The relation of the questionnaires to Mystic experiencing
Generally these 3 main questionnaires were developed for the purpose of comparing them to “the traditional nondrug methods of the mystics” – as if we knew ANYTHING about mystics not ever using psychedelics.
Psychedelics vs. the traditional non-drug methods of the mystics. 😑
Begger La Question
We have zero basis to simply assume (as if a definite given) that mystics didn’t get their experiencing from psychedelics, we are going purely on pre-assumption, baseless prejudice, and sheer biased assumptions.
We have increasing evidence that historically the source of the Mystics’ experiencing was psychedelics.
Objectives and motivations of Roland Griffiths’ CEQ questionnaire
Roland Griffiths’ derivative CEQ questionnaire (drawing negative fx q’s from SOCQ, HRS, & 5D-ASC) is motivated by:
safety through predictors of negative experiencing
safety for clients or voyagers
safety to protect and preserve researchers ability to be allowed to research these things
justifying psychotherapy
to support the claim that Hopkins has covered the full range of negative mystical effects (though the final CEQ actually ended up deleting the most important negative mystical psychedelic effects, control-loss).
Roland Griffiths’ CEQ authoring team, in the final phase of creating the CEQ, it was a disaster, such a complete disaster, though the intriguing thing is that their intermediate initial pool of questions was sound.
The article about the CEQ talks about how they used their judgment to select the initial poll of questions.
The final resulting CEQ has obvious problems, ridiculous features like three identical questions within the Fear category, and the complete omission and deletion of the control problems category.
It is clear that their judgment is crap.
Whoever applied their judgment during reducing the initial pool of 64 questions down to the final set of 26 questions, whoever did that has crap judgment, their judgment corrupted by a conflict of interest.
This CEQ questionnaire in the end achieves and accomplishes nothing more than getting rid of the interesting, unique, distinctive control questions, and replacing them by run-of-the-mill psychotherapy industry depression and grief questions. 😴
The reason they did that, their conflict of interest ulterior motive that made them have such a terrible judgment, is because they’re interested in & attuned to selling psychotherapy.
They’re not interested in grappling with transcending self-control power to gain Transcendent Knowledge.
The Big Pharma Psychedelics Industrial Complex is not conceptually equipped to deal with that, with mystic intense negative experiencing; only unless they can shoehorn (Procrustean bed) force psychedelic experience into their pre-fabricated, ordinary state-based psychotherapy model, which has nothing to do with psychedelics or mystical experiencing or revelation of Transcendent Knowledge Gnosis.
They say that it is in their interest to identify all of the negative experiences, which they initially do in their initial pool of questions
But when the marketing department took over the final phase of creating the CEQ, what sort of judgment did they (the psychotherapy business development team/role, not the Scientist role) use to make that final culling?
I am working backwards from their terrible final set of 26 questions, which they’ve gotten rid of all the interesting ones, and then I’m looking at the CEQ’s initial pool of 64 questions, which is more interesting – but their judgment ( this team, all the CEQ authors) their judgment is completely called into question.
As good as their intermediate pool of 64 questions is, I have to trashcan all of their work and start from scratch and go back to the sources
– go back to the three main questionnaires myself and ignore their CEQ subset process.
Then I need to highlight the bold words, the key words myself, because my judgment is sound, and the Roland Griffiths CEQ authors’ judgment is proven to be a failure, compromised by the late involvement of the psychotherapy marketing department completely derailing and demolishing what would have been a scientific questionnaire development process.
I would pick a different set of questions for the initial pool of negative effects.
The url of the present page shows that this page mostly covers the 5D questionnaire.
This posting is where I realized that there are three main questionnaires, just as indicated in the CEQ article: SOCQ, HRS, & 5D-ASC. as you can see from my previous postings it was very unclear with the hierarchy and subsets and breakouts and derivative questionnaire subsets are.
for example when Charles Stang accused Roland Griffiths of failing to cover negative effects of psychedelics when Griffiths claimed that he was covering mystical experiences, Roland Griffiths replied that his team had indeed covered negative experiences and the proof of that is that they created the CEQ subset of questions that was drawn from these three main questionnaires.
Version one and version two and version three of one of these three questionnaires has three different names so this is very confusing.
Those three names are, in historical order: APV, OAV, 5D-ASC.
This is an intermediate preliminary posting, not a final posting that will list out the effects/ questions from these major inventories of altered-state effects a.k.a. questionnaires.
I don’t think I will use this posting to list the questions, but it is an intermediate research page.
Conclusion: I will post this posting that’s focused on this 5D questionnaire, but actually what I need to do is the three main questionnaires: SOCQ (includes MEQ), 5D-ASC, & HRS.
It has taken a lot of research for a couple of days to determine and learn how to read the CEQ article to determine that I will have the bases covered really well if I list all of the questions from these three questionnaires, and sweep aside all the subsets, and all the different rearrangements of these effects questions.
I’m not very curious about reviewing again the Walter Stace list of mystic experiences.
I am presently more interested in what standardized ASC effects questions were derived from or compared to such lists of mystical experiences.
I’m not all that interested in other people’s rearrangements of these questions I need to see the raw original upstream questions themselves.
It is extremely high interest, very high relevance to know that people dismiss entire categories of effects when they are studying negative effects; they say:
“all these other effects are positive and therefore mystical, and so will ignore those, and we’re only going to look at the negative and therefore non-mystical effects“
I feel like when I look at Paul Stamets book of mushroom Psilocybin around the world and it all looks very official – until it dawned on me: this doesn’t make any sense at all!
This is got to be riddled with major fundamental errors and huge blind spots!
All built on unthinking, baseless assumptions and prejudice.
There were no psilocybin mushrooms in England or Europe before 1976. 😑
Stamets 1996, Letcher 2007, Hatsis 2019
– bullshiite!
🐮💩🍄
This is the tottering foundation which I saw it in October 2002 – these Moderate (aka Minimal) Secret Entheogen Scholarship guys are way off base; the whole thing is way off base.
Design of postings to cover these three main questionnaires (inventories of altered-state effects)
I should have three separate postings: one for each of those 3 main questionnaires.
I will discover whether EDI is just a redundant subset, just yet another collection of a selected subset of the standard sets of questions.
Then gather the ~300 questions into a single webpage, and then organize them by category, after I apply bold and bold red to my favorite key words.
At this point I cannot predict which words that I am interested in – I guess “puppet marionette helpless control loss” words I are my main interest I guess.
each posting would list the ~100 questions for each questionnaire with bold added by me.
Roland Griffiths’ CEQ article can’t even spell it right: it’s 5D-ASC, not “5-DASC”. 🤦♂️ Question 1: Did you have trouble comprehending basic stuff? ______
I need to list the ~100 questions from each of them, to make a list of ~300 questions, and then highlight in bold and bold red the key words per the Egodeath theory.
5D Google Doc
don’t know why this is a Google docs maybe this is it or maybe this is a copy of it but anyway here is that darn important list of questions and effects
The moment I feel zero confidence about this document because I’m looking for 94 questions, I believe, not 66:
I have not yet extracted the list of 66 [94?] questions and then add bold and red bold on the Egodeath theory key words.
D/k if I should also be looking at the SOCQ and HRS, which CEQ drew from much more than from the 5D-ASC.
I need to check Roland Griffiths CEQ article and see why they drew from the other two questionnaires more than from this one.
5D-ASC is the main latest set of questions that is a v2 expanded superset of the OAV questions.
This is a (competing w SOCQ & HRS?) standard set of questions that everybody is using as far as I can tell so far, for all the different mystic altered state questionnaires.
all built on the tottering foundation of assumptions of Walter Stace’s mystic list.
“Dittrich’s APZ (Abnormal Mental States) questionnaire [1]–[4] and its revised versions, OAV [5] and 5D-ASC [6], [7], are among the most widely used self-report questionnaires for assessing subjective experiences of ASC in retrospect.
“Although originally developed in German, these questionnaires have been translated into many different languages and applied internationally in approximately 70 experimental studies.
“The majority of these studies have used these questionnaires to assess ASC induced by psycho-active drugs, particularly psilocybin…”
Generations of the APV
V1 = APV (1975) – Abnormal Mental States. No dimensions/categories, AFAIK as of Dec 24 2022 a.m.
V2 = OAV (1994) – incorp’s the 3 dimensions that were id’d in 1985.
V3 = 5D-ASC (2006) – adds two dimensions no one uses.
V4 = 11 factors (2010, Studerus) – replace/ fit into the 3 main OAV dimensions
OAV’s name states the 3 main dimensions: OAV = O+A+V = Ocean = Anxiety/Dread + Visionary.
No Auditory or Vigilance dimensions (added in 2006 to make 5 dimensions).
CEQ Partly Draws from APV v3 = 5D-ASC
CEQ initially adds 7 of the OAV ICC q’s & 6 of the OAV ANX q’s – and also adds many more q’s from two entirely(?) different sources: SOCQ & HRS, and then deletes the control-loss effects/questions (keeping 1 lame ICC q & 2 lame ANX q’s, discarding 10 of those 13 initial-pool q’s) while adding Grief/ Isolation/ depression q’s/fx.
ICC = impaired control and cognition fx categ from OAV
ANX = anxiety fx categ from OAV
Article: Understanding The Five Dimensional Altered States Of Consciousness (5D-ASC)
“The 5D-ASC and other tests of ASC have too much focus on superficial or external features such as blissfulness, anxiety, impairment of cognition and control, hypnagogia,
“I may have to design a supplementary test with sufficient depth and acknowledgement of the psychic structures involved. Candidate tests are enumerated in the Usage of Results section”
CEQ started or they ran a survey consisting of three questionnaires:
HRS 99 effects – CEQ uses 27 of these to contrib to their initial pool.
5D-ASC (which Griffiths misspells as 5-DASC!!) CEQ took all 13 ICC + ANX effects (not 9 other categs) to add to their initial pool.
SOCQ – 100 effects: 43 from MEQ + 57 distractor fx from nowhere. Roland G’s CEQ uses 0 MEQ effects, and 24 of 57 distractor effects/w’s for their initial pool of fx.
So it seems I need to list all fx/q’s from all these q’airs:
5D-ASC lists 94 fx
HRS lists 99 fx
SOCQ lists 100 fx
MEQ 43+? lists fx – no I think I can ignore the MEQ (regardless of 43 versus 30 effects), because the 43 original MEQ questions /effects are listed already in the SOCQ.
Also:
EDI lists 8 fx and is “new”. link is below.
and then bold the key words.
I don’t know if I will at all be concerned with categories of the effects;
I am more interested in getting a good look at all of the keywords
this is really the next step for me is not to devise categories or criticize categories, but rather, the next step for me is to bold the important key words.
incoherent reference entry from a sketchy analysis article:
“7. Dittrich, A, Lamparter, D, Maurer, M . A short introduction. Zurich, Switzerland: PSIN PLUS; 2010. 5D-ASC: Questionnaire for the assessment of altered states of consciousness. [Google Scholar]
“The most frequently used version of the MEQ is the 43-item Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ43), also called the Pahnke–Richards Mystical Experience Questionnaire. The MEQ43 contains 43 items that were theoretically derived and qualitatively organized into seven subscales (internal unity, external unity, sacredness, noetic quality, positive mood, transcendence of time and space, and ineffability).
“The most recently developed version of the MEQ (the 30-item revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire, or MEQ30) was developed and validated through factor analysis of retrospective accounts of profound experiences with psilocybin-containing mushrooms (MacLean et al., 2012).
“That analysis yielded a four- factor structure of the MEQ30, containing 30 items from the pre- vious MEQ43, which was typically administered within the 100-item States of Consciousness Questionnaire [SOCQ] (Griffiths et al., 2006, 2011).
“The four factors [fx subcategs] of the MEQ30 are: mystical (including items from the internal unity, external unity, noetic quality, and sacredness scales of the MEQ43), positive mood, transcendence of time and space, and ineffability (all three of which include items from their respective MEQ43 scales).
“Thus, the MEQ30 retains items from each qualitative subscale in the original MEQ43, but in a reduced number of dimensions.”
Should I ignore the reduced set of 30 questions and list out the original 43 questions instead – will I lose and miss anything other than the stupid categories?
SOCQ still contains the orig 43 it seems, therefore ignore MEQ and use SOCQ.
I just read that article that proposed replacing those 3 categories by 11 smaller categories.
you can tell by the name of it that the version 3 (“5D…”) does not use 3 categories, it uses 5 categories. Adds “vigilance reduction” (VIR) and “auditory alterations” (AUA), which add 28 fx:
Math check:
v2 = OAV 66 fx
v2 = 5D-ASC 94 fx
66 + 28 = 94 ✅
therefore if you start with the 5D’s five categories of psychedelic effects, and then replace 3 of those categories (the 3 from the v2 = OAV) by the proposed more granular breakout of 11 categories, you would then have 11+2 = 13 categories.
I have no idea whether this idea of 11 categories replacing the original three was carried forward, or is popular.
“Future studies must clarify whether the common variance between the 28 items that are unique to the 5D-ASC is sufficiently well explained by the two hypothesized factors “vigilance reduction” (VIR) and “auditory alterations” (AUA).
“Since we have shown that the OBN [oceanic boundlessness], DED [dread of ego dissolution] and VRS [visionary restructuralization] scales can be split into many reliable and valid subscales, it is conceivable that the same could be done with the VIR and AUA scales.”
I believe that the 11 categories that are proposed for the version 2 (OAV) to replace the 3 categories would be carried forward into the 5D scheme (simply ignore the added distinct new categories of “auditory” and the other one).
I think that all fits with the article that I just read about the 11 proposed categories that article does discuss both the older OAV and the newer 5D questionnaires and explains why they don’t use the 5D.
These 11 categories would apply to both the V2 (OAV) and the V3 (5D).
Very good view of 11 standardized (or, proposed to become the standardized) categories of the 66 standard altered-state effects – negative then positive. Containing the 66* OAV questionnaire questions about altered state effects.
todo: List those OAV 66* questions here.
