Everything is Illuminated

It was a cold Friday afternoon when the “box of truth”, as we all later agreed to call it, finally arrived from Amsterdam. After my mother had left the house, my friends S., Sch. and L. came over and, full of excitement and anticipation, we opened the box. It contained one gram of Salvia 5x, 10 Hawaiian baby Woodrose seeds and 40grams of Philosopher stones, which we decided to settle for that night. After measuring the small dark pieces, we were happy to find that it was in fact 5 grams more than we had paid for – which left exactly 15 grams for S., Sch. and myself. L. had volunteered to be the trip sitter, which we all appreciated, as this was to be our first psychedelic experience. We were well prepared; I had read immensely much on the topic and we had waited for the shrooms for weeks.
We decided to cut the stones up, chew them and flush them down with orange juice – they tasted somewhat like nuts at first, with a horrible aftertaste. I had to fight vomiting very hard. I decided to simply swallow the pieces without chewing them; apparently, that did not decrease the effect. After we each had our 15g down, we went to my room and put on some music. I had prepared a few triptoys, such as an orange plastic kaleidoscope and lots of paper to write and draw on.
After about 15-20 minutes, we all started to feel “something”… none of us could quite put our finger on it at first. Soon, Sch. started laughing like crazy and rolling around on the floor, and only minutes after that he declared that he saw colorful dots with his eyes closed. We all laughed a lot and I felt my limbs get lighter; my arms began moving practically without my control. In the meantime, S. sat down at my desk and began to write and draw something; he looked extremely concentrated and none of us dared to speak to him so as not to interrupt his chain of thought. I did not feel as much as Sch. yet, who was still rolling around the floor, but soon I saw the first colorful pattern appear behind my closed eyes. It started out as a few dots of light and then became a fairly complex pattern of lines that were centered around two triangles. Later, whenever I closed my eyes, I usually saw diagonal stripes of psychedelic colors such as turquoise and orange. I dimmed the lights in the room and suddenly everything changed. The entire room seemed to have a whole different mood, a different color and a different feel to it; now, with my eyes open, I could see strange circular patterns of light on the walls. Occasionally, the room suddenly changed colors – from a warm yellow to a bright green, blue or red. Amazing.
I was extremely fascinated by the visualization of my iTunes and I seemed to be pulled into it. This was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. I felt like I was part of the colors and the movement, until I accidentally pressed a key and was completely thrown off by the psychedelic visualizations disappearing from my computer screen. I put my ear on the computer table and suddenly the music sounded completely different - I could hear the table vibrate and the sound being numbed and transformed by it. I was completely fascinated by this, until my phone rang right next to my ear. I got incredibly scared, as I was laughing and talking uncontrollably and was completely unable to hold my thoughts together as they were blurred by countless sensations. Nonetheless, I picked up. It was my dad, and with a tremendous effort I was able to tell him in a fairly reasonable way that I had some friends over and that this was a bad time. Soon thereafter, 2 friends of mine called – we had decided not to tell anyone about our trip, L., who was watching us, had a really hard time fighting them off since they urgently wanted to talk to me (of which I was quite incapable). A few times, I got scared that my mother would return early, but I was comforted easily as she was only due home well past eleven.
Around an hour into the trip, I began ascend to my peak, which would last very long and have many different phases. S. and Sch. Were lying on my Persian rug, and once I looked at S., then turned around to see him again, behind me. I got very scared until I figured out that I had confused their faces. They looked very different than usual to me; S. seemed to have huge eyeballs throughout the entire trip, and Sch., who was mostly lying on the bed talking to himself or thinking, was constantly chewing gum, which I thought would drive me insane. Every time I looked at him, he had a blank expression on his face and did nothing but chew his gum. While S. was writing furiously at my desk, I noticed that my rug seemed to be moving – the circular pattern in the center seemed to be alive and pulled me in like a tornado, until I lay face down in the center of my rug. L. was filming us occasionally, and I looked into the camera and left a message for myself that I intended to be a remainder of my state of mind for later. I watched this when I was still on the trip to some extent; it seemed very freaky.
When I looked at him, I did not understand what S. was thinking, but he looked like a genius writer to me – somebody like Shakespeare, furiously scribbling things down on dozens of papers, mumbling to himself and occasionally throwing the papers off of the desk in frustration. What a character, I thought to myself.
I first began using the orange plastic kaleidoscope, which turned out to be the best trip toy imaginable. I scanned my rug with it and was amazed by the moving patterns, and it felt like it became part of my hand and was giving off heat. I felt like I could form it like warm clay. Then I turned it around and looked through it the wrong way, which was even cooler, as it completely warped the entire room to a curved orange cave. However, when I suddenly looked at L. through it, who was sitting on the bed, watching us and taking pictures, I got unbelievably scared. He had become a very strong, heavy man with a beard and an incredibly and profoundly evil look on his face. I screamed and tried to climb my radiator, but he managed to calm me down. I took up most of his attention as I seemed to be tripping quite a lot harder than the others.
