Damn.

So far my experience with psychedelics had included three LSD trips (1, 2, and 3 tabs) and one mushroom trip on an 1/8th. For my second time with shrooms, I felt I was ready to attempt a 'heroic dose'.

Things seemed to be set up perfectly for this day. I had found out my friend, let's call him 'K', was going to be back in town from college for the weekend. I've spent all three of my LSD trips with this friend, and he hasn't yet tried mushrooms. The two of us, as well another friend 'B', decided we would spend our trip in the woods at this local hiking trail. It was a great outside, 78F and sunny, and I had enjoyed tripping in there on mushrooms for my first time so why not?

It's 5:30 PM, and we chow down on our shrooms. We split 3/8ths between the three of us, 5g for me, 3.5g for K, and 2g for B. I don't really understand why people have a problem eating shrooms. I've found them to be pretty bland so a bottle of water has been more than enough to get them down. Once that was over with, we were on our way up the mountain. It was about a 10 minute hike to a nice secluded place that we used to smoke at during the summer. By the time we got there and got settled down about 20 minutes had gone by since ingestion. Surprisingly, K said he was already beginning to experience the effects. Even consuming 5 grams myself, I hadn't yet really noticed anything. None of us had eaten anything since breakfast, so naturally the onset would be pretty quick.

At this point, K wanted us to follow him to a nearby area to show us something. Before going off to college out of state, he set up a 'burial site' for his homemade bong. It took about 5 minutes to get there, but we were delighted to find out that it was untouched. Inside of a protein mix container and hidden under some wood and foliage was the bong and a note he wrote to anybody who might find it. I assume he used it well when he came up with that idea. xD

So it's been about 30 minutes, and I was beginning to notice some subtle movement of things when I looked carefully as well as the precursor to what I would call psychedelic clarity. B hadn't yet felt any of the effects, understandably. He was sitting quietly on a fallen tree, but I couldn't say the same for K. Even only a half hour in, he said he was beginning to experience full on distortions and was acting very giddy. It wasn't long before he shed tears over a tree. I could understand because it was a very nice tree... and K said he felt it communicating its hardships to him. B, on the other hand wasn't quite so joyous. Right around now is when he said he started feeling it come on a little, but he was beginning to ask strange questions that had already been answered many times. It's hard to explain, but he seemed to be really 'out of it' and having difficulty thinking straight. He had recently been put on an SSRI, so he probably shouldn't have been tripping in the first place in his fragile mind state, but has tripped before and insisted he would be fine on 2 grams. I was a bit apprehensive but we went ahead with it anyways.

We trekked back base camp, and by base camp I mean the lawn chair that I left at our original location. On the way back, B said he was starting to feel bad and was really worrying that we didn't like him or something and weren't his friends because of the way we reacted to his questions. The mushrooms seemed to be bringing out his social insecurities pretty dramatically and I hadn't realized before now how serious it was.

We planned to bring a sleeping bag or two to be able to lie down and get comfortable, but somewhere in between the planning and execution of that idea it didn't happen. At least we were going to get to smoke a bit of weed and I hoped that might alleviate a bit of the bug problem. We forgot bug spray, and then realized we also forgot to bring a lighter. Not smoking didn't really matter to us, because at this point the effects were starting to really come on. B started feeling it a bit, and I could tell that the the 5 grams were beginning to come on with full force. However, I'm in a short sleeved shirt and shorts.. and the bugs were totally relentless. I had a lighter and a sweatshirt in my car, but hiking back up here (uphill) was annoying enough sober and would challenging tripping as hard as I would be to say the least. It was also starting to get darker outside, and started to realize how uncomfortable that would get on this kind of dose. We planned on tripping much earlier to avoid this, but it didn't happen. None of us wanted to go all the way to my car and back, but I knew that this wasn't a place I wanted to be in the dark with all the bugs, especially on 5 grams.

I was able to convince my friends that we would be more comfortable down at my car, so we started going back. Things were beginning to get pretty trippy and it was difficult walk and keep our balance on such a rocky hill. It started to feel somewhat hectic and negative because it was only getting darker. K was still having a good time, but I've felt better, and B was having a hard time. Thankfully we ended finding some comfort in a patch of sky on our way down, and made it out with our minds in one piece. Although driven by fear, something about the adventure seemed fun in retrospect.

Finally in the sanctuary of my car, I had hoped that we would feel relieved. We felt a little better being in there but the anxiety induced by the previous situation seemed to stay with us, which didn't surprise me. During my 3 tab LSD trip, we had to resort to eating in a highly populated cafeteria at URI in the middle of our trip (don't do this!) and even though we were able to keep our composure, the negative feelings caused by that environment never completely went away. By now it was starting to look like full on night time, but it was only 7:00. We didn't believe it! It felt like 4 hours since we ate the mushrooms, but in reality I had only been tripping for about 45 minutes. K had also begun to absorb our vibes and we were all considering not tripping again. Like his last trip, he was worrying so much about his social status among his friends at college. University of Rhode Island has probably the most 'social' atmosphere imaginable; it seemed like an episode of Greek when I was there but with more drugs. I voiced my decision to not trip or even smoke weed anymore several times, and we all seemed to come to similar conclusions.

