Get Off The Toilet!

My foray in to the absurd can be summed up in one short sentence.

Crap or get off the toilet!

My friend (I'll call her Lucy) and I were both seasoned mushroom veterans. I have been a subscriber for many years, and Lucy has shared a number of fine experiences with me the past two. We both decided to take it to the extreme a week ago and each consumed nearly 10 grams of Psilocybe cubensis (Mexican variety). No matter how many times I eat shrooms, they taste fouler and fouler each time. I didn't even bother trying to chew them in to pulp, I just slammed them with a tall glass of OJ. Now that wait begins where you realize there is no turning back. Time to prepare mentally for the unknown. I had done as much as 5 grams at one time, but never more. I believe 5 grams took me to a solid level 4, so 10 should catapult me over the edge. I have heard that a good Psilocybe cubensis can take you to ego death at about 7 grams, so I was starting to sweat it. My mouth had been packed with dried shrooms before I managed to push them down with OJ. This time I was either being seriously brave or incredibly stupid. You are about to find out the latter was to be my unfortunate path.

Lucy and I just sat on my couch and looked at each other for the first 15 minutes. My palms were getting sweaty and I think Lucy was feeling the same way. What had we done to ourselves?! The wait was an eternity all its own. My mouth was watering and Lucy started blinking at me like a busted typewriter. The first recognizable effects couldn't have come soon enough. We wanted to start the journey, fearing we might not make it back if we had to wait another minute.

My first clue that the psilocybin was working was when Lucy's hair started to morph and swirl about her head. I asked her if she was feeling anything and all she could do was mutter something about her skin color. I could tell she was very scared, and that didn't help the situation any. She had the stoned look of someone going in to shock. Normally we laugh quite a bit at first, but this time the seriousness of what we had done was hiding our usual amusement at the mushrooms calling.

Slowly I descended in to my usual mushroom trance. Lucy followed suit and we both layed back on my couch to try and get more comfortable. I probably could have chosen better music. I had Paul Oakenfold's "Transport" in and its hard driving bass made my heart tremble with each beat. While the usual sort of sanity slipped away, I noticed my gut was grumbling worse than it ever had. I started feeling my mouth water, so I feared I might have to toss my cookies any minute. I looked over at Lucy and she had the most stern look on her face. I reached over to touch her and my hand floated right through her arm! Now I was getting scared! I leaned over and tried again, this time touching her with my finger tips. My dimension was shifting, as I couldn't even comprehend normal spacial distances. Lucy was there, just farther away it seemed. My eyes were pinned open and everything was starting to take on this rubbed out appearance. Lucy looked back with the most shocked look. I said something about really feeling the shrooms, and she just managed a nod and mouthed the words "What have we done?" We locked hands and leaned back, preparing for a peak that was at least an hour off.

The path to enlighentment can take any form your twisted mind can imgaine, and mine was just starting to twist. I was afraid to close my eyes because the usual patterns were sharp and cutting. My stucco ceiling was breathing like the underbelly of a Beluga whale. So white as to defy definition. This seemed much more reassuring than what the underside of my eyelids had to show me. Lucy had laid back and seemed in a slow trance, her eyelids flickering like something undernearth wanted out. It was probably her!

Before I could even comprehend what was happening I found myself paralyzed. I couldn't move! I would look down at my arm and say, "arm move!" and it would just lay there like a dead log. I had never been paralyzed before, so this started me to worrying even more. By now our hands were sweating, but it felt like vaseline between them. I couldn't even really feel Lucy's hand, just a strange wet warmth seperating them. Lucy was still head-back and deep under the shrooms knife. I decided that fighting it was scaring me too much. Time to dive in. The music was chanting funny words at me, almost hypnotically asking me to succumb. I did, and this is where the journey to Hell begins.

