PeaceFrog said:
On the other hand I had some tabs that supposedly came from Switzerland and they were absolutely amazing. I only regret that I drank a bit to take off the edge coming up. Alcohol completely kills the psychedelia of the trip.
For me personally, alcohol has never had a noticeable effect on me when riding Lucy's train. Never had a super amount to drink, but a buddy and I knocked down a bottle of Shiraz after a light meal two hours in and didn't even phase me; half a bottle of red usually gets me feeling pretty buzzed.
PeaceFrog said:
I expected the spirituality i got out of spice. An epiphany of some sort.
Since you said you were waiting for the opportunity to dose solo, I'm going to guess that your Lucy experiences have been social to a certain extent. Most of the folks I know, myself included, get that more "spiritual" experience when it is either solo or with a close friend/significant other (if you've never dosed with your significant other, I highly recommend it. You may end up closer for the experience, just warning you.). After many of my own trips, tripping with others, and observing those tripping, I guess I can put it this way: spice kind of forces a spiritual experience on you if you breakthrough, as there is really no other way to handle that powerful of an experience; whereas LSD and other psychedelics taken at sub-breakthrough doses (for that matter, religion, yoga, meditation, dreaming, life, etc.) seem to "open the door" to a spiritual experience, you've got to learn the lessons yourself (which is why set (mindset) and setting are so important, IMHO).
Take a moderate dose and do something that you thoroughly, almost spiritually, enjoy normally: enjoy nature, look at art, go for a walk, whatever works for you. Do it mindfully, revel in the awesome splendor that is creation. Since you are experienced with psychedelics and know how they generally affect you, don't be afraid to push the experience within your comfort zone: go swimming, take a long hike, paddle around in a canoe, go for a bike ride; getting the blood flowing always seems to help a trip (a friend and I kayaked around his small pond and smoked sub-breakthrough doses of spice, that was amazing!). Another option might be going to a public place where one can have a private experience, like a museum: public enough that no one cares if you stare a painting for 5 minutes as long as you're not in the way, quiet enough that there shouldn't be too many interruptions. I'm working on a trip report that involved a museum, should be up in a few days.
But I digress. Some people have recommended that you use side-effects to determine if you've been getting the good stuff or not; speedy, gassy, duration, etc. Please also consider the effect that set and setting have on the substance and don't downplay/underestimate that effect; combined, those two can can have on overpowering effect on substance, good or bad. And like any good experimenter, remember that repeatability is crucial before passing judgement. For example, I've tried LSD from at least 3 different sources a total of a couple dozen occasions, and I'm pretty much guaranteed to get pretty bad gas cramps in the tummy starting about 2 hours in that last for several hours, regardless of: where the LSD came from, how much/what was in my stomach at dosing, eating during the trip, etc. At this point, I've just come to accept the fact that my tract can handle anything I throw at it except for LSD, that is, until I started enjoying that blotter inter-rectally. No gas, very cool onset, overall seems to be more powerful. If you've never tried it that route, I recommend it!
I apologize for the long post, there haven't been to many posts about Lucy that I've seen and I just love talking about her, she's a helluva gal. Take everything I said with a handful of salt, I'm pretty sure I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Sounds like you've got some pretty good ideas on where to trip from here, I wish you the best of luck!
