Pandora,
I understand most chemists, scientists etc identify with Atheism. I should have elabortaed, but I will now.
My family is pretty relgious and has deep religious roots, as has his. I have relatives that have been in the convent and at one point nuns. My mother prays to St. Anthony when things go missing and does her rosary everynight before bed. She's a church goer. Chruch is actually how my friend and I met prior to pre school. Our familes would go bringing us along and that's where our relationship started. Both of us were really religous by force in our earlier years. We were alter boys together, made communion.. and both dropped out of conformation class because we'd rather smoke weed and talk philosophy, evelution and what the church considers taboo.
We both essentially fell toward the side of Atheism because of questioning and open mindedness. As highschool came to an end I had done a fair share of experimenting with psychedelics. Not so much the case for him. He stuck to his weed. He went on to pursue chemistry, and I went to film school. This was around the time I first smoked DMT, about 7 years ago. My first breakthrough experience left me in awe. I had instantly reformed from Athesim to Spiritual. To a believer, of something greater. A vast connectedness with everyone and everything. An understanding of this massive collective consciousness. I was determined to learn how to make DMT for myself.
I would have loved to have found The Nexus years ago, but needless to say I found out how to extract DMT. I used Sodium Hydroxied for a while. I had a few accidents and there was just something inside of me saying "There has got to be a better safer way to do this other than to use a product that say posionous on the lable!".
At this point, back when Facebook had a mear 200,000 users my friend and I had sort of lost touch. Caught up in our studies and new lives. We'd exchage a few words here and there making a point to stay in touch. We both came back to our small home mountian town for Christmas break one year and this is when I told him all about my experiences with DMT and how it had reformed me, changed my out look on this life. I insited he partake in this life changing experience. He wasn't into it, but glady helped me out with my discovery of Calcium Hydroxide. I could tell he got excited when it came to the chemistry aspect, even though it is a basic extration. He tried to explain how to run a column and do all other sorts of stuff but in any event the reason I get a kick out of the situation is because my friend and I drifted from the same mind set to another at the same time. And now I'm growing in the opposite direction as him with his help.
.