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Divided_Sky
Ten ThousandThings

Registered: 11/02/03
Posts: 3,171
Loc: The Shining Void
Last seen: 15 years, 8 months
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My theory on the different subjective effects of LSD, Psilocybin, and Mescaline
#5309097 - 02/16/06 10:48 PM (18 years, 3 days ago) |
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(I originally put this in the Pub but I don't think that was the correct forum. It dropped pretty quick so I deleted it)
First off I want to state that I'm not going to adress the fact that mescaline inhibits dopamine and nor-epinephrine receptors and not seratonin receptors like psilocybin and LSD. Perhaps some of its "warmer" and more sober effects are the result of a normal functioning seratonin system which has strong effects on mood and thought.
Now, my actual idea. I first started thinking about this trying to understand fractals in psychedelic drug experience, why they occur in though patterns and why one percieves them so often in the external environment. Reading a book on fractal mathematics I discovered that fractals are often created by a feedback loop, where the information comming out of a devices output is sent back into the input. A good example of this is what happens when you hook a video camera into a TV screen and then film the TV with the camera. What you see is alot like how one percieves thoughts and sensations on acid, shrooms or mescaline. Pictures within pictures, twisting around and stretching off into infinity. At very close distances this feedback circuit can create intricate geometric patterns that change with the angle of the camera.
This reinforced a suspicion I had already developed on my last mushroom trip, that fractal patterns and distortions are the result of mental feedback. Pyschedelic chemicals main function seems to be to shut down parts of the reptilian brain, particularly the Limbic system that are responsible for regulating the flow of sensory information to the conscious awareness. When this is inhibited or turned off unconscious processes and sensory data normal unavailable to the sober conscious mind flood in. By oppening the information spigot it's like we are turning up a microphone into the brain from the environment, or even within the brain from itself. Once the level of information crosses a certain threshold it begins to "overload" mental processes resulting in fractals, just like the TV and the camera. Thoughts and sensations begin to multiply upon themselves resulting in sensations of multiplicity and simultaneous experience.
At some point with the limbic system completely bypassed the amount of information comming into the higher levels of awareness is immense if not infinite, causing extraordinarily complex fractal patterns in subdivisions into the mental processes. What used to be normal forms and functions have now become more and more complex subdivions and multiplications. The ordinary mind has become fractalated beyond function. The user feels a sense of infinity as the result of his/her thoughts multiplying and subdiving themselves to a possible infinite degree, like the images trailing away in room full of mirrors, except to an unfathomable extreme.
Now, how do different chemicals result in different flavors of the psychedelic experience? What we find is that patterns within nature, that we consider "organic" result from a fair degree of abnormality or chaos occuring within the mathematical system. With chaotic or asymettrical variables in the fractal geometry we see more organic forms like in trees and ferns. With perfect mathematical symmetry fractal images tend to look very mathematical and non-organic.
Thus consider that LSD is 100 times more active than psilocybin and 1,000 times more active than mescaline. Anecdotes usually speak of as LSD being more cosmic and mathematical, and mushrooms and mescaline being more earthly and organic. My own experience with mushrooms and mescaline has been that mushrooms provided more organic forms like ferns and paisly patterns while mescaline forms were more inefficient and asymetrical, more like human creations.
A study in (I believe) the 1950s showed spiderwebs created by spiders intoxicated with different substances. The webs created by spiders on LSD were more perfect and symetrical than the mescaline webs which were more abnormal, and had more rounded and almost artistic qualities. (You can find this in the Psychedelic Encyclopedia). It is no suprise that asymetry is an important part of what is considered good art in both Eastern and Western civilizations. Perhaps a higher degree of asymetry leads to more 'artistic' or familiar aesthetic qualities.
It would seem that the less active a chemical is the more abnormally or inefficiently it binds to and inhibits receptors in the brain. I theorize that this responsible for many of the subjective variations between the experiences that each chemical catalyzes. LSD seems to be the most mathematical regular and symetrical with more obvious fractal and geometric forms, psilocybin being 100 times less efficient creates more organic and plant like forms, while mescaline being the least efficient and most abnormal creates the most 'human like' forms.
I'm sure there are many other factors at work that seperate the effects of one chemical from another, but this seemed to jump out at me.
-------------------- 1. "After an hour I wasn't feeling anything so I decided to take another..." 2. "We were feeling pretty good so we decided to smoke a few bowls..." 3. "I had to be real quiet because my parents were asleep upstairs..."
Edited by Divided_Sky (02/16/06 11:04 PM)
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,703
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Re: My theory on the different subjective effects of LSD, Psilocybin, and Mescaline [Re: Divided_Sky]
#5309409 - 02/17/06 01:41 AM (18 years, 2 days ago) |
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I am also trying to find good ways of describing experiences and memory in layman terms (without referring too much to brain structures); but I do want to use what is known to some extent especially WRT the holographic nature of memory, (which still works well when parts of brain are removed from a patient, though some details of memories do get fuzzier - meaning that memory is stored throughout the fabric of the brain).
other things that need to fit in to a theory of mind are - sensations, associative memory aquisition, associative memory recall, and the mysteries of feelings and will.
Finally, a good theory has to accomodate the psychedelic effect: the wonderful psychedelic effects (IMO) are all simmilar in some ways, and the subjective differences seem to be in dosage, flavors, degree of physical disturbance (nausea, hypertension) and pupil dilation.
the similarities seems to be in the area of prolonging the fadeout of sensations and memory events (trails, strobing etc.) and the tendency to have more layered experiences of one kind or another, sometimes so layered as to suggest that time could be running backwards, while past and future moments coexist.
an appreciation of fractals, is similar to the appreciation of music, both having grand mathematical and rythmic underpinnings, and that too should be part of a theory that knits together a conditioned and conditionable mind with appreciations and abilities that are rythmic and mathematical, as if they were a "sixth" sense.
(BTW if a math organ exists -that senses and processes interval- that sense organ would be the cerebellum)
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rDr4g0n
Young Hand

