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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 9, 2011 - 01:48pm PT
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Still researching. Cool stuff.
But it is interesting so far how many posts... and of course the people behind them... consider tripping - or express their tripping experience or expectation - in terms of enlightenment.
Assuming that was the main goal - if not the one and only goal - out of the 60's or whenever - doesn't necessarily mean it is STILL the #1 main goal. Or that it needs to be.
Neither entertainment.
It could just be for experience sake. Experiencing a variation in perception or a variation in consciousness as a gateway understanding to a better appreciation of the mental life. For self and others and different cultures, too. I mean, if this is an interest of yours. It would be mine. Or is mine.
I know I've taken experience in the past from the likes of (a) snow blindness (seeing everything white in red for a day), (b) browning out in a pool and having my team get me to the surface in (a feeling of) nirvana; (c) one night of mushrooms in college; (d) pot, cocaine and drinking; (3) anesthesia (most recently from a colonoscopy).
Of course it has all reinforced MY model for the mind-brain relationship: that being that mind is a production of brain for evolutionary behavioral purposes in a complex environment. But then some of you already knew that. So I'm being a wee bit tedious. I go to work now. ;)
.....
EDIT
Of course the other being... therapeutic. Which is of great interest, too. Too much dissatisfaction, mental funk, if not depression in the world to ignore psychedelics possible role in this area it seems to me. But then again, I also understand there is a place for some of this too in the world as motivation, motivation to change, whatever.
Then again, I guess "enlightenment" could be looked at from many and various perspectives. Including mine, above.
Onward explorers, developers!
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Captain...or Skully
climber
or some such
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I kinda miss acid....And I'm with Pate on the flashback thing. F*#kers ripped me off, I got nothin'! Shroomies are common, though, AND they're from dirt(so they don't hurt) so a venture forth now & again helps keep the cobwebs at bay.
Mostly a cannabinoid guy these days. Just groovin' over here, Boss.
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Skippin through the lilly fields
I came across an empty space
It trembled and exploded
left a bus stop in its place .
The bus come by and I got on
that's when it all began
It was cowboy Neal at the wheel
Of a bus to never ever land.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Am I the only one here who had flashbacks???
That must say something about my own brain chemistry before the trip. Serotonin receptors is my guess.
The question is whether there are more or fewer of them? Or more or less serotonin?
Meanwhile, nice summation Fructose, of the ways of looking at the subject. This venue provides a much better platform for talking about consciousness to my way of thinking, than any of the previous threads that ended up full of emotion because religion and philosophy got involved.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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And more questions for Doug.
Is your book primarily about pharmacology or climbing or 50/50?
Any chance we could see a sneak preview of the table of contents?
That should create some good pre publication buzz.
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Daphne
Trad climber
Mill Valley, CA
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Jul 10, 2011 - 02:20am PT
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I have really loved this thread so far. I eagerly await Doug's book.
Before I began my spiritual journey, which began in my late 20s, I loved psilocybin and through those experiences I recognized that the value of hallucinogens, for me, is in the way they open "the box" of habituated thinking. I had only one bad trip and in it I came face to face with my egoic self and it was pretty frightening.
As a traveler on a spiritual path from my late 20's to my mid 40's, a time when I did not take in any drugs except alcohol, the natural DMT in my brain gifted me with many visionary experiences for which I am eternally grateful. This time proved to me that we don't need drugs to achieve altered states of consciousness.
But lately, I have been going through a "dark night of the soul" that began around the time I lost most of the sight in my right eye, about 3 years ago, at around age 46. Last month I did ayahuasca in search of a way to un-stick myself. I had read that it is like experiencing 10 years of psychotherapy in 4 hours and that pretty much sums it up for me. I can't say I am fully un-stuck yet, but I received important information for my path that, if I follow it, will lead me back into the "flow". I am so grateful that the plant wisdom exists to help humanity when we cannot find the way without it.
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Rhodo-Router
Gym climber
wussing off the topout on Roadside Attraction
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Jul 10, 2011 - 03:41am PT
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Yeah but, you took drugs. You are a bad person and should be in jail.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Jul 10, 2011 - 03:47am PT
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I had PCP flashbacks on Acid. Those sharks ate Jesus. Hoh man.
Anybody have any good Jimsonweed stories?
Edit-- I have only done PCP once and it wasn't my choice. It was one of the most horrible experiences of my life, full of fear and vomit. And I made up the part about the sharks, but an acquaintance once told me that indeed he did have PCP flashbacks on acid.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Jul 10, 2011 - 11:37am PT
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I just typed up the Table of Contents, and I think it may spread as much confusion as light about what I'm up to. But I'll take the risk. This is risky too, but here's Chapter 7, a short one that explains a bit more of where I'm coming from. I'm on the road today, so won't be able to discuss much.
The Alchemy of Action
Copyright 2011
Doug Robinson
Ch 1 Runner’s High
Ch 2 Climber’s Euphoria
Ch 3 How the Rope Gets Up There
Ch 4 The First Hormone
Ch 5 Don’t Call Me Adrenaline Junkie
Ch 6 One Cup Over the Line
Ch 7 Metabolic Voyager
Ch 8 Two Afternoons in the Sixties
Ch 9 Dosed
Ch 10 Hormonal Cocktail
Ch 11 Summit Euphoria: The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience
Ch 12 My Brain, My Alembic
Ch 13 [Something About Anandamide and DMT]
Ch 14 What’s Alchemy Got To Do With It?
