psych0naut
Rising Star
Peoples of the Nexus,
Since this is such a long story, please let me know if anything I have posted is bad for the best interests of this community or myself. I know a lot of people use SWIM/other syntax when talking about experiences but this story is just too personal for that I think.
Let me start off by saying im about to get pretty personal right off the bat here, and I know this is a really awesome community (I've been poking around awhile), but I'm not sure anyone will care haha. This is a really long post. I think it will just be easier than trying to beat around the bush with you guys. I just need some unbiased opinions from people who are accepting. The first part of the story is background and you can probably skip it, just kind of a chronicle of my experimentation. I'll put a marker where I think the most important part comes in.
I'll begin where I like to think my psychedelic travels started. It started with a group of friends from my high school who I grew up with, lets call them S, M and T.
S had been smoking pot and had been around drugs because his older brother was a huge hippie in high school. We knew S had been smoking for awhile and me and M tried to get him to stop, we were athletes back then and super edge. Eventually, S, M, and T got into smoking pot together, and didn't tell me. This is probably all going down sophmore-junior year. I never had any exposure to drugs, until S and M approached me one day and asked me to smoke. I had started drinking my junior year so was more open to trying it, but was still very reluctant. After many many many months of peer pressure S and M finally got me to smoke. I was having the worst night ever. I had just been rejected by this girl, and was driving aimlessly and was like an hour away when they called me. It ended up being one of the best nights of my life. We just sat around and made the stupidest jokes but laughed for 3 hours straight. S M and T and I started smoking more frequently, and they introduced me to J and DP. I knew J from playing football, and he was super cool. DP was a new addition to our friends, him and J were really close.
As we started hanging more and drinking/smoking more eventually M came up with this new plan for us. We embarked on what we called the "Dark Path". It was never a very well defined concept, and I'm sure it means something different to all of us. Back then it was mostly about getting messed up and having fun doing illegal things. Now a days, to me it means taking any experience I feel comfortable doing using my own rational thought, no matter whether if society or anyone looks down on it. It was always a somewhat loose thing for the other 4 but me and M took it pretty seriously. We talked about it a lot and what it meant to us.
Because of the path, I ended up trying some acid (it was a super low dose, but I realize now after taking a lot more that I was actually feeling something from it), and some shrooms that were bunk, but never really had any good experiences. We mostly just smoked a boatload of pot. The group of us hung out constantly, literally every day at least part of the group was together. S lived far away (>45 min) so he wasn't around as much during the school year.
As my travels continued I kept meeting more and more people who experimented with drugs and meeting new connections (I sold pot for both the summer before college and the next, so I ended up meeting some people who could get some heavier stuff). LSD was always the easiest to get so I would grab it when I could, I probably took it a total of 5 or 6 times before this year. I never really had a good trip though. I'm not sure what it is, but in general I trip less hard than the people around me on the same dose. I don't know if its because I'm a big guy, or my slow metabolism, or what, but I never really had a strong experience. While experimenting, I met this other kid, J2, who was big into the rave scene and liked to get messed up and go to shows. He convinced me to go with him to Deadmau5 last summer near my town, and he was raving about how we were going to candy flip and have a great time. That night was the night I realized I actually really like to dance haha. Regardless, I had an amazing time and my first really good acid trip. I remember being at my friend's place that night trying to rip bongs down cause I couldn't sleep (first time I had ever encountered that haha), and I was just tripping more and more (didn't know weed potentiated the trip), and I sware that the mortar in the wall (she had exposed brick in her living room) was forming into words and sentences and I could read them just not understand what they were trying to tell me. It was then I really realized the nature of psychadellics. I like to call it “the universe dumping information on you.” Call it what you want but I had never realized how profound they are. I always did them to try to get visuals cause I couldn't believe that stuff actually happened.
