“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien The third year on the island. Oliver Queen and Freddie Tuck had become masters of their individual tasks. Oliver was a hunter — using spears, traps and stealth he could capture any prey. His aim was impeccable. It had to be, after all. Sometimes they had to rely on the small critters of the forests and the beach, so he had to be precise and quick about killing. Freddie was a builder — he built the traps, repaired their homes, crafted weaponry and pieces of furniture for comfort. The man had lost quite a bit of weight at that point and had built some muscle to replace it. It was their third anniversary of arriving on the island. And the two friends proposed a toast to new beginnings. They had just expanded quite a bit deeper into the jungles. Their homes were larger. They had paths and systems of coverings in place for ease of guidance to and from their abodes, whether it was to the beach or deeper into the trees. They had systems of pulleys and makeshift buckets for ease of access to sources of fresh water on the island. Additionally they had constructed a way of purifying any water they retrieved from the ocean as well as large containers to gather rainwater. The night was cold but they sat in a warm aura of a fireplace between their homes, where they had cleared away some trees in the center. They had finished setting up their traps and had weapons at the ready for any wild animals that may smell the delicious cooking fish and rodent that rested over the flames. One of the greatest discoveries of this island was cacao. They had saved much of it as a delicacy and with various berries they created some delicious warm fruity drink to go along with it. Something they didn’t do much. But tonight was a night of celebration. An honoring of how far they’ve come. Oliver rose his makeshift cup, smiling at Freddie across the fire pit. “To life,” Freddie said. “And to hope,” Oliver said. “It’s what has kept us going this far. And we’re still here.” They both drank deeply of the pulpy, warm berry flavored drink. They each had a bowl of cacao fruit to snack on while they prepared their main meal. They would eat much in celebration with some left over for breakfast tomorrow. And they decided they would share their plans for when they got off the island. It wasn’t something they discussed much, but it was something they held onto tightly. Despite their contentedness on the island, that was only due to misfortune. They had no choice. But to survive with purpose is what kept them getting up in the cold early hours each morning to put in the enormous amounts of work it required to live. “God damn,” Freddie said, looking at his cup. “We really perfected this I think.” “Reducing the blackberries was a good choice,” Oliver admitted. “We have plenty more in the jug, my friend.” “Of course. Tonight we feast, buddy. And I’m just going to go ahead and pretend there’s alcohol in this.” Oliver laughed. “Alcohol… wow, remember that?” “How could I ever forget? Maple whiskey on the rocks during a cold winter’s day… A nice, classic hoppy beer while my pals enjoyed their fancy drinks at some expensive bar.” He chuckled. “I want to go back to it. And I don’t at the same time.” “I know how you feel.” Oliver drank and thought of his father’s legacy. His life among endless money and zero cares back in Star City. He squeezed the cup, recalling all the times he had taken advantage of others because of his influence. “You still thinking about traveling, then?” Freddie nodded and stretched. “Oh, you know it.” He sniffed and poured himself more of the fruity beverage. “Even if I have to go it alone.” He paused for a while. “My girl wouldn’t join me. Hell, even I wouldn’t join me if I went back to the world and met who I was a few years ago. But that’s okay.” He spat to the side. “Fuck money, man. I don’t want it. Everything we’ve done here… everything you and I have been through. God, how many people have been through this right under my nose in the city?” He shook his head. “If we get out of this —” “When,” Oliver reminded him. Freddie looked up at him and smiled slowly. “That’s right. When. When we get out of this I’m using my money to help others. I’ll use what’s left over to travel and help whoever I can wherever I go. When I run out I’ll settle down. Countryside. Farm. Gotta tell you, I’ve gotten used to this whole manual labor thing.” They both laughed and poured themselves more to drink. Some of the fish was ready so Oliver got up to pull some off the stick onto some large leaves they would eat off of. “And you,” Freddie said. “You’re still thinking of taking over your father’s business.” Oliver nodded. “But not for the reasons I wanted to before.” He handed Freddie some food and sat down with his own. “I want to take this wealth and keep it. But use it for others.” Oliver shook his head and took a bite of the hot food. “I’m scared I might fall back into old habits. But I need to try. Because this world requires money to live. So as long as I have the resources… I can do the most good.” Freddie nodded. “Makes sense, Ollie. Makes sense.”
They heard a loud snap from within the deep jungle, beyond the shadows, hidden from the moonlight. Oliver straightened up and looked. “Probably just a branch falling,” Freddie said. But that was when the arrows started to fly. ⬨⬦ ➣ ⬦⬨
PRESENT DAY
⬨⬦ ➣ ⬦⬨ Oliver Queen had many things to take care of. Such was the burden of all heroes. But right now, there was the girl and he could take care of that. He hoped. Hope was all he could carry in his heart these days. Hope that he would see his sister again. Hope that he would reunite with his mother. Hope that Queen Industries could do some real good and make some real change in Star City — and hopefully, from there, the rest of the world. He tumbled and took a rest at a rooftop. But what good could he really do? He asked himself that sometimes. He unhooked his bow and looked down at it. There were real powerhouses in this world. Real metahumans who could save hundreds in a single swoop — who could destroy anyone with a single flick of their wrist. Oliver Queen was just some guy with a bow and arrow, who happened to also have way too much money at his disposal. That was his real power and he knew it, no matter how much he wished it weren’t so. It wasn’t his fighting prowess or his skill at marksmanship — it was his wealth. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly. It was an unfortunate reality but he had to make the most of it. For this city. For Dinah. For Freddie. And… well, for himself and his family. The world was unfair and, to some, Oliver Queen was as powerful as Superman. To the impoverished of this city, people with the wealth of the Queen family could do whatever they wanted. “That’s right,” Oliver said at that realization. “I can do whatever I want.” He hooked his bow to his back and continued on his way, running fast. “I can change things. I can change myself.” He was born with a power, just like these metahumans were. He could use it for selfishness — or he could use it for others. The choice was obvious. The only hard part was fulfilling the mission in his heart.
Dinah Lance, suited up as Black Canary, delivered a powerful kick to the mugger who promptly dropped the purse and fell to grovel and cry like a frightened child. She swiped the purse and tossed it to the woman who stood timidly behind her. She winked and gave a thumbs up as the woman laughed nervously and rushed off. Dinah knelt down and secured the thief’s wrists with some rope and moved him to lean against the side of the building, calling up the police on her flip phone so they could take care of him. As she waited, her thoughts were fixed on the rise of criminals with strange tech in the city. The man she and Ollie had fought earlier had seemingly come out of nowhere. Equipped like nothing she or Ollie with all his connections had ever seen before. And he wasn’t the only one. Police had been dealing with these kinds of people over and over again. High tech armor, weaponry and acting as if they’ve been dropped somewhere to cause some mayhem. All of them are inexperienced and only a challenge because of what they carried with them… which was most certainly given to them. She crossed her arms and knew Ollie was about to stumble upon this secretive, elusive organization. It wouldn’t put an end to them and she feared for his safety. But perhaps they would get a little further in their hunt and investigation. “Excuse me.” The voice came from behind and Dinah looked over her shoulder. She saw a figure, cloaked in black. A young woman’s voice came from within the hood. And where it didn’t cover her face, there was a dark mask to conceal her features. “Hello,” Dinah said carefully, ready to counter anything this stranger planned to do to her. “You’re Black Canary,” the young, disguised woman said. “Which means you know Green Arrow.” She spoke steadily. Sure of herself. “I have information for you. If you’d like to hear what I have to say.” Dinah turned around and tilted her head, eyeing this person with suspicion and slight amusement. “I do love to learn,” she said. “Do you have a name?” The stranger’s head rose a bit and she placed her hands into the deep pockets of her cloak. “You can call me Gadget. My Father worked for the criminal underground you and all the police are so desperately trying to apprehend.” Dinah lowered her arms and paid much more attention to her. “What do you have for me, Gadget?” She stepped forward and Dinah backed away an inch. “I have names. It’s the best I can give to you. But perhaps with your and Mr. Arrow’s connections you can do something more with them.” A cold wind gusted past them and Dinah nodded. “The man in charge calls himself Richard Dragon. Not his real name, of course.” She looked down. “He is a powerful, ruthless man. Don’t assume he wants anything more than power. He will kill anyone in his way. He will do whatever it takes to gain more power in this city.” She looked up and Dinah saw her eyes for a moment. A deep green. Full of sadness. “I only know two others. One who goes by Brick… I do not know his name. But the last I do know.” She took another step forward and said it with deep, deep distaste and hatred. “Emiko Queen.” Dinah reeled back but did her best to catch herself. Queen? She had never heard of anyone named Emiko in Ollie’s life. There couldn’t have been a relation there… but she also didn’t know of many other Queens besides Oliver’s, admittedly mysterious, family. The stranger tilted her head. “You seem to be struck even more silent by that final name.” Dinah collected herself and smiled. “I’m just impressed you have a real name for me… that is if you’re telling me the truth.” “I have no reason to lie to you, Black Canary. I want these criminals stopped. And I will help however I can. But… I can’t stay in one place for too long.” She seemed to glance to the side, down an alleyway for a moment before looking back to Dinah. From within her cloak she produced two small orbs. “I have to go now. I will find you again. Please relay this information to Green Arrow.” She dropped the devices and Dinah prepared to defend herself. In the next blink, the entire area was filled with smoke as the orbs burst. Dinah flipped backward and raised her fists, preparing herself. Waiting. When the smoke cleared, she was alone with the mugger she had intercepted moments before. She lowered her arms and heard sirens approaching. After a few final looks around her, to make sure that girl was really gone, she rushed off and used her grappling hook to get out of the area and up onto a nearby building. ⬨⬦ ➣ ⬦⬨ Oliver followed the information he and Dinah were given by the police and rushed to where this young Arrowette had gone to. For ease of travel, he ran to a private garage in the city and leaped into one of his many… dare he call it… Arrowcars that he had hidden away in the city. It was fast, sleek and got him to the abandoned, dark police station where the tragedy of one Officer Marcy Money occurred not very long ago. He got out of the vehicle, equipped his bow and eased his way up the path, through the woods and toward the warehouse up ahead where these criminals were once held out in… until it exploded and left no more clues to follow. Hope was what Oliver held onto as he ran. He wasn’t far behind this girl so he knew he would find her. He shouted her name for good measure. Through the trees — as he ran across an open field — as he explored the empty, vast remnants of the warehouse. And he entered the next patch of trees, calling for the amateur hero, hoping to see her alive. Hoping to meet her. Hoping to learn more about her and put an end to her dangerous goals. As he slowly entered the trees he could clearly see the aftermath of a battle. Arrows were lodged into tree trunks, snapped and restless on the forest floor. Some of them professionally made. Many of them were clearly made by hand but well crafted. He lifted one and nodded, impressed. Well, if anything he could probably give the kid one thing — she seemed to be pretty skilled for as far as that compliment could go. Much to his horror he found blood on the ground among the grass and dirt. Rope that had been cut away, wrapped loosely around a tree. Was someone restrained here? He did his best to find some leads as to where this fight could have gone to… …and he quickly received an answer. An explosion echoed across the sky, shaking his bones. He whirled around and through the gaps in the trees he saw something bright rise up in the distance. Far but powerful enough to be heard and felt from this distance. He rushed through the trees and at the treeline he could see beyond the hills and the next neighborhood over, a large fire on the horizon, spreading and growing high into the sky. What on Earth…? Hope, he reminded himself. It was all he had. Even among that mysterious destruction, whatever caused it, and whoever might have been within its vicinity… he had to hold onto hope. It was all that separated a life of potential from a life of desperation on an island made of pain and loss.
