DOSE:	3.5 g	oral	Mushrooms	(dried)
		smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

Before the Trip:

We worked very hard to get a hold of these shrooms. Even though I live in California, in an area ripe with psychedelic acceptance, it was especially difficult to find them. Everyone we knew had never done mushrooms or had a busted dealer. Plus, no one wants to just walk around sketchy parts of town at night to find drugs…that’s never good thinking.

Luckily a friend of my roommate has mushrooms and we bought 3 eighths of dried psilocybin mushrooms. My drug history before this: I have experimented, but never with things too hard. I have smoked a lot of weed in my lifetime, though never more than once every week or two at the most. I used to smoke tobacco but have quit recently. At one time I was doing some Vicodin, whose trip is amazing but very dangerous for the sole reason that I found it highly addicting. The only mushrooms I have tried are Amanitas Muscaria (Fly Agaric) which were very very fun, but in a strange way. They made we sweat and salivate excessively and I only felt the effect after I smoked a joint, and it only seemed like the mushroom augmented the effects of the weed.

So I am very excited for this trip because it will be my first intense psychedelic experience. I have been doing research on psychedelic mushrooms for a long time now and feel very prepared. I am not anxious or nervous and have only good vibes, so I know I don’t have to fear the bad trip. I will trip with a couple of my close friends, A and S, who I have done all my drugs with my whole life. We understand each other’s highs and know how to take care of each other. I know that nothing can go wrong because we know how to be safe.

I am a philosophy student at a very prominent university in California, so you can imagine what I expect to get from this trip. I feel like Aldous Huxley when he wrote his Doors of Perception under the influence of mescaline. A and S both know me very well, so they had no problems when I told them that I plan on bringing some paper and a pen so I can write down my thoughts. I believe that under the right circumstances and doses, psychedelic trips can not only be enjoyable but can truly give the user a different state of consciousness.

I don’t want to say “higher state” because it isn’t clear to me that states of being can be better than others, they are simply different. For example, as Huxley says, the state of consciousness that most people are in their whole lives is very appropriately suited for survival behaviors and thoughts best suited to social and demanding environments. The mushroom consciousness, however, is very obviously not suited to this, as shown by the fact that no should ever operate a car when tripping….just not smart and not suited to the state of consciousness. So, when I trip, I expect to have deep thoughts flow more easily and I want to capture them in writing for future reference.

The setting:

As I said, we are all very excited for this trip. I only feel good vibes and, personally, I’m not worried about anything going wrong. We are going to a beautiful park on the central coast of California, where we will hike through redwood groves, watch crashing waterfalls fall into the Pacific, and stroll along pristine beaches. I can’t imagine a better place to experience the mushroom consciousness. We will not be driving under the influence and just plan on enjoying nature for a great few hours before coming home.

The Trip:

We at the mushrooms at 11:35am at the park and made our way down to the beach. At this point, I turned off my phone because I wanted to remove myself as much as possible from the cares and worries of normal life. So, from here on, the times I note are just estimates and I can’t be sure exactly.

It seemed to be about half an hour before we started to feel the effects. It started as a growing warm feeling of comfort and pleasure that sort of flowed through my body. Then as it increased, we all become very excited and a little giggly. My friend climbed a tree and, of course, he fell. We realized that even though we were having a great time we still had to keep safe, so, no more tree-climbing. The next hour or so was spent in euphoric exploration of the new spot we found. We were utterly filled with wonder with everything and I was filled with an immense feeling of empathy. I loved everybody and everything. I realized that I shouldn’t try to be someone else in life because I am a wonderful person. I realized that I like who I am. Any shame I felt before melted away and was irrelevant.

I found some mint growing near us and I picked some and began to smell it. It smelled so good! It was a tangy sort of sensation that flowed into my nose and was felt all throughout my body. I probably held onto that leaf for a while, just smelling it and taking in its beauty. My friend then decided to join. He picked a small, perfectly shaped leaf and began to play with it in his hands. Suddenly, he exclaimed, “It’s alive!” He told us how the leaf was now his pet and it was jumping and playing on his hand. Actually, he was just wiggling it himself by the end of the stem, but we were all convinced and watched the pet leaf dance in careless joy.

While still exploring our new domain, I found a dead tree that was being decomposed by termites. On the surface of the wood, they had made intricate patterns that looked a little like fractals. This became the theme of the rest of my trip. I looked at the patters and exclaimed, “It looks like a tree!” My friends cracked up because they saw me looking at a dead tree and being so amazed that it is a tree. But the truth is, I was engrossed with the patterns on the bark and the image became engrained in my mind. We later found a rock with the exact same pattern in it, which I kept with me the rest of the day as a symbol of my trip.

