Back in 2019, when I was first investigating and partaking in the DMT molecule, there were so many conversations. I recall one evening, after the medicine wore off, my friend Jose and I were talking about responsible service of plant medicine. Jose asked me, “So, Paul, if you served someone the medicine, how long would you be responsible for their well-being?”

I thought for a moment, “Forever.”

We joked about having a call centre in Manila taking calls for the thousands of recipients who we (hypothetically) knew should drink this tea.

This story takes place just weeks before we entered the pandemic years. Thankfully, no one in attendance at this event was carrying the bug, as vomiting and other bodily secretions were present. There were buckets.

It had been over a year since I had started my investigation of DMT within Ayahuasca and Acacia. Jose and I had introduced a friend of his to the Aussie-centric mode of molecular travel. Lance was a sweet young man, and his interest in this molecule was keen. He was part of the Julian Palmer Facebook group and was familiar with many of the people we knew. He was a fresh-faced, Australian Government employee, soon to be a Dad for the first time.

He was trying to figure things out for himself and he was doing excellent work on himself.

As I wrote about once, we did not have a ‘ceremony’ or any shaman in attendance when we had our experiences. We created a safe, comfortable space for the time we were together. We looked after each other and we were kind, loving, and connected. I don’t think we drank with more than 4 people at any one time.

Less distraction, more introspection.

As we learned more and found out about other people serving the medicine, Lance decided to branch out. He wanted to take part in an Ayahuasca Ceremony. He had heard of this group called The Bird Tribe. This tribe was led by Soulore “Lore” Solaris.

Lance had returned from his experience, and he told me about it. It was a large group of about 75 people, everyone was dressed in white, and there was music and singing. I was intrigued by how the Bird Tribe held space and what it would be like with that many people participating in a medicinal psychedelic experience. I wondered how they vetted everyone and kept everyone safe and the like. We talked about it a bit.

Some time passed….

Lance was going to go off to the Blue Mountains for a weekend (13-15^th February 2020) with this tribe so I decided to attend. Truly, I cannot recall whether I filled out any forms, but I am sure there must have been. Maybe? I was known within the plant medicine community so maybe my invite was just enough. As Jimi asked, Are You Experienced?.

Yes, I was.

I can recall driving out of Dee Why, where I was house-sitting. I got to a traffic light, and some street art hit me in the face. It was a beautiful black cockatoo in flight. As this spirit animal had been following me around for some time, I took that as a positive sign on this beautiful summer day.

I arrived at the retreat centre and was given a dormitory-type room with a bunk bed and one single. As I was the first to land in that room, I grabbed the single and made myself at home. I wandered around and talked to some folks.

Some of the folks gathered had decided to take part in the offered Kambo Ritual. There was a circle of about a dozen people in one room and I wandered in and asked if I could observe. Kambo is the secretions of a Amazonian tree frog.Superficial burns are made on the skin, and the secretion enters the body, and soon after, there will be vomiting and/or diarrhea.

People were vomiting into their little buckets, some were rolling on the floor, and others looked like they had a bad case of something going on. I was not sold on the frog secretion that day.

Participants pay up to 175 dollars to take part and the frog secretions and the cleansing blast of a good vomit etc help cleanse the body physically and emotionally. I personally cannot attest to the healing powers of kambo, but I know many who swear by the frog peptides. Viva Kambo!

There were to be more frog secretion sessions later that weekend. I made my way bck to my dormitory room and two young ladies, Veronica and Gwen were there chatting. After intoridcutions, we began talking about psychedelics and ayahuasca. I found out that neither of these women had any prior experience and were there due to some calling.

Gwen was asking me if she should do the kambo and the ayahuasca over 24 hours. Knowing what I knew, I thought it might be a rough day for a newcomer and advised against it. A few hours later, I found her huddled in the bed, wracked by her cleansing kambo moment, but she had the night to rest, and Saturday would be a new day.

Lance arrived on Saturday with a beautiful White Cockatoo feather he had found and he gifted it to me. We made ourselves comfortable and prepared for our night of the ceremony. Gwen was feeling a tad better but she still did not look very well. We all changed into our white clothing and entered the ceremonial hall just after 6PM.

We drank 3 times through the night. There was music. There was purging. Gwen was carried to another room at one point because she was not feeling well. There was me feeling the medicine gently warm me and cause me to fart the entire evening.

There were 3 opportunities to drink during the ceremony and I made the most of each cup. The medicine did not take me as deep as the acacia. As I listened to the musicinas play a song I knew BY REM, Arms Of Love, I smiled at how much I love that cover. Robyn Hitchcock wrote the tune.

We had a song book and sang along at times. Other times we wandered around the room a bit if the legs needed to move, or a couple of times I went out to the fire and spoke with Cameron Kite and his partner, Chelsea. There was some chanting and warmth and the glow of the evening fire reflected off the foggy air. Morning was coming, the birds were commencing their songs.

The ceremony was enjoyable but the medicine did not take me as deep as others. My belief is that, for this participant, I needed a higher dose. I was not distracted by the people or the songs.

Gwen was OK when I saw her later. Lore, the leader of the tribe, asked me what I felt about the medicine and I said I could have used a bigger cup. There were many in attendance who had never had psychedelics. With that in mind, I believe that is the reason the dosage was ayahuasca lite.Keep in mind you never know how the medicine will interact with you. Each time is unique.

My feeling after this retreat was that it was a tad too cult-like for me. They were a friendly, loving cult of plant medicine musicians. That I walked away with a ‘cult’ feeling was not a positive for me. Through the years, I have met other people who have been involved with this group and other large medicine gatherings. I was always curious what follow-through was offered regarding integration and the like, and in many cases, I found people were left to work it out on their own.

For me, integration is the most important part of working with the medicine. Integration can take a lifetime and I am not saying the people serving are responsible for the mental health of each participant forever. Guidance should be offered is all I am saying. Of course, my sample size is small, so I am just reporting on what I have heard.

Ayahuasca retreats/weekends are happening all the time across this sunburnt country. If you are going to get involved with one and need advice, I am always happy to chat. Take care of yourself and your friends, and I hope anyone running it takes the utmost care with your human form.

I am not sure if the Bird Tribe is still in flight. Every once in a while, I spot one flying by. Due to an unfortunate incident in 2021, Soulore Solaris has now been charged with manslaughter. Jarrad Antonovich collapsed while attending the Dreaming Arts Festival at a property at Collins Creek near Kyogle in the NSW Northern Rivers region on October 17, 2021. It was not the medicine. It was the care taken in understanding his symptoms that led to this person’s unfortunate passing. Jarrad had partaken of Kambo and Aya on the same day and that was not the issue either.

Emergency medical assistance was not available at the retreat, and the ambulance was called too late. You can read all about it at the links below.

This is a cautionary tale for people who serve the medicineand for all who want to learn from Mother Aya. A loving, caring container is beautiful for the people taking part in the medicine. Safety for participants in large groups is vital. Not having someone trained in first aid or a hired paramedic to assess serious health issues that arise is negligent. The cost of these retreats can average $1,000 dollars per person, and if you have 80 people, emergency health care should be part of the package. If you are running a business, you cover your ass.

Honestly, this incident is an outlier. Thousands of people around the globe every month partake in these healing medicines, achieving amazing results with no risk. My heart goes out to Lore and all the people involved, and to Jarrad’s family and friends. There was no intent to harm anyone within this setting. As they say, shit happens….but this was real bad shit.

Kambo and Ayahuasca are readily available and they fly under the legal radar in Australia. They are both illegal substances according to Australian law. I do hope that this case does not drive this medicine further underground or paint it with negativity.

Take care in all that you do, and if it feels wrong in your gut, ask questions, and trust your gut.

Take care, all… see you out there… somewhere…

(All Street Art Photos )

Note: Links to Details About This Story
https://www.hccc.nsw.gov.au/decisions-orders/prohibition-orders/soulore-solaris-counsellor-who-facilitates-ayahuasca-ceremonies

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/mar/05/soulore-solaris-shaman-frog-toxin-ayahuasca-death-ntwnfb

Foreword-Whatever your understanding about psychedelics and plant medicine, I want you to know this is not a scientific peer-reviewed study. This multi-part tale is a biographic moment of my life that was enlightening and illuminating. My need to re-visit these moments is part of my continual integration of these experiences and how they positively impacted me. Even as I write these stories, I continue to learn. I hope you enjoy them. Any questions? Let me know in the comments or feel free to chat with me in any way you like. Take care in all you do.

As 2018 eased into 2019, my interest in a particular type of plant medicine, the blessed acacia tree, led me and my compadre, Jose, into the world of plant knowledgeable online communities. With our discussion with others, we found The Wattle Tea Garden Hangout. This was a Facebook Group set up by someone active in this community as a facilitator of ayahuasca journeys and the like. He is someone well-known around this island nation that I inhabit.

Hey, look at the people
Sometimes we forget that we’re just people
And we’re falling head over heels
‘Cause all of us forget quite how to feel

Yes, and we live in the Garden of Eden, yeah
Don’t know why we wanna tear
The whole thing to the ground -John Dawson-Songwriter

This community garden had few rules and was a sweet place to share information about our psychedelic journeys, how-tos for cacti, acacia, shrooms, and more. Some people had been involved in this community for some time and there were new folks like me and Jose who had decades of lived experience but did not know these people at all.

Within this hangout, you could find self-appointed shaman, home chemists, wannabe gurus, plant medicine followers, cacti experts, legal advisors and a large number of candy-flipping psychonauts. There were fabulous stories of people ingesting many varieties of these substances either on their own or in some special mix to enable them to have visions of the godhead or experience ego death. Some of the tales were beautiful in intent and made you want to experience something similar. There were other tales where people just seemed to want to get as high as possible by creating a magic elixir from ingredients they decided to use.

There were times we shared concern about some comments and the mental health status of some participants. But who are you going to call? We took it upon ourselves to self-moderate and check in with people who seemed to be having trouble integrating back into daily life.

What made this Hangout a vital part of my Aussie Plant Medicine Travels was that it was safe and secure, and we all seemed to have each other’s backs. Everyone could ask questions, there was little judgment, and the peace and love quotient was at a high vibration when we first entered the Garden. Just about everyone was allowed in and we all respected each other with good humour and knowledge sharing.

Occasionally, someone would wander in and join the group and we were unsure if they were a Narc or just someone who thought we were there to talk about gardening. We tended to keep the conversation ‘safe’ so no one would be sucked into the legal system. There was no trading of substances within this online community. I asked the Hangout owner how he moderated who came into the group. He never got back to me.

As you can imagine, in a Hangout where people are talking about expanding their consciousness, there were always some slightly wide left and right-wing turns. Fortunately, politics did not taint the garden that much unless we were talking about legislation regarding these molecules. This was a fabulous forum to meet like-minded folks online, which eventually led to me meeting quite a number of them at plant medicine conferences, Bicycle Day gatherings in the park, Australian Psychedelic Society meet-ups, and more. The garden was well tended and fertilised and things were growing into a beautiful community.

As the pandemic became the focus of our lives in 2020, weeds became overgrown and people were losing their way on the pathways within the garden. Our little community of like-minded travellers was becoming divided, fragmented by the politics and the unknown behaviour of this virus. You could truly see where each person stood on the issue as some quoted scientific information and others took up positions that walked hand in hand with conspiracy theorist David Icke and his broadcasts on London Live and the like. If you don’t know Icke, check him out, he is also known for his grand statements that reptiles run the world and the royal family are lizards. He believes the pandemic was a hoax.

Y’all can discuss that amongst yourselves until the end of time.

This is not a story about the pandemic.

To be clear on where I stand, I was following the science. I had insight from relatives working in hospitals in America that things were very bad over there. News from New York was not pretty. I was concerned about my direct community’s health and my own. I am not in lockstep with politicians and governments, so I kept an open mind. As we became locked down in Melbourne, I was on a constant search for facts amongst all the sensationalism.

The Garden Hangout mirrored what was going on everywhere. Everyone had an opinion, a theory, a story. I was particularly annoyed one time with a fellow in Perth who was deep in conspiracy mode. He took to his bicycle and took pictures of empty Emergency Rooms in Perth. Western Australia locked down its borders and, by April 2020, had eliminated community transmission.

People who were sick were not going to Emergency Rooms and there were not many cases in WA because of the steps they took. I definitely had some disagreements with this chartacter because of his so called photographic proof.

Other people posted blatantly false information, and others and I fact-checked it and posted information from SNOPES or other sources. The entire group was lost in the jungle of Covid. Disagreements and the like took place frequently. This was common all over social media. The group’s moderator could have taken a stance to ban such conversations, but did not.

Starting up Facebook one day in May 2020, I found I could no longer laze around the Hangout. There was also a notification from the Hangout owner in my private messages. Here is that conversation:

If you know me, I was VERY CURIOUS.

This 3rd person, who was blocked, had said that the FB Group had become a ‘conspiracy circle jerk’. It certainly seemed that way as the three of us were not playing that tune. And then all of a sudden, as posted below, I am not right for this community.

People began messaging me privately and were wondering what in hallucination’s sake was going on. I told them what you read above and then in the not too distant future this (below) was posted on the Wattle Tea Garden Page.

So, a mushroom told him what to do regarding his Facebook Group. Ok, I guess anything can happen. But were my words that bad?

Jesus….’raped by words’.

Now that is a fairly strong stance to take. Mind you I could not comment on his post because I was tossed out into the desert, no garden for me. Other folks I knew were sending me these details.

There was another female facilitator who seemed to be kissing the ring of this plant man and she blocked us from her page. They also took part in a bit of slanderous conversation about us, which people brought to my attention. This woman called us “American Gangsters” and the owner of the page called us ‘newbies’. As I had an interest in these molecules before thegroup owner was born, I could only assume he meant a ‘newbie’ to his world.

