DOSE:	3.5 g	oral	Mushrooms	(dried)
	repeated	smoked	Tobacco - Cigarettes

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

My worst trip is one in which I learned a good solid lesson about set and setting. It was horrifying at the time but like all of my experiences I wouldn't take it back because it helped to make me who I am.

It was my third trip ever, when I was 18, in college. My best friend decided to pick up an ounce of mushrooms from another of our good friends. It was summer, and I lived in the dorms that year, so we were all home at our parents' houses. One night, we decided we'd meet up at my parents' house (where we hung out mostly because my parents are fun to be around and we have a big attic we would always spend the night doing drugs in), with our friend S who was still in high school. It was my best friend's and my third trip (all on mushrooms), and S's first.

Anyway, the night came, and at about 10pm, we went up to the attic with everything we felt we would need for a good night, and ate about an eighth each. The first time I had had the most transcendent experience of my life even to this day, with a half eighth of very good mushrooms. The previous time I had had some weak mushrooms (as I found out later) and had a whole eighth, and had a very positive but underwhelming experience.

Well, we promised each other that we would stay upstairs the whole night no matter what to avoid trouble. But the instant the mushrooms started to hit, S and I were both like 'fuck this! We're going downstairs and outside!'. My best friend (B) protested and said he felt nervous about it (he is quite prone to anxiety anyway, but was right), but we basically made him come with us. As soon as we got downstairs, we realized that my entire family was still awake and watching TV! S started to get all egotistical (as he always does) and loud. He was talking to my parents in a very matter-of-fact voice which I thought would give us away immediately. Then he began talking to my little brother who was 11 at the time about how life was fragile and he (my little brother) could die at any second, and the world could end at any time. My little brother was playing with legos on the floor and was looking at S with a very strange look. I began to get nervous and paranoid, thinking we would for sure be caught. My family was starting to look at us weird.

So I dragged us all upstairs again for a little while to play video games until my family went to bed, which fortunately did not take much longer. But by that time, we were all pretty fucked up. S kept getting louder and louder about how these mushrooms were bullshit and he barely felt anything, and from now on he would stick with Ecstacy (which he did). He would not shut up with saying all these egotistical things that sounded so suspect, and my family was just a few rooms away.

Anyway, they settled in to bed, and we went downstairs and went outside. Before going out, I decided to bring my family dog and a blanket of my mom's which I wrapped around my shoulders because it was chilly.We went outside and I felt much better, like the weight of the world and society were lifted from my shoulders. B was not feeling better, though. We were walking around, smoking cigarettes, getting tangled in my dog's leash, and engaging in such suspicious activities as laying down on the side of the road on the blanket and staring up at the sky. S was, as usual, bitching about how lame the mushrooms were, loudly. B freaked out badly every time a car was visible coming towards us. He thought every one was the police. He was hallucinating strongly at this point and was seeing them as cop cars with lights and everything. At this point, my visuals were very vague, just a sparkle and glow to the world with a few crawling and bending objects. We smoked cigarettes throughout, which was nice (I used to smoke back then, as did we all).

After a little bit, B was freaking out quite a bit and I was feeling uncomfortable, especially since S was calling us pussies and bitches whenever we seemed to feel uncomfortable. He was alternating between saying he felt awesome and the experience was awesome and that it was stupid and lame. We decided to go back inside. My friends went in before me. The house was really dark. I walked in then with my dog and the blanket, and suddenly, my mom's very angry voice assaulted my now heavily-tripping self from the dark staircase: 'What are you doing out there? Why does my dog smell like smoke? Why does my blanket smell like smoke?? You know, you left the door open! Someone could have walked in and the cats could have gotten out!' And worst of all, she pulled out a bag of marijuana and a pipe and said 'I found these in B's bag. Don't you ever bring drugs into my house again! I could get the house taken away for this!'

