Ok, bear with me. I'm actually pretty excited about this specific idea, mainly because I think it is accurate. If it is, it may be the first time anybody has put forward this as theory on one of those central core experiences that go with the psychedelic experience for so many people..... Gut rot. And it represents a novel idea; An actual new theory about why psychedelics ultimately give you gut rot.
To establish my anecdotal but very common sense evidence I am first going to quote from a blog post I put up here way back in 2013. This will be from the blog post "The anecdotal proof that when you trip, everything living around you trips too..."
Secondly, I am going to tell a new story. Insignificant, or so I thought, until it just now it dawned on me, that I had come up with this concept a few years ago, then forgotten all about it, not realizing what an obvious and valid solution to a question many of us have had for years is and how directly relevant this almost CERTAINLY is.
Before I start, one last thing: Ive noticed over the years--every time I used to get good acid and ingest some, there was always one or more people who did the same, and were convinced that the LSD was "bad," or "dirty" or "strychnine" or any number of absurd claims based solely, principally on the fact that towards the latter half of their trip, they started to experience an uncomfortable condition in their gut that we all know as gut rot. It took a while to move past the rampant speculation on this one, and to recognize that, despite what people say, gut rot is often the sign you've had a good hard trip, not the sign of your chemical being "dirty" or "bad"..... It also seemed to change based on the specific psychedelic you took, as some seem to affect local fauna more then others....But more on that shortly.And so, with that established....I present to you my two pieces of anecdotal evidence which also establish necessary groundwork to understanding my theory. Please read on, as I quote myself from some time in 2013:
To establish my anecdotal but very common sense evidence I am first going to quote from a blog post I put up here way back in 2013. This will be from the blog post "The anecdotal proof that when you trip, everything living around you trips too..."
Secondly, I am going to tell a new story. Insignificant, or so I thought, until it just now it dawned on me, that I had come up with this concept a few years ago, then forgotten all about it, not realizing what an obvious and valid solution to a question many of us have had for years is and how directly relevant this almost CERTAINLY is.
Before I start, one last thing: Ive noticed over the years--every time I used to get good acid and ingest some, there was always one or more people who did the same, and were convinced that the LSD was "bad," or "dirty" or "strychnine" or any number of absurd claims based solely, principally on the fact that towards the latter half of their trip, they started to experience an uncomfortable condition in their gut that we all know as gut rot. It took a while to move past the rampant speculation on this one, and to recognize that, despite what people say, gut rot is often the sign you've had a good hard trip, not the sign of your chemical being "dirty" or "bad"..... It also seemed to change based on the specific psychedelic you took, as some seem to affect local fauna more then others....But more on that shortly.And so, with that established....I present to you my two pieces of anecdotal evidence which also establish necessary groundwork to understanding my theory. Please read on, as I quote myself from some time in 2013:
First.......
".....I am specifically referring to a trip though definitely, when you roll it affects the animals as well... So seemingly any empathogen would have some sort of similar affect, even ones that aren't pure psychedelics. Its a fact of life amongst those who know from firsthand experience that if you are tripping hard, your cats and the wildlife around you end up tripping too, and sometimes it seems like they are wigged out even harder than you might be. My (now) wife and I, back when we first met in our raver days circa the mid 90's, were walking down a street back to my apartment one night tripping sack like crazy. As we approached our apartment building we froze in our tracks. There was a BIG city racooon about 12 feet up a trree directly in front of us. The tree was maybe 25 feet away. He was starting right at us like he knew we were coming already.
..... I just whispered Sssshhhhh to the ol' lady, and we slowly appraoched the tree. In like super slow motion we crept, and the raccoon did the same thing, I could almost see it sensing...knowing even, that we presented no danger. As we got to withing 5 feet of the base of the tree, the raccoon was now at the foot of the tree at ground level.
We slowly began to crouch down as slowly as our legs would possibly allow us to do. It took what seemed to be 10 minutes for him to inch closer to us and for us you lower ourselves all the way down into a crouching position. Finally we were all the way down but our legs and ankles were starting to scream at us... The raccoon was staring, alternatingly right into my eyes, then my wife's.
