The Mind at Large

so I figure now would be a good a time as any to talk about my next subject: Tripping

I'll start off with shrooms (magic muSHROOMS), mostly because it was my most recent experience, and the fact that its a hell of a lot less complicated than LSD or anything else.

so what makes these shrooms magic? Well, the mushrooms that make you trip contain two important chemicals: psilocybin and psilocin. These are both psychoactive compounds that interacts with the neurotransmitters in your brain to mimic the effects of seratonin (that happy feeling chemical.).  With these increased seratonin levels comes changes in perception, mood, mild visuals (things may appear to shift and melt), and a general feeling of complete Euphoria.

What does it feel like to trip? Well.....its really kinda hard to explain, and the feeling varies slightly from stuff like shrooms to LSD. If I had to sum it up in one word, I would choose Fragile. When you're tripping, your senses are open and everyday things just seem to bombard you. Something as simple as listening to a song can be a taxing thing on your brain. Little things can startle you and even go as far as to completely scare the crap right out of you.

Your emotions run wild and become drawn out. For example, if you feel sad for whatever reason for say a minute, It's about 10 times more intense and that minute will feel like an eternity. Which is awesome if you're having a great time but it can be pretty terrible if you're not. However, I never have heard of anyone having a "bad trip" on shrooms. That kind of stuff usually happens on acid, but thats for another post.

What your body goes through: When people trip, they experience whats called "Rolling." to put it in the most basic terms, you're touch sense is wired. Things that feel cool when you're sober just feel amazing.

Now from what I've experienced on shrooms, the trip can be broken down into a couple of stages.

1.Speeding.
This is the first sensation. You feel alive, and you just want to run around and do everything because you have so much energy and your body and mouth move faster than your mind can keep up. It can get a little ridiculous at times, especially when theres more than say 2 people tripping. Speeding typically lasts about an hour or so

2."Woah"
After you come down from speeding, you start to feel pretty funny. You look at stuff and zone out really easily just thinking about a certain thing. It could be a song or something like watching your fingers move. Anything seems interesting, you might even find yourself talking about how awesome the carpet is in the room you're in. This is where things get interesting, you start hearing/seeing things in different ways and its all so beautiful. This is the longest of the stages lasting about 3-5 hours depending on the strength of the shrooms.

3.  Come down
At this point, things start returning to normal, but you still feel some residual effects. Nothing too extreme, but you may still be quivering or feeling a bit out of the ordinary, these effects will last for another 2 hours. While you're coming down, you may feel exhausted and just want to sit and do nothing.

Afterwards: Trips can be life-changing experiences for some people. If nothings stimulating you, you'll start to analyze yourself, which can be good and bad. You may see your faults and make a promise to change them. If you're a spiritual person, you may feel a lot more enlightened of your religion. It all depends on the trip.

Now I gotta admit, this post was REALLY hard to write, trying to describe a trip to someone who hasn't experienced it is really a tough thing to do. Personally speaking, I think everyone should experience it at least once, it really opens your mind and makes you aware of everything going on around you. Everything seems to just...fall into place.
With that being said I think I'll end it here, With more info on Shrooms and psilocybin in the next post.
Keep those questions coming!

Maui Wowie!

This is a follow-up post to the Marijuana post. It's mainly going to contain information that I couldn't fit or forgot about in the first post.

Now a common misconception is that stoners are these low-lives with no regard for rules and regulations, this couldn't be farther from the truth!

in fact, there are guidelines that we follow whenever we smoke:
1. Whoever packs/rolls, gets the first hit. whoever paid for the weed gets seconds
2. Pass to the left, unless the person on your right calls "deuces" (this is our groups own rule, it may not apply to all)
3. Blunts = puff puff pass, pieces = puff pass
4. If you're gonna tell a story, make sure you don't have the blunt, if you do, hit it and pass
5. if you cough into a piece and weed goes everywhere, YOU'RE DONE. I can't tell you how angry that makes me
6. Be generous. what goes around comes around, especially when dealing with weed
and last but certainly not least
7. DONT SLOBBER. its gross

Buying Weed: (WEED IS ILLEGAL, DON'T BUY IT)
When buying weed, you can't just take anyones word that the stuff their selling is "good" you gotta look for the signs!

