A vivid trip involving multiple substances
Well, I tripped this weekend and went too far even for me. Psychoactives
included approximately 360-400mg DXM HBr, 150-200ug LSD, regular use of
fluoxetine (dosage not recalled), cigarettes, and possibly a bit of
leftover harmaline from a previous night's experiment. My body mass is
80kg.
It started with dinner at Z. and B.'s; B. made black bean
burritos and I ate two (mistake number one). Then we all dropped; I
took three hits, at I'm guesstimating 150-200ug (these weren't particularly
strong hits of acid). Then shortly after I drank about one half of an
8oz bottle of RoboMax (yes, I know I should really be extracting the shit).
This was a combination I had done before, at lower levels, and I had been
quite impressed with the results. I also took a Coenzyme Q10 in an attempt
to prevent any metabolic insult to my posterior cingulate and retrosplenial
cortex, a matter about which I have recently become somewhat paranoid as
a result of Olney's findings.
The first 30 minutes were uneventful. Alert came at maybe 35-40 minutes in
to the experience. I felt a slight stiffness in my shoulders, or perhaps a
need to move around. Within 15 minutes I started feeling gastrointestinal
distress. I took 4mg loperamide, thanking the chemistry gods that it
doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier.
At about dose+1hour, I started feeling the DXM kick in. I remember sitting
in the bathroom, looking at the wooden door. As I sat there without moving,
the patterns in the wood transformed into a fluid sculpture, then into a
waterfall and finally into an incredibly beautiful place, with a waterfall,
small rapids, delicate ferns and plants, and life all around. At this moment
I knew something different would happen tonight.
For awhile after I honestly don't remember much (for reasons that will become
clear later). I started feeling a little uneasy in the tummy, and tried more
than once (unsuccessfully) to go to the bathroom. I finally ended up
wandering outside ... and then I saw the moon.
The weather here occasionally takes on a particular form, in which delicate,
wispy, and probably low-lying clouds are blown rapidly across the sky. In
the night, under the full moon, this took on the appearance of an Aurora
Borealis. Music was playing inside, and the rest of my companions were for
the most part inside playing with trip toys, but I had come face to face with
such incredible beauty that I could do nothing but stare in rapture, weeping.
As I regained consciousness of my more ordinary surroundings, I tried to
smoke a cigarette. It tasted terrible and I could *feel* the natural world
around me, almost as if it had a consciousness. It, or they, seemed puzzled
that I would waste my time (and life) on such a boring and trivial drug, and
I found myself having visions of how tobacco was originally used (when fresh,
it is a strong hallucinogen and far too powerful of an experience to become
addictive).
I began to look around me. I felt suddenly shocked that with such incredible
beauty and energy around us, we as humans choose to spend our time in sterile
and unnatural surroundings. It felt as if a black veil were dropping from my
soul, or perhaps as if an evil spell were being banished. I could sense the
life and joy around me in the trees, the clouds, the skies, and even the
stars. There was life all around me, and I could suddenly see the pattern
to it.
I realize now that this sounds hopelessly new-agey, but unlike some I have
never had the belief that nature and the spiritual worlds are some safe,
harmless playground and that all entities (physical or not) are basically
here to love us. I began to realize that I as an individual, and we as
humans, are just one thread in a much larger fabric, and that Nature
(either as a collective or as her individual parts) wouldn't shed a tear if
I were to vanish from life forever. Yet somehow that made me feel all the
more important, to be a part of some greater construct.
I began to wonder about the nature of consciousness. What if what regard as
consciousness (perhaps awareness of onesself and the ability to exert will
to change onesself or ones surroundings?) was a feature of many collective
entities, such as insect colonies, weather patterns, or even the entire
ecosystem? Or, perhaps what we *regard* as conscious behaviour is simply a
result of a complex, chaotic system which encodes (and "decides" based on)
a great amount of state information kept as a feature of the nonlinear
dynamic algorithm?
