“Oppos[e na/i]tional Agency” lyrics and explanation

In my final year at the University of Toronto, I took an upper year Anthropology course, “Native America and the State.” For the major paper, we were asked to write about Native fisheries in inland BC, 1849-1925. Anticipating that nobody would ever want to read a paper I wrote on that, and certainly not wanting to write something boring, I opted to turn in a one page rap instead of an eight page paper. Many seemed skeptical that such a thing can be done (one page when eight were asked? Rap as essay? No citations, bibliography or title page? Oral presentation?), but my professor gave me an A+ and nominated me for the Richard B Lee Award for “most outstanding student essay in critical anthropology.” So now we know. Yes, yes it can.

Verse 1:
When did agree, democratically,
How to divide coercive authority?
The right to write history and decide what’s as formerly?

Dominion officials conceded jurisdiction
To a governing body that treats rights as fictions
To rich whites benedictions, to most others afflictions
Ignoring pre-existing Native legal traditions

To propagate logics of “land improvement,”
They obfuscated freedom of animal movement
So meant maturation of this state puppet show:
Problems for the migration of salmon and buffalo!
Way to show why we need system wide contestation
Adaptation, innovation, patron annihilation

The implications of oppositional land dividing:
Providing only minimal per capita acreage
While Native freedoms continue to haemorrhage!

Chorus:
Foucault distinguished sovereign from government,
Tania Li and Nugent redefined state assessment.

Processes and projects frame coercive logics
Practices and classist twists express interests of activists
And pacifists and populists might only care for opulence
And the dominant’s centrality obscures true plurality
Every complex system displays dynamicality!

So as positions flip, with the shifting conditions,
You should never base a theory on just strict oppositions!

Verse 2:
With our presuppositions focusing on traditions
Of wage labour at the fisheries we might make an omission

Employed for five months a year
Survive the winter in fear
Living with what you’re given’s no way to make a career
But competing for fish stocks still beats trying to farm rocks
And independent boat owners had to put up with cost blocks

So go to canneries for guarantees of small degrees of dignities
But your expertise still gets traded in for Japanese
Employer rejection because of kinship connections?
Alienating and deprecating at new heights of perfection!

[instrumental]

Verse 3:
Our governing system was never smooth on its surfaces
But a cacophony of voices working at cross purposes
Services ensuring land purchases, practices of exclusion
Suffusion by settlers, unceded land’s prostitution, creating confusion

Leaving Indian Affairs to clean up what’s theirs
A process that could only help the splitting of hairs
Pseudo-representation! Hegem’nous instrumentation!
Sincerity of advocacy only furthered subjectification

Allowed to forget the reason for reserve allotment
Access was opened up by the fisheries department
Today the damage’s unmended, results no-one intended
Well meaning causes unduly commended

Dynamic disuniformity generated deformity
Scornfully, at turns informally, cordially or forcibly
Sovereign authority inflicted this paucity on what was the majority
Whatever became of constitutional priority?

Private property, once sought for protection,
Quickly became used as a tool for dispossession

Chorus:
Foucault distinguished sovereign from government,
Tania Li and Nugent redefined state assessment.

Processes and projects frame coercive logics
Practices and classist twists express interests of activists
And pacifists and populists might only care for opulence
And the dominant’s centrality obscures true plurality
Every complex system displays dynamicality!

So as positions flip, with the shifting conditions,
You should never base a theory on just strict oppositions!

——————————————————————————————————————–

At one point serious efforts were made to develop and record tabla accompaniment and a solo for this. We sounded great together, but there were a couple parts where the tabla still needed a lot of work and we eventually got sidetracked and didn’t finish it. Eventually I hope there’ll be a good recording. In the meantime, if you want to hear it, buy me a drink or something and I might spit it for you.

2011
11/23
CATEGORY
Formal Essays and Research
Uncategorized
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Do Psychedelics Encourage False Belief?

During a psychedelic experience, it’s common to have many new ideas. Are they always good ideas?  Trippers generally think so, and many of them may well be. To people who don’t trip, however, the idea that a drug could be a font of pure wisdom is totally ludicrous. This article approaches the issue partially from the perspective of social psychology and cognitive biases (much of what I explain here comes from a paper by Daniel Gilbert, which I highly recommend). Could tripping cause us to believe things we would otherwise — even ought to — reject?

To begin with, there’s the notion that comprehension entails belief. In the words of William James, “all propositions, whether attributive or existential, are believed through the very act of being conceived.” This may sound strange, but there’s actually a lot of evidence for it, and if it weren’t the case it’d be very difficult to get around and do things. Another way of thinking about this is that it takes more effort to doubt something than it does to accept it: first we represent an idea, and only later can we reject it.

Compare two hypothetical mental systems. In one, truth and falseness are assumed to be equally likely, and so everything needs to be evaluated carefully to determine its veracity. In the other, truth is assumed to be far more likely, and everything will by default be accepted as true, unless a compelling argument against it becomes obvious. Look around your room and see which of the two you’re using: all the objects you see, are they approximately, functionally, what they appear to be? Do you need to carefully test each bit of floor to ensure that you won’t fall to your doom through what’s merely an illusion in the shape of floor?

We constantly process large volumes of information, nearly all of which is accurate enough to trust. There are lies and illusions, yes, but they’re relatively rare, so it actually makes sense to be fairly credulous most of the time. And, as it turns out, we are. Our primary way of sorting information is to ignore the vast majority and accept the rest, disregarding whatever isn’t commensurable with our extant mental frameworks. If what you’re seeing doesn’t make sense, it’s probably an illusion. If it does make sense, it’s probably accurate enough to treat it as “real.” This is useful and important, but it means that determining whether information is “correct” or not isn’t even something we’re trying to do most of the time, let alone something we succeed at reliably. We don’t need to: pattern recognition alone is sufficient to effectively navigate and make decisions. This has important implications for drugs which boost pattern recognition: more things can be understood, and therefore more things will be believed.

Another important ramification of the primacy of truth is that the more overloaded we are, the more likely we are to accept things without question. Because accepting an idea happens before we have a chance to reject it (upon remembering some bit of information that contradicts it, or upon applying it to something and seeing that its consequences are absurd, for example), our ability to evaluate something for accuracy depends upon having the time and resources to do so. The fewer available resources, the more we’ll accept things as true.

An example of something that might take away some of those cognitive resources, of course, is other salient information. Why think long and hard about one question, when there are other, really exciting things to pay attention to? For those not familiar, “salience” is the technical term for the property of “standing out,” being interesting or notable. Increasing salience is also one of the main effects of psychedelics: things that you didn’t notice before become interesting, and things that were already interesting become larger than life. This is, of course, one of the major benefits of psychedelics for insight formation, because they get you to look at things in new ways, paying attention to that which you might otherwise have ignored. In some situations this may be a two-edged sword: simple illusions may be easier to spot (nothing can hide in plain sight), but the sheer volume of information you’re processing can make parsing concepts like “absolute truth” difficult, while crowding out your ability to reflect or carefully consider, increasing the proportion of ideas you’ll believe.

It’s worth remembering that LSD has been explored for its potential as a brainwashing agent, with dismal results. As it turns out, if government agents give you acid and try to convince you of things, their success rate is going to be very low. During my series of interviews last year, I asked each respondent whether they had ever had a “false epiphany” while tripping, and the results were nearly* unanimous: no. Interestingly, it’s far more common for people to come up and realise that their sober ideas were wrong than the other way around. This is especially true for mystical or metaphysical notions, as it’s very common for such matters to be concretely experienced when tripping, when they were merely hypothetical and abstract when sober. Thus, the puerility of what once made sense becomes obvious. They also tend to make us more sensitive to underlying motivations, so it may be very obvious if somebody is trying to trick us into something.

That said, psychedelics have been famously used by a variety of religious or “cult” leaders to indoctrinate new members. If psychedelics make it easier to spot bullshit, and if the CIA was unable to use them as brainwashing agents, how could this be? One explanation is that the religious leaders weren’t actually tricking the people into believing false things, or even transmitting information, but merely presenting generalities which could then be filled in with legitimate insights by each. Effective indoctrination into a religious or magical group does not require uniformity of beliefs, but merely a sense by the inductee that the leader has access to spiritual truth.  This is especially the case in a situation where the inductee formerly had little interest in or exposure to mystical understandings. Through having their first ever personal realisations of spiritual truth in the context of taking psychedelics with somebody, it becomes easy to associate truth with that person. Once the appetite for spiritual insight has been whet, pursuing group membership in the hopes of further insights becomes a distinct possibility, all without having had any “false epiphanies” or delusions.

