Ayahuasca Trip Report

18 50: Drank 3 cups of aya, tasted unpleasant but not overly so.
18 57: Stomach churning slightly.
19 01: Had half a joint.
19.56: walked along the seafront, constant conversation in my mind, directing my vision. I pause smoke the other half of the joint, ignoring the command to focus on the woman in red walking alone round the marine drive, laughing at the matrix cliche of life. I suddenly feel the need to head to a corner, my body clenching. I bend over, expecting "La Purga", yet only a few streams of spittle accompany my retch. I turn left and walk up towards the Castle, pausing along the way to drink in the view of the town. Lights flash at the corner of my vision,  and I reflect on a street I had never seen it seemed, it's contours alien in the moonlight. Church bells ring, and I feel the urge to move closer to them. Along the path, I feel the urge to pause and bow before four chairs. I see on the furthest left chair the snow queen. Do you find me attractive she asks? Her long legs are perfectly formed emerging from a silver blue dress. Yes, I think, and my vision is pulled to the next chair. A man with jet black hair in a black tunic with red trimming repeats the question. Yes I reply. I glanced to the right and I see an empty chair. There is hope a voice speaks. I glance to the right again. In different ways I say. The chair remains empty but I see an inscription, a U and M. I consider and move back a chair. K and I are carved. I move back to the U and focus. within the U is an egg. As I watch the Egg's curves even, and an O is formed. I snap back to the twin letters and focus once more.

I walk on, listening: The Four Nobles of Scarborough. The church bells move me faster and I glance left to Paradise. My voice inside tells me how this is truly a place that can be achieved on Earth. I smile in delight at the thought of achieving another species wide goal within my lifetime and walk into the graveyard. I glance down at a grave as I walk, a single word stands out to me: Theophiles. i think to myself i shall learn more of the ways. I am asked why I am here. I reply it is not Sanctuary I seek, but to share the love of God. I continue to walk around the Church, feeling the bells vibrate within me, and expect to see a door shining light into the darkness. The doors are closed. A moment of displeasure before I realise there is a purpose for everything, and walk on, taking a back street past the Market into áxax... I hear shiny happy people and turn right.
20:04 I sit in the Waterhouse drinking a coffee, my hands shaking as warmth flood into them.
20:18 I am rested and my hands have stopped shaking. I roll a cigarette and walk once more.
22:27 I am at home, with a healthy appetite and a lighter feeling in my mind, in colour rather than weight.  As I left the Waterhouse I wandered through town, seeing a compass, and a decision,  I looked down and was stood by North. I walked across the compass and looked round,  my destination set in stone, so it seems.


23:05 Overall I had a positive experience this night, and I am thinking back to how I synchronistically finished reading Junky by William Burroughs last night. It ends with him considering to take Yage, or Ayahuasca to kick his heroin habit, and reveals how Russians had been using it to induct telepathy with it's inbibers, and the potential applications to create a new workforce. Chilling at the time I read it, yet at the moment I can only think of the benefits this could bring to humanity, to encourage a new spirit of cooperation and prosperity.

Cornucopia, an Imagining

Cornucopia

I recently returned to my hometown. Again. Once again however, I hear the voices whispering:

"You're a coward. You've ran away from Amsterdam. And now you're running to hide in your parents house. You can't hide forever."

I shut them up by reminding myself that I chose to come here for a reason.

I went on a walk today. Not far, in `normal' terms, but far enough to clear my mind. After a while I realised I was walking across fields, following the map in my memory's mind. I started to ask myself that eternal question all adventurers ask in this day and age - "What am I searching for?"

The Holy Grail? The Lost Ark of the Covenant? The Spear of Destiny? Atlantis? The Philosopher's Stone? All of the above! Although after a while each knight must face his own doubt within him, the shadow companion who dances round his psyche while he walks, gibbering and laughing.

To seek these items in a literal sense is futile. They are symbols, representations of knowledge we once had, and has been lost, or more correctly, corrupted over the centuries. These relics are symbols of potential cures to our mental ailments - whatever is currently making us unhappy in the world.

