Hello Nexus, I've come here off and on for a handful of years now in search of answers as questions emerge through repeated visits into hyperspace along with fairly high amounts of other psychedelics. What can I say? It fascinates me, the mind fascinates me. They have helped me grow in ways I could have never even imagined just a few short years ago. Here's my story, I imagine it will bring up memories in some of you, provide a look into a different perspective for others, and hopefully by the end draw up an idea of why I'm here.
I grew up more or less the cliche anti-thesis of the Nexus. Extremely rural, lower middle class, Republican, and raised to be somewhat an epitome of toxic masculinity. I thought "drugs are bad [m'kay?]" and the people who took them were doomed to be criminals, idiots, etc. you all know the stereotypes.
Well, as fate would have it sometime later I guess I rebelled hard against all that and became a fringe forum dweller hah. Wasn't really into all the people I was surrounded by who were raised just like me anymore. I won't list the sites in case it's against the rules, but they had an impact that came into play years later. Bear in mind though, I still wasn't very big on drugs. Weed made me feel not very good mentally, an outsider-looking-in perspective that I didn't care for. Ironically, I drank quite a bit in my mid-20s anyway for the same reason most people probably do: social lubrication.
As I neared 30, I developed in interest in biohacking and reaching a physical and mental peak. I began bodybuilding and getting into nootropics but the reality at the time was that I was a complete neophyte who knew very little. I dropped drinking all but completely and wanted to try a one-off experiment with DXM. What I knew of it at the time was based on a mixture of aforementioned fringe forum discussions, some Erowid reports, and having seen first-hand the apparent huge burst of energy people seem to get on it. Sometimes even I myself felt a mild buzz on it when I'd have a cold and had to choke down cough syrup.
Little did I know this stupid, irresponsible experiment would begin a series of events that would change my life. I decided to take what should have been a smaller amount in the evening and long story short, things didn't go according to plan. I went well beyond the burst of energy I was curious about and hit the third plateau. I had never been high like that before in my life so it was the first time I felt my body go numb like that. It was just me at home, so needless to say I was rather freaked out. Was I about to die? (I know, newbies right?) When I closed my eyes I saw images come to me that came out of nowhere. As I rested at a table my arm turned into a tree trunk that attached to the table for a split second. This entire experience was completely alien to me! After I was confident I wasn't going to kick the bucket, I laid down in bed until finally passing out.
Waking up the next morning, I had two things cross my mind. One, I had no idea why that hit me so hard (in retrospect, likely a combination of whatever I had consumed prior in the day as well as my brain chemistry). Second, I had this strange vivid memory of something that never actually happened. I dreamed of something so convincing and timeless that it felt like a real memory in my mind. I can still, to this day, remember it like it actually happened.
So the mind, it seems, is both amazingly powerful and somewhat fragile and susceptible to strange faults. I've been a semi-regular lucid dreamer since I was a teenager and always found that fascinating but this was a whole new level of WTF to me.
Two years later I'm hiking in the local forests when I stumble across this mushroom that grabs my attention. As I've always been an outdoorsman, I know full well you don't consume a mushroom you don't know anything about. These were strange, however. For one reason or another, they fascinated me and I collected a few in a plastic bag I had handy and took them home with me.
I later positively identified these as amanita muscaria var. guessowii. I learned of the Wieland-Meixner test to make doubly sure these didn't have amatoxins and even learned of the value of milk thistle and it's extracts in helping pass amatoxins through with less organ damage. Just in case. Again, in somewhat less than scientific fashion this whole study was just myself but I felt confident in consuming some. I had read a lot of lore about the mushroom and possible historical connections and decided I needed to try it for myself. My search for more information brought me to reports on Erowid, YouTube, etc. along with the concept of a low Ph, low heat decarboxylation process to convert ibotenic acid into muscimol.
Great, seemed like a win-win. I placed my dried caps into a ceramic pot and let them simmer in just enough lemon juice to cover them for 3 hours. This was poured into a resealable glass bottle and placed into a refrigerator to cool down.
After cooling, I decided to work up a dose. I had seen people do similar processes elsewhere and consume rather large amounts, but I read this was more potent and who knows? Thus, I consumed about 1/4 cup of the liquid. Disgusting, ever wonder what burned toast would taste like as a drink?
What follows is what I consider to be one of the most important nights of my entire life. I sat at my computer desk reading more information waiting for the effects to hit. At first, I feel a bit buzzed just like I remembered feeling on alcohol. Then really good, then really energetic. The next thing I remember, I'm picking myself up off my floor with no idea how I got there or what happened. I crawled to my bed and laid down and...
