[HN Gopher] DMT drug study investigates the 'entities' people me...
___________________________________________________________________
DMT drug study investigates the 'entities' people meet while
tripping
Author : jelliclesfarm
Score : 207 points
Date : 2020-09-16 14:26 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bigthink.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bigthink.com)
| peteradio wrote:
| I would love to read some fiction where a study such as this
| leads to discovery that people are encountering the same concrete
| entity(ies).
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137697/ :
| meditation probably contributes to mental states that arent
| unlike DMT induced ones.
|
| we are chemical soups sloshing around within our meat sacs.
|
| i am interested though.. in the imaginary friends children
| make...could it be that when we are children, the brain
| releases 'DMT like' chemicals or signals that make them
| hallucinate our imaginary friends. children lose this ability
| when they grow up.
|
| same with ghosts and alien sightings. i think ..on a more
| diluted level..people with synesthetic proclivities. many
| religious and spiritual experiences can also trigger meeting
| 'other entities' not from our plane. angels and such. fairies
| etc.
|
| finally, could be seizures. certain kinds of epileptic episodes
| can trigger hallucinations and visualizations.
| criddell wrote:
| People dealing with Lewy Body Dementia often have very vivid
| hallucinations.
| NoOneNew wrote:
| Do kids really think their imaginary friend is real? When I
| did it as a kid, I knew there was no one there, but pretended
| and in a way role played situations. Normally this was only
| in between long gaps where I didnt get to hang out with other
| kids. I've never known any kids who truly think their
| imaginary friend is real or see them. I thought it was just a
| lame movie trope.
| endori97 wrote:
| Catholics identify the 'machine elves' as demons
| sbussard wrote:
| Anyone who's adequately informed about spiritual matters is
| able to identify "machine elves" as demons who still seek to
| rule humans as in times past and desperately try to hide
| their identity. I've heard they get extremely angry and
| transform into malicious monsters if you interrogate them
| about the truth of Jesus Christ. Doing that will guarantee a
| bad experience. People shouldn't be doing drugs anyways.
| peteradio wrote:
| This sounds super interesting and is exactly what I'm
| interested to hear more about. Where can I read more on
| this?
| sbussard wrote:
| The experiences come from testimonies I've heard from
| drug users and those who practice various forms of
| meditation. The historical context, which is partially
| reliable, comes from Dead Sea Scrolls (which have not all
| been released and translated) such as the book of Enoch.
| The Bible has a lot of hints throughout, such as in
| Genesis 6 and Jude. The Dead Sea scrolls also explain the
| origins of pagan religions and there's a striking number
| of prophecies in them have have come true over the course
| of thousands of years. There are a few brilliant scholars
| who are working very hard to research these things
| slfnflctd wrote:
| From personal experience (which I am by no means alone in)
| you can absolutely have a 'good trip' while contemplating
| Jesus Christ or other aspects of Christianity, and
| believing fully in it all. I am quite certain both good and
| bad drug experiences have driven people to that religion,
| and many others.
|
| To be honest, this sounds like some b.s. my mother picked
| up from 'Christian' radio (i.e. GOP propaganda meets
| X-files) and terrorized the kids with. There was a book
| called the beautiful side of evil that informed a lot of
| the kind of thinking you describe, and it is 100% purely
| anecdotal assertions from one person with extreme views. If
| you look across the spectrum at more individuals, those
| assertions fall apart pretty quick.
| sbussard wrote:
| The precondition is full sincerity and desire to know the
| truth. It's a deeply personal commitment that can't be
| argued in the hypothetical/abstract. Either you go all in
| or you don't, and nobody else will know but you. I'm just
| the messenger.
| [deleted]
| jodrellblank wrote:
| It's a while since I've listened to much Terence McKenna, but I
| have a vague memory of him talking about this, possibly related
| to Psilocybin instead of DMT, about how there's a recording of
| a woman in South America speaking in Spanish while tripping and
| yet "being told" the same content by the psychadelic entity.
| Another part of the world, another language, same message.
| Anyone know the details of that story?
|
| Right now it feels a lot like how UFO sightings have barely
| changed in the last twenty years despite over 2 billion
| smartphone cameras being pumped into the world, and countless
| millions more standalone digital cameras, tablet cameras,
| webcams, etc. A 1960s or 1970s recording from the "dawn" of
| tapes, a crackly recording of a woman in a mental hospital
| speaking in a distant place in a foreign language is extremely
| evocative, a far better story than a study at a dowdy chemical
| research lab in a flyover town.
| throwawayp123 wrote:
| The Phillip K Dick Novel, "The Unteleported Man" explores a
| similar theme:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unteleported_Man Been a very
| long time since I read it, but I believe the gist was that two
| people experiencing the same hallucinations somehow confirms
| the hallucinations.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I've always wanted a comprehensive entity guide, broken down by
| drug type.
|
| With that we could schedule PPV events like Mescalito vs
| ShadowPerson cagematches.
| pvarangot wrote:
| In my experience that guide needs a dimension of personality
| type or at least character traits. Most papers that analyse
| psychedelic experiences show that clustering by personality
| traits is a better or equal predictor of the type of experience
| than dose and (when appropriate) setting.
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| This is a classic DMT video (starts at 2:00)
|
| https://youtu.be/awChThLHAKQ
| new_guy wrote:
| There's an interesting book about encounters with the entities:
|
| DMT Dialogues: Encounters with the Spirit Molecule (
| https://b-ok.cc/book/3688170/74a672 )
|
| It really does seem like there's whole other levels/dimensions of
| reality and these things are real and independent of the person.
| pvarangot wrote:
| There exist collective hallucinations, and some people say the
| biggest one of all is what most people agree to call reality.
|
| These things people see on psychedelic experiences are not
| completely dependent on the person but are also not the same
| for everyone, like most things we perceive with our other
| senses.
| xpaqui wrote:
| If there are collective hallucinations then some of these
| article theories don't work. How can there be a personal
| entity and a shared one.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I may convince you that my personal entity is real and then
| you'll see it and it's not personal anymore. It's like
| religions work only that everyone gets to have their own
| religious experience and it's not only a matter of ego-
| driven debate.
| disposekinetics wrote:
| There are two competing theories: There exists another
| dimension that can only be accessed during hallucination, or
| people hallucinating hallucinate. One of these requires fewer
| assumptions.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Well one day we all die. Leading up to that we live in a
| world that exists entirely in the space between our ears. I
| kinda wanna believe in a dimension full of benevolent machine
| elves that we are linked to spiritually.
| butwheniknow wrote:
| A cloud-castle ...a sequel -Oh wait, I forgot, this is just
| for entertainment purposes, right? And doing nothing makes
| us the greatest traitors of all time, not? (-;
| jakeva wrote:
| I know what you're saying, and agree. But I think it's worth
| pointing out that the explanation of "people hallucinating
| hallucinate" doesn't end the conversation. Can you answer the
| question of "what is a hallucination?" with still fewer
| assumptions?
