DOSE:

10 g

oral

Mushrooms

(sclerotia)

BODY WEIGHT:

64 kg

It was March of 2017. Only a week or so prior to the experience, my girlfriend at the time had broken up with me. I went from probably being the happiest I’d ever been in my life to the absolute lowest point. I became heavily depressed and just generally desensitised to many things. I felt extremely hollow and directionless at this point. I hadn’t been able to make music since that happened as well, which left me feeling really unsatisfied. It always helps me to write about what I’m feeling. It helps me to move on that way.

At this point my friend suggested we should do truffles in the near future. He had taken them before with someone else and reportedly had an amazing experience. Feeling the way I did, I figured it would be a good way to try and sort of ‘break’ the depression I was in. I agreed to the offer and my friend ordered them.

In the days leading up to the experience, I tried as much as possible to get prepared for what I was about to do. I read up on dozens of trip reports and wrote up a big note with a bunch of music I’d want to listen to on the substance. Reading the trip reports that talk about bad trips really unsettled me. I tried not to let it bother me too much, but knowing the state I was in, it left me to think I might be too unstable to do this. Regardless, I refused to cancel. I wanted to break the depression, and I was convinced nothing else could help.

The day had arrived. I woke up real early, as we were planning to take the truffles at his house while his parents and sister would be out for work/school. The guy I was planning to trip with was a friend of around 5 years at that point. We’d met midway through high school and stuck together a lot after graduating. We were both kind of maladjusted to the rest of our class, so the friendship was less one of mutual respect and more one of necessity. Nobody else would really tolerate us.

I got on my bike and made my way to his place. I felt nervousness building inside of me as I got closer to his house. I tried my best to push it down. I arrived at his place and we went up to his room, and he immediately showed me the truffles. They looked kind of filthy, and to be frank, they tasted worse. We had some quick breakfast with milk and cereal (really bad choice as I’ve got quite a weak stomach. The milk didn’t help at all) and wolfed the truffles down together. They tasted like dirt clumps soaked in battery acid. I was starting to feel worse and worse about the whole thing, especially after I’d swallowed everything. This was the point of no return, and I was slowly starting to crack.

To lighten the mood a little, I suggested we’d start playing the songs I had listed. I’d compiled them into a playlist beforehand that we could just put on shuffle and have it play on it’s own. After we had it set up I spotted a Monopoly box in the corner of his room, and suggested we play it. At this point I think we were about 15 minutes into it. About 20 minutes after this it started to seep in slowly. I would buy a certain spot on the board and then my friend would land on it the very next turn, and we’d both just absolutely lose it and start screaming with laughter. The overwhelming emotions kind of terrified me. I have a deep rooted anxiety of not being in control of my body and my brain because of my medical history, so whenever something powerful would happen I’d feel an apprehension and be left quite uneasy.

However, I tried to remain composed.

The effects would slowly start to take over, and another 20 minutes passed. At this point we said ‘screw it’ to the monopoly game and threw it into the corner again. We both laid down and looked at the ceiling, noticing that it was sort of ‘breathing’ in it’s movement. We both saw it and that made me feel like I was still doing okay. Then, not too quickly after, my friend got up to get something but tripped and bit his tongue. I felt fine until he swiped his finger across it and I saw blood on his finger. The extremely uncomfortable flush I felt got the best of me and set a really dark tone. I suddenly felt strangely opened up to the vibrations of his home, and they didn’t resonate with me at all. I felt terribly out of place. The music was still playing at this point, but I found it extremely loud and obnoxious and kind of wanted to turn it off, but my friend wouldn’t let me.

I became so unsettled by the way everything felt in his room that I just quietly got up and walked downstairs. My legs felt like they were made of jell-o, but I managed to get down the staircase safely. I walked into the bathroom and locked the door and proceeded to lay down on the floor in foetal position. It was also around this time that I started feeling some kind of ‘chunk’ in the back of my throat that I couldn’t quite swallow. I’m still not sure exactly what it was but I think it might’ve been the breakfast I had that was coming up. This sent me deeper down the nasty rabbit hole I was going into and the time I spent in that bathroom felt like hours. I felt like I couldn’t let my guard down or relax because of how strangely unbalanced his house felt, as little sense as that makes. I think the added factor here was that I couldn’t relax around my friend, as he was being quite inconsiderate of the bad time I was having. After 15 minutes or so of being in that bathroom I got up and decided to leave. I wanted to grab my bike and go home. Lay in my own bed and just cry and wait for the bad feelings to leave me alone.

So I did. Or, tried to. I went upstairs, grabbed my backpack and my jacket. On the way down towards his front door I ran into my friend, who told me to come into the backyard with him. I felt too scared to say no so I went with it. The weather was very nice that day, although it didn’t do much for me as I was too enveloped in the misery I was feeling. My friend decided to light up a big cigar and I inched away from him as the smell just made me more nauseous than I already felt. After a few really awkward exchanges of words my friend asked about the girl that dumped me, and the reminder of that I think was the tipping point. I crudely cut him off and bid him adieu, and made my way to the front door. My friend awkwardly said goodbye as I got on my bike and rode off.

