The Profile
Name: Eric
Nationality: American
Lives in: Maine, USA
Age when taken psychedelics: 47
Job: Bartender
Psychedelic of choice: Ayahuasca & microdosing with Psilocybin
Place of ceremony: USA
What was your intention?
I don’t think I had a clear intention apart from wanting to figure out who I really was.
Why did you take it?
I was in a situation where I was not happy where I was work wise and as a person. I felt a bit lost. I didn’t really know who I was. I was always really good at putting up a façade of “it’s all good”, when inside, there was a lot of anger, jadedness, even jealousy to some extent about what other people had and I didn’t. I just didn’t like that aspect of me.
A lot of the reading I’d done was that if you are lost in life or not sure where you are at or you don’t know what to do, or even if you want a bit more self-awareness and discovery, the Grandmother (Ayahuasca) will help you with that.
There was also this recurring phrase I kept on coming across of “shedding of the ego” where you strip off the ego and you realise that whatever you thought you were isn’t necessarily who you are. Ayahuasca, and a lot of other psychedelics, will strip that away, so you can figure out who you are, where you are and why you are really here.
It didn’t really do any of that for me though. I took it on my own and maybe that’s the reason I didn’t get the full benefit out of it – I wasn’t in a proper ceremony with a shaman who could guide me and take me deeper into that journey.
I don’t think I felt fear with Ayahuasca – it was more about the discovery, to see what’s out there. From what I’d read about it, it was a powerful thing.
Before I did it, I had watched the movie Avatar and I think James Cameron basically based the movie off the indigenous people of South America with their tree that they called Aya. I thought that was cool and felt I wanted to live in that world as opposed to the world we are living right now. So, it was like a journey of discovery to see what’s out there.
The experience was pretty crazy, especially the not knowing what it was going to be like. I had spoken to a few people who have done it and they told me that it was going to be pretty intense and so to just be ready but you can’t prepare yourself for something like that – you don’t really know what that means. I don’t know if I would do it on my own again…
It was intense and it’s not something you can or will do everyday. That’s why after a couple of times, I started to do microdosing with psilocybin and it changed my life for the better.
I read a lot of Terrence McKenna stuff, Paul Stamets, who’s like the grandfather of mycology, and the more that I read what these people were writing, it seemed to me like everybody was operating at this level down there, going about their daily grind and not really thinking much past what they were going to do that weekend. I felt like Terrence McKenna, Paul Stamets and a few other people like Wim Hoff are operating at such a higher level of consciousness and I wanted to try to ascend to that level where you know there is more to life than going to work everyday and binge watching stupid tv shows. So, I wanted to see what’s out there and that’s what got me started on the microdosing path.
The human mind has always fascinated me. I feel like the mind is like the great white shark. Scientists have been studying it forever and all we know is that it swims and eats. The brain is similar – doctors have been studying Human Anatomy for a long time and all they can tell us are some basic functions. They don’t really know what it’s capable of and what it can really do. I’ve always felt that psychedelics are the key to opening up the parts of the brain and the mind that you typically wouldn’t use or know they were there. So, that’s always fascinated me even before I thought about microdosing.
I originally started microdosimg following Paul Stamet’s neurogenesis stack: half a gram of psilocybin mushrooms, half a gram of lion’s mane and 100 mg of niacin. After taking it for so long, it would create neurons in your mind and connections to those neurons. So, it was like building your brain from the round up.
The 1st couple of days, you get that initial “Oh, OK, here it comes” but with microdosing, that’s as far as it gets. You don’t go to full-on tripping. Once my body adapted and eased into it, it was an amazing thing.
A month into it, I got rid of the niacin – it acted like a flush – it opens up your capillaries and forces everything through your system faster but your skin also gets red, almost like a sunburn and it’s itchy for about 20 min. I didn’t like it.
Originally, I was doing 5 days on and 2 days off. A couple of months in, I went down to 4 days on and 3 days off and now I’m almost feeling the residual effects from it: I can take it on a Monday and then not do it again until Thursday or Friday and feel the same effects throughout the week. I want to get to the point where I’m not taking it at all.
