Hate The Drug / Love The Music

From the "Bands you keep trying to like but can't get into" thread:

lol, I don't do 420 listens b/c I mostly have a bad paranoid time rather than a fun chill time, but I could definitely see it working.

― emil.y, Tuesday, 6 October 2020 16:52 bookmarkflaglink

Glad it’s not just me. Surely there’s an ILX support group thread for people who like the idea of weed but are incapable of not going from zero to dark whenever they smoke it. I do love how music sounds on weed and I seriously envy people who can be blazed all the time while avoiding gazing into the dark abyss of their soul but I inevitably start hearing weird shit in the music (even instrumental music) and having bad thoughts, no matter what strain I smoke.

― Paul Ponzi, Tuesday, 6 October 2020 22:04 bookmarkflaglink

Like, I listen to a ton of overtly stoner music, but I absolutely cannot take what cannabis does to my psyche.

There have got to be other drug / music combinations where music is intended to be listened to on a drug but you... do not get along with that drug. (We've talked about this a little on one of the psych threads recently...)

Just a brief plea to keep things chill here: this thread is for your personal experiences. It is not a thread for ~drugs are GREBT!!!~ proselytising or ~all drugs are TERRIBLE you horrible monsters~ demonising, though please stay of the individual local laws of various posters' countries and understand that your laws may not be the same.

It is a source of great mystery and confusion and shame to me, that I love nothing more in this world than wibbling, repetitive beats, but Ecstasy, as a drug, does absolutely *nothing* for me and I have always wondered how my life would be different if it had.

Have to admit I didn't really get proper dance music until I tried E for the first time, and then it all clicked. I was converted overnight.

But I've often heard people remark half-jokingly about certain types of house/techno: "You have to be on drugs to like this music", which... well maybe there's a kernel of truth in there - not saying you HAVE to; they're are plenty of examples of teetotal techno-heads. But now, of course, I can happily listen to dance music without being off my box, while admitting that being in the right set and setting on the right substances were in many ways a gateway towards me appreciating these sounds in the first place.

Similar to my first experiences with w33d and getting into reggae, doom metal, IDM at the same time (the two are entertwined) - I'm p sure that at that young age it opened my ears up and made me less close-minded about what it is I like about music, and what I look for.

As for the question; I'm not really sure I have a direct answer. I mean, I was listening to Alice In Chains last night and I felt like I could empathise with the lyrics without having ever tried heroin.

But how much music is necessarily intended to be listened to on a drug? Certainly a lot of music is designed for the dancefloor, even radio pop music, and therefore alcohol could possibly play a part. But they play I Gotta Feeling on the radio to parents on the Monday morning school run, which is contextually bonkers ("Tonight's gonna be a good night"? Unless you're singing about dozing off to Brooklyn 99, I'm not sure).

The most obvious cliched one is reggae/dub + w33d, which I kind of agree is kinda like steak and chips. It just seems to help make my mind focus on bass + echo in a particular way; turns the background chug into something more 3D. But I've listened to dub not stoned and it's not that I don't appreciate it.

Are there examples of music which really has been created by design to be listened to on a specific drug and (presumably) in no other state?

Plenty of dance music, arguably - but how much of it is "This would sound GREAT in a big club" as opposed to "This would sound GREAT on E / K"?

I think there's sometimes a presumption (especially among tee-totallers) that drink/drugs are the ultimate aim as opposed to a sideline. For example, I have friends who don't drink and have grown to associate the idea of going to the pub with people getting smashed - possibly because of formative experiences, I dunno. But it's like the concept of going to the pub to enjoy time with other people in a convivial setting doesn't occur to them: As far as they're concerned, people go to pubs to get drunk and clubs to take drugs.

honestly I would blaze up and listen to music all day were it not for the fact that it causes me to snack like a bear prepping for hibernation. not helpful!!

keep thinking misreading this as a Roxy Music thread

Good thread idea!

As I wrote above, I keep trying with cannabis because music - especially reggae and dance music, both of which I love - irrefutably sounds better when you are baked. If I could just turn off the rest of my brain, I'd smoke a lot more. There are dispensaries where I live and I will occasionally pick up some flower or edibles because I want desperately to enjoy the positive aspects of cannabis without all the negative ones, but it's such a fragile balance.

Someone on the original thread suggested microdosing, which I have done successfully (usually in 2.5-5mg doses via mints), but the effect is so minimal that I often forget that I took anything. And yet, if I bump up to 7.5, I get wiggy.

I have always heard that indica produces fewer psychological effects than sativa so I've always gone for indica dominant strains, but I'm wondering if my brain chemistry is such that I should try a true sativa (possibly one with a lower THC level?). I love the idea of being creative and "up" - I have historically loved taking amphetamines and such - but I really want to avoid psychological collapse.

There have been studies about the anxiety-and-paranoia thing and cannabis, of course, and lots of external factors about why some lucky people can take a huge bong rip and go about their day, while others (like me) take a single hit of ACDC and spend the afternoon under the blankets, chewing on peppercorn, and waiting for it to be over. There's something about where the THC hits your brain (the front or the back, or something), as well as obvious stuff like preexisting anxiety and depression issues. I dunno. But I'd love to figure it out!

Ecstasy, as a drug, does absolutely *nothing* for me

Same - well nothing or paranoia, 100% the reverse of the 'open to the love of the universe and fellow humans' experience that everyone else seemed to have. the one time i can remember that i took it in a musical setting was for the warp 10th anniverary party; i recall listening to autechre, teeth grinding away, not feeling much, the set finished i thought 'what? they've only been playing for 5 minutes'.

Here's a thing that would be really helpful to me, as someone for whom cannabis is "absolutely not, the carpets will start shouting at me" hell, and for whom ecstacy is "people take drugs to feel like this? I have to take drugs to *not* feel like this!"

Could you explain, what exactly changes in the music listening experience, on these chemicals? How is music altered? How are your perceptions altered?

I suspect there is a really big correlation between 'neurotypicality' (whatever that is) and non-neurotypicality (autisms, ADHD/ADD, anxiety) that has a lot to do with brain chemistry and brain states which means either "I don't *get* that effect" or "that effect is nothing new to me?" or "this triggers unexpected side effects which make the experience not worth it" - which colour the experiences?

So, if you don't mind talking about this on a public forum - getting the people for whom the drugs *do* work, to talk about the specific ways in which they *work*, might be helpful for us - for whom they don't work to also discuss and compare our experiences, and work out why?

Like, I am 100% convinced that my love of super-repetitive, droney music with lots of build is 100% about autism for me, it is audio stimming, and therefore amazing. And I do think that for people who are *not* autistic, a lot of the way they describe ecstacy and some aspects of cannabis, it *sounds* like it puts them in a kind of "all gates open, everything all at once, no filters at all" state which is very similar to how many autistic people experience the world ~all the time~.

Also, if there's a mod about, please, can you maybe de-index this thread?

If you're especially sensitive to w33d it might be helpful to combine it with meditation in a quiet place for at least say 10-20 minutes as it first comes on. Sit there and feel / breathe through the stuff that comes up. You'll feel when it's done. Then it's time to stick the music in or whatever. I do think of it as a wonderful medicine these days that can also be a super fun companion but it has to be approached with respect.

* music on or whatever

Like, I listen to a ton of overtly stoner music, but I absolutely cannot take what cannabis does to my psyche.

Same for me, these days, but I wonder if I would like the more psychedelic end of my music interest without ever having been a stoner, as I was for a couple of years in my teens.

It's similar with ecstasy, a drug I love but take maybe once a year now. I can certainly hugely enjoy banging dance music without being under the influence of it, stone cold sober in fact, but did my former considerable use open up the requisite neural pathways? I suspect it at least sped up my understanding of the genre(s).

I don't like the effects of weed nor pungent stench of it. Sheeit it is so strong these days I can smell it off people smoking it 90 metres in front of me up the road. When my arsehole neighbor smokes it in his back yard he might as well blow the smoke into a bellows and pump it straight into my kitchen window. It can enhance music yes, but I can't live with effects of it and the smell of it makes me feel physically ill.

great thread idea, count me among those for whom weed never quite worked like i wished it was supposed to. i only ever smoked when it was around in social situations, and subsequently would have an awful miserable paranoid time being high & surrounded by people. the only time i ever had an enjoyable experience while was the one and only time i ever smoked it while home alone, i stayed up all night making mixtapes it was rad. now i'm older, i probably havent smoked in fifteen years, and its been on my mind again. i've got a nice home to hang out in, a better record collection, more free time at night. what i'm saying is... i think i might be ready to take a smoke of weed and listen to a jazz record.

Could you explain, what exactly changes in the music listening experience, on these chemicals? How is music altered? How are your perceptions altered?

Think I touched on this upthread, but especially when I was younger, I often noticed the 'feel' of the music change if I smoked w33d. Dub music, for example, can be pretty boring and repetitive after a while. Smoking meant I could train my mind less on what was happening peripherally and focus on what's bubbling under there: The characteristics and qualities of the bassline, the way the snare echo recedes into the rest of the music. One time as a student I listened to Autechre's EP7 in the dark on headphones after getting very high and just letting the mind cinema play-out - it was very visual.

As for E, music can accompany a body-high, the feeling of rushing, your finger-tips tingling as the music rises and falls.

In my experience, coke makes most music sound terrible - the only thing people are interested in is the sound of their own voices, and that's partly why I've never been a fan.

w33d for me quite simply makes my brain focus more on sonics and less on any extra-sonic aspects (like the meaning of lyrics for instance)

Could you explain, what exactly changes in the music listening experience, on these chemicals? How is music altered? How are your perceptions altered?

This is the only part of weed that really works for me, and the reason I keep trying to use it recreationally. I hear music completely differently on cannabis. I can hone in on individual parts in ways I usually can't. Jazz is one of my favorite things to listen to stoned because, even as a non musician, I can hear the decisions being made. I follow just the bass line or just the piano and I marvel at the quick thinking and the virtuosity. I also feel like a lot of music is encoded with little easter eggs for people who are high. There are some mixing decisions that I refuse to believe are anything but winks to stoners.

I suspect there is a really big correlation between 'neurotypicality' (whatever that is) and non-neurotypicality (autisms, ADHD/ADD, anxiety) that has a lot to do with brain chemistry and brain states which means either "I don't *get* that effect" or "that effect is nothing new to me?" or "this triggers unexpected side effects which make the experience not worth it" - which colour the experiences?

I think you are on to something. I suffer from ADHD and have taken a daily low dose Adderall for many years. It's a great drug for me. As far as I know I am not autistic but I've never been tested and I had a good friend who once suspected that I was mildly autistic based on certain habits I have (won't go into that here).

If anyone itt who has ADD, ADHD, anxiety, or autism and also smokes weed without a problem feels comfortable discussing it, I for one would love to hear about your experiences.

These are the kind of threads that make me wish this forum allowed for a tad more anonymity.

I’m straight, not like Spotify Hipster Johnny, so pretty much most music except for that one band from SF.

