First Time in a Decade

This should be considered a work of fiction as it has no basis in reality. Any names or characters are fictional and bear no resemblance to anyone either living or dead.

In the early and mid 90s I did quite a bit of hallucinogens and other drugs. When I graduated college and entered the real world I stopped all of that and focused on my job and bills and other mundane things adults have to deal with. I got married and divorced. As I was thinking about whether I should get remarried I had a lot of deep feelings and thoughts and wanted to sort through them. I remembered my experiences with hallucinogens as a great way to sort through this kind of stuff and added mushrooms to the plants I grow (the rest was my herb garden.) I had difficulty growing mushrooms and didn't really get enough for a decent experience. But it was too late and I went ahead and against my better judgment got remarried. Two years later that marriage broke apart and I once again started thinking about using hallucinogens to help sort through my complex feelings about my life. I still had the supplies to grow the mushrooms so I started growing them again. Again I had difficulties and wasn't sure if I would have enough for a decent experience.

A few weeks ago I ran into an old friend in town who had some DMT. I had always heard about DMT but had never heard of anyone actually having it so I jumped at the chance. The brevity of the experience made it extremely attractive as I didn't really have to commit much time. I smoked it and had a mindblowing experience. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced - I lost contact with reality for a bit but never broke through the veil to see what was on the other side.

A week after that I finally found a block of free time that was long enough to allow me to try to mushrooms. I had 12 grams of completely fresh mushrooms and 6 grams of mushrooms that were partially, but not completely dried. I ate the smaller amount of partially dried mushrooms around 6:00pm. I then went upstairs to meditate to make sure my mind was clear and calm. After doing that for half an hour I went back downstairs and ate the remainder of the mushrooms. I wanted a very deep, spiritual trip and wasn't sure if that dosage would be enough so I ate 3grams of dried cactus as well, hoping for a little boost. I went back upstairs and meditated some more.

After about another half hour of meditation I started to hear some distortions in the music I was listening to. The sounds were starting to break apart. I always dislike the sound quality of MP3s and the shortcomings became evident as the parts of the spectrum that are eliminated in MP3 compression jumped out at me, no longer masked by harmonics and other sonic tricks.

I felt very tired so I put on some other music and lay on the bed for half an hour with my cat. I started to get hungry so went downstairs to find something to eat. It was about 7:30 at this time. I was experiencing typical mushroom effects - the visual distortions, the body feelings, the sound distortions. I ate some fruit looked in the mirror for a while and then needed to lie down again. I lay down on the couch. The music was a bit overwhelming at this point so I turned it off and turned the TV on. Some silly Hollywood movie was on and I watched it, enjoying the morphing and visual effects, while I was barely able to understand what was going on. Parts of it made sense but I was losing my link with reality and layed there and enjoyed it.

The movie ended at 9:00pm, I figured that the peak was just about over and I would try to enjoy the rest of it. However it wasn't even close to over. It hadn't even really started. Things got even weirder. I went outside and ate an apple which was the most ecstatic experience of my life. As I ate the apple reality took a bizarre twist. Things started to blend together and the world looked very much like a cartoon with the grass of my lawn being one giant smooth block of green, and my cats looking like drawings of cats. When I closed my eyes things got even weirder. Yet at the same time as things blended together if I looked at something I could see exquisite detail. Each blade of grass shone and had it's own nuances and spectacular details. I've experienced both of these things in the past, but never at the same time.

I went back inside and lay on the floor for a while, I was having difficulty moving around, standing up straight, etc. This experience went on for another 2 to 2.5 hours, not really lessening in intensity at all. As an example my TV remote control looked like a cartoon drawing with a solid gray piece with brightly colored buttons. If I looked at it more closely I could see all of the scratches and dents in vivid detail. And at the same time the buttons multiplied into complex geometric patterns. As I said I have never experienced these things happening simultaneously.

About 11:30 things started to calm down, I regained my ability to stand up and walk normally and I gradually came back to this reality. My hallucinations went back to things that were more typical of previous mushroom experiences - the flowing, morphing, etc. Compared to where I had just been it all seemed very mundane and normal. When I was sufficiently back that I could think and operate electronics I put on a movie and when it was over I went to bed and fell asleep around 3:30.

The cartoon-ification of the world is something I have never experienced on mushrooms before. The closest experience I can think of was my DMT, which was similar, but different. I wonder if the small amount of mescaline consumed has anything to do with these bizarre and unexpected results. I have done mushrooms more times than I can count in the past but never experienced anything like this. Even my strongest mushroom trips were always of the variety were reality would twist and melt and flow and sparkle, I never felt like the world was turning into a cartoon.

It was an extremely interesting experience, I didn't feel so great the day after, and unfortunately I didn't have any great insights into myself. A lot of the introspective qualities I was looking for were not present. Maybe next time I will try to consume some more of my cactus and see how that compares...