Selftherapy tripping inbetween Microdose and Full Trip For Newbies

   ---written by Asante, March 2021
I've used psychedelics from 1993-2019, quite a long time.

From about 2009-2019 my favorite dose of mushrooms was 0.1-0.15 grams of dried Wavy Caps, Psilocybe cyanescens, from an outdoor patch

Anyways, personally I consider Psilocybe cyanescens the best kind of shrooms I've experienced, but they may not be the kind you have available, so you will need a reference.

What I'm talking of here is the strength of 0.2gr liberty caps or 0.33gr of cubies of average potency, in other words 2mg psilocybin, which is the amount contained in one Indocybin pill, as marketed by Sandoz, from Hoffman's lab, back in the 60s.

So 2mg psilocybin. You can calculate what that is for your species. Its equivalent to 20mcg LSD.

What did it do for me?

For a decade, it was my default go-to dose so I have a lot of experience with it.

Two things it never was:

1) It NEVER was a microdose: you had to stick with the program. You were clearly affected.
2) It NEVER was a fullblown trip: not once did it lead to hard to control difficulties.

What it was, was an inbetween stage, a mild trip, that's the best way to put it.

Everything was enhanced because YOU were enhanced, but not to the extent of distortion, confusion or wild anxiety. Colors were more vivid. Textures, to the eye and touch, smells, tastes, intensified. All your senses were dialed up. Also dialed up prominently were emotions.

In pleasant social company, I had fits of boundless and mostly appropriate laughter. There was a tendency to euphoria but it could also become tense and anxious, forcing you to relax and breathe with it. It wasntb like MDMA, a sure-fire good time, it could go either way and the only pleasant company was with people who either also tripped or knew of it and were OK with it.

Its not suitable for a party setting, unless everybody is on it and no other drugs and alcohol go around until about 5 hours after dropping.

What was also intensified were your thoughts, both the vividness of them, the extremity of them and the extent to which they captivated you.

In general what happens is that you become intensified and because of it are more withdrawn in yourself, as inner processes become more prominent.

Fantasy becones more vivid, daydreaming and reminiscing becomes more prominent, what I describe here is that your psychological processes become more vivid too, and that needs extra attention.

Because your psychological processes become more prominent, people with issues are more likely to be confronted with them, and, so to say, trip over them. Your issues can get triggered more easily. You are more likely to misperceive a comment or look in just the way that hits you in the feels, and out comes the rainstorm!

This is a GOOD THING.

If you trip over an issue on such a small dose, you will psychologically fall on your face, lie there feeling the situation, then you get up again and often shortly after feel good, in fact usually you feel better than before, if only because of the relief.

Think of shrooms as hot pepper. If you eat hot pepper, you experience pain, with pepper in your mouth, with psilocybin, if you got issues, in your mind. If you repeatedly eat hot pepper, you develop a tolerance against the pain pepper evokes, you get a routine handing it and may learn to enoy working with the situation.

With psychedelics and issues its much the same. If the dose is low (ie not chemically anxiety provoking) and yet triggers issues with you, let the emotions flow through you. Laugh, cry, curse like a sailor, sob out your story, smack the pillow with your fists in anger, bring forth the wind! rain! thunder! hail! let it come out, come out, come out like Oprah's sitting next to you with a box of tissues.

In fact put a box of tissues prominently on the table as a visual cue to all that yes, emotions may happen and It Is Good to work through them because if they come out on 2mg, they NEEDED out.

If you have issues, and they come out with psychedelics, let it come out, let that cloud rain out, and get up again. Not just will you feel better but your issue will be better integrated after the fact. Then, after a few repeats perhaps, your trigger treshold is higher than the dose and you are also more crashproof in your sober life.

Like with red pepper, you are learning how to deal with suffering, with intensity better.
So, its a good thing.

Thats therapeutic tripping and your trip group must know that this can and should happen, if people get triggered, you work with it. You must also agree not to take things said during trips  too personally. First, you might feel exceptionally hurt by something innocent because its your issue, secondly the other may innocently say something unintentially venomous because it touches their issue. People can say very shocking things when under the influence, in a way that is not what they are about when sober. They are processing their issues too and might blurt out something toxic their dad used to tell them.

Especially in these times of political correctness and triggeredness you and your tripping friends must make a pact that you will do your best to forgive anything said during a trip, and of course to try not to be toxic, and agree to a signal that means "back off, lets drop this right now, I cant handle this" that serves to remind people they are in a trip and that special social rules apply. You have to be willing to coddle each other a bit even if you persnally feel they are exaggerating. It is a blowup, magnified, of what they deal with so dont be irreverent, its not just the drugs talking. Its also good to have a serious Alert signal, such as give a clap in your hands, say "attention" then what you feel important enough to snap everybody out their process for such as "do you smell fire?" "We forgot the pizza!" or "Is Kitty outside?"

For tripping alone, its best, in my experience, to alternate lying in bed and reclining in a chair, eyes closed, trying to crawl into the experience like a cat in too small a box. :awesomenod:

If you don't have issues going on, a dose like this is great to practice meditation, self hypnosis, intuitively work with Tarot cards, enjoy origami, maybe paint, charcoal or draw some. Another thing you can do that is very fruitful, is either get behind the computer and open a document and write about aspects of your life, or just talk to yourself about your life when alone, or exchange life discussion with others so willing.

Its best to stay with the expeience and not listen to music or watch media. What you CAN do as to music is to make music. Live music is good, pre recorded, not so. Candlelight feels more pleasant than electric light.

One thing we used to do, and you can vary on the theme, was lighting [i]intention candles[/i].

We'd put a plate on the table, each gets a tea light candle, and a lighter is passed around. When its your turn, you speak of your intention for this session, then light the candle and put it with the others. Then we drop our dose, and when we are all coming down we hold a round about how things went in regard to our intention for the session. Tea lights typically burn for 4 hours, the duration of the most intense part of a mushroom trip.

You can vary on the theme. What we also did with night sessions, in the early morning hours when it was time to sleep we'd all gather by the freezer, out comes the ice cold J