To the ShroomMobile!

After unsuccessfully choking down a few bites of my generous eighth, I opted to brew it in tea. Little did I realize that what would have otherwise have been a mundane day was going to be transformed into a shroomy Odyssey. Sure I had done mushrooms before - three times - but this trip turned my mind upside down.

There were five other people with me: my brother, his wife, and my friends Mike, Greg and Will. After downing the tea I got the familiar nausea, only this time it was particularly strong; nothing a couple hits of weed couldn't remedy though. We were all sitting in the front room, waiting to come up, paraphernalia and mushroom chunks scattered all around, when I saw a man approaching the door. There was a forceful knock, and, wouldn't you know it, the mushrooms took the opportunity to start to kick in. Peering out carefully, I saw the visitor was no ordinary visitor, it was a sheriff! Not knowing why he was there and already knowing this was going to be my strongest trip yet, I and everyone else decided to dodge the proverbial bullet. We scurried around hiding all evidence of our den of vice then rushed to the back room of the house.

Well Mr. Sheriff got it into his mind he was going to talk with whoever was home, and I looked into the backyard to see him scanning over the fence. This was obviously very discomforting, and I was starting to fear my trip was going to be ruined by this unwelcome visitor. But our patience topped his, and he left after a few minutes of lurking around (to this day I still don't know why he was there). Well, we were sitting there paranoid in the back of the house fearing ruined trips, when my friend Mike stumbled and tripped over a computer. For some reason, when this happened, we all broke out laughing and knew everything would be alright.

Still, we weren't going to linger around the house after the sheriff had come aknockin', so we cleaned up and moved out to the car to head to a park. I suppose this is where I'm supposed to provide a disclaimer about how dangerous it is to drive on shrooms but screw it, I'm not legally responsible for what you guys do. I knew I could trust my brother to drive.

The drive to the park was rather uncomfortable, I felt funky and heavy but wasn't really fully coming up yet. When we got to the park, however, things quickly changed. The grass in the park literally glowed green - almost a neon color - and as we stumbled around I was struck with the beauty of our surroundings. It was a little journey unto itself moving around that park, trekking a little stream proved to be as much an ordeal as trying to forge a river, and the rows and rows of park benches in one area (set out for large picnics) looked like they were endlessly repeating.

We settled down on a secluded grassy hill, where I truly started to come up. I idly lay there feeling the mushrooms take hold, smoking cigarettes which were supernaturally good, and as I continued to come up I get the impression I was continually "waking up." When People would start talking my mind would all of a sudden come into focus in the middle of the sentence, as if I had just woken up in the midst of their conversation. Funnily enough, their voices all sounded like audio recordings - like when they started a sentence someone was pushing play and it got clipped off at the end abruptly by the stop button.

My cigarettes were constantly thwarting me. I'd smoke and smoke and smoke, then look at my cigarette and see there was well over two-thirds left; then the next thing I knew, it was down to the freaking filter.

This may have annoyed me if it hadn't been for the fact the grass was churning and swirling nearby, like the surface of a pool being disturbed. Then the ground got it into its mind to just start spinning me in circles! Well, this was entertaining, but I didn't want to spend my entire trip staring at the grass, so I reclined and stared at the sky.

Well wouldn't you know it, then the sky just sucked me up! Not only was my entire vision filled with blue, I could actually feel my eyelids AND my brain fill with blue. There was no ground, no friends, no park, just sky and an endless expanse of blue. The longer I stared, the more I realized the sky was peeling back to reveal a second, much more distant layer. This layer was the image of a very small whispy cloud (one I assume was actually in the sky) repeated thousands of times over, and in front of it I could still see the normal sky, and beyond that my mind and eyelids were still totally filled with blue.

I don't know how long I stared up there, but when I finally tore myself away to look around the park I noticed all the grass was slowly growing, and the ground was still merrily morphing around a bit.

Someone got it into their head to go for a walk, and we ended up walking to a spot which looked absolutely identical to the spot we had recently left. Greg, Will, Mike and I sat on the hill while my brother and his wife wandered off on their own.

We were enjoying ourselves, sitting on that grassy hill near a grassy field and a few copses of trees, when all of a sudden, I saw my brother just driving over the hill by us in the car! No road, no logic faculties, just a munchkin mobile cresting a hill and five shroomers with their tongues lolling out of their mouths. The car appeared to me like an insect, not a car, and I marveled at the idea ALL five of us could fit in that little itty-bitty vehicle. Well, my brother beckoned, and we all answered his call and piled in. Our destination: a huge lake and dam set in some foot hills about a forty minute drive away.