I suspect there is a really big correlation between 'neurotypicality' (whatever that is) and non-neurotypicality (autisms, ADHD/ADD, anxiety) that has a lot to do with brain chemistry and brain states which means either "I don't *get* that effect" or "that effect is nothing new to me?" or "this triggers unexpected side effects which make the experience not worth it" - which colour the experiences?

this interests me too.

trying E for the first time really was an epiphany, far beyond "I like dance music now". I felt like neural pathways being created - a very sudden realisation of "Hey, actually talking to strangers in a social context ISN'T so bad!"; "People are all largely similar in terms of hopes and dreams, no matter who they are"; and "maybe I'm not so different from everyone else after all".

That was the day I went from being a highly-reticent and introverted person who exhibited a lot of neuro-diverse behaviour to a somewhat more extroverted person (at least on the surface - there's still a whole bundle of things going on inside).

I come from a country where cannabis use is quasi nonexistent and even though I grew up in North America, part of me has always viewed it as that one facet of ‘Western’ (scare quotes intended) culture I’ll never get it, so as with most drugs, I don’t feel like I’m really missing out.

Anyway, OP snipped the third post after emil.y and Paul’s, so to reiterate: every time I try smoking up, my anxiety goes through the roof and the rare benefits I get out of the experience are overwhelmed by the sheer awfulness of a death-defying heart rate, even at lower doses. Weed just isn’t for everyone and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Like, my best weed-related memories are ‘I managed to look and act normal despite the fact that I was dying inside, wow so kewl’.

This is the only part of weed that really works for me, and the reason I keep trying to use it recreationally. I hear music completely differently on cannabis. I can hone in on individual parts in ways I usually can't. Jazz is one of my favorite things to listen to stoned because, even as a non musician, I can hear the decisions being made. I follow just the bass line or just the piano and I marvel at the quick thinking and the virtuosity. I also feel like a lot of music is encoded with little easter eggs for people who are high. There are some mixing decisions that I refuse to believe are anything but winks to stoners.

for me the best place to listen to music is in the car. because driving takes so little of your brain power (at least if you live in a smallish town), and there's nothing else for you to do, you can focus pretty heavily on the music. I think cannabis sort of recreates that at home, by making you not really want to do anything else. I don't really know if it's so much that it makes the music sound better as it is it puts you in the zone where you can really enjoy something. Maybe these are the same thing?

that doesn't sound very fun. i don't drugs much, but my friend made some nice weed brownies that made everything sound like the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich

frogbs OTM, but also opiates

Weed for me enhances music (and food) but it has nothing to do with a change in the manner of perception ad far as I can tell and generally goes along the lines of "being high has made me feel nice > nice things seem a bit nicer". As a very dysthymic individual achieving a state of mind that is an improvement over my regular way of feeling can be crucial in enjoying things sometimes sadly. Music isn't improved if I get high and feel anxious/para (which depends mainly on my state of mind going into the high and/or the size of the dose - too much is usually not great).

My preferred drugs: opiates, acid, ecstasy have sort of a similar effect tbh. The drug makes me feel euphoria and therefore the euphoric and joyful aspect of the music is amplified. I suppose acid can sometimes engender musical effects in me that are analogous to stereotypical trippy visuals they cause (things shimmering, moving, and being more saturated): I perceive a piece of music more or less the same as I have before but the elements seem changed and more brilliant.

Theres some music that seems made for drugs: heroin and spacemen 3, ecstasy and house music, acid and acid rock etc. but am sober at the moment and considering making that an indefinite thing and I dont think "the effect sobriety will have on my enjoyment of music" is something I worry about, or should

If you're especially sensitive to w33d it might be helpful to combine it with meditation in a quiet place for at least say 10-20 minutes as it first comes on. Sit there and feel / breathe through the stuff that comes up.

― Kieran Arse (Noel Emits), Wednesday, 7 October 2020

Haha, see meditation is another of those ~neurotypical people things~ I have never managed to make work with my brain. Some people are just wired differently, it's OK.

Think I touched on this upthread, but especially when I was younger, I often noticed the 'feel' of the music change if I smoked w33d. Dub music, for example, can be pretty boring and repetitive after a while. Smoking meant I could train my mind less on what was happening peripherally and focus on what's bubbling under there: The characteristics and qualities of the bassline, the way the snare echo recedes into the rest of the music.

― Specific Ocean Blue (dog latin), Wednesday, 7 October 2020

See, my brain really isn't bothered by repetition on that level, in fact, I'm really attracted to music that does the same thing over and over in bubbling-under kinds of ways. This is one of the things about my autism (and seems to be a thing for autists in general) - that we just don't experience the acclimatisation of 'stuff getting boring' upon repetition. Something that's good the first time, is just as good, in fact, maybe even *better* on the 20th time. Stuff being soothing and familiarly repetitive makes it *more* possible to enjoy the wibbly, changeable stuff in a way that less same-y music sometimes just feels overwhelming.

But the kind of *sound* of it - the one thing that used to change for me, when I was still able to tolerate cannabis, was that sound would get deeper, more three-dimensional, more ECHOEY in a way that was really intriguing - it produced an effect (and weirdly, lithium, which I took for a few years while I was misdiagnosed as bipolar) produced very similar auditory effects. That it was almost like audio 'trails' - that a sound would echo and repeat in weird, shimmering, slightly warped ways, while under the influence of cannabis.

Dub is *full* of those kinds of sounds - both because it is intended to duplicate the effects of the drug, but also because it's full of things that sound good when run through the mental echo effects of the drug. What's weird is, I loved dub from the moment I heard it, before I'd ever even considered taking drugs - because of those far-out, spacey, echoey sounds. But it wasn't until I tried cannabis, that I understood where they got the *idea* for those sounds?

I had the same experience with 'psychedelic' sounds and other kinds of hallucinogens, like "OOooooh, is *that* what that comes from" - but always having loved the sounds, just having instantly, sugar-hit, candy rush "this sound is the best thing ever!" reactions to those kinds of sounds from a young age.

(I do wonder if that comes from being autistic, like I have always had the ability to kind of auto-stim myself into something like an ecstatic trance state, since a very young age.)

trying E for the first time really was an epiphany, far beyond "I like dance music now". I felt like neural pathways being created - a very sudden realisation of "Hey, actually talking to strangers in a social context ISN'T so bad!"; "People are all largely similar in terms of hopes and dreams, no matter who they are"; and "maybe I'm not so different from everyone else after all".

That was the day I went from being a highly-reticent and introverted person who exhibited a lot of neuro-diverse behaviour to a somewhat more extroverted person (at least on the surface - there's still a whole bundle of things going on inside).

― Specific Ocean Blue (dog latin), Wednesday, 7 October 2020

See, I really, really wish I'd had this kind of experience. Like, people talk about how powerful E is, I listen to The Shamen going on about it, and - it's like, it has the ability to make shy, socially awkward people come out of themselves and connect with other people in this amazing way. I genuinely do think that E has significant social (and maybe clinical) applications in terms of overcoming social awkwardness, shyness, anxiety, depression, etc.

But what it can't do is making someone who is non-neurotypical into a neurotypical. Like, I was given E by a girl I suspect was trying to get off with me - and it made me totally uninterested in her or other human beings, and what I wanted to do was rub my hair against a carpeted section of the wall for several hours. While she got off and had this amazing time (which is why I don't think I just got a bad pill - I think my own brain chemistry just doesn't click with E.)

Like, the only drug that has made me feel like "ah, I can overcome my social anxiety and be all comradely with strangers because all humans have the same hopes and dreams" - is alcohol. Because that has the effect of numbing excessive sensory input and lowering social inhibitions. Alcohol is the "I feel better about myself, so I feel better about whatever music is playing."

Other drugs - especially the hallucinogenic ones - have genuinely changed *what the music sounds like* in the first place.

The part from Paul's post that frogbs quoted above really sums it up spectacularly for me.

Also, I was diagnosed with ADHD and social anxiety disorder many years ago but left therapy as a teen without resolving anything and haven't gone back. Would love to be able to afford it again. Herb tends to magnify these problems for me in ways that can get very unhealthy at times, but in some ways has also allowed me to be more introspective about the issues I face.

I have read (from decently well-informed perspectives) that part of what w33d does is continually reset short-term memory.

So it's harder to concentrate, in some ways. (That is, harder to follow a series of linear developments - you forget where you were and what you were supposed to be paying attention to).

But it's paradoxically easier to concentrate, in other ways. (You can shut off extramusical distractions and just groove, because you're relaxed and not also worrying about work and the laundry and your electric bill or whatever.)

HOWEVER for me the main benefit of the short-memory erasure effect is that you have way less ability to get bored. This can show benefits especially in the long-form blues-based jam-band aesthetic. You can hear a bad Dead tribute band playing a 15-minute version of "Further on Down the Road" (or whatever) and you're happier about just vibing to it because you forget that you've been listening to the same three or four chords for seven minutes. Sorry, I know it's a stereotype - but some stereotypes arrive for a reason.

A similar side effect is the ability to laugh at the same bad joke over and over again.

Personally I like w33d (just edible baked goods these days because Smoking is Bad For You, or so I hear). In normal non-high life, I sometimes just don't have the patience or attention span to sit and listen to music as the main activity. I get bored or anxious and want to be doing something else as well. w33d puts me in a state where I can just listen and enjoy.

tbh, i'm not sure i always LOVE amoking w33d. it really depends. sometimes i get cool, relaxing, mellow vibes. but more often than not i'm like "huh i wish my housemate would stop talking to me because i just want to sit down and not have to pretend i'm listening to him; also why is the salt shaker there? it's doing my head in. god, let me listen to joni mitchell in peace!"

Dub is *full* of those kinds of sounds - both because it is intended to duplicate the effects of the drug

No it isn't. Not only did King Tubby never smoke cannabis in his life, or take any other kind of stimulant, but he wouldn't allow it to be smoked in his studio.

‘Relaxing’ is absolutely the last qualifier I would use to describe my experiences with pot. Weird how that works.

I hate that cliche about dub and reggae.

And wb Tom.

fair point about Tubby (also, nice to see u posting again) but um isn't weed, like, the sacramental herb of the Rastafarian religion?

to pom: Absolutely true that your experience may vary.

Personally, I have a rule where I already have to be in a good mood. Drugs often press the accelerator on whatever mood I'm in. So if I'm anxious or stressed or in a bad mood it will make it worse, not better, so it's best to abstain or wait.

as a total stoner, I gotta say that it's nice to see a lot of people here who *don't* like it and are still total music fiends

Just passing, pom, got no intention whatsoever of staying.

Haha, see meditation is another of those ~neurotypical people things~ I have never managed to make work with my brain. Some people are just wired differently, it's OK.

In this intance "meditation" means more or less sitting quietly and feeling through and into the energetic stuff that happens. I could say a bit more but this isn't directly about the experience of music. Sorry I mentioned it.

as per the thread question, I don't plan on ever doing heroin but boy do I love listening to Spacemen 3 and Mazzy Star's sonic evocations of the drug

fair point about Tubby (also, nice to see u posting again) but um isn't weed, like, the sacramental herb of the Rastafarian religion?

