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Revisiting My Birth
Nitrous Oxide
Citation:   Happycracker. "Revisiting My Birth: An Experience with Nitrous Oxide (exp53369)". Erowid.org. Jun 26, 2007. erowid.org/exp/53369

 
DOSE:
5 hits inhaled Nitrous Oxide (gas)
BODY WEIGHT: 150 lb
Mindset: Initially reluctant to partake but relaxed and feeling good.
Setting: Hanging out with my girlfriend in her apartment.
Preparations made for the experience: none.
Other substances being used at the time: none


Some friends had managed to procure a tank of nitrous and left it at my girlfriend's apartment to pick up later. In the meantime, they told us to enjoy the tank until they came by to pick it up. I was reluctant to partake because I believed it would be nearly impossible to tear myself away from the tank once I got started, based on my experiences on nitrous 10 years before (also with a tank). But I consented to allowing my girlfriend to blow a lungfull of nitrous into my mouth while we were kissing.I could have refused, but it was such a delicious way to be coaxed back into what I deep down really wanted to do.

The experience was very mild, but enough for me to immediately consent to a balloon.I did not experience the echoing and fierce, jarring buzzing that had accompanied the nitrous trips that I had experienced 10 years ago. I do not remember much worth reporting from the first few hits except for a lot of exhilaration and laughing, but when each inhalation got me progressively higher, I finally began having some breakthroughs. It was as if the first few hits helped me get adjusted to the effects so I could be in the right space to experience what was to come.

I felt like everything that pertained to my participation in this life dissapeared, and I had a direct experience of the ageless being that I was before this life and who I will be after death. Ageless, yet somewhat a cross between a newborn infant and an adventurous but confident teenager. It felt rather organic and primordially human, but sang of the spirit at the same time. I felt like I was revisiting the individual tinge of emotional being, destiny, and purpose that infused itself with my body and bodily consciousness the moment the body was ready. I realized that this self I was meant to be had been forgotten during my life but never lost. That self showed me my entire future and my entire life, but I could not connect this with the details of my life as conceived of in a sober state.

I felt like each time I took a lungful, I was returning to where the last nitrous trips left off...it was as if they all occurred at the same time. I felt the sense that the trips that I had taken in my early 20's had brought me to the same moment that all future trips would. I felt that 10 years before, I had already experienced this moment of being with my girlfriend, and I felt like I was back with my friends from 10 years ago. I felt like people would say the same things each time I got high again, and even though I heard them say different things as well, this did not detract from my amazement that they were repeating themselves every time, in perfect sync with my own thoughts repeating themselves unexpectedly.

When I got extremely high, the appearance of my girlfriend changed as if vision was being pushed down and scrunched, and it had a sense of a yellowish light to it. A couple times while I was extremely overwhelmed by the gas, I heard sound breaking up and stuttering, like time was falling apart.

I was alone with my girlfriend, when the most amazing and shocking thing happened....I had taken an especially powerful lungful and was enjoying the experience immensely, when I heard my girlfriend say some vague things asking me if I was ok, and then mentioned the names of some other friends. I felt a vague sense of the presence of 2 other generic beings. To my shock, from those generic beings, people corresponding to the names my girlfriend mentioned materialized where moments before, nobody was there. I had experienced no break in consciousness, so I could only assume that I was hallucinating...the hallucination became more and more vivid. I looked at the new arrivals with awe and was amazed at the vivid details of their faces, although one of them I did not know well enough to imagine based on memory. They were smiling at me and looked like they really cared about me in a way I had not sensed before. I told them that I couldn't believe I was experiencing this and that I wondered when it would go away and I would be back with my girlfriend alone. But minutes passed and I felt more and more sober.

My girlfriend told me I had passed out and that they came by while I was making lots of noise in my 'unconscious' state. I did not recall any of this. I could not shake my suspicion that this was all a fantastic illusion and that I was experiencing time distortion that could seemingly go on forever before I would be yanked back into the world I experienced before this trip. Even now it still presents itself as an interesting possibility. But I decided to try to trust that this was all real, and began inhaling more nitrous.

I felt like I could not move, and I had to actually see my body moving to believe it really was. I felt stupefied by the drug but was surprised to see other thoughts occurring by themselves that I could have never imagined having in response to my circumstances, These thoughts did not require any logical analysis on my part, and seemed so intelligent as to seem to come from an instinctual place I had long been out of touch with. I felt myself becoming aware of conclusions that had nothing to do with my conscious thinking, and those conclusions seemed so convincing that I felt I had no evidence to the contrary.

I had unfortunately been misinformed long ago that nitrous could kill me if I inhaled too much, and under that impression, whenever I took a hit, I began feeling a sense that I was to die today, a sense that disappeared and was forgotten each time the effects wore off, only to come back stronger next time with a voice that said, 'See? You are not in control of your destiny...you will do this until you die today...you are 3 hits away from death.' I took those 3 hits, and sure enough, on the third hit, I felt as if I experienced death, but was surprised to find that I was still alive despite this. In that state, death did not seem so bad anyway. I felt that it was my destiny to die from nitrous and I was just fulfilling my destiny. In the world I left behind, everything would work itself out and everyone I left behind would eventually know the peaceful joy of death that resolves all fear and attachment. After that 'death,' my fear of nitrous subsided along with my fear of death.

I could only count 5 punchingball balloons total for sure, but I may have done more. Surprisingly, I got my fill of nitrous after awhile and did not feel the intense desperate craving for it that I had experienced in the past. Also, unlike in the past, I did not experience much diminishing of effects between hits...I got just as high or higher every time. It is very odd to realize that this original self I rediscovered is truly my self even now, despite the fact that who I experience myself as being now does not seem anything like that. All and all, this was one fascinating experience of life seen from within the balloon. Peace

Exp Year: 2006ExpID: 53369
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 26, 2007Views: 25,256
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Nitrous Oxide (40) : Small Group (2-9) (17), General (1)

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