Critical listening and altered states


Ok, this is not a question about relaxing, but about listening to evaluate how the system (or a piece of gear is sounding).

What, in your experience, are the pluses and minuses of altering your state of mind for listening? This can include anything you've used to affect your everyday state of mind, from coffee, beer, scotch, tobacco, to much stronger — and psychoactive, dissociative — additives.

What do you gain by altering your consciousness in terms of what you notice, attend to, linger on, etc?
What causes more details to emerge?
What allows you to stick with a thread or, alternately, make new connections?

Or perhaps you like to keep all those things *out* of your listening; if that's you, please say a bit about why.

128x128hilde45
@mijostyn


You’re one of the “know-it-all’s” on the forum who loves telling others they are “hearing things” or wasting their money when you’re too ignorant to understand something … and now we learn you’re a pothead?

🤦‍♂️
Decades ago I took some sort of acid and thought my friends car stereo was the best I had ever heard.  I believe mushrooms had a similar effect on me.  The interesting thing is that both increase ones sensitivity to seratonin, which is similar to staying up a long time with no sleep, but seratonin also builds up the longer one is awake, so perhaps that’s why those late night listening sessions sound so good- as well as quieter electric grid.  
daj makes a point.
When I was between 18 and 22, I used cannabis on a regular basis and found that when listening to music, it turned down the "noise" in my head as well as peripheral thoughts and allowed me to connect with the music deeply much more easily, with a relaxed concentration. I then used it  only on rare occasions up until I was around 40, noting the same effects. 
In the end, I decided to stop using it altogether because I hated the unpleasant side effects and found that for me, it just wasn't worth it in total. 
Thinking now of some of the unpleasant parts of using it, I recall being very surprised in recent years when I heard that people were using it for pain relief. It always had the opposite effect on me. Any small ache or pain that I had seemed greatly amplified after smoking.
Everyone's different. For me, it just got played out over time. I know people my age who still smoke every day.


I find THC to give a hyper sharp focus. It can also turn on the the illuminated, 3 dimensional inner landscape of visuals, sound, emotions and an ineffable blend of them all, that I would bet many a person doesn't even suspect is there to be experienced. (won't even go into what other substances have to offer) Show me a person with a fearful, negative attitude toward the use of mind altering substances and the exploration they make possible, and I will show you someone who is most likely locked into the consensual dream state of life as the character they learned to be. There is nothing beyond these confines for them. Bless their hearts.

Let me guess, you were high when you wrote this?

I rest my case.
This whole question comes down to personal experience and preference.  There's no rigth or wrong, just a lot of opinions.  And like they say, opinions are like a**holes.  Everybody has one but people usually don't want to hear someone else's.