Sheeet

Ok, I don't even know why I bought this. Amphetamines are boring.
Also, I lost the whole day yesterday because I couldn't get myself to sleep even with usual remedies. And i still feel like shit.

DOB trip

I got this blotter for free - so why not I thought. I actually did not quite understand the the  difference between DOB and LSD, but I figured it should be fun for as long as the dosage is controlled.

Well, I know the difference now, although I can not in good conscience say whether my experience is caused by the nature of the substance itself or by environmental and personal factors such as being hungry and a somewhat tired. The "set" was fine - I had a nice date earlier and just thought "why not make the evening even better" (I was also frustrated for having so little time for myself lately, so I jumped at the opportunity). The "setting" was perhaps less then ideal,  as I did not prepare visuals beforehand, thinking that perhaps sitting in front of pc screen would be just fine. It turned out that I was not feeling well while being seated at all - but more on that later.

Anyway, there was no serenity and peace in my trip, very strong visuals, wavering feeling of "high" and quite a lot of physical discomfort. I felt intoxicated and ill, one moment I was "there" getting familiar feeling of floating through time and space and another moment I was shivering in my bed trying to find comfortable position. I felt noticeable nausea (never had this in any significant amount on my trips on shrooms or LSD) and I peed maybe 7 or 9 times ( I drank a lot of water, too).

Overall I'd say the experience was not quite to my taste, because physical side effects were too strong to be ignored. I had a few "aha moments" and would really appreciate someone to have a conversation with (so maybe I should not trip alone on this or at least do this during the day so I can at least message some of my friends). I listened to music and found it appealing, but the distortion in sounds were very strong, so I could hardly recognize the melodies. I actually liked that part very much. I also noticed that my iTunes volume was very low (I usually turn it quite high during the trip) and on the coming down and later that day I found myself very sensitive to noises. Now this very day my neighbors needed to to have some renovation work done, so I spent some 30 minutes laboriously thinking about killing some humans. I still feel somewhat more aggravated by noise outside, although I am generally known for such things when tired.

On the good side I did quite a bit of reading (and enjoying the thought process itself).
I started to read Prometheus Rising and spent about an hour reading into MAOA gene expression, also did a bit of a catch up on biography of some prominent personalities and usage of psychedelic drugs in modern history by government structures. All of this was heavily intertwined with various thought and visual distortions  which resulted in strong "my movie" kind of feeling. I wish I could study history with this back in school, lol.

Visual distortions included (a lot of) creeping patterns, shifting proportions, the walls were getting rounded and inflated, the light changed tone often. Black and white portraits were of particular interest  - they would waver between being bw and full color, sometimes toned down like sepia, and the face on the picture would change constantly, sometimes even switching gender. It was amazing and fun. Colored portraits would animate and smile to me, and at one point I saw that a tree outside was constructed of random chunks or blocks of tree parts stacked up together, like a puzzle that was in a disarray. The same tree would sometimes flash grapes or blue leaves, and other times it would appear to be painted on a few pieces of cardboard placed one in front of the other, much like  plane sprites in old pc games. 

I am not totally against the idea of repeating this experience, but it definitely requires better preparation and good timing (no interruptions, no random noices, no annoying pets).

The trip lasted for about 9 hours.

Ok, expanding the expirience

...Expanding the expirience to your basic speed. Boring (compared to other things), but effective. 

Useful, so I gotta stash a bit for some emergency.

Tripping on acid

Tripping on acid made my brain feel totaly fucked. In a good way. I enjoyed this 250 .ug blotter very much. It gives much stronger and somewhat scarier trip then shrooms can provide, not to mention that it was much longer. I was so tense, I had to grab 'Yorik' (my pet decorative scull) and bring 'him' to my bedroom just ot have some company X)
Even when my mind was tired and quite ready to shut down my brain would have none of that. The next day was a bit weird, too. Still, just as the shrooms, lsd makes me feel really self-confident for the next few weeks because I manage do think over all those little things that clutter the mind and keep on nagging, making you somewhat miserable and bugged as times goes on.

Very strange

Yesterday I had quite a chat with one of my acquaintances  She was pretty much drunk, I was high, so we started talking about stuff we don't usually discuss.

I was mostly listening an thinking, though, and I realized, well, it was like I could see life from her eyes for a while. It is vastly different. This was my first experience of altered mind state in a sense that my actual outlook on life shifted. I could totally understand her, accept her values, her perspective, without any reservations or judgement. Through this, my understanding of my life, my actions and the way other people perceive me shifted (hopefully permanently).

 I realize now that _I_ am a weird one and though I might seem relatively normal, the inner workings of mind would probably surprise most people. Often, I end up doing expected things - but for entirely different reasons. This mostly goes for social relationship, but must be true for other things too.

Example: when I see a person who likes me I never expect there could be ANYTHING between us. Well, maybe, if we start dating and talking and really know each other, blah blah... For some people becoming friends and even having sex with others is - easy. Natural. Not much more difficult then having really deep conversation.
Maybe most extroverts are like this. If that is so, then most people would be actually correct when they say that we (introverts) are a weird bunch.

