Home | Community | Message Board |
You are not signed in. Sign In New Account | Forum Index Search Posts Trusted Vendors Highlights Galleries FAQ User List Chat Store Random Growery » |
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.
|
| |||||||
Some of these posts are very old and might contain outdated information. You may wish to search for newer posts instead. | |||||||
Unityofopposites Stranger Registered: 11/15/08 Posts: 4 Last seen: 15 years, 3 months |
| ||||||
I am currently doing research on the subject of transformative psychedelic experiences. I feel that it would be beneficial for me to collect reports of many experiences had "in the wild," or in a naturalistic, non experimental setting. These abound on the internet, but since the subject matter I am searching for is rather specific, Ive decided to make a new post, perhaps getting responses of specific relevance to what I am studying from intelligent psychedelic explorers.
My aim in this post is to hopefully gain many rich descriptions of various peoples psychedelic experiences (with any of the drugs listed on this site as valid subjects for discussion), which they feel fall into the category of "mystical" or "transforming." What I particularly am interested in knowing is how your more "profound" or "deep" experiences have initiated lasting change in your normal perception of your self, others, your world, and the interrelations of those. Let me elaborate... I am studying these phenomena from the vantage-point of social constructionism. Any of you familiar with the philosophy may be concerned that I am out to devalue these experiences, as it is normally used as a method of critique; but, I assure you, I am not. On the contrary, I am using social construcionism to try to better understand exactly what happens during these certain experiences, and most importantly, what exactly is transformed. The basic idea of social constructionism is that all our experience of the world is socially constructed. The best way I can try to provide an image for this is that our experience in and of itself is simply a vast continuum of perception that is not necessarily divided into the categories we use to refer to it; rather, those come with language, and are superimposed onto that fluid continuum, so that eventually we see it as having categories in and of itself, when in reality we invented those categories. In other words, through language we have divided one thing from another, introduced categories, hierarchies, and many basically arbitrary divisions onto our one undivided experience. This is hard to explain, but the basic idea is that our concept of what we are, our relation to others, and our relation to the world are socially constructed between people, and have no meaning outside the social system. This includes all the ways in which we construct our own identity. However, I am not looking for anyones opinion on social constructionism. I am proposing that what is transformed is actually the persons own social construction of their reality; their identity, their view of the world, all of the linguistic tricks that have been used to make sense of the world are shaken, critiqued, and reconstructed after the reportedly ineffable experience. So, anyone had one of those? I know from personal experience, if youre on this site, you most likely have ^ ^ Please describe as richly as you can, and focus on how your identity was transformed, and how you felt changed in general afterwards, in your own words and terminology. Looking forward to hearing from you all!
| |||||||
deCypher Registered: 02/10/08 Posts: 56,232 |
| ||||||
Erowid trip reports are your friend, and they even have a Mystical category.
| |||||||
Clordio Existing is Half Registered: 02/04/08 Posts: 227 Last seen: 15 years, 11 days |
| ||||||
One weekend while camping in the mountains, my girlfriend and I dosed some quality LSD. Previously I had been trying my best to come to terms with the new ideas that psychedelics had revealed to me, ideas that shook my very foundation.
