DOSE:	repeated	smoked	Cannabis
	9 g	oral	Mushrooms - P. cubensis	(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

125 lb

I had previously endulged in Cannabis regularly since graduating High School, I had already taken Mushrooms on several prior occasion, have experimented with 2C-B, 2C-I, a variety of prescription medications, LSD, Mescaline, DMT, DXM extractions. I'm not trying to brag about my background, nor do I believe drugs to be 'positive' things in the first place, it's just that due to personal beliefs, I tend to experiment for the purpose of simply experiencing aspects of life I wouldn't otherwise be able to see from a first hand account, and in some cases, such as the one in this report, resulted in an awesome experience that I will never forget...

The second semester of my Freshman year in college was coming to a close, and all the friends I had made on campus were getting all nostalgic as everyone was spending the last week packing up and preparing for a summer of boredom back in their hometowns. I'm not quite sure who brought up the idea, but next thing I knew, we were all throwing down about $75 a head (there were about 14 of us), and one of our close friends, who had also supplied our close-knit group with all kinds of fun substances over the years, had bought 2 ounces of P. Cubensis from a private grower, a half pound of mid-quality cannabis, and a few bottles of liquor and we set out to some cabins about an hour off campus for an overnight camping 'trip', spend the next day at the river (it was walking distance from the cabin), and send everyone home on a great note.

At around 2 o'clock, the convoy of vehicles pulls up to the cabin, everyone started setting up, claiming bunks, some people started rolling blunts, and our friend had begun dividing out the mushrooms to everyone. I had come out with the intentions of taking a LARGE amount (I had previously taken a maximum of 4.5 grams), so when he handed me my 1/3 oz baggy, needless to say my face was beaming. We all sat around on couches and pillows in the common room in the cabin, passing around blunts as everyone slowly made their way to the bottom of their respective sacks. Despite the unpleasant taste people often associate with mushrooms, I honestly don't find them much different than dried normal mushrooms. It's not candy, but I certainly can't understand how anyone could have any sort of problem downing these (unless you don't usually like mushrooms, of course). We all chilled there in the common room for a bit, finishing the blunts and listening to some friends of ours play music, everyone was singing, just generally having a good time.

About 30 minutes after we had eaten the mushies, a few people were starting to notice some effects, others still weren't feeling anything. Getting anxious about the amount I had taken, I grabbed a few friends and we set off into the woods to find a nice clearing we could set a blanket down in, and just kind of chill in the sunlight till things picked up. After a short ten minute hike, we found a clearing with a bunch of wildflowers (nothing beats late Spring and the wildflowers), sat down, and began chatting. Slowly, but surely, the field started getting brighter. The grass was getting greener, the sky bluer, and the wildflowers looked absolutely amazing. The leaves of the trees slowly started to move between one another freely, making them all look like giant staticky green balls. One of my friends (it was his first time tripping, took 5 grams) started crying quietly at how beautiful everything around us was. We all stayed out in this field for another 45 minutes or so, just taking in the scenery of the world around us.

When we began to really start tripping, we decided to pack up and head back to the campground to see how everyone else had been doing. I couldn't help but notice on our way back how much all of the scrappy, leafless trees made me feel more and more like I was wandering through the opening of 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'. After I commented on it, we all started laughing HYSTERICALLY and didn't manage to bring ourselves together till we got back to the cabin and had miraculously forgotten what had prompted the laughter in the first place.

Sure enough, everyone back at the campground was in full-blown trip mode. We all sat down around a campfire, even though there were hours of daylight left and the weather was quite warm (high 90's I believe). We had bubbles, colored pencils, paper, guitars, colored lights, just about all the stuff to make the 'trip' perfect. I had noticed at this point that from behind my sunglasses, the world had almost been dimmed a bit, but the contrast was turned up to the MAX! My favorite part had to be the tracers coming from the fire, the bubbles, the lights... all of it coupled with some good friends and jams really helped to keep me calm through my coming up, which was awesome cause the little worries about the amount I took would keep popping into my head from time to time. At this point, the visual effects were mindblowing. I have, and always will, prefer LSD to Psilocybin, but nothing I've done (cept DMT of course) has ever compared to these visuals. The trees were rippling, the colors reflecting from the bubbles would flash and change hues slowly... 'This is totally F*CKING amazing...' was the only thing I could keep repeating to myself.

