First Real Trip

I had taken shrooms a couple times prior to this, but those were very tame. Mild visuals, bit of euphoria, generally a fun time. Apparently these had all been relatively weak batches compared to what I had acquired for a vacation with my friends. We had 200 acres of what was basically desert, miles and miles away from any form of civilization, different from the other trips I'd had which were very much within the bounds of civilization. I had meticulously planned when and how exactly we would be taking these, (along with other substances not relevant to this story) but for whatever reason I had a lapse in judgement and rather than measure out doses, decided to just divvy these out as caps and stems. I had done research and was reasonably confident in my conclusion that this specific strain had much more psilocybin in the cap than the stem, and since I had the most experience in this field I distributed the fungi accordingly with how much each person said they wanted to trip, as well as how much I naively thought they should take. D and Te both got one cap and one stem, X and R got one cap and two stems, but for L and H, the only other people who had ever tripped before, I decided to let them decide how much they wanted to take. They wound up taking the same as me: 2 caps and 2 stems. We had eaten a decent breakfast about an hour prior to dosing, which we did at around 11am. Everyone decided that it would be a good idea to walk to the only place with actual greenery on this property, which was near a small body of water. It took what felt like 45 minutes to get there, and the come up was wonderful. We all felt this sort of childlike wonder, to the point that when we were nearing the water, we encountered an enormous diamondback rattlesnake that somehow seemed more afraid of us than we were of it. By then several of us were starting to really feel it, D and I talked about the differences between a Slurpee and a Slushee, others were frolicking about the path we were taking. But once we got to the water, I was rudely reminded of an experience I call rubber banding. While on the walk the effects had slowly made themselves present, but nothing overwhelming. As soon as we stopped walking and stood in one spot for any extended period of time, however, the strength of this batch caught up quickly. I stared at the water, which was nice, but made the mistake of taking a long hard look at a nearby tree. Several "layers" of the tree had separated and were swirling about my vision like oil in water or dust in the wind. I then drew my attention to the dirt beneath me, as well as the multiples of layers beginning to cloud my vision. I was about to make the executive decision to continue walking when I looked over at R, who was pulling his shirt up to reveal several dozen tiny black bugs crawling all over his body and giving him itchy bites. I realized I was coming up way faster than it seemed like anyone else was, and announced my departure as to attempt to outrun this approaching anxiety I felt in the back of my mind. Most of the group followed suit, except R and X who stayed behind to deal with the bugs and continue admiring the green clearing. If the walk there felt like 45 minutes the walk back felt like 45 hours, and although moving was helping me keep myself present and sane, the looming threat of the rubber banding made my anxiety skyrocket. I was speed walking at this point for whatever reason, as if getting back to the house would lessen the growing effects. After half a lifetime of speed walking, the house came into view, simultaneously instilling me with a sense of comfort and dread. I walked over to the carport area, and upon looking down at the concrete below me was blown away with the vividness and numerosity of the layers I was standing on. The elastic band had fully come upon me, and the paranoia came right with it. I decided the best course of action at this point was to do like 15 laps around the house, desperate to avoid the full effects catching up. Alas walking was far slower than my body metabolising that damned fungus. Eventually I became incredibly sluggish and decided to join the rest of the group on the back porch. We had separated into two groups, D, To (my partner, also the only sober one) and I on the left and H, L, and Te on the right, who had decided to smoke. I was entirely against this idea as I had been getting a lot of anxiety lately from weed, combined with the growing fear of my trip sounded like a recipe for disaster. In retrospect I don't think smoking some weed would have changed nearly anything about what was in store for me. As I sat on this bench in total silence, I looked out at the mesquite trees in the distance which looked straight out of a salvador dali painting. My attention was then drawn to the particle board ceiling, whose layers seemed to pop out at me, and I immediately decided to look at somehow the only thing worse than the wooden patterns above me, my own damn shirt. A button up with patterns even a stone cold sober person would think were trippy. Something inside me finally shifted and I decided I wanted to be anywhere else, and left the porch wordlessly to go back to the carport. To thankfully followed, noting my silent departure as a sign to not leave me alone. I climbed into the back of the ranch truck parked half on and half off of the concrete slab from earlier, the bed riddled with branches and bullet casings from much earlier in the day, none of which bothered me in the slightest. I laid down face up, in what would be my resting place for the next several eternities, only able to see the branches of a mesquite tree and the sky. At this point I was imagining that surely this was about the peak, hoping that it would begin levelling out. The branches of the tree dangling above me said otherwise, and at that point it became hard to tell what was far and what was close. To climbed into the truck next to me to make sure I didn't fall off the deep end never to return, which thankfully somewhat helped. Time began dilating at such an intensity that seconds dragged on for millennia, and I could feel myself physically melting into this truck bed. Several times I thought I had stopped breathing for what felt like hours, and had to remind myself to breathe. I had to ask my partner (who had now become my trip babysitter) several times whether I was actually there and still alive and breathing, to which they confirmed my continued existence. As the trip grew ever stronger I felt my mind and body melt into the surroundings, feeling every breath as if I was sucking vaseline into my lungs, and exhaling what seemed to be physical parts of myself back into the sky. The tree reacted to my breaths as if we were underwater and my exhalations were the currents. The visuals combined with the intensely growing mental effects began to overwhelm me, so i attempted to close my eyes and possibly even fall asleep, being so high as to not realize how impossible that would be. Behind my eyelids were intense three (or what felt like four) dimensional visuals that seemed to correlate with what I had just seen with my eyes open. I began falling deeper into a pit inside my mind that threatened to never release me. Uncontrollable repeating thoughts cascading down my eyelids, somehow right beside attempts at conscious thought which refused to be completed. I imagined this is what being in a state of unrelenting manic depression felt like, my mind conjuring thoughts that I had never