High Weirdness

Dom and I discuss High Weirdness by Eric Davis in relation to spiritual experience in general but also to Dom's personal experiences as a psychonaut before getting sober. We are interested in exploring the relation of psychedelic experience to the process of recovery. Of particular interest is the irreducible ambiguity, or weirdness, of psychedelic experience that can either be a nightmare or the ecstasy of release from habitual modes of thinking and being in the world. Infamously, Bill W., the founder of AA was a part of an early research project with LSD to "cure" alcoholics of their "obsession" with alcohol. Does the weirdness of the psychedelic trip have the potential to break one out of addiction's habitual binding, or is it just another form of "low-level" spiritual seeking that contains limiting bindings of its own?

https://youtu.be/HpIwJiy_zAw

Intention without intention

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Thanks for doing this with me. So uh doing some more content for the sober reading channel. That's probably not the exact name yet. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 0:22

I continue to work on it. Like something like that. Reading and recovery, another possibility. Okay, that flows a little bit. So yeah. So these are books that like have some sort of relation or meaning, you know, to our uh recovery in some kind of way or another. Just facilitate a conversation about uh recovery, about like what it was like before even you know, we got into uh you know any sort of program of recovery. Um we're talking, you know, mostly you and I about a 12-step program, AA. But um, you know, it really could apply to anything where we're trying to make a change. Um, and uh, you know, I'm excited about this book uh that you chose, although I was probably uh prompted a bit by me.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

But yeah, yeah, I think it was Incepted by you, but it was a book I was looking forward to reading for quite some time. And given the opportunity, I thought it would be a good discussion for both of us since we definitely have experience and varying viewpoints on uh this subject itself.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Cool. So the book is High Weirdness by a really cool uh religious studies professor, I think he's at Berkeley, uh, Eric Davis. Uh I've read a couple of his books. I've also read this book about um like how some forms of humanism are like becoming the new um uh transhumanism in specific, uh becoming the new like form of Gnosticism. I think it was called Technosis, I think was the name of his other book. But okay, anyways, uh, and that that preceded this book. Um and I I've seen him give talks on YouTube and stuff like that before. He seems like a pretty cool guy, and I have a history of religious background and religious studies background, and it's like kind of cool to see that a lot of what you know he references and and has read through is like all stuff that we you know did and read, um, you know, in in the history of religions slash religious studies kind of background. But I know I thought this book was specifically a good choice for you, and I don't know if you want to talk to that a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Yeah, I mean, my background, I have a degree in um neuroscience with a molecular and cellular specialization, and a lot of that decision to go into that field was kind of based around my affinity for psychoactive substances and affinity. Being a young kid that had interest in all things weird and mind-bending or mind-numbing, uh pick either or um really kind of drew me to that. I mean, there are obviously other reasonings and you know explanations behind it, but I think um deciding what I wanted to focus on, I decided on something that I one experienced and yeah, had just had just had an interest for. Um and yeah, this book, I think from a religious standpoint, I've always been investigatory and at least a sense of I was unsure of where my alliance laid in terms of who I believed in or what sect I believed in. Um and it was definitely You've been a seeker. Yeah, I was always frustrated because I never found a summation that I agreed with, I never fully accepted any specific ideology, and therefore I had to find the correct one for me, which led me down every path. And then as soon as I would realize that I didn't encompass everything that they did, um I would move on to the next. And it became this like perpetual cycle of seeking something that I aligned with, and that just never happened. Um, so I think from uh I couldn't find spiritual guidance outward. Um, so I think I turned inward and thought I could find it within myself.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

And okay, and so um well, let me just say, first of all, about the title. I'm gonna I'm gonna come right back to that, but the the high the title high weirdness. Um so the weirdness here, I mean, weirdness has a like a long, cool history that he goes through that I don't want to get into um too much, like just etymologically speaking. But like, you know, the uh weird sisters uh of Shakespeare of Shakespeare uh in Macbeth are kind of like one of the first touch points uh in the book. And there also seem to be a reference to the fates, um, those weird sisters uh in Greek mythology in particular, and um just the way that the concept of fate and working out our fate, um, and you know, if there are any ways we can challenge or change, you know, our destiny and that kind of a thing through weirdness. Um, and so we're gonna get into um, you know, what that really means, but as a preliminary definition, I would just say something that is just irreducibly ambiguous or indeterminate, hard to pin down, something that doesn't fit into any paradigm. So, like you were talking about searching around for a kind of interpretive framework, paradigm, if you will, to like understand, you know, the world and yourself and that kind of a thing. Um, and you know, weirdness is an interesting one because it's kind of like the paradigm uh that breaks paradigms, um breaks all the other paradigms or whatever, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

The sincerest anomaly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is a very sincere anomaly, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:48

Yeah, the that that totally so anomalous that it like makes you totally rethink whatever paradigm. You know, speaking of it neurologically or neurobiologically, uh, you know, according to your back uh you know your background kind of way of thinking about it, you know, breaking out of this default mode network somehow, like your normal ways of thinking about things, just because there's something that's just undeniably weird, anomalous, ambiguous, that just cannot be reduced by the scientific understanding, by you know, by the even the religious understanding. This is not religion like finding the right framework to interpret the world or anything like that. This is like learning to be in a world that's irreducibly weird. So um, you know, that which brings us back to you know your experience um as a psychonaut. So another term I kind of want to explore with people. Uh, you know, what's your kind of definition or understanding, and do you relate to that term in your own experience or not?

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Um, I think I relate to it in terms of my experiences. I definitely was very interested in um reframing my mind in any way possible, diving into any deep corners I thought had been undiscovered, you know, trying to open up some part of myself that I was looking for, even though there wasn't a specific goal or point I was trying to reach. I thought there was something under the surface that I could uh find. Um yeah, LSD was probably the first one I attempted to, you know, utilize, I guess. Um MDMA, MDA, um ketamine, mushrooms, DMT. Um slowly but surely I try to, you know, work within the cornucopia of psychoactive substances and come out with something undiscovered before. Um I shared with you one of my professors my first day of class. His first slide was a photo. He was our psychopharmacology teacher, and it was a photo of an apple, and he described all 52 psychoactive substances contained in it, and that just threw me for a loop because it meant that my uh cornucopia of drugs had now just expanded to apples and other fruits and vegetables I could, you know, dive into. But yeah, I definitely relate in a sense that I wanted to experience something outside of our known world. Um, I don't think I did it experimentally in a sense that I ran tests. You know, I didn't I didn't create a specific setting for me.

