DOSE:	4 glasses	oral	Alcohol - Beer/Wine
	2 g	oral	Mushrooms - P. cubensis	(tea)

BODY WEIGHT:

170 lb

Mindset: slightly buzzed from alcohol
Setting: Friends house (known friend for 10+ years)

At about 3 a.m. My two friends (Kyle, and Jared) and I decided to make a tea out of the 6 grams of particularly potent psilocybin mushrooms that we had acquired about 8 months ago. We made the tea and drank it around 4 a.m. I don't know if it was the alcohol we had consumed earlier in the evening (about 4 pints of a micro-brewed IPA), but within 10 minutes I was starting to feel the effects. To me this was rather strange as I have eaten mushrooms before and was able to go to the store and come back before I had even noticed anything happening. I could feel my heart beating faster and faster as the minutes after initial consumption began to add up.

Around 25-30 minutes past initial consumption I began to feel the arousal of the nervous system that I hear Terence McKenna talk about. I don't know if it was the fact that I was unable to sit still, or the fact that I knew something heavy was heading my way, but I started to feel a considerable amount of anxiety. I tried to play it off and act like I didn't feel my demise coming by giving a half hearted exclamation about how the trip was going to be “fun”.

Roughly 2 minutes after I had said that I felt the weight of the mushroom pushing me to the ground. A feeling came over me that made it seem impossible to stand up. I reacted poorly to this and had a bit of a panic attack. I am a fairly regular psychedelic user and this thing was making it seem like I was brand new to the game. I quickly grabbed a blanket and a pillow and fearfully, frantically ran to the safest place in the apartment I could find. I found a bathroom and barricaded myself in there to try and, as I told my friends, “work this out”.

After I found refuge in the bathroom I turned the light out and closed the door as to have no sensory input. This helped the situation mildly. I became somewhat comfortable again and thought everything was okay and I had only had just a minor glitch in the trip. I got cocky with the mushroom. I quickly became bored and told the mushroom “show me something”. Immediately the whole trip began to open up around me. The fear that had initially brought me into the bathroom seemed minuscule to the fear that began to rise inside me. I then felt something grab me and I began to see a swamp saturated with dirty, muddy, foul looking fish all swimming on top of each other. I was dragged into the grotesque swamp and I plunged deep into the earth. I was engulfed in terror. I was in a realm of endless torture, suffering, and chaos. The mushroom then showed me my father, it held him up for me to see who it was and then destroyed him right in front of my eyes. The reason I don’t say that it killed him in front of me is because using the word ‘killed’ would be doing this thing an injustice. It destroyed him in the most grotesque was possible. After witnessing that for what seemed like forever, I was pushed deeper into the pit. I then began to see an endless wheel of men-like beings all spiraling around me shouting the most terrifyingly evil things to me. This went on for so long that I began to feel like I was going insane. I somehow managed to get out of what I will call “the audial torture loop” but I was again in the realm of the destroyer. This time it held up my mother. It almost seemed like the mushroom was asking me if it needed to continue. I had seen enough. I shouted no.

I still felt the heaviness on my body but I fought it. I crawled out of the bathroom into the living room where I found Kyle and Jared sitting. I must have had the look of sheer terror on my face because they immediately knew something was wrong. When they asked what happened all I could seem to mutter out was “it's heavy.” I sat next to them for about 15 minutes trying to chill out. I went outside and walked it off. Kyle and I began talking about philosophy and the human condition.

The rest of the trip went smoothly, we even made our way to our music studio where we jammed and came up with some great melodies. I doubt I’ll ever forget what I saw that night while laying on the bathroom floor. The funny thing is, for how terrifying it was, I don’t want to forget.

Exp Year: 2015	ExpID: 105271
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 26
Published: Feb 9, 2023	Views: 302
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Combinations (3), Difficult Experiences (5), Small Group (2-9) (17)