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comment by thenewgreen
thenewgreen  ·  4567 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What was your most interesting psychotropic experience?
I also had a "bad trip" on acid once where I sat in a bathroom for hours contemplating existence. I came to the conclusion that because it takes time to take the light in through our eyes and send the synapses to our brains receptors (clearly I'm no biologist) that we cannot ever be fully in the present moment. Everything we experience is the past. There is no now, only moments ago. I remember looking in a mirror after thinking this and saying "I can never go back". -meaning I can never erase this new knowledge. It was odd but I do feel like I've never been the same again.




briandmyers  ·  4567 days ago  ·  link  ·  
You were probably more correct than you realise. The concept is called the "Specious Present" :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specious_present

Related link :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception

thenewgreen  ·  4567 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Wow, thank you very much. This makes me feel somewhat validated. I will definitely be calling this by it's proper name, the "Specious Present". I have always had the same image fixed in my mind from that "trip" too, I've mentioned it before. You know how when you point a video camera at a television it gives you seemingly infinite images of the television waving like a snake in to eternity? That is what inevitably pops in to my mind whenever I think of the "Specious Present", I'm not sure why?