Here is a report of my best friend Ted's first mimosa/rue experience last Saturday. I'm just gonna use "I" from here on out because that's easier.
PRE-CONDITIONS
(mind)Set: Excited, anxious, fearful...confident that I am being called to experience this
(physical condition) Set: energized, well stretched
Setting (location): my house, by myself
time of day: (12 or 24 hour system, daylight? starlight? overcast?)10:30 pm
recent drug use: (list also any kind of medication) none
last meal: (Time and type)28 hours previous. Homemade vegetable stock with rainbow chard and whole wheat pasta.
PARTICIPANT
Gender: (m / f) Male
body weight: (in kg pls) 185 lbs
known sensitivities: none
history of use: (experienced, novice, first timer - in general and for this specific substance/form) In general well experienced with psychedelics, particularly mushrooms. 10-12 DMT experiences since last summer. For Ayahuasca, first time.
BIOASSAY
Substance(s): Syrian Rue (tea), Mimosa Hostilis (tea)
Dose(s):3 grams, 5 grams
Method of administration: tea
EFFECTS
Administration time: T=:00 (expand this if you used delayed administration for multiple substances or the same substance with multiple doses. Use indices.)
Duration: (x hours)
First effects: 0:45
Peak: 1:30 -2:30
Come down: 2:30 - 5:00
Baseline: next morning
Intensity (overall): 2.5
Evaluation / notes:
OPTIONAL
Pleasantness: (3)
Implesantness: (1)
Visual Intensity: (3)
.
.
.
AFTER-EFFECTS
Hangover: (0-4 ; what type of impleasantness ; duration)
Afterglow: 3.5, felt tremendous the next morning.
REPORT
I am writing the beginning of this report approximately 48 hours prior to taking the sacrament. I have chosen to do this so that I can go through all the preparatory measures I took beforehand, so that after the session is over I can just dive right into talking about the experience itself.
Five days prior to the scheduled session I began the diet. For me, this has meant ingesting none of the tyramine-containing foods, drinking no alcohol, ceasing marijuana use, and abstaining from any and all sexual activity. I have also tried to be mindful of my “mental consumption” as well, limiting exposure to television, radio, the newspaper, internet, etc… Music has been chosen carefully, preferring classical, ambient, and of course the Good Ole’ Grateful Dead.
Alternatively, I have made an effort to continuously reflect upon the blessings in my life this week, with a renewed focus and appreciation. I began this practice with having out of this world sex with my wife last weekend (a final send off before the abstinence! ;-). Also this week I have been spending every quality moment possible with my two year old daughter. Last night, we took out a giant piece of paper, and together painted a mural that I plan to put up in my living room this Saturday for when I take the sacrament.
There is only one part of my plan that I find unfortunate. This Saturday I will have to be at a professional training from 9 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon. I would much rather spend this day alone in the woods, meditating and reflecting upon my intent. There is nothing I can do to change this, so my plan is to come home immediately after the training, change, meditate, smudge the house, and begin preparing the brew with a estimated ingestion at around 9:30 that evening. The hours between getting home and taking the sacrament I intend to be spent in silence.
I fasted for 28 hours prior to ingestion. My last meal was a homemade vegetable stock with rainbow chard and whole wheat pasta.
Saturday:
Preparation: After thoroughly smudging my kitchen, I set up upon preparing the brew. I ground 3 grams Syrian Rue seeds and added to 150 ml distilled water and juice of one lemon in a stainless steel saucepan. Did 3 separate boils on this, then set the coffee mug of brown liquid on the sill to cool. Then I measured about 10 grams of powdered mimosa and added to the pot with about 200-250 ml distilled water a juice of one lemon. Did three separate boils, then reduced it all to roughly 300 ml. During the reduction I added the egg white to remove tannins*
*note: I will omit this step next time. I hate, repeat HATE the smell/taste of egg, and while I’m sure it helped in removing tannins I later found it made the whole mixture taste of egg. Blech!*
Setting:
At around 10 pm I prepared my space: a meditation cushion in my living room, my daughter’s painting pinned up over the television set, a side table to rest the brews, water, a few slices of plain bread, and a cup of ginger tea to help my stomach should I need it (I needed it). I called up a playlist on iTunes: 30 minutes of shamanic drumming, followed by 1 hour worth of rainforest sounds, followed by 30 minutes of icaros, followed by another hour of rainforest, and finally about 30 minutes of some live Grateful Dead. Turned off all the lights.
