Summary: TRP's resident junky here to give you a low down on how I used psychedelic drugs for emotional development and life progression. I've had way too many requests from people to type this up, so this is really for those that are interested. The post is long, I know. Many will be too intimidated to read the wall of text. I wanted to get it all out at once. Multiple posts would be disjointed and I didn't want to spam the sub. If you can push through it well done to you. This isn't a joke post, this isn't just a deadbeat druggy trying to push his lifestyle on you, this is an information post. A life field report. Take from it what you will. I owe my entire life to psychedelics and TRP. These were the two things that woke me up to the world. I want to share how.

When Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the streets of Sarajevo it set off a chain of events that led directly to the first world war. The dominoes had been in line for a couple of years all over europe and that assassination was the finger that tipped them over. One by one each domino fell until the world was a different place, ravaged by war, border lines redrawn, a new era for the world.

And WWII, entirely impossible without the events of WWI. WWI needed to happen to set the stage for the second, even more destructive world war; and when we came out of that, the world was drastically more different. Drastically.

In the summer after my first failed year at university my girlfriend and I went on an improptu trip to amsterdam. I'd just discovered weed at college, and I took to it like catnip. We got a hotel, we smoked some bud and ate some edibles, got high off our faces and wondered museums. Then on one of the last days I stumbled into a smartshop and we bought two 10g packs of psilocybin truffles each. My gf pussied out when she saw and smelled what we had to eat, and to be fair to her, they were disgusting. I told her I was wary of having my first trip while she was there sober, so I told her to go to vondelpark for a few hours or something. She left me in the hotel room with a bottle of water, a bed and my phone.

8 hours later I came out of that hotel room a different person. The dominoes in my life had been stacked for a long long time, and that trip was the push that led me into a world of self discovery and emotional growth. I call it my Princip trip.

I've found that growing up isn't really that gradual. Now others may have different experiences but I've realised that you don't really grow up every day, it's not like you earn maturity points every day you wake up. No, I realise that growing up, or developing emotionally, is something that happens in stages. You jump from one level to the next, you do not slowly climb. My adult development has come in a series of big leaps triggered by major life events. Only after these life events have I come out the other side and realised I'm a different person to the man I was before. It's like I'm on a platform, and every so often, I climb onto the next. I look down on the platform I was before and laugh or cringe at how stupid or immature I was.

I often see others on the lower stages I was on before, and having lived in those stages myself, I understand and don't hate or blame them for their immaturity or stupidity. I see a kid spending all his time playing video games or pedestalizing women and I don't blame him, I was at that stage once in my life. I've left that platform now, and I'm on the next.

And often I see people in stages of emotional development that are vastly higher than mine. Some of my role models, some celebrities, some of the posters on here. It reminds me that I haven't "finished" yet, that there are still levels to climb onto, and that one day I will look back at my current level of development and laugh and cringe at myself.

My life has been defined in before and afters. Events so important to me that they have made a lasting impact and taught me huge things about myself and the world. The knowledge all comes in one go and it comes in thick, it can be psychologically painful or freeing. The Epiphanies and eurekas all come in at once, and they seem so fucking obvious in hindsight. You collect dominoes throughout your life and set them up, it's the big life events and the subsequent quiet meditative moments to yourself where you process and digest it all.

It's those nights that you spend awake in bed wondering what the fuck you're doing with your life. It's those plane journeys staring out the window contemplating your existence. It's those evenings sitting next to an amsterdam canal with a joint and a psilocybin comedown listening to Lorde and realising you've been a fucking embarrassing idiot for the majority of your life.

I'm going to list some of the life events that caused "jumps" in my consciousnesses, where I ascended to a higher level of "me". You can call each and every one of these events "waking up", because that's what they essentially are.

  • Realising I was a sentient being. This must have happened sometime in my early childhood. Such a big jump that I can't even remember anything before it.

  • Reading the Harry Potter books from start to finish. 9 year old me came out of these stories utterly changed and different and more mature and emotionally available. They were the first "real" books I'd read and they smashed open the world of literature for me to appreciate. Required fucking reading for any child.

  • Rejecting God at an early age, and questioning the sanity of the adults who pushed it on me. I was 11, how could these adults around me cling to this? Are my parents really that stupid?

