My Altered States: A Doctor's Extraordinary Account of Trauma, Psychedelics, and Spiritual Growth - Softcover

Strassman M.D., Rick

 
9781644119792: My Altered States: A Doctor's Extraordinary Account of Trauma, Psychedelics, and Spiritual Growth
Softcover
ISBN 10: 164411979X ISBN 13: 9781644119792
Verlag: Park Street Press, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

An investigation based on direct experience into the meaning and message of altered states

“Every reader will find this account fascinating. A lively and intensely personal addition to the drugs-memoir genre.”—Kirkus Reviews

“You're such an important part of the psychedelic history.”—Joe Rogan Experience, episode #1854

• Recounts several dozen of the author’s experiences of drug and non-drug altered states of consciousness from birth to early adulthood

• Applies the lenses of four explanatory models—psychoanalysis, psychopharmacology, Zen Buddhism, and medieval Jewish metaphysics—in understanding how and why they occurred

• Demonstrates the importance of careful unflinching recollection and documentation of both heavenly and hellish altered states in one’s psychological, emotional, and spiritual life

Why do we seek out altered states of consciousness, or why, in some cases, do they happen unbidden? What do we see and hear, and what happens emotionally, physically, and psychologically? How and why are these experiences different from or similar to one another? Are they meaningful? And what do we do with them after they have passed?

Addressing these questions, renowned psychedelic researcher Rick Strassman, M.D., draws upon his journals and analyses of dozens of episodes of altered consciousness that occurred during, or are intimately tied to, his life between birth and young adulthood. Just as significant as the ecstatic blissful experiences are the uncensored and, at times, painfully unvarnished narratives of less elevated ones. Visually augmenting all these accounts are the striking images of artist Merrilee Challiss.

Understanding and applying the meaning and message of any altered state—its integration—first requires a clear-eyed recollection of the actual experience in all its aspects, neither pushing away the ugly nor grasping after the beautiful. This book provides a profound example of how one might go about accomplishing this daunting task.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rick Strassman, M.D., author of DMT : The Spirit Molecule, and co-author of Inner Paths to Outer Space, lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.

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From the Introduction

The following chapters recount several types of altered-state experiences. One category is memories of actual altered states that occurred during childhood. An example is my discovering meditation in second grade. Another type includes visions of childhood experiences that I witnessed during an altered state as an adult. These may be memories of real events. While I do not devote a chapter to this particular experience, I mentioned it in the previous chapter. In it, I relived one day on a psychedelic drug as an adult an allergic reaction I had to a chocolate cookie as a toddler. Later on, my mother verified the truth of that memory. Reexperiencing my forceps delivery in the previous chapter, however, “The Beginning,” may straddle the line between real and imagined.

Some “childhood visions” I saw during an altered state in adulthood are unlikely to have occurred in real life. Rather, they are like dreams whose contents represent a condensed symbolic representation of one’s mental state. A case in point is my vision of suffering sexual abuse that appeared while meditating in “Prayer Wheel.” Here, the vision’s contents and associated emotions corresponded to how I felt about my relationship with my parents when I was an infant. In addition, a vision may convey normally suppressed thoughts and emotions linked to being part of a larger historical and cultural universe without actually having undergone the events in question. The chapter describing past lives and deaths in “The Beginning” describes my sense of what it must have felt like for my ancestors in Eastern Europe during a particularly deadly phase of anti-Semitism.

THE EARLY MIND

What is our nature and how have others nurtured it? As these chapters deal with infancy and early childhood, I wish to briefly introduce models that help us address and understand these issues. Infant temperament is the earliest precursor of adult personality. It’s what the baby is like, its attributes or characteristics. While differences exist among classification systems, temperament usually falls into four broad categories: (1) warm, optimistic, social; (2) relaxed, apathetic, slow-moving; (3) analytical, quiet, nostalgic; and (4) irritable, quick to react.

Temperament is congenital, present at birth. It is the product of a confluence of multiple biological functions: hormonal, immunological, gastrointestinal, cardiac, and nervous system/brain. If you include past lives, our new body resonates with that previous consciousness, which now influences and is influenced by a new set of biological parameters.

