DOSE: T+ 0:00	2 tablets	oral	Ephedra sinica	(pill / tablet)
T+ 0:59		oral	Caffeine	(liquid)
T+ 0:30	7 seeds	oral	H.B. Woodrose	(extract)
T+ 2:00	5 seeds	oral	H.B. Woodrose	(extract)
T+ 4:00	1 cart.	inhaled	Nitrous Oxide	(gas)

BODY WEIGHT:

200 lb

Substance:
HBW seeds. Steeped in bottles of cool mineral water. 3 Bottles. 14 seeds each. Seed shells removed before being ground up in small plastic bags with a hammer and then poured into the water. Bottles sat for 5 days in cool dark closet to prevent loss of alkaloids. First bottle completed before the others, then after observing the change in color of the water and being convinced of an effective water-only extraction I proceeded with two more bottles similarly. The final concoction that was consumed was filtered of some of the larger chunks of observable plant matter compared to the prior experience related.

Prior:
My younger brother is a pretty adventurous person. Upon discovering that I had purchased the seeds and that they were now in my possession, he enthusiastically decided he would like to try them that night. I ground up 6 seeds (losing a little material in the process, so going with 6 instead of the suggested 4 for aprox. Threshold exp.), let them sit in cold tap water for an hour mixed with lemon juice to aid extraction (only remembering about the chlorine until later), then added sugar and let my brother drink. To summarize, he complained of nausea and then tiredness before feeling slight but interesting effects.

Date of experience:
August 5, 2002

I thought this would be a good introductory psychedelic substance for myself. Somewhat cheap, legal to purchase and get my hands on, with much more subtle if any visual effects, it seemed like a good choice -- although I was extremely wary of the other trips to be found in Difficult Exp. / Bad Trips / Health Problems, etc. After having delved into a substantial experience with this substance I would wager a guess that the problems with many of these trips were witnessed due to not clearing off the shells on the seeds, consuming them by simply chewing them, or not approaching the substances cautiously in terms of dosage, although doubtlessly there were a few genuinely bad experiences due to unique reactions to the active substances.

7:30 PM – I added the lemon juice and sugar before I drank it. Voila! Psychedelic lemonade. I should also note that to combat the tiredness that my younger brother complained of I consumed two pills of ephedra 30 minute before drinking the concoction, and also drank a glass of coffee minutes before as well. Only drank 3/5 worth of the one bottle for about 6-9 seeds worth of alkaloids all things considered.

8:00 PM – Only 30 minutes in I’m trying to see if I can sense it coming as early as possible. Think I sense something maybe slightly. Slight tiredness, a little listless, and also … can’t put my finger on it until 30 minutes later.

8:30 PM – Now noticing an increase of effects described above. Could be because of other substances consumed as well. Definitely am noting much more tiredness and somewhat dreamy quality, realizing it as what I couldn’t define earlier. Moderate level of nausea.

9:00 PM – Nausea has increased. Dreaminess has increased, hard to pinpoint where this may mildly result from the tiredness or is of a substantial level to be an effect in and of itself. Pretty sure abnormal dreaminess is occurring. Easy but tired movement, but with a little energy behind it. Think the ephedra is kicking in. Starting to get highly disappointed in the results I’m seeing. Am convinced that it won’t get much better than this, and that nausea still has a ways before it will even get better. Decide to drink the remaining 2/5’s.

9:30 PM – Still not noticing much, not seeing much interesting or beneficial to offset the amount of nausea I’m feeling.

10:00 PM – My disappointment has peaked in part because the description from my younger brother left much to be desired and he did not see to find it very rewarding, and also considering how much I’ve drank and feeling that this tiredness/dreaminess may be the primary effect and the extent of effects to be found, I decide (much too early) to go ahead and dump the other two bottles and call this a wasted venture.

10:30 PM – Only a little more of the same described above. Fatigue, nausea with a little energy coming up behind it. Invite my older brother to come upstairs and share some nitrous with me, it being his first time. He says maybe in a bit. I don’t think he will be coming up. Back to reading _American Gods_.

11:00 PM – Older brother knocks on the door and comes in. Lament over only having one balloon left because our dog chewed up the other one. I go first, do one cartridge.

