Category Archives: microdosing

depression, health, microdosing, mushrooms, quantity

i’ve heard it said before…

i’ve heard it said before that depression is like a weight, but i never really felt like that was true for me. it felt like a gloomy presence which infected everything, but not, specifically, as a “weight”… until today, the 6th day since i microdosed. i took 750mg this morning at 09:45 and proceeded to have one of the most bizarre trips i have ever had.

despite the outdoor temperature climbing, i got very cold, to the point where i put on a hoodie and closed it around my face to ward off chills. then i got very sleepy, so i took a nap for a couple of hours. when i got up i felt straight enough to drive to the place where i bought some storage media, and then i decided, on the spur of the moment, to go “out for a drive”…

and that’s when i realised: depression IS like a weight: it gets a little bit heavier, imperceptably, every minute of every hour of every day, until i go around wondering (like i was, only yesterday) how i don’t know i have the energy to do things until i’m actually doing them, only to be made more tired and exhausted by the things that i was doing that i didn’t know i had the energy to do, and doing things (like i did yesterday) like going to bed at 19:30 because i was so exhausted… and the only respite i seem to have is when i take enough mushrooms to be able to perceive that it is all an illusion. it was around this time last year that i had a profound, mushroom-induced brush with reality, and i really haven’t done anything BUT microdoses since then.

microdosing keeps the weight from getting too unbearable, but it still accumulates. i need regular macrodoses, as well, to keep things from getting too overwhelming.

because too much whelm is never a good thing for anyone. 😉

busking, circus, depression, frustration, medication, microdosing, mushrooms

meh… 😒

since 240214 i have had 5 circus classes, 4 unicycle classes, 3 moisture festival rehearsals, 2 counseling sessions, 2 dentist appointments (my first in over 20 years, and they STILL couldn’t find anything wrong with my teeth), and 1 eye appointment.

17 days, nominally (the only evens that were MORE THAN an hour were the dentist appointments), worth of “stuff” and 20 days of “no stuff”… almost A MONTH of sitting around reading what passes for social media these days (i still haven’t quit reddit, although i’m closer to it than ever), or taking off and playing a lonely, solo game of “this way, that way” (which is best played by three or more people), getting lost, and ending up in orting — and when i mentioned it in one of my circus classes, the coach said “orting? what’s that?”

😒

okay, i’ve done “routine” things, like splitting firewood, taking care of laundry, washing dishes, shopping, and that kind of thing, and i’ve done “important” things, like upgrading the NAS, and building a rack for the kayaks, on top of everything else, so i wasn’t REALLY frowsting on the internet tubes ALL the time, but there has been a SERIOUS LACK of things to do, recently.

plus, the glasses i got from the aforementioned eye appointment are WORSE than my current distance glasses, and they’re supposed to be reading glasses (which means that they REALLY don’t work), and moe went to bellingham today, and i didn’t, after spending the past two weeks saying that i wanted to go (and then, deciding at the last minute, last night, that i would stay here with the pets), so now i’m here, alone, with the two ADULT dogs (moe took the annoying puppy with her), a cat, a snake, and a parrot, in this REALLY QUIET house, and all i want to do is make noise and pretend like there’s somebody here… so i can hide from them in my office, because i don’t know how to interact with them like normal people.

but, for some reason, i haven’t even played other peoples’ music, and have just been sitting here with the silence, the sound of my keyboard tapping, and the occasional bong hit…

AND i haven’t been out busking AT ALL since february 14th, which makes my new micro-tuba REALLY sad… i’ve got to renew my pike place market busker permit before the 15th of april, which means going through the whole rigamarôle again, only this time it’s with new folks in charge, who i have never met before, and, what do you know? the “official rules” STILL say “no brass instruments or drums allowed” in one place, and “muted tubas will be accepted on a conditional basis, and added to the 2018 rules” in another place… except they weren’t, and nobody has bothered to define EXACTLY what they mean by a “muted tuba”, and nobody has bothered to update the rules since then. 😒 and that’s not to mention the fact that i’ve been hankering to go out with my harmonic flute, my hindu drum machine, and my electronic rig, to some place OTHER than the pike place market, but i haven’t done so for reasons which come down, basically, to paranoia and self-doubt. 😒

this is one of those “i’m feeling grouchy and out-of-sorts” experiences that, in the past, i would have solved by taking mushrooms, but… well… i’ve been taking ≈250mg of mushrooms, every other day, for the past 8 months, i have absolutely NO clue what “the protocol” is for microdosing, and, at this point, if i have a trip that isn’t at least partially decent, i’m going to get even more frustrated than i already am. part of what i’m doing about it is, the next batch of capsules are going to be 200 mg, rather than ≈250mg, but i still have ≈100 250 mg capsules left, so it’s going to be a while until i get to them. the weather has been playing around with being nice enough that hiking in the forest sounds feasable, but the weather is also hit-or-miss whether it’s going to be nice or rainy, and it’s probably going to be that way for the next few weeks.

