Live long and prosper!

San Pedro is my most trusted medicine - I drink it often on my own as well as with shamans in Peru. Maybe I can help you understand this better.

First off, for the issues you want to work on I think this is the perfect medicine. San Pedro is known as hummingbird or heart medicine - it helps you live a fulfilling life and follow your passion. It teaches you to love yourself and others and to express that love. It teaches you how to be a good person with heart.

It is very gentle though, and it sounds like you are expecting a trip-out visual experience - which sometimes happens with San Pedro but not usually.


Good luck wherever your path leads you! Sounds like from your later post the meds you are taking could be interfering.... Maybe they are, maybe they arent.... I think San Pedro could help you get to the point where you dont ever need those meds again, but that could be a longer road to recovery.... Maybe you prefer to just stay on the meds and hide the illness....

I have seen San Pedro heal Bipolar disorder, cancer and PTSD. It is powerful stuff.

Mushrooms are also really excellent. I prefer San Pedro greatly, and think it could be better for you, but I also think mushrooms are worth a try - they are really great teachers too. I like them either out in nature during the day, or in a quiet and dark room at night (no music, eyes closed).

Happy journeys!

I agree with almost all of what travsha said - especially about the importance of being out in nature in order to have visions manifest more easily (looking at the clouds in particular seems to do it for my friend). But if you weren't even getting good CEVs, it really means you just didn't take enough. Mescaline is more MDMA-like at lower doses. That's totally great and has its place, but it is not all that this plant has to offer. If you get a proper dose, it is definitely psychedelic and you won't be wondering whether it will show up. Part of it may indeed be that you have a hard head - individual sensitivity to mescaline seems to vary a good deal. However, 5 feet of a halfway-decent cactus is going to rock anyone. So get yourself some good cactus and give it another shot.

DoingKermit, Cognitive Heart, travsha, and xram: Thank you all for your thoughtful comments and suggestions. I will come back to San Pedro one day when it feels right...and I believe it will feel right again someday. I won't forget the healing it has already given me.

I must say, even though I was not out in nature during my San Pedro experiences, I did go to a lovely nature preserve the day after the intense emotional experience, and I've never viewed flowers, trees, and grass with so much awe and reverence! It remains one of my favorite days ever.

Now I have a trusted source for psilocybe cubensis and am carefully preparing my mindset, arranging the right setting, and researching dosages. First experience should be within the next two weeks. Wish me luck, and thanks again!

Good luck, startrek!

I hope it's okay that I continue to post in my original "introduction" thread. I feel that I still haven't had a proper psychedelic experience, and until I do, I feel like I'm a beginner and belong in this "beginner" area.

I'll cut right to the chase: Either my tricyclic antidepressant, clomipramine, has a powerful and long-lasting negating effect on both mescaline and psilocybin, or my brain is just a mighty fortress of psychedelic impenetrability. Here is a summary of my first three experiences with psilocybe cubensis:

FIRST TIME
DAYS WITHOUT CLOMIPRAMINE: 1
DOSAGE: 3.0 grams dried p. cubensis, then 3.0 more grams an hour later

I figured I might have to take a fairly large dose the first time, since I had been so resistant to mescaline previously. Still, it seemed strange that I felt almost nothing an hour after taking 3.0 grams, so I took another 3.0 grams, for a total of 6.0 grams. About an hour later I was experiencing occasional, mild open-eye visuals and the very lightest closed-eye visuals. My motor functions and attention span seemed to be unaffected. The visuals consisted of a bit of swirling of the patterns on my ceiling and some dancing points of color, and a bit of rhythmic movement off what looked like some kind of color-machine when I closed my eyes, but again, it was not very pronounced at all. I noticed these things only if I looked for them; if I simply looked around my room, I noticed nothing unusual, no halo effects or the like. I guess this was the peak, and it lasted less than two hours. After that I experienced about two hours of heightened emotional sensitivity; I thought about my kids and shed some tears of joy and generally felt that I have been disconnected from my emotions for much of my life. I was especially sensitive because my son was about to get married, and I love him tremendously. This is good because it encouraged me to try psychedelics again after being off clomipramine for a while longer. In general, though, I was pretty astonished that 6.0 grams of shrooms had such a mild effect.

SECOND TIME
DAYS WITHOUT CLOMIPRAMINE: 8
DOSAGE: 1.75 grams dried p. cubensis plus 8" of San Pedro cactus (brewed)

I combined the two psychedelics because I didn't have enough of either for a full-blown trip, and I just wanted to gauge whether being off clomipramine for a longer period of time would result in more noticeable effects. It didn't. I can't say that I experienced anything more than a very slight body load, if even that.

THIRD TIME
DAYS WITHOUT CLOMIPRAMINE: 22
DOSAGE: 2.5 grams dried p. cubensis

About one hour after drinking tea and ingesting the remaining shrooms, I felt a definite body load. (No nausea in any of these experiences, by the way.) I never experienced any visuals. The emotional effect was real, however, and this time I was just in a very good mood for nearly five hours. I spent the time reading funny stories and articles and watching an episode of Barney Miller on YouTube, and I laughed out loud a lot! It felt really good. Once again, I believe 2.5 grams should do more than put me in a good mood, and to have no visuals whatsoever seems highly unusual, but the fact that I had a definite reaction encourages me to continue trying.

