Like sex, your first psychedelic experience could have gone any number of ways, but is probably seared into your memory forever.
What was your first psychedelic experience? Given that we're on a forum of people who have dedicated a serious portion of their lives to psychedelics, I imagine they must have been pretty profound.

For me, my first really psychedelic experience was the second time I smoked cannabis, which I know some people don't consider a psychedelic, but if this case, it was.
I remember sitting around a fire, watching the logs transform into hundreds of different, amazing scenes. The logs and embers became crabs, then battle scenes and all kind of other things.

Finally, I think my giggling started to unnerve my friends, so I lay down, put in some music and proceeded to drop into another dimension. I had incredible closed eye visuals, for the first time in my life: the sounds of the songs were pinwheeling across my eyelids and I was overcome with the most incredible sense of wonder I have ever experienced.

That was the real start of my love affair with mind altering substances.

What about you guys?
Blessings
~ND

That sounds like some serious cannabis. My first was on mushrooms. I was living with a few friends while in college and we all took about an eighth. I remember the first feeling was as if I had put on a motorcycle helmet (this is how I always ended up feeling in the beginning of a trip) and at that moment I was in touch with everything around me. The walls began to breath and the ticking of the clock became a deafening shriek.

I decided to go for a walk, to get away from the clock, with a buddy down the boulevard. Once outside, everything became a cartoon. A 2 demential playground that I got to interact with. It was amazing..... and then I puked. A lot. On my friend. Luckily, he was awesome and we started laughing so hard we were on the ground on the side of the road with puke on us holding on for dear life. After about 15 minutes we finally mustered the strength to stand up and hobble back to the house.

The following shower was exceptional, I felt like I was in there for a day and a half. I finally decided I should probably go lay down, so I threw on a Miyazaki anime flick and settled in under the covers till I fell asleep. Woke up feeling rejuvenated and decided I should probably do laundry.

Thanks for sharing, I hadn't reflected on that one for a while.


S

Just awesome.

My first one was on mushrooms as well. It was in my last year of high school with almost my whole class. It was a beautiful day and we decided to go into the woods. Drank the mushroom thee and played music until the trip started. I retreated in the woods and just lay in the grass thinking. It felt so much like a true rebirth, as if I was a new person. I looked at the grass around me in amazement. I even have pictures of that trip somewhere...

After a while everyone started to look for one another... amazed having the feeling we hadn't seen each other in years.

Surely one of which I have such great memories.

I was 18 years old, and my brother bought me an eighth of shrooms. A love was born. Next came the Carlos Castaneda books, and a lifelong pursuit of inner knowledge that continues to this day (I'll be 33 on December 1st).

Laying in bed at night as a kid. But if we're not counting that sort of thing, then my first was with cannabis. It was easily one of the more reality-shattering experiences I've ever had. Cannabis has always been very intense and psychedelic for me, so going from relative sobriety 24/7 for over a decade to THAT in a matter of minutes is just another kind of mind blowing. After falling to sleep an hour or two later, it was literally like being stuck in hyperspace with no body for an eternity, with my screaming consciousness smeared across it all. When i finally woke up the next day I felt like i'd landed on an alien planet and would never be the same. That experience is still stained into my brain.

Then a few years after that I tried salvia, and mushrooms shortly after.

My frist psychedelic/drug experience was from a low dose of magic mushrooms. I ate them and waited for the come up; but I didn't even know what to expect! I waited for a while and it was just like a massive shift in how I thought. It was a rebirth. I have firgured out that I was an introverted, an unhappy kid from third grade up. I could go a week without talking. In my teens I figured out it was caused by the death of 5 of my family members.

This experience completely changed me immediately. I always hated who I was always scared to be different, but after this I figured life is what you make so you just have to live how u want and not care if others try to affect your life. I changed from being dressed very dark and plain to finding as much colors and flamboyancy dress I could. And for the first time in my life I found a music I really enjoyed and wanted to be able to create, classic rock and the blues! I learned guitar and that alone has changed my life more than I could ever imagine. It was an awe inspiring mental trip for the most part! I am still baffled how one trip changed me so much and has led me to a smarter lifestyle.

I can see how they change people and how powerful these substances are. Used in a right setting can have spectacular and surprising effects on your mind and for me my personality.

