Pushing the Envelope!

[Lichen]

A warm welcome to you all!

There is so much I would like to say but don't know where to start!

I have been reading the fascinating posts on nexus for rather a long time now, learning, listening and observing. i feel I'm ready to take the next step and be a visible member of this wonderful, compassionate and intelligent community.

I've experimented with lots of different substances, and I've found over the years that nothing interests me more than the psychedelic experience.

I'm fascinated with the bizarre, strange, the other, whatever you want to call it and always have been. I've had only a modest amount of psychedelic experiences (psychedelics and impatience never mix), about 5 profound LSD trips and one which was borderline divine - it taught me a lot (it is also the subject of 10,000 word trip report!). Despite my devout interest I've not had much experience with psilocybin mushrooms, a couple of times in Thailand which were fun but nothing was gained. I have had very intense cannabis trips in the past, especially when using Butane Honey Oil. Also, strangely, I find the effects of Nitrous to be very very overwhelming.

I bought DMT (never again - I am a firm believer that psychedelics should never be sold) about 2 years ago, and stored it for a while waiting for the perfect moment - and waiting until I knew I was ready. Unfortunately that went pear shaped, and smoked it about three months later after having beers with friends. Apparently my friend and I had an amazing profound experience together but unfortunately I remember very very little of it.

When I woke in the morning, I was really annoyed at myself. I had ruined the moment I'd been waiting for. Psychologically I was as ready as I could have been, but the timing was just not right. It was exactly the situation I didn't want to smoke it in. I wanted to have a clear mind going into it, I wanted to be at a beautiful place at a beautiful moment. It was so unlike me to violate my principles in the "heat of the moment" like that.

Anyhow, no regrets - our past experiences shape our futures and I have come along way since.

Also a long time browser of erowid, bluelight, Lycaeum, deoxy, psychedelic salon and an assortment of others, but the nexus is, as far as I am concerned, the only legitimate online psychedelic community. What we have here is very very special, and the work we do is important. I've rarely seen such genuine compassion in the outside world let alone on an online forum.

I'm fascinated with human behaviour and their relationships with each other, their plants, and their drugs. I'm a regular lucid dreamer and worked with Silene Capensis and Calea Z last year with great results - I look forward to continuing my work with Oneirogens. I also experimented a little with Elemicin last year, but didn't continue research after I moved overseas. I'm an obsessive reader and music listener... I will try and push books and music on to you haha.

I am a person who loves and cares about the planet, the environment, our future, the animals that live beside us and the fundamental right that everyone should have a roof over their head, a bed to sleep in and food in their stomach. It's something I am very passionate about but not something that I will go with here.

But let it just be said, I find the current situation that we, as "conscious" beings on this planet, have found ourselves in very distressing.

This is a group that I already very much identify with and would like to be more of a part of - to share and to learn.

Anything else anyone wants to know, just ask!

 

[Enoon]

welcome to the nexus freeradicals. I greatly enjoyed your intro essay and am glad you joined. While I never really got into any of the other mentioned forums I agree the nexus is truly a special place and once I found it I knew I had to join

You say the psychedelic experience is what you are interested in the most. In which way do you mean this? You also say 'nothing was gained' in your mushroom trips in thailand (can you tell me more about those? it sounds dream like to trip in thailand, lol) - what is it that you are interested in gaining?
Generally I feel slightly ambivalent about the term gain, because I don't like thinking of psychedelics as some sort of divine vending machine where you insert the psychedelic and some of your life's time/energy and as a result you get a 300ml soda can of understanding... I guess it's hard to find a better way to put what we search for in the experiences and why we think they are so valuable other than labelling our results as something concrete. Especially when speaking to ppl that have never experienced them.

Myself I like to think of it as a process, a sub-process of the greater process of my life. Each experience I make is part of my ongoing evolution and optimization. Psychedelic experiences I feel contribute to this evolution and optimization a great deal, while say, driving a car or riding a train only rarely do.

It is this that I am most interested in, rather than the pretty colors of the experience itself.
So when you say you are interested in the psychedelic experience, what is it that you are looking for? What makes a profound trip, what makes a trip from which 'nothing is gained'?

As for books and music, I'm all ears. I love new suggestions.
In that sense, a very warm welcome to this community. May your future journeys enhance your cosmic resonance

love abounding

 

[MooshyPeaches]

Welcome to being a official member longtime lurker! =] Great introduction essay!

definitely have to try mushrooms again, i find the profound experiences that come from them to outway my LSD trips but that might just be me.

5g's with some lemon, dark room with 6 hours. =]

 

[Pandora]

Hi freeradicals,

Welcome to official membership at the Nexus. I'm so glad you signed up. . I loved your thorough and well thought out introduction and thank you for sharing. Yes, please do push music and books on us. .