  • Questioning authority and getting unjustly punished for it. The first time I realised that life was not fair, I was freed. I started seeing the world for how it actually was, not how I was told it was.

  • The first time I left the country, and discovering how big the world is

  • The death of my father

  • Performing for others on stage and absolutely embarrassing myself.

  • Losing my virginity

  • Getting beat the shit out of and lying in bed regretting my fucking arrogance

  • My first job.

  • That first fucked up relationship every guy has at least once in his life, where he comes out of it a different person and with a new outlook on life. For some of us, this happens multiple times.

  • Travelling by myself for the first time

  • Moving to college

  • Reading Machiavelli

  • Psilocybin

  • TRP

Now, of course I've got to have a disclaimer. I'm just a kid who messed around with psychedelics in college. I will be honest about my drug use and explain, chronologically the benefits they've given me, and the times they've fucked me up. My experiences will not be your experiences if you decide to try them. I am no authority on drugs. I do not have all the information. I do not want PMs with drug questions, I won't be able to answer them. There are countless places online where you can learn about other's trips and various drugs. Erowid is a good place to start. I'm only going to to be talking about my experiences.

Weed

"I sit back with this pack of Zig Zags and this bag Of this weed it gives me the shit needed to be The most meanest MC on this - on this Earth"

Weed is a trap. Take that from a stoner. I understand fully now why the government, or my parents, are so against it. I do not want my child smoking weed at an early age. Only when he is mature enough to control it.

I didn't have the capability to control my THC intake. I loved it. It sedated me. I did it all the time. It shut up the fuzz of depression in my brain. It chilled me the fuck out. It allowed me to talk to people without stressing out about the interaction.

It made me so fucking creative. Bud made me daydream in ways that I hadn't since I was a kid. I couldn't write or compose while high, but I sure as hell had the most creative, best fucking ideas of my life while blazed. I would jot down notes or lyrics, or even hum melodies into my phone recorder to listen to later and make into a song. I would be astounded by just how... good... the shit I would come up with would be. I would write stories and while they were still shit, they were vastly better than anything I could have come up with sober.

But then I stopped using it for creative purposes. I started waking and baking, and smoking after every meal, and before bed, and after sex, and after a shit. I'd smoke all the fucking time. I became broke, groggy and fucking lazy.

It spiraled me into a deep depression. I spent all day just laying in bed on reddit, having a toke, maybe playing a video game or two. I did not study, I didn't partake in my hobbies or follow my dreams, I just blazed all day. Weed was my only hobby. I went to amsterdam so I could smoke better weed than the shit I could get.

Weed causing depression is an odd thing. I've learnt that drugs changing you isn't some kind of outside affliction, like a disease. No, they just set off the train of thoughts that lead into the eventual epiphany or depressed state. I could have achieved this myself sober, the drugs just sped up the thinking, made me reach the goal quicker.

Weed didn't make me depressed, weed made me lay in bed all day. Weed made me not eat because I couldn't be bothered to cook. Weed made me broke because I spent all my money on weed. Weed made me skip class or the gym becuase I was too high.

Skipping class and the gym, not eating, being broke, not getting out of bed, not seeing my friends, not showering and playing video games all the time. These things made me depressed. And while I could have done all these things without marijuana, it was the bud that put the pieces in place for me to fall into it. The bud made me depressed, I smoke bud to drown out the depressed thoughts. You can see how the cycle perpetuates.

I pulled myself out, and you'll see how. I still smoke weed, I've learnt to control it. I've learnt how to make the most of it now. I follow one simple rule with my weed intake:

Never smoke on your own.

I realised that if I was to sit on my balcony with a six pack and drink them all and then collapse into bed, and do this every night, and drink in the morning too; I'd be a fucking alcoholic. People go to meetings for this shit. I was no different. My first step was admitting that I had a problem with weed.

The next step was to stop masturbating with marijuana. I stopped smoking on my own, only with friends, only at parties, only after fucking some broad if she was down too. It changed everything, it gave me complete control, it allowed me to channel the high into something creative or social.

I have made SO many friends, good friends, lifelong friends, best friends through marijuana. All the stoners just kind of glue together, and I'm glad. Some of them are fucking losers, some of them are finding their way in life like me. I am glad weed has given me the chance to meet them. I owe weed everything, even if it did fuck me up for the longest time. Weed was my gateway drug, it led me to other drugs, and they changed my life in other ways.

