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, and I realized
I am splitting, these runaway valuations have me

reckless and lost, out on the borders
you'll find my lines are crossed.

There are clouds in my head
and they are cumulus, voluminous, blotting out
my cognitions."When I was younger I could not concentrate", she said.

Yeah me neither, and I find it happening again.
Unable to break through to catharsis, to feel the depth I used to,
it distresses me when unfeeling so obstructs my experience
and blankets my lucidity in thick brain fog. My consciousness locks up
as its parts bristle in anarchic chaos, incoherent, indominant.

I am bedridden into the afternoon, indecisive, fetal.
I muse on what chemical could be motivating:
The unsubtle euphoria of dexamphetamine,
The warm excitement of a phenidate,
The cold focus of an adrafinal,
But I refrain from these
and instead take
the prescription cathinone,
Supplemented with a racetam/choline donor combo,
Stacked with acetylcysteine and magnesium.
I get up, but find I am disconcerted,
Apathetic, yet I manage to write.

The darkness can be a source of strength
when more wholesome platitudes fail,
But those feelings of power
are founded on something unstable, unsustainable, cruel;
Yet here I am

I find myself "strongly desiring intimacy"
yet often feel emptiness
even after experiencing
connection with others.

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

So ****** up and genuine.

I'd have been lost without them.

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.
Wish I felt more connected.

Feel so far away.
Been meaning to take an empathogen,

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

Recently I've been unwell.
This summer sickness has me wishing
for winter's cold, dark knell.

I feel music carry over
into the world, and note
the onset of a familiar psychosis.

It is curious, to interpret one's cognitive and emotional experience
in light of their hypothesized neural specificity.
I could feel the waves of anxious activity
untempered by proper inhibition,

That reckless energy
run wild in my neural circuits,
Unrestrained by sub-functional regions
Spinning tales of frantic analyses, going on

in a circular fashion.
It was only upon reading the phrase
"...patients  experience chronic and significant emotional suffering
and mental agony" that I finally realized

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 conclude I'm borderline,
And my life makes sense. I take my eyes
off the ground, and see clouds;

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

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

together.

This fleeting worldliness,
My reticence to dispel it,

A desire to focus on other therapies,
A wish to connect with human beings.
These festive weekends cause such thoughts to stir in me,
Longing to understand the person, our being here, these notions.

Speaking to a friend about drugs,
They say it sounds like I've unfinished business.
I am torn by judgements of what is right, and what is good;
To lead an ethical life, one must discern it.
Now I find it difficult to commit to pleasure,
Too concerned with aponia to achieve ataraxia,
Yet I know "...once you've been through that door
you can't just keep going through it over and over again".

Substance should be used with intention,
And we must intend authentically.
I feel I could do so among them,
To trust, and be vulnerable

in their presence;
The humanistic turn.

I wish to open up
and be human again, like I once was.

Someone offered me drugs, so politely did I decline.
Someone showed interest in my body, but I did not engage.
Someone asked if I wanted a wing-man, and I said "no, thank you".
I wanted to say yes, to move closer, to accept.
It was so automatic. When asked if I were single
I said "I am", and felt so lonely. This trauma is disheartening.
I turn the volume up.

It's strange now that I want to be a good person
I feel so broken, and when I pretended to be as bad
I was so rewarded. Once I was carefree
and more willful in my reaction,
Now I am confined by it.

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,
The ethics' dare answer
a contented human
so wholesome.

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 BoC
and begin searching
through the dark web.

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

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

These weekends are no balm
Lack of intention, absent desire,
Confusion brings me low,
A tightness in my temples,
These trappings in my chest.
I crave escape,
I wish to egress.
I did some 3-MEC,
120mg oral. Mellow
but it's fine, I like the odd cathinone.
Eventually the substance fades,
As do I. Late into the night

he spoke to our curious group
about a book he wrote in prison,
The Rose of Paracelsus. There was
a mystical quality about him, calm,
Measured, gracious, wise and sagely.
His caution against the endless chasing
struck me, and advice to mind intentions.

I'm left pondering
the relation between
desire and intent,

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 wrung 'round my neck

reminds me how I came up, living
for the tunes we were breathing.

The wry smile
of a free animal
who knows it's time
to mix some jungle juice:

Smirnoff *****, Berliner Luft, peppermint tea;
Stroh '40' Austrian ***, apple & ginger;
Sea Dog Jamaican ***, neat;
Eventually it fades

and I feel those tendrils
drag me back into the sways,
The throes. The only thing to ever

outrun them
is music, it is so good,

So good to travel, to get away,
To come alive. 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.

