Greetings all. I'm worn and tattered like a well-used manual. Could be missing a few pages here and there but I'm here to share it all; particularly the sections with the hasty margin notes. The 'pages left intentionally blank' we'll come back to.. they'll have immeasurable content later - or so I've led myself to believe.

My inaugural departure from convention happened half way through my 9th grade - mid 80's. Friend of a friend sharing the ride into school offered me a round trip ticket to 'something completely different' that came in the form of blotter paper, of which I eagerly accepted. That day at school would forever change the course of my life and outlook on it. While serving actively, I would later make the acquaintance of a Thai visionary visiting Manitou Springs, Co to complete a portion of a rite of passage journey that would eventually land him back in his home village as the successor to his grandfather - the tribal high shaman.

I learned a great deal about what lessons naturally - occurring alkaloids have to bestow upon us all but the greatest lesson he gave me was to let the plant/fungi be the teacher. With that, he taught me to fish and I was turned loose into the world to explore and partake as she provided herself to me in various forms and ROIs. This proved to be quite the distraction as I made my way through pharmacy school and later on to pursue an IT degree but, as it has been said many times before, you can't untake the red pill. We just grow into it, adapt and learn to normalize and blend in with others in between brief sessions of being able to show our truths to ourselves and share it with others like us.

Only recently have I consider merging my journey with a virtual hui of like-minded explorers. I was on the shroomery a bit but the Nexian vibe is quite different; one that I'm drawn to, actually. This convergence of embryonic technology and our most fundamental, senescent truth is a crossing of the streams that I've been almost reluctant to delve into. That being said, the discourse here has swayed and suspended my belief that the two should remain separate. Idk.. maybe I'm becoming less crotchety as I age.

Anyway, I hope to learn and share whatever nuggets I may have that could benefit others. I'm also immensely grateful to all those that have put forth the tremendous effort to compile such a wealth of information on this subject. I don't think the benefits and level of harm reduction, confidence - building and breadth of communal support for those in need of entheogenic healing can be measured.

Thanks for reading and thanks to all that have contributed to this amazing project.

Hello there and welcome!

It's great to have you here - you have a good turn of phrase about you and quite flattering for us here at that.

Formalities aside, I quite look forward to hearing some more of your tales and insights; from my perspective it's what you may have picked up in pharmacy class that piques the curiosity. By the sounds of it you may have a little shroom growing under your belt - do you have anything else in your psychoactive garden? And what might you have tried in the way of extraction thus far?

See you around - and don't forget we have a chat room if you want to bring that technology thing into the twentieth century

Full disclosure: I didn't follow through on the pharmacy program. Like most applicants that didn't make the cut (~4% admission rate, last I checked), I went into Toxicology for a semester after the two year pre-pharm (which is where all the good stuff is anyways, really ), then switched over to an IT career and eventually ended up a network engineer.

God.. the fungi thing. Swim couldn't stop those little bastards. Flush after flush, they just kept going so he started throwing the cakes out onto the compost pile and burying them where they spread all over. It was maddening. He ended up giving it all away just to reset. Other than that, he's got a few species of cacti around the ranch, CBG plants, and some amanita dabbling but man, the quality of blotter these days is just mind blowing - impossible not to partake in that taste of bliss from time to time.

Thanks for the chat tip. Swim has been lurking in the chat room earlier today. He's looking forward to sharing some tips on using the Yocan Orbit he was babbling about over there. Was going to write it up in a 'notes from the field' format to share usage of that style of vape for those curious once he's matured here enough to allow posting/sharing. The efficiency is astounding.

In terms of extraction, swim started his first today. He'll be sure to share details upon completion. It's the least he could do to pay forward this wealth of guidance provided herein.

Basically, friendly and positive engagement is what contributes to prompt promotion here, with an added bonus for nice cactus or shroom pr0n

If there are any threads that you'd like to reply to which are in an area in which you do not yet have posting rights, simply start a thread in the Welcome Area with a title which refers to said desired thread. For example, there's a Yocan Orbit thread already so feel free to share some thoughts on that. And it definitely sounds like you might have a thing or two to add regarding shroom cultivation.

Looking forward to hearing how that first extraction goes too - best of luck!

How about this little fella...

Thanks for the warm welcome. I often wonder how things would have played out for me had that first experience not happened at such an early age. Thinking back on it, I suppose it's not far off from the age that tribes send youths down that path as a coming of age sort of rite.

I'm always intrigued by stories of middle aged to close to retirement folks surfacing and how that affects the massive structure of coping and comfort mechanisms they've amassed at that point. I think this may be the first instance of physical trauma being the catalyst that I've heard.

Fun with a usb microscope..