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HowardMarks

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
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Mar 2, 2002
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It surprises me that there are not more threads on the pschedelic effects caused by hallucinogens, and I apologise if I sound like some sort of washed out hippy but I recently experienced a very scary level 5 trip on magic mushrooms and have been thinking about it ever since. As an avid subscriber to all things Fortean I cannot help but draw parallels between the Fortean world and the hallucinatory one.

I am uninterested in the visual hallucinations caused by such drugs, rather what fascinates me is the weird infinite time-loop, circular thoughts, and 'outside of reality' feelings that I experienced at the height of my trip. In particular the phenomenon of 'ego dissolution' where one's mind ceases to be in control of its actions.

What are your opinions on this state of consiousness, and does this really reveal an alternative view of the way that time works as we seem to feel? When I am stuck in an 'infinity loop' is it simply an illusion, or has the drug allowed my brain entry to another dimension of time and space, not normally seen?

If anyone is interested in reading the full report of my trip, it can be found here: http://www.npfx.com/Mushrooms.doc

Any comments/ideas appreciated
 
Scale 5 - :confused:

Is there a scale for drug experiences? How does that work, then? The more f***ed up you are afterwards, the higher the scale, or does it depend upon how diminished your ego is during the experience?

I suppose a true measure would be based upon a number of factors, I can think of several -

1. - how long it takes to 'go up'
2. - the niceness or other wise of the journey into the trip (i.e. e-type wobblies are high or low, whereas the nice gentle ride of the 'shroom express is the opposite
3. - the quality, reality or otherwise of the hallucinations (i.e. glue is traditionally accepted as producing the most vivid and convincing hallucinations and therefore would score higher than acid, for example)
4. - the value of the experience in terms of personal development (obviously glue would score quite low on this one)
5. - the longer term impact of the trip on your interpesonal skills
6. - a ratio of f***ed up-ness against cost (obviously 'shrooms would score highly here, being free in the UK to most people who know where and when to look for the little monsters)
7. - the amount of self-centred and delusional rubbish they make you spout afterwards and how long it takes before you realise that it is actually quite boring to relate drug experiences to people you've never met before but who you happen to sit next to at parties
8. - how many people you were with at the time and how many of these share your same fond memories of a muddy field in the rain/your bedsit/
9. - how long your brain can actually remember the experience in terms of years afterwards

Or do you just class it as a Scale 5 'cos you were right off your tits?

After reading your account of the trip it looks like a classic case of too many mushies. Those things can come back to haunt you (I've had a few in my youthful days when I thought I could do anything without any consequence) - at least you didn't drink loads of booze and add a hang over to your troubles.

Personally, I think that Huxley was a little off the mark.
 
scales

I was using the classification system found on http://www.shroomery.org e.g.

Level 1
This level produces a mild "stoning" effect, with some visual enhancement (i.e. brighter colours, etcetera). Some short term memory anomalies. Left/right brain communication changes causing music to sound "wider".

Level 2
Bright colors, and visuals (i.e. things start to move and breathe), some 2 dimensional patterns become apparent upon shutting eyes. Confused or reminiscent thoughts. Change of short term memory leads to continual distractive thought patterns. Vast increase in creativity becomes apparent as the natural brain filter is bypassed.

Level 3
Very obvious visuals, everything looking curved and/or warped patterns and kaleidoscopes seen on walls, faces etc. Some mild hallucinations such as rivers flowing in wood grained or "mother of pearl" surfaces. Closed eye hallucinations become 3 dimensional. There is some confusion of the senses (i.e. seeing sounds as colors, etcetera). Time distortions and "moments of eternity".

Level 4
Strong hallucinations, i.e. objects morphing into other objects. Destruction or multiple splitting of the ego. (Things start talking to you, or you find that you are feeling contradictory things simultaneously). Some loss of reality. Time becomes meaningless. Out of body experiences and e.s.p. type phenomena. Blending of the senses.

