Psilocybin 1 7/15/23 2 grams P. Cubensis Shift brand chocolate bar
Ingested 9:50 AM, 7/15/23, written and edited retrospectively over the following weeks. No cannabis for a few days prior, no caffeine for 24 hours beforehand. Empty stomach except a piece of bread. Chased with peppermint green tea with a large amount of lemon juice (half a lemon shaped container) to aid digestion.
We sat on the sun porch looking at the plate. It was an ornamental piece of porcelain, with a tropical sunset design and a series of chocolate rectangles arranged in a circle around the perimeter. The day had finally come. Our long-planned, much discussed, highly anticipated first trip was about to begin. I previously had experienced several intense psychedelic events, some good, some bad, one life changing, from cannabis. But my girlfriend's superhuman (or just normal compared to my nonexistent?) tolerance or neural makeup seemed to preclude her from those effects regardless of dose. Hearing about my profound cannabis experience on 6/14/23 seemed to be the catalyst for finally deciding to take the plunge and try mushrooms. And the day had finally come, the appointed hour was here, and all we had to do was eat some really delicious chocolate while sunbathing and looking at the beautiful forest behind my cabin.
Onset came quickly, first tinges felt in 10-15 minutes. We walked into the forest behind the cabin and made our way down a path through the trees, into a pine grove, and then into a hardwood meadow before effects started in earnest, although perhaps minor effects were felt earlier but could've been nerves/placebo.
Looking through the trees looked like peering down a long hallway with the trees bowing in and then snapped back to normal. Looking up resulted in a snowglobe effect where the tree canopy looked domed for a bit before snapping back to normal. Started feeling lightheaded and woozy and occasionally nauseous and headed back.
The walk back felt long and was punctuated with minor waves of nausea. Muscles felt weak, felt lightheaded and off balance. We took it slow and tried to absorb the beauty of the woods, but the physical sensations were kind of hampering that. We made it back and sat on the sun porch as effects started coming on in earnest. The floral rug started swimming gently and folding in on itself. I reminded myself that feeling bad physically is often the cause of a negative headspace for me, so to realize that if I had bad thoughts, it was likely just a byproduct of the nausea and muscle weakness I was feeling. Sitting on the couch felt good, but T wanted to lie on the floor, so we lay together. I watched the rug swim gently, as if slow eddies and currents were thickly swirling through a liquid the consistency of corn syrup. I had to sit still and focus to see it but I didn't feel much like moving anyways.
We got up and went to the living room. My muscles felt so utterly weak and sapped of strength but walking felt strangely light and bouncy. My arms seemed to want to naturally float upwards. Walking to the living room couch was the worst of the physical effects: one minor dry heave and then I was fine. I lay on the couch and watched the ceiling. I lay parallel to the lines of the wooden ceiling slats and the a frame structure of the log cabin looked more like a w, like a huge weight was placed halfway between the wall and the peak of the ceiling causing big sags on both sides of the roof. As the physical discomfort subsided, I began to really enjoy it. The wood kind of moved, the many lines of the wooden slats slightly waving and flowing. T was getting very talkative and I found I couldn't simultaneously talk and watch the visuals. Just as I'd get into the visuals, she'd say something that would pull me back to reality. She mentioned her parents and I found I could hardly place them. They seemed very distant, like a memory of a memory or a thought of a thought. I knew in my logical mind that they existed and what they were like but it was strangely meta.
I watched the ceiling fan and how the light played off the brushed metal. We talked about thoughts, what we were seeing, and what we were hearing. It was becoming difficult to speak. I felt I needed a lot of time to hear what she was saying, process it, and then formulate an appropriate reply. And what exactly was an appropriate reply anyways? And frankly I just didn't really want to talk much. She on the other hand, was getting bubbly and super talkative. Laughing more and more as the effects came on stronger.
I got up and moved my arms, now about an hour after consumption, though it seemed like several hours had passed. They felt so light. My muscles still felt weak but I could now stand surefootedly and didn't feel like my legs would give out. We sat out on the deck in the sun and watched the trees. I watched the concrete of the patio gently swim and form mandala type symmetrical patterns. It felt good to sit but also to move around in the sun. The breeze felt good on my skin. I felt very centered and profoundly still. I wasn't anxious, concerned with yesterday or tomorrow, or even with the experience I was currently having. I just existed in the moment and thoroughly lived every split second of it. I watched a wasp take off, buzz around, and land. While simultaneously watching the trees sway in the wind (and distort in slightly wavy patterns). I felt like I was hyperaware, taking in every detail, leaving nothing unnoticed. I felt like an impartial observer, just watching everything that was going on with a strange sense of calm. It wasn't good or bad, right or wrong, hot or cold. It just was. I felt like my spine was some kind of center axis around which the world was sculpted. I wasn't bored but I wasn't excited. It was very zen.
T's talking kept bringing me back to reality, but we wanted to experience this together so I didn't get annoyed or anything. Her trip made her want to talk so I listened. Almost all my mental bandwidth was being used watching every little detail of the busy world around us with bugs, the breeze, birds flying and chirping, squirrels running, trees swaying: it was very hard to hear her-> formulate an appropriate reply-> verbalize it-> wait for her reply. I wasn't going on weed type thought tangents or mental tunnels, I was just so aware of everything around me that I just lacked the processing power. My mind and body just wanted to be.
