This is PART 1 of 2 parts: a foray into the unknown - MDMA, K & N2O.
In the playground of my mind I have installed a slide next to the swings.I rolled over and uttered what I felt compelled to share with my companions next to me on the duveted floor :
«
In the playground of my mind I have installed a slide next to the swings !! »
Their dumbfounded faces confounded me, so I repeated the phrase, chuckling at the end to underline how simple it all was, and added :
« But I lost a screw, so the installation is incomplete. I need to go back to the playground !! »
I was in a shallow ebb of the deep end of the trance, many hours into the waves that pushed me up and across varying and phantasmagoric shores :
We had arrived hours earlier, nine of us slowly trickling in the door to the rented chalet, the autumnal lakeside mansion that would be the host and only witness to our hours of ecstasy and division & union and travelling. It was the fortieth birthday of the woman organizing our outing, and all were in high spirits, the sense of anticipation lucid and charged.
It was an adventure for me : I knew Shayku (a nexus member), and had met his friends on one calm afternoon in the park for a quick and distracted picnic, the distraction being my energetic almost-two-year-old son who had me spending more time chasing him around the park than breaking bread with Shayku and company. So I went to the chalet with a traveller’s spirit, to greet a new environment, new people and 3 substances soon to be new to me : MDMA, Ketamine and Nitrous Oxide.
I had done Ecstasy twice, 8 years earlier, both times in an after-hours dance club - and hated it. The feverish come-up, the sudden and near paralyzing dehydration, the profound sensation that my head was either about to burst or stay in this pressurized pre-burst stage for the duration - or worse, forever... I didn’t get what all the ra(v)e was, and decided to leave it to the dance crowd, of which I was most certainly not a part (anyone who has had the distraction of watching me gyrate a-rhythmically to the throb of chest-caving beats knows at least one of the reasons…)
I have since learned that the difference between pure MDMA and « X » cannot be overstressed : X, apparently, marks many spots, from speed to cocaine to even sometimes heroin and of course (although occasionally only in trace amounts), MDMA.
So I had let myself be convinced that maybe this particular phenethylamine, in its pure form, was worthy of more RESEARCH.
Before everyone had arrived, the itch was too great for some. We went upstairs to the lofty attic, where mattresses had been arranged on the floor. We lay next to each other and I heard my first SWoooOoooCH as a balloon rapidly expanded with N2O from a cartridge loaded into a whipped cream canister. I was there to observe, wanting to wait to experience Nitrous with MDMA and perhaps Ketamine, having been told that it is much more effective in conjunction with these other substances. But I am easily led when I choose to follow… One was filled for me, but then S, also as new to all-that-was-new-to-me that evening, asked if I wanted to split it with her. I laugh about it now, but said yes then, ever the cautious cliff jumper! Needless to say to anyone familiar with this particular inhalant, it wasn’t particularly strong on half a dose, first time around, with poor technique and low expectations… I experienced a mild head rush and a lightness that could just as easily have been attributed to the long breath-holding as to the N2O.
We did a couple more (full doses this time) , and I had some minor CEVs and audio distortions, accompanied by a not unpleasant physical sense of cerebral expansion (yes, while my mind didn’t expand, it sure felt like my brain had !) . All in all OK, but not terribly impressive.
NOW ON TO THE MAIN COURSE :
Settled in, rooms sorted, sun long set and amidst giggles we « popped » (not sure I liked the terminology, given the way my head had felt years ago on « X »…!) There were several strengths of pill, and being the intrepid explorer that I am (ehem, READ : often reckless when not cautious explorer…), I chose the strongest dose on the assurance that IT CANNOT GO WRONG WITH THIS STUFF. Heard that before - have you ?
Those more familiar with the substance wanted to all jump in the sauna for the comeup, but me-bein’ a lil shyboy summadatime, coupled with a fear of the fever-rippling comeup that was my only point of reference, I decided a sauna was the last place I wanted to be as the phens began their work tickling and rip-pull(play)ing at my neurotransmitters.
