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OfflineKafei
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Registered: 11/18/13
Posts: 20
Last seen: 4 years, 7 months
Gauging the Psychedelic Experience.
    #19157681 - 11/18/13 11:47 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

I have a question for the more experienced psilocybin users of the forum. I want to give a description of an experience, and have you guys gauge what level this trip is based on the descriptions of the "Trip Report" area of the site, i.e. whether it's a level 1 or the boundary-dissolving "ego death" level 5.

I want to initially preface this post before I post the actual description of the experience below by saying first that this person is recalling an experience that happened over 20 years ago. He hiked up to a mountain with some friends and while he didn't weigh the dose, he claims he took a compressed amount that would fill half the amount of room in his baseball cap. Here's the description:

Quote:

I descended into a terror so jagged and ugly it teared into my mind like tissue paper. Millions of beetles crawl between the fibers of my muscles and skin. I resisted the urge to grab a knife and start cutting holes all over myself to let them out. You know that's insane but if I was insane, doesn't it make sense, and shouldn't I start cutting? I was afraid to stand up because my bones suddenly seem too fragile and creaky to support my flesh. My heart pounds like it'll burst. My friends suddenly seem like weird, hostile, alien beings, barking in foreign tongues. The second hand on the clock seems to take an eternity to move each time. It goes CLICK.... CLICK.... CLICK.... The coolness of the air when I would inhale seemed like poison. Every thought I had, every aspect of reality, seemed like a malevolent sham, a laughably silly prop, put there specifically to deceive me. I was incapable of trusting myself, anyone, or anything. This is hell and hell is ME and there is no way out of hell until the trip ends, and I know it's going to last all day and all night, and the worst is yet to come.

That was the last time I used a psychedelic drug.




Any feedback is appreciated.


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OfflineSagescruffy
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Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: Kafei]
    #19157771 - 11/19/13 12:09 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Sounds made up.


--------------------
Love.


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OfflineKafei
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Registered: 11/18/13
Posts: 20
Last seen: 4 years, 7 months
Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: Sagescruffy]
    #19158987 - 11/19/13 10:21 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Sagescruffy said:
Sounds made up.




I really appreciate your response. However, would you mind elaborating? If you're an experienced user, then perhaps you could tell me why you think it sounds made up? If you could do this, it would be greatly appreciated.


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OfflineCampari
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Registered: 08/08/13
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Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: Kafei]
    #19159621 - 11/19/13 01:12 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

I will break down the parts I think are unusual.

Quote:

Kafei said:
He hiked up to a mountain with some friends and while he didn't weigh the dose, he claims he took a compressed amount that would fill half the amount of room in his baseball cap.




Kinda of a careless way to dose.

Quote:

I descended into a terror so jagged and ugly it teared into my mind like tissue paper.



No description of the come up. There are distinct stages to a trip which are missing in this story.

Quote:

Millions of beetles crawl between the fibers of my muscles and skin. I resisted the urge to grab a knife and start cutting holes all over myself to let them out.


This sounds like an experience commonly told by people who are describing a trip that isn't their own. For instance on a TV show about the history of LSD. Or a writer who doesn't have any first hand experience to share in their story. 


Quote:

You know that's insane but if I was insane, doesn't it make sense, and shouldn't I start cutting?



This self-harm thing feels cliche to me.

Quote:

I was afraid to stand up because my bones suddenly seem too fragile and creaky to support my flesh. My heart pounds like it'll burst.



There is a body load with mushrooms but this is an odd interpretation of it. After the initial come up it usually subsides for me too. 

Quote:

My friends suddenly seem like weird, hostile, alien beings, barking in foreign tongues.



Reasonable.

Quote:

The second hand on the clock seems to take an eternity to move each time. It goes CLICK.... CLICK.... CLICK....



On a high dose I usually lose all understanding of time,on lower doses it slows down for me. Once I read a text message that said 3 o'clock and I all I could think was that 3 looks like a butt. I simply couldn't grasp that 3 o'clock was a time that something was going to start at. 

Quote:

The coolness of the air when I would inhale seemed like poison.



