DOSE:	3.5 g	oral	Mushrooms	(edible / food)
		oral	Chocolate	(edible / food)

BODY WEIGHT:

148 lb

I grew up in a devoutly catholic Latin American family. My belief in God was never very strong, and I passively lost all contact with the spiritual/religious side of myself. I would say by July of 2020 (18 years old) and the years leading up, I was by default an atheist. On the 5th, I took a small dose of mushrooms with some lifelong friends (somewhere between 1.5-2 g, I don’t think we measured exactly, but split a bag between two of what we were told were 3g, and I took the heavier handful). I had an incredible experience, with ups and downs. This was my first proper trip. The pinnacle of this first experience was me dissociating into my chair, and viewing a strain of divinity connecting art, language, which then turned into civilizations and our individual connections to nature and the world that made up all those things.

This undercurrent then appeared to overtake and then connect every consciousness and everything that had ever existed, and was the animator and cause of everything, and was thus, everywhere/ everything. This to me, was clearly god. In that moment I was as happy as I think I could be, and felt not only immense peace, but also excitement, and I think I audibly exclaimed: “God!” and repeated in my head, “I believe in God, I believe in God!”
 My feeling was fleeting, and as I came down, my confusion and inability to understand or relate to what I had seen and felt left me uneasy and confused.

Later that summer, my friends and I decided to trip again. We had gotten our hands on some mushroom chocolates, dosed at 3.5 g each. I came in foolishly and headstrong, thinking in this trip I would come closer to what I had seen before. That was the goal, to get closer in any way I can, driven by excitement and curiosity above all.

I ate entire bar over the course of 20 min, as we walked through the woods to the little beach around the lake we were going to sit in. I was the only one tripping that day. I sat on the beach, took my shoes and shirt off, and laid down. Strangely, I felt as if I skipped through the usual nausea I get with mushrooms, and was catapulted straight into the experience.

Through my closed eyelids, the sunlight cast a bright red. Looking down into my skull, (I think in part due to the reflection from the lake in front of me-not sure exactly) I saw a rich, turquoise green. In these different colors formed different worlds, populated by different types of entities.

First, I dove into the green. In the green was a city, filled with entities traveling around and doing various different things. It was extremely rich visually and in terms of what I was perceiving and felt in the presence of, but very hard to parse out exactly what was happening. It’s of course very difficult to write about and describe. My presence was at times acknowledged, but I did not have much of an effect on this world. It sounds incredibly stupid, but I can describe it is as a very busy, chaotic version of the underwater world in the first movie of the Star Wars prequels. Hah.

I then, unconsciously, placed my arm over my face, completely covering my eyes. i was transported instantly to another place of pitch blackness, and was put face to face with an immensely complex totem pole, with eyes on every rung. The totem pole acknowledged me instantly with anger. I was looked down upon, with disdain and as an intruder.

Removing my arm from my face, I entered into the red. In the red, I saw a sea of little red people. The little red guys (?) covered my entire vision. They were anthropomorphic but not very detailed; they looked like red translucent silhouettes with pitch black eyes. If I can give another stupid movie reference it would be big balloon guy from the kids movie big hero six, only red. They all were working, in complete unison, on some immense and infinitely complex machine. It was never clear to me what the machine did, or what it even looked like, as there were so many of them that I couldn’t even see the surface of the machine. Diligently working, they never acknowledged or noticed my presence.

The cicadas in the woods droned loudly through every different world. They would modulate and come in waves, and coincided with my movement through these different spaces. It felt as if it was them that would take me to the next color - world.

At this point, the red made way to a large entity. This entity was immense, and shuffled the contents of my field of view around. She had an indescribable appearance, seemingly made out of a weave of white blankets and clouds. She appeared kind and wise, and extended her hand to me. She led me through her world, which was made up of her. She explained to me without words, that I needed to relinquish something for her to show me what she wanted to. It was clear that without relinquishing this thing I had, I could not pass over to where she wanted to show me what she wanted to.

I came into this trip with the desire to dive as deep as I could into the experience that the mushrooms would give me, and to return to the place where I could understand or relate to the spiritual experience I had had months before. While at this point in the trip I don’t believe I was fully “there” - if someone had woken me up and asked me what my name was I don’t know if I could have responded - but I still had access to a remnant of that feeling of curiosity. In my curiosity, I tried and tried to relinquish this thing I had. What it was I needed to relinquish went from instantly clear to more and more cloudy the more I tried. The entity in front of me kindly made it clear to me that I was not ready, and fizzled out. I cannot say now what it is I was trying to relinquish. I don’t know if it was my ego, myself, a particular belief, my commitments; I have no idea now. But it was without a doubt something that defined or still defines my normal, sober state.

