Eight Legged Elephant, by Vibrata
This turned out to be an extraordinary night of dreams, rich in detail and emotion. Dale Pendell’s calea zacatechichi liqueur was prominently effective right from the start, with a period of hypnagogic shopping through rows and rows of little items—bottles of pills mutating into little stuffed toys, all in great quantity and detail. I realized as I was experiencing this that the imagery may have been influenced by my day’s trip the grocery store. Once again, I’m reminded of the theory of the dream state as the brain’s way of processing memories.
The night’s dreaming was broken up by a brief trip to the bathroom (a lot of fluids before bedtime) and the Galantamine dosing. Each time I woke, I was reminded of the Eight Legged Elephant, an experience from the dream in the first period of sleep, after the calea. The imagery was so rich that I made my way through in all in a state of awe and each time I awoke, I was filled with excitement to have experienced it.
I was surrounded by creatures of all sorts, known and unknown. My cat Bohdi was there, but so was this strange elephant that was having a hard time getting a standing position because it had so many legs. I watched his handlers trying to help him up. The surroundings were rich in activity, sometimes distracting. The cats had been fighting and I noticed bloody gouges on their bellies.
There was a gathering, a party and a lot of consumption of intoxicants. We were talking about various substances, and there were a lot of people around, and in the confusion one girl took a bottle of ayahuasca that was sitting there and downed the whole thing. We were pretty concerned for her as she was about to leave for home and though she said she felt fine, we knew it wouldn’t be for long. I explained to her what she had ingested to try and prepare her for her journey.
My friend Seth paid a visit with a very strange device he had invented, some sort of teleportation-time-travel-helmet-telephone-thing. I was surprised and excited to see him. Only his head appeared, and I could hear his voice.
After the Galantamine, the scene was like a party with strangers in costumes and music and laughter. I had deep and emotional conversations with people. One woman and I talked with a puppet. The puppet seemed to upset her. I asked her questions about her feelings about the puppet and had an empathetic wave come p of deep childhood delight and joy, yet I could sense that she had a feeling of loss. I explained that I still knew how to be a child and that it was possible for her too.
I suppose that defines the difference between the first periods of my dreaming, with the calea, and the second part, with the Galantamine, was the depth of emotional and psychological responses. Dale’s brew produced a prolonged deluge of sensual imagery, inducing awe and excitement. The Galantamine dreaming was notably more mental, with thoughtful processing.