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The Upside Down Tree
Cannabis
Citation:   Billy. "The Upside Down Tree: An Experience with Cannabis (exp24584)". Erowid.org. Jan 6, 2007. erowid.org/exp/24584

 
DOSE:
4 bowls smoked Cannabis (plant material)
BODY WEIGHT: 140 lb
I am submitting this narrative as a somewhat nostalgic account of some of the great fun I've had smoking marijuana, and because I haven't seen too much on this site regarding the very real hallucinatory properties of this plant. This occurred when I was perhaps 16 (I'm almost 34 now) and the fact that I remember it as well as I do speaks for itself. I've listed my weight as 140 lbs because at the time it was probably about that. I was a real bean pole of a youth, 6'3'' and 140 pounds. I've since filled out quite a bit and now weigh over 200 which is about right. A little hope for you skinny beanpole lads out there.

I was over visiting my friend Peter at his house. The only notable thing about this particular visit was that Peter was mainly my brother's buddy. You see, I have a twin brother and since about 4th grade we always attended different schools, in order not to have to endure the 'geez you guys look so much alike, which one are you' stuff that all twins come to find annoying to say the least. So Pete was from my brother's school so usually I'd be over there either with him and/or less often than he was. But high school pot enthusiasm can be a great social catalyst and somehow Pete and I agree over the phone that I'll come zooming over there with my fresh new bag though my bro's away somewhere.

I get there (after crossing the hudson river by car) to his parents' suburbanite well to do area. We were in a decent 'buddies ready to get good and high' mood, perhaps somewhat augmented by the novelty of it being just me and him rather than the usual gang of my brother and often other friends. We had expressely in mind smoking and making the most of it. Sometimes circumstance just sets up fun circumstances and we were juiced for some good smoking.

We decided : 'we wont even sit inside doing it, we'll go out and do it the night itself. Do it right.' And out we went, starting off on a quiet subarban lane near his house, lights in windows, wind in the trees, stars in the sky, a brook, a storm drain, sneakers clomping in fresh night dirt. We smoked the first bowl, then another. the first stepping stone to the high I remember was when somehow in conversation I used the word 'exegesis' which I don't think I even knew the meaning of then, and Pete being even more of a goofball than I was started in his first pot wordmind effects to analyze as 'exe, that means outside, gesis, jesus, like, outside jesus...' even then I knew that was entirely faulty semantics. 'uh no Pete not quite'.

We went gradually smoking toward some back lawn area nearby his and neighbors' houses, back pathways discovered in his long years of childhood play, less well known to me of course being of relatively recent aquaintance. Then he comes out with a most novel suggestion (we were already high by now and I was eerily tuning in on his whole ancient-to-him new-to-me night suburb world). The suggestion was as follows as uttered by him that night in 1985 or 6: 'let's go to the upside down tree!'.

Now dig it, I didn't know what the upside down tree was, and here I am high in a relatively foriegn yet deeply interesting seeming suburan nightworld. You do the math. 'What the hell is the upside down tree?'!!!!!!. He said it was a tree that grew somewhere near his house that looked like it was upside down, roots on top branches on the bottom.

OK then let's go! This I had to see. But first another bowl. So we cook one under a nearby pine. There may have been other brief perambulations, but this was a while ago, and one thing was for sure, we were gong to see this fabled 'upside down tree' before this night was out and curiosity crackled in the fresh (somehow I think maybe late winter early spring) air. My curiosity was to be well rewarded as the reader shall see.

By the time we got to the srange tree I recall I was extremely stoned, in that phase where people look momentarily like other people you'e seen, locations become other locations, you've thought so many landcapes and people and events into the scene already that you forget what you've been doing and find yourself here with the new thought up ones associating and echoing into what you're seeing. in particular I remember Peter sitting or climbing or balancing on some low branch and looking for all the world like, among many other things, that guy from an ad for a law firm called Jacoby and Myers. This works doubly well at night.

The tree didn't look all that unusual from the bottom, though it did have long low branches sort of like the upper branches of a tree. Pete assured me that when I got to the top the real appearance of it being an upside down tree would become manifest.
Pot has always had a powerful effect on me, and by this time I was really in a mystic frame of mind. We climbed. Branch by branch I ascended. It was like going through a life process. From one to ten. Stages of developement, fascinatingly represented by a strange, anonymous moonlit tree. But even stranger, when you get to the top youre at the bottom. After all this was the upside down tree.

Pete gets to the top having started first. Then I do. all the leafage dissappears and boom we're on top of something like the stem of an uprooted tree. I'm not sure to this day what this tree's story was, but on top it was this rooted gnarled wood on which you could sit, almost like a tree house. I almost had vertigo a bit out under the starry sky, out in he open, like the crow's nest on a ship. 'wow!' I was saying. You know just 'wow', for reasons not the least of which I had just experienced something like archetypal 'growing and maturation' on the way up. I sat down next to him on the perch.

Then it happened. There was a light in the distance in the upper tree level suburban darks. I looked at it. I began to gaze and stare at it. It was some ordinary house or street light somewhere but as I watched it ceased to be something ordinary. It expanded, opened up and projected itself most convincingly in an actual motion image of little medieval type figures carrying some sort of a chest down an ancient underground tunnel. I don't mean for a second, I mean just as though I was sitting there watching an actual little lighted 8 mm film projected tinily against the night sky (or distant woods). I began describing it heatedly to Pete, who began chuckling in amazement. At first I was so enthralled and it was so real I thought he was seeing it too. Then the scene shifted I remember to a simple chess board with pieces on it. I described this too.

Then other scenes ensued, which I have forgotten. But there were a finite number, maybe 4 or 5. They would alternate. I'd say 'now its back to the guys carrying the chest throgh the tunnel, now its the chessboard again...' etc. it was just like some sort of actual motion pictue interface between my mind and the light in the distance. It was like 'dreaming into' the light that was there, and the light was somehow modally the means by which to see that dreaming,to project and illuminate it, light interfacing with thought, all unconsciously and automatically. It seemed it found 'channels' it wavered between just like a radio. I didn't decide which scene it was about to switch to, though I suppose I could sort of bring on a scene change by shifting my focus.

Eventually it stopped and I asked Peter: 'did you see it too?' his gleeful chuckling had gone on the whole time to he extent that I thought somehow he'd been a part of the vision 100%. 'No' he said, 'But I could just imagine everything you were saying.'

Exp Year: 2003ExpID: 24584
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 6, 2007Views: 26,429
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Cannabis (1) : Mystical Experiences (9), Glowing Experiences (4), Small Group (2-9) (17)

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