Truth or Consequences

Background: 39yo single dad. Kids are 16/18 now so I just started doing some things that I like which were impossible with them younger. Psytrance festival here & there, LSD or shrooms with friends around a fire pit, concerts etc.. Used to drink heavily, sober three years and elated. SWED… Spent lots of time over the years volunteering (still do some) with youth sports, cub scouts etc. Hold doors open, smile and talk to folks. Always let another car move over lol. I believe in a benevolent creator and have been touched by my own spirit before while sober. A call and response and some other affirmations. 

Some personal flaws that I drew a correlation to while in the trip.. to what I was seeing…

Follow the news in depth.. get annoyed at the chaos but take part in it by the fact of being exposed. The partisanship and virtue signaling. I inform myself on all sorts of things to make sense of the news of the day. I know it’s a waste of time and space but I enjoy it and do it anyway. 

I watch the latest war videos in Ukraine and ultimately see other war battle footage over the years in the threads. There is a tremendous amount of horrifying content. I’ve been telling myself this isn’t good but watch anyway. 

I watch porn (not vanilla) very regularly and know that it’s not good for me, but do it anyway. 

My typical psychedelic experience has been LSD and in more recent years a few shrooms. Up till this weekend my most profound experience  was my first time doing a proper dose of MDMA (go figure). First and last and actually amazing but out of respect for it I don’t want to adulterate it with anything casual. 

I did not apply that logic elsewhere after levying that respect I suppose. 

My friend since 3rd grade and I decided to do a fair amount of mushrooms. I had heard of PE but not the buzz in the culture around them and how they are held in a regard all their own. Mushrooms were just shrooms and I took them when available and never had a bad experience. Never bought them till this last time. I bought a 1/4 and figured to split it. My bud has an awesome man cave with maps and lighted figurines, great decor.. totally chill. We usually trip on 3/4-1/2 of this dose and watch a movie. I had not eaten for about 10 hours and that was not planned. We decided to watch Across the Universe.. 

Trip:

We split them and gulp. About 5 whole dry mushrooms each. At the moment I was very casual about it and did not even give a moments pause the way I was conducting myself. The way many would..  Just having a good time and ready for a chill night.  The movie wasn’t great and there was some points on the come up where I just really felt apathetic to paying attention to the story or dialogue. Started the yawning and eye watering pretty hardcore. About 20 minutes in the effects.. Watching the movie I would see the face of the actor and close my eyes to blink and open again. Each time I closed them, the face of the actor would get cut out and put into blackness.. like in photoshop… break, deconstruct into unequal shards, rotate and spin back around to form the face again in the blackness and synced up exactly to the movie when I opened my eyes again. That was fun and I played with that for a little. 

Started becoming uncomfortable especially with some of the fighting or shouting here and there in the Movie. Seemed like any confrontation was becoming more and more foreign and I started recoiling at the TV as if I was trying to get back from a hot fire while against a wall. Plus FUCKING Beatles music playing throughout it lol. Vietnam imagery of giant US soldiers carrying the Statue of Liberty held above them and stomping over the jungle right about when I knew what was coming on was going to be something larger than and more profound than I expected. The enormity and sheer terror of that. Other worldly. How is this possible. I am so rattled and want to go forward 4 hours right now. 

Swelling wave effects inside and visually. Feeling more overwhelmed..to the point of not really feeling like I wanted to be “here”. Having my eyes open and looking at the distorted setting, I was just so opposed to having a human experience in that moment is the best way I could describe it. Was also having the thoughts come to me.. “You asked for and accepted this and we are doing this” as I lamented. I took this as not coming from me but am open to it being a “part of me” . And it did frighten me. Definitely did not surrender because it was just a huuuuge nooo! Fumbling for something to distract me because at this point I loathed, absolutely hated the movie. It was adding to the anxiety. I had not let me friend know this was going on and he was just viiiibin. On top of that I was so preoccupied and confused that it wouldn’t have even come up. 

Ridiculously I put on some chill Spotify stuff on my at this point 5D phone screen and put it up to my ear.. meanwhile the Beatles still blaring out… FML. I know I was clamoring and grasping for straws. The thought of surrendering to such a monumental power didn’t even cross my mind not that it could. 

My friend had gotten up and stretching was looking at all the cool shit on his walls as we do… tripping or not. I did the same thinking that maybe the ritual would help. I was just doing what human would do. Going through the motions but having trouble focusing on it not visually, but the context of why the fuck am I looking at walls. Totally uninteresting and foreign. My mind was still getting more enveloped. There were

Moments where I could string out a sentence and it was like 85% accurate but the thoughts or subject matter for doing that were just not that strong. 

Sat back down. Coming on stronger and stronger.. still feeling like the visual world was hard to be in, while closing my eyes was bringing me closer to something.

My eyes were closed. First wild visual I remember looked as a cellular pattern like a sheet of bubble wrap with the bubble close together.  Maybe white snake scales with a light inside each one. I got the sense that this was my brain and I thought of it in the moment as defragging on the computer. Like the cells being gone through with waves one row at a time. I didn’t want it doing that. Resisted still. 

