DOSE:

175 caps

oral

Mushrooms - P. semilanceata

(tea)

As its ten years after this experience, I thought its time I let it out, as strange things seem to be drawing me back to these experiences lately, but I won't go into that.

I've smoked cannabis daily for the last 15 years, and have found it to be a constant in my life. When I was in my teens, my interests in altered states led me to LSD, and at that age the only sources of info seemed to be 1960's documentaries/research literature, which I eventually regretted ever having become obsessed with, as they tended to prejudice my experiences.

LSD didn't deliver what I was led to believe - in fact quite the opposite. One particularly upsetting trip went from hilarity to a genuine re-living of a childhood trauma which I still can't explain the source of, and feelings of total aloneness on a cosmic scale. It took a while for me to calm down, but it left me with a few months of night terrors, depression and a feeling of desperation. Like Howard Marks in his biography, I thought the solution was 'more acid' as I felt I had somehow 'failed' the test - more hippier-than-thou 60's machismo. This all changed with psilocybin.

I decided not to mess with LSD any more, but still felt I was on to something. Being brought up in Ireland, the myth of the pookie was something every kid knew, tales of the mushroom. On a bright saturday afternoon, a friend and I decided to look for the mushrooms. Walking through our local park, we met a man who strangely enough, had the same idea that day and had already collected hundreds. He gave us some bags, and before we knew it my friend and I had collected an estimated 800 liberty caps. We were immediately struck by the synchronicity of the day - everywhere we looked were clusters beside clusters.

That night, myself and a few friends, including my then girlfriend, brewed a very strong tea from our harvest. We drank the juice of 150-200 each and made a second brew. We then went on the 15 minute walk back to the park. I knew it was gonna be a biggie within 8 or 9 minutes, when we stopped outside a pub to chat to a few friends who were out in the sun.

I started getting a bit anxious because of my previous hard times on acid, and my legs were beginning to jellify. 2 minutes later we were walking to the park, and I stopped to vomit. This made my friends laugh so much that it forced the experience to break through simultaneously, even for poor me! I felt immediately, and this was wierd, that I was vomiting all the fear and doubt out of my body - this shocked me so early in the trip, and I felt bulletproof after it. Once in the park, we naturally went out on our own, and something amazing happened.

As I walked down through the park, I felt myself grow huge, tall and powerful, I could not believe it! These fucking mushrooms loved me! It was so different to LSD, I felt safe, warm and sane. A huge wave rose through me and emerged as song, I walked along singing in joy, I dont know what I was singing, but it was euphoria. It was only years later when I'd given up on the 1960s literature and read McKenna et al, that I learnt of the commonality of this experience. My song cut beauty out of the clouds, and the sun rapidly set before me, in perfect harmony with my song. All I can safely say is that it was a bluesy number!

We moved on as it grew dark, and a personally fundamental difference between the mushroom and acid became apparent. On acid, no matter how I tried, I felt like the world was still intact, real and concrete, and that I was fucked in the head from a drug I'd taken. On Psilocybin, I was perfect, the world was the thing that was screwed up. My thoughts were clear and refined, my body and mind were one and the same. The mushroom let me gaze on trees and mountains with awe, and when I looked at cars and houses, I laughed! Its hard to describe, but the mushroom was directly telling me something about time, eternity, and temporality - the eternal moved me to reverence, the mundane just looked silly.

The feelings we all felt that night, I have never equalled. We held hands in another park and without speaking, we had common experiences of the shifting and rolling of the ground beneath us, the movement of the earth, to a point where we all held hands to keep from 'falling off'- this was a joyous feeling. The stars were surrounded with their own individual green spirals, and shot primary coloured prisms down at us. The whole 'celtic' aspect of our visions was bizarre - in fact, it shocks me there is not more info available on Irish historical use of the 'shroom among academics, as everyone in Ireland seems to feel theyre part of our history and culture. Either way, the visuals were very 'celtic' lozenges and spirals with eyes closed, and a sense of the 'eyes-closed' state as being a 'physical space' in and of itself. Hard to describe. Rows of green and purple mushrooms interwove the celtic designs.

We all felt invisible, myself and my girlfriend were never closer as our bones rolled into each other when we embraced, similar to experiences on acid where parts of my body would melt, which felt beautiful. One friend thought he was dead - I told him he was but that we would be back soon. He didn't like that much. Up the hills to the forest, and the peak began to fade leaving that MDMA-like feeling of love and connectedness.

I felt so good, so clean, I remember calling to another friends house to tell him how I was going to give up the smokes, the drink - I genuinely felt this was revealed by the substance, though I suppose its common sense! The thought of putting a dirty chem like nicotine into me became abhorrent. Un4tunately, by the time I was eating ecstasy regularly, this went out the window.

Thats all I can really say. I've taken them a couple of times since, but kind of moved away from these experiences as I left my twenties. Now in my 30's, and with a hole in my life, the old spirit is rising again. I look 4ward to this september, and natures bounty. Its time to go back, the synchronicities have been enough to make a sceptic like me believe they're trying to get in touch. I reckon they have something to show me.

Ill be back to let u know their latest message.

CoCo 72

Exp Year: 1994	ExpID: 33674
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 2, 2007	Views: 10,954
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Mushrooms - P. semilanceata (90) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Personal Preparation (45), Nature / Outdoors (23), Mystical Experiences (9), Glowing Experiences (4), Retrospective / Summary (11), First Times (2), General (1)