Mardi Grass Madness 2003

FRIDAY:-
After weeks of anticipation, I, my g/f and a good mate were off to the infamous Nimbin Mardi Grass with visions of a truly psychedelic weekend in our minds. The journey south consisted of many pipes of kind weed, and after a brief detour to Byron Bay for lunch we were meandering through the foothills of Mt. Warning. We soon arrived at Nimbins main drag, the street was bustling with people and there was an air of anticipation about. During the day we walked around indulged in the sights and sounds(and smells), ate and scored some weed. That night was spent relaxing in Peace Park listening to a few music acts with the pot we had bought that day. The next day held much more in store...
SATURDAY:-
We spent most of the day smoking and walking around once again, but in the afternoon we managed to aquire some Salvia 5x Extract, and 11 grams of dried P. Cubenis. We headed back to the car and divided the mushrooms 3 ways(3.6 grams each), taking out around .75 to 1 gram so that it could be consumed 2-3 hrs into the trip so as to provide somewhat of a booster.

As far as my experience with psychedelics went at the time I was a newbie. I was smoking pot very regularly but I had only consumed 2 MDMA tablets prior to this and they were quite weak. My g/f had tried speed once but besides that she was also in new territory and my other mate had used mushrooms at a Mardi Grass Festival 2 years earlier.

We all downed our dose. I had no troubles as I don't mind mushrooms and these didn't taste much different to others that I had tried. My g/f and mate both gagged like all hell and had a couple of dry heaves. But as a whole they all went down without to much hassle. A few minutes later we smoked some pot (there wasn't really a point when we weren't toking up), and around 15 minutes after that we decided to smoke some extract. I was the first to go and packed myself a decent sized cone. I had heard that you need to hold the smoke to get full effects, so hold it down I did, and as I blew the smoke out I felt a the effects come on immediately. I threw the pipe out to my right with a stupid grin on my face and said, "no more!" ( at least I think I said it, I have had other experiences on salvia where I think I have said something but it was really just my mind). The left hand side of my body felt as though it was being pulled on really hard, and my vision, kind of blurred/warped. I was looking at the corner of the dashboard and the door of the car and certain lines of the upholstery extended and the different colours merged. This all seemed to be taking a really long time, and all of a sudden I had the sensation that I was on top of a rolling ball or moving through some sort of space. I could only make out what appeared to be something white beneath me. The rest of the salvia extract experience is a little hazy, but I remember being a little confused a unable to describe what had just happened. My mate was next in line and he had a bit of a bad experience, getting a little bit freaked out by a repetition in his vision that multiplied to the extent where he felt that he needed to jump out of the car. That kinda sobered me up but he mellowed out after a few minutes and my g/f decided she would have a hit. She mainly experienced uncontrollable laughter but upon looking at the steering wheel of the car she saw what resembled a circus carousel.

My mate was pretty much all good but I thought he looked a little bit shaken so we decided to go for a walk up to the main steet, my g/f stayed at the car with some other friends who had met us down there. While we were walking up the street we both commented that we were starting to feel a buzz, and by the time I was at peace park I was feeling quite energized and I knew i was in for an experience. We made our way back to the car and got my g/f so that we could go up to peace park and chill out. She also commented she was feeling different and by the time we had completed our journey to the park I was begining to experience very mild visual distortions. Colours were becoming more intense and the body sensations were great, it felt as though I was walking on clouds. Everyone noted that the body feelings were very pulse like, it seemed that with every heart beat the mushrooms were pumped further and further through our bodies. I'd estimate that it had been around about 1 hour maybe a tad more since we had first ingested the mushrooms. We made it to Peace Park and found a table under a bright red and white marquee. After a while someone managed to chop up some pot, we filled the bong and got ready to have a session. My thoughts seemed very lucid, at times contradicting, and my visuals became slightly more pronounced but not overly so, mainly staying in my periphery vision. I began experiencing auditory hallucinations, thinking that I was talking very loudly , which would cause me to lower my voice to a whisper. This happened all night and at points this gave me more than a touch of paranoia. I had few cones and watching the cherry in the cone piece became quite enthralling. Bits of weed that would stick to the side would grow bigger and smear and my mate even said that he saw firework type explosions above the conepiece.

I'm not sure what point it was at but someone sugested eating the rest of our mushrooms and of course I was feeling pretty good so I said yes. Deciding to get something to assist in eating them we each got a donut which we laden with the rest of our mushies and I slammed mine down. Well actually I didn't slam it down at all. My mouth was hell dry and I was strugling to even chew. While I was chewing I felt a stong surge in my trip and it definitely felt like it had moved to another level. My mate saw this and decided not to eat his booster but my g/f chowed downed the rest of hers with me. After about 10 mins of chewing it all fininally went down the hatch, with the aid of some water. I believe this is when my trip moved onto its peak. Every thing was starting to appear very out of proportion(especially my friends forehead, giving him a demonic appearance. His eyes also appeared to have sunk very far back in his head. I commented that his head was 'like a playground', which seemed very amusing to me at the time), and most edges and objects took on a curved appearance. When looking at a trippy projection screen I expereinced a kind of shutter vision, where I saw everyone dancing in front of the screen in various freeze frame postions. I saw what appeared to be lines of static in my vision and my thoughts began running in loops and although I had no trouble talking I had serrious trouble remembering what it was I was talking about. At one point I searced my pockets for a long time looking for rolling papers and when I finished my search empty handed I could not remember what I was searching for in the first place. I began to get the feeling that the trip was going to be pretty strong, and this began to stress me out a little, as it was all I was thining bout, and my mate had to talk me down as my face had started to turn white, and he had noticed that I was staring off for long periods of time. At this point everything I looked at had some type of visual distortion, the grass looked synthetic, people close by looked far away, and at one point the marquee seemed to be shaking or shifting around alot and appeared as though it lifted or grew slightly, while this went on I remember lots of various colours in my vision, mainly green, yellow and red. They appeared mainly as dots or blips that moved from my peripheral vision into the center of my sight.For how long I remained at the peak I am not to sure but when we looked outside the marquee we noticed that nearly every one was gone. The 10 min walk to the car took nearly 1hr as we got sidetracked by the slightest things. After making it back we rolled a big joint and I sort of half passed out after 2 or three tokes, and had what I consider to be an out of body experience where I was looking at myself from outside of the car. My body jolted everytime it happened and snapped me back into reality. I eventually fell asleep and woke up feeling a little groggy but more tired than anything else. All in all it was great experience but it taught me that setting is very important. Take it easy and safe tripping.