Hi everyone,

So, did some mescaline last weekend (very good time, aside from my tolerance being high and not getting the full blast, as it were). After spending the height of it meditating, I thought I'd go hang out on the TripSit IRC channel (not TripSit itself, they have a side chat for general discussion).

I had a good time chatting away, but then this one guy comes on after help. He doesn't twig that he needs to go to TripSit itself, and I got chatting to him in order to reduce his panic (he was on 1mg of 25i and a handful of xanax). The guy was clearly depressed in general, and had major trip anxiety after taking the drugs, and began to come up whilst we were talking.

I started giving him the usual advice. Relax. Find some good music. Let the drug work its magic. Don't try to fight it. All that sort of jazz. Eventually, the guy seemed to start having a good time, so we started discussing how to use psychedelics properly and what they can help you discover about yourself.

It turns out the guy was from the US deep south, young, and secretly gay. He hadn't admitted it to anyone apart from the people in the room, from what I gathered. We all started supporting him, and suggested that he could be depressed because he keeps his sexuality repressed. He seemed to largely agree with this, and we carried on by saying that he doesn't have to stay in the deep south, he could move to where its perfectly fine to be gay, and could even find love in the process. He seemed to take this all on board, and was quite moved by all the support in the room.

Eventually, I was happy he was going to be fine, and signed off and went to bed. As I laid there, the pangs of mescaline still firing around my head, I thought about the process that brought him in to tripsit. He must be somewhat panicked, and typed in to google something about a bad trip and got back tripsit. What if he missed the tripsit link, or was too gone to concentrate on words, or was out in the open on his mobile? He'd be out there alone with no support having a bad trip.

So I thought, how about making the Accident & Emergency of trip videos? A pre-recorded, well-written and informed video directly made for someone tripping and having a bad time? Something someone could watch, and help talk them down? You could have the video run, get them to follow the advice, and then maybe even link them into tripsit so they can get some direct support afterwards.

Then the ideas started to run. I wouldn't put my own face on such a video just in case it came back on my career. Should I ask someone else to put their face on it? Or instead, how about using a kinect to build a lifelike avatar, and making a relatively easy going animation instead?

Then I thought, why stop there? Yes, you could have the emergency bad trip video, but you could also have a channel that uses the knowledge we've accumulated here (and perhaps other networks like ours such as Shroomery and tripsit) to produce a range of videos that discuss things like:

- Why we have bad trips and how to avoid them
- Set and settings
- Special, focused, and informed videos on DMT, LSD, Shrooms, Mesc, etc.
- Reasons to take a psychedelic drug
- Reasons not to take a psychedelic drug
- Exploration of the transcendental state
- (add more suggestions below)

I think this could be a great project for the community if people can give it the time and support, and we could put out some high-quality, well-informed videos out there which would make the whole topic a lot easier to access. I'm not sure if anything like this has really been done so far, but my search so far for videos seems to just be people in dark bedrooms with a webcam - not the most appealing or trustworthy video. I think there's definitely room for people from the community to pull together, and put together some decent videos all around the subject of quality information about tripping.

What do you all think?

Other group video projects have been proposed and even started here, but because a lot of the members here who have animation skills etc tend to be extremely busy people, we've had a hard time getting much momentum. If you personally wanted to champion this project, rally the support etc and were able to stay on it consistently until it's done, it could very well be possible. Once you got the first one finished it would be easier to get support and contributions for subsequent ones. But I can tell you from direct experience that this kind of thing is a lot easier said than done, and can require an almighty push to make happen. Are you personally prepared for that?

It's an interesting idea with certainly no shortage of things to work out carefully beforehand. Ideas like this have been tossed around here before but usually in regards to extraction videos (not a great idea imo). I like the idea of a video dedicated to harm reduction though...it's pretty risk free and could benefit many--if it could be pulled off right. If people are in the middle of a difficult trip and need support, unfortunately they are way more likely to wind up on youtube than obscure psychedelic chat rooms, as great as they are.

As much as we'd like to think people can just work out issues alone and that 'you always learn more from the bad ones' etc, I think we should acknowledge that this isn't necessarily always the case, specially for new comers and those living in a society that not only labels us criminals but in addition mentally primes us to react negatively to these things from a very early age. Overall I think more support seems needed and will be even more so in the future as users grow. There is so much misinformation circulating and little solid education on both the substances/plants and frameworks/tips/advice for dealing with the experience before, during, and after from those who are already experienced with using them beneficially. I'm surely not the only one here who is convinced the world direly needs these tools, but along with that I think a lot of support is necessary to reduces risks and foster careful, informed use.

I actually made a short video a few months ago after hearing Michio Kaku regurgitate blatant propaganda about psychedelics, and in it quickly show dozens of studies and news articles highlighting some of their potential and how these misconceptions don't hold up etc. We decided to make it an official video for The Nexian and it's mostly ready to go, but one of the artists whose music I used backed out last minute because they thought it was too politically charged a topic, which is understandable, so it's on hold for now until I can find another song that fits as good. But I've been distracted lately, and picky. Nothing comes close so far to the other song but I'll start searching more soon.

