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Ythan
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This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping 4
#24826478 - 12/04/17 07:02 PM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping inverse.com
Two mandolins enter dreamily. They slowly build, occasionally fluttering, occasionally crescendoing, but always moving forward. This is what you hear in the first minute of a psychedelic treatment that could change the course of your life. The effects of the drug may not be noticeable yet, but one thing is very clear: This is a special space. The swelling soundscape surrounding you is the artistry of psychologist Bill Richards, Ph.D., who developed the playlist specifically for your psychedelic trip.
Richards works with Roland Griffiths’s lab at Johns Hopkins University, where patients get more than just conventional medicine. Instead, they get psilocybin, the active chemical in psychedelic “magic” mushrooms, so the researchers can investigate whether it can help cancer patients feel less depressed and anxious, induce mystical experiences in healthy patients, and even help smokers quit smoking. The results have been promising, adding to the continued efforts of a handful of researchers to bring psychedelics back into the scientific mainstream after decades of notoriety.
Unlike larger-scale clinical studies, psychedelic sessions are extremely personal and introspective, and as such, says Richards, it’s important for a volunteer to be supported by a compassionate staff and a safe environment. A big part of this is the playlist.
“I make the best musical choices I can, trying to separate the ‘very good’ and the ‘excellent’ on the basis of years of experience with many different people,” Richards tells Inverse.
“There’s only room for so much music in a six- to seven-hour period of time.”
Whether a session is held for treating anxiety, depression, and fear surrounding a terminal illness, or deepening meditative practice through a mystical experience — both things Richards has studied — he values music as a way to support a person’s experience.
It’s not a “trippy” playlist, though. You won’t find any psytrance or techno on the list, no Infected Mushroom, Shpongle, Daft Punk, nor any other music you might associate with altered states. Instead, there’s plenty of Brahms, Vivaldi, Mozart, and Bach. Richards says there’s a good reason for this: Orchestral music is less distracting and less likely to give room for a person to fall back on normal patterns of thinking.
“Except in the final phase, I tend to avoid music with words in the language of the volunteer, so as to discourage the rational mind from following the content of the words,” he says. “The human voice, as a solo or choir, can be very supportive, even maternal, but it is received as ‘another instrument of the orchestra.’”
While the assortment of sounds that make up his playlist is certainly important, Richards says it’s the order of songs that is crucial to a guided trip.
“In high-dose sessions, I feel that it is the structure of the music itself that matters most rather than the personal preferences of the volunteer or the guide — at least during the onset, peak and post-peak phases of the responses to the entheogen,” he says, using an alternate term for psychedelics that means “generating the divine within.”
Music during the onset of a trip, he explains, needs to be experienced as “supportive, unfolding, forward-moving.” At this stage, he suggests Edward Elgar’s “Nimrod” from his “Enigma Variations” series, which functions as a “nonverbal support system.”
“At a trip’s peak, music becomes a mirror of transcendental forms of consciousness that may not even be registered in unitive awareness, but is present if needed — like a net below a trapeze artist,” Richards says. In this playlist, the slow movement of Brahms’s Violin Concerto provides that sense of stability.
Post-peak, when powerful content is still occurring, Richards plays similarly supportive music, like the ‘transfiguration’ section of Richard Strauss’s “Death and Transfiguration.”
Compared to the potent drug at the heart of the trial, a playlist may seem secondary. But psilocybin trips can be potentially overwhelming experiences, and patients experiencing them are highly suggestible and vulnerable. As such, it’s important for psychedelic researchers to create a space in which patients can be supported through what can sometimes be a challenging time.
Richards, who has studied psychedelics for decades, sees music not as a force that actively shapes trips but as one that forms a psychological space in which a person can trip comfortably and safely.
“My preference is not to use either the word ‘augmenting’ or ‘the psychedelic experience,’” he says. “Profound states of consciousness can occur in silence, and there are many discrete states of awareness that can make up a particular ‘psychedelic experience’ (or series of ‘experiences’). With adequate dosage, I do not feel that the music ‘causes’ particular experiences; rather, it supports and undergirds the experiential flow, as content is emerging for the particular person.”
Richards is not your typical psychologist, but he’s the one you want by your side when you’re peering deep within — and as you emerge from the experience. As participants in these studies return to consensus reality, he says, the form and structure of the music become less important. The person has passed back into the world they know and are free to listen to something familiar and pleasant.
At that point, Richards says, “most any music can be explored and often enjoyed — personal favorites and music from varied cultures and genres.”
So what does he put at the very end of the playlist, when a volunteer has begun to come back to reality?
“What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong.
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pineninja
Dream Weaver
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: Ythan]
#24826504 - 12/04/17 07:12 PM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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I never gave him permission to take my tripping playlist.
-------------------- Just a fool on the hill.
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Konyap
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: pineninja]
#24826614 - 12/04/17 07:57 PM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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i've never even considered listening to classical music while tripping
on lsd maybe because that was invented in the 1900's but shrooms?
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pineninja
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: Konyap] 2
#24826639 - 12/04/17 08:12 PM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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Classical and jazz is made for it im(now scientific)o.
Very little structure from moment to moment with highs and lows that you can ride.....tripping.
