ForEverAfter
Ex-Bluelighter
Mescaline & Cannabis (Experienced) "The Grand Canyon & the Sibling Larvae"
(The extract was made from a 16 inch segment of San Pedro cactus, weighing 1.425 kg. Assuming an average potency of 0.05% mescaline, that comes to roughly 700mg, give or take. Extract volume = 600ml.)
+0:00 - Consumed 500 ml of SP cactus juice, on an empty stomach.
+0:10 - Consumed another 75 ml of SP cactus juice.
+0:35 - Early effects have started to emerge. The tingling before a trip. My body is numb, muscles relaxing. Nausea increasing, requiring all my efforts to suppress vomiting.
+0:55 - Emptied contents of my stomach, close to an hour after consumption. This should be enough time for enough alkaloids to have been absorbed. The nausea is now gone.
+1:05 - I decide to smoke a roach. A friend comes around while I'm lighting it. I show him the cactus juice and he says, "that smells good," so I tell him to have a sip. He spends the next five minutes frantically gargling water over the sink, tells me he will never drink it again, then leaves.
+1:15 - The effects are still building up. Despite my muscles being loose, I am noticeably wired. I am typing considerably faster than normal. I can feel this energy bubbling up inside of me, trying to escape. Standing over the balcony, I find myself drawn to the overgrown grass below. The gentles swaying of the blades hypnotizes me. I go downstairs and lie down.
The sun feels incredible, blasting against my face, heightening the otherwise negligible closed-eye hallucinations. The patterns are less geometric than LSD (very few, if any, straight lines or sharp angles) and less stable. Within the constantly changing landscape of colors and shapes, there are - seemingly - no recurrences or similarities. That is, there is no pattern to the patterns. It feels alive rather than artificial, free rather than constrained...
It is a hot day and I'm already sunburned from the day before, so I can't stay out long. It is hard to pull myself away from nature. The warmth of the sun caressing me, the earth massaging my body as I roll around in the grass.
My cat, Squid, arrives. Or maybe he's been there the whole time and I just notice him, standing there giving me strange looks, as if to say, "how did you not notice this before?"
I look at a flower, blooming in the garden bed. Not a cursory glance, in which I recognized it's beauty and move on. I looked at it with absolute appreciation; in awe of its magnificence. The only thing I can relate it to, in the sober world, is gazing at a beautiful naked woman. This is, I suppose, because my hormones (like mescaline) permit me to detach completely from the countless distractions that reside in my brain. The flower ceases to be a flower; it just is. Similarly, given the prospect of sex, a woman ceases to be a woman. Animal lust takes over from logic and the linguistic distinction between man and woman no longer needs to be made. Along with it, goes all the stigma associated to gender. All of that subconscious fluff that you've built up your entire life.
Flowers are symbols of love, forgiveness and bereavement. There are so many different meanings placed on the object, that the weight of these meanings ends up being greater than the thing itself. The actual flower is obscured by our collective historical observations.
In this drug-induced-state, I feel closer to nature than I ever have sober. Some people travel half way across the world to remote tourist destinations, places completely devoid of physical distraction. But, for the most part, they are unable or unwilling to remove the distractions within.
Staring at this flower, I am closer to nature than the average person who travels to the Grand Canyon or to an Amazonian rain forest. The idea of nature being a destination seems absurd when it is so abundant and so neglected right here in my backyard. Awe can be experienced, regardless of magnitude.
All the wonders of the world are enormous. We see them as wondrous - I guess - because they are so big that they actually start to outweigh their own stigma. But everything in the universe is equally incredible, from the insect world to the cosmos. From molecules to planets. They are not one thing or the other, big or small. Rather, they are all parts of the same infinite thing. Unfortunately we tend to attribute greatness to the big parts and never truly appreciate the little wonders that we walk past every day.
Visual and auditory hallucinations are the Grand Canyons of the psychedelic world. That is not to say they are any less important than the other aspects of the psychedelic experience, or that they are over-appreciated. They are, however, undoubtedly more popular than the spiritual and less sensory alternative. Ecstasy, for example, is almost entirely sensory, which is why it is so much more popular than LSD. From my observations, the average person approaches the psychedelic experience with somewhat selfish and indulgent intentions. For the most part, they want to get high and have a good time; breakthroughs are too often labeled bad trips.
+3:15 - I don't see the point in providing sensory descriptions. Hallucinations cannot be understood through words. It is impossible, if you haven't witnessed psychedelic patterns first hand, to have any real idea of what they are. Trying to imagine what it's like to hallucinate by reading words on a computer screen is like attempting to have your first sexual experience by correspondence; it is such a poor substitute, that I'm not even going to bother.
