Okay, so SWIM is brand new to this - much prior use of other psychedelics, but only just recently getting his feet wet in the mysterious spicey waters. He started quite cautiously a week ago with 15mg vaporized in a glass bong w/ hash oil bulb (quite effective), and has been working his way up in 5 and 10mg increments since, culminating most recently in an unbelievably blissful 50mg trip and a truly soul-rattling 60mg nutbuster, both earlier this afternoon.
SWIM has been trying very hard not to impose his own preconceived notions/expectations onto the experience going in, but it's challenging in the face of so very many corroborating (and fascinating) stories here and elsewhere. SWIM's issue (and the crux of the question he's hoping for help with) is this: NONE of his experiences thus far have been even remotely like ANYTHING he's read on these boards - no elves, no faeries, no clowns, no playroom, no secret handshakes with aliens - so he has to wonder if all this is just so much metaphor and hyperbole, or is he truly missing something. SWIM finds himself COMPLETEY unequipped to articulate even the broadest strokes of his experiences thus far, or even to recall much of anything beyond the tone and timber of every journey, but each time he gets off he's greeted with instant total recall and the overwhelming feeling of "that's right... now I remember...". His perceptions of time, space and self were entirely obliterated this afternoon, and the last journey felt literally like an eternity. But contact? What exactly is contact?
What he can put into words goes kind of as follows:
At lower doses he was definitely tethered to the physical world and OBSERVING 2-dimensional hallucinations. Somewhere around 30mg, the hallucinations took on physical depth and identity awareness began to erode (somewhat). Around 40mg he began to feel himself integrated into the objects he had previously just been observing. At 50mg he felt for the first time the sensation of being electrocuted at the onset, deep immersion/integration into his surroundings (which he can't even begin to describe with any kind of accuracy - except to say that rather than watching the inner workings of some huge cosmic machine, he actually became the machine, or a part of the machine - cogs and wheels or some such shit - although again, this is just so much of his own hyperbole, as it's not something he's capable of articulating). And at 60mg - heavy electrocution, overwhelming integration, complete obliteration of time perception and self (or physical identity, anyway), waaay too much data coming waaaay too fast to process, and a mindbending eternity of REAL fear before (or maybe upon) re-entry (which was MUCH less abrupt and more drawn out than in any previous encounters).
So, SWIM's weirdly self-conscious and neurotic issue here is this: he feels that the place he went on 30mg was basically the same place he went on 60mg - just exponentially deeper - kind of like stopping at a border town for an afternoon of shopping, as opposed to backpacking a month into the interior. Everyone here seems to get all wrapped up in the "breakthrough", and if what he experienced this afternoon wasn't one, he can't possibly conceive of what is, but lacking in objective data, SWIM just can't say for sure. He keeps expecting the rending membrane, the whacky elves, the hordes of alien probe dudes, and it's SO not like this for SWIM. What he has experienced so far is probably as close to a state of religious ecstasy as he's personally capable of (not being at all religious) - kind of what he imagines Joan of Arc might have felt as she found herself burning alive - so someone please, please tell me... is he not breaking through? Because he just can't lung any bigger a hit before losing complete motor function.
SWIM has been trying very hard not to impose his own preconceived notions/expectations onto the experience going in, but it's challenging in the face of so very many corroborating (and fascinating) stories here and elsewhere. SWIM's issue (and the crux of the question he's hoping for help with) is this: NONE of his experiences thus far have been even remotely like ANYTHING he's read on these boards - no elves, no faeries, no clowns, no playroom, no secret handshakes with aliens - so he has to wonder if all this is just so much metaphor and hyperbole, or is he truly missing something. SWIM finds himself COMPLETEY unequipped to articulate even the broadest strokes of his experiences thus far, or even to recall much of anything beyond the tone and timber of every journey, but each time he gets off he's greeted with instant total recall and the overwhelming feeling of "that's right... now I remember...". His perceptions of time, space and self were entirely obliterated this afternoon, and the last journey felt literally like an eternity. But contact? What exactly is contact?
What he can put into words goes kind of as follows:
At lower doses he was definitely tethered to the physical world and OBSERVING 2-dimensional hallucinations. Somewhere around 30mg, the hallucinations took on physical depth and identity awareness began to erode (somewhat). Around 40mg he began to feel himself integrated into the objects he had previously just been observing. At 50mg he felt for the first time the sensation of being electrocuted at the onset, deep immersion/integration into his surroundings (which he can't even begin to describe with any kind of accuracy - except to say that rather than watching the inner workings of some huge cosmic machine, he actually became the machine, or a part of the machine - cogs and wheels or some such shit - although again, this is just so much of his own hyperbole, as it's not something he's capable of articulating). And at 60mg - heavy electrocution, overwhelming integration, complete obliteration of time perception and self (or physical identity, anyway), waaay too much data coming waaaay too fast to process, and a mindbending eternity of REAL fear before (or maybe upon) re-entry (which was MUCH less abrupt and more drawn out than in any previous encounters).
So, SWIM's weirdly self-conscious and neurotic issue here is this: he feels that the place he went on 30mg was basically the same place he went on 60mg - just exponentially deeper - kind of like stopping at a border town for an afternoon of shopping, as opposed to backpacking a month into the interior. Everyone here seems to get all wrapped up in the "breakthrough", and if what he experienced this afternoon wasn't one, he can't possibly conceive of what is, but lacking in objective data, SWIM just can't say for sure. He keeps expecting the rending membrane, the whacky elves, the hordes of alien probe dudes, and it's SO not like this for SWIM. What he has experienced so far is probably as close to a state of religious ecstasy as he's personally capable of (not being at all religious) - kind of what he imagines Joan of Arc might have felt as she found herself burning alive - so someone please, please tell me... is he not breaking through? Because he just can't lung any bigger a hit before losing complete motor function.
