Category Archives: Yoga of Psychedelics

My Virgin Ayahuasca Trip Report: Dancing With A Sadistic Mother

ayahuasca trip report

Ayahuasca Trip Report: Set & Setting

I will keep this section brief for two reasons:

  1. The group I sat with operates within the US, and therefore is “underground”
  2. Most readers have expressed the most interest in the “juicy details” of my experience

I would like to acknowledge, however, that the two dozen fellow journeyers in attendance were the most genuinely loving and intelligent people The Big Toe and I have ever met. We wondered if this medicine attracts this quality of people, or if perhaps it produces these qualities in people (the vast majority of the participants had already taken many doses). We came to the conclusion that it’s likely a combination of both.

During the Pre-Ceremony Introduction, I met with the Shaman and told her of my experience with “heroic doses” of LSD for entheogenic purposes in the past.

Related: Virgin Voyage – My First LSD Experience & My Second LSD Trip – 25 Years Later

She asked “So, you’re not afraid to surf the big waves?”

I smiled and said “Hang Ten!”

Famous (and egotistical) last words…

My stated intentions for the session were:

  1. To know the Truth, no matter what
  2. To know the next steps on my journey to the Truth

Ayahuasca Trip Report: Session One

The ceremony began and soon it was my turn to approach the alter and take the medicine. The cup was filled to the brim… Laird Hamilton had nothing on me.

Within about 30 minutes I could feel the medicine coming on slowly, unlike my experiences with high doses of LSD. My body became warm and lighter, with a bit of dizziness.

I kept with my intention “Show me the Truth and my path towards it”.

Then she spoke to me for the first time. Now, there wasn’t an external figure that I could see (although many others have reported such an experience). This voice was from an internal source, but most certainly wasn’t ME. Those of you who’ve had this experience will know what I mean. Everyone else, just stay with me…

So she says:

“You’ve got to fucking be kidding me, right?”

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My Second LSD Trip: 25 Years Later

LSD trip voyage upwards

A full twenty-five years later, Big Toe and I met up in Boulder, Colorado to take our second big LSD Trip and psychedelic adventure together.

Related: Virgin Voyage: My First Psychedelic Experience

Honest to Goddess, I hadn’t consumed any mind-altering substances in that two and a half decade time period. From a spiritual path perspective, there simply didn’t seem to be any need for it.

Then I started to get an “itch”; but it wasn’t exactly an itch, it kind of felt like an ache. So I’ll call it an “Itch-Ache”.

There was something else that I needed to experience, or so I convinced myself.

As you may recall, on my first LSD trip, I spent a good deal of time after the “peak-behind-the-curtain period” in The Void. This was planned for that first trip, and was certainly liberating in many ways that I was able to carry into ordinary relative reality.

LSD trip into the Void

This Itch-Ache felt like a calling/desire for more than the loss of Ego into the Void, but rather a sense of Union. I was unsure exactly how this sense of Union would present itself, as I felt confident that the path of pure bliss, surrender and love wasn’t MY path. I had always been drawn to the more Jnana Yoga Path of knowledge and intellectualism, somewhat characterized by my leaning towards Alan Watts over Ram Dass.

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Virgin Voyage: My First Psychedelic Experience

psychedelic experience reaching the void

A Recount of My First Psychedelic Experience

This definitely ain’t Kansas.

As some of you are already aware, the totality of my drug experience (not to mention my psychedelic experience) throughout both high school AND college consisted of four beers. I suppose I should point out that the term “beer” is used lightly here, as they were really four bottles of Little Kings Cream Ale.

Seriously, I was that straight-edge (before that was a term) and vanilla, up until I was 24 years old.

Although slightly painful to admit, I was a Midwestern Country Bumpkin when I arrived in San Francisco, sight unseen, to study Religion and East West Psychology at The California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).

Although I had obtained my BA in philosophy with additional foci on religion and psychology, I somehow missed the books and lectures on mystical experiences, induced both by various techniques and the use of drugs.

That all changed at CIIS, as there was a corner section of the library dedicated to the topic of the psychedelic experience for enlightenment. Mind you, that wasn’t the exact description header for those two bookshelves, but even I could figure it out.

It was like porn to me.

Like real, old school porn, before the Internet; when it wasn’t so easy to obtain, and that seemed to exponentially increase both the desire and appreciation for it. That’s what this new and tasty information was for me… Enlightenment Porn.

But I digress…

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