My
boyfriend and I took an hour and a half driving around Towson with a VERY drunk middleman giving us
slurred directions and hiccuping (yes, actually hiccuping-- how stereotypical!)
from the backseat. Finally after driving aimlessly around a large apartment
complex parking lot (that turned out to be the wrong one) we secured the
drugs-- a quarter of pretty good (though not great) mush split into two eighths
for our eating convenience.
(It's
important to take a minute to acknowledge that I did not know how much an
eighth was actually considered, in terms of high, and if I had I would have
taken less.)
Immediately
when we got back to the house, my boyfriend dragged me into the rec room. It
was about 11 at night (this will probably be the only time related throughout
the whole story) and I was feeling very, very scared. What had made it worse
was that I texted my friend, the aforementioned drunk dealer, to ask him if it
felt anything like being stoned, and he simply said "No." I couldn't
imagine being high without actually being stoned, and I was very afraid of what
it would feel like. Looking back I'm not entirely sure why-- I guess it started
with feeling a little nervous, then I realized that if I ate the shrooms when I
was nervous I would have a bad trip. Then, fear of a bad trip turned into a
fear so intense that my palms were sweating. I wanted to take a minute to look
up psilocybin mushrooms on the internet so I could refresh myself of what to
expect, but my boyfriend said he wouldn't wait and made me eat them then.
They were
easy to get down, I ate them a bit slowly because that's how I eat everything,
which was probably worse for my fear in the long run. ATHF was on the TV, so I
tried to sit back and watch it, but the intense fear I was feeling mixed very
badly with the beginning of the high, as I knew would probably happen. I felt
so stupid. My boyfriend Erik's face lit up like a lamp and told me that Peter
Griffin was talking to him, and that we must have unknowingly purchased interactive
cable. I suppose his hit him all at once but mine came on very slowly. We began
running around the room in circles, he because he just fucking felt like it I
suppose, and I to join him and to try to take my mind away from my fear.
Suddenly it occurred to me that I hadn't had dinner, and at this anxious time
THIS WAS A BIG FUCKING DEAL.
I started
crying and told Erik that I absolutely had to have dinner. While he went into
the kitchen to find something, I went into the bathroom to give myself a little
pep talk. (I will take a moment to just say that I don't deny being a loser for
this.) I told myself that I chose to take the drug, and that I did not want to
be scared, and that I had planned to enjoy my high and that was what I was
going to do god damn it. Suddenly I found that my legs were shimmering, which I
was fascinated by for a few moments until I remembered that I was hungry.
When I
came into the kitchen I saw an open can of Chef Boyardee preparing to be
cooked. I gave a large heavy sigh, and when Erik asked me what the problem was,
I shook my head and in a sorrow-stricken voice responded, “I cannot eat that.
It is just too red.” So he sighed and argued a bit, but gave in pretty quickly
and began making me a sandwich, which I was very much looking forward to. I saw
something moving in the floor, so I got on my knees and bent over (bow chica)
to get a better look. There were millions and millions of tiny seahorses
swimming in the tile! They were all going in the same direction, like a huge
migration to the next tile over I suppose. It must’ve looked like I was
definitely gonna hurl because when Erik turned around he sounded really
concerned and asked me if I was okay, to which I brightly responded, “Oh no, I
was just looking at the seahorses in the tile.” Which he completely accepted.
He handed
me the sandwich and I sat down on the floor, so so happy to finally have food.
But when I took a bite I learned what I hadn’t yet realized—that the high was
making everything taste bad. It was everything that I liked on a sandwich, ham,
mayo, and swiss, but the ham was so ridiculously salty it was like ocean water.
Every good aspect of taste was so overblown that it became awful. I couldn’t
even swallow it, I had to spit it out. This news was very upsetting to me
because I was both nauseous and hungry, and the food tasted so abysmal that I
found myself physically unable to eat.
This was
so upsetting to me that I slipped back into my previous state of fear, so I
started crying again and told Erik that I wanted to go to bed. We went
upstairs, the hallway and stairway took forever to reach the end of; and
visions were beginning to float in front of my eyes, making it even more
difficult to navigate: peace signs and paisley, mostly, which I thought was humorously
appropriate.
I tried
to go to sleep but I was so emotionally disturbed that I couldn’t even stop for
a moment to feel how nice the comforter and the sheets felt on my skin. When I
closed my eyes I saw weird things, kaleidoscopic patterns of teal and green
diamonds spinning away from each other, while fingers spread out and fanned out
and spun away, alien faces spinning around in circles. In the corner there was
running a miniature iPod commercial that was blue and white, with a short
haired guy dancing around. I wanted to turn around to ask him why he was in my
room but I was still sane enough to know that he wasn’t actually there. My
heartbeat grew faster and faster and I felt so scared knowing that this feeling
could last for up to five hours. Erik was being very good about it, telling me
that it wouldn’t last forever and that I should go to sleep. But I couldn’t and
we eventually went to go wake up his parents.
I know,
this sounds like a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE decision to make. But it all turned out
alright—Erik’s dad called his older sister, who is known to the family to be
experienced with entheogens, and relayed to us the information that it would
last from four to five hours and that it was normal to feel nauseous. We
already knew both of these things, but hearing them told to us by someone older
and trusted as a matter of undeniable fact was very comforting. He tucked us in
bed and told us if we were ever having a problem we could come to him. Isn’t
that just peachy?
I felt so
happy, so excruciatingly happy that he had reacted so well that I began to get
hysterical and laughed a lot. After I was done with this, I sank into a very
relaxed, high state where I focused on the bright signs and runes dancing about
in front of my eyes, feeling a strong sense of eternity. I tried to express it
by saying “Each moment is its own individual forever,” but Erik was too busy
running around and chewing on things to be listening. Apparently he reacted to
the drug much differently than I.
After a
while of feeling this profound sense of truth and everything exactly as it is
and should be, I started to cry profusely, realizing undeniably that everything
in life is only temporary, even the most beautiful and wonderful things must
eventually die or pass away or be destroyed. What takes years to build can be
torn down in a matter of hours. And it was a very sad realization, though it made
me very appreciative of life’s beauty. And I cried slowly for about two hours.
Then I rapidly began to come down.
When I finally
came down enough to go to sleep, Erik and I talked for a while, laughing at
some of the ridiculous things we’d said (among them, during my hysterical
stage, “I am not inside my body, I am just behind it”) and expressing our
happiness that it was over. We vowed to each other never to do it again (although
we actually both broke this vow somewhat recently at the end of summer).
Overall I’d say that the experience was definitely worth it, although if I
could go back and rethink the decision to eat an 8th the first time,
I definitely would!