SPEAKER_03 8:26

Yeah, there were programmatic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Um I definitely had, you know, various experiences depending on where I was in life or where I was, even just my position in the world, you know, where you know what area I was in. Um but yeah, I definitely didn't run it as a series of oh, I got new data out of this run. Let me go back, try it a different way, and see what the results are. It was definitely more of um getting together with a bunch of friends and seeing what we would uh see what we're seeing what we could get into and find out. And uh yeah, each time it definitely became weirder and weirder and weirder, and um it wasn't always a positive experience. I will say that firsthand.

SPEAKER_03 9:04

Um you said even to me, which is like fascinating, is I was mostly extremely nightmarish and negative. Yeah. So like we'll get into that more later, but like we're you know, we're gonna not be like one way or the other. We're not gonna be like totally in praise because like uh you know, that's ridiculous. This is not a pay pay on to you know psychedelics, but it's significant in a program of recovery because it has a history, uh, especially in AA, um, in the sense that, you know, our founder, Bill W was involved in, I think, about a six-year-long program uh with LSD, you know, uh in the in the early 60s uh to like see if and he really preached it for a while and thought that it was possible that psychedelics might offer a um a remedy to um addiction. Um and we'll we'll talk more about like how why he thought that and like why he eventually, you know. I don't know if he totally rejected it, but like I think both you and me reject that. Um and so like you know, that's part of what we're gonna do. But on the other hand, this is not a total rejection either. We're not here to like be the I don't know, fuddy duddies or whatever who like totally like tell every you know the kids you know you're gonna fry your brains out and die or whatever. Because uh I mean what these site types, so for one, there's a big renaissance now of belief that you know um psychotropic, well, uh let's say um you know psychoactive, but I I don't know, just like all the classification. Is there a better name for psychedelics? We'll just state use that terms. Yeah, so there's another like kind of interesting renaissance that's been going on for at least the last 10 years. Um, and there's more and more mainstream legitimacy given nowadays to the idea that there's curative, therapeutic um, you know, possibilities with psychedelics, um, which we I don't think either one of us are gonna say that's totally false or that's totally you know true, like if they're unbelievable, you know, go for it or whatever. We're here to kind of like think about its relation to recovery. Um, and like also in in your case in particular, you know, like what what relation it was to your life before recovery and specifically. Um and so I just would say that you know we're you know open-minded explorers, we're not here to like you know, condemn it or to promote it. We're just here to you know think about it, really. Um so anyways, I kind of cut you off. You were talking about, you know, whether your psycho um nautical experiences, um, you know, what they were about, like what you like, I guess kind of like what you thought you were doing.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yeah, I know the way to put it, maybe I mean I don't think there was any sort of initial drive when it started behind just, yeah, I wanted to get weird with some friends. Yeah, yeah. Um, I think gradually, especially the frequency of horrible experiences I had, there was something that kept pulling me back into trying it again, into doing it again. Um I mean, we've tried to put our finger on what that actually was. Um The only way that I could phrase it at this point is that I was looking, yeah, I was looking for something that I wasn't I was unsure of what I was looking for, but I knew there was something that I could get to if I at least did it enough and did it the correct way. It turned out there wasn't a correct way to do it. There was no secret sauce that I could have added to that psychoactive recipe to get me to a place, at least in my mind. Um but each time was a different experience.

SPEAKER_03 12:58

So was that place like a like a final like way to understand the world? Was it like an encounter with God? Well, did you have any kind of thoughts about any of that?

SPEAKER_00 13:06

I think I was just very confused all the time about the nature of reality. I had too many questions that were unanswered, and I wasn't getting the necessary information, I thought, um, to make any sort of solidified, you know, decision about the nature of reality, or more importantly, I think with hallucinogen, it was my position in the world. Um, I know we talked about before where each time I don't think I ever dove into my past, my future, or even like characteristics about myself, it always relayed back to my position within the world, whether that be, you know, in a cosmic sense or just in like a societal presence where I didn't know where I fit into, you know. Yeah. And I think those trips sent me so far outside of myself that I was able to kind of crawl my way back to my own position in the world, and it made me feel more solidified and steadfast in like where I was. Yeah. Um, I don't think it was ever curing any specific, you know, any in it didn't open up any part of, as I said, my past, present, or future. It just made me more okay with maybe where I was in life when I was out of it, you know. Um as I said, I think every time your your trip is to somewhere that you can't control and to somewhere that you don't entirely understand. And then I think when you come back to reality and you have that tangible presence that you can say, This is where I am, this is who I am, it almost makes you more comfortable with yeah, your place in the world.

SPEAKER_03 14:48

I mean, if if so you're so this is like uh really kind of I when you when you first told me this, I was like totally like this is like really interesting because I don't know if this is the way that a lot of people formulate their psychonautical like journeys. Um, but like yours, maybe they do, but yours is like this sort of like um getting completely lost, disoriented, to a frightful extent. So you describe a lot of these situations as like intensely nightmare nightmarish, really.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Yeah, I mean I think the majority of the trips, as a lot of people I know can relate to, is that you get to a spot where you feel claustrophobic in your own head to where you don't feel that there's any way out of that state. I mean, I think multiple people have the early come-up butterflies, and they feel this alarming anxiety, um, which I believe is due to your 5-HT1A receptor that uh what LSD acts on. However, you feel this overwhelming, I cannot get back to this. I've had friends stand up in situations and exclaim, you know, we will never see certain people in our lives again, not because they thought anything happened to those people or their relation to that person had changed. However, they were stuck in that position for eternity. You know, you hear stories of people being lost for decades in their own mind, and then they come back and they're you know sitting on their couch in place where they should be. And it's just the the most relief that you could possibly feel is when you come back to come back, at least in my experience. Um and yeah, I think again, it's just I felt that life was weird and I didn't understand it. So if I could find an even weirder, yeah, like an even weirder, it would make my day-to-day life seem normal comparison, or at least I could comprehend it at a at a better level, you know.

