so one of my friends informed me about a week ago that him and some other mates had gone picking again since it's coming back into season over here. the last time i tripped was almost a year ago and the only drugs i had done taken since then were a few joints in amsterdam during my eurotrip. i've done acid 3 times before and shrooms about 3 or 4 times before in the past.
so i decided "fuck it" and bought just over 5g of handpicked and dried shrooms from my friend. i decided it had been long enough and i was interested in another mindfuck again.
so my rents were away for the weekend and i had the house to myself. i finished work that night at 9:30pm or so and got home and started preparing the house. i had had dinner around 7pm or so that night so i was full but not horribly so.
i turned the heating on, shut all the blinds, turned lots of lamps and lights on and made the place comfortable. we have a good 5.1 sound setup in the lounge so i got dark side of the moon, jimi hendrix live at isle of wight dvd and tool's aenima and lateralus lined up.
i took a shower and got all cleaned up and then a weird thought hit me. i've never done anything sexual whilst on shrooms...so i go out of the shower, measured out my shrooms, downed what must have been about 2.5g or so (i just had a semi-accurate cooking scale) and went and uh had a bit of fun with myself as i was coming up...
let me tell you, it was SO fucking intense. it also served as an awesome way to avoid anxiety whilst coming up as it takes your mind of it.
anyway, so with that out of the way, i started to settle into the loungeroom. it has now been about 30 mins or so since ingestion. i started playing DSOTM and lay back in sheer ecstasy and got lost in the music. i was gazing around and was so happy and content, i thought "this is ridiculous, i need this to go forever, 4 hours ain't enough!".
then, about 3/4 of the way through DSOTM, shit turned intense.
i guess it was a combination of getting higher and higher and having thoughts of despair and worry. i remember from my past lsd trips how this can happen. i suddenly froze and thought "...oh shit...what if i just spiral into that path of fear and paranoia?" and, obviously, it went on from there; "what if i come down and i have mental disorders? is that actually possible?"
i fidgeted and started to panic. the horrible thing about panicking whilst tripping is that your rational mind is obviously not there to haul you out of it. i got up and changed the music. thoughts and vague problems of my life were surfacing. i put in the hendrix at wight dvd and sat back down. it was clear, however, that i was going to need to sort this out. i had summoned this experience and here it was now and it was up to me to figure it all out.
luckily, a close friend of mine was online, so i started talking to him (this is maybe an hour or a bit more after ingestion). at first, i was struggling ridiculously hard to spit out a sentence. it's the same thing that would happen to me on lsd, get a profound idea, start to type it and experience 50 more profound ideas before the second word.
in any case, i started focusing on some things; what was making me upset? what makes me happy? what am i worrying about in my life at this point?
i had just recently read books on carl jung and the dragons of eden by carl sagan out of pure curiosity and interest and i found myself pondering about the subconcious of the human mind and human intelligence itself (corny, i know, but amazingly relevant). i systematically thought about these things and hoisted myself out of these depths of despair.
all the while, hendrix was on the tv in front of me, wailing away. it was ridiculous how passages of music and phrases of guitar would coincide and compliment so perfectly with my train of thought.
i spent ages and ages trying to figure out what makes music so enjoyable. what makes me dance with glee when i hear hendrix do a huge bend or when i hear a huge riff? i came to the conclusion that it was a) far too hard and pointless to even figure it out completely b) a lot of humans' driving needs and emotions are from the subconcious mind and c) humans try to find too many points.
all this time, i was sort of tottering on the edge of a fine line of panic. i was terrified of being alone (physically) and wanted to sort of crawl into a ball of sadness and tell these shrooms i was sorry for taking them with such a blase attitude. i kept having to rationalize things to myself; "no matter what goes wrong in your life, there is always a solution. life doesn't need to be and isn't all doom and gloom. there's always a way to make things better."
the trip went on and on like this until i finally came to solid and reassuring conclusions. i knew in the days before i took them i probably wasn't ready, mentally, for it but i was just too excited not to. i got it handed right back at me by the shrooms, all my worries and issues from normal day to day life spilled back into the trip and i had to deal with them, one by one, step by agonizing step.
but, of course, it was worth it. i actually did learn things that will help and affect me in normal, sober life from this trip. so, all in all, it was an incredibly worthwhile experience.
the whole thing lasted 4 or 5 hours or so, i wasn't keeping track, and strangely, it wasn't incredibly visual. it's funny thinking back on it now, how i'm not classifying this as "bad trip" despite its brutal and traumatic nature. sure, there were parts of it when i wished i hadn't taken the shrooms but afterwards it was fine.
so there you have it. i strongly recommend tripping solo to anyone who hasn't done it and is thinking about it.
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