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fedorahead · 2 months

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I put CWs, but I'll add a foreward; this post deals with drugs (magic mushrooms), sexual trauma, childhood abuse, and some religion. It's also maybe the most candid thing I've written in a long time.

This past weekend was my husband's birthday. We had date night Friday, and we decided to lemon tek some APEs that we've had sitting around for a while. I was worried they'd lose their potency because we put zero serious effort into storing them correctly and it has been months. These ones had been fantastic the past few times we partook, and we'd only been doing small amounts (small for us is 1-3g typically, and I usually eat rather than lemon tek which is a mellower, longer experience).

It's been a while as I mentioned, so my tolerance was back to zero, so when I finished my cup of lemon earl grey and asked how much I'd just had, I got a little anxious when he said it was 3.5g. But I had already set my mind to enjoying the evening for his benefit, so I calmed myself and got ready for the ride.

We've got a year and a half of eating mushrooms together now, we started just before my 30th birthday. I'd had them once before and it was not a good experience (yay music festivals and mixing substances) and he had done a lot of exploring in his teen and early adult years, but it had been a while. I delved headlong into the studies of psychonautica and mycology, and discovered I have better retention for mycological facts in my adulthood than I did for spelling or debunked urban legends in childhood (absolute mastery of those subjects, as a kid anyway).

We went into the bedroom, because the most important discovery I've made about enjoying the ride is that oxytocin is the miracle chem that turns a mushroom high into a full sensory vacation; though in the ounces upon ounces I've consumed, even pushing 7g in an evening and timing my medications for maximum effect, I'd never reached that state that neurotypicals (and even other autists/ptsd cases) tell tales of. Cohesion has never been the name of my game.

Our sex life, I won't go into, but it involves a lot of discussion of concepts reserved for the privacy of just us- this is relevant, I'm not just bragging or baiting. We started to do our thing, intimacy, closeness, playing roles that weren't really divorced from reality, and I came into full swing.

The intrusive thoughts that plague me always, and especially during sexy funtimes, became more tangible and less repetitive or fleeting. I started crying, (which was perfectly appropriate and enjoyable for both parties).

Sooner than expected, the sun was rising, and I was living renewed. Two major understandings came to me: one, much subtler and less applicable to daily life; the other, a complete audit of my entire identity.

The first realization was a spiritual one. I've always been an atheist. I tried to believe in something, anything, but none of the proffered options gave me any sort of inspiration.

I've also always had inclinations towards believing in the essence, soul, maybe even consciousness of things around me. Toy Story spoke to me as a tiny kid, and when Pocahontas sang "every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name", that resonated with me. Maybe it's cliché, or maybe there's an inherent respect for the world around us children understand that our society teaches us to ignore. Those movies were hits for a reason. Either way, especially since starting mushrooms but even before, I've felt tapped into something. My Buddhist studies have felt the closest to, well, not understanding it, but definitely vibing with it, whatever it is. And this weekend I connected the thing I do feel in some ways and some times with the stories other people have told of spiritual experiences. My brain is more inclined to see it as some sort of magic, and I've worried I've got schizophrenia many times for having some supernatural... not beliefs, but openness I suppose. It's always felt like a flaw, but I see now that it's just the thing all those other people have been going on about my whole life. They just layer all their tangible bullshit on top of it and make it so hard to see. And seeking whatever this is feels very very different to the assertion of seeking "answers" or some form of "explanation" regarding the nature of existence. Fictional media concepts like the warp, or the multiverse, or parallel dimensions (yes I know that's covered by the multiverse), higher and lower planes of existence, the threads that connect all things, even enlightenment; they're all referring to this place I've been going for a long time and I finally understand that now.

The second revelation, I've called it an epiphany, I've posted about incessantly since having it both here and on facebook.

Everything I use to define myself, every aspect of my personality I recognize and feel I know, is a result of, either by adherence to or rebellion from, a set of expectations that were forced upon me from birth. On one side of my family, there were the best of intentions, trying to encourage an educated, compassionate, caring, sensitive person. One with confidence and self-esteem, even though those were struggles for everyone guiding me. On the other, one person had control, and his expectations were not rules set out but reality presented in the form of facts and logical rants and arguments that begged their own questions. It was also a childhood of warnings, explanations, exposure to concepts far beyond a child's years. I was to be smart, quick-witted, fit, rational, completely sexually repressed, modest in clothing but not in academia, and entirely dependent. Mental illness wasn't an option, disability a choice I was to opt out of. I was taught cultural knowledge that was out of date by my birth let alone my tween years. The world around me had a lens of his perception. When I decided I would not be torn down for making my own life choices any more, I walked out of his house and stopped seeing him for years. While his mother and sister held control of me financially, they pressured me to "just go see him" and I refused. During that time, I worked very hard at unlearning the twisted life lessons he'd given me, the fundamental "truths" that were no such thing. When I was in my early 20s, I thought I had shaken his programming and rejoiced that I was no longer spewing ignorant bile at the expense of the people around me, that I had deprogrammed myself.