It is but reggae was hardly the sole preserve of Rastas.

I have read (from decently well-informed perspectives) that part of what w33d does is continually reset short-term memory.

you dont say

If anyone itt who has ADD, ADHD, anxiety, or autism and also smokes weed without a problem feels comfortable discussing it, I for one would love to hear about your experiences.

hi i have anxiety. i have not been diagnosed with adhd but a lot of my experiences in adulthood have been consistent with it, who knows though. i sometimes get weird looks when i tell ppl weed helps me tremendously with my anxiety, but it does, especially social, with none of the destructive effects of alcohol (which if i get at all beyond regular drunk i get depressed and oversensitive and low-key angry, all of my least favorite conditions at once). it just kind of soothes my nerves and keeps me open to the natural rhythms of a conversation, and my brain is at least partially inoculated against overthinking anything, which allows me to surprise myself (one of the reasons weed and writing have gone really well together for me over the past few years, although i think weed may also slow down my process)

however, i used to not understand or enjoy weed at all; it took me forever to just learn how to smoke it correctly, and then it would just lock me up inside of myself and make me a giggling idiot. the shift happened after a particularly bad breakup; i was hanging out at my best friend's apartment and we were smoking weed and watching ghost hunters and for the first time since the breakup i felt an incredible lightness and relief and openness to the goodness in all things and i was like "wow... this is what weed is for?" then tr*mp got elected and i full-on transformed into a stoner bc it was either that or probably die of alcoholism (that sounds dramatic but it was part of the decision-making process regardless)

like other ppl in this thread it has opened up music to me that may have otherwise been inaccessible, cf. my phish phase during the summer (sometimes the 420 approach has dubious benefits). in many ways my experience of music is the same—i loved house, metal, dub, jazz, etc. without needing a weed portal to open it up—but the music just fundamentally feels deeper, probably because of the enhanced focus, the way it peels back the eyelids of your own perception. paul, i find that our experiences listening to jazz stoned are identical, it is the best music in the world for when you just want to notice the brilliance of a player's mental shifts, or work yourself into the odd spaces that more out-there stuff works itself into

i also pretty much exclusively smoke sativa bc i prefer the brain high; indica makes me tired and i don't feel it as distinctly

i have never taken ecstasy as far as i know. i have done molly and the effect it has on me is indistinguishable from coke, i.e. it makes me suicidally depressed, so i can't do it ever again

I have read (from decently well-informed perspectives) that part of what w33d does is continually reset short-term memory.

So it's harder to concentrate, in some ways. (That is, harder to follow a series of linear developments - you forget where you were and what you were supposed to be paying attention to).

But it's paradoxically easier to concentrate, in other ways. (You can shut off extramusical distractions and just groove, because you're relaxed and not also worrying about work and the laundry and your electric bill or whatever.)

This would explain why I find watching movies stoned quite hard and easy at the same time. If I'm watching some sort of crime drama, forget it - I'm going to completely lose track of the plot. If I'm watching Jodorowsky then that's fantastic because I can let my mind wonder while admiring all the crazy bullshit.

it definitely helps you notice some of the odd and subtle choices the artists make. taking Underworld for an example (always a 420 favorite) there are moments where the beat briefly changes up where my sober brain previously had just filled in the blanks. also there were a couple of bass lines that I actually just heard wrong, like where you think it's moving up and down the scale but it's actually just two notes that are panned in a way to create sort of an aural illusion

_fair point about Tubby (also, nice to see u posting again) but um isn't weed, like, the sacramental herb of the Rastafarian religion?_

It is but reggae was hardly the sole preserve of Rastas.

this might sound strange (and I know I'm prone to thinking about music in visual terms), but i think w33d can give certain sounds and instruments more character: especially noticeable with things like dub and jazz etc. suddenly that bassline sounds like your mate bounding up to you in the street; that little trumpet lick makes it sound like he's dressed like a dandy in a fancy hat; that sax line signifies a bird swooping down to grab it off his head.... I think about music in these visual and more abstract ways a lot, but especially when stoned

and the cool thing is you don't just hear it differently when you're high, once you hear it then you start hearing it sober too. pretty neat really

For myself, I'm skeptical of reading too much into it. I like drugs, I like music, sometimes the combo works but I don't know if this is a result of some novel brain chemistry or just being happier because I have two fun things going on. Sometimes it doesn't work! Listening to music on a long car drive is far more reliably pleasurable. Yeah, music sounds great on morphine but... breathing sounds great on morphine too, as does farting. When I get my hands on some good opiates I always listen to music but that's also what I do whenever I get my hands on some free time so.

Aside: I am always touched when I'm at a music show and a stranger offers me some of their drugs.

Dub is *full* of those kinds of sounds - both because it is intended to duplicate the effects of the drug

No it isn't. Not only did King Tubby never smoke cannabis in his life, or take any other kind of stimulant, but he wouldn't allow it to be smoked in his studio.

― Young Boys of Bernie (Tom D.), Wednesday, 7 October 2020

fair point about Tubby (also, nice to see u posting again) but um isn't weed, like, the sacramental herb of the Rastafarian religion?

It is but reggae was hardly the sole preserve of Rastas.

― Young Boys of Bernie (Tom D.), Wednesday, 7 October 2020

Dub, and Reggae are not synonymous.

King Tubby is not the only artist who has ever made Dub.

Like, Reggae is a huge, multifaceted genre involving many different people. Dub is a genre which grew out of certain parts of Reggae, but has branched out much further than just Reggae. As far as I understand the genre, Dub is a technique as much as a genre - hence how artists can take those techniques (strip off the vocals, turn up the bass, add lots of echo and flange sound effects) and end up at genres like Dubstep (in the original UK sense of the term) and Dub-house and Dub-post-punk and so forth.

I do think that many of the people who utilised and explored Dub - not necessarily King Tubby but people who heard that style and ran with it - *were* trying to duplicate specific drug experiences.

If I were talking about Reggae, I would have said Reggae. I was talking about Dub, which is a genre and a technique larger than just Dub Reggae.

Aside: I am always touched when I'm at a music show and a stranger offers me some of their drugs.

oh you would love seeing Ween then

when I saw them I bumped into a friend I hadn't seen in years and we chatted for like 10 minutes

next time I saw him was a few months later and I asked him if he enjoyed the show and he said "whoa, you were there too?"

Haha, see meditation is another of those ~neurotypical people things~ I have never managed to make work with my brain. Some people are just wired differently, it's OK.

Btw Branwell, if you were making an assumption here. I wasn't posting as a neurotypical person.

part of what w33d does is continually reset short-term memory.

So it's harder to concentrate, in some ways.

...

HOWEVER for me the main benefit of the short-memory erasure effect is that you have way less ability to get bored. This can show benefits especially in the long-form blues-based jam-band aesthetic. You can hear a bad Dead tribute band playing a 15-minute version of "Further on Down the Road" (or whatever) and you're happier about just vibing to it because you forget that you've been listening to the same three or four chords for seven minutes. Sorry, I know it's a stereotype - but some stereotypes arrive for a reason.

A similar side effect is the ability to laugh at the same bad joke over and over again.

― while my keytar gently bleeps (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 7 October 2020

This actually makes a lot of sense to me, because it explains why two different mechanisms would arrive at the same phenomenon in different ways. Constantly resetting short-term memory = listener does not get bored, so listener does not habituate to repetitive music but finds it interesting.

While with autism, it's almost entirely the lack of habituation, and the pleasure actually depends on the memory of the previous pleasure and the repeated pleasure in repetition. You *do* remember that it's the 20th time you've heard the same joke, and the joke gets funnier with each retelling, because a lack of habituation means that the memory of funny reinforces the next funny.

(Also explains why someone who was autistic might find cannabis use so horrible and negative and frightening - autistic people often don't cope well with change or newness, and can find unfamiliar things to be frightening or anxiety-inducing. If using cannabis short circuits that short term memory which tells you "this is familiar, it's OK" - the overwhelming effect is quite similar to what I experience when I used to use it - even a familiar setting as a barrage of strange, unsettling, paranoid-making things which are Different in an upsetting and overwhelming way.)

Weed makes me tolerate a lot of bad TV too

people often talk about "set and setting" when it comes to drugs; so for example a hallucinogenic trip will be experienced very differently depending on where you are physically and mentally. It could even define whether that means a good or bad trip.

I think music is similar. I'm sure bands like Pink Floyd were interested in recreating an aural drug trip; but similarly they were making music with a specific set and setting in mind, whether that meant music that sounds great in your living room, or music that sounds great in a live context etc. Drugs may or may not come into it, but my guess is that artists are more influenced by the set and setting than the drugs. From what I understand, dub came out of DJs wanting longer mixes to play at soundclashes and blues parties, which would often take place outdoors in the West Indies. People enjoyed instrumental sounds and bigger bass lines because they could socialise and dance without the vocal cutting through so much. Weed probably affected this too and some happy studio experimentation helped it along as well. I doubt it's a case of some guy smoking a doob and thinking "I now know what I must do"

Btw Branwell, if you were making an assumption here. I wasn't posting as a neurotypical person.

― Kieran Arse (Noel Emits), Wednesday, 7 October 2020 15:23

I apologise if that was the assumption that came through. I was actually trying to make a joke! I thought the jokeness would come through, from the "haha" and the "lol" type framing of the statement.

Meditation is a thing that a lot of people have reccommended to me. I'd love for it to work for me! It never has. I find it better to go, like "haha, it just doesn't work for me because my brain is broked!" and make a pleasant, funny LOL-type-exchange out of it rather than get into one of those situations where the other person keeps telling me how great it is, like, I'm somehow ~not trying hard enough~ at meditating that it doesn't work for me? That's not fun. But I was hoping that a "haha, brain is just broked!" joke would be a more fun and enjoyable way to head that off.

Sorry that didn't come out the way it was intended!

I doubt it's a case of some guy smoking a doob and thinking "I now know what I must do"

although this has certainly happened

fwiw my very few experiences with trying meditation have been very similar to w33d anxiety. I felt anxious, short of breath and slightly sick. apparently that can be common for some people at first because the mind just isn't used to being clear of thoughts and rebels

I doubt it's a case of some guy smoking a doob and thinking "I now know what I must do"

I have been in studios where *exactly* this has happened.

xp but yes, after the fact. the 303 acid sound wasn't born of drug use, it was born of someone tinkering around with an obscure synthesiser one day and finding out they could make cool unexpected noises with it. it just so happened that that noise sounds fucking awesome when you're off your mash on ecstasy pipes, and then lots of people copied the idea

As someone with inattentive ADHD who's never formally tried weed (beyond plenty of 2nd hand exposure) the idea of having short term memory compromised on top of my normal short term focus challenges is terrifying. It's already stressful enough during peak focus struggle... god I feel like I would be absolutely losing my mind if it was even worse for other related / overlapping reasons.

