yardbirdrc
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2011
- Messages
- 160
A new summer had begun, and we were planning to make it quite a psychedelic one. It was the first summer I'd be spending away from home, and I had been quite happy to find a job almost immediately. The festivities were due to begin in late May with some friends from high school. Throughout the school year I spent quite a bit of free time "getting connected". I had access to anything I had ever wanted to take by the time summer came, and I had procured many samples of these materials. I was stockpiling in a big way, and waiting with bated breath for the warm weather and lack of stress to begin.
As the date got closer we began planning for the event. Various venues were considered but eventually we settled on a university where Alex had an apartment that was half way between myself and the town where the other members of the group lived. The area is surrounded by plenty of state parks and other nice outdoor spots. We had 3 days and a vast array of substances to partake of, and we were going to turn it into a full-blown Fear and Loathing style adventure. Our Dr. Gonzo case contained the following: LSD, 4-AcO-DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, N,N-DMT, 2C-B, 2C-E, 2C-C, Peruvian Torch Chips, MDMA and Methylone, as well as over an ounce of medical marijuana and some nice microbrews.
Obviously we wouldn't be able to get to all of these in the 3 day period, but we'd have a wide variety to choose from. It should also be known that personally I only have experience with about half of these substances, so many of the experiences were going to be new. As for my partners in crime, Alex had about as much experience as myself and Cheeseman had previously only tried the LSD. Also, due to legal stuff, Cheeseman wouldn't be able to have any of the marijuana or MDMA.
The following is my journal from the visit detailing all the trips we took. Every single one of them went very well, and all in all it was an extremely successful weekend.
Day 1: The Game Lands
Date: May 21st, 2011
Time: 9:00AM-8:00PM
Drug: Mescaline (Peruvian Torch)
Dose: 15g
Using a blender, 45 grams of Peruvian Torch skins were powdered and put into size 000 capsules. This was split 3 ways. This Torch had a reputation for being potent, so it was a conservative dose. The capsules were divided up and we went to sleep.
The next morning I awoke 15 minutes before my alarm, and could not get back to sleep due to the anticipation of the impending alarm. We each had 12 capsules, and we took them over the course of an hour - 3 pills every 15 minutes starting around 9 AM. I chased it with some coffee. By the time we had finished the last dose we were already starting to feel mild effects. To me, it felt a lot like 2C-B did on the come-up - this was a good sign. We packed up some water, some granola bars and a nice joint of some sativa strains, then we began out into campus.
The plan was to walk several miles away past town to a system of trails that eventually led to state game lands. Here we would explore before returning to spend the tail end of the trip back at the apartment. It was a long but rewarding journey. First we spent about 10 minutes just walking through campus, which was surprisingly large. I always thought this school had about the same number of students as my own, but this campus was much bigger than my school's. We passed all kinds of cool places - buildings and courtyards and etc. before finally penetrating the edge and entering the surrounding town. By this time the mescaline was no longer deniable, and was slowly beginning to build in its intensity. We passed through the town quickly and soon found ourselves at the beginning of the trail. I asked where we were in the grand scheme of the journey as it had already been about 20 or 30 minutes. Cheeseman told us that we were only about 15% there. The trail wound from behind the town through many acres of old farm land and other features before finally entering more forested areas towards the end. Throughout the duration of walking this trail the effects continued to escalate. As I walked I began looking at the ground and seeing the beginnings of the visual side of the trip. Color distortion, brightness, a sense of breathing and light pattern overlay. Pretty soon the trip was at about the intensity of 1 hit of LSD and still building steam. Even from this initial impression I noted several advantages over LSD. Don't get me wrong, I love LSD and it is definitely on my list of favorites, but I found the mescaline preferable in almost every way, especially given the context of a day out in nature. As the body effects built I found them to have a great deal more depth than LSD. LSD always feels very alien to me in terms of its physical side, kind of metallic and unusual - almost tense sometimes. The mescaline felt much more overtly pleasant, a lot like 2C-B but much more intense and "complete" feeling. I felt really good. I had been somewhat apprehensive about the body load with this method of ingestion because every other naturally occurring psychedelic I've taken orally as-is has caused some type of disturbing body effect like nausea or general discomfort. In fact, I felt zero nausea. This may be due to the potency of the cactus, and the low dose it required, as well as how we spaced out the ingestion. The body high I felt was just that - a high, and it felt very clean. No muddiness like mushrooms or poisoned feeling like morning glory seeds, just warm clean waves of euphoria, kind of like what I imagine MDMA to be like. By the time we finished this long portion of trail I had begun to reach noticeably psychedelic effects that began to level off at a plateau. I didn't really notice the typical wave pattern of effects from this drug like one might get from LSD or mushrooms, it was just one long blast that slowly but steadily tapered off. Shortly after we finished the trail we crossed through a country club and arrived at the game lands. This is where the trip began in earnest, about an hour and a half after finishing the ingestion cycle.