The effect is more like a feeling of connectiveness. Being outdoors is key for me. I love feeling the vibration of being outside. I meditate outdoors, which was really hard at the start with all these thoughts about what I needed to do that day coming to my mind. Now, I’m at a point where I don’t think about any of that stuff and everything is shut off. I have a waterfall that I go to, so I listen to the sound of the water, the wind through the trees, I notice the smell of nature. A couple of times I’ve had the experience of me vibrating at the same frequency and being in the same flow as everything around me. A tear came to my eye during that meditation. It was like that’s it, that’s where I want to be all the time – how do I get to that point?
What were you most afraid of?
I’d read a lot about Ayahuasca and I felt like I knew what I was getting myself into but it was still scary. I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance at some point – I literally felt like I was dying.
I’ve always had a fear of drowning. At one point during the experience I was under water and I started hyperventilating. I couldn’t breathe and I thought “shit, this is it”. I had some native American music going on in the background and I just focused on that and the rhythm and I got my breathing back. I realised I was under water but I was able to breathe – it was an amazing feeling.
Then I saw a cave that was illuminated but no matter how much I swam towards it, I couldn’t reach it. It was a weird thing: it was amazing but at the same time I feel like there was something in there that I was supposed to see but because of the situation I was in, I didn’t have the guidance or the shaman there, I couldn’t reach it. It was a cool experience though.
What did you most look forward to?
I was hoping for more connectiveness to everything around me, my surroundings. I’ve always loved the outdoors – it’s always been a thing where I’ve been able to go to escape from everything and Ayahuasca was the beginning. It opened up the doorway to my microdosing and what it has accomplished for me over the last year. Ayahuasca was my gateway that I had to walk through. Even if I didn’t feel like I got anything out of the experience, subconsciously, I did. It pointed me in the right direction.
The other thing with Ayahuasca: in spring and summertime, for like a month, I’ll have ants in my house. It’s not like huge colonies but every now and again I’d see an ant going across the kitchen counter or up the wall and I’ve always lived under the mantra of “You have the entire earth, the outdoors is yours. This little space is mine, so if you come in here, you risk being killed”.
During one of my Ayahuasca journeys, a being appeared outside of my window and it was like a human body with an ant’s head. I don’t know how long I had a conversation with this being – it could have been 5 min or 1 hour – but it convinced me that ants are no different to people. People live in communities and they go out and work, bring food for their families, they go on adventures and see what else is out there. Ever since then, I don’t kill ants anymore. I just catch them and release them outside. I have no idea if it was a real thing or just me feeling guilty about killing ants, so I came up with this image. Whatever it was, I feel more at peace with my new approach.
What was the hardest bit about the experience?
The feeling of drowning was pretty intense.
I know that a lot of times when you sit in ceremonies, they put you on these specific diets. They want you not to have any toxins. I didn’t follow that and I ate what I normally eat like chicken or sugar. So, when I was purging, it was pretty ugly – I really didn’t want to die on a toilet, which at some point I really thought I was going to…
The other part was that I didn’t really know how much of this stuff I needed to take. There is no book or recipe for it and so I was talking to people who advised me how much I should take. I got the ingredients through someone who used to live in Peru and still had the connections there. But when you make the brew yourself, you still don’t really know its strength.
So, I didn’t know how much to take and I think that the 1st time I took it, I took too much. It was tough: everything was pixelated and was made up of tiny little things and I couldn’t really focus on anything. So, I would close my eyes and that was like a whole other mess inside. I walked around and couldn’t focus on any one thing as it was built up of many other things. It was like a broken stained-glass picture. It was pretty intense, and I wanted to get off but once you are in it, you have to ride it out. I could also feel there was definitely something or someone there but I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what it was trying to tell me, which is unfortunate.
The 2nd time I drank it, I think I didn’t drink enough. There was nothing really special happening during that experience: I felt good, I was floating around a little bit but nothing close to being intense like the 1st time. It’s a matter of getting close down to what I actually need. I definitely want to try it again.
I feel that I didn’t know enough about it and I didn’t have the proper guidance to really get me to where I needed to get. My next Ayahuasca journey I want it to be with somebody that can guide me through it.
What was the best bit about the experience?
I think it subconsciously opened up the door to get into the psychedelic world and microdosing.