Perhaps we as humans were unique among animals in that we truly did control
our *own* destiny as individuals. Maybe that was what the Fall of Man was
all about -- we became conscious as individuals, rather than our
"consciousness" (or more complex decision-making behaviours) residing in
collective myths (spirits and deities). And perhaps, in these earlier times,
our "higher" decision-making systems, those that are now essential for
consciousness, propagated complex decision algorithms via song, myth, and
shared belief in gods. But with a continuous interplay between the decision
system and the observer system, consciousness became possible. Perhaps
with this constant interplay of awareness and observation, everyday life,
common aches and pains, boredom, depression, and ennui are possible because
we are constantly *aware* of them, i.e., they have constant emotional (or
generally, internal state state) significance. A fall from paradise indeed!
Then again, I had recently finished reading Jaynes, and was looking for
potential explanations for the transition from bicameral to unicameral
mind.
Chronology becomes difficult at this point. I remember looking at my
surroundings, lifting my point of view above, and then seeing the entire
scene in three dimensions. Three dimensions then expanded into four, and
the realm of history and future stretched into a complex, four-dimensional
fabric. Different possible futures (and occasionally different possible
pasts) superimposed themselves like ghost-images. The entire thing morphed
into a tremendously complex weaved fabric in state-space, each thread being
a sliver of consciousness or spirit, but more fluid. The "threads" were like
rivulets of energy; they broke apart, combined, swirled around chaotically.
I felt as if I could reach down and pluck one of the energy ribbons, move it
out of place, but I saw in my mind how shock waves would ripple out from
the point of my contact, and potentially have unforseen consequences.
I became aware that all four of us were in our own ways grasping this loom
and changing the patterns around us. I could hear Z. playing his guitar,
I think (or maybe I just imagined it). It seemed as if he were using this
instrument to make changes, both in us (and our consciousness) and in his
own reality (and, so it seemed, ours as well).
Anyway, by this time I had started to feel a great deal of energy. The
others came outside and Z. started to play his flute (I think I have
the chronology correct here). The faint lights that were in the trees
(which I have seen before sober, although only out of the corner of my
eyes) started to grow in intensity. I noticed that the shadows were
starting to move, and at first I suspected that a car was passing by (or
a helicopter was flying overhead from the hospital; it was a sufficiently
windy night that I thought someone might have run into a downed power
line). But I realized that the shadows were changing too fast and too
irregularly. As I looked into the sky, I thought at first I saw meteors,
and then for a moment had a vague and somewhat paranoid thought that bits
and pieces of meteorite were falling from the sky. Then I truly saw them,
the dancing lights, some tiny and sparkly, others like glowing, hazy balls
of mist. They seemed to fly in complex yet significant patterns, perhaps
following the contours of some imaginary clouds or field lines.
Then as I watched I heard them sing. They were singing to me, to us, and
I heard them calling to me. A door opened up ahead of me -- not in
realspace, but a spiritual door, one that I could not assign an image to
but was aware of nonetheless. I reached forward for it with my mind and
the world was flooded with light.
I became aware of other entities with me. The world changed and took on
form, although I felt it was more for my benefit than that of the entities
with me. Strangely enough I pictured myself in an ordinary-looking
classroom, and the entities had become professors and were telling me that
I was free to take the test if I liked, but that the price would be dear if
I failed.
Awareness of my surroundings returned suddenly and I felt a gradual but
steady buildup of energy. With it came a sudden nausea, and I managed to
make it to the sink before puking my guts out. In my mind came the thought
that there was a *reason* people often puked on psychedelics (at least the
natural ones), and that somehow having food in one's system during this
sort of experience was a bad idea. I still felt bad for puking in B.'s
sink though.
