Disregard Everything I Say

I’m pretty sure 99% of you will already agree with me on this one but judging by some of the messages I receive and the heated trollfests that I see quite often within my favourite online psychedelic communities there are an insistent group of people that like to push the idea of there being a “wrong” and a “right” way to trip and that it’s even possible to disrespect the trip through certain ways such as using psychedelics for purely recreational activities instead of deep spiritual journeys into the mind.

Now I understand that traditional shamanic psychedelics such as Ayahusca and Mushrooms are powerful ancient healers and should be treated with respect but if I want to watch Adventure Time and play videogames on a mind blowing dose of either then I will do just that, some people may prefer to be doing something else with their trips but to then assert that their completely subjective experience is somehow more valuable than somebody else’s completely subjective experiences is just plain retarded. Just because I am enjoying myself does not mean I am showing a lack of respect for anything.

Another way in which I have supposedly been violating the sacred rules of internet technoshamanism has been on this very tumblr as a result of the posting of simple and easy to follow extraction methods because apparently we should all know that these substances are a “calling” and if people truly want them they will seek them themselves and therefore to make it easy for people is to somehow disrespect the psychedelic experience. I honestly don’t see the point of messages like this as they seem a little silly. It’s not as if you were just sitting there and DMT called out to you from beyond the stars, no you heard about it through a friend or read about it somewhere just like everybody else. Making the extraction process easier so that people do not have to make sense of and browse multiple old forum posts that all contradict each other is not a terrible thing. In fact you could argue that since there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with modern culture and the only thing currently capable of fixing this problem on an individual level over a quick enough time scale to prevent us from collectively fucking everything up seems to be these very compounds it would have been rude not to post them. 

These rules apply to all psychedelics but none more so than Ayahuasca which has many restrictions and practises attributed to it that aren’t really based on anything at all, these include but are not limited to:

• You should never try Ayahuasca without the guidance of an experienced shaman.
• You should never use Ayahuasca recreationally in any capacity. Ever.
• You should never take preventative measures to remove the purge from the trip.

None of these are true. Although great care and caution should be shown until a user is completely comfortable with the powerful trip Ayahuasca has to offer a common sense approach and a sitter that knows what they are doing will make for just as safe a trip as any shaman from the rainforest. 

It is entirely up to the individual and the knowledge of their own limits when deciding what they want to do with their trips. How some people manage to place completely arbitrary cultural constructs onto a group of substances that’s main effect is the removal of such things I do not know.

The last restriction that is placed on Ayahuasca is the stigma of removing the purge as many people feel that it is an intrinsic part of the trip but I do still feel that it is obviously not an intrinsic part of the trip. It is an intrinsic part of ingesting pulverised rootbark that has been simmered down into a foul sludge and nothing more. If this were anything but the case you would not be able to remove it with an extremely simple recipe change (adding eggwhites hurr) and Pharmahuasca users who take 100% pure dmt instead of drinking it in liquid form would also experience such intense nausea. I do not want to ingest wood I just want to ingest the DMT.

I am with these people to an extent and completely agree that these moments of recreational use are not exactly deep spiritual work or how I should spend every moment of my trips but as somebody who has benefited enormously from tripping on a very regular basis I sometimes genuinely run out of introspection and personal problems to solve and just want to have fun, this is nothing but a good thing and although quite difficult, interacting with a breakthrough partial egodeath trip by attempting to play videogames, going shopping or whatever the hell you feel like doing can be a pretty hilarious experience if you know your limits. 

Although from the perspective of an outsider LSD and Mushrooms appear to have very similar effects on the human brain there are a number of very significant differences in the visual, mental and physical aspects in these three substances that make for very different experiences. It’s these differences that cause people to prefer one over the other and personally, if I had to choose it would be  perhaps Mushrooms for their deeper visionary states and more insightful headspaces because running out of introspection can eventually happen and cause one to hit what I call the “acid wall”.

