brewster
Rising Star
Hey guys,
allow me to give you a first attempt of an experience report.
So, after weighing the different descriptions of TMB's potency I decided to go ahead and make all four segments that I had harvested into tea. I skipped blending and just sliced them up very thinly, then boiled for 4 hours and do a first pull, meticulously sqeezing them with metal equip so no tissue may absorb goodies.
After that, they seemed so drained that 2 hours of boiling yielded only clear water. But, for the sake of it, I put them into the pressure cooker at 180 PSI and then boiled for 2 more hours. This yielded more green goodies, after all.
Reduced all of this into 500ml of tea which I drank the next day... today. And shortly after tea from approx. 5 grams of Passionflower. Had only moderate nausea, which was kept at bay by suckling on fresh ginger for almost 2 hours. Without that, I would have purged rather early on. But with a constant supply of ginger root, it was not too difficult, actually. Still, back then I wondered - even though I had egregious amounts of cactus, I have never had serious nausea before.
I took notes up until the 2 hour mark. Then, I just read one of my notes "a voice in a british tone is talking to me." 2 hours in...
And it kept coming and coming and coming. After a while, when realizing that I was going way into uncharted territorry, I somewhat lost my cool and got worried... and then started the most challenging psychedelic experience of my life. Anxiety took over and squezzed me really damn hard for 12-odd hours.
I've done mushrooms many times, also in high doses. Acid and mesc a few times, but in moderate doses. I almost always have been able to change the direction of the trip when things were going in a weird or unsettling direction... not today. I was gripped my the most massive force of anxiety I have ever had. I have talked for the last 12 hours to my tripsitter (who happened to be there and who literally saved my not-so-young anymore butt) and realized that all these anxieties were things I had in my life.
And while he was there, it was all good, I was relieved. I thanked him 3-4 hours in and told him I'd probably fine by now. But as soon as I was on my own, I was pulled to a really threatening place. I've had a nervous breakdown many, many years ago (burnout in a tough sales job, no drugs involved). This has shown me that there is a certain point of pressure beyond which I cannot go without needing quite a long recovery period, and I felt a similar point was not all too far.
But then, with his help, things went better again. But I had to draw upon all that I have learned in many trips, and a decade-old, ambitious meditation practice to keep myself from losing my shit in a way that would have fucked me up really bad. It was just that I felt that I have been forced to directly experience all of this suppressed stuff, and frankly, I learned that I'm not able to do that all at once.
As a meditation practitioner, I am very familiar to notions (and practices) of complete surrender and just being in the experience. But this could not be done at this point. My intuition strongly told me that there is a reason why I've been working on these issues on step at a time, and that this was a situation where I was in danger of getting sucked into something truly harmful and dangerous. I do not know what would have happened, but I'M pretty sure I would have freaked out if I was on my own. Even with the sitter, it took me almost 12 hours of a concentrated effort to keep things together - every time I tried to let myself drift a bit, things turned weird just so fast.
So, for many hours, I've been pacing and talking about all the issues that are related to my anxiety - seems counterintuitive, but it helped. I am immensely grateful to my sitter, whom I had not asked to sit, and who actually had other appointments. Which I canceled, after I had to tell him that I was going to need him for quite a few more hours.
Now, more than 13 hours in, the effects are still going strong. It takes me a long time to write, I see patterns everywhere and everything's very warpy and distorted. Even though, now I'm able to produce constant discourse again, which was not the case 3 hours ago.
While it's far from being over, things are declining now, and a sense of normalcy is creeping it, altough still very fragile. This certainly lasts a long time.
All in all, in almost any way, I realize that I have being given the answers to questions I was too afraid to ask. For the first time in my life, I know how it feels to have a brutal anxiety attack. I also know just how much fear and anxiety I'm keeping at bay, and how unequipped I am to deal with too much of it at once. And I am truly humbled as to where my own limits are, and have been filled with a much renewed respect of the plant teachers.
I had my first mushrooms more than 20 years ago. Almost all of my trips have been in transcendent bliss, some very strong ones with very profound ego dissolution experiences. But they always had that feathery-light quality to them... there never was a lot of pain or struggle involved. This time, I was reminded of when I once almost died in a hospital, the intensity, directness and inevitability of the suffering was beyond all that I have experienced before.
It all in all has been a journey that will probably re-direct myself and force myself to re-invent myself in some ways. A few things have collapsed that were meant to go, and my enormous fear of them has kept me from doing so - until now.
It was, in the end, a good experience. I wanted to learn and work on my traumas, and not just have a good time being high. But I was very close to being overwhelmed, and needed serious support for this to be a constructive experience. I was just so lucky that the sitter was there, because I've relied heavily upon him for the last 13 hours, and to whom I owe my state of sanity at this point. I am infinitely grateful to you, my friend. It has been very exhausting for you, no doubt about that, and I can only trust in a bigger scheme of things to reward you for it, for I probably won't be able to... unless you'd care for some tea of four or so mature segments of not so torchy Bolivian torch-tea?
Seriously... it took me about 80 minutes or so to write this. Now I's been almost 14 hours, and the substance is still very, very present.
allow me to give you a first attempt of an experience report.
