Van Gogh and mushrooms

This is my first trip report but not my first time taking shrooms. The first time I took shrooms was 2 years before this experience and for that first time I was well prepared, having spent a long while researching their effects and reading trip reports here on the shroomery. It was a great experience which I may write up at some point but was no where near what I experienced this time round.

Me and 5 friends had just spent 2 weeks travelling round Europe and were spending our final week in Amsterdam. During our travels we met a girl who worked at one of the head shops there and told us to come get some shrooms off her when we arrived. We spent a day getting used to the city's atmosphere and then decided to go pick up some shrooms on the way to the Van Gogh Gallery. She recomended the mexican supergold mushrooms so we bought 30 grams fresh each. I'd always thought of mexicans as a relatively weak mushroom but she said that she had tried every one in the shop and those were the best.

We sat down in the park outside the gallery and ate our share. I don't mind the taste so I ate them straight but my friends bought hotdogs and stuffed them in. After a little while we decided to go inside and as we were standing in the queue we started feeling the effects rushing through our bodies. It was a nice uplifting feeling, happy and content and slightly fuzzy. we decided to start at the top of the gallery and work our way down. J was already feeling pretty gone and I'd never seen him so happy but by the time we got to the top of the stairs he had a look of confusion on his face. Without saying anything he turned around and ran back downstairs to the toilet.

We started looking at the pictures and wandering slowly round the gallery. I was very chatty and acted like an art critic but I didn't feel like I had come up yet. The last time I tripped I knew I was coming up when I announced to the room "My arm's taking me for a walk", got up and followed my arm round the room. I certainly wasn't feeling the effects as strong as the rest. B and S were laughing at everything and barely paying any attention to the art because their faces were funnier to look at. L hadn't had shrooms before but was loving it and decided to go off on his own adventures round the gallery. I stayed with E. He was my best friend and I knew we should stay together so we could help each other if we get lost. He was quiet and contemplating my comments on the pictures. I stared at a picture of a forest and the trees swayed in the wind. A sketch of a man stared back at me. Faces appeared in abstract modern art. All of this I told to E and he agreed with me. There were lots of people around and though I was still ok with this, E was finding it all a bit much. I spotted a gallery with dimmer lights and less people and he calmed down a bit but it seemed like his trip transfered to me as mine became more intense. Picture frames zoomed towards me and water shimmered off the walls. Everything was so beautiful and we both started laughing. We tried to supress it and sat down for a second to calm our hysterics down. Just before we were going to get up and continue a little child came near and roared at us like a dragon. This was too much and we both stood up and walked out as fast as possible, out of breath from the laughter.

Outside the gallery we decided to walk back to the park round the corner. We walked across a gravel path and I could feel myself sink through it and my vibrations ripple across its surface. We lay down on the grass and E tried to calm himself. Noises were too much for him so we sat in silence. I marvelled at the wind as my arm sank through the earth. Each time it blew it would drag colours with it so they flowed into each other like rivers. E decided we should head back to the hostel as he needed somewhere quiet. I had knew vaguely what to expect from shrooms but the others had only had a mild trip before. We started heading back and the sun shone down on us making everything glorious.

When we reached the road I realised how far we were going to have to travel to get back. The gallery was the other side of town and, more to the point, I had no idea how to get back. I followed E for a bit until he sat down. I assumed he was trying to work out the way back so I looked on my map. The page swirled and the letters of the street names would dance around whenever I tried to read them, teasing me. I got more confused because I had 2 maps with me which were totally different but I couldn't tell the difference between the 2 so I would think I was on one map when I was reading the other. "E, I have no idea how to get back.". "Its this way" he said and started walking again. "I knew all the time, I just wanted to sit down". The waves would come and go in intensity but there was always the colours.

He was still finding it difficult a way down the road so we stopped in another park. The ground was wet so we couldn't sit down. E answered his phone and then put it back in his pocket. "Who was that?" I asked. He just stared at me for a bit. I asked again and he said he didn't know so we started walking again. The moose in the mountaineering shop stared at me suspiciously. The world swirled with brilliant colour and I felt so warm but we still didn't know the way back. Through the window of the building opposite I saw racks of guns against the wall. A car pulled up playing loud rap music which seemed too hostile. It seemed like I was a creature with no knowledge of the evils of human nature stuck in this world, but back at the hostel I had the power to cure all this.

