DOSE: T+ 0:00	0.5	oral	Cannabis - High CBD	(edible / food)
T+ 2:15	0.5	oral	Cannabis - High CBD	(edible / food)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

A Near-Psychedelic Experience

I'm 40 years old. I had never tried pot until recently. I had never tried any non-prescription drug, outside of alcohol, but was always curious. After hearing about other people's experiences with ayahuasca, I had made up my mind to visit Peru and have at least one ayahuasca session in the jungle. I wanted to do this for spiritual reasons, not for a high or buzz. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

With the reality of traveling to Peru on the horizon, I thought more about how I wanted this to go. I'd heard that it may be a good idea to work your way up to ayahuasca. Since I hadn't tried any mind/mood altering substance, I'd heard it might be wise to start out light. I mentioned this to my friend/lover. Let's call her Alexa. Alexa wanted to be with me when I tried marijuana for the first time. She'd had experience with pot and LSD, but doesn't take anything anymore. She would just be joining me for the ride.

On Thursday, January 12th, we embarked on Dispensary Tour 2017! It was a beautiful day and I was feeling really good. The sun was out and there were still several inches of snow left on the ground after a storm dumped 12 inches on Portland, Oregon a couple days earlier. We had a pre-tour brunch, where I had a couple slices of crunchy french toast and scrambled eggs. This was about 45 minutes prior to consuming the pot edible.

The plan was to visit a few local dispensaries, eat an edible, and then go to a sensory deprivation float tank.

At the first dispensary we went to, I picked out a mint hibiscus chocolate bar. I asked about recommended dosage for a first-timer. The budtender suggested half the bar. Here are the details of the entire bar: 11.1mg of THC, 10.5mg of CBD, and 0.8mg of CBC. This bar is called a “high-CBD hybrid” made with “full extract cannabis oil”.

T+0:00
With chocolate bar in hand, Alexa and I made our way to her car. I opened up the chocolate bar and, like the budtender recommended, I ate half of it, which was dusted with pink hibiscus powder. It was 2:15pm. I had read that edibles can take 45 minutes to 2 hours to take effect. So, we set off to visit a couple more dispensaries. I should note that I had no other drugs in my system and I am not on any prescription medications.

T+0:45
At around 3pm, I felt the beginnings of something happening to me. I felt a mild pressure from the top of my forehead down to my throat, but only down the front of my face in a narrow 2-3 inch wide band. It was the kind of pressure I would feel if I bent over while standing up. Blood would rush to my head and a slight pressure would build. It wasn't painful in the slightest, just noticeable.

T+2:15
After visiting a couple more dispensaries, Alexa drove us to our float tank appointment. It was about 4:30pm, and I had consumed half of the chocolate bar 2 hours and 15 minutes prior. Alexa was a little surprised that I didn't seem any different yet. So was I. There was a moment when I was looking at my phone and wasn't sure what I was about to bring up on it, but that moment of forgetfulness may have been nothing. I decided to eat the other half of the chocolate bar before we went for our float.

T+2:45
Soon after getting in the float tank, I found it easier than usual to calm my mind. I wasn't sure if I could attribute that to the weed or if I just happened to be feeling calm and relaxed. After a couple minutes, songs came into my mind. Some were songs I knew, but with different cool arrangements. It was actually fun and engaging hearing these different arrangements. This, I will attribute to the pot chocolate bar. This is not a normal thing I think about. Other than the music for about 5 minutes, my mind was very quiet for the remainder of my float.

T+4:45
After the float, it was about 7pm. I still felt a little pressure in my head, but it seemed less than before. I felt pretty clear. It had been almost 5 hours since I ate the first half of the chocolate bar, and 2 ½ hours since I ate the rest. I figured that was it as far as any effects the pot would have on me at that point, so we headed out for dinner.

T+6:15
At around 8:30pm, we had just finished dinner and were talking inside the restaurant. While talking with Alexa, I forgot the subject of our conversation a few times. I dismissed it as a simple wandering of my mind. It seemed to go away when we left for a dessert house a few blocks down the road.

T+6:30
We had dessert at a place located in an old house, where the vibe is creepy, but in a fun way. As we look at the menu, I notice that I'm having difficulty remembering things I just read. When the waitress comes over, it takes some focus to remember what I decided to order.

