First time shroomin'

Hey all,

This is my first post here, although I have read lots of posts and stuff dating back to about 2007.  This past summer I decided to eat shrooms for the first time, and experienced both highs and lows.  This was not my first psychedelic experience, though... I had done LSD twice before that, both times taking two very strong hits.  The difference in the trips was actually very noticeable.  But, back to my mushrooms trip... (Sorry about the long post, but I tried to relive this as much as possible, so I can one day read this again when my bones are brittle)

I was going through some problems with my work and school beforehand, although nothing serious, and nothing I was too worried about clogging my mind.   It was a very beautiful day, and the location we were at was a 5 minute walk to Piedmont Park in Atlanta.  The house we were at was a friend of mines who had just barely moved there, so it wasn't full of furniture or anything yet, a TV and computers had to be brought.  As soon as I got to the house I ate 5 grams of very stemmy shrooms (they kind of looked like little ghost people), having eaten a meal about 4 hours prior.  I was feeling great about the upcoming journey, as I was there with the group of my best friends since high school.  They all did acid, a friend of mine was going to share the shrooms with me but he bailed... whateva whateva.  I didn't feel weird about it though, nearly the whole time I felt like I was on the same level, mostly because I was tripping balls.  After I ate them we all started watching Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke, which was a great idea I think.  It was stomach hurting funny when it started coming on.  The first thing I always seem to notice is either patterns on the wall, the ceiling, or the carpet.  Shortly after we went outside to smoke weed in a nice patio with awesome trees invited me outside.  Nobody else was tripping at this point, but I didn't give a fuck... I became a man with these people.  They all noticed it too and joked with me, not maliciously at all.  After we went inside is when I hit my low.

We went back into the empty house with just a laptop and speakers in this one bedroom and started watching Planet Earth to a "trip balls" play list made by my friend.  The play list was mostly awesome, but animal collective was on it... I know for some people they like that type of stuff but it's not for me.  My friend has a scar above his eyebrow and it began to look like a mouth, and the eyebrow began to look like a mustache, hahaha.  The voices and sounds just crept around the inside of my head, if that makes any sense at all.  When the song started bugging me, the room began to make me claustrophobic.  The only reason I'd say this wasn't a "bad" trip at this point was because I could just look to my left and right and see my best friends all there, and I knew they would help me if I started to freak out.  I highly advise you be with your "bros" when tripping, they just help you realize that you’re only on a drug, and they are there with you all the way through.  But in addition to the room I started thinking of the problems I had with work and all that jazz, when looking back they weren't even big deals... but it is different when tripping.  Killing bugs sober can feel like nothing, but do it tripping and you begin to think of how you ended a life... comparison make sense?  At this time I began to notice my friend was not in the room, and for some reason I felt like I knew he was on the patio.  So I went to the bathroom, stared at myself in the mirror a little bit, and went outside.  Also, I can see how people might think it's really freaky because you don't look the same, but I thought it was comical.  I remember coming out and seeing my other friend waiting to go in and sounding like Tommy Chong saying, "Hey man, it's just a mirror in there, don't sweat it."

Anyway, I went out to the patio and sure enough my missing friend was out there drawing (he's an artist).  I remember leaving my Ukulele out there (I'm from Hawai'i) and I started to play it while watching him draw.  It was like magic.  His patterns and characters and shapes etc. were all forming to the soundtrack of my playing, which has never sounded as good before or after.  It was great.  The wildlife started to make their presence known, and the plants began to "breath" in and out and swirl and sway etc.  The sky began going from pink to blue to green to purple and the noises of Atlanta began to come in through my ears.  That friend and I have become SO much closer after this, and vowed never to trip again without one another.  With all this awesomeness going on I thought it would be mean NOT to go tell the others how sweet the outside was. 