I think that creative process usually results in something more along the lines of the My Dick album or the Pizza Underground

Believe me Bran, I do not need a history lesson on dub and reggae. For what it's worth, Tubby invented most of the sounds and the techniques used to produce the sounds that people think are intended to mirror drug experiences. Compare his early dubs to Lee Perry's early dubs for instance and Perry's are mostly about texture and timbre, Tubby's stuff is much 'trippier'.

personal experiences of making music stoned have stemmed from jam sessions. there's something special about everyone in the room being on a similar plain of consciousness and simply improvising together and just letting the tape roll. not that anyone else would want to hear it, but it was a good way to ideate and compose as sometimes you'd just get these uninhibited moments of creativity you might not have had otherwise

Deindexed this thread as suggested above. Some really interesting discussion here but my brain is a bit too fried (on tiredness, not drugs) to contribute well right now.

I do definitely think weed gives a warmth and roundedness to music. I like stoner-type stuff without being stoned (though I used to smoke weed a lot more so maybe that helped me be receptive to it?) but I have also experienced being bored as hell while listening to stoner rock records until someone brought out the weed, and I could connect a lot better with it. I think that's not just drugs lowering my quality control, more that it aligned my mental state more closely to the music. But weed has always had the tendency to make me paranoid so I don't think that small payoff is worth it.

Personally, weed has never had much effect on me, good or bad, it's just doesn't do anything for me. Also I listen to music on my own and I don't have any interest in taking drugs on my own, I very rarely drink on my own as well - not what I take drugs for, if I take drugs.

xps it's all a bit chicken and egg though isn't it?

like, if John Lennon had never taken LSD and instructed George Martin to try and make his voice sound like a choir of Tibetan monks singing on a mountain, would some of the studio tricks they discovered on the way have been invented?

And by extension, was Lennon trying specifically to recreate the psychedelic experience in musical form? Or was it more the case of the psychedelic experience informing his creativity?

I'm never going to deny that dub is stoner music, but Tom is right: Drugs didn't necessarily create the sound, they just happen to work well together, and since its invention plenty of stoners have gone-on to make dub music whilst stoned. Same goes for rave music (let's not forget that most of the OG Detroit/Chicago techno pioneers were teetotal Christians).

Has anyone else had the experience of 'oh shit, wrong music for this drug'? Kind of the opposite of the thread question, maybe, but I've experienced trying to play something I love for people while wasted, and what was once a sumptuous huge-sounding slice of genius coming out all tinny and weak. Never worked out if that was actually to do with perception from being on the wrong sort of thing or if it was me just becoming terrified about making myself vulnerable by showing other people something that's important to me, and thus ruining it for myself.

I heard "King Tubby Meets the Rockwrs Uptown" when I was like 13 or 14 and it completely blew my mind, I think I was on Irn Bru at the time.

indica vs sativa

I really enjoy the smell of weed and the music that is supposed to go well with it. Maybe I'm missing out. I've definitely been told this many times. I'm just terrified of manipulating my faculties in any way that qualifies as "not sober".

it definitely helps you notice some of the odd and subtle choices the artists make. taking Underworld for an example (always a 420 favorite) there are moments where the beat briefly changes up where my sober brain previously had just filled in the blanks. also there were a couple of bass lines that I actually just heard wrong, like where you think it's moving up and down the scale but it's actually just two notes that are panned in a way to create sort of an aural illusion

― frogbs, Wednesday, October 7, 2020 3:48 PM (fifty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is generally my experience as well. it helps me listen better. i can focus on the 'objective reality' of sound but also take a 'step back' and get a fresh take on what the bigger picture might mean. i tend to seek out music with depth and intricacy and just bathe in it for this reason, both stoned and sober.

i have had a lot of experiences where i hear something that i thought i liked previously while high and pretty strongly decided that i didn't like it.

Coke makes most music I like sound bad. SReynolds talks about the 'cocaine ear' which favours mid-range sounds (stuff like Rumours, Exile On Main Street). I don't understand why people go out dancing on coke, but then I don't really get it - just makes me itchy and annoying.

I did go to a Planet-Mu night years ago where someone gave me a mushroom and I spent most of the night thinking 'DAMMIT I JUST WANT TO HEAR A STRAIGHT 4/4 BEAT IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?'. Conversely I've been saved from this kind of experience at festivals and just jamming out to an ice cream van playing Queen and Status Quo: Clearly tripped-out psychedelic crazy music isn't always the right thing to listen to while tripping

Ha, I don't get people going clubbing on hallucinogens - I need to be contained in a room with people I trust so I can laugh at a wall for hours, not ~amongst strangers~ with way too much external stimuli.

yes, it was a terrible mistake

Autechre is a pretty interesting one in this regard. Their music is practically designed to hit differently every time you put it on.

it's nice to see so many different experiences tbh. drugs are weird, people are weird (in a good way).

otm

my best drug experience remains taking MDMA by myself at an intimate Sprained Ankle-era Julien Baker show. all resentments gone. pretty nice!

have basically stopped smoking weed, but there are definitely some artistic experiences that are undeniably enhanced by the high. nearly all music sounds better, honestly. for me, it especially helps with music that's more languid and atmospheric, though i'm sometimes in the mood for a more intense listening experience. i have giant, giant smoking playlists (well, they're mostly theoretically for smoking, since i don't do it so often anymore), divided into rap, non-rap, and then mood (intense vs. chill).

the main change in my listening that happens when i'm high is that i'm much more patient and willing to roll with the punches that artists throw at me. shifts in mood or tempo or arrangement are much more thrilling, even if i would maybe find them gimmicky while sober. this is also true for visual media, cause i can't imagine having the same experience of, say, the leftovers without being high out of my gourd.

re: 'oh shit, wrong music for this drug' this happened to me with the Beatles White Album on acid recently. I've generally found that like 90% of music sounds absolutely amazing on LSD--everything sounds huge, finely detailed, rendered in HD, you're "standing inside the music," etc.--but with the White Album the acid really amplified the album's undercurrent of creepy bad-trip vibes in an unsettling, dysphoric way. It kind of turned my world upside down because up until that point if you had asked me to name my favorite album of all time I would have said the White Album without hesitation. Now I'm not so sure haha. Of course peak psych-era love-fest Beatles, i.e. Revolver through Magical Mystery Tour, still sound godlike on acid.

Also I can't recommend the combo of Autechre and acid highly enough, which makes sense as they've openly discussed making music under the influence of psychs.

idk if we've talked about "music for every drug," but i think jimi hendrix fits the bill

pvmic

people often cite the ketamine boom of the 2000s as having helped both dubstep and minimal house. is there much to that? People talking about spacing out to the clicks and pops and tiny details etc

that said, most people I knew back then who used to do it listened to nonsense music so...

I’m a latecomer to grass: most of my high school friends were nerdy squares who didn’t partake or party, so I didn’t start smoking until I was around 30 (I’m 36 now). For me, the initial delight was that it gave me fresh ears: music that I knew by heart or hadn’t listened to in years due to overfamiliarity suddenly sounded fresh because I was hearing it in a brand new way, albeit one I couldn’t put my finger on. It felt like falling in love with it again.

I have a hazy memory when it comes to my younger years: not due to traumatic memories or partying, just a tendency for it to be rather impressionistic rather than precise, and I often have to think a bit before pegging a memory to a certain year. Listening to teenage favorites while high, I suddenly could recall all these specific memories of sitting in my room listening to this or that record, what I was up to at that point in my life, who I hung out with, etc. Names and faces I hadn’t thought of in more than a decade. So it was hearing the music in the same way, but also like a bit of a time machine. (I mean, I occasionally have that experience when sober, but never such vivid recall or specificity as when high.)

That said, in terms of “hate the drug / love the music”, I feel as though my mild tinnitus is worsened when listening while high: my ears get more fatigued, the music sounds simultaneously progressively louder and more muffled, and I can only do about an hour and a half of listening before I have to turn off. Headphones, even with musicians’ earplugs, are often undoable. I don’t know if it is a real effect or I just notice it more high.

pvmic

― Specific Ocean Blue (dog latin), Wednesday, October 7, 2020 11:40 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol what can i say

Ha! My worst 'wrong music for this drug' experience was smoking some horrible cannabis with my then-girlfriend, and we put on the Velvet Underground and Nico, and halfway through Venus In Furs, which was one of my very favourite songs ever, I was having the most awful time, like the music sounded so thin and whiny, the viola sounded so scrapy and nerve-jangling and terrible, and I had to beg her "take it off, take it off, take it off" and she put on the then-new Guns N Roses album and that sounded so much better and so much smoother and less anxiety-inducing.

And at that point, I had something like a personality crisis, like 'omg, what if I am no longer the queer art school student who loves the Velvets, what if I am a... ::gulp:: metalhead!??!'

(Spoiler: after I stopped taking my girlfriend's shitty drugs and took speed instead, I went right back to hating metal and being a Velvets-loving art student again, as it should have been.)

some really terrific posts in this thread, thanks to everyone who's contributed so far. I'm learning a lot here today and enjoying getting to the bottom of this with you all!

Has anyone else had the experience of 'oh shit, wrong music for this drug'? Kind of the opposite of the thread question, maybe, but I've experienced trying to play something I love for people while wasted, and what was once a sumptuous huge-sounding slice of genius coming out all tinny and weak.

Yes, although the mediation of another person always changes my experience with music. It's as if I need to vouch for every single production or musical decision or something, as if the music were my own.

But I also find weed to be a really good bullshit detector, which dovetails with map's post above, I think. Many times I thought I loved an album and then listened to it high and thought "wait, no I don't." And there is no rhyme or reason to this at all. Not all music sounds good when you are high, in my experience. It can also make bad music sound much, much worse.

I took speed in my early 20s and I was angry and anxious a lot but damn those early 70s Iggy Pop albums sounded awesome

Wrong drug for the music:
Acid + Bitches Brew. You'd think it would work, but it was dense and frightening.
Acid + Banging techno in a club in 1993. Dense and frightening.

The thing for me is, many of my most visceral memories of music being beautiful and powerful were when I was suicidal or intensely depressed (as in the only drugs were the ones innate to my brain) ... like The Cure's Disintegration and Gowns "Red State" (the two I remember most) ... idk this is a derail

Sorry that didn't come out the way it was intended!

I got the tone, I think, and can understand about meditation (although I don't think it's possible to do it wrong, the 'mistake' may just be having expectations) but apparently I bristle a bit at apparent accusations of neurotypicality ;-) But I know I'm not communicating as clearly as I could because i'm not totally comfortable talking about either autism* or drukqs here, for different reasons. Which does suggest I could just stop posting ITT.

* I'm still quite new to having had it *all fall into place*, although I had suspicions going back to the 90s, but not new to having my particular nervous system and living in a society with different priorities, or to the consequences of not understanding that very well.

I am interested in this discussion from that perspective though (obviously) and appreciate the way you talk about your experience.