In that same timeframe , while resisting, saw a very rudimentary /blocky computer swat team clearing a series of rooms with me looking above at the vantage point of the swat training center . Very simple graphic but a message. Clearing the rooms.. The movie and the Beatles are just too much. Really recoiling at anything violent or confrontational in it including some of the distortion in the songs, or just how emphatically they were singing about the egg man.. their tone was like a saw. 

I began to feel to myself become adjacent to my body. I felt where I was to be at an angle behind my right ear. Picture 6 inches over and back from your head and THEN facing your left ear. I felt like I was on the edge of myself. Talking was very labored at this point but had to keep going. Felt talking was anchoring me to sanity and I would lose it if I stopped trying. 

Couldn’t stand to be in the room and didn’t want to be annoying to my friend. Went into another room and thought laying down in the dark would help. The visual stimuli was painful. Eyes kind of forced to be closed. Shapes and patterns rapidly moving in my mind. Fast and organized but chaotic too. The patterns and images were like the skulls with eyeballs melting out on skateboards back in the day or a drag racing shifting zombie in his hot rod with tongue whipping out. Wild wild cartoony gore...changing from one form of itself to some other gore form.Tbh, it could have been the care bears with bloody noses… I was still so opposed to anything like that dealing with violence or confrontation.. It made me want to just go away. Very grotesque decomposing cartoons etc. I. The timeframe also some skin tones and figures which I took to be sexual but the gore much more pronounced. 

My mind came across a statement “ Look at this, look what you’ve allowed in your mind..look what you WILLINGLY allow in. Also the sense, “yeah you let people in in traffic, and volunteer and all that shit but that’s not what is in front of you is it?” Not in those words but the feeling.  I felt knocked down quite a few pegs and that I betrayed MYSELF. 

That statement is what is crushing me. That’s one big take away so far. 

In the patterns I saw a more solid strip come across, dark blue and black with… Aztec stone face. Like from that old Nickelodeon show legends of the hidden temple. I gave that some emphasis seeing it in the moment. I felt it was driving the wheel but that’s conjecture. 

I called my other good friend on the phone And told him what was up. We actually laughed a little when I described some things.. when I could talk. He is experienced in Psychedelics and a very amazing soul so I knew he could be a lifeline in this experience. He asked me the pertinent questions and Offered some advice which was physically impossible for the mind visual diarrhea and it taking my attention so often and violently. 

We said our goodbyes after 20 minutes and I tried to re-acclimate to the man cave.. nope.. still going through it.. I asked my friend to run my back and while he did I tried to breath and release tension. 

Eyes closed I tilted my head straight up … only to see in perfect clarity.. no vibrating or gyrating at all.. the Eye of providence. Golden and white perfect triangle frame  with an amazingly blue eye looking right at me with interest . Shape of the eye with lid but no lid. It was absolutely beautiful. Behind it was white as can be inside the triangle. This sight gave me a breather. There were smaller  other triangles on the periphery too so almost like looking up at a cathedral ceiling at a mural except that eye was alive. I knew below that were basically the rings of this hell I was seeing earlier. The visuals changed and I moved my head etc.. so went back to the gore stuff in and out for a while. 

Periods where there were shapes and faces, lots of eyes…Basically all of the psychedelic art and lore we’ve all seen for years. But the bad images were still very prominent and I ducked out of the room again. Gave my buddy another phone call and he talked to me asking things like.. do you like rollercoasters? Hehehee (I love you Matt) answering like 15% then giving up..totally fixated horrified and in awe on the stuff in the back of my eyelids. 15 minute call. 

A little demon man in a tessellation winked at me to give me an affirmative on some part of some realization I had. I forget. 

I saw clear blue eyes (two) in all the million mile an hour bedlam looking at me through a widow pane of the same white backdrop atmosphere in the triangle and acknowledging me in a positive way.. gave me reprieve..then back to craziness. I had peaked, after I noticed I had better control went back to chill. Was actually able to watch Alice in Wonderland which my buddy put on. I was definitely understanding what the Queen was better in that moment. Lol Ego.. the movie spoke to me in a good way :) 

Then watched The sword in the stone. There is a part of the movie where the wizard and boy turn into various animals. As fish they are swimming and the boy goes up and eats a big on the surface and immediately.. “ why did I do that? Yuck!” THAT WAS ME.. “human things” exasperation’s…  

Last visuals were with eyes closed.. black space background I’m in space.. maybe distant galaxies.. saw an outline a person that I think was me (think minimalist spine specialist logo design).. nothing inside just black.. inside the head of the outline there was a super clear square/level/compass that was moving so precisely and showing me it angle and measure in place in such smooth motion. I drew this to be a correlation to me feeling adjacent or angled earlier in the trip.. was weird. 

Last visual was me Seeing that same black space but I was like transferring from one curvature to another. They were also minimalist in sight but energetic. Kind of little solar flares between them. I felt I was going to be in this transition but don’t remember. That was when the trip went to body waves and came down. 

It was Horrifying and scary but apart of me in a meaningful way. Glad it happened and going to apply it to my life as it was a real true lesson. I feel that the Mushrooms have a lot of stored energy potential from their history.. did that make sense?  True knowledge of our building blocks. 

I feel my soul is in a deficit for embarrassing truths that I didn’t “get” in a waking state… and now an opportunity to “do the laundry” much Love