I ordered these May 14th and received them May 18th. I let these rest for at least a week before wearing them to test and write down my thoughts on them, although I played with a few of them before a full week elapsed. I do plan to let most of these age for a few months, even if I don't like them, to see what happens. I am also a total newbie, so uh! Take that into account I guess? I had a ton of fun with this! Flower Moon Alchemy (May 2020):"a lush bouquet of Verona tulips, fresh yellow daffodils, paperwhite narcissus, neroli orange flowers, stargazer lilies, and creamy white gardenias." Starts off really sweet and with a LOT of flowers- not subtle AT ALL, but also not trying to punch me in the face and doesn’t seem headache inducing. Think warm summer evening in a fancy garden instead of astringent artificial flower smell. I can’t really pick out individual notes other than FLOWER POWER, but it’s pleasant. I’m not very passionate about this one, but I don’t hate it- it’s fine. Also, this perfume WAFTS! I am constantly smelling flowers no matter what I do; I feel like there should be a sparkly cartoon cloud trail following me around my apartment, and I’m not sure how to feel about it. After about 20 minutes it starts to smell like something familiar I can’t place. Maybe…. wet wipes? Like the scented, lotioned ones my mom would use when my brother was a little kid and he got more food on his face than in his mouth. Or some kind of air fresheneFebreze type thing? I think it’s wet wipes. After about 45 minutes, the wet wipe smell morphs into something floral… but with a layer of something suspiciously poopy. Like, fancy artisanal scented diapers, but they’ve been used. Is that the indole I’ve heard so much about? I was hoping the poop impression would fade, but it only got stronger over the subsequent 10 minutes. At that point I washed the perfume off, because when given the choice, I refuse to smell like diapers. Yikes The Sybilla:"A perfumed augury of oracular botanicals from ancient Greece - acanthia, spicy bay leaves, sideritis, olibanum, olive flowers, oleander, wild apple, and fossilized amber." Ooooh I was wary of trying fruity perfumes and pretty much only bought this because I’m minoring in classics and liked the name, but HOLY SHIT, this is good. I get a lot of green apple to start, but it’s not too sweet, too tart, or too much like green apple candy- it’s really quite lovely and refreshing. There's little hints of something vegetal and leafy, like when you rub or rip the leaves and branches of certain plants and the smell gets on your fingers. It’s good, without it I think the perfume would be way too sweet for me. It slowly gets less sweet and develops some depth- I want to say some herbaceous notes? Like, a whisper of basil maybe? I don’t know why I like this so much, but there’s something about it that just jives with me. It's nice and summery without being too runaway light or syrupy sweet. The one downside is that it fades pretty quickly on me- less than an hour before I need to shove my nose into my wrist to smell anything. But hooo boy that hour is so good, it's SO good you guys, I’m really into this. This is one I will gleefully use up and may consider buying a full version, even if I have to reapply it throughout the day. I want to bathe in this perfume, holy fuck. Sailing to Byzantium:"A 19th century gentleman scholar's blend of dried ivy leaves, lotus root, and oakmoss; a nostalgic whisper of Provence lavender, tonka, and mist soaked tweed warmed by green cardamon; a quiet rumination of rare incense woods; and the papyrus paper, soft leather, and ink from a worn travel journal." I pretty much only pick up on what I think is papyrus- it’s very reedy and a little wet smelling. Something about this reminds of the smell of cucumbers, although I’m not sure why- it's not a refreshing kind of cucumber smell. It smells a tiny bit sweeter after ~30 minutes and stays that way for the remaining hour that I could smell it on my wrist, which helps my enjoyment of this scent a little, but not enough. This doesn’t really smell like the things I enjoy about old book smell, sadly. It’s fine? I don’t hate it, but I don’t like it and I don’t want to wear it. I wish I got more ink or leather or anything that wasn’t just reeds. The Lover Tells of The Rose:"Rambling wild roses, a touch of lemon verbena, white pearl tea leaves, delicate white patchouli, and a springtime rebirth of new greens and wet mosses..." Hmm I was wary about this one, but it isn't bad! Fresh cut grass smell is really prominent to start and the rose smell is second to the grass, but not faint. Sometimes I'll get hints of some sort of citrus, I think lemon. I didn’t expect to enjoy the rose, but it’s fairly lovely. It does get sweeter as it dries down (at this point I can’t tell if that’s the perfume or how my skin works, I feel like everything I’ve tried gets sweeter after application, ha) but does so without making the rose smell too overpowering. It’s not quite as delicate as I'd like, but over time the grassy notes fade and the rose settles into a really soft, pretty scent. It is very light and very pretty, but I just don’t like rose that much. I might pass this on to my mother, who adores roses. Mist Becoming Rain:"Rainwater, mist drenched hazel wood, meadow grasses, sage blooms, orris root, ozone, grey amber. Deep, dark, cool and mysterious." When I first put this on, I was SUPER worried, because directly out of the bottle I just get wet mushrooms, but oh man do I love this? Fresh on skin, the aforementioned wet mushroom smell is REAL FUCKING PUNGENT for maybe 30 seconds. After that, it smells wet and vegetal and a little earthy, with something sharp underneath it. After a few minutes, it mellows out a bit and gets sweeter, but there’s still that sharpness to it, which I can’t place. Is that the ozone? It doesn’t quite smell like rain to me, but that’s not stopping from huffing my arm! It reminds me more of the aftermath of a summer thunderstorm rolling away from you, when everything smells sweet and wet and grassy and all the greenery takes on that really wonderful Green. After 30-45 minutes, the sharpness fades away and there’s just this nice sweet wet smell left- maybe a touch earthy and not exactly the most realistic post rain smell, but it's close enough and it smells reeeeallly good. Seriously, I Cannot Stop Huffing Myself. I absolutely love this perfume, holy shit. The only downside is that it doesn’t last long on my skin- a little under two hours before I have to jam my nose into wrist. Is this a super realistic rain scent? Not really. Is this my ideal rain scent? No. Is any of that going to stop me from smearing this on any chance I get to become my own personal pungent thundercloud? Absolutely Not. Evil Temptress:"The essence of an inexorable seduction. A naughty elegance of saffron, pink pepper, Ceylon cinnamon, spicy carnations, bourbon roses, pears soaked in honey cognac, cashmeran, hay, tonka, dark caramel, a titillating flick of leather, black opium, and cardamon infused patchouli." Starts off really deep and a little fruity and sexy as hell- immediately after putting it on I’m like OH WOW YES PLS. No notes I can tease out individually but definitely a smell I want to put on my body. It’s deep and it’s dark but it’s not subdued- she’s not limiting her evil to subtle machinations, but she’s not constantly monologuing about her evil evil plans or maniacally laughing, either. I want to wear this and don a mysterious swooshy cloak and look knowing, attractively unapproachable, and yes, evil. Hell yeah! For about five minutes it remains in HELL YES territory, before veering hardcore into smelling like a dude’s locker room with an undercurrent of old spice. Maybe sweaty spiced pear? Either way, not great. I had to wash this one off, because I kept smelling myself and going “oh geez I just showered wtf?” but IT WAS THE PERFUME EVERY TIME. It’s summer, I don’t need the help of any perfume to smell sweaty. What a fitting name- this was an evil, evil, betrayal, and I will probably definitely fall for it again. IT JUST SMELLS SO GOOD IMMEDIATELY ON MY SKIN! AHH!!!!! This is one I’m shoving into the back of my closet and hoping like hell it works for me when I rediscover it. Maybe I’ll put it in my hair, because I really want to make it work. For now, though, I am sad about it. Love is Nearer Death: "A narcotically seductive floriental garden of Sambac jasmine, Spicy carnation, Dark orchids, Cananga flower, Lotus blossoms, Tuberose, Vanilla orchid, and Neroli woven with an aphrodisiac spell of spiced amber and cacao dusted labdanum." It's pretty! It's floral! It's not light and airy but it also isn't overpowering! It goes on floral and it stays floral! I have nothing else to say about it! It's not the perfume's fault, I think I'm just meh on flowery perfumes. I do get some of that maybe indole smell I got from Flower Moon Alchemy, but without any poopiness or wet wipe smell- I think the perfume deserves praise for that and that alone. It is, overall, very pleasant? I would wear it to to walk around on a humid summer night. Prairie 66: "A free-spirited, herbal-fresh summery blend of Sage Flowers, Aldehydes, Grapefruit, Linden Blossoms, Bergamot, Saffron, Gray Amber, Yucca, Yuzu, and a touch of cool concrete. Yes, concrete.The smell of an old cement-paved road in the desert just before dawn when the cement is cold and almost, but not quite damp. The smell of Mother Road." Immediately on skin it smells floral, but sweet and creamy- nothing too airy or insistent- and I uhhh REALLY like it? Underneath that I maybeee get something vaguely minty or menthol-y? It’s really nice refreshing note I can’t place, but I can only describe it as bright. While I can’t say it smells like a highway, something about this perfume believably situates itself in my memories of road trips and waiting at train stations in the summer. It’s like a romanticized version of those warm summer days when sky is that bright blue, the air is just a tad too humid to be comfortable, the smell of flowers and pollen drifting your way, and there might be people around but it is very much you and your thoughts and the asphalt. All without the unfortunate realities of like, wasps flying into the car or desperately needing to pee or that one guy on the train platform who is on the phone talking SO LOUDLY and SO OBNOXIOUSLY about his wild party or his stock portfolio or something. It reads more “train platform during non-peak hours in the summer” than “road trip!” to me, but I spend more time in trains than in cars. Unfortunately, that really nice smell became less and less atmospheric and more and more soapy on me, and only 15 minutes after application it straight up smelled like ivory soap. Seriously- I asked my dad if he thought it smelled soapy and he went “huh! It smells like ivory soap! :D” He got a bar and we took turns sniffing my perfume and then the soap, and it did! It smelled like ivory soap. #science #fatherdaughterbonding. Huge bummer, because I really liked how it smells at first! After an hour the perfume has faded, and the soap smell is still there but under that I can maybe begin to faintly smell some kind of floral smell again. It’s not unpleasant, but I have to really shove my wrist against my nose to get anything, and it's nowhere near as interesting as it is immediately after applying the perfume. Actually, it kind of smells like really faint calamine lotion now? Yeah, that reads like calamine to me. Still summery, but not in the way I would like from a perfume ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ OOF disappointing! I was really excited about this since it is tangentially related to Chicago! It smells good and for a brief shining moment is really evocative, but then it all goes to soap. I have read at least one review where the author had a similar soap-tastic experience, but after leaving it to age for a month it performed better, so I will definitely be returning to this! Until then, I will just gaze longingly at it whenever I open my perfume box. Gothique:"The scent of midnight mass in a medieval cathedral. A Byzantine monastic incense recipe of Somalian frankincense, styrax benzoin, Arabian myrrh, cassia, spikenard, canella, Liquidambar orientalis, labdanum, Atlas cedar, and vetiver." Immediately after application, it smells very smoky, in a barbecue burning charcoal type of way. Luckily, that fades pretty fast (~30 seconds) into a pleasantly wood burn-y type way, with a hint of sweetness. It begins to smell kind of like incense and gets sweeter over several minutes, and the smoke kind of settles down to this really nice backdrop for the incense. It doesn't quite make me want to light a shitton of candles and wear a hooded robe and speak cryptic and spooky prophecies unto passersby, (which, to be honest, isn't a difficult thing to make me want), but that's ok. I am into this. Unfortunately, the "sweet and kind of incense-y" smell gradually turns into grape juice concentrate smell. It is, to be a fair, a very nice grape juice concentrate, maybe one with some cranberry or pomegranate juice mixed in for depth, and it doesn't smell too artificial. Sometimes I get the barest hint, the faintest whisper, of some spices that take it into mulled wine territory, but that is very brief and may be my imagination. It is all incredibly well balanced with the smoke, none of it is overpowering and it is very smooth and mellow. That said? On me it smells like smoky grape juice. Fancy, well executed smoky grape juice, but smoky grape juice nonetheless. I am no longer into this. Lilacs Along the Winding Drive:"An olfactory portrait of a May evening.... lilac bushes heavy and purple with blooms, a gentle breeze after light spring rain, a dusty pebbled driveway, a slightly rusty porch swing, and a small handful of late blooming violets." I think I get violets more than lilacs from this perfume. The lilacs I grew up with were really light and airy, this perfume is much heavier and almost damp smelling. Every so often I’ll get a hint of lilac, but whatever the other floral is dominates it. It’s not unpleasant, but it’s not the nostalgic lilac party I was hoping for. It’s a pretty, steady, purple flower perfume, I’m not totally in love with it yet, but I could grow really fond of it. It settles down a little, but the smell seems generally stays the same for the duration of the hour I had it on. I wish it had more lilac, but it is a very pretty scent regardless. After an hour of wear, I started to feel some of the indicators of an oncoming headache, so I washed the perfume off. I was dealing with some other potential headache triggers at the same time and it smelled much milder than first time I played with it, so I don’t think the headache was caused by the perfume, but I can’t make a firm determination. The first time I wore it (about four days after delivery) it was strong to start with and quickly evolved into an even stronger and stupendously awful Purple Flower Soap Bonanza, which definitely caused a nasty headache. I had a VERY different and mostly enjoyable experience with it this time, however, so I’m hopeful that, with time, it will mature into something really lovely. 1891:"Based on a 19th century recipe for a fine gentleman's cologne. A delightful anachronism of French lavender buds, mandarin peel, lime leaves, bergamot, bay leaves, coriander, clove, nutmeg, ginger flower, pink pepper, elegant white carnations, heirloom tree rose, opium tar accord, and woody amber resin nestled in an embrace of precious oriental incense woods." Ohhhh this is first and foremost a cologne, but it is a very nice cologne. It starts with a bright and happy, but still grounded and sensible, citrus smell. The citrus isn't too sharp nor does it smell like fake citrus cleaner, and has a pleasant sweetness to it. There's some kind of sweet spice in the mix, maybe clove? ginger? I don't know what it is, but I know it smells good. It's just very fresh, in general! This may be one of my favorites so far. I've worn this multiple times, and sometimes, but not always, it can start to shift into a woody smelling perfume, and then as it fades more, can develop this weird smoky note. It's more of a burning charcoal smell than a pleasant smoke smell, and isn't very pleasant. Luckily, the charcoal smell is pretty faint and I have to really shove my nose close to my wrist to smell it, and it doesn't happen to me all the. The wood note is pleasant, although I would rather it never be accompanied by the charcoal smell, but the rest of the perfume is so good and the charcoal smell inconsistent, so I will overlook it. Oh boy do I love that citrus, though. Old Books and Fresh Flowers:"Fresh neroli orange flowers and heliotrope blossoms pressed between the delicate paper pages of a leather-bound book." This one may make me change my mind about floral perfumes. Immediately upon application, it smells like good paper, but also floral and creamy and sweet, and I love it. The paper is strong, and while similar to the papyrus note in Sailing to Byzantium, isn't too reedy, and slowly mellows out and blends really well with the florals. The floral smell isn't overpowering and it doesn't try to box you about the ears, but it isn't shy, either. The flowers in this perfume have a backbone and a self-confidence I envy, and it works and works well! Something about the smell makes me think of creamy yellow flowers, but I have no reasoning to defend that, because I know shit about fuck when it comes to flowers. Still, it smells yellow. There's also a subtle leather note that acts as a really nice backdrop for the flowers, but it's soft and doesn't try to compete with the flowers or the paper. It very much captures the smell of sitting with a bunch of older textbooks and a vase of flowers nearby. I'm going to wear this every time I study now. Persian Tea Room:"A long, slow flirtation – exquisitely polite, yet spiced with double-entendres and sensual promise. Strong black tea, dry desert sand, and Silk Road spices, against a background of erotically enticing musk and the slight, lingering kiss of soft leather." Wet on skin it smells faintly smoky, without going into barbecue charcoal territory like some other smoke notes I've tried have. It’s a little sweet, but not in a cloying or sugary way- it smells like a sweetened black tea to me! After drying it picks up some spiced notes that don’t try to shove themselves in your face- not faded, but not super intense either. There’s definitely cinnamon in there, and maybe nutmeg? cardamom? clove? Maybe some cumin or turmeric or something a little less sweet to round it out? The cinnamon isn’t as sharp or sweet as actual cinnamon, and I think it works well with the black tea smell. It’s all kind of pleasantly mellow and quiet and dusty, like a spice shop crossed with a pleasantly rickety bookshop or antique store. I’m not sure if this is something I would reach for intentionally, but I also can’t stop huffing myself. I may be in denial about how much I like this. (I'm definitely in denial about how much I like this). Absinthe and Laudanum in the Afternoon:"An intemperate intoxication of galbanum, laudanum accord, tonka bean, vetivert root and narcotic wormwood swooning into an euphoric delirium of opium poppy, poet's jasmine, and french lavender." This, like 1891, is definitely a cologne. I don't know how to describe this one, other than it's fresh and clean smelling, very much like a fancy men's aftershave, and it gets a little peppery towards the end. This is another one I really like, although not quite as much as 1891. It does smell fancy and classy, and you told me it was a $200 cologne I would believe you and then burst into tears because fancy classy people are terrifying to my grubby chemistry student self. It isn't $200 though, and I can look at the sample bottle without bursting into flames, so that's good! Wearing it does make me feel classy and put together- this is a perfume that tells me "you go you funky little lesbian, you got this!" and you know what! The perfume is right, I am a funky little lesbian, and I do got this. Thank you, perfume/cologne, I appreciate you. Also, the name is pretty fucking rad, so extra bonus points for that. Silver Sky:"A springtime freshet of rainwater musk, oceanic grey amber, muget, daffodil, silver needle tea, galbanum, and white cedar." Oh this smells so fresh and sweet and clean, and I love it. It doesn't quite smell like rain in my area, but it does smell "inspired by rain," if that makes sense? It doesn't take on a strong "perfume-y" or cologne smell, but it does smell cool and fresh and watery. It smells much more natural to me than Mist Becoming Rain does. The smell isn't like the aftermath of a rainstorm, but approaches how the air smells during a cool spring rain in midwest cities and suburbs. Again, this isn't my ideal rain smell, but damn is it close!
