My First Christmas Break Back From College

First off I will state that this was not my first trip on shrooms...it was my second. And second, this happened a few years ago, and have since eaten mushrooms several times (who am I kidding? Many) but for some reason this trip set the standard by which every other trip after has been judged .

I had come back into my hometown for christmas break and I was excited to see my old friends (and new ones) who had some mushrooms waiting for me. They were cubes (even with the trademark blue bruises on the stem. A good sign I now know... we thought it was mold or something back then.) We had picked a good weekend at my buddy's parent's house where we could be alone and trip and play around and whatnot and not have to worry about being bothered. There were 4 of us who tripped.

We each ate 1/8 at around 5pm and popped some Vitamin C pills (1000mg each). I can't speak for the rest of them, but I had eaten a full meal before hand. Being amatures, we were not too sure when these suckers were supposed to kick in. I grabbed my portable cd player and a cd I had burned with some (now) very choice songs. As soon as i started to play it, the batteries died. Shit! So i decided (against my better judgement) to drive to the CVS around the corner-- literally a two minute drive-- to get some new ones since none could be found in the house (what are the chances, right?). I had only eaten the shrooms maybe 15 minutes ago and the last time i took them (my first time!) it took an hour to kick in, so i figured I had time to grab some batteries and come back before i could partake in the festivities. Wrong.

As SOON as I stepped out of my car at the CVS it hit me. A wave of uneasiness and slight nausea. The body fry had kicked in. Oh crap, I thought. I wanted to get the batteries and get the hell out. But this was difficult. I was confused and yet amused at this fact at the same time. I felt that everyone at the store was looking at me, and I kept forgetting why i was in there and what I wanted. So I piddled and wandered the isles in total awe of the amount of useless crap they carry at a drugstore. These were just the inital effects. After pulling myself together, I got the batteries and got the f out of dodge. I had to calm myself for the drive back. I looked in my rear view mirror and the sun was setting, a HUGE molten ball of orange waving in my mirror. I couldnt' stop looking at it! It was awesome! It was beautiful! Needless to say I made it back to the house safely.

Apparently back at the house, everyone else was at the same level I was. They were already giggling and talking about retarded things already. I was still in shock from the store. The unexpected experience left me feeling a little anxious and very nervous...what the fuck did i get myself into? So I rounded up the troops and we rolled an enormous blunt and that, my friends, is what made the difference. It eased the transition into tripping.The pot eased my nausea and I was calm, cool, and confident now. This is maybe about an hour in. So we sat in his backyard playing in his (tiny) orange trees being jackasses. Then they decided to put on a "trippy movie" So they put on Fear&Loathing in vegas. This was a good idea in theory, but in practice it was an awful idea. Sitting in front of the TV was the LAST thing i wanted to do. I could not stand to be inside wasting my trip in front of a little box. It seemed absurd. I had seen Fear & Loating so many times that I knew it line by line. I didnt need to watch this. So I grabbed my headphones and went outside to my buddy's backyard again, grabbed a blanket (It's in AZ so its not too cold :o) and jammed alone.

I pulled a chair out in the middle of his lawn put on my music stared at the sky (a larger tv hehe) and by this time I was tripping BALLS! It was dark and just listening to-- no, FEELING the music was intense! I stared at the stars while Dream Theater played "Peruvian Skies". This is a killer song with a flowing riverlike first half that turns heavy and intense...REAL intense. I mean i had listened to this song many times before, and yeah it was cool, but on SHROOMS it startled something deep in me. Not scary, but like being in an intense movie, where you know you'll be ok. Man, I never hear that song the same anymore! Another track on the cd was The Diva's Opera performance from the movie Fifth Element. I have no idea what compelled me to put that on there, but... wow. It was beautiful and amazing. I stared at my blanket in the dim colored starlight. It was performing a play...just for me... to the music! The folds and stitches in my red blanket flowing and shifting. Back up toward the sky, there were power lines going overhead that only added to the intense visuals of geometric shapes and patterns that the stars had created. The sky looked like it had the Flower of Life patterned everywhere, and under the powerlines a huge net, ready to catch anything trying to escape its realms. Each song on there had a different mood, a different style, and different tempo, and each affected my mood and thought process. During a beautiful song called "Morphia's Waltz" by a group called The Gathering, I felt so overcome with beauty and happiness that I cried and felt that I was part of God. Now I'm not a religious person, and i'm not saying I was god, but I felt connected to... It, Him, Her, The Being, Nature, The Light, GOD. All of it. Whatever you want to call it. Its Hard to explain how "everything makes sense" when you're tripping. Pieces that you never knew existed fall into place and you EXPERIENCE that bigger picture. I was taken out of my humanly realm and elevated to a position where I felt total peace. This is what I had read about when people talked of "spiritual or religious connection" and for me, anyway music definatly helped bring about that connection.

