DOSE:		oral	Mushrooms - P. cubensis	(fresh)
	1 cig.	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

200 lb

Two of my friends, Adam and Jason, had tried shrooms the previous week and had told me about how great their trip was and I became very excited about trying them out. So the second day before I left Costa Rica to visit Ottawa, my friends and I took a cab to this field which Jason knew about and we paid a couple bucks to this farmer Joe guy to go pick some shrooms, since they grow on cow shit. We spend about 40 minutes searching through this huge field, full of cows and animal shit and we eventually found quite a large amount of them. We stuffed them into a plastic bag and took a cab back to my Jason's house.

At his house we went to his room and laid all of our shrooms onto the carpet where we looked through them and tried cleaning them a bit. Because Jason's parents were not leaving for a while, we decided to simply down the mushrooms as quickly as possible and be on our way. We divided the mushrooms pretty evenly between the three of us, laying them all in front of us. I had a pack of mints that I took out and presented to the group. The mints helped us deal with the taste alot and without them it would have been much harder to get the damn things down. Adam seemed to have the hardest time eating the mushrooms, he could barely keep them down and he would have to wash them down with water he had in a cup. Jason was a bit better but still slow while I simply ripped chunks off of the mushrooms, popped them in my mouth, chewed while humming and swallowed. Not a great experience but not as terrible as it could have been.

It started to rain so for some reason we decided to leave the house. To this day I still have no idea why we decided to do this right then and there. Our original intentions were indeed to leave but I still had a small mushroom left while my friends had half of their original portions to eat. We put the shrooms in our pockets and left the house, still not affected by the drugs.

From there we got out of the house and went to this creek where my friends and I would smoke weed sometimes. Due to the intense raining, the creek had flooded and we decided that it was not a good place to stay while under the influence of powerful hallucinogenic drugs.

We ran from that area to a close unused park that we would also smoke weed in sometimes. It was still raining so we sat on some rocks under the cover of some big trees, a little too late considering how wet we were but better than sitting in the cold rain. My friends continued eating their mushrooms, while I quickly, with more trouble than before, finished off my last small one. I think by then I had eaten so many of the disgusting things that I could hardly consume any more.

Adam and Jason were struggling to get the shrooms down, completely understandable but difficult to watch. Jason thought it would be easier to stuff his shrooms in a bottle full of water and try to drink the sloppy mess but after trying and almost vomiting, he decided it wasn't such a good idea. He was now left with a slimy lump of wet mushrooms that he had to get into his body, and he had a hell of a time doing so.

The drugs starting to hit me, suddenly I began to laugh at things that weren't funny. Similar to the effects of marijuana but a little less laughing, clear mind, and a much deeper overall feeling. Jason was getting really angry because he had asked me to fill up his bottle with water dripping from the trees and I couldn't hold the damn thing still because I was laughing so much. The combination of him suffering over having to eat the soggy shroom mess and his anger made me laugh uncontrollably.

Eventually Jason finished his portion while Adam ate most of his but left a few uneaten, too sickened by them to keep going. It had stopped raining so we began to explore the park which was quite big and spacious. At this point the mushrooms were beginning to hit me stronger, I was past the giggling phase I had and started observing my surroundings. I looked at the sky and it began doing things which I had never seen it do before. The clouds were moving ten times as fast as normal and formed amazing patterns and shapes. I told my friends to look at the sky but they were too busy doing their own thing to listen. I became very concentrated and focused on small things at times, such as how objects look or feel.

We just roamed around the park for a while and then suddenly my attention was caught by this big stone wall at the end of the park. In my affected vision I could see the wall breathing like a living thing. It looked so real and convincing, as if the stone was taking breath in and out. I also noticed that a small mark on the wall appeared to be an opening where I could enter and go somewhere, where exactly I did not process at the moment but I knew I wanted to explore it. I remember saying 'Sorry guys, I'm leaving' and started walking to the wall. I reached it but there was this ditch in between myself and the wall and I could not reach it. Not wanting to put my feet in a mysterious hole, I could not touch the breathing stone and I was a bit disappointed. I quickly forgot when I turned around and saw my friends talking and walking around the park. I recall just moving around and every little thing seemed amazing, the way the grass and flowers moved with the wind, the texture of certain objects, anything.

We sat down on these broken stone seats and because we were so cold we thought that any type of fire would warm us up. We started playing with lighters before one of us remembered the blunt we had rolled earlier. After a few minutes of discussion, we finally pulled the blunt out and smoked it between the three of us. I don't remember the weed affecting me. I clearly recall Jason being obsessed with this tree and its texture, he kept rubbing it and telling us that it was rippling. I touched it myself but I don't think I felt the same thing he did.

After what felt like an hour of debating, we made the decision to call a cab and go the mall where it was warm and dry. We got in the cab, my friends sitting in the back while I had to sit in the front with the driver. I wasn't sure how this was going to go but I figured I would just relax and enjoy the ride. When I got in the car and we started driving I realized that the taxi seemed very small compared to me. It felt like my head was right up at the roof and my knees were tightly squashed against the dashboard. It was like that scene in Alice in Wonderland where she eats those things and grows bigger than the house she is in.