Hello again everyone. I originally posted about my experience taking 21g of dried mushrooms because I was looking to solicit advice from people who had been to this level and beyond, as I have found very little information about this sort of thing online. I did not expect such a large (and positive!) reaction from the community, and would like to indulge in the requests for a full trip report, which I probably should have done first. This is going to be a long post, but I will break it up into sections for those who would like to 'skip to the good bits'. ** Throat Clearing *\* I have never written a trip report. All of us here understand how difficult it is to convey these experiences to the uninitiated, but thankfully I think we all have a common short-hand vocabulary. Spinning tunnels of fractal explosions are something I think we are all familiar with to some degree, so I will save some space by sparing any unnecessary visual details as, I trust many of you will agree, they are not necessarily the most important elements of these journeys. I'd like to emphasize that I do not think of myself as particularly special for having gone this 'deep'. There is a world of enlightenment available at a 5g dose or even less, and I do not feel that my experience imbues me with more authority than anyone else here. I won't ever recommend to anyone what I've done. Anyone who feels called to do something like this will find their way to it on their own, without being encouraged by some random internet post. The same precautions one should take at any of the lower doses apply here, and have been repeated many times over on the internet, and for good reason. These are incredibly powerful substances and should never be treated casually. Careful and mindful use not only enhances your physical and mental safety, but I think also allows you to get more out of the experience. ** My Approach *\* I figure context is everything, so I should briefly describe my CV, as it were, to give you an idea of where I am coming from when entering these realms. I have become increasingly fascinated by the intersection of scientific and theological inquiry. Science offers us precise language to describe the myriad phenomena of nature. Theology, mythology, poetry, art, etc allow us to gain insight into the more intangible or numinous elements of our reality that, at least for now, escape the grasp of a more rigorous scientific process. It is my purpose in life to dive into both of these fields and help to develop a structure of translation between the two. For example, we can describe Love as the complex interplay of dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine (wiki copy-pasta, don't mind me). We could also describe it as an unquenchable red flame that resides in the breasts of all men and women, and if extinguished, sends us flailing into a barren cave, devoid of meaning, hope, and peace. I regard both of these descriptions as valid, while coming from wildly different points of inquiry. There is much we know about reality, but it is dwarfed by what we don't know. The fields of theoretical physics, mathematics, and consciousness, among others, in many ways have only just begun, as we only have an account of 5% of the construct of spacetime (the rest being dark matter and dark energy). Driving these fields forward requires creative thinking, which often relies on riddle, metaphor, or analogy to get us pointed in the right direction, only then to be followed by a more precise set of instruments. For me, psychedelic substances, whether plants or deliberate chemical extractions, offers us one more powerful tool for inquiry. I try to look at humanity through the lens of what we were 50,000 years ago, when we lived in small bands. As far as I'm concerned, the Neolithic Era is modern times. We spent the vast majority of our time as a species living in very small bands of hunter-gatherers. Mushrooms strike me as being the OG of mind alteration, as there is no chemistry, or even fire, required to ingest it. Without deeply consulting the field of Anthropological Archaeology, it seems self-evident to me that mushrooms would have been one of the many plants discovered by our ancestors, and at least a few members of the clan, if not all of them, would have developed some kind of practice around them, as their effects are undeniable. This leads me to how one might define what a Shaman is. If we are a pattern recognizing species, over time, clans would have categorized as much as they could about their surrounding environment, from plants to animals, eventually to the stars, which then would have been passed down through oral traditions. Those who were more adept, would have been elevated to these positions of responsibility, and maybe its safe to refer to these as the first shaman. Over time, through introspection, medicine use (including mushrooms), and observation, they would have developed a codified system of understanding, thus allowing their clan to survive, and even thrive. I believe all modern religions are the descendants of these early discoveries, which is why there are so many similarities across belief structures. In my time, I have read through certain myths and holy texts, but I have not yet pursued a deep study of them (I only have so much time, after all..). This is not to say that they have nothing more to offer me, but I have become more interested in the process of original discovery as opposed to the already codified systems that have been handed down to us. Some have suggested that this is folly, and I understand their concern. I respect the elders, and those who have devoted their entire lives to the pursuit of wisdom. But I also am aware that the first shaman, by definition, had no teachers or traditions to draw from, and had to develop it themselves over the generations. I'll never have access to a true blank-slate the way they did, but I can try my best! Finally, I am guided by the idea that Everything, in principle, is understandable, even if it takes the human race, or whatever may come after, eons to develop this understanding. I reject the idea that to explain something is to diminish it. There are those who dislike the process of biological evolution, denigrating it as "mere chemistry" as opposed to something more poetically majestic. I find great beauty and divinity in all mechanisms of nature and reality (maybe those are the same thing). Whatever we may refer to as 'supernatural' still interfaces with what we regard as 'natural', and therefore both fall under the umbrella terms of nature or reality. I am comfortable in my ignorance, but refuse to accept that the seeking of higher knowledge is in any way arrogant. That attitude has done much to hold our species back, and it would be better if we left it behind. Caution should always be practiced and even celebrated, but I will not kneel to the 'god of the gaps'. I worship reality. Science and Art are the two high priests of my religion. ** How I Trip *\* I'll briefly describe my general process here. I typically go in with a few subjects I'd like to ponder, or specific questions to find answers to, whether they be about myself, society, politics, consciousness, etc. Lately I've been interested in exploring the dark side of human nature, and will deliberately put myself into a darker state. To stretch one's empathy with evil people can be quite a task, and can reveal a lot about your deeper darker self. I subscribe to the belief that there is a dormant Auschwitz security guard lying somewhere in all of us (unfortunately, not so dormant in some), and we have a responsibility to understand it, in order to prevent it ever coming out. Generally, it is reconciling with our shadow, a la Jung. When going into this state, I create a darker environment. Sometime this entails playing very loud death metal or black metal (music that I already love, but covers the darker elements of the human experience), and put videos on, sometimes of death camp footage, animal abuse, executions, non-sensual pornography, or even something like the New Zealand shooter video. It is difficult to push through and feel empathy, or even a sense of unconditional love for humanity, when doing this practice, but in order to fully appreciate the breadth of what humans are capable of, I find it necessary. If we can't love the worst of us, then our love is conditional. The realm of unconditional love is not all flowers and sunshine, as poets might otherwise suggest. Through this, I hope, and sometimes succeed, in finding some sort of insight into this class of human, to inform the development of a sort of psychological or spiritual inoculation from the worst of our impulses. It's not all so grim, I always finish out by returning myself to the light, whether through music or general contemplation of all that is beautiful in the world, and reconnect with my over-arching sense of purpose. I could elaborate more, but hopefully you have a general idea of the various mindsets I bring to this project. ** Pre-Trip *\* I already do a 36 hour fast once a week, so I'll typically have a journey on one of these days. I like to be very empty when I go in. Two hours before I dose, I like to do a really rigorous workout, maybe a hard 30 minutes with a kettlebell. I find this removes any excess nervous energy, and helps me get into the mode of focusing my mind and pushing through struggle. This is followed by a very cold shower, ultimately for the same purpose. A quick note on ritual. I learned the importance of ritual from my experiences of taking Ayahuasca under the guidance of shaman. I have come to the conclusion that ritual is crucial in keeping your centered on your purpose, whatever that may be. I don't think its necessary to copy rituals that others have done, and in reality, they will probably be more meaningful if you develop your own (though I've certainly borrowed from many). My mantra is: It doesn't matter *what* you do, just *that* you do. The presence of ritual is more important than the content of the ritual. I like to burn sage and palo santo, as cliche as that may sound. They are grounding, and god dammit, they smell awesome. I have a little table set up that serves as a sort of altar, where I burn my incense, pour my dose, etc. It nothing pretty, just a nice centered place to have everything. I first drink a concoction of ceremonial grade cacao, about 2oz. I don't mean to advertise or anything, but I get mine from Firefly Chocolate. High doses can have a mildly entheogenic effect, and contribute to a sense of gratitude and warmth (also tastes great). After drinking this, I go through my own version of a 'chakra blessing'. I don't really want to talk too much about chakras because, at best, they serve as a metaphor for the different contents of your personality and experience. I go through each one of these and try to express a sense of gratitude and surrender from them. When finished, I sit quietly and meditate for another 10-15 minutes. Then I dose. I grind mine in a coffee grinder, and mix it with water and a vitmain-C powder packet. It makes it taste nice, and it does seem that vit-C seems to help it kick in, but I fully appreciate this might be bro-science. Yes, 21g of dried plant material is a lot, and it ends up taking about 2 cups of water to get it all down. ** Trip *\* Alrighty, here we are at last. I am going to break this up into sections separated by content, as opposed to trying to tell the story chronologically. Through the experience, all of these concepts intertwined with and interrupted each other. A chronological telling would come across as a very poorly edited Christopher Nolan movie. I simply have to trust in the audience's understanding here, that under the influence, all of these things can hit us at once, in a way that would be indecipherable in our sober states. I suppose part of the process of integration is untangling all of these elements so that they can be fully viewed and appreciated. * The Beginning \* I always get very cold to the point of shivering at first, so I strip down and get into bed with a few blankets. I wear an eye-mask serving as a blind-fold, and put on noise-canceling headphones without music, to reduce outside sensory input and just lay there. Typically within 30 minutes I start to feel something. In the blackness, a small dot of color emerges from the center, and slowly starts to draw a multicolored spiral. I always interpret this as the mushrooms saying "Oh hai!! Welcome back!" and waving to me like a good friend in the distance. These dancing patterns grow and morph, and a gentle tunnel emerges. Sometimes these are colorful fractal patterns, which then morph into black and white cubes, then to an asymmetric weave of forest-like branches and roots, and everything in between, save for any kind of specific or discernible entity. The first phase of mushroom trips for me tend to be an experience of pure emotion, without any context. There are no words, or ideas, just a ballet of colors, light, and glee. It feels like I am ascending an elevator to the final destination, and I am simply surveying the landscape during the journey. Its like when you are out for a drive, soaking in the view of the beach, or mountains, or grass and trees; thoughtless formless bliss. It is here that I typically experience what we've all come to term as ego-death. Where your sense of self dissolves into the ether, and all that is left is a stripped down version of your own consciousness. At higher doses, starting around 10, I find this tends to happen within the first 90 minutes or so, it is almost like a pre-requisite to continue further down the rabbit-hole. This may be one of the harder things to convey from this process. The death of ego is like an open-sesame to whatever the next temple of being is. It is only the beginning. I don't mean to minimize the importance or beauty of ego-death, as it is an experience I wish all humans could experience even once in their lives, and served as a rebirth for me. But the journey to these deeper levels seems to use ego-death itself as the launching pad. Oh, and oh my god so cold!! *shiver shiver* * Trouble.. and then Hell \* A lot took place over this portion of the trip. I will give the general narration, but other details will be filled in in later sections. The visuals continue to grow in their geometric complexity. My intuition told me there was still a symmetry to them, but they started to look very messy and chaotic. There was a pattern to be discerned, but the speed of my thought and attention was insufficient to make sense of it. This didn't upset me, so I simply sat back to watch the show, only it grew more intense, and found myself becoming uneasy for the first time in all of my mushroom experiences. A creeping notion of "oooooh dear...what have I done..?" began to take hold. A wave of nausea overtook me. I followed my nausea to the bathroom, actually hoping I might throw up any undigested matter before I took anymore psilocybin on board. No vomit was forthcoming, but my stomach still ached, so I sat against the wall in the bathroom next to the toilet. Over time I found myself in a void, but no longer floating through a tunnel. I was crawling along a rough rocky desert floor. It was a very red and alien world, very suggestive of pictures of Mars' surface. There were towering mountains in front of me, and the sky was glowing a menacing mix of neon green and a pale red. But through the sky, like a constant shooting star, was the tunnel I was previously traveling through, with its ever-changing geometric patterns. It felt disturbingly far away. With dizzying delirium, I continued to crawl through the bottom of this cosmic Grand Canyon. The view of the ground and sky would occasionally fall away to something beyond vision. I was no longer seeing with my two eyes, or even my third eye. This was some other sense, that manifested itself from behind my consciousness. I sometimes refer to this as the Godhead, that voice, or vision, or understanding that doesn't seem to come through any of your typical sensory input, but emerges from behind them, from behind whatever it is to be you, or to be conscious. I've had plenty of experience with whatever this entity is. It is the source of deeper understanding, empathy, love, cosmic oneness, ego-death; the experience that convinces people they have connected with "God" or "god" or "source"; this entity has many names, and may be the source of our religious impulses as a species. But it was now sending me into a whirl of lightless light and soundless sound. All dimensions that make up reality lay before me in a dancing and precise tornado. If the speed of our thoughts could be measured, the way you might measure the speed of a car, this tornado lassoed my mind and pulled it along with it, far exceeding whatever its normal, or even elevated, speed is. If a car at sea-level suddenly accelerated to the speed of sound, its frame would likely rip apart and scatter to pieces. The speed of my mind was stretched beyond its limit, and everything, Everything, became a still blur. Concept, emotion, mind, spirit, space, matter, and time, all frozen. It was all one single brush stroke of paint on canvas, frozen into one moment. But I was still there, trapped. Unable to move, think, feel; it was an all-encompassing paralysis, and there was no escape, and it would never end. Ever. It felt like I was there for a thousand years. Then suddenly movement and presence returned, and I found myself back where I was, crawling over pebbles and sand under the alien skies. With presence of mind returned, I found myself horrified at the implications of where I was. I still had no conception that this would ever end. There is no past or future, those are mere concepts. The present moment is all there is or ever will be, at least from our own consciousness. And that present is itself infinite. At times I was able to fall back on my meditation practice, accepting and surrendering to the present moment. The key to psyches, as they all say, is surrender, surrender, and surrender. I did my best to clear my mind of everything and focus on one point of blackness. This actually did pull me out, for brief and sporadic moments throughout this portion of the trip. I could return to my bathroom, sitting against the wall next to the toilet. My cat sitting in front of me, staring at me, probably confused, or wanting food... But he is actually a fantastic trip buddy, and his presence offered a much needed respite. But I was pulled back in, it was too difficult to maintain that meditative state for long periods at a time. I was back in the canyon, crawling, searching everywhere for help. I would also be sucked back into that frozen vortex, then be released again to the desert floor, and then finally to my bathroom and back again. There was a constant oscillation between all of these locations, bringing me to the depths of absolute ceaseless psychotic madness, and to moments of utter clarity and fascination. Like a see-saw, or better yet, a sine wave. I imagine we all have our own sense of losing touch with Time in these realms. The typical mushroom trip lasts maybe 6 hours, but it can feel like you've been in for far longer. I felt stuck in this place for what felt like millennia, even though my sliver of remaining sanity knew I was home, on mushrooms, and..maybe this will end..? It was not enough to convince me. I'd