Oh, and it makes you eat fucking loads. For a skinny shit on a bulk, it was a godsend. That's if I could be bothered to cook.

Weed was the first drug that took me from one stage of my life to another. I came out it different. I came out of it realising my body and mind were capable of so much more. I wanted to find out how far.

Psilocybin

There's only one way to describe a mushroom trip, or any trip for that matter, ineffable.

I would do it no justice trying to explain it in words. Those who have tripped before will understand exactly what I mean. Language just isn't capable of expressing the feelings and thoughts you have while tripping, but I'll give it my best shot.

I took 10g of truffles in a hotel room in amsterdam. I waited and waited, nothing. Nothing happened for a while. I'd follow the instructions on the packet, I had an empty stomach, I had two packs of trip stoppers in case I was to have a bad time. Nothing happened for a while.

And then I felt the tingles, and then I realised I'd been standing in the middle of the room doing nothing for half an hour. I was coming up and I was about to experience something I was unable to comprehend. I'd taken 10g of my truffles, the overconfident idiot in me decided to take my girlfriends dose as well. I wouldn't recommend starting your first psychedelic experience on a dose made for experienced users. It might fuck you up. I was fine, in fact I think I came out better than had I done a lower dose. But i'm not sure others will be the same. Regardless, a deep, dark, fucked up trip was exactly what I needed.

The room had started to warp, hallucinations had begun. You realise very quickly on your first trip that while the warping and twisting and colour of hallucinations is astounding and beautiful, you know it's just your eyes basically malfunctioning. I had complete control over the hallucinations, I just needed to focus my eyes and they went. Or I could lay back and let them go wild and deep. It was very very fun. Then I stopped looking at the walls and lamps and flowers and started thinking. And oh boy.

I understood everything. It was like my mind had gone from 30mph to 100. I was still me, I still had self awareness, I still had my memories and my thoughts and my philosophies, they were just amplified.

I could think about anything and understand it, just straight up make complete sense of it with no trouble. I looked up my old math exam paper that I flunked in high school. I spent two hours doing it, I was rusty, but i'd never enjoyed myself so much.

I looked back on my life, the way I've been acting, the things I thought. I processed it all. My relationships, my family, my school, my friends. One by one I picked at all these things, analysed them, deconstructed them, filed them away.

Only years later during one of my first CBT sessions did I realise that I'd CBT'd myself under psilocybin. That 8 hour trip was better for my emotional wellbeing than months of psychotherapy.

I cried and cried. I sent my mother a message telling her I loved her. When my girlfriend came back I looked at her in wonder. I'd never fully appreciated her until that trip. I'd never fully appreciated just how beautiful and supportive she was. I remember thinking that day, I am captain of the ship, she is my first mate. She is my sous chef. I want to hold her hand and take us both on a journey. I was confirmed in my thoughts by TRP later on, and I now I understand why I thought that way.

Coming down from your first trip is probably one of the saddest things you can experience. It's painful yet melancholy. You don't want the trip to end, in fact, you wish you could operate on that level of consciousness for the rest of your life. You learn to accept it and let it go. It's very akin to the end of a relationship, a breakup. The insecure child inside wants everything to remain the same, but you know that everything has to end eventually. You wake up in the morning with a hangover and a slight afterglow. You wonder through the Van Gogh museum and are fucking astounded. Honest to god, I never truly appreciated or even understood art until I'd had a good dose of Psilocybin. Now I like to think I do, now I can look at a painting and draw something from it. Before I couldn't, but holy shit were the galleries in Amsterdam absolutely beautiful on the afterglow of my first mushroom trip. For the second time in my adult life (and not counting being kicked in the balls) I cried.

I came home, staring at the clouds through the plane window, and realised my life was going to be different from there on out. Everything was quiet, people seemed more relateable, there was much less stress, more understanding. I'd moved onto the next level of maturity, it all happened at once, in the space of 8 hours. The mushrooms had kicked it off. The dominoes had fallen. I was a different person, but still me.

Not so bad

One thing that the shrooms trip taught me was that while it was intense and deep and magical, it didn't fuck me up like everyone said it would. I'd had this idea of drugs instilled into me that they can make you go crazy, that people who do drugs always turn out worse at the end, that drugs are SUPER SUPER powerful and it's a big deal to even be around them.