I was thinking a lot about my mother and how bad I felt that I was doing things like this behind her back. I had a bong and a bowl hidden in my car and the thought of that really brought me down. She was always looking out for me and I knew that she worried about me when I came home really late high, even though she only accused me of it once or twice. I felt like I was most happy just relaxing at home on the computer watching movies and chilling with my cat, and didn't want all this perceived drama in my life. I also thought a lot about consciousness, what life meant, and questioned why I ever thought I might be able to begin to understand the depth of the answers to my many questions by taking drugs.

So another half hour seemed to go by, but it turned out to only be about 5 minutes. It wasn't unbearable, but definitely not pleasant. We were trying to brainstorm ideas for how to improve our situation. "Why don't we just be happy?" proposed K, and to be honest that wasn't a bad idea. Just concept of just deciding to be happy instead was funny and that brightened the atmosphere. We had laughs here and there, and they each seemed to contribute a little to our recovery. Still, there was nowhere we could go, but K and B knew a friend with tripping experience that may be able to help us out. It was somewhat comforting talking about it with him, but I think he only made B feel worse about freaking out on 2 grams. Then, eureka! We could call B's cousin. He is about 15 minutes away, and could come watch us for a bit... and if anything he could drive us somewhere where we might be feel better.

B's cousin was taking longer than expected to get here, but he and K said they were starting to feel better and went outside. It was completely night by now, but a couple street lights kept things dimly lit. I followed them, and they thought that the dark forest seemed inviting and wanted to go back in there. I knew what they meant, because K and I managed to navigate out of there in total darkness on 810mg of DXM before without much trouble. Even though I haven't yet described much of my actual visuals, believe me I was tripping balls at this point. I was still having the most intense visuals I have ever experienced and couldn't even put on my sweatshirt. It was hard to believe this was the same thing I had been wearing sober all this time. It seemed much more like a small piece of thin alien-like cloth than something I could put on. I thought it was torn in half for some reason, but B kindly helped me put it on. K was also extremely intent on trying to smoke to 'do something normal' and get back to his normal self.

Still, I wasn't going to go into that forest and I didn't want to risk being left alone so we went back into my car and waited the remaining 15 minutes (according to clock) for B's cousin to arrive. When he got here, I decided to stay in the car because I was tired and trying to relax with my seat back. They ended up talking outside for a while and walked around somewhere away from my car.

This was EXACTLY what I needed! A little bit of alone time went a long way. In fact, I probably ended up sitting alone in my car for an hour an a half. I was surprised how much better I felt when I didn't have to worry about my friends. K was always worrying about the cops trying to talk to us and always seemed to be very jumpy, loud, and talking too fast. He means well, but sometimes imposes too much on others without noticing. At this point I started to think about Terrence McKenna. He said that he preferred to trip alone because he always worries about the people around him. I didn't realize how much that applied to me until now. I also recall him saying not to fiddle around with things like the the temperature. Earlier I was feeling like I was either too hot or too cold, but I noticed that if I ignored those feelings then they would go away. Being alone also made me notice my own physical body much more. I was especially conscious of my breath. The mushrooms also make me yawn a lot, and all of my subtle movements really made me notice how animalistic I was. I felt like a very comfortable, yawning creature; kind of like a sleepy lion on a savannah. I noticed how directly I could feel the air in my mouth, in my lungs. I went on to experiment with all of surfaces in my car and found my windows to be especially trippy and interesting. I could pull the surface of the windows along with my fingers. Imposed on the trees and sky outside was a background of color. It would alternate between blue, purple, and green, and the trees were bending towards the ground and into each other. This was probably the best moment of my life. My mind was incredibly clear and my thoughts felt smooth and malleable. When I closed my eyes I was in a completely different space. I felt my ego disappearing quickly at this point, and it wasn't long before I was in an incredibly beautiful place. I had almost completely forgotten the circumstances of the external world, and was embraced wholly by an extremely euphoric golden light. I could have stayed there for hours, but was soon interrupted when everyone came back. The key to having a good trip seemed to be staying calm and peaceful and encouraged them to whisper and have a yoga-like mindset.

I was able to share my findings with B and we both quietly enjoyed our trips until he ended up falling asleep. B's cousin was sitting the passenger seat, and I was trying to explain what mushrooms felt like, but speaking eloquently in long sentences was difficult on shrooms. After probably an hour of this I was leaning over and pressing my nose against the back seat or something and caused my nose to bleed. Talk about disconcerting! I just took a chemical that drastically altered my perception of reality and now my nose is bleeding... so I start to be concerned about what that might mean. This happened to me once before on LSD, but I don't think it's something I need to worry about. I've had nosebleeds since before I can remember, so it seems far more likely to be a sinus based issue than the alternate, much more horrific alternative. I guess you could say the capillaries in my nose are already pretty sensitive, so it was easy to cause an episode considering how much acid, and especially mushrooms, affect the sinuses.

I eventually cleaned myself up, and B's cousin took me and B on a ride to 7/11. I thought at this point that I wasn't tripping that hard anymore, but the car ride was insane. Everything seemed to be stretched and blurred around us like we just used nitrous in a need for speed game. K went a ride with some other friends, and we actually ended up running into him at the store by sheer coincidence. After an awkward period of silence in the car, the four of us went back to where we were and went went our separate ways.

I'm definitely doing 5-6 grams for my next trip, and think I'll go it alone next time in my room when the rents are away and I have the funds. xD

THE END.