Color: The brighter and greener the bud(weed) is, the better.
Texture: What you want to look for here is stickiness and moisture. If the bud is dry, odds are its low grade.
Smell: the more pungent the odor is, the better. If you can smell it before you take it out of the bag, its good
Trichomes: Trichomes, when relating to weed, are the tiny crystals that form on the outside of the bud, giving it a "frosted" look. The frostier it is, the better
Hairs: Often you'll see bud with these orange hairs growing off of it. This is a good sign

If all of these conditions are optimal, you have whats called "Exotics" AKA: Really good weed.
The hierarchy of the quality of weed goes like this:
Exotics\"Dank"\"Dro": best you can get
Mids: Not bad but nothing special
Regs\Reggie: (Usually) low grade. However, I have seen regs that can go toe-to-toe with some of the best exotics. It all depends on how its grown
Dirt\Mexican Brick: Terrible, you'll be lucky if you get a buzz off this stuff.

Things to look out for:
If anyone ever offers you something called "Wet" or "Waki", it would be in your best interest to decline it and get out of there.
When people refer to weed as "Wet", they are talking about weed that has been laced with PCP. This stuff looks and smells like death. If you ever pick up bud thats black and smells like gasoline, you're better off getting rid of it, because that will do awful things to you.

Becca asked: "I'm a daily smoker as well, and I got a question for you! I've never smoked a strain thats high in CBD(cannabidiol), the content of the weed thats more of the "pain-killer", I'm obviously in it for the THC factor. Have you ever smoked a good CBD strain? I mean, I get the point of CBD, not everyone likes the psycho-active effect. But if I'm going to smoke, I want to get high and not just kill the pain."

To be completely honest I don't think I have or if I did I was un-aware of it. From what I know, all strains contain it, but as to what ones have a higher content, I really have no idea haha. I'm with you though, I want THC :p

Dave's not here, man

So what better way to start this off than talking about the drug I have the most experience with: Marijuana (aka: Cannabis).
Now I'm gonna try and keep this as simple as possible, but there are gonna be times I'm gonna throw some big words at you. I'll try to explain said words as best as possible, but no promises.

Now first: What is Marijuana?
Marijuana is the herbal form of the Cannabis plant. Cannabis is a naturally occurring plant that contains the psychoactive compound  delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC for short.

a little digression:
What does Psychoactive mean? A psychoactive drug is any substance that crosses the "blood-brain barrier." This means that the substance acts on the central nervous system to change your perception, mood, cognition, behavior, and consciousness. Sound like a lot? Don't worry, the effects of marijuana are pretty mild compared to other substances.

So What happens when you smoke weed? Well, at a biological level...a lot. I could explain it all to you, but then we would be here for a good long time. Plus, all of this information is available on wikipedia, so I'm going to try and keep this on a very basic level.
The first thing you would notice is a strange sensation in your head, comparable to the way you feel after you take an opiate pain killer such as oxycodone. This is the THC attaching to the Cannabinoid  receptors in your brain. This is usually accompanied by feelings of relaxation, a sense of well-being, and a greater sense of humor. Yes, this is why stoners are almost always laughing. It's a wonderful feeling that is just great for when you need to de-stress from a long, hard day of living.
Some other feelings you may notice is a greater appreciation for music and art. If I had a quarter for every new artist or band I got into when I was high, I could quite literally go into retirement. Even music I never thought I would listen to, I found myself jamming to it and downloading it the next day.

So what about your thought process? Does smoking weed impair your ability to problem solve and think rationally? Absolutely not! When you're high, your brain feels almost hard-wired to over-analyze whatever you're focused on. You'll start to think in abstract ways and maybe even philosophize a bit. Your critical thinking ability goes through the roof, in fact, it really helped me when I was a Computer Science major at Rowan.

Now all of these positive effects can have their downside. One of the most common problems someone smoking weed will face is anxiety, known colloquially as "Sketching". The tendency to over-analyze everything can lead a person to panic and be filled with fear. For instance, if its your first time trying weed, some common thoughts would be:
"oh man what if  my parents find out?" "It's gonna make my clothes smell" "what If I get pulled over? I'm gonna go to jail" etc. These, however, are all affected by what environment a person is in. If a person is in a familiar place, with a guarantee that nothing will go wrong, chances are they will not have any kind of thoughts such as these. Conversely, if a person is in a really sketchy neighborhood, then odds are they might get a bit paranoid.

Along with these psychoactive effects, a person will also experience some body effects of the high. These include muscle relaxation, dry mouth (aka: Cotton Mouth), hunger ("The Munchies"), red eyes, an increased heart rate, and a sensation of hot or cold.

