DOSE: T+ 0:00	3 g	oral	Mushrooms - P. cubensis	(plant material)
T+ 5:00		smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

135 lb

Written 11/3/23, 2:09pm

Intro: I’m writing this report as a way to help prepare for, and then process and integrate, an experience with Psilocybe Cubensis mushrooms that I had on 11/3/23. After reading so many experience reports in the leadup to this experience, I wanted to use this report not only for my own integration, but also to share with the community whose own shared experiences have helped me so much in understanding psychedelics, and the perspectives and growth patterns of all sorts of different folks interested in psychedelics, better.

Context: I am 25 years old, living in a major metropolitan area in the western United States. I grew up as a male, but now identify as genderqueer, and am as comfortable being called a woman as I am a man. I’m explaining this at the start of this piece because, the sort of “manly mask” I wore throughout my childhood is just one of many masks that I will be attempting to see clearly during this trip, and hopefully, learn how to accept and reckon with by integrating the trip into my everyday life.

I’ve always been incredibly socially anxious, and although I’ve had friends throughout my life, I’ve found it difficult to feel as though I’m being authentic around the different sorts of friends, acquaintances, peers, and authority figures I’ve interacted with over the course of that timespan. Instead, I often find myself morphing my personality, mannerisms, and opinions significantly to mirror the personality, mannerisms, and opinions of the people I’m interacting with. This sort of behavior has caused me a great deal of anxiety over who I actually am, so my intention with this trip is to find that person, and ask them to come up to the surface, at least a little bit.

Set: A little bit nervous to take this trip, but feeling excited and prepared for whatever comes. I’ve done quite a bit of thinking on my intentions for this trip, and I feel that they are secured in my head fairly strongly. However, this will only be my fourth macro-dose of mushrooms (3 dry grams this time), and all of the previous times have been with other people, and have often focused on them, or my connection with them. Therefore, this will be my first attempt to go “inside” as it were, and truly look into myself.

My partner and I began cultivating mushrooms back in July after I became obsessed with reading the Shroomery forum and decided that it would be a fun and interesting project. After three months of patience, we had our first round of harvests in mid-October. I was tempted many times to try some of the mushrooms, perhaps only a micro-dose, following our first harvests. However, a busy work schedule and some turmoil in my partner and I’s relationship kept preventing this.

Finally, during work last week, I was on my break taking a shit only to look down when I was finished and realize that my poop was laid out perfectly in the shape of a 3. In fact, it was even underlined. I knew immediately that this was a sign from the mushroom spirits that I was to commune with them on the 3rd of November, my first day off of work in 7 days, when I had no other commitments scheduled. Telling my partner this story, they suggested that it may also mean 3 grams, to which I immediately agreed. This only made sense. The mushrooms spirits were asking me to take the full ride today. After raising them under my watchful eye, caring for them daily, praying for them, and sleeping next to them as they grew, they were ready to give what they could to me.

In preparation on the day of, I vigorously cleaned and tidied the apartment that I share with my beautiful partner. I got a good night’s rest and woke up at a reasonable hour (7:30am) following a grueling 7-day workweek. I had a green smoothie and black coffee for breakfast, as is my daily ritual, then went on to do laundry, wipe down counters, and vacuum. I had a mixed greens salad with pepitas for lunch, and followed it up with a kombucha, consumed because I am currently finishing a program of antibiotics to help rid me of an ear infection. I did my nails in the most sparkly and deep colors I could. Then, I began writing this. While I wrote, my partner burned sage around the apartment to welcome in good energy and clear out the bad. Then, they left for work.

Setting: A tidy, 900sq ft apartment with a kitty cat. An altar with pictures of my ancestors, candles, and incense is set up in front of the fireplace. The day outside alternates between rainy and sunny, and is chilly and crisp.

Written 11/4/23

Experience: After getting confirmation from my partner that they had made it to work safely, I drank down the ground, dried mushrooms with apple cider (nonalcoholic of course). Not wanting to sit around anxiously during the comeup, and feeling like I would like to go outside at least once during the day (I had spent the full day thus far in the apartment), I went outside for a quick walk immediately following my ingestion of the mushrooms. I live adjacent to a quiet neighborhood bursting with plant life, and walked about a half mile up into the neighborhood, appreciating the gorgeous fall colors.

