DOSE:

10 g

oral

Mushrooms - P. cubensis

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

130 lb

BACKGROUND: Been meditating on and off, almost daily for almost a year now. Into Buddhism and spirituality; decided to try shrooms to experience 'ego death'.

SET: meditated 20min prior. 'Intention' for the trip: 'to see what is true'. Feeling pretty relaxed.

SETTING: alone in bedroom upstairs at parent's house. Sister is downstairs; knows I'm tripping. Parents coming home soon to take us to family gathering event. My sis will inform them that I'm not going. I play Native Tribal music from my phone to drown out background noise. I don't want my parents knowing I'm tripping as they are uptight.

DOSING: 10.0g may sound like a lot, but I took 4.0g of the same batch a few weeks prior, and it didn't do much for me, so I figured I would do more this time. Grind into powder, soak in lemon juice for 20min. Empty stomach (haven't eaten or drank for past 8+ hours). Down it all; very sour, but I didn't mind.

:::: Come-Up ::::

Meditating on armchair, waiting for it to kick in. Decide it might be more 'spiritual' if I was naked, so I strip.

:::: Hiding ::::

Hear dad downstairs coming home, he sounds pissed that we aren't ready to leave yet. Scared that he might discover me not just tripping, but naked, I run to the bathroom, and lock it. I repeat several times 'He can't get me in here. He can't get me in here.' It was pretty scary at the time; this fear of being caught manifests several times throughout the rest of the trip.

:::: Eternal NOW ::::

Perception of time seems distorted. I vaguely believe that a decent amount of time has passed, so my family should be out of the house by now, yet it also felt like no time had passed at all. I look at a clock: the seconds tick. Time stood still, yet somehow this clock was ticking. Hard to explain.

:::: Watching without a Watcher ::::

Suddenly: a shift in my perspective. I see the bathroom, and my naked reflection in the mirror. Yet I do not feel like I am looking at myself in the mirror. Even weirder: I did not feel like the room was being seen by me. I mean, vaguely I still thought 'I'm in this room looking at it, surely'.

:::: Learning how to Crawl ::::

At some point I leave my bathroom. The trip is ramping up. I forget how to walk, then how to crawl. I forget how to move my limbs properly. I pretty much slide around the floor. I eventually just lay on the wooden floor and start licking it. It was comforting that I at least knew how to do that.

:::: Understanding ::::

I have no idea what is going on; or how to understand any of it. I don't know what it is that I do not understand, or why I am trying to understand it; but the fact remained: I do not understand. The more I thought about it, the more agitated I became. I remembered the advice 'surrender to the experience', but I could not. I had to understand, I just had to.

I laugh hysterically and I don't know why. I sob and cry and I don't know why. I'm an emotional rollercoaster.

:::: WHAT? HOW? ::::

Suddenly, Ego Death. No longer was I that human being living out his life on this planet called Earth. I was like a stranger, somehow trapped inside this human body, and having memories of this human being's life that were not my own. It didn't make sense. I yelled out loud over and over 'WHAT? HOW?'; I could not formulate a more specific question than that.

:::: Nobody at Home ::::

I open my room door while sitting on the floor naked and gaze into the long dimly-lit corridor. My fear intensifies. There are no monsters or anything scary in the corridor. Normally I have a fear of darkness, but that wasn't what was bothering me either. It wasn't even a fear of the unknown.

There was just nobody who was looking out at the corridor. Nobody looking; yet there is was: the corridor, existing just fine on its own. Cue more screaming 'WHAT? HOW? WHAT? HOW?'

:::: I was not prepared for this ::::

I thought I was ready for ego death; I thought I was ready to let it all go. But I wasn't, not even close. It was as if all of the layers of my beliefs about my life and my self were stripped off and thrown into the trashcan of oblivion. I cry 'Please, let me go back to living the delusion of my life; I was not ready to see this!'

:::: Absolute existential horror ::::

This is worse than anything I've ever experienced. And I've been through a pretty tough childhood of bullying and domestic abuse, and the resultant depression issues (which I have mostly worked past). But I never realized how terrifying it would be to not exist anymore.

I ran room to room. Each room was a jump-scare; not because anything popped out, except the room popped 'into existence', yet there was nobody in the room. Where was I?

Even as I look down at my body, it is just a heap of flesh. Not me.

I run around the house screaming at the top of my lungs 'WHO AM I?', 'WHAT?', 'HOW?', 'GOD HELP ME', 'MOM HELP ME!', 'HELP ME FIND MYSELF'. Although, I used the word 'I' and 'Me', those words were empty, pointing to nothing. It was frustrating; something that should be so obvious and trivial (i.e. myself), I was kept failing to find.

:::: Someone, remind me who I am! ::::

I started talking to stuffed animals, to my own reflection, to photos of my mom, to photos of my child-self, to God, to the universe. I was screaming at anything and everything around me, and even at things that weren't around me. Someone, please, tell me who I am! I looked everywhere, for any shred of proof that I exist. I even started kissing a box of red-hair dye product because I had a memory where I used it to put highlights in my hair. It affirmed my existence. I prayed to it.

I started thinking about my friends, and my family. Surely those people exist? That comforted me. I was not alone. Then I realized that it only comforted me because these people were 'other' than me. They affirm that I exist, because they can speak to and refer to me! But that didn't satisfy me; I should be able to find myself, by myself and without gimmicks!

:::: The Universe Crying for Attention ::::

I picked up a stuffed bear to plead for help, and it held a heart written 'LOVE'. I paused. Suddenly, a deep connection and love. I hugged the bear. I loved it. I loved it more than I've ever loved anything. I went on exploring the house with this new found courage. I felt the entire universe crying out for attention. That is when I learned my purpose: to care for and love the universe, which I have otherwise neglected and been separate from. This was GOD. It was so beautiful, yet it was the same house as always. There was no brilliant lights, or visual patterns or anything. It was just the same old house. But I saw it in a new light, it was living and breathing, this universe. It didn't speak to me; it couldn't. It could only see and feel itself, through me.

I felt a deep love for all of my friends and family; any quarrels or deep-seeded resentments I held against them, completely vanished. If someone walked in the door, I would hug them and pour an infinite amount of love at them.

Sadly, my Ego was not satisfied with this, and I fell back into despair. There were a few bouts of the above beauty and love over the next while, but mostly I went back to frantically trying to find proof of my existence and crawling along the ground resisting the whole way through.

:::: On the Fence ::::

My dad comes home again at some point, so I isolate myself back in my room. It's pitch black. I find it curious that I simultaneously feel as if I don't exist and that my entire life is a sham, and yet here I am, caring what my dad will think if he discovers me in this state. The best way to describe this is a metaphor: I felt like I was sitting on a fence. On one side, Truth, my complete oblivion but also unity with God. On the other side, a comforting lie, the delusion that is my life. I just sat on the fence for the longest time.

:::: Conclusion ::::

Eventually, I come down off my trip; and I feel the layers of beliefs that were absent getting reapplied. Back to regular Ego consciousness. A bit dumbfounded by what just happened, but I gained a stronger understanding of just how deep my conditioning goes: so deep, it is so deep that I had no idea. Some might call this a 'bad trip', but my intention wasn't to 'have fun', it was to 'see what is true', and I think that is exactly what happened. Overall it was worth it.

Exp Year: 2016	ExpID: 109362
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 23
Published: Jan 16, 2021	Views: 846
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66), Meditation (128) : Combinations (3), Difficult Experiences (5), Alone (16)