Yay or nay - is it possible to be a weekend warrior long term with hard stuff?

[Rectify]

There's No Denying The Power Of Krystal!

 

[nato23]

There's No Denying The Power Of Krystal!

I’ve only tried meth a handful of times, didn’t get the addictive aspect.
Never smoked it properly and the stuff I’ve had was probably shit as I’m in the Uk.
It’s only really became easily accessible for us in the passed 3 years - for me anyway.

 

[garygroundwork]

yes it is possible

but fuck it gets harder ad harder

the party better justify it

 

[jitterer]

I was a bag lord lord for year, "a "*"short"*" habit compared to some vets here", short habit? Being a bad lord for a year and calling it a short habit, are u in withdrawal my friend?

It certainly felt longer than a year lol, but yeah your right a year on c daily is no joke. But to keep things in perspective I'm sure there are lurkers here who have been on it for 10 years and some fellas I've met have been on it for around 25 years. It's more the level of cretinacy I decended to in that period which was the most alarming

 

[jitterer]

You

M

You need to believe in yourself man

True dat! We all need to believe in ourselves. It always gets better. Since those times I have found meaning, purpose, and every day I feel like a kid on Christmas eve excited for the activities for the next day that contribute to my life quest. I wish you all the same!

 

[placebonaut]

Exactly. You sound just like me nearly thirty years ago, sitting sober and meditating on these things deeply while studying abroad and on a spiritual quest. I've mostly said the same things, and at one point, for about three years, I was despondent over the knowledge that when we die, that's it, game over. Pondering these things depressed me but I pretended it didn't bother me, proudly declaring my atheism and trying to sound brave when I claimed I didn't fear death. I hid my depression and drank myself stupid at the time. I refer to this spell in my life as "seeking oblivion". Some people never manage to make it out of that particular trap, seeking oblivion though alcoholism, and it kills them. They never stop seeking oblivion, and I think I know why. Others seek oblivion with opioids. Anything to quell the agony of having an ego. But fortunately I pulled through that spell through an unlikely mechanism, but everyone's path is different.

this struck a cord with me, I was brought up a christian, became agnostic in my teens and began drinking & seeking oblivion. Then became firmly an atheist in my early 20s though have always been at peace with no afterlife. Very recently in my 50s I'm now pondering if I'm agnostic again or not, I generally dislike religions because a. they seem to have done some of the most harm of any institutions, and b. how the fuck could they be all right and/or be arrogant enough to think they are (have "faith" and believe is a big bloody stretch).

however the older and wiser I get the more I recognise that just like the vast majority of other people I have no real clue if there is a god or an afterlife, there's no evidence, and the only real sure fire way of getting some is a bit too permanent for my liking!

best I can do is enjoy what I have and wait to find out, then take it from there, or not depending on what happens - either way it's not materially gonna change me, what I do, or how I live my life.

I've filed all this shit in the "too hard to figure out and can't do anything about it" bucket, I'm along for the ride....

 

[unodelacosa]

Then became firmly an atheist in my early 20s

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[TheUltimateFixx]

Yes it is. I've done it.

So have quite a number of users I have interviewed for research over the years.

 

[unodelacosa]

Yes it is. I've done it.

So have quite a number of users I have interviewed for research over the years.

I'm not talking about just DMT. I'm referencing here the medical grade DMT caulking gun IV anesthesiology pump…

 

[Vastness]

Yes it is possible, it depends on a fuck-ton of variables though and generally if you're at the point you're asking this question you're not ready to revisit "casual" use.

