Flickering
Bluelighter
5:30a.m. Friday morning, I woke up, took a bowl of cut-up cactus out of my drawer, and spent the next hour eating it. By 9a.m., I was extremely disappointed to find it had had no effect, whatsoever. I'd been looking forward to this psychedelic experience so much that I spent the rest of the day more or less moping.
Saturday night, a couple of friends came by and offered me some cannabis. I'd wanted some sort of experience this weekend, so mild thought it would be, I said sure, why not. I took four hits from a bong and followed it down with a 'dream herb' called calea zacatechichi, in the form of a very bitter tea. By the third hit, my head was swimming, and I was feelling a bit dissociated, but some of the typical effects - laughter, munchies, fridge logic - weren't kicking in. They wanted to drive to the shops and get some food, so against my better judgment (a mistake I won't repeat, even though nothing happened) I got in the car with them.
Sitting in the backseat, I started noticing what I can only describe as a hallucination of the nervous system. When I touched my chest, ripples of sensation flowed up to my throat and nostrils. The sensations were highly unpleasant. Imagine biting your tongue, but feeling it like a splinter jammed up your nose. I was getting a weird displacement of feelings - a cough felt like it was in my legs, there were fireworks sparkling in my stomach - and it ranged from uncomfortable, to mildly painful. This freaked me out. I'd never heard of this happening on weed, and I had no idea if it was going to keep getting stronger. I could see myself writhing on the ground in confused agony if it kept up. As we pulled up to the shops, I let my friends know that I was feeling weird, and said I should stay in the car. But they seemed to think this was a bad idea, so I reluctantly agreed to go with them.
The sensatory confusion continued as we walked around buying food. One friend insisted that I was just hungry, and that I'd feel better once I had something to eat. I doubted that. I wanted them to hurry up, but they, typically stoned, didn't get the urgency and just wandered about at half speed. They also talked openly about the effects of various hallucinogens while we walked past other shoppers, which made me more uncomfortable. I managed to not feel paranoid, I knew we weren't being watched, but I just wanted to get the hell back home. So finally we got back in the car and drove off, and that's where I hit the peak.
I started losing contact with reality. I recognised what was happening straight away, because it had happened before on two grams of mushrooms, only that time, it had been completely overwhelming, steamrolling my logical thought and replacing it with a totally delirious mess. This time, it was about a tenth that strong, and I found I could hold it together. But it was hard. I was sitting in the back seat thinking crazy shit like, "What I'm seeing and feeling right now is the only reality that's ever existed. I AM what I'm seeing." Actually, I find it impossible to convey exactly what was going on in my head, because it was beyond words. The misplaced physical sensations were much stronger, and my entire existence was devolving into a zero-dimensional mess of what I was feeling, thinking, seeing and hearing, and none of it made sense. I kept believing I could dissociate out of this body into another form of existence, but there was a despair that came with it, as though any other kind of being would be equally pointless and unpleasant.
Anyway - realising what was going on in my head, I told my friends that I needed them to talk to me, tell me my name, that I'm human, that I smoked weed, etc. Whenever a crazy thought entered my head, I violently opposed it. "NO, that's drug logic, I'm having some sort of unexpected bad trip and in a couple of hours it will be over, and I'll remember the real nature of my existence." But it was hard to believe, it was in spite of everything my brain was telling me. I fought, asserting rational things about my personality and identity which nonetheless seemed far away and unreal. It was a tough mental struggle but I held it together, partly because I'd already felt it before at full force on mushrooms, so I knew what to do.
It was like fighting sleep. You know, your thoughts start slipping into dreamy delirium, and it happens without you realising until you catch yourself. Well, I was doing the exact same thing, except I was fighting insanity. I felt that if I let down my guard, I could easily slip into total madness. It was as though my normal thoughts and feelings were a layer of structured writing on a flat piece of paper, but beneath that paper was a swirling mass of multi-coloured lunacy, and it kept breaking through the flat piece. I was worried it would get even stronger, and that I'd be too disoriented to fight it, but I held fast to my sense of self.
Back home, they told me to stay with them, and they smoked some more. I felt I was getting them down, so I slipped away to my room and played some music to help bring me back down to reality, and laid down in bed. This helped somewhat. I was still really confused, but I had something to focus on, to get me through it. I wasn't panicking or freaking out, because by now I was confident that I'd be back to normal soon, but it still wasn't nice. I watched an episode of Breaking Bad and had slight trouble following it, but overall it took my mind off the receeding psychosis that kept scratching around the edge of my consciousness.
After a while, I felt more or less back to normal, and I tried to get some sleep. Stage 1 sleep was very relaxing, but I kept waking to insane thought patterns and it took a few seconds to get myself back to normal. This persisted for several hours until I finally fell asleep. I woke the next morning feeling normal.
You're probably going to tell me what I took wasn't weed, or something like that, but my two friends took the same stuff and it worked out totally fine for them. I've had to take a tentative approach to psychedelic drugs; I've only ever had one decent experience, the rest have been fucked, in a similar vein to this one. I really think if my brain can't even handle cannabis, it's time to stop, but I say that every time. In a few weeks, I'll probably take a great big san pedro dose, and have to be hospitalised. 8) I wonder what would have happened if that cactus I ate on Friday had worked. Probably nothing nice.
Overall, the whole thing wasn't that bad, just whacked and unpleasant. I had PTSD or something for about a week after my last mushroom trip, but after this weird experience, I woke up thinking, "Oh well, that was shit" and got on with the day. If anyone's been following my bad trip reports, they'll know I once had AiWS, and I'm now convinced that this (and mild derealisation disorder, perhaps? I should see a psychiatrist) is causing my brain to not handle drugs well.
