Intensity factors outside of dosage

[CatsPawTea]

Hey Nexus

I've been mostly playing with sub-breakthrough doses on an eMesh for the last 3-4 months. The last while my dose has been 13-15mg and the setting of my trips has all been consistent -- on my meditation cushion in my basement. Given that... I'm still finding a relatively wide range of intensity.

Sometimes the trip is so light I barely have CEVs; other times I experience rich and vivid OEVs, a couple of times teetering on the verge of breakthrough.

The point of this post:
I'm very curios to hear others' experiences when it comes to what physical and mental conditions they find to affect the intensity of their trip. Considering my method, dosage, and setting have been consistent the only thing left to consider is the set.

From my own notes the three things I've noticed to effect the trip intensity significantly are:

1. Being physically tired, or even sleepy, seems to dull the trip intensity significantly. When I am absolutely exhausted I get almost no trip and instead just feel my need to sleep amplify greatly.
   
   
2. Being agitated/stressed seems to increase the intensity of the trip, but ironically it doesn't seem to have any effect on the "goodness" of the trip. On the contrary, often when I go into the trip stressed the spice reminds me that there's nothing real to stress about and I come out of the trip feeling fresh as a cucumber.
   
   
3. If I don't spend any time putting myself into a meditative state of mind, like for example if I'm just in the midst of my day-to-day thoughts and then I take a hit, then the intensity is also greatly diminished -- the more "in my normal" state of mind that I am, the less I get out of the dosage.

As a side note I find it interesting that many shamanic-type practices seem to aim to both excite the body while at the same time trancing out the mind -- maximizing the flood of neurotransmitters while also taking one out of the typical state of mind.

So I'm very interested to hear: in your experience what physical and mental set factors do you find to amplify or diminish the intensity of your trips?

 

[pantostao]

Hello CatsPawTea. As soon as I started reading, I thought about the same 3 modifiers you talk about in your post. Specially number 3.

Getting your mind in a meditative state is the key for a powerful trip in my experience. 10mg can go a long way if I have spent the last 20 minutes meditating and doing breathwork. In the same vein, I find that a second hit after coming down from the first one can be also more powerful than usual, because one is at the right mindset.

 

[Pandora]

This is a great post. Sometimes it feels so random like nothing I do can affect intensity, intensity just happens the way it wants to. But, I'm still mainly using a GVG so if I don't vape efficiently the comeup is a bit slower and less intense. Also at random times I smoke a big hit of harmala before which can slow things like pace and intensity down a bit.

I tend to use an established ritual (prepare space, smudge, prepare scale, spice, pipe and dose, open journal, turn down lights, turn on timer, turn down computer brightness, meditate, speak mantra) every time I vape with very little variation. In terms of how I feel I tend not to do it when feeling tired, over full, in pain, irritable, headachy, whatever.