Hello Traveler & All Other Welcoming Folk Here,
DMT-NEXUS seems like a very warm place. I used to just lurk, but decided to register yesterday and was very generously granted membership. I warned anyone who made it to the end of my experience report that SWIM loves to write and finds it difficult to be concise. I was encouraged to report elsewhere on this site, so we'll see . . .You men and boys are in for it - SWIM can type over 100 words per minute!
SWIM's background is probably worth reviewing for context and can be found in the Nursery. Briefly, let me say that SWIM had consumed Psilocybe ("Liberty Caps"
mushrooms in the 1980's recreationally. Her last experience was at an outdoor music festival and back then she and her peers never bothered to measure doses of anything (Something that makes her shudder today.) including powder drugs like Ecstacy. Her last experience is remembered as being beautiful and profound, but borderline trance-like and part of it was literally spent "down in the dirt." She overdosed for an outdoor festival.
Due to a phenomenally harrowing (bass ackwards ego-death experience!) LSD experience in the late '80's SWIM took a 20 year abstinence break from all psychedelics. More details on this (but not the trip narrative yet - that will come later and will be LONG) including problems with drugs and a personal process of detoxification, research and exploration.
SWIM was back in the psychedlic swing of things but she was frustrated! She has having trouble getting off in the way that she thought she remembered. Having difficulty getting fully psychedelicized (other than fantastic full-blown 3-D visions on Salvia Divinorum). So frustrating. She started thinking things like (for the first time ever in her life), "Could it have been all that acid I did?" "Am I too old and sane for this?" "Shit, perhaps kids and the mentally ill are the ONLY ones who should consume psychedelics, as they may be the only ones who can get profound/personally meaningful experiences out of them!" Fortunately, all of these thoughts were proven false.
As part of her psychedelic "experiments" with herbs and chemicals, SWIM grew Psilocybe Cubenis mushrooms at home, harvested, dried. SWIM is not a kid and begins potentially mind-altering experiments at very low levels, slowly titrating up on a weekly schedule. SWIM is no Sasha Shulgin but she knows herself, her body and psychology. She needs time to process and integrate, otherwise it's not really different from "getting high," and she had more than enough experience on that front.
SWIM began with a 0.75 gram dose which had no effect worth mentioning. Next week she tried 1.5 grams and felt a bit altered, but was able to read and wound up going to bed at the usual time. The next week was 3 grams and she definately got off, even experiencing some mild visual effects with eyes open and closed, but it was still her lying there on the bed with blindfold on. It was still the same old her/ego sitting up, giving the cat treats and planning a trip to the dental clinic soon. How very mundane. How very frustrating!
SWIM's next week's experience was with 5 grams, what Terence McKenna called a "heroic dose." SWIM (me too) has always hated that term, because it has the feeling of bullshit and dare/challenge to young, vulnerable minds - people who might try to take a "heroic dose" when in fact a so-called threshold dose might get them to exactly where they want and need to be. But, SWIM does tend towards heavy doses for her own purposes. . . .
The 5 gram trip was irritating and physcially painful! This reminded SWIM of a low-dose acid trip (50 to 150 micrograms) which she HATES. It does not fully psychedelicize her head, but it sets her thoughts spinning in useless circles! SWIM also went deeply into her own body and this can be a challenge because although she exercises, is trim and muscular, and brushes/flosses her teeth three times a day, SWIM has a shoulder full of GRINDING degenerative arthritis and a rotting, blackened molar. SWIM does not have money for more than rent and food (no TV, borrowed internet access, no car, etc.) but is not poor enough for Medicaid or similar public aid. Oh well, just have to wait it out and suck up the pain. Attempts at meditation failed. SWIM has been sucking up A LOT of physical pain ever since she detoxed from the pain pills (synthetic opiates). Sigh. SWIM talks about consulting with a pain-management specialist if/when her financial situation improves. . . .The best thing about this irritating trip was that once again SWIM was NOT fully psychedelicized, and was down from the visuals and circular thoughts in 2.5 hours.
Her brother and sister-in-law could not believe she was down in 2.5 hours on 5 grams of mushrooms! SWIM began complaining to them that she had apparently built up some truly monumental and massive walls due to the ego-death experience. SWIM was also aware of the fact that hiding pridefully (not cowering by any means of the word) behind these thick, tall walls was an ego and sense of self that were so rock-solid they were like Mount Everest - SWIM had discovered this fact during a fascinating round of Salvia Divinorum visions.
