DOSE:

oral

Morning Glory

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

T minus two days, and I am full of anxious anticipation. It's actually taken some will power to hold out this long. According to TrakMan's FAQ, my concoction should achieve its desired potency right about ... now. But I am waiting until Thursday, wisely I think, when my parents depart on their mini vacation. It's really quite fortuitous that their absence will occur when it will. If I had to wait much longer, or worse yet, if they weren't going anywhere this summer, or, much worse yet, if they'd somehow managed to drag me along with them, I'd be left with little choice but to dose late at night, after they'd gone to bed. As is, I am looking forward to a day-long, daytime, delightfully parent-free experience.

T minus two weeks. I'd been perusing online information almost obsessively, up till four or five in the morning on a couple of occasions poring over experience reports and articles. As I am in self-imposed exile this summer, with no access to fast food let alone illicit substances, my attention was naturally drawn to those stuffs enticingly known as legal highs. And not just because I was in exile: knowing which substances had not yet been proscribed by nefarious governmental bodies -- for my own good, of course -- would be of inestimable value, even once I was back in the city in the fall. My shady drug connections are nascent and tenuous at best. The appeal of surreptitiously (and legally) preparing my own mind-altering substances from common (or not-so-common, as it would turn out) products available at Canadian Tire, was undeniable. So, with the prospect of driving into the nearest socalled metropolis in a few days, I put myself through a crash course on the psychoactive properties of morning glory seeds. Which essentially entailed me reading every experience report twice. I felt ready.

T minus nine days. Acquiring the accoutrements proved to be relatively easy; however, I came this close to leaving for home at the end of the day with Smirnoff Blue ($24), lighter fluid ($3), an electric coffee grinder ($20), but no morning glory seeds. I at last tracked down six 1.5g packages ($10) of Heavenly Blue seeds at a nursery, evidently the last six packages of morning glory seeds in the entire city, pop. ~50,000. This scarcity was not due to a recent swell of underground interest in the non-gardening uses of the seeds, but rather, I gathered, due to it being early July: I'd missed the planting season. Apparently some jerk from the seed company even drives around in late June or so to collect all the unsold seeds from the hardware stores, Wal-Marts and such.

The girl working at the nursery didn't even raise an eyebrow at my purchase. But after all, how long had those six packages been sitting there? If there were some illicit interest in the seeds, they'd probably have disappeared off the rack before then. So on the one hand, I was surprised to find only six packages in the entire city, and on the other hand, I was surprised to find even six. I left town quite pleased at my own esoteric ingenuity.

But for this I had, for lack of a better, more concise word, the internet to thank. I've been aware of online information for some time, but before this summer, in fact prior to this month, I'd not consulted its vast banks of collected wisdom for much more than ascertaining that I wasn't slowly killing myself with moderate cannabis use. (This didn't take long to ascertain.) Then, quite lately, I'm not sure precisely why, I began to do some serious research. At least I called it research. At times it felt like voyeurism, or vicarious tripping, or psychedelic pornography. In the absence of opportunity for actual experience, bonafide altered consciousness, I was making do with secondhand accounts. Similar to watching pornography when sex isn't available, I guess, except drastically different in that there's no equivalent to psychedelic masturbation. Though I've always felt vaguely, incipiently fascinated by drugs, I had, while in the city, only partaken of such substances as crossed my path.

Perhaps this is due to the fact that I vaguely associated that vague fascination with something harmful, maybe even self-destructive: I remember making the rather offhand comment a couple of times that I thought it likely that my death would probably be drug-related. Quite a naive and insouciant prognostication for one who'd been exposed to nothing more pernicious than pot. But I must have thought -- and this not so terribly long ago -- that any intimate familiarity with or interest in 'drugs' must necessarily result in death or dissolution. I put 'drugs' here in quotation marks because any category that includes everything from acetaminophen to heroin to psilocybin is a pretty useless one. But it is a useful designation in another way, if one takes 'drugs' to mean 'illegal drugs': and this is the way the average ignorant person perforce views these substances: they are all drugs, and therefore insidious, with the only meaningful distinction being legal vs. illegal.

All legal or over-the-counter drugs are obviously okay, innocuous, even beneficial, and all illicit drugs are obviously harmful, dangerous. With prescribed drugs falling somewhere in between in potency, maybe, and not the sort of thing the layperson needs to worry his head about anyway -- the doctor will tell you what's needed. Now I'd like to imagine I was a little more enlightened than to blindly subscribe to this sort of black and white view, but the subconsciously acquired equation of 'drugs = bad' is as subtly insidious as the anti-drug campaignists would have us believe drug addiction is.

