toejam
Bluelighter
First off, a definition of the SPAK experience. Well; Shrooms Pills And Ketamine, in short. I will admit that making up various cool little words out of the available letters has been a major motivation in trying out various combinations (I recommend a true SPAK, And replaced by Acid, or the SPANKing; 'N' for nexus, 2-CB, or nitrous). Nevertheless, SPAK remains my all time favourite combination for anything from introspective delving to full-on raving (although I have never tried it at a large gathering). The ancient/neo-shamanic properties of mushrooms and ketamine respectively, seem to compliment each other perfectly whilst synchronising into beautiful wave states with the MDMA.
Anywho, anyone who has read psychonaut65's accounts of his mushroom parties will be familiar with the location of this particular journey; a plateau on a beautiful forest-laden ridgeway that is situated next to a clearing occupied by 'stone circles' or patterns that form mazes. More on these later.
What had been planned as a massive SPAK session that befitted closure to our year of college had turned into a depressing array (at this point in time funding whole nights of substance cocktails for select penniless friends was something I was generally accustomed to, simply out of a desire to create a more cohesive 'journey' experience). Firstly, I had been unable to pick up any k as my supplier was out. This meant I could not earn any money and so our journey started out with five double-cherry ecstasy tablets (of ambiguous effectiveness) and about 35-40g of thai cubensis (I was not about to cut into ketamine funds).
After bitching and whining about ketamine for a long time my business associate gave me his last wrap containing little over a quarter gram. Even though I was eternally thankful, I knew this pathetic amount would somehow make everything worse but I was happy that at least a SPAK session could occur. Technically at least.
And so D and I went into town, I bought the mushrooms and some vinyl, went our separate ways for preparation and then obtained a lift from my band mate S; laden with tent, liquids, the all essential soundsystem and a bounce in our step. D is one of my best friends, my oldest partner in crime (he introduced me to marijuana and we have shared almost every substance we have ever encountered since) and my definitive SPAK companion. There has not been a SPAKing without me and D. Even you people reading this who've SPAKed; we were there.
We set up camp about 5, switched on the CD player (Dreadzone; some pre-Glade festival anticipation) sat back and tried to get people to come out. Without an ample supply of drugs and with the temptations of a 'night on the tiles' in local town it is amazing how few do. At about 6 we decide to dose, I had been snorting rails of ketamine substitution (pills) since my last exam in the morning which made me comfortable about dosing the mushrooms and a pill together (my preferred flipping order is methlenedioxy/serotonergic with about a half hour gap).
Dosing at six was an undeniable longevity killer (I think we ended up crashing at like half three), yet it enabled me and D to trip together before anyone else arrived. The mushrooms acted extraordinarily fast on both of us and pretty soon we both entered bubble-float world with an uncharacteristically small amount of giggling. We go for a jog to try and instigate the ecstasy come up and follow a dirt track to a gate. On the other side there is a fantastic almost bowl shaped valley (filled with the satanic demons from the nether dimensions that pose unsuccessfully as 'cows').
This SPAKing does in fact serve another, more practical purpose, to find a location for a rave we were setting up. And there, on the left hand slope as if it were put there just for us, is a semi circular platform cut out of the valley side. It is at the perfect height from the valley floor so that, as I'm sure happened in both our minds, the platform becomes occupied by an impressive set up and looks down upon a group of ravers on the valley floor. I remind D how far the road is and how heavy a rig, coverings, electrical equipment, water, lighting and such is for a couple of people to carry and we turn back.
Very suddenly on the jog back whilst admiring the passing leaves I notice the visual ascension into that mycological, blurry lustre that seems saturated with paradoxical clarity. As if you are seeing things clearly for the first time. We return to the camp, have a few beers and a rollie and I stick on some GMS and Astral Projection for a bit of raving. D becomes solely occupied in his task of building a fire and delights in explaining to me how a complex system of wax, plastic, paper and thin twigs will mean that his fire lights with ridiculous ease. For the next hour I have to actively refrain him from lighting it while it is still a good time from darkness. I go for a slash and laugh uncontrollably as I look upwards and see the leaves of a tree arranging themselves into fractal patterns. I listen carefully and hear D laughing, he's pissing too and says something like "It's fuckin' amazing!"