Visuals:

When compared to the visuals of mushrooms, LSD’s visuals are generally described by most as much more vibrant, clean, digital, colourful, cartoonish and angular with bolder outlines. These visuals generally consist of very nonstop fast flashes well defined 3D and 2D geometric patterns with impossible complexity.
The thing that has always annoyed me about LSD is that although its visuals are astonishingly beautiful they are entirely lacking of deep visionary hallucinations and appear to be nothing but pretty patterns all the way up unless combined with other substances such as huge amounts of weed or other hallucinogens.

When compared to the visuals of LSD, magic mushroom visuals are generally described by most as much softer, less defined and rounder with slightly more earthy and natural colours. Its lower level effects such as distortions and melting are significantly more solid and a little more permanent, meaning they are more likely to stay if you look away from a distorted object and then back at it.
At higher doses there are usually large amount of visions as well as visuals. Visions differ from visuals as rather than patterns, shapes, colours and images they follow plots and themes that can be anything such as being thrust into outer space at extreme speeds, visiting alien lands or communicating with autonomous intelligent entities such as insectoid creatures, elves, gods and complex robotic machines.

The simplest way to put it is this; LSD CEV’s were generated in an advanced piece of vector imaging software whilst Magic Mushroom CEV’s were elaborately hand painted by an impossible artist. 

Headspace:

The headspace of LSD although drastically different from normal waking consciousness is surprisingly clear headed and concise when compared to Magic Mushrooms. It greatly enhances your current mood and can be incredibly euphoric to the point where at the end of a hard day tripping your biggest problem is usually that your cheeks hurt from the amount of smiling and intense laughter that you’ve experienced.
LSD feels like entering your own mind and not an alternate coexisting reality and its overall theme is one of greatly increased interconnectedness of the mind with rapid firing profound thoughts and intense introspectiveness accompanied by a very short attention span.

The headspace of Magic Mushrooms is much less clear headed than LSD and has a very obvious stoning effect to it that can be described as vaguely similar to weed. This severely reduced mental capacity leaves for a slightly more confusing trip.
People often note that the headspace on Mushrooms feels much less like an intense change of perception brought about by ingesting a powerful drug and much more like being tuned into a different frequency of reality or in other words things naturally feel that they are that way because “that’s just the way they are”.
The overall theme of the Mushroom headspace space although also one of personal problem solving places much more emphasis on “outrospectiveness” as trippers often find themselves contemplating the society they live in, their place in the universe and many profound philosophical thoughts.

Bodyhigh:

The body high of LSD is my favourite body high out of all psychedelics. It can only be described as an intensely euphoric, energetic tingling sensation that encompasses your entire body. This body high is one that encourages movement and running around and is almost the complete opposite of the body high experienced on Magic Mushrooms.
It’s also worth noting that the body high of LSD through means that I am unsure of unlocks complete control over a tripper’s body. During an LSD trip many trippers usually find that they have complete control of the movement of every tiny little muscle throughout their body and that they can be individually moved without a trigger. It’s this aspect of LSD that can put people back in touch with the animal body.

The body high of magic mushrooms is an incredibly relaxed and lethargic state that causes a tripper to want to sit down on a comfortable spot and enjoy the trip. It can however be accompanied with nausea and stomach cramps that stem from the ingestion of the mushrooms.

Duration:

Although the duration of LSD is generally considered to be 12 hours I have never managed to stay up long enough to completely sober up and have always fallen asleep still mildly tripping even after 24 hours. It is also worth noting that the peak of an LSD trip comes and goes in waves giving the tripper little moments of sobriety throughout the trip. The long duration of LSD allows for an entire days worth of events to be planned around its usage and is something that is very enjoyable.

The duration of a good mushroom trip is sadly much more fleeting than that of LSD and generally only lasts around 7 hours. This does however allow for the convenience of a person to have an evening trip and still go to bed at a reasonable hour or for a morning trip if a person has plans for later on in the day.