Disregard Everything I say

Sensory Filter Theory - speculation on how the Psychedelic experience is generated

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 10:39:00 -0400

This article is technically a repost of a repost but it is a necessary one. This is because my understanding of this topic has recently increased so greatly since I have started deliberately reading up on psychology and neuroscience in general, that it has needed a complete overhaul. As a result of this, the original article will be broken down into two separate articles. For both, I will try my hardest to supply as much solid evidence for as I possibly can, but if you know more about these things than me and want to contribute ideas of your own or debate mine please do so. Any help with this would be great as my knowledge of neuroscience barely extends beyond what Wikipedia has managed to teach me over the past few weeks, making it something that is trivial in comparison to genuine scientists.

For a long time I and others have suspected that during sober living, a large part of what our brain does is filter out the mass of sensory data and self thought into a highly streamlined package. This package is what the subconscious brain has deemed important and relevant to pass along for our conscious faculties. The underlying mechanism behind this must have evolved, because if it did not we would be immediately and constantly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of raw sensory input and our inability to process it all, causing us to be completely incapable of functioning. It’s because of this that we have evolved a brain which is able to filter out irrelevant information, using what I have named the Sensory Filter.

It seems to me that all visual and mental components of the psychedelic experience are generated by this one very specific mental component of the psychedelic experience, the partial or complete removal of the sensory filter.
The effects of this are commonly felt in quite a direct way, even at low level psychedelic experiences, in a way that anybody who has ever tripped should be quite familiar with. These low level effects are the result of the partial removal of somebody’s sensory filter, which seem to be universally felt as:

Being able to comprehend your entire visual field, including your peripheral vision. For example; the sensation of staring at a tree and comprehending the exact position of all of its branches in your visual field all at once, instead of just the simple few that are in focus.
Being able to comprehend every layer of complex sounds, and the precise position and direction from which they are coming from in your surroundings. This results in greatly increased music appreciation.
Being able to feel every nerve ending all over your entire body, whilst simultaneously having increased muscle control and bodily awareness.

The above effects are generated are all generated by a lack of filtering when it comes to external sensory information but this sensory filter does not just block out irrelevant external sensory input from being experienced. It also filters out irrelevant brain activity from the conscious faculties and it’s through this that the higher levels of psychedelic visuals are generated.

This irrelevant brain activity includes many things such as the organization and firing of every neuron, every memory, every stored concept and every last structure of the mind, until something such as a mind altering drug forces it to stop. In simple terms, this means that once the sensory filter is shut down, we suddenly become exposed to the very fabric of our mind. This is due to the brain being chemically changed in a way that causes it to begin to reveal itself to itself.

To describe in depth how this lowering of our sensory filter results in the psychedelic experience, I will first break the visual effects of tripping into three separate categories, and explain in simple terms how I think they work (using my personal experience and research as a basis). After this I will explain the neuroscience behind it all, whilst trying my best to cite studies and articles as evidence. Before I begin, please remember however to keep in mind throughout this article that I am a teenager who has taken a whole bunch of drugs and not a neuroscientist of any sort. This means that although I have tried my best to keep this as scientifically accurate as possible I cannot promise anything and if anybody out there wants to team up and help me write a better thesis I would be all for it.

The first of these three separate visual effects that I am going to explain are Open/Closed eye visuals, which can be described as the sensation of a persons visual field being partially or completely encompassed by intensely fast-moving, kaleidoscopic and indescribably complex geometric patterns, shapes, fractals, structures and colour. These visuals somehow have a deep sense of profoundness and importance attributed to them and feel like perfect visual representations of your current mind state, and the vibes of your current surroundings.

It’s because of this, among other things, that I have been led to believe that Visuals are the experience of your lowered sensory filter allowing you to be exposed to the current neurological structure, organization and activity of the brain. This starts at lower levels of tripping, as geometric patterns that increase in intensity, until they eventually encompass and overwhelm your entire visual field. As the amount of neurological structure that is experienced increases proportionally with dosage, the sensory filter is eventually decreased to 0%, leading to a person being exposed to the organization of their entire mind all at once. This feels like you have suddenly become everything in the universe as the boundaries in your mind are completely broken down, and is described as profound and infinite in size. As this is happening, the vast data stream of neurological structure and geometric shapes that are experienced begin to cause the ego to go through complete sensory overload.

Since this sensory overload increases proportionally with dosage it can be thought of as a set of scales. As Visuals go up, the ego goes down, and vice versa. Because of this, once the sensory filter hits 0% and a person starts to feel one with the universe, the ego becomes completely eradicated. This results in a state in which you are conscious, but your short term memory has been destroyed, creating a state that can be very confusing and often negative to the unprepared and the unstable.

This idea is mostly based on in-depth sceptical discussions with friends and the fac that all of my personal experiences pointing towards the idea that Closed Eye Visuals feel as if they are perfect representations of the mind because they are the literal spilling over of our neuroligcal structure into the visual cortex due to a dampened sensory filter. This does also however have a scientific basis that I will go into later.

The second visual effect that I am going to explain is Distortions. This category of visual effects is a very common one and does not behave anything like Closed Eye Visuals. Instead of geometric shapes, these visuals are most commonly manifested as objects and scenery in your visual field acting as if they are melting, bending, changing colour and various other distorting effects. These increase in intensity when stared at, but immediately reset once you double take.

In my opinion, these are generated by your sensory filter, allowing the conscious facilities to be visually exposed to your immediate short term memory. This creates a recursive loop that continuously builds up. As you experience this, you literally see your short term memory and then immediately your memory of your short term memory and so on continuously. This builds up a visual feedback loop of increasing inaccuracy, which must be based on some sort of recursive visual looping system within the brain. This looping system sends sensory input from the optic nerve into the processing faculties of our subconscious brain and straight back into the optic nerve as a loop. This happens because our dampened sensory filter allows us to be exposed to our sensory processing faculties and working memory causing it to continuously go around and around, allowing the distortions to build up and up, until the loop is broken by new visual input (when a person looks away or double takes).

It’s because of this that distortions increase when stared at, but reset when looked away from. Out of focus eyes allow the loop to continue undisturbed, but new input immediately breaks it. This is just like a visual form of the increasingly loud feedback noise that you get looping through speaker systems when a microphone is placed near them.

I think the fractal effects found within visuals are closely related to this recursive visual looping. Fractals are generated by recursive formulas, such as x=x^2. Therefore, it would make sense that the fractals you see within the visuals are simply the looping effect being played out onto visuals, instead of your external environment. These fractals are created because your brain’s recursive looping is reinterpreting the same stimuli multiple times, causing the geometry to flower out into these fractals that all psychonauts are familiar with.

Finally, the third visual effect that I am going to explain is the experience of Imagery and Hallucinations. These states begin as imagery within the visuals, which can be described as pictures of scenes, objects, people, place or anything you could possibly imagine. On many psychedelics, such as; LSA, Ayahuasca and Syrian Rue, these are manifested as exact visual versions of whatever you are currently thinking about that all come about when you slip into a mildly trance-like state. As these states of imagery become increasingly elaborate (proportional to dosage), they eventually become fully fledged 3D hallucinations. These could be described as induced mystical states, contact with autonomous entities, imagined landscapes and situations that seem so unlike anything previously experienced that they are in all probability untranslatable into English. It’s not uncommon for people to report that these sorts of hallucinations feel infinitely more realistic than anything a person has previously experienced in real life.

For multiple reasons, it seems to me that these hallucinations are caused when high states of sensory filter suppression triggers dreaming in fully conscious trippers. My reasoning for this is three fold; the first is pretty simply that psychedelic hallucinations look and feel exactly like extremely vivid dreams. This is even to the point where it is not uncommon for people to recognize places from dreams they have had during intense Ayahuasca trips. Along the same lines, the feelings of amnesia commonly felt after strong DMT trips are identical to that extremely familiar feeling of not being able to remember a vivid dream immediately after you have woken up.

My second line of evidence to support this is that the imagery seen within closed eye visuals (that eventually leads onto hallucinations) feel exactly like Hypnagogia. Hypnagogia is the state between being awake and falling asleep where many people experience mild hallucinations, imagery and a fluid association of ideas. In fact, hypnagogia is considered to be characterized and based on a mental function, known as “auto-symbolism”, which are a person’s thoughts and ideas being made to manifest in their minds eye. This happens continuously when experienced, and can be either a vague and hazy manifestation, or completely clear and distinct ones depending on the persons dosage. Either way, this is exactly what states of hypnagogia are commonly described to be like. These two in my opinion feel identical, therefore making Imagery simply a psychedelic induced state of hypnagogia. These later lead onto full-on dreams, once they eventually become powerful enough as you finally fall asleep. This makes perfect sense, as Imagery leads onto Hallucinations in exactly the same way as Hypnagogia leads onto dreams.

All of this is happening along side the effect of a conscious person’s exposure to the neurological structure of their mind, and therefore visuals is what must cause the hallucinations and autonomous entities to commonly be made of what appears to be an impossible closed eye visual based material.

In my opinion, this has a genuine neurological basis, as the leading theory in the generation of dreams ties perfectly into the sensory filter. The leading theory can be found described in detail, here and here, but put simply, it is believed that once a person falls asleep, the level of activation in the conscious part of the brain descends to a very low level, as the inputs from the sensory are basically disconnected. This triggers what scientists have called the “continual-activation” mechanism, to generate a data stream from the memory stores to flow through the conscious part of the brain. It’s suggested that this pulse-like brain activation is the inducer of each dream. It’s proposed that, with the involvement of the brain associative thinking system, dreaming is, thereafter, self-maintained with the dreamer’s own thinking until the next pulse of memory insertion. This explains why dreams have both characteristics of continuity (within a dream) and sudden changes (between two dreams).

The supposed “continual activation” mechanism is, in my opinion, a loss of sensory filter. This is caused by the complete loss of ego that occurs to the brain as it falls asleep. This loss of ego happens because the activity in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex is lowered to a near halt during sleep. The function of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex when awake has been implicated to be planning complex cognitive behaviour, personality expression, decision-making and moderating social behaviour. The basic activity of this brain region is considered to be orchestration of thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals. All of these are the essential components of the ego and it is this cortex that is said to in charge of our Exectutive functions.

