This was the third and highest dose of my initial self-led therapeutic mushroom journeys with almost the last of my locally picked P. semilanceata, see trip #1 and trip #2.
I originally planned it for 27th December, but postponed it due to my not being in the right headspace on the day. My experienced psychonaut sitter suggested it could be quite something to do it on New Year’s Eve, an auspicious time, leaving everything behind in 2020 and starting 2021 in a new headspace. It felt right and he was cool with having a sober NYE, and so we went with it.
When my sitter arrived we made soup for the come-down later. Although I had fasted since the previous night, with only herbal and green tea taken during the day, I tried a couple of spoonfuls of spicy bean soup to adjust seasoning about 20 minutes prior to ingesting the mushrooms.
This was my highest dose to date, with 30mg psilocybin/70kg body weight equating to 3.5g dried liberty caps, using the average figure of 0.98% psilocybin by dried weight. Again, I turned them to a fine powder in my spice grinder and ingested them mixed with orange juice at 8pm. My intention was mainly “To surrender, to connect to my deepest truths and to walk my path with courage, compassion and creativity”. I say mainly because earlier in the day I had thought about “facing my shadow”, but set it aside as it felt too dark. But once you think something you can’t unthink it…
The heating was turned up, candles lit, psybient and psychill playing on the hi-fi, and so I lay on my sheepskins with an eye shade to chill and wait.
Now I don’t have a lot of experience at this, this would only be my third journey, so I don’t have much familiarity at how these things unfold, but this was different. Previously I had started to feel the mushroom energy by about 45 minutes with the main wave beginning at an hour, but this time I lay there, and lay there, and lay there. I wondered if this was due to the small amount of soup I had eaten just prior to the mushrooms? I had some very, very light closed eye visuals, some faint rainbow patterning, but nothing else, no intense feeling spreading up my arms and legs and settling on the solar plexus as before, no increasing CEVs before the mushrooms took me.
After about 1hr 15 I engaged my sitter in conversation about there apparently being nothing happening. “Wait” he said, “give it time”. At 1hr 30 I still had the same CEVs but no more, far less than my initial 1 gram two months before. I asked him to change the music to ethereal, then asked him to turn it off as it felt jarring, disjointed, inappropriate. I lay there again and became aware of a subtle but noticeable internal energetic heaviness, it felt quite dark. It was if there something going on at a really, really deep subconscious or even cellular level, that was being masked by the music. 2 hours in and still only mild CEVs, but with the heavy dark feeling deep within. I remember saying to my sitter at about 2hr 15 that it just wasn’t happening and then it came over me, and intense psychedelic energy swept me into another realm.
Reality warped. My lounge looked like it was designed by Picasso. My sitter looked even more distorted than he usually did. The sheepskins enveloped me.
At about 2hr 30 psychedelic patterned mycelium plunged through my consciousness, hyphae burrowing deep into every last corner of my psyche. They were vivid and physically tangible in my consciousness, I felt them. I felt them drawing out the hidden parts of my consciousness, stuff long buried. It was neither negative nor euphoric, it just was.
Then beings visited me. Dark, grotesque beings. They came at me from away in the mycelium, right up to my conscious ‘eye’. They manifested as aliens, insectoids, trolls, goblins. Shadowy forms, menacing, with contorted faces and grasping limbs. But I knew that they were not evil, just dark, negative, shadowy. I realised they were part of me.
My consciousness witnessed them, accepted them, but did not engage with them. And with the witnessing, acceptance and non-engagement they simply dissolved. Then there was another, different dark being, then another. There were dozens of them, one after the other. All were witnessed, accepted, not engaged with, all dissolved. My consciousness felt no fear, did not resist or pull away.
And then they were gone and there was just the psychedelic mycelium growing and plunging through my consciousness, and then my consciousness itself dissolved and all I had was a sense of oneness, a pure white light. The mushroom energy came in pulsing waves of intensity, ‘I’ would dissolve and then ‘I’ would be back on/in the sheepskins. I was in a state of bliss, although it was not a euphoric bliss. Just bliss at being.
About 3hr 45 I was mostly back in the room, on the sheepskins, in awe. I realised that I needed to be outside in the garden, to see the moon. The garden was incredible, utterly incredible. The moon was intense, just after being full, hanging in an almost crystal-clear star studded black satin night sky, the grass was deeply frozen and it was incredibly still without a breath of wind.
We sat under my old oak tree and looked out across the countryside towards the nearest town. There was the occasional firework and a distant techno beat drifted up from an unknown party. I remembered it was New Year’s Eve, but had no sense of time, then all of a sudden, we could hear midnight cheering from the town and fireworks lit the sky and, across several miles of countryside from the local port, several unseen ships let rip with their foghorns, with multiple deep blasting tones drifting through the night and reaching us on the hill so many miles away. Oh. My. Days. It was insanely beautiful, without doubt the most incredible New Year’s Eve, ever.
Finally, the sub-zero temperature drove us inside, to bread, soup and tea, to Solar Fields’ ‘Movements’ (I suspect that it is fortunate that my only neighbor is deaf) and general chat and making sense of it until 3am. And then to bed.
New Year’s morning I felt slightly displaced and I took it easy with tea and eggs. I felt much more with it in the afternoon and ventured to the coast for a solitary walk and tea on a secluded beach.
And today, 2nd January, I feel rock solid, connected, deeply centrered. Cleansed almost. And life even feels good, despite all the craziness and sadness we face in the world.
Happy New Year!
Eyra
 
Edited by Eyra (01/02/21 12:19 PM)
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Quote:
Eyra said: At about 2hr 30 psychedelic patterned mycelium plunged through my consciousness, hyphae burrowing deep into every last corner of my psyche. They were vivid and physically tangible in my consciousness, I felt them. I felt them drawing out the hidden parts of my consciousness, stuff long buried. It was neither negative nor euphoric, it just was.
Then beings visited me. Dark, grotesque beings. They came at me from away in the mycelium, right up to my conscious ‘eye’. They manifested as aliens, insectoids, trolls, goblins. Shadowy forms, menacing, with contorted faces and grasping limbs. But I knew that they were not evil, just dark, negative, shadowy. I realised they were part of me.
My consciousness witnessed them, accepted them, but did not engage with them. And with the witnessing, acceptance and non-engagement they simply dissolved. Then there was another, different dark being, then another. There were dozens of them, one after the other. All were witnessed, accepted, not engaged with, all dissolved. My consciousness felt no fear, did not resist or pull away.
And then they were gone and there was just the psychedelic mycelium growing and plunging through my consciousness, and then my consciousness itself dissolved and all I had was a sense of oneness, a pure white light. The mushroom energy came in pulsing waves of intensity, ‘I’ would dissolve and then ‘I’ would be back on/in the sheepskins. I was in a state of bliss, although it was not a euphoric bliss. Just bliss at being.
I like this description a lot. In my journeys, I feel both the grotesque terror of so many horrible things, but I also experience the realization that they too are impermanent and that there are bigger things.
I also like your discussion of postponing this due to being in the wrong headspace. I often postpone these journeys and I felt better about my most recent instance due to reading this here. Sometimes I'm just not ready, it's good to be reminded that this happens with others!
-------------------- Knowledge is finite, ignorance is infinite.
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