Space Donkeys!

I got a good night's sleep on Sunday night, and consequently I spent much of Monday in a state of contentedness and general well being. When I found myself still in a good mood after a whole day's work that settled it: It was definitely time to go back to Mushroom Land.

I've had these dried Psilocybe Semilanceatas stored in my fridge for a few months now. At first they'd provided some pretty wild trips, but latterly they'd been getting disappointing. I was beginning to think they'd lost their potency - in that I was completely wrong.

I got home with an empty belly and in a good mood. Knowing this to be the ideal Shrooming condition, I immediately counted out 50 Semilanceatas and ate them dry whilst I waited for my evening meal to cook, disguising the awful taste with some Doritos and grated cheese. When my meal was ready I sprinkled the remaining crumbs onto it and ate the lot.

As the Euphoria slowly crept up on me I received a telephone call from a good friend. She told me that her troubles at work had possibly reached a favorable conclusion and she was happy. I told her I had eaten some shrooms and was expecting to start having a good time pretty soon. We had an enjoyable conversation for a while, then I told her I had to go and stare at the ceiling for a while and I'd talk to her again tomorrow.

The friendly conversation probably set the scene for what was to happen next, but the thing that got the trip started was the Psychedelic Screen Saver on my home PC. One moment I was just looking at it, the next I was staring at it in awe and fascination. I realised that the anxiety I was feeling about the trip was just the my normal overactive state of mind - I was obsessing on trivial details as usual. I told myself it was OK to stop fretting about what I had to do in order to have a good trip - I could just sit down and have a good trip.

I began to perceive 3 dimensional ethers coming from the screen saver, I allowed myself to fall smiling to the floor and watched those ethers as they swam through the air in front of me. I'd somehow contrived to put on the album 'Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space' by Spiritualised at this point and it fit the trip perfectly.

Remembering that phone call I decided that a little human contact would go down well about now, so I began planning a hairbrained trip to see a friend who lives a few miles away. This took a while because I was having trouble coordinating my thoughts. I had the feeling that I had some great plan possibly involving food, Marijuana, music or some combination of the three that I'd forgotten. Eventually I managed to load a bag with some Dope and CDs, put on some shoes and some trippy red-tinted glasses, play the guitar for about an hour, then leave the house.

My friend lives uphill and my asthma set in whilst I was en route. I was delighted to see that somehow my Inhaler - which I rarely carry these days - was in my bag with the dope and CDs. One sniff of this completely cured my shortness of breath, which gave me a sense of power and youthfulness. I began to write revolutionary documents in my head "I'm not getting any older."

My friend was not at home, but that didn't bother me at all, because walking around with my red tinted glasses on was fun. On my way home I decided to sit down in a nearby park and smoke some dope. I sat down on a convenient wall, but unfortunately people kept walking past. I knew that this was a student area, so in fact I could probably just get out my hash pipe and smoke openly and if anybody hassled me it would probably only be 'cos they wanted me to share. I didn't have the guts to spark up though, so eventually I moved on. I removed my red glasses cos I was getting self-conscious about them.

I decided that instead of going home I would walk to a nearby bridge that crosses a high valley and enjoy the view from there. I kept stopping on the way to sit down and enjoy various bits of nature and just wander around aimlessly. I started wanting to pee, but the public toilet was locked. I spent so long looking for a place to piss that I eventually decided to releive myself right in the middle of a common, where fortunately noone was around. I was fascinated with all the places I was seeing. I kept remembering going there as a child and the experience seemed to give me some kind of perspective on my whole life.

This part of the trip demonstrates how drug taking is effected by people's perceptions: To a passing policeman I'd have been a degenerate 'Drug Addict' shambling around urinating and staring at trees for hours on end, to Cheech and Chong I'd have been a stoned hippy, off in my own world having a groovy mystical experience. In other words you can interpret people`s behavior any way you like: The people getting off their heads outside your window can either be Dangerous Drug Addicts, or Groovy Psychedelic Trip Heads, depending on your point of view. If everyone adopted the latter approach society's 'Drug Problem' would immediately be over.

Anyway, after enjoying the amazing silhoutte of the bare twigs on a certain tree against the sunset for a while and staring in awe at Mr Isambard K. Brunel's amazing illuminated Suspension Bridge, I decided finally to treat myself to that Hash Pipe in the very same deserted common where I'd releived myself earlier. This was probably the 'high' point of the trip. I felt that I was after all getting older, whilst at the same time remaining young. I had found the way I was going to live my life and was at peace with myself.

After that I wandered off over the bridge, and once on the other side it seemed futile to turn around and go back the same way, so I began a lengthy trek down the side of the valley, where I could cross the river by a lower bridge on the outskirts of the city where I live. This was another long, aimless, enjoyable walk in the dark. I saw faces looking at me from bricks and walls, I thought how great it was that I could walk past poor people's houses and rich people's houses so close together. I talked to myself a lot and was happy, though I thought it was a shame I didn't meet up with my friend and so would be unable to share this mood with anyone.

At the bottom of the Valley I found myself slightly lost, trying to make sense of the system of signs and fences that they'd put there to confuse pedestrians trying to use the lower bridge. I could still I K Brunel's much groovier, higher bridge glowing at the top of the valley.

I found the remains of a plastic bag tied around a fence and wondered how it got there. I touched it and a strange feeling came over me like a gust of wind. Out loud and without knowing why, I said "Uh oh... Part Two".

I thought that there was something sticky in the bag that had got on my fingers. I thought it was superglue. I thought it was sulphuric acid. I thought it was some incredibly pure drug that had been left tied to a bridge by insane crack dealers as part of a million dollar drug deal. I thought I might be in intense pain and bleeding to death and not aware of it because of the shrooms. It became very important to me to get home. Luckily for me home was just the other side of that crappy little fenced-off bridge.

When I got in I splashed water on myself and concluded that I was not in fact covered in dangerous mind-altering slime, but when I tried to sleep I found that I was obsessed with the idea that I'd crapped myself. I had two showers, but couldn't convince myself that I wasn't covered in shit or some unknown slime.

When I've had anxiety trips before I've always been able to escape via the 'back door' - taking a lot of dope to alter my mind-state away from the bad shroom trip. If I'd been able to get my bong together, or if I'd just done a bit more dope that might have worked this time, but as it was the small quantity of hash I then smoked through my pipe was no match for this nightmare anxiety trip. Eventually I snapped out of it and was able to sleep. Possibly the hash helped with this, possibly not. One thing that I found helped was to force myself to concentrate on my actual perceptions and think really hard about the difference between what was definitely real and what was internal nightmare.

Looking back I am grateful for the trip I had. The good parts easily outweighed the bad and the whole thing was filled with revelations and little personal self-discoveries. It's a shame all the bad stuff came at the end of the trip and spoiled what would've been a great night's sleep, but everyone who takes shrooms knows that experiences like that are part of the deal.

Tim