First Trip

My husband and I are frequent travelers and we love to explore new places and cultures.  I should preface this by saying that aside from SOME heavy drinking in college and an an enjoyable relationship with the occasional xanax, I have never done any drugs - never smoked pot, never taken X, anything.  My husband sometimes smoked weed in high school, but now that we're both in our 30s and both teachers, drug experimentation isn't something we really think about.

But!

This year we took a six-day trip to Amsterdam, and decided that since it's legal and reasonably safe, we both wanted to try mushrooms.  We found a Smartshop on our third day (after doing some research online) and told the nice lady behind the counter that we were first-timers.  She recommended a product to us, told us how much to take and what to expect, it was all quite easy and and swift.  We went back to our hotel early that night, waited two hours after dinner as we were told, and each ate 10g of fresh (vacuum-packed) mushrooms.  I was worried that I wouldn't get much out of it, as she told us to chew them thoroughly and they tasted so awful that I couldn't bring myself to chew them ALL up.  But about 30 minutes after we ate them, I started seeing faint blue blobs dancing around the light fixture.  Light hurt both of our eyes so we turned the lights out and the TV off, and I turned on my iTunes to a playlist I had put together specifically for our experience.

I got up to go to the bathroom and noticed in the mirror that my pupils were gigantic.  Awesome.

Lying in bed together, we both noticed that the curtains on the window were flashing in a strange series of lights.  I closed my eyes and immediately began seeing the most amazing things.  I had my eyes closed for probably 80% of the trip, because what I was seeing behind my eyelids was so wonderful.  I saw myself lying in a decorated barge -- I was a Viking princess experiencing my own funeral as my boat floated through a series of canals and into the sea.  Each song that came onto the playlist changed the story I was watching, and each song had a very clear and definable meaning.  One song was about me as an Egyptian priestess, going through the ranks of a temple initiation.  I was being chased by albino scorpions, but I understood very clearly that these were the fears of ignorant men, and they could not harm me.

One song made me cry, and my husband, who kept muttering, "This is Mexico, this is just like Mexico.... I feel so... Mexico..." asked me what was wrong.  I tried to explain to him that the song was about a girl who had a pet bear, and the bear bit her and killed her, and then the bear was very sad.  As I was explaining, I knew how absurd this sounded so I started laughing and we couldn't stop, we laughed hysterically for what seemed like an hour.  We finally calmed down and laid back down, and our legs started to twitch madly.  I literally could not stop rubbing my feet up and down my calves, and announced that my legs felt like guitars.  This brought on more hysterical laughter.

Anytime our eyes were opened, there were faint blobs of light everywhere, and in all different colors.  We were immersed in the music -- it wasn't just coming from my computer, but all around us.  Towards the end of the trip, I got up to use the bathroom and was in there for probably five minutes.  My husband kept shouting, "Where are you?  Get out here, get out here!"  I think he was worried I'd fall asleep or something.  When I came out he was sitting on the bed crouched over a bag of Doritos.  He looked over and said, "Yum, these are good and I ate them all because you were in the bathroom for an hour, hahahaha!"

We laid back down and saw some more cool stuff behind our eyelids -- one song, as I explained to my husband was "mainly about wood -- grain size, color, and texture."  We fell asleep and woke up the next morning refreshed and happy.  I wish go heaven mushrooms were legal in the US, as this was one of the most fun things I've ever done.  I can't wait to do it again, but I've got no idea where to get them -- I could probably ask a former student, but something about that feels wrong!