Has this ever happened to you?
 

I don't know about you all. But, have you ever been daydreaming one cozy afternoon, staring at who knows what and, all of the sudden, you feel as if you were inside of a frame that we call body?

you know what I'm speaking of. Times when your inner self feels like moving outside of the body, glimspe at him/her self and then return to the body?

:yelsick: :yelsick: :yelsick: I you are still confused, talk to one of the following:
>me
>myself
>I
>the dude who wrote this
>the person who edited this thread
>the man who created this thread
>the boy who came up with the silly idea of writting this.

It's called an "out of body experience."

You can get to a point where you can do it on purpose, if you work at it.

I'm a firm believer in the out of mind experience myself. :3eye:

*struggle*

must resist clear opening ...

Back where I'm from, we call it "smoking weed". ;)

*giggle* I was egging you on, girl! :stickpoke

Actually, there are a lot of completely legal herbs that will also induce an out-of-body experience, or similar dream-state. Personally, I have had success inducing dream states with leaves from damiana (turnera aphrodisiaca), both as an aqueous infusion and smoked, with lion's tail (leonotus leonurus) smoked, and with morning glory (ipomoea violacea) seeds run through a coffee grinder, soaked in distilled water, and the seeds and water consumed. All 3 are more of a sedated, "stoned" feeling, with lion's tail and damiana being a lot like pot, and morning glory being more of a mind-stone than a body-stone (no feelings of heaviness, just mental quietness, rather like psilocybin mushrooms but without significant hallucinations). I've also tried dried mexican sage (salvia divinorum), reputed to be amongst the strongest of legal highs, but with no effect. This was very disappointing to me, as I was expecting a visionary experience and ended up with nothing. Two of the last legal highs left on my list are the fly agaric mushroom (amanita muscaria) and, believe it or not, tobacco (nioctiana tabacum), which, when uncured, is apparently much, much stronger and will induce visionary states. I like to use these different drugs (Yes, these are drugs, and they need to be approached with caution) as meditative aids, because a lot of life's major problems are, in my experience, issues of perception, and there's nothing like being totally out of your head to give you a different vantage point on what troubles you.

There was a thread on the topic of psycho-tropic plants which you can read here: http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=5983

(Amazing! I both remembered it and found the thread, am I getting better or not? F--K those neurologists with their bleak prognosis!)

Tom....Hey stay off the scooby snacks. Just start with the writings of Quintus Tullius Cicero. Wanting to get out of your skin for a minute is natural to everyone and has been written about since the dawn of man/woman kind! If you do the enhancers you may not come back!! One day it's dandelion tea....then it's pot...excessive drinking.....might lead to heroin.....etc. etc. Dare to keep kids inside their bodies. haha. And If I find you digging up my garden I WILL take out the blow darts. Marichiko usually has a beautiful garden it seems....hmmmm.....green thumb Mari?

Thanks for the pointer, but I think my post has a different purpose than that thread would allow for...the thread was on out of body experiences (I must be tired...I just typed auto-body experiences...."Man, we tripped our faces off on putty. Tim just stared at the orbital sander for hours"). I have tried a number of techniques for inducing OOBEs and/or lucid dreams (I believe that the two experiences are very, very heavily related), and have had the most consistent success using small doses of various psychoactive plants.

Thanks for pulling my cover, Flip. You'll pay for that one! :D
And Alpha, did you know Tomas is only 15 or 16? Do you really want to be responsible if he uses the information in your post to have an out of body experience in study hall and ends up getting expelled? Food for thought. :eek:

M.A.R.I.C.H.I.K.O.: Mechanical Artificial Repair and Infiltration Construct/Humanoid Intended for Killing and Observation

Information is not to be held responsible for the way it is used. I am simply conveying my experiences with an interesting (and perfectly legal) hobby. In the interest of not being a dick, though, I must point anyone whose interest has been piqued to The Vaults of Erowid, so that you can inform yourself, make an intelligent decision as to whether to use these drugs or not, and use them safely if you decide to do so.

Before I get raped to death I also want to add that, as a generality, I don't think 16 years old is an appropriate age of consent for drug use, especially psychedelics. These drugs aren't, generally, fun drugs in the sense that pot and alcohol are. They are not social drugs and there is no guarantee that you will have a good time. I've personally experienced a number of jerky perception shifts and what felt like absolute loss of self while on psychedelics and, while I feel I am better for it in the long run, it can be a very frightening and dangerous experience. The best answer is to inform yourself when dealing with the heavy responsibility of drug use.

