DOSE:	10 mg	oral	Pharms - Escitalopram	(daily)
	5.5 g	oral	Mushrooms	(dried)
		smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

200 lb

In 2018, I decided that I needed to know what a “heroic dose” of psilocybin mushrooms was like. I found out and then I found out a few more times.

The first of those high-dose experiences moved me so deeply that, almost a year later, I still feel it. This is my very-late attempt at reportage.

While my intent going into it was mostly to have fun evening at home by myself, I was also hoping this trip would be healing in some way. I’d been feeling pretty low and worn-out by my lifestyle. My nocturnal job with inhumane hours had been grinding on me for a couple of years. I’d been abusing alcohol hard and steadily for a decade. I’d been on SSRIs for most of that decade and felt like they were just mitigating the fallout of my near-constant hangover, keeping me in a constant, low, dull depression. I’d gained a lot of weight and was feeling pretty sickly. I was lonely and feeling alienated. In my exhaustion and despair, I decided to go sober for February and see if I couldn’t put a little order to my messy life, or at least lose a couple of beer pounds.

When I woke up on the day of this experience I took my daily escitalopram prescription of 10 milligrams. I hadn’t drank for a few days. I had not eaten any food in at least 6 hours prior to dosing and I think that, even then, I’d only had a croissant and a cup of coffee. If I remember correctly, I took this dose sometime between 10:30 and 11:30 PM on either the first or second Saturday of the month. It had been slow at work and I’d cut out around 9:30 PM. I went home and consumed all the mushrooms I had left, 5.5 grams. Today I almost always make tea from mushrooms but I can’t remember if I did on this occasion. Considering the gastrointestinal discomfort I experienced late in the trip, I think I probably ate them dry. I was alone with the exception of my cat.

I set my VHS player and my headphones up with the 1940 Disney classic, Fantasia. I’d seen this movie once before in 1990 when it had its 50th Anniversary theatrical release. I was a junior in high school, I was with friends, and was on 4 hits of acid. It was a good time but that’s another story. The choice of re-watching this seems strange to me writing this now. Maybe I just wanted to evoke a feeling from my teens. I don’t know. I smoked a little weed and puttered around the apartment while waiting for the come up.

When I felt the effects of the mushrooms starting their queasy, tidal rush in my stomach and chest, I pressed play, put my headphones on, and leaned back. At the time I didn’t yet have prescription eyeglasses and my eyesight overall wasn’t great so I was watching with a pair of dirty reading glasses on. As I the movie started, the low fidelity of VHS made me feel nostalgic. The colors seemed very saturated and I wondered when the last time I actually listened to classical music had been before this because it felt so satisfying now. I was grinning ear-to-ear in the darkness. I felt physically moved to sit up and wave my outstretched arms in focused circles rotating from my shoulders. It felt almost like an athletic warmup. I felt no anxiety. I felt an energy starting to pass through me that felt like waves of “YES.” I felt pretty confident that this was going to be a good time. I started rotating my neck in circles and it felt like my head and my whole body were rubbing up against a membrane that had the whole of the universe on the other side of it . Like I was wearing my consciousness like a glove or it was enveloping me. I started to notice that when I blinked my eyes and moved my head, images I saw with my eyes open would smear and become fixed behind my eyelids.

Maybe 15 or 20 minutes into Fantasia, I noticed that what I saw when my eyes were closed was much more in focus than what I saw when my eyes were open and I decided to take off those dingy readers and close my eyes. What I saw when I closed my eyes also became much more compelling. My field of vision was filled with visions of very complex and constantly changing but seemingly organized geometric patterns swirling around in deep, otherworldly pastel hues of purple, blue, and pink with veins of white separating the colors. There was a smooth flow to these patterns and there didn’t seem to be any sharp edges. They seemed to exist in a space that was infinitely bigger than my living room. Occasionally, I’d open my eyes and see my actual living room and the animated Fantasia animals on my television dancing to the classical music score in my headphones and I’d chuckle like, “Oh, right...I forgot that was happening.” When I closed my eyes again and I’d be back in this expansive other space with the swirling colors and patterns. Eventually my vantage point in this space slowly rose up to a great elevation and then backwards so that I was ultimately looking out over an expansive field of vision. It was at this point that I was struck with total awe.

In my closed eye vision I was looking out over a vast alien landscape. It seemed simultaneously natural and technological and all the matter within the landscape appeared to be the same. There were elevations and lownesses. There were buildings and spires. There were vehicles on roads and in the air. All the movements in this pulsing, moving tableau were fluid. The sky over this landscape was dark but everything occupying the space had its own sort of internal light that was neither sharp nor diffuse but that retained a kind of pastel neon glow. It looked like a scene out of some kind of combined fantasy and science fiction mythology mixed with early-Netherlandish landscape paintings. I now refer to this space as the TRON VALHALLA.

A voice spoke. I felt its giant presence but saw no physical form. I don’t really remember what the voice sounded like except that it felt universal and cosmic. Like it came from everywhere near and far. It was fatherly but not anything like MY father. More like some kind of giant oracle. It was relaxed, confident, graceful, and undemanding. It was clear to me that it only had loving, understanding, and healing intentions.

