Screaming Meenies

This was the worst trip I'd ever had. Of the handful of bad trips I've experienced in my career of eating mushrooms, I'm glad that this one approached me early on... it became a sort of trial-by-fire approach for dealing with the milder poor experiences. After you have jumped from the airplane, you come to lose your fear of falling off the porch. The funny thing about bad trips is that you are going to have at least one. These episodes have value. Bad trips not only allow you to assess your own personal willingness to eat drugs, but they can serve as a good 'grounder' when you start to begin taking your voyages a little too casually. I don't like them, but perhaps they are a psychedelic method of self-regulation. A gentle push now and then in order to test one and their resolve to progress within the augmented realm of their hallucinations.

If you're not yet ready to drive deeper, you know it and you don't bother to argue. It all just gets too damn crazy from there on in. Without further pause, It was along time ago. I was 17 and had been eating lsd steadily for about a year or so. I found out about mushrooms and had tried them a few times, they were a nice change but a little too expensive when compared with the dirt cheap acid rollercoaster.

Mushrooms here go for about 7$ a gram if you're a fool, and a wonderous fool at this time I was. I had gone to a shindig with an ounce of mushrooms split into weighed grams. The intent was to eat a couple grams myself and then sell the rest at the party (I am adamantly against the selling of drugs now, give them away if you must). Some fella had been there before me and he had sold everyone this purple dinosaur acid. The early crowd was cooked, I ended up selling all but 9 grams to people who showed up later on. I popped back two grams myself, and began to wait for the show to begin. I was FLOORED. Completely. These mushrooms were the strongest I have ever encountered. The two grams I ate put me right up on the moon. Given the lack of rational thought, I then fell upon my only plausible course of action. I sat back, looked around, and ate everything I had left that hadn't been sold. It took me no more than 3 mouthfuls to finish off the last 7 grams.

I admit to remembering a little nervousness after swallowing the last of the dried fungus, but it was a little late for second thoughts. I wandered over to a couch in the middle of the room. The lights were off (it was downstairs, the party was upstairs now) and I started seeing heavy multi-textured patterns of geometric colour everywhere. A rolling twisted mass of giant electric snowflakes folded out from whatever I stared upon for too long, and things in passing were not objects but whirling animations of impossible forms and radiant colour arcs.

It was an exstacy! This stage progressed in fuller and fuller patterns unt! il I became able to make out meaning, it was a history of humanity and the continual conflict we had waged as a race for centuries. Warring tribes rose up before me and nations gave birth to whole civilizations right in front of my eyes. The repetition of this history was circular in form and mournful, birth through destruction, rebirth, conquest, loss... I was aware of it all. I watched helplessly as knights rode shining into fields of innocents, cleaving bloody paths through stands of golden grain. I gazed crying as women bathed naked and children played unknowing in the warm sun. I had borrowed the eyes of a god. I was cursed to witness our endless cycles of futility. I couldn't move. I lost the ability to differentiate between my own form and that of the couch I was resting upon. I could see both masses clearly, where my legs stopped and the couch began... but could not define exactly where the two became seperate. It was relaxing in a meaningless way.

At about this time a few people came down looking for me. I apparently scared the shit out of them as I was completely unresponsive and not aware that they were even in the room. I eventually noticed them and began to attempt interaction but found it hopeless, I just couldn't quite communicate clearly with them. I wandered off into another room and sat watching television. This was when the otherwise benign evening turned foul. It is now essential for you to realize that I have an unusual private fear. Deep down, nothing gives me the willies more than the notion that animals only pretend to be animals when people are around, and that when left alone they are actually perfect mimics of us and our behaviour.

I realize this sounds childish, but imagine the feeling you would have if you just happened to catch your dog one day walking around the house on its back feet, erect, opening doors and peering through cupboards. Shit. He knows you see him, so he just slips back! down on all fours as if nothing was wrong... a dog again, who'd believe you about it anyway...? Keeping this in mind I began to notice that the people at the party were not actually PEOPLE, but were rather ANIMALS pretending to be people.

What made matters worse was that they all knew that I was the only real person there, and they all knew that I was aware that they were all truthfully animals. Every single one of those bastards knew that I knew what was going on, and they were all content to let me be aware without ceasing for a moment this game of playing people. When I looked at one of them, I could clearly see the human face stretched like a mask across the underlying animal features. Dogs, cats, goats, and many others were all present. Each seperate animal a mockery dressed loosely within the skins of the people I knew. I began to wonder how long this had been going on. I began to doubt I had ever known real people at all. I fucking lost it. I tried to get out! of the party.

Retrospectively, people were just trying to help and make sure I didn't end up hurting myself. At the time I found myself surounded by pawing beasts. It was horrific. They would never let me leave. I couldn't be trusted to keep their secret now. What would they do? What was I worth to a beast? I was rescued by a close friend who dragged me outside and got me walking home. We had a few kilometers to go and it felt like it took forever to make it back to my place. As we walked I began to come down a little bit and started to talk. I hadn't been able to talk until then as the words just went through my head too fast to vocalize them. I could clearly think (or at least it felt like it at the time) but just couldn't slow the process enough for my musculature to communicate the flow out from my mouth.

Talking also helped me. I began to feel a bit more in control. Eight hours after the birth of the trip I finally felt solid enough to pronounce myself down. It was a vivid and terrifying experience which fully articulated to me the concept of a drug induced paranoia. Even though it has been a number of years since that night, I can still recall many of the details of the event with a pristine clarity. It is as if this is a memory I must bear from now until all ! time is lost. Sometimes now, I find myself under the influence of the divine mushroom and wondering over the details of that long ago evening. I consider myself lucky to have survived with an ego intact, and I limit myself to no more than three weighed grams of mushrooms a trip now. It's better safe than sorry. I hope that helps you all out.