I’ve been lurking here for months as a non-member. Initially researching teks—but quickly discovering there is so much more!

What you all have created here together is so enormously precious… and rare. The level of authentic dialogue, respect, open-mindedness, questioning, caring, and love you all put into this place is like nowhere else on the web. Really, like very few places I’ve ever been in the outside world as well. And for the Nexus to have persisted, grown, and evolved as it has for so many years is testament to the spirit and commitment of you, its denizens.

A very special thanks to Traveler and all the mods for holding and maintaining this space for us. It is a gift beyond measure. This Community. I just love the diversity of thought and the personalities present in the Nexus. Light or heavy—you bring it with grace and style. I feel I have found a home! And I so look forward to getting to know you all.

But you probably want to know more about me…

I’ve been intimately involved with entheogens for over 20-years. Lots of pot, LSD, MDMA, mushrooms and raving in the early 90’s. Mostly very intentionally (although at times recklessly in my younger years). I read as many books as I could on the subject: Hoffman, Leary, Alpert, Shulgin, McKenna, DM Turner, Psychedelic Illuminations Magazine, and so many others. I remember when the internet first really got going, spending many hours chatting in alt.drugs.psychedelics. What a refuge that was!

An astonishing impact of my early use of LSD was a day my sister asked me get up and do my dishes. Normally I would have said something like, “do them yourself, b!@$.” But that day, I enthusiastically said, “no problem, sorry I left them there.” In that very moment, we were both quite surprised by my uncharacteristic response. And I immediately recognized the transformative power of these chemicals.

But at the heart of my interest, was that I wanted to know what it was really ALL about. Increasingly unsatisfied with the answers provided by society and the religion I was brought up with, I gave it up, determined to push my mind to its limits, explore the edges—go over them if necessary to find the truth. And over the edges I went!

After a series of “bad” trips that really shook my foundations, I came to discover yoga—not even really knowing what it was at first. But I found it would become an integral part of my path. I’ve been a student of Iyengar Yoga for 20-years now. And I’ve never had a bad trip since. And I must say, yoga and entheogens are spectacularly synergistic. In fact, it was the Mushroom that first taught me how to do a headstand.

I continued to explore many spiritual and philosophical systems on my journeys (and still do). Taoism, Zen, Shamanism, Phenomenology, Art, Music, Dance, and myriad self-development programs have all had a profound influence on my world view. Recently, I’ve been keenly interested in Advaita, which I’m glad to see has an active thread here on the forums.

So more to the point of this site, tryptamines have long held a place near and dear to me. First through mushrooms, then onto copious amounts of 5-MeO-DMT. Those were the days when it was still legal! I was so absolutely fascinated by this substance. I used it every which way I could trying to bring something back from this most extraordinary experience. Over time, what I found was that my most profound trips where those where I just let my body and mind be completely still.

Some time later, in the middle of a 50-day juice fast, I was over at my friends’ house and casually decided to clear my 5-Meo pipe. I had been sharing it with many people recently—who evidently hadn’t near the proficiency as I did in vaping. Well, as I saw the enormous cloud escaping from my mouth, I knew I was in for a doozy!

I had no recollection of what happened over the next hour and a half. (Even the peak of very strong 5-MeO trips rarely last more than 15-minutes.) My friends recounted me thrashing about violently throughout the entire downstairs of their house, banging myself against any object in my path, smashing my face into floor grates, speaking mad gibberish with the occasional “GALAXY!… GALAXY!” spoken in complete wonderment. It took three grown men to hold me down at times to keep me from very seriously harming myself. They say I exhibited a superhuman strength. Luckily, they’d been with me through many an ordeal and had their wits about them in handling the situation.

Continuing, I began to start doing spontaneous, intense, pranayama-like breathing and rhythmic arm and body motions. This is when I began to regain the inklings of awareness. Seeing my friends standing all around me, yet not knowing them to be separate from me, I just experienced this profound love. I then closed my eyes and assumed a meditative posture—as the rhythmic breathing and arm motions gradually became calmer and calmer. And then, I was at rest. At complete REST. Back home in eternal peace. No thought or motion, yet completely present and aware. I sat there in GOD (or whatever you want to call it!) for another ten minutes or so. It took me another three hours to feel somewhat baseline.

In spite of the deep black and purple bruises and scrapes over every part of my body, I felt a kind of serenity I’d never known before. I still can’t explain it, but it completely changed my view of Life, the Universe, and Everything. It’s given me an unshakable confidence in the the way things are that continues to this day (this was about 15-years ago). It also showed me the power and depth of what is possible through meditation.

In the years between now and then, entheogens have always been an important part of my life—sometimes often and sometimes with great periods of time in-between. I’ve brewed my own Ayahuasca many times. But it has only been relatively recently that I’ve had the fortune to experience the mystery of freebase NN-DMT. And now, thanks to the teks on the Nexus, I’m in the process of extracting this wonder of worldly sacraments.

I’ve also gone on to study agriculture, sustainability, permaculture, self-organization, process-improvement, project management, and many other things. What you should know about me is that I have an undying commitment to a world that works for everyone, with no-one left out. A sustainable celebration of life.

To this end, I have been slowly cultivating myself to be the kind of person who can (in collaboration with others—including plants and fungi) pull this off.

The past several years I’ve immersed myself in a professional, mainstream career (so I take privacy and security issues very seriously here). I’m an inside person now… “Infiltrating and taking over.” Yet it is not my intent to fight or resist anything. Everybody has to win this game. My goal is to rearrange the pieces of the puzzle of organizational processes such that they produce different, positive outcomes for all involved.

But as you can imagine, working on the inside can be grueling and take its toll. And neither have I developed myself to truly take on the task that lies ahead. Furthermore, I find myself living in a kind of social isolation with no close friends in the city I live in. Just me, my cats, and the messy hermitage I call my house.

So it is that I seek the help of DMT, and now this community. My desire is not to escape the chaos of this world, but to live more fully in it. I want to get my life in order… really in order (clean house and everything!).

I know this has been quite a long introductory post. I want you to know that I am “all-in” here at the Nexus. You occur to me as the kind of folks that I’ve always longed to encounter. And I wanted you to have a good sense of where I’m coming from. I promise my regular postings will be more succinct!

I’m glad to have found you. I am eager to contribute. And again, I express my gratitude for this place. My dream is that one day, we may all come HOME together.

In Peace,
rootsie

Very well written intro; I enjoyed reading that.

Welcome to the Nexus.

I agree, great intro Welcome to the nexus

I look forward to hopefully hearing some more 5meo tales, that molecule interests me very much mostly just from reading James Orocs Tryptamine Palace. Glad to have you here

Thank you for the warm welcome, Tattvamasi and Bdevall!


There are many tales I could tell of 5-MeO... and will. One of the activities I most enjoyed was using smaller amounts as a meditation aid. Also, larger amounts by a babbling brook deep in the woods.

It's the first I've heard of Tryptamine Palace. I may have to pick that one up. Was there anything in particular that stood out or impressed you the most?

We're all family here!
Appreciate you taking your time to type that,
It gives a good insight. I can relate myself with similar interest.
I hope you find everything you seek here and in your journeys.

Welcome to the Nexus