Day at the beach

About 8 of us decided to go camping at Long Beach, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. No less, we also decided to pack along about 30 grams of shrooms.

A little past noon we boiled up about 12 grams of shrooms and a few teabags in one of those percolating coffee makers that you use on a camp stove, and then strained the liquid into an empty wine bottle we had. Then we headed off to the beach. We sat on the beach and split up the dosages. Most people had 2 small cupfuls, which probably worked out to be about 1.5 grams each. I had one cupful to start. All my previous experiences I've had pretty intense nausea, and while it went away, I always puked my guts out when it was first coming on. Going into the trip, I fully expected that it would happen again, but I didn't care. I thought, so what, I puke my guts out, and then 10 minutes later, I feel totally great. Who cares, I was prepared for it, and it didn't matter. None the less, I decided I would do things a bit differently and take it easy at the start, with just one cupful (maybe 3/4 of a gram).

About 30 minutes later, I was barely feeling anything, while my buddies were going... Oh wow. I really wanted to catch up to where they were, so I guzzled the remains of the bottle, a fair bit more than the second cup everybody else had. About 15 minutes later, I started to feel, ahh.. Now I'm getting somewhere. I thought, this is weird, I don't even feel slightly sick. Some of my friends who had drunken a lot more at once at the beginning were starting to feel a bit anxious and queasy. I was totally calm and totally free of anxiety, which again, was a bit unusual for me, as I'm usually the most anxious one out of the bunch. Anyways, we all started going for a nice long walk along the beach.

Things were starting to kick in a bit more, but for me, I thought, hmmm.. This isn't enough. So I ate another small handful of dried shrooms (maybe a gram). When you're a bit "up" already, somehow they seem quite fine to eat, and I didn't notice any taste at all.. They seemed neither good nor unpleasant, just neutral. This is coming from someone who hates mushrooms so much I refuse to have them on my pizza. :) We continued to walk along the beach, and I continued to munch. During the walk things started getting progressively more and more vivid and dreamlike. The transition was very subtle, gentle, and smooth. I think I attribute this to consuming slowly as opposed to all at once. Absolutely no nausea, I felt totally great!

It was a gorgeous sunny day, a few sparse clouds in the sky, a nice gentle breeze, not too hot, not cold at all.. Just perfect. We all continued to walk, and as I walked on I suddenly began to notice how incredibly beautiful everything was. I would look down at the sand and see the footsteps left behind and the shadows within the sand where a person had once walked. I would see seaweed, shells and things on the beach, and all the amazing patterns and colours they made. The sand was filled with beautiful waves and patterns of lighter and darker coloured sand. I said to one of my friends "Everything looks like it's been put through some sort of crystal-clear Photoshop filter". We continued to walk on the beach.

After a while we all decided to go sit down next to some logs and relax a bit. One of the guys was intent on digging an arm-sized hole to china. Another bunch of friends decided to try to balance some large and heavy logs on top of some other logs, creating an interesting and large piece of artwork. It took many of them to lift up the logs to put in place. Fortunately we had brought some munchies. Gummy Bears, Sour Berries, Lychee nut fruits, Fuzzy peaches and other lovely treats. It was amazing. Chewing some Dentyne Intense gum was "an experience in itself" as one of my friends put it. Lovely.

A few friends decided to light up a joint and have some tokes. The rest of us decided not to partake, but I decided to munch down another gram of shrooms. We just relaxed, talked about silly things, and enjoyed the sunshine and the beautiful breeze and wind. I looked down at the sand and watched how the wind morphs and moves tiny particles of sand around. The sand danced and melted as I watched it. It was very dreamlike. Suddenly the next bunch of shrooms started to kick in. For the first time in the trip, I started to feel a tiny bit queasy, but after what felt like 5 minutes it soon passed.

Things started to seem even more intense and dreamlike. I closed my eyes and I saw spectacular kaleidoscope moving patterns. The beach was incredibly serene, but simply closing my eyes I saw some of the most intense and beautiful moving patterns I've ever seen. I was really enjoying things by now. My friends I think had come down a little bit, but were still quite enjoying things. I looked and the crystal blue sky and was amazed at how fantastic this was, but at the same time everything had a really intense and surreal feel to it. I looked down at my legs and they seemed as if they were a mile away. Time seemed to have no relevance. I said to my friend, I think I'm pretty mega-fucked.