Have you extracted your own DMT yet? If not, please check the Wiki link in the upper right hand corner of the Forum to find many fine extraction teks.

I've really enjoyed your music in chat and hope to see a lot of you around. Again, welcome to the Nexus.

Peace & Love

 

[Lichen]

Enoon, thank you for your warm welcome,

Well, not only do I see a lot of value in the psychedelic experience as a catalyst for change - it's ability to seemingly erase ridiculous cultural modes of behaviour - but on face value it's the weirdness of it. These dimension of imagination that one can find themselves within can be so utterly unexpected and essentially, so interesting. I enjoy the surge of creative ideas that seem to come to me in the afterglow of an experience, I find myself thinking in ways I have never thought before, and am left with a feeling of genuine inner peace and an apparent clearer picture of reality.

LSD has given me a great insight about my own life and revealed underlying thought processes that just needed that extra push for it to form a clear idea, but it has also shown me areas of life my life I should be paying more attention to and having greater respect for.

Mushrooms in Thailand - First time at the Full Moon Party in Koh Phangan - they sell these 'special shakes' in a bar dug into the cliffs at the end of the beach. Delicious and rather potent, and I was already on LSD at the time and it proved to be a worthy combination. My friend and I walked up and down the beach amongst at least 20,000 people and would literally stop every 5 metres because we couldn't believe what was going on around us was really happening and couldn't stop laughing at all the incredible things occurring. Eventually that feeling of profound amazement mixed with a good dash of entertaining confusion wore off, and I felt very dancey and felt very positive, that everything was wonderful - much rather like MDMA. But I didn't want this, it felt so artificial - I wanted it to be like it was before so I took more LSD and had a great night dancing and feeling in complete union with everyone there.

Now, first let me establish that in every situation one finds them self in, there is always a 'vibe' for lack of a better term. This vibe was so strong at the event, that even though I could not see it, I detected it as if it were a 2 dimensional plane extending through the area. I found I was able to connect with this vibe as easily as riding a bike down a hill; with absolute ease, almost automatic. So I wasn't just dancing to the music and with the people at the party - I was dancing to the vibe of the event and everything that was occurring.

During the night I made many important observations regarding my life but this was all from LSD, not the mushrooms.

The next time I went to Thailand, I went back to the full moon party with two other friends. I really couldn't enjoy myself at all. By this stage in my life I had begun to see how badly people have been carefully manipulated and controlled by our media and taken advantage of by our governments. But I tried to not let these observations ruin my night. I already had upset stomach, but tried to party anyway. We had mushroom shakes but after these started taking effect, we just wanted to get away from the people. We hated the music, the attitudes and behaviours of the party people and spent most of night laying on the beach in our own group having a great time watching everything that was going on around us. All I gained was to not go to full moon party again haha.

Let me elaborate what I mean by gain, because I in no way mean it in the way of your vending machine analogy!

I know it's no magic bullet. I find during the psychedelic state, perceptions are opened up in ways that are vastly different from waking consciousness and that during these experiences one can be incredibly insightful about their self, their friends and their environment. Experiences that are educational and life changing. BUT nothing can be gained without a commitment to change or to apply what has been learned - Integration!

What I'm interested in gaining from these experiences, essentially, is a clearer picture of the world we live in, an understanding of why people do the things they do, and can these changed perceptions be applied to making our planet a better place for everyone and ensuring a future for the human race to explore the universe forever.

I also tend to think of psychedelic agents as re-conditioning agents - breaks some of the noxious social programming that may have been engrained since birth; riding a bus isn't going to knock some of those walls down.

Of the times I have taken LSD it had not been hallucinogenic in the slightest, but I found during my powerful LSD trip things were very hallucinogenic - and despite this being first time strongly hallucinating I was completely uninterested because of the incredibly interesting and important things running through my head. By comparison, they were utterly boring and only occasionally would I stop and look at something and be floored by amazement.

I plan to continue playing new music for everyone to hear in Chat, so if I'm ever on it's likely I'll have playlist of all sorts of great and possibly never before heard tunes!


MooshyPeaches - that sounds like absolute bliss, I've dreamed of it for years but finding time for it has not been so easy! I used to work alot, saving lots of money to go traveling - and since then... I've been traveling


Pandora, glad you liked it, but to be honest I need more practice getting it out of my head and onto paper so to speak. Haven't done an extraction yet, did lots of research back where I used to live as there was Obtusfolia and Maidenii growing in the forest reserves around my area, and now I have moved overseas so I hope I can find time over the next 8 months or so.

Gratitude and safe travels to you all.

 

[Enoon]

great answer freeradicals.

