Hello fellows, and thanks for taking a moment to check out my post! The reason for this particular topic is to, as best I can, recount my numerous experiences with various psychedelics over the years. To be honest, this is really equal parts sharing experiences and recounting them to myself, as a lot of these are still integrating, even years later. I'm going to try to just run down most of my most important experiences with as much clarity and as little digression as possible, but I think we all know how that goes for these things.
First, a quick note about what the experience means to me. I don't feel at home in the material world. I get along just fine, work, pay bills, love my Girl, but this isn't my home. Most of the time I don't identify with other people, and even when I do there is a very strict limit to how far that can go before it just plain breaks. For example, I love science fiction, but I dare not mention to any other sci-fi enthusiasts how much I love Southland Tales or Suckerpunch, because they will be quick to tell me how wrong I am, and all I can do is look at that early shot of a toy soldier guarding a bright light at the end of a long road and shake my head. You guys don't see that? Please don't think of this as a negative view of the world on my part though, believe me, I love butterflies and rainbows, pina coladas and getting caught in the rain. I just don't feel very connected to it all. What I do feel connected to is the spiritual realm, hyperspace, whatever it is, it has called to me since I was an infant, and it is where I belong. To be more precise, Heaven is my home and I'm on the long road back there. Oh, I also have a pretty serious case of Videodrome syndrome so please forgive the constant pop culture references, I'm sure none of those creative artists want their wok slandered by some tripped out dope head, I just find it the best way to relate my experiences to others. Now onto the fun stuff!
My first trip was when I was 19. A good friend knew that I wanted to try mushrooms and LSD and the like, and so one night my phone rang with the invitation. I ate a few grams and had no effects for hours, so I ate a few more grams and still had no effects for a few more hours, while my buddies had all been tripping the whole time. One of them really wanted to make sure I had an experience so as he was leaving for the night he made sure to find me and put a huge golden yellow cap in my hand. I ate the guy and a short while later thought it would be interesting to take my shoes off and go for a walk. I clearly remember my first ever visual: as soon as my bare feet hit the street the concrete enhanced and unfolded and I could see every crack and pebble down the entire length of the block. Cool! I immediately headed off down to the dead end of the street and spent some time exploring the fishbowl effect, how the concrete was somehow rubbery and wavy and moved with my touch. Sat down and enjoyed some auditory hallucinations for a while before noticing that there were some worms digging their way up from the ground. A lot of worms. And spiders. Waves of spiders flowing over hundreds of worms crawling up from the dirt... oooooh wait I think I know what this is, time to walk away! Turning and walking away, I suddenly leapt with fright at a slimy whitish-yellowish serpent slithering towards my bare feet. One double take later I was looking at a broken plastic clothes hanger. I got my shoes and walked home. On the way I remember stopping to watch one of those scrolling digital displays and ended up having something of a conversation with it. Further across town, almost home, I heard water running, and turned to see the door of an unoccupied house open to let a small stream pour out over the front steps, down the walk, past my feet and into the gutter. These mushrooms certainly are strange!
I didn't trip again until I was 23, though not for lack of interest. To be sure, the idea consumed me and I read as much as I could find about mushrooms, and also made sure to ask every dude that I got stuff from if they knew anything about them, but no one ever did. Or maybe they didn't want to share with this dopey kid. Either way, I didn't taste them again until I had spent a few years learning what real work is in a metal buffing and polishing shop and spent a few nights in jail and months on probation for smoking pot. Like many people, I stayed sober for a while after being released from my bonds, until another friend, m., called and asked if I wanted to trip out at his cabin for the weekend, and I took him up on it. I have very little memory of this trip. I remember the two of us had almost complete synchronicity. I don't think one coherent sentence was uttered the entire time, but we always knew exactly where each other were. I remember once being completely overwhelmed by nature, the moonlight on the dew soaked grasses, the chirping crickets and singing birds, the hailstorm of mosquitoes, the towering beauty of the trees as they loomed over our small clearing. I also remember my eyes constantly being drawn skyward, and a specific image of a great whale made of aurora borealis swimming across the stars. I had seen it before in a dream and had understood it then as a form of God, the greatest being swimming through the ocean of the subconscious, only now it was real and in front of my eyes and sending me waves of love and unity! The Batman movie the next noon paled in comparison.
