DOSE: T+ 0:00	1 tsp	oral	Syrian Rue	(powder / crystals)
T+ 0:45	11 g	oral	Mimosa tenuiflora	(tea)

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

It has been two years and I finally feel I have pieced together enough of what I learned from my experience with the Ayahuasca analogue combo I took to illustrate an objective enough view. Perhaps in two more years I'll have a slightly different view, but here is not only my trip but a complete story.

I was nearly 17 and living with my cohort in crime at his Mother's apartment up in Northern California. I had just landed a job at Whole Foods and was preparing myself to test out of high school early. I had decided to move up there with him from my family's home in the Central Valley where he was going to college and I was still in school. We were pretty much joined at the hip anyways, but I figured the new experiences I would gain in going up there with him would be worth the challenge, whether or not things worked out how I hoped. His mother agreed we could both stay with her and her boyfriend until we got on our feet and moved out, but before I got the new job we were struggling to find work for quite a few months, even though we went out every day and took every lead we each got. Neither of us had any real friendly connections up there aside from some of his old friends, most of whom he didn't keep in contact with while staying with me in the Central Valley. After a few months of dealing with the constant demands his mom and her boyfriend constantly flung our way, a new kind of rift between us arose where we seemed barely to be able to communicate and open up to each other freely. I know I can safely speak for him when I saw we were both looking for a way out or at the very least a little guidance. What we got was anything but a little.

I found myself getting back into a life with him that I tried so hard to escape from. Two of his old friends brought us back into this life; they were heavy into junk and crystal. For a time there we'd frequently cruise around Marin County with them in their friend's van smoking crystal all night and listening to music. The two were good company as long as you kept your cool and threw down, but they weren't trustworthy and they were wanted by the law. The friend with the van was a stellar guy with a big heart. He always had pounds of quality crystal he would smoke with us. Aside from the adventures with these folks I was just trying to keep my wits about me and look to future skies. But more and more it seemed to me that the rosy future I filled my utmost hopes and dreams with would never come and that I was just dragging my heels in this place, sacrificing myself for a life I didn't desire and unable to communicate this to my partner without an exaggerated and insensitive reaction from him.

We had been reading about Ayahuasca and its different analogue brews on and off for about two years. A couple months earlier we had ordered 28 grams of Mimosa Hostilis root bark to add to our stock of Syrian Rue seeds, hoping we could put it to use one day soon. Being the unyielding seekers at heart that we are, we were both eager to try the combination and the time finally came. We knew his mother and her boyfriend were going to leave town to head to Disneyland for a few days; we figured that week was as good a time as any. The plan was for me to go one night and him the very next. We prepared ourselves by abstaining from any sexual contact and eating cautiously for the entire week ahead - making sure to avoid all the 'no-no' foods which might cause a bad interaction. I fasted for the day I was to ingest. One thing I should add: I ate half an eighth of Psilocybin mushrooms the night before as a self imposed pre-requisite medicine and before ingesting the brew I shared a bowl of high quality weed with Spinal. At 2:00am I anxiously swallowed 1 teaspoon of Syrian Rue powder put into gel-caps and he set about boiling up 11 grams of the root bark powder with the juice of half a lime in 2 cups of water for 30 minutes. This produced a very pretty mauve colored liquid, with an earthy scent. I strained the liquid and measured it to be 1 cup.

We went back into our room and sat down, we both said some words, and I took the first gulp. BLEH! It tasted absolutely vile and gave my mouth a very astringent feel. I must've made the worst sour grapes face ever seen. I continued to sum up all the unaffected guts I had to get it down my throat though. It always seems to take forever with these things, but so far I had taken four mouth sized gulps and had two left to go. 10 minutes into drinking I started to feel I was intermingling in other dimensions, floating in and out of matter. There came to be no distinction between me and anything else. I was what I was seeing and feeling. The space around felt like white noise, it coursed with bright and heavy light energy. Visually it was an immense working of lattice-like threads. Aurally it was like the sound of silence times 10, at times the weight of this sound was thunderous. It was almost as though I could see and feel universe within universe right in front of my face and surrounding me. It was so incomprehensibly vast. I felt so small and insignificant in comparison and started to get a bit apprehensive about what I was getting into. I started to feel a lot slower in my extremities and bright waves of color flitted before my eyes.

