1 gram Libs

I have not tripped for about 17 years but have recently taken an interest in shrooms again having heard all the positive stories of ego death and such.  I have been meditating daily for many years now and was very interested to come across studies showing the similarities of the effects mushrooms have on the brain when compared to meditation practice.  This along with reading the forums here was enough to inspire me to test the theory, but first I wanted to be sure of a safe dose as I have bad memories of eating Liberty Caps by the hundreds as a teenager, which put me off psychedelics all together.

After pouring over the ID threads on here and looking at a tonne of photos I went out in to the hills and managed to pick only about 20 Psilocybe semilanceata (weighed in as 1 gram).  I posted photos here first to get a confirmation ID.  With a green light I began planning my trip!

I am currently living with family so I decided to take them at 9pm to keep interruptions to a minimum.  The shrooms were two days old so a little dry but still nice and fresh.  I chewed them up and washed them down with half a pint of milk.  I dimmed the lights and settled down to watch a nice inspiring spiritual talk on my laptop.  About 45 minutes in to the film I began to have a distinct sense my heart pumping in my chest, it felt as though it was almost demanding that I notice it.  The person talking on the video I was watching was saying some very inspiring things and I started to notice that a smile had crept across my face and a very tangible warmth was being felt in my chest.  The rising sensation of love were becoming impossible to ignore.  Before I knew it I found I couldn't help but laugh at all the profound truths being poured forth from this wise teacher, talking about non-duality and the narrow-minded way we see life.  The dilema of man being deluded by his own ego seemed so obvious at this point that the question suddenly arose in my mind' how can everyone be so stupid to lose touch with their heart?'.    I realised I was feeling much more deep than I usually get while watching such things and before I knew it I was crying tears of joy over the feelings of love emanating from my chest.  It was becoming very powerful and around this point I decided that I couldn't take any more as my heart was swelling up like crazy it felt like it could burst right out at any moment. 

I turned off the video and sat there staring at the Google.  For some reason I typed in the phrase 'miserable in heaven' (I think it was the last phrase I heard on the spiritual video).  The first link I clicked on turned out to be a segment from the book 'Wuthering Heights'.  It was white page with two orange borders either side and a wall of text.  Immediately as I tried to focus in on the words they were playing tricks with my eyes. I tried to read a sentence but as I read each word I forgot the context of the previous words in the sentence.  It was impossible to reach the end of a line without getting lost, let alone trying to move to the next line and string it all together in my mind.  I felt extremely confused at this and started to feel a bit thick, worrying that I had lost all ability to read and I may never regain the ability or be intelligent enough to do so.  As I tried to focus I noticed the small words around the ones I was trying to focus on were slightly warping in and out.  The orange borders framing the page were bending in and out in my peripheral vision.  It was at this point I had the thought 'why the fuck am I trying to read Wuthering Heights!?'.  

Next I tried to get in to my email account as a friend had emailed me some music video links.  I sat there at the password screen for what seemed like ages trying to enter different passwords.  I drew a blank.  I have been entering this same password every day for years, but it felt as if it had been sucked clear out of my brain.  Shocked at my own retardedness I just closed my eyes and rested my head on my hands, it felt so good to stop 'doing' things and I drifted off in to a numb vegitative state.  I remember thinking to myself 'wow, my mind feels blown!'.  I felt like I didn't want to do anything at all at this point but just sit there with my eyes closed, being still and feeling vacant.  I could feel the blood pulsating in my head, pumping in my temples and there was a subtle field of energy that was very tangible in the body, which combined with the warmth in my chest felt nice.  I just let go and went with it.

When I eventually pulled myself out of the mental emptiness I started looking at some old bookmarked web-pages of mine.  I came to a spiritual blog where some woman was writing about 'waking up in life' and such, how she loved her husband so much for introducing her to profound eastern teachings.  There was this photo of them smiling with arms around each other looking so in love.  I immediately started thinking about my loved ones and before I knew it the heart was getting really heavy.  I began crying and before long was balling my eyes out.  A thought would arise such as 'Do my family really know how much I love them?', 'I wonder if my parents think I'm a failure', 'One day my parents won't be around anymore, I should really show them love while we still have time'.  After sobbing for god knows how long (at this stage I had lost complete track of time)  I decided that I had to turn my mind to something more positive.  I picked up a notepad that was laying next to my bed and for the next 4 hours or something I just wrote and wrote and wrote.  It was like I was possessed, the ideas just spilled out,  whatever came in to my head was scrawled down.  This turned out to be the perfect release for the mind and the insights were coming thick and fast.  This cheered me up no end.  

Around 3 am I could feel a noticeable difference in the intensity of the trip, my whole body still had a subtle field of energy about it, a slight thrumming, and the pulsing of my heart was very noticeable.  I could tell that I was starting to feel a bit more level headed now but it still felt like being on a mild amphetamine or something.  From this point I decided to slow down and try to get some sleep.  I turned out the lights and closed my eyes but I just tossed and turned endlessly.  I eventually sat up in bed and reached for my headphones.  I stuck on a Buckethead's album; Electric Tears and just let the sounds envelope me, the heightened sense of hearing was really noticable and felt great.

Gradually I came in to land around 4am and although I managed to get off to sleep it was mostly in bursts.  The strange thing was that when I got up at around 10am I didn't feel tired at all.  Maybe the caps hadn't worn off quite as fully as I'd expected!

With regards to the eventual come-down I just felt like I had a slight beer hangover throughout the day, a very slight headache with some cerebral pressure at the temples.  I would say that my cognitive functioning was completely normal with no other noticeable negative side-effects.

Overall for a mild trip I would say it was a valuable experience.   I was surprised at how powerful 1 gram could be as I really hadn't expected much for such a small dose.  As a beginner I do feel it was about the right amount for me to be able to maintain a certain level of control throughout.    The visuals were very minor and the physical symptoms were mostly very nice.  It seems as though I purged a lot of repressed emotion during those hours (I hadn't cried and laughed like that for some time).  I also wrote down some really amazing and funny things in my notepad so I am completely convinced that shrooms are a good thing for creativity and lucid thinking.  There are some similarities to meditative experiences such as feelings of deep peace and relaxation, wise insights and such.  Naturally it's a little more difficult to maintain a good level of mindful clarity due to the slight distortions of reality which are obviously somewhat unpredictable.  I'll definitely be experimenting with bigger doses in the near future.

Here are some excerpts from my notepad...