A Major Shock

I live in Christchurch, New Zealand, a city with lots of bark gardens which could well have been designed for mushies. Well, last autumn, about 3 weeks before mushies usually start to pop up I decided to have a look at one of my favourite spots. To my surprise and delight there were lots of shrivelled old goldtops (psylocybe cubensis?), turned black from age sitting under some shrubs. I picked them and took them to show to some friends. We decided there was enough for three mild trips (around 40-50 mushies in all, but fairly old and wilted - probably lost their potency), which we would save for the weekend.

We took them at my flat at about 7 PM Friday. About four friends and flatmates were sitting around having drinks. After 10-15 minutes all of us were getting the speedy light unsettled coming on feeling. We all agreed it was too soon after ingestion so we knew the trip would be pretty intense. Shit, intense was an understatement.

We went downstairs and sat by the fire. By then the walls were moving, textures were turning to liquid, etc, I was tripping. Someone put on NIN's first album, Which I find depressing, so I took a look outside. Cool. Lots of pretty colours. But my trip had nowhere near peaked. When I went inside the others had gone, and I myself was too gone to deal with drunk people. I made a futile attempt to find the others, but delerium and paranoia got the better of me.

The next few hours (or god knows how long) were spent writhing around my room in the dark feeling more scared than I have ever felt before. During this time I talked to the earth (or mother nearth herself maybe), who had a moan about how the human race was devouring the planet and told me that mushies were her attempt at self cleansing (people eat them, get enlightened and stop fighting and polluting or something), and they shouldn't be taken for granted. Other than this I was getting the most intense visual and oral hallucinations I've ever experienced. Everything in my room turned into a liquid plastic representation of itself, ever changing and forming new shapes. If I wasn't shitting my pants wondering if I was still alive this would have been cool.

When I could move again I staggered outside and encountered the most beautiful feeling that everything had been born again. It was a crisp clear frosty night and everything was sparkling. My peace was soon shattered when some petrolheads drove past hurling abuse at some poor pedestrian, so I ran inside again. Everyone was back and still seemingly alive, but the trippers were still tripping hard and the others were too drunk to be any comfort, so I somehow convinced myself that I was in my afterlife. Eventually I talked to the other trippers, who were both as fucked up as me, and we established we were all OK, and this was the real world.

Wow. How can a few wilted old goldies do that much? Not the load of fun I was used to from mushies. I have seen them in a different light since. As Mother Earth told me; don't take magic mushrooms for granted.