Spinal put on The Beach Boys album Pet Sounds, which was very strange listening at this time. I couldn't figure out if I liked it, if it would prove to be a challenge to sit through, or if it even mattered. Within a few minutes I was nearing the point of no return. Even if I wanted to utter the words to tell him to turn it off I couldn't. Then he put on Kid606 which I was not at all happy with. Everything was just too much and eventually I found the button to turn it off, he muttered something inaudible to me and I lay down.

I was wearing some very warm fleece pants and started to get really flushed. They felt entirely too restricting and binding, so I took them off, afterwards laying back down. I felt very helpless, alone, and empty. Then a voice told me everything would be okay, I just needed to let go. After soaking up this message I vehemently pushed it away.

I wanted to believe that all would be well if I listened to this message, but my gut told me to take it with a grain of salt. I didn't want to let myself go if I didn't know where I was being led and I had the distinct feeling I would not be led where I wanted in order to consciously receive whatever lessons were in store for me. I knew I did not deserve yet what I desired and I had to do this my own way to understand what was meant throughout. No doubt this would be a challenging journey. I would see and feel things not even some of the bravest of men could handle. I needed solitude, so I wrapped myself up in a blanket, took some water and an empty pot into the living room and settled into the couch.

When I left the bedroom is when everything started to hit me really hard. My mind raced through issues of end-world oblivion and my personal debt to the world. Vivid visions of the world exploding and humans dying pounded through my inner eye. It was presented to me by flashing visions how all fear of death, loneliness, disease, pain, and destruction cycled in on itself; further continuing these cycles within us and in our environments. Nothing was insignificant in this space, every little thing had justification and nothing could have been scarier. I just kept trying to hold on to what little I had.

At this time Spinal's Mother's cat was jumping around; she did not fare well with me and my unchecked energy. She was freaking out and this made me very paranoid because it was not my intention to scare her. A bit earlier I had found my way back into our room and gotten the last two gulps of brew, convinced I had to purge. The cat came up, sniffed the pot I had brought out earlier and shot me an evil look then pounced away with her tail up. She seemed to think it was her duty to every so often check up on me, seeming to flit back and forth from a snooty to an almost curiously warm demeanor and then turn back to snooty. She would brush her tail up against the couch and move over to the blinds covering the glass doors and dart amongst them. She did this without end until I eventually settled in.

Sometime after this I moved into a black void space of zero gravity. It felt like what I imagine outer space would be like. I cycled through all my past's pains, resentments, self distrust, and self sacrifices. Periodically I would feel my face warp into that of a black cat's looking out onto the world. I was a scared animal waiting to die and at one in the same I was a wounded goddess waiting to live. Regardless of what I was I still could not surrender. I would have died there trying to find the peace I deserved if I could have. I doubted my resistance to the voice that called to me earlier. I couldn't go back though, either way I had too much pride. I'd have to go forward'whatever that meant, whatever it took. I had a powerful vision of myself being shot blank in the forehead at a bus station by St. Paul, one of the junkie friends. I felt the blackness descend over my death and the blood spilling onto concrete. This vision above all else struck me down in my place. What the hell was I doing with my life? Who the fuck were these people I was surrounding myself with? I kept asking myself this question over and over, but only finding the one straightforward answer I originally came with: to love, learn, and live relentlessly, regardless of where it took me. Nothing else mattered to me at that time of my life. It was either do or die. But looking back I know I tried my best for what I knew.

