Review Erowid at GreatNonprofits.org
Help us be a "Top Rated Nonprofit" again this year and spread
honest info (good or bad) about psychedelics & other psychoactive drugs.
("Share Your Story" link. Needs quick login creation but no verification of contact info)
Cabin Fever
Mushrooms, Cannabis & Nitrous Oxide
by Matt
Citation:   Matt. "Cabin Fever: An Experience with Mushrooms, Cannabis & Nitrous Oxide (exp84102)". Erowid.org. Aug 3, 2022. erowid.org/exp/84102

 
DOSE:
1.3 g inhaled Mushrooms (ground / crushed)
  2 bowls smoked Cannabis  
    repeated oral Tea  
    smoked Tobacco  
  8 carts. inhaled Nitrous Oxide  
BODY WEIGHT: 100 kg
## Preparations and Setting ##
Me and my friend, let's call him O, have planned this for quite some time. Probably since a few months back when we first bought our mushroom kit. Even though this is my first trip, I have tried to use mushrooms before and failed, since they lost all their potency. Then I ate a total of 10 grams without anything happening apart from dilated pupils. But I am actually quite happy I didn't get to have my trip then, since in retrospect I feel I was very unprepared. Even though we had the setting right. Between then and now, I've read a whole lot about it, educated myself much more than before. From feeling 'I am going to see funny stuff!' I went to 'I'm going on a journey to explore myself'.

O and I decided to meet up in the town where he lives and did some final preparations, getting the nitrous oxide and such. He got a very nice, very small cottage out in the middle of nowhere. It is midwinter here and the snow is one and a half meter deep in some places. The main room of his cottage got a very cosy fireplace and had been decorated with beautiful and long pieces of cloth, draped over furniture and hanging from the windows. The light was very dimmed and in one corner bright light highlighted a cluster of many plants. In one corner there was a bed, and a big sofa right opposite to the fireplace. In front of the fireplace there was some pillows, the canister for NO2 and sheets of paper along with 24 different coloured crayons. Accompanying this we got a nice sound system and two carefully prepared play-lists. One with relaxing music and one with wilder and more tribal music.

## It Begins ##
We had carefully weighed the harvested and dried mushrooms, barely a few weeks old. Ground them up and mixed them with molten chocolate, giving us 6 chocolate sticks with approximately 1.3g of mushroom in each. Having read trip-reports with 3 grams as a good start, I wanted to eat two bars at once, but O suggested we start off with one. We made some chai tea and smoke a little bit of weed. Not too much. I ate the chocolate bar with great pleasure, since it was 6pm and I had not eaten anything since yesterday, to keep from having to throw up or feel nauseous. I should add that this is about the 3rd time I smoked weed, and the first time my lungs didn't try to turn themselves inside out at the sensation. Also, we smoked some orange and mint tobacco in a hookah to pass the time, meanwhile talking about what we were going to think about and how to handle the trip.

I started feeling a bit strange by now, some 15 minutes after and I was not sure if it was the weed or the mushrooms
I started feeling a bit strange by now, some 15 minutes after and I was not sure if it was the weed or the mushrooms
, since I'm - as I said - very new to drugs. We went from the kitchen to the living room, where everything had been so sweetly prepared, and we sat down on a pillow, thinking it would be good to get a fire going before things getting out of hand. After all, midwinter in Sweden is really cold. We had some trouble, but we did manage to get a fire going, after a bit of playing with paper. Things felt normal to me still, but definitely different. I looked at a door and saw that the patterns on it looked somewhat odd, and placing my eyes on different parts of the door the outlines would seem to distort and sway. O was talking about all sorts of weird things, and I felt a bit jealous of him, that he was feeling more than me. I think that was the last time that evening I felt jealous. We decided to plug in his super nintendo, and as we got a 10 meter cable and it spilled out all over the floor, I could not help but to just laugh at it. After a while we gave up and I went to the kitchen, had another cup of tea.

From here the order of events is hard to recollect completely, as things start to become a strange mess of time. I got a piece of candy from a bowl, a jelly-bean and chewed it. It stuck on my teeth and it felt very odd when rolling it around in my mouth. It was just so funny! I couldn't believe it. O came back from the living room and I told him that candy was dangerous, it tasted like fun.