Conveniently, all the people that were joining us arrived at the same time and we started the almost too long journey to the car park to collect them. By now we are nicely nice and we approach the car park to meet four people. There is no passing comment from S and M who are accustomed to seeing D and I in far sloppier states than this, but B and J seem surprised to see a pair of half naked blokes giggling and stumbling across a main road with mad grins plastered on their faces. B is a friend from college and J a familiar but relatively unknown friend of B’s, both not entirely used to being around people on anything other than alcohol and cannabis (bar me and the k). S laughs at us and M confronts me with the task of calling someone for some reason, I fail miserably and he does it for me.
D and S go ahead as he is eager to light the fire and she wants to set up camp. I guide the remaining three at a more leisurely pace. Almost immediately I feel an alienation growing between me and B/J, spouting from the abnormal behaviour of me and D. Things I say seem to be meaningless and I find myself struggling to communicate with the pair who seem on such a different wavelength. In order to establish some common ground I decide to partake in the skunk and hash spliff they are sharing. M, quite rightly, warns me not too (borderline psychosis) but I assure him it is acceptable on pills (my final experience of the mushroom-cannabis combination and the terrifying hallucinations it produces most definitely deserves a write up).
We return to the campsite, D lights the fire as it descends into darkness and we sit around talking. Increasingly I feel that my attempts to communicate with B and J are becoming incoherent, this is worsened by the ascending random paranoia. I decide to be silent for a while and begin to stare at the fire.
It was at this point that I began to experience my most common form of OEV or CEV mushroom visual; organic, fern-fractal, multi-coloured ozric tendrils (no, not Tentacles). The after images of the light (although I don't remember shutting my eyes to be honest) transmuted into an exact somehow more than 3D replica of the fire but each individual flame was made up of these astounding tendrils, wriggling and spouting from the ground like frantic snakes. Some would arc through the air to hit the ground and burst into a shower of multicoloured... twinkly things. I remember lapsing in and out between this fantastic light-show and the music/people around campfire situation, foolishly surprised at how they were all talking calmly faced with such beauty.
Feeling ready to return I realise something; B and J are not lovers of electronic music. Not wanting to get the laptop out yet (to preserve battery for later) and having already rinsed Tool earlier with D, I introduce the pair to Ozric Tentacles. Finally, I feel the alienation lift as we all revel in the sonic mastery of Kick 98 and I feel that I can talk to B and J about things coherently again.
Feeling something is missing I suddenly say;
“S, it’s time for your medicine.” There is an excited response of “Really?” and I move over to my purple drugs egg (whom S and I shall later name Herbert). I take out a pill and hand it to her. With two left it looks glum for D and I but nevertheless I offer out to the remaining three, none of whom had tried MDMA. B and J are not interested, M is saving himself for Glade (a most sensible sentiment). So me and D dose and he enforces evil drum and bass, shortly afterwards (unrelated) B, J and M leave; having never intended to stay.
After making a date with my depressingly small line of ketamine (midnight) and seeing D off (who has gone to lie naked on the stone circles), I recline onto a blanket and feel myself enter into the uncomfortable hyper state of cannabis instability. It is always inevitable, yet sometimes I feel that will be able to escape it. My heart begins to beat too fast and hard and I start to tremble and move constantly. I try to settle down into the astounding aztec tunneling thats painted onto my minds eye but I cant. Suddenly I decide I'm sick of this shit and destroy all conscious attention of any drug or feeling. I empty my mind with deep prana inhalations and then open my eyes, ready to start anew. I look up into the clear night sky. A velvet blanket with some cosmic jewellers diamond dust thrown lavishly across it; bursting with a vastness that always creates a palpable awe in me. I have a special relationship with the sky.