Executive functions are a psychological umbrella term for some of the essential components of the ego. These components are:

planning
working memory
attention
problem solving
verbal reasoning
inhibition
mental flexibility
multi-tasking
initiation and monitoring of actions

The medial prefrontal cortex is presumed by scientists to manage these executive functions via a high level gating system or filtering mechanism, that enhances goal-directed activations and inhibits irrelevant activations. This filtering mechanism enables executive control at various levels of processing, including selecting, maintaining, updating, rerouting activations and emotional regulation.

Simply put this is the physical location of the sensory filter and it is completely tied in with our ego in a single cortex at the very front of our brains. It’s this unity of these two systems that causes ego and psychedelic experience to act as a set of scales as when the ego is suppressed, so is the sensory filter and vice versa. This means that as activity in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex goes down so must the level of the psychedelic experience go proportionally up to compensate.

It’s the similarities between this dampening of activity in the medial prefrontal cortex found during both sleep and the psychedelic experience that is what leads me to believe that both dreaming and hallucinations are caused by a suppressed sensory filter. This allows our conscious mind to become exposed to a completely random mixture of concepts and events stored within the long term memory of the brain. This means that states of dreaming, states of meditation and states of psychedelic hallucination are the essentially the same thing, caused by different methods of simultaneously suppressing both a person’s ego and their sensory filter.

This has led me to a conclusion that is now greatly supported in a recent study by British scientists. This was a study that tested patients under the influence of psilocybin during a brain scan, and managed to determine that psychedelics do not increase brain activity, but actually reduce it. They were shown to do this by binding to the serotonin receptors within the Medial Prefrontal Cortex and the Posterior Cingulate Cortex, and greatly reducing their activity. The Posterior Cingulate Cortex is also related to ego and has been shown to serve the function of dealing with internally directed thought, for example, memory recollection with an active role in the control of cognition. This is done through signalling an environmental change and the immediate need to alter behaviour.

Psilocybin cuts activity in both of these nodes, destroys their filtering abilities along with their connection to other brain areas, allowing the senses to run free. It’s this dampening of the ego and our sensory filter that psychedelics have now been shown to cause, which allows information to flow freely across the brain and the senses to run wild.

Psychedelics have now been proven to cause a decrease in brain activity in hub areas that deal with the self and moving information. This results in a) the subconscious mind taking over and b) the sensory filter being lowered.

However, there are still two more component beyond the visual components of a psychedelic experience that still needs to be categorized. These need to be tied in to the sensory filter, so that we can have the full picture when it comes to understanding how they work.

These is much rarer than anything found during the visual side of tripping, but still common enough to be worthy of mention. This is what is known as an Audio Hallucination. Audio Hallucinations are uncommon but happen occasionally and are more likely to occur on substances such as Ayahuasca, DMT, Syrian Rue and any 2C* compound. I have broken these noises down into two distinct categories that both tie into the sensory filter.

The first of these two I have named as “Audio Effects”, and they come in many forms. They are commonly described as hearing noises such as; reverb, tones, and general sound effects, that seem to follow thought patterns and processes.

Examples of this include hearing the very mechanics of your brain on Ayahuasca or DMT, in a way that can either sound like a soft purring or multiple tones and phasers in a completely rhythm-less tune. On DMT this can sound like a rocket launch as you begin to take off or as rhythm-less and unaggressive soft-toned dubstep, but are essentially limitless in their possibilities.

After personal experience, I have come to the conclusion that Audio Effects are essentially the heard equivalent of visuals and work by means of a lowered sensory filter, allowing neurological structure to pour over into a person’s audio cortex as opposed to their visual cortex.

The Second of these two components is a genuine Audio Hallucination. These can be described as hearing voices, music or any sound that is genuinely not there. The most common version of this seems to be hearing music that has been played throughout the day, within the sounds of your surroundings, even after it has stopped. For example listening to ambient music all day and then stopping can often cause a person to hear said ambient music in the sounds of the wind, the cars and any noise that may be around them.

This is, in my opinion, because Audio Hallucinations are not the heard equivalent of Visuals, but are in fact the heard equivalent of Imagery and Hallucinations. This must mean that they are the result of a person’s lowered sensory filter, granting them access to heard concepts within their long term memory, as opposed to ones that are seen. This puts forward another supporting line of evidence towards the idea of long term memory access causing imagery and hallucinations.

The more I have thought about the sensory filter, the more I have come to the conclusion that it is without a doubt the most important component of a psychedelic experience. It seems to me that it is the “base component” that leads to all others. This idea, or ideas similar to it, seem to have been on the tips of everybody’s tongue since the 1954, when Aldous Huxley first wrote about a similar idea in his book the doors of perception which he called the “Mind at Large”.

Many people (including myself) have come to similar conclusions across reddit and various forums over the internet, before the recent Psilocybin study, that provided some concrete evidence to base our musings on.

Although it’s important to note that even though none of these people ever defined their ideas beyond a few sentences and some vague metaphors, this still shows that one of the most important tools that we have when it comes to making sense of and mapping out the psychedelic experience is first hand experience and rational thought.

This may be mostly based on personal experience but I’d like to think that based on my extremely basic understanding of how the human brain works this does seem to be how the visual components of a psychedelic experience are generated and I challenge you to debate me at any point.

To express my ideas on how this works simply I have created the chart below. The concepts on it show what I’m trying to express and each part depends on the component to its left and leads on to the components to its immediate right. You’re going to have to click to enlarge I’m afraid.

Note: there is most likely going to be a second section to this article. I will get working on it immediately.

Behold,

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 09:25:00 -0400

I now have a domain name.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while but didn’t want to untill I was no longer poor and 100% sure that I would be able to keep maintaining this website longterm. This now seems to be the case and since there are atleast 14 articles currently floating around in my notebook and I still seem to be having no problem with coming up with new ones faster than I can possibly write them I have decided that it’s finally time.

www.disregardeverythingisay.tumblr.com is no more.

and www.disregardeverythingisay.com is now where it’s at.

Thanks for the support guys. I will do my best to keep this shit up.

The psychology of those who cannot let go during states of Egodeath

Mon, 28 May 2012 11:09:00 -0400

Before I start I need to make it perfectly clear that I am not talking about your average everyday bad trip but exclusively about Egodeath which is a state I have described in a very high level of detail right here.
If you do not understand what egodeath is before hand this article will make no sense to you.

Something that I have realized as I have begun to introduce more and more of the people that I encounter in life into psychedelics is that there is a very high percentage of people that completely struggle to let go and relax during states of psychedelic induced Egodeath.
This is something can often lead people into finding themselves becoming extremely confused, panicked and paranoid as the sheer overwhelming nature of experiencing the entire universe all at once overloads all of their senses and destroys their sense of self and short term memory in the process.

Having now watched multiple people freaking the fuck out and completely losing their minds I have begun to piece together the consistent thought processes, irrationalities and general attitude towards life that all of these people share not just during the trip itself but in everyday life as its a persons outlook on things that really affects how they are going to react to a state of complete egoloss and whether or not the experience will be so positively profound that the tripper will feel as if their entire life has been building up to this single moment or alternatively so overwhelming that the tripper becomes terrified and has to try with everything they have to maintain a firm grip on their sanity.

This is easy during low to moderate levels of tripping as although a person is much more distractable during a state like this their short term memory is still mostly intact to the point where keeping track of the environment around you isn’t difficult but once Egodeath hits it is a completely different story as your short term memory is obliterated by the sheer sensory overload and people suddenly find themselves unable to remember or keep track of anything from how they got here, what is happening around them and the meaning of even the most basic concepts such as what everyday objects are and how they work.

This creates for an extremely confusing state especially when people are going through Egodeath in social situations instead of by themselves in a darkened room as the complexities of conversation are extremely difficult to remember since you cant help but avoid forgetting what everybody is saying to you as they say it but although this is a major factor to a person freaking out during this state it is mostly something that creates for feelings of confusion rather than feelings of panic or paranoia.

As far as I can tell the extremely negative feelings that a certain class of people go through during this state stem entirely from the restacking process that is an intrinsic part of Egodeath. The restacking process is something that happens many many times during an Egodeath trip and is the sensation of suddenly regaining the memory of who you are that happens immediately after a person has had their sense of self destroyed by the sensory overload of experiencing the whole universe triggered by the runaway thought process of the experience of any concept.
This process lasts 3 - 4 seconds and can be timed pretty simply by staring at a stopwatch, going through Egodeath on the concept of a stopwatch and then only hitting stop as soon as you come back down and remember what it was you were doing again and it’s during the confusion of this restacking process that the mind seems to desperately clutch at straws trying to formulate what is happening around it as quickly as possible using whatever clues it can to the point where if a person lets a genuinely worrying thought slip into their head while this is happening they can be restacked into all kinds of fictional and paranoid scenarios that can be experienced as hallucinations in real time but are usually experienced as memories of the scenario having already happened previously with the belief that they are still happening.

These scenarios can be anything but do follow very common themes across people such as,

Thinking that you are going insane.
Thinking that you are going to die.
Thinking that the people around you are “out to get you”.
Thinking that the people around you are trying to teach you some sort of higher meaning to life, analyzing you or trying to recruit you into something.
Thinking that the people around you are entities, demigods or transcended beings of some sort simply because they appear to have their shit together whilst you do not.
Thinking you have done something wrong.
Thinking that you are somehow tripping wrong.
Being absolutely convinced that something is very wrong with the situation but being completely unable to get your words when asked to explain what your point is because you never had one in the first place.

From personal experience and discussions with people who have been through these things it’s being a worrier that every single person I have ever seen freak out during states of complete Egodeath all have in common and it’s when these worried thoughts slip into the restacking process that all of these fictional and paranoid scenarios are generated.

To truly be able to let go during a state of Egodeath and experience in a positive light what this amazing thing has to offer you cannot have an irrational and negative outlook on life without finding yourself spiraling out of control and generally freaking out. I have seen people worry so much and be so certain that they are in some kind of danger even though they are perfectly safe, with close friends and indoors that they begin grasping at straws in search of something to freak out about even going as far as demanding that they be supplied with concrete scientific proof that they are not going to spontaneously set on fire in a desperate search to find something wrong with the situation.