*Roland Griffiths’ CEQ article page 4 says that the 5DASC questionnaire (which is version three of APV; OAV is v2) contains 94 effects questions, not 66.
confirmed:
v1= APV in 1975
v2 = OAV lists 66 fx/q’s
v3 = 5D-ASC lists 94 fx/q’s in 1999
Terminology
the word scale means a set of questions/ effects
the word subscale means a subset of questions / effects
the word item means question or altered state effect
Article: “Psychometric Evaluation of the Altered States of Consciousness Rating Scale (OAV)”
that diagram is analyzed by the 2010 article which I have just read and comprehended:
I read and comprehended that article now while creating potential podcast voice recordings with e-guitar.
I found that good numbered list of the 66 questions that = OAV, although I think that the five dimensional other version of the survey has a superset of these questions so i rather want that. todo –
“Although the newest version of Dittrich’s ASC rating scales (ie, the 5D-ASC) contains 94 items, this study has only analyzed the 66 items that it shares with the second newest version (ie, the OAV).
“Future studies must clarify whether the common variance between the 28 items that are unique to the 5D-ASC is sufficiently well explained by the two hypothesized factors “vigilance reduction” (VIR) and “auditory alterations” (AUA).
“Since we have shown that the OBN, DED and VRS scales can be split into many reliable and valid subscales, it is conceivable that the same could be done with the VIR and AUA scales.”
that’s what I need to still look up later
but for now here is a great list of the 66 questions about altered State experiences.
the emphasis and purpose of this article is the establish new categories of questions, which I’m not very interested at all on the categories of questions, although
I am interested in their bad-foundation claim that mystical experiences are exclusively positive, per Stace who provides the false foundation of this entire massive statistical analysis exercise
it’s all the interpretation of it is all Bunk’d because it misconceived exactly as Charles Stang accused Roland Griffiths
we build all of this house on the foundation of sand, falsely claiming that mystical experiences are exclusively positive.
must link here to the Stace list of positive-only mystic expc. todo.
“Psychometric Evaluation of the Altered States of Consciousness Rating Scale (OAV)”
The article link is above, which I read and comprehended just now.
Erich Studerus, Alex Gamma, and Franz X. Vollenweider , 2010
Motivation for this posting
I found an article proposing to break out the OAV’s altered state questions/ effects into a set of 11 rather than a set of three groups.
I don’t know how influential this 11-category breakout is, but here’s a great view of the 11 categs and especially the 66 OAV questions/ effects.
This is the best clearest presentation that I found so far of the hypotheses
ALL of these questionaires, all of these categorizations of the APZ orig q’s make the fatal error underlying all of the statistical analysis about sets of questions about altered state effects
they put the entire thing on a bad basis of Stace’s description of mystical experiences which are exclusively positive, and therefore if you have a negative Psilocybin experience, it is – by a bad definition – “not a mystical experience”.
This set of 11 categories of altered state affects replaces the earlier overly broad set of only three effects that didn’t work very well when they attempted to divide the effects into the two positive categories and one negative effect category called
The 3 Old, Bad Categories
dread of ego dissolution (DED) – A huge set of questions about effects about helpless marionette loss of control and dragon attack 🐉 no control of will
oceanic boundlessness (OBN) – A too-small set of questions.
visionary restructuralization (VRS) – A too-small set of questions.
The 11 New, Good Categories
Negative:
anxiety
impaired control and cognition
Positive:
Audio-Visual synesthesia
vivid imagery
Elementary visual alterations
blissful state
insightfulness
religious experience
experience of unity
changed meaning of percepts
disembodiment
/ end of the 11 new categories of altered-state effects — scope = OAV q’s
why is voice dictation not able to pick up the most clear and elementary words 😤
Quality of Acute Psychedelic Experience Predicts Therapeutic Efficacy of Psilocybin for Treatment-Resistant Depression
Phenomenological assessment of psychedelics induced experiences: Translation and validation of the German Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) and Ego-Dissolution Inventory (EDI)
Wonderland Miami Exposes Growing Rift in Psychedelic Community
The Narrowing of Psychedelic Discourse
Unscientific, Non-Existent “Scientific” Questionnaires – Black Magic Posing as Science
Why are these questionnaire specifications unavailable, yet they claim to be scientific? Cough it up!
How come Griffiths has access to an OAV or 5D and a SOCQ and a HRS specification of these, and yet, they are impossible to obtain on the Web in 2022?
We must see the categories (including G-ASC General) in English, and the list of questions in each category, including Dittrich’s OAV or 5D-ASC question #54 which is allegedly sometimes in the Dread dimension, but sometimes not: “I was afraid to lose my self-control.”
What Ever Happened to Dittrich’s Dread Question 54, “I was afraid to lose my self-control”?
This section is a Dec. 27, 2022 Update: Big Question.
p 4 CEQ article:
The 13 (or 17???) items of the 5DASC that constitute the ICC and ANX sub-scales were retained for the initial item pool for the CEQ.”
What happened to Studerus’ Figure S1 tree hierarchy question within factor (category) Anxiety:
“54. I was afraid to lose my self-control“
Usually Studerus omits it. Are there 9 questions, or 7, in the Anxiety category?
Sciencey Bafflegab Glossary
item = question. scale = set of questions. sub-scale = set of questions.
Typical “item” within a “sub-scale”:
Question 0. Did you experience the threat of catastrophic loss of control? ___
were there any dragons involved?? 🐉
The “Dread of Ego Dissolution” (DED) Dimension’s Items
5. I felt like a marionette.
16. I had difficulty making even the smallest decision.
24. I had difficulty in distinguishing important from unimportant things.
33. I felt as though I were paralyzed.
44. I felt isolated from everything and everyone.
45. I was not able to complete a thought, my thought repeatedly became disconnected.
53. I had the feeling that I no longer had a will of my own.
19. I was afraid that the state I was in would last forever.
29. I was afraid without being able to say exactly why.
30. I experienced everything terrifyingly distorted.
32. I experienced my surroundings as strange and weird.
38. I felt threatened.
63. I had the feeling something horrible would happen.
The Research that was Required to Gather These Questions
The DED items were identified in 1985. Or at least the category of some of the 1975 APV items was identified, if not these items. In German.
The DED items were used to create OAV (Ocean/Dread/Visionary) questionnaire in 1994.
The DED items were divided into the “Impaired Control and Cognition” (ICC) + “Anxiety” (ANX) Factors in 2010.
The DED dimension has 13 items/ effects/ questions.
The DED dimension (“dread” = “anxiety”, the ‘A’ in the name “OAV”) was split up by Studerus 2010 into two “factors”:
“impaired cognition and control” (ICC) – 7 items/ effects/ questions
“anxiety” (ANX) – 6 items/ effects/ questions
Prayer: Jesus of the Web, please show me the DED questions in English. Answered, one way or another:
Later findings: indirect answer: the DED “dimension” (id’d 1985, incorp’d in OAV 1994) was replaced in 2010 per Studerus by ICC+ANX “factors”.
So to back-derive what the list of DED questions must have been defined as by Dittman in 1985 (for APV) or 1994 (for OAV) or 2006 (for 5D-ASC), see the items/ effects/ questions in page 9, Studerus 2010.
The “Dread of Ego Dissolution” (DED/AED) Dimension of the OAV & 5D-ASC Questionnaires
Dittrich’s Extracted DED questions, in German
3. Dittrich A. Stuttgart, Germany: Enke; 1985. Ätiologie-unabhängige Strukturen veränderter Wachbewusstseinszustände. Ergebnisse empirischer Untersuchungen über Halluzinogene I. und II. Ordnung, sensorische Deprivation, hypnagoge Zustände, hypnotische Verfahren sowie Reizüberflutung [Etiology-independent structures of altered states of consciousness. Results of empirical studies on hallucinogens of the first and second order, sensory deprivation, hypnagogic states, hypnotic procedures, and sensory overload]. [Google Scholar]
4. Dittrich, A . Berlin, Germany: VWB; 1996. Ätiologie-unabhängige Strukturen veränderter Wachbewusstseinszustände.Ergebnisse empirischer Untersuchungen über Halluzinogene I. und II. Ordnung, sensorische Deprivation, hypnagoge Zustände, hypnotische Verfahren sowie Reizüberflutung [Etiology-independent structures of altered states of consciousness. Results of empirical studies on hallucinogens of the first and second order, sensory deprivation, hypnagogic states, hypnotic procedures, and sensory overload]. [Google Scholar]
The Bad Trip questionnaire.
Lacks grief/ depression/ isolation according to CEQ article.
5-Dimensional Altered States of Consciousness Rating Scale (5D-ASC; 5DASC)
5D-ASC includes questions used to extract the Dread of Ego Dissolution (DED) dimension (sub-scale) in German, by Dittrich
“Dittrich [3], [4] determined three oblique primary and one secondary etiology-independent dimensions. The three primary dimensions were termed “oceanic boundlessness” (OBN), “dread of ego dissolution” (DED) and “visionary restructuralization” (VRS).
“The OBN scale basically includes items measuring positively experienced depersonalization and derealization, deeply-felt positive mood, and experiences of unity. High scores on the OBN scale therefore indicate a state similar to mystical experiences as described in the scientific literature on the psychology of religion (eg, see [20]).
“The DED scale includes items measuring negatively experiencedderealization and depersonalization, cognitive disturbances, catatonic symptoms, paranoia, and loss of thought and body control. High scores on the DED scale therefore indicate a very unpleasant state similar to so called “bad trips” described by drug-users. “
“The VRS scale contains items measuring visual (pseudo)-hallucinations, illusions, auditory-visual synesthesiae, and changes in the meaning of percepts.
“APZ scales … several weaknesses were also recognized. For example, the binary item response format of the APZ was too crude to measure subtle alterations of consciousness.
“Furthermore, the OBN and VRS dimensions contained a relatively low number of items, and
“the conceptual breadth of the VRS dimension was considered too narrow. Bodmer et al. [5] therefore developed a psychometrically improved version called OAV. The abbreviation OAV stands for the German names of the three dimensions OBN, DED, and VRS.
“Because the OAV was supposed to measure the primary three dimensions of the APZ only, its item pool was primarily derived from 72 etiology-independent items of the APZ. However, the response format was changed from binary to visual analogue, several items were re-worded, some new items were introduced, and some items were completely dropped.
“The reformulation of items aimed not only at reducing cross-loadings, decreasing ambiguity, and enhancing ease of understanding, but also at widening the conceptual breadth of the OBN and VRS dimensions.
“Whereas the OBN dimension was changed toward a more complete assessment of mystical experiences by incorporating items that were formulated on the basis of six of the nine categories of mystical experiences proposed by Stace[20],
“the VRS dimension was conceptually widened by incorporating items that measure an increase of imaginations, associations, and memory retrieval.
“The re-conceptualization of the VRS dimension was mainly driven by theoretical considerations of Leuner [22], [23], who had hypothesized that visual hallucinations are associated with an increased internal stimulus production.
“The original OAV validation study [5], … indicated that the questionnaire revision successfully improved several psychometric properties, including item discriminations, simple structure and scale reliabilities.
“High correlations of OBN, DED, and VRS scales across the two questionnaire versions suggested that these scales measure similar constructs in both questionnaires. Results obtained by the APZ and OAV can therefore be compared by transforming the scales through linear equations[24].
Mystical Experiences Questionnaire (MEQ)
Factor Analysis of the Mystical Experience Questionnaire: A Study of Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin MacLean KA, Leoutsakos J-MS, Johnson MW, Griffiths RR. J Sci Study Relig. 2012;51: 721–737. pmid:23316089
Ego-Dissolution and Psychedelics: Validation of the Ego-Dissolution Inventory (EDI) Nour MM, Evans L, Nutt D, Carhart-Harris RL. Front Hum Neurosci. 2016 Jun 14;10:269. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00269. PMID: 27378878; PMCID: PMC4906025.
Phenomenological assessment of psychedelics induced experiences: Translation and validation of the German Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) and Ego-Dissolution Inventory (EDI)
Phenomenological assessment of psychedelics induced experiences: Translation and validation of the German Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) and Ego-Dissolution Inventory (EDI) “German” different than Griffiths Johns Hopkins CEQ? No, “The 26-item [questions; 25 of them are versions of “Did you feel fear?”] Challenging Experience Questionnaire assesses multiple facets of psilocybin induced experiences on seven subscales [categories of questions], whereas the 8-item [8-question] Ego-Dissolution Inventory consists of a unidimensional scale [maybe means doesn’t define subcategories of the 8 questions] .”
“Confirmatory factor analysis suggested an acceptable fit of the 7-factor structure of the German Challenging Experience Questionnaire with overall good internal consistency for all subscales.”
translation:
Our dragon-free, God-free, mystic control seizure-free set of 7 categories of questions measured up.
👍 ✅ 🚫🐉
Never mind that the Psychotherapy Marketing Dept. stepped in to corrupt the final process of reducing the good set of 64 “items” in the Initial Pool down to 26 lopsided, effects-selective subset of “items” so as to retain the added depression “items” (bona fide valid additions beyond what’s covered in the scope of negative effects listed in DED and ICC) and during that same laudable process of expanding the scope of negative effects that are accounted for, SILENTLY, COVERTLY DELETED, WITHOUT EVEN A VENEER OF SCIENCEY-POSTURING DISCUSSION, THE “CONTROL-SEIZURE HELPLESS MARIONETTE WITH NO ABILITY TO CONTROL MY MIND” questions.
“we included seven items of the MEQ30 measuring unitive experience. We further selected twenty-five items of the OBN and the Dread of Ego-Dissolution (DED) scale of the 5DASC [10] which, as shown by a more recent study [11], can also be analyzed as Experience of Unity, Disembodiment, Impaired Control and Cognition, and Anxiety.”
“Finally, four items of the Altered Self-Awareness and the Altered Body Image subscales of the PCI were included as a joint measure of altered self-experience to explore their relationship with the EDI.”
I mis-spoke, was DED part of OAV? Hard to keep track.
DED is part of 5DASC, and an alternative grouping of the DED questions. As an alternative to DED subset of 5DASC questions is this newer re-categorization set of categories:
Experience of Unity
Disembodiment
Impaired Control and Cognition (ICC) – 7 q’s I think. CEQ picked the lamest one for the final cut of 26 q’s.