T+6:45
My dessert arrives while I'm talking with Alexa. At this point, I'm forgetting the topic of conversation often. It also feels like I'm missing slices of time. About ½ to 2 second sections are removed from our conversation every 15 to 20 seconds or so. I'm having difficulty following along. It's like watching television when I'm sleepy and doze off for a couple seconds and miss a few words of dialogue. The story becomes harder to understand. I'm definitely becoming confused. I feel a little embarrassed to tell Alexa that I'm having trouble focusing on what she's saying. It's a relief when she tells me that this is what can happen on pot. It was comforting to know that I wasn't losing my mind, but this experience of confusion was not something I was used to and hadn't predicted, especially since it had now been over 6 ½ hours since consuming the first portion of that pot edible.

T+6:50
The feeling of confusion came on slow, and in waves. But, shortly after telling Alexa about this development, I had my first magic moment. From out of nowhere, I had this vision in my head of a guy I viewed from behind sitting at a table. He looked almost cartoonish, and not quite real, but I perceived him as a real person. I had an understanding that he was either the future me or someone else entirely. It was a flash of a vision that happened very quickly. A fraction of a second after seeing this man, I knew he was remembering a moment from his past. I instantly jumped inside his memory, as him, and the memory was of Alexa and I sitting at the very dessert house we were sitting in right now, as though this moment we were experiencing in the present had already happened to this guy I had a vision of. I was feeling everything he remembered and experienced. It was fascinating. There was an element of sweet sadness to it though. The man I had envisioned was looking back at this memory with a good amount of fondness and a little sadness because it was over and would never happen again. All he had was this memory to look back on. I was so struck by the beauty and sadness of the moment I was witnessing and experiencing that I became overcome with emotion and started crying. I think Alexa was worried something was wrong. There was nothing wrong. In fact, even though I was crying, I was loving this new experience.

For the next couple minutes, I continued to cry as I kept seeing more visions of this man in the future remembering his past, and then me coming back to the present. Back and forth so fast. It was a fascinating time shift. The paradox of these time shifts prompted my mind to generate several theories to try and explain it all. The ideas themselves were blowing me away. I finally told Alexa I was okay, and continued to have amazing thoughts that made me say, “Holy shit! Oh my god! Holy shit! Oh my god!” Alexa asked, “What?! What are you seeing? Tell me!” With every new thought and theory about time and what all of these shifts and changes meant, I wanted to explore all of them. I'd start to tell Alexa what I saw and felt, but would get distracted by yet another new idea, and would forget where I'd left off with my explanation. I felt like I had one hand gripping onto reality as I knew it, while another was exploring these visions and ideas. I made regular checks into reality to make sure it hadn't gone anywhere, but I did wonder if I could get lost and not make it back. I'm not even sure that would've been a bad thing, but I didn't feel done with this world just yet.

Somewhere in that whirlwind of visions, I had this thought that the reality that we're accustomed to seeing is like a radio station we just happened to tune into and chose to leave on because we liked the song that was playing at the moment. But, the life we know may be one of an infinite number of stations, and it's easy to not only tune in, but to tune out and listen to other stations, perhaps simultaneously. With my visions, it was like I was just beginning to change the station. I could still hear some of the old station while the new station was coming into tune. There were brief moments of overlapping realities.

T+6:55
The visions stopped after maybe three to five minutes. Alexa asked a few times if I was ready to leave dessert house. I declined her first few offers. I was still having trouble focusing on what Alexa was saying, and still felt like I was losing slices of time. I was worried that, if I stood up, I might drop to the floor in one of those lost seconds. Finally, I decided to try leaving. I was able to stand and move around pretty well, but I was very cautious with my movements.

T+7:15
When we got back to Alexa's car, I was a little concerned about my continued lack of focus and lost time. I almost didn't want to talk with Alexa because talking to her meant that I would be reminded of losing time again. If we didn't talk, I wouldn't notice that I had missed any of her words. But, we continued talking, and the next magic moment was on its way.

As we're driving back to my place, my conversation with Alexa got pretty deep. I wasn't having visions anymore, but I was quickly feeling like Alexa wasn't just Alexa anymore. This is going to sound crazy, but things she was saying made me feel like someone or something was speaking through her. Like some entity who cared a lot about me took over Alexa's body and spoke to me through her. I felt like I was occupying at least two different worlds: one with this entity, and the reality I was accustomed to. Alexa felt like the one constant between these two worlds.

