Date: 5/5/2019

• Self:
  • Weight: ~[150-170) lbs, Age: [20-25), Height: [5’8’’-5’11’’), Male, Dosage: 12-15mg 4-AcO-DMT, 200mg caffeine, 100mg L-theanine, 0.25-0.5g cannabis, vaporized and smoked
• Companion:
  • Weight: ~[110-130) lbs, Age: [20-25), Height: [5’5’’-5’8’’), Female, Dosage: 10-12mg 4-AcO-DMT, 0.5g cannabis, smoked and vaporized

Relevant  Beliefs

• Ontology on personal identity: favors ‘empty individualism’
• Ontology on time: favors ‘eternalism’
• Strongly favors ‘indirect realism’ over ‘direct realism’
• Believes that an ‘information processing’ account of the mind-brain is appropriate in a variety of situations.
  • Finds valuable Marr’s levels of analysis
• Believes states of meditation, psychedelic use, and the combination of the two allow for an application of ‘energy’ which is directed towards the brain’s natural harmonics. Coarsely, there is a pattern of energy application -> entropic disintegration -> search/self-reorganization -> neural annealing which is likely to occur in such states.
  • Believes meditation is a tool which can increase the amount of cognitive control an individual has over his/her conscious experiences.
• Believes 4-AcO-DMT is an entactogen, and feelings of empathy and connection with others are desirable.
• Grappling with the Symmetry Theory of Valence
• Believes there is an interaction of ‘top-down stories’ and ‘bottom-up sensory data’ in the mind-brain. Each affects the other, and neither provides a complete account of reality.
• Problem of other minds: Believes animals and other complex systems are capable of experiencing conscious states, other individuals exist and are conscious.

Experience

Caffeine/L-theanine:

I took a pill with 100mg of L-theanine and 200mg of caffeine when I woke up at ~7:45AM, in order to wake up at ~8:10AM. Those unfamiliar with the caffeine nap should give it a try.

Dosing/Setting – 12:45

We took our 4-AcO-DMT in capsule form, gathered our ‘tripping accoutrements’ and set off for the local park. It was a beautiful 75 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny, with some welcome clouds in the sky, which seemed placed for our later entertainment. We made it to the park without feeling the effects, making small talk and finding our ‘goldilocks zone’ – the tree with enough shade, ample view, and dry grass. We walked back and forth several times, finding out which side the grass was greenest on. During this 10 minutes, I began to notice the first perceptible changes.

Onset – 13:15-13:45

I described to my partner that I could tell the drug was ‘kicking in’ due to an increase in my proprioception (closest ‘subjective effect’ is probably bodily control enhancement). I then noticed a man lying on his side on the grass in front of us, with his arm and leg out of my view, and next to him lay which I soon realized was a bike. At first blush I thought he was an amputee, and that the device next to him was a walker of some kind. Upon seeing him sit up, I realized I had been mistaken, at which point it could not have been clearer that the ‘walker’ was actually a bicycle (I noted that I was highly aware of the distinction between my perception of the objects and my top-down ‘storytelling’, a welcome surprise I’m sure our Buddhist friends would approve tremendously of). I relayed this to my partner and she laughed, clearly still more certain of her own ability to discriminate. As we lay under a beautiful oak tree in the ‘goldilocks zone’, she commented some discomfort (in the form of ‘anxiety’), and that she felt “too much energy” was getting pumped in with “no place to go”. As a reader of opentheory.net, this analogy was welcome and even surprising in its similarity to my current opinions. I chuckled, although I too was feeling a tinge of anxiety (which I attributed mostly to the 200mg of caffeine I had consumed), increased bodily temperature, and some minor pattern recognition enhancement in the surrounding flora. As I looked to the edge of my visual field, I had the distinct sense of being in a simulated environment. While I have at times toyed with “simulation theory”, I have transitioned to a view more based on an “inner simulator”: that the reality we enjoy is taking place within the boundary of our minds, and these inner simulations exist in separation from one another (similar to Max Tegmark’s ‘bubbles’), with each one representing the mind-independent reality that I believe, but do not “know” exists. In light of this thought, I found myself looking towards the ‘boundary of my external reality’ and explaining to myself that it was in truth actually like looking deeper internally. I noticed (again with more than sober clarity) a change in my belief map.  

