Hey there!
So I started poking around on this site back in the Spring and all I can say is - KUDOS!
I have a long history of forum viewing/lurking, for many years I frequented many forums of live music and arts, festivals etc... I am well versed in forum etiquette and sorely dislike trolls. You guys do a great job policing this place and gotta admit the questionnaire and rules in place are next level.
So... where do I begin? I started reading TEK after TEK, educating myself and learning all of the ins/outs of extraction and finally decided one day to start gathering supplies and found a vendor and next thing you know, I was neck deep in my first extraction, which went extremely well... mind blowing.
There's really nothing like that first time you load up something you extracted and test it out and blast off!
I've done 5-6 extractions over the past couple months, some good and some not so good... I think a lot of it depends on temperatures and bark quality needless to say, but overall I am very happy with my results.
One of the coolest things I've recently experienced was smoking some changa I made with 10x caapi leaf and some ORANGE JUNGLE SPICE GOO that I extracted from some mimosa soup with Toluene...
I took the big glob of goo I scraped from the dish, dissolved it into some vodka along with a little bit of normal spice and then spread it over a small amount of 10x caapi leaf, let it evap with a small fan blowing on it for about 24 hours and set it aside for about a month in a jar. I loaded it up the other night and suddenly my ENTIRE vaulted ceiling in my living room turned into the most vivid and brilliant orange/blue/purple swirling vortex of faces, patterns and diagrams... it was ABSOLUTELY STUNNING. All I could do was muster a slight chuckle and lay back and watch it unfold around me like a portal to another DIMENSION. I have smoked a lot of spice in the past year but NOTHING has ever compared or come close to this... just fantastic. (Note: I had taken about a gram of mushrooms a few hours earlier for a show I went to with minimal effects, but I'm sure it helped open some mental doorways) I tried it again last night and it was very similar but way more greenish yellow/purple and not quite as vivid swirling colors, but still very much a swirling vortex.
Mainly though - I like to make my changa 2:1 so it's not too strong and smoke a few bowls. The mixes I have made result in an amazing body high which immediately makes me feel the need to stretch out. Any stress or anxiety I am feeling from life will melt away and I have a very meditative state that comes over my entire being ... allowing me to process the day and unwind. I have begun to think of the spice as healing vs. a way to "detach" or "trip out"... which I think it's teaching me to do...
Either way - I hope to be promoted to a full member at some point, I mainly lurk and learn... and I'm not usually one for starting threads, but there are definitely some threads I've read that I wished I could have responded to...
Thanks and talk to you all soon!