Alyzarin

This night was rather bizarre. I spent a lot of the night smoking some really strong weed so I unfortunately don't remember as much of it as I would have liked to, but frankly I'm amazed I remember anything at all. Not long before going to bed I took a capsule of valerian root and was smoking an herbal blend that R had put together. It contained calea zacatechichi, blue lotus, wild dagga, baybean, and skullcap. I blame that blend for... this.

#1 - Wonderful [Non-Lucid]

There was a lot leading up to the end of this dream that I don't remember, but it started out in a large school/fortress somewhere in the middle of a massive mountain range. There were lots of buildings on giant stone platforms that were floating in the sky, with tiny wooden bridges connecting them all. I can't remember exactly how the dream progressed to this next part, but I was controlling a young Link (like in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time) in third-person perspective like in a game, but I still perceived it as if it was happening to me in first-person. And I was fighting another young Link, like literally he was an exact copy. We were swinging around on strings like Spider-Man and we were just going back and forth sort of in opposing figure eight patterns where we would fight once we approached each other at the center until we got too far away from each other again, and I remember knowing that we each had 2000 life points. I'm not sure what the strings were connected to as they went up above my vision, but we were floating just off of one of the stone platforms with a building on it, but too far away to just land on it again, and we were circling a giant open mouth a good distance below us, but large enough that it still took up a good amount of space in my vision. My perspective was oriented downwards so that I could always see the mouth. Essentially, what we were doing when we fought was throwing bombs and boomerangs at each other, attempting to make the other fall off of their string and into the giant mouth where they would be eaten. It was extremely nerve-wracking the entire time, and I could never seem to land a hit on the little asshole, so eventually I swung my string enough to jump down but miss the mouth and fall waaaaay down on to the ground below it, where I landed in my pool at my house. This part was extremely confusing, but I remember "knowing" that what just happened was a dream (more like random logic that just happened to include that rather than actually being lucid) and thinking to myself that I must be out of the dream now, and there was sort of a fade out effect on my environment, though it just faded into itself, which is hard to describe but was very noticeable at the time. After that I woke up.

#2 - Shark Attack [Non-Lucid]

There was some long high school dream leading up to this, I remember the guy AB who keeps appearing in my dreams recently being there, but that's about it. The part of the dream I do remember was all in third-person. The whole family from American Dad! was sitting at the end of a laundry shoot-like slide, with their feet hanging over the edge, overlooking some large pool of water. There was something said about a shark, and then I got a view of a gigantic shark sliding down the shoot coming toward them with its mouth open. The family screamed and Stan went up and grabbed the shark and was sliding down with it, and he said something about how it's not allowed to change it's mouth size. The whole family ended up falling into the water with the shark, and while they were underwater I got Stan's perspective. An old man who was essentially a mix of a Chinese martial artist and Jar Jar Binks from episode one of Star Wars (that's honestly the best way I can describe it) floated up to Stan and said "I require your assistance...." I'm pretty sure that man was somewhere in the dream before too, but it's hard to remember now. After that I was woken up by R.

#1 - Surrounded [Non-Lucid]

This dream sucked. We were in some evil house with killers wandering around outside, they would always wait at the windows and when we looked in that direction the blinds would be closed, but then they're start turning and we'd see the killers just staring in and then they'd just through the window. It was so nerve-wracking that by the end of the dream it was over and I was back at my house safe and sound but I couldn't stop myself from pushing the couch I was sitting on into the wall behind me over and over again without rest because I was having a bit of nervous breakdown and I couldn't accept that there was no one behind me trying to get me. I was very happy when I woke up from that one.

#2 - My Flying Pet [DILD]

O and I were in some alternate version of my house with my cousin P, and there were lots of girls that I remember "knowing" in the dream but I can't recall who any of them were now. They were all talking to P and for some reason O and I were getting really uncomfortable, but I don't remember much of the plot at this point. O and I somehow made it out of that alternate dimension and into our correct one, where we came swimming through a field of grass next to my real house to get there. Yes, swimming, we were actually half submerged in the grass and it had flowing waves like water. O left to go to his house and I went in mine, which looked like it was half in some weird jungle, in fact the lighting in the area was actually very surreal and video game-like, there was an orange tint to everything. As I was walking into my house I felt pumped and became lucid. I started yelling lucidity and control mantras to myself and noticed that my voice sounded different. More... distinguished. I like it. The backyard looked like it was fused with some sort of playground so I went out there and looked up at the top of the structure. I summed LK, a girl I knew in school, and she appeared up on the top. I told her to pull me up there and she almost got it, I had to fly a little bit too. I jumped on her back and she acted shocked for a second but then I did a "Hya!" yell and she flew us off into the air and we just darted all over the place until I woke up. Wonderful!

#3 - We Meet Again [DILD]

This dream was a long one, though I actually only remember very little of it. There were two plots going on, one involving me which strangely I remember nothing of, and another that involved some random guy and Hayden Panettiere, my original celebrity crush.





