Well, thanks to some information I've absorbed by pouring over the forums, and asking a question or two, I managed to find my way to some fresh cubensis mushrooms. The first harvest was very small, but only a small portion of what's on the way - two cakes started pinning nearly a week before the other colonized cakes. Those two were harvested last night, and are currently rehydrating. The other three are currently pinning - one started yesterday, the other two last night. And it looks like primordia are forming all over the place. By my estimate, the pinsets will be far superior to the first two cakes.
Anyway, I haven't taken mushrooms or any other psychedelic for probably five or six years at least, maybe a bit longer. And so I was a bit excited and harvested earlier than I probably should have, but that's okay. I ended up with 27.52 grams of mushrooms (wet weight) which I minced and soaked in the juice of one and a half lemons for about an hour. I strained off the juice into a glass with a few spoonfuls of honey, and had about 100ml of liquid. I then took the strained mushroom bits and put them back in the container they were soaking in, and added two bags of black tea and steeped that in about 100ml of boiled water for about half an hour. This was strained into the same glass as the lemon juice mixture and then iced, making a sort of mushroom Arnold Palmer iced tea.
I had eaten a light lunch slightly before 11AM, so I had an empty stomach, having fasted for about nine hours. While making the tea I took a shower and then changed into some loose fitting clothing. I meditated for a while prior to consuming the tea, which I drank all in one go slightly after 8.
I meditated some more for about another ten minutes or so, and started feeling the first hints of what was to come shortly after.
In the past I'd not had very visual experiences with psychedelics generally, with a few exceptions - salvia extract, some 2C-x stuff, DPT, etc., but I rarely had a very visual experience with mushrooms. I was hoping to get the most that I could from this, despite it being a fairly low dose, so I went and laid down in the dark as the effects set in. For a few moments I was pretty skeptical, as the effects took hold over what seemed like a longer period of time than should have been needed. But before long, I was in the grip of a pretty weird state of mind.
After this point, I really started to get a taste of a side of mushrooms I'd never been too familiar with, despite extensive experience with them. I found moments of fairly normal cognitive functioning, but it was mixed with some really strange states of mind, too, with audio stimulation often impacting the visual field. For one, I initially had a ceiling fan going, and the strained humming of the motor sounded to me a bit like a movie flying saucer, and the bed felt like it was lifting up and moving on its own. There were also sounds I had trouble discerning; the noises of the a/c turning on and off, and the train right next to my apartment complex were disorienting, but having little other external sensory input, they made a big difference on what I was experiencing. I often felt my mind trying to leave my body and very nearly succeeding, and also at times feeling as if I myself was transforming. It was at just such a time that I realized one possible pitfall of tripping in an apartment is that the neighbors live there and will go about their lives, oblivious to your state. And sometimes your neighbors are bumping around and being loud while you're just laying there turning into an ant monster, and can't quite come to terms with what you're hearing. This happened to me, but luckily I caught a moment of clarity immediately after this and started cracking up at the absurdity of what was happening. I knew I couldn't quite explain what all I was experiencing, and the word "ineffable" was all I could think of to describe it. It was novel and alien, but at the same time vaguely and eerily familiar, and I knew as I know now that words can't do it justice.
At a certain point early on, as I was truly entering the peak, I had a sense of some sort of entity being present, halfway materializing before me while my eyes were closed, but this being vanished shortly after, and was never very clear, not managing to communicate anything.
After a while of strange mental, visual, and aural phenomena, I left my bedroom and entered the main living space of my apartment. I decided to try some music, and put an album on. What I chose was "The Last Dawn" by a group called Mono, and it was a good choice - I was enthralled from start to finish, sitting in my recliner with a blanket and watching the carpet, watching shapes and patterns take form and dance in it. After the music ended, I decided to return to my bedroom and lay down some more. I don't have any frame of reference for how long I'd been there, but with eyes closed I found fleeting glimpses of vivid, fantastic alien landscapes with glowing crystal blue ponds, reddish stone ground and dark skies.
After a while of watching the mental pictures come and go, I started to realize the peak was ending, and I began to get a little restless. I also began to increasingly notice my hunger. I went to find something to eat and after about half an hour of trying to figure out how to do it, I poured a small bowl of salsa and got some chips. I ate about half of it and then felt too full and set it aside.
I spent the next hour or two coming down, ambling around the apartment, looking out the window at the sky and the trees and Spanish moss, sitting in the dark, laying on the carpet, and so on. Eventually, around midnight, I did turn on the TV around midnight and watched two episodes of a show which I found pretty funny at times.
Around 1AM I was almost entirely back to baseline, and went to bed. I slept well, and woke up sometime around seven thirty or so feeling rested.
I was surprised at how deep this got given the fairly light dosage - in the past I always used to use about 3-3.5g dried weight and never really found it to be a very high dose, but then again when I used to have regular access to mushrooms I would simply air dry them, and so I'm sure the potency suffered a good deal. I don't know if I really think the lemon juice made a big difference to the experience, and I definitely felt a little uncomfortable having something so very acidic on an empty stomach. I always prefer tea over eating mushrooms, which makes me vomit when it comes on, and I think next time I'll go back to a more traditional tea which I don't think is inferior to using the lemons.
While I was pleasantly impressed by the depth of the experience in relation to the dosage, I still think it was only scratching the surface of what's possible, and I hope very much to take a stronger dose next time - 35-40g wet is my goal, and I should have an opportunity to do that very soon here, depending on how fast these other cakes take. This was meant to be a "getting my feet wet" type of experience, and I consider it a smashing success. I think next time, though, I hope to venture a little further in. I have never gone over 4g dry to my recollection, though, and as such I think that should be my upper limit for now, but before the year is out I hope to try a stronger dose still.
There are two things that were difficult, though. It may well have been one of only a few times where I took mushrooms without also having cannabis on hand. And I was somewhat uncomfortable during the come down, and kind of wished I could smoke some pot. I'm in a new city, though, and don't know where to get any yet. Additionally, I didn't remember the physical discomfort - I was alternately too hot or too cold, much like if I had a fever. I was never miserable, just a little uncomfortable in my body at times.
Overall though it was a great success.
Sorry for the length of the post, this was more of a reflective project for me than it was for others, if I'm being honest. That said if you read it, I hope it was at least mildly interesting.
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南無阿彌陀佛 南無觀世音菩薩
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