It's great when you're straight

CORP$EY

no mickey mouse ting
I definitely don't have better control of my emotions when stoned - I tried meditating stoned the other night just as an experiment and it was 10 minutes of anxiety hell
 

cwmbran-city

Well-known member
You could be forgiven for thinking about knocking it on the 'ead, surely meditating stoned is just "stoned", non? If there's a chemical barrier, how can you transcend fully? Not lecturing, more an open & curious question for someone with an open mind.

In an ideal world cannabis would be available on prescription for trauma, its very difficult/borderline impossible trying to articulate how a volcano blast can create an interface where you can then genuinely see thru the murk & actualize daily/weekly goals, rather than face the constant folding in of a warped reality & the worst specifics of grinding psychological gears..... a wd40 comparison might read like self delusional bs, but life would be far far worse without the ability to micro-dose. Supermarkets and city centers are the worst. The noise generated, the zombie nations shuffling along streets & cake shelves. 2 hits off a volcano & S'burys will be soothed to a much more manageable level.

Some of the consultants i've met & talked to openly about this application have disagreed, some have kept an open mind, but when you self-chisel down & wedge the intake of "medications" they deem obligatory & still hold it together & self-regulate, slowly they can come round to this perspective. Right now, with EMDR ongoing, i hope that continues.

Thats why i'd trust cannabis over any benzo, used sparingly, but how many people know which strain they've got in an unregulated market? How many people have access to a strain thats suited to their psychology on a consistent basis? To do so involves closer association with more sketchy criminal elements unless a Cannabis Club has slowly taken you on-board, ahem. Likewise with the abortion that the UK's hash market became round the mid 90's. Clean, lower % but more varied cannabinoid spectrum hashes are pretty tricky to source consistently. It might be that folks who feel the the big friendly fear come on after ingesting flowers, would be better off with a small pipe & small doses of clean hashish/kif/live resin if yer v v lucky.

Music is the best medicine, personally speaking, both making mixes or just lazily drifting between turntables. It defines cathartic, like an audio tincture, after that its down to mood & taste. Thats another huge gap in CMHT's & mental health resources generally, how music poverty exists across society & its only really autism and palliative care that involve music therapists & engage with their skill-sets in the fullest sense of their remit.

Plenty of "sane" people i know bosh 5-7 bottles of wine a week w/out too much self introspection about their habits, but if i mentioned or disclosed that 1.5g's a week keeps an even keel upstairs, they'd scoff at the apparent absurdity, nevermind the hypocrisy.

Know your poisons & know yourself. After that it should be apparent what does & doesnt work.
 

luka

Well-known member
for large parts of my life music has been completely inert. flat. affectless. i loved weed in my teens but overdid it to such n extent it stopped working. i havent been able to get a weed high for about 15 years no matter what or how much i smoke. it's a great shame and i do miss that feeling but the relationship is wrecked beyond repair.
 

luka

Well-known member
used to sometimes have to buy weed of an old boy that used to give it all this


“Cannabis is anathema to the dominator culture because it deconditions or decouples users from accepted values. Because of its subliminally psychedelic effect, cannabis, when pursued as a lifestyle, places a person in intuitive contact with less goal-oriented and less competitive behavior patterns. For these reasons marijuana is unwelcome in the modern office environment, while a drug such as coffee, which reinforces the values of industrial culture, is both welcomed and encouraged. Cannabis use is correctly sensed as heretical and deeply disloyal to the values of male dominance and stratified hierarchy. Legalization of marijuana is thus a complex issue, since it involves legitimating a social factor that might ameliorate or even modify ego-dominant values.”

“There is no doubt that cannabis is trivialized as a commodity and is degraded by the designation ‘recreational drug,’ but there is also no doubt that when used occasionally in a context of ritual and culturally reinforced expectation of a transformation of consciousness, cannabis is capable of nearly the full spectrum of psychedelic effects associated with hallucinogens.”

