DOSE:	0.333 g	insufflated	Cocaine	(powder / crystals)
	repeated	oral	Alcohol	(liquid)
	8	oral	Mushrooms - P. cubensis	(plant material)

This story begins with a trip back to my home town with a large tupperware box full of Psilocybe Cubensis that I had been growing over the past few weeks. I had tested the shrooms out in small quantities, but not yet had the chance to try a larger dose for want of a suitable venue. This weekend, I was going back to visit some friends I hadn’t seen in a while. Also I had far too many dried mushrooms to have lying around the house and was hoping my pals would help me get rid of them before I came back home.

I arrived about 5:00pm and met my friends in my old local – a student bar type place. The plan was to go and watch our friends’ band play their gig in a nearby social(!) and then on to D’s house to trip out tits off. He had mentioned that his granddad was staying for a while, but D’s family is deaf, so we never have to worry about noise. Thought nothing of it. . .

We happened to bump into a man selling some good coke – so we bought a gram of it, and three of us ended up snorting it all off the toilet cistern at the social when we arrived. By the time the band came on we were getting quite rowdy – and had also a significant amount to drink. Not sure the regulars or the staff at the club were too happy with us. Either way, we must have been very wasted when the gig ended as D and myself were refused entry to the university bar everyone else had moved on to. Also, I miraculously remember lunging at D for some unknown reason, missing completely and charging headlong into a concrete bollard, knocking myself almost out cold. The lump is still there.

So D and I, and two other mates began to stumble to another club but by now it was 1:15am and nobody was going to let us in anywhere. D was standing around frantically phoning people to find some weed and eventually the others got bored and left us there. We decided that although we had no weed we had plenty of Cubensis so it didn’t matter. At about 2:00 am we arrived somehow and sat in the kitchen. D put the kettle on and I dealt out the shrooms. I’m not sure just how many we ate, but I know we didn’t finish the ones we decided to eat, which was probably a good thing. (later, I would see them crawling like worms over the kitchen table) The coke and alcohol must have affected our judgement, but I’m guessing we ate about 8 or 9 good sized shrooms each. D put his in a marmite sandwich, which must have helped the taste a lot as he won’t even eat normal mushrooms, yet he kept was saying how good the sandwich was. This man doesn’t even like the taste of mint toothpaste, so Marmite could be a good method of masking the taste for those fussier eaters out there. Or he might have been really drunk. Whatever.

Probably due to the booze (we’d had about 8 pints each and a shot or two), the effects hit me very suddenly, and heavily. There was no gradual build-up – no subtle tingles or trails warning us to get comfy. One minute I am reading the paper and D is on the phone to G, who had just got back home from the Uni Bar. Seconds later, I find myself laughing hysterically at everything I hear him say. Then a huge heiroglyphic cat shape on D’s kitchen wall appears and suddenly I am aware of all this intense movement and noise going on in the kitchen. Everything I look at is moving. And I can hear all sorts of indescribable sounds. The tiles on the wall are multiplying and moving crazily fast. Any kind of repetitive pattern – wood grain, wallpaper, the worktops, the skirting boards, even the hairs on my arm, begins to come alive. I go over to D and say something like “I think it’s starting..what the fuck what the fuck man” – D at this point seems fairly coherent and not quite sure what I’m talking about. He’s looking at me with some concern. He hasn’t properly tripped before and he hasn’t seen me tripping either. I say “wait for it man, this is intense” and collapse on the floor in fits of uncontrollable laughter. I grab the phone to talk to G but instantly forget that he’s on the line because D’s computer is moving steadily up the wall and changing colour. The plain yellow walls are suddenly a mess of fractal geometry, billowing in and out like tent canvas. The floorboards are moving around like a fun-house. I try to tell G to get a cab over so he can see this but have completely lost all power of speech and end up saying each syllable about a million times. “Wha…wha… man man you you you man you you have to to to to see….to see…..OH MY GOD!”