I’ll note that my first experience with nitrous put me off and left a lot to be desired. I became pretty sure this wasn’t that pleasant of an experience as I had wanted or expected. I feel like I’m kind of reneging on a little promise with myself to stay in the area of phenethylamines and tryptamines after reading PiHKAL and TiHKAL consecutively in the last week. However my third attempt with nitrous is not nearly as bad, trying a method of rebreathing back into the balloon so as to be less wasteful and more effective. I think there’s a threshold with nitrous where I can make it to a mild buzzing discomfort that isn’t that pleasant, but a little past that and it doesn’t seem nearly as bothersome and the anesthetic disassociative headspace is interesting, but I remind myself not to get caught up in it and to do too much. I’ve come to conclusion that at least for myself and a couple friends that cannabis only dulls the experience of nitrous and should not be done in conjunction as it was our first time.

My brother goes second. He likes it but maybe is a little put off as well. I do another, now it’s better further in. I close my eyes looking for a synergy between the LSA and the nitrous, maybe visuals as some described. All I get is intense star clusters like the normal kind I get when I close my eyes real tight, but much more intense and substantial this time. I tell my brother, “All I see is lots of stars, in different clusters and starbursts. Kinda feel like I have the universe inside.”

He does his second and is quite pleased. The lip of the balloon is dead and rebreathing using it is impossible now. The comedown is full of lots of giggles and happiness. Definitely high. Wish I could do more and go a little further, but remember an incident where a friend got caught up in the experience to the point where he wanted to continue to do more and more to see how far he could go. You can get caught up sort of in seeking to escape into the void-space this high provides. It’s not like I am seeking to null my thoughts out or anything quite so mundane, but it is like I find the switch to turn down all the outside noise and tune into the internal static inside myself and watch what thoughts and shapes it takes form into. I withdraw from my environment but still minimally capable of interacting with it to the point of being able to inhale more, and may continue to do so until nearly unconscious OR I (unlikely but not impossible) or a friend stop me from doing more. Or resources run dry. It is also called hippie crack for a reason.

I will try to limit my use of this substance to a booster to help see if I can bring up the effects of other drugs. And I have a nagging conviction that I should drop it all together. On the plus side it has removed much of my nausea from my mind for the time being.

11:30 PM – Still quite happy and goofy. Beginning to wonder why I haven’t come down all the way off the nitrous yet. Start to realize the nitrous may only be affecting me minimally now, and that something else is going on.

12:00 PM – Much of the nausea is down but not gone. After the nitrous I had much energy, still do now but it is tempered by a bit of listless tiredness. Yawns are erupting. Another important note: I have TMJ, a problem with my jaw hinge where if I leave my mouth open too wide too long it will get stuck. I have ended up in the ER twice because of this. The first time it was new and I discovered why it happened after visiting a doctor later (probably grinding my teeth at night – I have a problem with anxiety and tension). The second time it was visiting friends at University in a college town and I got more drunk than I ever have before by finishing off close to a half of a bottle of Baccardi 151 by myself. Reckless, I know. What happens is the human jaw jumps out of its hinge to open up past a certain point, and to close it slides back down against some cartilage back into its hinge. Wear down the cartilage and it can get stuck. Trying to close your mouth can only make it worse if unsuccessful getting the muscles more tense and the joint more inflamed. Kind of like one of those Chinese finer traps you play with as a kid.

For this reason these yawns are alarming me, and I focus on keeping lucid and aware despite my tiredness. Start getting into philosophical debate with my brother, normally I don’t agree much with what he is discussing or can see what he’s saying on some levels but not agree, and then not understand what he’s getting at on some deeper levels. Well I realize something very interesting is going. It’s like the tiredness has started to peak, I’m still quite euphoric, and there’s some new energy level and that’s started to infuse into the whole tired/dreaminess experience. Philosophical discussion gets intense. However, I understand very easily what my brother is talking about. Continuing discussion begins to get intensely fun.

My brother leaves to go mellow out for it a bit. I try to find him in a few minutes and find out why. He says he’s starting to feel high just talking to me. All the effects I’m experiencing very much seem to coincide with our philosophical debate, our very discussion of the universe. The illusion of time.

