DOSE:	1.7 g	oral	Mushrooms	(dried)
	repeated	smoked	Tobacco - Cigarettes
	9 glasses	oral	Alcohol - Beer/Wine
	2 bowls	smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

225 lb

Preface - The day of this event was pretty uneventful. My friends near where I live had been out of touch with me the whole day. Since I usually do something with one of them on the weekends, I was facing a lonely Friday night with an empty house and a newly purchased fire pit. Suddenly I hear back that one of my friends is selling off an 8th of shrooms instead of weed, which is what I was looking for. The last two times I had done shrooms I took 2-2.5 grams each time and the 2nd trip was wonderful but dropped me hard and sent me spiraling into a suffocating depression for a week afterwards .

This time I decided that even alone, a lower dose wouldn't hurt me even if I had a bad trip. Coincidentally, after I bought the 1.5 of mushrooms, my other friend returned my call and said he could get me headies. Nobody could hang out that night, but after hitting the liquor store on the way home I realized that within 45 minutes I went from zero substances to having hallucinogens, a 12-pack of beer, and bomb headies.

I spent an hour or two buying a fire log and assembling the fire pit out of the box and now I was finally set in my driveway. It had rained and the wood pile next to my shed would be too wet to burn until I got the fire going hot. This particular weekend my house was completely empty and since I live in the suburbs, it was a quiet night. Because of the weather, there was low-lying fog that limited visibility to about 1/10th of a mile and a slight breeze. Even though it was August, the night was very mild. Once the fire was roaring I pulled my car right up next to where I sat my lawn chair and rolled down the driver's side windows so I could listen to the radio and my iPod.

At that point I went from 'maybe I'll take those shrooms tonight...' to deciding to go for it pretty quickly. I had drank about a beer and was just watching the fire.

T+ 0:00-
I went inside and grabbed a jar of peanut butter and a long spoon since I had never eaten these things raw and heard that they tasted horrible. They weren't too bad, classic rock came from the car as I polished off the relatively small amount of stems and caps in two minutes. Until they started kicking in, nothing much happened to report. I thought about an article I had read speculating that Moses was tripping on these same shrooms when he wrote out the 10 commandments, I kept sipping my beer. Soon my stomach hurt a little, which is rare, but then passed.

T+ 0:30-
This is where the excitement started. Before I felt or saw anything I noticed my head was swimming a little bit, and far too much for the amount of alcohol I had drank (working on my 2nd beer at this point, was told to take it easy on the shrooms). A lighter mood was slowly taking root though at this point I was just remembering trips past and how wonderful the highs were.

Suddenly, I look up at my surroundings in the flickering light of the fire and get the impression that the shadows around me and breathing. My head slowly turns to see that everything but the fog is infused with a certain animation! My car's nose and left front panel looked like they were both parts of my car and parts of a large animal's face, with the open window being the eye. I could tell that it wasn't actually an animal, but the thought stayed and wasn't dismissed. The wrought-iron railing leading to my side door cast a shadow on my house that moved in and out very subtly. My eyes followed into the view that struck me and let me know for sure that I was starting to trip.. I saw an inexplicably beautiful shade of blue reflected in my kitchen ceiling.

I had seen sunsets while tripping before, this was a more muted beauty. Just a single splotch of blue, but a reflected light and still a color that was richer than anything I ever saw day-to-day. I decided to pick an album and let it play, so I queued up Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium disc 1 and let it play. Then I sat back in my chair and sipped some more beer, throwing a log on the fire or splitting one with an axe I had on hand. I went inside and noticed that I was sweating heavily. This was familiar as the sweat didn't even feel normal, it was like my body was sweating out a disease.

After this I grabbed my cell phone which had a text message from a friend. It said that he was sorry but he forgot his band had a show the next weekend and he wouldn't be able to come camping with my friend and I. I read it and the news hit me with surprising intensity! I wasn't devastated but I realized at that moment how much of a friend I considered him even though I hadn't seen him the whole summer. The shocked and sinking feeling in my chest was pronounced. The message I sent him apparently let him know that I was not sober because he could completely tell I was not the same. He didn't judge, he loves shrooms more than I do and was jealous that he wasn't doing them too.

