DOSE:

4 hits

smoked

Cannabis

(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

135 lb

The following report is written to provide a speculative look at an unusually psychedelic experience with cannabis. I've provided information about myself here, and things that may have affected the experience. I also wrote the experience out with much detail, so the title of this report may seem out of place for a bit. If this is the only interest of the reader, skip the first 6-7 paragraphs of the experience.

A little about me:
I'm not by any means a regular cannabis user. I've used it about 12-13 times in my life. I usually tell people that it's 'not my plant.' I say this for several reasons. For one, from the first time I used it (however enjoyable it was) it didn't feel like it was part of me. I know people who smoke cannabis on a daily basis--some use it as a recreational ally, some as a detrimental escape from nothing in particular. Suffice to say, I've never been an avid user of recreational drugs. However, I have spent the last year or so of my life in a deep fascination with entheogenic plants/experiences. I do feel the connection with that subject, more so than I'll bother to write here. If I ever get around to it (more so, *when* I get around to it), I'll post my experiences with other plant-teachers, along with some more personal insight and such, under the same nickname.

If there were one thing I think I should state here, that would have heavy influence on my (or anyone else’s) experiences with any drug, is that I have an immense respect for all psychoactive substances. I'm not the most experienced tripper out there by any means, but I take comfort in the sense of wonder I get when I think about the things I've already learned, and have yet to learn down the road-I've found that more times than not, that light of wonder and love of life can take one farther than simply using the drugs.

I try to meditate before I use any of them, and get to a calm and serene state of being so that I am entering the experiment with the most light inside me as possible. As I stated before, I have a deep respect for plant-teachers--However, I am slightly biased towards cannabis, which I feel obliged to include in this report. Up until this experience, it has had little spiritual impact on me (that I have made note of anyway), though it has had a lot of aesthetic value-and sometimes the line between the two is minimal or nonexistent. This could be because I haven't fully allowed myself a full experience of cannabis, but rather have used it as either an experiment in the field, or to enjoy life with friends. I don't feel that either of these are negative, but it's not the road I feel is mine to walk down more than once a blue moon.

Past Drug Experience:

Cannabis, Psilocybin Mushrooms, Salvia Divinorum (standard potency leaf) are the most entheogenic, or most noteworthy in the field of spiritual experiences. I've also experimented with a variety of herbs, including skullcap, kava, white lotus, passionflower, valerian, etc.

The Experience:

Set: serene and social, but slightly anxious
Setting: mountain range

It was a late summer day, and the sun was still in the sky. We (Me [male], S [female] and K [male]) had planned on going on a walk through the woods. We live in northwestern Nevada, so the woods were probably more like a treesy mountain range, rather than a dense and wet Oregon-style forest. I love trees and the outdoors. K grew up there, and S was going to move out there soon, so a walk through the woods sounded great. Me and K drove up there at about 6:30 PM, and S was supposed to meet us there within 10 minutes.

At about 7:00, she hadn't showed up, so we called her on her cell phone. It turns out she had made a mistake on where to meet us, and had been there longer than we had, somewhere else, waiting for us. She drove down with her two cousins in the car, and one of them wanted to drive back home because he wasn't up for the walk. He took the car, and S said that the spot she'd been waiting at was much more scenic and away from developmental areas, so we drove out there. I'm not sure where the time went here, as the rest of the night is kind of a haze as far as time goes, but I think we arrived at the spot at about 8:30, though it only took us about 10 minutes to get there.

Now as stated before, I'm not one to use cannabis much, and I probably turn it down more than I join in, because it always ends up very recreational with little spiritual value, and I feel like I've done something wrong (medical paranoia-side affect from cannabis, or is it really just not my thing?). However, we were in the woods, which I loved, and I was feeling like it was going to be a good experience, so I figured this would be the ideal time/place to use it.

We all intended on smoking, so we parked the car in the new spot, and headed up a trail for about 100 ft. We came to a 3-way (4-way if u count the way we came from) crossroads, and couldn't decide which way to go, plus it was getting dark. K and I had brought our guitars, but I left mine in the car, as it had no strap to carry it around on, but K brought his with him. Anyway, here we were at the crossroads, me, S, K and J (S's cousin)-and after a short blues riff from K to make a song out of which road to take, we chose one.

About fifty feet down the road, we realized it would be ridiculous to choose a road before we smoked the cannabis, because we might not remember which way back (a night in the middle of the woods with no camping material and some parents expecting us back home that night would be a less-than-desirable experience). We went back to the crossroads, and S filled her glass pipe with the stuff. The amount of cannabis she had can be compared to the size of a half of a French fry--for four people. We saw this and paused for a second to wonder what she was thinking, then verbalized this thought in a bit of skepticism. She assured us that it was very strong, and was enough for everybody, so she lit it up and hit it. It got passed around the four of us for about 5 minutes, and so she put it away and we started talking. From this point on (actually it was more like from the first time we were at the crossroads), K would be playing guitar all night.

I usually have a 2-minute onset to cannabis, and every time it's the same story. I keep telling myself it won't work this time and that it's not going to affect me, and then it hits me like a sack of bricks and I eat those thoughts at surprise for its potency. 10 minutes later, I was thinking, 'You know, I hate to sound typical, but it really should have kicked in by now.' And as usual, just when I have given up on waiting for it to kick in, it kicked in.

Some of the things I was experiencing I would consider 'typical cannabis effects,'. First, the strange and foreign feeling that most psychoactives bring with them. Like something is different but it's hard to tell what. This was followed shortly after by the screeching halt of 'normal perception of space and time.' For a second, my body carried on its usual functions, like walking, while the way I perceived it slowed down to the point that it is relatable to being underwater. My mind, however, was still working at full speed. This creates the effect that I think most people laugh and smile about when they are on cannabis. My mind works at full speed, but my body can't process its commands quick enough, and it's kind of a new and funny sensation.

Then comes what I would call the most distinctive effect cannabis has had on me, which is what I call 'the paper doll effect.' This is when the entire world takes on an animated quality and appears as though everything is a 2-dimensional object (like paper) in a 3-dimensional world. Basically, everything looks like paper dolls in a pop-up book.

So all of the aforementioned effects are taking place in the middle of a mountain range trail, when it is getting pretty dark out, so we decide to go for a walk down one of the paths. I ask J if he is feeling the paper doll effect, and he says no. S says that J doesn't usually get very high when he uses it, and K said that he wasn't as up as I was either. S usually feels higher when she uses cannabis with me, most likely because I am a really goofy guy when I am under the influence of it, and it rubs off on her and makes her feel a little more loosened up.

So we are walking down this trail and 3 out of 4 of us are musicians. I try K's guitar, but my body's lack of ability to follow the mind in adequate time disables me in playing most of what I can normally. I tried Al Dimeola style soloing, and it came out as a clump of clumsily muted tones, similar to a 5 year old on speed trying to play the same thing. I gave the guitar back to K, and we proceeded down the ever-darkening dirt road. A minute or so later, K exclaims, 'This is the road that the devil meets you on to take your soul! Like Robert Johnson, we even have a guitar!' and he started to run backwards with J. A bit more of this kind of nonsense happened, and then we started to head back.

The walk back to the car was kind of frightening, as the road seemed much longer and I was getting paranoid. I had just seen the movie The Village, and so had S who was making eerie comments about how those creature could be in these woods. We got back to the car, and pulled a futon out of the back of K's car/van/truck/whatever. We laid it out on the open field of dead pine needles and weeds. This is where it started to get weird for cannabis.

While K was off walking around and playing guitar within 20 ft. of us, me, S and J were lying on the futon, looking up at the stars. These weren't city stars like you see from downtown; this was out in the middle of the woods-type stars. When I focused on the brightest one, all the other ones would start to connect and take on the form of metal jacks, spiraling towards the center of the universe, which was the star I was looking at.

K said, 'If you look at the sky, and hold really still, can you see it move over us?' So we held really still, and sure enough, we saw the sky move over us. It wasn't like something was flying up there, it was like we were being so still, we could witness the cycle of day/night, watching the sky spin on its axis. Then, I would look at one spot in the sky, and I would all of a sudden be looking at an eye, staring right down at me. Then, a spider-web style fractal started spinning towards the eye. I told J and he focused for a second and saw it too. Then S heard us and saw it too.

The fractal changed constantly, from spider webs, to video-game style 3D cubes, to puzzle pieces, to eyes. When it changed to eyes, that's when it really hit me, like 'cannabis has never had this psychedelic of an effect on me before.' The 'eye in the sky' (as Alan Parsons would say) took on a whole tunnel that led up to the heavens. It was exactly like the DMT art I've seen (ex. Alex Gray).

The eye was like there was a tear in the fabric of the heavens, and an eye was peeping through. It was female, and very pretty (I have a thing for eyes anyway). I sat up and looked at K's car, and the fractal persisted. I could see the 3D-block fractal pouring into the tire-area of his car, because that was the darkest part of his car to look at, where I could see it best. The cubes were pink/red/blue/green, but very light in color. Very similar in color to 'blips,' as people call them-a common effect of Psilocybin mushrooms.

After about another hour of this sky-wonder, we decided to drive back into town.
This was at about 10 PM. After we got back, we had Del Taco. After about a half hour of talking and eating, we drove S and J home and then K dropped me off and he went home. That night (last night) I slept really well. This all happened yesterday, so I have a fairly clear concept of what happened.

Conclusion:

This is by far the most psychedelic experience I've had with cannabis. I highly doubt that it was laced with anything, as you cannot lace cannabis with any drug (that I am aware of) of that effect. I have never used PCP, but I imagine PCP laced cannabis would be much more disorienting and delirious. Now, I haven't completely ruled out the idea that J and S saw the visions I did because I told them to look for them, and that it was a placebo effect, and maybe that's half of it (or more).

I believe, however, that psychedelic drugs open up doors in the mind, and we experience and perceive things that we are usually shut off to. This would explain why DMT visions are so alike. It is possible, depending on what you personally believe, that all of us walked through the open doors in our minds that night, and experienced something of another dimension, as our minds and spirits caught a glimpse of that reality. I've never known this to be particularly true with cannabis, but this experience shook that ground.

In any event, I feel that what we (or at least I) experienced was real, and am grateful for it, even though I still woke up this morning feeling as though I'd done something wrong (the medical anxiety, or some psychological block, I don't know). That was always the missing link with cannabis- I usually feel like I've misused it, or like I used it selfishly, but this is probably an effect of my own self-analysis and constant strive to do 'the right thing' and be the purist person I can, even though, ironically- I believe that right and wrong is a fallacy, and all things in existence are really just one. Earth being one big ball of matter and complexly-designed life, each grain of sand on the beach taking their own route to the same place.

Just remember the man, Timothy Leary's words: 'Just relax and float downstream.' Good luck and Best regards.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 35827
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 15, 2007	Views: 49,615
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