Into The Flood
Ibogaine & Tabernanthe iboga (Total Aklaloid Extract)
Citation: Xorkoth. "Into The Flood: An Experience with Ibogaine & Tabernanthe iboga (Total Aklaloid Extract) (exp103568)". Erowid.org. Jun 5, 2014. erowid.org/exp/103568
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| DOSE: T+ 0:00 |
100 mg | oral | Ibogaine | (powder / crystals) |
| T+ 1:00 | 550 mg | oral | Ibogaine | (powder / crystals) |
| T+ 1:00 | 500 mg | oral | Tabernanthe iboga | (extract) |
| T+ 1:30 | 300 mg | oral | Ibogaine | (powder / crystals) |
| BODY WEIGHT: | 130 lb |
A story about an ibogaine flood dose to combat long-term opiate addiction
by Xorkoth
I have begun writing this eight days after taking the ibogaine. What follows is a detailed retelling of the peak psychedelic experience and one of the peak general experiences of my life. I discovered a lot about myself and experienced the most powerful state of psychedelia and dissociation I could have possibly imagined. The experience was nothing like what I expected; it was basically the experience of dreaming whether awake or asleep for three and a half days straight on one long unending chain of vision quests that was difficult to say how it related to my life at the time, followed by an amazing and sometimes tumultuous after-period where the metabolites were coursing through my body. Ibogaine is now my favorite psychedelic and my favorite dissociative. Hopefully this experience can transmit to you some of what I gained and felt and experienced, and if you're considering doing this for the same reasons I did, there should be a lot of new information not available from other reports, particularly regarding doing it at home and some of the non-clinical aspects of the experience.
And either way, it should make a great story! But, fair warning, a very long one. I remember every detail of the whole thing and I feel it is important to communicate it all. This is more of a short story than a trip report.
The state of my life has deteriorated more than I thought it ever would. A ten-year long opiate addiction, to kratom and then poppy tea, has wreaked more havoc than I could have imagined when I began my opiate usage. It was the largest contributing factor to the breakup of my twelve year relationship with my wife. My financial situation steadily grew more and more unstable, until recently I was forced to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy. My poly drug addiction had led me to consume just about anything, though opiates are the real destroying influence on my life. I suddenly find myself about to turn 31, with no partner and basically starting over, though I still own my house and have progressed in my career (I was always a highly functional addict). I am suddenly acutely aware of the press of time. In five years I hope I am with someone and we have a child, 36 would be about the latest I would want to start on that. But I have a long way to go before anyone will want that with me, and if I am a junkie, I have no right to bring a child into existence. I reached a point in the past couple of months where I said, I absolutely NEED to get past this, NOW, or else I will never become what I can and should and need to be, or have anything resembling the life I want.
So in talking with my friend Morninggloryseed, the idea of a flood dose of ibogaine came into play. Morninggloryseed had done a flood dose a year prior to this so he kind of became my coach for this whole thing, helped me plan it, and talked me through my mental preparations and extremely numerous questions. I had contemplated a flood dose before but the idea seemed too frightening and immense to actually do it or even seriously consider its reality. But four weeks ago, I felt strongly enough about it that I sourced some ibogaine and had it on its way. I ordered 1 gram of pure ibogaine HCl, and 1 gram of the total alkaloid extract which is 40-50% the strength of HCl, but which contains all of the plant alkaloids rather than just the ibogaine. I figured even if I didn't use it for a flood dose, I could experiment with lower dosages. And so I waited, that dreary painful wait when you're addicted to opiates, waiting to feel better, waiting to feel worse, waiting for the day when you can stop being weak and be the person you aren't sure you can be.
I began making preparations with my life. I asked a good friend, A, if he would sit for me the first night and day. I had discussed with a friend who said 24 hours should be enough, that then I'd be aware enough to be on my own. In retrospect this was dead wrong, but (much) more on that later. I tentatively told my friend to take off a Saturday in about three weeks, April 26th (totally coincidentally the month anniversary of my failed relationship which we always celebrated for all twelve years). That evening would be the big moment. I made an appointment to board my cats for four days since I wouldn't be able to take care of them. I began eating well, and trying to taper down opiates (without a lot of success). Through it all, I noticed a growing sense of sparkle and excitement in my daily life; the mere thought of such a dramatic event and expected conclusion to my addiction made me feel hopeful and also highly nervously excited. I began having better and better days. I can honestly say I have never prepared so well and so thoroughly for a trip in my entire life, and I believe this is completely necessary with an ibogaine flood dose.
At one week out, Saturday, April 19th, I decided to stop taking any opiates, as I had finally decided 100% that I was going through with this. I had hoped to detox more before taking the ibogaine, the reason being that people say it works better and is a much nicer and more vivid experience when you're not acutely physically addicted. I had intended on quitting 2 weeks prior, but it didn't work out. That last week before dosing, I felt this growing feeling, more than anticipation, it felt like it was the ibogaine reaching across time and pulling me slowly but inexorably in. Colors were brighter, and I had a giddy energy which affected my mood very positively. I only felt about 10% of normal opiate withdrawal that whole week, which is something I can't really explain. I am very familiar with how my body reacts to withdrawal and the time frames it does so in, and this was what it normally feels like in late 2nd week/early 3rd week of cold-turkey detox from poppy tea (which was my opiate of choice and current three-year addiction). I find it incredibly curious that this happened, but as I was about to find out, iboga is a massively powerful thing, so whatever the cause was I am not surprised anymore. I also found it nearly effortless to quit, and my mood remained positive at nearly all times. This was the easiest and most highly unusual detox I have ever had, though not 100% complete, as I still felt a bit of it when I took the ibogaine on the 26th.
Friday evening, the night before I took it, I was under a very interesting spell. I thought, I could die tomorrow from this ibogaine, in theory, I guess 0.2% of people have. The chance was slim, but I was very unhealthy at the time, though my heart checked out fine when I got it looked at pre-trip. Everything I did and experienced, I thought about how it could be my last time ever doing this. That night I brought my cats in to boarding, and I teared up thinking I might never see them again, my beloved kitties, nor they me. My head was buzzing with thoughts and deep introspection all day. I went over to my friend A's house, the one who was going to sit for me. We hung out with some other friends who live in the downstairs apartment, and I told them about what I was going to be doing and why, and we talked about it a lot, and about tripping in general. One of my friends told me he was jealous, and I told him not to be, that I was scared out of my mind! I had a very nice, relaxing night. But when I went outside, I looked up at the stars, and the thought that I might never see them again sent a searing jolt through my heart.
Saturday morning I woke up deep in an iboga anticipation trip. The energy coursing through me was incredible, and the fear had increased too. I reached a realization during that day, that nervousness and excitement are basically the same thing. I was butterflies-inducing amounts of scared for the whole day, but equally excited. I made preparations, cleaned my house, finished up some work so I would have very little when I got back (I had Sunday off and took vacation days for Monday and Tuesday), and spent a couple of hours up in the mountains overlooking the long view. I called my parents to talk to them 'one last time', and called my little brother to tell him I was going to do this. Being that my family is very aware of the extent of my addiction, and my brother is open to psychedelics and stuff, he was very supportive, which made me feel much calmer. I ate only fruit the whole day, but lots of it early on, as recommended by an iboga healing practitioner that Morninggloryseed is friends with. The idea is to make sure you have your nutrients and electrolytes and liquids, but to have an empty stomach by the time you take it.
I cleaned out my bowels as much as possible, which you are supposed to do because you can have your body stopped up for three days while you lay there in a trance and you want to be clear before that happens so you don't have any complications from being stopped up, and so you don't have to go during that time. I drank a lot of electrolyte drinks, lots of water, but stopped drinking any at all a few hours before because of not wanting to have to get up to pee while I am in space. As it grew to evening, I awaited my friend A's arrival. He was delayed but ended up arriving at about 7:00pm. He arrived and I was in a weird mood, it was kind of hard for me to hang out, but we smoked a bowl of cannabis to help me relax, which I was told was fine, as long as I wasn't actively high when I took the ibogaine, and talked about stuff. My stomach was churning constant butterflies with the anticipation. I reviewed the schedule I had painstakingly crafted with Morninggloryseed. I was going to take a 100mg ibogaine HCl starter dose at 9pm. Then at 10 I would take 550mg of HCl and 500mg of TA, the bulk of my total dose. Then at 10:30, I'd take 300mg more HCl, for a total of 950mg of HCl and 500mg of TA, or roughly 1100mg of HCl, which for me is 18mg/kg, a flood dose being considered between 17 and 25mg/kg.
So I took a bottom-level flood dose, but if you're reading this because you're considering taking a flood dose of ibogaine for addiction, I can attest that this dose of ibogaine was thousands of times stronger than anything else I've ever experienced. The level to which I was transported elsewhere was impossibly intense and utterly complete, I have never even imagined something could be as powerful as this. To me, 25mg/kg seems extremely excessive. But it may be my body chemistry.
At last the time for the starter dose arrived. I weighed out all three of my doses, which required a total of seven gel caps. I arranged them nicely on a plate, and arranged a platter of fruit for when I emerged. With reverence befitting what may be the world's most powerful spiritual medicine, I opened the gel cap and poured the chalky, slightly tan ibogaine HCl, 100mg of it, onto my tongue, and swallowed it with a bit of fruit juice, the minimum amount I could get away with since I wanted nothing in my bladder. It smelled like root bark, and tasted the same. At first the taste was chalky but then it turned sharply bitter. The TA is stronger tasting though. I sat down with my friend to wait, and we listened to some music, Bob Marley, a great choice for the happy state of mind he evokes. Within about 15 minutes, a smooth, wonderful sensation came over me, slight at first but slowly growing in strength, slightly entactogenic but in a dissociated way. Objects in my vision began to sparkle. At 40 minutes, I began seeing faint but long-lasting tracers when I moved my arms. I felt extremely physically pleasant, and the tiny amount of lingering opiate withdrawal feeling disappeared entirely. I found myself smiling a lot and was enjoying myself, but I almost didn't want to wait anymore and just take the next dose. But, I stuck to the plan and waited until 10:00 to take the big chunk.
Well, before long, it was that time. Every moment seeming dramatically long, followed by light tracers and filled with a slightly dissociated warmth, I gathered the speakers and my laptop and set them up in my bedroom, across from my bed, so I could play the Bwiti music through the trip (for the record, I was barely aware of it and the first time I came to after going out, it was off, and I preferred silence). I gathered my fruit platter and put it on my bedside table, as well as the plate of doses. I opened up the capsules for the second dose, the main dose, and poured them into my mouth. I wanted to taste iboga. I stayed downstairs to hang out with my friend until I felt it start to really kick in. About 15 minutes after taking it, I suddenly began buzzing strongly, literally an electric *BZZZZ* in my body and consciousness. I got up and stumbled up the stairs, suddenly feeling the intense need to be safely laying down in my sanctuary. I removed half of my clothes and got in my bed, and turned on the music.
...And I close my eyes. Behind them lay a roiling, throbbing field of blackness, but the blackness is rapidly unlayering with shadowy strands, though I can detect no increase in brightness. The Bwiti music feels alien and a bit harsh, but also familiar somehow. I begin to feel a rocket propulsion from within me, shooting out in all directions. The feeling is overwhelming, but I am not frightened. The blackness and rocket buzzing grow, expand, and become everything.
I open my eyes with a start. My friend is in the doorway asking if I'm alright. I nod jerkily, my eyes wide. I'm laying on my bed; no, I'm in a pile of blankets on the floor, or maybe I'm on my bed. All around me the world is coming apart. Great, violent jolts of pink and white electricity crackle heavily in the creases between segments of my vision. The walls are utterly awash in blues and greens and reds. I have no ability to move. It dimly occurs to me that this is the most spectacular visual display I have ever witnessed. As I turn my head, my vision defracts entirely into long, thin bright white lines all extending far off to the right. Within a fraction of a second the lines begin to coalesce into endpoints of color and pull in closer from the right until they meet and form the image I see of my bedroom. The process takes about a second or so, and is accompanied by a strong sense of motion and a deep whooshing sort of sound, or perhaps more of an organic movement through liquid. There is a steady cacophony of strange electric buzzing, humming, and throbbing sounds; if you remember the game Super Castlevania 4 (or whatever the first SNES one is, it's been a long time), the main sound is very much like the sound of the jolts of electricity that Dracula makes and also the grim reaper at the end makes as it is coming into being. I figure it's the very end of the night, and perhaps 8 or 9 hours have passed, but I also realize that I have absolutely no memory of that time, just blackness. This brings me some measure of disappointment because I was expecting visions immediately. The level of intensity I am feeling is staggering, I am utterly consumed in this feeling and the only thoughts I am having are very quick, functional thoughts. My cerebral cortex is entirely consumed by the flood.
I am at a house party at night, hanging out with my friend Jerry Garcia and his band. A lot of people are over and it's a great party. I took some LSD earlier and I'm having a great trip. The walls are awash in visuals and I feel a serene sense of love. I have many conversations with the band and others. As the night wears on, sometimes the party is in the Manson family mansion, with them rather than the Dead, and that is also a great time with cool people, it was evidently before any type of weirdness was detected with them, obviously before the murders. That stuff is not in my mind at all. And then sometimes it's the Grateful Dead again. The changes are seamless, I have no awareness at the time of the scenario shifts.
At some point the party is over, and it's the wee hours of the morning. I leave the mansion, walk through the front gate, and the vibe outside is very creepy. I think about the occult practitioners who have been doing murders and sacrifices to bring evil into the world and I hasten my step, yet at the same time I am not too worried because I am able to practice psychic/magical powers as well and am pretty powerful. I meet up with a friend, a female Bluelighter who I know (in reality, this is not a real person). We have an attraction to each other and there is potential for a relationship, but not one yet. Needless to say, I really enjoy spending time with her. We walk together into a forest. This forest is utterly beautiful, with trees of glowing leaves and large, glowing blue mushrooms and glistening gemstone flowers. The whole forest is lit thus with ethereal light. There is a festival going on, a magical festival where people and creatures set up booths, selling equipment, curiosities, knowledge and employment. I begin talking to a creature who appears as a glowing Neverending Story dragon, though smaller than from the movie. He's very friendly and he gives me a lot of information about the workings of the occult practitioners.
I am in a van, and it's a dark night, ominously, cloyingly dark. Beside me is a new friend, a dark tanned guy with black hair and some ominous-looking facial piercings, also made of black-brown metal the color of dried blood. I had a good time with him at a party the night before, and he invited me over to his place the next night, this night. He picked me up a bit ago and we are headed to his place. We are in a residential neighborhood. Hulking shapes of trees and houses silently scroll by, barely able to emerge from the clinging night. I feel somewhat excited about a new friend, but there are things about him that make me nervous. I have a sneaking hunch that this is no friend.
I am sitting inside a dark studio apartment, at a table with my dark friend and two of his friends whom I am just meeting. One of these friends in particular makes my hair stand on end. He has long spiky hair and serpentine contact lenses. The way he looks at me, hungry, cold, snake-like, makes me shudder and look away; this he observes, I believe, with cruel delight. My companions are speaking, and it is as if there is something flanging the sound into unrecognizable voice distortions. I cannot make out what they are saying. I concentrate and eventually dismantle the barrier, and I can hear that they are talking about their dark plans with their newfound occult powers. I don't know anymore why I am here. A nervous feeling begins to grow in my solar plexus as I listen to their plans, which involve sacrifices in order to gain more power. They are reading from an ancient-looking tome that I had somehow missed before. Suddenly they all look up at me sharply and I know that they know I have dismantled their sound barrier. Nasty-looking smiles slowly spread across their faces and I shrink back.
I open my eyes, my bedroom enrobed in tendrils of plutonian night. I look at my cell phone which is laying beside me somehow. I see texts from people on the bright screen, texts that fill me with foreboding. Are these from my occult 'friends'? I don't recognize the numbers. I look around me, and clouds of white and black smoke seem to organically swim across the room. Electricity is still pouring out of the cracks in the facade of reality, great violent pink bursts that vibrate my body with their power. The back wall is open, revealing a swirling morass of... something. Whatever it is, it's bright and as I gaze at it, I begin to see that it is a portal to somewhere else. Shapes emerge, faint at first, and coalesce into a complete scene of someone, somewhere else, somewhere far away and alien to the world I am used to. When I turn in my head, it's gone, but if I turn back, shapes again emerge and coalesce into a different alien scene. Glancing again nervously at my phone, I lay back, hoping I can avoid the occult practitioners in the future.
I am standing in a beautiful forest clearing. The leaves on the tall trees glow with a brilliant green which gives off a soft blue mist. The light of the trees, diffused through the mist, provides a warm, moderately bright glow, while still being soft. I often go to the monthly festival that sets up here, where magical creatures of all kinds converge to sell and share their specialties. I have learned much in this forest.
In a moment, a woman walks into the clearing and gives me a big smile. It's someone I am very interested in romantically, and I think she is into me too. She walks up to me, still smiling, and throws her arms around me for a close, long hug. Her hair is right at my nose, and I inhale deeply; her scent intoxicates me. I of course hug her back as well. The shape of her body feels wonderful against mine. She backs up slightly, cocks a flirtatious eye at me, and suggests we go further into the woods, because she has something to show me. Sounds promising! I of course follow.
We walk deeper into the forest, and as we walk, side by side, I look around at the wonders surrounding me. Before long, I have never been so far in. As we go deeper in, the trees get taller and taller, and more exotic plants and animals begin to show themselves. Pink creatures similar to squirrels but with two tails that trail a light green mist scamper by. Orange, red and purple brilliantly glowing flowers attract butterflies that trail light from their wings like long glittery tracers. I see my attractive companion looking around in wonderment as well. Suddenly, a large flock of these butterflies bursts out from a glowing bush and rushes past near our faces, leaving a brilliant network of beautiful tracers and sparkling motes of silvery light. My companion is laughing in delight, and on impulse I grab her hand and hold it. She holds it back, smiling warmly at me. We look into each others' eyes, and the world stops for a moment as I am drawn deeply into her brilliant violet and blue irises, the most beautiful I have ever seen, hypnotizing, enveloping, wonderful and wondrous. After a moment we turn and keep walking, hand-in-hand, not speaking, just savoring the moment.
After some time we make it to another clearing, this one much smaller, but comfortably surrounded by a ring of massive trees bearing plump, juicy golden fruits. We walk to its center, and she takes both of my hands in hers and tells me to close my eyes. I do, and suddenly I feel a warm presence in my head, and my closed-eye vision erupts into colors. I realize I have left my body behind, I look down and see it still standing there, smiling, eyes closed; I turn my awareness forward, and see that this wonderful woman is with me, present as a brilliant magenta streak of light, intermingling with my green. We begin an intimate sharing of energy. It rushes through me and I interpret it as beautiful, complex shapes. For a timeless moment, we exchange our essences as these shapes, these beautiful geometric constructs. And after that moment, we descend back to our bodies.