Level 5
Total loss of visual connection with reality. The senses cease to function in the normal way. Total loss of ego. Merging with space, other objects, or the universe. The loss of reality becomes so severe that it defies explanation. The earlier levels are relatively easy to explain in terms of measureable changes in perception and thought patterns. This level is different in that the actual universe within which things are normally perceived, ceases to exist! Satori enlightenment (and other such labels).


I'm not sure how universaly accepted this scale is, but it seems to do a good job of categorising various levels of trip.
 
Wow - I like it.

Wish we had that in days gone by! Yours must have seemed like a level five to you! Hope you're feeling better. That's one of the issues with 'shrooms - the strength varies so much. Even the ones in the UK can vary enormously - the ones picked in the Cleveland Hills seem to be large and quite potent in comparison with some of the welsh ones I've come across. I've even had a level two experience from picking the little fellas! Had to have a sit down for a couple of hours in the cold October rain to get over that one!

Thanks for that - I would still like to see a cross-comparative scale which takes into account factors outside of the singular. Maybe I had too many of the things in days gone by?

:rolleyes:
 
I've had a few dissociative experiences myself (using cannabis).
Like you,the experiencing of time is changed. Usually it seems like the mind is experiencing time at an accelerated rate than that which is passing on a time-piece.
I've experienced the ego dissolution thing as well.
At the time of ego dissolution time didn't seem like a real thing.
What's weird is that while this was happening I could actually see my wife dining in a restaurant,see/taste what she was eating as well as other details around her.
I was at work at the time when I "spaced out".
Interesting experience in that it showed me a little about what we perceive as logical and real is oftentimes an illusion that our mind works within the context of.
 
This is daft, but true: once I was on magic mushrooms, watching a film and experiencing extreme deja vu. I'd never seen the film before but "knew" what was going to happen, both in the film and in the events outside, for the duration.
 
The central meaner and short-term memory getting out of step.
 
Indeed. I couldn't exactly prove it by saying what was going to happen next. But whatever: what was interesting was that it was exactly the same as common deja vu, but went on for hours.
 
Because it had actually already been said!!

I sometimes get the same effect with skunk.
 
Skunk affects me very strongly (so i tend to avoid it), but I don't ever get that effect.
 
Where the hell am I going wrong?

I've imbued liquid LSD and probably achieved a level 3.

Tabs have given me at best a level 3 a long time ago, but generally I only get to level 2.

I've taken all kinds of mushrooms (Cubensis, Thai to name but a few) and never achieved a level 4. Ever. And I've been doing hallucinogenics for over 20 years! Exactly what fungus do you take to achieve a level 5 trip?

mooks out
 
Mooksta

I ingested approximately 30 grams of fresh Mexican Cubensis, which was bought from a 'smart drugs' shop in Amsterdam. Now I'm not that experienced with Shrooms, and have only tried them twice before with quite mild trips. Also previously they were dried where as these were big juicy fresh ones. Perhaps these buggers were just abnormally strong - they certainly had more effect than 'just wandering about laughing at stuff' like the guy in the shop had said!
To be honest, It's pretty difficult to categorise these trips into neat little sections, but I personally felt like the description of a level 5 experience closely mirrored my own - who knows? If you want to experience something similar I would suggest getting fresh ones (which seem to be stronger) and eating more than you usually would. This will probably work, although personally I never want to experience that level of innebriation ever again!
 
30 grams - that's a lot (I think). I think about 7 grams is about the most i've ever tried, and that was well enough. I suppose it was up to about "level 3"
 
Remember that these were fresh (not dried) mushies - I believe that the drying process removes something like 90% of the weight, so I would divide by about 10 if you are comparing to dried mushrooms. I know that 5 grams of dried stuff is supposed to give a pretty heavy trip, so I would imagine that your 7 grams (if it was dried) would be quite intense.
 
Never thought of it as a "weight" issue, but now you mention it...I would imagine then that two boxes of Cubensis equals 20 grams.

