(Long post, mostly just for me to get some thoughts out but maybe it'll help others too. Mod's, if this should be in trip reports please move it. Thanks!)
I took shrooms for the first time a few months ago and the experience resulted in some major outlook changes that I think are pretty positive.
What I'm so awestruck by though is that I had no intention going in of getting anything more out of it then a fun night of tripping.
I've done lsd a bunch, though that was mostly years ago back in college, and from what I'd heard about shrooms before that night I was expecting a light trip, things to be hilarious and generally to just be in a good mood to enjoy the party/night around me. What I had was also less then an 1/8th, maybe 2 or 2.5 grams and had just been stored in a ziplock bag for months in some dude's backpack while he hiked around the country. Kinda assumed there wasn't much potency left.
Soooo wrong! Instead I got to experience the absolute strongest trip of my life to the point that it made me feel like I'd never really known what tripping -was- before. I won't get into details, cuz you guys know, and this isn't meant to be a trip report. But hell, it was stupid amazing.
Unfortunately with this amazing trip came the worse whole body nausea I've ever had in my life. It kept me from enjoying the first half of the trip as I kept thinking I would die if I sat still too long but also getting sicker every time I moved around.
I had friends around but instead of really talking to them when they tried to get me to do things, I'd just do a "smile and nod" and say I was nauseous but never let on how bad I was really feeling or how scared I was and that all I wanted was for the trip to stop.
I spent a lot of time off on my own working on "dealing" with the trip. I knew all the right things to tell myself-
"I took drugs, all this weird stuff is supposed to be happening" "You're not dying, you just feel like crap from the side effects" "The peak will be over soon and then you'll feel better" "Time hasn't stopped, it is still passing like normal"
And going over that stuff let me keep things together and kept me from freaking out but I was still so miserable. I figured I was just stuck riding it out for the next 3 or 4 hours and I'd tough it out, even though every 5 min was feeling like it was 15 or 20 min.
Eventually one friend noticed I was not doing well and tried to talk to me. I still didn't open up to him but they are pretty experienced with drugs and must have had some idea. He basically told me I was stuck too much in my own head and that I needed to get up, do stuff, and not waste the experience.
He told me I should puke if I needed to (I already had once) and to try eating something.
I was feeling so crappy I didn't want to any of those things but this is someone who's opinion I really respect so I forced myself to get up. I went and puked again and really made sure to get everything up this time. I found an apple and as soon as I started eating what was the best apple I've had in my life, I realized my friend had given me some really good advice.
After that the trip got sooo much better, I had fun and got to see the world in a really awesome way.
But the therapeutic part of the trip actually came a couple days later when I was thanking my friend for helping me out. While thanking him I let him know just how bad things had been for me at the start and all the stuff I wrote above.
He, lovingly, basically called me an idiot and said I should have just talked to someone right away when things started going bad. That anyone there would have helped me out and the whole experience could have been so much better for me.
And while we were talking about that I realized that it wasn't just in the trip that I try and deal with things myself, but that I do it with pretty much everything. I've kinda cultured an attitude of "I can handle things, I don't need to bother my friends, I don't need to be a downer or make them deal with my silly problems"
I'd been so worried that I would mess up their night and take up their time that I was willing to suffer for hours to not be a bother and the really messed up part is that at the time, I thought I was being a "strong" person for doing that. I thought I was being resolute. And I've thought it made me a strong person to not have to rely on other people when I've felt sad or depressed or worried about things in life.
I always just suck it up and deal with my own problems until, eventually, they get better. I never talk to anyone about anything. This has been a very silly way to go about life.
Another thing I brought up to my friend was that there had been a moment during the good part of the trip where one guy said something totally mundane but that I though was hilarious. I wanted to fall to the ground and roll around laughing it was so funny. But I held myself back and just smiled a bit because I was for some reason trying to not act weird. I was all like "Oh no, I can't interrupt someone to fall on the ground laughing, that's too crazy"
Of course my friend said I was silly for being so concerned with what they would think. He said I just should have laughed.
All this talking with him, and thinking about it later on, made me really really aware of how much I've closed myself off from letting other people help me and from letting most of my friendships get past a "casual friends" level. Most of my friends really don't know me very well, because I never open up to them.
What I've thought was me being strong in life has really been more me taking the hardest route possible when dealing with things. It works, technically, but it's lonely.
Since then, I've taken the opportunity to open up to a couple of other friends about things I'd had on my mind for a long time. It was awkward and hard but they listened and didn't reject me and the world didn't end.
I feel like I'm going to have a lot more meaningful friendships with people down the road.
I'm really amazed that stuff that probably would have taken months to go through with a counselor (who I never would have thought I needed anyways) got dealt with, completely unintentionally, by one shroom trip and a talk with a friend.
Thanks for reading.
p.s.
Since that night I've also started dreaming again like I did back when I was a kid/teenager. Long, complex, plot-driven dreams that are very vivid. I'm dreaming like this every single night when for the past 10 or 15 years I only would have complex dreams once a week or so, maybe less. I'm not really sure what to think of this but I feel like it's probably a good thing.
Edited by sparkleball (12/01/16 09:20 PM)
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