I would not go so far myself as to inhibit my desire for help or assistance in understanding my "mental pain" or "depressive" states. I would rather like to be sensitive to the fact that my "mental pain" may be quite particular to me.

And I'd demand that kind of sensitivity to my particularity from anyone that I seek help from. There are people who indeed "do know what is going on" in that particular sense. I can tell who they are because they are very careful not to assume they know the "cause" of my mental pain before I tell them some very specific aspects of myself and my stories.

Those people will be very careful and they know enough of what is "really going on" to "not know" what my experience is until I can find a way to tell them or until we can begin to investigate those places in my psyche together.

Likewise with boredom or any other common word used to describe "states of the soul". Those "in the know" will have the naivete of a child and they will not assume that what you mean by boredom is what they mean by boredom.

When I turn my investigative powers back to myself and I look at these "states of the soul", I can see a richness to this particular moment and this particular mix of many states that without investigation I might call "baseline". Boredom is a very interesting and very complex and variable state of the soul, for example. It is worthy of investigation as well.

So, simply, from my perspective, the seeking of help or advice is a natural and even a good impulse.
Help is, however, tricky because I risk having "help" be imposed on me from without, from some authority, or from someone who thinks they know in advance some "cure".

Perhaps, what I really need is just a place to think through something, or a person who can empathize and who can think freely and openly with me. I need someone who can "not know" with me long enough for us to make a discovery together.

Does that make sense to you? Because if it does not make sense to you, then it is not a collaboration and it risks being an imposition on you. And what is the good in that?

I wish you well and I have a concern to preserve an agnostic perspective when it comes to your uniqueness. I appreciate the reality of "mental pain" and I am "in the know" enough to stop myself short, to discipline my beliefs enough to very specifically "not know" what is going on for you.

I'm going to go ahead and say that this is the response of someone who was talking out of their ass and got called out on it

From your first quote, on the first page, he said: "it promotes the release/uptake etc. of 5-HT and related compounds," so it's...interesting that he's now going back and saying "I didn't mention anything about re-uptake."

I'm sure there are certainly long-term effects caused by chronic, frequent use of DMT (that's true of every single drug, full stop), and who knows, some of them might even be adverse (although I haven't seen much that makes me think that we have any reason to be afraid, so long as we're responsible and educated). I remain unimpressed, however, with Barker, Strassman, and the Cottonwood foundation as a whole.

It may be that they really believe in what they're doing, and I hope, for their sake, that they do, but I'm not buying what they're selling.

Blessings
~ND

I gotta second ND on this. I mean, isn't asking questions and engaging in discussion the best way to learn and develop ideas? This seems especially relevant when discussing topics at the edge of human understanding. And, the characterization of asking questions as "debate" turns the engagement from an ostensibly friendly discussion into a hostile standoff, when clearly that wasn't the case, allowing for a framing that allows him to walk away without engaging. All of it seems like a ploy to avoid engagement...playing out along similar lines as Strassman's reply to me.

What does it say that some of the most visible people doing this research appear to cling to/rely on their authoritative positions while spewing their theories, respond to queries dogmatically, and shut down any meaningful discussion that might threaten their stated beliefs?

Color me disappointed.

I'm with you.

Maybe that they are not ready (able) yet to integrate (deal with) new information, as they are trapped in a somehow dogmatically enviornment themself. Some people might be steps ahead, but I can only walk by putting one foot after the other. Might the moves we make be small, but we are moving continuously.

I think people who really have been touched by entheobotanics and do serious research on them, do their best to come up with proper information. This hopeully leads to a change in the way we see and interact with these drugs societally, making them legal for reseasrch as a first step, which allows further workgroups popping up and enhances differiented discussions on them.


tseuq

In Barkers case he is a chemist, not much more than that on the subject.

Nathaniel.Dread said:
except should point out that it is missing agonism at over 80% of brain receptors when smoked, but this is corrected when used orally with either caapi or 5-meo-dmt as snuffs, as these 2 entheogens fill in for the missing dmt receptor sites (which compose over 80% of brain 5-ht) when used together with dmt.

The following below is from the ground-breaking study that was done on human brains & not rat brains for once:

Thomas S. Ray, Psychedelics and the Human Receptorome (2010):
http://www.plosone.org/a...1%2Fjournal.pone.0009019
hxxp://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009019

Breadth of Receptor Binding, 4.00=max, 0.00=min


Graham Hancock, "Supernatural", pg 428:
Graham has a whole chapter of his oral Ayahuasca experiences (caapi + leaf) compared to his smoked dmt experiences, and they are very different, a great read.

5-ht1a receptors make up over 80% of brain receptors according to Dr. Nikols, smoked dmt has no activity at these receptors. Dr. Nikols explains that 5-ht1a agonism is inhibitory and "shuts down serotonin signals", This is a prominent effect of all the natural oral entheogens. When dmt is orally combined with either caapi (contains harmine, thh & harmaline), then the missing 5-ht1a agonism is corrected by very strong 5-ht1a agonist in caapi. 5-meo-dmt is the strongest 5-ht1a agonist known to man, and also fills in for the missing 5-ht1a agonism. When 5-meo-dmt is combined with dmt as used in Shamanic snuffs for thousands of years, the two are helpers to each other, 5-meo-dmt when added to dmt also brings up the 5-ht2a agonism to that of LSD, as 2.5 of dmt + 1.0 of 5-meo-dmt raises to similar 3.5 agonism of LSD.

This inhibition of the brain's 80% of 5-ht receptors in effect "shuts down human serotonin signals", there are some who believe this is what is responsible for entering the spirit world, shutting down the brain's filtering system, so that "Mind at Large" as Aldous Huxley coined can be accessed. LSD, mescaline & shrooms are also very "anti-serotonin", shutting down brain 5-ht signals responsible for filtering. Scientists have been baffled by LSD's strong anti-serotonin capability for decades, but this same effect is repeated over and over in Nature's many entheogens from Caapi to Cactus.

Point is that DMT is "so busy" stimulating the other 20% of brain receptors with such great strength (even greater than LSD) that it uses it's helpers caapi or 5-meo-dmt to fill in for the missing 5-ht1a inhibitory agonism, when combined with caapi or 5-meo-dmt, the whole 100% of brain stimulation is recognized.

Helpers or "combinations of entheogens" is prominent in the Shamanic World, as used traditionally for thousands of years.

Digging deeper, found James Oroc's experiment of combining 5-meo-dmt with DMT accidental great find, as expected, sounds imho very much like a short beautiful transcendental Ayahuasca experience:

EDIT - Removed

Blessings
~ND