T minus eight days. I decided not to use the naptha in the extraction. (At least I think it's naptha. There's no ingredients on the bottle. It is sold as 'lighter fluid.' My mistake: actually it's 'Liquid Firestarter.' A warning note says that it contains 'petroleum distillate.' Which I think is the active ingredient that one seeks if petroleum ether is not available.) TrakMan disrecommends it, for one thing (mostly because he professes it will result in a weaker brew), and some responses I got to a Usenet inquiry also suggested that ingesting anything that had been soaked in naptha, no matter how well it evaporated afterwards, seemed like a bad idea. If it had been the only option, I would have gamely taken the risk (the naptha evaporated cleanly to the eye). But since TrakMan offers an alternative method, and since I was in no particular hurry, I decided to go with that.

The packets of seeds had a small warning right on the front: 'Seed contained herein is for planting purposes only.' How provocative. I vigorously washed the seeds in a little bit of lukewarm water and dish detergent. Strained and dried. In addition to my six packs of HBs, I discovered that my mom had one pack described as 'Giant, Mixed Colors' and another of 'Early Call Mixed.' I similarly washed the Giants, and just chewed and swallowed these.

The packet was also 1.5g, so for argument's sake let's say 50 seeds (seed sizes vary greatly). I'm pretty sure I didn't notice any effect. Maybe, maybe a slight increase in energy, but it was just as likely a placebo effect. And one wouldn't really expect a packet of seeds so ambiguously labelled to affect one much. I should point out the Giant Mixed were about 75% dark brown / black, and looked just like my HBs. The remainder 25% were light tan. The Early Call on the other hand were all uniformly dark, even darker than the HBs, and larger. I ended up throwing these out, perhaps stupidly, because they weren't HBs, Pearly Gates, or Flying Saucers. I now think it couldn't have hurt much to have included them in the mix -- at worst, no effect. And with an extraction, they couldn't have added much toxicity or nauseating effect.

Ground up the seeds (9g or, for argument's sake, 300 seeds) to a fine powder in my brand new coffee grinder. Worked like a charm. Except a knob thingy on the bottom of the grinder broke, either before or soon after I took it out of its box, and now the whole thing falls apart if you don't hold it right. But still works. I'll return it for a refund, maybe. If I'm back in the city before the warranty expires. Which seems unlikely.

Put the seed powder in a small canning jar. Added one cup of water. I was originally going to make this half a cup, so it would evaporate faster, but then I realized I was in no particular hurry, and wanted to make sure all of the desired alkaloids had enough water to dissolve in. I don't know anything about chemistry.

I shook well and then left the jar uncovered overnight. TrakMan doesn't specify how long to let the seed powder soak. Experience reports range a lot, but I get the impression that the 16 or so hours I left mine in was practically a record. Anyway, by the next day (T minus seven days), the water was very dark, coffee-black in fact, and some lighter seed sediment had collected at the bottom. I took this as either a good sign or a bad one. Or somewhere in between. From the reports I'd read, I got the impression that a darker seed (i.e. the Heavenly Blues) were more potent, and produced a darker and more potent concoction when soaked. Though it seems to me most of the resulting concoctions had been described as brown at their darkest -- not black. And since it was the seed husk that was supposedly more toxic, and also happened to be black, I was worried maybe I'd left the water mixture sitting and steeping too long. Time will tell.

I filtered the water / mud through a regular #4 coffee filter. While I was waiting for it to percolate, my mother came home early from work. I probably acted rather suspiciously as I smuggled a couple of my jars out of the kitchen and down to my bedroom. One of the jars, with some remainder of the seed junk, was left behind and duly noticed by my mother. With the lightning quick thinking of a Hitchcock murderer, I explained that the gunk was Kava Kava (which I also happened to be experimenting with at the time), and that it was supposed to have a 'light narcotic' effect when drank. This wasn't exactly the greatest or most reassuring or most innocent sounding explanation to offer my mother, but I figured it beat having to expatiate upon the similarities between LSA and LSD and how I was attempting to extract the former from some morning glory seeds for ingestion when they were gone on holiday next week. -- My mom said the mixture smelled 'like seaweed.'

Later on I snatched a cookie sheet from the kitchen and poured the strained seed-water into it. Placed a fan nearby, though it didn't seem to do much -- it was hard to aim at the surface of the water. This was all set up in my closet, and luckily, I guess, no one came in and asked what sort of science experiment I was running. My naive 15 year old brother came in, however, some time the next day and commented that it smelled 'like rotting corn' in my room. He didn't notice the fan and pan.

T minus five days. The stuff does stink. I could have sworn that I'd smelled that smell before; it was setting off all sorts of bells in my head, but I couldn't quite place it. It's not an overpowering stench, but is noticeable. Kind of sweaty feet meets damp basement meets dry rot. Rotting corn probably wasn't far off.

