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More Than I Could Have Ever Expected
Mushrooms
by ASR
Citation:   ASR. "More Than I Could Have Ever Expected: An Experience with Mushrooms (exp109304)". Erowid.org. May 20, 2020. erowid.org/exp/109304

 
DOSE:
5 g oral Mushrooms
BODY WEIGHT: 88 kg
I have been interested in mushrooms and psychedelics in general for a long time. I first started reading about them since I was 15-16, and found them fascinating. I have been smoking weed quite regularly for a while, and experimented with a range of drugs a few times, but not psychedelics. I have decided to wait until I felt completely ready, and willing, not to take it lightly. Make sure that set and setting are good, as well as my headspace and where I am in life.

I have actually been struggling for a few years with a few things: even though I believe to be a good natured person, who is good to others and is sociable and cheery, deep down I am often dismissive, cynical, for a good while I have felt very down and sad, because I felt disconnected from the world, like I am unable to enjoy anything. Unable to enjoy walks, unable to enjoy or understand art and music, and sort of unhappy a lot of the time. I also like to use a term called “mental masturbation”, or the obsessive thinking of certain subjects. The basic questions that baffle everybody, such as where we come from, why are we here, what is death, what is the point of life, have been consuming me.

My mushroom experience changed everything.

I knew my very good friend grew mushrooms, and him and his housemate were going to take them on a fantastic sunny day outdoors. I arrived at their house, and his friend claimed the mushrooms were still a bit wet, he thought they had at least 50% water so he suggested me a 5g dose (2.5g fully dry in his head). From the intensity of the experience we all had though we have reason to believe they were a lot drier than that.

We took the mushrooms and started walking to a beautiful park. Already about 15-20 minutes or so after ingesting I started feeling a bodyload and general euphoria. I knew something good was coming. We walked past beautiful sights, and at one point when the mushrooms really started hitting me I felt like my feet were sinking in the grass. I felt like my steps were sinking deeper and deeper, colors got extremely intense, and my “regular” perception was already radically shifting.

It is very hard to put in words what I felt or thought, I can’t even recall all of it but I will do my best.

We quickly reached a less-populated area where to sit down, we just lied on the grass. I look up to the sky, and the clouds start going crazy. They are warping exactly like a Van Gogh piece of art, the sun looked beautiful, every single plant was “playing” with me, full of life and moving around, as if it was giving me a show. The grass was growing over and over again, hair on my body kept growing as well. I looked at my friends and they were full of light and looked beautiful, their skin was morphing and their hair also kept growing back and forth. The visuals were stunning, but what shocked me was the extreme sense of euphoria. I had never known such happiness even existed, I really felt in touch with everything. The euphoria kept getting more and more intense, and my “regular” cognitive functions were going crazier and crazier. My thoughts started going wild, the way I thought stopped being language, it stopped being English, it’s as if my brain started working in an entire different way.

I started losing track of everything. Time became meaningless and I felt like the only “real” time was eternity. There was no present, no past and no future. There was just “everything”. I started analyzing life and death, and no matter which way I looked at it, everything was great. Death made me laugh. It didn’t make any sense. The grass was growing around me, there was a huge bush kids were playing around. I could see kids walk by the bush, play, laugh and smile, and it overfilled me with joy. Kids would then leave, (and in my head they were now adults), but more and more kids kept coming. Anything I looked at gave me the conviction that life is a never-ending cycle that we are all part of, that always was there and always will be. No matter how I tried thinking about death, or any “sad” fact of life, it all became meaningless. I felt protected the entire time by a really overwhelming sense of love and joy.
I felt protected the entire time by a really overwhelming sense of love and joy.


As the trip got more and more intense, and as I got more and more lost, and was more and more unable to think “linearly”, I had the realization that one thing was always by my side and never left me, even after everything else had left, the concept of time, of myself (I was having a hard time making sense out of what “me” meant, what people around me meant), there was a powerful force of love within me that made everything make sense all at once. When I started having more “sober” moments I wrote down the following on my phone (corrected the spelling and syntax, it was a bit confused but I made sense of most of it)

“All does not matter. Love”

“Reality is what we create around us”

“Meditate, do art, be spontaneous. What you see now is objective reality, its up to you to implement what you see when you come back”

“We are all brothers and sisters”

“Love is the only universal language and driving force. Its not cliché it’s the only real thing”

“The staple of any realization is love”

As you can see I really was euphoric and overjoyed. I was only able to experience love and nothing else. I saw love in everything I looked at. I only understood “love” out of anything I was trying to analyze.

We started walking back home as one of us was feeling very overwhelmed and didn’t want to stay in public anymore.

As we were walking back I was loving everything around me, as if I was a kid who was just reborn again and was experiencing the world for the first time. We get to the same path that got us to the park the first time, a beautiful strip of land next to a river, covered by secular tree branches, creating a tunnel of light. It looked never-ending and majestic, and I could not believe my eyes, it was so beautiful I had to sit down and cry for a few minutes. As we got on the street I was smiling like an idiot. Every old man and woman looked great, like they had a story to tell. Everything and everyone had a beautiful soul, and I was overjoyed to be part of all this that surrounded me.

Once I got home things got less overwhelming and intense, but I was still feeling great. I just spent the next couple hours having thoughts I can recall, but I recall laughing like a maniac and crying some more.

I started feeling more “normal and coherent” around 7-8 hours after the ingestion, and had the thought that “mushrooms stripped me naked and beat me with a stick made out of love”. I took a taxi home and watched the beautiful lights of the city, until I got home and had some much needed refreshing sleep.

It’s only been a few days since the trip and I am trying to apply what I learned in every day life. Had meetings at work, and instead of of coming in grumpy, assuming it’s gonna go bad, that people would have shit ideas I disagree with, I listened to what everybody had to say, got excited about their thoughts and plans. I started walking around without my headphones, without looking at my phone, just immersed in my own thoughts and the world around me.

I can say that the trip was overall crazy, I am still shocked what I experienced was even possible, but without a shadow of doubt I can say it changed my life for the better, it is just what I needed at this point in life, my entire mood and outlook on life, my own personal “philosophical” realizations feel real and healthy, I feel like a much happier and better person and can’t wait for my next trip, although I feel it’s going to be a while until then.



Exp Year: 2016ExpID: 109304
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: May 20, 2020Views: 1,846
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Mushrooms (39) : First Times (2), Nature / Outdoors (23), Glowing Experiences (4), Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53)

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