Strangely enough I've never had a "bad" trip. I've had a trip where I had to lie down for a few hours cos I felt so wasted but not in a bad way. I just didn't want to walk anymore. I believe the trip itself is a frame of mind, the more positive you are when you take the drug the better time you have tripping. I also believe that a creative mind employed to visualize is less likely to experience hallucinations when taking LSDetc due to the overly used imagination. But here I speak only from my own experience.

One final note:
Taking fungus for tripping is bad kids. The ancient Indians of the US did it and they've almost been wiped out!!

:D

mooks out (of it)
 
Does anyone else get a strange feeling, where you know you're going to start hallucinating?

Did e a few times, however the last time I did it I started to sketch out. Everything was going normally, I was euphoric, everything I percieved seemed to be in sync with me. People seemed to be saying the exact same things I was thinking and going to say, everyone was happy and agreeable, and seemed that we were all "in tune" with each other. I could even see this one person's third eye. I know, cliche'd hallucination material; but I could. It was some form of visual distortion, of course. But I fricking could see a third eye right on this girl's forehead.

Than I got this feeling, I knew everything was going to change. I think I said... "something is going to happen, something is not right". Then reality flipped.

And then my entire perception was reversed. It seemed everyone started ganging up on me, they repudiated me, etc. etc. Basically the exact opposite of how I was feeling before.

It seemed to go on for hours and hours, in fact I can recall hours and hours of things happening. If you were locked in a room with 4 people who absolutely hated you, and they were given free reign to voice their opinion, that was what it was like.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, I had had enough. I finally started telling off one person, and then pop. I saw the confused look on the person's face. I looked around. Everything was different.

I looked at the clock. As near as I can tell, very little or no time had passed, even though i had hours of recollections. Now, this isn't a vague feeling of time having had passed. I could recollect everything that had seemed to have happened, and if it did happen, it would have in fact taken hours. But it didn't. The experience was so horrible that I swore off everything the next day.

But do I think it happened? That since I percieved it, that it must be real? No. That seems to be a common fallacy, that a person's brain can't betray them. That what they percieve is real, it has to be real. This seems to manifest itself in various mental illness, in drugs, in dreams, everywhere.

It seems that most people seem to have an unshakeable belief that what they percieve is real. While, to some extent, this is very handy; I mean, what if all this is a hallucination? What if I'm not typing this? What if you're all figments of my imagination? What if I'm locked away, tied down to some bed somewhere in some mental ward? If you can't trust your perceptions, if you can't trust the reality that you percieve, what can you trust? This line of nihilistic reasoning is harmful. Of course, on the other hand, absolute faith in your perception of reality is just as harmful, especially when you're flirting with mind altering drugs.

In short, no I don't think drug induced hallucinations reflect some hidden, objective reality. I don't think you can draw the some line between visual distortions and distorted thinking. They're both a symptom of the same thing, and have the same cause. That's why mental illness is so damned scary. If you can't trust your brain, your perceptions, what can you trust?
 
As I've said before on this thread I've imbued and never had a bad experience.

On Friday night I imbued a powdered version of them and experience a Level 4, edge of level 5.

I'm sitting 24 hours later and I'm still quite shaken by what occurred so much so that I'm vowing never to touch them again, ever.

I can only explain what I experienced, what I felt and what both I and the person I was with "experienced".

For the first hour we were fine, laughing, rolling around the floor. I have lights in the living room that would put the Hayward's Gallery current exhibition to shame. As a result the white walls of the room I was in were already flashing all sorts of colours. At one point, while lying on the carpet I leaned my head right back and I focused on the end of the room behind me which would have been upside down in my vision. A wall with two down lighters in the ceiling which in effect created a trapezoid with the two corners of the wall.

As I've stated I've enjoyed this experience before and as we were at least an hour into "the trip" i felt quite safe and secure in where I was.

