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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Jan,
Upthread you asked, and I was NOT the one to say Meacaline was mild. Always seemed full-value to me. I love your story of a month of fuscia skies, and I hope you found it lovely instead of troublesome too. Significant that a bit of stress jogged you back into it, also.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Riley Wyna,
Yeah, that sort of rebound depression after splurging your serotonin is a hallmark of psychedelics. I recommend mega-doses of Vitamins B and C for that hangover. They are co-factors of the nerve-repair enzymes. Seems to help a lot.
the more long term affects on subtle things like patience.
This is puzzling, because I notice the opposite (not counting those immediately-after burnout days, which can sometimes be pretty irritable). No, long-term I see more patience, more resilience, more flexibility of spirit. More of that sense of "don't sweat the small stuff -- and by the way it's all small stuff." So I'm not sure what to make of your observations.
And I'm really struck by your over-active thinking brain -- "I usually have to much insight." I've noticed that in many good climbers. Galen Rowell was an outstanding example. Climbing can be seen as a self-medication to ground such people, to slow them down. Oddly, it's also perfect self-medication for my type, the depressed climber. It gets us going, brings us up to more energy and a broader view.
You're doing the best thing, imo, by going for meditation and Zen. Sounds like it's helping you a lot.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Doug-
The fuscia skies were definitely beautiful. I've always been an iconoclast so they didn't bother me. As for your comments about the movie Black orpheus being stressful, all I can remember of it is the brilliant colors and rhythmic dancing so I had to look up the plot on Wiki. Remembering all that as beautiful seems very similar to what the neroscientist with a left brain stroke says about her right brain being the eternal ecstatic now - lala land - even in the midst of a stroke.
One of the more interesting after effects of the movie flashback was a series of very vivid dreams I had during that period which featured a number of well known climbers I had heard about from Chuck Pratt and Chris Fredericks who were visiting Boulder that winter. One of them was Warren Harding who was dressed as the skeleton in the Rio carnival only he had enormously bushy eyebrows and golden hinges on the sides of each rib, all the better for wriggling up narrow chimneys. Another featured Frank walking through Camp 4 nailing crosses of human bones to the trees. Needless to say that image came back to me during the long process of getting his remains cremated and returned from France to Yosemite.
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PP
Trad climber
SF,CA
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I know two former Zen monk's who have become Ayuascaneros they have fully embraced it. Personally I like the longer route of meditation. Zen Master seung sahn took acid and said it was 1/2 way there; I think he said it was equivalent to emptyness mind and needed to come full circle to how may I help you ?
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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If you can attain that...and express it like Lovegasoline, without psychedelics... well, more power to ya.
That's what it's all about.
Thanks Lovegasoline, that was beautiful all around.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Thanks, Lovegasoline.
You expressed beautifully the visual epiphany of an emotional breakthrough, with all the layered intensity of its unfolding.
Any chance we could see what you drew?
Or is more of a "Say please" moment?
Hot thread we got going here, with guest appearances by Zen Ayahoascaneros and that other master who summarized his trip by pointing us onward to serving others. I always liked the Dalai Lama saying, "My religion is kindness." Who can argue with that?
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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I'm still reeling from my first experience with DMT (not the forum member) last weekend. Intense, and I know how to handle my sh#t.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Brandon,
You're not alone. Many, maybe most, have said the same. Very experienced trippers.
Maybe you've researched this and seen other people's reports. I think you'd probably like DMT, The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman, M.D. He did a research project in New Mexico in the early 90s -- DEA approved -- with volunteers who were experienced trippers, and the book is full of get-back stories like yours. Might help you to feel not like the Lone Ranger.
There are some pretty good videos he produced on You Tube too.
All of which points to my thinking that tiny doses trickling into our brains from climbing are kind of the right amount. A leetle bit seems like plenty.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Yeah Doug, I was shocked. Usually, it creeps up on you, but this was just like blasting off in a spaceship. Incredible that it exists in nature. I'm wary and respectful of it now. I didn't have a bad trip, but I think that it needs to be treated with more respect in future endeavors. Man!
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WBraun
climber
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So they take some hallucinogenic drugs and start hallucinating and then hallucinate even more by making absurd claims that it's a spiritual awakening.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Brandon,
Some of Strassman's volunteers described it as like a "freight train," "ground zero," or a "nuclear cannon." That's from smoking or injecting the pure DMT. I haven't tried it, but I suspect that Ayuhoasca has got to be gentler. Andrew Weil says that the intensity of a trip can be related to how fast it comes on.
An analogy is cocaine. Snorting the pure crystals is pretty intense, and lots of people get in trouble with it. It washes out lives. But the Indians in Peru chew on Coca leaves all day for a lifetime without any addiction problems.
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can't say
Social climber
Pasadena CA
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I never did it to seek any kind of enlightenment or cosmic understanding, I took it for entertainment. Most of my friends during that time did the same. It was more of a surfer/party central thing for us
We seemed to get large quantities of Orange Sunshine from Laguna Beach. Here's an interesting read on the S. OC connection
http://www.druglibrary.net/schaffer/lsd/books/bel3.htm
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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I have a question for Doug.
First let me say that it was a real revelation to read Wiki's article on mescaline. So much of my peyote trip made sense after that!
One of the things the article mentions is the drug creating temporary synesthesia - the association of certain shapes with certain colors. I don't believe I have it, but I have felt that my perception of color was always heightened after that trip and I often use color as an organizing principle with ideas and files. Before that I organized only in words.