THE MORE RELEVANT STUFF
That was the summer before my sophomore year of college (last summer). At school I had already made a good group of smoking buddies, super legit guys I met in my fraternity who were always there to lend a hand if needed. They were always generous and would smoke me up too. We were getting along really well so I thought I'd bring up the acid topic. None of them had done psychedelics before, and two were really interested. We met some guys through picking up weed who said they had some acid, so we bought some, and took it together along with our buddy R, who is also super chill. That trip was incredible. After that point in my life some stuff was really starting to get messed up though. I was pretty depressed, and not doing very well in school. I hated what I was studying. I couldn't see the purpose of life, and was getting very existential. I kept thinking that since, fundamentally, we are all just a bunch of subatomic particles interacting, it makes no difference to the universe whether I am dead or alive, and I didn't plan on being someone important or having a family, so what was the point of suffering through life? About two weeks after I was starting to go through these lines of thinking, M comitted suicide. Obviously, I was devistated. My mentor on the path had left me, and I had so many unanswered questions. He didn't leave a note or say anything to anyone, so we have no idea what was going on in his head. Now that it has been almost a year, and the pain and suffering for most of the people has subsided, I can see all the positive things that have come out of his passing (I know that sounds messed up but it really is true). It, along with psychadellics, has really shown me the beauty in life, and that all life and all things are beautiful. Also I have learned that you can turn anything positive, that everything is just perspective. Literally you can just approach something from a different angle and make it good. It's not always 'right' in the moral sense (serial killers, rapists, etc.), but it always works.
Lets go back to college now. As me and the group of guys here got closer we started taking more psychs and eventually the one guy, lets just call him Fred (I think hes a member of the nexus too haha), started getting fed up with the inconsistency of getting acid. He decided he wanted to start making his own stuff, so that we could all trip together and not worry about purity. I still think his search is that for the perfect trip. To experiment to the point he knows the optimal setting for his trip. He got on this form, and we got the supplies, and extracted some DMT. We had a crazy trip together where we took 5 really strong doses and went to this natural preserve by us, we had a friend drive, and that was what I think really solidified our friendship. We had a goddamn meltdown that day when we got back. When I got up in the morning we had 50 plastic cups covering the tables, all with a tiny amount of water in the bottom or empty. I think I just kept forgetting what cup was mine and kept pulling off new ones. That was the most intense acid trip I've ever had.
Anyways, it was getting really close to the end of the school year, and I knew I wouldn't really have time or be comfortable to trip on something this powerful and profound around finals. Fred had already tried it once he had gotten some to make sure it was good. It was. I'll be honest, I don't even really remember the first trip. That was a Tuesday. I was somewhat under impressed (not sure if I roasted the bowl down all the way, its always hard to do something for the first time). We decided we wanted to try to do the oral administration on Friday. We were trying to extract MAOI from harmala vine so we could just do a shot of water with all the powers in it, but ended up having to drink a bunch of the harmala root powder still in the water. We could NOT get that stuff to separate out, and we were out of time. That was the nastiest thing I've ever drank, literally every gulp I took down I had to gag down. I was gagging before the stuff even got in my mouth. I ended up purging about an hour later and then I started getting CRAZY fractals in the bathroom. One of Fred's roommates was around, and he doesn’t really do anything like this, so I felt like I was stuck in the bathroom cause I didn't want him judging me/imposing on my trip (little did I realize I was letting him do that by staying in the bathroom haha). I couldn't even get up, not sure if it was because I was still sick, or just that my mind was going insane. Kind of like an acid trip when I cant figure out what to do in social situations, so I didn't leave for awhile. I stopped tripping as hard and came out, and Fred still wasn’t tripping very much at all. I think we just didn’t get enough inhibition. Anyways this girl came over from across the hall and we had a really deep conversation about social networking and that kind of stuff. It was awesome. After she left me and Fred went in his room and smoked about 70mg. That was the most mind blowing trip. I am pretty sure I came in contact with M's spirit. I was in an entirely dark space, it was finite, but I couldn't perceive the end of it. In the middle, in front of me, was a huge object, I wish I could draw it. I felt an unbelievable wave of happiness and beauty. I came back from that place to my body and literally every nerve ending in my body was firing with pleasure. My crotch felt so weird I thought I had pissed myself. Then I started gagging and he brought the garbage can to me, and I got lost in another world in the garbage can. I remembered him saying something from the time we did 5 hits when he was breaking through. He said “This is it man, this is it!” That was playing on repeat in my head over and over and I know I was smiling bigger than I've ever smiled before.
