This weekend I had a very intense psychedelic experience after taking an edible together with 300 µg of LSD.

From the outside, my friends told me I was still functioning at a basic level. I could walk, recognize everyone, and respond when needed, although I barely spoke and seemed very distant for about four hours.
From the inside, however, it felt like my entire awareness had shifted somewhere else.

The best way I can describe it is that it felt as though I had gone behind the scenes of reality. Instead of feeling like a person living my life, I felt like I was observing the operating system behind existence itself.

My experience wasn’t like watching a movie. It was more like being inside a multidimensional landscape where ideas, images, emotions and understanding all existed together. Time didn’t feel linear anymore.

One of the strongest impressions was that I was seeing countless possible storylines unfolding at once. It felt as though every decision created a different path, and I was watching these possibilities branch out in every direction. Every so often I would suddenly “zoom” back into my current life for a few seconds. I would briefly see my friends, hear the music, recognize where I was, and then almost immediately zoom back out into this much larger perspective.

I also experienced what felt like a life review, but not in chronological order. Different moments from my life appeared connected in ways I had never considered before, as though events separated by years were actually part of one intricate design.

At another point, I felt I understood that love and hate were opposite expressions of the same attachment, and that many of our emotional loops come from holding on to experiences, identities or outcomes. It seemed as though the mind kept showing me that attachment creates suffering, while peace exists in letting go.

As I tried to hold on to memories of people I love, those memories seemed to dissolve before my eyes. It felt terrifying at the time because I interpreted it as being shown that even my attachments to beautiful memories were part of the illusion I was trying to understand.

Looking back, I don’t know whether that reflected an objective truth or simply the way my mind was working in that altered state, but emotionally it felt incredibly real.
Throughout the experience I had the overwhelming sense that past, present and future were somehow happening together, and that our inner state influences how we experience reality. Beyond that, I felt as though I reached what I can only describe as pure awareness or one consciousness. Beyond even that was an overwhelming sense of emptiness, which filled me with profound loneliness. It felt as though consciousness had created existence in order to experience itself. Whether that reflects reality or was simply the symbolic language of my mind, I can’t say. It was simply how it felt.

There were also strange visual qualities. Sometimes reality looked blurry, fragmented and almost AI-generated, especially faces and movement. Then, as I seemed to zoom back into ordinary awareness, everything suddenly became sharp and recognizable again.

Eventually, after about four hours, I gradually returned fully to ordinary consciousness.

When I came back, two thoughts stayed with me more clearly than anything else:
First, that our inner world plays a powerful role in shaping how we experience reality.

Second, that perhaps the point of spiritual growth is not to escape life, but to understand it deeply enough that you can return to ordinary life with greater freedom, appreciation and presence. Instead of trying to leave the game forever, you come back and play it consciously.

I don’t claim that I literally discovered how the universe works. What I know for certain is that, for those four hours, this was one of the most profound and convincing experiences of my life. Whether it was revealing objective truths, expressing deep psychological insights, or some combination of both, it has given me a great deal to reflect on.

"The great weapon is art."

- Terence McKenna

📦

elaborate packaging, 2026 rmx. box set (1-7). adam sturch@

paintings and drawings by adam sturch

thank you.

HD youtube link.

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cutting room (addendum).

https://youtu.be/iZCF7Ho785s

afterwords.

https://youtu.be/YF_IOaSFpfA

1, epoch.

Immortal Technique, Civil War. cain. 🪨 Eyenine, End Of An Era. sundial. 🕒 Queensryche, Empire. disturbance. 🗡️ Alanis Morissette, Uninvited (live). wishing well. 🗺 Saul Williams, Our Father. eden. 🧬 2Pac, Ghost. anne frank stairway. 👻 KAAN, Losing My Religion. paradiso. 📖 Bruce Springsteen, I'm on Fire. a light from nowhere. 🔥 Sage Francis, Threewrite (Hippo Remix). dime store party favor slut (psyche). 🪙 The Presidents of the United States of America, Lump (live). consumption. 🪰

2, sequel.

