Oh the chemicals. The 1998 movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is of much more educational value than it may seem. More so than, say, Requiem for a Dream (2000), never even mind Trainspotting (1996). But already I digress. If reality is perception, which to each and everyone of us it is, and if our perception is shaped by chemicals, which it is, then chemicals can be used and abused to alter our reality! 😶 To some extent, at any rate.
They allow us to modify 😵💫 our state and modulate 👁️ the mind's eye. Which of course we have been doing since time immemorial. We always were curious and playful monkeys — already as kids we enjoy the high of getting dizzy on the playground, touching upon the frightening — who then got better at science, and therefore the substances.
Some people think all drugs should be legalised — clearly this would be a big mistake. Imagine your GP in a yolo XTC mood, or worse, your bus driver shaking off their hangover in the morning rush hour. Many people feel there are hard and soft drugs. Again I markedly disagree, as I presume do you. The case of alcohol of course is well-known, but the flaw in the assumption has many ways of showing. Like wherein lies the difference between an addict dying by one too many µgs of IV fentanyl and a college student dying in a psychotic episode triggered by one too many a casual puff of marijuana?
Whatever the case, it's such an awful tremendous loss, the way 🇺🇸 'Murika took away from humanity the entirety of drugs' potential to heal ourselves and save the future when it mattered most. But it no longer matters. So yes, oh the chemicals. “Smoke em if you got em”, is the XR internet wisdom, and I'm not one to argue.
Before continuing, let's emphasize the obvious: there is knowledge and experience, and they rarely come together in equal measure, which is no requirement to have a valid opinion. Consequently I myself don't nearly have as much experience with, nor knowledge of all of the below as I would like.
..want tussen droom en daad
staan wetten in de weg en praktische bezwaren,
en ook weemoedigheid, die niemand kan verklaren,
en die des avonds komt, wanneer men slapen gaat.
Knowledge is available to us all – however much we care to know. One obvious thing we all know and experience taught me, is that drugs, while beyond doubt helpful in dealing with reality, will not provide purpose in it. I suppose one still needs religion for that, or l'enfer des autres. Put differently, and as is common knowledge, they won't be a durable fix for a hole: will not fill a void in a sustainable fashion.
Final babblings: for want of a distinction between “hard” and “soft” drugs a sensible way to distinguish between drugs would be 1) those that alter your mood, 2) those that distort your perception, and 3) those that are plain poison. Of course there is overlap; altering your mood means altering your perception, and poison will most likely distort your mood.
To me it then seems to boil down to either an easy way, a shortcut, up ↑ 😃 or down ↓ 😌, or 🫥 away into ↔ “hmm wots happening”. 🤔 Also, chemicals do not change a person's true nature or disposition. Breek me wat dat betreft de bek niet open over gevallen als, in steil stijgende volgorde van “wtf :|”, Conner Rousseau, Tom Waes, Guy Van Sande, of Sven Pichal. I can't imagine friends or loved ones, say, turning violent under the influence, or racist while intensely inebriated.
Tom, last edited December 2024
Czyli 3-MeO-PCP. dissociativa: PCP, MXE, 3-HO-PCP, 3-MeO-PCE, O-PCE, DCK, 2F-DCK.. 😶🌫️
NMDAr antagonism: disturbing “the transfer of electrical signals between neurons in the brain and in the spinal column”. You may know of ketamine (equine narcotics, and bladder trouble), and have heard of PCP punching physical holes in our monkey brains. Fearmongering at its finest. Drink a bucket of seawater, and tell us how your kidneys feel.
❲Hmm... Had ik niet hier.. Toch al, de vvele! voordelen van disso.. ☁️ En in het algemeen, de recente hernieuwde academische interesse voor het feitelijke nut van schijnbaar laakbare chemicaliën als disso en MDMA en psilocybine.. Eeuwig TODO.❳
Dissociation can go a long way, too long far away. Firstly, any kind of desensitisation will be a double-edged sword: desirable & unfortunate, but let's not lose ourselves in words' ways. Secondly, one may ever so insidiously start losing too much sense of Zeit und Raum. 🫥 Again, the matter of “too much” would be too much of a matter to go into here on this page , since it's different for all.
