesn't need to be a justification to listen to a song more than once or engage in any other fun human activity. But, I guess, the justifications that people use to justify using psychedelics can be less than true, even if they are not aware of this, and this very air of chemically induced enlightenment that they carry can make abuse hard to spot or to admit until those unfortunate few really start going off the deep end.

One final point that defnitely applies or did apply to my own life is that while I never considered and still don't consider myself to have a problem with psychedelics, I do also use (or at least, did use and likely will again) a lot of other objectively far more harmful drugs without much thought, just kind of subconsciously dragging them under the same umbrella of seeking enlightenment and insight that was the reason I told myself I like psychedelics, so in that sense for me psychedelics were kind of a gateway habit to justify other more harmful habits. And of course to keep telling myself this lie I had to use psychs occasionally even when I didn't really need to and probably wouldn't have done if my true objective wasn't to binge on a dissociative, or make a hard stimulant more interesting, or whatever... so in that sense, I'd say I did abuse psychedelics as a means to allowing myself to abuse more harmful drugs. I guess my own conclusion from that rambling diatribe is that complete honestly with oneself and one's reasons for using anything is probably an important guard against abuse of substances typically considered to be hard to abuse... and if that's difficult, or if you are unable to stick to your own promises regarding substance use, just as with any other substance, then it could be an indicator that some caution is advised.
 
Xorkoth said:
Some people are drawn to getting ripped to shreds and seek that out over and over again. It's similar to how some people get addicted to adrenaline.... a good friend and ex BLer had a really serious addiction to skydiving and then BASE jumping... he BASE jumped like 500 times, got close to dying a number of times, had various friends die from it, and kept doing it. Most people won't get addicted to BASE jumping, and most people won't get addicted to the psychedelic experience, but as is evidenced by some in this forum, it's certainly something that some people are drawn to again and again.

Personally I never resonated with the "when you get the message, hang up the phone" thing. But for me, psychedelics have changed their role in my life over time. I hardly ever have the desire to try to get off my face and have breakthrough experiences anymore with psychedelics, I have had those and they were life changing, and at one point I was chasing that experience, but nowadays I use psychedelics for a totally different purpose, mainly to help keep my inner child alive, to maintain my connection to that state, and also to enhance certain activities such as live music, makin art, and hiking/exploring. I tend to take light doses, where I remain fully functional. Sometimes I aim for higher than that.

But I did used to try to get off my face routinely, aiming for ego dissolution on a regular basis, so I get it. It's just that for me, after a while it started to be counterproductive towards what I wanted to accomplish as a person. As humans, we ARE our egos, I disagree with the buddhist idea of the point of life being to transcend humanity. The point of living is to be a human, to be yourself, to spend this brief blink of awareness experiencing what it is to be yourself as fully as possible. Too much ego dissolution started to make it hard to be me and live my life to the fullest.
Click to expand...

Though, as Dr. John Lilly puts it, you are not your opinion of yourself. Partly that's exporting tank levity to the outside in the form of putting a cognitive break on vicious negative self-appraisal cycles. But it also carries the meaning that you are not the most general idea of yourself. It's an example of the map not being the territory, it's not just some buddhist idea you're rejecting, it has proper roots in the West as well. And it's typical psychiatric bias to equate it with a passive, escapist attitude to life. This is one of the reasons why the clinical help professions are bastions of painful superficiality. One therapist online described his job once as restating obvious facts to silly people. They're well capable of gently goading overly free minds back to normalcy, but as long as they refuse to face how Victorian puppetry offends logic itself, they will not be able to properly help the people with the opposite problem, who don't feel they can function in such societal straight jacket without unacceptable neuroses. It's really not unlike psychiatric bias against psychedelics. There's a grain of truth in there in both cases, which shouldn't be ignored. But just like the one points to consequences of rationality itself, through general semantics or more exotic methods, the other points to the consequences of empiricism itself, through the revelation of the structure of the nervous system to itself. And surely a good life shouldn't have to involve disagreeing with the results of either sense or science. It's perfectly possible to interface with societal mechanics while carrying around the realization they're illusory projections on the indescribable. To the extent that keeping your inner child alive means coping with the oppressive aspect of reality as reflected in the cultural narrative, it will give societal functioning a welcome sense of levity. It's portable ego dissolution you could say, which you can deploy at will, rather than the forced chemical variety which is to be endured, and ends up requiring its own coping.

