first trip was a bad one with positive outcome

Maybe three years ago I was hanging out with a friend and he pulled out a massive bag of dried cubensis and asked "wanna trip?" I told him sure but didn't want to tell him I never tripped so I wouldn't appear uncool, or maybe I thought he wouldn't want to do it if he knew of my inexperience. "Man I've tripped so many times I lost count" I lied.

We sat in his room which was dark wood paneled walls covered with photos and posters of musicians and actors, he has a completely awesome movie, book and record collection so he put in Jodorowsky's El Topo (completely bizarre and frightening psychedelic western made in Mexico in the 60s funded by Dennis Hopper I believe, has banditos rolling around in peyote buttons after the opening credits, extremely gory with anti-religious symbolism). He sat the bag between us, I have no idea how many were in there, but we started popping them one by one in our mouth indiscriminately , sometimes grabbing handfuls and chomping them down. Well not to long through the first half of the movie I look at the screen and start seeing multi-colored space invaders blip on the screen, then form a wall filling up the screen and pulsating rapidly with ever changing color. They were the exact ones from the Atari version, pixels n all.

"Man I am starting to see some crazy shit" I say. "Yeah I'm seeing all kinds of shooting stars go zinging past my head" he says.

I take this as my cue to start eating more mushrooms and plan to stop when I'm fully tripping. Well this doesn't last too long. I look at the TV to see the movie and blink my eyes and suddenly I can no longer see anything. My entire field of vision is a lime green slab of stained glass, no matter which way I turn my head I see the same image, as if I have my head right up against a window. I rub my eyes and my vision clears up immediately. The movie is now at a part where a heavy droning note on a moog organ is playing while a man is going through some ritualistic dress ceremony with scenes of horrible rape and carnage going on outside his temple. I really couldn't stand it even though I like the movie a lot, my friend felt the same and got up and turned it off before I even said anything. He put on some light electronic music and some cartoon on TV with the volume down.

We sat around just laying back on the couch, I noticed his posters were moving around, a photo of Robert Johnson with a guitar was glowing green and it seemed he was swinging his head side to side grinning and picking. A poster of Bruce Lee striking towards the camera was appear as if his hand were getting bigger like his punch was getting closer, then it would snap back to normal, then big again, much like an Asian neon light sign you'd see in a city. A poster of James Dean appeared as if his hair were blowing in the wind. After a little while I started to look around and see the walls warp, it looked as if tattered rags were hanging from the ceiling and blowing in the wind. I would close my eyes and see complex diagrams and blueprints for pyramid like structures with glowing silver directional trail indicators spiraling through, they would slide up slowly like well, slides, then another would come up over it. Where things got bad, I still had my eyes closed and I imagined rolling a small worm tubes of flesh between my fingers, the sensation gave me with eyes closed images of giant malformed heads of children with eyes and mouths randomly growing out of it. I would twirl my fingers and it would give me this feeling that is almost impossible to describe, like you are grabbing a little of something you want to get a handful of. If that makes any sense, but the feeling made my heart rate pound through the roof.

I got up and said "man I'm having a fucking heart attack!" all I could think of now was that my heart was pounding way too fast and it was going to explode. Dude told me everything was fine and I need to just sit down. So I did but the more I thought about it, the harder my heart would pound. The whole time I was slurring badly and I told him I was sorry, I understood I'm on a drug and it will pass but that I'm suddenly having a bad time. I got up again and said I gotta walk outside and call 911. I finally calmed down and we hung out some more. He went to bed and I went and stood in his kitchen while I was coming down. Within that time I really dug deep into my mind, thinking about how my thoughts worked, and was dealing with a lot of parent shit, one commited suicide and the other I realized I would shoot accusations and insults at, in my own head, almost daily for my own shortcomings. It all surmised in the thought "man I am completely fucking insane" and from there I let many articles of bullshit in my head float away and thought how I could shape my mind to work in a more positive constructive manner instead of wallowing in defeat at every little thing. From the window over the sink I watched the sun rise and felt completely purely alive. I think its the first time I lifted my head with eyes closed in esctacy like I see dweebs on Jesus Rock CD commercials, but actually meant it, I thought I probably looked dumb but the moment was real.

That was maybe 4 years ago, the only other psychedelic I have used since has been DMT which is briefly intense and not all that deep. I plan on studying up more and growing my own the upcoming months. I have a bag of dried cubensis, about 1/8th I'm gonna make into tea after I'm done typing this and I plan on playing guitar, the eventually wandering off to whatever I do.

I don't think bad trips have to be a bad thing, they can take you to the full lower depths of your mind, and if you can realize what is going on and think it through without backing down, you come back up without that extra mental baggage completely renewed.