Odd to me, but kinda of matches the other physiological experiences he was having. High heart rate, feelings of frailty. 

Quote:

Every thought I had, every aspect of reality, seemed like a malevolent sham, a laughably silly prop, put there specifically to deceive me. I was incapable of trusting myself, anyone, or anything. This is hell and hell is ME and there is no way out of hell until the trip ends, and I know it's going to last all day and all night, and the worst is yet to come.



Introspection is a powerful part of the psychedelic experience. Its not always pleasant. Doesn't sound like ego-death to me either though. 


Quote:

That was the last time I used a psychedelic drug.




Anyway the reason it sounds fake is because it sounds like what an author who has never tripped before would write if he was trying to describe a bad trip for one of his characters.


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OfflineKafei
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Registered: 11/18/13
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Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: Campari]
    #19162529 - 11/19/13 10:10 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Thank you for your deconstruction and exegesis of that trip report, Campari. You're right that the trip seems to missing areas like the climb and the come down. There are a lot of elements that seem influenced by media, as you said, and fabricated mixed with other elements that seem genuine. However, I agree with your summation that overall, there's more fabrication than sincerity.


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OfflineSagescruffy
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Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: Kafei]
    #19162943 - 11/19/13 11:50 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

There's more than likely a limit to how much of the drug can affect you at one time. So there might not be a big difference between an ounce and several ounces, just duration. I don't actually know this so it's kind of a moot point. I have just seen people make shit up about their trips to make it seem more dramatic, kind of like a badge of their experience. Plus, the half life of psilocin in a persons body would render large amounts (like a pound) as a complete waste of mushrooms since after "x" amount of time half of all the psilocin would have decayed. I really doubt this guys account is real, it's all cliche and he mentions nothing of the comeup or comedown and it just sounds made up.

if it's not made up, this guys trip is probably considered level 5. Most people who experience "level 5" write quite a bit though since it's such a profound experience.


--------------------
Love.


Edited by Sagescruffy (11/19/13 11:52 PM)


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OfflineKafei
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Last seen: 4 years, 7 months
Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: Sagescruffy]
    #19163543 - 11/20/13 04:12 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

I agree. Terence McKenna emphasized this very point you mentioned about the "badge" of their experience. That there's a sort of chicness to having taken psychedelics, and the way to get into the club without paying your dues is to take some piss-ant amount and rave about that or you can lie flat-out like a dog that you've taken psychedelics. But what inexperienced users don't realize that if they're question closely enough, an experienced user can ascertain whether or not they've truly had this experience.

You're right that this person failed to mention a "come up" or a "come down," and that's quite peculiar. However, if he simply just got straight to attempting to describe the peak experience, I'd say it's congruent with a Level 3 or Level 4, because there still seems to be a vague sense of reality. Level 5 is usually attributed to the "ego death" experience, a total loss of connection with reality, etc.

I'll list 'em once more for a direct reference. Here's a direct quoting from the "Trip Report" page:

Quote:

Level 3
Very obvious visuals, everything looking curved and/or warped patterns and kaleidoscopes seen on walls, faces etc. Some mild hallucinations such as rivers flowing in wood grained or "mother of pearl" surfaces. Closed eye hallucinations become 3 dimensional. There is some confusion of the senses (i.e. seeing sounds as colors, etcetera). Time distortions and "moments of eternity".

Level 4
Strong hallucinations, i.e. objects morphing into other objects. Destruction or multiple splitting of the ego. (Things start talking to you, or you find that you are feeling contradictory things simultaneously). Some loss of reality. Time becomes meaningless. Out of body experiences and e.s.p. type phenomena. Blending of the senses.

Level 5
Total loss of visual connection with reality. The senses cease to function in the normal way. Total loss of ego. Merging with space, other objects, or the universe. The loss of reality becomes so severe that it defies explanation. The earlier levels are relatively easy to explain in terms of measureable changes in perception and thought patterns. This level is different in that the actual universe within which things are normally perceived, ceases to exist! Satori enlightenment (and other such labels).




