Planet Hopping

Becoming the Universe

In August of 2014, I drank Ayahuasca for the first time with a Shaman in Leticia, Colombia. In short, I could see all of my memories as if they were a movie when my eyes were closed. I could see each memory from the point of view of every person in the memory. I could hear their voices, see their expressions, and feel their emotions. All the while, I knew I was tripping, I knew the difference between reality and the hallucinations. All in all, it was an amazing, educational experience.

Two weeks ago, June 2015, I took 4 grams of mushrooms. It was 2 grams more than I had ever taken before. I was expecting to have a trip similar to ayahuasca, but it turned out to be pretty mild. Onset took about 40 minutes and lasted for about 6 hours (1 hour up, 3-hour peak, 2-hour come down). I was completely in control and had only mild visuals. I had some reminiscent thoughts, but no 3-D memories when I closed my eyes. I was a little giggly and pretty talkative. It was just a fun experience. It was just doing drugs, it was not a dive into my psyche and not an educational experience. I was disappointed in the end. I was looking for something more similar to ayahuasca. Doing drugs is fun, but there is really no point if I can%u2019t take anything away from it.

Last night, middle of June 2015, I decided to add some syrian rue to the mix. I chewed up 3 grams of syrian rue seeds, waited 30 minutes, and took 2.5 grams of the same mushrooms from 2 weeks earlier. After an hour and 15 minutes, all I felt was a little light-headed from the MAOIs. I chewed another gram of seeds and, 15 minutes later, took another 2.5 grams of shrooms (4 grams of rue 5 grams of shrooms total). That was 9:00. By 9:15 I started to get giggly. Everything started to become wavy. The come-up, once it started (1.5 hours after initial shroom dose), was fast. I started to laugh uncontrollably. I was laughing so hard that I was slapping my legs, coughing, it made my abs were sore, I was crying. It was amazing. It was the hardest I%u2019ve ever laughed in my entire life. I had no idea what I was laughing about. On Planet Earth, they would show an animal get killed and I would lose it laughing. It was beyond giggles of a normal shroom trip. I looked at the clock after laughing for what seemed like an eternity and not even 5 minutes had passed. Very quickly, I completely lost any sense of time.

I started to see the birds flying off the tv screen. I started to get kaleidoscope vision. Everything was pixelated. Everything they were showing me on Planet Earth was blowing my mind. When I realized I was hallucinating, I would start cracking up again. I was laughing like an absolute mad man. I started to say that nothing made sense. I couldn%u2019t form coherent thoughts anymore. I started to see animals morphing into each other on the TV. I saw monkeys with 3 heads and 6 eyes. I couldn%u2019t tell if all the effects were part of the show or if I was seeing things. Objects in the room started melting together. I thought I was a monkey and was eating things with my feet. I couldn%u2019t tell how big the room was anymore. Sometimes it looked 2-D, but other times it looked enormous and 3D. I started to lose all sense of space. I thought that all the places on Planet Earth were different worlds. Suddenly, I was flying through space. I was visiting different planets. The laws of physics were disintegrating in front of my eyes. My thoughts were visibly crumbling, my mind was breaking down. I could imagine anything in front of me and it was there. I could warp to different places in the country. I could be in Alaska, in Texas, where ever I wanted to be in an instant. TV shows were becoming the same. Everything was melting together, everything was one. My mind was all powerful, but I was out of control.

By this point, I would look at the clock and it was 12:00 each time I checked. I couldn%u2019t tell if was hallucinating or not. I lost sense of reality. I thought my hallucinations were real. I would try to talk, but I could only get about 2 words out before I would lose it because all the thoughts and images were overwhelming my mind. All that would come out was %u201Cahhhhhhh, ahhhhhh, oh my god.%u201D I couldn%u2019t control it. I was gone. For a while, I was the president. I couldn%u2019t tell if my dreams from the past weeks were real or not. I didn%u2019t even know if I was real. I had no idea where I was. I was putting everything in my mouth. A pen, the remote, my fingers%u2026 I didn%u2019t know what these things were, but they all ended up in my mouth. I felt like a baby. I felt like I was being born over and over. I questioned the permanence of everything, including the trip. I saw myself as a mountain. I realized that I was going to live forever. I was the earth, I was the sun, I was the universe, and yet I didn%u2019t exist. I thought for a while that I was permanently down the rabbit hole. It was so overwhelming that I couldn%u2019t really focus on anything. I had almost no attention span. Thoughts and images were coming and going so fast that I couldn%u2019t keep track of it all.