EDIT: Here's a TLDR:
euphoria: nonexistent, disappointing when hoping for laughing fits headspace: threshold to maybe level 1 visuals: level 3 or level 4. Definitely got some of my pink straggly lines...saw the bathroom tile swirl at 3 hours in...didn't really get the big, transparent mandala overlay sedation level 4 or level 5. really didn't want to move, even though I was wide awake
I recently read the paper from earlier this year about reclassifying the eastern North American Gymnopilus species. Here in MD I've been finding the some gymnopilus subspectabilis fruits, usually somewhat rotten and bug-infested, in the oak groves. But last Sunday I found my first Gymnopilus speciosissimus cluster! I didn't get any pictures of it in the spot, as it was very public and I was focused on carrying it away. It was so clearly a different species, much larger and more of an orange-red-brown color than the very yellow subspectabilis fruits. Its spore production was very impressive, my hands turned orange and the vines and leaves nearby were also covered in orange.

The scale of the cluster was also striking. The mass I took away, and I definitely left some behind, looked to be about the size of a basketball. I weighed the whole bag, including some oak leaves and some ivy and violet vines I'd snagged and it was 850g! I cleaned out the leaves and vines, losing no more than 200g, for at least 650g total fruits. I made the mistake of washing what I had left before I weighed it again: the scale said 1,060g!
 Preparing an extract seemed the only reasonable way to consume these. I assembled two batches, one with the bluing pins and the other with the big caps, and put each of them through a blender with water and then into a double-boiler for about an hour. I then strained them through a shirt and combined them, producing about 30oz/900ml of liquid. I returned that liquid to the double-boiler for another hour, reducing the liquid to 10oz/300ml. This liquid was sealed in a jar and refrigerated until the weekend.
One discovery: both the fruits and cooking of the liquid smell like rotting wood or soil with lots of decomposed organic matter, but they lack the sharp pungency of subspectabilis.
I'm obsessive with trip preparation and I spent yesterday closing my anxiety loops, doing things like paying bills, cleaning up, etc. I also walked around my hunting spots, finding some subspectabilis pins. I also did lots of yoga to release tension.
At 20:15, I added .2g of blended fruit acid (citric, tauric, mallic) powder to the liquid for a 'Lemon TEK' effect of a higher peak and shorter duration. Ten minutes later, I drank the very bitter liquid. It was work, but I got it down in about 3 minutes.
I got very comfortable in bed and put in ear plugs and an eye mask. The come up was evident by 21:00, but was mostly a body load. These mushrooms were felt heavy and numbing, not like the more light and mind-racing feel I'd expected.
The headspace seemed quite small and I felt very little of the wide-ranging thoughts I feel with Psilocybes species. While I felt wide awake, I also felt like not moving. A lot of my thoughts, and this might just be the result of current news on COVID, went towards a very calm acceptance of the cycle of life. That life and death are inevitable and intertwinned and that life is as much a nasty contest as it is a beautiful gift. This wasn't a harsh lesson, but more of a heavy and inescapable one. I had hoped for a very laughter-heavy experience, but this was almost the opposite of that.
Though my mind was pretty close to baseline by 00:30, about four hours after blast off, my body was in an entirely different place and sleep was a while away. My body still felt very heavy. I've heard that these contain compounds akin to those in kava, perhaps that's what I noticed? I stayed awake for another couple of hours. At 02:30 I felt tired enough to fall asleep.
I'm glad I did this, but mostly for its mycological interest. As a psychonautic exploration, I was underwhelmed. And given that collecting these is fraught, that preparing them is time consuming, and that ingesting them is pretty disgusting, I'm not too eager to try them again. They are amazing organisms and I'm glad to have become acquainted, but as long as I have lots of ovoids, I'm not making a priority of seeking out speciosissimus.
I recently found a 125g cluster of subspectabilis pins that showed strong bluing. I'm excited to see how these contrast with the speciosissimus, my only previous subspectabilis experience was from large fruits and had only threshold effects. I have this extract of the pins in the freezer, but it will probably be early December before I even consider consuming those. Hopefully they will provide the laughing effect!
-------------------- Knowledge is finite, ignorance is infinite.
Edited by LeafRaker (11/16/20 08:14 AM)
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I experienced less mind-racing and mind-fuck with these Gyms than I do with cubes. I felt strangely heavy and sedated. But the visuals at this does was pretty good, something like from 5-7g of cubes.
I might go for these again this fall when they fruit. I'm also looking at betting methods of extracting the actives. These and other Gymnopilus species have felt nothing like any Psilocybe or Panaeolus I've had, so there's definitely some curiosity there, but in general I'm less impressed...
-------------------- Knowledge is finite, ignorance is infinite.
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