This weekend, I realized how much deeper it went. I don't share his views anymore, but I was still bound by a deeper programming. Realization after realization hit me in waves. Every formative memory holds a trauma that has defined me for 30+ years. Every deviance from the norm I have, I can track to his behaviours, his words, his intentions. Including the source of most difficult shame, my sexuality.

I'm still not comfortable talking about the specifics of things in my head. But I had not realized until this weekend that they weren't facets of my inherent self; he put them there. His warnings and admonitions, so early in my life, meant I knew what incest was before I knew what sex was. Meant I knew what repressed memories were before I understood trauma. I remember not believing him when he told me women didn't enjoy sex, because how could it be objectionable when I already wanted it so bad, so young? I considered myself precocious until recently; the warning signs had been there the whole time, but I assumed I'd become who I am naturally and wasn't like others who only developed early sexuality from relevant abuse.

I've known for years the things he had been accused of, and also been told by anyone that would answer that the situation was complicated, that he probably hadn't done anything, that it was a misunderstanding, that maybe the witness lied and that's why she didn't come back to court to testify. Nobody wanted me to understand how terrifying it would be to go up against him in court, a small woman tied to our families, part of the social circle, whose house I'm sure he had been to. A teenage girl trying to protect a toddler without protection for herself.

From my late teens onward, I considered the signs that I'd been molested to be signs that our mental healthcare system was so terrible I'd been traumatized by that. A false allegation can still land the kid in probing meetings with adults who want to get something out of them. I do think spending my entire childhood in therapy traumatized me. I also wish they'd told me the truth. That they weren't sending me "just in case, because he yells so much", that they saw that I was suffering symptoms of complex trauma even at age 2 and they wanted to intervene. Even if I hadn't understood it, what I was told gave me room to believe his side. I kept believing his side for so long, it become the lore I told myself and others.

I realized, I've been running my whole life, and I don't have a self to find. He made sure of that.

Wave after wave of connection and realization made our evening of drugs and sex complex and amazing and ultimately, freeing.

I don't have to hate my body. I don't have to struggle to find clothes that cover perfectly normal parts. I don't have to compensate with gender confusion, sexuality confusion, hating labels and trying to find one and feeling like it's incomplete anyway. I don't have to have a cool name.

I get to build a person, and that person doesn't have to be perfect or better than anyone else. I don't have to look down on people for circumstances beyond their control. I don't have to be a judgmental dick just because I was traumatized into being one.

And I can have sex whenever I want, with whomever I want, and it doesn't have to be the sole purpose of my life to find the emotional fulfillment and validation sex provides. That can just be a fun side quest I do with my husband regularly. You know, to grind those skill points up or whatever.

I have energy. I have accomplished so much this week. I even cleaned the fridge and pantry. I danced. I played with the dog. For the first time in my life, I am Hannah, I am present, and I am free.

#twdrugs #tw abuse #tw grooming #tw gaslighting #tw molestation #trip report #tw religion #magic mushrooms #complex ptsd #dissociation #ptsd #cptsd #shrooms #psilocybin #albino penis envy #APE #i love you goodnight

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insipid-drivel · 9 months

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Berskerker Tea

I got to try the infamous “Berserker Tea” lauded by the Norse and Vikings. I had some the other day, but I’m having some as I write this, too, and I feel like sharing what the experience is like:

First off, my partner is from a very traditional Norwegian family. His gift to me upon arriving to move in with me was a drinking horn trimmed in hammered gold, carved from an ox horn, and etched with the symbol of a wolf. With him, he also brought... recipes.

A little cultural factoid: Before one can drink from a drinking horn, you have to “blood the horn”, aka cut yourself - usually nothing worse than a papercut - and swipe the blood into the grooves of the animal or deity carved onto the horn itself. It’s done in order to protect the warrior drinking from it from bad luck and evil spirits, particularly before and during battle. To my understanding, the blood “feeds” the figure carved on the horn in order to call upon its protection.

“Berserker Tea” is essentially the closest modern equivalent to the draught that Norse berserker warriors would consume before going into battle. Some of the ingredients are a secret, but it’s mostly comprised of tea (I prefer chamomile), mead (a wine-like alcoholic beverage made from fermenting honey and is also very high in healthy probiotics), and psilocybin mushrooms steeped for hours or days at a time and consumed cold. The longer the mix is allowed to sit, the more potent the drink becomes. It’s not unusual to mix cannabis in, either, in order to stimulate the appetite and make it easier to sleep. Shrooms can suppress the appetite and stimulate different areas of the brain so it’s difficult to sleep, and weed naturally counters those symptoms so you can snack and sleep whenever you genuinely want to.

