DOSE:

Mushrooms

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

175 lb

I came home from work one Friday found some mushrooms in my father's freezer. 'Holly shit!' I thought, 'a rare opportunity to rebel against my overly liberal parents!', as their hippy methods of raising me have led me on a path to unwanted yuppie happiness. Much love to mom and dad though. Anyway, I immediately stole them and went to my friend's apartment and scarfed them down. We were about 20 and had done shrooms about 8 times each. We live in New York City.

Looking back at it, it was probably enough mushrooms for 4 or 5 people, but we just poured the ziplock whole bag on a couple slices of pizza and figured, 'I've done this before...'. In fairness to what I'm about to write, my friend took the fattest bluest, fungus covered stem I've ever seen in my life and chomped it down.

About 1 hour earth time had passed and the effects we were feeling were mild if even present. So, we changed into some basketball shorts and headed for the park which is what we would ordinarilly do on a Friday at 4:30.

As we were walking to the park I started feeling very dizzy and heavy. It felt like my head was filled with water, and the water was rocking back and fourth like the ocean. My body parts felt unfamiliar to me, and my hands appeared about 1/2 size from what I knew they ought to be.

I expressed my concern to my buddy, and he was like, 'yeah, this doesn't feel too good'. Just then we ran into some dried up old friend of his mother, and she stood herself right in front of him and started asking all these questions. 'Yeah, I go to blah, blah colledge. Oh, I haven't decided on my major yet. Yes, she does still work with Dan. Yeah, my little sister is in high school etc.'. He was trying to make it brief with her but this nosy bitch just wouldn't quit. Then she started with the, 'you luck funny, is everything ok' and she was getting closer to his face to analyze him. Her jewelry and lipstick and makeup looked like they were dripping in the summer heat. Her whole face was dripping with this horrible snutty midlife beauty lost rumor spreading grease.

'Uh, I think Matt said we should be..um..there..um..now', I said in the least stealth way possible, and yanked my friend by the arm, and starting marching him away without even giving that poodle owning bitch without a goodbye.

As we walked along Riverside Drive in the West 80's, the usual congregation of homeless people who live in that area did not blend in with the environment as they usually do. There's the lady can collector, the guy who sings, and the guy who wears a suit and talks to himself. Not for a lack of compassion, but these people were just regulars there like the trees, the pizza shop, the playground. They are loonies, and when you have some spare change, or a half sandwhich you give it to them. However, under the influence of the mushrooms they seemed to me to be more like living corpses - wretched examples of humanity - scratching their scabs compulsively, nervously flinching and ticking, appearing diseased in their bodies and spirits. My friend seemed to be noticing this for the first time, and for what its worth, he was behaving the same way - itching himself in strange ways and asking a lot of paranoid questions about what we were doing.

I felt like shit, but I could see that my friend was struggling more than me. I suggested that we walk in a direction that we rarely go - some good exploring will cheer us up, I figured.

As we walked the Hudson River and Jersey Shorline and the trees in the park looked fantastic and magical - I can't ever remember such vivid colors or fascination with things. Even the pavement seemed like an unbelievable phenominon - who put it here? Hows it made? Why is it so beautifull? The two yelow lines in the middle of the road made me burst out with laughter (becuase all the cars on one side of the line went north, and all the cars on the other side went south) - at the time I couldn't believe it.

As we walked aimlessly through the park 3 or 4 tough kids with baggy jeans from a worse neighborhood walked pretty near to us and called us 'faggotts' ... probably becuase we gigling in the park in our gym shorts. They seemed to want to start a fight with us, but I was so flustered by everything that was happening, I asked the guy where I could find a water fountain. They were perplexed and walked along looking for someone else to fuck with. So, if anybody ever fucks with you and you're not sure what to do, ask for a water fountain. At this point I was extremely thirsty - likely from the heat of the day - not the mushrooms.

We started tripping so hard, it was pretty hard to remember anything at all. I was dizzy and felt like puking, but felt up to walking it off. My buddy was really tweaked about the lady, the homeless people, and the little hoodies. We made our way back to his house - to safety. Upstairs things were getting pretty sticky. He was vomitting, and I was worried that my heart had stopped beating. The dog was behaving strangely, licking me and then barking at me. Everything in the house was spinning - the ceiling fan, the art on the walls, the couch, the tv. We tried playing some videogames to chill out, my friend couldn't even do that. He was really having a bad episode. My hands looked HUGE! They were double or triple in size. When my buddy spoke to me his chin dripped down to his chest like a cartoon based on Dali's time painting. He was perspiring like one of those whole roast chickens that they keep on a spinning heater all day. I must have been looking at him cockeyed becuase he looked like he was melting to me. I think he felt like that too.

