DOSE:	1.75 g	oral	Mushrooms - P. cubensis	(dried)
	2 tablets	oral	Vitamin C

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

At 10:50 PM on March 2nd, I filled a paper cup with two cups of lemon extract and submerged around half an eighth of Psilocybin cubensis in it. I also took two vitamin C pills (and I had also taken two early that morning). My reasoning for this was that since I had such a minimal amount left, I might as well try and make the most of them (and boy did I!). Then at 11:00, hoping for the best, I guzzled the disgusting concoction.

Knowing it would take a little while for them to start working I put on some upbeat music and waited. I had taken mushrooms once before, to mild effect, and was determined (hence the vitamin C and lemon extract) that this time would be more interesting. After pondering what to do, I finally decided to watch Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring as I thought the visual stimulation would be very pleasant.

I waited until approximately 30 minutes had gone by, and then went down to the bathroom to relieve myself. As I did, I looked in the mirror and noticed that my pupils had dilated to an enormous size. Seeing this, I knew that the trip was soon to begin, so I hurried upstairs and put on the movie. At the point at the title screen where the music loops and there is an effect suggesting running water, I sat for about 15 minutes in pure bliss, entranced by the powerful music and the rippling waves. Then I snapped out of it and decided to start the film, pressing play.

This portion of the trip was truly enjoyable. The film was no longer in its usual flat, 2D state, it was in full 3D and the colors were a thousand times more vibrant than what I was used to. Mayan symbols swirled around the television screen as I watched. Frodo’s face looked like it was made of clay, slowly molding into new expressions. Gandalf’s skin looked as though it were covered with a thick, red membrane which pulsed and glowed. My vision in general took on a “melty”, liquidy cast which made human faces appear rather disturbing but also quite funny. These and many other interesting effects made for an interesting time.

Suffice it to say that watching Lord of the Rings on mushrooms was truly a wonderful experience. However, unfortunately, it was not to last. I noticed that the effects came on unusually fast, within half an hour. Around a quarter of the way into the movie I went downstairs to go to the bathroom. I finished washing, came back upstairs, and lay down on the couch once more. It was then I realized that I was in the exact same position that I was the last time I took mushrooms (a week earlier). I began to wonder if time had ever really passed. Perhaps I was still there, and the past week had all been a hallucination! At this point, things started getting very weird. I was suddenly aware that time was out of whack. Somehow, I had managed to tear a hole in the fabric of time itself. At will I could transport back and forth between the previous mushroom trip and this one. Little did I know how much my little experiment with time travel would cost me.

The next series of events are very difficult to recall, and impossible to portray accurately, but I will do my best. The order in which they occur is also extremely difficult to describe because time was absolutely a mess. Even now in recalling them, I do not know what happened first, second, etc. Some things which are about to be described seemed to have happened simultaneously!

As I continued to switch between each point in time, I became aware that the universe was unraveling around me. I was in multiple places and times at once, and I was having difficulty remembering which was the correct place and time. Then to my horror, I realized that I was dying! My body was shutting down, and I could feel my life-force leaking out into nothingness. Then my consciousness lifted from my body (specifically out of my chest) in the form of an almost phosphorescent mist and I was flung into a temporal vortex at the center of my room. I found myself in a place which was indescribable by any of the five senses. There I was surrounded by a collection of energy which made up the sum experience of all life in the universe, past, and present. All conscious beings that had ever existed, and even those that never had, were there. Friends, family, ancestors, strangers all brought together in that place.

And then all of us were one. All of those individuals, myself included, all melted together. All of a sudden we remembered the truth, although deep down inside, we all knew it all along. We were God (I will refer to the “Dreamer” as God, though nothing in the human language feels even close to adequate in describing It), and we had been dreaming since before time began. And the dream that we dreamed was called reality, and the people in that dream were us. All along we knew this was the truth, but we had forgotten. We had been swept up in the dream. For that was why we had fallen asleep in the first place. Here in this place, there was only God. Now that we had awoken, we had to decide, would we choose to fall back asleep, or would we stay? For eons beyond reckoning we pondered this question, until we arrived at an answer. The only answer. To be God was to be truly, utterly alone. And we did not want to be alone. So we went back to sleep. We would forget the truth once again and live out a billion mortal lives, unaware, as we had done before. Just as we were drifting off and my individual consciousness was returning, God communicated to me these words (though not in any form of language obviously, this is simply my rendering of them): “I made a conscious decision to be mortal, to live and to die, because the alternative is intolerable.”

