Introductions
So I’ve been lurking/reading/researching this forum for probably the last 3 years and recently finished my questionnaire after procrastinating for 3+ months. But recently I have moved from a very experiential relationship with substances, to a more experimental and generally more productive relationship with psychedelics. I feel that that has led me to want to be a more active member of the nexus. So here is a little about myself.
I’m fairly young (early 20’s), I’ve been using pretty much any substance I could get ahold of for most of my life. This has led to some of both the most awesome/fun/exciting experiences of my life and the worst/most miserable experiences of my life. I’ve personally struggled with alcoholism and mild opiate addictions for a few years. But I dabbled in psychedelics and started to fall in love with mushrooms. That all sounds kind of like a sob story, but that period of my life only lasted a few years and I learned a lot, so overall things could have been worse. After talking to one of my life long friends and mentors (mainly with psychedelic substances). He recommended that if I wanted to start a real a relationship with psychedelics the next step would be to do a solo mushroom trip with a fairly heavy dose for me at the time (4.5-5g). He offered to let me use a room in his house where I would be left alone and welcome to smoke cigarettes and weed as I felt called, he stayed at the house, but didn’t disturb me.
That night to this day is still one of the top 5 heaviest experiences of my life, but also was a huge turning point where I both faced and removed parts of myself that I hated or wanted to ignore, and finally made an active choice to stop hurting myself and the people around (which really are the same thing) intentionally or by doing things flippantly. After that I faded off of the opiates slowly, and have continued to create a less addictive relationship with alcohol (I still get a little out of hand occasionally).
About a year after that I was offered DMT, and after talking to my friend that I mentioned previously, I felt that there was no time but the present. I broke through on my first dose, which in retrospect is maybe not the way I would want to do it now. But that experience only confirmed the revelations that I had had through my other heavy dosage trips. After passing through the portal/mandala I met an entity, I couldn’t speak, or was too terrified to try, but she danced and smiled at me, and offered me a box. I didn’t open the box but either way, I saw there that everything was me, and vice versa, and so many other things that would make this long ass essay even longer. I’ve smoked twice since then, but haven’t pushed through again, although I’m considering trying a fourth time soon.
I’ve come to a point where there is very little left on this earth for me to try (substance wise), and combining my human experiences with the knowledge that I’m trying to collect as quickly possible, I feel like it’s my duty to help people that refuse to take “Just don’t do it” as an answer in relation to substances, with credible information on how to do these things safely. It would have made parts of my life so much better if someone would have told me not to smoke .5g of 15x salvia in one hit, I’m so thankful for this website for just that reason, and pass it on to as many people as I can find.
I also love chemistry, it was the only course I payed attention to during school. I love learning about WHY things do the things they do, whether it’s in your brain or in a reaction, for the obvious reasons psychedelics are insanely interesting to me, and have been a driving force behind me learning more about chem and bio in general. I plan to start trying to extract myself soon, and obviously have used the nexus for a wealth of information on that.
So long story short, I want to learn and experience as much as I can in my short human life, and pass that on, so that people don’t have to make as many painful mistakes with this stuff that I have.
Thanks for reading!!
-Paulo