Resonance: ~13:30-14:30

My partner put on some appropriate lo-fi music and we began to talk as the effects became more pronounced. I felt my experience to be ‘classically psilocin-like’, characterized by intense drifting, pattern recognition enhancement, magnification, color enhancement and geometry similar to that found in ‘trippy artwork’ (internally and externally).  When I focused more loosely on my surroundings I had my first brush with scenery slicing, which divided my view of the fountain and hillside opposite us into thirds, each characterized by tapestries of fractal geometry. My partner had been blowing dandelion seeds, which reminded me of a thought I had had on a past trip, that subconsciously she was fulfilling a genetically programmed role in the ecosystem, explained away as a ‘weird urge’. We began discussing the ‘jobs’ other insects and animals had in the ecosystem, and enjoyed their personification. I spouted off some factoids on dragonflies, and their 95% predatory kill rate. She respected the prowess of the beautiful little assassins, and I internally hoped to live in a balanced ecosystem without the predators we now honor. We both noticed that we could see dandelion seeds almost a hundred feet up (magnification, and in my estimation an artifact of our mental entrainment at the time). My partner went to the bathroom in the art museum nearby, and I took 2.5 minutes to meditate, using a silent mantra technique. I experienced beautiful 8B geometry in this state, a truly profound experience. When she returned, we saw a young boy playing with dandelions in front of us. He was so purposeful, so confident, and so apparently random in his behavior. My word choice in describing him (in hushed tones, so as not to disturb his work) revealed a greater availability of infrequently-used words in my vocabulary, and some increased sense of humor. My partner commented that she thought the whole thing to be fake, and this label seemed to cause an increase in my acuity enhancement and color enhancement of the scene (again, I was highly aware of the influence of the ‘top-down story’ on my experience). To me, it also appeared in some ways “not real”, but I thought the two of us had a very different sense of the concept.

I too needed to relieve myself at this point, and decided to take the adventure towards the bathroom, listening to the Johns Hopkins psilocybin experiment playlist on Spotify along the way. I will (for the sake of brevity that I am otherwise flouting) focus only on the seemingly pertinent detail of how I received directions to the bathroom. My partner described the sequence of steps and potential pitfalls to me, and I had an extraordinary ability to visualize the path I eventually followed. My visualization skills in general were extremely heightened, and I noticed I could imagine quite easily and accurately envision how my scenery would change when I moved to a different position (e.g. sitting to lying down).

Exploration: ~14:45-15:45

At this point we both were reporting intense cognitive euphoria (as well as spiritual euphoria). We decided to pack our things and make a trip to expend some of the boundless energy we had in our possession. We journeyed to the sculpture garden behind the museum, and I began to describe the chemical differences between psilocybin and psilocin as my partner and I basked in the glorious shade of the trees there (to which we both felt intense connection). I found that in the sculpture garden I had a greatly increased appreciation for art, and especially the symmetry and proportion found in the sculpture and museum itself. Combined with my feelings of intense well being and spiritual euphoria (which felt augmented by the artwork), this amounted to a point in favor of the Symmetry Theory of Valence. I also noticed cracks in the unity of my conscious experience, where locally bound objects seemed to separate (the analogy I could find was separate “virtual environments” a la whonix), which also engendered in me a type of pleasure I cannot find in the “Subjective effect index”. This may be an area of further examination for the Qualia Research Institute. We enjoyed a blissful walk in the park, featuring feelings of intimacy with children, pets, and ducklings. Of note here was what I felt to be an enhancement of my working memory, as borne out by the following observations: I again had higher availability of vocabulary and terminology in conversation, I was able to juggle rocks more effectively while walking (and felt that during my juggling I was simultaneously apprehending more objects – this was again pleasantly accompanied by increased reflective intelligence that allowed gave me the felt sense of 8B geometry without the visuals). I threw a rock in the stream and found that I could apprehend each ripple simultaneously, and my qualia decay function was much fatter as well. Hmmm, maybe there are some beneficial computational properties of consciousness! We sat on a bench, as I felt the intense urge to exercise physically (specifically to climb a tree, but that was a bit conspicuous). Instead, we looked at a goose and talked about memetics. We marvelled specifically about Dr. Seuss, and how his thoughts had taken root, despite his distasteful personal tendencies. I began to think about the cultivation of plants, and how we tend to use hypotheses and heuristics to guide advances in the rapid evolution, wondering if the same could be done with ideas.

