As of immediately I am retracting everything I said about if swapping your gender to match your body were possible I would have done it.  Here is why:

I had a scary incident yesterday triggered by an organic substance administered through the lungs.  I was sitting there and the effects of the stuff were quite scary.  The only way I could describe it was waking up after a long sleep.  I was horrifed by what had become of my body and what I was wearing.  I had, for a few hours, managed to swap genders.  It led to the most intense dysphoria I had ever felt in my life and the worst part was I couldn't tell anyone.  I was in the more or less right body but no one could know that.  Transition was but a distant memory, like the memory of a film of my life.  I felt as if someone else's [male] personality had been loaded into my brain.  I was still conscious of it and it was still me only I wasn't me.  I, driven by this personality, began to wonder how I would live the rest of my life.  It would be miserable having to live as a female.  It was almost worse than dysphoria.  I would be forced to live like this even though I actually had the body, albeit slightly altered, that was meant for how I was supposed to be.  I didn't know if I would feel like that forever or for the next few hours and that was the really scary part.

Fortunately I'm back to my normal female self.  If anything this incident has led me to say that yes, I am a woman.  I don't want to identify as male because I know what it is like and it's literally not me. 

Maddie,
  What were you smoking? Uh, never mind.  Keep off of that stuff!  This sounded like those Haight-Ashbury acid trips some members of my generation took! 
  Joelene

You need to send that substance to me immediately for, um, further testing!

That is why I don't partake of ... ah ... herbal remedies.  I do not like to not be in control.  OK guys would not care by I do.  You have to send that stuff to me for ... ah ... immediate disposal.

The stuff really isn't the point at least it's not supposed to be.  That was a really scary few hours and it got me to realize that I don't want to identify as male.  It's scary.

Why would you identify as male?  Are you thinking you are on of them Transexgimals?  FtM?

hehe

Too scary, Maddie.  Definitely don't do that stuff again.  Be comfortable as the woman you are.

I don't think I ever will again.  The odd thing is that it's not the first time I've done it (I did go to college you know).  It was a nightmare.  It really was like waking up from a long sleep and realizing what had happened to my body while I'd been away.  I really don't know how to describe it other than that.  I was conscious of everything I'd done and everything that was going on at the moment but I was being someone else, someone [male] who wasn't me.  And this male me didn't like what the regular me had done to my body.

I know it sounds confusing but it was and still is scary.  And having had that experience, I can definitely say this now: If there were a magical pill that could make your gender match the body you have, don't take it. 

Please be careful with any intoxicants Maddie. I have a feeling you may have created something which might not be useful, later.

Cannabis, for example, can create quite astonishing highs which bring a lot of pleasure. But I think I'm absolutely correct in sayiny that, once you have one scarey period, (the horrors, paanoia, whatever you wish), then it is much more likely to come again.

I stopped using any intoxicants, including, (lastly), alcohol, in 1996, because of this. I know that my own experiences are not unusual.

Our brains are not designed to have tricks played upon them. They need stability. And you're such a nice girl, I hate to see a really sad avitar photo.

Don't you find the particular nature of the trip to be oddly specific?  Or am I reading too much into it?

I can completely relate to that experience. That experience is part of the reason that I live in a haze for 7 years straight. More often then not that haze would making me feel more "normal". At the time it was a coping mechanism for myself so that i didn't have to face the reality of my inner self. Feb 9 of 2008 was the last time that I "inhaled". Since then I have come to realize that was the time that my transition started to happen, concious or unconcious. But I would like to echo the sentimant of other people. DO NOT SMOKE!

<3 Teagan

I think we naturally develop a persona to fill the gap between our real identity and our physical identity, and by smoking, maybe we disorient our coherient, normal personality, that our mind digs up the one that we left for dead by transitioning...
I remember that when I first finally decided I needed to take care of this, I didn't smoke, but by male side gave resistance before it seemed to die.

Kia Ora,

  A few years ago there was a report on the effects of ganja [or Jah Herb as some would say]put out by the NZ government... Now the weirdest thing about this report was it stated marijuana had a "feminising"  affect upon male brains...

Now how much of this was actually proven, is questionable, but I guess the government was looking at every possible ways of reducing marijuana use especially in "red-bloodied" males and what better way than to tell them they would become effeminate[or worse still impotent] if they continued to smoke it...

However it would seem [from personal experience] that marijuana tends to amplify whatever it is one is feeling at the time, so if one is slightly paranoid then whamo full blown paranoia sets in...

I personally no longer partake in the herb, I've found a better and much safer, healthier, and cheaper kind of high called "meditation"...

Maddie, if you want to understand where things are at try meditation...

Metta Zenda        

Quote from: Zenda on May 16, 2011, 12:33:49 AM
I personally no longer partake in the herb, I've found a better and much safer, healthier, and cheaper kind of high called "meditation"...

Maddie, if you want to understand where things are at try meditation...   

Quoted for truth - I've found that using meditative techniques it is possible to enter just about any chemically induced state - the drugs are just a short cut.