I guess I will wrap this up now. I have definitely learned some things, mostly about myself, and some about the nature of the universe, from doing psychedelics. One of the main things I realized is that everything is connected, through consciousness energy, whether directly or through other things. If you can follow those connections, and put them all together, you can understand anything. Also, I learned there are infinitely many perspectives, which lead me to the realization that there is at least one good perspective for every situation. I've learned that I am just the sum of the things I have experienced, and if I can make all of my experiences good (see perspective argument), then I will be good and whole and at peace. I also realize that there IS an answer to THE QUESTION, but it will not be easy to find.
The most pressing question to me currently is: “What is happiness?” and, similarly “What will make me truly happy?” Once I am happy and have my needs attended to I think I can start to tackle the bigger questions like, “What is the purpose of all this?”
The question I have for this form is: Can psychedelics, along with the right mindset, some willpower, some determination, and some meditation, show me what I need to be happy? Can I use them, as a tool, to bring me to the answers I seek? Or should I look elsewhere? I know there are no true shortcuts in life, and I know drugs don't tend to solve problems. Obviously DMT is a sacred chemical. It and the other psychedelics are very very different from other intoxicants.
Thanks for those who read. I'm excited to start this journey. I guess this is me officially stating I'm ready to go down the rabbit hole. I never knew if I wanted to know or not the answer to the big questions. Only one way to know
Peace and love.
-psych0naut (I really am pscyho, you know).
Since this is such a long story, please let me know if anything I have posted is bad for the best interests of this community or myself. I know a lot of people use SWIM/other syntax when talking about experiences but this story is just too personal for that I think.
Let me start off by saying im about to get pretty personal right off the bat here, and I know this is a really awesome community (I've been poking around awhile), but I'm not sure anyone will care haha. This is a really long post. I think it will just be easier than trying to beat around the bush with you guys. I just need some unbiased opinions from people who are accepting. The first part of the story is background and you can probably skip it, just kind of a chronicle of my experimentation. I'll put a marker where I think the most important part comes in.
I'll begin where I like to think my psychedelic travels started. It started with a group of friends from my high school who I grew up with, lets call them S, M and T.
S had been smoking pot and had been around drugs because his older brother was a huge hippie in high school. We knew S had been smoking for awhile and me and M tried to get him to stop, we were athletes back then and super edge. Eventually, S, M, and T got into smoking pot together, and didn't tell me. This is probably all going down sophmore-junior year. I never had any exposure to drugs, until S and M approached me one day and asked me to smoke. I had started drinking my junior year so was more open to trying it, but was still very reluctant. After many many many months of peer pressure S and M finally got me to smoke. I was having the worst night ever. I had just been rejected by this girl, and was driving aimlessly and was like an hour away when they called me. It ended up being one of the best nights of my life. We just sat around and made the stupidest jokes but laughed for 3 hours straight. S M and T and I started smoking more frequently, and they introduced me to J and DP. I knew J from playing football, and he was super cool. DP was a new addition to our friends, him and J were really close.
As we started hanging more and drinking/smoking more eventually M came up with this new plan for us. We embarked on what we called the "Dark Path". It was never a very well defined concept, and I'm sure it means something different to all of us. Back then it was mostly about getting messed up and having fun doing illegal things. Now a days, to me it means taking any experience I feel comfortable doing using my own rational thought, no matter whether if society or anyone looks down on it. It was always a somewhat loose thing for the other 4 but me and M took it pretty seriously. We talked about it a lot and what it meant to us.
