Had my first trip yesterday with a female friend (I'm male). Was also her first time. I've had an interest in trying psychedelics for a year or so now to deal with ongoing depression, social anxiety, generalized anxiety and OCD that lately has worsened. I've heard promising research that psychedelics may be beneficial in treating these debilitating conditions long-term through altering perceptions of reality. My motivation for getting into psychedelics is purely related to this, the recreational aspects were of minor interest. So from the beginning I agreed with my friend we would meditate first, and then close our eyes and meditate during the trip.
After reading as much as I could about dosage, bad trips etc, I ordered from a trusted website. The bags arrived and I divided each of our dosages (12g atalantis truffles each) in half. In accordance with instructions on the net, we consumed a half dosage (6g) to start. After 40 minutes or so with no apparent effects nor side effects being felt by either of us, we took the second half and waited.
I wasn't expecting much, realising this was a "beginners" dosage to just test the waters and get a feel for what psychedelics were all about. After a further 30 minutes, we both agreed we weren't feeling much. I wasn't sure if it was a placebo or not, but I thought I started to feel a bit floaty. I was smiling at this stage as well for no apparent reason.
Another 10 minutes elapsed, and I asked my friend if we should perhaps dose a bit more since nothing much was happening. She declined even though she agreed we weren't feeling much. We both lay down and closed our eyes. Then, within a few minutes, it began.
With my eyes closed, faint lights and images from outside seemed to be retained without disappearing. A further few minutes later I began to see static lines of red slowly emerge to form interesting images of various faces. This slowly got more intense, and within 10 minutes or so the images were much more apparent. It was like watching one of those old slide-show movies with a low frame rate, one image flickering into another, changing ever so slowly, all in red, white and black. My eyelids also seemed to flicker quickly, like I was in REM sleep.
At this time I felt my body also begin to relax. I had a bit of muscle pain lately from working out, and soreness in some parts of my body before the trip. All of that disappeared and was suddenly replaced with a warm feeling of tranquility. Similar to the warm relaxation in whatever sedative they use in a hospital when they admit you, but without the sedation.
I opened my eyes and everything felt peaceful and at ease. I was a bit taken aback with how quickly the effects crept up, but knew from reading to just accept everything and not resist it. Throughout this entire experience the smile on my face was becoming wider and wider. I felt as if the substance itself was examining my body for the first time, assessing me, and helping where it could. It revealed to me that I had a sinus infection.
When I closed my eyes I saw faint outlines of some interesting faces, ranging from happy clown like pictures to dragons to demons. However even if I found the images disturbing I accepted them, and they were then replaced by something else. There was no consistency to anything, rather it seemed completely random. I felt very good throughout all of this, and felt as if the substance was trying to make my body smile further than my lips would allow.
I noticed at this stage my friend was sobbing a bit. For some strange reason I thought this was hilarious and my smile insisted on growing further and these interesting images kept changing with my eyes closed. I felt as if the substance was "accepting me but rejecting her", hence the reason for my happiness and her sadness. I asked her if she was alright, and told her to "just follow it". This seemed to comfort her. Unfortunately she threw up 5-10 minutes later or so. Again, I found this hilarious at the time for some reason, the happiness within me being difficult to hide.
Once she was done we both sat up and starting talking, agreeing that the effects were strong and the experience was interesting. During the conversation I was taken aback by the pattern on the bedsheets, a flower in particular. I kept staring at this flower, as it was the most beautiful thing I'd seen. I kept touching it and talking about how beautiful it was, as if my entire being and thoughts were devoted to nothing else but it. This transferred to a few different objects throughout the room from time to time.
I had recently been reading a bit about "frame" in terms of social interaction, particularly how to maintain frame. Whilst my eyes were closed I had an interesting insight that was the only thing from the trip I felt necessary to write down at the time. The sentence written was: "where does the frame begin, where does it end".
I remember before writing this visualizing what I can only describe as christmas lights connected together, each light representing a different person. Due to the connection, it occurred to me that since we are all connected together, there is no boundary to frame, in fact our frame extends onto other people, to all of humanity. Therefore creating boundaries in our frame is an artificial thing since it never truly ends anywhere in reality.
After this I opened my eyes and looked outside the window at the clouds and the people walking on the street. Everything seemed very beautiful and at peace. The clouds themselves kept forming very detailed faces. At one point I became slightly unnerved with the level of detail of one cloud. I'm not sure if it was an open-eye hallucination or not, but the cloud was quite literally a large clown face, with such an incredible level of detail that would be impossible in any cloud normally. It was like looking at a 1080p quality portrait only in blue and white, very detailed.
I went to the toilet and on the way looked at myself in the mirror. I just stood there for 5 minutes looking. It felt like I didn't recognize the person there. I knew it was me, and there were no hallucinations, but it was like a different person, less attractive than I thought myself to be normally. The only way I could describe it was as if taking a picture of myself and looking at it, which always turns out far worse than looking in the mirror.
On my way back from the toilet I accidentally bumped into the table, and a very small truffle fell onto the floor. My initial instinct was to forget about it, but then it occurred to me that this truffle was part of the "tree mother" and that I was being disrespectful by letting it stay on the ground. I felt a deep empathy to it, and bent down and began to apologize, ensuring it I meant no disrespect.
I decided to lay back down and put on some eckharte tolle. It was now about 2-3 hours since the effects began. I thought of things, of life, of my anxiety and other issues. At the time it felt like I could relate to eckharte tolle perfectly, every word he said made perfect sense and seemed logical, how our thoughts are a prison and unnecessary lens through which to view the world. I wondered if perhaps he had a permanent high from some chemicals in his body, and that was the reason he was the way he was all the time. However I felt on some level that the answer to this question was "no", and that it was I who was missing something when I was sober besides just the bodily high I was experiencing in that moment.
Nevetheless, I did come to believe that a lot of naturally confident people must have a permanently high amount of serotonin and/or other beneficial neurotransmitters compared to people with anxiety conditions.
I decided to research this thought further, and ended up downloading Prometheus Rising as its summary seemed most related to gaining insight into the roles we play as humans, and the psychedelic experience.
My friend went home, and by this stage it was 4 hours after we commenced our trip. We both were still feeling floaty but our base senses were starting to return to normal, and the close-eyed visuals had ceased.
Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable first trip and I'm looking forward to the next one.
My question: In Prometheus Rising, I've been very much taken aback by how accurately I fall within the "friendly weak" or "submissive accepting" category. Lately however I've been crossing over into "unfriendly weak"/"I'm not OK, you're not ok" level.
The explanations have been spot on, especially since I was raised by a single mother and lacked a positive father influence in my formative years for that imprinting. But one part that seems paradoxically opposite is on page 67, the "Matrist vs Patrist" section for the 2nd circuit.
I eerily meet every single part of the "Patrist" portion in my life belief system. This isn't out of any disrespect or hatred towards women, I love them very much, but rather from my life experiences, political beliefs, innate jealousy and other base emotions, the "Patrist" sums up my world-view perfectly. I was shocked how accurate it was.
My question is, how could it be that I've failed imprinting on my 2nd circuit (ie: no father influence, am in the friendly/weak quadrant) and yet identify with the "Patrist" entirely, and not with the Matrist in any way at all? Since I was imprinted by my mother for the first circuit with a lot of love, and lacked a good father figure for the 2nd circuit, I find this quite a paradox that I identify with the Patrist so much.
My goal at this stage is to alter the 2nd circuit to become "dominant/friendly".
Any advice on this Matrist/Patrist paradox would be much appreciated!
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