Guys how did we get into a discussion about psychedellics here, without me even personally fuelling it? (At least I don't think I did- this time!
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I usually feel like a societal outcast, now I feel like I'm being left out.
I think it's very valid to distinguish between the effect cannabis has on consciousness, mindset and it's general psychoactivity whthter one has used psychedellics before or not at all.
In many ways the cannabis is like a little ignition key, it opens up what had already been opened widely.
I used Lsd and MDMA for 1 year from 1996, before I ever even tried cannabis once, despite growing up with cannabis and hippies all around me.
Aged 17 I started using clean old hash. Ate it first. Then it was bongs, and a home made "bucket bong", both bag taped on a plastic bottle, and bucket of water style, with a homemade and burned foil gauze.
Within a week of starting cannabis use, I was smoking 3 large hashish bucket bongs every morning at 8.45 am before a 3 mile bike ride to be in school by 9 am.
I did the 3 miles in 9 minites 52 seconds one day, a non stop dash through busy town centre rush hour, up a very steep hill to the school grounds, bike sheds and a sprint to the classroom to sign in- it was a strict private school, and you had to be in on time each day or face expallation.
I got out of bed at 8.45 am, sprung up, necked a cup of tea, smoked 3 huge hash buckets....dashed to shed, on bike, on my way... I was so piesky high when I got to school, fully kicked in, buzzing on exercise endorphins.
Wow, I still reckon those hash bucket comeups as I rode frantically through town were the best drug experieinces I ever had.
Phenominally psychedellic. If I had not taken psychedellics before cannabis, I've no doubt the feeling, mindset, effect and experience of the cannabis would have been qualitatively different.
Eating the hash was a real trip as well. I did it daily for years. When I worked as a dustman, I would eat a 16th (1.75 grams) hashish about 10.30 am, on way to the tip, before my sandwhiches.
We would get back to whichever town that day and I was on another planet.
I remember, I was working part time at pizza hut until 1997, while at school.
After I tried cannabis in bongs the first time ever, a friend worker at Pizza Hut called Bran asked me "What did you think of it?" (Cannabis)
I said, without a second's thought..."It's just like tripping."
Bran, years older than me, longtime tripper and had abandoned a past of extensive cannabis use by then already, looked down in contemplation for a second and then said exactly "Yeah it is actually."
I remember some suggestion I heard or read decades ago, that LSD is a million times stronger than cannabis.
I kind of viewed cannabis as mild LSD from the getgo, I see now. That was surely a telling, instinctive gut reaction by me to say...it's just like tripping.
I actually see those early years of being a hashish junkie, the cannabis experiences themselves, being equally deep and intense as my most intense psychedellic experiences in many ways.
We STILL underestimate cannabis, as a psychedellic, IMO.
@TheThriftDrifter hello mate really hope you've been holding up well in these tough times. Out the park is the ideal analogy as well.
You had me picturing a large public park in the middle of London.
In my imagination, I already constructed an image of this park in 1998. Which I just revisted this morning from reading your post, and am subconsciously walking around like a computer simulation model now.
LSD was surprisingly hard to come by in my UK area between 1996 and 1998. My older couzin Matthew, couzin James and friends went to London one day, without me, to get some super strength LSD tabs called "Freddies" or Fat Freddies.
Going by intuition, memory, knowledge and experience, I confidently estimate the Freddies to have been maybe 300 to 350 ug.
They were another level to anything people I knew had experienced.
In my older Hardcore Couzin Matthew's words they told me (after they all took the acid in a London park- Matthew was the only one who took a whole tab. The rest just took half a tab)...
"We couldn't get out the park."
"It took us 8 hours to find the car."
His identical words. It was a headfuck for all of them. Tripping too much, and unexpectedly/unpreparedly, to find the exit to the park. Lol!
Then 8 hours walking round streets looking for the car.
The Freddies were a big deal for everyone who took them. I never did. But I took my first ever "proper" i.e. properly dosed trip New Year's Eve 1998.
"Aliens" had come out about the same time as the Freddies. Suprer strong, I almsot got some one night, probably at least 250 ug.
I found "Cyborgs" at the NY Eve Rave. I never could have prepared for such a thing I can tell you. That's anther story lol.
So the park...they were trying to get OUT of the park.
In my mind now, I see the park. Big, pretty square or circular, with an edge all around, roads going round the outside, bang in the middle of London.
It has a low brick wall with metal fencing all the way round.
And entrance gates on all sides. Not too far apart and not too hard to find.
It's the same park I imagined from my Couzin's tale in 1998.
Except now I'm seeing the inside of the park as where I have been mostly ambling around, like most people, since ever.
My recent excursion, has led me outside of the park altogether. I'm not really disconcerted about that. I'm not fretting about getting back in either, it's pretty shit lol!
But I do feel as though I have wandered beyond the park's boundaries, and am looking more at the roads and avneues all around. It's strong imagery, still forming and unfolding for me to assimilate.
I have some serious integration to do.
If only I did not also need to perform my daily, horrendously painful and exhausting, literally traumatic, steam inhalation routine to clear my lungs of mucus in order simply to breathe and be able to eat any food st all today, if I could just jump out of bed ready to go, unchained, being inside or outside the park would not bother me at all.
I can't actually face my steam inhalation today, it takes the strive of an Olympian.
