DOSE:	7 g	oral	Mushrooms - P. cubensis	(dried)
		smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

180 lb

Alright here it goes.... it was the summer after I graduated high school and boy was I letting loose. I partied pretty much everyday up until this point and I didn't have a care in the world. A few friends and myself really wanted to do something out of this world so we decided a trip to the Hookaville festival at this place called Nelson’s Ledges would be perfect. Hookaville was a three day hippie festival which consisted of many concerts being held with headshop tents set up all over the place and drugs of all sorts being sold and consumed by many. Up until this point in my drug career I had experience only with alcohol, nicotine, oxycodone, xanax, marijuana and only one time I had a very mild mushroom experience where I ate very little barely feeling the effects. My other friends were a bit more experienced that I so I tried to take their advice when it came to enjoying the experience to its fullest.

So we were off, it was the middle of the summer and I was elected the driver since I had a fairly large-sized SUV, which could carry all of our camping supplies since we were going to be spending the night. There were 5 of us total, me, Nick, Bill, Murphy, and Tony. We brought along with us drinks, cigarettes, lots of beef jerky, a stereo, and a bunch of chairs for our voyage. Tony had a ton of money in hopes of bringing back a lot of party favors since they would be fairly cheap at the festival.

We left at roughly 1:00 p.m. and it took almost 2 hours to reach our final destination. During our trip to the festival, my friend Nick pulled out an eighth of mushrooms, which nobody knew he had and started munching them while we were driving there just in case we couldn’t find anything useful during the festival. We all had a good laugh and were in suspense for what we were about to be witnessing. When we arrived there was a booth where we had to pay $40 each to enter the campsite and get our car searched. They required us to sign in our names which we all used fake ones. Nick was tripping at this point and he signed in his name as “MIKE JONES” in all capital letters and I had a good laugh about that one.

Once inside we realized we should have came earlier or on the first day of the festival because it was absolutely packed to the maximum. There were cars, trailers, campsites, and huge mobile homes all over the place. It took almost an hour to find a good camping spot to park the car, but we actually found a nice one which was some what hidden from the main parking sites. We unloaded the car, pitched our tent, made a fire and decided we should make friends with our neighbors. They were really cool so we all felt we were going to have a great time. We decided at this point that it would be wise to make our surrounding familiar to us so all of us set out to check out the park while it was still light outside.

We realized at this moment in our journey through the festival that we were surrounded by hippies and people all around us were selling weed out in the open with no fear of police (since there weren’t any) or getting robbed or anything. We figured this was pretty awesome so we were no longer afraid of making any purchases, small or large. We came across a bunch of head shop tents that were selling pipes and bongs and all sorts of awesome stuff.

At this point we decided to split up into groups to find the mushrooms we had been looking for. Since there were only 5 of us, Bill and Murphy went back into the woods to find the hippies, while me, Nick and Tony stayed in the headshop tents. All of a sudden it started to rain so we were basically stuck in the tent where Nick bought a really nice piece for cheap. He was tripping hard at this point and couldn’t stop staring at his new glass. It wasn’t so bad being stuck in the tent because the owner had lit up 2 or 3 joints and started passing them around. Very cool experience overall and we laughed that Bill and Murphy were stuck in the rain.

Once the rain stopped we figured it would be a good idea to regroup back at my car so we headed back and while on the way this shirtless guy ran up to us saying how he had X and chocolate mushrooms. He smelled terrible as if he had been running around for a week without a shower. We bought a few chocolates just so he would leave us alone and we were back on our way. We checked to see if the chocolates were fake so we cracked one open and could see the shroom pieces inside. He said there were 2 grams in each one which seemed way too low of a dose. I wanted this to be a memorable trip and I felt fearless (bad mistake).

