First Time - Awesome

This was my first trip with 2 friends who were also inexperienced. We each had about 1.75 grams, dried. The shrooms started to kick in after about 45 minutes to an hour. I remember a very anxious feeling about what was going to happen... the fact that I could never turn back now. We were in my friend M's basement with music on... I think it was Pink Floyd at that point, and we had Looney Toons on TV with no sound, and a few lava lamps or blacklights all around. M started to laugh and be amazed by simple things as the shrooms started to hit him, and I tried to feel this too. The third person in our group (T) said he wasn't yet feeling anything, so he went outside for a cigarette. Slowly I started coming around and feeling the overall giddiness that M had. He was describing effects in the order that I read that they are supposed to appear... he told me to look at a Black and white Kurt Cobain poster with a black frame around it, so I looked up at it and I noticed that the sides and corners of it were stretching or bending out. I thought this was really cool. Then I looked at the wall with it's parallel vertical lines on it and I noticed the "breathing effect" that I had read about. I was getting excited as I knew that it was finally taking effect for me, and that this was all going to finally happen.
In an instant I suddenly remembered all that I had read about bad trips, and thinking positive, and not panicking and how once you dose there is no going back, and I began to panick. Actually I didn't let myself panick... but I started to feel this huge anxiety. It was like an actual weight that came and pressed down on my chest and shoulders and started to force me deeper down... I felt as if I was sinking into the couch or shrinking. I went from not being able to stop smiling one second to really having to struggle to keep a smile on my face during these waves of anxiety (this would happen 2 or 3 more times in the next 10 minutes or so). I remember reading that if you remember it is possible, you can control your thoughts and try to guide your trip, so I began thinking of positive things. I remember thinking "You are in a safe place, with good friends... you are just beginning what will be an amazing experience, just sit back and relax...". Then I heard my friend laughing at the chair behind me, saying that the flowers were coming out at him. The overall stupidity of this made me happy, and hearing his completely honest and happy laughter made me remember how much fun I was having seconds before when I couldn't stop smiling. I think the best way to describe what happened was the way that I told my friend T later... I heard the laugh and I could feel it going by overhead, and I remembered that I wanted to be laughing too so I just went WITH that laugh, and it was just like I got onto it and rode it up to a happier mood so that I could laugh too and get out from under my weight of anxiety... this was truly amazing.
T had just come back inside after his cigarette, still claiming that he wasn't feeling anything. I decided that I wanted to go outside, because nature was supposed to be really amazing. T and myself went back out for a cigarette and started talking about what was happening... I told him how I wasn't really seeing many visuals yet, just that wall kind of breathing at me, and how even though the bare trees weren't moving or anything they were really amazing to me. It seemed like I was able to appreciate for the first time how beautiful the trees were, and how they were in a permanent pose of reaching up and outwards for the oxygen and sunlight. T and I decided to go back inside.
We went back to the basement for a little while and M was quite blown away at this point. After another 20 minutes or so we decided to go out again. T came with me out to the van in the driveway, and he was going to smoke a joint he had rolled earlier with mushroom dust in it, since he was still feeling nothing. I remember that when he was done smoking it he said how his face was numb, and I said something like "That's ok man it's all good, just go with that... be a numb-faced man for a few minutes, it's amazing." It seemed to make perfect sense at the time so he just looked at me and smiled. M came out into the van right about now, and T went inside. This is where the most amazing part of my trip took place.
I don't know exactly when it came on, or how exactly, and I don't even know what IT is, but on some wavelength M and I connected and we both had an understanding of it's existence. We spent the next half-hour or so just trying to define it to eachother, to prove that we each felt it and knew what the other was talking about, but it was too complex to put it into words. I remember at one point that I said "If we were going to try to write this on paper and define it, all I could do was write the word 'Everything' on the middle of the page. And that's it". I guess the best way you could describe it was that I (we) had tapped into this amazing dimension that was always all around us. We were never aware of it before, but the shrooms showed it to us and it was COMPLETELY amazing. Everything was in it's place and it was happy to be there. Instead of thinking about other things that have happened in life, or living in the future as people always seem to do, we were living in the Moment (which, by the way, was meaningless... we both felt that the moment is all that there is, because it is all that exists and everything else is existing at the same time because it exists whenever you think of it in your memory, which is in the moment... and for us time had been standing still for what seems like days, as we marvelled at what we had been missing all this time.) M's brother came out to the van to see what we were doing... he had been drinking and he got into the van with us (we were only in there because it seemed warmer than the outside) and he wanted to see what we were up to. He ended up leaving after about 5 minutes of silence... it was silence to him because he couldn't get it, he couldn't see all of the beauty that was all around that we had discovered, and he couldn't feel the knowledge of this or grasp the understanding the way we could. To him, we were "fucked up" but we felt sorry for him. We felt sorry for everyone who was out there and not feeling this, not aware of this amazing thing that was all around us all the time... where everything is in it's place and happy to be there... the trees, the plants, the skunk that crossed the street; it was all perfect. I remember telling M that "We would probably fail a sanity test right now... to them (we came to call everyone in the world who was not tripping "them") we are the ones who are messed up... but they don't KNOW, they don't know that they are the ones who go about their daily lives and go to work from 9 to 5 and don't appreciate everything that is around them... Wow..." Time had been standing still, and that didn't matter. The van that we were in was breathing, and we made a connection with this inanimate object because it was breathing to us, and it seemed alive like everything else and happy to be where it was, happy to have company and keep us warm from the cold wind. The house was breathing the same way, as were the trees and the earth and sky.
I remember that all I could think of or mostly say during this time looking out at the world was "Wow...". It was the only thing to describe it. I was completely overwhelmed with a sense of understanding and knowledge and well-being that I had never known existed. I also felt like I had been let in on the huge secret that mushrooms are, and that I had a much better connection to the classic rock songs that I have always loved that revolve around psychedelics, or the artists who wrote them.
Once in a while I would go inside to use the bathroom. I remember reading that you shouldn't look into the mirror because it can magnify the flaws that you see in yourself, but I was having such a good time I figured I would try it. I remember getting the strange feeling that I wasn't sure what side of the mirror I was on, and that maybe I was on the wrong one. Also the flowers on the walls were blooming and the wood grain was flowing like a river. This was amazing.
We all went back inside and ended up sitting on the porch, discussing what had happened. It was around 5:30 AM by now but we all didn't care about sleeping... we were way too overwhelmed with what we had experienced and time didn't matter to us at this point anyway. We were saying amazingly profound things that we all understood, many of which I can't remember just yet except for this one:

"You hesitate to throw caution to the wind because you are afraid of what might happen... but when you do it, and you take that leap of faith into the other side, you realize that you have been seeing things wrong the whole time. The caution isn't the most important thing... the wind that you throw it into... that is what really matters."

and we went downstairs where I watched the flowers on the wallpaper bloom, or the colors swim in the carpet. We fell asleep with a much greater appreciation for ourselves and eachother, and the world that we live in every day. I want to thank everyone here at the Shroomery who contributes to the site, and everyone who runs it and keeps it updated. Most of last week I was on here reading about shrooms and rolling the issue over in my mind... kind of nervous but too curious not to do it. Now I feel like I will never be the same, and I can appreciate everything around me so much more.