They also said that Jose and I were “creepy Uncles hitting up females to drink with them”. Really? So because we were elders and Yanks and we disagreed with the bloody conspiracies broadcast by many on the page, we were thrown out of the garden. As far as being called a predator, we thought (jokingly) about legal action for this slanderous bullshit.

We did not lose any friends. No one else thought about us in that way. A very good person I knew from the page had this to say about the page owner.

Over time I have found other writings by this group owner, either on social media or in his emails, that denigrate America. Hey, I am no red, white and blue flag waving patriot. I left America over 40 years ago. I hold 2 passports. Maybe it was the tag team of the bi-coastal energy of New York Paul and LA Jose that irked him.

My thick skin was not bruised but there was a sour taste in my mouth. Things could have been addressed with conversation like any moderator of an online community would normally do. A simple announcement on the page to cease pandemic rumours and conspiracies and arguments would have gone a long way to fixing the problem.

But instead, the people who moved against the groove were exiled.

So it goes.

Postscript: The Wattle Tea Garden Hangout continued, and in 2022 I was reinstated in the group. The page’s owner had a MeToo moment on an ABC TV programme here in Australia. You can find that story for yourself with a bit of digging. I do not know the facts, I only saw the programme.
For whatever reason, at this same time, I was magically transported back to the Wattle Tea Garden Hangout along with the others who had been banned.

I never found out why I was suddenly allowed back into this plant community.

A mushroom must have let me back in.

Peace and Love.

And eventually, Meta shut down the FB Page.

You can ponder that the next time you have a shitake.

Foreword-Whatever your understanding about psychedelics and plant medicine, I want you to know this is not a scientific peer-reviewed study. This multi-part tale is a biographic moment of my life that was enlightening and illuminating. My need to re-visit these moments is part of my continual integration of these experiences and how they positively impacted me. Even as I write these stories, I continue to learn. I hope you enjoy them. Any questions? Let me know in the comments or feel free to chat with me in any way you like. Take care in all you do.

Life is a constant integration of your experiences and learnings. Something you read or learned moons ago may come up again and understanding will be revealed. You live long enough, if you are given the beauty of time, you get to revisit moments that impacted you and re-evaluate them through the lens of (hopefully) a wiser elder.

It’s good to pay attention as you meander down the path of life. Yes, there will be times when your attention is not focused on one particular thing. Life gets busy and at times you have to step back and breathe.

Been talking about DMT a bit lately and how my times with the plants that contain this molecule have altered my chemistry. The beauty of hallucinations and the struggle through the physical reaction of plant medicine will always be recalled. That is not where the learning is. The teaching comes from integrating what you were shown and what you experienced.

Or on Qobuz….at this link…https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/44230051

One example that stays with me was when I was sitting in Acaciaville, towards the end of an afternoon, wrapped in the arms of the acacia. I was with my friends Joe and Julie and they had gone inside to get some nourishment while I vibrated on the deck. This was the end of a journey that had opened up my heart. This was not something I had been seeking, this was being set out in front of me by this medicine.

Love was always in my heart but this was about 4-5 months after my marriage had dissolved. I was not drinking this medicine with the intent to heal. It was intentional experimentation with hopes I would be shown something. I knew there was healing going on after my first journey with acacia.

Joe and Jules were vibrating with warmth that night, and it burst through their complicated relationship. There was healing happening there, healing that would not last, but it reverberated. I can close my eyes now and see and feel that setting sun. The golden colour seeped into my being and I knew that all was going to be alright. Yes, everything is alright and has always been alright. This simple mantra has been part of me for decades.

Tears ran down my face and I smiled. I nodded at the sky, said some words, a blessing, and felt the universe hug me. I sat in silence as the light faded, smoked a cigarette and said “Thank You”.

Sharing these stories here and when people ask me about ayahuasca/acacia continues to enlighten me. This is what integration is all about on a personal level. I also hope they help people understand my journey with these plants. I don’t evangelise like I used to when I felt everyone had to drink this medicine. Sharing now is a bit more delicate, as delicate as this ‘moose’ of a man can be.

The 6th of January 2023 was the last time I communed with the acacia. There is a calling again. Intellectually, I have been thinking of taking a journey all of 2025, but set and setting seem to have been avoiding me. I had one, then the other, but never had they aligned. It is a rule I learned about at a young age and I know not to break it.

Soon to come will be tales about the online garden of plant people and the like, my attendance at Rebel Herbal in 2019, and further stories from beyond the armchair.

Today, I want to say farewell to the spot on the Central Coast of New South Wales where Acacaiville is rooted The house and garden will still exist in some form, but ownership has changed. I will miss the frogs and the plants and the trees flowing and breathing in the wind.

As we all know, change is the constant.

Acaciaville will always be a part of my journey. Thanks to all whom I spent time with there, and many thanks to my compadre, Jose.

Foreword-Whatever your understanding about psychedelics and plant medicine, I want you to know this is not a scientific peer-reviewed study. This multi-part tale is a biographic moment of my life that was enlightening and illuminating. My need to re-visit these moments is part of my continual integration of these experiences and how they positively impacted me. Even as I write these stories, I continue to learn. I hope you enjoy them. Any questions? Let me know in the comments or feel free to chat with me in any way you like. Take care in all you do.

Thora. Gumbaynggirr Country. The Dorrigo Plateau. The nearby rainforests are part of the Gondwanaland Rainforests here in Australia. This supercontinent existed 600 million years ago.

The energy of the Songlines reverberates through these hills and the land. This natural world fills my soul with joy and my heart with wonder. It’s a miracle.

Sacred Land

Just about 6 years ago, I passed through here on my way to a Plant Medicine Symposium near Nimbin. I camped just meters away from the Thora Store, which is just down the hill from this home on Waterfall Way. The synchronicity has meaning, but that is for another post.

We wanted to change the world one sip at a time. Calling us zealots would be too strong. As I mentioned before, talking about plant medicine, in particular ‘the plant’ (how we respectfully talked about acacia), seemed to come up in some synchronous conversations. It was rare for us to initiate these conversations.

Nah, wrong. We were disciples.

My mate Joe began inviting people to drink at Acaciaville where the trees turned to rubies and were filled with treasures. I was working with a small group of 3 keen to learn from the plant. All the preliminaries, including setting, pre-drinking diet, a safe or sage word, and intentions, had been discussed weeks in advance. Now we were bringing the tea to Mosman.

Sacred land and costly real estate.

La-de-da. Acaciaville had come to the land of extravagant waterfront homes, boutiques, BMW, and let’s not forget Taronga Zoo. The animals were to be safe from this plant drinking group and our rooms for the evening were in a house used for Yoga classes. We eased into the late afternoon/evening, and the anticipation was palpable.

I had cooked some food and brought post-tea drinking snacks, beer, soft drinks, and the like. Some of the others had also brought food so we were set for the evening.

We intended for 4 of the 5 people to participate in our safe, loving, secure, and non-ceremonial experience, and see where it took us individually and as a group. Joe was sitting out, but he did have some magic in his pocket, which we will get to in a bit. I would partake of the plant, but I would have a little more than a half dose.

Peganum harmala. 2-3 grams brewed into a tea per person brought on the sleepy, sedative effect, and all was going well until it was not. Simone had been overserved and was having a negative reaction to the Syrian rue. She felt nauseous, and long story short, she became an observer for the night. She was lying on the couch, feeling sedated, and we made sure we looked after her.

We had seen this happen before, and we did not follow our gut based on her size and dosage. In retrospect, we did feel bad about this outcome.

Maybe she would drink the elixir from the acacia later, time and her well being would answer that question soon enough. Meanwhile, three of us had our drinks and settled in for an evening that started to bloom slowly but transformed into a marvelous time spent together.

Things took off , and looking back, I don’t believe it was one of our more potent brews. I was lying on a mattress, or a table, or …I was lying on something, letting the feeling wash over me. It was gentle.

Rob was in one of the bedrooms and seemed fine, but was a tad apprehensive when checked on. Tracey was enjoying the sensation, and a lightness filled her being. Her aura was one that I noted as being golden.

Simone groaned lightly on a couch.

Tracey joined Rob and me, drifting slowly, not feeling it like I usually would. I was warmed enough by the tree, but was still able to assist in checking on the group. Joe was a tad more energetic than all of us. We did achieve a balance as the night progressed.

My dosage was light so I had a small hit of changa. The smokeable DMT helped launch me into a beautiful and introspective space for a while. The others had purged some and seemed settled into their experience.

The changa was offered to others. We knew Tracey was keen and we set her up on a mat on the floor of this cozy room and helped administer the pipe. The usual reaction is for people to fall back onto the mattress and exclaim, "Whoaaaaaaaa."

Tracey’s experience was something else. She slowly began speaking aloud, having a conversation with what appeared to be another being. This continued for some time, and then she started speaking in tongues. Joe came over to me and whispered, “Do you think that stuff is working?”

We smiled at the joyous, spiritual reaction that Tracey was experiencing.

She spoke aloud to her spirit friend for close to an hour. Everyone in the room was exhilarated and taken by the experience she was having.

Plant magic.

We were on the land of the Borogegal and Cammeraigal people—traditional owners of this beautiful country. We were one with it all—the warmth of connection and community, marked by a ceremony of caring and love.

Yes, we were looking at having people drink as much of this tea as we could get down their throats. There were roadblocks to turning a beautiful setting into Acaciaville. One of our conversations discussed the duty of care for individuals who shared the medicine with us.

“So, how long are you responsible for people who drink with you?” I was asked.

“Forever….?!”, I answered.

That’s a long time.

More on that later when we delve deeper into the plant community.

Note: Below is the lead-in piece regarding this gathering….

Foreword-Whatever your understanding about psychedelics and plant medicine, I want you to know this is not a scientific peer-reviewed study. This multi-part tale is a biographic moment of my life that was enlightening and illuminating. My need to re-visit these moments is part of my continual integration of these experiences and how they positively impacted me. Even as I write these stories, I continue to learn. I hope you enjoy them. Any questions? Let me know in the comments or feel free to chat with me in any way you like. Take care in all you do.

Time to take another walk through the gardens of Acaciaville. Here in the garden you never know what bejewelled animal, entity, or spirit might make an appearance. There were surprises around every nook and cranny. What is a cranny? I assume it is a small space because it is always teamed up with nook. Nothing to do with a cranberry….

We were not wasted away but we got very far away from wherever we were sitting. I always found my time with the plant, when ingested orally, that you were PLANTED in your chair. I never found the acacia brew (DMT the active molecule) one that enabled me to do too much moving around. You never knew who, what or where you were going to bump into something. Those that know understand there is much to move you and bump into you while you are stationary.

The experience with smoking DMT was intriguing as I have already told you. It was confronting because of the rapid onset but once you got used to that, it was time to roam around. Having slowed the spinning colours around after a few times, we leant into doing experiments with one or 2 hits. During some of these times I found myself floating in a blue space where I encountered a being working on a spaceship. It did not look like anything I had seen before but somehow I knew that is what it was.

This being, working away, had a head, and arms, but the body was hard to figure out. It was floating in this large chamber that I was also floating through. I was welcomed and invited to look around. It seemed like I was there for hours. There was only the one entity and the ship and blue that went on infinitely.

“Do you want another hit?”, Joe asked.

“No, no….I am just sort of ‘controlling’ this space….”, I said as I drifted away. Was I swimming?

It was a mild night, but I was so cold. We found when we smoked the molecule that we got a deep coldness within ourselves. As we went very far away we always had blankets nearby.

Joe eventually gave me another hit and I left the blue space but was still floating through the cosmos. This was just below breakthrough level. I was not yet ready for another hit that night, but I knew that I had reached another plateau. There was no fear of what I would encounter or where I would go.

Not long after this evening with my alien friend I decided it was time to take the 3 hits. The 3 hits, crossing over, leaving it all behind, ego death….let’s go.

Joe and his partner and our friend Heidi were there. We made a fire and a comfortable place to lie next to the fire. There was a fire in my belly and calmness in my soul and mind. My decision had been made.

Time to jump into the fire.

You can climb a mountain, you can swim the sea

You can jump into the fire but you'll never be free, no no

You can shake me up, I can break you down

Beauty and Space 13 July 2019

(written soon after the experience)

So yes the three hits...something I had heard and talked about for some time.

I had finally surrendered to any negativity or fear while inhaling the molecule.

Time was now.

This is how it played out.

Hit 1- hold it hold it hold it...familiar brown and white checkerboard and mandala-type patterns. It was coming on strong, but this was only number one.

Exhale....

Hit 2-all those visions sped up and moved through me ....my eyes opened but not seeing any of the planet. I could feel things starting to move and swirl. It was more an inner feeling than an outer one.

Exhale…..not sure at all where I was as I heard a voice say, “Readyyyyy, for the…..”

Hit 3- My friend held the pipe for me lit it and held it to my lips ....I inhaled stopped a bit...inhaled a bit more...waved it away. I think that is what I did. That was my recollection.

Later, I was told I inhaled the third hit like a ‘boss’. I had no recollection of exhaling. I had no idea who the boss was and my name is not Bruce.

Joe began to fragment. His arm and his hand broke into hundreds of pieces. I did not see his entire being, but his arm was all particles. My head fell back and I felt as if I was rushing and racing towards the stars....or another universe.

Imagery was not something that stayed with me.... but I had truly left the physical plane, and my body was far away from me, maybe never to be seen again.

There was no connection at all to this place that I called home. Earth.

And with a sort of whoosh...or some sound ...I entered an area...was it a room?

It was a simplistic but beatific space.

