Psychedelic drug cuts brain blood flow and connections

reply to post by RRokkyy

The proper way to approach psychedelics is with Radical Spiritual Understanding and that is what I Teach.

The shaman's refer to them as teacher plants. I tend to use the same terminology. Several people have made great comments on not using them like a frat boy uses alcohol. Radical Spiritual Understanding in my book translates to respect and that is what psychedelics demand. Any human teacher worth their salt is going to give you the smack down if you treat them disrespectfully why should plant teachers be any different?

reply to post by RRokkyy

Dont know why you are being hostile since I was agreeing with you.
I never said intoxicants are useless
And spiritual research is as useful as any other experience.
The proper way to approach psychedelics is with Radical Spiritual Understanding and that is
what I Teach.

Sorry man, I must have misread your post. I just get really tired of the bad-rap that psychedelics have taken by the vast majority of people. Kudos though for teaching people how to deal the with psychedelic experience. That is definitely the best way to handle it, with a teacher-student relationship.

Psycadelics have never really helped me with anything. Even being a calm, open minded person did not make it easy. As soon as I feel the effects, the increase in heart rate/loss of control is just too much for me personally. Marijauna did help me for years but even that took a bad turn when I started smoking too much. I was told to relax and just breathe through it.. "feel" the anxiety. Well I did and I was rewarded with a black out now feeling of anxiety even when im sober.

My point is, all the people defending psycadelics/marijuana ignore the fact that it's whats inside of your mind that's going to determine if it's a good experience or not. Sure the substance itself can not cause major problems or give you a mental illness, but by doing these things it can open the possibility of creating unnecessary problems.

I'm not saying I'm for prohibition and totally against these things, but.. just because some people get a good experience from it doesn't mean it will be a wonderful mind opening experience for all. Cause sometimes, you have no idea what is deep inside your mind. and once it's out, there is no fixing it.

Originally posted by Oroborus
My point is, all the people defending psycadelics/marijuana ignore the fact that it's whats inside of your mind that's going to determine if it's a good experience or not.

That's very true.

One of the worst things someone with schizophrenia can do, for example, is take a hallucinogen. Potentially, anyway. And what's worse is that hallucinogens can apparently bring out what they call "latent schizophrenia" in people who haven't yet been diagnosed.

Those kinds of experiences should definitely be relegated to the "heroic" category and not for the faint of heart or mind. But at the end of the day there's hardly anything you can say that's going to keep people from doing what they're going to do anyway. That's nature.

I think people are reading the title of both the thread and the article and immediately jumping toward the negative on the conclusions.

If you read it carefully there is no mention of negative effects, it's all positive. Potential anti depressants, the long term nueroplasty. It's not like the blood flow and connections stay that way. In fact it is the key to the mystical experience. Makes sense if you believe conciousness is not a product of the brain.

Similar experiences have been reported by stroke victims and NDE's. It's probably why some people relate the heavy doses to the death experience, as certain parts of the brains function begin stepping offline.

In my first deep experience I was sure I did die.

Shutting down or limiting certain parts of the brain forces it to use different pathways and possibly different parts of the brain. I think this type of research is exactly what should be being done. Terrence Mckenna once said that psychedelics could do for nuero science what the telecope did for astronomy. I agree.

Originally posted by squiz
I think people are reading the title of both the thread and the article and immediately jumping toward the negative on the conclusions.

If you read it carefully there is no mention of negative effects, it's all positive. Potential anti depressants, the long term nueroplasty. It's not like the blood flow and connections stay that way. In fact it is the key to the mystical experience. Makes sense if you believe conciousness is not a product of the brain.

Similar experiences have been reported by stroke victims and NDE's. It's probably why some people relate the heavy doses to the death experience, as certain parts of the brains function begin stepping offline.

In my first deep experience I was sure I did die.

Shutting down or limiting certain parts of the brain forces it to use different pathways and possibly different parts of the brain. I think this type of research is exactly what should be being done. Terrence Mckenna once said that psychedelics could do for nuero science what the telecope did for astronomy. I agree.

I agree with everything you're saying. People get so hung up on the negativity we are forced to believe. Just as Timothy Leary said, "Think for yourself and question authority."

I'm not saying everyone needs to do it or even myself but don't go spouting off propaganda that obviously you read too much into. If you would have cross referenced that article you would find many contributions the psychedelic realm has brought to Psychology to help discover ones mind and true self. Let alone actual treatments for people.

Regardless what you believe, people think and process things differently. If you had the option to expand your mind and process things different than before, wouldn't you want to give it a try? Those who turn and run are running for a reason. Are you scared of what you might find out about yourself? What you've been hiding?

Another quote to leave all of you with and marinate on...

"My advice to people today is as follows: if you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out." (The Famous Timothy Leary)

Originally posted by squizShutting down or limiting certain parts of the brain forces it to use different pathways and possibly different parts of the brain. I think this type of research is exactly what should be being done. Terrence Mckenna once said that psychedelics could do for nuero science what the telecope did for astronomy. I agree.

I concur. Perhaps an FMRI would have shown increased activity in other areas of the brain. Since Psilocin (The compound that the body converts Psilocybin to when ingested) is so close in structure to Serotonin and uses the same receptor sites it is altogether possible that the usual perception centres aren't in use.

As the poster who mentioned neuroplasticity pointed out, in certain circumstances, and especially in response to severe brain trauma, the brain can farm out functions to other parts of the brain, creating new pathways.

This is a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing, judging by the false conclusions jumped to by the OP, in which I'm positive he would not be alone.