If you need constant clarification and a complete understanding of what is happening around you at all times you will never be able to relax and let go during egodeath. It’s these sorts of unstable and negative people that should not be put through Egodeath without great caution as although I will forever advocate the amazing power that psychedelics have when it comes to allowing an individual to become who they truly are and reclaim their mind from the conditioning of culture an unprepared person should not be doing this. Being put though what I consider easily one of the most intense experiences a human being can go through can be extremely stressful for the unprepared.
This usually happens when people smoke weed during a moderate - strong trip without realizing how much a small amount of weed can intensify the experience.

It is not difficult to make sure that a person is mentally prepared for Egodeath they just need to fully understand the underlying mechanisms of it well enough that it becomes stored within their long term memory before they go through with the experience. It is impossible to explain to a person what is happening to them while they are going through Egodeath because they are completely incapable of holding onto a thought for more than 3 – 4 seconds due to the loss of short term memory but if they are aware of the ins and outs of it beforehand well enough for it to be stored into their long term memory they will be able to understand what is happening to them at all points during the trip even if they cant fully remember the specifics as the long term memory of a person during Egodeath stays fully intact. To do this I’d simply recommend that you do your best to read and pay attention to these two articles here and here so that you have an understanding from the start and can know what to expect.

If you find yourself in a situation where a person who you are tripping with begins to freak out because they are going through Egodeath there is only so much you can do, trying to convince them that everything is fine and that they have nothing to worry about is often futile as once you explain it to them they immediately forget it and begin to trail off again into a delusional scenario so trying to figure out the root of their irrational worry and then constantly telling them it is not the case before they can even say anything often helps. For example if you eventually manage to figure out that a person is having a bad trip because they think that they are going to die constantly interrupting everything they say with “it doesn’t matter you’re not dying you’re perfectly safe!” or something of the sort will keep them reassured but this has to be constantly repeated as they inevitably forget what you just said and the paranoid scenarios immediately begin to develop again as they trail off into an imagined scenario so writing a simple message in large easy to read writing on a piece of paper and holding it in front of their face can often solve the problem as they will continuously read it over and over again being constantly reassured. A simple message such as “you do not need to understand” or “you do not need to worry” will usually suffice but this depends entirely on the person and the situation so this is no guarantee and sometimes it’s better to simply sit them down and put them in front of a tv show that does not require a short term memory to pay attention to the plot such as Planet Earth but none of this is nearly as effective as a person having previously prepared for Egodeath by ensuring that they have got their shit together, have educated themselves on what it’s going to be like and have then proceeded to slowly work their way up towards Egodeath with each trip instead of just jumping right in.

Egodeath is one hell of a mindfuck to the average person but no matter how distressed I have seen somebody get during this state they have always come down a better person with a greater understanding of their own psyche and the alarming possibility that perhaps they didn’t know their mind quite as well as they thought they did.

Syrian Rue as a potentiator and a stand alone Psychedelic

Sat, 26 May 2012 12:35:00 -0400

Syrian rue is something that I have been using as an RIMA inhibitor to activate Ayahuasca for a long time now but it was only recently that I discovered its extremely promising potential as a stand alone psychedelic. Not only is this substance legal and freely available across most of the world but it has probably the easiest extraction process I have found with any drug.
Since Harmine the active chemical inside Syrian rue is a fairly robust molecule that can survive much higher temperatures than its close relatives the process literally just entails boiling the crushed seed matter down over a period of 30 minutes to an hour and consuming the remaining liquid after it has been filtered through a piece of material instead of a slow process of simmering it over 8 hours or more. This recipe can be found in detail right here and results in a foul tasting shot of green liquid.

I was extremely surprised to find that there isn’t more information available on the internet about this so I’ve taken it upon myself to categorize the trip itself and simplify the recipe into an easy and readable form so that more people can experience it for themselves.

Visuals:

After reading a few trip reports online I was expecting Syrian Rue visuals to be extremely unimpressive as many of them had described the sensation as highly chaotic tracers being the only noticeable open eye visuals but this is the exact opposite of what I found. In fact the thing that surprised me more than anything else was how remarkably similar the visuals looked to more common psychedelics such as LSD or mushrooms, these visuals literally just looked like an alternative version of LSD and were extremely intricate with my eyes both open and closed.

In terms of appearance they appear to follow a vaguely mystical style that unsurprisingly shares visual characteristics with Ayahuasca but behave in a way that is much more similar to that of ordinary psychedelics and are not affected by disturbances and light in the same way that the mostly recursion based Ayahuasca visuals are. These visuals do not build up and grow out of the air but are instead the constant flashes of colour and geometry that most psychedelic users are generally used to and are accompanied by some distinct and obvious but at the same time fairly unimpressive distortions that never seem to extend beyond the edges of objects rapidly wiggling.

At higher levels the imagery within these visuals begins to become increasingly elaborate until the all encompassing nature of them turns into a vast series of hyper realistic hallucinations that can include anything from contact with autonomous entities, entirely imagined landscapes and impossible scenarios. These usually happen during states of extremely intense closed eye visuals that are intense enough to trigger egodeath which feels remarkably similar to the state of egodeath found on LSD with the added bonus of 3D hallucinations.

Headspace:

The thought processes that characterize the Syrian rue Headspace are thoughts that are completely taken over by a sort of fluid association of ideas that is accompanied by a relaxing dreamlike state. This abstract game of word association allows the mind to creatively wander and cover all topics during a trip such as this and is often accompanied by imagery that perfectly fits the topic of your thoughts.

This is a Headspace that depending on what you want from a psychedelic has it’s downsides however, as at higher levels of tripping this substance can be extremely sedating, it is not uncomfortable and can be ignored if a person really try’s their hardest to move but if it is fought a person will constantly feel as if they are on the verge of passing out. If this is allowed to happen however they will usually find themselves in a state of endless hallucinations and vivid imagery.

Bodyhigh:

The bodyhigh on this drug is subtle but definitely there but is something that never extends beyond its lowest form. For some reason unknown to me the body high produced by 5 grams of syrian rue (a dose that has very little psychedelic effects) has a level of bodyhigh equally as strong as big of a dose as 30grams and the same holds true for even higher doses. It is a soft relaxing sensation that warmly tingles across your skin and is something that creates for a very chilled out experience.

This is not all there is to the bodyhigh however, it is also accompanied by a general loss of motor control and balance that at higher doses completely force a person to stay seated. This is a psychedelic that I would recommend people take indoors and on a comfortable bed not out in nature or at a rave as if you are going to do this you should be prepared to spend long periods of time in a sedated trance like state.

Potentiation:

Syrian rues use as a tool potentiating other psychedelics is what is probably its most common use and is something that can easily double or triple the strength of any tryptamine psychedelic if 2 – 5 grams of it is consumed roughly 15 minutes before the drug of your choice.

The remarkable thing about this is that it not only strengthens the trip but it changes the very nature of its Closed Eye Visuals in a way that is difficult to put your finger on at first but make you feel as if you really are experiencing something such as “Ancientness”. Now this may seem strange but not only have I read many trip reports making similar claims across the internet but many of my friends without prompting or previous knowledge of such a thing described the style of these visuals as “Mystical”, “Aztec”, “Tribal” and “Magical” and I definitely agree that Syrian rue gives any more common psychedelic such as mushrooms or LSD the same feeling that you are going through a mystical experience that I have felt so many times on Ayahuasca.

These visuals appear to be much more intricate than usual with a level of detail that is not usually found during a normal trip and comes along with transformations and hallucinations that have a whole new layer of depth to them. Each complex frame of closed eye visuals has outlines around the details of the patterns which were simply not there before and this felt to me as if I was finally getting the full package of the trip instead of just the usual 90% of it and is something that I’ve found quite difficult to describe. This is an extremely efficient way to ration out your psychedelics and I generally do it regardless because I preffer the overall experience but I’d definitely note however that the intricacy of these visuals unsurprisingly results in a short term memory that is much worse than usual due to the increase in sensory overload.

Warnings:

Syrian rue is an RIMA inhibitor not an MAOI which it commonly mistaken for meaning that dietary restrictions can be largely ignored as syrian rue does not contain an MAOI, although it is still advisable not to consume large quantities of alcohol or tyramine containing foods.

Although RIMAs are generally safer than MAOIs, they still have highly dangerous interactions when combined with almost any antidepressant or stimulant, common migraine medications, certain herbs, or even most cold medicines (including decongestants, antihistamines, and cough syrup) as it can cause serotonin syndrome or hypertensive crisis. In short: do not mix this drug with anything other than the classic psychedelic tryptamines such as LSD, Mushrooms, LSA and Ayahuasca unless you have done your research and are absolutely sure it isn’t going to kill you.

Simple Syrian Rue Brewing Technique

Sat, 26 May 2012 12:33:00 -0400

DISCLAIMER: I do not encourage you to break the law or to do anything your mother would not approve of and this guide is purely for informational purposes only. You have been warned. I am not responsible for your actions.

Things needed:

Syrian Rue seed matter
Lemon juice
Stainless steel pot
water

How it’s done:

Step 1
The seeds are first placed into a stainless steel pot and roughly about a litre of water is then poured into the pot along with 3 – 4 tea spoons of lemon juice.

Step 2
The liquid needs to be boiled for about half an hour, the boiling process can be prolonged to make the mixture more potent by simply adding more water when it has been evaporated.

Step 3
Once the liquid has evaporated down to roughly a small shot glass worth of liquid it should then be filtered through a piece of cloth and the small amount of absorbed liquid should be squeezed out to make sure that none of it is lost in the process.

Step 4
The liquid can be both drunk hot or cold, and washed down with a drink such as a fruit juice.

Dosage onset and Duration:

Mild: 10g
Moderate: 20g
Strong: 30g+

Onset : 20 - 60 minutes
Duration : 2 - 6 hours
Normal After Effects : up to 8 hours

Precautions
Syrian rue is an RIMA meaning dietary restrictions can be largely ignored as syrian rue does not contain an MIAO, although it is advisable not to consume large quantities of alcohol or tyramine containing foods.
Although RIMAs are generally safer than MAOIs, they still have highly dangerous interactions when combined with almost any antidepressant or stimulant, as it can cause serotonin syndrome or hypertensive crisis.

Useful links: Here and Here.

Some simple experiments with DMT – part 1: are the hallucinations predetermined?