This place was pure and white, and I existed in this space and for however long I was there it vibrated simplicity and peace...but mostly love and connection and a sense that all was going to be and always will be all right. This is a familiar mantra for me when I work with psychedelics.

This went on for years .... but there was nothing else just this feeling of pure joy...of being free and content and centred. There was no me really...just that vibration.

There was just my energy there in this peaceful space.

I did not so much leave that space as much as I melted back into my human form, piece by piece.

Coming back into my body...I had for a moment a sense of nausea that passed quickly.... but I felt like the fragments of self that had been broken apart were reforming into my human form.

I heard sounds but felt my other dear friend leaning over me and adjusting the fire. Love was apparent in all that was around me and within me.

My friend Joe whispered close to my head, wherever that was, “Is that the farthest you have ever gone?” and I may have nodded even though I knew it was rhetorical. There were parts of me still missing.

I opened my eyes, and the colours and fragments of reality were coming back .... but there was a patchwork of connectivity around the space and people that were there

The colours were orange and blue and I felt myself coming back into my physical self.

Whoa.

If I recall correctly, the timekeeper said that maybe it was close to 20 minutes from one hit to being back. It could have been millions of years.

I relaxed and did not speak for some time, just getting myself re-arranged and together. I was trying to make sense of this experience, and I knew the integration of that moment would take some time. But since we were going to be spending time around the fire at Acaciaville, while other people took some journeys, I had a thought.

With previous experience, I discovered that you could influence the experience, as I mentioned in an earlier essay where I said I was able to slow down the rapid-moving fractals when I took the first hit. I had made up my mind that I would do the 3 hits again this evening to see if I could control this ‘ego death’ or whatever it was.
As I expressed this to my dear friends, they sort of looked at me like I was a touch mad. There was no turning back. Being in this zone I wanted the magic to happen again, whatever it would be.

Batter Up

3 Hits (Again)

For some quite possibly insane reason, I wondered if I could control the 3 hit experience. I was going to stay as focused and in control of the magic as I possibly could. My goal was to hang onto the tail of that Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride of a molecule and see what I could make it do. Yeah…. such a promising, simple idea.

The idea of controlling the experience evaporated as soon as I inhaled again.

My brother-in-arms prepared the pipe and I made myself comfortable on the mat near the fire. I chose a song that I knew to leave with and to come back to...Gomez...”Get Miles”.

First hit in and held for awhile....no big rush yet....hit number 2....brought me those similar brown and white patterns and I could feel things uncoil.

Was the third hit a big hit or not? While you are heading down this trail after the second hit you are already beginning to break apart. After that inhaalation I was whisked away from my body again.

Rushing towards a pinprick of light ....until whoosh I was surrounded by all white again.

There were pulsations of light outside the whiteness ...like a beating heart of colour....but it was soon drowned out by the overwhelming calmness and tranquillity and beauty of pure white.

Once again everything resonated peace...And beauty and simplicity.

But this time it hit me in the heart .... or was that the soul...it was the people there with me and it was the universe. Everything seemed to coalesce around the beating heart and breath of our existence.

Fear and worry were not available. I vibrated and felt at one with wherever I was.

I had a thought that I should be seeing wild vibrant colours and entities but that passed and was replaced by that pure white light.

Did I have that thought? I am unsure.

Coming back into my body I felt tears rolling down my face and the vibration of a positive universe of love. This was remarkable but truly moving. Someone got close to me and kept me warm and hugged me.

My friend said “was that the farthest you have ever gone?” And it came to me as if i was in a dream. Or did he say that to me the first time? Did I actually do the 3 hits again or was I still there all that time?
Time passed...the music was soothing and familiar.

Tears rolled down my face and I was surrounded physically by good people who only cared for my safety. My tears were shed because of this deep, unlimited, beauty I had been shown. Not just the white space, but the beauty within the universe.

Something familiar yet foreign something distant yet near....something solid....or not.

It was a truth that I need to hold onto...something I know ...but must never be forgotten.

It’s love ...it’s bliss...it’s creation...it’s our vibration....it’s our vibration.

Every DMT traveller has a hard time finding the words to illustrate what took place for them. What adjective can describe the pureness of the love and beauty I experienced?

And that was it. That was the last time I took 3 hits. I feel as if I got the message and there is no need to pick up that phone again. I am sure there are other things to learn but I do not think I have to take that journey to learn them.

Drinking the plant was another matter. More tales to come about group ceremonies, plant medicine conventions and something about ‘the mushroom telling me to do it”. A line that was stolen by someone….but more to come about that bizaro tale later!

Thanks for hanging out and listening.

Foreword-Whatever your understanding about psychedelics and plant medicine, I want you to know this is not a scientific peer-reviewed study. This multi-part tale is a biographic moment of my life that was enlightening and illuminating. My need to re-visit these moments is part of my continual integration of these experiences and how they positively impacted me. Even as I write these stories, I continue to learn. I hope you enjoy them. Any questions? Let me know in the comments or feel free to chat with me in any way you like. Take care in all you do.

In my last piece on this topic of DMT/Acacia, I mentioned I would talk a bit more about an experience I had facilitating a group and maybe getting around to the 3 Hits Tale. There was so much crammed into a few years that stories keep coming back to me.

That will have to wait for now because the 2nd anniversary of my last visit with The Plant has just passed and I have been thinking about it. Also, I had been toying about a journey in 2025. With 2024 I found the prospect of having my chest cut open enough to deal with. I did have a nice funghi journey before the operation which was very therapeutic.

Acacia dreaming.

I am thinking of the plant as we slide into 2025.

The 6th of January 2023 and the Full Wolf Moon was set to rise that evening. What a great plan and idea to drink then!? No, it was not done on purpose and I did not find out about this celestial happening until, well, it was happening. Yeah, you know how these moments of synchronicity come about.

With a newfound friend who came along for his second journey, I was ready to sit with him, but I was also strong and prepared to drink an adult-sized portion of the plant. I had brewed 40 grams of plant matter each into the brown-purple brew, and we ingested most of that.

My mate, Ro, had not had the plant before, but he had sipped ayahuasca with Soulore "Lore" Solaris and his band of merry minstrels. That’s another tale to talk about as I had once taken part in a large ceremony with Lore. He is now banned for a period due to a kambo/ayahuasca incident in the Northern Rivers where someone died. Allegedly, there was inappropriate care provided, but the powers that be have this in the courts now, so let’s not dwell on that negativity.

Ro was looking forward to a session where he was not in a large group of 75 people or so. We did not have to wear all white either. This was semi-casual, leisure suit-wearing plant drinking.

The day was sunny and blue and a tad windy. Intentions set and accoutrements of the ceremony were nearby where we ingested the Rue and then the Plant. Now it was all about sitting back for a while to see what we would be shown. Our outlook was over some eucalyptus and a garden. The guinea pigs and chickens and the dog (Max) were all nearby and there was a mood of relaxation and anticipation about what was to happen.

My mind drifted and I found myself with my eyes closed and there was a light splattering of geometric shapes coming into view. Blues and reds and greens, moving, changing geometric shapes but all moving in an easy slow way. It’s interesting to note that during the early days of drinking the plant, the onset was so busy and fractious. Things had changed and I was welcomed in for a wander.

Orange, pink, and purple globs and lego-type shapes appeared with my eyes closed. They did not need to be assembled they were assembling themselves.

My eyes open and I was enveloped in this beautiful summer day. Not a cloud and the gum trees along with their brothers and sisters took on some tribal appearance and that soon morphed into smiling leave faces. I was being welcomed by these beings. These trees I loved and I could feel a warmth come over my body that was not from the sunshine. The trees and I were connected down to the roots.

As I wrote a couple of days post journey:

“After a bit, the trees began to sparkle with purple, iridescent blue, treasures. I thought these treasures were hanging off the branches for a time. The trees continued their joyful, happy dance and I smiled. The dancing wondrous trees soon morphed into graceful peacocks showing off their full beauty.”

The plumage was so clear, I could see the eyespots and the feathered beauty of this majestic bird. It was mostly the gum tree that was the bird although surrounding trees made up some of the feathers of this towering, swaying bird. The head of the peacock turned in the sunlight and I caught its eye. In full presentation, this bird was full of spirit and love.

Looking at Ro and his entire being was dappled in these colours. There were spots on his face of many hues that looked like Aboriginal Dot art. I felt a calmness from Ro and there was no need to check his vitals as he appeared to be traveling well.

I was tempted to ask him if he saw the peacock, but I was lost in the vision and words were far from my lips. Ro was breathing and lost in his visions. My concern that the brew was going to be too strong passed and I relaxed into the glow and felt at one with nature.

Billions of years passed in that chair as I communed with the plants and the peacock.

Working through the purge period later is something I wanted to touch on. I was in and out of the smallest room in the house for a wee bit (what is time?). Although it was blue sky and sunshine outside and it was pouring through the windows, the bathroom went totally purple and black. It was deep and dark like a bruise and the walls were a darkness that was real. I thought for a moment I was going to have a visitation from spirit guides I had met before.

From a physiological point of view, scientists have suggested ayahuasca vomiting is a result of higher levels of serotonin, particularly in the gastrointestinal tract, which can cause direct stimulation of the vagus nerve, as well as diarrhea (McManis and Talley, 1997).

First-hand experience has shown me that this purge is much more than a physical reaction. The purge is believed to help eliminate physical, emotional, and spiritual blockages. From first hand experience, I do confirm that belief.

Purging can come quickly, or periodically or sometimes at the tail end of the expereince. There is no set process but for me there is always a healing element around it. Sometimes things that are a bit dark come up while you are vomiting into a bush or a bucket or the loo.

Today there were reminders of my last long-term relationship, the blended family of 6 kids and the darkness I felt back in time when I knew it was over. Some people say there is a 6-month rule in healing from a relationship that has ended. That equation is 6 months for every year together. That’s a rule of thumb, of course. I am feeling pretty clear of any debris.

It is like layers of an onion peeling away and each time I encounter this feeling during a journey I hold it close and examine it and then let it go. It’s not sadness, it’s not trauma, it’s the life I lived and all the emotions and love that were involved in that time.

Or sometimes there is a glow, a light, a beauty that flows through everything from your soul to the planet. That same mantra…..everything is alright.

Things always change.

The Plant has taught me much about living with love in my heart. I am not talking about romantic love but just have that beating within my being. It’s a mighty big task to connect with that love every day in every moment. We have to keep on keeping on.

The wind picked up and the sun started to get lower in the sky. We were also coming back into our bodies. We lounged on the couches for the next few hours talking about our lives. It was good to get to know more and to share my stories. I was seriously impacted from The Plant and felt the rush of serotonin in my body. We ate some fruit and then some other food I had prepared earlier and soothed our bodies.

At one point as the sun was almost gone I went outside and I yelled, “Ro, get out here now!”

The sky was still blue but the Wolf Moon was rising and the stars were shooting across the sky. Ro said, “Are they shooting stars?” or something like that and we both took in the glorious expanse of the sky, moon, planets and the cosmos for awhile. I guess the plant had not finished with us yet because I know damn well there were not 50 comets and shooting stars in that magical sky.

We learned a lot about each other and the stories flowed. Around 11PM my phone flashed a Facetime call from Heather, my second wife, and the mother of my two children. We had not talked in some time and I was reluctant at first to take the call. I was drawn to the synchronicity of just sharing my life story and this call happening on the full moon, so I sat at the dining room table and accepted a video call. I left the call on speaker so Ro could hear what took place because he knew all the back story now.

No need to go into the details of the call but it was touching and human and a sweet connection I was happy to make at that time.

The Full Moon seemed to be doing some work.

For many weeks after this experience, I was moving at high speed. Tina even asked me if I was OK. I seemed to be over-energised. It was a positive time, but I was not as settled as I should be. I was not feeling myself. It was like a part of me had not quite come back yet. In March I took part in a Holding Sacred/Ceremonial Space Workshop and felt grounded after that weekend. I was only a wee bit concerned.

2 years have passed, and I have not been down The Plant path again. These writings do solidify some of the learnings. I know I will visit with the spirits again when I am called.

There is a whisper.

Enjoy the playlist of songs that came to mind as I have been thinking about folks back in Cali.
Sending love and prayers.

Foreword-Whatever your understanding about psychedelics and plant medicine, I want you to know this is not a scientific peer-reviewed study. This multi-part tale is a biographic moment of my life that was enlightening and illuminating. My need to re-visit these moments is part of my continual integration of these experiences and how they positively impacted me. Even as I write these stories, I continue to learn. I hope you enjoy them. Any questions? Let me know in the comments or feel free to chat with me in any way you like. Take care in all you do.

Many people in the Wattle Tree Garden, a Facebook Group of psychonauts, self-appointed shaman and healers, interested parties, plant medicine enthusiasts (and probably one or 2 narcs)) expressed interest in how Joe and I had experimented with the molecule. We had been told most people first experienced DMT by smoking it. We had gone deep by brewing 30-40 grams of dried phyllodes each and discovered how far we could go by swallowing that brown-purple bruised drink. We drank it numerous times.

We had seen some things as we left this galaxy for places unknown.

My mouth and mind wanted to tell everyone about what I had experienced. I did not want to talk about the wild visions or hallucinations of soul singers in the sky I saw. I found myself talking about how I felt and how my emotions had been impacted. I discovered and experienced such a rush of serotonin that stayed with me for many weeks after drinking the brew that made the journey worth every swallow.

Of course, some people probably got sick of me talking about it and I overshared with some who did not need to know. I think I damaged my relationship with my son and his wife because they had no point of reference to what they thought was craziness. I wish I could take back some of that conversation shared at a steak house in Manly.

There were talks with other friends of mine who were interested in taking part and us having a group session. There were to be a couple of meetings to discuss this with possible attendees and vet the field for the plant session. We had a duty of care, and we knew we needed to assess their medical history, mental status,s and whether or not they appeared able to climb this mountain.

