Dear Shroomery,
It is 5:04am in Seattle, WA right now. At 10pm last night I ate 3.5 dried grams, and 2 large fresh specimens (I didn't weigh those two) of Psilocybe Cyanescens which I had picked myself in the last two weeks around the city. Still with me are the visual distortions and afterglow of an epic journey, and it is really only now I can sit to type this. For the last several hours I have been coming back into my body, but the experience has been so potent that waves are still washing in and hitting me from time to time, and sometimes I'm not sure if it will pull me back into the infinite again.
Please bear with me. Knowing a little about my history will help to illustrate why this experience has been so transformative.
I started smoking marijuana when I was 13 years old and fell in love with it. I did LSD for the first time at age 15, and then had several very profound cubensis experiences when I was 17 years old. My marijuana use increased with time, and I had a short love affair with MDMA in my early twenties. In 2011, at age 29, I became very interested in DMT and Ayahuasca. Not knowing where to get DMT and not really wanting to do a flight to the jungle, I did research and was able to successfully extract many grams of DMT from Mimosa Hostilis. I vaped it numerous times, having 1 EXTREMELY deep breakthrough (from a massive bong bowl of probably 100mg) which essentially put to rest any desire I had of smoking DMT again. I moved into doing "pharmahuasca" for a while, and had many difficult but profound trips with the vine and the light.
All through this time I continued to use marijuana heavily, and began to eat excessively -- beyond just the typical munchies. I would describe it as developing into an exercise bulimia type of situation, in which I would get really high every night, eat until I was sick to my stomach, and then the next day I would run 10 miles or workout for 3 hours in some fashion. I once ate so much that I shat blood the next day.
For nearly 10 years I have known that marijuana was becoming a serious addiction for me, and I tried countless times to stop it all, but always ended up right back in its arms. The amount of money I have spent in throwing out all my weed gear only to have to buy it again...I don't even want to know. For the last several years as my Mom's condition has worsened, I have also worsened. I sometimes wake up so stoned and overstuffed that it literally takes all my effort and will just to make it through the day without cracking. I have felt like I'm always playing catchup, always trying to undo damage from the day before.
Maybe some of you have issues with substances, or with pornography, or with shopping, or with whatever method you might've found to dull your pain. I am not anti-marijuana, but I know that for me it is not a viable thing that I can responsibly use. It is my shortcoming.
Since my Ayahuasca adventures, I had only done shrooms a couple of times with friends and very light doses. My cubensis experiences as a teenager had been very powerful and overwhelming, and probably at the time I didn't really know how to integrate them. Recently, I'd been watching videos and reading about psychedelic therapy and how psilocybin has been used to treat addiction, depression etc. I learned that it often requires a fairly large dose to elicit the kind of experience that can be life changing in terms of getting over these types of chronic problems.
Only this year did I discover that wavy caps grew all over my home city. I swear that it was like they found me and not the other way around. I'd been hunting daily and had only found a few stragglers here and there. But just a couple of days ago, I was pondering aloud where I should take my mom for a walk, and her partner said, "why don't you try madison park?" So we went there, and BAM! Within 40 minutes I found a patch of HUGE cyanescens that obviously had been untouched all season. Some of the mushrooms were 3.5 inches tall with ridiculous bluing all around. I was ecstatic! My mom watched patiently as I gathered up as many as I could in the plastic baggies I have been toting around in my pockets at every moment. She has dementia, but she seems to understand I have a new mushroom hunting hobby and it makes her laugh when I go poking at the ground.
So, for the last 3 days I mentally prepared. I consider myself a very seasoned psychonaut, but I know the power of psychedelics and I revere and am humbled by them. Only respect for the mushroom. I don't take them lightly. Honestly I have been terrified from the moment I knew I was going to do this. I have always been very sensitive to psilocybin, usually getting completely floored by 3.5 grams of cubensis. What I wanted was to take a dose that there was no coming back from. Show me what you have to show me. Clean me. Do it. Purify me. End this madness and give me a rebirth.
I gave myself every excuse to back out, but I think the decision had been finalized long ago -- it was just the physical act of downing the shrooms that needed to happen. ANd it did. 3.5 grams cyanescens dried, and then I ate 2 large fresh ones just for good measure. I always pre-load with lemon essential oil drops in cold water -- I learned this trick years ago from erowid or DMT-Nexus or here, and it eliminates 90% of stomach issues. In fact, I had absolutely 0 nausea or discomfort in my stomach tonight. I diced the shrooms and pounded them with orange juice as fast as I could. I almost staggered the dose, thinking "maybe I can ease into the space", but then I just said fuck it and pounded them all down at once.
I will not try to describe anything. It is ineffable. Words can't even come close to doing it justice, as I'm sure most of you know. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, to make it through that, but it was the most profound and beautiful experience I have ever had as well. I always trip with a tape recorder because writing is just too hard, and in the few moments I was able to operate the thing, I just cried into it or said over and over again, "Thank you for killing me. I am destroyed. I am annihilated. Thank you for killing me. I will never smoke marijuana again. I will never numb myself with anything ever again. Thank you for destroying me."
With my new mushroom hunting hobby came the desire to try to cultivate some of my own. In fact, just today I finally received a couple of spore syringes to go with my grow bags. For weeks I have been anxiously awaiting their arrival, checking on USPS tracking etc.
But I don't want them. I don't ever want to take another psychedelic drug again. And it's not because I feel "raped" by the mushrooms -- quite the opposite. I knew they were going to purify me against the will of my ego, and I knew I was going to die over and over again...and I did--for eternity. It was impossible for me to make it through that, and I didn't. What made it through that is someone else. When I finally was able to anchor into my body a little bit, I stumbled around my apartment very much like a newborn baby. And I giggled the same way too.
It is going to take some time to integrate all of this. It is 6:15 am now, and I'm still experiencing a lot of OEV's and euphoria. I am utterly exhausted but I know sleep is a long ways off. My mind still buzzes with the power of the mushies, and all I can do now is reflect and accept that nothing will ever be the same for me.
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