“It diminishes the power of ego, has a mitigating effect on competitiveness, causes one to question authority, and reinforces the notion of the merely relative importance of social values.”
 

luka

Well-known member
not that i disagree necessarily. that pulling the ego out for under your feet aspect can be quite disconcerting when youre not habituated to it. not sure i like it any more.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
For me weed is all about sensory stimulation and intellectual stimulation too - it makes me mind go a mile a minute which can be a blessing and a curse. The main thing it screws me up with is sleep. So I'm trying to limit to wekends now.

I'm by no means an evangelist for weed but I think it does something for me that I'd feel somewhat deprived of if I quit. Definitely best to keep it an occasional treat though.

It's funny though - sobriety isn't necessarily a "clear" state of mind to be in. We're all half blinded by our thinking patterns, cognitive biases, ego, etc. Sanity is nothing to sniffed at, of course, but I think there's a good reason why drugs play a ritualistic part in most societies.

Definitely ethically dodgy to buy drugs of course and I don't feel comfortable with that, I suppose I'm being selfish. But I feel legalisation is the solution to a lot of these problems. Perhaps I'm just naive and selfish.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Coming back to sanity after too much ketamine can be a modestly profound experience. It made me thankful for understanding what the fuck is going on around me.
 

luka

Well-known member
sobriety isn't necessarily a "clear" state of mind to be in

important point. the biggest fugs ive been in have been totally sober. really lost my way at points without drugs to return me to some degree of clarity.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I feel like I'm being a bit... I dunno. Clearly smoking weed when you have depression isn't a good idea. Clearly smoking it all day every day isn't a good idea.

Meditation for me is the opposite of being stoned. It's about emptying your mind as much as possible. Weed is about making the world more vivid, including my thoughts. If your thoughts are negative and you're stoned it's going to be a lot harder to ignore those thoughts, in my experience.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
used to sometimes have to buy weed of an old boy that used to give it all this


“Cannabis is anathema to the dominator culture because it deconditions or decouples users from accepted values. Because of its subliminally psychedelic effect, cannabis, when pursued as a lifestyle, places a person in intuitive contact with less goal-oriented and less competitive behavior patterns. For these reasons marijuana is unwelcome in the modern office environment, while a drug such as coffee, which reinforces the values of industrial culture, is both welcomed and encouraged. Cannabis use is correctly sensed as heretical and deeply disloyal to the values of male dominance and stratified hierarchy. Legalization of marijuana is thus a complex issue, since it involves legitimating a social factor that might ameliorate or even modify ego-dominant values.”

“There is no doubt that cannabis is trivialized as a commodity and is degraded by the designation ‘recreational drug,’ but there is also no doubt that when used occasionally in a context of ritual and culturally reinforced expectation of a transformation of consciousness, cannabis is capable of nearly the full spectrum of psychedelic effects associated with hallucinogens.”

“It diminishes the power of ego, has a mitigating effect on competitiveness, causes one to question authority, and reinforces the notion of the merely relative importance of social values.”


dealers are basically petit-bourgeois ime. oh the irony...

i mean it is what it is but i hated that hippy twaddle, same with psychedelics/dissociatives, there's really nothing there that you can translate into non-drug experiences — politically i mean. loons like terence mckenna, just fucking ugh.
 
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luka

Well-known member
i quite like it tbh. but then perhaps i didnt get as badly burned as you did. just wasted years as a skunk addict, which is bad enough i suppose.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Re CBT research and the like - I've heard it said that you can prove anything with research, and also, the type of people who are into CBT are the type of people who are good at research, and that's one of the reasons for it's dominance. There's some person-centred therapists I know of who are kinda trying to fight a rearguard action here and put the research base together proving that other therapies are just as effective. Mick Cooper would be the most well known.

