Forty Miles In: A Solo Ceremony in Wilderness
I carried three days of food and one intention forty miles into the backcountry. What happened there is the most significant experience of my life.
I want to be clear about the safety dimensions first. I had done this approach several times before at lower doses. I knew the area. I had told a trusted person my location and my return date. I had experience and I had prepared. I am not advocating for solo high-dose wilderness experiences — I am accounting for one that I did with appropriate preparation.
Psilocybe azurescens is approximately three times more potent by weight than typical P. cubensis. 1.8 grams of what I'd identified and collected was likely equivalent to 4-5 grams of cubensis. I knew this and accounted for it in my preparation.
What happened: six hours in a landscape I had walked into with intention. The dissolution was complete and prolonged in a way my previous experiences had not been. I lost the edge of myself in a way that felt, at the time, more like return than like loss. The forest was not separate from me in the way it usually is.
I have been practicing integration for eight months since that session. The effects on my relationship with the natural world have been lasting in ways I find difficult to explain without sounding religious. I am not religious. But something changed that is not temporary and that I am still learning to live with and from.
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