We began by crossing through a series of abandoned corn fields. This was not corn grown for crops, but as Cheeseman informed us it was grown by the state to provide more habitat for animals around the nearby pond. In the distance we saw a yellow hillside tucked away behind a line of trees. When we arrived at this area we found a vast expanse of yellow flower fields. There was an odd stench from these flowers, but this would be the entryway to bulk of the trip. Here we found the gravel road system that works through the game lands, and we began to follow it randomly through the area. We walked for a little bit through a vast network of seemingly wild fields that were all connected by an extensive irrigation system. I had never seen plants being watered before that weren't crops or part of landscaping. It seemed like they were just growing whatever grew naturally in these areas, but keeping them watered. They were preserving nature essentially. We pulled off the trail near one of these large irrigation pipelines and found a small pond that was green on the surface from plant life and algae. Here we sat on a log and Alex and I smoked half of the joint and ate some granola. This is where the peak began for me, within minutes of smoking. Cheeseman put on some Grateful Dead and we peered out into the nature around us. I started noticing how everything was moving. Bugs were flying, frogs were making noises, and birds were perched and calling to each other. A leaf fell from the tree above us and spun down to earth. I thought about how surreal it was that all this life we were seeing around us was not self aware. We appreciated these things as beautiful but they themselves don't even have the ability to conceptualize of beauty. A flower has no pride in its adornments, and no ability to appreciate and understand itself. At least, as far as we know. It was very strange to feel so connected to everything but also realize how different its version of life was from ours. This became a common mental theme to the trip for me - the complexity of humans compared to other creatures and the dichotomy between man and nature. Depending on the situation we tend to view ourselves either as just another animal or as something special and privileged above the rest of life. I was beginning to get a little bit nervous about how intense the trip was getting. If I was reaching this intensity on LSD I would probably be debilitated by endless thought loops by this point. However, with mescaline I felt no such impending entrapment. Despite its quickly escalating intensity I felt confident that I could handle it even at double the dose. I finally understood what people meant when they said cactus was gentle and forgiving. The whole thing felt very supportive of my mental state. Instead of causing me to think by presenting challenging and confusing thoughts like on tryptamines, the mescaline was simply gradually opening up a new way to see the world. It felt very guided as if the drug had a distinct character to it, but by guided I do not mean "pushy". It felt like it was there holding my hand, not pulling my arm. We walked for a while more as the effects reached a plateau. Along the way we stopped a few more places.
The next place we stopped was another small body of water. I guess this would be called a pond, but it was more like a marsh. There was a small jetty made out of warehouse pallets, and we carefully moved out onto it and sat there. There was so much life all around us, especially insects. Usually I really hate most bugs but I found myself letting go to the fact that I was not going to end the day without a dozen or more bug bites, so I just stopped trying to deter them in most cases. We took turns sitting at the end of the jetty and peering down into the water. There was a vast city under the surface of bugs, tadpoles and other small creatures and underwater plants. Floating atop this world on a leaf was a long legged multicolored spider. Damselflies and small birds were jetting between the matrix of reeds and dead trees. It was very peaceful and cool in this section, but eventually we moved on. I was at a solid ++ now, stronger than a single hit of LSD but not overwhelmingly so.
Our next stop was the most important, for me anyway. We walked most of the way there in silence, I assumed because everyone was tripping so hard. In fact I was the only one who was feeling the kind of effects that I'm describing. Alex and Cheeseman both were only feeling mild to moderate effects. We reached the northeast corner of the game lands and sat down on a hill by a maintenance shed of some kind. From this spot we could see out over the trees to some distant small mountains or large hills. Above these far off plateaus there was a plethora of fluffy white clouds. It was here that the visual effects were strongest, and I consider these 15 minutes or so to be the true peak of the experience. I felt completely at peace and at one with the world. Everything was glowing and shockingly beautiful, as if it had been painted. From this sense of divine inebriation, the visuals began to come on in full. I stared at the clouds above the mountains, and I soon realized that I could never focus on a single one of them. Every time I tried to focus on a cloud, all the clouds in the sky began moving away from each other. It was like the whole landscape of clouds would expand and contract in such a way that I could never really get a solid glimpse at one. When I stopped trying to focus and just looked at all the clouds at once, they began to reach out to each other with visible patterning. Pretty soon lines of color ran through the whole cloudscape forming a latticework that united all the clouds into one entity that stretched across the whole sky. It was very much like an album cover I saw once, though I can't remember the band name at the moment. I seemed to be able to relate to this view personally. I wouldn't go so far as to say it had a personality or anything like an entity one might see on DMT, but it felt very conscious of the fact that I was looking at it. Soon faces began to form in the clouds, looking down on the mountains. We sat here for a while as I just soaked it all in. Then we moved on to another clearing where Alex smoked some more of the joint to bring out the lackluster effects he was feeling. It was a success, but sadly Cheeseman couldn't partake due to his probation. For all intents and purposes his trip ended here. He never really reached a peak, just felt mild effects the whole time. Alex reached a higher level but wasn't as impressed with the effects as I was. I'm not sure why this was, as we all took the same dose of the same material in the same fashion. The only difference was that 10 grams of my dose had been powdered finely in a coffee grinder a few months before, whereas the rest of the material had a much coarser grind from the blender. I don't see why this would make so much of a difference though. In any event, as we progressed through the rest of the game lands on our way back towards the trail home, it was evident that I was the one who had gotten the strongest and most impressive effect from the cactus.
In fact, this drug was quickly becoming one of my favorites ever, the effects were just so impressive to me. It was unlike any other psychedelic I had done in almost all ways, other than several obvious and welcome similarities to 2C-B. The sense of warmth and peace that I found on 2C-B was there in full force, even morse-so than on 2C-B itself. Everything had a much more blatantly happy and euphoric tinge to it than with something like LSD. It was as much an emotional journey as it was intellectual. The thoughts and insights I was having were definitely deep and drug-induced, but they weren't the paranoid and repetitive hyper-analytical thought processes of LSD. They were much clearer and more structurally similar to regular thoughts, they just went a bit deeper and wider. We hiked back through the game lands towards the point where we entered, exploring new areas and smoking the last of the joint. I was still at the same plateau of effects for much of this journey but then things started to slowly taper off. I found that despite being a sit-on-the-couch kind of guy I was willing and able to walk the long distances we were exploring in relative comfort. If this had been LSD I would've most certainly entered that phase of the trip that I like to call the bends, where everything begins to feel kind of strung out and surreal, as well as exhausting physically. With the mescaline I was able to power through all of the hike, only beginning to feel physically tired towards the end of the return trail. At this point we stopped to rest on a log, where we found several cool things to look at, like a strange fungus and another cool spider. Here I popped a magnesium supplement to help soothe my now straining muscles, and we continued on until we reached the town, then the campus, then finally the apartment where we started. We were greeted by the dankness that only an ounce of the finest medical marijuana can induce, and we sat down to watch some TV. For about an hour and a half to two hours, I wanted to smoke a bowl or two, but I was too comfortable to move and prepare it. The mescaline afterglow was truly fantastic. For a good 3 hours I was no longer "tripping" in the traditional sense, but the mescaline was still making itself known in a big and beautiful way. I felt very tired (probably from the walking) and just very relaxed and contented. We ate and eventually started in on some of the weed. The rest of the night was spent drinking beer, smoking, and hanging out. It was a relaxing end to a long but worthwhile day. We then planned to spend the next day with something shorter lasting and more precise. Cheeseman was particularly interested in the 4-AcO-DMT so that became the plan.