My clear memory comes in on the last part of the dream, I'm seeing Hayden and the guy each wearing similar strapless tops with ink blot patterns on them, black skirts, and heels. The guy didn't look half bad! Hayden and the guy have been running from some evil organization guys for a while now and Hayden says that they're about to have to start running again. After walking behind a crowd in my vision they each took off in different directions and a guy followed Hayden into a store, so I went in too. My involvement in the scene became a little less passive now, I was actually there instead of just watching. I turned lucid as I was going into the store and watched Hayden and the guy running through people really fast. Hayden was now wearing something more like a tracksuit, an outfit much better suited for this activity. I think to myself "This looks fun!" and move my perspective forward and zoom into Hayden's body. Oooh, limber! I keep running and start weaving my way through crowds of people while keeping away from the guy, it was pretty fun. But after not too long the dream started fading, and I tried to bring it back failed. Oh well.

I smoked some Alepidea amatymbica before going to bed last night to see if it would have a significant effect on my dreams, and it did seem to improve my recall from what it's been at lately. It's hard to say for sure, but next time I'll try to smoke it without smoking weed too close to it too so that I can get more accurate results.

#1 - Boss Hotel Room And Meeting Melanieb [Non-Lucid]

This dream is hard to remember as whole, it comes to me in a series of fragments, but I know that they're all connected. It started out with me and a few other people in this "boss hotel room", but the only other person I remember is this guy AB from high school. I vaguely remember doing something to have earned getting there and we were afraid that if we left the room the door would close and we wouldn't be able to come back, so AB took a laptop and held it up to the window. This caused a glow and a ray of light came out and he aimed it outside, as if it was like a system of mirrors reflecting the sun in a dark room or something. The next thing I remember is being at a restaurant in a casino, at least I think that's where we were.... I was with melanieb and she said she was going to help me be more social. I don't remember much else of that part. Next we were figuring out who was going to ride in which car to get back to the hotel room, and, though I can't remember this discussion at all, I know we collectively decided that there was "no sharing in group photos". After this my memory gets too fragmenty to put it in order. There was something with Kyle and Cartman from South Park, and then a panoramic view of the night sky with the backdrop of stars constantly spinning, and after that I woke up.

#2 - Hopeless Love Addict [Non-Lucid]

I followed someone, I think it was O, into a college class about how to eat lunch. Since I was just visiting I didn't have to do any of the graded assignments myself. Someone else was also there just sitting in, visiting Kenny from South Park who was sitting just a little bit behind me. I quickly befriended a girl who was sitting next to me and, of course, I started developing feelings for her. We were talking about some singer (who I don't think actually exists) that we were both fans of, though she was more of a true fan whereas I just loved listening to their music whenever it came on the radio. I don't think she liked me as much as I liked her. Eventually class ended and we started walking through the hallway together, but there was an enormous crowd of people and we got separated until I woke up.

#3 - Elementary School Reunion [Non-Lucid]

I was in another college class filled with people from my elementary school, mainly this guy NS and this girl J whose last name I don't remember but I knew lots of people (over the years, all the way up through high school) who had a crush on her. Uh... the basis of this dream is kind of private as I have a history with these people. But the point is that they were being really friendly to me, much more than normal, and NS even invited me to come to lunch with him after class, and it made me feel really good. We bonded a bit and then we got our report cards handed out (in college ) and ours were all terrible! My highest grade was a D, and my lowest one was an R. Mine was the worst of the three so I used that to cheer up NS and J. At some point I managed to come into possession of the couch pillow I normally throw around and keep next to my seat when I'm on my laptop at home, and I was trying to figure out how I was going to carry it to lunch with all of my stuff, but then I woke up.

Dream Fragment - "Dianeva and I create an IRC language that's hard to understand at first because it work the same way as SSRIs???"

Oh yeah, this is what euphoria feels like! [Trip Report]
Alcohol, Cannabis
Date: May 3rd, 2012

Dose:
repeated, oral, Alcohol - Cabernet Sauvignon
repeated, smoked, Cannabis

Yesterday afternoon, K, the same K I always talk about but who from this point on I'll refer to as R, texted me saying that his evening plans had fallen through so I asked him if he wanted to hang out. I went over there without really intending to get too far away from sober, but at one point we decided to go get drinks at Sonic and then buy some wine and beer afterward. I'm still trying to not really drink these days, but I figured it'd be okay as long as I got a set amount and stuck to it, and stayed away from liquor. I bought a bottle of red wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon, and R bought a six pack of beer, and then we headed back to his apartment.

After R found a neighbor with a corkscrew, I started drinking pretty quickly. We watched an episode of Metalocalypse that R wanted to show me and then listened to some music, and I was feeling drunk pretty easily. Alcohol tends to hit me pretty hard most days the way I normally drink, especially when I haven't had a drink in a while. I barely checked what time it was at any point in the night, so it's hard for me to say the time frames beyond this, but we just talked about stuff for a good amount of time and kept drinking, and eventually I started to notice that my memory didn't extend very far beyond 10-20 seconds back. I decided to give it a rest as to avoid a blackout.

