Psychonautics: Spiritual, Personal, Substances, Ptsd

[Kintsugi]

Hello forum.

I am wondering if (and suspecting that) there are others on the forum who identify, however loosely or closely, as psychonauts or practice psychonautics--particularly via substance usage. However, psychonautics using more organic methods, including meditation; fasting; quests; and even dissociation and dreams and nightmares, is entirely encouraged and very welcome. (Am I pleased I used the semicolon's list function? Yes. Yes I am.)

I will be using some nicknames, probably, so as not to attract unwanted Internet search attention, in discussing substances. If you don't know what I or another forum member is talking about, you probably don't have that substance experience.

I am placing this in sufferer discussion because I am mostly interested in this practice as it relates to your relationship with suffering from PTSD.

I was surprised when my college psychiatrist wanted to know about my drug usage and was appalled that I trip. He thought it was very dangerous for someone with PTSD to trip. I entirely disagreed. After tripping for the first time, I informed him, for the first time in my life I felt consciously truly grateful and happy to be alive. He was really shocked. And I was shocked that he was shocked.

This is NOT a thread to discuss partying with substances. I take these practices very seriously as spiritual and personal vehicles for exploration, and I find it no more a party than meditation, chanting, prayer, etc.

Psychonautic substances, for me personally, is a unique and very serious method for exploring one's psyche, beliefs, values, and allowing oneself to be free of one's ego.

I invite everyone to chip in their two cents and ask questions, regardless of whether or not you have any experience with this practice.

I also encourage those who have experience with or without substances to share how this practice may or may not relate to their identity or experience as regards PTSD.

And I leave you to tell what you will. What have you found in the rabbit hole?

On my back and tumbling
Down that hole and back again
Rising up
And wiping the webs and the dew from my
Withered eye
-Tool
"Third Eye"

 

[rainydaze]

I have a minor in anthropology and it sounds to me like you are talking about trance states.

I don't use drugs; I drink occasionally and take a low dose benzodiazapene as needed. I've tried a few less vetted substances as well, such as Phenibut, Picalmilon, and Piracetam (all legal but not regulated) for symptoms. I like herbal substances too. But these things don't induce trance states.

However, I have a crazy sleep disorder (the doctors believe it is narcolepsy) that allows me to induce trance states via sleep deprivation. This is in the style of the old school asthetics during the time of the Buddha. I have been to some very trippy places this way!

From an anthropological perspective, my experiences, however real they seem, are nothing more than a result of the induced state of altered consciousness. In this state I was visited by an alien friend named Creature Comfort, who took me to a swirling mass called the Collective Consciousness. He told me that I could find all the answers I needed here.

My altered state of consciousness occurs when I am fully paralyzed but aware and able to speak (albeit difficultly as my mouth muslces are paralyzed and it is difficult to get them to move). I have recordings of me talking during these expereinces. They are as real as the day is long and are helpful to me. But please know I am fully aware that I was not truly visited by an alien and taken to a place called the Collective Conscious.

I think Creature Comfort was the higher part of me that I was able to access when I entered a state where my subconscious was able to float to the surface. I see him as a metaphor for a deeper knowledge inside of me that I don't recognize on a day to day basis. When I am seriously struggling, I will intentionally sleep deprive so I can enter this state.

If this sounds crazy or unbelievable to anyone, please check out Derren Brown. Hulu did a short series on his abilities. What I've explained above will sound much more plausable after watching what he can do (I think).

So in short, I think that psychotropics are useful, but because they are illegal (location dependent), I believe other induction techniques are more appropriate.

 

[franciemarnie]

I read a book by a shaman trained over the course of many years by an old shaman in Peru. This guy had amazing revelatory, although sometimes terrifying, experiences on the drug the old shaman gave him. He taught him how to find the drug - the name of which I can't recall - so he would be taking the right stuff.

I'm all for revelatory experiences but I wouldn't trust the drugs I'd get here. I'm from the 60's generation and there were a lot of people that went on "bad trips man". It's too unpredictable for me. One guy I knew in college went nuts. It pushed him over the edge.

If I could be certain I would have a positive experience and it could change my life in a positive way, I'd try it - if I weren't married. But for me - it's too risky.