Getting back to the point I introduced above — that comprehension entails belief — psychedelics make it easier to conceive of new ideas by lowering the filters on our perception and supercharging our gestalt pattern matching facility. They also jack up the salience of everything, including those ideas, so they will not only be understood (and therefore automatically accepted), but also experienced as very important. They also tend to occasion not just one idea, but many, many ideas in a very short period, so remaining focused on any particular one for long enough to fully evaluate it may be unlikely. That means it’s extremely likely for the ideas we have while tripping to be accepted as true, especially if they have a spiritual feel to them and we’ve been primed to expect mystical truths. Especially during very intense trips, it’s common to come out of them dumbstruck, feeling that all the secrets of the universe had been revealed (not just the one secret of everything, but thousands of distinct truths), but being unable to remember all but the vaguest of generalities.

The experience of my respondents does not suggest that asinine or false ideas are likely to be accepted because of a trip. One particularly interesting comparison is often made between the “hit rates” of ideas occasioned between cannabis and classic psychedelics: on cannabis, people often have many ideas, a few of which are great but many of which just sound stupid after sobering up. On mushrooms or acid, however, the ideas didn’t just seem good at the time but actually were considered to have lasting value. This often surprises regular pot-smokers when they first take a classic psychedelic: they’re used to having epiphanies, but not ones which actually still hold water the next day and the next week. Further research is necessary to adequately explain this difference and to determine its extent. Your mileage may vary.

If you want to have a trip geared toward the generation and honing of insights (as opposed to Mystical union, or experience of Communion and interconnection), here are some guidelines which take into account the above discussion:

  • Be somewhere not too distracting or overwhelming. Raves and the like can work for a Communion experience, but Insight requires time, quiet and privacy to think things over.
  • Give yourself lots of extra time after your expected comedown before you need to be anywhere, so you can reflect while sober.
  • Audio record your session, and/or take notes! Make sure to get permission if anyone else appears on the recording. Listening to a recording of your conversation afterword can be extremely useful.
  • Take a small or moderate dose of something with a medium duration. Short, strong trips are great for Entheogenesis or Mysticism, but could be an information overload, and past a certain duration or intensity there may be diminishing returns.
  • Don’t expect to remember or keep everything, or for everything to make sense. If you get one or two interesting ideas out of a trip, great! Stressing over completion will just get in the way

“Though Truth and Falsehood bee neare twins, yet Truth a little elder is” – John Dunne

* A rare example of a “false epiphany” comes from Heru (a cultural engineer). For approximately one year, he believed himself to be Christ. “I believe that everything that we’re shown is in some sense true, in that it relates to the nature of our mind. But in my experience I found myself falling into quite delusional states, because I was attempting to project these truths into another level of experience. … We generally seem to exist on a relative level where there is a dualism between subject and object. … And if we experience a non-dual state like ‘I am the Christos’ or ‘I am Buddha-nature,’ … when we go back to the relative world … it appears to us that ‘I am the One, but no-one else is.’ So we objectify and reify the idea. And in that sense it can lead to Messianic complexes, which I went through… and yes, technically, we can save the world. We are here to do that. But it’s very easy for the ego to take that and twist it around and simply use it as another thing to propagate its own belief in its own independent existence.”

2011
11/20
CATEGORY
Drug Education
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Cannabis: what’s it good for?

A main effect of cannabis is to make whatever you do while on it easier to continue doing. Since “whatever you do while on it” could include anything from martial arts to munching out to melding into your couch, its effects can be hard to adequately characterise. It’s usually thought to be category breaking: it’s unclear whether it’s a “depressant,” “stimulant” or “hallucinogen,” because in practice it paradoxically behaves as all three. This becomes simpler if we instead emphasise intentionality and dynamism, tracking why people use it, what it’s good for and what it’s not good for. Below I will quickly run through some varieties of its uses and conclude with a brief discussion of its health effects.

Inebriation
Contrary to its reputation as a “mild” or “soft” drug, cannabis can be extremely inebriating, in the sense that a large dose can make it nearly impossible to “act sober” or “think clearly.” For those who “have to be in control,” it can be a scary experience, as flights of fancy and sensory immersion dominate the cognitive and perceptual fields. This is compounded by the notorious difficulty of controlling dosage. Variation in potency between batches, variation in the amount actually consumed in a given session (especially in a social setting where it’s passed around repeatedly among people who may have differing tolerances), and variation in the ratios between the many active alkaloids can make it very easy to get way higher than was intended. Users frequently become familiar with the batch they have and the method of ingestion they use, and then end up getting completely fucked up the next time they try a different variety a different way (bongs, vapourisers and baked goods are all notorious for taking people by surprise).

This variability, combined with a manageable duration and an excellent safety profile, makes cannabis ideal for anybody who wants to experience something powerful, different and not altogether predictable. It’s therefore the drug of experimentation par excellence. Because of the completeness of its change compared to sober consciousness, it’s also effective for sedation or relief from stress or pain: if you simply don’t want to feel how you’re currently feeling, that can be accomplished. Thus, it’s highly suited to two of the three Inebriation subcategories: Variation and Negation, but less suited to the third: Disinhibition. While it is sometimes used for this purpose, it’s much better at helping you continue something rather than do something new, and users often become introverted or cautious when stoned, exactly the opposite of what you want to help you loosen up and engage in behaviours you otherwise couldn’t.

Enhancement
As already noted, pot makes it easier to continue activities already being performed. As it turns out, it works by activating the receptors in our body  that are responsible for the “runner’s high.” If you smoke pot but you’ve never tried exercising while high, try it! You’ll be surprised how amazing it is. The feeling of effort in your body will become more intense but also more enjoyable, making it far easier to push yourself harder or keep going longer. There is, of course, a danger here: it’s possible to push yourself too far and risk injury. For this reason my yoga instructor cautions against highly vigorous practice under the influence, although he adds it does synergise well with meditation. It can help with the physical practice, but just be careful not to overdo it: as an anti-inflammatory it can make it easier for your muscles to get into extreme postures, but that doesn’t mean your tendons are ready for that.

Cannabis also often makes sensations of all sorts more enjoyable. Massage, music, sex, film, art, landscapes, food… everything becomes more salient, and it’s easy to become absorbed. This makes it highly suited to  anything primarily about sensation and experience, though poorly suited to things which require a long attention span. Good media for pot is anything that grabs you and takes you somewhere; poor media for pot is static and requiring of a robust short term memory.

It’s therefore good for some kinds of Ability Enhancement, great for Sensory Enhancement, and nigh unparalleled for Immersion. “Flow” states (suspension of neurotic self-consciousness as action and awareness merge) become far easier to access. Whether you’re giving massage, playing video games or making music, it’s easy to become lost in the experience.

Psychedelia

As noted above, marijuana sometimes causes flights of fancy: intense thought patterns often on a specific subject, colloquially termed “tripping out.” While for some people this may be unpleasant (anathema to relaxation, and sometimes anxious or even paranoid in character), for many it’s the primary reason they use the drug: it makes them think about or reflect on things, and they often end up learning a whole lot through the process. This is what’s meant when people talk about cannabis “boosting creativity.” As size or frequency of doses increase, however, mental stimulation tends to get subsumed by haze and lethargy. Best practices are to take a relatively small dose in a safe, creative setting, jot down whatever seems important, and then look over those notes the next day, searching for gems (not everything that seemed  brilliant when high will still seem brilliant when sober, but some of it might!). The other approach is to meditate while high, which can be more powerful than either the pot or the meditation would have been separately: personal insights and mystical truths may flow forth. Because of the way that cannabis often strengthens aesthetic experience, taken in the right situation it can also be conducive to a feeling of Communion: awareness of beauty, intimate feelings of interconnectivity, love and gratitude. This seems to work best when consumed outside in a beautiful location.

Thus, it’s great for the psychedelic category of Insight, and though it’s less consistent for Communion and Mystery, it certainly is used for and can accomplish both some of the time.

