“Universal love,” said the cactus person.

April 22, 2015 10:45 PM

A short story about DMT by Scott Alexander

“Transcendent joy,” said the big green bat.

“Right,” I said. “I’m absolutely in favor of both those things. But before we go any further, could you tell me the two prime factors of 1,522,605,​027,922,533,​360,535,618,​378,132,637,​429,718,068,​114,961,380,​688,657,908,​494,580,122,​963,258,952​,897,654,000,​350,692,006,​139?”

posted by frimble (24 comments total)

Thanks, that was fun!
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:22 PM on April 22, 2015

I loved this. I really must try DMT sometime.


Memail if you can help

GET OUT OF THE CAR
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:59 PM on April 22, 2015 [6 favorites]

mostly just reminds me how much I miss John Campbell's work
posted by kagredon at 12:00 AM on April 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

“GET OUT OF THE FUCKING CAR!”
posted by boilermonster at 12:09 AM on April 23, 2015

I would just like to point out, before this thread descends into woo, that the idea your brain releases DMT when you die was theoretical speculation by Rick Strassman. There is no scientific or factual basis for this belief. Yet.

End public service announcement.
posted by clarknova at 12:14 AM on April 23, 2015

Which suggests a new punchline for the old joke...

Doris dimmed the lights, and we held hands in a circle around the table.

"Is there anyone there who wants to talk to somebody here?" she said, in her prim Morningside accent.

Silence.

A knock.

"Who is it?" she asked

"I... an Ethel!". She answered herself, but in a Cockney twang.

"Ethel..." she said, back in Morningside. "To whom do you wish to talk?"

"My beloved Arthur."

"He is here! Arthur, do you have any questions for Ethel?"

I cleared my throat.

"Ethel, dearest Ethel... has it been just two weeks since you moved over?"

"Arthur, my heart, we speak not of weeks in this place. I have watched over you for all Eternity"

"Oh, Ethel. So you saw my sorrow as I drove back from the hospital, and sobbed into the pillow all night?"

"Of course I did, Arthur. I was with you all the time."

"You saw... everything?"

"Everything, my dearest. I saw everything, understood everything. It's all all right."

"So where the fuck did I leave my car keys?"

There was a pause.

"I can prove the Riemann Hypothesis, if you like."

"Stupid bat"
posted by Devonian at 12:20 AM on April 23, 2015 [19 favorites]

I heard from a friend that it is kind of like trying to inhale a burning mothball.
posted by poe at 12:22 AM on April 23, 2015

I didn't see any bats, but it did make me feel Made Out Of Everything.

which was pretty neat.
posted by deadbilly at 1:05 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

DMT is the one psychedelic drug I actually want to try. The hope is to experience ego death. Really curious to have the experience, try to piece out the bits of my consciousness to allow a Metzinger-style analysis.
posted by cthuljew at 1:43 AM on April 23, 2015

DMT was the worst bad trip I ever had. I will not willingly try it again. Fortunately, it only lasted about 20 minutes.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:17 AM on April 23, 2015

the idea your brain releases DMT when you die

It weighs 21 grams.

So, I watched a documentary about ayahuasca on Netflix a few months back. I was interested because I've been to Iquitos and considered doing the follow-a-shaman-into-the-woods-for-a-week thing. But I was traveling by myself and was a little concerned about making my boat out of town, so skipped it and told myself to do it the next time I was in town. But the documentary. Yeah. Kind of glad I skipped the shaman trip. It looked like being on mushrooms, with the added bonus of being completely trapped in a hut with no private rooms in the jungle with strangers. Some people were off in their woo, while others were completely damn miserable. Like with many hallucinogens, my guess is that it is principally about your state of mind, your circle support/friends, and the activity you choose to do while affected that contributes the most to the experience.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 4:18 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

This account presents a kind of fun and games state of consciousness derived from DMT intoxication. But with a bit of structure much more than fun and games can be achieved.
posted by rmmcclay at 6:06 AM on April 23, 2015

So that's what happens when you stop in bat country.
posted by TedW at 6:24 AM on April 23, 2015 [9 favorites]

This does sound like the kind of trip this person would have.
posted by nom de poop at 6:39 AM on April 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

In my experience, at least with dreams, the bat could've just told me some numbers that sounded right and I'd have had no way to verify them until I woke up, with no way to remember them.

Recently in a dream I wanted to know where and when the first Viking outpost in America was. I had previously read about it but forgotten the specifics. So of course I Googled it. Pages and pages of completely bizzare results, none of them about Vikings, and the AdWords were way worse. When I woke up later I did the same search and I didn't even have to click through the first result to see the answer.

This got me to thinking about what exactly is a computer in a dream? In the real world you can expect them to behave in a certain way, indeed that's one of the joys/traps of computing, that given sufficient knowledge they are predictable. In a dream they are some kind of window to the unconscious, providing a different perspective or filter than the dream itself.
posted by Joe Chip at 7:20 AM on April 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

It looked like being on mushrooms, with the added bonus of being completely trapped in a hut with no private rooms in the jungle with strangers.

UGGH. I can't imagine people doing stuff like that without your favourite pillows, blankets, familiar water bottles, favourite playlist, etc etc. And with someone else, good friends that are OK with cuddling.
posted by Theta States at 7:24 AM on April 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

mostly just reminds me how much I miss John Campbell's work

Just FYI, there's an archive of all of his stuff out there that was compiled after he deleted it.
posted by johnnydummkopf at 7:27 AM on April 23, 2015

From the comments:

It’s also a lot harder when nobody will tell you what “GETTING OUT OF THE CAR” actually entails. You’d think maybe one of the prophets could drop a hint about the existence of car doors, or that you have these things called legs that can be used for more than working the pedals.