It smells amazing when it’s still hot and steeping. Like an ancient Pagan holiday.

In spite of the alcohol, it doesn’t make you sleepy or give the sensation of feeling tipsy or drunk. I only have about a gram of mushrooms in mine, which is about the clinical equivalent of a microdose, but holy shit.

First off, at the dosage I prefer, you don’t actually hallucinate. Colors are more striking and beautiful to look at, art is more captivating to see, and stimming feels amazing, but you aren’t going to see little green men or dragons circling the sky. Jokes you’ve heard before become hilarious again like it’s the first time you’ve heard them. Most forms of chronic pain disappear. Music is more than music. Your mood becomes buoyant and pleasant. Feelings of anxiety and depression go away. Chronic fatigue and sleepiness just... evaporate. PTSD and traumatic memories and flashbacks aren’t traumatic anymore - they’re there, and you may actually remember more detail or uncover memories you’ve blocked out, but they can’t overwhelm you anymore. You can choose to observe your memories and make a real, firm statement like, “That sucked and it wasn’t okay, but I’m not going to be afraid of it anymore,” and it works.

Unlike caffeine, you genuinely feel awake and alert (it’s a lot more like having the right balance of B12 in your system rather than a stimulant like caffeine), and the effects last for 8 hours or more. There is no crash-landing or hangover, and when you sober up, the realizations and observations you made with things like trauma and triggers for depression actually stick.

I wanted to cry the first time I felt the tea kick in for me. It feels like the way antidepressants should feel. I wasn’t hiding from any psychological pain, and the tea wouldn’t let me. It almost feels like it forces you to confront what’s been bothering you, in fact. It doesn’t let you become numb to emotional and psychological pain the way something like opioid use can. It turns your brain into an open book for your own perusal, where the facts and truths are plain in front of you, but as harmless as an ink blot on paper. It lets you process in a way where the most uncomfortable and unexplored passages in your mind are well-lit and safe to delve into.

I didn’t end up sacking Rome or bush-whacking supply trains in the Teutoburg Forest while contemplating rallying behind Versingetorix over in Gaul, but it’s still a pretty awesome experience.

Right now, with another round in my system, all I feel is pleasant and comfortable while also contemplative about my life in general. I’m able to be a little more critical of myself without being self-deprecating, while also being able to be vastly more forgiving of myself, too. There are no strange hallucinations dancing in front of my eyes, and the only compulsion I have that’s out-of-character for me is that I feel like smiling a lot more than usual. I think I may put some music on my headphones and take a walk in the woods. Who knows? It’s a great day.

#psilocybin #berserker tea #vikings #norwegians are wild #microdosing #hallucinogens #tw: alcohol #tw: drugs #tw: blood #tw: cutting #i mean it's entirely ceremonial in purpose and not intended to be self destructive #unless you're a roman on the wrong side of the danube

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super8motel · 1 year

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SG learns of her boyfriend’s purgatorial existence.

#art #feint #webcomic #psilocybin #1970s #psychadelic art #violence tw

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afieldinengland · 8 months

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can i have your full list of movie recs? i’m sure you’ve posted them before but idk where to find them, also i hope you feel better soon i’m not terribly good with comforting ppl but i’m thinking of you tonight <3

oh, of course, friend– well, i have a list on letterboxd of a few of my favourites, but i can be much more expansive here :) hopefully this is alright, thank you very much for the kind words

the wicker man (1973) - the best film ever made. erotic and pagan and rolling the sun on the hips of a lord in tweed. to date the only film i have shown people that invariably had made them come to me the day after to tell me i have introduced something undeniable and strange into their world. thank you anthony shaffer for everything

equus (1977) - and thank you peter shaffer for everything, too. uniquely distressing and terribly, unutterably sensual. i know not everyone has galloped like alan strang has, but i have. and i know how it feels to have a god take your intestines in his teeth

harold and maude (1971) - when i first started university someone told me that i reminded them of harold chansen, but it wasn't for another few months that i found out why. i don't think i'm being overzealous when i say that this film would probably change anyone's life for the better, really. go and love some more

penda's fen (1974) - a rare thing indeed, which i was made aware of by someone i consequently owe a great deal to. homosexuality, paganism, spiritual becoming, angels and demons and the music of edward elgar bleeding like a long-exposure across the soil of the english countryside. again a film i hardly have words for.... it feels like a rare thing indeed for a boy on a hill in england in the 1970s to declare so vitally and so beautifully that his sex is mixed

if.... (1968) - mick travis and the proto-droog, or the boys' boarding school as petri dish for violence. ever so slightly hallucinatory and alternately deft and brutal and comic in encouraging the growth