Everyone is asking the same questions in the same way, and losing faith when they do not receive the answers they seek.

"How do we cure cancer?" ,"Is Abortion Right or Wrong?" ,"Did God create the world in seven days?"

Cancer is merely something that eats away at us. Something we have let fester inside too long, and without the correct treatment, we are consumed. Yet we fail to appreciate the beauty in cancer, the natural way of controlling our population. People have argued for millenia what this cancer is within us, as a society. Is the cancer crime, like the good people at OCP thought? Partially, crime is a symptom, once again of a larger illness. A society is judged by the way it treats it's prisoners. We only need to look to our apparently benevolent leaders in areas of the U.S. to see how more "advanced" they truly are.

Under the hypothesis that we share a global consciousness, each man serving 23 hours of solitary confinement is suffering. Each man, woman and child are sharing his suffering. Does the man enduring this hardship learn anything new about the crime he may or may not have committed during that time?

Rarely, even more rare that if he did he would be given the chance to prove to his peers that he has been reformed. Economically, the same system drains funds by providing slave labour (ala The Shawshank Redemption). Honest businessmen cannot compete with greedy corporations. Nothing is learned. History repeats itself.

We can learn a lot from how to act from our elders. People who lived in simpler times. In certain tribes, when a man stole from one of his neighbours, the rest of the village would go around to the offender's house, and instead of lynching him with pitchforks, give him gifts of food, and other luxuries.

They would apologise, "Please, we are so sorry for ignoring your needs so much that you felt you needed to take without being able to ask permission. What can we do to help you?" Perhaps we need to end the failed “tough on crime” stance.

Walking today I saw a church group advertising for Street Angels, to patrol the streets keeping towns safe. The towns are safe. It's the violent vigilantes, inflicting their beliefs with the stick upon whomever they feel is intolerable. The idea of these people being giving taciturn approval by a scared populace feeds my own fears.

Is abortion Right or Wrong? The answer is always both. It can be the right decision for the time, yet the effects of the action will be felt for a long time afterwards, and correctly so – not in an ethical sense, but in a psychological one – I have rarely met a woman who has had more than one. Once bitten, twice shy? The terms pro-life and pro-choice seem once again a false dichotomy. Alarmingly, if I'm wrong, the arguments we have presented are between “Living and choosing, or dying oppressed. Kind of tempers the fire.

God created the world in seven days in an allegorical sense (as in IT created it for us to live and respect different aspects of the world in different days: a day of Sun, of Moon etc.) so Creationists have a point, yet try and read the phrase in a literal sense and confusion is bred.

So if we are all asking the wrong questions, what are the right ones?

I have been trying to study the answer to that question for a long time, with little success. The same problem plagued Douglas Adams (or did it...42?), but when I started to open my channels somewhat, as in to listen to more, shall we say, alternative suggestions from branches of science, I found much more that seemed to crossover successfully with religion.

I think it was the fact that I approached most `new' science with a spiritual bent that I developed my...strange way of seeing the world. One of my mantras of late has been “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

For example, I mentioned earlier I was walking with no sense of direction. Aimless in more than ways than one in the world, I decided to just to go wherever I felt like, wandering across verdant fields and gorse-covered hills, near the Great North Yorkshire Moors, between Scarborough and Whitby.

Dante may have had to pass a leopard, a lion and a she -wolf on his trip through the dark woods, I only had to contend with some cows, a horse, a skittish deer and a worm.

I say only. Every animal is intelligent, whether we can sense it or not.

I felt the cows fear of me as I approached them nervously, practically courting their friendship. Eventually they approached me after I lowered myself before them. After staring at the Sun for a moment, I looked back at the cows, who had all lowered their heads and were staring at me. Their coal black skin and eyes was only offset by a yellow barcode branded in their ear. I gazed about me at their `prison'. Yes, they had no freedom, but as I walked away from them, the mad thought that many women pierce their ears ran through my head and I giggled maniacally for a moment, and then stepped over a toppled iron gate, and looked back at the cows. They were still watching me intently, but had stopped following me a little distance from the exit to the field. They were happy. Everyone in the farm was happy, except you (me?). I shivered and walked away, trying not to glance behind me.

