DOSE:

30 mg

smoked

DPT

(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

190 lb

For months I had been without psychedelic experience. In fact, in the previous year, there have been only a few. The acid was long since gone. It has been hard even to find mushrooms lately. Then I remembered the DPT on the shelf, next to the DMT and 2C-B that were too sacred to use until the perfect time. The DPT was there only because I didn't know what else to do with it. About eight years ago I obtained some DPT from a supply house, and experimented with it. It was freebase, I assumed, because the label didn't say DPT HCl, just DPT. My friends and I smoked it and tripped and generally had a good time. I ordered more when it ran out, but all I could get was DPT HCl at that time. So that came and I had heard that you couldn't smoke it so I tried snorting it, but vowed never to do it again because the drip burned the back of my throat so badly. Then I tried injecting it IM, and that was so intense I only did it once. I put 200mg each into a bunch of caps and gave it to some friends to eat. They had a mellow but fun experience. So I had 200 mg left that I didn't know what to do with. It sat there for years.

The other day I brought it out, blew the dust off. It had turned sort of a tan color from the white that it used to be. Because I heard that it oxidizes over time, I had no faith that it would work in any sort of form whatsoever. I thought about it. Then on a whim I put a little bit into a glass pipe and heated the glass with a flame. It melted immediately! I watched, and the oil did not resolidify. I vaporized a small amount and inhaled it, and waited for something to happen. My legs began to feel restless: an unmistakable alert! It's going to work! Whether the HCl salt is actually smokable, or whether I in fact had the freebase, I do not know. What I do know is that it worked, it is still potent even after sitting there for seven years! I put it away for the time being.

Today I brought it out again. I set everything up for an escape. I had the music all cued up and the headphones adjusted just right. I had the blankets smoothed out. My body was clean and naked. Yet as I loaded the DPT into the pipe, I hesitated. Was this really what I wanted?

What I really wanted is to escape from alcohol. I did not want to consume any today. Nor tomorrow. Nor the next day. It has become painfully obvious what a negative force in my life alcohol has become, and yet I have found it difficult to let go of. Perhaps if I plunged into DPT space, I would not feel the urge to drink tonight. Perhaps if I went in there, there would be some answer waiting for me that I had been searching for.

Fuck it, I thought. I held the lighter flame to the glass and watched the 100mg I had put in there melt. Soon, vapor appeared in the pipe, and I put my lips to it and inhaled long and slow. The vapor from DPT is not harsh like DMT, it doesn't seem to burn your lungs. It just tastes warm and sweet and makes your tongue go kind of numb. I took all my lungs could hold (maybe 30 mg vaporized?). Unlike DMT, DPT does not start to come on as you are still inhaling. It waits until you've held your hit for a while. I held it as long as I could, and as I did so the walls very gently began to breathe, the texture on the ceiling began to crawl. I exhaled, and my breath was full of vapor. I had planned to take another hit, but then I found myself just staring at the pipe. I didn't want to take another hit, but I didn't not want to either. I just felt very peaceful and content to sit there and stare at it instead of smoking it.. Well, I'd better set the pipe down, then.

I laid back to be absorbed into the music: Divine Moments of Truth by Shpongle. But I found that the world was much more interesting with my eyes open than with them closed. The ceiling was very colorful and crawling, with repeating organic movements. My inner monologue was very noticeable, the music not so. When I had listened to this song on DMT, I seemed to travel to another space entirely, one in which this particular song was playing with total and utter cosmic genius. This time, it seemed just like some good music to be listening to. I was brought very much into the awareness of THIS space, this world, this body. I could feel my legs getting restless.

When the song finished ten minutes later, I got up. I felt cold. I put on running clothes and shoes. Outside it was late afternoon, wind was in the trees and dark clouds in the sky. I didn't care. I put on a beanie and glasses and called the dogs. I walked out the front door. The sky was shimmering, the sidewalk crawling. The wind was bitter cold and a few snow flurries were falling. Whoa, this is going to be intense, I thought. Fuck it.

The dogs ran out the back gate when I opened it. I ran after them down the trail that leads towards the mountain behind my house. I felt very cold. I don't know if I'll get far, I thought. Everything was moving, but then when you're running, everything is moving whether you're on drugs or not. That inner monologue still very clear. My feet go where they go, my thoughts wander.

Ever since I was first exposed to them, I have been wrestling with the question: 'What is it, exactly, that psychedelics DO?' Its hard to answer, because they don't really DO anything. Maybe its better to ask what they stop you from doing.

