i died...

The first time I tripped on shrooms was quite an experience.

It all started 6 months ago on a cool Thanksgiving evening. My friend "M" had managed to come through with a big bag of shrooms, about 14 oz., for myself and my friends "E" and "J". We were at J's house in suburbia when M broke the news. "Sweet!". I was very psyched about tripping shrooms for the first time.

The plan was to wait until the next day, then trip during the daytime at M's house while his mother was gone for the day.

We had settled in at J's house for an evening of drinking beer and watching movies when M decided we should trip "NOW." J felt cool with it, and I was so pumped we decided to do it. E was upstairs asleep as he had flown in a few days earlier to visit from college. We woke him and told him the plan and he was cool with it.

We grabbed our stuff, M's girlfriend "S" and headed over to M's house.

M and S had both tripped several times before on shrooms and led the show. M started boiling some water to make tea and we relaxed at the kitchen table. At least I TRIED to relax, but couldn't. I was really psyched about the ordeal (as if you haven't gotten that already.) I had smoked a good amount of pot in my day, but was hesistant to try any harder drugs. I had heard bad things about X and acid and did not want to make any silly mistakes with drugs. At the same time I did really want to "expand my mind" and try something unusual, and shrooms seemed the perfect choice.

The tea was prepared and M poured us all a healthy mug of the brew. The leftover shrooms from the tea were placed on a saucer and we commenced with a seriously f***ed up version of a tea party :) We all drank our tea down, though it took me a little longer to finish mine than the others. As we sat and sipped we all nibbled from the plate of shriveled shrooms. Opposed to what I've heard these warm, moist dried-mush leftovers did not taste too awful. Rubbery and a little gross yes, but not too bad. I ended up eating a VERY healthy sice of the saucer shrooms and finished my tea. All in all I estimate I had about 4-5 grams (or, as I would later learn, 2-3x the recommended first dose).

Our tea finished we all made our way outside to the patio. M's house was one of those houses in those communities (you know what I mean, the communities apart from the rest of the town; all the street names end in "wood" i.e. "candlewood", "birchwood", etc.) Despite this, he was lucky and had a decent backyard, sloping from higher on the left down to the right, bordering on the woods. It is a very relaxing place, and there we were, pacing around the patio.

After 35 minutes of pacing I was certain we had gotten bogus shrooms (it had happened once before, a total drag I assure you). M, sucking on a cigarette and thoroughly calm told me to relax and that they would kick in soon. He couldn't have been more right.

Within a few minutes everyone felt sick to their stomachs. E and J were both feeling very sick, and E ran to the side of the patio and vomited on the grass. M followed a few minutes later. J and I held our own.

Then I started really feeling it. As I stood on the edge of the forest in the cool November air, I started feeling very... well it is hard to describe. "Powerful" comes to mind. As I stood there and looked at the trees in the darkness I felt I powerful. I felt as if I could do much more than I could before. I can remember myself saying over and over "This is way different than weed. This is way different."

M, E and J headed inside. M and E were starting to feel it as well. J was still feeling a little sick to his stomach and had not felt it yet.

This is where it starts to get blurry. J and E sat down in the living room to play Playstation, specifically the game "Nitrous Oxide." It is the equivalent of a very tripped-out 3D version of Space Invaders. The colors are fantastic and it really looks like you're flying through these tunnels in your ship. Anyhow, the visual stimulation required to pay attention to this was beyond me... I turned on some 311 on the stereo. Though their music is fast it is in a very positive vibe and I felt right at home.

I sat down in a comfortable chair near the music. A sliding door was open in the room (most likely to facilitate M's 4 enormous, annoying dogs), and the room was too cold for me. I did not want to leave, however, my good friends were in the room and I had nowhere else to go. I put on my dark red coat, flipped the collar up and zipped the coat all the way up. I then stuck my head into my coat and lost track of time.

Inside my coat I found a wonderful world. It was in a mall-like building. I was floating around inside in the third person (it did not sem as though I was actually there, but I was, go figure). The "mall" interior was not sharp and rigid, it was smooth and blob-like. It pulsed with life. Every surface consisted of a single image repeated. The image like a choppy movie clip of an Andy Warhol print. The character in the image was black and white and moved around choppily against a bright, single-color background. As I neared a column in the mall I noticed the character in the image was me.

He noticed me and looked right back. It did not startle me, I was intrigued. He mirrored my movements in every way, but he was definitely conscious. I just stared at him and he stared right back... I have no words to describe the feeling, but it felt as if I was getting a chance to really examine myself, see myself through the eyes of others, etc.

My friends said all they saw was me, sitting cross-legged on an old chair with my coat over my head, laughing sporadically like Butthead in slow-motion ("huh...huh...")

After that the shrooms cranked it up a notch. Basically at this point myself, M, J and E ran around the house like idiots, running into glass sliding doors, chairs, tables, walls, each other, etc. At this stage I was beginning to feel that I could pass through objects, unsuccessfully trying to pass my hand through a wall and the stairs). S (M's girl) was not tripping and was pretty calm through all this, however I was not.