Thu, 24 May 2012 12:17:00 -0400

This short article is going to be the first in a mini series of experiments that I’ve devised to test and categorize the true nature of DMT trips and psychedelic hallucinations in general.
I am completely certain that any of my findings apply to the hallucinations found during any high dose psychedelic trip not just this drug specifically but I am using DMT as it’s short duration makes it extremely practical for acting out multiple experiments in a short period of time.
These experiments will eventually involve interviewing and negotiating with entities but first of all I thought it would be more appropriate to establish how the underlying logic and rules of this universe work by testing whether or not the plot of a DMT trip is written out from the start and following an already written script that is predetermined or if it is something that generates as it goes creating for something that the tripper could abruptly change the course of of depending on the way that they choose to behave during the trip. Put simply this would be the same set of differences found between films and videogames as one has a predetermined outcome and the other is completely interactive.

The Experiment:

Testing this should be pretty simple, during every DMT breakthrough I have ever had I have been either standing or floating on the spot but consistently looking directly forward in a state of complete captivation and awe as the plot of the hallucinations unfold infront of me.
This doesn’t necessarily feel like I am stuck in a fixed position but feels more like I am in a state of complete astonishment and bewilderment and therefore simply have no reason to move. But I have definitely noticed that despite the infinite variety and endless possible ways in which a DMT trip could play out I have not once been freely walking around the hallucination and at best I am occasionally moving gracefully forward on what feels like some sort of track.
Determining whether or not this is a product of simply being extremely captivated or a product of DMT trips being predetermined should be simple and could be tested in multiple ways such as simply trying to look in any direction other than straight forward be it straight down at the floor or directly behind me. Another way to test this would be attempting to sprint in the opposite direction of the entities as soon as they form in front of me should also prove it either way and decide once and for all whether or not the DMT flash is following an unchanging script.

The Results:

Having finally gotten to the point where I can smoke dmt and no longer immediately give into complete astonishment this experiment was extremely straightforward and gave me a quick answer to my question.
My first attempt at moving on the other side during a dmt trip gave mixed results, trying to physically move from the spot during the hallucination was completely unsuccessful but I could to an extent look around in front of me. Looking straight down at the floor revealed that I don’t have a body in exactly the same style as when you look down at the floor in a first person shooter game but during this state no matter how much I tried it was impossible to move any of my limbs or body beyond being able to look around directly in front of me. In fact the more I tried the more the trip began to feel as if it was less a fully immersive parallel dimension and more a veil of hallucinations over my eyes as I could suddenly start to feel the chair beneath me again. Physically moving my head in the real world as a last ditch attempt to look in a direction other than straight forward did not translate over as I suspected it might and made the effect of being able to feel that you could not physically move in this universe even more pronounced as the chair beneath you suddenly becomes extremely distinct and obvious proving to me that the plot of a DMT trip is predetermined making it extremely difficult if not impossible to physically move from the spot that the plot of the trip has decided you are going to stand in.
However we did find one thing that extends your field of vision in leaps and bounds but still does not allow for moving from the spot. This may sound strange but it has to be mentioned, providing you have played enough first person shooters or videogames in general to have the control system down to a reflex which I’m sure many of you have if you hold something such as an Xbox 360 controller during a DMT trip you can control the trip in the same way that you would play a first person shooter without even thinking about it by simply using the analogue sticks to look around. This admittedly still confines you into looking mostly forward but it does help significantly and puts humanity in the funny position of teenagers who have grown up playing a large amount of videogames that also happen to be able to handle their shit on extremely high dose psychedelics having a genuine advantage over everybody else when it comes to navigating the DMT flash.

In conclusion I’d say hallucinations are not 100% predetermined but are still definitely fixed to a plot as your thought processes are still completely able to wander and interaction with entities is still possible as holding conversations about topics of your choice does not seem to be restricted but interaction with the plot of these hallucinations through physical means such as sprinting in the opposite direction of an entity when it is trying to teach you its message is not going to happen anytime soon. DMT is more like an interactive film than anything else and all of this to me is evidence that the plot of the trip really is being generated during the waiting room period at the start of the trip instead of during the trip as it happens as this is exactly what it feels like to me at least but I can’t exactly prove any of my own findings to anybody other than myself and friends as all of this is based purely on personal experience making it something that you will have to confirm for yourself if you want proof but in my opinion this is not a problem as if we continue to depend on and wait for the so called “experts” to handle these questions and provide us with answers it is going to be decades before we make any kind of real progress, so screw it. We don’t need them.
But it’s still a shame, without exaggeration these substances have to be one of the single most important things the human race has ever discovered and in a sane world should have been studied rigorously inside and out as soon as they were brought to the attention of modern science. Things are looking good as scientific interest in the study of hallucinogens is gradually increasing over the years but we are still at a point where not nearly enough has been done and this is not something that humanity should have pretty much ignored leaving it to some kid on drugs and his group of retarded stoner friends to try and figure it all out themselves nearly a full century later.

If a person or a group of people with more money, resources and intelligence than me got working on this I think things would finally begin to speed up but for now we are just going to have to do it without them.

The different components and stages of a DMT trip

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:34:00 -0400

DMT is a short acting smokeable psychedelic tryptamine that provides a trip of only five to ten minutes in length but is still universally considered by anybody who has tried it in a positive environment to be the most incredible experience a human being could ever possibly go through.
It is so vastly different from anything else a person has ever experienced that not even the most extreme of sober circumstances could ever come close in terms of profoundness and intensity.
DMT is the drug that people are looking for when they buy and smoke Salvia without knowing what to expect and is in my opinion the pinnacle of the psychedelic experience yet despite this very few people outside of the psychedelic community have heard of it and even fewer have actually gone ahead and tried it. It’s said that DMT is not only stranger than you suppose but it is stranger than you can suppose and there is literally nothing that could ever truly prepare you for it until you’ve tried it for yourself.
In this guide I will do my best to describe in as much detail as I can manage the different stages and effects of a typical DMT breakthrough.

The Visuals:

To ensure as clear of an understanding as possible I will first have to describe the specific style of Closed and Open Eye Visuals attributed to DMT that are found throughout every stage of this trip but as usual I can only describe them in comparison to other psychedelics.
These visuals are unsurprisingly extremely similar to Ayahuasca and are in my opinion the most complex and intricate species of visuals known to man as they simply have so much more detail and structure to them when compared to anything else. In comparison to the visuals found on LSD and mushrooms they are just as bright and colorful as LSD but with the depth and structure of Mushrooms and more. These visuals appear to be much more solid and less abstract as they look so much more like physical 3D shapes floating in the air or layed out on the back of your eyelids as opposed it’s flatter more ill defined (but still incredible) cousins.
It’s these complex geometric shapes, imagery, fractals and colour that almost all of the hallucinations and structures experienced on DMT are based on as they seem to be made entirely of a condensed solidified Closed Eye Visual based material.

Now that I’ve at least vaguely discussed the basis material for everything seen during such a trip I can walk you through the 4 different stages of a DMT trip and explain to you what they are like:

Taking Off
The first step of a DMT trip is the come up that leads onto breaking through and this is something that seems to have at least a few different ways of presenting itself to a tripper as they start to smoke DMT, for example the first thing that a person notices is that it looks as if all the air has been pumped out of the room leaving everything in sight crisper and clearer than you could possibly imagine. Outlines become extremely well defined and it feels as if your sensory filter has immediately been eradicated.
This is followed by a sudden onset of high level 3 visuals and a warm tingling sensation and the feeling of your body being pleasantly tugged in all directions at once from the inside.
This is often but not always accompanied by the soft crackling sound and an extended tone that quickly increases in volume and pitch proportionally as the visuals increase. This sound becomes all enveloping and sounds like some sort of interdimensional rocket launch that abruptly ends as one of a few different take off options are experienced.

These include but are certainly not limited to feelings of suddenly being pushed through and onto the other side of a membrane, the room infront of you splitting in two down the middle leaving a gaping infinite chasm filled with incredibly fast moving visuals as you separate from your body shooting directly into it at light speed and often enough the slightly simpler experience of visuals simply becoming so all enveloping that absolutely nothing of the room is left anymore. This all happens within the space of about 30 seconds to a minute and leads directly onto the next stage of a DMT trip which I have taken to calling…
The Waiting Room
Immediately after a person has smoked enough DMT to have taken off and have now broken through they often find themselves spending a brief amount of time in what feels like some sort of cosmic waiting room. This can take any form but generally takes the shape of a tunnel or space comprised of fast moving visuals that lasts approximately 10 – 20 seconds and feels distinctively different from the main bulk of the trip and starts off quickly but immediately begins to slow down and form into the next stage.
Personal experience has led me to speculate that this is some sort of psychedelic loading screen and its during this moment that the trip ahead of you is being generated and planned out.
The Other Side
Once the chaos has cleared and the trip has been generated this means that the tripper has finally broken through onto the other side. It is here where literally anything can happen to you but despite this most trips seem to follow some extremely common themes and plots that happen across pretty much all people who try DMT.
These generally consist of coming too in an alternate reality so real it feels better defined than real life with a single or multiple external entities in front of your line of sight. These entities are usually completely unsurprised by the trippers sudden appearance into their dimension and immediately begin to greet and welcome you with open arms giving off a sense that they are deeply concerned with what they have to show you in the short amount of time that they have before you comedown.
At this point it is pretty common for the tripper (unless they are very experienced) to be completely overwhelmed by the nature of what is happening to them despite feeling completely sober mentally, often screaming and shouting in amazement as the entities encourage you not to give into astonishment and simply try your hardest to pay attention to what is happening. It’s here that they start to communicate with you using a variety of different methods such as directly manipulating what you can see and view, by telepathically beaming information into your thoughts, by using a visual language comprised of pure linguistic meaning and mathematics or any combination of the above and it’s through these that they teach you their message or show you what they want to show you.
This message is often something personal to you or something that only applies to the logic of the universe in which it was taught in making it impossible to integrate and apply it into your everyday life.
These entities often appear to be all knowing and although they can take any form there are definitely more commonly experienced entities present and these generally include bodiless super intelligent humanoids, Aliens, Elves, Insectoids, Giant Spheres, Beings of light, Plants and complex robotic machines.
If a lower dose is taken however but a breakthrough is still achieved these entities will always manifest themselves as an obvious but difficult to put your finger on sensed presence of the Other. The Other feels as if it is somewhere in the background of it all, capable of hearing what you tell it but incapable of telling you what it has to say due to too low of a dosage.
This stage of the trip can last anywhere between five to ten minutes before heading onto the next and final stage of a DMT trip.
Coming Down
Just as quickly as the DMT hit you after several minutes it begins to leave you at this final stage of the trip. This is experienced as the sensation of being pulled further and further away from the scenario in which you were placed as the entities wave good bye and encourage you to come back as soon as you can.
Once this is over you immediately find yourself back in the room tripping extremely hard as an incredible sense of euphoria and confoundment washes over every part of your mind and body, the moderate to mild visuals stay for a further 10 – 15 minutes before disappearing completely leaving an afterglow that stays for up to an hour. This afterglow feels like a warm fuzzyness and leaves behind a sense of well being and clarity that can last up to weeks after a good trip.
Before trying DMT keep in mind that it’s best to record what happened during your trip immediately after it is over via either telling somebody or through a voice recorder as DMT trips can sometimes be extremely difficult to remember in exactly the same way that dreams are often difficult to retain.

