Altered States

On it's own

Yes, I have, in fact, smoked weed, and injested weed in gummy form factor. You may remember from my Tragic Backstory™ that I was force fed weed a couple times. The problem with weed is that it frankly just works for me. It makes me feel good and relaxed, and, for a time, more productive, particularly when my anxiety was so high I couldn't do work. When I know someone's watching me, it helps to get a little high to get over that stage anxiety. Sometimes the stage anxiety happens with one person. Sometimes it's stage anxiety for the voice in my head, and I'm paralyzed at the computer desk. But a little bite of an edible and I'm back in the driver's seat. Obviously not literally, it's terrible to drive on this shit. You kind of suck at anything related to timing, and I feel like I live at 5 fps when I'm on it, but for things that are in your head, things that are automatic, like playing music or writing code? It's easy. Unfortunately, I'm bipolar, I have psychotic symptoms so I sometimes get a little crazy after taking it. Nothing too out of the ordinary at the moment, just the usual bugs inside my skin feeling. The biting at the ankles where you scratch, nonchalantly, and find there was nothing there.

Getting Cross

This is all the benefits of weed and alcohol but with way more psychotic symptoms. It has only happened a couple times but if you've ever seen Part 5 of JoJo's it feels like the visual effect of King Crimson. The world is exploding away from you and the only thing you can trust is the ground beneath your feet and things you approach to reach out and grab. You are living through the blackout and you can remember the insanity of it. I took a great photo I no longer have where I'm staring at the camera, trying to get a good photo of my eyes to see if I "look high." I looked like a serial killer. The next day I was so nauseated I couldn't leave bed.

I've tried, in medicinal quantities Xanax, Valium, valerian root, and skullcap. Valerian root, Valium, and skullcap, in that order, provide increasingly more satisfying highs. The high is kind of soothing and very welcome. It's like that feeling when you lay down after a hard day and but it continues whiel you move. Incredible. Xanax was terrifying though. I took Xanax because I was having a panic attack in the middle of a tornado. We were caught on the road away from shelter, and ex-husband wanted to know whether to turn around or go straight. He wanted me to use the Radar, this new technology I hadn't previously used. He wanted me to navigate a site obviously designed for desktops on my mobile. Hail was raining down and the kathunks of ice on the windshield did not let me compose myself. So I took a pill, and within the hour, I was good again. I was better than good, I didn't feel anything at all. I was in total control. I felt zero empathy for ex husband in that moment. I felt zero self preservation. I did not care about anything anymore. I felt nothing. In fact, I was irritated that there was so much commotion. Like okay dude, I'm on it.

Alcohol is one of my personal favorites. I've called it id juice before. I've called it many things. I use it to delve into my subconscious. I cannot see myself very often but when I drink I feel as though I am reaching a part of myself I do not normally have access too. I feel as though I'm learning something. Sometimes, often times, I will get black out drunk. I will not remember what I do, and then I find that I have written love letters to the obvious exception, I have written love letters to one of my partners, I have written love letters to myself. Famously, I wrote a letter to myself that simply said, "you have reached terminal depth, there is no bottom, there is no greater truth. You're you." This was heartwarming, especially from someone I care about so much, Drunk-ika. I'm a jolly drunk I think, though I'm told last time I got black out I cried about the obvious exception AGAIN, even though I didn't send her a confession of my undying love.

I have minor depressive symptoms now, but they used to be significantly more severe. Being depressed is like being drunk except it sucks. You don't get any of the fun parts. You become clumsy, bumbling. You fail at mundane tasks and cut yourself in the kitchen. You lose track of time. The past is now, tomorrow doesn't exist and you wish there wasn't a present. Watching someone be severely depressed again after I've been severely drunk, I see the similarities. I was so much at the mercy of others. I depended on them, and their kindness in a moment I would not remember. You're interacting with someone who looks just like the person you love except they're not really there, and the only way to get them back is to try everything you can to help them out, to make sure they don't wake up in pain when it passes. It makes me not want to get blackout ever again, not for myself but for others. I don't want to subject them to that anymore. Maybe this is a false equivalence. Maybe it's not as bad as I think, and I'm just experiencing empathy for someone like that for the first time.

My manic symptoms are also mostly undercontrol, and most of my experience has been with the hypomanic nonpsychotic type. I think that my SLS (Shit Life Syndrome) kept my mania in line for a while, but when I made friends and started to improve my life a bit it became somewhat different. I went off the rails, as I'm sure you've read before. I won't dedicate any more to explaining it, but it almost always feels euphoric.

A dopamine agonist, in the mind of a schizo such as myself is particularly potent. They say that schizophrenia is related to the dopamine system, and that blue lotus can provide some psychoactive effects in some people. In witchcraft it helps you "make the leap" into the spiritual. I drank some tincture, it was good. It didn't taste like anything in my cup of coffee, but after a bit I felt the euphoria. It was like full contact; it was like I was manic again, but without any delusions. I could see everything around me for the first time. I was the opposite of dissociating, I was hyperassociating. I loved it, but I also saw that I could get addicted to it. I won't take the tincture often, but I think it's important. My mood is better I think because it made me realize how easy it is to be happy if only I try, if only I give myself to the world wholly.

The least clinical of these is masochistic sex. It's not a drug, it's not a plant, it's not a psychiatric condition, it's just something I enjoy, a lot. Sometimes when it hurts enough I start to see shapes, colors, like I'm half asleep. I get sensations of architecture, the corner of a green steel suspension bridge, a purple walkway bollard, black and yellow warning signs jutting out diagonally from the ground: hard steel and concrete in vibrant colors wash over my mind. It's one of the only times I see things that aren't there. I get dizzy and lightheaded. It's not like I'm anywhere else though, everything feels so much more real in those moments. I look at my partner's face and it's like the only face I've ever seen. I feel their body and it's like the only solid thing I've ever felt. And then on top of it these bizzare sensations. It's strange.