gone mad, I broke, and even if I hadn't, even if I somehow returned to sober existence, I knew that all our reality was built on this foundation. Even if I did escape, there was no true escape. Time, life, consciousness, matter, none of these can escape the confines of what reality is. There is an actual outer limit to what everything *is*. I wanted to escape. I needed to die. I have a gun in the house, that's my way out. This cannot continue. I have to escape. These thoughts flew through me at a dizzying pace. I had to get myself up, make my way to my room, load it up, and escape. On three occasions through this journey, the decision had been made, then lightly fell away. Finally, and ironically, reason prevailed. If everything truly is confined to whatever 'reality' is, and there is no escape, then...there really is no escape, right? If you die, you just pass into the infinite, and come out the other side, into similar form, with the same structure, and the same problems. The only thing you would accomplish is to destroy the lives of those you love, thus ruining the rest of their conscious existence until they themselves were reborn and started again. The moral of the story? There is no such thing as death, and what a fucking shame that is. Throughout these dimension flips, I encountered entities. Some came to me in the bathroom, some into the canyon, and some into the void. I'll talk about some here, and do the rest in their own sections. I was helped through by many familiar faces. There were three women who have had a strong presence in my medicine journeys and spiritual growth, all healers in their own way. They wore white, and glowed like the Elves of Rivendell(!). They cradled me in their laps and stroked my hair, speaking words of encouragement and peace, granting me strength to push through. One of my best friends also emerged, and carried me on his back a part of the way, no words spoken, just letting me drape over him and rest for a moment. There were unfamiliar faces as well. Sometimes crowds of strangers looking on, without speaking. I couldn't tell why they were there, or what they were expressing. There were just..there.. At one point, when it was at its most harrowing, I was on my back, under a very dark but starry sky, with that tunnel still running through it. There was a small fire next to me, and a very hairy and dirty bearded man hovering over me, with his face inches away from mine, chanting something indecipherable. He calmed me with his words. It felt as though he was some shaman or medicine man from a time long past, entering the same realm I had, to help me get through it. I wondered if he thought I was some dumb kid, messing around with grown-up things, and performing an annoying duty of pulling me out. Over time, the intensity of this experience diminished, and I returned to my bathroom, my cat still staring at me. I found the strength to stand up, and go get a cold drink. On my way, I saw the clock. I had dosed three hours prior. My time on the bathroom floor had all taken place over the course of about 90 minutes. I had the presence of mind to be able to laugh at this. Millennia...in 90 minutes..? Christ, what a drama queen! I went back to my bed and sat up, and put on some gentle music. At this point, I recognized the 'level' that I was at, which would have been peaking on about 10g. This is a comfortable place for me, and helped me to unpack whatever the hell I had just been through. I texted my friend to let him know I was okay, thus obviously prompting him to wonder if I actually was. We talked on the phone for a couple minutes, which is very hard when you're on mushrooms.. I told him a small portion of where I was at mentally, and said I'd have a hell of a story for him tomorrow. The rest of this story is best told by splitting them up into concepts, many of which took place during this last portion, but make more sense in isolation. This essentially concludes the 'fireworks' portion of the journey. For the sake of length, I may skip a couple things that won't be quite as interesting as others, as I don't necessarily want this to be a treatise on my personal philosophies about every goddamn thing in the world, and I know most of you probably are here for what you just read. * Love \* Many come from these experiences with an intuitive sense that the universe is filled with an everlasting and unconditional love, one that they in turn wish to share with everyone. How many times, dear psychonaut readers, have you come out of a trip with something like "I! LOVE! EEEEEVVEEEERRYYYYTHIIIIIING!" on your mind? I've been there myself, many times, and it is an extraordinary way of being. There was a presence of love here, as well as hate, and every other emotion imaginable. But they were not a part of the fabric of reality, they were more of a byproduct. I'll explain. Many spiritual traditions are predicated on the two fundamental forces of nature, Order and Chaos. Chaos both creates and destroys, much like Mother Nature, and Order puts pieces together, temporarily. These can be expressed through scientific or mathematical language, through entropy or chaos theory. They can be expressed mythologically, Yin and Yang, God and Satan, even masculine and feminine. They both intertwine with each other for reality or creation to come into existence. These two forces danced in front of me, trying to show me how they work. A swirling black shadow and some sort of white flowing piece of fabric. Up and down, inside out, it was almost a weird puppet show. They morphed into human form, god-like form, even cartoonish form. Where they intertwined, the points of contact between the two, was the dimension of love, the birthplace of all that is new. The love was tangible, but it was confined to that location. It did not exist outside of those two specific forces touching each other. This is not to say that love cannot exist in one soul in isolation from another soul. The birds and bees part of life obviously takes place here, but love can emerge when two forces, opposed in some way, find a way to come together and mix the best parts of themselves; the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. My takeaway is that love exists whether or not there is a conscious being to experience it, just as a tree that falls in a forest with no one to hear still makes a noise, but it is not a fundamental sub-structure of reality. * Sexuality \* As I said during the longer portion of this post, there were moments of unimaginable horror and suffering punctuated by moments of clarity and respite. Crawling around the canyon I desperately searched for help. I was carried by a friend, comforted by healers, and chanted over by some shaman figure. But there was something in me that knew that if I were to have sex, somehow it would rescue me. I passed crowds of women in my life, any that I had ever met, and begged and pleaded with them to lay with me. They all refused, but with kindness and smiles in their eyes. Frantically I moved past them, being continually refused, until I happened upon my mother. I went to my knees and begged her for the same thing, and like the others, she refused me. And as quickly as that last sentence struck you, it struck me too. Wait, what!? You tryna fuck your mom?? My surprise briefly snapped me out of everything, I returned to baseline sanity for just a flash, enough to exclaim, "What the fuck??" And as quickly as I snapped out, I fell back in, facedown in the canyon. Everyone had left, I was alone again. I sat up, and in my bemusement and confusion, interrogated what the hell had just happened. Why did I want that from my own mother. I'd been asking for it from every woman I ever knew, sure. Why did I even need that..did my masculine sense need to somehow be enveloped with the feminine, and that would somehow get me out of here? That makes sense, but they refused me. Well, there is masculine and feminine in us all, so we have the ability to accept ourselves and self-generate a sense of love. Wonderful, beautiful. Normally, this would have been enough for me, as this was already a familiar way of thinking for me. But what the fuck was that shit about mom?? One word entered my mind, Oedipus. The Oedipus Complex. The desire that some men have to be with their mothers. The jealousy of one's father, expressed in many tales. Tales like that are not told unless they represent some deeper element of the human psyche. Okay, why did this happen then? I was seeking escape from my suffering, sexual coupling would have been a union with the feminine, but with mom, it would be returning to the womb from where I first emerged, the safest place I had ever been, because I wasn't even conscious then. Suffering does not exist outside of consciousness. So...phew! I'm not gross, just altered as all hell, and deep conceptual insight that has been stored in my spine over eons of evolution are barging into my mind faster than I can think. (Side note.. my mom laughed when I told her about that part, and she'll laugh again when she reads this later.. *hi mom*) * Transhumanism, the Data Economy, and the Matrix \* This tends to be the type of place I go to during the latter part of my trips. Contemplation of society, politics, economics, etc, and how these all interface with each other and with the more intangible spiritual and archetypal dimensions of the human experience. The visuals have diminished significantly by this stage (still there though..), but data from the come-up and peaking portions, including my time in the bathroom, still play quite a role in the roiling of these thoughts. Nobody has to take the predictions of the Ray Kurzweil types seriously in order to contemplate the implications of something like the technological singularity. Will humans eventually join their brains, and consciousness, into a set of brain machine interfaces and spend the rest of eternity floating in a VR simulation? Well shit, we kind of already are right? This is where many people come out of the woodwork with simulation theory, even if reality is its own simulation and we aren't just a data-mining operation being run by higher beings trying to gain insight into their own consciousness, the way we eventually will, or Bill Hicks' "We are the imagination of ourselves." This is pretty well traveled territory, so there isn't too much need to dwell on it. Instead I'd rather focus on what I refer to as the coming "Reality Crisis." I lost touch with what I held as being reality, and ultimately only expanded my sense of what reality is. Remember, you can't escape reality. Reality does not change; you and your perception of it change. But I had the benefit of returning to what me might call "Base Reality." Sober waking life. Modern technology is messing with our collective idea of what Base Reality is. These aren't new gripes. We live in a social media world, with people projecting a distorted version of themselves for others to see, in hopes of return with a new kind of currency. I find that people are falling under their own spells en masse, which is understandable but also lamentable. Mass cultural paradigms shift faster now than ever before in human history. Antiquity was an epoch, as were the middle ages, the renaissance, enlightenment, etc, all with decreasing lengths of time. The digital age has given way to what some refer to as a post-truth era, the consequences of which I'm sure we are all familiar with, without pointing fingers at certain political sections of society (you miss the larger point when you do that, please stop and breathe, and empathize). Children born in this time, a time without any solid philosophical foundation, are being raised by adults who seem to not have acclimated to the new way of being. Historically, this is too much to ask of people, as this has never happened before. Absent the perils of a changing climate, the eventual switching of global currency to data instead of labor (intellectual or physical) as more work becomes automated, and the ever-quickening pace of all this change, we would have enough to deal with. But these problems will intertwine with each other, the way the various dimensions danced with each other in the desert. Mass perception of reality will rapidly alter, with no escape back to Base Reality. Just as suicide occurred to me in that place, from which there actually was an eventual escape, I believe it will begin to occur to more and more people as this epoch of humanity draws to a close. People will be backed into existential walls, and for some there will only seem to be one way out (even though it isn't actually a way out). I hope I'm wrong. Be good to your neighbors, brothers and sisters, and enemies, both perceived and real. We all need to help each other through. Exercise and expand your sense of reality, psychonauts. This is why we do this. All of you who have been to the other side have been given gifts of altered senses of reality, and death of the ego. I think this is a good way to build a resilience of meaning in a rapidly changing world. I'm not saying you should proselytize the use of these substance (u should tho..), but you can contribute your own experiences and earned wisdom into the collective consciousness, and maybe help steer the ship into safer waters. ** Conclusion *\* I think that's about god damn enough out of me. Kudos if you read this whole thing. I hope I offered some insight as to what it can be like when taking these substance to a level that few talk about. This experience filled me with a healthy terror of just how far one's mind can go. I still only really feel like I've waded a few meters into the ocean, and haven't even started to explore its true depths. I try to imagine a what it would be like to go where I went, and even deeper, with serenity and openness. What wonders and insights could one possibly attain? I look forward to finding out, I'll keep in touch with this community, but it may be a while before I take my next plunge. Be well, everyone. TL;DR o_O
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
Joey van Koningsbruggen, 29 years old and started Jimmy Joy in May 2014 at age 24 to make nutritionally complete meals. We create different products to make eating as healthy as easy as possible. Our products are: Plenny Shake, Plenny Bar, Plenny Drink. The meals are ideal for anyone who wants to eat fast but avoid fast food because they value nutrition. It is popular amongst high earning, ambitious males in big cities. They use it to kick start their day and as fuel during demanding work hours; think coders, accountants, top-level gamers, etc. Another audience is sustainability-conscious and vegans. Our products are plant-based and have a long shelf life making it 3.5 times more sustainable than an average Western diet. We also compensate for our CO2 emissions through charities like TreesForAll. We currently make around $440,000 per month. I started in my dorm room and expanded globally over the years. image
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I got annoyed with having to choose between healthy or fast food. So I set out to create healthy fast food. Which then became a mission to create the healthiest meal scientifically possible. Starting with interns from the University of Wageningen and by partnering with a large manufacturer of baby food, the first recipe was created to be as close to health recommendations from the World Health Organisation. When the company grew I hired a food technologist, a research analyst and worked with certified dietitians to do in house research to improve further health. Food is more than just the nutritional makeup however and recent updates focussed on flavor and sustainability too. Real fruit was added to improve flavoring and the highest quality ingredients were sourced to create not only the best in nutrition but also in texture, creating a smooth milkshake-like experience. When I started there was nothing like it in Europe, I made it because I really wanted the product to existing here like it did in the US. The US company was focussed on making meals as close in the experience of drinking water. I immediately felt the need to work on taste. Even though the focus of our meals is nutrition, the taste is still very important, which is why I started with different flavours and options, flavoring with real fruit, vanilla sticks, and cacao. The idea wasn’t very validated at the time. I wanted it, soon my friends wanted it, then their friends, etc. It grew from there and got a lot of media attention, BBC, Men’s Health, etc. Later a lot of other companies joined with big funding, Huel started making nutritionally complete meals in the UK with millions in funding only one and a half years after me, a company called Feed popped up two years later also with millions of funding. The idea is very validated now but back then it was a very bizarre thing to be able to have all nutrients for a meal in one go, which the media loved. The free press was lovely but we had to change our name because we got sued for the former brand name. I got a lot of free press because a friend of mine wrote a piece for Vice. He really liked the fact that I was a drug dealer once and so he made it a prominent part of the article which made it go viral. It got translated and published on all the Vice sites in the world. That spiked interest, which drove more journalists to write my story. It got really crazy, I got invited to a big national talk show, the BBC made an item on us. At one point I was even followed around by an entire video production crew trying to make a reality TV show out of my life. Joey’s Wereld it was called ‘Joey’s World’ in English. I enjoyed the whole ride but it was a little over the top. Media trembled over each other just to write and shoot the exact same item that another outlet already made just because it did well there. It was fun nonetheless and it drove a lot of traffic so I am not complaining lol. When I started the company I just finished college and had no funding at all. At one point we had a 14-day backlog and used the funding from customers to actually create the product. Those early customers are really what made the company and were very supportive for example during delays, almost like friends, the internet is such an amazing place. As long as I was able to explain what I was doing in blogs and video’s they were very forgiving on delays.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
When I started I used pea protein which tasted horrible. Because I told my friend that I was going to live exclusively off my recipe for 30 days I felt the need to improve the taste and switched to whey and soy. After selling some meals I used the money to gather nutritional expertise and instructed them to create the healthiest meal scientifically possible. Most iterations after that first recipe were focussed on health & nutrition. I currently employ 3 MSc in nutrition to work on that. We do our own production because outsourcing is expensive. I think it is great to make healthy meals accessible so the price is a big factor. This is a picture of me in our first production space. image After this one, I invested $220,000 to build a BRC certified production space which is under pressure so no particle from outside can come in. Employees enter via a lock system. We also automated the majority of the production process, mixing, filling and sealing of the bags.