seriously considered previously, which made me glad we had locked the guns in the shed and hidden the key. After a very long while in my mind, Te and D came over with a speaker, playing a Tame Impala song whose music and lyrics became interwoven with my thoughts and hallucinations, completely blindsiding me. I immediately requested that To have them leave as I am no longer corporeal and unable to comprehend anything happening around me. They were tripping pretty good, which made me feel better about my dosages for the others compared to mine, but it took them some convincing to finally clear out, the music echoing in my mind, ricocheting off of the inside of my skull. Finally I opened my eyes again and the sounds flew out of my eyeballs back into the open air. This interaction reminded To of our two companions who had decided to stay behind, and so they messaged them on discord. Evidently that extra stem was hitting just right, as the responses were short and hard to discern, but from what we gathered they were doing fine. Later we would find out they had ran through the brush with their shirts off yelling like actual monkeys, which was apparently very cathartic. I continued to meld with my surroundings, the idea of an end to myself and the beginning of everything blurred drastically. I felt as though my body were a plasma, and had to once again consult the sober one to confirm my solidity. It was hitting in intense waves, one moment I would feel like maybe I'm coming down, only for the next to arrive and swiftly execute that notion, sometimes strong enough to make me somewhat nauseous. Any time I moved my body it was like I was swimming, floating, and firmly stuck to the ground all at the same time. If I tried to touch myself with my hands it seemed like they would go right through me, just to get elastically launched back once I looked at where my hand actually was. Often planes would fly overhead, seemingly military drills that were a constant source of brief terror before my mind retreated once again into itself. At some point, we heard a drastically different and completely unexpected noise; the almost animal-like growl of a 4-wheeler on an adjacent property. This was so strange that even To got startled, considering there are 7 people tripping absolute nuts in various places around the property. Though as quickly as the vehicle unceremoniously interrupted the horrors, it began driving off, the sounds once again repeating relentlessly within me. I attempted to sleep once more, only to confront the world behind my eyelids, which forced my eyes back open. The waves of visuals and thought processes persisted in my mind for an unknowable amount of time, which was probably only a few hours in reality. At this point the sky i had grown so accustomed to shifted to much darker shades of purple and pinks, the first stars illuminating like beacons to a person I was unsure of still being. With the dark came the cold, and I began shivering uncontrollably, upsetting my already fragile mind even more. To ran inside to get a blanket, but upon being left alone to my thoughts in this truck bed I became frantic, wondering how it could take so many eons just to get a simple blanket, imagining myself dissolving into nothingness now that my only tether to the physical world had abandoned me. After infinitely many panic inducing thoughts, they finally arrived with a blanket. Horrified by the existential dread and possible dissolution presented by their absence, I asked them to please never leave my side again. Soon after, though, I decided it may be a good time to finally leave this location at which I had endured uncountable hardships, unending threats to my physical and mental stability, and I slowly sat up from this altar to my naivety I once called home. At this point I was coming down, but having spent so many lifetimes in this place in the same position it felt alien to move so much if my body at once. It was like getting off of a trampoline that I had lived and died on for generations. I allowed my eyes and ears to adjust to this intense shift in scenery, seeing the concrete that had begun my initial descent into madness, whose layers were slowly returning to rest. L was standing at the top of the stairs to the side door, also draped in a blanket. I was reminded of the fact that I was not the only one who had dared to take a second cap, although L seemed to have done at least somewhat better on the front lines than I did, having locked herself into the room she was staying in and listening to a podcast about existentialism and space. I informed her of the absolute insanity I was facing in this truck bed, which I was now slowly descending from. After some struggle, To managed to get the blanket back on me and began the arduous task of guiding me to the room we were staying in. On the way there I encountered H for the first time since I had left the bench oh so long ago. He fared about as well as I did, being stuck in a prison of our minds own making, except his term was held within the house, something my mind abhorred since I returned from the initial walk. Being inside, modern technology like phones, and the concept of eating were all foreign in this altered state and seemed wholly unnatural. We conversed shortly and then I made my way into the bedroom where the final stretch of this journey would take place. The visuals had drastically diminished, but the mind games were yet to cease. I attempted sleep to once again no avail. I was able to actually discuss what happened during my time in existential hell, and found that it helped quite a bit to put into words what I had experienced. After some talking, I looked up at the ceiling which still had some minor visual effects, and then down to the wall in front of me, and in the time it took my eyes to move a fraction of an inch, it was like a switch had been flipped, and my trip was essentially over. I almost immediately got up and went to the door, feeling like a million bucks and antsy to discuss the insanity of the past several hours. When I went back outside it felt like I was seeing for the first time, colors were vibrant, lights were bright, the starry night sky glowed effervescently upon me, I felt like a brand new person. R and X were just now coming back from their jungle antics, shirtless and covered in scrapes and bug bites, and apparently wanting another stem to keep the good times rolling, to which I had no qualms with. Te, R, and D all wound up taking another stem, which I decided to pass on as it felt unnecessary considering how good I already felt. We set up a fire, grabbed some beers, and all settled in after a wild ride of an afternoon, with renewed vigor and enjoyment for life. The whole week we spent at this ranch was incredibly fun, and I felt like I realized how little I actually knew about myself and the world around me. I'd go the next 2-3 months feeling absolutely phenomenal, optimistic and free of anxiety. Hell nothing in my every day life could ever be as stressful as the eternities spent in the bed of that truck. It helped me realize how much my own mind stresses me out, more than almost anything externally could ever hope. In the end I learned one very concrete lesson though; test my next batch before handing it out carelessly to a bunch of my friends, and weigh the damn things it doesn't take all that long and could have saved me 7 trillion eons in hyperspace as a plasmoidal entity, although I wouldn't change the experience I had for the world.