The bat turned a shade of octarine and tried again. “If you must have it in inside-the-car terms, here’s how to get out of the car. There is an image in your windshield, but you’re always disregarding it. To see it better, drive to a dark place, stop to a halt so you can’t crash into anything, turn off your headlights, and turn on the lights inside the car. This is called meditation, there’s a good book by Sam Harris on the matter. Once you see the image, you can study it, although it will be confusing because you’re so used to interpreting everything in beyond-the-windshield terms. If you turn your ignition key just a bit – so you get lights but the motor isn’t running – you can try to accelerate and brake, which won’t do anything dangerous in that ignition key setting, and discover the actuators you’re using to accelerate and brake. These are your legs, and you can learn to use them independently of the intent to accelerate or brake. These are important because you’ll need to use them very differently once you’re out of the car – otherwise you “fall down” (this term will make sense when you’re outside) into an affective death spiral and your instinctual system 1 will scramble to get you back into the car to protect you. There are similar but more complex actuators, which you’re using for everything else you’re doing, and a single actuator which is the most difficult to study because when you play with it you lose sight of the image in the windshield. But using this last one in a deeply unfamiliar way you can discover a way to unseal the self, um, car, which is called samadhi, um, the door handle. Learn to use it, this might take a while, and you’ll discover how to get out of the car. Finally, a warning: outside the car you’ll be much slower and more vulnerable than you used to, so if you get out of the car in a bad place, or in the middle of lots of other cars, you could get too confused to ever find your way back into your car, which you’ll still need to do to go places.”

posted by Rangi at 10:37 AM on April 23, 2015 [9 favorites]

The story was elegantly written, extroverted, internal dialogue.
posted by Oyéah at 10:49 AM on April 23, 2015

I never got anyone on the line who'd talk with words, I just got this ever shifting fusion of Islamic and Buddhist art cast on a geodesic that seemed to make a sound like an orchestra composed of bass, tenor and alto saws as it convolved.

More like a place than an entity. Nothing there that seemed sensible to pose a question to, generally too quick to sustain anything like his story, more like stepping out your front door to find an unexpected forest or bog or something.

Similar experiences were had orally and smoked, and with other analogues to DMT.

Not an experience without merit, but also hardly informative. Peaceful, relaxing, fascinating, a source for a greater appreciation for the fractal structures of the world -- sure.

Maybe I just don't mythologize drugs enough to get as high as everyone else. Weird to consider I might be less of a "true believer" than Scott Alexander!
posted by Matt Oneiros at 1:28 PM on April 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

Reading this is like a tower of babel nested inside of another tower of babel, in terms of communicating anything useful. He's talking about the problems of achieving (what he thinks is, and what he thinks other people think is) enlightenment. Both him (mr. rational skeptic) and those deities are using some sort of western fantasy idea of enlightenment as a baseline, in which you are freed of the chains of time and experience eternal timelessness and joy separated from all worldly concerns. The "get out of the car" that's being referred to is an impossible and undesirable thing, an immature dream really, and the forms of eastern spirituality that I've read up on would dismiss it quickly in favor of a more grounded spiritual practice. At the end of the day you're a flawed being living in the world, and no amount of deep enlightenment will free you of the need to negotiate human relationships, survive, and take part in the whole of worldly experience. In this life anyway. And that's fine! But starting the discussion from some dichotomy of rational practicality vs. a selfish fantasy enlightenment is just kinda tedious. There will never be a flash of sublime light that complete reconfigures everything and turns you into a being of pure energy - or if there is, it's probably some form of false enlightenment - but you can have transformative experiences that fill you with radical empathy, compassion, and an overwhelming sense of feeling in harmony with the rest of the universe - and those experiences can be deep, fulfilling, and lasting, even if they don't provide you with All The Answers and absolve you from your obligations. It's not as sexy and dramatic, I guess, but ah well.
posted by naju at 6:32 PM on April 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

I think the "Get out of the car," concept in this has to do with astral travel, far looking, or however other disciplines name it. I actually had a lucid dream in which I not only got out of the car, but I flew out of the car. A building in an unknown landscape attracted me. I went inside, it was an ashram or meeting place, a big room for sitting meditation. A side room off the main was a regular den, and behind the couch was a little gingham covered soft reading nest for a kid.

I was looking around as professional types began coming in, dockers, ironed madras shirts, they couldn't see me. It was getting full and I was dodging folks, so I went into what was the old dining room empty for meditation. The swinging door to the kitchen came open, and a bearded man in Sufi dress stepped out, unlike the others, he could see me. I said, "Hello, I am learning about active dreaming, and I am looking for a teacher from the dreaming side." He scowled at me, turning on one heel to go back into the kitchen, while he said, "I'll tell that to the Shah." I left the scene and found my way back to the sleeping me. I had the distinct feeling I had been in Colorado.
posted by Oyéah at 8:15 PM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

SlateStarCodex: "there's a book by Sam Harris on the matter"
posted by kagredon at 8:42 PM on April 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

Unable to tell whether my eyes were open or not, I hung on desperately to the notion that it didn't matter - and that I wouldn't stay this way. Then: trolls made out of light...daring me to carry on, their deep laughter keeping company with the panic. Worth every infinity it lasted.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 12:04 AM on April 25, 2015