Hi all,
I hope it's all right to mix my introduction with some discussion about some attempted extractions and experiences, seeing as my primary impetus for joining is to get some input from the wonderfully knowledgeable people here on just those things!
I'm a longtime psychonaut, psychopharmacology enthusiast, and most of all lurker; it's not often I'm compelled to actively participate in communities. You might call me shy, even when it comes to the internet! Nevertheless, I've found such useful information on these forums stated in such clear and compelling manners that I couldn't help but want to participate, especially after my recent dabblings with morning glories. I have some past experience with DMT, as well as an absolutely overwhelming appreciation of it as a substance, but for numerous reasons it has felt less than accessible to me for some time now. Morning glory seeds are readily available, perfectly legal and seem to lend themselves to potentially easier extraction (at the very least not requiring the heavily-watched NaOH), so when I recently found myself feeling the call of the psychedelic mindscape after some years of being too distracted by life to have time for it, I figured morning glories would be a worthwhile option to explore.
My first few experiences were with (what I would later discover were completely botched) cold-water extractions. While I don't recall the doses, they were initially in the low-moderate range, stepping up to high-moderate. I ground the seeds, placed them in a cup of previously-boiled water in the fridge, waited 2 hours with occasional stirring, filtered the seed material and consumed the resulting liquid, which tasted almost pleasantly like iced tea. The very first time I tried this, a friend of mine participated as well. Expecting at least a mildly psychedelic experience, we were both surprised when we started to feel extremely tired...right around the time the seeds should have been kicking in. We suddenly found ourselves chair-bound and fading into a nap that lasted a few hours. When we awoke, we both felt perfectly sober, but we agreed that the sleep we experienced felt very unusual; "ethereal," we concurred, was a good word to describe it. Certainly, the experience was more consistent with the reported sedative/hypnotic effects of LSA than with a psychedelic. Pleasant and intriguing, certainly, but also disappointing.
I repeated the same extractions a few more times, stepping up the dosage each time. The next few experiments were completely inactive, without even the interesting LSA-like effects. Wondering if morning glories were mostly placebos for people who hadn't tried "real" hallucinogens, I was about ready to give up, when I suddenly discovered...I hadn't even been grinding the seeds! I had misinterpreted the instructions of the grinder I was using, and, since I performed the grinding in the dark, hadn't noticed that the seeds remained mostly intact. I immediately prepared for another experiment when I discovered I could coax my grinder into converting the seeds into a fine powder. Same extraction procedure, just with the seeds actually ground this time.
Success. 100% psychedelic. I initially tried a rather low dose as a precaution (I think ~125-150 seeds), since I correctly assumed that an extraction with properly ground seeds would not be comparable to one with intact seeds and this could effectively be my first experience with this substance. I had widely dilated pupils, noticed objects "breathing", saw lights as shinier and straight lines as actively waving, and all my thinking seemed to have a bit more depth. So, certainly psychedelic...very similar to my experience with weak LSD. I knew a higher dose was in order to really asses this substance.
My next experiment was with ~400 seeds, same cold-water extraction. I'd like to note that this was a particularly steep climb in dosage, especially considering my inexperience with morning glory seeds. I have some experience with heavy doses of psychedelics (a 10g mushroom trip, a 125mg smoked DMT trip) so I believed I was prepared to handle the experience yielded by such a dose. I would not recommend anyone emulate such a climb, even with experience in heavy doses. I was perhaps too impatient to explore the real potential of this substance. It did turn out mostly fine for me, but as you will read, it was a decision that was not completely without consequence.