|
| Maybe you can, but I think if you're acting in good faith
| you'll find you have to discuss the nature of consciousness
| and its relationship with the natural world. Now, this may
| still come to a simpler explanation than one involving extra
| dimensions but I think it's a lot more complex than "people
| hallucinating hallucinate" if you're being fair in your
| investigation.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| >Can you answer the question of "what is a hallucination?"
| with still fewer assumptions?
|
| Not the OP, but I think google's deep dream provides a nice
| analog to the process of hallucination that goes on within
| us on psychedelic drugs. Essentially our brains are wired
| to detect certain patterns in the world; our neural wiring
| is isomorphic to the structure found in the world. What
| these drugs do is increase the excitability of some neural
| structures, which structures are excited correspond to the
| kinds of experiences different psychedelics induce. The
| fact that DMT seems to universally induce encounters with
| "entities" suggests the areas of the brain that are
| excited.
| jakeva wrote:
| Yeah, that's true but still doesn't really explain a
| hallucination. It's like seeing an infrared video of a
| complex machine like a car. Ok, so the main heat seems to
| happen in the front part. Does that explain it?
|
| As one who has hallucinated intensely, the experience is
| not just about what your senses create for you while
| certain neural structures are excited. Often times it's
| about what is left when your senses have gone off the
| deep end. For many it's a deeply spiritual experience,
| some experience a total ego death. Others experience
| lifetimes in different bodies, working jobs and having
| families that never existed here.
|
| So while it's interesting to know something about what
| the neurons are doing, I don't think that gets us any
| closer to an explanation.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| But none of those things you cite are intrinsically
| outside of neural structures. To be clear, explaining a
| hallucination doesn't require that one explains
| consciousness. Consciousness is a background assumption.
| But given consciousness, hallucinations are merely
| abnormal patterns of neural excitations, some of which
| influence conscious experiences. What is "left over"
| after a psychedelic experience could be due to new
| memories that give one a fresh interpretation on typical
| experiences, or new connections made in the brain from
| the over excited state that induces new patterns of
| thinking.
| jakeva wrote:
| But you don't actually _know_ none of the things I've
| cited are intrinsically outside of neural structures.
| Nobody actually _knows_, except the very religious. It
| might be a reasonable assumption, but at that level I'm
| not sure it's simpler an assumption than that there are
| things about the universe we don't understand that many
| naively file under "extra dimensions".
|
| If you want to compare two explanations for the
| experiences of one who is hallucinating where one invokes
| extra "dimensions", and the other invokes "hallucinations
| mean you hallucinate", and you want to say one is
| obviously simpler than the other, from a certain
| perspective you might be right but from where I sit
| you're leaving a lot of potential discussion on the
| table.
| mistermann wrote:
| > But you don't actually _know_ ...
|
| An interesting observation I've had is that there seems
| to be something about the nature of human consciousness
| such that people are ~literally not able to fully grasp
| the idea that they often/usually don't _actually_ (!)
| know what they think they know, with high accuracy. With
| some people, depending on the topic (it seems) of
| conversation, they are sometimes able to switch to an
| abstract mode of thinking and realize and admit that yes
| of course, they do not _really know with 100% certainty_
| that "<X> is True"...but often only if this abstract
| notion is pointed out to them by a third party. But upon
| resuming the object level discussion, this knowledge that
| existed mere minutes ago often seems to once again become
| inaccessible. And with some people, they seem unable to
| accomplish (or at least admit) this _at all_ , and even
| more curiously, seem strongly motivated to resist even
| discussing the idea that they may have made an error.
|
| On one hand, you might just write this off as people
| "being people" who want to "win an argument" and that
| sort of thing, and surely that's a big part of it, but
| _is that all_ there is to it? As a terrible analogy,
| consider how difficult it is to say, recite song lyrics
| while doing mildly complex math in your head -
| considering this, is it so hard to imagine that the mind
| may also be sub-optimal to an unknown degree when it
| comes to reckoning about the complex reality we live in
| _at the object level_ (physical reality and events),
| while concurrently executing a "proper" abstract
| background process to do things like evaluate logical
| consistency and epistemic soundness of the primary object
| level processing, particularly on sensitive topics?
|
| Just pondering the general notion, I tend to lean
| strongly towards the intuition that I'd be surprised _if
| we could do this_ in a skillful and accurate manner,
| rather than being surprised that we cannot (which seems
| to be the overwhelmingly default opinion), and
| observations of internet discussions (regardless of
| community) tend to strongly support this theory as far as
| I can tell. Might this help explain how do so many people
| believe so many diametrically opposed things
| (increasingly, as the complexity of the world increases),
| while also having an extremely strong self-perception of
| objective correctness, even despite objective correctness
| often being literally impossible for the topic being
| discussed?
|
| How this relates back to the original topic, is that a
| lot of people perceive a dramatic increase in the ability
| to think (in more ways than one) deeply about extremely
| complex topics while under the influence of psychedelic
| drugs, and fMRI tests are now starting to illustrate some
| changes at the neurological level that may plausibly
| explain why this is, at least in part. I think it's quite
| philosophically interesting to consider what the real-
| world consequences might be if the situation is that our
| _perception of reality_ is not 100% consistent with
| _actual reality_ - might this possibly result in sub-
| optimal decision making at both the individual and
| societal /national levels from time to time? And what if
| it's not off by just a little bit here and there, but by
| a lot all over the place? If so, might this perhaps help
| explain the counter-intuitive human behavior and general
| state of world affairs that I've been reading about on
| the internet lately?
| recruitmentals wrote:
| Sounds fair... A german comic about what maybe become
| common - if 'training' is, what you were referencing
| to... with 'real-world-consequences' :
|
| >
| //www.bildhost.com/images/2020/09/16/909.1_ABGEDUNKELTER-
| RAUM-KAMERAS...mar.15_FINAL.Mail.png ^^
| jakeva wrote:
| > is it so hard to imagine that the mind may also be sub-
| optimal to an unknown degree when it comes to reckoning
| about the complex reality we live in at the object level
| (physical reality and events), while concurrently
| executing a "proper" abstract background process to do
| things like evaluate logical consistency and epistemic
| soundness of the primary object level processing,
| particularly on sensitive topics?
|
| Agreed. To add to the point, one can't help but consider
| given what we know of the evolution of the tree of life
| of which we are a part the particular factors that do and
| do not lend themselves to survival. Namely, "reckoning
| about the complex reality we live in at the object level"
| is probably not a skill needed for survival in the way
| that developing hunting, language, and social skills
| probably were- not to mention "while concurrently
| executing a "proper" abstract background process to do
| things like evaluate logical consistency and epistemic
| soundness of the primary object level processing"
|
| In my own experience, had my experience in a severely
| altered state of consciousness persisted for more than
| maybe a day or two, I would have needed a lot of
| assistance for basic survival things. In that state I
| perceived the world differently, if not more objectively,
| but was not well equipped for survival.
