I can’t remember exactly, but it must have been about half a year, very, intense use. Basically daily. I remember it was every single day, for many, many weeks, and then, suddenly, I experienced what I later came to call a lockout experience.
After that, even though it had clearly changed, I kept pushing it, trying to get back to that space. I was so fulfilled with wonder during those early weeks that I didn’t think it would ever stop, I thought I could always return.
Anyway, I’m not going to go into the details of the horrible experience that followed, but it was horrible. It took me at least a half-year break before I could even think about starting again, and even then, it took years, years of very low dosages, before I could return to the point where I could confidently go for a breakthrough experience without overwhelming worry. It’s taken time, a long time.
And of course, this was decades ago now, so I don’t remember if that process was linear or not. When I look back at my notes, because I’ve taken notes after most trips, I can see how intense that period of use and discovery really was. For me, the term “honeymoon phase” fits, but it was also much more than that, it felt like coming home, like becoming part of another world, like becoming, somehow, an inhabitant.
And then came the hyper-slap. That was the most devastating part, not just the fear or the difficulty in managing reality, but the loss of access. Not being able to dive into that magical lake anymore, for a long, long time. That was what really hurt. I felt lost. It felt like a missed opportunity, like I was being excluded from hyperspace.
It’s a bit like the feeling you get when you move house and everything is unfamiliar. It’s not exactly being unhinged, but more like… ontheemd. That’s the Dutch word. I think in English it might be something like “displaced,” but that doesn’t really capture it, it’s more like being emotionally unrooted, cut off from something that once felt completely like home.
It took a very long time to find my way back, luckily it has been great now for a very long time and although I’m on a rather regular interval for years and still go very deep at times, I don’t ignore any sign that leads me into the waters I was swimming in then.
Hope this helps, as for mushrooms I too can’t enjoy them anymore, I try them more or less every 5 years only to find that they really don’t make sense. The strange thing is that I don’t have any problems other psychedelics.
