Low Dose Psychedelic Recipe

The image here is of an old book called The Psychedelic Guide to Preparation of the Eucharist, which contained methods for preparing a number of psychedelic compounds.  I like the image, and I feel it sets the tone.

I figured before I got too respectable I'd share a bit about some recent recreational explorations.  It should be said that the doses I'm listing here are almost surely too low for most people.  I have found that as I have progressed in meditation, I don't seem to want or need a whole lot of psilocybin or cannabis, for example.  This is simply what works well for me, as someone with a couple thousand hours of meditation and access to 10 jhanas.  My sense is that those specific developments/attainments are what have changed the doses for me, moreso than just time on the cushion.

Given the low doses, I would think these would be pretty safe starting doses for most people.

I sometimes think of these as the acronym CANP, i.e. Cannabis, Alcohol, Nitrous, Psilocybin.  Here's a recent recipe for CANPing:

Cannabis - 0.05 grams edible, every couple of hours
Alcohol - 1/2 drink per hour or two, at first
Nitrous - 1/3 cartridge every other breath
Psilocybin - 0.10 grams of mushroom

Cannabis by itself is not necessarily a huge factor, although in combination with nitrous it does become a pretty big deal.  It brings a little bit of pleasure, and it does open the psychedelic door just a crack.  On very rare occasions, particularly when I feel very worn out or chemically sensitive, it can have very profound effects similar to psychedelics.  0.05 grams edible is a very small amount, not that long ago I used to regularly use around 0.25 grams (one brownie at ~8 grams per pan of 32).

Alcohol is not particularly important here.  I just find it a bit soothing at the beginning, it seems to take away a certain edge that seems to come up with cannabis and psilocybin as they take effect.  I tend to mix weak 1/2 strength drinks in tall glasses and sip them over long periods of time.  For me this is often a bit of vodka in Crystal Light lemonade.

Nitrous, I would mention that (at minimum) one should always take some B12 ahead of time, ideally sublingual methylcobalamin.  I'm trying to approximate my dosage here, but something approaching 1/3 of a cartridge, maybe about a 4 second sip, with at least one breath in between every sip.  Make sure you are oxygenated so you can hold it a bit.  I'll have to admit it took me quite a while to discipline myself into this particular rate of consumption, as nitrous often called out for "more".

Psilocybin at 0.10 grams (of mushrooms) may not be enough for some people to feel much of anything, I think for a lot of people something like 0.25 to 0.75 might be more like it in combination with the rest of the cocktail, and frankly, a couple of years ago I was using 2.0 grams.  For me, recent explorations at as much as 0.20 were fine, but were simply too intense.  It's one thing to have tears of joy, but to turn that into super intense, gut wrenching sobbing is just too much for me.  So I've backed off.

I'm also a big fan of appropriate music, lying down, eyes closed, and staying present.  There can often be a great yearning to go off into fantasy under these conditions.  What happens when you acknowledge that desire and allow it but instead of grasping at thought you just remain with what is?

ADDENDUM:

Re-reading this a couple of years later, the psilocybin dose of 0.10 does seem low and would be the one to play with.  Although I suppose I covered that.  I seem to have gone through a phase of extraordinary sensitivity and while that hasn't entirely changed, I now find something like 0.20 to be tolerable and appropriate.  For my unique situation.

I would add that in the interim I experimented with DXM, dextromethorphan.  I gradually worked up to a dose of 300mg but decided it was not for me.  It produced a uniquely weird kind of experience which was fine, but on balance I found that there was something unpleasant about it and would not recommend it.  Perhaps luck of the draw, but I ain't going back there.  So I nixed the high dose, but I did find along the way, and in the spirit of the whole low dose synergy combo thing, adding a mere 30mg (2 pure gelcaps) to the above mix seems to add a slightly noticeable and beneficial difference with no apparent downside.  As with some of the other ingredients, it seems to help open the psychedelic door a wee bit more, at a very reasonable dose.