The things experienced on this drug are incredible and completely logic defying, if a single object could be somehow brought back into the real world from such a place nothing would ever be the same again as the sheer impossibleness of these things would instantly break reality for the better.

Misconceptions:

Before I finish this article off I am going to address the extremely common misconceptions and borderline mysticism that surround this drug all over the internet. These misconceptions are the widely held belief that DMT is naturally produced in the Pineal Gland and is routinely released every night when we dream, at the moment of birth and at the moment of death. There is not yet any conclusive scientific evidence that this is true yet despite this many people on the internet claim it to be fact on a regular basis.
These ideas were first hypothesized by Rick Strassman in the book DMT: The Spirit Molecule and have since been popularized by the likes of Terrence Mckenna and Joe Rogan.
This is not something that the scientific consensus supports but it has been conclusively proven that trace amounts of DMT have been found in the blood, urine and cerebreal spineal fluid of some mammals, including humans and a great little list of them can be found here.
Stopping the spread of psuedoscience and misinformation across the psychedelic community is important if we want our position to be taken seriously so this is not something that should be tolerated.

If you are motivated to try this drug it is completely possible to make it through some very simple kitchen based chemistry found here that requires only legal and freely available ingredients all of which can be found on Google. Keep in mind however that this is very very illegal and I am in no way responsible for your actions.

psychedelicreplication: Flowing textures. A simple gif to demonstrate the flowing of wood grain,...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:05:00 -0400

psychedelicreplication:

Flowing textures.

A simple gif to demonstrate the flowing of wood grain, one of the most common distortions experienced during a psychedelic trip.

Simple Mescaline brewing technique

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:20:00 -0400

Simple Mescaline brewing technique:

DISCLAIMER: I do not encourage you to break the law or to do anything your mother would not approve of and this guide is purely for informational purposes only. Do not listen to anything I say ever and please keep in mind the name of this tumblr. You have been warned. I am not responsible for your actions.

For 1 dose of mescaline

Things needed:

Blender
A cooking pot that can hold 9 to 10 litres
A wooden spoon
A clean cloth
1 foot or more of San Pedro Cactus

How it’s done

Step 1
The cactus should be sliced up into star shaped sections, and then further sliced into smaller pieces so that they can fit into the blender. The mixture should be blended thoroughly, and should have hardly any lumps of cactus in the mixture, the more lumps of cactus there are in the mixture the longer the mixture would need to be boiled for.
(The spines of the cactus can be left on before being cut up and blended as they will become soft during the boiling process and then strained out of the mixture at the end.)

Step 2
The cactus chunks should be placed into the blender, and roughly the same amount of water should be poured in. The mixture should be then blended and put into the cooking pot.

Step 3
The blended cactus and water mixture is then cooked slowly on a low heat.
As the mixture cooks, the cactus pulp separates from the water and sits on top of the liquid, this will look like gooey green foam and may spill over the top of the pot as it first starts to cook, so the mixture would need to be monitored closely for the first half an hour.

Step 4
As the mixtures continues to cook, the foam should then start to mix into the liquid again, and should start to look more like a liquid rather than a foam.

Step 5
After the mixture has become less foamy and frothy, the heat can be increased slightly so that the mixture starts to boil lightly, The mixture needs to be boiled for 2 to 4 hours, until there is roughly 1/5 of the mixture left at the bottom of the pot. This will look quite gooey.
If there is still more than 1/5 left in the pot, the mixture can be boiled for longer but stirred more as the mixture will start to sit at the bottom of the pot and possibly start to burn.

Step 6
A clean piece of cloth is then placed over the top of the blender acting as a filter. The mixture is then poured from the pot into the cloth slowly bit by bit, once all of the mixture has been poured into the cloth, it can be then tied at the top, it then needs to be suspended in the air over the blender using some string or some other piece of cloth, so that the juice can be drained from the pulp. After 15 minutes, once the mixture has cooled down enough the remaining liquid can then just be squeezed by hand from the cloth into the blender.

Step 8
The liquid then needs to sit so it can cool down further, once cooled down it can be then poured into a cup.

Dosage onset and Duration:
The potency of your cactus depends entirely on genetics, so different clones of cacti will give you different potencies. If it’s a potent clone, it could take as little as 3-5 inches to trip but if it’s a weak clone, it could take up to about 2 feet.

But 1 to 2 foot of San Pedro is recommended.

Onset: 45 – 60 minutes
Duration: 4 – 8 hours
Normal After Effects up to: 2 – 4 hours

Consumption
The liquid will have quite a bitter taste to it, but water can be drunk in-between each sip. The liquid can also be consumed over a period of half an hour if need be.

Precautions
Mescaline can cause quite a bit of nausea. Good weed should help this drastically.

Useful Links: here and here.

The visual and mental components of a typical Salvia trip

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:58:00 -0400

The popular and freely available hallucinogen known as Salvia, is in my opinion probably one of the most confusing experiences a human being can possibly go through making it perhaps the most difficult of all substances to explain. This is a substance that feels completely unlike all other psychedelics and is technically classed as an A-typical dissociative by erowid.
The reason it is so unique in terms of effects is due to how it effects the brain, while pretty much all of the classic psychedelics work by simply happening to fit into our serotonin receptors Salvia does not do this and instead targets the brains k-opoid receptors creating for a completely bizarre style of tripping that many people find terrifying. So I will attempt to break down this thing down into it’s base components right here.

Bodyhigh:

The physical sensation of this sort of trip is almost entirely characterized by what I call “Salvia Gravity”. This is present at even mild trips and increases proportionally with dosage until it is all encompassing, beginning with a heavy sensation that pulls and tugs at the body. As this increases it inevitably becomes so powerful that it swiftly lifts the tripper up and out of their body in a direction that simply doesn’t make sense and into a place so different from anything previously experienced that words fail to describe it.

This is sometimes accompanied by the sensation of pins and needles all over a persons skin that for an unlucky few can become very uncomfortable, most people however never experience this feeling at all.

Headspace:

While most drugs usually enhance or heighten certain cognitive functions and simultaneously lower others Salvia does not do anything like this. Instead it literally lowers everything all across the board, it’s this effect that contributes to Salvia being extremely confusing and creates for an experience devoid of introspection for most people as this isn’t a substance that creates profound thoughts, just profound experiences.
The average first time user of Salvia generally experiences a mixture of extreme gigglyness and confusion. Paranoia and panic are also very common for the unprepared and this can be accounted for by the fact that k-opoid antaganists have been shown to cause such feelings in people, you combat this in just the same way that the paranoia induced by weed can be handled. Simply take Salvia in a safe, comfortable environment away from noise and brush off all negative thoughts as irrational paranoia before they can even begin to develop themselves.
This only really happens at mild – moderate dosages, however a breakthrough Salvia trip feels completely different mentally with a huge amount of egoloss but not necessarily egodeath being very common. This is egodeath at 99% and feels as if you are receiving the sensory input of your trip, but not fully conscious enough to think about the implications of it until you come down.
Language use is also extremely affected with many users going as far to report that their thought processes become replaced with a completely garbled and nonsensical alien language. This can be described as pure syntax that is completely devoid of meaning.

Visual effects and Hallucinations:

The visual effects of Salvia have a completely alien and unique style to them not found anywhere else, instead of the typical fast flashes of geometric patterns found during a typical trip these visuals are of a completely different nature.
Salvia’s typical open eye visuals are unimpressive but rather confusing, a sensation of being flattened into one unified surface is common when a persons eyes are kept open and this seems to play heavily on different sections of your vision as the objects in front of your face become devoid of meaning.
Closed eye visuals however are instead most commonly experienced as murky yet defined shapes that are not quite as abstract as your typical closed eye visuals but instead more heavily based on mathematical constructs such as extremely elaborate fractals that come with a sense of physical scale and depth to them. These constructs are often so huge that they expand for hundreds to thousands of miles and do not change by means of quick morphing flashes but instead change by panning, zooming and rotating slowly into view as more and more detail is gradually revealed. A sensation of folding between frames of still constructs and visuals is also quite common and these often behave in a similar fashion to the structures found on dissociatives such as MXE.
The hallucinations at low to high doses, these are very murky to look at but still extremely detailed as most of the details are felt instead of seen. For example you may be hallucinating during a breakthrough trip that there is a crowd standing in front of you and although you can barely make them out using your sight you can sense and feel every last one of them in a level of detail comparable to normal vision.

Although these hallucinations are limitless in their potential and can encompass anything there is interestingly enough one very commonplace scenario found on Salvia which is the sensation of becoming a random inanimate object. This object could be literally anything but the most common seem to be, a conveyor belt, a brick in a wall or a book.

Leaves vs Extract vs Oral:

There are three different forms of Salvia trips with the leaves providing a much more relaxing trip when smoked that is equally as intense visually and the extract being much more intense when it comes to the body high and the physical sensations of tripping on Salvia.
Orally active Salvia is taken by creating a tea or chewing on leaves/extract, this results in a trip that lasts upwards of two hours instead of 15 minutes and eases you in and out of trip slowly rather than hitting you like a tonne of bricks before you can even exhale. It’s worth noting that the traditional method of Salvia consumption is orally with the Mazatec shamans claiming that Salvia “does not like to be smoked”.

I personally prefer smoking Salvia leaves as it seems to be a much more pleasant experience and are extremely cheap and available all over the internet.

