DXM: The insider's view of the brain

[Halfglass]

I'd read about the phenomenon of ego loss one encounters while in deep psychedelic states and I thought I knew what people were talking about from my dabblings with LSD over the years. But I hadn't a clue. It took a 1200mg ride into the swirling colored plastic mindscape that is the DXM trip to set me straight on what the loss of ego entails. More than that, I found myself privy to the very workings of my brain--an insider's view--which left me sad and horrified and exuberant. This stuff is often byplayed off as a "kiddie" drug because obviously bored and broke teens do use it and then post on places like Totse: "...dude I was sooo ripped--like worse than drunk..." The undignified method of getting it to your brain--drinking cough syrup--certainly must keep it relegated to the status of a garbage drug in the minds of many cellar shamans. I disagree. First, 1200mgs is ALOT of DXM and reintegration of the ego from this far out can be harrowing (though the come-down is fast and a bath works wonders). I've only done this much a few times by taking about 500mgs, waiting for it to hit (about an hour) than slugging perhaps 200mg shots every half hour. Daniel made a point about the belief in elves probably facilitates one's encounters with them. This happened to me with Astral Projection after reading Robert Monroe's classic "Journeys out of the Body". I've logged about 50 OBEs (three induced, the rest spontaneous) since finding out about them from that book in 1996. The DXM trip doesn't feel like astral realms. I tried to project and realized I was hopelessly in my head. I am convinced that the machine-like workings I was witnessing were inside my brain (although I did interact with someone/thing at one point). The entire trip is experienced on a bed with eyes closed. As the doses kick in, "thick" vaporous light churns in vast chambers, fully three dimensional. I make a mental note: Everywhere I look I am seeing with peripheral vision. I can see perfectly, every detail, but I can never "stare" straight at anything. The colors feel/look syrupy and electric--unlike LSD somehow. I sense "I" have become detached from the machine, but "I" must be somewhere in it. I try to think of something happy or terrible to prove my instinct that the colors ARE emotion--emotion at large. I do succeed in changing the hues by this thinking but due to my ego (what I thought I was) shuffling on the edge of the action, the effect is short lived. Memory fades in and out and I find myself by a pattern/device, circular--The Wheel of Emotion. Loony sounding voices are echoing my thoughts and I realize some"thing" is pulling the voices down from The Wheel randomly. "It" is machine-like but alive--incapable of feeling embarrassed by the goofy sounds it is causing. What at first seemed to be taunting or deranged prankishness on the part of the Decision Maker (who pulls down "feelings" to fit the circumstances in my everyday life) is actually The Regulator of The Wheel dropping moods-attached-to-voices now completely randomly. And the voices are infiltrating "my" thoughts with whatever mad voice happens to connect. My ego is crushed. It is embarrassed. The ego staggers at these implications--it is sad. All is revealed now--The Wizard of Oz is a little indifferent part in a machine. DXM believe it, has changed me. I will forever be haunted and grateful by its revelations of the underpinnings of the brain and who or what I am. After a three hour peak I was off somewhere unremembered when an entity whispered something like, "You have to get off here now" and CLICK I'm back--still very high-- but The Wheel was now chugging away somewhere unnoticed in its secret reason.

[ January 22, 2003, 06:43 PM: Message edited by: Halfglass ]

[Halfglass]

I want to add also that this sense of Machinelikeness makes me think of the Foreign Installation idea in Castaneda's "Active side of Infinity" or McKenna's "Traders" in that I was not a part of that machine--it was indeed foreign-made. P.S. My fking computor won't indent, sorry for the huge block of text....

[ January 23, 2003, 04:28 AM: Message edited by: Halfglass ]

[PuristLove]

Great post, thanks for sharing. It really reminded me of zen, this realization that thoughts and ego are just phenomena, with nothing inherently special about them.

[DoctorSchwag]

Well, the question of WHY would the government want to outlaw Salvia? I would guess for the same reason that LSD was banned and mushrooms, etc. I didnt even know what salvia was until I already smoked it, thanks to some dumb kid who didnt tell me what i was in for. It was the scariest moment of my life, and everyone else who tried it agreed. But the sad thing is that more people around city heard of it and everyone started to try it, which i have to say is really dangerous considering the lack of common sense that some people have. Just doesnt look like the law is going to change anytime soon with our society is being 'shaped'. Peace

[Hazz]

RE: Halfglass. I know what you're talking about with the "plastic" flowing light. DXM is odd, I mean it's definitely psychedelic but unlike anything else in the psychedelic vain (I never did angel dust or any other disassociative). You're right that it is worthy of exploration at least a few times. I certainly find the mind lights really something. I'll probably do it sooner now that I'm thinking about it, it's been along time and now I realize I can't put my finger on what its about anymore.