Describe the process of launching the business.
There was no real launch of the product. I started making videos for my friends on Youtube and Facebook about a recipe I made and my commitment to live off it for 30 days. Three days later a writer who is well known in Holland asked if he could join so I made some meals for him. He shared my videos amongst his social media following (30-40k) and more people contacted me if they could have some. I created a simple website using WordPress and orders came flowing in. Back then the production process was very labor-intensive so I soon found myself creating meals full time. I had to order and weigh all 18 individual ingredients. Because I was getting them from B2C sites they quickly could not supply my demand so I had to switch stores and brands, each with different densities of the active compound, which had to be factored in during the production process, making it even more time-consuming. I hired my roommate and remodeled our 60m2 house in the center of Amsterdam into production space. The kitchen, the living room, we used everything for production. I removed my bed and slept on a mattress under a large table which I used to weigh micronutrients on. It was quite a hectic period because there was a lot of media attention, which demanded time, I carried all individual orders to the post office, which was heavy and time-consuming, I did supply chain management by buying dry the local stores, delivery times were slow so there was a lot of customer support, the ingredients that I did order B2B confused delivery chauffeurs because I requested pallets to be delivered to the center of town and to be left on the pavement so I could carry the individual 25kg bags 4 stories up. I hired two more friends, they still work in my company today, but I ran out of space. Which is why I sold 30% of my stocks to a guy who had a small warehouse and promised to do the production. It later turned out to be the worst decision of my life. I started working with a manufacturer of baby food to create our micronutrient premix. It took some time for me, my newly hired food technologist and them to work out the formula but when we finished, it saved so much production hassle. It dropped our ingredients from 18 to 4 and we could finally aim to lower delays. We switched from my business partner his warehouse back to Amsterdam where I rented space of 250 m2 which was 9 meters high. Because we could stack pallets on top of each other it seemed to last us for years. I did $1,700 in the first month and $350,000 in the 4 months after. The growth kept increasing however and six months later we had to move to a 2000m2 warehouse close to the harbor of Amsterdam. image Below you see one of our two production areas where we produce our Plenny Shake Active which is a product that is higher in protein and in a bigger bag, which we produce manually. image image In the second year, we did 4 million in revenue and I wanted to expand into the US. I made a verbal agreement with my former business partner to create a new legal entity to do the US from for liability and tax reasons and that I would run R&D and marketing from it. I resigned from the company as CEO and created the new entity to become CEO again there. I saw this as a small foot as I trusted my business associate and did not do proper legal work. It was a big mistake. I saw my paycheck disappear while he increased his own salary 2 fold. He started doing business with himself creating a distribution company that charged $3 per package more than what we were paying. When I found out it was very difficult to get back. I hired a lawyer and battled for two years. The company dropped 40% in revenue under his leadership. I recently settled in the arbitration to buy back his stock. Now half a year in we are growing again. 13% in the first quarter, building it back up slowly.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Word of mouth is important. We fuel it by having loyalty and refer a friend program. We run ads on Facebook and Google mainly. We aim to sell a starter box in which new customers get a free t-shirt, shaker, and scoop so they can familiarize themselves with all our products and choose their favorite in a second order.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
We are profitable and are focussed on launching more products and flavors. We are also expanding in the US were we recently set up local fulfillment in LA and NY for fast deliveries. We just launched a new bar called the Plenny Bar which is completely vegan making all our products entirely vegan.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I really only have cliches to mention here tbh: work hard, fail fast (A/B test), trust but verify, take time to choose business associates wisely and have clauses to break up quickly when things go south.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We use Shopify as a platform and offer subscriptions. We are about to launch three new plant-based bar flavors and are actively improving our whole product line still on a mission to make the healthiest meal possible.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Four Hour Workweerk, Tim Ferris. The main takeaway is to do what you love, reduce your cost of living to be able to live off your hobby asap. I never worked for anyone as a result. I started for myself as an artist painting portraits of people and experimenting a lot with art and eventually food. I also really like Ending Aging from Aubrey de Grey. The reason I like Jimmy Joy is that it helps be healthy. But eventually, though we will still die from the damage that occurs from being alive. Aubrey proposed a damage repair approach to medicine which recently has really taken off. Google started Calico to combat aging with a billion USD in funding, Insilico Medicine uses AI to dramatically reduce the time to discover drugs to help repair damage from old age, Jeff Bezos invested in Unity targeting the removal of senescent cells etcetera, etcetera. The whole longevity field is exploding right now with billions in funding and it all started with this book from Aubrey de Grey and Peter Thiel funding him.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Create something you’ll love. I was a visual artist before this and would not have the energy to persists if I did not truly want this product to exist. I think Naval Ravikant is a good guy to follow on this topic on Twitter.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
I fired, hired, reshuffled and rehired the team after I bought the company back and am currently not hiring.
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below! Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data. For more interviews, check out starter_story - I post new stories there daily. Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
Joey van Koningsbruggen, 29 years old and started Jimmy Joy in May 2014 at age 24 to make nutritionally complete meals. We create different products to make eating as healthy as easy as possible. Our products are: Plenny Shake, Plenny Bar, Plenny Drink. The meals are ideal for anyone who wants to eat fast but avoid fast food because they value nutrition. It is popular amongst high earning, ambitious males in big cities. They use it to kick start their day and as fuel during demanding work hours; think coders, accountants, top-level gamers, etc. Another audience is sustainability-conscious and vegans. Our products are plant-based and have a long shelf life making it 3.5 times more sustainable than an average Western diet. We also compensate for our CO2 emissions through charities like TreesForAll. We currently make around $440,000 per month. I started in my dorm room and expanded globally over the years. image
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I got annoyed with having to choose between healthy or fast food. So I set out to create healthy fast food. Which then became a mission to create the healthiest meal scientifically possible. Starting with interns from the University of Wageningen and by partnering with a large manufacturer of baby food, the first recipe was created to be as close to health recommendations from the World Health Organisation. When the company grew I hired a food technologist, a research analyst and worked with certified dietitians to do in house research to improve further health. Food is more than just the nutritional makeup however and recent updates focussed on flavor and sustainability too. Real fruit was added to improve flavoring and the highest quality ingredients were sourced to create not only the best in nutrition but also in texture, creating a smooth milkshake-like experience. When I started there was nothing like it in Europe, I made it because I really wanted the product to existing here like it did in the US. The US company was focussed on making meals as close in the experience of drinking water. I immediately felt the need to work on taste. Even though the focus of our meals is nutrition, the taste is still very important, which is why I started with different flavours and options, flavoring with real fruit, vanilla sticks, and cacao. The idea wasn’t very validated at the time. I wanted it, soon my friends wanted it, then their friends, etc. It grew from there and got a lot of media attention, BBC, Men’s Health, etc. Later a lot of other companies joined with big funding, Huel started making nutritionally complete meals in the UK with millions in funding only one and a half years after me, a company called Feed popped up two years later also with millions of funding. The idea is very validated now but back then it was a very bizarre thing to be able to have all nutrients for a meal in one go, which the media loved. The free press was lovely but we had to change our name because we got sued for the former brand name. I got a lot of free press because a friend of mine wrote a piece for Vice. He really liked the fact that I was a drug dealer once and so he made it a prominent part of the article which made it go viral. It got translated and published on all the Vice sites in the world. That spiked interest, which drove more journalists to write my story. It got really crazy, I got invited to a big national talk show, the BBC made an item on us. At one point I was even followed around by an entire video production crew trying to make a reality TV show out of my life. Joey’s Wereld it was called ‘Joey’s World’ in English. I enjoyed the whole ride but it was a little over the top. Media trembled over each other just to write and shoot the exact same item that another outlet already made just because it did well there. It was fun nonetheless and it drove a lot of traffic so I am not complaining lol. When I started the company I just finished college and had no funding at all. At one point we had a 14-day backlog and used the funding from customers to actually create the product. Those early customers are really what made the company and were very supportive for example during delays, almost like friends, the internet is such an amazing place. As long as I was able to explain what I was doing in blogs and video’s they were very forgiving on delays.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
When I started I used pea protein which tasted horrible. Because I told my friend that I was going to live exclusively off my recipe for 30 days I felt the need to improve the taste and switched to whey and soy. After selling some meals I used the money to gather nutritional expertise and instructed them to create the healthiest meal scientifically possible. Most iterations after that first recipe were focussed on health & nutrition. I currently employ 3 MSc in nutrition to work on that. We do our own production because outsourcing is expensive. I think it is great to make healthy meals accessible so the price is a big factor. This is a picture of me in our first production space. image After this one, I invested $220,000 to build a BRC certified production space which is under pressure so no particle from outside can come in. Employees enter via a lock system. We also automated the majority of the production process, mixing, filling and sealing of the bags.
Describe the process of launching the business.
There was no real launch of the product. I started making videos for my friends on Youtube and Facebook about a recipe I made and my commitment to live off it for 30 days. Three days later a writer who is well known in Holland asked if he could join so I made some meals for him. He shared my videos amongst his social media following (30-40k) and more people contacted me if they could have some. I created a simple website using WordPress and orders came flowing in. Back then the production process was very labor-intensive so I soon found myself creating meals full time. I had to order and weigh all 18 individual ingredients. Because I was getting them from B2C sites they quickly could not supply my demand so I had to switch stores and brands, each with different densities of the active compound, which had to be factored in during the production process, making it even more time-consuming. I hired my roommate and remodeled our 60m2 house in the center of Amsterdam into production space. The kitchen, the living room, we used everything for production. I removed my bed and slept on a mattress under a large table which I used to weigh micronutrients on. It was quite a hectic period because there was a lot of media attention, which demanded time, I carried all individual orders to the post office, which was heavy and time-consuming, I did supply chain management by buying dry the local stores, delivery times were slow so there was a lot of customer support, the ingredients that I did order B2B confused delivery chauffeurs because I requested pallets to be delivered to the center of town and to be left on the pavement so I could carry the individual 25kg bags 4 stories up. I hired two more friends, they still work in my company today, but I ran out of space. Which is why I sold 30% of my stocks to a guy who had a small warehouse and promised to do the production. It later turned out to be the worst decision of my life. I started working with a manufacturer of baby food to create our micronutrient premix. It took some time for me, my newly hired food technologist and them to work out the formula but when we finished, it saved so much production hassle. It dropped our ingredients from 18 to 4 and we could finally aim to lower delays. We switched from my business partner his warehouse back to Amsterdam where I rented space of 250 m2 which was 9 meters high. Because we could stack pallets on top of each other it seemed to last us for years. I did $1,700 in the first month and $350,000 in the 4 months after. The growth kept increasing however and six months later we had to move to a 2000m2 warehouse close to the harbor of Amsterdam. image Below you see one of our two production areas where we produce our Plenny Shake Active which is a product that is higher in protein and in a bigger bag, which we produce manually. image image In the second year, we did 4 million in revenue and I wanted to expand into the US. I made a verbal agreement with my former business partner to create a new legal entity to do the US from for liability and tax reasons and that I would run R&D and marketing from it. I resigned from the company as CEO and created the new entity to become CEO again there. I saw this as a small foot as I trusted my business associate and did not do proper legal work. It was a big mistake. I saw my paycheck disappear while he increased his own salary 2 fold. He started doing business with himself creating a distribution company that charged $3 per package more than what we were paying. When I found out it was very difficult to get back. I hired a lawyer and battled for two years. The company dropped 40% in revenue under his leadership. I recently settled in the arbitration to buy back his stock. Now half a year in we are growing again. 13% in the first quarter, building it back up slowly.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Word of mouth is important. We fuel it by having loyalty and refer a friend program. We run ads on Facebook and Google mainly. We aim to sell a starter box in which new customers get a free t-shirt, shaker, and scoop so they can familiarize themselves with all our products and choose their favorite in a second order.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
We are profitable and are focussed on launching more products and flavors. We are also expanding in the US were we recently set up local fulfillment in LA and NY for fast deliveries. We just launched a new bar called the Plenny Bar which is completely vegan making all our products entirely vegan.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I really only have cliches to mention here tbh: work hard, fail fast (A/B test), trust but verify, take time to choose business associates wisely and have clauses to break up quickly when things go south.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We use Shopify as a platform and offer subscriptions. We are about to launch three new plant-based bar flavors and are actively improving our whole product line still on a mission to make the healthiest meal possible.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Four Hour Workweerk, Tim Ferris. The main takeaway is to do what you love, reduce your cost of living to be able to live off your hobby asap. I never worked for anyone as a result. I started for myself as an artist painting portraits of people and experimenting a lot with art and eventually food. I also really like Ending Aging from Aubrey de Grey. The reason I like Jimmy Joy is that it helps be healthy. But eventually, though we will still die from the damage that occurs from being alive. Aubrey proposed a damage repair approach to medicine which recently has really taken off. Google started Calico to combat aging with a billion USD in funding, Insilico Medicine uses AI to dramatically reduce the time to discover drugs to help repair damage from old age, Jeff Bezos invested in Unity targeting the removal of senescent cells etcetera, etcetera. The whole longevity field is exploding right now with billions in funding and it all started with this book from Aubrey de Grey and Peter Thiel funding him.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Create something you’ll love. I was a visual artist before this and would not have the energy to persists if I did not truly want this product to exist. I think Naval Ravikant is a good guy to follow on this topic on Twitter.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
I fired, hired, reshuffled and rehired the team after I bought the company back and am currently not hiring.
