Why do I crave Psychedelics?

[jnegrych]

Well this question I already somewhat know the answer to. More or less I would like to see other peoples opinions on why they might choose Psychedelics?
Personally for me its the fact I already opened up a world of trippy shit, I get the overwhelming desire to say fuck it where else can my mind take me.

 

[djstrip]

For me I more crave the way it allows me to think about my past, the present, and my future from many different perspectives and to have the strength to accept the truth my sub-conscious already knows, but my conscious mind doesn't want to believe.

Plus the visual enhancements are beautiful and sometimes mind blowing.

cool post jnegrych,

-djstrip

 

[jnegrych]

Wow that tripped me out.
So basically to put it straightforward you use psychedelics to put perspective on situations?
Couldn't you also use it as an escape. Like sometimes this reality doesnt do justice?

 

[SpecialK_]

You crave them because their fun! Just like other drugs and hobbies that you may enjoy.

 

[DwayneHoover]

We are hardwired to seek out NOVELTY as a learning strategy that increases our intelligence and survival of our genes. Hence, we crave psychedelics.

That, plus THEY ARE COOL AS FUCK!

 

[brueright]

We are hardwired to seek out NOVELTY as a learning strategy that increases our intelligence and survival of our genes. Hence, we crave psychedelics.

That, plus THEY ARE COOL AS FUCK!

x2.

I have friends who are all into ~spiritual revelations~ and what not. I'm just like, "I like seeing cool patterns and having cool sensations lulzzzzz." Being able to think about things in different ways is nice, too. When I'm sober, I'm always looking forward to the next time I can step into a different world for a little bit.

 

[Raw Evil]

Couldn't you also use it as an escape. Like sometimes this reality doesnt do justice?

Well sure, you could use psychs for escapism. But that would be doing yourself a disservice in my opinion. These compounds are capable of so much teaching, so much revelation, so much completely novel fun that using them as an all-the-time escape route just seems wasteful to me.

I often look forward to a trip I have planned, but not from a "man, I just gotta get high again" type of craving - I find it to be quite analogous to the anticipation one feels toward an upcoming event (such as a vacation).

And what do you mean by "reality not doing justice"? I'm interested to hear, to what measure does the totality of existence not satisfy you? Did you perhaps mean sobriety?

 

[Solipsis]

Sounds like you are not the first one with this issue, trust me. If I am interpreting this correctly, 'this reality not doing justice' would be like not accepting mundanity anymore. Psychedelic trips carry a double multilayer message IMO: the deeper message is that just being here right now is deeply profound whether you are tripping or not. But it can be easy to prefer the more obvious profundity that psychedelics produce.
Problems are that rejection of everyday sober life can cause dysfunction and that being at peace or in balance rely heavily on accepting first of all who you are and secondly what your regular life is. So yes you can abuse it to escape, but after a while you get more tolerant and it starts getting harder and harder to get meaningful trips. You might get a message to go out there and start your life, that is what the more classic psychedelics have often told me.

IMO the only way to not crave them but still use them, and balance everything is relying primarily to ground yourself in mundane life. Get some new goals and work on them. Get used
to not tripping again. Then after you have abstained for a while make an arrangement with yourself to trip periodically. The trips should have meaning again since there is little to no tolerance anymore and because the content is like a review of the past while you have been sober!

 

[Godzilla]

Beautiful response solipsis and dwayne.
Plus they are just magical.

 

[clubberdude]

Escapism.

That said I've never had a super intense trip yet, closest I got was my first (and only, I must add) bad trip on LSD several years back, but was in a poorly advisable state to be doing anything like that at the time, as so many things went wrong that night, and I combined it with strong cannabis, which gives me paranoia anyways.

 

[MasterSparrow]

cause dem blunts, watch yo self homie

 

[max_]

well i think huge amounts of serotonin are released.. i mean, it's love itself, you gotta want to go back there

 

[jnegrych]

Well sure, you could use psychs for escapism. But that would be doing yourself a disservice in my opinion. These compounds are capable of so much teaching, so much revelation, so much completely novel fun that using them as an all-the-time escape route just seems wasteful to me.

I often look forward to a trip I have planned, but not from a "man, I just gotta get high again" type of craving - I find it to be quite analogous to the anticipation one feels toward an upcoming event (such as a vacation).

And what do you mean by "reality not doing justice"? I'm interested to hear, to what measure does the totality of existence not satisfy you? Did you perhaps mean sobriety?

Wow i can look back and remember the best drunken nights, high nights... were planned in advance! Thats true the " I need to get high" high aint as fun.
And regarding what i meant, i just mean an escape from every day reality and life. Mainly the visuals and the mind trips help alleviate the depressive reality im somewhat accustomed to.