My brother drove to a road and we were poking around for an exit for a few minutes... I then blurted out, "We're lost." Then, as if to prove my hypothesis, no less than half a dozen roads appeared out of nowhere! We all started laughing hysterically and eventually found our way out and back to the main roads of our city.

I kept looking to the right and the left out both the windows, and was shocked to see the view on either sides were totally identical. The sights and traffic just flowed by, and I bided my time squeezing a lighter which was feeling very very squishy, almost like a water balloon.

Then I realized I couldn't tell where the right side of my body ended. You see, Greg, Will and I were all crammed in the back seat and I was to the far left. With my right shoulder and arm and leg pressed up against Will I literally could not tell where my body stopped and his began. I just felt like a heap of flesh fused to him. Will said he felt the same thing, and Greg quietly scooted away from us.

Next I got this incredible feeling. I moved my arm in the air for some reason still unknown to me, and I felt my movement fractured at three points along the path my arm took. What I mean by this is I could feel a version of me before my arm started moving, a version of me in the middle of my movement, and one of me at the end of the arc, all existing simultaneously. It was a strange and exciting experience.

I don't remember why, but for some reason we pulled into this redneck food stop for a minute (no one ended up getting out though). I looked over in the yard behind the food store, and there were these two poodles or curly-haired terriers or something humping right up against a fence. At first the male was making short, abrupt thrusts, but as I watched they became all slow and sensual (for the dogs at least). He had this incredibly satisfied looking on his face, which he was rubbing against the fence as he pumped his woman, and I swear he even shuddered when it was all over! Regardless of whether this was real or not, it was the fucking funniest thing I had ever seen and I could not stop cracking up.

As we made our way up into the foothills and nearer to our destination, the bendy roads actually appeared to me as if they were bending themselves in front of the car, instead of being naturally curved. It was around this point where I forgot who I was for a bit... I couldn't tell which member of the group I was. It wasn't so much ego loss as loss of my individuality to the group - this probably wouldn't have happened with less people - but I didn't really care.

My emotions took a downward turn somewhere along this car ride. Trips to me have always been dual-natured. One aspect of it is all fun and hallucinations and giddiness, and another is a melancholy which comes and goes, sometimes with my environment or where I am in the trip, and other times totally arbitrarily.

The view at the dam was spectacular however, it was almost like a martian landscape. The lake was mostly dried up and surrounded by barren rocky land which was dyed red by the setting sun. As the sun dipped below the horizon the sky, too, took on a reddish hue - it was one of the most beautiful sunsets I've seen in my life, and marked my comedown.

I could go on for more paragraphs how we saw a baby in a carriage and when I mentioned to my brother he was "supposed to drive into it" as a joke, my fried Greg asked in all earnestness if that was the truth; or how the quesadillas we got from Taco Bell were the most disgusting, cheese-oozing, inedible creations known to man; or how I began to feel trapped, cramped, and depressed in the car; or how, when returning to the city, I took somewhere close to thirty hits of weed to make the transition from tripping to being stoned and returning to a familiar feeling... but really, that is the truth of every true trip - there are too many stories to tell.

Mushrooms really are a double-edged sword. Some people insist they are the recreation of all recreations, others they are purely spiritual and not for entertainment. I think the truth is, it depends on the individual who takes them. Here, I mostly detailed the hallucinations and enjoyable parts of the experience, so as to spare you the boredom of the introspective or just plain unhappier parts of the trip. This experience with mushrooms satisfied my desire to take them... I did once since, and doubt I ever will again. But, on the other hand, it is funny in that it is a memory I find myself constantly cherishing, perusing, and even fearing. I've always felt you can't explain a drug to someone who hasn't taken it, but in the case of mushrooms I feel it is something more than that - I believe you can't adequately explain a trip even to an avid tripper. Mushrooms can peel away the layers of your mind blocking your conscious mind from your unconscious, so in a way I feel it might even be futile to provide a full explanation of my trip to someone who isn't me. Regardless, this is what I experienced, and I think it's changed my life in subtle ways I haven't yet (and perhaps never will) come to understand.