Suddenly there was just black. But perceived blackness, like outer space. Music I had playing in the background felt like waves passing through my body and the stars were like a visualizer, moving to the music. I entered a thought loop but at the time I had no idea what was going on. I felt like my perceptive consciousness had to just sit there and watch my subconsciousness run totally wild without me being able to change what I was thinking about. This was ego death, but back then I didn't know what that felt like. I thought I'd died and become part of the fabric of reality that helps to create everything. I'm sure many of you know that feeling, but this was in that total darkness. Did I die? (lol still hadn't learned my lesson)
This thought loop went on for what felt like an eternity. Raw thoughts moving faster than I could keep up with. At some point I was able to "concoct a plan" with my conscious thought process and realized I wanted to come back to reality. I began envisioning my body waking up in bed, my eyes opening. I fought the strange comatose trance I was in with everything I had mentally, and the first thing my eyes saw was "4:26". I had opened my eyes and was now looking at my clock next to the bed. No way I was going back into that, so I sat up and began writing all of my thoughts out as best I could. Rather hard when your body isn't cooperating though. But, after some perseverence I managed to type out a personal account of everything I had just "seen" and experienced.
"That's it" I thought. "I'm done." Never doing drugs again. That was terrifying.
Except, I was wrong.
Two years later my life had changed quite a bit. I'd changed jobs, moved... things were different. I thought about that trip a lot. Why? I was scared of it, yes, but also fascinated. What just happened? What WAS that?
If you're still reading, I know this is a lot of exposition but I feel like it may have some importance for what comes toward the end. I'm sure at this point it probably seems like a samey read for many of you. The terror of ego death, first trip, etc. You probably read it all the time. I promise, I'm shaking up the formula soon enough.
That trip had inspired me to learn more about both theoretical and practical physics, psychology, philosophy, and neurochemistry. This was an interesting tie-in with biohacking for me so it was easy to stay interested in the subjects. I'd spend entire evenings just soaking in information and concepts, pursuing academic studies published online, and more.
So here I was two years after that trip, mulling over all of this new information and I got to thinking "What if there's more to all of that?" Well it just so happens that many of the channels I was watching also began discussing DMT. What is it, what does it do to us? Nobody seemed to have a concrete answer. Maybe it could provide me some new insight into my own questions or rephrase them for me. Whatever the reason, I decided why not just jump into the deep end?
One extraction later I was able to try it for my first time. Coincidentally, I had also procured more amanita caps from the woods that summer. Down the rabbit hole we go.
The first attempt smoking it was mostly just me being overwhelmed at the rapidness of the effects. Once again "Oh no did I mess up and I'm going to die?!". I should mention that, as basically all of these go, I was flying solo. I know a trip sitter is a good idea, but I felt like having someone nearby would detract from the introspective part of it. This was a personal matter to me. I knew the risks at this point.
The next attempt gave me my first mild CEVs. Soon I was having full blown CEVs but hadn't yet broke through. You could say I was having a honeymoon period with DMT at this point, the CEVs were really cool and also fascinating in their own way. Why was I seeing this stuff? How was it materializing? Why couldn't I manipulate it like I can the scenery in my lucid dreams no matter how hard I tried?
I also took note of the fact that if I kept my eyes closed even after the visuals faded away, I could recall them far better. Lock them into memory. Even though I could mentally picture my real world surroundings, when I opened my eyes it was like a strange system shock that immediately began covering up the memory of the trip. Fascinating.
At this point I was feeling pretty emboldened. I had a few near-breakthroughs where I suddenly just "woke up" in rooms with no memory of how I got there. The waiting room, if you will. Interested in how the brain kind of goes weird when you opened your eyes, I wondered what would happen if your surroundings were something totally different. For example... VR?
Here's where it gets different.
I wanted to see if I couldn't exploit this by reaching the waiting room while inside of VR. So, I put on a 360 scenery app and went on in. Vaped up. As the images became super cartoony I closed my eyes and less the CEVs happen. Sure enough, I woke up inside of the waiting room. When I recovered my memory enough to remember what I was supposed to be doing I opened my eyes...
It was like I was really there. At least, part of me was really there. Like I could shift my mind back and forth between my body here in physical reality and my mind there in the virtual beachside, watching the ocean on a grassy knoll. It was like dreaming while awake.
Haha, I've never experienced anything like it. It was like magic. Amazing! And a success!
Ok. So that worked, but I felt like I could do better.
This time I was going to try it while keeping my eyes open with activity going on. And that's when DMT gave me a big slap in the face...