Some of my friends who smoked the joint were in a bit of a different space and started to turn much more inwardly and started talking about all sorts of interesting things, like fractals and theories, the meaning of our existence, and all this. For me, this inward thought was just not where I wanted to be. I felt like I was a child again, perhaps 5 years old, and I desperately needed to play. I looked at the ocean and I again was very drawn to it. I played with the sand some more, and I had a intense craving to just start getting really creative and paint pretty pictures in the sand, but I decided to leave that for the moment, and go on a bit of an adventure towards the ocean.

I walked along the sand and everything was flowing, sparkling, and beautiful. The sky, the air, the wind across my body, I could feel everything as if it were a beautiful fluid dream. It felt like I was walking miles to the ocean, and as I walked to closer to the water, I noticed the tide was coming in. The tide coming in had this interesting white stuff in it. As the water would come in, the white stuff would swirl and spin to make a beautiful pattern all along the edge of the water. Not something I really wanted to stick my toe in, but it sure looked beautiful.

I walked further along the beach, where the waves were coming in more intensely. I rolled up my pants and started walking along in the water. The waves coming in were like fluid Jell-O, morphing and flowing up and down the beach. I loved the feeling of the cold water on my feet and splashing about was a lot of fun. Each wave would come along and run up on the beach, and millions of bubbles would swirl and spray. Watching just a single wave come up ashore was an intense experience in of itself. I continued to enjoy this for quite some time, enjoying the sun, the breeze, and the water.

I saw some people jogging by, and watched some people surfing in the distance. I thought, wow, I bet boogie boarding would be pretty intense right about now. I had my wetsuit in the car and the boogie board, but it was about a 20 minute walk away, and I wondered if getting in deep water and dangerously strong currents was the brightest thing to do in this state of mind, so I decided to just continue and enjoy things, besides, I wasn't all that ambitious.

A friend who didn't do as much as the rest of us had to leave the camping trip early as she had to work early the next day, so we walked her back to the car to see her off. (she had come down fully) The walk was fun and while everyone else had come down a fair bit I was still in quite a dreamlike state. I flicked the sand forward in front of me as I walked and noticed how it danced about like fireworks.
Everyone was quite peaceful and chatty, not so much about inward thoughts but just about simple mindless things like dreams of what we wanted to do, like do some rock climbing together, and my friend was interested in having me teach him how to sail Hobie Cat sailboats, which I like to do when I'm not tripping on the beach. :)

Everyone was very at ease, relaxed, and calm. Things had started to come down for me a bit now too, and things were still very pleasant but not nearly in such a dreamlike and surreal effect that it had some hours ago. We drove back to our campsite, munched down some food, and drank some lovely wine. The wine seemed to really make things nice and pleasant afterwards, and with the aid of the wine I barely noticed any kind of comedown at all.

Around midnight a few of us were all feeling still pretty perky and enjoyed a long walk along the beach in the moonlight. I slept well and woke up feeling refreshed. I had some dreams, but instead of the shadows and vague images I would usually dream, some of the images I dreamt were incredibly vivid, clear, and lucid. No hangover at all, but the morning seemed a little more beautiful and dreamlike than usual.

Not only was that one of the best trips I've ever had on shrooms (this was my 3rd time doing them), but I think it was one of the most visually interesting and fun experiences of my whole life! Having such a great environment to do these in surely helped me feel like a child again, enjoy and appreciate life, and allowed me to direct myself away from anxious thoughts of who am I, what am I doing here, am I happy in life. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against having mushroom experiences that delve deeply into these inner thoughts, but at the same time focusing on experiencing the purity and beauty of the environment around you brings one to just let these anxious thoughts release and allow one to just be totally at ease with one's self, now, and in the future.

I think I will definitely do mushrooms again, definitely in the daylight, in a serene environment with some great friends.