I am also experiencing some positive effects in my life from being off clomipramine, taking psilocybin, or both. First, I'm enjoying sex a lot more (impotence being one of the common side effects of clomipramine). Second, I have more energy, as clomipramine tends to raise the "troughs" of one's mood but also knock down the "peaks," making every day rather emotionally flat. That has been a good thing for me in many ways, and I don't regret taking clomipramine at all, but it's nice to really feel again, too. I've been shedding tears rather frequently, but not out of depression, just out of being deeply touched by emotional thoughts, both happy and sad.

Third, and related to the second point, I'm experiencing these positive feelings without anxiety, tension, or bursts of anger. I believe this must be from the psilocybin, because in past I have tried to stop taking clomipramine and ended up back on it within days because I couldn't handle the return of the "old me".

I've also been having a lot of thoughts lately about doing what I really want to do in life instead of working at my job, which is a great job but not anything I'm passionate about, just for the money. In fact, I worked out a detailed, six-year plan to get myself completely out of debt and build my savings so that I can change careers and do something I love. That's a very good thing! Oh, and my girlfriend and I spent a whole day writing songs together; that was freaking awesome! (And wow, she's a lot more talented than I realized.)

So, I remain without the definitive psychedelic experience but am still feeling encouraged and intend to obtain more of the special fungus and try, try again.

POSTSCRIPT: Someone suggested before that my San Pedro cactus may have just been weak, and I'm sure some must be thinking that my shrooms may be weak as well. I have three responses to this: (1) Sure, I suppose that's possible. (2) But my shrooms come from a very reliable source. Very reliable. I know him as well as I know myself, if you get my meaning. (3) My shrooms bruised easily and deep blue when fresh, which I believe indicates at least a normal psilocybin content, and they hadn't been dried for more than a week or so each time I took them, so they were not degraded. Just thought I'd put the "weak cactus/weak shrooms" issue to bed. After all this time, with different batches and sometimes very high doses, I think the problem is clearly my own body and brain, not the quality of the product.

Hi,
I'm new here too. You and I got to a similar place in life with two very different background stories. I used and abused all types of drugs as a kid. 30 years later, after I got sober I realized the beginning of my drug use coincided with the start of my mom and dad's marital turmoil. I don't use any drugs now except caffeine and cactus. I would consider doing LSD again and I would definitely try DMT, but I'm sticking to cactus right now due to circumstances.

I think you probably did a slightly lower than "Threshold" dose and you were so emotionally pent up it was enough to open the flood gates. I second the suggestion to try another type of Trichocereus: Bridgesii, Terscheckii or Peruvianus, but ditch your current source. Most Pachanoi out there is weak, which is why I've stayed away from it until I trust my id'ing skills.

I have a trip report about Terscheckii I posted just this week. Terscheckii is easily available and was a very emotional experience for me. Bridgesii may be your best bet, but I wouldn't try to do any 5 feet of it.

Wait Startrek, 2,5/3,5 gr of cubensis is a breakthrough dose only if they are well dried. You're reporting "a week or so" from fresh: do you know that a well dried mushroom weigh just 1/10 of a fresh one?
Are you sure they were completely dry when you took them? If not, the dosage was likely too light...

Mothman, these mushrooms were dried in front of a fan for two days and then stored in a sealed container with desiccant, so they were "cracker dry". Your estimate is quite accurate: they lost 90% of their weight compared to when they were fresh.

Wolfnippletip, thanks for your comments. It sounds as though you may have read only my first post; there are several updates throughout the thread as well. I am now growing two of my own San Pedros, which I promised in exchange for wisdom. They took a very long time (months) to root, but now they are finally doing well.

Hey star trek, what an amazing read your story is so beautiful was looking for a bed time story last night ended up reading till the end and very encouraged to place a reply. I once had a friend who had a similar tolerance to psychedelics needing around 4-6 g of cubes to feel much of anything in your case it can be your tolerance combined with the med interference . Seems to me the teachers are being so generous with their care of you it amazes me to hear your dedication and also life changes, congratulations on your new found since of enjoyment in life , it takes a lot of self growth to replace meds with your natural health . From all of this I believe the psychedelic plant Gods are showing you the way! (Mostly because your asking for their help)Another thing with cactus is one can use it in very small doses say 1 teaspoon dry powder daily or so and this is said to balance Ph (much like lemon)I would believe since it has similar effects to MDMA would slowly bring great benefit with wholelistic healing appossed to just blocking your feelings like some meds can do! As others have said you are consuming extreme doses which sometimes turn into an unfortunate unforgettable unbearable psychological psychedelic circus for some people! I am happy this is not the case for you although if one were to try say a known specimen of cactus with higher alkalines, oops-alkaloids great respect is needed to listen for instructions from your wise teachers as they are ultimately the ones choosing the dose we take, but that's just what I believe to be true.... Keep up the good work!

P.s if one is trying to remove pharmaceuticals from their diet it's wise to choose a gently detox diet and or liver flush to remove excess Chemicals which remain in body even after use has stopped.

Namaste

Thank you, DmtinMe2, for that thoughtful and encouraging reply!