We forgot briefly how to cross a road. Not that we just walked straight across without looking, we just stood on the pavement trying to figure it out. This was a problem all the time in Amsterdam as the roads have 4 lanes: Tram, car, bike and pedestrian, but they all just run into each other. Once across the road my phone rang. It was L. He asked if we could come meet him. We were far from the gallery by now and we had no idea of how to get to him. He said he was enjoying it but had just spent the last hour and a half upside down in the toilet. We suggested he tried to find the others. I lent against a wall and started melting into it. I found this a bit strange and thought about pulling away but a voice inside me told me to wait. I found myself becoming the building and I could move it with my body. I learned about the building from the inside. I am an atheist and gave up on God and religion early but this made me contemplate the exsistence of spirituality once again. We carried on our walk and came across 4 canals, one after the other but each was exactly the same place. This was from walking straight down the same road and it seemed like there was some form of time travel going on. We would talk to each other about these things but nothing we said was important to us, we were on a quest.

We arrived back at the mushroom shop and saw the mushroom girl so stopped to speak to her. She was going on delivery on her bike. She was only small, about 5 foot, but when she met her that time the bike was twice her height. This was good, we knew we were going in the right direction at least. We set off again. As I swung my arms they would retch off into the distance, bringing amazing colours with them when they returned. I concentrated on this and my vision stretched off with them, suddenly turning round. I could see myself walking, a bright glowing light in the background peircing through the purples and orange around me. I was me but that was not how I look, maybe more how I look from inside. We reached a square we knew which E said was actually a portal to medieval times. We took a short cut down a side street because it was pretty.

I eventually found our road but it seemed to stretch for years. I was so glad to find our road, just in time in my opinion because I couldn't cope with my hands falling out the back of my legs when I reached into my pockets any more. We rushed into the hostel and found the lift. As soon as the lift doors closed reality changed. We were safe and the world was now ours to create. Then it dawned on us that we started out as 6 and were now 2, maybe they were back in the hotel room, especially J who left the gallery after 10 minutes. But no, it was just us. we sat quietly for a while, calming down while staring at the walls and carpet, seeing hidden symbols. I tried to write a text message to my girlfriend back home but the words would shrink when you concentrated on them while other ones could become larger it obsure it. Although I knew it would never work I carried on trying for a while because it was such a fun game to play. We decided to do something like roll a spliff but we kept forgetting what we had decided to do. We made a mental list to help us. It went as follows:
1) Make a list
2) Make a list (just in case we forgot)
3) Roll a spliff
4) get some music on

I got up to go to the toilet but as I turned round E found my shaving gel and pressed down the top, intregued. The floresent gel fired all up my leg, making my leg glow and become more than a part of my body in ways I can't explain. We started laughing and giggling and the atmosphere stayed like this. As I came out of the bathroom from washing it off we heard a strange knock at the door. Hestitantly, E opened it and B fell onto the floor laughing hysterically. He had had the time of his life on his trip back but you could not get a word out of him that made sense. We got some music on, some heavily drug influcened blues by the name of Captain Beefheart. We sat around laughing for ages and whenever the laughter subsided, one of us would make some rediculous noise and set us all off again. I lay down and my legs would stretch to infinity. We were coming down.

L rang. He said half his body was paralysed and his body was popping. I told him that the shrooms are his friends and they won't hurt you if you don't want it but he wouldn't listen. I asked where he was and he said that he went to find the countryside but he'd tell me why later. I asked if he wanted us to come and find him but at that point his phone cut out. There was nothing we could do so we went downstairs for a spliff. J and S appeared with the biggest of grins on their faces, followed shortly by L who looked very shaken up by everything. I felt warm and at peace with myself. This afterglow lasted for the rest of the evening.

My friends experiences were varied. After leaving us at the start, J decided he had made a mistake so went to throw up in the toilet. He spent the next 2 hours in there before lying on the grass outside thinking about jumping out in front of a tram to end it. S stayed in the gallery for 4 hours, staring at a book of pictures, getting jealous that the gallery could have these pictures and he couldn't. He decided to get one for himself but decided against it at the last moment just before his pulled it off the wall and went outside where he met J. S picked him up and started walking him back to the hostel and after 5 minutes of walking he had a revalation that left him with a huge smile on his face and a newly acquired love of mushrooms. They went on a mission to thank the mushroom people for their gift but couldn't find it. L was lost in the gallery for 5 hours and then walked in the opposite direction to the hostel. This was his first time taking shrooms and he had done no research. Shrooms deserve respect and if you do that, they will reward you well.

The whole period lasted over 8 hours and is probably the most memorable experience of my life, none of us will forget it. Theres so many parts to this I haven't been able to put in because they can't be explained in words, like the strange connections with time but this explains most of it. I feel that shrooms have let me connect with beliefs, nature and myself in a way nothing else can and it is something everyone should experience once. I can't wait to have the shroom experience again and I'm looking into growing my own.