HBWR Explorations

Visualizing consciousness

Substances: LSA

I have realized the power of the Hawaiian baby woodrose. I received 30 grams of the seeds in the mail. After keeping 20 of the seeds to plant, I had 250 remaining. I decided to perform an extraction into alcohol of the LSA in the seeds. I put them in a blender to pulverize them, and washed the pulp with white gas to remove all non-polar soluble toxins (I believe that some of the nausea is reduced this way..?). I let them dry for 24 hours then poured some Bacardi 151 over them. This I let sit for five days then filtered and saved the 151. All told there was 130 ml from 250 seeds... so approximately a seed and two thirds per milliliter...

Well yesterday I finished my last midterm before spring break (the second that week...) and my love, A, finished a term paper and a midterm the day before. We had planned on taking this day to celebrate. We didnt exactly know how, as we had many options. After I got home from my midterm, I ate lunch and she came over. We decided to try the LSA, as neither of us had tripped on it before. I couldnt remember how much one was supposed to take. Id heard five seeds equals one hit (of standard 60 ug street quality) of LSD. A and I have a bit of a tolerance to other ergot-derivative products, so I put 8 ml of this mixture into each of our drinks, after asking her if this was okay. So 8 times 1 2/3 equals... between 13 and 14? Intensity equivalent to two and a half hits of LSD sounded about right. We drank our extract. It was about two oclock.

Immediately I started to get nauseous. My stomach was quite full from lunch (leftover home made mushroom strudel, which was delicious but now filling my stomach like id eaten a cinder block)... We drove the very short distance (1 mile) to a trailhead I know of. We started walking up the trail and my love began feeling nauseous as well.. I was getting a bit of body ache too, but it was subtler than with LSD, it came and went more I guess...

The trail leads up a steep hillside. We walked for a while and I had to take leave of her to go purge myself. Nothing came and after a long frustrating while I returned to her, lying in the grass on the hillside in the sunshine and enjoying herself thoroughly. I laid with her a while in the sun, then went back to try again. After a LONG time I succeeded. I felt a bit better. I walked back to her. We talked for a while while lying on the steep hillside trying not to slide down. We were feeling these little pulses of energy (or something..?) going through our senses. I think I have felt those before while feverish. We walked up the hill further to go lie in the grass at the top of the hill (where there is a rock and a great view... and such deep soft grass!) We lay about up there for a while. Lying down and closing my eyes made me less nauseous, if only for the fact that I would lose touch with my body for a while into the pulsing lights which were now going on behind my eyes. My CEVs were actually getting quite intense but nothing open eye had occured yet. I started feeling sicker, not just in my stomach. A was having a wonderful time. She rolled around in the grass, smiled, laughed and proved to me that joy is contagious. I was having fun by this time, even with symptoms quite like a fever. After a while I got really cold and requested that we move to somewhere inside. I was sorry to make us go because she was having such a good time. We wandered slowly back to the car. At one point I turned around to see my love standing on the trail, arms outstretched, smiling at the sun. It was as if her essence had acquired a picture. Later we walked under some trees with hundreds of yellow blossoms. She was standing looking at me near the outer branches and I was near the trunk, and I grabbed the branch abover her and shook, sending a shower of flower down onto her. She was delighted...

A bit later we came into view of a clock tower. She asked what time it said, and I replied 3:40. No, 4:40... 'How can you tell? It has so many arms.' And she was right. It did... like five or six at least. (It was far away...) At this point I was getting some trails but this was the first OEVs that occured. Ten minutes later we arrived home at 4:50, after we drove very slowly the one mile back to my house.. (which in retrospect was NOT the greatest idea... but I trust A's driving skills greatly, even on psychedelic drugs.)

