Psychedelics

I'm not saying a hallucinated object is equivalent to an actual one. I'm saying that you can't discount subjective mental experiences/phenomena simply because they aren't amenable to objective observation and measurement.

I'm really just responding to a few posts back about money and politics not being real. Such things are real phenomena. They're socially transmitted concepts—viral ideas—which produce real, objectively measurable results. One can even often predict those results as one can predict the behavior of metals near a magnet.

I imagine even a realist like yourself would agree that gravity is a real force. But "gravity" really just describes the behavior of matter. Isn't money just as real as gravity?

  On 6/30/2015 at 5:14 AM, caze said:

his perception of the unreal knife was actually a real configuration of neural connectivity and electro-chemical processes, his subjective experience isn't reality, it is a projection of a more fundamental interaction in the really real world. subjectively speaking, there may be no difference between a hallucination of a knife and the visual perception of an actual knife, but objectively only one scenario includes a chunk of metal atoms bound together in space, and neither subjective experience is reality, one merely contains a more readily determined relationship to reality.

there are more than one so called reality. yours is not the only one. 'this' is not the only one. maybe the only one that 'matters' to you. nothing to do with psychedelics really.

  On 6/30/2015 at 6:13 AM, doorjamb said:

I'm not saying a hallucinated object is equivalent to an actual one. I'm saying that you can't discount subjective mental experiences/phenomena simply because they aren't amenable to objective observation and measurement.

 

I'm really just responding to a few posts back about money and politics not being real. Such things are real phenomena. They're socially transmitted concepts—viral ideas—which produce real, objectively measurable results. One can even often predict those results as one can predict the behavior of metals near a magnet.

 

I imagine even a realist like yourself would agree that gravity is a real force. But "gravity" really just describes the behavior of matter. Isn't money just as real as gravity?

In what manner do you think I'm discounting them? I'm discounting that they represent a window to a more fundamental level of reality is all (in fact they're far more likely to add a layer of obfuscation). And I don't agree that they're not amenable to objective observation and measurement, because I believe that everyday subjective experience and hallucinatory experience are fundamentally very similar, and I obviously believe everyday subjective experience is amenable to objective observation and measurement.

Social constructs are not real in the same sense as matter and energy (or whatever it is those things really are) are real, they only exists as representations in the minds of people, encoded as patterns of matter and energy (or whatever). It's may be more useful for us to talk about the emergent properties than the complex array of deterministic causes (or even probabilistic causes, if it turns out that is a true property of reality), but only one of the two is actual at the end of the day. They may appear real to us in our day to day experience, but it's not the same category of reality as the fundamental reality that they are constructed out of (even if we never truly know what this is, we can still make judgements on theories as to whether they are more or less true with respect to it).

The theory of General Relativity describes the behaviour of matter (or more accurately the curving of space by matter/energy), I don't think it's correct to say that 'Gravity' itself is limited a mere description. We don't know what gravity is really, at least until we can reconcile it with QM at a minimum, but the other forces of nature do seem to represent some fundamental nature of reality, when we figure gravity out it may be the same; or it may indicate some deeper system of which gravity and the other forces are only specific configurations.

  On 6/30/2015 at 11:33 AM, skibby said:

 

  On 6/30/2015 at 5:14 AM, caze said:

his perception of the unreal knife was actually a real configuration of neural connectivity and electro-chemical processes, his subjective experience isn't reality, it is a projection of a more fundamental interaction in the really real world. subjectively speaking, there may be no difference between a hallucination of a knife and the visual perception of an actual knife, but objectively only one scenario includes a chunk of metal atoms bound together in space, and neither subjective experience is reality, one merely contains a more readily determined relationship to reality.

 

there are more than one so called reality. yours is not the only one. 'this' is not the only one. maybe the only one that 'matters' to you. nothing to do with psychedelics really.

 

there are many different perceptions of reality, including mine and yours. there is only one fundamental reality though, neither of us knows what it is, and it may well be unknowable in principle.

I believe heads are entitled to thar beliefs. But facts are only really strong beliefs.

Haven't done any psychedlics in quite a while, but I used to eat shrooms semi-regularly, shrooms are fun and I've kinda been wanting to do them again, but haven't found the time to. Although people say night time gives you more hallucinations, I always prefered to daytrip outside in the sunshine, usually in a large park or nature reserve.

