Possessed by the Goddess

Brugmansia (Tree Datura)

Citation: Delight. "Possessed by the Goddess: An Experience with Brugmansia (Tree Datura) (exp81383)". Erowid.org . Jul 15, 2010. erowid.org/exp/81383

DOSE:

3 flowers oral Brugmansia (tea) 2 leaves oral Brugmansia (tea)

BODY WEIGHT: 110 lb

After my boyfriend told me about his long ago datura trip and the mystical spiky seed pods I began my own search for the plant. I did a decent amount of research in the beginning (hardly enough), and after several months of searching finally located a brugmansia tree. My first test was with half of a large double white flower.I made a test tea out of the flower by steeping the flower in hot water for 30 minutes, straining out the plant material, and adding honey and lemon to taste. I experienced mild and mostly enjoyable effects. I felt light and floaty, I had a lot of energy and my thoughts seemed to be moving all around, for lack of a better description, plus dry mouth.I enjoyed my test tea so much, that I decided to do a larger dose as soon as I could. A few weeks past before I found another tree, also brugmansia, but of the yellow/golden and single flower variety. I took about 6 or 7 flowers to experiment with, as well as a few leaves.Although I was reasonably experienced with drugs (regular cannabis smoker, lover of MDMA, pursuer of magic mushrooms and dabbler in acid...not to mention a taste for the opiate family), I really underestimated the power of the moonflower.I can only laugh at my own stupidity now....knowing that I thought it would be 'fun' to drink datura tea on my way to a club. Yikes!My best friend Alex, myself, and three other friends were going clubbing that evening. Everyone else in the party was going to get drunk and I thought it would be fun to be delirious...My besty Alex barely knew what Datura was, and like I, was not expecting what happened.That evening, I choose three flowers and two small leaves for my tea. WAY way too much, little did I know. It seemed like a reasonably safe dose. One of the flowers was still budding, very green and fresh. I chopped all the plant material up and boiled it for 30 minutes, then let it sit for about an hour. I strained out the flowers, added sugar and lemon juice and ended up with about 8 oz. of tea.Alex picked me up at 8 pm and I drank the entire 8 oz. of tea within 10 minutes. The tea was tasty and I felt excited about the experience, expecting something more like acid or mushrooms.....hehe, silly girl I was....8:30 pm, we meet up with our other three friends at a coffee shop near their homes so we can all ride down to LA in one car. I am getting higher and higher by the minute. I step out of the car to greet my friends and I feel like I'm two feet above the ground.Alex comments that my pupils are huge and I seem very high. I'm stumbling around and having trouble walking. I begin to grow slightly concerned, never having felt this disorientated or strange before on anything. It's not unpleasant, but the unpredictability of it starts to frighten me.Then the dry mouth....oh, the horrible dry mouth. My lips were sticking to my gums and I could barely talk it was so bad. Alex takes me into a coffee shop to get a glass of water. I stumble in, looking drunker, laughing, and becoming more out of it.We all get in the car and start to drive down to LA. I sip my water, it's not helping and I begin to feel nauseated but I keep drinking. I think I'm going to vomit and I try to roll down the window but my hand won't seem to work. I feel almost like I'm underwater, and I hear people asking me questions but when I try to answer a bunch of low mumbled nonsense comes out, and I'm started to get frightened.Then I puke. All over my clothes. Thankfully it was just flower tea and water...but now everyone in the car is upset and worried. Alex keeps asking me if I can go to club and I think I try to say 'yes' at first, but then admit that 'no, I can't '....and I'm beginning to loose moments of consciousness. Blinking in and out of dream conversations. I'm afraid because I know the people in the car are unhappy....many of them try to comfort me and tell me it's fine, don't worry, etc. But I feel I'm staring with crazy wide eyes and babbling nonsenses.So, Alex, being a good friend, has everyone turn around, although we are nearly in LA, and drive back so he can take care of me. I'm sure I would have been arrested or taken to the hospital had I actually made it to the club or any public place.I don't remember much of the drive back. I mostly remember trying to talk and not being able to speak up and feeling confused and worried. I feel that the trip could have been immensely enjoyable for me, had I done in an appropriate setting, but with a bunch of anxious friends who know nothing about datura, it was pretty stressful, mostly because everyone seemed quite upset at me! (Not that I blame them...I did puke all over and kept trying to answer questions that no one had asked).Anyway, next thing I remember is saying goodbye to our other friends as they got into their own cars and headed down to the club. Alex ushered me into the backseat and told me to sleep. Things got pretty weird from this point on. I'm laying in the backseat while he tries to drive me home, the whole time making phone