Thanks
Really nice to hear your progressive thinking and actions.
I was more a "purist" during most of my time when I experimented with drugs -- at first simply because they became accessible to me in a stepwise manner, and later more consciously because I was interested in experiencing the effects of each of them, without interference from other chemicals. But yeah by the end I also got into mixing and combinations... and for a while (luckily it was short for me, less than a year) I did combine mind-altering substances. I actually feel lucky that I had some quite scary and otherwise negative experiences with combining. For example, I was big on mushrooms for a while... lived in London during an era when they were legal there. So I could just go to the market or to an "expert" shop that sold them at the time, and that was what I did. Also did lots of those "experiments" with my intimate partners, planning the trips and getting high together, then interpreting together. Yes at times very bonding. But it was also very... artificially created connection.
The first bad experience that I still recall vividly (it was ~10 years ago) was when I combined a large dose of mushrooms with alcohol, right before a stressful professional event. I did it with my bf of the time, and he did not seem to have any problem. I had a very strong trip late into the night, and then we were drinking lots of wine. Then tried to sleep, but I could not, my mind was tripping all over the place. Had to get up to travel to a conference (both my bf and me) at dawn. He managed to give a good presentation at the conference, and me too... but I was totally out of it, feeling very weird, sick, and paranoid all day. I remember us vividly, sitting at a bar in the first evening of the conference, in a group of good people... and just feeling totally dissociated, fearful, and unable to be myself or to formulate my thoughts in any decent way. That was ~18 hours after the mushroom trip followed by alcohol. I had thoughts and feelings that were very paranoid, also jealousy which is typically out of character for me. Then my bf and I finally got back to our hotel room, and I broke down... crying uncontrollably telling my bf I could not go on with our relationship and that he should leave me alone. Poor guy did, for that night (we had separate hotel rooms provided to us by the conference). He was completely supportive and understanding. Two days later, we went back home (to my home in London), and I kept having paranoid thoughts and flashbacks, crying spells, etc. I recovered from it after a few more days but it really put me off from both psychedelics and alcohol for a while. I only had a few more psychedelic trips (typically increasingly negative) after that, but got really into alcohol for years later.
The isolation tank is something always interesting and positive for me... I use this facility in NYC; not cheap but we can play around with the conditions also, like levels of sensory input, music or complete silence, etc. It's fun and very relaxing for me.
Blue Light Floatation - Floatation Tanks in NYC - New York City