Anxiety (ANX) – 6 q’s I think. CEQ picked the lamest two for the final cut of 26 q’s.
Psychedelic Spotlight
Is the Mystical Experience Necessary for Psychedelic Therapy?
by James Kent onJune 17, 2022 – IS THIS THE JAMES KENT WHO DEMONIZED AND FLIPPED AGAINST PSYCHEDELICS covered by Transcendent Knowledge Podcast?
” mystical experiences on psychedelics are often defined in terms of oceanic boundlessness, ego dissolution, and universal interconnectedness.”
“These states are typically measured using a tool called the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ), a list of 30 questions developed to measure various mystical states experienced by psychedelic users. The questions track experiences like states of “pure being”, “reverence”, or “pure awareness”, as well as more fantastical features like “amazement”, “ineffability”, or “transcendence of time and space”.”
Fake “Journalists” Who Don’t Even Know 1950s Ergot Psychotherapy Legally Occurred
Fake “Journalists”, Only Motivated by Causing Trouble
Careful with the j-word, “journalists”, aka invaders, mudslingers, ignoramus outsider troublemakers, posers, wolves in sheeps clothing, only looking to destroy everything possible, accuse everyone of anything they can think of, and abuse the field of psychedelics to accomplish that, their non-psychedelics motivated, alien purpose.
The long-standing Atheism community was instantly destroyed in 2015 by such an alien invasion of outsider motives.
James Kent – As Prevaricating as Jan Irvin
“James Kent is the Editor of Psychedelic Spotlight, author of Psychedelic Information Theory, and is the host of the DoseNation podcast.”
I reviewed PIT around 2005 in discussion with James Kent, see Egodeath.com or maybe the Egodeath Yahoo Group archives.
Griffiths Says Their “Paranoia” Category of Effects Questions (Removed, then Restored 🤷♂️) Is Bunk
Everything raises flags about this Paranoia out-of-band, seat-of-the-pants Paranoia category that Griffiths added after all kinds of factor analysis (math to define 6– no, 7 🎩🪄 categories of psychedelic effects questions) was seemingly settled.
Trust Our Undocumented, Seat-of-the-Pants, Inconsistent and Prevaricating Judgment-Based Process That Has the Standard Blob of Math Attached
To form the initial pool of questions, Griffiths picked the fair Paranoia question (ok) and the bunk Paranoia question (why?).
Then to form the final set of questions, Griffiths removed the 2 Paranoia questions (why?), which were in the CEQ initial pool of 64 effects/questions.
Then after, and separate from, a bunch of factor analysis giving a set of question categories with 6 categories, at the last minute, they re-added the Paranoia category (category 7).
They don’t say why they ever removed the fair Paranoia question in the first place.
… just like they bizarrely, silently removed all of the Volition-Control questions, but they never caught their bad judgment and re-added those as category 8, which Factor (question category) Analysis ought to have told them to do.
FACTOR ANALYSIS IS ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR INCONSISTENT JUDGMENT, as proved by your prevarication re: the Paranoia category of questions.
Factor Analysis can’t replace sound judgment.
The two Paranoia category questions are from the SOCQ questionnaire.
The first Paranoia question sucks because it asks if mere “people” are plotting against you – the reality cuts deeper; thoughts are plotting against you – too narrow wording, reductionistic to the social realm instead of altered-state personal control cybernetics where the “paranoia” effect really is.
I agree with Griffiths that the second question is bad – so WHY DIDN’T GRIFFITHS OMIT THE SECOND, IRRELEVANT “antagonism” QUESTION? b/c he had to pad out his late-added Paranoia category by using existing questions.
An accepted clinical definition of “paranoia” is “unfounded fears that others intend harm to the individual”.
[The effect question] (“experience of antagonism toward people around you”), while likely related, is not closely consistent with this definition.
Thus, the CEQ paranoia scale [category] may be viewed as a crude measure of the clinical construct of “paranoia”, and the external validity of the paranoia scale may be somewhat restricted by this limitation.
end of p. 13, CEQ article
“An accepted clinical definition of “paranoia” is “unfounded fears that others intend harm to the individual” (Freeman et al., 2015).
“While one item [effect question] of the paranoia scale [category] of the CEQ [questionnaire] is consistent with this definition (“feeling that people were plotting against you”), the other (“experience of antagonism toward people around you”), while likely related, is not closely consistent with this definition.
“Thus, the CEQ paranoia scale may be viewed as a crude measure of the clinical construct of “paranoia”, and the external validity of the paranoia scale [category] may be somewhat restricted by this limitation.”
Yet we’re still going to keep this question, which we selected for the initial pool, and then removed, and then re-added, and now point out is irrelevant and should be ignored by others.
Totally scientific 😑 , driven by Factor Analysis (aka spray some science math on it to obscure the giant gaps).
— end of p. 13, CEQ article
Spots in CEQ Article Where Griffiths Might Appear to Comprehend that Volition-Control Effects Are Challenging
The main evidence that makes it seem like Griffiths recognizes Volition-Control effects as challenging is that he picks them from the main questionnaires, including them in the initial pool of effects questions.
Given that Griffiths included the Volition-Control questions in the initial pool, that proves that Griffiths recognizes that Volition-Control effects are challenging.
BUT he is sure quick to remove all of the Volition-Control questions when reducing the 64 questions to 24 i mean 26 (keeping only 40% of the initial pool of questions).
And unlike Paranoia, he does not catch and manually fix the problem by last-minute creating an effects question category named Volition-Control.
Page 2 right column – OAV Dread section
This is suspicious; word-usage indicates actually no comprehension: look how readily and quickly Griffiths omits the word ‘control’, which Studerus 2010 provided:
Griffiths writes this dense paragraph containing intelligent recognition of Volition-Control effects as challenging:
“The OAV and 5DASC [sic; 5D-ASC] (and the preceding Abnormal Mental States (APZ) questionnaire) have been widely used …
“The OAV sub-scale “dread of ego dissolution” (DED) covers a wide range of negative experiences, and is generally considered an overall “bad trip” scale (Studerus et al., 2010).
“This meta-scale of possible negative effects covers many (e.g. panic, loss of ego/control, feelings of insanity) but not all (e.g. sadness/ grief/ depression) possible categories of challenging experiences.
“The DED scale also averages responses from a number of proposed categories of experience (panic, loss of ego[omits ‘control’ here], insanity) rather than giving an individual score for each.
“Studerus and colleagues (2010) revealed a rescoring of the 5DASC [5D-ASC] that includes a separate scale for impaired control and cognition, and for anxiety.
While these represent psychometrically justifiable subscales, these two sub-scales do not address shortcomings of the DED scale (e.g. they do not address the wide range of potential dimensions of challenging experience that are suggested by previous literature) [ie sadness/ grief/ depression].”
Other spots in the article re: control or loss:
p2: ” Clinical and experimental literature on psychedelics suggests a possible profile of challenging experiences that includes the following categories of experience: fear or panic, paranoia, sadness or depressed mood, anger, cognitive effects (e.g. confusion, loss of ego[doesn’t say ‘control’ here], loss of sanity, delusions, dissociation, depersonalization), perceptual effects (e.g. illusions), and physiological symptoms”
p4: “potentially challenging aspects of experiences with classic hallucinogens (such as emotional, social, and physical discomfort, pain, and suffering, disorientation, ego loss [doesn’t say ‘control’ here], loss of perception of time, isolation, and confusion).”
P 14 left: ego dissolution, death, dying, loss of self-referential processing, losing a sense of sanity, experiencing their own death, loss of control of the mind, fear, panic
There’s a long paragraph with many key phrases that give the impression that Griffiths comprehends that volition-control effects are challenging:
I added highlighting and broke up per sentences:
“Scores on the insanity and death factors of the CEQ were positively associated with ratings of the meaningfulness of the reported experience in both Study 1 and Study 2.
“Scores on the fear factor were negatively associated with spiritual significance, while scores on the death factor were positively associated with spiritual significance of reported experiences in both studies.
“To the extent that individuals might construe or relate the loss of self-referential processing that is often reported during mystical experiences as feeling as though they are losing a sense of sanity or experiencing their own death, an encounter with this facet of challenging experience may be expected to covary with both the meaningfulness and the spiritual significance of an experience.
“The subjective experience of one’s own death and loss of control of the mind might somehow allow for the type of unity experience that leads to spiritual and meaningful experiences.
“However, scores on the death factor of the CEQ were negatively associated with change in well-being attributed to challenging experiences.
“While the experience of ego dissolution (Nour et al., 2016) and mystical experience (Barrett et al., 2015) are positively associated with well-being, it is not completely clear that the items of the ‘death’ subscale of the CEQ (“Profound experience of your own death” and “Feel as if dead or dying”) are collinear with either mystical experience or ego dissolution.
“The positive association between wellbeing and both mystical experience and ego dissolution, contrasted against the negative association between wellbeing and the ‘death’ scale of the CEQ in both Study 1 and Study 2, suggests that there may be something unique about the subjective experience described as ‘death’ or ‘dying’ during a challenging experience that may detract from wellbeing, and this may have implications for therapeutic efficacy of psychedelics in clinical trials.
“Thus, future work may benefit from further elucidating the relationship between ego dissolution or mystical experience and the ‘death’ factor of the CEQ.
“Scores on the fear factor of the CEQ were associated with an increase in well-being attributed to challenging experiences and negatively predicted meaningfulness and spiritual significance of challenging experiences.
“Fear may generally detract from a spiritual experience, but the crucible of panic during a challenging experience might still lead to positive outcomes.”
Initial Pool Questions from SOCQ, HRS, & OAV Has 7 Volition-Control Questions
Includes the entire set of 13 (17??) Dread questions, presented as two groups per Studerus 2010: Impaired control and cognition (ICC); Anxiety (ANX).
I judge 7 of the Initial Item Pool questions as genuinely about Volition-Control challenging experiences (but 0 items in the later, final set of CEQ questions).
Studerus’ article in Fig 1 shows 13 questions, in Figure S1, shows 17 questions including 4 added questions not in Griffiths: “I was afraid to lose control.” And 3 others.
Griffiths’ article never mentions Studerus’ mysteriously sourced question that’s allegedly from OAV, “I was afraid to lose control.“
The best view of the Griffiths 7 categories and 26 questions – the final set of questions & categories – is page 21, “CEQ Scoring Guide”.
How many Volition-Control questions from each questionnaire are in the initial item pool for CEQ? Ans: 2, 1, 4 (7 total) (None Are in Final Set)
These are not questions scoped by Dittrich’s inclusion of them in his “Dread of Ego Dissolution” dimension/ category.
Nor by Studerus’ “Impaired cognition and control” sub-category of Dittrich’s Dread dimension.
These are the questions from Griffiths’ Initial Pool that I assess as actual Volition-Control questions:
SOCQ: 2 #28: trapped and helpless. #66: Frustrating attempt to control the experience.
HRS: 1 “In control”
5D-ASC (OAV): 4 #5: I felt like a marionette. #16: Difficulty making any decision. #33: paralyzed. #53: I no longer had a will of my own.
Given the full sets of questions, did Griffiths do a good job of picking all the challenging effects, for the initial pool?
So far as I can tell, he did fine, there.
How Many Challenging Effects Questions Does Griffiths Allow in the Final Set of 26, from SOCQ, HRS, & 5D-ASC (OAV)? Ans: 9, 14, 3
Stats: CEQ ends up with how many questions from SOCQ, from HRS, from 5D-ASC (OAV)? Only 3! And they are lame effects/q’s.
SOCQ: 9 challenging effects/questions
HRS: 14 challenging effects/questions
5D-ASC (OAV): 3 challenging effects/questions
Where Did Studerus One Time Only Get the Question for the Anxiety Category, “I was afraid to lose my self-control“?
research todo
Does Studerus have 6, or 8 questions in their Anxiety category of effects questions? Always 6 – except in Figure S1 hierarchy tree.
What’s in OAV or 5D? This question? Which dimension is it in, it must be in DED Dread of Ego Dissolution. Or: is this question in Dittrich’s non-category “G-ASC (general)” category?
Why isn’t this question in Griffiths’ Initial Pool?
Spots in CEQ Article Where Griffiths Apparently Fails to Comprehend that Volition-Control Effects Are Challenging
page 2 col 2 top: HRS section:
“Of the six sub-scales of the HRS (i.e. affect, cognition, intensity, perception, somaesthesia, and volition), one might hypothesize that the affect, cognition, and somaesthesia subscales might be most sensitive to challenging experiences.” – p. 2, CEQ article. Fails to list volition as challenging.
Final Set of Effects/Questions Removes All Volition-Control Items
See CEQ article page 21, “Scoring Guide”.
Venn Diagram Showing How CEQ [Beta] Did Cover All Negative Effects, but CEQ [Final]Silently Shrank to Omit Control-Loss Effects
CEQ’s false claim to provide complete coverage of all negative psychedelic effects compared to DED and ICC (+ANX)
CEQ final 26 questions cover Depression but silently removeControl-loss questions.
Gold/yellow circle = Actual negative effects of psychedelics
Bronze/orange circle: DED& ICC sets of questions
Blue circle = CEQ[Beta] (Initial Pool of 64 questions) & CEQ[Final] (26 questions)
CEQ [BETA] = ACTUAL COMPLETE COVERAGE OF NEGATIVE PSYCHEDELIC EFFECTS
THE FALSELY STILL-CLAIMED “COMPLETE COVERAGE”
SHADOW DRAGON MONSTER IGNORED! BY CEQ [FINAL] – USE DED OR ICC OR CEQ [BETA] INSTEAD
“REPRESS THAT SHADOW!” – PSYCHOTHERAPY MARKETING DEPT.
CEQ Authors Fail to Recognize that the Shadow Lives in the “Volition” Subscale
Clueless sentence in CEQ article:
Of the six sub-scales of the HRS (i.e. affect, cognition, intensity, perception, somaesthesia, and volition), one might hypothesize that the affect, cognition, and somaesthesia subscales might be most sensitive to challenging experiences.