I went inside to ask everyone if they wanted to smoke again (I didn’t wanna be like “Hey, drop what you’re doing and come outside”) and they did, after they figured out how to stand again(Otters were on the screen and my friend noticing that it was hard to get up yelled “WE’RE OTTERS, MAN!”).  They all noticed how beautiful it was, and we smoked and departed for piedmont shortly thereafter.  Crossing the street proved to be pretty confusing, be careful if you ever do that.  Once across the street there was this crazy futuristic super nice bathroom my friend wanted to use.  Hahaha the way it opened up was a touchscreen button and a recorded voice on the inside said he had 15 minutes, and we could all hear him inside laughing… it was great.  We began walking through the park and choose a place to sit, overlooking a field and a forest beyond it.  On the field a man was doing wind sprints, and my friend yelled “GO DUDE!”  It was pretty funny, but then he started walking toward us, for what seemed like forever.  Everyone started freaking out, but I’ve been involved in combat sports since age 8 so I wasn’t worried about it… turned out he was only going to the water fountain.  We then continued to go through some trails and ended up in this beautiful pond looking area, where the buildings of Atlanta could be seen above the trees.  The ducks, fish, and other wildlife looked beautiful and seemed to have an unspoken bond with me.  I wanted ducks to come closer and they did, same with the fish.  We all picked spots near the pond and sat, two of my other friends were out on a pier and I wanted to be with them.  This is when the trippiest thing happened to me.  This guy and a lady were walking with a stroller and the guy appeared to be shaking his head insanely fast, it was really creepy… and the walk over to my friends was on a narrow path so I almost fell in the pond because I was freaking out.  The walk over to my friends was extremely long, although they were only about 15 yards away.  After appreciating the nature on the pier for a while we decided to go back to the house because it was kind of hot outside.  Upon reaching the street we had to cross, it was again really hard to figure out when it was okay to leave.  When we got across the street, almost IMMEDIATELY after there was a t-bone wreck at that light.  It was really crazy, and a two guys just sitting on a wall were asking me about it and stuff as I walked by.  I think after this I proved to myself that it is possible to talk to people not tripping, while tripping.  When we were almost to my friends house my friend that was originally outside with me and I noticed this guy walking really close to us and we thought it was weird and just as I started to worry two of my friends whom were female in the group yelled “BOYS!” for us to stop and wait for them, but they too said that guy was sketching them out… but he just went along on his way being a creepy ATL bum. 

Once back at the house we smoked some more, and they all wanted to go into the room of death to watch Planet Earth and listen to super creepy music again.  This time I had my Ipod on loud enough to block out the crazy music with a play list of my own that I thought was super awesome.  But the room started being way to small again so I went outside and found my friend out there again.  This time I began to play ukulele and he accompanied me on the guitar, and it was amazing.  After a while of doing this the others came out looking for us and two more of my friends began to play music with us, one on an acoustic bass, and another on a bongo.  After a while we began to realize it was hard to collaborate with that much going on and they left me and the original buddy out here again.  After a while we decided we wanted to go to the park, and everybody made a big deal about how we shouldn’t go with just the two of us and we told them to go fuck themselves, well not that mean but you know…  My friend and I had one ear bud in listening to great music and walking back to the park, we saw a bunch of creepy people and almost always pointed out what we though was cool to each other.  Once at the park we sat down for a while and just listened to music and looked at a group of trees mesh with each other, it was great.  We then went back to the lake for a while.  After all of this my friend called my phone (which is really hard to figure out, btw) and we met up at the entrance… and by this time I was not tripping much at all anymore. 

I began to realize after all was said and done that if you aren’t feeling comfortable you can’t just stay their and be uncomfortable because THAT is when you’ll start tripping bad.  The noticeable difference in LSD and mushrooms, at least to me were the visuals.  LSD causes things to change shape and color among other things, but on mushrooms it almost felt like everything was feeding off of each other, and everything was all connected to the life force of the Earth.

I hope you enjoyed this, if you have any questions feel free to private message me or something.