Some statistics:

A survey performed 6 months ago involving 170 people performed on the r/psychonaut board over at reddit provided this guide with some very useful charts and statistics on the topic of what your average person experiences during a Salvia trip and can be found right here.

Ayahuasca as a first time psychedelic and a recreational drug

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 18:40:00 -0400

I’m writing this article because the general consensus online seems to be the exact opposite of what all of my personal experience has led me to believe. Many people (including myself at one point) around many psychedelic communities on the internet hold quite strongly the opinion that Ayahuasca is serious business and not a sensible option for a person’s first trip, stating that it is extremely difficult to handle, with some even going as far as saying that you need to be guided by a genuine shaman to avoid being crushed. I’d like to suggest the exact opposite, as it seems to me that Ayahuasca is a much better option for most beginners than even LSD or mushrooms – providing the tripper cares enough to have a very basic understanding of how an Ayahuasca trip plays out beforehand. This really isn’t a very difficult thing to achieve.
The reasons that this isn’t considered to be the case are based on three different factors and people’s inability to find some basic solutions to them. These problems are:

The Nausea,
Ayahuasca is very famous for its painful nausea, violent vomiting and the diarrhoea that it generally causes during the first 45 minutes or so, but this is not an effect caused by Ayahuasca – it is an effect of poorly brewed Ayahuasca, and can be avoided by some simple steps that completely remove this problem. All of them are found in the Ayahuasca recipe right here.
The Exponential Enhancements of all Emotional and Physical States,
One of the biggest characteristics of all Ayahuasca trips is the way in which it enhances your present state many times over in a unique and often overwhelming way. This can be either incredible or horrifying, as it works in both negatively and positively, but most people seem to completely miss just how easy this is to control. If Ayahuasca starts to loop and enhance a simple but negative state, such as being irritated or exhausted, you can stop it by changing your state to something else by simply acting the way you want to feel. If you begin to act out and force an emotion or state it immediately becomes genuinely felt; moving in an energetic fashion will cause you to feel extremely pumped, and smiling will cause you to feel extremely euphoric. This is a completely unique effect and once you understand how this works it no longer becomes a problem.
The Sacredness of it all,
I don’t need to go into depth with this one as I’ve spoken about it here already, but I will say this: even if Ayahuasca truly is a divine connection to a sacred and infinite universe, it’s pretty arrogant to assume that it would give two shits about small petty things such as which humans are using it, where they are doing it, and how they are preparing it, especially when I have yet to see any evidence of Ayahuasca being angered by such things beyond “but it’s sacred, bro! These substances are a calling!” With these problems gone it’s pretty difficult to find any reason stopping people from moving straight to Ayahuasca and skipping the so-called ‘starter’ psychedelics altogether, and after taking many people on multiple first trips with Ayahuasca, with all of them having positive experiences, I am completely confident in my position and would go as far as saying that it might even be a better option than LSD or mushrooms since this is something that anybody can be self-sufficient in producing – providing they have access to a kitchen and the internet – and it also has many properties that are simply not found with other trips.

The first of these is that judging by personal experience, Ayahuasca does not seem to increase a person’s HPPD as the visuals behave completely differently to that of other psychedelics; instead of the constant stream of visuals being fired into your face, Ayahuasca visuals only appear when you are paying attention to them, and disappear as soon as you concentrate on anything else. This is extremely practical as it allows you to do anything during an Ayahuasca trip that you could do sober once you have a feel for it, and combined with the light sensitivity of Ayahuasca visuals, an Ayahuasca-based hppd is rendered near-impossible to become any kind of nuisance in your day to day life.
The second thing that Ayahuasca really has going for it is its extremely rational head space that is surprisingly less of a mindfuck than more common psychedelics, and how it seems to completely reorganise your brain in a way that lasts so much longer than anything found elsewhere. Not only does Ayahuasca leave you with the sensation that your cultural filter has been destroyed, that your hard drive has been defragged, and your thoughts completely reorganised – for sometimes weeks after a single trip – but it literally forces you to become a better person with regular comments, such as:

Stand up straight!
Stop being an idiot!
Eat more fruit!
Spend more time with your family!

These comments feel like spontaneous thoughts popping into your head and are often snide, but envelop everything from the big things in life to the small things and force you to follow them by making you too self-aware to be capable of rationalising any other options. It is extremely difficult to fight what is best for you when it’s clearly the most reasonable option, and it’s this head space that removes your cultural filter quicker and more efficiently than any other psychedelic I have found.
Lastly, a small but very practical thing I have found is that you really can have an Ayahuasca trip on any work night with no problems. Its shorter duration allows you to fall asleep feeling absolutely pumped for the next day, and upon waking up you’ll feel extremely refreshed, clear headed and reorganised. This shorter duration, combined with its lack of tolerance, allows you to take many people on life changing trips throughout the week.
So, this drug is a great option for a first-timer – you just need to be sensible and understand how it works – but not only is Ayahuasca perfectly fine for a first timer, it can even be used in situations outside of the usual chilled-out bedrooms and nature. Many people would tell you that it would be completely irresponsible to use such a powerful/sacred psychedelic outside of a traditional environment, but as a person who makes a hobby out of taking a wide variety of psychedelic drugs in completely random places I can tell you that not once did it suddenly go wrong for no reason at all, or show any signs of doing so. For example, here are some of the things I have done and the places I have been whilst on Ayahuasca:

At the cinema.
At multiple bars with live and very loud music.
During a game of Dungeons and Dragons (holy shit the immersion was intense).
In very public places such as town centres, fast food restaurants and supermarkets.

None of these places are where I would prefer to trip, but in all of them I was tripping balls yet not once did it feel any different from being on any other psychedelic in a non-traditional environment, and the same goes for my friends – some of whom were literally on their second-ever trip. I am not saying Ayahuasca is a party drug, so go take it at a rave, but if you already have a feel for the substance and want to do so there is nothing stopping you. You just have to know your limits, and you also have to know that due to Ayahuasca visuals being so light sensitive, you’ll want to take at least double the usual dose that you would take in an environment without so many disturbances to compensate for them. People might think this is dangerous but I’ve yet to find a real reason why – providing the person doing it is comfortable doing so, are familiar with the drug and aware of their limits. Nobody is selling this drug on the street to random people, so it’s safe to assume that if somebody has gone through the effort of learning to brew their own Ayahuasca, they must have done some research.
If I had to choose a single substance for society to base its values on it would be Ayahuasca, not LSD, and certainly not alcohol. At some point this year we are going to work on a guide that would let people brew Ayahuasca and extract DMT using the extremely common Phalaris grass that grows all over the northern hemisphere. It probably grew in your school field, and it might already grow in your garden – it should be easy to do this long before our governments start to notice Mimosa Hostillis Rootbark, and once this is done there would be literally nothing that they could do from preventing Ayahuasca and DMT from being available to the masses. This is going to be so goddamn hilarious you have no idea.

Some useful charts.

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 18:08:19 -0500

Some useful charts.

The visual and mental components of a typical LSA trip

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:37:00 -0500

LSA, although well known across the psychedelic community has a pretty bad reputation for making people feel incredibly nauseous to the point where I’ve seen many people say that LSA simply isn’t worth trying but it is completely possible to eradicate all of the nausea using what is in my opinion the simplest extraction technique there is. It’s literally just putting crushed seeds in cold water and then adding garlic a few hours later and sieving it out. That’s the whole extraction technique and it removes all of the nausea, it can be found in more detail right HERE.

Headspace:

the headspace of LSA is much more subtle than that of most psychedelics but it is definitely there and feels like relaxed yet alert thought patterns combined with a greatly increased ability to visualize concepts. This leads to one extremely vivid day dream after the other that play out in a style unlike any other psychedelic that I’ve found, these day dreams eventually become intense enough to envelop the entire trip.

Bodyhigh:

The LSA bodyhigh is one of a pleasurable tingling and is more commonly found on higher doses. This tingling sensation is also accompanied by spontaneous mini rushes of euphoria and these become longer and more drawn out proportionally to the amount of seeds consumed.

This bodyhigh is accompanied by a feeling of wakeful sedation which can be described as a dreamlike state, all sedated however it’s worth noting that you do no longer feel sedated the moment you try to stand up or do things just ever slightly off balance.

Visuals:

The visuals on LSA are well known for not being particularly impressive unless a heavy dose is consumed. They are definitely present but do not become very well defined unless at least a strong dose has been consumed and can be described as finer and more zoomed out than other traditional psychedelics but just as detailed. In comparison to LSD I would describe them as quite similar but far less digital and vectorized.

Scenarios:

Scenarios are the main all enveloping component of any moderate – strong LSA trip and are completely unique to this substance. The hallucinations, entity contact and general scenarios on all other psychedelics that I have tried stem from the imagery within the visuals eventually becoming intense and elaborate enough to form into full on three dimensional hallucinations but this is not the case with LSA. The hallucinations all seem to stem from a state of wandering vivid daydreams that get increasingly intense. These scenarios have a completely different feel to them and can be broken up into 3 different levels of intensity:

Vivid daydreams – the first level is a state of wandering thoughts and extremely vivid daydreams, these are more felt than seen but felt in detail. An ability to visualize concepts and have them appear in your minds eye is present, these often appear as perfectly normal but other times they appear in elaborate psychedelic forms that are partially embedded within closed eye visuals and anything can be visualized be it people, places, objects, whatever.
Murky breakthroughs - this second level is where things start to get really strange, during states of sedation trippers enter spontaneous breakthroughs into short elaborate scenarios. These scenarios can be anything but are often extremely nonsensical to the point that they are difficult to recall and translate into English but realistic enough to include sound and 3D hallucinations. These are just like intense versions of the dreamlike states experienced when on the verge of falling asleep.
Defined hallucinations – finally on the third step these effects have become so intense that they become a full on psychedelic hallucinatory breakthrough similar to that of any visionary psychedlic. This can be described as the usual extremely intense psychedelic imagined landscapes, Entity contact, hallucinations and scenarios.

These scenarios at level 1 and 2 can be controlled simply by daydreaming in a way that I have not found on any other psychedelic making for a crazy sort of lucid dream / trip during these states of alert sedation. If practiced I am certain that the trip could be controlled almost entirely.

In Conclusion:

LSA goes just as deep as LSD, Mushrooms, Ayahuasca or any other psychedelic you just need to find the right dosage and extract it correctly.

