DOSE:

repeated

Various

That magic feeling. It’s the thing I’ve been after all of my life. It’s hard to explain what it is. All I know is that I came close once; a tale of mind expansion through drugs and music, and so many other things. Who knows where to begin, I guess birth, but I’ll skip past that. Like I said, drugs and music almost define who I am, which is a paradox in itself, because who I truly am cannot be changed, only my ego can be manipulated – and in that sense I consider myself a walking hypocritical mess. I pledge to my ego, my true soul, but I do so many things to violate it. Therefore I am a hypocrite, and I have no problem with admitting it, which really disturbs me even more.

The drugs came first. I was quite a shy person until I found marijuana, which only led to other things. The night where I tried it was probably the most life changing night of my life, I’ve yet to conclude if it was for better or worse, but I’ll get to that later. I think I was 16 at the time, right before my 17th birthday as a matter of fact. I met some new guys at school, one of which would become probably my closest and truest friend for the next 6-8 months, but that fell apart, something I’ll also discuss later. They invited me to one of their houses, and I was pretty sure they wanted to smoke. I’d never tried it before. I left my house and drove to his house, and basically right before I got there I went back home, and told him I got lost and I had to reschedule. I was too nervous. I was kind of against drugs I guess, but only because of ignorance. Drugs are amazing, in both good and bad ways of course, but the bad isn’t anything like what the media or government or your mom would have you believe. Anyway, about 2 days after that happened, he called me up again and asked to come over. I said yes and manned up and actually went over. We spent the whole day trying to find some bud actually, and got jacked once. Looking back it was pretty hilarious. We finally got some however, and smoked out of a can behind a school at 11 at night or so. After my first hit, I choked and blew out and sent everything flying from the can, and I laughed so damn hard. After we finished, I was so high and it was the most innocent high you can ever imagine. I tried to back flip over a curb, ended up falling face first into some mud. I tracked all the mud inside my buddy’s house, and remembered how I got so dirty in the first place, and spent probably 30 minutes laughing. Fell asleep.

And that’s how it really all began, one of my humblest memories really, besides all those nostalgic childhood memories, nothing will ever top those. I think those memories are part of the magic feeling as well. What I think it really is, is something that you thought you had – and you can never retrieve again. I’ll try and expand on my never ending search as this goes on. After that night, we pretty much became extremely close – the three of us. We smoked almost every day after school, and like I said, it was that super innocent high, where nothing else mattered except fun, and that’s exactly what it was. The best time of my life, the first few months while I was 17 years old. I remember a camping trip we went on, and smoked so much the whole time, everything was so great. I had great friends, great relationships, and I enjoyed so many things. These experiences are the core of that magic feeling that I’m describing. Fun and innocence play a major part in it. After that camping trip, I felt I should expand my horizons, and this is where the madness really started I guess.

After swearing to myself I’d never try pills (this was before I even smoked) I tried some Adderall at school. Was actually pretty nice the first few times, made me super social, and I had already completely broken out of my shell by this point, mainly because of the smoking, and all the socializing involved with that. I did that 4 or 5 times, and got bored. I started researching OTC medications. I actually remember looking into OTC meds when I was 14 or 15, but never chose to try it; which furthers my theory that marijuana is not a gateway drug, simply an amplifier of ingrained interests, and by this I mean if you don’t have a willingness to explore all kinds of drugs, marijuana will fill your appetite, but if it’s in you to explore further, then you’d have tried different drugs no matter if you tried marijuana first or not, often times it’s just the simplest drug to get.

Anyhow, the first OTC drug I tried was sleeping pills, lots of them. I remember staring at my carpet, thinking it was on fire. That’s about all that happened, I don’t think I took enough, I hear stories of people encountering fake people while on that stuff (the name escapes me) but I only tried it once and put it down. Then I tried Dramamine, another instance where I only tried it once. This had more substantial effects, dreaming while awake, and being enveloped by darkness. Besides that, didn’t interest me all that much.

My next drug of choice would be the second life changing event. I decided to try Dextromethorphan, DXM, or cough syrup, or whatever you call it. I took the little red pills. My first go I took 300mg, a 2nd plateau dose. I read so many damn trip reports before actually trying it, I completely educated myself, as I advise anyone to do, especially when indulging in OTC meds. DXM blew everything else out of the water, I never felt so ridiculously awesome in my life. My legs and arms were like Jello, everything looked funny and sounded funny. I played video games and talking with people over the headset was so liberating and entertaining. I decided to listen to music, and bam, my life changed. I listened to Come Together and Eight Days a Week by the Beatles, and having never liked the Beatles, I suddenly fell in love instantly.

It all made sense. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Before that, all I listened to was music that didn’t really have any soul or purpose. The next year would be an exploration of music and mind altering drugs, and the two walked hand in hand. After that 2nd plateau dose, I took it upon myself to double the dosage – which put me in a high 3rd, low 4th plateau dose. This really changed everything. If you haven’t had a dose like this, you’re missing out on life, truly. I remember sitting there for 30 minutes, thinking nothing was really happening. Then as you may know, you kind of fall into a void, or a hole, or something and you forget about the world. You are inside a machine, your body. You understand the inner workings of everything going on inside your brain, and you watch them occur. Vision is out the window, small rooms look like warehouses, everything is doubled. This is nothing compared to what I encountered with later visits to this realm, but I’ll touch on that next. I started changing severely.

I dropped all of the music I once listened to, and started indulging in Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and the Beatles. I wouldn’t find my true idol until later, that being Jimi Hendrix. This music really changed my life. It’s all I listen to now, music from 1967-1972, and a lot of early 1950’s and 1960’s blues. It just goes so well with everything drugs bring upon you, and the lifestyle you eventually find yourself leading.

Anyway, after I started doing DXM (just about every weekend for 3 months) we all started doing Ecstasy at my buddy’s house that I talked about earlier. We wasted so much money on that crap. Ecstasy is one of the things I regret doing, not only because of all the money we spent on it, but because I’m pretty sure it fucks you up a little bit cognitively, but I’m not a psychopharmacologist, yet, so I can’t be too certain. Anyway, after we tried that a whole bunch of times, I eventually found out by accident what happens if you take 2 pills of E on a Friday night then do a 4th plateau DXM trip the next day, being Saturday.

The following is the most extreme trip of my life, outdoing any psychedelic trip tenfold surprisingly. I was sitting in my room and I down the 40 pills or whatever, and laid there for an hour waiting for it to come like always. It came so much harder than ever before. I think it’s because Ecstasy drains serotonin when it’s done, and DXM acts on those receptors, and since there’s nothing there, the DXM just floods the receptors and you have no natural defenses against it. This is probably extremely harmful, but oh boy the effects were pretty much indescribable. At first I totally lost track of time, and space, and ego, and the Universe in general. I remember thinking I had to use the restroom or whatever, and all of a sudden I’d be in the restroom, not knowing how I got there, then I’d be back in my room, having no recollection of ever needing to go in the first place. I would stumble outside, and get enveloped by a neighbor’s light they had on the garage. The light took form of monsters, and ate me, but it didn’t scare me. I loved that light, it was so damn interesting. I’d be in my bed again all of a sudden, listening to music.

At one point after I finished listening to the Dead Kennedys record Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, and traveling around some desert urban city environment behind my eyelids, I stared at my iPod. I would move it around in the darkness, and the light would linger in the air for a few minutes. I could bend the light by moving my eyes around, and draw pictures in the blank space in the air. That was a highlight of my drug career, and very cool. Listening to music on DXM after doing E is the best thing in the world, hands down. The music takes me places more so then any other drug. Listening to Dark Side of the Moon was just...something else. I close your eyes, and I'm literally in a different world. I'm rolling through mountains, or walking around massive warehouses, and I FEEL yourself moving. It’s a dissociative, so my mind is going all haywire. I was feeling the wind blow against my face when I was laying in bed, and there wasn’t any wind in the room. Stuff like that, like I said, indescribable.

When I turned the music off, I remember being guided through space by some guy. He would fly around space with me, open up doors, and we’d be in rooms all of a sudden. In one of these rooms he took me too, while I was listening to Astronomy Domine (one of the most psychedelic songs ever) we were all laying down in my buddies house, and we were somehow all on Acid. I’d yet to try Acid at this time, but it literally felt like I was on Acid. After that, it was my goal to get LSD as soon as possible. I woke up the next morning, still completely tripping, and freaked out a little, because it never lasted this long before. My family thought I was on something, a first for them, but I just said I was sick. I tripped hard for about 3 days before I finally came down, it was brutal, I thought I made myself retarded. It was pretty scary, but it passed and I was back to normal or as normal as you can be after such an experience. That night remains the most intense and gratifying night of my life.

The next few weeks are pretty hazy. I drove a couple thousand miles to visit some family in the summer, thinking of trying LSD the whole time. Psychedelics interested me so much, I’d yet to try them. When I finally got back home, the search began. One night, after weeks of searching, we finally found what we wanted. We were trying to get mushrooms or LSD, either one would be fine. We got both somehow. We were all in for a night to remember. I see the blotter sitting on my finger, and it blew my mind. I had all these preconceived notions of what the trip was going to be like, and I guess they were kind of accurate.

I expected to be talking to pink elephants and all that stupid stuff, which obviously didn’t happen, but I never expected the mental aspect of the trip at all, you don’t hear about the mental effects too much – only the visuals. I dosed 2 hits. It was pretty cool actually, walked to a gas station at midnight, listening to the wind talk to me and whisper my name. Ended up running home, because it got a little overwhelming. All my friends and I gathered in a room and turned the lights off and wrestled in the dark. That was ridiculous. Voices coming from 30 directions at once, yet only 4 of us in the room. My 3 buddy’s departed the room and I laid there staring at this glowing swirling ball thinking how peaceful I was. I wrapped myself up in a blanket and listened to some music while all my friends played around. In hindsight I wish I stuck with my friends, but I was stuck to the couch listening to music.

After about 4 hours into the trip, one of them suggested we kill the mushrooms next. I was kind of weary, I wanted to wait a few days before we tried them, but he convinced me to take them. Mushrooms aren’t for the weak hearted, at least these ones weren’t. I had never tried those before either, and I was already on 2 hits of LSD. I ate 4.2 grams of the most potent psilocybes’ I’ve had to date. It took about an hour to kick in. This was the 3rd life changing moment in my drug career.

I’ll start from the beginning of the mushroom peak. We are all sitting on a couch in the garage smoking, and it is slowly starting to wreck all of us. We’re laughing like maniacs. My friends face is growing and is orange and blue, and is swirling upside down and the size of a balloon and zooming towards me and disappearing all at the same time. I’m laughing uncontrollably. I reach to the laptop and try to play a song called HaHaHa by SMF, a truly trippy hardstyle song, and in the search bar the HaHaHa continues on for miles and miles. I play the song, and oh my god my head nearly exploded. We’re all howling with laughter at this point, at nothing, and I’m laying on the couch. In my mind, we’re in some kind of Fear and Loathing reenactment, with eyes closed we’re all zooming through the desert in a car, fucked up on all kinds of drugs. It's a future goal of mine actually to recreate this fantasy in reality. At some point, I forget when, we went to that nearby school and climbed atop all the buildings and lit a fire and stared at it – nobody saying a word. That was pretty much at the peak, don’t remember much of it. At one point we decided to take a glass and smash it on the floor in the garage, and the shards of glass flew up in the air, and stuck in mid air, swirling around with the light reflecting off of it, then they all immediately fell. There was another point when somebody knocked over a cup of water, and the water started filling up the whole house, and I could feel my feet getting wet, and I could feel and hear the splashes I made when I walked – but there wasn’t really any water there except the little spill. That was pretty interesting.

Soon the Sun started to come up and my friends went outside. I sat and turned on some punk music and start beating the fuck out of my friends couch for about 15 minutes before I realize I’m pretty close to losing it. I went outside in the back yard and the 2 inch tall grass is suddenly 20 feet high and I’m in some kind of Amazonian jungle, and the sun is dancing and the clouds are talking to me. What the fuck. I lay down in the grass, completely overwhelmed. I look down and I’m being eaten alive by insects. I do a double take and there’s nothing there, which was relieving, I wasn’t in the mood to fend off carnivore cockroaches and ants. My friend’s dog stumbles over, and then it falls over and dies. This confused the hell out of me. I look away and look back and the dog is fine all of a sudden, besides the demonic smile and swirling eyes. Feeling like my brain was about to implode, I head inside.

Everybody was freaking out, not in a losing control way, but we definitely over did it for our first times. 2 of us wanted to die, not including me, but we talked them out of it. I think their plan was to jump in front of some cars or something. They also all went driving, I tried to stop them but I ended up being the only one who didn’t go – I figured driving around with a head full of acid and mushrooms was a bad idea, but thank god they made it safe. I was really angry at them the next day for putting me through that, but they just said I worried too much.

[Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]

Anyway, back to the night. We were all spread throughout the house. I was in my friend’s bed crying, praying for it to be over. I ended up getting totally naked because I wanted to shower, but ended up lying on the bathroom floor for 30 minutes thinking I had lost it. Eventually I got over this, sort of, and we all converged in the living room discussing our mindsets. We all said that we like it, but maybe we just did way too much or something. We cleaned the house for the next 6 hours, because it was dirty and it was severely bothering us and we had so much energy, but people’s faces were still morphing and everything had a demonic tint to it. I was watching TV and everyone looked so fucking evil I didn’t know what was going on. This trip lasted probably 15 solid hours, and I passed out for about 2 days in a deep sleep and I was basically a different person, unbeknownst to me at first.

That trip was the first time I really discovered the magic feeling that I’ve been referring too. “Ooh that magic feeling, nowhere to go...” as sung in the Beatles song You Never Give Me Your Money. While we were peaking, there was a point where I was in some kind of déjà vu, I was actually in my DXM trip that I talked about earlier. The one where we walked through the door in space and were in a room all tripping on acid, all of a sudden I was in that exact place, with the exact people from the DXM trip. Honestly, it was like I somehow knew this was going to happen in my future on that DXM trip, and here it was. That was the magic feeling, the conclusion of all things – everything coming together, and being at peace. This was quite an eye opener to me. “I used to live in a room full of mirrors, all I could see was me, so I took my spirit and I crashed all the mirrors, now the whole world is here for me to see”. Great lyric to describe what my first psychedelic experience was like. As I said, music and mind expansion have been hand in hand since my first DXM trip, I find relevance in a lot of lyrics to personal experiences, sometimes they fit so well it seems almost supernatural. I feel as if I have some kind of supersonic connection with the music, as if I have somehow experienced it before – this all relates back to the feeling, the feeling of dejavu, of paradoxes, of time and space itself. It’s all related somehow.

That night was probably the most intense psychedelic experience I had, but it was also a turning point for my little group of friends. I had one more revealing experience with this group. I took about 3 grams, and the night started pretty rough. I tried to make myself throw up but to no avail. We got into my friends car, and I could have sworn we were in a submarine, but we got back to the house and I listened to the Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again and my attitude changed. I had never felt so euphoric and happy in my life. I wasn’t even tripping anymore, I was just extremely happy. Nothing could go wrong. I had to throw up, but it was like one of those Ayahuasca purges you read about, I felt I was getting rid of everything bad in me, and everything negative. After the purge, the night only got better and better. We watched PULSE by Pink Floyd, and after that I just laid in the darkness till I fell asleep. At one point, the door handle turned into a spider, and it crawled around the ceiling, which was one of the most realistic hallucinations I’ve ever had, except for one time where my mother came and spoke to me on DXM, which didn’t really happen. Anyway, this was the most positive trip I’ve ever had to date, I’ve never felt so euphoric and innocent in my life, and I hope one day I’ll reach that level again.

Our last trip together was on LSD trip in a friend’s house in the heat of summer. There was 4 of us tripping, and one more would join us later. I took 4 hits even though I was supposed to take 2, and convinced my buddy to take 4 with me, and the other 2 friends each took 2 or 3, I don’t remember. I was the first to feel it. I couldn’t stop laughing. Some friends came over and started trying to fuck with us, and we were all coming up pretty hard. They weren’t letting off positive vibes as they say, so we kind of kicked them out. They weren’t feeling as we were, and we felt they weren’t welcome for the time being. I decided to try and drink some milk because I heard that kills an acid trip, which is false, but I was dumb, and the milk was actually bad, which would have repercussions later on in the evening. We dosed around 11 in the morning I think. I was in pretty bad shape at around the 2 hour point, and my buddy eventually threatened to beat my ass if I didn’t calm down, and we went upstairs and played drums and “tried” to play xbox and I somehow managed to calm down. We went into the garage thinking the trip was almost over, and looked at the clock, and oh my god, we were only at the 3 hour point – we were in for quite a day. Funny how time works on psychedelics, it’s so damn irrelevant. I think time only has importance because we let it run our lives. Once we die, or when the slate is clean, time has absolutely no meaning.

We decided to go in the hot tub, and I don’t know what happened but I think my friend turned on the pump backwards, because the hot tub was insanely dirty, maybe it was just our mind playing tricks. One of my buddies flipped out because the tub was sucking in, and he felt himself being sucked into the tube, which was pretty interesting when we all tried it. Ducking our head under water was pretty fascinating as well. After that we listened to some dogs having a conversation. There was this one big dog barking in a real masculine tone, and a bunch of yippy dogs barking back – and I was translating the conversation. It was probably one of the funniest things I’ve ever been a part of – I could understand what the animals were saying, or at least I thought I could, but they were damn comedians. After all that, we went inside and dried off and put real clothes on, unfortunately my clothes weren’t too comfortable, but anyway. At this point, we weren’t really having a bad time, and weren’t really having a great time either. My stomach was in knots because of the milk, and I couldn’t stop having to run to the restroom.

Restrooms aren’t a whole lot of fun on psychedelics. Dealing with the toilet and my body is one thing, then getting up and looking at the zombie in the mirror that makes evil faces and talks to me, and wondering what’s behind the shower curtain, all that horrible stuff. Some people like it I guess, I avoid mirrors like the plague when tripping. While I was in the bathroom at one point, I heard a knock on the front door, and began preparing for the worst. I thought my friends parents had come home, and we were all in for some trouble. I prepared myself for what I would say and do, I think my main plan was to run out the back and hop the fence and flee. Thank god that wasn’t the case – it turned out to be some girl who wanted to trip with us.

She was very cute, at least I think so, it was hard to tell when her face was swirling all over the place and her skin was purple and red and every other color under the rainbow. She took 2 hits, and 2 more later. We were peaking when she came in and took her first dose. She wanted to order some pizza. We did so, which took about 45 minutes, operating a phone book on psychedelics is difficult. I figured we should get the money ready now, as to not look like complete idiots when the dude actually showed up, which turned out to be good planning. My buddy took a bite and showed me his mouth while he was chewing it, and the pizza was dancing inside his mouth, it was so weird. It grossed me out and I didn’t really want any. We ordered probably 3 pizza’s and only ate a slice or two between the five of us. I eventually started rubbing the girls feet without really asking for permission, she kind of asked me what I was doing, and I didn’t even realize it was inappropriate, but I was kind of angry at the same time. She was one of those neo hippy free love girls who wear peace t shirts. She was also tripping on acid, as was I. I figured she would have been fine with it, but she snapped at me. I kind of dropped her foot angrily, or as angrily as you can drop a foot, but she said to continue, but I was kind of annoyed so I stopped and ignored her for a bit.

Later on in the night, we tried to watch some movies. We watched Ironman first, or at least the first 45 minutes. That was scary as hell, especially when he was stuck in the cave. I remember when he first tries his suit out, or first tries to fly, and falls back to Earth. I was thinking “Wow dumbass, you knew it wouldn’t work, why try and go up so high?!?” and I was seriously worried about his safety. We got annoyed by the movie though, and played The Ringer. What a silly ass movie to watch while tripping. I hardly remember any of it, only that I couldn’t follow the plot for shit. The girl asked if I liked the movie, and I said not really, and that the faces having 8 or more eyes was kind of detracting away from the plot and she laughed. Once the movie ended, my friend played some Pantera against the girls liking. We were all coming down, but she was peaking and she was pretty much gone. The music he was playing made her nervous as hell, and I put on some Shpongle, which wasn’t nearly as cool as it should have been, because we weren’t really peaking anymore, but she LOVED it. After listening to that for 30 or so minutes, we went outside and smoked.

We all started smoking, which only increased the level at which we were tripping. At one point the girl breathed some smoke out, and my buddy breathed out, and their smoke intermingled and floated together in the air, and I felt a little awkward, because I liked her, and felt he was intruding, but it was just the uneasiness of the drugs wreaking havoc on me. Paranoia and all that. We got back inside and she basically asked to have sex, but I declined. Was probably a good thing, I was so confused by the whole aspect of having sex with her, and my stomach was still fucked, and I didn’t feel right at all. She forgot about even asking so it wasn’t a big deal. She was pretty skanky in hindsight. She eventually asked my friend to drive her somewhere. He took 3 hits but said he was perfectly sober, I didn’t really believe him, but he took off in his truck and drove her and dropped her off at some gas station. Never heard from her again.

I refer to her as one of the “drug people” if you will, someone you meet under the influence, and never see again, and you’re never quite sure if they were even real in the first place. Kind of a Fear and Loathing type of thing I guess. All the people just come and go, like the people in the casino when Duke is walking around. Are these people even real? After she left, I decided I should call home to say I was alright, and my camping trip was going great. I thought I was sober, but oh that was a mistake. My mother answered, and I had the devil or something whispering throughout her breaths and gaps in speech. That was terrifying, but I handled myself fine. My other friend tried to call his mom as well, which didn’t go too well. He kind of tipped her off that we weren’t where we were supposed to be, and he decided she was gonna come check on us, so we had to run to our other buddies house. Well actually we had to drive.

That was ridiculous. Cars flying at us, I swear we almost crashed 20 twenty times, but the driver said we were driving perfectly normal. I still don’t really trust that judgement, I know we had a few close calls! We got to the house, stayed for an hour, and realized we over reacted to the whole situation, grabbed some 40’s, and went back to the other house. The one guy who wasn’t tripping drank a 40 or 2, and got pretty drunk and went to sleep. The rest of us went to sleep as well, or at least 2 of them did. I didn’t sleep a minute. At one point I walked through the darkness to the bathroom, and eventually I had to run through the hallway because I thought the darkness would swallow me. The clocks didn’t stop ringing and buzzing, and every time I closed my eyes I had all kinds of creatures jumping and leaping at me, it was pretty surreal. Really intense closed eye visuals if I do say so myself. I was up all night, and we cleaned up the next day, and like my last LSD trip I went home and crashed for 2 days. I don’t know why, but LSD really drains my soul for about a week.

I had one more memorable trip with this group of friends, and it’s not really something you’d expect to trip this hard from. We took a few Xanax bars. After about 3 hours, it hit us like rocks. We somehow managed to get Ecstasy, don’t ask me how, I don’t remember. One of us must had driven somewhere, how idiotic. I’m very against driving while on any type of drug, but it does happen. I almost did it once actually, but my friends had the mindset to take my keys away (they locked me in a car while I was on a very high dose of DXM while they went to some festival, was probably a good idea, I was fucked up). I took a few of the Ecstasy tabs. We went outside, and smoked for probably an hour.

I’ve never been so absolutely trashed in my life. I think I smoked about a gram or even more. I couldn’t hold the pipe. I was way more gone then my friends with me. One of them had to hold the pipe and light it for me. They were all staring at me, joking and talking. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. They were nowhere near as gone as I was, I don’t know why. I was hallucinating little gnomes and stuff running in the grass under the midnight light. My friends eventually had to cut me off. I couldn’t speak anymore, or see, or understand them worth a damn. Their words were gibberish, it was like a psychedelic trip, I think I just smoked way too much and took way too many pills. That was the most trashed I’ve ever been, but it was actually one of my favorite experiences, although I hardly remember a thing. Woke up the next day with about 30 minutes worth of memories from an 8 hour experience, gotta love Xanax.

After a few more mild experiences, one involving a waterfall and shotguns and helicopters (only the waterfall was real, but I had quite an imagination that day, got stuck on top of a waterfall and thought the only way I would get down was by helicopter, but I finally found a way off without jumping; oh there was a monkey involved too); my friends started getting into other substances, as did I. They started getting into cocaine, heroin, oxy, and all that. I started researching Dimethyltryptamine and Mescaline and Ibogaine and Ayahuasca and all these seemingly ancient ‘entheogens’ and to this day they still absolutely fascinate me. I recall one time where all my friends were in the house fucked up on heroin, and I was in the garage researching DMT. That’s when we all started to get divided, and after about 6 months of a seemingly undying friendship, I basically parted from their company. It was a pretty hard time for me, wasn’t really my decision, but we just stopped talking. My best friend got sent to prison for dealing, and the others basically all dropped off and I had no real interest in talking to them, my friend was kind of the liaison between all of us and with him out of the picture we didn’t really have much in common. So I was on my own, with an undying interest in psychedelics and music, and the relationship between myself and everything around me.

I decided to embark upon a solo trip, which would probably be my 2nd most intense experience right behind my DXM trip I discussed earlier. I started watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, and ate the 3.5 grams straight up. Such a “wonderful” taste. I was at the point where he’s in the space ship talking to his daughter on the screen when it really started to kick in. It became too much, and I had to turn it off. I wish I had left it on however, I had never seen the movie before, and upon watching it later with a clean head, the ending is so fucking beautiful it would have synergized completely with my state of mind at the time. I actually did try and turn it back on, but couldn’t figure out how to turn the dvd player on because I was so gone, but what’s done is done. After I turned the movie off, I tried listening to some music to recreate my earlier euphoric mushroom experience. Didn’t really work as planned, the music made me quite angry, and I ended up throwing my music player at the wall in frustration. The room had a blue tint to it and everything was cloudy; the walls were breathing and waving all over the place.

What would come next was the most fucked up time loop I’ve ever experienced. 4 hours of pure dissociative hell. At one point I had to get up to use the bathroom, and the journey back was so damn terrifying. I finally got back into my bedroom, and just closing the door was impossible. I ended up giving up on the whole closing the door thing. I threw on a sweatshirt, hoping it would somehow protect me from all the shit swirling around the room. Ghostly cats were running around the floor, leaping at me and scratching me. I closed my eyes and there was some octopus thing with bloody hooks as arms swirling around, with a big cat’s head that had swirling eyes and it’s head was rotating as well. It was against a kaleidoscope background, and seemed real as ever. It was completely enveloping me.

I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed. I knew how to open and close them, but it didn’t matter. This was the first time this has ever happened and it was quite terrifying. The realm behind closed eyelids offered no comfort, and the living and breathing world that is reality was the same as the darkness I entrusted to be behind my eyelids, but was nowhere to be found - completely surreal - and highly recommended to anyone who has yet to venture that far into things. All of this lasted for about 4 hours, and finally I just kind of snapped out of it. I spent about 30 minutes (or maybe longer, I don’t have a clue really) just reciting my name, and thinking that I needed to get out of this. It finally worked, and all of a sudden the time loop stopped, and I crash landed back into reality, or whatever this is. I kind of thought, wow, that was incredible! It was pretty terrifying though, I don’t know if it was complete ego death, but it was pretty close. I got up out of my bed, it was probably 3 in the morning. I dosed around 10 pm, and only remembered about 30 minutes. The whole trip past by in what felt like seconds in hindsight, but was an eternity in the heat of things. I went outside and laid on the concrete to enjoy my comedown, the saddest part of the trip. Sad because it’s over, but joyful because it's over. I turned on one of my favorite reflection songs, Shine on You Crazy Diamond. I have a bit of a history with this song.

The first time I truly listened to it I was trying out LSA (this was a long time ago, before I even tried any of the OTC drugs I talked about earlier) which was a pretty funny night looking back. Me and my good friend were bored one day, and it was just the two of us. We wanted to try something new besides weed for once. We did some research like always, and came across LSA. Apparently it’s a little bit like LSD, at least that’s what the all knowing internet told us. We drove to literally 8-10 stores to find the correct Morning Glories. Stopped at all kinds of flower shops, drove around town for about 5 hours. Nobody had it! Stopped at one chain store, they didn’t have them either. Finally drove about 30 minutes to another big store, and they had it, finally. We pocketed all we could, and left the store. We got outside realizing we took a whole bunch of the wrong kind, and had to go back in, and pocket the right kind. It was pretty embarrassing to be honest, but thankfully we never got caught, which was always something I was pretty proud of. I was pretty adept at not getting caught. Anyway, we finally got out of the store and back to the house, 30 minutes later.

We crushed all the seeds in a coffee grinder, and put it all in a little pill bottle. We were pretty proud of ourselves. Here we had something completely legal that was apparently the same shit as LSD (we’d figure this wasn’t true quite quickly). We read about doing Everclear extractions and clear water extractions and all kind of crap, and we finally decided on a little bit of a mixture. We washed the seeds, and got some beer from a friend, and instead of doing an alcohol extraction, we just dumped all the seeds in the beer. This was… the nastiest thing I’ve ever done. I cannot drink beer to this day, because the horrible taste still presents itself from that fateful night. The taste was so bad, we ended up just spooning the seed material from the bottom of the cup. My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

We split a pretty decent dose, I can’t really remember how much, but I know it was up there. My friend got a little upset and just decided to go to sleep. I toughed it out and decided to stick with it. It took about 3 hours to kick in, and I was watching Intervention and for some reason I wanted to cry. I felt pretty different. I had to pee every 2 minutes, not sure why, but other than that, I felt as if I was away from my normal self. Things started morphing a little bit, not very much. The real enjoyment was listening to music, and I played Shine On You Crazy Diamond for the first time ever, and it seemed to last forever. I loved it so much. I stayed up all night listening to music, and in the morning laid under the sun; a common theme for me, laying on the grass or concrete staring into the sky during the come down portion of the trip, I wished I could just blast off in a rocket ship straight into space, which reminded me of a quote I heard pertaining to DMT, “Load Universe into cannon, aim at brain, fire!”

So before I get into that, I’ll finish up on the mushroom trip I was describing. That trip was pretty essential in my drug career, and was my last earth shattering trip, which was about 2 years ago. It kind of let me know how much I can really handle, and how much further I could go, and showed me that psychedelics and entheogens were definitely a part of me, and would remain with me forever. So DMT was my next venture. I’d had heard about it online, and I never thought it was actually accessible outside of the 1960’s – but apparently it was hardly even known in the sixties. I did some research, and by some, I mean hours. I figured out all the necessary steps to actually acquire it. I actually ended up receiving the first dose through the mail from some person I’ve never met, it was a friend of a friend who lived in a different state that I’d been talking to on the phone for a little bit, and he said he’d send me some. I finally got it and it sat there for a couple of months before I grew the courage to try it.

Loaded it up, lit up, and off I went. It was a pretty nice trip. Body went numb, room expanded and imploded, ceiling was an inch away from my nose, and I decided to close my eyes. It’s like watching a video, sort of. I think it was a pretty low dose, maybe 20mg. I never really got into high doses with DMT, although in hindsight I wish I did, oh well, that’s what the future is for. The first time I tried it, I saw a city behind my eyes, and some lizard man was talking to me holding a brief case. Then it was over, pretty weird experience, but definitely made me want to try to do it again, but not right away.

