DOSE:

200 seeds

oral

Morning Glory

(ground / crushed)

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

Before I get into preparation, let me say that I've never really tripped on anything and I've only used alcohol with any consistency, so I'm not exactly as experienced as those who have taken DMT, acid, etc. and have something to compare it to.

Let me also say how I got interested in morning glory. Originally I was into metaphysics and sort of believed things along the Aristotelian line of thinking, but I thought there was more to first principles than met the eye (and the western mind). I end up getting interested in Zen Buddhism. There seemed to be an endless number of paradoxes that I was certain had been solved by those who practiced zen. This led me on to the Alan Watts/Timothy Leary/Aldous Huxley connection. And this with some reading on the topic (most importantly including 'The Joyous Cosmology' and the 'Doors of Perception') got me to somewhat believe that I could understand the nature of these paradoxes by taking something similar to acid. So it should be obvious that this was not just for fun on a Saturday night but a totally different way of perceiving the world as a whole. Now I'll go into the preparation and the actual trip.

Preparation:
Obtained about 1600 supposedly uncoated seeds off a website. So I didn't wash them with detergent, figuring that they were probably not coated, and that getting some detergent in my stomach wouldn't make a good night. Counted out 200 (which was laborious, but I didn't have a scale, so I figured it would be more or less the best way for me to measure my dosage, which seems to be about normal dosage without taking anything too big). Then bought a coffee grinder online. When it came, I ground up 200 seeds, and mixed them in with a fair amount of applesauce, which made the applesauce turn a slightly dark color, which made it look a little nauseating, but it still tasted good.

Experience:
So I didn't feel anything for about two and a half to three hours, except slight nausea this whole time, but nothing too unbearable. Around 3 and a half hours there was a very slight change in perception, and by 4 there was something noticeably different. Up until now I had been watching a movie and when the movie had finished I got up and started walking into my room. This motion was amazing and so incredibly different from sitting. But then I felt very sick to my stomach and went to the bathroom and vomited. Once that was done, I was fine for the rest of the night without feeling nauseous at all.

I end up talking to my roommates and while holding a conversation I end up staring at something in my environment (for instance, a hook on the wall, or the shadow that the corner of my door made), and while listening to them speak I was also wrapped up in the image of this thing, but I was amazed that I could focus on both things at once and not stop paying attention to either one. And because I was so focused on the corner of my door, I felt as though I was there. Probably I was there merely in thought, but it was such heavy, concentrated thought that it almost took on a physical nature. And so I knew that my body was where it was, and that I was there listening to a conversation, but in some way I was also in that corner of my door. So in some way in which I cannot describe, I was in two places at once. Not explaining any of this to my roommate, I said, 'Man, it's like I'm right here!' (And by that meaning, my physical body is right here, but in my mind I'm in two different places). And so understandably he got quite a kick out of that, and I must admit that looking back on it was quite funny.

I decided to go into my room and write down some thoughts. This was the best part in my opinion, because thoughts were so free flowing (I suppose free association is greatly enhanced) and what I was looking for from the beginning. And now I understood why intellectuals such as Aldous Huxley took a liking to acid. Not only did I jump from idea to idea very quickly but every single idea had such great novelty...that 'aha!' feeling that one gets when one discovers a new angle on something that one has been thinking about for a while and I'm instantly reminded of Archimedes running naked through the streets to the king after discovering how to calculate displacement, and hence density. It’s the 'Dynamic Quality' that Robert M. Pirsig talks about in his book 'Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.'

The hardest part of the process was actually getting all of these “aha” moments down on paper. It was virtually impossible to do so because of the sheer time it took to write down all the different ways in which something was true, and as soon as I would write down something a new idea would come, and so I wasn’t compelled to finish the old thought.

Let me also say that the feeling of being in two places or more was preserved. It wasn't as physical any more, but I could easily think of two things at once, and so every new idea seemed connected to every last one, and in general all of the ideas were connected. And I wrote down in my notebook: 'If acid is anything like this, it is everything,' meaning two things: 1), if acid is anything like this then it will be everything I expected and 2) if acid is anything like this then everything will seem connected, and so hence it will be everything.

The drug was nothing like pot or alcohol. With both drugs there is an amazing time dilation that goes on. With Alcohol things go by very quickly without my ever noticing. With pot everything comes to such a crawl, yet I feel as though I am going even slower and need to compensate. And for me this is accompanied by irrational paranoia. On the morning glory, no time dilation was going on and no loss of motor coordination or general cognition. So there was none of that 'baked” feeling or 'trashed' feeling that describe those drugs.

I was listening to the Beatles Revolver while all of this thinking and writing was going. I was comparing the drug to pot and I remember writing down 'The good thing about this drug is that it doesn't spiral down into paranoia.' I went on to another few ideas and then started to feel cold in my feet. This is pretty normal for me, but then I started to get a little paranoid. I'm a pretty paranoid person normally, but then I wrote in my notebook 'The bad thing about this drug is that it can spiral down into paranoia.' And I was a little worried about dying. This is for several reasons, but mostly because there is ergot in the seeds [Erowid Note: Ergot is a fungus that infects cereal grains; morning glory seeds do not 'contain ergot', they contain ergot-like alkaloids] and the fact that the package said “poisonous” on it. I got up and looked back to my bed to see if my body was lying there, and if I had in fact died. Of course it wasn't there! I also tried to rationalize this possible dying to myself and said, 'If I die tonight, at least I would have had a glimpse of god (a statement I still stand by today).'

But none of this paranoia kept me from calling the paramedics or even waking up my roommate to say something. And thank god that I had done my research beforehand because otherwise it would have really sucked to wake up in a hospital the next morning (worst case scenario). So then I went online confirmed something that I already knew, that morning glory seeds have .1% (.001) ergot and that taking 200 once will not kill me. At the same time, the Beatles song 'Tomorrow never knows' came on and said 'It is not dying.' And I knew that all of this was just irrational paranoia and I would be fine. But none of this was traumatic to my psyche as if I were on pot.

I end up writing down a few more ideas (most of which I wished I had expounded upon!), and then went to bed. I noticed that going to bed seemed noticeably different even though I knew the setting. And then fell asleep.

The whole thing was such a great experience (except for the nausea at the beginning) that I will definitely do it again, maybe trying an extraction method to clear away the nausea. I really am quite impressed how the dying part didn't freak me out, and that is probably because I was well informed on the issue. It’s all about knowledge, set and setting.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 37630
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Aug 23, 2005	Views: 14,665
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Morning Glory (38) : First Times (2), Alone (16)