It was in this period that I started heading downhill. I have since read and heard that shrooms don't really MAKE you feel good, they simply amplify the way you're feeling already. Well, I had dropped out of college not too long ago and was at odds with my folks and deep down was not feeling real happy... and it showed in the trip. I became very emotional; I was frustrated, hyper, anxious... I had to run to the bathroom and did (on the way running INTO the fridge). I must've stayed in the bathroom for at least an hour, but it didn't feel like it whatsoever. I sat there and just zoned out... it was happy, peaceful... I realize noe this was a "time trap", where you can just get stuck in a moment of time. I was feeling very fucked up, and was getting amazing closed-eye visuals, all kinds of shapes and colors, drifting together, apart. Beautiful, clear images I had never seen before but were real for me. When I chose a single image out of the group I found I could "zoom in" and see the picture in better detail. It seeemed very real. At this time my friends outside were wondering "what is he doing in there?" I had already begun feeling paranoid before and this did not help the situation.

It was then, in M's bathroom, that I got the thought in my head that I was dying. I must admit that I am afraid of death, and, quite obviously this scared me. I thought I was driving along with a friend of mine whom I had met at school, and we took exactly the same route as we had driven the last time we hung out.

My friends kept banging on the door and yelling (do not ever do this when someone is tripping, please), and eventually I got myself together and got out of there. For the next 30 minutes or so I ran around my friends house ("scaring the shit out of the dogs" as M would later recount). At one point I jumped up onto the couch in the living room. I then jumped again and fell onto the couch again, this time with my hands pointed towards the pillows.

At that point I flew INSIDE the couch, where I floated around. I felt very safe and secure, but also felt pressurized, as though the environment inside the couch was too thick. I found it hard to breathe and I came out of the couch.

I then walked over to the dining room table and looked at my reflection. It was another person looking back at me. He looked like me, but it was not me. He moved around even as I stood still. It was very strange and eerie. It was at this point that I tried to pull myself out of the trip, as I can do with a weed high. I tried to pull back from the strange world that I had enveloped myself in and take a breath of fresh air. I could not. Even as I said to myself "Wow, that's fucked up" I knew I was stuck. The walls kept moving and the room kept breathing.

The next hour or two is very blurry, but at some time myself and E were running around M's bedroom. I tried to do a headstand on the edge of M's bed and fell, almost knocking over a table. Then I thought I was dying again. I was on M's bed and thrashing around, scared. I tried to crawl between M's bed and the wall, and had a harder and harder time breathing, as if the air was slowly being squeezed out of me. It was now that I saw myself talking to all my friends, seperately, and zooming over to another friend when I finished with another one. I realized that one of my friends was not really as good of a friend as I had previously thought. I was inside my friend's basement closet and a wall of repeating images flashed in front of my eyes, covering up my entire view. It was a choppy-movie image (much like a poorly done animated GIF, now that I think about it) of a girl from high school. I had regrets about this girl because I really liked her, and apparently she had liked me, but I had never had the guts to really talk to her. She was absolutely gorgeous and exotic (and a gymnast I might add). I lay there in the musty-smelling basement (all this is while I'm actually still in the bedroom) and I'm dying. Eventually everything goes black and I am dead.

Waking up a few hours later was the strangest thing I have ever done. Everyone says they've been so drunk/stoned "the next morning" that they don't know where they are. I woke up from death and did not expect it. I never thought I would wake up again. The house was dark and I had no idea where I was. I stumbled into the hallway en route to the bathroom and saw E stumble by. He looked completely foreign. He mumbled something and I mumbled something incomprehensible back. I finished up in the bathroom and then looked at myself in the mirror. It was like a stranger looking back. My eyes were very dialated, my hair was all over the place and I was very pale.

At this point I was not high but still in the "afterglow" stage. I could think fairly rationally, and things had stopped "breathing", but my vision was still screwed up. Everything had a residual flow to it; everything looked passively wavy, like when you looked at the road far ahead on a summer's day. Even when I focused on an object, a lamp for instance, it still gently rippled. It was very odd but also very neat.

I discovered all my friends layed out in M's brother's bedroom and I joined them. Everyone had come down, but myself and J talked about our afterglows, and J said his stomach still felt queasy. After awhile everyone started passing out (it was 5:30 am at this point) and I picked myself off the floor and went back to M's bedroom to sleep on the nice, comfortable bed. After a few minutes on it I felt paranoid and slipped back into M's brother's bedroom and slept on the floor next to my friends.

Looking back it was certainly an experience, and I look forward to doing shrooms again. However, next time I will do 1.5-2g instead of the 5-6 I took that night.

Lessons learned:

Do not trip alone! If I did that trip without anyone else there I would have gone mental for sure.

Have a trip sitter (the more experience the better); someone who is not impaired who can bring you down or pick you up if you get in over your head.

Shrooms will magnify whatever you're feeling x 1000. Shrooms are much more emotional than LSD/X/DXM, etc. Do not trip if you're anxious, if a family member or loved one has passed away, etc. Shrooms will not "pick you up".

Start small. Shrooms are not like beer; just because you can chug more doesn't mean you should or that it will be "cool". I didn't eat alot for these reasons, I ate alot because I was a little too excited/anxious to trip balls. Start with >2g.

Do not trip in public! If you are really tripping you cannot control yourself, let alone anyone else.

Trip somewhere where you are confortable. My friend's house was fine for me, I've been there a million times and can navigate it blind. It is important that you feel safe in your environment because you will see and hear strange things, and walking around in the woods would freak the hell out of me.

Plan your trip. When does the trip have to end? Make sure someone will not have to leave to pick up their little brother in the middle of the trip. Set aside a block of 6-8 hours that are solid.

Have fun! Keep yourself in a positive frame of mind and remember: you're not dying! :)