Before you begin reading, know that this is very indepth, and long, and never at any point does it involve being abducted by aliens or communicating with the other side, or anything you would usually hope for in a trip. I'm writing this because this isn't what I expected or hoped for.
I felt I should share it somehow.
I won't double-check it, so I apologise for any incoherence.
Last Tuesday I finally found some mushrooms, after a fairly long time hunting for an active species. I found a small amount of Psilocybe Subaeruginosa, and you can see one of the photos I took here:
It's 4:50am Saturday morning here at the moment, but I took a couple of the smaller mushrooms yesterday at around midday. I didn't want to trip too heavily my first time, so I didn't take too many.
On Wednesday I tried one of the caps to test the taste and make sure it didn't make me feel ill, and it tasted fine. But since they've been in a paper bag in my cupboard for a couple of days now, they tasted quite unpleasant.
I decided to go outside with my mp3 player, playing some Beatles. I sat on this little wooden bridge we have for the driveway that runs over a small stream (usually pretty much dry) that runs into our dam. We live out in a fairly rural area, so the dam is used for hose water and toilet water and such. I sat cross-legged on the edge, looking at the small amount of water underneath my feet. I watched a worm move around inside the water, looking like it was trying to dig into the ground below it. After a while, I decided to go inside and do a couple of things while I waited. As soon as I came to the computer, a friend offered to send me an unreleased acoustic song from a band I liked, since he'd just encoded mp3s from the tape he has of the performance. I agreed, and told him I had to go feed the cat, since she was meowing at the door.
I took her inside (I live in the garage, which is a couple of metres away from the house), and gave her some cat food. And then decided to grab a boysenberry drumstick (which is a type of ice-cream here) from the freezer, and go back to my room.
After this time, I still wasn't feeling any effects. I was beginning to think that my washing off the dirt in warm water had somehow taken all of the psilocybin content. So I went to the cupboard and took a couple more smaller mushrooms. I'm pretty sure all up I could've only had about four or five... but I don't really remember.
I went back to the computer and listened to the song my friend had sent me. Then I started to eat the ice-cream, and listened to "Where Bluebirds Fly" from the latest Radiohead single. This is a fairly trippy song, and it reminds me in some ways of "Phlegmatics" by Mr. Bungle. So then I listened to Phlegmatics, and posted on a Radiohead messageboard I frequent, asking whether I was crazy for thinking the two songs sound alike. Someone replied with something like "*big flashing neon sign* BEEP BEEP! YOU'RE CRAZY!"
And I began to feel different.
Phlegmatics was having an effect on me, I could definitely feel it. My head began to feel numb and cold, and I was shaking a little. After a short amount of time, I knew what was happening. I walked over to my window (which has no curtains or blinds), and hung a towel over it, which is the only way to keep out the light. I looked through the towel, and the sun shone through the tiny holes in it. I stared at this for a brief while, and it seemed like there were different layers of my vision, and the holes of light were rising through the pattern of the material.
This bothered me a bit, so I stumbled over to my bed and got inside. I closed my eyes, to see if I would be able to see anything. I can't really say that I had any visuals, but there was a faint pattern in the blackness, kind of like an Alex Grey painting. Think the cover of Lateralus by Tool.
Every so often, I would open my eyes, trying to balance the change of perception with just a regular look at my room. And never while having my eyes open, throughout the entire trip, did I see anything. Even the slightest change in surfaces. The only thing resembling those sorts of visuals was the sunlight moving across the side of my wall from behind the towel.
The thing about the trip was... I didn't hallucinate at all. I didn't feel like there was ever another presence with me, or that anything amazing was happening. It was inwardly-focused. And this became very nasty and frightening fairly quickly.
I decided to put in the album "Post", by Bj?rk, and put it to track 2, "Hyper-ballad". The music definitely sounded different. I was hearing different things more clearly, and it was easier for the music to take me to a different place. Different songs affected my thoughts differently, however. Hyper-ballad was quite pleasant. But a few songs in, there were songs like "You've Been Flirting Again", which I found quite unsettling. Not too long after putting the album in, my skin began feeling very hot, and so I decided to take off my shirt and pants, and just throw them on top of the amp + guitar next to my bed. Before doing this, I held my pants against my chest, like they were some kind of comfort. A security blanket or something. But my skin definitely felt burning hot to the touch, so I threw the pants on top of the shirt and lay down on my side.
I felt quite uncomfortable staying in any one position, so I moved around. But not one position felt comfortable. Not so much comfortable, actually... more that it just... didn't feel right.
When the album reached "Possibly Maybe", one of my favourite songs, it gave me more of an unpleasant feeling. At this point, I likened the trip to feeling ill. I mean when you feel *really* ill, and you're sitting on the toilet, your head is ringing, you feel faint, and you're just praying to god that it will end soon. I didn't actually feel sick, but the perception was the same. The "What have I done? What can I do?" line of questioning, repeated over and over.
I tried pushing off the quilt, so I didn't feel so hot. But despite the fact my skin was burning hot, doing so made me feel cold and unprotected inside. So once again, it was the sensation of just not feeling "right".
When the album finished, it was doubly unpleasant to have silence. Because it wasn't complete silence. I could hear the whirr of the computer fan, and the barking of dogs next door, and loud chirping of birds. I found all of this fairly unpleasant. I found myself forming loops of thought and music in my mind. I remember wishing I could somehow get it down whilst I was tripping, but I knew that was impossible. I couldn't possibly get up and do things while feeling like this.