I came across a red circle in a hay field. Curiously there was some hay in the centre that looked a perfect place for a lay down and a smoke. My mind was filled with pride. Of how I should write of a new Utopia, a Utopia achievable in my lifetime. It is to be called Cornucopia. There is enough resources for everyone. I just need to collect enough data to prove how it can be done to others. Writing gets easier...

The horse was enclosed near the entrance to the Hayburn Wyke public house. I climbed through the barbed wire fence, and approached the horse with even more trepidation. I had been wishing for a horse of my own, as a companion with me on my travels. Maddeningly, I reasoned I was here for a reason, and with a gesture of peace approached the Shire Mare.

She stood her ground as I approached, sniffing me curiously. Not surprised with some of the stuff I had been smoking. I gently tried to stroke her mane, and she pulled back as if stung.

Wounded, I returned my hands to their sides and let her paw the ground slightly before she advanced to me one more time. I closed my eyes, and lowered my head. I listened to her breath, and was surprised by her rubbing the side of her muzzle to my hair. In return I stroked hers for a second, before she suddenly came to and moved away again. I watched her, partly in anger (why can't I touch her?), and partly in sorrow (I'm not worthy to touch her, to ride her).

She ground her teeth, I started to think how she has learned to distrust humans, even though she does not fear them. The wave of distrust swept over me, and I start to cry. I whirl around and walk away from the animal again, my pride sufficiently lowered.

I head to the pub down the long winding wooded slope, all the while amazed at the coincidence – I had been to the same pub with my father, mother, and sister's dog the previous weekend, yet I had arrived here from a completely different direction, with no intention of visiting here until I saw the sign (beer!) and the horse.

I enter the bar and order a pint of Black Sheep. Always was my favourite ale. I start to drink and can hear nothing but incessant titters and giggles from a group of 50 year old men sitting to my right. A man, his wife and dog sit at the table in front of me. I try to drink to take my mind away from them. The beer was perfectly poured, and well settled. Yet I cannot drink more than a few gulps, before I angrily snatch my bag and walk away, leaving the pint practically untouched.

I do this like I'm acting out a script that I read the day before. Yet at the same time it is all completely ad libbed.

Walking in weariness once more, feverishly trying to rewrite my own script, I see a earthworm on the ground. It is on the path of the Cinder Tracks, a disused railway line that links the two towns. I watch it for a minute, seeing the way it flexes and contracts to move, it's proboscis snuffling the dry, rocky gravel path. I am seized by a dilemma once more. Should I move the Earthworm from it's difficult path onto the damp soil of the adjacent field? Is the Earthworm suffering unnecessarily? I try to shut out the cacophany of questions and pick up the worm, and place it gently in the grass by the field. Was I right to attempt to save the worm? I decide that as long as I thought I was helping. How hypocritical of me. It is only now thinking back that I consider both the hermaphroditic aspects of the worm, and that a worm under certain circumstances can be cut in two, and two worms will survive.

Rather than mention the skittish deer, whose representation of temptation I trust is obvious, I encounter as I type the final animal encounter of the night. I'm distracted by my typing by a movement in the shadows to the right. I flick my gaze right and see a large house spider crawling quickly towards the mattress on the floor that I sleep on. I look on, nearly paralysed as it moves on it's razor spindles towards me. The rational part of my brain that normally tells me “This is a house spider. It is harmless.” has vanished. Instead I can only think of Ariadne, spinning gloom and cocooning her victims. The spider dances on, moving along edge of the mattress behind me. I glance down and see the spider walk under the overhanging edge of my pillow. The paralysis breaks, I breathe, and lift up my pillow.

The spider, feeling my fear, my mind dying, absorbs this dreadful energy and moves towards my naked leg. “Jesus.” I close my eyes and look again. The spider trundles away towards my father's laptop, and disappears in the shadows.

