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OfflineTheScientificMethod
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My Colorado Trail Psychedelic Experiment (Chapter 4)
    #25397153 - 08/18/18 07:45 PM (5 years, 5 months ago)

Aug 18
Miles: 16.51
Dose 1 gram mushrooms

I had honestly wanted to take a bigger dose today. I was thinking 2 or possibly 2.5 grams, but as I was writing my trail journal last night rain drops started falling on my tent fly and then through the night it rained off and on, sometimes quite heavily. I knew that I was going to have a heavy climb this morning on my way into Breckenridge (“heavy climb” is really just a relative term at this point, but it was from 9,700ft elevation to about 12,500ft elevation), but that climb wasn’t really my worry. In fact after the climb and the light dose yesterday I was almost looking forward to climbing on the mushroom today, but the rain is what changed my mind. I was in a place last night where I was able to get cell service, so I checked the weather and it said that the chance of rain was high. So with that in mind I decided that it would be unwise to take a big dose. Mushrooms I can do. A climb I can do. Rain I can do. But all of them at the same time doesn’t sound like a lot of fun.

That said, I have reached a point on this trail where one full gram in the morning is more like a microdose to me than a real trip. When I say that I should clarify though. In reality, I think that a true “microdose” is sub-threshold by definition. When I take a gram of mushrooms out here, it is absolutely NOT sub-threshold. I get effects, but they’re not so overwhelming that I’m unable to manage slogging through a rain storm or up a mountain.

So after I broke my camp and packed my things up I popped one gram of mushrooms and started on my way. I could feel the first effects in about thirty minutes. I think that my metabolism was burning quite fast after the hike yesterday and since I jumped right into hiking this morning and my heart rate was at 135 within ten minutes of starting the hike (heart rate ranges between 120-170 when I’m hiking from moderate to heavy exertion). So my uptake of the mushroom was very quick. The effect itself was not heavy in any way, which was my goal, but then again it started quite quickly—probably within 30 minutes, which is exactly when the rain started and when the climb started.

I rather liked it though. I find that when I’m in a slight dose of mushrooms my head sort of cocks sideways, my eyes get squinty, and I almost go into a trance. It’s a very mental state of altered consciousness. The colors are brightened just a bit and my pattern recognition is very high as always, but it’s become a normal state to me now. I think of a dose of mushrooms like this more like a cup of coffee than anything. Not that the mushroom affects me in the same way that coffee does (though it does give me a slight stimulant effect), but that many people drink coffee in the morning without even thinking about it. It’s just a normal part of their day. That’s the way I feel towards the mushroom on this trail. It just is something that I’m doing just like the sun rises or the tide comes in and out.

I’d like to thank the gods of the trail that I did not chose to have a bigger dose today, because by the time I was in my downward part of the trip and into my afterglow, the storm became intense! It was literally the hardest storm that I’ve ever had to go through on a thru hike. At around 12,000 feet elevation the visibility was down to about 20-25 feet, the wind was blowing about 40-50 miles per hour, and the rain was coming “down” heavily. I put “down” in quotes because really the rain was coming in sideways. It wasn’t very pleasant, but at this point in the hike, I’ve learned to separate my body and the pain of the hike from my mental state and my self. I just go into a step, step, step mode and listen to my breathing and my footsteps. It’s almost a type of mediation and I like it quite a lot.

On my way down from the high storm, the weather started to clear out a little bit and I met two trail runners. They asked me what I was doing up on top of the mountain in that weather and I told them that I was thru hiking. They were interested in my story and they asked my name. I don’t want to disclose my trail name on here to the general public, but I will say that my trail name is a reference to psychedelics that you’d only really know if you were psychedelically inclined. They asked how I got my name and I just flat out told them: “I got a reputation for taking a lot of psychedelics on trail.” To my great pleasure, they turned out to be psychedelic themselves, and we ended up hiking together for about two or three hours into Breckenridge where they gave me a ride to their house where I was able to get a shower and then they brought me out for pizza. It was cool making a couple of new friends.

I have a resupply box here in Breckenridge that I need to pick up from the post office, but today is Saturday and tomorrow is Sunday, so the post office is not open. As such, I’m resting the rest of today and all day tomorrow. I’ll head back to trail for my last 104 miles starting on Monday, and my plan (weather pending) is to eat psychedelics all four days that it will take me to get from here to Denver. I hope that the weather holds out well enough that I can do some higher doses and possibly do some redosing throughout the day as well.

I’d also like to end by noting, and I may have mentioned this in previous entries) that at the end of this hike I’m going to do a “post trip report” and give some context to all that has happened out here, fill in some of the things that have happened between the psychedelic journies, and combine all these chapters together. I may start working on that piece tomorrow while I’m resting.

In the meantime however, thanks for reading and I’ll probably post again as soon as I arrive in Denver on Thursday or Friday.

—————
Aug 17
Miles: 23.2
Dose: 1.5 grams mushrooms

Every time I start to think that I have a grasp of this mushroom thing I’m proven wrong. You’d think that by this point in the journey I have it figured out, but I absolutely do not. I’ve learned a lot about the mushroom and I’ve learned a lot about myself and I’ve learned a lot about the nature of life, the universe, and existence, but I don’t have all the answers, nor do I believe that I ever will during this life and in this plane of existence.

Here’s what I was expecting from today: Since yesterday I took 2 grams and had some pretty profound stuff take place (although I wasn’t expecting it to be that way), I figured that if I just took one and a half grams today then that would be something akin to a microdose. Nope!