There is no reason to not have a firsthand experience. Excluding some small island nations, psychedelic fungi grows practically world-wide. If you include DMT-containing fauna, I believe every country on the planet has access. So, there is no excuse. Mother nature is doing her best to deliver these incredible gifts; she doesn't have marketing campaigns and artificial sweeteners at her disposal, or a chemical laboratory and it's because of these limitations that most drug-users will not consume cactus juice. It is admittedly mildly unpleasant to ingest, but that - in my opinion - is a fair price to pay. We are so spoilt by the luxuries of modern society, that the idea of drinking something that may induce vomiting is inconceivable to most. As a result, these millennia-old shamanistic practices are becoming increasingly unappealing. Your average drug-user will not experience mescaline unless it is in crystalline form. Personally, I refuse to do this. I think it is a cheat, for lack of a better word and I would rather consume it, given the choice, the way nature intended. I like the horrible aftertaste and the initial nausea. It's all part of the ritual.
Cacti and mushrooms both taste "earthen", despite having dramatically different flavors. There is a common element detectable to the palate, far beyond the typical spectrum of flavor. I feel, when I chew on dried mushrooms or cacti buttons, as if I am chewing on the earth itself; not eating dirt, but eating part of the planet. This unity between all things; the lack of distinction between dirt and tree: is inherent to the psychedelic experience.
Whatever that common element is - the flavor of the planet - I believe it to be part of tripping. And, humble as I am in the face of what some people call God, I chose not to bypass it for fear of having to ingest something mildly unpleasant. The fact that it is hard on the stomach is an indication that it should be consumed cautiously, that is: in relative moderation.
Those who do acid extractions and consume crystalline mescaline, often consume far more than nature has made possible - which, since there is little to no risk of physical overdose, isn't a big issue. It does, however, potentially reveal user intentions. ie. Not only do they want to bypass the ingestion of the drug as much as possible; they are also dissatisfied with the effect. To return to the tourist analogy, it is like searching for something more spectacular than the world has to offer. The Grand Canyon, then the Grander Canyon, then what?
If this device, capable of revealing the world in all its glory, is not enough. Then the world, in all its glory, is not enough. It needs to be more glorious, more wonderful. The hallucinations, more spectacular. If you have gotten to this point, and you take for granted the very thing that was designed to help you stop taking things for granted, I'm not sure what the solution is. Perhaps another drug, or substance, or thing - should such a thing exists - that helps you see the beauty of the thing that helps you see the beauty of everything?
+4:00 - I am still rather wired, stir-crazy. It's hard to remain still for more than thirty seconds. My body is completely relaxed, though. It is not an anxious energy. My mind is functioning perfectly, a little better than usual if anything. Having had quite a lot of experience with psychedelics, I am not overcome with unmanageable realizations. The groundwork has been done. Instead, I feel immensely satisfied with who I am and the choices I have made in this life and I find myself reflecting, time and time again, about my childhood. It feels as if my brain - satisfied with my present state - is systematically rewinding and fast-forwarding through my memories, in order to iron out the kinks. I sit out on the verandah, contemplating this and that, thinking about when I was six years old.
+4:20 - Time to roll up a joint. While smoking, I watched flies dancing around a dead bird. Previously, during the early stages of the trip, I picked it up by the tail feathers, exposing a cavity full of maggots, and threw it across the yard. I wasn't disgusted by the larvae, I was simply moving it so I didn't have to smell death as I lay in the grass. Sober, I would have been disgusted - maybe even a little sick. When I thought about it, though, it actually made me happy. It was life as a result of death. Flies born from a dead bird.
I stood there, smoking idly, and watching these paternal flies dance about their fertile breeding ground. I am unable to distinguish between flies and other animals. There is no hierarchy of importance. No bad animals and good animals. Under the influence of mescaline, whatever physiological reaction I usually have to flies, is gone. There are no pests, no unwanted species. Life is life is life. It is a strange feeling, regarding a carcass full of maggots, but I feel joy that so many animals will be born. Joy, because I am connected to them. Their existence is my immortality. When I am sober this only extends to the human race and, more specifically, my family. We value humans above all other species and our family above all other humans, to the extent that we disconnect ourselves from the planet and from our own race, respectively. There are ridiculous rules. First cousins take priority over second cousins. Uncles over great uncles. Basically, the closer somebody is to you on the family tree, the more you care about them. We take mammals over reptiles, apes over rats, humans over baboons, and family over strangers.
There isn't a whole lot of love for non-mammals and there certainly isn't a whole lot of love for maggots. These baby animals, yet to be born; they make us sick... As I write those words, they strike me as particularly odd. I wonder if it’s possible, when sober, to not be disgusted by a carcass full of maggots.
+6:20 - Coming towards the end of the trip. Soon I will return to the person I was before.
Although the doors of perception are often hardly ajar, and my sense of family is limited to the most finite subgroup imaginable, I am thankful that - today - I felt connected.
