DOSE: T+ 0:00	0.5 g	oral	Syrian Rue	(tea)
T+ 0:00			Ginger	(tea)
T+ 1:00	6 in	oral	Cacti - T. pachanoi	(tea)

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

I have had a considerable break from psychedelics, but just of late I have started to re-kindle my affair by utilizing certain accessible entheogens. I took a couple of baby steps first - mild Brugmansia tea, then a substance I was long ago acquainted with - LSA (Hawaiian Baby Woodrose seed in this instance), and finally, bringing things up to date, I’ve been experimenting with San Pedro cactus. My first experience was at a higher dose than the one in this report, and was a remarkable experience. However, if this first encounter with San Pedro cactus wasn’t quite an epiphany, then this follow up certainly made the grade:

I had been in two minds originally, I had some extra cactus that I couldn’t fit in my pan to boil up the first time round (maybe 6 inch), and it was sitting in the freezer these last two months. I hardly qualify as a new ager, but I am observant of solstices, equinoxes and, as I’m leading onto, the cross-quarter days, or Beltane and Samhain to be specific. Anyway, I saw Samhain approaching (* note I’m talking southern hemisphere here), and my mind turned to my frozen segment of San Pedro. Samhain is supposedly a day where the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest (once, many many moons ago, I inadvertently took mushrooms on this particular evening, and had an acutely ‘otherworldly’ experience).

I wanted my second experience with S.P. to be in daylight and outdoors somewhere isolated, but that wasn’t an option. It had to be squeezed in one weekday night, and had to be home based. An amount of preparation took place, and when the time actually came, I considered my bases were covered, and I could comfortably focus on and surrender to the imminent mental deluge.

The prep was a straight 6h boil, lemon to basify, and then strain. I avoided consuming much food in the buildup, and the hour before actually imbibing the juice, I took a tea of ginger with slightly over ½ a gram of ground Syrian rue seeds mixed in. By midnight (to my relief) I’d emptied my draught; for better or worse, the ball was now in motion.

T 00.00 – first off, the ambiance needs tweaking a bit. I have a nice smoldering wood fire on the go, so I center myself in proximity to it, I knock off the lights, and even shade the LED’s coming from the appliances. I add some music tracks to a playlist on my PC, though it needs keeping ultra-low for the sake of my sleeping family.

T 01.00 – I don’t exactly feel nauseous, but I can tell the flood gates are opening, and it’s a little agitating. I flit about a bit, the fire’s a little warm, but I move away to find it slightly chilly. I lower the volume on the music till it’s nearly inaudible; I sit near the fire, but find the high chair is a little uncomfortable. This alternating state of mind is gaining momentum; I just don’t know where to put myself. I try to settle down away from the fire, closer to the music.

I can feel a surge of psychic commotion steadily taking hold. My thoughts briefly turn to acts of violation, abuse, defilement and desecration, and for a moment, I get a sense of madness and terror streaming through my mind. (I had a similar moment at the start of my first S.P. trip 2 months ago.) It’s like the entire human race is melting together, and manifesting into a phantasmagorical godhead. I think this moment is the zygote, the moment before the big bang.

I somehow change focus from the disturbing subject of atrocities, to a related possibly, but tamer topic, namely Genesis P Orrige, and his ‘p-androgony’ exploits ( I’m fresh from watching ‘the ballad of genesis and Lady Jaye’). I say related, because Genesis is someone who has delved deeply into many taboo subjects. Anyway, it’s something I can handle turning over in my mind. The trip is about to step up a gear now.

At this point I have a flashback to the last trip – I had been watching “bob’s burgers” at a point a little further into the trip than I’m presently at. I say watching, but the truth is it was like I was living in the show! My flash back is pretty clear; my tripping is unbalancing the cosmic equilibrium, and so it requires Bob to stop his space time continuum machine, to take me on board, but it’s pretty funny, he’s wound up, I’m stressing him out; it’s only recently that this last happened, and it’s a very tricky maneuver! Louise is around too being her usual crazy hyper self, as is Bob’s wife Linda; I’m really glad these guys are stopping off for me, I had them coming in and out of my trip for a couple of hours during the first trip. The key thing is that the hallucinating has started, though it’s not a case of seeing with my eyes, this stuff is like day dreaming, but by its vividness it’s almost tangible – the space machine is jarring through inter-dimensional space -I can feel the shaking, I can hear the pulsating oscillations of the straining drivers and engaging gears. At the same time it’s only in the background, and quite ephemeral, and it’s easy to switch focus back to the room, and the music for e.g.