Day 2: The Black Pine Forest
Date: May 22nd, 2011
Time: 2:00PM-6:30PM
Drug: 4-AcO-DMT Fumarate
Dose: 15mg
I woke up a bit later than usual. 4 doses of 4-AcO-DMT were weighed, 15mg each. Gel-caps pocketed and supplies packed we set out in the car for a local old-growth forest. This particular type of forest was not usually found in our area, but usually was only found much farther north, so it was kind of a remarkable area. We arrived and dropped the caps. There was a placard on a stone with the name of the area and leaning up against it were some walking sticks. I grabbed one for the hell of it, but it was fortunate because the terrain in this area turned out to be pretty difficult to navigate. It had been raining a lot lately and the trails had become very muddy in some places. We struck out into the thick and overgrown forest. The first thing I noticed was how none of the plants seemed to be typical. For example we started off by walking through a long grove of rhododendrons, which is usually something I've only seen in landscaping rather than growing wild.
After about a half hour I was starting to feel the trademark heavy sedation that mushroom trips seem to invoke in me. I just started getting sleepier and sleepier. Eventually this feeling began to rise to a level that was no longer just first alerts. I asked if we could sit down somewhere, but as it turned out nobody else was feeling anything yet. We pushed on a little bit longer until we found a suitable area to sit on a long fallen log. The bugs were unbearable here even when we were liberally coated with bug spray. I began to enter the first wave of the experience on the log. Mostly I felt heavily disoriented - again standard fare for mushrooms. I noticed a buzz or ringing in my ears similar to the buzz I hear at the beginning of a strong dose of DMT. Things began to run together and form layers and the beginnings of visual patterns. For probably 20 minutes I sat on the log because I was too tired and disoriented to do anything else. I watched nature all around me: the trees in the distance, the leaves on the ground, an inch worm that was lowering himself slowly from the tall trees above. Meanwhile my friends eventually began exploring the area we were in, which was very much covered by tall trees creating a dark and relatively cool section away from the sun. They began to come up at this time as well. Eventually I began to force myself to walk around. Walk is a loose word, for much of the rest of the day I was meandering and stumbling. Mushrooms and 4-subbed tryptamines in general really put me out of it. First I found Alex perched in a tree. Rick and Cheeseman were out farther exploring, I presumed. Alex and I talked for a while. Rick emerged in the distance and we asked him where Cheeseman was only to find that he was only about 25 feet away from us by a section of the small stream that ran throughout the trail. Here we found him sitting cross legged beneath a tree staring out into space. Alex and Rick were still only feeling initial effects but Cheeseman had joined me in full blown effects. He wasn't able to talk much, only to tell us that he was very much feeling the effects. We spent quite a bit of time here talking in fragments. I looked at my hand for a while and saw it in extreme detail. It was like I could see through my skin partially and get a relatively detailed view of my veins and different areas of heat. Eventually we returned to the log to get our things and pushed on. The next area we found was a relative clearing that had, at its center, a black pine. Usually these don't grow anywhere near here, so it was somewhat significant. The bark was a dark brown almost purple color, and it was very complex and beautiful. We sat in a circle beneath the tree for a while. I started to feel belligerent towards nature. This was not reactionary to the muck we had to walk through and the intense swarm of ever-present bugs, which could've been understandable. This was more the result of a drug induced train of thought where I began thinking about how nothing really had significance until humans were around to place significance on things. In a sense this realization boiled down to the old classic about humans creating their world with their perception. I began to realize how incredibly impartial the non-human world was. Before us, it was just there. But we can't even really think about that because before us there was no such thing as "here" or "there". I tried to express these thoughts but I failed. All I could really muster out in full was "Fuck nature, that's what I'm saying! This doesn't have shit on people, people is where its at." This wasn't exactly eloquent, and I guess it made Cheeseman think I hated nature for most of the rest of the day until we talked about it later.
We spent most of the rest of the trip walking. The trail we were on was supposed to be a loop so we should've been able to keep on it and eventually find our way back to the car. Knowing this we pushed on slowly through the trail that was ever increasing in difficulty. We got lost quite a few times, having lost most of our navigational skills. All I could do was think, really. I just followed whoever was leading and I thought and thought and thought about all kinds of things. A lot of it came down to what I had thought about before: human perception and thought and its importance as a reference point to give context to everything we experience as people. Much of what I thought about I can't remember now, but it was all very deep and much of it seemed dark. Not necessarily dark in any kind of morbid sense, but dark in a matter-of-fact sense. I remember thinking about anything without hesitation, even stuff I like not to think about. I began to feel as if I was learning from nature. Eventually I came to realize how "fuck nature" is not really the type of thing I meant to think or say. I started thinking about nature more and about how all of us came from it. I realized how important nature was for this reason, but I also simultaneously realized how "important" is something that nature knows nothing about. I felt powerful, like a god. I was creating everything around me. I also remember thinking for a while about how it is our distaste for nature that has driven so much of our innovation as a species. We tend to have this idealized view of nature as something harmonious and perfect. Nature is indeed harmonious but again that concept wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for people. As I was assaulted by insect after insect I began to realize that much of our drive to develop new tools came from our drive to get out of the forest. Whether or not this is right or good is another question entirely, but I realized that something environmentalists tend to overlook is how important our disregard for nature is to where we are today in human development. Then I started thinking about what sets us apart from nature while we simultaneously are a part of nature. I think that ultimately it comes down to learning. As humans we have a desire to learn things. That was the whole reason I was even there that day. We want to experience and understand as many things as possible and we have complex mental frameworks that allow us to do so. I'm sure everybody can think of an example of a person who definitely does not fit this description in the most obvious sense. That is to say, somebody who doesn't really appear to enjoy learning. However, I still think this observation applies to them, just not as much I guess. These people simply learned to avoid learning.
