Mind-Altering drugs

[NeedsMoreWolf]

I've recently become pretty interested in hallucinogens and mind altering substances. The idea of seeing "reality" in "a different light" has always sparked my curiosity. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) seems like one of the more powerful hallucinogens i've read about. I've never used it myself, but people who have always use the term "consciousness expansion" Are these people really experiencing genuine "expanded awarness" or is this feeling just a delusion brought on by a brain going haywire?

[dajo]

If you're interested in LSD, maybe read this thread? http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=86488 or more generally this: http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...=26696&page=14 or this: http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...t=72764&page=3 As for your question, I think it's hard to say. Some parts are illusions for sure and I think it's not that difficult to know which ones - on the other hand there are definitely aspects of it that I'd call the opposite.

[Specialis Sapientia]

The expanded awareness is not as positive as many think it is, because it is temporary and often counter-productive for consciousness evolution. What good you get out of getting shot into another reality frame like a cannonball, is insignificant against the long-term problems it create. Nothing is simply free in terms of evolution. I would like to quote some wise words. All, It is not that awareness altering drugs can never produce valuable insights, they can, but rather that such drugs are much more likely to become a part of the problem than a part of the solution as you work toward your goal of evolving the quality of your consciousness. Their upside is infinitesimal in comparison to their downside. What constitutes an upside often appears, because of its suddenness, more valuable than it really is. Drugs do not constitute a shortcut. Drugs do constitute a trap by encouraging you to believe in a phantom upside that does not exist while reducing your ability to precisely control the focus of your awareness. Your consciousness is like a precisely and subtly tuned tool – a delicate instrument – drugs interact with that instrument like a sledgehammer – detuning and increasing entropy in exchange for a random big bang. The probability that you will derive some lasting benefit from a psychotropic drug is inversely proportional to the number of times you use such drugs. There is no free lunch – you only get to keep what you earn. If you have done 95% of the work, the drug may bump you over that last 5% and offer you an “ahh-haaa!” moment. But if you have done only 60 % of the work the drug will only make it harder and take longer for you to accomplish the last 40%. Expecting drugs to deliver or aid in consciousness evolution is a fool’s dream. Primitive societies, who know how to use psychotropic drugs to that end, are trapped at a low level of understanding, functionality, and awareness. You might think that would be better than no understanding, no functionality, and no awareness, but that constitutes a false choice. The price of “easy” is very high. Such people have no idea what they have given up for what they get. Like forgoing a high school, college, and graduate school education so one can spend all of one’s time playing on a brightly painted jungle gym in a big sandbox. That will always appear to a 5 year old to be a cool choice. Because indulging in psychotropic drugs over time eliminates other options, it becomes more and more difficult to escape that particular sandbox. In terms of consciousness evolution, a 50 year old stuck in a kindergarten sandbox may be completely normal for our drug saturated culture (both legal and illegal, common and uncommon), but it is sad just the same. Tom

[Speesh]

Its up for debate, but I'd call it expanded awareness. In our normal, homeostatic state of consciousness our sensory awareness is very limited. We are bombarded by massive amounts of sensory data all the time but our human brains are programmed to ignore most of it, and only accept the data that fits our own dogmatic way of looking at the world. Its a neurological process known as Latent Inhibition. What LSD and other hallucinogens do is overstimulate parts of your brain in such a way that some areas get extra attention while others get less. Overall it has a net effect of severely lowering Latent Inhibition, so much more sensory data that we don't normally 'need' to survive enters our awareness. That's why on such a drug things seem more colorful, nature looks amazing, and music is just about the greatest thing ever. It also tries to strip that sense of self and that dogmatic view of the world away from you. It'll show you as you really are, without means of protecting yourself. Most people aren't mentally prepared to deal with losing these things, which is where anxiety and bad trips come from. Edit: The expanded awareness is not as positive as many think it is, because it is temporary and often counter-productive for consciousness evolution. What good you get out of getting shot into another reality frame like a cannonball, is insignificant against the long-term problems it create. Nothing is simply free in terms of evolution. I would agree with this. Experiences on these drugs can provide valuable insights, but they're still only a crutch. You'll always end up back at homeostasis eventually. Finding a way to be more aware all the time is where true consciousness expansion begins.

[Xei]

I can't really say given that I'm yet to try psychedelic drugs, but I'd point out that we've evolved to have a good grasp of reality, and taking drugs represents a deviation from this brain function.