I concentrated and can only describe it as the walls breaking apart at the seams, ripping like a slow motion balloon would. I can clearly recall the tapezoid tumbling away into the darkness. I believe I saw nothing beyond that but a very intense black, I believe there was a laughter, male and malevolant. I can recall thinking before this began being "brave" in my mind, thinking I could handle this and I think the laughter was spiteful toward those thoughts. I believe that I soon as I "saw" and "heard" this there was an intense icy blast of air into the room we were sitting in, the lighting became very dark, the white walls looked like damp was creeping up them and the person I was with suddenly started to throw up violently.

This wasn't a gradual change, this happened within 30 seconds time frame as near as we both can recall.

It becomes a bit sketchy after that but according to the person I was with on their return from the bathroom and the throwing up I was found rocking in the middle of the room, hugging myself and repeating the words "Shouldn't have opened the door."

:shock:

My friend apparently hugged my for a while until I stopped rocking and mumbling. The next few hours were quite difficult for me and the person I was with. Yesterday morning around 8am I was in the garden talking about happy I was to see blue skies and sunshine.

The friend I was with claims that they too encountered a sudden change in the room. In their own words "We were having such a great time, it was great but then it just changed, I felt incredibly ill, you went all weird and were sitting up, the music were were listening too slowed down, the lighting went dimmer."

And that point they ran to the toilet to throw up.

24 hours later I'm back to being as normal as I used to be though there is still a feeling of residual ..."shock" would be the best word I can describe it as.

I've done this before, I decided to push a little further. I feel I shouldn't have because perhaps my mind isn't as strong as I thought it was.

All the tracts and passages I've read about our "reality" and other "realities" kind of makes sense now, maybe I'm more prepared to believe them.

I'm okay now.

Wanted to report my experience. Dismiss it as a "munter getting what they deserved" if you wish.

as ever
former - mindnaut
mooks out
 
Don't worry too much about it - that's a classic bad trip. That's why I packed in the acid 30-odd years ago - not that I ever had that many trips in the first place. Maybe a dozen all told, a few more on 'shrooms.

It does come out of the blue like that. And one of the things about tripping is that you are very sensitive to mood around you, so bad trips are infectious to others that may be tripping with you.

But you are all right, you are out of it and still sane.

If I may sound a bit like Methuselah giving advice, the wisdom among my friends was that once you had a real bad one you shouldn't do it again because the bad memory would be in your mind and triggered by taking the drug. Hey, you had fun while it lasted, didn't you? Time to find another kind of cool experience :)
 
Cochise said:
If I may sound a bit like Methuselah giving advice, the wisdom among my friends was that once you had a real bad one you shouldn't do it again because the bad memory would be in your mind and triggered by taking the drug. Hey, you had fun while it lasted, didn't you? Time to find another kind of cool experience :)

Sound advice.
Thanks
 
Cochise said:
... It does come out of the blue like that. And one of the things about tripping is that you are very sensitive to mood around you, so bad trips are infectious to others that may be tripping with you. ...

Agreed ... I used to see this sort of runaway effect back in the 1970's when I volunteered in crisis / intervention centers, dealing with phone-in and walk-in trippers.

The situation can all too easily escalate in perceived unpleasantness once the least hint of something awry arises. Hallucinogens tend to induce a sort of recursive amplification effect for emotions and mood, such that an impulse in any direction (gaiety, sadness, etc.) can feed back on itself and move you farther / faster in whatever emotional direction it is. Once you start (e.g.) seeing something as negative, it will tend to grow more and more threatening / ominous until and unless you disengage.

In my experience the most effective response is to induce a distraction toward a better emotional trajectory. Do something totally random. Ask them a question that makes no sense. Tell a joke. Give the person freaking out a non-threatening toy. Take him / her for a walk. Give them something entirely different to get engrossed in ...

The artfulness lies in selecting a distraction which doesn't itself immediately lead in a negative / threatening direction.
 