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below! Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data. For more interviews, check out starter_story - I post new stories there daily. Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM
My experience at the Spirit Vine Ayahuasca Retreat Center
This is the journal I wrote during a trip to the Spirit Vine ayahuasca retreat. My intention was to treat depression. The short version is it was an epic vacation. Spirit Vine is a magically beautiful paradise. I trusted and looked up to the facilitators, Silvia and Ti 0. The social interaction was a big thing for me. I don’t have friends at home. It wasn’t just that I was with a lot of people, but I opened up in ways I wouldn’t normally and everyone was friendly and accepting. The ayahuasca wasn’t strong for me. It was for others. I think I’m unusually unresponsive to psychedelics. So I still highly recommend Spirit Vine. But that was a little disappointing. I had some emotionally hard times that I suspect were largely from lack of sleep. I was intermittently sad and scared, mostly after ceremonies when I got 1-3 hours of sleep. As the retreat went on, and afterward, the sadness deepened and my social participation waned though I was still physically with people. After getting home, the sadness got even deeper, but improved after letting myself sleep long for several days. Prior to the retreat, I spent 2 days in the nearby town, Itacare. I spent another 2 days there afterward. The retreat consisted of 4 ceremonies. The last one was a half-dose daytime outdoor ceremony. A week prior, I started the prescribed vegetarian, low-tyramine diet. May 24 - Getting to Itacare I felt bad starting the trip. Lethargic and worried about it. I lost the excitement. The 10.5-hour overnight flight sucked. Not much sleep. Freezing AC, sore back, turbulence. I thought, this is like a challenging psychedelic experience - once you’re on it, there’s nothing to do but suffer through it. I was nervous getting off the plane, unsure what I was supposed to do with my checked bag. I just had to get it from baggage claim, and recheck it and go back through security. It was all fine, I was just groggy and unclear about what to expect. And frustrated that I didn’t have a phone signal after I arranged for that with AT&T. At one point, I tried to say “Eu não falo português” and badly butchered the pronunciation. Once I got to the gate and worked out the phone problem, I felt better. It was strange coming out of the dull austere terminal into a bright strip of flashy perfume stores. I’ve never seen so much perfume. Then there were liquor stores at the end of the strip. What’s with that? The final airport in Ilheus was easy. The baggage claim was right at the gate and as soon as I picked up my bag and turned around there was the taxi driver with a sign with my name on it. His sign had two other names of Spirit Vine goers I shared the ride with. One from London and one from Colorado. I got pretty engaged (for me) with conversation with them. I proposed we meet for dinner and they were into it, but later decided to go to bed early. I was energized and ready to feast after 30 hours of fasting. At the hotel, they spoke enough english to make check in easy. Same at the restaurants I went to. I had some anxiety about that before coming because it didn’t sound like I’d encounter that. A lot of people don’t speak English though and I keep forgetting I can’t just talk to people like I usually do. I walked up and down the main strip before going into a vegetarian restaurant that was recommended by Silvia Polivoy, the Spirit Vine facilitator. They had a good vegan and gluten-free special that I ordered twice, hold the beans (tyramine restriction for the ayahuasca diet). Then I went to another restaurant and ordered veggie paella. The waiter, Miguel, at the second place was out on the street looking to attract customers and was very friendly. He asked if I was traveling around Brazil and I told him I was going to Spirit Vine. He said he had done ayahuasca a few times in the past, though not at Spirit Vine, and it’s an important experience involving lots of learning. He got goosebumps thinking about it. I listened to a little live music down the street from there - funky drums, guitar and vocal - and walked around town some more. A lot of people were playing soccer on the beach lit by street lamps. May 25 - Chillin in Itacare Mostly just chilled at the beach today with 4 others going to Spirit Vine. We go to the retreat tomorrow afternoon and the first ceremony is Monday night. One woman was just at Spirit Vine 6 months ago. She said it’s paradise and everything is perfect. May 26 - Arriving at Spirit Vine Excited to be at the retreat finally. Don’t know why I felt so nervous arriving. I guess it was meeting a large group. There are 16 participants. I have a roommate from Vancouver. A few people were here before. It’s one woman’s fifth time. Didn’t have time to look around much when I got in. Haven’t seen the pond or ceremony room. We met for introductions, had dinner, and then got a longer talk about what to expect and guidelines for the ceremonies and other aspects of the retreat. Most people said they were here for things like finding their purpose and overcoming fears. It didn’t sound like the kind of diagnosable mental disorder I’m here for. Not that I care, just surprised. The food was amazing! Great variety of veggies and herbs. No gluten in anything. They will have gluten bread available at breakfast, but they don’t cook with gluten, so no cross-contamination. That’s reassuring after getting escalating diarrhea from Itacare restaurants. Today I didn’t eat til I got here, so getting a couple mountainous plates of great food was blissful. There were eggs too! Finally protein! That’s the only animal food allowed on the diet and I didn’t see any eggs in Itacare, so it’s been very low protein (no beans allowed either). I wish the talk they gave about ayahuasca was recorded and available online so I could share it with you. A lot about surrendering, asking what you can learn instead of resisting, and trying to go deeper. The ceremonies will start at 10 PM and we can’t leave the room until sunrise. Except the last ceremony will be in daylight out in nature. Each of us will have a mattress, blanket, pillow, and puke bucket. No dinner on ceremony days (every other day). They’ll announce when two hours have passed since we drank the ayahuasca and then we have the option of requesting more if it’s weak. No lights, which makes the white clothing important for seeing people. They play music designed to trigger different experiences. Tomorrow, yoga at 7:30 (yikes), breakfast at 9 and massages at 9:30. The first workshop is at 4:30. I think everyone’s sound asleep already. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep for at least a few more hours. May 27 - Loving the place, childhood regression workshop Bats live under the deck by the pond and there are big bright red dragonflies. Slept 3 hours, but really not tired. Did yoga, got an aruvedic massage, swam in the pond and socialized a lot. (later) The workshop was about childhood traumas. That’s a common theme with ayahuasca and trauma in this context means any stressor that enduringly shapes your behavior. Silvia guided a meditation that gradually brought us out of our bodies and into a traumatic childhood experience of our choice. We had to identify the thought pattern that arose from the experience. Then we, as adults, visited our child to provide an adult’s perspective on the event. We spoke with and supported our child and told our child we can always come back to help. Then we went around and shared our experiences. Some people had actual serious traumas like witnessing violence in their families. I talked about being put down by my peers at school. (later) We’re supposed to be napping now since we won’t sleep tonight. My roommate and I laid in our beds in the dark for a while, but I just kept thinking “you got to be kidding me”. I imagine even the morning people can’t sleep right now. May 28 - First ceremony It was an amusing, but superficial trip. There were colorful patterns and I imagined some weird things like a cross between a centipede and a boat. At one point I kept calling out my thoughts as “stories”, meaning they’re imperfect models for understanding the world that can be challenged. When we all got to the ceremony room, Silvia asked the experienced folks how much they wanted, and the newbies if we’re allergic to alcohol. I don’t know what that connection is about. They first distributed lime wedges, for removing the bad taste of the ayahuasca after drinking, and ginger sticks to chew on if we get nauseous. Then they distributed the ayahuasca and stirring sticks. I was between two other newbies. The short woman on my left got 30 mL, I got 40, and the big athlete to my right got 50. We stood in a circle in the middle of the room and announced our intentions for the ceremony. I said I want to do more with myself and be less tired and vegetative. Then Silvia said something like a prayer about our inner light growing until it comes out our pores and surrounds the ceremony room and the plants arounds us. We imagined roots coming out of our feet and keeping us grounded so we can be confident we’ll come back ok. Then we went back to our mattresses and drank the ayahuasca. It tasted like chocolate to me. Kinda good. Some people talked about hating the taste. They started the music and turned out the lights and I immediately started seeing visuals, which couldn’t possibly have been from the ayahuasca. It takes more time to kick in. I actually saw psychedelic visuals for a minute Saturday afternoon at the beach and for a few seconds Sunday night. It’s common for me to see that stuff in the dark at night, but this was more vivid and animated. I enjoyed the music - mostly eastern-sounding, stuff. But it got a little boring waiting for something to happen or for the 2-hour booster opportunity. At two hours she asked if I felt anything and I said “barely”. I got another 40 mL and it got more interesting after that. Sometimes the music was just weird sound effects that seemed humorous. When the sun rose, I was restless. Most people stayed and slept or just sat up like they were meditating. I left and enjoyed walking up the hill and taking in the scenery. That was the best part of the trip. I still felt subtly altered. I got an hour sleep before breakfast and following breakfast was art. Then I went for more sleep and got maybe a couple more hours before lunch and the meeting to share our experiences. The sleeplessness really caught up with me. It’s been a hard day. A couple other people had experiences as weak as mine. It sounded like, on average experiences were mild, but some people went incredibly far. One woman died a few times, once as an aborted fetus. May 29 - Reiki, garden tour, spirit releasement Last night after dinner we watched the documentary, Finding Joe, about life lessons from mythology. It was hard to pay attention, but one thing I heard was a story about a tiger living among sheep. A grown tiger saw him and showed him with his reflection in a pond that he’s not a tiger. Then the grown tiger killed the sheep and forced a piece of meat down the little tiger’s throat. The little tiger gagged, but then realized he felt healthier when he ate what tigers eat. Seemed ironic that we’re eating this crazy diet. It’s been hard on my gut and my feet and legs are pretty crampy. I got a solid 7 hours sleep last night. I still felt bad in the morning. My mind was racing during yoga and I felt sad. After breakfast, I got a massage that was a combination of standard deep tissue and reiki. I wouldn’t normally go for something like reiki, but it was actually really relaxing and I’ve been feeling well and active since then. We went to a relatively empty beach. I played in the waves and went for a jog. We toured the garden area where they grow some of the food we eat, and the ayahuasca and chacruna (DMT-containing plant mixed with the ayahuasca). They grow lettuce, herbs, mangos, pineapple, cacao, and other things. Ti 0 (that’s the number zero, not the letter O - pronounced like spanish uncle), Silvia’s assistant formerly named Rohan, said the ayahuasca roots grow deep into the ground. Parts were popping out of the ground like roots. We touched it to silently tell it our intentions for the ceremony. The workshop was about spirits we carry within us that we need to get rid of. She said you don’t have to believe in spirits. You can call it a metaphor or whatever is comfortable. The practical reason for thinking of these things as spirits is to separate them from yourself. They can be bad habits, body pains, pieces of dead people, or various other things that are holding you back. In the meditation, we saw these spirits inside us. We saw their color, shape, texture, and where they were in our bodies. We asked them who they were and where they came from. Then we put them in a tube that went to a hospital in another dimension. We set fire to the place where they were to clean that space and healed it with a green light. I focused on my bad habit of reflecting on things and being critical of myself. I could picture the spirit, but when I asked it who it was and where it came from, I drew a blank. So we talked about for a while in the sharing part. She asked several questions and the discussion got into parts of my past and even my posture. Several other people got that level of attention and it was a long workshop. May 30 - Second ceremony I don’t think I’m going to get the dose I need here. I asked for 150 mL and she said that’s too much and gave me 100. This time it kicked in in maybe half an hour. I thought that was a good sign of things to come. It started out with intense fast visuals. Then physical turmoil set in - nausea, feeling cold, and a general sense of malaise. I thought I’d get through that and go on to have a good trip. But the intensity just faded from then on. It affected my sense of time. She announces when it’s been one hour so we can lie down. They recommend that we stay sitting up until then to help keep the ayahuasca down until it takes affect. I thought for sure that she missed the one hour thing. Then eventually I thought she missed the two hour mark too. Then after a while she did announce one hour. That’s when I realized how badly my sense of time was affected. After that I finally vomited. I was definitely tripping, but not nearly at the level that the psilocybin research says is associated with lasting benefits. At the two-hour point, it was more or less over. I asked for a booster. I said the effect had passed and she said, “you don’t know. It can come in waves”. So I said “ok” and she said she’d give me a small booster. It never came though. It was a long boring night from then on as I still couldn’t sleep and didn’t even feel like lying down most of the time. I got about an hour and a half sleep before breakfast and worked on my art for almost an hour. (later) Not much went on today. I took a couple dips in the pond and played a small hand drum I brought for a few minutes. We shared our experiences in the afternoon and others had strong experiences. It seemed everyone did better than I did, going to other dimensions and having big insights and the like. Though at least one other person thought their experience was weak. A couple people I talked to about my experience said I could have blockages, which are spirits that stop you from breaking through. After dinner we watched the documentary, The Shadow Effect. Tomorrow’s workshop is supposed to be about that. I couldn’t pay much attention. Feeling sad and ready to go home. https://theshadoweffect.com/index_main.php?page_id=4 May 31 - Waterfall, jungle walk, shadow workshop Today was great. It seems like there’s a pattern of feeling down the day after the ceremony and great the following day. We went to a waterfall that I really enjoyed. The walk to it was beautiful and we swam under it. You could climb up the rocks a little and stand under the falling water and dive off of it. It felt great to lean back on the rocks and let my head and shoulders get pounded with water. That was my massage. Then we went to the same beach as before. I wanted to fast today, but at lunch Ti 0 insisted that I just eat some salad. He said the experience will be too strong if I completely fast. So I just had some flavorful arugula from the Spirit Vine garden. We went for a walk through the jungle around Spirit Vine. The path was dense with vegetation, so it was lead by a guy with a machete clearing the way. We had to wear long pants and a long-sleeve shirt. There were sticky plants that clung to you and tried to pull you back. Somebody, I think Ti 0, picked a fragrant leaf that he said was cinnamon and we all smelled it. In the workshop meditation, she asked a series of questions about our shadows, parts of us that we hide or that lead to unwanted behaviors. One set of questions were about people who bother you and why and if you’re projecting something on to them. I talked about how my boss values pleasing people above him in the dominance hierarchy. I was pressed for examples of me doing the same thing outside of work and I said I try to show empathy when it doesn’t come naturally. Another set of questions were about things that you hide. I talked about inattentiveness when other people are talking and how it’s rude to not listen to people so I’m afraid of getting caught when my mind wanders and nod my head as if I heard it all. June 1 - Third ceremony The ceremony was beautiful. There are certainly deeper levels to explore, but it was good. I got 132 mL and a 35-mL booster. It came on more gently with gorgeous soothing visuals. There was a lot of analysis of my thoughts. I would get some small insight about a thought, associated with a certain visual pattern that was standing out, and then it would fade back into visual noise. As they went away, I thought “I’ll never remember that”. Indeed, I can’t give an example of an insight. I thought at the time, it’s ok because it’s changing neural connections that can be unconsciously helpful to me later. At one point, I couldn’t wait to tell everyone at Spirit Vine that I love them and thank them for making it a perfect container (setting). My intention, by the way, was for ayahuasca to help me have more empathy and connection to people. I was surprised by the volume I vomited given I hadn’t eaten and had very little water. It didn’t interfere with my experience though. At one point, I forgot my bucket was in front of me and I stretched forward and knocked it over. I pulled it back up and had to know if it spilt. So, I felt with my hand if there was vomit on my mattress and there was. Then my hand was slimy. For a moment, I thought, “this is bad”, and then internally laughed it off. At one point, I thought, “I’m wrong” and everything shattered into dust and fell to the ground. Then