DOSE:

seeds

oral

Datura

(fresh)

BODY WEIGHT:

180 lb

A friend of mine, who turned me on to all my psychedelic experiences, had been researching datura and had just recently (a few days prior) found some plants growing on the Canadian River in cental Oklahoma. I'm not quite sure what strain this was, but what he had were thick oval pods with soft spikes all around, opened up to reveal small seeds. He invited me to experiment with him, and was very explicit in telling me it was a dangerous beast and not a lot was known about it. Intriguing... I couldn't resist! The first few times we tried it, we took a very small dosage, maybe 5 seeds a piece, and felt no effects. A week later, we tried again with a larger dose, fifteen seeds a piece. This resulted in blurry vision, small amount of diziness, and both of us falling asleep 2 or 3 hours after ingestion, but no noticable effects otherwise. It was kind of scary, and we decided to write this one off.

Looking back, I don't know why we would want to try again after that experience... but a month or so later, we ran across another plant in the same area as the first, and grabbed a pod a-piece, went home and ate all the seeds. We were careful to meticulously chew the seeds up this time, and it seemed to help. A few hours afer ingestion, we both passed out. We did not fall asleep. We passed out, it was involuntary. He awoke before me (don't know how long we were out) and shook me untill I was awake. I could not walk. My legs felt strong, but I could not keep my balance, it was as if the weight of my body kept shifting from one side to the other and I felt very top-heavy. My eyes were also extremely light-sensitive. The sun coming through the blinds in his house looked like solid laser beams. When I closed my eyes, I thought I remembered seeing little men, like the Silver Surfer, but smaller, riding on these laser beams of light coming in through the window. But when I opened my eyes, the vision was gone.

My friend later told me that he could not focus on anything, but had no hallucinations. At this point in the trip, I felt a strong urge to be home, so I took off walking. How I managed to get across town, on foot, in my balance-deprived and semi-delerious state will always be a mystery to me... but I did make it home. By this point, I was hallucinating very heavily, still not able to walk well, but it was not alarming. I was not consiously thinking, 'Its okay, I'm tripping.', rather it just seemed natural that the world should appear to me in this form. My roomate came home, and he had been in on our earlier experiments with Datura, so I told him what was happening. He sat with me for awhile, then went to bed. He later said that while he was awake and with me, I was sitting on the couch staring straight ahead, my eyes would open and close for long periods of time, and I would sometimes mutter intelligible things under my breath.

This is when I started to truly slip into the 'delusional' state. I recall seeing and talking to friends from high school, whom I had not seen in years. I even recall being able to bring more people into the conversation at will. I 'brought' my friend whom I had started this trip with over as well, so he could see this. I was having sort of a party with old aquaintences. The conversation was very trivial: how have you been, remember when we did this or that, are you still with whats-her-name, type of stuff. I remember having direct conversations with people, while hearing other people in the background having totally unrelated conversations. Such was the the clarity of the hallucination. Sometimes the person I was talking to would just disappear in front of my eyes, but this seemed natural, as in 'Oh, they left.' It was totally different from an acid hallucination where I have to remind myelf that I am tripping. The sudden spark of fear (omigod I'm loosing it!) was never present.

My roomate was awakened a few times by my talking and he heard me open the front door numerous times and say 'Hello' and 'See you later' to people. He said that once he came to check on me and I was talking so fast that he couldn't understand me, and I was drinking a beer! (I don't remember that part). He asked me who all I was talking to, and I told them he could see them if he just looked. He said he didn't see anyone, and I told him to close his eyes and try to see them. He went back to bed...

I don't remember much else, except for constantly thinking I was smoking non-existant cigarettes. I would think I had one in my hands, even be taking drags off of them, and then my two fingers would touch together and I'd think I had dropped it! I probably spent 3 hours of this trip crawling around on the floor looking for dropped cigarettes. I found out years later that this is a very common appearence in datura trips.

I was drinking a lot of water during the trip (and apparently beer as well) due to an extremely dry mouth and throat. Still, urination was infrequent and very difficult.
I later slipped into more of a stupor. The strong hallucinations subsided and I wanted to DO something but was lacking the motor skills and mental accuity to accomplish much. Music didn't seem to be very enticing (during acid trips music was usually the cornerstone of the experience for me). I tried to play with a fractal program on my roommates PC, but had trouble remembering how to use the mouse properly. I tried reading a book, but my eyesight was too far gone to focus on the letters, and my mind was too far gone to comprehend their meaning even if I could. 12 hours and one LONG bath later, I started coming back to earth. To the best of my ability, I figure the 'active trip' lasted around 24-30 hours.

The next day, I felt very tired, distant, and depressed all day. My vision was very blurry for a week, and not sharp as normal for more than one month after the trip. The mild depression stayed with me for a few months, and eventually led to me taking a cycle of Zoloft (I never suffered depression before or since). The long lasting after-effects had me very worried. For a long time (at least a year) after this trip, I would occasionally see 'something' rushing towards me out of the corner of my eye, only to be startled and realize nothing was there. I also had, for many years after, a slight speech impediment (occasional trouble getting sentences to start, sort of like a mild form of stuttering). This still happens today from time to time, and I took the datura over 8 years ago. Maybe its related and maybe not, but it never happend to me prior to the datura trip.

In summation:
It was not what I would call a good trip, but not exceedingly bad either. It was the only drug I have ever taken that provided 'true' audible/visual/tactile hallucinations, and that was quite an experience to behold. But it was also a spiritually empty trip... other than remembering the hallucinations, I didn't bring anything back with me, nor did I have the mental accuity to do much soul searching. I have been 'taken down to zero' before on acid, but still achieved a positive experience in analyzing and rebuilding my psyche. This was different... it was more like I was distracted by amusing hallucinations while some demons attached my psyche to a taffee puller. The work afterwards was more of a 'repair' than a 'rebuild'. I would not recommend this drug to anyone.

In short... Be careful out there.

Exp Year: 1996	ExpID: 34297
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 11, 2004	Views: 184,602
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Datura (15) : Post Trip Problems (8), General (1), Small Group (2-9) (17)