DOSE:	30 mg	oral	Psilocin	(capsule)
		oral	Caffeine	(tea)
		smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

73 kg

Yesterday I gave myself a fair good wallop in the head with 4HO-DMT, at 30mg. I had decided to use my day off for a trip, which I had been promising myself during my week off, but was unable to do, for various reasons. I got well organised, rising early on a gray autumnal morning. I busied myself around the house preparing various things so that I wouldn't have to reach too far once embarked. The house was not that warm, due to the failure of our central heating boiler unit, but I put the lounge gas fire on to compensate a little. I saw my good lady out at 8.30 am, and set up a few joints, including one little elephant with 5mg of 5MeO-DMT, along with a vapouriser bulb containing about 50mg of spice. The scent of tangerine essential oil wafted from my burners around the house and by 10am I had done the most pressing household chores so that I felt ready to blast off with a clearish conscience. I had a light breakfast of cereal so that the little packet would not open on an empty stomach.

I had attended to the physical preparations pretty diligently, but in retrospect I hadn't really prepared emotionally so well. I knew that the trip was intended as a bit of DIY therapy, because this is what I had been considering for my trip during my week off. However, that morning I had set everything up for the session but not had the useful quiet time of contemplation about what might transpire, and I ploughed in rather hurriedly, washing the goods down with a nice strong cup of tea.

After ten minutes or so, I was mentally restless over various things, wondering whether my 4HO-DMT had degraded? Shortly after that though, I could feel things moving. The sense of awe as the drug took effect was powerful. It seems to be very similar to DMT in this respect, the main difference being the more gradual onset. At high doses, though, 'gradual' does not seem an adequate description. I was taking protective action fairly rapidly. I quickly turned my laptop off, which had been providing music (Byron Metcalfe), whipped off my headphones and dived under my duvet to lay down. I was quickly becoming fairly immobile. I was not to alarmed by this, since I have experienced a similar loss of leg know-how before (with similar higher doses of 4AcO and 4HO-DMT). I lay down and waited expectantly.

I have experienced what might be described as entity contact on several occasions with both these drugs, and DMT, and that is perhaps what I was hoping and expecting at that point. I have enjoyed such experiences immensely for a variety of reasons. They seem to have an antidepressant effect through the way they are life-affirming somehow. The mystery of the universe and reality is deepened, and rather than this being a frightening thing (as it was the first time I came across it) it is, to my mind, a hopeful thing. There are, obviously, quite a few problems in the world, and the sense of wonder I get from a peak experience, gives me hope that humanity might still be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the last minute. These entity experiences are also aesthetically stunning, another reason why I like them. I had arranged by my bed a series of my favorite art books, including Abdul Mati Klarwein, Alex Grey, and others. I had to put all this aside though, because of what was happening to me.

When a strong dose hits, I feel quite physiologically altered. It is going to be hard to be objective about this, but I sense some vascular change. My fingers and toes were warm and felt like they were glowing with heat, while my limbs seemed to throb as well. My breathing seemed to alter, and I became conscious of a kind of hyperventilation taking place. It was not threatening, and could be modulated through gentle application of willpower, but I felt well oxygenated, so I let it progress as it seemed to wish. There were rapid short breaths whose frequency ramped up gradually. As this went on, I became aware (with my eyes shut) of a lattice or framework of neon green fizzing light beams analogous to the whereabouts of my body. With the rising crescendo of my breathing, the structure began to lift away from my locale, upwards into the sparkling sky of my mindspace. This was all very interesting and fun, and resembled some entity type experiences I had had before, but this time the object in my vision pertained to myself, or so it seemed. It appeared to me as though some of myself was represented by it, and it was this that was rising up and out of me, or projecting beyond the conventional shores of my body.

I became distracted by thoughts of what was going on in the outside world. Perhaps if I had not been so mentally restless and adrift, I might have continued experimenting with the effects of breathing patterns and their modulation, to achieve more visions along these lines. However I opened my eyes expecting to see outrageous visual effects and hallucination. Instead, the room and my body were clothed in writhing patterns of various hues of grey. The view was pixellated in a squared off fashion, with squares of varying size. The objects of my visual attention were represented to a greater resolution by these squares, which would degrade into coarser grain as my attention moved away. This was spectacular in its own way, but not the usual carnival of living form and colour that I had expected and experienced before. The concepts of beaurocracy, dry structure, utility and systematic function were present in my mind for some reason. I work for the post office so that might have some bearing on this theme. Furthermore, the frames where we sort out the mail consist of grey plastic racks with a slot for each house, and their colour was reminiscent of the visual effects I saw now.