medication, microdosing, mushrooms, pictures, quantity

🍄 capsule update

so i’m going to try a smaller dose for the next 100. i’ve learned a little more about how to make capsules more uniform, and i decided to make 200 milligram doses, rather than the (nominally) 250 milligram doses i’ve been taking. a “microdose”, by definition, is “subperceptual”, and, for the most part these are, but every now and then i get a little twinge of psychedelic-ness, and i KNOW that as little as 50 mg will affect my mood, so i figured why not go lower, just to see what happens.

turns out using a sieve to sift the powdered mushroom filters out the pieces that are big enough to cause problems with consistency, and makes it easier to re-powderise the remainder. i was able to get 100 capsules that range from 190 mg to 210 mg, compared to my last 100, unsifted “250 mg” doses, which were anywhere from 190 mg to 270 mg. i’ll take a 20% margin, but 80% is pretty close to unsatisfactory. 😉

i’m still about halfway through the 250 mg doses, but i’ve got the next 100 doses all ready, plus around another ounce or so of powdered mushrooms, and “30 gram” “ounce” of unpowdered mushrooms…

231106 capsule making in progress
231106 capsule making in progress
231106 capsule making results
231106 capsule making results
depression, incense of the month club, microdosing, unicycle

surprisingly adequate

today’s mood, overall, is surprisingly adequate: i took 250 mg 🍄 @ 09:00 this morning, but that wasn’t what triggered it. i went to my circus class at noon, and i think i experienced the “click” that people talk about when learning unicycle… i can’t put my finger on one thing that is different from a week ago, or even a month ago, but, for some reason, today i was able to free mount more than half of the attempts i made, and, if you want to talk about free mounts that didn’t go two rotations or more, that ratio goes up to almost three quarters of the attempts. another thing that i found A LOT easier to do today is turning left. i’ve been able to turn right for quite some time, but turning left has eluded me, up until today. it’s still sort of sloppy, and not particularly precise, but it’s a left turn that wasn’t there last week. if this is the “click” everyone talks about, it took about 3½ years longer to hit me than it did for the people who told me about it… but, apparently, it’s there… 🤷

and then i came home and put together the last IOTM offering for the year.

fun with the post office, microdosing, miscellaneous, panto, people, pictures, players, wolfenoot

misc. update-ish

i ordered some jewelry from an artist in poland. i’ve been tracking it for a month, now. from poland, it spent almost two weeks undergoing microscopic scrutiny in customs, in florida, and then it took another week to get from florida to kent, washington (which is right down the road from where i live)… but, after spending a full 48 hours, plus, in kent, it suddenly, this morning, makes a leap to juneau, alaska, where it is currently “preparing for delivery”… 😒 if it’s anything like the recent shipments i’ve gotten from germany, the united kingdom, or portugal, it will be delivered today, in my residential mailbox, with no further explanation for why it was reported to be in alaska, but, as this delivery is “registered mail” (because of the fact that it’s jewelry), i’m probably going to have to sign for it, rather than having them just leave it in the box.

the postal delivery person just came and went, with no registered package from poland, so i guess it HAS gone to juneau, and who knows when i’ll be seeing it. 🙄

i’ve settled down to microdosing every other day, which seems to be working A LOT better than the commercially available (legal) alternatives that i have tried (buproprion), but i’m getting frustrated again, because either, i feel “okay” (in that i do not feel as frustrated or depressed), or i feel frustrated and/or depressed about stuff that has been there, is there now, and will be there tomorrow and into the future, regardless of whether or not i am taking medication of any kind. it’s frustrating to have to be taking a microdose to feel better, rather than being able to do something constructive to rid myself of the factors which cause the frustration and depression to begin with, but which are not possible, because they require things like killing tens of thousands of #drumpf-cultists and/or making major changes in society as a whole… which is exacerbated by the knowledge that if i were taking 2.5 grams, instead of .25 grams, things would be a lot more different. i call mushrooms my “don’t give a fuck pill”, but i guess i should call the microdoses my “give a little bit less of a fuck pill”, which, i’m not totally sure, is the point.

in the upcoming 49 days, i have 25 panto-related obligations, including 18 performances and 7 rehearsals, starting next monday. wolfenoot is thursday (as is thanksgiving), when our friends from hawaii are coming for dinner (but, significantly, NOT my mother-in-law), and, on friday, moe and i, and our friends from hawaii, are all going to go get tattooed: a few years ago, pre-COVID, we rented a house on the beach, and invited a whole bunch of friends to come and visit. the only people that ended up being able to come were micah and shaya, our friends from hawaii. we spent a week in a VERY large house, under the influence of a fantastic amount of trendy chemical amusement aid, flying kites and playing board (bored?) games, which included a “boys-against-girls” round of pictionary, in which the girls won with monique’s drawing which has come to be known as “snake-camel”… so, on friday, we’re all going to get a tattoo of “snake-camel”… which looks like this:

231028 snake-camel
231028 snake-camel

the panto this year is a re-visitation of one of our previous pantos, “Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs”. we’ve got 7 rehearsals scheduled during the next two weeks, including one band-only rehearsal. marni, the flute/alto-sax player that moved to england just before the pandemic, is back, and she was the “purple” member of the group, so i don’t know how the fact that i have sort of taken over that position is going to play out. rehearsal season, this year, has been decidedly abbreviated and condensed, and i’m not sure whether or not that is a good thing.