wead

What was even the format for these Gemini posts again? It's been a while, and I forgot. Also my brain isn't functioning correctly right now. That's what I'm mostly gonna be talking about here.

So, yesterday, I did weed for the first time. Walked down the street a bit to one of the well-reviewed weed shops in my city, and then got myself a vape cart. After a bit of struggling to figure out how to *use* the thing, i figured it out and got immediately fucking toasted. roasted. artichosted. (turns out, you're not supposed to inhale the whole damn smoke cloud!)

When I got that weed (something on the "relax" side of the spectrum; this box says 74.49% THC and then a bunch of other stuff I've never heard of with weird Greek letters) I was expecting it to just, get me chilled the heck out. And it did, for about a minute. And then it turned into full-on acid trip in a way that I don't think I've seen *anyone* else describe this.

...I'm struggling to write this because I keep just zoning out. Anyways

I go and lay down on the couch w/ my girlfriend and just kinda take it all in. The first really wacko thing that happens is that my perception of myself completely and totally shatters. It feels almost as if I'm seeing and hearing myself from a third person perspective, just kinda yanked up and away from reality, stuck in a headspace I don't think I've felt since I was a kid. But I do, eventually, end up breaking through that, although I then get stuck in an absolutely strange perception of my thoughts just totally not working. It felt as if my short term memory was just vanishing into the void and I kept getting close to falling in too.

Really, really, a lot of what I went through for the rest of that "trip" was almost hypnotic. I'd just every so often go and just *fall in*, deep into my subconsciousness, deeper and deeper, hold held to reality by the slightest thread. And then I'd pull myself back up and snap back to reality, thoughts working normally again, feeling as if whatever the heck I just went through was just a strange dream. (And yet I remember it??)

Often, when I was down in those trances, where the vision went tunneled and my eyes were closed and my body felt like it became comfortably numb, I experienced something I kept calling "magnification", in my strained, fumbling attempts to say words through a mouth that doesn't feel attached to my soul. Like, I got a pack of peanut M&Ms, and I was holding one as I went down, deeper and deeper, and it was this mind-bogglingly intense sensation in my fingertips as I rolled the M&M around, while the rest of my body faded into background noise.

I came back up again, and my gf offered to order us pizza. I of course agreed, although I still felt detached and spaced out. The couch was starting to get a little uncomfortable (turns out IKEA makes shit couches) so I went and cuddled under the blankets in my bed. And they were *cold*. Like, *frigid*. And the walls were ice. And I sank back in, back in, magnified again. Distance felt magnified too, like the blankets I was curled up in were right up against my soul, while my girlfriend in the other room was a universe away.

I had considered bringing my phone with me to bed because I was talking with some online friends about this before the weed hit me like a god damn freight train, but decided against it because I was absolutely in no state to read text, let alone operate a cell phone. But I was laying in bed, entering trance again, and it felt like I had descended *into* the chat room with my friends! But, like, not in a visual sense, more so like I was looking at their souls, their prescence, the shapes of their hearts. And I just really really wanted to talk to them and hug them and be with them, but they wouldn't respond, because I wasn't actually jacked into the internet like some kind of robot. So back up into reality I went, frustrated. My girlfriend finished placing the order and went to join me, and she was utterly enamored by how cute I was being for wanting to hug my friends. I sensed that the waves of hypnosis were about to start pulling me down again, so I asked my gf to give me a tummy rub (I *love* them) and holy fuck that felt gooooood. Just, damn.

After a while the pizza arrived. I pulled myself out of bed, somehow, and went to go wash my hands and whatnot. I was looking at myself in the mirror, a sight I'd become quite acquainted with, and everything just looked... off. Distorted. Distinctly *not me*. That was odd, I remarked, as I stumbled over to the kitchen table. I got myself a slice of the pizza (from this pretty good local joint) and folks. Y'all. Food? Turns out it tastes fucking awesome when your tastebuds are cranked up to 11. The warm, rich cheese and pizza sauce and crust jelled together in my mouth in an symphony of *amazingness*. I went back down again, enchanted by just how damn GOOD this was. You know that one scene from Ratatoullie where Remy's trying to show the other rat why food is good, and it's got the sound and the trippy visuals and stuff? It was THAT. I EXPERIENCED THAT. I've always had an issue with food generally tasting kind of bland and unappealing all the time so this was just, like, heavenly to me. I tried a garlic knot too and I could feel the shape, the texture, the *flavor* of it across my tongue, and it just made me utterly *melt* with bliss.

After I was done (the pizza started to get cold after a few slices), I managed to brush my teeth, somehow, before heading off to bed and having one really nice slumber. I woke up the next morning (today!) and I was just all, like, "wow. I guess that happened." I was still kinda feeling something, and not quite firing on all 4 cylinders, but I got myself up and going to work regardless. At work, I managed to completely sidetrack myself from almost any productive task at all (slow workday; I got what I needed to done at least) and got myself sucked down daydreaming about what it would be like to fly in a small Cessna, fueling myself with /r/aviation. This isn't that extraordinary for me, I end up doing this all the time, but I was just *into* it today. For the dozens of you who've read YKK (see https://alpha.cafe/), there's a scene in one of the later chapters where Alpha gets invited to sit in the back seat of a T-6 Texan, this beautiful small aircraft that had a canopy made entirely out of windows. The pilot tells Alpha (a robot) to stick her interface cable into a port on the airplane, to get a sense for the wind speed. And she does, and after a second she falls completely in, into a trance, a dream, where she feels *herself* flying, wind in her face, breeze in her sails. And my gosh, yeah, in hindsight, that's ABSOLUTELY what that felt like, as I was scrolling through posts and images on airplanes.

Work ended, and I got back on my bike and sailed off into the distance. But I did notice something peculiar: holy fuck I'm feeling dissociated. Detached from reality. And it felt eerily similar to the DP/DR that I used to very strongly struggle with before I started HRT and treated my gender dysphoria. Just, cruising along on the bike, at the edge of reality, trying hard not to fall back in to trance. And then I went home and just kinda flopped down and started worrying about if I managed to fuck my brain up somehow.

I don't know if I want to do weed again. It did feel good, absolutely, but the thing is, I took maybe two or three hits (i wasn't sure how many i needed) and I'm still feeling the effects a whole 24 hours later. That's probably not a good thing! Like, my gosh, my appetite has been relentless today. (And I'm not against that; it's been pretty non-existent as of late.) I will, however, say that it was absolutely worth experiencing, just watching as reality folded in on itself and showed me entirely new ways of perception.