Nathanial.Dread wrote:I saw a talk by Hamilton at the first Psymposia conference, it was on dissociative anesthetics, although I don't remember him saying all that much interesting stuff.
I feel like sometimes he confuses 'taking drugs' with 'knowing about drugs.' He's got a pretty good grasp of chemistry, especially SARs and basic pharmacology, but there's only so much you can get from that.
He doesn't seem to explore any deeper than the surface level, both in terms of the biology or the philosophical implications. He reminds me of the kids I went to college with who could tell you all about the different functional groups you could put on DMT and what effects the new RC had but never explored any farther than that - their real interest was fundamentally getting high, not the 'how' or 'why' the drugs worked the way they did.
Why does the addition of a 5-MeO group to DMT decrease the visual nature of the experience but up the ego-death factor? Who cares, it's just a different high.
Blessings
~ND
I've gotten this feeling as well...
He does generally remain "on the surface" with some of these things...
I feel Hamilton missed a good deal during the Timothy Wyllie interview in the Phencyclidine episode...
Timothy Wyllie actually expressed some pretty deep concepts...
When he was talking about other entheogens, and he said with PCP you "go up into the experience with it" or something to that effect, he was saying you take your ego with you, rather than the ego death or ego dissolving that occurs with other entheogens...
Also, when Wyllie said "sand dollars are holographic" Hamilton shrugged it off as crazy "drug talk" when in reality it's a concept on the cutting edge of science and math...
Let me explain: he was saying that like a hologram, it's fractal in the sense that the whole of information is present in every piece once broken off...
Here, this May help:
Quote:To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film.
When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.
The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms.
If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose.
Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole. http://rense.com/general69/holoff.htm So he was saying sand dollars are fractal in nature, and thus are in a sense "holographic"
He then applied this concept to the whole of the sea breaking off novel information into these sand dollar fractals, then he speculated that dolphin's sonar could hit these objects, (just like the laser in the hologram), and information or an image would be presented to the dolphin...
While there may not be much basis in reality, these were deep and scientifically based concepts, and I feel Hamilton dismissed them...
Specially the ego statement...
I never believed in a "contact high" before, but I experienced one while watching the Tim Wyllie in the "positive pcp" episode, I experienced the high with him, ans strangely enough I felt "high" like I had taken a small dose of Phencyclidine or ketamine for the rest of the day...
I think that Wyllie is evidence that the Entheogenic substance is not important, PCP is a terrible compound for most, yet some can derive these amazing ideas, experiance, and art from it...he is finding an entheogenic route through whatever experiance which he is presented...
Quote:shamans are are simply curious people. Intellectuals of a certain type. In Australian aboriginal slang, a shaman is called a “clever fellow”. If someone says “I’m a clever fellow”, they mean, you know, I’m a shaman. Well, that’s all it is – it’s somebody who pays attention to how things actually work, and sort of transcends the culture by that means. It’s a weird paradox. It’s that the shamans, who are the keepers of the cultural values, are also necessarily the keepers of the secrets of the theatrics of the cultural values, and so they live their lives in the light of the knowledge that it all rests on showbiz. You know, everybody else is a true believer, but these are the image-makers, the people who actually pull the strings and control the evolution of the mythologies. And in a way, it’s a situation of alienation. -terence mckenna
in shamanic societies, the shaman would select his apprentice based on certain traits...I see these traits in Tim Wyllie, as well as Alexander shulgin, and terence mckenna, and so on...
But im going too far off topic.
As far as the "how and why" and gaining deeper meaning from these compounds, as a chemistry student and apprentice, the reactions I facilitate in the lab are just as much psychological as they are physical, To assume that certain chemists are not obtaining something deeply psychological from facilitating chemical reactions may be a mistake...
Take the excerpt below, but replace alchemist with "organic chemist", for myself at least these same alchemical psychological processes are occurring as you mix, dissolve, reflux, stir, evaporate, separate, crystalize, etc..
