Tripping In a Blizzard

You'll have to excuse me, I have a knack for being lengthy and too wordy.  I've tried to minimize unnecessary plot points and much as possible, but this is my story.

My whole life, I’ve always been an introverted person.  It’s not necessarily narcissism, but if I can find ways within myself to change my character in favorable ways, I actively try to pursue those options.  When I heard about the fantastic and often incredibly insightful voyage that psychedelics can bring, I felt like a whole new world was opened to me.  I had a history of alcohol in high school and early in college (but has since drastically tapered off,) I enjoy smoking quite a fair share of marijuana, have tried Psilocybin three times prior, and have also taken Sass three times as well.  My previous mushroom trips left a lot to desire, however.  My first one a friend (J1) and I had purchased an eighth each.  We essentially chickened out right before taking them, and only took approximately 2-2.3 grams a piece, finishing off the rest of the bag about an hour and a half later.  The second one was also unsavory, because I only had one chocolate which was about 2 grams.  Lastly, the third happened this last New Year’s Eve, and I also could only procure 2 grams at the time.

So I very recently decided to move forward and explore what kind of effects a higher dose of mushrooms would have on me.  My old friend, J1 hadn’t tried mushrooms since that first experience, so he decided to join.  Another good friend, J2 had tripped many times and wanted to.  Three other guys were going to trip with us.  However, only one of them did (B) because the other two guys had taken theirs the night before.  It occurred at J2’s and my house, which is a place that usually has a fairly high rate of traffic, but we weren’t worried because it’s always good company that seems to be around.

I ate my last meal for the day at 2 PM.  I got out of work at 4 PM, and headed home.  We rallied the troops by about 5:30.  We enjoyed some bowls and blunts to help mellow out anxiety a little, and just a lighter atmosphere.  We actually ate the mushrooms at 6 PM…an eighth for each person.  I crushed them up and put them in orange juice, and slugged it down.  Trying to decide on a good movie to watch, I have the first few seasons of the old Nickelodeon show Doug.  J2 didn’t want to watch it, however, because apparently it’s racist.  Instead, we watched Final Fantasy VII:  Advent Children.  Only B had ever seen it, so we put it on. 

After about thirty minutes or so, thoughts had started to become a little more erratic and spacey.  It was then I had the idea of putting the movie on mute and putting on Shpongle’s “Nothing Lasts.”  Excellent idea.  I can’t describe how it happened or when exactly we put it on, but the music went almost hand-in-hand with the movie.  Neat sounds would play in the background of the song while someone was struck during a fight.  Everything fit together perfectly.  It was almost like they made the CD (or movie, perhaps) to the exact point in which we started each other.  The coolest thing was is that this actually happened, and wasn't just a by-product of the come-up.

By now we were all starting to feel really good.  J1 was getting extremely giddy and excited and started talking a mile a minute.  J2 was also starting to go into “Cave mode” (he retreats deep within his hooded sweatshirt when tripping,) so I knew he was coming on.  B seemed to be pleasantly entertained drawing pictures, but he’s also a quiet guy.  I was getting a bit worried.  Not because the shrooms were coming on, but because they weren’t.  I’m a bodybuilder so I have a large stature, and was concerned maybe I didn’t do enough.  I was wrong.

After about an hour, I was feeling great.  J2 looked excitedly at all of us, and said “Let’s go outside!”  He, J1, and I were all excited to go.  B told us no, it was too cold.  Like I said, B was a quiet guy and had tripped many times before.  He said he could handle himself alone at the house, so we took his word for it.

So we got decked out in ultra winter gear.  It was about fifteen degrees outside.  Winds weren't too blustery, but it was almost whiteout conditions.  We were going to trip in a blizzard!  We started walking downtown.  J2 apparently knew about a very cool wall that he had to show us.  We followed, walking through the 4 or so inches that had accumulated in the last hour.  Conversation at this point started to become very erratic and individual.  J1 and I would both be discussing the same issue, but we’d each have a perspective on a different aspect of the particular dilemma.  It was then we began to realize the farce that is human communication.

We continued towards downtown, and eventually saw the wall.  I have to admit, it was a pretty cool wall.  It was a long, brick, wavy wall.  We continued a bit further until we got to a park.  Now imagine this, the trip is coming on full-force and you’re in the middle of a beautiful park at night, with (what seemed like warm) light-poles illuminating the falling sheets of snow.  It was remarkable.  I believe I started saying and really thinking about how theoretically all our knowledge is acquired through our sensory input only.  I can’t say for sure, but I think this is what haunted me all night.  We finished walking through the park, and started simply walking around the neighborhood.

I really started losing track of time and reality, as the old adage goes.  We walked, and I saw that we were walking, but I was thinking more about what it means to be than the snowstorm I was in.  I don’t think I was actually using rational principles to ultimately come up with conclusions, but I was also tripping pretty hard.  I think J1 and I were actually trying to have some conversation, but usually they’d trail off pretty quickly and I noticed that we had both starting using fragmented and incoherent sentences.  J2 remained steadfast and quiet, leading us into the wintery night.  Although I can distinctly remembering at one point J2 spit on the ground and said “I just put some of my DNA on the sidewalk.”  That was pretty funny then.  The walk was quite a bit of fun, and we saw some cool things.  Although I did notice at one point we were all talking quite loudly about what it is to be, and people were walking past us with very quizzical looks.  There was also a point in the trip when we were walking down a sidewalk, and all the trees caved "inward" towards the buildings to our left.  Combinig that with the snow and the street lights down the road, it looked like we were in a personalized snow cave kind of.  Hard to explain, but it really was something else.

