Ego Death?

Typical egomaniacal reaction from a psychedelic user. Apparently ego-death doesn't last very long.

 

Apparently opiates are not effective in quieting some ego reactions.

 

How so? Have I spoken any hostile words flaunted my ego? No. I simply got tossed aside from meaningful conversation with psychedelic users on an issue we both can talk about. It is almost like Democrats vs. Republicans!

 

He also admitted to being an opiate user, I've nodded on oxycontin once, it didnt provide anything remotely similar to ego death. You're not the only person to mention a profound awareness on opiates but its few and far between, more like democrat vs. Modern Whig party.

 

i've experienced a psychedelic-like mindstate before from smoking opium. but it was two days after i had one of my first and most profound psychedelic experiences on lsd. so i was still in an afterglow from that trip. which i'm sure contributed massively.

other times that i've smoked opium i've been at festivals. which again, gave me a mild psychedelic reaction. more like just an awsome high.

but opiates are also very addicting. i've never had any of the more positive effects from opium unless i took a 3-6 month break, and then i can only smoke it a few times before i am feeding an addiction rather than opening my mind.

so sure, opiates can have mild psychedelic properties. but that is kind of like saying that marijuana and nicotine have psychedelic properties. which is true, all three of those drugs DO have psychedelic properties, but they just don't fall under the same category as serotenergic psychedelics like lsd, mushrooms, dmt, and mescaline.

 

You take offense. What is there to be defended but the sense of one's self, the ego.

 

ok, let me help you.

This was a joke, no offense should be taken, but IMO(key phrase here, all drugs do different things for different people) opiates are like temporary retardation.

I have given my time to opiates and they gave me nothing in return(positive anyway). Again IMO is the key phrase, its my experience, i am not trying to say your experiences aren't positive. Nor am i saying i am any better or worse than you.

Do what works for you man. no sarcasim there.

I didn't want you to feel tossed aside from the conversation, not my intentions, you have taught me a lesson here which i thank you for.

Let me say this though - opiates can lead to addiction, addiction can lead people to do very selfish things, ranging from stealing from loved ones to suicide. I have never met anyone who has stole anything to buy any psychedelic. This is a general over view, i choose to use a general over view because lots of people will read this, this doesn't have anything to do with you personally. On the flip side opiates can beat someone up so badly that they will humble themselves(happened to me). At the end of the road i was about as down on myself as i could be, absolutely no ego to speak of. I hope opiates never lead you down this road.

well said.

 

From Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception:

Although in this passage he speaks directly of mescaline, I'm fairly certain all psychedelics work in a similar manner. Maybe not all affect the blood sugar in the same way, but it's the expanding/loosening of your brain's "sobriety filter" that all psyches seem to have in common. To me, that seems like it would require much more brain activity than normal to let in and process all the excess sensory imput, so I would have to say the state of your mind while tripping, especially during ego death, is quite the opposite of retardation or paralysis.

 

Thanks to all who came around and responded fairly. I understand that there is a bit of bad blood between psychedelic and opioid users, and a fair amount of stereotype going with it.

I think what we all agree on is that one can gain great insights from a wide range of psychoactives. It depends on the person. And we can all agree that LSD and similar tryptamines are much safer than the opioids.

I admit, though, that I am in a minority with my views on opioids. I know that my fellow users tend not to dig as deep into the experience as I like to. Some do. Just not as many as with psychedelics.

I am interested in the pharmacology of psychedelics (mainly 5-HT2A agonists), so who knows what I might do some day if one of these chemicals passes by me?

 

When I used to nod off on oxycontin I would go into these psychedelic dream states, and when I'd wake up I'd think I was in the dream still and start babbling about something. Sometimes I would realize it, and sometimes I'd fall right back asleep and continue dreaming. Sometimes I actually stood up and acted out as if I were still in the dream, it was such a strange trippy feeling, but I liked it. It defiantly melts your ego some.

 

haha i wasn't aware of that. perhaps you are just used to getting criticised for your opioid use.

one thing that i've always found interesting is that salvia is actually a kappa-opioid receptor agonist. making it one of the only psychedelics that doesn't act as a 5-HT2A agonist, although it still produces magnificently profound psychedelic effects. giving weight to the idea of opioid based psychdelics.

 

Yeah. I have felt this bad blood on the internet. In real life, I am the only person in my social group who experiments beyond alcohol and Cannabis, incidentally, two drugs I don't particularly care for.

So, on internet forums, I have naively started conversations on the entheogenic-like benefits of opioids with lots of criticism from the psych-group. And the fellow opioids don't really ever discuss those more "glowing" effects, but rather just rather boring things. I find the opiates forum on this site to have some good discussion, though, and I admire the LSD forum here as well!

The fact is: opioids are more addictive and can cause more social harm than psychedelics. I just happen to take them with a more sacramental view.