Is there any indication that some of the drugs permanently enhance or multiply receptors? I know people have said that some of them can permanently or long term damage receptors, I wonder if the reverse is true?
If not, it would seem that one peyote trip opened my right brain to me and thus the advantages of long term memory storage among others, and that factual memories are clearer when associated with colors?
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Jan,
I've never heard of that particular effect, though an increase in synesthesia is a common psychedelic effect.
As to receptors, they ebb and flow all the time in response to reality, habit, hormonal traffic, degree of stimulation, etc. It's a very fluid system. Transmitters ebb and flow constantly too. And so do neuro-hormones, which you could think of as longer-acting tone-setters in the brain. It's a big, wet system, in constant flux.
Receptors can permanently increase in number too. That has been shown, for instance, in studies of Prozac. You can see brain-slice shots of them having increased a lot. Unfortunately, stuff like that is more often looked for in relation to prescription drugs because there's a lot of $$ involved. But I'm certain that it happens all the time, for all the reasons above and probably many more. So yes, definitely.
Look back to the quotes in Karl's two posts at about #55. He's noticing that Charles Grob -- who is an A-1 great researcher of long standing -- is pointing out that Ayuhoasca does a better job than Prozac at getting long-range healthy effects on depression. More receptors is one way that could be happening.
I don't want to go into the half-dozen other ways that transmitters (or neuro-hormones) can boost their interaction with receptors. And you probably don't want to hear about it. It gets pretty technical. But the important takeaways are that 1) yes, the resulting connection can be strengthened, and 2) it can stay stronger for a long time. Like years. Maybe a lifetime.
Memory is an analogy. Memories get strengthened by being remembered. And a memory is just a circuit too, six neurons long.
Climbing moves get better too when we use them, and I just came from the gym...
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Quasimodo
Trad climber
CA
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Tried mushrooms, peyote and acid over a three year period looking for primarily entertainment and searching for enlightenment as a secondary benefit. My first mushroom experience was amazing and wonderful but the second experience was horrible. I found that natural hallucinogens have alkaloids that can make you very sick. I tried peyote once and spent eight hours retching from the poisons. So, I got smart and switched to LSD.
A chemist at UC Berkeley made a great batch that appeared to be unadulterated. I started off with a small dose. One particularly great trip was below Banner Peak in the Minarets. I thought I was in heaven. I kept increasing the dose over the next few years until one day I had what appeared to be an out of body experience. The experience, sensations and visuals were beyond explanation. Strangely, this intense experience ended my experimentation with hallucinogens. It seemed like a dead end.....a lonely detached place.
Recently, I read that MDMA or Ecstasy is an effective treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Euphoria helped people overcome PTSD. I also read that a dog can do the same thing.
At 51 I am done with my search for a synthetic nirvana. I would rather climb poorly, hang with my son, shred sheets with my wife, play with my dogs, ski powder and hike than waste precious time looking for enlightenment in the wrong places. I wish I knew then what I know now......but the again I don't know much.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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This is a remarkable thread, pretty fascinating stuff.
Any number of acid experiments left me with a sense of joy as the world seemed to present itself as a colorful pleasure that just couldn't stop laughing. Try as I might I really couldn't find anything deeper in the process, certainly no real enlightenment. A final trip sometime in 1968, I believe, left me in a state of intense panic and terror. Since then I've never experienced the kind of overwhelming fear and terror of those hours in which absolutely nothing was as it should be and the world seemed to collapse on me. For a year after that experience I was plagued by panic attacks that eventually seemed to subside and then finally go away.
The sum total of those experiences the good and the bad did, I believe, lead me to a deeper appreciation of beauty and the value of my own sanity. If I've found any enlightenment in this life, it is my own sure knowledge of the reconciling nature of beauty. That beauty in nature and art is a fine and adequate justification for existing on this planet. And for that I am grateful.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Well I took peyote once and acid twice, when they were all still legal, and they changed the course of my life, particularly that first peyote trip. Already as a young adult I could see the dangers of taking an unknown blotter or powder bought on the street, and the nausea of peyote was pretty overwhelming. That said, it did change the course of my internal life.
Externally I kept on doing the same things and turned out to be a successful professional so I can't claim any bad trips or any harm. Internally, it made me curious about the body, mind, spirit connection and was the impetus for investigating eastern meditative practices which I continue to this day. I feel but can not prove that it also heightened my senses on a permanent basis, especially my artistic eye for shape and color.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jim-
I eliminated the part that you probably took as self satisfied as that is not how I want to come across. However, I don't think it's right to blame the drugs for the abuses of their takers. That and the commercial interests surrounding alcohol is what got psychedelics banned so that even legitimate scientists could not test them for therapeutic purposes until recently.
I graduated from a high school of 200 students and by the time of graduation, 6 students had already lost their lives due to teenage drinking, yet we don't generally label alcohol as a dangerous drug or outlaw it? So why single out psychedelics?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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I can only speak for myself and I thought I had made it clear in the sum total of my posts that I think one can get to the same place without psychedelics and that is preferable. However, given the biases of our society toward logic, conformity, technocracy and bureaucracy, a lot of people particularly back in the 1960's, needed some assistance to realize there was something beyond all that.
I suspect we might differ on drugs in general though. I voted for medical marijuana and I favor the European solution of government dispensaries for drugs like heroin since the long term cure rate is practically nil and giving it out with prescription takes the criminal element out of it. The billions we have spent on the war on drugs is a huge waste in my opinion.
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Lambone
Ice climber
Ashland, Or
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How's the view from yer soap box? we get it man...
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