I'll PM you the vid to give you an idea. Seeing a continuous stream of articles and studies on psychedelics was very interesting, since hardly anyone is aware of the extent of research that has been done or been able to see a decent amount (but far from all) together in one place, along with the clear fact that even famous mainstream scientists such as Kaku can fall for the propaganda as blindly as anyone else. It also sparked the idea of making a series of similar videos aimed at exploring specific topics or research in the psychedelic sphere that the public isn't well aware of, or just compiling studies on certain psychedelics etc in video format. I should note though that I'm not skilled with video making programs at all, so I'd love for someone with skills to jump on board. A member here was going to go through and improve my video once done, but they're limited on time and so won't be able to pump out a series of informative videos.

Really after making that I think we could do a video focused on harm reduction that doesn't even have to involve a face or even a voice if we want. We could just write what we want to say, and add in some blissful music with fantastic nexus art...

Thanks for the vid, UC. Great work.

Yeah, I wasn't thinking about extraction/smoking/procurement guides for any of the videos - I think that's something where you might run into hot water, and I think it's best to have the information put into words and be there for people to read, but that's just me.

I think for the purpose of the first video, a face with a voice and no music would be best for what I had in mind. The idea being that I think clarity would be essential, and one of the very first things I think it should recommend is to get music that person feels good about playing. This is, of course, open to discussion. As for the rest, we don't really need a face as they will be videos presented to sober people - I just thought a face would be ideal for anyone who's in a dark place. I guess in the long run, it's a question of the resources the community can offer, and our approach will come down entirely to what we can put our hands on.

Guyomech, that's why I wanted to go with the kinect-based animation. All we'd need is for someone to build the main model once, and then whoever has the kinect can animate it simply by acting. The animation editing required afterwards I think would only be slight compared to making each video from scratch. It doesn't even have to be that complicated - we could even make a 2D model which we can animate with acting. I'm not sure exactly how it'd work, but I know it's possible and relatively easy to pull off if people know what they are doing.

As for the text we use for it, my suggestion is that I'd prepare a script, present it to the community for suggested edits, and then I'd run those edits. I'm a journalist (well, editor) with a background in radio as well, so doing the audio shouldn't be too much of an issue, unless we have someone who's got a great voice and can happily do the recording and editing themselves (or just do the recording and then hand over the editing to someone else).

I'd say to get videos to where I imagined them:
- A scriptwriter
- Researchers to back up the writer (which we can source from the forums easily enough)
- A video editor
- A producer to oversee a video and to keep all the pieces in play
- An animator
- Voice actor
- Body actor (with a kinect)
- A sound editor
- Someone to do quality control

That said, we could get someone brave enough to just be the face, which could work if they can record a decent video in a not-too-shabby location, and then we wouldn't need the actors/animators. If we can't source that, I'm more than happy to work in some capacity on vids similar to UCs with the view to do harm reduction. In that case, we just need a voice actor, which I'm happy to provide unless anyone else wants to get involved, a script, a video editor (or team), producer, and sound.

It could also be a case that when we get the ball rolling, we get more people volunteering to play a part, and we can revisit videos and update them with new resources. After all, you can aim for the stars, but you still need to launch off from Earth to begin with.

By the way, aren't there creative commons tracks you could use, or find any other psychedelic musicians who can provide tracks if you approach them? Surely there's a great many trippers out there happy to lend their skills!

The animated character would certainly be more engaging, and in principle the model it once/ kinect it into motion approach sounds nice and easy, but there's really sooo much more to it than that. Someone in the middle of a hard trip might not even be able to read, so a spoken voice could be advantageous. The simplest approach would probably be something like UC mentioned, but with a gentle, appealing female voice reading the script. Nice Nexian art including possibly a couple illustrations if necessary, but really the important thing is to list the steps that an alone person can take to ease the worst effects of a hard trip. So that boils it down to: script, voice recording, image selection, editing. That could be quite doable.

If you're really attached to the animated figure idea, the next step is to search around the Nexus art area for posts by animators, start the dialog with them. Research what's really involved in kinect-based animation, especially the face tracking aspect (I'm guessing that kinect cannot track face movements, that's the next level up in terms of sophistication). Meanwhile we can start talking about a script. We shouldn't let technical hurdles get in the way of creating this potentially valuable video.

Great ideas!

Good point too about them possibly not being able to read text in that state, not sure why that slipped my mind. I think a female voice would be perfect.

I'll have to think about all this but I hope we can get the ball really rolling sooner rather than later.

Yeah, that sounds like a great plan, Guyomech. I reckon keep it simple, and then build on it if we get support from the community. Definitely like the idea of a female voice - would probably work better than my somewhat posh bassy English accent

Okay, I guess putting together a script would be a good start which I'm happy to delegate myself for. I've actually got a few hours to kill on the train tomorrow, so that'll probably be a good window to do a turn and churn something out.

I'll then post it up somewhere on the forums, and ask people for feedback. Hopefully in the process, we can get a woman to lend her soothing tones to the project, and we're half way there.

Maybe for music a medative simple pad like sound in the background would be nice?

The music should definitely be chill, and not too eerie. Got any suggestions?

I would be happy to add such a background sound to the video.. just a positive like heavenly pad sound. it would be quite easy to do.


But for an example of the type of sound im talking about check out Steve Roach. Some of his music is very chill droning sounds that are peacefull and reflective.

I've posted a draft of the script here:

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...m=548217&#post548217

Feedback welcome!