I had read the electric Kool-Aid Acid Test a few days before, and I find it quite joyful and fascinating to see how my brother’s discussion synchs with many of the things relayed and described through the book, and the feelings of the heads, the essential acid experience, and the relations to eastern philosophies and traditions, religions. The illusion of time. My brother describes it through Gnostic concepts. There is some discussion of Jung, of some Buddhist beliefs, and it is interesting how the understanding of the universe in many of these so easily coincides.

I’m utterly convinced of it now.

Jung called it synchronicity. My older brother said Gnostics call it correspondence.

And I become convinced of the very magic of my being.

12:30 PM – I’m pretty sure I’m peaking now. Surprised it has taken so long to reach this point. Sad that I threw away the other two bottles. No OEV’s, other than the feeling of how illusory the world outside me has become, how convinced of this because of how very synched up I am. The world has become more than just dream like now, it is as if I am seeing out of the bubble I have created and everything feels somewhat hollow around me, but all the more magical because of it.

When I close my eyes I realize I am getting some kind of visual. It’s funny because it is very stereotypically psychedelic. I always imagined the old 70’s colorful swirly shapes and contours surrounding each other could only be a poor misrepresentation of what a lot of people must really see. In this case, it was in fact not! If I began to pay attention I saw that I was seeing rivers of color with no clear beginning or end, no place where the peripheries began or ended, just the area I was focusing on where the river swirled with little curls and eddies and tide pools stemming off in different directions with many different colors with shapes inside of shapes. Like a thick line of one bright color (bright blue, orange, red, green, doesn’t matter) surrounded by a very similar shape of a different color with little distortions of the original shape it surrounded. Much like some art that I have seen.

1:30 AM – My brother confided that he needed to get some sleep as much as he would like to stay up with me. He goes off to bed in a bit after a little more discussion. I don’t want to quit talking with him about all these new profound ideas. Not so much new things that I am hearing or discovering for the first time, but rather that I am finding a reason and validity in many of them that just did not present itself before. Like I have attained some sort of empathy for the natural workings of the universe. But of course I have, it emanates from me. My illusions are shared with the illusions of others.

2:00 AM – I resign to go to bed. I have no desire to stay up beside myself, seeing that I’m coming down now and that I see no value in experiencing this alone. I’m ready for asleep.

The next day. – I am happier than ever I remember being in my entire life. Full of energy. No psychedelic side-effects, but every bit of much as the euphoria as before. Singing to songs, beaming, clapping my hands. Rapping! Words tumble out in a stream. I realize that I can best describe my feeling with English words as: SynchedUp–Hot to Go!! It IS as if I am seeing the world for the first time. As with a child’s eyes. When reading this description about mescaline from a few authors including Shulgin, I was wary to start with any other substance than mescaline for a first time. Well I am exceedingly happy that this experience must have come close if not in a completely parallel trajectory.

Not only am I more happy than I ever remember being before throughout the entire day, I charge around the entire day with more natural happy-energy than I remember ever experiencing. I have every desire to share it, to smile at strangers, wave at passerby’s, sing songs. Me and my older brother had come to the agreement that there are just some people Who Know. People Who Know to some substantial extent. And I begin to feel like I can ascertain Who Knows within moments of meeting them. Somehow, through whatever method, they have come to similar basic realizations. Whether they be acid heads, born-again Christians, monks, people happy with living simple lives, teachers, or philosophers.

I listen to The Chemical Brother’s Come With Us album before heading to school for work. Yeah, they know too.

Two days later – Much of the same feeling is with me although admittedly and sadly to a lesser extent. I was absolutely ecstatic yesterday. I feel glad knowing the realizations that I know now and that they will never leave me, although without exercise and concentration, that if I take them for granted these realizations and the feelings that come from them will leave me with time. I need to learn how to practice different forms of meditation. I commit myself to treating my acne by disciplining myself in regards to exercise and diet. And mood.

I want to label that night a ++++ experience, but I’m hesitant to do so with so few experiences to compare it to. But thinking about it I know I will remember that night and the following day for the rest of my life. I’ll call it a +4, you call it what you will.

Exp Year: 2002	ExpID: 16628
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 23, 2003	Views: 113,478
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Ephedra sinica (243), H.B. Woodrose (26), Nitrous Oxide (40) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Glowing Experiences (4), Preparation / Recipes (30), First Times (2)