I open my eyes, and find myself still staring into her eyes. Her lips are curved into a faint welcoming smile. I lean forward slowly, and ever so carefully place my lips against hers. She kisses me back, and I'm in ecstasy. Everything stops as we seem to merge into each other, the kiss growing ever stronger and more passionate. After a while, but far too short a time, she gently pulls away, smiling radiantly at me. She tells me she has to go get something. In a beautiful fog of emotion, I just smile and nod, and watch her walk away, beautiful, swaying, sensual. She looks over her shoulder at me and winks, and then fades out of sight into the trees.
After a few moments spent on long tangents of the possibilities of the future with this person I am suddenly and completely in love with, I come to and look around. Are the trees glowing a bit less brightly? Why are all of the animals gone? Suddenly the forest feels ominous. And now I am sure the light is fading, bit by bit, but more and more quickly. Fear ignites in my stomach. I look around wildly as the remaining light is strangled into submission. I feel a dark power as I see only blackness, and I mourn what is lost.
I'm in a van, driving slowly, quietly down the street in the enveloping darkness of a moonless night. A new friend of mine is driving. I don't know him much yet, but I'm hoping we can become real friends. We are creeping along a quiet residential road, big friendly trees lining each side with warm cookie-cutter houses and clean fresh driveways, but the night's embrace paints them with a desolate and cowering light. Something is nagging at me. Have I been here before? My companion is driving, but he is talking with me in a pleasant way. Still, something about this does not feel right. We float along, somehow making no sound at all, passing by houses that each look the same. It gives the effect that we are not going anywhere at all, that we're stuck on repeat.
All of a sudden we brake to a halt. The silence is claustrophobic. My companion tells me to follow him inside because we're going to meet a friend of his. That seems fine enough, yet right after saying that he pulls a black ski mask out of his side pocket and puts it on. Okay, now I definitely have a bad feeling about this. I am about to say that I have to be somewhere else and I'll walk when I see the glint of surgical steel, cold and sharp, in his exposed eyes, and I realize I am being forced to follow. His smile now seems cruel and mocking. We walk softly and quickly up the driveway and to the side door, where, after testing the knob and finding it locked, my captor mutters something, places his hand on the knob, and turns it, silently opening the door.
We creep through inky, terrifying blackness as I try to calm myself. Okay, we've just broken in, what does this guy intend to do? We continue to creep along, myself unable to see completely so trying desperately to keep up with my captor in an ironic jab from the universe. The silence continues to be complete, and I realize that so far the only sound I have heard at all is the sound of my occult practicing captor's voice. At last we reach the kitchen. I see a terrified man sitting at the table, shuddering with fear, cowering away as my captor closes in, a maniacal grin on his face. He gestures for me to sit right across from the poor man, and the same as I must obey, I cannot look away as he pulls a long-bladed knife from his belt and places it just under the man's heart. The knife glints coldly, providing the only light in the room. Now a whispering fills my awareness, a heavy, dark serpentine whispering of syllables that causes my stomach to flip. Slowly, excruciatingly, he pushes the blade all the way in to the hilt, as the man screams in agony, yet completely silently. As he struggles around the blade, my dark captor begins to chant in a full voice, louder and louder, the arcane syllables inspiring a horrible unclean feeling within me. As I watch, unable to turn away, the man's life escapes from his mouth as a brilliant blue mist which then turns red, brown, and finally, an inky black as the evil one sucks it into his own mouth and his eyes burst forth with a fiery light. He turns to grin wickedly at me and my heart screams out.
I open my eyes, and I am in my bedroom. It's the middle of the night, and my field of vision is awash with movement. I think back to what I had been doing last night, and I wonder how I could have gotten myself into that situation. Just thinking of it now makes my skin crawl and the feeling of being next to such a dark person fills me with a sense of foreboding. I hope I can gracefully avoid him in the future, as I don't want to be friends anymore, but I don't think he will let me escape. I check my cell phone once again for any messages from that beautiful woman, or from my dark captor, but there is nothing since my last response to her last text to me. Sighing, I lay back.
I am in a massive living room, with friends all around me. It's a Bluelight meetup! Everyone I know from Bluelight is here, and many of them are not human. One of the administrators is a large, glowing, fuzzy worm-like creature hanging from one of the huge chandeliers, but his face is human-like and it extends down to head level with everyone else. He is exceedingly friendly and wonderful, as is everyone else. We're all having a great time, and showing each other our magical abilities. Also, with magic, we are altering each others' consciousness, as a psychedelic would do only with more finesse. I am having many great one-on-one and group conversations, and many amazing mental and perceptual experiences, just having the time of my life.
At some point I go out back with some people, onto the back deck. It is built over a tremendous gorge. I peer down into the dizzying depths and it looks impossibly far down to the bottom. Across the gorge is almost too far to see. It's like the Grand Canyon's father. On the walls of the gorge, bands of brilliant colors stripe dramatically across the surface in layers, blues, purples, reds, pinks, yellows, greens... the greens are the most brilliant of all, glowing brightly and enshrouded in clouds of blue mist. The owner of the house comes out and tells me that the gorge is two miles deep. I would have been very nervous being out on that deck had it not been fastened with magic from the best talent available for that task.
I go back inside the house and continue this intellectual party. Many more conversations are had, all wonderful and stimulating. At some point, I notice that a couple of my friends are missing, and the mood in the party has shifted slightly downward. Rapidly, more and more people disappear, not into thin air, I just suddenly notice they are nowhere to be found anymore. And then, in the middle of my conversation with the wonderful worm-like administrator I look away to check the room, and when I look back he too has disappeared. I look around, and the house is empty, silent, dark. As I stand in confusion, the house becomes darker and darker. I am suddenly filled with an intense sense of foreboding. I can feel that something is going to happen. Nervously, I move to exit the house. I meet no resistance, so I walk out and get in my car. I turn it on and drive away. As I leave, I am feeling a nagging sense of loss, of deep loss, the kind of loss you feel when someone you care about is gone.
I am lying in my bed, clothes removed, covers in disarray. My friends A and E are in the doorway, asking me how I'm doing. I tell them I'm doing fine, a bit puzzled. Hadn't we just gotten back from a party? It appears to be nearly dark out, pale, cool twilight coming in at a sharp angle through the windows. In the next moment they are gone as if they had never been there. The idea of my real friends I just saw blends into the dreams I've been having, and I start to feel lonely. I start checking my cell phone, and I read through a text from one of my dream friends. The screen just contains a strange symbol, and I can't seem to recall what it means. A feeling of gentle sadness comes over me, derived from loneliness. Awash in wistful ambivalence, I decide to lay back; I suddenly remember that I had taken ibogaine, and that perhaps it was about to kick in. I do not immediately remember my iboga dreams and I am critically inebriated, unable to rise to my feet; fortunately I have not had to pee, nor do I now. I am so intoxicated by the alkaloids of the iboga plant that I am only partly aware of how intoxicated I am. As I slowly gaze around the bedroom in a stupor, I notice black and white wisps swimming through the air like smokey amoebas, as cool blues and whites wash across the walls. There are no large-scale perspective distortions, objects remain fixed, but reflections leap away from them in my vision. I glance at my cell phone, and I appear to have a message. I don't recognize the number, but it occurs to me that since last night I went to that magical Bluelighter gathering, that it's probably from one of my friends. But the text message contains only a strange symbol that I can't seem to wrap my mind around. It sparks a light sense of foreboding in my solar plexus. I send a text back, but as soon as I send it I forget what I sent. I lay back down, a bit shaken, and close my eyes.
I am walking down a dusty road, in a neighborhood of dirty brown ramshackle houses, next to a park of brown grass. I am searching for something. I won't know what it is until I see it though. It could be anything. I glance down at the glass jar on my belt, reassuring myself that it's there. It contains the objects of my searches. I stop for a moment and bring the jar up toward my face, unscrewing the cap. I inhale deeply from it; there is no scent but I get a heady rush, the only pleasure I get in this world at all. I peer at the objects inside the jar, the grain of sand, the metal fastener, the thumbtack, and the earring. I'm starting to get pretty high now!
People walk past me, some of them glancing weirdly at me or turning their noses up, why I am not sure. Others pass by me, their heads to the ground, seeming to be looking for something. Those people, I realize, are also clued into what I am, that there are objects around we must find, to alleviate the squalor we live in by making us feel better. It's not that I feel exactly GOOD, it's more of an edgy euphoric feeling that makes me feel slightly nervous, but it's better than waking up every day in a dormitory that is falling apart and spending all day trying to eat enough and not be seen by the occult overlords. Nevertheless, I feel paranoia around them. I am afraid they will steal my treasures. I feel that they look crazy and pathetic, but I know that I am not like them. Oh no, I've got it together; what I'm doing makes sense. Not like these poor lost souls.
I continue searching, walking into houses I know to be abandoned and derelict. I pull open drawers, open cabinets, avoid holes in the floor, occasionally avoid falling beams and weak floors, and walk slowly through each room, searching for something I will only know once I find it. I am malnourished and exhausted, as is nearly everyone - except the overlords of course - so this is very hard work, moving around all day. Many of my dorm mates barely do anything but lay in bed or sit in their chairs, reading a tattered book over and over or staring at the walls. The last time I ate was... I actually don't know. I trudge my way through the ramshackle town I inhabit, searching, always searching, a grimace on my face at the pain in my legs.
At last I reach the edge of town, and as my goal is not yet reached, I walk beyond it, through the sad, wilted trees and barren grasslands. After an hour or so, I reach a house. Slowly I approach, and walk around the perimeter, looking through the cracked and cratered windows for any sign of inhabitants. At length, I determine that there aren't any, and I carefully open the front door, which promptly falls off its hinges and breaks into two large pieces on the ground, startling me and causing me to look around wildly in paranoia in case another searcher heard it and decides to follow the sound. After a few moments, satisfied that I am still alone, I walk inside. It's an old farmhouse, in the middle stages of decay, the brown forest slowly overtaking it and the acid rains slowly dissolving the exposed wood. I search methodically, intensely, through each room, first on the ground floor. The home looks to have once been beautiful and I momentarily feel a little twinge of something around my heart, but I don't think much of it, it's just a sensation, albeit a foreign and unsettling one. I make it upstairs, and there, in the back bedroom, I freeze; I feel something pulling me in. I walk slowly but directly to a chest of drawers, and open the top drawer. There, calling out to me, is a tiny locket, in bright, burnished gold. I reverently pick it up and feel its energy. I put it in my jar. I feel better, right? Yes, I feel my hunger a bit less and I am slightly less tired. I'm sure of it. Definitely not placebo. Yes indeed. With adoration, I open my jar and gaze in. The locket looks perfect next to my other pretties, the prettiest pretty I could have imagined. Like it's meant to be. I am suddenly overtaken by a foreign thought, something so massive that it rocks me on my heels. And then it is gone. Must have been the hunger.
I wake up in my dormitory, greeted by the rotting ceiling beams as I always am. I painfully rise, though part of me wants to just stay in bed forever, I am so exhausted. But my endless mission to find my treasures and rise up out of this misery pulls me ever onward. I walk out of the building and out into the world, filled with hope at the new and fascinating item I just found the day before. So I search. And search. And search. All day goes by, me walking by random people on the streets, some of them repulsed by me (which I never understand), and some who I pull back from, eyeing them fiercely lest they steal my pretties. The day trudges on, and at last night falls and I collapse into a dreamless void, my day of searching entirely in vain.
I wake up in my dormitory, greeted by the rotting ceiling beams as I always am. I slowly rise, grimacing mightily at the ache, though a big part of me wants to just stay in bed forever, I am so, so exhausted. But my endless mission to find my treasures and rise up out of this misery pulls me ever onward. I walk out of the building and out into the world, hoping I can summon enough strength to continue. So I search. And search. And search. All day goes by, me walking by random people on the streets, some of them repulsed by me (which I kind of understand), and some who I pull back from defensively, eyeing them hesitantly lest they steal my pretties. The day trudges on and on, and at last night falls and I collapse into a dreamless void, my day of searching entirely, painfully in vain.
I wake up in my dormitory, greeted morosely by the rotting ceiling beams, as I always am. I rise in agony, all of my muscles exhausted and my insides burning with hunger, though most of me wants to just stay in bed forever, I am so obliterated. But my endless mission to find my treasures and rise up out of this misery pulls me ever onward. I walk out of the building and out into the world, nearly weeping as I think of the walking and searching I must do on this long, desperate day. So I search. And search. And search. All day goes by, me walking by random people on the streets, some of them repulsed by me (which I understand), and some who I glance at in terror, eyeing them pleadingly lest they steal my pretties. The day trudges on for an impossible length of time, every step agony, and at last, oh at last sweet, dark, terrifying night falls and I collapse into a dreamless void, my day of searching entirely, horrendously in vain, the success I had so many days ago a faint memory.
I am searching today in a new town, a town not so abandoned, with a college that a few people are attending. People I pass here also glance at me with disgust, but there are less searchers so I am pleased. Who knows what I might find in this fancy place; it's barely falling apart! I continue on my way, walking each road, taking each side road, until each dead-ends or I have criss-crossed them all, and then I move on, back to the main road for the next side road. It's labor-intensive and takes quite a while, but it's the only way to ensure I won't miss anything. There are far fewer abandoned houses here, but I creep through everyone's yard, careful not to alert them to my presence. A few times I am chased away, which I find to be entirely rude. Can't people just let a man search for his treasures?
Eventually I get to the entrance to the college building, a huge, ornately carved stone building to house all the parts of the college, truly the most massive and well-built structure I have ever seen. I cross the bridge and enter. Inside is a warren of hallways carved from rock, leading to various classrooms and libraries. As I begin to criss-cross the maze of hallways, suddenly I see a hunched, animalistic figure hobbling across the small bridge I am about to cross. At the sound of my footsteps he turns sharply and gazes straight into my soul with his yellow glowing eyes. In shock, I see that it is my friend willow11, from Bluelight. What has happened to him!? His skin is so wrinkled and darkened his face barely looks human anymore. He is much shorter due to an intense hunch; his hands almost reach the ground as he is standing. As I begin to ask him what happened, he speaks, in a thin, raspy voice, 'Beware the occult! And do not collect, it is how they control us!'
With that, he scampers off.
I wake up in my dormitory, greeted by the rotting ceiling beams as I always am. I begin to rise when my next-door neighbor in the dormitory pokes his head in and frantically tells me that there is an attack happening, the occult overlords are displeased again. I get up, suddenly possessed of energy. I run out the door, and get caught up in a flood of people running, running, running into the big room of the dormitory. We emerge into it, and I gaze up. The room is at least ten thousand square feet, and the ceiling is far, far above, much too far to see. Decrepit blocks of wood and stone hang in midair, and vines hang down from them. Without a second thought, I begin to climb a nearby vine, as many others do the same, while still others stay on the floor, terrified of what is happening. As I climb and begin to get some height, I see that great stones that are fiercely burning with enveloping flames are crashing occasionally through the walls, wreaking havoc as they destroy everything in their path, even shattering the floating stone and wood blocks they happen to hit. Whenever that happens, mostly far up above me still, all of the people climbing the vines attached to that block fall, screaming, to their sure deaths. Falling from such a height makes the continuation of life terribly unlikely.
I keep climbing, occasionally dodging debris. I periodically check that my treasure jar is still attached to my belt, and pull on it for strength when my arms get tired from the constant climbing. I don't know what is up there, but I know I must climb to it. I look down at some point and the people look like ants, yet still I can't see the ceiling, only smaller and smaller floating blocks with vines trailing down, with smaller and smaller people climbing them, making progress, giving up, being obliterated by fireballs. Now I am in the range of these fireballs, but, concentrating carefully, I manage to correctly guess which blocks they are going to hit.
Suddenly my jar slips out of my belt. NO!! In desperation I look down, hoping that everything I have in this life has not fallen to the floor far, far below, shattering into a million pieces or being collected by other searchers. With a powerful sense of relief, I see that it has fallen a very short distance to rest on the block I had just been to. All I have to do is climb back down to get it! Whew! I make my way down my current vine, and triumphantly retrieve my jar.
I look up for a moment and glance around, just in time to see a massive fireball slam into me and my block.
I open my eyes with a start. I am in my bedroom, laying in my bed, splayed out in a mess of tangled covers, and daylight is streaming in the windows, an early morning light, but brilliant and full of promise. The dreamscapes of the night before come back to me in pieces. I stretch all of my muscles and notice that I feel, well, really good. A bit heavy and uncoordinated, but good, just plain good. A smile materializes on my face and I get up, collect my clothes and put them on. Well, my daytime pajamas anyway, some cozy pajama pants and an old, plain t-shirt that is very comfortable. I get to the stairs and realize I need to be careful. As I walk unsteadily down them I think back to my night, my long, long night. Man, I am so glad that I'm not really there, that I don't have to stay there. That version of myself is so incredibly sad and tedious. At the bottom of the stairs I look around. My house looks normal; the visuals at this point consist of a brilliant hue to everything the sunlight touches, as if it is jeweled, and some light tracers. I walk around my house, looking for something. What was I supposed to find, and will I know it when I find it? I had been searching for something, but it doesn't quite come together and I become confused. I'm sure I'll recognize it when I see it. Eventually I sit down on the couch and close my eyes to think.
I am in a brown, frayed railroad town. I grew up here and I know most everyone. Despite the poverty, people here are pretty happy because we have each other. I'm walking along the tracks, whistling, the tiny downtown directly to my right, maybe a hundred yards. I am on my way to meet up with my somewhat older friends. They're an old cockney couple, constantly bickering but in a good-natured way, like Punch and Judy. I look all around me, taking in, as always, the dusty, brown surroundings. The buildings of the town are run down, but each house contains bright, happy decorations, done to the best of the ability of its inhabitants. Children run and laugh through the streets, and I smile. I keep walking, whistling brightly to myself, excited that I am going to get to spend some time with my friends.
After five or ten minutes I arrive. I knock on the door and they answer with big smiles and hugs. I come in and we get to talking. I observe the way they interact with each other with fond amusement. To an outsider it looks like they hate each other, but it's just their game, and they are wonderfully close. They are both very overweight and slobby-looking, but it's just part of who they are. The woman asks me if I am aware that the festival is almost here. I tell her that I had forgotten, is it here already? Then she tells me about the festival. Hordes of people come in to celebrate in the streets at the height of summer every year. Much revelry is had, and this year the local head shops have amassed a huge supply of these packets of drugs. When taken in small quantities, they provide a faint sense of relaxation and calm, but when taken in large amounts, the user becomes utterly inebriated, full of joy, and is no longer under much control of their own actions and speech. We shake our heads; it seems like a stupid thing to do. The head shops have said that they will be giving as much away as anyone wants for free, in honor of the festival. We all three agree that this doesn't bode well for the festival, having hordes of people unable to control themselves and highly intoxicated. Our conversation turns to other things, but the special festival drugs stick in my mind, and I worry lightly for the rest of the day.