Sometimes, when people get stoned… strange things happen. There’s no real consistency here and so it’s impossible to adequately describe, but profound experiences do sometimes happen under the influence, often leading to personal transformation. How this will be interpreted depends to a large extent upon network situatedness and cultural conceptions of the Other. Stigma surrounding unusual states of consciousness can lead any strange experience to be interpreted as a sign of mental illness, and the truth is that pot use appears to have genuinely triggered persisting pathological effects in some rare cases. However, it has also left many other people mentally healthy but with a new-found awareness of the transcendental, or of God. Note that sometimes mystic awakenings, drug occasioned or otherwise, can be dramatic and overwhelming. Spiritual emergencies like unexpected kundalini awakenings and many other phenomena have been reported, and must be taken seriously: appropriate guidance and discretion is necessary. Attempting to interfere with or block whatever was activated can do far more harm than good. If this happens with a friend, don’t panic or jump to conclusions, just keep them safe and try to contact somebody qualified to act as a guide.

Symbolism and Religious Associations

Cannabis has a place of distinction in many religious, mystical and magical traditions. To begin with, it has strong associations with Goddess worship: what is smoked is literally the sex organs of the female plant, and its effects are considered to have a distinctly “feminine” character. For Rastafari, it grew on the grave of Solomon the Wise and which, when used in meditation, gives you access to that wisdom yourself. For the Church of the Universe, it increases connection to God. Reverend Brother Walter Tucker once told me that while LSD let him behold God in full majesty, such an experience is too much to handle regularly, and that the Sacrament brings him just a little closer to and reminds him of that sacred connection, while still being mild enough for him to use regularly: not a mountain-top experience, but a daily reminder. It’s also sacred to the Hindu world-destroyer, Siva, because it relieved his anxiety, allowing him to dance, thereby sublimating the poison of Time, and he therefore bears the title Lord of Bhang.

As a major agricultural plant, it is deeply associated with the Harvest and the cyclical nature of Time; because of its mental stimulation and inebriation it is used to occasion ritual madness and ecstatic experience. In China it has associations with death and immortality.

Health Effects

Certain people want you to think that pot is really dangerous, while others make it sound like a cure-all. Fact is that it has some fairly straight forward health effects, and it can be either good or bad for you depending how and when you use it.

  • It lowers blood pressure. This can be beneficial in some circumstances and dangerous in others. Especially when combined with alcohol it can cause light headedness or nausea, sometimes referred to as “greening out” or “the spins.” 
  • As an anti-inflammatory, it’s useful for dealing with certain kinds of pain and injury. There is some concern that this effect may increase susceptibility to certain kinds of infection (inflammation, though unpleasant, is sometimes important), but there’s no good evidence that this is something users ought to worry about (maybe if you’re immune-compromised or visiting the Amazon).
  • Regular, long term smoking reduces lung capacity and may lead to chronic bronchitis
  • It appears to treat or protect against certain kinds of cancer; unlike tobacco smokers, marijuana smokers do not have massively elevated rates of lung cancer. Its anti-carcinogenic effect appears to balance out with the inherent carcinogenic nature of smoke inhalation, but of course it’s better for your lungs not to smoke anything.
  • It blocks nausea, particularly chemically induced, and it therefore may be useful to combine with certain chemicals for which that is a problem (such as in the case of chemotherapy).
  • It stimulates appetite, very helpful in certain situations. Despite what might then be expected, its use is not associated with obesity: quite the opposite.
  • Some people are allergic to cannabis (remember, they call it “weed” for a reason). If you personally react badly to it, this may be why.
  • It has neuroprotective effects on adult brains and may prevent such degenerative conditions as Alzheimer’s Disease. However, processes that slow degradation may also impede development, and so we ought to caution against regular use by young people.
  • It potentiates or interacts with many other drugs, so combine with caution. In particular, if you’re going to mix cannabis and alcohol, one idea is to smoke first and then drink, as it’s easier to control the dosage of alcohol than the dosage of cannabis: you can nurse your drink, but you can’t un-smoke that joint. Smoking pot when already drunk often ends very badly.
  • It reduces dream activity. For people who have regular nightmares this can be a godsend; for others it’s an unfortunate, if not altogether important, side effect. Sudden cessation of regular use can produce a rebound of extremely intense dreams.
The bottom line is that Cannabis is used by many people for many different reasons. A witch I spoke to recently said that it is placed in the centre of the medicine wheel: it pertains to everything. In my consciousness alteration framework, it sometimes falls into all nine of the categories, although it is clearly better suited for some (Variation, Insight, Immersion and Pleasure) than for others (Disinhibition). Its health effects are generally positive for most people, and people find it useful for such common things as stress relief, sore ankles from running and menstrual complaints. Why anybody thinks these are rare enough, or its risks severe enough, for it to require medical oversight is beyond me.
2011
11/06
CATEGORY
Drug Education
Drugs, Herbs, Medicines, Poisons
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Inebriation: change for change’s sake

I have elsewhere described three broad categories of drug use: inebriation, enhancement and psychedelia. Of these, inebriation is simultaneously the most basic and the most reviled. Whereas the cultural struggle for acceptance of psychedelia revolves around acknowledgement that it exists at all, inebriation is typically taken to be self-evident, and self-evidently distasteful. I do not share this opinion. In excess, inebriation can certainly be very dangerous (or just plain ugly), but I believe that it has its own time and place, its own legitimacy and its own benefits.

The Basics:

Inebriation is fancy-speak for getting fucked up. The feeling is that normal, sober existence is too frustrating, stressful or just plain boring, and that if we can just do something — anything — to change how we’re feeling, things will be better. Pretty much any drug can accomplish this, as can practices such as fasting, eating, holding your breath, meditating or masturbating.

Of course, you can’t simply have your consciousness be arbitrarily different: depending on what technique of consciousness alteration you use, you’re going to get a particular cluster of effects, with widely varying degrees of predictability. The classic psychedelics, for example, are extremely unpredictable, and can do just about anything. That makes them sound appealing to somebody who’s bored and wants a change, but the change could easily be a lot more dramatic than had been intended: just because you want reality to be altered doesn’t mean you want it to be destroyed completely. Careful practices like meditation on the other hand may come with a host of other benefits and be well worth pursuing, but require a good deal of motivation, effort and discipline, likely to be lacking when we’re in the uncomfortable place of craving an alteration.

A prototypical inebriant therefore will reliably turn down the volume on neurotic self-consciousness, and not do too much else. Despite various well documented adverse effects, alcohol is by far the most popular drug for this purpose, and for good reason: it’s effective, predictable and general in its effects, providing readily scaling levels of inebriation from a slight fuzziness to total annihilation. Cannabis is also highly popular as an inebriant, and is generally safer than alcohol, but is far less predictable.

Why would anybody seek impairment?

Getting “fucked up” sounds like an entirely bad thing. Society highly values lucidity, which it associates with sobriety, so anything which alters consciousness in a way that’s not obviously and directly beneficial is seen by some as categorically unacceptable. This line of thinking is common among high achievers and religious puritans, but may also be informed by experience with problematic drug use such as alcoholism, or for other reasons. It typically comes down to the fear of lost possibilities, the idea that when you drink, you could have done something else instead, like read a book or make a painting. This is generally not actually the case. Those who reject the legitimacy of consciousness alteration generally do so from a privileged position in which consciousness is stable, manageable and positive. Even a common phenomena like stress (experienced very differently by different people) is sufficient to undermine this, let alone variation in life situation or psychological makeup.

Maybe you’ve been working hard all day, or maybe you’re really worried about something, and you just need a break from it all. Obviously, if you get fucked up all the time that’s just going to make things worse if you never take care of whatever problem was stressing you out in the first place, but if you’re past the point of being able to do something about the problem right this minute and can’t get it off our mind, doing something to take the stress off makes total sense, and might actually lead to more productivity or clearer thinking later. A nice bath, a massage or a good orgasm are generally healthier options than getting wasted, but there’s nothing wrong with taking something to help you kick back and relax, as long as you’re reasonably safe about it and get things done at other times. For a lot of people, smoking a joint serves as a great adjunct to a bath, massage or orgasm! Learn how you react to things (both at the time and in the days to follow), and do what seems to produce the most benefit with the least negative effects.

