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Twenty-Five Days in This Stretch
Fasting
Citation:   John Michael Davis. "Twenty-Five Days in This Stretch: An Experience with Fasting (exp102020)". Erowid.org. Jun 4, 2020. erowid.org/exp/102020

 
BODY WEIGHT: 155 lb
Fasting on Distilled Water

To this point in my life I had been fasting regularly for 5 years intermittently. I was 25 years old. I was at this point it is fair to say, living to fast. I was slightly out of my mind. I know that the best report for the community would likely be a full disclosure of those 5 years while fasting and the observations taken in that time. This however is going to be, for lack of time a very brief but direct expression of the details of the final fast that I made through this period of my life. It could be considered the hallmark moment of the total run that lasted 5 years from 1993 to 1998.

I had begun 1998 with the soul intention to accomplish a 40 day fast on distilled water. The reason for this was it is fair to say for psychedelic experience. I had at this point read many books on fasting and developed a good grasp of the stages of a fast. I had taken note that around day 15 in a water type fast that serotonin and other brain plasticity type transmitters peaks out. I had experienced on many occasions the subtle psychedelic effects and general natural highs that were generated through fasting. I wanted to figure out if it were at all possible to sustain the effects and to what degree the experience could be sustained. Still at this point my experience and curiosity I needed to know if one could go further or as far with fasting as one could with LSD or any other Hallucinogenic substance.

My direct experience at this point did suggest that general well being and intelligence could be enhanced through fasting and that, well a fasting seemed to be like a slow roll out of a psychedelic session, so that it was so easy to notice because it was happening over the course of many days instead of in the frame of 8 hours. Fasting requires a discipline and a constant self maintenance that is interestingly self correcting by its own merit. Due to the fact that one is engaged with society the layout of the experience has more incognito to the conscious awareness until the strangeness creeps up around day 12 for me. I have spoken about fasting with many people and really found nobody who experiences it quite like I do. So I do not expect this to relate to others. I spent many years hoping that my experience was not me specific and could also be grasped by others. To this day, I have not found that to be the case. I do not know the reason, because I really felt that I found a passage beyond any need for alternative substances that may be considered illegal or otherwise temporary and dangerous. I thought everyone would want to know something about it. Not the case at all.
I thought everyone would want to know something about it. Not the case at all.


Now in this fast, like many of my fast, I was working full time at a Gas Station as the Assistant Manager. I was working more than 40 Days a week. I lived in Denver, Colorado and worked in Niwot. Key #1 I was working more than full time. I did not rest. Granted during the later days of the fast I could barely walk up the steps to the apartment I was living at by the time I got home. Still, I would only need 6 hours or less of sleep a night. This is because most of my energy is utilized for digestion of food. When that is gone I actually need less sleep. Also I am able to slip into a deeper more aware kind of dreaming state that I believe has a higher quality than when I fall asleep with a traditional intestinal cycle of food ingestion.

At some point these dreams become trans-lucid. Usually around the 7 – 12 day. In this experience I am becoming more and more lucid (aware that I am dreaming). I will be focused on my hunger and searching for some food that I can not find. Then I will find a store house full of food and will begin to binge. I will binge with a fury until as I gradually come to the awareness that this is a futile dream…. This realization goes on simultaneously to the act of gorging on all kinds of taste, textures and flavors that are increasingly becoming real in a lucid awareness. The thought occurs to me 1. That this is a dream. 2. I am still meeting my desire. This is the point of transformation neurologically. What is I believe happening is that the neurons associated with my previous trends of behavior are being turned off while axon dendrite action is turning toward an alternative placement of these pleasure orientated lines of fulfillment. In my awareness I realize that the hunger for all these foods can be quenched from within my own reserves and my mind lets go of the quality associations and binds taste memory to correlate with the internal reserves (ketosis). Then my entire body begins to buzz and I have a lift from the dream into a spiritual body. Music begins to play as if by a chorus of angels. I wake up and my entire body is electrified, I open my eyes and the music is still playing. It takes a few minutes for the song to diminish but the sense of joy does not diminish as I move into my day feeling totally alive and fresh.

On day 17 as I am sitting in the parking lot of the movie store where I am going to go rent a movie. I am listening to Crystal Planet by Joe Satriani. It had become my custom at this point to sit in my car for many minutes before getting out of it, just listening to the music. I had just replaced Anti Christ superstar with the new album by Joe Satriani. I was sitting with my eyes closed while the song called Flight of Angels begun. The marching drum beats took in and I was just listening without really paying attention to the music. I caught what I thought was an under logic to the song that reminded me of something from Steve Via and it caused me to laugh but then something happened in my brain and the energetic magnitude around my head shifted and my thought was like, well I guess you could also listen to the music like this, just then the core theme of the music popped and in full scale visionary logic a flight of air force jets boomed through my conscious window taking off from the flight deck of a battle carrier, it was a waking dream. The music was no longer outside of me, but it was emanating from within the center of my point of awareness. Then a dripping of total absolute bliss carried down through my cranial sacral in moment to moment pulses that were not so much fixed in time only were present like breathing. I turned off the song. Smiled a minute about what just happened. Turned back on the song from the beginning and relived the entire sequence of events. This should have been my sign to end the fast.

