Tensed

My third (and until now also the strongest) trip By Edward Location : Campus of the University of Twente
Psychonauts : Edward, Joost, Hans
Dosage : 30 gr fresh, 30 gr fresh, 1.7 gr dried cubensis
Dinertime : 20:05 (march 24th 1998)

The mushrooms were bought at the smartshop near the Polaroid factory in Enschede. Joost and I both bought 30 grams fresh cubensis, Hans took 1.7 grams dried cubensis. These mushrooms were clearly fresher than the ones I had bought the last time at Conscious Dreams in Amsterdam. And at this smartshop the mushrooms were stored in a fridge, which wasn't the case at Conscious Dreams.

Since half past ten that morning I hadn't eaten anything so the mushrooms could have their maximum effect. At a few minutes past eight we started eating the shrooms while sitting in Hans' room and after ten minutes I'd finished mine.

At nine o'clock the shrooms were kicking in.

My body felt like it was full of energy and I felt very tense (although it wasn't visible from the outside; I was laying on the bed like a sandbag). I had the feeling that something was about to happen or that I had to do something (but I had no idea what). The skin of my arms was tingling and my heartbeat was rising fast, relaxing was impossible. This was the only part of the trip in which I had some visuals. The radiator was bending in different directions, the furniture seemed to be bending too, but not as much as the radiator. The flat carpet was getting a 3d fluffy look. It was like there was a colored, transparent fencing over everything I saw, first there were moving, curved red lines, later little circles in red, green and white (when I went outside later on the evening I saw this again a couple of times).

I had brought a cool Terry Pratchett book to see what it was like to read while I was tripping, but I had to concentrate so hard to read it that I quickly put it away.

I had totally lost my concept of time; every time I looked on the clock I was surprised that so little time had past. After being in Hans' room for a while I began feeling uncomfortable; the room looked like I had been sitting there for years and Hans & Joost looked like they'd been sitting on the couch for centuries.

At that moment I decided to go to the toilet. Hans and Joost warned me that I shouldn't be afraid if the shrooms made me not being able to find the necessary organ anymore :) , fortunately I didn't have problems with that. When I was walking from the toilet to the kitchen I leaned on the walls with both my hands, the walls seemed to bend a little when I touched them. The same had happened with my face; it was like it was made out of wax or rubber, I could mould it with my hands after which it flew back in it's normal shape.

I was walking restlessly in the flat for a while and when I came back in Hans' room, where two non-trippers were also sitting at this moment, I had the feeling everybody was watching me. Joost gave me a peppermint, to my suprise I didn't taste a bit of it! Only after a while I could, like from very far away, taste it. I couldn't bear being inside anymore and after much effort I could finally get Joost to go outside with me. Putting my jacket on wasn't easy; the zipper was changing shape in my hands. I think that at this moment it was about ten o'clock.

When we were outside we were discussing where we wanted to go. We couldn't reach a decision. What we agreed about was that we didn't want to meet any more non-trippers; they would ask us questions, had no idea how we felt and would stare at us. Finally Hans came outside too, he knew a bench in the park and that is where we walked to. Along the way I found out that I had three chocolate bars in my jacket (I had bought them that afternoon so we had something tasty to eat while tripping). I still had that nervous feeling and the breaking and passing around of the chocolate did cost me some effort. Again I could almost taste nothing of the chocolate.

On the way to the bench I stopped a couple of times to take a look around me, because after each step it was like I was in a totally different place. After sitting on the bench for a while we went to 'The art object' (if you've been on th campus you'll know what I mean, it's very ugly, you can sit on it and it has several of those LED news boards). I tried to read what the news boards were saying but it cost me too much effort. I couldn't think back and forward in time anymore; I couldn't imagine that it would be light again the next day or that I would be following classes. After that we went to my room. I wasn't afraid to walk past people anymore, they didn't seem to care a bit about the fact that we were tripping. When I looked up to see the stars my neck seemed to be made of rubber and I could bend my head ridicously far backwards.

Somewhere between eleven and half past eleven we arrived at my flat. We went upstairs as quietly as possible so my flatmates wouldn't ask or say anything to us (I hadn't told them about the shrooms). At this point the trip began to wear off, I was finaly feeling more relaxed. While I was laying on my bed I was thinking and discussing for a while if it was a good idea to go lay on my stomach. After a while I did, but it turned out I couldn't see the TV anymore so I turned on my back again.

The rest of the evening I have spent chatting on the net a little (typing was difficult at the beginning) and the rest of the evening I sat on the couch feeling very content, eating cheese and watching tv. At around 1 o'clock I was back to normal again ( or at least as normal as I usually am :).

It wasn't a good or a bad trip. It was a weird trip though. I've never felt like the way I did when I was tripping. During the trip I already thought of how difficult it would be to write about that. It's also impossible to describe the twisted way my brain was working. During the trip we talked a lot with eachother about what we saw, felt and thought about what was happening. For outsiders our conversation probably didn't make any sense, sometimes we didn't even understand what we were saying ourselves. The next day I had a light headache and I was tired all day, I think this was due to lack of sleep ( I had slept only five and a halve hours that night and I was exhausted when i went to bed).

Well...on to the next trip! (after a few months of recovery)