Pheromones and acting: betanol and P96 in Strasberg acting classes

It’s rumoured that pheromones have been used by certain stage and movie actors and there have been some reports by members of this forum on the impact of their phero cloud on live performances.

I recently started taking Strasberg acting classes part-time - one thing that is emphasized in this method is to be able to recognize and act on the impulses that one feels as the character. Also to make first explicit and then tacit the unconscious programming of characters.

My mone experiments in this situation have so far been limited, but betanol certainly seems to be useful in amping up the intensity, intimacy and connection (whether sexual or otherwise).

P96 also seems to reduce the anxiety from performing in front of others. There is still arousal, but its manageable rather than being overwhelming.

I would love to hear anyone else’s experiences.

This sounds really interesting. I have to do some public speaking and media stuff, and anything that might help to reduce the crippling nervousness I always get would be fan-flipping-tastic.

My ears are open! :slight_smile:

May

May, I am a performer for a living, sometimes performing in stadiums with famous musicians, and one thing that I found works REALLY well is betablockers like propranolol. 10mcgs, and I am invincible. No knees shaking, nothing. It totally blocks that nervous response. I don’t know what I would do without it. Now, for acting, I don’t know because this stuff makes you very cool and collected, but I don’t know about invoking emotions while on it. This is strictly for nerves..

Hey hotmama! That info is really helpful. Is that 10 mg or do you really mean 10 mcg?

Ridiculously cool post, Quirk.

Strasberg method is very interesting because it mimics real life - real life toils and troubles, biting into the real MEAT of living. The pheromonal potential of blends like IH or A314 can be amazing, especially if you want to tease out some underlying expression. Makes for an awesome performance. (IH is a crowd favorite around here - Hollywood for those unawares - for that reason.)

Instant Shine is also very snappy, especially in improv situations. The pace quickens and brightens, and people noticably synergize. Everyone is on everyone else’s level.

I haven’t seen a lot of my actors around here with putative pheros yet (aside rom putatives that are already in mainline products).

Report more as your course evolves!

That sounds good Hot Mama. Is it just one 10mg tablet you take?

May

I’ve been performing and speaking in front of live audiences so long pheromones don’t make any difference for me with or without. I’m pretty fearless and can put myself in the right mood and frame of mind with a few moments of focus. However I wear pheromones for social enhancement before and after the performance. Also, I try to wear products that tend to relax other performers.

It would be nice if they worked on the audience–a whole other level of control–but piping pheromones into the AC systems isn’t practical…

licorice root tabs or tea helps some with stage fright. St. John’s Wort is helpful to some as well (if you can stand the increased skin sensitivity).

OTOH… good acting means dealing with discomfort(s)… often the best acting moments are the one when the audience wants to jump out of its skin… you don’t want to be too relaxed on stage, right on the edge of something is much better… it is often said that when a mid-career pro loses the edge is when it become too second nature and they can’t shake the blahs… and a (high) percentage of actors are weird enough as it is… :open_mouth: …

Sorry, I have to disagree. While this statement is certainly true for less trained individuals, a real pro can turn it on and off like a light regardless of the situation or prior emotion sate. Indeed many musicians do their best work in the sterile confines of recording studios while others can only shine in the high energy of live performance. It really depends on the individual performer.

P83 may be useful as some kind of performance enhancer at least with regard to dancing and music. No personal experience with it in these situations but see the posts below… It might be great for acting as well who really knows until more people try it at low and high doses in these situations…

1 week of p83
Tacitus (12 February 2007):
“…then back to… P83, IN moderation, “buried deep in the mix”… can put a focused, attentive, totally in the moment quality… so it might be great for performers too, say if you wanted a band to practice hard and get their gig super tight you might balance P83 for precision and Estratetraenol for groove…”

1 week of p83
toilofday (12 February 2007):
Thanks for the info tacitus. Do you feel that p83 has a creative side to it as I have noticed. Your comment on using it for a band practice seems perfect for this one. (Heavy rock/metal)

1 week of p83
MarkL (11 March 2007):
"2.5 mu P83 I applied to chin and inhaled during the spray. Just one spray over a mostly depleted base of A314 mutant and Instant Shine.

After about ten minutes, I started making the small muscular adjustments that remind me of trying to clear my sinuses and nasal passages when taking off in an airplane.