Ever since my tequila excursion before last where I blacked out for the first time I've been faced with a problem. Once you're on the verge of blacking out, how do you directly enhance the alcohol's high without losing awareness? But then, R brought the solution straight to me. Smoke weed! Sounds simple, no? But I realized then how accurate of a solution it is. Alcohol is said to raise phenethylamine levels in the brain, which causes D2 activation. I've had enough clothes-shedding tequila experiences to believe this is true, since my mindset, imagination, euphoria, dissociation, EVERYTHING I get from drinking tequila, and to a lesser extent other alcohols as well (I just don't drink them as fast as tequila), is characteristic of D2. The beauty of this is, THC works by raising phenethylamine levels too, to an even more significant degree than alcohol at least for me, so the D2 effects will stack without increasing the GABAergic amnesia! R only had a small amount of weed, but he had wanted to get rid of it anyway. We loaded a bowl and quickly smoked it, and it was pretty high quality. I'm also fairly certain I took another hit or two later on, but I'm not sure exactly when it was. Some time in there I also drank the last bit of wine from my cup (yes, cup ) and put the rest of the wine away; I can't remember if that was before or after that last bit smoking. There was just enough wine in the bottle left for another cup of the sizes I'd been pouring, so I took out a pretty good amount of it.

Once it had all hit me, I was just lying on the floor staring at the ceiling in ecstasy. I hadn't felt that good since way back when R and I first started getting heavy into the drug scene! The weed high was mostly assimilated into the drunkenness, rather than adding its own effects it really just potentiated what I was already feeling. Everything around me was in a constant spin and difficult to focus on, but in a very pleasant way. My body high was very intense, and I essentially felt like I was blackout drunk but not blacked out. It was pretty great. R and I ended up just talking mostly for a while, and at one point we spontaneously started improvising a skit where I had already seen some unmentioned truth and I was trying to convince him that he was keeping himself blind by resisting it, and in the end when he finally admitted to it he couldn't bear the weight of reality and ended his life, and I silently lamented his loss. It was rather satisfying considering it flowed pretty flawlessly. Eventually we were getting hungry so we decided to walk down the main street his apartment complex is off of and find some food.

The outside world was awesome! The D2 effects were in full swing here making everything look very intensely detailed and colors were highly saturated, and I felt extremely playful as far as perceiving my environment went. Combined with the memory fog of being drunk, it made the area look like a totally new place for me to explore again, despite having been there countless times. It was already around 1:00am at this point, or possibly a little later (it's hard to remember exactly), so we weren't expecting too much, but we tried to going to Del Taco first. Closed! There were people in there so we tried walking through the drive thru and they totally ignored us. We walked to Whataburger next and they were closed too, and we were considering trying the drive thru again since we know it's 24/7 for sure, but then R noticed that the Jack-in-the-Box across the street had an OPEN sign turned on in the window. Success! We stumbled over there as we had been this whole time and went inside, and I don't remember what I ordered but it was some chicken sandwich, and holy crap it was freaking fantastic. It was almost too much to handle, it was soooo good. I was still fairly full from earlier in the day when I had my 20 McNuggets celebration meal from McDonald's though, so after the sandwich and about half of my french fries I gave up. R, barely having eaten all day, ordered three sandwiches and a thing of cheese sticks, and finished my fries.

After we finished eating we walked back to R's apartment and we were both pretty beat. I told R I could sleep on the floor but he wouldn't let me, he insisted that I take his bed. (There was nothing else to sleep on like a couch or anything, it's his new apartment and he doesn't really have much furniture yet.) I'm pretty sure it only took me about five or ten seconds to pass out after my head hit the pillow. When I woke up today I was fairly dissociated, I wasn't really comprehending much of reality aside from how comfortable the bed I was in was. I rolled around sort of in a trance until finally I opened my eyes all the way and saw that my vision was so blurry it was nearly pixelated, and there was a strange filter over everything, sort of a grid of yellow, blue, red, and green dots that was creating sort of a fuzzy static noise as well, but it faded away quickly. I didn't really want to get out of bed yet at the risk of being hungover, so I just rolled around some more trying to fall asleep again. I'm pretty sure I did at least once or twice, but I was also hallucinating a fair amount. Just hypnagogic and hypnopompic stuff, I suppose this combination made them come out especially easily. At least five or six times I saw R come into the room and try to wake me up for various reasons, though he never actually did, and I knew he had really gone to work before I even woke up the first time. I heard voices coming from the room next to me a few times too, but I think they were actually coming from outside. I also spent some time looking at the ceiling and noticing what a strange pyramid-like shape it had, only to later look at the ceiling again when I actually got up and notice it was flat.

Surprisingly, there was no hangover of any kind. When I got home I did some chores and then got in the shower and felt very refreshed and energized. As I'm typing this I still feel fairly ready to do something. Definitely a good experience overall.

I've been really lazy about logging DJ entries and checking others lately, but I'm trying to get back into it now, starting with these dreams from the past week or so. I got lucid four times despite smoking lots of weed, too!

