Psychedelic drugs can unlock mysteries of brain - David Nutt

You beat me to it! I love the way they banish him but he just keeps coming back!

 

Do you lose track of who you are? Even to the point that I could come in, take your stash and say "Allright knock" as I walk out of the door?

This has happened on etizolam! The police came in and took my stash. I don't think it was ego-death though. Rather, straightforward shutdown of consciousness. Same is possible with ethanol.

I don't really know if a state of mind where I am not actually conscious, is a useful one where I can exercise some control of what happens during and after the experience.

As mentioned, on MXE and Salvia I have lost my sense of what it means to be human, to be knockando, I do not know who I am or where I am, what things are or what they could possibly mean to me. If someone came in and took my stash, I would not know the significance of the event.

I normally lock my front door to stop you getting in, especially when I'm doing dissociatives!

 

SHM
For the tldr crew. Take disassociatives.

The K-hole isn't really ego loss though, I mean when you come back to reality it does anything but soften the ego. DMT does the same thing except does soften the ego (for a while) when you come back to planet earth.

 

The K-hole isn't really ego loss though,

I said I think it's incredibly powerful short-term ego dissolution of a high degree. I never used the words loss or death. I argued against black and white extremes.

As Knock said, ethanol, anti-psychotics etc, probably equal a total shut down but that isn't what we are really talking about. So sorry for bringing those up Ismene.

 

What drugs is Ian Duncan Smith on, I wonder?

None? That's extraordinary. God help us all, then.

 

What drugs is Ian Duncan Smith on, then.

Power. It's like 110% cocaine for bald twats.

 

A very dangerous character, imo, who may be part of a sinister conspiracy to subvert the British state...one can only trust Special Branch keep a close eye on him and his so-called 'colleagues' and will 'swoop' at the appropriate time.

 

Never been on a psyche ward Issy? Loads of brain dead geriatrics on anti-psychotics? You could easily take anything from them. The chair they are on.

Or is this different?

I dunno shm, I've always found the magic of psychedelics is that you DO know who you are so you can experience it. I'm not sure what benefit I'd get from them if I had no idea what was happening to me. Perhaps I'm the odd one out and everyone has no idea who they are when they take mushrooms.

 

I dunno shm, I've always found the magic of psychedelics is that you DO know who you are so you can experience it.

There is generally consensus amongst post 1950's neuroscience researchers that there is no YOU so to speak, a concept first introduced by buddhists a few thousand years ago i believe. For me, psychedelics help lean towards a meditative state in which you realise that YOU are really just a collection of conscious experiences and that the closest thing there is to YOU is whatever it is that can be aware of those internal experiences / phenomena as they are unfolding in real time. I think this is what most people here mean by conscious awareness without the ego.

 

Perhaps I'm the odd one out and everyone has no idea who they are when they take mushrooms.

No, I made it quite clear I agree with you when it comes to psychedelics.

It's just that with disassociatives I think there might be a clue in the name. Just my opinion.

 

True, I do become a little more disconnected on the K, never not known who I was but come fairly close.

 

YOU are really just a collection of conscious experiences

I like how you put the word "just" in front of something that has philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists still quite stumped!

 

That's how 'just' is used* all the time Knock, I agree.

Usually by women when they want you to do something laborious that they can't/won't do.



* i.e (unwittingly) ironically, indicating something's simple when it ain't.

 

I like how you put the word "just" in front of something that has philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists still quite stumped!

That's exactly why i phrased it that way. Probably less than 10 percent of what our brain's activity is ever available to consciousness yet this is all we have access too when constructing our sense of self.

The last time i checked, there was still a fairly viscious battle going on between the opposing philosophical camps of david chalmers and dan dennet over whether or not a "hard" problem of consciousness exists or not. I'll agree that many people see this as a mystery rather than a problem, and do feel stumped accordingly. But this is really a debate about sensation. When it comes to the concept of the unified self, few self respecting neuroscientists have felt stumped since michael gazzaniga's ground breaking research on split-brain patients.

 

That's exactly why i phrased it that way. Probably less than 10 percent of what our brain's activity is ever available to consciousness yet this is all we have access too when constructing our sense of self.

The last time i checked, there was still a fairly viscious battle going on between the opposing philosophical camps of david chalmers and dan dennet over whether or not a "hard" problem of consciousness exists or not. But this is really a debate about sensation. When it comes to the concept of the unified self, no neuroscientist has felt stumped since michael gazzaniga's ground breaking research on split-brain patients.

