DOSE:	3 g	oral	Mushrooms - P. cubensis	(dried)
		smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

74 kg

I recently acquired some dried Cubensis and was really excited to work my way up into the higher doses, hopefully to get to McKenna’s Heroic Dose in silent darkness in the near future. I had never experienced psychedelics on my own since usually we picked fresh Liberty Caps from the fields around the area I live – an experience that is always more satisfying and manageable with several people looking at once. I wanted an experience that would be challenging but not unmanageable in order to test my wits for getting potentially lost in whatever would be waiting for me beyond the pale of the heroic dose.

I’ve spent a fair amount of my life in the woods and knew of an area within walking distance which was exceptionally beautiful, with some lakes, some woods and some more open hilly areas and thought it would be a good physical analogue to see if I could make the whole journey there and back in one piece. It was the day after my birthday and I was feeling extremely optimistic about the day and my life.

My preferred method of dosing is to simmer the mushrooms in water for about 15-20 minutes and then add a large amount of chocolate powder to try mask the flavour. I put that in a flask and walked to the area I had chosen, which took around an hour. I had taken precautions such as setting a timer on my phone when I started drinking so I knew roughly when I was peaking and to return before it got dark, should I forget in my elated headspace, and I also let some friends know where I would be.

T+0 mins I started drinking and subtly coming up as I entered the area and continued walking up to the lakes where I waited until I was ready to move. I had intended to eat the mushrooms themselves which were sitting in a chocolatey mess at the bottom of the flask, but they kept making me gag and I eventually gave up. During this time I sat on a mossy bank and felt the high coming in waves.

T+40 mins and the tree to my right started getting an iridescent sheen to it, and would breathe a little. When I closed my eyes I got vague patterns moving. Around this time I noticed a man fishing around the other side of the lake and became mildly self-conscious, which is disappointing because I found myself naturally slipping into a deep meditative state when I focused on my breathing. Being self-conscious, I didn’t follow that feeling.

I had mild come up anxiety, wondering if I was going to overdo it and get lost, but I have become quite good at gently steering my mind away from some of the darker, less necessary thoughts I have.

T+50: Around this time I had a brief image of a freak show clown in inverted flashing colours with an impossibly intense and itself uncomfortable grin and eyes, which I took to be the carnival-esque drug fuelled and self-destructive desire for more and for excess that is so prevalent in modern society – the filthy and dark truth that we are destroying ourselves and the planet and that we at times revel in it, like cocaine addicts. It didn’t make me particularly uncomfortable because I recognised it as a part of myself and had faith in the mushrooms ability to heal through insight. I was also getting really annoyed at the large amount of flies nipping at my ankles and fighting each other around me. The guy who was fishing around the lake had moved much closer and I didn’t feel comfortable enough to have any kind of normal conversation with him so I decided it was time to get moving.

T+60: As soon as I leave the lake and enter the woods there is an unstoppable grin on my face. The area is outstandingly beautiful when sober, but the vibrant autumn colours are practically glowing at this point and I can’t help but exclaim as to how amazing everything looks. I don’t even have any particular direction I’m going in but just keep walking toward anything that feels right, being sure to stick close to paths. I start going up hills that seem to go on forever and find that really amusing. I yawn frequently and there are tears in my eyes partly because of it and partly because of the overwhelming feeling of euphoria. Life becomes very clear as I’m walking. The things that I was anxious about when I was coming up and the problems I had planned to think about during the trip seem silly and the resolutions came naturally and with empathy.

As I come over the top of one of the small hills I see a small herd of cows/bulls, one of which was on the path while the others were dotted around in the ferns and surrounding area. I walked toward the one by the path and said hello from a distance, hoping to get close enough to touch it. It didn’t seem very pleased about my being there and approaching it, so it began to walk toward the others who were down a narrower path that branched off the one I was on. As it reached that path it looked up and seemed to gesture with its head as though it wanted me to follow. I thought about how cool it would be if the animals just accepted me because they could tell I meant no harm and was tripping, but I remembered a funny story told by Alan Watts about a kid disciple to some Guru who when told he was the Brahman and therefore thought himself invincible, and who after ignoring the calls from the rider of an elephant, ended up getting bashed off the road into a spiky ditch. When he confronted the guru and said he had lied, that he wasn’t the eternal Brahman and could therefore be hurt, the guru told him he should have listened to the rider and gave way to the elephant because they too are the Brahman. I carried on walking and didn’t try touch the cows. My legs felt ridiculously powerful and I felt dangerous and animalistic, like nobody could hurt me out here because I could give as good as they could. I was very keenly aware of the advantage of being a man.

