DOSE:	4.5 g	oral	Mushrooms	(dried)
	5.0 g	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

160 lb

Firstly, to relate to my experience a little better let me supply some information about myself. I am a sophomore at a university with a very open mind, so as you can imagine, I have done some playing around with drugs, mostly pot, with only one previous mushroom trip under my belt. I have a history of mild anxiety, with some mild panic attacks when I was younger.

At first tripping seemed like it may be a bad idea given the fact that I was prone to get a little sketchy when I got really high, but my friends talked me into it and I ate 3 grams. This first expierience was very pleasant, and mild, almost like being as high as you can get with marijuana. This second time I was looking to achieve something a little more intense and decided to eat an entire eighth. The date was set for the day of the final probation meeting of my best friend because he was excited to be able to get high again and we wanted to celebrate. We got around ten of our friends together and all threw in on a bunch of mushrooms to eat the next day.

The day of the trip I had a terrible day. I don't have the time or desire to get into it in detail, but suffice it to say that the end of the day had me feeling very angry, depressed, and generally upset. I thought about not eating the shrooms given my current mindset but my friends insisted that they would make me forget my troubles, so I ate them. After eating our shrooms the ten of us went into our 'smoking room' to hit some bongs and wait for the shrooms to take effect.

After 45 minutes I began to get some really strong visuals, stronger even than the peak of my first trip, and was having a great time. This was when the trip stated to turn bad. I didn't know several of the people tripping with me in this room and began to grow increasingly paraniod of who they were and what their intentions were. I know it sounds stupid but I really thought that there was something vey wrong in the room and couldn't put my finger on it.

I decided to go upstairs and chill out by myself for a while. I sat down on the couch and began to play some amazing 3-D Tetris on Xbox, the shapes and colors of the blocks were hypnotizing and I started to relax and enjoy the trip again. After twenty minutes or so the game became too much for me and I had to turn it off and lay back and tried to watch a movie. This too proved to be too much for me and I only made it about ten minutes before I couldn't look at the tv anymore. This was the most intense feeling I have ever had with a drug, it had been about an hour and a half or so since I ate the shroms and my visuals were amazing.

The tv was what I think freaked me out the worst because I couldn't keep up with the pictures in my head. They came up on the screen and changing before I had a chance to take them all in I started to register the new image so after ten minutes or so I ended up with a screen full of nonsensical half images swirling together where the screen should be. And if that wasn't weird enough everything around the tv and myself started to feel and look compressed, like it was all coming in on me. I began to feel the beginnings of a panic attack coming on.

I knew that a panic attack was the last thing I needed to happen at the moment so I decided to take a walk. It was a brisk october night and I could see my breath in the air whick seemed to swirl around in front of me before vanishing into nothingness, a concept I found particularly interesting. I walked through some alleys and as I walked I could feel the trip intensifying. I was a couple hours into the trip now and I remember thinking I must be near the peak because I could not possibly imagine ever being more lost than I currently was.

Every step I took I felt as if my legs were stepping into potholes, and the lights in the alley seemed incredibly far away. I have never felt so alone and frightened in my life, I was knee deep in the middle of a panic attack (mild, but enough to really screw with me on the shrooms) and I was begining to peak. Suddenly I had a dreadful feeling that I was not alone. I kept looking around as I was walking and couldn't see anyone. Then I saw some trash cans and felt like they were the source of my fears. This is where the trip was the absolute weirdest for me, this was/is the only time I have ever really seen something that was not at all there, it wasn't a melting or swirling of an actual object, I actually saw something that wasn't there.

There were two big grey trash bags on top of the cans and as soon as I saw them I stopped dead in my tracks. These bags weren't bags at all to me, to me they were giant gray animals eating out of the trash cans. The whole thing was so real to me, I saw their red eyes, their gnashing teeth as they tore through the trash, and their long sharp black claws as they turned on the cans to address me. I completely stopped and watched these animals for about thirty secinds before realizing that I should run away.

This was the breaking point for my trip, I knew if I ran it would mean running from the trip, and you can't run from something that's in your head (something I learned through speaking with a psychologist when I was a child for my anxiety). I knew I needed to face the trip to conquer it, so I rubbed my eyes and blinked them away. I realized that if I did not get back to the house I was going to lose it, I have never felt so isolated in my life.

I made it back to the house and finally felt like I might be ok, I sat down by myself at the table to collect myself before I joined the group again. This is when the trip got so incredibly terrifying that I still get chills thinking about it today. My friend came in the room and told me I might want to clean up because the police were on the way to the house. I guess while I was gone his car had been stolen out of the driveway, and the police had been called to file a report.

It took some convincing that they were not just messing with me, as I was still pretty paranoid, but finally the reality of the situation hit me. I began to really freak out, I began to believe that everything was against me and I was legitimately going to die. The visuals were completely gone but the psychological effects were still amazingly strong. I told my friends that I just wanted to go lie down and be left alone so they had me go into a bedroom and lock the door while they cleaned the house a bit and organized their stories.

As it turned out later the police didn't come until the next morning, but whats important here is the effect the thought had on me. I remember laying on the couch for what seemed like eternity, I was thinking about some wild, intense stuff, all about how my life was worthless and everyone was just trying to make a fool out of me. I wasn't suicidal or anything like that, but I was pretty angry and depressed with my current life.

Just as I was beginning to think that this mindset was going to be permanent I remember a feeling of an intense weight being lifted off of me. I don't know what triggered it, but I felt completely sober and more clearheaded than I have ever been. I felt like everything in life made perfect sense, and that everything was right with the world. I have never, ever, felt more peaceful in my life. the only way I can describe it is by comparing it to a space shuttle blasting off, I felt more chaos and terror than I ever have before which was like a rocket hurdling through the atmosphere in a blaze of fire and speed, and then it was like I finally blasted through into space and was completely weightless and carefree, it was like I finally made it out of the chaos, and I was so amazed at my tranquility. It was like everything in the world was coming on me and it was all so intense, then the pressure got too intense and it all exploded and floated around the universe weightless and completely calm.

I spent the next hour or so coming down, which was a little unpleasant with some slight nausea and general discomfort. I was still amazed at the short feeling of enlightment, and couldn't get over how real it all felt. All in all I am glad that the whole thing happened. I have never been more scared in my life, but I really feel like being that scared puts a lot of things in perspective. I now completely believe that you can truely get to know yourself with the aid of drugs, and I would give my personal recommendation to anyone curious about mushrooms.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 40782
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 27, 2007	Views: 5,595
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Mushrooms (39) : General (1), Difficult Experiences (5), Mystical Experiences (9), Depression (15), Bad Trips (6), Small Group (2-9) (17)