Then, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. This was when the serious visuals began. Against a colorfully striped background, I saw people leaning in over me, handing me imaginary glasses of water which I tried to drink. There was a clown and a large hexagonal bear without a face and leaves as his fur that came very close to me. People were constantly opening and closing doors, and the visuals were very three-dimensional. I thought I would go insane because everything was so amazing, so I clutched L.’s arm because I needed some anchor in reality. It felt strange and soft, and I could later even see all the hair fall off of it. It felt warm, but dead like a sack of sand. When I had my eyes closed, I could hear his voice when I asked him to talk to me, but it came from all directions even though he was sitting right in front of me. I was never able to locate him by the sounds. Then, a butterfly-winged fairy threw down a yellow piece of paper next to me, for which I searched frantically as I knew it was extremely important. I had my head in an empty bookshelf next to my bed, and I knew I was tripping extremely hard.
When I opened my eyes again, the room had changed colors again. I walked up to the mirror, even though I had told myself it would not be a very good idea. When I looked at myself, I saw that my face was asymmetrical and was widening on the right side. I saw a greenish-purple pattern on my face, and then it started to melt. I pulled my fingers off my right cheek and touched it with my hands, and the skin of my face and my hand was becoming one and melting away as I pulled my fingers off. I felt very contradictory emotions; sometimes, I could recognize myself, then, just a few seconds later, I talked to my mirror image like to a stranger.
I realized that something strange was going on in my mind; I was constantly debating with myself and contradicting myself. My thoughts were so fast I could not even register what I was thinking. I realized that my ego split itself up. That, all my egos agreed upon. I kept saying, “I am five different people” – in fact, that was just a rough estimate; at times, I felt like I had about 20 different personalities that were switching and alternating faster than I could understand.
Then, I looked at L., who was asking me a question. I just stared at him for a few seconds because although his face was familiar he looked like a stranger. I even asked, “Is this you?” because I really wasn’t sure. He turned his head for a second, and when he looked at me again, he was a completely different person, but again with the same appearance. His personality seemed completely changed; at least, I thought so by looking at his face. Then, I looked away and looked at him again, and once again he was different. “Every time I look at your, your personality changes.” In fact, one second he was talking to me and holding my hand, and the next second he seemed to completely ignore me like a stranger. I could not make much of this, although one of my multiple personalities was well aware that this was my friend.
Again, I was hallucinating very strongly with my eyes closed. I was sitting on the bed for a while and clutching L.’s arm very tightly out of fear of losing my contact with reality. Then, “Session” by Linkin Park played, and I tripped very hard. I was sitting on the bed and my arms were floating, and I could feel that my body was completely empty. I knew that it was just a weightless contour or silhouette filled with nothingness, except that I imagined stars in my body. I floated. I was tripping so fucking hard to Session. I mumbled something about putting the song on repeat, and in fact it turned out to be the trippiest song of the night (even though every song seemed perfect). I asked L. repeatedly, “what do my eyes look like?” because I felt that they were full of emptiness – he only told me that my eyes were closed.
When I opened my eyes again, the room was in an intensity of color that I had never seen before. My friends were lying on the floor, looking at me, and everything was so overwhelming that I withdrew into the far corner of my room and I felt that my eyes were wide open, wider than I thought they could open. I waved my hands in front of my face, and the motion blurred everything so it seemed like I had ten fingers on each hand under a strobe light.
A little later, I suddenly became extremely conscious of the state of my room. Even though it had looked like this for about an hour, I instantly became aware of the mess. Someone had dropped one of my large speakers, pillows and dozens of papers were lying all over the floor, my school books and folders had partly been carelessly thrown into a bookshelf and were partly in my trashcan. Some of my clothes were lying around as well. I stared at the mess and realized that I could not think of a greater chaos in this world. I thought, even if the walls would be torn down now, it would not look much worse. “My room looks like a fucking graveyard”, I kept repeating.
I decided to leave my room and go play the piano. S. was still busy writing and really enjoying the music and Sch. was just lying on the bed, saying that his hat was part of himself and still chewing his fucking gum. Since I needed the most attention anyways, I took L. with me, who sat down next to my piano as I began playing. I could not recollect any piece at first, but I felt much more like improvising, so I did. It felt amazing. I have rarely played better than that night, and I kept morphing completely different and beautiful melodies and keys together. It felt unbelievable. Since I was unable to put into words what I felt, I knew I could only express it with music, and it worked. I played my innermost emotions, and they were part of the music, and so was I. I felt completely at home with the sounds, as if they were a place I could go to. The piano was doing exactly what I wanted it to do, and I played out everything that was on my mind as if the piano was my mouthpiece. This may have been the best moment of the night. I could feel my emotions that had not been clear to me with my physical senses now. It was like they had suddenly been translated into a beautiful language that I could understand.
After I had stopped, I looked at L., who had been listening. He said something, but I just noticed that he had grown a full beard in the meantime and was now Sigmund Freud. This did not seem like a very unusual or special thing to me, so I decided to go upstairs to look out my large window with the nice view. However, before that, I had to drag Sch. out of my mom’s room; he had his feet on her desk and I was afraid he would make a mess. He was still chewing the same gum, needless to say.