SPEAKER_03 16:49

It it may be relevant to the history of the um of psychedelics to to note that soon after it was synthesized, um, one of the first like actual like legitimate uses was to induce psychosis in um psycho psychologists and like just people in a psychotherapeutic environment, therapists, so that they can experience what their psychotic patients were going through.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Yeah, I believe it was is it a memetic where it's supposed to, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:21

Well, and the question is is like, is how is um is how much of a memetic is it if you're like actually psychotic while you're on it? You know what I mean? Like, like is it is it imitating uh psychosis or are you in an actual psychotic state?

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Well, when you're when you're in it, there is absolutely no second thought that what you're experiencing is not real. There is zero moment that I've ever had when I'm in the thralls of a trip that I question the reality of what I'm experiencing. I mean, it is gospel, it is truth, it is everything that you thought you were looking for, you now found. And then when you start to come out of it, all of those truths that you've uncovered seem to regress into just being fabrications of the trip. Yeah. Um, so it's real interesting. You it's a very, although it's a long experience, the introduction to a psychotic state and then immediate regression is very fast. How many people in a you know schizophrenic psychotic episode or stance can go in and out as quickly as you can with LSD? I mean, but yeah, I mean, you definitely are in a psychotic state in my opinion when you're on it. I mean, there's there is nothing that could pull you out of it. Um, you are completely untethered.

SPEAKER_03 18:33

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, and this is like one of the figures. I'll I'll just mention the figures that we're going to be covering uh are the Eric Davis covers, which is the McKenna brothers, Terrence and Dennis, Robert Anton Wilson, and Philip K. Dick. And famously, Philip K. Dick really didn't use psychedelics. He was actually psychotic and would flip in and out of it, and I would argue, like was at his best when he could flip in and out of it. Like when he was in it, but like he had this sort of like way of distancing himself from it at the same time, and we'll talk way more about this when we get into Philip K. Dick. Um, so that he could like get whatever he was getting, you know, from the psychosis, but at the same time be enough in a neurotic position where he could question and even you know, in books like Vallis, make fun of the per the part of him that was in the psychotic state. So literally to step outside of himself and be watching himself as a psychotic. Um, but anyway, we'll we'll definitely get more into that. And it is interesting because both you and I um you know wound up just regular drunks. Like we like the you know, I I never went very far in at all with with psychedelics, um, you know, never got anything out of it. Um, but you know, I wound up just medicating if you want to put it that way, uh, you know, with alcohol. And it has, you know, obviously, you know, psychological, uh physiological effects. Uh, but it's it's it's nothing like I mean one thing that people talk about with you know um psychedelics is that supposedly they're not a uh addiction, uh they don't form addictions. Um whereas there's like this very like obviously robust literature that alcohol does like in the most classical sense of an addiction where you were physically dependent in in some way or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Yeah, I I remember when we were younger, we you know, psychedelics were very not scary in a sense that we were never afraid of becoming addicted because the experience itself was so heavy that you wouldn't want to experience that on a frequent basis.

SPEAKER_03 20:53

Yeah, you did at least for a time. That is that that's so fascinating to me. Yeah, it most people have one bad trip and they're dumb forever.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yeah, I mean, I had subsequent, you know, I would say, I don't know, maybe 10 direct experiences back to back where they were negative. And I think the only way, and and I think begrudgingly I would be heroic, but like I would I would enter them begrudgingly as well, or someone would be like, hey man, like tonight's the night, and I'd be like, oh my god, this is gonna be horrible. You know? And and I I was I was aware, and I don't know if that set you know the trip to start off in a negative way. However, yeah, I don't think anyone that has done um like high-dose LSD trips would want to experience it on a frequent basis. I mean, I think the snapback to reality is extremely taxing on your brain, to where I've described it before as you can almost feel a pressure in the back of your head, um, at the bottom of your brain, to where it almost feels weakened. And I know it's completely psychosomantic. I imagine. But you you feel like, oh, I I should probably cool down for a bit before that doesn't snap back. I mean, I think there's a fear that it brings to where you know you're you're lost for so many hours that if you repetitively enter that space, you might never come back. Um similar to what a psychotic episode could offer, you know.

SPEAKER_03 22:24

Yeah. I mean I think it's interesting too. So the first difference that we're kind of perhaps outlining is like this, you know, ability to, you know, get you into sort of an addictive uh I think there maybe are people who do get addicted to psycho uh uh psychotics. I mean psychotics to psychedelics, but like um I don't I don't know that that's like a huge thing.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

I think they have to be quite sadistic. I genuinely think they would have to enjoy forming, you know, even for a moment, I I would categorize them as like small traumas, you know, that you're that's fascinating. Yeah, I I think you know when people reference having you know PTSD for a traumatic event. I think you talk to a light of a lot of people that have significant experience with psychoactive drugs, and a lot of their responses mimic, in my mind, a PTSD uh mindset at least. Um I because it is traumatic. I mean, you come out of it. I think the only reason I made it so long with these horrible experiences was that I tried to reframe it as, oh, that wasn't negative, it was just weird, and I made it out. Yeah. And I'm and I didn't know if it actually impacted personality, or I know some people we've joked about how a lot of men will go through psychoactive experiences and they say, I've learned I've now learned empathy. Oh right. You know, like they didn't have that before, and it instilled something in them. Um Yeah, I don't think I ever was instilled with any new emotion, or you know, I think it just broke me out of my normal state, and I crawled my way back, and it was something that I wanted to. I don't know, though. I was never proud. I never I never gave myself a gold medal for making it back, you know? It wasn't like I I climbed a mountain and you know found my way back.

