PSYCHEDELICS - Sciencemadness.org

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____________________________________________________ Psychedelics
out of scale with one's environment seems, in general, a negative
stimulus. Being small in a large environment may produce
feelings of being overwhelmed, while being large in a
small environment may give a sense of power, but also a sense
of isolation and insensitivity to others.
In the metronome-induced time rate changes, the sound
of the metronome seems to be the adequate stimulus. There
was less variability in the metronome versions of fast and
slow time than in the verbally induced ones, but more variability
in the stopped-time conditions, when the metronome
was stopped. The verbal instruction that time was stopped
seems to have been a stimulus the subjects other than the
simulator could not evade.
Speeding time produced hyperactivity, tension, impatience,
euphoria, sweaty palms, and reports of heightened stimula-
tion. Slowing time produced a slowing down of rates of activ-
ity, thinking difficulties, and feelings of incompetence for
quick action. Because of the difference in response between
the simulator and the subjects, the stopped-time changes
fail to reach our statistical criterion. However, stopping
time verbally produced in all the hypnotic subjects depres-
sion, feelings of unreality, withdrawal, apathy, anxiety, think-
ing difficulties, and loss of perception in all sensory mo-
dalities. The effects of stopped time are similar to no
depth, which is underscored by the tendency of subjects to
report a loss of depth in this condition. Fast and slow time,
however, are less like the other spatial conditions, except
that fast time is associated with increased stimulation and
positive feelings, while slow time seems the reverse.
The data suggest that psychedelic experience is associated
with conditions that enhance the input of stimuli and aug-
ment the perceptual processing of that input. Bleibtreu
(1968) has pointed out that in effect this perceptual process-
ing is, on an experiential level, the time flow. In the time
rate experiments here, altering time rates seems to change
not only perceptual processing, but the rates at which re-
sponses are emitted as well. In the conventional psychedelic
experience, however, an increase in the rate of perceptual
processing does not seem to be accompanied by necessary
changes in response output. It may be that there are two kinds