Home

*Skip home journey, where much of the conversation centered around the responsibilities of pet ownership* 16:30-17:30

We found ourselves at home with the welcome company of a close friend. We relayed some of our experiences, and I felt the onset of some fast euphoria – there were simply too many things I wanted to do – feel water on my hands, do yoga, eat food, smoke marijuana, have sex. I considered how wonderful it would be to restructure the human cognitive reward architecture around health, knowledge of which could be researched, stored and relayed via artificial intelligence. More simply put, as I consumed an entire family-size amount of Tostitos Hint of Lime chips (feeling gustatory and olfactory enhancement), I wished pleasure mapped 1:1 to health. We did some yoga, ate some food (I found sociability enhancement with the delivery man) and we again basked in the glory of the weather and natural environment, taking comfort in each others’ arms. I noticed multisensory magnification and acuity enhancement, finding that I could hear and see elements of nature that usually were unavailable to me, such as the sounds of distant insects and birds, and the ability to see bits of dust floating far off in the sunlight. The birds above drew my attention to my frame rate enhancement, as I could easily watch their wings flapping each time, even from a distance.  I could also extract more information from an amorphous reflection in a car door, with the feeling that I was “looking through it” to a slightly more misshapen world. We saw a bunny (“awww bunny!!!”) and had an interesting exchange:

Me: “You know, when I look at that bunny I think about the algorithms going through it’s head – eat blade -> look for next blade -> check for predators -> eat blade -> ..”

Her: “Yeah, that sounds like something YOU would think. I just like to think he’s so excited every time he sees another blade, like it’s the first time every time. That would be cute.”

Me: “Well actually, those could both be true. I’m just talking about the ‘program’ – it could be implemented any way you like. I really have no idea how they feel when they see the next blade of grass, but I hope you’re right. In terms of it being the ‘first time’, he could be like Clive Wearing, on a perpetual refresh.”

Her: “I guess we’ll never know what it’s really like.”

Me: “I don’t know about that.”

Really, we’re just talking about Marr’s theory, but it was interesting to see a real-life example. I was discussing his algorithmic level of analysis, while she was pointing to potential features of the implementational level. Makes me think about how virtual and augmented reality could be such wonderful tools for education. As someone who had thought about his theory often, it was also interesting how this exchange affected me phenomenologically: I felt now like I understood it. I definitely think understanding clearly has qualia-properties (not a very bold statement), and also important computational properties (ahem). I certainly think I can “do more” in terms of analogizing etc. with concepts I understand, and yet I find that understanding likely boils to a feeling. I have had this issue ever since reading John Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment and thinking it was positively moronic.

As we were talking, I found that I had heightened coordination and dexterity in playing with my pocket knife, something I often do when deep in thought. I considered how it could be a use of some of the ‘excess mental energy’ I had been accumulating, and how the increase in neuroplasticity that Paul Stamets swears by could be playing a role as well.

Intimacy – 18:00-19:00

We vaporized some marijuana (~0.125g each – I commented on how the Pax 2 would eventually come equipped with it’s own brain) and went inside to enjoy a shower and cuddling together. Before our shower, she commented that the water was too cold, and I joked that the whole day was ruined. Yet in that moment, I felt none of the ecstacy which so permeated our day, and so I thought once again that empty individualism had such merit. I had intended to experience the feelings of ‘oneness’ commonly associated with 4-AcO, and wasn’t disappointed, feeling at times as though I was touching my own body when I felt hers. Point in favor of open individualism. For unimportant reasons which I label “boundaries”, I’ve chosen to keep the rest of the details of our intimacy to myself…  

Concluding remarks:

There is much more I could write, and yet there are only a few pertinent details of our trip that I’d like to share:

1. We smoked some additional marijuana, which ended up overpowering the influence of the 4-AcO as the trip came to a smooth stop (there were none of the feelings of depletion or dejection I associate with other compounds such as LSD).
   1. I had a relative reduction in REM sleep compared to my average and felt a small amount of residual grogginess which I personally attribute to the marijuana.
2. When we went out for a late snack, I again had a thought and associated changes in perception (or vice-versa, who knows?) I discussed in ‘Onset’ – I saw a car headlight, and as the afterimage decayed from my visual field, I had the sense that it was slipping from my attentional system as well. It was moving further in space-time, and more internally, making its retrieval more difficult.

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Credit of Featured Image: Psychedelic brain, Bloomington photo by Ali Eminov