Novice 2nd Trip

First Trip:  Not knowing the true potency of my crop I thought it would be best to do an exploratory run.  For this I decided on 2.75 grams.  I'm 5' 9" and 165lbs.  I'm also 34 years old.  I've been smoking weed pretty regularly and it just wasn't doing it for me on the psyche front anymore.  Oh, before I go any further I'll briefly describe my motivation for wanting to try shrooms, which I feel is an important factor.  As I said I'm 34 years old and have already lived a pretty well experience life, traveled around the world, been divorced twice, and have no kids, etc.  Oh, and I was in the Marine Corps for almost seven years.  Needless to say I underwent an identity crisis several years back and pretty much separated myself from the military mindset and violence in general.  Regardless, I have never been able to gain back any sense of innocence, creativity, or artistic imagination.  I used to be an avid writer, but have been uninspired for quite some time.  I was beginning to think that I was becoming depressed and disenchanted with life, but internally I was holding out hope that the great spirits of nature could lead me into the light again by trusting them and taking shrooms.  

So the day came and I decided to warm some water just below boiling, put the shrooms through the ole coffee grinder and poured the hot water to them.  I steeped this for a minute and washed out the remaining shroom powder from the coffee grinder into my cup and pretty much chugged it as soon as it was cool enough.  Oh and before this I fasted for about 12 hours, nothing but water.  

I decided to do my usual yoga routine while I anticipated whatever gift the shrooms were willing to provide.  About 30 minutes in and while I was meditating after having completed my yoga I felt immensely energetic and vigorous!  I put on some good jams and before I knew it I was running around the house singing and dancing my ass off really exploring movement and space.  I'm lucky enough to live on the beach and was feeling wonderful so I put on my headphones and took the dogs for walk on the beach.  I wasn't quite hallucinating at this point, but i definitely had a new and intriguing curiosity about everything in my environment.  I was enjoying my music and the beach, but after a while the physiological effects increased and things in my environment easily became overwhelming.  My dogs were becoming annoying and I couldn't get over how much litter was on the beach and the music I was previously enjoying had become loud and intrusive.  I decided to go back home to see what was yet to come.  I came home and showered, which was wonderful then when I turned off the water and was hit with a cold blast of air my body wasn't cold, but rather I felt as though I was floating through the air.  I was not hallucinating I was simply having distorted physical sensory perceptions.  I put on some comfortable clothes, found some soothing music and began to color in my coloring book.  The animals in my book immediately became very interesting and enticing.  They seemed to be looking at me trying to entice my curiosity to color and imagine. I do remember going to one of my favorite paintings and it briefly seemed to be moving.  The striking thing about this first experience was how emotional I got during it.  I suddenly wanted to be completely honest with everyone I loved and for them to know how much they meant to me and for us to work out our differences.  Overall, this was a great experience.  

A week later I finally had a friend who was experienced at psychedelics who offered to trip sit me.  She's an artist and a hippy so this was a no brainer. Additionally, her recreation room was still decorated with multicolor christmas lights, art, and tapestries from a David Bowie memorial she had done.  The room was amazing to say the least!  I decided to go for it all and took 5 grams.  I thought about taking more, but figured that there must be something amazing that happens in that 2 little gram increase from approximately 3 to 5 grams.  I did the same fast routine and warm, not boiling, tea.  I avoided boiling to reduce the risk of the tea losing any potency.  Within 30 minutes the giddy, happy, and euphoric giggles set in and my environment was becoming very interesting.  My energy spiked and before I knew it I wanted to be dancing and jamming to music, so we did!  I began to feel a little nauseous so I went to the kitchen to get some juice.  I remember looking at my friends granite countertops.  They had gone from being random natural granite patterns to full on hallucinogenic patterns.  I was seeing what appeared to be crystal skulls, which would become a theme of my hallucinations as the night continued.  My friend has a huge smile and whenever she would laugh and squint her eyes her eye slits looked like little mouths which was trippy, but fun!  We eventually ended up in the recreation room that had been setup to house the evenings events.  As I was racking the pool table I noticed that there was a design on the felt of the table, or so I thought!  There seemed to be eagles and wolves and all sorts of strange art engrained on the surface of the red felt pool table.  I couldn't believe it and my friend explained that this was the beginning of the real hallucinations.  Before I knew it my environment almost entirely erupted in mandalas, lights were pulsing and the music that was playing moved through my soul.  My friend realized that this was the perfect time to up the sensory experience and broke out a fresh canvas and paints!  For the longest all I could do was watch her with amazement and walk around the room lost in the amazingness of the emergence of what I would go on to call a "sixth sense".  Soon I became very preoccupied with my body and the paints!  By this time my shirt was off and I kept going back to a mirror to watch my skin swirl and crawl which didn't freak me out at all.  I soon went back to the canvas and my friend invited and urged me to assist in the painting.  This is where shit got real.  i was faced with my true fear, that in fact I simply could not paint.  I would put the paint on my hands, but would only carefully dab here and there while she smeared and brushed over the whole thing.  I went back to the mirror and began to place the paint on my face and body, carefully.  What was I afraid of?  Why couldn't I just paint?  I would return to the canvas throughout the night tempting myself to jump in with both feet, but I couldn't bring myself to ruin the beautiful painting my friend was creating.  After leaving the room a few times only to run back to it screaming overwhelmed by the world outside those safe doors, the paint on my body became too much and I began to get a little anxious.  Leaving the room I think reminded me of my obligations outside of the "trip room"!  I remember at one point looking down the stairs into the basement where my friend was getting stuff, when I looked down the stairs at the floor it looked as though it was flooded with water!  Like I said, shit outside the room seemed to be falling apart.  I was wanting to escape reality and the "trip room" had provided that escape and safety.  Wanting the paint off, I was supposed to be returning to my girlfriends that night and she didn't know I was doing this, my friend set me up with a scrub pad and a nice hot shower.  The paint seemed to never want to come off then the paint didn't want to rinse off and this was all overwhelming, but I wasn't losing it, emotions were all just much more intense so funny shit was funnier, but anxiety provoking things also provoked much more anxiety.  Luckily, I had my friend there who comforted me. There were multiple times throughout the night where I just hugged myself, looked into her eyes and would say, "I just don't know Sarah, I just don't know!" while slightly getting teary eyed.  Like I said EVERYTHING was intense!  I would inhale deeply through my nose and it felt awesome!  It was all amazing, but at the same time I think a part of me just couldn't let go enough to just completely embrace it.  I would spend the entire next day reminiscing about the night before and was finally having creative flashes of artistic inspiration which was exactly what I was looking for.  All in all a great experience!  In hind sight I want to do it in the morning as apposed to the evening.  The hope is that I will have much more energy initially and this will make it easier to handle the overwhelming sensory and emotional perceptions.  Also, I want to spend time exploring the forest while taking the same 5 gram dose hoping that I will discover how to find spirituality in the wild.  

Well, I hope this helps!  Be smart and take it seriously, but have fun!  Peace!