April 28th

#1 - Unemptiable Mouth RC [DILD]

I was hanging out at the house of this kid AB who I knew in high school, except it was actually my house and we were hanging out in my parents' bedroom. It was just us and some random people, and AB apparently smokes weed now (which would NEVER happen in real life). I can't remember much of this part, but I know we got a pizza and we finished it but I still wanted more, so I said I was going to head out and get some since everyone else wanted to go somewhere else. At the door when I was getting ready to go I noticed that RE was with us as well. Now first of all, the way I was thinking of this was that AB, RE, and I all lived in my same neighborhood, and AB and I each lived in mirror copies of the same house. There's a street that extends directly out from my house, and in this dream the whole neighborhood was just symmetrical around this one street, so on the other side would be my house again, the one that's actually my house. Yes.... RE also lived on the other side but one street over, so we decided to walk home together. I realized that this was my first time seeing him since he got signed to a label for one of his latest songs (which actually happened in waking life), so I congratulated him for it. Instead of taking the symmetrical street we went to the next one over and started walking down it, and somehow it turned into a huge bazaar with lots of restaurants intermixed in it. RE went to stand in line to get some food, but I just sat down at a small table not far from him. Suddenly my mouth started seeming very full of chewed up food and it was really starting to bug me, it seemed like no matter how much more I chewed up and swallowed there was always the same amount still in my mouth, so I started just spitting it out on the table and it still wouldn't reduce in volume. O's mom suddenly showed up out of nowhere and sat down at the table with me, and I felt embarrassed because I couldn't say anything. I pointed to my mouth and made a weak gesture and she nodded, it looked like she was chewing something too. I went back to my annoyance and started getting really upset about it, thinking "This only happens when... I'm dreaming." The area has suddenly become a 7-Eleven-like store, and I get up excitedly and say to a DC a couple of times that I'm dreaming, to which he grumbles "Yeah, I heard ya the first time!" and walks off trying to mind his own business. I just flew around the store a little bit and tried to use the windows to teleport myself, but it didn't really work. After enough bouncing around, the dream faded. I woke up without moving and with my eyes still closed, so I thought about attempting a DEILD, but then I got antsy and decided I'd rather remember this dream for sure instead since it was my first lucid in a while.

#2 - Cute High School Guy [DILD]

I saw this girl... wow, her name would also be AB, I didn't foresee this problem. >w< Anyway, AB and this guy T whose last name initial I don't know, were walking around my old high school where I ran into them. It seems that they still go to high school despite the fact that they're also celebrating T's 23rd birthday, and it appears as if they're dating. T starts asking me to do something for him involving a bridge and digging but I can't remember exactly what now, though I agree to do it at the time. There was also talk of a monster...? Anyway, I start walking down one of the school hallways and see some black lagoon-type humanoid monster just standing there, and lazily think "I'm dreaming." I fly down the hallway and there was some cute guy standing there. I landed and the dream started fading a little bit, and I told him to hug me because I needed to stabilize. He did and I grabbed his ass while he was doing it. :3 After that, I took my glasses off for some reason and everything got really blurry. Wonderful move, me.... I put them back on but it didn't help anything, so I just gave up trying to save the dream and let it fade away.

April 29th

Dream Fragment - "D's house base, McDonald's food drug makes you full, K, aunts S and D."

Dream Fragment - "A's boyfriend drive to movie dad meets us turn into M SSRI serotonin control dopamine M burped by boyfriend by being thrown into the air hilarious everyone so happy, dave1701 doing SSRI presentation, among others."

Negligent Sisters [Non-Lucid]

I had sisters (I'm an only child in waking life) that I normally forgot about because I never saw them, at least a few. I claimed that the last time I'd see any of them was around 15 years ago. J was over (and refusing to shut the door to my room no matter how many times I told him to) and getting to know them before coming into my room to wake me up in the morning, having spent the night. He talks about my sisters and I said if he was getting to know them then he probably knows them better than I do, and I'm obviously feeling a little dejected. He starts talking about how he'll have to take me home soon because he has stuff to do during the day, and I'm like "What the fuck? I'm already home....", and suddenly we can't remember who drove him over. I look out front and neither of our cars are there so I start getting a little concerned, but then I wake up.

April 30th

Waiting For Class To End [Non-Lucid]

I was doing some really bizarre worksheet in a high school class and then I got up to stand at the door with this girl A who's last name I forget. We could hear some kids yelling funny stuff with a musical track playing on the other side of the door, and we start making fun of it and I do a little dance that makes A laugh. We eventually pushed the door open to hear the music and I recognized it at the time but I forgot when I woke up.

May 1st

#1 - Horny Teacher [Non-Lucid]

This girl who I don't know wants me to help her go to the game store (which is apparently anti-Jew ) at some vacation spot, I don't remember exactly where. The store ends up being a medicine store owned by my old Chinese class teacher. He tries speaking to me in Chinese and I don't understand him, but I don't need to to pick up on his incredibly lewd gestures. I laugh weakly and the girl and I leave (oh, also, I lost a sandal right outside the store and magically had it back on when we left), and then we see the actual game store we meant to go to. As we're walking in we look at each other and back at the medicine store and I say "Pervy old man."

#2 - Transporting Bodies [DILD]

I was helping a group of people transport bodies in bags into a truck being driven by a fake cop that's behind some huge house. The people weren't dead though, just unconscious. One of the bodies was actually melanieb, and I saw her sneak a quick glance before pretending to be knocked out again as she was put into a bag. I finally finish taking all the bags over and then walk out to the front of the house and become lucid. I try to make all the windows in the house suddenly shatter but it isn't really working, so instead I fly up to the roof and lay on my stomach and feel the brick texture, and I was intenting to make something of it but then I woke up.