 

[Kintsugi]

@rainydaze
Sometimes trance states can be used in the pursuit of psychonautics. Your experience definitely sounds like one of psychological or spiritual exploration, depending on how you choose to look at it. Jung might say you were getting in touch with your animus. However, trance states are only one method in the psychonaut handbook.

I LOVE Derren. His work in hypnosis is certainly an example of the limits of the induced trance state. I don't necessarily know that he would classify what he does as psychonautics, since he is a ringleader when putting someone under. He may however say that some Victorian mediums were in a sense psychonauts without realizing it if they were not fully aware of their hand in the illusion of channeling the dead.

@franciemarnie , the shaman was probably seeking aioaska or dymethyltriptomine, the most active ingredient in aioaska (the other herbs used are catalysts, extenders, and substances that prevent you from vomiting).

Dimetri certainly took Lucy's place as my favorite substance. It's incredibly powerful stuff and plays fewer games (none, actually, in my experience) as compared to his sister. My SO was lucky enough to have a sip of aioaska while in the amazon. I so envy his experience of total oneness and peace.

When I hit Dimitri, I did not know what I was getting into one lick, which is good, because otherwise I may have been way too scared. Since then, when I've tried, I have been far too afraid and inhibited and tend to suffer heart palpitations. Yet even sniffing the pipe now reserved for that gives me an overwhelming sense of peace and divinity.

I did not know what would happen. I was expecting tracers, a little movement. I was hitting what was left over from what I now know was double the effective dose, taken by my SO, who--I think they call it?--broke through the veil. I did not. But I realized a moment after I had held in the smoke for maybe 10 seconds that I had just done something that there was no taking back. Thank god I was advised to sit somewhere where I could collapse into a laying down position. I watched the pipe and my hands grow very small, far away, I was leaving my body and traveling upwards. I had the thought, "Oh shit. What have I done?" Before being forced by the upward thrust and overwhelming blossoming feeling in my mind to close my eyes (and, one might argue, open a third). I felt as if a key had turned in the depths of my psyche, unlocking something (very viscerally within my skull), before I had left my body behind and was involuntary closed-eyed on my back in my bed.

Awareness of this was little, as my body or any physical form of existence at all immediately escaped my comprehension. Many who were in the only federal study of dymethyltriptomine (before they had to change their ethics and consent policies) thought that they had died. I can see why. My mind was very much intact, totally bewildered, hesitant, and very aware that I used to have a body and now apparently did not and couldn't envision such a thing. There was a white light, and I had time to notice that although total nothingness surrounded me--no spatial markers at all, no body, no matter--that I was moving toward the light, not the other way around. I was scared. Then I reasoned with myself. There is no getting off this ride until it is done. Do you want to see or not? Will you resist or embrace? I want to see, I decided. And I was catapulted into the light. And revelation began.

I will describe this further, probably (about the other side) but I want to hear from others!

 

[franciemarnie]

I personally think you do go in a different dimension, a real one, that we can't ordinarily access without some inducement. I don't know why people think the physical world is all there is. Anyway, I love hearing the stories of going thru the veil. I always wanted that mystic's vision of everything being connected, etc.

I visited with a shaman and had a great experience. No drugs but it was cool. I found another one I'm checking into.

When I had sleep deprivation, I did not have cool experiences except the first night. Rainbow globes floating. Then it was downhill all the way with turantulas and quickly moving dark figures and a giant eye on my ceiling. Shiver.

 

[Philippa]

I haven't taken any substances for the purpose of exploring my mind in a while now. I was into all that in my late teens early twenties, and felt I'd gone as far with it as I wanted to, or needed to, at the time. I've left it open to taking them up again anytime in the future if I want to, but so far, apart from a little dabbling in ketamine, and the odd mushroom experience with friends, I really don't go there much these days.

I got into meditation, healthy living and yoga instead, after realizing that whilst I have no problem with exploring these regions with substances, and they are all helpful and useful in gaining insight, that at the end of the day these things can be discovered using natural methods, and they just aren't necessary. If I do start taking them again, it will only be strictly in a ritual context for the purpose of gaining new insights into my spiritual development.