Set:
No more excited anticipation now (which has characterized the past week). The realization that I’m about to actually do this for the first time, by myself, humbles me and quiets my internal dialogue. I review my intention: to open myself to this sacrament and receive what it has to offer, and work to integrate its messages into my life.
T-00:00:00 start the playlist: drumming. Ingest the coffee mug of Rue tea. The taste isn’t nearly as bad as I’d prepared for, kind of like stale coffee with lemons. For the next half hour I simply sit up right and practice shamatha breathing with my eyes closed.
T-00:10:00: Aware of slight tingling in my fingertips. Head feels heavy. Finding it easier to keep my attention on my breath as thoughts become less intrusive.
T-00:25:00: the drumming track comes to a close with a series of bells. I open my eyes and take the mimosa tea (note here I have split the mimosa into two equal doses—the backup dose is waiting in case I either decide to go deeper, or purge too soon), stir it up with a chopstick, hold my nose and take it down in two quick swallows. I taste more egg than anything else, but quickly just try and forget about that. At the tail end of the tea I get a nice clump of mimosa sludge on my tongue. With a grimace I knock it back. Chase it with a few sips of ginger tea, and two pieces of white bread. Return my attention to meditating as the next track comes up, sounds of the rainforest.
T-00:40:00: about fifteen minutes after drinking the mimosa, I am aware of dramatic body temperature fluctuations. One moment a heat is rising up from the center of my chest to the crown of my head, and then it breaks, and I feel myself cool off considerably. Then back up, then down. This is the first real signal to me that something is happening.
T-45:00: first CEV. It begins as little more than a phosphorescent squiggle on the periphery of the darkness behind my eyelids. A funny little electric noodle doing flips and vibrating—it sheds slight little resonate traces of itself at its edges. My head is feeling quite heavy, and I want to lie down on the carpet. But I remember reading somewhere that meeting this spirit on your back suggests weakness, fear, and can cause subsequent difficulties. So I remain upright, but position a pillow on the couch behind me so my head can rest back.
T-1:00:00: CEV’s have picked up. More electric noodles are now squiggling about, and their resonating tracers meet each other from across the gaps between them. When they meet, a kind of stacking, or compiling together occurs, and here new forms are created. I consciously try to direct their activity with my thoughts to see to what degree there is a relationship, but these new images are quickly becoming more and more complex and it’s clear my ego is not really playing much of a role here, which reminds me to loosen my hold on it.
T-1:15:00: The CEVS have grown more intricate, interactive, and purposeful as I can now see machine like creations arising from their interplay. To attempt to adequately describe these things is futile. The best I can do is note they are all kinds of shifting colors, tubes, clean mechanical edges, engine-like designs that pulse and swell and pipe out glittery speckled something or other (cosmic gene swarms?!?) into the darkness. There is now an auditory component as well: a steady bzzzzzzzzzzz begins to surface from inside my head, and it feels as though my face has been hooked up to an electric current. Accompanying this buzzing is steadily building cacophony of whistles, bomps, beeps, hissing, and clinks that are clearly associated with the ongoing creation of these machine-like things.
*note: I remember thinking around this point how this is in some ways familiar to the DMT space, though far more gentle (relatively, of course) and drawn out.
I have a simple thought at this time, that I always have the option of downing the backup dose of mimosa that is on the table beside me. As soon as I think this I imagine the taste of the egg, and right then and there I know I need to purge. I grab the hurl bucket and let it all come out.
I have to say: La Purga was AMAZING! My stomach hurled forth its contents with a relaxed, even heave. As it started, the CEVS suddenly morphed together to form the face of what I can only call an intergalactic panther, for it was the face of a majestic cat made out of galaxies. It opened its giant mouth, teeth and all, to receive my purge, and my closed eye view rested calmly in its own benign gaze. It reached out a paw and placed it on my shoulder (I felt this weight undoubtedly). As I continued to hurl the panther spoke, and I was awestruck to recognize its voice instantly as that of my father. And he said: “This is good. This is good for you, there you go. This is good for your body. Good job, Ace…” The reassuring quality of his tone was also familiar, and as I vomited I was shown slides of memories as clear as day of being a young boy getting sick at the toilet, and my dad rubbing my back and comforting me.
“Back then and Here Now are the same thing, see?” the panther (not my dad anymore) told me. And this was not so much said in words, but conveyed as a telepathic sort of understanding. The words I’ve used are my best translation of it.
