I was very late getting into psychedelics. I was too "straight" to be interested during high school, and during college I was too busy studying. Plus the only "drug" that seemed to be popular at my college was alcohol, and I was very turned off by alcohol.
Only after I had been out of college for a couple years did I start to wonder. It started out with a program I happened to see by chance on TV while doing my laundry at a laundromat. The program was all about the 1960s, and they showed a lot of the drug and mysticism culture from the time. I remembered having seen similar scenes on TV as a very small child during the 1960's. Right about that time I kept seeing the book _Storming Heaven_ (about LSD) featured prominently at a bookstore I often visited. But I never got interested enough to buy it. After seeing the TV special, I picked up the book _The Electric Kool Aid Acid Tests_. It was a good read, but I never really followed up. I got pretty involved in my career and didn't think too much about psychedelics.
Then, at age 35, I ran across the book again so I went online to research about LSD. I decided I wanted to try psychedelics, but since I had no contacts for LSD I would have to settle for LSA. I ordered heavenly blue morning glory seeds. My first trip was a light dose and quite uneventful, so I doubled the dose the second time. That second trip was amazing for the first couple hours. I could actually "see" my subconscious working. It was like I could follow all the thoughts I had subconsciously as I thought about things. Instead of just having thoughts on a particular topic randomly pop into my mind from time to time, I could actually sense the evolution of several thoughts at once. Unfortunately, as the trip went on it turned negative. My clear thoughts were replaced with confusion and really bad short-term memory. I began to panic, as the trip was lasting much longer than I had anticipated and I was scared that something was wrong with me. But I was fine after a few more hours. At first I thought I would never try LSA again, but after a few months I tried several times more, with a lower dose.
Only a few months later, I made a big career move and didn't really think much about psychedelics again until I was 42. At that time, I read about magic mushroom growing and how psilocybin was supposed to be a lot more similar to LSD than LSA was. I became active on the Shroomery board and within a couple of months I had my first batch of homegrown magic mushrooms. My first harvest was a few days before Christmas (2006). I took a very small sample to make sure I was not allergic or anything, and then I had my first real dose (I think it was 2 grams dried) on Christmas. I used magic mushrooms an average of once every few months over the next couple years, until I was out of dried mushrooms. I took a break for about 6 months.
Since I didn't have any more mushrooms, and the spores I had saved were no longer viable, I knew I would be starting from scratch. So I started looking into other psychedelics as well. One thing I didn't like about mushrooms is that I needed to dedicate nearly a full day or more to preparing for, experiencing, and analyzing the trip. This made it hard to find the time to use them more than once every few months. I was looking for things that were shorter lasting. I read about nitrous, so I bought some but it didn't provide any insights for me. I read about DMT being the "businessman's trip", and the thought that I might be able to use it more often for quick insights appealed to me. So I started reading teks on DMT Nexus in the fall of 2009, and my November had done my first extraction. I was 45 years old when I first smoked DMT. Unfortunately, the DMT trip (sub breakthrough) always seemed too fast to allow me to think about what was going on and gain insights. And I had problems with smoking technique, which made it hard to get consistent doses. A couple months later in January 2010, I ended up getting a much too large dose due to remaining DMT from past attempts. I had a traumatic experience which left me somewhat shaken up for a month or two. Based on my lack of insights, combined with the difficulty in getting a consistent dosage and my traumatic experience, I decided not to use DMT again. I also decided to take a year-long break from psychedelics in general.
I grew more magic mushrooms last winter. I was a bit concerned about taking them after reading how past DMT trips are supposed to intensify and change the character of mushroom trips. I started with a small dose (1 gram dried) early this spring, and that went very well. So I went back to the usual 2.5 to 3 gram doses. It seems my mushroom trips have not been affected at all by the previous DMT experiences. They have been very similar to how they were previously. I've used them several times since then. Still having some nitrous left from my experiments two years ago, I recently discovered that doing nitrous while under the influence of psilocybin is quite a bit different than doing it alone. It seems that nitrous is actually worthwhile while on mushrooms. The experience is very deep, but it is easily controllable based on the amount of nitrous I inhale. So that is what I am experimenting with now (as time permits), at age 47.
elphologist