TripSitterNZ said:
life can make you question your faith constantly throw so many challenges at you that returning to the psychedelic space to see the same underlying message there can restore said faith in life and allow you to once again appreciate been alive and to carry on. I Love pushing the limits of my experince as far as possible i really don;'t have much going on in my life at all quite dull and boring but tripping all the time allows me to enjoy been alive and not fall into lifes traps of negativity. But balance is important and i lack balance when you lose sight of the ground and can no longer function as a person inside this sandbox of life then what you seeked to achieve has now become the opposite. Though psychedelics during heavy periods of use usually come to a point where a person takes a break for a while.


During a bad point of my life during all my addictions my trips were extremely dark i knew i was fucking up my life and i did not care i refused to accept it and would also keep tripping quite often the LSD had only one way to teach me that was through extreme darkness to finally scare me so much and so bad that i was forced to make a change in my life those trips i now look back on as good trips without them i would of been living a pretty horrible life. Now my life became better bit by bit my trips were so much more wonderful filled with light and love.

But i was so addicted to escaping the world because i did not want to confront life and i hated the entire world and at that point did not care if the entire world burnt alive because all i thought was fuck people fuck the system fuck the world everybody can burn in hell and my trips were a reflection of my own mind state. Yet after each horrible scary experince in hell i kept coming back and back and at one point i was like why the fuck do i keep doing this to myself then it finally clicked i was my own enemy i was literally the archtype of the devil/satan i was self-destuctive i did it all to myself i refused to listen and change til it go so bad that there was now no other option but either kill myself or put in the hard work to turn my life around. I realized my true reason for taking drugs was to destory myself that included LSD aswell at that point i hated myself i hated all the mistakes i kept making i hated everything and everyone and was a slave to the devil. That was finally a turning point my life i quit smoking weed cut back on other drugs and made a serious effort to try get clean then my trips became truly better filled with so much light and love i was blind to. It deepened my love for life.

What i was truly seeking in the psychedelic experince during that time was that if i simply just took a high enough dose i would wake up from this nightmare life forever and never have to return. i really delusional back then.
Click to expand...

Which brings me to the topic of that thread of yours. I didn't want to bring language issues into it as people were enjoying it as is. But the above can be seen as a consequence of the confusion around what "ego" really means, as a consequence of conflating ego dissolution with, exaggerating for effect here, substance-induced dysfunction. The power of having the word around at all as meaning something other than default mode network configuration is exactly that it is already a Whiteheadean misplaced concreteness, pre-dissolved in fallaciousness. It's already quite impossible to accurately bound that which seeks and overcomes bounds, even without the chemical trick of simultaneously melting the boundary projector while amplifying the boundless qualities, cartoonishly exaggerating its essence. You can still get your fractal kicks like before, it's just that the sense of release can also be gotten from words, or rather from a proper understanding of their hypnotic effect and how they can run unchecked and overbear when unexamined to the extent we grow the unbelievably cheeky belief that we are capable of knowing what we are causing depression over being this bloody thing, this pitifully static conceivable, forgetting it's the conceiving that's the relatively static. The same goes for the outer world, which incidentally has remarkably similar properties, heh.

BenzosBudOrBooty said:
I don’t think I’ll ever completely demolish my ego. Hell I’m not sure ill ever be fully satisfied with what I have. It’s the ego that is the bondage. But maybe enjoy the game. Sometimes. It’s Not about material stuff. I’m not a materialistic but I’ve had ego problems. An unhealthy ego. What I felt was I had direct attacks on my ego in my life that caused me to feel dead as an individual of who I was. A disassociated entity in a body. A confused ego. Strong in some regards. Very weak in others. Polarized and just recently I’ve found more a balance. On a bad LSD trip my friend said “your ego” on the phone while I was coming down. Very abruptly I said “I KNOW” and he told me he loved me and I loved him back. But after the bad lsd trip and then this made me very submissive in my life but crazy also I didn’t love him anymore. I was reminded of a childhood trauma he attacked my “ego” and all the times he was crap to me and began to dislike him. Now I don’t know what to think. He’s got his life he’s got mine and I’m glad I don’t have to see him ever anymore.

