Purple Haze

I recently had a mild experience with shrooms after eating 6 of them. Last night I decided to up the ante and double the amount. My girlfriend and I ate 12 semi fresh shrooms at 17:45 on an empty stomach. We downed two glasses of orange juice in case of nausea. Within 30 minutes I started noticing effects.

An inner anxiety started building somewhere inside of me and I began to notice shifting shadows in my peripheral vision. Not long after that I started passing through the first stage of intoxication. Everything seemed humorous and we both started laughing. I turned on the TV and noticed everyone was talking with an echo. At times I couldn't even make out the language. I started watching Bram Stoker's Dracula and was really getting into it when my girlfriend called my attention to an oriental fan we have hanging on the wall. The fan was shifting into 3D patterns and appeared to be breathing. This was so cool that we turned off the TV and sat watching the fan for a while. Eventually I dimmed the lights and put some Jarre on the stereo and turned on the lava lamp. The lava lamp cast shadows onto the ceiling that seemed to take on all sorts of shapes and images. The music floated out from the speakers and gave the impression of other people being present in the room. None of these things seemed the least bit scarry or unusual at the time. Everything was blanketed by a happy, funny feeling.

The experience went on till 23:30. My girlfriend swore she saw a little gnome peak around the corner in the hallway and smile at her. At one time a picture fell off of a shelf on its own and my cat started freaking. She carefully stalked into the room and puffed up her tail while looking at the shelf where the picture was. I had the distinct impression that something had entered the room and was watching us. Again, this didn't seem the least bit scarry or unusual at the time. My girlfriend also reported seeing John Lennon's face in the wood grain pattern of the kitchen cabinets. We never lost complete touch with reality but the visual hallucinations continued steadily for a few hours. Finally we started coming down and got really exhausted.

The only bad part of the trip was wanting the effects to go away so we could get some rest. We went to bed and finally dozed off around midnight. We both woke up the next day feeling fine aside from having headaches. Overall the trip was fun and pleasant. I would like to have experienced some more useful insightful thinking but the mushrooms caused too much distraction. I think that deep trance states could be reached but it would take a lot of concentration and will power to suppress the intoxication. Also, the experience was very tiring mentally and physically and I don't think I could bring myself to indulge in it more than once a month or so.