Holy mackerel this thread moves fast xxxxxxps

Noel, I’m sorry my ‘joke’ made you in any way uncomfortable- I honestly don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable on this thread because it *is* quite an emotive and charged and personal topic! Thread has mostly gone in a really peaceful and interesting and informative direction, which I pleasantly surprised to be so pleasant.

I appreciated Branwell's joke because I get the same thing -- people saying "you should meditate" and one of my best friends, even, inviting me to some "meditation group" -- and trying to politely decline the invite without being an asshole about it or getting into too much detail about "how it doesn't work for me"

have never been able to do meditation because the way my brain works if I sit down and try and still my thoughts I start internally humming "scatman's world" while at the same time trying to remember the details of the Jansenist heresy or something along those lines

Has anyone else had the experience of 'oh shit, wrong music for this drug'? Kind of the opposite of the thread question, maybe, but I've experienced trying to play something I love for people while wasted, and what was once a sumptuous huge-sounding slice of genius coming out all tinny and weak.

I know that w33d can sometimes make me incredibly self-aware and hyper-critical sometimes. You ever done that thing where you say to someone "Oh my god, you've GOT to watch this film with me, it's the best film ever and you're going to LOVE it", then ten minutes in you become painfully aware that the other person just isn't getting it at all, and it rubs off on you and you're seeing the film through their eyes and noticing embarrassing things about it you'd never noticed before, and you wonder why you even struggle to work out why you liked the film in the first place? Often the same happens to me with music as well, ESPECIALLY when I'm stoned.

yeah that sort of mind-racing feeling isn't uncommon for me

not just mind-racing, but that self-criticism/nervousness in those exact situations

Terence McKenna sometimes said that meditation is bunk, unless you get really stoned, LOL. He thought that all the effects attributed to meditation in old texts just left out that part.

I'm not a regular meditator these days or a proselitser for it, just that someone (who is not me of course) has found that something obverse can be valuable - add a bit of meditation to the w33ds. Some Tai Chi type movements (which can happen spontaneously) as well.

Maybe it's facile to say but neither w33ds or meditation is necessarily all nice or pleasant, and that's fine, even the point. But on the other side of a little 'work' are often the immediate rewards of relaxation, laughs and so on. Maybe especially useful as an occasional intervention for people who can tend to build up bodily tension through the day / week or whatever.

have never been able to do meditation because the way my brain works if I sit down and try and still my thoughts I start internally humming "scatman's world" while at the same time trying to remember the details of the Jansenist heresy or something along those lines

hahahah I can relate ... except it's like sections of Catch-22 plus the astrological signs of the characters of whatever TV show I've been watching and the verse to some half-forgotten show tune by Sondheim or Andrew Lloyd Webber

it's similar to the "just go for a walk in nature" response that well meaning people suggest as a treatment for depression, except the nature walks are like, memories of horror movies, snippets of songs by like The Cure and news items about people getting killed by falling trees or killing themselves by hanging or jumping ... in terms of this type of activity, driving works best for me, because I am actually "going somewhere" ... or tedious productive tasks like doing dishes or painting/spackling / patching walls ...

xp a meditation advocate would suggest that this is very normal and it's precisely because our minds work in this way that meditation is important and useful. from what i understand, it's about acknowledging this "thought-noise" while letting each thought drift out from one's mind like a passing car.

but i'm not going to do that, because i don't really meditate and i also find the experience weird and uncomfy

I had to give up w33d because the negatives started to outweigh the positives (paranoia, basically, but also lassitude), but I smoked a lot in my early-mid 20s. I can still access the fabulous feeling of being high, experiencing music as something spatial - both in the sense of being able to explore it like a landscape, but also how it could be felt internally. There's something of a vapour trail of that, like a thin, tremulous excitement. The couple of times I did LSD were like that but magnified hugely. One of my defining experiences was listening to the opening of Facet Squared with the walls throbbing all around me thinking 'shit, I'm not sure I can handle how awesome this feels'.

Coke made me too jittery to really focus on music, albeit I had some great nights out dancing. Speed had a similar effect. Both had a horrendous impact on my mental health so I stopped.

I think anything that alters brain chemistry/consciousness has to have an impact on perception, even if that is only on receptivity and attention. I miss it. Now I only really drink at the weekend, listen to music and get maudlin (which I love, btw).

xp and i totally feel you on nature walks too. much as i like going out and seeing nature and exercising, there's a bit of me that struggles with the idea of doing something unproductive for the sake of it. a lot of people struggle with meditation because there's no tangible productivity coming out of it - it's just sitting still, and that's torturous to a busy mind with a lot going on. this is probably why i hardly ever get a full night's sleep: i don't see how sleeping is useful; it's boring and i get nothing done, even though it's very logical tht i need to get 8 hours

(xp I did get some resin recently. I've got it in a syringe in the garage. I'm telling myself I'm waiting for the right moment but really I'm too scared to give it a go.)

I was going to say, if you've ever tried seated meditation (zazen) the expectation is that it takes a lot of practice and discipline to quiet the mind! And sometimes getting hit with a stick.

In the same way that I sort of consider getting baked something I did 'back then', I consider meditation something I'm going to do in the future. Not sure exactly what I'm waiting for, really. I've read my Suzuki, I like sitting down and, well, the odd whack with a stick even sounds appealing.

but the thoughts keep coming is the thing ... to continue your metaphor, it's like being stuck in traffic, if each thought drifts out from one's mind like a passing car, I end up stop-and-going so that I catch up to that car, and there it is again, with its "COEXIST" bumper sticker and obvious automatic transmission because it doesn't accelerate the same way, and also, the driver doesn't have the quickest reflexes

so when people say that everyone should practice meditation, what they really mean is that everyone deserves a good whack with a stick

My understanding of meditation is there is no point or aim to it. You're not trying to quiet the mind or achueve some state. That's for specialists but otherwise basically guff. Just don't judge what happens, and if you do, don't judge the judging etc. Notice your mind being a dick? Good! In the end, give up. It's all the same.

W33d meditation is something a little different as it's like a direct energetic intervention. This person (who is not me) finds it's like this is how it wants to work with you, not that they are given to anthropomorphising plants. Let it facilitate that for a bit.

I guess to get back on topic, meditation definitely informs the "deep listening" school of Pauline Oliveros and a lot of music has come out of that

oh yeah defo. that's spot on

The thing I find with "stoner rock" (some of which I like very much) is in combination with the ostensible symbiotic agent too much fuzz can just become like a whiteout overload. And Doom = interminable, and slow!

Oh no, here it is, exactly the conversation about meditation that I didn't want to derail the thread into...

You remember many, many years ago, someone - maybe Dog Latin, maybe Sick Mouthall? - posted something about some people being mental-non-visualisers, and I discovered from reading the article and chatting with people on the thread, that I was the reverse, that I was a super-visualiser, like the amount of visualisation that goes on internally for me is hyperactive, maybe even excessive? Well, what happens when I try to meditate is, the meditation guide will say something like "visualise a stream..." and my brain goes into overdrive, what kind of stream is it, is it a rocky stream in Scottish mountains, a slow-moving lazy stream with willows growing by it, the whole stream situation pops into life in my head in incredibly distracting detail. "Your thoughts are like leaves that pass under a bridge..." well, what kind of a bridge is it, is ia rickety wooden bridge, is it one of those neat iron suspension bridges like in Inverness, and while we're at it, what kind of leaves are they? Oak? Maple? Willow? Gingko? And literally every thing that the meditation guide suggests to clear thoughts just piles up layers and layers of more and more visualisation until my brain isn't doing meditation, it has dreamed up... Brigadoon, starring me and Thom Yorke with cute strawberry ginger hair like he had when he was 18. And I have MORE thoughts, and not less.

Like, nature walks actually work for me, as a form of meditation, because there is something out there to pull me out of my internal world of all these incredibly detailed intricate thoug... LOOK! A SQUIRREL!! OMG that tree has such red leaves. Why are there so many acorns? And I am just noticing detail after detail instead of allowing my head to fill up with those dense visualisations.

Anyway, thinking about Speed and the Velvet Underground, like a lot of the music that I was attracted to, before I ever took drugs, was not stoner music or heroin music so much as it was amphetamine music? (I will fight anyone on this - the first couple Velvets albums are amphetamine albums not heroin albums.) Though, that said, a lot of heroin music, and I'm thinking of stuff like Spacemen 3's Let Me Down Gently or When Tomorrow Hits - or the Cocteau Twins' Victorialands - makes fantastic comedown music, either from speed or from the hysterical-ecstatic states I used to stim myself into before I ever learned about drugs. (Like, there are 2 sides to Speed music, there's the incredibly intricate, jangling, dissonance-sounds-great, Venus In Furs / Amphetamine Logic speed music, then there's this weird thing, where sometimes there's this weird time dilation effect where it's like speed doesn't speed you up, it's like it slows you down to the same rate as the rest of the world - things like the Sisters of Mercy's Reptile House e.p. capture that elongated time dilation speed music really well, like I remember taking my sisX0r's prescription diet pills and lying around her flat listening to that and it being pretty much perfect in its reptile slowness.) And, also for example, the JAMC, who were also teenage favourites from the same period - I think they're considered a smack band, but they literally called their singles compilation The Sound Of Speed?

But there can also an intense psychedelic quality to Speed music, because sleep deprivation causes such intense and surreal hallucinations. I think of the first four Neubauten albums, which are often really quite trippy, but it's not acid trippiness, it's sleep deprivation hallucinations. I think Blixa's one of those people who both abused speed because it does work as self-medication for non-neurotypicality - but he specifically said he used it to stay awake for long stretches, in order to access the hallucinogenic land-beyond-logic. (Weirdly, the fifth album, Haus der Luege was recorded when the band finally got some money and moved from speed to coke, it doesn't sound *bad* like coke albums usually do, but it was where the production values started to really change.) The overlap between 'people who self medicate with speed' and 'people with ADD type non-neurotypicality' and 'people who really like music that ~sounds like speed~' I think might have some correlation? From purely anecdotal evidence? (Actually, though, the first two of those three are 'they ask you about this when you're diagnosed' level of correlation, so...)

I dunno, I also feel like... many of these drugs are... Not One Drug. Because they're illegal, you never know entirely what you're buying. I know that the 'acid' I used to get in Upstate NY in the late 80s was very speedy, very jittery, and was probably cut with as much speed as LSD. But when I moved to NYC, I hung out with techno-hippies who had a completely different source, and the stuff they had was very different, not as jittery, much 'kinder'. (And more likely to be fungal-based, we once got a very strange batch of 'acid' that a few days later, the dude who gave it us was like 'oh that was actually mescaline, sorry!')