I loaded up a video and wanted to see if I couldn't make it feel like I was actually there physically, too. Rested the set above my eyes while I took a rather huge dose and lowered it. It hit hard and fast, it was too much. The scenery began to melt and I hit the eject button by pulling the set off.
Grids and lights were my last visuals as my eyes became worthless. I had this incredible feeling at first like... "I did it, I found out what THIS is and I found the way out!" (DMT thoughts) and I began to visualize my entire life, the cosmos, there was no entity. I felt like I was the entity. Then, ego death, thought loops. I couldn't control it. I had mental flashbacks of the amanita trip and it felt like everything that happened between then and now was the dream and THIS was real life. It felt more real than real. Infinity, me processing reality.
In short, I had the classic "I'm God" trip a lot of people end up having to contend with and it was traumatizing. I came out of the trip screaming like a little kid trying to visualize the world I remembered around me and found myself death clutching my coffee table. The screaming after the beginning was mostly just so I could hear myself, like a connection to the real world I had to hang onto. I wasn't ready to let go so easily of everything and man... I just wanted to be little old me working my little job. Not directing the cosmos and being unable to interact with humanity.
Back then, a lot of the trip quickly faded from memory but the worst parts of it stuck with me for quite awhile. So much for answers, I was just getting more questions. And yes, my first huge breakthrough was a failed VR trip. Bet you don't read that one much lol.
Things were rough after that, but life seemed to take care of me in a way. I got moved to a new position at work that kept my mind productive instead of crumbling. I wondered why I was even here, I was in that "convinced" stage of that type of trip.
The next week my mind was full of questions and I couldn't stand them anymore, so this time I went in sans VR. Another breakthrough. BTW to anyone new reading, this is what people talk about when they say "How you know you've done too much." Anyway, it was like I was right back to the previous breakthrough and the communication I received was basically "You had your chance to get out and now it's too late." It was as if my attempt to uncover what reality is had inevitably led me to this strange doomed fate. That was my thinking at the time.
And once again, "That's it, I'm done."
Life went on, I slowly normalized somewhat but that always remained in the back of my mind. Are our minds really so malleable? Is it true? If so, why am I still restricted to purely mortal things?
As chance would have it, almost exactly a year after all of that had happened, a good friend of mine invited me along to his old hometown where p.cyanescens grow. I'd heard about them through Paul Stamets and was interested. Maybe something less insane than DMT would do my mind some good.
When we got back, I soon decided to give them a spin after they'd dried. No lemon tek, just straight up. That was my next big breakthrough, not in the trip sense but in the mental sense. I wondered to myself thinking about how if my last DMT trips had any truth, I was still restricted to the ordinary. I hadn't consumed enough mushrooms to really get far out there so I could still function fine and typed out these thoughts and more.
DMT again, this time I wanted to test my idea. Think outside of myself. Control myself and my mind during the trip. I thought it was possible. I'd never read about anyone doing it, it's always just been going with the flow. So, I made a new round and jumped in.
Breakthrough again, and the infinite thought loops came back. Once again, the time between those trips and now felt null, like my life in between was the dream/trip. But, I caught myself. "Ok if I'm God I know everything, I'm connected to everything. Think in Chinese. I shouldn't know any Chinese." Nothing. And suddenly, it was like recovering myself inside of ego death.
My knowledge of recognizing a dream as such, seeing patterns, and the trauma of those first trips had, in the end, given me an unusual gift! The ability to come out of ego death in a trip and actively explore it! I can tell when I'm about to enter a helpless thought loop, think my way out of it, and retain my ego if I so choose in the middle of a breakthrough. Fascinating!!!
Once again the mind became a wonderful and powerful machine and I wanted to know more and do more with this ability. Maybe I could figure out exactly what DMT was doing to our thought processes and how we can actually manipulate psychedelics mentally, actively, to achieve positive results. What if we could actually, finally, use this to reverse engineer consciousness? I know this question comes across as somewhat heretical to many but I do not think this crosses with many of the spiritual ideas most have regarding psychedelics. In fact, I've drawn interesting parallels between the rational and irrational.
So, I guess that's I'm here. Since the last described trip, I've gone on many more plus longer ones with LSD and mushrooms and the insight has been invaluable. If nothing else, I'd like to see if it's possible for anyone else to reach to same state of self-awareness inside of a trip as I have. It's incredible and the potential is huge. Infant-level pattern learning, all accumulated knowledge actively accessible and at your finger tips, and so much more. I have written down loads of hypotheses and ideas I've personally tested but it's just me.
I don't pretend to be an expert, just a highly enthusiastic amateur. I thank you if you've read this and hope some of you are interested in discussing and possibly developing this potential.