It was hard on my psyche to think that all the commercialism that had surrounded me since birth was indeed false and empty and that the idea that my long held 18 year christian beliefs were ludicrous. Lately I had been reading and listening to a lot of McKenna and the ideas he spoke about made a lot of sense. Ideas that the government was not trying to protect us, or that we were being shepherded into a creativity lacking populace of identical drones and scared into staying at home by mass media. These and other ideas, such as religion through plants and living things such as plants were all hovering around my thoughts, as if waiting to be accepted. But for some reason I just could not fully accept these ideals. And this is where I finally understood my beef. These inhibitions were all derived from my own unwillingness to take a plunge, to admit that I just might not know anything and be willing to be re-taught. And I now understood this meant I would need to experience death, a loss of my ego. Now, while tripping on this exceptional hit of acid, the waves of psychedelia came as usual but with a hint of something extra. Each wave came faster, closer, and more intense. I grew uncomfortable but I couldn't figure out why. I closed my eyes to dispel the feeling and witnessed my transformation. Behind my eyelids lay a scene. A young man in front of a chalk board, trying to demonstrate an idea on the blackboard to what appears to be a class room of people. Whatever the idea was, the whole class was laughing at him. I immediately felt embarrassed for the person which was a common reaction I've always had when I feel a person is acting in an embarrassing way. It was then that the person looked at me dead in the eyes, and in his eyes I saw a message. He wasn't paying attention at all to the class's laughs, he refused to be embarrassed for expressing his ideas. Then I realized this person was me. Since childhood I've always been embarrassed easily, especially for not fitting in, and this was THE MOST incredible revelation for me to have, to know that it doesn't matter what others think of me. I know it sounds childish, but it was a hard thing to get over and this vision helped incredibly, but that wasn't the end... Then came an extra boost of uncomfortableness. Everything became black and I felt myself slipping away. I immediately began trying to fight it which was my common reaction at the time, fighting the loss of myself and my ego. But in mid struggle I realized what I was doing. If I was ever going to learn and progress as a person, I had to lose my fear and take the plunge. And so... I let go Immediately 3 heads that looked made of stone in Aztec design appeared in my vision. They formed a triangle, and then each head swung around so that their mouths lined up and I fell through the opening created by their mouths.... Bliss...pure and utter bliss. I felt cleansed, renewed and reborn. I finally understood that there was a lot more beneath the surface of reality and I honestly felt like I was a new person. It's impossible to describe the feeling, but it definitely had the religious tonality to it. I'll never forget that night, because from then on I finally started to make healthy changes in my life and began to live for myself and not for those around me or by what the media says I should do. Hope this is helpful --------------------
| |||||||
Beege gatherer Registered: 08/02/08 Posts: 4,466 Loc: Germany Last seen: 12 years, 4 months |
| ||||||
This isn't a "trip report" per say. It's more of a list of positive effects gained from use of psilocybin-containing mushrooms quoted from a previous post of mine.
Quote:
| |||||||
pfxtc RUEXP? Registered: 11/15/08 Posts: 21,166 Loc: Last seen: 8 years, 6 months |
| ||||||
I'm 100% with you on the weed thing,
ever since I smoked on shrooms my experience while being faded is much more rewarding, and I do it as a gift to myself now instead of just doing it because it's something to do. -------------------- koods said: Young male going by the name "Bassfreak" entered Worcester General complaining of a sharp pain in his buttock region after attending EDM event. Attending physician considered a possible diagnosis of acute rave anus, but upon further investigation it was determined there was nothing cute about patient's anus. Life-long trip report
| |||||||
Unityofopposites Stranger Registered: 11/15/08 Posts: 4 Last seen: 15 years, 3 months |
| ||||||
Wow excellent stuff so far, very helpful. I look forward to hearing more reports.
Yes, erowid is great and I have used it some, but I'm hoping to get some descriptions specifically relevant to my subject of study, which is already happening. Great! And it's nice to see so many others whose life has been radically changed by these wonderful fungi, plants, and chemicals. How about Ego-Death?
| |||||||
Beege gatherer Registered: 08/02/08 Posts: 4,466 Loc: Germany Last seen: 12 years, 4 months |
| ||||||
Quote: It's a hell of a thing
| |||||||
04281969 Hobbyist Registered: 08/09/06 Posts: 1,406 |
| ||||||
A large dose of LSA can show you the history of life, following the progression of DNA since its creation. How do you want that described to you?
Have you ever been to a place that had been so well described that the actual experience added nothing to your expectations?
| |||||||
Coaster Baʿal Registered: 05/22/06 Posts: 33,501 Loc: Deep in the Vall Last seen: 12 years, 5 months |
| ||||||
Have you ever been to a place that had been so well described that the actual experience added nothing to your expectations?
wow that is one deep question id hafta say no, but maybe u are so bomb at explaining things --------------------
| |||||||
Clordio Existing is Half Registered: 02/04/08 Posts: 227 Last seen: 15 years, 11 days |
| ||||||
Quote: You forget who you are You forget who your friends are You forget... everything And if you don't let go you feel like you're going insane, trying to remember all of these things. But if you do let go, you just exist. Like a floating entity with no history or attachments. Pretty wonderful --------------------
| |||||||
budbro Stranger Registered: 11/13/08 Posts: 23 Last seen: 14 years, 1 month |
| ||||||
i am very interested in the transformation process as well as I have yet to do shrooms. Keep up the posts!
| |||||||
Balaam Stranger Registered: 11/16/08 Posts: 28 Last seen: 12 years, 7 months |
| ||||||
This one is about 7 months old. I mean to edit it a bit at some point, sorry if it is a little TL:DR but it's all written out to go!