a field in england (2013) - you are a coward in a seventeenth century field with a wizard and he won't tell you he's feeding you psilocybin, but he's feeding you psilocybin. every time i got drunk in a field between the ages of sixteen and eighteen i turned into whitehead.... has the world ever recovered from when reece shearsmith emerged from that tent-flap mad and on the end of a rope. a tw for strobe images

in the earth (2021) - as above, a ben wheatley-directed film in which reece shearsmith kind of plays whitehead's descendant. a spectral pandemic looms large at the margins of an unmapped forest, while a standing stone and parnag fegg speak and scream through the mycorrhizal mat inside. a tw for strobe images / flash

the rsc richard ii (2013) - david tennant plays shakespeare's self-dramatising, histrionic king as a posturing androgyne, an inept ruler, a hysterical poet, a madwoman in the attic, a ghost at the feast and a scared little boy all at once. deposition comes to find him crawling and strutting and wailing by turns in a matrix of history and tragedy

caligula (1979) - anyone who tells you that this is one of the 'films considered the worst' is a coward. aspiring headily to cleopatra (1964) but with every possible flavour of bodily fluid and sex act and effete little costume on malcolm mcdowell ending just below his balls represented. helen mirren i hope we live forever. tw for sexual violence

caravaggio (1986) - love and violence and paint and anachronism talk brutally about art and muse in a way that reaches far beyond 1610. death ejaculates blood everywhere, complete with contortionism and engraved knife-blades and kissing blood and coins from another man's mouth to your own

dead ringers (1988) - ellie... ellie... can you ever escape something like a twin? parasitic siblinghood as addiction / withdrawal / overdose, and how the body opens under metal no matter their mutations

ravenous (1999) - this is a love story. comparable to a field in england, in many ways. the devil comes whistling over the sierra nevada in the 1840s in the shape of a man, and in his hands and on his palate he carries the hypnotic taste of longpig and unnerving manifest-destiny ideas about the bloody power of eating who you kill

the cook, the thief, his wife and her lover (1989) - the insides govern everything. eyes caught across a restaurant germinate a love affair, then chaos, and then the brutal and total and pyrrhic main course. the dry outside moves unforgiving towards the slippery inside. tw for sexual violence and domestic abuse

sleuth (1972) - anthony shaffer does it again. homoeroticism and class posturing and wry detective novel cliché, hemmed in by the animatronics and board games and sedately hedged walls of a wiltshire manor. above all else you have to keep your eye on the rules of the game

mumsy, nanny, sonny and girly (1970) - speaking of which, this is one of the films that inspired anthony shaffer to write the wicker man. childhood games and childhood language dance laughing circles hand-in-hand with axe violence and imprisonment and jelly for elevenses. everyone in the 'family' commits to their place in the game in a way that would even make sleuth's andrew wyke safeword out, i think, but certainly not the beetle-trapping children of summerisle

robin redbreast (1970) - another predecessor of the wicker man, this time a bbc play for today that places a pregnant citydweller in a remote and rural cottage. somewhere between sergeant howie and rosemary woodhouse, she is surrounded by a knowing and smiling circle happy to pull her closer and closer to the golden bough

the lion in winter (1968) - you will see the script of this film posted in webweaves alongside hannibal and succession, and with good reason. henry ii, eleanor of aquitaine and their sons are a writhing, humid familial sickness at the heart of their christmas court, too close for comfort– alternately struggling for the crown, tearfully reminiscing and threatening one another with knives. as with all family christmases, of course

straight on till morning (1972) - peter pan and dorian gray as post-psycho proto-slasher. shane briant and rita tushingham are equally astounding as children who never grew up, telling stories to keep themselves from shaking apart against the brutalist backdrop of the 1970s south bank and the winding tower of their own never-neverland. wendy and peter on a nihilistic backdrop of stashed jewellery, dog mutilation and recorded screams

the creeping flesh (1973) - somehow a standout among many other cushing/lee vehicles like it. victorian attitudes to madness, to women and to sexuality corrode around an uncanny supernatural force that brings forward a spectre of unaccountable grief. tw for attempted sexual violence

who's afraid of virginia woolf? (1966) - me and who. again the spectre of grief, but in the form of a glass hitting a wall like a broken-necked bird and the ultimate and consequent bilious overspill of truth. violence!! violence!!