You are obviously "familiar with the literature", no need to get on the defensive.

Still don't really see why you phrased it that way though! Were you being ironic?

 

Sorry i didn't mean to go off on one. No i wasn't being ironic. I guess this phrasing reflects my concept of the self. The more you get into psychology, atleast for me, the more you become astonished by the sheer amount of activity that is totally unconscious too us. It seems that freud was right all those years back when he told us that the role of the conscioussness mind was not to make decisions, but rather to inform us as to the action that our brains have just decided to do

 

Sorry i didn't mean to go off on one. No i wasn't being ironic. I guess this phrasing reflects my concept of the self. The more you get into psychology, atleast for me, the more you become astonished by the sheer amount of activity that is totally unconscious too us. It seems that freud was right all those years back when he told us that the role of the conscioussness mind was not to make decisions, but rather to inform us as to the action that our brains have just decided to do

Yes, I see what you mean, and I agree! Well, to some extent.

There are things our brains do without (usually) any conscious awareness - making our heart beat and our digestive organs work are obvious ones. Making new memories and processing sensory input are less obvious ones. And we have no opportunity to make decisions about these without resorting to "manual intervention".

There are other things we are aware of, and we seem to choose to do them, although we didn't make a conscious effort to learn them - walking, talking. I am in control of them, but they just happen.

Then those things we are aware of, and we chose to learn them, and made a concerted effort of will to learn them. Driving a car, operating a computer. When learning to drive we are keenly aware of every fucking movement. When we get good at it, we can do it almost in our sleep. My brain "makes decisions" about driving continuously, yet I'm only aware of the "managerial" ones, like which way to turn. Sometimes that goes on autopilot too, though. (It's not constantly like this, it usually happens if there is something else to occupy the mind like a funny programme on the radio).

Whether conscious awareness is actually a key part of decision making, or a lucky "mistake", I don't know, but it seems to become less involved in decision making when the decisions are rote.

Perhaps it just gets bored and stops paying any interest! Seems weird to have this "awareness" thing and yet for it to be merely an observer of things outside it's control, though. What would be the point?

 

Nice one

 

I made a massive edit after posting! I should do my posts in a text editor first.

 

Really liked your email, you obviously know your cognitive psychology. One thing first though. While behaviours such as driving a car do involve lots of unconscious decisions, they also involve conscious ones too. Say you choose to overtake someone infront of you. This involves a deliberation process (eg. estimations of how much time you can afford to be on the right side of the road without smashing an oncoming car head on) and then a decision (whether to overtake or not). Now the latest research suggests that our brain makes the decision to overtake up to 5 seconds before you consciously decide to overtake. This comes from research done by Libet if you want to check it out.

Why does this odd, past event awareness occur? This is obviously a more speculative issue. My perspective, one greatly inspired by the work and theories of V.S Ramachandran, is that this is perhaps an emergent property, resulting from the function of conscioussness itself. His idea is that conscioussness is like a high powered memory tool that enables us to apply logic to memories, therefore enabling us to plan for the future. Conscious represenations are thought to be key instruments in helping humans break apart from the world of "fixed action patterns" or "reflexes" that form the stable set of behaviours for most of the rest of the animal kingdom.

 

Really liked your email, you obviously know your cognitive psychology. One thing first though. While behaviours such as driving a car do involve lots of unconscious decisions, they also involve conscious ones too. Say you choose to overtake someone infront of you. This involves a deliberation process (eg. estimations of how much time you can afford to be on the right side of the road without smashing an oncoming car head on) and then a decision (whether to overtake or not). Now the latest research suggests that our brain makes the decision to overtake up to 5 seconds before you consciously decide to overtake. This comes from research done by Libet if you want to check it out.

Why does this odd, past event awareness occur? This is obviously a more speculative issue. My perspective, one greatly inspired by the work and theories of V.S Ramachandran, is that this is perhaps an emergent property, resulting from the function of conscioussness itself. His idea is that conscioussness is like a high powered memory tool that enables us to apply logic to memories, therefore enabling us to plan for the future. Conscious represenations are thought to be key instruments in helping humans break apart from the world of "fixed action patterns" or "reflexes" that form the stable set of behaviours for most of the rest of the animal kingdom.

To take this further here, I would have to ask you to define your terms. But I have other shit to do, so instead I'll just say that I will look into Libet and Ramachandran's stuff, thank you!