by glubglubglub » Sat Oct 22, 2005 9:06 pm
i) DMT is exceedingly powerful (ahem) in the freebase, but quite tameable in any of the ayahuasca-style preparations ( oral ingestion + maoi to activate ) with sufficient practice, and with a mind to the dose (once above threshold less is more productive than more). I think the author's premise that under the right circumstances if the brain thinks the body is about to die it dumps dmt to transfer the consciousness elsewhere, although even if correct the significance of that fact'd be wide-open to debate; as I think I've said previously I immediately discount the opinions of people who claim to have made sense of the experience/the other side/however you wish to call it -- that you've gotten used to it and have a familiarity I'll accept, but claims of understanding are just hubris.<br><br>Technical note: melatonin -> 5-meo-dmt -> (perhaps) dmt via some catalysis, or at least that's the current hypothesis. I've no direct experience w. 5-meo but all accounts indicate it's very different from its simpler cousin...worth keeping in mind while speculating about melatonin dreams.<br><br>ii) SD seems very alien to me -- it didn't do much until I went straight to the liquid extract, and it didn't so much feel unnatural as just of an alien nature, in the same way that I intellectually recognize, say, an insect as natural but still very alien to my mammalian sensibilities...given its bizarre mechanism of action -- a kappa-opioid-agonist -- my suspicion is that the mode of consciousness it ties into is an avenue that was mostly abandoned on our evolutionary path, and consequently even though the door is still there to be opened there's not a lot of processing infrastructure in place to handle what it dumps into you.<br><br>iii) The author's speculation about the coccyx was very much a lightbulb moment -- it provides a sensible explanation or theory for the 'alien abduction' = 'anal probing' correllation. Not sure that I'd buy that explanation as a complete one, but it's a major step towards having a theory. Worth reading the article alone just for that investigatory lead.<br><br>iv) Many people seem to put a sort of naive faith on labelling, categorizing, and otherwise delineating the varieties of experience; although this may be essential for communication, there's a nice warning about moons, fingers, and pointing that ought to be kept in mind, lest you mistake your framework for what it serves to contain.<br><br>a speculation: the most productive frontier of psychedelia isn't going to be new substances and also isn't going to be the territory exposed by higher doses of known substances; rather, the real frontier is developing the chemical technology and practical knowledge base to enable, say, spending a week or month or more just over the apparent activation threshold of some of the obvious candidates -- psilocin or dmt, say -- and explore the world of low-dose, long-duration, continual usage. I'd argue that contemporary psychedelic research -- ie, self experimentation + trip log -- is more akin to breath-hold-diving or being shot out of a cannon, when what's needed is something akin to a submarine or powered, controlled flight. <p></p><i></i>