I recall now, before Post, I listened to a Radiohead track, called "Coke Babies". It's an old b-side, and it's always been one of my favourites. I'd imagine that during a less unpleasant tripping experience, it would be incredibly wonderful to listen to. I quite enjoyed the chorus, and I found quite interesting to listen to nontheless.
But after Post, I decided to listen to the new Radiohead single, "There There". There was one song from the three that I hadn't let myself listen to yet, and that was a track called "Paperbag Writer". Obviously no relation to Paperback Writer by The Beatles.
When I put the CD in, I decided to go to the toilet, as I needed to relieve myself.
But staring at the beach towel hanging in my little bathroom (basically just a toilet and a shower), I felt more unpleasant. This wasn't what tripping was supposed to be like. Despite the fact I've been researching it for a couple of years now, and have read a hundred trip reports from Erowid and this place... it really was just like being ill.
After I got off the toilet, I went back to lying in bed. And then Paperbag Writer started...
I have to say, I really don't think I can blame the Radiohead single for the unpleasantness that followed, but it may have put my mind in an even worse state. Paperbag Writer repeats the line "Blow into this paper bag. Go home. Stop grinning at everyone." with some fairly trippy bass and drums. It's not very comforting or pleasant. Even if usually I would think it was incredibly cool (I'm sure I'll think it will be, next time I listen to it), it probably wasn't best for my current state. Then there was Where Bluebirds Fly again, which brought me back to when the trip first started.
I was in a constant state of looping thoughts and feelings. It felt like whatever place I went to to escape, or feel something pleasant, the mushrooms would follow me, and laugh at it. After a while, it became very upsetting. I wanted to know, "What am I doing wrong? What can I do?" and just repeating these things over and over.
I recall looking at my CD collection, wondering what I should play. And just thinking "I know what all this sounds like. I've heard all these CDs before. None of them suit my mood. I knew what was going to happen yesterday. There is nothing new or exciting that awaits me. I've felt everything before. The only thing that could possibly happen is feeling worse than I do now."
If you knew what my mind was usually like, you would understand this is nothing but a speeding up and magnification of my regular thoughts. Which, seeings as I already think ten times too much about everything, is an incredibly frightening concept.
I know I think too much, and I know I over-analyse, but I was hoping the trip would help me change that. Instead it just made it worse.
Eventually, I put in "Vespertine" by Bj?rk, hoping it would soothe my thoughts or calm my nerves. The kind of things I thought whilst listening to it aren't really the kind of things you can explain. Which I'm sure you understand. But I wanted to feel something else, something more. I felt like I could take a plane to the other side of the world, and not escape myself. That things would never change. I felt like the concept of The Matrix. That none of it is real, it's all simulated. I had seen The Matrix: Reloaded the day before, and I suppose it was still on my mind.
It's a frightening thought, feeling like you know everything there is to know, and to feel, and yet that you know absolutely nothing and there is no way to escape that truth. Not that you know absolutely nothing, and you've yet to experience the tearing apart of your ego, and infinite feelings of euphoria flooding through your soul... but that you know absolutely nothing. And that's all there is.
Listening to Vespertine was kind of like a journey. A journey through what I've already felt, and already know, but a journey nontheless. Every song seemed full of wisdom. And I could appreciate this. But it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. It took me to places I'd already been, and I heard sounds I've already listened to before... but it didn't change me. Listening to something like "Frosti" was incredibly beautiful. Sparkling, shimmering, twinkling instrumental. The album is definitely a winter album.
But the lyrics were what stuck in my mind.
I won't try to explain my thought patterns, but I will post a link to the lyrics for the album, here.
http://www.alwaysontherun.net/bjork.htm#v1
Starting from there, and reading through the 12 tracks. They aren't very long, and it will help you understand.
Vespertine was the last thing I listened to. And for the next two hours, I had thoughts, in Bj?rk's voice, endlessly repeating. I can't even tell you what they were now...
But it was so hard to bear. That level and speed of the same thoughts, over and over again in your mind. In a voice somehow devoid of emotion, beautiful, but with an inability to appreciate that beauty.
Something like...
"Is this what it's supposed to be like?
Is this what you imagined?
What is it...
(This is not a question)
It's just like feeling ill.
What did I do wrong?
(I could look at my eyes in the mirror... to see if I'm tripping)
It wiped the floor with me.
Everywhere I went, it laughed in my face.
I've felt this before.
Everything.
There is nothing left.
I want to feel like everyone else/someone else or I'll explode
An eternity.
This is not a question."
Things I've heard. Things I've written myself. Every desperate moment I've had in my life. That's why I say it was like being ill.
I can only say, that after a couple of hours, I fell asleep. I couldn't have gotten out of bed. I just wanted to escape. I eventually woke up around 1am or so. Managed to keep myself in some state of sleep 'til around 3am.
I don't know what I could've done. I find it hard to believe tripping could ever be a pleasant experience for me.
I don't think I'll be able to recover for a while. I didn't feel there was really anything to live for whilst it was happening.
I wouldn't say I regret it. But I don't know what to say or think anymore.
I hope there is something more out there. I thought I would find it in taking mushrooms. Or at least get a glimpse of it. Instead of a magnification of my current thoughts and over-analysing.
I suppose I'll end this now.
I just hope you all can have pleasant experiences. Even if I'm not sure now that I can.
End: 6:09am.
--------------------
Immerse your soul in love.
Edited by KefkaX (05/30/03 02:10 PM)
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