I felt a little bit lighter being just on my own again. I’ve always liked being alone, because it left nobody to disappoint. I could be wonderfully dysfunctional and not have anyone berate me for it. I’ve sought isolation for most of my life, and in the midst of my horrible trip it gave me some superficial form of comfort. However, I wasn’t home yet, and still had a 20 minute bike ride ahead of me. This went off without any hitch though. I noticed whenever something caught my attention it would feel like my eyes would zoom in and I’d see it in extreme detail. I was also captivated by the people I encountered on the way back. I didn’t make any conversations or whatever, but I did look at everyone’s faces as they passed me. On every single one of them I saw a really miserable expression. It somehow felt like they were mad at me. This thought would normally make me feel bad but the way I was in that moment it just made me feel like laughing out loud. Really loudly. Not sure why.

I ended up safely getting home. I stowed my bike away into the garage and walked into the living room. My parents were both working there and I had been dreading going past them, but it was completely fine. My dad asked me if I was okay without even looking up from his computer and my mom barely noticed me. I walked past them into the hallway without looking suspicious, and got up the stairs to my room.

I noticed I was feeling extremely hot, and threw off my coat and hoodie. The weather was pleasantly warm that day, but the truffles made me feel way hotter than I should have been normally. I felt a discomfort from my contact lenses, so I decided to take them out. When I got on the bed to do it, I almost threw up and just barely kept it in. The chunk in my throat still hadn’t disappeared and this kind of confirmed for me that my stomach was in distress. I tried to ignore it however, took my contacts out and put on my glasses. The shift in vision was very dramatic and it took a while to get used to. I also noticed I was still extremely hot so I pulled open all my windows and stripped down naked, but it wouldn’t help. So I decided to take a cold bath and make everything better.

Getting into that bathroom was a really bad decision. I was left with barely any stimuli to occupy my brain and I was completely alone. My brain was my only company, and it was doing terribly. I got into the tub and let the cold water run. I started speaking to the faucet, referring to it as ‘Mr. Faucet’ because it looked very elegant to me. I would keep switching the water between hot and cold during the entire time I spent in the bathtub, and not letting it fill up at all. I was too scared I would drown in my current physical state, so I had the plug resting on the edge of the tub the entire time.

My thoughts were barely going anywhere in the meantime. Where I would normally think in a straight line, my train of thought more felt like a really curvy road with loops and strange, sudden, sharp turns. I would flipflop between the thought of my ex, the thought of my friend, and the general feeling of being misplaced in society. I’d felt like I was some sort of alien that came from another planet and never actually learned how to mingle with everyone else. I felt like nobody ever understood me except for the girl that dumped me, making that breakup THAT much harder. This being the cycle that kept flip-flopping me between the limited array of subjects that plagued me.

In the end, I became so confused and distraught that the only thought that kept bouncing around my head was ‘the only thing I truly understand is the love I feel for her’ and it would just ring on, over and over and over. I felt like there was no way out of this and began laying on my side, with my face almost directly against the bathtub. I felt utterly alone. I’d never made any significant friendships in my life. I never felt like I belonged with any people, or like I really connected with someone. I felt ostracised. And I had no idea why. I blamed myself without reason.

I felt like I was going crazy. I was so scared of facing my parents and having them notice, because I figured they would send me to a mental institution and I’d have to live there, feeling like this for the rest of my life.

There was a point in this downward spiral where I finally just, out of the blue, came upon the thought: ‘nothing that’s hurting me will matter if I don’t give it any attention.’ And at that exact moment, I felt all the weight of my depression, my anxiety, and the terrible past week slide off of me. It was all gone! I started smiling, and sat up. I checked the time, and noticed that I’d been tripping for almost 4 hours at this point. The prospect of coming back down to earth excited me more, and I closed the faucet. I got up from the bath, and looked in the mirror. For the first time in more than a decade, I looked at myself without any form of contempt, disappointment or any other dark emotion. I loved what I saw. I saw a healthy, vibrant young man with an unbreakable confidence, and limitless possibilities.

I could not understand where the sudden peacefulness came from, and I still don’t. In that moment, I tried not to question it too much, and rather just go with it. The rest of the day was really great. I had some fruit and it felt absolutely godlike to eat. I felt like I was being nourished by Mother Nature. It had a strangely divine feeling to it.

Most of the time after the trip I spent talking to people and revelling in my completely peaceful state of mind. I had some really bad stomach pains from the milk and truffle combo, but other than that I felt alive. I hadn’t felt alive in ages at that point. I felt like this could be a turnaround for me.

I want to end this report with saying that the happiness I found that day was pretty short-lived. It took about 3 days for me to slip back into how I was feeling beforehand. I have not really been able to get much relief since then. Taking psychedelics provides me with temporary relief, but it always fades. I’m still quite an antisocial person, but I’ve been taking initiative to change this. I also realise that it’s better for me to look at the bad hand I’ve been dealt with humility and love instead of anger and frustration, but this still proves to be hard for me. This truffle trip however was a pivotal point in my life and taught me a really great lesson. One that I’m trying to follow as much as possible.

Exp Year: 2017	ExpID: 111575
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Apr 30, 2018	Views: 1,889
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Mushrooms (39) : Difficult Experiences (5), Depression (15), Personal Preparation (45), Various (28)