DOSE:

18 in

oral

Cacti - T. pachanoi

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

160 lb

This is an attempted description of a profound psychedelic experience. The ‘trip’ occurred 3 days ago at a free campsite in the mountains of Arizona, on 18 inches of extracted san pedro cactus slime. I had eaten a small breakfast 10 hours earlier, but fasted the rest of the day.

I had recently moved to Arizona, from Maine, to return to college and attempt to release this mental state I had been in for quite sometime. I wouldn’t necessarily call it depression, as of late, more a boredom with life, though it often led to anxiety. I should probably mention that I am one year free from a near 3 year heroin ‘addiction.’ I quit taking both my Suboxone (after stepping down for quite a while) and a low dose of Paxil at the same time. Heroin (and all opiates) is the most seductive of drugs I find. Its lures you in slowly.

For quite sometime I have only treated hallucinogens with the utmost respect. My first trip was on only 2.5 grams of shrooms and up until this point I have never had a trip of this magnitude. When I came down from that trip I wondered how I would ever be the same again, how was I supposed to act around my family and friends now that the entire world had fallen apart. My worldview had literally shattered. Since then I have taken/used/abused almost every drug on the market.

That first experience I think actually intensified my ego. It separated rather than connected, as this trip did. I guess seeing how much pain I really put myself in on a moment by moment basis is a pretty painful thing to realize. But, naturally, my ego shrank back in, and perhaps even intensified due to this dissolution.

Fast forward 9 years, 25 years old, just moved halfway across the country to return to college, camping and drinking a decent dose of mescaline on a campsite at 6000 feet surrounded by mountains. Its strange now to think about opiates. I have used opiates since I've been ‘clean’ and still (and perhaps always) will reminisce about that peace. It’s that kind of ‘dead’ peace that appeals to the ego. Or at least one half of it. I arrived at the campsite just as the sun was setting. I set up my tent as I plugged my nose and drank the disgusting cactus slime, over the course of an hour. I hadn’t planned out the extraction time well and I ended up with nearly 2 cups of sludgy liquid to drink as opposed to a few shots. It was not too pleasant. But the day had afforded several unexpected good things and it seemed like an appropriate day to take a trip.

The nausea hits almost instantly. And in 20 minutes I know I'm tripping. Waves of pleasure wash over my body, mixed with the feeling of ‘if I move I’m going to vomit.’ My thoughts began to expand and sensory faculties blur.

After an hour I vomit several times, a gut wrenching vomit similar to an ayahuasca vomit. I curl up in my sleeping bag for a while after this. The trip is escalating rapidly, all the normal sensations of tripping are noticed (and enjoyed, naturally, this is mescaline). And I wont go into much detail of this aspect of the trip as it was fairly well along the lines of a normal fairly high dose of mescaline or other hallucinogen. I spent the next hour or so alternating between listening to music in the tent or car and exploring the woods with my headlamp.

As the trip escalated I became more confused and out of touch with normal reality. The more confused I got the more negative the trip turned. This is what I had expected, the trip up is rough on any psychedelic.

And at some point something clicked in my mind. It was just this ah-hah moment. I have studied and practiced buddhism for many years and this was the truth I had been ‘seeking.’ There was this moment where I said, what a minute, this is happening, why create it into pain? And this feeling washed over me, a complete release of everything. The “I” faded out of reality. There was no resistance to anything, it all was happening at once and “I” was everything.

It didn’t last very long and pretty soon I came back to a semblance of reality. Its something that cannot be explained in words. Even though every sage in history has tried to. This feeling continued to wash over me for the next 4 hours. It would wax and wane. And between a ‘fading out’ would come the most powerful realizations I have ever had. Things I had read before but never affected me in such a way.

I will briefly try to explain these realizations. The universe is made of duality, the yin yang aspect. This is how light (the essence of everything) interacts with itself. But it all boils down to light, just because its interacting with itself its still all light. This is where the mind gets confused, we take the interaction aspect as truth, and create our own personal reality out of what we chose to observe. It all boils down to the conditioned mind and the unconditioned mind. We are all stuck in the unconditioned mind. And it is truth, because it exists, but it only a certain piece of the puzzle. Whenever the mind is stuck in the conditioned mind there is suffering, this is what the Buddha meant when he said ‘existence is suffering.’

As this state faded, I returned more to my body and went into intense pain. A major discomfort beset my body and though the realization that this was all a dream I was creating still stuck, I couldn’t deny it. Pain flooded through me, mostly centering on my heart and neck region, it was a mental pain, one of discomfort. These two states, one of pain and one of release continued to alternate as I began to come down and the sun was rising. I was massively strung out but also massively at peace.

The feeling has stuck with me for several days now. It feels as if my kundalini energy has been stirred. I have had several instance in the past few days after tripping where I step back into this state of peace. As strong as tripping but while sober.

I really can’t describe this experience, it was the most freeing and amazing things that I have ever felt. And it has truly been a changing experience for me.

Exp Year: 2009	ExpID: 84282
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 26
Published: Jul 2, 2020	Views: 791
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Cacti - T. pachanoi (64) : Difficult Experiences (5), Mystical Experiences (9), Nature / Outdoors (23), General (1), Alone (16)