Because of the path, I ended up trying some acid (it was a super low dose, but I realize now after taking a lot more that I was actually feeling something from it), and some shrooms that were bunk, but never really had any good experiences. We mostly just smoked a boatload of pot. The group of us hung out constantly, literally every day at least part of the group was together. S lived far away (>45 min) so he wasn't around as much during the school year.
As my travels continued I kept meeting more and more people who experimented with drugs and meeting new connections (I sold pot for both the summer before college and the next, so I ended up meeting some people who could get some heavier stuff). LSD was always the easiest to get so I would grab it when I could, I probably took it a total of 5 or 6 times before this year. I never really had a good trip though. I'm not sure what it is, but in general I trip less hard than the people around me on the same dose. I don't know if its because I'm a big guy, or my slow metabolism, or what, but I never really had a strong experience. While experimenting, I met this other kid, J2, who was big into the rave scene and liked to get messed up and go to shows. He convinced me to go with him to Deadmau5 last summer near my town, and he was raving about how we were going to candy flip and have a great time. That night was the night I realized I actually really like to dance haha. Regardless, I had an amazing time and my first really good acid trip. I remember being at my friend's place that night trying to rip bongs down cause I couldn't sleep (first time I had ever encountered that haha), and I was just tripping more and more (didn't know weed potentiated the trip), and I sware that the mortar in the wall (she had exposed brick in her living room) was forming into words and sentences and I could read them just not understand what they were trying to tell me. It was then I really realized the nature of psychadellics. I like to call it “the universe dumping information on you.” Call it what you want but I had never realized how profound they are. I always did them to try to get visuals cause I couldn't believe that stuff actually happened.
THE MORE RELEVANT STUFF
That was the summer before my sophomore year of college (last summer). At school I had already made a good group of smoking buddies, super legit guys I met in my fraternity who were always there to lend a hand if needed. They were always generous and would smoke me up too. We were getting along really well so I thought I'd bring up the acid topic. None of them had done psychedelics before, and two were really interested. We met some guys through picking up weed who said they had some acid, so we bought some, and took it together along with our buddy R, who is also super chill. That trip was incredible. After that point in my life some stuff was really starting to get messed up though. I was pretty depressed, and not doing very well in school. I hated what I was studying. I couldn't see the purpose of life, and was getting very existential. I kept thinking that since, fundamentally, we are all just a bunch of subatomic particles interacting, it makes no difference to the universe whether I am dead or alive, and I didn't plan on being someone important or having a family, so what was the point of suffering through life? About two weeks after I was starting to go through these lines of thinking, M comitted suicide. Obviously, I was devistated. My mentor on the path had left me, and I had so many unanswered questions. He didn't leave a note or say anything to anyone, so we have no idea what was going on in his head. Now that it has been almost a year, and the pain and suffering for most of the people has subsided, I can see all the positive things that have come out of his passing (I know that sounds messed up but it really is true). It, along with psychadellics, has really shown me the beauty in life, and that all life and all things are beautiful. Also I have learned that you can turn anything positive, that everything is just perspective. Literally you can just approach something from a different angle and make it good. It's not always 'right' in the moral sense (serial killers, rapists, etc.), but it always works.
Lets go back to college now. As me and the group of guys here got closer we started taking more psychs and eventually the one guy, lets just call him Fred (I think hes a member of the nexus too haha), started getting fed up with the inconsistency of getting acid. He decided he wanted to start making his own stuff, so that we could all trip together and not worry about purity. I still think his search is that for the perfect trip. To experiment to the point he knows the optimal setting for his trip. He got on this form, and we got the supplies, and extracted some DMT. We had a crazy trip together where we took 5 really strong doses and went to this natural preserve by us, we had a friend drive, and that was what I think really solidified our friendship. We had a goddamn meltdown that day when we got back. When I got up in the morning we had 50 plastic cups covering the tables, all with a tiny amount of water in the bottom or empty. I think I just kept forgetting what cup was mine and kept pulling off new ones. That was the most intense acid trip I've ever had.
