Burned!

Author: Everlast - everlast@everlasting.co.uk

Dosage: One fresh stem from a Psilocybe cubensis, Ecuador strain. Specimen was about seven

inches long, but the cap was not present as it was being printed. (I must be amazingly

sensitive to psilocybin/psilocin).

Set: Excited, slightly nervous. Generally content, but a bit anxious.

Setting: Alone in my front room at night with lots of pillows, and a duvet.

Abstract Version (thoughts at the tail end of the trip):

So, finally I come to write.

Scared by my office assistant as it shimmies into life.

Total synaptic shock - temporal lobe storm?

Where the hell do I begin? That seems too grandiose an opening for this tale. It was

everything and nothing.

Let me spew some - mind not hanging onto one thread for long. It's been four hours on the dot

since I ate my hugest shroom - words at you, words that are both true and false.

Jamais vu, dejas vu, ego splitting/schizophrenia, synesthesia, loops in time, dissolution of my

essence into the universe.

There was Escher - at first my thoughts were confused and then as thought became so much more,

became image and sound, I understood the truth of my thought process. I saw the hands drawing

themselves, the frogs melding into each other. This was a visual representation of madness.

I felt the first form of truth, and then was able to see beyond that to the reason why I felt

truth, to a secondary truth. I was talking to myself. It was an inner dialogue, but I was

talking to me. I was two. The reason I felt the truth was because I existed as both two people

and as one at the same time, and the other would confirm the thoughts we had. This lead me as

one to think that I knew something I couldn't have, when in fact I was telling myself something

I already knew, but because I was hearing it from someone else I felt it had been confirmed.

Oh, and how I burned up. This was why they call it frying, although acid did nothing like this,

it was all energy and nonsense. This was paralysis and truth - with a fever.


Chronological Version:

At first I felt the aura of an epileptic seizure coming on. My muscles were twitching and

tensing and I was not able to get comfortable. I took my clothes off, arranged pillows and

duvet on the floor and tried lying down. It was uncomfortable, but not physically - I just

couldn't settle. I found myself turning everything off. No more monitor, no more headphones,

no more whir of CPU fan. I was trying to turn off the trip by affecting my environment, but I

couldn't as it was in me. I was so close to asking for a doctor. I knew I was going to seize.

I knelt with my head on the floor, and the world was upside down. I felt the tightening of the

bubble around me, the membrane of aura that meant I was slipping into a fit. Then, looking

upwards, to the floor, I went through the membrane via osmosis. The tension passed and I had

ridden the first wave. It feels good writing that as I have a huge fear of epileptic seizure

(being struck infrequently with them), and I learned the value behind what my mother always told

me - don't fight it, just give yourself up to it. I did and passed though the membrane.
My eyes were closed but I was still conscious. I saw a legion of gaudy, multi-coloured pinning

mushrooms and rattlesnakes' rattles moving like sidewinders from the bottom left to the top

right of my 'vision'.

I had arrived, and everything felt good. I'd felt the yin, now for the yang.

The room had become lit with two ghostly omni-directional light sources. They cast red and

green light on everything, and shadows looked like a 1970's 3D movie, or a 3D comic, with the

red/green fringes. As I became aware of the colours, I noticed the orange glow of ethereal

flames from the kitchen. I followed the fires' glow to its' source with my eyes and saw that

everything was alright, nothing was burning, but the yellowy white kitchen light bulb had gone a

deep orange. It's light felt so organic though that it could well have been a fire. I could

sense the light was living.

The tension built again minutes later and I was now lying on the sofa. I'd had a sock, the only

thing I could find, run under the tap to dab my forehead with, as I was feverish. I ran it over

my body and the drying water felt tight around me. I was freezing and burning and my

perspective was so distorted. Everything had skewed and fish-eyed. My skin was grey and

featureless when I looked at my arm, which seemed so long and thin. The hairs looked like they

were wrapping themselves around my arm, and seemed fluffier than normal.
I decided to look at myself in the mirror. I reached down for the little mirror I had placed at

the side of the sofa for checking my pupils with, and brought it up to my face expecting to see

my face, ashen and gaunt from the fever. It looked perfectly normal at first, but my gaze was

drawn towards my eyes - my pupils had a gravity that was pulling me in. They were large and at

first dark, but then I noticed a point of white light in them, right at the back. I moved my

head to see if it was perhaps the reflection of the kitchens' light bulb (the only light on).

As I focused my attention on the points of light they grew stronger and I felt as if I was

looking at something living again, as I had done with the kitchen light. I put the mirror down.

I was definitely starting to feel another wave of fear and tension coming on. Another aura.

