PsychicJuggler
New member
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2017
- Messages
- 73
Greetings fellow SS!
A while ago, I was getting interested with this stuff called Dark Retreat.
It is promoted a lot as a miracle and a mean to reach divinity and even a way to become one with the universe. :lol:
Many new age sites will claim that this tradition goes back to ancient Rome, India, some Amazon tribes and in one blog they associated it with the Tibetan and Bon empire.
A Dark retreat is simply done by spending an huge amount of days in complete darkness and alone. They go from 3 days to some extreme 1 full month cases.
It is pretty difficult to find useful research material on this topic, but they claim it to be a spiritual miracle.
Here's what I know:
Melatonin is an hormone produced by the pineal gland, it regulates your wake-sleep cycle, the amount of it will spike during night reaching the peak around 3 to 4 PM, and is gradually depleted when you're exposed to light.
Those sites claim that prolonged exposure to darkness can push your brain to produce more Melatonin, wich in turn produces many benefits. This seems to be just a lie, since there are no proofs of this increase in Melatonin production, the substance instead is simply not depleted due to the absence of light and will pile up in the system.
Since every active endogenous substance in the body is strictly regulated, and since we evolved in a world where light and darkness cycles are a constant of our life, our body developed a melatonin-disposal process that is essentially linked to this cycle (Circadian Rhythm and Suprachiasmatic Nucleus have a role in most if not all events related with night/day fluctuations).
Melatonin is processed from Serotonin, wich is produced from Tryptophane (wich is abundant in Bananas 0.o).
In absence of light, when the Melatonin reaches a the maximum level of concentration wich is around 15-20 Gr the body will have to reduce that amount and this is the interesting (and to me confusing) part.
At this point Melatonin is converted through different metabolic pathways to Pinolin, 5-MeO-DMT and proper DMT.
The Pinoline has two effects
- It will slow down the production of Monoamine Oxidase A (An enzyme involved with the catalysis of Dopamine, Norepinephrine and also Serotonin).
- It is supposed to be involved in lucid dreaming experiences.
About 5-MeO-DMT.
This stuff is less known, although this is similar to DMT it has different effect, hallucination (not just visual-related) being one of them, but also euphoria, insomnia and panick attacks.
DMT is far better known.
And I remember the topic was also brought up here on the server.
It produces vivid hallucinations, and often users will talk about seeing moving geometric shapes similar to fractals.
This Dark Retreat is supposed to be a way to produce DMT naturally, they claim the substance is only produced at birth and during death and they use this fact to make the whole thing more "Wow! It's spiritual!".
This is another lie, studies shows that small amounts of it are also produced around 3 to 4 PM, wich is also the peak time of Melatonin concentration in the body.
So I Think, Dark Retreat is just a way of tricking one of our biological circuit (The Melatonin Cycle) by removing all light related stimuli, causing Melatonin to reach the peak and never decrease, also causing the body to catalyze it into psychedelic endogenous substances like DMT and Pinolines.
I do believe this is dangerous, I also think that forcing the body to produce psychedelics is wrong and dangerous, they push the Endogenous label to trick people inti thinking "well my body produces it, so this is natural.." or something along that line.
Some will say the same about weed.
Along the same line one could just choke down a shot of adrenaline and die with an heart attack 20 secs later.
Even if DMT is involved in deep meditation experiences even in that case, it will be heavily controlled and will be part of a precise biological system with complex feedbacks and feedforwards regulations (like most biological Systems).
Also, if you trip in endogenous DMT in this way, you haven't done any real progress, just a cool and (REALLY expensive experience). The excess of psychedelics will simply be depleted and you will come back to normal. (Assuming DMT won't have a negative impact on your chemistry).
DMT level haven't been yet measured during a Dark Retreat, so I don't know the exact quantity, but a high dose of it can cause Coma, Respiratory arrest and seizures, imagine going with that in a completely Dark Room. :?
However a paper I've found on the subject gives a lot of interesting infos about the effect of Meditation on a biological and chemical level.
It's called "Pineal Gland, DMT & Altered State of Consciousness" by Iona Miller.
Such as:
EEG studies, lead some researchers to imply that as the brain oroduces Alpha brainwaves during meditation with eyes closed Melatonin will saturate the neocortex increasing both Melatonin and Pinoline concentrations.
This mechanism could partially explain some of the benefits of the basics of Meditation.