calls to friends and family trying to figure out if he needs to take me to the hospital or what, I'm totally unaware that he's on the phone because I'm busy having conversations of my own. He later told me I thought I was talking to my boyfriend and at one point he said I seemed to think I was conversing with the gods.I remember sitting up frantically in the backseat and searching through my purse every few minutes, looking for my cigarettes. He kept telling me to sleep and I would listen for a bit, then get back up. He says that I mumbled to myself the entire drive, that I tried to open the door several times as well. I also remember the uncomfortable bodily pain and whimpering in fear at some points, mostly in the onset of the trip.However, I also remember feeling like a child, everything was new for the first time, I was curious and easily fascinated....it was frustrating to have no memory though. He would try to talk to me and mid sentence I would stop and completely forget what was going on. He told me that I kept saying, 'Is that a new outfit Alex? I really like it!' over and over, even though he wasn't wearing anything I hadn't seen several times before.At what I believe to be about 10:30 pm we arrive back at my house. He pulls me out of the backseat and I can barely walk up to my door. I'm covered in vomit tea and complaining that I'm very cold. He reports that I got very belligerent when he tried to get me to follow him and that at one point I shouted obscenities at him....although I don't recall that part.The next thing I remember is that we are sitting on the bench outside my front door and he's trying to get me to sober up before he takes me inside...which of course is not happening in the least bit. I pretend to read the newspaper, holding it upside down but examining it closely and with interest. He tries to talk to me to see how coherent I am, and I seem to know who he is and who I am, but little else, including the fact that I've had datura.About 11 pm he realizes that I am far from sobering up and decides to bite the bullet and take me inside. The lock on my door sticks so he struggles with my key trying to unlock the door. I remember that he kept asking me how to unlock it and trying to get me to help him, at one point I stood up from the bench to try to unlock the door myself, but fell flat on my back against the cement. Then I started laughing, feeling no pain at all, and climbed back up on the bench. I had a bump on my head the next day and some bruises, but no pain or serious injuries.He finally got the door open and took me in. I kept bumping into furniture, walls, falling over and slurring nonsensical words. I thought I could pass for drunk in front of my family and get to my bed and pass out. I thought I was acting reasonably sober, but apparently that's not what everyone else saw.Stumbling to my bedroom was the last thing I actively remembered that night.I woke up at about 9 am the next morning, in my bed, dressed in different clothing. I'm still not sure who dressed me, apparently I managed to do it in my stupor. I was wearing a t-shirt and biker shorts. I awoke feeling oddly refreshed and awake, but with distorted vision and an odd...lightness....or confusion about me, but it was not unpleasant at all.Alex called me saying, 'Do you even know what happened last night?' and filled me in on some of the missing memories. It was very strange to wake up with amnesia, having never blacked out at all before. Alex reported that I seemed to have gone totally insane and he was worried I was seriously ill. He said that my eyes would get this scary blank look and I could stare right at him and think I was talking to someone or something else...He also complained that I peed in the backseat! Oops! I don't remember that, but knowing more about datura it doesn't surprise me at all now. Alex told me that once we got into my house he had to explain to my dad what was wrong with me. They tried to hide me from my mom, putting me in my room and saying that I was in there talking to Alex all night. Alex explained what datura was to my father who had never heard of such a plant, and they looked it up on the Internet. After that, Alex left me in my dad's care and went home.Some of the missing memories from that night came back to me, things that I thought were dreams. I remember wandering around the house and opening the fridge door and seeing it full of cans of ice cold coke. I thought I talked to my mom at one point, but I'm not sure if this was real. My dad said that I looked like an alcoholic going through DTs and that it was 'really scary', and he said that he had to keep telling me to go back to my room because I would wander out talking to myself and inanimate objects, and I kept moving things around the house.At one point I remember turning on the bathtub and the sink and forgetting about them...I kept taking objects from my bedroom into the bathroom. And the next morning when I opened the bathroom cupboard I found a bunch of my underwear and stockings stuffed in there.I also remember looking at myself in the mirror and laughing manically into my weird blankly dilated eyes and talking to my reflection, not really knowing that it wasn't another person. I'll never forget the look in my eyes, it really