That happens to me nearly every day at work. :D

Out-of-body experiences have been theorized to have much to do with an area of the brain known as the angular gyrus. In tests, they can stimulate nerves in this area and subjects will report that they feel like they've left their body and have floated up to the ceiling. Supposedly, this small cluster of neurons is what "centers you in yourself".

I think this section of the brain also has something to do with a really interesting disease known as Cotard's Syndrome. Along with feeling outside of yourself, you can also feel that your grasp of reality and "frame of reference" are so far off that you believe you are dead or no longer exist.

Freaky.

I've had some of that sort of thing with anxiety illness. Sufferers call it "depersonalization". Anxiety can cause every single symptom you can think of...

I've had some of that sort of thing with anxiety illness. Sufferers call it "depersonalization". Anxiety can cause every single symptom you can think of...

Same here, UT. For about a year and a half, I suffered some fun anxiety problems thanks to stress at work. The depersonalization can actually take on the form of temporary "mini-Cotard's" and you can feel completely detached from your world. What I experienced was mild, but I had no idea that stress could do such things! Its almost like you're floating through your world and aren't fully in control or like you're watching what you see through a television and your feeling that "you are inside yourself" feels shifted, like someone has miscalibrated your internal compass.

Fun stuff. :yelsick:

If you've had it for awhile, UT, and still do make sure you go see someone about it. I had a heck of a time shaking it but was determined to do it without medication and was able to get through it after many nights of thought, introspection, and forced relaxation. I still have a fairly stressful job, but learning to cope was a massive help.

I've had it all my life, it's truly chronic. I address it with medication.

alphageek I have just noticed you are very funny.
we shouldn't be worried about what we write here in case someone uses the information... this is the internet - it was designed for the sole purpose of teaching kids how to blow things up and get high and be the world leaders of the future.
anyway, back to the point, I find smoking pot brings me back in touch with reality - and you are able to see things a lot more clearly and rationally. Which reality is a different question - but I certainly prefer it.

Everybody I know has some deep reason why they smoke pot. Doesn't anyone do it just because it's fun?

fun? FUN? there are people out there levitating and you speak of FUN?! my son, you know nothing. this world was made for misery. MISERY I tell you! Fun indeed.


actually yes there is no deeper meaning. it's just that smoking pot makes you take everything so seriously, you must have a deep reason for smoking it...

I guess a side-effect is that it makes me *very* creative. I do my best writing / painting / whatever, but the impetus is always "for fun". And not everyone takes things seriously after smoking pot. There's a good reason my brother's nickname is "monkeyboy". :D

Well, (as the old poem says)

Worry not, ye who ask, For I have set my own self beyond the boundaries of perplexity(drugs), And so, whithersoever I walketh, mine lips shalt not touch yours...(oops, I meant) Mine lips shalt not touch any weed or grass of the field. (including tobbacco)

(translation: I ain't smoke)

...and besides, I want to die late, not early

well, (as Denis Leary says)

Smoking takes ten years off your life. Well it's the ten worst years, isn't it folks? It's the ones at the end! It's the wheelchair, kidney dialysis, adult diaper fucking years. You can have those years! We don't want 'em, alright?

(Translation: What's the fucking point of living a long life if you never have any fucking fun?)

Well, (as I say)

Life is not all that there is to living. There is more to life than just ________(fill in the blank) If you are the person that has a positive outlook to life (sees the glass as half full) then those 10 last years would not be as bad.

Tom if you are young,and I believe you are.......Live it up! There are PLENTY of chemicals there already. No need to enhance a prime.Or destroy the gifts of a young brain and body.Way to go Tom!(OBE's need no enhancement as you seem to have figured out)


No single rain drop believes itself to be responsible for the flood.........

Hey, this place is for sharing ideas. it is up to the individuals to accept them or reject them. :p

This caught my eye, Kitsune.

Does this mean "centers yourself within your own skin"? Creating your own centroid and the spacial reference to it?

The first paragraph of your post reminded me of a time I was taking prescription pain killers for a back injury, many years ago.

