yardbirdrc
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2011
- Messages
- 160
Date: February 22, 2014
Time: 10:30pm - 3:30am
Drug: Opium
Dose: 250 - 500mg
Kyle had been out of town for the past month, so his glorious return to Pittsburgh seemed like an appropriate time to try out our new batch of opium. This was my first time with the big O (or morphine of any sort) although I've had some limited experience with other opiate drugs in recent months which probably warrants some summation.
Throughout my drug-taking career my category of choice has undoubtedly been psychedelics, and I've generally viewed opiates and stimulants as possibly dangerous and at the very least uninteresting. My journey into the poppy realm began when I grabbed hold of a scalding hot pan and riddled my hand with searing blisters last autumn. After about an hour of intense, consistent pain I began putting out the feelers for anything dopey. Soon a trade was arranged and a friend fell through with a deuce of lean, which I apprehensively chugged out of the bottle. As the codeine and promethazine set in I began to feel the loopy drag of narcotics for the first time. My impression then is the same as my impression now: opiates, while physically very pleasurable, are immensely boring. The most prominent mental effect has been a complete deadening of all emotions - this has remained true unilaterally across all members of the class that I've now tasted, with oxycodone perhaps being the most truly joyful or euphoric. Perhaps if my father had raped me as a child or I had seen some shit in the marines I may have found this forceable removal of emotions desirable. Instead, as a well adjusted and generally fulfilled human being I find this effect relatively bland and even annoying at times.
The only times where I've gotten any kind of useful experience out of opiates are times when I was going through emotional tumult but still had planning to do and tasks to accomplish - in this context it afforded me a level of detachment where I could operate effectively. Those experiences represent a small subset of my opiate experiments, and most of these experiments end up with me glued to a couch with a limp dick and no desire or motivation to do anything. This does not suit my lifestyle in the slightest. For this reason I have little fear of addiction with these drugs, though I still take precautions with spacing and limiting dosages just in case they are trickier than they seem.
Kyle has a much more extensive history with opiates, having spent his freshman year of college watching his roommate devolve from taking vicodin for a broken arm to smoking dope and fentanyl patches. Kyle played around with the dregs of what came through their room, but easily avoided addiction to these compounds because he largely sees opiates as I have described them above. Moreover, most people seem to fear these drugs (understandably) so when I say "I got a line on a few oxies", Kyle is really the only one who is excited about that.
Much of the appeal for me, and the reason I continue to play with these compounds, comes from ritual. There's nothing like pourin' up another double cup of dirty sprite while Screw bangs out in the background (something easily as significant as listening to the Dead on acid). First the ice hits the styrofoam, then the mud, then the soda, and then the jolly ranchers laid neatly on top of the ice to keep them afloat. Opium has a great ritual of consumption associated with it so I was relatively excited to partake.
Kyle arrived around 10pm to an apartment full of people who were excited to see him. Hugs were liberally applied and pretty soon I cracked open a pill bottle to show him the black, waxy opium that we had acquired together - 2.5 grams each. The smell was unlike what I expected, a dark botanical odor that reminded me of syrian rue tea, roses and those old Mary Jane candies that stick to your teeth. Kyle had consumed opium once before and he commented that this batch was significantly different from the material he had previously encountered which was softer and more floral. I was not at all concerned that the product might be misrepresented heroin given the reliable nature of the supplier, the waxiness of the opium's texture and the complete lack of any odor resembling acetic acid. After we consumed it the relatively low potency also helped to confirm this.
In absence of an opium pipe we debated consumption method for a while and eventually settled on the method we had used for bubble hash in the past. We lit a hookah coal and placed it on a stone incense holder and then we proceeded to drop match-sized pellets of the opium onto the coal. We caught the vapors under a large hefeweizen glass, then tilted the glass slightly and sucked the vapors out with a straw. Almost immediately we both commented that we felt an opiate effect coming in behind the eyes, albeit very mild. We waited 5 minutes or so and split another glass of vapor, then another. Sam also joined in on a few of these and noted the same instantaneous but mild effect. We probably got 5 or 6 pellets into it before we were feeling strong, interesting effects. The flavor was much like the smell, but somehow more delicious than I was expecting. A strong pharmaceutical odor filled the room, in addition to a subtle oriental spiciness.