----------- Into the Ganzfeld: A narrative on the effects of the combination of LSD, Nutmeg, Salvia, and Nitrous Oxide with Ganzfeld sensory deprivation technology: About 3 weeks ago I set aside a weekend night to be devoted to some alone time for some needed introspection and life reflection- along with some experimentation with a combination of LSD, nutmeg, nitrous oxide, and my newly arrived salvia divinorum 10x extract I was eagerly waiting to break into. (I did not originally intend to use the Ganzfeld set up I had previously assembled for use with DXM, although it ended up playing perhaps the most important role in the course of my night.) The nitrous and salvia were the most important to my main mission of the night, which was to be an attempt at total ego annihilation and body disassociation. This was to be obtained through a “loosing” of the world with nutmeg and LSD, and then brought on through an intake of both salvia extract and nitrous oxide in quick succession. I had previously experienced ego loss in varying degrees on a variety of substances, and body disassociation as well (most often with DXM), but had yet to ever find myself in a fully disassociative state completely unaware of the existence of my body, or in a state of ego loss so profound that my fundamental concept of the “I” was ever truly obliterated the way I had read about in many’s experiences with DMT and Salvia. The nutmeg I had decided on due to being unable to procure any decent marijuana, and because the low quality cannabis that was available was extremely overpriced. Since nutmeg has always given me a high very similar to low quality marijuana I decided it would be a decent substitute for my purposes. I took the nutmeg, 3 heaping spoonfuls, at around 6 PM. Within an hour I began to notice some increased visual snow but little else. At about 9 PM after coming back from the gym I took my tab of acid and took a shower, getting giddy eagerly await the effects. I spent the next few hours in a very pleasant if mellow trip, listening to music, jamming on the guitar, doing some charcoal sketches and drawing this big psychedelic mural on a cardboard board I had lying around with markers. Around 1 AM I decided it was time for the main course of the night, which was to come in the form about a 10th of the gram of 10x salvia followed immediately by a hit of nitrous oxide from one of the whipped cream cans I had ready in my refrigerator. As I began to get everything set up for my big trip I started to feel anxiety build up. My brain recoiled in fear of the ride it was about to go on. I put some low-key music on, Bob Marley I think, and dimmed the lights, in an attempt to get myself properly relaxed before I took the plunge. I took the salvia via vaporizer, heating it to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal vaporization. I laid myself on some couch cushions on the floor with the vape next to me and unwrapped the can of whipped cream and waited for a minute or two, taking deep breaths to relax myself. Then I affixed the vaporizer tube to the vape, took four large hits, which I held for a count of 30 seconds each. With each inhalation I felt myself, my perceiving being, pushed farther and farther from things I had always closely associated with concepts of self, and began loosing consciousness of and connection to my physical body. I was being pushed away from my memories and personality, my “ego” if you will, although I would say I still possessed a strong sense of self. At this same moment a sort of “special gravity,” seemed to kick in. An experience common to all my strong salvia experiences, I felt the strong pull of gravity on the back of my head, and more so deeply within my being, dragging my consciousness backwards into my skull with a sensation not unlike that of the plunge of a rollercoaster drop, although without any of the adrenaline or deep stomach panic feelings common to roller coaster rides. Realizing I was quickly loosing control of my functions I hit the off button on the vape, who’s colored lights were strobing now considerably, and lifted the whipped cream can to my mouth. The nitrous hit took immediate prominence in my attention over the rising salvia effects. I felt like my head was a balloon being poured full of helium rising on its string and floating to the top of the room. The sound in the room coming form my speakers began to climb in pitch and became totally unrecognizable as music, although not at all unpleasant. The music, which now manifested itself to me as a pleasant and intricate buzzing, sounded as though somebody had hooked up a wah pedal to the input chord of my brain and was rocking it back in forth in steady rhythm. My vision at this point, while I still recognized the room and objects within it fairly well, became very chaotic, with very strong green, red, yellow, and blue colored spider’s web patterns overlaying everything. The room also began to have a very pronounced spin, much like that produced by heavy alcohol intoxication, although I experienced none of the nausea common with alcohol. Body disassociation was almost complete, and while at this point my name and much personal information had long since checked out of being, a definite sense of self as a being still remained. I could feel the nitrous effects subside as the salvia continued to build. The fuzzy headed upward floating was again replaced by the salvia special gravity sinking. Knowledge of my body returned completely, although ability or want to use it was nonexistent. As the salvia continued to come up the open eyed patterns became more intense, taking on more filled in geometric schemes. The erratic and nondescript spider’s web patterns took on a more mandalesque, shape based