As far as the actual experience itself, it was intense, e.g. being underwater and being able to breath was pretty wild. It felt amazing but I was also trying to get to that cave and as much as I was trying, I couldn’t get there and I don’t really know what the underlying meaning of that is.
What did you get from it?
I feel more comfortable being in the water. I still have a fear of being eaten by a shark, which is crazy and stupid – it’s one of those irrational ones and probably never going to happen but every time I go into deep water I’m like “What’s underneath me?”
I feel a little bit more comfortable though.
It’s also made me more balanced. I was working in a restaurant business for a long time, managing restaurants and bars and it takes a toll on you emotionally, physically, and mentally. I’ve met a lot of great people that way and it’s allowed me to travel the country and visit new places. The thing with that industry is that you will always also meet negative people though. I don’t know if it’s because their dreams have been broken and they are not where they want to be but whether it’d be a line cook or a server, there’s always one or two people in every restaurant that have this negative jaded attitude.
So, when you have to work with them and have to constantly listen to them complain and bitch about things, it rubs off of you and so I was jaded and would get angry. It was the wrong profession to be in. I feel like psychedelics are never going to cure my not being the fan of people in general – I know there’s a lot of great people out there that spark that little faith in humanity and make you realise there is hope but I’ve set the bar pretty low as far as humanity goes because the majority I come across, I just don’t get it. They are so miserable, they complain all the time and that makes me jaded.
Psychedelics helped me with that though. It’s almost like a fine line of not caring about anything but caring about everything at the same time. That’s where I feel I’m at now. I don’t care about the mundane, daily stuff. I can go to work and in 5-6 hours it’s not going to have an effect on me and so I’m always in a good mood. I don’t care about those little things but then at the same time, I care about a lot of things going on in the world like they are still eating dogs in China and killing dolphins – that stuff I do care about. People do get caught up in stuff too much though – you have to let it go and not let it define you.
A lot of people don’t really know what microdosing is like. I always tell them that it’s like living in the world from the movie Avatar.
How did it impact your life?
Microdosing has helped me realise how little I really need to be truly happy, which has been a huge emotional lift especially during this time of pandemic and self-isolation.
I don’t really feel like Ayahuasca has impacted my life – I didn’t think I got everything out of my journey that I could have. I actually get more out of float spas / sensory deprivation tanks. A few months ago, I took about 4g of Psilocybin and I went and floated for 2 hours and I got more out of that than I did out of my Ayahuasca experience. It’s not something I do all the time but every once in a while it’s interesting to go on that journey a little a bit deeper than you normally would.
The main benefit I got was from Psilocybin – it’s an amazing thing to really shed who you thought you were, almost like being reborn. It’s a magical thing. It’s not really a magic pill where you just take it and everything is better – you have to work it. It’s a bit like working out: if you went to the gym but you ate crap and missed sleep, you are not going to get the result. It’s the same thing with microdosing – when I take it, I meditate each morning and do Qi Gong and breathing exercises. It’s a combination of all those things that elevated me to the point where I am at now and it’s amazing.
Psilocybin turned around my meditation practice – I’m now able to shut off my thinking mind more easily.
It’s also so freeing when you just forget about who you thought you were and just forget about that ego. It’s such a liberating experience – now you can do anything and it doesn’t matter wat people think. I feel like old people have that down a bit – they don’t care what others think about them. That combined with love and tranquillity and connectiveness to everything around you is an amazing feeling.
What did you struggle with after?
After Ayahuasca, I didn’t really feel I got much out of that experience and it didn’t help me address the questions I went into it with. So, I needed to try other avenues. That’s why I went into microdosing with Psilocybin.
What improved?
I’ve been sober for 11 months now. I quit drinking and doing other drugs. It’s really been beneficial in that aspect as I don’t think about that stuff. I don’t even miss it! It’s just not an option. I feel so good all the time now that I’m not going to ruin it by ingesting toxic things into my body.
I’ve had this discussion with other people who are also on the path to sobriety. Some of them are hardcore AA people who tell me “You are just replacing one drug with another. One addiction with another addition”. But that’s not the case at all – psychedelics are not an addictive thing.
Another argument is that it makes you feel good, so it’s a stimulant, so it’s a drug and I think that you can say that about anything: the sun makes me feel good when I go outside, so is that a drug? Meditation makes me feel good – is this a drug? So, we just agree to disagree. I’m never going to see their point and they are never going to see mine.
