DOSE:

1 - 1.5 g

oral

Mushrooms

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

230 lb

Hello all, I am a 27 year old male living in Japan.

I have been reading experience reports since I was in junior high and had always been both fascinated and terrified of psychedelics. I am a somewhat heavy cannabis user and have always enjoyed the mind opening effects of cannabis. I very much enjoy smoking a bowl of high grade and just laying back and just letting my thoughts run freely.

After getting into Terence Mckenna and reading a ton of literature on the subject (I was particularly convinced by 'true hallucinations'), I decided I wanted to try mushrooms. I felt it was an experience I could not go my whole life without having. The only problem was, I have diagnosed General Anxiety Disorder. To be more specific about my symptoms, I am a big hypochondriac. Although I very much enjoy the way my thoughts change on cannabis, the way it can make my heart race and cause strange bodily sensations sometimes freaks me out and makes me think I'm having a heart attack despite knowing that cannabis is one of the safest (if not THE safest) psychoactives known to man. I know that psilocybin is very safe, but I also know how irrational worries can consume me. Because I can sometimes get very nervous about the body high cannabis gives me, I assumed mushrooms would be much more intense body wise, but a huge part of me still wanted to try.

One sunday during lunch at work my friend told me that he had gotten ahold of a bag of mushrooms. I thought to myself 'this is my chance'. We agreed to take them together the following sunday at a local park. That whole week, I did lots of research. Some days I was so excited to do it, and other days I totally psyched myself out-worrying about getting HPPD and lots of other irrational fears.

The sunday finally came and I was feeling sick to my stomach (either from fear or from the giant meal I had to eat at my wife's family's house the night before - lots of great Japanese food). I smoked a bowl and headed out to pick of my friend feeling nervous. The weather was beautiful, but a bit chilly.

We arrived at the park around around noon. The park, which is huge, has an amphitheater, a Japanese garden, and many other paths through the woods etc. By this time my pot high had worn off and I was once again feeling anxious. I debated for awhile and then my friend and I came to the conclusion that even if I had a bad time, today would be much more exciting and memorable if I went for it. So despite being freaked out, my friend and I went ahead and mixed up our mushrooms into some yogurt (I think I had somewhere between 1 and 1.5 grams-I wanted to start slowly) I downed the mushrooms, they tasted surprisingly good. I was always told that they were disgusting but I didn't really mind the taste.

I told myself 'this is nowhere CLOSE to a lethal dose so no matter what happens I won't die and my friend has already tried these mushrooms so I know they aren't the wrong type'. I layed back and started to feel happy and glad that I did it. I remember laughing hard when I put the mushrooms in my mouth and my friend told me 'OK chew that shit up for like 10 minutes straight'.

Around 12:30 I already felt a little buzzy and my friend and I decided to walk down this hill to the Japanese garden. The walk down the hill was fun, I remember starting to feel more and more heavy as I walked. My friend told me he was already feeling funny. I remember seeing a bamboo thicket off of the path and strongly wanting to run into the bamboo forest. My friend thought that because it was off of the path it might be a little conspicuous. I decided I was going to do it anyway, as I ran down the hill a bunch of spiders were jumping out of the way of my feet and I felt sorry for disturbing their home. Once we got down to the bamboo forest we realized it was too thick to trudge through so we decided to make our way back down to the Japanese garden.

Around 12:40-45, as we were halfway down the hill I could begin to feel it kicking in. We sat down at a bench and looked up at the mountains and the view was beautiful. It looked more beautiful than it had before. My friend looked at all the cars we saw off in the distance and mentioned how scary those giant metal boxes flying around at high speed look, and how it was strange that we felt so comfortable in them when we are in them. I noticed that if I sat down I would start feeling a little queasy so we decided to get up and keep moving. We went down to hill and came to a little pagoda where we sat down and this is where I really started to feel it coming on.

Around 1:00, I was looking at table we were sitting at at the pagoda, and it appeared to be wobbling. I looked up at some cherry trees and the branches seemed to be moving in and out and started to warp in my peripheral vision. I felt really queasy and strange and I realized 'this must be the uncomfortable come up everyone describes'.

I got up and we walked to another bench, It seemed far but it was only about 50 ft. away. When I sat down this time I noticed that not only was my stomachache gone, but I couldn't feel any pain at all -- all of my worries and fears about the experience melted away and I started laughing my ass off. This wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as I had expected, it was actually very pleasant. The colors began to brighten and everything around me was so vivid and beautiful. I remember looking down at my feet and noticing the patterns on the ground moving around. My shirt was yellow, and the specs of dirt in the path appeared bright yellow as well, so did the grate in the ground. The field of vision that was the grate, the ground, and my arms and feet became my world for the next 30 minutes. It was beautiful.

I suddenly had this feeling of extreme mental clarity. I felt like I could see all of my problems and all of my anxiety from an outside perspective and I realized I spent way too much time worrying about what could happen instead of just enjoying being alive. My friend and I discussed these things and every once in awhile paused to laugh at something stupid. I remember he said the word 'balsa wood' and I laughed so hard at that word that tears came out.

One thing that was a little aggravating was the sense that I was having all of these profound revelations but I couldn't properly express them in coherent sentences. Also, I would forget what I was talking about halfway through sentences etc.

Somewhere during this conversation on the bench I closed my eyes and got my only CEV of the trip. It seemed like I could see every nerve and vein in my eyelid, and they looked like the veins of a leaf. They were moving around and folding over one another, it was pretty interesting. A man going for a walk went by and greeted us with a 'konnichiwa', and opening my eyes to greet him back seemed very difficult. It was like being underwater and having to swim to the surface and pop my head out to say hello.

Around 2:30 we started walking again, and the budding cherry blossoms looked so vividly pink. The most intense part of the trip was over by this point and we were in the glowy after phase where everything just looks beautiful. My friend took a picture of me by a sign. We cracked up when I smiled for the picture and he said 'stop making that bear face' and I was like 'dude I'm just smiling'.

We eventually went back up the hill that we had came down and I remember feeling like my head and my body were two separate entities as I was walking. Around 3 I felt the fallen jenga tower that was my brain was beginning to be pieced back together. Once again I could communicate with my friend in coherent sentences, but I noticed Japanese words would often come out instead of English ones.

At 4 the euphoria had settled a little and I could feel that my stomach was a little strange still -- but I didn't mind. For the rest of the day everything had a beautiful afterglow and it seemed to be the most gorgeous sunset I had ever seen. Everything felt right and I felt so perfect being me.

I compared this trip to being a kid wanting to ride a scary roller coaster. You psych yourself out so much before you go on it, but once you finally make yourself ride it you realize you had no reason to be so scared in the first place, and then after you get off you are filled with this happy giddyness for the rest of the day.

All and all I feel like I learned a lot of lessons about myself and my personality that will benefit me for the rest of my life and help me become a better person. Starting with a low dose and making sure I was with a close friend in a comfortable place, it was definitely worth it for me.

Exp Year: 2014	ExpID: 102836
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 27
Published: Jun 24, 2020	Views: 1,217
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Mushrooms (39) : Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Glowing Experiences (4), First Times (2)