DOSE:	1	oral	Cannabis	(edible / food)
		vaporized	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

50 kg

Pretext
--
I'm not by any means a regular cannabis user. Usually, I consume it from every few weeks to every few months, mostly in smoked form. Apart from that, I had a few previous experiences with psychedelics, especially psilocybin mushrooms. I've experienced psychedelic states on cannabis in the past, including sensory hallucinations and closed-eyed visuals but never as intense as the report below. A day before this particular "trip" I consumed an increased amount of cannabis (smoking + edibles) leading to slight CEV (tunnels moving to psytrance, geometric patterns forming, fractals, as well as images expanding in "zooming out" fashion). Therefore I'm assuming I had a slightly increased tolerance during the experience described below.

Before the trip
--
On the date of the trip, I visited friends in a small quiet village. Although there were some new faces at the get-together I knew many of them so I felt fairly comfortable. We spent most of the day outdoors in the woods.

Time of ingestion
--
As we got back we decided on taking some cannabis edibles while having a BBQ for dinner. I was keen on exploring the psychedelic properties of cannabis more, which lead me to decide to take on a heavy dose. A friend previously prepared some very potent pot brownies out of some strong sativa strains. In total one edible contained about a hundred milligrams of THC. Before starting to eat I took a whole muffin on an empty stomach and took a few hits from a vaporizer to start off the experience. I knew that THC contained psychedelic properties but oh boy was I in for a ride.

Onset
--
The effects kicked in fairly quickly. Even though from this point on my sense of time was harshly impacted I believe it took about half an hour. A friend of mine was a hobbyist photographer, who showed me his picture gallery on a tablet computer. The images displaying colorful plants and fuzzy animals were wonderful to look at. They looked incredibly crisp and colorful and seemed to almost pop out of the screen. That's when I noticed the effects at first. The images almost seemed 3-dimensional, the motives seemed to reach out far from the bokeh. Colors (especially complementary-contrasts) seemed to melt and blend into each other. "That isn't natural is it?" was I thinking to myself. I seemed to have stared at them for an awful lot of time because a friend asked me if I was okay. I was. In fact, I rarely experienced such beauty in pictures before. Soon after I leaned back in my chair...and seemed to fall. I noticed how the effects crept in big time and a short moment of anxiety overcame me. It's still getting stronger?? Yes, this was only the beginning. To prevent a bad experience I knew I had to let go and decided to roll with the effects - worst case I could always smoke some CBD to ease those effects. This fact gave me peace of mind while I was sinking deep, deep into my own mind.



Peak
--

"What time is it?"
I believe it was around 9:30pm when I first asked that question. After quickly texting some friends I got sucked "down" into the chair, into my own mind again.



"What time is it?"
"When did I look at the clock first?"
"Was it 9:00pm or was it later?"
"How long was I in that state already?"
I couldn't remember it for the sake of it.



A strong force seemed to pull me into the chair again. I could speak, though preferred not to and only when absolutely necessary. My consciousness cleared up from time to time, letting me peek into a very distorted view of the world, but a few seconds later I would've been lost in my own mind again. In those moments I knew what I took, that it's a physically harmless substance and that I would be fine the next day...but a few hours seemed like such a long time especially only being about an hour in.



Then there was the grill. There was always more meat on it. More and more meat. I already ate more than enough and didn't want any more meat. As soon as somebody finished they kept up adding more on the grill, mostly when I was "under". This irritated me, I didn't want more meat, it was so much. The whole scene seemed like a joke from the universe - A neverending BBQ of confusion. The scenery would never stop, there's always more meat on the grill. "So this is why so many psychonauts are living a vegetarian life - not because of animal suffering but because they can't stand the meat anymore!" I internally laughed at that thought for a bit, realizing that this probably wasn't the case even though it felt like it. Other intrusive thoughts kicked in "This is greed", "This is gluttony"...over and over again.



"What time is it?" - 10:00pm.
"When did I start to count?"
"Was it 9:00pm or later?"
"When did I take that muffin?"
I decided to start over and count the time from here on.



Everything began to develop a very cartoony and chaotic vibe to it. The sound of psytrance that somebody played on a speaker didn't help. All people seemed to have a very cartoonish character, all emotions seemed to be really over the top.