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InvisibleSleepwalker
Overshoes

Registered: 05/07/08
Posts: 5,503
Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: Kafei]
    #19163749 - 11/20/13 06:43 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

I dunno that it's fake, maybe the guy just likes to speak in metaphor.  After all, a heavy trip can be hard to describe accurately...especially 20 years after the fact.


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OfflineOliveaux
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Registered: 11/12/13
Posts: 40
Last seen: 10 years, 2 months
Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: Sleepwalker]
    #19163876 - 11/20/13 07:44 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

if this is real, it doesn't sound like more than a level 3 and even then, it sounds less like a strong trip and more like a panic attack


--------------------
“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”


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InvisibleLibertin
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Registered: 10/07/09
Posts: 959
Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: Kafei]
    #19164115 - 11/20/13 09:23 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

I can't comment on what 'level' of trip it qualifies as, I don't think there's enough information and also I don't think it matters. But from a literary perspective I think the trip report is a strange mixture of some clumsily written sentences and other parts which are really quite good. I liked these parts:

Quote:

  • I descended into a terror...
  • My friends suddenly seem like weird, hostile, alien beings, barking in foreign tongues.
  • Every thought I had, every aspect of reality, seemed like a malevolent sham, a laughably silly prop, put there specifically to deceive me. I was incapable of trusting myself, anyone, or anything.
  • That was the last time I used a psychedelic drug.
 




I really love eloquent descriptive prose and I appreciate articulately written trip reports. :thumbup:


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Offlinethemusicofzann
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Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: Libertin]
    #19165498 - 11/20/13 01:48 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Trips are not to be simplified.


--------------------


The above is hypothetical, when it is illegal.

Psychedelics are performance enhancers for the philosopher.

Knowledge and wisdom are one and the same.


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InvisibleSleepwalker
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Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: themusicofzann]
    #19165839 - 11/20/13 02:54 PM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Trips are not to be complicated.  :crazy2:


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OfflineKafei
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Registered: 11/18/13
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Last seen: 4 years, 7 months
Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: Sleepwalker]
    #19173304 - 11/22/13 01:02 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

I appreciate the feedback so far.

I wanted to add that in my own experiences of dosing high, usually I'd gauge a "heavy dose" as its effect on my ability to physically function, as in being able to walk or stand, etc. I've found with the higher doses, if you've taken anywhere usually above the five dried gram range, you won't really feel compelled to try and move around as much. You could attempt it, but only find that it's pretty much pointless. As Terence McKenna would often say, "You will be nailed to the ground wrestling with an ontological vision so discombobulating, grappling with a mystery so profound, so bizarre that even with Husserl, Heidegger, Heisenberg, and all these clowns under our belt, it is still absolutely mysterious, appalling, challenging, boundary-dissolving, etc."

When I first heard him say that, I thought that was a metaphor for how intense the visions may be, that is until I found myself literally nailed to the ground without being able to move much. Another way to gauge it is, of course, the intensity of the hallucinations. Redban's account is a good example.

Redban's "Heroic Dose"


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OfflineKief Ledger
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Registered: 11/10/11
Posts: 1,784
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Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: Kafei]
    #19174034 - 11/22/13 08:25 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

Yea, gravity can be a cruel mistress  when you get into thehi higher doses.
Edit:  also, lmao at Joe rogan not knowing how many grams in an oz.(16?)  Isn't that like drug using 101?


Edited by Kief Ledger (11/22/13 08:29 AM)


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Invisiblelarry.fisherman
shoulda died already
I'm a teapot


Registered: 11/03/12
Posts: 36,294
Re: Gauging the Psychedelic Experience. [Re: Kief Ledger]
    #19174226 - 11/22/13 09:28 AM (10 years, 2 months ago)

I have never heard of nor experienced anything where I felt bugs where crawling on me or in me,or someone else. Bugs is odd. It sounds like maybe he mixed it with something, meth maybe? I knew a guy who almost pryed his eyeballs out because the bugs wouldn't come out. For me anyways, a bad trip on shrooms is thoughts and malevolence, which doesnt typically effect the visual perception.


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