SPEAKER_03 24:19

Another kudos to you because there's a lot of like fucking new age guru dudes who like honestly they feel like I feel like they've awarded themselves some kind of gold medal, yeah. The savior complex, whatever, because they've seen shit, man. Yeah. That like nobody else, and it's like they so they know the ultimate nature of reality, which is like the opposite of the theology that Eric Davis is articulating in this book, which is like what the psychedelic for these psychonauts did is like create this ambiguous space. So you talked about like being utterly in the psychotic position, in you know, on the you know, when you're peeking on the drug, so that it's like um, you know, no doubt, no question. And then as you come down, then the doubt comes back or whatever. Yeah, and so like that's the sort of interplay that Eric Davis is really interested in, so that like it's like no, I nothing interesting or of substance was revealed to me, it was all bullshit, like, but maybe something, you know what I mean? Like, there's it's always like this, like, I can't, you know, say one way or another. And so, like, the the value of it is for is for like a certain type of religious experience, which is not the sort of like psychotic, what's sometimes even called religious psychosis, where you like become convinced of some whatever programmatics, you know, like religious system of like whatever, but like rather, especially with the idea around like breaking down the default mode network, breaking your normal ways of thinking, what it introduces is a sort of ambiguity that can also be freeing because it because it re because it reduces certainty, which is this incredible irony given that you know, in neuroscience nowadays, like the understanding of what a human being is is as a you know prediction machine. So that and and a prediction machine designed to reduce uncertainty. And and and the claim of this type of religious experience, at any rate, as I understand it, is that like this is to produce uncertainty so that you can get out of the trap of certainty, uh, uh, you know, a certain type of, you know, any type of certainty is is is psychotic in in in some sense, you know, in this according to this thesis. And so like getting out of that is like a religious experience, which is the opposite of what I think a lot of people think of an epiphany, because the or an ecstasy or a uh enthusiasm or whatever, it's like you are giving some totalizing absolute revelation, you know, kind of like according to the mode of seeking for the answer, sort of a thing or whatever, or an encounter with God or whatever. Um, and the thing is, is like I'm you know, according to the thesis of this book, like that encounter is gonna be like, oh, was it God? Was it what what was it? Like it was something, like, but it was like not anything, you know, like that I can readily, you know, depict, explain, identify, yeah, reduce uncertainty around or or or reduce the ambiguity to zero in any in any way.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Yeah, I think it remains ambiguous after the fact. Um, I know James in the book references the peripheral being brought into view. Yeah. Once that peripheral is opened, it then closes, and then whatever is stuck in that position remains there. It's not like you have now free access to explore that peripheral. Yeah. It closes back in, and then I think an issue that people lead is they keep trying to bring that back into view, but the only way to do so is to re-enter that state or to get into a state of psychosis to where you always have that readily available, and then you know, you kind of lose the plot of what is actually in view. I mean, I think you said the brain is you know designed to reduce information, and when you open up too much, you kind of get lost. I think there's there's no way that you can rectify the peripheral and the you know the pattern recognition, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:28

Yeah, yeah. Like you can't you cannot identify the pattern. It's just like you know that there's things going on or whatever, but like yeah, you don't know what it is. Like a lot of times, yeah. No, and it's interesting too that like you know, the the the trips, you know, are often thought of as like similar in some regards, but not entirely to near-death experiences, and there's like a whole literature mapping, you know, like similarities and differences, but both of them share this characteristic of like symbolic sort of like meanings that are like you know, like trying to say something, or you think they're trying to say something or teach you something. There's a lot of encounters with teachers, but these teachers that they encounter, especially somebody like Robert Anton Wilson and the McKenna brothers, are trickster figures. So it's like whatever, like it's it takes you to a more shamanistic or animistic version of religion where it's not like you know, the people who like are gonna preach from the pulpit what to do, set of rules, like these are the laws, these are the doctrines, these are the dogmas, whatever. It's like somebody who's there to like introduce, like um, you know, the the essentially tricky nature of the universe itself. It's not just that you're um what's being revealed to you is like that like the universe itself in some ways is a tricky place, like yeah, and so um, you know, going back to Robert Anton Wilson, uh again, we'll get way more into this, is like his whole idea, roughly, is that like we can sort of like take something that is like fantastical and trick it into existence. And he's like the greatest example of this because there's a pretty good argument that the Illuminati, um, you know, his Illuminati trilogy especially is responsible for like all the bullshit Illuminati stuff that you see nowadays, where you see this what's sometimes called hyperstition where you dream something up. The ultimate example uh that we talked about is the um Necronomicon. From Lovecraft. Yeah, from Lovecraft, we just meant which gets mentioned, is like totally fictitious book. Lovecraft puts it in his fiction to make you know some character's library seem scary and weird because he's got a book in there called The Necronomicon. People take it as if it were a real book, and soon the thing gets written and it is a real book. You know, it's like this weird way of like coaxing, tricking, you know, reality and then whatever reality is, and then reality tricking people back. And so um I don't know, it's just like this full-on weirdness, and this is the I suppose the um second main idea around high weirdness is that it is irreducible ambiguity, it's kind of the first, like it's it introduces you to stuff that you can't think yourself around or into or whatever, and every time you do, like it kind of falls apart. But the second thing is is like it introduces this not this notion that there's a sense in which sometimes it's called active imagination, especially somebody like Carl Jung was big into that, but even before that, somebody like William Blake or whatever, uh, this idea that like your imagination has a certain reality to it, but it's a very precarious reality, it's a very ambiguous reality. You don't know what its ontological status is or like how, but it like it it seems to have some level of reality. It's not just you can't reduce it to total hallucination or total like whatever.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Like yeah, I mean I think I think of like being in a hypnagogic state or I know I know personally I've experienced hypnogagia for years um to where defined as how. Um in my experience, I've had sleep studies done um to try to find a root cause, but essentially I will wake up and interact with you know fantasy characters within my immediate in my room, you know, wherever I am, and I will wake up and still be in a hit dreamlike state. However, it's like an in-between um dream state and awake state, um, to where I will start interacting with characters, I will get up, walk around, start interacting with things that aren't there, yeah, and I'm aware that I'm doing it, but it's from a psychotic stance where I am completely in it. I am invested in what these people are saying, um, and then slowly they will kind of dissipate, disappear, and then I'll be sitting there just standing in the middle of my room with nothing around me that I'm, you know, I wasn't there before. Um and it's yeah, it's this real interesting state that you get out of and you realize that those characters weren't never I mean, obviously you realize that they were never there, and um, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 33:42

