outlandish

Yes that is indeed rare. How did that go? What was your ROA (route of administration)?

Tempeh for sure

Most people haven't taken psychedelics, most people who've taken psychedelics haven't taken 5-MeO-DMT, most people who've taken 5-MeO-DMT don't take it as their first psychedelic experience. It's unconventional to start out with 5-MeO-DMT, therefore it's not exactly recommended. That doesn't mean you couldn't find a way to make it work, it's just that you're talking about a very fringe way of doing it, so there's not much community history/experience to draw upon with this approach. I would recommend you try a more conventional psychedelic first, like mushrooms or LSD, but if that's not possible, there's no real reason why you can't take 5-MeO-DMT first. Just make sure you have a solid foundation in meditation, and then start out with very low doses and work your way up to gain experience and a feel for the compound.

Yep an acid trip is a big commitment! Those 12 hours feel even longer than 12h too, because of the time-dilating nature of the drug. Some of the things I like to do: have some good music ready to go, ideally something that I know is going to be great to listen to, but that I'm not super familiar with yet, so it still sounds fresh. It's good to have a few activities lined up, like being able to go for a walk, explore a part of the city you've never been, go for a run in nature. This is for when you're very comfortable in the trip and with tripping, to be conducted with safety! Have your outside clothes ready to go so you don't have to figure that out while tripping. Friends are good to be with, conversations can be amazing. Meditation is next level while tripping. It's funny because it can be harder and easier at the same time. If can go deeper and you can also get more wildly distracted. You'll likely need to eat at some point, so plan for that. You'll probably have appetite for pretty gentle foods It's nice to drink a tea of ginger or mint etc keep a notepad or something handy to scratch down ideas, insights etc If you have a lover you are tripping with it is amazing to have sex on the end of an acid trip

It's good of you to share this information, it might prevent someone else from making the same mistake. Take it easy, take care, be well.

Totally agree. Let your friends come to their own conclusions and have their experience, without trying to guide them in any way at all. Everyone has their own path and you can't force a flower to bloom by peeling open the bud. If they are ready for some deep insights, they will come to them on their own, and it will be more meaningful to experience them first hand.

Yeah, he's the master of that! Something I'd like to get better at myself.

Looking at photos is good enough for this. Sounds like you're not obese or anything. Excess bodyfat can cause reduced testosterone or increased estrogen, but 20% isn't so much by modern standards. Maybe you just have less sex drive than other people and it doesn't have to be considered a problem. Sometimes fretting about something like this can just exaggerate the problem. Maybe just let it be and don't worry about it too much.

You might want to talk to an actual doctor and get some blood work done. Avoid plastics, flame retardants and pesticides. Some of these can be hormone disruptors Like others have said try ditching soy because of the hormone disruptors How's your bodyfat level? 5-10 eggs seems excessive to me

The idea of inorganic vs organic minerals is a little bit vague, but you can't go wrong by generally sourcing your nutrition from whole foods rather than supplements, pills etc. As far as remineralizing your water goes, you'll have to DYOR in that department because it's not something I've ever bothered doing (since I don't demineralize it in the first place). I think calcium, sodium, iron, zinc are the main ones to be thinking about. Maybe potassium too? Just because it forms rocks/crystals doesn't mean your body can't use it btw. There are lots of nutrients that will do that, that our body's have no problem absorbing. If you take the water out of a mineral solution (whether "inorganic" or "organic") it will form solids and crystals.

@khalifa Ah I see, I had never heard of that. Sounds like a good fallback if you're having troubles with appetite. As far as fasting goes, you're going to hear a lot of different advice from different people, so ultimately you're going to have to make the call yourself. IMO you don't need to be fasting right now, you need to emphasize stability for your organism, avoid anything that will shock. A steady flow of good, consistent nutrition and moderate exercise over the long course will help stabilize your whole system. You don't need purification, you've had plenty of that ( - maybe too much!), or autophagy right now. As a general rule of thumb: Excessive purity is toxic.

@khalifa Good to hear you're living clean. What's huel? I don't think you should be fasting right now, your body has had its world turned upside down. Eating healthy, clean, and steadily will be better for stabilizing your system. No cannabis then right?

It's good to hear that the overall trajectory is that the HPPD/PTSD is weakening over time, and that you are getting some good rest from time to time. That will shoehorn you back into a healthy cycle. Are you drinking any coffee or taking any stimulants? Are you using cannabis? Any other drugs you're taking? You should abstain from cannabis completely and avoid any caffeine past mid-day. Skip stimulants too if you're taking any, obviously. It's probably something you've looked at, but just thought I'd mention. It sounds to me like you could benefit from a bit more socialization, do you have family nearby? I know you're content with it, but sometimes your being needs social activity even when you don't recognize it. We humans are social creatures, and the social net helps to stabilize us, in a good way.

@dinone I don't see much medical research that would agree with that, and that article is pretty thin on references and heavy on hand-waving. There might be something to it, but there probably isn't. That blog in general has a lot of red flags. If someone were to insist on drinking distilled water, it would probably be a good idea to remineralize it before imbibing, with some kind of gentle healthy combination of nutrients/salts/vitamins. That way you'd be playing it safe on all fronts. Ironically, a lot of distillers, at least in the old days, had leaded solder joints in them, and were prone to bacterial growth. I'm sure you can find clean ones these days, but you'd still want to be vigilant. Another irony in the whole snooty drinking water thing is that a lot of people buy water in plastic bottles, which is absolutely atrocious for the environment, and the plastic leaches into the drinking water as well, contaminating it with hormone-mimicking compounds and so on.

