DOSE:

oral

Mushrooms

(liquid)

BODY WEIGHT:

190 lb

You're a man at war with yourself.

Those were the first words I spoke aloud as the shrooms started to kick in while I was walking a to-be-unnamed beach in Indonesia watching the waves crash against the shore.

My brain kept thinking along those lines.

You want the best of both worlds. You want to be corporate while under your suits and ties you have drug tattoos and piercings. You want to be able to attend raves and pay your mortgages. You want to prove you can be good without their ideal of god. You want to be a good dad... from 8,000 miles away.

It was 30 mins after my first magic shake. Mushrooms blended with a myriad of various fruits. The gent asked whether or not I had ever taken a psychedelic before. I assured him I had. After all, how different could these shrooms be from watching snapchat filters cover a woman's face as we danced to MDA under the moonlight feeling the cool Phuket breeze on our skin. Turns out, very different. If MDA was baby steps into the world of psychedelics, shrooms, for me, was a full on sprint akin to Usain Bolt at the pinnacle of his success.

I say that MDMA changed my life and I will never redact that statement. If I had to choose between the feelings of shrooms and the feelings of MDMA, Molly wins every time. However, that doesn't discount the impact shrooms had on me.

After a brief walk on the beach we settled into a bar. It had a couple of tables and chairs and one long bar facing the ocean for people to sit at. It was here I confronted exactly who I am and where I fit in the universe.

If you've never tried them before then what I'm going to describe is like trying to explain the taste of the color red or the sound the number 7 makes. It's going to be so far removed from reality that you'll read this and think maybe I’m just trying to describe the Winnie the Pooh nightmare sequence (those animators were definitely referencing something). The shit made no sense except for the fact that it absolutely did.

The sequence of shrooms is unlike anything I've ever experienced before. There were no highs and lows like a Molly roll. There were moments of almost panicking and moments where every nonsensical thing made absolute sense. It was a peak behind the curtain. But unlike Dorothy in Oz, my peek didn't result in me seeing the wizard for the frail old man that he was. My peek led me to being absolutely terrified and amazed and astounded all rolled into one. My peek forced me to examine myself, my beliefs, my pains, pains I inflicted upon others, and just how minuscule I was in the universe.

It wasn’t all bad and self-actualization tho. Some of it was very cool. When things got too heavy and I had to look to the left, I saw trees dancing and Minecraft rock formations so that was cool. The At.Long.Last.A$AP album cover had me in a daze, and my headphones playing Solomun on the table sounded like a rave was next door so that was very cool too.

The weird thing about self examination is that if you're very honest you'll realize it's not about you even when it is. It's easy to assign blame to why you are who you are. We're humans. We err. We're experts at blaming others. Shrooms will let you do that. You can sit and stew in bitterness and anger but if you push past that if you allow yourself to accept some responsibility… you'll have a moment of clarity. You'll see the role you played in the why of why you are who you are.

During my trip, every time I closed my eyes I saw Jesus. I saw Satan. I saw succubus singing to me. I saw all kinds of unexplainable apparitions. I told myself if you get scared, open your eyes. As much as I tried to rationalize my trip and explain to myself, this is just your brain trying to associate preexisting ideals... sometimes I just couldn't. My friends words of, “be careful in thinking you're stronger than the drugs” kept coming back to me. There were moments near a panic attack where I found my peace.

Amidst the turbulence and the chaos of everything that makes me-me. The good. The great. The bad. The ugly. l found the nucleus of who I am. Everything around me was a storm of mixed emotions and in the center is where I found my peace.

In Walter Issacson's biography of Steve Jobs, he said in the first years of Apple, if, during an interview a candidate expressed he had never done a psychedelic that Steve Jobs would pause the interview, tell them to go try some, and then reschedule the interview. I now understand why he would do that.

[Reported Dose: '1.5']

Exp Year: 2016	ExpID: 109389
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 36
Published: Sep 22, 2019	Views: 563
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Mushrooms (39) : Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53), First Times (2)