I have reached a point where I’ve given up my insecurities a great deal and I attribute it to help from psychedelic drugs and thoughts on self/ego. When on a ketamine binge I could see the difference between having insecurities off the drug and not on the drug. Now I haven’t had k in a minute and my insecurities isn’t as bad as it was in the past. I have a much thicker skin than back before this binge but I see myself slip a little in this regard. Never gonna feel as good as on K I know. But it’s starting to impede with my sanity again a tiny bit. Nah nah I’m fine I’m just a little anxious and depressed. But on k i feel untouchable. But very balanced. Like you feel so good on k you just might be gods son yourself but there’s also an ego loss. Hmmmm. Strange drug but I love it
Click to expand...

And that's another major source of confusion, specific psychoanalytical and cognitive-psychological meanings of the same word, ego. It's useful there in the sense that to the extent there's a superego, i.e. additional complication, it can get be gotten rid of by tracing its historic source and carrying its function over to the Freudian ego through deliberate intention. But regardless of its precise meaning, a flip in thinking can be helpful here. Instead of thinking about it as an ego that gets traumatized, think about it as trauma that gives rise to the ego. Because it requires some pain and discipline to condition a brain to think of itself as separate to begin with. And an above average level of trauma psychologically dissociates it even further. Authoritatively instilled guilt cuts off a superego. Shell shock gives emotions their own life. Schizophrenics even put themselves in a multiverse. And that's where chemical dissociatives have their use, pricey as it might in various ways. When you even separate mind from body, when neurotic tensions in the musculature drop away, and there's really nothing else left to be separated from (you can lose still more individual mental functions but they're expressed as qualitative changes of one quantum-entangled intra-cellular and inter-cellular electron cloud), then there's nothing left but to conclude that this indivisible experience of the external world, really the external world itself as its experience of itself is a local loop of itself back into itself, is yourself! Habits gradually come back as bodily sensations reconnect, but they become like energy waves having to run their course, dissipating in time. They're not anymore these as-if-physical traumas that get fueled internally from fretting and externally by standing out as an alien object. Likes and dislikes are still there, especially dislikes after emotional calamitous aftermath. But there's a level of love that's there regardless of like and dislike, because just like a mother loves her baby because they were once undivided, so too you can't but love existence because you have directly perceived the quantum-umbilical-cord. Dissociatives don't have quite the same dissolving feel, but still, more portable-'n-foldable ego dissolution.

pupnik said:
getting the message and then hanging up the phone is too messianically delusional.
no single message is that great.
totality does not fit in a message.
also returning to the edge of madness is a natural thing - we do it daily in dreams, and why not weekly in our psychedelic ritual.
and if weekly, why not a tiny bit more often too?
Click to expand...

No single message can fit totality? Well that's a grand message in itself, isn't it?! It means you don't have to go compulsively chase anything. It's a great relief, one can go experience the world without any sense of existential FOMO. What a messiah you are! :p

You are free to enjoy any madness, of course.. if you want to answer your consequent question of why not more and more and more.

I failed to answer that question, but maybe you won't. Good luck.

Bitchniggaz said:
Ive been training martial arts for almost 20years.
During this time ive studied alot of topics around the human body.
Diet, physics, biologi,biomechanichs, neurologi etc.
Both by myself through books and podcasts, but also through real educations in sports science and physical therapy.

I def get your point, doing psychedelics can give you a false sense of knowing everything att times.
My experience is more that it helped me question dogma.
Alot of people today think science is this clean cut thing and if a scientist say something then it has to be true.