Two of my friends smoked a little reefer, but I passed because I knew it wouldn’t have any effect on my mind at this point.

We brought out someone’s ipod and picked a very trippy song to all listen to. We took turns going to the top of a hill and listening to the song ourselves. I was last to go but I noticed how each of my buds came down he talked of hallucinating crazy and fascinating things. It was my turn. I plugged in and began to look around. Everywhere I looked was that fractal shape I had seen in the bark of the tree and the rock. Every piece of matter had arranged itself to be made of this fantastic shape.

Part of the scenery began to melt and morph and the fractals became very vivid as the music picked up. I remember seeing a huge ladybug, which of course was also arranged out of this fractal shape. I followed him down the hill, still listening to the music, and we went back to the termite infested tree. He led me to the original fractal patterns and it was at this point that I made a connection. The tree, the rock, and all matter were arranged according to this fractal pattern. It was everywhere for a reason! I understood that this shape was some abstract code to the Universe. And it was the rock that I held in my hand, containing the code, that was the key to unlocking its secrets. Here, the music stopped and the hallucinations did as well. Everything I saw looked as it did in normal reality, except that if I concentrated, I could see the code in all things. It was comforting to know that I truly found the Answer to everything and that it would guide me the rest of the day.

One of my friends wanted food, so we made our way back to the car to get some. One the way we walked on the beach, watching the huge waves crash into rocks. It was so beautiful! Everywhere I looked, of course, the fractal was there still. I was so happy and I remember thinking that I would be perfectly content to walk into the ocean and just drift away.

After eating we wanted to find a new spot to stay so we just walked…and walked…and walked. None of us knew how long we were walking and we honestly didn’t know or care where we were going. Eventually we realized that we should try and not get lost so we made our way back to the beach. On the way, we smoked a little bit of herb, but, as I expected, it had no effect whatsoever. The shrooms were in charge today.

When we went back to our original spot, it was starting to get late and we were all starting to come down gradually. So we just relaxed and enjoyed looking around for a while. I told my friends that I wanted to write my thoughts for future reference. They understood and were very into the idea. This marks the most epic part of my trip.

I made my way to the top of the hill where I had listened the music before. I smoked a single cigarette and just thought as it smoked. I got out my pen and paper and wrote. I wrote savagely and desperately. I needed to get the thoughts on paper before they faded away into oblivion. It began to rain pretty hard but nothing could stop me. I held an umbrella with one hand, balancing the paper on the one knee and wrote a page of the most ripe and deep thoughts I have ever created. I can only imagine what I looked like at this point. It must have looked like something out of a movie. I felt like the thinker, whose grandest idea comes to him at the worst time and is forced to write it wherever he can before it is lost.

After this we headed back home, where we relaxed and played some video games for a while. We were feeling that shroom trip fade so we decided to smoke a little more reefer. We shared a small joint between 3 people, and again, it had no effect…..at first. I was a little disappointed so we just went on a walk around the city. After about 10 minutes, the strangest thing happened to me. I went completely and utterly blind. I have no idea what caused it, or why it only happened to me, but I will describe what it felt like.

We were just standing around a convenient store, all talking to each other. I noticed that I started to get a little dizzy and light-head—the sort of feeling I get when I stand up too quickly. I expected it to just pass but it kept coming and coming. The blackness crept all around until my friends all disappeared and I literally only saw black. I was terrified at this moment and my friends helped to a bench were I sat. They had to practically carry me because my vision was completely gone at this point. When I sat down, the blackness started to fade. It left just as suddenly as it came, and the figures and faces of my friends became clearer again. This whole episode only lasted about a minute and a half. It was so fast and so terrifying but I still have no clue what could have caused it. I can only guess that the weed brought back the shrooms in a very bad way.

The rest of the night was uneventful. We went to sleep and I don’t remember having any strange dreams. I woke up feeling pretty good, except being a little tired and sore from the adventures of the previous day.

I think I will try shrooms again. They were fantastic and made me so happy, and helped me to understand things so well. The temporary blindness is still unexplainable, and I am a little concerned about it, but I think it might have just been a fluke that may never happen again. We will see.

It was definitely one of the best days of my life and it has changed me for the better.

Exp Year: 2009	ExpID: 82483
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Jan 17, 2011	Views: 18,235
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