D takes the phone back and tries to chat to G some more while I crawl around in the kitchen screaming “LOOK AT THE FLOOR, MAN LOOK AT THE FUCKING FLOOR!”. The patterns on all the floor tiles are crawling around. I reach down to touch it thinking that because it’s just the drugs, it will stop moving once my finger makes contact. But it doesn’t. It travels up my arm just like that scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Until now I thought that was exaggerated in the film, but seeing it happen is something else. And all I can say is “I thought I….I thought I knew….I….I thought…but THIS….This is…OH MY GOD!” I’ve had trips before but usually been able to control them somewhat. This one is taking me over. The semi-realisation of just how wasted I am kicks in for a minute, and then I’ve completely forgotten again. D is peering over my shoulder at the floor and doesn’t appear to see anything yet. I get a strange feeling on my tongue, as if I have nylon threads, like fishing line, in my mouth. I’ve never had a tactile hallucination before, but this doesn’t bother me much. This feeling comes and goes throughout the night but it seems to be the only thing I am 100% certain is not real. And yet in retrospect I may well have had cat-hair in my mouth from crawling around on the floor. I will never know.

I realise I need to go to the toilet – and am surprised how easy it is to walk up the stairs. I even manage to piss in the toilet without sprinkling. I look at myself in the mirror – all my features are outlined by this zebra-striped string that is constantly moving around my face. I also have hair like Paul from Tekken. When I come back downstairs, D is talking on the phone. I ask him if it’s still G. He says yes, but I get the idea that he’s already hung up and D just thinks he’s there. I take the phone from him – he is starting to look very entranced by the computer. G is still there. However, the fact that neither of us were sure if D was talking to nobody for five minutes makes us both crease up laughing again and we soon forget that he’s still on the line and go back into the kitchen. D. is now as fucked up as I am. His face begins to take on some very gnomish qualities, (The wooly hat he is wearing helps this) and looks like he’s been painted into reality by Van Gogh. He is also looking at everything and shouting “ OH MY GOD” a lot. .Neither of us can really speak. We babble at each other for hours, sounding like Teletubbies. We are trying to describe what’s going on, but this proves to difficult. The conversation goes something like:

“What the…the…the….fuck”
“You…you…you…man….you too yeah?”
“yeah ……yeah……. yeah ……yeah ME.
“No …no…. no…. no…. no.…no….YOU.”
“What the fuck!”
“Yeah I have never…I…I….I…never..”
“Oops”
“It’s not. . . it’s. ..not…not……..not…………..not…..why….”
“Fucking…fucking….fucking… OOPS!”
“I’m gonna….I’m gonna…..I’m gonna…I’m KICK your fuckin. . .TOO MUCH!”
“Oops.”
“Yeah, oops”
“Spilt it.”
“Fucking oops.”
“What you done”
“Oops”
“Shocking behaviour”

The “oops” theme continues for the rest of the night. It seems to be the only thing we can say to each other. We run around in the kitchen like lunatics. Darren is getting more and more uncomfortable with how little sense everything makes and hammers the remainder of his sandwich into the table before running round the house, knocking things off the walls. And shouting “SHOCKING BEHAVIOUR” a lot. We calm down a little and try and communicate. A while later I am attempting to make a cup of tea, but keep forgetting this, so am staggering round the house with the kettle in my hand, shaking my head. I am like a goldfish – losing my memory every 10 seconds.

At this point I am overwhelmed by this feeling of familiarity with this state of consciousness. Even though I had never tripped on this scale before. I had such an intense feeling of déjà vu and I even said to Darren “I’ve been here before”, but he looked quite scared so I did not elaborate. All these insane thoughts about my own existence began to rush through my head. I had the realisation that everything you see, touch, taste, smell, or hear, every thought or emotion you have, is just due to chemicals moving around in your brain. There is no such thing as life or death. The whole universe does not really exist and neither do I. I find myself asking what is real, and then knowing that it doesn’t matter. I am taken over by a surge of knowledge and meaning and euphoria, along with a sense of the complete pointlessness, ignorance and despair. I am full of a million emotions all contradicting each other, and the more I tell myself “It’s just the drugs”, the harder I find it to believe. When I close my eyes I am lost in this world of fractals and shapes and chequer boards, and get the feeling of being a ray of white light getting split by a prism. Meanwhile, when my self-awareness returns briefly, I realise I am shouting “JESUS! JESUS! JESUS! JESUS!” at the top of my lungs. Not out of fear, but out of sheer amazement at what these mushrooms are doing to my brain.


So this was probably a bad time for D’s elderly and infirm grandfather to come downstairs.