I would like to try ayauasca to help with my recovery and realigning things, as it is purported to do, but at the moment, I am just enjoying a little cannabis fun when it's time to bleed, and that helps with my PMS. :D

I do really want to try the sensory deprivation tank though. That really excites me. I'm making a party of it, and inviting friends out for a deprivation party, when I find a place that can fit a few people at a time.

 

[Kintsugi]

@Philippa Yes! Organic methods are great. I want to try the white noise ping-pong ball thing everyone talks about. But I highly doubt it's anything like tripping. I find that I can get into a weird dissociative state sometimes when I want to where I can recreate a substance-like headspace, but obviously it is much more mild and mental. It's very unlike dissociating, but I think having a dissociative disorder helps, actually, if that makes sense. I have heard it said consistently that people come to a place where they've had their fill, in a sense, of psychedelic substances. I think I'm close. I don't know.

@zaniara , lots of people, including scientists, have wondered if dymethyltriptomine actually brings you to an alien planet or another dimension, since there are so many consistent accounts concerning alien-like creatures or "DMT elves." They tried studies where they wanted subjects to question the creatures about complex mathematical calculations that the subject wouldn't know, but I don't think the subject was ever able to remember the questions. I am closer to the belief that we often see the same archetypes represented by our psyche. I am very romantic about another theory which believes that it is possible for plants to have some sort of strange collective memory, and DMT is a method for communicating messages to beings who discover it. This theory relies on the idea that DMT is organically occurring (that it is released when you dream and when you die) in humans. All I can say is that it certainly made me unafraid of death. Unafraid of lots of things.

I am not sure I could possibly describe what I saw on the other side. I can say it was bigger than anything I could possibly imagine under normal, lucid circumstances. It felt like looking at Saturn while floating in space. That's how huge. I think that's about all I could dare describe in illustration.

But I can better describe the take away. I was watching this vision I was experiencing and just started laughing. A laughter of complete and utter mirth. It was the most purely happy laugh I can ever recall. I wanted to cry it was so beautiful. And I was laughing because I was experiencing a feeling of total, complete, encompassing, very very literal *unconditional love.* It was like the very fabric of the Universe was laughing with me, in all my human worry and pain, showing me that everything--everything that ever was and is--is really, really okay. I felt like I was experiencing infinity and just laughing with such giddiness at the hugeness of it all, the small was of myself, of segmented time. I felt like I was entirely, blissfully removed from time's linear march; I was seeing everything all at once, and it was so beautiful, and I loved it, and it loves me. I mean really LOVES me, and everyone, and everything. It was very Buddhist, I guess. It also reminded me of Allah. Allah is a collective and a singular. It is everything and also above everything. It was like seeing that and feeling it. Just so much mirth and love.

 

[Hashi]

You said questions were OK, although I'm not sure that questioning this approach is what you meant. I'm afraid I do question a lot of what you've said, very much.

To clarify, I have a metaphysical approach to healing. It's because of my experiences that I'm reacting quite strongly against a lot of things in this thread.

If you're willing to take questioning questions, my initial questions would be:

However, psychonautics using more organic methods, including... even dissociation and... nightmares, is entirely encouraged and very welcome.

Would this be for psychonauts with PTSD? The dissociation and nightmare thing, I mean. Encouraged and welcome for people with PTSD? No reservations there? For anyone?

and:

You mentioned its effect with regard to suffering with PTSD. I'm not sure what you mean by that. Acceptance of PTSD symptoms continuing? Temporary transcendence? More lasting transcendence? Healing? (if so, healing what - what does that look like?) What are the outcomes of all this?

and:

Any views on how this might inter-relate with more practical issues? (Coping, grounding, functioning and dealing with practical situations.)

I have a lot of experience without substances, a small amount of experience with. Those experiences lead me to ask, rather than tell. This topic causes me a lot of concern. If not from a bad trip perspective - because, granted, those don't happen to everyone - it's more from the perspective of whether this is actually healing from PTSD/mental health challenges or to do with finding some way of accepting them... or even temporarily avoiding them.

For me, metaphysics (spiritual approach, I suppose some people would call it) is about healing 100% and not just about psychic flights. Perhaps your meaning is much deeper and I'm not giving it justice. I'm not at all sure what you're meaning is.

