Trip Report – 9/27/2016
Mushrooms, unknown strain
4-5 mushrooms, ground to a powder, 4 tsp., lemon TEK then steeped with ginger and turmeric tea.
45 years old, male, 190#
I have taken acid in the past, numerous trips but no more than 2 hits at a time (and that only once). Marijuana off and on for 20 years. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.
Apart from the cat (more on him later) I was alone. My bedroom was the setting. Though I had read to do this at night in the dark, I chose to have some illumination in the manner of electric candles and three tea candles for a soft glow. I put on a nature sound loop on my iPod, a running creek with birdsong.
I drank the tea at 8:25 p.m. I read that effects from this preparation would come on quickly. After 15 minutes I felt a slight drunkenness. I prepared another cup from the mushroom matter and returned to the bedroom. Within another 10 minutes, there was a ramping up of effects within my body. It was, as I wrote in a notebook, a “rising exhilaration, anticipation, quickening, stirring, mellow joy”. There was no nausea. I felt a mild body load which felt like being drunk on a boat.
After 30 minutes from first intake all objectivity dropped away. As anyone who has done this knows, words are inadequate to the task of describing the experience. The trip seemed to have defined, yet fluid segments; advancements from outer reality to innerspace. Much like in a dream I traversed one experience to the next. Linear time intersected with a transpersonal dimension. With eyes closed I seemed to travel light years within; when I opened my eyes I found that only minutes had passed.
The first segment was unbound joy. This was an ecstasy I had never felt before. Pot, acid, sex, love had never generated this kind of feeling. This was pure love, not ego love; not the love of attachment to another. I was sitting in it, surrounded by it; it coursed through me like a current of electricity. I wept, but I was not sad. I invoked my mantra breathing in, “Soooooooo”; breathing out, “Huuummmmm.” With each inhalation I went deeper within; with each exhalation I rose ever higher.
At times I was able to return to time and place, dipping in and out of the pool of my own existence. I wanted to keep some kind of objective track of the experience but I found that to be self-defeating. The first segment could not have lasted more than an hour but I felt an eternity had been crossed.
The sound of the stream on my iPod began breaking up into pixels in my ears. This made sense to me as it was a digital file. Each lapping of water on the rocks broke into waves of digital squares. It was a patchwork quilt of noise that no longer resembled what it represented, so I switched to a recording of Vedic chants. This, too, soon became unrenderable by my ears and brain and I turned the sound off for the rest of the night.
The second stage then began. With my eyes closed I had CVEs. Waves and patterns of different colors; mostly blues, purples and oranges. Some of the patterns took shape as dandelions or thistles, some morphing into insects. I became aware that this might lead to something frightening and I was able to back out of this space. I maintained my sense of ecstasy.
Measuring linear time was now no longer a concern. I was fully and deeply swimming the Ocean of Bliss. I kept saying to myself, “It’s all so wonderful” and “It’s all around me”. I don’t know how long I was here, though probably not as long as it felt.
Eventually, nature called and I walked down to the bathroom. The entire apartment was dark, save for whatever exterior lights on my apartment building bled through the blinds. The lights are halogen with a bluish-white hue.
I relieved myself and asked, “Do you want to see yourself?” I wasn’t entirely sure that I did. I didn’t know what would be facing me in the mirror. I cautioned myself that my body had aged, that it may not actually be what I think in Straight Time. Like many, I suffer from body consciousness; mostly that I have not taken care of my body of late. Little exercise, poor diet, alcohol abuse. This has been the product of a year of several stressors that have depressed me and limited my interest in my health. One of the motivations behind this trip was to work through some of these issues so I may be free of the burdens that have grounded me (more on that later).
I paused, then turned to the mirror directly behind me. I burst out laughing. “Hello!” I said to myself as I took a step closer to my dear friend. I reached out to him in the mirror. I was so happy to see him. “How are you?” I asked. “I’m okay”. But it was no mere dismissal. It was a deeply felt acceptance that I was, indeed, “okay”, in all ways. I’ve never felt such joy in being Me. I stared at myself in the mirror for, again, what seemed an eternity. The light casting through the window threw strange shadows across my face and I was aware of tracers as my head bobbed and weaved for different looks at myself. I saw the simian features of our ancestors under the rubbery mask of my face. I continued to assure myself I was “okay” and returned to the bedroom. Several times following I returned to the bathroom to blow my nose, which was flowing with snot from joyful weeping and whatever physiological effects were at play from the mushroom. Each time I caressed my image in the mirror. I felt deep sympathy for the person looking back at me. I acknowledged I had experienced a lot of pain in my life but that I was still “okay”. I was capable of loving myself, loving others and being loved in return. Much of my pain has derived from the sense that none of those statements are true. I have not only experienced pain, I have caused pain; through withdrawal of my love from others, through rejecting the love of others, by the fear of loving and being loved. All of this was washed away.