 

[djstrip]

Wow that tripped me out.
So basically to put it straightforward you use psychedelics to put perspective on situations?
Couldn't you also use it as an escape. Like sometimes this reality doesnt do justice?

Haha, mind explosions! Yes I would say that psychedelics help expand my perspective on my life. One thing I will say is that while I love the visuals and the colors, I trip with a purpose. I don't do it because I want to escape my reality, I trip because I want to be more in line with myself when I come back. It's difficult for me to explain, but I feel that it realigns me with my inner self.

Tripping renews my sense of self and I love cleaning out the brain cobwebs!

Oh and one thing I can say without a doubt is that, I smoke cannabis daily and it has a negative effect on my short term memory when I smoke. Cubensis definitely have helped bring my short term memory back even when I do smoke. My recall is notably increasing .

-djstrip

 

[Raw Evil]

Wow i can look back and remember the best drunken nights, high nights... were planned in advance!

Your sarcasm notwithstanding, there are significant differences between a trip and simply being high or drunk. Tripping responsibly requires a minimum level of foresight and mindfulness, in the same way that drinking responsibly might involve organising a ride home. Recklessness will only damage you.

And regarding what i meant, i just mean an escape from every day reality and life. Mainly the visuals and the mind trips help alleviate the depressive reality im somewhat accustomed to.

Having a temporary escape route is fine; just bear in mind that distractions don't solve problems. Eventually you'll have to face your depressive reality, which could slap you in the face during a trip and would probably not be a lot of fun when it happens.

 

[yardbirdrc]

Sorry for the wall of text but this thread prompted me to get some stuff off my chest.

I have been asking myself this question a lot during the last 6 months especially. I've been helplessly drawn to the psychedelics scene before I could even be a part of it. My interest, ironically, was sparked when I had to make a poster for health class about hallucinogens. Before I knew it I was spending hours on erowid just reading stuff. That was 5 years ago, and I still spend a lot of my day researching psychedelics, even though at this point I rarely stumble across any new information. In the early days I was far too open about all of this. It lost me a lot of friends and probably worried/disturbed my parents quite a bit. But psychedelics were the only thing I had really felt passionate about, so it was all I could really think/talk about.

I'm older now. I'm more discreet and out on my own, so I can actually use psychedelics. I'm also in a serious relationship. Early on, she tried to enjoy psychedelics with me, because she loves me and wanted to be a part of my life. The first time I took LSD it was with my girlfriend, and it brought us so much closer. Mushrooms as well. I don't think she really knew how deep this went though. Throughout the last 6 months or so, finally having an apartment that was fully my own, and finally having the connections to do so, I've put together quite a massive collection of psychedelics from all throughout the spectrum. I began getting really paranoid, and worried about my own sanity while this was going on. I'm usually really frugal but I didn't feel much hesitation when sinking money into personal quantities of psychedelics that could last me far into the future. I was putting myself in risky situations sourcing everything, and having so much of everything under one roof. I was sitting through classes not paying attention and refreshing my email and bouncing around safeorscam instead. I felt almost obsessed. There is a history of mental illness in my family so this really concerned me. Even though I've "completed" the collection and I feel much safer now, I still worry about myself. If I could spend the time I spend thinking about psychedelics on something else, like learning new stuff or completing schoolwork, then I would probably be a more successful and well adjusted member of society. But I can't. I've been trying for years now, but psychedelics are just what I enjoy most, and I can't just force myself to be focused on something else. Seeing me behave this way, I think my girlfriend got really scared. We had a big fight about it one night because I was planning on taking 2C-B the next day, and she wasn't comfortable with it. It turned into a long and deep conversation where I think we both came to an understanding about the situation, and life since has been back to normal. I still worry that she doesn't quite get it though, and that she never will, because sometimes even I don't get it. Sometimes I just want to be "normal", and I wish that I had never learned about psychedelics.

Ironically the realization that I was too interested in psychedelics came largely from insights gained while on psychedelics. I feel compelled to make a change. Psychedelics should augment/complement life, not BE life. I can say with some certainty that I crave them. Not necessarily their use even, just the prospect of them, and learning about them. The allure of new horizons, new vials full of new things my brain has yet to grasp. Depth in a pill. Real riveting and complex emotions and thought processes usually only beheld by those of us lucky or unlucky enough to be insane or artists (two very similar states of existence, in my opinion).

