Everything is so ambivalent!

This is a trip report on the 6^th time I did shrooms. I'm a 24 year old european male, a student, and my first trip was about 9 months ago in Amsterdam. I just want to point out that when I say shrooms I actualy mean the sclerotia that they sell legally in the netherlands. They aren't shrooms per say but they originally grow on shrooms so the psilocybin and psilocin they contain are the same and the effects are exactly the same as with shrooms too (I guess the taste is a little better, I've never tasted shrooms but the sclerotia go down relatively easy, they have a nutty texture and a weird sour taste)

About 6 months before this trip, I had some sclerotia left, but decided not to eat them as I wanted to leave enough space between trips. So i made them into tea and froze it, having read how to do it on this awesome site, allthough I was not really convinced that the effects would be the same after the procedure... boy was I wrong ;)

One day, about a month ago, I wrote my final exam at college, and being in a good mood I drank three beers at home (mind that european beer generally has more alcohol in it than US- beer, this will be relevant because my trip taught me a valuable lesson about mixing alcohol with shrooms) So the beer plus my good post-exam-mood made me feel pretty careless, that's when I remembered the frozen shroom-tea in the freezer... Being in the foolish mood that i was I decided to finally drink it, thinking that after 6 months in the freezer it wouldn't make me trip and just get me a little high... wrong again !

It basically tasted like water which surprised me at first because it looked really awful (imagine sink water after you do the dishes) So at first I only drank half of it, layd down on my bed and put on some ambient music. About 15 minutes later I already felt the effects, which I attribute to the fact that like alcohol, the psilocibyn in a liquid state is absorbed much faster by the body than in solid form. Everytime I trip I set a stopwatch, so that in case I freak out i can reassure myself that in at least a few hours i'll be back to normal (this is of course of no use in a strong trip where time becomes obsolete and meaningless ;) )

About after an hour the music (santana, third album) sounded really really good and I knew that i was coming up on a stronger trip than I expected, so I decided to go all the way and downed the other half of the tea. (I can't really say how much it was in total, but there must have been about 7-10 grams of sclerotia in that tea – in coffeeshops they recommend 15 grams for a strong trip)

That's when things started to get really strange. I went from being totally lost in the music to reflecting on my self within seconds, then back to the music and again back to myself and so forth. I specially focused on the one thing that I feared I would focus on and was the reason I hadn't done shrooms for a few months : Since new year's eve I have a tinnitus. For those not familiar with that, it is a hissing in the ear that can come from being exposed to loud noises amongst other things. It can go away very quickly but it can also stay forever, being the source of distress and depressions. Now, since I got it, it had diminished a lot, wich has kinda helped me cope with it. But in the first few weeks I could hear it everytime I was in a quiet room, at night it would drive me crazy and almost give me panic attacks because there is just no escape from a tinnitus. It was specially hard on me because I'm generally a quiet person, I like to meditate, to be by myself (without being antisocial) and to read in quiet spaces, which is something the tinnitus has made impossible (in the first few weeks). But as I said, it had since then quieted down and now I only hear it at night and sometimes, since recently, it is goes away completely which gives me hope. Anyways, this condition (and the distress it brought) obviously isn't a good “setting“ for someone to shroom, but like i said, since I was feeling careless and foolish, I did it anyways and now I was directly confronted to it in my trip. So I decided to face it head-on. I turned down the music and it was just me with my tinnitus. Unfortunately unlike previous shroom experiences I didn't have a breakthroug, or a moment of clarity, where I suddenly realize the hidden beauty and relativity of everything. I just realised that this condition was something that I had to learn to live with, that it will make me suffer, and that it can't be turned into something benign over night. But at the same time I noticed that I wasn't having any panic attacks or slipping into a bad trip. I just felt the distress this condition had caused me in the past few months and I said to myself  « well, if this is as bad as it gets, if, even though I'm tripping balls and I'm not that depressed about my tinnitus, then it's not that bad ».

So these reflexions kinda helped me get over the issue in that moment and to continue my trip. But now I was stuck in a really confused state of mind. I did'nt know if I was happy or sad, I didn't know if I was coming up or down. Overall it was a very strange unfamiliar feeling. The colors were obviously amazing, when I looked out my window I could see seagulls I knew were far away but who appeared to be flying in front of my nose wich startled me but also at the same time amazed me. I saw a plane cross the sky and the curb it was making just looked incredibly beautiful. Now, I sometimes like to stare into a mirror when I trip, because last time I did it, I saw myself not with my own eyes, but with the eyes of Existence itself, with the eyes of matter, of the universe itself and I realised that I as a person and we as humans are just one part of the universe wich has become conscious of itself. We are matter that recognizes itself as matter, and that in itself is mindblowing. It is an amazing feeling to know and to feel with every fibre of yourself that you're part of something that big, and that you are not more but also not less important than every other atom, galaxy or person out there.

But this time I felt none of that, I just saw my head morph like when you look into one of those special mirrors that deform your face. It kinda freaked me out but at the same time I found it hilarious and awesome because I was fully aware that I was tripping. I knew that I wasn't actually morphing but just for fun I tried to be sure by taking a photo of myself in the mirror. But as I looked at the photo, it morphed in just the same way as my reflexion in the mirror which made me laugh :).

Anyways, all this time (now about 2-3 hours into the trip) like I said I was feeling very strange, I couldn't place the feeling and grew pretty frustrated by this. So I sat down on my bed, and tried to put into words what i felt. Then I nailed it : « Everything is so ambivalent ! » That was exactly how I felt : I was happy but the happyness was tainted with sadness. I was sad but the sadness was tainted with hapiness. I was living in the moment but at the same time anxious of the future, I was thinking about the future but at the same time I realised that everything that exists is now ! Realizing that I was in this ambivalent state of mind really helped me snap out of it ! I took my note book in which I like to write down ideas and wrote down my realisation in big trippy letters wich was an amazing experience in itself. The letters I wrote had nothing to do with my tiny undeciferable usual handwrithing but were large and beautiful (even now when i'm sober). They seemed to appear on the paper after I drew them, kinda like in a harry potter movie ;) That was amazing so I decided to see what else I could do. I drew a stick figure to see if it would dance and indeed, holy shit ! the little stick figure started to do some kind of mambo dance which was hilarious. From then on my trip was smooth and easy with a nice come down, including beautiful visuals and patterns on the carpet but without any spiritual experiences like the ones I had on prior trips.

Thinking back, I now believe that it was the three beers I had before that played a big part in that ambigous eerie feeling and especially in the fact that the trip was not at all spiritual. Alcohol does the opposite of shrooms, it dulls your mind whereas shrooms expand it and makes it more sensitive. I believe the two substances were having these opposite effects in my brain at the same time which is why i felt so weird. I think having one beer befor tripping to calm down won't do any harm, but being slightly tipsy like I was is really not a good way to go on a shroom trip because the mood it puts you in is the exact opposite of the mood that shrooms will provoke. This creates a conflict in your mind which is not necessary and will only aggravate the hidden conflicts that the trip is likely to reveal anyways.

So that was my trip, nothing too special or mindblowing, I just thought I might share it with you and see if you have any feedback on the issues I talked about, specially concerning the alcohol&shrooms combination

Thanks for reading :)