Because... Seriously: I remember that one day when I was  15 and a friend of mine invited me to her birthday party.  I was honestly looking for a way to entertain myself - have some meaningful conversation, read some book from her library, tell some jokes. What most others were looking for  was to get drunk (I'm not from USA so yes, teenagers were getting drunk, it was expected), and to have sex.

 I couldn't imagine back then  that you can just come to a party, get high,  MEET someone new and have sex with her/him whatever, just like that. Maybe in movies, and exaggerated tales?

It was - not something I even wanted to try, because I never realized I could! It was like, completely out of question. I wouldn't know how to start this, I wouldn't know how to act. Even now when I see a girl who smiles to me at the party I'm like "well, she doesn't know me, so she must be smiling out of niceness, not because she just might be willing to know me better." And I bet this is the case OFTEN, but not all the time. So...I now realize why some people seemed disappointed with what seemed very nice time together, huh.

 The way one sees things, people, relationships - it basically defines who we are, yet we suppose that most people see the world just like we do. But, there's often a difference. In fact, it is so huge a difference in some cases that it is a wonder how we, people, can function as united society.

I do feel enlightened, truly. It is very important to peek out of your shell once in a while.

Stereopsis

While reading Oliver Sacks' 'Minds eye' I found myself astonished at how little I actually cared about stereoscopy before. Test show that my stereopsis is feeling quite good; I don't think I ever had trouble with it, but I just never gave it any credit, taking it for granted, as most of us do. I never understood the fuss about 3d monitor, even though I like 3d movies at the cinema (but more on that later)

 However, as I started to experiment with stereoscopic vision, or rather, because I became aware of it through my reading, and started to experiment with it, I was amazed at what magnificent difference it actually makes.
 Try looking at the world with one of your eyes closed and you will probably notice how flat it is without stereo vision. It is, in fact, often hard for me to tell if the object I see is concave or convex if I close one of my eyes while looking at it. In some situations it is virtually impossible to tell the distance between objects, I think it might also prevent from manipulating objects in some situations. Of course human brain can use many 2-dimension cues to help with those tasks, but it is not quite the same.

Here you might be able to see the teapot, a cup and a window frame. Or you might not. But you can never see any of that on this picture (that is - random dot stereogram) if you lack stereopsis.

Now, I feel bad about it, but as I realized that some 5% of overall population lack stereoscopic vision, sometimes being totally unaware of it, I suddenly became proud of my quite imperfect overall  but still strongly stereoscopic vision. As I realized that most people with strabismus fail to develop proper binocular vision, I remembered a story.

There was this smart-pants girl who mocked me for liking Avatar movie; she criticized my taste and criticized the film - she called it bland, naive, second-class and basically just stupid, meant for people who are easily attracted to flashy pictures and don't care much for actual depth, story or proper acting techniques.

I tried to explain that most of us were excited because of the next-gen technology this movie demonstrated, and how I felt amazed by the mastery with witch 3d elements were featured. I actually wanted to touch some pollen as it flew in front of me, the illusion of it being real, 3-dimensional both stunning and surprising.

She would have none of that, saying that these were just flashy pictures seen before and elsewhere many times. She continued on, pointing out that I was fooled and only excited because of the marketing fuss around this movie; she is still strongly convinced that this movie has nothing even remotely interesting from artistic or technological points of view.

I must confess I was a bit baffled at this, but figured that I, indeed, must be the kind of person who gets easily distracted by colorful pictures and somehow managed to overlook the facts about this movie, even though I had always considered myself a bookish kind of person. I wouldn't care for Avatar movie at all, were my senses, my brain not so delighted by stereoscopic depth in some scenes. Even though 3d movies are known for over 50 years now, rarely do we get to see something so - pretty - done with it.

And now of course I realized that MAYBE this girl, who has had noticeable strabismus for her entire life, could have never see what the rest of us, with our binocular sight, could see. She mentioned seeing 'images too bright and colorful' to make sense when she attempted to see 3d movies.That would be it, of course - people with two functional eyes lacking true stereopsis usually end up 'switching' between their eyes many times per second. Now if such person would try to wear 3d glasses - he would naturally see colored images lacking any depth, just being more irritating because of the color difference.

So, for all her pride and knowledge and education and snobbishness she could have been simply unaware of what others saw, yet was strongly opinionated and vocal about her judgement.

I believe this if often the case in many other situations as well.

Breaking bad

...Watching this movie made me think, again: how many people out there really, honestly, genuinely believe that doing certain things - like using drugs - is horribly dangerously morbidly wrong, not just 'illegal' as others may feel (in that 'mostly okay but officially discouraged' kind of way). And also - how many others honestly believe that suicide or killing is always 'not an option', that it is always the bad thing to do.

I think that I never had much respect for people who say that certain things just are, universally good or universally evil, regardless of the context.

If someone has that imaginary line that divides good and bad just like that -  I don't trust that someone, and I don't like him. Every mental line I have is pretty much blurred - I'm extremely shortsighted so this is to be expected, right?

And that is why I don't like religion. Religion is basically there to provide those sharp lines that mark segments of life with tags. I don't like religious people because I believe their judgement is unfair and inaccuratre. It might have been useful set of judgement material, in a sense that at least it was good enough to help religious people to live on and propagate - but still inaccurate and discriminating - objectively speaking.

It's funny how even today some people just believe certain things. They have no proof, no data - they just believe shit.