DOSE:

eighth g

oral

Mushrooms

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

This event took place the summer after my freshman year in college. Over the course of that year I had a lot of new experiences with drugs, including first trips with salvia, acid, and mushrooms. My first two mushroom trips were very visual and while they were enjoyable I was eager to experience some of the purportedly life changing revelations that magic mushrooms are famous for inducing. For my third trip, I was staying with a friend from college at his house in Vermont. His property was ideal for tripping, roughly 6 acres of grassy field bordered by mountainous forest, a large barn, which had been refurbished as a bachelor pad (complete with its own bar), a small farm house, and a very big mansion which was under construction (but near completion) when I was visiting.

Unfortunately the friend, who I'll call “J”, had to work on the house with his dad that day so the travelers would just be me and another friend who I'll designate “A.” We each ate a little more than half of an eighth of what I had been warned were very potent shrooms, sitting in some beach chairs in the middle of J’s field. After about 15 minutes me and A began to feel the first effects and decided to go for a walk. On all my previous trips, the world would take on a very distinct sheen when the shrooms hit me, textures and colors would be far exaggerated and I would often see moving patterns in stationary objects or “breathing walls.” On this trip however the effects were almost entirely in my mind. As me and A walked towards the edge of the field, we began the first of a series of deep and rambling conversations about anything which grabbed our interest. For instance sitting down in the tall grass at the edge of J’s field brought about the topic of insects living in the grass, and we spent a good 15 minutes discussing how they originated the field and then the origin of life on earth as it evolved from tiny bacteria living in the prehistoric oceans.

Looking out over the Vermont countryside I was struck by a profound sense of scale. I noticed that the patterns of larger animals in the forests mimicked the patterns of life that the tiny insects in the grass at my feet followed. Occasionally I would pick up a blade of grass or a leaf and marvel at the intricate patterns that cells and vessels in the leaf’s surface made. Not merely because they were beautiful, but because they were formed that way because millions of years of evolution had shown that this was the most practical way for them to be organized, and that this applied to all forms of life on earth including myself. I conveyed these thoughts to A, who was equally astonished by the notion that everything we saw around us was the way it was because some vast periods of trial and error had shown that this was the best way for cells to orient themselves or for animals to behave with respect to one another. Every tiny revelation we came across seemed to have deep and resounding impacts on every facet of my being alive.

At one point while walking through J’s gravel driveway, I noticed a stone glimmering in the sunlight and bent to pick it up. When I inspected it more closely I noticed that under the dirt and grit which clouded its surface, was a tightly woven pattern of silvery grey crystals, these to me seemed to be the most beautiful rock formations I had ever seen. Suddenly the rock itself became a metaphor for human existence. I saw that all people are born covered in the same sort of dirt and grime that covered my rock. Over the course of their lives, the experiences they have rub away this grime and begin to polish people into the uniquely shaped and worn gems that represent them as individuals. I realized that if I were to simply hold my rock long enough, over the course of a lifetime the oils in my hands would shape the stone and polish it just as my life experiences would shape and polish me. I kept this stone firmly clasped in my hand the rest of the trip, and I still have it to this day, so deep was this revelation.

The first 3 hours of the trip were spent in this manner, with me and A simply wandering around outside talking about things and having hundreds of small revelations about ourselves and the world around us. I learned things about A that I had never heard before and probably will never hear again (and which I certainly wont repeat here). But as we entered the fourth hour of the trip the vibes shifted and I suddenly began to feel as if I wanted to be alone. Me and A had been sitting on the stone wall behind the barn and without a word I simply got up and started walking back towards the field. I think A understood because he didn’t attempt to follow and just went off to ponder the rest of the trip on his own. I walked across a stream into the field just behind the mansion where J had been working earlier in the day but which was now deserted. I lay down in the grass and looked up into the clouds for probably 15 minutes. Here I had some of the only visuals of the trip, I saw faces in the clouds in all manner of expressions, some happy or sad, others contorted with rage or screaming in terror at something unseen. Despite the fact that some of the faces seemed to be looking directly at me, I was not at all afraid of them, I just knew somehow that none of them meant me any harm and were just there to display different aspects of human nature.

I grew tired of watching the clouds and got up and began to walk deeper into the field behind the mansion. As I climbed over the top of the ridge that runs through the middle of the field I saw two deer grazing about 30 yards away. Immediately I froze, not wanting to disturb them and simply sat down slowly to watch them. After a few minutes they were spooked by something and began to dash across the field towards the forest. I cautiously followed them until they led me to what seemed to be a path leading into the woods, I later learned that this was an old logging road running through the forest, but it must not have seen use for a long time. The deer had vanished but something in the trip vibes told me that there was something in this woods that I needed to see or find. I can't explain how I knew this, it was just something I had to do. I left the path and began climbing up the mountain through the woods. Bugs and brambles bit and scratched at my face and legs but I was not to be deterred, I knew that these were just obstacles sent by “the forest” to test my worth and determination.

As I hiked upwards, I came to a stonewall upon which sat an enormous quartz rock with thin veins of something silver running through it. I sat down on the wall next to this rock and put my hand on it, listening. The rock seemed to speak to me, not literally, but through the vibes such that I simply knew things about it. It told me that it had once ruled some great collection of rocks before it was kidnapped and moved to the forest to become part of the wall. It told me that while my encounter with this rock was important, I still had not come to the end of my journey, I still had a little farther to go. I left the wall and the rock and continued upwards, loosely following the stonewall as it was my only tie to civilization at this point.

After another 5 or 10 minutes of hiking (as I estimate, time seemed irrelevant to me) I came to a clearing in the woods, a long, thin sunlit grove running along the side of the mountain. At the edge of it, where the stonewall ended was a small wooden bench and table, with no paths or markings of any kind around them. This is probably the most remarkable part of the trip, the fact that the shrooms literally led me to this bench in the middle of the woods, what it was doing there I have no idea nor does J, who owns the property. I had this feeling that it had been put there for me to find. I sat down at the table and closed my eyes, allowing the forest to speak to me.

To this day, I’m not entirely sure what it was that the forest had tried to tell me. I may never know, all I knew was that after a few minutes sitting at that table I knew that I had found what I set out to find and that it was time to leave. The insects that were biting me began to be a nuisance and I took that as a sign that the forest had shown me what I was permitted to see and that now I was no longer welcome. The only stop I made on the way down was when I came to an enormous fallen tree, which made me very sad to think how it had once stood mightily and then suddenly come crashing down for no apparent reason.

When I emerged from the woods I felt weary and travel worn, but happy, with a tremendous sense of both accomplishment and fulfillment. I reunited with A and we went back to the barn to look for J and discuss our mutual experiences. When we got back, J’s father (who knew we had been tripping and was fine with it) asked us “So are you guys back on this planet yet?” to which I replied: “I'm not sure, I think I just met the spirit of your forest.”

I still don’t know what exactly I found that day in the forest, I haven’t had any desire to go back there and try to find the bench and table or the rock again because for one I’m not entirely convinced they were real, and two I think it would ruin the experience that I had in there to see it sober. Something, some mental force, led me to that clearing with the wooden bench, and I think it was the mushrooms. The revelations and experiences that I had that day were unlike anything else I had ever seen on any psychedelics I’ve tried. Although I still don’t know the full importance of everything I saw, I was left with a deep appreciation for psilocybin mushrooms and the magic they can invoke in the human brain.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 72324
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 2, 2023	Views: 759
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