DOSE:

oral

Mescaline

(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

Many years ago, when I was a humble university student getting a degree in music, I was presented with multiple opportunities to try psychotropic substances, which I declined to do because I feared the loss of control. However, one evening I was with a fellow musician and he said he had some mescaline and would I like to try it? For some reason on that occasion I said yes.

The mescaline was cut with Coffee-Mate, and we ate it with a guitar pick. I don’t know much more about where my friend got it, and whether it was real or synthetic mescaline. We went back to my apartment, where I had a beautiful Musser vibraphone as well as a nice used marimba, which I had set up side by side. My friend and I started jamming on these two instruments; he on the marimba and me on the vibes.

I had the vibrato set on a rather high rate of speed. At one point I noticed that my heart rate was trying to synch up with the rate of the vibrato, and I had to turn the vibrato down to a much slower rate (I would have otherwise passed out, or perhaps worst). Then, I noticed that I was seeing the sound vibrations coming off of the bars when I struck them (a phenomenon I later came to find out is synesthesia). I looked over to tell my friend what I was experiencing and lo and behold... his nose was about two inches away from a bar that he was striking slowly and with a great deal of interest... he was experiencing the same thing I was.

Upon the full onset of the mescaline we sat down and I put records on the stereo system. Mahavishnu Orchestra, a Billy Cobham solo album... I remember having a hard time getting the hole over the spindle since the record seemed quite pliable in my hands. I remember having my eyes closed most of the time, and a great deal of colors coordinated with the music, but I don’t remember the colors being geometrically very ornate or complicated – more like a prism of colors, a stream of colors. Later in the trip I put on La Mer by Claude Debussy, performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, and that music swelled many deep, beautiful emotions in me.

As the trip wound down in the early hours of the morning my friend left, and I noticed as I let him out that there was a street cleaning machine quite some distance away, but the buzzing noise was extremely penetrating, and nauseating. My senses were on high alert. To compensate I put on an album of Tibetan Bells & Singing Bowls – an album I had come across much by happenstance – but one that was perfect for the final hours of the drug’s effect.

But what was truly significant about this whole experience was not the time spent directly under the influence of the mescaline but the subsequent couple of days in which for the first time in my life I was experiencing an opening of what I would later realize was my Heart Chakra, symptomized by a quiet mind and a heart filled with unconditional compassion. I felt I would do anything for anyone, that my heart was connected to every other human being in a deeply intimate way. I also noticed that when I ate meals I felt a deep gratitude for where the food was coming from, and that it was being provided to me so that I could live. This was a felt experience, not a thinking one.

The feeling dissipated and I returned to normal life, but over time many of my usual things began to lose their meaning, and I started seeing through things to see how illusory there were. It was my dark night of the soul, and it lasted for almost a year – a difficult time of emptying out so that I would be ready to receive the spiritual content yet to come that would forever change the course of my life. I truly wish that, like many indigenous cultures that have used these substances for rites of passage, that in our society we would be able to provide the proper set & setting for these powerful transformative experiences to safely work within. Mine was trial & error until I found my way, but I fear many others squander their awakening opportunities by not having the proper guidance. But what a different world this would be if everyone could – if only once – take this life course and see beyond the boundaries of their deeply conditioned worldviews.

Exp Year: 1973	ExpID: 91450
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: Jun 10, 2011	Views: 15,923
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Mescaline (36) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Mystical Experiences (9), Glowing Experiences (4)