Right, A little background to this story, as it is written in a strange way. This was a report written by me and three friends to try and make a detailed record of a psychedelic trip we had together. It was originally written in the 1st person from 4 different perspectives, as it was posted on a forum where we all know eachother and there is already a level of understanding. About a year after writing this I sent our first draft copy of it to Howard Marks who was writing a new book called "tripping". He responded with some positive emails, suggesting that in order to put it in a book it would need to be written in the 3rd person, or a narrators perspective. So I changed all the names and made it from the third person's perspective. So any assertation that someone felt something, or someone experienced something is not an assumption but written by the person themselves. I spent a while (probably not long enough) editing it and cleaning up the text. Howard Marks stopped emailing me about it, I guess it wasn't polished enough or he found something else. Some of you might recognise the DMT bit at the bottom as what I posted in the Nursery forum, (except it's now magically in the 3rd person). Apologies for double posting it but it makes the most sense as part of a larger story, which a few members suggested I post in it's entirety; so here you go people:
Also a quick word about the title. Other than on the journey to wales, we did not experience any notable fear or loathing, however it is meant as a homage to the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo journalism.
(I changed the names as I thought this may be published, but I am not shy to tell you: I am Carl, although it's not my real name!
Fear and Loathing in North Wales.
The true life tale of a group of 4 young psychonaughts who travel across the country to embark upon an epic psychedelic adventure. The group consists of Carl (21), a psychology student living in Brighton. Adam an Engineering graduate from Portsmouth. Vince (20), a Chemistry student from Bath and Alex (19) a Molecular Science student from North Wales. All are connected by an internet drug forum, and all are experienced users of a variety of psychedelics.
It all started with a text…
"Hey Carl, Its Adam, Me and Vince are going to Alex's House in Wales for a crazy trip, you should come along, Zeb is coming!".
Cut to a few weeks later, it's Friday night, Carl finishes work in Brighton at 5pm. He walks back to his car, changes into a casual t-shirt, jumps in and start driving to Adam's house near Portsmouth. They met in a lay-by and exchanged a few brief salutations, then loaded up Adam's car with bags and headed to Bath to meet their wild haired psychedelic loving chemical brother, Vince.
Now Vince is basically a machine that processes psychedelics. He is not unfamiliar with heroic cocktails of psychedelics, mostly involving Ketamine, LSD and good old fashioned Marijuana.
The journey to Vince's was pretty uneventful. Carl smoked a joint and they listened to some good tunes as they barrelled along having a good old chinwag, catching up on old times and discussing the weekend ahead. Before you could say "This is Bat Country" the car had pulled up outside Vince's house, and the three friends were soon reunited in Vince's bedroom whilst he threw the last of his things together. The merry trio hopped into Adam's car once more and started driving towards deepest darkest rural Wales.
It is hard to get into too much detail about the trip from Vince's house to Zeb's house, for a variety of reasons. The important details are as such, that Adam remained sober as a driver, and Vince and Carl (the navigators) did not. The car became very smoky while Carl and Vince became completely unable to read a map, or pronounce any of the Welsh town names. They got round the latter of which by renaming particularly polysyllabic town names with more familiar silly words, for example Llandridod became "land of nod" and Bwlch y Frydd became "Belchy Fred". They pulled up outside a rest stop for a break to find it was all shut, It was past midnight and they were lost. The two incapacitated passengers and the driver got out, had a pee and tried to work out our bearings. Vince and Carl soon giving up, chilling out and put themselves into the capable hands of Adam. It soon became apparent that they had gone the wrong way and were about 15 minutes off course. So now with renewed enthusiasm and a clear idea of where they were headed, they set off for Abergaveny where they could get back on track, promising themselves that when they got to Abergaveny they would roll and smoke a joint to celebrate.
Soon enough, they rolled past a sign welcoming them to Abergaveny. and Adam pulled up in a lay-by to allow us to roll and smoke our celebratory joint and double check the maps. cross referenced with directions from Zeb. As the group sat relaxing in a smoky car finishing looking at the maps and generally 'chilling'; suddenly Vince whispered "Police". Adam & Carl looked to their right, and sure enough there was a police car parked alongside , with two policeman peering inquisitively towards the car full of stoners. They did not know how long the police car had been there or what they had seen or heard. Luckily as Adam was in fact (relatively) sober, he rolled down the window (releasing a billow of interesting smelling smoke) and talked to the policeman, telling him where he was going and what he was up to(leaving out a lot of details). The policeman seemed placated by this and drove on, but the group was left a little shaken to say the least. About 20 minutes from Zeb's house the car started running very low on fuel, the occupants becoming more aware that there was a significant chance they wouldn't make it to Zeb's house, let alone Alex's..