May I ask how you manage living over seas/traveling permanently? I am currently seeking a way to do this myself. any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thailand sounds so much fun. Everyone I know that has been there has absolutely loved it. I really want to go there at some point.

And yes, mushrooms can be unbelievably profound, healing, revealing, teaching. They can also be downright terrifying and very very angry at you if you do them at the wrong time. I am careful with them. It's been a while since I have wanted to take any. But I highly recommend trying them again and on their own if you feel it's right. the mix with lsd is pretty nice, but mushrooms alone have a lot to teach already.

wish you the best

 

[christian]

Hello, Free radicals..

-I have also been to Thailand, Ko phan gan many times. I must say i feel what you felt when you were tripping there must have been the overcommercialism of the famous "full moon parties".. I saw some maybe 15 years ago, and even then they were pretty commercial. About 6 years ago i saw they were even playing awful r'n'b music in some beach areas to cater for that crowd!!...certainly commercial :surprised

-And it mostly seems to be all about drinking redbull and vodka or thai whiskey "buckets" these days. I'm not surprised you felt that people were manipulated by a closed minded society. The full moon parties arent mind opening things like they once were, hey-you can't do much with all the police and idiots about these days!!

-Welcome to the nexus, and i'm sure you'll find the crowd you do want, here..

 

[Lichen]

Yes, full moon party never again! Went for a third time last year with my girlfriend, and I really didn't want to go but the place must be seen to be believed and I had told her so many things over the years, I couldn't not show her. If you thought it was bad 6 years ago, you should (or maybe shouldn't) see it now. It's all top 40 music, with maybe a few places playing hard psytrance. The mountain bar is still the best place to hang out, it's chilled out, the mushroom drinks are delicious and no where near as noxious as the rest of the event.

Thailand is a beautiful place and I recommend everyone to go there at some stage - if anyone is planning a trip over at some stage I'd be more than happy to share some advice, things to do and not do and places to go and stay etc -

If anyone has never Scuba dived before, I strongly urge you to do so if you visit Thailand - we swam with a Whale Shark for 45 minutes - it was an unforgettable experience.

Christian, have you been to other areas in Thailand? I've also been up north to Chiang Mai but the real jewel of the north is a little town called Pai, which is only a few hours bus ride away.

Enoon, I am fortunate to have my British passport so I can live and work anywhere in EU - my girlfriend however had to get a 2 year working visa, it only allows her to work in the UK but she can travel through EU for 90 days straight, before having to go back to UK to remain for 6 months before doing it again.

We saved up about $AU10,000 and traveled through Thailand for a month before heading up to London. We found work straight away but we had to 'live' (I use this term loosely) in hostel for 2 months before we found a flat to move into. We worked solidly for about 6 months (it was very hard, for reasons far to tedious to go into here) and then traveled throughout Italy (taught English to Italian kids at a summer camp for two months in the mountains beside beautiful Lake Como) and Spain, with brief forays in the Czech Republic and Germany. Have just settled in Scotland for the next 8 months before heading off and doing it all over again! It's been a great year

If there's anything specifically you'd like advice with just let me know.

 

[christian]

Hello again, Free Radicals.

-Yes, i've been several times to Thailand, and also to the north and south. Visited Pai, and did a motorbike loop ride from there. Done quite a bit of travelling all over Asia and Latin America, and other places.

-I am also lucky enough to have a British passport.

 

[DeemsterDiva]

Welcome! I was a secret lurking here for a while until this week as well. I look forward to reading more about your experiences and journey. Nice introduction. I love hearing about other peoples entry into DMT as well as other mind expanding experience you may have

You describe in your post why I respect seek out people who are into psychedelics as opposed to other drugs. A love for the earth and a desire to learn from your experiences.

 

[Lichen]

"A love for the earth and a desire to learn from your experiences." It's a simple and very powerful set of values.

From one long time reader to another, I'm glad we both made this transition - and I'm sure it's consequences will be rewarding and life changing beyond our imaginations. Peace be with you.

 

[nen888]

..hi there freeradicals, like your statement

the nexus is, as far as I am concerned, the only legitimate online psychedelic community. What we have here is very very special, and the work we do is important. I've rarely seen such genuine compassion in the outside world let alone on an online forum.

i think the nex is one a the best web site/communities on any subject, out there..and yeah, love the passion..
i am very interested to hear about your lucid-dream-work..did you ever read castaneda's 'art of dreaming'? if so, what did you think?

see you round..

 

[Lichen]

Hi Nen, among many things, I think it's the genuine mutual respect I find shared amongst people in this community that really makes it, with humility, shine above the rest.