Alterity and Breaking from the Everyday

In speaking of change, we assume a conception of “normality,” a sober “baseline” against which alterations can be compared, and to which we can return. This is, of course, merely a convenient fiction: like history, consciousness does not repeat itself (though it may often rhyme). Further, identifying with the state of consciousness you find most familiar tends to exaggerate the illusion of yourself as static and separate from the Other, an illusion which inebriation may subvert by highlighting variability and hinting at the tenuousness of control. Promoting variety of experience can therefore be inherently useful, a way of “playtesting” reality, allowing for what I have described as “psychic triangulation:” considering a single topic, concept or image in various states of consciousness and comparing the results to get a more robust, multifaceted understanding of it than any one state of consciousness alone could provide. This also relates to our capacity to empathise with a greater diversity of people, and it renders our identity constructs more fluid, revealing their arbitrariness and dynamism, working to disentangle Self from the Everyday.

This break from the everyday is not exclusively about variety: it is also central to the capacity of religion to unite practitioners through the production of sacred space and sacred time. Although they frequently have other meanings as well, religious rituals tend to consist of elements which alter consciousness. Incense, chanting, unusual acoustics or lighting conditions, special clothing and sounds all contribute to the production of an “axis mundi” in which the divine can be experienced. This, I would argue, is essentially the same as entering into a group drug experience, and explains the use of drugs to mark special occasions, such as holidays, graduations or marriages. Through the act of ritually consuming a similar amount of the same drug, collective feeling within the group is established, fostering intimacy and unity. Alcohol and cannabis both to serve in this capacity: cheering commences convivial conversation, connoting comaraderie and cooperation. When a joint is passed around a circle of friends, they share in each other’s spirit and enter into a sacred space together, qualitatively separate from the Everyday that came before. Cannabis may have additional spiritual benefits, but inebriation is all that is required for this type of ritual to function.

To conclude: 

Inebriation describes any drug use where the change in consciousness the drug produces is the objective of its use. Whereas enhancement pertains to some sort of connection between subject and object, and whereas psychedelia seeks the discovery of potentially lasting insights, inebriation is about the experience itself: a desire for something out of the ordinary. This has significant ritual and psychological applications which ought not to be casually dismissed.

To me, the point of consciousness manipulation is to find a dynamic balance. Experimentation is crucial to the process of self discovery, and having tools with which to break out of complacency and ennui can be very valuable.  That said, as we try to break out of our patterns it’s easy to end up creating new, more toxic patterns. That is the meaning of addiction: becoming stuck in one way of experiencing reality, and being unable to flow easily through others. Experiencing inebriation occasionally may be highly beneficial, but do so too often and things might get really bad, really fast.

Embrace variety; don’t get stuck.

——————————————————————————————————————

ADDENDUM:
After publishing this, I received  two criticisms almost simultaneously. One was that I talked too much about death, and the other was that I didn’t talk enough about danger. Seems death isn’t the point for the one person, and danger is the point for the other. Inspired by these diametrically opposed critiques, I sat down and refined my model. I now have Inebriation as consisting of three subcategories: Disinhibition, Sedation and Variation (Disinhibition bleeds into the Enhancement subcategory of Ability, and Variation bleeds into the Psychedelic category of Insight). Disinhibition is the one about “danger” (and freedom, and shenanigans) which I didn’t adequately cover in this article. This addendum is to note the theoretical alteration, and to point out that danger/disinhibition is important even though I didn’t get into it much above. This will be more fully addressed in a subsequent article.

2011
10/30
CATEGORY
Drug Education
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5 comments

Sex and Drugs

Drugs provide powerful tools for altering consciousness; so does sex. What about combining the two? For many, sex and drugs are separately the most pleasurable experiences they know, and in combination they can be even more powerful. This article explores a few of the reasons why the two are sometimes combined and a discussion of various advantages and disadvantages.

Psychedelic Sex Blast

Inebriation

A lot of us are really conflicted when it comes to sex. Sometimes because of guilt or past traumas and associations we want to do something on one level but on some other level we’ve got a mental block that keeps us from following through with it. People in this situation may turn to an inebriant to help “loosen up” and do what they secretly want, or to overcome social anxieties, making it easier to find a partner. For a lot of people this can be an important part of getting sex to happen at all, but it comes with a tradeoff: if you’re fucked up, chances are your performance is going to be impaired.

Alcohol’s the obvious case study here. Some people find a glass or two of wine makes them tingly and sensitive, but drink too much and it impairs motor control and dulls sensation, so drunk sex usually doesn’t feel nearly as good as sober sex. It can also make consent even more complicated than usual. You may be drinking to loosen up, but what do you do when someone is pushing your limits and you’re too drunk or high to know how to respond? Make sure you think about your limits beforehand: what are you okay with doing, and with whom? It may be good to have a friend who knows your limits watching out for you so that you don’t end up doing something you’ll regret. Also remember that some people may give booze or other drugs to make you more likely to sleep with them. Avoid bad situations, watch how much you take, and don’t tolerate this kind of douchey behaviour; if your friend tries to get someone drunk so they’ll “consent,” call them on it. Not cool.

Note that within this is the implication that inebriation can be used to surge past limits into experiences of wild abandon. Just remember that Dionysus is god of wine and orgies, but he’s also insane.

Enhancement

Enhancement has two sides:  improving your performance and improving your experience. Exactly what it is you feel needs improving and what you would consider to be an improvement will change what is appropriate here, such that two things that can separately be seen as improvements might be antithetical. For example, hashish might help you make intimately connected, passionate love, whereas amphetamines might help you fuck the shit out of each other. Which is it you want, if either? (I don’t mean to imply a dichotomy here, by the way! Just that you should consider your intentions carefully)

Stimulants like coke and crystal can lead to really intense, hard fucking, as you’ll be energetic, impatient and won’t get tired as easily. As hot as that can be, the harder you fuck, the more likely that you’ll hurt yourself or your partner. Cuts and tears make it much more likely to transmit infections like HIV, and coming down hard at the wrong angle can literally break a penis! Use lots of lube, and change condoms if it’s taking a long time. Getting your heart rate up too high can lead to a heart attack or stroke, especially if you also took Viagra — and many drugs can make it hard (hehe) to get an erection or to achieve orgasm, even if it feels great. Remember, there’s nothing wrong with taking a breather and drinking some water, and if you can’t cum, that’s fine: don’t force it! 

Cannabis, on the other hand, makes sensations more intense, and causes us to get really into whatever it is we happen to be doing. So if we’re running, running becomes more pleasurable and we can keep going longer, or if we’re sitting around on the couch it can be hard to be motivated to do anything. Applied to sex, that means we usually have less desire to initiate sex if stoned — so it’s not true that pot is an aphrodisiac. However, if sex is initiated, it can make it much more intense, so we get really into it and stay into it for longer — just like how it effects us when we go running. Unlike stimulants which make us fuck harder, pot will often make slow fucking feel that much better. Many women have reported that they’re only able to orgasm when stoned!

Psychedelia

Sex by itself can be psychedelic: soul revealing, ego-destroying and triggering of deep insight. Mixing sex and psychedelic drugs can amplify both and be one of the most unbelievably intense things imaginable. If you Google around you’ll find many awesome stories of experiences so profound that you’ll probably be envious and want to try them yourself. Don’t!

Taking a powerful psychedelic with a lover and having sex sounds like an awesome plan on paper, but in practice it can be incredibly awkward, because once you come up, who knows how you’ll be feeling… these drugs are so powerful that they can easily overwhelm us and make it so that sex simply isn’t on our minds at all, whatever our intentions may have been. What’s worse, because of the way they can activate and amplify latent psychological processes, a bad sexual experience while tripping could be incredibly traumatising, and in the moment you might be completely incapable of expressing to your partner what it is you’re going through.

The truth is that sex on psychedelics can be totally amazing: ego boundaries dissolve and you fuse into one another, transformed into archetypal, primal energies, transpersonal divine beings of infinite beauty and love, pleasures upon pleasures unfolding into secrets of Ultimate Reality. If you ever get into that sort of space with somebody, count yourselves profoundly blessed. But do not expect it, or plan for it. What happens, happens, and that’s okay. 

On any drug, you may end up being too high to go searching for condoms and lube, so if you think you might have sex later (whether or not you’re planning to), be sure to already have everything you need with you before you get high, and don’t forget to have to take care of yourself! Make sure to eat and drink.

Addendum on aphrodisiacs:
The idea of an aphrodisiac is a drug which produces sexual desire where it wasn’t already. Many plants and drugs are claimed to be aphrodisiacs, but few truly occasion new feelings (damiana and bremelanotide are notable exceptions). My approach to aphrodisiacs is to recognise that if we’re unable to get horny, there’s often a somatic problem at the root of it, such as a headache, low energy levels, anxiety or indigestion. Better (and effective!) to treat these problems directly, rather than skipping ahead to a substance specific to getting you to have sex. My favourite aphrodisiac, therefore, is ginseng, which is primarily a stimulating “adaptogen.” Lots of people get randy after taking some… personally it makes me want to dance more than anything, so I usually have some when I go to a party. Energy can be used for lots of things! Ginseng is good for you; it’ll make your headache go away, it’ll help you think more clearly, and, yes, it may help you have more and better sex.

2011
10/23
CATEGORY
Drug Education
Sex/Gender/Sexuality
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Research Occupy Toronto

So last night I got a call from a man who’d done a bit of work with me hyping the G20 anniversary back in June. He apparently has a similar relationship to Occupy Toronto. I, on the other hand, have been sitting back and watching  where it goes due to being extraordinarily busy, and to  various concerns around the progress of the movement.

The man who called me last night… well I guess he liked some of the posters I made for the G20 anniversary, so he offered me $75 to design him some posters for this. Not much for the kind of work, but hey, I was feeling slightly guilty for my lack of involvement, and really needed the money. Missed a couple readings but got it made.

Said he wanted something to target students and get people involved, and that he wanted it to be upbeat and funny. This is what I ended up with:

https://michaelvipperman.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/occupy-research_merged.pdf

Consider it an attempt at metaprogramming and the first publication of Electrum: The Invisible College

Print some and put them up!

Thanks to several people whose permission I need to ask before mentioning you by name!

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Text:

DO YOUR RESEARCH AT OCCUPY TORONTO

WRITE YOUR ESSAY ON OCCUPY TORONTO

MAKE YOUR PAPER ABOUT OCCUPY TORONTO

Mass demonstrations and conversational analysis: limitations and applications

Occupying Rn : the social calculus of public spaces

Reification of the 99%: The homogeneity of diversity 

Interaction Ritual Chains or total eld immersion? The spread of affect in mass demonstrations

Dispersion patterns of peaceful protestors upon exposure to capsaicin aerosol

Spatial distribution, vocal register and the “people’s mic”

Resolving local obstructions to uniform distributions satisfying global inequalities

Hold position or build momentum? Quantum algorithms utilizing times of great uncertainty

Lemmas about dilemmas: preliminary results in the topological theory of injustice

Time series analyses on nancial markets and FInancial district occupations: a comparative study

“Marching for what we desire”: comparing walking routes through protests to desire lines

The cohomology of almost-impoverished social manifolds

Implications of the Toronto G20 for mass organising in Canadian metropolises. Radicalising or pacifying?

Affect and rationality in group decision making

Strong solutions to inhomogenous populace equations on unbounded domains

Huron, French, Algonquin, British, Corporatists, Us. A local history of occupation

“But my feet hurt”: practical advantages of sedentary uprisings

Curve of participation in Occupy movement over time: sigmoid or bell?

Consensus building and demography: the signication of race and class

“What if we win?” An ethnography of multiplicity and hope
2011
10/11
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
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Caring for the Body

Before a trip, you should consider how it’s going to affect your body. Aside from complex and unpredictable psychological or spiritual effects, will it physically* hurt you? Fortunately, the physical effects, at least from the “classic” (seretonergic) psychedelics are usually both predictable and mild. In this article I will begin by laying out how to take care of yourself during a “typical” psychedelic trip, and end with a brief overview of some concerns related to some of the other substances which may have psychedelic uses.

Nausea is the most common source of discomfort during a trip. Some psychedelics are more nauseating than others — 2C-E is usually more nauseating than shrooms which are usually more nauseating than LSD, for example. Generally the nausea starts soon after dosing and goes away within half an hour, although at the time it may feel like it’s going to last all night. To minimise this, make sure not to have eaten much just before dosing! Best-practices are to have a light breakfast and dose 45 minutes later, or to take a mild fast. Keep in mind that if you puke, it might make your trip more intense!

Muscle tension and/or strange sensations in the body are also common, especially during the come-up. A lot of people have a specific place they always feel something weird, but it’s not consistent between people — for me it’s my throat, possibly because of my asthma. Tremors (shaking) and involuntary or semi-voluntary contractions are common as well, and because of this you should never take psychedelics if pregnant. Spontaneous uterine contractions = induced labour = miscarriage. Otherwise, this typically isn’t a problem, although if you’re prone to cramping it’s possible that something may be activated (lockjaw, for example). Interestingly, unlike other causes of tremors or contractions, these tend to become milder over repeated trips, and for that reason Stanislov Grof suggests that they represent not a problem but a therapeutic release of tension (funk not only moves, it can re-move. Dig?).

Appetite/sleep loss are also common. Sleep is usually not possible until you’re completely sober, and you probably won’t be hungry. This is only a problem if you plan poorly! Food and sleep are important, yo — take care of them both before and after. Be sure to check the duration of the drug you’re taking, and, pro-tip: if your “acid” has a strong bitter taste, it’s probably DOI, which lasts far longer than LSD (acid has a mildly bitter taste, but the amount in a normal dose is too small for most people to notice). This is why they say “if it’s bitter, it’s a spitter;” DOI can be a good time, assuming you have nowhere to be this week.

Heart rate/blood pressure changes deserve mention because they contraindicate tripping for anyone with heart problems or dangerous circulation issues, but for most people this simply isn’t an issue. If you didn’t have heart problems going in, you’re not going to develop them because of a trip. It’s vasoconstrictive, but so is, say, a walk in the snow.

Fatigue. Tripping is work. You may have more thoughts in five minutes than you normally have in five hours, all captivating and highly salient. After a whole day of this, expect to be worn out! Most psychedelics don’t leave a “hangover” to speak of, but give yourself lots of time to rest up and think about the experience.

Frequent urination. You may find you need to pee constantly during a trip. Try not to let this distract from introspection! In some cases, the tripper doesn’t actually have a full bladder, but feels the need to pee anyway. If you catch yourself constantly expecting to pee but then nothing actually coming out… just let go! Terrifying as it sounds, accept the possibility of peeing yourself, go into that, follow those thoughts and see where they go. You might even have an epiphany related to your need for control, and emerge a better person for it. Much better than wasting your trip by constantly going back and forth between bathroom and couch!

Literally everything else. LSD has been called a “non-specific amplifier” of latent and manifest psychological contents. Ever heard of psychosomatic conditions? That’s where you have a physical experience of something because of your mental contents. Because of the way psychedelics reveal and amplify things below the surface, literally anything can happen. Limb paralysis, strange rashes… anything. This can be very unsettling, and it may be impossible to parse a bizarre trip-related experience from something unrelated and life threatening. It’s far more common, though, for something pre-existing to become very obvious, or a thought pattern to manifest physically, than for something actually dangerous to be going on. It’s not altogether rare for people to think they’re dying during a trip, and have physical sensations that seem to confirm it. If that’s happening… amazing! Horrible as the experience may be in the moment, accepting it and passing through might be the most profoundly beneficial thing you could possibly experience. No matter how it feels, it’s almost certainly not the case that you’ve actually been poisoned; you can’t overdose on most psychedelics. Whatever you’re feeling, don’t run from it! Usually, as soon as you accept it and go where it’s taking you, it will transform from fear and pain into radiant beauty.

Before a trip, pamper yourself. Eat healthy, get plenty of sleep, do anything that makes you feel your best (massage? Yoga?). Got any physical concerns you’re worried about? Get them checked out; there’s no point obsessing over questions you can’t answer during your trip, when you could have answered them before. You want to come into it feeling your best, with as few worries as possible.

The day of your trip, eat a good, healthy breakfast (some people prefer to fast, and that can be good, but do so carefully). If you’re going to be dosing later in the day, a light meal an hour beforehand might be a good idea. While high you might think more about things like dietary purity than usual, so save yourself a guilty conscience by only eating foods you consider “pure” or “good” beforehand, whether that means vegan, halal/kosher or “all natural.” For the trip itself, have lots of water and some simple, single ingredient foods on hand: rice, bread, fruit (grapefruit, mango, grapes, pineapple), etc. Don’t get too fancy, as normally delicious foods might confuse or repulse. You probably won’t be hungry at all for the first half of the trip, but once you “remember” that you need to eat, having something simple, healthy and high in carbohydrates can make you feel worlds better and provide much needed energy. Several of my respondents have talked about discovering how amazing plain white rice and water truly are!

