DOSE: T+ 0:00	2 cups	oral	Coffee
T+ 3:30		oral	MDMA	(powder / crystals)
T+ 4:00	150 ug	sublingual	MIPLA	(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

61 kg

This past summer I was in one of the most profound and beautiful psychedelic state of my life. The peak plateau lasted for about 5 hours, with hours and even days of afterglow. It’s difficult to discern to what degree this experience is due to set and setting. Maybe in sharing some of its ingredients, repetition is possible. I hope so.

It was the final evening of a festival week and all music had already ended, except at the chill-out area. The past week had taken its toll on me. I was feeling very tired from less sleep than usual, dancing and dealing with the heat. I had also been working daily, as a psychedelic harm reduction volunteer; which gives but can also take.

When my shift was over, I went for a light meal (9-10 pm) and downed 2 coffees after. I am not so used to drinking coffee, but one cup was definitely not enough to get me going. I was unsure if this last festival evening still had something in store, and unsure if I would do any drugs, but food and coffee was a good start. Later in the evening I arrived at the chill-out temple and shared a few sips of my favorite rum (1 am) with a colleague. Earlier on he had confided he loved whiskey and was delighted to hear that I had brought a bottle of fine rum to the festival. (only 12 years old but in finesse easily overtakes others a decade older!) I wasn’t into drinking that night, so, I only had a few sips for taste.
A friend was by that time enjoying some first waves of 2C-B. Normally I tend towards leveling my state with party friends. Instead of taking 2C-B as well, I decided however to dip a bit of pure MDMA in my mouth (1h30 am – 35mg I estimate, in retrospect). It was clear that the festival week was having its positive effects too: I felt in touch with myself and could easily stand in my own truth of the moment.

When the MDMA came on, I swallowed 3/4 of a 200µg tab of MIPLA (2 am – so 150 µg) after letting the tab sit sublingually for a few minutes. Candyflipping gurus on the internet tell me that I need to be over the peak of the MDMA before adding a psychedelic. Otherwise the effects just fight each other. But it just felt right to do the MIPLA then and there. I had tried 150µg of MIPLA for the first time some weeks earlier, in a safe setting at home. MIPLA was clearly a friendly and easy-going substance that time. Generally, I half my doses on festivals but the fluo flashiness of the trance vibe had already ended and I felt safe enough to do the same dose.

Half an hour later (2h30 am), I started falling into an extra-ordinary state. I looked at people dancing to the slow beats, moving like plants on an ocean floor, and the beauty touched me profoundly; not so in a trippy way ‘moving like plants’ however – MIPLA has only soft visual effects – but more metaphorically, while at the same time feeling the beauty of a person, whoever my eyes would land on. One song was just the perfect match. I went up to the DJ and asked the track title: Paul Schulleri “Sirene (Zen Baboon remix).” It had taken a whole week of cooking in this pot called ‘festival’ to produce this chill-out vibe of people sitting, sleeping and dancing. It felt unique and I was glad to be there. Everybody was in some kind of cocoon, with his or her own festival and life history, and underlying that, in a shared mellow “cooked” state.

Only at the end of the evening did I try to objectively define my state of mind. I hadn’t been inclined to do that earlier, which is unusual for me. But it was impossible to define my state! I would focus unto something, like the morning mist on the lake, and my whole being would just be filled with the beauty of it, overwhelmingly, pushing out any thoughts or thought processes that were going on in my head. I could not analyze. So it was not that I was overlooking a scene and thinking “Oh.. everything is so beautiful”, which can happen in other psychedelic states. It was more a reality in which I became a building block of the surroundings, which at the same time enveloped me in the experience of the whole.

I was in a kind of clear observing, experiencing mode. However self-consciousness was mostly not part of that because everything I did just happened naturally and in tune with reality. When something unharmonious would occur in an interaction with someone, I would just move to harmony with the whole again, without any effort, and I could “solve” the situation naturally without unnecessary feelings of shame in me or giving them to others. At some point I needed to make clear to someone that I didn’t like having her around me. Being assertive was not difficult, and it went in a gentle and caring way.

I felt playful and trippy and went on a discovery mission. Wandering around, I found a group of four people who had created a funny micro-habitat somewhere on the ground of the chill-out temple. They were lying under a blanket on top of an air mattress in the shape of a pineapple. My brain was still relatively sharp and with humor intact, connecting was easy. At some point I enjoyed just listening to them, softly talking into each other’s ears. The intimacy of the dialogue sounds was pure bliss. I wished I had a bunch of friends like that whom I could have an under-the-blanket-session with. (Or probably just a girlfriend.) My only friend there was not in a “cozy around” mood. So, since that was not an option, which was fine, I hung around to the side of the pineapple club for a while.

Joining them under the blanket, becoming part of their festival casserole, did not feel appropriate. To be sure I was not on some ego trip, I checked with them if they minded me hanging around them. They happily said “not at all.” I like to keep an eye on possible ‘ego trips’ because MDMA and psychedelics can put me in touch with the divine, allow me to see through unfiltered eyes, but controlling and conditioned aspects of the ego can still break through that and warp the experience, without me being aware in a blissed state. (Paradoxically from these states, my unconscious ego games are brought more easily into the light than from an ordinary sober state.)

I noticed that only one specific ‘ego game’ could take me out of the amazing mind-body state: the feeling of being special. When I would think I could be of any special meaning to someone because of my unique state, that idea would take me out of it. Or any interacting from that mindset would be unharmonious. If I ‘d just surrender and be and move, the impact of my state on someone would just right. If that happened.

Because of the minimal visual effects of MIPLA it was like moving in ordinary reality. If I wanted to be in a more visual psychedelic reality, I probably could have intensified that. But I didn’t feel the need to focus on the psychedelic alterations. I did only so for a moment with my eyes closed. The closed-eyed visuals were peacock feather style, which is just my absolute favorite. I felt blessed with that, because it doesn’t happen often in my psychedelic explorations. Everything that had happened until that moment, the whole festival, had been perfect. In this trip report I can only share a few things, but there were many coincidences and some difficult situations that were necessary to make this evening possible. And I felt deeply grateful.

Towards the morning the chill-out temple had become quite chilly. With a warm chai in my hands I wandered off into the sunrise at the lake (7h30 am). Then to the camping (8h30 am). I lay down in my hammock and started to reflect on some difficult situations of the day before. I could easily move into them, reflect and find resolutions if necessary. At some point, without any sad feelings, tears just streamed down my face, triggered by a memory of the day before. A release from the deep.

I had a meeting to attend at 11am and needed a piece of fruit and a coffee. I wanted to speak at that meeting and the lack of sleep was starting to make my brain fuzzy. I ended up not being able to say things completely in the way I wanted to say them, but it felt okay and ‘just the way it is’. (Hey, that’s Bruce Hornsby, right?! – Sorry guys, I grew up in the 80’ies.)

What was left of me in these last hours, was a deep peaceful joy in being ordinary. Nothing cool or fancy walking on the festival grounds… just me.

This whole trip didn’t leave me with specific “profound revelations,” as I call, a bit ironically, my psychedelic insights. It was the state of being. Days and weeks after, I would be unexpectedly ‘touched by it’ or I could reconnect to it by listening to that Zen Baboon song again. In the bigger picture I have the impression that I‘ve changed a tiny bit, for the better. I have moved a bit closer to my true nature.

I am very grateful to everyone who made the experience possible.

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 112451
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: 42
Published: Oct 14, 2018	Views: 4,032
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MDMA (3), MIPLA (864) : Festival / Lg. Crowd (24), Glowing Experiences (4), Combinations (3)