Putty reality

This is a long story. There's too much to tell, even with this many words.

I decided to take my first trip, during the summer after my freshman year of college. I had never tripped before, and for that matter, I had never really gotten stoned before.
I was with two of my best friends, one with whom I had been in a band through high school (B.), and the other with whom I had known and been friends with since I was a baby (M.). M and B had each had some trip experience, and were my guides up to a point throughout my experience. Two more of our friends accompanied us for a while, although they did not partake of the mushrooms. We took our whole trip outside, in the woods and trails surrounding a reservoir in suburban NY.
We went to a set of cliffs that overlooked the reservoir and ate our shrooms just before the sun set. I couldn't believe how horrible they tasted; they made me gag as I tried to swallow them. I finally got them down, and almost immediately (within 15 minutes) started noticing that things were, for lack of a better description, weird. The clouds in front of the sunset, the mountains, even the power lines above us seemed to be breathing with one shared breath. As these perceptions were intensifying as time went on, and as the sun set further and further, I began to feel frightened. I had always been a very scientific and physical perception based person, and my senses were going haywire. My friend B. had told me before the trip (in a sort of pre-trip briefing) that the three of us tripping should hold nothing at all from eachother, and keep lines of communication open. I told B. about my fears, and he said, "OK, let's take a walk." We were then walking and I felt immediately better. This experience proved to me all that one hears about "set and setting" is absolutely true.
We continued walking around, and things looked weirder and weirder. The huge granite boulders that were in piles around took on vague forms of faces and animal shapes. I then first experienced for the first time something that has followed me through all subsequent trips. I call it "bubble world." It's a hard sight to explain. I was looking through the branches at the sky and at the water, and all the holes where light got through the trees appeared to have huge soap bubbles suspended between them. It can be explained as a total loss of coherent depth perception given obstacles in the visual field. It can best be explained as beautiful, though, and that's how I'll leave it.
We walked along the trail on our way to another reservoir. I got sick to my stomach along the way, and my friends were very caring towards me. This increased my feelings of connection with them, that made me comfortable throughout the whole trip. I was walking along and holding hands with M, my best friend whom I have known forever. Things were going well once again at this point in the trip, and we were walking swiftly along the trail. We were swinging our hands as we were walking. During one swing I watched my hand, still tightly grasped with hers, extend about 10-20 feet in front of us. Our arms just stretched to compensate. Knowing this was all in my head, I tried to suppress my laughter, as I looked over to M. As I was looking over to her, I saw the same laughter in her face, and we simultaneously realized that we had seen the same exact thing. We were hysterically laughing at that point, pointing out all the things to one another that we were both seeing at the same time.
Once we got to our destination, I began what I now know as the peak. Then, I had no words. I laid down on the grass, near some rocks, and I began to lose myself. My other friends were talking, and I slowly lost connection to their words and meanings. I started thinking about my life, and the sequence of events in it. I couldn't make a sensible explanation of it all. I could remember characters, such as my new girlfriend from college, my father, my high school principle, and I could remember places, such as the road on which I lived my whole life. I couldn't remember whether my life had taken place over several years, days, or seasons, because I couldn't tell the difference. All of these units of time seemed to be the same thing, but some were arbitrarily more important than others. I was also confused about what home meant, because I had just recently finished my freshamn year at college 500 miles away. I remembered something about being a musician, so I asked B.. He assured me that I was a musician and that we were in a band together. I asked where my girlfriend lived, because I couldn't remember, and my friends told me. I actually then saw a map of the U.S. in front of me and a red line connecting where I was with where she was. It confused me.
I crawled to the rocks and laid down on top of them. It was not comfortable, so I decided to melt, so I could fill in all the cracks. I did, and then was instantly horrified by the fact that I just did something like that, and immediately pulled myself out of the cracks. I told B. what happened, and, being an excellent trip guide, told me to do it again. I did it again, and I found I could stay longer and longer without getting scared. It was an extremely pleasurable feeling.
One of my recurring hallucinations is a sensation of wetness, (probably becasue of sweaty palms.) I felt my body, and it felt wet. I panicked, and asked my friends if I peed in my pants. They obviously all laughed. But as they were laughing, I realized that I didn't know what "pee in the pants" meant, so I asked them about that also. Again, they all laughed. I could still formulate sentences, but vocabulary was meaningless. I now realize that this is because I left a dualist world behind, and there was no longer self + outside. There was only It. I was confused then, though, so I started to melt again.
In the middle of one of my melts, I entered into a state which I am sure I can not explain properly, but I guess I can try. All of my reality turned into putty. Not just space (i.e. visuals getting twisted and distorted), but time was also looping and mixing within itself. Fragments of sound would enter my field, and would project themselves back in time. I remember saying to myself (also looping) "is this the way it always was this way it always has been this way forever, etc." I probably spent an hour or so like this, although attaching a duration to that experience is only meaningful as far as narrative is concerned. The experience lasted forever, but as only one infinitesimal snapshot of time. Once I came down from this, I realized that our other friends had left, and only M, B, and I remained. We started to walk back, feeling even closer than before, talking about intensely personal things the whole time. M and I continued to have synchronized visuals and other hallucinations.
When we got back to my car to drive home for the night, I thought that my trip had ended. So I unlocked the door, got behind the wheel, and all of a sudden, I knew (not only thought) that it was not my car. I saw that it had all the same stuff inside it, and the same license plates, but I convinced myself that someone had switched all those things while I was tripping. My friends tried to convince me that I was still tripping and didn't know what I was talking about. I knew that even if I was right, I was too upset to drive, so I got in the back seat and let B drive me home.
I got home and went to bed immediately, feeling so confused, as if my whole world had just been turned upside-down. It had been. I will never forget or underestimate the value that this perception-shattering night had and continues to have on me.
BTW: When I woke up the next morning, it WAS in fact my car parked in my driveway.

happy trips and lives! :)