Then the waves of sweet glory washed and ebbedandflowed up my legs and through the ever/over/river-arching spine to my nuque and over my headskull to my gaping and incredulous and tingling mouth-hole.
Ahhhhh WHaaaAAAAT ? Ahhhhhhh, gd……JUST awwwwww as just as AWE can be…
AwwwwWWWWWHAHAHAHawe……….
No feverpitch, no sweat infused terror, no debilitating dehydration. Just ahhhhhhhhh… and a touch of Ohhhhhhhhh…
I sat there for another ten minutes or so just feeling the wash before the sauna crew sauntered down the stairs with balloon gear and a mission to hug and roll around on the floor.
A faux-fur white duvet stretched over the floor was our launch pad. We all took our places side by side.
SwoooOoooCH
SwoooOoooCH
And yet another 7 SwoooOoooCHes.
All loaded up, everyone a balloon in hand, Chin chin, balloon to balloon, then CHoooOoooWSSWoooOoooCH, inhale hold exhale. Inhale hold exhale.
Eyes closed, the sounds in the room - music, giggles, moans - recede and reverberate, echoing into echoes, into distant vibrating ripples of audio and then, in the centre of my field of vision, out of the grey-speckled darkness, a squiggly geometric lattice labyrinth, swirling-spinning, gates shifting and changing to gates and more gates in/out/around the maze in my head. Then it recedes and the audio in the room folds back into familiar sounds. N2O meet JBArk, JBArk meet N20...
Another MDMA capsule consumed. Then:
MORE BALLOONS. (SIDEBAR, a little note on technique: I discovered that for me the most effective way of inhaling nitrous is to take it all in, hold it as long as you can, exhale into the balloon, take two or three quick breaths to re-oxygenate, inhale the balloon again (repeat a third time if able), then hold it in until you forget who/what/where you are. I repeat “breathebreathebreathe” in my mind and tap the floor lightly with my fist so that just as I leap into ego-death there is a little reminder to breathe, and a grounding tap as a further reminder. THEN – bang, gone, swirling cartoonvortex and reverberating feedback audio and NOJBArk takes over)
A balloon: A vortex of music bars spinning large cartoon notes through a square of brilliant otherworldly sparkling red to the suckpoint in the middle where they recede and disappear.
Another balloon: a spinning primary coloured square within another within another until the diminishing squares within squares were a point – around the edge of each square was written this bit of nonsense, that swirled with each of the squares:
____
A____
L____
L____
____________________
G __________________M
I __________________
R __________________
L __________________Y
S __________________
____________________
_____
FAVOURITE_____
Yet Another balloon: Unrecognizable glyphs and symbols spinning in glittery luminescent fields of colour – in a receding, swirling vortex...
Why always a vortex that spins to infinity? Why always sucking these nonsensical symbols and objects…? And “all my favourite girls”…??? This clause has no personal significance whatsoever, and in my recollection, I have never once uttered these four words together… so from whence? What deep recess of my mind? Or - elsewhere… (?!) What significance, if any? The nonsensical utterings and fabrications, and non sequitor imagistic associations of a drug addled mind? TRUTH? Glimpses of an otherness, hints of veiled connections and hidden unities? The circumference of a forbidden knowledge? A brain-machine confused by exogenous signals?
These are the confounding questions that keep me searching, asking, returning and discovering new and unique questions and perspectives and substances, armed with the knowledge that questions MUST be their own answers…
…After this, nerves steeled (or melted given the drug in question), and curiosity tweaked, I ventured into K-land. Since a bad bicycle race crash in Belgium 15 years ago (broken septum deep in my skull, resulting in long lasting low grade fever and 2 bonesetting surgeries into my head), I never put anything into my damaged sinuses, one of which has been left scarred and largely fleshless, prone to infection. So gum-in-cheek administration is what I use, and it seems to work just as well. I did not measure the quantity I took, but rather returned frequently for small lines I would lift with wetted fingertips and rub into my mouth below and above my teeth.