However, despite the general sleepiness of the neighborhood, on my walk I kept running across people. Given how much of my intention for this journey surrounded my own social anxiety, each new person I ran across made me more and more anxious. That, coupled with the fact that I walked past three or four houses undergoing loud construction projects, brought me into a general sense of overwhelm by the time I was a couple blocks from home. My anxiety had become overwhelming, and I began to experience the hyperventilation, fast heart rate, and pervasive sense of fear and dread that were usually characteristic of an oncoming panic attack. I quickened my pace, hoping to get into my safe space before I broke down, and as I did the world around me took on a blurry glow, the boundaries between objects bleeding into each other.
I finally made it down the hallway, and opened the door to the thick smell of sage, which immediately put me far more at ease. I knew that I was home, I was safe, and I wouldn’t be disturbed. I knew that I was about to deal with a massive wave of emotion, but I was prepared for it. I shed my fall outerwear, lit the candles at the altar, and turned on the playlist that I made for this trip, which was currently halfway through The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin.

I checked my stopwatch, which I always start upon taking psychedelics, and saw that I had ingested the mushrooms only 26 minutes prior. I was already tripping hard. I got down on all fours, no longer feeling the ability to do anything but let the mushrooms take me where they may. I looked at the floor, generally covered in a very boring plain gray carpet. Now, however, it was moving wildly. The lines which I had impressed into the carpet earlier by vacuuming were now moving, like little treadmills or conveyer belts, one running towards me, another away from me, yet another in a snaking pattern that curved and swirled between the others. They multiplied and multiplied and multiplied until the carpet was thousands of separately moving little treadmills. I found the visual fascinating, but also felt more nauseous the more I looked at it. I rolled over onto my back and looked up at the white ceiling, upon which now shimmered groups of glowing orbs collected into spheres which spiraled around one another, leaving trails of soft, pastel rainbows behind them as they moved. Again, fascinating, but my nausea only increased.

I knew, of course, that I wasn’t there for the visuals, or to enjoy the music, although it did sound absolutely exquisite. No, I had asked the mushrooms to lead me to my core, and the mushrooms were not going to allow me to spend the peak of my trip playing with their colors and patterns. I turned back onto my stomach, laying fully prone now, and closed my eyes, shoving my face into the crook of my arm to block out the light. Before my eyes, in the glowing green most frequently experienced in the afterimage after looking at a bright light, appeared wispy, abstract curves that formed themselves into the image of a mother, with long, flowing hair, holding her infant child. Immediately, I knew that it was the energy of my mother and grandmothers, whose pictures I was laying right next to, comforting and supporting me in anticipation of the difficult journey ahead. I laid in their arms for the rest of The Flaming Lips’ album, steeping in their love and support.

As the album ended, however, I raised my head from my arm, realizing that both my face and arm were completely coated with sweat. Upon opening my eyes, I was immediately nauseous again. I got up to skip past the bonus remixes at the end of the album, which I had carelessly left in the playlist, and grabbed a scarf to use as a nightshade, a bowl to puke in if I needed it, and a sweatshirt, as my sweat had suddenly made me very cold.

I tried laying back down on my back, but immediately became afraid that I would choke on my own vomit and die, so opted to flip back over. At this point, the journey became much less visual, and focused itself almost entirely around emotions and concepts. I’m sure I still was having visuals, but they became so secondary to my thoughts and emotions that I barely paid attention to them.

On the ground now, face buried in the scarf and curled into a little ball, which felt best on my tummy, I looked into the swirls of color and felt an immense and overwhelming appreciation for the intention that I had put into this journey. I felt very glad that I had set my intentions beforehand, that I had cleaned the house, and that I had my ancestors to watch over me while the mushrooms led me down my path. I reflected on the importance of set and setting, and just how vastly different a mushroom trip can be given what you’ve been thinking about and who and what you’re around. I knew, in that moment, that the mushrooms were thanking me for respecting their knowledge and power , and that they would indeed take me where I had asked them to.

Time, during this part of the trip, became rather strange. I peaked through two of my very favorite albums, the Cocteau Twins’ Blue Bell Knoll and Cherry Colored Funk, which together total barely more than 70 minutes, but each song seemed to stretch into infinity, and was filled with a thousand thoughts and emotions.