After she fizzled out, I sat up from the beach confused. I parsed together what had happened, and believed that that was probably the peak, and that I was going to start coming down. It still made sense that I had taken a drug. I vividly remember being off balance as I stood, happy and scared, and smiling to myself as if to say “woah” to what I had just seen. I realized I needed to piss, so I walked off the tiny beach, back into the trees. I remember carefully selecting a tree, and fiddling with my pants for a while, which were very difficult to undo. After I had pissed, which was itself a very interesting experience as my stream of piss glistened strangely as it hit the ground.

As I finished peeing, I went to walk over to my two friends who were with me. They were on a rock overlooking the water on the other side of the little beach, only 20 feet away from where I was laying but completely out of sight as I had asked them to let me sit alone for a bit. These are two of my closest friends, who I've known for most of my life. Going to go tell them what it was I had just seen, I realized that I remembered nothing. Not just nothing about the entities that I had met, but nothing about anything. I had no recollection of taking a drug, no idea where I was, and no idea what my name was or who I was. I felt like a sort of animal, having been stripped of my human identity. However, I don’t think I was in a state of complete ego “death” at this point. It didn’t feel like a transcendent experience of non duality, where I was conscious or in the realization of a state of non duality; it was as if I was left with a very very damaged concept of the self, which was pulsing in and out of stability, but remained completely empty. This is what I believe put me in a state of terror, as I had a sense of self to understand abstractly, but nothing in it at all.

I waddled confused over to my friends, feeling terrified and like an ape. My terror was physical too, it felt like my entire body was about to throw up. I told them that I was terrified, apparently with a massive smile on my face. It’s funny to think back on it but I really don’t understand why that is. I honestly was terrified in a way I had never been before. My “theory” about this smile is as I began to come back, there was a part deep inside me that thought to myself “You’re fucked” and found it funny.

After this point, there is not much of a narrative until my comedown. I have space memories of myself in different places around the rocks we were sitting at, and of visuals and feelings I had. Until I start coming down, it will be more like a list. I saw many fleeting images. Kind of like heat imprints or the way in which I can conceptualize an image in memory if I close my eyes and think about it, but far more vivid and completely out of my control. In these fleeting images, I was as if I was transported to them.

I saw war, bombings, planes overhead, and a group of people hiding in a dim building. I was overwhelmed by the feeling of death and killing around me, and the fear of it was palpable (I had been reading stuff on the Kosovo conflict on the internet in the week leading up to this trip - wiki pages, articles, etc-, which I think could have played a part in this coming up). I saw my family. My parents had a scared, helpless look on their face. My siblings looked terrified. I could do nothing to help them. At one point, I realized they were terrified for me, too.

I began to come back, and was flooded with memories and a sense of self. It all came back in the ugliest way possible. I was faced with every single bad thing about myself with no clarity to it whatsoever. It was as if every flaw and mistake I had made was incorporated into a slop that was poured over me, and was the only part of my identity that I had. I could not identify any single individual flaw or issue there, just a blanket of pure and overwhelming but completely indecipherable self hatred. Unfortunately, this feeling of confusion and hatred had a lasting effect on me, and has come back in not only other tips, but has come to affect my normal, sober life.

I felt like a child, and saw fleeting images of being surrounded by people. I was being laughed at in one, and kicked in the other. My identity became easier to remember, and I made my way to the rocks. I sat there and looked down a creek that fed into the lake. My wits were not fully about me, and I did not fully understand I had taken a drug. I remember thinking that I had gone insane, and in the midst of fear and self hatred imagined a gun in my hand a shooting myself with it. I believed I would never be “normal” again, without fully remembering what normal was like. I wanted it to be over, and I wanted to die.

I sat with my friends in silence. They knew I was sacred and having a bad trip, but I had not said anything to them. They had largely left me along because they had no idea what was happening in my head other than that. Apparently, my expression was blank faced the entire time, so it was unclear if I was still in a state of terror. I appreciate them leaving me to work through it on my own, and their presence was very comforting as I begun to come down.

As I came down, they told me that our other friend, who is also very close, was coming to meet us. A man fishing nearby where we sat scared the shit out of me, even though he was over 50 feet away, and just waved hello. By the time my friend arrived, I was more sane, and recovering emotionally from the fear and self hatred.

When my other friend arrived, I explained to everyone what I could. They sat with me and listened, and we began to speak about normal things. The sun began to set, and I regained sanity. I felt an overwhelming sense of peace and clarity. Sitting on the rock I felt comfort in my body and self. The reflection of the water on the leaves that formed a roof over our heads danced around in wonderful patterns, and I felt pure gratitude, and for some reason, determination.

Exp Year: 2021	ExpID: 117213
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Apr 15, 2025	Views: 16
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Mushrooms (39), Chocolate (182) : General (1), Difficult Experiences (5), Glowing Experiences (4), Nature / Outdoors (23), Entities / Beings (37), Post Trip Problems (8), Personal Preparation (45), Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53)