Odds are we get hurt at some point.

The question is: how will we react,
How will we respond? Will we be
wounded, scarred, will we grow strong?

As long as pain isn't inflicted upon us
then we should be able to forgive, but
were we to malign or neglect the other

it'd be hard to account our intentions
so awry, amiss and astray. Let this never happen to us,
But should it occur let there be wholesome truth
and honest reconciliation, 'cause I reckon
we're in it for the long haul, and I know
we'll do our best, as surely as I know

I have value.
    I am courageous.
    I am worthy of love.​
    I give myself permission to be myself.
    ​I am enough.​​

I care for myself.
    I am mindful.
    I am strong-willed
    I have clear intention.
    I share in the good life with others.

Hone in on those genuine desires.
    Health.
    Prosperity.
    Passion.
    Trust.

Trust in the world.

Why was I so enamored as a young person
by the world I had found in addiction
and everything it encompassed;

The search, the climb
and the view from up high.
It was as a balm to my longing,
A salve to that infinite homesickness.

Why was I so enchanted as a young adult
by the moments we experienced
as companions of substance;

A breeze caught my sails
and I escaped the doldrums
of mundane existence, I knew
"Today is Yesterday's Tomorrow"

When things become difficult
I am not afraid to turn towards the source of pain.
Thus I asked: what is your greatest fear?

Failure is a path to learning.
To err is human.

You can never be abandoned.
Solitude is a blessing.

Damage is the chance we take.
It is the most genuine fear

known to all wounded healers.

I've been feeling that division
between the world of techne (these abstractions
of data) and the world of virtue (those intuitions
and stories). Those more meaningful, self-fashioned
but unscripted, a-textual. These to quantify
what is authentic, original, genuine.

It strikes me as near sacrilegious,
Intention mining,
Sentiment analysis,
Would it disenchant us, and profane
our living narratives. They would strip us of those
vestiges, and even belief: cognitive liberty
is the freedom to believe
in your story,

Some better habits
are written upon
our conscience,

And ketamine;
But you know what they say,
Irony is golden.

The warm, entactogenic transience
of 5-MAPB carried us into 2δ24, thus
we found ourselves in January uttering:

Tempus edax rerum (time devours things).

My father never spoke Irish to us as children,
We were told it had no practical use, and thus
our language was devalued, never appreciated
for the gift it was. We learned to oppose it, thus
we assumed a generational grudge, we felt it was
forced upon us, and understood we were powerless.
Thus the pain of his fore-bearers was re-inflicted on us.

My father never spoke Irish to us as children,
As an adult I felt The Inheritance of Loss.

Meaning in Perpetual Threads
Definition in Purposeful Thoughts.

Each of us is holding back the heavens
and thus we stand accomplished.

The things of earth will grow strangely dim
as we account for those times.

I'd forgotten the plural of anecdote is not 'data';
There are things for which no quantity will satisfy.

Trying to Get to Heaven
Before They Close the Door.

To make it, focus on an intention
and follow it as your guide star.

That weekend something softened in me,
I felt a wholesomeness I'd almost forgotten.

During the car journey we spoke of things so
relaxed yet deeply. During a communal dinner
I noticed us reciprocally glancing away from one
and other, sharing a mischievous, concealed smile.
The next morning those juicy 90's tracks
blared from your car stereo along the back roads of K-town.

After that we messaged occasionally. I took up some old practices
and found myself believing strongly.
This month I felt the ground beneath me, to stoke the fires of my soul.

The clay of my body softens, I am malleable
in these desires for our health, to be with them,

I dreamed a pair of desert cobras
were wrapped around my torso
running up to my left shoulder.

I felt their movement across me
and their weight, I did not flinch
but staggered, wary. I've been told

there's no malice in me, of this I'm certain.
Why then do I carry these walterinnesia aegyptia as a burden?