An exercise in futility, I try to put it out of my mind. Already I feel tingling goose-bumps on my flesh. “There's a spider crawling on you...it only has a small bite. Barely a pin prick. You won't feel it.” I banish the voice by reminding myself that scaring myself has stood the hairs of my legs on end, and it is only them rubbing on the hastily-wrapped-round duvet that I feel. I hear a snicker.

It's healthy to remember the power animals have over us, they were here a lot longer before we were, and we are the usurpers. Respect nature in all it's aspects and in turn you shall gain the respect of Gaea.

Or so I hope. Dear God in Heaven, I hope. Gone 3am. Forget the day. You've wrote something down. You're getting better. You're still free to leave anytime you want. The sticky coating of concern that draws tighter and tighter around your throat is for your own good. The phosphorescent netting that bites into your ribs is a healing balm. Don't struggle. It makes it so much more difficult. It's the circle of life you know...we all need to feed...

Salvia Divinorum : The Shaman's Secret

I feel like trying Salvia again in a couple of days, and I guess I want to share my experiences with this powerful mental, physical and spiritual plant.

So what is Salvia? Where is it from? Who used it originally?

Courtesy of salvia.net :

"

Salvia is endemic to the Sierra Madre Mountains in Oaxaca, Mexico. In this region it is used by Mazatec curanderos and curanderas in different rituals. The plant is mostly used when these shamans felt they needed to discover the cause of a patient’s illness in the supernatural world. The shaman entered a visionary trance that allowed him to see what steps have to be taken to cure the patient. This is still a common usage of salvia under the present generation of Mazatec Indians. The plant is also used for prediction, meditation and the search for the divine.

Little is known about the usage of Salvia divinorum before its Western “discovery” in the 20th century. It's probably been in usage for hundreds of years, but it was only when R. Gordon Wasson, the famous botanist who also introduced psilocybe mushrooms to the Western world, brought back a specimen in the 1960’s that the plant became an object of scientific research. However, it remained an obscure plant until the 1990’s, when Daniel Siebert began his research on the plant. Nowadays, salvia is widely known and sold in many (web)shops. But, there is still a lot of research to be done into the chemistry and effects of salvia.

Modern research into Salvia divinorum started in the 1930’s. Salvia divinorum was first recorded in Western literature in 1939 by Jean Basset Johnson, who did research on the use of hallucinogenic mushroom in Mexico. He saw that the Mazatec Indians used the leaves of “Hierba Maria” to induce visions. R. Gordon Wasson continued research in the 1950’s and confirmed the psychoactivity of salvia. Together with Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, and Roberto G. Weitlaner, he was the first to bring back live specimens back to the west. They sent one of those specimens to Harvard University in 1962, where it was analyzed by Carl Epling.

It remains unclear how long salvia use dates back among the native inhabitants of Mexico. It is suggested that the plant was introduced after the conquest of the new world. The evidence to support this is that the Mazatecs do not have an indigenous name for the plantl: they use names referring to Mary or sheep herding(“Hierba Maria” or “ska Maria Pastora”), while both christianity and sheep were introduced by the Spanish. Moreover, the Mazatecs have a method of consumption that is quite inefficient, which suggests that they are not aware of the enormous psychoactive potency.

However, R. Gordon Wasson, and others after him, suggested that Salvia divinorum could possibly be the same plant the Aztecs called "Pipiltzintzintli" (literally "the purest little prince"), , which was described by a Spanish author in the 17th century. In the 1980’s researcher J. Valdés III continued to investigate the history of salvia prior to Wasson’s "discovery". He suggests that "Pipiltzintzintli" is most likely cannabis, not salvia."

OK, so now we know that it has been used since time immemorial, by Mexican Indian shamans to enter the spirit world, where they could identify illness in a person by looking inside them.

It was used in religious service as well, for meditation, and exploring the inner conscience that usually remains quiet within us.

Salvia is nothing like weed, save the easiest way to ingest it is to smoke it. If you eat anything on Salvia, you will likely vomit. I tried to give an Italian friend some water while he was tripping, and he poured it down his shirt. I held to his lips and he took small, frightened sips, his eyes rapidly blinking as he no-doubt reacted with madness to the feelings of the water trickling down his body.