SWIM normally takes week breaks between experiments, but her first taste of spice was so beautiful, joyous and welcoming that she felt she was being given a message. This was the day for her next scheduled mushroom trip. The tryptamine landscape seemed to be calling to her and again, felt very welcoming. She was done smoking DMT for the day, so she sipped some juice and took a shower. Later that evening (around 9:00 p.m.) she took 7 grams of mushrooms. That was a large volume of 'shrooms and took a long time to eat. When she was finished, she burped and commented, "Dinner." She played with her cat (who, sensing SWIM's potentially vulnerable condition, mooched an obscene number of treats), listened to Steve Roach and tried to quiet her mind ('though it had been wonderfully quiet ever since she came down from the DMT trip - the "twisted thought generator" had seen enough to shut it up for one of the first times ever in SWIM's life) with a bit of meditation. She knew her brother was scheduled to come over and do some work, but he wouldn't be interacting with her when he saw her "tripping lamp" on.
She began to come on in under a half hour. She could tell right away this was going to be the one. At least she hoped. Finally - maybe she could find a door in the wall and blast that bastard wide open!
A number of fantastic and unique things happened to SWIM over the next 6-7 hours. It will be difficult to lay out in a coherant, linear-time narrative . . .
As SWIM was climbing towards her first peak she felt herself hit the point she had hit at the music festival (from 20 years ago) and rapidly surpass it. She was excited, but glad she was in her safe, dark bedroom, planted on her bed. Her brother arrived. She knows he ineracted with the cat but does not think he tried to interact with her. She is glad, as he would have had her at a distinct disadvantage and she is normally undefeatable when it comes to (nearly eiditic) memory and verbal facility. They had had a recent argument and she just didn't want to get into it right then. To his credit, she believes he saw the tripping light and understood that now was not the time for direct interaction.
SWIM's room was beginning to dissolve into beautiful tryptamine landscape hallucinations. It is interesting how the hallucinations (of patterns and colors for SWIM) on spice are like the ones on mushrooms, just much more detailed, fractal, changing, moving, animated, etc. SWIM wonders if this is a suggestion or authentically related to the fact that once her gut rips the phosophus atom off of the Psilocybin and it's all Psilocyn, we're in Tryptamine land. The plants were sparkling with flashes of rainbow life energy. SWIM sees life energy whenever she is profoundly psychedelicized and took this to be a good sign. The cat was getting a tremendous contact high and acting super swirly and affectionate (perhaps it was all the treats!).
As time progressed, it stopped then moved backwards! WTF?!? SWIM had experienced time dilation many times on psychedelics and was old enough to understand that each year of life lived feels like time compression ("Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time . . ."
. SWIM was convinced that her brother had re-entered the apartment and was beginning to come up the stairs. She heard him close the door, then she heard his foot land on the first step. But the time between this was nothing compared to the time it take his foot to hit the second step. SWIM is not sure if he (or the hallucination) ever made it any further. She could hear and feel that they got stuck in a time bubble. They were frozen in time! She checked her digital clock and it said 11:28 or some such. But, after sitting there for awhile and deciding she would NOT venture to the stairs to see her brother stuck in a time bubble, she checked the clock again and it read 11:15! WTF?!? Admittedly, she was having trouble reading the clock face. She was very aware of how many tryptamines she had consumed that day and how very high (intoxicated) she felt at the moment, so she chuckled and decided she would check the stairs in a few hours . . .when time got back to running forward . . .
SWIM began to perceive some deep audio hallucinations. They sounded like they were coming from deep within the Earth. She was reminded of the Morloch holes in The Time Machine. SWIM could hear the Earth's heartbeat, but she heard something else deep in there too. It sounded like chainsaws and heavy machinery! Lots of chainsaws near and far, and lots of machinery that sounded like it was belching smoke and dumping slurry. Holy shit! SWIM doesn't normally go in for any religion (including Gaia), but she has come to learn that her subconscious does! She could hear the Earth's heartbeat and the Earth was sending a message that it was under attack and much sicker than she had suspected. She found this to be fascinating and a bit dismaying in her intoxicated state. The next day she found this be be very sad and it still haunts her.
SWIM put her blindfold on and had some fantastic COV's (closed eye visuals). These visuals were approaching some of the stuff she saw on the spice earlier that day. One in particular seemed to resolve into a coherant image made up of archetypal figures that created the overall shape of a wajed (sp?), the ancient Egyptian eye. Suddenly this figure of archetypes opened up and the 2-D hallucinations opened into a 3-D landscape! SWIM ventured forward and she was flying! Not just flying, but flying in black space over a most beautiful planet with a tryptamine landscape (SWIM loves science fiction). Fantastic and wonderful! A unique experience for the burned-out, novelty-hungry SWIM!