Registered: 01/17/06
Posts: 587
Last seen: 17 years, 8 months
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Re: My theory on the different subjective effects of LSD, Psilocybin, and Mescaline [Re: redgreenvines]
#5309906 - 02/17/06 09:47 AM (18 years, 2 days ago) |
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dude, this is awesome. i havent tripped yet, but im working on gettin some shrooms, and im doing it for the intellectual experience (i dont liek the feeling of being "fucked up" so to speak, but id love to see and analyze the unusual sensory input 'glitches; the hallucinogens cause). anyway, i feel that i can analyze and understand things very cleary, even while under the influence of something of this nature and i may be able to offer some sort of insight into my experience that could assist you in your research into the scientific explanation of the effects of hallucinogens.
plus what your saying makes a lot of sense. i sit around being introspective like that all day without tripping.. i wonder what will happen when i finally do? lol
-------------------- i can speel... im just too lazy to sppelcheck. My first trip (good read) - Speed Leaching Poo! - My Second Trip (with art)
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Linuxman
PsychoactiveResearcher

Registered: 12/29/05
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Re: My theory on the different subjective effects of LSD, Psilocybin, and Mescaline [Re: rDr4g0n]
#5310005 - 02/17/06 10:28 AM (18 years, 2 days ago) |
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haha man I feel so old when people come on here saying they have never tripped.. seems like ages ago for me.
-------------------- "We can't stop here man, this is bat country" "There is acid in the beer in the red cups"
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Mushroom_Mike
AGAPE LOVE

Registered: 02/23/04
Posts: 532
Loc: Australia
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Re: My theory on the different subjective effects of LSD, Psilocybin, and Mescaline [Re: Linuxman]
#5310706 - 02/17/06 02:39 PM (18 years, 2 days ago) |
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here is a link to the spider webs he spoke of, incase anyone hasnt already seen them.
http://www.cannabis.net/weblife.html
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always remember.... to respect the fungus!
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kake
The answer to1984 is 1776.



Registered: 05/06/99
Posts: 2,782
Loc: The 66th harmonic
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Re: My theory on the different subjective effects of LSD, Psilocybin, and Mescaline [Re: Mushroom_Mike]
#5310743 - 02/17/06 02:50 PM (18 years, 2 days ago) |
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great posts Divided Sky and redgreenvines! I very much agree with your theories.
The feedback loop is especially interesting.
-------------------- The answer to 1984 is 1776.
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kake
The answer to1984 is 1776.