We had both completely forgotten he was in the house so the sight of him suddenly appearing at the kitchen door comes as quite a shock. He is just standing there, groaning, with wide eyes and gaping mouth. D is on the floor at the time screaming his head off about being “stuck in a loop” and trying to wipe slime off himself. He hasn’t even noticed him yet and I am staring right at him, almost shitting myself in mortal fear of an 85 year old Alzheimer’s sufferer who is genuinely shitting himself, while at the same time, laughing uncontrollably at the general absurdity of this situation. I am not even totally sure he is really there or if it’s just the shrooms, so I draw D’s attention to him. He stares at him blankly for about 5 minutes. Then D smiles and starts saying “don’t you fucking dare or I’m so gonna kick your ass!” I get hysterics again. We’re rolling around babbling like retards and this poor man is just standing there, scratching his head. Grandad doesn’t know what’s going on. I forget that he ISN’T tripping. D’s mum is sleeping upstairs. She, like grandad here, is deaf and for better or for worse, can’t hear the commotion down here. I suddenly begin to panic and tell D “we’re tripping we need to get him back to bed man, can’t have him wandering about” but I realise D is far too gone to deal with this situation and can say nothing but “SHOCKING BEHAVIOUR.”

It dawns on me that this man has come downstairs to find his grandson fucking up on the floor while some person he’s never seen before is pointing at him laughing his ass off, prodding him to see if he’s real. Yet, I cannot stop myself laughing and prodding at him. And it also occurs that his Alzheimer’s isn’t so bad he can’t read my lips. So it’s not surprising he takes a swing at me. The sound of deaf people shouting angrily at you when you’re tripping this hard is a terrifying experience if, like me, you’re not used to it. Especially when their paisley pyjamas are turning into a blanket of wriggling, kaleidoscopic slugs and their heads are completely out of proportion to the rest of their bodies. The image sends me into complete panic. I am suddenly flapping my arms about like an idiot, screaming “OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT ITS UNREAL ITS UNREAL BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER OH SHIT” still holding the stupid kettle in one hand, and the two large shrooms I hadn’t got round to eating in the other. I then forget all this and go to make the tea again, but have completely forgotten how to make tea. As I slap myself in the face in the hope it will help me remember, I hear D is still verbally kicking his grandad’s ass. I worry that he will soon physically start kicking his ass. I realise I have to snap D out of it before this happens, so I try to do something about it by getting him up off the floor and straightening him out. Unfortunately, I had got the two of them mixed up and had grabbed his granddad instead. Luckily I am not shaking him very long before I notice. I attempt to sign him my sincerest apologies (although I am bloody useless at communicating with deaf people even when sober) and tell myself to go away into the lounge, sit down, and not move. The less input I have on this situation, the less damage I will do.

It seems to work. I trip out in the lounge for about an hour and when I come out everything has calmed down. However D is upstairs convulsing on his bed, saying “Oops” and “shocking” periodically to no-one in particular. He is terrified, and paranoid and it soon gets to me too. I try to put some music on to get us out of this dark, petrified state and calm us down, but suddenly have no idea how to operate the CD player. So we sit in the dark speaking demonically to each other like Gollum in Lord of the Rings talks to himself. We seemingly take turns being the evil Gollum and scare the shit out of each other until we reach the red screen and crash out for an hour or two.

When we finally came to our senses (9:00am) we managed to piece together the events. Turns out D’s granddad doesn’t even remember what happened. Apparently he was only pissed off because we had knocked his coat on the floor during our headless-chicken phase. The more we thought about it, the clearer it became that nothing bad actually happened. But we both agreed that while very little was really going on at the time, it was too intense for either of us to handle. If the shrooms had just taken that little bit longer to kick in, we would have been able to get upstairs, get some music on and get comfortable. We would have enjoyed the most intense trip we’d ever had. The 10 minute come-up just wasn’t enough time, and as a result it all went horribly wrong. Yet looking back, it wasn't at all bad! ARGH the confusion.

I wasn’t about to let this bad experience put me off tripping. I ate some more the very next day in an effort to make my peace with the mushrooms. Different people and different surroundings. Great success. Had eight of the most exhilarating, enlightening and funniest hours of my life. I was more worried by not being able to enjoy tripping again than the damage done to my psyche. In fact, the next trip seemed to repair any damage done and I managed to solve a few problems in my life as well. So what have we learned? Before doing hallucinogens, I won’t drink too much, eat just a little beforehand, and NEVER do them around old people in freaky pyjamas. That’s just asking for it.

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 21478
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 3, 2005	Views: 79,836
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66), Cocaine (13), Alcohol (61) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Glowing Experiences (4), Difficult Experiences (5), Combinations (3), General (1)