[Supernova]

I can't really say given that I'm yet to try psychedelic drugs, but I'd point out that we've evolved to have a good grasp of reality, and taking drugs represents a deviation from this brain function. What is real? How do you define real?... Seeing is not believing, dreams should be enough to teach you that.

[Xei]

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

[Kraftwerk]

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. Schizophrenics may not believe in their hallucinations, but the hallucinations remain all the same. Reality is undefinable. IMHO

[Supernova]

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein

[cygnus]

"If you have done 95% of the work, the drug may bump you over that last 5% and offer you an “ahh-haaa!” moment." ... "Expecting drugs to deliver or aid in consciousness evolution is a fool’s dream." contradiction.

[Invader]

Reality is that which can be perceived by a conscious entity. Psychoactive drugs, I think, serve well for creating one time experiences in which the user can get some idea of just how far awareness can be pushed for us at our current level of development. contradiction. Not quite. The quote says that to expect it is a fools dream, but that it may help just that little bit all the same. To expect that I will win something with steep odds would be foolish, but it may happen.

[cygnus]

hookay, then

[Matchbook]

To NeedsMoreWolf, or anyone else that uses or would consider using mind-altering drugs...be careful, and never underestimate the power of influence that a hallucinogenic substance can have. If you are an "experienced" drug user you may feel like you've been around the bend and back safely, but at any given time the drug can ambush your consciousness with a blitzkrieg of horror. I know this because it happened to me. I used hallucinogens for years, and did so with a firm belief that I was grounded enough that I would never succumb to the terrible experiences that others related. But sure enough, one particular time a boil in my mind was poked by the drug and out oozed the worst sort of nightmarish thoughts and distortions I couldn't have even dreamt up, and the anxiety disorders (plural) that were set in motion at that very time have been plaguing me ever since. Yes, as some might point out, those mental disorders could have already been lurking, and I admit that that is likely the case, but I would have MUCH rather attempted to stave off their approach with a more well-equipped mind through a slow process of time. It's like going down rapids in a kayak versus toppling off a high cliff into the water and then soaring down a waterfall. You may be handling similar terrain, but one is more sudden, drastic, and leaves you pretty battered, if at all functional. When calculating the risk of taking a mind-altering drug, you must consider and recognize the fact that by doing so, there may be a risk of a life-long ill effect.

[Wednesday]

I agree with Matchbook that there are significant dangers. But don't make the mistake that, short of having a devistating bad trip, they can only do you good. It really depends on what you want in life and your psychology. Some take it just to 'get wasted' (indeed a waste imo) and the only subsequent thought about it they have is "man that was some crazy shit". Others more disposed to reflection obsess over it and marvel. That marvelling is good so long as it doesn't take over from the rest of your life. If you don't already have strong interests/connections/projects in life, psychadelics can enter your psychic space like a new planet and suck up your 'existential debris'. But again I guess it depends on what you want out of life. As to the question: hallucinogens, by definition, operate via hallucination. There is a sense in which the reality we perceive is itself an extended and mutable hallucination. For instance you could call the colour 'red' an hallucination, given that there is no such thing as colour 'in reality'. Reality is always being constructed according to the neurological mechanisms in an organism's evolved brain. But not all hallucinations are equally valid. Some happen to represent reality better, and as a species operating on a certain level of reality, evolution has selected mechanisms yeilding better representations, resulting in a 'consensus reality' (for our species). Deviations from the consensus are called delusions or hallucinations in the conventional sense. Psychdelics like LSD, LSA, psilocybin etc tend to increase the occurence of these deviations - inducing what appears to be temporary insanity. They take the brakes off our spontanenous theory- or hallucination-generators, so that we percieve patterns and meanings and connections everywhere. And just like a schizophrenic, the more you give into a particular pattern, the more you peer into it, the denser and more elabourate it becomes. Note too that the types of hallucinations you experience reflect your own psychology - you 'ask different questions of the world' and hence bias the train of your perceptions. So you can learn about yourself in this way, just as you can learn about yourself from dreams. But good luck to you if you discover things about the world (independent of your mind). In my experience, LSD rather than allowing me to transcend my mind has made it so very clear that all I can ever experience and be is irreducibly contained within it. We are isolated in our personal nest of neurons. However, I'd also say that it is possible to forget this fact during a liberated peak when the volume of data from the world (as it is morphed through your hallucination-generators) escapes your capacity to order and 'get on top of it' with analysis (which is where the sense of self seems to come from).