Set and setting, man.

Meanwhile, Joe and I were playing with the theme park, roller coaster ride of inhaling DMT. Initially, I was taking one smallish hit and seeing where it would take me. It was trippy and gentle, so I upped the size of the one hit soon after.

Now I was onto something. During this dosage, I found myself entering a similar space each time I smoked. Mind you this was not an everyday occurrence, it took a little bit of courage to enter into this world. So let me explain what went on.

After I exhaled, I closed my eyes, and there were visions of brightly coloured geometric shapes, rounded shapes, and brightly coloured objects that moved a bit like a lava lamp but not as blobby. These shapes started to move very fast, almost flashing in my mind's eye, and I found it a bit too busy at times.

Slow the hell down, I thought. I was almost getting dizzy.

On the third day, I tried it again, and there were those shapes. But something was just out of my sight, sort of just around the corner, giving me the idea of a bright light. I could not get myself to make it to that light.

Eventually, I was able to move towards the light and I saw it was a window. Outside the window was a beautiful blue sky, no clouds, and bright sunshine. I knew part of my journey was to get down to that window and maybe even move through it.

How do I work this?

The very busy geometric shapes were always the way these little journeys started for me. On the day I took this hit, they began to group and move and vibrate and shuffle and I sighed and said aloud, “I have seen this every time and I am tired of this experience.”

That may have been my words or I may just have said, “Fuck off will ya”.

Lo and behold that worked and I never saw those fast-moving images again. I had inadvertently learned that I did have some control over what felt like a strong uncontrollable feeling. I was making progress as the window that was slightly open with the blue sky and sun seemed much closer. I could almost feel a breeze coming in that window. It gave me a feeling of hope. Not hope within the experience of the altered state, but hope within the life I was living and would live.

You know, always look on the bright side….of life.

There was going to be more testing of this wild carnival ride as we progressed to the holy grail of three hits.

Meanwhile, I had been talking to some people about drinking the plant and we met in a park one sunny NSW holiday to drink a few beers, eat some snacks and discuss what we might do. There was a couple and 2 women. One of the woman had studied Shiatsu with me and was my regular Shiatsu therapist. The couple were from the lower North Shore and Rob was an engineer of sorts and his partner was a yoga teacher.

The other woman, let’s call her Mavis, was a 30-something woman of Asian background. Mavis had showed up after the other 3 and when she arrived I noticed a shift in the light and eager mood of the day. The weather was still bright and sunny….

Mavis was interested in taking part in our future session but I was not getting a level vibe from her. She seemed a bit fucked up on something and I could not put my finger on it. We were all relaxing in the sun after snacks a beer or 2 and a couple of hits on a joint. Mavis positioned herself on the opposite side of the circle and asked me questions about acacia.

While Mavis talked to me, sitting in a flowing skirt and tank top, she uncrossed her legs from the cross-legged position she had been sitting in. She moved her skirt around, opened her legs, and gave me the full frontal of her vagina. I was hoping she would re-adjust herself but she did not and she kept asking questions while I kept my eyes locked on hers. Her eyes, that is!

Now, at this stage, I had been single and celibate for about 6 months. I found this suggestive move on her behalf to be titillating but I also found it totally out of character for the discussion that we were having. I averted my eyes and we all kept conversing.

About 30 minutes later, Mavis decided it was all too hot out in the sun. She did not ask if we could move to the shade. We were surrounded by other groups of families and friends enjoying the warmth of a sunny holiday. The heat had become too much for Mavis though. She rolled to her left, stood up, and removed her skirt. Seconds later she had thrown all caution to the wind and removed her singlet. Rushcutters Bay Park was not quite ready for a naked woman in the park twirling around. It was mid-afternoon.

People were looking. You could feel the eyes and the judgement , especially with some people with kids. The naked human form is a beautiful thing but not here. I am no prude but we had been smoking a joint and who knew who would call who to deal with this?

“Mavis, I think you should put your clothes on. Don’t you have an AVO (Apprehended violence order) out against you? You probably don’t want the police called,” said my Shiatsu friend.

My brain went into a spasm thinking that this woman already has legal issues and where is this going? Sweet baby Jesus. I stood up, handed Mavis her singlet and skirt, and advised her to get dressed. We don’t need this hassle. Mavis twirled and did some yoga stretches before demurring and covering her naked self.

Things settled down and the sun began to get lower in the sky. We set up a WhatsApp group to discuss future plant plans. Everyone left but Mavis and I so I helped clean up our trash and I was ready to go. Mavis wanted to keep talking and she told me all sorts of tales of drug usage and her personal life and I had already made up my mind that this woman could not drink with us. As Mavis was a friend of the other people involved, I did not know if her behavior was ‘normal’ for her and if they would still want her along.

She also told me a story about the first time she did LSD when she was on ICE. I reached out and hugged her and said, “So, that turned out to be a very bad idea?”

She said, “Yes, it was a very bad idea.”

I found out soon enough the others did not want her involved so we removed her from our communications. She reached out to me once in awhile asking to purchase DMT but I told her that was something I knew nothing about.

A few weeks later we had organised our session to take place in a beautiful home in Mosman where one of the group ran some yoga classes. It was the perfect spot and there were to be 3 people drinking (plus myself) and Joe would assist with facilitating on the the evening.

I was able to move and stay at the house in Mosman the night before and I made myself at home with some Thai takeaway. There were a couple of younger Bush Doof-EDM producers also there that night and we hung out for a while. We traded stories, they showed me some of their fabulous work online and after a while they drifted off to their rooms.

During my stressful times, like when a marriage breaks down or I get a flat tire,I turn to nicotine. I went outside to smoke a cigarette in the cool evening air. My thoughts were busy with the plans for the next day. Some wonderful human had sent us some changa made from mimosa hostilis, something we had not tried yet. Since we might be introducing some of the attendees to it tomorrow, I thought I should give it a small test run.

Thinking back on that moment, as I sat there with no socks on, some light cotton pants and a t-shirt, i am very glad I only decided to have a small taste. I finished my death smoke and loaded the pipe with the changa. Lighting the bowl, I inhaled the one hit deeply and held it. And held it. And held it.

Whooooooooooosh! I exhaled. It was dark outside and there was no moon so I was staring off into the bush and all of a sudden shadows came rushing at me. They seemed a bit menacing, yet not scary, and I was taken aback at this sensation. There were no bright colours or geometric shapes like the other changa I had smoked.

I felt the cool, my body temperature was lowered due to the molecule, and I thought I should go inside and lie on my bed. Now, the kitchen was between me and the bedroom I needed to get to. I would say it was no more than 20 feet to my bedroom.

I turned to look at the kitchen and the damn room was like a tilting funhouse. It was moving and shaking and yes, it was tilted. My biggest concern now was how I was going to get up and get through that room and onto my bed. As things were moving faster and faster I decided to launch myself into the unknown and see what would happen if I moved towards my room.

Somehow, I got through the dangers of the psychedelic kitchen and landed on the bed. This was not like anything I had done before.I looked up from the bed at this brown and white tapestry on the wall that was in full movement. The white shapes were spinning and mandala-like geometric patterns were nonstop. I was mesmerised and could not take my eyes off this wildness.

I had no idea how long this had been going on but I got to a time where I thought, “Is this ever going to stop?”

The spinning did not slow down but eventually it stopped as if someone had flicked a switch and I was left with a feeling of amazement and awe. I was a bit out of breath and I think I said “wow” any number of times.

One thing was certain if anyone was going to take part in smoking this item tomorrow I knew for sure that it worked and had a good idea of dosage level now.

In my next installment, I will share some tales from our group facilitations, meeting more people from the plant community and our lead-up to a plant medicine conference called Rebel Herbal to be held just outside of (where else?)….Nimbin.

And of course the 3 hits….

This little talk by Mckenna is worth a listen to understand why people go here with this stuff….really, have a listen. The real message is the primacy of direct experience.
Don’t miss this little snippet of TM….it will give you some very good insight into society and this molecule.

Foreword-Whatever your understanding about psychedelics and plant medicine, I want you to know this is not a scientific peer-reviewed study. This multi-part tale is a biographic moment of my life that was enlightening and illuminating. My need to re-visit these moments is part of my continual integration of these experiences and how they positively impacted me. Even as I write these stories, I continue to learn. I hope you enjoy them. Any questions? Let me know in the comments or feel free to chat with me in any way you like. Take care in all you do.

We believed that everyone, even Donald Trump, should get some acacia into them.

What would happen if we facilitated acacia sessions?

How far can we go with this medicine?

I am not giving up my chair. Joe and I had a chair each on his verandah and we felt ‘planted’ on it while we communed wth nature. Some might say we were rooted to the spot.

Reduction! We learned that we could reduce the juice. That was quite a relief for the gut.

Friends, family and others HAD to hear about my adventures. I was a bit of an evangelist. People listened to my ramblings but I am sure there are some in my network I should have avoided oversharing with.

Acaciaville? We christened Joe’s yard with that name. Think Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville” except what we were doing was not getting wasted and there was no blowing out of flip flops. Nor was there a hangover.

We made more contacts with people within the Australian Psychedelic Society (APS) and Entheogenesis Australis (EGA) who were helpful and well-versed in plants and plant medicine.

My energy was switched on, and I felt I was moving through the world less stressed. Little things did not bother me, and I was open to the many changes in my personal life.

There is no ceremony, there is a ceremony. We believed the plant did the work and taught people what they needed. We created a safe and loving space for anyone who drank with us.

Joe had people come to him to sip the tea and I facilitated a couple of sessions with small groups. (More detail on that later with more trip reports from the field)

Did I mention that I was seriously oversharing what we were up to with family and friends and people on the street? Oh, yes I did….

My journeys made me more open and able to be even more vulnerable.

As I have mentioned this medicine found me when I needed it. My heart was wounded and my family life was changing. I could not thank the plant enough for some healing that was taking place.

Joe and I were both having revelations and conversations that would stretch into the early hours of the next day. I thank him for his friendship.

Smoking DMT was next on our list. I was enjoying the healing properties of drinking and purging and learning and integrating, but I was curious to find out about the wild side of inhaling the smoke.

Alex Grey is an American visual artist, author, teacher, and Vajrayana practitioner known for creating spiritual and psychedelic artwork such as his 21-painting Sacred Mirrors series. He works in multiple forms including performance art, process art, installation art, sculpture, visionary art, and painting. check out his website for more of his work.

https://www.alexgrey.com/

I had heard the term ‘businessman’s trip. Alex explains…

Listening to Terence McKenna I had always been drawn to this experiences. Have a listen and let me know what you think.

‘The Western mind is very queasy around these experiences that cast into doubt its cherished delusions about how reality is put together and when you get to DMT you have hit the main vein.

I mean I hold it in reserve as the ultimate convince sir I mean that's for these there are these people running around you know who say “Oh you people who are into drugs give me a good branch whiskey and a little TV I think you're deluding yourself”

Say you do you well if you got five minutes to invest in this proposition my cheerful friend because if you do have I got news for you’ (excerpt from above video)

Changa was created by Julian Palmer in 2003-2004[ and named when he 'asked' for a moniker for the drug during an ayahuasca session.Palmer actively 'seeded' Changa throughout the world, introducing it to the UK, Russia, India, Morocco, West Africa, Chile, Montenegro and China. Julian Palmer is an Australian well-known in the plant/psychonaut community. We would cross paths along the way.

One morning I awoke at a house sit in Surry Hills to a knock on the door. Joe and his friend came in and I worked my head around my sake hangover. My friend Heidi had brought over some changa for us. My head was more in need of panadol but Joe was keen to partake so we sprinkled a bit in a bowl and he inhaled.

“WHOA”, is all he said. We sat and waited for him to return. Little did we know was that word “WHOA” was going to be heard a number of times over the coming weeks/months.

After Joe returned with a look of amazement, I decided to have a wee toke of what remained in the bowl. I took this wee hit, and as I exhaled, the cocktail glasses and bottle of liquor on the cabinet in front of me started to flicker, melt, and change shape. The speed in which this manifested was like nothing I had experienced.

We were about to try some more experiments with our beloved acacia.

We were about to enter …..The Changa Zone….

“The only way to write honestly about the scene is to be part of it. If there is one quick truism about psychedelic drugs, it is that anyone who tries to write about them without first-hand experience is a fool and a fraud.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

Foreword-Whatever your understanding about psychedelics and plant medicine, I want you to know this is not a scientific peer-reviewed study. This multi-part tale is a biographic moment of my life that was enlightening and illuminating. My need to re-visit these moments is part of my continual integration of these experiences and how they positively impacted me. Even as I write these stories, I continue to learn. I hope you enjoy them. Any questions? Let me know in the comments or feel free to chat with me in any way you like. Take care in all you do.

You can find the earlier pieces on my acacia journey here in case you missed them..
https://www.outsidemyinside.com/s/magical-elixirs-and-plants

Do you recall that water lily that was telling me it was going to bloom in my last writings, well, of course, it was in full bloom when I had my coffee the next day. I had no doubt that was going to happen.

Moving forward to early 2019….

Recently I downloaded some conversations my mate Joe and I had during the early months of the Acacia Experiment. We were deep into it now and I was eager to drink again. There were doorways to wander through and roads still to travel. I had accepted the invitation and I was not shying away from the learning. I still was unsure what that learning was going to be but I felt drawn to the plant teachers.

The conversations with Joe were about his continuing research into the possibility of making a smokable form of the plant and communications he had been having with people on the Facebook Plant Page. This was a garden of information, psychonauts, psychos, and beautiful people. We were eager to learn and listen to what this community offered. It was a fertile area for discovering more about plant medicine during this period.

