Esoteric, (Hidden,) Knowledge

If you were joking, it went over my head... sometime's difficult to read through the text lines. I figure anyone who uses Einstein in an argument does so to boost their point of sincerity.

Also, Absinthe is a different buzz than being drunk of your standard liquor or even liquor with higher alcohol content like 151. What's been largely discarded regarding absinthe is it's myth as a powerful hallucinogen.

 

Bullshit, people say shit like whiskey gives a different buzz than rum, or "tequila makes me crazy!" blah blah blah it's all ethyl alcohol.
I've experimented with the main constituent of absinthe, Wormwood. and I took it in quantity's much greater that any absinthe contains...nothing. they say "it's a synergy of all the herbs" I still call bullshit.

Stravinsky and Zappa weren't just artists in the general sense, they were ground breaking composers in the highest sense.

BTW, Stravinsky was hospitalized for nicotine poisoning. Them pipe smokers can really pound it back, lol

 

In the interest of esoteric knowledge I would like to point out that the tobacco plant and traditional native uses are a different animal than the tobacco product cigarette that the tobacco industry produces.
http://www.jeffreywigand.com/WHOFinal.pdf

 

I can't imagine why you would think I was joking, Einstein just happens to be on the top of the list because most people know who he is. I don't need to drop names to boost my point of sincerity. Not too many people even know why Stravinsky was a groundbreaking composer. Most people haven't even caught up with modern music from 100 years ago

Igor Stravinsky

 

No, it's not a " different animal". The biggest difference is in the curing process.This process inevitably produces a wide variety of chemicals that are not present in the original material.
Yes there are accidental contaminates in tobacco, and there are pesticide residues, as there are in all commercial food products, to a greater or lesser degree. And as far as intentional additives, they are flavorings derived from tobacco, that are added to low quality product to make them taste like something. If you grow a tobacco plant, dry it and try to smoke it, even a hard core smoker would gag and wretch. it's practically un-smokable. It's not until it's properly cured that it becomes a desirable product. Fine flue cured smoking tobacco is a relatively modern discovery. It was an accident. The slave that was supposed to be monitoring the wood fired drying barns fell asleep. He was whipped, but when they tried the supposedly ruined tobacco they found not only was it not ruined, it was freakin' awesome! They've been flue-curing in much the same manner ever since.

 

I can guarantee you that not all these chemicals have been tested for combustion by-products alone, never-mind in combination with tobacco or with each other:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarettes

While a large part of the toxicity from cigarettes is derived from the flu-cure methods, there are other compounds added to cigarettes. And when those compounds combust, who knows what is being produced. Nor what interactions those by-products may have with each other. These flavourings are not all derived from tobacco anyway.


I would also disagree that nicotine doesn't get you high. I've been a nicotine user for a few years now (snus, not cigarettes) and I would say I still chase the high. I smoked cigarettes for a few months of my life, and even then there is still an aspect of getting high to it. Most of the cigarettes you smoke/tobacco you consume in a day don't get you buzzed per se, but I would say most smokers are still chasing that fleeting nicotine high.

 

Maybe your system was just resistant to it like those people who don't get high the first time they smoke weed. Also there is pharmaclogical evidence supporting why the mix of wormwood and alcohol in absinthe would create a unique buzz.

 

Well possibly that could be true, I don't know. I personally am averse to alcohol, and it's not because I have a moral objection, or for lack of trying. When I was a teen I drank like anyone, more maybe because I got a lot of free booze when I was gigging. I just got tired of the buzz and what I saw it do to people. When I was experimenting with wormwood I was pretty young and looking for a buzz from something legal and easy to get ahold of, had I thought there was some synergy with alcohol I probably would have tried it...but I still would have been dubious as to weather the effect of the herb would be noticeable above the effect of the alcohol. A booze buzz is not something that tends to lend objectivity, lol
Then again if I'd had some booze at the time I probably wouldn't have been fucking around with the wormwood, I would have just drank the booze and been happy with that! lol

That Van Gogh and other artists from that era indulged in absinthe I don't believe had anything to do with enhancing their artistry, they were just enjoying a certain variety of drug of their time, alcohol. I really doubt they had much discernment of buzz, they just liked it, and liked fucking around with the whole sugar cube ritual and what-not. And they generally didn't indulge while they were working. In fact history illustrates absinthe was pretty danged deleterious to these artists and their work.

Nicotine on the other hand does not cause intoxication, if fact there's evidence that it could increase and bolster critical higher brain synapses, as evidenced in the recent observations having to do with preventing the onset of Alzheimers disease, which is shown to be mush less prevalent in smokers and other users of nicotine.

 

As someone who has lost family to lung cancer from smoking cigarettes, your argument falls on deaf ears.

Similarly with absinthe, the argument could be made there was a time when it was used medicinially but both drugs have a toxic addictive side as well. Both drugs probably have a very narrow scope of medical benefits, however I certainly think the way they are using cigarettes in Indonesia as shown in that video is bogus.