Everyone continued dancing and singing and whatever for quite a while. I on the otherhand, despite my usual social nature, felt extremely introverted and quiet, something I was used to on shrooms, but never to the extent I had at that point. After much, MUCH debate, I decided I just needed to go somewhere quiet and be alone with my thoughts. At this, I rolled myself a couple of joints, stuck em in my lucky bandana (always good to have a 'comforting' trip object to have with ya thats sentimental to ya), grabbed a pen and a notebook, because I knew there was no way I'd be able to maintain straight, fluid thought otherwise, and set out BY MYSELF into the woods, unbenounced to anyone else, which is usually never a good idea.

I began trekking through the woods, this time sticking to a greener area to try to avoid 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' feeling from sneaking up on me. I tried to stay focused on my path, so I could remember how to get back, but the trees all around me kept distracting me. The looked like they had faces and arms and were reaching out for me, but oddly enough, I didn't feel afraid by this. I felt like the trees were calling me back into nature, welcoming me back to the place that created us all. I kept hiking for another half an hour or so, and then I found this little grove of trees and shrubs that formed a little enclave on top of a hill, and I had decided this would be the PERFECT place for me to sit and examine myself for a while.

The second I sat down, I noticed my legs (i was wearing boardshorts at the time, no shirt) were bleeding, as well as parts of my arms and back, naturally this scared the HELL out of me, but I diagnosed it as nothing major, probably due to me wandering through the woods so quick on my 'mission' and neglecting to notice some pricker bushes and such.

THAT IS the danger of tripping. I know I can't OD, I won't think I can fly and jump off a roof, and it won't distance me TOO far from reality. The danger comes in getting too caught up in my thoughts and completely missing harmful things happening around me, even as they are directly hurting me, I may not even realize it till after I stop tripping. Be safe, have someone with you at all times, and don't ever forget you're on a drug that can do these things.

With that said, I now checked the area I was about to be resting in for pricker bushes, poison ivy, fire ants, etc... basically all the things I wouldn't want to be sitting in and not realizing it till I'm just another idiot who fucked up on psychedelics... Area cleared out, so I sat. I realized that directly in front of me were more rolling hills, all bright green and colorful, and that the sun would be setting directly in front of me. I wrote it off as a beautiful stroke of luck, indicating that this was EXACTLY where I needed to be...

I sparked a joint, opened my notebook, and started thinking. At this point, I was definitely peaking, the visual distortions at this point had fully convinced me every tree, bush, and shrub was reaching out for me. Luckily, I had convinced myself already that these were 'friendly' reachings, pulling me back to some higher meaning, and that set my train of thought for the next hour or so.

As I sat there, a lot of things came to mind I didn't think would necessarily pop up. My parent's divorce when I was younger, my father's substance issues (the thing that had frightened me away from drug use for so long), and a lot of other things I won't detail on because they are dearly personal to myself and my life. I had been writing quick 1-or-2 sentence summaries of the conclusion I'd reach after each thought, trip on to the next one, write the conclusion, and keep going, seeing if I could string together and connect the ideas.

This is when my life changed. Because of some personal stuff that's happened to me, I had always had latent problems with anxiety, depression, stuff like that. Never too severe, but enough to cause personal emotional problems. Probably about twenty minute before sunset, all of these emotions starting springing up in me, literally out of nowhere (my train of thought had been very positive). First, depression, which caused anxiety, and so on and so forth, until next thing I knew, these thoughts had just about consumed every part of my body, and I just started crying. I'm not talking *tear* *tear* *sniff*, I'm talking full on sobbing, which isn't something that had happened in a while. I didn't know why I was crying, all I knew is I felt the worst I had ever felt, and all I could do was just sit there in this field and sob. This went on for another fifteen minutes or so, when I started to hear I really weird, familiar noise from behind me.