In Ancient Greece the toxotai were held in contempt,
They never placed themselves in physical danger
and so were not seen to be courageous. I've
indulged in dissociation, been captive
in a town of "nothing but snakes".
I ask you to blow out the three poisons
of my soul, three unwholesome roots. I ask:

If I inhale the clouds,
Will you exhale for me?

A dream of three parts the more significant.

On campus but I felt lost, deceived, confused;
Visible to many people, few of whom I knew.

In a fantasy, we searched littoral gates, scrub-land
and trekked across frozen mountains. I argued
with my old master in Isengard, and lost.

Transported underground to an oracular room,
Colorful shadows on the wall show visions of
the far corners of this middle-world. I turned
away from those portentous scenes, to a staircase
that towered before me. Half-a-dozen chests perched
upon its odd steps, tragicomedic faces enameled into them.
Atop sat a grand piano, two saplings sprouting from its strings
and reaching up toward an attic skylight. From this lofty window
a voice uttered a strange, soft dialectic incantation, and a light shone
bright enough that I could climb out
through a ladder wrought of sunbeams.

On Sunday I took 350 micrograms
of dimethoxybromoamphetamine,

In the afternoon I prayed

to the drives which animate us,
beseeching them:

To be mindful,
To clear intentions,
To care for myself, and
share in the good life.

Old money gone bad,
New money gone wrong,

Last month I started a course of Zyban,
This month I remembered
the days of theater;

Our familial failings, stage right.
An escape offered by friends, stage left.
To center, torn by whatever it is the world says.

On the apron, resplendent in lurid hues,
Illuminated by neon bisexual lighting,
I find I am comfortable here, at last;

Everything seems to be happening at once:
Memories of every night out blur into one,
Aspirations to manifest now after so long,
And I am off-valence, so willing to be lost, to gain or be bound.

I wonder at our capacity for spontaneity
and wish I had asked for help sooner.

These sways don’t stop, the only thing to soothe them
is music. Those tunes are the most
reliable way this anxiety fades.
"Know thyself"

The dominant drive is the handle on the reducing valve of consciousness.
Consciousness is not merely received, it flows through us,
And one's body is its conduit.

Being has an active role in its synthesis.
It is from this vantage that pharmacophenomenology dares to ask:
Is there something the components of neurotransmission feel like?
For example, what commonalities are felt
under the influence of serotonergic drugs?

What sensate invariants are to be found
in the actions of other neurotransmitters, endorphins and hormones?
Can we identify these felt sensation with those naturalistic concepts?
Could we map the structures and limits of experience from the inside out,
Using neuropsychopharmacology as a cartogram
and the phenomenological tradition as a pathfinder.
Would that be so noumenautic?

Strange that I missed those gray skies
and places I've hated in shallow moments
and glacial moods. I suffered such confusion.
My shadow told me: I wouldn't know what to do
with someone. I realize I am splitting, these runaway
valuations have me reckless and lost, out on the borders
my lines are crossed.

"When I was younger I could not concentrate", she said.
That really stuck with me, because I'd been there
and found it happening to me once again.

My consciousness locks up, its parts bristle in anarchic chaos,
Incoherent, indominant. I am bedridden into the afternoon,
Indecisive, fetal. I muse on possible chemical motivation:

The unsubtle euphoria of dexamphetamine,
The warm excitement of a phenidate,
The cold focus of an adrafinal,
The brutish pyrovalerone,
And my prescription
NDRI cathinone.

I get up, disconcerted, apathetic, yet I write this
just to prove that darkness can be a source of strength
when more wholesome platitudes fail.
I know those feelings of power are founded on something
unstable, unsustainable, cruel; yet here I am, in this moment with you.

I find myself strongly desiring intimacy
yet fear its consequences. Sometimes I feel
emptiness after connecting with others.

The group are among a few of the only humans
I've ever felt to have known authentically.
A sense of belonging, fleeting, sempiternal.

A little ****** up, a lotta genuine.
I'd've been lost without 'em.

G-town hasn't changed.
Same city, different crowd.
Year-in, year-out.