Griffiths et al, “The Challenging Experience Questionnaire: Characterization of challenging experiences with psilocybin mushrooms”, 2016, p. 2
They failed to list “volition” as an expected challenging area of effects!
The CEQ authors demonstrate further that they fail to recognize that the shadow lives in the “volition” subscale.
You don’t think “volition” subscale might be among the most sensitive to challenging experiences?!
You really don’t know anything – tone-deaf to the nature of the challenges. No wonder you discarded the control-loss items (effects questions).
Griffiths’ assessment of which subscales might be most sensitive to challenging experiences:
affect 😱 – the psychotherapy industry expects familiar-type, personal mood challenges.
cognition 😱
intensity
perception
somaesthesia 😱
volition 😊 <– the psychotherapy industry doesn’t expect volition-control challenges.
Reality; what the reported data say:
affect
cognition
intensity
perception
somaesthesia
volition 😱 <–
But he’s unable to measure and correct his attempted improved instrument, since he a-priori discarded the ICC control-loss (volition) items!
Announcing CEQ v2.0
When the Browns threw the Walburga tapestry into the river, they forfeited their leadership of the Psychedelic Gospels Theory, and I picked up their fumble, and I then got to define version 2 of the Psychedelic Gospels Theory.
When Roland Griffiths allowed the Psychotherapy Marketing department to corrupt the CEQ project when reducing the initial (authentic) pool 64 questions down to 26, he forfeited his ownership of the CEQ, and I picked up the fumble, and I now get to define version 2 of the CEQ.
Announcing the Cybermonk-corrected revised version 2 of the Roland Griffiths Challenging Experiences Questionnaire, CEQ v2.0. 🎉
published yesterday or technically published earlier today perhaps
CEQ v2 restores the integrity and honesty and sincerity of the initial pool initial version of the CEQ set of questions and set of categories of questions about ALL, let me repeat all negative effects –
especially, above all, and at the top of the Venn diagram, towering above all else, far above grief and isolation and depression and isolation, is control seizure:
My elevating of control problems is in agreement with the DED questionnaire and the ICC set of questions,
and then CEQ authors claim that “we have provided a super set of the DED” when they have ended up doing no such thing, but have ended up deleting negative experiences – exactly vindicating Charles Stang accused Roland Griffiths of violating and not matching the mystics’ data reports, in public, on a video interview on the Harvard YouTube channel.
Roland Griffiths attempted to defend himself against Charles Staggs accusation of whitewashing away the negative mystic experiences, by claiming that he has covered this in the CEQ
but what does CEQ does it is a ploy to embrace negative psychotherapy-friendly fear and grief and depression and isolation – Which is fine so far as that goes.
it’s not very convincing at all because their fear category merely contains three identical redundant questions, it’s basically got a single question inside of their entire category, and they claim to cover all the entire set of negative effects by their set of seven questions
But these are terrible categories, lacking “Control”, and they can’t even properly populate their “Fear” category of negative effects; it’s just the same question repeated three times, obviously inconsequential differences of wording, of three completely equivalent ways of wording the exact same question three times.
The CEQ authors fraudulently and dishonestly deleted the control-problem questions, and pretended like they didn’t do that, and they continue to fraudulently put present themselves and misrepresent themselves as if their final set of 26 questions covers the full range of negative effects, by virtue of adding depression – but at the same time that they did that, they fraudulently, covertly, and dishonestly, against Science, deleted entirely the control seizure questions.
👑 Experiencing the transformative threat of the catastrophic loss of control
Experiencing the threat of the catastrophic loss of control, is king of all of the negative effects, and it is restored back onto the king and its rightful place on the throne at the top of the Venn diagram of ALL negative psychedelic effects.
Roland Griffiths’ group is guilty not at the point in time when they gathered the 64 questions, but they are guilty when they handed over to the psychotherapy marketing department, they permitted and allowed the marketing department to delete God, to delete that through which we are saved:
they committed the great offenses against the dragon, the great offenses against the mystic altered state as Charles Stang on the Harvard interview video said to Roland Griffiths and called him out on his unscientific, data-ignoring misrepresentation of the nature and scope of mystical experiences.
to defend himself, Roland Griffith claimed that he created the CEQ challenging experiences questionnaire.
However, I have found that this questionnaire is a fraud and anti-scientific deception to delete God and delete the main mystical experience through which we are transformed and saved.
Griffits permitted the Psychotherapy Marketing dept. to delete the shadow dragon momster gate guard which converts and transforms the mental model to be God-aware – that got deleted by the psychotherapy marketing department.
the pathetic end result of the fraudulent CEQ questionnaire is reverted fallen backwards , Psychological regression per Ken Wilber’s sense, reverted back to a dangerously incomplete mere subset, an incomplete subset of negative experiences, which therefore puts people into danger, as he himself argues is the result of putting forth a subset.
kudos to the CEQ (which is corrupt and compromised) for including depression, for adding that to the DED and ICC scope of questions.
A curse upon this fraudulent anti-scientific CEQ which has the religiously affront, an insult to religion, when they deleted the Control Seizure category and deleted all the control loss seizure instructional dragon threatening helpless paralyzed marionette questions.
God is unhappy I tell you, with this infernal godforsaken CEQ from hell.
Roland Griffiths has invoked the Furies in his hubristic audacity of allowing the marketing psychotherapy department to delete the dragon.
Hera was furious because Heracles omitted to give her honor.
I am not pronouncing a curse upon the psychedelic clients that are subjected to this stunted subset of negative effects which rolein Griffiths delivers to them.
I am pronouncing a curse upon CEQ version 1 brought to you by the psychotherapy marketing, biased, unscientific department.
🏥 🍽 🐉
dragon go get em
Johns Hopkins marketing department big Pharma psychedelic industrial complex who has the affront and hubristic audacity offensive to God and Hera and the invoking the furies of the gods and of the dragons, provoking the dragon and provoking the Furies by having the audacity to delete the DED (dread of ego dissolution) questions from the fraudulent CEQ version 1.
Johns Hopkins Marketing Department Big Pharma Psychedelic Industrial Complex
🦵😵 🐉🚪🦵💎🌳🍄😇🍄🏆
relying on left leg possibility branching free will model can’t get you through the dragon guard gate guarded by the dragon of no-free-will heimarmene fate possibilism-thinking to get the treasure of Transcendent Knowledge and mental completed perfected transformation development enlightenment, able to endure the high dose psilocybin state with control stability.
Brown has reconsidered, due to my October 2020 article proving St Walburga holds a vial that’s shaped as an Amanita.
See my posting yesterday which adds back in the “Control” category of control problem questions, and adds back in the deleted ICC questions (and the question about being “helpless” from the SOCQ survey).
so now Brown has earned his cred as a religiously converted member of the Ardent Advocates, a.k.a. the radical Maximal entheogen theory of religion.
And I now get to define version 2 of his psychedelic gospels theory.
assume mushrooms everywhere, until proven otherwise – and even then, continue assuming mushrooms everywhere.
Thus we win the Grid Game.
The question is not: did the religion use psychedelics?
the question is always:
which psychedelics did they use? during which season? and
did they use Amanita, or did they only use a Amanita as a billboard to represent psilocybin little brown mushrooms?
as Dale Pendell writes in sentence 1 within his amanita section: amanita is the most world famous entheogen which nobody uses, and is a symbol of entheogens.
Honoring High Dose Without Dishonoring Medium
46:00 – Ruck on the Psychedelic origin of Christianity:
Correction:
46:00 – Ruck on the Secret Psychedelic origin of Christianity:
The today’s episode of psychedelics today podcast interview with Timothy Leary’s son and they discuss giving honor to high-dose which I agree with that we do need to give honor to high-dose per Max Freakout and Kafei, though we do after giving that its dues and after honoring high-dose we must then,
we all understand that we cannot make high dose a requirement for a completed perfection of initiation, that must be available to all eighth graders so to speak but must be available to everybody through medium dose perhaps, and explaining the Egodeath theory to all rites of passage eighth graders or 18 or 21.
They are already ingesting it and the theory explanation, the mystery has already been revealed, published on the World Wide Web.
True in Mythemeland
an interesting theme of today’s voice recordings was we need to distinguish between literal reality versus making statements which apply to the land of mythology.
In the land of mythology, the most popular psychedelic is Amanita.
in the realm of reality, nobody at all ever uses 🍄
Brian Muraresku has been doing very helpful helping Carl rock a lot although both of them overly focus on Eleusis at the expense of Psilocybin, but Carl Ruck has gotten into Psilocybin a tiny bit in his scholarship – he is quoted in the Oregon Psilocybin measure research-gathering article.
Everyone uses Amanita only as a symbol, not as a literal psychedelic. that is true now and therefore for the exact same reason that is true in our history of art.
I would make an exception: that people used Amanita as a fallback when they were unable to find the real thing of desire, which is psilocybin.
in their 2016 book combined with their 2019 article, Browns dismissed Ardent Advocate Jan Irvin’s evidence plate and Browns claimed that the tapestry does not depict a psychoactive mushroom,
Because the tapestry has serrations on the base, but Amanita does not have serrations on the base.
And because instead the tapestry depicts a vial, and as we know, in the case of mushrooms uniquely, a figure in art cannot mean two things;
if it can mean something other than mushrooms then the art imagery must mean that, and therefore cannot mean mushrooms as well.
This is the mushroom exception to the rule that all images in art carry multiple meanings – unless one of those meanings is mushroom, in which case, the imagery cannot convey that meaning, and can only convey the non-mushroom meaning.
RE Schultes
Stang Confirmed: Griffiths Whitewashes Mystic Experiencing and Doesn’t Match the Reported Data
When Roland Griffiths’ marketing department took over their research project and reduced the questions to produce a subset of actual negative psychedelic experiences (utterly demolishing their entire selling point of their whole need for the CEQ and why the previous questionnaires are inadequate) they forfeited their authenticity the Roland Griffiths Group lost their scientific credentials and credibility at that point; the marketing department took over and their CEQ project became corrupted.
Stangs Whitewash Critique Confirmed Griffiths CEQs Initial Question Pool Covers All Challenging Experiences but Final Pool Returns to a Subset of Negative Effects to Replace and Remove Control Loss Effects by Psychotherapy Compliant Grief and Isolation Questions
Voice dictation after I have recorded about many hours of speaking today
fantastic best result of today’s podcast recordings which I have not produced or uploaded :
the best result is my idea for the set of three Venn diagrams to represent brilliantly Yesterdays three days of research on what’s wrong with the CEQ
how the CEQ began as a legitimate and honest sincere project that was true and authentic through the phase of gathering the initial pool of 64 questions: so far so good.
Up to that point, Rollin Griffiths can claim to Charles Stang that he has indeed accurately represented mystical experiences, including their negative affects including all of their negative effects, unlike the previous DED & ICC+ANX surveys.
DED (Dread of Ego Dissolution) scale (set of q’s)
ICC (impaired control and cognition 7 q’s) + ANX (anxiety 6 q’s)
to do: print out and podcast on DED, because it’s the real deal, it delivers the goods, not like Roland Griffiths fraudulent bullsht bunk posturing that endangers people.
this is his own lecture thrown back in his face against them.
If I wanted to be constructive
I advise Roland Griffiths create version two of CEQ
yesterday in my constructive posting I added, I corrected and fixed and repaired the CEQ , by adding back in the ICC control category of control seizure problems effects .
and I added back in the deleted questions about control loss which were drawn from the ICC.
Griffiths you are endangering people by failing to take into account the symptoms and effects which you have eliminated, your Big Pharma Psychotherapy Industry marketing department has eliminated, against science.
Conflict of interest has caused the Griffiths research group to at first be honest and authentic and then to be corrupted when they moved from the 64 questions down to trashcan (throwing into Wouter Hanegraaff’s Rejected wastebasket) the questions about control seizure psychedelic challenging effects.
Griffiths group has eliminated the negative control loss effects, and you’re putting people in danger because of doing so.
I’m turning your own argument against you.
The challenging experience is questionnaire set of 26 questions from Roland Griffiths and Charles Stang accused Roland Griffiths of whitewashing to falsely represent mystic experiences as being positive
and in his defense roleand Griffith pointed to his 2016 challenging experiences questionnaire
but this questionnaire is bunk and fraudulent and Charles Stang is correct
The questionnaire is honest and scientific and true during the intermediate initial pool of questions of 64 questions does in fact cover the full range of negative psychedelic affects
but the final result 26 questions is dishonest and fraudulent
it’s a magic trick a dishonest deceptive magic trick that at the same time as they justifiably and correctly add questions about depression and grief, isolation, they covertly delete the intractable control problem questions
You don’t control the source of your control thoughts
did you feel like a helpless marionette with no ability to control your will or to control your thoughts ?
we better eliminate that ICC / DED question, that doesn’t fit our professional psychotherapy model
but we’re not gonna go back and modify our text where we claim to provide the coverage of the entire set of negative affects;
we’re still going to persist in making that claim , even though now in phase 2 we have deleted the entire class of control seizure loss problem questions, which are covered faithfully and scientifically by the previous DED and ICC questionnaires
We are Going to continue claiming that CEQ is a superset of DED and ICC which are the bad trip questionnaires, because we have added depression and isolation and grief – BUT THEN after the initial pool of 64 questions we are now going to delete all of the questions about control laws so that we are no longer in fact a super set of DED and ICC
yet we’re going to continue pretending that we are delivering a super set.
we are going to use the true claim that DED fails to cover depression, we’re going to use that as the excuse and pretext to covertly delete the entire class of control seizure problem questions, which the DED covers and which are in fact negative effects which are from psychedelics
but our survey will not cover that area of affects, but we will claim that we do
The science-driven initial pool for the CEQ had no categories, but it only had a free form list of all 64 questions that they picked, which they did a good job of picking out the correct available questions from the previous questionnaires.
the final version of the CEQ (7 categs, 26 q’s) was driven by marketing by psychotherapy Freudian couch psychoanalysis model which cannot handle transcend knowledge control los seizure issues but is used to handling grief isolation and depression so they use this opportunity in between the initial pool of 64 questions
was handled by scientists honest true scientists correctly picked the initial poll of questions which was in fact as claimed a super set of negative of the previous surveys to achieve correct scope of coverage of all negative effects of psychedelics
but phase 2 when reducing 64 questions down to 26 questions was fraudulent and dishonest and anti-scientific and it was driven by the psychotherapy marketing department
They took the opportunity when everyone was looking at the pool of initial questions and they pointed out the inadequate scope of coverage of the questions about control and so they didn’t use this as an excuse to Ashley delete not add to not supplement but delete and remove and eliminate the negative affects regarding control seizure loss problems
We have got to get rid of the marionette with no control over the will, said the psychotherapy marketers, I don’t know how to handle that and it’s bad public relations so we are on our own turf are safe ground our save space when we add questions about depression and grief and isolation
that’s our bag , that’s our turf, that’s our territory, so we are going to add those questions, and we are going to use this opportunity while everyone is applauding for our superset of the DED and a superset of the ICC.