DJ Screw seemed slightly off. We spent some time trying to find the most appropriate music for an opium experience before landing firmly and unanimously on bop. Freddie Hubbard drifted into Lee Morgan, Lee Morgan drifted into Bird and Diz, and as the opium laid harder and harder on our heads we found ourselves dipping into more laid back west coast jazz - all from the late 50's and early 60's. As the night wore on I found myself with less and less patience for the large group of boisterous people that had accumulated in my small, one bedroom apartment. While I would usually be happy to mix and socialize, keeping up with conversation began to feel more and more like a chore. Sam was rubbing my back and I was literally drooling, unable to pay attention to anything else going on. Eventually I proposed to Kyle that we move into the bedroom and lay on the carpet and he agreed.
As I laid my body down on the carpet I was met with an intense relaxation the likes of which I have never experienced. The voices coming from the living room were muffled and distant, and Parker and Gillespie flowed beautifully out of my bedroom speaker and over my body. The music enhancement was really the strongest and most desirable aspect of the experience. As the drug tingled throughout my extremities I thought about how intimately the jazz scene was linked with heroin, and about Bird's death in particular. I felt connected to him in a strange way, now being able to see at least some shadow of what he died for. The notes seemed slowed down to a point that they were more comprehensible, and somehow had that way they had a greater resonance and significance. It was as if I was hearing it for the first time even though Parker has been a favorite of mine for a decade now. I began to feel warm rushes of pleasure running from my toes up through my arms and scalp. We didn't really talk. Eventually Sam came in and laid down with me, saying that she felt like she had been draped in a warm, wet blanket. I don't know how much time passed - the only thing that motivated me to leave my position on the floor was to get opium, which I found to be a little more-ish. It is now 4 days since this experience and I feel no major draw towards doing more in the near future, but when I'm on the drug itself all I want to do is smoke more of it. This is very similar to MDMA with me.
I packed a bowl with some marijuana (which I had not smoked that evening up until this point), liberally sprinkled some specks of opium on top and then layered more weed on top of that. I took this to my room and split it with kyle. We realized this was a preferable method of ingestion compared to the hookah coal - holding the lighter far from the opium allowed it to quickly bubble up and release its vapors without the weed even burning. After the opium had liquified and sank into the bud, we could then smoke that normally. It seemed more potent this way, but maybe it was just the added cannabis. Whatever it was, I was not leaving the floor for the rest of the night.
By now it was nearly 2am and the main party room was beginning to clear out. Soon it was just Kyle, myself, Sam, Robin, and Ruari sprawled throughout my room and gently waxing poetic as Art Pepper cascaded soothing licks throughout the space from the adequately warmed up AR Model 4 in the corner of the room. This was a much more optimal setting for the drug. Kyle and I spoke about opium for a while, taking intermittent puffs off the ope-soaked bowl while reclined in true opium den posture. Personally I found the opium to be a much more robust opiate experience than any of the parmaceutical drugs I had encountered. It was physically much more nuanced and exciting than something like oxycodone, but also much less euphoric and the emotional blunting was very strong. I was beautifully dead inside. I believe I felt less happy than I would have normally felt spending time with Kyle after not having seen him for a month, but I was somehow more content - more peaceful. It was bizarre.
We probably spent about an hour just the five of us before people started filtering out and Sam and I were left alone to get ready for bed. Sex was out of the question for me at this point, so we just laid quietly and held each other. It wasn't that I physically couldn't perform so much as that I had zero interest in it. All the emotional beauty of making love would be completely absent, so really why bother? Why bother doing anything?
