I wanted to say hello to the members of this forum. I've been reading this forum for years, but never needed to really interact before. After deciding to finally do something with the mimosa I got about a year ago, I signed up last month in case I needed to ask any last minute questions. Turns out I did okay!
I wanted to write an experience report, but turns out you have to say hello first.
I'm almost 30 and I first tried psychedelics when I was 18, really getting into them over the next 2 years. My first Phish show (ironically 9/11/2000, one year before) really opened my eyes to where the mind can go. I became less interested in school, though I stuck with it. LSD, mushrooms, K, nitrous, marijuana, MDMA, coke... pretty much anything I could find. I was living in fraternity with a lot of similarly minded people, so the environment was very supportive. Pretty soon I discovered I didn't like the narcotic drugs like cocaine, but marijuana, LSD, and mushrooms really worked with my mind. When I was 21, my roommate at the time returned from a festival with DMT, which at that point I heard described as "500 times as strong as acid but really short." Erowid was pretty new back then and I wasn't yet in the habit of obsessively researching compounds before I try them. So I just went for it. Went to the bathroom, put the song David Bowie by Phish on, and my favorite sweatshirt. I laid on the couch as my roommate held the bowl while I took three great big hits. If you know the song, there is a hi-hat intro which is super uniform, and immediately the sound began to waver, as if the transfer function of my ear was being altered (if you know what a transfer function is), and I heard the ripping sounds, and it felt tight for a moment, and then I broke into this place of wonderfully geometric and fractal moving soupy visuals. I waved my hand in front of my eyes, and saw many copies of it, like the weird mouse setting in windows.
Anyway, a lot more happened during the trip which is unimportant, but when I came down I was still higher that I had ever been, and my life has not been the same since. My focus had been permanently changed from wanting to do computer work/engineering (objective reality) to metaphysics and spirituality (subjective reality). I mean, you do what you have to to get paid, but we all know what our inner focus is, and mine was changed that day. It would be years until I tried DMT again. I've tried the orange stuff (never had white) and tried a mimosa drink straight-up (nothing added), and it worked! It's similar (yet different) when you drink it, though at the peak, I think it would be hard to tell.
In 2007, I attended the Mindstates conference in Costa Rica (anybody else attend?) and was able to meet Shulgin, and I have a picture to prove it, though I won't post it for privacy reasons. It's bad-ass though; I am standing between Sasha and Ann, and it's just a great memory. The first day of the conference, everyone was finally there and we were all getting drinks. Well I arrived a little later, and when I got my drink, there was no place to sit, except for the one open seat next Sasha. I walked over and asked if the seat was taken. He replied "No," I sat down, and we began an hour long talk about everything except drugs. It was refreshing, because normally that's probably all he get's asked about, being who he is. I was able to meet Jonathan Ott, too! My goodness, when that guy lectures, EVERY sentence is FULL of new facts that you've never heard before, and its kind of draining, but awesome and mentally invigorating at the same time. The last day of the conference was Sasha's 83rd birthday day party, and I took LSD and was able to listen to him lecture on the history and future of psychedelics. Once in a lifetime experience. Afterwords near the bar, people were able to stand up and thank him for his service, or say whatever they wanted. My mind = blown. It's rumored that his hair stands on end when he is dosed, and his hair was standing on end! So we were both in somewhat the same space. Totally wild 6 day trip. Saw my first volcano, zip-lining, this weirdo rodeo, and lots of conversations with lots of interesting people. I also met a billionaire! Weird shit.
So, we come to this last weekend. I brought my results from the mimosa work with me to the 10/22/2010, Providence, RI Phish show. I dosed on a hit of LSD before I got there, and during the second set, with a fantastic open view of the band, I took a couple nice hits of my end product, and I am still trying to put it into words. I never left the room (spiritually), so maybe it wasn't as intense as it could have been, but everything turned into great big bright colors and seemed to transform on themselves; kind of dribble on themselves as McKenna put it once: the band, the lights, the crowd... all pouring in on themselves. What I found really strange was the significance of this experience. It wasn't anything to write home about visually, compared to my earlier experiences, but it had a feeling of *deep* mysticism. I was formally Catholic, not by choice, and now I believe in a kind of universal animating superconscious energy, that which animates all life. So the word God for me does not imply an anthropomorphic idea. Yet, at the peak of the song (Suzy Greenberg), all I could say to myself (in my mind) was "Thank you God", over and over and over again, and I was deeply reverent for the rest of the show. I'm not sure I want to try to put this experience into words; I am still humbled by what happened.
I will leave this introduction with my favorite psychedelics quote. It deeply reminds me of my first DMT experience and how it altered the path of my life. I used this same quote to introduce myself at the Mindstates conference, so it is significant to me: Tim Leary said
"It has been five years since that first LSD trip with Michael Hollingshead. I have never forgotten it. Nor has it been possible for me to return to the life I had been leading before that session. I have never recovered from that shattering ontological confrontation. I have never been able to take myself, my mind, and the social world around me as seriously. Since that time five years ago, I have been acutely aware of the fact that everything I perceive, everything within and around me is a creation of my own consciousness."Thanks everyone,
highpriestx