didn't seem to be me, but it was...it was my unconscious mind, free through the power of datura, peeking back at me from behind my big black pupils.I guess at some point I must have gotten into bed and truly fell asleep....although I really wish I knew more about what I experienced during my delirium. Sadly, I didn't have my trip set up right. I wish I had had a guide who wanted to watch and help me on my journey, as well as report what I was saying and seeing.Anyway, the next day I went into work just fine, and felt quite good but strange all day. I felt an odd sense of power and excitement, and happiness that I wasn't hurt. I don't believe I was in danger of dying from too much poison, although I do think the dose was too large. However, my delirium presented a strong danger that I could be killed by walking into traffic or in some other unwitting way (I did try to jump out of a moving car without knowing what I was doing).Ultimately, it took me about a week or so to return to 'normal', although like many others, I don't think I will ever fully return to my pre-datura state. My short term memory was very impaired for most of the week following my trip and my concentration was shot. I felt very ditsy and worried that I might not fully recover. My mental capacities do seem to have returned for the most part now. My vision returned to normal in about two days.After that I have been a freer person than I ever was before. Having struggled with anxiety and depression for years (treating it with prozac), I feel that truly experiencing that delirious state may have actually helped relax my mind in some way I don't fully understand. I became stronger and far less passive after my trip as well. I was going through a hard time with my boyfriend, and after the trip awoke feeling more in love with him than ever, and the feeling has remained.I became even more obsessed with the goddess datura after that trip. My dreams are filled with her and are more vivid and real then ever before. Before datura I did sleep walk occasionally and talk in my sleep often, but I often felt unable to call out for help in my dreams, having no voice. After doing datura, I talk in my sleep more than ever, but I am no longer silenced in my dreams, I can even shout out in my dreams now. Sometimes it's harder to distinguish what was a dream and what really happened, as the lines are certainly blurrier.I have since experimented with datura, jimson weed in particular, several more times at much much lighter doses. I ate 20 seeds, which produced an uncomfortably heavy body, strange illogical fear and some very interesting delusions. The 20 seeds was an alright dose, because I only experienced a moderately delusional effect for a shorter time range. I started getting mumbly and weird about 30 minutes after consuming the seeds, laid down into bed and started going in and out of dreams....had a conversation with my friend Alex, who had moved to San Fransisco by then, and kept dropping my imaginary cigarette into the blankets. The after effects almost felt kind of mushroomy to me, in that jerky colorful sort of way. I enjoyed the after effects more than the actual trip, which at the time had that gripping fear.Some time later I made another tea, this time using one flower and one leaf. I only drank half the cup before the strange fear and painful body high set in. Then I fell asleep, no hallucinations that I recall that time. However, for now I'm foregoing tea and other consumable methods, as the power is just too profound for my body.Currently, I'm experimenting with my second jar of flying ointment, made from lavender oil, ground datura leaves, flowers and seeds, all boiled in candle wax until frothy, then strained and let to cool. So far I've only rubbed very small amounts of it into my wrists and temples, producing excitement, shaking and that sort of datura weirdness. For now, I only experiment with very small doses of datura. One day I hope to experience full delirium again, with the presence of a guide to help me get the most from my trip and remain safe. I've been doing as much research into every area of this plant as possible, the history, science and mythology are fascinating, and I strongly recommend that everyone research all areas before beginning experimentation.I see a lot of bad talk and fear about datura, but I guess I'm one of the few people who have fallen in love with her...I love the smell, the flowers, the beauty, the power, the intoxication....her very spirit is the spirit of the dream realm, of the delirious mind, of the untamed brain stem, our primitive thoughts given control of our bodies.As it's been said before, it's not recreational, it's not traditionally 'fun', it can be painful and frightening, but I do believe if she calls to you, you may not be able to resist. Doing datura, to me, is like being possessed by her.The only advice I have for anyone looking to try it is, respect her, more than you think you should, or she may put the fear in you like you've never known before. Love her and perhaps she'll imbue you with some of her power, treat her poorly and she may kill you. Start at really small doses, work your way up to different levels before you jump in...and never do it alone, you might need help when she takes over.