All the same "His Praise Remains
unto Ages of Ages"
across this weathered domain.

Old highs, new lows. Homesick for infinity
and lost in the throes.

Another pub, club, afters, rave. I forget sometimes
the world is not such a malevolent place.

Same conversation, different heads.
Once I felt more connected, now I am far away.
Been meaning to take an empatheogen with someone

to remind me
the world is not such a malevolent place.

The pines' silhouette a dusk sky.
Suburban streetlight glows in silence.

I cycle 15km to a rave in a quarry, take MXPr
and dance for several hours before cycling home.
I like dissos but they make me feel afar from people.

I want to be close with them, but a poison wellspring can
no thirst quench. At 28 I question if I'm borderline,
And some of it makes sense. I take my eyes
off the ground, and see clouds;

Sometimes I feel I've abandoned much of myself,
I get a longing for self-expression; I just don't know
who I am, who I should be.

Among them I'm honored,
I feel we are unique and genuine.
It's long written, a kinship that bonds the group.
We passed thru the millennium together.

These festive weekends
cause such thoughts to stir in me, longing to understand
the person, our being here, these notions.

I find it difficult to feel pleasure, I am too concerned
with aponia.

Substance should be used with intention,
We must intend authentically.
I feel I could do so among them,

That I could trust
and be vulnerable.

I wish to be carefree like I once was, and not feel this badness.

With nothing to lose, you'll take chances.
You become fearless, a false confidence.
You beget pleasure, gain accomplices.

Careless longing, nostalgia,

They say "...people who are homesick for infinity
find it more or less in all drugs",
So come a little closer, like I once was.

I put on some Boards of Canada
and begin searching
the dark web.

I forgot how much time I spent here,
Perusing boards and forums,
Running the shadows,

Turning over dark corners.
I put on some Carbon Based Lifeforms
and continue researching.

For those in society who have been displaced,
For whom no bell tolls,
For ware no refuge is safe.

Hackers. Dealers. Journalists.
Dissidents. Whistleblowers. Anarchists.
It's all very strange. I put on some drift-wave

to study them, their stories.

We made a choice
to fall like stars,

We fell so low
it was never too far.

We let go our cynicism,
Our disenchantment,

Forget the world,
Remember our planet.

How did I live through this, after it;

I recall acid binges, candy-flipping
across town in an unwholesome fashion,
The underlying theme of escape, as dark waves
tore through our extended reality, to leave me 'wake.

Why feel this, why think it?

Sometimes I would start in fright from a nightmare
filled with flashing blue lights, cacophonous sirens,
My front door thrown off its hinges and the house
destroyed by vicious policemen. Eventually I quit.

When I could take no more, I gave it up
slowly, piece by piece, clutching to the last
remnants of my empire, feeling that apostasy,

Gave in to the itch, looking for that real betterness.
I'm spinning, loud clothes, quiet figure,
Burnished copper chain on my chest,
The wry smile of a free animal who knows it's time

to mix some skiddy-up juice: Sea Dog Jamaican ***;
Smirnoff *****, Berliner Luft, peppermint tea;
Stroh '40' Austrian ***, apple & ginger;
Eventually it fades, I feel those
tendrils drag me back
into the sways, the throes.
The only thing to outrun them
is music. It is good to travel, to get away.

Being home, perspective etches a contrast
between lives, and I feel what destroys me,
My past chaste me, but I always had an escape plan.
Shall I reinvent myself again?

The whiff of peat briquettes
and glow of sodium-vapor
carry echoes
of this evening's Angelus,
It peals across satellite estates.

December's early darkness
dispelled by old streetlamps,
And the draught of winter
yet to solstice
held back by dreams of escape.

We swept through an altered town,
Familiar faces, I met someone I knew
but cannot remember; what would it mean
to experience a moment
without prior?

Recently I was misidentified as a psychonaut
so allow me to clarify,
I am not.