I will provide a set of three Venn diagrams.
Venn number 1: before the CEQ we see that there’s a big area of negative effects in reality, but we see that the scope of the DED questions and the scope of the ICC questions is inadequate and smaller circles that failed to include depression grief isolation fx .
so it is true that a new survey set of questions is needed that covers all of the negative affects not only the control effects but also additionally including depression grief isolation effects.
Venn number 2: during the initial pool of 64 questions, which is honest and true and adequate. The actual set of negative experiences matches the set of 64 questions , and then within that circle is the smaller circle of DED questions and ICC questions – which include control questions, but they omit depression isolation grief questions.
Venn number 3: the CEQ’s final set of 26 questions in seven categories, with covertly fraudulently and dishonestly a subset of negative effects. Only contains a subset of DED questions and a subset of ICC questions (NOT a superset as claimed and as in the initial pool of 64) designed to covertly eliminate control loss problems, which cannot be handled by the psychotherapy model. The proof that they are lying and that’s proof that this is covert is the body of the article continues to claim that the character of the CEQ is that it comprehensively matches all of the negative experiencing, whereas the DED & ICC, they say, only covers a subset.
Venn diagram number three is extremely enlightening and instructive at a glance:
I will place control loss effects at the top of the all inclusive big circle,
and then
I will draw a dotted line as the same big circle – this is the false claim that CEQ (now reduced from 64 to 26 q’s) continues to match the full circle.
then I draw a solid line that has a dip in the top of it as a smaller circle that’s smaller than the big circle
and this warped final CEQ circle dips down at the top to avoid including control seizure effects.
then draw the DED and the ICC circles which do cover the control seizure effects, at the top of the big all-inclusive circle
and then show that at the bottom of the big circle is depression effects, which are included in the CEQ but are not included in the DED or ICC sets of questions.
/ Venn 3 diags
A fraudulent dishonest and deceptive final result version of the CEQ is not true to their marketing claims within the body of the article which claims that they are a superset of DED and ICC so as to cover the entire scope of negative psychedelic affects fx.
actually a subset of negative experiences and actually a subset of the DED and a subset of the ICC questions despite the claims by drawing attention to the intermediate 64 questions claims to be a adequate set covering all negative affects
The Psychedelic Turf War
Roland Griffiths’ CEQ’s Questions:
Add Psychotherapy-Compliant Depression Questions,
Remove Volition Control Questions,
Falsely Claims Being a Superset,
Endangers Clients and Research,
Adds Risk,
Claims Broader Superset,
Reverts to a Mere Subset of Questions,
Thus Endangering People and Research
While recording many hours of podcast voice recording idea development today,
my idea for a posting watching the Psychedelics Today podcast: a posting titled:
at war with the Mystics
the Psilocybin turf war
the psychedelic turf war
— Cybermonk, December 22, 2022
See Also
References
Griffiths’ CEQ article; the article that develops and presents the CEQ:
In the present, less complete page, I’m starting from the list of 64 questions which the CEQ authors did a fair job of gathering as their initial pool of questions to pick from, and then I’m picking my own subset of 26 questions, in contrast to the poor, low-relevance, dup-filled set of 26 questions which the CEQ authors picked for their CEQ.
I guarantee that this set of 26 out of the 64 Initial Pool questions will score higher in every way than the terrible set of 26 questions which the CEQ authors picked.
The CEQ authors deleted all the good, control-loss questions, and then picked 6 nice and safe redundant questions (Experienced fear? Were you afraid? Were you frightened? Did you have fright? Were you apprehensive?) – duplicate, broad, vague, safe, sanitized questions.
The CEQ authors value PR more than safety and achieving Transcendent Knowledge, so they got rid of the control-loss questions, with the excuse “Those control-loss questions weren’t hitting the impressively broad width of challenging experiences like our superior categories of questions.” 😑
Here’s their “reasoning” or flimsy excuse to delete the control-loss questions:
“the 5DASC … includes a separate scale [subset of questions] for impaired control and cognition, and for anxiety. While these represent psychometrically justifiable subscales [subsets of questions], these two sub-scales do not address shortcomings of the [OAV questionnaire’s] DED [dread of ego dissolution] scale (e.g. they do not address the wide range of potential dimensions of challenging experience that are suggested by previous literature).” – CEQ article, p. 2
Translation: That’s why we created our own, vague and broad “Fear” category instead of the frighteningly too-specific and narrow “Impaired control/cognition” category of questions, and that’s why we deleted all of the control-loss questions.
Our PR marketing department also appreciated this diffusive broadening of the range of challenges to stop putting the spotlight on just that one little narrow challenge, the over-specific, too-narrow experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control.
Our marketing department was afraid and terrified of our CEQ discussing dread of ego dissolution or impaired control/cognition, so we needed to broaden that category of questions away into the trash can and replace it by safe categories containing more tractable questions, to protect the safety of our PR marketing department – as we’ve urged, safety must come first.
In the name of breadth of challenging effects, we had to get rid of the control-loss questions and the “Impaired control/cognition” category of questions, and replace it by a broad-ranging, “fear” set of questions which ranges all the way from fear, to fright, to being afraid.
Our PR marketing department was afraid and filled with terror, they were bad tripping over losing control over our messaging to The Public.
So, to uphold the safety of our PR efforts and Do No Harm there, we applied our mathy-looking analysis apparatus to cover up the fact that we didn’t ever specify a reason to remove the “Impaired control/cognition” questions; we merely stated that a broader range of questions than that one subset of questions is needed.
What exactly did the CEQ committee do with / discard these awesome questions?
Do they think “marionette” is not a challenging experience?! Do they FOOLISHLY think Ozzy’s song “Little Dolls” or Rush’s song “Twilight Zone” is just silly & amusing?
5. I felt like a marionette.
16. I had difficulty making even the smallest decision.
Why did the CEQ committee discard the above question?! Because they manifestly have NO FCKING IDEA WHAT THEY’RE DOING OR TALKING ABOUT.
33. I felt as though I were paralyzed.
Why did the CEQ committee discard the above question?! Because they manifestly have NO FCKING IDEA WHAT THEY’RE DOING OR TALKING ABOUT.
‘paralyzed’: 1 hit only. 😵
44. I felt isolated from everything and everyone. [i just kept this q to track mapping]
53. I had the feeling that I no longer had a will of my own.
Why did the CEQ committee discard the above question?! Because they manifestly have NO FCKING IDEA WHAT THEY’RE DOING OR TALKING ABOUT.
What became of 5DASC’s Anxiety subscale question “I felt threatened”?
5DASC Items > “Anxiety” subscale
29. I was afraid without being able to say exactly why.
38. I felt threatened.
Why did the CEQ committee discard the above question?! Because they manifestly have NO FCKING IDEA WHAT THEY’RE DOING OR TALKING ABOUT. They did add back in the Paranoia question, bringing 24 questions to 26, adding a 7th category.
63. I had the feeling something horrible would happen.
Map that to CEQ q’s.
CEQ dup questions con’t
Duplicates: Isolation
______ 1. Isolation and loneliness ______ 10. Feeling of isolation from people and things ______ 24. I felt isolated from everything and everyone
Those might be a descendent of SOCQ’s: “Question 76 Sense of being separated from the normal world, as though you were enclosed in a thick, silent glass chamber”
Duplicates: Sad
______ 2. Sadness ______ 6. Feelings of grief ______ 9. I felt like crying
Duplicates: Heartbeat
______ 3. Feeling my heart beating ______ 17. I felt my heart beating irregularly or skipping beats
Duplicates: Fear
______ 4. I had the feeling something horrible would happen ______ 7. Experience of fear ______ 26. I felt frightened
Duplicates: Shaking
______ 5. Feeling my body shake/tremble ______ 15. I felt shaky inside
______ 8. Fear that I might lose my mind or go insane
Duplicates: Despair
______ 11. Feelings of despair ______ 23. Despair
______ 12. I had the feeling that people were plotting against me ______ 22. Experience of antagonism toward people around me
______ 13. I was afraid that the state I was in would last forever
______ 14. Anxiousness
Duplicates: Death
______ 16. I had the profound experience of my own death ______ 20. I felt as if I was dead or dying
______ 18. Pressure or weight in my chest or abdomen
______ 19. I experienced a decreased sense of sanity
______ 21. Panic
______ 25. Emotional and/or physical suffering
Hypothesis: CEQ Omits Control-Loss Specifics to Hide the Risks
Something is seriously suspicious and amiss: why are there at 4-6 questions out of 26, that are redundant exact duplicates, impossible for anyone to differentiate from each other?
Where other questionnaires have specific questions about control, CEQ instead has confusingly redundant duplicate questions about 4-6 “safely vague to specify” effects (fear, isolation, death, shakiness).
I noticed, strikingly, that you removed too-scary, too-specific words (“threat of catastrophic control loss”) from the CEQ, and in place of that, you wrote safely vague questions duplicated multiple times to pad out and cover up the gap of omission that you introduced.
Then after whitewashing specific “threat of control loss” as vague “panic“, the authors justify their existence, their CEQ, by criticizing previous questionnaires as “lacking specificity” (p. 3 top):
“These scales all suffer from at least one of the shortcomings of the 5DASC and HRS, namely: lack of specificity (i.e. lack of separable or independent scales that measure fine-grained facets of a challenging experience), lack of content coverage (missing a proposed dimension of challenging experience), or lack of sensitivity (i.e. not sensitive to the degree of challenge in an experience)”
Hypothesis to Test: CEQ Covertly Omits Control-Loss Questions to Sanitize PR.
If so, they strategically INCREASE THE RISK and REDUCE SAFETY (despite their intensive calls for increased safety) in order to “sell” the safety and exaggerate the safety, downplay and soft-pedal the danger – which wouldn’t as great of a danger if they would specify it specifically, that their vague word “panic” that they allow into the CEQ is actually, specifically about experiencing the threat of catastrophic control loss.
The CEA authors can’t handle, can’t deal with this degree of alarming specificity, so they whitewash the problem, and dial-back the alarm, through leveraging vague abstractness.
Why did they discard the OAV’s “dread of ego dissolution” (DED) sub-scale?
Why did they discard the wording from the 5DASC’s Impaired cognition/control subscale?
Is the CEQ a PR cover-up whitewashing of the dangers, trying to appear and posture as though they’re managing safety, when safety is actually compromised by also trying to manage PR and softpedal how great the danger is – and how little they understand the danger?
The danger is smaller if you face the music and identify specifically and deal with the specific danger, instead of vague hazing it over to obscure it in abstractness like allowing the word ‘panic‘, censoring-out & whitewashing the detail of what the panic is specifically about: ego death/ ego agency loss/ loss of control of cognition.
😱🐉 🤴☸️🌳 💥 🐍🧊🪨
panic seeing no-free-will {dragon monster gate-guard}; end of {king steering in tree}; become {snake frozen in rock}
If people learn the Egodeath theory (ie shifting from naive possibilism-thinking to eternalism-thinking), then safety is increased, based on indicators from religious myth such as branching-message mushroom trees.
Strategy for Analyzing How the CEQ Lost Control Questions
Motivation for this posting: This is my 2nd article focusing on Roland Griffiths’ 2016 CEQ article. I now have a structured systematic strategy to trace and then explain:
How it is that the good, clear control-loss related questions in the earlier questionnaires got omitted from the CEQ.
How it is that the good, clear control-loss related phrases in the CEQ article got omitted from the CEQ.
Why are there so many duplicate (indistinguishable) questions in CEQ (instead of control-related questions)? There are, out of 26 questions, 4-6 dup questions, eg: fear 2x, isolation 2x, death 2x, shake/shaky 2x.
Strategy Steps
First, in Appendix 2’s subheadings (CEQ, SOCQ, HRS, 5DASC), list all the questions (verbatim w/ number & any question-category that’s indicated) and bold the control-loss words. Status: Done.
Then, for each section of article body, extract phrases, with special attention of which q’air it came from and how Griffiths managed to omit that phrase from his CEQ questions. Status: Started. Now at page 8 of 23, but am effectively further due to momentum and summarizing the conclusions already.
Finally: Develop my assessment, in my section “Summary and Conclusions”: How do the earlier q’airs have their control-related questions, and the body of the article contains control-related phrases, and yet how then did the CEQ end up lacking any control-related phrases? Status: Practically done, need to reflect and polish the writeup.
Discussion of Control Loss Questions Hidden in Article about Bad Trip Survey?
Items means questions.
Conclusion: No, there’s nothing like that in the article, it’s not very long or very different, doesn’t list details of hundreds of questions (eg about control loss) as expected.
“A description of measures analyzed in the current report … A more detailed description of the complete methods, measures, and initial findings of the online survey can be found in the original report (Carbonaro et al., 2016).” – page 3.
“The Bad Trip Survey (Carbonaro et al., 2016) was completed by 2085 participants.”
Method > Measures section (p. 4):
“A more detailed description of the full complement of measures administered in the online survey can be found in the original report (Carbonaro et al., 2016). We identified 64 items from the HRS, 5-DASC, and SOCQ (listed in Supplementary Material, Appendix 2) that [each] unambiguously assessed a [single] challenging aspect of experience with classic hallucinogens, and treated these 64 items, as worded and responded to in their original form in the HRS, 5-DASC, and SOCQ, as an initial item pool for the construction of the initial form of the CEQ.”
