Building bonds -- level two and a half

I'm still riding the trail ends of a half-day Adderall rush so I've got a lot to account for.

Most or all names in this story have been changed.

Just like my life.

Where do I start...
We'll start earlier in the story at a minor, yet integral, event.  We begin on a Thursday night in my car parked in my driveway.  I call my friend Johannes about the big weekend getaway ahead.  A large group of nine of our friends were to head down to Johannes' beach-front condo in La Jolla.  He tells me, "Slops is picking up shrooms from his brother's friend for this weekend."  I had done much reading on magic mushroom topics such as how psilocybin and psilocin affect the mind and body, what trips are like, how set and setting are important... all the big ones to prepare myself.  Johannes asks if I'd be interested, and I wholeheartedly agree to partake.  We then discuss details about the trip down such as drivers, meeting times, and the like.  We would be leaving the following night on Friday.  After we finish our discussion, I invite him to a secret concert to see the love of my life and amazing Canadian synth-pop, electro artist: LIGHTS.  I tell him that our friend, Garza, couldn't make it out to the show with me, but Johannes politely declines.

The show was at 1:00pm on Friday, and it was originally a private show for the Warner Bros. Records employees, LIGHTS' people, and all their friends and family.  Fortunately, LIGHTS' producer hooked it up for the first 50 fans to line up.  Once again, the show was at 1:00pm, but for the love of my life with a limited capacity venue, I had to show up early... 11 hours early in fact.

The only two fans crazier than I am showed up at 8pm the night before... hey, third place ain't bad.

Don't want to bore you with the details, but Garza watched me jam out to LIGHTS from the live feed cam impotently behind a computer screen while I basked in her radiant and perpetual perfection.

I met with her after the show, she wore my gift, signed something for Garza, and took a picture with me<3

...and then my new friends and I snuck back into the venue and met her again!<33

I swear that entire thing plays a role in the story.

After the show, I have to rush down to my girlfriend's house 2 hours away with Los Angeles traffic.  Luckily for me, Tracy was already packed and we speed down to my house to meet up with Garza.

Tracy, Garza, and I drive down to Johannes' house where we meet up with the whole crew.  Johannes, his girlfriend Lucy, Slops, his girlfriend Ellie, Billy, Garza, Tracy, and I all get together and start chatting up a storm -- effectively wasting our time and precious daylight, because we're just so brilliant.
When we get to the condo, Slops tosses me a baggie full of these grey-ish, beige things which I realized were my cut of the shrooms.  Johannes said it was 2.5 grams, and Slops asked for $20.

Lucy tells me that her, Johannes, Slops, and Ellie were all taking theirs' around 1pm the next day.  Hesitantly, I regretted to inform them that I wouldn't be taking mine this weekend and that I would be saving them for another time with Johannes during the semester.  It seemed like a good idea to me at the moment, and the rest of them begrudgingly accepted.

Our friend Chuck shows up, we grab some of the best burgers I've ever had, and the night is on.

Unfortunately, the depressant of the alcohol with the comforting body high from the weed combined with being awake for 36 hours without sleep caused me to pass out... mid-hookup... with my mouth still open... Moving on!

The next morning, I wake up fairly late, and as I step out into the hallway, the sobrietors (Chuck, Tracy, Garza, and Billy will go no further than drinking) are all fast asleep.  Johannes, Lucy, Slops, and Ellie are one foot out the door.  They tell me they're off to get a very, very light breakfast, and that they were going down to the beach after to take the shrooms.  I decide to go get lunch with the sobrietors.

I end up eating a giant plate of Carne Asada Fries and have a little fat day with them.  Why not if you're in San Diego, yeah?  On the car ride home, the other four shrooming call me begging to get let back up into the condo because they all had to go to the bathroom so badly.  I go down to let them up, and I see them all smiley and a little weird.  The second we got back to the apartment, I grabbed my shrooms, went to the bathroom, threw up all my food so I could have an empty stomach, and ate my entire baggy without a second thought.

I laid down in bed next to Tracy, and she told me that her and the other sobrietors were going down into the La Jolla village to shop and hang around.  I told her I'd be here hopefully being safe.