Anyways, it was getting really close to the end of the school year, and I knew I wouldn't really have time or be comfortable to trip on something this powerful and profound around finals. Fred had already tried it once he had gotten some to make sure it was good. It was. I'll be honest, I don't even really remember the first trip. That was a Tuesday. I was somewhat under impressed (not sure if I roasted the bowl down all the way, its always hard to do something for the first time). We decided we wanted to try to do the oral administration on Friday. We were trying to extract MAOI from harmala vine so we could just do a shot of water with all the powers in it, but ended up having to drink a bunch of the harmala root powder still in the water. We could NOT get that stuff to separate out, and we were out of time. That was the nastiest thing I've ever drank, literally every gulp I took down I had to gag down. I was gagging before the stuff even got in my mouth. I ended up purging about an hour later and then I started getting CRAZY fractals in the bathroom. One of Fred's roommates was around, and he doesn’t really do anything like this, so I felt like I was stuck in the bathroom cause I didn't want him judging me/imposing on my trip (little did I realize I was letting him do that by staying in the bathroom haha). I couldn't even get up, not sure if it was because I was still sick, or just that my mind was going insane. Kind of like an acid trip when I cant figure out what to do in social situations, so I didn't leave for awhile. I stopped tripping as hard and came out, and Fred still wasn’t tripping very much at all. I think we just didn’t get enough inhibition. Anyways this girl came over from across the hall and we had a really deep conversation about social networking and that kind of stuff. It was awesome. After she left me and Fred went in his room and smoked about 70mg. That was the most mind blowing trip. I am pretty sure I came in contact with M's spirit. I was in an entirely dark space, it was finite, but I couldn't perceive the end of it. In the middle, in front of me, was a huge object, I wish I could draw it. I felt an unbelievable wave of happiness and beauty. I came back from that place to my body and literally every nerve ending in my body was firing with pleasure. My crotch felt so weird I thought I had pissed myself. Then I started gagging and he brought the garbage can to me, and I got lost in another world in the garbage can. I remembered him saying something from the time we did 5 hits when he was breaking through. He said “This is it man, this is it!” That was playing on repeat in my head over and over and I know I was smiling bigger than I've ever smiled before.
I guess I will wrap this up now. I have definitely learned some things, mostly about myself, and some about the nature of the universe, from doing psychedelics. One of the main things I realized is that everything is connected, through consciousness energy, whether directly or through other things. If you can follow those connections, and put them all together, you can understand anything. Also, I learned there are infinitely many perspectives, which lead me to the realization that there is at least one good perspective for every situation. I've learned that I am just the sum of the things I have experienced, and if I can make all of my experiences good (see perspective argument), then I will be good and whole and at peace. I also realize that there IS an answer to THE QUESTION, but it will not be easy to find.
The most pressing question to me currently is: “What is happiness?” and, similarly “What will make me truly happy?” Once I am happy and have my needs attended to I think I can start to tackle the bigger questions like, “What is the purpose of all this?”
The question I have for this form is: Can psychedelics, along with the right mindset, some willpower, some determination, and some meditation, show me what I need to be happy? Can I use them, as a tool, to bring me to the answers I seek? Or should I look elsewhere? I know there are no true shortcuts in life, and I know drugs don't tend to solve problems. Obviously DMT is a sacred chemical. It and the other psychedelics are very very different from other intoxicants.
Thanks for those who read. I'm excited to start this journey. I guess this is me officially stating I'm ready to go down the rabbit hole. I never knew if I wanted to know or not the answer to the big questions. Only one way to know
Peace and love.
-psych0naut (I really am pscyho, you know).