The K added sharp edges to everything, and all quickly went a little askew, sliding, reality now two or more tectonic-like plates shifting until I was uncertain which way was up (never thought I would employ this cliche, but damn, now I know where it comes from !!)
THE SHIFT.
Of perspective, distance, meaning… like another dimension just slid into our own, juxtaposing it at what I can only refer to as an angle - AND an intersecting plane.
The fifth dimensional hypotenuse of K. That upon its intersection, triangulates LENGTHWIDTHHEIGHTTIME.
Another half MDMA split with S, an hour after the last one, to keep it all riding along.
I RODE THE HYPOTENUSE INTO THE DaTa STREAM.
Returning for several lines broken up by a balloon or two each time, I was unprepared for the Mth line that was further intersected by the Nth balloon of nitrous. I was catapulted into a deep voyage, “hyperspace”-like, but with a unique signature and an odd sense of control – I felt less guided than able to navigate, like the experience was partly interactive. With DMT “hyperspace” launches you are shot from a NASA launchpad and dragged along at breakneck velocity, perhaps willingly, kicking and screaming, awed or terrified, but undeniably dragged. You have as much will as a stone, and about as much interaction as a fly with a windshield.
First I was thrust dreamily into a vista of whirling shapes against an aquamarine field of infinite depth ; the shapes were like the animated version of a child’s mobile : 3D shapes rendered 2D - pastel pyramids, cubes and spheres and dodecahedrons rotating around a common invisible point in the centre of my field of vision ; geometric planets orbiting an eternal and infinite point in an infinite space…
Then the shapes spiralled from view, the blue space darkening further to blueprint dim, and little glowing whitish lines shot from the periphery and danced around, as if forming, unforming reforming and morphing in and out of blueprint forms of buildings and vehicles and beings and planes and worlds… It was a dance of creation, but I was witnessing its plan, its architectural representation, and not its reality.
I floated through this and beyond, past many similar visions and vistas and intersecting planes, until emerging from the darkness was a world, seemingly a planet, over which I flew, or floated, bird’s eye-like, above its surface as it evolved : things grew, first semi-biological morphing beings or plant life, then more regular, architectural structures like buildings, skyscrapers, cities, civilizations (the actuality of the blueprinted plans I had witnessed, perhaps… ?) The further I floated along, the more complex and complete the surface, and these civilizations, became.
I WANTED TO SEE MORE :
So I consciously dove into one of these cities, down to street level (and there were streets !), where I saw the equivalent of a business district end of day : suits fresh from work bustling past one another on a sidewalk in the shade of the edifices above, purposeful, brief-cased and numerous, but faceless, a veil of skin where eyes and mouth should be, and behind each of them I saw, as I floated just above and over their heads, a squirming collection of varicoloured neon lines that roughly formed, in geometric permutations, a colourful tron-like rectangular box that followed about 6 inches from their backs…
At this point, unsure if it was of my own volition (things such as « will » remain a little vague in this state), I floated back up above the « cities » and vaulted at superspeed over the neverending surface of this « planet » until BANG !! I was released from orbit and I, or the planet or both, receded into the void until I could see no more than a dot, then a speck then nothing. This civilized planet had receded into the folds of an infinite plane, as had I…
Coalescing now in my field of view was something deeply familiar, yet it felt like the first time I had seen it in this form : a large yellow/orange striped and bejewelled capital M in a red frame of white dots that completely filled my periphery, shimmering and stable yet ever-glittering and transforming.
IT WAS THE SAME PLACE. “HYPERSPACE”.