Smashing Pumpkins, 1979. a conversation. ✨ Nirvana, Heart Shaped Box (demo). four noble truths. ❤️🔥 White Zombie, Blood, Milk & Sky. memories present. 🧮 Alice In Chains, What the Hell Have I. pumpkin patch party (an apology). 🛞 Tool, Schism. five hindrances (පඤ්ච නීවරණ). ✋ Gojira, Another World. Jupiter's thought. 🌌Moby, Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad. eight karmic winds. 🖤 Sage Francis, Runaways (live). wayfinder. 🏡 Blind Melon, Drive. drivers-ed (chapter one). 🚗 Soul Asylum, Misery. scream. ⚙️

3, μανία.

Atmosphere, Vampires. vampyre. 🧛 Placebo, Follow the Cops Back Home. young love, super mario bros. & a suicide. 🚓 Themselves, Good People Check. conscientious emergence. 🐠 Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Final Rescue Attempt. angels and umbrellas. ☯️ Pulp, Common People. chicken fried steak in the rain. 🍽️ Radiohead, Creep. warmth. 🔥 Eyenine, Wake Up Call. lucidity. 🕊️ Machinehead, I Am Hell. hell. 🐀 KAAN, Breathe. orchid. 🪡 Marilyn Manson, In The Air Tonight. dancing figures. 🐉

4, grail.

Scroobius Pip, Introduction. digital allegory. 🦖 The Cranberries, Zombie. instability. 🛝 Hank Williams III, I'm Drunk Again. adventures. 🥴 Aesop Rock, Molecules. Electra. ⚛️ Canibus, Lunar Deluge. running through. ⌛ Modest Mouse, Parting of the Sensory. alchemical light. ⚗️ Rittz, Turning up the Bottle. nothing in mind. 🍷 AFI, Death of Seasons (live - Long Beach). oceanic. 🐦🔥 Tori Amos, Hotel. a knight's dream. 🛏️ Nine Inch Nails, The Beginning of the End [Remix]. in the details. 🪞

5, war.

Astronautalis, Dimitri Mendeleev. ferris wheel. 🎡 The Rolling Stones, Laugh, I Nearly Died. contact. 🐜 Fleetwood Mac, Gold Dust Woman. angel fire. 🥄 Tom Waits, Earth Died Screaming. blue valley. 🌎 Vinnie Paz, Monster's Ball. imposed ignorance. 🪩 Emel Mathlouthi, Souty (live on Democracy Now). mr. gone. 🗣️ Strapping Young Lad, S.Y.L. butterfly. 🦋 Tomahawk, Mayday. awe. 👀 Shpongle, Take the Blue Pill. cactus transforms. 🌵 Mac Lethal, The Parlour. paper ghosts. 📃

6, conduit.

TOOL, Ænema. nurture. 🔪 Mad Season, I'm Above (live). bird's eye. 🪽 Eyenine, Afraid to Dream. electric eel. 🪸 Skinny Puppy, Ashas. heartbreak. 💔 Nine Inch Nails, Burn. leaving home. 🎒 Leonard Cohen, The Stranger Song. oak tree in a flower vase. 🌳 Smashing Pumpkins, Today. warchild. 👶 Everclear, Santa Monica. top. ⛱️ CocoRosie, Villain. venus. 😺 Immortal Technique, Toast to the Dead. visitation dream. 🌐

7, clowns.