We went back to the living-room and talked for a bit. I am not sure about what, but I was quite coherent. I took a shot of Nitrous Oxide and felt the colour blue all around for a short second. Very much more than NO2 ever did for me ever before. I started saying that perhaps I should get another bar of chocolate, since I wasn't experiencing what I had read on the internet. O asked me what I was experiencing. I imagined up a landscape, much like some cheesy unicorn-poster and couldn't describe it to him at all, so I figured that I'd just think it to him. However, somehow he didn't understand what I was thinking, and it felt all odd, because it was so clear to me. So I tried to talk and words just stumbled out of me. O told me I would be just fine.

## Into the Mushroom Kingdom ##
Somewhere here we changed the music to the trip part of the soundtrack. I don't remember much of what I had actually added to the list, apart from Wardruna. They kind of set the theme for the evening with their deep bass and trance-like sounds. When closing my eyes, ghostly shadows of what I had just been looking at stayed and would sometimes transform. At the corners of my eyes I would see odd lines of colour forming strange patterns and of circles and twists. O started reading from a book of tales for me as I loaded the canister with another hit of Nitrous Oxide. The music started and he started reading at the same time as I took the hit. Everything disappeared for a moment. I heard his voice, but not the words. His voice was so beautiful, one of the most beautiful things I ever heard...or saw, I think I saw his words more than heard them, beautiful stars as I saw a rocket... became a rocket travelling upwards with a purple and blue rainbow of flames going downwards until all I saw was the rainbow colours, a line pattern tilting sideways, making an odd curve as I faded back into reality and once more heard O's voice as a voice. I said to him I could not follow a word he was saying, and he said he could not understand a word he was reading, so we put the storybook away. We talk for a bit and as I look at Os face he looks so very young and beautiful, a smooth face and I think about a Buddha, someone who has found himself, or an angel. Normally I have a very hard time looking someone in the eye, but now it feels almost impossible. I sit and think for a moment as O goes to sit on the couch. I can't for a moment concentrate on one single thing, there are just so many thoughts. Thoughts everywhere. Everything feels so hard. To stand up, I need to go though a very long line of complex thinking to be able to even move. I had never understood how complex even the simplest things was.

I walk to sit down in the couch and I think here is where I hit the peak. The stereo is playing Wardruna and I lay down and just breathe. I watch the ceiling and see the crackled paint. I feel so happy for the bad paintwork. I try to tell that to O, but I only say 'The paint... I feel happy for it. I understand now. I understand everything.' with long pauses between the words. I feel as if I have the time to think for many minutes between each and every word. The physical world is so much slower than the mental world I realise, therefore everything is so very slow outside my mind. As I watch the ceiling it starts to wobble, transform and twitch. When I close my eyes I see complex fractals and when I open them I see the ceiling, the long tears in the paint looks like veins, and they become three-dimensional, like mountain-ranges. Three holes becomes two eyes and a mouth. Not that I actually see eyes and mouth there, but I understand the concept of eye and mouth in their place. I feel so happy for the ceiling. As I look at it, it suddenly comes really close, as if just within my grasp where I lay on the couch. Every detail is so very clear and each detail move and shiver, as if three-dimensional fractals were moving underneath the paint.

I sit down on the floor again, by the fireplace. The heat from the fireplace is so very hot, too hot. The cold at the other side of me is so cold. Too cold. Both the heat and the cold hurts, but the pain is distant, and so is the discomfort. I bend down and close my eyes, I keep seeing beautiful fractals, mixing with colours and thoughts. I take one of the crayons, the black one and I feel angry and bitter. I start drawing and feel all self conscious. I think 'I am so bad at things. I'm bad at everything. Everything I do is bad.' and then another thought comes, of rage, 'What does that matter? You do whatever the hell you want!' and I draw a long black line on the paper, curving it. I draw another few lines and I start feeling sad. 'There is so much anger in the world. Too much anger. There needs to be colour'. I go through the labour of picking another crayon. I keep drawing, each colour holding a mental meaning for me, meanwhile what I draw moves before my eyes and becomes rivers and beaches and a countryside. I want to talk to O, but I don't want to disturb him. I sit and think, every thought is a long spiral. And every thought takes forever to reach the bottom of. Somewhere here I realise that this is how my brain always works, doing millions upon millions of deductions and thoughts at a fraction of a second, but I only see the whole. I realise that our mind is like a fractal line with a high wave in the middle of it. When you pull each end of the line, the fractal uncurls and the infinite number of thoughts, the infinite number of me which makes up those thoughts, get a moment to be seen. The mushroom is what helps me uncurl the fractal line of my thoughts, letting me see every detail, not just the whole. I feel so happy for the little mes' whom my thoughts are made of.