When I went upstairs, all the houses on the other side of the street, which is about 70-100 meters away, seemed to come closer and I could see all the light with great intensity. I could see everything extremely clearly, almost as if I was using binoculars. I looked into a row of four lit windows in an attic opposite of mine, and although it was very far away, I could see every little detail as if I was zooming in. I saw a black-haired young woman with a ponytail at first, but then she became three identically-looking Japanese schoolgirls with white blouses. I could not see their faces, and they were running around very swiftly. They kept opening doors in the middle of the room that weren’t even there, and disappearing through them, just to reappear in some other imaginary door. Then, a white figure drifted through the room, while the girls were just running around or through it. She was a ghost, dressed completely in white and with white, short hair. When she came back, she was a man with a white hooded sweater. These were my most obvious open-eye visuals, and they were amazing.
When I came back down, Sch. was lying on the couch, and he was a ghost too; his face was completely white with large dark blue holes for his eyes and mouth. However, this did not bother me much, and neither did Freud, who was sitting next to him. Music came out of my room where S. was changing songs and constantly singing “Martini Sensation” (to the song “My Teenage Sensation” and dancing. I ran my fingers over my home cinema screen, and it made a beautiful noise that became part of me. I could still touch and feel my emotions. I had trouble walking or even standing straight, but I felt amazing. My emotions had become a little clearer, and I knew I had to write them down, so I did: “This is truth. This is truth. This is beauty. Nothing is more real than this. I have more senses than I can feel”. Indeed, I felt so many sensations that there were not even senses for that I could not understand them. I realized that there were so many things in the world that we could not feel, and my dormant new senses had now been awakened to feel these inexplicable things.
This was the most philosophic part of the trip. I understood that there were countless realities and that the one we knew was just one of many, and at the same time it lost all its meaning and gained infinite meaning. I knew that there was some profound truth that nobody could understand, and that there was more to the things we feel. Emotions became infinitely deep, and all sensations that my I perceived with my senses connected and morphed to produce new and inexplicable hybrid sensations and feelings.
I looked at L., who still looked like Freud, although at that time I already knew that it was just an illusion. Sometimes I talked to L., sometimes to Freud, and I said to L., “I don’t know what you are, but you’re not real”. And I meant it. Reality was a word I could no longer define, although I was just becoming aware of its true meaning.
I began playing the piano again, this time with L. and Sch. listening for a while. I heard Sch. say, “he’s so good”, and it meant incredibly much to me. This time, I could partly recall the piece “Für Elise” and I used parts of it in another great improvisation. After my audience left for my room, I noticed that I could now communicate with the sounds. Now, they no longer reflected my emotions, but each note had a personality of its own. Without any effort on my part, I watched them interact and could see them communicate with each other, talking, fighting, interacting and also talking to me. Some sounds turned their attention to me, and we communicated without words. They were simple and abstract beings, but I could fully understand them. I opened the door to my room, where my friends were sitting over a pack of chips, and said, “I just made friends with sounds!” Laughter. At this moment even I realized how absurd this must sound.
We were all past our peaks, so we talked about what had happened. The room still looked like a graveyard, but it was not as bad as before. L. was lying on the bed, quite exhausted, while S. and I were imitating the skaters in our school who go crazy over their little insignificant highs. Ignorant little stoners. We all agreed that alcohol and weed had completely lost its fascination, and we planned to be abstinent from both for a good while.
We did not have any more visuals, but we still felt very strange, and after I had said something to that extent, we were all suddenly in the sixties. The 60’s were like a place, I could step into and out of it by just crossing an imaginary line, but we had a lot of fun while we were there as we all thought it must have been a great decade to live in. Little by little, we all came off, and when my friends left and my mother came home at 12:30, we were mostly off of it, although still somewhat confused.
In conclusion, it was the greatest thing that I ever felt and saw, and it even got me off Weed and alcohol for a while. It was great to have S. and Sch. there, they were fantastic trip mates, and L. was the perfect sitter. We all agreed to do it again some time not too soon, and in a lower dose. We had settled for level 3; I went up to a very high level 4, at times even 5. Anyways, an unbelievable experience. Everything has lost its meaning, or gained several new meanings. I don’t know. But I have seen the truth.


Quotes by myself(recorded on video):

“Oh my god, this is SO FUCKING INSANE!” (repeated about 100x)

“My body is doing something, and I’m like, wow, what the fuck are you doing, and my body is just like, wow, I don’t give a fuck, man, I’m just moving without you; and I’m just like, fuck off man, and my body is just like, whatever man, whatever, and then I’m just like, yea, fuck it, I’m trippin’.”

(Video message to self): “Holy shit, I know what I felt like I’m gonna say when I hear this again! I mean, whatever, that didn’t make sense but when I hear this again, I’ll know what I meant, man; this is to you!”

“I am five different people!”

“My room looks like a fucking graveyard!"