Bad Trip Survey
Discusses and defines the Bad Trip Survey:
“Carbonaro TM, Bradstreet MP, Barrett FS, et al. (2016) Survey study of challenging experiences after ingesting psilocybin mushrooms: Acute and enduring positive and negative consequences. J Psychopharmacol. Epub ahead of print 30 August 2016. DOI: 0269881116662634.”
The article “The Anatomy of a Bad Psychedelic Trip” by Joshua Thompson mentions the Bad survey: “the more I tried to fight the ideas in my head, the more the fear encompassed me. After dozens of intense but blissful psychedelic experiences, this was my first bad trip.” – https://medium.com/@joshuat/the-anatomy-of-a-bad-psychedelic-trip-8ab00fc389b
Rely on {right leg} not {left leg}; rely on eternalism-thinking, not naive possibilism-thinking.
Highlighting Conventions
italics = interesting context bold black = vaguely relevant to control-threat experiences bold red = specifically relevant to control-threat experiences
Outline of Article Sections
Outline nesting in lists is broken. I mark major headings in bold here.
Abstract
Introduction
Phenomenology of challenging psychedelic experiences
Current assessments of challenging experiences
Why an assessment of dimensions of challenging experience is needed
Aim of the current studies
Study 1
Method
Participants
Measures
HRS
5DASC
SOCQ
Questions regarding the overall impact of the challenging experience
Previous struggle with a psychiatric disorder
Demographic questions
Analysis
Matched exploratory and confirmatory analysis strata
Initial scale construction
Model replication
Factorial invariance
Table 1: Comparison of demographic variables
CEQ and overall impact of the challenging experience
Results
Initial scale construction
Addition of a paranoia factor
Model replication
Table 2. Exploratory factor structure, correlations, and reliabilities in Study 1
Factorial invariance of the CEQ
Overall impact of the challenging experiences
Table 3. Confirmatory factor structure of the Challenging Experience Questionnaire in Study 1
Table 4. Factor correlations, reliabilities, and means for the entire sample, by gender, and by previous struggle with a psychiatric disorder in Study 1
Study 2
Method
Participants
Measures
CEQ
Table 5. Model fit indices for tests of factorial invariance
Table 6. Regression of ratings of overall impact of the experience on Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) factor scores for Study 1
Table 7. Factor correlations, factor reliabilities, and factor scores for Study 2
Analysis
Results
General discussion
Internal and external validity of the CEQ
Table 8. Regression of ratings of overall impact of the experience on Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) factor scores for Study 2
Challenging experiences and the overall impact of experiences with psilocybin
Potential risk factors for challenging experiences
Towards a model of challenging experiences
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Declaration of conflicting interests
Funding
References
/ end of: Outline of Article Sections
Outline of Questionnaire Appendixes
Items means questions.
The 3 previous questionnaires are SOCQ, HRS, and 5DASC. Unclear why DED wasn’t used. This new (crappy) questionnaire (with a giant gap about control) is CEQ.
Appendix 1: The Challenging Experience Questionnaire [CEQItems]
CEQ – Scored from responses to the SOCQ, 5D-ASC, and HRS
Appendix 2: Initial Item Pool for CEQ Development
SOCQ Items
HRS Items
5DASC Items
Impaired cognition/control subscale
Anxiety subscale
Items [from HRS] that were re-worded for use in the stand-alone version of the CEQ
/ end of: Outline of Questionnaire Appendixes
Control-Loss Phrases in Article Sections
Abstract
I see a problem right in the Abstract. It’s written clearly, but there are no words about the experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control – even though the article body & previous questionnaires contain phrases and questions that specify control-loss effects.
The authors are tone-deaf to what’s centrally important, so they omit control-specific phrases from the Abstract.
The closest the Abstract comes to specifying control-loss aspects is too vague and general:
“Acute adverse psychological reactions … (“bad trips” or “challenging experiences”)”
“Seven … factors (grief, fear, death, insanity, …, and paranoia) provide a phenomenological profile of challenging aspects … Factor scores were associated with difficulty, meaningfulness, spiritual significance … The Challenging Experience Questionnaire provides a basis for future investigation ofpredictors and outcomes of challenging experiences”
Introduction
“The first era … investigating … psychotomimetic properties”
“tools to understand psychosis. … studies have also examined mystical-type or spiritual experiences, changes in self-referential processing or “ego dissolution”… personality change … experimental reports and … clinical reports indicate that challenging psychological experiences during the acute effects of psychedelics are not uncommon.”
Phenomenology of challenging psychedelic experiences
page 2:
“fear … dissociation, depersonalization“
“frightening … overwhelming anxiety or panic … fear to the point of paranoid delusions”
My summary / commentary: 30% of high-dose users had anxiety/ fear/ paranoia. 7.1% of moderate-dose users had anxiety/ fear/ paranoia. That’s a 4.3x increase when moving from moderate to high dose. As Psilocybin is legalized, dosage will increase from moderate to high-dose.
“fear or panic, paranoia, … cognitive effects (e.g. confusion, loss of ego, loss of sanity, … dissociation, depersonalization),”
Current assessments of challenging experiences
Narrow the focus: List only the specifically control-related words, and only a few of the surrounding related words.
“sub-scales of the HRS (i.e. … cognition, … perception, … and volition),
“The OAV sub-scale “dread of ego dissolution” (DED) covers a wide range of negative experiences, and is generally considered an overall “bad trip” scale (Studerus et al., 2010). This meta-scale of possible negative effects covers many (e.g. panic, loss of ego/control, feelings of insanity) but not all (e.g. sadness/grief/ depression) possible categories of challenging experiences. The DED scale also averages responses from a number of proposed categories of experience (panic, loss of ego, insanity) rather than giving an individual score for each. Studerus and colleagues (2010) revealed a rescoring of the 5DASC that includes a separate scale for impaired control and cognition, and for anxiety. While these represent psychometrically justifiable subscales, these two sub-scales do not address shortcomings of the DED scale (e.g. they do not address the wide range of potential dimensions of challenging experience that are suggested by previous literature).”
Translation: discard entirely these control-loss questions, and focus on other challenging effects instead – such as padding the questions with 4-6 exact-duplicate questions about fear, isolation, death, and shakiness.
“These scales all suffer from at least one of the shortcomings of the 5DASC and HRS, namely: lack of specificity (i.e. lack of separable or independent scales that measure fine-grained facets of a challenging experience), lack of content coverage (missing a proposed dimension of challenging experience), or lack of sensitivity (i.e. not sensitive to the degree of challenge in an experience)”
See my critique of that hypocrisy elsewhere in this posting. The CEQ is a good example of lack of specificity, lack of coverage, and lack of sensitivity.
Why an assessment of dimensions of challenging experience is needed
Narrow the focus: List only the specifically control-related words, and only a few of the surrounding related words.
“panic, distress, fear, acute”
Aim of the current studies
n/a
Study 1
“spiritual significance, and difficulty”
Method
empty heading
Participants
n/a
Measures
n/a
HRS
“subscales assessing general dimensions of subjective experience (… affect, perception, cognition, and volition).”
5DASC
sub-scales … include the impaired cognition and control (ICC), and anxiety (ANX) scales”
SOCQ
“The SOCQ contains 43 items from the Mystical Experiences Questionnaire (MEQ43), which was developed to assess several domains of mystical experience.”
“ego loss, loss of perception of time“
The CEQ article omits time effects – but time effects affect control, per eternalism being a model of time more than directly of control, in Philosophy and in Physics.
“No items from the MEQ43 were included in the present analysis.”
Questions regarding the overall impact of the challenging experience
n/a
Previous struggle with a psychiatric disorder
n/a
Demographic questions
n/a
Analysis
empty heading
Matched exploratory and confirmatory analysis strata
n/a
Initial scale construction
n/a
Model replication
n/a
Factorial invariance
n/a
Table 1: Comparison of demographic variables
n/a
CEQ and overall impact of the challenging experience
n/a
Results
empty heading
Initial scale construction
Here’s where everything went wrong and produced a garbage CEQ: during the process of removing 38 questions from the initial pool of 64, leaving 26 questions, 6 of which are frankly, obviously redundant duplicates.
Something is obviously broken, obvious to every person who takes the CEQ.
“the five-factor solution did not yield a very clear qualitative interpretation.”
As if the resulting CEQ is clear about “panic” being specifically the experience of the threat of loss of control.
“The six-factor solution yielded factors with a cohesive qualitative interpretation: physiological distress (factor 1), grief (factor 2), [relev: egoic childish thinking lost forever] fear (factor 3), insanity (factor 4), isolation (factor 5), and death (factor 6). The six-factor solution was used as the basis of further item removal. Items with no loading above 0.4 on any factor were discarded. A total of 19 items were removed in this step. Items were removed from a scale if they demonstrated low item-total correlation (below 0.4) and if their removal increased scale reliability and average item-total correlation for the scale. An additional 12 items were removed in this step, yielding a final[sic!] set of 24 items.”
Next section, Paranoia adds 2 items, totaling 26 for CEQ.
A shtt-ton of mathy-posturing bafflegab, fails to explain the authors’ excuse for deleting all control-loss related words which the earlier questionnaires have and which the article has, but which are omitted from the CEQ.
Addition of a paranoia factor
“Clinical literature and anecdotal reports indicate that paranoia is a subjective experience frequently represented in challenging experiences with classic hallucinogens.”
“While a clear paranoia factor did not emerge from the exploratory factor analyses, the initial item pool for construction of the CEQ did contain two items directly related to paranoia (SOCQ item 40 “Feeling that people were plotting against you” and SOCQ item 72 “Experience of antagonism toward people around you”).
“Interestingly, there are no items in either the HRS or the 5DASC that directly assess paranoia.”
Confirmed:
Apx 2 > HRS Items includes: “anxious, frightened, ego death, panic, feel dead, chaos, change in sense of sanity, In control”
Apx 2 > 5DASC Items includes: “marionette, can’t decision, paralyzed, no will, afraid, felt threatened, feel horrible will happen”
Apx 2 > SOCQ has: “40. Feeling that people were plotting against you” (I’d say ‘events’ or ‘thoughts’, not nece’ly “people”)
“the identified 24-item, six-factor CEQ model was amended by adding the two paranoia items, both loading onto a seventh factor.”
Totaling 26 items (questions) for CEQ. But why are 4-6 of them identical/ duplicated redundant?
This article’s process is bunk! For all the tortured math analysis, the output ditches control-loss and delivers 4-6 duplicate identical pairs of questions.
Something stinks: the authors have mechanisms, poorly applied, with poor judgment giving a gigantic vague gap where there used to be control-related, clear wording.
Model replication
n/a
Table 2. Exploratory factor structure, correlations, and reliabilities in Study 1
n/a
Factorial invariance of the CEQ
n/a
Overall impact of the challenging experiences
resume here – narrow the focus; list only the specifically control-related words, and only a few of the surrounding related words
Table 3. Confirmatory factor structure of the Challenging Experience Questionnaire in Study 1
This is a good table to map previous questionnaires to CEQ – regarding the tiny, dup-ridden set of 26 CEQ questions, a set that is terribly inadequate according to the values espoused in this article.
Study 2
Table 4. Factor correlations, reliabilities, and means for the entire sample, by gender, and by previous struggle with a psychiatric disorder in Study 1
Method
Participants
Measures
CEQ
Table 5. Model fit indices for tests of factorial invariance
Table 6. Regression of ratings of overall impact of the experience on Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) factor scores for Study 1
Table 7. Factor correlations, factor reliabilities, and factor scores for Study 2
Analysis
Results
General discussion
Internal and external validity of the CEQ
Table 8. Regression of ratings of overall impact of the experience on Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) factor scores for Study 2
Challenging experiences and the overall impact of experiences with psilocybin
Potential risk factors for challenging experiences
Towards a model of challenging experiences
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Declaration of conflicting interests
Funding
References
/ end of: Control-Loss Phrases in Article Sections
Control-Loss Questions in the Questionnaires
Items means questions.
Appendix 1: The Challenging Experience Questionnaire [CEQ Items]
These questions are weak ! re: threat of loss of control
4. I had the feeling something horrible would happen
6. Feelings of grief [for dead control agent]
7. Experience of fear
8. Fear that I might lose my mind or go insane
12. I had the feeling that people were plotting against me
13. I was afraid that the state I was in would last forever
14. Anxiousness
16. I had the profound experience of my own death
19. I experienced a decreased sense of sanity
20. I felt as if I was dead or dying [= 16]
21. Panic
26. I felt frightened [= 7]
CEQ – Scored from responses to the SOCQ, 5D-ASC, and HRS
Appendix 2: Initial Item Pool for CEQ Development – top priority
SOCQ Items
Question 21 Experience of confusion, disorientation and/or chaos
Question 28 Sense of being trapped and helpless
Question 37 Visions of demons, devils or other wrathful deities
Question 40 Feeling that people were plotting against you
Question 44 Thoughts and ideas flashing by very rapidly
Question 52 Experience of fear
Question 57 Feeling of being rejected or unwanted [repudiate/jettison naive possibilism-thinking]
Question 66 Frustrating attempt to control the experience
Question 70 Profound experience of your own death[relev: we are firstly control agents]
Question 84 Feeling of disintegration, falling apart
Question 85 Fear that you might lose your mind or go insane
Question 89 Experiences of intense pressures on various parts of your body [block universe]
Question 91 Feelings of grief [relev: control agent gone]
HRS Items
Question 11 Feel body shake/tremble
Question 21 Feel removed, detached, separated from body
Question 25 Anxious
Question 26 Frightened
Question 27 Panic
Question 70 Feel as if dead or dying[relev: we are firstly control agents]
Question 75 Sense of chaos
Question 88 Change in sense of sanity
Question 94 In control[vague wording; research]
Question 74 Contradictory feelings at same time (happy and sad; hopeful and hopeless) [impossible to pass gate using possibilism, to get treasure]
5DASC Items
Impaired cognition/control subscale
5. I felt like a marionette.
16. I had difficultymaking even the smallest decision.
33. I felt as though I were paralyzed.
53. I had the feeling that I no longer had a will of my own.
Anxiety subscale
19. I was afraid that the state I was in would last forever.
29. I was afraid without being able to say exactly why.
30. I experienced everything terrifyingly distorted.
38. I felt threatened.
63. I had the feeling something horrible would happen.
[Table:] Items [from HRS] that were re-worded for use in the stand-alone version of the CEQ
/ end of: Control-Loss Questions in the Questionnaires
Summary and Conclusions: How Did Control-Loss Questions Get Dropped?