I don’t know where I got it in my head that if you take mushrooms day after day after day you’ll build up a tolerance to the point where the mushroom no longer has an effect on you, but I really need to get that out of my head.

I first toyed with this concept almost a year ago... holy hell—it’ll be a year ago to the day later this week—when I went to Grand Teton National Park to watch the solar eclipse and spent three days backpacking while taking mushrooms each day and redosing throughout the day. The impact of the mushroom changed, but it never went away. So when I started out on this journey I wanted to toy with this a bit more fully since I knew that I’d have more time out here for this one. And at this point I’m comfortable saying that based on what I’ve found so far, the mushroom does not ever lose its effect even when I’m taking it day after day after day after day.

Here’s what does happen: I notice that if I haven’t taken them for a long time and my tolerance has fully diminished, then when I take them again the impact is much more heavy and profound than when I take them day after day, but when I take them as I have been out here on this trail, I still get a level of profundity from the experience that is nothing to be scoffed at. In fact, there are many times when I’m aiming for a small or microdose trip and what I’m given is on a level that I can consider life altering.

So as for the trip today: I set my target lower than yesterday. I thought that since I took 2 grams yesterday and it was pretty heavy, if I took just one and a half today, then it would be nothing, and that seemed to be mostly true when I first took them. What ended up happening is something that’s happened many times on this trail, so you’d think that I’d have learned by now, but I have not. I took the dose, and I failed to factor in that I had eaten a lot for dinner last night and had a big breakfast this morning before starting my hike. So I took the 1.5 grams at 11am when I started hiking (late start to the day because I slept in and dilly-dallied around before hitting the trail), and an hour into it I was thinking to myself that I wasn’t going to get an effect from them. Two hours in and nothing. Then about three hours in, blam! I started to get a little spinny, and the trip began.

The timing was not what I had planned for. I had taken them with the thinking that usually a trip lasts me about three hours (then some after glow will follow), and my first three hours this morning were really mellow miles. The trail just kind of stayed flat, but I knew that around mile 9 the trail was going to go from 9,500ft elevation all the way up to 12,500ft elevation, and I wanted to be done with the trip before getting to that climb. The mushroom had another plan though.

Maybe I shouldn’t put it that way though. It’s not that the mushroom just sat there and waited for the right opportunity to strike; rather, my body had to process all the food I had in my tummy before getting to the mushroom, and once it did, it kicked right in. Now, looking back on it, I”m kind of glad it happened the way it did, because it gave me a very different experience today.

The mushroom kicked in right towards the start of that heavy climb, and I’ll be real with you in saying that it was a bit of a struggle to get up through those miles. I’ve been through harder climbs, but no matter how you put it, hauling a backpack up those miles is never easy. On top of it, the temperature was about 90 degrees at the base of the mountain. So to say that I had to suffer for a bit today would not be an exaggeration. And during that suffering, the mushroom made its presence known.

What ended up happening was a trip like one I have not had in a very long time. Most of the trips that I’ve had out here on the trail have been primarily introspective and they have connected me with myself and I’ve learned about my own life, but this time the mushroom connected me with the collective consciousness of all life and all beings. It reminded me that thing that Bill Hicks said: “we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively.” I was reminded that I am not [insert my birth name here], but I am and always have been every living thing that ever has and ever will be. I’m just experiencing myself through the eyes of [insert my birth name here] for the 100 or however many years my life lasts. I am every tree, I am every blade of grass, I am every man, woman, and child who has ever lived and has ever died. I am Jesus, I am Hitler, and I am everyone in between.

Many years ago when I had my biggest mushroom trip I was connected with this too. I was shown how I have been the victim of every school shooting and I’ve gone through those deaths first hand, and I’ve also been the shooter. I experienced an officer being killed near where I lived and I realized that I am both the officer and the shooter who then killed himself after doing it. It’s hard to explain... it’s hard to even understand... but today, in a less overwhelming way, I was shown that again.

Now I want to make it clear here that I’m not trying to compare my climbing up a hill today with the suffering that others have gone through, but the mushroom connected me with those others’ suffering today and showed me how we as people make it through the hardest parts of our existence. In particular, I was put in the body of holocaust victims, and I was shown how they suffered and struggled through that time. I was shown a first person perspective through their eyes and their suffering, but then I was also shown through the eyes of the Nazis who did the killings.

It’s hard for me to put this on the page, because I don’t want for it to come out wrong... but that’s part of what I’m trying to do out here on this journey is go through these psychedelic experiences and try to make sense of them... try to put them into words. It’s an impossible task, I know, but this is my attempt at trying to do it.

I only have about 5 more days left on the trail. It hurts me to see this coming to an end soon, but I’ve learned so much and I have so much to do when I get home as a result of what I’ve been through out here—much of which I have the mushroom to thank. In the days ahead I plan to continue dosing regularly, and of course I’ll continue to document and post when I have cell service again.

Thanks for reading.

Keep on tripping!


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OfflineTheScientificMethod
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Re: My Colorado Trail Psychedelic Experiment (Chapter 4) [Re: TheScientificMethod]
    #25410095 - 08/24/18 01:54 PM (5 years, 5 months ago)

I have just finished the 26 day hike that was 525 miles long and stretched from Durango to Denver. I found that my journey on the Colorado Trail was much more successful in terms of my ability to use psychedelics along the way. On the PCT I was using mushrooms or DMT about every week, but on the Colorado Trail I used them 61% of the days that I was on trail, and almost every day that I used them I dosed and redosed and usually redosed again.

I hope you enjoy, and I’d love to hear your feedback if you make it through the whole thing.

Here’s the link: https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/25410077/vc/1#25410077


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