site banner

Wellness Wednesday for July 26, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I am wondering whether you have interpreted this norm at the same level of abstraction as its purpose.

I think the purpose of the norm is to improve public perception of the club. The founder gets invited into academic circles to talk about the psychedelic issues in the local community. If the club has a good reputation, then it gains more power to influence academics and public opinion.

Since the group is open to the public the typical disclaimer must be given every meeting in case there is law enforcement present and to deter someone who just watched something like How to Change You Mind and probably need more preparation before they are ready to try psychedelics.

There are many interesting people in the club that I would like to be friends with even if they can’t help procure psychedelics. I will make more of an effort to make friends there.

Phenibut is excellent!

Indeed! I’ve spent a lot of time studying it and it has led me to many insights. I wouldn’t want to be on it more than once a week anyway because it dulls my analytical skills and makes me unmotivated to do cognitively challenging tasks.

My ultimate goal is to internalize the lessons of Phenibut so that they persist even when I’m sober. My current research area is Phenibut and exposure therapy. I do things I’m normally afraid of doing sober while on Phenibut and then slowly lower the dose each time so that I need less and less Phenibut to do the things I’m afraid of. I’m also trying to figure out if I can set ‘anchors’ to retrieve the Phenibut mood when sober. Since Phenibut increases appreciation for music I listen to music when on Phenibut. When I sober up and listen to my favorite songs I feel an elevated happiness compared to my base state!

I’m also curious about if you can use Phenibut to have a night where you combine multiple things you enjoy with something you fear. If you ask your brain how was your night it tends to aggregate certain experiences and say something like, “I had a fun night”. It doesn’t always say I enjoyed X + Y but I didn’t enjoy Z. So if you do X + Y + a minor amount of Z while on Phenibut it might be possible to persuade a part of your brain that Z is less bad than you initially thought.

all us shards inside here ought to be looking for ways to cooperate and love one another and reconcile our differences

Yes, I had a very similar realization. I realized that the more rational part of my brain was just trying to protect me from the more impulsive part of my brain that only thinks about immediate happiness. The rational part of my brain is so strong that it can often completely shut down the impulsive part of my brain (such as “don’t go dancing you’ll look like a fool”). I came to an understanding that I would listen more the impulsive part of my brain so that I can have more fun/enjoyment in life, but at the same time agreed that the rational brain is like a wise parent that sometimes has to say no to the impulsive/child-like thoughts of my brain.

SSRIs

I tried Saffron extract and the side effects outweighed the minor benefit I got. My extremities would sometimes feel like they weren’t getting enough blood flow.

DMT

The DMT study was about the safety of extending the state without using other drugs. The other purpose was to see how the body acclimates/adjusts to being in the state for longer. Like how if you’re intoxicated for a long time the same level of the drug feels weaker and the intoxicated reality feels more normal and natural to you.

There will be more studies about how to actually gain therapeutic effects from the extended DMT state in the future.

have you heard of DDREADs?

No, that sounds interesting thanks for bringing it up.

I have heard about designer drugs though. One thing I recently recall hearing was that underground therapists are finding 3-MMC may be more useful than MDMA because it causes less urges to be touchy/feely.