Psycheledics - what's really going on in the brain?

[blade5x]

Most people believe that taking some kind of psychedelic you are effectively altering your brain's chemistry which cause hallucinations. But my question is - what exactly is going on? Let me start with what is going on NOW: Right now our brains have active chemical processes and reactions occurring. What is the final result? We're conscious human begins, and what perceive what we believe to be reality. You take a psychedelic, and the brain chemistry changes just so slightly, and your off in another world. So what am I getting at? What if these hallucinations have a reality that is just as real as our own. And I'm not talking about "the experience is real and that's all that matters". When the brain chemistry is altered to the point that you enter an alternate universe - the brain has effectively completely tuned out our everyday reality. What if it tuned into a different reality... but this reality is connected to our own. Like it's always around us, it's there - we're just not tuned into it. In the same way - if there are actual conscious and real entities there, their reality is not tuned into our physical reality... What if... What if there was a way to control perception through the alteration of brain chemistry. For example... take visible light. Visible light is 400-750nm. Anything outside of this, we pretty much cannot see. Now here's a cool fact... if you were to wear glasses... I forget what kind exactly - you could actually very barely see in infrared. That's right - infrared vision, though not much. This is a different wavelength of visible light... problem is our eyes are not very sensitive to it. What if through taking a controlled drug, it could temporarily alter the brains chemistry to ignore all visible light, and only focus in (and magnify) the infrared spectra, causing a human to be able to see in full blown infrared. Something like this would be extremely hard to accomplish if even possible at all. Humans would be the guinea pigs, but it definitely would not be hard to find volunteers. But *if* this was possible, all of a sudden I don't know if I could look at drug induced hallucinations at "just hallucinations" anymore.

[Pyrofan1]

so are you saying that drug induced hallucinations are real? But my question is - what exactly is going on? the drug binds to receptors and causes various effects

[blade5x]

so are you saying that drug induced hallucinations are real? Yes and no. If you took my infrared vision as an example... that would be real if possible. When you travel to another universe... it might be. But it's something irrelevant to our "universal" reality that it wouldn't have much meaning. the drug binds to receptors and causes various effects Right, but you say that like you know the true nature of what is going inside the brain when it's on drugs. The brain chemistry is changed when this happens, and as a result different things are happening. Receptors are blocked, some are firing randomly - I don't know. My post was more inspired by the post in extended discussion - "why are drugs illegal?" I think it's true that's psychedelics get a really bad image... but I think they could really be beneficial in scientific brain studies in trying to unlock the brain's secrets. I think I may have posted this in the wrong forum.

[Casualtie]

This post has made me want to try psychedelics all the more. I'm not a neuroscientist, or psychologist, or whatever, but if the information you gave in that post was true, you may have completely changed the way I look at psychedelics. Most drugs do have their dangers, but from what I've read/heard, there haven't been any reported or confirmed deaths because of shrooms or LSD. Besides human negligence, of course.

[Pyrofan1]

well actually i believe there was a guy who died after injecting himself with 320mg of LSD, thinking it was something else, but that's ~$5,200 of LSD assuming $5 a hit and each one containing 100ug of LSD.

[Cyclic13]

I did acid again a few times this past new years break and can personally say that it tunes you in to a different mode of thought outside of causality and duality. You can see each and every dichotomy for what it is... two halves of a greater whole. On acid you are tuned into the whole and gain perspective enough to see how each part fits in. A perfect analogy: Imagine a ball being thrown into the air. From the person throwing its' perspective, the ball just seems to keep getting smaller and bigger. And, from a person at a distances' perspective, the ball seems to just go up and down. Only from having experienced both those perspectives can you have grand perspective enough to understand it is doing both depending on your point of view. Reality at any point is much the same. If you were able to step outside of reality's 'frequency', as you put it, you would have grand perspective enough to understand it's inherent qualities at all points. Something that is hard to be seen when standing only directly beneath or from within it at a distance. Does that make any sense? Anyway, here's a poem I wrote on acid a while back... Open up your mind's eye Looked inside but nothing was there. Turned outside but no fruit to bear. A cold summers' frost. A hot winters' sun. No matter the cost, Together as one. Infinite brilliance of infinite thought. Infinite questions of answers sought. Infinite layers of infinite gray. As the mirrors of perception fade...

[SKA]

well actually i believe there was a guy who died after injecting himself with 320mg of LSD, thinking it was something else, but that's ~$5,200 of LSD assuming $5 a hit and each one containing 100ug of LSD. That guy died because he dosed up dramatically wrong thinking it was another Drug requiring that dose. I remember having read it too. And I've had my share of encounters with "Parallel universes". To me they are Realities on their own and I am obviously not alone. Isn't it strikingly perculiar that, allthough every individual reacts differently to substances, it seems to be a Universal Truth to all who have experienced smoking DMT that they Go to an unwordly, seemingly underground dome-like place, where they all come into contact with strange beings? Some may call them aliens, others ancestoral spirits or Gods..but the naked, uninterpretated basis of the smoked DMT experience is strikingly similair. This Universe seems coherent and credible to be considered real.

[Taosaur]

Blade5x, I like where you're going, but not quite where you went I wouldn't say one sees a different world, just that we see this one differently. Independent of the peak experience, one of LSD's main effects is to insert small errors into the mechanisms of perception. It's easy to understand the early effects this way--you start seeing "tracers," a series of still images rather than smooth movement when someone waves an arm, or 'shards' of light from a streetlamp rather than a smooth aura. As the trip progresses, you place highly unusual emphasis on stimuli, to the extent that you may not recognize them at all, or may feel you never truly saw them before. As these errors compound, one result is that the mechanisms of perception, undetectable when functioning normally, become more visible--you begin to see how you see, and often one finds that what had been taken for reality during ordinary consciousness was in fact a representation, a drawing one made of reality without realizing it. Another, related effect is that the line between inner thought and perception of the "outside" world blurs and becomes less meaningful. In general, I would say your brain is processing boundaries differently, grouping stimuli into different "objects" than one would normally perceive, and not settling on a single interpretation of available stimuli, but constantly shifting emphasis and reorganizing the scene. So, I guess that's more what's going on in the mind than the brain, but that's my interpretation. I've never seen anything that isn't always there, I've just seen things differently.

[Cyclic13]

Well said. I concur.

[O'nus]

.I think I may have posted this in the wrong forum. *Cough*AnotherReasonToHaveAScienceForum*Cough* ~

[Goldney]

Haha "psycheledics". Nice title.

[grasshoppa]

+2 points for correcting another classmates spelling error!

[Howie]

Most people believe that taking some kind of psychedelic you are effectively altering your brain's chemistry which cause hallucinations. But my question is - what exactly is going on? This goes into a lot of detail of what is actually happening in the brain. psychedelic drugs It is lengthy but interesting. I like to consider hynopompic hallucinations that occur naturally but randomly. Our subconscious is obviously manifesting images that are surrealistic in nature in our dreams. Through any practice, such as medication and lucid dreaming are brain begin to mold and physically alter to a degree depending upon our conditioning.