I agree with you about the teachers being generous and gentle with me. Even though it is sometimes frustrating that I've had nothing even close to a breakthrough experience, I have also been fortunate to have nothing bad or overwhelming happen. The gods are making sure I ease into this very slowly, and I trust their wisdom and am waiting patiently to learn whatever they're trying to teach me.

Thanks for reminding me that I shouldn't take a high dose of a substance that I haven't tried before. I've eaten three feet of San Pedro and not tripped, but three feet of the next batch of San Pedro might nail me to the wall! I will be careful.

The idea of a spoonful of dried cactus every day is interesting. I know about microdosing with psilocybin and LSD, but I never thought about microdosing with mescaline. I see no reason it wouldn't be helpful. Perhaps I'll try that sometime.

I am currently out of fungus but expect a new crop within a week or so. Then I hope I'll be able to post something amazing.

This is an epic thread. A+

It sounds like your mushroom doses are approaching what they should be. Really 3.5 is where things start getting pretty psychedelic. You could probably even safely go 4.5 with your generally decent-seeming mental health and not encounter problems. As long as you are willing to invest the time and money with these things you can work your way up slowly into completely dissolving yourself in dimensions you were previously unaware of. Low doses of DMT are incredibly therapeutic and not frightening. Medium doses aren't even really frightening or all that insane.

Thanks a lot, FLep! I've never had a thread called "epic" on any forum.

Two people I know have just had experiences that precisely illustrate my reasons for needing to explore psychedelics at this point in my life. One of them, a coworker, died of cancer last month; he would have retired this month. The other, a family member, was just diagnosed with terminal cancer last week; he retired a month ago. Both of these men worked their entire adult lives and then found out they would have no time to enjoy themselves afterward. (The family member just had surgery that might give him as much as a year; the prognosis is officially four months.)

There is almost nothing sadder to me than the thought of doing something you aren't passionate about for most of your life, with the promise of having at least a few years at the end of your life to do whatever you wish, and then having that promise yanked away at the last moment. It's like being a slave, being told you'll be freed when you get old, and then, on the day you're to be freed, being shot in the back. It's so pathetic it almost brings tears to my eyes.

That's what psychedelics are about for me. There's something inside me: a passion, a drive, a calling, an acceptance, a peace...something. I'll be damned if I'm going to die before I discover it.

I like your thread because it is very illustrative of the power of entheogens to facilitate personal growth. Glad to see it is ongoing and I'm looking forward to your future updates.

It happened!!! It finally happened!!! I am so happy!!!

I'll get right to describing the experience after I explain the setup: I took 35 grams of fresh shrooms blended into 12 ounces of low-sodium V8 juice on an empty stomach about an hour after getting up in the morning. An hour later I felt a heavy body load, mild nausea, and some mental fog but nothing trippy, so I made a tea of 3.5 grams of dried shrooms, drank the tea, and ate the shrooms, for a total of about 7 grams dried. I lay on the bed with the blinds closed; the room was lit about as much as at twilight, not particularly dark or bright. I lay on my back; my girlfriend lay next to me, partly on my chest with one arm draped over me.

I stared at the plain, white, plaster ceiling and saw only some mild undulations and faintly-colored lines on it. Within a few minutes, however, a three-dimensional lattice began to emerge in the space between me and the ceiling. It looked as though it were made of the clearest glass; I could see it only because of the colors that faintly glinted off its strands, but it was otherwise see-through. It was so very complex, like a spider-web spun by a spider that was somehow also an engineer and a mathematician.

The lattice moved in response to changes in the environment. When a breeze came through the window, the lattice in the area near the window compressed slightly, then gently drifted back to its previous position. Even light seemed to affect it, making it change in subtle ways, causing it to twist or flow slightly, but it always came back to its original shape. Some areas of the lattice were inexplicably more dense, more complex, or differently shaped than others, for no reason that I could discern. The entire lattice existed in what appeared to my eyes to be open air, and yet here it would be dense and twisted in a spiral, while there it would be stretched thin in a wide-open mesh covering a broad area of the room.

By this time my body and my girlfriend's felt as one. We were separate consciousnesses, but I could not perceive the boundary between our entangled arms. Our flesh simply melted together.

I watched the lattice for what felt like about five minutes and then closed my eyes. I saw some patterns, but the light coming through my eyelids cast shadows on my visions, so I asked my girlfriend for something to cover my eyes. She gave me a washcloth and wrapped it over my head with something elastic (which I later found out was my favorite headband of hers, which turned out to be appropriate later). This is when my adventure began.

Before me, just inches from my face, was a dark brownish-yellow wall or barrier with deep, jagged, vertical grooves that looked not quite random enough to have been carved naturally as by erosion; I deduced that they were some kind of writing, but I had no way of decyphering it. Then water rushed in from either side of my face and churned around me, and I wondered if I was in a kind of washing machine. Knowing that I had just taken a psychedelic drug, it occurred to me that perhaps I was undergoing a kind of psychic cleansing, but the metaphor didn't fit: this container was in no way profound. It was more like some industrial washer, completely impersonal and quite depressing in its drabness, and the light faintly coming through the wall in front of me had the dull quality of light seen through translucent plastic. Surely my spirit was not going to be cleansed in some old, dingy, used dishwasher. I gave up on the idea.