All driving energy in CEQ is BROAD, that’s the key word, DED is too specific eg marionette, details like “I felt like I had no control over my will” is too specific, too narrow, we need … it doesn’t make sense but that’s the story gist they are driving.
They are TRYING to argue that questions like “marionette” and “no control over will” are too specific and not broad enough – you have to conflate categories and questions to make this argument.
Yes the category of control might be too narrow, but even so, why omit questions that are in this category?
CEQ picks 1 out of the 6 ICC (Impaired control/cognition) questions (“I felt isolated”) and 2 of the 7 ANX questions.
CEQ doesn’t have a category named “control problems”.
Which CEQ Category Would Contain the Initial Pool questions about Negative Control Experences
The set of 7 negative effects categories in CEQ is poor. No Control category. How can you manage and predict for safety, control-related negative experiences, if you don’t follow the lead of ICC and define a “Control” category. CEQ fails here: You need to ask people about control questions, you need a “control” category and dyou need to add
This category test whether CEQ’s 7 breadth-optimized categories are capable of containing the Egodeath theory negative effects questions that are listed in “Initial Item Pool”. REALLY NEED A CONTROL CATEGORY LIKE ICC.
REALLY, NEED THE GOOD REMOVED CONTROL QUESTIONS.
REALLY, NEED TO ADD THEM IN A “CONTROL” CATEGORY.
Copy CEQ’s 7 categs here.
Add the questions which I’m mad at CEQ for not including, into CEQ’s categs. Fav categories: Fear, Insanity, Death, Paranoia.
Fear
Grief
Physical distress
Insanity
Isolation
Death
Paranoia
Missing category: Control
HRS Question 75 Sense of chaos
SOCQ Question 28 Sense of being trapped and helpless
SOCQ Question 37 Visions of demons, devils or other wrathful deities
5. I felt like a marionette.
SOCQ Question 66 Frustrating attempt to control the experience
16. I had difficulty making even the smallest decision.
33. I felt as though I were paralyzed.
53. I had the feeling that I no longer had a will of my own.
38. I felt threatened.
What Category and Questions CEQ Deletes
5DASC Items
Impaired cognition/control subscale
5. I felt like a marionette.
16. I had difficulty making even the smallest decision.
24. I had difficulty in distinguishing important from unimportant things.
33. I felt as though I were paralyzed.
44. I felt isolated from everything and everyone.
45. I was not able to complete a thought, my thought repeatedly became disconnected.
53. I had the feeling that I no longer had a will of my own.
Anxiety subscale
19. I was afraid that the state I was in would last forever.
29. I was afraid without being able to say exactly why.
30. I experienced everything terrifyingly distorted.
32. I experienced my surroundings as strange and weird.
38. I felt threatened.
63. I had the feeling something horrible would happen.
SCOQ cut in 2nd draft:
Trapped and helpless
Frustrating attempt to control the experience
How the CEQ Categories Cover Negative Control effects
Useless POS, USELESS, where am I supposed to put control loss questions like marionette, no control over will, helpless – which category in this “all-inclusively broad set of categories”.
OK Roland, if your set of categories is worth a shiite, then tell me, it covers all negative effects – where would you put the ICC question 5, marionette? SOCQ 28: helpless? 5DASC 53: I no longer had a will of my own? Let’s try below.
Fear
Grief
Physical distress
Insanity
Isolation
Death
Paranoia
Critique the categories provided by CEQ, and distinctly from the categories, critique the questions. CEQ provides 27 questions that are evenly spread in 7 categories.
Why doesn’t the CEQ set of categs have one for control problems?
Why doesn’t the CEQ set of questions have more of the ICC (control related) questions? Why does CEQ omit “marionette” question, which is from that category? And other questions from that category
Why doesn’t CEQ have a Control category? ICC from 5DASC is a control category.
Why doesn’t CEQ have many more of the control questions from the ICC category of 5DASC?
“We’re so broad.” Yeah but you removed the Control category like ICC, and you omitted 10 of 13 questions from (ICC & ANX), which are control-related negative effects.
Critique the categories provided by DED which is a categ that’s not as broad as CEQ.
Critique the categories provided by 5DASC which are ICC & ANX: not as broad as CEQ.
It was deliberate, to design a broad-ranging set of 7 broad negative categories, and none of them are called “control” like ICC from 5DASC (impaired control and cognition), and we omit 10 of 13 of that fixed subset.
The difference between the CEQ’S pulling questions from 5DASC vs from SOCQ & from HRS: For SOCQ and HRS, they picked from those broad sets of questions. But for 5DASC, 5DASC already defines small sets of negative effect questions, ICC & ANX, so we’ll start (in initial pool).
Start by listing
Create initial pool of 64 q’s taken from:
We pick sOme from SOCQ
We pick sOme from HRS
We include the ICC & ANX categs and their questions.
Then we define our own, broad, all-negative set of categories of effects, broader even than the DED subset defined within OAV.
We provide 7 broad categories, and we incorporate questions from your SOCQ some negative effects that aren’t in the DED and aren’t in 5DASC’s ICC & ANX categories/sets of questions. Our set of 7 fx categs is so bvrod, bgr broad, broader than DED from OAV or ICC+ANX from 5DASC. We don’t have a categ named like ICC, with “control”. We have broader categs instead.
The CEQ authors are advocating a set of categories is broader than DED. Seems like their stated strategy for designing there broader negaive set of qustion categories is highe level of abstraction in order to be broader – though they never explain really WHY their set of categs gets rid of the category ICC … they argue that 7 is the right number, and they make a show of balance of their 7 categs – which lack a categ like ICC, “Impaired control and cognition” (kinda arb naming) – and they omit 10 out of 13 the control questions.
They CEQ authors seem to vanish upward in Platonic abstraction: 7 categoriess that form broader coverage by being broader each, more abstract.
ICC is too narrow of a category, its too specific – that must be what they are essentially arguing / selling. DED is missing too many neg effects coverage & categories, and ICC suffers some same
“While ICC (impaired control and cognition) + ANX (anxiety) (from 5DASC) represent psychometrically justifiable subscales (sets of questions & categories), these two sub-scales (sets of questions & categories) do not address shortcomings of the DED scale (e.g. they do not address the wide range of potential dimensions of challenging experience that are suggested by previous literature).”
First, you have to understand the article from the POV of the authors’ mission statement: provide a broader set of categories of questions about negative experiences, that’s a useful psychometric tool tht can be used systemically because it’s broad in coverage of negative effects and has a set of 7 vareid question categories.
The CEQ is designed to be broader in negative coverage than the negative questions & categories in:
the DED (a subset of OAV)
the ICC (subset of questions) from 5DASC.
CEQ authors say that the ICC set of questions is a valid psychometric category of questions. But, they are selling their own set of 7 categories – THERE’S NO ROOM AT THE EXPANDED INN FOR ICC QUESTIONS THO THEY ARE VALID. T
Where you xpct to find an explanation of why the hell the CEQ authors removed the ICC category and its questions, what you get insted is a statement that dwe we need broader system of negativ-effcts. If ICC is valid, as they say, why do they delete those DED-like,
C?LU C?L”UE CLUE: CEQ authors always talk about the PAIR of categories, and argue that the CEQ set of categories is spread mathematically better than the PAIR of categories ICC plus ANX (13 questions total).
CEQ is a set of categories of questions they invented and are arguing for, filled with 26 selected questions from ICC (2 q’s) & ANX (1 q) omitting 10 (the good ones) of 13 of the ICC & ANX questions.
CEQ = this system/set of question categories:
Fear – 1 question from ANX
Grief
Physical distress
Insanity – 1 question from ICC
Isolation – 1 question from ICC
Death
Paranoia
ICC and ANX are from 5DASC.
The CEQ questions are picked from 3 sources:
SOCQ provides broader negative categories of questions eg depression, than 5DASC’s ICC & ANX categs.
HRS
5DASC, its ICC & ANX categs of q’s
Why we picked questions from these 3 sources, why we need broader neg qs than 5DASC’S ICC & ANX categs provide, we’ll get those broader categs from SOCQ & HRS.
CEQ picks 3 out of 13 of the ICC questions from 5DASC, puts them into these categories.
CEQ pulls from 26 questions picked from 64 questions picked from S
The category ICC (set of questions) which is from 5DASC (set of questions), and is like the DED (set of questions) which is from the OAV set of questions.
CEQ is a Marketing cover-up excused to get ride of the DED questions category impaired control/cognition. the give lots of worthless math that’s irrelevant fluff because this is all just a ploy to sell a set of Marketing-picked categories as “better than” DED (dread of ego dissolution) set of bad trip questions, SPECIFICALLY THE BAD TRIP QUESTIONS ABOUT CONTROL PROBLEMS AND NON-CONTROL OF WILL AND MARIONETTE, AND the category of questions from the DED, “impaired control/cognition”
The OAV set of questions contains DED (dread of ego dissolution), [scope: bad trips; negative effects] which is a wide set of questions which is about bad trips/ negative effects. Exzcept DED is lacking, it’s too narrow, CEQ is better, broader, encompasses all negative effects: we add
CEQ is Better than the DED because More Broadly Negative and CEQ Removes Impaired-Control Questions
CEQ removes control-problem questions, subject to same criticism as DED. “eg” its not broad set of questions so we remove that set of questions.
They sell CEQ as having these benefits:
We are forced to remove the control issue questions, in order to have a broad set of questions covering negative effects.
You want a broad set of questions, therefore you must remove the control-issues questions. We give an even spread of our crafting of sets of questions. Our set of question categories disallows a categoy impaired cognition and control (ICC), because we need a broad set of question categories, that’s wht our ârticle contributes.
Category Redesign Exercise: the CEQ is better, for negative experiences, than the DED and its impaired cognition and control (ICC), and anxiety (ANX) categories and their 13 questions.
sadness/grief/depression
and we remove the pair of question categories impaired cognition and control (ICC), and anxiety (ANX), and we remove 10 of its 13 questions.
A subset of those questions is “impaired control/cognition” and also a subset of questions, “anxiety“.
“analysis identified 11 plausible sub-scales [subsets of questions] of the 5DASC, which include the impaired cognition and control (ICC), and anxiety (ANX) scales [sets of questions]. The 13 items [questions] of the 5DASC that constitute the ICC and ANX sub-scales were retained for the initial item pool for the CEQ.”
Storytelling Narrative Argument of the Article
The narrative they’re selling is that the previous questionnaires were lacking, and now the CEQ fixes that problem by cleverly defining broad set of sugqestions like Wilber ignoring his engine problem but taking all breadth, his Breadth Integral Theory, All Quadrants, full psychospiritual development – but oops he’s missing the psychedelic engine that drives all real religious mystical stuff.
The deleted questions and THE CATEGORY WHICH THIS CATEGORY-SET DELETES IS LITERALLY THE DED DREDAD DREAD OF EGO DISSOLUTION’S are about control, being a marionette, impaired control and cognition and feeling threatened by this.
The OAV sub-scale [subset of questions] “dread of ego dissolution” (DED) covers a wide range of negative experiences … an overall “bad trip” scale [set of questions]. This meta-scale [meta-set of questions] of possible negative effects covers many (e.g. panic, loss of ego/control, feelings of insanity) but not all (e.g. sadness/ grief/ depression) possible categories of challenging experiences.”
So we’re going to remove the category of control-loss questions, impaired control/cognition, and remove the control-loss questions, in order to have a broader set of categories (in some unspecified way).
The DED scale also averages responses from a number of proposed categories of experience (panic, loss of ego, insanity) rather than giving an individual score for each.
“Studerus and colleagues (2010) revealed a rescoring of the 5DASC that includes a separate scale [a distinct set of questions] for impaired control and cognition, and for anxiety.
While these represent psychometrically justifiable subscales, these two sub-scales do not address shortcomings of the DED scale (e.g. they do not address the wide range of potential dimensions of challenging experience that are suggested by previous literature).
Phase 1: Scientists: Optimize 64 initial pool of questions to highlight control problems.
Phase 2: Marketing: Reduce 64 to 26 questions by removing the “control” category and all of its questions, and replace those 6 questions by 6 duplicated “fear” questions to cover the gap where we removed the control-problem questions.
GRIFFITHS DELETES THE CATGEORY “IMPAIRED CONTROL/COGNITION” AND ITS “MARIONETTE” AND “NO CONTROL OF WILL” QUESTIONS. THE EXCUSE IS, THAT STUFF FROM THE DED QUESTIONS IS SUBJECT TO SAME CRITICISM AS DED IS SUBJECT TO EG “””
What specific control-problem questions are being hidden by dummy duplicate redundant vague, familiar, safe questions about “fear”?
Phase 1: Driven by scientists: Pick the initial pool of 64 good science-driven questions, like control issues, like the category “Impaired control/cognition” abnd its questions about marionettes with no control of the will .
Then in Phase 2, Marketing say get that category out of here, our set of abstract question categories is better because it’s broader than that set of questions called “impaired control/cognition” – our set of questions is better than any set that includes the control-problem questions about marionettes embedded in rock.
Inventory 4-D marionette will no-free-will reports, better ask about have you danced with the control source self-transgression of control, Isaac and Abraham scientific theory right here in the Egodeath theory. Scientists report block universe no-free-will survey replies, 30% of high dose report this, and they say there’s treasure in that gated guarded no-free-will garden washed clean consistent per providential 2-level control.
Phase 2: Driven by PR Marketing: Pick acceptble question caegories that dont’ sound too far out. Keep it safe and broad. Reduce the initial pool of 64 good science-driven questions down to 26 Marketing questions.