Except I was flexing and extending my temporoparietal muscles, the auriculares .. and some of the jaw and throat muscles as well: clearing my ears.

The next few hours riding around the city on buses and trains I was attuned to the sounds around me. Perhaps it was a shift in attention, or perhaps a real ratchet in auditory capacity – I was able to get a sense of the tone of people around me who were conversing, even when they spoke at a murmur (or I felt I did!) I seemed to have an empathetic understanding of their … “vocal intent”, if that makes any sense.

I repeated the P83 application about 8 hours later – one spray – and felt comfortable in my local bar sitting back and listening to the buzz around me. I felt I got some of the nuances of the music (videos) playing in the bar – more than I would ordinarily have picked up on – and could suss out the quality of laughter of various people there. I was able to rapidly shift my attention to tune into a short utterance from across the room, then jump back to two or three other conversations.

While I could hear words if I wanted to, I wasn’t eavesdropping – I ignored the words, for the most part, and tried to just listen to tone and rhythm.

I wondered if I’d shift into non-semantic audition (when listening to a quality of a person’s voice and you shift into a mode where although you hear the words, you only hear the words as if they were nonsense sounds; you can pick a word and repeat it until it begins to lose it’s meaning-carrying value, until it’s just a sound).

I didn’t, but I’ll make a conscious intention to go there if I can when I try P83 next.

In summary: high auditory alertness, flexibility, and perhaps even enhanced sensitivity, preceded by face and throat “gestures” or “exercises” related to “opening ears”…
PS: I had P83 / 2.5 mcg in a to-go with no additional scent. I get a hint of a rotting/aging meat aroma from P83, but I stop sensing it after a minute."

P83… a nice little empathogen
SwingerMD (5 September 2006):
"Second day on using p83 here. The feeling that I get from this one and the vibe that I get from other people can be summed up by part of the lyrics from a song:

What you want.
Baby I got.
What you need.
Do you know I got it?
A’ll I’m askin’
Is for a little respect when you come home (just a little bit).

Yesturday, I wore about 60 mcg along with four drops of Pheros at a dance. Same thing today as I was running around doing errands. On Suday, I had a very long conversation with the ballroom cook on new laptop computers. She wanted my expert opinion on what new computers to get. Nothing noticable from any of the follows that I danced with yesturday, but I got approached by a few aspiring photographers (I’m a well known photographer on the swing dance scene.), wanting to know my opinion on equipment, techniques, etc . . . .

As for today, I went into the Bose store to ask for replacement ear pads for my Triports. The service rep began by telling me how I can go to the website to order new earpads. After telling me this he said, “You know, on second thought . . . it’s my last day here . . . we normally don’t do this, but I’ll just get you some new ones.”

Outside the mall I ran into a couple of swing dance follows that I knew and a local jazz saxaphonist (playing on the sidewalk). Within a few min, I found myself dancing with one of them amids the Labor Day traffic on the sidewalk. I was even asked if I teach dancing lessons (I don’t.). All in all, a very unusal day. I’ll try this out on my co-workers tomorrow.

-SwingerMD"

P83… a nice little empathogen
Carrie (18 November 2006):
"We were out dancing last night and I wore 50 mcg of P83 with Serge Lutens Fleurs d’Oranger; no other -pheromones. On the way there, W (my husband) was annoyed with the other drivers on the freeway and his own aggressive driving style (his usual M.O.) really bugged me - I felt more bothered by it than usual. I felt fairly unconnected with the crowd, observing them coolly and critically. They were mostly white folks in their 20s and weren’t feeling the band (10-piece soul/funk/R&B) the way we were so the giant dance floor was all ours until about 11 when it filled up (I suppose a lot of them won’t dance until their blood alcohol level reaches a certain point!)

The highlight of the evening came later on and can’t be attributed entirely to -pheromones of course, but they may have played some role, who knows? I really adore this band and was thrilled when late in the evening the leader (K) approached us and offered W a job in a new band he’s forming. We’ve talked to him once before so he knew W is getting out of his current band and looking for a new one. K talked about this new smaller group having a different focus, being all about “the beauty” and “leaving a lot of space” - he was speaking W’s language. They love the same material and K knows a lot of the guys W has played with before, but I think it’s kind of unusual to get offered this kind of gig without ever hearing W play a note!"

