Posts tagged "trip report"
The Loop Trip How Two Kids on Acid Stumbled onto the Theory of Everything
When I was around twenty years old, I was living in a little apartment on Pearl Street, in Boulder, Colorado, with my good friend Jim. We were both guys who had an affectionate, on-again-off-again relationship with LSD, and during this time we were both on again. We were tripping all the time. Often, we would develop themes, inside references, ongoing philosophical explorations that would carry over from trip to trip. One day, we were sitting around waiting for our doses to kick in and decided to put on the Steely Dan album, Aja. (Steely Dan is hugely underrated...
Psilocybin Healing How Mushrooms Cured an Artist's Depression and Anxiety
While traveling in Italy and Greece in 2006 I developed a sinus infection that got so bad that once back in the US it ruptured the lining of my sinuses and allowed a strep infection to travel unchecked into my brain and spinal column. Bacterial meningitis ravaged my brain as a 107° fever raged out of control. I spent a week in the hospital unconscious and on life support before my folks whisked me off to their farm for lots of rest and lots of organic food from their gardens. Years of challenging recovery led to more and...
Underwater Tripping 5 Hours at the Bottom of a Minnesotan Lake
Today’s guest post is by Alex Beyman, an author, diving enthusiast, and psychonaut. His story of tripping at the bottom of a Minnesota Lake was originally posted to Reddit’s /r/drugs forum. Note: This is not a how-to guide. I do not condone irresponsible diving. I urge readers not to try diving without scuba certification and an understanding of the risks diving entails, especially where DIY gear is concerned. If you’re not careful it’s easy to kill yourself, so don’t try anything similar until you’re certified to dive conventionally. A few years ago I developed an obsessive interest in...
A 1914 Trip Report of Psilocybin Mushrooms from Science Magazine
In the treasure troves of Erowid I found a very old experience report for psilocybin mushrooms — a ‘trip report’ from long before that term was coined. It predates mycologist R. Gordon Wasson’s groundbreaking article, Seeking the Magic Mushroom — which exposed psilocybin mushrooms to a much wider audience in 1957 — by over forty years. It is as funny as it is historically interesting, so I am taking the liberty of re-posting it. Erowid Note: The following report is from the September 18, 1914 issue of Science magazine, generously contributed to Erowid by archivist Michael Horowitz, as a silvered, heavily-aged copy...
All the Butterflies A Monumental Shrooms Trip from 'Thank Earth You'
Thank Earth You is a memoir by Armand Daigle about his transformation from cubicle slave to a free-spirited creative force. In last week’s chapter, he embarked on a camping trip with three good friends — his wolf pack — and downed a heady brew of psilocybin mushrooms. This week we share the next chapter, All the Butterflies, in which the mushrooms take effect! Armand calls it “the most important campfire in my twenty-eight years of existence.” If you like what you read, you can buy Thank Earth You here. On our late afternoon descent, a phalanx of purples, dreams, triangles, oranges, and jellyfish races above...
Power-up Pelt A Story of Campfire Tripping from 'Thank Earth You'
Thank Earth You is a terrific memoir by Armand Daigle about his transformation from cubicle slave to a free-spirited creative force. Central to the story are two profound psychedelic experiences, one with mushrooms on a camping trip, and the other a traditional ayahuasca ceremony. I interviewed Armand last week, and today we’re sharing a chapter of his memoir for free. In this chapter, Power-up Pelt, you get to know Armand’s wolf pack while witnessing the early stages of the mushroom trip that stretched his consciousness and changed his life. You can buy Thank Earth You here. The four of us are holding hands in a circle—one hand...
Interview: Armand Daigle, Author of Psychedelic Memoir ‘Thank Earth You’
Fed up with his 9-to-5 engineering job, Armand Daigle quit, joined a fledgling media production company, and wrote a memoir called Thank Earth You about his personal transformation. His story contains two incredible psychedelic experiences, one with mushrooms and one with ayahuasca, which propelled him to continue in his new direction. Armand has a way of revealing both the deeply personal and deeply psychedelic in a compelling, readable, and very funny way. Anyone who has questioned the rat race and the trappings of modern culture will relate. I’ll be publishing two full chapters from Thank Earth You in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s...
Life Versus Entropy Tripping on Fractals, God, and the Mystery of Existence
Setting: Early morning at a lakeside cabin in the woods of Vermont. Chemical lens: 25I-NBOMe, a research chemical with effects resembling LSD. (25I-NBOMe is a very new chemical, its safety profile is largely unknown, and lethal overdoses have been reported. Consuming 25I-NBOMe or other research chemicals is risky and I do not recommend it.) I walk outside as dawn arrives. Fog rolls across the lake and wraps the trees in a gauzy shroud. The silence is punctuated only by the chatter of birds and my own footsteps. My breathing takes its cue from the lake, gentle and unhurried. Where...
My Story, “Fireworks,” Featured in Psypress UK 2014
My previously unpublished tale, Fireworks, is featured in the latest edition of psychedelic magazine Psypress UK. You can get a copy for just £5 plus shipping (in the US, it comes out to $17 total, but it’s well worth it). Other featured writers include Dale Bewan, author of Dropping Acid, Ross Heaven, author of several books on shamanism, and Neil M. Goldsmith, author of Psychedelic Healing. Plus ten other submissions with titles like Myco-metaphysics, The Dogmatist’s Debacle, and Reigniting Awe. And check out the cover art by Jeremy Beswick on the right. Intrigued? So am I — I can’t wait for my copy to arrive in the mail! My...
Jason Grapples With a Star An Interstellar Trip Report
Setting: The riverfront in Hartford, CT. Chemical Lens: 25I-NBOMe, a “research chemical” with effects resembling LSD Jason and I settle down on a green patch of grass in Riverfront Plaza. The fireworks are spent and the crowds have gone home. We are alone except for the cleanup crew, who rustle around collecting garbage and putting away equipment. They give us some strange looks as we remain there into the wee hours of the morning, but mostly they leave us alone. Floodlights illuminate the city park. I feel like we are lying in the middle of a football field, complete...
Shrooms for Five: My First Psychedelic Experience
It is a wet February night, and we are gathered at Lee and Dan’s suburban apartment. There are five of us — our hosts, plus Alex, Jason, and me. We have a larger group of friends, but the rest of the crew is not into “serious” drugs. The five of us jokingly call ourselves the “Psychonautic Subcommittee” ever since we tried MDMA for the first time together last fall. Tonight, it’s time to explore a new psychedelic frontier. We each grind an eighth of an ounce of dried mushrooms, mix it with orange juice, and gulp it down....
Free Book: The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley became a pioneer in the (practically nonexistent) field of modern psychedelic literature in 1954 when he published The Doors of Perception, a short but detailed book about his experience with mescaline. Many people would hesitate to publish a book about such a controversial and personal topic even today, half a century later, but Huxley staked his claim smack dab in the middle of the 1950s. The term “psychedelic” hadn’t even been coined yet (though Huxley would contribute to its creation a few years later). This book represents one of the first and best-known “trip reports”, at...