Ch 15 Wrapup and implications
Part Two: Out There
Ch 1 Fastest On Two Feet
Ch 2 Running Wild
Ch 3 Walking Blues
Chapter 7
METABOLIC VOYAGER
Copyright 2011 Doug Robinson
It was an old bread van that had slid comfortably into being a mobile home. That winter it kept appearing around the ski resort of Mammoth. Those were simpler times; I did my taxes that year right on the bar at the Village Inn. You could emerge from there, blinking into a bright afternoon or an icy starscape, and there would be the van. Painted across its side in broad liquid lettering was “Metabolic Voyager.”
Never met the voyager, but I didn’t have to; his message was clear even in its wavy lettering. Plain to see in a certain light, and easy enough to understand, if you thought about it. Certainly it illuminated big chunks of my life, the parts that drove me up the walls of rock and out on skis into ten thousand square miles of white wilderness. Those things were adventure, sure, but day-by-day it was just fun, thrilling. And the thrill comes from the metabolism. Flows right out of it, as fluid as that lettering.
The process is time-honored, and it leads to getting high. The voyage, the adventure, is arduous and dangerous. You pull yourself up a rock wall, and the muscles in your arms and shoulders begin to quiver with effort as the ground recedes. Glance between your legs at the prospect of smashing into the rocks below. The voyage becomes a trip. And the trip gets you high. Naturally high, organically loaded, but the metaphor, the closest experience to help explain it, comes down to drugs. Here’s William Burroughs in Naked Lunch:
“Buddha? A notorious metabolic junky… Makes his own, you dig? So Buddha says, ‘I’ll by God metabolize my own junk. … I’ll metabolize a speedball and make with the Fire Sermon.”
Like Burroughs book itself, this is banned information. Or at the least veiled, esoteric and subtle, a fire-tempered path that exists only out on the ragged edge of experience, say after years of piercing meditation under a Banyan tree, or maybe like the tunnel of white light described by those accidentally snatched back to life from the jaws of death.
Well, I disagree. It’s tempting to call such remarkable experience once-in-a-lifetime stuff, locked away out on the edge of life itself. But that’s too easy, oddly dismissive, and anyway making such experience impossibly special is just wrong. I see the vibrant loveliness of the visionary hovering at the edges of even an afternoon jog. That little can sometimes be enough to kick in the necessary metabolism. And occasionally even less than that. The visionary state can arise spontaneously, unbidden, a gratuitous moment of grace. Suddenly your perception turns hot, and there before you is the burning bush.
Usually, though, it takes a degree of effort and a dash of fear to open the doors of perception, to jar your metabolism in the direction of profound sight. And insight.
We have arrived at the central insight of this book, that effort plus a degree of fear shifts your brain in the direction of seeing more sharply, more clearly, more deeply. It does that by changing the dynamic balance of hormones in your head, The upshot is a change in metabolism that becomes literally psychedelic.
We’re all metabolic voyagers, every day. Mostly in little ways that we can dismiss as mundane, as mere nuance, we float on tides of hormones that define the timbre of consciousness. We take for granted sweeping changes like waking up, and regularly brush past more subtle effects like a few tiny neurons whispering to each other about brightening their perceptions. Sometimes, though, when your day veers more directly into the face of adventure, when things get dicey around you, with sketchy conditions and uncertain outcome, the metabolism ramps up in ways that turn the voyage into a real trip.
In the end it turns out that psychedelics are not just a metaphor but a signpost, pointing toward where our metabolism, acting under the stress of a meaty challenge, really leads.
Then, you become the metabolic voyager.
//Don’t need no ticket,
You just get on board.//
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jul 10, 2011 - 02:15pm PT
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Wonderful Doug !!!
I can't wait to read the whole book!
And I want a signed copy too.
Thank you for posting.
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Jul 10, 2011 - 02:20pm PT
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Yeah Dougie!
HFCS-
Have you seen the magazine "High Fructose"???
Check it. Trippy.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Jul 10, 2011 - 02:53pm PT
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I would love to read your book, DR.
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Jul 10, 2011 - 03:30pm PT
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Thanks wes.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Jul 10, 2011 - 11:47pm PT
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What they said. I'm buyin' one!
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PAUL SOUZA
Trad climber
Clovis, CA
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Jul 11, 2011 - 01:38pm PT
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It's interesting that people on here say that evil scientists are out to debunk the benefits of these drugs.....did ya ever think the other way around in which some evil scientists are out to prove these drugs are actually safe?
How is it that the scientific community agrees that these drugs are harmful, yet everyone else that uses them think that they know better?
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." — Stephen Hawking
Very interesting.
The first step to enlightenment is being honest with yourself....
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Jul 11, 2011 - 02:21pm PT
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Paul,
You prolly also find it ironic that some who decry those 'evil scientists' who
debase those 'beneficial' drugs would also loudly shout down the critics of
those who attack the 'science' behind global warming. I guess that is the
benefit of living in a democracy - you get to choose the type of science you ascribe to.
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Lambone
Ice climber
Ashland, Or
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Jul 11, 2011 - 02:21pm PT
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I had friends in high school that use to dose on a daily basis. To me it seemed like they were a bit lost in the clouds even when sober. Definitely changed them....I'm not gunna make a judgment on whether the change was for better or worse, that's for them to decide. I think a young developing brain is more greatly affected by repeated dosing.
Like all things that have ill effects, moderation is the best path.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Jul 11, 2011 - 02:52pm PT
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"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." — Stephen Hawking
he was tripping when he said that....
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PAUL SOUZA
Trad climber
Clovis, CA
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Jul 11, 2011 - 02:55pm PT
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Reily,
It's the same scenario with climate change. A few are paid by corporations to come up with "studies" to debunk what the greater scientific community is in agreement with. Meanwhile, there are the couch scientists that think they know better.
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