Dosage independent intensity

Outside of miscalculating the amount of substance that the person is consuming, dosage independent intensity seems to be quite a rare event. However, I have heard a number of credible accounts over the years from friends, as well as a first hand experience, that truly felt as if it defied all conventional models of pharmacology.

For example, my own experience with this was under the influence of a very non-traditional ayahuasca brew. During this phase of my life, my entire circle of friends had taken to no longer bothering to brew mimosa hostilis root bark over the course of several hours into a foul tasting liquid, but were instead simply blending the product into a fine, stringy powder and masking it within banana smoothies. In conjunction with Syrian Rue taken 45 minutes beforehand, this worked incredibly well and allowed all of us to use ayahuasca in a surprisingly accessible and casual manner. On this particular night, it was my friends birthday and the two of us were planning on tripping together to celebrate it. However, when we finally got around to consuming the root bark smoothie, a single tiny strand of the root bark immediately got stuck in the back of my throat on the first sip and made me almost vomit to the point where I knew that I could not drink any further and would not be tripping tonight. I had consumed what I would estimate to be less than 1% out of what was likely in the 15 gram range of material.

However, as we waited for my friend to come up on what was quite a heavy dosage, I began to notice that I was also coming up at the same rate and intensity as him. I was experiencing incredibly intense geometry to the point where I was having trouble seeing the room around me, alongside intense visual distortions and a multitude of cognitive effects. While this was happening, I heard a voice in my head tell me that I was being allowed to trip at this level despite my miniscule dosage because it was my friends birthday and that it would be more conducive for him to have an enjoyable evening if we were both tripping. At the time, this absolutely blew my mind and continues to baffle me to this very day.

While I am not sure what could have caused this experience, I suspect it was because I had used ayahuasca several times before and that despite the dosage, some sort of unknown subconscious process was apparently both present and actively capable of allowing that door in my mind to open regardless. From what I have gathered, other accounts of this seem to follow similar themes that, in my opinion, have some potentially interesting implications in regards to how the subconscious mind can impact a psychedelic experience and to what extent.