As with any online community, many things changed as the population grew. Sometimes I think there was too much acid in the water. More on that nonsense later.

Joe had a chat with a nurse on the FB page and she was interested in drinking the plant. I figured since my mate had worked in the medical field this was someone he knew from previous employment. He told me she lived near me in Sydney and gave me her phone number so I could arrange to give her a ride the next weekend. I chatted to this Heidi person on the phone and we arranged for me to pick her up the following Saturday.

A few days later I gave Joe a call.

“Joe, how do you know this Nurse Heidi?”

“I don’t know her. I was just talking to her on the Plant FB page.”

My mind sort of went into a spin.

“Hold on. Without meeting us this 20-something woman wants to get in a car with some middle-aged dude she does not know and drive to a semi-rural property to drink plant medicine with two dudes she has never met?”

“Yeah….” Joe tailed off.

“She must be either downright crazy or a wild free spirit of some sort”, I said.

We could be some weird cult for all she knew. We were definitely becoming disciples of the acacia.

I messaged Heidi on the Saturday we were to meet and told her I was on my way and would call her when I got to her home. I was eager to meet her and find out what her deal was. I thought that anyone who would jump in a car to drink psychedelics with strangers was going to be a freakazoid. She had asked me no questions and I was like this person has no interest in set and setting. If I were her I would be checking the boot of the car for shovels and axes and handcuffs.

“Hey, Heidi, I am out in front of your place come on out when you are ready”, I said down the phone line.

“Hey Paul, great. Hey, before I come out can I ask you a few questions?”

This is what I wanted to hear. There was some concern in her voice. I found out later a friend of hers had questioned her decision to trip with strangers and told her she should make sure she was safe.

Long story short she asked me how I knew Joe, my background, some questions about me, and psychedelics.

I breathed a sigh of relief that Heidi did have some smarts and asked the right questions. I told her this on the phone and we laughed and she decided it was safe to come along with me.

I had been thinking that Heidi was going to be some blonde-haired Swiss figure skater type and her last name was as plain as Smith. Alas, this is where some weird synchronicity pops up. You may recall my first Acacia Tea journey when I was first starting to take off and I was taunted and teased by South American females to drink more. It was full-on and kind of odd that this Aussie plant was showing me Indigenous people from another continent.

I see Heidi walking towards the car and she is not of European stock. Her brown skin and looks are very South American and I find out soon enough she has a Peruvian background.

Sure, whatever, this has nothing to do with my first DMT experience.

Yeah, not at all?? Right?

You can be the judge but I know what I know and understand. I kept this weird thing quiet until we got to know our new friend better. I was a little freaked out.

Heidi and I got to know each other on the 90-minute drive and we talked about what I had written about above. I even joked and said, “Yeah, don’t worry I have no shovels or rope in the boot of the car, Joe has them all!”

There was a good energy between us and I was looking forward to the experience with someone else along for the ride tonight.

The 3 of us hung out for a while and relaxed into the late afternoon when we ingested the Syrian Rue. We all had the same amount of tea made from the same 2-3 grams of seeds. We learned something over the next 90 minutes. Heidi was not a very big person and she should have been given a lower dose of seeds. She experienced nausea and a bit of sedation and she decided to hold off on drinking the plant.

Heidi huddled under a blanket and Joe and I drank the medicine and went on our inner journeys. There was thunder and some lightning and other weird creatures in the trees and our souls. We were concerned about Heidi but she rested and purged at times. Towards the end of our time with the plant we asked Heidi if she wanted to drink as it was getting late.

“Yeah, sure, I will have a bit. I am feeling better now”, she said.

Joe poured some into a cup, Heidi came and sat next to us and Joe held the cup for her.

He brought the cup to her lips and ….

As the cup touched her lips there was the loudest thunder and the longest flashing of lightning that lit up the back sky for what seemed like 15-20 seconds.

Talk about some sort of sign. A sign of what, who knows, but it brought much laughter and some tears to us as her sipping the tea was punctuated like that.

Heidi turned out to be a soulful and lovable human. She brought a sweet touch and lightness to the gatherings she attended. It was a good balance to the Joe and Paul bi-coastal USA humor that bounced between us.

This journey, for me, was not so much about anything that came to me on the night. It was more about community and a sense of love and beauty found on a patio communing with nature. In many ways, these experiences were not solitary, they were cumulative. I found that sharing these moments in a safe, protected, and loving capsule with a few people met my needs of set and setting. Vulnerability, to me, was very important.

In short, the accumulation of these experiences was overwhelmingly positive and joyful. They also brought many more questions to the table, but I will delve into that as I continue sorting through these stories and integrating some of my learnings as I do.

From this point on I was out on my own again, house-sitting around Sydney and holding down my corporate job, and working on being single again. This single thing after 15 years of being hooked up was something I had to get used to. I was not depressed but I was lonely and alone. The crowded house of a wife and kids was no longer my environment. How do I work this?

OK, maybe I was a little depressed.

In short, I sensed I needed to reconnect with myself. Of course I was torn by my sex drive and a lifetime habit of being coupled up. Little did I know I was headed into 18 months of celibacy. In Paul Busch’s years that is a lifetime….but I found out it was just what I needed.

This plant, the acacia, was holding out a branch to me. I was offered the leaves and I drank from the cup. Choosing life and love and growth seemed the way to go but I still had to shake off some demons. They fell away easier than I thought they might when I look back. It was not just the plant but the conversations I had with Joe and many others during this time of experimentation that helped me heal.

Of course, healing was not in a straight line but it seemed to be accelerated by the magic of the acacia.

More people were coming into our circle when I was there and when Joe was holding court with the plants while I tended to my full-time job. As noted, I was also moving from house to house and starting my period as a housesitting gypsy. I found this time liberating in ways that still sit positively with me today. I became a minimalist and purged myself of many of my belongings from books to my CD collection.

As we move forward with this tale we will delve into meeting more spirits, smoking DMT and more revelations.

So far what I had been integrating into my life was a level of calmness that had not been with me for some time. I was calm and centered. There was one ongoing issue though that is pretty normal with these deep experiences. I could not stop telling people about the plant.

We sort of felt that the world would be a better place if everyone got some of this into them and maybe we should be involved in making that happen. We were looking at what we were experiencing and wondering if it was in our heads or something else. What type of communication was taking place between us and the plants and the spirits encountered?

Oh yes, the spirits are going to make a return.

Foreword-Whatever your understanding about psychedelics and plant medicine, I want you to know this is not a scientific peer-reviewed study. This multi-part tale is a biographic moment of my life that was enlightening and illuminating. My need to re-visit these moments is part of my continual integration of these experiences and how they positively impacted me. Even as I write these stories, I continue to learn. I hope you enjoy them. Any questions?  Let me know in the comments or feel free to chat with me in any way you like. Take care in all you do.

Continuing With Acacia in 2019

I was not the first nor will I be the last who has been called by plant medicine. There are many articles, podcasts, videos and books about people hearing the call of ayahuasca/acacia, aka DMT. Some are called by other funghi or plants.

Something was going on here that seemed inviting, playful, and enriching.

As you saw in my earlier writings about my first journey there was a strong attraction to the healing aspect of this plant and the serotonin lift I had experienced for weeks post-tea ingestion. My mate and I constantly communicated about his deep weekly journey with the plant, the people he was meeting online in the garden of the local plant medicine community, and whatever other readings were found in our research.

Besides the decrease in anxiety and stress, I was finding clarity, happiness and a very strong awareness of synchronicity in all that I did. Every connection I made from the barista to the bus driver to my family held more significance. Moving through how to organise living arrangements as my wife and I separated became somewhat effortless as 2019 became the start of my housesitting ‘career’. It was not as smooth as a waxed leg but things could have been much worse.

I headed up the M1 to drink again where we were still consuming a large volume of plant liquid. The sun was still high in the sky and we drank it back. The onset was nothing like last time and those South American women never made an appearance again. There were similar colours and shapes and this time I forced myself to open my eyes and commune with the plants and nature. Everything was glistening and the plant life was alive. There was a closed water lily bud  in the water feature in the yard.

Sitting in the sunlight that bud was sending me vibrations of life. The energy was flowing across the yard to me. There were no words but there was communication.

“By tomorrow morning that lily will be fully bloomed”, I solemnly said to Joe. I firmly believed that the lily had sent me some sort of message.

Unsure if he heard me I continued to absorb all of the nature and energy going on during this early Summer afternoon. Puffy clouds and blue sky were on display and as I looked up into these clouds they transformed into black female soul singers. Phoebe Snow, Roberta Flack, and Aretha Franklin were in the sky above me. I shook my head.

They remained. Of course, they were not singing but I could see their faces and afros as clear as a photograph.

I went inside to get some water. I came back and they remained. This was probably the only time in my life I had experienced a static hallucination. I was impressed and taken aback. I think I looked like this.

Time passed.

I needed to navigate down the hallway to take a leak. There was no purge on the horizon and I was feeling the impact of the medicine in a happy moment. I had to sit down to wee because I was a bit wobbly. I was sitting there, and 2 spirits came and presented themselves in front of me. They sort of had the outline of a human body but no distinguishing features.

They communicated with me. I am not sure if it was words but there was a conversation that went like this:

One of them commanded me, “You have to purge!”

“No, I must do a wee. I don’t have the urge to purge at all”, I said. Urge to purge made me laugh and I thought I must recall that rhyme.

The order was repeated and I just said I was going to finish doing my business. They stood in front of me, sort of floating, not touching the ground. Who were these beings? What were they and what did they want with me?

As I began to pull up my pants and re-attach my belt, I found myself crashing to my knees and purging, retching into the toilet bowl. I wiped my mouth and laughed and said to my new friends, “Well, you certainly got that right!”

The spirits remained in the bathroom with me and they reached out to me and said, “Come with us”.

Was it a hand, whatever it was, I commenced to reach out to them but then stopped short and said, “You know, we just met and I am not sure of you two yet,” I laughed.

They understood and put no pressure on me to go anywhere with them. Today I wonder where I would have gone if I had accepted their invitation.

Washing my face and brushing my teeth, I looked in the mirror laughed, and was about to head out the door. This was some weird ass hallucination, and I was not even sure it was a hallucination. It seemed real.

“Wait, don’t go yet,” one of them said.

“What now”, I asked with a laugh. I was sort of giggling at what was going on and I had no fear.

They said, “Don’t forget, we aren’t done with you yet.”

I walked out to the day bed laughing and Joe was asking what was going on and I said I would tell him later. Meanwhile, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feeling I was having.

I giggled thinking about the spirits and their visit with me. What did it mean? Were they going to come back? And if they did what needed to be done with me that had not been done? There was not much to report after this occurrence. Visually for me, things were still happening, but that visit was simply off the charts. This is why DMT is called the ‘spirit molecule’ I assumed.

Joe and I were sitting on the back deck, planted in our chairs, as usual, staring off into the beautiful foliage and trees that swayed in the breeze. We did not move around much during our travels.

Joe said quietly and solemnly, “I love you too”.

I glanced over at him with a quizzical look. He said, “Did you see that?”

I think I replied that if I had seen that I would probably have to be inside his head and I laughed and he tried to describe what occurred, but in my state, I could not follow him. There was something about love and the plants but at this point, conversation was not a strong point for either of us.

There was once again an abrupt ending. One moment I am meeting spirits and seeing amazing shapes and colours and the like and then all of a sudden, BOOM, it is over. I had never experienced this before with any psychedelic. With LSD or mushrooms, things seemed to ease off as they moved through your being. With this acacia there seemed to be a firm off and on switch for me.

After some food and some downtime and maybe a beer, we slept. In the morning we sat over coffee and brekkie and I asked Joe to tell me about what he saw last night when he proclaimed aloud, “I love you, too”.

“I was looking at the leaves on all of the plants and the trees and each blade of grass. They seemed to want to say something to me but I had no idea what, I just felt it. All of a sudden every leaf, every blade of grass, each piece of plant matter flashed a big sign at him, printed in bold letters on each one: We Love You.

He said it was like a flash, like someone opening and closing a blind, it was that fast and very moving. Once again the plants themselves were communicating with us.

What a remarkable day.

I was left wondering what my spirit friends meant when they said they were not done with me

Time would reveal that soon enough.

And just in case you were wondering, that Water Lily was in full bloom when I awoke for my coffee on the verandah. I had no doubt it would be. It was a given, I had been told by the plant itself.

Coming Up-Interesting synchronicity, lightninbg bolts, plant obsession and smoking DMT.

At present, I have not gone deep into what I have integrated in my experiences so far. I will clue you in down the track.
But have a listen to Gabor Mate’s experience. It’s worth the 12 minutes.

Foreword-Whatever your understanding about psychedelics and plant medicine, I want you to know this is not a scientific peer-reviewed study. This multi-part tale is a biographic moment of my life that was enlightening and illuminating. My need to re-visit these moments is part of my continual integration of these experiences and how they positively impacted me. Even as I write these stories, I continue to learn. I hope you enjoy them. Any questions?  Let me know in the comments or feel free to chat with me in any way you like. Take care in all you do.

November 2018

Set and setting were niggling at me. I know how important that part of the experience is and I have stressed it many times. I felt like a pioneer about to cross into new terrain and that feeling inspired me. The tales of others who had gone before were like sirens on the rocks of consciousness-changing alkaloids. Just like Odysseus, my desire for this experience was deep and strong. I doubt I would have to be tied to the mast of any ship or have my ears blocked with wax. What was the message? What was the song?