Saturday night, a couple of friends came by and offered me some cannabis. I'd wanted some sort of experience this weekend, so mild thought it would be, I said sure, why not. I took four hits from a bong and followed it down with a 'dream herb' called calea zacatechichi, in the form of a very bitter tea. By the third hit, my head was swimming, and I was feelling a bit dissociated, but some of the typical effects - laughter, munchies, fridge logic - weren't kicking in. They wanted to drive to the shops and get some food, so against my better judgment (a mistake I won't repeat, even though nothing happened) I got in the car with them.
Sitting in the backseat, I started noticing what I can only describe as a hallucination of the nervous system. When I touched my chest, ripples of sensation flowed up to my throat and nostrils. The sensations were highly unpleasant. Imagine biting your tongue, but feeling it like a splinter jammed up your nose. I was getting a weird displacement of feelings - a cough felt like it was in my legs, there were fireworks sparkling in my stomach - and it ranged from uncomfortable, to mildly painful. This freaked me out. I'd never heard of this happening on weed, and I had no idea if it was going to keep getting stronger. I could see myself writhing on the ground in confused agony if it kept up. As we pulled up to the shops, I let my friends know that I was feeling weird, and said I should stay in the car. But they seemed to think this was a bad idea, so I reluctantly agreed to go with them.
The sensatory confusion continued as we walked around buying food. One friend insisted that I was just hungry, and that I'd feel better once I had something to eat. I doubted that. I wanted them to hurry up, but they, typically stoned, didn't get the urgency and just wandered about at half speed. They also talked openly about the effects of various hallucinogens while we walked past other shoppers, which made me more uncomfortable. I managed to not feel paranoid, I knew we weren't being watched, but I just wanted to get the hell back home. So finally we got back in the car and drove off, and that's where I hit the peak.
I started losing contact with reality. I recognised what was happening straight away, because it had happened before on two grams of mushrooms, only that time, it had been completely overwhelming, steamrolling my logical thought and replacing it with a totally delirious mess. This time, it was about a tenth that strong, and I found I could hold it together. But it was hard. I was sitting in the back seat thinking crazy shit like, "What I'm seeing and feeling right now is the only reality that's ever existed. I AM what I'm seeing." Actually, I find it impossible to convey exactly what was going on in my head, because it was beyond words. The misplaced physical sensations were much stronger, and my entire existence was devolving into a zero-dimensional mess of what I was feeling, thinking, seeing and hearing, and none of it made sense. I kept believing I could dissociate out of this body into another form of existence, but there was a despair that came with it, as though any other kind of being would be equally pointless and unpleasant.
Anyway - realising what was going on in my head, I told my friends that I needed them to talk to me, tell me my name, that I'm human, that I smoked weed, etc. Whenever a crazy thought entered my head, I violently opposed it. "NO, that's drug logic, I'm having some sort of unexpected bad trip and in a couple of hours it will be over, and I'll remember the real nature of my existence." But it was hard to believe, it was in spite of everything my brain was telling me. I fought, asserting rational things about my personality and identity which nonetheless seemed far away and unreal. It was a tough mental struggle but I held it together, partly because I'd already felt it before at full force on mushrooms, so I knew what to do.
It was like fighting sleep. You know, your thoughts start slipping into dreamy delirium, and it happens without you realising until you catch yourself. Well, I was doing the exact same thing, except I was fighting insanity. I felt that if I let down my guard, I could easily slip into total madness. It was as though my normal thoughts and feelings were a layer of structured writing on a flat piece of paper, but beneath that paper was a swirling mass of multi-coloured lunacy, and it kept breaking through the flat piece. I was worried it would get even stronger, and that I'd be too disoriented to fight it, but I held fast to my sense of self.
Back home, they told me to stay with them, and they smoked some more. I felt I was getting them down, so I slipped away to my room and played some music to help bring me back down to reality, and laid down in bed. This helped somewhat. I was still really confused, but I had something to focus on, to get me through it. I wasn't panicking or freaking out, because by now I was confident that I'd be back to normal soon, but it still wasn't nice. I watched an episode of Breaking Bad and had slight trouble following it, but overall it took my mind off the receeding psychosis that kept scratching around the edge of my consciousness.
After a while, I felt more or less back to normal, and I tried to get some sleep. Stage 1 sleep was very relaxing, but I kept waking to insane thought patterns and it took a few seconds to get myself back to normal. This persisted for several hours until I finally fell asleep. I woke the next morning feeling normal.
You're probably going to tell me what I took wasn't weed, or something like that, but my two friends took the same stuff and it worked out totally fine for them. I've had to take a tentative approach to psychedelic drugs; I've only ever had one decent experience, the rest have been fucked, in a similar vein to this one. I really think if my brain can't even handle cannabis, it's time to stop, but I say that every time. In a few weeks, I'll probably take a great big san pedro dose, and have to be hospitalised. 8) I wonder what would have happened if that cactus I ate on Friday had worked. Probably nothing nice.
Overall, the whole thing wasn't that bad, just whacked and unpleasant. I had PTSD or something for about a week after my last mushroom trip, but after this weird experience, I woke up thinking, "Oh well, that was shit" and got on with the day. If anyone's been following my bad trip reports, they'll know I once had AiWS, and I'm now convinced that this (and mild derealisation disorder, perhaps? I should see a psychiatrist) is causing my brain to not handle drugs well.
8(