The one and only time I did acid I candyflipped (dropped the acid and snorted some ecstacy), and it was amazing, I seriously could probably write a short novel about everything that happened within that 24 hours. In fact part of the reason I've never done it again was because I'm not sure I could ever outdo the overwhelming experience of that first time...

I never knew exactly how much I took but I was told it was quite potent acid, and I later found out by people more experienced in such things after describing the strip that was cut off the sheet and handed to me it was more than likely quite a few hits. It probably took me a full 24 hours to fully comedown... It was like Fear and Loathing level events all jammed into one crazy night/day including a legit out of body experience, a friend having a bad trip and getting hospitalized (he's okay now), some very strange conversations with other people tripping, a car crash that very nearly could have killed me (I wasn't the one driving and we somehow managed to bounce off the tire of the pickup that blew through a stop sign), wandering downtown by myself and into a very busy bank to speak with a friend who worked there, etc... It was fucking crazy, awesome, but crazy and i remember the whole night very vividly.

Nothing like the first LSD trip, yo. God is like, "Dude, check this out..." *touches your taint*

I haven't tripped in a while. I hear the spirits calling me.

I remember this one time I was all taking xanax for a couple days and drifting out of dreaming and being awake. I then did some DXM and smoked some crazy weed and I realized that my awake and asleep life had been so thin and mundane that I was unable to tell one from the other. False memories of my girlfriend of the time were as believable as real ones. I then remembered the frightening reality of another person's consciousness being unknowable, as perception is simply a limited projection of one's brain. EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS FALSE

[youtubehd]K_FUYELukEs[/youtubehd]

Taking psychedelics can at the very least enliven the senses and remind you of the variety of beauty and mystery in life. There is scary uncharted territory outside the narrow road our brains have adapted to work on in our everyday lives.

The morning after my first mushroom trip I felt like I had survived WWII and experienced the full spectrum of human existence.

Anyone who has experience with psilocybin mushrooms: What's a safe dosage to get a decent trip, more than a just a body high. I realize there are many different types of psilocybin mushrooms and different tolerances.

  On 8/23/2015 at 2:58 AM, Danny O Flannagin said:

Anyone who has experience with psilocybin mushrooms: What's a safe dosage to get a decent trip, more than a just a body high. I realize there are many different types of psilocybin mushrooms and different tolerances.

2 g, but take 2 1/2 - 3 to be certain. You're not going to trip "too hard" on less than 4g.

  On 8/23/2015 at 2:58 AM, Danny O Flannagin said:

Anyone who has experience with psilocybin mushrooms: What's a safe dosage to get a decent trip, more than a just a body high. I realize there are many different types of psilocybin mushrooms and different tolerances.

very scary/full ego loss doses of shrooms are 'safe' physically speaking. but if you mean generally safe on your mind too I would suggest a half of an 1/8th for a first time. If you're feeling brave, twice that. A full 1/8th of decent cubensis will be borderline ego loss, you'll be able to take yourself in and out of the more crazy hallucinatory states but it will be fairly intense.

The nature of shrooms is intense. I don't think you're really going to avoid that and still properly trip. You can take a small dosage of like 1 gram and get some visual, but then it's more like getting stoned than tripping imo. Not worth it. If you are trying to get your feelers then I understand, but really I think just diving into it is not a bad idea if you have faith yourself and those around you. Good environment is KEY.

  On 6/18/2015 at 10:38 PM, caze said:

 

  Quote

1) Yes i understand that experiences on LSD entail hallucinations.

My point was that all conscious perception is in a way hallucinatory. Hallucinations are just operating modes of neural activity, everyday perceptions are hallucinations directed by sensory input, a drug induced hallucination is just some aspect of that neural activity being altered biochemically, but it's fundamentally the same thing, from the point of view of our perception of it.

 

I completely get what you're aiming for here - that every sensory experience is merely an interpretation of an outer reality which can never be truly interpreted 'as is' by our inner homonculus. Plato and all that. However I think the group hallucination we experience in general is as close as anyone can get to agreeing what 'reality' is. I certainly would prefer todrive straight than I would after a nice dose of liberty caps, 2CB, or even alcohol or a few spliffs.

In some cases I think it's nicer to agree to reality being 'what the majority of people agree reality is' than anything else.