Odysseus, bravest of heroes,
Draw near to us, on our green island,
Odysseus, we’ll teach you wisdom,
We’ll give you love, sweeter than honey.
The songs we sing, soothe away sorrow,
And in our arms, you will be happy.
Odysseus, bravest of heroes,
The songs we sing will bring you peace.-Homer (The Odyssey)

As I drove up the M1, leaving the Inner West of Sydney on a warm spring day I had no idea what that message would be. The seduction of the visions others had were sprinkled in my brain. I knew to pay them little mind as I would get what I needed, I knew that. Well, based on my investigations that was what I was told would happen.

I had prepared myself physically by eating well and ensuring I ate none of the foods that may complicate this experience. No pork and alcohol dining, no blue cheeses, oh damn, there were many things on lists I found on the internet, so I opted for just eating light vegetarian food for a week prior. I was on no other pharmaceuticals that could cause me serotonin issues. I had done the due diligence.

Was I going to see anything like this imagery below? I know hallucinations are the entertainment part of a psychedelic experience. There is so much more to learn during/after a psychoactive journey. I knew that from many other experiences. This alkaloid, the spirit molecule, came with many warnings and tales. Yes, that box of chocolates again.

I was a DMT virgin. I was getting many stories firsthand from Joe and was educating myself online. There was a large online, not quite underground, community where people could sit in an imaginary garden and talk to like-minded travelers, self-appointed shamans, seekers, tweakers, and people playing with beakers. People would discuss methods and trips and it was an intriguing and diverse Facebook Group. There was much online drama to be experienced within that group later in 2020 when it seemed the world was coming apart at the seams during our COVID months.

My VW brought me to Joe and Bambi’s home. (*Bambi- not her real name). Anxiety crept in a little crack and I became a wee bit concerned that I had met Joe only once and I had not met Bambi. Tripping with strangers was not my perfect setting but I had an inner calmness that pushed that negativity aside.

On arrival, all anxiety was washed away when I entered their oasis. LA Joe and NY Paul began to riff off each other early and the door was open to us becoming friends. I felt relaxed. Their home was calm and inviting. It was more than nice to be out of my house while I waited for whatever change was coming into my life.

I had heard much about their garden and where we would sit that afternoon/evening and I was not disappointed by the reality of this lush paradise in suburbia. I would learn quite a bit sitting in company with the trees and plants surrounding us.

Over the next 15 months, there was much shared between the three of us and the other plant people who came by and visited. Our experiments were looked at with interest by people we had met online and that was encouraging and wonderful. I recall someone telling us that our method of discovering DMT was not the norm. Most people had their first experience smoking changa/DMT where you blast off in seconds and the experience is over in 15 minutes or so.

We will get to that later.

For now, we were interested in that voluminous purply-brown brew that we created from the leaves of the acacia. There was ‘magic’ in that liquid that you could sense just by looking at it or stirring it in the pot, I know it sounds hippie-dippy, but it was like some sort of fairy tale elixir.

Shit, at this stage it had not even passed my lips. What was going on?

I did not know this at the time but the integration with ayahuasca, or aussiehuasca that we were drinking, commences as soon as you decide you want to work with the medicine. You have already begun a conversation with the plant before your first ceremony. Are you with me here? You may have decided, based on your experience (or lack thereof) that I have lost the plot.

Before I take you through the first ingestion of the plant, let me say a little bit about our ceremony. We came up with this idea: “There is no ceremony, there is a ceremony.”

Yeah, real deep, don’t laugh. Our thought was to create a capsule, a place where we respected the plant, and the people involved and all were shown love, respect, safety, and honesty within that capsule. The plant would teach us something. We did not need a guru or a shaman. We did not need to travel to South America to get our consciousness raised. You could do that in your backyard if you were brave.

Be your own guru, baby.

But make sure you know what you are getting into. This is no museum dose of magic mushrooms.

Late afternoon came and delivered us to our appointed time to drink the 2 plant teas. In case you forgot, first the Syrian Rue tea which enables you to absorb the DMT from the acacia tea was knocked back and 45 minutes later the main brew followed.

Feeling relaxed and a bit dreamy from the rue, we toasted each other with care and drank the very dark plant mixture. I gagged a bit as it went down and struggled to drink the pint glass of liquid.

You folks who have attended ceremonies or had the plant with others did not drink as much as we did. We were also hitting a particularly high dosage of plant matter per serving. We had a discussion about this with our plant medicine friends as time went on but we handled it all well. Some folks asked if we were totally disassociative when we partook in our brew.

We had no idea about the volume and the reduction process. We would learn, but for now, gulp this down and see what happens. At this stage, we were drinking close to a liter each of this potion. I found out soon enough that it was awful to drink and I had to struggle to get into the second glass as we dosed up. Joe was slugging his glass back like Ernest Hemingway with a big ass rum and I could only have a ½ a glass at a time. This was messing with my stomach; there was just so much to drink. So much volume….but we had not found the answer yet.

The plant was part of me now.

I was a bit uncomfortable in the gut so I was lying on the couch, day bed situation, and it was obvious that something was about to happen. Had my eyes closed and nothing….but it was not to be long like that. Seriously, there is a vibration in my consciousness from this first experience as I can feel the pulse of the ‘plant’ energy right now as I type this.

Red and purple geometric shapes were pulsating when I closed my eyes. Some guy in a suit made of lights, a big dude, cartoon-like, wearing electric bling. I think he had a briefcase and a hat trimmed in flashing lights.

Open my eyes and the world was bright but pretty normal. Closing my eyes and there were balls of colour and light bubbling like a kaleidoscope of intriguing lava and that pimp with the hat dancing off smiling and laughing.

Open my eyes and things in nature are bright but there are no hallucinations in the trees.

Closed my eyes again and there was a bevy of South American females hanging around a room. They kept coming up to me sort of teasing me and being flirtatious and downright seductive. I could feel this feminine energy.

My stomach was turning. I opened my eyes. The world looked fairly normal as I looked out over the garden.

Closed my eyes and these, I can only call Indigenous South American women started telling me to drink more. Holding a cup up to my mouth and laughing and singing.  It was all rather intense. I wondered why I was seeing South American Indigenous females when I was drinking an Australian plant. I had never had such visions in my life.

All of the swirling movement and in-your-face weirdness of these ‘sirens’ was met with a twirling uneasy feeling in my gut. Even revisiting these moments now has caused me to pause because I can feel the sensation.

I have to pause and come back due to the strength of these images as I re-visit them.

PAUSE

Well, it is the next day and that connection last night was riveting and close. After the intensity of those South American women, I had to shoot off and purge. After my first purge, the women were gone and I was feeling warm and wrapped up in the healing energy of this drink.

I never saw those women again.

Unfortunately, the healing energy did not stop the nausea that had me purge three times that evening. Purging puts some people off the idea of drinking plant medicine, but it is part of the healing process, there was no doubt. Later on, I have had journeys where I did not purge by vomiting, but I farted the entire night instead. You get what you need. I guess I just had a whole bunch of hot air I needed to release. I am still integrating that moment. Some of you know I am full of hot air.

There were 3 purges for me that night. Being a virgin, I was unsure if it was the plant matter or the medicine that caused me to feel the way I did. After I visited the loo the last time, I washed my face and brushed my teeth. I recall looking into the mirror and feeling healthy and alive. I also noted the plant experience had ended. There was no fade to black or light. It was as if someone had closed a door on that reality.

BOOM, it was over.

I did feel as if there was going to be a next time as there appeared to be more to explore and there was some unfinished business that was apparent, even if I could not put that thought into words. This was just the start.

I walked into the kitchen and Joe and his partner both asked me how I was and I said, “I feel bloody amazing!” They concurred that looking at me it appeared something had shifted. We hugged.

And it was true, something had changed. There was some serious removal of something from my being. At this point I was unsure but I knew there was a shift of some kind. I felt lighter and more grounded. The visuals had not been overwhelming, it was much more of a physical experience. My body was getting used to having the plant visit me and I felt it was just a brief initiation over the 4 hours we were with the plant.

Where was this going to take me?

Over breakfast, we discussed the experience for both of us and we also mentioned the amount of that bitter-tasting brown brew we had to ingest. Whoa, that was a challenge. Joe and I laughed and talked about it and planned to drink again as soon as I could organise myself to get back up the M1.

The days post-plant had me filled with strong positive energy and a flow in all that I did. Nothing had changed in my rippling, rumbling, and disintegrating home life, but I felt as if, at least for myself, I could hold on to this positive energy.

I even thought sharing this magical elixir would be a beautiful thing to experience with my wife. I talked about it with her. I talked about it with others. This was something I would have to work on but for now, I became a little obsessed with the power of the plant. My wife was not interested as she had just commenced AA to help with her drinking. I mentioned to her that Bill Wilson, the co-founder of AA, had thought back in 1956 that LSD could benefit alcoholics in their healing. Huxley and Wilson were known to have opened those doors of perception together. Aldous Huxley that is.

She was not interested in what I had to offer and felt I was just being over the top with my ramblings about this plant and DMT. It was not like she was averse to these kinds of ‘trips’, that was far from the truth. She did not listen because the words were coming from my mouth. I understood and I backed away. I probably did not back away enough because she told me to shut up about it.

With a full-blown backyard renovation about to begin at my home, Christmas 2018 just weeks away, my wife called me and asked me to meet her in Wooloomooloo. We met over a drink and her face was full of tears. There were and had been many words but the ones today from her were, “I can’t do this anymore.”

This was not the first time we were at this crossroads. Unfortunately, this time, I knew it was the last time.

My tears did not come. I was worn out fighting for love. I had nothing left.

Simply, there was no coming back from this.

How do I work this?

How do I work anything?

P.S.- Besides the strength and positive energy my first drink had given me, there was one bizarre physical transformation. My purging was very strong when I drank that first time and I felt like things shifted within my ‘being’, not just my gut.

I had a plantar wart on my left foot that had been there for a couple of years. Callous had built up around it, been removed and home remedies tried to eliminate the wart, all to no avail. It was a little smaller than the size of a 20-cent piece. It annoyed me and bothered me when I ran.

4 days after I drank the plant I reached down, a body memory, to pick at the callous. I could not find it. Maybe it is on the other foot and I have lost my mind?

No, it was gone. Not a sign of it or the callous. GONE.

Yeah, something had shifted from the sole of my foot.

Something had shifted in my soul, too.

Part 3- More Journeys-Finding More Reasons To Believe

Foreword-Whatever your understanding about psychedelics and plant medicine, I want you to know this is not a scientific peer-reviewed study. This multi-part tale is a biographic moment of my life that was enlightening and illuminating. My need to re-visit these moments is part of my continual integration of these experiences and how they positively impacted me. Even as I write these stories, I continue to learn. I hope you enjoy them. Any questions?  Let me know in the comments or feel free to chat with me in any way you like. Take care in all you do.

Part 1-September 8^th 2018

Life at home with my partner was not even close to being normal. You could feel the threads coming undone as if a jumper sleeve was unraveling. Your arm was getting colder. Everything was getting toxic and harder. You tugged at the wool to keep yourself covered.

I could hear the Talking Head lyrics from their song “Once In A Lifetime” bouncing around inside my noggin’.

And you may ask yourself, "How do I work this?"

And you may ask yourself, "Where is that large automobile?"

And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful house"

And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful wife"-Talking Heads

Like humidity, the tension hung around and weighed us down and made us drip with anxious sweat. Things were fucked up, we were not even sleeping in the same bed.

Our friends Jen and Pete were having a housewarming party this Saturday night. It was September 8^th, 2018. I asked my wife if she wanted to attend, and she said she would pass. I knew what the answer was going to be, but I was hopeful there were some embers in the fire still. I knew I was fooling myself.  A family event was coming up before 2018 ended, and I felt that was the only thing holding my marriage together. That and the numerous children and stories we had accumulated together. The web was losing its ability to stay a web. I was filled with sadness.

Maybe I am just paranoid?

Man, that was a question that hounded me for several months. Or I was hoping I was just paranoid? I did not want this marriage to end but it takes two to tango, jitterbug, or whatever dance step you choose. I knew it was not paranoia. My therapist and I had many conversations about it, so no need to re-visit any detail here.

Meanwhile, I headed over to Beecroft for the soiree. There was a gathering of people, some I knew, many I did not. Was not drinking much as I was driving and buried under my bonhomie was some dark, brooding pain. Shit, I sat in the car for 10 minutes deciding if I should bring this energy into a celebration. I shook the dust and the bad juju off my soul and headed in. It was a cold spring evening, not much above 13C, and I was hoping for some human warmth.

Drinking beer, and smoking a joint, I was feeling a little better. Some folks decided to play poker, so we sat around a table playing for fun and I turned to the Yank next to me and introduced myself. He said his name was Joe and I asked him how he knew Jen and Pete and he said, “She’s my sister”, to which I replied, “Ohhhh, you are that Joe.”

What I mean, is that I knew enough about Jen’s family to know a brother Joe existed. I should have picked up on who he was immediately when I heard his Los Angeles accent, but if I ever was myself I was not close to it that night. Nothing felt right and I was probably as close as I ever get to being depressed. Get that damn dark cloud away from me! It’s Saturday night and I’d like to have a few laughs. Go away! Leave me. It sort of went over to the corner for a wee bit and sulked.

The night was winding down and Joe and I and the new homeowners were smoking a fare thee well number or was it a cigarette.  The conversation had turned towards psychedelics and other tales. Joe said to me, “Do you know anything about acacia?”, Joe asked pointing out the tree in the garden.

“Well, it’s our national tree, ya know the golden wattle (Golden Wattle (Acacia pycnantha), and I think it is on some of our currency”, I replied.

“Do you know anything about ayahuasca?” asked Joe.

My ears perked up as I knew a bit about ayahuasca and the spirit molecule, DMT, that can be extracted from that plant. At this stage in my life, it had not crossed my path, nor had I gone looking for it. As many say, DMT finds you when you are ready.