After this I moved out of state and had to continue my efforts on my own. Being alone and also pretty naive and inexperienced in the realm, I found myself working with different morning glory extracts to varying success. Often I got no more than the worst stomachaches I have ever known, but on a few occasions had great and very informative experiences. In fact, my first experiences with entities came with morning glory. One particular night I sat on the front stoop trying to figure out why the hell the stray cat at the crossroads was staring at me all night (it was probably thinking the same of me) until a man in black came by. He emerged from a grove of trees, seeming to come directly at me, but then changing his mind he walked up the block. I remember his face, it was screwed up in torment, and I got the sense that he was death, his purpose here had been to come for me, but he didn't want to hurt me and was conflicted. I believed him to simultaneously be a trumped up paranoid delusion of dark forces come to take me and a real life potential danger, as in my area it would not be unlikely for him to be holding heat and looking for a victim. When he came back down the road, this time on my side of the street, it just got worse. the more I tried to tell myself I was just paranoid, the more I was certain he was fighting and inner battle about whether or not to kill me. I stayed put just until he had slipped behind my line of sight, which I realized was his perfect opportunity to strike if he had wanted to. Immediately standing to go inside, I waited a moment and peeked around the side of the building, but he had disappeared. On another trip, I had gotten my extraction technique down about as good as it gets without realizing it, and thinking I was taking a single dose of LSAs, I was actually taking about a quadruple dose. As with most big trips, I felt early on how strong this was going to be and started to worry, but as soon as it became too much for me to handle, possibly the single coolest entity I have ever met showed up. Wide-eyed in the living room, Close Encounters, Tommy, and some random Lucio Fulci fantasy flick (Conquest, I think) could not contain my mind and I felt I might break when suddenly I was in the presence of the Laughing Buddha! He had come to save me from my honest mistake and have a few good laughs, and maybe show me some tricks. We put in A New Hope and he showed me how to use it as a guided meditation track. As Obi Wan showed Luke to use the force by blocking his sight and reaching out with his feelings, the Buddha taught me the same. With my eyes closed I could begin to see the world outside them as if outlined in the green Matrix code, only in rainbow technicolor. We went other places, many of which I can't remember, but one neat one where the Buddha and I were one and the same, simply reflections of each other in an infinite hall of mirrors reflecting Buddhas reflecting me.
So now I had a start; a cat, the crossroads, a madman who may be the hand of death, and a deity of laughter and joy. Pretty easy to build a complex drug based mythology out of those pieces, and I sure did. Shortly after that experience m. contacted me again, telling me of some amazing acid he had found. It was my first journey with LSD, and it was indeed very good, thick slabs of white blotter almost glistening with chemical love. However the trips themselves were pretty uneventful, with m. having entered a stage of disillusion with the whole scene right as I myself was becoming most enthralled. Worth noting are my first experience with magic tricks and super powers as I entertained him with some visual cantrips (I use the D&D definition of cantrips, so if that's not correct, my mistake), a moment when his bathroom tried to swallow me whole, and a serious cat motif. I mean SERIOUS cat motif. Like his household cats were following and protecting us, and messing with us, as well as neighborhood cats. One point I remember was particularly awesome and blew his mind was when I told him, "They're probably watching us now," right as we both turned and saw a whole colony of cats and kittens in someone's front yard staring at us. And yeah, they were still there in the morning. Also, we chased some toads in the woods and watched two hawks pursue a squirrel for lunch, but I think it got away. Also made some music with a spatula and grill. A lot of fun and some real beauty, and easily my most clearly remembered trip, but also one in which I had to face losing my longtime tripping buddy to travel on alone, and his mood really soured the experience for me. It was bittersweet and I chose to take it easy for a while.
