What is Reddit's opinion of Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to their History, Chemistry, Use, and Abuse?

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I lifted most of it from Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to their History, Chemistry, Use, and Abuse. Maybe give it a buy if you are looking for a good information source.

This one is a surprisingly good & easy to read book about general drug knowledge. If you're curious about all the drugs (pre-2000), I couldn't recommend it more. Has history, legality, chemistry, usage, effect, addiction, harm potential, withdrawal symptoms, ect ect. http://www.amazon.com/Illegal-Drugs-Complete-History-Chemistry/dp/0452285054

I read it in 2 days and I don't normally read books at all.

I wasn't even around when they were popular, so I don't have any first hand experience. But from what I remember from reading this book (great book btw) quaaludes high is very similar to being drunk. Only their's no hangover, and to many people taking some pills is preferable to knocking back drinks. Hence why they got so popular.

I like this book a lot: Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to their History, Chemistry, Use, and Abuse - Paul Gahlinger

Hello there,

I don't use really use reddit and just stumbled into this forum. If I am breaking any standards of etiquette please excuse me or simply disregard what I have to say. General disclaimer: I do not recommend trying anything I mention.

"Basically I've done shrooms 4 times, highest was 7 grams."

Four times isn't really enough to make certain claims like "set and setting mean nothing to me" and "it is impossible to have a bad trip for me at any dose". Let me explain, mushrooms, more so than the vast majority of other psychedelics, are more dependent on the individual's neurochemistry. Meaning you will find a greater range of reactions to varying doses. With that said, there is still a range of "normal" dose-responses and then the outliers. These outliers can have a much stronger response to 2 grams than someone else would will have on 6 or visa versa where they have a comparably "weaker" response to a much higher dose than others. For some more information on this check out: http://www.amazon.com/Illegal-Drugs-Complete-History-Chemistry/dp/0452285054 , it mentions it and provides additional sourcing for this (I am in the middle of a move and my copy is in storage). I am not saying that most of the qualities of a trip are somehow non-applicable to the outliers, rather, that those qualities are achieved at differing doses.

Having said that, one's individual neurochemistry can change a lot over the years or even shortly with dramatic changes in certain conditions. When I was your age I fell into a large scale interstate drug distribution situation and was procuring bibles (lsd) and large quantities of mushies and ketamine. With the ease of access and a leaning towards being a bit of a drug-nerd, I tripped many hundreds of times with huge fluctuations in doses. I have ingested half sheets and babysat others who took a few hits, a friend and I have babysat people taking 2 grams while being on 10 g each (that same friend would pop a tab of family fluff to stay awake so he could drive the 8 hours during our smuggling days) and I have pushed 25 g of primo aborts while meditating. I have observed different phases insofar as how I reacted to various doses while controlling for obvious factors like short-term tolerance.

For example, after I participated in my first 2 year Dzogchen meditation retreat, half of which was spent learning thogal meditation, and once I returned I found I could trip much much harder on smaller doses, while also gaining considerably control over the experience. When doing thogal, one learns to bring about intense visions as is, so I am able to induce and retract the emergence of visions on psychedelics too. Additionally, as I had extremely high dose experiences, afterwards I noticed more sensitivity to lessor doses while retaining a greater degree of control, meaning I can modulate to what degree the same dose induces certain "intoxications" depending on how I oriented the mind. All in all, T. Leary was right in that high doses and experience changes one's neurochemistry and how one interacts with certain chemicals in the future. I can "choose" to trip harder on a few grams now compared to my younger self on 15 g.

Though I can't advise you to take more, you will actually trip on higher doses, as it seems you are indeed an outlier. I have met others like this, they won't trip hard off of a quarter (and require higher and more concentrated doses). However, there are certain things to increase the intensity of the experience (aside from the standard smoking n-n-dmt while peaking on another psychedelic). One example for beginners to increase their visual experiences would be to keep your eyes open and try to focus on everything at once but nothing in particular. One is simply letting the visual field rest in itself while trying to initiate this pattern recognition process (certain patterns can help this, including on the carpet or walls, outside is particularly great for this). Basically you are going beyond the dichotomy between center-periphery in regards to attentional distribution, one is allowing one's visual field to become panoramic-like and trying to basically allow the pattern recognition process to pick out patterns that are easily noticed, or in other cases, not actually there. The visual change is dramatic and one sort of starts "trancing" out with massive distortion. It may take a little practice the first couple of times, but once one gets it can take only a few seconds to initiate. If one initiates this at the very beginning of the trip, then the visions will naturally be more pronounced for the remainder of the experience. The real trick here is to allow the pattern recognition process to re-sync based on the prior pattern, rather than resetting by like blinking one's eyes. If you guys remember the magic eye books, it is as if the next round of patterns is based on the hidden image now exposed, opposed to blinking one's eyes and going back to normal. The goal here is to allow several rounds of this re-syncing to occur, as the patterns will become increasingly sophisticated and removed from the starting point ("objective reality"), this will consume all of one's experience and if allowed to continue will cease being mere extreme distortion and become full on hallucinations, initially still perpetually blooming but still static in a sense, but eventually turning to fully animated hallucinations. In the study of Buddhist trances, this stage is critical in exposing subtle non-jungian archetypes and beyond. Only 1% of LSD users for example experience full-on hallucinations, and this is one of the ways to be 1% =P.

"Only me. Very similar to enlightenment."

Ego-death is such a convoluted and nearly meaningless term in the psychedelic community, so is "enlightenment", which is often based on a bastardization of the contemplative traditions that such terms are loosely based on. "Ego-death" in the senses used by the psychedelic community means anything from a full blown jhanic samadhis, to nirodha-samapatti, to a base-of-all states, etc (in each case, none of which would be "ego-death" in the Buddhist sense). Your brief description for example clearly doesn't fit into the Buddhist sense of ego-death or enlightenment; my reference point is Buddhism because I majored in Buddhology and have formal Buddhist training, as well as vastly preferring Leary's and Capriles' respective models of psychedelic experience, which are framed in terms of Buddhist models.

"Set and setting mean nothing to me. It is impossible to have a bad trip for me at any dose. All that happens is the same thing at higher intensity for a little longer. "

After all I have said, I will simply iterate my objection to these claims as being not rationally justified. If you trip enough and on sufficient doses, more than what you described will happen. If you want visuals, you can have them, as yogis can bring about visions without any chemical support at all, and the chemical support provide an excellent catalyst for such methods. Though minor visuals are really just a distraction, the full-on hallucinations are considered a critical aspect of soteriology by the advanced traditions of Buddhism, for example the third series of thogal visions are so compelling that they bring out the faults in states that appear to be freedom, but are merely imitations (the base-of-all states, which present the largest obstacles to experienced yogis in the pursuit of true and definitive freedom and sanity qua the end of existential lack, a.k.a. Rigpa qua fruit a.k.a. Nirvana/Nibbana).

Anyways, take care everyone. I doubt I will be back, but you guys have quite a nice forum here and I wish you all the best. Have a smashingly great life!