Mother nature is really allowing you to see what life is all about and it’s not a coincidence that those things appear in nature. You have psilocybin, peyote, San Pedro, the bufo – the toad you can get the venom from. You just have to listen to her.
People like to turn a deaf ear to nature but she’ll feed you if you are hungry, she’ll heal you if you are sick, she will show you the way if you get lost – you just have to allow her to do that. Some people are just too closed-minded to really grasp that concept. I feel fortunate that I was able to let go of everything and look at things in a new light.
My relationships with people are so much better now just because I’m in a much better head space. I used to be very judgemental and that’s completely gone. Everybody is allowed to do everything they want. It may not be what I would necessarily be doing but hey, all the power to you.
I also used to be a procrastinator – now I’m just like “Oh, I’ve got to do this” and I just do it.
Creativity wise, I started writing again. I compared one of my old notebooks when I used to write like 15 years ago to now and I was so angry and full of self-loathing. Reading the words side by side is like “Who the hell wrote this?” as if that wasn’t me…
It’s just a completely different way of looking at things, e.g. playing the guitar, I find myself playing notes I come up with that just sound good – it really boosted my creativity and cognitive thinking.
A good friend of mine had battled with anxiety all his life and been on so many medications. I told him about microdosing and he wasn’t sure he could do it. I encouraged him and brought him some mushrooms. I usually make tea as it’s more of a gradual thing that way. He tried it and is now off his meds, strictly on Psilocybin and loves it. He was initially worried about it because his reference point was taking mushrooms when we were younger but there is a difference between tripping and journeying. You can trip but if you look at it a certain way, it can be a journey.
It’s such a powerful thing. Mushrooms in general are so healthy and beneficial in so many ways. I’m almost at that point where I might start growing them. My space is a bit limited but I may have enough to grow a small batch. It needs to be clean and sterile so there is no contamination and I have a dog, so I’d need to make sure there is no dog hair flying into the spores.
What do you need to work on?
I didn’t really know what I needed to work on after Ayahuasca.
Right now, I would really like to get into work with MAPS – people who study psychedelics and their benefits. I feel like there’s a way to get in the back door and work with some of these people to be part of that community. Being in the forefront of this is really exciting.
What would be your advice if you were to do it again?
For Ayahuasca, I feel like I don’t know about it to give myself any advice.
When it comes to Psilocybin and advice to somebody who’s never done it before, it’d be don’t worry about what other people are doing, what they think and what their view are. Do your research and figure out what you are looking to get out of it.
You won’t be able to just eat a mushroom and your life will all of a sudden get better. You do need to know what you want to get out of it and it will far exceed your expectations.
It’s been an amazing journey so far and I can’t even imagine what I would have done without it. I often think I wish someone had turned me onto this 20 years ago but all the spiritual people that I follow all say the same thing: you are exactly where you are supposed to be on your journey right now. You needed to experience everything that you have experienced in your life to get you to where you are right now. That’s sat with me and it resonates with me a lot. I needed to go through difficult situations to appreciate and love myself.
Sometimes when people ask me “where do you see yourself in 5 years” and I’m like “I’ll be exactly where I’m supposed to be”. I don’t think about 5 years down the road – I’m more focusing on right now.
Eric's story is an interesting example of how doubt can impact out set. He decided to make and drink Ayahuasca himself but all this time, he wasn't too sure about some of the crucial elements, for instance how much of the brew is actually is enough.
He still, bravely or naively, went ahead with it and rode through the experience with its ups and downs culminating with something he wasn't sure how to interpret.
This doesn't mean his experience was 'wrong' in any way - there just is no such a thing. This was the experience he had and it still got him further onto the path he is on now. However, his comments about how he doesn't think he was able to get as much benefit out of his Ayahuasca journeys did make me think once again about the importance of set and setting and how a clear intention and a belief in something can in fact shape how we will behave during the experience itself.
If you feel safe, you are more likely to let go. If you believe you are OK, you are more likely to focus on the insight.
Just like me, it looks like Eric has ended up with some unfinished business with Ayahuasca. When it comes to Psilocybin though, well, I don't know how about you but I'm pretty sold!
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