So I drop that first hit of acid, and wait a few hours. At first, nothing happens. Then, all of a sudden I discover that the ordinary has become very profound. Only, maybe it hasn't. No, actually, it was profound all along. It's just that somewhere along the line, I stopped paying attention to it. It's funny, people always talk about how profound the psychedelics are. But its not the drugs that are profound, it's the whole UNIVERSE that's profound! Everything! That rock and that tree and that bug and that dog running ahead and the clouds above and all of it profoundly beautiful, miraculous, divine. Whether we notice or not.

When I was a child, and the whole world was new, everything in it was fascinating to me. That is because I was observing it from a beginner's standpoint. I did not think that you knew anything about it, therefore I paid attention carefully in order to learn. But at some point I decided that I had learned enough, and so I formed labels in my mind for things. 'Bug.' 'Tree.' 'Cloud.' Once I created in my mind this simplified idea of things, I could stop paying attention to them and focus on other things. What the kindergarten teacher wanted, for example.

I've come to the first junction. I take the left path, up the mountain. A warmth is starting to seep through my body from the muscles moving inside. My legs are running. The scenery is passing. My thoughts are flowing...

When you were very young, I am saying to myself, your brain was plastic. It was moldable. Synapses were forming, breaking, and re-forming. I experienced stimulus, and I learned action. In my brain, neural connections were made that associated a familiar pattern of stimulus with a pattern of reaction. Clouds, for example, did not require much action, because they could not be interacted with. Likewise, they did not require much attention. How many times a day do I walk outside and not notice what is going on in the sky above you? That is because the sky rarely requires any action, so my brain filters out the visual stimulus of the sky, and keeps it from reaching my conscious mind. It leaves my mind to focus on more important matters. 'What am I going to have for lunch today?' 'Am I going to be late for work?' 'Will I have enough money left over this month to buy that jacket that I want?'

My brain became more and more hard-wired as I grew older. Old neural connections become harder and harder to break, and new ones harder to make. My brain began to function in a rhythmic pattern, instead of chaotically as it did when I was young. I wake up in the morning, go to work, come home, drink beer, and go to sleep. One day starts to blur into the next. Sometimes I think to myself that tomorrow I will make a change, but then tomorrow comes and more than likely it goes the same way as yesterday. This is because my brain has become hardwired for me to behave in this way.

I am on top. Already? I didn't even notice myself running up the steepest part of the trail. Come to think of it, I can't even remember doing it! Huh. It is strangely peaceful under the Ponderosas at the top. The wind has stopped. New fallen snow sits fluffy and white among the trunks. My pace quickens as I begin descending the other side.

I think that what psychedelic drugs must accomplish by binding to the 5-HT-2 receptor is that they stop these neural connections from functioning, temporarily. They stop the filters from working. Poison for the mind, as Pendell would say. Poisoning normalcy. Poisoning familiarity. Poisoning those cancerous patterns that have grown there and make me sick. I glance at the sky and instead of my brain labeling 'Clouds' and diverting attention elsewhere, I am all of a sudden caught by the stunning beauty unfolding above me. And all around me. Everywhere. All of a sudden, the world is new, like it was when I was a child. Everything is innocent again. Everything is beautiful again. I forget where I have to be at a certain time tomorrow, but I am very aware of what is going on right this very now.

In our society we are so focused on the future that we tend to forget to appreciate what we have in the present moment. How many times do we really stop to notice how good it feels to be alive? But when you stop to think about it, it really does feel good to be alive and healthy, even if you're sleepy, even if your muscles are sore from the day before. How many times do we stop just to take a deep breath and enjoy? Most of the time, people forget to do these things, and I think this is a great loss. The psychedelics tend to slap me across the face and remind me of these things. It is very hard not to forget again and slip back into the old ways of functioning, but I think it is a very important lesson to remember that there is a now, and it is amazing.

So why the addiction? Why the drinking? I can see that the influence of alcohol takes me in the exactly opposite direction. It takes me away from the now, away from the present, away from the joy and the pain and the beauty all around us all the time. It is an escape, when the way seems too hard, when things are too painful or too frustrating. It is easy. It demands no responsibility. It is a lazy man's drug. It takes the pain away, but it takes the beauty away too. All the poignancy of this wonderful and terrible world is lost to the drunkard, who escapes to his slumber or his stupor.

The wind is blowing again and a few flurries are hitting me in the face. My chest heaves with the breath that steams from my mouth. The world is cold and grey and stormy and very beautiful. I am running fast, down the hill towards my house, floating over the rocks and around the winding bends.. feeling very alive and very grateful to be here now, in this moment, in this body, in this world.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 61818
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Apr 2, 2007	Views: 22,728
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DPT (21) : Mystical Experiences (9), Personal Preparation (45), General (1), Alone (16)