Hey Higherside fam!
Many years ago (at this point), I was living in Brazil and I was exposed to an amazing new drug called 'changa'. It was created by an Australian man by the name of Julian Palmer and is fairly new, as he only debuted it at a psychedelic conference in 2009 (so it's only 17 years or so old, at the time of writing this).
Changa is basically a smokeable form of ayahuasca...the effects last between 15min and 2hrs (depending on how you make it). I describe it to people as a full ayahuasca trip condensed into about 20 minutes; it's all of the amazing psychedelia of the ayahuasca experience without any of the throwing up and shitting your pants...while purging is an important aspect of an ayahuasca trip, changa allows you to visit the same realm ayahuasca takes you to without the whole 'to-do' aspect of drinking the brew (fasting, purging, intense cathartic experiences, etc). It also doesn't require a trek to South America to experience, as all the ingredients to make it are legal in most places....You can cook it up in your kitchen (legally), smoke it in the morning, talk to gods, and be completely sober and ready to go about your day a mere 20 minutes later. Many of us would like to go to Iquitos and have an 'authentic' experience, but changa allows us to tap into that realm and experience what it has to offer without having to pony up absurd amounts of money and travel halfway around the globe to do so.
It's basically the perfect way to experience the spirit realm for our western sensibilities, and I truly believe it can change the world.
I've started a blog about my experiences with it (was planning to publish it as a book, but I've been getting frustrated with getting alpha-reads and finding a lit agent, so decided to just start publishing sections of it as substack articles....which I will continue to drop every week or so starting NOW)
As you guys are probably the most savvy and receptive audience I can think of that I'd like to share my stories with, so I'm going to drop the link to my nascent little substack here:
https://substack.com/@changadiaries
Check it out...please share any stories you guys have had with changa (if you have any) in the comments, and....thats it!
Bless you all! Thank you Greg for everything you do! Rest up and get better after your kidney thing, and hope it heals up quickly and you're back on your feet in no time!!
<3,
-Hermes
