DOSE:	13 in	oral	Cacti - T. pachanoi	(tea)
		oral	Cannabis - High THC	(edible / food)

BODY WEIGHT:

155 lb

Thank you cactus. This was my first San Pedro Experience. I grew the Cacti myself. I brewed it up, went and found a place to camp in my van, and drank it down solo. Was this dumb? I was nervous. I had no idea if I would be end up down on my knees, begging for mercy, but this is what transpired.

As a summary, it wasn’t that strong. Or was it? Because I had:

* possibly the most beautiful nature day I’ve ever had
* my favorite bike ride ever
* some of my deepest meditation ever

So about a year ago, I walked into [a nursery] in Berkeley, CA, and bought three San Pedro Cacti, each about three inches tall. I’m not sure what led me to this. I’ve participated in Ayahuasca ceremonies, but all my solo trips have been with mushrooms so far.

A year later, they are each about 18” tall. Quite dark green and healthy. Maybe a little skinny. And so I used this technique:

I took a 13” piece, without removing the outer skin or core, just chopped it up into finger width stars (this was a 6 pointed cactus). Over about 24 hours, I froze/thawed the stars three times. Then I put those in a pot, and covered them and then some with water, and lightly boiled this down until the liquid was at the bottom of the pot, without agitating the stars. I poured this off into another pot, and reduced that liquid. This took about 3 hours. I did this all three times. I had two small containers of light green liquid in the fridge. I left this in the fridge for 5 days without touching it. I then poured this off, decanting it from a small deposit of sludge at the bottom. I then froze the results. Later, I will drink the whole thing, and have not a hint of nausea. I believe this is the result of this fridge decanting method.

Set:
This occurred a couple of days after the Floyd George protests had really gotten underway. I was in a very busy mind state. I think it may have been my most engaged use with Facebook ever. I was really engaging with people on issues of race. I consider myself to be incredibly lucky to have arrived at my current mindset. I seek in peace in myself, and I wish it for the whole world. I approach every individual with as little judgement as possible. In fact, I absolutely love people. I see each one as a unique expression, sort of an impossibly specific flowering. I tend to see anger and malicious action and intent as a product of overly active ego and intellect, basically a need for healing. Not sure if this is true, but it’s my feeling as I interact with people. I try to be open as possible. However, this is an articulation of an approach that I’m not sure would be the same before this weekend. I mean, my approach is the same, I’m just not sure I would have articulated it the same way. I understand it more now.

And so this has been a really important time for me to explore why we are in this place in our society. Why do class/economic lines fall largely along race lines in this country? Why do we set police up to be intimidating assholes? Why can’t we just train them to be like bureaucrats? Why on earth do we hire people to break up peaceful protests with violence? Why are white people so scared of black people? How do we create change? How can we turn the tide of this mental poison, and slowly turn society into a direction where everyone has opportunities to develop, and don’t feel like they have a boot on their necks simply because of their culture or skin color?

I started getting too heady. I was kind of losing my mind. If you are in the future, remember that this is also after two months of COVID, and so I had already gone through that crazy experience of watching this unfold, which had already made for some deep social media engagement.

The other thing to consider about my mental state was that, while I was more mentally busy with all this crisis, I had, over this same period, been having the best success with meditation I’d ever been having. I seemed to be able to get to a place where my thoughts wouldn’t just take over, much more easily, and be able to return back to that, and persist for good periods. And I feel like I’m really quite enjoying it, and it’s having good benefits on my mental well being.

And so I decided to just take off for a couple of days in my van. I have this great van I can sleep in. It’s the best thing ever. I also have a mountain bike. So I figured I’d leave in the evening, camp somewhere close to the closed Point Reyes Seashore park area, dose in the morning walk or bike in (depending on how loaded I was), and then see what would happen. So June 4, before the curfew of 8pm, I kissed my wife goodbye, and took off.

Setting:
If you don’t already know, Marin County, just north of San Francisco, and the area around Point Reyes is just a jewel of nature’s creation. And it was just an absolutely beautiful time to be there. As I was approaching the park I started scoping van camping parking spots. As you get closer to the park, they get scarce. The rich people around there don’t take kindly to people sleeping in their cars. Somehow before I got to Point Reyes I found this perfect little spot next to an old bridge off the main road. It was quite hidden, and so I stopped there to check it out. 