May 2nd

Spa Adventures [DILD]

There was a lot of dream leading up to this, but most of it is blurry in my memory. I was at some kind of resort hotel/apartment all by myself, and I went out to a room that was supposed to be like a private spa tub room. I got in the tub and was enjoying myself, but was also somewhat afraid that someone was going to break into my apartment, for whatever reason, but after I got up and locked the door to the spa room I stopped worrying about that. I looked around and noticed that there were no walls in the room, in fact the huge hotel building was built in a square design with all of the spa tub rooms directly on top of and under each other and all facing inwards in the square, so I could actually see lots of other people using their tubs as well. It was mostly girls, but some guys too. I became a bit concerned for my own privacy, but then figured that I'm already looking at everyone else, so, eh. Across from me and to the left a bit I saw a creepy guy looking straight at me, with some weird woman crawling around like an animal next to him. I tried to act like I hadn't seen him but it was too late, he yelled to her to get me, and she jumped all the way over to my tub and cornered me. She's reaching into my forehead and I'm freaking out, but she says "I'm just prying open your third eye so that you...." Well, there was more, but that part's a secret. Sorry! So I say "Oh, okay!" When she finishes opening my third eye, I'm suddenly standing in one of the hotel/apartment rooms again, and I think to myself that that was pretty crazy was just happened, it must have been some kind of hallucination or something. I happily walk off, but quickly become suspicious, so I do a noseplug RC for the first time ever in a dream. Holy crap, it works! Now I know what it's like to breath through my nose when it's pinched shut. I fly out through the window until I end up at some pool area where there are what seems to be a few random employees and a Chinese man and his daughter (?). I had a lot of energy so I was just yelling gibberish at them like usual and repeating stabilization mantras to myself, which seemed to work pretty well. The man and his daughter started getting into a fight so I flew off and started traveling down different hallways in the main hotel building. A thought suddenly occurs to me that if I'm dreaming now then maybe what happened was I fell asleep in the tub and the woman opening my third eye was hypnagogic imagery, and now I'm slowly drowning there in my sleep. I freaked out a bit but finally managed to "wake myself up".

False Awakening - Ah, safe at last, back in the spa tub. Happiness sets in, then suspicion. Noseplug RC. Damn it! Oh well. Totally forgetting about my imagined danger, I fly off and hover around the other floors' spa rooms. One pretty much directly below me is occupied by three very gorgeous and very naked women just chilling in their tub, and I was intent on joining them. X3 But then I woke up. D: Damn it!

Too Many Negatives [Trip Report]
Cannabis, 5-HTP, Valerian Root, Ginger Root
Date: April 27th, 2012

Dose:
repeated, smoked, Cannabis
T+0:00: 200 mg, oral, L-5-Hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP)
T+0:55: 450 mg, oral, Valeriana officinalis (Valerian Root)
T+1:15: 1100 mg, oral, Zingiber officinale (Ginger Root)

A couple days ago, against my instinct, I decided to see if there was any recreational or experimental value in 5-HTP. I've taken it before, but not in a long time, and my memories from back then are hazy. I had originally planned to use it with EGCG, from green tea, as an aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase inhibitor so that it would only metabolize into serotonin in the central and not peripheral nervous system, but I assumed I could probably take it safely enough as is for a test run without having to worry about too many physical side effects. I was wrong.

I smoked a small amount of weed shortly before taking the 5-HTP, and just a little bit more right afterward. Within an hour I was starting to feel some tingling and was yawning occasionally, something I'm used to having as a come-up sign for serotonergic drugs like MDMA. However, I was also starting to feel significantly nauseous, and it was starting to make me very dissociated and anxious as well. I took one capsule of valerian root in the hopes that it would combat the anxiety and help get rid of the nausea by increasing GABA activity and lowering serotonin activity, but it didn't do very much other than make me a little more sedated. Not long after I took two capsules of ginger root as well, since I believe it relieves nausea by antagonizing 5-HT3 receptors, an antiserotonergic mechanism. It helped a little bit, but not much.

The experience overall could be classified as almost psychedelic as far as the mindset goes, but in a very negative and dissociated way. There was some change in my sensory perception, but it was hard to put my finger on. I imagine this effect could be viewed positively without all of the side effects. It took quite a while for the nausea to finally wear off, but it eventually did. The rest of my day was pretty normal, and then I went to bed and had two lucid dreams. So at least that's nice.

I was just about to type up my dream from two nights ago and I accidentally deleted it from my phone. XD

Damn.... I have no idea what it was about now. Anyway, I might as well put here that the last couple of days I've been getting some strong hypnagogia. Two nights ago I repeatedly, while trying to fall asleep, forgot that I was lying in bed and thought I was in various rooms around my house, and at one point a large, old-looking book appeared in front of my eyes and started quickly turning through all of its pages. There was more, but that's all I remember in detail. Last night the location-changing one happened a few more times, and at one point while typing a text in my phone I realized that it wasn't actually happening and just waved my hand around and stared at the screen for a few seconds, and then the whole scene melted back to me being in bed.

Strange stuff.

Evil Dimension [Non-Lucid]

I was over at D's house with O, this guy JY I knew in 9th grade, and a few other random people. We had entered some other dimension that I don't remember very much about, except that it was... evil. DX There were hornets that would come after me and dig under my skin and start slithering around, and I could feel them in bulges on my skin. I don't... I don't even.... Uggggh.



Anyway, I told D that I couldn't stand being in the evil dimension anymore, so JY and I left. On the way out JY turned into N. We were in some airport-like area, but after walking out the exit we were in a mall. N started talking about getting something to eat, but I can't remember what. I woke up after that.