I found Johannes (who had done shrooms twice before in the past), and I asked him, "When will I know it's kicked in?"  He told me, "Oh.  You'll know."
Slops' trip was in full swing.  When I saw him, he uttered one of the only three full sentences he would speak for his entire trip, "I love magic mushrooms."
He sat on the floor cracking up laughing while his girlfriend, Ellie, laid in the bed looking slightly queasy.

Johannes and Lucy had gone back to their rooms and closed the door.  I got back into Tracy's and my bed and waited it out while Slops sat giggling at who knows what.

As I waited, he consistently asked Ellie, "Are you okay?" and "Did we go to the beach?"

After enough "shut up"s from Ellie to Slops, the closet door began to warp slightly.  I got up quickly and this only intensified the effect.  I was in.

I left the room to tell Johannes that it kicked in, and I walked in on Lucy blank-staring out the window.  The scene was reminiscent of a horror movie.  I was anticipating her head turning all the way around on its axis.

She freaked when she saw me for she had forgotten who I was.  I quickly left the room and found the sobreitors in the house still.  Chuck's face seemed HD.  I could clearly see his pores and facial stubble and his face was slightly saturated up.  I walked out onto the balcony and checked out the ocean.  She was a beauty!  And I thought it was quite the view beforehand!

The sobrietors walked on out, and all five of us shrooming sat around a coffee table chatting.  Slops had lost it.  He had his feet up on Johannes and had his boardshort's strings in his mouth.

Lucy was content and quite, and Ellie began to cry.  She claimed not to be sad or even feeling like crying.  She said tears just started coming down her face.

We spoke about all the ideas in our minds, and I felt like I had complete understanding of what others would tell me and I felt as if they completely understood me.

We had our phones on the table and we would look at them periodically.

At 4:03pm, we noticed that only three minutes had gone by since 4:00pm.  Although it had been three minutes, it felt like a year or more.

Everyone felt the same way.  It was as if everyone was connected.

Slops began to act like a slow man-child, but luckily Ellie is a caretaker as a profession.  We continue talking about everything imaginable.  Years-worth of information passed between all of us in a span of an hour.

After an hour or so, the sobrietors come back.  With my ego shed, I saw my girlfriend as if I were seeing her again for the very first time.  She looked beautiful and radiant.

They grab some other stuff and go out to leave again, and I thought I'd tag along.  My group warns me that that may not be the best idea.  But screw it!
Johannes and Lucy decide to go out on another walk along the beach.  On the elevator ride down, I realize how horrible of an idea leaving the apartment is.

At the bottom floor, I kiss my girlfriend goodbye and close the elevator doors.

Big.  Fucking.  Mistake.

I pressed what I had thought were the right buttons.  The elevator would not move.  The pattern in the carpet was wavy... extremely unhelpful.  I was alone.

Then begins the bad trip.  I begin to freak, and I slam as many buttons as I can.

The elevator starts to move, and eventually I find my way back to the condo.  However, I was unsure if I was at the right door, and I feared I was breaking and entering...

I found Johannes and Lucy again and a few minutes later, we go for that walk.

Chuck and Garza came back and joined us.

We mobbed through the beaches and around the hills seeing sights and taking every minute in.

The trip came in waves.  One minute we were sure it was done, and the next, it was back in full swing.

Lucy and I had a realization about how pathetically empty it is to have and use cellphones.  We realized that we let these little boxes run our lives.

In that moment, I gave my phone to Garza (who had destroyed his by jumping into a pool).

When we returned to the apartment, we found Ellie and Slops in their room.  Slops had fallen asleep when we were out and he had just woken up.

The rest of us were coming down.  We weren't so much coming down as we were realizing that we were normal again.

It didn't have a sharp drop-off "it's over" feeling like ecstasy does.

We all discussed our trips and all the things we felt.

Slops claimed that he thought he was dreaming, and all the things we recounted to him were in his dream.

It was a magic experience.  I was expecting something completely different.  I was expecting getting lost in some visual universe of hallucinations.  But I had more control that I was expecting, and I went more on a spiritual finding answers I've always been needing.

It won't be the last time.  If any mental, spiritual roadblock ever comes my way in life, I will definitely trip to find the answers.