Extensive Prep Pays Off
Mushrooms
by DBTM
Citation:   DBTM. "Extensive Prep Pays Off: An Experience with Mushrooms (exp32099)". Erowid.org. Oct 11, 2005. erowid.org/exp/32099

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
2.0 g oral Mushrooms (ground / crushed)
  T+ 0:00   smoked Cannabis (dried)
  T+ 1:30 1.5 g oral Mushrooms (ground / crushed)
BODY WEIGHT: 170 lb
Background:
I've been searching for mushrooms in my lil town for months now, with zero success. This town is dry as a bone, so me and a couple friends did a lot of research and decided to make an attempt at cultivating our own. We got hit with a nasty contamination and lost 12 jars, but we haven't given up and are currently trying again. With all this waiting time and not a lot of tripping time, I have been extensively preparing myself for a high dose experience. I've meticulously read trip reports on erowid and shroomery and I have done mushrooms 3 times before (none of them high dose, however). The most important piece of advice I could give to anyone is to be extensively prepared. Have a sound mind, a safe place, and comfortable clothes. Make sure you know and would absolutely trust your life to anyone in the tripping party, because that's what you might just end up doing.

Amazingly enough, me and 2 friends managed to procure '20 grams' of mushrooms which we decided to consume the following weekend. I say 20 grams loosely because these mushrooms were sold in chocolate chunks, with each containing '2 grams of powdered dried psilocybe cubensis.' Obviously, the dealer took some liberties with his measurements and I suspect from my visuals that they contained about .75-1.25g each. One member of the tripping party ('T') had taken shrooms 3 times before while the other ('B') was a virgin who had first smoked weed only a week earlier.

Preparation Notes:
T and I fasted on a mostly water and juice diet for 3 days prior to the trip to help purify ourselves. We decided that it would be best to eat the day of the experience so we would have the required energy. I loaded up my MP3 player with music that I loooove and figured would be thought provoking and comforting (the pixies, misfits, alkaline trio, AFI, the mars volta). To be quite honest, I've listened to a bunch of ambient and trance music that people often recommend on previous trips and it wasn't my cup of tea (to each his own I say). We didn't want a sitter, but as 'B' was a first timer he was only going to take 2 chunks, and we figured would be relatively able to call for help on my cell phone if shit hit the fan. As an additional precaution I got one of my other buddies to call us intermittently to make sure we were still doing ok.

I figure a timeline (I'm actually amazed that I am able to recall times that certain things happened) would be the best way to represent our trip.

T 0:00 ->
Setting: Car
Dosage of 2 chocolate chunks each (dealer weight: 4 grams each, but probably about 2-ish). We drove around with our sober friend 'J' for about 20 minutes smoking copious amounts of weed. I began to feel the mushrooms building, at first it was a tingling in my feet that moved up my leg and soon I had vast quantities of energy. I was feeling VERY VERY cramped in the car and to be honest it was giving me terrible vibes. As well, stomach pains were becoming noticable. #1 rule of treating a bad trip is change the setting. Reminding myself of this I suggested that we get dropped off at the forest where we had earlier decided to trip. March is fucking cold at night in norther/central Alberta (actually...its pretty much just cold 365 days a year) but we PLANNED AHEAD (IMPORTANT!) and bundled up to the point that we figured even if we passed out in the snow we would most likely survive.

T 0:45 ->
Setting: Local forest
We walked around disoriented through the forest. Nobody was capable of selecting a path, when it came to a fork we would stop and talk hysterically for what seemed like ages. I was tripping quite decently by then, I figured I had level 2 visuals at that point, which was as far as they had gone on any previous trip as well. We walked and walked and laughed smoking more weed. I'm a crazy bad asthmatic and sometimes weed just grabs me by the lungs and chokes. One particularly large hoot (I was absolutely unable to feel how much smoke was in my lungs, I just breathed out and smoke just billowed). I coughed like crazy, and :( I managed to cough so hard as to induce projectile vomiting. Imagine talking to your friends and suddenly just puke alll over. I threw up non stop for about 10 minutes, dry heaving and the whole unpleasent lot. I was an absolute mess. We sat down on a bench where T and B proceded to smoke more weed.

I was keeled over the side dry heaving into the snow. Now right about this moment, I was at absolute rock bottom. In fact, I was concerned that I had just lost my dose when I remembered that I was tripping, so at least it had not gone to waste. Eventually T put some headphones on me and played some goood music (Death From Above). This relaxed me and I closed my eyes and listened to the tunes. I tried so hard to collect my thoughts and turn my trip around. The headphones started to piss me off so I took them off. My body temperature was just all over the map. One minute I would be shivering and the next I would be absolutely on fire. I had no idea how I was going to survive and I remember wishing to myself this would all be over.

Well holy crap, I thought I was a mushroom pro, I thought I could've handled anything, but here I was having the worst trip of my life feeling absolutely isolated. I thought the forest would be a perfect place to trip, right in nature. However, this forest just seemed horrible. I tried talking but I just felt horrible. The forest was definitely bad vibes again, so I suggested we head back into town. As soon as I stood up, my mood did a complete 180. I was so happy to be leaving that I started laughing, and having very cool visuals.

I kept seeing branches bend at INSANE angles, like trees would practically be touching tip to root. Me and T dosed another chunk and a half. Me and T figure we had level 3 visuals, B was approaching level 4. He has juvenille benign nightime epilepsy and is taking a bunch of meds for it, so it's possible that one of those upped his trip. As well, he got much more of a stone than me or T because that was his third time smoking weed. That was our third time that day :P.

T 2:00 ->
Setting: T's Truck
So once we got back into town we decided to go smoke up more and relax in T's truck. We got in and just talked and talked. I looked at the clock, at it was about 1AM. We struck up a conversation and I looked again, and it was about 3AM. There was two hours of crazy hysterical conversation that was just loopy and made nooo sense. The person's house we were parked in front of came out and yelled at us for pounding music and smoking weed, T bagged away (driving on mushrooms sucks, we had planned to just stay parked then walk to B's house to sleep).

T 5:00 ->
Setting: Friends house
On our way to B's house we were stopped by two of our friends K and D. We were all coming down by this time and we went into K's house and smoked out of his beautiful Chong Glass until 5AM when sleep again became possible (and we practically dropped dead).

Lessons I learned:
If you aren't comfortable with something/somewhere, change it. Do not try and suffer through a bad trip, take the steps you need to take to make it okay. I wasn't worried about my dose or anything, I didn't even have the 'omg i think i took too much' jitters or anything. I think the only reason I started having a bad trip was that when I threw up I was in a foreign environment which was not in the least way comforting. This was compounded when we stayed in that environment for such a long time. I think I will be preaching the whole 'change setting' method of fighting off a bad trip to a great many people.

Exp Year: 2004ExpID: 32099
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 11, 2005Views: 17,437
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Mushrooms (39) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Personal Preparation (45), Nature / Outdoors (23), Difficult Experiences (5), General (1)

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