corruption (1968) - in 1968 peter 'lavender and linen' cushing obe played a sex murderer. surely one of the most bizarre grindhouse flicks for the casting alone, he beheads a woman in a train carriage and rubs the blood of another all over her exposed breasts (in the european cut). there's also an incredibly silly chase scene on a beach, a guy in john lennon glasses who crushes an apple in his bare hand and a giant laser. thank you

theatre of blood (1973) - four words for you: vincent price does shakespeare. perhaps the most fun film on this list, and starring pretty much everyone who was working in british film at the time. critics forced to eat their words, sometimes literally, with the meat of the speeches given to price and diana rigg to devour with the scenery. from greasepaint to chef's hat to the mud of the thames, vincent price is clearly having a whale of a time, and it really is fucking great

the bride of frankenstein (1935) - i have no idea if it's blasphemous to say this is far better than frankenstein (1931), but that's what i think– largely due to the presences of delightfully camp mephistopheles aka dr septimus pretorius and the unutterably captivating bride herself. to a new world of gods and monsters

bride of reanimator (1991) - i think this, too, is better than reanimator (1985), but that's a very close-run thing as both films are excellent. shoutout to herbert west for proposing to dan cain with the heart of dan's dead ex-girlfriend and shoutout to dan for accepting it. before the wrath of the lamb there were two men in a basement laboratory killing geckos for gecko juice

dragonwyck (1946) - vincent price brooding tall as byronic villain, replete with a manor suffused with hints of rebecca and jane eyre and wuthering heights. death, remarriage and birth pass in an opiate haze that drive relentlessly towards mandess

rope (1948) - nietzschean philosophy, dinner party etiquette, palmistry, incriminating furniture and household items, and why every sign in this room of wonderfully dressed people says to me that gay people ought to be allowed to kill whoever they want

the lair of the white worm (1988) - do you want to see peter capaldi in a kilt pull the pin out of a grenade with his teeth? do you want to see him have vitally homoerotic moments with hugh grant on the stile of a fence while covered in blood? do you want to see a sexy snake lady lie on a tanning bed and taunt a hypnotised woman with a giant strap-on? of fucking course you do watch this film right now they have pickled worms and a specifically written folk song

flesh for frankenstein (1973) - somehow a uniquely nasty take on the frankenstein narrative. the film's acting is as awful as its approach to flesh, explicit blood relation between victor and his sister, obvious motives behind his quest for the 'perfect nasum', and overabundance of gushing mutilation are interesting

the medusa touch (1978) - an oddly quiet thriller about the power of the mind with a climax filmed in the beautiful environs of bristol cathedral. which isn't the only reason it's on here, but it helps– especially as they adamantly want to make you believe that it's a building in london

horror hospital (1973) - similar to the creeping flesh in that i have seen its ideas done much weaker elsewhere, but also completely unlike that film because it is so totally unserious. any film that opens with one man calling another a 'silly little red faggot swirling around in his own smoke, who does she think she is, greta garbo' and then turns into the world's most bizarre narrative about a health spa with a limo that beheads people is a joy to behold

dracula ad (1972) - johnny alucard we are making you king of all the faggots. he whores and scores his way across the groovy baby shagadelic underbelly of london and takes his little gang of freaks to a desanctified church to drag dracula up from the dead, as if the old sod hasn't suffered enough. and then he has the temerity to moan and kneel and ask a reasonably irate christopher lee to bite him– which he does. if nothing else i hope you will watch for the line 'close the devil's circle, dig the music, kids'

the satanic rites of dracula (1973) - the bitch is back, and you better forget everything you know about dracula movies because this time he has an office building, a motorcycle gang in sheepskin vests and a eye for bioterrorism. shoutout to joanna lumley for playing peter cushing's granddaughter in this who just a year before had a different face and body and hair colour and was a different actress entirely

frankenstein and the monster from hell (1974) - shane briant's simon helder is baron frankenstein's johnny alucard. they do not have crazy gay bitesex in a church, but they do transplant a brain together and in the world of hammer frankenstein that is a fingers in the mouth sort of a deal. astonishingly strange and fantastic swansong to the hexad, with briant, cushing and madeline smith making up the mental asylum's worst family unit

martin (1977) - another vampire story undoubtedly for the modern age. walking firmly ahead of the bela lugosis and christopher lees before it, and playing with the ambiguity between supernatural and homicidal behaviour. all vampires should be ringing in to radio shows

the finishing line (1977) - a 1970s public information film about the dangers of walking on railway tracks, except the way they convey this is a dreamlike vision of a sports day held on said tracks that takes on the air of a calmly administered mass ritual sacrifice. i keep behind the yellow line on the platform, now, though

apaches (1977) - another public information film, this time about the dangers of being an unsupervised child on a farm. except, again, the way they convey this is to make the world seem a callous and terrifying place in general, because it is the 1970s. anything from a slurry pit to pesticide to a tractor can lead to the name above your coat-hook at school being quietly spirited away

the insomniac (1971) - a hallucinatory journey between the fantasy of storytelling and the cement world outside. short and peculiar, but shares similar concerns to parts of penda's fen

stigma (1977) - a family moving to avebury aim to have one of the stones removed from their back garden. only half an hour long but again tempering british mundanity with incarnadine consequence

