Wipeout!

Introduction:

I am a safe and careful individual. Six months ago, if you were to ask me about drugs, I would have said something that would have come straight from a DARE pamphlet; I would have told you that drugs are very dangerous and they will destroy your life. While this statement may hold some validity in some situations, it's not true in all cases. After talking to many people who have experienced a variety of different drugs, and spent countless hours researching information on erowid, something was changed: I had been informed with the truth. Unlike DARE and other programs and misinformation that lump all drugs together and label them evil and dangerous, I discovered that there are many different drugs that have different positive and negative effects. Knowledge is power. 

Now don't get me wrong, I am not a complete advocate of drug use, but I believe that adults can make intelligent choices for what they put in their body after weighing the benefits and consequences. Prior to my mushroom experience, the only drugs I have used were marijuana, nitrous oxide, tobacco, and alcohol.

Enough of my rant, and on to the experience: The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

T: -2 hours (1:00 pm)

I arrived at my friend A's house around 1 pm in the afternoon. He is hanging out with friend ‘B’ and ‘C’. Friend’s ‘A’ and ‘B’ are “professionals” as they like to call it; people who have tripped many a time on various drugs. Friend ‘C’ didn’t want to join us as he has had a bad experience on mushrooms that sent him to the hospital (apparently he ingested a large amount of mushrooms non stop for 3 days, and woke up with paramedics shocking him back to life. Scar tissue on his heart proved that he had a heart attack).

We all go down to the store and buy some food and snacks for our journey. I bought jelly beans.

T: 0 (3:15 pm)

We decide it’s a good time to start our journey. We each had 1/8 oz mushrooms and we sprinkled them on a piece of pizza, and down the hatch they went (I’ve heard that mushrooms taste horrible but I didn’t taste them at all on the pizza- highly recommended!). We then smoked a bowl and started to play video games.

T: +0.75 hours (around 4 pm)

Friend ‘A’ asked me if I feel any different. At this point I am feeling buzzed and excited. I feel like I have an intense sugar/caffeine high on top of having butterflies in my stomach. It feels like a body high when you eat marijuana brownies.

T: +1.5 hours (around 4:45 pm)

I start to notice that things “don’t look right”; objects seem to look distorted. For example, there is a large painting of a black panther on the wall that looked a lot bigger than it was. I also noticed that when I stared at a blanket with an Indian pattern on it, the pattern seemed to move and kinda flow a little. Also, when I tried to focus on an object, it would blur and copies of the item would move around. My friend ‘A’ later told me that this was called “layering”.

T: + 2 hours

We decide to head to a nearby park dubbed “the acid park” as it has weird playground equipment reminiscent of that TV show “Wipeout” where people run around on a giant padded slippery obstacle course and try not to fall into the water below. Friend ‘A’s worst fear is getting run over by a car when tripping, so luckily there is a bike path that takes us all the way there with out having to cross any streets. When we get to the park I play around on the monkey bars a little and sit on the swing. As I’m sitting there, I am staring at the swing set posts which I believe are bent and warped in reality but I’m not sure when I was tripping. Then, I remember looking down at the bark mulch/ sawdust flakes or what ever you call that stuff at playgrounds, and remember seeing a pattern! I believed that a 1’ by 1’ square was being copied multiple times and pasted like a computer image. It was also like looking through a kaleidoscope! Very strange to say the least! The asphalt and the grass looked like that too!  Friend ‘A’ later told me that was a “fractal”.

T: +3 hours

Friend ‘C’ who isn’t tripping is growing very bored at this time, and wants to go home. As we are walking home through a grassy hilly field, about 6 little black birds start swirling around us. I start cracking up laughing and I throw some jelly beans at them to eat. At this point I’m not sure if I am really seeing these birds, but friend ‘A’ later reminds me of this. This whole trip has a weird lucid dream feeling to it, like I’m in some sort of a weird dream. Then I start staring at the sky. The sun is being partially covered by grey and white clouds, but it looks so amazing! I can’t stop staring and my friend notices my undivided attention and says that he also loves looking at the sky when he’s tripping. And just to freak me out, he says, “Hmmm… today sure has that ‘end of the world’ feeling to it doesn’t it?”. Hearing him say that does scare me a little, but I don’t seem to care. As we are walking down a path, I notice that the trees look like they are bending toward something. I’m not sure if it was the wind or my imagination, but they looked like they were being pulled toward a center force of some kind. I tell the guys all of this and friend ‘C’ is irritated by me and says I’m making it all up. He rationalized everything and just made me feel foolish.

T: +4 hours

We’re back at the house. We sit down and play some more video games and then we watch TV. CSI is on, and the episode is about some weird ecstasy drug that kills people. On the pill is a stamp of Tinkerbelle. Now for some reason I am convinced that this episode is about Alice in Wonderland and I try very hard in my confused state of mind to figure out the characters. The episode is really about adults taking this designer drug and dressing up as Peter Pan characters, but none of it makes sense at the time. Then Law and Order comes on, and one of the character’s name is actually Alice. I remember asking my friends “Is this the same show? What’s going on? Is this still about Alice in Wonderland!??!”.

When Law and Order is over, the show called Wipeout comes on. I remember thinking “What in the world?!? Were we just there? The acid park is just like Wipeout! What’s going in!??!”. I then thought I had some kind of ability where I could see codes in the written names on TV. “See? Every thing is five! Q-w-e-s-t P-h-o-n-e. See? They are in sets of five!”. I think I was seeing that because I watched that movie ‘23’ with Jim Carey where he sees the number “23” in everything.

T: +6 hours

I am starting to come down from the mushrooms, when a new friend pops in the house. I’ll call him friend ‘D’. ‘D’ is a very outspoken enthusiastic individual who always seems super happy. This is the first time I’ve met this guy and he kinda freaks me out when I’m tripping. As he’s going off about his day at work and other adventures, I’m starting to freak out in my head: “Is this trip going to end soon? My girlfriend is going to be there and she’ll freak if she sees me tripping! Am I trapped in this house? Am I ever going to sleep again?”. Weird shit like that is going through my brain. I feel like life is a TV show and I am waiting for my exit queue but it may never come.

T: +7 hours

I decide it’s time to go home. I shake everybody’s hands and drive home. When I arrive, I just lay in bed paranoid that I’ll never sleep again. Finally about 1 or 2 am I finally fall asleep.

The next day:

I woke up with what felt like a bad hangover, minus the headache. I just felt extremely nauseous and dizzy the whole day with mild diarrhea and vomiting. I broke off all my plans with my family and friends and spent the day mostly in bed, fighting nausea. I felt okay the day after that, just a little tired.

So that was my first time on mushrooms (or any hallucinogen for that matter). I don’t know why I felt so rotten the next day, as others told me that they either throw up WHEN on mushrooms or not at all. They said that they don’t feel like crap the next day, but just rather tired.

Would I do it again? Yes, but in moderation. It’s definitely not something I could do every weekend. Mushrooms are a powerful mind bending drug. Use responsibly.