DOSE:	3.0 g	oral	Mushrooms	(dried)
	1 bowl	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

128 lb

A cold February night. I had decided to go with two friends of mine, D and G, to an arcade on the waterfront in Philadelphia. We drove into the city and parked in the arcade's parking garage where we each took three grams of mushrooms carefully weighed out on D's digital pocket scale. Once we had downed the shrooms, we got out of the car and proceeded to the entrance of the building. We were promptly turned away because I was under age. Scratching our heads, we tried to decide on what to do with our night in the city. It was only 8:oo and we knew we would be feeling the effects soon, so we started to walk.

And walk we did, to a night club on the riverfront. I started to feel the head rush as we reached the club, which was a few blocks away from the arcade. We swayed on the sidewalk as we waited outside the door. A lady at the front desk of the club informed us that they didn't open until 9:oo, so we stood looking at each other, indecisive for a good fifteen minutes before deciding to head back to the car. After all, it was freezing outside, and things were starting to feel weird.

When we finally reached the car, which seemed miles and miles away by this point, we tried to decide what to do. D thought it would be a good idea if we tried to leave and go somewhere else, so he started up the car and we backed out of the space. Bad idea. Almost immediately D realized driving was a bad idea and we parked again, this time in a space that over-looked the waterfront. From our vantage point we could see the Ben Franklin Bridge, which lights up at night and looks quite beautiful whether one is on mushrooms or not. We started talking, and as we did I felt at peace. The most beautiful feeling washed over me and I felt the happiest I had ever felt in my life. This, I thought, was the meaning of life. Sitting with your friends, being happy. Feeling like nothing in the world could possibly be wrong.

I laughed until I cried as we talked. I started to see beautiful closed eye and open eye visuals, so I laid down in the back seat and stared up at the ceiling. It no longer existed. I could see straight through the ceiling of the car and the parking level above us up into the night sky which swirled with beautiful symmetrical patterns of light and sound. Looking at the bridge as the lights changed colors and reflected off the water made me feel tingly and warm. I remember stuffing my hand into my pocket and finding a pack of Orbit gum I had bought earlier that day. As I unwrapped the plastic, I felt things go upside down.

Then all peacefulness was gone.

My hallucinations spiked. The wrapper stuck to my hand, which was wet from wiping the tears (I was laughing a lot) from my eyes. I shook my hand to get the wrapper off, and the celophane was suddenly one with my hand and my arm no longer had any nerves. The dissociative feeling of the mushrooms had set in as it should have, but something was wrong. I looked up to the front seat to see that my proportions were horribly out of whack. My friends seemed miles away! I took my cell phone out of my pocket and flipped it open. It looked like a toy in my hand which was massive, my fingers long and thin. I couldn't feel anything, and the screen was distorted; impossible symbols scrolled and swirled on the color LCD screen. I was suddenly very confused.

Looking out the back window I saw a crowd of people distorted by the dark tint and dim lighting of the parking garage. I heard children laughing and singing, as well as a sound that can be best described as a drop hitting into a shallow pool of water in a metal bucket. It sounded beautiful and musical. D and G talked in the front seat a few feet away, but it was unintelligable. Next to us, people were getting into their cars, and I wasn't sure if it was real or not, but I knew that we were being loud, flipping out in the car for the last two and a half hours. D&G both confirmed the people were real, and we all agreed that we were probably more than a bit conspicuous tripping out in a parking garage. I heard D announce that he was good to drive.

Naturally, I protested.

After five or ten minutes of convincing, D started the car and the stereo came back on. As we waited for the car to warm up, Radiohead's Hail To The Thief album played. I suddenly felt very anxious and scared: we were about to go driving on mushrooms around the city of Philadelphia. We started to drive through the parking garage, which seemed to be quite a task for D. I trust him more than anyone else behind the wheel, but this was very different circumstances. We carefully made our way to the exit.

[Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]

'That wasn't too bad,' said D as we pulled out to the street. Then the cars zoomed past. Fast city traffic, and lots of it. 'We are gonna die,' D whispered to G. I knew it too. The music really began to pick up as we turned out into traffic, and it tripped me out like nothing else. Street signs made no sense to me, cars seemed LOUD and everything seemed to be happening too fast. I felt utterly lost in a world I knew. I KNEW this place, but it seemed as though I had never been here! Where did the signs point to? Impossible locations, words and symbols that couldn't ever have made sense to me. I laid down in the back seat again and tried to ignore everything, including myself. We smoked some pot to bring us down from the trip, but I was so anxious and afraid of imminent death in an automobile accident that even my good friend Cannabis wouldn't calm me down.

To make a long story shorter, what should have been an hour trip back home turned into a four hour jaunt around New Jersey and Delaware. We were lost, obviously. During the time we were driving I freaked out. Nothing mattered, no matter what. The only things in the world that seemed familiar were my cell phone, my girlfriend's face in my mind, and D. I no longer knew myself, and my entire existance was so far removed from this reality that I could no longer associate myself with my actions. I feared that I had become aware of being comatose, and that there was nothing I could do to stop it. I cried. I screamed, I gave up. I was peaceful in this dream world where nothing mattered, but everything inside of me screamed 'You have to FIGHT THIS!' This was my mistake.

I shouldn't have fought the trip, but instead I should have just held on tight and rode. I wasn't in control, but I wasn't supposed to be either. I took the mushrooms to be OUT of control, and somewhere along the line I lost sight of the fact that this was normal for a mushroom trip. I think, looking back on it, that the main reason I had a bad experience is because I was in a strange place under strange circumstances.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 32226
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 19, 2007	Views: 5,655
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