The only visual activity that I had on the trip was probably inspired by imagination. I've always had more of an imagination that most vivid dreams that I have every night. But imagination or the psilocybin and psilocin in my mind, I saw an overhead pool light just start twirling and then was spinning so hard I thought it was going to fly off the ceiling. But then it just stopped and turned into a mushroom that sprouted out where the bulb was. I was in the dark listening to led zeppelin which was the perfect setting! I speculate that the massive change came from my brain still developing and trying to find who I was, I was 11 or 12 when I dosed.

By far my most life changing experience that's made me into the nice helpful person I try to be!

Cape Town 1987 - yin yang blotter. Laughed until my gut hurt.

is it bad that I cant remember mine?

I think it was mushrooms, but it could have been acid, I'm not sure.

I didn't have a real "OH MY!!!" moment until DMT turned up though.

My first was mushrooms. After listening to Terrence Mckenna for more than a year I decided to see what all the fuss was about. Went out an picked some beautiful specimens (psilocybe subs) after weeks of shroom hunting. It was funny because I was just about to give up and walk home when I happened to glance at one in a bush Felt like destiny.

Brought home 90 grams fresh and just ate one by one over the period of a few hours until I didn't want anymore. It was incredibly euphoric, my room was melting and there was so much colour...but most of all, I felt the layers of my being fell away until all that was left of me was pure LOVE. It dug me out of my anti-social hole, I was motivated about life and people all over again- I had so much love to give, so little time.

One tab "tie-dye" blotter LSD, 1997.

The magic and mystery of life I once felt as a kid returned to me. Absolutely life-changing.



Castaneda's books and philosophy accelerated my knowledge and integration of many psychedelic/OOBE/lucid dreaming experiences. I'm thankful for knowledge in all it's forms but
The Warriors Path is truly "a path with heart" for me.

My first was also with Cannabis (if we're not counting experiences as a child, as universecannon said)

I was down the street at my friend's house and he had just purchased a bong to smoke some of the weed he bought. I had a small amount of really crappy cocaine and we were snorting that before we toked. I was also on SSRI's at the time.

After the third or fourth toke I started to really trip out. He had a red flood light in his room so everything was rose colored and I had severe tracers. I kept getting the sensation of fainting...like I was going to pass out if I moved my head too fast. Rage Against The Machine was playing and for the first time I started to grasp some of the lyrics.

When I got up to leave I was still feeling like I was going to pass out. I had a five minute walk down the street to my house and the relative safety of my waterbed. I only remember bits and pieces of the walk home. About half way I was hallucinating that the pompom on the top of my toque was a big spike, like those WWI German helmets. I started to hear gun fire and mortars. I quickened my pace

When I got home my stepdad was on the computer which was right by my bedroom. I walked by and he called back, "Hey, can you come help me with this?" I was terrified...why now...oh god. He asked me something really simple and I showed him, then I went and melted into my waterbed. As I was falling asleep I had a full-on OBE. I was watching myself in bed from the top right corner of my bedroom. Switching back and forth between this perspective and being in my body, seemingly at random.

My second experience was four hits of 'Made in Canada' blotters. It was the Fall Fair in the town I live in and we ventured forth to see what we would see. We were absolutely mangled by the time we arrived there, realizing we had to pay to get in, and having no money.

Very nice report Metanoia! I've had similar experiences where when I was younger I had to talk to my father while being higher than a kite haha. Always played it cool though which was lucky.

My first psychedelic experience was with Cannabis. I was 17 and had never consumed any psychoactives before this.

I went over to some random 30 year old guys house after school with six friends because this guy had his own place where we could smoke and relax. This would be my second time consuming cannabis. Nothing happened the first time, which I've been told is normal.

My friends were serious smokers.. like it was some kind of competition to take monster sized hits and then try to keep your composure.

Out of peer pressure I kept LARGE hits out of a two foot bong the creepy guy owned. I can remember on maybe my fourth or fifth toke, as I was milking the entire bong and watching tv my mind froze... I couldn't even finish the hit because everything was kicking into the max...

Out of fear I grabbed my bag and just left.. my friends were like wtf?? I started walking home as fast as I could. People were looking at me as I passed them on the sidewalk because I was highest space monkey you could possibly imagine.

There was a 5 second delay in everything. A flanger effect. I would swallow my saliva and feel nothing.. then 5 seconds later I would feel every muscle in my body contracting and every cell working to swallow my spit. It was the freakiest thing ever for someone with no experience!

There was cops everywhere as I was walking. I finally sat down outside of a church to rest and a cop pulled right up to where I was. So paranoid I thought that someone had called him on me so I got up and went to talk to him. I told him "I'm just waiting for a ride" and we made eye contact LOL. He was like uh, oh.. okay, be safe :]

Got home and went straight to bed.. My dad and sister came to check in on me and I was pretending I was sick. Next day at school I got made fun of so hardcore haha.

