Where does consciousness reside? We haven’t answered that question yet. Perhaps somewhat in the brain, and somewhat in the blood.
I have very thick, type A+ blood. Once, when I was donating blood in the 1990s, the nurse turned to me and said: If your bag doesn’t start to fill more quickly, we’re going to have to throw it away.
But is my blood truly thick, or could it be thin blood that is moving very slowly? If excessively thick blood were moving too quickly, would it present as “too thick” or “too thin”? I am interested in an underappreciated variable in human health: perception.
When you spray a spritz of perfume, you notice the fragrance for a few moments, then it seems to vanish. Not for me. I have noticed I do not perceive fragrance the way most people do. For me, it lingers much longer, and is much stronger. All my life—but especially since living in a house in upstate New York that had a hidden mold problem—I have had issues with fragrance sensitivity.
It is as if I am spending longer inside each discrete moment of time.
There is schizophrenia in my family, on my father’s side. I am interested in the role the thickness of the blood may play a role in mental disorders. Here is an interesting article about coagulation and mental disorders. Should we consider the thickness of the blood and its possible relationship to the speed of time?
I can tell that I am working with a lot of dopamine. I have an aunt with Parkinson’s. On my genetics report, I have multiple double mutations at MAO-A genes (C42794T, G3638A, T89113C). With dopamine, I can slow time down—up to a point. But if I slow time down too much, the moments start to split too quickly—to branch away from me.
I have the same experience with micro dose LSD. I tried micro dose LSD to treat migraine—it worked—but I noticed it also altered my experience of time.
My mother has Alzheimer’s. Often it seems as if her experience of time is askew. She is more stationary in time; she is back where the perfume was first sprayed, whereas the rest of us have moved forward.
It feels as if my blood has to maintain a very specific density, but it is a “net” density, if you will, that is being achieved in conjunction with the speed of time.
When my experience of time is altered, when I am lingering in each discrete moment “too long,” the degree to which I can do this is limited. If I deviate from the speed of time by too great a differential, I can feel trapped. If I slow time down too much (dopamine), after a while I begin to feel trapped beneath a false floor. If I speed time up too much (serotonin), after a while I begin to feel trapped above a false ceiling.
As I slow time down, it also oscillates more quickly. Sodium and calcium cross the cell membrane at an accelerated rate. But there are limits to how quickly or slowly sodium and calcium can change places.
If I slow down the background with dopamine, the foreground oscillates quickly. If I speed up the background with serotonin, the foreground oscillates slowly. I am interested in the speed of time in disease.