Another 'wrong music for this drug' experience - friend brought back the 'creepy brown acid' from Woodstock 25. Psychedelic music just *did not work* with that stuff, we put on some ambient music, and got really freaked out, like 'is that the cat?!?!?' so we put on the Beatles and they were singing "baby's in BLAAAACK and I'm feeling BLUUUUUE" and we got even more freaked out, so we put on the Byrds, like, how the Byrds do you wrong? "shapeless forms... BLACK limousines..." aaaaaahhhh we're getting really really freaked out and not having a very good time at all Space Face will EAT US ALL

We put on Sonic Boom's Spectrum - AAAAAAAAH. Everything's OK again.

Weird. Brains are weird. Drugs are weird. Isn't music great, tho.

Christ, I'm sorry that was so long! I had no idea while I was typing it! o_0

I know that w33d can sometimes make me incredibly self-aware and hyper-critical sometimes. You ever done that thing where you say to someone "Oh my god, you've GOT to watch this film with me, it's the best film ever and you're going to LOVE it", then ten minutes in you become painfully aware that the other person just isn't getting it at all, and it rubs off on you and you're seeing the film through their eyes and noticing embarrassing things about it you'd never noticed before, and you wonder why you even struggle to work out why you liked the film in the first place? Often the same happens to me with music as well, ESPECIALLY when I'm stoned.

― Specific Ocean Blue (dog latin), Wednesday, October 7, 2020 1:18 PM (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah this is a pretty common experience for me, though it usually doesn't matter if the other person digs it or not. music is such a personal thing to me, I feel like if someone doesn't like it then it's an attack on my character. Which is really stupid to think but that's what goes on in my head. I also think it's because I'm in my 30s and have kids so I kinda feel like everyone else is as busy as I am, when I tell someone "oh you gotta see/hear this" I feel like I'm infringing on their time a bit. strangely this applies way more to some genres than others. electronic/vaporwavey/hip-hop stuff I kind of assume everyone likes

It was a good thread.
But I killed it stone dead.

Sorry, everyone. :(

nah, the thread is just pretty stoned right now, and needs to sit down and listen to some Tangerine Dream

seriously, though, very good discussion here

yep, great thread and great posts all round. glad it's taken a few twists and turns

Can we do love the drug / hate the music now

hating drugs to make music to hate drugs to

Bands you keep trying to like but can't score the right drugs to get into

Bands you keep trying to dislike but the drugs won’t let you.

Drugs the band keep asking you to get them so they can get them in you

Drugs you keep trying to get in you and succeeding.

Thread has weirdly turned into the hidden track on The Shamen's UV...

Drugs the band keep asking you to get them so they can get them in you

the only good line anthony kiedis ever wrote

Re meditation and music:

Meditation has been recommended to me many times, and I've always had problems with the activity if I conceived of it as "meditation." However, a while ago I started to listen (closely) to 4'33" on a daily basis; that conceptualization clicked for me. Go figure.

that totally makes sense! I might try that.

i've done deep listening workshops where we did ostensibly that, though probably, because it was in the context of "music" -- I found myself thinking about music, so it wasn't like "a self-discovery thing" it was more like, "the tonality and rhythm of the HVAC system is kinda interesting, I wonder if it would be better to try and emulate it via percussion + pedals or by playing with it as a pre-recorded sample"

this particular HVAC system definitely had some major dub aesthetics

So I am high right now and the crickets chirping outside sound like a motherfucking symphony.

On many levels, listening to music *is* meditation for me. It fulfills many of the same functions and provides many of the same benefits.

I've been thinking a lot more about why meditation in general has never worked for me / actively made things worse. (And this has nothing to do with drugs, but certain drugs bring on several of the same problems, which is how we got on this topic in the first place.) Like, in my earlier description I started a little too far along in the problem, and forgot to include the basic problem.

I suffer from intrusive thoughts, also known as Pure-OCD, incredibly badly, sometimes to the point of actual crippling. The combination of Pure-OCD, plus autistic single-mindedness/repetitiveness? VERY, VERY BAD. You know the song Worm In My Brain by The Weather Prophets? THAT.

One of the things that is often reccommended for Pure-OCD is... meditation, which makes no sense to me? Like, that whole thing of "watch your thoughts like leaves drifting past in the river of your consciousness" like, I can understand the instructions and why you'd think it would make sense "oh, here's a thought, just look at it, that's what the thought is, let it drift on by..." Lovely idea! Intrusive Thoughts... do not work like that. If you could pick them up and look at them and let them go on by, they wouldn't be intrusive. If you pick up an Intrusive Thought and look at it, it sticks to your fingers and spreads like rot, it metastises like cancer, until your whole brain is the Intrusive Thought. (And Pure-OCD really loves to cannibalise stuff that is emotionally charged, stuff you care about a *lot*, stuff that you are genuinely afraid of.)

Music works, because it shuts up that part of the brain, like it overwhelms and blots out the Intrusive Thoughts - the same way that using white noise works on tinnitus in a way that 'just ignore the internal noises' doesn't. (I don't actually suffer from tinnitus, but I suffer from Hyperacusis a *lot*, and white noise is genuinely the only thing that helps that.)

Meditative techniques where it's 'pay really close attention to a piece of music' or 'pay really close attention to what kinds of plants/trees you are seeing on your nature walk' really work for me, in a way that 'pay really close attention to your breath' or 'pay really close attention to this voice telling you to relax and ignore your thoughts' really doesn't - because it provides a bulwark against Intrusive Thoughts.

I think, similarly, it's the same thing with drugs - that any drugs which encourage sprawling, meandering, thoughts, maaaaan are - FOR ME - really *really* bad. (While drugs that work more like 'I am pure single-minded thought and concentrated energy like Yu-Gung can move mountains!' provide a much better experience for me.)

I hate that my posts are so long, but I try so hard to be specific and precise!

There's this endless double-bind where, if my posts are too short and I don't qualify everything, people are like OMG WTF BRANWELL YOU ARE MAKING TOO MANY GENERALISATIONS YOU ARE A TERRIBLE HUMAN BEING

But then again, if I spell everything out very specifically, and qualify again and again "this is how it is FOR ME, I am not trying to generalised to everyone, then people are like OMG WTF BRANWELL YOU ARE SUCH A NARCISSIST YOU ARE MAKING EVERYTHING ALL ABOUT YOU

I know these people are basically Intrusive Thoughts in human form, but I would rather err on the side of long posts that are as specific as possible.

maybe to a much lesser extent, but I can very much relate to needing music to fill up a space or block out certain thoughts. my mum remarked to an ex gf once: 'yes, he needs music all the time or he goes... funny'. I even used to listen to music when I went to sleep, but stopped doing it when I realised it wasn't helping with insomnia

Yeah, I think that's almost exactly the same thing.

So, that would make sense why 'the combination of music and drugs' works... *differently* when music IS the drug one already uses to control one's unruly mind.

(These days, I actually use continual white noise for about 80% of what I used to use music for, it's just as effective and far less annoying to the people around me now that I live in a very densely populated urban environment.)

excellent (and for me, relatable) posts, Branwell. The Pure-OCD thing makes sense and I fear I may have some of what you describe, but it only seems to reveal itself when I am high. I'm reminded of the old joke where the guy goes to the doctor and says "it hurts when I do this" and the doctor replies "so don't do that," but I'm determined to get to the bottom of my issues with weed because when it works (like in very small doses and when I'm focusing only on music as you describe above), it can be very therepeutic and pleasant. I just wish there was a surefire way to discover my threshold, and then simply reduce my intake by one. But different strains, different moods, and different circumstances make too complicated a problem for that to work.

bro, it's down to the strain bro, just relax bro, this is different yeah bro

The meditation I meant wasn't about "thoughts" per se. More working with chi in the body. Mj can (and basically does) activate this and it 'demands' to be worked with; felt deeply and allowed to move. Anxiety and other unpleasant effects are often a result of this increased energy + pre-existing blockages, so there's an opportunity there to work with that. Not doing so, adding more resistance can result in things getting more unpleasant.

Thoughts are energetic presences as well though, prior to the supposed content. It doesn't take some special skill to be with thoughts in that way because that's already what they are, even if you are caught up in content.

I'm not sure I understand what the difference is between intrusive thoughts and... thoughts.

What are non-intrusive thoughts? And what do intrusive thoughts intrude on?

There's this endless double-bind where

There's something interesting here to do with shared context, or the lack thereof and trying to know or guess where it's supposed to be. Is that the sort of thing you mean?

There's often very little, perhaps none, and yet I'd prefer not to have to be a verbose bore. Trying to guage this right in posts is very difficult and evidently I get it 'wrong' quite often. I also tend to assume this is a general issue in communication but apparently autism has a bearing on this. Or rather, neurotypicality constitutes a degree of shared context that otherwise can only be guessed at with some effort.

I really would like to understand this better.

Noel, babe, you and I do not conceive the world in the same way - and it looks like we use language in quite different ways. Which is fine and beautiful and good, my friend! The world needs many different kinds of interpretations, and of course we need different language to talk about those interpretations.

But it makes communication difficult, when we think we are talking about the same things, but actually we aren't.

I was an enthusiastic psychonaut for many years, I look upon those years and those experiences very positively. I understand all of the importance of 'set and setting' with regards to the use of any kind of mind-expanding agent, I am very aware, as someone who was in therapy from the age of 13, about how one brings one's own experiences and attitudes and fears to any new situation or experience - including drug experiences. I know that 9 times out of 10, the bad trip is on account of something the user brought with them, into that trip, and not about the mind-altering drug. (This is true even of non-hallucinogenic drugs, such as alcohol - it's taken me years of bad and good experiences to understand that there are certain *circumstances* under which I absolutely cannot and must not use alcohol!)

I am aware of all that. I am also aware, from many years of experiences (i.e. not from a lack of trying) that my brain chemistry just does not work, with certain drugs. This makes me sad! Like Paul, I enjoyed many other aspects of those drugs. But for me, there was no amount of 'set and setting' or 'try this different strain' that can make cannabis OK for me to use. That's fine! People are allowed to be different. You have good experiences, I can have bad experiences, Paul can try to experiment to find ways that mitigate *his* specific experiences. This is why there is chocolate *and* vanilla!

But there really is a point where it becomes, as Paul describes "Doctor says, if a thing hurts, don't do that thing" - and that is a legitimate response - and continuing to tell people to try it some other way they haven't thought of, comes across as... badgering. It's not fun to be badgered about something supposedly fun, that you've explained multiple times why it doesn't work for you. This is what makes this kind of conversation become unfun, very fast. I'm not mad at you, and I'm trying really hard to project an attitude of 'I think we're all friends here having a friendly conversation' but this is a boundary for me.

I have never said that it takes some 'special skill' in order to be able to meditate or use cannabis, or do this thing we are talking about, however you want to describe it. But it would take me having a different kind of brain, from the brain I do have.

I think Intrusive Thoughts are one of those things that if you do not get them, it is impossible to describe what they are like - but if you do get them, the moment I say "thoughtworm", people who get them instantly grok what I mean.

A couple of people on this thread, I've said what I've said, and they've been like "oh yeah!" so I think they grok what I am talking about.