Very nice! You weren't scared to take that many mushrooms? I wish I had the courage to just pick up a random number of mushrooms and start eating until I didn't want any haha. Cool to see you had a posative experience!

It was 1994, I had foraged the bounty myself with some friends. Blessed little liberty caps they were. There was four of us, two had experienced mushrooms, two hadn't. The other friend who hadn't experienced mushrooms backed out and baled.

Back to my friends house we went, myself and my two friends who had taken shrooms before. At the time we were kind of into Krishna, so we lit some incense, listened to some Kirtans, then ingested the little blighters.

One of my friends decided that Krishna would not like us getting intoxicated in his holy name, so we swapped the Kirtans for some LTJ Bukem. We tripped quite a while, with music and without, we laughed. We ran up and down the stairs and laughed when we passed each other, because it was just like a thin ladder and there shouldn't be enough space for us to pass each other.

We ventured outside and decided that we weren't walking properly and our legs were flopping making our top half go up and down too much. Then we studied each other and realised we were walking fine.

We marvelled at the scenery and how mystical the place where we lived actually is. Then we saw some fellow humans down the pathway, so decided it was best if we went back into the house. Things in the house swirled and breathed, it was so damn funny.

Peace

Macre

I had a few reasons for doing so...I had no proper method to weigh them/I ate a few shrooms every 30 minutes until I felt comfortable with the dose (stopped eating at around 3 hours in)/and foolishly believe that what happens in life is meant to happen whether it ends up in disaster or not.

I had taken what I thought was acid a couple times but wasn't that strong, and ate mushrooms that had no effect. But my first real experience was amazing...

There was like 6 or so of us. Sitting in living room I cut my shrooms up into little tiny pieces placing them in a bowl. Everyone started eating there's. For the first ten minutes all the commercials on TV were coincidentally very trippy and we all laughed about it. Then someone felt something. I said no way it hasn't been long enough. Then I felt something. I said "let's go outside"!

Took a good 45 minutes after that to hit peak. I was grilling so hard and enjoying every second of it. I had brought a couple milk jugs filled with water and was carrying one around for some reason. I decided I didn't want to so placed it down. My friend kept picking it up handing it to me. Then I would be like "why the hell am I still holding this" and would place it down again.

Each time it would leave my hands feeling wet even though they were dry. We kept making the decision to go back and watch the tool dvd but something would distract us and we would forget.

A friend ended up having a seizure later on due to the fact he hadn't slept in 24hrs,was slightly dehydrated, and started drinking beer.

So he starts to go out, I lunged forward in an attempt to catch him. He hit his head slightly but I managed to get him onto the couch. Then the most amazing thing happened. He was scared and it was difficult for him to talk. He started describing a sensation he would feel that meant he was going to have another seizure. He could tell it was going to happen again.

I talked him through it and told him to focus on my voice. That I would protect him. I would notice he would start to lose focus but was able to direct him out with reassurances.

I held his hand and comforted through the whole ordeal until he was better. I have never felt so in tune with someone before. Somehow knew exactly what to say and do even though I was still frying pretty good.

It was so intense. Many more things happened before the seizure that were amazing too, synchronous experiences, getting mauled by kisses from a dog, a bathroom, ect. But this point of helping a friend in such a connected manner was a life changing experience.

That's a very beautiful experience anrchy, thanks for sharing :]

I got 10 argyreia nervosa seeds. Read that a normal dosage was 8, so to play it safe, I took out 4. I had no idea how psychedelics manifested themselves, I was only smoking cannabis for some years, and I knew that psychedelics are different, but I could never imagine how. Washed them and started crunching and chewing (yup, I know...).

Pupils dilated, muscles clenched, and the vomiting started. First I thought it was because of the husks, but then it carried on for a good 1 hour. After the purge, went straight to bed. Intense muscle twitches, clear vasoconstriction, time dilation, and sounds had a high modulator effect and reverb. Friend got up to check up on me, I found talking very taxing but spoke really fast. If I had a drop of water, I would vomit; if I didn't, I felt dehydrated. Alternated between feeling cold and hot throughout. Heart rate was really slow, found breathing to require my effort to trigger it.

Then I found some enjoyment in this annoying event, when I felt my hands elongating and changing texture to a wooden vine's, into the empty space across me. It was a wonderful feeling, and lasted for quite some time, still, quiet, and made of wood. Then I felt like a snake, a lizard, and back to me again, shivering under the covers.

