DOSE:	12	oral	Mushrooms	(fresh)
		smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

105 kg

Hello, wonderful people, namaste from India!

I've suffered and been treated for depression with Desvenlafaxine for three years, and then stopped taking the pills when I felt all right. Around that time, I began smoking cannabis, which led to a fascination with its effects and a general avoidance and overcoming of my medication. I used my first psychedelic, mushrooms, around a year after quitting my medication. I am not greatly experienced with psychedelics, but I am deeply interested in them and their potential for human evolution.

This is my third mushroom trip, and overall 6th psychedelic trip, the other three being on what I was told to be LSD. Here begins my strangest voyage yet into mushroom land.

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It was a fine morning at the forest in which I was staying. I'd been planning this trip for months, and knew that I needed some psychedelic clearing of the cluttered, anxious, jittery and paranoid mess that my mind had become. I needed to partake of mushrooms, and because I knew it'd be a rough ride, I went alone.

So finally, I'd taken a week off and headed into the forest to trek, photograph, relax, and of course, take that amazing mushroom trip. It was the season of fresh mushrooms, and I'd arrived a week before the crowds began to come in. All was quiet, beautiful, and peaceful. Tension and nervousness mounting, I fasted about 16 hours before popping. I was worried, I was scared, and I had been dealing with crippling anxiety, creating a constant guilt and worry on my mind over the last few months. But I'd experienced the elucidating effects of psychedelics a few times before, and knew it'd help.

I munched them down [12 mushrooms cap and stem], and took a walk outside the forest to a juice shop, where after downing a glass of orange juice, I could feel a come-up. I quickly began the walk back to my cottage in the forest. It was going to be intense, and I had brought a decent bit of mental baggage that had to be dealt with. As I sat down in front of the cottage I'd rented, the come-up evened out, and I began to experience the effects. A saturation of colour, visuals growing in intensity until my vision was covered in sacred geometry and art so completely meshed with the forest floor that I couldn't bear to keep looking at the forest floor any longer.

I raised my eyes to pear trees in the distance, and they threw their leaves and branches back, much like a sensual dancer would, and began their sway to the music that began filling my ears. The chirping of the birds, croaking of frogs and the distant sound of a man mending his hut, all melded together to form many divine songs of the forest. I was in a trance.

The trees continued to dance gently in beat to the music as my vision tinted to red, their green leaves and brown barks began to strobe with energy that charged them and colours began to flash and change, and at the crescendo, the trees connected their branches to form an arched doorway of Clear, White Light.

I tried to let go and enter, but the baggage held me down, as the vision faded and the visuals began to get more energetic and intense. I lay down and looked at the plain blue sky, as the clouds formed giant interconnected mandalas who's segments and quarters contained fantastic stories and creatures, none of whom I could flow with completely because of my paranoia and anxiety.

It was then that I felt the mushrooms collecting and coagulating my negativity into this pit of nausea in my stomach. 'Wait... Wait... Don't throw up...', I was told, as the nausea got more and more intense. The mental noise that permeated my every thought for months was washed out of my head, the vise of tension was pried off of my temples as the negativity all began to be concentrated into my chest from my stomach. I tried to let it go, but it held to me fast. I sensed the annoyance of my subconscious (or the mushroom?) and I tried to let go again, but to no avail. The visuals were just as intense, the clouds formed their amazing geometry as the negativity held fast. 'Life's a trip, and then you die!' was the message I kept getting for some time.

It built and built until I couldn't stand any more, and rushed inside to let it out. I hadn't eaten much, and didn't have it in me to vomit. The cottage was dark, as I struggled to strip myself of my clothes (only could take off my boots) as began to cry out my poison. I curled up on my cot, as the negative ideas and perspectives were magnified to their maximum, and I lived through all of the nightmares that I was afraid could come to pass. And I lived.

The kept coming, as I dealt with death, loss, regret, guilt, and saw how I'd been punishing myself for long time, and that it was over now. This (the nightmare visions) was the worst things could be, and that I, and life, could heal and go on, if I confronted my demons and stayed strong.

They kept coming, my demons. I felt I'd been poisoned, and I needed it out. It took maybe a couple of hours, but that was a lot in trip time. Finally, when the last of them were ripped from the roots of my mind, I opened my eyes and noticed a small sketch by the door of my cottage. It was a picture of the Buddha, with the words, 'Life's a trip, and you will die... live in peace'. I looked all through the cottage when sober the next day, and no such sketch actually did exist.

I got up, picked up a joint that I'd rolled, and walked out into the sun after calming myself. I drank some water, and finally began to truly appreciate the beauty around me. The mountains in the distance, the grass, the trees, the great song of the forest. I was also surrounded by the characteristic trptamine hum, which changed to shamanic chants of different ancient cultures from time to time.

A few puffs of some good bud later, the trip came back in full force. My vision was covered by even more patterns after patterns until it blacked out, I lost balance and fell to the ground in a puddle. My vision came back, panoramic. Plant-o-vision, I realised. I enjoyed it for a few minutes, then began to get cold from the puddle, and tried getting up, but couldn't move. I blinked a few times, no change. Felt something re-wiring in my brain, and back to normal be-mushroomed human vision. Weird.

I walked back to my cottage and changed out of my wet clothes. The visuals calmed down a bit, only slightly. I felt more confident, strong, and different. Reborn, in a way. I'd found strength, confidence, and I learned to let go of my worry.

I tripped for a while longer, bringing my total trip to lasting around 11 hours, seeing archetypical and mythological figures and idols in the clouds, fractals in the grassy floor of the forest and the trees dancing and breathing. I was still tripping as I finally ate some dinner, and lay down to sleep. I was exhausted, but refreshed. So many more insights, so much integration to do.

The auditory hallucinations impressed me deeply, and the little bit of music I played during the rougher parts of my trip sounded amazing, as though there was an added dimension of perception to sound.

I realized I had to control my anxiety through meditation, and that I needed to learn to let go. I had started to grow up, embrace adulthood, but there was so much more to do. Life's a trip, with hopefully a long time till I die. And when the tough times come, it's dealt with the same way a bad trip is. Life's just a trip, and there's a lot to come my way, though I look forward to it with positivism.

Am I uncertain of the future? Of course, but that scares me a lot less than it would earlier. I am trying to be less controlling, and have decided that I will never shut away from the people who truly want the best for me, no matter what my mental condition. I'm hanging up the phone for some time now.

Is tripping on psychedelics fun? Hell yeah, it's amazing, but I've got to be able to function and learn by myself, without these tools. I have many more insights and experiences to be had for sure, but for now, I guess I won't foray into the psychedelic realm until I properly understand and integrate this trip.

The afterglow persists, and I'm trying to hold on to it as long as possible.

Thanks for reading!

Exp Year: 2017	ExpID: 110695
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: Nov 5, 2022	Views: 282
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