The California Trip

The first time I did shrooms was probably the best. At the time, I was in kind of a rut in life, taking my first semester of college off. I had been visiting a friend at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA (I'll call him P). P and I had been discussing shrooming before, and I was very eager to do it. I had done inhalants, ritalin, opium, MJ and various tranquilizers and wanted to see what all the hallucinogen fuss was all about. Boy, did I ever get what I wanted.

My friend had been telling me it might not be a good idea to trip, since I was taking Paxil for Depression, BuSpar for Anxiety, Remeron for poor appetite and insomnia, and Lithium for Bipolar Disorder. Lots of meds, huh? I didn't care though - I was going to trip and like it. I was just hoping I wouldn't have an episode of paranoia or total ego dissolution. I guess life is all about risks eh?

That afternoon, in my friend's dorm, I consumed 2 large mushrooms and 1 small one. My friend said that was a very small dose - but I wanted it that way. He ate about 125% as much as I did. P's friend A was tripping wtih us too. Unfortunately, I began to feel nervous and trapped almost immediately after taking the shrooms. "Don't panic" I kept telling myself, but it didn't seem to be working. I sat on the floor of his dorm, feeling isolated, trapped and terribly anxious. I trusted P and A - but I suddenly felt a horrible anxiety brewing from within myself, and didn't know what to do. I told my friend I didn't feel so hot and laid on his bed. Soon, the trip began to kick in.

My eyes were closed, but I couldn't fall asleep. I suddenly began noticing little dancing red, green and blue shapes when my eyes were closed. I opened my eyes to look at a psychedelic poster that P has and I saw it twitching and "breathing." "This is it" I knew. I called for help from P as I began what would be a 3 and 1/2 hour long panic attack. I felt very hot, bothered, trapped and EXTREMELY nervous. I suddenly realized that when I walked, the panic feeling went away. I just felt the URGE to MOVE...I looked down at my hands, horrified as they began to pulsate and change shapes. I felt as though my hands were the hands of an angel, and were not my own, that they were amputated and replaced while I was asleep. I went to look in the mirror - ACK! I had turned into an elf!! My ears were suddenly large and pointy. I had to get out of there.

We started to walk around the campus. WOW - How utterly BEAUTIFUL everything was. It was around dusk. The campus was gorgeous when sober, but WOW....The COLORS....I had never noticed how beautifully green everything was. The hallucinations were so rich and vibrant...The more I observed, the more my panic seemed to wash away...But only when I was walking. My friends had coats on, and informed my that it was cold. However, I was still REALLY hot and I took off my shirt. MUCH better. We started walking around a track field, and there were sprinklers shooting on the field, and there were lights over us...Wow, I had never noticed lights reflected over sprinkling water like that. The water glistened, shone like dark red diamonds (the field was dark red)...Everywhere I looked, stationary plants were ebbing and pulsating around.

I had to see more. MORE MORE MORE. I am an artist and these sights were beginning to make me euphoric. P took us to a swimming pool, and the whole pool was breathtakingly turquoise...and it seemed to breath in and out, like a gigantic aqua lung. How funny it seemed! We passed a baseball field, surrounded by standard baseball field steel fencing....WOW, when I moved my head rapidly from side to side, the fencing looked bizarrely good. Everything just pulsated and swirled around.

I felt as though I was in another world. It was the peak of the trip. We came to a group of trees that were from California...WOW, they seemed made of PAINT. The trees were dripping glistening streams of color as they contorted themselves. Also, tulips beneath them seemed to have faces, they were contorting too. It was amazing - the best I can describe it is the Painted World scene from What Dreams May Come. We saw a "D.A.R.E" display car-crash to simulate drunk driving (or whatever) and ACK - I saw a bloody corpse in the car!! It kind of freaked me out but I knew it was just a hallucination. I was just amazed at how I could suggest something to myself - auras for example - and I would begin to see them.

By now my anxiety was mostly gone. I was very surprised also at how I was not feeling nauseous or anything even remotely resembling it, considering I have a very weak stomach for FOOD let alone psilocybin mushrooms. On the way back to my friend's dorm, I was exhausted. I was also thankful that P and A's actual physical shape did not distort. I'm also thankful my hands no longer look like angel implants. In conclusion, I must say that I need to find I way to better rid myself of anxiety...But the magnitude of the sheer beauty that shrooming has given me is more than enough for me to want to trip again.