The voice told me that the space that I was looking out over was mine, that it had always been mine and that it will always be mine. It told me that in this space I am the same as god and I am free to be exactly what I am. It told me that I could return to this space whenever I want to. It told me that this space is actually all around me all the time and that I am the same as god in that space as well. It told me that none of the barriers that I feel up against in my life really exist because everything I think of as “reality” or “life” were just illusions. It told me that everything that I have ever had a true drive to do could be achieved. It told me that all the things that I’ve ever done in my life that keep me from being in a peaceful state are no longer necessary. It actually used the phrase: “You don’t need to do the shit that sucks anymore.”

I knew exactly what shit the voice was talking about. There was a lot of shit. I felt a feeling of what it might be like to not do ANY of the shit that saps me of my mental and emotional and physical energy. The drunken rage and violence. The hungover in bed all day regret. The up all night seething with silent resentment. The empty, habitual, narcissistic, mindless time-wasting and procrastinating. The unattended health issues. The secrets and the lies and the keeping up appearances. The things said and done that can’t be taken back. I felt what it might be like to be free of all of that and actually live a fully genuine life, accepting of others and accepting of myself. It might have been the most sane and whole and true and at peace I’ve felt in my entire life. I was happy.

I’m not sure how long this went on for. Feeling the normal passage of time and the normal experience of my living space had fully disappeared for a while. I was completely wrapped up in this cathartic experience of wholeness and coming together. Eventually, I could feel the vision fading and I got very sad because I worried I would lose my connection to this moment and never experience anything like it again. I don’t know if I said it aloud or not but I pleaded with the voice not to leave me and that I was afraid to be without its guidance. It reassured me as it was drifting away that it has always been with me, it is always with me, and will always be with me. It told me I don’t need to be afraid because what I see as “me” and whatever I’ve ever thought of as “god” are the same thing. It’s said I can do anything I really want.

When the movie ended and the soundtrack in my headphones faded away, so did the otherworldly voice and visions. I got up from my couch and turned on the lights. Despite only a little under two hours having passed, in that moment I felt like this trip was essentially over. I felt moved to go about straightening things up in my apartment. The trip, however, was clearly not done with me. At one point I was in the middle of my kitchen, staring up into one of the recessed lightbulbs in the ceiling, completely entranced by it for who knows how long, only to snap out of it and find myself holding my cat’s full litter box in my hands. I laughed at myself and was like, “What am I doing? Why am I doing this right now?” Nonetheless, I somehow finished the job of cleaning the litter box. I don’t remember how long this strangely distracted straightening up went on or what else I did.

At some point I started to have a gastrointestinal disturbance in the form of some really bad gas pains. I remember rolling around on the couch dealing with that, hoping it would pass soon. I went to the bathroom and took a seat on the bowl. The gas pains became so great at one point that I thought I was going to pass out. This is something that has happened to me before on occasion throughout my life so I didn’t really get too scared by it but it wasn’t pleasant. I laid down on the floor so that I wouldn’t fall down if I lost consciousness. Eventually the pain passed, I took a huge shit, and felt relieved.

Despite having just experienced this unpleasantness in my guts, I was really hungry. I hadn’t really eaten much all day. Despite my better judgement, I used an app to order a bacon cheeseburger deluxe and a milkshake from a diner. I don’t remember what I did while I was waiting for its delivery but when it arrived I wolfed it down. I felt like I’d made a bit of a mindless and decadent choice in food considering the deep spiritual experience I just had but I didn’t get too down on myself for it. Soon after I was tired. I smoked a little more pot and went to bed.

Something opened up in me. In the week after this trip I found myself reassessing all aspects of my life and how I was living it. I kept thinking about what the voice had said to me. I felt that - while I generally don’t believe in things like this - if there is a voice of god then I’ve heard it. I decided that even if this “divine voice” was just something that a chemical pulled from deep within my own psyche, I ought to take it seriously.

In the first couple of months that followed this experience I purged a bunch of useless junk from my apartment, changed the furnishings, hung a bunch of wall art, built a desk, started an art project, sold a large collection of vintage clothes for a few thousand dollars, opened a savings account, and planned a vacation. I made a decision to cut my work schedule so that I could spend more time trying creating things and seeking my true calling. I made the decision to get off my antidepressants and started tapering down my dosage a month after this trip. As of this writing I’ve been off my antidepressants for 7 months. Over the rest of the year I saw my alcohol consumption radically drop. Before this trip, I drank 4-8 drinks a day, 4-7 nights a week, for about 10 years. At press time, I’ve only consumed alcohol about 10 times in the last 5 months, mostly out of perceived social pressure, and have regretted it every time because of the depression it causes me. My cannabis consumption also decreased notably which I didn’t expect. I’ve lost about 15 pounds. I’ve started and maintained a daily practice of mindfulness meditation for the last two months. I’m writing every day. I’m reading a lot. I deleted all social media from my life. People tell me I look good and that I seem like I’m in a positive place. I feel more genuinely engaged with my thoughts and feelings than I have in a very long time. I’m willing to hear things of a spiritual nature without getting in an atheist uproar.

I also took three more heroic doses last year. I wanted to hear more of what the voice had to say and I very much did, sometimes in much more overwhelming, confounding and frightening ways. I wrote an experience report about one of those experiences.

I think that there is much more for me to learn from psilocybin and other psychedelics. It’s not an exaggeration when I say that 5.5 grams of P. cubensis made a positive change to, and may have even saved, my life. I feel a certain responsibility to pass on my findings to the greater community.

Thanks for reading. Safe travels.

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 112797
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 44
Published: Jan 29, 2019	Views: 2,467
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Mushrooms (39) : Alone (16), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Entities / Beings (37), General (1)