DOSE:

5 g

oral

Mushrooms

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

125 lb

This is the story of the first, and possibly last time I have taken mushrooms. I do believe that this trip was the result of our own stupidity and disrespect, but it may have turned me off of mushrooms for good.

I'd used LSD three times prior to this, one 240 mcg, and the other two 200 (one with the addition of 100mg MDMA). My friend, we'll call him C, had used mushrooms once before, but that was 2g, so for all intents and purposes it was both of our first times. He'd always told me that shrooms were more 'natural' than LSD, which makes me feel like plastic. I expressed interest in trying them, so he said he'd keep an eye out. We'd also been learning about the idea of the 'committed dose,' which is why we ended up doing 5 grams. Fast forward a couple months and C tells me that he's got a line on some mushrooms and asks if I'm still interested, and I say I am. So he buys them and we start figuring out when we're going to trip.

We ended up deciding to trip at Unicois State Park. The first attempt to get there was a failure; we'd barely gotten on the highway when his car started belching steam. We made it back to his house, defeated for the moment. He took his car to the shop and learned later that he'd blown a gasket and the car was totaled. But then- salvation! His parents were going out of town and leaving one of their cars. So here we are a week later, back on the road, ready to go on out adventure.

We listened to some Bob Marley to pass the time until we got to Unicois. We got there at around 2:30PM, and were looking for a specific campsite. We drove to where we thought it would be, then past that, and then some more. But finally, he recognized it. The reason we were looking for this particular campsite was because it had access to a ravine we were planning to climb. And finally, here we were, mushrooms laid out before us, ready to partake, so we did. They didn't taste nearly as bad as people described, kind of like chocolate dirt. Once we'd finished eating them, we went for a walk down the road, waiting for the come up.

We walked for a while, starting to feel the body high. We found a road that led to a field which seemed to have no purpose, which befuddled is more than it probably should have, and then we decided to start heading back to the campsite. By the time we got back, the visuals were coming on, and they were interestingly different from LSD's. To me, LSD tends to make me feel like I have multiple layers of vision, and none of them are quite in sync. On shrooms, I only had one layer of vision, and Hingis were genuinely moving. We decided to head to the ravine.

It was daunting. A wall of earth, and here we were, ants that were going to surmount it. We started out climb, calling out handholds and footholds, telling each other where the ground was stable and where it wasn't. Finally, we got to the top, and we felt like gods. Not in an ego-heavy, powerful way, but in a connectedness way. We had mastery over nature, but we were not its master, if that makes sense. We sat on a log and just relaxed, enjoying our surroundings. Unfortunately, this is when I started to feel a little nauseous, a shadow of a warning of things to come.

We made out way down by sitting down and sliding down the ravine. Perfectly safe- as long as you didn't make a single mistake. When we had our feet back on the road, we started to head back to the campsite, with the intention of listening to music (I had Babylon by Bus ready to play). This nausea was growing, and by the time we got back, I was certain I would throw up, but knew I would feel better afterwards. So I threw up. But then I realized I couldn't breathe. You know feeling when you're throwing up, and you try to breathe, but instead your throats just convulses again? It was kind of like that, but prolonged. I could feel it- I was dying, asphyxiated by my own vomit. This was the end.

Miraculously my airways cleared. It wasn't all at once, it was like I had taken a fistful of air and forced it down my throat. Slowly I began to relax, knowing that I wasn't going to die, at least not yet. We were rattled by the incident, but we didn't think it would ruin the trip. I was very anxious about throwing up, so I decided to lay back in the car and put the music on. And Bob Marley proceeded to absolutely kick my ass. The music was extremely intense, and my anxiety wasn't only growing. Finally we made a decision- we were going to drive back home, still absolutely blasted on shrooms. It only got worse from there. [Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]
My anxiety continued to grow, until, I was having full blown panic attacks. I kept asking, begging C to tell me that if I stopped breathing, or had a heart attack, he would revive me. Because not only was I stressed mentally, it was beginning to show physically too. My fingers became drawn up into a claw and no matter how hard I tried a couldn't move them. Periodically, my facial muscles would be affected as well, my mouth drawing up, and my eyes squinting. During these bouts, my heart was racing faster than it ever has before, and it felt like I was being blasted with energy that threatened to blow my consciousness away. I thought I was about to go into cardiac arrest. Sometimes C would wake me up from a sleep I didn't want and couldn't remember falling into.

C was the saving grace, however. He was there the entire time and talked me through it, reassuring me that I wasn't going to die, and if he thought something was about to happen he'd get me to the nearest hospital immediately. We knew that shrooms shouldn't be able to kill you, but the physical manifestations were what frightened us the most. But finally, we started seeing signs that we were nearing our town.

The panic subsided. I realized how stupid we were to do what we did, out in the woods with no cell service, no medical supplies, and no facilities nearby. I realized that up until now, even though I had been telling myself I wasn't, I had been using drugs to escape my reality, and resolved to not partake again until my life was much more stable. I realized that, even though we had a rough time recently, I care about my girlfriend a lot. My sister as well, she's been having a very rough time lately, and I realized how much I really care about her. And both me and C realized that we might as well be family, as good of friends as we are. I don't know a single other person who would sit and talk me through an hour and a half of panic attacks, and I'd do it for him in a heartbeat. During this time, classical music had begun playing, and we never figured out where from, it helped immensely.

And, at long last, we returned home. We called up our friend, S, who I'd had my first acid trip with, and shared the details with her. She'd had a very similar experience during the acid trip, and I didn't really take her seriously then, but I understood now. I understood how bad a bad trip could really get. In fact, as I wrote this a week later, I'm still not over it. I'm uncomfortable going to sleep, and suffer from frequent hypnic jerks when I try. And sometimes, I feel like I'm on the verge of another panic attack, but I know that in time I'll return to normal. So please guys, respect your substances. I needed to go through what I went though, but that doesn't mean you do.

Peace

Exp Year: 2017	ExpID: 110951
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Oct 6, 2017	Views: 1,022
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Mushrooms (39) : Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53), Nature / Outdoors (23), Bad Trips (6), First Times (2)