I was taking everything in while we drove along, and I noticed that my friends, Jason in particular, just wouldn't be quiet. They constantly talked, and most of the time I believe they were speaking to themselves. Jason was speaking and laughing nonstop which made me a bit nervous as I wondered what the cab driver was thinking. I would start to zone out and then my friend's voices became echoed and muffled, almost as if I was trying to hear them talk underwater. I was intrigued by this so I listened for a while to figure out what had happened before shaking myself and bringing sound back to normal. After a bit it started to happen again so I shrugged it off and enjoyed my own trip.

We arrived at the mall and went it, I remember everything being very strange. There were so many strange noises and the voices of people began overlapping so I couldn't tell what language they were speaking. Jason later told me that when he looked down at the floor tiles he could see the outlines of big neon butterflies. The three of us walked around for a while, many times going in circles or walking back to where we had been sitting or standing minutes before. We sat at this table in the food court and I think this is where I started to feel bad.

I kept trying to get my friend's attention but they were so immersed in their own experience that they paid little attention to me. We all went to the bathroom and I started freaking out. I kept talking to Jason while he was in a stall and all these guys were looking at me strangely because it appeared like I was talking to myself. I began panicking and I wanted to try to vomit the mushrooms up but I didn't want to be alone. We left the bathroom and decided to go get some McFlurries which were at a little stand by the back entrance of the mall.

Here was when the bad trip really kicked in. All three of us were sitting on a bench by the McFlurry stand and they were some people all around us. I remember constantly changing my position for some reason, I would put my face in my hands and then change to sitting straight and just continously moving around uncomfortably. For whatever reason I was very concerned about the people around us and if they were watching us. I thought they might be staring at us or wondering why I was shifting around so much. If I may, I would like to insert a quote from William Blake and some ideas of Aldous Huxley to help me explain what happened next.

'If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.'

'Huxley assumes that the human brain filters reality in order not to let pass all impressions and images, which would be unbearable to process. According to his view, drugs can reduce this filter, or 'open these doors of perception,' as he puts it metaphorically.'

While perhaps difficult to understand at first, this is very similar to what happened to me. I began contemplating about life and its meaning, like what the point of it was and how I would die anyway so it was a waste of time. This was altogether too much for me to process and I freaked out. I felt like dying or vomiting up the shrooms to go away because I felt so bad. I was trying to calm myself down and tried thinking about what I had to look forward to, like my family waiting at home and my summer vacation in Canada I would begin in two days. For some odd reason I could not remember why these things were good in the first place. I felt as though my family was barely connected to me, and that they would die eventually so they didn't really matter. I forgot what was so great about visiting my friends and family in Canada so I had nothing happy to focus my thoughts on while I dealt with this awful experience.

I wanted to vomit the shrooms up to make it all go away and I was thinking crazy thoughts. I remember seeing/thinking the word BAD and how bad this whole thing was. I constantly was asking my friends if we could leave and go to someone's house or get out of the mall but they told me to cam down. I took my cellphone out but I think this made it worse as I got obsessed with looking at the time. I called my friend Alonso and I told him that I had done shrooms and that I felt terrible and like nothing I had ever experienced before. I distinctly remember saying 'Shrooms are bad. Don't ever do them, they're bad.' I asked him if he could pick me up and he was ready to before Jason took my cellphone away from me and told him that I was ok and it would pass in a while.

We walked blindly around the mall, I remember I wasn't even looking where I was going because I felt bad. While extremely difficult to explain, my emotions were out of control and everything was wrong. The best way I can put it is that I was extremely confused and disturbed and I would try to make sense of the situation and when I did I landed on a 'platform.' Every time I landed on one of these platforms everything would be clear and I understood what was going on, like that this was just the drugs messing with my mind and that it would all be ok. But suddenly almost as soon as I landed, the platform would be pulled out from under my feet and I'd fall into a mess of confusion again. Then I would land on a platform of understanding before falling again. This cycle continued for a while and believe me, it was an extremely unpleasant experience. Eventually after what felt like an eternity the sensation passed and I was back to my happy tripping self.

Looking back on it, I have no idea what happened but I believe it was caused by the amount of people around us. It was a powerful panic attack mixed with some hallucinations and odd feelings of sadness and confusion.

After it passed we spent the rest of our trip in the food court where my friends got food. I was not hungry surprisingly as the only thing I had eaten all day were the mushrooms. I said to my friend 'I never thought I would have magic mushrooms for breakfast.' It felt like a long time that we sat at the food court table, much longer than most people. Our conversations were very strange but we were so happy and friendly that it did not matter. I even think that no one understood what another person was saying and just talked to themselves while paying no attention to the other comment. Jason at one point said something like 'Dude...animals are so beautiful.' and I replied with a simple 'Yeah man, animals are beautiful.' Anyone listening to us would have thought we were insane, or on drugs.

We spent a few more hours in the mall, just sitting there or walking around a bit. It was pretty fun and we were happy for the rest of our trip. The effects of mushrooms begin to fade and then go away completely. It is unlike weed that hangs on until the very end. A while after it ended I called my mother and she took me home.

It was quite an interesting experience and definitely worth at least a try.

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 50836
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 25, 2007	Views: 5,941
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : First Times (2), Difficult Experiences (5), Bad Trips (6), Glowing Experiences (4), Small Group (2-9) (17)