Anyway, we eventually found that the loop was blocked about 3/4 of the way through. We had to turn around and go back the way we came. As we did we found that due to rain that had gone on elsewhere in the park, the landscape had completely changed. The muddy patches we walked through before were now full blown bodies of water. Oh well. We traipsed on through the mess and eventually we made it to familiar territory and we knew that we were close to the car. We stopped one last time about 20 feet from the exit to look out over the area through a clearing in the trees. It was pretty remarkable, the vastness of the area and the thick blanket of fog and general humidity made it seem like we were looking at prehistoric times.
We smoked half a joint and drove back in silence, all of us still lost in thought. The trip was definitely on the way out but the altered thought processes were still very much apparent. I felt very peaceful and very happy, and I continued to feel that way for much of the rest of the night. When we returned we ordered some pizza and I took a long hot shower which did wonders. I felt so cleansed of everything. If I could live life in this afterglow, I'd be a better person for it. But alas that's not how these things work.
Day 3: Campus, and Pulling the Trigger
Date: May 23rd, 2011
Time: 6:00PM - 10:00PM
Drug: 2C-B HCl
Dose: 20mg
I was feeling brazen. The past 2 trips had gone very well so I had no hesitation in diving into 2C-B at 20mg. My past experience was more of a feel-out at 15mg, I wanted to get a bit more about the character of this drug. Everything I had read seemed to indicate 20mg and up is where the real fun begins, so I figured I'd start there. We spent the day caving, a pursuit demanding of a sober mind. The evening was dedicated to the 2C-B, which 3 of us would be taking.
We ate a light meal around 5:30, then waited until 6 before dropping the capsules along with some magnesium. We spent the first 15 minutes or so watching TV, then we moved outside to smoke some hookah. As we smoked I began to feel it come on over the course of about 30 minutes. The effects quickly escalated to a peak. I felt alive and talkative. It felt good to be around old and true friends. We talked for a while and laughed a lot - this stuff really seems to have a way of bringing a smile to one's face. I began to feel slight pressure in my head and teeth. This started to remind me of a bad 2C-I experience but I was in such good spirits that I didn't let it get to my head. The 2C-B I knew from experience was a much gentler affair than its iodinated cousin, for me anyway. I had faith in the experience and it turned out quite well. At about 2 hours in we began to walk around the tremendous campus. It was a night full of joking and reminiscing. The 2C-B was very pleasant at this higher dose and the body effects were manageable. In fact, I would've very much liked to have gone back in time and upped the dosage. My next excursion will be with 25mg of the HCl. I'd like to say more about this experience but honestly there isn't much else to say. I didn't do anything interesting other than be myself for several hours. To be honest I found the experience lacking when compared to mescaline. The mental agility, mood boost and confidence are all there but the physical component is but a shadow of its 3,4,5 patterned brethren and the whole thing lacked significance as well. All in all it was a very, very fun night though. But this trip isn't really the main focus of the day, the real event was the DMT that knocked my socks off.
Date: May 23rd, 2011
Time: 11:30PM-1:30AM
Drug: DMT Freebase
Dose: 55mg
The DMT breakthrough is a gun with a trigger that I've been meaning to pull for quite some time. I've always been intimidated though and I just stuck around 35mg for a while. This night changed that, and changed me. We had vaped some weed after the 2C-B and we were just kind of chilling while we waited for the post-caving laundry to be done. Cheeseman, who wasn't able to smoke weed for legal reasons, was feeling like trying some DMT again after having tried it a few times throughout the weekend. I asked him if he wanted more than last time, and after some assurance from Alex he decided to go for 45mg of DMT and 35mg of Salvia. The Salvia + DMT combo is one I wrote about earlier this month, and one I've been liking a lot lately. When I arrived I made sure to turn my fellows on to this treat. Anyway, Cheeseman cleared the bowl and began tripping. After about 5 or 10 minutes he came out of his trance and began to talk about his experience. He told us that he had completely left the room and experienced something so complex that he could not describe it, but so profound beyond his wildest imagination that he felt his outlook would never be the same. Alex knew what he meant, as he too had been to that place. That made me the only one who hadn't, and after seeing Cheeseman's reaction I was determined to put an end to that. I first loaded a 50mg bowl. After some hesitation I put it all into my lungs. The resulting trip was intense but it is not the trip I'd like to talk about. This 50mg adventure only made me see enough to know that I wanted to go further. I immediately loaded a 55mg bowl and after a brief rest and collecting of my thoughts, I pulled the trigger once again.
I quickly found myself back in the place I was on 50mg. Then I took the hit that broke the camel's back, and the world fell out from under me. This is going to make for a boring trip report but there really just are no words to describe the experience. I was looking across the room at a TV with a music visualizer and Ratatat was coming out of the speakers. Eventually this began to fall away and I found myself in a new room entirely composed of beautiful walls of colors and patterns. The whole environment was rapidly changing color all the time. I looked up at the ceiling above me and the holes in the tiles formed patterns and yellow faces. The faces melted together until suddenly my entire vision was faded to yellow. I realized what was happening and something inside me fought back and knocked me out of the trance. Quickly I beat it down with another strong puff of DMT. And then I left my body. I don't really know how to describe what happened after this. The dresser in front of me began to rapidly morph and melt into all manner of crazy shit, the room behind it completely disappeared until I was in a new room, floating around outside of myself. I felt myself pulled out of my body from behind and I melted into the experience with complete peace and confidence. I never once felt any fear or anxiety. I sat in this state for what felt like a very long time, but was probably only about 10 minutes. It was the most beautiful and powerful experience of my entire life, and I will never forget it. 50mg and up is the only way to do DMT. Low doses can be constructive and they have their place I suppose, but I think 9 times out of 10 in the future I'll be doing much higher doses from now on with 50 being the bare minimum. Please, please try it yourself. This stuff is the be-all end-all of psychedelics.
