DOSE:	10 g	oral	Amanitas - A. muscaria	(dried)
		oral	Pharms - Clonazepam	(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

165 lb

2 weeks ago, 165 lbs, around 10 grams

I purchased a quarter-pound over the internet of what was described as ‘Washington Grade A’ Amanita muscaria (dried) mushrooms. I was cautious about taking too much at any one time, so over the course of perhaps three weeks I just experimented with small amounts, in the expectation, of course, of hallucinogenic, but also of tonic effects, which I’d heard Amanita could induce.

The results were underwhelming. On the day of my genuine trip I had been picking at the ‘duff’ in the zip-lock bag all day, eating broken chips, some of which were pure skin, even gathering and eating the powder at the bottom of the bag. In the evening I ate two whole caps, one of middling size, the other rather small, but for some reason I had a hunch it was potent. I reasoned that the amanita fragments I had eaten in the course of the day would have left my system and not enhance the effects of the whole caps but in that I think I was mistaken. I had eaten little all day and nothing for at least five hours before consuming the whole caps. This was about 7pm.

There was an errand I had to run so I drove to the pharmacy [Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!] to pick up a prescription for klonopin and I think I did immediately did take one or two (since, frankly, it would be unlike me not to). My vision began to be affected on the way back. It wasn’t blurry, like with alcohol; I guess the best description would be to say it was breaking down: things, like the speedometer on my dashboard were resolving themselves into simple vertical lines. Friday evening, rush hour, there was a lot of traffic on the main road back to my house and I was eager, I guess, to get off it. So I did, but onto the street two blocks before mine, as it turned out. In my haste I then drove into someone’s front yard, believing it was my driveway.

Realizing my mistake I did the ‘right thing’ and rang the person’s doorbell. There then ensued an insane conversation, in which I introduced myself as her new next-door neighbor (I had recently moved to the neighborhood), still thinking I was on the right street, only a little left of my driveway. The crux was trying to convince her that her next-door neighbor(s) had moved out and I had moved in. ‘…Oh, so you live with Sylvia?’ ‘No, they’ve all moved out.’ ‘…(Her, doubtfully) oh, I had no idea…’ And so on. The only reason she did not think, or tell me, that I was nuts was the shared attitude of tactfulness. I’m surprised she didn’t call the cops (maybe she did). Well, she determined that there had been no damage to her front lawn, I returned to my car, found my house and went into my study.

The plan was to watch a video, which seemed a fair idea for what was now obviously going to be a hard trip. But I must have fallen asleep before it really started. In my somnolent state I had dreams, or ‘brain hallucinations’, but only one I can clearly remember. It was not coherent, but emotionally extremely intense. A man was flipping/shuffling cards. These ‘cards’ were really just horizontal lines, maybe it correlates with the lines everything was being reduced to in my waking state. They were rising in three discreet, vertical piles. The image was beautiful, in a way, because it was perfectly symmetrical, the cards were perfectly aligned, and were gold. But the ‘visual’ aspect was not so important as what was being enacted. The three piles represented three different countries. The US was one, Russia was the other, the third was some obscure country like the Duchy of Grand Fenwick in that movie The Mouse That Roared: a David against the two Goliaths. Whosever cards rose higher would dominate the world. As the cards rose, the tension, the suspense grew and grew: who would have more power?

Somehow a rational segment of my mind reflected on a sermon I had heard at church once, the point of which was that man’s strongest instinct was the drive for power—something I’ve since come to believe is true. So the cards rose, and then they passed the ‘100’ mark, where they should have stopped. But in defiance of logic and gravity they kept rising. I now felt that I was witnessing what was without a doubt the most portentous moment in human history. I was not experiencing fear so much as intense awe and astonishment, competition between the countries had mostly been lost sight of now, that part of the hallucination really could not supply an adequate ‘objective correlative’ to my emotion, it was the tail wagging the dog, in a sense, in that I think the mushrooms were instilling in me emotion first and foremost, and the hallucination in a confused way was trying to keep up. I was now witness to a miracle of nature as well as human drama. My feelings of suspense and amazement just built and built as the cards grew higher; I now believed that they would rise forever and that my feelings (at this time definitely mixed with fear) would mount until I would explode.

I have no idea how long the hallucination lasted, probably only a few seconds, maybe a full minute, who knows. But at this point I awoke, if that’s the word, broke out of the trance, regained full consciousness anyway. Probably the unbearable tension jolted me ‘awake’. There was a moment of rude adjustment to another reality, but I soon realized where I was and what had happened. The next thing I noticed was that I was sopping wet, from my head to my feet. My jeans, which I bought for skiing, had a thick wool lining, but were soaked even through that. My t-shirt was soaked back and front, especially the front since I had been drooling on it. Naturally the next day I was a sponge, I drank a whole quart of milk straight from the bottle, practically without stopping to take a breath. I was chilled, shaking, so I got into a hot bath. But because I began to nod off again with strong dreams/hallucinations, I figured a bathtub wasn’t the safest place to be at the moment. I went to bed but couldn’t really sleep, I was still too energized, and my dreams, when I did catch some shallow sleep, were strong and disturbing.

No really bad or dramatic after-effects, only since then I sporadically imagine that things in the periphery of my vision are moving, reflexively demanding my attention of course, so I jerk my head to look at them, when they turn out to be a table, chairs, whatever—nothing moving or likely to move on their own.

The experience included no euphoria whatsoever, and overall I would probably not try again; in fact the next day I threw the bag containing the remainder of the mushrooms away…

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 45776
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 27, 2010	Views: 17,080
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Amanitas - A. muscaria (70) : Alone (16), General (1)