Health - Colorblindness and DMT

[razoenator]

SWIM has been colorblind since birth, first drug he ever took was 140mg of pure MDMA. Had a lot of crazy hallucinations on it but when SWIM was introduced to DMT by a friend. Damn! Colors that didn't exist manifested in ways that SWIM had never dreamed of before. SWIM was immersed in this never-ending kaleidoscope and fractal shower. The colors were accompanied with emotions, it seemed like every shade of color had a different feel as they surrounded the 360 degree view. SWIM's trip was aided by music prepared by a friend. (Dimitri from Paris "SACREBLEU" Track 1,9,6,16,15) On track 6, SWIM was in a convertible driving around a neon translucent city. Anyway, any colorblind psychonauts out there?



"You are not a human being searching for a spiritual experience, you are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience"

Reputation Comments on this post:

Fascinating: Thankyou for sharing!

[AceOvArts]

SWIM is colourblind, but this means you cannot differentiate between colours. SWIM finds it hard to see the difference between certain yellows and greens, browns and reds, and purples and blues. In SWIMs mind its very similar in a way to dyslexia. Whenever SWIM had tried hallucinogens (many many tabs of LSD and mushrooms) He did see colours become more vivid etc (and SWIM does get slight synesthesia anyway allowing sounds to become color). However, It wouldnt allow him to differentiate between those colours any more than if he were sober.

[razoenator]

Hi AceOvArts!

Swim sees mostly grays and faint blues. Synesthesia is cool though. I saw a special on NatGeo about it. SWIM hasn't tried how it is on LSD or 'shrooms since it's impossible to acquire 'em here in PI. Swim tried to grow cubies but got a dud print online.

"You are not a human being searching for a spiritual experience, you are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience"

[kaliwraith]

SWIM is a protanope and has not experienced any never-before-seen colors from his experiences with 2c-e, LSD, MDMA, or mushrooms. In fact, even on high dosages of 2c-e (34 mg), he can't really distinguish any colors that appear before him. Things are just blue, yellow, grey/black/white, and brown. SWIM loves psychedelics, especially 2c-e, but never really cared for the visuals after the first few tries: he thinks the real beauty of the experience lies in the effect on the mind. Basically, he doesn't really pay attention too much to visuals and doesn't try to figure out what colors he might have seen but can't distinguish well even when he's sober.

On the other hand, it's really quite fun being colorblind. After 19 years of practice, SWIM has become pretty good at being colorblind. He can separate colors into linguistic based categories (that he does not naturally understand) by paying close attention to different aspects of the colors that he sees (esp. saturation and brightness) and guesses colors intuitively based on limited possibilities and the probabilities of each occurring.

Reputation Comments on this post:

interesting insight. thanks for sharing. welcome to dF.

[Tortoise]

A lesson in colour blindess.

There are three types of cones (light/colour detecting cells) in the normal human retina. There are cones that detect blue, red and green light. Different levels of relative stimulation of these cones can result in millions of colours being seen.

Now, there are various forms of colour vision defects but only very, very few should be classified as colour blindness. Typically, people who have true colour-blindess have a multitude of other eye problems including very poor acuity (poor uncorrectable vision), nystagmus (ceaseless twitching of the eyes) and albinism. Very rare indeed.

The most common forms are deutan and protan defects in that order. A deutan defect suggests a problem with the green receptor and a proton suggests a problem with the red receptor. Furthermore, colour vision defects are typically called -nomalys or -nopia's. A 'nomaly' means that a specific colour receptor works, but it picks up a slightly incorrect wavelength of colour, causing a mildly different perception of a range of colours to the norm. A 'nopia' means that that specific colour receptor is missing altogether, rusulting in a more serious, yet still surprisingly easy to live with colour vision defect.

The two descriptions are typically combined to explain a persons CVD. For example somebody with protanopia (known as a protanope) doesn't have a red photoreceptor, wheras somebody with deuteranomaly has a slightly faulty green receptor. Makes sense?

Having said all that, it stands to reason that somebody with a deuteranopia or a protanopia (ie, missing a red or green pigment) may experience entirely new colours when they are on certain hallucinogens, because parts of the brain that exist but have bever been stimulated by the eye are now being stimulated artificially by the drug. On the other hand, because of the brain's 'use it or lose it' attitude, it is very, very possible that the part of the brain responsible for perception of these hitherto nonexistant colours has atrophied or failed to develop by the time a child reaches age 6 suggesting that it is impossible to experience new colours after this age.

Swim is a deuteranope and has never experienced new colours on hallucinogen's such as LSD or mushrooms. Unfortunately he has never tried DMT and hopes that this will show him something new!

This is a very, very interesting topic Razoenator and Swim thanks you for bringing it up. Swim would love to do a Phd on the subject, but he doesn't believe it has been explored enough. Also, because he'd love to get his hands on hallucinogens for research purposes!

peace

[kaliwraith]

Good info! It's right on. SWIM is personally a protonope, or has a very very severe case of protoanomaly. It's hard to tell.

Anyway, the other day, SWIM was took some acid, then did some blow that turned out to suck, so he found an E pill and had some fun (the acid had mostly subsided by then). He felt too "sober" so he made the mistake of smoking some marijuana. Extreme hallucinations manifested themselves all over everything and seeing every color that he can possibly see on every surface in mostly hexagonal patterns (think three boomerang shaped lines pointed towards a center make a unit, 3 make a hexagon, more make more hexagons) caused SWIM to feel SOOO colorblind because colors he recognized as red or green or orange or yellow seemed to be exactly the same except just different shades as they flashed next to each other. MJ is far too harsh, though; visuals are not fun for SWIM with MJ because he can't think about anything and is so absorbed into them, it can become painful. Otherwise, he thinks it's great to see plants grow out of people's skin, body parts melting onto the floor, etc.

[razoenator]

Word!

[AceOvArts]

SWIM is a CG Artist/animator by trade and has had some issues when dealing with colour palettes, its annoying sometimes. Luckily SWIM used numbers to help tell him what colour he was looking at. Nowadays this dont bother SWIM as he gets a minion to tell him LOL. Getting back to the subject though, SWIM plans a DMT trip to see if new color manifests itself, though SWIM thinks the colours were always there and he could always see them, he just couldnt work out what they were

[Tortoise]

Yeah, then there are people with normal colour vision but poor colour discrimination and colour naming skills.