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Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG

nature.com

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Re: Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG

#101

Post by cwkoss »

mathgorges wrote: post #85
ThJ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, um, that’s interesting. I have found I can make myself dream while awake in a way... I use relaxation techniques on myself all day and it’s actually a bit frightening what you can make your own brain do... What happened to me is I became more openminded, more fluent in my writing, more daring in my choices, and actually also more socially aware... I can only compare it to eating the forbidden fruit of the garden…

Hey friend. I just wanted to say that I grew up with a parent that was addicted to ADHD meds and he used to say eerily similar sounding things when he was in the thick of it. If your honestly doing better I’m happy for you. But if you’re doing _anything_ without the supervision of a medical professional with experience with amphetamines and ADHD, please please please, for the good of yourself and those around you see…

Tangentially if anyone is dealing with a stimulant substance use disorder, the new research on N-acetyl cysteine around stimulant abuse cessation is looking very promising. Something to discuss with your doctor - but it's available over the counter.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5993450/

Re: Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG

#102

Post by ThJ »

davebryand wrote: post #74
ThJ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, um, that’s interesting. I have found I can make myself dream while awake in a way... I use relaxation techniques on myself all day and it’s actually a bit frightening what you can make your own brain do... What happened to me is I became more openminded, more fluent in my writing, more daring in my choices, and actually also more socially aware... I can only compare it to eating the forbidden fruit of the garden…

Sounds like you are moving through spiritual awakening. Congrats!

I mean, it looks that way, but who walks around telling that to people? I recognise it as that. I took some interest in Zen Buddhism, years before this happened, and would sometimes experiment with meditation and controlling my breathing.

“In the oldest texts of Buddhism, dhyāna (Sanskrit) or jhāna (Pali) is the training of the mind, commonly translated as meditation, to withdraw the mind from the automatic responses to sense-impressions, and leading to a "state of perfect equanimity and awareness.”

I don’t know if it’s perfect exactly but the whole training the mind to reduce automatic responses to sense impressions sounds exactly right to me.

I still have some difficulty controlling it but it gets better every day. It seems that the more I dare myself and confront my fears, the better I get at self regulating my emotions.

And damn do I wish there was science to this, because I was very committed to a scientific viewpoint before this happened, which is rather inconvenient at the moment, because my only source of information about what I’m currently experiencing is religion.

Re: Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG

#103

Post by cwkoss »

ThJ wrote: post #96
nyolfen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my thought as well, particularly the bit about following amphetamine use and the death of their mother, assuming it wasn't figurative or an arbitrary example. as someone who has experienced mania it reminded me strongly of the way i've felt in the midst of it -- the sense of mastery, the paranoia, and feeling like i had some kind of conceptual or philosophical breakthrough.

Oh, I read psychology. Actually, it was mania at one point, but, uh, I... stopped it? And then interesting things began happening. My ability to improvise on the piano improved. My appreciation of classical music grew. The paranoia was replaced by the understanding that people usually aren’t out to get me. It wasn’t so much mania as it was my social skills turning on for the first time and it was a bit intense. I’m t…

Amphetamine can cause a somewhat paradoxical sensitization at lower doses. I'm not sure if it's ever been clinically demonstrated in humans, but I suspect that chronic 'microdosing' of amphetamine could lead to a manic-like state even when sober.

If you're planning on taking doses lower than ~5mg regularly, I'd recommend doing some research on amphetamine sensitization. But, I'm just a guy who likes reading pharma studies in my spare time and definitely not an expert.

Re: Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG

#104

Post by vokep »

rzzzt wrote: post #92
mapcars wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not exactly like this, this and other "tricks" are described in great details in Stephen LaBerge's books on Lucid Dreaming

What part did I miss out on for this particular technique?

You're likely thinking of dream induced lucid dreaming, in which you've trained yourself to run routine reality tests such as looking at text carefully, and if the test fails, you are triggered into greater lucidity from within the dream.

OP was talking about falling asleep in such a way that you never lose waking awareness, you just watch as your sense of the world as it was is replaced by a dream world, and then you can explore the dream world as you like. Also known as Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming.

Re: Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG

#105

Post by yowlingcat »

ThJ wrote: post #102
davebryand wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you are moving through spiritual awakening. Congrats!

I mean, it looks that way, but who walks around telling that to people? I recognise it as that. I took some interest in Zen Buddhism, years before this happened, and would sometimes experiment with meditation and controlling my breathing. “In the oldest texts of Buddhism, dhyāna (Sanskrit) or jhāna (Pali) is the training of the mind, commonly translated as meditation, to withdraw the mind from the automatic responses…

Out of curiosity, how old are you, if you don't mind me asking? I recall going through some reasonably similar stuff when I was 19. Curiously enough, in my case, I found biofeedback to begin to start pulling me into some similar terrain.