Attachment style is the intermediate stage between infant temperament and adult personality. It is a general pattern of interactions between the infant/toddler and caregivers. The newborn has its unique temperament, and this temperament mediates its interactions with the world. And the most important interactions are with people.

The responses the infant elicits in those around it feed back onto the child, encouraging certain responses and discouraging others. As with temperament, attachment style classifications vary, but four types that researchers regularly cite are (1) secure, (2) insecure, (3) avoidant, and (4) anxious. We sometimes come across (5) disorganized. The quality of the “fit” between caregiver and infant influences this behavioral shaping, especially its emotional aspects. If the fit is good, the degree of stress is manageable for the child; otherwise, fundamental attachment interactions—such as feeding, discipline, and bedding down—become traumatic. For example, an insecure infant may respond well to a highly attentive and doting mother, while a secure independent one may find such a parent uncomfortably intrusive.

Adult personality is the final result of the process that begins with biological temperament and then interpersonal attachment style. Now, structures and processes are in place and modifying them is less likely. Contemporary psychology research has characterized five factors constituting adult personality: (1) extraversion, (2) agreeableness, (3) conscientiousness, (4) neuroticism, and (5) openness to experience.

Psychoanalysis also proposes a model of personality with roots in infancy and toddlerhood. For example, newborns and infants progress through psychophysiological stages: oral, anal, and genital. In each, the psychic–life force, or libido, concentrates upon and develops within one set of biological structures and functions before moving on to the next. Later, young children’s interactions make their way through more-or-less hardwired interpersonal milestones; for example, the “Oedipal phase.” * Adult personality finally forms—healthy or disordered to various degrees, including obsessive, hysteric, depressive, narcissistic, schizoid, and borderline.

Maimonides—the thirteenth-century rabbi, physician, and philosopher— suggested that character is what God gives us to overcome. This doesn’t mean we must change our character, whose essential building blocks of temperament are biological. Rather, the idea is the following: We are what we do by choice, and not who we are by nature. We can modify our behavior—behavior that our inborn traits make likely—for good or ill. For example, we may be stingy by nature, but we can learn to practice generosity, thereby neutralizing a negative temperamental disposition. By virtue of our generous behavior, we become a generous person, even though our nature remains the same.

My temperament at birth was social, inquisitive, and intensely engaged. At the same time, I was irritable and quick to react. I was alert and responsive, restless, curious, and easily frustrated. If I didn’t like something, I knocked it over. If I didn’t get my way, I cried and threw a tantrum. These temperamental features also resulted in unpleasant sensitivity to sounds such as noisy eating or breathing. My parents’ personalities were less than ideally suited to deal with my temperament, leading to an attachment style with significant insecure and anxious features.

The flip side of this elevated reactivity was my responsiveness to positive influences, such as friends and teachers, as well as the beauty of the natural world. Finally, I possessed strong powers of concentration, both regarding objects in the external as well as internal worlds. While time and inner work modified these early temperamental features, attachment styles, and personality, the broad outline of my adult character and behavioral style was, like most of us, apparent at an early age.

From Chapter 1

1 FLYING BABY

I have always enjoyed being high, but how far back does “always” go? The answer comes to me surprisingly late, in my early sixties. A month after my sixty-second birthday, my life takes a turn for the worse. Two near-fatal infections and two failed relationships, both within a year, prompt my beginning a course of weekly psychotherapy that lasts more than four years. I am committed to finding out how things have gotten so off course.*

Once the acute phase of psychotherapy is over, my therapist and I begin to dig deeper. As my sickness resulted from an ill-advised trip to visit a woman I met online, examining these events gradually segue into discussing my former marriage, stepchildren, and divorce. The death anniversary of my stepdaughter reminds me of having so few photographs of life with my family. At the end of our marriage, my ex seemed to have taken every photo.

“Why did she take them all?” I ask rhetorically.

“What photos do you have from then?” Merle asks in her casually incisive...

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Verlag
Park Street Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
164411979X
ISBN 13 
9781644119792
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande