DOSE:

1.3

oral

Cannabis

(edible / food)

BODY WEIGHT:

165 lb

The trip I am about to describe happened yesterday.

My good friend A came over a few days ago and dropped off some pot cookies. His father had recently passed due to an illness. A's father had been using medicinal pot cookies to manage his pain. Thus, when A's father died, A inherited a couple of bags worth of cookies.

A and I are in a band, along with C and G. We decided that we would each have a cookie and then do our usual rehearsal at my home where I live with G. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon when A and C arrived. We chatted about the potential of an upcoming show in August and we chatted about the cookies. C, our drummer, decided not to take his portion because he was planning on going to ice hockey in the evening. As such, A, G and myself gained a third of a cookie each.

We ate the cookies quickly and started our rehearsal. I felt normal when we began to play. We got through our intro-jam and the first two songs when I began to feel, not anxious, but a surge of energy. It was like the feeling of anxiousness, but without fear. Just a lot of energy. I told the guys to wait a minute and ran around the house twice. We began playing again. My body began to feel strange and I began stretching in between my parts during the song. As a singer I try to relax my entire body in order to sing properly, and as I began to get high I began to sense how tense my body was. I didn't feel like I was tense due to my high, but that my high allowed me to sense deep inner tension that I couldn't normally recognize, and that now I was going to be able to let it go. So I was stretching in between my parts. The tension did not release, however, and I soon began to forget my lyrics. These were songs that we had played many, many times. Lyrics that I have perfectly memorized in a sober state. But as I got higher and higher I forgot more and more. My lungs also began to feel weak and I stated to lose my voice somewhat. My breathing began to feel shallow and tense, which hindered singing greatly. I ended up walking out on the jam because I needed to take a break. I didn't want to interrupt the song so I just walked out the front door.

Another reason I left abruptly was that I was beginning to feel overwhelmed by the high. This would be a feeling that would become characteristic of the entire trip. Overwhelming and intense.

I live on a small farm just outside of city limits. Our property backs onto hundreds of acres of forest, and so I went for a walk into the woods to calm myself, burn off some energy and in general come to grips with the intense high that was beginning to come over me.

I was forced to return from my short excursion into the wilderness because I was overcome with very intense cotton mouth. By the time I got back into the house, I could basically not swallow, open my mouth, or speak. My water was in the jam room. The boys were still playing even though I had abandoned ship. I felt slightly paranoid at what my friends might be thinking of me. I went in and got some water. I also felt paranoid, for a split second, that my cotton mouth might not go away and that I was going to be stuck like that forever. I realized the absurdity of that thought as soon as I had my first sip of water and the cotton mouth completely dissipated. But this was the beginning of some paranoid thinking for sure.

I may have apologized to the boys, taken my water, and gone outside into the hammock. I lay there and basically just attempted to get a game-plan together. I realized that I was very high and was experiencing a very intense reaction to the pot cookies. I couldn't understand why my friends were fine. That thought did not occupy me long, however, because I was more concerned with navigating the massive wave that I now found myself riding. In the hammock I began to experience some slight disassociation, more of which was yet to come. I basically felt a disconnect between my body and mind, a feeling which would become much more pronounced later in the trip. At the same time the sunlight was peeking through the trees and warming me, I had my water, and I was able to enjoy the very intense euphoria and 'doped' feeling that I was experiencing. It was now that I began to understand how pot, ingested this way, could have medicinal use in the form of a pain-killer. So I tried to relax into the numbed out feeling.

I lay in my beautiful garden hammock, Saturday afternoon, knowing that I was missing a rehearsal that I was so looking forward to. I could hear the guys playing in the house and I lay there definitely feeling regretful. I didn't want to be this high, I wanted to be in there with my friends playing the beautiful music that gave my life so much meaning. Instead I was fucked-up and riding an intense wave that was still getting more and more intense.

Then the guys started to play a song that I loved, a new song that we hadn't really played much as a full band. I decided to try and go back and play. I got out of my hammock sanctuary and stepped up to the mic. We got through the track and played two more classic songs. All the while my high was still increasing and after the two tracks I had to go back to the hammock.

