An introvert connecting with the world

In the past, I used mushrooms almost exclusively for deep introspection. I am an introvert with strong autistic traits and I often struggle from social anxiety.

Now, I for the first time used mushrooms for the opposite purpose and I can only recommend it to my fellow introverts (of whom, I guess, there are quite a few here).

So, recently I went to a large folk and world music festival in a beautiful historic town. It is not a place where lots of people take psychedelics.  I've been going there for many years, but in recent years, the excitement had faded quite a bit and I had been even thinking of skipping it. I often felt isolated in the crowd, and new exciting musical discoveries had become quite rare.

So this year, for the first time I used shrooms to modify my experience, making it one of the best couple of days of my life. Usually I need larger doses for a good experience, but since this was the first time, where I wanted to stay active during the experience rather than lying down with eyeshades, I decided to start low and only take 2.3g (which the shroomery.org calculator says you need for a level 3 trip). After about 30 minutes, the mushrooms started kicking in, making me really dizzy, a litte nauseous, tired and also emotionally not feeling very good, rather, I felt somewhat depressed and isolated. I sat down, closed my eyes and watched my inner movie, with some interesting CEVs.

But somehow, I managed to push trough the initial dizziness and I managed to get up and open my eyes and watch the musicians on stage. Somehow I experienced a completely unexpected change. From feeling really tired and dizzy I went to feeling incredibly clear, energized and easy. It was absolutely fascinating watching and hearing the interaction between the musicians and to appreciate what each individual musician contributed.  I was able to experience the whole and the parts simultaneously in a wonderful form of synaesthesia.

Later on I went to another stage where a group was performing Balkan and Klezmer music, and people were dancing East European round dances, and the experience of everything belonging together was incredible, everything was a huge choreography, every person in their individual expression all belonged together, some joining the group dances, some doing their individual expressive dances, everything was one organism. Usually, when I join those dances, I constantly worry about myself doing everything wrong and tripping over, but now I completely stopped worrying and I felt so totally connected to the others like never before in my life. I saw with open eyes, what I usually only see with closed eyes. This time, it wasn't my inner movie, but it was the real world around me.

And again, I was completely stunned about how unimpaired I felt. For me, as I said above, mushrooms so far have  been a tool of introspection, forcing me to lie down and just watch and listen to what is going on inside of me. I never thought that they can be such a great tool to connect with the world.

I took more mushrooms the following festival days, and they helped me to turn the whole festival experience into something completely and utterly magical. The concerts weren't even the main attraction for me. Just wondering around the town, watching the people interact, stopping on the bridge to look at the river, watching little children play was all I needed. The concert I enjoyed most was a West African trio playing completely unplugged on their balafons and drums at the river banks. It was the same place I knew from many many festivals in the past, but it was totally changed, it was suddenly totally magic. It was like my vision had been black and white for all these years and suddenly become coloured. Another thing was that my feelings about other people were totally changed. I often am quite negative and judgmental. Now, I just loved watching people interact with each other, I perceived everyone to be a gift, everyone in their own way.

I never thought, that the mushroom experience can be that euphoric, at times it almost felt like MDMA flooding my brain with serotonin.  It was just the perfect experience. Of course, you can't do that in just any environment but you need a place and a setting that has good vibes and the dose should be rather low. But I feel this experience has allowed me to genuinely connect with the world and my fellow sentient beings like I haven't done since forever and thus has done more for me than many deep introspective journeys, in fact during the experience, it felt even more magical than many of those. I can only recommend this to my fellow introverts. The beginning tends to be difficult, but then, something incredible awaits you.