Cannabis Research: Unger

Came across an excellent research paper:

Mescaline, LSD, Psilocybin and Personality Change

Sanford M. Unger, Ph.D.*

from: Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes
Vol. 26, No. 2, May, 1963. © The William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation

courtsey: http://bluehoney.org/

Although this paper discusses the effects of only LSD and magic mushroom – Psilocybin and Mescalin, most of the experiences of the subjects are astonishingly similar to the ones I had after taking Cannabis. To quote a few:

The predominance of visual experiences in the picture is striking— not only on account of the persistent hallucinations and illusions, but by the impressiveness of seen real objects, their shape and color….

Changes in the perception of visual form occur in virtually everyone…. Consistently reported [are] the plasticity which the forms of the visual world assume . . . the emphasis upon play of light and color, as though light were alive

The above observation explains my light blobs through the palm fronds turning into various deities (refer to my post titled – II Voyage – Imagination Overdrive).

Then again:

There is an awareness of an abnormal distance between the self and what happens in its consciousness; on the other hand, the experience of an abnormal fusion of subject and object

Some degree of depersonalization probably occurs during every LSD experience . . . the detachment of the conscious self, a sort of detached ego. This self is in touch with reality and is in touch with the self experiencing the psychic phenomena.

It is difficult to classify the state of consciousness during the intoxication which allows such self-observation and, at times, seems to foster detachment and self-scrutiny.

. . . in a state of clear consciousness [the subject] . . . is able to describe in detail the manifold mental changes daring drug intoxication

I have noted very similar experiences in my post titled – III Voyage:Multiple consciousness