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You can talk about what movie you will watch beforehand and select a specific one for a reason with a goal in mind and then tall about the movie and your experience of watching it afterwards and about how that movie relates to your lives or whatever else. What do you mean get people to help out?

Then fuck gyms, sports you can do outside, you can look for free concerts, good movies you can watch at home, travelling you can do with hitchhiking and couchsurfing. I don't know if his advice works for you, I'm just saying that your justification for not applying it isn't a very good one (I follow this topic because I experienced similar things like you described above before. Maybe I can share something valuable later.)

I'm aware that there's this book "Quiet" by Susan Cain and I've seen her TED talk. Haven't read the book though, just looked at its content at the corresponding wiki article. So I don't know if there's anything helpful in there in terms of explanations. Has someone read it? I'm also aware of Eysenck's hypothesis that introversion/extraversion on a neurophysiological level comes down to the activity of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS), which from what I remember is supposed to be responsible for how information is filtered before it gets processed in the brain; so if there's not much filtered out and you have to process tons of information all the time, you're overwhelmed more easily and tend to be more turned inward, since you're busy all the time sorting out what's going on inside your head, whereas when very much is filtered out, you're devoid of stimuli and therefore turn outward seeking for more, which leads to more extraverted behaviour. This seems to make a lot of sense in and of itself, but doesn't explain much in the context of these social issues in my case. Or is there a connection between the ARAS and negative emotion, such that I'm also more susceptible to negative emotion and then tend to freak out more easily over the thought that other people might judge me negatively for the stupid problems that I have? Or are these independent factors? Anyone with some knowledge of psychology or neuroscience who can say something about this?

@Elephant You'll be fine

Okay, I'll try to put something together here. I hope you don't feel attacked by anything I say, I'm just trying to help since you ask for advice here. I've had something between 30-40 trips (the majority of them low-dose) with various psychedelics. LSD was the one I've had the most and my highest dosages and strongest trips were also with LSD. I've spent a lot of time reading hundreds of trip reports in various forums and trying to educate myself about the pharmacology of LSD and other substances and neurochemistry in general. And after all that, I still feel like a noob. Or maybe somewhere in between noob/medium level at best. What I mean by that is that it seems to me that there's so much more personal experience to be had, there are so many more insights to be had about how this substance works, there is so much more general knowledge and theory to be acquired. I'm always very hesitant with telling people who haven't used psychedelics before anything about them, because I never know if the experience they would be getting without my words wouldn't be just the right experience for them. Often people like to put out blanket statements like "ALWAYS have a trip sitter" or "take a low dose at first", but maybe the presence of another person will give you trouble which otherwise you wouldn't have and maybe things you would struggle with psychologically at a low dose would be less of an issue with a high dose, because they get thrown in your face so hard that you can't fight against it and face them and then resolve them or your general experience is so altered that they don't even make sense anymore. If a person follows strict advice, you just never know if they wouldn't have had a better and clearer and less conceptually-filtered experience without knowing anything about what they might expect in the first place. My take on resolving this would be this: You can try to be as safe as possible or you can try to get the most personal, direct and unfiltered experience (meant as a spectrum with all the possibilities in between). That is a decision that you have to take. If you want to be safe, then listen to people with a lot of knowledge and experience and gather general information from various sources. Note that your experience will be altered by that and you're just following what statistically has worked best for people in general, not what would've been the best thing for you. If you want to be on the safe side, you really should educate yourself more. I'm not saying you need to read 20 books with 300 pages each before going on your first trip. But I would try to get at least 50-100 trip reports from different people with different backgrounds and at least read into a few scientific articles and watch some educational material on what LSD does in your brain and body. And you should really look for sources which give you more than just a collection of blatant statements without explaining how their claims were acquired. You can apply this to any future research you will ever do on anything: Always ask: How exactly did the source who is making a claim acquire that information? To me this seems obvious as fuck, but apparently many people like to decide about the trustworthiness of a source by whatever standards they have and then either believe or disbelieve whatever the source says. This is exaggerated, but it's basically how you went with your first post. That's why I said educate yourself more. Let's look again at what they say on this website: Do you notice how vague these statements are? How common exactly is "not uncommon"? How many are "many"? Is there anything more specific said in the text? Is anything said about how this information was acquired? Do they cite any sources? Now let's look at the impression these statements gave you: To all my theoretical knowledge and personal experience and what I've heard from people, this is precisely NOT how it works. You're not simply "unlucky" and then a bad trip fucks up your life. It's very hard to make any general statement about what LSD does to you, because the experiences vary so much between individuals. However, what can be said fairly safely I guess, is that it hugely intensifies whatever experience you might have (sensory, emotionally, thoughts, etc) and that it has a tendency to bring up unconscious stuff. So what might happen is the following: Let's say you're struggling with psychological conflicts in your life, consciously or unconsciously, which makes you a little bit fucked up on the inside, but you've managed to work yourself around that so far and live a fairly functional life. Then you take a high dose (!) of LSD and your conflicts are thrown right in your face with an intensity of whatever you've experienced before multiplied by 100. Some people get to do some productive inner work on their conflicts in such a situation. But others, who've been too fucked up before and/or are in the wrong setting and/or the dosage was just too high and they can't find their way back and their brains just keep reiterating the same dysfunctional patterns that have been there before and now brought up to the surface with highly increased overall presence and intensity. If that's what you're scared of, then I would prescribe two methods with which you can lower that risk to a point where I would be confident to say that you've eliminated it completely: 1) Take a low dose. I wanna see a case before I believe that you can possibly seriously damage your life with a single use of 50 micrograms of LSD. It doesn't happen. 2) Know yourself. Note that an LSD trip is not just a chemical bringing you weird experiences; it's a reaction of you to that chemical. Anything LSD will bring up in you is there anyways. It just gets intensified. Look at your past and your current inside and try to see if there's anything that would make you prone to some mental illnesses in general, which could then be brought up and intensified by a psychedelic. If you don't find anything, then you'd have to take a very high dose and be in a very bad setting to have any real risk. I haven't heard of a single case where someone who was on no medication, had had no severe episodes of mental illness and then suddenly went insane from a low-dose LSD trip in a calm setting. If you're still sort of unsure with this, you could tell the people here on this forum more about yourself. Your past and what your current everyday life looks like, what you're doing, what your inner landscape (thoughts & feelings) look like. They can probably tell if you're risk prone or not. To me so far, you don't seem to be. You mentioned an episode of depression, but I wouldn't be too concerned about that. I'd be more concerened if it was schizophrenia or psychosis for example. It depends on what was the cause for your depression though, not sure if you wanna talk about that here. You can lower your risk even more by reflecting on your depression beforehand and note if any of the thoughts and emotional patterns from that time start to come up when you're under the influence of LSD. If you've worked through it back then, then it'll probably seem ridiculous and you will laugh about it and accept your past self for everything that happened. If you didn't fully work through it, then maybe you find new solutions now. And if you don't, you know there's still some work to be done. That in and of itself doesn't damage your life though, it just shows you that there's something you gotta deal with either now or in the future. In the end you'll do what you'll do, but here are just two very safe possibilities: 1) Up to 50 micrograms on a walk in the woods or somewhere out in nature where there aren't too many people. 2) Up to 100 micrograms in a home with a good friend. Just go with whatever you feel comfortable with. If you go with a low dose first, you'll probably be like "oooh okay, so that's what this substance is doing to me. How unnecessary that I was put off by all these alleged general risks". And if you try a high dose later and face some paranoia and fears you'll be like "oh okay, so now I understand how this can be dangerous". If you don't feel quite ready now, keep in mind that you always have the option to just leave it and consider it again in a few years. If there's one thing I'd like you to take away from everything I've written, it would be that you can eliminate the risk that you're scared of (severe psychological damage that has bad consequences for you life) by simply taking a low dosage.