Although I don't recall leaving the washing chamber, I found that I had been moved to a laboratory. The word laboratory connotes sterility, but this was not that kind of laboratory. It was filled to the top with water, and although it was not obviously dirty, it felt murky and stagnant, as though the water hadn't been freshened in a long while. Hoses and valves connected to various chambers, each of which housed some kind of biological experiment involving a different life form. The life forms were alien to me; nothing had a face or eyes or leaves like a plant, but it was definitely organic. Most of it seemed formless and inert like algae, but a few specimens had suckers, tentacles, and other features reminiscent of life forms familiar to me. None of it was conscious of me. I didn't interact with anything. I just observed.

While in the laboratory I realized that I must not be there in a body, but only as a consciousness, because I felt no need to breath and was not troubled by being underwater, nor had I been bothered by the churning water inside the washing chamber. This realization led to great disappointment, because if I was there only as a consciousness, then I must be having a spiritual experience, and this was nothing like what I'd imagined a spiritual experience would be like. To me that means going either far out into uncharted space or deep within my own being. To be stuck in an impersonal laboratory full of stagnant water and life forms that I could not relate to on any level was depressing. I wasn't distraught, but rather sorely disappointed. I felt that, if this was the reality of my existence, I would rather not have known.

But then I felt an entity with me—a female energy—and she guided me out of the laboratory, to the area around its perimeter. Oddly, the environment was almost exactly the same as it had been on the inside: we were completely submerged in stagnant water, as if in a bayou or landlocked pond, and the life forms growing there (many attached to the exterior walls of the laboratory) were pretty much identical to those on the inside. The entity seemed to be showing me that, although reality was not all that different from what I'd been perceiving before, I was not in fact locked inside it, but free to wander and explore it.

This was not entirely encouraging to me, however. So I was free to move around. What difference did it make, when I was still in an icky environment, the only colors dull greens and browns, unable to relate to any of the life around me? Freedom felt disappointing as well.

Then the entity lifted me higher in the water. As we rose, I began to see sunlight filtering through the water from above, and my surroundings became gradually more open and more blue. Almost immediately, however, I noticed that the color, though vastly improved, was not quite a natural blue. It was an antiseptic light blue, and I anticipated surfacing not as a free being in the open ocean, but as a captive dolphin in a Sea World aquarium. Again, it was an improvement, but only by degrees: I would be able to swim and play, and I would be able to relate to the life around me, but I would nevertheless be a captive.

But at the surface, I found that we—the female entity and I—were in a place I would never have expected: a pet store in a shopping mall. Once again, water was everywhere, about waist-high to the people shopping there, but we were much smaller and were inside a shopping basket that had clearly been custom-built as a life-support system so that we could be transported to another place without dying. We were very much like fish; somehow I knew that we had to be kept under the water, or we would die, but I felt in no danger.

By this time the entity accompanying me felt smaller than me, and, although she, like me, was still just a consciousness without a body, she had taken on the character of a pixie, fairy, or angel. She was showing me something important because helping me made her feel good.

A woman picked up the basket we were in and began carrying us through the mall, the water up to her waist, the basket dangling at arm's length so that the entity and I remained safely submerged. The woman wore a sun dress printed with large, orange flowers. She did not acknowledge us in any way. I wondered if she even realized we were in her basket, but then I remembered that the basket was purpose-built to sustain us as we were being transported. The woman had to know we were there, because there was no other possible reason for her to be carrying the basket except to take us somewhere.

She took us to a peninsula that is a summer resort area near my home, out to the very end, where there is a beach. Many people were there, playing and having fun on a sunny day. This is what we do, I said to myself. We live our lives on the mainland. Now and then, when we're tired of living those lives, we come here and play in the water for a while because it's different, and it helps us forget the mundane and the difficult, and we just have fun. But we don't stay in the water; we always go back to our lives. There was something pleasant about this; it was nice to think of people coming together in a special place for the sole purpose of being worry-free for a while. It was just a little bit sad, though, to think that we never stay; we always go back.

My fairy and I entered the water and began to move away from the beach, out toward the buoys beyond which swimmers are not allowed to go. The lifeguards will blow their whistles and shout at you if you go farther, but of course they can't stop you. Then I realized that the buoys don't mean that you can't go farther, but rather that if you go farther, you are on your own. Between the beach and the buoys, someone will be watching you, will rescue you if you start to drown. Beyond the buoys, you may be okay, or you may not be okay, and no one will be there to guide you.

We swam past the buoys.

Quite suddenly, the environment changed. Life forms were everywhere, and although they looked a lot like the life forms I had seen inside the laboratory and in the swamp outside it, here they were dynamic and truly alive: swimming vigorously, sucking in food, latching onto things, twirling, replicating, going places. All of it was still indifferent to me. Nothing cared that I was there; it was content to let me observe it, but it knew that I was there. It didn't react to me or accommodate me, but on some level it subtly acknowledged me.

Although this was a vast improvement over all the previous environments I'd found myself in during this adventure, an unfortunate truth occurred to me: I still wasn't absolutely free. The peninsula, you see, juts out into a lake, and that lake is surrounded by land, and that land keeps me from swimming beyond a certain distance. (It never occurred to me that I might traverse the land; this experience was all about water for some reason, and my consciousness could exist only in the water.)

