Inadvertently dosed!

(Actually happened on December 11, 2001. This account written from notes taken the morning after. Bordered on a 4-5 level.)

Last night was something crazy. Recording some music, trying to find a reason to live and I'm literally falling asleep. No liquor or cigarettes, just coffee, no inspiration. I take a nap and for 15-20 minutes dream wacky images. I come to approximately 8:05 pm and nothing's right, can't get anything working. I realize I'm going to sit on my ass all night and be depressed, so I got it in my head to trip.

I had a stash of shrooms that I had grown about six months earlier with a large assortment of full shrooms, caps and stems and I also had a medicine vial with 6 or 7 perfectly beautiful and fully developed shrooms that I had been saving for a special occasion.

Recently, twice over the past week or so, I had eaten what I thought was a great deal of shrooms but received little to no effects. Maybe I drank too much alcohol first or ate twice, one day after another, so tolerance was a factor. THIS time I wanted to be sure. So, I ate all the medicine vial shrooms. Then, I began sorting out the baggy, creating a pile of "usable materials". Now, I'm not sure what possessed me to do it, but I just started eating this pile. I paid no attention as to how much I was eating.

About 9 or 9:15 I got the first of many [visuals]. Concentrating on a Christmas light, the rest of the wall turned into plasma while the string of lights hovered perfectly clear. I shut off all lights but a candle and listened to ambient music. Then, I switched to older music I had written.

It was moving along fine when I started to fixate on the music and the creation of music and the use of the mind. Here, I started a downward spiral. I remember thinking about my command of the psychedelic experience. If I'd only known what I'd done. I knew as long as I could lay down on my side and feign sleep, I could just ignore it and ride it out. This is where it got out of control.

The music began to irritate me, so I shut it off. I'm cold in my apartment laying on my bed. The candle flickers. I begin to fragment here. "Myself" is not a recognizable entity. I see and feel many of "myself" and notice the living souls in the paintings on my walls. It was around here, I lay down on my belly in the manner of sleep trying to recover. I realize now, I was waiting for this first wave to break. I'd never ever experienced a first wave of such ferocity. As I lay on my belly, I lost all concept of a human being. I had four, five, six selves, all stationed around me on their own individual trips. I talked to "them" or whatever you'd call it. Now I grew truly fearful.

I rolled over and saw a group of dark figures rise at the foot of my bed with sickles and other such instruments. I knew if I let them, they'd tear me to shreds. I couldn't stop them. It was here I began to hear the "engines". This is the only way I can describe it. From the void, a sound all around me building slowly, but forcefully, like a jet-engine reving-up. Above me, I see a wax impression of myself, positioned horizontally, melting away under a blinding light as the sound builds and the world begins to engulf me. The sound gets louder and louder as the drippings fall on me. I try to get away. Waiting for this wave to break, but it only carries me higher. What do you call this? Ecstacy? Every emotion at once. I had the urge to piss, shit, vomit, cry all simultaneously.

Then, at what seemed to be a climactic point, the sound stopped and it was utterly quiet. "I" was nowhere. A barrage or a flood of thought passing through, over and under, linear reality never existed. The more I struggle to regain a coherent thought pattern and analyze what is happening, the more I suffer, the more lost I become.

This was the beginning of about two hours of this. Two hours of relentless and naked exposure to "myself".

About 12:15 or so I felt the wave start to break. The first wave. I've always perceived trips on mushrooms to have definite "waves" like a roller coaster. You go down and fast and it's horribly intense, but then you come back up, slowly, weightless and can almost collect your thoughts before you go back down. THIS trip had a three hour plunge with absolutely no relief.

My first coherent, purposeful thoughts felt like water after a week in the desert. Only glimpses, though, but some reassurance that it would end. About two hours into the ordeal, I had this thought that I had somehow gotten my hands on a vial of LSD and drank the entire thing or spilled it on my hand or something. I had no recollection of anything, and as most people know, fear can turn into a monster under these circumstances. I was unprepared and horrified and sure I would be lost forever.

The next half-hour was a little easier. Coming-down. This part resembled the most hardcore trips I'd ever had at that point. In and out. Dragged down and thrown back-up. Wave after wave, but a breath every once and a while. Then, I remember snapping out of it, instantaneously, and feeling the most overwhelming joy. Rambling to myself for the next two hours. Disbelief I'd done it, but thankful I'd lost my mind about five hours earlier.