DOSE:	3.5 g	oral	Mushrooms	(dried)
		smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

275 lb

||| INTRO/BACKGROUND |||

Allow me to begin by giving a brief summary of my past experiences with psychoactive substances. I began smoking cannabis at the age of about 16 or 17. However, I did not begin to smoke cannabis regularly until I was 18. I started drinking at the age of 20, and eventually took to cigarettes about a year or two later. The first time I tried mushrooms was around the age of 19. The first time I took LSD was at about age 25 or 26. I am now 28, as a reference. At the time of the trip I will talk about, I was about 22 or 23 - I can’t remember exactly. Up until that point, I had taken mushrooms about four or five times beforehand, and have had two extremely psychedelic experiences on cannabis (the first time I smoked, and then smoking after taking a year-long break). I had tripped both with company and without.

Personally, I prefer to be alone during a trip. I believe that there are just some things best experienced on your own, without other people there to influence your behavior. That being said, I was alone in my bedroom, watching TV.

I have had bad trips, I have had amazing trips, and I have had trips that even still are nothing but a blurred, hazy memory of staring at the sky or watching tv or watching my ceiling slide around like it was made of molten plaster.

However, I think the most interesting trip I had was this one in particular. The reason being that during this trip, I was able to fully and permanently pull myself out of a "bad trip." A lot of people say you lose control when you take psychedelics. For me, I find that while that is true to a certain extent (I lost the ability to speak the first time I took LSD), I have 9 times out of 10 been able to retain a relatively firm grip on my sanity. Even when racked with anxiety and shivers of a bad mushroom trip and being stuck in that state, no matter how much I know for an absolute fact that I will be perfectly fine; even when I saw the letters of my phone’s keyboard fly away from my finger and around the screen like some kind of color-changing balloon that someone pricked with a pin, I have never become truly lost within myself. Perhaps it is because I've never taken a suitably large enough dose for that type of thing to occur, or perhaps I was just lucky. I like to think that it was through meditation and a constant interest in the idea of what lies behind one’s identity throughout my life that I have developed a very open mind, and a clear distinction of what my ego is. Open enough that I can go through these weird, disorienting, and immensely powerful experiences, and yet my mind stays intact. I retain that sense of lucidity and “control” throughout the ordeal. But I digress.

I do not remember if I had also been drinking during this experience, though knowing myself, it was very likely, though it is worth noting that I tend to not drink very much, if at all, during a psychedelic experience. Not because I was afraid of mixing the substances, but more because when I’m tripping, I tend not to notice the effects of alcohol until I am already coming down, so I tend to only sip on a bottle of beer (and smoke a bowl or two of cannabis) as I drift into the afterglow.

||| THE EXPERIENCE |||

I remember it was around the time of Thanksgiving, just at the start of the weekend. Maybe Friday afternoon. I was excited - it had been a while since I last got my hands on some mushrooms, and I was eager to have a good time. I had bought 3.5g of dried Psilocybin-containing mushrooms. I gave this trip some thought, which I usually didn’t really do - I mostly just waited until I knew that I would have the next 12 or so hours to myself. I wanted to have a really good experience this time around. I felt more mature, and I felt that I had gained a greater respect for the substance since my last foray into the unknown.

So, I had the amazing idea to set myself up on my bed for the trip (something I still do to this day). My bed becomes like a little sanctuary, my little ship floating among a sea of weirdness. I put my fan close by, where I could just reach over to adjust it without getting up. I had my blanket next to me, in case I got cold (something that often happens to me when shrooming is my body cycles through profuse sweating, then to chills, then back to the heat. I find if I have a fan or some other way to control the ambient temperature of the room, it helps to stabilize these fluctuations). I grabbed some sodas and some water from the kitchen downstairs, and I also even went through the trouble of making myself a couple of sandwiches and grabbed a bag of chips in case I got hungry or just needed to chew on something to calm my nerves. I grabbed my TV remote, the mushrooms, my pipe, and my cigarettes, and sat at my desk. I packed my pipe with cannabis flower, and took a couple hits. I ate the mushrooms very slowly, as I always do (mostly because I can’t stand the taste and find it easier to put small portions on my tongue and wash them down quickly with some soda or anything to mask the taste). Once I was finished, I decided to try and forget I took them, as waiting for the onset is often a trigger for my anxiety. I lit a cigarette and perused youtube and read news articles on my phone until I got bored, then decided to think of a good show to watch.

