(EDIT: I apologize for being a dick here. I was butthurt that I had to take the time posting instead of my thread, but then I started having fun telling a story)
Hello, Nexus. So I registered a while ago, but my practical need to post on the site wasn't quite enough the motivation to write my intro essay. Well I've now come across a legitimate reason to start a thread, but I can't exactly post in the appropriate section, so I am forced to come to the intro essay section instead. I've no problem with introductions, but I must say I don't like the idea of incentive coming from a desire to participate in a free exchange of knowledge. Anyhow...
I haven't been using psychedelics for very long, but I am also likely younger than a lot of members. I was around many psychoactive drugs and had seen them in use since early life. I was always drawn to them in some manner. As I aged I believe I also developed many escapist-type psychological coping mechanisms. My ADHD-primary inattentive and crappy social skills that became apparent later on I think made me more of a daydreamer or introverted escapist. I longed for the days when the imaginary worlds my friends and I would play within felt more real than anything.
One of my first psychedelic experiences outside of the psychedelia of childhood and the spontaneous peak experience (to which I am very emotionally susceptible) was from music. A gorgeous song from Moby's first album produced dreamy blue visions for a short while. Music is important to me because it seems to line up my brain to be receptive to experience. I crave experience, but have a hard time living in the now. This could be chalked up to a lack of dopamine in the brain, but I think this is the basis of my love for music and of psychedelics. I think when my brain or perhaps anybody's brain is calm, there is a tendency toward psychedelia. Not in the manner of sensory deprivation-induced calm, but something different. The calm of a focused mind.
My first psych was DMT. When I first got my license, I picked up a long-time friend whom I hadn't seen in a while because he was going to get me weed. I drove my truck without the direction of another licensed driver for the first time to a random weed dealer's house, and nearly crashed on the way. My friend walks back out of the guy's house and tells me he is also selling DMT. DMT is the psych I had the strongest curiosity for at this point, and my buddy was literally just talking it up before this. Of course I got some (the guy was selling buy one dose, get one free
![Wut?](/forum/images/emoticons/getlost.png)
), and thus my first experience was as breathtaking as could be. I was quite hooked.
Now DMT proved hard to procure after this, but summertime was fast approaching, and apparently my buddy knew all about shroom-hunting. Shrooms were magical to me, and I overcame my fear of being arrested for trespassing many times that summer searching for cubensis. Now fast forward a few years and my fiance and I work with all kinds of psychedelics because we believe they are the best therapeutic substances around. They allow for a sort of cognitive behavioral therapy while putting one in touch with "the truth", or "the divine", or the beauty of the moment. They can show you how to find bliss in everyday life, if your coping mechanisms have been so screwed up like mine have, or even if they haven't been. They show the complexity of consciousness and what we are capable of experiencing while still physically alive.
And so, to close--may I post a thread regarding my current bufotenine extraction? I'm experimenting with reducing the (hypothetical) N-oxide to freebase, but it always seems to re-oxidize in solution when evapping or basing.