So, after weighing the different descriptions of TMB's potency I decided to go ahead and make all four segments that I had harvested into tea. I skipped blending and just sliced them up very thinly, then boiled for 4 hours and do a first pull, meticulously sqeezing them with metal equip so no tissue may absorb goodies.
After that, they seemed so drained that 2 hours of boiling yielded only clear water. But, for the sake of it, I put them into the pressure cooker at 180 PSI and then boiled for 2 more hours. This yielded more green goodies, after all.
Reduced all of this into 500ml of tea which I drank the next day... today. And shortly after tea from approx. 5 grams of Passionflower. Had only moderate nausea, which was kept at bay by suckling on fresh ginger for almost 2 hours. Without that, I would have purged rather early on. But with a constant supply of ginger root, it was not too difficult, actually. Still, back then I wondered - even though I had egregious amounts of cactus, I have never had serious nausea before.
I took notes up until the 2 hour mark. Then, I just read one of my notes "a voice in a british tone is talking to me." 2 hours in...
And it kept coming and coming and coming. After a while, when realizing that I was going way into uncharted territorry, I somewhat lost my cool and got worried... and then started the most challenging psychedelic experience of my life. Anxiety took over and squezzed me really damn hard for 12-odd hours.
I've done mushrooms many times, also in high doses. Acid and mesc a few times, but in moderate doses. I almost always have been able to change the direction of the trip when things were going in a weird or unsettling direction... not today. I was gripped my the most massive force of anxiety I have ever had. I have talked for the last 12 hours to my tripsitter (who happened to be there and who literally saved my not-so-young anymore butt) and realized that all these anxieties were things I had in my life.
And while he was there, it was all good, I was relieved. I thanked him 3-4 hours in and told him I'd probably fine by now. But as soon as I was on my own, I was pulled to a really threatening place. I've had a nervous breakdown many, many years ago (burnout in a tough sales job, no drugs involved). This has shown me that there is a certain point of pressure beyond which I cannot go without needing quite a long recovery period, and I felt a similar point was not all too far.
But then, with his help, things went better again. But I had to draw upon all that I have learned in many trips, and a decade-old, ambitious meditation practice to keep myself from losing my shit in a way that would have fucked me up really bad. It was just that I felt that I have been forced to directly experience all of this suppressed stuff, and frankly, I learned that I'm not able to do that all at once.
As a meditation practitioner, I am very familiar to notions (and practices) of complete surrender and just being in the experience. But this could not be done at this point. My intuition strongly told me that there is a reason why I've been working on these issues on step at a time, and that this was a situation where I was in danger of getting sucked into something truly harmful and dangerous. I do not know what would have happened, but I'M pretty sure I would have freaked out if I was on my own. Even with the sitter, it took me almost 12 hours of a concentrated effort to keep things together - every time I tried to let myself drift a bit, things turned weird just so fast.
So, for many hours, I've been pacing and talking about all the issues that are related to my anxiety - seems counterintuitive, but it helped. I am immensely grateful to my sitter, whom I had not asked to sit, and who actually had other appointments. Which I canceled, after I had to tell him that I was going to need him for quite a few more hours.
Now, more than 13 hours in, the effects are still going strong. It takes me a long time to write, I see patterns everywhere and everything's very warpy and distorted. Even though, now I'm able to produce constant discourse again, which was not the case 3 hours ago.
While it's far from being over, things are declining now, and a sense of normalcy is creeping it, altough still very fragile. This certainly lasts a long time.
All in all, in almost any way, I realize that I have being given the answers to questions I was too afraid to ask. For the first time in my life, I know how it feels to have a brutal anxiety attack. I also know just how much fear and anxiety I'm keeping at bay, and how unequipped I am to deal with too much of it at once. And I am truly humbled as to where my own limits are, and have been filled with a much renewed respect of the plant teachers.
I had my first mushrooms more than 20 years ago. Almost all of my trips have been in transcendent bliss, some very strong ones with very profound ego dissolution experiences. But they always had that feathery-light quality to them... there never was a lot of pain or struggle involved. This time, I was reminded of when I once almost died in a hospital, the intensity, directness and inevitability of the suffering was beyond all that I have experienced before.
It all in all has been a journey that will probably re-direct myself and force myself to re-invent myself in some ways. A few things have collapsed that were meant to go, and my enormous fear of them has kept me from doing so - until now.
It was, in the end, a good experience. I wanted to learn and work on my traumas, and not just have a good time being high. But I was very close to being overwhelmed, and needed serious support for this to be a constructive experience. I was just so lucky that the sitter was there, because I've relied heavily upon him for the last 13 hours, and to whom I owe my state of sanity at this point. I am infinitely grateful to you, my friend. It has been very exhausting for you, no doubt about that, and I can only trust in a bigger scheme of things to reward you for it, for I probably won't be able to... unless you'd care for some tea of four or so mature segments of not so torchy Bolivian torch-tea?
Seriously... it took me about 80 minutes or so to write this. Now I's been almost 14 hours, and the substance is still very, very present.