I open my eyes and find myself sitting on my couch in the living room, and the furniture is in its old arrangement from a couple of years ago, though the difference does not occur to me. Warm, golden sunlight streams in through the double french doors behind me, illuminating me with warmth and celestial light. I check the clock; it's about 9:30am. I seem to be drawn powerfully outside by the sublime beauty of my mountain cove, so I oblige my desires and step outside onto the back deck. Gorgeous sunlight filters through leaves to caress my skin and cast the world in its cheery morning brilliance. I spend some time just standing there, looking up, letting the warmth fall on my face and admiring my yard. Then I walk down to the top of the driveway and admire my beautiful natural mountain spring that I landscaped two years ago with forest ferns, rich soil and river rocks. Then the thought occurs to me to check my mail, as it has been a few days since I've done that.
I walk slowly down the driveway, beaming at the world with my beautiful energy and feelings. Once I get to the bottom of the driveway, my across the street neighbor drives by me in his car and pulls into his driveway. He and I talk whenever we encounter each other, and I'd like to get to know him better, we're about the same age and he seems really cool, but I think he may not do drugs, it's hard to tell. He also has a girlfriend, or maybe wife, who seems very shy. Anyway, the thought suddenly infuses my mind that I would love to talk to him about my ibogaine experience. Once in the recent past I told him I was struggling with opiate addiction, so it only seems logical to me in the moment to go and share my joy with him at being cured and experiencing one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced. I do hesitate however, some part of my mind telling me that this may not be a good idea. In the time it takes me to hesitate, he grabs the groceries from his car and walks inside. Oh well, I guess I've missed my chance. I resolve to talk to him about it if I see him come outside again.
I make it the rest of the way to the mailbox and check inside... some random junk mail, that's it. I turn and immediately forget all about it as I gaze up at the place where the two ridges that form the cove I live in meet up, far above. I really do live in paradise for Spring, Summer and Fall here. My heart swells with love, and I start to head back to the house.
I stand up from my computer chair and decide that I want to see what these special festival drugs are about after all. So I decide to drive to the local head shops and ask them if their special festival drugs are in, and if my friend is right, they'll have plenty of packets for free. I gather my phone, wallet and car keys, and head outside into the beautiful late-afternoon day, early evening really, about 6:00pm it feels like, though I don't bother checking my phone. Something is nagging at me that it's not a good idea to go do this, but I pay it no attention and walk down to my car, unlock it, and get in. I do my standard checks for my wallet and phone, and turn it on, relishing in the feeling of the engine's thrum through my body. I open my window and stick my head out and look behind, which is necessary because my driveway is narrow and steep and you can't see anything through the mirrors. I undo the parking brake, press in the clutch, and put it in first gear so that I am in the gear I need once I finish letting gravity roll me out of the driveway. Same as always. I carefully, and dare I say skillfully, maneuver down the driveway, cut the wheel sharply left at the bottom so my back end goes right, and steer backwards for a moment to land myself facing the downslope of the street, the way I need to be going.
I am driving down the main commercial street in my end of town, heading towards the downtown head shop. The one I usually use is closer, but I feel a bit embarrassed to be going in and asking for free special festival drugs. So I opt for the downtown one that I never go to. I'm looking forward to seeing what this experience is like. It should be interesting to go see my old cockney friends tonight, but I wonder if they'll disapprove. I think back to some of the other dreams I've had in the past few days. I shake my head, wondering at how I had believed they were real at the time when they were so clearly dream visions. I pass under the underpass leading into downtown, the mid-evening sun just about to pass below my line of sight.
I'm driving back under the underpass heading out of downtown. It's nearly dark out, mid-twilight. I wonder if I accomplished my goal? I can't really recall; that's odd. Right? It's at this moment that I remember the ibogaine. Oh my god, wait a second, the 'special festival drugs' aren't even real! I hope I didn't actually walk into that head shop asking for them! And then another thought hits me: I'm driving... police! I get nervous and look all around, though the light is getting quite dim. I don't see any cop cars, but I realize I need to be extra careful, and that this was, indeed, a bad idea.
I drive along, at the speed limit, not making any sudden moves. I pass the same storefronts, though something seems a bit different about them. Then I see my usual head shop, and I think to myself, wait, maybe I can get some of those festival drugs after all!
** Disclaimer: Driving while intoxicated is a terrible idea and I do not condone it. Due to the time constraints required to drive to where my memory tells me I was, and the fact that my two surrounding real-world memories take place less than a half hour apart, and due to the fact that in my memory this took place in the evening, and my usual head shop looked different and was standing alone, I do not believe I really drove, but that this too was a dream, albeit a very realistic and detailed dream. Still, this should serve as another lesson to you that one needs a constant sitter for at least three days when taking an ibogaine flood dose. I COULD have driven, and I may actually have, I will probably never know for sure **
I am in my kitchen, and I realize, while eating fruit, that my stove has gotten messy. Fruit juice is dried all over it, there are crumbs everywhere, and too many things are out. I decide to straighten up the stove/counter area. As I go to grab a paper towel and some cleaning spray, I suddenly realize I am on the set of a game show!
'You have chosen the paper towel and cleaning spray! Are these your final choices??'
'Yes, they are'
'Now remember that you only get one steel wool pad save! On your mark... get set... Clean That Stove!!'
As I spray the counter and stovetop initially, the crowd goes wild. My adrenaline pumping, I wait the requisite fifteen seconds for the spray to have really gotten in there, and then begin wiping furiously with my paper towel. Making record time, I grab another paper towel to finish the task. Sweat beads my brow but my adrenaline is coursing powerfully. I'm gonna to do it! I'm gonna Clean That Stove!!
But wait, an encrusted spot? I pick at it and scrub with the paper towel, but it won't budge. I panic momentarily, but then I remember I have a steel wool pad save to use. So I grab one from the box under the sink, to the appreciative roars of the crowd and exclamation from the host. I rush back and scrub it, once, twice, thrice. It comes clean off, and I grab one more paper towel and wipe off the last of the soapy residue. I did it! I won!!
I am in the dusty railroad town. It's mid-evening and I am on my way to the middle-aged cockney couples' house to get together with them for dinner. I arrive and knock on the door, and the visibly distraught man answers. Wild-eyed, he tells me that his wife was kidnapped! Some robed men came, waved their hand to immobilize him, and took her! He wails that the overlords have taken his love. Tears falling down my face, I swear to him that I will find and rescue her.
I walk away, my mind reeling. What can I, a poor young man, do against the overlords? Suddenly I know my first step: I call my friend egor from Bluelight. He answers and I explain the situation breathlessly, and, bless his heart, he agrees to help. But he says that due to the huge crowds here because of the festival, and their out of control behavior due to the festival drugs extravaganza, that he is holed up in his house and he can't get out without my help. And he also tells me that the occult overlords are watching everything through the eyes of the revelers who are lost in the festival drugs.
I carefully make my way through the crowds, making sure to appear out of my mind and euphoric, to blend in. Eventually I make it to the edge of town, where egor's house is. At this point there aren't many people around, so I take care to actually hide. I use the bushes to cover me, stealthily creeping closer and closer. Many times I have to pause and hold my breath while waiting for someone to pass. Eventually I make it to egor's place, and creep to the back door. He comes to it and together we focus our energies and mute our sounds and put up a partial light defraction cloak, making it much harder to see us and impossible to hear us. Alone, most people don't have enough power to do anything major, but together, the two of us can accomplish a few things.
We set off further out of town, toward a remote country house that we somehow know the woman is being held at. Steady streams of intoxicated festival-goers pass along our path, so we make slow and careful progress, never taking a step unless we are sure we can get away with it. We use the bushes and trees as much as possible, but occasionally we are forced to simply freeze and concentrate extra hard on our partial invisibility cloak as people pass by. But no one's gaze ever fixes on us. I know that if it does, we will be discovered, as the overlords can read minds.
After a long while of careful creeping and tense moments, we clear a crest of a hill and see the small cottage below. Suddenly there are no more revelers. Still creeping along, we head down the hill, test the doorknob and find it unlocked. The woman is cowering the corner, but as soon as she sees it's us she cries out in joy and nearly crushes us with her embrace, tears streaming down her face.
Now, to escape with an additional person who has no powers...
I'm in the kitchen, eating fruit, a delicious, juicy pear, a perfectly ripe banana. It's been sitting out for days now and has ripened nicely, as I had hoped. Eating the fruit is like the first time eating fruit, and the incredible flavor overwhelms me. I realize I am simply radiating with euphoria, and the feeling in my body is like heaven. I feel plenty of energy but also very relaxed. The light pouring through the numerous kitchen windows is like a crystalline web, bathing the entire world in radiant color. I suddenly feel pretty with it, and a bunch of the dreams I had start to come back to me, and I realize just now how far out I have been for the past few days. I decide to get online, and notice it's just before 10am. I go to Bluelight and read some threads, though I don't internalize any of it. I head to the PD Social thread and make a post. I notice it is very difficult to type, but I work slowly and I feel that I do an alright job (I later came to find out that it was entirely illegible and had some people worried).
At this point I notice that my computer and browser seem to be really glitchy, almost like I've caught a virus. I struggle through it for a bit, and suddenly notice that there is a tab open that says occult. I try to close the browser, but it won't close. It won't navigate. It starts to pixelate. So I open a different browser and that one works a bit better, though I am creeped out. So the occult practitioners are at it again, eh? A sense of foreboding overtakes me as my mind begins to scatter and I spend an indeterminable amount of time consumed by recall of many of my visions from the previous two nights, in much more detail than I have remembered thus far.
At some point I look at the clock, and then glance at my work email...
Oh my god, it's Wednesday (no, relax it's Monday, no wait, shit it's Wednesday! So much has happened, it HAS to be Wednesday!). I have to be back at work! It's 2:30pm (where the hell did the time go??) and I have missed a whole half day, and there is an issue with one of my studies! I'm gonna really be in trouble! Frantically I attempt to log in to the software we use that the study is programmed in. I can't log in. In panic, I try again; same result, invalid password. Mustering my focus, I sit there and slowly press one key at a time for the password, careful to press the right keys, and I am positive I did it right. Still, I can't login. Overwhelming feelings of panic start to wash over me. I am starting to feel like I have broken my brain, nothing is working, I can't make anything happen reliably in the real world. Five days have gone by, I say to myself with dread, I should be able to function by now! I start to think I need to talk to someone to get a handle on reality. I try to use my phone to call my little brother, who knows I am doing ibogaine for my addiction, but I am having trouble working it. But texts I can do, so I send a text to my parents and one to my brother (I later found out that what I sent was an illegible jumble of text. I also sent texts to my friends who were keeping an eye on me, though obviously not at this moment, which I later found out alarmed them). No one is calling me. My panic grows; I begin to weep softly and then gradually harder and harder until I am pacing around my house wracked with choking sobs, uncontrollably venting my terror into the air. Finally I decide it would be the best idea to send an email to my boss, and tell him what is happening, so he can call me and talk me down. He already knows about my battle with addiction, and I bet he would be understanding, and he can prevent me from snapping or dying. Hurriedly, I get on my computer again and compose an email. I am attempting to communicate that in trying to cure my addiction, I have inadvertently broken my brain and I am afraid to be alone, and I need to talk to someone desperately to help me anchor. I read back over it several times; I notice a few typos and fix them. I seriously double-check myself that this is a good idea, and decide that it is, that it's the only option. Then I press send.
After I send it, I immediately feel that I shouldn't have done that. My panic continues to grow, along with regret. I increasingly become sure that I am going insane and that I will never be able to function right again. Suddenly the only choice for saving me seems to be to take a dose of kratom (which I should have thrown away beforehand). I pull it out and swallow 5 teaspoons of it (a normal dose for me, about 12 grams), a part of me screaming No! No!
Just then, my little brother calls. I answer and tell him I'm scared and I think my brain is broken. He calms me down and tells me that I'm fine, I just took a huge dose of ibogaine and it's Monday, not Wednesday. After multiple rounds of calming me, then listening to me work myself back up, he starts talking about other things, and it leads me into a calmer place. While I'm on the phone, I get a text from my friend saying he's coming over at 5 when he gets off work, and we'll go spend the night at his house and hang out with some friends. I get very excited for that, as I'd love to experience other places and interact with people. I tell my brother, and he says that's good. Then he has to go because he's at work, and he hangs up but tells me I can call again if I really need to.
But I don't, I've calmed down. The excitement of the near future of seeing my friends has completely transformed my terror into excitement. Just like that, the world feels beautiful again. I feel pretty lucid finally. I decide to leave my computer alone and just go outside and admire the scenery in my beautiful little mountain cove. It's not much longer until 5 anyway, just an hour and a half.
My friend is knocking on my door and I am at my computer again. I get up and let him in. He looks around and cleans up a little, and asks me some questions, I suppose to gauge how together I am. He asks me why I logged into work. I tell him that I was asked to help with something, even though the real answer is that I looked at my email and saw that something needed help, and thought it was Wednesday. I realize I am lying but I am unable to say any other reason, it feels like the truth to me. He tells me that I told them I was hiking right now when I got the time off, so trying to work now is a very bad idea because then they will know I'm lying. But I am still convinced that I am supposed to be working, however at this point I have accepted that I can't and I will deal with the consequences later. I start to gather up a few things. I grab my shoes, my sunglasses, my phone, and my drug jar ('Just in case', I say to myself, flashing back to the treasure jar from my dream I suppose). As I open my refrigerator to get the jar, I notice my phone is sitting inside, and that somehow my boss had called and I had answered, and he had probably been hearing our conversations, which had been pretty incriminating. I say rather loudly 'Oh shit, he's on the phone RIGHT NOW!' and hang up the phone. I look, and there had been 4 missed calls from him before. I decide to turn my phone off, as in a stroke of clarity, I realize this is no time to communicate with anyone but my friends. Things gathered, we walk out of the house and down into his car.
We get in the car, amid the emerging rainforest of my yard, the new leaves growing ever larger by the day. Once strapped in, A backs out of my driveway and we're off. Much of the ride is a bit hazy to me in retrospect, but in the moment I am content and feel with it. I know we discuss some things, and I spend a lot of time watching the world go by much more quickly than is possible without our modern traveling machines. I greatly enjoy the sights and the sense of motion, as the whole world feels brand new and interesting. The rapidly shifting scenery is amazing to me, all of the sights brand new, and the sense of increased motion is exhilarating.
After a while, A says he wants to stop to get some food at Cookout. Now the idea of food produces butterflies in my stomach. Other than some fruit this will be the first food I have eaten since the morning of the flood dose, and the prospect of sustenance makes me realize just how hungry I am. We get up to the window and A decides for simplicity's sake we'd do the same order and I could just give him cash, which I have. I reach into my money fold where I keep my cash, which is all from selling my art at the market, and pull out a twenty, and hold it in my right hand as I speak my order: a half pound burger with cheese and bacon, and an Oreo milkshake. For those unaware of Cookout, they have amazing shakes and also amazing other food, this burger is so good, it's basically like a really good backyard cookout, as the name implies. As we go to pay, I look in my hand and the twenty is missing. I look all around and so does A, and we can't find it. He saw me with it too. So he says not to worry about it and just pays and we drive off. I eat the entire burger before we even arrive at his house, which is only a few minutes away.
After what seems like a very long amount of total time since we left my house, we arrive at A and E's place. I grab my milk shake and drug jar and exit the car, holding the jar heedlessly out in the open, totally oblivious to the fact that I am in a neighborhood with other people and children. It is only at this point that A even realizes I've brought it, which I discover later he was a little nervous about, as he didn't think I needed to be taking any other drugs, and indeed I didn't. I still don't know why I brought it, perhaps it was just force of habit, an emotional connection to drugs. Exactly the sort of thing I am doing ibogaine for. Or perhaps I was still connected to that dream in my subconsciousness. He hurries us inside. Once inside I say hi to his girlfriend E, another good friend of mine. We chat a little bit, and she eyes my drug jar with slightly wide eyes. Things are beginning to get a little hazy for me. For a moment I will be talking to her and we will both be different people, and the apartment is a different place. And then I'll snap back to reality, sometimes to a puzzled face.
I am sitting on a couch. I feel old and grizzled, sore, achy, spent. The couch is outside, and the landscape is pastoral. Hunched over, I am drinking a cold green beverage made of crushed up plants on ice. I have to slog it down, as it is quite unpleasant. I think grumpy thoughts as I rue my aching body and constant fatigue. Other people are around me having fun, but I cast my negative thoughts at them, hoping to drag them down so I can have some company in my misery.
I am throwing away my empty milkshake cup, and A says we should go outside and downstairs and hang out with our friends that live in the downstairs apartment. That sounds good to me, as I feel gregarious and sociable. By this time walking is easy and my coordination is fully intact. While I am present, I am consumed with the most beautiful euphoria, a crystalline feeling that everything is perfect, in its right place. I feel not the slightest hint of opiate withdrawal, and my slip with kratom when I freaked out earlier never seemed to materialize anything as far as actually feeling it. I tell myself to remember to throw the kratom away when I get home tomorrow.
We arrive downstairs and my friends R and M are there. They know that I'm on ibogaine, or that I took it on Saturday. Naturally they are curious, I see them regarding me extra closely, but they don't say anything about it which is nice. We step inside to hang out.
I'm walking down one of the innumerable great hallways of my family's castle, my powerful footsteps reverberating. I'm on my way to meet my little brother, as we have some business to discuss. Before long I emerge into a great, open hallway, the center of the circular castle complex. The dominating features are the many rows of seats, in circular structures, radiating out from the center, the high-domed roof that is open to the sky in the center, and the opening in the floor that views down upon the white-capped mountain peaks far below, and even farther below the rambling, bustling towns that contains our subjects. I am, of course, in my home, a palace floating high above the tallest mountains in the world. My family and I are the gods of the local people below, and we do our best to be just and kind. Through the massive skylight above, the sky is clear blue, since we are above all of the clouds, a clear and deep blue that can only come from a thin atmosphere. I look down through the bottom skylight again, and notice it is snowing. Of course I can see through the clouds and in doing so I note that the people below are lighting fires and bundling up against the cold.
After a moment, my brother walks in. He, like the rest of us, is around twenty feet tall. He wears light blue armor which shows off his tremendous muscles as it has no sleeves and stops well above the knee. At his side is his trusty sword Kingslayer, ornate to the point that mortals could barely comprehend, but which is just beautifully ornate to me. We walk towards each other, smiling, and clasp arms in greeting. I ask him what the important business is and he lists off some things regarding the people below and the neighboring sector's gods. Then he grins and tells me that the real reason he wanted to see me is to tell me that it's time to go snowcloud skiing! With great excitement, he and I materialize our skis from thin air, strap them on, and leap down through the floor opening.
I fall, faster and faster, until I reach terminal velocity, and then even faster. In moments, my skis touch down on the snow clouds, finding solid purchase, right next to my brother. And then we're off. I pick the steepest course, right down the edge of the wedge shape of the massive cloud. The feeling of extreme motion is utterly exhilarating, and I laugh out loud in pure excitement. I reach the edge of the cloud and leap powerfully off, flying through empty air, faster and faster, and setting down as if landing a massive ski jump on another, lower cloud. A moment later my brother flies through the air above my head, landing in a spray of cloud. We continue in this manner, laughing and shouting, kids again for a few precious and all-too-brief minutes, losing ourselves in one of life's joys.