So I had no idea how much time had gone by. It felt like eternity. Until my buzz was killed by the rest of my tripping jackass friends, who waltzed out loud as could be and wondered where the hell I was and what I was doing. After that time of beauty had come and gone, I thought it was time to join them inside. That was a totally different WORLD. Going from outside (for probably a couple of hours, i listened to the cd twice) to inside was like stepping from a jungle onto the moon. Total contrast change. And I was still tripping hard. This was a little into the peak of my trip.

It was hard to adjust at first. I felt tense and wound up. So we turned off white lights, turned on colorful ones (Xmas lights, YES!) It was a suprisingly confusing and difficult process. From all the laughing, and taking a break to breathe from all the laughing we could hardly function normally. We were facinated by blinking and moving lights. The trails and strobes were just intense to stare at. Instead of just looking at the lights on the xmas tree, we got the fantastic idea to take them off the tree! We got about halfway through destroying my buddy's parent's xmas decorating before we were satisfied just playing with strings of lights (still half attached to the tree mind you) and making them spin and twirl and it looked all fun and cool...all to the soundtrack of Frank Sinatra's greatest hits. Man, i'll tell you that music got us Jazzed up! Can't even explain it. It put us all in an even better mood than we already were in. This felt like an hour long project but in reality it was probably about 20 minutes. Simple pleasures easily amused us throughout the night.

One friend wandered into the kitchen and decided he had a kool-aid craving. So he went about to try and make some. Poured the water, put in the kool-aid packet, and the sugar... alas, the house was out of sugar (which led to an ongoing joke of "what the hell kind of poeple dont have SUGAR in their house?"), so through the rest of the night he just carried a jug of water with the one tiny kool-aid packet added to it, and didnt drink it (if anyone has ever tried it sugar-less, it tastes awful), but kept it cause "it smelled AMAZING!" And my brothers and sisters, it DID. It was the best smelling kool-aid ever! And at that point, we all RE-discovered our sense of smell. It was a shroomers coke. We all would occasionally smell the fruity sweet smelling kool-aid just cause... well it felt good! Makes you realize the things you take for granted, a simple smell gave us so much pleasure. After a little more piddling, a walk was in order. We decided fresh air would be good, so we left the messy xmas-light-tangled house (with said jug of kool-aid of course) and walked to a nearby park, at about 10pm...? And the fresh air was magnificent! Looking at various trees bending and swooping against starlight, everything that was normally still-- walls, houses, CARS-- were flexible and breathing and moving. Everything was ALIVE! It was exhilirating! We tripped out at the park playing on playground equipment, layed in the grass and smoked a J till we came down.

Every thing we did at that park brought back a childlike innocence and well... a feeling i cannot describe. Like the firstime you get a certain feeling, or how a smell can set off a memory of a time that you felt truly happy.For me it was the smell of the grass linked to the memory of playing soccer as a kid. I was in heaven. Thats the best explaination I can offer. That was the closing to my mushroom trip. I couldnt have asked for anything better.

I've since had many trips, each with their own quirks and memorable phrases, astounding visuals, that have even exceeded this one, but overall, this was a great time. The discovery of music affecting the trip was something i'll take with me, and i dont trip without SOME music--any kind. It really takes you away. The next day (although physically and mentally drained-- i found it hard to fall asleep i was so wound up) i felt enlightened. Like I was a part of something so big, that i could not comprehend it. I had (temporarily) found meaning existance. You can't re-think what happened, you have to FEEL it. You have to FEEL life, words and thoughts alone are not enough.

Good trippin.
Peace.
p.s. i am not a hippie i promise... but i UNDERSTAND them now ;o)