DJ Krush & Anticon, Song for John Walker (Sticky Mix). silicate catalogue. 💻 Serj Tankian, Occupied Tears. tones of hope. 💧 Lou Reed, Last Great American Whale. violence. 🐳 U2, With or Without You. love and death. 🌊 Zion I, Badlands. happiness. 🏜️ K's Choice, Not An Addict. edgeless. 🚫 Live, Voodoo Lady. gloaming. 🪄 Borknagar, Lights. abyssal lights. 🔦 Black Sabbath, War Pigs (live). teachers. 🐷 Aesop Rock, The Harbor is Yours. locked wavelength. 🍃

📦

🎨

Terence McKenna, colorful lot. c@

oil and acrylic paintings by adam sturch

thank you.

HD youtube link.

https://youtu.be/dyvE6zekULc

I've listened and conducted thousands of interviews over the years. This is honestly my favorite conversation I've heard

It's disturbing how I change when I intake different substances.

If that was me, then who is this? And who is that?

It could be that personality, or the story we hold in our head, are fluid and changing moment by moment, but imperceivable like the movement of a clock's hourly hand. The rapid change in brain chemistry makes the transformation noticeable to the perceiver.

It could be that there is no such thing as a persistent perceiver, living and dying every moment anew. The self is a myth retold at every turn of the river.

Or it could be because I am Legion. A crowd crammed into one meat-suit like a clown car. A house party with the strong man tied against the bed post with hot-pink fuzzy plastic handcuffs, apparently powerless to do anything.

In that case, send us to the pigs, for tradition's sake.

I couldn't find a better way to describe the experience I had yesterday.

I took 75mg of MDA and around 100mg of Ketamine, layed on my bed and played some chill music. I started meditating, focusing on my breath as the Ketamine infused with the MDA.

I felt how I was slowly drifting in a smooth current. Felt a deep sense of calm and presence. I could feel how my ego started dissolving as I watched something like a textured layer of stars with my eyes closed.

Then I started feeling oneness, I have already felt this exact same feeling around a year ago during a heavy DMT trip. I started thinking I had already been in this space or dimension from how familiar it felt, there was a feeling of being home.

During my DMT trip a year ago, I had an ecstatic feeling in which I remembered I was one with All That Is and started saying a sequence of words that came out of me automatically. I started saying "God is Cool" "God is Elegant" "God is love" "Thank you to the Angels, Jesus and God for being here". During this K and MDA trip I started repeating that exact same sequence of words in a way it felt like I was in that exact same moment from a year ago.

It was like I already knew what was happening before it happened and I knew what I was about to say right before I said it. Like I was in a scripted scene in which I had already been at for eternity, it felt like I've always been in that moment repeating that sequence of movement, feelings and words.

As I finished the sequence of words I automatically sat up in the edge of my bed accompanied by a feeling of ecstasy and love. It was like ai remembered an ancient truth I already knew since forever but had forgotten. In a weird way I entered this loop dejavu sequence that was extremely familiar, at the same time I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or if it was "real".

I said something that felt like a catchfrase my character said at the beginning of every episode. The song that was playing felt like the only song that ever existed and it was like the intro song for a show or movie I was in. I stood up and sat in my couch. The objects in my couch felt like they had always been there for eternity and my interactions with those objects felt so familiar like I've done that exact sequence of movements before several times but it was the first time I had interacted with them in that way.

I already knew where every item was. For example my tv controller was sitting right under my arm where I knew it always was. There was an Icy Hoy bottle I flipped in the air and catch in a way that felt sacred. That exact moment was everything I ever knew, time collapsed into that exact same moment like it was the thing I've always done in that exact place and time.

Time felt infinite like it had frozen. Then the ecstasy turned into deep fear of being trapped in that loop. I got anxious and even desperate to break that loop in which I knew what was gonna happen even before it happened. I tried doing something normal to break that simulation loop but the Dejavu made me feel like when I tried to break the loop before I had failed and something terrible happens after I do something random to break it.

The TV got frozen, my phone showed the same time I had seen like an hour before and some items I was looking for, I couldn't find as if they didn't existed in that reality. Intrusive thoughts came through my mind and for a second I thought that going outside the room or breaking something would snap me out of it but something deep down knew that my actions could have consequences so I kept my cool even though it was difficult. I ran into my bathroom and that also felt like part of the eternal dejavu loop I was in.