All people seemed to have a very cartoonish character, all emotions seemed to be really over the top.

I experienced vivid visual hallucinations, or I at least remember them that way. The sunset in the background seemed to split from everything in the foreground. Everything looked distinctively 2-dimensional and very saturated, just like in a cartoon.
-I remember a friend standing up and having a sharp golden outline around them.
-I remember trees curling up in a spiraling "fractal-like" matter.
-I also vaguely remember seeing clipart-like images of topics that I was heavily thinking about in the past few days

If I remember correctly then all those occurrences happened more in the peripheral area of my vision but I'm not a 100% sure.

I walked inside to the kitchen for a while. Although I could only move very slow and carefully. Suddenly I experienced a massive change in scene. The golden light from the lamp combined with the feeling of being more clear-headed due to walking made it seem like a whole other world. It almost felt as if I was under a tent in a massive dessert while every motion would blow waves of sand of my arms. I went to the bathroom real quick where the fuzzy carpet seemed to curl up, almost like you would expect it from a psilocybin trip. When looking in the bathroom mirror my image seemed to be slightly distorted, but I couldn't identify why. [In hindsight my reflection seemed to be pretty yellowish (most likely due to the lighting), which I assume added to the whole cartoony quality.] On my way back I met a friend who was grabbing a snack from the kitchen.

I told them about my heavy time dilution. and looked at the clock on my phone...10:10pm. How could it only be 10 minutes after I started counting? "It felt like I have lived several eons and only 10 minutes have passed since I started counting??" I also mentioned that I couldn't count to 10 without being sucked into my own mind again and tried it. "1...2...3...4...5...6" - I'm not sure if I finished it, I for sure can't remember anything after that. Once again I reminded myself to go with the flow and not freak out, so I went back outside again.



As soon as I sat back down the exact same cartoony scene seemed to go on again. I was surprised that nothing changed since I left and I just got thrown into the same thoughts and visuals again. When I walked between the two locations I could feel the change, almost like switching location in a video game where events are rather static and seem the same upon visiting again.
"Still so much meat."
"More and more."
"I don't want more meat."
"Not more meat."
I perceived an interesting phenomenon where, in the corner of my eyes, I could visually see my friends as their perceived archetypes. This was especially clear when I identified a very "humorous and pranky" friend of mine as a jester as he danced around.



As it got darker my visuals shifted. I strongly remember seeing strings of energy between people, indicating how spiritually close they were to each other. Then everything seemed bright again. The world felt a shattering matrix at this point. I was sure that my "default" reality was just an illusion that could be eradicated at any time. From a visual standpoint, everything seemed to have gotten brighter and became divided into tiny pieces. If you've seen the movie Coraline the scene in the "fake garden" should be a fitting reference.

[I still can't imagine how much of a visual effect cannabis had on me. I'm still unsure whether it was the substance or my mind causing the hallucinations but I'm dead sure I've seen/experienced them. They would be just a bit too weird and specific for my mind to make them up after the trip plus I've taken notes during it describing them.]

Thoughts crept in "This is what you wanted right?", "This is what you hoped for?", "This is what you wanted?" over and over and over again. The questions had a slight hostility to them, a mean joke from MJ, laughing into my face for being naive and underestimating her effects. At this moment I realized the infinite potential of the mind. That this trip, however intense, was only a little taste of what my mind was capable off...and that it could go way deeper if I'm not careful. "This is what people take edibles for?", "This is what people say when they mean they got high?", "This is what they seek when consuming edibles?" [In an afterthought these thoughts seemed funny because I was pretty experienced with marihuana and those were definitely not the "normal" effects of mode enhancement and increased appetite most people seem to take it for. But at that time I was seriously contemplating if everybody was experiencing my current state when they took weed and why in the world anybody would want to do something like that.]