If you have never experienced OCD, then I think it just sounds like complete freaking insanity, if I talk about "a thought that isn't actually a thought, but is like a cancer or a computer virus that quickly eats up every available part of your conscious mind". But that is what it is. I know of no other way to get that idea across.

Would you say that it's roughly thoughts (often bad thoughts) that crowd out everything else and can't be quieted down?

Branwell, I'm not suggesting anyone here use anything if they don't want to. And my initial aside where I mentioned meditation wasn't directed at you. Someone else mentioned anxiety or something. I didn't go into detail because it was just that, an aside. And precisely because I didn't intend it come across as prescriptive or condescending, yet that seems or have been how it was taken. I wanted just there to clarify a little what I meant, not to be bang or be defensive but because I'd like there to be a smidge less miscommunication.

I'm aware there is a gulf in communication and understanding but I don't think there is such a big difference in experience.

Yeah, they're not always bad thoughts - often I get 'the incredible hottness of current lust object' as an intrusive thought, which is not an unpleasant thought at all! It's usually more like, 'stuff you care about, a lot'.

Like, if there are any sci-fi fans on the thread, there's a hilarious example in Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide, when Arthur tells the Ship Computer about Proper English Tea, and the Ship Computer throws all of its circuits into making *the* perfect cup of tea. And Zaphod is like "hey, computer, Vogons are attacking, can you please get us out of here?" and the ship computer is like "nope, sorry, all circuits are currently occupied with this tea problem, and it's a doozy!" "Tea" is the intrusive thought, where the computer should be focusing on navigation and life support and hey, getting the ship away from the bad guys, but the only thing the computer can think about is "tea".

Except, the last time I used cannabis, the intrusive thought was actually literally "The pink of the carpet is too bright" and I was also experiencing a significant amount of synaesthsia, so that I was experiencing the PINK! of the carpet as an incredibly loud sound that made it impossible to hear or contribute to any conversation in the room, or even hear the music that was playing, over the incredibly distressing loud PINK-ness of the carpet, which never previously bothered me, since I had been in that room 100 times before.

(And that was what had started to happen, every time I used cannabis, it wasn't the exception, experiences like that had just become 'what happens when I smoke' - I have no psychological issues or baggage surrounding the colour pink, or persian carpets, or anything like that to work through, and no amount of mindfulness or paying attention to the music or the trees outside would have stopped the awful pinkness of that carpet from eating up my brain, and I am aware of how incredibly petty and silly a complaint this sounds - I stopped using cannabis because the pink of a carpet was shouting at me - but it was just really unpleasant!)

(It's OK to laugh at my ridiculous 'this is why Branwell isn't a stoner' story)

But thinking about this - Noel, maybe it would help, that if you are replying to someone in specific, like if you were talking to Paul (who I think was also saying very similar things to me - but does *want* to try cannabis in different ways) - to quote Paul's post that you're replying to?

I have been trying to do that way more than usual on this thread, because it *is* such a personal issue, and it is one of those subjects where if you don't name the person you're responding to, other people *do* tend to think it's directed at them, that is completely understandable on such a personal thread (in a way it wouldn't be on a more neutral thread e.g. a political thread or a 'do you like band X' thread)

It might have been sowmthing Paul said that prompted it but it wasn't a reply to anyone inpartocular. The post started with "if you are sensitive maybe..". i.e. take it or leave it, just a suggestion. I'm mainly just surprised at how hostile people are to the idea of meditation and how 'everyone' apparently thinks it's about thoughts or guided meditation. Also I hoped it was implied that "a quiet place" indicated that I would consider this absolutely a solo activity.

You know you are doing the very things regarding my posts that you said happened to you above.

My friend, "I've tried this and it hasn't worked for me" is not hostility, and it's a little odd that you read it that way.

I don't think "please be more specific about what you are responding to" is an unreasonable request in a highly personal thread.

Thanks.

My outlook on meditation is that there isn't a right or wrong way to approach it, just what suits the individual, but obviously not for everyone.

Ecstasy (and acid) definitely helped unlock dance music for me, especially understanding the physicality of all the very tactile sounds that pop up, that they are there for a reason. Also being able to get lost in long form music and ride the waves of different moods that may develop across the space of an entire night. I don't really need the drugs to enjoy this stuff, but they helped make things click for me at first.

Brabwell, I'm not talking about *you* saying you're not interested in "meditation", even though we were evidently talking about very different things. I get that. I got that many posts ago. And u was talking about hostility to an idea, not a poster. I mean the response generally. Look how it 'derailed' the thread. Like I was telling people to join a fucking monastery or something. It's a little surprising to me. I'm sure people will tell me why it came across as awfully condescending and how they actually lived in an ashram for 20 years thanks.

* I wasn't talking about hostility to a poster.

Noel, babe, you and I do not conceive the world in the same way - and it looks like we use language in quite different ways. Which is fine and beautiful and good, my friend!

I don't think "please be more specific about what you are responding to" is an unreasonable request in a highly personal thread.

I mean, the first part there is very general. In terms of your own suggestion, what does that refer to, specifically? As a broad statement it could be a rather condescending and indeed alienating thing to say to someone who is trying to communicate with you. Is it cos I mentioned "chi"? You know, the terms or apparently implied metaphysics don't matter. Expeeiences are real. I don't necessarily "conceive" of the world at all, if I'm communicating I'm trying to translate.

When you first replied to me with -

Haha, see meditation is another of those ~neurotypical people things~ I have never managed to make work with my brain. Some people are just wired differently, it's OK.

That's supposed to be self-deprecating or something but firstly it reads like instruction. "See," "it's OK". And it's literally not true, which at the very least means you missed where I was coming from and 'who' I am. Something I wanted to clarify. That has nothing to do with mj or meditation per se and everything to do with communication.

I am interested in talking about ND experience and appreciate the clarity you can bring to talking about it but the "only autist in the village" act is quite alienating.

Not that you have any obligation to be not-alienating. I have been trying to communicate here though and as someone who should perhaps know better I think you could do better than make out that the failure is entirely mine.

My own experience with intrusive thoughts are thoughts that 1) are bad, 2) are demonstrably false, and 3) dominate all other stimuli. One moment I am happily listening to Selected Ambient Works and suddenly a voice in my brain says "Paul, you don't really love your dad / mom / brother / best friend. And I will prove this now by showing you several ways in which this person is ugly or immoral." When I am not high I recognize the gremlin for what it is, but when I'm baked, these thoughts can become pretty persuasive despite the fact that I do in fact unreservedly love my dad, mom, brothers and best friends. This is the main reason I avoid smoking weed.

Noel, have you ever had the experience, of talking to a neurotypical person, and explained a difficulty that you face, and they reply "Hey have you tried... just NOT being autistic/ADD/anxiety?" (I am not sure what specific type of neuro-non-typicality you experience.) I get that all the time, and I find it an intensely frustrating experience. Have you had experiences like that?

Can you try to relate that experience, to this experience: you walk into a thread, and say "Hey, if you have problems with this thing, have you tried meditation?"

"Meditation" is one of those things that gets reccommended to everyone, for everything - but very specifically, it often gets reccommended to people with various mental health issues. (Along with, "have you tried jogging" and "have you tried going for a nature walk" and "have you tried just... cheering up and going to the pub once in a while?") It's something that many of us (and maybe I'm extrapolating too much here, but based on other people's reactions on this thread, I don't think I am) have had reccommended to us, many time, by people who thought they were trying to be helpful, but did not realise that in repeatedly reccommending something that *just did not work*, they were reinforcing really negative, unhelpful views of mental illness as mentally ill people somehow 'just not trying hard enough'.

I'm not saying that meditation doesn't work wonders for some people - obviously including yourself! (As jogging and nature walks and... going to the pub can and do help other people.) The hostility is not towards "meditation" - the hostility is towards a) the idea that we haven't already tried it b) the dismissal of our experiences when we say "well, I tried it and it didn't work" and c) this idea, which often comes along with the experiences described in paragraph C, that our poor mental health is due to us 'just not trying hard enough'.

Mental health is a personal and emotive topic. People have personal and emotive reactions to discussions of it.

I have tried, really hard, on this thread, to be clear when I'm talking from a "this is a weird thing I experience, maybe some other people do, but I'm not being prescriptive because autists are all different" - and when I'm speaking from a "this is a super-common thing that many, many autists and non-neurotypical people around the world experience."

You have taken one flat, poorly-expressed, badly-worded attempt at diverting a conversation I didn't want to have - (I didn't want to have to explain for the 500th time why meditation doesn't work for me!??!? Yet you are demanding that we have this conversation again, because you didn't understand my joke as being a... poorly expressed joke of which I was supposed to be the butt?) - as evidence of my entire attitude towards mental health, towards your non-neurotypical status, of my entire quote-unquote "only autist in the village act" (literally: WHAT A BIZARRE THING TO SAY AND PROJECT ONTO ME. WOW.)

If you want to use a joke I have already apologised for twice, in this way to project such bizarre stuff onto me, I'm going to start suggesting that maybe there *is* some hostility here, but it isn't coming from any of the three or four people who have very patiently explained "meditation doesn't work for me" - "or me" - "or me."

This is exactly what I mean by "we see the world in very different ways". I am not enjoying this, and I think I'm going to stop now.

suddenly a voice in my brain says "Paul, you don't really love your dad / mom / brother / best friend. And I will prove this now by showing you several ways in which this person is ugly or immoral." When I am not high I recognize the gremlin for what it is, but when I'm baked, these thoughts can become pretty persuasive despite the fact that I do in fact unreservedly love my dad, mom, brothers and best friends. This is the main reason I avoid smoking weed.

― Paul Ponzi, Friday, 9 October 2020 14:30

Yeah, that definitely sounds like Intrusive Thoughts, but if you are able, when not-baked, to recognise "oh, hey, this is a gremlin" and *stop* the thought from taking over, I would guess that it's probably not Pure-OCD - or at least, if it is, you manage it really well. That's executive function, the ability to turn off or shut down gremlins. Do you have the "can't stop the gremlin" experiences while using other chemicals - does it happen e.g. if you drink? If it does, it's probably a "cognitive control impaired by substances" issue rather than your executive function being totally borked. (For me, my executive function is pretty borked regardless of substances, it just got way worse when substances were involved.)

Do you have the "can't stop the gremlin" experiences while using other chemicals - does it happen e.g. if you drink?

Oddly, not at all. I'm no teetotaler - I drink fairly often and generally have a good relationship with alcohol. Ditto pills and other certain powdery drugs I took when I was younger and less concerned about dying on a toilet bowl. I only smoked hash once, but I don't even remember that bringing this on. It's just weed taken in any form, but the effect is almost instantaneous.

IANAD but yeah, that does sound suspiciously drug-specific, brains are weird! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is exactly what I mean by "we see the world in very different ways".

A conclusion which may be correct but which in this instance seems, as far as I'm concerned based on a misconstruel of my intent and meaning. And premature as a dialogue stopper IMO.