form, reminding me both of pre-Columbian Central American art and eastern Hindu and Buddhist art, although the general impression was much more so of the former. Faces began to appear in the pattern. Not clear faces, because the pattern was still very much merely an overlay of material objects in the room, but the perception of faces was still quite strong within the pattern. The overhead light at the center of my room took chief hold of my attention. It seemed to be a being in itself, or more so a half being, for I recognized it well as a light, but also as an entity. Although it did not speak to me in any clear sense I got the distinct impression from it that “I would need to try harder in the future to get what I was looking for.” Staring at the light it seemed to take on an arachnid character, with thick black leg lines growing from it and twisting around it with the spin of the room. Despite the visuals persisting in intensity, I began to feel more and more the presence and importance of my body, and the many scattered facets of my ego began to fall soundly back into place. Most importantly, the idea that this was all the effect of a drug became concrete once more, pulling me out of the aimless trance state I had been in. I realized that my goal of total ego and mind/body dissolution had not come to fruition; however I was very excited. There was, as the spider light had suggested, more I could do. The idea of the sensory deprivation Ganzfeld fell immediately into my mind. I was almost overwhelmed with excitement to begin, but for the moment was still far too intoxicated to start setting up, so I laid back for a while closing my eyes and enjoying the intricate patterns forming on the backs of my eyelids. The salvia effects subsided for the most part soon after, though in my already altered LSD and nutmeg induced state I found my trip had been kicked into overdrive by the recent experience both as respects a far more noticeable “high, and fogging of the mind, as well much more prominent visuals and patterning. Setting up the Ganzfeld, especially with all its parts scattered around my apartment was to say the least, difficult in my current state and took a good hour and a half. A word should be said on the Ganzfeld I suppose. I was first introduced to the Ganzfeld by B. White’s DXM FAQ. He does an excellent job describing it there, so forgive me while I lazily copy and paste, if you’ve read his description before then skip on! [QUOTE] There is one major problem to sensory deprivation, which is that even in conditions of total darkness and silence, one will typically continue to perceive sight (phosphenes) and sound (tinnitus, or ringing in the ears). There are numerous causes for this, but it all boils down to the fact that as you boost the gain on any sensory detection system (natural or artificial), you end up with more and more noise. When scientists were studying psychic phenomena, they ran into this problem, and rather than using drugs to enhance sensory cutoff, they chose to take a different approach: the ganzfeld. A ganzfeld, (literally, "total field") is a set of constant, predictable sensory inputs. In a typical ganzfeld experiment, the subject is placed in a comfortable chair in an isolated room, with translucent filters placed over his or her eyes, and a dim, constant light source (usually red). Sound may be absent, or white noise may be used. This sounds a lot more expensive than it usually is. In many experiments (remember, this is often on the fringes of science, so budgets aren't terribly high), the "translucent filters" are ping-pong (table tennis) balls cut in two, and the white noise is provided by an AM radio. This is surprisingly easy to recreate in the comfort of your own home. Buy a pack of (white) ping-pong balls, and cut one in half. Let it sit open for a few days to let the ubiquitous "ping-pong ball smell" dissipate. Tape over the sharp edges of the half ping-pong balls with transparent tape over the edges so there are no sharp edgesPlace a comfy chair in the center of a room, and place a few dim, red bulbs in the lights. Get yourself an AM radio and tune it to a nonexistent station to provide a white noise, and turn the volume down to where it is comfortable. Sit down in the comfy chair, adjust it to where you can totally relax, and place the two ping pong balls over your closed eyes. [/QUOTE] My personal Ganzfeld was very similar to the set up described. I had a television covered in a blanket creating white noise for my head phones, 2 lamps with low watt red bulbs in them set up over my head, and the pingpong balls with adhesive already affixed to them ready to put on over my eyes. The only downside of my set up is that the TV had a 15-20 minute auto shut off timer when it was playing static. I actually kind of liked this though because I figured it would keep me from being there all night and into the morning when my roommate come home early and find me obviously in some sort of weird drug fueled ritual. (One thing I feel I should make very clear about the Ganzfeld is that unlike other forms of sensory deprivation it does not induce darkness like effects, but you simply cease to process visual stimuli. You loose all sense of visualization, making it quite a bit different from darkness in that respect. In this way it is perhaps more of a deprivation then a sensory deprivation tank. Meanwhile, with white noise, the sense of sound remains prominent unlike with noise canceling, making sound take of a greater role in Ganzfeld experiences then in sensory deprivation tank ones.) Figuring out how to hit the vape and the whipped cream without being able to see was quite the challenge. I loaded the vape with the salvia from last time, figuring it