Hi, all.
I've been lurking on the Nexus for about 18 months on and off and I thought I'd introduce myself.
I've almost always been interested in trying to understand what's going on around me: trying to figure out what this thing called "reality" is and who or what "we" are. Partly this has meant studying formal, academic subjects like economics, physics, history and so on. But this has also meant gathering first-hand information by talking with anyone about anything or exploring my consciousness.
So: consciousness exploration. I've been working on meditating recently and found "vanilla", just-practice-being-aware meditation to be very useful for being a happier, nicer person.
I've also tried inducing lucid dreams and OBEs. Unfortunately, my experimentation with OBEs led me to either hallucinate while sober and awake (if you prefer a strictly materialist worldview) or somehow caught the attention of non-human, intelligent entities that intrusively manifested in our cozy, normal consensus reality (if you believe in spirits and variations thereof). Those experiences, even though they lasted for maybe 5 seconds in total, were distressing enough that I've stopped experimenting with OBEs.
That leaves us with chemicals. I'm terrified of the police and government where I live, so I don't do anything illegal. But I've had a few experiences with Sally: nothing life-changing, just small, pleasant trips. I might visit her again, but otherwise I'm trying to not do psychedelics since I'm pretty sure that I have a weapons-grade predisposition toward mental illness. In the past, I've had problems with disorganized thinking, mood swings, depersonalization, mild paranoia and, the bestest of them all, severe clinical depression. Those, combined with my OBE-related hallucinations, have led me to believe I have a very fragile mind. But don't worry about me. I've taken really good care of myself and I'm feeling waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better now. Just amazing, really.
Anyway: so it's pretty unlikely I'll contribute any trip reports, but I like reading about your guys' or gals' adventures and I wanted to say "howdy".