The weekend was a smash success and I hope to have the opportunity to do something similar later on in the summer. I learned a lot from all of these drugs (drugs sounds like an understatement or something, should I say tools?) and I feel very confident about tripping in the future. By the third day it seemed that my usual hesitation and nervousness about taking a psychedelic had completely vanished, and even now I would not hesitate to take any of them again. I know that me and mescaline are going to be friends for a long time, and that I will learn as much from DMT as it is willing to show me. Thank you for reading!
As the date got closer we began planning for the event. Various venues were considered but eventually we settled on a university where Alex had an apartment that was half way between myself and the town where the other members of the group lived. The area is surrounded by plenty of state parks and other nice outdoor spots. We had 3 days and a vast array of substances to partake of, and we were going to turn it into a full-blown Fear and Loathing style adventure. Our Dr. Gonzo case contained the following: LSD, 4-AcO-DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, N,N-DMT, 2C-B, 2C-E, 2C-C, Peruvian Torch Chips, MDMA and Methylone, as well as over an ounce of medical marijuana and some nice microbrews.
Obviously we wouldn't be able to get to all of these in the 3 day period, but we'd have a wide variety to choose from. It should also be known that personally I only have experience with about half of these substances, so many of the experiences were going to be new. As for my partners in crime, Alex had about as much experience as myself and Cheeseman had previously only tried the LSD. Also, due to legal stuff, Cheeseman wouldn't be able to have any of the marijuana or MDMA.
The following is my journal from the visit detailing all the trips we took. Every single one of them went very well, and all in all it was an extremely successful weekend.
Day 1: The Game Lands
Date: May 21st, 2011
Time: 9:00AM-8:00PM
Drug: Mescaline (Peruvian Torch)
Dose: 15g
Using a blender, 45 grams of Peruvian Torch skins were powdered and put into size 000 capsules. This was split 3 ways. This Torch had a reputation for being potent, so it was a conservative dose. The capsules were divided up and we went to sleep.
The next morning I awoke 15 minutes before my alarm, and could not get back to sleep due to the anticipation of the impending alarm. We each had 12 capsules, and we took them over the course of an hour - 3 pills every 15 minutes starting around 9 AM. I chased it with some coffee. By the time we had finished the last dose we were already starting to feel mild effects. To me, it felt a lot like 2C-B did on the come-up - this was a good sign. We packed up some water, some granola bars and a nice joint of some sativa strains, then we began out into campus.
The plan was to walk several miles away past town to a system of trails that eventually led to state game lands. Here we would explore before returning to spend the tail end of the trip back at the apartment. It was a long but rewarding journey. First we spent about 10 minutes just walking through campus, which was surprisingly large. I always thought this school had about the same number of students as my own, but this campus was much bigger than my school's. We passed all kinds of cool places - buildings and courtyards and etc. before finally penetrating the edge and entering the surrounding town. By this time the mescaline was no longer deniable, and was slowly beginning to build in its intensity. We passed through the town quickly and soon found ourselves at the beginning of the trail. I asked where we were in the grand scheme of the journey as it had already been about 20 or 30 minutes. Cheeseman told us that we were only about 15% there. The trail wound from behind the town through many acres of old farm land and other features before finally entering more forested areas towards the end. Throughout the duration of walking this trail the effects continued to escalate. As I walked I began looking at the ground and seeing the beginnings of the visual side of the trip. Color distortion, brightness, a sense of breathing and light pattern overlay. Pretty soon the trip was at about the intensity of 1 hit of LSD and still building steam. Even from this initial impression I noted several advantages over LSD. Don't get me wrong, I love LSD and it is definitely on my list of favorites, but I found the mescaline preferable in almost every way, especially given the context of a day out in nature. As the body effects built I found them to have a great deal more depth than LSD. LSD always feels very alien to me in terms of its physical side, kind of metallic and unusual - almost tense sometimes. The mescaline felt much more overtly pleasant, a lot like 2C-B but much more intense and "complete" feeling. I felt really good. I had been somewhat apprehensive about the body load with this method of ingestion because every other naturally occurring psychedelic I've taken orally as-is has caused some type of disturbing body effect like nausea or general discomfort. In fact, I felt zero nausea. This may be due to the potency of the cactus, and the low dose it required, as well as how we spaced out the ingestion. The body high I felt was just that - a high, and it felt very clean. No muddiness like mushrooms or poisoned feeling like morning glory seeds, just warm clean waves of euphoria, kind of like what I imagine MDMA to be like. By the time we finished this long portion of trail I had begun to reach noticeably psychedelic effects that began to level off at a plateau. I didn't really notice the typical wave pattern of effects from this drug like one might get from LSD or mushrooms, it was just one long blast that slowly but steadily tapered off. Shortly after we finished the trail we crossed through a country club and arrived at the game lands. This is where the trip began in earnest, about an hour and a half after finishing the ingestion cycle.
We began by crossing through a series of abandoned corn fields. This was not corn grown for crops, but as Cheeseman informed us it was grown by the state to provide more habitat for animals around the nearby pond. In the distance we saw a yellow hillside tucked away behind a line of trees. When we arrived at this area we found a vast expanse of yellow flower fields. There was an odd stench from these flowers, but this would be the entryway to bulk of the trip. Here we found the gravel road system that works through the game lands, and we began to follow it randomly through the area. We walked for a little bit through a vast network of seemingly wild fields that were all connected by an extensive irrigation system. I had never seen plants being watered before that weren't crops or part of landscaping. It seemed like they were just growing whatever grew naturally in these areas, but keeping them watered. They were preserving nature essentially. We pulled off the trail near one of these large irrigation pipelines and found a small pond that was green on the surface from plant life and algae. Here we sat on a log and Alex and I smoked half of the joint and ate some granola. This is where the peak began for me, within minutes of smoking. Cheeseman put on some Grateful Dead and we peered out into the nature around us. I started noticing how everything was moving. Bugs were flying, frogs were making noises, and birds were perched and calling to each other. A leaf fell from the tree above us and spun down to earth. I thought about how surreal it was that all this life we were seeing around us was not self aware. We appreciated these things as beautiful but they themselves don't even have the ability to conceptualize of beauty. A flower has no pride in its adornments, and no ability to appreciate and understand itself. At least, as far as we know. It was very strange to feel so connected to everything but also realize how different its version of life was from ours. This became a common mental theme to the trip for me - the complexity of humans compared to other creatures and the dichotomy between man and nature. Depending on the situation we tend to view ourselves either as just another animal or as something special and privileged above the rest of life. I was beginning to get a little bit nervous about how intense the trip was getting. If I was reaching this intensity on LSD I would probably be debilitated by endless thought loops by this point. However, with mescaline I felt no such impending entrapment. Despite its quickly escalating intensity I felt confident that I could handle it even at double the dose. I finally understood what people meant when they said cactus was gentle and forgiving. The whole thing felt very supportive of my mental state. Instead of causing me to think by presenting challenging and confusing thoughts like on tryptamines, the mescaline was simply gradually opening up a new way to see the world. It felt very guided as if the drug had a distinct character to it, but by guided I do not mean "pushy". It felt like it was there holding my hand, not pulling my arm. We walked for a while more as the effects reached a plateau. Along the way we stopped a few more places.