I relaxed into it, and it dawned on me that the repeating of symptoms and action was going to be

a recurring event tonight. I knew I would be doing this forever, and that was okay because

forever was only a few hours. I realise now that my mind had started to separate. I could know

two mutually exclusive facts were real, and that they impossibly existed side by side as

parallels in the same universe. There was one part of me that knew I was only tripping, and one

part that knew I was dieing.
Warmth spread through me, totally euphoric. I felt I understood the relief of a terminally ill

patient as they drifted out of this life on a wave of morphine, which looking back surprises me,

as I do not feel my actual mindset is one that wishes to die, despite it being one that really

fails to drive me to live.
I put my hand between my legs and held myself for comfort, although I wasn't feeling distressed.

It felt good and I let the feeling of euphoria take control of my actions. I floated in a warm

bath of pleasure for a few minutes, when I became aware that I was being watched. It felt good,

but not in a sexual, exhibitionistic way. It was a benevolent spirit, and I felt its approval

and happiness flow through me. It felt like it was above me to the right, so I opened my eyes

and for a second there was something looking down at me from the wall mirror, and something

leaning over the back of the sofa watching me although they dissipated almost instantly. I sat

up and looked over the back of the sofa, to my right, where I had felt the presence. My eyes

fell upon a sculpture of an anthropomorphised sun, it's face so happy and handsome that I could

do nothing but smile back at it. I told it that I was glad it was watching over me and returned

to my previous activities.

I decided to try and conjure up images of a sexual nature, and instantly the entity that had

been leaning over the back of the sofa reappeared and elongated, becoming about eight feel tall

and extremely skinny. As it grew, it bent over the back of the sofa and took my penis in its'

mouth. I was in heaven!
As I approached orgasm I knew that doing so would mean death. Although I didn't feel at all

pressured, it did seem like some sort of test of my spiritual strength and I was glad to accept

the challenge. As I came, I watched myself fountain through my penis and dissolve into atoms.

It didn't matter though because I still existed in my original form.

Strange noises came to me after this. I could hear musical harmonies, and a voice in the right

hand side of my mind was making tribal throat music, humming, screeching and explosively

expelling non-verbal sounds. I wet my forehead with my friend the sock (know to me now as Doc

Frog - after another bit of cloth that had helped me though a bad weed/speed experience), and as

I ran my fingers through my hair I saw a jagged wave, /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\, appear it my minds eye.

It made a low, harsh humming noise, and I was convinced that the wave was being aurally

represented by this noise. I tried to chase the thought and realised my mind was now operating

on a quantum level. If I had a thought I wasn't aware of it until after it was expressed, and

yet as soon as I focused on it, it changed. I felt like I was trying to examine an atoms'

behaviour, but was altering it in the act of doing so. I had an urge to write this down, but

didn't want to leave a physical imprint of my current state for fear of it being discovered in

the event of my death.

The clock read 42212 as it had done for the whole night, then STOP/PLAY (PLOP/STAY a voice

mocked) as I tried to add the digits up. Was this how it was done? Where the fuck was I? I

looked at the room, and it was totally unfamiliar. Even pictures of loved ones were strange.

The faces had a silhouette but no features. They were just white blobs. I became aware that

the more I tried to physically do to improve my situation, the worse I felt, so once again I let

myself slip away, this time into a living, waking dream, which I can't really remember, although

I do remember jolting back to reality extremely harshly sometime later, my heart pounding with

the shock.

I was yawning a lot now, which bothered me a bit as this was supposed to be something that

happened when you were coming up, not at this stage of the trip. Was it only just beginning? I

knew that it wasn't, that I was coming down, and that was relief in itself, as I seemed to exist

as one consciousness again. When I felt more comfortable and sane, I slipped into bed with my

girlfriend and tried to sleep.

Now, post trip, I feel like I have physically damaged my brain. I have been extremely shaky and

tense for the last thirteen/fourteen hours and I have a bit of a headache. It's on the right

hand side of my head incidentally, in the spot where I sensed a presence, and where my visuals

were often leading. I need to revise the structure of the brain and try to piece together some

facts to support my theory that my trip was either actually a series of partial temporal lobe

type seizures or something very close to it.

I do not rule out tripping on shrooms again, but I am reluctant as this was such a physically

stressful experience. At least I have some understanding of why it's due such respect now. It

saddens me that something I've thrown so much time and energy into (as I've grown my own) has

left me feeling a little cold now it's come to pass.
As of now I honestly think that this was a mistake, but definitely one I needed to make. Who

knows what form time will mould my opinion into though.

Ev.