my first trip (heaven and hell)

before my first trip, my roomate who had tripped several times before, said on more then one occasion "there is your life before tripping, then there is your life after tripping" The trip started off at my apartment, with the roomate i mentioned and one of my best friends, we each ate atleast the equivelent of 3grams of dried shrooms, but the ones we had were fresh grown "wet". within about 30 minutes we started to feel the effects, the top of my head began to tingle and it felt good to rub it, especially since it was nearly shaved at the time, we stepped out on the porch to smoke and i soon noticed that i became much more aware of boundaries like doors, the outside verses the inside and things like that, and our small porch seemed huge. after that we went back inside and listened to some mp3s while watching cool screensavers on my roomies computer, soon my other roomate came home, extremely stoned, he is a cool guy but kinda intense, and more so when stoned, the 3 of us agreed imediately that it was to much for us, and that we had to leave immediately. I wasn't thrilled at the idea of driving but staying there was even less desirable, so we got in the car and took to the back roads, we eventually found a small bridge, parked and walked around on it and just kinda chilled for awhile, i swear it was the coolest bridge ever, and after leaving we were all pretty sure there was no way in hell we could ever find it again. After the bridge we eventually made our way to a near by lake where my friend had some property, other people lived on the property sometimes in trailors so we tried to stay away from them, but the lake was great, it was night ofcourse, and the water looked like smooth black ice reflecting only the moonlight, and the trees made very nice shadows. i had to get very close to the water and look hard to see even the faintest ripple from wind or anything. We then proceeded to just explore the woods, and i remember feeling child like and experiencing the most intense feeling of adventure. we dicussed the lights of the trailors on the property and wondered about the people, but decided that they were doing their thing and we were doing ours and thats how it should stay. i also remember thinking i saw a magical elf village in the distance but that might also have been the lights from the trailors, but still very cool.we played in the woods somemore, and it was strange how intuned we were with each other and what each was feeling, a very strong feeling of empathy among the group. eventually we decided to leave, and began driving somemore, we stopped at a convience store, and bought snacks, i got some burnt peanuts which we all agreed was not just a good idea but for somereason almost a necesity(it was like i knew thats what everyone wanted, we had other similar seeminly psychic experiences). it was very strange being around people in the store, and i got out as quick as i could, we were in my roomates home town by then which was near by the town we started in, we saw a cop, which was diconcerting but luckily he didnt seem intrested in us, but that was probably when my trip began to go south. eventually we made it to one of my roomates friends house, he came out to the car and we smoked a blunt, i knew him and he is a good guy and had tripped before so he didn't bother me at all, but the blunt, was a bad idea, atleast for me. I should have known better given that i was already worried about the fact that we were driving around while tripping, and soon we would be stoned too, but i smoked anyways. Weed and i dont seem to go well together, i seem to get most of the bad effects and not alot of the good ones, im very laid back by nature, but instead of mellowing me out like it does alot of people, i start to get what i can only term as mildly skitzophrenic, which is why i eventually stopped smoking, but anyways, we smoked and then drove some more, stopped on a dirt road and chilled for awhile, things were still ok then, but after we dropped our friend off and started to head home, i began to feel more and more uneasy, during the drive, there was something in the road, we had to slow down and swerve around it, but at the time we werent sure if we hit it, or what it was(or atleast i wasnt sure), and for a moment we we wondered if it was a person. after the trip and after checking my roomates car for blood the next day i remembered we didnt actually hit whatever it was and just went around it, so even if it was a person we didnt hit them but my friends assured me that it wasnt a person. anyways i cant remember if this happend before or after the swerving incident but i began to get panicky, started to ask when we'd be home, i contained my panic for the most part, but my friends still noticed it though im sure at its peak it was a 100 times worse then they probably ever imagined it was, sometimes the music on the radio became so intense that i felt i wouldn't be able to take it and would either die or go insain, infact the fear of loosing my sanity began to increase greatly, i felt like my mental well being the rest of my life hinged on being able to keep myself sain at this moment, eventually i moved from fighting insanity to begining to think we might be dead or dying, then soon i made the transition into fully believing that we were dead, and that driving on these seeminly endless country roads was indeed the after life, and that it would last forever. And the meaning of "forever" hit me and i had to confront it, and now feel like i truely know what it means and feels like. Also during all this, i was trying to remain calm and i made some progress, i would become completely content, and resign myself to the way things were, then the shear panic and horror would come back for a second, and then in the next