Miscellaneous Do you take notes / write during trips?

[CavernsoftheMind]

I'm often trying to take notes / write about my thoughts during my trips.

Usually, I'm able to write down the time & dosage right after ingesting the drug / taking a redose. Not much more than that though.

Most of the time, I write a few sentences down here and then.
It's just so sad that so many of the interesting & funny thoughts are lost.

Have you tried filming / recording your voice?
What's your experience with trying to conserve your trips?

 

[xdrc]

I often write experience reports, especially if it is the first time with a substance and the dosage is low. I've found that during the more 'interesting' trips, writing will often halt for a variety of reasons. Often it is still possible to reconstruct the experience in a written manner by just a few timestamped thoughts however. Personally I'd think recording myself in audio or video would feel weird, but perhaps you have a different opinion.

One should note that undergoing an experience with the intention of recording it, and especially interrupting the experience by writing notes, shapes the nature of the experiment. Some people even argue that the practice of intentional experience reports taints the experience so much they'd rather not read such reports even, and I understand where they are coming from. The practice definitely substracts from the value one could get during the experience.

I notice however you are not specifically asking about writing experience reports though. In this case maybe skip the timestamps altogether and just keep a pen and paper nearby when tripping and record some of your thoughts and play with them, while not trying too hard. I'm sure some interesting things will come out of it.

One thing to consider is that if you're distracted with writing, there is less time for silly thoughts

 

[CavernsoftheMind]

@xdrc
Writing trip reports is one way I've tried for conserving my trips. A pretty good way to construct a story out of them.

Maybe letting a voice recorder record the whole trip could be interesting.
I hope I'd forget about it after a while. Maybe that way I could record the trip without influencing it that much.


Just to show what usually happens when I try to take notes:
Here’s the diary log I made during my trip 2 days ago.
I translated it from german & obviously a lot of context is missing.

T0: 5mg 3-MeO-PCE

T+50min: 5mg 3-MeO-PCE
Some light effects. More sedating than stimulating.

T+90min: I’m clearly feeling it. ++. Relaxing, loose. Calm. Very present somehow. No hint of mania.

T+100min: Now less tired. Appetite. Craving chai. Had a long strategy talk, about how to get hot water, milk, cups to this room without bringing chai syrup to the kitchen.

T+115min: 5mg. Some stimulation / mania is felt.

T+140min: “Genussmittel” are being enjoyed, moodlifting, close to reality (“realitaetsnah”).

T+180min: 10mg. Action all around me. The session is being moved up to the loft bed. It’s very action-heavy right now.
A swedish stink-fish is being eaten by two friends.

T+250min: 15mg MXiPr - rubble. Yum yum soup + raw tofu eaten on the loft bed.

T+265min: Reality turned to absurdity.
You’re laughing, how about looking at your own feet?

T+350min: 40mg ketamine. Pissing. The poisonous dragon.

(3 pages of abstract paintings made with my ball pen)

BE A COLLECTOR
Calling from a station

 

[iom]

I believe Myron Stollarof who wrote "Thanatos to Eros" used a reel-to-reel tape recorder (in the old days, lol) to capture all the audio of his trips and to which he could dictate to. Much of that book is written based off of the notes he recorded this way.

 

[CavernsoftheMind]

I believe Myron Stollarof who wrote "Thanatos to Eros" used a reel-to-reel tape recorder (in the old days, lol) to capture all the audio of his trips and to which he could dictate to. Much of that book is written based off of the notes he recorded this way.

I need to read that!

 

[pupnik]

I like to write during salvia experiences, but otherwise I just make cryptic notes in my daily log/schedule which is a continuous document of what I have to do or have done for the last few years.
the cryptic notes include time and dose, and anything after that in the day may or may not pertain to the drug experience.
eg 1sprM means 1 spray of 15mg MDMA, and 40ug means 40ug lsd. and 2sprK means 30mg ketamine (I have both MDMA and ketamine as nose sprays)

 

[xdrc]

I need to read that!

