"You really only ever need one ticket for the Muppet Show"
Substances:
Cactus tea - multiple small doses from t-24hrs; 125mL being an effective dose
1P-ETH-LAD - 1x100ug; followed by 1x100ug @ t+1hr, approximately
1 hash brownie; 5mL cannabis tincture in 1x125mL glass wine
The scenario was a weekend "retreat" (AKA party) with a group of professionals and myself. While it would be useful to comment on the preceding experience with the cactus tea - delightful as it was - this report is focussed on the following evening where the LSD analogue 1-P-ETH-LAD and to a not a insignificant extent oral cannabis played the major role.
My mood and state of health were excellent.
Although some aspects of the experience could lead one to think that it ought to be filed under the category "Train wrecks", overall (for me at least) the benefits have far outweighed the negatives. Thanks to the carefully chosen positive setting I have been left with a lasting sense of being loved and cared-for, as well as enhanced confidence in my powers of self-healing. (It would nevertheless be useful to hear the view of another person involved who - psychologically - had a more difficult experience.)
Since - at the time of writing this report - the experience occurred more than two weeks ago, details and timings are already becoming somewhat hazy in the memory. In a way, this helps the most important details to shine through so the reader should be spared too much of a wall-of-text.
So, sometime between 6 and 7 pm I ingested a blotter of the aforementioned LSD analogue - my first "ticket to the Muppet Show" - so named because of where for a time they had been placed for safekeeping. IIRC, this was shortly before a sumptuous dinner. By the time we had finished eating, the effects were becoming apparent as I struggled to capture the last of my carrots with a fork. Typically for me and lysergamides, this entailed humour and ridiculousness being cranked up 1000% and more. Wordplay and surreal scenarios become the order of the day.
Things were pretty fluffy, visuals were light and gentle and my overall mood was very buoyant. At this point, a fateful dessert was brought round - as you may guess: the hash brownies. "They're not very strong," said 'B'. Foolishly, I believed him and thus decided, in order to be really sure of the effect, I would take in addition a teaspoon of a herbal cannabis tincture I had with me. Normally, two teaspoons of this tincture produce a nice, strong but manageable effect - so, hey, one teaspoon and a 'weak' hash cake should be fine, right?
Yes, somehow I failed to figure in the fact that I'd been drinking cactus tea for 24 hours as well as having had a tab of research chemical of, for me, uncertain pharmacodynamics. But! That wasn't all - not content with ignoring the rulebook of good harm reduction practice, it was time for me to start using its pages as toilet paper.
At this point, I bring your attention to the title of the report. Maybe you can infer what happened next. Here I will point out the very important harm reduction rule that was broken: "Do not redose while already high." Somehow in my enthusiasm I had forgotten this important maxim and instead thought, "If one tab is this good, another one should be at least twice as good! GIVE ME MORE!"
I was only too happy to oblige myself with a second ticket to the Muppet Show. [This was also the point at which 'R', my unfortunate victim/tripping companion became swept along in my enthusiasm. "You seem to be having a good time, so why not?" - this statement he came at some point to regret, at least for a time.]
[
EDIT: 'R' actually thanked me for this the next time I saw him. It turns out this was exactly the kind of reboot he'd been needing at the time ]
Predictably for me, things continued to ramp up. My humorous quips degenerated into insane gibberish and manic laughter. Visuals increased such that it became hard to recognise my surroundings. The music that was playing, while sounding utterly magnificent, started to contribute to my sensory overload. I thought to myself, "This is getting really intense!"
As I stood up from where I was seated the OEV's of tiled rainbow fans swarmed together into an almighty climax. I just had time to mutter to 'P' who stood next to me, "I think I've overloaded my system!" before it became a white-out and I toppled over, striking my head on the edge of a table in the process. In a way this was fortunate as it woke me up enough to prevent myself from striking my head on the far harder tiled floor instead...