might have some active chemical left in it that had not been vaporized and added another 8th of a gram of extract intent on really blasting off this time. Being blind did little to ease my anxiety about the coming trip, but I was so eager to really break through that I was able to spur myself on, images of Frankenstein floating through my mind aside. Vape tube in one hand, whipped cream in the other, I took in and held several hits of the salvia, experiencing the same rising cloud of confusion and removal of aspects of self as last time, along with the special gravity beginning to move me back into my skull. This time though the effects, due to taking more hits with more salvia in the vape, and the Ganzfeld, built up quite quickly. I felt I was barely able to get off the nitrous hit and then I leaned back into the floor. With no build up, within an instant, it was all of it, everything, like nothing I had ever experienced before- I was falling back into my imploding skull Falling backwards Back back back And into Falling… And it is all eternal nothingness and I’m all gone, all but my tongue and my teeth, they are my everything- tap the teeth with the tongue- “what is that?” What is? Then the tongue and teeth disappear and there is no body, just a wisp of I, cart wheeling in the engulfing nothingness. Gavity in the back of my head. Gravity sucking in everything. A black hole in my skull, spinning, consuming everything. My vision and hearing shut down entirely and I lost all sense of my body, though I had the distinct feeling of being something through powerful sensation of rushing backwards. The white noise faded into a cascade of unchanging sensory waterfall that became a sonic pulsing of my entire being. For an indeterminate amount of time I simply was not. Then out of it I became aware that I was, and had begun quite recently to be. As I continued to be I felt myself expand out of nothing, I began to grow. This feeling was akin to a sense of first birth and then growing up and maturing in life. I felt a strange sense of removed pride in my expansion not unlike that which comes from beating a level of a video game that hasn’t fully captured your interest. This continued for a while and I continued to grow, expanding into the nothingness. After a time my parents appeared to me in a blurred conceptual form. They were thoroughly chastising me for being so amazingly high. Although my sense of sight had shut down I saw them, as if in a dream, as large hulking cartoon bears towering over my expanding, but still small child entity. I tried to get away from the chastisement, picking up on their suggestion that I was just “high,” and tried to look around me, hoping to reestablish contact with reality, only to be met with a featureless field of dull red infinite. I fell back into nothingness. A whirling phantasm- an “I am, I am. I am. I, I, I. I. I.” No I. An eye simply! An eye was all that was left of “me,” pure perception, zero introspection. Internal monologue, which had ceased to exist, began again, but was degraded into single word-concepts repeated again and again as my reduced ego sought vainly to lay hold on some semblance of recognizable thought- some foothold of cognition, to reassert itself on. Just as one experiences the tip of the tongue phenomenon, able to recognize a concept or thing but not the words for it, so was I able to vaguely guess a word and concept but unable to lay firm hold to either. The words, experienced as both as concept assertions and audible stimuli were repeated again and again to me, quickly degrading in understandability and meaning with repetition and trailing off into infinity before blending into the omniechoing static. I then fell into a very distinct and detailed memory of being about 6 years old and playing with my next-door neighbor and best friend in my neighbor’s basement. I was going up their stairs to go outside into the fresh summer air, totally caught up in the game of imagination we were playing. Then suddenly I fell out of the vivid memory and was bodyless again. Then another one of my oldest friends, Mike, came to me in bodyless concept form and tried to put me at ease as to what was going on, telling me to relax. Next my friend Dave appeared to me laughing hysterically and asking me why I was so fucked up? I could not rightly give him an answer but began to find my current state very funny as well. I came too with the static of the TV chiming off. In a heavy fog of confusion I lifted the ping pong ball off, turned the TV back on, hit the vape again, replaced the eye covers, and fell back into total ego loss. Whether there was any active chemical left in the salvia that had been left in a vaporizer at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or so I don’t know, but lying back into the Ganzfeld was enough to blast me off yet again. The phenomena of coming vaguely back, taking a vape rip, and falling back into nothingness again happened a few times. I felt like I was coming up for much needed oxygen each time and diving back into the deep enveloping sea of unsurpassed beauty and wonder that was total disassociation. On the last time I began to feel terrified as my ego drifted away once again. I thought I would never be me again, that I was doing something incredibly dangerous, that I was dying. Adrenaline- deep stomach terror, shot through my body as I opened my eyes wide and saw nothing. I tore off the ping-pong balls, then immediately relaxed at seeing the world appear again. I replaced the eye coverings and drifted off again. When the TV kicked off again I made the decision that it was time to come back to myself. It was a slow and difficult process. I felt amazing drained and tired. I had spent almost 30-40 minutes