Nah, shrooms made me realise just how tame and "disappointing" drugs are. Well they're not disappointing, but they're definitely don't live up to the ridiculous paranoia projected on us about them. They're just really fucking cool. Plus, I'd just survived 20 grams of psilocybin truffles for my first time, if that didn't fry me into a potato, than I doubted anything less would.

MDMA

I do not snort MDMA up my nose. In fact I refuse to do any drug that needs to be injected or snorted.

I bought some Ecstasy pills on the darkweb. I used a VPN, I used tor, I encrypted all my messages. 10 100mg pills arrived, I'd read reviews of the seller on the website I bought from. It all checked out. I looked up the pills on erowid, they checked out too. I didn't buy a testing kit but I probably should have. They were MDMA though.

I took two pills, then another. Then the rest. What a fucking idiot. I would not recommend doing 1 gram of MDMA for your first time. If you do trip you'll realise that you feel invincible and on top of the world, that you can handle anything. And to be honest, you can. 1 gram was okay, and the way that MDMA works means that I wasn't exactly tripping equal to 1 gram. The more you take, the less effect each subsequent pill has. Your brain can only produce so much dopamine.

MDMA made me forgive myself. I forgave myself for being depressed. I forgave myself for wasting my life. I forgave myself for not following my dreams. I forgave my failures.

I forgave my mother for not being mentally stable, I forgave my dad for dying. I forgave my girlfriend for not being the perfect pedestalized unrealistic unicorn I was expecting her to be. I forgave women for behaving in solipsistic ways I for some reason expected them not to. I forgave them for being just as "shallow" as we are. I forgave the betas and the white knights, while I can't save them, I hope they can save themselves.

MDMA was the kick up my ass that told me to do something with my life. It made me feel like anything is possible if I work at it (which is true), it made me stop stressing about past mistakes and fuckups, it made me stop blaming the world for my troubles, it reminded me that life was unfair, something that I'd forgotten for a while. It removed all sense of entitlement I had.

MDMA gave me empathy in ways I couldn't believe possible. Everyone is lost and just trying to find their way. Everyone. It makes you realise everyone is just as insecure and fucked up as you are. It made me realise that my anxiety and insecurity is just an evolutionary programming that helped my ancestors survive. I wouldn't be rid of it, I will carry it for the rest of my life. I should stop trying to fight it, or cure myself, I accepted that anxiety is an inherent part of me, and everyone.

I stopped blaming and judging people for stupid shit. I started to understand that good people do bad things because they are hurt or in pain or just don't understand. I stopped losing my temper at people, I stopped being impatient with tourists on the street. I stopped taking it personally when I was slighted.

I don't really understand how people can go clubbing on MDMA. It makes me want to just lie down and contemplate existence. I also get pretty bad turbulence; those 30 minutes or so of rolling around sweaty and your stomach turning that you wish you hadn't take the drug. That's normal. These pills aren't made by GlaxoSmithKlein, it's just some dude in his basement. They won't be pressed perfectly, you'll be hit by it all at once. Ride out the anxiety and worry and sweatyness, it's over before you know it.

I still have the trip stoppers from Amsterdam. I've never needed to use them. I've never had a bad trip. Bad trips don't exist for me. If you're in a shit mood and take drugs, you'll have a shit time. Who knew. Plan your trips well, have some food, some water, and a day of recovery afterwards. You'll get hungover because you're dehyrated and your serotonin levels are shot, that's normal. Drink lots of water before bed, take a multivitamin and 5-HTP when you can. These things help.

I CBT myself with MDMA all the time. All the fucking time. It tells me to calm the fuck down and get on with my life. It's not a big deal. Everything is chill.

MDMA taught me stoicism better than any book or trp post ever has. It made me shut the fuck up and observe.

And the first time I did MDMA with my girlfriend? Wow. You'll never be closer to another person. All your problems are resolved. You just talk it out, complete straight talk, no dancing about. I can imagine MDMA has fixed a lot of relationships, and ended a few too, those that needed to end. It just makes you behave so.... logically. It's the perfect couples therapy. Take it with your LTR if you're having problems.

And the sex, wow, the sex.