#answered #film recs #thank you friend!! i think i've included all my main recs... sorry it's a long one. i haven't tagged gore so take it as par for the course

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tiredandcaffeinated · 11 months

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tw: mentions of d3ath and drugs

did you know some mushrooms can cause hallucination? those shrooms are called magic mushrooms that contain psilocybin and psilocin and in the human body psilocybin gets broken down into psilocin which is the active form of the hallucinogenic drug. the chemical structure of psilocin is similar to the neurotransmitter serotonin which normally sends signals between brain cells to regulate things such as mood, memory and sleep. SO psilocin tricks the brain in activating serotonin receptors and this can cause hallucinogenic effects like changing thought patterns, mood and even a sense of euphoria!! people also consume magic shrooms as drugs (?)?.).?.) and the effect usually begins within thirty to forty five minutes and can last for six hours, in rare cases if someone consumes a large amount of shrooms it might result in death.

omg this is so interesting ty for telling me!! i knew that they can cause hallucinations but i did not know exactly how.

#zenia <3 #asks #tw: mention of death #tw: mention of drugs

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zinniajones · 1 year

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“Extremely strong atheism”

(tw death, fear, life-threatening danger, anxiety, drug use, war, cancer, car accident, near-death experience)

(copied from Twitter)

So "dread of ego dissolution" is a measure of an adverse psychedelic effect where you are terrified your self is being destroyed (similar to what I saw when I almost died?), and having this happen from psychedelics is associated with worsening depression (frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…)

I feel like when you've seen what actually happens when you die and your self is erased into nonexistence (speaking from my actual experience of almost dying, not a hallucinogen) it's almost impossible to stop being aware of it at every moment and freaking out about it constantly

I think my awareness of this may be an absolute contraindication to ever trying psychedelics again. There isn't ever going to be a "set and setting" where I'm not constantly aware and terrified of death, and you aren't supposed to give someone psychedelics when that's going on

Drugs like psilocybin and MDMA are also used to treat traumatic stress and PTSD, but even if that does anything (the overall effect might not be all that impressive), there's just something about this particular experience I had of seeing what death actually consists of

It's not like any drug I ever happen to take is going to change anything about our fundamental situation as decaying material beings trapped for a finite span in a physical universe before we're killed and erased like an animal dying. How is hallucinating supposed to fix this? I didn't have an out of body experience at all when it was happening, and actually, since HRT made me stop dissociating, it's possible it helped keep me grounded inside my body as it was being killed and my perception stayed completely fixed in place as everything was closing out

There's also some positive version of this apparently experienced under psychedelic use called "oceanic boundlessness" associated with better outcomes and improvement in depression symptoms. There's an entire history of calling it "oceanic". Why does it have to be that :(

But yeah, when you know that reality is actually a fucking horrifying nightmare you're trapped in and your body can literally die and wipe out your entire self forever, taking a drug that generates more apparent altered realities of an unclear nature seems extremely dangerous

And if there were a drug that did anything to fix this, it would have to be some kind of hypothetical drug that actually changes beliefs and values, something that makes you acquire a belief in an afterlife or postmortem "survival" even when there's still no evidence of this

Which would also be a really worrying effect for a drug to have and it's probably really good that drugs can't do that

I wish this was something that could be more conventionally addressed like depression, or like a specific phobia of water, but there's not a way to exposure-therapy yourself about the fact that death is still always there and waiting to finish the job of erasing you at any moment

Nobody understands why that experience isn't something I can just get over. I could spend however much money on therapy and still come out the other end as a body that knows it's going to die

A lot of "bad trip" experiences with psychedelics involve reports of something like fear that one will be trapped in a place for eternity or will experience something going on forever. Not the fear and certainty that everything is actually about to end in the next few seconds

I wish I had a subjective eternity to be terrified of, at least you'd still exist at all

I've been extremely angry since then, more than usual, at Christian religions claiming there is a hell, because I don't consider this a threat, I consider this a bogus promise they'll never make good on

It's "hell"? Who cares about that part? The point is they're telling people you get to keep existing after you die which is awful and untrue and a disservice to everyone

I have actually screamed at campus preachers about how this is worse than hell and how dare they even promise us hell? I'm hopeful that going through some studies of what is happening during "ego dissolution" in psychedelic use may provide some information on what my brain was doing and perceiving while I was drowning, although it should be specific to the the "dread" part (pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/74/4/8…)

I'm still very confused about how being dunked underwater for less than 5 seconds, and not having my body physiologically die or even come close, caused me to acquire that significant of an experience and apparent knowledge in what seemed like one key moment

Previous thread on how, at least on paper, this suggests cocaine is something that reinforces your sense of self and increases your confidence in a way apparently opposite of ego dissolution. I can't confirm that because you can't just be doing cocaine