But no sooner had the thought of still being less than perfectly free occurred to me than my fairy lifted me up, out of the water, and onto a space ship! We were at the fore of the ship, facing a wide bank of windows. The ship was extremely close to Earth and pointed down toward it, so that, out of one window, I could see the lake we'd just ascended from, with all its life forms. Interestingly, the life forms in the water seemed truly alive, whereas the life forms on land were grotesque. On the land I could see the soil churning endlessly, with bits of every living thing—cows, plants, everything—just fighting for air, desperate to express themselves, debased with the desire to live fully no matter the cost, yearning endlessly for openness and sunlight. The faces were garish like colored plastic, and had expressions of desperation and malice. It was nothing like the content, rich life of the water. I was glad to be away from the land and its horrors.

Out of the other windows of the space ship I could see nearby planets—very nearby, in fact, so that this particular area of space felt rather densely packed—and from each planet, faces extended toward and into the space ship. They were not human, but they were recognizable as the faces of sentient beings. They were purple and blue, lumpy and pliable, as if made of neon-colored dough, but they were not disgusting or frightening. They were just different forms of intelligent life from throughout the universe, and they wanted to communicate with us. However, there was no message. They wanted only to communicate that they exist, and they wanted nothing more than for us to acknowledge them. Once this thought formed fully in my mind, they were satisfied, and their faces retreated back into the walls of the ship and back to wherever they called home.

Now we left the ship, and my fairy flew with me through far, open space, light-years and eons from Earth, and said to me, not in words but in pure thought, “Remember? This is where you're from!”

And at that moment I woke up spiritually and realized what I am.

I am an independent consciousness that has existed as long as I can remember. I may have been created at some point, or perhaps I've always existed: I don't remember that. What I do know is that I have long flown from place to place and time to time throughout the universe, looking for interesting things to experience. I don't remember any of my past lives, but I imagine I've probably been a plant here, a rock there, a squirming whatchamacallit in the indescribable muck on some celestial blob or another. All of it was very interesting, I'm sure.

All I remember for sure is that, forty-odd Earth years ago, I came near this planet, and in a city in the American Midwest, I saw a couple who were about to have a baby, and I was given permission to join the life on this planet, living the life of that baby, becoming the man I am right now, and experiencing what this place calls “life.” In this adventure, I experience the pleasure of my life intersect the lives of other beings who, for reasons unknown to me, also ended up here and now, each on his or her own journey, discovering whatever things they've decided are important to discover. I don't have to understand any of it. I'm only here to marvel at it and to end my life one day saying, “Wow, Earth, huh? What a place!”

I chose this! And remembering the moment I saw my mom and dad and decided that I would become their child made me cry with gratitude.

That is the greatest revelation I've ever had in this life. The challenges, the difficulties, the tragedies. The uncertainty, the joy, the wondering and hoping and wishing. I chose it. I asked to come here and experience all of these things. I didn't know what they would be, or how they would make me feel, or how I would deal with them. But I came into this world with open eyes, knowing that whatever wonders and whatever insanity I might experience, it's all part of what is called “life” here, and I wanted to see what it was like. And now I'm seeing it, just like I wanted, but it's temporary, so none of it has to be an undue burden to me. I'm just here to do what comes naturally, enjoy it as much as possible, love and be loved by my fellow travelers, and do my best to leave this planet a little better than it was when I got here.

There's more to this...thoughts I've pondered and conclusions I've reached in the three days since my mushroom trip, and I look forward to writing about some of them...but not today.

The only other thing I want to say right now is that the female entity, my fairy, turned out to be my girlfriend, who was beside me on her bed the whole time. It turns out that she's a fairy (though she's asked me to spell it “faerie”) who goes through life helping people solve their problems. That's how she has fun and feels useful. She was even beaming thoughts into my head during the experience, guiding me out of the bad spots and into the good. (I narrated some of my trip to her when I was lucid enough to speak, and when she was not napping.) Now I look forward to getting to know her in a whole new way, not as my human girlfriend here on Earth, but as the cosmic faerie who decided to be born here and be my angel for a while. :-)

I'm off to integrate for a while, and to think about how to show my gratitude to the fellow travelers who have taken time out of their journeys to help me on mine. I'll be back. Thank you for reading and take care of yourselves.

So far my integration is coming along all right. It has been ten days since my awesome trip. (I posted the trip report in my previous post several days after the experience, although I wrote it the day after.)

For about five days, I felt invincible. That feeling has subsided, but several important things are staying with me so far:

1. Lack of anxiety. At work I am not crippled by worrying about what my boss and coworkers think of me. The feeling that I'm being watched and judged constantly is absent, and I feel as though, if my employer doesn't like my performance and wants to get rid of me, c'est la vie. Anyway, I know I do my job pretty well, so I probably never had anything to worry about. Still, that knowledge was never enough to keep me from feeling anxious most of the time.

2. Gratitude. I just feel like being nice to people, and everything that happens feels like a small blessing. I've started making amends with a few people in my life whom I've wronged or failed to appreciate. That process will take a long, long time, but I'm starting it.