Once we made it back to my car and all 5 of us were together once more everything seemed pretty cool. We each showed each other what we had found on our journey through the wilderness and I was astounded at what Bill and Murphy had found. They pulled out 2 large bags of mushrooms, which were distinctly different but nonetheless very large. They said there was a quarter in each bag which seemed unlikely since they were so large. Murphy decided he didn’t want to eat that many so I traded him $30 and my 2 chocolates for his large back of the bluish mushrooms I had ever seen before. I thought to myself “Wow this is going to be great” (bad mistake #2).

Murphy ate his chocolates while Bill went to show Tony where he got all the mushrooms since the guy had many more. Nick sat in my beach chair tripping balls but completely harmless nonetheless. Now at this point my excitement got the best of me, I sat in the driver’s seat of my car, put my cell phone, keys, wallet and everything else in my glove compartment but left the windows open so we wouldn’t get locked out. I started to gobble down the mushrooms. I didn’t just eat them, I shoved them down and was loving it. When I was almost at the bottom of the bag Bill came up to me and said hey dude let me get some, I was feeling greedy but I gave him the rest of the bag since he was a good friend. That was probably the best thing I did all day.

All of a sudden within 10 minutes after ingesting the mushrooms I felt the first of the effects. I was sweating hardcore. Not just hardcore though, the worst sweat I had ever broken out into in my life. I wrestled in high school and a sauna couldn’t have made me sweat this much. I looked in the mirror and I could see the sweat bead up and fall off my face within seconds. I tried to shake this off but I couldn’t I felt my body going through a transformation, which I couldn’t put my finger on. I pondered what was happening to me since my first mushroom experience had not yielded this type of effect before.

I attempted to walk around, but I felt as if I were an infant walking for the first time. I felt like I never used my legs before. Nick was laughing hysterically at me and took pictures of me with his phone. I went to go sit back in my car so I could collect my thoughts. All of a sudden I turn around and Murphy is going thru the backseat looking for something. He says something to me but I can’t understand it because it sounded like he was talking backwards and even moving backwards like I was rewinding a videotape. This freaked me out and I was thought “Holy shit, what have I done.”

I come out of the car and my friends try to calm me down. They are in somewhat of a panic because they don’t know what to do with me. They give me a cigarette and I reply “what’s a cigarette? What do I do with such a thing?” (I was a regular smoker). They give me a bowl with weed in it and I reply “What’s this? What’s Weed?” I really didn’t know what these objects were used for cause for some reason I felt above it all. I just felt like what’s the point of these materialistic things. All of a sudden I looked up at the sky and the trees had these patterns which were interweaving and moving very quickly. My eyes couldn’t keep up with the lucidity and movement of these patterns moving throughout the trees. I was astonished. I was befuddled. I was in utter shock. I had heard of people seeing things before, but I had no idea how intense it was.

At this point Nick got up out of his chair and started walking through the woods, me being an infant child once more decided to follow him through the woods where we came across a path. This path was basically the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland and once more I was astounded at what I was seeing. The flowers, trees and vines were growing all around us, Nick was basically dancing and I was just like “Oh my god, Nick are you seeing this stuff?” It was unreal, the clarity of everything was breath taking. Everything was breathing and growing with me.

Finally we made it back to the car where everyone was about to go leave and check out the concert going on. At this point I had my shirt off and felt like one with nature. I get back in my car and sit for awhile and at this point it felt like I started back at the beginning. Murphy came in the car looking for something and said the exact same thing he said before but it was backwards again and he was moving backwards again. This really freaked me out and I got out of the car saying “Where am I? What is this?” I had completely forgotten I had ate a shit load of mushrooms just 30minutes prior.

I couldn’t stop asking Murphy questions at this point since he was the closest friend I had there. Bill and Tony were nowhere to be found and Nick was back to sitting in his chair smoking something. I felt that Murphy was the marker for my experience so I asked him everything. I tried to collect myself, but soon I found out this would be impossible. I’ve read somewhere about ego death before, but this aspect had totally consumed me without my knowledge. I fought and fought to gather myself and get my personality and ego back but it was indeed impossible at this point. My ego was a 5 billion piece jigsaw puzzle and it had dropped on the floor and spread everywhere. I had to pick these pieces back up one at a time. And I assure you I tried my best.