I'll try to quickly provide some arguments against the specific doubts you mentioned, maybe you find them helpful. 1) You're very young, but so what. If you have a skill and you're very good at it, then why not teach other people your methods. If you feel uncomfortable telling some 52 year old dude the subtle secrets of the universe, then don't do it and focus on simply explaining the meditation techniques and general theory about it. For that your age shouldn't matter. 2) If you feel it's not sufficient, then get some more experience. It seems sensible to me anyways that your becoming a meditation teacher would involve some some courses and instructions from other masters and teachers and maybe a handful of different retreats specifically for going a little hardcore before you start passing this on to other people. If you do an intense year or two like this, you'll probably feel more ready. 3) You came up with solutions yourself, so no need to say anything here. 4) I guess that depends on you. You just gotta make this work. I think it should be totally possible. There's this Big Think video with some well-established scientist who talks about the many proven benefits of meditation and how he's very sure that meditation will become a major thing very soon in western societies (he says it'll be as common and obvious as brushing your teeth). People are super crazy about improving their lives and many are very open to try out whatever methods it takes. So the demand is there. Selling the idea that meditation will benefit people greatly shouldn't be too hard. If you're passionate about it and acquire some confidence with it, this should be a huge opportunity to make a career.

I guess you weren't aware of this thread here: You might find some helpful information there. I found it very interesting.

Sounds interesting! Can you maybe talk a bit about what kind of ideas or practices were in there for you that you applied and what changes that has brought for you?

If you are surprised by reading this, I would advise you to research more into LSD and how psychoactive substances work in general and then take a very light dose at first (with proper set & setting!!! This is just as relevant as dosage and substance when it comes to psychedelics). Maybe I'll have time to explain why later that day.