After a full 48 hours the water is all evaporated, leaving a dark brown, molassesy resin. It was mostly evaporated after 24 hours, and almost entirely after 36, but it took two days for it to dry completely. The resin is not exactly easy to peel off the cookie sheet, either. After some laboring, I get it all scraped off and most of it back in its canning jar. Now I add a little bit more than two ounces of Smirnoff 'Blue,' 100 proof. Put on the lid, shake it up, let it sit. I'm supposed to let this stuff soak for three days? It looks entirely dissolved in about an hour. It's back to its coffee-black. I'm worried that everything will redissolve, and this step will have been a waste. Because if all this material was soluble in water, and the vodka must have some water in it, then won't this all just dissolve again? But no, some lighter brown sediment eventually settles on the bottom. Not much, but apparently this step is doing some good. I wonder why a person couldn't just skip the water step and go straight to the alcohol step. The only possible reason would be that some of your unwanted materials that aren't soluble in water ARE soluble in alcohol. But even if that is the case, couldn't you do the steps in either order? And doesn't alcohol evaporate more quickly? So it might make more sense to do them in the reverse order. I'll try that next time. Maybe.

T minus two days. So my mixture has been sitting for three days. It should be ready to strain and imbibe. I am, as I said, full of anxious anticipation.

---

T plus 4:00. It hasn't worked. It did not work. All that time, effort, money, and anxious anticipation -- all for nought. My lab notes' entry at this time reads, in full: 'Fuck!'

T minus 1:00. I awake betimes, to see my parents off. Well not really. I couldn't sleep well, like a kid on Christmas Eve. I think in fact I got less than five hours, which for me is a catastrophic deprivation. But I'm feeling okay. It'll be nice to get an early start.

Once they're gone (and of course, they return about ten minutes later, having forgotten something), I begin my preparations. I take my notebook and tape recorder (for when I can no longer write, of course) upstairs. I set up my CD player and make a few preliminary listening selections, aiming for a variety of styles and moods. Start with some moody classical, Mahler or Schubert or Rubbra, move on to some moody pop, perhaps some Kid A or Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, with of course some cheery pop on hand in case of emergency, be it Bikeride or Girlfrendo's new one or even the Beatles. Although I can't for a minute imagine that Schubert's String Quintet or Amon Tobin's Supermodified could actually send me spiralling into a funk or panic. And if so, it could be kind of fun, even exhilarating. Well, we'll see. Better safe than sorry. For me, this is perhaps the most important part, what I'm going to listen to. In fact, if the trip only lasts twelve hours, I'm worried I won't be able to cram enough in. But I've also made some preparations for my other senses: downloaded some Winamp visualization plug-ins last night ... And, well, that's about it. I can't imagine wanting to watch a movie or anything, though a DVD might be interesting with the sound off. Oh, and I'll make a trip to the grocery store to pick up some Jolly Ranchers. What else? Maybe I can watch some porn and masturbate -- for the sake of science, of course.

T plus 0:00. Back from the store, with junk food and orange juice. I've let my concoction filter in the meantime. I save the sediment, just in case. Let's begin.

The first thing I try is holding the black-looking alcohol in my mouth for a while, basically until it starts to sting, then spitting it out into another glass. This is to test TrakMan's claim that the effects should be felt immediately (when dissolved in alcohol). My intention is to only imbibe half the fluid for now, about one ounce of alcohol and 4.5g of seeds (~150). One thing I think I have discovered from my research is that the alkaloid content varies a hell of a lot from batch to batch of seeds -- maybe even from seed to seed. (Cf. 'J.J.J. Smith''s experience report on Erowid for a table that shows the alkaloid content varying anywhere from .01% to .052%.)

TrakMan makes the ambiguous statement that 1 seed = 1microgram -- but of what? Alkaloids? Another 'fact' I have discovered (largely speculation and hearsay) is that the LSA in these seeds is a lot less potent than LSD (by weight, presumably?). J.J.J. Smith, for example, speculates they're about 10% as potent. I'll take his word for it, as I've come across no other figures. But if that were the case, then if 300 seeds = 300 ug of alkaloids, this would be more like a ~30 ug LSD dose. Which doesn't match with any of the experience reports or dosage amounts online. More likely TrakMan's equating 1 seed to the approximate effect of 1 ug of LSD. Thus, 100 seeds is roughly equivalent to a 100 ug hit of acid, 300 3 hits. But considering how much the alkaloid content varies, this seems like a pretty rough estimate of potency.