I don't know if it was the change in setting, or if it was just that the opium was exponentially stacking (we had smoked a lot of it over a many-hour period), but the effects seemed to increase dramatically in strength during this time. In the hour or so before I finally passed out I felt that I was in some kind of vacuous abyss. I kept hoping for the creativity and the visions that people sometimes talk about with opium, but instead I just felt like the most comfortable corpse on the planet. Complete mental quietude, almost zen-like. My body began to slowly lose definition. First all of my fingers would become one clump of hand, then my hands and arms would become one clump of torso... eventually I felt very much like a tiny version of myself sitting inside of my own head, which was attached to about 200 pounds of completely undefined meat. It was as if my body was asleep but I was still very much awake. Unlike sleep paralysis (with which I have had many experiences), I could move if I wanted to but the minute I remained still for more than a few seconds my body once again transformed into an amorphous blob of numb pleasure. I played around with this for maybe half an hour before the one thread of consciousness I maintained finally slipped my grasp and I fell asleep with the lights on as the jazz continued to play.
I woke up around noon, much later than I usually rise and shine. It took me about an hour to actually find the motivation to leave the bed, and that was really only at Sam's prodding. I felt physically quite well rested, but I had no desire to do a god damned thing. This was annoying on a day where there was a lot planned - I had to clean up after the previous night's party, I had to go to the grocery store and then I had to prepare a food item for Sunday Funday - our usual orgiastic potluck / TV marathon. One large bong rip of some sativa, two cups of cafe bustelo and three marlboro reds later I was able to push myself through the day until I fell asleep early that night. Were I still in college I would've skipped class, and if I had to work the next day I might've called off. Lesson learned: this is strictly a weekend drug.
Overall this was probably my strongest opiate experience, so it's hard to really say whether or not I prefer opium to any other sort of opiate drug. I'm guessing that over the course of the evening Kyle and I smoked around half a gram between us, perhaps more than that but no more than a gram. That night's experience was certainly one of my strongest with opiates, and one of my favorite such experiences. Whether or not it varies practically from, say, a comparably strong dose of hydrocodone? That I can not say. For all it's mystique I will say that regardless of whatever mix of morphine and codeine and XYZ-ine is going on in that latex, the very practice of smoking opium is most pleasurable and highly recommended. Just be sure to consider the setting and to consider your intentions in consumption. Don't come to opiates looking for an escape, because you'll find it. Come looking to learn what they have to offer, and do so with some semblance of skepticism and non-attachment. They certainly can have value when treated with respect and used in the right context.
Time: 10:30pm - 3:30am
Drug: Opium
Dose: 250 - 500mg
Kyle had been out of town for the past month, so his glorious return to Pittsburgh seemed like an appropriate time to try out our new batch of opium. This was my first time with the big O (or morphine of any sort) although I've had some limited experience with other opiate drugs in recent months which probably warrants some summation.
Throughout my drug-taking career my category of choice has undoubtedly been psychedelics, and I've generally viewed opiates and stimulants as possibly dangerous and at the very least uninteresting. My journey into the poppy realm began when I grabbed hold of a scalding hot pan and riddled my hand with searing blisters last autumn. After about an hour of intense, consistent pain I began putting out the feelers for anything dopey. Soon a trade was arranged and a friend fell through with a deuce of lean, which I apprehensively chugged out of the bottle. As the codeine and promethazine set in I began to feel the loopy drag of narcotics for the first time. My impression then is the same as my impression now: opiates, while physically very pleasurable, are immensely boring. The most prominent mental effect has been a complete deadening of all emotions - this has remained true unilaterally across all members of the class that I've now tasted, with oxycodone perhaps being the most truly joyful or euphoric. Perhaps if my father had raped me as a child or I had seen some shit in the marines I may have found this forceable removal of emotions desirable. Instead, as a well adjusted and generally fulfilled human being I find this effect relatively bland and even annoying at times.
The only times where I've gotten any kind of useful experience out of opiates are times when I was going through emotional tumult but still had planning to do and tasks to accomplish - in this context it afforded me a level of detachment where I could operate effectively. Those experiences represent a small subset of my opiate experiments, and most of these experiments end up with me glued to a couch with a limp dick and no desire or motivation to do anything. This does not suit my lifestyle in the slightest. For this reason I have little fear of addiction with these drugs, though I still take precautions with spacing and limiting dosages just in case they are trickier than they seem.