It was a brief post about a possible approach to dealing with stuff like a little anxiety which may be present when doing something someone was doing anyway that has been found valuable in the experience of someone who is not me. There was no denial of anyone's experience and it was not a prescription to fix mh issues, do drugs or get a difference type of brain! (Although..)

It was something shared in a spirit of discussion, not something I am or ever have been remotely invested in persuading anyone to do. That's the weird and ironic part. You know how the exchange of information without any agenda beyond the sharing is often misconstrued as argument?

Someone who is not me could have put in terms only of their own experience but for the same reason this sentence is stupid they chose not to.

have you ever had the experience, of talking to a neurotypical person, and explained a difficulty that you face, and they reply "Hey have you tried... just NOT being autistic/ADD/anxiety?"

I guess this is mostly rhetorical but... I don't need to have been regularly on the receiving end to understand how this sort of thing would be unhelpful and maddening.

But I'm not regularly on the receiving end of stuff like this probably because I don't talk about ND experience or "difficulties" much. Hardly at all until recently and certainly not with most people IRL, medical professionals aside. I've had hardly any undeetanding of it myself for most of my life.

Yeah I'm sure there have been occasions. I don't dwell on them or blame people if I can help it.

lol that reminds me of when I was hangin' out online as a teenager and there were these forums where people would write about their depression and people would respond "that's too bad!! you seem like such a great person! have you ever tried just being happy instead??"

the intrusive thoughts thing! Yeah, Branwell, that sounds a lot like what I deal with, and why meditation doesn't work for me. ... And, apologies, because I spent most of my waking hours yesterday looking at architectural plans, I am going to use building/construction metaphors here.

So the intrusive thoughts in my brain are like faulty wiring in a weird old building mostly constructed and subdivided without permits and not up to code. Because this wiring is all over the place in this building, if you were to try and remove it, you would end up demolishing a substantial part of the building, at prohibitive costs, and end up displacing a couple dozen low-income tenants in the middle of a pandemic. You can't remove all the faulty wiring. In many places, you just have to put in new wiring and bypass the bad wiring, leaving these corroded cables there, but just not drawing current. The common meditation model of "let all the thoughts go" -- to me -- is like mandating the removal of all the bad wiring, maybe you can get some of the bad wiring out fairly well, but you can't get it all out, and you will just have potentially dangerous "zapping sounds" and ground faults in places that are harder to get to. Whereas what works for me: certain music, other productive tasks, provoking new thoughts -- is what is functional -- it is putting in new wiring, and reducing/eliminating current going through the bad wiring.

(hopefully calzino will come along and correct errors in my electrical terminology and/or tell another awesome story about electrician lyfe)

As someone currently dealing with some pretty horrendous OCD-related stuff with one of my kids, this thread is unexpectedly providing me with just the 'frontline' advice I needed. Remarkably clear and poetic renderings of the experience of the disorder (I hate that word), giving me the insight I've not really had from clinical literature. I wish I could buy you a beer/bong hit/week in an ashram (just kidding about the last one).

hahaha <3

idk maybe it's partly me, and that I like to solve problems and puzzles and organize things, but, outside of sleep, the only thing that will get me out of intrusive thought paralysis is outside stimulus -- and in general, it's about creating new habits and thought processes to divert the power of the dysfunctional ones, e.g. I hate myself and want to die.

also, I realize, that this approach to dealing with intrusive thoughts probably is why my instinct when I see threads going into what I feel are "bad places" is to change the subject or be funny or cute or distracting

Wow, I didn't mean to turn this into 'OCD, the thread' but I guess, here we are - if it's helpful to people, or helps people to understand, that's great? (Like, I've learned quite a bit from this thread myself!)

The stuff that helps me, is like ctrl-alt-delete for the brain?

I talked to a neuro scientist person (a friend, not a therapist or anything) about what causes OCD - like, her understanding of it was something like 'the brain wants to complete a loop and mark it as done, but somehow can't, so the loop just keeps going, looping over and over and over again'.

So, stuff that helps me, is anything that pushes the reset button on that loop. (This is stuff I've found helpful - your mileage may vary! Brains are different!) Like, often, literally getting up and leaving the house, or even just walking into a different room, different setting can help hit the reset button? (Liminal experiences, going through doorways is actually a powerful psychological mechanism - which is why, sometime when you get up and walk into another room to do something - you forget what you walked in there to do, the minute you walked through the door?) As an autist, I find it very hard to shift gears to start with - so getting up and walking out of the house, out of the office, going somewhere else, looking at a different view can just provide the gear-shift. When I'm in the office, my boss, who sits next to me, will sometimes tell me "get up and go for a walk around the block, dammit" if my OCD starts interfering with his ability to concentrate. But lockdown has been *killing* me on this front - when you lose "out", that removes a powerful reset button.

Distraction totally works for me, I can bannish thoughtworms with music - or with really engaging reading material - or sometimes just looking at pictures of pleasant things that provide a jolt of good brain chemistry. When I'm like "show me a picture of a sea arch / special interest / hott person" - that's what I'm after, the distraction jolt which is like ctrl-alt-delete to get me out of a loop.

When a thoughtworm is really settled in, when it's a couple of days (even weeks - really sticky thoughtworms can *stick*, man! - when I was younger and didn't have so many therapeutic tools, they could run for months!) that's when I have to call in reinforcements, and kind of check in with people I trust, and "Am I going crazy, or ..." - again, my boss bears the brunt of this when we're in the office, he is a literal saint - but weirdly, and I know this makes no sense to other people, but I often use the 'no boys' thread for this, to check in with other people if I'm being absolutely tortured by a thoughtworm that won't leave me alone (thoughtworms like to cannibalise stuff you really care about!) - when I'm asking "Is this a thing, or am just nuts?" what I'm really asking is, "I'm being tormented by an intrusive thought about this subject, can someone else look at this idea, tell me if it's good, bad, crazy, sensible" and the act of someone else going "yeah, that's a thing" or "nah, that sounds a bit off" can tick the thought as complete and stop the loop from looping.

It's so uncomfortable to talk about this, because when I explain what's going on, it genuinely sounds completely nuts, it sounds seriously insane. (And especially when I'm doing a check-in, people misread what my motives are, why am I asking these stupid questions? Am I doing it for attention? No, I'm doing it to save my literal sanity.) I think it's hard for people to understand just how invasive and disruptive, invasive thoughts can be if they've never experienced them. Aren't brains weird!

Puzzles are also really good, because any puzzle that has a *solution* can tick the box completed and the brain feels that a loop has been completed.

(But that feeling is also addictive - my stupid solitaire app automatically redeals after completing a set, which is... argh, no, now I have new loop to complete, oh noes.)

'the brain wants to complete a loop and mark it as done, but somehow can't, so the loop just keeps going, looping over and over and over again'.

Whoa!!! yes! ... also I went through a compulsive solitaire phase a few years ago. ... Another insane but satisfying thing I did once, was collect all the writing implements in my apartment and test each pen to see if it worked, and threw away the bad pens. I kept the piece of paper I used to test the pens as a conceptual artwork, because, why not, I've seen far less attractive and less rigorous works on paper presented as art.

oh ... actually ... speaking of solitaire and conceptual art ... I have a fb friend who is a conceptual artist in LA and I mentioned how much solitaire I played. And that in the Windows 7 solitaire program there are actually glitches, where it will not pop up the message that there are no more moves left in the game in some cases where there actually aren't any moves left in the game, and in some instances where you can play the 3 of diamonds as opposed to the 3 of hearts, but nothing else. Anyway my friend suggested I should document this and make an art project out of "Glitches found in Windows 7 Solitaire"

okay, as this is ILM, maybe y'all will accept this as an apology (this is one of said friend's projects)

https://albumsbyconceptualartists.tumblr.com/

Actual LOL:

https://albumsbyconceptualartists.tumblr.com/post/115000437562/beuys-ii-men-how-to-explain-pictures-to-a-dead

(I have heard the Jacque Lacan joke many times before, I have definitely made it myself in various situations)

And yeah, I honestly think there is some kind of connection between conceptual artists (that said, are there any artists who aren't conceptual artists?) and some form of obsessive or compulsive behaviour, because many, many artists have talked about art as a kind of compulsive urge, as much as a rational decision-making process. And that 'look, now this is a piece of art' both ticks the brain-box that marks the loop as 'done' and also provides a retroactive raison d'etre for the whole experience. (I wasn't losing my mind, I was creating this piece of art; look there is now a beautiful piece of art that didn't exist in the world before, the end result - the artwork - validates and slightly justifies the unpleasant experience of feeling like I was losing my mind.)

good point!

To a narrower point, re bad effects of weed. I enjoyed for most of the 70s, then it started adding to my already increasing insecurities, so I quit, felt better, came back to it in the 80s, felt much worse, then read a big feature about this kind of experience in Rolling Stone: the author finally mentioned it to a couple of friends, who were like, "You too?!". so yadda yadda growers and dealers were enhancing it, going for quality over quantity, because War On Drugs. I've smoked it a few times since, with better results, but it's always much stronger, a bit edgier, than in thee old days.
Totally concur re xpost nevrer done heroin but can relate to it in song. In my case it's always been. "I have made a very big decision. To nullify my life," and then going off--not rushing on that particular run, but something more artsy, also involving money and time-time.

Not nec. going so far as to overall nullify, but plus or minus out, cancel out some good or bad, don't want to bother with stuff.

I mean I had this cash register once, where if you entered too big an amount, that was the plus, so you would have to re-enter it in red ink, with a minus sign in front.

Too big, too good.

For myself, music is the drug. I been on everything and listened to a lot on everything but the downsides of using were eating me alive so i quit it all. What remains is music. And it hits the spot a lot of the time.

Definitely had some ear-opening experiences on weed. I remember in college getting high and listening to Kate Bush's "The Ninth Wave" and I could hear everything, all kinds of layers and textures and even vocal lines I'd never noticed before. Also had sort of a jazz breakthrough watching the Vandermark Five play while I was moderately stoned and for the first time watching a jazz band I could really disaggregate all the parts and understand the time-keeping and structure under the improvisation. I realized during one solo that I knew when it was going to end, and that was kind of revelatory.

So yeah, I think it's just the ability to isolate and focus on things and follow along (while letting the focus on lots of other things subside). I'm neurotypical as far as I know, but my brain is a busy and easily distracted place, and weed definitely turns down some of that noise. (Also fwiw music is a great antidote ime to any weed-related downward spirals — if that starts up, I can just distract/divert the train of thought by putting on the right music and getting lost in it.)

I definitely don't "need" weed or alcohol to enjoy and appreciate music, I listen to music all the time regardless of any level of intoxication. But they both enhance it in certain ways.

(The key for me to both weed and alcohol is moderation. I hate being either too stoned or too drunk. My favorite is a nice combined buzz between moderate levels of both.)

Oddly relevant:

#MentalHealthAwarenessDay pic.twitter.com/YQvYTdsZue

— Zombies Transed My Neighbours (@finryan87) October 10, 2020

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