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The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

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Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#151

Post by lostlogin »

scrame wrote: post #148
metaphorm wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

leave to Hunter S. Thompson of all people to throw a little __sobriety__ into the conversation. Somebody had to say it and he said it well.

Well, not "of all people". Hunter S. Thompson has that reputation from younger people as "crazy guy who did lots of drugs". That was part of it, but his reputation came from his writing and journalism. He created a new, influential style of gonzo journalism[1] where he was openly opinionated and wrote with emotional attachment, and certainly some exaggeration. That he's remembered as "crazy guy on drugs" instead of "…

Don't forget Rum Diary.

Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#152

Post by brusch64 »

stinkytaco wrote: post #72
fragola wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on the bullshit. I think this might have something to do with me growing up in a certain hippy town on the California coast, but I couldn't get through this article without a lot of eye-rolling. OK, let's just put the whole drug thing aside and call it a hobby. You can have a hobby without having a pseudospiritual and vaguely appropriative justification for it. Bodybuilders have a term that they use to describ…

Offtopic, but unfortunately broscience has extended beyond pharmaceuticals to training practice. This kind of thinking dominates the crossfit world with terms like "muscle confusion" and "failure". It's sad because I got into crossfit ten years ago because it was fun, something different every day kept me coming back. I didn't want to be a Navy SEAL, just to keep active, but the almost religious adherence to the trai…

How about Kettlebell training ?

It can be done easily in your home (if you have some space) and you can do great full body workouts. I was pretty much out of shape when I've started it two years ago and now I feel great.

The people over at the Kettlebell subreddit are quite helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/kettlebell

The FAQs show some good starting points https://www.reddit.com/r/kettlebell/wiki/index

Maybe this is something for you. Altough some people around Pavel (and Strongfirst) can come off a little bit cult-ish, but I don't think that it is too bad.

Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#153

Post by posterboy »

notliketherest wrote: post #41
empath75 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug experiences are still experiences and like any experience, you can learn something from them or waste them. At the absolute least, a psychedelic experience should teach you a lesson about the reliability of the senses and about how subjective our experience of reality can be, which is a valuable lesson to learn, IMO, and no matter how much you understand it intellectually, directly experiencing it is another mat…

You make a good point - the psychedelic experience can lead to a greater sense of empathy in that you perceive the world not through the eyes of your ego but as "all one" (over simplification). An increase in empathy is a good thing but equating these drugs to a magic pill for self actualization is wrong.

> world not through the eyes of your ego

in most cases, you don't see much of the world past you own eyes anymore, but some "fantasy", which is why it is aptly called an hallucinogen. It messes with your head and you have a hard time making sense of the world so you revert to some basic notions of knowledge, that appear like an epiphany because they are that basic. I don't think these are new found insights and good luck if these facilities of your brain are damaged in the process. It is called acid for a reason.

Edit: A neat analogy would be fuzzing a production system. Not only that, it is randomly deleting files and flipping bits of memory to see how robust the system is. If your system is error free, the fuzzing is not a problem, but every system has bugs.

Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#154

Post by vbhavsar »

Fraterkes wrote: post #146
empath75 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there is a lot of bullshit around psychedelics, and it's totally possible to take them and just have fun, but if you're interested in the way the mind works and how we piece together reality from our perceptions, there is a lot to work with there. I think where people go wrong is in thinking that drug experiences show you some truth that's hidden from you in normal life. It really just shows you how ill equippe…

I think the idea of seeing some hidden truth, comes simply from seeing the world from some other perspective. I guess the problem people have with that is that people who take drugs talk like their epiphanies are only obtainable by doing drugs (and thus unique and rare). When instead drugs are more tools to find out things you personally didn't know.

Very well said.

Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#155

Post by FrozenVoid »

zizzles wrote: post #54

In my eyes the VERY FACT that psychedelics like N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) even exist in the FIRST place (and take you on the experiences that they take you) can NOT be some sort of coincidence. I am not suggesting that they are some special all-knowing tool, but the sheer potency of DMT and the other-worldly-dimension-changing-states-of-mind that it yields when consumed can not be shrugged off as just another recr…

Maybe you should try meditation? It can do "other-worldly-dimension-changing-states-of-mind" without the colorful bells and whistles of drug trips.

Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#156

Post by azernik »

monktastic1 wrote: post #21
azernik wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus fantastically uncomfortable physical side effects, and on the positive side an experienced spotter to help you along.

Depends. If the MAOIs are extracted from the caapi, leaving out the other alkaloids, even the uncomfortable physical side effects can be avoided.

A lot of the physical side effects are inherent to MAOIs - they have crazy interactions with all kinds of stuff present in most people's bodies. (Hence the psychedelic interactions with DMT that produce the "ayahuasca" effects, and hence the long and hard-to-follow list of things to avoid for 1 or more weeks pre-trip.)

There's a reason why MAO inhibitors are so rarely used in psychiatry. High efficacy, but the side effects are nasty to deal with.

Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#157

Post by nommm-nommm »

fragola wrote: post #75
stinkytaco wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offtopic, but unfortunately broscience has extended beyond pharmaceuticals to training practice. This kind of thinking dominates the crossfit world with terms like "muscle confusion" and "failure". It's sad because I got into crossfit ten years ago because it was fun, something different every day kept me coming back. I didn't want to be a Navy SEAL, just to keep active, but the almost religious adherence to the trai…

I am similarly put off by yoga, which as practiced currently is not an "ancient tradition" but a bizarre relic of 19th century Indian nationalism[0] Some people find the woo motivating, but I find it to be a distraction. I want my exercise regimen woo-free, thank you very much. [0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/2989a78a-ee94-...

In practice, Yoga is pretty woo free for the most part. I was also concerned to try it because of the woo but my friends all said I'd like it.

I took some classes and not a single instructor treated the class as anything but an exercise class with some meditation at the end. I even took an "alternative" yoga class with weights.

Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#158

Post by Nursie »

chillwaves wrote: post #142
Nursie wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah but that's working around the 'plant spirit' and all that other stuff, you won't have an 'authentic' or 'real' experience and the hipsterswill laugh at you....

What's the point of the tone of your comment? Some people would find the processed drug to lack the "authentic" experience of what is found in nature. Doubt anyone really cares. Sounds more like a caricature to me.

I'm sneering at people who make themselves sick unnecessarily by drinking random plant-juice with a side-order of woo rather than a proper preparation that would give the same effects without the discomfort or other risks, all in the name of 'authenticity'.

Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#159

Post by gerbilly »

Why is this community so uncomfortable around 'woo'?

Some of my ideas:

Woo multiplies entities beyond necessity.

Woo uses imagery (goddesses, grandmotherss, spirits, 'energy') that we find aesthetically displeasing?

Woo has an anything goes feel to it (whatever is true for you...)

But perhaps we should look at our own woo before criticizing others too much for theirs, after all the world of business is full of it's own sort of woo (synergize our two platforms to leverage our cloud based infrastructure going forward...)

To me when someone speaks woo, it's a sign that the person may be on to something that can't yet be expressed.

This can happen to techies, for example during that interval when you feel that you have solved a problem you have been working on, but can't quite express it clearly yet.

But woo is so open ended, that this is only true for the best cases. Often it's just nonsense, but so are scientific abstracts and press releases sometimes.

Re: The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale

#160

Post by metaphorm »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #136
dwaltrip wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps more importantly, surveyed the unfortunately scant literature to understand how they work as well as any potential for harm.

Regardless, you MIGHT get some non-mainstream academic agreement that there is the potential for therapeutic benefits; but not "Enlightenment" or anything spiritual. Although, it seems to me that the burden of providing such literature is on you, not OP (no, erowid.com doesn't count).

erowid is a fine source for experiential reports and technical information on the botany and/or pharmacology of the substances involved.

let me ask you a question: is nothing true unless a credentialed academic writes a peer reviewed journal published paper about it?

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