Nutrition and PCE/ASC

Since almost ALL food & substances influence our state of consciousness, it would make sense to avoid some types of foods/drinks in order to experience pure consciousness (PCE).

Any insight on this from you or from the Actualism website?

Richard smokes cigs so you could try that.

But seriously, I haven’t seen much on the site regarding nutrition.

You can look for more specific references on the AFT site but here are some comments about it:

Frequently Asked Questions – Body and Personality Change?

Mailing List 'AF' Respondent No. 53

Whatever nutrition keeps you alive lol.

Thank you, I will have a look.

It doesn’t particularly matter. You could have a PCE while being seasick on a boat (as happened to me).

Of course, to the extent that feeling good makes it more likely to have a PCE, then… … eat the foods and ingest the substances that lead most to you feeling good! For example, binging on junk food can lead to feeling unwell can have a detriment to your emotional state, so maybe doesn’t make sense to do it a lot… on the other hand, in that case I’d say it’s more the impulse that led one to overeat that is the issue than the eating per se.

And it’s definitely against the spirit of the thing to put moral impositions on what you can or can’t eat – that does not sound fun at all! I do love myself a good hamburger and I will and do eat one when the fancy strikes me :yum: .

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I absolutely agree regarding any moral impositions. :slight_smile: For me, the key is to observe how one feels after consuming various substances & food.

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Sugar and alcohol seem to be the most mood altering substances for me personally. I have been working on my binge eating of sugar a lot recently, finally making some good progress. Alcohol is weird one, sometimes it would amplify my mood so if cheerful or angry it would amp it up, but sometimes it would cut a mood, so if anxious it would make me feel calm. Sugar makes me feel high but there is usually a come down plus associated feelings of guilt regarding gluttony, etc. As I rarely just had a reasonable portion of sugar, I would over do it.

Other stuff doesn’t really affect my mood but my body, like being lethargic, unenergetic or uncomfortable like gassy, lol.

I completely agree with the sugar and it must be noted that the effects of sugar & alcohol are surprisingly similar to the body system.

What about caffeine/cocoa? There is a brilliant piece from Michael Pollan regarding the coffee and its effect on the society. It seems that it is a substance that indeed alters our state of consciousness.

I have never really noticed any emotional affect from these. Caffeine if I ever had in large quantities sometimes used to accelerate my heart rate or help keep me alert/awake but I never noticed any emotional change.

Personally I have noticed nowadays I do not tolerate coffee on the morning which is super odd cos I used to require a strong one to be able to function at all.

Now it seems it puts me into too high of a gear straight away, this can lead to some sort of anxiety situation.

Interesting, I don’t drink it anymore either. Unless somebody randomly makes for me. I usually go for the predictable cup of tea, such an English cliché.

I used to be a heavy coffee drinker and then once I stopped for several weeks and had one strong brew of coffee I could really feel that it affects my consciousness. Maybe it’s a personal thing, the bottom line is that it does have influence on my perceptions and cognitive functioning.

Interesting. What does it do? Can you elaborate on the changes?

Yeah, it kind of narrowed my perspective/perception & my thoughts were “racing” faster and there is this urge to do something. It’s not possible to relax.

I have heard other people describe the not relaxing scenario. I don’t think I have ever drank it regularly or in high quantity enough to have experienced that. Additionally, as an experiencer of anxiety regularly over the years, I might have not noticed lol.

I’ve recently changed to decaf as well, that’s interesting