“Murph, why am I thinking about Melissa so much?” (my girlfriend at the time) “Murph, what’s elite fitness?” (the gym I worked at). “Where are we?” “Where are we going?” Well at this point Murphy didn’t know what to do with me so he grabbed me and we started walking towards the concert area. We met up with Bill and Tony where Tony confirmed to us that he obtained a quarter pound of mushrooms and would be joining us shortly. I was awestruck. Since Murphy couldn’t’ answer my questions I felt like I was on this journey alone. I was the shirtless wonder of the festival. As we were walking I would go up to random strangers and flex in front of them as if I was at a bodybuilding show. Some would be like what is this crazy kid doing and others would be like nice muscles baby and after whatever they had said I would see their faces morph from strangers into a person from my past. People I had either forgotten or had not spoken to in a long time.

At this point I was tripping as hard as anyone could possibly trip. I was gone in the worst way, trying to pick of the pieces of my lost ego from wherever they laid. I kept wandering off the path speaking to random people as if I knew them because in a weird way I felt like I did. They all resembled people from my past and I couldn’t just walk the path to the concert. Murphy kept pulling me along and I tried my bet to keep up with him, but I was constantly wandering away from our destination. A small child approached me and to this day I am not sure if it was a hallucination or real, but the child took my hand and brought me to a van which once inside I realized it was the most trippy spectacle I had seen thus far. I was amazed by this van and how it resembled a replica 70’s VW wagon from Yellow Submarine or something.

Once again Murphy appeared and brought me back to the path. Strangers everywhere realized the condition I was in a tried to take advantage of it by selling me things that seemed spiritual by nature. I would converse with these people for some time and they believed they were making a sale when Murphy would appear once more and pull me away. At this point everyone was waving good bye to me and this made me feel somewhat uneasy. I remembered the end of the movie Big Fish when the father is dying and his son tells the story of when he’s going back home to the lake.

All of a sudden I felt as if this was it. This was the point where I convinced myself that the matrix was real and I had taken the blue pill (the blue mushrooms) and was now using my senses for the first time. This new realization overtook me and I wouldn’t be making it anywhere near the concert although I began to hear the music blaring through the trees. I tried to collect myself once more and then I realized “Oh my god, this is my death, I’m on way back to the beginning, the alpha and the omega.”

Once again I wondered “Where am I?” “How did I get here?” I tried my best to remember this day and what had happened. I completely forgot about eating the mushrooms and all of a sudden convinced myself I was Donnie Darko. A year earlier I was involved in a near fatal car accident in which only a safety belt saved my life. I felt like I had cheated death back then and now was the time where I was being called back to it. I felt as if I didn’t learn my lesson from that accident and now I made a fatal mistake. I remembered that my friends and I were on our way to a festival and then my memory went blank. I didn’t remember if we had ever made it to our destination since my car was no longer in sight and I didn’t have anything on me except a pair of shorts and shoes.

Murphy kept telling me to come on dude lets go and I kept seeing a light at the end of the path. This scared me immensely and I decided I no longer wanted to go anywhere. I was afraid of the light and I tried my best to get away from it. I decided that since this was my time, I would just lay down in a puddle, in the middle of the path of mud and just lay there. I didn’t want to move any closer to the light and the sky just looked so beautiful. At this point I was pretty much left alone, I had no idea where Murphy went nor did I really care since it was my time to die, that was it. Horrible ideas started shooting through my head while I attempted to get a clue to what had happened. All I could think about was my past car accident and how I made the same mistake only this time nobody was restrained by a safety belt. I convinced myself that I had killed all of us on the way to the festival and that’s why my car and friends were nowhere to be found. I lay there in the puddle of mud while horrible ideas flooded my head once more. I saw ambulance lights all around the trees and people talking and beeps going off in the back round. I felt like I was in the hospital on my deathbed and there were surgeons running around trying to stop the insanity going on all around me.