"Once an addict always an addict" is a bullshit prohibitionist 12-step cultist myth, for the most part, there are multiple studies documenting how many people are able to return to more functional use of alcohol after severely problematic habits - off the top of my head, there might be others, but alcohol is the most studied for fairly obvious legal reasons, and there's no reason to think this doesn't hold true for a vast majority or even all other drugs. Alcohol, really, is a far "harder" drug than the current nonsense clownworld legal climate and cultural preconceptions would suggest. Heroin, on the other hand, I would not personally consider a particularly "hard" drug, although unfortunately it probably is associated in many ways with harder circumstances due to those same clown-car prohibitionist legal and social structures that surround it, ie, if you're using IV, it might be more problematic than alcohol in many ways, and for sure heroin addicts have a harder time generally than alcohol addicts because of greater barriers to access to help, clean heroin, or whatever else you can think of in this nonsense upside-down idiocratic timeline that affects drug users specifically.

HOWEVER, all that said it is a frustrating quirk of the human mind that holding on to the prospect of being able to use your DOC occasionally, safely, once it's caused you serious problems, is likely to be a hindrance to your recovery because you're not going to properly let go of the idea of being able to fallback to your DOC when the going gets tough or for whatever other reason. IMO/IME you really do need to be able to internalize the idea that you can exist without your DOC, and life (if not absolute sobriety, let's be pragmatic here) might be OK if you never use your DOC or another drug in that class ever again... you also need to kinda prove to yourself that it really is true by having your life going generally well without it, it isn't enough just to tell yourself you've accepted the idea even if you really do fully believe it because the human capacity for self-delusion means that without demonstrable, real world evidence that things actually seem to be going fine, even quite well, dare I say, what you think you believe about yourself just isn't a reliable measure of, well, anything, really.

Also kinda depends what you mean by "weekend warrior", I mean this is where it gets very hazy obviously because not all drugs are equal and not all humans are the same in terms of what levels of use are physiologically and psychologically destabilizing, and absent real evidence and research into this which isn't gonna happen anytime soon in this clown world, none of us have any choice but to somewhat rely on our own internal intuitions even while knowing that they cannot be fully trusted. I'd say, for example, that it just isn't sustainable to stay up for 3 or 4 days on an IV methamphetamine binge once a month, indefinitely, even if you seem to be keeping all the other plates in one's life properly spinning and healthy - this will just gradually destroy your brain little by little and faster and faster as you get older, for sure. But that's an extreme example to prove the rule, a few weekends a month doing a little heroin 1-2 days of a weekend when everything else in your life is going fantastically? Sure, don't necessarily see any problem with doing that indefinitely. But if you have had a heroin problem before, I'd say you shouldn't even try that before having several years clean at least... wish I could quantify things more than that but for the aforementioned reasons I don't see how it's possible to do so.

Also because you mentioned heroin which is more commonly associated with IV use I will say, really, IV use is a particularly sketchy method of administration even for a seemingly "functional" "weekend warrior"... Unless you have the skills, equipment, resources, and training to be injecting lab-purified substances, with the skill and practice of an actual medical professional (or are one yourself) - I'm somewhat doubtful how feasible it is to keep this truly to something "casual" in the longterm, since it's just inherently unsafe without those things being in place, in a way that doing drugs in other ways just isn't. I feel similarly about smoked stimulants, just because of the ever-present cardiac risk, skyrocketed addictivity (which is shared with any IV substance, obviously, although maybe this isn't quite equivalent between different classes) and some unique dangers involved in inhaling impure substances... although maybe some of that is just my own bias talking since I'll still smoke an olde worlde combustible joint of weed mixed with a little tobacco filtered through a piece of rolled up cardboard now and then, and I can't really defend the "healthiness" of that decision in any way... well, I could try I guess in comparison to, say, DIY crack, but I won't bother, y'all get the idea I'm sure.

 

[placebonaut]

What are your thoughts on this?

Even in the peak of my atheist years I was more open to some of these ideas than I was to religion (though there's overlap).

Now since getting back into drugs and having had a few k-holes I'm much more open to it.

I'm a scientist at heart, simple fact is we do not understand enough about how the brain works or physics to have a clear theory on things let alone any evidence for what the right answers are.

There's interesting overlap between theoretical physics, metaphysics, maths, and spirituality.