I often feel like I am experiencing some sort of grid like structure when I am in such states and it seems to be connected to the constant human theme of categorisation, by which intelligence gets its bearing on reality. I know also that the male brain is perhaps a little more prone to collecting things, and having systems. In Britain we have a proud tradition of beaurocracy in, for example, the civil service, health service and once nationalised industry. At work we had all been balloted on strike action recently, and I had attended a union meeting the previous week. I found myself whispering quietly 'I doesn't matter what goes down, as long as you have the appropriate paperwork filed, sir.' and chuckling to myself.

I shut my eyes again and lay back on the bed. Music didn't seem appropriate, nor my books. I knew that the world of my backgarden would be rewarding but my legs were not about to take me anywhere. Instead I began thinking hard and fast about things. I asked myself (and this is bound to be familiar to some readers,) 'why do I take these drugs?' This was not a 'bad trip' type issue here. It was more a matter of curiosity to me, seeing that the issue of drugs is such a contentious one in society. So what thing about me is different, or means that I am interested in changing (temporarily) the way it feels to be? Of course encapsulated in this issue was my long-term weed smoking habit. There are aspects of my personality which do not satisfy me and seem to account for some of the disappointments I have come across along the way. I was frantically trying to trace the line of past indiscretions back to some point or other, which might have triggered or initiated the patterns of behaviour I was dwelling on. This can be quite tricky when your memory is full of holes, and you are labouring under the auspices of a psychedelic drug.

The use of psychedelics seemed linked in my mind to interests I had had for a long time, since before I had ever heard of drugs. For example, I would enjoy taking electronic items apart and putting them together again, with varying degrees of success, when I was a child. This appeared to be what I was getting at when I tripped out, except that the object of attention was my own mind and prejudices, rather than a ZX81, or a mono cassette recorder. What was this about? Perhaps just an inquisitive nature. More emotional issues followed. In the past I have been a stranger from the truth to some extent, and in my teens, a bit of a thief. When thinking about these issues I vocally cried 'What was I thinking about?' and felt a boiling flush of shame. My relationship with the truth has improved somewhat, so that I am honest and pretty much as straight up as anyone else is. On this level I am content, but I recognised that I hold reality at arms length, somewhat. I pictured it as like a card player holding his hand close to his chest. I would tell white lies, to allow myself room to maneuver, which was connected to lack of confidence in my moral convictions. Why this lack of conviction, as though waiting for others to jump first or to find some cue about what was what?

Of course this led to thoughts about my family and the people I care about. I have three brothers and I'm the eldest. We arrived on this stage in two groups of two, 'the big one and the little ones' as we had it. It was my next brother down who I shared a room with, and with whom I shared the most hot air. Sometimes I was a rotter, in that nasty childish way, but I wasn't going to beat myself up too much about that. It was the stuff in my teen years I felt bad about, where I should have known better. A time came to mind where I had persuaded my brother to send up an ounce of green to me at university in Aberdeen when I was 18. It took me a year to pay him back. I had disregarded the essence of his standpoint as a human being, and subsumed it into the greater project (or so it seemed to me at the time) of me staying high at all times. I thought about various thefts and subterfuges during those times and their meanings in terms of people and hurt. The issue of truth was again involved and how you can believe, as a thief, that while no one has noticed the act in question, you can pretend to yourself that it hasn't happened, and even find yourself pontificating about the rights and wrongs of others. 'There are two types of hypocrites, the self-conscious hypocrite and the unself-conscious' I said to myself, 'and I have been both sorts over the years'.

'Where had all this started?', I wondered. I tried to cast my mind back further. I felt that I had probably learned a bad lesson at some early stage. There were various silly lies that came flooding back with memories of sunny classrooms, and the struggle to be interesting, or get attention. I remembered telling the lads in my class when I was 9yrs old, that I had seen a rusted up old army halftrack in the woods by an old disused RAF airfield near where I used to live. I was fairly certain that none of them would actually be allowed to bike down there to look, but one day, a lad whose parents didn't seem to mind where he went, called my bluff and came round on the bike to ask if I wanted to go and show him. About halfway there, I crumbled, and told him lamely that it was a trick for one of the other lads. I think he had probably suspected so, while I had wondered whether we might actually find one, if I wished hard enough. The rest of the afternoon we played on the damn by the river, but I knew I had given too much away about myself.