All of a sudden someone told me to get up and for some reason I got up from my comfortable place in the mud and got onto a golf cart. Apparently this was a security vehicle of which I had no idea at the time. I was still hallucinating to a great degree. I was brought to a hippie campsite, which looked as if they had made their home at the ledges. It was a hippie family which I was now a part of, I kept shrieking saying how I was suppose to go to college and make my father proud but now I was destined to be part of this new hippie family for all of eternity. It was raining at this point and this is when I realized it was nightfall as well. I returned to thinking horrible thoughts and was having the most terrible trip of all at this point. I was consumed by all that horrible things I had done in the past, cheating, stealing, sleeping around on my girlfriend. I felt like I was being punished, this did not sit well with me so I stood up in a panic went back onto the path and was hallucinating like a mad man.

All of a sudden the hallucinations were too overwhelming and I started literally pissing my pants. The strangest part was that I didn’t even care because I was already soaking from the rain and just wanted it all to end. As I peed myself uncontrollably my entire field of vision melted in front of me and suddenly I realized where I was. I sat back down and someone put a towel over my back. I was still tripping hard at this point but was feeling slightly better since I had wet myself. I started reminiscing about all the horrible things I had done in the past and all the bad karma I had built up over the years. I felt as if I was in a confessional in church and the only thing that made me feel better was spilling my guts out to these complete strangers taking care of me. I swear they knew more about me then my parents did after that heart to heart and once everything was out.

After all my confessions had taken place I snapped back to reality was done tripping in a split second. It was as if I woke up from a deep sleep and felt extremely at peace and well rested. I got up and stood next to a man by the fire. It was the hippie man that took me in from the wilderness and I told him how grateful I was for saving me. He just kept saying its all good and we just understood each other without wasting words at all. We just nodded to each other because we both knew what I had experienced couldn’t be justified with words at all whatsoever. I gathered myself and bid farewell to my new hippie family and went along my way. Before long I realized I had no clue where the car was at and I decided to explore the festival on my own since after all I did pay $40 to come and enjoy myself.

As I made my way down to the concert, this couple approached me said “Wow you came out of it man, I’m really glad because we saw you earlier and thought something terrible was going to happen to you.” I replied “Amazing experience dude, can I come along with you guys?” They were delighted to bring along a local celebrity with them since I ended up being “that guy” at the festival. I smoked a few joints with them although I already felt high as a kite from the mushroom experience.

After I split with the couple I went back on a journey to find my car and my friends. I finally came across the mobile home, which was our landmark since it had been blasting techno music for the better part of the day. In complete darkness I followed down the path to my car and low and behold there were my friends, they were beyond amazed to see me back there walking with my hands on my head as if I had just come back from an extremely long vision quest. Apparently they thought I was going to get raped by a bunch of hippies and that when they came looking for me, security told them that I was with the “spiritual leader”. I told them that was exactly who I was with and that it was an amazing experience. They looked at me as if I were a ghost for the rest of the night until everyone went to bed except for Murphy and myself. We traveled a long a little bit and sat by the lake smoking cigarettes for awhile before we decided to call it a night.

Overall, my experience was breath taking. I explored my psyche from the inside out and full realized the extent of a full on mushroom trip. It was extremely insightful and helped me get over my past self. The only negative after effects were my car being extremely muddy and being hung over for several days thereafter. Nothing in my life could ever compare to what I had experienced that day at the ledges but at the same time I wouldn’t wish that difficult discovery of enlightenment onto my worst enemy.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 70991
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Aug 23, 2009	Views: 32,115
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Mystical Experiences (9), Difficult Experiences (5), Festival / Lg. Crowd (24)