From very bad to very good

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 8^th the first time, I definitely would!

-Cassie (Ratci <3)