Psychedelics question

[East Coast Hustle]

I am one of those contemptible human beings that enjoys these things for self-improvement reasons. Dramatic perceptual shifts spike my creativity. These toys have done wonders for me, helping me leverage myself into the relatively cool person I am today. In the right settings, I have had what some might call a "spiritual experience". I don't have a lot of language to describe it, but ego death is pointing in the right direction. This is what I aim for. One of these experiences once or twice a year helps keep me grounded and self aware. And I think I've turned out okay and not become some kind of hippie wankstain.

this is pretty much how I feel about it (I sometimes jokingly refer to it as "squeegeeing my third eye clean"), but I see no need to attempt to make some sort of spiritual experience or any other such mumbo-jumbo out of it, it's just a way to remind myself of my place in the universe.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Or you could just try looking at things without a filter once in a while.

Apparently easier for you than for me.  I don't know that I have ever managed that.

Also, for me, psychedelics aren't so much about removing the filter as swapping it with a different one.

Precisely.

I'm a fan of cactus, but I don't do it to look at the world in a different way, I do it because it makes me into even more of a horrible shit than I am normally, and I like that once in a while.

But looking at the world without filters takes practice and hard work.  Sort of like meditation and all that other hippy shit, only it's useful (and funny), in a horrible way.

You can look at the world without filters? Could you go into some detail there?

Nobody can look at the world without any filters at all...After all, we all have biases.  However, if you constantly question those biases, try to look at things with a fresh set of eyes, you can minimize over time the "built in" filters you use. 

Mind altering drugs don't do that.  They add filters.  Huge ones.

Ah, very good. Your initial comment made it sound as though you were filterless

Minimizing filters, in my experience doesn't require drugs. However, my experiences with drugs have helped me identify some filters and change those (when I'm sober). The people that think tripping will clear their vision on its own seem incorrect to me. Its the post-trip analysis and action that seems the most useful to me.

[Doktor Howl]

Ah, very good. Your initial comment made it sound as though you were filterless

Sorry, I absolutely refuse to use e-prime in every post.  I had thought it obvious that anyone who was absolutely filterless would also be absolutely insane.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Ah, very good. Your initial comment made it sound as though you were filterless

Sorry, I absolutely refuse to use e-prime in every post. 

Well, you said 'without filters' which seems to say 'filterless' e-prime or not.

I had thought it obvious that anyone who was absolutely filterless would also be absolutely insane.

That's why I asked you to clarify rather than saying you were nuts

[Doktor Howl]

Well, you said 'without filters' which seems to say 'filterless' e-prime or not.

I think I'm done for the day.

[BadBeast]

Ah, very good. Your initial comment made it sound as though you were filterless

Sorry, I absolutely refuse to use e-prime in every post.  I had thought it obvious that anyone who was absolutely filterless would also be absolutely insane.

And would therefore take great care not to exhibit any of the symptoms of "Old Sanity", instead, leading the lost ones by example, along the broad new vista, of the glorious "New Sanity".
As a Wise Woman once said, "Only the True Messiah will deny his Divinity"

[Doktor Howl]

Ah, very good. Your initial comment made it sound as though you were filterless

Sorry, I absolutely refuse to use e-prime in every post.  I had thought it obvious that anyone who was absolutely filterless would also be absolutely insane.

And would therefore take great care not to exhibit any of the symptoms of "Old Sanity", instead, leading the lost ones by example, along the broad new vista, of the glorious "New Sanity".
As a Wise Woman once said, "Only the True Messiah will deny his Divinity"

I JUST CAN'T WIN, CAN I?

Dok,
Has been taken up.

[DeusExMachina]

I think you have to travel to insanity and view it objectively, come back to sanity and view it objectively.  I have found that drugs can take you near but unless you have a near death experience with them you will only get close.  I went to insanity once, admittedly i was smoking weed at the time but it was the fact that i had not slept for about twenty days that took me to the point where the walls fell down and my mind was about to go to the point of no return.  Anyway after watching the show for a little while and feeling physical effects from what i was seeing i decided enough and ended it. Now i have quite a gift for understanding and communicating  with people who are "insane", i am not insane but paradoxically i am, but i am sane as well.

In my opinion drugs take a lot longer to send you insane but they gradually show you a perspective from an insane viewpoint where all conventional  sanity is seen as insanity, useful for dipping into occasionally to break the spell if you will from mass hypnosis not only from media but from language and communication.  I would prefer an alternative and i think the only one would be deep meditation.  Maybe i will get back to that once i stop smoking.   