I am standing outside under the upper deck, all my friends around, and R is looking at me like I'm crazy. I realize it's early twilight, and that I'm having a great time hanging out with my friends. I can tell I'm being a little crazy and animated, but as far as I can tell everyone is entertained by it and we're having some great conversations. In this moment, R is looking at me like I'm crazy. I stop to think a second and realize that what I had just said last made no sense, like when you're falling asleep while talking to someone and you start saying something that is part of your emerging dream thoughts, and it makes no sense, and then you wake up a bit and catch yourself. I laugh and tell him I realize what I just said made no sense, and he laughs very loudly and extendedly and when he can speak again, he says 'Yeah dude, no SHIT!'. Everyone is laughing, including me.
I look around the yard and notice that we're way up high on a concrete patio with a high railing, perched in the air overlooking a long-range mountain view and canyon. Odd, I think to myself, usually this backyard is flat. Well, no matter, I'm having a great time with my friends. I feel myself speaking but I have no clue what I'm saying as the dim light and a forgotten corner of the patio, under the stairs, seems to draw me in.
I watch the eerie luminescent light coming down through the ceiling of the great cavern that I live in. The light emanates mysteriously from within the stones, and is dim but casts the whole realm with a steady, low light, the color of twilight. My entire town fits inside one little section of a gargantuan underworld cave system. The ceiling is many hundreds of feet above, though at the edges of town it comes down to the ground. I am one of a race of dwarf-like people, like grizzled oompa-loompas. We live here in this small village. As it happens, I am a high-up member in the local crime family. I'm on my way to go meet up with a few of my people and the town's mayor, as we're all old friends. We have some business to discuss regarding one of the town's other politicians who is trying to expose the connection between my family and the mayor.
I stroll confidently down the cobbled street, people making an effort to cross the street as I walk by. I don't blame them. I'd cross the street for me too. Well, actually if it were me, encountering me, I'd probably knife 'em. I pass by familiar houses and businesses, all carved from the same glowing stone, though such comparatively small chunks of stone only have a very faint glow. It's really quite beautiful. After a few more minutes, I reach the tavern that is my destination, the meeting place. I glance around and make sure no one's looking, then I walk in. Once inside, we're all good, as this is our establishment.
The others are already there. I nod to my father and brother and tip my hat to the mayor, who I went to grade school with. We sit down at the bar and each order a round. My stomach flutters with anticipation. I feel a moment of discomfort; this is always my favorite part of the day, when I start drinking. Do I drink too much? Deep down, I think I do, when my machismo doesn't humiliate me into suppressing those thoughts. Am I an alcoholic? No, that's for punk bitches. I heartily order another round for everyone, and we get to business. This politician, he's too incorruptible. We've tried bribing him, we've even tried offering him a partnership. The time has come to kill him. Clinking glasses, we cheers to that. This town is ours, and nobody better forget that.
I suddenly realize I am in A and E's kitchen, and E is laughing at me and asking me what I'm doing. Unsure of how to answer, I look down. It appears I have opened my drug jar and found a wide-brimmed spoon, and evidently decided to open my baggie of 6-APB and tried to stick the spoon into it. The spoon, however, is quite a bit too wide, and I am just standing there with the spoon shoved into the baggie as far as it will go while the baggie is still in the jar, and the handle of the spoon is sticking straight up out of the jar. I blink a few times, look and E and just shake my head. Laughing, she takes it from me and closes it all up.
I peer out one of the front windows of my family's spacecraft, out into the reaches of space that I love so well. The view of space without the diffusion of an atmosphere really is a sight to behold, beyond comprehension, I suppose, if you haven't experienced it. I feel bad for the people who can't afford a space home. I am sitting in the living room/control room with my family. We're all looking out into space, as anyone who lives in space is wont to do, and we're having casual conversations. I'm quite young, a late pre-teen. Suddenly, the living room teleporter flashes and my best friend Brandon is there. Excitedly I jump up; we had planned to play hide and seek between our two houses and space walking. Laughing, we rush off. Since we're able to use our minds to rather quickly locate each other, hide and seek consists of constantly changing locations, and of both of us hiding and attempting find the other without being seen first. It's a fantastically fun game. We rush in and out of teleporters, between each others' houses, and we even walk out into space and float around on the outsides of our houses. This game continues on, and I'm having the time of my life in a way that only a kid knows how to do.
I am standing on the upstairs deck at the back of A's house, with my friends, who are smoking cigarettes. I am having an animated discussion with R about the evolution of brains. I bring up that maybe there were smart dinosaurs, how do we really know? He says that we do know how large their brains were and they were super tiny, basically a brain stem plus a little tiny bulb on the front for non-autonomous functions. All of a sudden it occurs to me the long path of evolution that has led to us, from bacteria to multi-celled creatures to fish to the fish that went on land, to reptiles. By then something of a brain had evolved, but it would take hundreds of millions of more years for those brains to evolve into anything that any of the cutting-edge creatures today possesses. A dog is untold times more intelligent than a dinosaur would have been. The reptilian ancestor that crossed over into the ancestor of all mammals shared the brain of the dinosaur, and slowly evolved more and more over untold millenia.
And then at some point the early human ancestors were born, and for whatever reason the evolution of our brains just exploded. And now here we are, with as many neurons in each human brain as the number of stars in the known universe. It's such an amazing thing. I realize how lucky I am to be inhabiting a life-form on a planet so late on in its life, which has had the good fortune of creating a beautiful and long history of mental evolution. I realize now that it's very unlikely there could have been anything of even marginal intelligence by today's standards alive on Earth back in the time of the dinosaurs, unless it was extraterrestrial. This realization brings me a lot of satisfaction, and R seems happy with the conversation as well.
It's pretty late. I'm sitting on A and E's couch, and they're sitting on other seats in the room. We're talking and hanging out. I feel pretty beat, my eyes half-lidded. E asks if I want a hit of weed. I consider it for a moment and then shake my head and tell her I'm already disconnected from reality enough. A nods in support, as all day he has been trying to make sure I don't take more drugs. He tells E to stop asking me if I want anything. I loll my head around, enjoying my body sensations but also feeling a bit worn down.
I am being led to bed, in the extra bedroom, which I am sharing with the parrot they are sitting for. I gratefully allow myself to be led in there, and E has made the bed for me. She tells me to sleep tight and I fall into the bed forcefully, my head slamming into the pillow, and the dreams begin immediately.
Soft light filters down through the stone of the massive cavern. I'm again a brother in the local crime family of our village. It's later in the night on the same day, and we are again gathered at the bar, discussing our murder plan for the incorruptible politician. But this time, I am internally conflicted. In the time since our original meeting, when I was totally on board, I did some checking into this guy. Something within me seemed to rebel against the idea of murder, so I decided to do some research. What I found was disturbing to me. This is a great guy, who does a lot of good. He runs a homeless children's shelter. He has three kids and a loving wife and they seem extremely happy. I myself have a kid and I can't imagine what would happen to him physically or emotionally if I were to be killed.
The result of my research is that now I feel very strange about this. I have never before been against a murder for business purposes, though I have never been cruel like my older brother and father, who seem to revel in the misery and terror they cause. No, I only do it if there is a pressing need, but I have never felt bad about that before. I suppose it's because usually the people we kill are rival crime family members or corrupt politicians who do not align with our interests. So I sit there in a dark corner of our tavern, drinking heavily, my thoughts dark and troubled. Then there is a tap on my shoulder; it's my friend, the mayor. He gets close to my ear and whispers 'Hey, I think what we're doing is wrong, I don't think we should go through with this'. I tell him I agree completely, but that my father and brother will never see it this way. The mayor's face softens in a way I haven't seen since we were kids, before a life of corruption and murder hardened us both. He tells me that he thinks we need to actually kill them, and get their influence out of this town, and start ruling like people should, with the help of this politician we will end up saving.
I consider this. Most of me rebels against the idea and feels like I should go tell my family and we should deal with the traitorous mayor. But the deepest part of me, the real me, realizes he's right. With a heavy heart, I resolve that we will do this and I tell the mayor so. He pats me on the shoulder consolingly, puts his finger to his lips, and walks back to my father and brother, laughing and patting their backs heartily.
So we head out into the cold, dark cavern. We head out of town, where we have heard the politician will be, enjoying a nightly walk. Inexplicably, there is snow covering the ground the farther out of town we get, eventually forming great drifts. At last we come upon the clearing, where the politician is kneeling in meditation, a big smile on his face. We creep up behind him silently, and at the last moment, as my brother and father are raising their knives, he spins around, eyes wide, arms up to shield himself, fruitlessly. But then before they can strike, me and the mayor thrust our knives into their backs. They turn to us in utter disbelief, as blood bubbles out of their mouths and they fall to the ground, dead. Though I have just killed two of my family members, I feel good. I have had a change of heart and it feels wonderful.
I am in an old mansion that is absolutely falling apart, in a bed. I sluggishly get up and walk through the house. Where am I? I walk around, admiring the crusty old crown molding and ornate wood carving embellishments on the paneling. After a bit, I open a door that leads into a strange room that my dad is standing in. I look around and my eyes catch one of a dozen or so pits in the ground. It looks like one of those 'bottomless pit' tables from the 80s, that has mirrors on the bottom and top and a ring of lights, and the mirrors cause the lights to repeat endlessly, looking like a bottomless pit. As my eyes touch it though, suddenly my essence is pulled towards it and the lights glow brightly on the first row. Then, accompanied by a terrible siren sound in my mind, my gaze is pulled down, down, down as the light brightens all the way down. Within probably a second I each the bottom and feel a soundless explosion. Then I snap back to reality to my dad's sad eyes. 'I was about to say don't look at those... every time we look at one, even a tiny bit, it goes off, and a random person is killed where they stand'.
This horrifies me! I am a murderer! I tell my dad so, and he chuckles sadly and says that if I'm a murderer, then he's a mass murderer, because he's been hiding out in here to avoid the authorities due to the accidental murders from these things, and he says it's been impossible for him to avoid accidentally looking at them since there are a dozen of them in a rather small storage room. So I set up with him now that I'm a murderer too, and attempt to keep my gaze away from them. But it's fruitless. My dad says something and I turn to him, and halfway through the turn my eye catches it again. Again the terrible descent of my consciousness, the terrible noise, the violent soundless explosion at the bottom. I emerge and my dad looks at me sadly.
Over the course of time this happens many more times, and my heart sinks more and more with each one. Here we are, father and son, the accidental mass murderers. My soul recoils in sorrow.
I realize I am standing in the hallway of A and E's house, in my underwear. I have no idea why I am out here. I walk into the living room, pondering my purpose. Then I realize I have to pee. So I do that, and return to bed, again hitting it hard and immediately my awareness dissipates.
I open my eyes with a start, a collection of crazy emotions swirling around in my head. I am in my childhood bedroom. For a moment I wonder what I'm doing here. Then I look down at my child body, small, hairless arms and legs, wearing an oversized nightshirt. It is then that I realize I had just been dreaming. Wow, what a crazy dream! The specifics of it begin to scatter in my brain, suddenly no longer making sense. I'm pretty sure it was a really intense dream but I can't even remember anymore what it was about. And with that, some twenty years of life dissipate into the aether and I am again a ten year old kid. I lay there, smiling, and then turn over and close my eyes again, looking forward to get school over with tomorrow so I can play video games and play outside with my friends.
I wake up Tuesday morning, the fourth day, to an absolutely destroyed bed. There are two pillows crammed between the wall and the bed, a pillow on the other side of the room on the floor, and the covers are crammed down to the floor at the end of the bed. I collect myself for a moment, the flood of dreams from the night before retrieved automatically and intensely from my memory. I look around and notice a few things. For one, I went to sleep in my clothes but I am now down to my underwear. My clothes are strewn about the room in different places. My drug jar is open and on the bedside table. I check through it and nothing appears to be taken, fortunately. I rub my eyes and focus. I feel completely lucid for the first time since I took the flood dose three nights ago.
Before long, E knocks on the door and asks if she can come in. She meets me with a grin, and asks me how I'm feeling. At this point, my memory of the previous day is fuzzy, but my belief is that I was mostly present, I remember quite a few moments of hanging out and discussions with E and with others. I smile back and say I feel great, because that is, in fact, the truth. I realize as I answer the question that the feeling in my body and mind is, well, amazing. I am filled with a wonderful amount of energy, buzzing with pleasure. My mood is wonderful; I feel as if nothing could get me down. Moment by moment, the extreme state I had been in since I took the ibogaine is coming back to me, and it fills me with awe that the human experience contains possibilities as intense and wonderful as ibogaine. I am nearly manic, or perhaps, I am manic, but in a controlled way, in the best kind of way. Life feels wonderful, I have not the slightest hint of withdrawal or discomfort. I am cured! As well as bestowed with a beautiful state of post-ibogaine metabolites.
I hang out in the living room as E begins to gather her stuff for work and start her day. We talk some; I tell her how I'm feeling and some of what has been happening to me, and I tell her I feel cured, which she is happy to hear. I don't have my car here so she is going to take me home, and then head to work. I want to get home and spend my last day off languishing in this beautiful state I have found myself in.
Before long, the time comes to leave. We walk out of the house and I am met with the most gorgeous day I can imagine. It's about 10am, and the mid-morning sunlight shines down to illuminate brilliant greens of leaves and grass, pinks, yellows, whites, purple and blues of all of the wonderful Western North Carolina mountain flowers. I feel intensely grateful to live in such a beautiful place, and to be alive at all. So many, effectively infinitely many, paths could have been taken for this planet that would not have led to having such a beautiful place to live and highly intelligent life forms to appreciate it as well as appreciate and contemplate their own existence, and for where my soul decided to enter a living body, of all the trillions of planets in the universe. I love Earth, and I am so glad I live here.
We walk to the car, get in, and E starts driving. The drive is fun, I enjoy the fast movement and the ability to travel somewhere a distance away in a short amount of time. If we didn't have cars, I wouldn't ever see my friends probably since my house is way up a mountain and on the other side of town. Cars pass with a powerful energy that I feel as they whoosh by. But I am also looking forward to getting home, to my beautiful house and mountainside forest half-acre yard, to enjoy it in this wonderland I have found myself in. I talk freely during the ride because communication feels good, it feels human. At times in the past few days I haven't been human, or I have been versions of myself I didn't like. It feels so GOOD to be ME, which is a feel that I haven't felt in years. The wonderful body feeling is constantly coursing through me, seeming to originate from the heart and radiate quickly out through the tips of my fingers, toes, and head. The feeling is so wonderful that it adds greatly to my euphoria. I have never felt a euphoria like this, it's so natural, and I am filled with gratefulness that I am able to experience my life. Everything feels new, fresh, exciting. Like I have been reborn.
After a good 15 to 20 minutes, we arrive at my house. I get out and say bye to E, and she drives off. I stop at the top of the driveway and look around. The trees are are jeweled majesties, stretching out gracefully above, their young leaves bright green and full of promise. I really do live in an enchanted little mountain cove. I decide to go check my mail. Beaming all the way, simply enjoying the physical process of walking, I go to the mailbox. Surprise! My package from a certain vendor came way earlier than I expected. With excitement I go into my house and open the package. Inside is a gram of methylone and a gram of 3-MMC. I'm having such a great day already, and then my original reason for doing drugs emerges from my euphoric mind: I'm having fun, this is good, but if I take [insert drug here], it will be even better! So, on impulse, I take 150mg of methylone, taking it down raw by pouring it onto my tongue and swallowing with water, or in this case, fruit juice. I always just put drugs in my mouth and swallow them, except for a few that are too nasty. I did it with the ibogaine and I am doing it with the methylone. It's a little bitter but no big deal.
At that moment, my phone rings; it's E. She tells me that her car broke down and she's about a half mile down the road from me. She wants me to come and bring jumper cables. I have a moment of pause, as I realize the ibogaine is affecting me strongly still, but I feel so in control and super lucid. So I decide it will be fine and I walk outside, get in my car, and start it. Note that I do not recommend doing what I did. In retrospect it was a bad idea. But it is easy for me to drive. I stay hyper-focused, and I feel that I'm doing a good job. Within two minutes, I arrive at E's car. I take the jumper cables out of my trunk and we connect them, red and red, then black and black. She gives it a try. Nothing. We re-connect the cable, her end sparking. But still no luck; it appears to be a different problem. Reluctantly, E calls a tow truck to take the car to a shop nearby. While we're waiting, we chat and I tell her I took some methylone, which she seems to somewhat disapprove of; she looks a bit shocked really. At that moment, the methylone began to kick in. I feel an increase in that wonderful euphoria from the ibogaine. They seem to work together well, the post-ibogaine metabolites and methylone. As E stands there anxious about a possible serious car problem, I empathize with her, but I can't help but keep a wide grin plastered on my face. Suddenly the impulse to take more methylone hits me. In retrospect, this reveals to me that I am a poly-drug addict, not just opiates, though those are by far the worst thing for me take. But in this moment, I just feel exited. I tell E that I have to run home and get something, and I head off for the two-minute drive to my house.
Once there, I measure out 100mg more of methylone, and again on impulse I also down 100mg of 3-MMC, as I read that they are a good combination. I do this quickly and immediately head back to E and the car. I get there, and the tow truck has just arrived. The driver is a really nice and helpful guy. He tries a bunch of things to get the car started, but with no luck. The time comes for us to follow him to the place he's taking the car. E asks if she can drive my car. It's a stick shift and she doesn't normally drive them, and my car is having problems and I need to make sure it's treated gently, so I tell her that and she reluctantly agrees to let me drive. So off we go, following the truck. Driving is actually really fun, it feels really cool to be able to travel at that kind of speed while being the one to make it happen. It's like it's the first time I am experiencing the sensation and novelty of driving again, but the knowledge and muscle memory remain fully intact. I stay hyper-focused, and E comments at some point that I'm driving extremely well. In reality I think I am driving better than usual, because I am being extra careful.
We get to the place where the car is, but set up right in front of it is a road block due to construction. The tow truck driver stops and asks the police if we can get by to drop off the car at the shop, and they tell him that we need to go around to the other side of the block where the road isn't torn up yet. So off we go. The back roads we have to take go up fairly high and are quite narrow. As I follow the tow truck through them, I am again struck with the incredible beauty of the place I live. I drive slowly through a jeweled jungle, sunlight streaming through the leaves, wonderful euphoria streaming through my body. I definitely feel the methylone, and the 3-MMC adds a nice dopamine push; the combination is indeed very nice. I chatter away with E, about this and that, feeling good just talking. In reality, the methylone and 3-MMC are completely extraneous and random. I am feeling so amazing from the post-ibogaine trip that the other drugs, though they feel nice and increase my euphoria, are really not necessary and are really just a consequence of my poly-drug addiction. I am so focused on opiates, which the ibogaine has worked so well for, that my larger addiction has not really occurred to me. However, since I was 17 years old I have been addicted simply to getting high, to altering my consciousness. I so often take drugs with very little point, at inappropriate times, and my ability to function on pretty much anything (except a flood dose of ibogaine!) has really ultimately been detrimental to me, because it's made it so much easier for me to say, hey Xorkoth, you should take some of [insert drug here], it'll just make your day better! The result is that, since I started using drugs, on my best days I have just as much desire to use drugs as I have come to have on my worst days. At this point, however, I have not yet recognized what a negative pattern this has been for me.