The old red car coasted to a halt, the tank completely dry and the engine cut out. As luck would have it they happened to come to a standstill, outside a gate at which they were supposed to call Zeb so he could come find them. None of them had been to Zeb's house, or even met him, knowing him only as a mysterious internet persona. They had no signal on their mobile phones so reluctantly they decided to hop over the gate and try and find him. They walked down a long and dark path, finally coming across a beautiful secluded cottage, with a camper van parked outside. Was this Zeb's house? Who knows? For all they knew it could have been anyone's house. Vince, Adam and Carl wandered into the garden to try and see if they could spot the elusive Zebedee, or any more clues. Round the back of the cottage, they spied an upstairs window with a light on.
Through the window they could see a monitor with a green and cream forum on which the gang recognised as the internet forum that linked them all. They jumped for joy when the back of Zeb's head came into view, long fair gingery hair....The group started whistling and shining their torches at his window, and soon enough Zeb noticed and came to the front door. His father came out with him and Adam explained the dire fuel situation and asked if there was any petrol about, and very kindly a can of petrol was donated, the car was topped up and the final leg of the journey could commence.
They were back off, now a 4 strong motley crew of internet stoners, Carl, Adam, Vince and Zebedee, now headed for their final destination: Alex's house. By this point the car stunk of petrol and Adam had driven well over 250 miles. Exhausted and in dire need of some serious narcotics, the weary travellers arrived at Alex's house around 2:30am, met at the gate by Alex himself with a huge spliff in his mouth. It was a miracle... They made it.
The group quickly proceeded to get comfortably intoxicated rather quickly, playing around with GBL, Ketamine and excessive amounts of cannabis. Carl was a pretty hardcore stoner. He had smoked pot on a daily basis for years, and had spend years surrounding himself with other stoners and the lifestyle surrounding the drug. He was also a big advocate of psychedelics, and liked to go on psychedelic voyages every couple of months or so. On this occasion, he had acquired a large lump of morrocan blonde hash. Alex had some interesting home grown water cured bud from his guerrilla grows on the moors. Joints were rolled, bongs were smoked. As the night progressed, Vince, Alex and Adam K-holed while Zebedee and Carl took it easy with their drug intake, relatively. At sunrise the festivities started to wind down, with the gang eventually getting some sleep sometime soon after sunrise.
Sometime during the early afternoon they awoke with a rather hazy daze and then started preparing for the trip with a nice wake and bake and some cooking. Vince at the oven attending the grill, slowly evaporating the water off a tray of ketamine solution and beside him was Carl cooking a delicious soup of Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, Butternut Squash, Parsnip, Carrot and Coconut. Alex and Adam were helping with various duties, while constantly keeping the smoke levels high.
This was a good mental preparation for the trip ahead and good relaxing chill out with Zeb, who decided to opt out of the trip as he felt he wasn't in the right overall mood for a group psychedelic experience. After some time the group took a trip into town to drop Zeb off after an enjoyable smoky farewell and pick up some final supplies.
Back at the rural house Alex measured out the 2ce doses. Alex was the youngest member of the group, but had a drug checklist as long as Vince's. He lived in the middle of nowhere and he and his parents are mostly self sufficient. He had a drug in his stash that could do just about anything, and he would often self-medicate his mood. Very experienced with a wide variety of rare and exotic psychedelic drugs, uppers, downers, smart drugs and more, he took charge when it came to dosing out the 2c-e. Vince on 22mg for a harder trip (he was a 2c-e virgin), Alex on 20mg, and Carl and Adam on 17mg, both being more cautious being unfamiliar with that particular drug.
Whilst preparing the room, packing bags for their trip and taking the 2c-e they put some psy-trance. As the 2c-e started to seep into the minds of the 4 young psychic travellers, they all knew this was the start of at least 15 hours of hard tripping, but none were prepared for how earth shatteringly beautiful the experience would be.
After getting used to the feeling of the 2c-e in their stomachs they set off for a trek through the moors. They immediately walked past a large sinister looking oak tree, leafless (it was late autumn) and vast, overbearing and sinister, but also beautifully organic, stretching upwards as if worshipping the sky. As they walked, the 2c-e began to kick in. At this point it was still very light, and the landscape and roads twisted into surreal fairytale paintings. The warmly dressed pack of psychonaughts walked for ages, standing alongside each other, talking about what they were feeling from the chemicals and sharing memories of previous psychedelic journeys.
