DOSE:	1 bowl	smoked	Wormwood	(tar / resin)
		smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

210 lb

I bought three grams of wormwood resin extract (10X) off a website based out of the Netherlands. It came as several chunks that looked like solid mud, but was much harder to break up. I crushed it into an orange-brown crystalline powder which reminded me of topaz flakes. It had the slight smell of pine needles. I put a tiny nugget of marijuana in the bottom of a glass pipe to prevent the powder from falling through, and added the wormwood on top. In total the pile of powder was about the size of a dime around and about half a centimeter high. The setting was my living room, on a lazy summer evening, with nobody else around. I was very comfortable and had little to no anxiety over trying the extract.

The smoke was unusually hot and it had a rather unpleasant, plastic-like taste. The crystals sizzled a bit at first when lit, and they fused together into a solid mass after each toke which had to be broken up with a knife tip. As with any smoke, the effects were rather immediate. At lower doses, it was very similar to marijuana, with generalized feelings of sedation and contentment, but my limbs felt heavier. Other similarities include turning down the volume knob on conscious thought, and that 'buzzed' or lightheaded feeling.

I got into a meditational posture, and I found it easy to keep the correct mindstate without attention to breath or other techniques. As I continued to smoke (which took several minutes due to the rather harsh nature of the smoke itself), the differences from cannabis became clearer. Wormwood did not have the effect of diminishing short-term memory. My muscles became rather tense and mildly sore, making me want to stretch. There was a mild tension in my chest, and my throat felt a little tight, but both were fully ignorable. Unlike marijuana which gives me a certain cheeriness, I felt blankly content.

Visuals were nearly absent, but there was some interplay between light and shadow and a few vague yellow and blue overlays on objects, likened to what you see for a second after you close your eyes, but with eyes still open-- psychologists call this 'negative after images'. While in the meditational mindstate, it seemed like whatever I focussed on became stronger, and the rest simply faded out of awareness. I felt quite unmotivated too.

There was only one effect which I found significant. After five or so minutes of taking these small, harsh hits, the crystals had turned black, and I stopped trying to get more out of it. Around that time, the 'buzzed' feeling slowly expanded outwards. A pressure began to build in my head, pushing out mainly forward but also up slightly. It was focussed around my forehead, the strongest sensation coming from the area of the third eye. It was truly an odd feeling, for it gave me the impression of sensing or feeling the area directly in front of my head. This, the peak, lasted for fifteen minutes or so. The effects slowly subsided, and were gone in about two hours.

I have since given it to several other experienced trippers, and most simply liken it to marijuana, only a little different. For me, it felt like a rather superficial drug with the strange coincidence of giving a specific sensation in the third eye region. After a half dozen experiences, I feel no need to order any more (although I would try pure thujone if given the opportunity). Overall I would say that it's worth a try, but do not expect to get anything profound or meaningful out of it. It's like marijuana, but inferior to it in my opinion.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 53863
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 4, 2009	Views: 34,358
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Wormwood (50) : Retrospective / Summary (11), General (1), Alone (16)