It turns out there was a long flat paved mellow bicycle trail that started right where the van was parked. It follows a river for miles, and just walking up it in the fading light, with a moon almost full, with the hills glowing with sunset, I started to wonder why the universe takes such good care of me. Why do others suffer so much, and I just keep getting these gifts? I realized that, if San Pedro is the great nature experience teacher it was purported to be, it might be that it was, at this point, helping me a long. Perhaps this is a bit wuwu, but this was full Hawaii level beauty going on. I was interested in maybe using my bike, and… it was clear that I would have to actually go ahead and drink the thing down.

At 6 in the morning I snapped awake. I had heard that this stuff can last for >14 hours and so I really wanted to get going. It was 6:45 by the time I had eaten a couple of nectarines, and finally managed to drink it all down. It was very bitter with a not unpleasant cucumber taste. But the bitterness was a challenge, easily remedied, as I happened to have a couple of limes and salt. I just did the tequila method, little salt, bite on a lime and take a chug. Worked perfectly. Hardly tasted it.

So I started walking down the path, and it was just SO stunning. There was a cacophony of birds I’d never heard before. The sun was just licking over the edge of one of those rolling Marin hills that provide the perfect place for single Oak trees and cows. And I’m walking through a tunnel of an incredible variety of trees overhanging the trail, with morning sun dappling coming through. The exquisiteness of the nature would last all day and into the evening.

It was about 7:50 when I started noticing something. But effects were very mild. About 8:12 I hop a barb-wire fence and walk up a hill and sit with a 360 view in all directions that just opened up the glory of the world. How could we not protect this? And so I can barely notice the effects of the medicine because the nature is just so beautiful. I can’t tell how they are overlapping. I lay down on a coat, lift up my shirt to let the sun come onto me, and just put myself into my body and the feel of the wind and the morning sun. All mental tension from the craziness of the previous months was just gone.

There was a bit of a body load, which was evidence that there was something working. I pulled down my pants to be a sort of half naked sunbathe, and noticed my dick was all shrivelled up.

This was pretty much the whole day. Stopping here and there and having meditations. At one point, when I realized I’d be fine on a bike, I went back and got my mountain bike. I’d ride for a while, find another unique and incredible place, and take some time and meditate. Very few people anywhere. At one point, I went down to the river, and submerged just my head into the icy cold water repeatedly, which was just impossibly purifying and clean.

There was one point where I walked down to the river, went fully naked and laid on a warm stone for a while. Then I stepped into the cold running river, and just lowered just my ass into the freezing water. While doing this I kind of arched back, and looked up, and there was a maple tree dappling sun down on me (I’m Canadian. Didn’t even know they had maples down here). And I kind of made this nuuuughhhhh oh god kind of sound. Kind of like an ohm but if you’re having an orgasm. It certainly felt almost as good as one. I probably did that for about five minutes. I think I can still feel the body benefits now. What a wonderful thing that was.

I tried to keep my thinking down to a minimum. But I considered the mental disease that our society seems to be catching. We’ve all got it. The social media. The phones. The monkey brain has now taken over, and it’s on the loose. It now occupies the white-house. Meditation, by providing some separation between you the thoughts that float in, can help you develop better judgement. Isn’t that what we’re fighting for? Better judgement? Judgement alone is a wonderful challenge. The more you stop judging, the more you start living. But we have to judge. That’s what the ego does to keep you alive. And so if you can just react first with your heart, then watch the ideas float in and consider them carefully… isn’t that really the problem here? If we were all able to just chill out a bit ie: meditate, or just be a bit more ‘mindful’ (mindless?), that would probably be just enough to start the water trickling in a better direction. And that might just start the creeks, streams and rivers required to connect us all in a more effective way… That sort of thing. I was thinking that. Knowing that. And I still have that as I write this.

How did I end up here? Is it too wuwu to think that the thing that brought me and the cactus together also brought me this day?

I’d recently been having good results with very small (like 2.5mg) cannabis edibles and meditating. And so I thought that maybe if I would take some edibles, it might help it all to kick in stronger. And so I opened up my can of edibles to find it one big gloopy mess. I think I had maybe four 5mg gummies in there. I rarely eat more that 2.5mg (half a gummy) in a day. But that day I would eventually eat the whole mess. The day turned into an elevated cannabis nature meditation from that point on. But clear. I usually have a kind of a… dunderheadiness from cannabis, but this was sort of just allowing me to enter the stream of life more effectively…

In short: I had the best day! Thank you San Pedro. I like blasting off into space, but this day was such a gift, and I thank you for that. XO And thank you, oh reader for making it to the end of my story. I hope your path leads you to peace too.

Exp Year: 2020	ExpID: 114481
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 52
Published: Oct 27, 2020	Views: 693
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Cacti - T. pachanoi (64) : Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53), Glowing Experiences (4), Preparation / Recipes (30)