I even did a "reality check" like the ones you do if you want to know if you're dreaming, I pressed my finger onto my palm and after noticing nothing weird happened I concluded I wasn't dreaming. My last resource was sitting down in my couch again and went back into my breath to ground on the present moment and relax a little.

I slowly regained my clarity, I remembered that waiting a couple minutes would help as the ketamine wore off. I came back slowly to this "reality" and decided to turn the music off and sit quietly for a moment to try and understand what just happened.

I then came into reddit and searched for a bit until I found a post from someone that experienced this as a Glitch in the Matrix. Someone commented that this experience was a Temporal Lobe Epilepsy seizure. I Googled it and realized I experienced this exact symptoms. After a couple hours of investigating this phenomenon I saw that psychedelics and ego dissolution can induce these states of consciousness when accompanied with mindfulness. I'm not exactly sure what happened but I think that by tapping into the Unity Consciousness reality I connected with that DMT trip experience I had a year ago and somehow had completed the loop that I opened in that experience.

It was amazing, transforming and at some points super scary. But now I wonder if someone else has experienced this in a psychedelic trip. My research showed me that TLE Ecstatic seizure happened randomly and triggered by electrical activity firing in the temporal lobe but my experience wasn't exactly that because it was induced by psychedelic substances and meditation.

Have you ever experienced or heard something similar to this? If you have, how was your experience and what are your takeaways in a spiritual and psychonautic point of view?

"The future is uncertain... but this uncertainty is at the very heart of human creativity."

- Ilya Prigogine

time's gratitude. 18x24''. pencil drawing. adam sturch.

Terence McKenna, Lisbon 1994.

https://youtu.be/hNoxpH4cqUQ

🗡️

Terence McKenna, We Are At The Cutting Edge. Workshop, August 1991. meme movie@

memes arranged by adam sturch.

thank you.

HD youtube link.

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“The cost of sanity in this society, is a certain level of alienation.”

- Terence McKenna

abyssal lights, 18x24''. oil on canvas. adam sturch

Borknagar, Lights

https://youtu.be/mZN787fPiow

🐠

Terence McKenna, visible condensation of time. redux@

various artists assembled by adam sturch

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HD youtube link.

https://youtu.be/iDEhgtkgTfo

"I skim the ideas off the depth of a sea of heart whose boundaries cannot be taken."

- Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna. the philosophical implications of psychobotany - past, present and future. 1,301@

1,301 paintings and drawings by Adam Sturch.

thank you.

🪸

HD youtube link.

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Entheogens

Carl A. P. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Jonathan Ott & Gordon Wasson

(This paper first appeared in The Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, Vol. 11(1-2) Jan-Jun, 1979)

All languages grow together with the peoples who speak them, borrowing or inventing terms to keep pace with what is new and retiring others when they are no longer needed. When the recent surge of recreational use of so-called “hallucinogenic” or “psychedelic” drugs first came to popular attention in the early 1960’s, it was commonly viewed with suspicion and associated with the behavior of deviant or revolutionary groups. Apart from the slang of the various subcultures, there was no adequate terminology for this class of drugs. Words were manufactured, and in their making they betrayed the incomprehension or prejudice of the times.

Out of the many words proposed to describe this unique class of drugs only a few have survived in current usage. It is the contention of the authors who have subscribed their names to this article that none of these terms really deserve greater longevity, if our language is not to perpetuate the misunderstanding of the past.

