I have no objections to this. We totally are.
Indeed, I'd go as far as saying the biggest philosophical disagreement we may have is that you think the world objectively exists, whereas I have strong suspicions that objectivity doesn't exist

My point was (and I don't want to drag this any further so don't take it as "well akshully ur wrong lol rekt" I'm just trying to make myself clear lol) this : the most commonly used (and abused) substances around the world are, for the most part, harmful indeed, but there's a whole plethora of molecules, organic or synthetic, that fall under the umbrella of "psychoactive substances" or just good ole "drugs" that have a waaaaay better safety profile than, heck, basic cold medicine.

Drugs that cause visible destruction are usually those that "take the pain away" one way or another. Jerry Garcia had this wonderful (and kinda scary) quote about heroin :

"Heroin takes every single problem you have in life and condenses it to just one problem :where is my next shot?"

Sadly way too many people live in pain, be it mental, physical, spiritual, social.. And as much as I wish it were possible for every human being to work through life's difficulties, the sad reality is that a large percentage of us don't have the material conditions that would allow for self realization -survivor's bias notwithstanding.

But on the other hand, well, I'll keep it real short : a single psychedelic experience can alter one's life in a drastic way, for the better. It has happened countless times since the dawn of time, and still happens today.

So while both are consciousness altering, they're so different in their intent and outcome (not to mention their safety profile) that they shouldn't be put in the same ballpark, ever. They don't have the same mode of action on neurochemistry (referring to your dopamine release comment). Meth "burns" your receptors, while Psilocybin, it is argued, repairs neural pathways damaged by depression and creates new ones.

Anyway, that's all I want to say on the subject for now. I'm not trying to turn you into a drug advocate, but I think you're too intelligent not to see the nuances.

I thought it was 4 liters or something, which is more doable (google "hold your pee for wii").

Not trying to start a new argument here, but numerous organisms have used music for torture
Or some dipshit listens to a Beatles record and thinks he's the prophet who'll start a racial apocalypse or something. It depends on who listens I guess lol.

I'll PM you for my thoughts on that.

 

Aight. Awaiting eagerly.
Gonna be brief with the rest for now.
First, it's possible that I edited this part in while you were replying:

I'm barely ever satisfied with the first version of my every post, so there's that. I also edited in a few other clarifying details at the same time, might wanna double-check the post, sorry for the inconvenience : (

My friend tried to figure out her life with the help of this. At first it worked.
Then she got a bad trip and almost killed herself. Then she got flashbacks. She's still getting them.
Another friend of mine turned himself into an emotionless vegetable. He likewise used self-grown shrooms to escape from his feeling of misery. Regularly, for many years. Once a talented chemist, he's now interested in nothing.
What I'm saying is, it should be studied, and it should be administered under an informed medical supervision.

You know, this is probably where I'm at my most judgemental, but I believe this only happens to people who are so up their own issues they lose sight of an objectively existing world around them, and can't get out of themselves without a rough shove.

Oh. Right. Riiiiiiiiiight : D

 

Trivia... I thought it was somewhere in the vicinity that an average person has around 7.5 litres of water... but rather than post randomly I checked and it seems that it varies depending on height, weight etc etc... The percentage seems to vary accordingly too.
It seems logical though that if you drank more than half your total capacity, you'd flood yourself, so 4 litres sounds pretty close to the mark.

 

all I can really add is just some professional tip about Music.

Never put your Van Halen records with the rest of your collection.
They will melt the other records....

David.L.Roth - Mtv 1985

 

Easy peasy method, just plug in your numbers...

https://www.msdmanuals.com/professi...ulator/total-body-water-in-men-watson-formula

 

I found this gem of wisdom on the whole problem.
the cowboy way, just pour whiskey on the problem til it catches on fire, or goes away..