Getting exercise and/or stretching before, during and after can both help with any muscle tension and make the trip much better, allowing you to move more freely and just generally feel good. Spiritual or energetic exercise practices like yoga and qi gong can be especially rewarding, though you should know that they could be way more intense than you’re used to, which means that you might be able to access certain mental states you aren’t ready for. Proceed with caution and drink plenty of water, but know that exercise while tripping can feel amazing! 

Lastly, make sure to get some sleep. It’s important! Drugs like acid last a long time and you need time to rest and recover, so make sure you’ve got plenty of extra time with somewhere comfortable to stay and nothing you need to do immediately after.

Alright, time for a super-brief rundown on some other popular substances sometimes used for tripping and their “side effects” (physiological effects likely to be perceived as negative). This is not meant to be an exhaustive list; Google is your friend, as is the word “contraindications.”

Cannabis: lowers blood pressure; if smoked can cause sore throat and/or coughing in the short term, bronchitis in the long term; “cottonmouth” or other strange feelings in the body (not dangerous); risk of transmitting infections from sharing smoking/vapourising equipment; some are allergic to it. Be sure to have something soothing to drink handy, and be careful what you mix it with — it often makes other drugs much stronger!

MDMA: increased heart rate and blood pressure; muscle tension; teeth grinding; “gutrot” (digestive complaints); sleep loss; appetite loss; hyperthermia (overheating) and the potential for both dehydration and overhydration (can make you want to drink more water than is healthy); difficulty getting an erection; burnout/”sketch” which compound with regular use. Avoid using too much or too often, take 5-HTP and B vitamins to minimise sketch, make sure you drink an appropriate amount of water and have some chewing gum or even a pacifier to prevent teeth grinding.

Ayahuasca: nausea, diarrhea (vomiting very common, referred to as “the purge”); potentially dangerous interaction with other medicines. Following a careful diet is recommended. Have something you can puke into.

Deliriants (datura, belladonna, benedryl, gravol): extreme drowsiness; loss of motor control; overdose may cause paralysis and death. In general, just avoid these; they’re too dangerous and usually neither fun nor beneficial. If you must try them, be very careful of your dosage and be sure to have someone sober watching over you!

Salvia: Sore throat and/or coughing; loss of motor control, possible flailing or erratic movement. Be somewhere comfortable, always have a trip sitter so you don’t climb out a window or something (that kind of thing is rare, but, come on, it lasts 10 minutes; surely a friend can watch you for that long), and make sure there aren’t any knives, glass objects or whatnot nearby on which you could hurt yourself.

Ketamine: nasal or sinus irritation and “drip” if snorted; nausea/vomiting; excessive long term use can cause bladder damage and “k pains” (intense pain in the back/sides; not dangerous). Have something to puke in and some napkins or handkerchiefs handy, make sure to do it in a safe/comfortable place where it won’t freak people out if you k-hole, and don’t take it all the time — occasional use has all of the benefits and none of the bladder failure or addiction.

The safety profile for most psychedelics is far better than that of, say, aspirin. Most psychedelics are not significantly toxic, and deaths are extremely rare, usually related to people accidentally taking far too much of a research chemical. Just… be responsible. Tripping can be very rewarding, but that benefit will be quickly erased if you spend days without sleeping, and you’ll have a much better trip if you take good care of yourself before, during and after.

*I do not mean to imply that the “physiological” and “psychological” are ultimately separable. On the contrary, they are intimately linked, and any change in one will effect a change in the other (as well as each with the “sociological”).

2011
10/09
CATEGORY
Drug Education
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Potentiation

Depending on a number of factors (what you take, how much you take, what you do before/during, etc), a trip can be anywhere from a mild buzz and increase in mental energy to the total dissolution of the world around you and a loss of a sense of yourself as separate from the cosmos. Depending on what you’re after, any number of places on that spectrum might be desirable. Some people seem driven to plumb the depths of their unconscious; others are merely looking for some added creativity. In any case, it’s best to figure out what it is you want and proceed accordingly, so that you don’t end up either disappointed or overwhelmed.

The most obvious aspect of this is dosage: take more of most drugs and you’ll get higher than if you took less. It’s important to understand, however, that the more intense psychedelic experiences bear little in common with the less intense ones, and with many drugs it’s not just a matter of a gradual, predictable increase in intensity, nor does a low dose “prepare” you for a high dose; they may just be completely different in very fundamental ways. Naturally occurring drugs are especially hard to predict: eat the same amount of shrooms from the same batch three times and the first might be glorious but manageable, the second unbelievably overwhelming, and the third entirely uninteresting. Some drugs, such as Moxy (5-MeO-MiPT), are mild at any dose, mainly just developing worse side effects as you take more. Others, such as 2C-E, only seem worth the side effects when a powerful dose is taken. Still others, like LSD, are more pliable and can be used at many different dosages, depending what you’re after, although, again, small doses don’t really “prepare” you for anything, so taking a quarter-hit or similar might give you the energy and presence to have an awesome day, but you probably won’t “trip.” Pick both your drug and your dosage carefully, according to what you’re looking for.

Some people, once they have a couple trips under their belts, start to think they’ve “mastered” tripping, and from now on can handle anything. If this is you… you’re wrong; you can’t. Milder trips are generally predictable: once you’ve had a few, you know what to expect. Intense trips are not. Each is totally different from every other, and they’re almost always very surprising. You might think you know the territory of your mind, but there’s nothing like a plant or chemical teacher to pull the rug right out from under you and remind you that control is an illusion. The best thing you can do is to enter into it with all humility, a willingness to let go, and whatever you need to keep yourself centred and grounded already in place. Even very experienced psychonauts sometimes get taken completely by surprise.

The following are a few ways to intensify (potentiate) an experience, if that’s what you’re after. Use with caution! Your mind is not a toy that can be replaced.

– Introspection. Often, a psychedelic trip that seems mild when you’re moving around and talking will become drastically more intense if you just lie down, close your eyes and let come what comes. Sensory deprivation (blindfolds and similar) will help with this, as will intense music. Choose your music carefully, though: it should be progressive, not too “busy” and not too “harsh.” I personally enjoy post-rock, freak folk and dark ambient for this purpose, but a lot of the psychedelic psychotherapists swear by “classical” music. Indian ragas are also very effective.

– Setting an intention can also be a big part of amplifying the intensity of a trip. Focusing on a specific and personally meaningful thought or image can give the trip something to work with or build upon, rather than just waiting for something to happen. This typically works far better if you discuss it with your tripping partner(s) ahead of time, so you can feed off of one another’s energy rather than losing your intention in the fog of aimlessness and open-ended, ambivalent curiousity that often pervades group trips. If it’s your first time and you don’t know what sort of intention is appropriate, one thing you can do is to pick a simple symbolic concept (like water, fire or the moon) and surround yourself with things that remind you of it, the intention being to explore and better understand the concept in question. Note that different drugs are more suited toward different types of intentions; if you aren’t sure, ask someone more experienced, or leave a comment here!

– Meditation. If you know any specific meditation practices or techniques, expect them to be super-charged! Most spiritual traditions insist that it requires training and guidance to properly react to or use the subtle energies present in some higher states; meditating while high is a powerful tool and can act as a short cut, exposing you to something you aren’t ready for. Some consider this to be very dangerous.

Amitabha

– Cannabis. Sometimes we mix drugs because we want to feel them both, or to balance each other’s side effects (or just for the hell of it), but it’s also possible to take one drug to strengthen another. Cannabis often seems to “kick up the dust” and make an experience more powerful, even bringing back the peak when you’ve started to come down. It can also cause a manageable experience to become unmanageable, however, so don’t smoke any if you’re already plenty high. Cannabis interacts with many other drugs (from alcohol to acid), so if you’re already on something else, don’t expect it to feel how it usually does!

– Piracetam is a nootropic (smart drug) which also potentiates psychedelics. In addition to its remarkable cognition-boosting effects, it seems to make the “waves” that frequently come in psychedelic trips to each last longer, possibly even overlapping and compounding. At best this can make for a sharp, strong and consistent experience; at worst it can produce the uncomfortable feeling of having become “stuck” in a moment. Note that some people are hypersensitive to piracetam, and when you’re tripping is not a good time to find that out. Try it on its own first before combining it with anything.