So we got home. At this point, I was having a good time. My mood had improved greatly, away from the flat light of a sunny day with high altitude haze, and a chill wind... I didnt feel so sick anymore either. I took a shower and came back to find A lying on my bed staring at this poster of an incredibly detailed oil painting by some artist I cant remember. Its a painting of a sunset over a lake which empties into a waterfall with lots of mist. There is a volcano in the background spewing ash which is blowing into a pall which partially obscures the sun and the sun shines blood red. It looks like a south american landscape. There are lots of incredibly detailed trees, and a tiny little girl walking a llama. You can really get lost in it. A was. 'where is this?' she asked. Later she asked if it was a photograph or a painting. I told her it was a painting. We rolled around on my bed for a while cuddling. 'Now Im rolling,' she said, demonstrating. I knew what she meant. It made me want to roll around, quite like mdma. Cuddling was great fun. We lay there talking for a long long time. The ceiling started to move. It got dark outside, and I turned down the light to make the lighting very soft. We lay there cuddling, talking, looking at things... The shadows on her face would turn to liquid and flow into the recessions of her eyes where they would pool and get deeper. I could see that the bumps on my ceiling were all arrangements, clusters, of one certain bump shape of varying sizes arranged in clumps to form larger bumps, and each one of those smaller bumps was also made up of smaller bumps, ad infinitum. It was a true fractal, and for once it looked absolutely nothing like the mandelbrot-set visuals I typically get. She went to the bathroom and while she was gone I took out a Dali book and started paging through it. When I got to Tristan and Isolde, I was caught. I sat staring at it until A came back. As she got into bed I glanced at it but lay down without looking. Somehow I took my eyes of what had become the most painfully beautiful image I could imagine and lay down beside her. Later I got up to go to the bathroom and I handed her the book and told her to look. When I got back she was still looking. 'Thank you for making me look at this' she said. I cant define what made it express to me the emotion it did, but it was amazing. Eventually we put it down and laid down again. A said at one point 'I wonder how this is going to end...? I wonder where its going to go..' My body ache had been steadily increasing this whole time, and I thought that I knew where we were going and that it wasnt going to be pleasant. But for now... (I later was proved very wrong.) The thoughts that were going through our heads were amazing. LSD hardly gives me a mind trip anymore. I guess I always know how to think like im on LSD so being on it isnt that surprising to my brain or something. But the way this tweaked my thoughts was incredible. Just lying there watching everything and THINKING was so much fun. I was feeling quite achey and still kind of sick at this point, and the rolling mdma feeling had mostly gone away. I thought I knew what would make me feel better. My roommate was home and I got up and offered to give him a bong rip. He declined, but said I could use his bong if I wanted to. I packed a large portion of pot into his 'party size' slide. And I took a bong rip. And then another. Almost immediately I felt much better. I got back in bed and things started getting pretty interesting. The marijuana kicked the visuals into high gear (which had been subtly getting more and more intense as we lay there anyway.) I mentioned that I wasnt sure but I thought that I was still coming up. This was about eight PM.

At this point my thoughts had gotten really really out there. I could see how my consciousness was structured. I could envision how how all of my thoughts were really just association pathways linked together, formed into networks that we call 'concepts.' I could see how everything was just programmed association., but that the program was constantly changing and that this became what I know of as 'consciousness.' I could also see how some of those things were governed by chemical processes within me, how my hormones and instincts guide me constantly without my awareness. At some point I went to the bathroom again. In the bathroom, I noticed that visually things had gotten quite crazy without me realizing it. The room had been so soft in the room that I couldnt really tell how intensely visually I was currently tripping. This was nine pm? When I turned on the light, I realized that EVERY surface in the bathroom, even the air itself, was brightly multicolored and moving very quickly in a way similar to what I have seen before on high doses (8 hits or more) of LSD. This was sort of alarming. I walked out into the kitchen and stood sort of hypnotized, watching every surface in the room dancing in unison.

I went back in to my room and said to A 'im definately still coming up. This is crazy...' But I was still having fun, so it didnt matter. Im glad that I like tripping so much because it makes taking a larger than expected amount of a chemical much less traumatic. I got back into bed and watched the ceiling dancing at an amazing pace. Now I was getting tactile tracers too. It started with my foot. A's foot was touching mine and when she moved it away, i could still feel it there. The sensation gradually faded to a tingling and was gone. The rest of the night this persisted. At times my legs would be totally tingling with leftover sensation. A complained that her body ache was getting bad too. I convinced her to smoke some marijuana. She did, using a bubbler because a bong sounded too harsh at the moment.

The pot made A feel a bit better. We lay on my bed talking about the most bizarre subject and watching my room dancing all about us. There had been a definate peak at about nine pm (about the time I went into the kitchen and stood hypnotized) and now I was coming down. Wow, seven hours to a peak. Maybe because I had such a full stomach? Anyway we were sitting about drinking lots of water (we were quite thirsty) and nibbling on some good bread for a while, and A fell asleep. I followed suit after a bit.

When I awoke the world was still shimmering just a little bit, the way it does if I awaken after sleeping before coming down all the way from LSD (when one awakens only sixteen hours after dropping or so.) Only this was more like nineteen hours after ingestion. This stuff seemed to be a bit slower acting than LSD. The body ache was really horrible until I smoked pot. Visually and mentally I greatly enjoyed it though. It pointed my thoughts in great directions. Musing on everything, from the nature of consciousness, to the meaning of love, and everything in between. A reported the next day that she had been getting 5-MeO-DMT like surges right before she fell asleep. Very interesting stuff. Im curious to try it at both higher and lower doses.