DOSE:

2 bumps

insufflated

Anadenanthera peregrina

(ground / crushed)

BODY WEIGHT:

125 lb

Not so much the substance as the set and setting. Not so much a drug as a medicine.

Background: I am male, at the time of this experience 23 years old and weighing around 125 pounds. I take no prescription or OTC medications, but use yerba mate and Cannabis on a daily basis. I am well versed with commonly available psychedelics including mushrooms, LSD, DMT and 5-MeO-DMT, ayahuasca-type brews, Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds, Trichocereus cacti, 2C-I, MDMA and methylone, and some dissociatives like Salvia divinorum and nitrous oxide. I have experimented in the past smoking preparations of Cebil seeds (Anadenanthera colubrina var. cebil), but I had never before experimented with Yopo seeds (Anadenanthera peregrina), nor had I tried insufflated seeds of this genus in the traditional manner.

So I did some Yopo seed snuff yesterday; never thought I’d be insufflating a couple pinches of toasted and pulverized seed material, but there’s a first time for everything I suppose. To my surprise, there was no pain or burning, no nausea and vomiting; though it did make my nose very clogged. It tasted nicely nutty, and had a peanut-butter smell. The preparation did not have any basifying agent, it was just the toasted and pulverized seeds, so perhaps this is why it didn’t burn my nose. However, the effects came on quickly and noticeably.

Setting: Over for a weekly dinner party with my “second family” of friends. Most of the usual faces, a few old acquaintances and a few new ones; and a few surprises, friends just returned from vacation and my cousin among them. All people I know and love.

Mindset: I was in a very strange state of mind when entering the experience as well as in previous days. I’ve been having a feeling of spiraling downwards; exploring into the dark depths of my soul. I felt I had to make it all the way to the bottom before contemplating bubbling back up to the surface.

Partly I seemed to be channeling some very powerful cosmic energy, so high a vibration that it was like I was tripping without having taken any psychedelics. Case in point: The previous day I had smoked one hit of some very potent hash oil. For the next three hours, I tripped hard. Everything moved and waved, the room breaking up into tiles which would shift at odd angles, not in the way you’d expect them to. My thoughts were racing, looping into spirals. I felt as though I was on mushrooms, I don’t think I could have tripped this hard from the marijuana without being in a particularly receptive and open mindset to begin with.

Being around all these intense people at the dinner, who all seemed to be buzzing off this plane of reality, was affecting me like an LSD cocktail. Strange thoughts and vibrations. I spent a lot of time just sitting quietly on the couch, observing and feeling as the emotions of everyone around impinged on me through the solar plexus.

I was also struggling with a feeling of love I have for this woman. A tugging at heart and throat because I’m conflicted about how to express this love. How to let the emotion flow openly and freely, but within boundaries. Without taking it to a physical level, as she’s in a committed relationship with a man I respect and care for. The object of my desire cornered me in the kitchen; picking up empathically that I am worrying about something she asks what is wrong.

As my gaze stumbles, falling into her hypnotic eyes, “Well… I love you.”

“It’s okay to love me,” she reassures. Love is the strangest and strongest drug of all. I was glad I’d been open and honest about how I felt, and she thanked me for that.

The Experience: Jarman and I head downstairs for a little peace and quiet as I’m kind of freaking out a little. Everything is just really intense and emotional right now, but downstairs is a nice calm area to collect ourselves.

Jarman and I were discussing his experiences with smoking DMT and taking cebil and yopo snuff. This man has a deep connection with these substances. His trips are filled with entity contacts, spirits, daemons, energy healings, communication and information flooding. I trust his knowledge of these plants completely. The first time I saw him was at an outdoor festival, right after he had taken some Yopo snuff. As it kicked in, he had gone out of body and reports having entities enter his body and dance his body around. I remember it vividly, because he was dancing so wildly and crazily that he managed to distract half the crowd from watching Bass Nectar spin, instead they all formed a circle around watching him as he flailed wildly. The next day when I was introduced to him and he told me about his experience on Yopo, he literally broke down into tears recalling the wonder and awe of what he had experienced!

With his mischievously glinting eyes and fiendish smile, Jarman reminds me of nothing so much as a leprechaun. Crazy leprechaun man passes me a small dime bag filled with yellowish powder, lips curling even higher as the smile grows.

“DMT?” I question, holding the bag. It certainly feels like DMT in my hand.

“No, it’s yopo.” He replies.

It wasn’t too long before we were taking pinches of the powder out of the bag and throwing it up our noses, a little flick of the fingers on the inhale. I’m not usually comfortable snorting anything, although I’ve taken ketamine and methylone intranasally in the past. The yopo was nothing like these chemicals, it felt totally natural and almost pleasant in taste and smell.

