DOSE: T+ 0:00	3.0 g	oral	Syrian Rue	(ground / crushed)
T+ 0:20	18 g	oral	Mimosa tenuiflora	(ground / crushed)

BODY WEIGHT:

170 lb

This is the story of the first time that I felt what ayahuasca has to offer. At the time of this experience I had been experimenting with ayahuasca brews about once a month for the past year. Having tried various ingredients, preparation techniques, dosages, and settings, I was confident this night's mixture would allow me to explore ayahuasca in the way that I wanted to. Previous attempts had only given me a taste. I wanted a lesson.

I ground 54 grams of M. tenuiflora to a fine powder and combined this with 3 cups of bottled water. The pH of the mixture was adjusted to 1 using cheap HCl. This tea was evaporated down to a manageable amount in a scratch free Teflon coated pan. It was never allowed to boil. The resulting tea was filtered with cotton cheesecloth and coffee filters. Solids were returned to the pan, and the process was repeated twice more. The three liquid fractions were combined and evaporated down to a red solid. The solid was divided by eye and put into 57 gel-caps. This made three doses, at ca. 18 grams of Mimosa a piece. Three doses of powered and unrefined syrian rue, at 3 grams a piece, were measured out and encapsulated to compliment these. Two doses were set aside. I was to take the third dose the next afternoon.

I spent the early afternoon dissecting squid for a party that I'd been invited to late that evening. I was half scared that cutting-up animals right before my journey would create a difficult experience; then again, a part of me was hoping to be visited by ten limbed mollusks jetting through the ether. Mindful of the MAOI's, I'd consumed nothing but water this day, and only matzo and water the day before. Had I the ability to feel hunger, my food may never have made it to the party.

Forty minutes before my sitters, Tater and Elm, arrived I took the rue. Twenty minutes later I followed it with the Mimosa. My goal in starting early was to keep the journey from carrying on past my bedtime.

During what had previously been my strongest ayahuasca experience, sleepiness, along with a horrible stimulant quality that I attribute to the B. cappi of that night's brew, had added to the difficulties that I experienced. That trying night, my sitter and I had both fallen asleep and I awoke confused, extremely moody, and lost in a psychedelic world. After finding the bathroom and relieving myself, I found that the toilet refused to shut off. Not being able to tell whether it was overflowing or not, I tried to wake my sitter. 'Cool, wake me up if anything interesting happens,' he responded. It turns out that he was only half-awake when he said that. Though I tease him a lot about leaving me hanging that night, I actually enjoy having a friend with enough of a personality to sleep through just about anything. I returned to the toilet, removed its top and tried to find the source of the problem. Vines!, that's all I saw, not good. I reached in and ripped out a handful of these vines, and with a stroke of great luck, instead of flooding the bathroom, the toilet's hiss quieted. I spent the next seven hours trying to find a meditative refuge from my racing mind by watching an uncontrolled videogame skateboarder slosh back and forth in his half-pipe. Anyway, I don't like having to 'sit out' a difficult psychedelic experience, and I made sure that all parties would be awake this time.

My squid was about done, I had some Police on and I was feeling good. After about one half hour, the rue had kicked in and I felt happy, and mellow. Tater and Elm arrived, I briefed them a bit on what I expected of them, and almost immediately I felt as if I was about six feet underwater, above me a good swell was tugging at me (T +40min.). At about the one-hour mark I was starting to come-up, fast. Over a period of 20min. I felt as if went through the entire 2 hour rise of a plus 3 shroom trip. This was coming on fast.

An hour and twenty minutes after ingesting the rue, and with only the slightest hint of nausea, I was very much under the influence of DMT. The world was shaded in warm hues of purple, orange, green, and red. I felt very loved, but the speed at which things were progressing worried me a bit. I grabbed some pillows, which I laid on the floor, and a blanket to which I would cling like Linus on Halloween for the rest of the night. I made myself nice and comfortable, because I was pretty sure that I wouldn't move much during the hours to come.