I would be interested to know privately what the intoxicant you were exposed to was though. These things are often quite specific in the brain area that they affect and so knowing what it was might shed some really useful knowledge on how dysphoria arises.

(oh and just to say Maddie that I haven't forgotten our little science project - I've just been rather pre-occupied with builders in my house this week. Hopefully in another two weeks I'll be properly back on stream.)

Quote from: Maddie Secutura on May 15, 2011, 09:42:21 PM
Don't you find the particular nature of the trip to be oddly specific?  Or am I reading too much into it?

No, I don't. You took a chance and got hurt.

You have been warned.

Our brains don't like to be fooled with. I've worked with people suffering from various psychoses, where their sense played silly tricks upon them. There was a good reason these people were in hospital.

Now people will tell you, or imply it, that the reason these chemicals are banned is because the government doesn't want you to enjoy them or get the insights that they can deliver.

Rubbish. The reason these substances are banned is because they harm you. They screw with your brain.

OK?

Quote from: spacial on May 16, 2011, 02:51:47 PM
The reason these substances are banned is because they harm you. They screw with your brain.

With respect that doesn't entirely work as an argument when it has been widely publicised that the science of relative harm is frequently being ignored. For example there is very good scientific evidence that Alcohol is vastly more harmful and addictive than many of the chemicals which are banned.

In my opinion, all too frequently, the reason why these things are banned is, at least in part, because far too many humans have not yet learned that they do not have the right or indeed the duty to protect others from their own poor life choices. Basically in an ideal world the law should exist to prevent one person harming another. However when that person is only harming themselves I do not believe the law should be involved.

That's a big ol' can of worms I'm staying about 3000 miles away from.

With regard to the original post, something I'm curious about, is how were your memories and stuff affected, like... the situations from your past you remember yourself as female in, were these also overwritten? Or did they stay the same?

Quote from: Sephirah on May 16, 2011, 03:45:41 PM
That's a big ol' can of worms I'm staying about 3000 miles away from.

With regard to the original post, something I'm curious about, is how were your memories and stuff affected, like... the situations from your past you remember yourself as female in, were these also overwritten? Or did they stay the same?

Thank you.  Substance abuse was not the main point of this topic and I am fully aware of harmful side effects.

At the time my memories of my female self were almost like remembering an episode of my life; the memory of watching it happen with no control.  Nothing was overwritten, just subdued.  My pretransition memories, however became sharper.  The funny thing about that is lately my pretransition memories are a blur.  I can appreciate the fact that I was there but I don't remember being that way.  Once you wholly realize your gender, you can't remember being any other way.  That night I was so completely overtaken by this masculinity that I couldn't remember, and could barely believe, I had ever beenn female.  It was a mega identity crisis.  It mainly got me thinking that maybe there is a part of me that belongs to my original unaltered body.

Quote from: Laura91 on May 16, 2011, 03:09:08 PM
If that were true, then why is alcohol so widely available?

And to others.

Alcohol is a very harmful drug, though claims that it is on a par with most of the illegals substances available are not true.

Most of the illegal substances are created to be quite potent. That is how those who sell them make their money. Along with the lies they associate with them.

But much more importantly is that alcohol has been available and used, for centuaries. In our part of the world, these are widely used as part of the culture. Banning these has been attempted, most notably in the US. It led to widespread disrespect for the law. Law, incidently, any law, can only function when there is general acceptance.

Other drugs, including the ancient ones, such as cannabis, opium and the various folk drugs, magic mushrooms, were never widely available or used, in this part of the world. Hence controlling and banning these was relatively more straightfoward.

As a comparison, some countries in SE Asia have a long tradition of cannabis and opium use. Consequently, it has been much more difficut to supporess their use in those areas.

Now I strongly suggest you forget the hype over alcohol. It is also a very dangerous drug. It happens to work is a different way to opiods and canabinoids.

Its legality is because it is almost impossible to restrict.

The argument that adults should be free to make their own judgements is valid, of course. But the issue here is the effect of these drugs upon the psyche of those using them.

Many people, it is true, do appear to suffer few ill effects from any drug, while some suffer quite terribly. The point is that Maddie has had a seriously distorting experience. This is her wake up call to stop putting dangerous chemicals into her brain.

Quote from: rejennyrated on May 16, 2011, 03:38:51 PM
.......For example there is very good scientific evidence that Alcohol is vastly more harmful and addictive than many of the chemicals which are banned.

There is certainly a case to argue for that. It seems to be a matter of fact that alcohol is at least as dangrous.

But the problem is actually enforcing a ban.

I love how it was the method rather than the message that everyone jumped on here.  Pragmaticists to the end I see.  Tell me, would you smack a heart monitor when it flatlines because the instrumentation has to be off? [/sarcasm] 

Seriously though it was more the implication of what occured rather than how it came to happen.  The whole point of this little exercise was that I now know that if switching genders were possible, you shouldn't want to do it.  I did for a small stretch of time and it was somewhat frightning.  Hence the title: "You Don't Want to Swap Genders."