Why you became a Psychonaut.

[Zerodyme]

Well, seeing as this would be my first post here, I would like to ask everyone this:
Why is it you became a psychonaut?

As my own reason, I just want to say this: The human brain is fascinating. I always enjoyed looking how people are, whether it be psychology, sociology, orienology (study of dreams; hope I spelt it right) or anything like that really. But after reading the book "2012: The Return of Quatzcoatl" by Daniel Pinchbeck, I saw something that my own mind came to with. It wasnt something exactly from the book, but it hit me in the middle of it. "If I truly want to understand anything, I should understand myself, my world, my life, and then go to others."

I am quit the cannabis smoker, and I always have deep deep thoughts, and pretty much cover every angle of a question or a thought. I don't smoke as much lately, due to my position as where I am right now, but I still do and I quit enjoy how much more I have progressed seeing myself.

Pretty much, a long story short, I rabble on quit much, I came to see my mind more and more, and I do believe cannabis, as well as psychedelics improve these thoughts *Spoiler; cannabis has been shown to improve mental abilities*, and someone brought to me the term psychonaut. thus I came to understand that I was quit possibly, if not one, a psychonaut.

 

[restin]

by accident and curiosity...

welcome to the forum.

 

[Shamanita]

because i wanted to travel to Andromeda, but cause i don't have a spaceship flying license, i just travel to the other side of the universe without moving (cfr. Dune)

by accident and curiosity...

me too

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

I can't tell you why, but I can say how. It's something that happened to me.

Actually it mainly started when I was 14 and became one of the editors of the schoolpaper. We had a small 'office' in the basement of our school, where we had a comfortable bench, a radio, coffee machine, and lots of crazy decorations everywhere. During lunch breaks I was usually there, along with 5 or 6 other students. One in particular, Ulrich, loved the 60s and 70s and always spoke about about Hermann Hesse, Aldous Huxley, hashish, Steppenwolf, the Grateful Dead etc. Very soon after I became editor our school celebrated a certain anniversary, and the theme was the sixties. Since the chief editor loved The Beatles and Ulrich was already a hippy, our little office became a real hippy den. Right in front of the school an older kid had set up a huge shisha, and it was there that I had my first toke. He gave me a couple of seeds, which I planted in my garden. Though the celebrations were over the Monday after, the Summer of Love had just started for us! I started listening to the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and The Doors, reading Plants of the Gods, Island and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and a year later dropped acid, and tried Datura. That's the drug story up to my eighteenth birthday. The search for a deeper meaning in life goes back much further.

At age 18 I interrupted my use of psychedelics for three years because I wanted to be a monk. After a couple of experiments with LSD and cannabis I abstained for another two years, and then had my first mushroom trips and MDMA experiences. But it would take another five years before I even learned the word entheogen. I got to know Terence McKenna and most of the other celebs in 2005, 13 years after I first dropped acid. In 2006 I regularly tried mushrooms in silent darkness and had my first ayahuasca experiences.

So that's all how it happened, not why it happened. Perhaps the reason why is that the psychedelic experience and the psychedelic movement are attractive, and I was just charmed by it. The books, the music, the art, the people, the colorful effects of the drugs themselves... I had two older brothers who played soccer, listened to lousy music, smoked smelly cigarettes and drove around on their scooters. It made me want something else, something more aesthetic and meaningful. And I found it in many different places.

 

[Brugmansia]

I used to be a caterpillar amoung many others crawling over each other
by chance I tasted a sense which was the fondling to my memory

right in there, there was a vague bridge
which had been demonised ever since I got my posture

Now and then picking footsteps carefully to get a further glance from the bridge
the TV and sugar lost their familiarity as the time went by

One occasion, a certain recognision
a wave of shock and fear runs down my body
the gathes behind me are closed

One dependency, breathing, as the rest becomes freedom
implementation of the sensorial life and it's path, for evermore

 

[user_1919]

In search of spiritual knowledge...

 

[Nomada]

A somewhat violent social alienation, spiraling as a chain of events since early childhood was able to deteriorate the cultural programming of the institutions. The only way to survive, to not die victim of the abyss to where I arrived, was to sail it.

I am lost now, I know nothing, The world has turned into a fog. I play a song with my lungs and universes are collapsed out of this monolith of whoever knows what the fuck. If it happened, anything at all, it must, by necessity of its very perfection, be a coincidence.

 

[st.bot.32]

i've been interested in dreaming ever since i can remember, as well as threshold wakeness, altering my perceptions by use of trance or music or just increasing my awareness in general. i've always had creative ideas popping into my brain left right and centre. i think i've always been a psychonaut of a sort, long before I took my first trip

 

[Psyolopher]

Ever since I remember myself, the notion of wonder dominated my view of life.
I was always an observer, abit of an outsider.
Then I got mental problems very young, i started going depressed.....very depressed, and with high levels of anxeity.
Then I thought the only way I could ever get better was to understand myself.
Now, already thinking much....I grew tired of external information.
And i tried to focus more on internal focus.
This changed alot.

I then found the word psychonaut, and I didnt even know anyone coined this word.
Then voila, here I am posting shit for you to read.
After my encounter with various mind altering substances, I've come to realise that the mind is deeper than I assumed.

Overall, the desire to know and understand is what brought me here.

 

[aryaman]

Why... I don't know.
I grown in a filo-psychonaut ambient (my mother ate shrooms while pregnant of me, my father has a semilanceata tattoo...), although for them was more like a beat-wave, while for me is a different kind of research... I take drugs quite rarley,try not to abuse, I don't smoke and don't drink alchol; just learning from their mistakes!