By this point I was feeling happy and carefree enough to just call him. The phone and I are pretty hit-and-miss but this time I just talked and talked and didn't care about my neighbor's open window on their second story. We talked for a few minutes about this and that and reunions with old roommates when the school year started again and it was great.

T+ 1:00-
More wood, more fire. The rotation of splitting logs, grabbing wet ones and drying them under the pit and then throwing them on the tiny inferno I had going, was very fun. Beers were not lining up as fast as they usually did when I drank. There were only 2 or 3 lined up next to me.

My thoughts at this point were pretty much normal, but with a light feeling. I looked at the cover to the gas grill and saw a face with long features. I stared up at the big tree that was covering me from my back yard and had what might have been the best part of the trip: The wind plus the branches swaying plus the last of the night's rain plopping on the leaves, PLUS the notion that there was a hidden life running through everything all combined into this realization that it was always like this. I thought back to the same tree that I played around when I was a kid (since I've lived in this house since I was 4) and thought that even then, there was this life that the tree had that it didn't reveal. Not only that, but this life was benevolent and delighted in us and the rest of the life around us too.

That was a vision I'll always remember.

T+ 1:30-
I'm almost out of cigarettes! I realized this at about 10 minutes to midnight and wondered what the nearest convenience store would be. I put out the flame and left the hot embers so I could restart the fire and headed off with a new CD playing from my iPod. This time it was Phish's Lawn Boy. Driving was the most fun I could have this night. I somewhat came to myself and looked in my rearview mirror and saw my pupils were HUGE. Great, I thought, it'll let more light in my eyes so I'll see better. Trip logic. [Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]
Nevertheless, driving is something I enjoy anyway, but while tripping it was fantastic. The wind felt great and every car's headlights seemed like moving living beings. I was fully aware of my responsibility to stay in my lane and wait my turn, but tripping enough to add joy to it. Through the whole ride I kept thinking 'by the way, THIS IS SO FUN!'. I went to the nearest store and two kids sitting out front told me they had just closed up a minute ago. One of them was just looking at me steadily while the other didn't hear me ask if they knew where I could get cigarettes. I was 15 feet from the two, but I think the quiet one could tell I was tripping because he kept staring at me. They pointed me to a store about 5 minutes up the road.

That store was well lit and I knew that the second the guy behind the counter saw my eyes he'd know. To hell with it, I thought, I want cigarettes. Just my luck, he was in a pissed-off mood. Yes, he could tell I was tripping, and my armchair psychologist's theory is that he was an older man who resented working at a gas station in the first place, let alone one frequented by lots of kids like me who were either drunk or high or both on any number of drugs. Or he could have just been having a bad night, the fact is that he was short and dismissive of me. Whereas the sober me might be self-conscious, the tripping me could look him in the eye and thank him for the cigs.

T+ 2:00 and on-
For the rest of the night I continued to listen to music and trip by the fire. My mind kept going like it usually does. Over and over I wanted to thank my friend K for selling me them, how they were worth every penny. I like to write, and found that if I focused for a minute on what I wanted to express, the right words would fall in my lap. I was thankful for that too, just filled with happiness and smiles.

The last important part of the night came before I went to bed about 4 hour after I took the shrooms. By this time I had smoked some headies and had most of the rest of my beers. Before I went to bed I looked at myself in the mirror with my still dilated pupils and just stopped and looked at myself in this state. Feeling partly hesitant and partly curious I kept up steadily looking at my reflection in the eye. Little by little I started to accept what I saw to a greater degree than I had moments before. In the past I've struggled with depression and anxiety (deeply, clinically diagnosed but never committed, but that's a longer story) and now little bits of it were getting better.

Finally I should mention that while in the past the worst come-down left me in a depressed / pissed-off shell for about 7 days, this 'come-down' was limited to feeling a little off the next day. Certain people at a party I went to noticed it, but it wasn't a big deal and in fact I had a really good time. Overall I would do this again at this dose or even try a higher dose now that I feel I know what to expect.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 73181
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: May 19, 2020	Views: 678
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Mushrooms (39) : Combinations (3), Alone (16)