second contentment again, then horror, and i alternated between these two states for atleast 15-30 minutes every second or two, all the while still relativily sure we were still all dead, eventually the closer we got to home the weaker that delusion became, and started to get it together, but still felt rather uneasy, especially since at the time i still wasnt sure if we might have hit someone while driving, and i was unsure that the things i had been feeling would ever go away. Then when we finally got home i felt much better, still a lil worried about the things mentioned earlier, but much better, then i remember all of a sudden talking to my roomate. For along time i have had intrests in philosophy and religion especially Zen, science also, and had been reading alot about theoretical physics, quantum physics and stuff like that, the actual moment when it all came together i cant remember, but suddenly i found that for the first time all the things i had come to believe and think in the last couple years but never truely feel were now no longer just thoughts and or even beliefs, but now pure truth, and i felt it(regarding the oneness of everything, ect...). i also remember just after that repeating insitantly that "our whole life was actually the trip" eventually after that i went to bed, and after some difficulty fell asleep. my trip lasted roughly 6 hours the first 4 were the most fun i've ever had and the last two were the worst in my life. with the exception of that strange moment i had that i can only describe as something akin to the kensho experience in Zen, a shallow one, but similar to kensho none the less from the various descriptions i've read, though i'm not sure it was kensho, i am sure if it was it was only a shallow one and definately not full blown satori. but i enjoyed it very much. in those last two hours i had been to the very edge of death and sanity, and actually died for a time. The feeling that i've truely faced death and possible insanity is as strong and real as anything i've ever known still to this day. As for the kensho like experience i dismissed it as cool, but drug induced and likely meaningless. the day after the trip like i mentioned earlier i checked the car for blood and eventually remembered that we didnt actually hit whatever that was in the road and felt much better, and upon speaking to my roomate that day i told him i agreed completely with what he said about there being your life before shrooms and your life after. For the next few days i had an odd feeling that things were somehow different but it eventually faded. a couple months later, i began reflecting on my trip and all i experienced probably because i was reading another book on Zen at the time, and i started meditating, within several days of doing all this reflecting and 3 days where i meditated for aleast an hour every night i had a couple other odd experiences, first during one of the meditations i had a vivid hallucination more so then then anything i saw on my trip, but through reading discovered that such things were common and should mostly be ignored as they might serve as a disctraction to obtaining full enlightenment, which by now was my goal. anyways the second thing that happend was i woke up the day after the 3 or maybe 4th time i had seriously meditated, and during the course of the day there came a moment where i started to look around me, something was different, and then it became clear that everything was different and upon that realization i soon felt great excitement, that i was truely free to do anything i wanted and was in a state of almost complete fearlessness, this persisted for atleast the next week or two at almost the same intensitly with which it started, over the next few months it has slowly faded and platued, but i have kept something of it, and am still aware that things are still "different" like they were that day i woke up. This experience again i can only relate to some type of shallow kensho, but again i dont know for sure, but i doubt it would have come without the experiences i had on that first trip, and it is indeed that trip that motivated me to seriously begin meditating, and i have been ever since. Also aftet the trip i felt like i needed to get my life in order, i wasnt unhappy in the least before the trip, but the feeling that i couldn't go on like i had been nagged at me, i have changed much because of the trip and the experiences i had after it that i feel were related to it, but still not enough to completely get rid of my tendancy to procrastinate. Though not all of my trip was good, most of it was, better then good infact, but the experience itself was all good, i felt joy, i faced death and insanity, it was a hell of a ride, and i learned a great deal from it, and in general feel like i have faced the worst things i could ever experience and i survived, infact they made me better then i was. Though i cant in good conscience say that i think everyone should trip, i can say that for me personaly it was one of the most positive and profound experiences of my life, and one of the best things i ever did. oh yeah i forgot on the car ride home we saw a raccoon and stopped and had a quick chat, but he only said hello and went on his way since he was in a rush for some reason i have since tripped once more and that time i didnt smoke out, and i didnt take as much, i held it together the whole trip, but i think due to the fact i took less then what is considered a normal dose by most people, the trip was much less profound, but still good and somewhat enlightening none the less. The best advice i can offer to anyone who is thinking about tripping is just "let go"....harder then it sound for most i think, and i'm not sure i ever did completely, but am sure that your trip will be better if u do.