(*note: this was the first of many “pun moments” throughout the experience, but the only one I’m mentioning in this report. Generally what I mean by “pun moment” is I would be shown something, and then understand how this vision/event/memory/what have you, is simultaneously multiple other visions/events/memories/what have you—that it is the same energy thread, or something, and only the illusory nature of the content is what varies.)
T-1:20:00: The purging was over. I spit out a few remnants, put the bucket to the side and opened my eyes. The dark room appeared much as it had been, it seemed only behind my eyes were there any visuals. I felt utterly fantastic now that I’d hurled, and again contemplated taking the backup dose. I closed my eyes and allowed this notion to just kind of float there. Again, there was this telepathic conveyance that was delivered to me, not in words but in an immediate understanding. Here is my best translation of it into words:
“You go to excess in many different parts of your life. This has gotten you into trouble before. If you abstain from another dose, I will take you on a gentle ride. If you take the dose you may see more of what you want to see, but I cannot promise it will be easy.”
Again, my words. What it actually was an immediate telepathic understanding that had a visual component as well—the visual component was like a frenetic unraveling of layer upon layer of events (past and I even think future) of my making choices on the side of excess.
I decided to forgo the dose, telling myself there will be another time to go deeper. I felt immediately gratified by this choice, and proceeded then to lay down on the carpet, pulling a warm blanket over me and shutting my eyes. A vision of a single street lamp shining defiantly against an oppressive dark fog flashed before me –I was the lamp, my choice to abstain from another dose was the lamp, good choices are the lamp, listening to your intuition is the lamp….
(note: the lamp as representative of good choices was first presented to me the first time I ever tripped, when I was 18 and took acid in college.)
T-1:20:00 to 2:20:00: the next hour was spent on what I will call the Ancient River Ride Through Time. I lay on my back floating down Time’s River, the spirit of the medicine guiding me as the Icaros began somewhere high above me. The rhythmic chanting of the shaman was a conversation with Nature Herself, and called forth endless imagery of jungle, pulsating purple vines, cawing canopy birds, lizards slithering beneath, and everywhere the heavy hot dripping of water back into its many sources. I could taste the ancientness of what I was experiencing, while also grasping that this was much the future as it was the past. Nature simply was.
It’s hard at this point to continue in any kind of linear way, so here are notable recollections:
While on the river, I would glance my attention off to the side and see amazing constructions of temples. Multicolored electric neon infra/extra structures, self-generating into Mayan-styled monuments. The material used was made up of an ancient language, syntax itself, perhaps, that buzzed and beaconed out towards me. I had visions that seemed to imply that humans were headed towards a realized state of pure imaginative existence, where we can create/imagine/revisit whichever reality we choose. I suddenly found myself at the center of one of these structures, and it built itself up around me at a dizzying pace. Suddenly I was on a large veranda attached to the building. The sky around me was adorned with floating waterfalls amidst islands of impossible flora and fauna. The sound trickling water was everywhere, and I saw the veranda I was in was in fact a garden. My two year old daughter came traipsing from behind some trees, dressed in a soft brown dress, and thin green strands of grass weaved throughout her hair. My wife was suddenly beside me—we were both gray and elderly, but beautiful and happy watching our daughter play.
I want to be right here forever, I thought. But eventually I was back on the river ride.
Other notes: I was shown the people in my life I owed apologies to. I saw a fair amount of unfinished business and I made a promise to address it all.
Man, there was so much more. Eventually the CVE’s diminished and I got some of my body strength back. I thought it was “over” and actually walked into the kitchen and turned on the light….Heyooooo! Nope! All of reality was bendable and indeed bending!! The borderlines of my body were emanating these wavy ribbon-like auras, the color of oil slicks in the sun that wobbled with every move I made. I pulled the blanket around myself and managed to get out on my porch for a cigarette in the cold night air. It felt marvelous and I just smoked in awe for a while.
It’s been winter for so long. I said out loud: “The winter that won’t let go.” Then I said almost immediately after: “Let go when you’re ready.”
I repeated it to myself several times. “Let go when you’re ready.” It seemed infinitely applicable. Another one of those multilayered puns.
The last hour consisted of me showering and going to sleep. I read over this report and it hardly touches the actual experience. As glowing as it was, I’m also quite aware I had a “mild” experience. That’s fine by me for starters. The next time we’ll take the river a little deeper.
"We're all in this together, by ourselves." --Lily Tomlin