DOSE: T+ 0:00	3 gal	oral	Syrian Rue
T+ 0:00		smoked	Cannabis
T+ 0:50	17 g	oral	Mimosa tenuiflora	(ground / crushed)

BODY WEIGHT:

195 lb

I was a 19 year old freshly back from college and living with my girlfriend at my mothers when this took place. It was September 14, 2002 and I had my first Ayahuasca experience, It went something like this....

I started out by ingesting an eye balled amount believed to be about three grams of Syrian Rue that had been stuffed into gelcaps. Then I proceeded to grind up what I thought was fourteen grams of Mimosa Hostilis root bark, however this turned out to be seventeen, oops. The bark was then added to a hot water infusion. One cup of water was put on a low boil for thirty minutes with the only addition being the juice of half a lime. This resulted in a pleasant smelling purple liquid that was left to cool as I went to go smoke some cannabis. Some fifty minutes later I had now become rather high, although there was something different about the pot high I was much more spaced than usual. This must have been the rue.

Next came the big moment, it was time to drink the Mimosa. I poured the liquid into a cup and brought it into the room to drink as I sat with my girlfriend who was also to be my tripsitter. I then began looking at the brew with the intent of taking a few gulps to wash it down as quickly as I could. The taste was not as bad as I thought, however the intense bitter taste got much worst after every sip. This worried me a bit because I thought I would not get a very strong experience, I soon found this not to be the case. I downed the Mimosa after what seemed to be about 15 minutes, then my head went over to the clock, it only took me two minutes!!!

I then propped myself up with a pillow on the floor and put in the Coups 'Party Music', not more than a couple minutes into the album I knew I was feeling the DMT. This characterized itself as a warm buzzing sensation in my body, not to mention the streams of thought that were accompanying every song I listened to. I was really enjoying myself. I would have been perfectly content to stay at this level for the rest of the trip, soon visuals started to manifest around me, increasing my elation. A picture of some mushrooms taken from a nineteenth century botany book reprint took on new life through my changed eyes. The mushrooms now had become faces razzing me and laughing at me, I didn't care, I was laughing too.

The strength of the Mimosa had still been steadily increasing this whole time, soon any external input became to much for me. The music had become very powerful, it was almost all I could think about. The images and thought from the album where filling my head. Not that it was a bad thing, but when the song came on about Pam The Funkstress the strange lyric and light flowing beats just became too much.

This is when the trip really changed dimensions. After lying down for awhile I simply forgot about my immediate surroundings. I was now in a place completely within my head. I had no idea where my sitter was or where I was (At least physically), nor did I care. I soon started to hear strange pitches in my head. Somewhat sounding like the hearing test they give you in school, although these tones were accompanied by a sort of pressure that would change with the pitch. I thought these sounds reminded me of the sound the mufflers my car make (I have dual flows that often leave my head ringing).

Not long after this idea I found myself driving in my head. I was seeing myself drive in many of the places I had recently been, on the freeway, driving out of a shopping center, ect. Each place I found myself driving had a different pitch and amount of pressure to it. That seems interesting to me as I was going different speeds and giving my car different amounts of gas on all these occasions.

It had felt as if someone had scraped my consciousness into the crankshaft of a Mack truck and was toying with the gas pedal. Not the most pleasurable experience in the world, but certainly intriguing. At this point in time my thought turned to the nature of schizophrenia. Did I actually think I was going schizo? I don't think so but perhaps a small part of me was trying to convince me that I was. The only thing I have to go on was the thought that the sounds being produced I my head where not my sounds but that of a schizophrenic person. Needless to say this freaked me out a little.

The sensation of being on this sort of cosmic crankshaft has yet to dissipate, instead it only got stronger. This lead my jumbled brain to the phrase 'Schizophrenia is the nature of the big bang'. I can only guess what this means, although it would be repeated many more times before the night was over. Somewhere in my head I was trying to get a grasp on this whole schizophrenia thing. Low and behold I began to thing about the movie twelve monkeys. How exactly is the main caracter James Cole able to travel through time with the help of his supervisors to accomplish the tasks in the future? Pressure, speed and motion?

All this talk of pop culture and time travel had brought me to an interesting place. This void of pressure that had been slowly building up had become so great, so intense, that it just imploded. The pressure was so bad that I felt as though I was being thrown about like a rag doll in a washing machine. There wasn't even any way to communicate, only a dire need to get back to the place I once was. Thus began my struggle to find some way to communicate with myself. But still the sensation of pressure engulfed me to the point where I could only be swept away by its power.

Soon I became able to piece together words. Very slowly, like piecing together some DMT version of syllabic pantomime, with the fragments of my mind and the fits of pressure driving me mad I soon spat out the demented mantra 'Schizophrenia is the nature of existence' and began repeating over and over in my head. A sort of calm came over me then. I had been struggling for this point of peacefulness for who knows how long? Now that I had it I felt like shit. I surrendered my self to this illogical psychedelic truth. Something had gotten some part of me to believe in it. Now all I could do was accept the facts.

For a moment I came out of the void to see my girlfriend sitting over me asking me if I was O.K. and telling me I was on Ayahuasca. I wasn't sure if she was real or not but I was relieved to see her there with me and to know I had not gone to the brinks of schizophrenia. Then I was back to the void for me. Half Time was over and I had to fight not just for my sanity, but for my existence.

Seeing my girlfriend face cast a different light on the trip. I was back in the void, but I had felt as if something had rused me into admitting this flawed philosophy about myself. I found myself wondering how I got so into believing this phrase. The void had changed. It was no longer the hellride it had been earlier, but a peaceful place full of cold bitterness and unsure feelings. A good place to give up. I guess I wasn't done being toyed with though. I soon thougt the world was ending. Not the physical world, but my world. I began to believe that I was over with, nothing simply mattered to me any more. I began to realize these feelings were mirroring my feelings and emotions in the past months. It was all over now with an attitude like this. I might as well watch it go.

How nice it felt to be handed a ticket to my own destruction, I must have been on the dole because I soon myself trusted into a vision of myself in a gutter puking my brains out with a Japanese lady in a trench coat with a film crew sticking a microphone in my face as people ran around like mad trying desperately to decide what to do with their last moments on earth. Although this was an extremely unpleasant part of the trip I figured I might as well enjoy myself while I could. Sitting in that gutter full of puke on Ayahuasca was sure as hell better than being one of those freaked out normal folks, microphone in my face or not!

After a short while of recapping my experience in my head I found myself in a vision with my friends at a party, I found this to be very odd. We were all singing, playing guitars and laughing. The louder we got the more the pressure grew. This time the pressure was building up there was less fear to let words come, though a booming repetitive sound was getting almost to much to handle. Again it was the sound similar to being inside an engine, only much slower. The sound still got louder, soon only me and one of my friends were there to talk. Everyone else had seemed to vanish away.

We then had a very interesting conversation. Every time this cycle of intense noise would revolve we would exchange phrases, the conversation went something like this:

My friend, 'Psychedelics'. BANG!

Me, 'Psychedelic drugs are the'. BANG!

My Friend, 'The frequency'. BANG!

Me, 'The nature'. BANG! My friend, 'Of the'. BANG!

Me, 'Big Bang'. BANG!

Me again, 'The frequency of psychedelic drugs in the nature of the Big Bang'! BANG!

Shortly after this conversation I was trusted into a dark void. I then saw crowds of people gathering around important world figures, the Pope at the Vatican for example. I was wondering why all these people where standing around and gathering by these figures. Shit! I was seeing the last minutes before the world ended. Prophecies were coming to pass. By no means would I like to think this would happen any time soon or at all for that matter, but it was a pretty dam humbling experience none the less. That was going to be it for the earth. No more friends or family, now what? Could a planet so small in this seemingly large universe make such an impact on it as a whole? Or perhaps what happened next is simply representative of humanity consciousness as a whole being ripped apart all at once?

The thought crossed my mind that we may just be multi-dimensional consciousnesses experiencing the most powerful drug in the history of the universe, known simply as human existence. That maybe the earth and space did not even matter due to the fact that time was on a repeating pattern with psychoactive molecules as our guides to serve us a reminder of where we came, or show us a bit of that world as we walked to path of evolution.

Now where am I? It was really dark wherever I was. I was beginning to think I've watching to much Star Trek in my life. My field of vision then started to brighten up. I had reached a spot that was quiet and peaceful out in the middle of this cold dark void. I thought to myself that I had reached humanity's full potential. No, it was not a thriving city covering the whole planet and sustaining itself from nothing without hunger or war. But a state of mind existing without a body, simply a consciousness completely at peace with itself without a need for a body, gigantic spaceships or a dying planet. We'd evolved past all pain, misery, suffering and guilt. There was no need for religion or control of the population. Only a feeling of happiness, gratification and love that when on forever.

I stayed in that warm gooey place for sometime, I can't say how long. It didn't matter I was simply happy to be there. It was sure a lot better than the hellride earlier. Soon enough though pharmacology reared it head in my direction and pushed me out of this state. I was actually pretty happy to go when I came to. Due to the fact that, although it was a wonderful state of mind, I was bombarded with many ideas and phrases about religion and personal philosophies I don't necessarily believe in. But thats the way it goes when you take something like a psychedelic drug. After all, its pretty much a given that your going to be hit with thoughts, feelings, emotions, and ideas that you don't necessarily, or outright do not believe in. You just got to sort out what is relevant to you and try to make sense of it the best you can.

I had left the warm gooey place full of love and universal understanding to find myself staring at the face of my girlfriend. I was still unsure if she was real or not but she soon began asking me questions calming my doubts as to her legitimacy of being physically real. At this point I knew I was back to some sort of physical reality. I looked around my room and saw that everything in it was completely trashed. The stereo in shambles on the floor, the computer strewn about the room, cacti smashed by a bookshelf that had fallen upon them.

Intently questioning how this came to be, I managed to convince myself that the deep cuts on my legs, carpet burns on my face and trashed room were a trick. Based upon my experience I convinced myself that I had died and the world had ended and the laughing people I could hear outside my 3rd story window were people come to take me back to the world of my experience. I guess you could say that I was in a bit of shock as to what happened to my body while my mind was away. So I waited it out to see if my hypothesis was to good to be true. Yup, it sunk like a solid lead submarine.

After about twenty minutes I was pretty much back to normal, if not still a little shocked about having my very existence ripped apart. Not to mention pretty disappointed that my sitter had flaked out on me so hard. As it turns out I was convulsing rather violently and the trashed room was all my fault from flailing my limbs about the room. My girlfriend then let out another bombshell, she called my mother on her vacation. My mother is in A.A. and very any anti-drug-that-is-not-prozac. I could only imagine what she would think and do, but that would have to wait.

So we began the clean up. Luckily everything still worked electronically, although I was rather pissed at myself for killing some of my favorite cacti. This experience ended on a very sour note. I was left mad a my girlfriend for being a flake and mad at myself for not being more careful, as well as the consequences that would follow. Anyway you can put it I have a lot of respect for how much Ayahuasca can change your life. Yes, it would seem that the experience became very negative. But in that negative aspect I realized the most. I had been setting myself up to crash now for sometime. With my lifestyle, excessive chemical intake, and not getting over many fears I've put myself into since moving back to my mother's. If I had not taken Ayahuasca that day I am certain that I would have crashed and burned even harder than I did.

Yes, there have been some negative consequences from this experience, my girlfriend had to move out and lost her job. Ive also have flashbacks when trying to go to sleep or when I've been very stoned and near asleep. But it is nothing that can't be changed with hard work and effort. As I have worked and tried to make my life better I have found more doors open to me than I even knew possible. There have also been some wonderful experiences and chances that would have never come to me if I had never taken Ayahuasca and worked to better myself instead of disregarding it as a 'strange' trip. I think it as the power to change you, and it does so with force. Like it or not. The only regret I have is that our society is not set up to handle these types of experiences and many people who undergo them are not as lucky as I and become institutionalized and put on medications. Or get so frightened they never come back a whole person. Maybe in time this will change, I certainly hope so.

I don't know if I will ever take Ayahuasca again, maybe someday, if I feel I am ready. All I can do now is embrace the changes it brought to me, for better or worse and use that knowledge to help make myself a better person.
Thank You for Reading.

Exp Year: 2002	ExpID: 19392
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 5, 2002	Views: 54,714
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