I occasionally work with formulas in Microsoft Excel. There are times when I have to hold all of the pieces of a formula in my head. Several equations all have to be pieced together to make one cohesive whole that works flawlessly. Some are so complex that they seem to push the limit of what my mind can hold onto at a given moment. I will then reach a breakthrough point when I'm teetering between holding onto everything and letting everything go at the same time. It's right on that razor's edge where the breakthrough magic is. I had a similar feeling while high talking with the Alexa entity on the ride home. I was balancing on the edge between reality as I knew it, and some other world being revealed to me. A psychological shift to the left, and I was in a world of the familiar. A tilt to the right, and I was seeing what was going on behind the curtain. I didn't feel fully in either world.

I was absolutely convinced that I was talking to some wise entity or spiritual force. At one point, Alexa told me, “You're having trouble disconnecting. We're here to help you disconnect.” At that moment, I thought, “Am I dying? Is this entity telling me to let go? Do I need to leave this world for some reason? How do I disconnect?”

After a few questions directed at Alexa, I was curious to know who this entity was who was talking to me. I asked, “So, who are you?” Alexa quickly replied, “Who am I?” There was a pause, and then she said, “I am you. We are all one.” After this, I'm not entirely clear what was said, but I remember thinking later that she told me that, although we are one, we needed to be divided into individual people so that we could see ourselves. We wouldn't be able to see the single being we were without being split up into multiple people. Alexa also added, “Isn't it funny that being in this world was our choice?” Perhaps sensing how good I was feeling, Alexa told me, “You always have access to this feeling. You can come back anytime you want.” That thought really comforted me.

T+7:30
When we got back to my place, I was still having trouble focusing. Actually, I was missing the most time at this point. Instead of missing half a second to two seconds frequently, it felt like I was missing five or six seconds. Alexa seemed more herself than an entity at that point, but she still said unusual things that kept me wondering.

Alexa wanted me to drink some water, to help flush my system. It took a while for me to drink as I was having difficulty understanding her and losing time here and there. I feel like the water helped though.

A few minutes later we got into bed together, snuggled, talked, and eventually had sex. While in bed, my mind slowly started coming back to me and I could focus a little better. We talked a lot more about my experiences since I could finally verbalize them without losing my train of thought.

T+11:30
Alexa went back to her place in the early morning hours. After she left, I felt a little worried that I would look in the bathroom mirror and see something other than myself. Maybe a demon or something. But, nothing like that happened. I was also concerned that I might see something or someone walk through my apartment while I was getting ready for bed, but that didn't happen either. I walked around my apartment thinking about everything I had just experienced. It took me about an hour to finally decide to go to bed.

T+17:45
I woke up after only 4 ½ hours of sleep, but I slept well. I don't remember having any dreams or nightmares. I woke up feeling good and clearheaded. I went to work and could focus a lot better. However, it did take me a moment to get back in the swing of things. It felt like I had taken a vacation from my job for a couple weeks and was a little rusty when I returned. But, once I got a few minutes into it, my mind kicked in and things flowed well again.

I thought a lot about my experiences that next day. I had the feeling like I shouldn't do ayahuasca just yet. That maybe I should try psilocybin mushrooms first. Plus, I just wanted to think about my pot experience more and figure out what I might want to do next. I also didn't have a need to try pot again soon. I felt like I got what I wanted out of it, and then some. There was no way I could do pot everyday. It felt like a profound and spiritual experience to me. If I did it everyday, I feel like it would cheapen the experience. It would make it common instead of significant. I would take it for granted.

I have to say, pot was not what I expected it to be. I thought it would either be mood enhancement, where I would get really happy and giggly, or I would get paranoid. I may have experienced a touch of paranoia, but not much. It felt a lot more like I'd imagined a psychedelic drug would be like. I will likely try it again, but it will be a while. And, I will have to have someone with me again.

Anyhow, that was my experience. Your results may vary ;)

Exp Year: 2017	ExpID: 109870
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 40
Published: Aug 17, 2019	Views: 7,809
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