I have had the moon physically bring me to my knees almost in worship of it, the milky way turn into a flowing river of effervescence whilst atmouspheric clouds transform into multicoloured nebulae of proto-star matter, a cloudy sunset turn into an indescribable every-hued roadway to, well, heaven. In short, I feel that I was designed to commune with the sky whilst tripping. As such, I tend to try and find massive open spaces so the sky is as vast as possible when tripping and usually spend a good deal of time in a sky-session.
Feeling the ascension there is this familiar feeling of some essence of me beaming upwards into the night whilst a tremendous energy is being thrown back at me, whilst at the same time I am being spun around in some mighty ballet with the vast cosmos I perceive. I understand this sensation for what it is; the experience of pure ecstatic beauty from gazing upon such vastness. The stars begin to 'rain' down with blurred after trails as I have experienced whilst SPAKing before, after a while I start to notice patterns that I have never seen before and then, when the star-scape turns into a 2D hexagonal bee hive-esque structure, I realise this is because they aren't there. In all of a sudden and with a massive surge of the aforemention awe-energy a shiteload of stars coalesce in the center of the sky collapsing to arrange themselves into a gigantic 3D strand of DNA. It rotates gently, superimposed over a background of the night sky. The feelings of harmony, enlightenment, singularity and sheer ecstasy I experience here are indescribable. They transcend the clumsy frailties of this here language.
At this point D calls me over, it appears he has dressed himself to an acceptable minimum again and he proceeds to communicate his revelation (somehow I know, even without asking him about it, that while I was sitting down by the fire getting spiritual with the stars in the sky, he was over there getting spiritual with the stones of the earth). The stone circles or mazes are complex furrows in the ground, the apexes of which are lined with flint stones. Each one is a different shape and you start walking on an entrance lane and, after a complex series of turns, it leads you to the centre the piece.
D led me to one of the mazes and positioned me. “Look at it.” He said. “I am.” I replied. “It’s a fucking brain!” He shouted. And there it was. A fucking brain! The shape, the lobes... A brain! And then I realised something else, the furrows seeped outwards in concentric rings from the centre as if it were radiating energy. At this point I had my revelation. In a field next to this very spot is a psilocybe semilancea ‘nexus’ a place where for thousands of years liberty caps had returned season after season en masse until a few years ago when irresponsible people had inexpertly picked the spot killing the mycelium. I see this, personally, as a direct result of the site being listed on the UK Shroom Map internet site.
Now, the next part of my theory involves the fact that the land we were camping on is National Trust property. NT don’t buy random land, they buy land with heritage; structures of historic value, remnants of ancient sites, etc. I decided that those shapes (not the stones, probably replaced) were ancient; they had been put there buy our ancestors who had ingested the sacred mushroom and constructed these monuments to the Mushroom Entity’s power.
I vowed there and then to confirm my theory and, if it was true, confront NT and demand that they put some recognition (explanatory plaque) to the role psychedelic mushrooms played in the construction of the ancient site. My vow still stands, but information is difficult to obtain.
Anyway, we return to tell S our news and afterwards D decides to go get naked and lie on the circles again and makes a stern point of telling us not to follow him. S hasn’t come up, yet has become steadily drunk, so I offer her the last half. She says she would prefer to snort it between us (I agree this always helps me come up quickly on a lagging bean) so I split it in half and add mine to the k to make it seem, psychologically at least, like a bigger line of ketamine.
Unfourtunately the line I had looked forward too for so long turned out to be a complete downer, expectedly it added little of the velocity, temporal distortion and dimensional emergence that is experienced in a significant SPAK session; instead it caused me to sit calling various people for about an hour trying to secure more k whilst bitching about not having any k and being a general dickhead. After a few 'fuck its' and relapses into rabid fiend mode I finally managed to drop it and enjoy what essentially was a steady descent from the peak with some raving, a few more gos on the mazes and general mass rollie consumption.