Amen.
(The extract was made from a 16 inch segment of San Pedro cactus, weighing 1.425 kg. Assuming an average potency of 0.05% mescaline, that comes to roughly 700mg, give or take. Extract volume = 600ml.)
+0:00 - Consumed 500 ml of SP cactus juice, on an empty stomach.
+0:10 - Consumed another 75 ml of SP cactus juice.
+0:35 - Early effects have started to emerge. The tingling before a trip. My body is numb, muscles relaxing. Nausea increasing, requiring all my efforts to suppress vomiting.
+0:55 - Emptied contents of my stomach, close to an hour after consumption. This should be enough time for enough alkaloids to have been absorbed. The nausea is now gone.
+1:05 - I decide to smoke a roach. A friend comes around while I'm lighting it. I show him the cactus juice and he says, "that smells good," so I tell him to have a sip. He spends the next five minutes frantically gargling water over the sink, tells me he will never drink it again, then leaves.
+1:15 - The effects are still building up. Despite my muscles being loose, I am noticeably wired. I am typing considerably faster than normal. I can feel this energy bubbling up inside of me, trying to escape. Standing over the balcony, I find myself drawn to the overgrown grass below. The gentles swaying of the blades hypnotizes me. I go downstairs and lie down.
The sun feels incredible, blasting against my face, heightening the otherwise negligible closed-eye hallucinations. The patterns are less geometric than LSD (very few, if any, straight lines or sharp angles) and less stable. Within the constantly changing landscape of colors and shapes, there are - seemingly - no recurrences or similarities. That is, there is no pattern to the patterns. It feels alive rather than artificial, free rather than constrained...
It is a hot day and I'm already sunburned from the day before, so I can't stay out long. It is hard to pull myself away from nature. The warmth of the sun caressing me, the earth massaging my body as I roll around in the grass.
My cat, Squid, arrives. Or maybe he's been there the whole time and I just notice him, standing there giving me strange looks, as if to say, "how did you not notice this before?"
I look at a flower, blooming in the garden bed. Not a cursory glance, in which I recognized it's beauty and move on. I looked at it with absolute appreciation; in awe of its magnificence. The only thing I can relate it to, in the sober world, is gazing at a beautiful naked woman. This is, I suppose, because my hormones (like mescaline) permit me to detach completely from the countless distractions that reside in my brain. The flower ceases to be a flower; it just is. Similarly, given the prospect of sex, a woman ceases to be a woman. Animal lust takes over from logic and the linguistic distinction between man and woman no longer needs to be made. Along with it, goes all the stigma associated to gender. All of that subconscious fluff that you've built up your entire life.
Flowers are symbols of love, forgiveness and bereavement. There are so many different meanings placed on the object, that the weight of these meanings ends up being greater than the thing itself. The actual flower is obscured by our collective historical observations.
In this drug-induced-state, I feel closer to nature than I ever have sober. Some people travel half way across the world to remote tourist destinations, places completely devoid of physical distraction. But, for the most part, they are unable or unwilling to remove the distractions within.
Staring at this flower, I am closer to nature than the average person who travels to the Grand Canyon or to an Amazonian rain forest. The idea of nature being a destination seems absurd when it is so abundant and so neglected right here in my backyard. Awe can be experienced, regardless of magnitude.
All the wonders of the world are enormous. We see them as wondrous - I guess - because they are so big that they actually start to outweigh their own stigma. But everything in the universe is equally incredible, from the insect world to the cosmos. From molecules to planets. They are not one thing or the other, big or small. Rather, they are all parts of the same infinite thing. Unfortunately we tend to attribute greatness to the big parts and never truly appreciate the little wonders that we walk past every day.
Visual and auditory hallucinations are the Grand Canyons of the psychedelic world. That is not to say they are any less important than the other aspects of the psychedelic experience, or that they are over-appreciated. They are, however, undoubtedly more popular than the spiritual and less sensory alternative. Ecstasy, for example, is almost entirely sensory, which is why it is so much more popular than LSD. From my observations, the average person approaches the psychedelic experience with somewhat selfish and indulgent intentions. For the most part, they want to get high and have a good time; breakthroughs are too often labeled bad trips.
+3:15 - I don't see the point in providing sensory descriptions. Hallucinations cannot be understood through words. It is impossible, if you haven't witnessed psychedelic patterns first hand, to have any real idea of what they are. Trying to imagine what it's like to hallucinate by reading words on a computer screen is like attempting to have your first sexual experience by correspondence; it is such a poor substitute, that I'm not even going to bother.