Eventually I left the hammock and lay down in the grass, in a spot which was fairly hidden. I did not want to interact with anyone. I began to dread my bandmates finding me. I began to feel quite disassociated. My mind was out of control. I felt very numbed out and wanted to sleep it off. I also thought that if I was sleeping no one would bother me. At this point I so badly did not want to interact with anyone that I even thought about faking sleep if someone found me.

I spent probably two hours laying in the grass outside and this was the climax of my trip. My mind was racing about all sorts of things: paranoid thoughts about being found, thoughts about insanity, about the intenseness of the high, thoughts about how I was going to navigate the trip. While my thoughts were racing, my body was numbed out and twitching. The twitching wasn't severe, but it was consistent. My butt or my back or my arm would every few minutes twitch, meanwhile my mind was ranting about God knows what. Every once in a while I would suddenly 'feel' my whole body, I would suddenly realize that I was in a body. This was the height of my dissociation, and every time I had one of these surges of feeling my heart-rate would increase dramatically.

Luckily I was in my beautiful garden this whole time, and my wonderful extremely affection cat came and kept me company. Now and again I would have a feeling of being relaxed and happy. I would stick my face into the grass and just appreciate the smells and feelings. But in general these enjoyable moments were few and far between.

Eventually I had another visitor: my female friend, CM. She came by to pick up her vehicle, as I had given her a ride to the ferry the day before. I had to explain to her what was going on. She was sympathetic and nice and calmed me down significantly, returning some of my faith in my fellow human beings, which, in my paranoid state, had diminished.

My room-mate G eventually discovered me in the grass. G had ingested the same amount of cookies me but seemed completely fine. He went on to drive himself and others to the ice hockey game in the evening and he even played. I just told G what had happened. He seemed somewhat concerned but I tried to explain that I wasn't having a bad time, just an intense time.

I eventually went into the house, got more water, got a big blanket, and slept out in the grass for quite a while longer. G and C left for ice-hockey and I went inside to have something to eat. A, who brought to cookies and who ate the same amount as me, was inside, and we talked. At this point I was beginning to come down somewhat, but I was still very high. The paranoia had diminished and my disassociation was almost completely gone. But I was still balls ass high. A and I had some cereal and watched some Dr. Seuss for a while. After a while I put some ribs that I had been marinating in the oven. A left and I stayed awake until the ribs were done. I was assaulted by very extreme munchies at this point and proceeded to eat a ton of ribs and watermelon. I didn't check the time, but I think it was around 6pm. I fell asleep on the couch and woke up around 1am when G got home from hockey. We hung out and watched British comedy until about 3am, then I went into my room and tried to read but found it hard to concentrate. I fell asleep at 4am and woke up at 11am feeling groggy but not bad at all.

In fact, I feel pretty damn good today. I feel as if I successfully navigated a very intense, unexpected high. I was lucky in that I was home on a sunny day and was able to just lay in my garden with my cat during the most intense moments of my long trip. Had I been somewhere else, like a house party or something, things might have been a lot worse. In all, I feel happy to be here still. Just grateful to be back to my normal state of mind with the chance to continue making music and participating in the beautiful positive flow of life.

Everyone reacts uniquely to different doses. Know your sensitivities. I only had a small sausage-muffin and some Tim Hortons before I ingested the cookies and that obviously was one reason I was hit hard. But I'll so be a lot more careful from now on with the oral ingestion of drugs, just because I now have some evidence that I am sensitive to that.

I am a fairly experienced tripper and am good at getting through stressful situations as well. I feel that my own mental fortitude allowed me to successfully navigate a trip that might have been truly overwhelming for someone else.

Despite all of the paranoia, dissociation and jacked heart rates, I didn't panic. I tried to keep positive and remember that my experiences were not bad, just very intense. That was my motto and I think it helped me get through my unexpectedly strong reaction to medicinal pot cookies.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 91279
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 23
Published: Oct 30, 2011	Views: 8,738
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Cannabis (1) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Overdose (29), Music Discussion (22), Difficult Experiences (5)