He seemed in a state of total confusion. And would either say, 'wait, no!' or, 'you're right!', even if I hadn't said anything to him at all (I don't think). He also thought that he was going to die and naturally was frightened. I also thought it was possible we would die. But I was hellbent on having a good time first. I went to the bathroom to take a piss. That was the weirdest piss I've ever taken. Honest. Then I looked in the mirror. Bad move. I could have been looking at someone else. And I looked like a dork in my gym shorts and all. Whatever I was looking at it made me really uncomfortable. Splashed some cold water on my face. We weren't going to go to the hospital - I've been paranoid too many times to fall for this one - some strand of memories in the cobwebs of my mind braught me the insight that when the trip was over this might all seem funny.

I tried to explain this to my friend, but he was so fucked up he would just stop and say, 'time?!' or 'what!?'. Meanwhile, those words would echo in my head as if he'd said them 20 times - 'what WHAT what what what WHAT whatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhat WHAT' and you get the idea, in oscillating pitches and frequencies. Everything was madness.

After an excrutiating hour of panicking in my friend's apartment, I lured him outside with a lacross stick - his favorite passtime. I got a cab to central park, where we'de be less likely to see anybody we knew. I figured that if we had a catch that maybe we could start to get into the moment and enjoy how hard we were tripping - chill with the trees and the brees and all.

During the cab ride to the park my friend tried to open back the door as we drove down 86th street, as he suddenly felt clusterphobic. We were going like 30 miles per hour. I grabbed him and said 'shut the door' and after a long stare at me he relunctantly did so. The cab driver was pissed off. He drove a little while longer and then pulled over and angrily said, 'get out of my cab'. He was a middle eastern guy with a turban and a thick stench of body odor. I had no money to pay him with. He said that we were drunk and he's calling the cops. Whatever...we got out of the cab and walked away.

We were only 5 blocks from the park. When we got to the park it was packed - packed! On a Friday afternoon in summer in NYC Central Park is more crowded than Times Square. And there were all these softball leagues, and people jogging and fences up and signs that said, 'no ball playing, no loitering, no standing, no anything'. So we tried having a catch in this 10 yard by 10 yard area and wouldn't you know it, we were having a fucking good time. My buddy was faking out the trees and ducking and jumping and all this stuff. Then these cops come by and tell us, 'can't you read the sign - no ball playing'. Oh. 'So get out of here!'. Oh, right.

So we continued to walk. At this point I had to piss real bad, but I couldn't find a bathroom for the life of me, and I didn't want to piss in the bushes and end up tripping like this with my wrists in handcuffs. The New York skyline was fantastic. One of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life.

My friend was aparently in a lacross game in his mind. He was jogging in place with his stick ducking, bobbing, deaking, tweaking. So I joined in and we ran down the road as people made dissapproaving sneers at us. During this process I stepped in a hearty pile of dog shit and it reminded me of how bad I had to piss. I didn't know what to do , sso I saw a garbage and I took my shoe off and threw it in. Now I was walking through the park with one shoe. I started to get very paranoid that I would step on something and contract aids. Its all I could think about. And how bad I had to piss. Everything was blarring. Peoples' faces were contorted and sickly. The buildings leaned over as if they were touching their toes.

We saw a cab going through the park and I hailed it and told the cabbie that I broke my ankle. He offered to take us to the hospital, but I said we had to go to my friend's house first. That guy was a damn good man. He gave us a free ride home. My buddy twirled his laccross stick the whole way as if he was playing in an actual 1 on 6 game, him being the one. By the time we'de gotten back we were not panicking anymore, but his Father was home. Luckily, he was on the phone when we entered the house.

So we stayed in his room and tripped for another 3 hours, talking on the phone with people and watching t.v. and shit. It was not fun. I felt like I was walking on eggshells, had to stay undercover, etc.. The trip was more manageable at this point, but time traveled very slowly and everything was woozy.

Moral of the story: Don't steal from your parents man.

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 50277
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 18, 2008	Views: 62,184
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Mushrooms (39) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Nature / Outdoors (23), Difficult Experiences (5)