That scale above was able to, for instance, show that cocaine use has an almost opposite effect of "ego dissolution" seen with psychedelics. Cocaine and psychedelics are tapping on the same slider there. So that's like saying doing cocaine was a life-changing spiritual experience (https://twitter.com/ZJemptv/status/1589853648074727424)

But does cocaine make you stop being afraid of death all the time? I really hope that when I do die I'm so out of it at that point that I have no real lucidity or comprehension at all of what's happening, because being completely aware that it's happening is the worst thing ever

I've had to stop describing it in so much detail because it was starting to give a couple people frequent ruminations about death after they read what I was saying and they hadn't even had a near-death experience, so just, going into death suddenly with eyes wide open is so bad

It also completely upends your life when you survive, there is so much now that I just don't care about anymore, because I can't force myself to consider it important enough to be worth spending my limited time on

I mean I completely understand now why my paternal grandfather absolutely lost his shit and went off the rails after serving in the Korean War and why my dad did the same twice after almost dying in a car accident at 18 and almost dying of leukemia in his early 30s

It has a way of absolutely arresting your attention, although in their cases it also led to an incredible amount of egregiously erratic and sometimes uncontrolled irrational behavior that was dangerous to themselves and others

As in problematic substance use, violence, unaddressed severe mental illness, a ton of destructive and maladaptive behaviors that I personally am not interested in leaning into

Anyway, I need a specific term for: this fusion of true belief and deep knowledge, reinforced by acquired experience, of an atheistic nonspiritual physicalism-materialism/other nondualism in the nature of the universe and consciousness, that entails destruction upon bodily death

Because this experience strongly confirmed for me some kind of Atheism And Then Some

I'm not exaggerating when I say I'm thinking about this on some level at literally all times since the moment it happened at approximately 1:00 PM on September 2. There's no way not to be aware of it even just as the backdrop of everything, and frequently it gets foregrounded

I've never believed in anything more deeply and strongly and genuinely than what I saw and experienced that day

There's weak atheism, there's strong atheism, and then there's this "extremely strong atheism" that honestly seems to have been imposed on me, in the form of an experience similar to the "faith conviction" sometimes described by adherents as their form of religious epiphany

Just not like a conversion, but a very emphatic reaffirmation that what I previously believed on a deep level is also in fact true in reality on a deep level

#tw death #tw drowning #near death experience #near death tw #drugs tw #tw drugs #tw war #Zinnia Jones #atheism #extremely strong atheism

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merrrgun · 1 year

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Holy shit. The raw emotion in tonight's dnd session. Tw drug use, death, suffering in general, existential crisis

I've talked about Thia before but here's a recap: Thia is a drow from the Underdark who grew up hating the society around her. She abhorred the cruelty she witnessed and it drove her out of the depths and into the world above at a young age. She then spent decades trying to learn magic "the good way" (i.e. become a wizard), but no matter how hard she tried, how well she studied, powers didn't come to her, until one day during her studies when she fell unconscious trying so hard to cast a spell. When she woke up, her white hair and silver eyes were purple, and she had powers. She has no memories of what happened to her, though over the next few years she pieced together that some sort of pact must have been made for her to receive powers.

In a floating harbor town in the sea, Thia was offered the opportunity to open her mind with a drug extracted from pufferfish. After ruminating on this offer and coming to the conclusion that it may be just the thing she needed to commune with her patron, she accepted. Her trip began as something very similar to a psilocybin trip: she felt the crashes of the waves outside, she became disconnected from herself, she saw herself outside of herself. And attached to her body, she saw a thread that lead into darkness. Following the thread, she found herself in a cave with a dead body and a rat with a severed tail. From here she experienced memories of thousands of other drow who had suffered in the Underdark. She felt their pain and anguish, and as she came back to the scene of the cave, it gradually became littered with thousands of dead bodies, and the rat began weeping and wailing louder and louder. Then, the last memory she experienced was her own. She was in a bookstore, reading a book about a rat king and a rat who had severed its tail to separate from the rest. As the trip began to end, and she felt herself becoming farther from the rat and being dragged back towards her body, she called out "who are you?" and the response was like a hot coal on her soul: "the one who sets the Dark right."

This was her patron.

When she came to, she groggily uttered to her lover who took the liberty of watching over her, "I understand. I understand what it means to hurt. That's why it touched me."

Led back to her rental room and into a bath, she was left alone with her thoughts for a while after this. She slipped under the surface and screamed, her cries muffled by the water. When she came back up she silently cried until her lover checked on her from the other side of the door. She insisted she was fine, and that she'd meet him and the rest of the party in the tavern. She drank something strong, and asked her lover to hold her when they went to bed.

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crowpocrypha · 1 year

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Tw: psychedelics

I'm actually only on .25g of psilocybin, but I just wanted to say I was doodling

Jon and my tactile hypersensitive touch-curious ass

There's a little conversation written next to it saying:

Jon, you can't just give her psychedelics.