So, I though about using psychedelic substance from when I was 13, but waited until 18 years(to let my brain and mind grow without problems). Then, a friend of mine grows shrooms and gave me some of them, while also teaching me how to cultivate.

So it start. Did my first shroom trip in the forest, with a girl, very intense...

Then, months later, I knew a guy in Sardinia, moon valley, that was interested in ethnobotanic and such things... the first that talked to me about Ayahuasca, DMT and similar.

Back home from that month living in caves, I felt like in love for psychedelic exploration and literature...

but yeah, so many things, many, concured to make me approach this world... that anything that I'd say would be little

 

[PsychedelicPirate]

Welcome! I'm a newbie too. =3

For me, it started because I needed a subject to do a persuasive paper on for school. I chose marijuana legalization because my internet boyfriend smoked and I wanted to learn more about it. During my research, I became very fascinated with the drug, especially how harmless it seemed to be! Later, when I moved to live with said boy, I smoked up for my first time [though I didn't actually get high until after months of trying]. Another friend turned me on to raves and ecstasy, then other drugs followed. Cocaine, ketamine, DXM, etc. . .

After I realized I didn't want to be a "druggie" or drug abuser I knew something had to change. I started cutting out drugs that had low shamanic potential and started working towards a mentally stimulating trip instead of just getting fucked up. Tried acid, then DMT, mushrooms, and most recently salvia. Hence, my inner psychonaut was born. =D

 

[IJesusChrist]

hmm.
It was either because
1. I wanted to try mushrooms so I went and looked around
2. I did try mushrooms and tried to get help after
3. I wanted to make DMT and do it.

I'm pretty sure it was number 3 actually.

I am not a psychonaut like most on here are - I'm more of an unprofessionally trained neurologist, not my choice but by necessity. I don't find bliss, euphoria, or ever talk to god on entheogens, I simply learn. How the brain works, how evolution works, and how neurology + communication = society.

I also am fascinated with waves, and when under the influence seem to have the brain power to understand them.

 

[overman]

Short answer: Because of a girl.

Long answer: I came from a religious family, and never really fit in anywhere. I was always self-conscious and introverted, but managed to make long-lasting friendships with similar individuals. I suffered with, and continue to manage, anxiety (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder) and depression. Reconciling religion with the world around me, coupled with losing the love of my life, left me broken and in search of answers. Like many of the posters here, nothing in organized religion satisfied my inner curiosity and rational intuition, nor did it help heal my fractured sense of self-worth.

Then I had another life-changing experience: I smoked a joint for with an experienced friend of mine in a downtown alley, and had the most frightening and mind-expanding trip of my life (I had tried cannabis before but to no affect). I changed my major to Philosophy and Religion, became a skeptic, and have since sought answers within the confines of my mind and being. Discovered the notion of being a psychonaut and knew I was well on my way. Only have experience with cannabis and had a mild trip on LSD, looking to expand my experiences though. Sorry for the novella, first post as well so I thought I'd introduce myself lol.

 

[GOD]

Welcome to the forum Zerodyme and overman ,


I started when i was 14 because it was obvious that there must be more to life . I started to read everything i could about unexplained phenomena and extra sensory perception .

 

[Zerodyme]

Thank you all for your hearty welcomes, and your stories more importantly. I honestly did not think so many people would see this as interesting, especially that it was a first post.

I find it great that fellow psychonauts, whether it be from afar or close by, can sit here and tell their stories, regardless of how it came to be. It is quit comforting knowing that with everyone coming together like this, faster then I thought they would, that I know that I am not alone on this journey.

I look forward to working, in the sense of communication, sharing ideas, research, experiences, etcetera, with everyone of you.

Although I am a psychonaut to figure out my own mind, theories and ideas become greater with the effort of many.

Who knows, maybe we will all be famous for our own theory one day?

 

[atypical]

im new to this forum too used to be a heavy drug user of ketamine, coke, and anything else i could get my grubby little fingers on but after an experience of egoloss with lsd realized the potentialities of drugs and how they have different personalities that have to be managed if one is to walk the line and still use drugs but only responsibly.. Hopefully that wasnt too long/abstract but in conclusion psychedelics woke me up to reality and have made my life considerably better.

 

[GOD]

High Atypical . I hope you have fun here . Just remember that its not allways a bed of roses and sometimes you might have to have a thick skin . If you do that i`m sure we acn help you and you can help us with all our experiences .

 

[McAllister]

I was briefly in a Golden Dawn sect in the late1980s, and I became really interested in Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson from Israel Regardie "bigging" them up in his books and introductions to Crowley's.

When the Guardian announced in 2003 that fresh magic mushrooms were legal in the UK and that a market in Portobello Road was selling them the temptation was too much to resist. It was just as well because by then I'd lost interest in magick, kaballah and gnosticism, and my drug experience gave me the encouragement to take them up again with a vengeance.

I love the idea of being a psychonaut as regards my gnosticism. In Captain Kirk's immortal words, it's like "discovering strange new worlds" and retracing the steps of men "boldly going where no man has gone before".

 

[grifter7]

After smoking weed for fun i realised there are a million ways of looking at things so i wanted to see them all. Drugs are just convenient

 

[Rymmen]

My role models, the rebel geniuses in my schools that I've encountered, were all into drugs. I got into drugs. The shitstorm ensued.

What is a psychonaut, anyway?