The universe is 13.8 Billion years old, humans have been around for what 300,000 years, we've only "recently" figured out quantum mechanics & the standard model but don't yet have a theory to align with gravity.

It's pure arrogance to think that scientifically we know the answers to what happens next, equally arrogant to think that a drug induced epiphany has the right answer - even if the experience is consistent across users, correlation does not equal causation springs to mind, DMT just might always work in the same way with human brains to produce the same effect, it would need better and more rigorous study before anyone could draw any conclusions.

I'm open to the idea but doubt we'll get answers to much of this during my lifetime, but that's not even a blink of the eye in the grand scheme of things.

 

[unodelacosa]

Even in the peak of my atheist years

So if they've peaked, does this mean you're no longer an atheist? Atheism is an all or nothing kinda belief. Hence why I think most proclaimed atheists are instead more reasonably agnostic, whether they realize it or not.

I was more open to some of these ideas than I was to religion (though there's overlap).

Obviously believing in God and believing in organized religion are two different things, but they're often mistaken for one another.

Now since getting back into drugs and having had a few k-holes I'm much more open to it.

Um, okay. So k-holes make you open-minded toward religion? Or toward the concept of an afterlife? So why is it you make an exception for ketamine inebriation but you draw the line at DMT?

I'm a scientist at heart,

Unless you're in a k-hole? What makes you say you're a scientist at heart? Meanwhile, Idk how familiar you are with my posts/comments, but if you read them, you might notice that you're not the only BLer who appreciates science… more specifically: organic chemistry.

simple fact is we do not understand enough about how the brain works or physics to have a clear theory on things let alone any evidence for what the right answers are.

I'm just curious what your qualifications are for stating this. You must do some kind of leading work in these fields to make these statements so confidently and assert this with authority. I mean, "we do not understand enough" makes it sound like you're speaking for the entire industry in a way you're uniquely qualified and experienced to do. … Either that or you're making broad claims and bad assumptions. Or maybe it's a blend of these… Lord knows my dumbass will jump to conclusions, and I'm a class 1 grade A hypocrite many times, so please don't take any offense to me pushing back here. Idk wtf I'm talking about, except once in a while I get lucky and I do.

There's interesting overlap between theoretical physics, metaphysics, maths, and spirituality.

Indeed. As a dumbass yank, it's still so odd to me that British-English speakers pluralize the nickname for mathematics: "maths" while the tradition in the U.S. is to shorten it to "math". To me, while there are many branches, it's all still the same singular tree of the one, pure subject. Let's call it "crystal math", shall we? ()… British English also does this with some names. Like Steven becomes "Steves", not simply "Steve". Brits also say "going to hospital" and "going to university" without any articles. In the U.S. we'd say "going to the hospital" or "going to a university." The lack of an article makes it sounds almost like a Russian speaker's grammatical inclination toward eschewing articles…

The universe is 13.8 Billion years old, humans have been around for what 300,000 years, we've only "recently" figured out quantum mechanics & the standard model but don't yet have a theory to align with gravity.

You say this like we're behind schedule. We have nothing to compare this to, so we have no clue if our evolution has been rapid or slow-going. You know, from another perspective, we rapidly discovered the nuclear bomb during the middle of an intense global war, and humanity survived that, and (mostly) made it through the subsequent Cold War. Or maybe we're all really in an intense scaled-up version of a classic Mexican standoff. Perspective and paradox often seem to abound… just consider the double-slot experiment. As to Einstein's unified field theory, well… if Einstein broke the Newtonian model of reality, perhaps something yet will "break" Einstein's models of space/time and gravity/matter.

I'm a fan of American theoretical physicist, Sean M. Carroll, at Johns Hopkins University, who specializes in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and the philosophy of science. He writes excellent, accessible-to-the-public books on these topics, such as "Something Deeply Hidden". Highly recommended.

