DOSE:	repeated		Cannabis	(plant material)
	repeated		Mushrooms	(plant material)
	repeated		MDMA	(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

135 lb

This article is about altered visual and audio perceptions after usage of various psychoactive/psycadelic substances.

Recently, I have quit smoking Marijuana for a month and two weeks after a two year long day to day, minute-to-minute binge along with a six-month drug-dealing period. Going on twenty years of age, I have recently been diagnosed with what is known as Adjustment Disorder with mixed anxiety and depressed mood (DSM-IV diagnosis code 309.28) that was sparked from my parents divorce when I was two years old. My symptoms consist of extreme sadness/hopelessness (depressed mood) about my life, which then leads to constant self-analysis/harsh self-judgment (AKA anxiety); and the two moods bounce back and fourth, as they are complimentary to each other. These symptoms have persisted since the age of two years old and they have only recently become so pronounced that it began to affect my everyday life, although my constant and immoderate drug abuse/usage could most likely be responsible for the onset of my disorder.

Drug usage:

Now that you have personality background, I’d like to comment on psychedelic psilocybin/THC flashbacks, but first, my fairly humble profile of drug abuse/usage.

-Marijuana for a span of two years with intervals of once a week to four or five grams (when business is good) a day, administered every way thinkable with the exception of injection (which I’m not even sure is possible).

-Psilocybin mushrooms (strand unknown) twice with an interval of one year. First time: 2.5 grams orally. Second time: 4 grams orally (way too much for my liking).

-Ecstasy (mmmmmm…ecstasy) once; then a year later acquired a large quantity with a sale lined up. The sale didn’t go through, and got stuck with a shit-load of tabs (not really only 20 tabs which was a lot for me) and rolled for a consecutive seven-day period on 14 tabs. Some days I took five, and other days two, and one or two days I didn’t drop any tabs but was still rolling from the previous day. This triggered what me and my buddies like to call the endo effect, where my body was kicked into a very subtle one to five day roll after stopping my seven day binge without dropping any tabs at all. Caffeine can contribute to such an onset. Needless to say, on the fifth day, I felt like shit. This was also accompanied by light-headedness and feeling out of breathe. I took a week or two vacation from E and then returned to a twice a week trip for two weeks, and that’s the last I’ve seen of E due to my disorder and lack of motivation to work (no money, honey). I admit E did not help my situation in the least! After these series of E trips, I was so addicted for three weeks I dreamed of purchasing and ingesting E every night. Talk about torture. I couldn’t even escape addiction in my waking life let alone my dreaming life.

-Cocaine a couple of times only two three months ago, which is one of my least favorite drugs. The high is too short-lived, and I get paranoia too often.

Flashbacks

After about the first three days to a year or so, I began to see a slight difference in my visual/audio perception. Such differences consist of thinking I see a figure in the corner of my eye like say a cat or sometimes a person. When I turn my head to look, it is only a brown paper bag or a tall bush. Also, positive image imprints of light persist for longer than before my THC usage, such as looking out a bright sunny window, then looking at a wall and still seeing the an imprint of the window frame. Such perceptual differences are very subtle at this early period of time in my drug use/abuse time-line.

After taking psilocybin mushrooms however, my visual perceptions were altered a bit more dramatically than my when they were altered with THC usage. Instead of seeing something out of the corner of my eye, my visual perception is altered more closely around the focal point of my eyes. Such alterations consist of slightly swirling lines on a coffee table. Other alterations occur at times when I’m looking a computer screen from approximately two feet away, the lines of sentences on the screen will slightly shift up and down, side to side, or slightly swirl. Not dramatically, but it’s subtle enough that when I read to the end of a page, I might loose my place in the text when I look to the left side of the page, one line down. It seems that I can also turn these slight hallucinations on and off, especially when looking at a computer screen. Sometimes they occur absent of my will, usually when I’m spacing out or thinking about or interpreting something I just read.

My worst flashbacks have occurred after the abuse of ecstasy, which are still very moderate and not frightening. Whenever I’ve even taken a good dosage of E, during the later phase of my trip I will start to see black and white checker boards running over everything I see, like somebody’s pulling a transparent black and white checker board table cloth over everything. I’ve also experienced visuals where everything looks like it’s on the inside of an oven because there are little heat waves in front of everything. It also looks as if everything I see is under water. This is accompanied by confusion sometimes. Also in this state of conscience I’ll see 15th-17th century ghostly pirates coming through my walls like in the Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean ride in the scene where the pirates are pillaging a village and chasing all the women. After such intense trips, I began to see “static” everywhere when I’m sober. It’s like the snowy black and white TV image that usually occurs only when I’m in a dark or dim setting. Also, after these E trips, I had my first full-blown hallucination that lasted about two seconds, but was extremely terrifying.

I was in my bed at my parent’s house where I live. It was about nine o’clock, and the room was dark. I was dosing off into sleep, and was in a poor, sort-of paranoid mood, when all of a sudden I turn over in my bed from my right side so that I’m laying on my back, only to find a figure standing over me on the left side of my bed. He had a dark shallow dome shaped head and stout body about 5 foot, 2 inches tall who looks like the X-Men’s Juggernaught, only he has a hollow dark face and body. It was bending over my body and extended an arm outwards toward me with a wand in its hand. At the end point of this wand was a bright white light so intense it covered up its hand, and all I could see was his head, and partially his body. As it leaned over me in a menacing gesture, it brought the wand close to me in an attempt to touch me with the end of it that was illuminated with white light. As soon as it brought the light close to me I descended into a state of panic where I was completely aware of what was happening consciously, but my body went into convulsions and began to shake and do worm-like break dance flip-flops. It was sort of funny I have to admit, and simultaneously frightening. Mind you, this all happened within the time span of 2-3 SECONDS. It was a very short-lived experience, but my hallucination appeared with such detail that I could remember what it looked like. I knew it wasn’t real because if the light at the end of the wand were real, it would have illuminated the whole room, which it did not. I was also very, very sober, but in a paranoid state of mind.

Convulsions like this have also occurred at times when somebody comes up and scares me from behind or enters my room to rapidly before I can identify what they are. In these instances I am usually imagining that there is a monster coming into my room or some nonsense like that. Similar hallucinations have occurred only when I’m stoned, lying on side in my bed, again in a paranoid state of mind, suddenly a bright white light will appear as if somebody is shining a flashlight from the other side of the room in the corner of my eye. Then I’ll turn over and look to that side of the room and it will be gone.

Overall, my visuals have been changed forever. I wouldn’t trade this for never having used/abused drugs. The only thing I would have done different would to have not taken E in such a close interval of days. It can cause neuron receptor damage depending on dosage and brain temperature. An E binge is nice, but rolling less often than more is exceedingly better.

I wrote this article because I’m researching LSD flashbacks. It’s the only thing that scares me about the drug. I’m afraid I’ll have constant flashbacks due to my change in visual perceptions in my post-drug usage state. None-the-less, my excitement to try it exceeds my fears about the outcome, so I’ll let you all know how it goes.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 52710
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 2, 2008	Views: 13,327
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Cannabis (1), Mushrooms (39), MDMA (3) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Health Problems (27), Not Applicable (38)