 

Aight about water. Wikipaedia says that drinking 6 litres of water in 3 hours has been known to kill a human.
I remember reading an article which stated that water toxicity by itself is very low and a human will die of hyponatremia long before the water's actual toxicity will catch up. The article referred to hydrogen-oxygen poisoning and that it requires 16 litres of water to achieve this state, which is unrealistic.

 

-Robert Mayer
-Fritz Haber
-Gilbert Lewis
-Percy Bridgman
-Ludwig Boltzmann
-Paul Ehrenfest

These are some of the founders of statistical mechanics/thermodynamics.
They all attempted -with some succeeding- suicide.

Are thermodynamics to blame?
Or were they mentally fragile people who happened to be interested in a topic that may lead to a pessimistic view of nature?

Sure, people got bad trips, they get too strung out, they become shadows of their former selves blah blah..
It usually happens to people who have underlying issues that can be triggered by anything.


I've had bad trips that were so incredibly awful that my girlfriend got an anxiety attack just by my descriptions and words can't even come close to describe the literal hell I've experienced, not. even. close. I've had experiences of non-existence, I've existed as nothing than sheer terror itself. I've felt my mind crumble in infinite pieces of nothingness. I've been to places in myself where I faced true absence of meaning, and I thought I could never go on living after that.

Remember that scene in Matrix where Neo wakes up in the amniotic fluid thingy pod and sees the "real" world for the first time?

Imagine living that moment, only difference is nothing happens, no sentinel comes checking your pod, there's no Morpheus and co. picking you up to explain what the real world is, you don't unlock a new layer of reality where your life will evolve.

You just wake up into this fluid, and there's nothing else, there's never been anything before it, there'll never be anything after it.
Everything you thought was real, wasn't. It wasn't even a dream. It just wasn't.
And you keep waking up again and again, eternally. There's no sense of time.
The ONLY reality you know is waking up to this state of total void, forever.
Even suicide won't save you, because suicide doesn't exist. You'll just wake up to this state of total void.

I've lived this experience numerous times.

Now, I'm not saying I'm a shining example of a well adjusted individual.
But after more than 100 trips on LSD alone, truckloads of Ketamine up my nose, two Eiffel towers of amphetamine ingested though every orifice, enough alcohol to fill the Mariana trench four times, god knows how many trips on different designer drugs (I've stopped counting somewhere around 60. Not trips, 60 different drugs), plus every chemical that says NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION on the label in neon lights finding its way in my brain...

I feel pretty normal lol.



-----

I have a friend who is, IMO, a world class jazz vibraphonist.

He is OBSESSED with the legendary pianist Theolonious Monk. His drive to study Monk's music drove him to insanity.
He works as a psychiatric nurse during the week, and every single moment he has to himself, he plays Monk (other stuff too, including original material). At one point his close friends did an intervention because his Monk frenzy was going too far. You couldn't have a single conversation where he didn't divert it towards Monk. Sometimes, he'd take sleeping pills with a bottle of wine, get on the car and speed on the highway at night blasting Monk, later saying if he died listening to Monk he'd be fine.

Now, I've listened to my fair share of Monk too. Didn't even cross my mind to as much as slap myself on the cheek.
Did Monk drive him crazy?
Should Monk only be listened to under supervision of professionals?


The thing is, western thought, let alone medicine, is very ill-equipped to guide individuals through psychedelic experiences.
I should know, I did both therapy and psychedelics for a long time

Wait, so where are those people exactly? In the objective world, or inside themselves? If so, how can you know they exist?

Believe it or not, I don't believe in anything to the point of being sure of myself

 

Audiosexy's are the best in the world, that can transform every theme in an intense debate about the extrems. But it flows, y'all wonderfull people. How much can one learn here!

 

I felt high after reading that, thanks for sharing. With some of those thoughts you could scare someone out of hurting themselves.

Drugs are misunderstood, as long as you go to work, pay your bills, do your taxes, don't disturb your neighbors and keep your head on straight, quite frankly you should be able to do as you please.. but if a person is not doing the first things then maybe they have to lay off the drugs or alcohol a bit and settle issues.