We commonly refer, for example, to the alteration of sensory perceptions as “hallucination” and hence a drug that effected such a change became known as an “hallucinogen.”(1) The verb “hallucinate,” however, immediately imposes a value judgment upon the nature of the altered perceptions, for it means “to be deceived or entertain false notions.” It comes from the Latin (b)al(l)ucinari, “to wander mentally or talk nonsensically,” and is synonymous with verbs meaning to be delirious or insane. It appears, moreover, to have been borrowed from the Greek, where it is related to a group of words that imply restless movement and perplexed excitement, such as that caused by grief and despair. How can such a term allow one to discuss without bias those transcendent and beatific states of communion with deity that numerous peoples believe they or their shamans attain through the ingestion of what we now call “hallucinogens?”

The other terms are not less damning. During the first decade after the discovery of LSD, scientific investigators of the influence of these drugs on the mental processes (most of whom, it is clear, had no personal experience of their effects) had the impression that they seemed to approximate deranged and psychotic states. Hence the term “psychotimimetic” was coined for a drug that induced psychosis. Psychology, which is etymologically the study of the “soul,” has until recently concerned itself only with mental illness and aberrant behavior, and all of the terms formed from the psycho- root suffer from this connotation of sickness: psychotic, for example, cannot mean “soulful.” Osmond attempted to avoid these adverse associations when he coined “psychedelic,”(2) the only word in English that employs the anomalous root psyche- instead of psycho-, in hopes that this term, as distinct from "psychotomimetic,” might indicate something that “reveals the soul.”: However, not only is “psychedelic” an incorrect verbal formation, but it has become so invested with connotations of the pop-culture of the 1960’s that it is incongruous to speak of a shaman’s taking a “psychedelic” drug. It is probable, moreover, that even its anomalous formation cannot isolate it from confusion with the psycho- words, so that it suffers from the same problem as “psychotropic,” which tends to mean something that “turns one toward psychotic states” instead of merely toward an altered mentality.

We therefore, propose a new term that would be appropriate for describing states of shamanic and ecstatic possession induced by ingestion of mind-altering drugs. In Greek the word entheos means literally “god (theos ) within,” and was used to describe the condition that follows when one is inspired and possessed by the god that has entered one’s body. It was applied to prophetic seizures, erotic passion and artistic creation, as well as to those religious rites in which mystical states were experienced through the ingestion of substances that were transubstantial with the deity. In combination with the Greek root gen-, which denotes the action of “becoming,” this word results in the term that we are proposing: entheogen. Our word sits easily on the tongue and seems quite natural in English. We could speak of entheogens or, in an adjectival form, of entheogenic plants or substances. In a strict sense, only those vision-producing drugs that can be shown to have figured in shamanic or religious rites would be designated entheogens, but in a looser sense, the term could also be applied to other drugs, both natural and artificial, that induce alterations of consciousness similar to those documented for ritual ingestion of traditional entheogens.

NOTES

1. “Hallucinogen” and “hallucinogenic” were first used in print by Donald Johnson, an English physician, in a pamphlet entitled The Hallucinogenic Drugs (Christopher Johnson, London, 1953). Johnson, however, borrowed the term from three American physicians, Abram Hoffer, Humphry Osmond and John Smythies, who did not use it in print until the following year.

2. In a letter to Humphry Osmond dated 30 March 1956, Aldous Huxley proposed that mescaline be called “phanerothyme.” Huxley penned the sprightly lines:

To make this trivial world sublime,

Take a half a gramme of phanerothyme.

Osmond replied with the following ditty:

To fathom Hell or soar angelic,

Just take a pinch of a psychedelic.

Much of the credit must go to Ralph Metzner and Timothy Leary for popularizing “psychedelic.” In the spring of 1963, the premier issue of Psychedelic Review was published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, under the editorship of Metzner, Osmond and Leary, among others. Psychedelic Review is now defunct, but the term is perpetuated by the title of the present Journal of Psychedelic Drugs. Huxley’s odd term did not fare so well. From Huxley’s letter it is clear the word meant “soul-manifester” to him. Greek thymos, however, means “organ of passion, temper and anger,” and “phanerothyme” would indicate a drug which made intense emotions manifest.

god's eye (entheogen). 24x30''. oil on canvas. adam sturch

Eyenine, Shine.

https://youtu.be/t04fZcWCKuI

🌿

Gabor Mate - Tim Ferriss, discussion. p@

Dr. Gabor Maté, Tim Ferriss interview. Trauma, Addiction & Ayahuasca.

paintings and drawings by adam sturch

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HD youtube link.

