I just recently came across this and figured a few of you may be interested in it. Basically it goes through what exactly physically is happening to your body during psychedelic experiences (and multiple altered states of consciousness for that matter). He then explains how it is clinically/culturally/personally/etc important and offers up his theory as to the information generated through “tripping out” (non-linear information) can be as useful as information generated in more conventional (linear) ways that we collect data (the traditional 5 senses [but this is not to suggest that we gain some extra sensory perception while tripping; at least this isn’t what the reading suggests]). Essentially this is the theory.
Side note : This is a scientific journal. Which means, the reading uses lots of big words that require at least a basic understanding of physiology/chemistry to comprehend.
I am interested to see what some of your takes are on this.
I’m by no means an expert on anything (other than Phish of course), but I am currently working on my Ph.D. in Neuroscience/Cell and Molecular Biology. I’m not writing this to be a nay-sayer or a downer or anything either, but merely to inform and help educate because the US is woefully ignorant when it comes to science. Nor am I trying to poke holes in anything this guy has written (yet) as I haven’t read it. I am going to try to read it because it does sound interesting to me on both a professional and personal level. I do want to clarify though about the whole scientific journal thing. This has been published by “Psychedelic Information Theory”, which is its own company/publisher and can therefore publish whatever it likes. It IS a scientific journal/book because yes, it talks about science. However it is NOT a traditional scientific journal because it is NOT peer reviewed. Traditional scientific journals have their stuff edited by other experts in the field to prevent people publishing whatever they want. This piece of literature has NOT been peer reviewed so I wouldn’t accept everything at face value.
There are a few peer-reviewed references in his list so that’s a start, however they are out numbered by the number of wikipedia references and “University Publishing” references (I’m pretty sure these are not peer-reviewed either).
Also, this guy is NOT a professionally trained scientist or researcher. He is a “writer and programmer”. I really am not trying to be a dick here I just only have a few things that I’m good at and this happens to be one of them so I try to help educate. Be wary of this guy if he is offering ‘scientific proof’ of anything, he sounds like he’s just a spunion. I mean come on, look at him :
Seriously though if I get a chance to read some of it I will and respond. I know that the book is also taking into account ‘other worldly’ factors and shit like shamanism, which I don’t claim to be an expert in.
I’m under impressed with this. His general thesis seems to simply be that psychedelics can help you think better. How insightful . There is so much information out there on the benefits of psychedelics, and this brings almost nothing new to the table.
Believe me, I wasn’t trying to pass this off as an accepted theory. I just figured a few of you might be interested in this. I am sure it would be close to impossible to even get this thing considered for peer review. In fact it is rather difficult to find any “legitimate” studies regarding any sort of drug (but you knew that already). This lack of research results in “grey area” journals such as this.
As for the actual content of the book, there are many connections made between concepts that may not necessarily be related. From what I understand, the dude who wrote this thing was trying to create a logical explanation of why (specifically in the N,N-DMT experience) you seem to come in contact with beings that possess a knowledge base separate from our own.
This is merely an alternative to the metaphysical explanations provided by most psychedelic-pseduo-philosophers (McKenna in particular). It really provides no new insight as to what happens, but more to as why, in the physical sense.
As soon as you get to the section on “shamanism” you leave the realms of science and enter the land of the subjective. Until we have more legitimate research, stuff like this will always be used to fill in the gaps.
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. There is so much information out there on the benefits of psychedelics, and this brings almost nothing new to the table.