The group began to come up harder as they walked aimlessly along the moor. Adam suggested the group stop somewhere to sit, smoke and look at the view, so they say with their backs against a fence and shared a joint. Everyone feeling the 2c-e coming on stronger than before, as the landscape became darker. The group sat transfixed by the propellers of massive wind turbines across the horizon, synchronised perfectly on a dark grey background, whilst the landscape flicked before their eyes like a epic movie. Carl became determined to get the group to go towards the wind turbines, having always had a slight phobia of them and finding new courage in his novel intoxication. They trekked cross country, through boggy fields for what was probably a mile or two, however it seemed like a lifetime. When they arrived they climbed the fence and lay underneath the huge rotating propellers, Carl at first very nervous, but decided to go with it and soon became mesmerised with the rest of the group, the visual effects of 2c-e were becoming more prominent, and experiencing the huge metal blades flying towards you and swinging away was exhilarating.
As they walked back to the path Vince entertained the group with stories of his earlier trips, 900mgs of DXM and his first Ayahuasca experiences were particularly well received, complete with full Technicolor gesticulations and grimaces.
Adam suddenly noticed they were sat in a field of sheep which seemed to be multiplying. He felt like they were a part of some vintage painting, silhouetted against a an orange and grey sky. The colour theme of a rusty orange haze was being picked up on by the entire group, and it stayed with them for most of the evening in a variety of ways.
Soon enough the darkening landscape and gentle rain was enough to convince the group to start heading back for the shelter of the house, so they walked on talking and comparing experiences, the plants became rusty iron spikes and the trees became dynamic sinister silhouettes. Alex and Vince decided to boost the psychedelic potential of the evening by having a tab of LSD each, while Carl broke into a box of fire-works he had been carrying. The group began to play, finding it amazing seeing the showers of sparks and multicoloured flares being set off against a background of psychedelic visuals. As Carl started adeptly spinning a pair of orange and red glow sticks, an empathetic group feeling set in. They were all in this together, and they stuck together physically and mentally for most of the trip.
The darkness and fog had closed in a little more. There was the occasional shimmer from strange glowing lights in the distance. Maybe Cars, maybe houses, maybe torches or perhaps the 2ce... A little of all most likely. Soon enough the group were under the shadow off a huge dark overbearing tree signalling the imminence of their most triumphant return from whence they had came. By this point the acid Vince and Alex had taken on the walk home was starting to kick in. Soon enough Adam and Carl were to join them in their first voyages into the land of LSD.
When the group returned, Carl and Adam went to the kitchen and after working out how to light a gas hob, they warmed a pan of the soup Carl had lovingly prepared earlier. Meanwhile in the bedroom Alex and Vince carefully eyed out generous doses of MDMA, and wrapped them in cigarette paper. Adam and carl returned with the soup, which was used to wash down the tiny ball of paper containing the precious MDMA crystals. Soon enough the first warm rushes of euphoria began to fill the trip with a new level of ecstasy. The LSD/MDMA combo was treating the group well as they set the room alight with the power of several laser pointers set up around a slowly revolving crystal. All then agreed it was time for the mood to get wonky as ketamine was dished out to each traveller of the psychedelic cosmos.
At this point it should be explained that things started to get gloriously messy. The narrator will that the order of events may not be completely chronologica, due to the rather postmodern habit the group had of taking photos and videos, and viewing them later on to re-live the event. Mushrooms were imbibed by Vince, Carl and Adam at some point, probably around 10pm when they had been tripping for over 7 hours. There were many mentions of how the mixture of euphoria and psychedelia was mind-blowing, and the psychedelic pioneers experimented with a variety of different combinations of lighting, music and visual effects to find settings that were ideal.
It was agreed that the best visuals were obtained with all the lights and screens off and a laser light creating red fractal beams sweeping round the smoky room, burning an imprint onto the dark ceiling.
The group were communicating well, and seemed often to be sharing the experience, they communicated open eye visuals of all sorts of things, from vast impossible networks of glass houses to intricate and dramatic intergalactic space wars. It was getting more and more intense by the moment, but incredibly never feeling overwhelmed or in any way negative, that would be the MDMA doing its magic. Vince, in his unique state of intoxication somehow managed with surprising ease to roll joints throughout the evening, which proved a huge service to the room, as the others were not really used to functioning under such novel levels of intoxication.