Casino Drug Smuggling [Non-Lucid]

I was in a casino with O, J, and this guy PR I've known since elementary school but haven't seen since we graduated high school. It's hard to remember most of this plot now, but we were trying to play this one gigantic game (it looked like a cross between a poker machine and a pinball machine ) as a way of smuggling drugs. Inside the little tray where coins drop out there was a veritable pharmacopoeia of unidentified pills all of varying shapes, sizes, and colors. We were basically just sneaking around making sure there weren't any cops in the area while O (I think it was O) played the machine and tried to sneak all of the pills into his pockets in the meantime. At the end of the dream, we're all just standing there watching him when a guy walks up from out of nowhere and then jumps on the machine and starts humping it for a minute.

And that's all I remember.

Paradoxically Stimulated and Sedated [Trip Report]
L-Theanine
Date: April 21st, 2012

Dose:
T+0:00: 400 mg, oral, L-Theanine

Today I decided to give L-theanine a run after reading that it had some stress-relieving effects and reading about its pharmacology. It increases levels of GABA and dopamine and has some affinity as a NMDA receptor antagonist, meaning overall it's a sedative, stimulant, and dissociative. The bottle I bought had one 200 mg pill as the recommended daily dose, so I chose to double it for this test; the LD50 is said to be very high. As a final note, I'm feeling rather sick today so my resulting lethargy may have skewed the results slightly as far as how much energy the dose gave me goes.

I took the dose in the early afternoon and waited for it to set in, totally unaware of how long it was supposed to take or what the duration of the effects would be. Within half an hour I was feeling noticeably sedated, but not necessarily enough for me to say it definitely wasn't placebo. But by the hour mark I could feel a bit of a head fogginess that I recognize from other GABA drugs, and the music I was listening to had started sounding wider and deeper. Though this could have been from NMDA antagonism, I'm going to say it was likely at least mostly from the increase of dopamine. The mood it created was one of being paradoxically stimulated and sedated. Figuring that staying on the couch would be a waste of a dose, I decided to go for a walk in the nearby park forest.

Unexpectedly, once I actually got outside I had a good deal of energy. Or rather, my body was moving very swiftly and fluidly, despite feeling rather at peace. It was a great day outside and being in the sun and feeling the wind rush by me was very soothing. Once I reached a hill that I really like in the area I could tell that my senses were somewhat expanded. I felt like I had a wider panoramic view than normal, as if my vision had been flattened somewhat horizontally, but I believe that was only an illusion caused by the fact that I was taking in a very large quantity of visual data at once (like the opposite of tunnel vision). Among the forest wall I could easily spot several complex patterns of leaves and branches, and colors were fairly saturated in a way that was almost cartoony, but not quite. There was definitely a dopaminergic filter applied to the world, but given that I am very accustomed to this mental change and can pick up on it easily.

I ended up walking down a path in the forest and found myself feeling very connected to nature. I watched bugs fly around me and animals scamper through the trees as I just walked by. The feeling of mental calmness despite the stimulation made for a very synergistic mindset at this point. I read that L-theanine may have effects on increasing serotonin as well, though it's still disputed. I'd believe it after experiencing this, but it could have just been from the GABA increasing/NMDA antagonist effects as well. Eventually though, I started to feel a bit tired. This may be due to my sickness, like I said, but I also suspect that the dual nature of L-theanine might make the stimulation more susceptible to reduction from fatigue than the average stimulant. It wasn't really an exhaustion though, just that I had gotten my fill. I headed home and basically relaxed until the effect died out. I'm not totally sure when that was, I didn't much pay attention to it after that.

This was more impressive than I had hoped. It wasn't a very powerful effect, but it wasn't negligible either. I do think though, based on some reports I've read of people getting "drunk" from higher doses, that L-theanine's sedative effect will eventually overpower and probably blunt its mild stimulant psychedelia. This is one probably best used as a compliment to truly psychoactive doses of stronger drugs, as it seems like it could ease your mindset a bit if need be or maybe just smooth out an experience a bit, while still maintaining the same level of hallucinogenic effect. I'll certainly be keeping it on my shelf.

Family Guy College Class [Non-Lucid]

I only vaguely remember this dream, but it wasn't a fragment or anything, my recall lately has just been poor. I was in some college class where we were watching an episode of Family Guy. Supposedly, the episode was leading up to the start of some very significant arc to the plot, and the characters were letting us know that it was going to end at a very awkward scene because of that. The characters were also very visibly stoned, which I found funny. After that, I got up and wandered around this huge building until I found my way outside, then started looking for my car but was unsuccessful in finding it before I woke up.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how activating or deactivating various receptors in the brain brings us closer to the dream state, and what that implies for using hallucinogens in respect to various dream phenomena like signs and guides, understanding the way dreams work on a more basic level, and beliefs like shared dreaming. To study this relationship and see if I can come to any conclusions, I've decided to use side note DJ entries to track any experiences I have which enter the hallucinogenic realm, no matter how small.