in total ego and body disassociation. I felt like an infant. I’d move my head up, look around the room, and then drop it and close my eyes trying to gather the gravity of what had just happened and reassert myself into the world. All my concepts of the world as it was, all my hard earned objective philosophy, all my Nietzsche, and Heidegger, all my things in and of themselves, all my memories and concepts of self, they were all of them blown to total shit. I sat in complete wonderment of the fact that I had a body, of the idea of bodies and being. That simple thought brought to me such exquisite joy. I sat in rapture at being again but at the same time basking in the ecstasy that had been nonbeing. It was as if both were infinitely enjoyable and I was now on to enjoy the treats of being after a good time- a measureless time- of ecstatic nonbeing. When I had the energy to stand I wavely walked around a bit as I gathered my thoughts. I got naked and began to admire my body and the wonder of having a body. My thoughts were at this point still highly frazzled and everything in the dim red light seemed to be breathing heavily. I laid back down for a time simply basking in what had just happened. “And I came back in a body that knows how to play guitar.” This was a wonderful fucking revelation. I grabbed my electric lickty fucking split, not caring to plug it in, and began to play away to my great joy. My fingers flashed around the fret board, great trails of bright blue streaming off them and into the dim red surroundings with each note. After a bit I walked upstairs to my room, purposely avoiding the mirror, I wanted to wait a bit to look at myself for the first time, and sat down with my acoustic on my bed and tried to reflect on just what the fuck had happened. It seemed amazing to be so absolutely separated from all things human. The utter difference of my experience blew my mind. At this point I began to get extremely excited about my prospects in life. I truly felt my previous self had died, and though I grieved him, the new me had been born through his death, and he had to live. And live he would! How easy everything would be! No tiredness would hold me back, no anxiety. Everything was possible! I could go out and meet all sorts of new people daily, bring them joy and love. I could work on my guitar playing, on my art, on making those closest to me happy with three fold efforts. I could practice meditation more as I had always meant to, I could start keeping a good dream journal again and work on my lucid dreaming. And yes! I could at some point in the future use substances as tools to loose myself in the ecstasy of nonbeing once again. A shaman born! A shaman born was I, one who could choose or not choose to be! To be or not to be, was no longer a question, it was a simple choice. As Sartre said, existentialism is humanism, but I could become unhuman. I had overcome existentialism? Ubermensch! Ubermensch? I almost could not wait to begin running around meeting and helping and loving people, even if it was 4:30 AM at this point. Looking in the mirror for the first time occupied a good half hour as I admired my physique and got happy about being “placed into such an adequate body.” I decided to take a shower, which felt amazing. Towards the end I switched the water to as cold as it would go and stood under it as long as possible before jumping out. At this point I may have creeped out my neighbors through our thin walls by yelling “I’m alive wooooo, I’m alive,” and wooping around the apartment. However it wasn’t all sunshine in the hours following. There were birthing pains to be had. The next hour, as I was still tripping to a large degree, unfolded into “who man I? Am I me? Who was me? I’m not him, have I killed him?” I had to stop myself from thinking a few times, pull and E brake on my thoughts, because I felt myself going right off the deep end into a total freak out. At this point I began to realize the risk of running such a heavy trip without a tripsitter. At the same time I think a tripsitter could have negatively effected the experience at many points, especially my coming out of the Ganzfeld, where in my weakened and confused state I would have been very embarrassed to have a person watching me. I’m not sure what good a trip sitter might have done at this crisis point anyhow. I probably would have rambled to them, apologizing for killing their friend, which might have driven me further over, where as being alone I was able to decide “fuck it, whatever,” with all the “I don’t give a fuck,” years of minimum wage jobs and pointless American high school had taught me so well. I have Mondays off, and this had been a Sunday night. At around 9, as the first wave of people were taking the bus down to class. I decided to go out with them and get myself a nice fruit drink. Not that I didn’t have drinks in my refrigerator, but I felt the need to mingle with my fellow humans, to start right away meeting and sharing love with the whole human race. Dostoevsky was right, understanding is forgiveness, and I understood and forgave all that was human weakness! This turned out to be an absolutely terrible fucking idea. I had expected everyone to be as bright eyed and enthusiastic about life as me and I was met with bleary eyed, tired, and pissed off looking people on all sides. Noise was incredibly loud to me and I felt awkward for my own breathing as I sat silently on the bus. The buses movement also made me extremely motion sick, and I found myself getting off at an early stop to walk home rather then risk my acid weakened stomach. It was being self-conscious for the first time all over again and it sucked. The way home from the bus stop I got off at runs by a cemetery, which