Managing addiction is very important, whether it is substances, academic/philosophical endeavors, hoarding, Theloneus Monk, entertainment or even just improper tech usage (most likely a combination of all). It is easy to destroy yourself. All that energy goes into digging your own grave.

Having good healthy friends or a good pet might be the most important thing of all for a long life.
Being completely isolated is not the best for the mind or spirit. Deep connection is vital.

I have many good friends but I feel like a lot of them are disconnected, or just too preoccupied in their own dream world to even think about the collective dream. Even I am guilty of it too, I am just as bad as everyone else. They don't really use substances though. Maybe alcohol, nicotine, and coffee/sugar.

One day we'll all get old and wonder what even happened, if you are fortunate enough to get there.
The world needs more love, less corporate profit incentives and forced survival mechanisms on civilians.
The choice seems to be to run the show until it falls apart.

Like the McKenna's would say, the brain is the drug. That's where all the chemicals come from. So I try not be so quick to judge.
We are all getting high off our own supply.

 

Sorry but 115

 

Absolutely. You'd kill yourself too if you studied statistical mechanics. I actually don't know if you'd do. Anyways.
Really, it destroys any hope one might have for a world if you understand it, a true cosmic horror. You need an equally deep understanding of Christianity to withstand its effect.
I am NOT even remotely joking. The most hopeful thing coming out of statistical mechanics is false vacuum decay hypothesis. Look it up and don't go any further.

Sound like he wasn't okay in the first place.
Such obsessions are born of nihilism, which in itself is born from disappointment in idealistic, well, ideals without really moving away from them. A person then breaks down and looks for something they can plug a hole in their lopsided reality with. The whole process is very sad, sadder still that people around afflicted individuals don't understand that the problem lies not with their obsession, but with clinical lack of something else, often opposite, and a refusal to let it go.

I have a sneaking suspicion that for you, the existence of subjective perception undervalues the objective existence of things outside of it.
For me too! That's why I suffer such intense meltdowns when people are wrong on the Internet.
Luckily for us both, this is not the case. The world objectively exists. Our subjective perceptions objectively exist! And they do objectively matter, since they exist.
But they don't matter subjectively. It's a great issue for the whole of humanity that we treat them like they matter subjectively.
What I'm saying is, you should absolutely not discard your subjective experiences, cause they contain information about how your body perceives the world around it, but you should not treat them as anything more than what they are, and remember that your body is dumb and feral and requires education and explanation on every turn, in its dumb and feral language.
So the takeaway is, there is truth in the world, cause the world just *is*, and there's no truth in what your body tells you about the world (and by extension itself, cause it's a part of the world and sense of separateness is a hallucination), and you always need to look further.

If you were to indeed feel normal, you would've stopped the first time it happened. Either it's not as all-encompassing, or you're too tolerant to these experiences.
I've never told you how I came to be a Christian. This is not a public story, maybe I'll tell you in the DMs.

 

Last edited: Feb 18, 2024

Depends on the drug. Pain, if destructive and real as mine truly is, needs to be offset by some moments of freedom from it. In Canada, opioids are now 'the devil' (thanks to the term 'opioid' referencing illegal Fent--yl) and so people like me who genuinely suffer unretractable pain that you can't simply 'CBT or meditate away' get denied basic health care and are always told, "No, you can't have a scrip for Percocet - don't care if your now-dead family doctor did - I won't risk my license."

When you need pain relief, you might make some errors in judgment as to how to get it. Tried poppy seed tea but have settled on Kr-t-m as it's still (for now) legal where I am.

"A man is slave to whatever controls him" it says in the Good Book (and it IS good!). Just don't be a slave to a drug, whenever possible. If it's NOT possible and it does what it's designed to do because you have no other recourse, then enjoy the fleeting moments of pain relief you get.

God be with you all.

 

I think these are very balanced pragmatic comments. Its very hard to pinpoint the one thing that causes someone to 'fail' in any state, sober or straight.

