DOSE:

2 g

oral

Mushrooms

(ground / crushed)

BODY WEIGHT:

84 kg

I had been left alone for the weekend, and I had a few hours to myself before friends were coming over for a bachelor’s party that I was hosting. I had just said goodbye to my girlfriend, who would be traveling with her mother to her childhood home for the weekend. With nothing to do until later, it seemed like the perfect time to consume a light dose of the psilocybin mushrooms (golden teacher strain) I had home grown. Since there had been no time to undertake this in the past few months, I considered this to be one of the few chances I would have to experience this. I decided to use the “lemon-tek”, grinding about 2 grams of material into fine pieces with a cannabis grinder and adding them to a mixture of hot water and lemon juice. I let this steep for 10 minutes and then consumed it, including the ground mushrooms.

I took a few hits of cannabis and settled down to listen to a playlist I had set up for the trip. Lying on the couch, I soon became aware that the music was becoming horrible distorted. Concerned that the volume was loud enough to disturb my neighbors, I turned down the music, only to be overwhelmed by the annoying noise of the air conditioner. I could not tolerate the music at all at this point, and tried desperately to change it to something more calming, but was unable to understand the controls. In disgust, I flopped on the couch, my body buzzing with bizarre physical sensations. Suddenly the droning AC was interrupted by music. The music was familiar – in fact it was my phone ringing. In dread, I picked it up and realized it was my girlfriend, who is now my wife.

While in the car, my mother in law had begun to needle her about when we would be getting married, and what I was bringing to the relationship. This was upsetting to my girlfriend, and she had called me from the passenger seat crying. Despite my confusion and difficulty understanding, I tried to calm her, or at least get her off the phone quickly so I could deal with the trip, which was quickly headed downhill. I began pacing around my living room while talking to her, and once I had hung up I headed out onto the terrace to inspect the surrounding landscape.

The hills across from the building were writhing with activity. Trees contorted themselves into swirls, the houses on the hills swayed and jiggled like gelatin, and the mountains in the distance stretched into peaks and then compressed into stubby lumps. All of my visual field seemed alive and irrational. I looked down from the top floor of the high rise where I live. The ground was too close, with every detail apparent, even the smallest rocks and plants. I realized that I was tripping hard, and turned back inside. Closing the glass behind me to block the heat, I realized that the living room was covered in a fine layer of dust. Strange letters glowed from the walls and paintings began to scroll and contort into different forms. I felt slightly nauseated and went into the bedroom to lie down and rest.

Closing my eyes, the world seemed to disappear, and my thoughts began to race. I entered a horrible thought loop, which went something like this: I can think of the solution to any problem, given enough time. Which lead to thinking that my time in this world is finite, so there will be problems that are beyond my capacity. This brought me to realize that time is the ultimate problem which must be solved, which lead back to the possibility of thinking of the solution to any problem, given enough time.

This loop eventually began to degrade over what seemed like hours (but was probably 15 minutes) and become mixed with thoughts of going insane and being stuck in the loop forever. So at the same pace and in parallel to my thoughts of time, and solutions to complex problems, I was also mumbling nonsense words and feeling sorry for myself. One particular word that I remember repeating was “thermomber”, which was a combination of thermometer, mom, and November. I began to feel nauseated and uncomfortable and curled into a fetal position on the bed. The looping continued, and I began to feel that it was not so dissimilar from my life in general. I have always relied on quick thinking to do my job – doing the minimum of basic investigation but coming up with strong conclusions based on the evidence. I realized that in some way, this was the same loop I was experiencing. A problem was presented, and I would egotistically set out to solve it, always staying one step ahead of the problem. I felt transported by this, like each loop brought me further out into an infinite space in the mind, and farther away from myself, with the backdrop of some concept of time always there as a limiting factor. I realized I couldn’t outrun time itself, no matter how smart I was.

I got up, feeling miserable, to head to the bathroom and try to expulse something, anything from my body to try to break out of the trip. Nothing was coming out, so I returned to the living room, with the air conditioner still droning incessantly. The dust in the living room had continued to pile up, and I was overwhelmed by a dusty smell. The electronics in the room, a stereo system, and the TV, began to take on an odd sheen, like the 1980’s silver faced electronics. Suddenly I became aware, and began to repeat to myself, that the room had become “hopelessly trapped in the 80’s”. I paced through the room, feeling like I was locked in some infernal, dusty, and cluttered Radio-Shack, surrounded by outdated Realistic brand electronics, unable to escape to the 21st century. I returned to the bedroom and lay on the bed.

Lying there with my eyes open, I saw strange text dropping down the walls, hieroglyphs, runes, and random letters. These characters were pulsing with a glowing light, but were unfathomable. Through the window, I could see the pine trees on the hill, still curling their tops into spirals and waving about. The crazy thought loops had subsided, though I continued to mumble to myself about the “80’s” and the “thermomber”. I wished my girlfriend were there to talk me down, though I knew she’d probably be frightened by my crazed behavior. After about 2 hours of lying there, I finally felt like I was coming down, as the mental discomfort was replaced with a sense of being physically drained. My friends were coming in less than an hour, and I was pale and drenched in sweat, with my pupils totally dilated. Despite taking a shower, when they showed up, I still looked like hell, and they all though I was hung over.

All in all, this was a pretty horrible experience. I would definitely try taking mushrooms again, due to quickly reaching a very powerful level of introspection. However, I will avoid the lemon-tek, and I would definitely not use cannabis with shrooms again. High doses of cannabis by itself sometimes gives me thought loops, though never as bad as this. As far as any long term effects, I think that I was close to ego death, and that the discomfort was caused by not wanting to let go. It’s hard for me to admit that there are things beyond me. Of course on a superficial level I know that I don’t know anything about, say, particle physics. But somehow I have always believed that I could learn, if I wanted and I think this trip points to my growing realization that this is probably not possible. Fortunately I enjoy my chosen profession - even if my degree of specialization in financial matters is limiting.

Exp Year: 2014	ExpID: 107792
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 30
Published: Oct 13, 2021	Views: 1,284
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Alone (16), Difficult Experiences (5), Preparation / Recipes (30)