26/1/24 addendum: The ether scene in Fear and Loathing does a good job showcasing part of the sort of NMDAr antagonism vibes. I cut the fragment and put it up here. Bit miffed I couldn't figure out quickly enough how to retain the subtitles, which I then had to put in the separate .html file. I suggest you download the video and play it alongside those subtitles in your browser.
I had at first completely forgotten 🫤 about the benzos here. Do not fear!
I honestly don't know the first thing about these benzodiazepines, yet there are so very many of them. I'm just grateful they helped me take the bus back then, and delivered me from the invisible burden of prying eyes and relentless city hustle – help me find some peace quietness of mind in unfavorable circumstances.
Why not be opening with some quoting Terence McKenna –
Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.
It bears mentioning that it is highly imprudent to indulge in psychedelics unprepared. Then again that goes for any chemical. And then, again, that goes for anything in life – I suppose and, again, digress. 🤷 It is of utmost importance to take into account, and care of, circumstances. This includes interactions with 5-HTP (SERT?) and Ar°(Li) (lithium) — I am not a doctor.
That said, psychedelics can stir an inert soul, stuck in a void or undesirable state. Poke and prod it into rethinking and reestablishing how the facts are put, and the things belong, together. For healthier people, those in lesser need of fixing, they can flaunt the splendour of those facts and that way they belong together.[clarification needed]
They will be fiddling with the senses like a Photoshop filter – but the senses and the soul blend into one another. An adult in a psychedelic moment of wonder reminds a lot of a toddler immersed in playful thought, imposing some reality on new impressions; looking for order, or to establish it, in the face of things all new. So many different levels and ways of awareness – a baby at first literally can't even properly see where it ended up, but its brain can't but already start trying to make sense of it. [clarification needed]
Microdosing psychedelics is an entirely different approach. The same soul-stirring & -prodding, but, as the word indicates, in a gentler, micro fashion – more latent, less incisive, but present all the same. Words will keep falling short, and experience prove ever more useful – like a psychiatrist who has experienced psychosis or went through depression himself would obviously be in a better position to relate to, and understand his patient suffering the same burden.
The psychedelics are manifold in nature, m.in.
Also 🍄 mushrooms of course, I suppose, but too much botany (like Salvia divinorum, let alone deliriant Datura) gets too murky for me. Not for me..
..as aren't the ↑ stimulants (cocaine, speed, amphed up, hyper hyper), not by accident conspicuously absent on this here page. As is ↔ ethanol, dansen en pintjes drinken. 🍺
Czyli tetrahydrocannabinol – cannabis, quoi. We have good reason to assume Shakespeare (and seriously even Jesus 🫢) got ha' every once in a while.
Don't confuse synthetic cannabinoids with the plant the hippies were smoking! If there were a group of NPS (also known as RCs) deserving of the disparaging label “designer drugs”, they would be it. Keep away!
Czyli U-47700.
Opioids bring misery and bliss. And bliss. Wars have been fought over, and many a suicide committed with them. Big pharma sucked out most of the joy to turn it into a profit, and left the popular imagination with heroin, and the richer populace with an OxyContin problem. The poorer people with cold fentanyl to die for..
And the law-abiding, amateur µ-suckers settle for Mytragina speciosa. Kratom, homeopathic heroin, as it were. The bowel misery is miserable. I've never understood why opioids came with an extreme ☠️ for needles, yet gut disruption never had a mention.
❲And but hmh — rich, poor, a tangent coming up here. The <1% will take without morals, rob you with a smile, and kill without remorse. Many of them perhaps oblivious of it — it doesn't take a genius to own a yacht, and no IQ test is required to party on one with an empty mind full of coke — but most all of them are despicable egos morbidly high on their own gases. Life sneakily imitates art again, denn daß Narrenschyff segelt weiter (1494/281).❳
You can learn all about the chemicals, if you want: on Wikipedia aplenty, whither I copiously link by default, but just as valuable knowledge can be found, in different manners of abundancy, at comprehensive PsychonautWiki and venerable Erowid.
And how could I bring this page to a close without a few words of praise and respect for the late Alexander Shulgin, whom we owe thanks for the rediscovery of MDMA and authoring PiHKAL & TiHKAL. That man lived a long strange life, doubtlessly with many frustrating hurdles and much unpleasantness, charting the unknown, sharing the wisdom of much laborious though at least, presumably, oftentimes just as much fun work.