The most peculiar thing of all, the whole trip left me with an intense aroma, like that of sandalwood, but as if one is inhaling the actual oil of a bark. Very intense. Later on I discovered that smell to be of the detergent that was placed on top of the toilet while I was vomiting..

The whole trip lasted for about 8 hours, with a gradual end to the agony, and sheer appreciation for being alive. I then understood how holistically one is affected with these substances, how unpredictable they can be, and most of all, how cautious one must be when interacting with them.

After a week I met with the Lady and all my fears disappeared.

Wow I think this was around ten years ago now...crazy where the time goes! That summer I had first experienced cannabis with a good friend, and had really enjoyed it, and definitely had some mind expanding and visionary experiences with it. I guess it piqued my curiosity about other psychotropic plants and fungi, or maybe I was always going to seek such things, I'm not sure.

My first proper psychedelic experience was with mushrooms, and it was mostly a disaster, but one that was definitely learnt from. I hadn't long moved to London, and was at uni with my same friend and some other great people. This was during the days when mushrooms were legal to buy fresh all over Camden, and I think we each ingested 20g of cubensis mushrooms on eve. I certainly did not have the foggiest idea really about what I was letting myself in for, and I think the same applies to my friends. Being a country bumpkin, the Big Smoke was a very different environment to what I was used to, and I believe being out in nature is automatically more grounding and stress relieving. We were going out clubbing to Fabric, our first time, and as it happens, my last time. We started to come up before we'd left, my friend remarked he couldn't feel the top of his skull, which I though was odd, and then I felt it too. Not having time to gauge the situation there wasn't really anytime for paranoia to develop and on the tube on the way there we were in fits of giggles, and quite rapidly seem to empty the carriage. Both myself and my friend got this weird thing at the same time we haven't had since then, the 'mirror conspiracy', where out of the corner of your vision there would be a doppelganger reflection of oneself, mirroring you every action, this was very interesting if pretty weird at the time.

The club environment in the bemushroomed state was oppressive. Many, many people sardine canned in, and the music and atmosphere definitely wasn't resonating with my brain at the time. We all got split up, and my friend had a very strong reality bending experience where he was convinced he was walking the streets of Camden while in the club, he never experienced anything like this again. We bumped into someone we had both known from school in the club, which took on surreal overtones at the time. Can't remember going home, and although this experience wasn't exactly a gem, much was learnt about the power of the whole 'set and setting' thing, and following this some very beautiful and amazing. moving experiences were had, so I guess this experience was the real start of a journey I'm still on now, and very grateful indeed to be on.

My first experience with a non-cannabis psychedelic was with a lot of freshly picked psilocibe cyanescens boiled, and in chili. This was the early 1990s.

I'm going to cut and paste and slightly edit from something I wrote previously about this:

First, a little back story. I had never tried a hallucinogen before and my friend who I went picking with had been up for nearly two weeks on mescaline, LSD, and mushrooms. I don't think the concept of cross-tolerance was one that either of us had. And he figured that the dosage that would be right for him was correct for me. BIG MISTAKE!

After eating a lot of mushroom chili, I noticed that my spoon had a blue streak off to one side, then everything did, like someone had turned the blue tint and color saturation all the way up on a television set.

Climbing quickly, I floated through the air, which felt thick, and started having visuals of dancing neon lights and hadn't even peaked by this point.

On the way up, my visual field went to a full 360 degree sphere, and I saw blue and white BMW propellers in a honeycomb pattern all spinning at the same speed and blinking on and off.

The next part of the trip can't be explained readily as language is designed to convey linear experience. Time ceased to be linear, and was rather relative and something that branched out in multiple dimensions. This is when I peaked.

After coming down a bit, I barely recognized my own apartment. I looked at my hands and they looked like paws. A look at my body showed it to be wiry, long, flexible, and covered in creamy and brown colored fur. I had turned into a ferret! I could even see my muzzle below my eyes. I looked away figuring that the hallucination would pass, but it was quite persistent. I became aware of my friend complaining that the shrooms were weak and he suggested we go get some LSD so we could at least trip. I was horrified by this though. He wanted to go out for a cup of coffee and I exclaimed that I couldn't, as I was a ferret.

He never did believe that I was tripping hard, because in his reality tunnel, he wasn't tripping hard. At least he didn't think he was. After eating over an ounce of fresh cyans, I was definitely more then slightly affected.