However of you indulge in the actual studies and cross examnine different ideologies its obvious that the whole research field is as corrupt as any religion.

So by not getting attached to any theory and keeping a open mind i have been able to study many paroxadol viewpoints from several angles.

I work with training and physical therapy and many people who knows way more then me are usually impressed with how i see things.
I think this is from doing alot of inner work and be able to see the bigger picture where alot of people zoom in way to much.
Click to expand...

I sympathize with the quest of seeking the flaws in science. I've had a close look at psychology in particular, and was indeed horrified at what got to pass as science at the time. Chemically induced states made for transformation into a one-man multi-disciplinary team from which to triangulate critical perspectives. But it needs to be critical of itself too, and still take consensi seriously. There's a huge irony in complaining over science in general over a medium that couldn't possibly exist if hard science wouldn't get the job done. I've seen you come in here questioning firmly established facts, over which independent scientists too agree. To the extent that there is failure in even hard science the same way there is in religion, it is because both tend to ossify into bureaucracy. That's the confounding factor. Strictly on their own they both represent experimental methods with which to constructively examine reality, like is found with the individual mystics. But Christianity for instance is nothing but bureaucracy anymore, it's really no more than cognitive dissonance over real estate. And the psychological establishment imitates it to a degree, slipping into people's subconscious groves left behind by centuries of church. But so hard science needs to keep the trinkets running, and if even gentlemen-scientists (i.e. outside the hive) agree about an important issue then any skepticism based on bureaucratic conspiracy needs to be re-evaluated.

Xorkoth said:
Yeah dissociatives (like DXM) are way more commonly addictive for people than proper psychedelics. I know tons of people who struggle with ketamine or other dissos, and there are a ton in this forum over the years, too. I know people who won't touch psychedelics who are total K-heads. Some people don't get addicted to dissos (like me, I don't want to be on dissociatives usually), but for those that feel the pull, they can be extremely addictive. it seems far more common for people to abuse dissociatives than it is for people to abuse psychedelics.
Click to expand...

You're pidgeonholing DXM together with ketamine, which, again, is misleading in my opinion. Comparing complaints over DXM addiction with psychedelic addiction gives quite a different picture than comparing DXM addiction to psychedelic psychosis. I'd argue the latter measurement offer greater content validity for their respective harm operationalizations. At least the bluelight google results for "DXM addiction" and "psychedelics psychosis" are within the same order of magnitude, to give a stub. (DXM psychosis is a thing too of course, but unlike with psychedelics it's a side-effect with longterm abuse, and can be therefore subsumed under addiction. It seems to be an order of magnitude lower than psychedelic psychosis, by the same method.)

Vastness said:
Really interesting thread, I admit I haven't read all of it and meant to chime in a lot earlier, for sure have a lot of thoughts on it although most of my thoughts have already been said in some shape or form in enough detail that I don't have too much to add.

Psychedelic abuse obviously is a real phenomenon although an underreported one. I'm hesitant to say if I've ever personally experienced it since I've never had a real compulsion to keep using psychedelics to the point of causing damage to my life, really, and find most of them easily self limiting. But because of their spiritual aura and potential as a tool for personal growth, as well as, obviously, their unique magic amongst mind altering substances, it's very, very easy IMO for self-described therapeutic or mind-expanding usage to actually just be an excuse for pure hedonism. Perhaps the prevalent social stigma against psychedelics and indeed most other mind altering substances plays a big part as people are more inclined to frame their usage as beneficial or in pursuit of spiritual growth rather than, simply, a desire to escape reality or purely hedonistic intent, not that there is anything wrong with usage for these reasons - but I think many people subconsciously internalise prevalent cultural stigmas and therefore avoid admitting these reasons even to themselves, allowing them to believe that psychedelic overuse is actually a more pure path than overuse of almost anything else. Not that it isn't potentially a more enlightened form of substance abuse, in some ways, but self-delusion about one's reasons for using any substance is almost always a dangerous path to go down.