I felt the terror rise through the body I could not feel…(it was identical to a place I have visited on DMT, and have glimpsed on mushrooms and LSD). Then the fear receded. I laughed. I controlled the terror and smiled, realizing that I could not be afraid for, strangely, there was no emotional content to this experience…
I was down at the root, where I have been many times before, staring at my own naked consciousness up through its own asshole, and not a hint of fear. Enraptured in the bejewelled and ever-folding corridors of infinity, I rejoiced !! There was a way to this place, of perfect unity, of oneness and dissolution, that bypassed the fear I had taken as one its innate characteristics !!
A voice that was not a voice did not say “I told you so”, but I felt this wisdom, this friendly rebuke, to my core. NO MORE FEAR.
The visions receded and I opened my eyes, a grin I had forgotten I could grin hurting unused and heretofore un-flexed facial muscles. Laying there for a minute, I lived the SHIFT and just let it flow over me.
When I finally stood up, the SHIFT shifted with my vertical re-orientation. I felt as though I were walking on the wall, and that the ceiling was actually one of the four walls and… What confused me as I strode awkwardly toward the bathroom : which of the four walls, in this case, was the floor… !!??
In the bathroom I saw, superimposed over the orange wall, a veritable energy sphere floating within. Sparks flew from it and seemed to make up its form, like a giant atom, the electrons spinning/reappearing at such speed as to suggest the spherical form I witnessed floating in or on the surface of the wall. Then it slowly shrunk to a point, subdividing along the way into identical shrinking spheres that diverged, pulling lines with them, until, as points still dividing and subdividing, they formed a 3 dimensional geometric expanding lattice that continued to grow, the spaces between the points themselves shrinking, the lines connecting them shortening, until the points were so minute as to be indistinguishable from the lines, from the other points, AND FROM THE WALL ITSELF !! Had I just witnessed the atomic then molecular formation of the wall before me, macro and micro co-existing in the same space ?
Then a bump came out of the wall: an orange sloping protrusion next to the toilet. I changed angles, taking a step to the side. The protrusion had perspective. It existed in the 3 dimensional space of the bathroom cubicle. I pushed my hands toward it but the instant I should have touched it, it began to recede, pushing out sideways to form a longer, shallower protrusion. I pushed my hand again further toward the wall, and the protrusion suddenly burst in two and waded away along the wall, then split again. And again. AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. Like the spheres, the infinite subdividing was accompanied by a shrinking, until there were so many tiny protrusions, they were again indistinguishable from the surface of the wall. Never have I experienced such vivid hallucinations. In fact, by strict definition, I could even say these were the first true hallucinations I had ever seen, being independent of the subject, not just mere textural and chromatic overlays. And they seemed to exist in all 3 dimensions - and alter over the 4th, time.
I left the bathroom, enthralled. When I came back into the room, my friends were dancing, in camisoles or bare-chested. AND THEIR SKIN. Their skin was crawling with the black out-linings of animated tribal-style tattoos. Inching into swirls and vines and ancient symmetries, these evolving, animated lines etched over arms and legs, under garments, emerging higher up on neck and face – anywhere skin was present, it was delineated, held together, defined by these slow moving deepdark tendrils. I was again enraptured, and when I touched S’s arm, the lineage reacted, swirling away then back toward the contact point of fingers and then digging under my palm.
St danced, the tattoos flowing on his skin to the rhythm his body set; E laughed and the dark forms receded and pulsed with each punch of laughter. C leaned against the wall, watching the dance unfold, the swirls and cues on her arms and across her back straining, as if supporting her weight, and allowing her to lean without crashing to the ground.
Strangely, I have no recollection of this living tattoo on myself…
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thank you sincerely for reading (and finishing!) Part 1 and:
PART 2 is up, THE PLAYGROUND & THE DATA STREAM!!
JBArk
JBArk is a Mandelthought; a non-fiction character in a drama of his own design he calls "LIFE" who partakes in consciousness expanding activities and substances; he should in no way be confused with SWIM, who is an eminently data-mineable and prolific character who has somehow convinced himself the target he wears on his forehead is actually a shield.