About a year later the mushroom came to me again, another unexpected call, though now I knew better than to think it came from the man who dialed my number. These calls were from those beings across the threshold, though they came from human actions. I took a Monday off of work to properly set my irresponsible and childish mood, something that has become very important to me. Upon waking I put on some Marley and some Yes, and finally a Tangerine Dream album I had not listened to yet for a little treat on the back side. I ate a bunch of mushrooms and sat down with a copy of Catch 22 to await the rise. The beginnings were very mild and focused mostly on the music, but by the time Tangerine Dream came on I was sufficiently screwbrained and could not fathom this strange new music coming from my speakers. Was this some alien melody from beyond? Was the material world finally dissolving? Oh man, no, this is just that one album you nerd. Then the eyes came, pushing outward in clumps of three, melting through the walls, trying to see into my soul. I could either be afraid and freak out, or let them see. I did my best to open my heart and show these frightening eyes of the demon that I wasn't afraid to share my love with it. There was an experience of it entering my body and not quite possessing me, but also not being completely benign. He remained for the rest of this trip, taking full form in a visual later on. I laid down on the couch sleepily, closed my eyes to listen, and soon found myself traveling at high speeds through a long tunnel, kind of like the Stargate, but again, rainbow. It was very interesting, the tunnel moved and twisted, changed shape and color according to my thoughts and feelings, and at the end, what is that... at the end... a constellation? The Virgin Mary? Christ? Buddha again? It looked like all of those and more, like every bit of spiritual symbolism I had ever seen, and also like a strange blue female alien, almost exactly like the aliens from the Abyss. It was calling to us, the demon and me, singing within the music and reaching for us, and I reached out to it, but could not connect, with the thought "only human" breaking my focus. I went to the bathroom and the man in the mirror was not me. It had my face, but it was only using it because it had no other way to show itself to me. I spent some time trying to "break the mirror" so I could see him, probably looking very much like Groucho and Harpo in Duck Soup, and succeeding a little. I was at least able to break free of my reflection and we moved independently of each other, but communication was not very effective. After a while I realized my Girl would be home from work in an hour or so, and thought at least I could put on a nice shirt and be handsome for her. However the image that greeted me at the full length closet mirror stopped me in my tracks. My curly, unkempt hair curled upwards, like small horns, and my ragged jeans became fuzzy, curly locks of fur, and the "demon" Pan was within me, fully visible in the mirror, and ever since he has been a welcome addition at any of my private parties. Dude is nuts and very reckless, but has great taste in music and always parties hardcore, and most importantly he looks out for his bros. At least so far he has.
After that I went through a few strips of acid, mostly watching cartoons like Disney's Alice and a lot of anime, Macross and Cowboy Bebop in particular. The only noteworthy experience, outside of general spiritual contemplation and small bits of understanding, was a particular piece of music that combined with the reflection of my living room in my overhead fan assembly. Something about the beat of the music seemed specifically designed to jack the concept of time, not just the dilation or loop effects, but completely skew it out of whack, and as it did so, and I lost my place in the flow of time, I saw within the reflection that the room around me was reverting to the home I had grown up in as a very young child. My couch was reverting to the old couch, the tv and layout, everything was exactly as it had been when I was a child. Of course my mind openly rejected this and wanted to test it. As soon as the thought of reality check entered my head though, my little sister came out of her bedroom with her old teddy bear and smiled at me. I wept. I'm tearing up right now, ha! Tough it up soldier.