One thing I do have to say is, if you're gonna drop Molly, lock your phone away and every form of communication you have with people. I messaged everyone I wronged in my life on my first MDMA trip and apologised, I tried to connect with old friends and scared a few away. You will be a soppy bastard and people will not understand, and you will wake up in the morning and cringe.

LSD

This is my drug of choice. This is the one I've done more than any other. LSD is very akin to a shrooms trip, just "milder", less deep, fucks with you less, and much more bright and colourful. If I had to compare them in terms of music, I'd say my mushroom trips are Radiohead, my LSD trips are Gorillaz. Both smart, both deep and dark and complex, but one more playful and colourful and funky.

And that's what LSD gives me. The funk. It's this weird kind of groove that I carry with me. This IDGAF attitude that will stick with you even after the trip has ended.

LSD makes me MAD. It allows me to be pissed off with people who are no good to me, toxic friends, stupid colleagues. It allows me to be more assertive and not a fucking doormat.

It makes me pissed off at myself. I look at myself on Lucy and I say "damn son, you haven't lifted in like a week, you skinny shit. You've been eating crap, you didn't talk to that girl cos you're a weak faggot, why is that book half read, why are you so behind in your studies?".

LSD is akin to the older brother or the dad or the TRP poster who's shouting at you to stop being such a wet rag. It makes me get up and lift, it makes me cook, it makes me read. It's the best brain bleach you can have. Cleans all the fucking shit away from your brain. It shuts up that inner monkey child inside of you, in fact it beats the shit out of it.

And it teaches you IDGAF in ways you wouldn't believe. The only 10s I've ever cold approached and picked up have been while on acid. And it was fucking easy. Fucking easy. Don't believe me? Try it. You straight up don't give a fuck. It makes me dark triad to the core. It makes me Machiavellian. It makes me super fucking productive and driven, it tells me to follow my dreams and complete my mission or GTFO.

LSD cured my addiction to weed. Once again, it wasn't some magic drug that stopped me smoking. No, it just gave me the tools and thought processes to follow a line that eventually led to me dropping the dependency. I've had friends who said it's done wonders in helping them quit cigs.

LSD is where I learned and developed my frame. LSD is where I finally figured out amused mastery. I went on my vacation, I discovered shit while out there, and I brought it back with me. LSD is like a study room, or a TRP page, I sit there, I learn, I epiphanise, and when I'm back in the real world I put it all into practice. And it works.

LSD has made me powerful. Powerful in every aspect of life. It amplified the intensity of how much I want things. It encourages goal seeking behavior. I feel stronger, I feel smarter, I feel like my life is in control, I understand everything, I feel like I can shape myself in any way I want.

I'm not lying when I said I developed frame under acid. My eyes are stern now, I speak less, I observe more. I don't bother giving advice or trying to save people. I don't let myself be affected by other people's shit. Amused mastery is absolutely natural to me now.

And whenever I slip frame, or I can see myself breaking down; I take another good dose of acid, and every single time without fail it pumps me back into the groove of my life and sets me back on the right track.

There was a phase during a hard time in my life where every sunday I would take the train up to the countryside with a bag of weed and a few tabs, lie in a field or a forest and just trip. Every sunday I would allow myself this break, this little getaway from the world, and it would do wonders. The rest of the week would be perfect and productive. I did this every sunday. I needed the rest. It was my church. It was a time for me to connect with myself, to process my thoughts and sort out my life, to plan ahead.

Now I don't need that, my life is better, meditation helps, I have more control. But if ever things start falling to shit again, I'm going to start going back to church. There's nothing better than tripping somewhere beautiful by yourself. Try it. One thing I've yet to do is look at the milky way while on acid, too much light pollution where I live. That's one of my life goals.

I started having some really deep trips. I was taking 400, 500, 600 ug at a time. I would lay in bed for hours and think. Just think. I would sometimes forget how to breath, and have to do it manually. I would't feel my face, I would touch it and it would feel like my hand was going directly though my head. I would sometimes go blind for a few minutes. I would close my eyes and dream awake, have full fucking dreams while awake. I would experience insanity for hours. It was ridiculous. I never want to get that deep again. It wasn't good for me, but I'm glad those trips happened.

During exam season I would microdose on acid. I've tried Ritalin, I've tried Adderall. They have nothing on this shit. Acid is my drug, it's propelled me through life and into the next stage of maturity multiple times, although I think now I've exhausted it's powers. I've learnt all that can be learnt, and now I just use it as brain bleach, a reset button, or for church.