Psychedelics have changed me a lot for the better, but also for the worse. I have a much richer appreciation for life, and I'm much more open to try new things, something that I never used to be when I was younger. My music tastes have expanded dramatically, as well as the foods that I eat. I find myself able to love fully, something I never imagined I'd be able to do. I have a better understanding of my emotions and how my thoughts develop. I find myself able to draw deeper connections and put together more accurate metaphors in conversation. I value that skill because crafting a good metaphor is the linguistic mechanism by which we bring people into our heads, to see the world as we see it and to expand their understanding of reality with a little bit of our own perception. I communicate better, and I'm less socially anxious and more independent. But I'm also more dependent in a lot of ways. I often feel like among my friends I'm only known as the guy who knows everything about drugs, and I'm always struggling with a fear I've had since I was very young: that my friends don't actually value me as a person and are eventually going to leave me. I picked up a nicotine habit, which I hate myself for. I've drifted in and out of healthy and unhealthy use/abuse patterns with marijuana. I drink more alcohol. I take caffeine every day. I feel like 80% of the conversations I have somehow get back to drugs. I don't know... maybe not all of that is psychedelics fault per se, but I am who I am and sometimes I don't like it lately.

I've seen psychedelics and marijuana break people. I feel my desire to gain a richer understanding of life's pleasures through psychedelics juxtaposed with my desire to succeed in this corporatist system of this nation that I hate so much. Many of the people that were by my side in the early days of my psychedelic use kind of lost it. Some dropped out of school. Others dropped out of the game that we call life in the western world completely, choosing not to pursue financial security in life but to pursue things like "the here and now" and "satisfaction". I believe the pursuit of satisfaction is more complex than most of these people make it. Yeah life is great when you're 25 and living on a commune in Israel or something, but when you are old and sick you're going to want two things: a best friend and health insurance. Money is important. Lasting relationships are important too, and usually much easier when you're in a stable place in life instead of bouncing around the globe. 5 years ago I wouldn't have believed that I'd be saying these things today, but they're true (in my eyes at least). So every day that I spend a few hours cruising a drug forum instead of working to get a job or perfecting my skills in my trade I feel, primarily, guilt. I feel a lot of guilt for liking and using psychedelics. A lot of my life comes down to guilt, and I don't feel guilt is a positive motivating factor in life because guilt begets resignation. "Well, fuck, guess I'll have another cigarette, what else is new." Guilt doesn't change people for the better.

But what does? I feel trapped. I can't seem to pick myself up out of these vices and mental traps and accomplish things for myself and for my future these days. Am I crazy? Am I obsessed? I find myself constantly asking these questions. "Take a break" I say to myself. But what about the big box of drugs, how can I just "move on" from that? What was that all for then? I feel like I've invested too much time and energy into being this guy who is all about psychedelics to just let it all go.

So I guess what I'm asking is, does anybody else feel like this? Helplessly fixated on psychedelics? Focusing on other things seems forced because psychedelics are what I really love, and in the society I live in that's not a healthy or profitable pursuit.

 

[Godzilla]

I kind of understand what ur saying. Over the last year I've gotten further involved in psychedelic use. I now feel that I no longer want to use them to party but to learn more about myself and the world around me. Some of my closest friends think I'm taking it to far. I attribute their feelings to ignorance. But its all about balance. Just try to convince yourself that your gonna save and plan special trips for ur Psychs. That lowers the amount of use and abuse and the trip may be more meaningful to.you. good luck my friend. One other thing I am thankful for is the BL community u can always come here for advise.

 

[<SpaceHead>]

