I'm talking about the bags under mine.

I haven't done magic in quite some time. Not had much need - but I find if I don't, after a while I get quite tense and angsty. I start suffering PMT and all this gumph that goes with being a non-smoker (I actually liked myself more as a smoker - I was a chilled out kinda gal. I dealt with stress in a cool kinda way lol - can't stomach the taste anymore though).

But the other day there was an important need to sort out a spell. Once I start, the flood gates open. If I've not done awt for a while and lived too much 'in my head' (day-to-day grind) and then I turn to magic it all comes pouring out and then I feel much better. My first few spells after a dry spell (ho-ho) tend to go off like rocket fuel so I know it's all good and dandy.

But the work wasn't finished with me. Open up, take a stretch and it all goes to pot.

Mid-day I'm being self-indulgent eating the wrong things, relaxing, slobbing out - when I suddenly come over very tired and literally pass out on the bed like someone's knocked me out with a brick. I have to sleep NOW.

Dumph.

And I have a very full-on experience. Very lucid, as it is when you do this in the middle of the day. Slightly erotic - always nice. Although - of all the things I could have screamed - some African guy, we're having a conversation when all of a sudden, like five people this week, he asks me for money. I was mortified but dealt with it with my usual reserve.

And there was another guy there. A big, roly-poly, ginger dreadlocked heathen man. And a blond, dreadlocked woman in a red top. And it was very, very interesting - an interaction occurred that held a mirror up to part of my character and I flinched. It wasn't terrible, it wasn't something I was entirely oblivious to - it was just something I didn't expect to see so clearly. It had answered a question I hadn't asked.

And I woke up. Lovely experience. Only I felt like the living dead.

There’s that wonderful buffer between there and the waking world - that yummy coming-round stage when you're still just slightly out of it and floaty and anesthetised.

Then bam. Yuck. Ugh. I was shaky like I'd downed a bottle of vodka the night before, I was clammy, I was white as a bed sheet. I hadn't wanted to wake up - can't remember entirely what woke me. I wanted to stay there but home I came.

It was intense. Wonderful. Useful. Profound.

But I felt like shite. And although the details have since departed, the sense of the lesson is still quite clear.

But do others get this - after you've been off in the twilight - do you find your body sometimes needs some TLC? What do you do with yourself? Do you have a come-down ritual involving ginger tea and smelling salts? Do you get that sudden tiredness when you know you need to 'go' somewhere?

It's creeping on me again. It's late now but I know it's going to be a night of dreams and visions and I'm not entirely sure I want to go just yet.

Do others get this need to do magic from time to time - a compulsion? Do you get tense if you don't? Is there a change over you when you do - an energising? A vitality? A sparkle in your eye?

The magic energises me, the travel exhausts me.

Enough waffle before this becomes a blog lol

Sounds like you need a few Grounding exercises, Thin.

Of course it could be bad vibes from the kitten...

I found that when it's time for me to have one of my "spontanious journeys" (as I like to call them), it becomes very clear, though I do generally have time to prepare myself for the onslaught. It usually happens in the evening and I generally go to sleep straight after, so I don't know about recovery. Maybe the spirits know that I might have a bad recovery and so do it in the evening so as not to mess me up too much!

Thanks Fred - no, I don't need grounding

Kristovski - may well be linked to the tryptophan/serotonin chain reaction of the evening time. Same reason people only take ayahuasca in the evenings