Time isn’t very possible to track, but during this period I petted the fluffiest dog in the world and said hey very briefly to the women who was walking with it. The dog seemed like the happiest creature on the planet and the fact that it came up to me to be pet and licked my hand stuck with me for the rest of the trip. Every area I walked to was somehow more gorgeous than the last. I found myself thanking the trees and was incredibly grateful to be alive. I found what seemed to be a big stone totem at the base of an electric pylon, which was actually just used by the energy companies in the area for some reason (had key holes and stuff), and I thought about how these things function as monuments to electricity.

I found myself up on a small hill on the other side of the lake and walked down to a part that I saw but had previously seemed inaccessible. I felt great about the journey I was making and saw migrating cows on the side of the lake I had sat at while coming up. It was very raw and natural, like I was getting to see something people normally wouldn’t see from a place people normally wouldn’t find. I had a semi-dream like vision, kind of like how I zone out when driving but still see the road etc but am focused on some internal imagery, of a girl I know. The symmetry of her face and her in general seemed so effortlessly beautiful and whole. Her beauty and beauty in general appeared to me as self-sustaining, like a water droplet on a lily pad which is held up and spherical by its own water tension. The migrating cows and the area had the same delicate yet unmistakably powerful feeling.

This is really long already, so I’ll quickly tell a couple funny/scary things that happened and then the really challenging part of the trip. I found myself in a more open area, and there was a truck ahead collecting branches or something. I didn’t really want to get involved in any social interactions but thought it would look weirder to turn around and walk the other way. As I got closer I saw one person talking to another. Their voice was garbled and alien and impossible to understand, and they seemed to have weird sickle or a paddle in their hands. I couldn’t tell which way their face was oriented and it seemed to shift. This was pretty stressful because I had no idea where I was or if I was even allowed to be going in this direction, but I soldiered through trying to look normal. Everything was fine obviously and I felt relieved as I walked past unharmed. As I got a bit further some dog walkers joined my path quite close behind, and they must have had bells on their collars or something because it sounded just like Santa’s sleigh.

It’s after the peak at this point and my friends want to meet me for a joint. I walk around half an hour back to the lakes and meet them there. I was worried about socialising but found my speech fluent mostly and wasn’t very anxious. They seemed worried about me getting back and I thought they were silly. I was absolutely fine to make my way back – I still had battery and google maps if I got lost. They seemed a little annoyed and I realised that everyone was probably worried about me back home because I hadn’t been answering my phone and it was getting late. They say something like “it’s that time of the year where it gets dark really quickly”, which I knew but for some reason that information didn’t intersect with my expectations. They seemed a little annoyed and wanted to go in for dinner, so I told them to cycle ahead. I immediately followed my tracks back home, leaving the lake and re-entering the woods. I thought about the state of my friendship group and started getting really worried about people’s opinions of me, and got self-conscious about mistakes I may have been making without realising.

My mood got increasingly worse and I suddenly realised it was getting very dark very quickly and most of the walk was through woods. I looked at my phone and I had 14% battery left. My phone likes to die at random times, and I was suddenly unsure of the way home. I saw I had missed calls from my mother and was panicking about my situation. I figured I can only safely do one thing with my phone before it was likely to die. The thought of calling my friends and asking them to come back was really embarrassing, like I would be failing myself for being unable to do the whole trip on my own wits and survival skills and that they would resent me for being arrogant enough to think I could make it all the way back and for making them even later for dinner. I thought about calling my mother but I would only worry her and she’d never find me before my battery ran out.

I imagined getting lost and freezing in the woods. I reached the absolute brink of panic, almost crouching down in hopeless despair, but I snapped out of it, realised this kind of struggle is exactly what I was after when I planned the trip. Something unexpected but manageable. I took a deep breath and looked around me. In the darkness I saw cars driving down a distant road, and knew it was the road to my town. I knew I only had to follow that road, but it didn’t have a path so I’d have to stay in the woods. I was still pretty freaked out and was having dark imagery of parasitic aliens using people’s psychic energy by essentially programming new neural networks in their brains and getting them to run operations for them. This culminated in an image of someone’s brain so riddled with parasitic neurons that their head and skull splits open down the middle and their brain bursts out like a really ripe fruit. I take one look at google maps and make sure I’m headed the right way down the road. As soon as I confirm I am, my phone dies. I took this as the final sign of my test and continued, still a little rattled.

I made it home, extremely satisfied with my day and my turning a terrifying and potentially dangerous time into something manageable. The rest of the night I chill with friends who are all very excited to hear about my travels and trip and I find myself extremely calm and articulate.

It’s been around 5 days since, and I still feel more confident and appreciative for life.

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 112519
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 23
Published: Nov 4, 2018	Views: 824
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Nature / Outdoors (23), Glowing Experiences (4), General (1), Alone (16)