I totally agree with getting away from feeds and patterns that we have in day to day life, whether they be visual or auditory.
Listening to jazz and classical whilst tripping has allowed me to "get" both genres like I now "get" ancient art.
If someone were to ask you to explain your trips musically and you could play a trumpet, you would make jazz.
-------------------- Just a fool on the hill.
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Fractal420
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: pineninja]
#24826964 - 12/04/17 10:53 PM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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Listen to Ott's Hallucinogen remixes
-------------------- Dreaming of That face again. It's bright and blue and shimmering. Grinning wide And comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes. Prying open MY third eye
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Camwritesgonzo
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: Ythan]
#24827037 - 12/04/17 11:50 PM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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No Paganini, couldn't see it.
-------------------- "I've always maintained that reality is for those who can't face drugs."-Tom Waits "I feel the same way about disco as I feel about herpes."-Hunter S. Thompson A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
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Fractal420
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: Camwritesgonzo]
#24827087 - 12/05/17 01:42 AM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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I should try tripping with less infected mushroom/shpongle/prometheus/ott type music and more mozart and bethoven (altho, ive always found the latter to be haunting, like fur elise and moonlight sonata, those 2 might even freak me out a bit while tripping, lol)
-------------------- Dreaming of That face again. It's bright and blue and shimmering. Grinning wide And comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes. Prying open MY third eye
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MikeTesserect
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: Ythan]
#24827267 - 12/05/17 06:57 AM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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Check out "Endless river pink Floyd tribute" on youtube. I think the group is named Magicdweezle. They are as great as Floyd in my opinion. Scientists do claim I heard that your heart rate will sync with music
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Fractal420
Psycellium
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: MikeTesserect]
#24827278 - 12/05/17 07:13 AM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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Floyd tribute bands rock, at least the ones i know about
-------------------- Dreaming of That face again. It's bright and blue and shimmering. Grinning wide And comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes. Prying open MY third eye
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Thayendanegea
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: Ythan]
#24828071 - 12/05/17 02:26 PM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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Thanks Ythan, I actually have a friend who is at the end of her fight with cancer and will soon be under hospice care that is contemplating a mushroom trip before she dies. I have offered to help her and I would use this playlist if she chooses to go through with it. She is 57 now and the last time she tripped was in 1979.
-------------------- Look Deep Into Nature,and Then You Will Understand Everything Better. Albert Einstein
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IntergelacticPal
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: Fractal420] 1
#24828370 - 12/05/17 04:49 PM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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Rainforest sounds and meditation music is often underrated IMO
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FractalMind
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: IntergelacticPal]
#24828654 - 12/05/17 07:06 PM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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Robert Hunters lyrics will always stay my tripping playlist. Dude was an mk-ultra lsd test subject. Nuff said...
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dodgem
Learner
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: FractalMind]
#24831147 - 12/07/17 01:30 AM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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I listened to some Chopin while on mushrooms one time and it was an amazing experience. May have to throw on a classical vinyl the next time I trip at home.
--------------------
Walk where you like your steps
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CLIT
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: FractalMind]
#24831198 - 12/07/17 02:40 AM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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what band was he in?
Quote:
FractalMind said: Robert Hunters lyrics will always stay my tripping playlist. Dude was an mk-ultra lsd test subject. Nuff said...
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Fractal420
Psycellium
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: Thayendanegea]
#24831310 - 12/07/17 05:58 AM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
Thayendanegea said: Thanks Ythan, I actually have a friend who is at the end of her fight with cancer and will soon be under hospice care that is contemplating a mushroom trip before she dies. I have offered to help her and I would use this playlist if she chooses to go through with it. She is 57 now and the last time she tripped was in 1979.
Similar situation. Im planning on facilitating an experience with my friend
-------------------- Dreaming of That face again. It's bright and blue and shimmering. Grinning wide And comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes. Prying open MY third eye
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FractalMind
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: CLIT]
#24831456 - 12/07/17 08:14 AM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
CLIT said: what band was he in?
Quote:
FractalMind said: Robert Hunters lyrics will always stay my tripping playlist. Dude was an mk-ultra lsd test subject. Nuff said...
He wrote most of the Grateful Dead's lyrics. Very interesting backstory a lot of people dont know about. He was tested in the early 60s. (1964, Stanford) http://m.beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/09/grateful-dead-lyricist-subject-in-the-cias-mkultra-program-2769816.html "I'm uncle sam, that's who I am!"
Edited by FractalMind (12/07/17 08:17 AM)
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Doc9151
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Re: This Is a Scientifically Determined Playlist for Tripping [Re: FractalMind]
#24833818 - 12/08/17 11:47 AM (6 years, 3 months ago) |
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Anything without words is cool, I have been taken on some amazing journeys with the assistance of music, headphones are a must in my opinion.
Edit: Alan Parsons project to me to the ellysian fields and then to a sacrificial table of sorts complete with candles and hooded monks. The monk at my head leaned over me to where I could see his face and said " It's not time for you to be here yet", then I was back in reality, trip was over.
-------------------- Psilocybe cubensis data collection thread. please help with this project if you hunt wild cubensis. https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=26513593&page=0&vc=1#26513593
Edited by Doc9151 (12/08/17 11:53 AM)
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