– Nitrous Oxide. Inhaled by itself recreationally or as an anaesthetic, N2O produces euphoria, a feeling of “floating,” timelessness and even mild psychedelia of its own. When combined with a conventional psychedelic, it blasts you into hyperspace. The combination is, therefore, extremely popular among experienced psychonauts who have access to the gas. Because of its very short duration, it functions as a way to occasion a momentary “peak” experience, even repeatedly during a trip. That it’s also used as an acceleration system in high performance cars seems entirely appropriate. Note that nitrous intended for cars shouldn’t be used to get high, as it’s often intentionally contaminated with sulfur dioxide to discourage recreational use.

This is nitrous oxide: N2O, two nitrogens and one oxygen. NO2 is nitrogen dioxide, and is poisonous

– Yoga/Qi Gong/Energy Work, or even just stretching, can produce a LOT of psychic energy, as well as provide a focus for your trip. The same warning as for meditation applies; consult your guru/sifu/teacher first, if you have one, before combining these practices with drugs (exercise while high, if done safely, is almost always really excellent; just be careful not to overdo it and injure yourself!). I highly recommend that everyone do a bit of yoga or stretching before dosing, but doubly so if you intend to exercise during the trip: get the boring stuff out of the way so you’re warmed up for whatever you want to do later.

– Sex can be extremely intense without combining it with psychedelics, and their synergy may lead to both an amplification of visions and a sense of fusing with your lover. Combine this further with sexual meditation like creating a circuit of energy through your bodies, or basic sex magick techniques like repeatedly pausing just shy of orgasm, and the result may be indescribable. However, don’t expect sex! Two people might agree that sex with each other while high sounds awesome, but then one’s trip might be stronger than expected and getting in the mood might be impossible — potential awkwardness! It’s also critical that this be done with the right person. Casual sex without an emotional bond might be fun and all normally, but if you’re going to do it while high, trust and intimacy become crucial. Also note that the conventional wisdom in psychedelic psychotherapy is that seeking sex serves as a distraction from the introspective work and is therefore to be discouraged. Your mileage may vary.

– Fasting. When people fast, even without taking any drugs, they sometimes have visions, so it’s not surprising that doing both together can be very powerful. Fasting before a trip also usually leads to a quieter, more introspective, visionary experience, because you’ll have less energy and less inclination to run around and interact with people. This is therefore a bad idea if you’re hoping for a social or creative trip, but good if you want a cleansing experience. Along the lines of altered food intake, vomiting can seriously jack up the intensity of a  trip, typically producing a feeling of “letting go” which might catapult you into the experience and produce a mild delirium. This is not recommended, but good to keep in mind: if you and your friend both dose, and your friend pukes, your friend may get much higher than you.

Once again, it’s important to understand that mild trips do not prepare you for intense trips, and that the drug can always throw you a curveball and disprove any notion that you’re “immune” or unshakable. It’s also not a contest: people generally get the most out of experiences that they can actually make sense of and remember afterward, so getting too high can just be a waste, or a great way to ask for a very bad experience. Be careful, be sure to have a sense of why you’re doing this, and try to think seriously about how high you think it’s actually best to get for pursuing that reason.

“It’s easy to get high. It’s not easy to get un-high when your baby walks in the room.” – Katt Williams

2011
09/25
CATEGORY
Drug Education
9 comments

Recreational Use

Conventional wisdom is that psychedelics are not recreational drugs; for every one who trips at a rave, it seems three are lined up to condemn them for it. With Burning Man this week, it seems like an appropriate time to ask: is psychotherapy the only acceptable use for psychedelics, or can they be fun, too?

To begin with, we should ask: why do people speak badly of recreational use? They consider it disrespectful towards the substance, thinking it frivolous and less likely to produce serious benefit. They consider it dangerous, because the risk of having a very unpleasant trip is much higher in a chaotic setting where anything could happen. They see psychedelics as incredibly powerful and commanding of respect, something not to be wasted, taken lightly or used merely for entertainment. And, in that, they’re right.

When used intentionally by someone with a relatively stable psyche, psychedelics are unlikely to lead to any kind of lasting harm (persisting harm from psychedelics does happen, but it’s very rare). Even a “bad trip” will most likely pass quickly, and the user will often emerge from it with a better self-understanding . On the other hand, nervous energy is a capricious thing. Even a good trip may have moments of anxiety and uneasiness, radiance and fear, calm and dis-ease, alternating like tick and tock. As your perceptions are magnified, music you normally enjoy might grate, a level of filth or sketchiness you’d usually be fine with might perturb, and people and conversations you would at any other time delight in could seem alien, ego-driven, or, more often, just entirely too prosaic. Worse, the tendency of psychedelics to get at your emotional core and prevent you from running away from your flaws means that you might end up very emotional and needing to either be alone, or at least only with loved ones — not good on a crowded dance floor. And, even if bad trips are uncommon, they’re a lot more common when there’s fear and hostility in the air. If the only people who come to a certain kind of party are beautiful and loving, fantastic, but you have to ask yourself, is that really something you can be sure of in advance?

Another effect psychedelics often have on people is making them quiet, slow moving and pensive. It’s not like you can’t dance if you choose to (you might even find you’re better at it!), but you’re likely to end up at the sidelines of the party thinking deeply about something with a mildly distraught look on your face. Is that how you were hoping to spend your night?

Psychedelics are work. Sometimes they make us feel amazing, filling our souls with radiant energy and bathing us in the eternally new love shared between all conscious beings, but even in that they’re anything but relaxing. If you want to blow off steam, loosen up so that you can have a good time without being anxious and simply feel good, frankly, there are better drugs for that. Psychedelics are a commitment: they often last a long time, they’re mentally exhausting, and until the trip is well underway, even someone with lots of experience will probably have no idea what it’s going to be like. Do not underestimate them.

Does that mean wanting to have fun is bad?

“Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked.
I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek
For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone;
Seven are her sisters, and the least of them is more beautiful than pleasure.
Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?”

– Kahlil Gibran

Trips can last a long time. Even supposing that a party is so overstimulating that no introspection can take place, you’ll probably still be high when you leave, and you never know what might lead to a personal breakthrough. I’ve talked to people who were able to conquer self doubts and insecurities while high at a party, and more who were captivated and transformed by the wonderful, vibrant energy they bore witness to. Good things certainly can happen when you trip this way, there’s no denying it. For some partyers, psychedelics may even serve as a gateway to the unexpected: their hedonistic motivations lead them into spiritual epiphanies and away from unreflexive hedonism. I’ve personally interviewed several people whose psychedelic use, originally motivated by a desire to “get fucked up,” cured them of their addictions! Let them dig for their roots.

Further, anyone who looks down on fun and pleasure is missing the point: trips should to be fun. Meaningful, intense and at times challenging, yes, but what use are the thoughts we provoke if they do not help us to carry our burdens lightly and to open our eyes to the beauty all around us, so that our efforts to improve ourselves, each other and the world might be a song of praise and thankfulness for the joy we’ve found in our hearts? Make your trip fun! Nay, make your whole life fun! Be silly, and laugh at your overly serious conceptions of what spirituality “ought” to be. Give into freedom, dance, and love.

… just don’t make yourself vulnerable and open to psychic impressions somewhere you aren’t sure will help you feel safe, or where you’ll be pulled down into your own bad habits. If you’ve never done a certain drug before, you really ought to familiarise yourself with it before taking it in a chaotic setting, as it might catch you totally off guard. Even if you’ve already had a trip or two, the effects are unpredictable, so next time might be far more intense than last time! Take care. If nothing else, pick your party very carefully (hint: try to avoid drunk people), make sure you go with a friend who knows what you’re taking and will be there for you, and always, always, always have somewhere private and comfortable you can escape to, even if it’s just a nearby park, in case the party isn’t what you were hoping for.

Not all safe trips are fun trips, but all fun trips were at least safe enough.

2011
08/28
CATEGORY
Drug Education
1 comment

Yet Another White Man’s Burden (Normal: Redux)

Made some revisions to my recent major paper about magic, construction of sex and prostitution. Sharpened it up a little and addressed some  of the critiques people had made. Added a concluding paragraph because apparently people like those, and a couple appendices, because I like those — they let me laugh in the face of length restrictions; Appendix I is about privacy concerns and the erasure of identity. The other I’m including below.