So...400 seeds. I don't exactly know where to begin to describe the experience. The first thing that comes to mind is how much it felt like an odd flavour of LSD. The next thing that comes to mind is how I've read so many comments about how LSA is essentially a watered-down LSD...somehow inferior or weaker compared to its diethylated cousin. Nothing could be more wrong. This trip without a doubt rivaled the intensity of the strongest LSD trip I've ever had, and in many ways, put LSD to shame. The visuals were almost entirely absent, I suppose, but those are such a small part of the psychedelic experience to me. What the seeds offered to me, instead, was an exceedingly intense acceleration and expansion of thought. I've never been able to, for lack of better words, think about so much at once and process so much thought so quickly. I felt like my consciousness was actively expanded and outright capable of more than it had ever been before. On top of this, I believe my senses were actively enhanced, particularly sight and sound. I examined the ridges of my fingerprints in detail that felt like I was looking through a microscope, and upon taking a midnight stroll, heard the buzzing and croaking of animals I'd never before realized were present near my home. Though I didn't put it to the test, I'm fairly certain I was able to pinpoint exactly where the animals making those noises were located. Oh yes, and in lieu of visuals, I got visualization; rather than seeing pretty fractals and mandalas with my eyes, I was able to create and see them in excruciating detail with my minds eye. And I do mean excruciating...as the trip progressed the sheer amount of thinking I was doing got to be so intense that I noticed I was clenching my teeth extremely hard as a response to my mind racing. I actually gagged myself to make sure I didn't inadvertently damage my teeth! Some of this thinking was actually extremely productive too, particularly with respect to introspection. I came up with some effective solutions to serious relationship problems I had been having, and meaningful insight into why those problems had arisen in the first place! The seeds had given me an almost paradoxically lucid psychedelic experience truly unmatched by any substance I've yet experienced.
Unfortunately, they also gave me some pretty severe physical side effects as well. I'd done plenty of research on morning glory experiences, and was expecting a good deal of nausea and vasoconstriction. That was not what I got. Instead, the trip greeted me with mild nausea that I happily pushed through...that eventually became severe intestinal cramping and some of the worst diarrhea I've ever had in my entire life. It certainly did not make for a pleasant trip, to say the least. In retrospect, I feel pretty lucky it didn't turn into a bad trip, as it was extremely difficult to deal with the physical problems without my racing thoughts turning down a darker path. I certainly felt paranoia, panic and fear creeping up on me a number of times, particularly when my mind translated my body's reactions into a cry of "YOU'VE BEEN POISONED!" that echoed through my internal monologue. I pushed through, though, trying to focus on keeping my racing thoughts positive and productive. Eventually, both the extreme expanding of my consciousness and contorting of my bowels dwindled, and I exited the psychedelic mindscape seemingly no worse for wear.
So that leaves me where I am now, and you with the context of my joining this forum. My 400 seed MG experience was so astonishing that I can't help but be compelled to explore this substance further, and yet the physiological effects of the seeds felt so outright toxic that I know further exploration must be tempered by some prophylaxis against whatever toxic component exists in the seeds. I made an attempt at Kash's Tek, which was a very interesting failure. I would detail it here but I feel I've already rambled enough, and I'm also hoping for a more focused discussion on the technical details of that extraction and how exactly I failed. Instead, I'll end my introduction with some of the non-Kash Tek questions I came to discuss:
Does anyone have thoughts on why an extraction with incompletely-ground (almost completely untouched, really) seeds would produce a trip that resembles the purported effects of pure LSA, while more thoroughly-ground seeds would yield a more classic psychedelic trip? And why might the incompletely-ground seeds only yield such a trip the first time?
Has anyone else had more lower-GI focused body load from MG seeds? I've read so much about nausea and vasoconstriction occurring that it's still a little unbelievable to me that I wound up experiencing such drastically different physiological issues.
Does anyone else think MG seeds are underappreciated? I suppose if there's not a good way to mitigate the toxic effects of the seeds I would be less interested in continuing exploration, but some of the extraction teks I've read just on the DMT Nexus seem to promise that it's possible to avoid serious body load. So for anyone who does appreciate MG seeds, what's your favorite method of extraction/consumption?
I do hope to participate in discussing my experiences with other psychedelics and learn more about their chemistry and pharmacology here, as I certainly have a deep love for the experience that so many of them have provided me...especially DMT, which is probably my favorite. My present focus is simply on exploring the potential of morning glories, which is why my introduction fixates on them. Maybe once I can sustainably grow some mimosas (the last few I grew died right after producing some beautiful flowers
), it will be time for me to again explore DMT. Until then, I hope I'll find a part of this community that shares my enthusiasm for the potential of morning glories!