I alternated between standing and sitting, watched the grass gently roll and the trees gently sway. We talked, though about what I can't recall. We went in to the basement because T's contact lens had come out and she needed to put in a new one. I could tell I had passed the peak because the visuals were less pronounced and I was more capable of mundane tasks and thoughts. Plus I felt like I had to be the sober one. I looked closely at the paintings on the walls and the brightly colored ones had a vague holographic/3d effect, though the wood grain of the walls didn't swim or ripple at all. I talked to T in the bathroom and helped her through a slightly difficult part in her journey, getting her over some chronic indecision and intensely emotional bits. I felt capable of being sober when needed, but still under the influence when I wanted to be, though definitely on the downward slope of it.
The shower looked interesting and I wondered how the cold stone would feel on my feet and hands while warm water showered my body so I took off my clothes for a shower. I felt a profound patience. I wasn't interested in rushing anything, I just wanted to ponderously do each step of a simple process like showering and relish each tiny step. Lifting my arms to pull off my shirt, slipping my shorts down around my ankles, sliding the glass door smoothly along its track. I walked into the shower, aware of the texture of the stone and the pattern formed by the tile. I examined the optical illusion of black dots in the white grout between the square tiles. I leaned my head against the tile wall and looked down its length. I felt the stainless steel of the shower knob. I turned on the shower and held my hand under the water, feeling it slowly go from cold to hot, enjoying the gradient. I showered and got a few minutes of alone time to experience this place without the influence of another human. I put on my premade playlist and listened to my favorite Uncle John's Band (12/26/79) in the shower. I had a hard time focusing on the music and it didn't sound nearly as distorted or strange or intense as I had expected. In fact, it sounded remarkably normal. I sang along to bits of it and felt like I was breaking a profound stillness within myself that had lasted for quite some time, but not in a bad way, it was fun. I stayed in the shower for around 10 minutes, listening to the studio version of Heavy Things and turning off the water towards the end. One of my favorite moments came during the guitar solo/outro jam as I was squeegeeing the glass. The warm light illuminated the top part of the shower glass wall, making the top almost peach in color, while the bottom was a crystalline ice blue from the reflection of the floor, the beaded water, and the lack of light. A perfect peach-to-ice blue gradient spanned the glass panel, punctuated with thousands of small beads of water, each reflecting light of its own. I took some time to soak in the beauty of the image so that I'd remember it. I got out and languidly dried, savoring the texture of the ultra plush egyptian cotton towel. I dressed slowly, really feeling my shirt between my hands, appreciating the texture, slowly turning it right-side-in, appreciating the nuance of such a mundane task.
I ran upstairs feeling refreshed and energized and went back outside. I was in a better place to talk now so we talked. Enjoyed the sun and breeze, felt centered and calm. I had made a point of not checking my phone or the time, but at this point the visuals had completely subsided, I believe around 12:30, so 2.5ish hours after ingestion but my sense of time was off. It wasn't super slow but consistent like with cannabis, it seemed to be a bit all over the place, with some segments seeming long but only lasting minutes and other segments seeming brief but probably lasting a half hour or more.
I felt like the “wind” of the journey had faded and was replaced with an ever-so-gentle breeze, slowly setting me down as I eased back into sobriety. It was both shorter and less intense than I had expected, being fully in the “afterglow” phase by the 3 hour mark with peak intensity being quite mild and early. The visuals at their peak were very gentle, even subtle. Once the initial discomfort passed, the strongest sensation was stillness and calm, just being. I felt intoxicated but simultaneously very clear-headed. I felt like an impartial observer, detached from reality, somehow just on the outside watching the world from arm's length. The large inflow of information was probably the most intoxicating aspect, so much mental bandwidth being used to process every minute detail of the environment that other thoughts and processes slowed or stopped and left me surprisingly tired at the end despite the low intensity of the trip.
I'm glad I started with a small dose and had another person there. The few moments of physical discomfort in the first 30-45 minutes were made easier knowing there was another trusted person there to help. Now that I know what to expect, I look forward to exploring this place more in depth, experimenting with both lighter doses appropriate for concerts/public and heavier doses appropriate for introspective journeys. I'd also like to try the 2g dose again but alone and see how different the experience is when I don't have another person pulling me back to reality. 2G seemed light in the context of a secluded cabin but would probably have been intense in a setting like a concert or festival. I'm also not sure if so much lemon juice was a good idea. I wonder if it shortened the duration of the trip, as my girlfriend seemed to have both a longer and a more intense trip, with effects lasting about two hours longer than mine. Then again her metabolism is remarkably slower than mine, so who knows.
Overall a good experience. Can't wait to see what the mushrooms have to teach me on what I suspect may be a lifelong journey. Thanks for reading!
-------------------- Love is everything Life is good The opposite of negativity is gratitude Be KIND
Edited by shed light (08/08/23 05:17 PM)
|