Last month, I was at this conference: https://finder-research.com/en/ Maybe you can get to some sources or interesting people if you check the website. In the 'Speakers' section, you can find the people who presented their recent research there. I'd recommend looking into David Nichols, Franz X. Vollenweider, Jeffrey Guss (!) and Jordi Riba in particular. But you can also check the other ones. Most of them were very friendly and open to students who were trying to do research in their field. So if you think someone has valuable information or sources for you, papers, questionnaires, whatever you might need for your research, just contact them. Also, a friend of mine will be doing his Masters project in the field of psychedelics, I'll drop you a pm, so you can contact him if you like.

I guess he's asking if you have a vision board. What are you trying to master? What do you think you should take 100% responsibility for? What do you want to look at with Big Picture Thinking? Etc. You need to apply these things to actual stuff in your life, otherwise you're just filling your mind with super abstract ideas about nothing that don't mean anything.

Hello @Lorcan , thanks bringing this up! I'm also struggling with this a lot. Luckily, I have some friends who also wish more honesty and frankness for themselves and for the people around them, so together we get the opportunity to practice this on each other a little bit. I'm nowhere near where I would like to be with this, so I take your post as a reminder to work on it more. It's probably healthy to understand why these social barriers are there. However, if you crave being more honest and frank, you should just try to do so. And if you would like other people to behave more in this way, then this is probably one of those instances where you should be the change you want to see in the world. I think this is totally possible. You may look at it as a skill which you can train. Let me give you three examples where I stepped past this barrier and spoke what was on my mind. 1) I was taking a walk by myself and saw two little boys looking at a specific spot somewhere far away. I wondered what they were doing there. Normally I would be way too shy to just speak to strangers like this, but then I thought who cares, these are just two little boys whom I will never meet again anyways and I'm curious about their agenda. So I thought fuck it and asked them what they were looking at. They told me their story and I wished them good luck and they asked what I was up for and they told me to have fun. We said goodbye and I went my way. The specifics of the interaction aren't important, the important thing is that I stepped over my inner barrier and I learned that it wasn't that hard and nothing bad necessarily has to happen from it. 2) I was on a bus, overhearing a conversation of two strangers about a friend of them who got knocked over while sitting in a honey bucket. They were talking about how it was funny but probably inappropriate and they were wondering whether they would do such a thing and what it would be like to be the one in the honey bucket yourself. I didn't want to partake in the conversation, but I thought why not boost their imagination a little and told them to imagine what it would be like to knock over the honey bucket with the door faced down. They were laughing about it and just continued their conversation. Before, I thought it would be weird to step in a conversation of strangers like this, but then I just went with it and it was totally fine. 3) I was at a house party sitting on a bed next to two girls. One of them was moaning about how she didn't manage to hook up with a guy she had been talking to and now she had to go home all by herself. After hesitating a bit, I just said "So, you're looking for someone to hook up with?" They started laughing and the other one said "So you would offer yourself for that?" and I said "Yes". We were all laughing even more and the other girl said "Ok fine, I'll leave you alone then" and she went away. I don't remember how I continued talking to this girl, but we definitely didn't talk much at all and only asked for our names when lying in her bed later. I can think of many other instances where sometimes I hurt someone or I got hurt myself. But these are always opportunities to learn. I think the key is to get a good connection to your truth (meaning what you actually think and feel and why) and realize that it is valid in itself. It's fine that you think and feel the way you do, since circumstances just happen to have lead to this and now it is what it is. If you can speak your truth while being detached from a certain outcome and delivering it in such a way that other people won't feel threatened, then everyone will be fine with it in most instances. You can even start with saying that you'd like to say something but you're scared it might be awkward or explain more specifically what you're afraid might happen and why and then maybe it won't even be so awkward anymore to say it after all, because now a context for it has been established. I did this sometimes and it usually worked out well. Have you looked into "radical honesty"? You could research into this a bit. Or why not start your own journal here about practicing honesty (doesn't necessarily need to be radical at first, you can always start small^^)

@nice shot You've got some really cool stuff there. Need a soundcloud account soon so I can follow and see what's coming in the future That artwork is crazy - where did you get it?

A few questions, just for clarification: Do you really not know why you become enraged? What do you think you are trying to achieve with your rage? Do you actually achieve that? I think what Brimstone suggested - doing the things that bother you together with the people who you think could do them more in a way you think would be appropriate - is super valuable. I'd be really curious how things would go if you tried this.

May I ask where you've booked it?

Are you afraid of describing more?

Sounds exactly like the situation that I'm in. Can you maybe describe a bit more about what you perceive her to be like in general and how you feel being around her?

@Hardkill So you don't want to answer why you still live with your parents?

Anyone attending the DrugScience Conference 2017 in Berlin in September?

