This is sort of an introductory post. I would like to tell a story which I haven't told in entirety to very many people, and some aspects of this story I have never told anybody. I'm telling it because I feel that it will be cleansing. I'm not sure whether it belongs here or in "Trip Reports", but I feel that overall the story transcends the focal event, a trip I took. This is an fairly long story and I understand that not everybody will read the whole thing. I only ask for feedback on whatever can be read.
This story begins about 5 years ago, in April of 2005. I had been growing some Cubensis (I don't remember the strain, something pretty common I think like B+ or Ecuador). I had been harvesting the mushrooms for some time and I had a decent amount dried and stored in my freezer. I decided to consume 10g of these mushrooms sometime in the late afternoon around 5pm. Consider them to be of average to slightly above average strength (owing to the fact that they were fairly fresh and I can vouch that they were desiccated quickly and without heat). As all of you know, this is a pretty high dose. I thought myself to be prepared for this though, as I had done up to 7g previously many times and never found the experience overwhelming even when it was quite strong. I also decided to augment the dosage with about four grams of Syrian rue, taken ground in a coffee grinder and swallowed in gel capsules. I had never used Syrian rue with mushrooms before, although I did take 2g dried on its own a few days prior. I noticed no effects at all, adverse or otherwise, so I naively assumed that whatever effect the rue would have on my trip would be subtle.
I knew that I was going to have a very strong trip when I could start feeling the effects as I was finishing eating the mushrooms (which in itself took quite some time). Very soon after, probably 10 minutes or so, I realized that I would be on a much stronger trip than I had ever previously been, and I was experiencing a great amount of anxiety over this. I tried to calm down by listening to music, but my anxiety level increased when I realized I could not recognize the music that was being played even though I had heard it many times previously. I turned the music off, and considered calling my girlfriend for help or advice. However, I quickly realized that I could not speak, could not operate a phone, and yet also realized that my girlfriend (who had never tripped) would not be able to help me at all or offer any advice.
At about +30 minutes (it could have been less or more, this is the last moment during the trip that I have any concept whatsoever of how much time had elapsed) I decided the best thing I could do would be to lay in bed and ride out the trip. I felt like this would calm me down, and I was confident that even if I continued to feel this overwhelming anxiety, that I would be able to ride out the trip. I then remember feeling very itchy and uncomfortable as if my skin was crawling, so I took off all of my clothes before I went to lie down.
From here, I have very fragmented memories. I do remember feeling that I was experiencing infinity, and I remember being able to visualize a lot of abstract numerical concepts (most variations of taking a limit towards infinity, as I had been taking a lot of calculus classes at the time). I remember feeling that my ego was being decimated (in the signal processing sense, I felt that my ego was being divided into fewer and fewer discrete units until there were no units, and I remember feeling that this was some sort of epiphany, although I don't know why).
I remember feeling something about my girlfriend and her stepmother, and it has something to with sex and the word "fuck" and feeling something incredibly profound about all of it.
I also remember thinking something about the concept of "n****r", what it means to be one, how the word was used, I was envisioning a lot about street culture and black culture and I really thought I was on to something. I also remember having some kind of dialogue with Fat Albert and the gang. Yes, really. This is especially odd to me as I had not at the time, and still have not actually seen the television show or the movie and know little about these characters.
Very unfortunately, and unbeknown to myself at that time, I was shouting many (all?) of the things I was saying quite loudly. My neighbors (I lived in a small apartment) could hear all of this shouting clearly, but to them, all most of what could hear was me shouting "fuck" a lot, and the word "n****r" a lot.
At some point, they called the police, who showed up and unsuccessfully tried to get me to come to the door for what was by all accounts, quite some time (about a half hour or so). According to them (and I actually have no reason to doubt them) I had partially left open a blind and they could see what was going on in my apartment. What they saw was a naked young man rambling and walking around in a dark apartment and occasionally grabbing and handling his penis. And at some point, they saw me turn towards the front door and fall face first without making any attempt to catch myself, eventually landing on a futon, splitting the entire wooden frame in two.
I should interject at this point. I do have some memory of that. I felt that I had died, and my apartment was a form of hell, and everything would be exactly as it was for all eternity, dead and motionless and unchanging, and I would be forever unable to leave. I don't remember why I fell face forward onto the futon, but I remember that it was intentional and it was some kind of test of the boundaries of this imagined hell in which I was existing.