I turned around to find a small litter of feral kittens sitting under an old thing of tree roots, and they were meowing and yelling, I can only assume my crying had woke them. All of a sudden, all the bad feelings I had dissapeared. I looked at the kittens, and noticed that behind them was a BIG ASS black cat, who I can only assume was the mother, laying there sleeping as the kittens cried. I started petting one of them, and then the two others came out, followed by the mom. I couldn't believe I was here, in the middle of the woods, surrounded by kittens, and on top of it all, the sun was finally starting to set.

For the second time, I started sobbing, this time twice as hard as before. For the first time I thought that in spite of everything that had happened to me, I was right here, right now. I was in the woods, with kittens, by myself actually trying to figure myself out. I was making an effort. I had just finished my freshman year of college, all out of my own pocket, no help from anyone. In spite of it all, I was right there, doing something with my life, making something wonderful out of myself, and it wasn't because I overcame all of the shitty things that had happened to me, but because all the shitty things let me know EXACTLY where I didn't end up. Nobody can tell you what you REALLY wanna do with your life, but I now have a damn good idea of what I don't want to be.

I sat there for a little while longer, and suddenly got the urge to write a poem about everything that had just happened. It came surprisingly quick, despite that being my first poem, and with my newfound sense of self, I set back towards the campgrounds. About twenty minutes into the walk, I found two of my friends (one of them the same guy from earlier who had been crying) walking along the same path. They both ran up to me and started hugging the hell out of me. I didn't understand what was going on, and they had explained other people back at the cabin had gotten worried about me. People were thinking everything from me falling off a cliff to being eaten by a bear... ahh, psychedelia. To make the weekend even better, on our way back to the cabin, we found our friend passed out drunk (he was the only one who didnt trip) in the middle of this pasture moaning.

We hopped the fence onto the property, helped him up, and laughed our asses off the whole way back to the campground. We arrived just as it was getting truly dark, and everyone was excited to see me, which made me feel great. I started passing around the poem I wrote, entitled 'Nine Grams of Knowledge', that was basically about me wishing that everyone could get the kind of experience I had... I'm not sure if it's cause I actually did a good job, more likely because everyone was tripping, but people would read it and get a big ol smile and start to tear up, made me feel perfect.

For the rest of the night, we all basically sat around the campfire, tripping, smoking and talking. As soon as I felt the mushrooms starting to wear off, I started drinking, getting drunk before the trip was completely over, which was definitely interesting. The cats I had found in the woods had followed me back to the cabin I guess, as later that night I saw the one I recognized as the mother wandering around our cabin, getting petted and fed by all the kindhearted people we were that night...

All in all, this was pretty much the deepest I've ever tripped, in the sense of self-exploration. Since then, my anxiety and insomnia have diminished substantially, and my depression is gone. I'm not calling this a cure. But there is no doubt in my mind that's what caused my breakthrough. I achieved this though, after years of counselling and self-reflection.

All in all, yes Psychedelics are fun, but they ARE powerful. Another thing, it's not about hallucinating and seeing cool shit get moved around, that's all just the fun side-effect of psychedelics. It's about reading in and actually trying to learn something about humanity, in oneself and others. In short, I'm basically paying money to take a drug that's going to make me blurt out all of the awkward, odd thoughts that pop into my head, even the ones I don't want there. I expected that, and surrounded myself with people who appreciate me for me, and had an amazing experience and connected with friends in a way I never before dreamed possible...

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 88773
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Oct 15, 2020	Views: 938
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Depression (15), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Glowing Experiences (4), Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53)