As I lay on the ground, I began to cry. My thoughts were turning from appreciation for my own purpose in this journey to the meat of the journey, to my relationship with myself and other people. The thoughts ran through my head, lightning fast and blurring into one another, and I followed them both emotionally and intellectually, though I cannot recall now quite what I was thinking. Then came a pause. I had read before that mushroom trips can often feel like they hit in waves, and I realized that the mushrooms were giving me a moment to collect myself. It’s almost as if the trip, with its fast-paced thoughts and heaving emotions, completely stopped for a moment, and I was sober. I threw aside the somewhat damp scarf, wiped my eyes, took a big breath, and dunked my face into the crook of my arm, now covered in the softness of my sweatshirt.
I heard the mushrooms in my head ask me if I was truly ready to go where I wanted to go, and I consented. Then, together, we plunged down the tunnel that had opened up before me. It was dark, hot, and prickly sharp. I felt an overwhelming sense of confusion. The confusion ballooned bigger and bigger until it had morphed itself into a sphere of sadness and rage. Why rage? I bounced my legs to the Cocteau Twins, deeply enjoying the music even while a mess of negativity laid itself out inside of me. “The Cocteau Twins are so fucking good.” I thought. “Why does nobody else seem to like the Cocteau Twins? I mean, I know that other people do like them, of course, but every person I show them to seems completely unenthused, they often find the music rather off-putting. Maybe I’m in the wrong? Maybe there’s something wrong with what I’m doing? No, I love this! This is some of the best music I’ve ever heard, and it really moves me! It’s ok to like this music!” I thought back to all of the times I had listened to the Cocteau Twins before, the many sad, lonely nights when Elizabeth Fraser’s haunting vocals spoke directly to my soul. Why was I so sad, then? Why had I spent all of those nights sad, and alone?

And that realization of my own sadness, the desaturation of color that I felt in so many periods of my life, really sunk into me. Most of the time I was sad. Most of the time I was disinterested in what felt like a hollow, flat world. All of the past me's in their lonely pain stacked atop one another and lived in me simultaneously, and I felt the complete emptiness of my existence. It was a deep, wretched pain, and the only thing that I held onto then was my love of the music. That led me to think of all of the things that I love doing, the simple tasks of listening to music, writing, reading, cooking, and working out. And it felt like those things were never enough, to anybody else. I was constantly pretending to be something more, to be trying to do more, to be on the verge of starting my professional career or involving myself deeply in activism… but I wasn’t. And I didn’t want to.

Oh god, I didn’t want to. The rage flooded through me unadulterated now, and I saw what it meant. I hated our society. I already knew that, but now it burned fully in me. I loved simple things, a small life with close friends, good conversations, and interesting stories, but my mom, my teachers, my peers, society, expected me to be so much more, to launch a career and network and make connections and build a business and start a 401k and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to. In fact, I realized, I barely even wanted to be alive. I felt that I was being shoved through this sharp-edged society filled with confusing twists of moral judgement and asked to be a career-leader, a husband, a father, and I didn’t want any of those things. I didn’t ask to be born! I didn’t ask to do any of this shit! Why do I have to do it? I would just as soon be rid of it. I don’t need the money, the material items, the vacations, the notion of career-based “success.” I don’t need power, or privilege. You can take it! You can take it all! My parents set me up with so much, they gave me so much support, and I appreciate it so much, but I don’t want to do it. I just want a simple life of reading, writing, friends, family, and gardening. Is that unreasonable to ask?

During this massive train of thought, which was both progressive and felt like it was all happening simultaneously, I rolled around on the floor, crying basically the whole time, fluctuating between speaking out loud to myself and allowing the thoughts to run themselves in my head. Near the beginning of this part of the experience, as this all came to me, I felt a significant sense of relief, and appreciation – it’s okay to like the things that I like, as simple or basic as they may be, and I don’t need to make myself into something grander, something “more” for other people, just because I think that’s what they expect of me. My cat got up from his nap and laid on my chest, his fuzzy warmth and purrs comforting me as I experienced this mindfuck. However, as Cherry Colored Funk neared its conclusion, the cat wandered off, and I felt empty.

I had expected some sense of redemption to follow, an understanding and a sense of peace with it. But I had not realized that, despite my many tears up to that point, I had not yet reached the darkest part of the trip. My appreciation for these realizations wore off, and I found myself staring coldly at the reality of what I’d come to understand – I didn’t want to be alive. At my core was not some beautiful, angelic soul with style and pizzaz, as I hoped I’d find. No, I found my core, and it was completely hollow. The mushrooms had turned the table, as I’d asked them to, and on the other side was exactly the same thing – I was still me, the person I’d been all along. And I couldn’t change into anyone else, as hard as I tried. I couldn’t be the style queen, the career queen, or the revolutionary leader. I was just simple, and nobody seemed to find that acceptable in this world. In fact, I could hardly understand what was acceptable in the world. It seemed that there were a million moral viewpoints, all pulling me in different directions, and in trying to follow any of them I was failing another. It was exhausting, confusing, and utterly impossible.