I remember a man sticking his head through my window, and shining a flashlight in. This astonished me. He knew my name, although I had never met him and did not recognize him. He kindly suggested several times that I should open my front door. This concept really blew my mind, and I took it as a sign that there might be a way out of this hell. I eventually stumbled over to the door and opened it, and was amazed by the crowd which had formed in front of my door. None of them seemed happy. Very quickly I was forced to sit in a chair in my kitchen, put on some pants, and explain who I was and what I had taken. Actually, I say very quickly, but evidently (according to the felony complaint) this process took about a half hour. They were not able to get me to speak my name or present any ID (I think I feebly tried to present them with some dried leaves from a house plant that I was crumbling in my hands). I also distinctly remember the smell of cigarette smoke (which I associated with death), and which I tried to get up and locate in a corn flakes box on the top of my refrigerator. I was strongly encouraged to sit down.
The next memory I have is of being strapped to a gurney and taken outside of my apartment and into the ambulance. I remember a lot of people watching me, many of them shaking their heads as if in disappointment and mild disgust. I would later recognize these people again as my neighbors. I saw that it was very dark outside. I still don't know what time it was, but I imagine it to be at least midnight as everybody who was not wearing a uniform was in pajamas.I remember putting up a very weak fight as some kind of needle was tuck in my arm. I imagined myself to be dead again.
The next fragment is in an emergency room. I remember a doctor explaining to me that if I could not produce a urine sample on my own, that they would have to catheterize me. I was unable to produce a urine sample on my own. Thankfully, that is all I remember of this fragment.
The next memory I have is of being in a gurney again, this time lucid. I remember saying my name, explaining that I had taken a lot of mushrooms and that I was still hallucinating quite strongly, but that I was now aware of my surroundings and would not resist any further medical treatment. I'm only paraphrasing slightly. I was actually surprised at this than they seemed to be. I remembered being incoherent only moments before, and then of suddenly being lucid. The doctors and nurses knew something I didn't, though. They had treated me with diazepam, which apparently is pretty good for getting people down from a bad one.
I was then made to be (relatively) comfortable in an ICU room, with blankets, a bed with adjustable incline, a television, and some food which I found to be unpalatable and bland. This was right before dawn. I was exhausted, but could not sleep. I was trying to process everything that had happened. I was extremely worried that I had incriminated myself (I had) and that the police would find everything I had pertaining to growing mushrooms (they did). I wanted to get home as quickly as possible in the event that they would be unable to obtain a warrant immediately. However, I could not be released until a doctor examined me, and he would not be in for a couple of hours. I contemplated escaping the hospital, but I was unsure of how to remove the IV drips from my body safely and I also had absolutely no possessions on my person except for the pair of pants that the paramedics had earlier coerced me into wearing. So I waited.
The doctor finally arrived. He asked me a series of questions which I had already answered during a pre-examination by a nurse, wrote some things down, and told me I was free to go. This was fine, except they wouldn't let me leave without at least some socks and a sweatshirt, which the nurses provided. They also provided me with a taxi ride home. All of this took some time to arrange, and it was about 10am by the time I left the hospital. When I arrived home at about 10:30am, a swarm of intimidating-looking swat officers were breaking down my door with a battering ram. This was actually kind of funny since the door was not locked and even if it were was completely accessible via the broken window. I tried to explain this to some onlooking detectives, but they explained to me that this was a safety measure. Somehow.
Shockingly, they discovered my illicit psilocin manufacturing lab, which consisted of a humidifier feeding a tube which passed through a few 3-liter bottles, fed into a styrofoam cooler, with a couple dozen cakes in the middle of fruiting at the bottom, all cleverly hidden inside a large television shipping box which I had inconspicuously placed in the middle of a spare room. The detectives asked me a series of questions about the operation of my elaborate grow operation, the answers to which they clearly did not understand in the slightest.
I was then taken down to the local police station, printed, kept in a holding cell for several hours, and then released under suspicion of manufacturing a controlled substance, a class B felony in the state I was in (Missouri).
Over the next several days, I obtained a lawyer for the princely sum of $1500. Within a couple of months, I started to get a lot of bills for my hospital stay, which I believe initially exceeded $10,000. When I explained to them that I had no money, they reduced that amount to somewhere around $2,000, which I had a year or so to pay off, interest free.
By the end of May, I decided to move back in with my parents in Nebraska. I was somewhat disgraced by this, as I was 21 at the time and felt that I had achieved independence. However, I was financially and emotionally a wreck, so it seemed the wisest course of action at that time.
