BODY WEIGHT:

125 lb

I was just a boy of about 16 year in age when I was first introduced to this beautiful world of psychedelics, and since that day my life has been forever changed.

When I first began gobbling down potent psychedelics, I was immediately captivated by their potent capacity to subtly subvert my malleable social construction of reality with characteristic humor and elation. I'd been focused on philosophy, quantum mechanics, and cosmology at the tail-end of high school...while maintaining a devoted relationship with getting myself blitzkrieg-ed drunk, stupid-stoned, or pin-point-pupil numb with oxycodone (not necessarily in that order). I was always surprised, however, at how popular psychedelics were at parties; while I'd enjoy such environments on the drugs, I knew I was consciously suppressing many of the sensations and effects while focusing in on others.

I quickly found that my favorite experiences were in solitude or with a sole companion, when my attention was forced to go beyond dazzling sensory activity, and actually think about the way I think. Amazed by my capacity to comfortably confront my unconsciously repressed emotions with these compounds, I began to value them beyond mere recreation; I identified some psychedelics as particularly useful tools for re-evaluating my aspirations, values, and urges. Astonished, I was approaching something similar to a lasting calm. My use of more addictive substances returned to recreational levels, rather than dependent.

Whether it was simply maturation associated with growing in age, or my exposure to new ways of thinking and perceiving afforded by psychedelics, I'm not certain. I am certain, however, that neither might easily be eliminated as crucial contributors to my ability to overcome significant emotional obstacles, and pursue the things I deemed important and interesting, not just those things that made me feel good at the time. It seemed that my emotions had begun to be guided by my thoughts, rather than my thoughts dominated by emotion. An effect later potentiated by the introduction of quetiapine (taken for a condition that preceded any drug use).

As I continued to consume various psychedelics, I realized that I was still suppressing certain sensations (I.e. The ones I considered to be at all unpleasant in comparison to those euphoric or viscerally pleasing in nature) with the intention of consistently avoiding 'bad trips'. I intentionally neglected side-effects, or anything that didn't feel positive, ignorantly ignoring the grotesque qualities of dis-ease or discomfort. The 'acid-tummies' or 'mushroom grumblies', muscular tension, strange sinus sensations, changes in facial expression, and over-sensitivity to inflection and tone during interaction with others that I'd experienced all began to present a newfound intrigue. When watching movies, I'd be completely distracted by, and envious of, the actors' talents at conjuring emotional expressions at will...noticing the subtleties in mannerisms and gestures they recruited to communicate the nuanced differences between similar feelings like frustration and anger, tenacity and obsession, or love and dependence. I found how much we speak with each other through facial expression, and that language fortuitously presented the detail necessary for accurate & intended perception. Inevitably, these observations influenced my own expressions when interacting with people when sober; I began to feel that I expressed myself more honestly and according to my thought processes, rather than the state of my body or emotional status. I also began to look for ways to effectively alleviate the strange digestive sensations I'd observed; various methods of torso-stretching and manual facilitation of digestion were sought and found.

An esteemed administrator once cited an individual whom many would consider to be the father of modern psychedelia, Sasha Shulgin, while discussing potential side-effects observed from research cannabinoids.

Quote:
'If Sasha's methodology has taught us one thing, then it is exactly this. To notice side effects and to extrapolate them to higher doses.'

This struck a chord, though likely not precisely the one intended. After spending far too much time navel-gazing, and deciding to leave the social sciences to individuals with considerably higher levels of patience than my own, I decided to pursue a conspicuous and exceptionally intimidating elephant-in-my-room, neuroscience. It was borderline voyeuristic pornography to learn what the drugs I'd been consuming had been doing to my body; like an elegant and complicated labyrinth or garden of forking paths, I could endlessly explore profoundly intricate relationships that comprised my body...every component having a delicate impact on every other component. Each psychedelic adventure began to incorporate images of anatomy that I could both spatially imagine and intuitively feel with an unprecedented resolution. When stretching to attenuate muscle tension, I could almost see my tendons sliding, sarcomeres stretching and contracting, and blood flowing through my arteries and veins. I could visualize my lungs expanding, bronchioles exposed and ravenously absorbing the compounds present in my pleasantly smoked cannabis. One time I was lucky enough to actually observe myself becoming infected by a common cold-style virus, watching my body's tissues reliably respond and fend themselves from the invading pathogen. I could picture my sinuses swelling, various immune-system proteins transferring chemical signals to one another like a stock-brokerage firm responding to a crash in the market, trying to execute the best strategy to adapt and overcome a novel obstacle to survival. In essence, I was re-introduced to these compounds as study-aids of unparalleled efficacy, derived predominantly from the side-effects I'd long been ignoring. I was learning from probing my physiology with the side-effects of psychedelics, and this opened up a whole dimension of the experiences that I'd never anticipated.

I hope this hasn't come across as self-aggrandizing or arrogant; quite the contrary, most individuals are able to implicitly learn these lessons without nearly the same degree of egocentrism as they mature, but I was undoubtedly and enviously stunted, emotionally and intellectually, in many of my realizations. The invaluable lessons I extracted from these experiences have been long lasting and character-defining. The information I've privileged to study falls into a beautiful biochemical ballet, each character playing a part as significant as the next; when it comes to psychedelics, there are no such things as side-effects for me anymore. Each effect represents a biological system in an altered state, which is one of the most fundamental ways that we've learned about our universe; most frequently, the most foundational lessons in neuroscience have blossomed from disruptions of typical activity. At least in my experience, side-effects are some of the most physiologically relevant ways to understand the nature of the systems subserving our abilities to interact with, and perceive, the external universe.

[Reported Doses: "Average"]

Exp Year: 2001-2008	ExpID: 81219
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 23
Published: Oct 27, 2021	Views: 643
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Mushrooms (39) : Unknown Context (20), Retrospective / Summary (11)