I came round promptly, already cradled in the arms of 'E', who, frankly, was an absolute gem in this moment. His calm approach helped prevent inducing a panic reaction which could have been disastrous. "Are you OK? Do you think you bumped your head?" he asked.
I knew I'd managed to avoid hitting my head on the floor so I replied, "I'm OK, I'm just tripping really hard. I don't think I hit my head..."
'E', ever so calmly, continued, "I think you may have hit your head when you fell over. What do you think?"
After continuing this exchange for perhaps a minute or two the preceding moments came back to me and I eventually recalled how I had smacked my head on the table. Quite fortunately a chair had also broken my fall so I must have been aware enough to have notice this before finally coming to a rest on the floor.
Upon acknowledging the situation it was clear to me that I should attend to this potentially serious head injury in some manner, so I asked for someone to bring me some ice and a towel. In my heavily altered state, I could feel the bones on the back of my skull to be splintered like the hull of a fibreglass boat. I started to notice there was indeed pain and swelling at the site of impact.
In reality, given the lack of blood pouring out anywhere, it seems most likely that I had only sustained a slight bump to the rear left of my head. I was completely relaxed as my head struck the table and this helped to prevent a more severe injury. At the time, however, I could feel the splintered plate at the back of my skull and proceeded to coax it gently back together with the improvised ice-pack.
I was visualising how the energy of the impact had dispersed through my skull on a molecular level and the protein matrix of my bone had come apart somewhat like a burst zip-fastener. Working my way in from the edges, I gently eased these molecular structures back together and the energy given off as they returned to their stable crystalline forms was absorbed by the ice. This was clearly some kind of lysergamide-induced bonesetting magic
At some point 'E' came by and informed me of how much of a hard time 'R' was having. "How long will this last?" he asked me. "I'm holding you personally responsible for him until this wears off." I was aghast. I was in no state to look after anyone except myself, at least until I was sure I hadn't sustained concussion or intracerebral bleeding.
"'R' found it all too intense to deal with and had to take some valium and lie down." The horror multiplied. 'R' had also had a (thankfully small) amount of cactus brew, and a bit of a herbal potion that's good at perking up serotonergic psychedelics. I thought how this could affect the metabolism of something like valium and how what might be a normal dose could become far stronger. How that could lead to medical intervention, ambulance personnel and a host of other terrible worst-case scenarios.
"It'll be eight to twelve hours at the most, but he should be fine within about four hours," I replied. "I'm so, so sorry, I've been a complete idiot!" Other members of the party, such as 'K', continued to look after me with great kindness (thanks, MDMA!) to ensure that I was not encountering any delayed symptoms from the head injury.
At my request, 'E' and I went to see how 'R' was doing. With a small retinue of doting women, he appeared to be absolutely fine albeit thoroughly prostrated; I was nonetheless deeply apologetic and, seeing as we could add very little to the situation, 'E' and I were promptly dispatched from the room.
By this time my head was no longer hurting and there was no bump. Whatever I had been doing with the ice appeared to have done the trick. Someone then mentioned how 'R' and I weren't the only casualties. Several other members of the party had been utterly immobilised by the hash cakes. Slowly it dawned on us that the train wreck was not solely my fault and had in fact been a team effort.
I had merely had a case of cannabis-enhanced postural hypotension and fainted. 'R' probably would have coped with the trip just fine had he not eaten the supposedly weak but in reality fairly incapacitating hash brownie. Thinking about it, they didn't taste that weak when we ate them. We were all old enough and experienced enough to know better but somehow we forgot that we're not bullet-proof. And I still have a dent in my head...
βThere is a way of manipulating matter and energy so as to produce what modern scientists call 'a field of force'. The field acts on the observer and puts him in a privileged position vis-à-vis the universe. From this position he has access to the realities which are ordinarily hidden from us by time and space, matter and energy. This is what we call the Great Work."
β Jacques Bergier, quoting Fulcanelli