[Xaqaria]

The most basic way in which psychedelics 'expand consciousness' is by forcing you to realize that your normal brain state is merely a particular balance of chemical and electrical signals, and the experience of the psychedelic trip is just a different balance of signals, and yet the experience is profoundly different from what you are used to. It just makes you wonder why the particular balance you are used to is necessarily representative of the 'real world' and not just another electrochemical filter.

[Jesus of Suburbia]

i've been reading up on Salvia Divinorium, it's at least partially legal (if not fully legal) in most states and countries. I'd make sure, though. I plan to get some soon.

[Wednesday]

Salvia need to be studied more! Be wary of dosage, there seems to be a great variability in individual reactivity to it. For some, reality crumbles with half a cone (of like x10 extract), and for others like me three cones will only yield tantalising whisper. Or maybe I've just got some bunk leaf or bad technique :S. Oh, and it also sends my hypnagogic imagery and dreams insane and vivid if I smoke it before bed.

[Jesus of Suburbia]

Salvia need to be studied more! Be wary of dosage, there seems to be a great variability in individual reactivity to it. For some, reality crumbles with half a cone (of like x10 extract), and for others like me three cones will only yield tantalising whisper. Or maybe I've just got some bunk leaf or bad technique :S. Oh, and it also sends my hypnagogic imagery and dreams insane and vivid if I smoke it before bed. Salvia doesn't need to be studied more, because they might find that it's bad for you and make it illegal everywhere‼ Anyway, Reality Crumbling is a good thing.

[stormcrow]

i think certain drugs can be useful tools if used in moderation. like alan watts said about lsd "once you get the message, its time to hang up the phone". i think you can learn alot about yourself by taking mushrooms by yourself in complete darkness and silence.

[DreamPwner]

As with any alteration in consciousness - actually, as with anything in life - the use is defined by the user. Of course, the effects on the brain and body may be basically identical, but the interpretation is everything. I don't think that the intention of taking a drug "for fun" is necessarily any worse or misguided than so-called "spiritual exploration," either. To each his/her own. I've personally had a handful of hallucinogenic experiences (3 salvia trips, 3 DXM trips, 1 psilocybin mushroom trip, many marijuana experiences, and quite a few nitrous oxide experiences). Have I "seen reality in a different light"? ABSOLUTELY! Marijuana often allows my mind to traverse a greater realm (I don't mean this in a metaphysical or New Age sense...I'm only talking about my range of thought, from a psychological standpoint) than it normally does. Within a short time span, I can analyze an event or item from a whole variety of angles and perspectives, which is partially why marijuana causes time distortion (a higher frequency of insight leads to time dilation, especially with higher psychedelics). Psilocybin mushrooms actually allowed me to enter a mental space in which time was pretty much not an item to be considered. I laid on the floor, completely oblivious of time's passing....actually, it felt as if I had been "dumped into time" or "dumped into energy." I have a hard time describing exactly what I mean, but time had basically no meaning to me at the time. LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, as I've heard, are practically the same in effect. There may be slight differences in the come-on of the trip and such, but either will do. These days, LSD is becoming harder to find (since a large bust that happened, cutting off something like 90% of North America's LSD supply), and psilocybin mushrooms are becoming the higher psychedelic of choice. For your first trip, I recommend you do somewhere from 2 to 4 grams. (I did an eighth of an ounce, or 3.3 grams. for my first trip, but they were weak mushrooms.) And of course, BE IN A GOOD ENVIRONMENT. "Set and setting," as they say, are very important. Basically what I'm saying is, don't trip at a party, and don't trip around a bunch of people who are just gonna mess with you. Be comfortable. Wear comfy clothes. You asked if trippers have experienced genuine consciousness expansion or if they are merely delusional. This question is unanswerable for me, and provokes only more questions. What necessarily do we mean by "consciousness expansion"? What is "delusional"? In any case, I found that psychedelic experiences are beneficial for me, because they provide me with perspectives that may have not occurred to me otherwise. Some will say that this is a danger of the psychedelic experience, that the drugs are basically implanting ideas and perspectives into your brain. These people don't know shit about biochemistry and probably rarely question their own beliefs. That's a total generalization, but you get what I'm saying. In any case, if you are going to mess with the psychedelics, start with weed like everyone else. It'll give you a basic idea of what this brand of consciousness alteration is all about. Not to say that you'll trip if you get high, but you can actually have some pretty interesting experiences. Actually, my very first weed experience was the second most frightening psychedelic experience I have ever gone through, and I had a bit of a freakout. Granted, this was with really good chronic being vaporized. Anyway, take one step at a time. Even if you do have a bad experience, move forward and learn from it. Best of luck.