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

I take 25mg of DPH to sleep. No effect.
I am feverish, restless.

In the morning I test positive.
I experience symptoms between a cold and flu.
Fatigue, headache, congestion, dry chesty cough,
Changes in taste, constriction of pupils, nerve pain
in the roots of my teeth, and cognitive fog. After three days I mend.
After ten days my isolation ends.

That soporific dose of diphenhydramine went unnoticed, blotted out
by the onset of coronavirus.

May your word be supple with optimism
and may their cognitions follow suit.
I took a little 2C-D tonight
and prayed to move

Old friends corrupted by the apotheon,
Old fiends so wretched.
New **** as if we're more wholesome,
New hope for a free agent.

The weekend comes and goes,
I should party more. At night I go driving
around G-town in my old Lexus.

How does a man on earth live,
Does he live like this?
Exhausted,

Some bad habits
are etched into us.

I drank Havana Club
'tres años' to ring 20β2 in,

Surrounded by a few friends
(and honored to call them such),

I worry sometimes they're too good
for me. I am torn by my history, in 20ζ2

I am between selves.

My head's spinning
with the flaws of the earth.

Commit to the tailspin
and let the truth wash over us.

What I want is a mystery
yet I ruminate over our prospects.

I'm so afraid I won't ever be strong enough
to be in a relationship.

Up until recently
I craved solitude.

As part of a longstanding personal tradition
I do drugs alone on my birthday.
This year I do flualprazolam and 2C-C.

I turn 27, and it occurs to me
I don't want to spend another birthday
doing drugs on my own.

A switch flipped,
I sought company.

So I found my people, drank two bottles of ***
and did a few bumps of 4Fucking-MilesPerHour
before eventually walking home at 7am on Sunday.

I find myself dreaming of strange tides
and awesome shores. I mix some ***
and ginger, in my headphones I hear
a storm. Now everything goes dim

and I feel it. Drink is a writer's drug,
It allows one to lose their poise and swim.
Remember when we cared less and felt more.
I lost this when I yearned for a normal life, but

it is in my nature to seek this thing.
It is within me, it will rise again.
I tried to forget about a world
but the world remembered

and said:
We are lost,
We are lonely,
We are forgotten,

We are ephemeral,
We are the next gen,
We are the algorithm,
We are the new ****.

Embodiment says more about consciousness
than symbolism or analysis;
"Your emotions become your reality".

What anticharms and antistrange ways lie beyond us?

Our eyes take care in their saccades,
We skim the surface, brushing over one's skin
as if to remark that I am here, searching for something.

Being and dissociation.

Enough with these low doses, I feel like some real therapy.

A strong dose of some rather rare material, a designer dissociative
once highly popular, now virtually extinct: methoxetamine.

I disperse 47 milligrams into water and sup it, tentatively.

I feel the usual fear as a foreign chemical enters my brain en masse
and begins to alter the fabric of my mind.
It has a relatively long come-up, 45-90 mins.

In due time the chaos begins, I drift off into that aeon M-verse.
Eventually I get comfortable and listen to Skyrim atmospheres.

I have an epistmic vision, a vision of human knowledge as
increasingly ubiquitous, in line with the proliferation of modern ICT.
The use of tools, of signs and language is a gift unlike any other.
That we might imagine the past or a future. We are most fortunate
to have these stories, concepts and imaginings,
Things that allow us to venture beyond our home;
Things to remind us there's something to come back to.
They ask us what we want
and we answer: to share in this.
It asks me what I want and I answer:
To contribute, to feel this wash me away

such that I am no longer marooned.

An overcast autumn sky settled in
and fall let loose. Uncertain, lose it.
Lost,

Use it.
I had strange dreams of you last night
actually. It's been some time

since I dreamed about anyone
realmente. Bring out all the carotenoids and anthocyanins,

Bring down the foliage; America is an empire in decline.
X is the new Y.

Came home from Berlin
transmetropolitan,

Came home from NYC
chasing the apotheon.

Back in Galway
I dissolve ♄ere


♐︎his instance; of
being otherwise

October looms.
Autumn is here,
I feel an eagerness

to leave and change color.
Cycling these medieval streets,
The scent of **** and rain-clouds

float through the town, NewDad plays
in my headphones. Think I'll skip winter
this year, travel to the southern hemisphere.