I found hundreds of trips and E experiences thought provoking and generally inspiring. I always felt safe and in control. The one bad trip presented me with a genuinely puzzling 'out of body' experience and my sense of self being completely 'dissolved'. It was a fail triggered by my first ever panic attack. What caused the attack? I'll never know.

The dissociative 'out of body' effect is actually common with a panic attack, and nothing to do with drugs. Showing that a brain can naturally deconstruct reality. Encountering it on a trip for the first time wasn't fun at all.

Weirdly through, in the background there was a small sane part of me understanding and observing the whole situation. Sitting there calmly, quietly watching. I could recall everything afterwards as this observer. This indicated something else deep, stable and fundamental is also a part of consciousness. I found that fascinating.

Once experienced, psychedelic realities are way too varied and complex to dismiss as illusion, just the trivial fantasies of an 'intoxicated' mind. There is so much being explored - time, philosophy, imagination, memories, spirituality. Like the most complex intricate dreams, its almost impossible to share with others.

Modern theories on how the brain interprets visual information or current consciousness models would indicate psychedelics have helped us understand how much of a real time self created illusion our personal reality is. Just existing you are utilising a theoretical 'machine' that is unpredictable because it is so powerful, complex and nuanced.

With any consciousness manipulating system (drugs, philosophy, religion, science, meditation, art, therapy) you'll find many positive stories of growth and many stories of people losing their way and becoming very confused. I would argue most of these powerful tools have helped AND damaged society.

To counter all the tragic urban destruction being highlighted, I would like to offer another (rather obvious) drug impact -

In the 80s and 90s I was part of UK rave culture. For a good 10 years every weekend, thousands of young people across the UK were basically one giant drug experiment. E was the main drug at that time and all my friends consumed it regularly (20+ people in that specific social group).

We all understood it had serotonin related side effects and most of us controlled its usage pretty sensibly. Eventually we all grew out of heavy usage and got on with normal life.

25 years later nearly all of friends have good jobs and families, and look back very fondly on those days. You only have search for famous rave tracks on you tube to find long streams of friendly comments where people discuss those golden years as magical. For thousands of people it was a genuine moment where a large group of humans became a community and treated each other much better than we do currently.

Of course people lost their way in the 90s - I lost 2 friends to heroin. But from personally experience, the UK rave scene was an example where one drug combined with music became a reliable ritual that was meaningful and culturally powerful. And supported the theory that certain drug rituals have the power to unite us in deeper more 'spiritual' ways. E was the glue but the resulting parties made us fundamentally kinder and more connected.

And its undeniable, we wouldn't have 90% of modern electronic music without that drug and those parties.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 18, 2024

AH FUCK ME, I'd typed a long answer proving once again I was right above all else, but my browser reset and it's gone. Oh well. Time to get high.

 

I've just got high from your post,
great utterance

 

Last edited: Feb 18, 2024

like many others here, ive had a long history with drugs. started using at age 14, within a year was using acid, shrooms, mdma, ketamine, coke, meth, pills, etc etc on the regular. continued this for the next 15 years. somehow managed to be a functioning member of society lol.

I still use psych's, mdma, and ket every so often, but have stopped all other use. including alcohol and weed. Not to sound cliche, but i only use now for medicine, both phsycially, mentally, and spiritually. I used to think i could never live without drugs. That drugs were the best part of life etc. But since stopping, i have found life is worth living for many reasons. Spending time with friends and family, music, art, exploring nature, spending time with yourself, sober, and getting to know yourself, your goals, and how you can grow spiritually and as a member of society that not only exist, but works together with others to make the world a better place, or at least tries to.

Life can be hard, situations arise that test us, and its easy to take the escape way out. Drowning feelings, emotions, thoughts, the past with chemicals only snowballs until eventually one day it becomes an avalanche. Its best practice to face things as they come, address the past and set your sight on growth and the future. whatever that means.