Eventually we were so close that we put out our hands and the raccoon smelled our hands. After he had done so, he crept back up a few steps and slowly, without any fear, walked back up the tree. We took the opportunity to stretch our legs, as our tendons and muscles were crying out in pain as this whole showdown had taken about 20 minutes of deliberate slow motion moving then crouching. We felt like the most amazing thing ever had just occirred to us, and we knew without a doubt that the raccoon became as high from the LSD we had taken as we have, and he sort of made this connection with us."
Secondly.......The other story I mentioned...
I tripped out this one time, right after I had sustained a pretty ugly, filthy cut on the end of one of my finger tips. I forget which one now, but it was a doozy. Running along the side of my finger it zigged into, and back out of, my fingernail bed. It was deep, and whatever the hell I had cut it on was sharp, filthy, and I was nowhere near hand sanitizer or a handwashing station when it happened. By the time the opportunity to clean it up had finally rolled around, it was too late. I had a doozy of a pus-creating, nasty infected cut.
In the past, when I had sustained an injury that was like this, I could usally pop or squeeze out the infection, gritting my teeth against the excruciating pain this causes, and with tears welling up in eyes, eliminate get rid of the invasion, and at least be left with just a painful cut, sans bacterial infection. When you wait too long to get it clean, as with this time, bad things seem to happen.
Well, the really dumb thing I did that night, was instead of sleep that night, I decided to trip balls and then go to work the next day. Not terribly smart, but even less so for reasons I couldn't have imagined. When I was at the height of my peak, I distinctly remember being 100% convinced that my finger was getting abscessed, and that I was going to lose it entirely to a mandatory amputation. The lack of sleep downtime--where/when my body normally would have done a lot to fight this infection, but since I didn't get any it only was made worse as time went on....
I remember a few distinct points where the pain in my finger had ENTIRELY consumed my focus, as I felt like I was holding it near a hot anvil, and it was being seared. I was sure it was waaaay worse then it should have felt, I was really truly worried about losing the finger, not because of my heightened sense of paranoia, but rather only because my finger hurt so bad, and the throbbing with every pump of my blood continuously was made worse, and the cycle seemed unstoppable.
My finger would just hurt worse in perpetuity. It'd never go away, I was certai; Such that even the next day at work, even though i was hardly still feeling the acid I'd eaten the night before. I think that whole "tripping until you get a good nights rest" thing was at play because I was exhausted at work, and my finger kept heing the untouchable hot spot item that I was afraid to bump on anything.
Finally after an OK night of about 4 or 5 hours of sleep, but I did sleep nonethless, I notice a marked improvement over the previous day. I began to think I might not be losing my finger after all......
Conclusion and Summary......
Then it occurred to me. Just like the story I told above with the animals acting all crazy each and every time we trip, including zoo animals, petting zoo animals, etc, the problem in my finger was maybe because my trip had affected the BACTERIAL fauna on my body, and that had infected this cut were likely sent into OVERDRIVE mode, just like the psychedelic experience itself altered the way I was perceived for anyone or anything I come into contact with while the trip is in affect.
Because of this novel idea, I thought It really WOULD have just kept getting worse if I hadn't gotten some sleep, I think. Now take the fact that your gut is home to more bacteria then anywhere else on your body, and they even make up a good percentage of your body weight, that it only makes sense that the bacteria in you are affected just like every other living thing around you is when you trip.....Only, being a single celled organism, what else do they have to do to show their excitable, agitated state, other than multiply faster, eat more, produce more gas deep in your gut and divide, since that is how they reproduce, and so on. Wash, rinse, repeat. I think this production of excess gas coming from deep in your guts is what causes the pain and discomfort of "gut rot."
This would also explain why when you look in a mirror closely while tripping, you SWEAR that any blemishes, blackheads, or otherwise that you might have take on a life of their own that practically begs you to try and remove them, often leading to bigger redder blemishes.....Making it best to stay away from a mirror entirely. It would explain why that infected cut on my finger was so bad during my trip and it probably explains a whole host of other things too, that I hadn't thought about yet.
What say you? Any thoughts as to the validity of this theory?