When I was (over) taking the meds.....I felt as if I was "behind" me. Maybe 6 or 10 inches behind. I still had precise motor control but felt very different. At the same time I felt as though I was somehow behind my own body, there was no effect in rotational positioning. If you were somehow attached to your body behind yourself, you might expect that the distance between the turning axis and where your body was repositioned to distort the sensation. This was not the case, it was a strictly mechanical sensation but broke the physical rules.

So anyway......interesting post.

I've had what sounds like the exact opposite experience- intermittently, too much, too inside my own head, seeing shapes, lots of flowing geometry- after closed eyes, and loud ringing, pulsing in my ears. Since I was a kid, I can calm myself out of it. No drugs involved. Not chronic, just mildly wierd, just me.

I occasionally have mild temporal lobe seizures which cause a very interesting sensation in my brain: I "recognize" whatever's happening around me and I am ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that I know what is going to happen next. (This is not like your typical deja vu experience, there are a bunch of other symptoms that go along with it, but anyway...) The interesting thing is the theory as to the origins of the sensation--they think that perception is delayed ever-so-slightly, kind of echoing if you will, so that you actually ARE seeing something you've seen before.

Steering clear of psychoactives is a really good idea.

Mystical experiences while high are really just being high.

You're welcome to consider me an old fogey killjoy, but that's how I feel about it.

Oh, and most of the stuff on that list of things to try ... very dangerous, some to the point of lethality.

I always swore that I'd avoid the old-fogey judgementalism myself, and sometimes it is difficult to discern whether I'm just old and crotchety, or that I truly have some hard-won wisdom to impart, so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt, or ignore it altogether if you choose.

I started drinking regularly when I was 15. I came from a family of drunks, and so it wasn't really looked at askance. At 17, seeking to be one with my hipper friends, and to also bring my other unhip pals into the "mainstream", I started smoking pot. For me, the herb was definitely a threshold drug, and pretty much anything that you didn't have to insert via a needle followed over the coming years. I was particularly addicted to amphetamines, and would always have a couple of hundred miniwhites around.

I quit the speed after about a year because it was having some pretty profound negative physical effects...my teeth were getting loose, I was malnourished, and I exhibited some really interesting paranoid dementias. I kept up with everything else for another 15 years.

I had to quit the dope due to having to work, but drinking...well, drinking was *the* drug for me, even when I was doing the other stuff. After all, if 40 mg of valium is good, 40 mg of valium with a twelve pack is *better*!

All of this, as I now see in retrospect, was self-medication to try and make myself somehow better, or at least different. Sometimes, it was a search for cosmic inner truth, but most of the time it was simply wanting to not be *me*.

Now, a couple of years shy of 50, after a heart bypass and lacking a colon...I want those years - and body parts damaged by my consumptions - back. I wish I'd had, during those years, the clarity of being clean and sober. I now want to be able to decide that I want a couple of beers rather than having a case of beers decide *me*.

I have found more spirituality in a bottle of water and a walk through the park than I ever found in a hit of acid. I have found more insight in the struggle to not drink and do drugs than I did when I was fucked up.

My .02. I'm sure your mileage will vary. Oh, yeah...and what's with these kids and that music today? And those haircuts? And those clothes!!?? :blush:


(edited to add a bit more rambling)

:thumb: Elspode!

They say you only have one body and that you only live once. People sometimes look at me funny when I tell them I've never smoked anything, never abused drugs legal or not and have imbibed no more than 12 oz of alcohol in my entire life. Keeping the body you come with pretty clean doesn't mean you can't be incredibly creative or insightful or mean you can't have fun. Got no love for drugs, especially the illegal ones. Got no use for them either.