My whole body felt completely hollow, and empty. There was not even a lick of positivity or awe. My emptiness was my everything, and it was so deep I felt that I could never escape, nor that any escape was even conceivable. At this point, I really began to wail. A loud, ugly cry took over my entire body and ripped out of my throat, shattering the soft melodies of Animal Collective’s “Broke Zodiac.” I’m not sure how long I cried this way for, but eventually I had no more energy to do such, and lay on the ground, tumbled over on my side in a heap. Given this moment of space between waves, my bodily functions made their demands. My nose wanted to be blown, my bladder relieved. I got up and abided, opting not to turn on the bathroom lights and look in the mirror. I went and laid on my bed, basking in the darkness for a moment while my mind tried to summarize what just happened. I certainly had depression, and autism. That was a lot to deal with. I felt a compulsion to write these insights down, to summarize, but I was simply too exhausted. Animal Collective’s “Defeat” drifted in from the other room, and I took the lyrics to heart. Defeat is now.

I had the sudden urge to call my partner. I could hardly spell words or write in my notebook, but I knew that my partner would listen to me and take notes if I caught them on their break, and besides, I thought that they might want to know how I felt, given that my purpose for this trip in trying to find my authentic core stemmed partially from hurting my partner by lying, trying to be exactly who they wanted to be. I wanted to show them who I really was, even if that was just a core of hollow simplicity. I felt, I thought, mostly like a frog. I was an earthy being not meant to navigate either the halls of bureaucracy or the cosmos, and I hoped that my partner would be okay with that.

Luckily, my partner had just gone on lunch when I messaged them, and they called me right away. I became quickly energized upon hearing their voice, and proceeded to rapid-fire spill the night’s realizations onto them while they ate. They comforted me, and expressed pride in me for reaching out to them for help and sharing with them honestly. The conversation made me feel much better, and I ended up spending most of the rest of the evening quietly reflecting on my realizations as I came down.

I spent the period immediately after the conversation with my partner rapid-fire ranting to myself about all of my realizations, attempting to feel them out and sum them back up for myself, which tapered into a period of quiet reflection. By the five-hour mark, I felt that my mood was generally stable – melancholic but at peace. I decided to smoke a little weed to help me eat dinner and relax.

The weed, of course, launched the trip into a whole different place. While the mushrooms basked me, in various ways, in the aura and spirit of the evening as a whole, throughout every moment I was in, the cannabis immediately narrowed my perspective to what was right in front of me. I became truly mindful, connecting fully and solely with each moment. Of course, part of what allows cannabis to do this is the distinct lack of short-term memory, so that each moment that I had an interesting thought or funny moment with myself was self-contained, often hitting me with full force before I immediately forgot what brilliant take on the realizations of the evening I had just had.

It helped to give an air of light, bounciness to the evening that I sincerely appreciated. I turned on The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and sat before the altar, slowly eating my dinner while I apologized to my ancestors for the many ways that I am disappointing and will disappoint them. However, I left the evening with the understanding that my life was mine, and that even if my core felt hollow, it was nobody else’s. I had, I reflected, the right to disappoint my family. But yes, I’ll still apologize for it. At least right now.

This experience was filled with pain, but I still treasure it greatly. The mushrooms returned my preparation and respect for them in kind, and although I didn’t find what I wanted to, I did get what I asked for, and now I’m able to proceed in the world with a renewed sense of clarity as to who I really am. I am simply a frog. Ribbit.

Now that I feel like I know what I want and who I am a bit better, I can take those things and build that up into my next chapter. This trip consisted in the stripping away of those defenses which did not serve me, and now I may continue forth, truer to who I am.

Exp Year: 2023	ExpID: 117667
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: 25
Published: Nov 3, 2024	Views: 14
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Cannabis (1), Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Alone (16), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Personal Preparation (45), Depression (15), Music Discussion (22), Families (41), Difficult Experiences (5), Preparation / Recipes (30), Combinations (3), General (1)