It actually took almost two years for the state of Missouri to put out a warrant for my arrest. My lawyer informed me of this before it happened, as he had "pulled some strings" and gotten my charged reduced to simple possession and made sure that I would be able to afford the bail, which was only about $5000, and of which I only had to pay 10%, to the courts directly, and which would be refundable if I made all of the court appearances. So I traveled to Missouri and surrendered myself. I was held for several hours for no apparent reason, and then released. I would travel to Missouri several times over the next few months for various hearings in which I merely had to stand before a judge. Eventually, there was a hearing where I was allowed to plead guilty, as I had always intended to do, and in July of 2007, I was offered a suspended imposition of sentence if I completed five years of probation, paid about $1000 in court costs, and completed a few other small conditions such as 4 days shock time in jail, 40 hours of community service, a substance abuse treatment program, etc.
There is of course more to this story, but I'd like to stop here for now and get feedback from you folks. How does that story make you feel about mushrooms? What should I have done differently? What adjustments would you make to your life, and most importantly, how do you think such a trip (with similar consequences) would affect your psyche?
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Well, I definitely agree that 10 grams was probably too much - certainly too much without a sitter. The syrian rue was obviously overkill, and I probably took too much of that too. Also, from reading mushrooms+rue trip reports it's not uncommon for rue to add that edgy feeling, which I really didn't need.
As for my neighbors - they really weren't assholes. They were concerned, had no idea that I was just on a strong trip, and were actually thinking I might be having a psychotic episode. Actually, the very next day, the black lady upstairs bummed me a cigarette and let her young daughter show me a pet turtle she had, which is pretty damn trusting when you consider the previous night I had been the crazy naked guy downstairs shouting "n****r" and "oh, fuck yeah!". I felt really bad about that racial shit because that is not me at all. I'm a white guy, but about 1/3 of my extended family is of various racial background, I've grown up in a lot of mixed race neighborhoods, etc. I don't want to come across like that "I'm so culturally enlightened, I'm practically an honorary black" type of white dude, I just don't harbor any antipathy towards anybody for being a different color than me.
If there is one lesson to be learned that I would like people to take away (and that I have certainly taken away from this), do not ever trip where you grow! Tripping where you rest at isn't a bad idea, and growing where you rest at could also work, I think - although it is harder to claim that the operation isn't yours, you do have a lot more control that way over who sees what's going on in the first place. But growing and tripping in the same place is a very bad idea. If something goes wrong, you could be fucked, and I mean in the exact opposite way from however it is you love to be fucked. And by the way, just about anything not under lock and key might constitute "plain sight" once you let them into your place.
So, the rest of the story...this is a bit harder for me to retell, because it quickly merges with the present. Basically, what happened is that after I left Missouri, I stopped tripping for a while. I got a job at a Starbucks and eventually went back to school, where I am still attending. I'm about a year away from my BS in Electronics Engineering. I have never failed a UA while on probation, so my officers have always given me as much leeway as they are allowed. Usually I only have to stop by once every three months, tell them I'm clean, that I've paid my monthly fee, that I still have a job, then I piss in a cup and I'm on my way. They've even been advocates for my early release, however the situation is a bit complicated as I am an interstate compact case so it is the Missouri probation's decision whether to release me, and they don't even return phone calls to me or the Nebraska probation. But the situation is hopeful because at any given time if the lines of communication open up, I could be released from probation, which would be kind of cool.
I'm a bit apprehensive about discussing any current psychedelic use as there is easily enough evidence in all of these posts to identify me for any interested party, so for now let's just say I don't at all feel like I'm "damaged goods" in terms of my capacity for experiencing psychedelics. I also like to chill out on occasion and I'm a bit of a sidelines fan of amateur horticulture.
P.S. - it should also be mentioned that although my experience was extremely frightening and led to a lot of adverse consequences, it wasn't all terrible. It broke me off from a girlfriend I didn't love but with whom I felt trapped in a relationship. It brought me closer to my parents, with whom I had previously had a fairly distant relationship. Moving back to Nebraska brought me close to a new woman that I genuinely love and adore, and who is now my fiancé. That, in turn, got me to return to school learning about something I enjoy, and have a good chance at being compensated well for doing. I'm also very undesirable to the military, so that's a plus! This wasn't a life-wrecker at all. It's not something I ever wish to repeat, but in a way I'm actually glad that I had this experience, because it has given me perspective on a lot of things which most people do not have.
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