Recently I was faced with a difficult decision. I had been looking for work, and after a month of looking was offered two extremely attractive jobs on the same day. I was quite torn as to which I should take. In most ways they were pretty close. The main difference was that one offered more money, the other a superior working environment and less stress. After debating the pros and cons of both for hours, it occurred to me that I might try smoking a little 5-MeO-DMT to facilitate some insight into the situation. I'd tried this before, and had good results. After thinking about it for a few minutes I decided to go ahead and give it a try.

I loaded up a small amount and smoked it carefully while lying on the living room floor. After finishing the hit I realized that I had underdosed slightly. Nevertheless I was propelled into heavy psychedelic territory. With eyes closed stark black and white visuals expanded and contracted in a multitude of geometric forms. With eyes open the room shimmered and had a multilayered, "trailing" aspect to it. I was very aware of the sounds that my house made in the "silence". My thoughts were centered mostly on the experience itself as it unfolded, but I did think a bit about the question I had gone in with. Upon my return to normal consciousness I felt better, less worried that I might make the "wrong" decision, but no closer to ultimate resolution.

Not ready to give up I decided to try again. As usual I was a little shaky upon return but I managed to load up another hit and moved to the couch to smoke it. I cued up some music to propel my journey, the song "History" by the Verve. I carefully vaporized the hit and held it while starting the CD player. As the first majestic strings swelled up, my reality accelerated until time seemed to stand still. I was very conscious of the room, the music and the rest of my immediate surroundings. The music seemed beautiful, and it made me think of my girlfriend who had turned me on to the band a short while before. About this time my mind became deeply involved in fantasies or projections of what my life would be like if I took the mellower, lower paying job. These were all positive. My thoughts raced over the possibilities, pros and cons, and seemingly every thought I'd had or might have about each position. As I came back it was clear to me what my decision should be. Money and material things have never been of supreme importance to me and I knew that in the long run I'd be much happier with the job that paid less but was more interesting and fun. I was relieved to have finally made a decision. It felt very right.

I was feeling good, but I still hadn't penetrated deeply into the MeO trip yet. I decided to continue probing. I loaded up another hit, smoked it and restarted the CD as I began zooming. The music of "A New Decade" filled my head and pushed me into psychedelic space on a wall of guitar. I was filled with an immense joy and pleasure in the beauty of the music I was listening to. It suffused my being and lasted well into the second song of the album. As I came down I was in a wonderful mood, full of energy even though it was quite late at night and I had been tired before starting. I almost felt as if I had slept for a few hours. This dose, like my last two was lower than I had hoped. 5-MeO is extremely hard to eyeball dosages of, and not too easy to smoke efficiently either. I decided I would load up one more hit before calling it a night.

I decided to go all out, as a sort of celebration. I put a seemingly large amount of material into my pipe and smoked it as the fifth song on the album started. This is "A Northern Soul", the song the album is named after and one of the more psychedelic songs on the album. This time, I did it. The guitars pummeled my consciousness until it was floating somewhere in the mix. Space folded around me as I dissolved. I curled up on my couch and let the music wash over me as I experienced melting into the fabric of being and watched extremely bright white streams of light form and reform and punch holes in the inky blackness behind my eyes. It was very intense. This lasted for the length of the song and into the next tune. After coming back I put my things away, brushed my teeth and headed to bed.

This is the second time I have used MeO to provide some insight and help me make a difficult decision. My early experiences didn't necessarily seem to indicate that this would be a useful application for MeO, but something told me it would help, and it has. The process is very different from the insight I get from most psychedelics. It just seems to speed up my cognition so that I can examine thousands of pieces of data simultaneously. Decisions that might take me weeks to make seem to be made in a few minutes. This seems very useful to me, to say the least. I will probably continue to use MeO in this manner from time to time as the need arises and as long as it continues to be useful.