Here's Roger Daltrey's (The Who) opinion of the effect of drugs on his bandmates, it evidently was a combo of alcohol and strong drugs, and it easy to believe it affected their abilities, he should know, he watched the effect first hand throughout the years,

He has lost his two other bandmates, Keith Moon and John Entwistle to drugs. He was the only one in the band not to touch the heavy stuff. ‘I wasn’t a goody-goody; I dabbled in the natural,’ says Roger. But I was in a band with three alcoholics and someone had to be straight. They were three lunatics.

‘I also got warned off chemicals very early on by the man who made Purple Haze ['___']. His name was Owsley Stanley, The Bear. He told me to never touch chemicals and I believed him because he was the man.’

He was famously thrown out of the band for a week for physically attacking Moon, who was providing drugs for the others. He says he only became angry with his bandmates when it started to affect their performances.

‘I don’t think anyone who hasn’t done this job can understand how hard it is; particularly with nerves,’ he says. ‘You are completely naked up there and you will be judged. It’s very tough psychologically.

‘So it’s easy to see why musicians would go for a bit of Dutch courage here, a bit of something else there. Keith used to throw up before every gig. The quality of the playing went down because of the drugs and we were better than that. I didn’t know how to deal with it, so I thought the best way was to get rid of the drugs.’

Source: Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk...

reply to post by seentoomuch


and what point are you trying to get at?

Less blood flow to the brain

reply to post by Corruption Exposed


I agree 100% with you about man made poisons. I use nothing but herbs and plants, along with honey, coconut oil and other natural products now. I was bounced around like a puppet for 12 years by doctors, pills and propaganda. I felt something inside say there is a cure so find it yourself and stop relying on people who are funded by the government. It took me four months to come off the poison they had me on. I feel better than I did when I was a slave to the pills.

reply to post by Kargun


You seem to be mixing up mind expanding - as in a perceptable alteration in your counciousnes which opens you to new ideas, thoughts and revelations - with the mechanical function of the brain.

To say that this substance in NOT mind expanding because it changes blood flow, and /or reduces synaptic activity, only goes to show you do not understand the difference between the mind and the brain.

Wow.

So many gifted replies to this rather simplistic interpretation of hallucinogenics, and psilocybin in particular.

I don't really have to add anything, but...

Originally posted by Kargun
Psychedelic drug users throughout the ages have described their experiences as mind-expanding. They might be surprised, therefore, to hear that psilocybin – the active ingredient in magic mushrooms – actually decreases blood flow as well as connectivity between important areas of the brain that control perception and cognition.

Much like NREM sleep do, characterized by decreased blood flow to the brain and skeletal muscle.

Originally posted by Kargun
When I was young and foolish I did much experimenting with certain mind opening substances and wondered at the time if I was just experiencing something along the lines of mental retardation.... I might not have been far off.

Did you give up up sleeping as well, as you got older and wiser?

Originally posted by Oroborus
Psycadelics have never really helped me with anything.

Then you should definitely stay away from them. I do believe Francis Crick (biophysicist) is glad he used hallucinogenics though, since he has publicly admitted that he first realized how the DNA was structured in a double helix while being 'high' on '___'. That discovery landed him a Nobel prize by the way. It's what you could call a positive drug story.

Originally posted by Kargun
My point is, all the people defending psycadelics/marijuana ignore the fact that it's whats inside of your mind that's going to determine if it's a good experience or not. Sure the substance itself can not cause major problems or give you a mental illness, but by doing these things it can open the possibility of creating unnecessary problems.

Drugs can be used in good or bad ways. See the drug as a tool. You can use that tool to construct something with it, or you can use it to hit yourself on the head with it.

Put Francis Crick next to a crackhead, and you get two totally different aspects on drug use.

I. Surprised this thread is still up.

I wrote a thread a while back about these mushrooms and the chance may actually have originated from space. I had 7 flags and 2 pages of replies within 5 minutes and then my thread was erased without warning. They didn't even give me a chance to save all the work I did so I could at least edit it to fit t/c.

And in this thread we have people very beastly testing the t/c.... It's good to see selective administration.

I condone the use of psychedelics.

OP, it is interesting how you took a neutral article and derived a negative from it. You can surely see the article does not indicate any harmful effects of psilocybin? You know that decreased bloodflow does not indicate damage or harm in anyway?

The study simply shows brain activity during the duration of the psilocybin trip.

Originally posted by VonDoomen
I. Surprised this thread is still up.

I wrote a thread a while back about these mushrooms and the chance may actually have originated from space. I had 7 flags and 2 pages of replies within 5 minutes and then my thread was erased without warning. They didn't even give me a chance to save all the work I did so I could at least edit it to fit t/c.

And in this thread we have people very beastly testing the t/c.... It's good to see selective administration.

I didn`t see your thread, but I too have noticed that some people are allowed to breach T&C relating to drug use, while others (me too in the past) are not allowed. We can only speculate the reasons why.

There are few things more amusing than drug users trying to justify their habits while being forbidden to do so by forum mandate.

This development is hardly surprising.

Hypoxia. More evidence that drugs are bad for you.

Originally posted by 2012srb


Hypoxia. More evidence that drugs are bad for you.

Hypoxia. More evidence that climbing mountains is bad for you.

See, not really an argument is it?

reply to post by psilo simon


People who climb Everest are dumb too.

Are people who take drugs dumb? Why?

I trust I`m just picking you up wrong and you aren`t grouping all drugs together and making a sweeping generalisation, I suspect you are talking about a specific group of drugs or just on particular substance?