Kyle has a much more extensive history with opiates, having spent his freshman year of college watching his roommate devolve from taking vicodin for a broken arm to smoking dope and fentanyl patches. Kyle played around with the dregs of what came through their room, but easily avoided addiction to these compounds because he largely sees opiates as I have described them above. Moreover, most people seem to fear these drugs (understandably) so when I say "I got a line on a few oxies", Kyle is really the only one who is excited about that.
Much of the appeal for me, and the reason I continue to play with these compounds, comes from ritual. There's nothing like pourin' up another double cup of dirty sprite while Screw bangs out in the background (something easily as significant as listening to the Dead on acid). First the ice hits the styrofoam, then the mud, then the soda, and then the jolly ranchers laid neatly on top of the ice to keep them afloat. Opium has a great ritual of consumption associated with it so I was relatively excited to partake.
Kyle arrived around 10pm to an apartment full of people who were excited to see him. Hugs were liberally applied and pretty soon I cracked open a pill bottle to show him the black, waxy opium that we had acquired together - 2.5 grams each. The smell was unlike what I expected, a dark botanical odor that reminded me of syrian rue tea, roses and those old Mary Jane candies that stick to your teeth. Kyle had consumed opium once before and he commented that this batch was significantly different from the material he had previously encountered which was softer and more floral. I was not at all concerned that the product might be misrepresented heroin given the reliable nature of the supplier, the waxiness of the opium's texture and the complete lack of any odor resembling acetic acid. After we consumed it the relatively low potency also helped to confirm this.
In absence of an opium pipe we debated consumption method for a while and eventually settled on the method we had used for bubble hash in the past. We lit a hookah coal and placed it on a stone incense holder and then we proceeded to drop match-sized pellets of the opium onto the coal. We caught the vapors under a large hefeweizen glass, then tilted the glass slightly and sucked the vapors out with a straw. Almost immediately we both commented that we felt an opiate effect coming in behind the eyes, albeit very mild. We waited 5 minutes or so and split another glass of vapor, then another. Sam also joined in on a few of these and noted the same instantaneous but mild effect. We probably got 5 or 6 pellets into it before we were feeling strong, interesting effects. The flavor was much like the smell, but somehow more delicious than I was expecting. A strong pharmaceutical odor filled the room, in addition to a subtle oriental spiciness.
DJ Screw seemed slightly off. We spent some time trying to find the most appropriate music for an opium experience before landing firmly and unanimously on bop. Freddie Hubbard drifted into Lee Morgan, Lee Morgan drifted into Bird and Diz, and as the opium laid harder and harder on our heads we found ourselves dipping into more laid back west coast jazz - all from the late 50's and early 60's. As the night wore on I found myself with less and less patience for the large group of boisterous people that had accumulated in my small, one bedroom apartment. While I would usually be happy to mix and socialize, keeping up with conversation began to feel more and more like a chore. Sam was rubbing my back and I was literally drooling, unable to pay attention to anything else going on. Eventually I proposed to Kyle that we move into the bedroom and lay on the carpet and he agreed.
As I laid my body down on the carpet I was met with an intense relaxation the likes of which I have never experienced. The voices coming from the living room were muffled and distant, and Parker and Gillespie flowed beautifully out of my bedroom speaker and over my body. The music enhancement was really the strongest and most desirable aspect of the experience. As the drug tingled throughout my extremities I thought about how intimately the jazz scene was linked with heroin, and about Bird's death in particular. I felt connected to him in a strange way, now being able to see at least some shadow of what he died for. The notes seemed slowed down to a point that they were more comprehensible, and somehow had that way they had a greater resonance and significance. It was as if I was hearing it for the first time even though Parker has been a favorite of mine for a decade now. I began to feel warm rushes of pleasure running from my toes up through my arms and scalp. We didn't really talk. Eventually Sam came in and laid down with me, saying that she felt like she had been draped in a warm, wet blanket. I don't know how much time passed - the only thing that motivated me to leave my position on the floor was to get opium, which I found to be a little more-ish. It is now 4 days since this experience and I feel no major draw towards doing more in the near future, but when I'm on the drug itself all I want to do is smoke more of it. This is very similar to MDMA with me.