I decided to walk through. My thoughts at this moment on death were odd. On the one hand I loved life intensely and never wanted to die, and yet, death, nonbeing, was infinitely better and more powerful then anything I had ever known. How were those souls beneath the ground fairing, how was it not to be ever again? The morning was crisp and warm and the sun on my face felt amazing. I was still getting slight visuals and the morning sky dotted with lightly breathing clouds looked picture perfect. I walked further into the cemetery, paying respects in my mind to those who were once like me yet now no longer were, were never to be, and walked out of sight of the road and into a copse of trees. There I sat down and I cried. -------------------------------- I’ll end the narrative there although I had many similar, if less intense experiences over the next few hours before going to sleep and to a degree the next day. I can say that this trip definitely has affected me in what seems to be a permanent way, although not to the extent I originally thought it would. It has made me change my views on perception-based reality and the ridiculousness of objectivity in any sense. I’ve abandoned to a degree my faith in any amount of rationalism or empiricisms to make things clear to me when perception can be so radically altered. This was a mystical experience in every sense of the word, and although it instilled in me no spiritual revelation as respects organized religion or any set beliefs, it made me realize I was fool hardy in casting spirituality aside, and I now strive to embrace it and break down the protective walls I had built up around myself against spirituality that had masqueraded as “philosophy.” Over the next week I made efforts to tell my parents and all close to me how much I loved and appreciated them. I put myself forward in new social situations and attempted to help and love as best I could. My resolve in this faded disappointingly quick though, especially as regards branching out socially. Fatigue, which I was sure I could cast off as a regular part of life continues to be a problem and I find myself being too tired to put all my best efforts forth in most things most of the time. Still, self-improvement is a long road and I use this experience as a drawing point for motivation towards progress. The other lingering effect of the trip is that I still feel as though I am not fully the same person I was when I left that night, although much less so then when I first came back to myself. It feels like a chapter of my life ended that night and a new one has begun. It is much like how I feel the day after a heavy DXM trip, the difference being that with DXM that sensation lasts a day or two and this has lasted 3 weeks. I haven’t used any psychedelic drugs since despite having friends trying to get me to trip with them on spring break. I feel I need to digest this last trip quite a bit before returning to anything of that sort and get me well rooted in me. I still feel a bit wispy ego wise! Anyhow- not to be too long winded, hope you liked it. Edit: As a post script, if this hasn't already reached tl;dr proportions, I would like to comment on the philosophical implications of this experiences as regards my view of perception based reality. I had before this taken, perhaps a bit grudgingly, that reality is perception based, and ultimately subjective. I however, drew the conclusion, erroneously, that somehow because a given perception schema I've come to hold is more persistent then others, that it is more consequently more important, and more importantly, more "real." This was a grievous mistake in valuation perhaps brought on by my fears of succumbing to postmodernism and loss of valuation grounding. Nevertheless, the eye opener has helped me cast this off. I don't see my experience then as fake, I don't doubt a total loss of body and self brought on only by drugs, and real as me lying on the ground with ping pong balls on my eyes tripping my brains out, rather I see a duality of reals, to which the former stands out firmest for it being perceived by me. For a better example, I think of my first girlfriend. When I was with her I thought my self thoroughly in love. Now I hardly see that as even possible. And yet how can I challenge the reality of previous perception based on what persists just due to its persistent. What evidence is there that the persistence of perception is equal to its reality? I've adopted a quite Hegelian idea of epistemology, seeing knowledge of being as a flower, it must first be a bud before it can bloom into greater things, and must be a flower before a fruit, but all are real knowledge. Knowledge in improved by synthesis and possesses inherit dualism between immediate and persisting perceptions. Hegel applies the idea of the flower bud to man kind as a whole, and I think this is very suiting. How we viewed the world years past is totally different from our "real," know with big bangs and atoms and such. It is much like my being in love before. Was I not really in love because this image has not persisted. Was spirituality, as Nietzsche thought, all mere escapism from the threat of death just because the evidence from which spiritual conclusions were drawn have not persisted? Will not our current scientific mold of reality, and our current hypo-deductive epistemology not seem ridiculous to future humans? Will it be as much a myth as dead, and denied love? Will we deny the big bang ever was if we find evidence somehow to the contrary? In the great chain of history it is easy to side with the present and give yes and nos to these questions, but given the essential duality found in perception as relates to its persistence I am drawn to question this.