Now, ten years later, I feel much further away from it than I have before. However, your experience isn't the first I've read where breathwork allows you to control mental "elevation" (for lack of a better phrase) at will -- it makes sense, given the way that breathing integrates into the mind/body connection.

Re: Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG

#106

Post by sujNansnam »

cwkoss wrote: post #103
ThJ wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I read psychology. Actually, it was mania at one point, but, uh, I... stopped it? And then interesting things began happening. My ability to improvise on the piano improved. My appreciation of classical music grew. The paranoia was replaced by the understanding that people usually aren’t out to get me. It wasn’t so much mania as it was my social skills turning on for the first time and it was a bit intense. I’m t…

Amphetamine can cause a somewhat paradoxical sensitization at lower doses. I'm not sure if it's ever been clinically demonstrated in humans, but I suspect that chronic 'microdosing' of amphetamine could lead to a manic-like state even when sober. If you're planning on taking doses lower than ~5mg regularly, I'd recommend doing some research on amphetamine sensitization. But, I'm just a guy who likes reading pharma st…

Do you have any pointers to those studies? I’ve been taking a lower dose of methylphenidate (10 mg of 8-hour extended release) to try to avoid risks of tolerance and addiction, in addition to skipping it entirely for tolerance breaks. I figured lower was better from a risk standpoint so I’m interested if that’s not that case.

Re: Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG

#107

Post by companyhen »

zwieback wrote: post #37
rollerboi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that it's interesting nonetheless. I've been "joking" with my friends that I want to take a trip to Costa Rica to do Ayahuasca with them. The "story" of how Ayahuasca came to be is quite fascinating: Ayahuasca, the drink, is actually comprised of two plant-based ingredients. One of the ingredients supplies the "DMT" portion, but the effects would last a very short time (something like 20 seconds to a couple mi…

I heard there's a lot of barfing involved - made it seem kind of unappealing.

Comes out the other end too.

Re: Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG

#108

Post by Cybernetic »

vokep wrote: post #34
shawnz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to popular opinion I haven't found DMT to be that much different than any other psychedelic drug when comparing equivalent doses. Sure it's true that while high on the drug it creates experiences that feel real, but that's true of dreaming too, isn't it? It's not obvious that it wasn't real until it's over. And similarly I have had the same feeling from high doses of "plain old" psychedelics.

The difference is rarely do people wake from a dream and feel they ought to change their life in major ways as a result. Curious what "high" doses of "plain old psychedelics" might be? I've never gone further than 200ug LSD.

I've had an experience and ego-death on 500ug. I've done DMT once. That LSD experience produced hallucinations, including 'data' in my field-of-view like I was using an AR app. I was looking into a mirror as it was happening - the 'resolution' of the experience was so high-fidelity it seems impossible to have occurred. I wrote a very detailed report after and even have a video of me describing what I'm seeing only moments after I can back to my 'self' post ego-death. It was every bit as fascinating as DMT. That experience was the most significant of my life.

Re: Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG

#109

Post by chachachoney »

_arvin wrote: post #49
FailMore wrote: post #10

> Decreased alpha power is a particularly consistent finding in neuroimaging research with psychedelics7,8,11. Alpha is the most prominent rhythm of the resting-brain, particularly in humans, and particularly in adulthood30. Alpha has been linked with high-level psychological functioning31,32, top-down predictive processing18,33 and related feedback connectivity34 - all of which have been found to be disrupted under…

One of the worst side effects of cannabis :[ I miss dreaming and REM sleep. feelsbadman

Take one day/night off smoking each week, take 1-3 MG of Melatonin an hour before going to sleep that night.

Enjoy...

Re: Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG

#110

Post by blaze33 »

peterwwillis wrote: post #91
mettamage wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you can remember the old you, I think in most cases it's fair to say that it's the new you that has enough knowledge of the old you. It's just like normal learning really, if you learn something, you become a new you that has knowledge of the old you and the new you might then say "what I learned right now was better." I know, I'm not the best at philosophy.

If a drug significantly alters your brain to the point that you no longer think the way you did before, how do you know you changed for the better? Maybe the old you, the you that existed before you took the drug, would say this is not better. Maybe the new you only thinks you are now changed for the better. Maybe you didn't change at all! After all, do you even have a way to measure what has changed, and how much be…

I won't disagree with you but you have to consider the context of the original comment: use of psychedelics. Their effects, though I'm happy to see more and more research being done, are already widely discussed so when he said "it changed me for the better" we can quite surely rely on the numerous reports of how psychedelics changed peoples lives. Not so sure about new far-right extremists feeling better in their echo bubble... I more often hear about people being more at peace with their lives, overcoming stress or anxiety issues, learning to go with flow after years of fighting it, etc.
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