After that my interest in drugs didn’t really recede, but I pretty much stopped doing them altogether. Weed included. I actually stopped smoking weed long before I stopped tripping, once I stopped hanging out with all my friends, I stopped smoking. Just didn’t feel like needing a hook up all the time. To be honest I can’t stand most people in the drug culture, a bunch of thieves, with exceptions of course. I didn’t talk to any of my old friends anymore, and I didn’t really have any friends outside of work. I started to become my own person really, which is actually fine with me. The importance of my friends has never left me, and even to this day I miss our good and innocent times every day and will never forget any of them. I hope one day I can find some friends like they used to be, and we can experience amazing times together, but until then, I actually don’t mind being by myself.

It’s not that I’m antisocial, I get along with nearly everybody, people have a bit of a tendency to try and walk all over me though, something about me just makes them do it I guess. I’m very kind and helpful to everybody I meet, or I try my hardest to be. People take that as a weakness and try and put me down for it, and it has been instilled into me since I was a kid to not take anything from anybody, so I’ll defend myself every single time. I don’t know what it is, but I can never find friends that truly mean anything to me. I never have a relationship last longer than 3-5 months with any friends, and it’s not because they stop calling me or anything, I usually cut off contact with them. I’m not sure why it is, but I wish I could find another me as a friend, as awkward as that sounds.

So to this day, I don’t have any real close friends, I remain pretty close with my family, even though they’re thousands of miles away, but I am still fascinated with my own happenings as much as ever. I hope that’s not a negative trait, it’s just how I am. I’m not relatively proud to admit all of these things, but what’s life if you’re not honest? I have a tendency to think people are always talking about me behind my back, or when people make jokes, I often assume they’re referring to me. It’s gotten progressively worse over time. I’m sure I have some kind of undiagnosed “disorder” but why worry about it, I just try and live as best as I can. Hopefully I’ll be able to shed the negativity that I associate with people soon. Honestly though, I have met few if any people that I actually like. People lie so much, never hold to their commitments. I do everything I say I’m going to do, and always try and help others – it’s just not a trait you find too often. Maybe it’s just me, it probably is, but either way, I’m working on it.

After about 8 months of not really trying any kinds of drugs, I delved into music. I started listening to all kinds, from all points throughout history. My favorite music is the blues, and psychedelic rock. Blues rock is the center point. I’ll never thank myself enough for smoking the first time, because I doubt I’d have ever stumbled across this type of music. So music has pretty much enveloped about 50% of who I am, and I’m always listening to it. It’s just so damn fantastic. I cry when I hear certain songs, or just close my eyes and nod off. People look at me funny sometimes, or ask why I’m crying when I hear Come On by Jimi Hendrix, and I just can’t explain it. I’ve yet to meet anyone with an interest in the same music as me, which only lends itself to why I like to stay alone. I’d be so happy if I met someone with similar interests in music, but I guess I’m a little unique in that category.

I guess you could say I was born in the wrong period of time, as I’m sure a lot of people say. I’d be much happier dancing around the UFO club in the mid sixties to Syd Barrett and the Pink Floyd Sound, or running around a Grateful Dead concert, or mingling with Hendrix at the Electric Ladyland studio. I can’t change any of that though, so I try not to think about it a lot. That’s part of the magic feeling as well, the longing for things that I never experienced, and never will. That’s part of the struggle I guess, almost like a cosmic April Fool’s joke – but I try my best to make it here in this life, what else can I do?

Anyway, I finally started thinking about DMT again, and other things. I ended up doing a rather large extraction, and had a few experiences. None were too earth shattering, which I regret to this day. When I left home, I flushed all of it down the drain, looking back I would have much rather binged on it for a week and got the full experience. I never broke through, or even came close. Hopefully the future holds that experience in store for me. I also got some cactus and acquired some Mescaline from it, and had a good time doing it. I love extracting, and just learning. I love reading, about drugs, about musicians, and the past, about the future. Could care less about the present; kind of a strange way to live.

Whenever I’m just sitting around, I can only think of the past, and all the great experiences I had. But while I’m experiencing them, I can only think of the future, and how the experiences should be better. I think that’s my problem, and my central point of anguish. Always trying to better the situation instead of sitting and relaxing. With the mescaline I only took a low dose, and the same fate met my little stash. Flushed down. Wish I hadn’t, but oh well. At the time, I was done with drugs for some reason. Decided I wasn’t mature enough, or ready enough, for what they had in store for me. The mescaline experience was quite interesting. Decided to rewatch A Space Odyssey, wasn’t quite as fascinating as it should have been when I robbed myself of watching it the first time, but a great experience nonetheless. Mescaline’s a strange drug, it wasn’t exactly pure, but it was a lot like speed and acid combined. Great night however, hope the future holds that in store for me as well. That was the last time I was high, the mescaline experience.