I was floored. My stomach dropped out. I responded, and it felt like I said something like 'Uh, well, um... that... yeah, um...'. I thought for sure I was caught. According to my friend B, I actually was quite coherent and it amazed him. I must have done alright because my mom just scoffed at me and went back to bed. Somehow she missed the giant ziplock bag of mushrooms in B's bag. She had to have seen the bag, because it was surrounding the bag of marijuana. Maybe she just didn't know what they looked like. But she would have been very scared to find 'hard drugs' on us!

So she went to bed without further incident, and even gave the bag of weed back to us for some reason. But by then it was too late. I was spiraling violently downward into a very negative and overwhelming trip. I went to the darkened living room where my other friends were sitting, hiding from my mom, and sat down silently. The visuals, which before had been missing, now came on with a terrible vengeance. My world was spinning into a dark vortex in front of me. Nothing made sense. Everything was swirling, swirling, spinning, being sucked into the center of this vortex. Horrible thoughts of self-deprecation continually assaulted me. I thought about how I was a terrible son, a loser druggie, obsessed with being fucked up. Why would I have taken these holy mushrooms in such a terrible setting?? WHY?? Would I ever be normal again? We sat in the same positions the entire night, in the pitch black living room, just lost in our heads, experiencing horrible anxieties for hours and hours. It was horrendous.

5:00am rolled around, and suddenly we felt the weight lift. The mushroom afterglow hit us, and we went upstairs to my room and started talking and laughing. We talked and talked non-stop and never slept, mostly about how awesome it was to be back to sobriety. They vowed to never touch psychedelics again. They felt that they were given one last chance at sanity and that next time they would never recover. I knew I would use them again and I realized what the problem was. The setting was terrible! Eating mushrooms at my parents' house while they were awake and then going downstairs to interact with them? Come on, now! I didn't use any psychedelic for over a year from then, though.

Anyway, life went on, as it always does. B and S really never did take a psychedelic again (except years later, when I gave B some 2C-I and we tripped. He didn't want to repeat it but by 2.5 hours in, he was enjoying himself as we listened to Shpongle and some others. This time in the safety of his own bedroom!). B is still my best friend. He went through years of drug problems, alcohol throughout, cocaine for a while (which almost killed him and was the major factor in him leaving college to live with his parents). Then he was using opiates daily, oxy and heroin mostly. He would get it in the city and get robbed, and beat up once. I was really worried about him and definitely feared for his life, and for a few months he no longer considered me his friend because of some stupid living situation bullshit and his feeling that my girlfriend was taking me away from him, and because of coke paranoia. Fortunately, though, a year after I moved across the country after graduating college, he got a job playing trombone on a cruise ship for 5 months at a time, and has totally changed. He's happy, has a serious girlfriend who works with him on the ship and just so happens to be from 2 minutes away from his childhood home, and he still drinks but no longer has drug problems, or at least has no time to have them. He has realized that he just needed to get out and make things happen for himself instead of festering in anxiety in his parents' basement.

S and I grew apart later that year due to him being an increasingly egotistical asshole, and moreso because he hated my girlfriend (now fiance) and blamed her for me growing apart from him even though it was his fault for being really mean to her to her face and constantly telling me to 'leave that fucking bitch', and being just generally an immature high school kid. His negative traits got really bad and he became a heavy Ecstacy user and a massive alcoholic. The few times I went to his house after that, he would be incoherently drunk by 9pm, and passed out by 10. He would get ragingly angry at everyone and everything, yell about how great he was, try to fight everyone, fall over, and sleep until noon. His close friends said he did that every night without fail. He went to the Navy after that year and last I heard he's doing okay.

And as for me, I moved across the country with my fiance (then girlfriend) almost 2 years ago, after college, and began using psychedelics a lot which, along with other things, has helped to put me in touch with my spirituality and I live most every day in paradise.

Exp Year: 2002	ExpID: 62514
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: May 24, 2007	Views: 29,381
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