So how long does it last? What does it feel like? Am I breaking the law taking it?

The effects of Salvia typically come on very fast, reaching their peak between 5 - 25 minutes after inhalation. The effects also subside quickly, leaving you (relatively) normal in a couple of hours.

However I cannot stress enough that Salvia is not a party drug. You will not be looking and acting your best while tripping. It is true that it can be hilarious to watch people tripping ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7dDGJo_qkc ), and it is always a good idea to find a trusted friend who is sober to sit with you while you explore another dimension.

I'm going to be quoting salvia.net a lot, and I reccomend that if you plan on taking Salvia, check their website - read trip reports, thoughts, opinions, and share your own afterwards!

"A number of people report that the effects of salvia became stronger after having used it a couple of times. Some people appear to become more sensitive and will reach a higher level of effects after a couple of times. On the other hand, quite a large percentage of people (around 10%) are fairly insensitive to salvinorin. Many of them will reach effects at a higher dose, but a minority will still feel nothing, even at higher doses.

If you are a first time user, it is advised to use only a small dose to test your sensitivity, because the effects can sometimes be overwhelming. Always make sure a sitter is present."

"Salvia is often grouped with other hallucinogenic psychoactives, but in fact its effects are unique. Salvia is sometimes marketed as a legal cannabis substitute, although the effects are in no way similar. During the trip several states can occur: 2-dimensional hallucinations, out of body experiences, becoming an object, traveling back in time, being in more places at once and uncontrolled laughing. On his website www.egodeath.com Michael Hoffman discusses what he considers the religious effects of Salvia Divinorum. Erowid mentions the following reported effects in their Salvia FAQ:

• Loss of physical coordination
• Uncontrollable laughter
• Visual alterations or visions
• Experiencing multiple realities
• A contemplative sense of peace
• Sense of profound understanding
• Dream-like veneer over the world
• Sense of total confusion or madness
• Seeing or becoming part of a tunnel
• Loss of sense of awareness as an individual
• Experiencing a “non-Euclidean” geometry
• Sense of flying, floating, twisting, or turning
• Feeling of being immersed in an energy field
• Feeling of being connected to a larger “whole”
• Feeling of being underground or underwater
• Appearing to travel to other places and/or times
• Becoming inanimate objects (a wall, stairs, a couch, etc.)
• Viewing patterns or shapes that are tube-like, snake-like, or worm-like

The famous salvia-researcher Daniel Siebert made up a scale for the strength of a salvia experience. His S-A-L-V-I-A trip scale shows 6 trip stages:

• S - SUBTLE effects, Relaxation and increased sensual appreciation may be noted. This mild level is useful for meditation and may facilitate sexual pleasure.
• A - ALTERED perception, colors and textures are paid attention to. Thinking becomes less logical, and more playful.
• L - LIGHT visionary state. Closed eye visuals (clear imagery with eyes closed).
• V - VIVID visionary state. Complex three dimensional realistic appearing scenes occur. With eyes closed you experience fantasies. So long as your eyes are closed you may believe they are really occurring.
• I - IMMATERIAL existence. Individuality may be lost; one experiences merging with the Divine.
• A - AMNESIC effects. Loss of consciousness. The individual may fall, or remain immobile or thrash around. Dangerous!

When smoking or chewing salvia leaves or extract, many people will be able to reach level 5. For them it is not necessary to experiment with stronger ways of taking salvia. We advise you to try smoking or chewing (or a combination of both) a couple of times and to gradually increase the dose, if you are experiencing little or no effects. Stronger forms of salvia should only be used if you have some experience and know how sensitive you are."

Music is extremely synthetic to a Salvia trip, but not in the way you'd suspect. In fact, it's nearly impossible to predict how you'll interpret music during a trip. Most people listen to relaxing music that doesn't have much in the way of vocals, so you should probably go with that until you really figure out what a Salvia trip is like. I also strongly advise against listening to any “scary” music until you have plenty of experience.

So there you have it. The best news about this drug is that it's (as of May 2011) legal to buy this amazing plant.