Newsgroups: alt.drugs.psychedelics I have been totally blind since birth and about a week ago I tried shrooms for the first time. I read all I could about them from hyperreal and a.d.p and a friend said it would be interesting to see what it would do to me. It was not possible to have anyone with me so I picked a time when I knew I wouldn't be bothered for six hours. I decided the only thing I would do was to sit in my rocker with headphones listening to whatever felt good. I figured that would be pretty safe since most music you find on the radio has a positive message or if it didn't you could always tune into something else. After about 30 minutes I became aware that the world, life, the universe or whatever was racing by at a trementous speed. I felt that this wasn't a problem if I stayed in the center and didn't get off track. But if I did, my life could shatter into millions of pieces and could never be put back together. After that acute intense phase I got the idea that whatever I was listening to was being played and written just for me. I became aware of a deeper understanding of life, people, and the music I was listening to. I got the idea that it would be nice to take all my clothes off and just bathe myself in whatever I was listening to. Around that time I began to notice many audio distortions. It seemed that the music began coming apart and unraveling. My conception of harmony became very strange. Most music began to echo around and around in my mind. It was like my brain would hear music in the present while still hanging on to what I heard a second ago. It was like a tape loop where you say something and a second later it repeats and feeds back until it builds into a jumble of music that kept on echoing. Also at the peak of the experience the music would actually change; transposing itself into other keys. It was the most intense and pleasurable musical experience you could ever imagine. Thoughts were racing through my mind at warp speed. About this time the phone rang somewhere off in the distance. I decided it was best not to answer because whoever it was wasn't on my channel/frequency. I thought about the time many years ago someone attacked Dan Rather and the guy said something like "Keneth whats the frequency?" I understand now, the guy was on shrooms! When you're on shrooms noone can find your frequency! More time went by and I decided that maybe I would make a phone call. When I turned the music off it was very strange. All sound was very distorted. My voice sounded strange as it bounced off the walls. It was like I was hearing everything from inside a tube. Sounds were "out of phase". It was like my ears were hooked to a fancy audio filter where you could vary the notch frequency and/or the passband. With great difficulty I was able to make a long distance call. After a few minutes I went back to my music. I had no idea what was real and what was not but that didn't matter because I wasn't hurting myself or anyone else. What a great way to take a vacation without leaving home! It does disturb me to read about people who take drugs like this and insist on doing things like driving that require good judgment and a clear head. I was thinking that if we lived in more enlightened times there could be clinics where for a fee you could take a trip on your choice of psychedelic drugs in a controlled and safe setting. Maybe to start with your personal drug therapist would take a brief medical history ... depending on the drug you were taking and then arrange for music, vidios or other interesting things to do on your trip. I don't have much hope of anything like this in our lifetime at least not in the U.S. but maybe in Holand? But in the meantime we have to arrange our own trips. It's not our fault, it's the government's fault. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------