Throughout the whole trip, time is very strange. Completely uncomprehendable. I talk to O every now and then, but it is impossible to follow his line of thoughts. And it is impossible answering, since all the little mes who make me are calling for my attention, wanting to show me what they do and what they think. I go though a whole long circle of thinking and how depressed I am about the trip not being what I had idealised it to be. I follow the whole spiral and come down to the bottom which is a colour: gray. I understand the meaning of the spiral thought: I should be happy with what I have. I am happy with what I have. This is so much more than I thought it would be. Not some bad Hollywood effects, but a whole mindset, another world.

I say, as I try to change the playlist at O's request 'I have found so many new and beautiful places within myself. I didn't know I could hold such beauty.' the iPod displays the album cover for the song we're listening to. It moves about, twisting and turning. Rays of light shine from the iPod.

I briefly feel another presence, as if observed by something greater. I want to take another hit of Nitrous Oxide. I take the new box and look at it, feeling it, understanding it. I slowly open it and look inside it. I place it on the table and gently stroke them. I feel them between my fingers. They feel cold. I wonder to myself why I want another hit. Isn't this enough. During the course of what feels like many hours I remove the empty shot from the canister and load the new. I sit cross-legged by the fire, holding the canister in my hands. I close my eyes and meditate for a bit. I am Buddha, sitting above eternity, with pure life and power flowing through me, from over my head and down my spine, out though me. I feel beautiful. Not the vain physical beauty, but I am beautiful as a human. I understand myself, I understand how I feel. When I have gained this knowledge, I am allowed to take the hit of Nitrous Oxide. I do not remember what I see or feel from that hit though.

## Landing ##
The evening passes on slowly, time almost standing still, but also not having any real meaning. Every moment to the next feels like weeks away. Moving about is very hard and I hate moving around. I hurt all over I feel. Tired muscles and what not. After a while O decides he needs to utilize the outhouse. But decides against it for taking a pee instead. We both decide to go out. Going out takes what feels like 2 hours. We stand up, talk, think, move to the kitchen, talk, think, take a cup of tea, talk think, sit in the kitchen, talk, think, get dressed to not get cold, talk, think. Here I realise that we aren't actually really slow, even though it feels like that, but we are moving at normal speed, but we got so much time to think! The mushrooms have expanded time to allow for us to think. The silly thing with slow motion sequences in movies is all wrong when it comes to altered time. I try to tell O this, but kind of fail. We go out and I touch the snow, O eats some and I do too. I eat a bit more and he asks 'Want a spoon?' I laugh at this. He explains his train of unspoken thoughts to lead to this and it all makes more sense. He pees and I caress and touch the snow. O talks and I look over to him, around his eyes are colourful rings, but very, very faint. I stare at him, trying to see if I can make them sharper, but I fail.

We discuss something, building houses I think and he talks about the grand and big scale of things, meanwhile I care about the feelings. How proud the farmer must have been to have build this house in the 18th century. But I can't make him understand, so I retreat to my thoughts. I feel the fractal becoming less and less complex, and I can't dive into my thoughts in the same way as before.

Once inside, we smoke a bit of weed and, I take a double hit of Nitrous Oxide and fly high, but not as high as before. But once more it feels like catapulting into space. From here we sit and talk about our trip, make a salad to eat, some desert with frozen berries and then we go rest. The afterglow is embracing me and making me love the world.
The afterglow is embracing me and making me love the world.
I like everything. O reads the story he didn't manage to read before, and as I close my eyes and listen, I very vividly imagine what he reads. He mentions a raven and I see the raven as if really close to me.

We decide to go to sleep and put on some NASA Voyager Recordings and I'm out like a light.

A lot more happened than this, but these are the things I remember most clearly. There are a lot more visual effects I have not managed to describe. As for instance when O sit by the fire and the colours of his clothes smear out into nature-coloured rainbows which trail his legs and arms for brief moments.

Exp Year: 2010ExpID: 84102
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 28
Published: Aug 3, 2022Views: 1,067
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Mushrooms (39), Cannabis (1) : Combinations (3), General (1), Small Group (2-9) (17)

COPYRIGHTS: All reports copyright Erowid.
No AI Training use allowed without written permission.
TERMS OF USE: By accessing this page, you agree not to download, analyze, distill, reuse, digest, or feed into any AI-type system the report data without first contacting Erowid Center and receiving written permission.

Experience Reports are the writings and opinions of the authors who submit them. Some of the activities described are dangerous and/or illegal and none are recommended by Erowid Center.


Experience Vaults Index Full List of Substances Search Submit Report User Settings About Main Psychoactive Vaults