|
| So, no, I see no reason to think the mind is well
| equipped for that kind of reasoning when evolution might
| select against that kind of adaptation.
| johnward wrote:
| Reminds me of this episode of tales from the trip:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1h9OjS8NTw
|
| This one too (sees the same entity as his friend):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHLpB38LNg4
| motohagiography wrote:
| The geometric patterns are interesting to me because we can
| generate them as the effect of feedback loops, recursion, and
| iteration in pretty much every physical and logical domain. When
| you introduce a delay or discontinuity into a continuous process,
| it causes echoes and periodic patterns we would interpret as
| "geometric" as well. Think effects pedals on musical sounds, or
| modelling queues.
|
| The underlying presumption seems to be that there are barriers to
| understanding a truth that can be "unlocked," which seems like a
| leap fraught with baggage. Even though using a poison that
| impairs the ability of our brain to reconcile its sensory inputs
| with its memory of itself is an out of "self" experience, this
| idea of viewing it through the lens of an enhancement or
| impairment yields different interpretations. A functioning
| society and civilization requires that people can be acted upon
| by - and respond to - the artifacts of language, so something
| that impairs that is going to raise hackles among people who
| think about those sort of things. But to grow it and survive we
| also need things that originate outside of it, so the insights
| people get from these trips can also be very valuable.
|
| DMT elves I can't explain, but geometric patterns, just generate
| interrupts on a signal that has feedback. If they do exist, I'd
| have to assume they're some instantiation of tech support, as
| something is going to detect the signal jitter and check it.
| meroes wrote:
| I've seen geometric patterns and it's very similar to tie-dye
| fractals that kind of pulse and move among itself. A friend and
| I had very similar experience of the patterns (no elves wasn't
| DMT). You'd see them only when looking close up at something,
| not your entire visual field. They conform to the object you
| are staring at. A cardboard box wilth all its micro texture and
| creases "generated" the patterns and your brain would interpret
| it moving, pulsing, distorting, adding color.
|
| (I am not saying this as some kind of allure of the drug's
| effects, just interesting to think about why and how the
| perception change happens).
|
| I think maybe it has to do with your brain trialing new pattern
| recognition algorithms.
|
| _warning more musing below_
|
| I mean what is to say _how_ any signal from our perception
| should look or feel internally? Visually the input in just raw
| EM radiation. And our brain makes this vivid picture out of
| basically a field of numbers. In this case you could argue that
| the extra pulsing or moving is not from a signal in reality,
| but we also can easily be tricked with visual illusions into
| seeing a static image move while completely sober.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_motion.
|
| There is no "right" perception of reality, or at least ours is
| subjective to begin with. I think drugs just allow new patterns
| or patterns recognition "algorithms" a trial run. Our biology
| ended up as it is to keep us alive; it is not "poison" or wrong
| to try to re-jigger it temporarily to see what else is possible
| - as long as you are in a good situation to do so. (Or not, who
| am I to judge).
| adriand wrote:
| You may find that with enough experiences like this, you can
| perceive the same type (but not degree) of fluctuations when
| looking at any kind of textured or patterned material, such
| as asphalt or a woven rug. Try gazing at a surface in a
| slightly unfocused, highly "relaxed" manner. I expect that to
| your point, your brain filters or corrects for this type of
| perception.
| pea wrote:
| I actually have this pretty much constantly, as well as
| after images on lights and what not.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Have you had it all your life?
| pengaru wrote:
| I especially enjoy looking at "MagicEye" style
| autostereogram images for another completely sober
| psychedelic-like experience.
|
| The way the 3D view comes into perspective, that sensation
| of maintaining an altered mode engaging with the 3D image,
| with distractions or a decision to leave that view
| disengaging. It's very similar to how modal and deliberate
| interacting with hallucinations on psychedelics can be.
| crucialfelix wrote:
| I occasionally wake up half way during the night and experience
| glorious intensely colorful geometric hallucinations. It
| definitely feels and evolves like feedback. There are sometimes
| beings and encounters. The colors are hyperreal, impossible to
| see or display on a monitor. Normal dreams don't have colors at
| all really.
|
| This is a natural part of our brains I guess.
| jjcm wrote:
| My personal explanation for the others is that we are pattern
| recognition machines. One of the patterns we train to recognize
| every single day is a human shape and figure. On DMT your
| pattern recognition goes into overdrive, and you find these
| patterns out of nothing.
|
| What I find interesting though is that almost everyone has
| nearly identical experiences with this. Almost everyone goes
| from sober -> geometric shapes -> "the others", advancing
| between the levels dependent on the dose.
| dalbasal wrote:
| If you're interested in these kinds of parsimonies... I suggest
| looking into traditional and modern "psychedelic art"
| (especially dmt-related) and machine generated "art." There are
| similarities here too, some uncanny.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Interestingly, many hallucinatory geometric patterns fall out
| of a simple mathematical model of V1. This is a great paper
| that is less known than it should be:
|
| Geometric visual hallucinations, Euclidean symmetry and the
| functional architecture of striate cortex
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1088430/pdf/TB0.
| ..
| zkms wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182860/ this
| is a neat paper as well -- the hallucinations can be
| provoked without any pharmaceutical assistance -- just
| diffuse flickering light.
| yboris wrote:
| One of my favorite papers! Thank you for sharing!
| harel wrote:
| I remember the entities. Or in my case a singular one. I went
| into it with zero expectations or knowledge of what other people
| experience and I'm glad for that. It's amazing that the common
| thread of the descriptions is so similar.
| nullsense wrote:
| The Default Mode Network codes for your sense of self in time and
| with others. DMT basically turns it off and that's why you feel
| that sense of oneness with everything right?
| lilboiluvr69 wrote:
| Some friends of mine did some tests with DMT entities. Apparently
| they can't solve math problems.
|
| I never believed they were anything other than hallucinations,
| but they were still some of the most positive and meaningful
| events in my life. I hope one day we'll know enough about
| consciousness to understand why DMT causes the formation of these
| seemingly other selves.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| As a layperson reading experiences, it sort of seems to align
| with a lot of Jungian psychology models. The idea that there's
| a guiding visualizable other self that provides insight and
| meaning when visited, but is still ultimately an extension of
| the self.
| andi999 wrote:
| I am always wondering. From split brain patients we know that
| there are two fully functioning halfs. And when you think
| about it from an IT perspective, it is difficult to imagine
| that they are fully synchronized (emotionally, information,
| etc). So basically you have a pair of twins sharing a phone
| line giving somehow the idea of a single person. I am not
| surprised that some odd things going on.