It can be read for free on the MAPS website. I have converted that HTML to epub a while ago so if you need that shoot me a DM.

 

[jasperkent]

I've tried to take notes but, well, you know.

 

[foodcrisis]

i was writing with ink and a paint brush on acid. i like how the ink dries and reflects in the light. maybe it's just a hallucintion, but i feel like i can really see the ink attatching to the paper and the light gets captured in it while it dries. idk... i wrote a lot of weird shit. i have schizophrenia and was using a computer to document voices i would hear while tripping that went along with images of movies i was having in my head, some of the stuff is pretty weird.. i read it years later and i have no idea what some of the stuff is, but other stuff i can specifically remember what i was thinking about and seeing.

i feel like recording music or doing art on drugs aside from writing is also pretty much the same, but i tend to get cought up in the experience of "doing" with art and music more than writing. like i'm not gonna trip as hard while being active with music. sometimes i get to other realms while paintings, actually it's happened pretty strong, but there have been times i've been frying while painting and i really get cought seeing what the canvas and paint hitting the canvas looks like in reality. it's not actually psychedelic or anything. all the drugs really are doing is seeming to make my vision see finer. i feel like that's just where the art muse takes me and it's fueled by the drugs... when i was typing on a computer to be able to keep up with my thoughts, i found that i could actively achieve very vivid hallucinations on acid working with what i was hearing with schizophrenia... recording music while tripping, although i get good results with the music,, i tend to just get cought up in the sound, and it's not very cool visually... actually though, the only reason i would take psychedelics at this point would be to record music. kind of unnecessary though. i wouldn't feel that way if i didn't have HPPD. now it's like life is a constant trip report with the voices and visuals i experience.

 

[perpetualdawn]

I like to write during salvia experiences, but otherwise I just make cryptic notes in my daily log/schedule which is a continuous document of what I have to do or have done for the last few years.
the cryptic notes include time and dose, and anything after that in the day may or may not pertain to the drug experience.
eg 1sprM means 1 spray of 15mg MDMA, and 40ug means 40ug lsd. and 2sprK means 30mg ketamine (I have both MDMA and ketamine as nose sprays)

How do you do nose sprays @pupnik? Do you use water? How concentrated? What kind of sprayer?
I've thought that a nose spray could be a good way to administer DPT or 5-MeO-DMT

Re: the point of this thread - sometimes I scribble some notes down, esp on the tail of the trip, and I have found it to be useful note taking for sure.

 

[Gridlink]

I tend to write poetry during my trips. Some of the lines might reference the psychedelic experience, but many do not. I think psychedelics unlock something in my writing, i.e., I write about certain themes and use certain poetic devices that I wouldn't write/use when "sober" or on other drugs like stimulants and opiates. So in that sense psychedelics are a good writing tool for me.

I used to do trip reports while taking dissociatives and psychedelics, but as people already mentioned, doing this really shaped the trip and distracted me from the experience. Plus I would get in a state where I would second guess my writing, thinking "did I accurately describe my feelings here?" Or "is this really the right word to use?" So it detracted from the trip in a way, but I don't get this problem when writing poetry. Thus I ditched the trip reports and stuck to poetry only.

 

[pupnik]

How do you do nose sprays @pupnik? Do you use water? How concentrated? What kind of sprayer?
I've thought that a nose spray could be a good way to administer DPT or 5-MeO-DMT

Re: the point of this thread - sometimes I scribble some notes down, esp on the tail of the trip, and I have found it to be useful note taking for sure.

I don't make the nose spray, I'm in Canada,
a company advertising on instagram sold them online, but it seems to be no longer be in business :sad:.
I liked the ketamine and mdma, but had not tried their cocaine
not sure how they made them

I have read about mdma nose spray being advanced as a PTSD in office treatment venture investment in USA, so I think something may ultimately come of it.