DOSE:

6 capsls

oral

Amanitas - A. muscaria

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

The immortal Soma

I discovered this mushroom around this time last year: rainy season in Northern California. The first patch I found was right by the road, across the street from my old 'High' School. Had they been growing there for years without me ever happening by while fruiting? I don't know. I know that they migrate with the wind, with animals, with man, and are always there like a hidden god. It is a strange thing about mushrooms, and particularly these mushrooms, that first you don't see them at all, and then you start to see them everywhere. They are very special, very magical beings, have a spirit like you or I, and perhaps, just perhaps, the human being is not the 'highest creature' on earth, at least not when it comes to ethics or vision. Perhaps we have something to 'relearn' with this ancient sacrifice from our common Vedic past....

These are the thoughts I sometimes entertain anyhow, in my tromping through the wet hills of Northern Cali looking under the wide boughs of old Pine trees... between the Christmas season and Easter. But it is not true that they only grow under pine trees; we found some recently with Brother J and Brother T growing under a little live oak surrounded by rush grass. Surely a strange place to find this little red and white man! And out of the mushrooms and the reeds slivered a young garter snake, and Brother J did hold it in his hand, and we were all amazed, for the presence of the mushrooms and the snake.

I eat this mushroom, in its well-dried or well fried state, almost every day in season. This is only my second season. I find it to be an excellent tonic herb in moderately low doses (1 or 2 '00' vegicaps of ground dried mushroom). At 3 or 4 capsules the tonic effect gets so strong that a different relationship to energy is established, which can feel kind of awkward and weird at first. Because persons in this state may appear to wobble and negotiate their environment in exaggerated movements, it has often been written or said that it makes you 'drunk' but let me assure you that the mental state of an alcohol drunk and that of someone who has ingested Soma are quite different. Soma gives a literal jump to my walk, and there is for me a kind of 'jumping puppet' or 'crazy dancer' effect. I also have lots of energy, and if I can negotiate the occasional challenge to my regular sense of balance, I can run really fast! And I don't even think about it, I run like kids run: spontaneously. Instead of walking over to do something in the garden, I sprint there! Sometimes I dance without music, or keep dancing though the music has stopped. It's less messy for losing my inhibitions than alcohol, and can similarly make me garrulous or confused, but there is none of that sloppiness associated with liquor, it's more clear and absolute.

The paradoxical fact is that Soma can just as likely make me feel heavy, weighted, lazy, sleepy.... It may just accentuate the natural changing feelings of the body: at my moment of peak energy I am at the peak of that peak! And at the moments of the day when I am tired, I go deep into the weight of my body, into the weight of the earth.

I should explain that I am writing this trip report while on mushrooms, and this is another character of Soma. In small enough doses (I took 6 capsules about an hour ago) I can still write and concentrate on typing more or less, but my mind is kind of profoundly altered. Soma, one feels when communicating to others about Soma, has a lot to say, wants to communicate with us. This is the way I explain it anyway. Technically speaking, the mushroom never 'dies', even when dried, rehydrated and put in the body; it can make mycelium from a rehydrated piece, and the spores can survive the passage in the body and come out the other side ready to reproduce. All of this, and the general presence of the fruiting mushroom, makes me think of Soma as a 'doctor' that enters the body and scans it for information, putting things back into place, and then exiting to the external world, never having fully died or lost its fungal consciousness. I suppose one has to accept a somewhat 'nonscientific' view of things to think this way, but it is what makes more sense to me....

This new years I took the strongest dose I have ever felt: about a whole mid-large cap, done with a warm infusion, changing the water 3 times and drinking all of the liquid, over about am hour. I went dancing with Brother B and had a wonderful time jumping around and letting my spine do its own talking. While I felt a certain floppy imbalance in my body, it was never one which threatened to topple me. It was like I was drunken master and could spin and jump and twirl without ever really losing my core balance , though my body was constantly in motion, even after the music stopped. When we went out into the street at a break the impression of the two sides of my body, or two people walking side by side, or my two arms, was that everything was switching positions back and forth -- the person on the left exchanged positions, for the smallest split second, with the person on the right. The impression was of 'weaving snakes', that everything that was and which had two 'sides' was weaving and dancing back and forth like a double helix. Later when I closed my eyes I saw the image of this drawn in moving light, a universe of patterns of moving weaving light. Still later I had the idea-image that there were only two real numbers, 0 and 1 and that they represented the left and the right sides of the body/brain, ying yang, etc... And all of this based on the same Soma induced 'vision'.

Soma makes music sound very  rich (but it is harder for me to play the piano, as the fingers get disoriented), and makes the newspaper funnies much deeper than they appear to the groggy coffee mind; I actually enjoyed strips I usually think of as trite. Soma mushroom is delicious fried with eggs and onions for breakfast. I just make sure I cook it well and eat with moderation, I ate too much one time, didn't think I was high and started having movement hallucinations (like suddenly jerking or grasping hands, grabbing for things that aren't there, passing a joint then repeating the action of letting go of it very quickly after the fact). [Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!] This was startling because I was driving, and glad not to be too far from home! I got home safe but discovered personally the reason for the old belief that Soma causes convulsions, which it does not, at not least in my experience.

Soma is also excellent for thought. It takes the stoniness out of pot, making things clearer and less tending towards paranoia or fuzziness. A little bit of dried red skin crumbled into some weed is very nice. It certainly feels like either there is another presence in me pointing things out, or the mushroom opens parts or functions of the brain that are otherwise turned off, because there can be much self-scrutiny, changing of mind, understanding of the misunderstood, all in a very natural relaxed manner, as if it was only obvious. Apparently it is obvious to Soma, and we have only to listen carefully!

Exp Year: 2009	ExpID: 88764
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 39
Published: Jul 14, 2017	Views: 2,258
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Amanitas - A. muscaria (70) : General (1), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Retrospective / Summary (11), Alone (16)