Suddenly a thought dawned upon Carl, that he had brought a couple of self inflating toy 'fat-suits' that a rather quirky relative had given him for a recent Christmas. He realised that if they could get Vince into one of these suits, it could have the potential to be rather amusing. So enough motivation was rallied to actually get Vince inside one of the suits and switch it on. Slowly it inflated to a gargantuan size. Vince seemed rather taken aback by his new found girth, but also instantly started to enjoy himself, much the inconsolable and wild cries of laughter coming from his peers. He danced, he sang, he wiggled and jiggled and generally got very into the character of the dancing obsess psychedelic guy.
After about half an hour of continuous and hysterical giggling it was decided it would be a good idea to return out into the dark cold November night, but this time keeping a closer proximity to the house in order to build a small camp-fire and let off the rest of the fire-works.
Everyone was completely twisted by this stage, the variety of psychedelics, stimulants, euphorics and other narcotics were heavily complementary and everyone was having a blast, but rather disorientated.
Carl poured a bag of firewood into a pile, doused it with paraffin and ignited, instantly transporting the group into a completely different and much more comforting environment: the perfect instant fire. Carl picked up a roman candle and pointed it downwind like a magic wand. He began gleefully and dramatically firing coloured balls of sparks at imaginary foe's all round him, dancing, and jumping around. "You look like a Wizard!" Shouted Adam, "You crazy Wizard!" Carl quickly realised how wonderfully magical and psychedelic it looked, giving the impression he was casting spells. Carl's big flowing psychedelic poncho he bought when tripping at Glastonbury festival helped the illusion too.
Carl continued running around, sparks flying at hedges, trees and shadows in the dark, smiting "dark wizards" and generally acting like a bit of an idiot. The group heard laughter coming from the house, realising that Alex's father was laughing at our antics. Now it should be explained that Alex's father had had his wild days, and was very tolerant of his son's extensive experimentation with drugs and had been around the house keeping a vague but respectful eye on the amusing antics. The group found it amusing and felt happy to be providing some entertainment.
Alex had been sitting by the fire saying nothing for some time, acid tends to make him withdrawn and deeply involved in his own thoughts, he was getting waves of confusion and couldn't understand where he was. In his mind the group drifted in and out of various locations near and around his house. As he sat staring into the fire he saw a giant cathedral with a large imposing dome mounted on the roof. Alex gazed on in awe as a large ladder grew, leading up to the top of the roof on top of which was a small child. Alex recognised the child as a 4-6 year old Carl, the fire glowing in his eyes and a paintbrush in his hand. Despite the fact the real Carl had no paint or brushes, Alex watched as he slowly covered the ceiling of the dome in colour, this colour swirled, leaped and fought its way out of the cracks and became the fire breathing in front of him, it was breathtakingly beautiful and gone all too fast for Alex.
Getting bored of the lack of music, Adam and Vince cautiously ventured back inside. Carl and Alex however were reluctant to stray from their outdoor base camp, still enjoying the sound of the fire crackling and breathing, not to mention the symphony of colour, light and warmth that Carl was conducting by fanning the flames and embers and occasionally adding varying amounts of paraffin or water while Alex stared on in silent awe. Alex and Carl stayed out for about 5 or 10 minutes after Vince and Adam's departure, watching the fire and talking profoundly about the power of beauty, the simplicity and magic that is all around everyone. They shared a moment of pure aesthetic revelatory oneness. Playing with that little campfire was so beautiful in ways they will never be able to fully describe within the boundaries of any language.
Alex and Carl eventually returned to the house and settled back into Alex's warm, soft dark room for more tripping. Alex suggested a film, Casshern: A crazy Japanese film about hybrid humans and post apocalyptic robotic warfare, which had beautiful colours and profound imagery, feeding the group's appetites for the bizarre, thought provoking and colourful. They also watched a couple of south park episodes about Imagination Land., This raised more questions about reality, imagination and the mind/ The group enjoyed it thoroughly and energetically discussed the metaphysics of the human mind and the power of imagination.
