Callous attitudes towards important chemicals

What is meant by the psychedelic experience? Isn't it different for everyone? And further, isn't it different for every chemical? Daniel Pinchbeck wrote in "Breaking Open the Head" that he felt like our brain is designed like a radio that is normally set on one station, but the use of psychedelics allows us to turn the station to receive other "styles of music and sounds." To take this one step further, I feel like our consciousness' are attuned to using our 5 senses, but the use of psychedelics allows us to open our minds to use other senses or sub senses. Think about the levels of self-introspection that come with some substances. Think about why certain groups of psychedelics are empathogenic and entactogenic and so forth. The confines of our language prevent us from expressing the depth of our experiences eloquently enough to do them justice. Instead we're stuck with things like, "I saw alot of tracers," or "the visuals were cool." to describe experiences that hopefully are more meaningful and intelligent. That leads to questions like ,"Which has more visuals, 2coe or sandpaper on my eyeball?" Posts like that are completely inviting mockery. The psychedelic experience is not an illusion. It is privileged information that the user is lucky enough to have access to. It is taking control of your neurochemistry, reclaiming the mind and spirit/essence/soul/whatever one wants to refer to it as, and admonishing the the limitations that cultural conditioning has forced us to unknowingly live with.
With that in mind, I do not claim to be a high and mighty psychedelic authority, nor am I telling everyone to tune in, turn on, and drop out. I do have an appreciation for the compounds that hold psychedelic secrets. That appreciation leads me to seek out references and resources to further understand things like the action of a chemical on receptor sites, the synthesis of molecules, academic research on the qualitative effects of compounds, and drugs and law.
Anyway, someone had posted something about people being sarcastic in their posts. Others have said that some of the people on this board are no help and are only mean-spirited. Boo-hoo-hoo These same "mean-spirited, sarccastic" people are the ones who aren't contributing to further persecution by giving out supplier info, lab addresses (hahaha-you fuck), and in general making fun of anyone who says that they once ate 36 double stacked batmans, which definitely had meth in them because they're green, and then 17 grams of mushrooms picked out of his frontyard, washed down by a 40 oz/GHB cocktail with a chaser of 378 mg 5-Meo-AMT in solution, and then for the comedown drank a bottle of ketamine, but it didn't do shit but make him dizzy and feel drunk. Who cares though because he only paid 5 quid for it.
So in response to accusations of groupthink, it's not. It's just that certain member of the group think the same way in regards to treating psychedelics, both natural and synthetic, with the respect they deserve.

 

What is meant by "pleasure cruise"? Aren't everyone's vacations different?

 

Maybe I'm a bit thickheaded. Can you explain the metaphor in relation to the post?

 

wow I missed the one where someone gave out an address to a lab... I would have loved to taken part in that.

 

It was the recent post where the kid is like, "Uh, where are all the acid labs at these days?" for his first post. It's still active.

 

o yea that one.

 

I have a callous on my brain from drinking beers.

 

I picked up a bottle of Glenlivit Scotch 12 year aged last night, shit's pretty dank.

 

cheers!

 

"Isn't it different for everyone?"

Different people can go on the same trip, stay in the same room, eat the same dinners, go on the same excursions, and come away with a different experience to report. State of mind, experience, cultural conditioning, etc. alter one's perception.

The same experience can be perceived differently by different people.
So yes. Everything is different for everyone. To a certain extent.

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"And further, isn't it different for every chemical?"

Two different cruise ship lines can have all inclusive packages. They might be similar week-long trips, but they're not going to be interchangeable experiences. One might have a better breakfast bar, while the other one makes better pina colatas, for instance.

So, yes. Different chemicals will produce different effects.

That makes sense now, doesn't it?