3. Initiative. I just feel like "going for it" in my life: not working harder than usual, but also not hesitating to do, or attempt, whatever I feel is right for me. I applied for a promotion at work and called the guy who would be my new boss, an executive I've never met, to introduce myself and tell him why I think I'm the guy for the job. I was able to do this without hesitation or fear. Similarly, my interactions with people in public have felt effortless. After all, what's wrong with just asking for what you want and being friendly to everyone?

4. Freedom from my past. I have hardly thought at all about painful or frustrating experiences from my childhood, for example. Thinking of those things has been a daily occurrence for most of my adult life. It's not that I've forgotten them, and I really do think I'll have to come back around and deal with them at some point. But my recent trip convinced me that those things, painful as they may have been, are part of the life I chose on this planet. I choose to live, and life includes pain as well as pleasure, loss as well as love. I've got it better than probably several billion people, so why worry?

I'm having relatives visit from out of town this coming weekend, and how I interact with them will be educational. I haven't had difficult experiences with these particular people, but still, I expect some changes in how I treat them and communicate with them.

To anyone who's still reading after all this time, thank you again!

EDIT: Another good thing, that's also kind of funny. As I was coming down from my trip, I was looking at my fingernails, which were ratty and torn from my severely biting them, and I realized that they are alive and growing and want to look nice. Since then I have not bitten them; I've carefully clipped and filed them, and now they're starting to look nice, although they're still rather short. I had ravaged those poor things, sometimes until they bled! Now I feel more confident because my hands look presentable, and I don't have to hide them from whomever I'm talking with. Oh, and I've had a couple of cups of tea but otherwise no caffeine! I'll probably think of ten other little improvements in my life as soon as I hit the "post" button.

Last night I had another incredible trip that built upon what I learned twelve days ago.

I was alone in my apartment with my girlfriend on standby in case I needed support, which of course I did. I made a tea of 5 grams of dried shrooms and drank it. Then I poured more hot water over the same shrooms and added salt to make a broth. After drinking that, I ate the shrooms while watching the movie Trans-Siberian and waiting for the effects to start.

I am now convinced that my particular antidepressant, clomipramine, totally blocks the effects of psilocybin and takes over a month to get out of one's system sufficiently that one can trip normally. A few weeks ago, 6 grams made me deeply thoughtful without really tripping; twelve days ago, 7 grams made me trip but came on gently with just a mild body load; but last night, 5 grams hit me like a ton of bricks.

The first half-hour of Trans-Siberian was rather ominous, like it was building up to something bad, and I knew that was no way to start a trip, so I turned it off. I started feeling a body load around the one-hour mark, and by 90 minutes my heart was racing and my breathing was deep and hard. I admit that I was a little scared, not because I thought anything was wrong, but because I was worried that the unpleasantness of my physical reactions were going to overshadow the psychological benefits. I even tried to throw up twice but couldn't. I texted my girlfriend/angel/faerie that it would be a REALLY GOOD THING if she would come over. Fortunately she was grocery shopping in my neighborhood and was at my door within fifteen minutes.

By this time I was having the strongest open-eye visuals I've ever had: my ceiling was swirling and everything in my apartment was moving. This was not unpleasant by itself, but it wasn't particularly good, either, because I don't do this for the fun of seeing weird things, but rather to learn and grow spiritually. That being said, it was reassuring to know that I am capable of having a “typical” reaction to psychedelics once the antidepressant is out of my system.

Before my girlfriend arrived, I lay on my bed and closed my eyes, and I could feel myself slipping away. I didn't want to go yet, though. I needed her with me for reassurance, so every couple of minutes I would open my eyes, get up, and walk around a bit. As long as my eyes were open, I felt completely grounded in reality, but as soon as they were closed, I felt my body dissolving and my mind being pulled away.

When she arrived, I told her how happy I was that she had come and hugged her, but as I hugged her, my arms seemed to go right through her, as though we were both immaterial. She could tell I was hanging by a thread and immediately guided me to my bed and lay next to me. I asked her to just tell me that she would be with me, watching my body and keeping me physically safe as my mind journeyed. After a couple of minutes I felt safe and tried to let go. A feminine energy—not my girlfriend this time, not anyone or anything I know, just an neutral entity—was pulling me hard, and I tried to let go, but several times I had to open my eyes and get up and walk around, because letting go was just too hard. But finally I was able to relax and trust the universe enough to let go.

My consciousness was yanked from my body almost violently. I expected to go into space, or perhaps to lose my sense of self, but no...I was immediately thrust into a familiar but unpleasant situation.

Remember my previous trip, in which I looked at the solid ground of the Earth and saw all the elements of life churning chaotically and fighting for their existence, desperately trying to express themselves? I found myself in the midst of it. It was like being in a bread mixer with bits of cow, plant, pig, tree, worm—all just churning without purpose or direction. But I clearly remembered what I had learned in my previous trip, that I am an independent consciousness who chose to be here on Earth and to live amongst Earth's other life forms, to experience the chaos and find some kind of meaning in it. The entity that placed me into the churning soil seemed to tell me, “In your last trip, you saw this from afar. But in reality you are in it, just as you chose to be. Now what are you going to DO about it?”