According to my research, the only thing on that list with an overdose danger is tobacco, the perfectly legal and socially acceptable one. Of course, with any psychoactive, there is a lot of danger in that they may aggravate any pre-existing neurosis and that too strong of a dose could lead to you doing something stupid (Trip Rule #1: Don't trip alone. Ever. Don't do it. Never, ever do it. Don't trip alone.). The only viable threat is amanita muscaria, which apparently resembles a number of other, significantly more poisonous mushrooms (Trip Rule #2: Unless you are a mycologist, do *not* go mushroom hunting. It is quite easy to fuck up, and fucking up can easily kill you.). Also, long-term, high-dosage use of damiana has been tenuously linked to liver damage. Again, I say, it is worth doing the research. This is why I stay away from things like DXM (found in cough syrups, and has been strongly linked to lesions in the brain due to swelling and decompression), the 2C and 5-MeO offshoots (hard to gauge dosage, very hard to synthesize, even slight overdose could be deadly), and jimson weed (if you need a reason not to smoke jimson weed, you're already fucked up enough that you may as well go ahead and try it). Even kava root, once commonly sold in stores as a relaxant and somnifacient, is something to be avoided (strong link to liver damage, especially with dosages heavy enough to be psychoactive). There are dangers with drug use, as with any chemical (do keep in mind that an overdose of oxygen can prove fatal), and there are benefits. Ketamine (before its significant side-effects were discovered) was used in a psychological setting to induce ego-loss and allow breakthroughs in cases of severe repression, as was LSD. Acid and MDMA (ecstasy), in smaller doses than those found on the street, were used as anti-depressants, and progress is being made as to salvinorin A (the active ingredient in salvia divinorum) as an anti-depressant also. As always, the answer lies in the middle, somewhere between "I won't do any drugs, ever. All drugs are terrible and could never possibly benefit society" and conducting acid tests in the town square. I'm not saying drugs are right for everyone, far from it, but I have had a number of pleasurable and enlightening experiences while on various substances. They help me achieve an alternative viewpoint on situations that trouble me, and I've found that for most of the truly nagging, hard questions, all you need is a new perspective or two to really find an answer that suits you. For a number of people, drugs are a viable route to self-discovery that should be explored.

Just say "Know"

Never tried amanita. Do know that it contains strichnine and enough of that will kill you as good as any other poison. Same goes for Datura. The Spanish call it "widow's weed" for good reason. LOVED amphetamines in college. They were great for finals and all nighter term papers. Loved 'em so much that I knew I'd better stay away from them. Alcohol - went through a time when Jack Daniel's was the best lover I ever had. Then Jack proved fickle and turned on me. Giving him up was one of the hardest things I ever did. Now I stick to a couple of glasses of wine. Pot always just made me paranoid. I guess it's great for some folks, but I'm not one of them. Valium, and the other tranquilizers I liked almost as much as Jack, but they gobbled up too many of my memory cells and these days I need my last two remaining memory cells desperately, so I refuse when a doc want to gives me a script for ANY tranquilizer. Psychedelics I wouldn't go near when I was young. I figured I was teetering close to the edge as it was. Why risk going on a trip to a foreign land that might prove highly unpleasant and find that my passport had been revoked when I wanted to go home? I saw this happen to a couple of my friends who ended up in psych wards. No thanks.

I have had two very profound spiritual experiences in my life and each time I was neither stoned, drunk, nor high. Those experiences impacted me profoundly and neither I nor anyone else can merely write them off as some drug side effect. I have friends, however, who swear that psychedelics brought them closer to God. Well, who am I to question someone else's spiritual experience? If they feel it helped them, great for them.

Its true enough that there's tons of information on various drugs out there everywhere. People just have to live and learn, and hopefully survive the learning experience.

What better way to live and learn than to let everyone else try the stuff and watch them slowly go crazy? :D

OK. So drugs won't bring you closer to spritual enlightenment. Only you can do that, and as Mari says, it is possible to have amazing spiritual experiences stone sober. But what drugs can do is act like a painkiller. Like aspirin for a headache, drugs can facilitate spiritual experience by removing the intial blockages (stress, anxiety) that are preventing spiritual exploration. To use the headache metaphor: if your headache is caused by dehydration, you drink water. If it is exhaustion, you sleep. If it is because you banged your head on a 2-ton water heater (don't ask) then you know the cause of the pain, there's not a lot you can do about it, so you might as well treat the pain and allow your body to recover - excess pain will only increase the amount of toxins and stress hormones your body produces thereby slowing recovery.

I think I may have rambled slightly there (damn weed) but my point is that there is no harm (really) using drugs to facilitate thought and perspective; just as long as you know when to stop.

Now where's that spliff?

.


IN ALL SERIOUSNESS I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE.

Like I said, who am I to argue with someone else's spiritual path? It DOES concern me, however, that some young people might get the wrong idea and OD on a substance that contains strichnine like amanita and the like.