Further back I went, to the age of 5, just after I had started school. It was playtime, and a girl (who shall remain nameless) and I were playing near the hedge at the edge of the playground.. She had found a bottle under the hedge, and gave it me to look after, or something. It was a small Victorian ink bottle with an engraved crystalline star on the base. I later told a teacher about it, with the morally crippling statement that I had found it. The teacher was impressed, and the next day in assembly it was shown to the school, and I stood up sheepishly to relate my tale. I wasn't proud at that point, and had wished I could go back in time again to do the correct thing. Was this a moral conviction, or merely the fear of being unmasked? She was a clever girl who I remembered being, for some reason, my arch enemy in the fantasy games we played. I later met her at secondary school 7 years later, and offered to give her it back. I had been struck by the fact she had not blown my cover then in that assembly. It might have been for the best if she had done so, because like the fabled butterflies wing effect, who knows what different path might have transpired.

What had this lesson taught me then? That you could get something for nothing sometimes, that perhaps you can take shortcuts, lying could be useful, etc. I was henceforth working on two levels. One surface level, and a more calculating, selfish level. The truth is I was not born stupid, but I did not apply my brain very diligently. I was lazy and while a reasonably clever person can fly through most of school, and perhaps the first year at university, they will come unstuck us they approach the real world and squander their talent if they are lazy. Which is, pretty much, what did happen as I hit my 20s. I also knew quite a few of those extremely clever people who manage to combine a rigorous social regime and score straight 'A's. It took me until thirty to settle into a regular long-term job, and while a Postman is not a teacher or a doctor etc, it is a happy holding point for me now. During my 20s I found drugs, specifically MDMA, occasional LSD trips and weed. They seemed to offer the usual benefits, with little of the costs that society seemed to dwell on. This was a short cut or quick bonus I had little hesitation to delve into. They seemed to offer a sense of utopia and nirvana that I was looking for, which broke past some of my own inadequacies.

The unfortunate thing was that they were not conducive to getting priorities right, in the way I used them at the time. I remembered some truly wonderful moments as well though. Some of my loves that I had lost, or hurt, some great sex. I became aware of a pattern of having close friends for a few years, and then the drifting away, or moving different ways. There was a vast raft of people I had at one time been very close to, and then completely lost touch with. This included my first real girlfriend, whom I had let down when she really needed me to come through for her. Also, a lad that I had spent a couple of years summers as thick as thieves with, exploring the countryside around our village on bikes with him. We drifted away from each other in different classes. We were both from musical and church families and our parents were still in touch. In his teen years he had been a bit of a fool on his moped. I had seen him flying around on it many times, but that was not my scene by then. He crashed later and received terrible burns. About 8 years later, my mother told me he had hung himself.

Bearing in mind I was heavily tripping at this point of thought, I cried out loud at the thought of his pain, and that I had not been around. Could I have made any difference? Probably not, but I felt that perhaps I should have tried. Of course I was too busy with my own little mountains to be aware of his plight. It was as though people didn't exist if I was not aware of them. This struck me as an almost psychotic streak, and I was reminded how terrible things transpire when people stop regarding other people as real people, but instead things or numbers etc. Perhaps this was how I had perceived the victims of my past misdeeds. Obviously I was not on the scale of the really bad guys, but it was unsettling.

This rollercoaster of emotional nostalgia was hard work, but I felt it was rewarding. It was a tough therapy. Sometimes you get more of what you asked for than you really expect, or want. But it was good to really work on those ancient databanks, and try to fathom out the names, places and running order of the events. It seemed crucial somehow, at that juncture, to remember the name of the girl whose bottle I stole. I flitted through various combinations until I hit on the right name. S##### B####r. Relieved, I mind started to relax a little. It was still very restless and busy. When I thought about what I was seeing behind my eyes, I saw sparkles in the blackness. I knew the peak was passing away gradually. I was coming into the gentler post peak phase. I also became aware of the call of nature, but I was loathe to leave the warmth of my bed. After a bit, I realised that it was becoming a quality of comfort issue, so I lumbered carefully to mt feet, and began an amusing quest for the bathroom. My legs were still very shakey, and on arrival, the toilet was a vision of splendour. I managed to go, but I saw ribbons of urine cascading away from me at all angles. I was comforted by the sound of the real flow hitting the water, while the others fizzled into space. I got a fit of giggles at this, whilst reflecting on the simple pleasure of a job well done.