More and more meat. At this point, I faced an incredibly distorted view of the people around me. Their emotions seemed to be so over the top that laughing almost felt angry, almost felt manic. Faces seemed oddly distorted so I couldn't look at them for too long without feeling very weird (similar to the feeling to shrooms). I noticed how much of a "cotton mouth" I've developed and tried to drink some soda. Later I observed that I had no "guard" anymore, just like I would expect it from classical psychedelics. For a moment I was pretty afraid how people would perceive me but the feeling was rather mellow and fleeting. Yet I felt very uncomfortable as soon somebody said my name out loud. It felt oddly personal, something that should only belong to myself and not said out loud. Luckily I cleared up soon again and assured myself that those effects are temporary, that my friends certainly must like me but my view is very distorted because of substances right now.



More meat, more cottonmouth, more soda. I noticed that I felt physically unwell, so I relocated inside. The stairs, although barely a few inches high, seemed as tall as mountains and it must've taken me an awful amount of time to climb up and get inside. Once back in the bathroom I had to puke. The feeling when purging was pretty comfortable and I physically felt a lot better afterwards. In my experience, it didn't affect the intensity of the rest of the trip though. At this point, the clock showed 11:10pm. Later in the living room, I was approached by a friend who checked on me. This was a nice touch and made me feel much better.



I sat on a chair surrounded by a few friends who got cold and went inside as well. Once in awhile I got clear and tried to take notes about my experiences. But I always felt pushed into my own mind again, harder and faster than before. "So this is what madness feels like". I understood now. I truly understood how madness feels like. Merciless waves of clearance that show my delusions for a brief amount of time, before inevitably burying me inside myself again. Even though the experienced state felt incredibly psychotic...incredibly mad... I wasn't afraid since I knew that this state would be only temporary.



Somebody watched a weird video on their phone, typically high pitched youtube voices and people screaming over each other.



I snapped up a weird Japanese word from that video.



The word repeated itself again and again turning into a weird thought loop.



The word again [I can't remember what it was for the sake of it].



The word again, my friends laughed because I must've said it out loud all out of context.
I looked at the clock - 11:18pm.
A lifetime in eight minutes.
An eternity into the trip yet still hours to go.



Now I either have blacked out or been lost inside because a significant amount of time has passed. Around midnight a few more people joined in and we watched a comedic movie together. This was a nice change as it released the internal tension a bit. The film almost seemed to flow out of the screen a bit (probably because of the screen lighting up the pitch-black room). Later around 1am I fell asleep so I can't tell you about the comedown.

Afterthoughts
--
The next morning was great. I didn't sleep much and thus felt pretty exhausted but also relaxed. The effects were gone and everything turned normal again. As I walked through the sceneries of last night I still felt a strange, mystical presence at the scenes.

"This is what you wanted?"
During the trip, I had troubles answering that question. Reflecting upon the trip it definitely was. The experience didn't let me get a peek into wonderland, it shoved me right through the rabbit hole.

Compared with other substances the trip had a very dark quality to it. Not in a bad way but far different from common psychedelics. It seemed a lot weirder and less controllable. The massive body load, endless time dilution, thought loops, and waves of being stuck into my own mind added a bit of a deliriant quality to the whole experience. At the described dose I definitely recommend having a trip sitter and CBD ready. In the described state I definitely could understand how people could accidentally harm themselves.

A thing that didn't leave me alone for a while was the grill scene and the meaning behind it. A few days later I think I've figured it out. At the time of the trip, I was in a bit of a dilemma between career opportunities. One position paid significantly more and my ego clung to the "brand name" associated with the company (mostly for self-validation). The other position seemed exponentially more interesting, rewarding, and had a better overall cause. For days I've been contemplating which one to take. I believe that in this case, marihuana was a teacher.

I believe that in this case, marihuana was a teacher.

There were two main themes in the bbq scene:
- The act of people always wanting more meat and shoving more and more on the grill while I just wanted it to stop
- The words "greed" and "gluttony" that were repeated over and over again
In hindsight, I believe that those were an unconscious manifestation of myself, of how I always wanted more even though I already had more than enough and don't know when to stop. You can imagine that my decision wasn't a hard one anymore.

--
is indicating an undefined period without consciousness or memories
"" is indicating an internal monologue
[ ] is an author's comment describing thoughts after the trip upon reflection

Exp Year: 2020	ExpID: 114469
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Jun 29, 2020	Views: 5,340
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Cannabis (1) : Large Group (10+) (19), General (1)