So that brings an end to the experiences section of this tale. I’ll try and decipher what it all means, or what it meant to me anyway. “With all memory and fate, driven deep beneath the waves, let me forget about today until tomorrow” – Mr. Tambourine Man. Another lyric that really describes what I’m all about. Let me forget about today until tomorrow, story of my life. Relates perfectly to what I was talking about earlier, about never truly being in the present. I think Bob hit it right on the head there, that’s what the magic feeling is all about. Losing the present, and just living in infinity. My two favorite books, at least my two favorite that pertain to the topic at hand, are the Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. Both of these men knew what it was all about, the magic feeling. Huxley talks about finding a way to diminish the door that blocks the truth of the universe out, or disabling the brain in a sense. Hell, the mean injected LSD on his death bed. Thompson represents the feeling perfectly in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with the wave speech:

“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run...but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting, on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark, that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

I love this quote, and the whole book in general. A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, isn’t that what we’re all chasing? Thompson talks about that special feeling, the feeling of being unstoppable, being part of something. In my spare time I’m always searching for the feeling, or at least until now. I would drive around in the middle of nowhere, looking for nothing, simply listening to music. If I owned a camera, I’d be taking pictures of everything, for no real reason. I’d drive past my friend’s old house, simply if to relive a memory for but a moment. Depression would follow me around for a bit, and I think I’ve gotten over most of it. When I had no friends, and the psychedelics didn’t interest me anymore, and the music was getting repetitive, I couldn’t find a point in life. I’m still not sure that I have, but thankfully I overcame the depression for the most part. What a truly horrible time. I figured I’d never find the magic, so why even be alive?

Something rejuvenated me though, and now I’d like to live forever. I have so many plans; all I need is time and opportunity. So nowadays, I’m further away from home that I’ve ever been. Haven’t tripped in something like 4 months, and haven’t had a real trip in over a year. That part of me has pretty much disappeared, although I still think of my experiences every day. I got away from home because I was losing my mind there, and was kind of living the same day over and over again. Now that I’m away, I miss it more than anything. Just relates to the same thing I’ve always done though, always trying to change the present. My only goal as of this moment is to learn how to truly Be Here Now, as Ram Dass suggests. It’s quite difficult though, at least for me.

It’s some deep seeded thing in my brain that just doesn’t allow me to be happy with what’s around me. I hope I can change this, and when I do, I will look back to psychedelics. I want to be as stable and happy as possible next time I try them. I want to do a heroic dose of every drug, in a closet, or in an isolation tank, wherever. I want to be confident in myself though, both as a man and a human being, before I engage in them. I know that I was pretty immature when I first started chasing the dream, and I’m still pretty immature, but I’m getting better I think. Hopefully this depression erases itself from my persona, and I actually pay attention to the things I learn from everyday life, which will hopefully allow me to not only be content with what’s happening in the present, but thankful.

I’ve yet to forget about drugs though, like I said, the experiences shape my everyday life. I want to be a psychopharmacologist, I want to study mycology and philosophy and many other types of things. I want to see the world, see the Pyramids, see the Amazonian jungle, see things much greater and older then I am, so I can become that more connected with my home, this beautiful Earth. Before all I wanted to do was expand outwards, explore space, lose myself, melt into the sun. I’ve realized I can’t explore space without fuel though. Fuel being discovering myself, and discovering this beautiful place that feeds me air every day. Maybe once I finally accept that the Earth is my mother – and learn to be grateful, then I’ll allow myself to try and expand my horizons. Everything comes back in full swing, it’s all related to karma.

I believe my negative experiences are related to a need to get away, or to have something that I’ll never have. Maybe once you stop chasing everything, and just accept the moment for what it is, you’ll find you had everything you ever wanted all along. I’m hoping this will lead me down the proper path. I’m young still, and hope to better myself every day, and get closer to accepting the present moment every day. I’m becoming thankful for my past, and I’ve stopped romanticizing it. I’m thankful for what all these experiences taught me, I’m thankful for never getting into any serious trouble, I’m thankful for never getting physically or mentally damaged. My plan from now is to simply forget everything that makes me anxious, depressed, or sad. Such things come about when I think about the past or the present. I try and change every situation, and I think that’s incorrect.

It just hit me today actually, maybe, just maybe, I should try and be happy for all the things I have. I should be happy and grateful for even being allowed the opportunity to exist. Who knows what death holds? Death will either be the infinite end to all things I’ve ever known, and my spirit never actually existed, or maybe it will be the beginning. Only the dead know, but I figure maybe I should just get the most out of this life as possible. I want to be an old man one day, with a wife I would die for, and children who have children that I can teach all kinds of things too. I want to be able to sit on my porch and stare into my spacious back yard, and watch the flowers and trees change colors with the passing of time. I want to be able to listen to Pink Floyd and reflect back on this very moment, or maybe reflect on my first LSD trip, or maybe just relate to the first time I apologized to my mother about treating her so badly for so many years.

Instead of looking for peace and always coming out hostile, maybe I’ll just drop both of them. As Ram Dass says, “Just drop anger”. Once you drop anger, then what else can you do but be happy? I also want to expand my musical horizons as far as possible. I want to record a couple of albums, learn to play guitar, saxophone, bongos, harmonica, and everything else I can get hold of. “Music, behind silence, is the closest way to describe the indescribable”. So my message is to not be content with daily life, but be grateful for daily life. You don’t need anything but the air to be happy. I want to live forever, but I know I’ll die one day. I want to smile on my death bed, not be stuck in the final moments of my life regretting everything I ever did because I never lived in the present.

That’s my message. It was mostly a method of self counseling, but if anybody can relate to it, or if anybody finds it relates to their own life, then I’ll be satisfied. I’ll be satisfied either way. So for the moment I’ll stop thinking about drugs, and think about the things that should matter to me; building a foundation and a positive personality and mindset. Once that’s been established, I’ll light up and allow myself to explore further. So how do you find that magic feeling? Give up looking for it.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 85708
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: 17
Published: Dec 21, 2012	Views: 6,675
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DXM (22), Various (136) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Various (28)