Awoke to an almost mystical view of misty valleys and primitive forests that was only partially spoiled by the occasional fences/houses and the blemishes of settlement in the distance, this quickly cleared into a bright hot morning. After some basking we thoroughly cleaned the site, stashed the remaining bottles of water for a free-party we intended to put on there in the ensuing week, and went about our day.
Thanks for reading a very long post,
peace
Anywho, anyone who has read psychonaut65's accounts of his mushroom parties will be familiar with the location of this particular journey; a plateau on a beautiful forest-laden ridgeway that is situated next to a clearing occupied by 'stone circles' or patterns that form mazes. More on these later.
What had been planned as a massive SPAK session that befitted closure to our year of college had turned into a depressing array (at this point in time funding whole nights of substance cocktails for select penniless friends was something I was generally accustomed to, simply out of a desire to create a more cohesive 'journey' experience). Firstly, I had been unable to pick up any k as my supplier was out. This meant I could not earn any money and so our journey started out with five double-cherry ecstasy tablets (of ambiguous effectiveness) and about 35-40g of thai cubensis (I was not about to cut into ketamine funds).
After bitching and whining about ketamine for a long time my business associate gave me his last wrap containing little over a quarter gram. Even though I was eternally thankful, I knew this pathetic amount would somehow make everything worse but I was happy that at least a SPAK session could occur. Technically at least.
And so D and I went into town, I bought the mushrooms and some vinyl, went our separate ways for preparation and then obtained a lift from my band mate S; laden with tent, liquids, the all essential soundsystem and a bounce in our step. D is one of my best friends, my oldest partner in crime (he introduced me to marijuana and we have shared almost every substance we have ever encountered since) and my definitive SPAK companion. There has not been a SPAKing without me and D. Even you people reading this who've SPAKed; we were there.
We set up camp about 5, switched on the CD player (Dreadzone; some pre-Glade festival anticipation) sat back and tried to get people to come out. Without an ample supply of drugs and with the temptations of a 'night on the tiles' in local town it is amazing how few do. At about 6 we decide to dose, I had been snorting rails of ketamine substitution (pills) since my last exam in the morning which made me comfortable about dosing the mushrooms and a pill together (my preferred flipping order is methlenedioxy/serotonergic with about a half hour gap).
Dosing at six was an undeniable longevity killer (I think we ended up crashing at like half three), yet it enabled me and D to trip together before anyone else arrived. The mushrooms acted extraordinarily fast on both of us and pretty soon we both entered bubble-float world with an uncharacteristically small amount of giggling. We go for a jog to try and instigate the ecstasy come up and follow a dirt track to a gate. On the other side there is a fantastic almost bowl shaped valley (filled with the satanic demons from the nether dimensions that pose unsuccessfully as 'cows').
This SPAKing does in fact serve another, more practical purpose, to find a location for a rave we were setting up. And there, on the left hand slope as if it were put there just for us, is a semi circular platform cut out of the valley side. It is at the perfect height from the valley floor so that, as I'm sure happened in both our minds, the platform becomes occupied by an impressive set up and looks down upon a group of ravers on the valley floor. I remind D how far the road is and how heavy a rig, coverings, electrical equipment, water, lighting and such is for a couple of people to carry and we turn back.
Very suddenly on the jog back whilst admiring the passing leaves I notice the visual ascension into that mycological, blurry lustre that seems saturated with paradoxical clarity. As if you are seeing things clearly for the first time. We return to the camp, have a few beers and a rollie and I stick on some GMS and Astral Projection for a bit of raving. D becomes solely occupied in his task of building a fire and delights in explaining to me how a complex system of wax, plastic, paper and thin twigs will mean that his fire lights with ridiculous ease. For the next hour I have to actively refrain him from lighting it while it is still a good time from darkness. I go for a slash and laugh uncontrollably as I look upwards and see the leaves of a tree arranging themselves into fractal patterns. I listen carefully and hear D laughing, he's pissing too and says something like "It's fuckin' amazing!"