'Do you remember when Vince was fat?' said Adam out of the blue. The group came alive in a sudden surge of movement and Vince was back in the fat suit, his body engulfed in a shell of warm flabby air. With more bumbling about and regular moments of uncontrollable laughter, Alex joined in on the fun but accidentally put his suit on backwards, becoming the backwards fat man. Carl then received the same inflatable treatment, before they eventually got tired of laughing so hard and unzipped and returned to their original builds.It was somewhere round this point Vince found himself tumbling downwards to the ground, with his head colliding with surprising force with Adam's, leaving both parties unknowing exactly what had happened. Vince fell off the sofa.
While in Alex's room been sitting around 5-7 feet away from an imposing 42 inch plasma screen, hooked up to a computer full of music and films. It was quite an experience, tripping, surfing the internet, listening to crazy psychedelic music with massive intricate 3D visualisation engines spewing ultra complex and dazzlingly beautiful patterns across the screen. They spent a while sitting still listening to modern 8-bit music, and watching the various laser beams flicking across the ceiling, from the device that Vince was now waving around, making the patterns projected onto the walls distorted and exciting. Adam got to his feet and wandered towards the toilet. Slightly unsteady from a line of Ketamine, he used his hands to feel his way along the beams of the low ceiling, opening the door and wandering out to the darkness beyond. As he wandered further away from the room he was gripped with confusion, and worried that he had wandered outside or gotten completely lost. He looked round and saw his friends sitting in the room amusing themselves quietly and wandered back towards them, worried that he would get lost outside of the security of the warm soft room, postponing his trip to the toilet until the ketamine had worn off 20 minutes later.
At some point the group began using the internet to stream bizarre and thought provoking videos and music. The room unanimously loved Shpongle, and their music was becoming a pivotal part of our trip. As they watched the increasingly bizarre videos, the song "Divine Moments of Truth" came on, with the lyric "LSD to DMT", reminding Adam of when he and Carl went to see Howard Marks' "Senor Nice" live show, during which he played a video of his DMT experience. Carl found a copy of the DMT video online and played it on the big screen. The group watched Howard's enthusiastic and powerful description of the DMT experience with great interest.
So out came the DMT. Alex had extracted some N,N-DMT from some mimosa bark some months before, and Carl had bought a quarter gram of the stuff a while back when he was at University. Although Carl had still not tried any DMT, Alex and Vince were both experienced with the drug. Talk began of smoking some of the elusive Elf Spice….
How sensible this idea seemed at the time was unsure as the psychedelic cocktail was running strong in the lads. 2C-E, LSD, Magic mushrooms, MDMA and ketamine were coursing their ways through our body, synergising and working together in a glorious sea of wonderment.
Vince was first to ascend into the Dmitri heavens. After the second hit from the small pipe, it began to take hold, Vince hastily managed one or 2 more hits before the experience engulfed him completely. Vince's body high was immeasurably wonderful. As the world begun to cartoon and morph into a fantastic world of beauty, closed eye visuals left Vince speechless as he sailed through the room on a cloud of euphoria. After about 10 or 15 minutes, Vince came back to earth with a serene return to his still massively chemically altered state, but found himself unable to communicate any of his trip other than its immensity, euphoria and body high. .
Meanwhile Alex had been flickering in and out of reality for the past few hours, candy flipping with a nose full of k on a base of 2CE. The k holes were taking him to a place beyond time; Alex met versions of himself and watched helplessly and objectively as his life spiralled away from reality. Alex had been diving in and out of the most profound psychedelic states, but managed to get control of his senses long enough to see Vince handing him a smoking DMT pipe and sinking into his own universe.
Alex sprinkled 45mgs of DMT on top of some weed in the wooden pipe. He carefully toasted the crystals, melting and bubbling them into the marijuana in the bowl. He managed to hold in two big hits before exhaling and taking a third final big hit. There was a moment of peace and tranquillity, before an incredible vibrating ripping noise and a surge of energy as Alex's reality was torn apart. Alex's mind decided to show him just what it was capable of doing. He experienced a beautiful enveloping rush and roar while guided into the experience by a playful spirit entity. DMT dragged Alex around his whole ego taking him on an enlightening journey through the very fabric of consciousness.
Vince had by this point returned to reality, and did what he does best, prepared a few lines of ketamine. Before Alex's DMT had worn off, Vince passed him a line of K which he happily insufflated. Instantly Alex's ego started to dissolve as he felt himself turning into a giant fleshy bubble, screaming through reality, travelling through the veins and arteries of conscious dreams. As Dmitri playfully twisted and ran ahead of him like Alice's elusive white rabbit, showing him glimpses of an infinitely powerful self. As the DMT wore off, Alex entered a stage of half-sleep as his ego rebuilt and he tried to assimilate the experience.
