This is gonna be long. Please skip to the end for a tl:dr if you don't want a poorly worded, full of metaphore, historocal joyrney through my life with psychedelia. Some of it may sound judgmental, but I promise you there is no judgment, only my experience.
I may have started young. I was 15. I did LSD. Probably 300micrograms. I loved it. Shit melted and my brain switched on. O understood really important for a moment but couldn't put words to it... I got REALLY into My own journey. I had read about other's experiences with small doses but quickly stopped. I patently refused to read about other's experiencea excep what to physically expect at 1mg+ doses. A typical trip was 1.25mg. And I had no benzo safety. I also didnt stop at LSD. I did doc a few times, salvia, mushrooms, mescaline, k, dxm, others i'd never hope to remember the names of... I stopped for years after an insane mescaline journey. It left me broken for ~18 months, with a loss of purpose, self, terrible hppd, and my own loss of belief system... A ragnarok of sorts.
I find salvia experiences blissfull. They begin isolated, desolate, cold, solitary moonwalk with gods..."In your face, you live in a 2d universe and here's the physics of all of it, you couldn't hope to understand, in 30 minutes, you presumptuous, precarious child. You, however, made it here so our present to you is feel pretty good for the next day or so"
DXM is like being alone on a green wire frame planet where everyone speaks beeps and all they can do is build 8 inch wire frame pyramids that zap data into the sphere. And that I shouldn't have come because all I do is break the data transfer.
Ketamine made me forget me in a way that wasn't psychedelic. It was psychiatric. I could clearly identify that my brain workings were affected and I was.removed from perception. I also felt like in shouldn't be there, and its not real.
The more typical psychedelics (AL-LAD, LSD, mushrooms, etc) are longer, often more real and dangerous journey. I will try metaphore because its easier for me and i have more experience with these than others. The darker, the better often times. There's a room wirh doorway in this journey. And the room is full of stuff, distractions maybe... Sometimes those distractions are better to stay with.
But there's this door. And you need to know what is on the other side... You know its the real reason you came.
Once the door is open, you might be gone for a long time, and its not all oneness and safe harmony, realizations that we all have a common bond and shit... Other things hide out there. You can't know what it is until you open it.
Sometimes its a sunny day, all is right and you learn nothing new. Other times, it's like a storm you can read, written about by the vikings. The weakest men washed away... No monsters to see but you know it's not all hugs and walks in the park.
Then you have that one trip on something new. It starts like nothing out of the ordinary... Maybe things are too flat? Whatever. Its all distractions... Play the games for a minute to get some laughs, then you open the door. Alone. On a new substance. You go from the play room to a battle for your soul. The only thing you know for sure is the dichotomy of good and evil, but you might be on the wrong side... Fuck, you opened the door too soon. You took too much.... And the doorway is now gone. You have nothing but your beasts to face. You meet depersonalizarion, derealization, deconstruction, and all the inner demons lay in wait... But so do wonders... There are gods out there. Only the bravest of people ever come home, warriors changed forever, sharing a common enemy, and bonds of war bind tightly for those of us who go through the door.
I went through too soon on mescaline. I took too much mescaline. I saw all my evil and forgot all my good. I saw something I could only describe as the whole thing and how I am so insignificant that I can't control anything... I saw how my isolation was all my fault (I had just realized I didnt like any of the people I knew)... And I couldn't find my way back for almost 2 years.
Some of us go through the door a lot, we get over confident and we might go through too soon. We come back strange. Many of us fight back to normal, and sometimes it takes a while. Maybe we forget to be the warrior, maybe we meet a foe we dont know how to beat.
It took me almost 15 years to open the door again. A little bit at a time, until I remembered I made it back... So now I have to go through the door every time. Sometimes I never find the door... I didnt find it with AL-LAD alone. I couldn't open it with LSZ alone. I didnt want to leave the room on 4-aco-dmt... There is a combination in there somewhere which will get me through.
I dont know if the escalines will strip me of my armor... And I dont know if I could survive that fight again... Odin saved me once, but I got a good beating before he stepped in.