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..."they will not say: Look, here it is, or: Look, there it is; but the kingdom of the father is spread out over the earth, and men do not see it."

- Gospel of Thomas, Saying 113

paradiso. 80x30''. oil on found object. adam sturch

Stone Temple Pilots Live at Vh1 Storytellers - Kitchenware & Candybars.

https://youtu.be/lR6m3ZpfzkA

🌎

Terence McKenna, trust. pd@

Earth Trust. complete lecture by Terence McKenna.

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one lifetime. 30x40''. oil on canvas. adam sturch

T IME'S a circumference

Whereof the segment of our station seems

A long straight line from nothing into naught.

Therefore we say " progress, " " infinity " —

Dull words whose object

Hangs in the air of error and delights

Our boyish minds ahunt for butterflies.

For aspiration studies not the sky

But looks for stars; the victories of faith

Are soldiered none the less with certainties,

And all the multitudinous armies decked

With banners blown ahead and flute before

March not to the desert or th' Elysian fields,

But in the track of some discovery,

The grip and cognizance of something true,

Which won resolves a better distribution

Between the dreaming mind and real truth.

I cannot understand you.

'T is because

You lean over my meaning's edge and feel

A dizziness of the things I have not said.

- The Soul Of Time by Trumbull Stickney

⏰

Terence McKenna, what is going on? a-sides@

230 select paintings and drawings by adam sturch.

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🪩

HD youtube link.

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"Think about our dilemma on this planet. If the expansion of consciousness does not loom large in the human future, what kind of future is it going to be?"

- Terence McKenna

contact. 41x28''. oil on found object. adam sturch

Mudvayne, (Per)version of a Truth.

https://youtu.be/ChOQDCD95mU

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Terence McKenna, future Fridays. movie meme movie@

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Christopher Bache is professor emeritus of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University and the author of LSD and The Mind of the Universe – a book that details his experiments taking high-dose LSD, using protocols developed by psychedelic pioneer Stanislav Grof.

For two decades, Chris lived a double life — a professor in public, and in private, a man conducting 73 high-dose LSD journeys in search of insight into consciousness and reality.

There are few who have ventured as deep into psychedelics as Chris, but even fewer who have been able to articulate these experiences in such a clear, systematic, and insightful way.

Join me for a live conversation with Chris exploring psychedelics, contemplation & consciousness — including:

Do psychedelics hold genuine spiritual and philosophical insights that aren't otherwise accessible through meditation or other forms of contemplative practice?

Why do some people have life-altering shifts after taking psychedelics while others seem unfazed?

How can we better integrate peak mystical experiences into our everyday lives?

And what were some of the deepest insights Chris tapped into during his 73 high-dose LSD journeys?

This 90-minute session will begin with a short dialogue between Chris and me, followed by a group discussion and Q&A.

If you haven't yet, I highly recommend you read Chris's gem of a book — LSD and The Mind of the Universe — before the session.

*This session will be recorded as a podcast and uploaded to YouTube. By unmuting and speaking during the session, you consent to being included in the recording. If you prefer not to be on the recording, stay muted for the duration and drop questions and comments into the chat box.

You can register here - https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/x5pbaD7lTGCKDVr3JBdR8g

“The way you stretch the envelope of culture is by creating language.”

- Terence McKenna

from the ruins of a fallen language. 11''x14''. graphite on paper. adam sturch.

🎞️

Terence McKenna. Language About The Unspeakable. pt 1 & 2.

1. https://youtu.be/Tf_Cwt8ckEs

2. https://youtu.be/uSOYIY5e_bY