| |||||||
Balaam Stranger Registered: 11/16/08 Posts: 28 Last seen: 12 years, 7 months |
| ||||||
I think my above post will fit in with that rather well.
I'm finding myself flip flopping between the idea that language helps create our world, the idea that given the nature of reality as a series of "point events," symbolic systems are a intrinsic facet of being able to "be," and the idea that linguistic structure is actually a very poor analogue to what reality IS. In a way I feel control of ones own cognitions, and the use of symbolic systems (be it english, spanish, numbers, qabblah, green language, ect.), along with the regulation of one's own biology, via diet, exercise, bio-feed back, or the intake of drugs, gives one almost infinite ability to shape their reality, with language and social construct playing a massive role. The problem is that language and social norms can become as much chains as they are boons. They are a double edged sword. A good work on this topic, although it also veers off into esoteric and magickal theory at parts, is Magick Without Tears by Aleister Crowley. It hasn't be reissued cheaply in a long time but it is available here- http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/ chapters 3 and 5 will have the most direct relevance
| |||||||
Unityofopposites Stranger Registered: 11/15/08 Posts: 4 Last seen: 15 years, 3 months |
| ||||||
wow I'm really impressed with the depth of responses, great stuff.
| |||||||
zSDMF Stranger Registered: 09/07/04 Posts: 10,562 Loc: lost in nothing |
| ||||||
Quote: the only thing crossing my mind once i entered back into my body was how large the piss stain was on my pants
| |||||||
|
|
Similar Threads | Poster | Views | Replies | Last post | ||
My Salvia Trip -A Psychological and Life-Changing Experience | gotmagog | 14,037 | 8 | 05/12/08 08:34 AM by redgreenvines | ||
How best to prepare for a first experience with fly caps? | Huxley | 1,746 | 15 | 07/07/03 10:29 PM by LysergicVision | ||
Old Amanita experience | munter | 1,153 | 6 | 04/22/04 06:58 PM by haunted | ||
My plans for my first psychedelic experience, need advice... | ShroomNoob03 | 1,556 | 3 | 03/24/04 09:40 AM by boeha | ||
How do you know when you experience ego-loss? ( 1 2 3 all ) |
MOTH | 9,910 | 43 | 04/20/17 10:54 PM by Bruce Campbell | ||
My trip report from Saturday: The human experience | MOTH | 2,616 | 8 | 06/10/04 09:15 AM by peleg | ||
my brain keeps itching- doubts about psychedelic experiences ( 1 2 3 all ) |
kubix | 6,628 | 40 | 08/26/04 09:10 AM by THE KRAT BARON | ||
The Psychedelic Experience and Enlightenment ( 1 2 3 all ) |
Kid | 22,134 | 55 | 10/03/18 10:06 PM by PrimalSoup |
Extra information | ||
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled Moderator: psilocybinjunkie, Rose, mushboy, LogicaL Chaos, Northerner, bodhisatta 3,079 topic views. 2 members, 38 guests and 46 web crawlers are browsing this forum. Calendar Event: 11/15/55 [ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ] | ||