Carl had been quietly observing Alex and Vince as they tumbled down the DMT rabbit hole, and as they slowly returned to reality, he began to realise that it was time. He had bought a quarter gram of pure N,N-DMT about 6 months before this point, but had patiently been waiting for the right moment. Slowly preparing and researching, reading experience reports online and downloading literature about the chemistry, history and psychology of DMT. In the weeks before this trip he had begun to feel like he was prepared, and felt 'ready' to try it, but had simply been waiting for the perfect opportunity to present itself. Carl was at the tail end of a revelatory psychedelic experience among 2 experienced DMT users. He felt completely mentally prepared as he slowly and carefully loaded up the same small wooden pipe the others had used with a small amount of weed and about 5-10mg of the DMT.
Now at this point he wasn't sure if his DMT was N,N-DMT or 5-meo DMT. Chemically, they are quite similar but they differ in the type of experience (visual vs. auditory) and their dosage differ wildly. 20mg of 5-meo would be a heroic dose, but 20mg of N,N is generally considered a good starting dose, hence Carl started low. He brought the pipe to his lips and gently started heating the crystals. As he inhaled, a small plume of the initial hit was lost to the air around him, but he held in the rest and kept hitting the pipe and holding in the smoke.
He lay back, waiting for a cataclysmic ego shattering experience….
Nothing.
Well not quite nothing, He felt a subtle mood lift, and he watched small skittering patterns crossing his vision. The visual effects, albeit minor reassured him that his DMT was not the 5-meo DMT and was in fact the much more precious visual N,N-DMT, so he could afford to up the dose.
He immediately loaded up another pipe, this time with a little more, maybe 10-20mg, took a deep breath and inhaled.
As he sat back the room started to change. The huge screen (now turned off) in front of him stayed the same, but all the walls around it, his fellow trippers and the rest of the room dissolved into darkness. Once again, small but complex and dynamic patterns scrolled across his vision, but much more prominently than before.
"Damn, another threshold experience." He thought to himself.
The third experience was more successful. He sat silently contemplating his options for about 20 minutes. He wanted so dearly to have a DMT experience, and soon decided to slowly load another pipe.
As he loaded up the pipe with somewhere over 20mg, it could have been 20mg, it could have been 35mg Carl realised this time felt very different. He felt much more contemplative, preparing for his mind to be unravelled. When the pipe was finally loaded, he sat on a cushion on the floor with legs folded, pipe in his hands, resting gently in his lap. He then did something different. He meditated. For another 20 minutes or so, more focused than he had ever felt before. He was stating his intentions for his journey. He was asking for guidance, wisdom, understanding and direction. He was preparing for a big deal.
For the third time he looked down as the flame licked the bowl, and felt the harsh plastic taste of the DMT taint the wonderful water-cured home-grown bud it was rested on. He inhaled and lay back, this time shutting his eyes.
Carl instantly transported to a world of the most wondrous, vivid and informative closed-eye visuals he have ever experienced. He was met at the start by a female entity, who told him in a soft and kind voice that this was not the big ego shattering experience (or 'the big one' as she put it) that he was expecting, but that didn't matter because the 'big one' would happen eventually, but she still had a lot to teach him to prepare him for that day and help him with some of his questions.
He was then taken on what can only be described as a detailed colourful visual metaphor for various the functions of his brain. Firstly Carl was shown what the DMT was doing, He watched it recharging different parts of his psyche, his mood being lifted whilst his senses synergised into a harmonious input of colours, lights, sounds, feelings, smells and tastes. He could see the body high that it was building inside him, the tidal wave of euphoria and revelation. It was special, very special.
Out of the blue Carl heard a voice; Alex asking how it was going. He muttered a monosyllabic response to say that it was all going well. As Carl refocused after this distraction he had been taken to a place that was a graphic representation of his memories, both short term and long, each with a visual cue to what the memory contained. Time seemed to stand still as Carl explore the 'memory bank' re-living powerful memories, some from the trip, some from other trips as well as a few emotional happy times from his travels round South America. It was beautifully presented and all the emotion was emulated perfectly. The final part of the trip laid down several potential paths that he was now standing at a crossroads to. It showed Carl a life as a Shaman, then a life devoted to addiction leading to a premature death, then it showed him helping people, teaching people, inspiring people and loving people. All along the way giving him little snippets of wisdom on ways of improving his relationships with family and friends
.
As Carl slowly slipped back...