Phenomenal effects

Written by Riccardo Volpato on 7 October 2023.

This post is a contribution to the second Qualia Research Institute psychophysics retreat, which took place from 2 September 2023 to 20 September 2023 in Kaslo, British Columbia, Canada.

Table of contents

Here’s a list of some phenomenal effects I noticed during my 5-MeO experiences. These are the effects that I noticed re-occurred regularly and somewhat similarly during most trips:

1. Energisation of experience

Manifested as:

  • Flickering of light
  • Jitter and shuddering of portion/tiles of the visual field

Usually happening during:

  • Onset of experience
  • Rransition moments before peak or before deeper letting go
  • Low relaxation

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/p2wm5DxSw7A

2. Experience dilation

Manifested as:

  • Slowing down of frame rate of experience
  • Zooming-in
  • Expansion of pockets of experience
  • Reminiscent of algebraic transformation of vectors and shapes

Usually happening during or in:

  • Sound stimuli
  • Time perception
  • Increases of relaxation

3. Stimuli focusing

Very related to experience dilation:

  • Expansion of experience led to certain stimuli/phenomenal (e.g. those at the “centre”) to become very pervasive, self-absorbing

Manifested as:

  • Feeling that stimuli is all that there is
  • Feeling that one is the stimuli
  • Self-absorption into relatively small and discrete set of sensory information

Usually happening during or in:

  • Tactile and sound stimuli
  • Increases of relaxation
  • Peak or near-peak

4. Defabrication

Features:

  • Progressive reduction of complexity and information content
  • Progressive disappearing of concepts from more complex and abstract all the way to simpler and more cohesive ones
  • Sipping method demonstrating gradual fabrication
  • High-doses could jump right into very defabricated states
  • Progressive deactivation of cognitive functions

Citation

For attribution, please cite this work as:

APA

Volpato (2023, October 7). Phenomenal effects. https://heart.qri.org/retreats/2023-canada/riccardo-volpato/phenomenal-effects.html

BibTeX

@misc{volpato2023phenomenal,
  author = {Volpato, Riccardo},
  title = {Phenomenal effects},
  url = {https://heart.qri.org/retreats/2023-canada/riccardo-volpato/phenomenal-effects.html},
  year = {2023}
}