I had recently finished the show “Legion,” a Marvel show on Netflix about a mutant who is not only omnipotent, but also clinically insane. I don’t know why I thought that this type of story wouldn’t bother me, but it was probably because I had seen it before and knew what was going to happen, which took away from the perceived “realness” of the situations in the show. I was also careful to avoid episodes that contained scenes I knew would disturb me.

Approximately 1.5 hours later, I was laying in bed, propped up on my pillows, when I started to feel the onset. It was like every other time - my body got a small boost of adrenaline, and my limbs started to rapidly lose weight, like someone letting the sand fall out of a sack. It is hard to describe the exact sensation, it’s like my arms are pinned down by some great weight, while at the same time, it feels like I could send them spinning around like a windmill with the slightest flinch of a muscle. I felt very limber. So I sat there in the bed, lifting my arms and letting them fall back down onto the bed, chuckling to myself. It took me about 10-15 minutes before the realization that I was tripping actually sunk in. I smiled, laughed a little louder, and said to myself “Here it comes, hold onto your wage packets!” This I found incredibly funny, as I had referenced an old comedy show I like to watch, called Red Dwarf. As my mirth subsided, I resumed watching the TV, turning it down just a tad, because I seem to always have somewhat heightened senses while under the influence of psychedelics. Even though I knew from previous experience that my TV was quiet enough that you could barely hear it outside in the hall, every time somebody so much as spoke in the show, it almost hurt my ears because of how loud I perceived it to be.

I don’t remember when it happened, or even what triggered it, but at some point after I resumed watching the show, the bad trip started to come on. I had had at least two bad trips on mushrooms by this point, so I knew what was coming, and I braced myself to ride the waves of anxiety for the next several hours. I pulled the blankets up to my chin, and tried to lay down in the most comfortable position I could find. I was on my side, curled in the fetal position, with my arms interlocked and held down by my head. I had my headphones with me, and thought playing some music might calm me down or at least help me cope by giving me something to focus on. However, there was something more intense about this trip. I eventually pulled the headphones out of my ears, because I had this weird sensation that my ears were being suffocated. This only intensified my anxiety. Between bouts of covering my face with my blanket so I would feel encased in safety and familiarity, only to rip it off when I felt like I was being suffocated, there was this thought that kept nagging me. After probably the fourth or so wave (by this time it felt like I had been writhing in my bed for hours), I decided I couldn't take it anymore. I needed to get a grip, somehow. I voiced the thought that kept racing through my head: "Why does this have to happen every time I start to really enjoy myself?"

After a little while - I have no idea how long, though I think it was only a few minutes - I came back enough to prop myself up and take a hit of cannabis to try and level myself out. I took as big of a hit as I could get, feeling absolutely nothing in my lungs (normally there is a kind of sting that makes me cough, but it literally felt like I had just taken a deep breath of regular air), and held it until I felt myself starting to lose consciousness from lack of oxygen (this I believe was probably just because I stood up too quickly). After I exhaled, I sat back down on my bed, looking at my carpeted floor. I wasn’t having vivid hallucinations, but my eyes were tinging the light, as if I was wearing a pair of colored glasses. I shook my head as if chiding myself, and that same thought questioning why this has to happen when I’m just beginning to have a good time went through my mind again.

Then, as if in response to that, and just as another wave of anxiety began to swell up around me, I heard myself whisper out loud "Because you make it happen." I caught myself off-guard with the absolute conviction with which those words left my mouth. It felt like time had stopped for a brief moment. I thought about it, then I had an idea. Once the wave died down enough for me to regain my composure, I started to consciously conjure up every single thought, image, or memory of the things I love or even remotely liked about myself. I thought about how I would do anything to protect the people I care about. What I’d do just to comfort a complete stranger. How many times I had held the door for people, how many times I let my friends and family borrow money and not expect to see it paid back. All the times I have treated my friends to a good smoke session on me. The fact that I like my hair color. The fact that the vast majority of the people I’ve met in my life think of me as a good, honest person. Anything, big or small, it mattered not. Then it finally hit me. "Look at you," I said, "A lot of people would be in a hospital right now if they did what you did. Maybe not most, and certainly not all, but still a lot. But look at you. You're here. You're alive. You're breathing. You are strong in mind and body. You *are* a good person. You've done bad things that you regret, but the nature of life is not one-sided. You can't clap with one hand! Embrace every facet of your existence, for what else is there but the void? The light would not seem so bright if not for the darkness that surrounds it."

Then, I hugged myself while laying in my bed, and something interesting happened. The more I comforted myself, the more I felt like I was splitting into two beings: One was my ego - my identity, constantly nervous about whether or not he is existing correctly in the eyes of the world. The other was almost like a spirit living within me - a graceful, loving being that possessed so much power and love, I could physically feel it. A being that knows deep down that to exist correctly in the eyes of the world is to exist correctly in your own eyes - because they are one in the same, like they sing in that Grateful Dead song: "Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world." “There is no ‘they.'" I said. "There is not even a ‘You.’ Everything is all part of the same existence, the body your ego occupies but a small fraction of the impossibly immense vibration of life. You are it, and it is you.” Then I remembered something I had heard Alan Watts say in a recording, which I repeated to myself, eyes closed, smiling enormously: “You are something that the whole universe is doing, in exactly the same way that a wave is something the whole ocean is doing.” Then I repeated it, and I laughed.

Warmth suddenly spread throughout my body. Not the heat I experience when tripping that makes me sweat bullets, only to sink back into bitter chills, but a loving, comforting warmth. The feeling was almost indescribable. Utter joy and elation, but more than that: acceptance and contentment. I had finally felt true love for who I was - which I don't think I had ever felt before, sober or otherwise. I wasn't just some insignificant piece of an indifferent universe. I was really part of it - I was all of it and none of it at the same time. I was life, in the flesh. That thought in particular made me laugh even more.

I felt like I was on top of the world. I was even brave enough to purposefully start to think about dark things, things that I would normally find disturbing or stressful, but my mind was now like an impenetrable fortress. An unbreakable shield surrounded my consciousness, and anything that might upset or confuse that consciousness bounced off my mental armor like drops of rain. My eyes welled with tears at the immensity of the cosmos, and how I encompassed everything within, and without. I saw myself as a living embodiment of love. I felt like I could do anything. I felt like anything could happen, and I’d be fine. I even told myself as much. I remember saying “Man, I feel like I could fly!” Then, glancing toward my 3rd-story window, I laughed and said “Well, maybe not that.” My body stopped heating up to the point of sweating, and the chills went away. Not completely, but to the point where they were easily ignored or dispelled by my fan.

I felt like I had just discovered a great secret, and it made me giddy with excitement. “I’ll never have to worry about a bad trip again! It’s so simple: You create your own bad trips. That means that you can also break free of them. You designed the prison. You know its weaknesses and egress points. Just keep calm and ride the wave!” Then I had to stop myself because I wasn’t sure how loud I was being. I was about 6 or 7 hours into the trip now, and I was just thankful that everyone else was either out of earshot or had just assumed that I was talking to someone in a video game or something. I sat smiling in the glow of supreme happiness and contentment for the next few hours, absently watching my TV. This time, anything creepy in the show just made me laugh at how ridiculous it all was. Fear, pain, misery, happiness, wonder, and elation - they are all just different wavelengths of the same vibration. We cry tears of sorrow, and tears of joy. We shudder from horror, just as we shudder from delight. It’s all about perspective, and how you choose to interpret that perspective. Eventually, I switched shows and started watching Red Dwarf, and I fell asleep smiling before I ever came down. The next morning, I felt like a new man.

||| CONCLUSION/TAKEAWAY |||

To this day, I will never allow myself to forget that trip. Now, I have had bad times since then. I was never “cured” of the human condition. I just simply learned how to accept it as just the nature of things - sometimes things just don’t go your way, and there isn’t always someone to blame for it. Sometimes, you just have to go with it. I think, though, that the biggest takeaway from this particular trip is this newfound ability. Because it still works. Ever since that trip, I have never had a bad trip. Every time anxiety starts to creep up my spine during a trip, I can just brush it off like a mosquito with the memory of that night.

If you made it this far, then thanks for reading. I know I'm not the best storyteller, but I felt like I should share this.

Cheers.

[Reported Dose: 3.5g Psilocybin-containing mushrooms, dried, consumed orally, Approx. 3g of dried cannabis flower, smoked, over the course of approx. 7 hours'']

Exp Year: 2015	ExpID: 116797
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: Dec 16, 2022	Views: 587
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Mushrooms (39), Cannabis (1) : Combinations (3), Bad Trips (6), Glowing Experiences (4), General (1), Alone (16)