I continue to follow the tow truck, and eventually we make it out of some winding mountain roads and find ourselves on the other side of the roadblock, maybe 200 yards from the end we started at. It is also blocked, with police everywhere, but there is no construction yet on this side so the tow truck driver talks to the officer sitting guard in his car and gets us permission to pass. I follow, passing right by the officer, the danger of which never occurs to me. I can talk to police, I feel fine, I think to myself. Of course my pupils are likely quite dilated and who knows what I look like after over three days in ibogaine's ferocious embrace. However, nothing happens, we just drive by. E gets out of the car once we park and talks to the driver as he lowers her car down and places it in an empty spot. E gets out and writes a note and sticks it to the door, as the shop is closed for the day due to the construction. Then she gets in my car and asks if I can take her to the local university where she is going to set up to give massages today. The drive there is more of a same, fun, but uneventful. I drop her off and drive back home, and by the time I get there I'm glad to have arrived.
I spend the rest of the day just soaking up the awesomeness of my life and the current mental state I have found myself in. I take another redose of methylone a few hours later, along with some 3-MMC, and then that is my last for the day. I spend time browsing Bluelight, compiling notes for my report on this experience, and then around 1:30pm I check my work email again, and see that they are still having issues with my study, and the person covering it for me is clueless on how to fix the issue. I, however, know exactly what to do. I decide to give them a helping hand and log in, tell them I am going to work the second half of this day (and hey, now I get an extra half day of vacation back). I proceed to spend a few hours working it out. The team is very appreciative. I guess I truly am lucid again finally.
The rest of the day is more of the same. I talk to Morninggloryseed and other friends quite a bit on instant messages, and I gush to everyone who will listen about how I am cured and how amazing this feeling is. At some point I go to bed after I realize I am tired, and I sleep a comfortable, peaceful sleep, with several dreams that I do not remember after waking.
I wake up Wednesday morning feeling even better than I did the previous day. A steady, pleasant, amazing, sparkling, coursing euphoria suffuses my entire being. Really it never left, but it's even more powerful than it was yesterday. I get up, smiling ear to ear, stretch, and then remember it's my first real day back at work. Aw man... well, nothing can ruin my mood. I feel as if I am reborn, the old anxieties and negative thought patterns and, yes, the old opiates gone from my life, as if by magic. I have no desire for opiates, and I am happy to see them go. I am utterly comfortable and content with my life and everything about it; it all feels beautiful. I feel intensely alive, and intensely grateful to be alive as me, in my life. Living through some of those dreams was pretty intense, and I wouldn't want to really exist like that. But, it's a miracle; here I am, living this awesome life! I am in full-blown mania at this point, and I am absolutely loving it! But at the same time the thoughts I am having are introspective and healthy, so really it is a mania borne from the pure, unadulterated beauty of the experience I just had and am still experiencing.
I walk downstairs and get on my computer for work. This time, I can enter my password fine and I am having no trouble working my computer. I chuckle ruefully to myself, my solidly positive mindset cushioning me from my next thought, which is about my email to my boss. I have a sneaking hunch that the email is worse than I had thought at the time. I scroll through my sent emails and eventually find it, and proceed to read over it. This is what I see:
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Subject: Mesage youres, wmores. I can't seem to to successfulloy ay anuy out of tn afiriutes \urseomthing My brain is nor workibf right. I nees other taial been telling alice and you guysthat I was going to takje I ibogaine (whiuch rersch resseachatribe.) I have absolkutwly no rememberces almost al osyt herefix. I have weird occult type browser history stuff out too. It made hard to ewver cauf naughneat me to O have been inb a really hard place iuin lufe, Threre I almost to the I have been littlending deeenon. I know you guys have been trying to a get em to m dork, but in today Ibogaine ihas been of the two pictits fines, and I did that nut. The I have be.leieving everone at MARreseaeched any feeling feeling it all . Also because there eas a day I’m a quality says. My thumnbs almost; I feel that U have hidden em orieises that are hearding ftrom mepissibibly Please give me right now I need to talk someone someone so badly right now. |
Worst email to your boss ever, right? Let this be a lesson to those of you thinking of taking a flood dose of ibogaine at home. You MUST be supervised CONSTANTLY for at least three days. I can't believe I was SO wrong about the legibility of that email; I ever proofread it twice! I stare at it, blink a few times, shake my head, and half-laugh, half-cry to myself. Oh shit, this might be really bad. My boss gets home from vacation tomorrow, so today I can put it aside in my mind because there's nothing I can do about it now. Still, an intense feeling of embarrassment fills me. I have always managed to keep the two parts of my life separate, work and the rest of it. Even when I worked in the office for three years from 22 to 25 years old, I often tripped and took drugs IN the office, DURING work (though never +3 level doses). And many other times I have tripped at home while at work, even a couple of accidental +3s. And it never crossed over. I have always prided myself on my level of control no matter what on non-alcohol or other blackout drugs, but perhaps that has been big-headed of me. Of course I didn't mean to mix work and ibogaine, in fact I planned ahead with the days off to ensure it wouldn't happen. But one lapse in judgment, the supervision, undid most of my preparation, in effect. I feel somewhat nervous for what is to come, but at the same time I have an inner calm and I believe that events will unfold neutrally at worst for me. Whatever the reason, however it sounds, things tend to work out for me. I am about to start working, and then the thought occurs to me that I have most of a gram of methylone and also of 3-MMC still in my possession. So I weigh out a combo of those, which I figure will help my work day go by without being too frustrated at having to work. I down 150mg of methylone and 120mg of 3-MMC, a bit higher than yesterday to account for tolerance. I don't even really think about this decision, as I am gripped in warm mania. I begin to feel them very quickly, the wonderful feelings I am already feeling intensifying, my mind sharpening, my body gaining a flushing tingle of pleasure along with the coursing feeling of perfection already present.
And with that, I dig into my work. I find it kind of fresh and new, fun for a while, good mental exercise. A bit before noon, I receive an email that I am receiving an award for my work yesterday for half of my vacation day, both because of using my vacation day to help with an urgent problem, and because of the quality of the work. I grin to myself; this is more like how I remember psychedelics and work. I continue on, taking phone calls, catching up with what I missed. I take numerous breaks to eat. I mostly eat fruit, also some cereal and yogurt, and for actual lunch around noon I make four eggs, with grated onion and some extra sharp cheddar cheese. I make food so much, plus I have a knack for it, that everything I cook is always one of the most delicious versions of it I have tasted, as is the fruit, given my rebirth-like state.
At around 2 in the afternoon, I hear the mail truck come, and since by now my work feels a bit monotonous, I decide to take a quick break from it to check my mailbox. I step outside into the perfect air, about 72 degrees, intoxicatingly fresh from the national forest at my backyard, a wonderful humidity caressing my skin. In the Midwest, humidity is something people hate, myself included; it feels stifling, stale, suffocating. But here, it feels cool and fresh and clean and amazing, I love it so much, regardless of post-ibogaine glow. Breathing in deep and relishing the lovely tingle that spreads from my heart through the ends of my limbs, I walk down to the mailbox. It's a ways down and pretty steep, so in the meantime I enjoy every moment of the sublime day, golden sunlight streaming through the now slightly-larger and darker leaves, flowers everywhere. Oh! I notice that my hydrangea bush has blossomed, its deep red flower clusters nearly leaving spots in my vision from their saturation of color. My body feels strong, the nor-ibogaine and other metabolites providing a boundless and utterly clean source of energy.
After a couple of minutes I reach the mailbox and open it. Interesting, another package! It's from Greece... I bet it's one or the other of baclofen or gabapentin. I had ordered them a week and a half before iboga, thinking I could use them to help me stop opiates beforehand. Of course I hadn't factored in that they take 10-20 days to arrive. So it was fruitless. But, I am always interested to try new buzzes, and I figure that this way I can report on some ibogaine, or at least post-ibogaine, combinations also. And, you know, contribute to science. Or whatever, I am excited to get more buzzed. I open the package up and it's my baclofen, which is a GABA-B agonist like phenibut is, and phenibut is one of my favorite substances when done right. So, excitedly, I head back inside and look up what a good dosage to take would be. People report anywhere from 60mg to 150mg. I decide to play it safe and take 40mg to start. The pills are tasteless and tiny.
I get back to work and finish out the day, relieved when 5:30 hits. I have been redosing small amounts of methylone and 3-MMC throughout the day. At this point, I log onto Bluelight and start posting and moderating, telling everyone about how the ibogaine worked, I'm cured, and I feel amazing. I also chat with Morninggloryseed and another friend on instant messages. I feel very manic, but wonderful. I love feeling manic so this works for me. I also continue to compile notes for the report I am going to write. I continue to eat lots of food. By the end of the night I realize I have eaten all of the following: four pears, five bananas, a bunch of grapes and strawberries, three bowls of quality cereal with raisins, dates and pecans, a large-size single serving chicken pot pie, four servings of yogurt, at least a gallon of fruit juice, and a small stir fry I made. My hunger just continues, eliminated for an hour at a time and then returning.
At around midnight, I am conversing with a friend online when all of a sudden I realize I am perhaps too manic. It reminds me of too much phenibut, which makes sense since I took baclofen, a relative of phenibut. I suddenly become nearly nauseous and overwhelmed and go to bed, my head ringing. I immediately pass out into a blank period of nothingness.
Thursday morning... I wake up feeling extremely fuzzy. Momentarily confused, I wait to catch my bearings. Finally I realize it's morning, a bit later than I meant to get up. I step out of bed. Whoa... I don't like this. I am unbalanced and my insides feel like they're on fire. My brain also feels hot, and confused. This is like too much phenibut times two, and not just a little too much phenibut. Ruefully I realized I took too much baclofen yesterday. I must be sensitive, because the dose I had was pretty low by almost all reports. Nevertheless, I feel like absolute ass right now. I walk down the stairs and get right in the shower, hoping it will make me feel better. It does, of course, while I'm in there, but as soon as I step out, the feeling returns just as strong as before. I mentally hit myself for randomly taking drugs and jeopardizing my post-ibogaine glow. Totally unnecessary to take the baclofen, and now here is my payment due. I figure I'll just ride this out and the glow will return.
So I start work. I have a moderate amount of tasks to complete, and my brain is absolutely scattered. It feels like I have virtually no short-term memory, I read a number I need to remember and two seconds later it's gone, over and over. I start to get nervous. Time is going by and I have basically gotten nothing whatsoever done. I simply cannot make my short-term memory work. To top it off, I still feel on fire inside. This is some of the worst I have felt from drugs, and coworkers are starting to send urgent emails asking where their files are. My boss, the one I emailed, calls me suddenly. I panic and don't answer it. I can't function like this at all, let alone have a serious conversation that could shape the course of my employment future. The thought of a dose of kratom enters my mind. I push it away. But, I think, when I've had too much phenibut in the past, kratom or other opiates have helped to return me to a balanced state. At this point I know, deep down, that I am going to take it. It's that point an addict reaches where they have given themselves the allowance to take their drug. They may continue to fight it for a while, but it is going to happen. And so it went. I resisted mightily for a half hour or so but at around noon, here I am, opening my bag of kratom that I have stupidly not thrown away, and taking a twelve gram dose, a nice full dose, while my true self watches helplessly, screaming 'No! No! NO!!'.
The dirty deed done, I wash it down with some fruit juice, shame in my heart. After fifteen minutes I do indeed feel better, but right at that moment I feel a light go out within me, and I no longer feel the tether of post-ibogaine euphoria I realize had still been there underneath my misery. Well, maybe it will come back, I think to myself with horror. I had been told of this beautiful euphoria lasting weeks, even months. Morninggloryseed felt his beautiful mania for a full six months after his first flood dose. This can't be it, I think to myself!
Still, my mind does clear, somewhat, just enough to fulfill my work tasks in a reasonable amount of time. Hours pass with me focusing on work. I still feel very off and unpleasant, but it's bearable now. At some point, A gives me a buzz, asking me if I want to pick him up from work and then hang out at his house. This perks me up, and I reply that indeed, I do want to do this. At around 3pm, I finally reach a lull in work. For a little bit now the thought has been ruminating within that perhaps I should smoke a small, 10mg dose of DMT. I figure it will clear up my thoughts, clear my head, maybe re-attach me the wonderful energy I have been feeling since taking my flood dose, and even before. So I grab an old pipe I never use and weigh out exactly 10mg of DMT crystals. They're quite orange but smell strongly of that distinctive smell that can only be dimethyltryptamine. I put a layer of ash and marijuana leaves on the bottom, and the same over the top of it. I experimentally test the pull-through, and I gag on a few DMT crystals. They burn my throat slightly until I drink fruit juice to wash it down, which takes a few moments. I look in the mouthpiece of the pipe and there are a few tiny crystals laying there too which I can't recover. I figure I lost about 3mg. But I figure that was supposed happen and don't sweat it, and I go outside with it on my back deck, which overlooks hundreds of trees downhill, and behind huge trees absolutely tower overhead from farther up the mountainside. It's beautiful out and the sun is shining, filtering through the young leaves and providing a lot of comfortable heat. The last time I smoked 10mg of DMT out here, I had the most beautiful experience where all of the sounds I could hear were revealed to be part of this massive repeating rhythm, all the dog barks, lawnmowers, birds, squirrels, cars, humans, hammers, chainsaws, insects, tree creaks, the deep thrumming noises the trees were making at each other... and each moment my awareness of how massive the beat was zoomed out, more and more intricate. It was one of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring moments I have had and it left me glowing. So my associations with DMT on this deck are entirely positive. I stand there, soaking up the sun, raise the pipe to my lips, carefully vaporize it but possibly burn a bit of it, it's hard to say. And I inhale.
At first I feel nothing, for a longer period of time than is typical for me with smoked DMT. I start to wonder if I did it wrong. I stare down in concentration, and my eyes fixate on a point on the ground, in the rotting leaf mulch, in the shadows under the deck, a chair blocking all available light. And then I feel a strange sensation in my head, or my brain I think, a sort of pushing pulse bringing to mind my idea of the feeling of a blood clot breaking free and re-opening blood flow. And with that all of the DMT slams into me at once. My vision, rather than fractalizing, turns fully green. I have a sinking feeling in my stomach. The intensity is blinding. Suddenly, I have a strong, clear memory, as if by revelation, its reality and immediacy slam into me powerfully. Though later I will not remember what the memory is, it was complete, a memory of a different time and place, some epic turning point, something important and crucial to know, paradigm shattering, the discovery of who or what I am. And then a thought-voice, 'he's remembering!', a feeling of this being a negative surprise and a hint of panic. And like a guillotine, some inner mental reflex slams a wall of denial down in front of me, blocking this memory out. I am back in the real world, utterly and completely suffused with raw, animal panic. The level of terror I am feeling is unprecedented to me. I have never ever experienced something like this. I feel... just WRONG. The only structured thought I can manage is, 'remember what what you just experienced!' But each moment slips into the next leaving the past a mystery to me. The thought becomes 'remember to remember what you were just thinking'. It's hopeless. I stand there, frozen, gripped in stark terror. It feels like it's not going to stop. I start to feel like I just accessed some deep, deep memory that is traumatic to me.
Then all of a sudden I feel only a slight buzz, I have come down mostly, in the blink of an eye, though my energy is reeling from the raw intensity of my emotions just a moment ago and I am extremely nervous and shaken. I pause for a moment and try to catch my breath, and then I feel that weird blood clotty feeling in my head again along with a sort of organic smushy sound and all of a sudden I'm rocketing up to a peak again, though not as full-on as the previous one moments before. This time I look in the glass panes of the double french doors into my house and I see my soon-to-be ex wife standing there looking at me with her mom. They're sitting at a table and the room inside is totally different from my house. I am filled with a sense of shame and desperate fear, the kind of fear you get from loss. I feel crushing sadness and desperate fear as I step toward the doors, then realize this is in my head, then forget and step toward the doors, then come to again. This happens incredibly quickly and the result is me standing there, stepping once or twice in a direction, then stopping again. I imagine I look quite a mess right now. The thought constantly bubbles forth of me running screaming down the street, though I never make a move to do so. And then, once again, the effect suddenly subsides, leaving me with a shaken, nervous feeling. I begin to slowly walk across the deck towards the large sitting area overlooking the downslope and the long range view. I make it about ten steps before I feel that strange head movement feeling again, in several pulses, each pulse sending the DMT effect roaring more and more intensely to life. In a moment it becomes everything to me once again.
This time I strongly recollect being in a dark cabinet or armoire type space, huddling there quietly, peering out of the slats and being in utter terror at the sight of someone walking the hallway slowly. It's a hallway covered in powder blue and white flower wallpaper and has a smell like an old person's house. I cower there, trembling, for a few moments, and then I am back in reality, again feeling terror, though less piercing as last time. But this time I am able to remember the vision, I can still feel it. At first I am sure I have uncovered a suppressed memory, but then I start to think I may be remembering a dream or something. It feels deeply significant for me to be remembering, and deeply important, as if there is some part of my life I have no access to in memory, something darkly intriguing. I am afraid to know what it is, but I also feel I must know; the thought of something significant I can't remember at all seems unacceptable. The feeling is disturbing and I am filled with an existential fear. My level of effect from the DMT is fluctuating moment to moment, as if it has been bubbling steadily but is slowly fizzling out now. I am torn between waves of gripping fear that has no source I can surmise, but is one of the worst feelings I have ever felt; and periods of intense realizations in thinking about the sequence of events. I am still trying to piece it together and link all my thoughts back to that original, all-important thought, the first moment of effect slamming into me after I smoked the DMT. I make progress, I feel, and that progress leads to realizations. But I cannot remember these realizations for long at all. So in a wave where my panic is ebbing, I get up and run inside for a piece of paper and pencil, run back outside and sit down in one of my camping chairs I use as deck furniture, and begin trying to write all of my thoughts down to help me get to the root of this.
As I write, I have a hard time keeping up with my thoughts and most of my statement are not finished at first. I continue to experience peaks and valleys of anxiety and feelings of doom, along with brief flashes of understanding which I attempt to communicate on the paper. I keep staring at my words, trying to use them to help me piece this together. I sit outside for quite some time, and gradually I finish most of my statements. I review my work, and it seems significant. Unfortunately I cannot find this paper at the time of this writing, and without it, I can't remember anything else about it. I hope to find it and come back and fill this part in a bit more. At last, I work through it all and I notice that I don't feel scared anymore, although the entire bizarre experience has left me a bit shaken. I sit outside for a bit longer, just trying to soak up the sunlight and beautiful nature.