If you don't enjoy alcohol then there is probably not much to find of value in absinthe. In my experience, it slightly reminds me of cocaethylene (alcohol + cocaine) Absinthe gets me drunk but I don't feel really impaired or out of it like I do when drinking alot of liquor, it's a more functional intoxication. However, it seems to have a shorter duration, so I usually drink a decent amount when I do it. If I combine it with other liquor, I usually just feel wasted, but on it's own I prefer it over regular liquor, it's pricey though.

 

well I had my detailed rebuttal typed out and a simple backspace fucked me over again. Fuck it I don't care to retype it. I basically call bs on that wiki entry, those ingredients are mainly for other types of tobacco, Pipe, chewing, and snuff. American spirit uses no additives and neither do the major brands of unflavored cigarettes. Menthol cigs are a different story

Hey, here's a conspiracy theory for ya. The dangers of tobacco have been over over-played because 'they' (yes, the big 'they', lol) don't want to address the biggest health issue facing us all, environmental pollution.

Case in point; When my late grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer, the kind most associated with smoking, nothing she or any of her family members could say would convince the doctors that not only had she never smoked, but she was never exposed to any kind of second hand smoke, grandfather didn't smoke, nor did any of her family growing up. They insisted she wasn't telling the truth and never backed down from that stance...

Somethings not all together clear here.

I'm not purporting this theory as absolute, just something to think about.

And cannabissoul, if you are 'chasing a high' with snus you've got a different sort of problem, it's called 'jonesing'.. it's a psychological problem you should probably think about addressing.

 

What argument, did I say anywhere tobacco smoking was entirely benign? Fuck you

 

I already owned you on your dumbass assumptions about absinthe..

This argument, if there is anything suggesting negative aspects of nicotine here that I am glossing over, please point them out... otherwise shut the fuck up.

 

The few times I've done chewing tobacco I was buzzing pretty good. Definitely a high of sorts. The first and last time I mixed chewing tobacco with booze, I got way too intoxicated.

Spliff bowls will fuck you up too.

 

i remember when i first started smoking that you definitely could get a buzz from nicotine and that if you were drinking and then smoked a cigarette that it would almost double the level of intoxication. eventually that effect dissappeared and i dont smoke anymore but i still have to have nicotine in some form or else i get edgy and uncomfortable and can't think about anything except getting some nicotine in my system.

 

Which is why I say it is a different animal. It is not unsmokeable it is just not conducive to habitual use but it was used ceremonially as an entheogen. Selective breeding has changed the native chemical profile to become more potent as do additives in commercial processing, making the product more addictive and easier to consume. They use additives to make it easier to smoke or to sedate the choking reaction., it is not just a curing process that makes the cigarette palatable in a habit forming way. In the paper I posted it states that only about 50 percent of the volume of a cigarette is just tobacco the rest is what they call recon or various scraps reconstituted in various ways and other additives. Even the construction of the paper wrapping of the cigarette is formulated to sell the product in a chemically dependent way.

"Before the development of lighter Virginia and White Burley strains of tobacco, the smoke was too harsh to be inhaled. Small quantities were smoked at a time, using a pipe like the midwakh or kiseru or smoking newly invented waterpipes such as the bong or the hookah (See Thuoc lao for a modern continuance of this practice)."

 

He might not have understood what you were saying. I know I didn't quite get what you were saying. What are you saying about absinthe? That it is different in effect from other alcoholic preparations? Based on your subjective experience? I didn't catch where you owned him on dumbass assumptions.

Cigarettes are formulated to increase tolerance and addictive properties. For the less than habituated there is a high.

 

Refer to the bottom quoted portion of my post #1507.

 

Functional intoxication is a misnomer unless the function is to be intoxicated. You may function on a normal level better at some levels of intoxication than others.

 

Phenomena such as state-dependent memory may suggest otherwise but that is a whole other digression. When comparaing levels of intoxication I find it an apt description.

 

His Firebird Suite is my best friend and mine's definitive LSD soundtrack for when we are ready to release the shackles of sobriety. You are right to say we have yet to catch up to him . . . stunning work, can be very tough to chew on for those just introduced to him or to "classical music" in general. I play piano, primarily romantic era (primarily chopin) so the step to Stravinsky had lots of ground work, and still . . . gorgeous, luscious, primal, force

I think it's time for you to elaborate on what you mean by "ritual". You say this word so much, I don't know what you mean by it, this is a primary reason for my lack of involvement.

Also from your comment I suspect you don't know much about meditation (which is a kind of ritual in the dictionary definition of the term), and which forms the bedrock of much of humanity's spiritual knowledge, practice, and insight into psychology.

Meditation is not acknowledged post 2012. You only think this because you get your knowledge third or fourth hand; you read a website, which has chosen to to quote another website, which has chosen to quote an academic journal, which has chosen to quote a study. Your data is filtered through many hands and distorted and so you think "WOW, look at this, an article about meditation in 2015!! Post 2012!!" Meanwhile meditation has been studied with a fervor you cannot imagine since basically the 1950s, and in particular since the early 2000's.

John Kabatt-Zinn, the Einstein of this field (meditation in western science), founded his first clinic and developed what is western scientific meditation (MBSR, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) in 1979.

China you are still scratching around and just not doing your homework. Basics my friend. When you take this seriously, you will benefit from it. Until then you are dogmatically fighting a battle you don't even comprehend.