It was touched on earlier in this thread also but although I often see people talk about how psychedelics have enhanced their lives in some way - this kind of discussion very often is kind of vague, unverifiable, not backed up by any concrete examples of people who had a powerful psychedelic experience and really turned their lives around. Not that these latter events don't happen - but, IMO, they are by far more likely in less frequent users than those who keep on coming back... It reminds me in some ways of the nootropics community, where new substances almost always come with a slew of reports on how it changed people's lives for the better, that actually read as lightly manic and possibly placebogenic and skewed perceptions of whatever is really going on... ie, "colours look brighter", "verbal fluency enhanced", maybe lesser anxieties and a new appreciation of life... the latter 3 things obviously may well be real - especially the last 2 I think are demonstrably real and studied - but they're still so subjective, and not generally backed up by reports of how, specifically, someone's life was changed for the better by these effects. Did that increased verbal fluency land them a better job, a better partner? Did that lack of anxiety and gratitude for life give them the courage to do what they really wanted to do in life rather than whatever their status quo was before? Maybe, sometimes, but this follow up, concrete information about positive changes resulting from subjectively improved experiences of life moment to moment are sorely lacking.

Dissociatives of course I don't think are real psychedelics but they take all the negative, unverifiable positives and ego-enhancing negatives and turn them up to 11. Dissociatives mostly are flat out addictive and easily abusable, and any psychedelic abuse I've done is invariably coupled with unhealthy usage of their darker cousins.

Something else that came up earlier was the idea that "hanging up the phone when you get the message" is kind of dumb, and I agree, because that phone will keep on ringing and it probably won't be the same message. It's also not a requirement that one is even looking for a message - there doesn't need to be a justification to do a drug more than once just as there doesn't need to be a justification to listen to a song more than once or engage in any other fun human activity. But, I guess, the justifications that people use to justify using psychedelics can be less than true, even if they are not aware of this, and this very air of chemically induced enlightenment that they carry can make abuse hard to spot or to admit until those unfortunate few really start going off the deep end.

One final point that defnitely applies or did apply to my own life is that while I never considered and still don't consider myself to have a problem with psychedelics, I do also use (or at least, did use and likely will again) a lot of other objectively far more harmful drugs without much thought, just kind of subconsciously dragging them under the same umbrella of seeking enlightenment and insight that was the reason I told myself I like psychedelics, so in that sense for me psychedelics were kind of a gateway habit to justify other more harmful habits. And of course to keep telling myself this lie I had to use psychs occasionally even when I didn't really need to and probably wouldn't have done if my true objective wasn't to binge on a dissociative, or make a hard stimulant more interesting, or whatever... so in that sense, I'd say I did abuse psychedelics as a means to allowing myself to abuse more harmful drugs. I guess my own conclusion from that rambling diatribe is that complete honestly with oneself and one's reasons for using anything is probably an important guard against abuse of substances typically considered to be hard to abuse... and if that's difficult, or if you are unable to stick to your own promises regarding substance use, just as with any other substance, then it could be an indicator that some caution is advised.
Click to expand...

Dumb? Well it is if you take it apart in a dumb way. I don't think impolitely putting down the idea of deriving more out of less is in the spirit of harm reduction. Integration is in demand in the psychedelic scene at large, which is no different than what that old metaphor was trying to convey before everyone and their grandma stripped it from its multiple levels of context.
 
Dumb perhaps is too strong a word, you're right I was taking it out of context, although I went on to add my own context. If we look at substances as just another form of entertainment, like a film, then if someone just really liked films for someone to say "once you get the message, turn off the TV"... Admittedly, this might be good life advice too in the spirit of not wasting time on unfulfilling things. But then, hedonism, appropriately balanced with meaningful pursuits, has it's own value. I would say simply that the statement doesn't always apply, but, for sure, sometimes it does, and in the context of psychedelic abuse, perhaps it definitely does. I think it should be obvious from everything else I said that I really wasn't advocating that anyone just keeps on dialing that psychedelic hotline with reckless abandon. Just that that particular sentiment (out of context, admittedly, yes) perhaps is lacking nuance.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top