Although I’d just recently said I was going to take a break from psychedelic drugs, everything about taking the yopo at this moment felt intuitively right; as with the ganja the day before I was particularly open and receptive to the effects of the yopo. I could nearly anticipate what it would feel like just from having held the bag. An energy attunement, adjustment, shifting my perception so that the spiritual dimensions begin to leak through. I knew intuitively that this was exactly the experience I needed to have.

After the first pinch I noticed an immediate calming effect. All the rough and jagged edges of my thoughts and emotions were smoothed out. Visually everything gained a soft sheen like an oil painting. I became aware of the energy flowing through everything: through Jarman and I, through the ground and walls and objects around us. I could see our auras quite distinctly.

Taking a second pinch deepened the effects. I had to blow my nose out after a few minutes as it filled up with copious amounts of mucous, and a slight tension and nausea in the stomach became noticeable.

A tingling head rush comes over me, sucking me into the yopo realms. I just close my eyes and pay attention to the feeling. Similar to DMT, a definite tryptamine buzzing and I see feathered sheets of colours flash behind closed eyes. It’s a gentle and peaceful sensation.

I am feeling pulled upstairs, so I follow my feet in that direction. I’m slightly dizzy while walking as if I had consumed a moderate amount of alcohol. When I get upstairs the living room is full of people drumming and singing with vigour and force. The energy in that room hits me like a few more shots of liquor. I am reeling, somewhat disoriented and make my way to a couch. The yopo is pulsing strongly through my veins.

Almost as soon as I have sat down Nessie looks at me from across the room and makes her way over to my side. We talk a bit, her telling me about vacationing in Latin America (she’d just gotten back earlier in the evening), and me telling her about the strange natural psychedelia I’ve been experiencing. I don’t mention anything about having taken yopo to her.

Nessie says “I can feel my hands wanting to come down onto yours…” Mine are facing palm up and she places her hands palm down on them. Nessie can pull up vast amounts of earth energy which balances nicely with all the cosmic sky energy that I pull down. This is something I’ve noticed about her before, that she channels so much earth energy that it can feel like I’m being sucked down into the ground when around her. As we sit with palms together the vibration between us grows, and grows, and grows. Wow.

Nessie places her hands, one on my back and one on my front over the heart chakra, suffusing me with a wave of earth energy. “This is your centre of grounding. You can draw energy up from the ground around you, like a blanket so you feel secure and protected.” As she speaks these words, I feel that blanket rise up around me in a spiral, soft and fuzzy. I feel strongly grounded and safe in a way I don’t normally.

She continued to open and cleanse my lower chakras. Earth energy flowed over me like soft but weighty clay. Occasionally Nessie would remove and throw away or blow off negative energy I’d been holding inside me. So deeply held inside me that I didn’t even realize it was there until feeling its cathartic release. I have been repressing more than I thought, but was now letting go of some of that. Nessie finished by holding my feet, pressing them to the floor in a closing action of grounding. As we opened our eyes and smiled at each other thankfully, I could see reeling, touching her third eye where she had gotten back a surge of activation from me.

This combination of deep energy cleansing and yopo had left me feeling amazing. Totally tapped in to divine consciousness. At the centre of my being was a pulsing core of electric energy. Every minute or so, a little tingling “Zing” of energy radiates through me. Butterflies and exhilaration, like speeding over a bump in the road or being on a roller coaster just peaking over the crest of a curve. I was very alert and stimulated, but it felt like a natural energy, not speeding and jittery or fake and chemical.

The afterglow lasted a really long time. Everyone at the party was buzzing and talkative, and it wasn’t till around 2:00 AM (on a working night!) that I finally managed to extricate myself. When I got home, some three hours after taking the yopo, I smoked a little bit of potent marijuana before going to bed. The synergy was strong, seeming to bring back the warrior yopo which dominated over the gentle mary jane. There was a pressure and churning tension in my stomach. With eyes closed I had vivid, ever-changing and colourful hypnagogic imagery before drifting off to sleep. Normally I have little or no hypnagogic imagery before sleep.

Aftereffects: After only four hours of sleep, I woke up feeling surprisingly energized. That little tingling pulse of energy from my centre was still there, not so strong as the night before but enough to let me swing through the morning with ease. The whole day after my nose ran constantly. I’m not sure if this was some kind of sinus infection from snorting the seeds, or possibly a continuing purging of negative energy. That’s the only negative aftereffect I noticed from the yopo. I would try this again, but plan to wait till everything about the situation feels right. Yopo for me was subtle but powerful, so set and setting are key to a good experience.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 83380
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 23
Published: Jun 23, 2010	Views: 28,301
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Anadenanthera peregrina (285) : First Times (2), Relationships (44), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Glowing Experiences (4), Small Group (2-9) (17)