Quote: You all know what mercury looks like. At room temperature it's a silvery liquid that flows, it's like a mirror. For the alchemists, and this is just a very short exercise in alchemical thinking, for the alchemists mercury was mind itself, in a sense, and by tracing through the steps by which they reached that conclusion you can have a taste of what alchemical thinking was about, mercury takes the form of its container. If I pour mercury into a cup, it takes the shape of the cup, if I pour it into a test tube, it takes the shape of the test tube. This taking the shape of its container is a quality of mind and yet here it is present in a flowing, silvery metal. The other thing is, mercury is a reflecting surface. You never see mercury, what you see is the world which surrounds it, which is perfectly reflected in its surface like a moving mirror, you see. And then if you've ever, as a child, I mean I have no idea how toxic this process is, but I spent a lot of time as a child hounding my grandfather for his hearing aid batteries which I would then smash with a hammer and get the mercury out and collect it in little, bottles and carry it around with me. Well, the wonderful thing about mercury is when you pour it out on a surface and it beads up, then each bead of mercury becomes a little microcosm of the world. And yet the mercury flows back together into a unity. Well, as a child I had not yet imbibed the, assumptions and the ontology of science. I was functioning as an alchemist. For me, mercury was this fascinating magical substance, onto which I could project the contents of my mind. And a child playing with mercury is an alchemist hard at work, no doubt about it. -terence mckenna
Shulgin called depictions of molecules "dirty pictures" due to how intimately he felt it allowed him to know the molecules, and it does, you deeply knows the ins and ours of these molecules...
Quote:Orbitals are for mathematicians, organic chemistry is for people who like to cook! -Alexander shulgin
I can tell shulgin recieves this same alchemical joy from working in the lab, more so than in the notebook...
SAR is crucial for chemists and pharmacology researchers looking to discover new medicines.
SAR is great research, you have to understand the "how and why" in SAR, as you must understand your receptor target in relation to your molecule, look at the 5HT2c receptor, it is composed of bundle of seven transmembrane alpha helices, when serotonin interacts with this receptor it bends the helices into a specific shape, now when you take a compound that is structurally identical to serotonin aside from some added substitutions, it will interact with the receptor, yet the substitutions bend the alpha helical proteins into a slightly different shape, eliciting a slightly different response...
It also helps explain activity vs inactivity of similar compounds
LSD has 4 Stereoisomers, but only one is active...the orientation of the diethylcarboxyamido grouping off of position 8 determines activity..
as a result of the asymmetric carbon atoms at positions 5 and 8 of the LSD molecule only the d-LSD isomer is active, Look at d-LSD, look at the diethylcarboxyamido grouping where it connects to ring D (position 8 ) as you can see its is pointing "towards" you, while the asymmetric carbon with the hydrogen atom attached off of position 8 is pointing "away" from you, it's this specific orientation which allows d-LSD to fit into a "special pocket" on the receptor site, and this is also the explanation as to why the other 3 stereoisomers of LSD are not active, because these key positions are orientated in the opposite direction. For example, look at l-LSD, at the point where the diethylcarboxyamido grouping meets ring D you can see that it's pointing "away" from you this time, while the asymmetric carbon with the hydrogen atom attached off of position 8 is "towards" you, thus it would be unable to fit into this "special pocket" of alpha-helical proteins of the receptor site...
It all has to do with the orientation of key positions on the molecule in relation to the receptor site...
The implications, philosophical aspects, and meaning of the experience is still a huge interest of mine, more than half my posts are in relation to this, but it's always quite personal, it would not make much sense for me to tell you what a drug or an experience means to you, right? I can tell you what it means to me, or what these compounds do to me, but that may have absolutely no relation to what the experience would mean to you, or phenomenonologically what the compound would do to you you...
Quote:Metaphorically, DMT is like an intellectual black hole in that once one knows about it, it is very hard for others to understand what one is talking about. One cannot be heard. The more one is able to articulate what it is, the less others are able to understand. This is why I think people who attain enlightenment, if we may for a moment comap these two, are silent. They are silent because we cannot understand them. Why the phenomenon of tryptamine ecstasy has not been looked at by scientists, thrill seekers, or anyone else, I am not sure, but I recommend it to your attention.
~ Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival
This may be why most would prefer not to discuss the deeper implications of the experience, some would rather stay silent than be misunderstood.
Or look at Timothy Wyllie in the interview with Hamilton, he tried to.express some deep concepts and was more or less shrugged off as a "crazy"
This has gotten way to long and I keep getting distracted, so I'll stop, even though I had more to say...
-eg