Returning to the bedroom, another segment began. I was now traveling through the time of my own life, visiting places and people I have not considered in many years. I reflected on what those people and places meant to me, how they formed my life and how I abandoned them. I reflected on the pain they all must have felt by my rejection, or how their life circumstances were misunderstood by me leading to the many layers of ego built up to protect my spirit. For instance, I’ve long harbored resentment (though unstated) for my father for not being present during much of my childhood. He always seemed to be working. I came to understand that it must have hurt him terribly to be away from us while he was doing what was necessary to care for us. My brother and I had an epically combative relationship throughout childhood. Though I knew intellectually it was because he was adopted I never fully understood the pain that must have caused him until this evening. I was able to put myself in their shoes, so to speak, to gain insight into their struggles and finally feel an understanding and sympathy for them.
This train of thought ran to many people who are no longer in my life. I discovered it was my own fear of loss and rejection that turned me against them when all they wanted was to love me. I was able to feel the pain they must have felt. All of this may have been understood on some level, but dismissed by my ego. Now I was really feeling it. It made me very sad, but not self-blaming or shaming. All of our pain is equal; it belongs to all of us. We share in the grief though we try to push it away. There’s nothing wrong with feeling it. Indeed, if we felt it more we would have better relationships with each other. Though I was sad, I also felt “okay”, deeply. “It’s teaching me so much,” I repeated to myself.
By now the peak experience was probably over. No more CVEs, no more deep dives into the Ocean. I was present, here and now. But now that the lesson had been learned, it was time for recess.
Another segment began. My cat joined me on the bed. I can’t imagine what was going through his little mind seeing me and sensing my condition, which was still in a state of infinite bliss. My heightened senses made him appear larger and farther away than he was. When I reached out to pet him it felt as though it wasn’t my hand that was doing it, though the stimulation of the act was coming into my sensory array.
I've often wondered (not really) what my cat does at night while I’m asleep. I got a little taste of it this evening and got to join in on the fun.
He gets what is called “the crazies”. Just as I saw things that weren’t there (at least, not here there) so he sees things in the dark, too. Jumping, flipping, crawling and scratching his way around the apartment, eyes wide and black, who knows what was amusing his little brain. I got into the act with the laser pointer, which streaked across the floor. I still had some tracers going and kitty seemed to be moving through a warp tunnel as he chased it.
I felt a little hungry, though really just curious what food would be like in this condition. I had a pumpkin soup cracker from Trader Joe’s. It was the single best cracker I have ever tasted. Ever. In my life. The joy of taste was never more profound.
The crackers were a little sticky so I ran the kitchen tap to rinse the residue off my fingers. “What would water feel like?” I wondered. It was incredible. I remembered our bodies are 98% of this stuff that was running over my hand. It was a marvel to feel the essence of what makes me.
I returned to the bedroom, feeling tired and wanting to sleep. It was difficult returning to my normal space. I could, with little effort, zoom off again into a tangent thought but as the surroundings came into focus around me those tangents became disorienting to entertain. I was determined to sleep. I still had some heightened senses. The ticking of the clock and my wristwatch, the flicker of the electric flame, all felt to be moored inside my ears. I put in earplugs and heard the distant roar of the Ocean, now receding from my experience. I felt very grateful for my mushroom voyage, even as the return to port left me somewhat questioning its validity. I told myself now was not the time to analyze. I was still in the experience. I needed to settle into bed and drift off to sleep. Tomorrow I would be able to tell the tale and what I learned from it.
It was sometime after midnight when I went to bed. I awoke a few hours later, perhaps 5:00. It’s my cat’s habit to get me up at that time. I felt no hangover. Unlike acid, which keeps me buzzing for a full day afterwards, there was no lingering current from the night before. It’s a subdued day, overcast and a bit chilly. Still, there was some sense that the world outside was more alive than it was the day before. The grass is a deeper green, the flowers brighter yellow. More than that, they are there. I am more acutely aware of them than I had been before. I may have noticed them but never lingered over them. Like a long timed exposure on a camera, they are rendered more fully than just as if by a snapshot.
I am taking this day to rest and reflect. I have no business to attend to, no people to see. This was an amazing experience; one that I could never have anticipated. I wonder now what I will do with the lessons I’ve learned from it. Shall I approach all those people from my past and express my sympathy and understanding? If so, how? Some may not want to hear from me, much less accept my deep remorse. I suppose that is to be expected. Certainly I would not tell them how I came to it, since it may only enforce an idea that it was not come by honestly and is therefore not valid. But these feelings have not been erased with the new day and I feel they are as valid, if not more so, than if I spent years analyzing and cogitating on them intellectually. I have felt the pain and I have come to understand, accept and embrace it. Now I want to heal it.
I also think about the next time. Should there be one? What more can I learn? I would not enter into it lightly, for who knows how the voyage may go? This one cruised on a lightstream, full of color and beauty and joy; another may take a darker route. So I will wait for it to call to me again.
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