Has anyone got any experiences to share about inducing trance by the use of valium or similar?

Stevie

Anyone?

Some of the time, I work with mentally ill people who are dosed up with all manner of drugs that trance them out. And you know what? Even the ones who it does some good for would rather they weren't taking meds. Given the choice of pharmaceutically-assisted trance and getting there other ways, I know which I prefer.

"Anything that can be done chemically can be achieved by other means" - paraphrase of Robert Anton Wilson.

I'm not talking about getting hooked, maybe just having a few reference experiences to call on later.

You can do it without reference experiences. Heard of Drug of Choice? It's a method to create altered states through modifying internal experience (submodality tweaks, in NLP language). Some people use it to replicate particular drug states. Others come up with custom ones.

I spent about 15 years of my life conducting chemistry experiments with my cerebral cortex - I was interested in meditation, hypnosis and NLP all the way through that period too - and most of the time I really enjoyed myself...

...I'm not sure people around me enjoyed my self quite so much though...

What did I learn from this?
Fundamentally - nothing much.
(Perhaps that drugs are monstrously overrated... :cool

I now induce radically altered states in myself with qigong, Taijiquan, meditation, chanting, self-hypnosis, NLP, shamanic journeying etc etc
It's cleaner, it's more controllable, it's physically safer and I actually learn and grow through it. I get to choose my responses and experiences rather than blotting out parts of my consciousness with chemical / toxic elements...

The principle problem with drugs is the 'noise' that goes with most of them - unecessary stuff that gets in the way of the mental/physical engagement of the experience.
This is why in tribal cultures there is a lot of preparation and ritual that goes along with taking a trip - it focusses the attention before you get bombed and loads the consciousness with the idea of it being something special, not routine - unlike most of the cannabis users I know, and myself when I was one - something for your growth and elevation, revelation...

During my period in mental hospitals I was given valium to calm me down a few times, I didn't feel it was particularly trancey by my standards, but I did like the mellow buzz. Chlorpromazine (largactyl) was better.
Interestingly haloperidol (haldol) is described in American psychiatry as a 'hypnotic'. When I was on it, it was at least a thousand miles off course from the land of hypnosis!! Very poor description. I would describe it as a mind/emotion blocker/paralyser - really horrible stuff.

To sum up, I personally would not consider using any kind of manufactured drug to induce or assist a trance - I might use something natural, but I can't really see any reason to, given the skill set of NLP etc I have.

Just my thoughts

:cool:

Hi Stevie,

I've done a lot of hypnosis with people in hospitals and hospices who are under one degree of medication or other, so I've got some experience there.

Valium does alter consciousness, but the states it induces are not generally conducive to the powers of focused attention generally associated with the class of states of consciousness we associate with trance. So it's a hindrance, not a help.

So I'd say one can induce trance in someone having taken an average maintenance dose of valium, it's just more difficult. Larger doses might affect the ability to fix and maintain attention to the extent that it renders trance highly unlikely or improbable.

I hope that's helpful.

Be Well,

Michael Perez

I think it's generally a good idea to find out for yourself about the things that pique your curiosity. How it works for you might be different to how it has worked for other people, because you're not other people. Your username suggests that you already have some experience of this. I've not been curious about valium myself and I don't have any experiences to share about that, but I've learnt some of the most interesting things I know by doing things that most other people thought were crazy... so I say keep an open mind, explore what your intuition leads you to explore, and remember that you can only ever gain experiences - you won't lose what you already have, and you can always stop and change direction at any time. Take care, take risks, and see what you can learn that most people never will.