|
| (The old: left hemisphere math, right art or vice versa has
| been debunked if I remember correctly)
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > From split brain patients we know that there are two
| fully functioning halfs
|
| I don't think it necessarily shows that. The "two halves"
| may just be a phenomenon that arises when the brain splits,
| not something that's normally there. And I believe there
| have been recent studies that even brought the original
| split brain conclusions into question, i.e., there might
| still be communication happening between the two halves.
| anon73044 wrote:
| >(The old: left hemisphere math, right art or vice versa
| has been debunked if I remember correctly)
|
| As usual with biology, it's a bit more complicated than the
| '60s explanation ever revealed to the public.
| https://youtu.be/dFs9WO2B8uI
| leptons wrote:
| I have tried DMT more than a few times. Every time I felt a
| sense of connection to something greater, some would call it
| "God", and some call it "the Universe", etc.
|
| On one trip I caught a glimpse of this and within the trip I
| moved towards it, curious what it was, and I was pushing
| closer towards it trying to discover what it was, and then it
| "shattered" and revealed itself as my own subconscious - that
| force within me that protects me and guides me and loves me,
| it was my own self at its purest essence, stripped of all the
| layers that we construct to deal with the rest of the world.
| It was a rapturous epiphany, I literally turned into a
| million smiles and my own subconscious welcomed me "home".
|
| I know it probably sounds strange to some, but I do consider
| it a breakthrough. I haven't really needed to do any DMT
| since then. "Once you get the message, hang up the phone" -
| Alan Watts. I got the message. Oh wow, I got that message.
|
| I never believed the "aliens" in DMT trips were anything like
| "aliens", because after all, everything that occurs during a
| DMT trip is happening within your own brain. These aren't
| "beings", they are you, yourself, or at least the inner
| workings of "the self".
| pieceofcakedude wrote:
| Just beautiful, thank you for sharing.
| rootw0rm wrote:
| I've had a similar experience and it made me a better
| person. I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.
| Thanks for sharing.
| leptons wrote:
| I don't think that everyone that tries DMT will get
| there. The visuals can be distracting and are easy to
| focus on instead of using it as a tool for deep
| introspection. The "machine elves"/aliens may be
| something the subconscious uses to distract and some may
| see them as "the thing" and not look further, I don't
| really know. No doubt every trip is different, as is
| every person.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I see other dimensions, aliens, a higher mathematical order
| to reality, God, etc... as another way to explain "the
| subconscious". I think your subconscious manifests itself
| as what would be easier to understand for your ego, with
| varying degrees of effectiveness depending on the person.
|
| A conspiracy theory fan, a priest, a therapist, or a
| hardcore fan of David Lynch movies will probably see their
| inner selves manifest differently when the subconscious
| pushes through to show itself to ego in a way were it can
| be seen with our "eyes" and heard with out "ears".
| indigochill wrote:
| Well, he did deliberately induce this state on himself and
| record the results in The Red Book. And given that he had
| those experiences, it's no surprise his model of psychology
| aligns with those who also have.
|
| Which is not necessarily to discount it. I'm intrigued by his
| research and willingness to apply the scientific method to
| things other scientists would dismiss out-of-hand.
| ncrmro wrote:
| I have a copy of the red book that's still shrink wrapped,
| it's big.
|
| Think I should open it or read a digital copy now?
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| You should open it. The art is beautiful. I read a page
| everyday.
|
| Half the book is in Middle German. So..there is that...I
| just admire the calligraphy.
| temp0826 wrote:
| To the other jungians out there- a note/reminder that the
| black books are finally being released in October.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Since I haven't bought/read the 'Red' book, does the
| Black contain everything the Red does, i.e. a superset?
| johndevor wrote:
| I wonder if this lines up with the psychology of Internal
| Family Systems (IFS):
| https://www.reddit.com/r/InternalFamilySystems/
|
| Basically, that we are a collection of inner-selves, not a
| single self. IFS provides a framework for working with our
| inner selves.
| war1025 wrote:
| I've given up on reddit since their redesign. I know there is
| the `old.reddit.com` trick you can do, but I can't be
| bothered.
|
| Is there a non-reddit reference to this "Internal Family
| Systems" thing? I'd be interested in looking into it more.
| nullsense wrote:
| It's mentioned in The Body Keeps The Score
| disown wrote:
| Or maybe the self is an illusion.
|
| https://philosophynow.org/issues/97/The_Illusion_of_the_Self
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| Both.
|
| There are multiple selves, and each one of them is not as
| set in stone as we think.
| devilduck wrote:
| Possibly because math is a human invention and not actually
| "the language of the universe" or whatever
| anchpop wrote:
| There is a classic Slate Star Codex post/short story about
| whether DMT entities can do math:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-th...
| awb wrote:
| > "Right," I said. "We'll have more transcendent joy if you
| help me out and factor the number than if you just sit there
| being spiritual and enigmatic."
|
| This is hilarious :) Especially when you think of the
| entities he's arguing with as different aspects of his own
| consciousness.
|
| There's parts of all of us that want to pursue knowledge of
| the world around us and those parts that want to pursue our
| emotions and knowing ourselves.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| So, I've not read any of SSC, though obviously the news
| lately has made me aware of him.
|
| But this? This is pure genius. Thank you for the link! So
| many laugh out loud moments. I particularly enjoyed '"I
| demand a better answer than that," I demanded.'
| anchpop wrote:
| Scott is fond of sentences like that, especially with puns
| thrown in. I have no idea how he's so good at coming up
| with them. They took me a moment to understand so I'll
| explain with an example from this page [0]:
|
| "I'm not going to make a deathbed conversion," Tom said
| diagnostically.
|
| The sentence indicates that Tom is dying and not currently
| religious, and the word "diagnostically" sounds like a
| mixture between "die" and "agnostic". They aren't quite
| funny when explained but when you spend 3 minutes trying to
| figure one out before it slaps you in the face it's a very
| good time
|
| [0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/tag/tom-swifties/
|
| More examples:
|
| "I went rock-climbing with my girlfriend," Tom updated.
|
| "The defibrillator worked!" Tom said, repulsed.
|
| "My karate instructor died," Tom said, desensitized.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Woah. I never got most of the jokes on that post when I
| first read it. Now it's all obvious (and fun, finally).
| Thanks!
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| > _they can 't solve math problems_
|
| > _I never believed they were anything other than
| hallucinations_
|
| I mean, dogs can't do math either, yet they are real.
|
| I'm not necessarily arguing for the independent reality of the
| entities, I'm just saying that's not a super-conclusive test.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I think people generally perceive these entities as being
| advanced and hyper intelligent, hence the math question.
|
| But yeah, still not conclusive either way (but the most
| likely answer is still that they're constructions of your own
| mind).
| itronitron wrote:
| maybe they are so hyper-intelligent that they let their
| subconscious handle the math problems
| tsco77 wrote:
| Just to be pedantic, dogs can count (probably, or something
| akin to it).
