An Outerworldly Experience

AMT and DXM

Substances: AMT, DXM

That means that everything else is sigma-activity. OK. I'll just accept that. But mixing this hodge-podge with something as complex as acid (which has at least two different modes of operation itself) leads to results that I find difficult to predict or explain.

Now NMDA-blockage essentially interrupts connections in the brain - in a sense you're disconnecting neurons from each other. If there was a signal traveling along that line, it'll stop. That's why you can only think simpler and simpler patterns, since complex patterns just have their details cut off. Think of cutting the brain into a hundred (or a thousand or whatever) little unconnected compartments - each of them not big enough to hold something complex, and too few of them to form a complex net by themselves (well, maybe not "unconnected" compartments - lets say compartments that are only loosely connected compared with the density of connection inside them. You start off with a complex net and randomly cut strands and you get areas that are relatively unconnected from each other.). And if you take enough nitrous, then the process that is "you" effecively stops (and what you remember of nitrous is the process of becoming aware again, as you aquire the ability to form more and more complex patterns in the brain.) And if you're already on another drug (weed for example), then a lot of complexity is already stripped from the pattern "you" and hence you get deeper faster and take more time coming back (i.e. remember more of it). OK, so far this is straightforward.

Now if you combine this with a postsynaptic agonist, i.e. something that'll keep your neurons firing even though their connection to the rest of the brain is cut off, you'll essentially keep these compartments "on life support" - the complex process "you" breaks down, but it doesn't stop: it just goes on as a thousand (or whatever) much much simpler, unconnected processes.

Or so goes the theory.

Only one way to find out: Combine a 5HT agonist (aka AMT for example) with an NMDA-blocker (aka DXM for want of something cleaner like ketamine) and see what happens. So you drop 40mg of AMT (that's on the lowish side, but we're shooting for synergy here), wait two hours, then put 500mg (7.5mg/kg) DXM on top. (Interestingly, both unscheduled substances...)

Well - I guess I "expected" my 'self' to be blown to bits, but the result was quite amazing anyways. "mind-blowing" so to speak, and at times frighteningly so (and I'm not easily scared). For the first hour or two, I simply didn't know what or who I was -- I was whatever bits or pieces were floating around in the brain. For a while I was a book, for example: opening so that people can read me, then closing again. Not the most interesting thing one can be, but as a book I didn't care much for action.

[I could, at all times, open my eyes and simply identify as "this body", but "this body" is a pretty simple and dumb thing without something running in the brain up there - not really any more intelligent than a book. So I kept my eyes closed most of the time to keep the options open of what I could be...]

Then for another 3 or 4 hours (AMT lasts long, remember) I (i.e. some piece of "I") frantically tried to assemble something like a "self" from all the floating bits and pieces, until I arrived at something that I felt I could trust to speak and act for the whole thing. Before that point, I could not answer a question like "do you want some music" (I had a sitter around), because there was never a coherent "self" that would've represented all of the splinters to formulate a preference.

Let's say that I learned a lot about the way the human mind works, and also about the way it feels when this harmless sounding "synergy" kicks in. The difference between theory and practice, I suppose.

Now that I've gone through it once and it hasn't killed me, I find the experience quite interesting and enlightening. In hindsight, this combo was probably safer than any NMDA-blocker alone, since there is no way that there's no pattern in my brain. (A certain very simple pattern has to be retained at all times to keep breath going. All other patterns can be disrupted, but that one should be left alone if possible. Ever read of people who combine drug X with drug Y and "their breath stopped"? That's people who didn't retain this particular pattern - for whatever reason...). With something like AMT floating around, there's always some cluster of neurons that can deliver a simple dualism ("in", then "out", then repeat - the pattern necessary for breathing).

Certainly not for the faint of heart. Then again: no intense experience is, I suppose.

And the research continues...