I was right; from two hours into it, I seemed to reach a beautiful plateau. Every object seemed to be alive and conscious. Nothing attempted to interact with me, but every twist of carpet, every chair-leg, and every drinking glass seemed to stare back at me and sway to the rhythm. Tater sat in on my computer as DJ for the night, and with great enthusiasm I flopped my limp leg against the floor along with the beat. Smiles. Elm drank herself silly and grinned along on the carpet as I babbled incoherencies at her. I could speak in English, but only with great effort. Occasionally, my desire to share the experience would overpower the gibberish, and I would blurt out something intelligible. Mostly, I just made gleeful vowel sounds.

Certain items would appear to be covered in bangles like an Egyptian bust, and at one point the head of a Chinese lion, decorated in the same manner, danced for me from the ceiling. I remember being a little freightened that this lion would gobble me up, but I guess he was friendly, just really big.
Throughout the night, friends kept stopping by. To my surprise, I was okay with this. Everyone was happy and seemed understanding; so, I didn't feel threatened. I was even delighted to see an ex-girlfriend. I was, for the most-part, unable to communicate, but flopping around on the floor, hugging my blanket, and smiling was enough. I wasn't going to make it to the party, so some friends took my squid for me. I heard later that people liked it; I guess some lies are okay.

Then it hit. The journey started to rocket to a higher intensity. I'd been having one of the most amazing experiences of life and then someone hit turbo-boost. I was perplexed, and scared; I didn't really feel that time had been very distorted. So, I asked Tater; I was right, it had already been ten hours; I was supposed to be coming down. At this time a strong wave of nausea hit. I can only speculate that this nausea came from a combination of fear, the sheer intensity of the experience, and the now liquid contents of my intestines which I am, unfortunately, very good at keeping inside me. I have bad habit of defeating my body's purging reflexes, and this has lead to bouts of psychedelic nausea on several occasions. Now I was beyond any thought of control. I passed in and out of contact with reality. My consciousness seemed to split in to two. One half was panicking, completely breaking-down, spouting an internal monologue of doom and hell. The other half was listening, and absolutely unable to think in words, it had no describable thoughts, just fear, and the pain of having to listen to the other half. I always try to clean all dangerous objects from an area where I plan to trip, but on one of my passes through reality I found that I was laying on top of a screwdriver. What stupidity had caused me to leave tools laying around on the floor? I don't know. Thankfully, for some insane reason, I decided to stick around in this hell for a while before I offed myself, just in order to experience it more completely. Now, I feel proud that I had the strength to stick around in pure horror in order to feed my curiosity. I doubt that my sitters could have stopped my from gouging at my neck with the flat-head. I know that I let out a dull scream, and maybe a 'Nooo!' In another pass through reality Tater asked me if I was tired of tripping. Somehow I managed to slur out an eager 'YeEess!' I was tired, but my answer was a lie. By agreeing to Tater's understatement I was trying not let he and Elm know that I wasn't whole anymore; I 'knew' that I was thoroughly mad. I think that I heard Elm ask, 'is he okay?'

I've thanked them, but I could never thank my sitters enough for being there. There is nothing that they could have done to intervene, but their presence was impossibly comforting.

As fast as this horrible peak came on, it left. I was dropped back into reality. Again, I was just tripping; tripping a hard as I've tripped, but I was me, the carpet was alive, and it was all right. The horror probably lasted for only ten minutes, and I was down in another two hours. The whole experience lasted twelve hours. Maybe the horror peak came from the plant material that I was holding in my intestine; I don't know.
I've never been so happy to be alive and sane, or felt such pure joy as I was at T +12 hours. This joy however is not where I find the value of this journey. I am immensely grateful for the horror; that experience is utterly unique in my life. Those ten minutes, where 'I' wanted so badly to die, but stuck it out for curiosity's sake, vastly overshadow the other eleven hours and fifty minuets of that night, amazing as they were. I thought about those ten minutes every day for a couple of months. I still think about them maybe once a week, a year and a half later.

Drained and barely up to speaking, I found a few tired stragglers left at the party. In a bathroom elsewhere, I let out what I contend is the longest single act of flatulence in human history. I got tired of laughing and my asshole was numb before I was through. My ex took care of me until I fell asleep the next morning.

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 16853
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Aug 17, 2002	Views: 35,397
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