There is no reason to not have a firsthand experience. Excluding some small island nations, psychedelic fungi grows practically world-wide. If you include DMT-containing fauna, I believe every country on the planet has access. So, there is no excuse. Mother nature is doing her best to deliver these incredible gifts; she doesn't have marketing campaigns and artificial sweeteners at her disposal, or a chemical laboratory and it's because of these limitations that most drug-users will not consume cactus juice. It is admittedly mildly unpleasant to ingest, but that - in my opinion - is a fair price to pay. We are so spoilt by the luxuries of modern society, that the idea of drinking something that may induce vomiting is inconceivable to most. As a result, these millennia-old shamanistic practices are becoming increasingly unappealing. Your average drug-user will not experience mescaline unless it is in crystalline form. Personally, I refuse to do this. I think it is a cheat, for lack of a better word and I would rather consume it, given the choice, the way nature intended. I like the horrible aftertaste and the initial nausea. It's all part of the ritual.
Cacti and mushrooms both taste "earthen", despite having dramatically different flavors. There is a common element detectable to the palate, far beyond the typical spectrum of flavor. I feel, when I chew on dried mushrooms or cacti buttons, as if I am chewing on the earth itself; not eating dirt, but eating part of the planet. This unity between all things; the lack of distinction between dirt and tree: is inherent to the psychedelic experience.
Whatever that common element is - the flavor of the planet - I believe it to be part of tripping. And, humble as I am in the face of what some people call God, I chose not to bypass it for fear of having to ingest something mildly unpleasant. The fact that it is hard on the stomach is an indication that it should be consumed cautiously, that is: in relative moderation.
Those who do acid extractions and consume crystalline mescaline, often consume far more than nature has made possible - which, since there is little to no risk of physical overdose, isn't a big issue. It does, however, potentially reveal user intentions. ie. Not only do they want to bypass the ingestion of the drug as much as possible; they are also dissatisfied with the effect. To return to the tourist analogy, it is like searching for something more spectacular than the world has to offer. The Grand Canyon, then the Grander Canyon, then what?
If this device, capable of revealing the world in all its glory, is not enough. Then the world, in all its glory, is not enough. It needs to be more glorious, more wonderful. The hallucinations, more spectacular. If you have gotten to this point, and you take for granted the very thing that was designed to help you stop taking things for granted, I'm not sure what the solution is. Perhaps another drug, or substance, or thing - should such a thing exists - that helps you see the beauty of the thing that helps you see the beauty of everything?
+4:00 - I am still rather wired, stir-crazy. It's hard to remain still for more than thirty seconds. My body is completely relaxed, though. It is not an anxious energy. My mind is functioning perfectly, a little better than usual if anything. Having had quite a lot of experience with psychedelics, I am not overcome with unmanageable realizations. The groundwork has been done. Instead, I feel immensely satisfied with who I am and the choices I have made in this life and I find myself reflecting, time and time again, about my childhood. It feels as if my brain - satisfied with my present state - is systematically rewinding and fast-forwarding through my memories, in order to iron out the kinks. I sit out on the verandah, contemplating this and that, thinking about when I was six years old.
+4:20 - Time to roll up a joint. While smoking, I watched flies dancing around a dead bird. Previously, during the early stages of the trip, I picked it up by the tail feathers, exposing a cavity full of maggots, and threw it across the yard. I wasn't disgusted by the larvae, I was simply moving it so I didn't have to smell death as I lay in the grass. Sober, I would have been disgusted - maybe even a little sick. When I thought about it, though, it actually made me happy. It was life as a result of death. Flies born from a dead bird.
I stood there, smoking idly, and watching these paternal flies dance about their fertile breeding ground. I am unable to distinguish between flies and other animals. There is no hierarchy of importance. No bad animals and good animals. Under the influence of mescaline, whatever physiological reaction I usually have to flies, is gone. There are no pests, no unwanted species. Life is life is life. It is a strange feeling, regarding a carcass full of maggots, but I feel joy that so many animals will be born. Joy, because I am connected to them. Their existence is my immortality. When I am sober this only extends to the human race and, more specifically, my family. We value humans above all other species and our family above all other humans, to the extent that we disconnect ourselves from the planet and from our own race, respectively. There are ridiculous rules. First cousins take priority over second cousins. Uncles over great uncles. Basically, the closer somebody is to you on the family tree, the more you care about them. We take mammals over reptiles, apes over rats, humans over baboons, and family over strangers.
There isn't a whole lot of love for non-mammals and there certainly isn't a whole lot of love for maggots. These baby animals, yet to be born; they make us sick... As I write those words, they strike me as particularly odd. I wonder if it’s possible, when sober, to not be disgusted by a carcass full of maggots.
+6:20 - Coming towards the end of the trip. Soon I will return to the person I was before.
Although the doors of perception are often hardly ajar, and my sense of family is limited to the most finite subgroup imaginable, I am thankful that - today - I felt connected.
Amen.
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