I am no longer
part of that cabal,
I am no more a psychonaut than I am a catholic;

But, as a philosopher, I will write of it.


Psychonautics is an act of configuration.
It refers to a methodology
for describing and explaining
configurations of consciousness,
And a research cabal
in which adherents explore
and harness those configurations.

The power of psychonautics
is that configurations of consciousness
have resonant effects on meaning and belief.
The psychonautic cabal emerges from a recognition of this.

Psychonautic exploration is not without risk
to the physical and psychological well-being
of the researcher, to their essence and beliefs.

An experienced and trustworthy practitioner
can provide a tether to your shared reality,
Advanced practices require caution and patience
to navigate safely; "[t]here is no casual experiment".


In the Western paradigm, classical psychonautics
was defined by contemplative and ritual techniques,
The religious or spiritual practices of a tribe or society.

Modern psychonautics has been increasingly defined by
the use of psychoactive substances, which is likely the result
of secularization, advances in pharmacy, and the war on drugs.

In contemporary society psychoactives are a valuable commodity
that many people use (or misuse) for a variety of reasons.

Some will seek out drugs they have not tried before,
Few shall devote themselves entirely, investing
their time and resources in learning about,
acquiring and assessing psychoactives.

This latter cohort aligns with the methodology
of psychonautics, they commit to understanding
through practice. Many become well-versed
in Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS),
Some academics assume this is the mark of the modern psychonaut
but it is mere specialization  rather than characteristic thereof.


As more initiates into psychonautics emerge from drug experiences
so does the cabal become more chemical. Nevertheless
it draws its adherents from a diversity of practices.

Psychonautic practices entail ontological risks,
The ranks of the cabal are full
of disordered, misguided, or warped adherents
whose heedless practice undermines
the meaningfulness of consensual reality.
A lack of formal training and mental health
likely contribute to this, although no equation
can encapsulate the qualitative experience which
compromises ontological security.


The cabal is decentralized, without singularly defined leadership
or ideals, and it operates through intrigue. Its adherents
may dispute the ethos or validity of some practices
and their corresponding configurations, and so
within the cabal there is an internal politics:

Cognitive liberals
believe anyone using responsibly
should be allowed their methodology and be able to practice.

Universalists or absolutists
believe everyone should be initiated, if not adherent.

Elitists and psychocrats
hold that only their method and practice is valid.

Cognitive dissidents
believe the methodology and its praxis must not be vested
in nation-states, corporations, or religions
if it is/they are to retain its power.

The cabal's politics of intrigue
represent an unspoken power struggle
where the stakes are unclear, if even communicable.

If the war on drugs comes to an end, psychonautics
will be redefined by its next wave of initiates,
May they be wise and kind.


I have written enough,
That part of my life is well and truly over.
My purpose here is to explore ideas, to experiment with poetry.
The place I allocate psychoactives
has always been secondary to that;

Rarely do I deign to sail the soul now
but when I do, know I am a philosopher

and do so as an inquiry into mind
rather than in service of alteration.

Speak the phrase "Civis Europaeus sum"
and safety is guaranteed to one's data
when traveling through the internet.

Relativism does not usually trouble me,
That our knowledge is perspectival
and our morality, cultural;

I do not think this precludes communication,
We can still share in cause and meaning.

Physics and metaphysics can prove
the unity and continua
of matter and energy,
Of mind and body,
Of one and many,
And of opposite
properties, even being
and becoming, essence
and existence.

A relativism of the self
is something entirely else
which I find quite troubling;

Should one's experience change
uncontrollably, and of course
it will. That drastic instance

it diminishes one's choice.
That afternoon I took MPT,
An obscure base tryptamine.

Psychedelic compounds do not reveal truths and such,
They reconfigure mind to make associations potent.
I am concerned the intimate sense qualities of
this mental life are precarious, beckoned
by contextual substrate, they submit

Modern pop-politics
is rife with conflicts
over freedom of speech,
The use of language,
The shape of the narrative,
'Phrasing'.
Knowledge
is always political, language
is often contested, consider
the language of drug use:
'Addiction', 'dependence', 'substance use disorder'.
Nevertheless a compassionate idealism strives
to contrast the weighty realism of suffering.