[BadBeast]

I think you have to travel to insanity and view it objectively, come back to sanity and view it objectively.  I have found that drugs can take you near but unless you have a near death experience with them you will only get close.  I went to insanity once, admittedly i was smoking weed at the time but it was the fact that i had not slept for about twenty days that took me to the point where the walls fell down and my mind was about to go to the point of no return. Sleep.  Anyway after watching the show for a little while and feeling physical effects from what i was seeing i decided enough and ended it. Now i have quite a gift for understanding and communicating  with people who are "insane", i am not insane but paradoxically i am, but i am sane as well.

In my opinion drugs take a lot longer to send you insane but they gradually show you a perspective from an insane viewpoint where all conventional  sanity is seen as insanity, useful for dipping into occasionally to break the spell if you will from mass hypnosis not only from media but from language and communication.  I would prefer an alternative and i think the only one would be deep meditation.  Maybe i will get back to that once i stop smoking.  

?
Actually, I can't see how you can view anything with objectivity, if, by your own admission, you're insane. How would you know if you could trust your own judgement or not? How do you know "you went to insanity" once? A Weed High can be a bit mad, but at the end of the day, it's not "insane".

Also, the "20 days without sleep" is a wildly exaggerated claim, and not at all objective. I know from personal experience, and Clinical Research, that at any point approaching 10 days without sleep, you are at a very definite limit. There is a very real danger of death, that increases by the hour by day ten. You will have no cognitive skills to speak of, your motor skills are packing up minute by minute, your liver, kidneys, and heart, are suffering from toxiosis, due to build up of stress hormones. The simplest tasks, such as eating a bowl of soup, are beyond your power. You can't remember simple things like the names of family members, how to use simple items like lightswitches. The record for going without sleep is nearly 12 days. Even if given huge (and I do mean huge) doses of Amphetamine at this point, there is only maybe another day it can give you.  

Your "gift for understanding and communicating  with people who are "insane", Is this under clinical conditions, or a therapeutic environment? Or just talking to mad people? (For fun, not science) The tricky thing, in this life, is to be able to "understand and communicate" with people who are apparently sane. The Insane will sit and talk to themselves, or a fellow patient, or a fucking Rubber plant for hours and hours. Then have no recall of the discourse. How are you any different to the Rubber plant?

But you're not totally without merit, or stupid, and I'm really not attacking you. At 26, I was a far more insufferably full of shit, pineal know it all, and then some arsehole, than you have any hope of being. I didn't need to listen to anyone, read anything, adjust my point of view, because I had "attainned a place of perfection". Even thinking about how stupids I had makes me cringe today.    What a laughably naive and punchably irritating wanker I was! (I must apologise sincerely to anyone who had to ***** my bullshit back then) So maybe you pradoxiacally are both sane, and not sane at the same time. (But if this is the case, I think it's actually classed by the Medical people as insane)

[Don Coyote]

And then BB was drug away mid sentence.

[BadBeast]

And then BB was drug away mid sentence.

But in an artful piece of cut and stitch, time has again been repaired, and my keyboard's sticky keys are now shiny, clean, and  fully operational. As is my post.

And I think this link is actually relevant to the thread today, instead of my usual random "seemed like a good idea" impulse links.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRV0PNqnHaY

[DeusExMachina]

I think you have to travel to insanity and view it objectively, come back to sanity and view it objectively.  I have found that drugs can take you near but unless you have a near death experience with them you will only get close.  I went to insanity once, admittedly i was smoking weed at the time but it was the fact that i had not slept for about twenty days that took me to the point where the walls fell down and my mind was about to go to the point of no return. Sleep.  Anyway after watching the show for a little while and feeling physical effects from what i was seeing i decided enough and ended it. Now i have quite a gift for understanding and communicating  with people who are "insane", i am not insane but paradoxically i am, but i am sane as well.

In my opinion drugs take a lot longer to send you insane but they gradually show you a perspective from an insane viewpoint where all conventional  sanity is seen as insanity, useful for dipping into occasionally to break the spell if you will from mass hypnosis not only from media but from language and communication.  I would prefer an alternative and i think the only one would be deep meditation.  Maybe i will get back to that once i stop smoking.   

?
Actually, I can't see how you can view anything with objectivity, if, by your own admission, you're insane. How would you know if you could trust your own judgement or not? How do you know "you went to insanity" once? A Weed High can be a bit mad, but at the end of the day, it's not "insane".

Also, the "20 days without sleep" is a wildly exaggerated claim, and not at all objective. I know from personal experience, and Clinical Research, that at any point approaching 10 days without sleep, you are at a very definite limit. There is a very real danger of death, that increases by the hour by day ten. You will have no cognitive skills to speak of, your motor skills are packing up minute by minute, your liver, kidneys, and heart, are suffering from toxiosis, due to build up of stress hormones. The simplest tasks, such as eating a bowl of soup, are beyond your power. You can't remember simple things like the names of family members, how to use simple items like lightswitches. The record for going without sleep is nearly 12 days. Even if given huge (and I do mean huge) doses of Amphetamine at this point, there is only maybe another day it can give you. 

Your "gift for understanding and communicating  with people who are "insane", Is this under clinical conditions, or a therapeutic environment? Or just talking to mad people? (For fun, not science) The tricky thing, in this life, is to be able to "understand and communicate" with people who are apparently sane. The Insane will sit and talk to themselves, or a fellow patient, or a fucking Rubber plant for hours and hours. Then have no recall of the discourse. How are you any different to the Rubber plant?
But you're not totally without merit, and I'm really not attacking you. At 26, I

After about nine days of not sleeping i was experiencing visual and audio hallucinations which would last until i looked away or willed them away i was aware that these were not real but that did not stop them effecting me but i attempted to reason what the meaning of the hallucinations were and were these a product of a creative imagination or messages from my sub-conscious or was i observing an outside phonomena.

I know i went to insanity once or perhaps i should have said the closest i could be without actually falling into it because i was seeing  what i can describe as a humanoid shape about seven feet tall appearing from a vortex in front of me. It was black like a shadow and it had spike like apendages and an over sized gaping gash like a mouth.  When it appeared it changed the definition of dread for me because that is the only way i can describe the physical feeling i felt in my chest.  It phased in and out and moved position next to my face in front of me and so on.  Then I could hear several different voices all talking incomprehensibly in one ear, then both ears which gradually became more aggressive and it seemed if i was hearing with my ears would be deafening.  Whilst this was happening I was just observing and not particularly bothered by it because i knew it was my imagination and if it was really an interdimensional being it couldn't physically strike me or hurt me. This continued for a while and the feeling of dread became a lot worse and i felt like i was losing myself, the best way i can describe it is my mind felt like a non-shatter ruler when you bend it and it is about to snap.  At that point i thought i better do something and willed it to disappear and it did back into the vortex eventually.  Like i said admittedly i was smoking weed at the time but i wasn't high it was from the not sleeping the effects came from, i think the weed made my insomnia worse.

It was about twenty days i am not sure exactly.  I did not sleep but i would goto bed and rest by closing my eyes and laying there for hours until the morning eight hours or more very very boring.  I would often check my watch every hour or so to see how long i had to lay there.  This was not done under lab conditions and it is not something i would care to repeat believe what you will, that i was meditating or whatever and just for the record there is a man who has not slept by eating raw vegatables i can't find the documentary i am sure someone else could but this will have todo
http://news.softpedia.com/news/This-Man-Has-Not-Been-Sleeping-For-34-Years-62224.shtml

No this is not under clinical conditions i would like to do some work with the mentally ill but unless i did volunteer work it is unlikely i will.  I have managed to converse with several people who are mentally ill and get sense out of them where others cannot on a couple of occasions.  If someone suffers from acute alzheimer's or dementia i doubt it would matter.

[DeusExMachina]

Took me a long time to type that, yes i believe i am classed as clinically insane.  Which worries me considerably  

I did have my insufferably full of shit, pineal know it all, and then some arsehole, who didn't listen to anyone period, i think everyone does.

[Iron Sulfide]

I think you have to travel to insanity and view it objectively, come back to sanity and view it objectively.  I have found that drugs can take you near but unless you have a near death experience with them you will only get close.  I went to insanity once, admittedly i was smoking weed at the time but it was the fact that i had not slept for about twenty days that took me to the point where the walls fell down and my mind was about to go to the point of no return. Sleep.  Anyway after watching the show for a little while and feeling physical effects from what i was seeing i decided enough and ended it. Now i have quite a gift for understanding and communicating  with people who are "insane", i am not insane but paradoxically i am, but i am sane as well.

In my opinion drugs take a lot longer to send you insane but they gradually show you a perspective from an insane viewpoint where all conventional  sanity is seen as insanity, useful for dipping into occasionally to break the spell if you will from mass hypnosis not only from media but from language and communication.  I would prefer an alternative and i think the only one would be deep meditation.  Maybe i will get back to that once i stop smoking.   

?
Actually, I can't see how you can view anything with objectivity, if, by your own admission, you're insane. How would you know if you could trust your own judgement or not? How do you know "you went to insanity" once? A Weed High can be a bit mad, but at the end of the day, it's not "insane".

Also, the "20 days without sleep" is a wildly exaggerated claim, and not at all objective. I know from personal experience, and Clinical Research, that at any point approaching 10 days without sleep, you are at a very definite limit. There is a very real danger of death, that increases by the hour by day ten. You will have no cognitive skills to speak of, your motor skills are packing up minute by minute, your liver, kidneys, and heart, are suffering from toxiosis, due to build up of stress hormones. The simplest tasks, such as eating a bowl of soup, are beyond your power. You can't remember simple things like the names of family members, how to use simple items like lightswitches. The record for going without sleep is nearly 12 days. Even if given huge (and I do mean huge) doses of Amphetamine at this point, there is only maybe another day it can give you. 

Your "gift for understanding and communicating  with people who are "insane", Is this under clinical conditions, or a therapeutic environment? Or just talking to mad people? (For fun, not science) The tricky thing, in this life, is to be able to "understand and communicate" with people who are apparently sane. The Insane will sit and talk to themselves, or a fellow patient, or a fucking Rubber plant for hours and hours. Then have no recall of the discourse. How are you any different to the Rubber plant?
But you're not totally without merit, and I'm really not attacking you. At 26, I

After about nine days of not sleeping i was experiencing visual and audio hallucinations which would last until i looked away or willed them away i was aware that these were not real but that did not stop them effecting me but i attempted to reason what the meaning of the hallucinations were and were these a product of a creative imagination or messages from my sub-conscious or was i observing an outside phonomena.

I know i went to insanity once or perhaps i should have said the closest i could be without actually falling into it because i was seeing  what i can describe as a humanoid shape about seven feet tall appearing from a vortex in front of me. It was black like a shadow and it had spike like apendages and an over sized gaping gash like a mouth.  When it appeared it changed the definition of dread for me because that is the only way i can describe the physical feeling i felt in my chest.  It phased in and out and moved position next to my face in front of me and so on.  Then I could hear several different voices all talking incomprehensibly in one ear, then both ears which gradually became more aggressive and it seemed if i was hearing with my ears would be deafening.  Whilst this was happening I was just observing and not particularly bothered by it because i knew it was my imagination and if it was really an interdimensional being it couldn't physically strike me or hurt me. This continued for a while and the feeling of dread became a lot worse and i felt like i was losing myself, the best way i can describe it is my mind felt like a non-shatter ruler when you bend it and it is about to snap.  At that point i thought i better do something and willed it to disappear and it did back into the vortex eventually.  Like i said admittedly i was smoking weed at the time but i wasn't high it was from the not sleeping the effects came from, i think the weed made my insomnia worse.

It was about twenty days i am not sure exactly.  I did not sleep but i would goto bed and rest by closing my eyes and laying there for hours until the morning eight hours or more very very boring.  I would often check my watch every hour or so to see how long i had to lay there.  This was not done under lab conditions and it is not something i would care to repeat believe what you will, that i was meditating or whatever and just for the record there is a man who has not slept by eating raw vegatables i can't find the documentary i am sure someone else could but this will have todo
http://news.softpedia.com/news/This-Man-Has-Not-Been-Sleeping-For-34-Years-62224.shtml

No this is not under clinical conditions i would like to do some work with the mentally ill but unless i did volunteer work it is unlikely i will.  I have managed to converse with several people who are mentally ill and get sense out of them where others cannot on a couple of occasions.  If someone suffers from acute alzheimer's or dementia i doubt it would matter.

Really? The longest I've not slept is almost 7 days. That only occurred once in my life, while I was grieving my Grandmother. By the 3rd day, I would have sworn that I hadn't slept in a week. That's when the hallucinations started. First, everything would ache- bones, muscle, I could swear the chair I was sitting in would hurt, sometimes, too. Then, randomly, the feeling would stop and a flush of euphoria wash over me. Another day in, still surfaces would start to become wavy, or rounded; I would see flickers and streaks from the corners of my eyes, recalling only seconds later having seen a distinct and visible human form before me. I tried to sleep. I tried hard. I smoked weed, I drank NyQuil, I exercised, did chores, warm milk, boring TV shows...nothing. About the fifth day, I was basically what BadBeast described, which is, in short, a horrible mess of a wreck. Hunger pains would sound in my stomach, I would attempt the harrowing task of making food, only to find that it nauseated me. The timber of sounds would change without cause; deep reverberation would come from something that should sound shallow and tinny. I couldn't even remember what sleep was a this point. And it lasted another two days.

I seriously doubt that you went 20.

Moreover, laying in your bed with your eyes closed...I'm thinking you slept at least some.