T02:00 - I head back to the fire for a while. I have a couple of decent logs, but they’re not going to last long, I have a peep outside, and decide I won’t be venturing there, I still have this edgy feeling, but I’m riding it out better now. Outside it looks like there’s a storm, but I can see that the undulations aren't wind, it’s the aether, I can see surprisingly well in the dark, and the night sky is subtly illuminated with violet and magenta hues. I’m seeing the elemental world in all its beauty, the glowing heat of the embers of the fire is transfixing.

I estimate that half an hour 40 mins passes in this manner, switching from looking at the outside behind me, and the fire to the fore. Something else is going on though, it’s like I’m conscious of a presence, or perhaps the quietness and darkness is conducive to shutting off my internal dialogue, and that presence is self-awareness, although ultimately, it’s a moot point – presently I’m a conduit, there’s a process taking place that I’m aware of, and part of, but figuring out what way round it is, is barking up the wrong tree. It feels as though events that are bigger than me are taking place and by the grace of a power that I can scarcely comprehend, my conscious awareness is presently the vehicle it is employing. I’m looking inwards, and experiencing a cosmic dance of energy in chaos.

T03.00 – I’m watching the fire get lower, but there’s no wood left in the house, and so I leave the fire and head back to the PC and my music. I sprawl on a sofa, or sit on an upright chair, I’m still keeping the lights out, and my monitor switched off, but I’m listening to the music from the playlist a bit; it’s all psychedelic stuff that I’ve recently downloaded, so I’m not familiar with any of it - normally I’d pick out what was what, but it’s pure alien to me right now. In actual fact, I’m inclined at this stage at least, to believe it originates from a more celestial source. It’s clear that it’s ceremonial music, tribal sounding, but a bit unearthly at the same time. I’m seeing corresponding forms emerging out of the darkness; secret rites performed to magical idols, dimly iridescent and shimmering apparitions. I’m captivated, eagerly part of the congregation, but this is no Christ or Shiva or Zeus. It’s a Lovecraftian entity, a relic of a far distant age.

There’s a definite aspect of intertwining male and female energies as well, and a hint of planetary conjunctions and transits and such like. I can clearly see that this is tied in to the day its self - Beltane/Samhain; it’s the reason why I’m doing what I’m doing right now after all, and it is what I wanted to experience.

So now I’m starting to feel like an initiate! I’m pulled to my feet, and start toward my PC monitor. I want to switch it on now. I wonder if it will be like switching on a floodlight, but it doesn’t do any damage. I’ve got a slideshow running with geometric patterns loaded into it. The track list is on screen, but I don’t try to decipher it, the text is swimming, in a very organically animated fashion. I also experimentally advance the tracks; again, it does little damage; the music is still the same - just ‘something else’ that’s all! There’s nothing that gives me a clue what’s playing, or that relates it to anything I’m familiar with. Besides, I haven’t any preference, and it’s certainly weird enough to be perfectly in keeping for the time being.

At this point it crosses my mind that I have a little trick up my sleeve that should add something to the night’s enjoyment; it’s just a little cerebral jaunt, I have a second PC that can run an audio visual synth, but cheapskate that I am, I only have the one monitor for both PC’s. The music that’s already playing will need to stay on to feed the synth, I just have to change speakers and monitor over. It’s a testament to the subconscious brain that I manage to do this in darkness by touch alone. I proudly fire the thing up, and with some minimal input, enjoy immediate gratification. I’d figured beforehand it would probably be fun to do during the trip, but I wonder if I am ruining my eye sight (suppose it’s no worse than being at a rave!). I have a sense of relief though because now I am taking a first step to being back in the control seat.

