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A Rollercoaster Ride At A Snail's Pace
H.B. Woodrose
Citation:   KeyKnee. "A Rollercoaster Ride At A Snail's Pace: An Experience with H.B. Woodrose (exp55874)". Erowid.org. Oct 16, 2007. erowid.org/exp/55874

 
DOSE:
8 seeds oral H.B. Woodrose (extract)
BODY WEIGHT: 182 lb
After using alcohol and marijuana for some years, myself and 3 friends decided it was time to branch out a little and explore the somewhat more interesting side to psychoactives. Exploits with MDMA and Salvia had produced interesting results, and
after reading up on Hawaiian Baby Woodrose seeds and finding them for sale on the internet, we decided to order 8 each and see what the outcome would be.

Our method of ingestion would be a simple water extraction. The furry material around the seeds was picked off by hand. The seeds were then ground up and put into 500mls of water, with 8 ground up seeds to each 500mls. These were left to stand in 500ml bottles for 24 hours and were shaken occasionally, turning the water a dark green/brown. As the time came to do the seeds, we filtered the water using a simple tea strainer, which still left small particles in the solution, threw away the mush, and mixed the dark water with fruit juice (50/50).

We all managed to consume our 8 seeds worth of water each in the space of about 10 minutes. It created a very heavy feeling in the stomach, and produced considerable gas and cramping. The nausea wasn't too intense, and quite bearable, and we were all in a fine mindset and very much looking forward to the experience. We had one sitter, who was a brother of one of the 3 friends, and we had known him for years. The rest of the evening, which took place next to a large tree on a small field close to where we lived, went as follows:

7.00pm - An hour after ingestion, and stomach still feels quite tender. Can feel a very slight change in perception, but unable to tell if this is a placebo effect. Sitting/lying down is more pleasant than standing, and feeling quite lethargic.

8.30pm - Stomach discomfort starting to ease, and we are subtly becoming affected. Effects at this stage are essentially comparable to being drunk, without the mental impairment, although with slight blurred vision. Me and 2 of my friends pop to a supermarket down the road to get a snack, and inside the store it is very enjoyable - everything feels completely different, seeming alot more vivid and colourful, almost magical. Also, the people in there walking around seem robotic, almost like drones. The sky is a pleasing shade of orange when we leave, which adds to the pleasurable effects.

9:30pm - Back at the tree it has become dark now, although the sky is still quite colourful. Effects are now completely tangible, including a light 'buzzing' sensation, almost like a mild dose of MDMA, coupled with distortions in spatial perception. We notice how walking through the grass makes us feel very small, like we are very close to the ground, but standing still and staring at our feet makes us feel very tall. The darkness may have added to this. Also, lights such as the moon, streetlamps, start to glow more vividly, and also become quite blurry around the edges (more so than normal). Apart from these, no actual 'visuals' as such are reported. The experience so far is definitely positive.

10:00pm - The beginning of the downward turn. We are sitting down making idle talk when I get up to urinate, and I pick a bush that is about 15 metres away. When I have finished, and am just about to return to the group, I start to get very vivid flashbacks from childhood, and start to feel an intense sadness. I stand there, motionless, as small 'films' in my head play back of my mother making me and my friends sandwiches after we had come in from playing, my first day at school, and how my dad used to take me out cycling and walking. I feel like I want to pay them back for all the good they had done to me down the years. I want to return to that age of innocence and love that adolescence leaves behind. This is rather unnerving and difficult to shake off.

After around 10 minutes of this, I try to stifle the thoughts for a while and return to the group. One of my friends is lecturing the other about how mankind has become 'poisoned' by modern technology and fashion and other things that have taken him away from nature, and that we have all become 'sick animals', confused and diseased by the industrialised world around us. This is a concept I find interesting, and I want to join in, but am still experiencing flashbacks and I sit next to them for a further 10 minutes, moaning and feeling like I am going mad. At this stage there is a very strong sense of a change in reality, that we are not really 'all there' with respect to life as we know it, like everything we see in the distance like cars and trees are just a movie set, unimportant and unreal.

My flashbacks start to weaken and I start to join in the conversation, which is now reaching it's morbid peak. The friend doing the lecturing is wailing that we will have to revert back to being animals and not join the sick people and that we will never recognise our families when we go back home to them as they are sick people as well. I quickly become sucked in and before we know it we all have a belief that we are aliens in a very screwed up world and it feels as though we are walking a very fine line between sanity and insanity. It is as though all the filters that my brain uses to discard silly/unintelligible points made in a conversation are completely gone. You could make me believe anything you wanted them to, no matter how wild. Interestingly, the third friend, who has been sitting up in the tree since this insanity started, has been able to distance himself from our anguish, saying he is finding the experience very pleasurable, and that we should 'go with the flow' like he is.

11.00pm - Me and my two friends that I'm cracking up with decide to head back to the supermarket we went to earlier to pick up some Neurofen tablets, which contain Ibuprofen and Codeine, to try and calm us down. To our despair, the pharmacy section
is closed, so we leave. As we walk out of the entrance, the friend who was lecturing earlier starts complaining of a pain on his forearm, and holds his arms out and points to a rather minor looking swelling on one of his arms. We insist that it's probably an insect bite or a nettle sting, and that he probably has 'the fear', but this only makes him more paranoid, and he says he is getting a taxi to the local hospital because he 'doesn't know how much longer he has left'. Me and the remaining friend are feeling very paranoid and anxious at this point, and we ring the other two at the tree to tell them what's happened, and they say they think they'll go home as they're getting bored, and offer us to go with them as our pupils were as big as saucers. After we had been back at theirs for half an hour, the bad part of the trip fades away, and everything feels very pleasant and mellow.

3.00am - The last few hours have been spent simply sitting around and chatting, and we still feel definitely 'affected', but in a much better state of mind than earlier, very mellow and calm. Feeling quite hot and sweaty (another MDMA-like effect of the seeds) and have been drinking a fair amount of water. Our friend at the hospital phones to say he has been given an X-ray and a blood test, and that they have sent him home. He puts his reaction down to extreme paranoia, and is feeling better.

4.00 am - Have nearly returned to baseline, and we lie down to go to sleep. Sleep after the seeds is very pleasant. I am lying on the hard floor of my friend's room with a jacket for a pillow and it feels like pure luxury.

In conclusion, we had quite a rollercoaster ride on the seeds, but because the 'coming up' stage is so slow and subtle, and the trip is so long in duration, it's a very unusual feeling and we were definitely caught by surprise once we found our consciousness changing. Although the middle of the trip was at times terrifying, I found it to still be a valuable experience which taught me (and presumably my friends) alot more about my inner self, and made me realise the power of my own mind. Most important of all, it taught me to have more respect for psychoactive substances, and not to go jumping in at the deep end. I think the bad part of our trip may have been avoided if we had been in a warm house and had something comfortable to lie on like a sofa, and if we had been able to focus on more pleasant things. These seeds were small, but they sure packed a punch.

Exp Year: 2006ExpID: 55874
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 16, 2007Views: 18,388
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H.B. Woodrose (26) : General (1), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)

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