You should definitely drop the weed if you do decide to try psychedelics again. Anecdotally, it seems that people who combine weed+psychedelics are far more likely to have intense, dark, disturbing trips that can potentially be harmful to mental health. I think (this is just my opinion and you'll have to assess this for yourself) that if you stopped smoking weed, and very carefully experimented with well measured doses of psychedelics, well spread out over time, you could be fine and possibly even bring some healing to your bipolar disorder. In studies, users of psychedelics tend to show higher degrees of mental health than non-users. This doesn't mean there aren't outliers who test worse though, so it is possible that you'd be playing with fire. But on average at least, using psychedelics tends to be beneficial to mental health. This has been my own experience and observation as well. If you do try psychedelics again, you're going to want to really pay attention to mindset and setting. You might consider working with a guide.

What is Real? by Adam Becker is a really good book on the history and politics of quantum physics and it's interpretation. I recommend anyone with an interest in the area to check it out. It really puts the science around quantum physics into context and perspective. I like the quantum multiverse interpretation, it's the only one that makes sense to me. The Copenhagen interpretation has a problem where you have to find some boundary between quantum scale and normal scale, which seems artificial, and you have to kludge in the observer thing. Bohm's wave guide interpretation seems contrived, but I can't really remember the specifics of what I didn't like about it off hand... It's very mysterious, but I like what you had to say @crab12. Even if we rationally knew 100% what's going on there, would our experience of existence be any different? I think Bohr and the Copenhagen people are/were satisfied with "it's weird and here's the math", maybe the quantum level really just is the limit of what is knowable about reality.

You can totally meditate while running. It's easier than sitting meditation. This is because it's easier to be fully present when you're doing something than when you're not doing anything. You can practice just running, not thinking about other things, always bringing awareness back to your present action action of running. So yes, you can meditate while running treadmill, or any running, but It's still a good idea to practice sitting meditation because it's so damn hard.

Lol totally The topic of psychedelics makes many people very uncomfortable. Over the years I've learned to avoid mentioning them most of the time, sadly.

@SidBySide I've struggled with this a lot myself. There are a few things that give me some peace: Things have never been better for humanity - we are extremely lucky to be living at what is peak humanity. The level of global peace, health, lifespan, information, education, human rights, has never been higher at any point in history. It can all improve, but we are currently living better than kings did 300 years ago, even 100 years ago. It can and will get even better Things aren't so good for most non-human creatures, it's very true. We really are chewing up our planet. But don't forget that life has bounced back on this earth after much worse encounters than with Homo sapiens. The planet has been decimated in the past by colossal meteor impacts that threw so much dust into the air that almost everything died, mass extinctions that make our worst-case scenario seem like a picnic. Super volcanos, and other catastrophes that make what we're doing seem mild. We won't end all life on earth, and we won't wipe ourselves out. We could definitely turn the planet into something of a biological desert if we don't watch it. The earth needs people like you if there is to be any hope for protecting the ecosystems that make our planet a joyous garden to live in. We won't erase our impact, but we can learn to be good stewards for this amazing place. We really need to take action and steer humanity in the right direction. The less we do that, the more bleak things look in the future. But no matter how bleak it gets, life will go on. We just might make it a very sterile place if we don't watch it.

Gays have kids too, but it's true that homosexuals have lower average fecundity than the heterosexuals. That's why major religions and dominant cultures tend to come down so hard on homosexuality, it's counter to the survival of the tribe, when that tribe is competing in numbers with the next one. But at this stage of the earths development, it's vital to the survival and thrival of humanity as a whole that we abandon these old negative attitudes towards gays.

Oh that means she's in love with you jk Don't worry about it, don't read into it too much. Just let it go, and talk with her.

@The Don girls get awkward too lol! Awkwardness can be a feedback cycle.

The Power Of Letting Go

Don't look for techniques, I don't think there are too many because it just comes down to practice. Just talk to girls more and more and eventually it's less of a big deal. Talk to girls, slow down, talk to girls, be chill. If things get awkward just remember that they don't have to remain awkward. Awkwardness is a tension, and if you can come up with a stupid joke it can break that tension, sometimes a sense of humour helps a lot. Or it could make it even more awkward and then you have a great story to tell about that time you were so fucking awkward. It's normal to have some awkward social interactions, just move on. Just make sure that if you're getting awkward that you are being non-threatening. That's the most important thing. Stay aware of her space, don't close her in or anything like that. If you're awkward and clearly without ill intention, some girls will take it as a compliment. I'm old and have spent so much time around really beautiful women, dated a few really hot women, and have an extremely attractive wife, but I still get awkward around attractive women sometimes. So it never goes away completely. It's fine, you can embrace the tension, it's there for a reason, because there is energy, and then just let it go (see Leo's vid!) as much as you can. And as much as you can't, that's ok too, it's part of being human.

I think your "hardcore christian" and cultural background has made you very scared of being gay, and that has built it up into a bit of a fetish for you. You might be a bit gay, or fully gay, or maybe not even gay at all but built up this complex. It sounds like you're going to have to experiment to really find out what you're into. It's going to be hard given your cultural programming, but I think once you give up resistance and accept the possibility you're going to have a much easier time. It's OK if you're gay, it's also OK if you're not, it's OK to not have to define it either way, and just be into what you're into.