It also talks about resonating frequencies in DNA and other really interesting things.
A while ago, I was getting interested with this stuff called Dark Retreat.
It is promoted a lot as a miracle and a mean to reach divinity and even a way to become one with the universe. :lol:
Many new age sites will claim that this tradition goes back to ancient Rome, India, some Amazon tribes and in one blog they associated it with the Tibetan and Bon empire.
A Dark retreat is simply done by spending an huge amount of days in complete darkness and alone. They go from 3 days to some extreme 1 full month cases.
It is pretty difficult to find useful research material on this topic, but they claim it to be a spiritual miracle.
Here's what I know:
Melatonin is an hormone produced by the pineal gland, it regulates your wake-sleep cycle, the amount of it will spike during night reaching the peak around 3 to 4 PM, and is gradually depleted when you're exposed to light.
Those sites claim that prolonged exposure to darkness can push your brain to produce more Melatonin, wich in turn produces many benefits. This seems to be just a lie, since there are no proofs of this increase in Melatonin production, the substance instead is simply not depleted due to the absence of light and will pile up in the system.
Since every active endogenous substance in the body is strictly regulated, and since we evolved in a world where light and darkness cycles are a constant of our life, our body developed a melatonin-disposal process that is essentially linked to this cycle (Circadian Rhythm and Suprachiasmatic Nucleus have a role in most if not all events related with night/day fluctuations).
Melatonin is processed from Serotonin, wich is produced from Tryptophane (wich is abundant in Bananas 0.o).
In absence of light, when the Melatonin reaches a the maximum level of concentration wich is around 15-20 Gr the body will have to reduce that amount and this is the interesting (and to me confusing) part.
At this point Melatonin is converted through different metabolic pathways to Pinolin, 5-MeO-DMT and proper DMT.
The Pinoline has two effects
- It will slow down the production of Monoamine Oxidase A (An enzyme involved with the catalysis of Dopamine, Norepinephrine and also Serotonin).
- It is supposed to be involved in lucid dreaming experiences.
About 5-MeO-DMT.
This stuff is less known, although this is similar to DMT it has different effect, hallucination (not just visual-related) being one of them, but also euphoria, insomnia and panick attacks.
DMT is far better known.
And I remember the topic was also brought up here on the server.
It produces vivid hallucinations, and often users will talk about seeing moving geometric shapes similar to fractals.
This Dark Retreat is supposed to be a way to produce DMT naturally, they claim the substance is only produced at birth and during death and they use this fact to make the whole thing more "Wow! It's spiritual!".
This is another lie, studies shows that small amounts of it are also produced around 3 to 4 PM, wich is also the peak time of Melatonin concentration in the body.
So I Think, Dark Retreat is just a way of tricking one of our biological circuit (The Melatonin Cycle) by removing all light related stimuli, causing Melatonin to reach the peak and never decrease, also causing the body to catalyze it into psychedelic endogenous substances like DMT and Pinolines.
I do believe this is dangerous, I also think that forcing the body to produce psychedelics is wrong and dangerous, they push the Endogenous label to trick people inti thinking "well my body produces it, so this is natural.." or something along that line.
Some will say the same about weed.
Along the same line one could just choke down a shot of adrenaline and die with an heart attack 20 secs later.
Even if DMT is involved in deep meditation experiences even in that case, it will be heavily controlled and will be part of a precise biological system with complex feedbacks and feedforwards regulations (like most biological Systems).
Also, if you trip in endogenous DMT in this way, you haven't done any real progress, just a cool and (REALLY expensive experience). The excess of psychedelics will simply be depleted and you will come back to normal. (Assuming DMT won't have a negative impact on your chemistry).
DMT level haven't been yet measured during a Dark Retreat, so I don't know the exact quantity, but a high dose of it can cause Coma, Respiratory arrest and seizures, imagine going with that in a completely Dark Room. :?
However a paper I've found on the subject gives a lot of interesting infos about the effect of Meditation on a biological and chemical level.
It's called "Pineal Gland, DMT & Altered State of Consciousness" by Iona Miller.
Such as:
EEG studies, lead some researchers to imply that as the brain oroduces Alpha brainwaves during meditation with eyes closed Melatonin will saturate the neocortex increasing both Melatonin and Pinoline concentrations.
This mechanism could partially explain some of the benefits of the basics of Meditation.
It also talks about resonating frequencies in DNA and other really interesting things.
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