[East Coast Hustle]

I think you have to travel to insanity and view it objectively, come back to sanity and view it objectively.  I have found that drugs can take you near but unless you have a near death experience with them you will only get close.  I went to insanity once, admittedly i was smoking weed at the time but it was the fact that i had not slept for about twenty days that took me to the point where the walls fell down and my mind was about to go to the point of no return. Sleep.  Anyway after watching the show for a little while and feeling physical effects from what i was seeing i decided enough and ended it. Now i have quite a gift for understanding and communicating  with people who are "insane", i am not insane but paradoxically i am, but i am sane as well.

In my opinion drugs take a lot longer to send you insane but they gradually show you a perspective from an insane viewpoint where all conventional  sanity is seen as insanity, useful for dipping into occasionally to break the spell if you will from mass hypnosis not only from media but from language and communication.  I would prefer an alternative and i think the only one would be deep meditation.  Maybe i will get back to that once i stop smoking.   

?
Actually, I can't see how you can view anything with objectivity, if, by your own admission, you're insane. How would you know if you could trust your own judgement or not? How do you know "you went to insanity" once? A Weed High can be a bit mad, but at the end of the day, it's not "insane".

Also, the "20 days without sleep" is a wildly exaggerated claim, and not at all objective. I know from personal experience, and Clinical Research, that at any point approaching 10 days without sleep, you are at a very definite limit. There is a very real danger of death, that increases by the hour by day ten. You will have no cognitive skills to speak of, your motor skills are packing up minute by minute, your liver, kidneys, and heart, are suffering from toxiosis, due to build up of stress hormones. The simplest tasks, such as eating a bowl of soup, are beyond your power. You can't remember simple things like the names of family members, how to use simple items like lightswitches. The record for going without sleep is nearly 12 days. Even if given huge (and I do mean huge) doses of Amphetamine at this point, there is only maybe another day it can give you. 

Your "gift for understanding and communicating  with people who are "insane", Is this under clinical conditions, or a therapeutic environment? Or just talking to mad people? (For fun, not science) The tricky thing, in this life, is to be able to "understand and communicate" with people who are apparently sane. The Insane will sit and talk to themselves, or a fellow patient, or a fucking Rubber plant for hours and hours. Then have no recall of the discourse. How are you any different to the Rubber plant?
But you're not totally without merit, and I'm really not attacking you. At 26, I

After about nine days of not sleeping i was experiencing visual and audio hallucinations which would last until i looked away or willed them away i was aware that these were not real but that did not stop them effecting me but i attempted to reason what the meaning of the hallucinations were and were these a product of a creative imagination or messages from my sub-conscious or was i observing an outside phonomena.

I know i went to insanity once or perhaps i should have said the closest i could be without actually falling into it because i was seeing  what i can describe as a humanoid shape about seven feet tall appearing from a vortex in front of me. It was black like a shadow and it had spike like apendages and an over sized gaping gash like a mouth.  When it appeared it changed the definition of dread for me because that is the only way i can describe the physical feeling i felt in my chest.  It phased in and out and moved position next to my face in front of me and so on.  Then I could hear several different voices all talking incomprehensibly in one ear, then both ears which gradually became more aggressive and it seemed if i was hearing with my ears would be deafening.  Whilst this was happening I was just observing and not particularly bothered by it because i knew it was my imagination and if it was really an interdimensional being it couldn't physically strike me or hurt me. This continued for a while and the feeling of dread became a lot worse and i felt like i was losing myself, the best way i can describe it is my mind felt like a non-shatter ruler when you bend it and it is about to snap.  At that point i thought i better do something and willed it to disappear and it did back into the vortex eventually.  Like i said admittedly i was smoking weed at the time but i wasn't high it was from the not sleeping the effects came from, i think the weed made my insomnia worse.

It was about twenty days i am not sure exactly.  I did not sleep but i would goto bed and rest by closing my eyes and laying there for hours until the morning eight hours or more very very boring.  I would often check my watch every hour or so to see how long i had to lay there.  This was not done under lab conditions and it is not something i would care to repeat believe what you will, that i was meditating or whatever and just for the record there is a man who has not slept by eating raw vegatables i can't find the documentary i am sure someone else could but this will have todo
http://news.softpedia.com/news/This-Man-Has-Not-Been-Sleeping-For-34-Years-62224.shtml

No this is not under clinical conditions i would like to do some work with the mentally ill but unless i did volunteer work it is unlikely i will.  I have managed to converse with several people who are mentally ill and get sense out of them where others cannot on a couple of occasions.  If someone suffers from acute alzheimer's or dementia i doubt it would matter.

unequivocal absolute bullshit.

you'd be dead, end of story.