So, the stage was set for this trip. It would be about finding purpose right here on Earth, not out in space somewhere. The shrooms have been teaching me that I have to ground myself and live this life, not the one I imagine or wish I had. As I churned with the neon life-mess, it occurred to me that the chaos could not stop because it wasn't tethered to anything. There was no rock to cling to, nowhere to root. Then I realized that it was up to ME to become solid, to find a place to hang onto and grow.

At this point the chaos disappeared and was replaced by a vast network of interconnected nodes, whitish and organically-shaped, alive. It reminded me very much of mushroom mycelium. Each node of the vast network was an individual consciousness, and I was one of them. Each node was connected to others by tendrils through which they nourished one another, and the nodes with the most tendrils attaching them to other nodes were the biggest and healthiest.

Then I saw my own node. I saw the tendrils connecting me to other nodes wither, and my node turned dark and small and receded into nothingness. The vision was telling me that I can not thrive on Earth without connections to other people, because it is only through those connections that I can be nourished and grow strong. Then I saw a vision of my node forming new connections, and with each new connection, my node grew brighter, larger, and stronger, like a rock. Soon other nodes were seeking me out, trying to connect with me in order to anchor themselves and escape the same chaos that I had wanted to escape. I felt benevolent and grandfatherly, a sense of warmth and satisfaction that I could be a source of strength and security for others.

With that, my thoughts turned to my own, real life. I realized that I have always been a seeker of security, never a provider of it. Other people—other nodes—have always nourished my soul and helped me escape the chaos, but it has never occurred to me that I should, or could, do the same for them. I've been a parasite, but our lives must be symbiotic if life on Earth is going to be good.

I could go on for hours about how my thoughts turned from one family member to the next to the next, one by one counting the ways in which I've been selfish toward them, and firmly deciding that I will no longer take from them, but instead restore the balance by giving back, helping them on their journeys the way they have always helped me on mine. Tears flowed until I was a wet, snotty mess; fortunately my girlfriend had fallen asleep and wasn't inconvenienced by having a blubbering mess of a man next to her in bed.

For those of you who have been kind enough to read about my experiences from the beginning, I should make it clear that, unlike my breakdown last year about my childhood trauma, these tears were good. Not tears of joy, exactly, but not tears of sadness. They were the tears of being overwhelmed by an incredible realization about how I've lived my life the wrong way and now have an opportunity to get on the right track. They were almost like tears of determination. I was (and am) determined to seek out those I love and tell them in no uncertain terms that I love them, that I am eternally grateful for all they've done for me, and that I am ready to stop taking advantage of their kindness, and that I instead want to know what they want and need from me.

Around this time, which I think was around T+3:30, I started coming back to normal reality (although I would continue to feel trippy and have strong open-eye visuals for several more hours). As I woke up in my physical body, I opened my eyes and looked at my girlfriend. She instinctively opened her eyes as well and opened her arms, and I hugged her and thanked her for looking after me. She looked like she was made of a million neon pixels.

I immediately began to process my insights about nodes and connections and had, for the first time, an important insight about my work.

For years I've struggled to find meaning in my work and had convinced myself that I was in the wrong career, because I have so much trouble getting motivated. I work a job for two years or so, and when the novelty wears off, I become bored and seek something new. Now, perhaps I am, in fact, in the wrong career, but last night I realized that that is not the point. After all, lots of people work in jobs they're not passionate about, yet they stay motivated and do a good job long after the work has ceased to be entertaining. I've always wondered how people can do that, and why I can't.

Now I think I know why. It's because it's not the work that's meaningful; it's the connections! It's the bonds we form with other individuals, helping them as they help us, achieving our life goals together and thus growing into brighter, stronger nodes of existence. If I can know and understand my coworkers, if I can ascertain their motivations and find out what they want and need from me in order to be happy themselves, then I can do my work knowing that it truly matters. It's not that my work matters in some big, cosmic sense; making another car part or finishing a report doesn't make the world a better place. But delivering that car part or that report to a person who needs it in order to do his job better, so that he can get a promotion, earn a raise, send his kids to college, buy his wife a nice pair of earrings, go on a nice vacation...THAT is meaningful. And when I help that guy make HIS life better, my bond with him is strengthened, and that makes MY life better. It helps to secure my place in the world.

I had a great revelation about a good friend of mine, whom I'll call Arty, who is a career salesman. Sales has always seemed to me the most soulless work, looking for people's weaknesses in order to make money from them. Evil, in a way. But my good friend Arty never talked about his job that way. He talked about relationships. In fact, I met him when he was trying to sell his employer's services to my employer, and we became close friends. After several years, I noticed that he had never actually asked me to buy anything. He just kept coming around, chatting, taking me out for lunch, eventually visiting my home and I his, meeting each other's families, but never actually telling me it was time to sign on the dotted line, so to speak. When I asked him about this, he said that sales to him was not about making money; it was about making friends. He spent his career making as many friends as he could, finding “customers” that he genuinely liked and was happy to spend time with regardless of whether it “paid.” That way, he said, he knew he'd always be able to make a living (since some of his friends would become paying customers), but in the meantime he had lots of fun and got to meet all kinds of interesting people.

After last night, I finally know in my heart exactly what he meant, and how he—a thoughtful, intelligent, and genuine man—could spend his whole career as a “lowly” salesman, something that always seemed icky to me. He did it because it allowed him to support himself while doing things he enjoyed with people he enjoyed, so it never felt like work. (I use the past tense because he's retired now.)

