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WBraun
climber
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What is there to win ultimately? ^^^^
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Lambone
Ice climber
Ashland, Or
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The truth is within yourself. If you couldn't find it, don't blame the drugs.
You really found it on the summit of a mountain!? Ha. I'm guessing you found a dead end up there too.
Sound like a tool to me...
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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The reason psychedelics can work on us at all is that we have receptors tuned to them. It's natural. So is the DMT that your pineal gland is cranking out right now. Spider said one useful thing, anyway:
Seeking accomplishment in climbing on rock or high peaks delivers real high and real enlightenment.
That's true, and it works because it's the natural equivalent of a psychedelic high. In fact I'm convinced that it literally is a psychedelic high created by the challenge of climbing with a dash of fear thrown in. My book, The Alchemy of Action, will show how that works. And I'm tired of saying this by now, but it's actually nearly done. Like just months until it goes to the editors. Consider me kicked in the butt.
And the bad trips? Overdose, mostly, with a bit of, for some, psychiatric weirdness thrown in to keep us honest. When Owsley died back in March, I posted up my chapter about overdoses, largely because he was about the best example out there. It's here: http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1438637&msg=1440268#msg1440268
A hot new dosage study with psilocybin (a cousin of DMT) shows that as the dose increases the sense of awe and beauty peaks, and only above there does the nasty stuff come on. Here's an article about it: http://www.gizmag.com/johns-hopkins-psilocybin-study-finds-optimum-beneficial-dosage/18981/
A cool thing about the natural high, even enlightenment, from climbing is that it stays grounded in that positive and blissful range. It's also not that hallucinatory. More like it enhances our appreciation of the beauty around us. And in us.
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fivesix
Big Wall climber
hope, alaska
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look up experiments with phselosybin (im not even going to try to spell it pronounced: see-low-sigh-bin). its going to be used as an antidepressant. subjects reported a higher sense of being and happiness up to 9 months after taking it when compared to placebos.
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can't say
Social climber
Pasadena CA
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After doing probably every recreational drug I can think of, my favorite drug of choice is adrenaline mixed with endorphins. Nothing beats it IMO, well a cranking cup of coffee is a close second
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 6, 2011 - 11:49pm PT
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This is a information-rich thread. I've been checking out some of these links. Tomorrow, too.
Karl, can you get me some? For research purposes.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Werner is half right.
LSD is just plain synthesized marijuana.
The two compounds do have a lot of similarities both chemically and in the way they feel, but they activate different receptor systems.
LSD fits into the serotonin receptor, just like psilocybin and DMT. Serotonin is one of the three main mood-regulator hormones in our brains. It's everywhere.
The cannabinoid receptor for weed took a long time to isolate, but finally it was found in the early 90s. A couple of years later they located our natural hormone that activates it, and gave it one of the all-time great names in science: Anandamide, from the Sanscrit for bliss.
Want proof? Anandamide gives you the munchies. Many diet-pill labs are chasing that one as we speak.
Anandamide is also beginning to supercede beta-endorphin as the prime suspect for runner's high. Can climber's euphoria be far behind?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 7, 2011 - 12:02am PT
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The two compounds do have a lot of similarities both chemically and in the way they feel
Doug,
So do you think if one doesn't have a healthy satisfying relationship with pot, it's likely he won't have one with LSD.
Back in the day, I never got around to getting it on with pot like my roommates did. (God knows I tried.) For instance, they could smoke before taking an engineering exam and ace it. Witnessed this many times. No way could I had done that. (Yeah, i was always envious of this feat of theirs, too.)
.....
EDIT
Thanks for the reply, DR.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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HFCS,
Several questions in there.
There's a thing called state-specific-memory. If your housemates studied on weed, then they were prime to test on it.
Dose is also important. My housemates smoke stuff that would put me under the table, but a couple of hits is fine to study, write, climb, whatever. But not to argue with the ex-, thanks.
Set and setting are crucial. Wouldn't dose myself when anxious, for instance. It helps to be feeling balanced, in your body, outdoors on a nice day.