Attempting to explain the idea of Universal Oneness

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:40:00 -0500

I may just be going crazy or something and I’ve been debating whether or not to post this since I was never sure if these ideas fit on this blog or if they are formulated enough for them to genuinely make sense but I’m going to post this anyway as it’s a theme that’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the more I trip.

The idea that “we are all one” is thrown around quite a bit in the popular culture be it through philosophy, eastern mysticism or general stoner talk and most people have heard similar statements somewhere but despite this people rarely bother to define what exactly it is that they mean by this statement in simple, clear cut terms without using vague analogy’s and bullshit mysticism so this short article right here is an attempt at describing my very basic understanding of exactly why it is that all people seem to think we are completely one with the universe and what that even means. So be warned, I may be about to try and write philosophy while high.

First of all to explain this I’m going to have to talk about the distinction between the body and the self and where the self lies in order to help me explain this fully. Most people feel that who they are as a person is not their body or its unconscious functions but instead the few parts that they have conscious control over i.e the thoughts that they think and the decisions that they make using them but if you analyze this a little closer it quickly becomes apparent that it is a completely arbitrary distinction since although you are conscious of your thoughts after they have been thought you do not have any kind of control over the decision to think them in the first place. For example lets say you consciously choose to reach out your left hand, it may feel like you decided to reach out your hand but did you decide to make the decision to reach out your hand? No, of course you didn’t, it just happened unconsciously in a way that is just as “out of our control” as your beating heart or breathing lungs.
We are not simply just an ego trapped inside of a body but are infact the whole body in itself, every tiny cell, neuron and synapse of it. Just because these things are not performed by the limited conscious faculties of your brain does not mean they are not performed by you as the everyday distinction that we use simply doesn’t make sense when analyzed closely.

Now that we’ve established that we are not our ego and that the distinction between the mind and body is completely arbitrary I’m going to talk about the distinction between the Self and the Other which is something that is thought by most to be yet another obviously clear cut line. It’s generally considered that the self is you as a person and the other is anything that is not physically a part of you or your body but lets think about this for a quick moment, say we were to try and accurately describe in every way a person who is casually walking across a room. If we were to do this in any level of real detail we would need to start describing not just the person and the way in which they are walking but also the floor beneath their feet and the way in which it interacts with the person making the two things one system of behavior as you cannot describe any system accurately without also describing the interactions it has with the other systems around it and of course the systems around those. But it does not stop at people walking and it certainly does not stop at the floor. All things in existence that interact with anything else all define each other as the physical laws of this universe simply do not allow for any truly independent systems or an obvious place in which we can put a “cut-off line” this extends indefinitely across the entire universe making it all one unified system of behavior as opposed to a serious of separate unrelated events as to truly know one thing you must know all others.
In simple terms this means that although you are a part of the universe the universe is also a part of you as every single component of this reality is something that we are equally as intertwined with as we are with our mind and body.

These two deeply embedded illusions of separateness are the result of the fact that our ego cannot see from the vantage point of anything but itself and that we are all raised into a lack of understanding of the implications of some basic logic.
The use of the ego as a concept is still an obviously useful symbol for communication and language in much the same way that the abstract concept of your name is but the problem however is that we seem to naturally forget that this is all it is and begin to take the symbol too seriously.

This is what I think people are talking about when they refer to being “one with the universe” and it is not a drug induced experience but a simple perception switch that I’d highly recommend, one of the biggest reasons people feel like aliens in this world is because they automatically designate themselves as seperate without even considering the alternative. There is no difference between the self and the other as assuming everything I just wrote makes sense, conscious beings are not separate, they are the universe looking into itself. The universe is writing this article through me on one end and reading it on another end through you.

TL;DR - The distinction between the mind and body is completely arbitrary and the distinction between the body and the rest of the universe is also completely meaningless. Therefore everything is you and you are everything.

“and if I am my foot, I am the sun.”

I am not anywhere close to running out of articles to write. Do...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:33:00 -0500

I am not anywhere close to running out of articles to write.

Do any random people in the UK want to go on an adventure? I am on the southeast coast and I am ready.

Simple Nausea Free LSA Extraction Technique

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:08:00 -0500

Simple Nausea Free LSA Extraction Technique:

Untreated Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds.
Garlic clove
Orange juice or any other preferred fruit juice
A glass of boiled water.

How it’s done:

Step 1
The water should be boiled and left to cool down to room temperature. There is no specific measurement of water needed as the LSA will extract into it regardless but I would recommend a small glass so that the final product can be 1 part water, 2 parts fruit juice.

Step 2
4 to 12 seeds should be crushed using a mortar and pestle or a hammer and then put into the water.

Step 3
The water should be then put into a fridge for at least 4 hours or more and covered in something such as tinfoil or a paper bag to avoid exposure to light when the fridge is opened.

Step 4
After the water has been refrigerated, a finely chopped up garlic clove should be added to the water for 30 minutes and stirred periodically to completely eliminate nausea and vomiting, this works because the sulphur in garlic eliminates all cyanogenic glycosides within the seed matter. These are the cause of discomfort not the LSA itself.

Step 5
A small amount of fruit juice can be added to help eliminate the taste of the seed matter.

Step 6
Sieve out the seed matter and garlic and this can be discarded of. Sieving through a fine material such as an old tshirt or a paper filter to remove every last bit of seed matter will help greatly.

Step 7
If these steps have been followed correctly, the cold water extraction is ready to consume.

Dosage (by number of seeds) and Onset:

Threshold : 1 – 4
Light : 3 – 6
Common : 5 – 8
Strong : 7 – 12
Heavy : 12 +

Onset : 20 – 60 minutes
Duration : 4 – 8 hours
Normal After Effects : up to 12 hours

Precautions:

This is a substance that at toxic doses can cause vasoconstriction meaning that your blood vessels shrink resulting in a decreased blood flow to your extremities likes toes and fingers, this is not much of a concern unless you are taking extreme doses and typically feels like a mild tingling sensation during most high dose trips and usually leaves before the peak hits you. This vasoconstriction can have a long term cumulative effects if repeated high doses of LSA are used for extended periods of time.

Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds must not be purchased unless sold as untreated, as typically seeds are coated with fungicides which can be toxic if consumed.

Different batches of seeds vary in potency so a low dose should be used to test the strength of the seeds before jumping right in. It’s from here that a person can work their way up.

Useful Links: Here, Here and Here.

Ego Death - What it's like and how to function during it

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:18:00 -0500

What it’s like:

Ego death is the highest level of psychedelic experience along side Hallucinations and Entity contact and exists in different forms even outside of psychedelics that can be reached through sensory deprivation tanks, meditation or simply being asleep / unconscious as any loss of self can technically be characterized as Ego death but here I am only going to talk about the state of Ego death that can be induced by psychedelics.

A state of psychedelic induced ego death is reached when a tripper has finally taken such a large dosage that their sensory filter is at 0% and is therefore allowing every single tiny bit of brain function and sensory input to reach the conscious faculties regardless of whether or not it is relevant in an extremely visual and felt form. This includes not just the sensation of being able to comprehend the input of every single nerve ending across your entire body all at once but also the sensation of experiencing all concepts, memories, archetypes and information stored within the brain in a single instant giving an extremely profound feeling that you are experiencing the entire universe all at once forcing you to feel completely one with all of existence and this is often interpreted as a perceived loss of boundaries between your body and the rest of the universe. This oneness is so infinitely huge and profound that the people who experience it in a positive and safe setting almost universally report that it feels as if their entire life has been building up to this single moment and that they are finally “getting off the train”.

Unlike the feeling of being able to comprehend all of your sensory input this state of oneness is not 100% constant when reached but is rather something that happens repeatedly over and over again pulling you in and out of the room. Egodeath is triggered by the experience of a concept and the completely all enveloping runaway thought processes that ensue because of them. For example if you were to hear somebody say the word “internet” a runaway thought process would immediately begin as you experience all concepts attached to your idea of “the internet” and all concepts attached to those. This spreads outwards infinitely and quickly encompasses everything in such a powerful and overwhelming way that you’re ego is immediately destroyed due to sensory overload. Once this is over in 3 – 4 seconds however your ego begins to quickly restack and reform itself as you are placed back into the room, this only stays however for a very short time as another trigger is usually experienced instantaneously putting trippers into rapid fire bursts of not having any concept of the real world or anything in it. This experience of the entire universe typically looks and feels like an infinite sea of all enveloping fractals, concepts and non Euclidean geometry.

Learning to function during this state:

Due to the overwhelming nature of this state your typical person’s reaction is to immediately lay down and not even attempt to get back up until it is over as trying to function during this state quickly leaves most people in a permanent state of confusion and thought loops as they try to grasp what is happening to them but just as a baby learns to walk and talk so can we learn to function while being completely one with the entire universe.

Although this sensory overload completely envelops your ego and short term memory leaving trippers permanently stuck in the present and unable to remember anything from more than 1 or 2 seconds ago a persons long term memory is left completely intact allowing you to retain basic knowledge such as who you are and where you are but not anything beyond the most basic of conversation skills as new information becomes near impossible to store. Our long term memory being left intact during Ego death allows us to avoid a state of permanent confusion with some practice providing the person has already stored the concept of ego death and all that it entails into their long term memory before they begin to trip giving them the sensation that they know and have a basic understanding of what is happening to them but do not remember any of the unimportant specific details. This is enough to help avoid the commonly felt state of permanent confusion and from here you can begin to learn to walk and perform tasks in a mental state with capabilities somewhat similar to that of a very young child or an animal meaning only the most basic of knowledge is felt and understood during this state.

Despite the fact that your short term memory has almost completely disappeared however your memory of the recent past can be extended from the typical zero seconds into the past to 4 – 10 seconds into the past which is the length of a sober persons short term memory but only if extra sensory input is constantly experienced. For example if you keep moving around you find that egodeath only occurs once you stop and focus on a concept for even a split second and through this technique a constant source of sensory input can keep you in the room allowing you to walk, function and to eventually with practice: maintain a coherent conversation for more than 3 seconds.

The easiest way to do this is to constantly keep moving around with a spring in your step but it’s worth noting that the constant background stimulus of a strobe light such as the one found on this webpage here allows you to maintain a constant connection to the room and extends your memory field considerably.

