The First Journey
Magic Tea In The Garden
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