DOSE:

7 seeds

oral

H.B. Woodrose

BODY WEIGHT:

175 lb

Some time ago, on a perfect summer evening, I dropped by my old roommate's flat. He's a bit of a self-declared shaman, and soon enough he was showing off his latest acquisitions: bags of this and that 'ritualistic incense' derived from ancient Mesoamerican ritual preparations. Or at least that's what the labels claim. He also had a sizeable quantity of H. B. Woodrose seeds; earlier that day he'd removed their shells and torched off the fuzz. My curiosity piqued, I decided I'd try them.

I followed his instructions and used sandpaper to strip the seeds, also employing a Swiss Army knife's file to handle the awkward bits. He dug out a kitchen igniting tool to burn the seeds' fur. The clock was striking 17:30 when we swallowed our seeds; he had eight and I had seven. Within forty minutes I was experiencing faint nausea pangs. A bite of sugared ginger made them go away, either because the spice is inherently medicinal or I was so busy figuring out its odd taste that I couldn't pay attention to my stomach anymore. My current roommate, a woman a few years older than I, had a sudden craving for a cold lemonade, the kind they serve to tourists, all slushy with lemon bits floating in it. We left the apartment and tried to find the nearest tourist trap.

We found a truck on the park's edge which sold the sort of goodies we sought. I had a vanilla ice-cream cone, choosing that flavor over chocolate because I didn't want a flavor I really enjoy being ruined coming back up. As it turns out, the nausea didn't return, and my GI tract handled the dessert fine. I first noticed myself distinctly removed from baseline (other than nausea) when I stood up to throw my paper napkin away. My legs felt buzzy when I put weight on them, not quite the muscle tension I get from 2C-phenethylamines but similar. Soon the same feeling entered my back and traveled up my spine. A bit like the enkephalin thrill from really good music, more or less. The park's celebrated pond was reflecting postcard-perfect streetlamps. My roommate and I were trying to articulate the odd appearance the reflections were assuming when a Hare Krishna walked by. Our sober friend reassured us that he wasn't a white-robed hallucination.

By T + 1:30, the sun was down and all three of us were lounging in the grass. 'Every ten minutes I feel the world's heartbeat,' my old roomie said. Myself, I felt a sensation not quite like anything since my first LSD trip: the happiness I can get anytime from good company in a quiet park settled upon me and grew into an inescapable euphoria. Tree leaves overhead hung like specimens in an exotic crystal garden, as if an eyedropper had squeezed thousands of droplets which solidified into fractal fronds as they fell. The sodium-vapor lamps shining through the trees would've been pleasant any night, but with LSA it was inescapable. I felt inseperable from all the beautiful things I saw. I was supremely confident. My new roommate recited a play she once wrote about starfish beached during a storm. We applauded with enthusiasm. From the park we three walked to another friend's place, taking a route through a Victorian-esque district. Time seemed improbably dilated, stretched out like each block was a kilometre long and we were floating on helium-filled legs. Every once in a while I would catch my friend's tripping eye, and we would share a look: 'Is this happening to you, too? Oh, yes. Oh, wow.'

I find I can describe 2C-phenethylamine visuals fairly easily, but LSA/LSD gives me more trouble. A good part of the visuals involved not being able to take in an entire field of view at once. Most of what I saw seemed fairly stable, but the information pouring in was so rich that I couldn't process more than a segment at a time. At our destination, our mutual friend was sitting at her computer, watching 'Young Frankenstein' while draped across a young man's lap. I couldn't handle much of the movie; by the time Frahnk-en-steen meets Eye-gor in Transylvania, my sensory data was once again too rich for me and I decided to find someplace quiet. I made a mistake here. I found a computer and used the Internet's magic to pull up an artistic project I've been hacking away upon for several months, and I looked over the work I'd done. For a while all was fine. And then, at T + 3:00, I lost my confidence. I suppose anybody who puts heart and soul into a project can feel rotten when it doesn't work out right. On seven seeds' worth of LSA, when I lost confidence I hit the floor with a bone-splintering thud. Just as in the park I had been unified with everything wonderful, at that keyboard I shriveled to a cipher. It was not enjoyable. For perhaps half an hour, I jittered and trembled in the midst of the worst trip I've had in my psychoactive career. A subjective measure, I know.

During this time I noticed the strongest visuals, when I was staring at a tile floor. The squares went dark and light in twitching, seasick patterns, and I had the distinct impression I would soon go mad, exactly like Nabokov's chessplayer Luzhin in his novel 'The Defense'. I pulled myself together in the most un-Zen way. 'I'm going to flip out like Luzhin,' I said to myself. 'But wait, I only know about that because I read a book, because I took in those words. Words mean that much to me. I can verbalize. I can do it well.' I started rambling to my old roommate. 'I'm going to feel confident again. Dammit, I am!' When I seemed a little more solid, I kept talking, affirming and re-affirming my ability to put words together and communicate. I felt better still as time passed, either because the LSA was wearing off or because my jabbering did my mind good. I chose to believe both.

By T + 4:00, I felt almost back to where I'd been in the park, two hours earlier. Visuals were more noticeable: footprint scuffmarks on carpet spread out and moved themselves around. Those forty or fifty minutes of self-annihilated abyss still hung around me, never quite out of touch. I'm grateful I had a sympathetic pair of ears nearby to receive the jabbering which kept me stable until I was baseline enough to trust myself to go to bed. I won't joke about this: I was terrified that without some external input I could center myself upon, I would lose it again. If I ever wanted to filibuster the Senate, I might try this drug again. I would certainly be able to spout volumes, giving my best histrionics to anything in sight. At T + 2:00, I wanted to bring these seeds to all my fraternity friends. Now I'm not so sure.

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 24986
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Apr 3, 2006	Views: 6,612
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
H.B. Woodrose (26) : General (1), Small Group (2-9) (17)