All of this madness coalesced beautifully into one monster of a mind blower on this most recent of April 20ths, the trip that lead me to DMT, or it to me, as many will agree seems to be its method. After it, I came here and wrote
my introduction essay , which should cover most of it, but leaves a lot of the specific experiences out, so here's just a bit of what I left out of that. Before I had even finished eating the mushrooms I was experiencing those little little waves of trepidation that signal to me that my mind is taking off. I had decided this trip wasn't going to be about chasing rabbits or meeting aliens, this was going to be a return to form from the old days, just getting super high and enjoying it, so feeling rumblings this early on with more to eat made me very happy. A storm blew in, and the lightning and thunder were amazing, and the tree in the front yard was quite beautiful, swaying in the strong winds, dancing and swirling in the rain. Wait a minute, it's really dancing! Ha! It's Gaia! What a pretty lady. I can't share a lot of what went on between us that night, it's mostly our little secret, like it is with a lot of fellows that know her. Eventually I experienced the light from my intro essay and entered a world of the wildest experiences I have ever had. The best description I can give would be as a single five minute loop: I would find myself alone on my couch, or in my chair, checking the room for demons, hoping no cops were at the door, asking my hands if everything was ok (they held the place down for me and took care of me while my head was in the clouds, kinda weird but awesome to know I can trust those guys when I need em), and then I would slip back into one of two situations. I would either find myself in a hellish realm surrounded by demons and evil things filled with malice and hate and would have to fight my way out, back to the palace in the sky (aided by my flaming sword and newly grown angelic wings, of course), or I would immediately rise, soaring above the rooftops, through the clouds and stars, across the galaxy, to Heaven, where I would mingle and party and learn and teach, often ending with some of the most beautiful things ever (like the DMT self replicating machines kind of thing) and just be blown away. The experiences would be so powerful and amazing that I would find myself saying "Damn, I'm pretty damn powerful," to which something would always say, "If you're so damn powerful, what's your name human?" And I would say my name. And then I would be back on the couch, wondering why I spoke my own name. Am I identifying myself to a police officer at my door? My only response would be almost exactly like the scene in Terminator when the janitor knocks on Arnie's door and he cycles through a selection of replies and settles on "Fuck You Asshole" because even if I was talking to a cop I was too fucked up to do anything about it. Hopefully if that was the case I could count on the Mad Hatter to take control and lunatic me out of the Matrix's grip. And then back up to Heaven and God and Gaia and Toad Demons and the whole wild deal. After the peak, as I came down, the ability to recall my name coupled with my returning mobility lead me into the position of being The One, chosen and imbued with God's divine power. I could do no wrong! Of course this pretty much just meant that I could successfully hit a pipe or change the track (Animal Collective and Zeppelin that night), but it was nonetheless an interesting place to be. If one could somehow harness that power for greater works...
And that's about where DMT enters my life. I still have the little packet sitting in my stash, and I can feel that the time to step into it is soon. I have only one real worry. My goal with DMT is very simple. I want to see the face of God, or failing that, at least be in his presence and have clear memory of it. Believe me I know how much that is asking, and I am not coming into it demanding this or even fully expecting it. I just feel that this is the reason DMT came to me, a direct pass from God to come up and say hi, and maybe, if I feel up to the task, take a larger role in his work. This worries me because if I just get dumped in some alien planet with strange apes that love to dance and laugh at my silly earthbound ideas, that's great and all, cool trip, but it could totally smash this ivory tower I've been building. I mean, Yes is one of my favorite bands of all time. I saw them this summer, and it was easily the worst concert I have ever been to, and left me very disillusioned and broken. They played for less than an hour and APOLOGIZED for not playing Close to the Edge. How the fuck does a band just come out and apologize for not playing their best goddamned song?!
Sorry, I'm still bitter.
Ahh, anyways, this is getting quite long, and as much as I have put down, there are ten times as many things left out. Hell I didn't even mention my 20 or so DXM trips! For anyone who read this through, or even just skimmed it, thank you very much, I greatly appreciate your attention and hope that my stories have been worth your time. I'll not be surprised if no one does, it would fit right in with my lifetime spent disconnected from my peers, even within the outcast circuit, but at the very least I wrote it, I shared it, I hope you like it.
Love and peace guys!
You'll never take me alive coppers!