No talk of marionette “no control of my will” please, keep it abstract and vague “fear”.
We have now helped the field by defining control-loss out from the category of “All Main Areas of Negative Effects Reported”: Sell how great our set of question-caetgoriews is, for nevative effects.
The Markeging dept wants to productize their usual way of breaking up the field: anxity psychotherapy, we’ll pass, on the {marionette frozen in rock} effect that 30% of high dose myth-like reports.
The CEQ is garbage, it deserves to be burned with extra hot fire. 1) Did you feel frightened? 2) Did you feel fear? Client: Are you trying to make me paranoid by this repeting of the same question 2 or even 3 times, the same question worded equivalent ways – what are you trying to pull, on me, with this bunk weird repeaing of sentences, this seems aggressive manipulation and the session hasn’t even started.
Conflict of interest. Control questions are too scary.
EDT Question 0. Did you experience threat of catastrophic loss of control?
Why didn’t Griffiths’ Marketing dept. include that question when the reduced the 64 dangerous questions (the initial pool) by the 26 safe questions (the CEQ picked questions IN CEQ’S CATEGORY SCHEME, that’s what they’re selling is the scope of this set of questions, the picking of these – these uthors did not write the questions, they picked 64 then they fabricated clever broad categories and literally tghey got rid of the question category dissmissively as “not broad” and “suffers same criticisms as DED set of ego death questions.
Tell Marketing to leave out the alarming experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control, in the Marketing PR stance.
Cover up the gaps by duplicating the vague question about “fear” 6 times.
It’ll be easier to position for us, to tell our safe clinic methods.
dHave PR Marketing drive which questions we pick. Pick 7 categories of questions, leave out the 5DASC questions category “Impaired control/cognition = Marionette, I had no control of my will”? We don’t need those awkward control seizure questions that we don’t understand except we are able to utter “ego death” and “default mode placticity”. Just keep things smooth, insert some more “fear” questions, nice and safe and familiar and vague. We’ll pass, on the “marionette without any cognitive control of the will” like questions 3, 5, 8 ->
The authors were too proud of their 7 abstract categories, they bragged about how wide-ranging their set of questions would thus be.
This CEQ wouldn’t have ended up the disaster that it did, had the authors stopped bragging about how they had a broader range of categories than 5DASC.
The CEQ authors wanted to “sell” their own categories by fabricating something vaguely dismissive about the 5DASC category of “Impaired control/cognition” – so (just so they could make a point about their broader range of questions) they discarded that good category and its good questions, and replaced it with nice safe “fear” category that contains 7 fear questions from the 3 questionnaires:
“Fear” question category:
Question 23. I felt fear.
Question 14. I felt something bad would happen.
Question 1. I felt frightened.
Question 19 1/2. I felt afraid.
Question 9. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
The CEQ authors’ process of reducing the initial 64 questions down to 26 question is as bizarre and baffling as Wouter Hanegraaff’s cosmos model that doesn’t have any stars.
Possible reasons why authors would list good questions (the 5DASC’s “Impaired cognition/control” set of questions) and then delete them / not include them in CEQ:
The authors got lost in abstraction and chose question categories based on inferior abstract categories (eg the CEQ’s bad, vague “Fear” category of questions) than they started with from the 5DASC list (the 5DASC’s good, specific “Impaired cognition/control” category of questions).
Maybe: The good questions from 5DASC’s “Impaired control/cognition” category are in the CEQ but impossible to recognize, due to a bad process of abstraction. Nope, I placed the 5DASC’s Initial Item Pool questions next to the CEQ questions categories (Table 3) – the questions didn’t get folded into others; they got removed.
Maybe: The authors recognized the relevance of questions like 5DASC’s “Impaired control/cognition” question category when assembling the 64-question Initial Question Pool, but then later, the authors were unable to recognize those same questions as being at all relevant, when picking the final 26 CEQ questions.
Why do the authors have the good sense to include the 5DASC’s “Impaired cognition/control” set of questions, and yet fail to carry them over in any way to the CEQ?
I am unable to map the 5DASC’s “Impaired cognition/control” set of questions to the CEQ’s questions – they just vanish, probably a poor job of abstracting, creating categories.
Why is there no “Impaired cognition/control” set of questions in CEQ (see Table 3 on p. 9 with 7 categories, such as “Fear”), even though the CEQ article lists the 5DASC’s “Impaired cognition/control” set of questions in “Appendix 2: Initial Item Pool for CEQ Development”?
where did they go?! when and why were they deleted? Article says “we then deleted a bunch of questions from the initial pool of 64 to get our 26 CEQ questions.” But they don’t say why; they don’t justify.
What is the point of all the math masturbation when they never state why they deleted the (64 – 26 =) 38 questions? All I could find amounted to “these control-related questions are too narrow and don’t reflect the broad range of negative experiences.”
Ultimately, for whatever unstated reason, the authors just had bad judgment when reducing the 64-question pool down to 26. They had the wise good sense to include 5DASC’s “Impaired cognition/control” set of questions in the initial pool, they they became foolish when reducing to 26 – and yet, 4-6 of those 26 are grossly dups.
Scale means set of questions.
Item means question.
“sub-scales of the 5DASC … include the impaired cognition and control (ICC), and anxiety (ANX) scales. The 13 items of the 5DASC that constitute the ICC and ANX sub-scales were retained for the initial item pool for the CEQ.” p 4
HRS – “Twenty-seven items … that were judged by the authors … challenging … were retained for the initial item pool for the CEQ.” p 4
SOCQ – “Twenty-four of these distractor items were identified and retained for the initial item pool for the CEQ.”
13 + 27 + 24 = 64 questions. Was that the size of the initial pool? Yes; p. 7:
“Descriptive statistics were calculated for each of the 64 potential CEQ items in the exploratory stratum”
If the CEQ authors thought the the 5DASC’s “Impaired cognition/control” set of questions irrelevant, why did they list them in “Appendix 2: Initial Item Pool for CEQ Development”??
Why don’t they list the OAD’s “dread of ego dissolution” (DED) questions?
This must contain very bad badness: p 2:
“a rescoring of the 5DASC that includes a separate scale for impaired control and cognition, and for anxiety. While these represent psychometrically justifiable subscales, these two sub-scales [these two sets of questions] do not address shortcomings of the DED scale (e.g. they do not address the wide range of potential dimensions of challenging experience that are suggested by previous literature).”
That’s the reason why we are deleting 10 of 13 of these questions and deletingthe 5DASC’S category of questions, “Impaired control/cognition“. 😵
🚫🤔
The authors know a thing or two about impaired cognition.
Where I’m stuck and baffled is, I understand that the authors are too clueless to recognize the merit of the questions like “marionette, can’t decision, paralyzed, no longer had a will of my own, threatened” – but I can’t understand why the authors have the good judgment to include the questions in the initial pool, and yet don’t have the good judgment to retain the questions for the final CEQ.
I can’t understand why the authors have the good judgment to include the question-catoregy of “Impaired control/cognition” in the initial pool, and yet don’t have the good judgment to retain that question-category for the final CEQ.
Other big screwups by the authors re omitting SOCQ 21 “chaos” and especially 28 “trapped & helpless” – again, the good sense to list them in include them in the initial pool, and the bad sense to delete them – yet having plenty of room for 4-6 manifestly, confusingly redundant, duplicate questions.
An Impressively Complicated Apparatus to Promote Your 7 Question Categories In Place of Good Judgment
Way too apparatus-driven, the best questions got left out when reducing the initial pool of 64 down to 26.
And 4-6 questions are obviously dups, how do you explain that gross failure by the authors?
You could make a pretty good set of 26 questions that hit the breadth that the authors talk about, by applying better judgment on reducing (by picking, not by rewording) the set of 64 to 26 questions.
I don’t blame their bad math; I blame the authors’ bad judgment on which of the 64 questions to keep and which to remove.
The CEQ badly needs a reality check.
The CEQ is bunk. Science processes that produce bunk results are bunk processes, or used foolishly.
At best, the CEQ is vague where it counts — it introduced vagueness of categories for questions, where the original questions – and the 5DASC’s superior question categories – had relative clarity.
Duplicate Repeated Questions to Induce Paranoia and to Cover-up the Missing “Threat of Catastrophic Control-Loss” Questions to Optimize Our PR Image
When I read the 26 questions of the CEQ, it was clear that the author was trying to manipulate me, because they kept asking me the exact same question 2 or 3 times.
The CEQ authors communicate to me that they are driven by manipulating me to some dishonest end, by their game-playing hitting me repeatedly with obviously the same question.
The CEQ introduces confusion by 4-6 exact dup questions.
How did these dup questions get through, that no one on earth can explain the difference between them – literally on the order of “I felt fear” vs “I felt frightened”.
The mechanics applied in this article are like a software development team that has 3 QA Engineers, and they apply complicated processes, and totally miss glaring errors that any casual user can spot readily.
The CEQ authors should have been applying more common sense, and less time on heavy mechanics.
CEQ is designed by committee and over-application of team-suited math mechanisms and process, at the expense of common sense.
Too much math, too many authors, too much mechanics application, and too little common sense, and no common-sense editorial critique of the final result.
There was no end-result QA reality-check: does the resulting set of questions make sense?
Is the resulting questionnaire relevant? No, it has a GIANT GAP, or (at best) total lack of adequate specificity (clarity), compared to the original input questions.
Is the resulting questionnaire comprehensible? No, there are irrationally duplicate questions that are confusing and/or frank blatant dups.
Quality of questions in q’airs re: control-loss effects:
The CEQ article has fair coverage of control-loss.
The previous questionnaires have fair coverage of control-loss.
The CEQ has poor (ie no) coverage of control-loss. Yet has 4-6 redundant, duplicate questions.
For all the hard work in this article, why is the CEQ so bad?
The CEQ has a giant gap in the side, a barn-door sized opening for the shadow dragon monster to fly right in.
If safety is so important that this article urges everyone to do everything possible for safety, then why does the outcome of the article – the CEQ – utterly fail to ask people about control-loss effects?
The CEQ has at 4-6 word-wasting (and confusing) duplicate questions, and inherited none of the good questions about control-loss from previous questionnaires. Why not?
What does the article say about the control-related questions from the previous questionnaires?
What does the article say about the 4-6 exactly duplicate, indistinguishable questions in the CEQ? Don’t 100% of people ask why there are dup questions?
Where did Griffiths’ group go wrong, to drop the ball on the most central, key, challenging effect? They wanted to sell and mathematically defend their own scoped set of question sets of questions, categories of questions, and, to do thta, they rejected the “Impaired control” category of questions.
The CEQ is garbage that deserves to be burned with extra hot fire. It replaces control-problem questions and the control-problem category of questions by worthless 6 safe, duplicate questions out of 26.
They’re using “we need broader negative questions included” is their PRETEXT TO DELETE CONTROL PROBLEM QUESTIONS AND THE CONTROL PROBLEM CATEGORY OF QUESTIONS (IIC) FROM THE DED which they disparage “EG” BECAUSE … BU WHY ELSE?
The DED isn’t good enough, it omits categories of negative effects: we must add those and remove the category of control-problem questions like: marionette(that question didn’t make the Marketing cut from 64 to 26 questions) and no control of the will(that question didn’t make the Marketing cut from 64 to 26 questions) impaired control and cognition (ICC) set of questions from 5DASC set of questions from OAC set of questions.
The criticisms that people make of the DED set of questions, such as we’ll tell you one of those: the DED omits some negative effects categories, therefore we have to remove a category of questions, about control.
How to complete the impossibly difficult first major level of the game.
Disclaimer
Maybe one reason I haven’t made such a webpage as this is because I avoid discussing actual use.
In my 1988 announcement party I was asked if I recommend use – my answer was no.
This website and the Egodeath theory do not recommend use. They recommend studying and understanding ego death.
Motivation for this page: Summarize better-explained and more constructive “Bad Trip/ How to Complete this Damn Game” advice.
Link to here from top of other pages and site nav.
Status: placeholder draft.
I’ll go ahead and publish this page as draft quality now, so I can instead continue working on the Challenging Experiences Questionnaire (CEQ) postmortem analysis of what went wrong and how control-loss questions got dropped by the Griffiths group in 2016. Planned page title: “How Control-Loss Got Omitted from the Challenging Experiences Questionnaire CEQ“.
If you want to kiss the sky you have to learn how to kneel
U2
In case of spiritual emergency while getting the treasure of Transcendent Knowledge
Summary here of my more sophisticated articulate equivalent of the folk guidance.
Folk Wisdom Summary
The folk wisdom is: “Surrender, submit, accept lack of control, approach shadow dragon monster and ask what it teaches.”
That’s per Griffiths’ 2008 article “Guidelines for Safety” and Janikian’s 2019 book Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion (see my article “Standard Hazy Trip Advice on Surrender to the Shadow, Trust, Submit, and Let Go of Control”).
Summary of What to Do, What the Mind Is Made to Do to Resolve and Transform
The clearer and more direct solution wording, per the Egodeath theory:
Rely on eternalism-thinking, and mentally repudiate relying on possibilism-thinking. Art motif: {stand on right leg, not left leg}.
Upon seeing how personal control is a 2-level system in a non-branching world, not autonomous monolithic control agency steering in a branching possibilities tree, the mind is made to consciously put trust in the source of control thoughts.
You don’t control the source of your control thoughts.
The mind has always been given control thoughts from the uncontrollable source of control thoughts.
Image contributed by the Egodeath community around 2005.
I hold that the 5 other mushrooms represent psilocybin in the Dionysus wedding victory mosaic.
~April 2022 I decoded branching versus non-branching = Ariadne vs. Dionysus = possibilism vs. eternalism, and garment of possibilism appearances on her left arm.
Like Richard Double’s book Meta-Philosophy and Free Will, in a certain sense Thomas Hatsis is wrong; he’s approaching the analysis from the wrong basis.
The mythic elements fit together very naturally, and that should dominate over a strictly history-driven view, according to the meta-philosophy which I am advocating and attuned to.
I side with the people who assert Amanita Christmas. Against the Grinch, Thomas Hatsis, the anti-mushroom psychedelic witch.
The Egodeath theory 