The next place we stopped was another small body of water. I guess this would be called a pond, but it was more like a marsh. There was a small jetty made out of warehouse pallets, and we carefully moved out onto it and sat there. There was so much life all around us, especially insects. Usually I really hate most bugs but I found myself letting go to the fact that I was not going to end the day without a dozen or more bug bites, so I just stopped trying to deter them in most cases. We took turns sitting at the end of the jetty and peering down into the water. There was a vast city under the surface of bugs, tadpoles and other small creatures and underwater plants. Floating atop this world on a leaf was a long legged multicolored spider. Damselflies and small birds were jetting between the matrix of reeds and dead trees. It was very peaceful and cool in this section, but eventually we moved on. I was at a solid ++ now, stronger than a single hit of LSD but not overwhelmingly so.
Our next stop was the most important, for me anyway. We walked most of the way there in silence, I assumed because everyone was tripping so hard. In fact I was the only one who was feeling the kind of effects that I'm describing. Alex and Cheeseman both were only feeling mild to moderate effects. We reached the northeast corner of the game lands and sat down on a hill by a maintenance shed of some kind. From this spot we could see out over the trees to some distant small mountains or large hills. Above these far off plateaus there was a plethora of fluffy white clouds. It was here that the visual effects were strongest, and I consider these 15 minutes or so to be the true peak of the experience. I felt completely at peace and at one with the world. Everything was glowing and shockingly beautiful, as if it had been painted. From this sense of divine inebriation, the visuals began to come on in full. I stared at the clouds above the mountains, and I soon realized that I could never focus on a single one of them. Every time I tried to focus on a cloud, all the clouds in the sky began moving away from each other. It was like the whole landscape of clouds would expand and contract in such a way that I could never really get a solid glimpse at one. When I stopped trying to focus and just looked at all the clouds at once, they began to reach out to each other with visible patterning. Pretty soon lines of color ran through the whole cloudscape forming a latticework that united all the clouds into one entity that stretched across the whole sky. It was very much like an album cover I saw once, though I can't remember the band name at the moment. I seemed to be able to relate to this view personally. I wouldn't go so far as to say it had a personality or anything like an entity one might see on DMT, but it felt very conscious of the fact that I was looking at it. Soon faces began to form in the clouds, looking down on the mountains. We sat here for a while as I just soaked it all in. Then we moved on to another clearing where Alex smoked some more of the joint to bring out the lackluster effects he was feeling. It was a success, but sadly Cheeseman couldn't partake due to his probation. For all intents and purposes his trip ended here. He never really reached a peak, just felt mild effects the whole time. Alex reached a higher level but wasn't as impressed with the effects as I was. I'm not sure why this was, as we all took the same dose of the same material in the same fashion. The only difference was that 10 grams of my dose had been powdered finely in a coffee grinder a few months before, whereas the rest of the material had a much coarser grind from the blender. I don't see why this would make so much of a difference though. In any event, as we progressed through the rest of the game lands on our way back towards the trail home, it was evident that I was the one who had gotten the strongest and most impressive effect from the cactus.
In fact, this drug was quickly becoming one of my favorites ever, the effects were just so impressive to me. It was unlike any other psychedelic I had done in almost all ways, other than several obvious and welcome similarities to 2C-B. The sense of warmth and peace that I found on 2C-B was there in full force, even morse-so than on 2C-B itself. Everything had a much more blatantly happy and euphoric tinge to it than with something like LSD. It was as much an emotional journey as it was intellectual. The thoughts and insights I was having were definitely deep and drug-induced, but they weren't the paranoid and repetitive hyper-analytical thought processes of LSD. They were much clearer and more structurally similar to regular thoughts, they just went a bit deeper and wider. We hiked back through the game lands towards the point where we entered, exploring new areas and smoking the last of the joint. I was still at the same plateau of effects for much of this journey but then things started to slowly taper off. I found that despite being a sit-on-the-couch kind of guy I was willing and able to walk the long distances we were exploring in relative comfort. If this had been LSD I would've most certainly entered that phase of the trip that I like to call the bends, where everything begins to feel kind of strung out and surreal, as well as exhausting physically. With the mescaline I was able to power through all of the hike, only beginning to feel physically tired towards the end of the return trail. At this point we stopped to rest on a log, where we found several cool things to look at, like a strange fungus and another cool spider. Here I popped a magnesium supplement to help soothe my now straining muscles, and we continued on until we reached the town, then the campus, then finally the apartment where we started. We were greeted by the dankness that only an ounce of the finest medical marijuana can induce, and we sat down to watch some TV. For about an hour and a half to two hours, I wanted to smoke a bowl or two, but I was too comfortable to move and prepare it. The mescaline afterglow was truly fantastic. For a good 3 hours I was no longer "tripping" in the traditional sense, but the mescaline was still making itself known in a big and beautiful way. I felt very tired (probably from the walking) and just very relaxed and contented. We ate and eventually started in on some of the weed. The rest of the night was spent drinking beer, smoking, and hanging out. It was a relaxing end to a long but worthwhile day. We then planned to spend the next day with something shorter lasting and more precise. Cheeseman was particularly interested in the 4-AcO-DMT so that became the plan.