Learning to function like this opens you up to all sorts of experiences based on sensations such as walking around and living in a state based purely on animal like reflexes and an infinite sense of oneness that seems to come so naturally to the human brain. The subconscious has no problem whatsoever with creating sensations that the universe is one ongoing intertwined process that we are not in anyway separate from and this is often felt as a permanent but subtle change in perspective that lasts a very long time even after the tripper has come down from the experience.

If you want to experience Ego death your best bet is to combine a strong dose of LSD and some good weed but Ego death can also be achieved through Mushrooms and other psychedelics in very large doses. Keep taking increasingly high doses and you will eventually get there.

Look into his eyes. He knows the secrets of the universe.

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:04:24 -0500

Look into his eyes. He knows the secrets of the universe.

Testing DMT Entities Through Math

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:38:26 -0500

I’ve already spoken about testing the existence of DMT/ Ayahuasca and Mushroom entities through simple questioning right here but I think that using mathematics to do this could be a much more interesting way to go even if the existence of such things are immediately shown to be a complete fabrication. Which to be honest, is probably the most likely outcome.

As a person who is completely useless at maths it would be very interesting to ask autonomous entities (particularly entities who appear to be all knowing) simple mathematical questions that are beyond my immediate comprehension such as “64 x 112” and to then time how long it takes for a response. Assuming they can answer at all I could then across multiple trips ask entities questions of increasing complexity to find the upper limit of their abilities and see just how far I could push it as doing this could teach us multiple awesome things about the nature of psychedelics and the human brain.
This will obviously have to be done with a polite attitude because entities do have the power to crush you.

There are 3 possible outcomes to performing this experiment, which are:

The Entities fail to answer the questions.

If the entities outright fail, refuse to answer or show mathematical skills no better than that of the tripper then this is yet another line of evidence suggesting that they simply do not exist or are at least not nearly as all knowing as some of them seem to be. This combined with the results of my further questioning that I suggested in the previous article on this topic would be the final nail in the coffin in my opinion and would finally provide us with an answer.

The Entities succeed in answering the questions, but there is an upper limit.

If the entities are capable of solving with greater ability than the conscious skills of the tripper then things are really starting to get interesting, this doesn’t necessarily prove their existence (although it certainly helps) but it does let us find out a few things about the human brain as finding the upper limit of their ability to answer basic multiplication questions would essentially show us what the exact processing limitations of the subconscious mind are and just how far it is ahead of our conscious processing power and personal experience leads me to suspect that it is might be leaps and bounds ahead of what is consciously available to us.

The Entities succeed but there is no upper limit.

If everything goes perfectly and the entities pass all questioning beyond what could reasonably be considered the physical limitations of a human brain then goddamn. This would be proof that this experience isn’t just a hallucination that acts like it is in possession of a huge wealth of knowledge inaccessible to me but that it really is exactly what it claims to be. OH MAN

Each of these outcomes would be a fascinating discovery so although it’s probably going to be the first option this is still definitely worth a try and nobody else is working on it so it’s a chance to break some brand new ground and do front line research. I’m finally ready to get working on this very shortly through a series of high dose Ayahuasca trips and you’re welcome to help out and report back if you want to but I do understand that most people are far too lazy for this sort of shit so I shall push on regardless.

The many unique components of a typical Ayahuasca trip

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 01:34:00 -0500

Ayahusca is by far my favourite psychedelic, it is extremely easy to make and offers a completely different but amazing style of trip that needs to be taken much more seriously. Here I will describe in detail each component to give new users a rough idea of what to expect before taking such a drug.

Body high/ Purge:
Depending on how traditional the method of preparation for a users dose of Ayahuasca has been kept the first physical sensation that is usually noticed is an intense nausea that gradually builds up until the user purges and vomits. This vomiting doesn’t feel particularly violent and is over with very quickly but the nausea before it can be horrible and generally makes it difficult to move without feeling like you are going to throw up for the first 45 minutes of the trip.

I’ve been thinking about the purge a fair bit recently as despite the entire internet telling me that it is a necessary and important part of the trip I have yet to see anybody experience a purge without causing an immediate and sudden end to their trip. It does feel surprisingly pleasurable if you let it happen and I know quite a few people are going to disagree with me on this but it really does seem like the purge is an unnecessary bullshit cultural construct that does not actually benefit the trip in anyway and is very easy to eradicate by means such as a few simple recipe changes (the egg whites trick), a little practice and some good weed. If it really was truly necessary to purge before a successful trip Pharmahuasca users would also experience such a thing but they do not.

The physical sensation of the real bodyhigh is a very difficult to place but genuine feeling of euphoria and a sense of being completely in touch with the animal body. At higher doses this sensation becomes spontaneous rushes of intense pleasure that envelops every single nerve ending on your body. This is intense but does not overwhelm and you even have a large amount of control in inducing these rushes if you constantly communicate, encourage and cheer the Ayahuasca on to produce a bodyhigh inside your head. All of this allows you to be fully mobile and to explore anything that you could explore sober providing that you are aware of your limits.

Headspace:

The headspace of Ayahuasca is probably my favourite of all the traditional shamanic psychedelics and seems to put you a very profound state of a completely rational objectiveness that seems intertwined with a wide array of very intense feelings and emotions. This feels as if your cultural filter has been instantly removed and gives you the power to look at any topic without any irrational biases, giving you an intense appreciation for life and everything within in it with a huge thirst for knowledge and thought patterns that generally steer towards thoughts of being human, introspection, the passing of generations, tribal thinking and increased mystical thoughts.

Ayahuasca has incredibly sharp rapid fire thoughts that feel as if a quick paced intelligent conversation with yourself is constantly happening inside of your mind. Language capacity and creativity are greatly increased just as with all psychedelics but as certain brain functions seem to go up others temporarily go down to compensate. It can be very difficult for most people to perform certain complex tasks as motor control and short term memory are usually mildly affected as well an increased sense of distractibility that is found on most hallucinogens. This is hardly a problem however unless you are planning to write a letter or file your taxes during your trip but it’s worth noting that even after a mild Ayahuasca trip you do not feel mentally withdrawn or exhausted but completely straightened out as if each and every one of your thoughts has been reordered and reorganized. This leaves you with a personality that feels altered and humbled for the better after every successful trip.

A Sensed Presence of the “Other”:

During an Ayahuasca trip it is almost universally reported that it genuinely feels as if there is an authoritative presence or intelligence that is completely guiding or directing the trip with a sometimes twisted sense of humour. It really does feel as if the Other is sitting behind the scenes pushing all the right buttons and completely directing your trip from a position that is not always on your side. This Other has a habit of punishing the irrational, the arrogant and just about anybody who goes into this with the wrong attitude and it’s this habit that in my opinion makes Ayahuasca a drug that should be seriously researched before trying.

This feeling of the “Other” as if it is controls the intensity of the trip sporadically creating a trip that flows completely differently to other substances which offer a constant stream of visuals instead of a trip that can be so fussy sometimes it simply wont happen if the Ayahuasca isn’t feeling it. This sensed presence of the “other” is the lowest form of entity contact found on psychedelic drugs and is unsurprisingly also very common on low dose DMT trips.

Visual Behaviour:

It was the behaviour of the closed and open eye visuals that really took me by surprise the first time I took Ayahuasca. At first I was expecting a merely alternatively stylized version of the visuals experienced on mushrooms and LSD which are generally described as an incredibly fast moving and constant stream of geometric patterns, fractals and imagery but instead I found a set of incredibly rich and detailed patterns that behave in a bizarrely unique way.
Apart from your typical melting, breathing, tracers, etc the open eye visuals even at lower levels look just like real physical floating patterns that stand still and slowly grow out of the air in a very organic fashion. If allowed these visuals steadily grow, build up, come together and form networks all around you that become increasingly intense as you watch them but die down greatly if they are disturbed. Visuals can be disturbed by many things but sudden changes in the environment such as suddenly having to perform a task, a light being switched on, a sudden change in music or any unexpected changes to the vibes of the room will generally reset them. But despite having been reset the visuals do not take long to grow back and can quickly take over as you immediately begin to lose yourself in them.

These visuals are also very sensitive to light and It’s this aspect that many people confuse as an incompatibility between Ayahuasca and technology as the erratic nature of technology is generally very efficient at causing the visuals to die down a fair bit. This however is definitely not a universal truth and depends entirely on the technology, a first person shooter will probably not cause you to trip very hard but a copy of Planet Earth and some appropriate music will do just the opposite.

The closed eye visuals of an average Ayahuasca trip are not simple flat veils of complex geometry but generally rotating 3D structures of limitless style and possibilities that are comprised of a closed eye visual based material. These structures show huge amounts of imagery and get increasingly drawn out and elaborate depending on the dosage, eventually becoming fully fledged hallucinations, entity contact, imagined landscapes and impossible scenarios.

Hallucinations, Transformations and Distortions:

The open eye hallucinations experienced on Ayahuasca are a common occurrence and happen even at lower doses or when you seem to have completely come down off of your trip. These low level hallucinations are actually a form of photo realistic transformations and distortions and are never created from complete scratch but are instead always based on something such as a pre-existing physical object and often present themselves when you lose focus and stare at literally anything. This losing focus and zoning in on something as it elaborately transforms into an incomprehensible anything comes completely naturally during an Ayahuasca trip and unlike the cartoony and silly distortions found on LSD do not disappear once you realize they are there. These hallucinations only collapse in on themselves once you double take but are still insanely persistent compared to other psychedelics as an ability to remain completely and constantly lost in the distortion seems to be present.

Low level distortions come in the form of the tunnelling and sectioning of objects in your peripheral vision. This is experienced as objects in the corner your eye appearing to pushed back into themselves in a way that forms a deep tunnel of identical shape. These are not very well defined despite being obviously there and always immediately disappear if you try to directly look at them.

Dreams:

Many many misinformed people on the internet believe that DMT is released from the pineal gland during dreaming and death. Although this has been shown to be completely untrue from personal experience there does seem to be at least some sort of underlying tenuous connection between the DMT molecule and dreaming as although it is generally noted by most Psychonauts that the act of tripping increases the intensity of your dreams during sober living me and others have never experienced such a sudden jump in the intensity and realism of our dreams since we started taking Ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca completely changes the style of your dreams, causing them to become elaborate and incredibly psychedelic in a far more profound way than any of its close relatives.