Registered: 05/06/99
Posts: 2,782
Loc: The 66th harmonic
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Re: My theory on the different subjective effects of LSD, Psilocybin, and Mescaline [Re: kake]
#5310744 - 02/17/06 02:51 PM (18 years, 2 days ago) |
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Oh BTW, can you think of any ways this might tie into ego loss/death?
-------------------- The answer to 1984 is 1776.
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Divided_Sky
Ten ThousandThings

Registered: 11/02/03
Posts: 3,171
Loc: The Shining Void
Last seen: 15 years, 8 months
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Re: My theory on the different subjective effects of LSD, Psilocybin, and Mescaline [Re: kake]
#5311277 - 02/17/06 05:34 PM (18 years, 2 days ago) |
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My idea is that ego loss simply happens when the fractalation of the thought process becomes one of extremely high or infinite detail to the point the normal conceptual structures like time and self are unable to function.
However I agree with redgreenvines, alot of the egoless/timeless experience has to do with the dissolution of linear time. It's like the refresh rate between moments slows down till events start "pilling up" and the moment gets longer and longer so that you can have hour long moments with everything in that hour occuring simultaneously. As has been noted by the (anti)philosopher Krishnamurti, your sense of self is dependent on linear time for its sense of narrative and continuity. When time is gone the mental construct of the Self stops working. There are no linear reference points to construct a sense of identity.
Perhaps this happens because the increased flow of information from the sense and subconscious and increasingly multiplied perceptions from the feedback loop boggs down the time 'buffer'. Like a slow computer, there is too much processing going on to maintain a normal refresh rate between moments so they stack up. Eventually the system "crashes" until the level of processing begins to decline to a normal level.
-------------------- 1. "After an hour I wasn't feeling anything so I decided to take another..." 2. "We were feeling pretty good so we decided to smoke a few bowls..." 3. "I had to be real quiet because my parents were asleep upstairs..."
Edited by Divided_Sky (02/17/06 06:22 PM)
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rDr4g0n
Young Hand

Registered: 01/17/06
Posts: 587
Last seen: 17 years, 8 months
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Re: My theory on the different subjective effects of LSD, Psilocybin, and Mescaline [Re: Divided_Sky]
#5324478 - 02/21/06 03:23 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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heres my theory about memory... im a computer geek so its got some computer terms in there too..
we have short term memory and we have long term memory. after something has sat in our short term memory, and our brain (or ego) decides its worth remembering, it gets "written" to our long term memory. i think that in the case of deja vu, our brain takes something that is incoming (and should go to the short term memory) and writes it immediatly into our long term memory, but in the wrong place (ie not today, but into last weeks part of the long term memory). the impression is that we already had this memory, when its just a bit of misplaced memory.
i think this would also apply to a trip. it could manipulate when and where our memories are written so when we see something, say the time, we could be thinking "no way, it cant be 1am, because i just looked and it was 3am!" this could be due to memory being written slowly, in the wrong place, or of course having our perceptions altered.
its a theory with absolutly no scientific grounds and probably only makes sense to me, but yeah.. thats what i think of that.
-------------------- i can speel... im just too lazy to sppelcheck. My first trip (good read) - Speed Leaching Poo! - My Second Trip (with art)
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hamilton
friend


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Re: My theory on the different subjective effects of LSD, Psilocybin, and Mescaline [Re: Linuxman]
#16110037 - 04/19/12 03:08 AM (11 years, 9 months ago) |
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it is really different
-------------------- i love you !and look forward to shroomin wicha !
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GettinPsilly
Stranger


Registered: 09/04/11
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Re: My theory on the different subjective effects of LSD, Psilocybin, and Mescaline [Re: hamilton]
#16110330 - 04/19/12 06:10 AM (11 years, 9 months ago) |
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LSD: Haven't tried it, don't know. Sounds a little like a combo of shrooms and mescaline to me.
Mescaline: Energetic, "up" high with no shortage of nausea. Mindblowing CEVs but no real OEVs. Lasts way longer than shrooms. Feels somewhat like being poisoned IMO.
Shrooms: Alternates between stimulation/sedation. OEVs are more impressive w/ shrooms for sure--melting, waving, breathing, moving of inanimate objects; colors appear brighter. Lasts the perfect amount of time: 4-6 hours.
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Please don't take my sunshine away!
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