DOSE:

100 mg

oral

Mescaline

(capsule)

BODY WEIGHT:

170 lb

Here's me coming into it: I've done a lot of psychedelics. Heroic doses of mushrooms, DMT, and tried a bunch of others. That and just a bunch of other drugs, but that's beside the point; I'm adventurous and like to experience things first hand, not just hear about them. I love how they can catalyze creativity and just do a lot of good things for a person. I bought a handful of San Pedro cacti, but after two failed 'trips' on them, Mescaline found me.

I had gotten a surprise day off work and had a good 8 hours free before working a second job at night. Being a bit anxious and feeling positive premonitions, I went for it. It was a little transparent capsule which contained a really tiny amount of the stuff. I emptied it into a spoon, mixed it with a few drops of water, then took it orally. It tasted of a similar bitterness to the San Pedro. This was at 11:40 a.m. I had breakfast at 7 that morning and a small piece of bread at the time of ingestion. Could not eat until 6:00 dinner. My stomach was quite empty upon ingestion.

Initially, it felt like I had just taken a really ripping, strong line of cocaine, as in: I was bouncing around with mad energy within the first 5 minutes of consumption. Perhaps due to excitement of mescaline?

Nothing else happened much in the first half an hour but slight queasiness. Under the supervision/accompaniment of by girlfriend, she drove us from my house (where I ate it) over to hers. We opened some post-christmas presents from her family, after which I started playing guitar, at which point things starting ramping up a bit.

I'm a pretty fluent guitarist, it's my best second language. I felt more able to focus in on my fingers, more nimble and acute with thinking through my fingers, speaking through tones and improvising a musical conversation. The sound of the strings grew rich and detailed; the pulsing guitar body sounded big enough to seem like I was inside it...the multifarious tones and dynamicism of it all was incredible. I found my voice through a guitar. My girlfriend sat silently beside me as I played; whether my playing was as intriguing to her as it was to me I don't know, but she completely dropped everything she was doing (she's usually a kind of frazzled busy-body) to tune in. I started playing with new tunings and driving some new thoughts out of my fingers.

After a bit of that, I walked out of her room to make some food with her in her kitchen. She has two house mates, one of which was around. I knew she had done mushrooms before, but I didn't know her that well, so I was just straight with her and told her I took mescaline. She was interested and wanted to hear updates along the way. This made me feel good and welcome, but after I spent some time zoning in on making some food while my girlfriend and her talked a lot...the room started pulsing and glowing a bit, swelling a bit, so as soon as I finished cooking, I took my food out into the living room adjacent to the kitchen and sat cross-legged. This was when the visuals and acute stomach-aching began. I couldn't eat, just sat there while the wood grain of the wall paneling took on this surreal depth, like a topography map. I could see new colors within the wood that combined to form (or so it seemed) the normal red-brownish tone of the walls. It was profound, all the spectrum of color was everywhere. The ceiling and walls and lights started slipping around and wavering, showing their inherent changingness and impermanence. It felt just like mushrooms but more colorful and less particled. I felt like being alone and meditating but felt really bad for bailing out on this day off we all had together, but it had to happen.

So, I bid the house mate farewell, and my girlfriend drove me back to my house, dropped me off with my plate full of uneaten food I had cooked and gave me a kiss.

I went inside my house, sat down on my drum set (I am very fluent on the drums as well, I would say it's tied with guitar as my second tongue), played for a while with more passion than normal. I felt very alive. The visuals had gone away mostly after the travel between houses, probably due to how cold and rainy it was outside: it probably just overwhelmed the smallish dose that I had taken. So, I was kicking ass on the drums but my interest in them waned really quickly: my timing and synchronization and creativity were there, but the drums were so limited, lacking the range of tones that can be had with the voice and the guitar. So, off of the drum throne and on with the guitar strap. I had just purchased a hand held stereo portable digital recorder a couple days prior so was super excited to do some stream of consciousness recording with the new device. It turned out to be a waaay better fit. I pressed record on the device and just went to town...thinking on my feet, spraying out whatever came to mind through my mouth and fingers in a synchronization and harmonization with the guitar. Normally, I'm quite introverted, but I've been pressing myself to work on being outwardly creative and productive in that way as my life's work (as I used to be in high school: in the last 7 years since, work and other things have taken precedence, you know, making a living). Good results. Really good results. I was singing in colors and painting with sounds. Singing a symphony of atoms and colorful energy, a sweet exploding dream that is you and me. I would start improvising with a word and not even know what the word was going to be, but halfway in I would figure it out and I just ended up letting the words kind of form themselves, as if I was a medium for the ghost of a song to come through. And it was great, like a ouija board of sorts. After a good 15 minute session of that (which was probably 2 hours after ingestion), I felt like just doing some writing. I wrote about six pages.

In writing, I felt linguistically focused and opened. I could think freely, access thoughts and words more easily than normal. That and I felt much more perceptive. At this point, most of the visual or sensory distortion/waviness had left and I was mostly just on mental overdrive. I could look in any direction, and there was just so much more detail that I was able to take in: things were just more graphic, as if my mental inhibitors that normally block out most of the world were shut down and I could take it all in. Sitting was profound. Looking. Listening. Breathing. It helped me see how relevant art is: taking the time to create something beautiful and share it with others, out of love. My girlfriend texted me: 'what is the greatest taste experience you can think of? One with the quality that all food would strive for,' to which I responded 'any from the heart and hands of a loving human. It's the thought that counts. That trumps all.'

At one point when I started writing, I had this mental imagery of light exploding out of the top of my spine, out my neck and the back and top of my head. I could feel this, too. It was this light, clear, free, tensionless feeling centrally located behind me.

It occurred to me that hallucinogens are good for (at least!) this reason: they cause ripples and waves in ones consciousness; bring elasticity and fluidity around stale conceptions and irrelevant mental ideals and hangups. They bring motion to stillness. It allows one to see the mangled birdsnest of feathery life for the raw and changing thing it is and to adapt- mentally and spiritually- to the occasion! The moment. It helped me open and understand my humanity, the human needs and uniqueness. Brought me to a better acceptance of myself and what I need to do to be comfortable. I am an artist. I need to be able to freak out musically for my mental health. The air was tingling. The phrase of the day: why not? I find myself usually in such debilitating self-critique that I can stop myself from doing a lot of things. What I realized, with some clarity, is that what gurus mean about looking within instead of without is for this reason: that maybe you should do some considering of if you are serving your purpose fully, that maybe you have something within you that you need to bring to the table, so as to live within your inclination, your authentic skillset; so as to feel useful and needed.

At about 4:30 or 5, I was lying down trying to sleep with my girlfriend before going to work that night and things had pretty much gone back to baseline, though at one point I started breathing uncontrollably heavy for a few seconds and it felt like my heart was slowing down, which was spooky, though I do have a family history of heart troubles.

It is now the afternoon the day after. I still feel a bit mentally lubricated, and am still excited about what happened and hope to try it again sometime. Beautiful.

Exp Year: 2013	ExpID: 98914
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 25
Published: Jan 20, 2022	Views: 801
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Mescaline (36) : Music Discussion (22), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)