I thought, “ok, now I can rebuild”. I wished that the people I was sending my journal to (parents, sister, some relatives) could all experience a psychedelic journey. I got less than 90 minutes sleep before breakfast and felt very tired, sad, and scared through breakfast and art. I trusted that it will turn around. I got another half hour sleep before lunch and was already feeling better after that. June 2 - Fourth ceremony Last night we watched the 1974 African safari wildlife documentary, Animals are Beautiful People. I nodded off early on and struggled with sleepiness throughout. Today we had a half-dose ceremony at 9:30 AM. It was a half dose so we would be capable of going outside to experience nature. I got 85 mL. She said there was a group intention of connecting with nature and we could optionally add a personal intention. I said it was for ayahuasca to help me feel glad to be in this world. We had to stay in the ceremony room the first hour, then most of us went right outside. There were no boosters. I was sad and scared in the morning and the ayahuasca amplified that. So I said, “ok, show me the sadness” and explored that until the one hour point. When the hour came I was excited to go out. We weren’t supposed to talk to or look at each other because that can bring you out of an altered state of consciousness. We interacted telepathically. I dove into the pond and swam near the bottom most of the way across. It felt like it always feels and everything looked like it always looks. There was just an enhanced appreciation. The bats were active. Then I got heavily fatigued and just lied in the sun. I was thinking I wanted to walk around, but my body refused. Eventually that lifted and I slowly, lightly went walking. The place was quiet with people all around being still. I didn’t want to disturb them with noisy steps. I stopped by a few trees that caught my attention and meditated on them. There was a fallen coconut with a sprout a few feet tall that I sat next to for a while. I lied down in the grass and felt ants crawling around my head. They say you can communicate with the plants, though I didn’t quite experience that. By this time the ayahuasca affect was pretty gone, but I still felt in a transcendent state of mind as I observed things. It interested me to see one of the staff come down the hill to harvest coconuts. He used a long stick to shake a few loose, then put them in a bag and went back up the hill. At 4, we had a meal cooked with salt. Then shared our ceremony experiences and provided feedback about the retreat. Tomorrow we have breakfast here and then its over. Back to Itacaré for a couple nights. June 3 - Leaving Spirit Vine We ate breakfast at Spirit Vine and took a group photo. I volunteered for the testimonial video they make after every retreat. I was nervous and didn’t know what to say, but wanted to give back since I liked watching those every month in anticipation of the retreat. As we got ready for it, she said, “let’s talk about behavior patterns you’ve discovered.” I said “that’s personal” and was thinking, “what’d I get myself into”. I was relieved when it was over. Then we all went to lunch together outside of Spirit Vine. We had tapiocas, crepes made from tapioca flour, and local açaí juice. Then we said goodbye to Silvia and Ti 0 and those not staying in Itacare. Once I got checked into the same hotel I was at before the retreat, I went to the same beach we hung out at before and met up with a few people and played in the waves. My Spirit Vine roommate and I jogged to a place where you can see the sunset and enjoyed that. Then we went to a restaurant for fish even though Silvia recommended staying on the diet another 3 days. The rest of the group was interested in a place that didn’t have much gluten free options and I would have just had a salad. My roommate wasn’t into that place either, so we thought we could eat at the fish place and just hang out with the group at the other place. But the place they wanted to go was closed and we ended up at a good vegetarian place I ate at the first night I was in Itacare. I had another meal there. There were 9 of us. My roommate talked me into trying some surfing in the morning and one other guy is interested in going, so I’m looking forward to that. June 4 - Surfing and hanging out in Itacare For surfing, we got an instructor who drove us to a relatively remote beach. We carried our boards through a 10-minute jungle trail to reach the beach. It was me, my roommate, and another fellow Spirit Viner who had never surfed before. It was fun. I caught a few small waves near the shore and started going deeper for bigger waves, but was wearing out. I had some insomnia and was yawning from the beginning. We got some cold coconuts with a hole drilled for a straw to drink the water. Then they chopped them open to eat the meat. The 3 of us went for moqueca, a Bahian seafood stew. It was great. We saw the sunset again with a few others. There was a guy there playing a berimbau with a very large gourd. We ate at a great vegetarian restaurant with a gluten-free vegan dish I ordered twice. June 5-6, I traveled back home and didn’t journal. June 9 - Reflection My cousin asked, “Did you get out of it what you'd hoped? Is this something that you'll want to do again? Most importantly, do you feel better than before you went?” I replied: No, I feel worse. I actually felt from the time I landed in Ilheus and was greeted by the cab driver and two other Spirit Viners I shared a ride with that I was already a lot better - very socially engaged and excited. It faded though and I interacted less and hated myself when I reflected on social interactions. I had intermittent phases of deep sadness and fear. I mostly was not very tired and vegetative though, but I'm feeling that pretty badly today and yesterday AM. It looked like others were getting more happy and connected as the retreat went on and in Itacare afterwards. It broke my heart because I wanted to be in on that, but felt I couldn't handle it. I kept trying anyway though. Kept meeting up with the group in Itacare and being active on their social media app, "What's App". I plan to keep in touch with some people. There was some good one-on-one interaction with some people, especially my roommate. It was certainly an epic vacation and I'll always treasure the memory and the people I met. Very glad I went. It might be hard to justify doing it again though. I'll probably try psychedelics again, but not ready to think about that yet. I think a deeper experience is more likely to cause real change. But I did have a pretty deep mushroom experience in January that didn't do a lot for me, so my hope in psychedelics is dwindling. I think my experience is unusual with regard to having relatively weak psychedelic journeys and not getting much benefit. Others had a much better time. So, I would still highly recommend to others to try it and I think there's probably no better container for it than Spirit Vine.
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
Joey van Koningsbruggen, 29 years old and started Jimmy Joy in May 2014 at age 24 to make nutritionally complete meals. We create different products to make eating as healthy as easy as possible. Our products are: Plenny Shake, Plenny Bar, Plenny Drink. The meals are ideal for anyone who wants to eat fast but avoid fast food because they value nutrition. It is popular amongst high earning, ambitious males in big cities. They use it to kick start their day and as fuel during demanding work hours; think coders, accountants, top-level gamers, etc. Another audience is sustainability-conscious and vegans. Our products are plant-based and have a long shelf life making it 3.5 times more sustainable than an average Western diet. We also compensate for our CO2 emissions through charities like TreesForAll. We currently make around $440,000 per month. I started in my dorm room and expanded globally over the years. image
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I got annoyed with having to choose between healthy or fast food. So I set out to create healthy fast food. Which then became a mission to create the healthiest meal scientifically possible. Starting with interns from the University of Wageningen and by partnering with a large manufacturer of baby food, the first recipe was created to be as close to health recommendations from the World Health Organisation. When the company grew I hired a food technologist, a research analyst and worked with certified dietitians to do in house research to improve further health. Food is more than just the nutritional makeup however and recent updates focussed on flavor and sustainability too. Real fruit was added to improve flavoring and the highest quality ingredients were sourced to create not only the best in nutrition but also in texture, creating a smooth milkshake-like experience. When I started there was nothing like it in Europe, I made it because I really wanted the product to existing here like it did in the US. The US company was focussed on making meals as close in the experience of drinking water. I immediately felt the need to work on taste. Even though the focus of our meals is nutrition, the taste is still very important, which is why I started with different flavours and options, flavoring with real fruit, vanilla sticks, and cacao. The idea wasn’t very validated at the time. I wanted it, soon my friends wanted it, then their friends, etc. It grew from there and got a lot of media attention, BBC, Men’s Health, etc. Later a lot of other companies joined with big funding, Huel started making nutritionally complete meals in the UK with millions in funding only one and a half years after me, a company called Feed popped up two years later also with millions of funding. The idea is very validated now but back then it was a very bizarre thing to be able to have all nutrients for a meal in one go, which the media loved. The free press was lovely but we had to change our name because we got sued for the former brand name. I got a lot of free press because a friend of mine wrote a piece for Vice. He really liked the fact that I was a drug dealer once and so he made it a prominent part of the article which made it go viral. It got translated and published on all the Vice sites in the world. That spiked interest, which drove more journalists to write my story. It got really crazy, I got invited to a big national talk show, the BBC made an item on us. At one point I was even followed around by an entire video production crew trying to make a reality TV show out of my life. Joey’s Wereld it was called ‘Joey’s World’ in English. I enjoyed the whole ride but it was a little over the top. Media trembled over each other just to write and shoot the exact same item that another outlet already made just because it did well there. It was fun nonetheless and it drove a lot of traffic so I am not complaining lol. When I started the company I just finished college and had no funding at all. At one point we had a 14-day backlog and used the funding from customers to actually create the product. Those early customers are really what made the company and were very supportive for example during delays, almost like friends, the internet is such an amazing place. As long as I was able to explain what I was doing in blogs and video’s they were very forgiving on delays.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
When I started I used pea protein which tasted horrible. Because I told my friend that I was going to live exclusively off my recipe for 30 days I felt the need to improve the taste and switched to whey and soy. After selling some meals I used the money to gather nutritional expertise and instructed them to create the healthiest meal scientifically possible. Most iterations after that first recipe were focussed on health & nutrition. I currently employ 3 MSc in nutrition to work on that. We do our own production because outsourcing is expensive. I think it is great to make healthy meals accessible so the price is a big factor. This is a picture of me in our first production space. image After this one, I invested $220,000 to build a BRC certified production space which is under pressure so no particle from outside can come in. Employees enter via a lock system. We also automated the majority of the production process, mixing, filling and sealing of the bags.
Describe the process of launching the business.
There was no real launch of the product. I started making videos for my friends on Youtube and Facebook about a recipe I made and my commitment to live off it for 30 days. Three days later a writer who is well known in Holland asked if he could join so I made some meals for him. He shared my videos amongst his social media following (30-40k) and more people contacted me if they could have some. I created a simple website using WordPress and orders came flowing in. Back then the production process was very labor-intensive so I soon found myself creating meals full time. I had to order and weigh all 18 individual ingredients. Because I was getting them from B2C sites they quickly could not supply my demand so I had to switch stores and brands, each with different densities of the active compound, which had to be factored in during the production process, making it even more time-consuming. I hired my roommate and remodeled our 60m2 house in the center of Amsterdam into production space. The kitchen, the living room, we used everything for production. I removed my bed and slept on a mattress under a large table which I used to weigh micronutrients on. It was quite a hectic period because there was a lot of media attention, which demanded time, I carried all individual orders to the post office, which was heavy and time-consuming, I did supply chain management by buying dry the local stores, delivery times were slow so there was a lot of customer support, the ingredients that I did order B2B confused delivery chauffeurs because I requested pallets to be delivered to the center of town and to be left on the pavement so I could carry the individual 25kg bags 4 stories up. I hired two more friends, they still work in my company today, but I ran out of space. Which is why I sold 30% of my stocks to a guy who had a small warehouse and promised to do the production. It later turned out to be the worst decision of my life. I started working with a manufacturer of baby food to create our micronutrient premix. It took some time for me, my newly hired food technologist and them to work out the formula but when we finished, it saved so much production hassle. It dropped our ingredients from 18 to 4 and we could finally aim to lower delays. We switched from my business partner his warehouse back to Amsterdam where I rented space of 250 m2 which was 9 meters high. Because we could stack pallets on top of each other it seemed to last us for years. I did $1,700 in the first month and $350,000 in the 4 months after. The growth kept increasing however and six months later we had to move to a 2000m2 warehouse close to the harbor of Amsterdam. image Below you see one of our two production areas where we produce our Plenny Shake Active which is a product that is higher in protein and in a bigger bag, which we produce manually. image image In the second year, we did 4 million in revenue and I wanted to expand into the US. I made a verbal agreement with my former business partner to create a new legal entity to do the US from for liability and tax reasons and that I would run R&D and marketing from it. I resigned from the company as CEO and created the new entity to become CEO again there. I saw this as a small foot as I trusted my business associate and did not do proper legal work. It was a big mistake. I saw my paycheck disappear while he increased his own salary 2 fold. He started doing business with himself creating a distribution company that charged $3 per package more than what we were paying. When I found out it was very difficult to get back. I hired a lawyer and battled for two years. The company dropped 40% in revenue under his leadership. I recently settled in the arbitration to buy back his stock. Now half a year in we are growing again. 13% in the first quarter, building it back up slowly.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Word of mouth is important. We fuel it by having loyalty and refer a friend program. We run ads on Facebook and Google mainly. We aim to sell a starter box in which new customers get a free t-shirt, shaker, and scoop so they can familiarize themselves with all our products and choose their favorite in a second order.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
We are profitable and are focussed on launching more products and flavors. We are also expanding in the US were we recently set up local fulfillment in LA and NY for fast deliveries. We just launched a new bar called the Plenny Bar which is completely vegan making all our products entirely vegan.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
I really only have cliches to mention here tbh: work hard, fail fast (A/B test), trust but verify, take time to choose business associates wisely and have clauses to break up quickly when things go south.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We use Shopify as a platform and offer subscriptions. We are about to launch three new plant-based bar flavors and are actively improving our whole product line still on a mission to make the healthiest meal possible.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Four Hour Workweerk, Tim Ferris. The main takeaway is to do what you love, reduce your cost of living to be able to live off your hobby asap. I never worked for anyone as a result. I started for myself as an artist painting portraits of people and experimenting a lot with art and eventually food. I also really like Ending Aging from Aubrey de Grey. The reason I like Jimmy Joy is that it helps be healthy. But eventually, though we will still die from the damage that occurs from being alive. Aubrey proposed a damage repair approach to medicine which recently has really taken off. Google started Calico to combat aging with a billion USD in funding, Insilico Medicine uses AI to dramatically reduce the time to discover drugs to help repair damage from old age, Jeff Bezos invested in Unity targeting the removal of senescent cells etcetera, etcetera. The whole longevity field is exploding right now with billions in funding and it all started with this book from Aubrey de Grey and Peter Thiel funding him.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Create something you’ll love. I was a visual artist before this and would not have the energy to persists if I did not truly want this product to exist. I think Naval Ravikant is a good guy to follow on this topic on Twitter.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
I fired, hired, reshuffled and rehired the team after I bought the company back and am currently not hiring.