This is where it all gets tricky and, for some, all goes to hell. One person can get these incredible highs off X dose of acid and come back with little problem when it's over. The next person could drop dead from the same dose. Of course, then you get the folks who figure if X amount was This cool and didn't kill them, then 2X should be twice as cool with no ill effects. Unfortunately, the only way you'll know your limit is to try it and push it and, unfortunately, that's when we get the tragic results, people so far gone they never come back, in the figurative and terminal sense.

IN ALL SERIOUSNESS I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE.

Megatron, get referred to a neurologist and he can order an EEG for you. Your normal brain activity will show if you're prone to small seizures (and don't be too quick to self-diagnose in the meantime: psychologically-rooted "panic attacks" share a lot of similar symptoms with temporal lobe seizures.) More importantly, if your EEG comes back abnormal, get an MRI, because sometimes temporal lobe seizures are just genetic and sometimes they're the result of a tumor.

Then he was probably surfing an entirely legal teen hormone high. ahh to be young again...

On Weed:
Last night my lover and I smoked a bit of weed and started having the most passsionate sex of our lives. Ours souls were in complete harmony, every subtle gesture and movement of hers was met by a perfectly resonating response from me. we explored the depths of each other's passion like no couple ever had before. it was as if we had one, delicious, orgasmic mind. Our connection was so profound I could anticipate and fulfill her every pleasure and desire.

Then she turned to me and said:
"Look, if you're bored why don't you just go to sleep?"

I'd love to see a source that says that amanita muscaria, muscaria var. formosa, pantherina or other amanitas used psychedelically contain strychnine (not other species, as it is common knowledge that a large number of mushrooms will easily kill you). This is not a challenge, I am not trying to disprove you. I'd just really like to see a source before I go ahead and try some of this stuff.

footfootfoot, that's fucking hiliarious. That about sums up my impression of what all drugs trips are like (seeing as I've never had any myself...)

From Alphageek
Ah, the secret of happiness. :thumbsup: Don't make yourself nuts trying to find THE answer, THE truth, THE path. There is no THE. Find an answer that suits you.


besides, you can't handle the truth. :biglaugha

AMANITA PHALLOIDES (Mushrooms) - This kind of mushroom is
distinguishable from its non-lethal, tasty twin AGARICUS CAMPESTRIS by
its tiny white scales and warts. You can cook amanita without
detoxificating it at all, so it is quite easy to serve this baby up to
somebody without arousing suspicion. You've got 12 hours to head down
to Mexico before your victim gets hit with relatively mild nausea,
vomiting and diarrhea. These won't be too bad for another day or so,
when they will become bad enough that he will seek medical assistance.
But by then it may be too late, and death by circulatory collapse may
have occurred. If not, then in 3 or 4 days his skin will turn yellow
from liver deterioration, and how long can you live without a liver?

http://www.textfiles.com/drugs/poisons.txt

In the 60's many psychotropics were laced with strychnine. I don't have contacts with the hallucinegetic drug world anymore (everybody who was under the age of 30 and alive in the 60's had such contacts almost by default), so I don't know if this is still a common practice. Amanita in the right dose is still deadly, however.

Are you thinking of the Blue Star blotter acid warnings?
Strychnine in LSD is an urban legend.

I certainly hope it is an urban legend now, but it wasn't back then. I managed to live through those times, but I had some friends who became VERY ill! :dead:

I've got to second Mari, here...the people I knew who used to make the stuff told me they put minute quantities in it. It was believed to enhance the colors, and it caused hellacious stomach cramps when it was present.

Clodfobble,
Yeah, I wish it were entirely mine. I cribbed a bit here and there. But it does seem to hit the nail on the head.

"And remember to first identify Amanita muscaria from its more deadly relatives, A. phalloides, A. ocreata, A. virosa, and A. verna, before gathering on your own. Each of these potentially deadly species can be differentiated from A. muscaria by their saclike volva. If you have any doubt whatsoever about the mushroom you have then discard it."
From the Erowid Psychoactive Amanitas Vault

As I've said before, unless you have a degree or a fairly large amount of experience in the field, do *not* go mushroom hunting. I actually have mushrooms growing in my backyard right now that are almost definitely amanitas, but I can't tell if they're pantherina or phalloides, and becuase of this they will continue to grow unmolested.

As for strychnine in acid to cause tracers and other visuals, see the above link to erowid (god, it's nice to have zero-bullshit sources for these things...hyperreal, RIP).