I wasn't about to do the math, but it seemed likely that my 300 seeds could range in effect anywhere from 100 ug to 500 ug on the LSD scale. Actually, fuck it, I'll do the damn math now: Using the above third-hand figures, .01% of 9g = 900ug, .052% of 9g = 4680ug. Following J.J.J. Smith's hypothesis, this would be, in terms of efficacy, a range of from 90ug to 468ug LSD. So my rough guess wasn't bad. -- And so, taking half for starters, and waiting an hour or so to gauge the effects before taking the rest, seemed like a prudent thing to do. As it turned out, prudence wasn't required.

T plus 0:15. After swishing around an ounce of the alcohol in my mouth, and spitting it back into another glass, and waiting fifteen minutes, there are still no effects. The alcohol underwent some kind of chemical reaction with my saliva, however, and the spit-back liquid is now of the consistency of sputum or phlegm. Very disgusting. Well, there's nothing for it, so I mix it in with a glass of orange juice. Bad idea: the sputum and the orange juice now achieve a consistency and remarkable similarity to egg yolk. The goo even sticks to my spoon. Anyway, five minutes later, I've slurped it all up. Now I wait.

T plus 0:45. But not for long. Nothing yet. Can't wait any longer. I finish the rest off, this time mixing it with cola.

T plus infinity. There's not much else to tell. In short, nothing happened that couldn't be accounted for by two shots of vodka, four hours sleep, and the placebo effect. For the first few hours, I basically did nothing but keep my fingers crossed. I was constantly, as it were, interrogating my consciousness: 'Is this it? Is this something? Is this?' At some point, I had the subtle suspicion that there was SOMETHING going on that couldn't quite be explained by the above three considerations, but if you also factor in that I may have been working with a particularly weak batch of seeds (i.e. 90ug?), maybe there's no mystery. You might also want to factor in the Novice Tolerance Factor, which I know affects a lot of people smoking cannabis for the first or first few times (myself included), but I don't know how prevalent it is with LSD (and its alkaloid cousins).

In response to another of my Usenet inquiries, Bob Wallace wrote 'One of Stan Grof's books (LSD Psychotherapy?) mentions several cases (out of perhaps a thousand) in which their subject had taken LSD but said it had no effects. In most of these, later LSD trips did have some effects.' So perhaps I'm one of the unlucky few.

It may be worth noting that at T plus 3:00 I mixed the strained-out sediment (that I put aside earlier, remember?) into a glass of water and drank it. Strangely enough, the sediment did not redissolve back into the water. Perhaps I didn't let it sit long enough, but I shook it up pretty good for about five or ten minutes. I wanted to see, firstly, if perhaps this non-alcohol-soluble sediment had some psychoactive properties (needless to say, it didn't), and secondly, whether or not it even caused me some nausea (which is presumably what the last five days or so of my extraction process was trying to avoid). It didn't. So, next time around, I will probably not bother with both steps. I will either just mix the seed powder in with water and drink the strained liquid, or do the same with alcohol. Though I think I'll use water, to avoid confusing myself with the alcohol's effects.

As I said earlier, I undertook the long extraction process because I was in no real hurry (had to wait till the parents left town), but I would advise others to not waste their time until they know the seeds are going to do something for them. Thus, just do a simple water extraction, for a few hours or overnight, and if you get a tummy ache, so be it. Lots don't. And next time around, you can be more fastidious.

Well, that's a hell of a long report for a hell of a little advice. It's a real bloody shame that I'm left with more questions than answers than when I began. And, if you've suffered through reading this entire thing, you may well be in the same position. Before I drove to the city two weeks ago, I was in a state of optimistic enthusiasm. It seemed to me that websites were allowing anyone with the inclination to edify himself greatly. It seemed like the internet was at last living up to its potential. It seemed like unbiased knowledge was at last being freely disseminated to anyone who knew enough to look for it. It seemed like an underground psychedelic renaissance was inevitable. And it seemed like I was going to be a part of it. And legally! But now I realize there's still a lot of gaps in our collective wisdom. Vis-a-vis morning glory seeds, it seems about all we've learned in the last ten years or so is that seed companies aren't actually trying to poison us -- that the seeds can in fact be washed. Our wisdom, such as it is, is still largely based on speculation and hearsay. It's just that now, there's a hell of a lot more of it. And we no longer have to rely on literal, person-to-person word of mouth ('Dude, did you know you can get fucked up on morning glory seeds?'). God knows I learned (or 'learned') a lot more online than I ever could have fathomed otherwise.

But the fact remains: Dude, I did not get fucked up on morning glory seeds. And so, if the next batch doesn't work, I'll be left with little choice. I will have to become a rebel, an iconoclast, a criminal. -- Does anyone know where I can score some acid?

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 8279
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 11, 2004	Views: 16,682
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Morning Glory (38) : Preparation / Recipes (30), Alone (16)