Treeple

My brother lives in Albuquerque, town of his birth, where the air is too dry to cause any asthma flare-ups, and where he can say "I ate at that diner!" for every diner in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. 

He knows many meth addicts, because yes, they do have a lot of meth there in New Mexico, and he's always giving me little peeks into the world of addiction. Most recently, he told me about "Treeple."

Per Dave, and that link to Urban Dictionary, Treeple are the shadowy people who live in the trees and follow paranoid meth addicts.

It's odd to think that a drug causes reliable, specific hallucinations. I know I've read that people who take ketamine share a hallucination in which they see tiles and then fall down a hole and meet God. Like, "Have some K, say hi to God for me."

I have questions. If you take Ketamine and Meth at the same time, which hallucination do you have? Or do you have both? Do the tree people follow you down the hole where you all have lunch with God, until they start whispering to God and He turns on you? Does the ketamine trigger the hippocampus, hence religion, hence God, and if so where is the part of the brain in charge of tiles? And where is the paranoid lobe, or the tree neurons?

All of this sounds a little like the urban legends about people on LSD trying to fly. I don't know how much to believe. Let me know if you've seen God or Treeple, or if you have a friend who has.

Comments

[KC]

Apparently-standard-issue dreams are also a weird thing - a la crumbling teeth? (I don't think I've actually had that one, though.)

And alcohol-induced hallucinations were, for about 40 years in the late 1800s/early 1900s, reported in fiction and journalism and memoir to be almost entirely animals in unnatural colors. (not just pink elephants, but definitely including pink elephants)

I'd suspect a mixture of non-reporting from people who don't experience these specific things, plus primed expectations before entering an altered state (like seeing a movie before going to sleep: you're putting those thigs in there, extra-easy for your brain to drag out), fuzzy remembrances of previous trips/imaginings (to help out with cognitive bias about hallucinations/dreams you've already had - if you remembered you felt like someone was following you, then of course, looking backwards, it could easily be treeple), and, yes, some specific prodding of some neurochemicals or areas of the brain such that things can be close *enough* maybe (feeling like something's following you seems very likely to be an area that can be specifically activated, given that specific thing showing up in a few different cases).

I mean, also there is peer pressure. I'd imagine that a Tough Guy, whose trip was that he thought he was the Queen of England's assistant on a hat-choosing mission, might feel the need to stretch that to match/beat other peoples' adventures, yes?

[TheQueen]

KC - oh, teeth are children. Teeth falling out =having children, crumbling teeth=sick children. I am not afflicted by tooth dreams = never gad children.

[KC]

A friend of mine has also never had children and has had crumbling teeth dreams, so I am uncertain.

[theQueen]

KC - Hmmm. i don't know then, unless it's a reaction to the supreme court and crumbling rights?