My memory of my time as God I feel is like a gift, a souvenir bestowed on me for having had to go through all of this. At the time immediately following this experience my memory of it was completely crystal clear, but some sort of voice or presence informed me (wordlessly, if that makes sense) that it would fade with time. Indeed, now only a very bare-bones, “just the facts” sort of memory remains of those events, but I know that they happened.

At this point my consciousness was returned to my room accompanied by a sound that I can only relate as an alien-like humming noise, but reality was far from back to normal. I was outside of my body, and could see myself lying on the couch. Then suddenly I experienced complete ego death, exactly as I have before and since on Salvia. This happened not once but many times in succession. I would become more aware of who I was and then suddenly reality and ego alike would rip apart again. At times I actually assumed someone else’s ego, and forgot my identity completely. I went through a million different identities, realizing each time I assumed a new one that it was not who I was supposed to be. At one point I was Syd Barrett, which is interesting because I felt I was in a similar position to him. We both had lost our minds, and I truly thought I would never be sane again.

It was this period of time more than anything else which convinced me (and continues to convince me to this day) that reality truly is a dream. I felt so hopeless, and so insane, and devoid of any semblance of reason that I came very close to committing suicide. I have never once in the past ever considered suicide, and up until this point I was a relatively happy, upbeat person. I came very close to driving a knife into my heart simply to end the insanity that I had unleashed, but fortunately I experienced ego death again before I could follow through on this. Then I was outside of my body, I was a million different people all at once, I was in the past and the future both at once, and at the same time I was lying in my bed staring at the clock. I noticed that time had stopped (in fact I even checked my iPod which shows the passing of seconds to confirm it).

Slowly however, I began to have moments of greater coherence during which I tried to calm myself down. I opened my notebook in the hopes that writing would help bring things together (I felt that if I made a conscious act in one of the many realities I was experiencing simultaneously, that that would help to keep my awareness in one place). However as I began to write, I noticed that the ink began leaking across the page. I opened to a new page only to find splotches of ink beginning to appear there as well. Frightened at the fact that reality was still not back to normal I closed the notebook and put it away. Once again I fell back into a period of madness, and I could find no solid reality to hold on to.

Then once again I became aware of my body, and that I was in my room. In a moment of clarity I slipped on my headphones and put on Jessica by The Allman Brothers Band. By the time the next song was over, I was fully conscious and sober once again. Looking over at the clock the time was around 3:00 AM. All I could do was sit there, wide-eyed, repeating the words: “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.” Opening my notebook I began recording my experience in the hopes that it would calm my nerves. There I found that I had already written the words that God had spoken, in surprisingly sober looking letters. For the next four hours I sat there, in silence, unable to believe what had just taken place, and actually laughing as only one who has gone through something like this can laugh.

When I woke up the next morning, I went outside to find it was unusually warm out and there was a nice Southern breeze blowing through. Looking up at the clear blue sky and watching gulls fly by over head, I knew that my life was changed forever. Standing there watching the gulls is one of those magical little moments I will remember the rest of my life.

The aftermath of this experience is that I spent several months in utter hell. Each morning I would wake up with gut-wrenching, soul-deep depression gnawing at my mind. No rationalization, no positive thoughts, nothing would make it stop. I became desperate, and in my desperation I recalled my first (and only) Salvia trip which had occurred nearly a year before. I hoped that if I were disassembled and reassembled via ego death for a final time, it might ease the mind-numbing dread that had gripped. I was surprisingly correct, but that is another story! If I were to give advice to whoever may be reading this right now it would be cautionary. Entheogens can do truly miraculous things, but they can also take you through levels of hell you never even dreamed of. I paid dearly for underestimating the power of the mushroom, but I also reaped benefits which I do not yet fully comprehend. I am truly a changed person, but ultimately, I think, for the better.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 72785
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Aug 7, 2017	Views: 2,792
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Alone (16), Post Trip Problems (8), Mystical Experiences (9), Difficult Experiences (5)