Check it out! I think it’s pretty snazzy.

Appendix II: Yet Another White Man’s Burden

After the first time he had sex with a prostitute, Chester Brown felt that a burden he’d been carrying was lifted and has never returned. This offhanded remark, elaborated on briefly in his appendices, is very important, and is something in which I can easily see myself. The burden he describes is the pressure to initiate sexual interactions with women; it was lifted because, once he paid for it, there was no longer a need to seek it out in other ways. In this appendix, I will be looking not at the act of sex, but its pursuit. In focusing on my and Brown’s experience of difficulties surrounding sexual interactions, I do not mean to imply that ours are somehow worse than those of others. Our privilege as white heterosexual men in Toronto is not in dispute: I merely wish to explore one problem particular to our otherwise very advantaged sexual demographic.

Heterosexual men in this society are in a strange place when it comes to the pursuit of sex. On the one hand, we’re expected to do the “hitting on,” a vague, violent metaphor for “our role” in the mating dance. Many women who might be sexually attracted to us will still very much want us to “make the first move.” On the other hand, we’re vilified for doing so: we’re “pigs” who “only want sex,” and if we “hit on” the wrong person at the wrong time or in the wrong way we’re likely to be labeled as “creepy” and stigmatised, sometimes with disastrous consequences for our reputation and self image. Yet, rather than consensus on what the “right” time or the “right” way might be, we’re faced with many contradictory accounts. If I give the same description of a situation to two of my female friends, asking what they think is the appropriate thing to do, one might tell me to be sexually forward and the other insist that doing so would be invasive and disrespectful. So what are we supposed to do? This is further complicated by an awareness of feminist writing about sexual violence. Very few men wish to think of themselves as violent towards women, and yet most want to think of themselves as sexual towards women. So what to do with arguments from theorists like MacKinnon who suggest that sex is inherently violent?

Clearly men are not collectively paralysed by this. Most of us will proceed anyway in one way or another, evaluating social cues to the best of our ability to determine what is or isn’t appropriate in a given situation and finding ways of seeking out sexual interactions while minimizing the discomfort for everybody involved. Not all of us are always successful at this, nor do all of us even care that much; many men are profoundly inconsiderate, others downright abusive. But some of us both care, and are not always successful at navigating the complexities of social interactions. Some of us even have cognitive disadvantages here.

Aside from being white hetero male writers in Toronto, Chester Brown and I most likely also have something else in common: high functioning but undiagnosed autism-spectrum conditions. Those familiar with such things will likely spot it in Brown right away, in his emotional neutrality (one of his friends describes him as a robot) and atypical response to social cues, as well as in the particulars of his analytic style, but he’s old enough that even had he met all the diagnostic criteria of Asperger’s Syndrome as a child, he would not have been tested or diagnosed. Whether or not he meets the full diagnostic criteria, it’s very likely that he shares some of the key features, and thus is at a particular disadvantage in evaluating the appropriateness of any given social action, or in initiating social interactions and maintaining them without violating conversational expectations more generally. To maintain his self-image as a “good guy,” he then errs on the side of inaction much of the time, which typically precludes the possibility of sexual encounters.

As for my own experience of this, the simplest way to sum up my social philosophy is that I live by the anthropologist’s motto: “homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto:” “I am human, nothing human is alien to me.” No matter how you feel, it’s okay to feel that way – it’s just one way to feel, and we would all do well to strive toward an understanding of as many ways of feeling as possible. Social reality is unfathomably complex, and therefore we ought to be candid about our thoughts and desires rather than taking for granted that simplistic, inherited modes of interaction will be sufficient to inform our behaviours: through honesty we’ll discover compatibilities where they exist, and learn to avoid those interactions that are causing suffering. To me, this formulation makes perfect sense… but social interaction doesn’t generally work out this way. Even if I think I’m being totally candid, somebody may think that I’m implying a whole lot more than I meant to, or through my candour I may speak explicitly about that which they would have preferred to remain coy. Add to this a natural difficulty that comes with autism spectrum disorders to accurately assess whether or not you’re making somebody uncomfortable, and moreover an even larger difficulty guessing exactly why they are uncomfortable if such cues are noticed, and pursuing sexual interactions quickly becomes seriously problematic. Thus, over time, I’ve become more and more hesitant to express myself sexually towards people. Although the number of women with whom I’ve had positive sexual interactions exceeds the number with whom I’ve gotten into a truly awkward situation, the few bad situations have been sufficiently traumatic as to make me afraid of repeating them, and therefore, like Brown, I’ve learned to err on the side of caution. This may be for the best, but when combined with the rest of the above, it leaves me with a strong desire for sex, social expectations that I’ll be the one to seek it out, and the incapacity to actually do so.

Brown evidently used to suffer from the same problem. He mentions various times when women called him “cute” or otherwise reacted positively to him on the street, which perversely resulted in insecurity. Feeling that he may have missed rare opportunities for sex, while at the same time fearing causing discomfort by wrongly assuming that they were okay with being approached sexually, he would endlessly obsess over his inaction: this was his “burden.” This is a regular occurrence for me, and I still haven’t figured out what to do about it. I absolutely do not feel comfortable hitting on somebody simply because they were being friendly toward me… it could mean too many things, and I don’t want to immediately sexualise every encounter. However, I do want to have sex, and I also know that many women do find me attractive, so presumably some of those who are friendly towards me would like me to hit on them. But what ought “hitting on” even consist of, if I’m to transcend the violent model of sex? I have no solution to this right now other than to wait for the “right” situation in which things will seem natural and it will be clear that everybody’s comfort levels are being met. Because I’m young and reasonably attractive, chances are good this will work out for me, but what if I was older and uglier? My refusal to play the game isn’t really much of a solution except for a desirable few, and I don’t know how we as a society can adequately deal with this. Chester Brown claims to have found the solution: by paying for sex, we make the arrangement explicit, and the difficulties of pursuing interactions and assessing appropriateness diminishes remarkably.

I must say, there’s something compelling about his solution. I have never paid for sex, but I’m probably a lot more likely to now that I’ve read his book, and I know I’m not alone in that: a male friend of mine just yesterday told me that reading it made him think of calling an escort. This is what I was describing as sorcery in my essay: through what he wrote, Brown has influenced patterns of social behaviour in non-trivial ways, and brought us closer to the society he envisions. Like anyone else, of course, I have friends who insist that prostitution is always exploitative, but I can’t accept this. If I were to pay for sex right now, the most likely person I’d pay would be a female friend who occasionally escorts and who, due to the nature of our relationship, is likely to be sexual with me at some point in the future even if I don’t pay her. However, she’s very busy, and has other partners, so if I want to sleep with her tonight, not “likely… at some point in the future,” calling her and offering money I know she could use would certainly speed up the process. If I need the sexual release badly enough, why not?

That does not, however, mean that I’m ultimately convinced by Brown’s approach. The world he describes in which paying for sex is seen as normal and common seems completely unrealistic to me… it doesn’t seem to acknowledge the complexity of either social or economic life, particularly in the context of global systems of domination and discrimination, and it exaggerates the agency and independence of the various social actors. That’s not to say it won’t be an excellent solution for some people… it may well be. Though I don’t doubt it was an excellent solution for Brown, it will not be so for everybody. I have no moral qualms about paying for sex, but that doesn’t mean I actually can afford to start doing so, for one thing, and even though I know my friend is not opposed to either sex with me or sex for money, that doesn’t mean that entering into a financial arrangement wouldn’t complicate, even compromise, certain aspects of our friendship. What if I pay once, and then invite her over another time just to eat dinner and hang out? Will she assume I’m going to be paying her, or that I’m after sex? Employer/employee relations can easily become problematically unbalanced. Since we’re both intelligent adults, no doubt we could mitigate such miscommunications by talking it over, but the bottom line is that sex and affection create highly charged spaces which not everybody is equally capable of navigating effectively. Brown’s solution makes that space easier to navigate for one group who otherwise are at a marginal disadvantage: men who lack social skills but have money. Hopefully, as scholarship in gender studies continues to produce material about masculinity, and we do more to collectively negotiate the meaning and value of romantic, intimate and sexual relations, more alternatives for sexual fulfilment will emerge – not just for the privileged, but for everybody.

2011
08/21
CATEGORY
Formal Essays and Research
Sex/Gender/Sexuality
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