At last, I head back inside to finish work, especially as I am trying to get off a half hour early, at 5, to pick up A and go hang out. It's a little after 4 now; my 7mg DMT trip lasted over an hour. I shake my head, still slightly reeling from the level of terror I had been feeling. I log back on and answer a few emails, and complete some final tasks. Someone wants me to program this little trivial thing for the CEO, and I have other client work that is pressing. I try to make time for it, but the CEO's assistant is taking forever to get back to me. And she said earlier that if I didn't have time she could use a different thing this week. But nevertheless I get it programmed a little bit before I have to go and send it to her, with no answer for a while. At the last possible moment before I am going to leave she tells me no, wait, the way you programmed it isn't what I meant, sorry I didn't describe it well. Okay I have to go, go ahead and use the other thing, I don't have time to re-program this thing. I hesitate a moment before leaving and realize I still feel pretty crazy. So I spontaneously decide to take the rest of my methylone (around 120mg) plus 150mg of 3-MMC. I also bring the rest of my 3-MMC, about 250mg, in its little baggie in my wallet. With that, I head out to pick up A.
The drive is fine and I arrive at the bar he's waiting for me. By now I have started to feel the drugs, but being that this is the third day in a row chasing this high, it's mostly just stimulating. Still, it does the job, and I feel more sociable and with it. A comes out and gets in, and we head to his house. He tells me about his work day, and I tell him about my weird DMT experience. I feel a little self-conscious talking, like my mind is working so fast it's weird to talk, while at the same time I keep trailing off because of my remaining lack of short-term memory. Other than this, the ride is uneventful, and soon we reach A and E's place. We walk inside, and E is there. I give her a hug, and I notice she's looking at me with a grin and a sparkle in her eye and she asks me how I'm feeling. It's obvious she's referring to the ibogaine, but I think I was feeling fine three days ago when I was last over, on that third day. I tell her I feel great. I do not mention the kratom slip-up or the baclofen because I am ashamed. Still, being among friends helps me to feel much better, especially mentally and emotionally. I truly do love being around people I care about. This living alone thing isn't my ideal situation. But it's undoubtedly healthy for me for the time being, seeing as how I never have before. We sit down and take a dab, that is, a hit of vaporized hash oil, which gets me very pleasantly high in that hash oil sort of way. I cough mightily of course, but it doesn't hurt at all, it's merely due to the expansion of such a large volume of vapor.
At a little after 6pm, my phone rings, and my stomach does a few flips; it's my boss. It's after work hours though so I decide not to answer. I tell my friends, and they open their eyes wide, since I already told them about my email to him on Monday, after it happened. I figure it's after work hours and I'm with my friends so I'll call him back tomorrow at work. He leaves a message but I am too afraid to listen to it.
Before long, A asks if I want to go downstairs and see our other friends M and R, whom I had also seen on Monday. I very much do want to do this, so down we go. As soon as I walk in, R sees me and his eyes get wide. He asks me how I'm feeling with a laugh, and says to me, 'Dude, you were OUT OF CONTROL the other day'. I'm a little flabbergasted. I mean, I remember a couple of times I said something and then realized it made no sense, or was a little boisterous or walking crazy, but most of my memories from that evening involve hanging out and being present. So I say as much, and R laughs and says that he's never seen anyone that out of their mind and still interacting. Well, this is interesting. Come to think of it, half of my memories of that evening are ibogaine dreams, interspersed with real-life hanging out scenes. In retrospect, it's difficult to imagine how I thought I was with it at all. Then M walks in, and I have A, M and R all in the same room, and I ask them to tell me any stories they remember about that day. They tell me that I was very animated and interactive, but that my interactions only partly made sense. Apparently I would respond to something they said, but transform it into something else partway through the sentence that made no sense, but almost made sense. They say that it seemed like I was taking input from the real world and my mind was interpreting it totally differently, especially the more time that went by from the original input. Also A tells me that the most interesting thing from his perspective is that I was mixing up pronouns, using him or her instead of it mostly. For example, one time R said 'Xorkoth saw the sun rise this morning' (not sure how that came up as I don't think I did), and I said 'Yeah, she was hot'. They inform me that they could tell when I was totally gone because I'd have a faraway look in my eye and I would not seem like myself, and they could tell when I was fully there because I would look like me again, but that they could never tell when I was starting to slip out again until I started not making sense. Apparently during my dream states, I would take on many different looks and even voices that were not my own. One time, R looked over and I had a terrible, evil look on my face, as I tapped my fingers together spasmodically and muttered darkly in a raspy voice, looking straight at him with malice. It actually scared him. Then I came to and began talking to him in an ordinary, present way.
Apparently at some point I had been withdrawn, and then I just blurted out 'I'm an alcoholic', and all of them but A thought something was coming up from the depths, an admission. But in reality I am the farthest thing from an alcoholic. I hardly ever drink, hardly ever want to, and when I do it's usually just a beer or two. This puzzles me, until I recall my dream about the dwarven mining village, the first part of it, where I was in a bar, drinking heavily. A tells me that I did have a beer, which I drank slowly, and then when I was done with that, I grabbed R's half-full beer out of his hand forcefully and unexpectedly and chugged it. I do not remember any of this whatsoever, even having the first beer, and the grabbing of someone's beer is totally unlike me. I suspect this was during the dwarven mining village dream.
Apparently another time I started singing the Seal song, 'Kiss from a Rose'. And we all started singing together. Apparently I was really cheesing out, in a good way, and they were impressed, but I kept getting the words close, like humorously wrong. They say I looked like I was having the time of my life. At first I do not remember this, but then a flash of memory, a few moments on the stairs to the upstairs patio, come back to me. In this memory, my vision is only half there and I am singing and laughing.
Then A tells me about another time where I had been silent and then I suddenly got all serious and looked at him and said 'Dude, I've been thinking a lot about this. Tell me if this makes sense...' and then he says I just went off on this long, winding run-on sentence of constant tangents, that kept morphing constantly from one thing to another. When I was done, he just looked at me and said 'No man, that doesn't make sense to me at all'. The thing is, I remember saying that to him, but my recollection of what I said was that it was coherent, and it was supposed to have been me explaining what I had just experienced a moment ago in a dream.
Apparently someone also offered me a hit of weed and I took it, and A realized and told them not to give me any more drugs. Another time much later, before bed, I remember being present and A and E were smoking, and I said I shouldn't because I was already out of it enough, so until now I thought that I hadn't smoked any weed that day.
We continue on hanging out, laughing, at me but with me. I am absolutely loving this, as their stories add so much to my experience in my mind. It brings me great joy and amusement to know what really happened that day after I came over to hang out, and to realize just how dramatically different my own idea of how it went was. And since I was with friends being watched again, I was entirely safe this time. I tell them that they have given me a great gift with their stories and thank them profusely. Then it's time to go back upstairs and eat some food and relax with E. I ask E if she could tell me her impressions of me that day. She tells me that I seemed very out of it and she was actually worried about me, but that I usually seemed like I was having a good time. However, sometimes I would be sitting there and my face would be contorting into worried looks and tiny whimpers, as if I was experiencing anxiety. She also says I told her that I did talk to my neighbor. To this day, I don't know if I did or not. I'm actually too scared to approach him!
Shortly after I get up there, my phone rings again; and again, it's my boss. I have a sinking feeling. He leaves another message, then calls again immediately. I don't answer, but I realize that in fact I DO have to deal with this now. I ask E and A what I should do. E suggests I first listen to his messages, and then call him back and say I will talk to him about it tomorrow. I realize he is probably worried about me, since my email was so terrible. So I listen to the first message. In it, he is using the nicest voice possible. He sounds soothing, and tells me that he got my email, and that he is there to talk to me (and he put a lot of emphasis on the phrase 'talk to me' since I used that terminology in my email) whenever I am ready. The sweetness in his voice encourages me and I decide I am going to just tell him the truth, since he already knows about my addiction. The second message says that he also needs to talk to me about that survey for the CEO, and why it isn't done, and that it needs to get done tonight. I get out of my voice mail, my heart beating fast, worry twisting my gut. I tell A and E what the messages say and that I feel like I should tell the truth. I figure that he might know if I'm lying and then he'll have an employee who lies to him. And that I believe he will be supportive of the truth. E tells me she thinks I shouldn't tell him it's ibogaine, that I should tell him it's ayahuasca since 'everyone knows what that is'. I tell her I don't think my boss does, he is a non-drug user and I don't believe people who have no connection to drugs by and large know what ayahuasca or ibogaine are. And if he decides to look it up, if he looks up ibogaine he'll mostly see addiction treatment stuff, whereas if he looks up ayahuasca he'll see all kinds of references to psychedelic trips. So, gathering my courage, I decide to tell him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and I go into the extra bedroom and close the door. I stare at my phone for a couple of minutes, and then take a deep breath and call my boss.
Ring... ring... ring... *click* Hi Xorkoth. I fumble around a bit nervously, and say hi to him. So, I say, I imagine you want to know what that email was about. He says yeah, he does, he has been worried. He says he got especially worried when he called right after and I picked up but I didn't answer and then did answer and hung up. He apologized for not trying harder to get ahold of me but he was on vacation with his dad and brother. I tell him to please not feel bad, that I feel bad for interrupting his vacation for my own stuff. Okay, this is starting out well. I tell him I am with friends but I will tell him what is going on tomorrow. It gets slightly awkward, probably because he doesn't want to talk about it at work, so after a moment I say okay, actually I'll tell you now if you want to hear. He says he does. So I start with the story. I tell him that I have tried everything for addiction other than in-patient rehab, and finally I heard about a South African spiritual medicine plant called ibogaine that is supposed to have a shockingly high success rate for addiction. The only thing I tell him differently is that I was at an underground clinic in someone's house, rather than tell him I just got it online and did it at my house. I tell him that on Monday, I should have been being watched more and I freaked out because I was still so powerfully altered, and I couldn't work my electronics or my brain so I called him in a panic. He tells me it's nice that I thought of him. He asks if it worked, and I said yes, feeling a bit of shame at the kratom I had taken, but this is no time for ALL of the truth in this case. Then he asks me what it was like, which really makes me realize that everything is fine. I tell him it was basically like dreaming whether awake or asleep for three full days. He thinks that's wild. It takes me almost 45 minutes to tell him the whole story and finish discussing it with him. He tells me congratulations on beating addiction, that his brother suffers from addiction too. I don't even have to ask him not to tell anyone else in the company. He also tells me that HE was scared to call ME because he couldn't tell what I was really trying to say in the email and he interpreted it as me being upset with my job and feeling taken advantage of by him personally. I laugh and tell him it's hilarious to me that he was scared because I was REALLY scared. We laugh about that. It honestly could not have gone any better in my wildest dreams, I feel closer to him now than before and I think he feels the same.
Then he tells me about this work thing. Apparently the CEO's assistant is upset that I left without finishing it and she also neglected to tell me that it was a particularly important one for him, something to do with a speech he had given and some follow-up to that. So I tell him I'll get on my friends' computer and do it real quick. E says I can use hers, and I go in their bedroom to have some silence. Well, the software we use for programming needs all these components installed, and she is running Ubuntu and it's not working out very well. I spend over two hours in there trying to get this simple task done. I begin to sense they want to go to bed, but I am almost done and I have this ASAP deadline breathing down my neck... it takes twenty minutes to get home and I keep thinking I've got it about done, but something else keeps coming up. Finally I feel too bad and pack up and say bye; they are only mildly annoyed, but they're good friends, so it was no big deal and it wasn't weird or anything. I listen to great music in the car on the way home, get home and finish up my task in about three minutes on my own computer. Should have just gone home in the first place, but I was hoping to knock it out in fifteen minutes and keep hanging out. Oh well.
I begin to browse Bluelight a bit, trying to unwind, when I suddenly notice a low-grade withdrawal restlessness and crappiness. This nearly makes me cry. I had felt so perfect and amazing. I am 100% certain that if I had not taken the kratom a few times afterwards, I would have never experienced this again. Fighting back anxiety about it, I decide to go to bed. I take some L-theanine and L-tryptophan to help me relax and be tired. Nevertheless, after an hour I am thrashing in bed too much to sleep. With horror filling my gut, I slowly walk downstairs, weigh out a dose of kratom, and down it. Eyes to the ground, I solemnly walk back upstairs and get in bed, crying on the inside, numb on the outside. My only feeling of hope is connected to the fact that I have decided that I will take the rest of my ibogaine tomorrow as a follow-up dose to try to get this thing back on track. Within fifteen minutes, a wave of relaxation washes over me and I fall asleep, and sleep deeply and dreamlessly through the night.
Friday morning I wake up, post-ibogaine euphoria painfully missing, replaced by a light-grade withdrawal restlessness and sensitivity. Upon waking, my goal for the day remains the same: no drugs at all, get through the day, and take an ibogaine booster dose at night as it is getting dark. Painfully, filled with deep, sharp remorse at my slip with the kratom that shattered my post-ibogaine glow and brought back the withdrawal I thought I'd never feel again, I make my way downstairs and into my office to start my work day. I am able to focus fine, in fact, the same as I have for the past three years, that is to say, everything is a bit painful to do but my mind works fine. Nothing special happens in the work day, but at some point Morninggloryseed logs onto instant messenger, and in a rush of emotion I message him, telling him I have something to tell him. I confess about the kratom and tell him he was right that I should have given myself more time after, and I wish I had been supervised for longer. I am nearly in tears I feel so emotional about this. He tells me to relax, it's okay, just don't take more. And do take more ibogaine. This makes me feel relieved since it's my plan anyway, I decided I am going to do it regardless of others' opinions because it feels right, but it makes me feel much better about it that my good friend has the same opinion. He tells me to just take 100mg and that will be plenty, so I decide to take about that much at first, but deep down I know that I will be taking the rest, which should be at least 300mg equivalent.
I pass the rest of the day slowly, painfully. I take my bag of kratom and, finally, throw it away by spreading it over the forest floor in a large area. I decide I will take the follow-up dose at 9pm. Ibogaine feels like it should be done at night, and even during the flood dose the nighttime was always much stronger than the daytime. It does work on dream consciousness so this makes sense. After work I clean my house some, get the kitchen spotless, clean up random messes. I watch some episodes of How I Met Your Mother to pass the time and relax, whiling away the hours before I can take more ibogaine.
At long last, the hour has arrived. I open up my jar, and remove the TA extract. I weigh out 250mg of it, or roughly equivalent to 125mg of ibogaine, but of course with those all-important other alkaloids present as well. I stick it in my mouth and swallow, feeling the bitterness and letting it wash over me. The deed done, I decide to watch some How I Met Your Mother episodes while waiting for it to take effect. As I lay in bed, that familiar calm, smooth, comfortable feeling starts to come over me, and the desire to kick my legs subsides, some. At about 30 minutes in, I wave my arm and notice a very faint trailing. The episodes still seem pretty normal. At about 50 minutes in, there has been little progress and I still feel uncomfortable and mostly unchanged, so I make the decision to consume all of the rest of my ibogaine, which is roughly equivalent to 250mg, for a total of 350mg (there is a bit extra in the HCl packet).
I walk downstairs, noting that I have to be a little careful on the steps, and my walk feels slightly wobbly. I go to the freezer and get my drug jar, open it up, and remove the ibogaine packets. I am able to easily pour out the rest of the TA, about 250mg, and I pour it in my mouth and swallow. Then I open up the HCl packet, and pour out as much as possible, about 50mg, but the rest is sticking. So I grab a knife and start scraping, which recovers probably 30mg more which I immediately consume, but there is still a decent amount in the corners; this is also true for the TA. So, carefully, I cut the bags open so I can access all of the surfaces, and begin licking them clean. There is quite a lot of powder, and with so much prolonged contact with my tongue, I truly experience the bitterness of ibogaine for the first time. It's so sharp that my eyes start to tear up, though it still tastes like rootbark underneath. I finish up with both packets as fast as I can and open the refrigerator to retrieve some fruit juice. I swish it around in my mouth in an attempt to dislodge the bitterness, which only works somewhat. Then I throw away the mangled packets. Ingestion complete, I walk back upstairs, get in bed, and continue watching the show.
As the current episode ends, about 25 minutes after ingestion of the rest of the ibogaine, I take a break and take stock of my situation. I have been feeling a growing buzz, a physical buzzing sensation coupled with a massive body relaxation and pleasantness. As I wave my arm, multiple images of it materialize, inky black and radiant white arms curling together at different rates of speed and positions, following everywhere my real arm goes, trailing behind in long, moving trails. As I move my eyes back and forth, everything appears to crack and beams of brilliant white light pierce through reality's facade. Experimentally, I begin to turn my head back and forth rapidly, and I am rewarded with all sorts of visual phenomena, the beams of white light criss-crossing everywhere, along with clouds of smoke and clouds of tiny, pinpoint black dots that appear to follow each object as it moves across my vision, settling into it as my vision rests. These black clouds move in the manner that schools of fish and flocks of birds do, synchronized, forming beautiful organic ever-changing shapes.
Suddenly I realize I need to pee. I stand up; well now, this is interesting. It is at this point that I realize how truly intoxicated I am. The buzzing has continued to increase and by this point it feels like my body is vibrating with the power of the buzzing, but this is not uncomfortable at all. I realize that my balance is very off; as I take a few steps toward the door, I find myself walking in a different line than I intended, with great, wobbly steps. I catch myself on the dresser to avoid falling, as small clouds of black and white smoke, as real to me as anything else, float around my head and into the corners of the room, and clouds of black dots drift through the air to follow my movements, and my arms are constantly throwing off those white and black swirling doppelgangers. I get to the top of the stairs and the idea of actually using them seems unacceptably dangerous. My thoughts at this point are very rapid and functional, there isn't anything extraneous other than awe at the magnitude of the visuals I am experiencing. They are easily the most detailed, lifelike, and predictable visuals I have ever had (meaning they always behave the same way), and the most intense besides something like DMT that completely overtakes your vision. Behind the many impressive visuals displays, everything remains solid and unchanged. It is as if the visuals are separate but interacting with objects, or are perhaps something normally unseen.
I turn to walk into the upstairs bathroom, unwilling and perhaps unable to traverse stairs. The toilet is broken, but there is a sink, which I feel is a better alternative to tumbling down steep wooden steps, and I can wash it later, not that I ever really use it. The bathroom is darker than my bedroom, and as I stand at the sink trying to pee, the landscape around me alters drastically. Vines begin growing up the walls, and small animals scurry about, between my legs, by the door, on the edge of the tub behind me. From the vines to my right grows a large venus flytrap style carnivorous plant, but it doesn't alarm me in the slightest. In truth, ibogaine does not seem to inspire even a tiny bit of fear in me, it simply feels like a natural way to be, but different from normal... oh, so different. I look down to make sure I am aiming well, and I notice the black dots floating gently above my skin in grid patterns. As the urine moves closer and closer to emerging, I notice the black dots are growing excited and swarming my area, their velocity and dispersion growing ever more severe, until I begin urinating, at which point there is a burst of black dots and they all gather very closely to the stream and follow its path down, their energy so strong I can hear some sort of humming. Once I'm finished, I rinse the sink out well and as my arms move, I notice the black dots seem to focus on my shoulder, elbows, and fingers. It's almost as if they respond to heat. I find this incredibly fascinating and it occurs to me that the shamans may use these black dots in their practices. I believe ibogaine is very powerful medicine, perhaps the most powerful produced by the planet Earth.