 

i think we are blurring the line between state of euphoria and actual hallucinations between the opiate people saying they go into a psychedelic trance. the drug doesn't effect the same parts of the brain that hallucinogenics do. but the mind is so powerful that they may think they are having a psychedelic moment because the euphoria is so strong. but i also don't think that you need to take a drug to have ego death. i just think that alot of us do need a powerful mind altering substance such as a psychedelic for it to happen. and im just going off my own experiences because Ive used both opiates and hallucinogenics for quite some time

 

I have virtually no tolerance. I love taking a low dose of hydro or oxycodone at my pad or library and reading a book for hours on end.

I have not done much intentionally, but I do think I have an inkling of what you are talking about. Depending how late in the day I dose, I almost always experience some kind of lucid dream or sleep paralysis when I go to sleep. It is a lucid dream. If I open my eyes (which I am usually able to do), it becomes some sort of sleep paralysis and I see a white being floating above me (every time). I have not mastered staying in this state. I always wake up after (what seems like) 20 seconds.


The strange part is, my dose is usually very low (7.5-10.75ish-sometimes 15 mg). Another strange part is, I do not remember always having these experiences... unless I just never noticed.


EDIT: In the past, DXM has given me similar lucid dream experiences. Though, they are lightly different. For example, after one trip, I started to fall asleep. My head nodded down a bit and I woke up... kind of. As I nodded off, I had a glimpse of an owl (do dreams normally start that early in the stages of sleep?). I opened my eyes and saw that owl on my ceiling as a 2-d object. It took some eye blinking and a shake of my head to rid of this image.

 

Yeah. Ego death need not be drug related. I feel the most profound self-realization I have ever had was when I was sober and reading this book "A Guide to Rational Living" by Albert Ellis, a psychologist. The whole point of the book is to detach yourself from the ego, but it is not put in psychedelic terms, obviously. I had a wave of humbling realization sweep over me that day, and I have been changed for the better ever since.

As for receptor sites, of course opioids affect the opioid receptors and psychedelics (to be general) affect the 5-HT2A (ie: serotonin type 2A) receptor as agonists. However, there is still quite alot of controversy as to why the radical shifts in perception happen in psychedelics. I read some really interesting medical journal article that gave a good description of the mechanism. It is unbelievable complex. I know this is getting tangentially, but your point made me want to bring it up. The opioid receptor is a bit more straightforward in how it produces euphoria and contentment. I think wikipedia explains that one well.

You know what drugs are really interesting? The hallucinations gained from GABA agonists like muscimol and the z-drugs. I think I am going to read up on that now haha...

 

in my opinion, even though these drugs can have notable effects on the human brain, the effects are largely a spiritual one that effects the human spirit and psyche. i've always believed that there is a seperation between spirit and body. so even though we might be able to measure things physically the real effect is that which is caused to our spirit. only about 5% of the lsd that you dose actually enters your brain, and it is only there for about 20 minutes after your initial dose. the rest of your trip is a series of reactions that are caused within your psyche. if that is true -- which it is -- then how can we account physiologically for the effects of lsd which last for 8-12 hours? we can't. a more accurate description of how psychedelics affect the human experience could be learned from how they affect the spirit, rather than how they affect the body.

the human brain is too complex too be brought down to a science. you can't science consciousness. there are some things that science will never be able to explain.

 

^ LSD's half life is a few hours

 

i lost a friend due to an overdose in my room and it didn't really hit me until i took some lsd 2 months after i had a true ego loss. it all hit me at once, it made me take a long hard look at who i am, where i am, and where im going to be. I laughed so hard that night and after my "ego loss" i started balling my eyes out saying i wanted to quite drugs (because i was on probation at the time and still smoking/using) i kept telling my friend i didnt mean it and i was sorry. i had my friend drive me home and i told my parents i took lsd and i didnt want to do drugs any more, i gave my father my bag of weed and the few hits of lsd i had left. It made me change my thoughts and my actions towards others. life is a constant flow of positive and negative energy's. you cant have good with out the bad. you need to learn how to see the bad and use it in a constructive way to make the positives even better. ever since taking lsd i have felt that no matter what happens in my life, everything will always work out. even if i die its just part of my life and a journey into a new dimension begins

 

don't remember the original study where i found this is, but here is what a quick google search turned up:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_does_LSD_affect_the_brain_and_neurochemistry

An interesting side note, only around 3/4 of a percent of lysergic acids (LSA, ALD, LSD, ect.) actually cross the blood-brain barrier.

so really, when we trip on acid, it is due to just a couple of lsd molecules entering our brains, and then departing shortly thereafter.

i'll see if i can find it.

 

and how did you draw the conclusion lsd only effects the brain for 20 minutes from that?

you can google LSD half life and wikipedia, erowid and plenty other sources list it as a few hours.