Well, just a short time later, we arrived back at home.  I was sure that we had been walking for hours.  I started to head inside, but J1 and J2 decided to sit out on the porch.  I was okay… covered in snow, cold yet hot, confused about existence and words, how our bodies are “capsules,” and how everything we know actually comes back to conditioning.  I went into the warm house and stripped away some of my layers.  B was inside a dim living room, trying to play Mass Effect 2.  It wasn’t going well for him.  He quit a short time later and stopped playing.  It was actually only about 7:35 or so, so we hadn’t even been tripping for two hours.  I began to drive myself insane with all my questions, however.  Pacing around the house, I basically questioned everything.  I really wasn’t sure if everything I had thought to be real was real anymore.

I went back outside to J1 and J2.  I instantly walked into a conversation and tried to jump in, but something just wasn’t working.  They were both telling me I was being accusatory of their nature, and basically things like that.  I think.  Anyway, I kind of took offense to it and found it to be a bad vibe out there now.  I retreated inside, and tried to rid myself of the negativities that were forced onto me.  I told B that I had to change the music, although he had on Outkast and that’s always solid.  I put on some Ravi Shankar, and found that to be beneficial.  I lied down on the carpet beside the stereo system with my arms stretched and closed my eyes.  I was thinking about how I was just tripping and those guys couldn’t spoil my fun.  I BELIEVED it, too.  I was having a very neat close-eyed visual, something to which had seemed to be lacking to this point (visuals, I mean.)

Apparently only a few minutes later, but what seemed like an eternity, J1 and J2 came inside.  They were wondering where I was and what I was doing.  Eventually they found me in the dark room, lying down and contemplating existence.  J1 started laughing hard, and said he wanted to do what I was doing.  I remember saying “Why don’t you try?” and apparently that was too funny to him.  I didn’t really see the humor in it, but whatever.  J1 and J2 started having a conversation about something and I had a very strange experience.  I “saw” and “felt” something that looked and resembled a plant root (but thinking back, felt like something life-related,) and it was organic and alive.  Someone said something in a conversation that apparently upset me and I similar ‘felt’ the root shrivel up and turn into a dead-looking piece of matter.  It was kind of chilling, and it the closest I got to having a bad trip.

We all congregated back into the living room, which is when I realized that one of our other friends, M, was over.  He had tripped many times, and was a good person to have around even if he was sober.  He played it mellow and cool, knowing what we were going through, (especially J1 and I, being our first good trip.)

We got eaten into the couch, and started having debates about God knows what.   I remember just continuing to ask questions.  J1 was also having an inner dialogue with himself, although sometimes his incoherent thoughts would intertwine with my incoherent thoughts and a semi-conversation would be about to begin, but it never really lasted.  J2 was all over the place… he seemed to be acting antagonistic.  Telling me I was putting a burden on him by asking all of my questions.  But then he’d tell me that he was just trying to understand what was troubling me.  I’d try to tell him, and he’d get frustrated that I burdened him with it!  I’m pretty sure this happened for about the next two hours solid. 

All the while, J2 was consumed by an 8-lb medicine ball we have at the house, and J1 kept muttering to himself about strange things.  Specifics are hard to remember, but one that kept getting emphasized between J1 and J2 was that “everything is of a transitory nature.”  J1 also kept coming to the conclusion of "Everything Is Nothing" because everything is actually the same, or something.  I remember some of the other guys who were there (not tripping) were watching basketball all damn night and I started to realize that the television would only show us exactly what it wanted to (ads) and couldn’t be trusted.

After this, I started to get even more sketched out because I began to realize that our conversations were cyclical and we weren’t actually getting anything accomplished.  By this time there were a lot of people at this house, including two guys who had tripped the night before, a roommate who doesn’t really trip, and the guy who gave us our shrooms and had also taken some at about 8:30 or so. 

I started to feel as though I couldn’t help but dwell on the negative aspect of everything.  I think this was because J2 continued to make me feel like I was doing something wrong in asking questions.  I accepted death as inevitability.  I started to wonder why I paid someone to give me something I could get myself.  I started wondering why I wasn’t doing something like homework instead of tripping on a couch unsure of everything.  Now, this may sound like it was a negative aspect of a trip, but I disagree.  I feel as though it really helped to shed some light on how I handle my day-to-day affairs. 

We all started coming down to a fair degree.  B started to talk again (I don’t think he had said a word since I got home at like 7:30,) and it was now about 10 o’clock or so.  I was definitely still feeling great and we continued to have some wacky dialogue, but conscious and logical thought began to come back.  It’s not that I didn’t enjoy my trip, but it was definitely reassuring when everything was familiar again.  I just couldn’t for the life of me remember what sobriety was like.

Anyway, my thoughts started getting more focused on actual things I had to get accomplished in my normal life.  I’d still have stupid words and sometimes irrational sentiments would spurt out of my mouth during conversations.  We all started to get quite hungry thought, and I made 6 delicious eggs and loving them because of ‘how organic’ they were.

When all was said and done, I had gone to sleep at about 11:45 or so.  People told me ‘good luck’ and that ‘shrooms would decide when I slept.’  I actually found it quite easy to get to sleep.

Overall, I quite enjoyed my experience.  Like J2 said the next day, I now know what it’s like to be crazy.  I don’t know when I’ll do them next (I’m broke and they’re not always accessible,) but I’m definitely giving thought to investing in a grow kit.  My next journey, however, will definitely be with a girl named Lucy.


On a final note... It seems I lost it, but I did try to draw a picture that explained a theory.

0 < > 0    Like each circle was onhe aspect of our life.  The one on the left was "What we need, or want to be," and the one on the right was "What we have to do."  Underneath these pictures were lines of text.  Said "We must divide everything into subjects."  I don't remember the next line, and then the last one simple said "Why?"

Pretty nonsensical, but I thought it was entertaining.  Anyway, thanks for reading!