“Some types of acacias have the spirit molecule, the tryptamines, the same DMT that is in ayahuasca”, he told me.

We exchanged details before I drove off into the night back to my home where darkness lurked, even when the sun was shining. I had no idea at that point that this plant would help me maneuver my way through some big changes coming at me.  At this point, I did not even know if this guy Joe would follow through, but I found out soon enough.

Back in 2018, a short 6 years ago, people in my neck of suburbia were not talking about microdosing or macrodosing. “How To Change Your Mind” by Michael Pollan had only been published in May 2018. There were people I knew who loved to take a bit of a “bus trip” as we called it, but to some, the idea of letting go to the unknown was scary as all get out. I understood their fears as even a seasoned bus traveler like myself entered into these experiences with a bit of trepidation. You never knew what was beyond that doorway.

Joe stayed in contact, and he began experimenting with the acacia. He was learning how to brew the tea and he imbibed several times during late September and October 2018. He regaled me with tales of amazing psychedelic visions. We had all read about machine elves as per Terrance Mckenna. Joe did not get the elves, but he did get a bandicoot. He also saw jeweled trains and carriages in the trees on his property.  I was envious of his trips, but I knew soon enough I would partake.

Meanwhile, we both took to the internet and other social media to see what was happening in the plant medicine world. What is the story with DMT?

There were so many stories and tales online about how ayahuasca could give you many sessions of psychotherapy in a few hours, it was the mirror of your soul or whatever you bring to the table Mother Aya will reflect it back at you through her loving lens. I found this report from Jim Belushi a couple of years ago and it is worth a watch to give you an idea from Mr. Belushi what went on with his travels. (see below)

We also started to discover a vibrant plant medicine community online where we could learn more.

Plus you could find a list of possible benefits all over the web and it sounded like some sort of wonder medicine.

Potential Benefits of Ayahuasca

• Improved or resolved depression and/or anxiety symptoms.

• Alcohol and/or drug addiction recovery.

• Greater self-knowledge.

• Improved interpersonal relationships.

• New perspectives on life.

• Resolution of past trauma and trauma triggers.

N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT or N, N-DMT) is a substituted tryptamine that occurs in many plants and animals, including humans and is both a derivative and a structural analog of tryptamine. DMT is used as a psychedelic drug and prepared by various cultures for ritual purposes as an entheogen.

Yes, various cultures and psychonauts and home chemists and budding shaman (ahem) and people interested in delving deep, way deep were all looking at this as some sort of entheogen. My past had seen me roll with funghi and cacti, which will be detailed in other magical tales, but for now, how do you make this medicine?

The acacia brew we made from 40-50 grams of sacred plant matter per dosage. This plant matter was simmered with water and apple cider vinegar for a couple of hours, strained off, and repeated 2 more times. All of this liquid was collected in the pot and we were left with several litres of the brew. It was quite voluminous. We also found out later that the grams of plant we used were on the high side. People we began communicating in this community said, “Whoa! Are you totally disassocaited?”
It certainly made for a interesting initiation.

Just a wee bit of magical science to follow. To metabolise the DMT from the sacred plant, the acacia root or leaves, you first need to drink something else called a harmala alkaloid about 30-45 minutes before you drink the acacia brew.

I can hear you ask, “Oh why, Professor?”

Harmala alkaloids are several alkaloids that act as a monoamine oxidase inhibitors, otherwise known as MAOI’s. Through our online research and questions posed to people  with the Australian Psychedelic Society, we learned that peganum harmal (Syrian Rue) was needed for us to activate the DMT that we would orally ingest (https://www.psychedelicsociety.org.au/)

But how do you get the root bark/leaves and the Syrian Rue seeds I can hear you asking? True the trees grow around Australia but you need the ‘right’ tree and so we talked to more folks in the know and found someone who grew them, harvested them in an environmentally safe way, not raping the tree as some are wont to do, and were handed some of the sacred plant matter. Acacia is not illegal in its natural state.

Harmala alkaloids are considered Schedule 9 prohibited substances under the Poisons Standard Act.  A Schedule 9 substance is a substance that may be abused or misused, the manufacture, possession, sale, or use of which should be prohibited by law except when required for medical or scientific research, or analytical, teaching, or training purposes with the approval of Commonwealth and/or State or Territory Health Authorities. So where are we going to find these seeds?

As my mate Joe said, “Just check where America shops! eBay!” Sure enough, you could find them there. We also found them in some shops here in Australia. I don’t think the message on legality had reached everyone.

I am getting ahead of myself for at this point I was only learning this from Joe and our conversations. I was getting real-time updates from the garden which amazed me. I was a bit concerned about set and setting for my first experience scheduled for November. This had to wait until the family wedding was successfully celebrated. I also had to think deeply about set and setting. I was standing on the precipice of a separation and quite possibly a divorce. Even though this was occurring, I felt a calling. This was not just curiosity. It was an actual request by the plant. I know that sounds weird, but plants have been around for a long time. They are sentient beings. You can dwell on that for now.

I had no desire to escape, and I did not want to be in a position where my mental health was impacted or rearranged while I was swimming with a bunch of flotsam jetsam. Everything I read seemed to call me to this plant for healing and knowledge. It was a calling I could not, and I did not resist. Even if I did it once and found it intriguing, I could cross it off my list of experiments in my life. Just like the one time I jumped out of a plane. With a parachute.

I was soon to find out how that experience compared to this plant medicine.

“Funny, I’d forgotten that what comes to you when you take a psychedelic is not always a revelation of something new and startling; you’re more liable to find yourself reminded of simple things you know and forgot you knew — seeing them freshly — old, basic truths that long ago became cliches, so you stopped paying attention to them.”

― Alexander Shulgin, Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story

End Of Part 1

To Be Continued-Part 2-The First Experience (s)

I will try to get a bit of this story out each month. There is much to tell and revisit. It is an important part of my 21st Century.

Meanwhile, ethnobotanist, mystic, and veteran bus traveler, Terence Mckenna had me at machine elves. Wha?

To sit, perchance to daydream.

Daydreaming.

‘When we think about things that aren't actually happening, like when we daydream, the brain is essentially making up information rather than receiving and processing it-for this reason, researchers classify it as a "self-generated" brain state. In a recent study published in Nature Communications, researchers from Japan have identified that these self-generated states are associated with a specific pattern of brain activity known as "sharp-wave ripples." These ripples start in the hippocampus, an essential brain region for making and retrieving memories.

In general, the sharp-wave ripples from the hippocampus were generated in patients at night (presumably during sleep). Furthermore, the research team noticed a link between increased sharp-wave activity and thoughts that were more vivid or imaginative and less desirable or task-related, i.e. when their minds wandered.’

Less task-related thoughts. Does that sound nice to you?

Close your eyes for a moment or just turn off the device and look around.

You will be surprised what you “SEE”.

Click on Patti Smith below for her thoughts…..she is a goddess of wisdom, poetry, and song.

femalepoetssociety

A post shared by @femalepoetssociety

What a day for a daydream
What a day for a daydreamin' boy
And I’m lost in a daydream
Dreamin' ‘bout my bundle of joy
And even if time ain’t really on my side
It’s one of those days for takin' a walk outside
I’m blowin’ the day to take a walk in the sun
And fall on my face on somebody's new mowed lawn

I've been havin’ a sweet dream
I been dreamin’ since I woke up today
It’s starrin’ me and my sweet dream
'Cause she's the one that makes me feel this way

And even if time has passing me by a lot
I couldn't care less about the dues you say I got
Tomorrow I'll pay the dues for droppin’ my load
A pie in your face for bein' a sleepy bulltoad

And you can be sure that if you're feelin’ right
A daydream will last along into the night
Tomorrow at breakfast you may pick up your ears
Or you may be daydreamin' for a thousand years

What a day for a daydream
Custom made for a daydreamin' boy
And now I’m lost in a daydream-John Sebastian

Now I’m lost in a daydream….

Enjoy yourself.

Nearly 25% of the 21^st century is gone and everywhere you turn these days you see an article about psychedelics. Whether it be microdosing or macro, MDMA therapy, or funghi to help depression or to assist people in palliative care, the stories and podcasts are hard to miss.

Back in the early 70’s for me and my friends, it was about the counterculture that we had missed and trying to tag onto that freak flag and be a ‘head’. We were free-form experimenting with very little to guide us. Let me share some advice that may help you out down the track if you decide to walk this way.

We did not think much about set and setting while in our trial-and-error period of life. I learned many things that way. Please tell my younger readers that it is not the BEST way to learn about life, but it happens often when you are younger. Why would you listen to anyone when you are a teenager when you know everything?

If you have had the joy of raising children you would understand that teens know everything and your advice was not even heard. It may be recalled later, but after they have done whatever they please.

I tell you it can be pretty confronting when your face begins to melt and all the people around you look like, well, damn, what do they look like. You can’t even make some things out when you are dealing with a freaked-out LSD journey.

Enough of unsolicited advice from me, your elder, let me tell you a story about set and setting. If I only teach you this one thing you will not have to figure it out like I did. We had some books but most of our psychedelic guides were people like Hunter S Thompson. Terrence Mckenna was not known to me back in the early 70’s and the internet did not exist.

We were kids at the tail end of the 60’s and our teenage years were in the transitional 70’s. We still wanted to live a dream that had truly flown by our turn to turn on, drop out tune in, and get higher than we could imagine. We did not have lofty spiritual goals as teenagers. We had no ceremonies around dropping acid or chomping on mushrooms. This was all an experiment that we decided we needed to take part in, and it was combined, in the early days, with recreation.  

We had visions of driving through the desert in a convertible with the roof down and a bag with too many drugs and a bottle of ether. Those were fantasies. The reality was that we smoked weed if we had it, and we always had it, and a lot of our other time was spent sourcing molecules that would take us to other planets without leaving the lounge room of the family home. There was a group of us who were good students, we stayed out of trouble, I played high school basketball (idolising Bill Walton and The New York Knicks), and we all loved getting high. Outside of the high school walls we were pushing all our boundaries.

We also had NYC in our backyard when we wanted to see how we could handle the 2 hits of LSD we took 30 minutes before we arrived at Penn Station. We would jump off the Long Island Railroad, hit the streets, and wander with our pupils dilated. Sometimes we would have a destination, other times it was just the ability to walk around NYC as a theme park and take it all in. Did you SEE that? Sometimes it was only you that SAW that.

I do have some stories. Let me tell you how I learned about how to take psychedelics properly. It is all about set and setting. Are you listening dear reader, take heed of my words. Set and Setting make the experience. Even if you are experienced and know you can handle the streets of NYC or a deserted beach on Long Island, you should always take a breath and think about where, when, how, who, and what the actual fuck am I thinking before that sugar cube or piece of paper hits your tongue.

You always knew it was LSD when it hit your tongue. There was a special spark. A knowing in that slightly bitter taste that things were going to change drastically over the next 30-60 minutes, and you had boarded the bus for a good ½ day of some sort of experience. You just did not know if it was going to be the Wild Toad or It’s A Small World ride. That was part of the adventure.

I loved The Academy of Music, the old theatre on West 14^th Street in NYC, and saw many concerts there. It was sort of my rock and roll home through the 70’s. Seeing acts like Framptons Camel, Foghat, Slade, Hot Tuna, Roy Buchanan, David Bromberg, Dave Mason, Joe Walsh, Rory Gallagher, and more. My teenage tastes were rock and roll, blues, and cosmic country. I never saw The Grateful Dead or The Band there. I was just a little too young for those nights.

Let me take you on a little journey where things went haywire because I had no real idea about Set. Setting I was pretty good at, I could handle most places and The Academy was a place I went to many times. From its amazingly sticky floor to the ornate walls this aging movie house accommodated about 4,000 punters, and it was very familiar to me.

2 nights in 1974 gave me some serious learning.

October 5, 1974, Blue Oyster Cult Academy of Music, New York City, NY (supported by Triumvirat)

My mate Bill and I were hanging around and we decided we needed to get some psychedelics for the winter  holidays. I don’t think we had a plan for when we wanted them. We knew where we could get them and no one on Long Island could help these 16-year-old heads. We decided to head into Manhattan and go to The Academy. You could score there.

If you had been to this place during the 70’s you knew the downstairs lounge area was a place to take, buy/sell and share drugs. It was quite the narcotics marketplace. All you had to do was ask and someone would point you to the right person who you could score from. There were usually several people selling different spices so you had to shop around.

What have ya got? How much?? That looks great.

On this night Blue Oyster Cult, a Long Island band just about to break big, were headlining. Bill and I found some inexpensive tickets outside and headed for the lounge to procure some magic. We found some blotter and windowpane acid and we must have bought about 10 hits each. That would have set us back around 20 bucks.

We wandered around, smoked a joint, and then I made a mistake. Bill was a little curious about BOC and wanted to catch some of their show. We got to our seats and Bill, and I decided to test-run the LSD we had purchased. Within an hour I was having one of the worst nights of my life. I had trouble communicating my distress to Bill as the walls closed around me. The music almost made me feel sick and I was just hunkered down in my seat.

We did not stay until the show was over and once I was back on the street things commenced to get better. Bill and I went to Tad’s Steaks as he was hungry. I sat down and ordered a steak and salad and when it came out to me the food was doing the boogaloo across the plate. From then on I called it Tad’s-Where The Food Moves. I think back then the steak was 1.99 with a salad. I can still see it breathing on my plate if I close my eyes.

We went back to Long Island and Bill wanted to hang out, but I was deep in some psychosis and just wanted to get in bed and hold onto a pillow. My soul was shattered. There was quite a bit going on in my home life at this time. Checking my pockets the next day most of the tabs had survived but I think a couple may have passed through my jeans into my bloodstream. Anything was possible…..

Let me fill you in on why i knew nothing about “Set”.