 

[Zef]

In my college days, I took trips 3 or 4 times a year. It really wasn't about entertainment, I started referring to Lucy as Roto Rooter of the Brain. . .it cleaned all the bullshit out. I doubt I could have made it through college without those psychedelic brain enemas. ;) There were no other avenues available for me to reduce symptoms. Sometimes relief would last for a couple months.

I am following the MDMA PTSD research pretty closely. From my previous experiences, I understand how the drug would absolutely help process trauma effectively and with long-term results. Just because a substance has received some bad press and governments try to scare you, doesn't mean a substance should be withheld from those who could benefit medically from it. I'm a little bitter in that I'm probably needlessly suffering today because the substance is currently illegal. . .and I'll probably die before it ever qualifies as a treatment.

 

[Kintsugi]

@Hashi Glad you came here. I kinda wondered if you'd have anything to say.

I'm not really talking about healing, rather experiences members may have had wherein they were trying to explore the human condition, their psyche, their ephemeral relationship to/with the Universe... I would say, er, hopefully not in an offensive way, that this discussion could parallel a discussion about God or faith and how that may or may not relate to the condition of PTSD for members. I was really surprised that my psychiatrist thought it was odd that I took psychedelic substances, for instance, because of my condition. Frankly I think experiences that separate me from my ego are, for me personally, healthy escapes.

I don't think that illicit substances are a way to healing. I do think that forms of meditation can be helpful, but I'm not a big practitioner myself. Really this thread was to see if others on the forum practiced any forms of what could be called psychonautics. Like, to me these aren't "recreational drugs." I think of them as entheogens, because I take them explicitly to experience a headspace for internal dialogue with myself as well as to attain some sense of communion, I suppose, with a "higher" headspace and relate to the world and time differently. But no, not to heal. Just to explore.

I'm not really sure I've answered accurately.

@Zef , sometimes psychedelic substances did seem to "open me up" in a sense to new perspectives on myself that appeared to answer to things I've grappled with in my journey to heal. In Hoffman's work ("LSD: My Problem Child") he theorizes from subject accounts that the majority of "bad trips" result from--of course, environment and conditions but also--a subject's refusal to let go of attempting to control the situation mentally. I don't know that I 100% agree with this, but I do prepare those who have never tripped by giving them some tips and techniques to "stay safe" both in terms of environment and mentally. Feedback I often get is that the most helpful thing I say (based on a meditation visual I was told) is to think of all your thoughts as debris in a body of water you are watching. You can see something beautiful and pick it up, or you may see something negative, and you just need to watch it float away.

In my experience a fellow participant should always be placed in a sort of "driver" position, where they are responsible for keeping tabs on others and having contingency plans if someone is getting stuck in a negative headspace. I typically prepare for a couple of weeks to take on this position. I mentally prepare myself and then also ensure there are supplies for activities, such as lots of paper, markers, fresh foods, peanut butter for just beforehand, blankets, music etc

I also set up some CBT-style "wise self" that has some hard-and-fast rules about what we cannot do. I hide keys, phones are turned off, I set up for someone sober to be present in case people drop by, I give said person my wallet... I try to plan for whatever a few tripping people may run into on the journey. This seems to work well. If I am a guide for someone's first time, I feel responsible for making sure they are prepared. I also never have more than will be taken and keep track of the time (which obviously gets funky but that "wise self" headspace is put in place to allow me to step back and survey the situation in the most lucid way possible). I have textbooks and a powerpoint saved from a psychology class that I review personally but also share with first-timers who find it helpful which goes over the stages of said drug.

Needless to say, yeah, I take it all quite seriously. I think there are plenty of people who benefit from such precautions when I know, because they have told me, that this is something they are set on experiencing anyway. I am also not above agreeing to trip sit but expressing bluntly that some aspect of the desired experience is a bad idea, whether I feel someone is too stressed or their choice of company is risky due to past negativity they experienced with said company.

 

[Philippa]

I was searching for the other thread which covered the subject of MDMA used to help heal from PTSD in a professional therapeutic setting. I just finished watching an awesome you tube vid of an interview with a woman who suffered from PTSD for 20 years, and had been through it all. Her kids were the only thing keeping her here.

It's quite an inspiring video, though frustrating that it is still illegal.