I continued until day 25. The water had begun to taste very chemical like after I had licked an envelope
I continued until day 25. The water had begun to taste very chemical like after I had licked an envelope
at work that needed sending. The rubbery glue seemed to slide down my throat and would not go away and soon I my throat grew very sore. I later learned that the true sign that your body has moved out of ketosis (muscle sparing mode) and into cannibalism of major organs is a soar throat. The sound of all music was centered through core of my mind and seemed to filter through my symbol dream mind before reaching my awareness so that when I actually heard the lyrics deeper meanings would be flashing to the surface. This happened with my guitar gently weeps while I was selling someone a pack of cigarettes suddenly an image of a rising Christ with blazing light and a hierarchy of angels appeared around the spokes of the melody and the lyrics:
I don't know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don't know how you were inverted
No one alerted you

I told the person to hold on a second, while I dropped to my knees and pure bliss that was just there to be enjoyed for its buoyant presence. And my spirit self was waking up. It required nothing but its recognition and when I would pay attention to it, the light would get brighter and the bliss would get more extreme, my voice took a shift in the direction of some of Hollywood’s top actors resonating with new and invigorating tones that carried humor waves in the way I spoke. But I had to sell the cigarettes.

About an hour later a Government FBI Inspector comes in and gently interviews me. A customer had called the cops on me and suggested I was on some kind of hallucinogenic when I told them that what if I could place a dial in your hand and you choose to turn it from pain to total bliss, where would you turn it? I personally would turn the crank to bliss. But so many just look at you and say somewhere in the middle. Instead of saying to people have a good day, I would tell them, Pleasure through you.

The day I broke the fast, I was in pain and a bit afraid. I thought if I did not break the fast I might end up in the hospital and so decided instead to break it, though I thought I could go on, I did not no feel confident enough and I am sure it was for the right reason. By this time in the year being April I had inconsecutively fasted 90 days out of 120 but 25 in this stretch.

So I was in pain and broke the fast on orange juice and powerbars. Ice-cream, hotdogs, Doritos, deli sandwiches until I was throwing up. That night I would wake up in pain, I would have all the water I could drink and some powerbars. I took a few calagenix fuel tablets which had ma huang and guarana in them before ma huang was illegal. I continued to wake up every hour but feeling a bit better. I did not know if I would be able to make it to work I felt so bad, but every hour I woke up feeling better and stronger. Then the last time I woke up with a vision. I was lead to this old building in a swampy woods. It was abandoned. I went in and inside it there was an artesian well with ancient inscriptions on it. An angel appeared and told me it was the voice of god and that I should drink from this fountain. When I did an elixir of pure absolute total bliss that knocked me back into my childhood flooded me on every level. I remember looking up to this angel as the room I was in began to shift into a large universal sky above my head and I asked, “can I have some more?” The angel said to me, “you can have all that you crave, this is your eternal essence and was abandoned but has been claimed by you. Know one else can keep you from it. Whoever would will be dealt with by the one who oversees all that is.” So I took another drink and as I did I could hear all peoples in all realms speaking and asking questions, pointing fingers and throwing all kinds of hate at me for standing in this spot. Then I stood up, I stood up out of this building like a giant with my head in the stars. I could see all matters of being within and without form inside and outside of myself and the one who deals with the matter of boundary in the material world took my place and smiled to me a knowing smile that said, you don’t want to see what is ABOUT TO HAPPEN TO ALL THE HATERS. Or something like that, I haven’t totally been able to put it into words that fit the gesture.

I woke up again with this total body buzz but a light all around the room and I felt a pinch on my back while as I opened my eyes I heard the flutter of wings as the light flew out of my open apartment window. Everything was crystal clear, I could here the birds chirping in formulas and equations that spoke to the inside of my DNA coding. I was totally awake and I thought, They should make a drug that does this. They probably have it, and have it locked away… what a joke... Who needs a fucking joke... I am at the punch line now... and laughing authentically at nothing at all, just because I had humor in sense. I got myself together and made it to work on time. These sensations lasted about 2 weeks, I did not have a lifestyle in place that would sustain the bliss crescendo of that experimental plateau
These sensations lasted about 2 weeks, I did not have a lifestyle in place that would sustain the bliss crescendo of that experimental plateau
and since for 15 years have only worked at cultivating a lifestyle that might stand the test. At the end of the fast I weight around 105 lbs.

I have since fasted many times and in many ways. I have not been called to endure or given the fortitude to endure into the inner nectar state. I did this with zero support and no positive feedback. Nobody has ever encourage me or though to work with me in reconstructing the experience. I have matured a lot and developed a strong template to assist in reentry into this super state of being. I have become a certified Health Coach and have nearly finish College at Western Michigan University. I had dropped out in 1995 to pursuit my quest with the fasting potential. It has continued to be my belief that there is a natural path to the psychedelic experience, that it is an essential component to creativity, intelligence, compassion and joy that has been diminished by our current social administrations. I sought out to chart this path so that those who naturally are geared toward this avenue might have a legal way to it. I believe that the potential that lies dormant within our cells is inherited from our ancestors and belongs to each of us independently from each other and that it has no limit in the direction of the evolutionary. To each their own unfoldment.

John

Exp Year: 1993-1998ExpID: 102020
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 25
Published: Jun 4, 2020Views: 2,731
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Fasting (178) : Glowing Experiences (4), Hangover / Days After (46), Multi-Day Experience (13), Retrospective / Summary (11), Various (28)

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