DOSE:

4 g

oral

Mushrooms - P. cubensis

(tea)

BODY WEIGHT:

130 lb

The week prior to dosing, I had a lot on my mind regarding myself and my way of thinking. Due to a short period of abuse during my childhood during some important years for mental development, nearly my entire life I lived in a constant state of self-doubt. My mind was trained to never trust my own senses or thoughts, so I forever approached problems with hesitation, over-analysis and in most cases, inaction. A vast majority of my regrets in life were having held back and done nothing, as opposed to taking risks and having done wrongly.

After having been inspired by someone special to me to give the approach of “living without regrets” a try, and after during the same week having what I perceived to have been missing a rare opportunity because of my doubt and hesitation, I’d finally reached the breaking point and had enough of my own mind. I had previous success improving my mental outlook in other areas with the aid of psilocybin, so I enlisted its help once again.

The preparation was a tea using 5 grams of crushed & dried homegrown "B Strain" Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms, including a bit of chamomile with it, into about 500mL of water that was simmered for 10 minutes and steeped for another 15 minutes until filtered, and stored for 2 days in the refrigerator. I meditated on what I hoped to accomplish a few times before taking the trip; was anticipating quite a battle within my own mind to undo year’s worth of automatic behavior.

At about 7:25 PM on Friday night, I shut my bedroom door and began to drink the chilled mushroom tea. It tasted far more awful than I’d ever had it before, like I would vomit from the flavor alone, so it took until 7:45 for me to stop drinking it, and even then I’d only had about 4/5ths of what I made, so only consumed roughly 4 grams worth. Washed it down with an additional 400 mL of water or so (and thus was able to avoid the next day’s severe migraine-like headache that I normally get with doses over 3 grams).

Once I drank all I could stomach, I stripped down to my boxers and tied my T-shirt around my head to filter out whatever stray light my curtains could not, and rested my head on the pillow and waited, thinking of what I wanted to accomplish, but trying to remind myself to trust the mushrooms to guide me through and teach me what they will.

Not much longer than 10 minutes passed until the first visuals appeared, faint but colorful fractals appearing, along with the memories of previous trips that I can never recall in sobriety. Much of what went through my mind were repeats of lessons earlier taught but that I still hadn’t put into practice, regarding being more thankful for the people in my life, and the understanding that every person is an experience. Also came the powerful feeling of loneliness, also quite familiar by now as far as trips go.

But then the images and feeling changed, and from the lower-left of my field of vision, the fractals changed; they began to pull away and give way to a red and black distortion made of my fears and insecurities, and with it came death. I knew immediately this was the force I came to fight, but it was immediately overpowering and I had no idea what to do. Trying to think positive and search for my inner strength was too difficult, the thoughts I tried to conjure simply were not there. I felt like a knight without armor or weapons, facing a dragon the size of the sun.

I tore the shirt off my head, turned on the bedroom light and with my iPod already prepared and ready to go, was able to turn on some Buddhist instrumental music, song called “The Pure and the Real”. That provided some calm but I was already pretty unsettled, and while I returned to the darkness and lying down now with the music playing, I already knew I’d failed in my goal by retreating at the first sight of my inner darkness. I promised the mushrooms that I’d never trip again until I had someone with me (all but my first low-dose trip were solo).

The trip from that point on was just very miserable, and I wanted it to be over with as soon as possible. Turned on the lights again and flipped on the TV for some distractions, first by watching that cartoon network “Clone Wars” series which I found to be a not-at-all transparent commentary of today’s political climate in America, and then changed the channel when that was over to watch “Polar Express”, which turned out to be very stressful to watch as the children’s emotions penetrated me, their sadness and worries. I was eventually able to hope on my phone and talk to a friend on Facebook chat, to keep me company until the trip wore off a few hours later, and then I went straight to sleep.

Mentally I regarded the trip as a failure, but had work right in the morning so had little time to dwell on it, turned out to be a very busy day. However about halfway through the workday, I was assigned to sweep the floors and thus had time to myself.

That is when it occurred to me, that not once did I actually “feel” like a failure, or that the trip was a waste or anything like that. As awful as it was, I didn’t regret it one bit… and further remembered, one of the main goals of the trip was to get over my tendency to have regrets! I can’t explain how, as it apparently operated completely unconsciously, but I had achieved a strong victory both for and against myself, even in the face of retreating from what I thought I was supposed to have confronted.

It has only been 3 days since that trip as of the writing of this report, but so far I have found it easier to take more risks and be less inhibited about going after the things I want out of life. Hopefully this is a permanent change, and that with the proper company to guide me in the future, I will confront that inner darkness again.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 88602
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 24
Published: Oct 20, 2020	Views: 1,030
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Alone (16), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Difficult Experiences (5), General (1)