For me it’s funny seeing the “Magic Eye” books on there - part of my reaction to LSD is that it kind of makes the whole world do that. Mushrooms give me less visuals, but feel weirder and friendlier.
I did go to one talk on drugs at a neurology conference where the researcher was talking about which ones trigger which parts of the brain chemistry. One of the big differences between DMT and the others is that it hits the areas that decide what’s real and what’s imagination, and tells you everything you’re seeing is real. (Haven’t had access to the stuff to try it, and I’m not usually in the mood to get thrown off the edge of the planet.) I don’t know if salvia also does that; in theory it should be a really convenient psychedelic, fast acting, fast dissipating, but the most it did for me was a cup-of-coffee level of hyperventilation, even with the concentrates.
“In my experience, tryptamines tend to feel more “psychedelic” than LSD or phenethylamines, and a lot of people probably feel the same way, but that has nothing to do with intensity.”
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be a psychedelic for it feel like the sort of experience people would call psychedelia. Once I smoked a ton of weed and listened to the Dark Side of the Moon while driving around (as a passenger) at night, and it was a much more memorable and intense than many of my experimentations with true psychedelics.
Yeah, I know, I just didn’t think you would notice and then also remember that book, even if it is kind of related to topic/me.
Castaneda’s books are like a rite of passage for all new hippies looking for shamanistic spiritual psychedelic experiences (like straight from the Amazon); you start out all doe-eyed and naive and then once you actually have a multitude of experiences behind you, you’re like, “eh, they were fun books” and go back to shooting heroin.
The next time I completely flip out on hallucinogenics, it’s gonna be you I’m gonna be seeing through my window and coming from the closet, instead of the police.
That sounds very much like what I sometimes feel with cannabis - and what I’ve also felt with many different substances (mostly psychedelics, some dissociatives and a few miscellaneous drugs).
And here, I have to say very clearly: not really.
Psychedelics are not deliriants; they do not (except in some extreme cases) cause a delirium, which is a state of confusion, where you don’t even realize you are under the influence of a drug and often can’t remember it afterwards. Being on LSD is nothing like a psychotic break (though it is in very extreme cases possibly have one during a trip) - it’s actually a very lucid state. It’s much more about what goes on in your mind; exactly the sort of introspection and change in perspective you were talking about with regards to cannabis, except stronger and much more… immersive. That’s what psychedelic. The colors and textures and your friend looking like a turtle are just the visual reprensation, the inner becoming the outside.
This is all obviously highly dependant on dose (not to mention the substance), but on light-to-medium (and even up to very high) doses of most kinds of psychedelics, you can most certainly tell what is real and what’s not. You might not even hallucinate, though let me be clear on the terminology here; usually people differentiate between actual hallucinations and what in my language we call “visuals” (I’m not sure if the English term is the same), which are just distortions of colors and textures. Even if you do hallucinate, and your friend really looks like a turtle, it doesn’t look like someone just photoshopped a turtle in their place (which is what people seem to think hallucinating is like); it’s much more about what’s in your head. Your head is certain he’s a turtle, so he is a turtle.
Your state of mind defines what you see. Bad set and setting can mean a bad trip, but it doesn’t mean it’s like a psychotic break - those happen only to people who take very large doses very unprepared. If you have been feeling very anxious about possibly being pregnant and then get your period while tripping, it can feel like you’re giving birth to Satan and freak you out a bit - but I don’t even look back on that trip with bad feelings, because it was a valuable experience, it gave me introspection. Another valuable trip was spent on a warm summer day with two friends, when I ate a caterpillar and run on a field.
TL;DR: Psychedelia is all about introspection, your feelings are magnified and you see what you feel. If you fear a bad trip too much, don’t trip. But most everyone does feel somewat afraid their first time; you just take the lowest dose possible (after an allergy test!), preferably something nice like 4-HO-MET which is the perfect first psychedelic IMO, and see how you feel. You’re likelier to end up disappointed because you underdosed but even if you do have a bad trip, you’ll feel treat it like you would any anxiety; relax the best way you know how.
The K-hole phrase was a euphemistic use of a euphemism. I’ve never done ketamine. But sometimes I refer to certain experiences I’ve had with pot and much moreso with JWH-018 (before it was banned) as the k-hole.
It’s because I close my eyes and spend the whole trip locked inside my head doing mathematics on the biological and physical syestems of the world at various scales. Getting excited about how each piece of the universe is related to and interacts with its smaller parts, and the bigger systems any given scale of phenomena are a part of.
I always come down loving the universe more, and usually spend the next few days raiding my physics and biology and math textbooks.
My friends call me professor DooBie because of this.
Sometimes, if I’m still present enough I’m even able to teach physics class to my “students”.
As if I could fit into that overstuffed repository!
Also: there are too many dust-bunnies under your bed.
I have to admit my mind has never been altered by any of these substances, despite much curiosity when younger. And now… eh, too many other things to do with all the stuff that been spit out of those neurons. Something that would allow me to stay awake for a year at a time, and perhaps concentrate a bit bitter – THAT I could go for.
In collitch, though, I used to hang out in the music library, listening to Terry Riley or Morton Subotnick, read Finnegan’s Wake, and eat candied ginger. Does that count at all?
Everybody in our house, except my wife, likes Pingu. However, THIS episode is questionable:
I have watched many of the shows mentioned here, growing up on Krofft and other weirdness. One sign of a supremely weird show that years later I wonder whether I might have imagined it.
When my little one was younger, I had some seriously WTF moments with some of the more recent ones such as Teletubbies, Boohbah, Tiny Planets. One time after having slept a total of about 8 hours all week I had a LazyTown-induced uncanny valley freakout.
I like some other weird kiddie programmes. Kure Kure Takora is a hard to find example, but it’s real lunacy. It’s from the early 70s and about a greedy, selfish octopus who lives in a psychedelic forest with other creatures and spends most of his time stealing things and getting into trouble. Then there’s Popee the Performer, which is just surreal and otherwise very difficult for me to describe
Different things, really. DMT is an important component of most brews (but not all), but the experience can be quite different, owning to the psychoactivity and the modulation of the beta-carbolines.
Like I said, I trust Shulgin and his entire career as an organic chemist far more than my cursory search of wikipedia, and my limited knowledge of chemistry.
So probably Shulgin got it right, and definitely I don’t “know” what I’m talking about in any depth. If shulgin said it’s a tryptamine, that’s good enough for me.
Does anybody know the show were big, primary-color fuzzy creatures (kind of like teletubbies, but fully grown) fly around though space to EDM but with no dialog? We rented it once when my kids were young, but I can[t remember the name of it.
Seriously the trippiest thing I’ve seen, movies like Blueberry and Enter the Void notwithstanding…