I packed a bowl with some marijuana (which I had not smoked that evening up until this point), liberally sprinkled some specks of opium on top and then layered more weed on top of that. I took this to my room and split it with kyle. We realized this was a preferable method of ingestion compared to the hookah coal - holding the lighter far from the opium allowed it to quickly bubble up and release its vapors without the weed even burning. After the opium had liquified and sank into the bud, we could then smoke that normally. It seemed more potent this way, but maybe it was just the added cannabis. Whatever it was, I was not leaving the floor for the rest of the night.
By now it was nearly 2am and the main party room was beginning to clear out. Soon it was just Kyle, myself, Sam, Robin, and Ruari sprawled throughout my room and gently waxing poetic as Art Pepper cascaded soothing licks throughout the space from the adequately warmed up AR Model 4 in the corner of the room. This was a much more optimal setting for the drug. Kyle and I spoke about opium for a while, taking intermittent puffs off the ope-soaked bowl while reclined in true opium den posture. Personally I found the opium to be a much more robust opiate experience than any of the parmaceutical drugs I had encountered. It was physically much more nuanced and exciting than something like oxycodone, but also much less euphoric and the emotional blunting was very strong. I was beautifully dead inside. I believe I felt less happy than I would have normally felt spending time with Kyle after not having seen him for a month, but I was somehow more content - more peaceful. It was bizarre.
We probably spent about an hour just the five of us before people started filtering out and Sam and I were left alone to get ready for bed. Sex was out of the question for me at this point, so we just laid quietly and held each other. It wasn't that I physically couldn't perform so much as that I had zero interest in it. All the emotional beauty of making love would be completely absent, so really why bother? Why bother doing anything?
I don't know if it was the change in setting, or if it was just that the opium was exponentially stacking (we had smoked a lot of it over a many-hour period), but the effects seemed to increase dramatically in strength during this time. In the hour or so before I finally passed out I felt that I was in some kind of vacuous abyss. I kept hoping for the creativity and the visions that people sometimes talk about with opium, but instead I just felt like the most comfortable corpse on the planet. Complete mental quietude, almost zen-like. My body began to slowly lose definition. First all of my fingers would become one clump of hand, then my hands and arms would become one clump of torso... eventually I felt very much like a tiny version of myself sitting inside of my own head, which was attached to about 200 pounds of completely undefined meat. It was as if my body was asleep but I was still very much awake. Unlike sleep paralysis (with which I have had many experiences), I could move if I wanted to but the minute I remained still for more than a few seconds my body once again transformed into an amorphous blob of numb pleasure. I played around with this for maybe half an hour before the one thread of consciousness I maintained finally slipped my grasp and I fell asleep with the lights on as the jazz continued to play.
I woke up around noon, much later than I usually rise and shine. It took me about an hour to actually find the motivation to leave the bed, and that was really only at Sam's prodding. I felt physically quite well rested, but I had no desire to do a god damned thing. This was annoying on a day where there was a lot planned - I had to clean up after the previous night's party, I had to go to the grocery store and then I had to prepare a food item for Sunday Funday - our usual orgiastic potluck / TV marathon. One large bong rip of some sativa, two cups of cafe bustelo and three marlboro reds later I was able to push myself through the day until I fell asleep early that night. Were I still in college I would've skipped class, and if I had to work the next day I might've called off. Lesson learned: this is strictly a weekend drug.
Overall this was probably my strongest opiate experience, so it's hard to really say whether or not I prefer opium to any other sort of opiate drug. I'm guessing that over the course of the evening Kyle and I smoked around half a gram between us, perhaps more than that but no more than a gram. That night's experience was certainly one of my strongest with opiates, and one of my favorite such experiences. Whether or not it varies practically from, say, a comparably strong dose of hydrocodone? That I can not say. For all it's mystique I will say that regardless of whatever mix of morphine and codeine and XYZ-ine is going on in that latex, the very practice of smoking opium is most pleasurable and highly recommended. Just be sure to consider the setting and to consider your intentions in consumption. Don't come to opiates looking for an escape, because you'll find it. Come looking to learn what they have to offer, and do so with some semblance of skepticism and non-attachment. They certainly can have value when treated with respect and used in the right context.
