Hello, SWIM is excited to join this forum as it continues a rapid growth he began this summer at the festival Lightning in a Bottle. While he did not explore any psychedelics while there, SWOM fell in love with culture. SWIM is very very new to this a new world. Luckily, he is a fast learner and very excited to be a part of such an awesome community to help foster a safe environment for his exploration. SWIM is a life science guy and very interested in healthy lifestyle choices. As he learns more, he see how these two passions will likely end up meshing very quickly as they have both made me healthier, one mentally, one physically.

Through his life science education, SWIM is excited to bring a limited level of scientific background to this community, which is exciting because he has turned to this forum often for advice over the past few months and has really enjoyed the scientific emphasis in much of it. It's also very cool to be joining this at a time when this culture is seemingly having a rebirth, as shown by the need for pulsing as well as some recent surveys and studies.

SWIM use to be kind of a "typical frat douche," but he is learning and growing and changing quickly. He doesn't come from a background with much support for this culture so his knowledge of a lot of jargon and other semi-basic stuff is very suspect still.

Thanks for reading!

Welcome to the community! I'm new here as well. It's great to see you're interested in a healthy lifestyle. As such I believe you will benefit alot from this community as psychedelics tend to foster good lifestyle choices through their teachings. If you want to chat/want a friend feel free to PM me

By the way, SWIMming doesn't do anything to provide security or anonymity. If you still want to use it go ahead, but I thought you should know that it is unnecessary.

Welcome to this great community. I saw you mentioned mental and physical health and drugs, I want to say a few things about that based on what I think I have learned during my time here.

I'm starting to think that mental and physical health are the same thing. They are integrated. You eat addictive fat and sugar and you brain changes, making you a lot more likely to become a couch potato. If you work out, you release endogenous drugs that in turn affect your brain, etc.

Also, I'm arriving at the conclusion that drugs are an essential part of health. There is no such thing as not taking drugs. Look at serotonin and psilocibin below. Can anyone say with a straight face "I don't take drugs" with a brain soaked in serotonin? I heard that praying can change serotonin levels, so in a deep fundamental way, praying is like taking drugs.

We are an integrated chemical and spiritual entity. Phyisical, mental, Spiritual health are all interrelated with each other and trough the drugs and chemicals we either produce in our body's or the ones we eat.

Recent research has shown the positive neurological effects of psychedelics (increased dentritic growth and development of). These observations partly explain the outcomes of other research measuring improvement to depression and reduction to tobacco addiction.

Below are diagrams of serotonin (endogenous for humans) and bufotenin (endogenous other life forms). Anyone who says "I don't use drugs" should maybe rethink this statement after simply looking at the two molecules.

As much as I agree with the theme of your comment I think it is important that we remember that the brain is extremely complex. Due to its precision, the slight difference in structure between molecules, can have a massive impact on the action of a drug. Although I agree that certain drugs are crucial towards the development of the human race (or even life as a whole if you want to extend upon the notion), I think it is important that we remember that our brains utilize specific chemicals such as serotonin for a purpose. The fundamental concept of using drugs (as defined by the society) indirectly refers to the addition of drugs which our own brains do not produce. So yes, we are all technically on drugs, but one molecule versus another, with a slight alteration, can produce vastly different results within the brain.

I guess really what I'm getting at is that despite all being on drugs, we can't treat drugs such as bufotenin or other molecules similar to/which mimic serotonin, as though they will have the same effects on the brain as serotonin. The profile of drugs that we add into our brains are very different and unusual since the brain is unfamiliar with them.

Hi and welcome You don't really need to use the term "SWIM" here. It makes reading posts less personal and nothing will happen even if you think you are incriminating yourself.