But like, um I think part of the thesis of this book, and I not to deny that they weren't ever there, but part of the idea or part of the playfulness of this book, let's say, okay, is that like to try to like understand like they weren't ever there, fine, they were just like mere like figments of my imagination, but nonetheless, there was some sort of like reality about it that that was like beyond just like I don't know, thin air, which maybe it was just thin air. So, but like I the thesis of this book is like whatever happens in the imagination, um, whether it's in a hypnagogic state or whether it's in um you know an actual psychedelic trip, uh, it's not entirely reducible to just like brain chemistry and like and like you know, whatever the the drug you took was or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Well, I think one of the most frustrating points of my college career was realizing that all of these things I believe that you know neuroscience and uh biology would provide, all the answers, they never encompassed the entirety of whatever they were um asking. Like the qu the the answers were never there was always some sort of anomaly outside their description or solution to a neurological phenomena or you know, mental illness where they could point to um a symptom and they could see that that symptom was being reduced or removed, but there was still something outside of that pharmacological solution that they couldn't actually describe or couldn't actually fix.

SPEAKER_03 35:21

Yeah, yeah. So like these things are ambiguous uh like a symptom or a condition or whatever, are irreducibly ambiguous in a lot of senses. And one isn't that we don't have complete medical control over any of them. So that's like one of the things that we find out, you know, in AA is like there's no like you know, total solution, especially because what happens is like after you get sober, like whatever was like primary, you know, was it depression, was it like um trauma, you know, induced, you know, PTSD, that you well, whatever it was that you were treating, you know, and and this brings me to you know, the sort of my my long career of like mainly just drinking, like thinking that I was treating my intensity, my natural intensity, actually. So like trying to calm myself down, like the basic way that I understood it, I mean, well, the basic way the medical field understands is is ADHD. That's the diagnosis given. But as with every naming, every um neurobiological description, what I think you're saying, and certainly what the book is saying, is there's always this part of it that isn't named, that escapes whatever determination you make about it. So that, like, in whatever way that determination gives you some predictive ability to recognize the patterns of this, you know, specifically named symptom, disease, whatever, there's all this irreducible ambiguity that escapes that diagnosis. Yeah. So it's like the name, and I mean, and and in history of religions-wise, knowing the name like gave you a certain power over something, which is like what's around the whole like God not giving Moses his name. It's like all around, like, you know, roughly understood as like demonology, like learning the name of whatever it was, like gave you some sort of power over it. But like, as you know, history of religions also shows, especially with demonology, is that like learning the demon's name and what his gig is, um, you know, sometimes could allow you to bind the demon, but usually you're the one binding yourself. Um, but or the the demon is the one binding you or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

Well, I think in AA terms, a lot of people get bound by certain statements about, oh, alcoholism is a disease of, and then they insert a word, and now your entire framework for why you're an alcoholic is focused around that one word or statement. Yeah. Um it becomes a determined, non-ambiguous, you know, like this is why you are the way you are, which in reality, I mean, you know, the the trite saying of people contain multitudes, you know. I think it's yeah, it's trite.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Until like somebody convinces them, no, you're this, yeah, this is your identity, uh or whatever. And like whatever it is you're going through or experiencing can be reduced to this, understood this way. Here's how this works, and here's the program that like fixes whatever it is. And and it's allowed, unfortunately, uh, especially older generation of people in recovery to like understand their problem as just this thing, and then like whatever else comes up, they can like ignore it because at least they're not drinking or whatever, yeah. And you know, they don't have to dive into it, you know, because they're treating like the problem, which is you know, this one thing, and this is how you do it, and blah blah blah. Uh so many people get sober though, and the reason why it doesn't work is because all the things that they were treating with their alcoholism or with their addiction are now untreated. Yeah, and they remain, yeah. And so, like, you know, uh, and it's a spiritual solution, which is, I think, you know, where we'll have to end up, but like, it is like the spiritual solution here is uh very interesting uh part of AA because so much of what we're gonna get into is the medical solution versus the spiritual solution. A lot of people nowadays want to make those two things the same and make them smoothly exist with each other within AA. But there are people in both camps. There are people in the medical camp uh who think a spiritual solution is stupid, that AA is useless, so that you know you should, you know, just get on whatever you know meds you need to get on. And so like if you go to a psychiatrist, they're generally gonna give you antidepressants because usually it you know it looks like you're depressed, so like, you know, like you're gonna be able to like drink normally because you won't need to treat your depression with the alcohol if you you know take the psychotropic drug. And sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. Um but like, and then there's the AA guy who totally rejects the medical stuff, you know, thinks like whatever, psychotropic drugs, um, antidepressants, especially, are just like the um psychological industrial complex, just or pharmaceutical companies basically selling you a solution. And then each each one uh of the extremes thinks the other is a huckster, is a trickster, which is like again very fascinating that like that's the type of like figure that is the centerpiece of this book, uh is this undecidable trickster. And um, that's the thing, you know, like it is this undecidable sort of position. Like, is it uh a totally medical solution to this? I mean, it's becoming more and more. I mean, there are now there were always drugs that if you took them, they could make you sick. Yeah, like if you try to do, and then now they're supposed to talk about drugs that like totally end the craving for you know alcohol or drugs or whatever. I don't really know how far these things go.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

I would question what else they would end the craving for, you know, would it reduce you to some boring? Just like antipsychotics, frankly. Yeah, they they don't know a specific mechanism, they they're gonna disrupt everything, you know.

