DOSE:

1.5 g

oral

Mushrooms - P. cubensis

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

83 kg

Context:

I’ve only had one psychedelic experience before; I had taken around 12mg of 4-HO-MET previously and had a fantastic time with them. I’ve been interested in taking shrooms for a while, but was waiting for a good time to do them. Having finally finished my animation assignment - therefore wrapping up my semester - I decided that then would be a good time to finally experience it. Part of the reason I wanted to try shrooms was from my curiosity regarding substances, but I also was really interested in introspection. I wanted to know myself better, learn how to be the best version of me for my current and future self. Along with excitement, I was also very anxious about the possibility of the experience triggering some sort of psychosis (although very very very unlikely as my family has no history of such things) during the days leading to the experience.

The come-up:

Finding myself still anxious on the morning of, I called a friend (A) to tripsit me. At 3 pm, I ate around 1.5 grams of dried Golden Teacher mushrooms (they definitely didn’t taste as bad as I expected them to).

Around 30 minutes later, I felt it starting to hit; I felt jittery and physically similar to being anxious except it wasn’t due to anxiety. At one point, I remembered I forgot to buy train tickets for an upcoming trip, and immediately jumped out of bed. I went through the hassle of buying the tickets while holding on to A as I was still very jittery - the whole process felt like a mission. A huge sense of relief overcame me when I had finally finished, and I went back to bed feeling good about myself for remembering and leaving A to play games on my computer. I also advised him not to kill or do anything silly in the game he was playing. I then set my LEDs to RGB mode and waited.

The trip:

A few minutes later the jitters became less intense and the trip actually started settling in (though I still had a really heavy body load for the duration of the trip). This came in the form of a small wave of pleasure going through my body, perception shifts - everything looked “different” - and colors looking slightly more saturated. As the trip slowly increased in intensity, I also felt a slight uneasiness, a sense that I would not be in control and would have to go along with the ride. Knowing this, I tried staying as open minded as possible and willing to accept whatever the shrooms had to show me. When talking to A, I realized it felt extremely difficult to properly articulate my thoughts, although A later commented that I seemed to be talking in a perfectly fine way. At around that time, I was getting mildly annoyed because I couldn't find a specific emoji I wanted to put as my disc status. Every few minutes I would go back to searching as it annoyed me more and more for no real reason - way more than I would be sober - until I finally found it, leading me to feeling relieved again.

At around an hour in, I started getting properly introspective, writing in my notebook. I found it interesting that as I wrote words like “anxiety” or “intrusive thoughts”, everything around me would look scary, threatening and a sense of fear would build up within me. It was around that time that I realized I was truly in for a journey, and so (politely) kicked A out of my room so I could be alone. It was when he left that things truly started getting intense.

As I wrote in my notebook, it went from me describing the trip to talking to myself through writing. My writing turned from full paragraphs to 3 word sentences spread out within my notebook. At some point, it felt like the shrooms themselves were present within my “universe” and were communicating to me in various ways; it never outright spoke to me, but it communicated through the music I was listening to, feelings, even messages I’d send or be sent to me by friends. For example, I’d listen to a song I really love, but in an entirely different way - specific words would stick out to me within the song or show and from those I’d formulate a message the entity would be telling me. My hypothesis is that my subconscious was sending me messages and warping my perception of the world so that I could see them. While I was tripping though, I fully believed an entity was with me and guiding me, with an almost motherly energy (I’d even write “thank you mother shroomsiezies” in my notebook). Throughout all this, I’d even verbally talk to the entity, asking questions like “what do you have to show me?” and saying “I see” every time I learned a lesson from them. At times, I could even see the entity that was “present” with me; I would hallucinate its face on my notebook and in various other places, smiling, grinning, winking playfully when I called it nicknames.

The trip itself also felt very… “natural, earthly, grounded” as I described to another friend. At times, when I really sunk into the experience, I’d feel as if I’m in the hollow section of a tree trunk, or some sort of treehouse. The face I hallucinated looked a lot like it had a texture that looked like it was directly carved into a tree. I had a slight urge to go outside even, but decided not to as I’d likely feel very lost due to the sheer intensity of the experience. The trip also felt like it had a very predetermined path I had to follow, otherwise I would be “punished”, likely with a bad trip. It felt like I was on the side of a rollercoaster; I had no control over where I wanted to go so I had to go with where it took me. Letting go was really important and was central to the experience, which also made it exhausting in a way. If I ever felt like I was straying, I’d remember I took the shrooms for “guidance” and recenter myself accordingly. My body also felt really heavy and sedated (which I only realized during the later parts of the trip), and time felt completely nonexistent and after a certain point, I could no longer tell how many hours had passed.

After a few hours, I decided to watch two episodes of Midnight Gospel which was a great experience. It felt like the characters were speaking directly to me, were me talking to myself and the shrooms talking about itself at the exact same time. There were also times I nearly deluded myself into thinking I was stuck in a mirror but it quickly passed. I was also really drawn to texting a really close friend who I perceived as “good vibes”. After another hour or two, as I started coming down, the shrooms gave me their “final” lesson of the day, which was to integrate the things I learned into my everyday life, and after that point I felt no desire to write into my notebook anymore. For the next hour or so, I did nothing more than listen to music (which sounded heavenly btw) and vibe. There was a point where I texted A, and he admitted he was in a shootout at one point while playing games on my pc. Upon hearing this, the trip 180ed a bit and I was filled with thoughts not to trust him anymore, which ruined the vibes a bit - although I quickly re-composed myself later.

The comedown:

As I came down, I started feeling hungry. Deciding that I was probably ok enough to go outside, I went out to get food, which was a bit intense considering I was still slightly tripping. I then ate a huge portion of fried rice which upset my stomach a little but I was fine afterwards. A little later, I felt a sort of physical and emotional crash and felt completely tired and slightly apathetic, so I went to sleep 2 hours earlier than I would normally. The next day, I still felt very tired and drained but after that, I felt great.

Afterthoughts:

After my 4-HO-MET trip, I hypothesized that I was particularly sensitive to psychedelics and they would hit me harder than usually described, and after this experience I’m almost 100% sure of this. It was a very rewarding experience, but also really tiring, therefore I have no real desire to take shrooms again for another month at least. Regardless, I’m very thankful for the lessons I learned through the shrooms and this will definitely stay with me as one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.

Exp Year: 2023	ExpID: 117745
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Jan 19, 2024	Views: 14
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : General (1), First Times (2), Alone (16)