Moooksta said:
As I've said before on this thread I've imbued and never had a bad experience.

On Friday night I imbued a powdered version of them and experience a Level 4, edge of level 5.

What do you mean by 'imbued'?
 
I can remember taking green ohms, brown ferns, bart simpsons, micro dots and all that in the early 90's. With a room of seven people all tripping and watching cyberdelia videos with the mad glasses. One night I thought my friend was the real king of Britain! The next day on comedown in the shower all I could hear was everyones voices from the night before.
We used to do buckets as well at the same time which seemed to highten the auditory and visual hallucinations. I had a couple of bad trips and stopped doing it, I agree that doing a random thing is the best way of avoiding a bad trip. Going for walks and adventures into the countryside helps and makes it seem more natural.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Moooksta said:
As I've said before on this thread I've imbued and never had a bad experience.

On Friday night I imbued a powdered version of them and experience a Level 4, edge of level 5.

What do you mean by 'imbued'?

Took.

Powered form wrapped in a small rizla and swallowed. Wasn't expecting to hit me within 20 minutes of taking it and certainly did not expect to feel the full effects some six hours later. In fact it lasted until at least 6 am so would have been a full nine hours gradually becoming less and less intense. Thank the stars there was someone with me or I do believe I'd be in a dressing gown in a home mumbling about "not opening doors"...within a month.
 
Anyone know of any GOOD sites online where I might read of others experiences whilst having a "bad trip" ?
 
There is a funny but obscure "novelty techno record" called, "Eric the Gardener, I live in a giant mushroom" that was on Mental Temple records.
It's got an Ozzie Temple re-mix on the other side, it's cool and is good for a laugh!
 
Agreed ... I used to see this sort of runaway effect back in the 1970's when I volunteered in crisis / intervention centers, dealing with phone-in and walk-in trippers.

The situation can all too easily escalate in perceived unpleasantness once the least hint of something awry arises. Hallucinogens tend to induce a sort of recursive amplification effect for emotions and mood, such that an impulse in any direction (gaiety, sadness, etc.) can feed back on itself and move you farther / faster in whatever emotional direction it is. Once you start (e.g.) seeing something as negative, it will tend to grow more and more threatening / ominous until and unless you disengage.

In my experience the most effective response is to induce a distraction toward a better emotional trajectory. Do something totally random. Ask them a question that makes no sense. Tell a joke. Give the person freaking out a non-threatening toy. Take him / her for a walk. Give them something entirely different to get engrossed in ...

The artfulness lies in selecting a distraction which doesn't itself immediately lead in a negative / threatening direction.
So true. During the only instance I took mushies (over 20 years ago) we were directed through the trip by the floor manager from our local channel 9 tv station. He was superb. He knew how to dose safely and he knew exactly when people were beginning to zone too deeply into one experience and switched us across to something else entirely. It was a great night all up, but I know I got away with it as the next weekend one of our crew tripped again with a less trustworthy companion and ended up banging on a stranger's door in a random street at 3am begging to be taken to hospital. He had his gut pumped out. The only bad thing that happened to me was at one point I was leaning back on a deck chair and failed to notice I had gone beyond the tipping point. When I regained consciousness and opened my eyes, flat on my back on the floor, there were five faces looking down at me and laughing their stupid faces off and I could hear nothing but a shrill ringing in my ears. I ju-jitsu flipped onto my feet and away we went again. Had a wee flashback or two the following week. Once at work and once at home. Both levitation experiences.

I fully condone experimentation. Just go with someone who knows their way around the block, else you end up another Arthur Cave.
 
BBC Radio 4, Out of the Ordinary

Altered States of Consciousness
Out of the Ordinary,Series 5
For 50 years, one of the most powerful psychoactive drugs, LSD, has been illegal in Britain. The authorities do not want you to alter your state of consciousness. In 2016, the government passed a law banningall psychoactive substances except caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08g7w2s
 
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