Chapter 5 from a book in progress: PLACEBO-A Rationalist Seeks a Miracle Cure
Spirits and Demons
Author: josephwouk
If you haven’t already decided that I ought to be institutionalized, then listen to what I have to tell you now. The most common ayahuasca hallucination concerns presence of Spirits. The shaman uses the power of the spirits to effect their cures.
Spirits, demons and the like are anathema to a rationalist like me. I simply don’t believe in them and have always regarded people who do as somewhat flaky. But I’ve seen them. Repeatedly. And always on nitrous oxide.
Most of the hallucinations on nitrous are auditory. If you work really hard at it, as you are returning from a semi-comatose state you can get the hallucination that a bunch of people are there with you and they are all trying to get you to understand something or other. Many times I grasped deep truths that would disappear with the nitrous.
Once when I was on mushrooms, a substance I’m much less familiar with than LSD, I developed a strong sense of “another”, whatever that means. The hallucinations I was having consisted of little guys who looked kind of like Aztec statues that were running/working all over the place. But these felt like hallucinations. Then I took a hit of nitrous. All of a sudden I was in the presence of what I can only describe as a daemon. A daemon that didn’t like me being there with it. It advanced on me shooting electricity to make me go away. I had a definite impression that I had broken into someplace I shouldn’t be.
When I returned from the nitrous, I told my friends about what happened. They couldn’t believe I wanted to go back. But I did. As scary as the demon was, it was the most “real” hallucination I had ever experienced. I went back time after time and each time would see it.
After I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and knew my only way out was through psychedelics, I decided to try some nitrous again to see if it could alter my sense of reality. While it doesn’t always work, when it does, it feels like there is something out there trying desperately to communicate something or other to me. And I always “get it” but then I “lose it” when I return to normal consciousness.
The weirdest part is that each time I break through the Spirit/daemon takes its power further, in order to make me understand something. It would cause electric pulses to explode on each of my hands in pink then in blue. It would dim the lights in my room. It would cause the phone to ring. It would do all sorts of things to prove to me that it was real, and not a hallucination.
The last appearance it made was to open the door to my office and stick itself in to look at me. It had the appearance of a Dr. Seuss drawing. I found myself outside my office at night yelling “NO…! NO…! NO…!” over and over. Something had terrified me to the core, but I couldn’t remember what it was. The Dr. Seuss drawing, as powerful as it was, was not particularly frightening.
But I was shaken up pretty bad. Back in my rational world I couldn’t say for sure that all I experienced was a hallucination. The whole thing seemed way too purposeful, and it did not feel like something I could have dreamed up, nitrous or no nitrous.
I’m not alone. Checking online, I’ve found descriptions of nitrous experiences that mirror my own. Below is an example that I found in a forum at:
(http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?t=323620&page=4&highlight=nitrous+levels)
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Thoughts of a nitrous user |
The nitrous world is inhabited by many creatures operating under a strict set of rules and with a strict chain of command.
You start your nitrous journey at the bottom of the chain, witnessing interesting hallucinations provided by people above you in the chain. It is almost like an RPG, in that you can complete missions (keep your eyes on the prize as mentioned above) to progress up the chain of command.
The purpose of all this is to provide balance to the universe, saying no to people who exploit others and bringing people their comeuppance.
It also is the avenue via which people all over the world catch glimpses of people who are miles away in reflections in windows, puddles etc. (I personally have seen my cousin, and she was as shocked to see me as I was to see her).
I assume it has more significances than this, but I have not yet put my finger on them.
Your rank sticks with you. Nothing you do on a trip is forgotten and all your actions/achievements carry over.
If your hallucinations die out while you are trying to do something though it does not count against you, you will simply be allocated some new mission next time round.
The purpose is the main thing I still really do not understand. It’s difficult, since these creatures speak in beeps which I don’t understand, so everything has to be interpreted (that seems to be the purpose of the hallucinations I experience – to explain the world).
The missions are virtual in general. As I mentioned above they sometimes involve keeping your eyes closed looking dead ahead for a long time (a couple of minutes) without breaking gaze or allowing your eyes to open at all.
Other times I will have to pick up objects and move them around the room (I don’t have to move, only move my arm, but the image of the object, once picked up will move with my hand).
On 2 occasions however, I have had to stand up and defeat a monster that had invaded my territory by punching it – lots of fun, like a real life video game – though I never have had to leave the room.
Both because of trip reports like the above, as well as my own personal experiences, I am now completely satisfied that it might be possible using psychedelics to convince myself that I had been cured. That belief might be all I need to engage the placebo effect and actually cure myself in this consensus reality.
Whether it worked or not, it was worth a try. I could think of nothing else to do.