DMT

Never again.

Maybe ayahuasca one day with a trained shaman and a good, safe environment.

Otherwise, never again.

I cannot fucking believe my body was capable of that. I cannot process it. Not even now. I was an idiot to even try.

I don't even really want to talk about it. All I know is that I shouldn't go back to that place again.

EDIT: to avoid more people thinking I'm trying to paint this drug in a bad light. I'm not. I'm just terrified by it still. I wasn't ready for DMT. I didn't have a bad experience, I didn't have a good experience. I just wasn't ready. It was mind shattering. It felt like dying and being born at the same time. The "beings" I met basically told me to fuck off out their world. Some people have had great experiences, I'm not sure what to define it as. I've never understood true terror until DMT. I felt the icy cold horror chill you feel when something startles you from behind. Like a huge catlike predator was hunting me the whole time. For 20 minutes. At the same time it felt like I was at the centre of a giant star/womb, burning hot and protecting. Never have I understood Orwell's doublethink until DMT. Never have I understood yin yang until DMT. It was subsequently the best and worst thing I've ever done at the same time. I don't understand how I could feel such polar feelings at once. I could even feel the different sides of my brain working independently. Or maybe that was projection. I don't know. I can't remember a lot of it. I repressed it. I came to on the floor drooling and having shit myself out of fear. I wasn't ready. If I am to try it again, I'd do it with a professional or someone experienced

Vacations

I don't do drugs that often anymore. I think I've learnt all that can be taught, drawn out as much as possible from them. It's something that has to be rare. It's called a "trip" for a reason. It's a holiday, a vacation. It's something you do to clean yourself and get away from your world. I'm sure many of you have come back from a vacation utterly changed and refreshed and ready to tackle life again, that's how it feels after all of my trips.

And vacations, you don't take them every week, or even every month. If you decided to holiday every weekend, or every day; you will soon find you have no control of your life and are so busy enjoying yourself on your "trips" that you don't do anything productive or work on your mission.

I treat my drugs like vacations, I take long breaks between trips, and I trip only when I think I need it. When I need the reset button. That's what psychedelics are too me, Psilocybin, MDMA, LSD. Every single time I do them I feel like my brain has been washed. Like I've hit a reset button. Like I've cleaned away all the brain sickness and shitty depressed or bluepill thoughts.

As I go through my life I collect all these bad thoughts and hurt and pain and anxiety. They collect like dirt in the pure glass of water that is my mind. Meditating is like letting the glass sit and the dirt collect, then skimming it off. A psychedelic trip is like emptying out the glass and refilling it with fresh water.

I refill every so often, sometimes just for fun. Sometimes when the glass gets really fucking dirty.

But If i keep refilling a a clean glass, it may be fun, but it is not productive, it won't give me any benefits. It is better for me to wait between my trips and live a productive life, using the trips only as vacations.

Psychedelics "ascended" me onto the next level of maturity, each in their different ways. I did each drug multiple times, sometimes mixing them, they didn't "ascend" me anymore after a while. The jump had already been made, and it wasn't going to work again. I was already on the next platform. It wasn't a hack that would make me grow up every time I used them. Now they're just a cleaning tool.

And just like how WWII was impossible without the events of WWI, I could not jump to each level of realisation until I'd made the previous jump to the step before that. Weed gave me the jump that paved the way for shrooms. Psilocybin gave me a HUGE jump, then MDMA, then LSD, multiple times.

I don't know what I need in order to jump to the next level. No one does until they see it in hindsight. TRP was a big fucking jump for me, and so were psychedelics. Now I continue work on myself and my mission. The next jump will come eventually, no need to rush it.

Lessons Learned

Well really, I'm not trying to teach you any lessons, but you can draw what conclusions you need from this post. Yesterday I posted a rant on how TRP has helped change my life, but I owe a lot, A LOT, to psychedelics too. That's what this post is for. Maybe the lessons is that drugs can be useful if used correctly. The conspiracy theorist in me wants to believe they're restricted because governments are afraid of people figuring shit out and getting smart with them. I know I did. Whatever the reason, I honestly think that everyone in the world should have at least one psychedelic trip if they want an enriched life. Even just MDMA. You won't know how they change you until you try.