It's pure arrogance to think that scientifically we know the answers to what happens next,

I thought you gave up on religion. This is a canned response from religious folks. Is there such a thing as "impure arrogance"?

equally arrogant to think that a drug induced epiphany has the right answer - even if the experience is consistent across users,

Maybe, though perhaps you've mistakenly appointed yourself the arbiter of arrogance… Or perhaps the real arrogance is fully dismissing these ideas as if you have hard evidence pointing elsewhere and despite consistency across users.

correlation does not equal causation springs to mind,

This is something a bit different, and your phrasing is off. What you're thinking of, in logic, is known as the questionable-cause logical fallacy, aka: cum hoc ergo propter hoc. Properly stated it's: correlation does not imply causation. But that doesn't negate all value from observing a correlation. Very many times, this correlation alerts us to something. The logical fallacy there just means that while there may be an inference, we cannot directly deduce causation from correlation.

I know what you're getting at though: just because everyone has the same experience doesn't prove anything objectively concrete about the experience. And to that I would borrow a phrase from Sean Carroll and say, Yes, it's something deeply hidden.

DMT just might always work in the same way with human brains to produce the same effect, it would need better and more rigorous study before anyone could draw any conclusions.

They're working on it: "A New Theory Says DMT Entities Might Be Real, and Proposes How to Test It"

I'm open to the idea but doubt we'll get answers to much of this during my lifetime, but that's not even a blink of the eye in the grand scheme of things.

In the Grandest Scheme of things, the blink of an eye might be a lot longer than you think.

On the opposite end of a black hole, is there a white hole spewing forth matter continously? Are there universes parallel to ours with different physics rules making it impossible for us to exist within them? Does every quantum moment split into many worlds in which everything forks at each decision point into all possible outcomes but we only travel along one collapsed decision thread? Therefore is it possible all of these theories are "correct" relatively speaking? Do you believe in the existence of an objective reality or is it something more like a consensual mass hallucination?

 

[kiLLAcHroNik]

i believe in goOD

 

[unodelacosa]

Obviously. Who else would put a Care Bears congo line on a rainbow? Only God would do something that gay. And BAM! if that's not proof of God, I don't know what else is

Sorry, I don't mean to de-rail the thread with my bullshit. The way I see it is that the terms "weekend warrior", "long-term" and "hard stuff" are not well defined here, and this ambiguity will almost always lead to "debate" or the illusion of same.

 

[placebonaut]

So if they've peaked, does this mean you're no longer an atheist? Atheism is an all or nothing kinda belief. Hence why I think most proclaimed atheists are instead more reasonably agnostic, whether they realize it or not.


Obviously believing in God and believing in organized religion are two different things, but they're often mistaken for one another.


Um, okay. So k-holes make you open-minded toward religion? Or toward the concept of an afterlife? So why is it you make an exception for ketamine inebriation but you draw the line at DMT?


Unless you're in a k-hole? What makes you say you're a scientist at heart? Meanwhile, Idk how familiar you are with my posts/comments, but if you read them, you might notice that you're not the only BLer who appreciates science… more specifically: organic chemistry.


I'm just curious what your qualifications are for stating this. You must do some kind of leading work in these fields to make these statements so confidently and assert this with authority. I mean, "we do not understand enough" makes it sound like you're speaking for the entire industry in a way you're uniquely qualified and experienced to do. … Either that or you're making broad claims and bad assumptions. Or maybe it's a blend of these… Lord knows my dumbass will jump to conclusions, and I'm a class 1 grade A hypocrite many times, so please don't take any offense to me pushing back here. Idk wtf I'm talking about, except once in a while I get lucky and I do.