Day 2: The Black Pine Forest
Date: May 22nd, 2011
Time: 2:00PM-6:30PM
Drug: 4-AcO-DMT Fumarate
Dose: 15mg
I woke up a bit later than usual. 4 doses of 4-AcO-DMT were weighed, 15mg each. Gel-caps pocketed and supplies packed we set out in the car for a local old-growth forest. This particular type of forest was not usually found in our area, but usually was only found much farther north, so it was kind of a remarkable area. We arrived and dropped the caps. There was a placard on a stone with the name of the area and leaning up against it were some walking sticks. I grabbed one for the hell of it, but it was fortunate because the terrain in this area turned out to be pretty difficult to navigate. It had been raining a lot lately and the trails had become very muddy in some places. We struck out into the thick and overgrown forest. The first thing I noticed was how none of the plants seemed to be typical. For example we started off by walking through a long grove of rhododendrons, which is usually something I've only seen in landscaping rather than growing wild.
After about a half hour I was starting to feel the trademark heavy sedation that mushroom trips seem to invoke in me. I just started getting sleepier and sleepier. Eventually this feeling began to rise to a level that was no longer just first alerts. I asked if we could sit down somewhere, but as it turned out nobody else was feeling anything yet. We pushed on a little bit longer until we found a suitable area to sit on a long fallen log. The bugs were unbearable here even when we were liberally coated with bug spray. I began to enter the first wave of the experience on the log. Mostly I felt heavily disoriented - again standard fare for mushrooms. I noticed a buzz or ringing in my ears similar to the buzz I hear at the beginning of a strong dose of DMT. Things began to run together and form layers and the beginnings of visual patterns. For probably 20 minutes I sat on the log because I was too tired and disoriented to do anything else. I watched nature all around me: the trees in the distance, the leaves on the ground, an inch worm that was lowering himself slowly from the tall trees above. Meanwhile my friends eventually began exploring the area we were in, which was very much covered by tall trees creating a dark and relatively cool section away from the sun. They began to come up at this time as well. Eventually I began to force myself to walk around. Walk is a loose word, for much of the rest of the day I was meandering and stumbling. Mushrooms and 4-subbed tryptamines in general really put me out of it. First I found Alex perched in a tree. Rick and Cheeseman were out farther exploring, I presumed. Alex and I talked for a while. Rick emerged in the distance and we asked him where Cheeseman was only to find that he was only about 25 feet away from us by a section of the small stream that ran throughout the trail. Here we found him sitting cross legged beneath a tree staring out into space. Alex and Rick were still only feeling initial effects but Cheeseman had joined me in full blown effects. He wasn't able to talk much, only to tell us that he was very much feeling the effects. We spent quite a bit of time here talking in fragments. I looked at my hand for a while and saw it in extreme detail. It was like I could see through my skin partially and get a relatively detailed view of my veins and different areas of heat. Eventually we returned to the log to get our things and pushed on. The next area we found was a relative clearing that had, at its center, a black pine. Usually these don't grow anywhere near here, so it was somewhat significant. The bark was a dark brown almost purple color, and it was very complex and beautiful. We sat in a circle beneath the tree for a while. I started to feel belligerent towards nature. This was not reactionary to the muck we had to walk through and the intense swarm of ever-present bugs, which could've been understandable. This was more the result of a drug induced train of thought where I began thinking about how nothing really had significance until humans were around to place significance on things. In a sense this realization boiled down to the old classic about humans creating their world with their perception. I began to realize how incredibly impartial the non-human world was. Before us, it was just there. But we can't even really think about that because before us there was no such thing as "here" or "there". I tried to express these thoughts but I failed. All I could really muster out in full was "Fuck nature, that's what I'm saying! This doesn't have shit on people, people is where its at." This wasn't exactly eloquent, and I guess it made Cheeseman think I hated nature for most of the rest of the day until we talked about it later.
We spent most of the rest of the trip walking. The trail we were on was supposed to be a loop so we should've been able to keep on it and eventually find our way back to the car. Knowing this we pushed on slowly through the trail that was ever increasing in difficulty. We got lost quite a few times, having lost most of our navigational skills. All I could do was think, really. I just followed whoever was leading and I thought and thought and thought about all kinds of things. A lot of it came down to what I had thought about before: human perception and thought and its importance as a reference point to give context to everything we experience as people. Much of what I thought about I can't remember now, but it was all very deep and much of it seemed dark. Not necessarily dark in any kind of morbid sense, but dark in a matter-of-fact sense. I remember thinking about anything without hesitation, even stuff I like not to think about. I began to feel as if I was learning from nature. Eventually I came to realize how "fuck nature" is not really the type of thing I meant to think or say. I started thinking about nature more and about how all of us came from it. I realized how important nature was for this reason, but I also simultaneously realized how "important" is something that nature knows nothing about. I felt powerful, like a god. I was creating everything around me. I also remember thinking for a while about how it is our distaste for nature that has driven so much of our innovation as a species. We tend to have this idealized view of nature as something harmonious and perfect. Nature is indeed harmonious but again that concept wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for people. As I was assaulted by insect after insect I began to realize that much of our drive to develop new tools came from our drive to get out of the forest. Whether or not this is right or good is another question entirely, but I realized that something environmentalists tend to overlook is how important our disregard for nature is to where we are today in human development. Then I started thinking about what sets us apart from nature while we simultaneously are a part of nature. I think that ultimately it comes down to learning. As humans we have a desire to learn things. That was the whole reason I was even there that day. We want to experience and understand as many things as possible and we have complex mental frameworks that allow us to do so. I'm sure everybody can think of an example of a person who definitely does not fit this description in the most obvious sense. That is to say, somebody who doesn't really appear to enjoy learning. However, I still think this observation applies to them, just not as much I guess. These people simply learned to avoid learning.