 

I had a feeling that was what you meant. Part of what prompted me to write that is the irresponsibility in which these chemicals are used. Imagine being 73 years old and going for a retirement pleasure cruise complete with prune juice and shuffle board. Now imagine that 73 year old just signing up for a "cruise" which happens to be a Hedonism II boat.
The point being that there are users who are looking for the next best "drug". There is no purpose behind the trip, no knowledge of the effects beyond "colors, tracers, and how music sounds under the influence", and little knowledge of dosing information or reliable scales.
That person eyeballs 12 mg of 1 substance from what he/she remembers 12 mg of another substance looking like, not realizing that all substances differ in density. To make matters worse, the person decides to bump the pile bc (s)he has heard it kicks in more quickly.
That person is probably going to be in pretty bad shape and now gives "drugs" a bad name. My main point is that psychedelics are powerful, but aren't "drugs" in the classical sense. They are tools.

 

I'd say if you're 73, you might want to stick to bingo.

 

Where I see a lot of people making a mistake (IMO) is that they feel they've done a psychedelic, even a 'weaker' one like marijuana that they are now "drug-users." This is a little feeding into the overblown idea that pot is a "gateway drug," but to some extent in the younger set the drugs just get lumped together. What comes with that is a lack of responsibility and no particular concern about getting into hard drugs. I think a lot of that can be blamed on the misinformation that is fed to teens. Its "oh, well I'm a criminal now cause I smoked pot, so I might as well just go nuts..." My younger friends who make no distinction between bumping an oxy and smoking a joint.

 

..which only adds to the stigma of "people who take drugs are lowlifes." I mean c'mon, there's a world of difference between Albert Hoffman and Pookie in New Jack City.

 

Ageist pig!
I don't see why that should be. This year I was talking to an old guy of 77 at a fest. He was extremely interested to know about the relations between dance music, acid, ecstacy etc..... Even in my own case - some might think I'm too old..but really it's not age that counts. That's something I'm learning more and more these days. If all this drug use is about maximizing the potential of the time we have, then why should there be a cut off point at a certain age?
And I can vouch for the fact that things like acid definitely get better as you get older. In a way, they help stop the mind atrophying, as seems to be the case in too many ageing humans. Stay switched on, stay alive.

 

Alchohol is a hard drug. People go straight onto that with no so called 'gateway'. Many end up totally fucked. Yet the powers that be actively promote it, whilst at the same time creating this phenomena you mention of lumping all illeagl drugs together through media panic campaigns and disinformation. Young people are being misinformed about drugs, and it's the fault of the goverments with their so-called 'war on drugs'.
Leagalize soft drugs - pot, pshycedelics, ecstacy - give out true and accurate info about them, stop labelling kids as criminals for using substances less harmful then what you can buy over any bar or in any supermart.

 

That is more my point right there actually.

 

I do agree with alot of what you say Philo but I just wanted to make a few points.

Sure I see what you mean about some of those kinds of posts inviting ridicule, but not all of them. In some cases people that don't have too much knowlege of or expierience with certain things ask a genuine question, and surely if forums like this should be here for anything it should be to help educate people. Replying to someone that asks weather you can get high from smoking banana skins ect with something along the lines of "yeah you can u fukking noob, but you have to piss on them first" is just frankly being childish and a prick. Things like that have just as bad an effect as the gouvernments misinformation and scare tactics that the same people constantly seem to be complaining about because they make people less likely to ask questions.

People come here looking for help or information and all they get from some people is abuse and ridicule, so they just give up and stop asking questions, which is bad for everyone. In the MDMA forum someone wanted to ask what MDA was but felt that he had to start the question with "I know I'll look like a complete idiot for asking this" because he had seen the reaction some people get for asking perfectly reasonable questions others deem to be stupid, despite the fact that those people wouldn't know the awnser themselves had someone better informed not told them at some stage. Thankfully not everyone is like this and I do see alot of people trying to help with questions instead of just trying to pretend they know more than they do by pointing out other peoples lack of knowlege.

 

I learned how to read and use google a long time before I even knew about drugs.

 

oh dear lord, snap.