Exploring Nature, and the Dream-like Qualities of THC [Trip Report]
Cannabis
Date: April 19th, 2012

Dose:
T+0:00: 1/2 bowl, smoked, Cannabis
T~1:30: 1/2 joint, smoked, Cannabis

After getting a few errands done for the day, K and I decided to go walking through a forest and smoke some weed since we hadn't done so in a long time. I went to pick him up and we smoked a small bowl before leaving his apartment, and then I drove us back to my house. I was already really high and could tell that the weed was pretty strong! My tolerance is not insanely high at this time either, but K's is and he was pretty stoned as well. We waited at my house for about half an hour and watched TV, then went walking around the park near here.

We picked a small opening in the side of the forest next to a big clearing and smoked the first half of the joint there. It's a pretty nice spot, but we decided to go somewhere more secluded and deeper into the forest for the other half. On the walk to the next area I was starting to become fairly stimulated but also dissociated, and I was beginning to ramble about whatever was on my mind, though I can't remember what those things were now. We stopped half way down a dense path and finished the joint, and then we kept following it as far as it went. My thoughts were starting to feel very associative and I went on a long rant about the difference in perception and stereotypes of the old and modern drug cultures.

When I finally ran out of thoughts I noticed that colors were becoming highly saturated. Everywhere I looked I was noticing patterns of leaves and things among the plant life, and my mind was connecting incorrect meaning to various shapes. For example, many trees suddenly looked like they were gigantic flames, and others that had long, slender leaves with pronged tips suddenly looked to me as if they were covered in snowflakes. What's interesting to me is that now, after my long break and my other drug experiences, I can come back to these weed experiences that normally die down a bit once tolerance sets in and look at them through enlightened eyes. This euphoric energy, analytical nature, color saturation, and psychedelic image association... it's all very reminiscent of my experiences with dopaminergic psychedelics. Is this the potential of THC's cannabinoid receptor-induced phenethylamine release? It certainly has the same feel as a phenethylamine psychedelic. In this case, the psychedelic effects would be coming mostly from the D2 receptor, which causes effects similar to NMDA receptor antagonists, among other things. This mechanism is the same that causes OBEs and is likely very important in dreams, and I wonder if that's where the associative thinking comes from - the same way that dreams are built off of our internal schemata and expectations, only whereas with dreams we have only the blackness behind our eyes to work with, instead here my schemata are applied to reality and my mind attempts to make sense (dream sense, anyway) of my surroundings.

Anyway, we returned to the small forest opening by the clearing where we had smoked originally, only this time I noticed a path that lead out behind where we were originally sitting and was amazed at what I saw. There were three stone benches where we were, cut in sort of a way that looks like if you were to divide a circle up into four even sections and then remove one of them. Behind, and juts a bit to the right, of the now middle section, there was a path made in the ground that led down a tiny hill and into a densely covered forest area. However, in the center of this, where the path directly led, there was just a, not huge but not small, patch of grass with no trees, and so the area itself looked like it had a large opening where you could see the sky, surrounding by a ring of tree tops. The patch was also just a very slight hill, and surrounding it on the edges of the circle was a constant low level of water. All of this was a few feet below all of the ground around it, enough to where it'd be difficult to get back out of this ditch if that path weren't there. The very first thing I thought when I saw all of this was "Holy crap, we're at a boss area!" I turned to K and started explaining. The clearing was the world map we had passed through to reach this tiny opening in the forest, and this is where the final space before the cutscene was. K even pointed out that the three benches with the two spaces in between them made perfectly for a save point and an item shop. Then, following the path would take you down into the ditch, and then the path would be closed off by rocks caving it in, or the trees moving to block it, or whatever fits the plot. You'd then be stuck in this tiny arena to fight the boss in, and they'd be situated on the hill whereas the ring of water on the edge of the map would be where you'd find things like rings in a Sonic the Hedgehog game or pots in a Legend of Zelda game. The forest scenery was definitely fit enough to support this epic battle, as it all had a very intense feel to it, even compared to the rest of the forest we'd been in. After a while the illusion became too much, and we left because we were tripping out.

On the walk back I mostly noticed more associative imagery. The trip dwindled a bit after that, and I was merely extremely stoned for the rest of the day. I was also feeling a bit sick by the end of it (as I had been for the past few days as well), so I knocked out after dropping K off and coming back home. All I can really say about this experience is that it was a fun reminder of what a psychedelic state of mind is like. It's nice being able to observe these mental processes from an outsider's view this time, and to be able to compare it to phenomena in the dream state. I will certainly be remembering this one for future reference.

I Am Speed [DILD]

This was a very long dream. I remember vaguely playing this game before this happened, but not much of the content. I was playing some new Pokémon ROM based on Red and Blue that I was apparently making, and was amazed at how good it was. (Even in the dream, I didn't actually remember making it.) I was showing D how crazy it was, but I only remember that from hearing it in the background; the screen took up my entire vision. I was in a Cinnabar Island-like area, and I laughed that at one point the whole map went from black and white to color, then back again almost instantly. I went inside the Pokémon center and the scene totally changed. It was some big panoramic view of a bar scene, with the healing station up in the front with an animated background playing behind it. I can't remember much of what happened there at the bar, but I got sucked into it and started experiencing it in first-person perspective. I met this girl there who I've known since elementary school, and I've been calling her M but for the sake of not mixing her up with my more current friend, I'll stick to ML from now on. I think she said something about some people being injected with some drug or virus, but they may have been inserted later by my false awakening.... Anyway, this dream was REALLY long, even from this point on, it had to have been at least another 20 or 30 minutes. Unfortunately a lot of my memory of this point is lost, but I'm pretty sure I became at least somewhat lucid somewhere in here.