After I closed my eyes only pieces of a fractured conscious return to haunt me. I felt like I had been dipped in a salty tidal pool of eels. The slithering was actually my limbs becoming elongated and twisted around each other. Lucy's presence was no longer even felt. Every marking of the real world disolved in to a worthless serum taken after a fatal snake bite. My mind felt like two trains colliding, over and over. Thoughts were focused on death, and the seperation of my soul from my body. It was like my emotions had each stepped in to the boxing ring to fight it out. The colors, textures and forms weren't even apparent, only this pressing fight over my sanity. I am convinced now that ego death was taking place, as my identity had left, replaced by fractured pieces of my hidden self. Voices, indescernible voices, were jabbering at me from behind to turn around, to face them and my own death. The overwhelming of the snake bite was upon me. I had died and my soul was siphining down the drain of reality.

The time displacement was much more exaggerated this time. Normally I notice that music and voices drag out, but this was beyond slow. Movement seemed to come to a stop, only my fears and emotions were moving forward, towards a finality that is so obscene and funny that its power can't be denied.

The eternity under the knife seemed to lift about 4 hours in to a journey I'd almost choose to forget. When I opened my eyes I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. My entire living room was this free-floating orb, and next to me was a shimmering figure in a long, red robe. Lucy was gone, and to be honest, her existence (or lack thereof) didn't even cross my mind. There was no facial features, but a voice emenated from the center and it said clearly, "Your throne awaits you. You must reach your throne." I felt almost kingly as this shimmering being directed me up and away from my seat. I followed down this long, pulsating corridor of dark greens and reds. I finally entered a huge room with shimmering silver all around, and a large white throne right in the middle. The creature motioned to me to take a seat. I did, and the warmth I felt inside was like all my blood had been warmed and re-injected in to my body. The creature then said something that seemed so out of place and unfamiliar that it only makes me laugh even harder when I think back to it. The creature said, "Either take a crap, or get off the toilet". At that moment I sensed that despite such a crude method, I was being given great wisdom and advice. I felt truly enlightened, that a key to great happines had just been given to me. Don't let indecession keep your heart from directing you down the right path. Oh, and I should probably mention that during this entire conversation with the creature an oboe honked and squawked in the background. I am not sure of its symbolism, but somehow the oboe looks like a mushroom, especially when a persons head is attached to the other end.

I sat on my white throne and seemingly feel asleep. I completely drifted from any recognizable form of consciousness and felt a warm numbness that slowly moved up my body. It was a wonderul feeling, and I just rested my eyes in darkness and let it climb. What happened next is where the story gets funny. Thank goodness for that, because I was absolutely ready for my trip over the edge to end.

I suddenly came to after what seemed like about another hour of time had slipped away. I was leaning back looking up at a very bright light. At first I thought I might still be in the mushroom trance, but what I saw next was too surreal to qualify as anything but reality. I still felt very numb and warm all over, and when I tilted my head forward there was a disheveled Lucy laughing at me. I continued my downward motion with my head to find I was sitting naked on my toilet! My legs were hanging like snakes from a tree, and I couldn't even feel them. Lucy continued to laugh hysterically at me. She leaned forward and taking my hand attempted to lift me from my white throne. I collapsed on the floor, as my legs and behind were completely numb. I reached back to my buttocks and could feel the deep groove of the toilet seat branded in to them. I looked up at Lucy and asked how long I had been on the toilet. In between her chuckles she said nearly an hour. I had to lay on the bathroom floor for about ten minutes before I could even start to feel my toes again. After regaining some semblance of balance Lucy helped me in to bed. I was still tasting moments of decline, but could tell most of the poison had wore off. I dropped in to a sound slumber almost immediately.

The next day Lucy and I talked about what little we remembered. I told her about my visit with the "creature" and how I had been led to a throne. Of course, she and I both knew this had to be when she helped lead me in trance to the toilet because apparently there were disconcerting sounds rumbling from my rectum. Lucy was convinced I was going to punch a loaf in my pants as I sat on my couch. We both laughed for what seemed like hours over this. So now that the lingering affects are gone and I can look objectively at my journey, here is what I took away from the madhouse carnival we call shrooming.

Never underestimate the enlightenment that can come from resting your dead weight on the toilet for an hour. I will always remember that as with life, if you aren't going to do something, get off the toilet. Someone else is always eager to take the throne.