Slowly, carefully, I traverse the pathway back to my bed. It's very close, but it takes a lot of focus to be able to get my body to walk there, and the darkness makes the house around me into a jungle. I collapse onto my bed and decide to watch one more episode of How I Met Your Mother. I turn it on. It is a very crazy and weird episode to begin with, and the ibogaine turns it much wackier. The characters seem to me rushing around and saying everything very abruptly. It is nearly impossible to follow the storyline, but it's still amusing to watch, because of how altered my experience of watching it is. The second half of the episode seems to repeating its scenes at various times. I do not know to this day whether it really was (as the show sometimes does) or if my experience of time had stopped being linear. I am deep into a mental spell by the end of the episode, throbbing with energy, everything in my vision seeming to want to explode with latent kinetic energy. The episode ends (finally) and I decide it's time to close my eyes.
As soon as my eyes close, the dream visions begin. For the first 20 or 30 minutes, all I see are scenes from the last 10 minutes of the episode I had just watched, executing at different levels of speed, in different configurations. But these visions are consuming, I can hear the sounds of the episode as clear as if the episode is actually playing now, but the sounds are altered by the tempo. Sometimes the scenes play at normal speeds, and sometimes they flash by very rapidly and all the voices raise an octave. And other times the scenes play very slowly, ambling along, the voices comically deep. For the first 10 minutes, this feels annoying, as I don't care to review the episode I just watched. I open my eyes several times to try to 'reset', but it always picks back up where it left off when I re-close my eyes. After a while, I begin to get drawn into it, and I believe I am various characters in the scenes, a different one each time. The thoughts feel reflexive. Once the pattern of scenes begins, the whole sequence has to finish. When it starts, emerging from the blackness of my mind, I feel a strong energy spring to life within me, and that energy needs to be released, and as the sequence of scenes progresses, faster and faster, the energy moves and accelerates until the last scene hits in a sudden halt and the energy blasts away from me along with a sense of satisfaction.
Slowly the context of the visions begins to get more complete. The scenes start to replay again but they are different, more continuous, and the plot alters. Now we are on a space ship, a large space station, going around and performing missions within the station, but still involving scenes from the episode. This time, though, at the end of the scene loop, the dream continues in a way that is unrelated to the episode, but still involves the same characters. At some point, our mission complete, I begin to head toward a teleportation pod, my destination the beautiful blue and green planet below.
I wake up, stand up, rub my eyes and head out of the building I am in. This building is a dormitory, and myself and a bunch of friends and other people I don't know are all staying there. I walk out into the bright sunlight. Around me is a glorious wonderland of a beautiful planet that is not Earth, towering trees, huge rock cliffs and canyons, beautiful creatures everywhere. In the dream I do not consider it other than with pure enjoyment, because it's just the place I'm from. Some friends walk outside too and we look over from our beautiful hilly vantage point at the festival that is going on. We decide we would like to attend, as there are many great, fun activities and booths. We fly down there, simply willing ourselves to lift off and move.
Once we arrive, I notice a large canopied tent advertising a special formulation of marijuana hash oil in a giant electronic bong. The proprietor explains to me that this is a new, high-tech way to consume cannabis, and he points to a wall that is awash in shifting purple energy and says that once you take your hit, you can go in there and explore the funhouse. Eagerly I agree, and pay for a hit in exchange for a bit of my energy. The guy takes a bottle and pours some of the contents into a chamber in the bong. What comes out is a brilliant purple goo. He flips a switch and that goo turns into roiling green smoke that fills the chamber. I step up, put my mouth over the opening, and inhale deeply. The smoke feels cool and tingly going down, as if I am inhaling cool water vapor; there is no pain and no cough whatsoever. Almost immediately, I become very dissociated and I realize that this 'new hash oil' is, in reality, smokeable ibogaine, as the feeling is precisely the same; for a brief moment I remember that I am on ibogaine in real life and having a vision, then that recedes once more. This makes me super excited, and I begin tripping on ibogaine, within my ibogaine dream. As the effects rapidly overcome me, as well as my friends who had also decided to partake, rather than entering the dream, my body and essence transform into pure energy, and I drift myself over to the purple glowing wall. As I touch it, I am drawn in.
Inside the funhouse is difficult to describe. The souls of everyone who entered are there, as floating, brilliant points of light. We can communicate through flashing our soul-light at each other, and the communication registers as language. I am overcome with a feeling of exhilaration at this novel state. I gaze around, or turn my mind's eye around in 360 degrees, or perhaps in more than 360 degrees, as the constraints of three dimensions seem to be lifted. I notice flashes of an uncountable number of scenarios, and I realize that by approaching them I can insert myself into them and experience what that scenario has to offer. I can also see the bright light orbs of others whom I do not know already inside some of the scenarios. Together, my friends and I decide on one to enter, and we drift toward it. As we approach, it becomes larger and larger until it fills my entire awareness, and I feel myself suctioned powerfully in an unknown direction.
My senses stretch out beyond anything I have ever known, and in doing so, I detect the five-dimensional space I am in. What was before an abstract concept is suddenly directly perceptible. Now, after the fact, it is impossible for me to really remember what it was like, let alone describe it. But in this moment, all is clear. My form is an advanced being whose body stretches across many frames of time and realities, existing in all of them simultaneously. I move experimentally, flexing my multidimensional appendages, and the sensation is entirely unique and wonderful. I turn my awareness around and meet those of my friends, and we share in the revelry. We turn together in an unidentifiable direction and dart off to do fifth-dimensional tasks. I can't now recall what exactly that was like, I have only impressions involving complex shapes and colors and feelings attached.
I emerge from a dark place through the other side of the purple swirling wall with a start. Wow, that was incredible! The vendor of the ibogaine 'hash oil' smoke smiles at me knowingly and asks if I'd like another. I happily oblige, giving him a sly look, attempting to communicate 'you sly dog, good move calling this hash oil since that's legal and ibogaine isn't'. Smiling knowingly, he again pours some of the purple goo into that giant electronic bong. At my nod, he presses a button and the goo rapidly turns into that delicious roiling green smoke. I inhale it into my lungs, again noting the incredible cool smoothness. The flavor is very distinctive, but difficult to describe. I can taste it now, a sort of musky artificial grape flavor with a deep velvety richness underneath. Again I dissolve into pure essence, and I eagerly thrust myself back into the purple void.
I have many more experiences with the smokeable ibogaine dreams, so many in fact that they run into each other. Periodically I open my eyes in the real world momentarily and remember that I am dreaming, but sometimes I think it is the next night, or the next night. Once I wonder how I keep getting high on ibogaine, because didn't I consume the rest on the first night?
But mostly, I just have a whole series of beautiful, relaxing, bright, fun dreams, taking full advantage of my disembodied state. I'm really having the time of my life, and the night stretches on long, gloriously long.
I open my eyes in real life, realizing the need to pee. Unlike during the flood dose, I am not disoriented or disjointed when I emerge enough to actually move; instead, I have immediate, complete, continuous memory. Rather than feeling like waking up from a dream, as during the flood dose, it feels more like emerging from a deep meditation. I have no trouble collecting myself and separating the visions from reality. Yet still, the visions are utterly consuming, and for most of the time I am having them I have been forgetting I am actually elsewhere, on ibogaine. As well as consuming, they are wonderful, mystical, space-age. I am enjoying them immensely!
I get up carefully, noting that the lack of coordination and incredibly intense visual displays are just as strong as ever, perhaps even stronger. At this point it has been probably 3 hours since I first started really getting hit with the full ibogaine dose. Accompanied by the black dots, I again stumble to the bathroom as a jungle springs up all around me. Once done, I hit the bed rather hard and close my eyes and immediately begin to see something.
I again get up from bed in the dorm my friends and I are staying in, and walk out into the hallway, meeting them as we all emerge from our rooms. This time a young woman is with us, another friend who had not been present in the previous dreams. We walk outside, and again drift over to the festival, which it is the last day of. So we decide to make the best of it. We once again take the ibogaine smoke hits and drift into the funhouse and begin to have amazing adventures.
Then all of a sudden we all receive a mental jolt and a message, that our mothership hovering above the planet is under attack from a hostile species! Rather than exit our state, we use the increased mental powers given to us through the ibogaine and our disembodies states and will our essences to travel out of the funhouse, up through the air and into space, and through the walls of our mothership. Once there, we are somehow in our bodies again. We run through the corridors, blasting the intruders when we see them. For hours we rush around the ship, holding it off from the invaders. Then, they initiate a quantum jump and pull us all into a different reality, along with the ship... their own reality.
Daunted, we nevertheless keep fighting. Slowly we beat them back, until finally we have control of the ship back. I initiate a high-speed loop that will intersect with the point we entered this reality at, and due to the speed, the recoil of our motion will reverse the quantum jump back to our own reality. However, right before we reach that point, an invader jumps out of hiding, grabs the female friend with us, and teleports out to his escape pod. It's too late to reverse; in a second or less we will jump. Helplessly, I watch my friend pressed up against the glass of the escape pod, screaming out to us. Then a soundless jolt and a flash of light hits as a sense of coming together enters my head, and we jump back to our own reality, minus one important passenger.
I wake up in the dormitory, stretching and contemplating how I got here. Then I remember the events of the previous day. And then I remember my female friend who got left behind. Suddenly anxious, I run to her room to check on her. I'm hoping that maybe it was a dream after all, or maybe she eventually just snapped back to the reality she is supposed to be in. But as I round the corner to her room, I see her roommate is talking to a few people, worriedly explaining that her roommate never came home last night. My heart sinks and tears spring to my eyes.
I wake up in my bed, again having to pee. It's about 5:30am, and I feel as if I haven't slept at all. But the visions are so interesting that I don't care. For a moment I think about how I can save my friend who got trapped in another reality. Then I realize that was a dream. With a chuckle, I get up, unsteady as ever, and go to the bathroom. The visuals are a little less intense at this point, but my balance is equally bad. I quickly do my business and go back to bed, but I still have a nagging sense of loss, even though I intellectually realize it was a dream.
I am on a beautiful planet, jeweled trees and grand canyons and towering mountains with a crystal blue sky and streams everywhere. I'm on my float-bike, soaring over a deep gorge, with my friends. I'm about twenty years old, not a child but with my whole life ahead of me. Suddenly, one of my friends who has been doing flips loses control and his float-bike slams into me, knocking me clean off. As soon as I begin to fall, terror utterly consumes me and I scream out with my entire being. I see my friend, who has righted his bike, realize what happened and let out his own scream. He tips his bike down and flies full-speed towards me, but as I gain in velocity, he slowly falls behind, and then quickly. I realize at this point that I am going to die.
As I reach terminal velocity, I feel as if I am floating, no longer falling. A strange sense of calm comes over me. I look around me at the beautiful bands of colors on the canyon walls as they slowly rush past me. I look down, at the slowly approaching river at the bottom. Water or not, I think, I am dead. The river is about two miles down, so the fall is long. I think about my friends, and I forgive the one who was reckless and got me killed. I hope he forgives himself. I think of my family and a tear springs forth. They will be so sad; there will be a hole in their lives. I think of my girlfriend and then I really start to tear up. I love her so much and I wanted to be able to spend the rest of my life with her, but now that will not be possible. And she will be so heartbroken. I feel a tremendous sense of pain at the effect this will have on my loved ones.
I look down again, and this time the ground is close. So very close. I slam into the water at terminal velocity after having fallen for two miles, and there is no time for pain or sensation of any kind.
I find myself above my body. I see it and I realize I am dead. I am ascending up, up, up, now I have just passed my friends who are wide-eyed and shaken to the core staring down dumbly. I think to them that it's okay, I'm still here, just not in the same way. I continue to rise, up, up and up, through the cumulus and other low-hanging clouds, up through the wispy stratus. The air is becoming darker and darker, deep blue, then black-blue. Then, finally, the inky black of space. I can see in all directions at once, I can see everything. Brilliant stars shine from most corners, some in much larger clusters and closer. It is like the night sky times a thousand, nothing between me and the objects of space. However, by this point the memory of my last life is just a tiny piece of the grander memory. I recall all of the lives I have ever had, and begin to integrate this latest one into my total experience, my total soul learning thus far. I drift farther and farther from the planet, though I can always see it. I see directly in the direction I am traveling a brilliant silvery line, and within moments, I attach to it.
I am oneness, the all. This is the source and it is where I have always been. I take one eternal moment to contemplate the core of existence. I remember that there are massive lines that branch off of the core where I am now. And from these branches sprout smaller branches, and from them even smaller branches, down many, many, many levels, uncountable, infinite. And when I choose to return to another life, I will travel down the same way again, as my part of the oneness occupies some one of the smallest-level threads. This means I will return to the same planet, at least for the next many lives. These branches drift with concentrations of matter, and where they do not occupy, life is not possible. However the galaxies are strong magnets. Each galaxy has a large branch drifting with it, shooting off branches exponentially to all of the planets in that galaxy. Over a long, long period of time, some branches will eventually come to connect to a different planet, but until then I will always be going back to the same planet. This brings me happiness because I have enjoyed living on that planet. With a sense of anticipation, I jump onto the large cord and rapidly, at impossible speed, I soar down the pathway that leads to my individual soul. The next time someone is born, I will enter, and that moment is now. All turns white.
I emerge from comfortable darkness into a loud, chaotic place. What are all these colors? Shapes? WHAT IS THIS?? I do not really use words though, they are raw emotions. I am dimly aware of what is going on, but have no ability to process it so it evokes raw terror. Then suddenly I am placed in a pair of arms. I look up and a feeling hits me: mother. I feel a deep sense of happiness and peace as her arms enshroud me with safety.
Recovery
The next morning, Saturday morning, exactly seven days after taking the flood dose, and of course the morning after my booster, I wake up feeling very weird and out of sorts. I hadn't really slept, it was more of an all-night vision quest. The ibogaine follow-up dose is not affecting me strongly enough to cause me to be partially dreaming anymore, yet the visuals are still at about 25% strength, and I am still quite unsteady walking. Unfortunately, the minor withdrawals are back. I feel sore, exhausted (especially since I really never fully slept last night). Taking the flood dose, I emerged after two days of deep dream trance, relatively immobile, with absolutely no fatigue and in fact a boundless energy and euphoria. The follow-up dose is not like this, though there are many factors at play, most significant of which is my slip-up with kratom that got me feeling this minor withdrawal again. It actually feels worse today than it did before. But worst of all, I feel hopeless, sad, and deeply regretful, and totally drained. I can't get out of my head that I am an idiot for not throwing my kratom away before this process, and for making the poor snap decisions at the times that I did to take some. I feel that I have totally destroyed my ibogaine experience, entirely through my own stupidity. But I can admit that my strong addiction is cleared. I have resolve to not use any opiates again despite my crappy feeling. I know I have to make this worth something; the only feeling worse than this would be if I actually fully relapsed, making it all for literally nothing. But nevertheless, I am terrified by how low I feel. I feel deep, deep regret. Slowly, painfully, I get out of bed after a good hour of watching TV shows (again How I Met Your Mother, I pretty much blasted through the entirety of the show without watching anything else once I started watching it, over a much longer period of time than this story covers). I walk downstairs unsteadily, though now I can do it fine, and get on my computer, browsing Bluelight. I chat with some people; I chat with Morninggloryseed for a while, spilling my woes me him. He tries to make me feel better, but I feel as if nothing can accomplish this.
After a while, I go lay on my deck in the sunlight, trying to soak it up as much as possible and maybe start getting a tan. It's relaxing, but it doesn't really make me feel all that much better. As time goes on, my sadness grows. I start to feel on the verge of tears. Everything wrong with my life, everything I did that I regret, comes rushing back to me. It all makes me sad, but the thing I am the saddest about at this time is my failed relationship. 12 years together and almost 6 years of marriage, and it's over. I was 100% positive she was the one, that I would never be alone again. Though the negative aspects of the relationship have been on my mind pretty much since one month after she left to go live with her mom (in February), now I am thinking only of the positives that I miss. Despite the emotional abuse when she got angry, and the lack of contributing financially, for the majority of our relationship we were so in love and very happy, though there were always aspects that I was subconsciously incredibly frustrated by that I didn't realize until it was over - hence why the ending of it is truly a good thing in disguise. But in this moment I don't feel at all that it is a blessing. I am LONELY. I have never lived alone until now, and I don't really like it overall. I like having people around who I care about. I miss her smell, her touch, her smile. Most of all, I feel a crushing void within where being in love with her used to be. I miss SO BADLY the feeling of having someone to love, to be in love with. Of course I also miss the sex very badly, and it was great. In fact we've only had sex with each other since we got together at 18, and it was a really special part of our relationship. But mostly I miss having someone to love and to express that love to. It's so painful in this moment that I can't stand it and, holding back tears, I decide to call my mom.
I get ahold of my dad, since he answers before my mom. But I only want to talk to my mom right now. He asks me how I'm doing and I don't say much, just that I'm a bit down and I want to talk to mom. I think he can tell I am upset. My mom gets on the phone and immediately I start crying softly, but not too hard to talk. But my voice is constantly quavering. I tell my mom that I've been clean for exactly two weeks (I don't mention the slip-ups) and that I am having a hard time, that I feel super lonely and then I tell her I miss having someone to be in love with, but I can't quite get through it without sobbing. I feel the loss of my relationship so deeply, and it hurts terribly. This makes my mom quaver a bit too, and then she tells me about how she is feeling about my dad, who has ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease, always fatal within 3-7 years), and then she starts crying a little bit. So we cry together, and it makes me feel a little better. I feel much less lonely because even though my parents live 700 miles away from me, I can still always rely on them to be there for me.
My mom tells me that I really should get some drug counseling, and maybe try NA. The idea of either one seems a little, I don't know, junkie-like to me. And then I realize, I have been a junkie for many years. I may never have gotten into heroin or injecting, as the stigma of junkie implies, but I have been a slave to opiates for almost ten tears, and have lied to the point of shattering my marriage for them, and lied to everyone else too. I realize that I really do need drug counseling, and I tell my mom that and I also tell her I'll try NA. She is extremely relieved, and I feel a bit of a weight lifted off me. I tell my mom I love her and get off the phone. I'm feeling a little better, the day looks a little brighter. I feel like I have something of a plan. My legs are restless, so I decide to go take a hot shower, which, as anyone ever addicted to opiates probably knows, is one of the only ways to feel pretty much normal and relaxed.
