How far can you go with Low Doses?

[The Renaissance Man]

TL;DR - Got a feeling that you can really do A TON of work with low dosages, and that I felt a culture of trying to up the dose ASAP, which may actually not be that productive for 99.9% of people, and that a better approach would be to milk low dosages and increase them over many months or even years, instead of weeks. And sincerely asking you guys what you think about this, I'm open to being 100% wrong.

 

When listening to Leo, and even researching the psychonaut community, I got a feeling that the goal with a new substance is to go as high as possible, while also remaining safe. So you start low, but with the goal of ultimately increasing the dose ASAP to the max you can manage while remaining sane. Maybe that was a distortion of my interpretation, or maybe just a reflection of what looks like Leo's practice, not recognizing his goal is very specific and philosophical in nature.

 

Anyway, after having a low-dose experience, I was really surprised by how much I was able to unpack.

For a dose that with eyes open felt like being sober, and with eyes closed the effects were super subtle, I really got the feeling that you can really push it super far, a lot more than I thought. Both in terms of exploring consciousness and emotional processing.

 

If we approach psychedelics as a tool that you're going to use for multiple years, possibly for the rest of your life, I feel like it makes the most sense to actually try to milk as much as possible from low doses over multiple trips, before ramping it up. And I feel like this can have a whole lot of benefits:

• Making the new state almost entirely understandable
• This can enable you to learn to work with it more masterfully, since you understand how it works
• Lower doses are less overwhelming and scary, if at all, and so they're pleasant and encourage further development
• You can still direct your focus (may require skill), and go into intense territory on your own terms instead of being forced into it
• You can more easily connect the experience to your sober consciousness, possibly allowing you to make huge progress in your sober practice, partially or even totally recreating some parts of the experience while sober

And after you reach the limit with that dosage, you end up with a solid understanding over the substance, skill in directing your awareness and focus, and a series of positive and rewarding and non-scary experiences that you can more easily integrate in life.

And from that experience and skill, you have all the tools to up the dose and truly make a lot of it while still keeping it pleasant, non-traumatizing, safe, and so on.

 

I do think high doses can have their own place, but aside from 0.1% of people, most would probably benefit more from this gradual approach and mindset, and actually develop a terrific skillset for exploration with fewer resources, and can make their medium dose produce the same level of insight as another person's extreme dose. Then there's the 0.1% that may combine the two and go to the extreme, and you can still do that, but a lot more gradually.

 

This is the feeling I've got, I'm not experienced enough to make recommendations, to be clear, I'm here to ASK YOU A QUESTION, because I really don't know. So I'm asking you beautiful people, What is your view and why?

Edited February 21 by The Renaissance Man

[halfknots]

Yes

[Flowerfaeiry]

Dude a majority of my experiences with psychedelics come from low doses. Albeit, a lot of them, but yeah I would say it’s extremely powerful. I am quite sensitive to the substances, however, so small is rather great for me. 

[LifeEnjoyer]

I'm more likely to resist and suffer on low doses. If I take a high dose though there is no chance of NOT surrendering. It's like, BOOM! Instant cosmic consciousness! 

[OBEler]

About which substance are you talking about taking low dose?

[The Renaissance Man]

@OBEler truffles