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12357291/
| sideshowb wrote:
| But they can't look up
| tsumnia wrote:
| > Apparently they can't solve math problems.
|
| I wonder if math problems, or even simple logic statements, are
| the most appropriate criteria for interactions.
| dingdingdang wrote:
| Hmm, depends, it's one way to aim towards objectivity though.
| Unless of course these being exists in dimensions where base
| reality itself necessitates a different mathematical makeup
| ... causing the entities themselves to respond to your
| presence with "yeah, right, nice try fantasy person, wink-
| wink, now get out of my day dream"
| [deleted]
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| To play devil's advocate: Math arose largely to deal with the
| problem of scarce resources. Magical drug-summoned beings might
| never have needed to do that.
|
| To then argue against that: Trippy aliens would not need to
| confront our simplest kinds of scarcity, like for land or food,
| in order to need to economize. Any world that offers choices
| offers tradeoffs by definition. Rational agents facing
| tradeoffs arrive at math.
|
| Unless somehow emotional intelligence is more useful to them
| than economic rationality.
| angel_j wrote:
| Hi-tech aliens could send no-tech agents.
| emteycz wrote:
| I wonder if this is determined by skill of the person
| [deleted]
| subsubzero wrote:
| Wonder how close this phenomena is related with lucid dreaming.
| The reason I bring it up is back in college I was struggling
| with an assignment and could not get the solution to a problem.
| That night I had a extremely vivid lucid dream where I was told
| the solution to the problem. The crazy thing was I tested it
| the next morning and it worked. Most likely my subconscious
| solving the issue but it was extremely strange as the answer
| was very clear and was not a technique I was used to.
| Kiro wrote:
| Apex Twin claims he's using lucid dreams to make songs:
|
| > [...] it's a technique James claims to be responsible for
| 80% of the tracks of Selected Ambient Works Volume II. In a
| 1994 interview he explained, "I go to sleep, dream I'm in my
| studio with imaginary bits of gear and do a track. Then I
| wake myself up and recreate it. I can do this in about 20
| minutes."
|
| https://www.factmag.com/2017/04/14/funny-little-man-the-
| fact...
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| Back when chemistry was just getting started and scientists
| were still trying to figure out the structures of molecules,
| benzene was a tough issue, probably because folks could not
| make yet the mental leap to non-linear structures (closed
| loops).
|
| And then one night Kekule dreamed up the benzene ring, and
| the rest is history.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Leaving problems to simmer in the subconscious overnight is a
| pretty common technique. Results aren't always as vivid as a
| dream, but it's not unusual to wake up with an "Oh yes - of
| course" if you prime the problem the day before.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I had both type of experiences, lucid dreaming and something
| like what's described in the article. While a theory of the
| subconscious may explain both, they feel completely
| different. It's like skiing is technically like kicking a can
| because you use your legs for both, but no one analyses them
| both from the same framework and gets interesting conclusions
| or predictions.
| xpaqui wrote:
| In lucid dreams entities can solve math problems to a certain
| degree. Does it mean that the lucid dream ones are real then?
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| We are capable of holding more than one identity in our minds
| and switching between them. Some people use that ability to
| create "characters" (tulpas:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/hearing-voices-in-your-
| head-...) that they interact with or even allow to take over
| their bodies. Apparently some people go as far as replacing
| themselves with a tulpa they've created (they call this ego-
| suicide).
| rocketmaster1 wrote:
| There's a great Reply All episode on this:
| https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/49hr6k (#74 Making
| Friends)
| loves_mangoes wrote:
| That's amazing! I did not expect to read about Tulpas on
| Business Insider, so thank you for that.
|
| Somehow I'm not surprised that the tulpa in question is a
| batpony. There seems to be an interesting intersection
| between Tulpamancing and My Little Pony.
|
| Perhaps something about escapism.
| mr_overalls wrote:
| We are also capable of realizing directly that personal
| identity itself is also construct, a mask we put on to make
| sense of the world. Seeing through this illusion can be
| deeply unsettling, as well as deeply liberating. E.g.
| Buddhist insight into anatta, or non-self.
|
| Shinzen Young's description on the nuts and bolts of Shingon
| Buddhist deity yoga practice is simply fascinating.
|
| https://alvinalexander.com/personal/shinzen-young-shingon-
| sh... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_VizlDWcTA
| s3cur3 wrote:
| If you'd like a secular guide to experiencing this
| yourself, for my money, Sam Harris's Waking Up app is the
| best way to do it. It takes quite awhile to build up the
| mental toolset to get there, but it's very much worth it.
|
| https://www.wakingup.com
| ismail wrote:
| I came across a concept of "direct experience" with out
| going through normal meaning-making structures. Anyone have
| more details on this?
| thinkingemote wrote:
| For hallucinations there's been some research on the
| brain that found that what we see is more imagined than
| actually there. Our brains kind of fill in the gaps by
| hallucinating images.
| mr_overalls wrote:
| An emphasis on direct experience can be found throughout
| Buddhism, usually in the context of emphasizing its
| utility, while downplaying the usefulness of intellectual
| elaborations on Buddhist ideas. I.e., it's much better to
| have a single, concrete, personal experience of
| emptiness/non-self in meditation, than to read several
| volumes of Buddhist logic.
|
| If you want to trot out the doctrinal stuff, Dharmadhatu
| probably what you're looking for - it's the label given
| to purified mind in its natural state, free of
| obscurations. It is the essence-quality or nature of
| mind,
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharmadhatu
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| This is cool, but I've always felt buddhists make this too
| big of an issue. Yeah, the ego is just a process, like any
| other, but it was probably created as a result of some
| selection mechanism.
|
| I'm pretty sure in a situation of conflict, it's beneficial
| to kick the ego in higher gear. Sure, when things calm
| down, relax that thing. I feel pretty strongly that's the
| evolutionary reason for having an ego to begin with.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| The evolutionary reason is survival. When you were
| ostracized from your group, or attacked by others in the
| group, for tens of thousands of years, that meant certain
| death.
|
| Now it doesn't, and our emotional evolution hasn't caught
| up to our society or our intellectual sophistication. You
| don't have to respond to conflict at all, in 99% of
| cases. There is no benefit to winning. If someone cuts
| you off in traffic, getting mad and honking causes more
| pain for you AND for the other person. The most
| beneficial thing is to not even react other than to
| prevent a crash.
| mr_overalls wrote:
| I'm not an authority on this stuff, but the rationale
| that resonates with me is: 1) gaining awareness of &
| context for the ego-narrative can HUGELY reduce
| psychological suffering, and 2) the ego doesn't go away
| for the vast majority of practitioners - it is put into
| perspective within a larger awareness
| petra wrote:
| I agree, and I find the buddhist method very useful.
|
| But it seems that ambitious people usually have strong
| attachment to the ego and that what drives them.
|
| And that's useful in a highly competitive society, where
| apartments are expensive, for example.
|
| And once you out that into a larger perspective, some of
| that drive gets lost.
| qntty wrote:
| I'm no expert on this, but here's an essay from an
| American Buddhist monk that might explain the context a
| little better. In short, Buddhism is meant to be
| practiced and the idea of "no self" isn't supposed to be
| an answer to a philosophical question, it's supposed to
| be a guideline for how to relate to your experience.
| (Emphasis mine)
|
| > A case in point is the teaching on not-self. Many
| students interpret this as the Buddha's answer to two of
| the most frequently-asked questions in the history of
| serious thought: "Who am I?" and "Do I have a true self?"
| In the light of these questions, the teaching seems to be
| a no-self teaching, saying either an unqualified No:
| There is no self; or a qualified No: no separate self.
| But the one time the Buddha was asked point-blank if
| there is a self, he refused to answer, on the grounds
| that either a Yes or a No to the question would lead to
| extreme forms of wrong view that block the path to
| awakening. A Yes or a qualified No would lead to
| attachment: you'd keep clinging to a sense of self
| however you defined it. An unqualified No would lead to
| bewilderment and alienation, for you'd feel that your
| innermost sense of intrinsic worth had been denied.
|
| > As for the question, "Who am I?" the Buddha included it
| in a list of dead-end questions that lead to "a thicket
| of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion, a
| writhing, a fetter of views. Bound by a fetter of views,
| [you] don't gain freedom from birth, aging, and death,
| from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, or despair." In
| other words, any attempt to answer either of these
| questions is unskillful karma, blocking the path to true
| freedom.
|
| > So if the not-self teaching isn't meant to answer these
| questions, what question does it answer? A basic one:
| "What is skillful?" In fact, all of the Buddha's
| teachings are direct or indirect answers to this
| question. His great insight was that all our knowledge
| and ignorance, all our pleasure and pain, come from our
| actions, our karma, so the quest for true knowledge and
| true happiness comes down to a question of skill. In this
| case, the precise question is: "Is self-identification
| skillful?" And the answer is: "Only up to a point." _In
| the areas where you need a healthy sense of self to act
| skillfully, it 's wise to maintain that sense of self.
| But eventually, as skillful behavior becomes second
| nature and you develop more sensitivity, you see that
| self-identification, even of the most refined sort, is
| harmful and stressful. You have to let it go._
|
| https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/qu
| est...
| emptysongglass wrote:
| It doesn't matter how it was created, it's still poison.
| Practicing Buddhists don't "make a big deal" of the ego
| out of some neurotic compulsion taken too far: the ego is
| seen clearly as an essential link in the chain of
| suffering and is dropped, breaking the chain.
|
| I invite you to directly experience it for yourself; come
| and see.
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| I don't think we would have survived as a species in an
| "egoless" state. It's very nice while you have it, but it
| lacks all strength and drive that are necessary for great
| achievements or for putting up a good fight when
| necessary.
|
| For full perspective: I've practiced various meditation
| techniques my whole life - Orthodox Christian, various
| flavor of yoga (mostly Raja and Kundalini related stuff),
| even some Buddhist techniques (mostly Zen). I'm fairly
| familiar with the Buddhist doctrine, and Christian, and
| the Hindu Dharma. I've had my share of experiences,
| including some that looked quite ego-free - and yeah,
| it's awesome.
|
| I'm just saying, we shouldn't draw absolute lines here,
| or anywhere. The danger of narrow dogmatism is always
| present. And there's room for, and value in, the inner
| fire, the energy that builds things up and pushes things
| forward. That, too, is what we are.
|
| You live in a wonderful, immense house; don't confine
| yourself to a couple rooms only.
| tamarind8 wrote:
| Are you saying you do not have an ego?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| "You must give up your ego!"
|
| "Who said that?"
| war1025 wrote:
| I started watching that video and something about the
| interview with the "Tulpamancer" just really creeped me out.
| chews wrote:
| I think it's because we're watching schizophrenia and a doc
| who feels it's just rich escapism.
| Retric wrote:
| Mental illness like schizophrenia are by definition a net
| negative, that's why their disorders. It seems strange
| but people can be very different without mental problems
| or seem perfectly normal but have severe issues.
|
| It's why some but not all young children with imaginary
| friends can be considered fine. More strangely some
| adults have similar imaginary friends which they realize
| are mental constructs but they still enjoy interacting
| with them.
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| > _Apparently some people go as far as replacing themselves
| with a tulpa they 've created (they call this ego-suicide)._
|
| Sure, but I wonder how useful that is. After all, you're
| replacing one ego with another. Before, the controller was
| this group of processes running on this slice of the CPU, now
| it's a different (but similar) group of processes running on
| a somewhat shifted slice of the CPU.
|
| Maybe if the new processes are better in some ways then it
| would be worth it? Less anxious, more confident, something
| like that.
| [deleted]
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Never encountered a being while using DMT. The closest thing I
| recall was looking at the moonlight through clouds and
| hallucinating that it was all made out of skulls watching over
| me.
| colordrops wrote:
| I had the same experience of skulls on mushrooms. The moon
| seems to induce the strongest hallucinations for me for some
| reason. I've also seen it sprout wheels and drive down a
| mountain on acid. On ecstasy I saw perfectly symmetrical flower
| petals around the moon.
| pvarangot wrote:
| If you get insight by looking at the moon I would recommend
| next time you try fire.
| libertine wrote:
| Yikes!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| crmrc114 wrote:
| Reading the comments on this was thrilling. I don't normally go
| for hearing about trip experiences but something DMT stories
| makes them so much more fun to read vs. LSD and Psilocybin. Love
| the comments here.
| awsanswers wrote:
| I believe this shared motif is some default mode pattern matching
| in our unconscious mind.
|
| i.e. We have a built in "entity" template and DMT puts us in such
| a state that we fill in that template
| stinos wrote:
| Or there is no such template by default, but DMT causes it to
| be created in a similar way across people taking it, and the
| differences in what people experience are filled in according
| to their personality/life/...
|
| Sorry, too busy too look up the exact terminology and
| hypothesis now, but IIRC there's these 2 major theories on how
| the mind/drugs work: one camp (a bit like your statement) says
| things are built-in and certain feelings/states/thoughts/..
| exist by default but in a 'normal' sober state the neural
| pathways to them are not active, and drugs just open the
| correct gates to be able to access them; the other camp (more
| like what I wrote) says drugs alter enough things in the brain
| to create those feelings/... from scratch i.e. not opening a
| gate, more like creating a gate then opening it and keeping on
| creating what lies beyond.
|
| I can recommend the thought experiment of trying to figure it
| out which one it is, especially when on drugs, it's rather
| interesting :) Personally I settled for believing it's a
| mixture of the 2, mainly because I find it hard to believe the
| circuitry for some of the things I experienced is readily
| available whereas at the same time once you have a certain
| experience it can have a lasting effect and the neural
| connections remain somehow, making it much easier to have a
| similar experience next time.
| sidpatil wrote:
| The study:
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02698811209161...
| loceng wrote:
| I would argue Ayahuasca ceremonies, a group setting, with
| experienced individuals who are already open and have very
| heightened senses and higher than average sensory ability, and
| cataloguing the experiences individually - and then matching to
| see if there were shared experiences with specific entities or
| other beings - would be the research necessary to start creating
| proof points.
| Shoop wrote:
| Related fiction: "Universal Love, Said The Cactus Person" [0]
|
| [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-
| th...
| grawprog wrote:
| I've never tried DMT, though it's something I'd like to try. I
| did have an experience with entities and salvia though. I've
| smoked it a few times and there was always things there...it
| always felt like to them I was an ant they'd suddenly noticed
| were aware of them and they just seemed kind of amused.
|
| But one time, I tried smoking a small amout of it while chewing
| on some extract. I'd read that south American shamans would chew
| the leaves rather than smoking them.
|
| It was a totally different experience. After about ten minutes I
| had this extreme sense of derealization, like everything in the
| world was flat and 2 dimensional the like backdrop of a play and
| if I tried I could have just ripped it all down to see everything
| hidden behind it. It was a really strange feeling.
|
| Shortly after that though, was when the entity showed up. At the
| time, I was fairly addicted to minecraft. Like would spend ally
| free time playing that game.
|
| All of a sudden there was a voice screaming in my head that i'm
| wasting my time and life...something made...I really don't know
| how else to describe it, stand up and start walking into the wall
| over and over while the voice kept going see, this is what you've
| been spending your time doing. If you've ever played minecraft,
| it involves a lot of walking into walls to mine blocks.
|
| At that point, I started getting this overwhelming urge to go
| outside for a walk. I remember arguing with the thing saying it
| would be a bad idea to go outside. It ended up relenting and
| left.
|
| The whole experience was strange...I swear that must be what it
| feels like to be possessed or something. I know it's like just a
| hallucination, but it sure felt real and even remembering it it
| feels real.
|
| Real or not, I stopped playing minecraft after that. Haven't
| played more than a few hours since.
| goodgrief99 wrote:
| I never smoked DMT, but I smoked salvia a lot. To avoid crazy
| trips, you have to take it horizontally in the dark quiet room.
| About 50% of trips started the same: the UFO arrives and hangs
| over me. Pulsating tunnel is started to connect me with the
| ship. Then 'they' start to drag me to the ship. The result
| depends of the smoked quantity. If you got 1-2 hits, you will
| not reach the ship. Yes, they will help you, they will drag
| you, but with no luck. But if you took 2-3 hits, the next what
| you will see is the space. With ships and 'lands'. So I felt
| those entities like good older brothers. In IT terms I was like
| junior and they like teamlids. I agree that that world feels
| more real than this one.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I have no desire to ever try salvia (heard too many bad things
| about how dysphoric it can be), but the 2D nature of it is
| really fascinating. You hear that same type of thing from many
| people. I wonder what the mechanism is that causes that to
| happen.
| evo_9 wrote:
| A breakdown in our perception of the holographic projection
| we live within.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| >heard too many bad things about how dysphoric it can be
|
| I tried Salvia once (35x extract which, yes, was incredibly
| dumb for a first timer), and my experience was so nightmarish
| and traumatic that I've never tried anything stronger than
| coffee since.
|
| Salvia is its own deterrent.
| grawprog wrote:
| Yeah to agree with you and the parent commenter, salvia's
| not fun. It's interesting, but not fun. It can be fairly
| terrifying and i'm not a big fan of the body feeling. It's
| certainly not something you start craving or wanting to do
| long term. That was all years ago and when I finished
| everything I bought, I never replenished it. But, it was
| interesting.
|
| And just so I don't have to write a second comment, to the
| above poster.
|
| The 2d effect was one of the strangest things i've ever
| experienced. I've tried my fair share of hallucinogens, but
| nothing's been quite like that. It lingered a while longer
| than everything else. Again though, it wasn't the most
| pleasant feeling, my girlfriend and roommate were with me
| and even they had that 2d not real seeming look to them
| which was kind of disconcerting.
|
| Overall it wasn't really something I regretted and feel
| like breaking my game addiction was a good outcome, but
| it's not an experience I'd like to repeat. Even after
| years, the memory of it all is still pretty vivid.
| dls2016 wrote:
| > overwhelming urge to go outside for a walk
|
| classic salvia
| AbnoxiousFox wrote:
| It's so great that there are actually people dedicated in
| scientific studies about DMT! I have a degree in CS and work in
| the field for 10 years. For 6 years now I've been participating
| in those mediunic rituals with ayahuasca and everything that
| comes to me is love, greatefulness and a contact with my inner
| self. When it comes to God we are actually talking about a more
| intense contact with our inner selves which already can be
| explained by psychology, but then it comes the interesting part:
| it feels like technology is inside my mind in such a way that
| when I'm under effect of ayahuasca the "beings" that I encounter
| are very much like "elven" machines but I don't see them, I feel
| an energic presence and the visual manifestation of that energy
| in my brain reflects in the form of patterns thus this "machine"
| looking visuals. Something very interesting about me being on DMT
| is that I'm able to render those voxels words indefinitely and
| visualize everything with sound like the sound is the code behind
| those renderers in my mind. I believe guys like Tesla, Einstein
| and so many others did have this same capacity to interact with
| their inner selves / sub consciousness and fully use their mental
| capacity in such a way that the "energic entities" (read the
| energy in your own brain parts) were able to describe to them the
| factories of the universe in the middle of a dream. You may
| actually follow up on this work with convicted man in Brazil:
| https://revistatrip.uol.com.br/trip/presos-de-rondonia-usam-...
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| Thank you for sharing your experience.
|
| > I believe guys like Tesla, Einstein and so many others did
| have this same capacity
|
| Sometimes when reading quotes by people like them, I get a
| similar impression, like they were "connected to the source",
| or "enlightened", and they intuitively followed that connection
| towards their achievements.
|
| It also reminds me of a part in a documentary about Steve Jobs
| when a friend of his says "Steve was enlightened, and he blew
| it", hinting at him using that connection or "power" for what
| she felt was the wrong purpose.
| ekam wrote:
| What's the name of the documentary?
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| Can't remember, it seems like it's "Man in the Machine",
| and the friend was also Jobs' former girlfriend and mother
| of his first daughter:
| https://mashable.com/2015/03/15/steve-jobs-man-machine/
| auganov wrote:
| > The form and nature of these beings vary in reports, but one
| thing remains curiously constant: People tend to rank these
| encounters among the most meaningful experiences of their lives.
| For some people, these encounters change their beliefs about
| reality, the existence of an afterlife, and God.
|
| Wonder how much of this is simply the fact this is a highly
| illegal and hard to obtain drug. By definition it would be an
| unusual experience for anybody and people tend to assign more
| meaning to the not-mundane. I sincerely doubt you'd be hearing
| all these stories if you could get these drugs in a grocery
| store.
| donut2d wrote:
| The most common emotions were "joy (65%), trust (63%), surprise
| (61%), love (59%), kindness (56%), friendship (48%), and fear
| (41%) during the encounter experience, with smaller proportions
| reporting emotions such as sadness (13%), distrust (10%), disgust
| (4%), or anger (3%)." Interestingly, 58 percent of respondents
| said the being also had an emotional response, almost always a
| positive one.
|
| Wow!
| KingFelix wrote:
| If you're into some awesome science Towards a Science of
| Consciousness conference is going on right now, amazing talks /
| Zoom chats with some great scientists. Join in on the
| conversations! https://consciousness.arizona.edu/
| non-entity wrote:
| Wow I wonder if this is just luck in the respondents having a
| good setting / proper preparation, etc. or innate effects of
| the drug. Ive had other psychedelics kick my ass more than a
| few times with anxiety / paranoia.
| munchhausen wrote:
| The difference to other psychedelics is the nature of the DMT
| trip - it is extremely "fast", short, and overwhelming. There
| simply is too little "idle" time in the trip (none, actually)
| for the rational mind to start developing paranoia or anxiety
| about what is happening.
|
| It also helps that the whole thing is so otherworldly, the
| thinking mind is simply awed into silence. It takes a while
| before you could even begin to develop a conceptual
| interpretation of what is happening, and by then the whole
| thing is over and you are back to your sober self.
|
| With other, long-acting psychedelics, there is plenty of time
| and opportunity for the mind to develop its own "spin" on the
| experience, and produce anxiety. Not so with DMT - it's like
| being shot out of a cannon and then coming back to earth just
| as fast.
|
| It sounds terrifying and it is, when you're reflecting on it
| outside of the container of the trip. Somehow, while it's
| happening, you don't even have time to think about how
| terrifying it is, and as a result of that it ends up being
| OK. Tells you a lot about the nature of anxiety, really.
| gavinray wrote:
| See, that logically sounds like the outcome you'd expect
| but the time dilation from enough DMT can make the
| experience feel like hours, or potentially even an eternity
| if you start looping or time stops.
|
| You are no longer player by the normal rules, so you can
| throw deterministic time measurements out of the window
| lol.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| The potential for anxiety and paranoia are heightened for me
| since I took cannabis edibles and had a horrendous reaction
| where I was 99% sure I was dying from a heart-attack or lack
| of oxygen. I took it at 11AM and I was still slightly high
| the next afternoon, so it lasted well over 24 hours! It was
| the worst experience of my life with any drug. This is coming
| from someone that smoked Salvia over 150 times in one year...
| I was basically doing it every other day. I only had one bad
| trip on salvia. I also did shrooms at a rave once and while
| that experience wasn't great nor horrible, it was just
| exhausting and I wanted it to be over after a couple of
| hours. All of this leaves me with a desire to try DMT but a
| huge fear of dealing w/ the same anxiety and paranoia I got
| from the edible cannabis ordeal.
| leptons wrote:
| You just had too much THC. Edibles are nothing to mess
| around with - you have to know your dose. You have to know
| how you will react to the dose. You have to work your way
| up with a known source to gauge your reaction to it. If you
| just eat whatever cookie someone hands you, you're almost
| certainly going to have a bad time.
| kls wrote:
| I have the same reaction to THC, smoked the stuff once, and
| convinced my friends that I was actually dying so they
| dumped me off at the hospital. Never touched the stuff
| again. If you have anxiety issue THC can spike them and
| cause you to go into a full blown panic attack and a full
| blown panic attack when you are stoned is one of the worst
| experiences you can have. The one I had was 1000 times
| worse than any panic attack I have had before or after.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Possibly responsible for many of the reported differences
| between dmt (especially traditional oral varieties such as
| ayahuasca) and lsd or psilocybin. The latter are often used
| in recreational (and often irresponsible) settings, while dmt
| is often treated more seriously.
|
| Even in a controlled test, expectations probably still play a
| meaningful role. Possible ethical issues with randomizing the
| active test.
| non-entity wrote:
| That's a good point as well, but I wonder if this will
| change over time as DMT seems to become more known and
| talked about.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| From infinity converging onto me: a neon hued triangle. Three
| beams shoot from its vertices, which have sprouted eyes. The
| laser beams scan my body and enter into my soul through my eyes.
|
| WHO ARE YOU
|
| i'm... me?
|
| WHO IS I?
|
| i am... ?
|
| Reality breaks down as colors rush over me. Intense joy suffuses
| my hitherto depressed existence. I return from the trip shivering
| and crying tears of joy.
|
| Strong shit.
|
| Years later, during a music show, I close the time loop by going
| out of body and becoming that triangle, letting my past self know
| everything will be okay, and life is worth it.
|
| DMT... yeah.
| carabiner wrote:
| Mine looked like hanging drapes closing in around me, but
| completely non-threatening. They were bright white, green, and
| brown stripes, and rhythmically pulsing, like breathing. I had
| the strongest sense they were non-threatening and watching over
| me. I never thought they were anything but hallucinations
| though.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| It's pretty remarkable how overwhelmingly intense and yet
| benign the experience can be.
| Stierlitz wrote:
| Long ago when I used to do maintenence on video consoles and pin-
| ball machines. The pin-ball machine was built with a standard
| desktop motherboard with additional circuits for the display and
| sound. If you wetted you finger and ran it along the tracks on
| the PCB, the audio circuit emitted strange avant garde sounding
| music. I figure it was the machine equivalent of a DMT trip :]
|
| OH WOW: self-transforming fractal machine elves ;]
| heimatau wrote:
| This could be a good analogy to what our brain experience. We
| do compartmentalize things, for efficiency reasons. (I.e. a
| book is a book. we have concrete models of the world to
| reference; like a PCB board has concrete functions it performs)
|
| Then...one can swipe the board with a wet finger that produces
| unintended non-negative consequences. Same could be said of DMT
| and the brain. Great comparison Stierlitz!
| KingFelix wrote:
| Anyone interested in this should check out Towards a Science of
| Consciousness conference going on right now. Selen Atasoy just
| spoke, Dennis Mckenna, Paul Stamets, Robin Carhart-Harris, and
| lots of other really great Psychedelic scientists. + Many many
| other avenues of Consciousness https://consciousness.arizona.edu/
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