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below! Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data. For more interviews, check out starter_story - I post new stories there daily. Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM
100+ tidbits of advice from a grizzled vet to new and returning players.
Want to save money on hereafter stones? Make your recall point your faction’s capital (Marianople on the west, Solis on the East). There are free ports there to Auroria as well as each faction pvp event and any other festival events when they're running.
Do your gilda quests each day every day.
Save your gilda. They go up in price exponentially. People will pay a small fortune for a 1,000 gilda design even on Legacy servers because saving gilda is hard.
I don't know if it's a bug or not but anyone can use a lunasolastellar 8x8 as a farmer's workbench no matter what the privacy settings. Look for these, they're small 8x8 farms with the fancy dressed scarecrow on the side of the farm instead of the middle. These are the only way for a non-patron to access a farmer’s workbench.
Do your daily meal quests! Not very many mats for crafting meals at a farmer's workbench and each one gives you 5 gold, a gilda star, and 500 vocation badges. You can do each of the four meal quests once a day.
You can upgrade a warrior's medal necklace to tier 7 before risking downgrades.
There's a button with a bar graph on it in the auction house that shows more detailed info about sales history for specific items. Use it!
After you reach level 55 swap to other classes whenever you're crafting to level them up as well. You never know when you might want to swap classes and the skill saver makes it easy to swap back to your usual class.
Getting all classes to 55 gives you a great title that reduces mana usage and a real awesome painting to put in your house.
Upgrading houses are expensive but usually worth it in the long run.
Muddy fields are amazing.
Trust me, someone already knows about your super difficult to get to illegal farm in the mountains and it's only a matter of time before they take all your crops.
If your are too trusting of people, eventually someone will backstab you.
Scamming other players is not against the terms of service.
This game does everything it can to encourage you to take trade packs through pvp zones so other players can fight over them. Don't go alone.
Players from your own faction can and will attack you to steal things from you.
Calling out “Green Pirates” in faction chat only encourages them.
As a new player your primary focus should be on developing an income source more than gear. Figuring out a way to make good money will pay for gear for a long long time.
Trade packs are probably the best way to make money, especially on the fresh start server. But they do take a time investment to move around.
If fresh start follows the history of the other servers, APEX will most likely quadruple in price in a few months. Hoard it now and cash it in later. (850-900 gold is the standard price per on Legacy Servers)
Land is still important but with all the new zones that came with 3.0 it isn’t nearly as rare and valuable as it used to be.
The two most precious resources in archeage are time and labor. Maximizing your usage of both is the key to financial success.
Spreadsheets are amazing. Seriously. If you want to get into the depths of crafting and maximizing profits you should use ‘em. At the very least they can be handy to keep track of materials you need for your current project.
There are two types of player made gear in Archeage “Crafted” and “Obsidian” gear.
Crafted gear is nice because it is crafting components aren’t bound and the equipment isn’t bound but it has only a very small chance of being upgradeable to the next tier.
Obsidian Gear is nice because it is always upgradeable to the next tier but most of its components are bound and obsidian gear is bind on equip.
Regrading improves an equipment piece’s grade and is a separate way to improve gear along with crafting it up to higher tiers.
Each time you upgrade a piece of gear through crafting to a higher tier there is a small chance for it to get a free regrade. This is why it is suggested to do all regrading at tier 1 obsidian.
Because of the increasing cost to upgrade obsidian gear it is the rule of thumb to never take celestial pieces past tier 4, divine past tier 5, and only take legendary or mythic to tier 7 (which is ridiculously expensive)
Regrading is a long and brutal process that you will be doing for the rest of the time you play the game. The sooner you see it as a necessary cost over a risky gamble the better.
Only use regrade gems if they are cheaper than the cost of the regrade.
Some will tell you to save money and buy gear, others will say regrade yourself. It really depends on your risk aversion and the price and availability of divine or better gear on your server. Usually you come out on top regrading yourself but you can get a bad string of luck and spend thousands on the process. Anything up to Celestial though and you’re always better off regarding yourself.
You can now regrade to Celestial without any risk of breaking or downgrading equipment. Celestial has a risk of breaking or downgrading. Divine and better will only upgrade or break.
This includes naval equipment too, however Celestial naval equipment will either break or upgrade.
Best strategy I’ve come up with for getting Divine gear: Regrade to Unique, then every time you have enough loyalty or gold get a resplendent scroll and regrade the unique item until it either goes Celestial or Divine. If it goes Celestial sell it and use the money to start regarding a new piece. You have about a 5% chance of it going to divine using this process.
Going for epic is the same except hitting Celestial pieces and accepting that 80% are going to break or go back to arcane.
Always focus on one piece at a time and never ever regrade a piece of gear you are actively using and can’t live without.
If you aren’t already, you should be doing all honor daily quest every day.
Honor gems are what separates good gear from mediocre in PVP
Whenever you upgrade gear to the next tier it loses all gems, so don’t go too crazy on them until you have gear you expect to wear for a long time.
Never ever be satisfied with your current gear. You can always get something better and if you don’t constantly work on it people will leave you in the dust.
In PvP gearscore is about ⅔ of success while skill is ⅓.
Knowing your class and those who are weak to your class is very very important in this game. Every class has a counter-class and you should avoid those that are best against your class while focusing those whose class you are best against. (If you’re scissors, you avoid stones and always attack papers).
Combo effects are HUGE, learn what status effects trigger combos for your moves and look for them on your enemy’s buff bar.
Most dungeon and open world bosses are immune to status effects, so don't waist your mana inflicting them on them.
For every CC/stun/debuff/status effect in this game there is a class with a skill to break out of it.
Songcraft buffs are amazing and every raid should have one person playing songs, but they don’t stack so having two people playing songs is redundant.
Always kill the healers first. Always.
If you are a healer, you are the most important person to keep alive. Heal yourself first, then the tank, then everyone else.
All things equal, three people in decent gear will always win over one person in amazing gear.
Numbers and coordination are the most important things in open world PVP.
“Pots” are amazing and help significantly bridge the gap between high gear and low gear players.
Soups and Sandwiches now only work outside of combat but are great at restoring you to max health and mana after a fight.
In 3.0 healers can now do some damage, making them significantly less easy solo targets.
Dying happens, and is at most a minor inconvenience in this game. The sooner you get over it the better.
You will be surprised how many seemingly overwhelming forces crumble when they are contested and don’t get an easy win.
People make mistakes when under pressure, always apply pressure.
Players near NPC guards are not invincible and there are dozens of ways to deal with the guards to kill the players.
Vehicles with packs in them cannot be desummoned. They will, however, dessummon if the owner is out of draw distance of their vehicle for more than 5 minutes.
Rider’s escape will get an unwanted player off your vehicle but you still need to be the first person on the wheel after it teleports.
A ship full of packs in a safe port can be dragged out of a safe port.
Your trade run is most vulnerable when loading and unloading.
Nothing will ruin a trade run more than being spotted while loading and having pirates waiting for you as soon as you leave the shore. Load as fast as possible and don’t leave a merchant ship waiting out in the open for everyone to see.
Placing packs on a plot? Use a seed to show the plot’s borders and borders of other packs on the ground. Hold your mouse over the pack on the ground to make sure it doesn’t say FREE LOOT.
Watch your owner’s mark. ALWAYS.
F12 toggles the GUI if you want to take cool screenshots
Ctrl+F12 will disconnect the camera from the player and let you take cooler screenshots. You can use it to do some sneaky creative spying.
Avoid moving around when you’re on boats, that’s how you end up falling off or knocking someone else off.
Tier 1 Dawns drop gear will speed up production times each time you use a skill on that item. Want to mine super fast? Get a set of dawns drop gloves with your vocation badges as soon as you can.
Underwater plants cannot be placed in illegal farms. If you want coral, pearls, etc. you’re going to have to get an aquafarm. Luckily they’re pretty cheap.
Not all housing and aqua farm zones are shown on the world map, there are unmarked zones that are usually very small but can be in some pretty neat locations if you can ever find one open.
Cacao, Chestnuts, Beechnuts, Coconuts, Cottonwood Fruit, and Jinn’s Tongue only grow in the wild. If you see ‘em it’s not a bad idea to grab them. Beechnuts, Coconuts, and Chestnuts are needed for making top tier crafting components.
Wild spawns reset whenever there is server maintenance. Wild spawns usually come half fully grown and harvestable and half freshly planted.
Mining Drills and Majestic Trees are a nice way to get stone and lumber but very few property types can hold their massive size. They need lunastellasolar farms or gazebos, tree houses, or mansions to be placed.
If your guild is benefiting only a couple members, that should raise some red flags.
If you leave a guild you will lose all your prestige, you should spend it before leaving.
Putting players on your friends list will tell you whenever they log on or off in your chat channel. They don't have to confirm this so you can use it to keep track of certain people you like or don't like.
Looking for very affordable way to give your gear a quick boost? Look at upgrading a guild cloak to Divine. Costs 150 prestige to purchase the cloak and then get synthesis materials from mobs in Diamond Shores to upgrade it to divine. Later on you can upgrade it all the way to Legendary but that costs a lot.
Cloaks and stat costumes can be continue to be ‘upgraded’ past their max tier to get even more stat boosts out of them.
A Quick gemming guide: The first gem you place into a piece will always socket. After that each normal gem that fails when placing will destroy all previously placed gems. This can be mitigated by using refined gems which will not destroy existing gems when they fail.
A common low risk strategy is to place one or two high end gems in your gear first, then use refined gems to fill up the rest of the slots.
Vivid Guild gems never fail. Put them in last. Your guild must be rank 4 for you to be able to purchase them.
Weapon and Armor tempers are totally worth using. The guild shop versions aren’t the best but are cheap and should be used on every piece of gear you use for any decent amount of time.
For gear you plan on using long term, Prime Tempers purchased from the loyalty token shop are the best available.
Looking to ‘swipe’ for some gold? Apex sells fast and easily but isn’t always the most efficient cash to gold exchange. $100 in credits can sometimes translate into more gold, than ten apex.
Popular marketplace items to sell? Tax Credits, Fusion Alembic, and regrade charms.
Accounts on North America and European servers have separate labor pools and loyalty tokens but share credits and patron status. Want to maximize your patron account? Make a character on the opposite server and use your separate labor and loyalty to make money to buy apex. Many use it as a great method to pay for their account or get extra credits to spend on their mains.
If you can get it, the 30-day labor stipend is amazing to have to get an extra thousand labor every day.
Once you have more than two properties your taxes per property go up exponentially.
Cars look cool but they’re purely a luxury item. Their utility is very limited compared to a pair of farm haulers or a skateboard.
Having a merchant ship will make you very popular with all your friends. Having an upgraded merchant ship will make you a lot more friends.
Fishing can be very good money maker but you are very exposed in a pvp zone. Fishing poles un-equip your normal weapons, make sure you re-equip them if you get attacked.
You can and should fish from the steering wheel of the boat and be ready to make a quick getaway if you need to.
The marketplace takes a 10% cut of anything you sell on it (5% if patron).
You may consider saving some money by selling things on trade chat instead of on the auction house.
That said the highest fee you will ever pay to list an item is 100 gold.
You can add more toolbars from the shortcuts menu listed under game settings.
You can rebind just about everything including toolbars in the key settings section of the options.
Draw distance is very important in open world pvp, you may minimize every other setting but you should keep that at maximum.
Hit shift+i to bring up the equipment encyclopedia. It lists every item in the game at each grade and shows where your gear ranks against other gear.
On the character sheet if you mouse over each base stat it tells you exactly what each point in that stat benefits.
Click on the box in the bottom right corner of the character info screen to see detailed stats on attack, defense, and regen statistics.
Make sure to grab your login tracker and daily merit quests every day even if aren’t regularly working on them many you’ll complete just by doing what you normally do.
Want to access the Trion store page in game? Bring up the marketplace, click on purchase credits. Then Click on Purchase APEX. Then Click on Take me back to Store Page. From there you can apply any free packages you are owed to your characters without leaving the game along with any other store functions you might need to do.
Players from other factions can be in the same family.
Any property or chest owned by you can be accessed by any other character on the same account no matter the settings of the property.
(edited to fix some grammar, clarify a few things better, and clean up some formatting)
Grafted trees grow and produce faster than trees you grow from seed; thus, if you start right, you will be enjoying your own homegrown mangos within two to four years. Step 1 Grow your grafted mango tree under the most conducive environmental conditions. Trees must have full sun and fertile soil. So in this article, we will be sharing information about Growing information Cocoa tree, How to grow Cocoa in a container, Cocoa care, Health benefits of Cocoa, Propagation of cocoa tree. It is a wonder that ‘Where do cocoa beans grow?’ Cacao beans trees are very beautiful, they are theobroma cocoa species and it grows in the tree pods. The cacao trees below were grown from a pod harvested New Hampshire, and germinated in my Vermont home, both zone 4. The New Hampshire parent tree grown by a friend is about 6 feet tall, and produces a crop of 2 to 5 pods per year, blooming in the summer and ripening mid-winter. Click to see full answer. Beside this, what conditions do cacao trees need to grow? Most of the world's cocoa is grown in a narrow belt 10 degrees either side of the Equator because cocoa trees grow well in humid tropical climates with regular rains and a short dry season. Cinnamon trees will do well in either location, as long as they receive around full sun. If the temperatures in your area fall below 68 °F (20 °C), then it might be best to plant the cinnamon indoors. You don't have to keep a potted cinnamon indoors year-round. Cacao trees can live for up to 100 years but are considered productive for only around 60. When the tree grows naturally from cocoa tree seeds, it has a long, deep taproot. For commercial cultivation, vegetative reproduction via cuttings is more commonly utilized and results in a tree lacking a taproot. Cacao, tropical evergreen tree grown for its edible seeds. Native to lowland rainforests of South America, cacao is grown commercially in the New World tropics as well as western Africa and tropical Asia. Learn more about the cacao plant and its cultivation in this article. Cacao trees typically do not begin to bear fruit until they are 6 - 8 years of age. Cacao trees are generally harvested biannually. One cacao tree can produce over 6,000 flowers in a year. Cocoa plant varieties grow wild in the Amazon basin of South America. Of the 20 species of cocoa plants, the cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao) serves as the most widely grown and popular. Known for its use in creating chocolate for confectionery industries, the cocoa plant now grows in 58 countries and the crop covers more than 17 million acres. Growing a cacao tree — the plant whose pods are made into chocolate — takes patience. It takes three to five years for a cacao seed to become a fruiting tree. Each tree makes a limited number of seeds.
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