DOSE:

3 capsls

oral

Amanitas - A. muscaria

(fresh)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

It was December 22, 2015. An unforgettable date that marks a turning point in my life. I had withdrawn from the university semester in October after worsening depression and withdrawal. I was a mess at home and spent some time hospitalized. By December I had grown used to my medicine and was pulling through but sought escape at any opportunity I got. Whether it was to escape the reality that I had somewhat burned out or to just make me feel something good for a little while I don’t know.

The reddish yellow caps of Amanita Muscaria had been absolutely aflush in the grassy areas of my neighborhood. Everyday I rode my bike and would pass them. As a semi-experienced psilocybe cubensis picker I made up my mind to try one once I confirmed its identity. This occurred on the morning of the 22nd at around 11 AM. While on a bike ride I picked three medium caps and ate them raw. The taste was nutty and quite appealing. After I finished I returned home, showered, and went to run errands with my father and sister. After around 60 minutes I began to notice closed eye visuals. An almost zooming tunnel made of fragmented, black triangles that was becoming more vivid as time went on. I still felt largely in control and had no worries. My parents suggested we go to lunch at a local restaurant and I agreed. As we crossed over the bridge connecting our town to the beachside a rapid progression in the dissociation occurred. The apparent frame-rate of my vision dropped considerably. It was more akin to staring at a wall while snapshots are repeatedly glued over the previous one. My life broke down into 5 distinct stages that I can’t recall and the edges of my vision were darkening.

We sat down at a table. I was uneasy and knew the end was near. I ordered a coke.
“That’s strange, I ordered a coke not water”
“That is coke”
“Oh yeah sorry”

After this exchange my family was cued into something amiss. They were no stranger to my substance abuse at this point and immediately asked what I was on. I denied it once and then spoke the words amanita muscaria mushrooms. To the emergency room.

The car ride back is one that haunts me to this day. I have tried very hard to improve myself and how I view the world due to the damage I suspect, although she denies, this inflicted on my teenage sister. I began to fall asleep in the car shortly after leaving the restaurant. My parents demanded that I stay awake and I do so. What follows is a bit blurry. I develop a fantasy that due to all of my terrible actions over the past few months I was being punished through the removal of my ability to speak. I suspect this was due to me reading “Midnight’s Children” at the time which features a related theme. My vision was completely blank and this I perceived as my eternal silence. That is until frame of reality starting intermittently flashing through the darkness. I thought I was nearing a reality, one out of an infinite number of ones, in which somehow I was able to null out all of my actions and regrets, avoiding the perpetual darkness of silence and redeeming myself back to normality.

“I meant to say ‘except.’”

I screamed this sentence over and over in the car suddenly and without warning. I believed I could somehow invalidate past actions by posing them as hypothetical rather than facts. I reached out with my arms trying to communicate, grabbing my mother’s hair and grazing my father’s hand with my teeth. I heard my sister crying.

We arrived at the hospital and the nurses I believe were already outside but I’m not sure. I emerged - or maybe was pulled from - the car and acted aggressively towards the nurses somehow. Maybe I lunged or tried running but according to my father this prompted one of them saying “Woah calm down .” I’ve read in a few reports on these fungus that aggression is sometimes encountered in the dissociated state. I was taken to an ER bed, restrained. I was urinated myself after my clothes were cut off me. I was given a very large amount of ativan and haloperidol. I have memories of doctors telling me to wake up and me immediately responding. Flashes sometimes come to me of my father on the phone with my mother talking about the Christmas vacation we had planned (turned out to be an ok but expectedly rocky experience.)

I started coming to around 1 AM. I was dazed and my hearing seemed to be slightly sped up, as if you were playing a tape at 1.5 times its normal speed. This phenomenon lasted throughout next day. A female doctor, who coincidentally I had seen before when I was probably 15 and in high school for a sinus infection, came in my room and asked if I had intended to kill myself. I said no but that I didn’t care whether it had or not. My father had apparently fought to make sure I was not placed in the psychiatric ward and was able to return home. I am quite grateful for this as it prevented the entire Christmas holiday from being totally marred by my recklessness.

On the drive home in the dark I told my dad to pull over on a wooded street in my neighborhood. We walked a short distance in and I pulled a bag of marijuana and some lighters out of a hollow and handed it over to him. “Assholes,” he said later as he flushed it down the toilet after asking who had given it to me.

The next day was quite surreal. Our plans to go to a cabin with my older sister and her husband in the mountains were still on. I apologized as much as I could. My father drove me to see my therapist in the morning. Along the drive I noticed the sound-speeding effect in the music on the radio. My father repeatedly asked me about my heart and respiration, afraid I was mistaken about what I ate and would suffer some sort of mushroom poisoning. My therapist was consoling and probably not harsh enough on me.

There probably has not been a day to go by when I didn’t replay the events described here. I spent most of the summer of 2016, away and back at university, trying to make sense of these - and other - actions that just didn’t seem to fit with the person I saw myself to be. My parents have been supportive beyond what I would expect and are the main reason I pulled through and didn’t do any permanent damage to myself. Dealing with the fact that there is a version of myself that could inspire such careless abandon terrifies me.

I don’t recommend anyone try this drug. I may have been ok if I had fallen asleep in the car and drifted off until the effects had diminished. Escape isn’t worth a nightmare.

Exp Year: 2015	ExpID: 109483
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Nov 3, 2020	Views: 3,175
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Amanitas - A. muscaria (70) : General (1), Preparation / Recipes (30), What Was in That? (26), Depression (15), Train Wrecks & Trip Disasters (7), Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53)