Alas, who can say whether drug use
is a set of choices, or the pattern of habits?
Vying between these drives, I try a few milligrams
of methoxyeticyclidine. This mortal coil, it harkens Absurdia.

The clever craft emerges from
intelligence, willpower. It allows
for healing, or human enhancement,
Provides a means to catalyze inspiration,
Or indeed proffers mere modes of recreation,
And of course a dark side which is unwholesome.

All the same I turn to those fabled schools of Alteration,
Of Conjuration, Destruction, Illusion,
Of Mysticism, and Restoration;
Its immanent applications

and its transcendent source:
Metaphysics. Knowledge, experience.
It is worth acknowledging recreation, playfulness.

The pace of life quickens, recognition
dawns in the dark corners of my mind,
To come alive, it's been so long, too long
to feel some; embrace these sways, to seek
eternity. Town
was such a remnant today. I could sense that
buzz hanging on the dusk: electric, ecstatic, but
I did not give chase.
Is it anhedonia when one's pleasures become mere
intellectual pursuits: my love of pharmacy, of music?

That recognition flickers
like a candle in the dark,
It was lit for you.

Chatting with Friday in The Blue Note,
She mentioned leaving for Scotland.
A friend commented on your body
language, I could not shake that.

Thought I saw Monday walking The Promenade,
I turned my head only to see you also looking
back. We waved, and it struck me

how we were kids once
and how much time has passed.
Passin’ Me By,

Not for lack of knowledge, I languish.
Not for lack of wisdom, I'd indulge.
Would lusting after apotheogens
make it any less anything? I can

administer those transhuman
Cybran stimulants, posthuman
Aeon dissociatives, and atavistic
psychedelic trips, but my longing
for harmony and synchrony might
bid alchemy and witchcraft farewell.
Ambivalence, comfort, a perfect static
in which the Anemoi are bottled, swirling.

This auld warlock does continue to ponder
the mysteries of quantum metaphysics:
The study of the smallest constituents
identifiable in an act of cognition,
An effort to identify the process
of quality and likeness.

Oh, to be Anonymous
in that sweet darkness.

Ah, to be Philalethes
in the pursuit of truth.

Joy, to be with Pasithea
enveloped by relaxation.

Sorrow, to be a **** Lord
that never to comes-down.

At the end of Nimmo's Pier
on a mid-week evening in July,
I gaze across the bay
with the city to my back.

To my left a heron potters about
in orange lamplight, from my right
two lads' conversation drifts
across the harbor docks,

Behind me the city thrums
with its mid-summer's nightlife.
My over-stimulation from three days
of intense work fades, my solemn thoughts

I am apprehensive about dating,
It's something I feel I should pursue
while I'm still young; part of me wishes
to come closer, yearning for someone other,
To stand outside oneself and be with another.

Another part of me takes comfort in solitude,
My old soul is content, the sun goes down.
There are times when I reject warmth
and feel the cold universe
run through me;

Eternity is always just a few moments away,
Seeking the edge of chaos, searching for someone

Months ago I awoke
to an almighty hypnopompic brain-zap
provoked by dreams of lisdexamphetamine-laced cereal.
Forceful, shocking, agonizing; strange to have felt this
when I lack any acquaintance with Vyvanse, and
when I am clean of residuals. That a dream
should cause real pain, such reaction
in my being, I wonder how
my brain contoured
the experience.

Weeks ago I grappled
with a prolonged tension headache
so I administered paracetamol, ibuprofen/codeine,
And buprenorphine/naloxone. Those opioids
provoked strange daydreams, to countenance the many idioms
I've grokked over.