Now all of these effects are dependent on what type of weed a person is smoking. Much of the weed people buy off the street are cross-strains of the Cannabis Sativa plant, and the Cannabis Indica plant.
The sativa plant is commonly associated with whats called a "Head High." That means a person will exhibit more of the psychoactive effects of Marijuana. To put it simply, you would feel very active and very loopy. This is my personal favorite of the two, I'll explain why after this.

A person smoking weed containing a large portion of the indica plant would experience a "body high." This means that you would feel very lethargic and lazy. I usually don't enjoy this simply because I, more often than never, fall asleep after. It's great if you have been working out and you're body is aching, but if you're smoking socially, its not the best way to go.

jeez...did I type all that? this is a lot longer than I had anticipated...I'm gonna try and wrap this up with some Fact vs Myth action. Now keep in mind, I'm not re-feeding you some information I got off of a website. Everything in here can be attributed to the lengthy experience I have with weed. However for this section, I'm gonna pull some stats out of the internet simply to back up my claims.
So:
Is marijuana addictive?
The short answer: No.
The long answer: No, but some people will mistake a general love of getting high with addiction. I smoke almost every day, not because if I don't get my fix I start to freak out. But because I love getting high. There have been periods where I have kicked the habit completely and not had any kind of withdraw effects. Don't let anyone tell you that BS "You're addicted after one hit" or something like that.

Is Marijuana dangerous?
No. In fact, Marijuana is one of the least harmful drugs you can put in your body, being outranked by things such as alcohol and tobacco. (fancy chart to show you)

Is Marijuana a gateway drug?
Well...It really depends on who you are, who you're friends with and what they do in there free time. Now, if you're friends with people who only smoke weed, chances are you won't run around trying every kind of drug there is. However, it will make you more open to the drugs that are out there. In the end, it all comes down to the kind of person you are. If you really don't  want to try anything different, then you wont! It's all about willpower.

Can I drive while high?
Believe it or not, I get asked this question a lot. And to be completely honest; Yes, you can drive pretty well while high. I'm not saying you SHOULD, I'm just saying you CAN. Being high is a lot different than being drunk. In fact, driving high is one of the easiest things to do. It makes the trip go by faster, and its just really relaxing. But again, if you can avoid driving high, do it. (that's my disclaimer for this post)

That's all I can really think of for now. Like I said in the last post, if you have ANY questions, feel free to post and I'll answer them as best as I can.

The Huntress Asked: "Would you consider anything that you misuse or overuse an addiction? What do you think that people are most commonly addicted to that could be perceived as risky behaviors? "

for the first part; There is a big grey area between addiction and just using it a lot. If you overuse something, but are not dependent on it, then it doesn't qualify as an addiction. However, if its to the point where its causing your life to spiral out of control, then its an addiction. As for misuse of a substance, I think that just a one way ticket to addiction.

Second part; I could say marijuana, but I've seen people smoke it for weeks straight and drop it like it was nothing. However, I think if you're addicted to anything, it's risky behavior.

Psychosomatic

Whether or not you like to think about, drugs are all around us in this day and age. You can rarely go a day without hearing a reference to some sort of substance, whether it be a joke, a news story, or in your favorite TV show.

The purpose of this blog is to educate people on what these drugs do, how they work, why they cause so much controversy in todays society, and hopefully put to rest some of the stereotypes associated with drugs. Now with that being said:

I am in no way advocating the use of drugs, what you do in your spare time is completely up to you and only you. Remember, all of these things are still illegal.


So now for some personal history:


I've been smoking weed for anout 3 years now. I started in 8th grade (thanks in part to peer pressure, I had some pretty shitty friends back then) continued for a bit into 9th grade, and gave it up for a while. I figured it was a phase that just didn't suit me. I picked it back up after I graduated high school, and its been a regular thing for me ever since.

Now I want to tell everyone right now that doing drugs in no way makes you a bad person (well...some anyway). You'd be surprised what kind of people would be classified as "stoners" or "pot-heads." I'll get into that in later posts.

Other drugs I've tried include:

• LSD
• (Magic) Mushrooms
• Cocaine (Not proud of this, there's a story behind it)
• Salvia
• 2C-E

Theres a story behind each of these substances for me, and I'm actually kind of excited to be sharing them with people. But remember, ther purpose of this blog is strictly education, I hope to use my experiences as a guide and only that.
However, if you have any questions regarding a specific drug, feel free to ask!
Hope you all enjoy!