30 grams fresh, wild cubes plus weed

I need to preface this trip report for it to make sense. I have used mushrooms many times. In my youth I enjoyed them with friends and after a 20-year period of abstinence from any drugs, discovered them again. I love tripping and I usually only trip alone. It’s not something that I want to do around other people as I try to use the mushrooms for insight. There are just a couple of very close old friends that I would consider tripping with. I have done enough serious meditation in the last 20 years to feel very comfortable alone, even in very difficult situations. Over the last 5 years I think I have used shrooms probably more than I should have but perhaps less than I would like to! Living close to amazing mushroom producing paddocks helps. I also almost always smoke a little weed with the mushrooms as I find the weed seems to lift the experience to another level and helps smooth out the raw psilo state – my experience at least. And so to my story….

 Friday night is a good night for tripping. It had been raining during the week but I didn’t have time to collect fresh cubes so I used some of my dried stash and had an amazing trip, so, so deep and so full of beauty – perhaps the subject of another report.

Come Saturday morning, I spend my time writing up the trip in my journal, trying to recapture and record the experience of the previous night before it fades too much. I had no intention of tripping again that night but then a thought crept into my head that I really should get out there and have a look for some fresh fungi. So off I trek, and a trek it is, to a place that I know that is far enough away from the farmer’s house not to cause concern. The shrooms were harder to come by than I expected. I’m a couple of days too late but after some hard work I find 7 shrooms in good condition, albeit a little dried by the hot sun. (Seekers note: Don’t forget to look under the trees – better water and shade there.)

 I make it home just as the sun sets to find that everyone else has either gone out or is going out now. Hmm… I know that I should wait, having gone so far last night but the opportunity is there and the shrooms are fresh. ‘Well, it would be good to continue last nights experience’ I reasoned. I found myself rushing, after getting home on dusk and having a definite time frame in mind because of a planned activity the following morning. I quickly blend the shrooms with the juice from a lemon and knock it back in one go, quite a cupful.

 From the moment that I took them I began to feel flustered, running this way and that, on the phone, getting dressed and then getting undressed as the heat from the come-on came on. It came on fast and hard, maybe only 15 minutes after dosing. My stomach was empty and I really had literally skulled the juice. Combined with my fluster this rapid onset made me feel very uneasy. I was unorganised and uncomfortable and feeling that I didn’t really what to do this, except to continue the previous night’s experience.  I kind of watched TV while trying to organise myself for the trip. I always wait until a full hour has passed before I smoke, so that I have a good idea of the strength of the peak. I was all over the place though and found it difficult to get my shit together, the weird repeating confusion kept happening. I’d go to do something, remember something else, go this way and then that way and then I’d catch myself doing it. ‘Get it together man; you are all over the place.’ The raw psilo state was making me feel uncomfortable so I decided to get myself outside and kick this trip into gear. More confusion and disorganisation but eventually I manage to blaze a couple of cones, sitting under the stars out behind the shed.

As the weed kicked in the trip came on VERY strong. Totally the nature of this trip, strong! I had dosed a bit higher than normal as I thought I’d have a bit of tolerance from the previous night. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that the shrooms were partially dried from a couple of days of hot sun and had maybe lost half their weight – I hadn’t really thought about a lot of things.

 The vibrations began to get very heavy and I felt terrible. Huge waves of despair, regret and self-disgust began to wash over me. ‘What the fuck! What are you doing? You’re treating this like a party time and its not – I’m going to kick your ass!’

The music from the iPod was too intense so I changed it and then it was too trivial so I turned it off. Now I was left with the malevolent psychedelic landscape and my thoughts. All sorts of shit was going on in the visual field but none of this mattered, it was the intensity of the internalisation that was so difficult. I was given a look at everything that I had, that I have done and at what the deceit that I have built into my life was doing to it. I was trapped in a prison of my own making, solitary confinement because of the choices I was making. ‘What about your family, what about the kids? Take an interest in them or you’ll lose them. Get rid of the drugs! Don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t you forget!’

Then the mood changed and I started to get the giggles. I was cracking up so hard that I had to put my hand over my mouth to keep it in. ‘What the fuck! Tripping so hard behind the shed and laughing like an idiot.’ But it really was funny and when I thought of ‘Get rid of the drugs’ it became like an hilarious saying that I knew would become a catchphrase for the experience. I was talking to myself and having to tell myself to ‘Get it together’ What if someone came? Could I have held it together? I don’t think so but it was so good to laugh. ‘Get it together, you trippin fool!’

 The despair returned and it was again followed by hilarity and this pattern continued for about another 4 hours. After each deep bout of introspection I told myself not to forget these lessons tomorrow. ‘Change your life while there is still time. What it is all about is love’

Then this poem formed in my mind and I started chanting

‘Get rid of the drugs, get rid of the pot, get rid of the mushies, get rid of the lot’

‘That’s right, no drugs again ever! Ha, ha what a crack-up!’

The drama of the dichotomy continued and I was having my ass kicked hard but in the most helpful possible way.

 I was made to take a good hard look at the world, what I had and what I had to lose. It wasn’t the material that surrounded me and that gave nothing back; it was only the love of others that made any sense at all. Then I saw what a mess we are all in, the whole earth. ‘God help us because we don’t seem to be able to do it ourselves.’

That morning I had written something about the mushroom landscape being ‘known territory’ and a ‘reproducible state’. Well to an extent but now I felt like a conceited drip for having written that and I was being wrung through, needing to learn a lesson.

I so, so wanted my son to come home but I knew that he wouldn’t. I was feeling such deep love for him. What if he did? I was in such a state, repeating catch phrases and then cracking up in rhythmic pulses for hours that I think I would have had to run away. All this time I was still sitting behind the shed in the backyard. I think that I was kind of hiding and I couldn’t leave. I’d think that the peak had passed and then it would come back on again even stronger.

‘You shouldn’t take magic mushies, I know… but if you do, you definitely want to smoke some weed with them!’ This kept coming into my head as well and I’d crack up and have to put my hand over my mouth. Eventually I felt like I could listen to music again but it was really late now as the peak finally began to fade. I think that I listened to Florence’s Cosmic love about 10 times in a row. I was completely fixated on it, something to do with being in the darkness. Man, I had just been there and was sure feeling happy to have been released from that prison.

 It had been a full-on  6 ½ hours but I was ready for bed now. I cleaned my teeth and cracked up looking at my reflection in the mirror. The laughter came from a deep place with such innocence and joy in it. Its effect was forgiveness, not for anything in particular, just of self. I laughed and relished the joy of being and then released this in vibrations of love, care, friendship and generosity.

 Just as I was dropping off to sleep, my son called asking if I could come and pick him up from his mate’s place. It was 3.30am and I was near baseline so I went out to get him. ‘Sorry to wake you up, how was your night dad?’ he asked, as he jumped into the car. ‘Interesting’, I told him, ‘ I spent a bit of time sitting under the stars out by the shed.’