They're tryptami--

They're shrooms.

#shitpost #doodle

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themindofus · 1 month

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My beliefs (TW: Religion, trauma, firearms, cheating, illicit substances,

This is going to be a long one. Strap in please. Most of us know what Christianity is. Most of us know what religion is. Some of us have had religious experiences. I grew up in the United States, which Christianity is the dominant religion of. I only agreed with it because every one else did. I didn't know what it meant to believe something, only to trust something. Around the age of 11 I decided to disagree with the religion. I didn't want to put my belief into someone who allows suffering to occur. Silly of me to put human standards on an entity, but I was young and at the time, this God seemed morally unjust, so I didn't ascribe. I understand there are reasons for this in the religion, however as you will read, the religion goes against what I currently (aged 23) believe in distinct and non-negotiable ways. I knew belief was a choice, just like causing pain to others was also a choice. I decided since there wasn't another religion to flood into Christianity's place, I'd accept atheism. Stayed that way for years.

My mystical experiences took off in early adulthood with with exploration of illicit substances. Granted, it wasn't my first time with the substances (all for psilocybin), at least not with the substance that catalyzed the mystical experience. So college looked like high school when I was a freshman. I felt weak, small, new, and vulnerable. I mention this because this openness possibly influenced my experience. Sonetime when I was 19, I was on psilocybin at my (then current, now ex) partner's townhouse. I had my first sign of emotional breakthrough (an experience of emotional catharsis on psychedelics, for more information about this terminology, please visit the article named Emotional Breakthrough and Psychedelics: Validation of the Emotional Breakthrough Inventory by authors Leon Roseman et al., 2019). I called my people, tried to get comfort from my partner (they did not satisfy my needs), and decided to take a bath. I remember dosing because why not? I had free will. I didn't care about set and setting. I would say I should have but.. people should care about their set and setting on psychedelics. Because I had no care at the time, it lead me to this experience. As dangerous as that may have been, I wouldn't change it for the universe. I had a bad day at work. I remember taking a gram, waiting an hour, feeling nothing and taking a second, and then emotions started to rise, so I let them out with my mouth, I sang. It was beautiful. I thought of a friend who recently (at the time) decided they did not want to be my friend and experienced gratitude towards their words and pain for their absence. I called my closest friend (at the time), who did not answer, so I left a voicemail describing what I was experiencing with sound and how much I missed my absent friend. I drew a bath and sat in it after crying aimlessly on my ex partner's lap. I don't remember the experience of the bath very well, but I remember feeling my body and my soul and feeling that they were separate from one another. I had bath crayons and drew my soul on the wall. No images were taken of my soul, but I remember many blues and yellows. Soon (in another post) I'll explain colors.

At the same townhouse, I actively emotionally cheated on my ex partner. This is not something I am proud of and if I could, I'd make everything up to all parties involved. One night, myself and the friend I was falling for were drinking ethanol. We were up pretty late. My partner left a firearm for protection purposes. Well.. long story short we thought we took all the bullets out, I shot a table attempting to demonstrate it's safety (it was not safe), no police were called or anything..oddly, and then after a panic attack, I had a mysical experience. Poor friend of mine.. they didn't need that experience but there it is. I am so so ashamed of this story. Basically, due to my first experience with human death, I believed our soul is the thing that animates our bodies, our pieces of matter. I believed we all came from a big soul (I affectionately named it The Souls) that essentially reduced reused and recycled pieces of itself. And we are all this soul, but we have to be on earth. I didn't exactly figure out why in that initial epiphany.

Things are different now. Four years have elapsed since my mystical experience. Now I see things..differently but not really? Well, I still believe the soul animates the body, I do believe we are here on earth for a mission though (for a view at my subjective/personal context to this "mission", I would like you to reference the album Portals by Melanie Martinez). I think we are all here to answer a question that The Universe thought. Thoughts so powerful it created entire beings in the third dimension. I don't know the exact mystics of it all.. I've been trying to mathmatecize it. Kinda think of it like string theory (see below video). Its by no means formal and I don't have any equations or anything, but its interesting. So I view these dimensions like the below image and conceptualize the 4th dimension as the mind or the soul or whatever. My thing is the mind and memory is based off emotion, so the higher your emotional intelligence, the more likely you are to harness the power of the 4th dimension. That power being "magic" but less magic, more math in my experience. I'm attempting to figure out what this soul is made out of. I know its emotion but you know. Anyways, next is Color Theory. And I am referencing the study of how colors work together and how they affect our emotions and perceptions, but in metaphysical terms. Thanks for reading!

youtube

#string theory #themindofus #thoughts #mystical #substance use #trigger words #math #°¤•.#Youtube

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