I get in the shower, feeling very weak. I think about recent times as the water turns hot and I step gratefully into it. I realize that I am often physically tired, but I don't do much. This is one of those times, so I sit down in the shower, turning it up a little to account for the greater distance the water is falling and cooling, and then I lay back, letting the water flow over my legs like a balm. As I lay there, weakly, wishing I never had to get up, I look at myself, like really look at my body. And it terrifies me. My rib cage is dramatically sticking out, my muscles are tiny, weak. I have been living a mostly sedentary life where all I do is work at my home on a chair at a desk, take opiates and lounge around and go out and drive places by car. It hits me hard how out of shape I am. And then it occurs to me that in five years, I see myself having a child that is being raised by myself and the mother, married or not. I want to find someone else to love. And to do that, I need to make myself into the person I want to be, a healthy, happy, strong, vibrant, non-addict adult male who has his shit together and has the means to support a child. And as I realize this, my horror turns to determination. I recall suddenly the last dream I had the previous night on ibogaine, the reincarnation dream. The significance and magnitude of such an experience slams into me and fills me with reverence for life, that it even exists, the great unsolvable mystery of how matter can become conscious and alive. And then a stream of recollections from my three-day dream vision quest that started a week ago slams together in my brain all in order, and I understand the flow of the visions, at least largely, and what they have prepared me for. I feel filled up with a strength I never knew I had, born from a steely resolve to leave my darkness behind and live my current life to its fullest, because that's why we're here. To live. To experience joy, love, suffering, sadness, and the entire range of human emotions. And I realize that I have it within me to change in any way that I want, to pick myself up and make the life I want, that I should have, that I need to be fulfilled. The fact that it is possible for me to experience what I experienced on my ibogaine journey is incredible, and reveals to me just how beautiful life is. Tears spring to my eyes as I stand back up in the shower, grateful to be alive and ready to never take another opiate again as long as I live, even if I have to suffer some minor withdrawals for awhile, even if I experience PAWS (Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome) as I have before. Everything has come together, all of the fragments from the past week, and I once again feel eternally grateful that I made this experience happen for myself. And what's this? Suddenly I feel... happy, content, centered. With a clear mind, I think about my situation as the hot water caresses my back and head. What to do to fix this? Number one, I need to exercise, regularly, daily, and get back in shape. Number two, I need to eat a lot of healthy food and put weight back on, because my skinniness and lack of energy is alarming. Number three, I need to start drug counseling therapy, and possibly start going to NA meetings. There. That's it. Those three or four things will allow me to turn my life around, or at least to start.
I finally get out of the shower, refreshed in every way. The world looks brighter and I feel a hundred times lighter. I spend the rest of the day going out to buy good food, browsing Bluelight, and beginning to write an outline for the report I am going to write on my experience. I feel it's not quite time to start writing in earnest, because it isn't over yet. Eventually, the night grows late and I get in bed. It probably takes me an hour to get to sleep because my legs are restless and I have that weird body energy, yet it barely bothers me.
I awake on Sunday morning, the eighth day after my flood dose began, sluggish as is common when withdrawing, and a bit restless, but in a good mood. I get up and go to church, which I attend for the nice people and because I sing in the choir there. I love singing and this is a great choir, and we're working on some really beautiful pieces. I haven't been there in a couple of weeks, due to various reasons, all drug-related. It feels good to be back. I may have never attended church again after college unless my ex insisted or I was with my family, but when we moved to North Carolina after college, she got a church pianist job and begged me to join the choir. I reluctantly did, but it ended up being a wonderful thing in my life, because the church really had the right idea about things and it was such a warm, loving place to be a part of. This church today is the same way. The people are great, the messages are always positive and loving, and it's a good group to be a part of for me, and it allows me to have the experience of singing in a good choir.
I get in my car after showering and dressing and drive to the church. Upon arrival, I suddenly get a little anxious to interact with these people (mostly old people or at least in their fifties, I am the youngest by far). But it's not a big deal, I decide to just deal with it, and I still have a smile on my face. I walk in, a bit out of breath as I make it to the top of the stairs, and get to the choir room. Everyone is really happy to see me and asks me how I've been doing, which is difficult to answer. But their enthusiasm makes me feel happy and welcome. I just tell them I've been going through some stuff but I'm back. I previously told them I was going through divorce, so I am sure that's what they assume. It turns out we're singing a really beautiful song from the Rutter Requiem (which we are learning the entirety of), and I enjoy it greatly. After that, there is still some service to go and I feel a bit antsy. I almost decide to get up and leave, but ultimately I feel I have to be strong, and learn to deal with negative feelings without hiding. So I stay, and I am glad I do. While at the service I send out some positive energy and intention during the prayers. A plan for the rest of the day is churning through my brain.
After church ends, I head out quickly. On the way back, I stop at several stores including a natural foods farmstand that I often get produce at, quality and cheap compared to the grocery store. I load up on eggs, fruit, vegetables, rice... a few frozen and other supplements to the main meals. I buy a bunch of granola and cereal too. I also purchase a thing of pre-workout supplement to help maximize energy and muscle usage when I start working out. Then I go to GNC and buy a large container of high-quality protein powder, chocolate flavored. While out at the mall, where GNC is, I usually buy a Double Doozie from the Great American Cookie Company. They're so delicious, but it is very easy to resist, because I am committed to eating right. On the way home, I stop to buy a jug of ant killer/repeller, so I can do the perimeter of the house inside and out, because ant season is upon me.
Finally I arrive home, many bags of groceries and supplies on hand. Before I do anything, I call my doctor, who I remember gave me a recommendation for a drug counselor/therapist when I broke my hand in late July 2013 (from punching the refrigerator during a fight with my ex-wife; I sure am glad to be out of that unsolvable situation!). I had told him about my opiate addiction because he offered me hydrocodone for my hand and at the time I was clean (though it didn't last long). I got ahold of the receptionist who said she'd tell the doctor to call me. So while I wait, I begin cooking a stir-fry sauce, something of an Indian and Thai fusion sauce, with coconut mild, peanut butter, yellow and red Indian curries, and Thai curry. At the end I add some cream. The result is an amazingly delicious sauce. I find my rice cooker and start cooking some organic brown basmati rice I bought in bulk. Then the phone rings; it's my doctor. He tells me his advice: call this therapist, who he says is amazing, and gives me her number and info. Then he says I should go to NA meetings. And finally he says that there is an outpatient rehab program he can give me information for. He is very compassionate and supportive. I thank him profusely and write all of the information down. Then as soon as he hangs up, I call the therapist, as that is what I am most eager to start. I figure it will help me in more ways than one, and maybe help me identify what parts of myself or my thought processes are holding me back. I call her and leave a message. Then I go back to the food preparation.
The rice is done, the sauce is done. I put some vegetable oil and olive oil in my large pan and start chopping vegetables, carrots, bok choy, green pepper and onion, both yellow and red. I throw them all in there and start stir-frying. I stick the onions in first to caramelize just a bit. Then after I add the rest of the vegetables I add the rice and after it all is hot and frying, I pour in a bunch of the sauce, and stir it all up. It smells phenomenal. I close the lid of the pot and let it fry for a bit. Then I crack three eggs in, stir them up, and cover again until it's all cooked. I begin to eat it; oh man, if this is what eating healthy is, then I'm going to love this! Before long, much to my surprise, I have eaten the entire pot, easily four or five servings. I'm full but I can tell I will want to eat more later, as it's only about 6pm. Dinner finished, I look up NA meetings... I figure I should give it a try, and at this point I am still scared of my own brain. I feel pretty good now but I've been here many times before and I ALWAYS have relapsed due to convincing myself in some way that it would be appropriate. I find an NA meeting right down the street at a church, in a half hour. I quickly get ready and go.
At the NA meeting, I sit there quietly, a bit too out of place feeling to actually get up and tell my story. And I am not sure that they will all want to hear about how I used a drug to get off a drug. A lot of these people are very desperate looking and sounding and the whole vibe is very 'no drugs, ever'. That's not what I want, I want to be able to smoke marijuana responsibly (as I do already), and take psychedelics occasionally, and even take other drugs that aren't opiates on occasion. I am not into the victim mentality. I have the power to stay off opiates without going to a meeting every day or surrendering myself to something else. It is something only I can do, I can do it without being involved in such a depressing organization. At least that's how I see it while I am in this meeting. After a while, it's over and I slip out before anyone can talk to me. The whole thing made me feel a little weird, but in way, also stronger, because I realize I can do this without putting myself into that kind of mindset. So in a roundabout way, the meeting does help me.
I head back home and spend the rest of the day cleaning up the house, spraying an ant perimeter, and eating more and more food. Finally it is night time, and I set my alarm for 7:30am, intending to get up to work out for the first time at the local YMCA, where I can get a guest pass, and then join after that guest week. I am extremely excited to start working out, I just know that I will feel much better once I am getting in shape. The last thought in my mind before I fall into a somehow comfortable sleep is that I can't wait to start my new life tomorrow.
This retelling took a long time and a lot of discipline to write, and in compiling it together, my integration of the trip was aided. It is now Monday May 19th, three weeks and two days after I first took my flood dose, and I have finally completed this report. But my journey is only beginning. I feel as if my life has started anew. Many of my most significant past bad patterns of behavior and thought are simply no longer there, replaced with new, healthy ones, as if by magic.
On that Monday morning two weeks ago, I did indeed wake up and head to the gym, after I stopped at GNC to get some protein powder and pre-working muscle power supplement. I've been doing three days on, one day off with the working out. Always in the past, I disliked working out; I mean, I've always liked the results but the process of doing it felt painful and unpleasant to me. But now, it's one of the best parts of my day, I would do it every day if I could get away with it. The minor lingering withdrawal has nearly gone, but it still pops up if I don't work out, perhaps a very mild form of PAWS. The exercise has allowed my mood to stabilize and I have gone through every day with a smile on my face. And I'm already twice as in shape and strong as I was, I can lift so much more, run so much farther, bike so much farther. It feels so great to be so much more in tune with my body, and for my body to feel so much healthier.
Additionally I have kept up with my new eating habits. I am buying mostly organic fruits and vegetables, lots of them and lots of variety, and rice, organic chicken, and eggs, lots of eggs. I eat about six eggs a day, three for breakfast and then for dinner I make stir-fry with egg in it. I'll make my own sauces, usually Thai or Indian (or a fusion) and then I'll stir-fry up some vegetables, maybe green pepper, carrot, bok choy, sugar snap peas, and mango, add some rice, then add some sauce, and once the vegetables are tender I'll add three eggs and heat it until the eggs are fully cooked. This will fill up an entire large frying pan to the rim, easily 4 to 6 servings. And I'll eat the whole thing over the course of two hours for dinner. Plus I am also eating 50 grams of protein powder on workout days. I have been eating tremendous amounts of food, as I am six feet tall and weighed only 130 pounds at my low point, when I saw my ribs in the shower. I went to a potluck with my friends a few days ago and I ate the biggest portion of dinner out of anyone, then I was still hungry so I went out to get a burger, hush puppies and shake, and then after I ate that, an hour later I was hungry again so I ate another helping of dinner as big as the first; this is the kind of eating I've been doing (except the burger and shake were just that once). But I'm happy to say that now I weigh 145 and my ribs are no longer sticking out. My appetite is a bit less than it was in the past day or two, I suspect I am catching up and can eat more normally from now on. I still plan to eat loads of fruit and vegetables though, indefinitely. A proper diet makes SUCH a big difference in how I feel.
I also began drug counseling/therapy two Wednesdays ago. I really like my therapist, she seems cool and open-minded. I have decided in my life to tell the truth from now on, which is a lesson hard-learned from my failed relationship. So I told her the truth about my story. Ibogaine didn't ring a bell to her, until I described what it's for and then she recalled hearing about it, but had never met anyone who did it. She seemed fascinated by my story and agreed with me that it seems to have so much potential for addiction treatment. I told her that I plan to keep using psychedelics and marijuana responsibly, and she seems to think this is alright, and she also seems open to psychedelics being a positive influence in a person's life. I've had two sessions so far and it feels good to have someone to talk to about this stuff who isn't a friend or family. I plan to continue therapy for at least a long while.
I have not been back to NA after that first time. It just didn't quite sit right with me. Plus I don't feel I need it, I feel good, steady, stable. It is, however, good to know it's there, in case I need it.
The post-ibogaine euphoria, which at first seemed like it was destroyed, was really just in hiding, and it has been coming back out, little by little. It is not nearly as strong or wonderful as it was those first few days after I emerged, but it's still wonderful and it's helping me to keep my new life on track.
The course of the dream visions, which at the time and directly afterwards seemed so random and nonsensical, was in fact logical after all. When everything came together for me in the shower a week later I realized what they meant and why their course fell out the way it did. The first day or so consisted of a spattering of pleasant dreams with dreams containing myself being controlled by dark occult forces. It is my belief that the occult forces present in many of my dreams always represented the opiates and excessive drugs in my life. On that first day I also had the dream about falling in love with that woman, which I think has been a help for me in getting the rest of the way over my ex.
The second night and morning were mostly filled with the long, monotonous, tedious gathering dream. In it, some mysterious, distant occult overlord force (the opiates) had driven me crazy, and I spent all of my days searching for things that I believed would make me feel better, but in reality were leading me to waste my life away and cause everyone else to see me as a crazy person. And in the end I tried to climb up out to escape, but my continual focus on my drugs caused me to fail in this. To me, the message here is very clear. This was one of the most impactful dreams on me because it was SO long, it occupied a lot of my thoughts for a while, and it was unpleasant in the same way that being an opiate addict is unpleasant. Shortly after that there were the dreams about the 'special festival drugs' and attempting to get them, yet another focus on mindlessly seeking drugs. The topic of drugs came up a whole lot in my visions, especially early on.
Then the third day's evening, when I was over at A and E's house, I believe was just there to show me a fun variety of experiences, to let off a little steam. The dreams were so incredibly random and bizarre and varied. I did notice that my family was in several of them, and we were in fantastical and amazing scenarios such as being gods in our sky palace or living in a space house. And the one where I woke up as a kid in my childhood bedroom and shook off the last twenty years of life as a crazy dream was amazing. I used to wonder when I was that age if I'd suddenly wake up and be 5 or 6 again, and now I have experienced that, sort of. I think Monday night's dreams basically just helped the post-ibogaine euphoria to get started and gave me a lot of pleasant and fun memories to treasure.
And last but certainly not least, the follow-up dose's visions were so amazing and so important to me, I feel they tied it all together. Unlike the flood dose dreams, these visions were more lucid and complete, and went much longer without shifting into something else. All of them involved being in space or on another absolutely beautiful planet. Many of them involved taking ibogaine, but there were no other drugs involved in these visions. I experienced many hyper-dimensional adventures and other incredible things which fill me with awe to have experienced. And the very last ibogaine dream I ever had, the one where I died and was reincarnated and experienced insights on the nature and structure of consciousness in the universe... that dream was the single most awe-inspiring of all of the dreams I had during that entire week. When it came flooding back to me in the shower when this trip came together for me, I was filled with awe for life, and gratefulness that I have my life, here, as Xorkoth. And ever since then I have been steadily filled with an appreciation for, and enjoyment of, my life. Although the post-ibogaine euphoria is more subtle now and has been slow to return, I realize that I am feeling it. Every day still feels new and exciting, and I nearly always have a smile on my face.
In conclusion, my ibogaine flood dose at home was a huge success for me, although it nearly went off course after the initial flood dose. I believe my greatest mistake was in not having enough supervision lined up. I also should have unplugged my electronics, thrown away my kratom, and hidden my phone and car keys. That would have solved most of the issues I ran into, but I might have just found more things to be a problem, which is why the very most important thing for this kind of experience is CONSTANT supervision for THREE DAYS at least. I am fine, but I could have very easily gotten into serious trouble, been arrested, been institutionalized, hurt myself, or any number of other undesirable outcomes. Imagine if I had wandered my neighborhood, trying to talk to my neighbors and babbling nonsense? Or if I had, god forbid, driven (I keep assuming I did not and that was just a dream, but really who knows for sure? I could have been dreaming that it was evening while actually driving). Also, had I had supervision, they could have prevented me from taking all the other drugs I did right after I emerged. I believe I did screw myself a bit and that I would be in an even better place now had I just hung around peacefully and been watched for the days afterward. But the message of iboga had not come together yet when I re-entered the world. I could have really benefited from taking the rest of the week off work too, I definitely went back too soon. My recommendation to you, the single strongest and most important one, is to have sufficient supervision for a sufficient amount of time, and give yourself at least a week of nothing else going to to integrate your experience. Such a long and monumental trip deserves that. It worked out for me beautifully in the end, and all the pieces fit together, but I took some really big risks that I do not recommend, so please learn from my mistakes.
Overall, my ibogaine flood dose was tied for my most important +4 experience, tied with my very first trip, on mushrooms, that blasted open my mind and revealed to me my spirituality and forever altered my life because of it. But ibogaine was far and away the most influential experience I've ever had on my day-to-day behaviors. It has been deeply transformative in a way that surprises me every day and is difficult to describe, though I have certainly tried my best. It feels like my old life ended and my new life has begun. It feels like it's been months since I took that flood dose. The few days of acute effects seemed to go on for weeks. Also, ibogaine was the most intense experience I have ever had by a tremendous margin. Even the follow-up dose of ~350mg was incredibly intense. I have had a lot of really intense psychedelic experiences but this one is in its own league; it has redefined my standards of intensity.
If you made it this far, congratulations for reading it all, and I hope you enjoyed it! If you're considering taking a flood dose of ibogaine, for addiction or any other reason, I hope this story has been informative for you and that you can learn from some of my mistakes. I have total confidence that I can continue this indefinitely, even though it's only been a few weeks, because of how much my patterns of thought and behaviors have changed. I truly do feel reborn and I have no cravings for opiates; that part of my life is blessedly over, and I feel better on a day to day basis than I did when I took opiates during my addiction. If you're looking to try this, know that in my experience ibogaine is the most powerful spiritual plant medicine that exists on this planet. It is NOT to be taken lightly, and preparations must be made, even more than what I did. But also know that iboga is a gentle teacher. Despite my descriptions of extreme intoxication, staggering length of time, and utterly engrossing dreams, some of which were unpleasant or frightening, I never once felt real fear (except when I wasn't being watched on the third day and freaked out and emailed my boss because I thought I had broken my brain), just dream fear, more of a sense of foreboding really.
I will most certainly take a flood dose again one day, though not for addiction. I loved everything about my experience and I thank my lucky stars every single day that iboga found its way into my life, at just the right time. To be free of opiates after ten years of soul-crushing slavery to them... forget MasterCard, now THAT is priceless.
| Exp Year: 2014 | ExpID: 103568 |
| Gender: Male | |
| Age at time of experience: 30 | |
| Published: Jun 5, 2014 | Views: 33,689 |
| [ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ] | |
| Dreams (85), Tabernanthe iboga (200), Ibogaine (28) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Addiction & Habituation (10), General (1) | |
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