SPEAKER_03 41:12

Yeah. So like, yeah, it's not yeah, like there that is the that is, I guess, the the theme of like the irreducible ambiguity bit. It's like no, not one of those solutions in isolation, at any rate, is the total answer. Yeah. And and and even though they might be mutually contradictory in some sense, like sometimes like a lot of people in AA find working both the medical angle and the spiritual angle at the same time, even though there's this in, you know, there's this tension between the two of them that being in that contradiction is like the place to be. Um, so you know, that's um a way to think about like the unusual spiritual nature uh of this journey that it's not it's not for you know the total answer at all. Carl Jung uh has this famous letter to um uh well it's to a guy in a whose name all of a sudden I'm forgetting actually was an alcoholic who went to uh Jung for treatment. Uh I feel like his name is like Titty something, I don't know. But anyways, and um this letter is actually something you can see online from Jung to this to this guy, and in it Jung articulates that like alcoholism, you know, is interestingly, you know, the the alcohol term in many cultures is spirits, and that it's so it's related to spirituality in the sense that it's somehow for Jung a low-level spiritual seeking. I mean, I would say the psychonautic quest is high, you know, high level, high weirdness, you're going for it or whatever. But like um, you know, Jung's idea was that at least with alcoholism, you know, you're like on a kind of like lazy search for God. It's like this crutch almost. Um, so like you're so much deeper than that though, for Jung. And so you're never gonna be satisfied with that, but yet you get stuck in this repetition of like trying to seek whatever it is that you're looking for in the bottle. For me, it was definitely like a sense of ease and comfort, you know, or or like take the edge off, take the edge off my personality, whatever was my idea about it.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

Yeah, I mean, I think for me, you know, obviously going through this journey and becoming sober, you know, I have asked that question what is the one thing that is an explanation for why I am an alcoholic? What is the one thing I can point to? Obviously, that has not yielded any specific result that I could point to. However, um, I think it's interested in reading this book and kind of reframing a lot of things I've questioned before in a sense that my alcoholism was driven, I think, severely by my passive. Experiences with psychoactive substances and going into a state of psychosis where I was given all these answers that I held to be true. As those slowly were removed, I was now displaced again in my position in the world, and I just I felt like everything was played out. I felt like everything I wasn't I didn't want to contribute to anything because it wasn't as important as my place was when I was in this psychotic stance. You know, I was the center of everything. I was the that's a feature of trips. I was the center of the universe, and at least I was connected with everything. As soon as that connection was removed, I felt isolated, alone, and the only way to remedy that and allow myself to really participate in anything was in a drunken stupor, or at least, you know, coming in or out of one. I think really I felt so lost in where I was because I had once found the solution or answers I was looking for in a psychotic stance. You couldn't, yeah, right. And I couldn't hold on to those or carry them with me. They diverted back into the peripheral and I couldn't access them anymore. And I felt like I was now stuck in a place I didn't want to be, and I yeah, drank about it in a you know, easy sense.

SPEAKER_03 45:17

Yeah, well, this is uh yeah, though this is like endlessly fascinating to me because uh I do consider myself a high-level spiritual seeker, not like I've accomplished a whole lot, but like it's interesting that every revelation that I've ever come to is not a totalizing disambiguation.

SPEAKER_00 45:37

Yeah, I think in psychotic, or not in psychotic, but in in my experimentation with psychoactive substances, I do think I found areas that I do still hold with me. Um, a decent example would be in one experience, I I mean, anybody that has tripped can tell you this that it's very difficult to be comfortable. You're either too hot, too cold, no matter where you're sitting, what you're wearing, you're always kind of pulling your clothes, you're questioning, you know, you you can never get comfortable. And that is something I keep with me today that I seek comfort out in almost every aspect of my life because I see it was taken away from me in these trips, and then when I got it back coming out of it, it became something that now I could recognize as important, and I think comfort is just a simple low-level um experience in life that I am grateful for and you know, seek out actively. Um but yeah, again, nothing ever groundbreaking or this is the pinnacle of life, or you know.

SPEAKER_03 46:40

Yeah, I think that's like one of the confusing things, especially in AA, where you know you're told right away you have to have a spiritual experience. Yeah. And then, you know, people's idea about like what that is gonna be is probably like the super intense psychotic, religious, psychoactive, psychedelic kind of thing. I mean, even just in the regular history of religions, I mean, nowadays, most people's religious experience will be classified as psychosis. So, you know, I'm just thinking of an extreme example, you know, Saint Francis uh ripping off his clothes and you know, giving away his uh wealth, uh, and then you know, preaching on the streets naked. I mean, again, historically, it's hard to know like how much of this stuff actually happened, and preaching to the birds in the trees, it's kind of like I've seen dudes like that, you know, and and like there's this kind of interesting documentary called The Devil and Daniel Johnston, and it's like this like uh really singer. Yeah, folk singer, right? Yeah, like and he, you know, like they had he was psychotic naturally, he wasn't on drugs or anything like that. But like there is this um idea that like that's what a religious experience is. Um, it's this very intense thing, and it sounds to me a little bit like, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, but like, and and and seeing Daniel Johnston after he was on antipsychotics, he was just like this really sad, overweight, like lethargic, no longer creative or very interesting, you know, person. And um you can see why, you know, psychotics people don't want to stay on their antipsychotics because it's like a reduction of themselves to such a degree. And it sounds like you kind of like maybe experienced a little bit of that like difference between the intensity of the trip and then like having to come down and be in a normal place. But I would just say that for me, the most important spiritual realization, and again, I don't want to be like too poo-poo-y about psychedelic experience, but like, or about those kinds of like mountaintop, white lightning, whatever, you know, God knocks you off your horse on the road to Damascus kind of experiences, uh, you know, the burning bush, whatever. Like those those are not my experience. And like the biggest part of my recovery was learning that spiritual experience, high-level spiritual seeking, is in the quotidian everyday moments where it's not gonna knock you over your head. These are things that are always, you know, could go either way, they're ambiguous, like the signs are often subtle. But for me, because of that level of complexity and the way in which you have to hone your own capacity to love, and to which in this sense means to like take all that in um and to and to see, you know, um that happening in the regular everyday um that's what the spiritual journey is for me. Um it's interesting the way you explain it though, is like this almost like yearning to be back there, even though it was awful when you were there. Yeah, kind of a thing is interesting.

SPEAKER_00 49:57

Well, I think within my spiritual journey in AA, the biggest shift that I experienced was I mean, you're talking about these knock knock you off your horse main character experiences where you still remain as the center of God's plan. He is actively seeking you out and acting upon you. However, I know some advice that I got from you was that you know, immediately coming into AA, a lot of people's fear is that they have to worship a specific spiritual being, a God figure, and they're not able to do that, so they stay away. But I know talking to you personally, um you said to me that um you know your higher level being has to be anything other than yourself, and I think it removes that fear of it it becomes less about you and more about the experiences around you, to where you are able to see those synchronicities, you're able to see those coincidences that you know, as I get older, I've said to people, the older I get, the less I realize that coincidences are simply coincidence. There's usually something behind them, or seeing those contradicting contradictions and being okay with it and seeing that that is where you know the truth lies are in these contradictions.

SPEAKER_03 51:15

It doesn't have to be a very unscientific notion of truth.

SPEAKER_00 51:17

Yeah, it doesn't have to be this lightning bolt from God specifically destined for you. Yeah, right. When you open yourself that there are these little micro lightning bolts all around us that we have the privilege of observing, you know. Like I think the gift and the spiritual guidance that I've been given is to really take a step back and realize that I don't have to be impacted by some lightning bolt, and that I can observe all the great things in the world and just be a party too, not have to be the party of you know, I don't have to be conducting, I don't have to be experiencing the world only through you know these big, huge, momentous moments.

SPEAKER_03 52:00

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so that and that's and that's what kind of love is for me now. You know, having you know been sober for a while and whatnot, and and having to to work the program, like the most important thing for me was like this is a Meister Eckhart kind of idea, but I had to uh I I had to pray that God rid me of God. And what that meant for Eckhart and what that means for me is like rid me of all my ideas about what God is, how God shows up, how God's supposed to look, you know, rid me of like this idea that like God is like gonna show up in some big flashy way. God does, but um, you know, as as again, it maybe with the lightning bolt analogy, it's not the one lightning bolt, it's like many lightning bolts, and that's like God shows up in that multiplicity, yeah not in that singularity, but like in that like incredible variety.

SPEAKER_00 52:58

I don't think those mini lightning bolts even have to affect you, but you can just notice them and recognize that they're there, and that's enough.

SPEAKER_03 53:06

Which takes a lot of training.

SPEAKER_00 53:08

Yeah, they don't they don't have to directly send you in a different path or give you this enlightenment that you were searching for, but being able to sit back, notice them, appreciate them, and then quite frankly, move on with your day. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:21

I think is a pretty knowing that for me, at any rate, knowing that your day is sacred is like is the sacred thing you were looking for. It's already here. Um and I it's very hard for me to stay there, believe me. But but but just like understanding that like whatever thing I'm doing, uh, you know, like you said, you know, you got a lot of yard work today, that is you are in the presence of the divine while you're doing that, whether you understand that or not. You don't need to go anywhere else. Yeah. Like, and it's all and it's already more subtle, complex, interesting, fascinating, loving than like anything you could create.

SPEAKER_00 54:02

Well, I think I've heard you say the craziest trip of all is just life itself. Totally.

SPEAKER_03 54:07

It's already psychedelic.

SPEAKER_00 54:09

And I think that's maybe like why I would describe myself as having an affinity for these substances and experiences, is because I've always been tripped out by life as a whole. Yeah. Even I think at a very young age, I was just kind of perplexed that, you know, it's like uh um is that term sonder where you're I believe it's the term sonder where you navigate through a crowd and you start, you just have this realization that everyone you're seeing has just as an intricate life as you do. Oh yeah. And it throws you into kind of a, you know, you kind of sit back and have to reevaluate because yeah, the the the trippiest part of everything is just that we all have these like non-integrated lives where we all have our own experiences, relationships, and then coming together, it's almost I don't know, it's it's very confusing to me at times how that's even I don't know, but yeah, I don't know where I was going with that.

SPEAKER_03 55:09

Yeah, no, no, I I think I think I think I feel it. I mean, one of the greatest things about realizing that other people have their, you know, like their own sort of like inner life, and um is like is like how exciting that is for me to like want to know it and like wanna be in relation to them. It like beyond the the fucking endless relation to myself, like that there is otherness, that there are others, and that I don't just have to like be in me, but there's like community becomes like for me the deepest form of spirituality, which I often have talked about, like is this service, so that like when I'm with somebody else and listening to their story or uh interacting with them, like it is like this wonderful release from the bondage of self, as we say that is like such a religious experience to me to like encounter something again that you know I understand to some degree in the other, like there's that gotta be some vehicle for our relation, but like that also there's like I'm being introduced to like an entirely different universe at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 56:16

Yeah, I mean, how how great does it feel to uncover something new about someone that you care about? Totally, yeah. I mean, it is just it it makes you giddy, yeah, and you you want the full description of, oh, I've never heard that before, you know, you know, what was that like? And it's not because you're trying to live by curiously through them, or it's just you care about that person and finding out something that you didn't know previously.

SPEAKER_03 56:39

I think that's what love is.

SPEAKER_00 56:40

It's true love, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:41

Yeah, it's it's like it's I mean, it's I mean, because like what's um the opposite of that to me is like what a lot of people call love, but it's just like this controlling horrible thing, which is to me a horrible thing, where it's just like this person has to be, you know, um, you know, somebody who I can predict, somebody I can identify. That's what makes me feel at home, or that's what makes me feel familiar. Um part of the idea of this book is like, at least for me, what makes me feel at home is the uncanny, which is like actually in German, unheimlich, it means like unhomely. Like, like I'm home when I'm like being introduced to like something that's other about you or other in me. Realizing something new about somebody is so wonderful to me, whereas you know, maybe it would cause a more insecure people to person to feel like, oh, I didn't really know this person, like you know, I don't know what they're capable of, and that kind of like anxiety, which is a part of it too, but like lack of control, yeah, lack of control over this person, and like I need them to fit in this box or whatever, but like the enjoyment of having your boxes, your concepts for people fail is the deepest religious experience I know. And so, like, again, I would say to some degree, and again, I don't want to be a fuddy duddy, but the psychedelic journey to me is like low-level uh default mode network uh destruction. It's low-level no-self or or or you know the big thing that everybody talks about, the ego death, but like somehow they've got the biggest fucking egos on the face of the earth. Yeah. So like, yeah, you you you're your ego died, but like you're the fucking like guru savior of the world. How did how does that happen exactly?

SPEAKER_00 58:22

I think that was a badge of honor when I was younger, is that when you would meet other people that had tripped on acid, um, they would ask the question, have you ever experienced an ego death?

SPEAKER_03 58:30

Because that's if you the that's the yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:32

Yeah, if you responded no, you are out. You you are you are not a part of the cool kids, you know. It was real funny because yeah, it became this badge of honor, yeah. Badge of honor that yeah, realistically made them more uh miserable to be around, you know, than they probably were. I've done it and I I've been there, you know.

SPEAKER_03 58:53

I've seen God. I I died to myself and whatever.

SPEAKER_00 58:56

And I think it's people wanting to, you know, lead with a sense of mystery that they know, yeah, they know something that no one else does. I mean, I think I fell into that. I've told you that I used to think that I could listen to people or talk to people, and they either got it or they didn't. And I never knew what that meant. In the club or out, yeah. Yeah, but you either got it or you didn't just get it. And and you know, I I really thought that I had a good radar for who got it and who didn't, and I thought I attributed that to whether or not they had experienced, you know, psychedelic trips or not.

SPEAKER_03 59:29

And it gave them something too much, they had too much ego, dude. Like you never your egos never like died like mine, yeah. You know, like yeah, yeah. You don't know what that's like or whatever. I mean, probably not, but like you know, like for me, you know, again in service to another or just in relation to another, in loving another, um, like that's the most uh intense, delicious ego death there is. I I can remember early on in recovery, it took a while, but like listening to other people around sharing their story or whatever, and then not thinking about what I was gonna say when I for when it came time for me to share, just like being sucked up into somebody else's story, and then afterwards like realizing like God, that was awesome. Like something in me is changing. Like, I'm not like trying to preach or teach or anything, I'm not trying to like have the best comment, like you know what I mean. Like, I and I was sucked up and totally in their story.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:34

Yeah, I I I leave a lot of meetings completely just overcome with I mean, still confused as to why I get to experience that and still confused of how that even comes to fruition because you leave meetings sometimes and just in awe of the capacity of another human being. Yeah, you know, it's like the depth of the depth of another human being and people that you initially probably had, you know, stereotypical or prejudiced against, like, you know, someone walks in and you're like, there's no way that they can be that deep. Yeah, but they share and you have a new understanding of you know who they are. And yeah, I think AA is something that I I've said it before. I I will leave a meeting and talk to my partner or a friend. I'm like, I really wish you could experience it, but I know that they probably wouldn't get as much out of it as you know, and you have to be in a certain place to get anything out of it. I mean, yeah, how would you replicate that experience for another person? Yeah, if it's someone that you love, you know, I would love to share something like that with them, but yeah, you realize you can't, but uh yeah, there's something happens inside of you know certain groups and certain moments that really open up yeah the capacity for another human being to be open and be loving and um yeah, and everything else to me at that point feels low level compared to that, frankly. Yeah, I mean I will say, I mean, you know, uh meeting up with old friends from my previous life, you know, it became very hard to have those conversations that we used to have because I would find myself trying to dive into, you know, a deeper aspect of our friendship or where they were in their like point of life, and it kind of would always come back to, you know, what what hey, did you see that game last night? You know, and you're and you're kind of like, How can I how can I care about that? And it's not that they don't have capacities that other people do, you know, it's just access. It's just not at the forefront of their mind. And but yeah, it it was very difficult in the in the beginning to you know have those more low-level conversations and be, you know, invested or to really leave that conversation with the same feeling that I was getting from certain meetings or groups or you know, even just uh you know, events or you know, stuff that we would go to.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:49

Um I think that's a pretty good place to wrap this up. This will probably wind up being part two, uh the end of part two here all but um yeah, just judging by our our time, I think. Um but anyway, the idea of um you know searching, high-level searching, the psychonaut as a as a searcher. Uh, and we're gonna get into you know two of the most famous. I think more people know Terrence than they know Dennis, but um and their experiments, like they're very um I think they're probably the first ones, I think is the claim to go down to South America and do the whole shaman uh ayahuasca uh deal, which is now very popular, which is now very popular and touristy to the point where like you literally can like get a travel agent and like you know, I don't know about that, but like you know, like it's just very candidate. Commodified super commodified at this point. Um, you know, just the entire concept of like um you know the consumer uh relation to religious experience is like a fascinating part of this book to me, at any rate. And none of these guys were considered like you know, lightweight tourists. Like these these were these are considered like the hard hardest core of the hardest core, you know what I mean? Like, oh and and so you know, I think it'll be really interesting to talk about their experience um within the frame of what we're talking about here, like um playing with the uh with with the world, with uh the trickster kind of figure at the center. Um the irreducibility of the ambiguity, the undecidability, like what is it that you really learn? And um, you know, and and Dennis is kind of like chilled out from a lot of that. Terence is dead, but like it seemed like Terrence never really backed off from some of that stuff, especially it's like I think the reason why he got so famous is because of his predictions with the Mayan calendar about like the end of the world is gonna be 2012 and all this stupid shit. But like, you know, uh, and they do they do a lot with time and time language and all this kind of stuff that'll be interesting for us to think about, like just the nature of you know reality in terms of time, but like just how ambiguous even time, which we think is the solid and unstoppable thing, is but um, and also you know, for both you and me, uh, skater culture, we're of a different generation, but like that is one thing that has lasted in skater culture, is like this like weird affinity for the McKinnon's, especially for um Terrence McKinna. Um, and so like or just like the idea of skaters like trying to you know go into some like alternate reality or whatever is like always gonna come of it for some reason. I have no idea why necessarily we'll have to think about that, but uh I mean uh you oddly hadn't really heard of them before, but I grew up hearing about special experience and then like once like this. Well, I should say it's Oh yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:04

As an undergraduate especially find out Joe Rog Joe Rogan is a popular fan of that. I'm sure he's brought back.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:12

I think he's actually showing at least a good thing.