Cwnbran-city: My sympathies in dealing with the UK mental health system. I keep on getting annoyed at this anti-EU, decentralising conspiracy magick guy I can't stop reading (you'd dig him Luka), but when you read accounts like the above, I can't help but agree with him, centralised governance can ruin fucking anything it touches.
.
I had a lecture on CBT yesterday, it's cool enough, but it did feel to me very much like the product of an engineering culture. Was also struck by it's exclusion of some of the stranger areas of experiences - dreams, the Freudian "uncanny" - but I guess it's a tool not a complete map.
 

cwmbran-city

Well-known member
Thats why i'd recommend EMDR over CBT, as dream interpretations & their symbolism are usually discussed in-depth each week, as it seems part of the reprocessing actually occurs during dreams & you know what Freud said about dreams being the royal road.....

The dreams themselves are so vivid & lucid, its almost akin to another state of consciousness entirely. It also incorporates the idea of & experience with pure unadulterated malevolence, but manages to reframe it, albeit slowly, plus it integrates the notion & significance of Jung's concept of "the shadow", which CBT can be a bit dismissive of.

Because of EMDR's mechanisms, it can resolve issues far more quickly & effectively than CBT, but for lower level issues CBT is still an effective remedy to a variety of situations & circumstances (like addiction) & can even act as the holding system for severe trauma (seen first hand with Syrian/Iraqi refugees assisting a music therapist). Note that thats not a cure, but even EMDR isnt always successful in resolving every case of PTSD 100% of the time. CBT has its place, but like any form of therapy, new research & nuances that tweak the practice & move things forward need to be taken on wholesale by the psychotherapy community. Theres a gulf of difference between cutting edge research and whats actually put into practice @ Ground Zero, cos it can take many years for groundbreaking research to filter down into a public health system's domain of practice.

In Britain without centralized govt you wouldnt have local govt, and without local govt you wouldnt have local health boards (a local health board for local people). Without local health boards you're left with a market place for therapies, which is all well n good until something entirely random leads you to losing your job/icome, home, ltr & force you into the benefits system. Most pvt therapy here could be averaged to approx £100 hourly, which is impossible to access successfully on £70 weekly Employment Support Allowance (for disability) & still eat. Its only thru centralized govt that tax revenue is allocated to the demands of the NHS, but the problems of underfunding are so utterly endemic and have been compounded to a huge degree by mental health consultants not collectively demanding change. So, without central govt, i wouldnt have been able to consolidate & build on the EMDR provided, which in & of itself took years to access. Without my family i would've lost my mind entirely.

The medical profession, at some level, has to accept responsibility in not being more confrontational with central & local govt over its continued underfunding. NHS strike action is justified, given 1 in 10 nurses are now leaving the profession due to stress. With CPN's (community psychiatric nurses) the burn out rate is astronomical, so no wonder increasing numbers seek out much better packages & options abroad. The US is currently recruiting NHS nurses with the option of assisted living, bursaries for MA/MSc post-grad study & Australia is v similar.

Suicide by men under 50 is now 1 of the leading causes of death for this demographic. If it was any other form of disease or disorder, it would be treated like an international crisis. But because of the all pervasive Guardian-obsessed "patriarchy" & the fact most men are disposable workhorses in the labour market, nothing is done. I can count 4 deaths by suicide in the last 18months by acquaintances, but until someone goes into their CMHT with guns or axes and NHS workers are taken out by the dozen, nothing will change. Thats not encouraging or supporting such actions, more the slow fragmentation of services, compliance in allowing underfunding to continue (consultants retire on insane pension levels), bad apples in key positions & bottle necks at every turn equating to one almighty clusterfuck.

Stay safe out there people & if you're facing any bs from healthcare providers in accessing services, source a reliable local health advocacy service asap. They're the only people a consultant will listen to and be weary of because every conversation will then be officially documented.

Rant over, its Saturday eve, its raining so def time to knock out a new mix, plus its been nearly a week since my last Volcano indulgence.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
dream interpretation is weirdo shit i don't want to talk to a white guy about my recurring dream of fucking my secondary school teacher lmao.
 

luka

Well-known member
lifes a bit weird though innit. i only did therapy for a bit but it was with an asian woman lol
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Suicide by men under 50 is now 1 of the leading causes of death for this demographic. If it was any other form of disease or disorder, it would be treated like an international crisis. But because of the all pervasive Guardian-obsessed "patriarchy" & the fact most men are disposable workhorses in the labour market, nothing is done. I can count 4 deaths by suicide in the last 18months by acquaintances, but until someone goes into their CMHT with guns or axes and NHS workers are taken out by the dozen, nothing will change. Thats not encouraging or supporting such actions, more the slow fragmentation of services, compliance in allowing underfunding to continue (consultants retire on insane pension levels), bad apples in key positions & bottle necks at every turn equating to one almighty clusterfuck.

Agree with everything else you say, but really, the undoubted male suicide crisis has nothing to do with ignoring this crisis to focus instead on patriarchal attitudes. It's almost the opposite - the continued fixation from men on maintaining fixed gender roles (which obviously disadvantages women massively; the less appreciated aspect being that men also suffer hugely from a system they in essence created) has to bear much of the responsibility, so that talking about one's feelings = a 'feminine' trait, rather than a human one, and stoicism in the face of any amount of emotional pain continues to be seen as 'male'. Men create this prison for themselves. Until men 'allow' other men to seek help for mental health issues by creating a more open culture of maleness (and not shaming them for it), then men will continue to kill themselves at alarming rates.

As you say, terrible underfunding and incompetence, as in so many areas, makes everything a lot worse.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
There's some person-centred therapists I know of who are kinda trying to fight a rearguard action here and put the research base together proving that other therapies are just as effective. Mick Cooper would be the most well known.

Do you have any links for the research, even if it's a work in progress? Trying to get psychotherapy funded (which is part of my job) is an epic battle due to the perception that 'there's no proof that it works', interested in any new weapons...
 

cwmbran-city

Well-known member
Agree with everything else you say, but really, the undoubted male suicide crisis has nothing to do with ignoring this crisis to focus instead on patriarchal attitudes. It's almost the opposite - the continued fixation from men on maintaining fixed gender roles (which obviously disadvantages women massively; the less appreciated aspect being that men also suffer hugely from a system they in essence created) has to bear much of the responsibility, so that talking about one's feelings = a 'feminine' trait, rather than a human one, and stoicism in the face of any amount of emotional pain continues to be seen as 'male'. Men create this prison for themselves. Until men 'allow' other men to seek help for mental health issues by creating a more open culture of maleness (and not shaming them for it), then men will continue to kill themselves at alarming rates.

As you say, terrible underfunding and incompetence, as in so many areas, makes everything a lot worse.


patriarchal attitudes have been far more entrenched in the past, but there arent anywhere near the same the rates of correlation with suicide, not by a huge margin.

equally mental health services have never been so expansive (yet still sketchy as fuck).

yet essentially you're saying rates of male suicide are down to males suppressing emotions, that this is a patriarchal prison, stoically self-made & self-perpetuating = really?

in Britain the "system" isnt fit for purpose, its beyond broken, its shattered, so men dont know where to turn to and when they do their GP will default to low-level pharmacology/anti-depressants/benzos.

hence, one of the main fault-lines lies firmly within the remit of primary care - GP's are dismissive & prone to delaying referrals to CMHT's, even then if you DO get to see a primary care mental health counselor, chances are you wont see a consultant (maybe an inexperienced SHO straight out of uni if you're exceptionally lucky), you'll receive an inappropriately short course of CBT (10 one hr sessions is farcical) then get discharged, which begs the question who is diagnosing what & when?

the 4 suicides i've known were all trapped in a systemic labyrinth, all sought help repeatedly, all were rebuffed time & time again, NONE got thru to secondary care CMHT's & all were chemically coshed with inappropriate meds from various GP's compounded by never seeing the same GP twice....all 4 cases are now in some state or another under investigation by the Health Ombudsman....2 might give your argument some sense of cohesion, but 4?

mental health is a societal & political taboo, not simply a self-made male prison, because unless you experience the labyrinth that passes for "duty of care" personally & up-close as a "client" (or patient like McMurphy), you can never genuinely empathize with or recognize the scale of the problem.

to blame it on patriarchal attitudes is, from this human's perspective, naive at best &, sorry to say it, misguided identity-politics based "professional" misjudgement @ worst.

you need to pull your focus back, talk to mental health CPN's about why their burn-out rate is so high, study where the bottle-necks are & why they're so severe, the relationship these aspects have on the people who dont know the system they're seeking help from until they've spent years receiving inappropriate care & then reappraise how we can collectively save more souls from such a diabolical thicket of chaos.

scuse the tone, but the health-care system, its repeated under-funding by various political administrations & any semblance of workable reform, are the real culprits.

male traits? pull the other one.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
i'm just tired of men setting themselves up as the victim of some kind of conspiracy by liberals obsessed with the patriarchy (many of these liberals are presumably men - are they oppressing themselves? I don't understand), that's all. I have no idea why you're bringing gender identity politics into this, as though women get a better deal from the (terrible) mental health system?

I think I agree with you on most of your points about the awfulness of the mental health system, which I have seen in far too much close-up over the past 18 months. To add to your list of criticisms - in my experience, psychiatrists tend to be tunnel-vision buffoons, with no method/guiding principles beyond 'let's try drug B, since drug A didn't work'. But who do you think set up this system and allows it to continue - it wasn't created by a cabal of women!

Yet the system is not the only culprit. As I've seen throughout my life amongst family, friends and acquaintances, a major factor in male mental health problems is the shame associated with showing any kind of 'weakness'/inner emotional pain, stopping men from going to get help at an early stage. Obviously this doesn't apply to all men, but the generalisation has a lot of truth in it.

"mental health is a societal & political taboo" - absolutely, couldn't agree more. But it does operate differently according to gender, and this is something men have the power to change. To do this, rigid conceptions of personality traits linked to gender will have to be loosened.

patriarchal attitudes have been far more entrenched in the past, but there arent anywhere near the same the rates of correlation with suicide, not by a huge margin.

equally mental health services have never been so expansive (yet still sketchy as fuck).

yet essentially you're saying rates of male suicide are down to males suppressing emotions, that this is a patriarchal prison, stoically self-made & self-perpetuating = really?

in Britain the "system" isnt fit for purpose, its beyond broken, its shattered, so men dont know where to turn to and when they do their GP will default to low-level pharmacology/anti-depressants/benzos.

hence, one of the main fault-lines lies firmly within the remit of primary care - GP's are dismissive & prone to delaying referrals to CMHT's, even then if you DO get to see a primary care mental health counselor, chances are you wont see a consultant (maybe an inexperienced SHO straight out of uni if you're exceptionally lucky), you'll receive an inappropriately short course of CBT (10 one hr sessions is farcical) then get discharged, which begs the question who is diagnosing what & when?

the 4 suicides i've known were all trapped in a systemic labyrinth, all sought help repeatedly, all were rebuffed time & time again, NONE got thru to secondary care CMHT's & all were chemically coshed with inappropriate meds from various GP's compounded by never seeing the same GP twice....all 4 cases are now in some state or another under investigation by the Health Ombudsman....2 might give your argument some sense of cohesion, but 4?

mental health is a societal & political taboo, not simply a self-made male prison, because unless you experience the labyrinth that passes for "duty of care" personally & up-close as a "client" (or patient like McMurphy), you can never genuinely empathize with or recognize the scale of the problem.

to blame it on patriarchal attitudes is, from this human's perspective, naive at best &, sorry to say it, misguided identity-politics based "professional" misjudgement @ worst.

you need to pull your focus back, talk to mental health CPN's about why their burn-out rate is so high, study where the bottle-necks are & why they're so severe, the relationship these aspects have on the people who dont know the system they're seeking help from until they've spent years receiving inappropriate care & then reappraise how we can collectively save more souls from such a diabolical thicket of chaos.

scuse the tone, but the health-care system, its repeated under-funding by various political administrations & any semblance of workable reform, are the real culprits.

male traits? pull the other one.
 
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