Conveniently, all the people that were joining us arrived at the same time and we started the almost too long journey to the car park to collect them. By now we are nicely nice and we approach the car park to meet four people. There is no passing comment from S and M who are accustomed to seeing D and I in far sloppier states than this, but B and J seem surprised to see a pair of half naked blokes giggling and stumbling across a main road with mad grins plastered on their faces. B is a friend from college and J a familiar but relatively unknown friend of B’s, both not entirely used to being around people on anything other than alcohol and cannabis (bar me and the k). S laughs at us and M confronts me with the task of calling someone for some reason, I fail miserably and he does it for me.
D and S go ahead as he is eager to light the fire and she wants to set up camp. I guide the remaining three at a more leisurely pace. Almost immediately I feel an alienation growing between me and B/J, spouting from the abnormal behaviour of me and D. Things I say seem to be meaningless and I find myself struggling to communicate with the pair who seem on such a different wavelength. In order to establish some common ground I decide to partake in the skunk and hash spliff they are sharing. M, quite rightly, warns me not too (borderline psychosis) but I assure him it is acceptable on pills (my final experience of the mushroom-cannabis combination and the terrifying hallucinations it produces most definitely deserves a write up).
We return to the campsite, D lights the fire as it descends into darkness and we sit around talking. Increasingly I feel that my attempts to communicate with B and J are becoming incoherent, this is worsened by the ascending random paranoia. I decide to be silent for a while and begin to stare at the fire.
It was at this point that I began to experience my most common form of OEV or CEV mushroom visual; organic, fern-fractal, multi-coloured ozric tendrils (no, not Tentacles). The after images of the light (although I don't remember shutting my eyes to be honest) transmuted into an exact somehow more than 3D replica of the fire but each individual flame was made up of these astounding tendrils, wriggling and spouting from the ground like frantic snakes. Some would arc through the air to hit the ground and burst into a shower of multicoloured... twinkly things. I remember lapsing in and out between this fantastic light-show and the music/people around campfire situation, foolishly surprised at how they were all talking calmly faced with such beauty.
Feeling ready to return I realise something; B and J are not lovers of electronic music. Not wanting to get the laptop out yet (to preserve battery for later) and having already rinsed Tool earlier with D, I introduce the pair to Ozric Tentacles. Finally, I feel the alienation lift as we all revel in the sonic mastery of Kick 98 and I feel that I can talk to B and J about things coherently again.
Feeling something is missing I suddenly say;
“S, it’s time for your medicine.” There is an excited response of “Really?” and I move over to my purple drugs egg (whom S and I shall later name Herbert). I take out a pill and hand it to her. With two left it looks glum for D and I but nevertheless I offer out to the remaining three, none of whom had tried MDMA. B and J are not interested, M is saving himself for Glade (a most sensible sentiment). So me and D dose and he enforces evil drum and bass, shortly afterwards (unrelated) B, J and M leave; having never intended to stay.
After making a date with my depressingly small line of ketamine (midnight) and seeing D off (who has gone to lie naked on the stone circles), I recline onto a blanket and feel myself enter into the uncomfortable hyper state of cannabis instability. It is always inevitable, yet sometimes I feel that will be able to escape it. My heart begins to beat too fast and hard and I start to tremble and move constantly. I try to settle down into the astounding aztec tunneling thats painted onto my minds eye but I cant. Suddenly I decide I'm sick of this shit and destroy all conscious attention of any drug or feeling. I empty my mind with deep prana inhalations and then open my eyes, ready to start anew. I look up into the clear night sky. A velvet blanket with some cosmic jewellers diamond dust thrown lavishly across it; bursting with a vastness that always creates a palpable awe in me. I have a special relationship with the sky.
I have had the moon physically bring me to my knees almost in worship of it, the milky way turn into a flowing river of effervescence whilst atmouspheric clouds transform into multicoloured nebulae of proto-star matter, a cloudy sunset turn into an indescribable every-hued roadway to, well, heaven. In short, I feel that I was designed to commune with the sky whilst tripping. As such, I tend to try and find massive open spaces so the sky is as vast as possible when tripping and usually spend a good deal of time in a sky-session.