My lucid dreaming in a nutshell (turned out to be a rather enormous nut... I hope this is of interest to you) - worked with Silene Capensis root, pre-powdered and agitated into a froth every morning for about 3 months - consuming only the froth. During this time I also sporadically drank (and sometimes smoked) the "deliciously bitter" Calea Zacatechichi- it's certainly up there with one of the most extreme tastes I've come across. IME was not worth the trouble, but I think I will give a shot again sometime.

I kept a journal from the beginning of my experiments - in the several years prior I had written down only a couple of interesting/epic/worth-remembering dreams and I found that once one puts more of a conscious emphasis on dreaming, one tends to remember ones dreams with more ease.

That being said, during the three months with Silene Capensis I did in fact have better dream recall, had many amazing lucid dreams (I had only had, maybe, two in my whole life prior to this) and suffered zero side effects from the extensive daily use of the SC dream root. It was also quite tasty.

My only drawback, it did look a little strange to others to see me every morning, squeezing foam out of a plastic bottle and consuming it.

However, I can never truly be sure that Silene Capensis had any active role in the improvement of dream recall or lucid dreaming ability; it could simply be down to my increased conscious emphasis on these dream states.

This being said, since I finished my small supply of root powder I have continued to have many lucid dreams and certainly many more vivid and wild regular dreams.

Incidentally, one of the strangest things of all is that despite my enormous interest in DMT it has only featured once in one of my dreams.

I have always put a lot of intention on re-creating the dmt experience in my dreams:
Whether a recreation of what I have learned about other people's experiences (for I barely remember my first and only time smoking DMT), or perhaps even unlocking my forgotten experience. I sometimes feel that my memory of it is just on the "tip of my tongue" and just needs the right thought process to act as a key to fit the lock.

Their is also the possibility that with conscious effort one could trigger the release of endogenous DMT into the cocktail of brain chemistry. But of course, as we all know, the jury is still out on the possible relationship between dreaming and DMT.

I find this so strange because I have had many dreams whereupon I have used LSD, cannabis, alcohol or MDMA within the dream and recreated identical effects. Sometimes I have taken an unknown psychedelic in the dream and had the most incredible dissociative, remarkable hallucinogenic and psychedelic experiences I have ever had.

Interestingly, I find that the consumption of drugs I have never used before in waking life, yet still know a lot about, do not seem to work on me in dreams. In one dream, my friends and I came across enormous bundles of very pure cocaine that had washed up on the shore of a beach. We promptly ripped open the packages and started eating handfuls of this pasty white substance. My friends were obviously showing effects, yet I was saying to them that it wasn't doing anything to me.

Only just recently did I have a dream that DMT was even featured in it. Some people and I smoked dmt in a joint as changa and went for a big walk up a hill. It was a little psychedelic but really it was a lot like a strong cannabis high.

LSD dreams I have had, have all been VERY acid. Not in the spiritual introspective sense of LSD, but in the social-construct shattering perspective; the dissolving of culturally assigned beliefs and reality judgements. The feeling of realer than real.

I have had dreams that were dmt-like that did not involve any substances. One dream, a friend and I seemed to be working in a small warehouse, moving crates around etc. I was climbing over many crates, and even a headstone from Easter Island and I came across a small door in the side of the building. It was similar to a trapdoor, yet it was on a wall. I became lucid-ish at this stage and 'knew' that if I went through this 'portal' I would become fully lucid. Yet if I were to go through, there would be no hope of return - physically or mentally. I have heard many reports of such gateways/portals/points-of-no-return during breakthrough experiences within hyperspace.

Some people seem to have great difficulty gathering the courage to enter such portals, I think it's our obligation a psychonauts to go through them

I made my way inside with a little difficulty, and closed the door behind me and saw that it was now flush with the wall with no hope of returning. I was fully lucid at this point, and I admired my new surroundings and was once again impressed by how indistinguishable from waking life it was. This, I think, is the most amazing, profound and significant aspect of the dream world - it says so much about what we consider to be reality.

I was in a passageway, that was only as wide and high as the trapdoor I came through and it extended about 10 metres in front of me, the end of the passage led to the twilit sky beyond the building I was in. I went into a glide through the passage and coming out of the end swooped into a perfect flight. I was above a large courtyard of a luxurious Italian mansion and I could see the the lights of the city extending all around me towards the horizon.

I woke up a little shortly after this in my bed and realised I had been waving my hands around in the air! At the time I was in a backpackers hostel in Scotland, people in the room had just started getting up and ready for the day - getting their Oktoberfest outfits on etc. I jumped down and had a few conversations with people and marveled the room and noticed many things I hadn't noticed before.

Then I really woke up. To my complete surprise I had had a false awakening!

I have many many more experiences to share, but this was certainly the most surprising dream I have had in a while.

I have not read any Castaneda - but he's been on my list for a while now, I think I will have to check it out.

Peace to you friend.