I used to think my superpower was depression,
I'd go around seeking pain
because nothing else would sooth me; and with each pang
I came a little closer, chasing it
like a true addict, savoring my damage,

Exalting in my lonely conscience.

When I awoke the opiates were leaving my body
so I lay in their dark waves of intemperate sensation
among what thoughts etch onto the inside of my skull
and found myself driving with a concussion
towards a home for misanthropes.

Apotheogen
n.
A psychoactive substance that induces alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, or behavior for the purposes of subduing personal drives in a profane context.
The functional opposite of an entheogen.

From the root, apotheo- (apotheosis, to deify) and the suffix -gen (genesis, to come into being).

Apotheogenesis can be understood as
the act of concealing or obscuring the self
through the singular focus of one's will onto a pattern or substance,
Raising it to a god-like position within their ideology.
The individual is thus subsumed by it, distracting from
dissonant parts of the self which are incongruent
with the whole. Such parts become hidden
though their drives remain in conflict.

I have been quiet these passing months,

Reflecting on my desires
amid this summer's solitude;
Their difference, and appearance,
These attitudes towards my future.
Odd to consider what changes in a year.

In May I moved back in with a few friends,
But after a month I move back out again.
As June comes to a close I find myself
at odds again, I assess 2C-T-21 but
it is unremarkable with effects
resembling a subdued 2C-E.
Given its toxic metabolites
I have no interest going
any further into it.
I guess they can't all be winners.

I attend the 2nd conference in
Philosophy and Psychedelics Studies
hosted by the University of Exeter. I applaud
the commitment and passion of this disparate group
of drug-addled academics, but still I am wary of our efforts.
It is a hard to study a thing
which alters the very faculties
of those who partake of it. As for
my own contribution, an old concept,
Apotheogenic.

Values are malleable things,
Shaped over the course of our lives,
Slowly changeable except during extremes
which necessitate a flip, provoked by revelation or dissonance.
I used to value a capacity to be non-judgemental, is that hubris?

To suffer through confusion, to take pleasure in mania,
To soar with impulsivity, to drown in melancholia.
To play with fire, to pray to madness, to savor
one's pain, to wish to forget all the hurt, and
when one finally does, to realize the loss
of one's soul.

So I spent years
coming down, I sank into mediocrity, troubled
by my prospects; disenfranchised, devalued.
I reneged upon knowledge and pleasure;
I reneged upon curiosity, compassion.
I might be between values, between
integrity and wisdom, these are
no mere platitudes, for I am

I wander through town by day,
Stopping at Sparch to chat.

I meander about town in the eve,
Chasing the hues of dusk.

I tear up in misplaced anxiety but,
Keeping my eyes on the sky

I am transfixed by what is above us,
Spacing out into that golden indigo fade

I know I am lost, yet I am with the horizon.
Lost in the sauce,

I dream of escape, albeit to an unknown destination.
Bathing in this, 1⁄f

Do nothing without intention,
Feel for the context.

Focus on others,
Be yourself.

By the Spanish Arch
a few kind crusty folks
talk in the March sunlight.

Soft incantations of sweet trad
spill from a concertina, tin whistle
and fiddle, sloshing out an ambiance.

An old fella' makes a poor man's black velvet,
The ladies drink Estrella Galicia and San Miguel.
Another lad jokes: my grief counselor died last week

but he was so **** good I didn't care.

A motley crew, good-natured and friendly,
Drawn to session like moths to a flame;
Always I wonder whether I belong.

"I think in his heart Frodo is still in love with the Shire:
The woods, the fields…little rivers. I'm old Gandalf.
I know I don't look it, but I'm beginning to feel it"

I took some suboxone
and wandered down to Dead Man's Beach,
Drifting over the sands, blown out, floating away
in the Atlantic wind,

I forget what troubles me.

The plateaux and caverns which map
my cognitive landscape correspond
by virtue of something; something
determines the salience of beliefs
and their ability to traverse this

I'm sick of believing in things.
Lets break the dialectic
and go for a swim