Every time I shifted my head, bright white, pink, blue, and green fractal patterns would bounce off the wall and disappear back into them. The visions would come, but I chose not to let them devour my focus. It was enough just to feel the measureless pool of white infinity surrounding me. It was around this time I started to feel a sliver of joy in experiencing such infinite spiritual communion, but I was still too frightened to relish it. I had not brought enough to the table to be embraced by it.

I had lay in the same position for the whole trip, paralyzed with one foot in life and the other in death until the early hours of the morning. Time seemed to be very slow moving as still did I. When I felt ready I went back into the bedroom and lay awake in the penetrating morning light next to a sleeping Spinal until I was so tired the residual fear and awe didn't even matter. I don't remember waking up, but I do remember him asking me sometime that day what it was like and what I was doing in the living room all that time. To that I couldn't possibly devise an answer that would make sense, except muttering something about how unbelievably intense and incredible it was. Part of me was angry that all that time he just stayed in the room.

The after effects were a furthering of empathic communication with others for a few weeks, slowness in body for a few days, and hyper-sensitivity. For the next three nights all the effects (visuals too) would come back full force during the hours of 2-4am making it very hard to sleep and re-assimilate my ordinary reality. Keeping a driving focus on my terrestrial environment was the only thing which got me through these nights. I would literally be waiting for it to come and be paralyzed with fear for the two hours it afflicted me. If it were not a spiritual anomaly I've never heard of this happening, but it makes sense to say that it was probably caused by a residual amount of DMT left in the brain coming through at its regularly scheduled time of 2-4am. Sounds quaint, don't it?

To anyone who fancies the idea of going on a journey with the aid of Ayahuasca or its analogues make sure you are prepared to take the call. Don't be stupid, be prepared for a critical analysis of your life's choices and be ready to face the sheer consequence of our mere existence with the weight of oblivion staring you deep in the face. Aya and its teachings compare to none other. If I was in my own perhaps I would have been able to let go, or perhaps I wouldn't have, still distrusting such ease of travel. In my reasoning I would have had to go where I went anyways. Either way, all was not wasted: it never is. Any worthy lesson is one worth going through hell to understand if you see no other way around it. All assumptions about life and self are worth being obliterated, redefined, and re-assimilated. The journey to enlightenment is always one worth putting yourself out there for.

It is said that we are doomed to go where we are headed if we don't first know where we are going. My utmost thanks goes to my great friend Spinal for relentlessly putting himself out there with me in this challenging time in our lives. You've always kept me on my toes and you truly are one of my angels. Two years later what can I say; you live and you learn' I'm just glad we made it through the lonely tyranny of youth with our persons and friendship still in tact. This trip in conjunction with yours saved my life. I am certain that I would have continued on the same path I was headed, if not for the two of our experiences put together, and I'm sure you would agree. Obviously, this is by no means any kind of success story. There are still many more questions and a whole hell of a lot to learn from this. Most of us don't go into a substance like this looking to conquer anything. Its nice if you are able to get some guidance and sometimes its better to get a cosmic kick in the ass; however, I will say two years after this experience I have more pieces of knowledge about myself and the nature of life than I did before, which can be used to help others on a similar path. I would never have put myself through such a challenge if nothing could be taken out of it and put to use for healing of not just mine, but all of our futures.

I can not say I am not curious about traveling to this space again, but not for a long time. There are definitely a few things I would do differently next time: such as making sure I'm in a safe environment with a more experienced guide and/or friend, abstaining from weed and other substances, as well I would hope to be a bit more emotionally established in my life. I'm also curious to try the more authentic Banisteriopsis Caapi and Psychotria Viridis combination.

This is my experience. It has taken me a long way. If anything, I hope it gives more insight into your own journey to a free-er mind, body, and spirit. Remember: travel safely if nothing else. Every moment is precious and has serious meaning in the grand design. Honest and compassionate reflection always eases regret.

love & light

Exp Year: 2002	ExpID: 37913
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 5, 2004	Views: 291,199
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