I have had a very similar experience with this 'psychedelic addiction' if you can call it that. A while back I made a very similar post here . Since I made that post I have made alot of progress on the way to a balanced life and mind. The attempt that I made to cut down, that I discussed in that post failed, and my drug use continued to intensify. I became even more addicted to ketamine, and by the way if you have a problem like this with the classic psychedelics I'd strongly urge you to avoid getting involved with dissociative drugs as they are much more addictive and have very serious consequences when they are abused. I was tripping so much that I didn't have any time to do my school work, so I started taking amphetamines to compensate. The crash from the amphetamines was so unpleasant I found myself drawn twards opiates, benzos and alcohol. This reached a climax very quickly and my friends and girlfriend told me they wouldn't want to be involved with me if I continued in this direction. I made a new plan to change my life which I have stuck to for the last three months. I started a drug journal to document which drugs and how much of each I take each day. This is a huge help because it gives you an objective outlook on your habit, where as before it would just be a blur day to day. I didn't set any really strict rules for myself at first. The main objective was to make each week better than the last, even if it was just a little better. You have to take it moment by moment, one day at a time, the whole problem at once is way too much to face and the fear only promotes more drug use. In my past attempts I have tried to do a cold turkey approach but I was usually fooling myself and would just swing back in the other direction even worse. For me the slow and steady gradual approach has worked better. I also have an index of chemicals, and I've found that keeping this in a friends freezer or similarly difficult to access location helps prevent taking drugs on impulse. After about a month of progress I started to use meditation and nootropic (piracetam, aniracetam) drugs to further aid the process. I started with just ten minutes a day of sitting with eyes closed, following my breath. I steadily built up to half an hour a day and it has been the most useful tool on this path that I have found so far. Without it I think I would have failed by now. It really can help to sustain that feeling of oneness, the expansive and crystal clear consciousness you feel when you take a psychedelic in just the right setting. I found that I could more easily navigate my trips, gain deeper insight with lower doses and maintain the insights and integrate them into my sober life. Every day I meditate before I allow myself to take any drug which seems to give me more patience in my drug taking. I still do a dissociative drug once a month, and so far I have been able to resist redosing and have had several very profound experiences. It is still difficult day to day, especially on some days. But my friends, family and girlfriend are so happy to have me back, and the feeling of being connected to the people I love instead of floating endlessly in a haze of drugs is worth much more than the high I would get from impulsively taking drugs. You don't have to give up psychedelics, but if you want to get anything out of them then you have to respect them greatly, and respect yourself even more. I have confidence that you can figure this out! I was on here making similar posts, and went through this for three or four years, but now I'm doing better than I have since high school! I hope my experience can help you gain some insight, feel free to PM me if you want to discuss further!

 

[yardbirdrc]

^^ thanks for the kind words godzilla, and thanks for the info spacehead (i'm assuming you guys were responding to my post, if not then well fuck me i guess)

I don't really have a problem with psychedelic USE, I really only trip once every month or two, if that. I have a problem staying focused on and interested in things other than things relating to the psychedelic experience. It's like a mental fixation, like that lady on "My Strange Addiction" who eats couch cushions, but I guess I'm not in quite as much trouble as her haha. I'm already taking some small steps to improve that though, one of them being writing down all of my thoughts in that post so I can look at them plainly. I used to meditate when I was younger but I haven't in years, I'm looking forward to giving it another shot.

 

[RainbowWarrior]

So I guess what I'm asking is, does anybody else feel like this? Helplessly fixated on psychedelics? Focusing on other things seems forced because psychedelics are what I really love, and in the society I live in that's not a healthy or profitable pursuit.

I know where you're coming from...

Psychs are a really important part of my life ever since my first mushroom breakthrough... It's been about 8 years now and i still think everyday about tripping, mostly remembering trips i had, but also always already planning the next one :D

i know how difficult it is to integrate the blissfull carelessness of being in the moment into the everyday life that mostly revolves about evading existential fears, i.e. piling up resources...

it is a difficult road to walk upon and it's a rough road... but from time to time you can reach spots that show you incredible panoramas of the lanscape that you are navigating, those moments are worth more than all the gold you could pile up! why? because they teach you that piling up material wealth is a Sisyphean task. No matter how rich you are, you can lose it all within one second and you will never feel safe only because of being rich. Those short glimpses of the infinite glory of life, however, will be there in your memory when you have to roll that damned boulder up the hill for the millionth time...

what i'm trying to say is: it's not a question of tripping or not tripping, it's a question of finding your personal balance between tripping and living in the society. Dropping out is only ever possible to a certain degree, we are always bound by our physical form. The degree to which you drop out is a very individual thing, just always remember to take one step after the other, it's an infinite road without a final destination - by rushing it you will get out of breath soon, always take your time and go at your own speed.

What i think could greatly help you is focusing on the message you get from psychedelics, not on the drugs themself - they are just the messenger. Find the language that works best for your soul to express its beauty! Learn to play an instrument, learn how to paint/draw, etc
There are ways to transport the psychedelic experience without ever mentioning a drug, ime they mostly are the best at transporting the message.

About compulsively researching drugs and browsing forums: it's really more a form of internet addiction. I have experienced this with things as forums for digital photography and camera equipment... you can waste just as much time on researching the newest camera model you won't even buy as you can waste on researching obscure research chemicals But only because it's really more an internet addiction doesn't make it easier to stop... if i knew a reliable way i probably wouldn't reply to your post in this moment...

I think there are worse things to be addicted to than psychedelics... like money, or the approval of others, or destructive drugs, or television, or all of those things...

I hope you find happiness and peace with your place in this world

best wishes!

p.s. sorry if that doesn't make any sense to you, you should know i'm insane, also english is not the language in which my soul preferably expresses itself and i am kind of high :D