T04.00 - I don’t claim to understand it all, but I work on the assumption that there are dangers to going too deep into these ‘other’ realities, there’s a time to be in an embryonic trance state, but there’s also a moment when you get your cue to start heading back to the planet! During my first S.P. trip my cue was when I found myself on my feet and heading off home from my friends, through the night on my bicycle, this time round, it’s a bit of electronics and art that starts bringing me round. Anyway I think there was a specific point when I ‘launched’ (the zygote. . .), and this is my re-entry, (maybe my ‘re-birth’).

My interest in jockeying on the PC begins to dwindle before too long, but before its quite gone, I recognize a song – “we were talking about the space within us all , and the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion. . .” – this versions not the Beatles though, (it’s the magic mushroom band as I’ll find out a day or two later), and on that note, I turn off the A/V synth, and swap the PC back the way it was. I see the media player there with some half gibberish titles floating in their neat little pane, I still can’t exactly understand what’s what, though round about now I do have a break through moment where I have a strong recollection about a track I’d loaded – i.e. what the origin is and how it goes, even though it isn’t playing and I can’t recall listening to it so far tonight; it kind of wells up from the back of my mind – it starts as a blurred murmur, growing to a groaning crescendo, then it modulates and becomes crystal clear, like a big wave breaking - “JUST ANOTHER FISH FROM TAHITI, JUST ANOTHER FISH ON A DISH FROM TAHITI” – somehow this heavily resonates with my mental state at this point; I believe it must be the bi-product of a heavily distorted altered state on the part of the artist. i.e. If I hadn’t had the mescaline I couldn’t have figured this bit of lunacy out, and so on . . . !

T05.00 - I’m on the move once more, I journey onward again, back to the fire, the ashes might have an ember or two left amongst them - time to find out. I take another scan outside, my eyes must be playing tricks on me because strange lights can be seen when I start looking across the garden up to the nearby horizon. I’m half braced to see my first visitation, and in fact as it turns out, I’m not totally disappointed, the 5.00a.m. freight train transits down the line about 50m away from me, shaking the ground as it goes.

I see if I can stoke the fire a bit, there’s still some wood I’d missed, and didn’t burn, so I throw it on with some kindling. It’s not catching easily; I work on it and get a flame. I should go fill the wood bucket now, but I do a not so smart thing instead. I put a log that’s too big to fit in, and pretty soon I have made the room quite smoky. I really should have gone for a pre-dawn bicycle ride like I’d planned; I wanted to avoid being around when my partner and kiddy got up, but now it’s too late. I’m guessing I’ll be feeling like a bit of a gate crasher at breakfast this morning then. . .

T06.00 - so pretty soon my family are up and about. Our kiddy is a bit sick though, and needs to stay home from the play-school with me today. It’s a clear dawn though, and the day is going to be warm and sunny. I do my best now to just go about the usual morning routine. I can just feel I’ve got a uphill battle to get through now. It’ll be a busy one, and I won’t be chilling any time soon, although there’s definitely something about having a young child’s energy around you that is galvanizing.

T10.00 – for quite a while I’m cleaning the house top to bottom, it feels sort of appropriate. I spend an energetic if slightly exhausting day busy with chores, and minding the kiddy, which is surprisingly rewarding.

T12.00 - fully back to base line; I feel no ill effects, and have only benefited from my sojourn.

I am 100% recovered next morning after an early night.

One thing I have observed is that although the quantity of Syrian Rue was way less than average threshold dose, it must have potentiated the experience in the first 2+ hours, because the trip was almost as strong as the first one, which was double the dose (i.e. 12”) of S.P. The effects however were quicker to dissipate. I was as close to base line at 6 hours as I was at 10 on the previous occasion.

I found my experiences on mescaline to be of a quality and depth that surpass any other psychedelic drug I've utilized, in a way that I would struggle to put into words. far more preferable than LSD or MDMA, and as far as my memory serves me it also beats magic mushrooms hands down (-it's been well over 10 years now, I really should refresh my memory!). I had been looking into obtaining Ayahuasca prior to encountering San Pedro, but now I am in no hurry - it will happen when the time is right.

Exp Year: 2014	ExpID: 103395
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 44
Published: Oct 31, 2016	Views: 3,014
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Syrian Rue (45), Cacti - T. pachanoi (64) : Alone (16), Entities / Beings (37), Glowing Experiences (4), General (1)