P83… a nice little empathogen
Carrie (19 November 2006):
"…I do believe W was acted on by the P83. He is very permeable to environmental influence, sensitive and psychic, and he responds quite a bit to my vibe, whether it’s pheromonally amped or not. I think that he does have a naturally aggressive personality but it’s been damped down by circumstances and typically has only come out under pressure. For example, he was bullied as a kid, but morphed into a monster on the football field - all that adolescent rage found the perfect outlet!

**On ****Experimental Pheromone P83 - Alpha A314

I think the pills come in doses of 10, 20 or 40 mgs. If you buy the 40mg dose, split the pills in quarters and try one quarter to see how it affects you. I take it 1/2 hour before I need it, and voila, I am a thick-skinned elephant :smiley:

You need to read a lot of information about it to make sure you’re not doing something that would react with your body/other medication in a wrong way. The brand name for the drug is inderall (maybe different spelling). It’s a prescription medicine, but you can buy it online from other sources, I think. I’d try to get a prescription and go the legal route as you don’t know where those internet drugs are coming from. The doctors will prescribe this as a migraine preventative method, or for performance anxiety.

HTH!
-hmama

Well, I’m around about the realest pros in the industry, and get to watch them on the crime dramas, etc… nothing kicks like watching your class buds do their bit… a good one can switch a level of the craft on and off just like that, up to a point that is, then they come in and try to work past “the wall”… I don’t know what “the wall” is, differs for each party… skills… passion… desperation… so often I hear about how much better one works when one is working hungry, working to get the rent paid…

I agree though, iIve seen some types who can create a perfect illusion of being in a scene while they working solo on camera… that ruined the movies for me because now I visualize a light box with a guy rolling his eyes around, just so…

Actors talk about their “process”…

Okay so P96 definitely seems to reduce anxiety. And it really is a bad idea wearing too much none during an improv exercise (my mistake).

(The guys want to kill each other but repress the impulse meaning nothing very interesting happens. The girls in boy/girl pairs don’t exactly feel comfortable with the background scream of none. The teacher gets furious because for some strange reason he is feeling irritable and he has the justification that people seem to be letting boundaries hold them back).

TAC and hilarity. I wore 25mcg to class (as well as several other mones including lots of P90 and betanol). A confrontation between a wife and mistress (onetime friends) turned barely controllably giggly. As tacitus mentioned, it’s hard to predict what will trigger the TAC hilarity effect.

Feedback was full and frank… maybe that is the p90 or betanol.

I wonder if P96 might be a little volatile.

25mcg TAC + 1 spray Instant Jerk = water fight during improv exercise (and general clownish chaos). Afterwards one of the girls reported feeling at the start like she wanted to punch someone. Aggression channeled in a comedic direction, I suppose.

Think of all the new behavioral channels… being unstuck from a fixed A response or B response…

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beautious mankind is!

I was reminded (having tried Shine a couple of days last week but omitted it today) that Shine/TAA def seems to impair one’s sensitivity to others’ emotional state and ability to recall past emotional states and is probably best avoided when acting. I wonder if Shine also covers up to an extent behavioural (and perhaps emotional) responses to none.

Nice thread. It would be great to know what to put on for performing.

Gegogi: As a guitarist playing my own material, I’ve recently noticed a problem with stage performance, where the more difficult technical aspects of my playing suffer (speed, accuracy). It’s as if strength and control drains from my hands, and I can’t do half the stuff I did yesterday and the day before in rehearsal. I didn’t have that problem as a sideman, and I don’t have that problem once I get warmed up. Sometimes I don’t have the time to rehearse for two hours before every performance. Have you found anything helps with this, or is it mainly just years of experience?

so… acting workshops a pretty good way to understand the impact on group dynamics of modulating one’s mone sig. I accidentally ODed on none today (1 spray of Instant Jerk without the usual Shine etc softeners). Tense mood in class generally, people were nervous and dropped things.

Intro scene that sets context for events later in the play where brutish male character rapes the mixed-up female. They decided to investigate it in a way where he makes advances towards her and she has to fend him off. So it’s entirely her responsibility - male actor has to actively try to make it with her in the rehearsal. Male actor reported on nasty energy that he was feeling develop. Hard to fully describe, but intense not too pretty vibe to the whole thing. I suppose this sort of impact is felt all the time in a high none situation - just that people aren’t as attuned to the impulses.