After puking my guts out I sat and felt miserable for a few minutes in a fit
of self-loathing. I felt terrible for having taken essentially my own trip
rather than participating with my friends and my wife, all of whom I love and
care about deeply. I felt selfish, and yet I remembered the dream I'd had
the night before where I was told I was to learn an important lesson and
that all would be made clear to me. I don't often put stock in this sort of
thing, but I figured I'd be better to say, what the hell, I'll try, rather
than ignore a potentially useful message from my subconscious (or wherever).
The energy buildup continued more quickly now. I felt that the food had
been holding me back somehow. My entire body began to vibrate in a new way,
not necessarily in any of the three dimensions we are accustomed to. A part
of it was time-vibration (I felt as if I were vibrating forward and back in
time very slightly, so that the net effect was alternating rapidly between
sudden jumps forward in time and pauses). And a part of it was something
entirely different. The vibrational states seemed quantized in that there
were sudden jumps from one frequency and mode to another, rather than
gradual transitions.
Eventually I noticed that I was twitching and then starting to shake along
with the music (didgeridoo). The entire world was turning into pure light
and color, and everything was dissolving into increasing power. I saw again
the entity (or entities) I had seen before. They were gentle, like parents
almost, and they seemed to be telling me something fairly complex. As near
as I could tell, the message was that, if I truly wanted to be able to grasp
the fabric of reality directly and learn how to shape it without unexpected
consequences, I must first learn how to let the energy flow through me
without it overloading me.
The energy suddenly turned up and I felt like I had just plugged my spinal
cord into a light socket. Every experience became excruciatingly painful,
all sensory input was maximal in intensity. It was beautiful, profound,
overwhelming, and terrifying. I felt an increasing throbbing in my head
and increasing intestinal pain, and my skin felt like it was being constantly
shocked. I remembered then about the potential for serotonin syndrome from
this particular combination (given the Prozac I was taking) and started to
become truly afraid.
The entities returned. I got another empathic message, that if I expected to
be Awakened I'd have to risk my life to do it, and I realized that perhaps I'd
gotten myself into more than I'd expected. Normally I do not have a great
fear of death, but somehow I felt like the penalty for failure wouldn't be
death per se, but something infinitely worse. Brain damage sprang to mind.
I decided at this point I was ready for the trip to stop. I couldn't take
the amount of sensory input, my psyche was overloaded, and while I felt I had
come to some very important point, I didn't think I was necessarily ready (or
that the Prozac was a good mixer in this cocktail). I took a clonazepam,
dreading the thought but nonetheless definitely ready to finish the trip
even if it meant slamming into a wall. The entities told me that it wouldn't
really help me anyway, that the duration of the test was unimportant, but
by then I'd already taken it.
The next hour or so (and it felt like twenty) was a constant struggle to keep
full control of my mind and soul. I felt like I had to hold myself together
by sheer force of will, and I came in contact with countless hidden parts of
myself, little pieces of my character, soul, thoughts, and memories, that I'd
never faced before. And suddenly I had to hold them all together. I tried
to make a very few simple changes to the overall pattern, strengthening my
will in particular areas and perhaps hoping that out of this would come a new
ability to shape my own behaviour, but I wasn't hoping for much.
Gradually I regained control and the trip ended. Like I'd predicted, it was
like slamming into a brick wall at lightspeed. My soul felt ripped out of my
body and shoved into a hole, and the glorious energy and life drained out of
me. Looking back on it I wish I hadn't taken the benzo, but I don't think I
anyone was sober enough to be my spirit guide at that moment and I wasn't
very coherent either. The rest of the night I struggled to stay awake, and
began to get confused as a result of the benzo, but I managed to hold on to
most of the bits and pieces. I still regret not having been able to stay
with my friends, though, and I think I'd have been better off to just drop
acid and save the cocktail for some other time when I was ready.
Looking back on it all, I have found that, if nothing else, confronting
death that directly has changed my outlook on life. Although it is not
terribly powerful yet, I have a growing feeling that I can make changes in
my life and in my behaviour that will last. In some ways it's like a part
of childhood is over.
-Shostiru
©1998 The Third Plateau
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