So, I seem to have a whole lot of work to do. I have to go back to the office in three days and start figuring out how to apply this lesson to my everyday work. I know it's going to make me better at my job and happier personally, but I'm flying blind. I'm not used to thinking outside myself. But hell, I've got twenty years or so before I retire, so there's plenty of time to make it work.

I also have an upcoming trip to visit my son and his new wife in their new city, and I have some really important things to tell him, stemming from last night, but that's personal enough that I won't go into it here. Same for my daughter, ex-wife, and dad. (Mom is a trip all her own. I didn't even attempt to deal with her last night; I told her I'd come back to her in the future and see if I can figure out our relationship.)

Writing this has been therapeutic for me. I hope you who are reading this, who may be new to psychedelics, are seeing their tremendous potential to teach and heal. Oh, one final word: No matter how confident you are as you begin psychonautics, have a trip sitter until you know your reaction to tripping extremely well! Even knowing perfectly well that everything was fine was not enough to pull me back from the edge of freaking out. Have someone you trust nearby. Just a few calming words and a gentle hug can make all the difference. Peace and love, y'all!

Just a brief trip report this time. Last night I made a tea of 3 grams of dried shrooms and sipped it as I walked with my girlfriend around my neighborhood. I didn't feel anything for over an hour. After my last experience, in which the come-up was pretty strong and caused some anxiety, I was more prepared this time and handled it fine. When I felt my heart rate increase and my limbs get heavy, I just concentrated on breathing deeply and regularly, and within about fifteen minutes I was just fine. Throughout the evening I got up periodically, first to eat the 3 grams of shrooms that had been in the tea, and then to eat a couple of fresh shrooms in order to deepen and extend the trip. I didn't weigh the fresh shrooms, but I guess I consumed the equivalent of around 4 dry grams in total during the night.

My mindset was improved by having had a relaxing day with my girlfriend before the trip. We went to the movies, ate lunch out, and walked on an isolated beach for a long time, watching as the waves became bigger and stronger as the sun went down. The trip itself took place entirely in my apartment.

Once again, as usual for me, the trip was almost entirely mental. I saw only light open-eye visuals, but anytime I closed my eyes, the geometric patterns were quite vivid. I saw the fabric of the universe as an apparently endless tapestry of little bits, almost like Lego blocks, and throughout the tapestry in specific locations the blocks took the form of living things. I could see the spot where my identity was located; my body and personality were merely the infinite consciousness of the universe expressing itself in one particular way.

Oddly, on this, my lowest dose ever, I experienced the closest thing I've experienced to ego death. I was outside myself, with no particular identity; I was merely consciousness. I was looking at my identity, watching it take shape from the infinite tapestry of building blocks. My everyday self was not "built" from these blocks so much as "grown" from them. I watched as the local area where I exist in the material world undulated and rippled, and from these movements, the outline of my body appeared, and also somehow the "outline" of my personality. I watched myself being created from the fabric of the universe.

I saw this identity take shape and thought, "We've made a good man. He is a nice guy. He helps people. He likes to make others happy. He is something to be proud of." I felt great affection for this identity of mine and felt that it was a privilege to be able to inhabit this body and have this personality, to contribute to the world by acting through this identity.

I don't know whether to consider this ego death or not. I felt very much as though my essence was separate from my body and mind, and that I was viewing myself with complete objectivity. It wasn't scary at all. At no time did I feel as though I was dying or losing myself in a negative way. I simply felt my essence gently slip out of my earthly identity. Because it was not traumatic at all, I wonder if it was real ego death in the way that others use that term, but it's the closest I've ever come.

I came away from the experience with a few specific bits of wisdom:

- I can't control what I am; I can control only what I do. I am a nice guy who likes to make people happy; that is my essence. I will never be a ruthless business tycoon or a daring stuntman; I can not choose to be such things, because they run counter to my essence. However, it's entirely up to me to decide how to use my essential characteristics to make my life as good and meaningful as possible.

- I invent myself every day. As I watched my identity being formed from the universe's building blocks, I noticed that my identity wasn't simply built and then left standing. Instead, the blocks were constantly shifting, waving, growing, falling. I realized that every morning I have a new opportunity to shape my identity in new and interesting ways. The only rule is that I can't violate the essential goodness of my nature.

This was a really nice trip. There were no huge realizations of things I've been doing wrong or feelings I've been repressing. It felt so good, instead of feeling things intensely, to see myself objectively and just appreciate the good person that I am. It left me looking forward to future trips instead of being afraid of what's hiding around the next corner like some kind of psychological horror movie.

Oh, one more thing. Right at the beginning of the trip, before any of the other stuff, I had a very simple realization about my mom (whom you'll recall I had decided, during a previous trip, to deal with later). I realized that it's important to reassure her that, no matter how old I get, I'm still her little boy at heart and appreciate the nurturing she gave me when I was very small, since it helped me live the rest of my life with greater confidence. So I called my mom today and told her that.

Just read through this thread and you're a wonderful person startrek

Star Trek Mushroom amalgam today for sure

I'm going to cook some mushroom risotto for dinner tonight!