 

you'll understand why i left this part in

a hypnotic sedative, nice way to describe a seemingly innocent sleeping pill but with some rather unpleasant side effects such as:

• hallucinations
• amnesia
• blurred vision
• confusion
• dizziness
• irritability
  
• paranoia, combativeness and such
• increase in appetite
  
• and a whole list of other things as well of course but these are a few that would matter in your example and a few that will come back in my example.

now these may not sound all too terrible but, as i found out, it doesnt say anywhere to what extend the hallucinations, the amnesia, etc have an effect on the patient. well it turns out that with amnesia they dont just mean forgetfulness, they mean total blackouts that can last 8 hours orso. during these blackouts the other side effects mentioned can/will also join in. now with confusion they mean having shit for brains. FE: not understanding how a closet door works (and ripping it out because it wont open when you tried to open it, prolly in the wrong way) or not understanding how a sliding door in the shower works(and crashing right through it). i feel like i dont have to explain how the irritability can surface. and for my last side-effect example, the paranoia (and partially the hallucination): FE hearing voices, grabbing a weapon and going outside... and the best thing yet: once the medication wears off, the patient doesnt remember a damn thing, no flashes, nothing.

and this all can be yours with a normal dosage of 5-10mg. yes, that is 8 hours of basically being a much dumber, highly irritable, almost blind version of yourself with an extra chance of hearing voices, seeing moving shadows and not listening to reason because paranoid. and you'll have a chance of 1 or possibly more side-effects lasting up to a few days! you'll have all the great moments of wondering why:

• the painters have a key to your house, well must be the renting company that let them in even though they dont have a key to your door
  
• there's a roll of toiletpaper in the studio rolled out all the way (prolly the cats right, the fact that there are no tears in the paper we'll just ignore).
• things start to turn up in weird places.
• you're out of sugar again.
• your butter looks like... well not what butter looks like.
• somebody would hack you facebook account and then post a message on your band/dj page "faker than pamela's tits".
• you only have 1/4th of your wooden baseball bat that you had since your childhood and most importantly where the 3/4th is...
• WTF happened in the hall and the closet door.
• WTF happened in the shower and the shower cabin door.
  
• why there's a actual hole in your skin of half an inch by half an inch on the top of your wrist... ooh wait...
  
• why the tv in the bedroom is on the ground.
• why there's milk coming out of your MBP.
• (in theory) you woke up in either a police cell or nice white padded room.

so yeah while it may help some paralyzed patients, it wont matter much if they cant remember/can't see/ can't control what they are doing.
while what you mention is very positive it is still a side-effect, something that is basically unforeseen and unwanted. and this is were experience and research comes in, the fact that someone may not have had experiences himself doesnt mean they can't do research into it. and with research people tend to rely on peer-reviewed or scientific theories. results that have been reproduced by others, good and bad.

personally i dont believe in homeopathy, weed is the wonderdrug(or any recreational drug for that matter, as much as i enjoy them) or any of that. if any of those 1000's of herbal/homebrew/grandma's remedies actually worked big pharma would have turned it into a profit already. there's a reason why traditional chinese medicine is also considered to be based on pseudo-medicine, because they stopped using the ones that didnt work and the ones that worked are now modern chinese medicine. for mental health the mind-altering substances could be of use but could also fuck things up even more. development of modern day mental healthcare is still in the stone age and i'm not sure they discovered fire yet.

 

I suggest you read the possible side effects of Aspirin.

If you thought I was trying to say Ambien is good or innocent, you completely missed the point.
I know Ambien is a slippery slope. It made me pee on the bed standing up.

What I was trying to say is every substance has a complex mechanism of action. This peculiar side effect of Ambien might play a key role in our understanding of paralysis, and maybe even help develop a cure one day. Don't throw the baby with the bathwater, maybe there's something in that water that the baby absorbed, and if we eat the baby we'll discover the meaning of life.

 

I love you. Even with those face on the avatar

 

Last edited: Feb 20, 2024