SWIM came down from this peak back onto her bed. She had great difficulty getting to the bathroom (hard to stand and walk, then wading through literally palpable darkness) and back to her bed. But then in a haze of hallucination, SWIM heard some weird noises and growls come out of her throat. Weird, long-lasting tones and animalistic growls. SWIM fell into a trance and does not remember what happened. If SWIM were more religious she might reach for the explanation of posession! How weird is that?!? When SWIM came back to her bed, glossalalia was coming out of her mouth! Nothing even close to this had ever happened before! The glossolalia didn't sound completely random, but more like it had some tones of an Asian language. SWIM is monolingual English.
As more time passed, SWIM's ego started re-coalescing in a meaningful manner from this peak and she became dismayed. She was eventually able to shut down the glossolalia, but when she tried to speak, she had lost her English! SWIM's background is in Psychology and she immediately thought, "Aphasia!" and wondered (for the first time ever on a psychedelic) if she had somehow damaged her left temporal brain lobe! This thought was followed by single-word thoughts penetrating a partially formed ego, words like "Serotonin," and "Tryptamines." SWIM realized that she had spent the day radically modifying her brain chemistry.
Nonetheless, SWIM spent a long time trying to speak proper English. She cannot remember the specific sub-type of aphasia, but it was dismayingly characterized by being able to form a proper word in her brain. Looking at a green lamp, she understood in her brain it was a green lamp. But, something was being blocked in getting that proper conception and brain-word-sound out of SWIM's mouth. It brokedown somewhere between SWIM's left brain and her mouth structures. Not only this, but some other gibberish got put in its place. Thus when SWIM tried to speak, the green lamp in her brain was uttered as, "Triangle popscicle!" or somesuch! As soon as SWIM's ears and brain heard triangle popsicle she instantly understood that this was NOT the proper way to say green lamp.
Eventually after much effort, partial breakthroughs would occur, mostly with expletives, in particular, "Fuck!" Aphasia becoming Tourettes. Great. SWIM's first real partial breakthrough was with her cat - eventually instead of saying the wrong thing, she said, "Kitty cosm!" Kitty cosm is now a new nickname for SWIM's cat. SWIM cannot begin to describe how frustrating this entire phenomenon was. After awhile she realized she was sitting there speaking gibberish with huge beads of sweat on her forehead and big tears coming down her face. She stopped. She shut up. She decided to table this entire thing just like the brother in a time bubble issue. She looked at the clock and it was 2:40 a.m. - she decided to revisit her speech in 8 hours or so.
Well, needless to say, SWIM eventually came down. SWIM got all of her English back, with no noticeable difference and SWIM's brother was NOT trapped in a time bubble on the stairs. SWIM has a slow metabolism and normally eats only one meal a day and can only sleep in 3-4 hour chunks. Well, for 4 days after this trip, SWIM ate 3-4 meals a day (snacks too!) and slept 8-9 hours a night in solid slices! SWIM is very grateful for this experience and counts it as distinctly positive, but suspects that her brain and body consumed an obscene number of calories in about an 8 hour period. And this while laying on the bed! Actually SWIM considers it a "breakthrough," though not in the spice sense of that term. More of a personal psychedelic breakthrough.
SWIM feels that the mushrooms have spoken to her (something she had read about but never experienced). SWIM had a Gaia experience. SWIM has always thought of this as a fortuitously placed rock in space. Their message was a dire one vis-a-vis what humanity is doing to this planet. And for what?!? Not for life and necessity but for meaningless consumerism and squandering. We are an amazing species blessed and cursed with huge, greedy egos. SWIM's sense is that it is not too late, but that there is so little time left she wonders how to hang onto hope for her niece, nephews and their progeny.
The other lesson that the mushrooms imparted to SWIM was the lesson of aphasia. SWIM had always found brain disorders (neuropsychology) to be particularly fascinating, but this was the first time she experienced even the illusion of one! It was rough and frustrating! SWIM feels she understands how a person recovering from a stroke but suffering aphasia might just want to give up on communication attempts. SWIM thinks she might be able to work with these people in the future. She does not necessarily feel this is her new calling, but she feels that if she were ever to work at a speech pathology center and were to become a therapist there that she could do meaningful work. She feels she would understand when to push people, when to tell them to take a break, try something different, take a new tack, etc.
SWIM is looking forward to taking mushrooms again, but is not wanting to take 7 grams. She is not sure if she should try 5 again or perhaps 6. She feels that at high doses the mushrooms might have other important lessons to impart. She wants to learn! The unconscious is an infinite arena containing Heaven, Earth and Hell. This is helping to feed a mid-life crisis, need for novelty need in SWIM. She feels quiet and at peace but ready for more explorations . . .
"But even if nothing lasts and everything is lost, there is still the intrinsic value of the moment. The present moment, ultimately, is more than enough, a gift of grace and unfathomable value, which our friend and lover death paints in stark relief."-Rick Doblin, Ph.D. MAPS President, MAPS Bulletin Vol. XX, No. 1, pg. 2Hyperspace LOVES YOU