Have you tried drawing random lines and shades on a piece of paper for 1 hour, 1.5 hours, 3 hours? At the beginning more as movements of the body that feel nice, and as things proceed, you can get more and more deliberate. Listening to good music to shut the mind off can work great with that. Whenever I did that and just continued long enough, I discovered new possibilites, which not only made a cool result by themselves, but also became part of my toolbox for later works.

Have you tried to draw on or after psychedelics? (Good weed/hash can also work to an extent, but it doesn't compare.) Considering your age, I don't know if that is or should be an option for you. However, psychedelics can have an amazingly powerful effect on all kinds of creative processes.

There's something else I'd like to recommend you: You should learn to consider something that someone says and contemplate if it makes sense or is useful independently of the person who said it and also independently of everything else that person has said. This is super basic stuff, but apparently you're having trouble with it (if you think you don't, I will point out examples from this thread, which lead me to telling you this). Actually, most people out there can't do that, but how can you use a forum like this productively, if you can't pull that off. You're here to gather information, so it shouldn't matter so much if that information is being presented in the form of compassionate gentle stroking or a slap in the face.

Hello Hardkill. This is coming from someone who is just at the beginning of his journey himself, so I can relate to you in some ways and I just wanna share some thoughts which perhaps could be useful for you. It sounds to me like you just pinned down your current problem here. (I really don't get why you should have to make this whole thing into a quest where you need to dig into the deepest darkest grounds of the mystical universe or investing years of grinding your way through some sophisticated method to unravel this allegedly hyper complicated mess you perceive your problem to be.) Why don't you just get your own place? Maybe less relevant, I'm just curious: Why haven't you done so already? I don't live with my parents, but I actually have a similar problem, I'm also often uncomfortable with inviting girls into my place. It's a crucial factor, because by not having an own proper place to present, you're basically signalling that you don't have the ability to come up with an appropriate space where potential offspring can be born into and grow and thrive. I guess you see how that's not too sexy. Here's one additional thing I'd like to tell you: Good God Jesus Mother Maria Fucking Joseph! Write him that goddamn text message. He'll either reply or he won't. Even if he doesn't reply, just writing it out thoroughly might already help you. (That's because if you want him to understand your problem, you'd have to spell it out properly, which makes you look more closely into its causal links, which tends to make you see things you may not have realized before.) Anyways, you've got nothing to lose here. I understand that you're probably afraid that he'll simply not answer back and funny enough I'm in a similar situation where I want to get lessons from Lubomyr Melnyk and I also have this idea in my mind that I have to create this masterpiece of an email, which is just so perfectly constructed and well written out that it somehow forces its way into getting me a reply and that this is my only chance to ever get one ever. But hey, maybe this fear is a little exaggerated and you just gotta try. You can also write to all sorts of other people who you think might have something valuable for you. Although I'm taking a wild guess that many of them would recommend you to get your own place

I have two suggestions for you. One is about mindful smoothie eating, the other about your feeling of insecurity in talking about things. First the one about mindful smoothie eating: Don't take too large zips. Whenever you take a zip, try to move it around in your mouth in such a way that most of the surfaces of the smoothie parts/particles have touched some surface of your mouth. I hope you can make sense of that, but it's really possible to get a feel for it, the taste changes and the consistency too. Try to feel the point when you've had the zip in your mouth for 'long enough'. You can try to focus on the taste of specific particles and on their consistency. You can still chew a smoothie. You can leave a zip in your mouth, not moving, and see how your sensations of it change. You can have your eyes closed throughout the whole process. Now the one about your feeling of insecurity in talking about things: You can say how sure/unsure you feel about what you are talking about. And you can say how you think you arrived at your conclusion. When you do the latter, you might notice that there is no reason to even be sure/unsure to whatever degree in the first place. You had some experiences, heard something from a particular person, read something in a particular article. That is all that happened and you can just report what happened. You don't need to additionally make up a thought about whether what you heard or read is really the case, nor do you need to assign any degree of certainty to that thought. It seems to me that this is a rather useless habit, that most of us are stuck in. (The reason for that might be deeply rooted in the school system that we grew up in. The way it works is you are asked a question of the structure "what is the case/what is correct", then you give your answer, basically guessing; when you studied well, you are rather certain, when you didn't study well, you are rather uncertain and hope you might still be correct to some degree; and then an authority figure tells you if you were correct or not or to what degree and then that's how you get to know. This mechanism in our school system might be rooted in an an even deeper and larger mechanism of how our society works, but I will leave that for another time.)

Then again, is it reasonable to let him take such an important decision for you, just because you think you are too weak to assert yourself? Ah, and about that throat chakra thing: I listened to your soundcloud recording with the singing at the end and when you were singing, your voice suddenly sounded so much more relaxed Singing can probably be a great way to unblock your throat chakra, especially if you try out different pitches/registers. Works for me at least