Fairly unpleasant experience with mushrooms for the second time in a weekend.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever do
mushrooms again, or even LSD. I learnt a very valuable lesson about
psychedelics; that they are not something with which one should mess. That
said, it was an important experience, and I learnt a lot from it. I don’t
regret doing it. I will explain why this trip was so unpleasant.
At around 7:30 PM I ingested about 3 grams of psilocybe cubensis
mushrooms. I caught the train up to my girlfriend’s house. We both took them
but I had more. She didn’t end up feeling it much. It took a fairly standard
time to work. Around 45 minutes, I believe. I told my girlfriend that I needed
to go to her room, as I was starting to go crazy. The plan was that we would
stay in her room and watch an Alfred Hitchcock film and her family wouldn’t
bother us. However, she decided that she wanted to watch this shitty ballet
film with Emma Watson. I couldn’t understand why she’d want to watch this as
she acknowledged its poor quality.
So I went upstairs, not realizing
that she didn’t intend on joining me. So I was left alone with nothing to do,
really. I listened to some music as time started to dissolve. As The Chemical
Brothers played, I became increasingly unaware of exactly how long I had been
lying there. Her posters started to change. I had tripped two days prior in the
exact same room, so I was familiar with what I would be seeing in these
posters.
This was the biggest mistake, I
believe. I had too much time to think about exactly what I was feeling. This
coupled with my extensive knowledge of the possible effects of psychedelics,
such as bodily highs, twitching and intensified thoughts lead me to be thinking
way too much about what I was feeling. The former two of these effects I had
never felt, and I was sort of expecting it. Further, I became obsessed with
trying to define what was coming over me, due to my new hobby of writing about
my psychedelic experiences (this is my fourth report).
I eventually decided I must go
downstairs, because I thought it would look strange or suspicious if I spent
too much time alone, away from my girlfriend, who I had come to see. I watched
the ballet movie with my girlfriend, her uncle, sister and mother. I cannot
describe the terror I felt at this moment. I had to sit completely still and
remain silent. The film made no sense at all. I couldn’t remember the previous
line. It was absurd. Things kept making me laugh, and I had to suppress all of
this. I think I pulled off being normal well enough, but my girlfriend believed
differently. Luckily, her family didn’t notice anything.
Eventually I begged my girlfriend
to join me upstairs. She was very disappointed to miss the film, but it was
simply unbearable to be in this room. She assured me that there was nothing
wrong with me staying in her room while she watched the film. I really wish I
had trusted her.
There were several skills that I
lost. I forgot many things in my life, such as how much time I spend in my
girlfriend’s room, and how much time we spend talking. I had no idea. I had no
idea of time, I had no idea what was real, I had no idea what it was like to
feel normal and I could barely put together a sentence that made sense. I
remember saying “I feel good,” when I knew I meant, “I feel bad.” This was
extremely frustrating.
The thoughts going through my
head were too much to handle. I could also feel all bad energy. When my
girlfriend said something negative, the light decreased and I felt more
stabbing pains in my torso.
With all the bad feelings I
described, the trip wasn’t actually all that bad. I could never decide whether
as a whole the trip was bad or good. I spent around 3 hours lying in my
girlfriend’s bed. I was freezing cold, but my palms were sweating intensely. My
eyes were also watering a lot, and I clutched tissues for a considerably time,
soaking up my hydration.
The absolute height of the experience
was when I played Echo and the Bunnymen. I had been playing the album Ocean
Rain through for a while, and it was really just background music. At one time,
I was sure the music had stopped, and I thought it was just playing in my head,
then it sounded like it was actually playing, but I thought it might have just
been in my head. As it turned out it was actually playing. This music was good,
and I rediscovered the meaning of the music, this album is now very significant
to me.
I digress. The best part of the
trip was when the song Silver came on. For hours I had been searching for “the
cure” to this dreadfully indescribable pain. This was the cure. My bad feelings
were instantly turned into good ones. I can never recall feeling this good
ever. It almost makes the whole thing worthwhile. My eyes watered crazily. I
just felt ecstatic. Unfortunately, when the song ended the pains came back. But
this definitely helped. I felt much better.
After a while my girlfriend and I
went for a walk at almost 12:00. I
wasn’t sure if I could handle this; my legs were in agony. However, I realised
pain is not a physical thing, and the freedom of the outside could do me good.
It was really cold outside, but I ignored this in the end when I was overcome
with nausea and heat. I had to leave.
We left in a rush and my
girlfriend forgot the things we were planning on taking to use to smoke weed.
My girlfriend wasn’t really feeling the mushrooms so she wanted to get high.
I didn’t end up vomiting, but I
coughed furiously. This felt a lot better, but I really needed some water. We
didn’t bring any of that either.
We walked to a toilet block in
which we often smoke weed. There is a shower room with benches and a broken
lock, so we planned on sitting in there.
The walk there was breath-taking.
Echo and the Bunnymen were in my head and everything felt kind of gothic. It
was really cool. There was a full moon, creating shadows of empty winter trees
on the ground. I trudged down a dirt road in my trench coat and boots, seeing more
shadows than there were. The sky glowed a fantastic green colour, with sections
or reds and purples.
We walked to the entrance of the
toilet block and there was water running everywhere, and a furious gushing
sound generating inside the male toilet room. We peeked in, not knowing what to
expect, and there was a burst pipe, spraying water everywhere. I couldn’t
believe it. How did this thing break? What should we do about it? Was this
really happening? We decide to return to my girlfriend’s house to call
emergency services. The state of New South Wales
is currently in a drought, and the morally responsible action would be to
report this.
My girlfriend smoked a joint
while I gazed upon the miraculous night’s sky. This reminded me that life is
truly beautiful. I couldn’t handle ingesting anything at this point, but I
think a cigarette would have really added to the moment.
After reflecting on my
experiences, I’m not sure how I view psychedelics. Perhaps I should stick to
small doses, where I can stay in control of myself. The idea of a level 5 trip
and the complete loss of reality was once appealing to me, but I have now
tasted this, and that territory is accompanied with many grave sensations and
thoughts.