My Mom had had a cerebral hemorrhage and a failed operation. She was still alive, but she was no longer able to communicate or feed herself etc. Life as I knew it at home had changed forever. I did think about the ‘bad trip’ and marked it down as one for the annals. Sometimes these things happen. I did not draw a conclusion that was certainly the elephant in the room in 1974. Call me dumb or just young.

8 weeks later I found myself at The Academy of Music. With a trio of friends, we had gone to see 3 bands that I adored:

November 29, 1974, NRPS/Commander Cody/Ozark Mtn Daredevils

I can’t recall what LSD we did that night but I found myself in an even worse situation than I was for Blue Oyster Cult. I felt as if there was a riot happening and that there were police everywhere in the venue. My paranoia had reached a peak and then gone past it. The walls were melting and evil faces came peering out at me. Was that a dragon coming for me? Or some sort of dinosaur? I would have left the concert but I was more scared about being on the streets without my friends.

This show commenced at 1130PM and with 3 acts I knew I was there for the long haul. I told my friends to have a good time and I would ride this out without interfering with their fabulous night. I can recall The Ozark Mountain Daredevils doing a fun set. After that, I recall bits and pieces of two of my all-time favorite bands from that era playing until about 530AM. I could hardly focus on the visions going on within my consciousness. Trial by fucking fire.

It was getting light when I burst out the doors of The Academy and nearly fell into the arms of 2 NYC police officers as I gasped for freedom and air. They asked me what was going on and I have no idea what I said to them. I am not even sure if I had words to use. They had probably seen much worse in their duties on the streets of the Apple.

My friends and I traveled home, and I was a bit of a bummer I am sure. I probably looked like someone who had just done too much acid. It was not the amount of acid that I did, it was the fact that I was playing with this type of drug at this point in my life.

Over the next couple of weeks, I talked to my friends about these 2 trips, and we all agreed that I should not be playing with psychedelics while my Mom was hanging on for dear life. That is how I learned about Set. At 17 I worked out that if your head was not in the right space, if anything felt wrong, messing with any drugs is going to quite possibly amplify the demons in your soul.

Never again did I walk that road or have a bad trip. Some people say there is not a bad trip and that you get the trip you need at the time. Maybe that was so, and I needed to learn this way because I must be a slow learner. I do know it was a lesson I have never forgotten and from that moment on I treated my decisions about ‘tripping’ with much more respect and care.

So, if you want to take some kind of mushroom or place a droplet on your tongue, take a moment and address how you feel. I guarantee you it will be worth your while.

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head-White Rabbit-Grace Slick

Did I mention that set and setting are vitally important?

Do not try this at home.

For that matter, don’t do it in a supermarket either.

This is something if you are going to try, your home might be a good spot.

What did I know about set and setting? 

At 14, what did I know at all?

It was 1971.

LSD became illegal in 1970.

The idea of altered states fascinated me. Rock and roll music spoke to me about it and it was in the books I was drawn to and the images and stories I read in Rolling Stone Magazine amplified it.

You were either on the bus or off the bus.

My formative years were on suburban Long Island, New York, about 30 minutes from New York City. You grow up fast in and around the city without even realising it.

We had no comparison, so it was just life.

Being the youngest of 4 children, my older brothers and sister had already broken some boundaries and rules by the time it was my turn to walk the teenage path. There were stories, whispers of other stories I had not heard all yet, and of course, there were elder cousins, friends of my older siblings and the media showing me many things.

My desire to grow up was something I pondered as a child as I played with my Matchbox cars and trucks.

Growing up seemed like something that would be fun to do.

You could also say I was corrupted very early.

Some may call it enlightened.

Others may call it downright crazeeeee.

There were stories that people had taken LSD and thought they could fly and jumped out of buildings. The old joke is why don’t you just see if you can take off from the ground first? Most of these stories were urban myths. We do know that people with mental health issues should probably avoid taking a trip that could exacerbate their condition or bring it to the forefront.

Back in the 60’s and 70’s, we were not aware of these things.

We rolled the dice.

Most of us made it back.

There were casualties.

 Campus Life is a program of Youth For Christ, a non-profit organization that has been active throughout the United States for over 65 years. When I was beginning high school, my sister and her friends got involved with this group.

Their focus was a chance to bring adolescents together for fun after school and in the community. Their gatherings were always raucous and filled with laughter. I tagged along and enjoyed the frivolity.

Jesus was not part of the regularly scheduled programme until the end of the fun. You could hang and listen, or you could make for the door. As I was raised a Catholic and had already turned my back on the Lord, Jesus was not part of my reason to hang out with these folks.

More waters being tested, hanging with people with different ideas and ages was a way to learn.

I liked to laugh.

Somehow I got my hands on 2 hits of brown dot blotter acid. I recall many things but where they came from is lost over the 50 years since it occurred.

 I stashed it in my wallet and I could feel it burning a hallucinogenic hole in my pocket. None of my friends had gone down this path yet, I was only 14, and so I waited until this one night when I was working in a supermarket.

Not just any supermarket.

This was a derelict supermarket, and it was Halloween Weekend. Campus Life had been running a haunted house situation for a couple of years and I got involved with working with them one Friday night. Campus Life sold tickets and made some cash as they scared the bejesus out of people for a few days around the 31^st of October.

Can you scare Jesus into someone?

We had padded the back stairwell and entrance to the building with foam and a trap door that would shut when about 20 people were in the dark hallway. The door slammed shut and the people were in darkness for a short bit. There was a lot of screaming.

Positioned at the end of the hallway was one person with a flashlight who would guide people into one of 2 small tunnels that would take them to the rest of the very scary haunted supermarket.

I was that one person for part of this evening.

Prior to starting my time down in the darkness, I decided it was time to drop one of those hits of blotter onto my tongue. I had only smoked marijuana at this point in my young life so I figured this little piece of paper should just be some more fun.

What could possibly go wrong?

20 minutes passed and I felt no difference.

This stuff is not working, I thought.

Reached into the little insert in my wallet and popped that other little piece of paper onto my tongue.

This was a rookie error I would never make again.

I took up my position down at the gates of doom and waited for the first load of revelers to come into the hallway.

SLAM!

The door closed, people screamed, I turned on my flashlight and I had so much fun splitting people up and sending them through different tunnels. I used the spookiest tones I could as a 14-year-old kid and enjoyed the time I was down there.
People were laughing and scared a bit and I even thought some of the faces were of people I knew. I found out later that quite a number of people I knew had seen me down there.
They were just cackling faces to me.

Time slipped and I decided maybe I should have a cigarette break and a chance to get out into the evening air. Yes, I was smoking as a teen. Smoking was cool.

Coming out into the evening, I was met by a few people, and I was also greeted by the lights outside and really seeing things tht may or may not have been there.

That second hit must have had something in it.

I was not experienced enough to know that I had double-dipped into Albert Hoffman’s Cookie Jar.

“Hey Paul, where have you been?”, Jerry asked.

“Was down in the entrance putting people into the tunnel. I came out for a break”, I said.

“You were down there for almost 2 hours, about time for a break.”

Now I knew I was tripping because I thought I had been down there for about 30 minutes.

Taking the cigarette from my pack of Marlboro, I held it between my fingers and followed the brown filter to the white cigarette that went on and on and on.

I laughed to myself, or maybe out loud, and thought this is going to be difficult.

The cigarette was at least 6 feet long and I was a bit mesmerised by it all.

Someone may have lit it for me.

Taking LSD before going to a haunted house as a spectator is something people may do for fun.

Working in the same place as a volunteer for Campus Life where no one knew I was tripping could turn out as one badass mistake.

Alas, good karma was on my side and I had the time of my life. I was able to navigate the world I was in and enjoy the hallucinations and the fun in an environment that some people may have freaked out in.

Trial by fire and I survived my first ride.

This was the experimental, carnival ride side of LSD for me.

It was such a fun night I camped out in the haunted supermarket so I could help out the next day.

There would be concerts, wandering around NYC, going to museums, and hanging out in parks while the world flowered and glowed and amazed me at every turn.

My initiation was all about the experience. That was probably the last time I dosed on my own for some time.

After that experience, I found many other travelers who were also on the bus.

More stories from the bus and beyond coming up.

“America's public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.” -Richard Nixon 1971

What do you think about the psychedelic renaissance or as some now call it a revival?

 Do you know what is going on? Do you get the newsfeed that I get?

Sometimes the straightest-looking people I meet bring this topic up with me out of the blue.

After the War on Drugs shut down any research and development using psychoactive ingredients, it seemed like what is happening now would not happen in my lifetime.

But now, the usage of THC and CBD is on the rise for pain, sleep, and mental health conditions. Of course, it is still used for recreation. I find it a good source to amplify fun especially when I see live music. The journey I have had with marijuana has been with me for decades and I respect it and enjoy it when the moment is right.

If I do not have a prescription though, I can still be hassled by the police here in Australia. Unless I am in Canberra, our capital, where I can grow my own. Nowhere else in this sunburnt country can you do that.

Go figure.

Getting a prescription is as almost as easy as it is to breathe. We are headed in the correct direction. You can get one from any doctor.

The weed is pricey though. It’s a weed, let us grow it.

My most recent foray to the United States showed me that marijuana is as common as a Budweiser beer. The states like California and Colorado and Massachusetts that I visited had dispensaries with budtenders giving you advice on strains, strength and what can help you with your sleep, creativity, energy levels and even for pain relief.

 It is a weed that can do so many things for so many people.

Even in the states where marijuana was illegal, everywhere I went the smell was present. It was not uncommon for someone to offer you a gummy.

 Having been raised in a time when Nelson Rockefeller was the Governor of New York State, my birthplace, it was like entering a work of fiction.

We feared the police if we were holding. The amount did not matter.

In 1973, Rockefeller was agitated and alarmed at the soaring use of heroin in New York State and passed laws that led to a huge leap in the incarceration of individuals who were in possession of any illegal drug.

Under the Rockefeller drug laws, the penalty for selling two ounces (57 g) or more of heroin, morphine, "raw or prepared opium", cocaine, or cannabis or possessing four ounces (113 g) or more of the same substances, was a minimum of 15 years to life in prison, and a maximum of 25 years to life in prison.

Look at those minimum times in prison.

Rockefeller used to think and act on drugs as if they were a social problem. Something shifted during the Nixon years, maybe even before that.

Nixon did not like the hippies and he was a racist. Fact.

John Ehrlichman was a political aide for Nixon, and he went down and served some time in prison himself for his engagement in Watergate. You know Watergate, don’t ya? If not, you will have to do your own research. Ehrlichman had this to say:

“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.”

— Dan Baum, Legalize It All: How to win the war on drugs, Harper's Magazine (April 2016)

As you can imagine, this resulted in a huge increase in incarcerations of so-called ‘radicals’ and minorities. This was also the germination of the billion-dollar prison industry in the land of the red, white, and blue. We could even go further and say this so-called war on drugs helped divide the country even more than the Vietnam War.

The war ended.

But not the war on drugs.

But now we are seeing a seismic change over the last ¼ century. California legalized medicinal weed in 1996 and now 23 US States have legalized recreational use and 40 States have legalized the medical usage of reefer.

Definitely not madness.

Even Joe Biden, who voted to pass some of those draconian drug laws, understands the need for change.

In 2022, Biden pardoned thousands of individuals who had been charged in federal courts for possession. If you were selling, well you will have to wait for some more deep-rooted changes. There are no people in federal prison in the US on marijuana possession charges. These pardons are not about getting them out of jail, this is to allow them to live a life without a felony conviction.

 Unfortunately, there are thousands of people in State and County Jails for possession. They will linger longer. It is a huge ball of string to unravel.

America leads the world with imprisonment. Over 2.3 million Americans are behind bars.

America does need to decriminalize marijuana. That would be a start if they could do it nationwide.

But that is up to Congress. That’s another story.

Getting back to the psychedelic renaissance, how do you feel about it? Does it bring you fear? Or hope for people who need help that may benefit from these plants and potions?

I am going to write more about this as time passes. Revealing my journey and the journey of people I have passed time with or met or read about.

Simply, before I leave you now, my journey was influenced by being 12 years old in 1969 and watching the counterculture, reading books by people much smarter than me, and hearing stories that piqued my interest. Yeah, I aligned myself with the hippies and the seekers.

The doors of perception were thresholds I wanted to cross.

“To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours, the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended directly and unconditionally by Mind at Large—this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.”-Aldous Huxley

I am still here. I am still alive. My experiences have helped define who I am. I have no regrets about anyone of my journeys.

As we enter a period of rapid social and environmental change, we need substances to shake people up. Let’s use it, that term that has become a trigger for the right-wing loonies, to wake people up.

These alkaloids are not panaceas. They are tools. They are medicine.

My story will come along as time permits. You can follow along when you get an email or just go to my website (www.outsidemyinside.com) periodically and check-in when you want! Please subscribe to my Substack if you enjoy.

The intention of writing about these topics and my experiences is to humanize them and simply I am very interested in where this trip will take all of us.

You don’t have to light up or swallow a sugar cube or drink ayahuasca, but you should know the spiritual, medicinal, and psychological benefits as most of these items are going to be accessible via prescription.

Or as per usual, until society catches up, from the underground.

Big Pharma wants in and is already in, so you know it is a fait accompli. They already make 13.4 billion a year on anti-depressants. We know these have become overprescribed and over-advertised in America and around the world.

Maybe Big Pharma should not be allowed to get involved, but of course, capitalism will have its way.

Next time I will tell you about how I came to my first experience and how I knew nothing about one of the key rules of psychedelics. Fortunately, I am here to tell the tale.

Meanwhile, enjoy some music which is a good way to commence any travel.

Within or Without. Outside My Inside.