I snuck back to bed and looked at the clock. It was still only 11.30am. I shut my eyes again and got comfy and warm. I had reached a blissful phase I had felt before, where I felt this intuitive certainty in my belief in a kind of omnipotent God-like being, beyond all the worldly human prejudices of religion, race, gender and sexuality, to whom the only real duty was to try and do good, or the right thing. I knew I had fallen short many times, but I also knew that my heart is in the right place and that I have come a long way. I knew that it was in my power to put right many of the things that I had done wrong, although admittedly in the present circumstances I was in no fit state of mind to do so, at least for the next few hours. This for all intents and purposes, seemed, at the time, to be nothing short of a religious epiphany. A meditative prayer being felt with almost painfully deep conviction, and being answered on a practical level. Its moments like these which make me come back to psychedelics from time to time. Their usage in my life is not in the same bracket as my use of pot, other more addictive substances in the past. They are mind manifesting tools every bit, in this context.

In this state I remained a while, feeling love for every one and thing, sending out my good wishes around the raft of people I knew and loved. I tried to think of someone I really disliked, just to see if I really did dislike them. Of course I found things to like about them, or to laugh about. I thought about one of the blokes at work, a bit of a loudmouth, and a real drinker. I thought of the smell of an entire crate of stale beer on his breath in the morning, and the dawn chorus of his foul smelling wind, as it broke like the dying groan of a wounded dinosaur. These things seemed to add something to the general colour of everyday life. And I also remembered he had bought me a beer at the working mens club a while back.

I sent out strong feelings of love for my Mrs and my family. Deep feelings of gratitude to my parents emanated within me. I could identify or feel some of the struggles my Father had been through, and felt petty about some of the resentments I had felt over the years. I thought about my Mother and how she, as a woman, had nursed 5 male egos through the times. I understood how women know more than we chaps sometimes sense, and that they have to keep secrets occasionally about things in order to cosset us from ourselves. I knew my own Mrs had done this for me as well, since we had had some tough times occasionally. I sent out love and thanks for it all. I thanked the universe for the privilege of tasting 4-HO-DMT amongst the other treasures I have known and loved (Ha ha).

I still wondered what had set the ball rolling. Where or when was the big bang? 'Aha' I thought, as I remembered my mother telling me that I was a breach birth. 'When you came out,' she said, ' your balls were all blue and bruised'. She was making a joke out of it at the time, but I had later read some psychological problems had been statistically connected to breach birthed people. I had also read some Stanislav Grof stuff about the importance of the birth event in forming mental archetypes and forms which can later overlay on to various adult behaviours. He suggests that an abnormal birth sequence can lead to pathological traits. I felt intellectually satisfied by this tidbit.

I stared at my bedside table, where the 5-MeO-DMT joint and the spice lay. I knew I would not be needing their assistance today. I had gone quite far enough, and further than I had expected. I also needed the loo again. I was still unsteady, but I felt that by moving around and trying to resume normal activity would flush out the remaining sense of immobility that clung to me. I wrapped up warm and made the journey. I decided that a good strong cup of tea was in order, along with a joint. I sat on the back doorstep and indulged, while enjoying the sight of the ivy on the dividing wall to our neighbours, as it blew in the wind. The 1pm news was on, and I was sympathizing with the Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell, who had been fitted up by the media as too old to lead the party, or less likely, the country. I felt he was a sincere man who cared about issues, but this was not what the media had reported on. I saw his age as an advantage, over the other notable characters, who appear to have done very little except politics from day one.

There was a carrier bag full of apples in the kitchen, which I summoned up the will power to peel and stew for the freezer, while I played the first two Bill Withers albums and sang along. I don't think I can emphasize too much, how sweet that man's voice, and the songs on those albums sounded that afternoon. Also much respect to Roberta Flack and the late Donny Hathaway. Enough. I later tidied away the detritus of my adventures, and made the house nice. I gave my Mrs a long hug when she arrived back home.

Thanks for reading - Peace amd Love - PippUK

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 66467
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 19, 2007	Views: 39,105
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Psilocybin (239), Psilocin (388) : Alone (16), Mystical Experiences (9), General (1)