Feeling the ascension there is this familiar feeling of some essence of me beaming upwards into the night whilst a tremendous energy is being thrown back at me, whilst at the same time I am being spun around in some mighty ballet with the vast cosmos I perceive. I understand this sensation for what it is; the experience of pure ecstatic beauty from gazing upon such vastness. The stars begin to 'rain' down with blurred after trails as I have experienced whilst SPAKing before, after a while I start to notice patterns that I have never seen before and then, when the star-scape turns into a 2D hexagonal bee hive-esque structure, I realise this is because they aren't there. In all of a sudden and with a massive surge of the aforemention awe-energy a shiteload of stars coalesce in the center of the sky collapsing to arrange themselves into a gigantic 3D strand of DNA. It rotates gently, superimposed over a background of the night sky. The feelings of harmony, enlightenment, singularity and sheer ecstasy I experience here are indescribable. They transcend the clumsy frailties of this here language.
At this point D calls me over, it appears he has dressed himself to an acceptable minimum again and he proceeds to communicate his revelation (somehow I know, even without asking him about it, that while I was sitting down by the fire getting spiritual with the stars in the sky, he was over there getting spiritual with the stones of the earth). The stone circles or mazes are complex furrows in the ground, the apexes of which are lined with flint stones. Each one is a different shape and you start walking on an entrance lane and, after a complex series of turns, it leads you to the centre the piece.
D led me to one of the mazes and positioned me. “Look at it.” He said. “I am.” I replied. “It’s a fucking brain!” He shouted. And there it was. A fucking brain! The shape, the lobes... A brain! And then I realised something else, the furrows seeped outwards in concentric rings from the centre as if it were radiating energy. At this point I had my revelation. In a field next to this very spot is a psilocybe semilancea ‘nexus’ a place where for thousands of years liberty caps had returned season after season en masse until a few years ago when irresponsible people had inexpertly picked the spot killing the mycelium. I see this, personally, as a direct result of the site being listed on the UK Shroom Map internet site.
Now, the next part of my theory involves the fact that the land we were camping on is National Trust property. NT don’t buy random land, they buy land with heritage; structures of historic value, remnants of ancient sites, etc. I decided that those shapes (not the stones, probably replaced) were ancient; they had been put there buy our ancestors who had ingested the sacred mushroom and constructed these monuments to the Mushroom Entity’s power.
I vowed there and then to confirm my theory and, if it was true, confront NT and demand that they put some recognition (explanatory plaque) to the role psychedelic mushrooms played in the construction of the ancient site. My vow still stands, but information is difficult to obtain.
Anyway, we return to tell S our news and afterwards D decides to go get naked and lie on the circles again and makes a stern point of telling us not to follow him. S hasn’t come up, yet has become steadily drunk, so I offer her the last half. She says she would prefer to snort it between us (I agree this always helps me come up quickly on a lagging bean) so I split it in half and add mine to the k to make it seem, psychologically at least, like a bigger line of ketamine.
Unfourtunately the line I had looked forward too for so long turned out to be a complete downer, expectedly it added little of the velocity, temporal distortion and dimensional emergence that is experienced in a significant SPAK session; instead it caused me to sit calling various people for about an hour trying to secure more k whilst bitching about not having any k and being a general dickhead. After a few 'fuck its' and relapses into rabid fiend mode I finally managed to drop it and enjoy what essentially was a steady descent from the peak with some raving, a few more gos on the mazes and general mass rollie consumption.
Awoke to an almost mystical view of misty valleys and primitive forests that was only partially spoiled by the occasional fences/houses and the blemishes of settlement in the distance, this quickly cleared into a bright hot morning. After some basking we thoroughly cleaned the site, stashed the remaining bottles of water for a free-party we intended to put on there in the ensuing week, and went about our day.
Thanks for reading a very long post,
peace
Last edited:
