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Comment by fasteddie31003 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's just DMT that gives you this experience. One of the most "geometric" trips was from taking Salvia in a dorm room in college. Everything felt like I was in the original Tron movie. Flat surfaces seemed to go on in a plane to the horizon. Honestly, made me feel pretty nauseous.

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I think folks tend to focus too much on the visual hallucinations caused by psychedelic drugs. I can only speak about LSD, so I might be wrong about DMT, but there's far more to these experiences than just "visuals". There's nothing wrong with talking about the visuals and the exploration in the blog post is interesting. I just want to point out for anyone looking to experience this stuff, bear in mind that you're going to get A LOT more than you bargained for if you think it's only going to be visual hallucinations.

There are also auditory and cognitive hallucinations. The perception of time gets incredibly distorted. Emotions and feelings especially about other people get a profoundly different and intense perspective. The experience can be very very unpleasant for some. For me it was an overall positive experience despite some rough spots. I was glad to have trustworthy folks around me when I was tripping.

A friend told me that on one trip, he was a cloud raining on a forest for five hundred years. He emphasized LITERALLY five hundred years.

> The perception of time gets incredibly distorted

We can only internally represent time as 3D space. If under the influence of psychedelics space gets warped and unrecognizable, it follows that our perception of time also does so.

I agree that the most "interesting" hallucinations are not the trippy patterns you see. But, take note, if you pay really close attention to it, you will realize that in fact there is a dual relationship between the geometry of the hallucinations and the vibe of the experience. Indeed, I was not the first to figure this out (though I did figure it out independently). Steven Lehar has been talking about it for ages - and he writes about it in his book The Grand Illusion (http://slehar.com/wwwRel/GrandIllusion.pdf).

Seriously - next time pay close attention and you'll see how the shape of the configurations you hallucinate determines how the "waves of energy" bounce off of them, which in turn gives rise to harmonious or dissonant interactions between them. So you can in fact modulate your mood by making your hallucinations more symmetrical.

Check out this article for more about that: https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/12/17/the-symmetry-theory-o...

Closing my eyes on 2CB projected neon patterns like the geometric patterns you find on central Asian mosques. It was incredible and I could really concentrate on the details.

Pretty interesting. I can do the same while stone cold sober. After half a minute or so I see geometrical patterns, much resembling Islamic geometric mosaics, with neon colors, that tend to move around (if I am listening to music, they follow the music). The longer I go, the more elaborate they get, and sometimes they even gain 3D dimensions or lead to scenes resembling dreams. When I tell that to most people they act as if I'm a weirdo, except for a friend of mine who sees similar patterns.

Would you say that is similar to what you saw on 2C-B?

That's pretty extraordinary. I don't think I've ever heard of someone seeing stuff like that without psychedelics. Have you always been able to see it or was it brought on by something? When did you first notice it?

I've been able to see it as far as I remember. I think I really noticed it first in elementary school. I remember very distinctly doing in the family car in 4th grade after telling my mom about Minecraft, lol.

I'm not sure but I think that's referred to as Astral Projection.

Yeah that sounds quite similar. Never had the experience sober, however.

Funny how no one really talks about salvia anymore. That shit was whack. I went to cartoon land while having my ability to communicate removed and feeling like half of my body was moving rapidly away from the other. I understand it is powerful and useful in certain settings, but yikes, not a fun ride for most people. A small, informal sample seemed to indicate women hated it less than men but that was just the people I knew.

Tried salvia once. Impressed by the visuals and the intensity; but there's no euphoria. Without euphoria, it's just weird perceptual distortions, and loss of the ability to move or speak. I thought it was like being ill.

Tried DMT once. It offers euphoria, visuals and intensity; but the speed with which it came on was such that I was effectively disabled before I could complete dosing - so no breakthrough.

Visuals are all very well - but I've been there and done that decades ago. Euphoria and joy are harder to come by, and drugs that provide them don't "keep on giving".

People react very differently to these substances, and my experiences are by no means normative.

Salvia was my first hallucinogenic experience. I and others have noted that it seems to trigger a primal fear response far more often than other hallucinogens. The trips tend to have very dark themes, and time is severely warped in such a way that it’s not uncommon to forget what a human is and live in an alien reality for centuries. Really weird stuff, and not something I would recommend to most.

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