Here is useful perspective from the wise old master chemist Alexander Shulgin, who personally synthesized and tasted over 200 new psychedelics, all with a DEA permit tacked to the door of his lab:
“The scare stories have been mostly from naïve people who took too high a dose the first time and the rest were cases of people who were fragile emotionally or mentally. If you’re fragile, or ready to tip over, then anything can send you off center: LSD or falling in love or losing someone or having a big fight with your father.
In the higher dose ranges, people who aren’t used to it sometimes feel they have less control than they would like. It simply has to be learned, like all psychedelics. Once you’re familiar with the quickness of it and realize you can control it whenever you decide you want to, there’s no reason for anxiety.”
You can Google Shulgin. Fascinating guy. His books are very readable and full of good stories. Last year I got to talk to him to check a few points of my theory.
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WBraun
climber
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Sure they are. All hallucinogenic drugs are material and poison the mind as an intoxicant.
A true learned man would never touch these and looks at them in the same light as dog sh'it in the street.
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Lambone
Ice climber
Ashland, Or
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Pick yer poison!
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Werner, I honor your wisdom and I hope you can respect what I know in another realm.
The air you breathe is material. But too high a dose of oxygen, whether it's out of a tank or from chanting, yoga, breathing exercises or whatever makes for some mighty high experiences.
Water is material too. You save the asses of lots of people who ran out. Marathon runners gulp it down, but once in awhile one dies of overdose.
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seth kovar
climber
Reno, NV
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Dose is also important. My housemates smoke stuff that would put me under the table, but a couple of hits is fine to study, write, climb, whatever. But not to argue with the ex-, thanks.
Greatest thing I've read all night, love it!!!!
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Hi BASE,
I know, I know. I would love to come talk with your neighbor. But believe it or not I'm turning down all kinds of stuff right now just to get this book out the door.
It's the 5-Ht2a receptor. Though I've heard researchers argue that 2c may be more like it. I was trying to keep it simple by just saying serotonin receptor. Like "car" instead of "Ferrari." Some people like my ex- are very allergic to pharmacology jargon. She trained me well, so I oversimplify at times.
Some of the anti-depressants, anti-psychotics etc really are full of side effects that can be considered poisonous. I hate it when Prozac limps my dick, for instance. People puke sometimes from organic psychedelics too. There's aren't too many free lunches out there, and it seems that a bit of cockiness especially gets you slapped.
Ayuhoasca is truly a piece of pleistocene alchemy. One of its two vines contains the DMT, but alone it gets destroyed in your gut before it can reach your head. (Some DMT plant material is snorted, which does work.) The other vine in Ayuhoasca, miraculously, contains MAOI (Mono Amine Oxidase Inhibitor) which keeps your stomach from deactivating the DMT. Incredibly clever. By the way, MAOI drugs were among the first anti-depressants back in the 50s, but they sometimes made people overdose simply from eating stinky cheese.
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MisterE
Social climber
Bouldering the Gnar
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I first dosed when I was 8. An early awakening to the LSD - 4-way windowpane made by a chemist friend of my folks. I remember clearly sitting on "acid hill" (as we called it) in Van Zandt Washington, looking at the maple leaves bobbing in the wind... they looked like Chinese in hats to me.
Some things you never forget.
Edit: yes, it opened my consciousness. But too young methinks. I have tempered it over the years, but what has been opened cannot be closed.
Don't listen to Spider Savage, he calls himself a spider, but part of spider medicine is the transmutation of poison - he is not true to his name by his statement of fear.
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Lambone
Ice climber
Ashland, Or
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I knew a guy who ate 3 1/2 oz of shrooms in a sitting once. He was fine. He did admit to it being a little much.
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Blitzo
Social climber
Earth
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I ate a half pound of fresh schrooms that I picked in Hawaii. I'm OK, I think!
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Anyone ever read, "The Road to Eleusis" by R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hoffman and Carl Ruck? What's it about? Basically posits that the Greeks invented Acid over 2000 years ago. Very interesting reading.
I have always been fascinated with the ethnobotanical aspects of psychadelics. Wasson, Ruck, Mckenna and others have some mind bending studies published. Controversial? Sure, but that's the kind of stuff that interest me. Others might think it a waste of time and for them it probably is but it is silly to think we all fit into the same mold when it comes to adventure of this sort. "One man's pleasure..."
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