I don't remember the realization, but I do remember the clarity of thought, knowing I had control, and remembering that it was lucid in my false awakening. For most of the dream, ML and I were trying to get away from this guy I used to hang out with named JB, who had been chasing us ever since the bar. He ended up following us around some huge building which I don't recognize as anywhere real, but it contained all types of strange rooms and structures. We were flying to get away from him, and my memory starts coming back in when we were in a movie theater room. We were just trying to watch the movie, but we sensed that he was there again, and ML slowly whispered to me to fly backwards into him. I did that and it totally caught him off guard, and then we both zoomed off. My memory gets a little hazy for a second, but then I'm standing a hallway somewhere in the building. I started flying forward again, and this time I started thinking to myself that "I am the fastest I could ever be, no one is faster than I am." My speed started increasing faster and faster and faster, and everything in my vision was moving so quickly that it looked like it was just bouncing all around my line of sight. Then finally, reality broke. My perception of my speed passed some kind of barrier, and it was no longer that I was feeling how fast I was going as much as it was that I just was speed... like there was no "normal" speed to compare it to. Very hard to describe. I was hit with the sudden feeling that the entire building map was open to me simultaneously, like I could see around all walls at once. I was still moving, so I was just warping all around the building. I was moving so quickly that my environment was just flashing and warping from one scene to the next. I felt like I was bursting with power but also pushing myself out of control, and then it suddenly faded. I guess I made it too unstable.

False Awakening - I woke up and tried sooo hard to get all of this dream typed up. N and D were both there and they wouldn't shut the fuck up. I kept telling them "Seriously guys, this dream was so amazing, please just let me type it." They would agree for half a second and then continue trying to distract me with stuff, and N wouldn't stop talking about how whenever he sings the lyrics to "Brown Eyed Girl" he gets it wrong and says either "blonde eyed" or "green eyed". (I can't remember which he said, I think it was the former, though.) D kept trying to hand me some keyboard, which I claimed was "memory foam" and told him to go put it in my parents' bedroom. Of course, if I'd looked around for even a second I would have realized that the environment I was in looked NOTHING like my house, and was in fact actually more similar to the building from the dream, but... oh well. When I finally woke up so much memory of the dream had escaped me. But I least I got what I did.

#1 - Just More Nonsense [Non-Lucid]

I vaguely remember watching some concert on TV, and I could see M was in the VIP crowd, which was situated up on the stage. I was super jealous but also excited for her, and when the show ended I started texting her. At some point the reason she was there changed to be that she was seeing a movie, and now she was mad that the crowd was taking a long time to leave so she couldn't get out. Meanwhile, I'm with D and we're trying to navigate ourselves out of some parking garage where all of the cars are named after different types of wine. We end up at some club door with a line and a bouncer, and we go up to him and say that the reason we don't have hand stamps is because we were already here before they started giving them to people, so he lets us in. On the inside it was more like an airport or something, and we passed by a line of people and there were two teenage guys talking about something, and as we were walking right by them they each, in turn, said "That's retarded.", so I said it too. As we kept walking they started repeating it more, as if my continuing the chain had gotten them stuck in some kind of mind loop. When we're a ways away from them, I turn back and can still hear them saying it. I nod and say "I'm pretty happy about that." I go into the bathroom and see in a stall there's a huge stack of girls all standing on each others' shoulders, so obviously most of them are over the top wall of the stall and are just staring at me. I give them a weird look and go up to the sink, and that's all I remember after that.

#2 - Hypnotized In A Dream? [Non-Lucid]

There was some plot leading up to this in the dream, but it's hard to remember now. What I do remember is that during this I was Hayden Panettiere, portraying Claire from Heroes. (Though the plot had nothing to do with Heroes, I just remember perceiving this.) There had been some accident that happened though I'm not sure what now, and I was in some high school class. The teachers were talking about trying to hypnotize me to not remember the accident, saying they could make up some quiz that indirectly brings something up that would make me write about the accident if I still remembered it. They seated me off to the side of the classroom away from the other students, and one of the teachers knelt down in front of me. He looked me right in the eye and told me to stare at his and was talking in a really trancy voice. The crazy thing is, I think I was legitimately hypnotized by this. I know I experienced him telling me something, but I don't remember what it was. And not because it's just a hazy dream memory, like it's actually blocked out of memory by the trance feeling. Suddenly I remember being in the chair again with sort of a goofy uncaring haze over everything. I went back to my normal seat and the teachers handed out the quiz. I needed a pencil, and I looked up to say something but the girl (this girl C I've known since elementary school) sitting in front of me just smiled at me, turned around, then turned back and handed me an open salt packet. However, that was enough for me, and I went back to the quiz. I could tell that there was something that I should've known (about the accident) but I couldn't put my finger on it no matter how hard I tried, it was being blocked from my mind. Instead I just ended up writing a bunch of nonsense answers, mostly symmetrical gibberish but also things like "your acetyl choline" and "your cat classy". The answers were put up on the projector and everyone in the class was laughing, but I was still just goofy-feeling so I just laughed along with them. After that, I woke up.