Indeed. As a dumbass yank, it's still so odd to me that British-English speakers pluralize the nickname for mathematics: "maths" while the tradition in the U.S. is to shorten it to "math". To me, while there are many branches, it's all still the same singular tree of the one, pure subject. Let's call it "crystal math", shall we? ()… British English also does this with some names. Like Steven becomes "Steves", not simply "Steve". Brits also say "going to hospital" and "going to university" without any articles. In the U.S. we'd say "going to the hospital" or "going to a university." The lack of an article makes it sounds almost like a Russian speaker's grammatical inclination toward eschewing articles…


You say this like we're behind schedule. We have nothing to compare this to, so we have no clue if our evolution has been rapid or slow-going. You know, from another perspective, we rapidly discovered the nuclear bomb during the middle of an intense global war, and humanity survived that, and (mostly) made it through the subsequent Cold War. Or maybe we're all really in an intense scaled-up version of a classic Mexican standoff. Perspective and paradox often seem to abound… just consider the double-slot experiment. As to Einstein's unified field theory, well… if Einstein broke the Newtonian model of reality, perhaps something yet will "break" Einstein's models of space/time and gravity/matter.

I'm a fan of American theoretical physicist, Sean M. Carroll, at Johns Hopkins University, who specializes in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and the philosophy of science. He writes excellent, accessible-to-the-public books on these topics, such as "Something Deeply Hidden". Highly recommended.


I thought you gave up on religion. This is a canned response from religious folks. Is there such a thing as "impure arrogance"?


Maybe, though perhaps you've mistakenly appointed yourself the arbiter of arrogance… Or perhaps the real arrogance is fully dismissing these ideas as if you have hard evidence pointing elsewhere and despite consistency across users.


This is something a bit different, and your phrasing is off. What you're thinking of, in logic, is known as the questionable-cause logical fallacy, aka: cum hoc ergo propter hoc. Properly stated it's: correlation does not imply causation. But that doesn't negate all value from observing a correlation. Very many times, this correlation alerts us to something. The logical fallacy there just means that while there may be an inference, we cannot directly deduce causation from correlation.

I know what you're getting at though: just because everyone has the same experience doesn't prove anything objectively concrete about the experience. And to that I would borrow a phrase from Sean Carroll and say, Yes, it's something deeply hidden.


They're working on it: "A New Theory Says DMT Entities Might Be Real, and Proposes How to Test It"


In the Grandest Scheme of things, the blink of an eye might be a lot longer than you think.

On the opposite end of a black hole, is there a white hole spewing forth matter continously? Are there universes parallel to ours with different physics rules making it impossible for us to exist within them? Does every quantum moment split into many worlds in which everything forks at each decision point into all possible outcomes but we only travel along one collapsed decision thread? Therefore is it possible all of these theories are "correct" relatively speaking? Do you believe in the existence of an objective reality or is it something more like a consensual mass hallucination?

really interesting topic!

rather than hijack this thread thought worth splitting it out to another place, hope that's ok

Experiences Thread 'Atheism/afterlife and science bullshittery'

Yesterday at 10:17 AM

@unodelacosa Rather than hijack the other thread thought better to take this to another thread

Spoiler: Post summary

Exactly. You sound just like me nearly thirty years ago, sitting sober and meditating on these things deeply while studying abroad and on a spiritual quest. I've mostly said the same things, and at one point, for about three years, I was despondent over the knowledge that when we die, that's it, game over. Pondering these things...

• placebonaut
• Replies: 4
• Forum: Philosophy and Spirituality

• 

 

[TheUltimateFixx]

I'm not talking about just DMT. I'm referencing here the medical grade DMT caulking gun IV anesthesiology pump…

? I'm replying to the OPs initial post.
Specifically asking about remaining a casual long-term user of so-called hard drugs, and more specifically heroin.

 

[CalicoCatLover]

i'd take a pharmaceutical opiate, heroin to me means the streets and a lack of hope. i mean its a fucking needle, have you ever done a line

 

[unodelacosa]

i'd take a pharmaceutical opiate, heroin to me means the streets and a lack of hope. i mean its a fucking needle, have you ever done a line

FWIW, Heroin is an old trade name for diacetylmorphine, which is a legal prescription drug in, for instance, the U.K. There are four drugs U.S. culture has chosen to demonize: α,n-dimethylphenethylamine, fentanyl, diacetylmorphine, and phencyclidine. It's shame bc they all have their uses/purpose…