Anyway, we eventually found that the loop was blocked about 3/4 of the way through. We had to turn around and go back the way we came. As we did we found that due to rain that had gone on elsewhere in the park, the landscape had completely changed. The muddy patches we walked through before were now full blown bodies of water. Oh well. We traipsed on through the mess and eventually we made it to familiar territory and we knew that we were close to the car. We stopped one last time about 20 feet from the exit to look out over the area through a clearing in the trees. It was pretty remarkable, the vastness of the area and the thick blanket of fog and general humidity made it seem like we were looking at prehistoric times.
We smoked half a joint and drove back in silence, all of us still lost in thought. The trip was definitely on the way out but the altered thought processes were still very much apparent. I felt very peaceful and very happy, and I continued to feel that way for much of the rest of the night. When we returned we ordered some pizza and I took a long hot shower which did wonders. I felt so cleansed of everything. If I could live life in this afterglow, I'd be a better person for it. But alas that's not how these things work.
Day 3: Campus, and Pulling the Trigger
Date: May 23rd, 2011
Time: 6:00PM - 10:00PM
Drug: 2C-B HCl
Dose: 20mg
I was feeling brazen. The past 2 trips had gone very well so I had no hesitation in diving into 2C-B at 20mg. My past experience was more of a feel-out at 15mg, I wanted to get a bit more about the character of this drug. Everything I had read seemed to indicate 20mg and up is where the real fun begins, so I figured I'd start there. We spent the day caving, a pursuit demanding of a sober mind. The evening was dedicated to the 2C-B, which 3 of us would be taking.
We ate a light meal around 5:30, then waited until 6 before dropping the capsules along with some magnesium. We spent the first 15 minutes or so watching TV, then we moved outside to smoke some hookah. As we smoked I began to feel it come on over the course of about 30 minutes. The effects quickly escalated to a peak. I felt alive and talkative. It felt good to be around old and true friends. We talked for a while and laughed a lot - this stuff really seems to have a way of bringing a smile to one's face. I began to feel slight pressure in my head and teeth. This started to remind me of a bad 2C-I experience but I was in such good spirits that I didn't let it get to my head. The 2C-B I knew from experience was a much gentler affair than its iodinated cousin, for me anyway. I had faith in the experience and it turned out quite well. At about 2 hours in we began to walk around the tremendous campus. It was a night full of joking and reminiscing. The 2C-B was very pleasant at this higher dose and the body effects were manageable. In fact, I would've very much liked to have gone back in time and upped the dosage. My next excursion will be with 25mg of the HCl. I'd like to say more about this experience but honestly there isn't much else to say. I didn't do anything interesting other than be myself for several hours. To be honest I found the experience lacking when compared to mescaline. The mental agility, mood boost and confidence are all there but the physical component is but a shadow of its 3,4,5 patterned brethren and the whole thing lacked significance as well. All in all it was a very, very fun night though. But this trip isn't really the main focus of the day, the real event was the DMT that knocked my socks off.
Date: May 23rd, 2011
Time: 11:30PM-1:30AM
Drug: DMT Freebase
Dose: 55mg
The DMT breakthrough is a gun with a trigger that I've been meaning to pull for quite some time. I've always been intimidated though and I just stuck around 35mg for a while. This night changed that, and changed me. We had vaped some weed after the 2C-B and we were just kind of chilling while we waited for the post-caving laundry to be done. Cheeseman, who wasn't able to smoke weed for legal reasons, was feeling like trying some DMT again after having tried it a few times throughout the weekend. I asked him if he wanted more than last time, and after some assurance from Alex he decided to go for 45mg of DMT and 35mg of Salvia. The Salvia + DMT combo is one I wrote about earlier this month, and one I've been liking a lot lately. When I arrived I made sure to turn my fellows on to this treat. Anyway, Cheeseman cleared the bowl and began tripping. After about 5 or 10 minutes he came out of his trance and began to talk about his experience. He told us that he had completely left the room and experienced something so complex that he could not describe it, but so profound beyond his wildest imagination that he felt his outlook would never be the same. Alex knew what he meant, as he too had been to that place. That made me the only one who hadn't, and after seeing Cheeseman's reaction I was determined to put an end to that. I first loaded a 50mg bowl. After some hesitation I put it all into my lungs. The resulting trip was intense but it is not the trip I'd like to talk about. This 50mg adventure only made me see enough to know that I wanted to go further. I immediately loaded a 55mg bowl and after a brief rest and collecting of my thoughts, I pulled the trigger once again.
I quickly found myself back in the place I was on 50mg. Then I took the hit that broke the camel's back, and the world fell out from under me. This is going to make for a boring trip report but there really just are no words to describe the experience. I was looking across the room at a TV with a music visualizer and Ratatat was coming out of the speakers. Eventually this began to fall away and I found myself in a new room entirely composed of beautiful walls of colors and patterns. The whole environment was rapidly changing color all the time. I looked up at the ceiling above me and the holes in the tiles formed patterns and yellow faces. The faces melted together until suddenly my entire vision was faded to yellow. I realized what was happening and something inside me fought back and knocked me out of the trance. Quickly I beat it down with another strong puff of DMT. And then I left my body. I don't really know how to describe what happened after this. The dresser in front of me began to rapidly morph and melt into all manner of crazy shit, the room behind it completely disappeared until I was in a new room, floating around outside of myself. I felt myself pulled out of my body from behind and I melted into the experience with complete peace and confidence. I never once felt any fear or anxiety. I sat in this state for what felt like a very long time, but was probably only about 10 minutes. It was the most beautiful and powerful experience of my entire life, and I will never forget it. 50mg and up is the only way to do DMT. Low doses can be constructive and they have their place I suppose, but I think 9 times out of 10 in the future I'll be doing much higher doses from now on with 50 being the bare minimum. Please, please try it yourself. This stuff is the be-all end-all of psychedelics.
The weekend was a smash success and I hope to have the opportunity to do something similar later on in the summer. I learned a lot from all of these drugs (drugs sounds like an understatement or something, should I say tools?) and I feel very confident about tripping in the future. By the third day it seemed that my usual hesitation and nervousness about taking a psychedelic had completely vanished, and even now I would not hesitate to take any of them again. I know that me and mescaline are going to be friends for a long time, and that I will learn as much from DMT as it is willing to show me. Thank you for reading!