  On 8/23/2015 at 3:13 AM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

The nature of shrooms is intense. I don't think you're really going to avoid that and still properly trip. You can take a small dosage of like 1 gram and get some visual, but then it's more like getting stoned than tripping imo. Not worth it. If you are trying to get your feelers then I understand, but really I think just diving into it is not a bad idea if you have faith yourself and those around you. Good environment is KEY.

1 gram is a small dose?

damn guess I'm a lightweight then lol

  On 8/23/2015 at 3:08 AM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

 

  On 8/23/2015 at 2:58 AM, Danny O Flannagin said:

Anyone who has experience with psilocybin mushrooms: What's a safe dosage to get a decent trip, more than a just a body high. I realize there are many different types of psilocybin mushrooms and different tolerances.

2 g, but take 2 1/2 - 3 to be certain. You're not going to trip "too hard" on less than 4g.

 

This is hugely subjective. Mexican, Hawaiian, European, Truffles?

I have no way to judge what I've taken cause it's been random shit. I always take 2g and it's only not been enough 1 time, and it's never been two intense to deal with, but I take care to make sure everything is in its right place beforehand. I've redosed halfway through with another 2g once and that was intense, and very enjoyable.

Well, what you dosed with is extremely important in context. What variety? How fresh were they? Were they dried?

Edit: I spose it's worth noting it's really hard to kill yourself on shrooms but the variety deetermines the strength. And getting your mind fucked when you're not expecting it isn't fun.

My opinion is that if you're going for it you should have your head straight beforehand and the dosage won't ever really be a problem if you use common sense dosing. If you don't trust yourself to be able to handle something intense you shouldn't be doing it, and if you're inexperienced us a chaperon. I understand taking a small dosage for first time, but in my opinion it always leaves you wanting more anyway so might as well go for it.

  On 8/23/2015 at 3:25 AM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

I have no way to judge what I've taken cause it's been random shit. I always take 2g and it's only not been enough 1 time, and it's never been two intense to deal with, but I take care to make sure everything is in its right place beforehand. I've redosed halfway through with another 2g once and that was intense, and very enjoyable.

that's some heavy dosage

adieu, you should be watmm's resident shaman

seriously

all in favor say 'aye' (or 'high'?)

  On 8/23/2015 at 3:31 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 8/23/2015 at 3:25 AM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

I have no way to judge what I've taken cause it's been random shit. I always take 2g and it's only not been enough 1 time, and it's never been two intense to deal with, but I take care to make sure everything is in its right place beforehand. I've redosed halfway through with another 2g once and that was intense, and very enjoyable.

 

that's some heavy dosage

 

 

adieu, you should be watmm's resident shaman

seriously

all in favor say 'aye' (or 'high'?)

 

I would love to lead watmm through a psychedelic experience. I know I sound like I don't take great care in these things right now by my tone, but I do.

  On 8/23/2015 at 3:31 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 8/23/2015 at 3:25 AM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

I have no way to judge what I've taken cause it's been random shit. I always take 2g and it's only not been enough 1 time, and it's never been two intense to deal with, but I take care to make sure everything is in its right place beforehand. I've redosed halfway through with another 2g once and that was intense, and very enjoyable.

 

that's some heavy dosage

 

 

adieu, you should be watmm's resident shaman

seriously

all in favor say 'aye' (or 'high'?)

 

Psychedelic machismo ≠ good shamanism

telling someone to take 4 grams for their first time on shrooms and that they just need the right 'headspace' to trip right is imo terrible advice.

  On 8/23/2015 at 3:33 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

 

  On 8/23/2015 at 3:31 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 8/23/2015 at 3:25 AM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

I have no way to judge what I've taken cause it's been random shit. I always take 2g and it's only not been enough 1 time, and it's never been two intense to deal with, but I take care to make sure everything is in its right place beforehand. I've redosed halfway through with another 2g once and that was intense, and very enjoyable.

 

that's some heavy dosage

 

 

adieu, you should be watmm's resident shaman

seriously

all in favor say 'aye' (or 'high'?)

 

Psychedelic machismo ≠ good shamanism

 

telling someone to take 4 grams for their first time on shrooms and that they just need the right 'headspace' to trip right is imo terrible advice.

 

haha fair enough. My first recommendation was 2g which is only a little bit more than what you suggested anyway. Underwhelming experiences are just so disappointing.