How I got into Psychedelics

When i was younger I had a friend (lets call him Bill), who used to smoke a lot of pot and always tried to get me to smoke with him. For years I rejected it, I think I first smoked marijuana at the age of 20; i still hadn't drunk at this time, and I didn't like marijuana because with the inebriation I felt like I didn't have full control of my body. I felt vulnerable, and when you feel vulnerable paranoia kicks in. Any negative thought takes you down the bad trip path rather than having a good trip. On top of that, when people buy marijuana off the street it is typically swag or an Indica based hybrid which makes you feel stoned and tired. For some people stoned is relaxing like tranquilizers or painkillers but I don't need painkillers, I just felt tired and demotivated, I wasn't full of energy, i hated the feeling. I was and still am a very physical, energetic person - constantly working out, constantly trying to improve myself. and so Bill would try to get me to smoke and I wouldn't be interested. But Bill was one of my best friends, a childhood friend and I would go with him as he tripped just to keep him company because he always wanted company. I would later find out as I get older that recreational drug users want people around to avoid bad trips because if you're alone by yourself with your thoughts, its much easier to get caught up and trapped into a bad trip than when your with someone who is happy and having fun and not having a bad trip. And in any drug or trip like situation, the best thing to do is have a sitter and many trip guides recommend this: having a sober sitter. So I didn't realize this at the time and I'm pretty sure that my friend didn't realize this either, that this was a key role to keeping him safe. But I guess Bill inadvertently through experience found out that he had much better trips with a friend and so I would accompany him while he would get stoned on pot or other drugs.

"Wanna try it?"

And somehow the discussion got into the topic of "the one drug I probably would be interested in..." because I was into spirituality and discovering myself, I was really just self educated and finding my own spiritual path – that is what I believe in, a personal spiritual journey. I studied many different major world religions, reading philosophy such as Conversations with God (an excellent book series), The Celestine Prophecy, Kahlil Gibran, The Power of Now, Quantum Physics and Law of Attraction, Buddhism and Zen. I had even taken THE best religion and philosophy teacher in the United States while I was in college according to Rate My Professors.com; he was rated #6 overall professor that year (all schools and subjects) and it was to this day was the best college course i have ever taken. Bill had mentioned to me that the best drug for someone who is addicted to self improvement and reads as much as I do; back then I had read 600-700 books mostly nonfiction, and constantly on the knowledge attainment/self improvement journey me was probably shrooms because it gives you epiphanies. A drug that you can just "pop a pill" and have an epiphany really appealed to me. And that is precisely how Bill described it to me, “you have an epiphany, it changes your life, you see God even sometimes...” This didn't just kind of appeal to me, this REALLY appealed to me and I wanted to try it. Except of course I never knew how to get ahold of shrooms. But I did have access to the internet and I'm reading everything I can and people are affirming that yes you have epiphanies, I'm reading about research studies showing that they are long lasting epiphanies where people made a profound change to their lifestyle and more than 50% of the group kept the same changes 4-10 years later. Your entire life just changes! BAM! Now talk about an exciting concept to someone who is just addicted to self improvement! I can have one epiphany after the next after the next and epiphanies are rare! Epiphanies are very rare occurrences! So one epiphany after the next after the next, man I'll be a superstar after just one year! Of course it would be at least 6-7 years later before I ever get my hands on some shrooms or LSD. But my interest was piqued and my mind was made up; I'm definitely trying this!

Once I discovered the black market which was Silk Road (now shut down), I was able to get ahold of LSD and Shrooms and try these things. It took me down a weird road, at first it was epiphanies exactly like I thought it would be, then it was stress relief - I was taking it recreationally, abusing it, because it was my escape from reality. At this time of my life nothing felt right except maybe my girlfriend at that time and so I used LSD to escape depression. I wasn't accomplishing anything – I was relying on an employer who was selling me short, and I was selling myself short in tolerating it. I felt like a slave to society, a slave to the system. I couldn't move up, despite being a hard worker and very talented, sure I got plenty of pats on the back and “promotions” even an “Excellence in Management” award and with it - more responsibilities without pay raises, just crap. I networked, talked to recruiters at Corporate, kept applying to other jobs and nothing seemed to be working. I also felt like i couldn't just uproot and move to another city for better job opportunities. I just felt tied down at that moment in life. My girlfriend just couldn't understand it, "why are you doing drugs?" and so we would fight about it as if I had some sort of addiction to something detrimental like alcohol. She was more okay with me drinking alcohol and getting drunk on a couple dates a week than me tripping once a week on my day off. She didn't realize that I was so unhappy with where I was in life - the stress of having so much talent yet not applying it right; crap pay, crap hours, crap life. She had some alien concept of “In Due Time” where everything just gets better if you keep doing what your doing and coast through life. She saw all the work I put in and eventually even she admitted to not understanding why the job market was so difficult for me - she got to ride the coattails of a great job with excellent pay that she got straight out of college. But her disapproval of “drugs” got me in the right frame of mind and played a role in me giving up LSD. I went about 7 months without a trip before I decided to try it again.