Set and Setting in the All That Is
Mushrooms - P. semilanceata
Citation:   energy elf. "Set and Setting in the All That Is: An Experience with Mushrooms - P. semilanceata (exp93961)". Erowid.org. Feb 12, 2020. erowid.org/exp/93961

 
DOSE:
1000 mg oral Alcohol - Beer/Wine  
  60 oral Mushrooms - P. semilanceata (dried)
BODY WEIGHT: 11 st
This mushroom trip happened on New Years Eve 2009. I’ve taken many psychedelics over the years and consider these substances some of the most profound tools to explore life with. I wasn’t expecting to take mushrooms this night and they were given to me as a gift by my cousin’s partner after I’d consumed a bottle of wine in the first few hours of the party – now the rest of the group consisted of around 15 people in addition to me and the friend I had travelled down with. ~I only knew my friend, my cousin and her partner but I’ve only seen my cousin 4 times in ten years.

I hadn’t taken mushrooms or any psychedelics for around 2 years before this night – I took around 60 dried liberty caps hand picked by my cousin's partner who I will call Phil – Phil is a friendly fella but he’s also like a large child in that he bounces around larger than life, very loud and always roughly play fighting with his brother. I was quite excited and in good spirits especially with the surprise element of the shroom gift, the time of year, the full moon and general good vibe in the house.

The shrooms came on as they usual do for me with a distinctive funny, giggly, tingling sensation in my stomach, it's like an elf is actually stuck inside me and the only way for it to escape is to tickle me from the inside out
it's like an elf is actually stuck inside me and the only way for it to escape is to tickle me from the inside out
. This was followed by the jaw stretching but very pleasant yawning – then came the gentle waves of energy lapping over me with accompanying subtle changes in perception, like better hearing, sharper vision and the ability to slow down facial expressions, giving me the overall sense that I could experience people more fully and clearly.

This is about an hour in to the experience– and I was ecstatic, feeling utterly energised and happy to be back in with the universal vibrations – the vibration had also slowed everything down to the gently pulsing loving vibe and I feel encircled in the light of universal energy – I’m moving around the party talking, listening and just feeling connected completely to the all that is. I spent some time listening to Aretha Franklin singing live on an album and it feels like she is all around me, inside me, in my mind more real than the floor I was sitting on. Amazing and I am in orgasmic rapture.

Suddenly Phil tells me he needs to talk to me, he looks anxious, troubled and slightly menacing – its thick snow and freezing outside but he tells me to leave the party and go out to his car – I attempt to say let's talk in here but he grabs my arm and sort of pulls me outside. The energy changes.

I follow him and his brother outside and its freezing with a full moon and lanterns are blurring across the night sky making it look like the hidden ones are making a rather obvious entry into our awareness – we get to the car and I’m in the front along with Phil and his brother is in the back – he speaks and his words leave his mouth, penetrate the air as an energy and curl around me like clouds of frankincense smoke – I’m not so much hearing as experiencing his words -

Through the smoky energy I can make out that he’s telling me that his family are involved in the masons in France and what they are doing is troubling for him and conflicts with his beliefs and he doesn’t know what to do– I turn in slow motion to ask his brother who now in the dark with his long hair looks like medusa on Jacobs ladder. He doesn’t say a word just looks at me – Phil roughly grabs me and tells me in what seemed to me a threatening tone that I ought to be listening to him – at this point I feel threatened so I remove his arm and I think I said ‘fuck this’ and opened the car door and got out – this action seemed to take some time and I felt my whole being while still connected to everything, I felt like I was heaver than everything else like the air itself had become condensed and hard to navigate-

I walked back to the house, feeling utterly split – on one hand it seemed hilarious on the other terrifying – unfortunately for me I chose to ruminate on the terrifying aspect and this became manifest for the next 6 hours – I re-entered the party but Phil and his brother were nowhere to be seen – it is a very large house with lots of room and land etc. so they were probably off doing something else – anyway I entered the main room to find everyone sitting there chatting away so–I feel pushed to the ground by an energy and sit rigidly cross legged on the floor.

I can’t remember this part very well but I recall feeling waves and waves of energy passing through me, it felt like as near as is humanly possible to be actual electricity. I remember after being forced to sit on the floor cross legged I just started talking – in seconds the group of 15 who had been talking and communicating between themselves sat in silence listening intently to whatever I was saying –It was stuff along the lines of an attempt to describe what I was experiencing which was shifts and breaks in what I perceived as dimensions – I felt I was travelling through time/space spinning in infinity able to experience what the universe feels like as an entity–

I was obviously pretty far out – after some time my cousin came in the room behind me and I remember her laughing and pointing at everyone and her saying that they all looked like they were listening to Christ himself. It was at this point that I realised that everyone else apart from me and me friend at the party were born again Christians. Now I think my thoughts must have wrapped themselves in knots, I felt that my energy was being taken from me – like some entity was literally taking my energy –my thoughts intensified as David Icke, the masons and the Christians all seemed to coalesce into one big fear dripping monster in my mind.

I was unable to move rigid with fear – I was gripped inside a fear so powerful that I felt I was experiencing the fight, flight and freeze mechanism all wrapped up in one. It was like the fear had then been condensed into a pill that was now wavering in front of me on the sickening tongue of Rose West as she attempted to French kiss me.

I was Hans Solo frozen in the centre of the death star with the only resistance available being that of my own torn mental health. I delved into this dark energy nightmare and became utterly convinced that I had been contacted by an alien life form that uses human negativity as a stoner might use his own personal sweet shop – I was being scoffed upon, drooled all over – this thing was cursing through my thoughts searching for one terrifying thought after another to feast upon- and I gave to it all I had for hours- fuck man its was hard going.

So basically I spent about 6 hours locked into a ruminative cycle exploring the things I find the most terrifying like being eaten alive, or that nothing at all exists and we are all simply here to be fed upon by this intergalactic alien with the energy munchies– I could go on but imagine your darkest thoughts manifest for hours and hours – I felt paranoid and uncertain of everything for months after this.
I felt paranoid and uncertain of everything for months after this.


I don’t blame the substances because all they do is connect you to another level of yourself – the environment changed but more important than this was that I changed my thinking and appraisals about what was happening – I think this is true of all bad trips – as Radiohead once sang ‘you do it to yourself you do and that’s what really hurts’. Our thoughts are incredibly powerful when we misinterpret them or when we appraise the other systems we take our cues from negatively –

Granted trying to rationalise by weighing up pros and cons, or maybe cognitively re-structure what’s going down is made all the harder in certain situations especially when tripping. However it’s not impossible and I would say that the most mystical utterly beautiful psychedelic experiences I’ve had were no doubt because I made the right appraisals in the right environment – In this situation I was stupid and flippant with my usage of a sacred substance I used in an unfamiliar environment with unfamiliar and unpredictable people. I did not set the scene and my previous reading material was too intense and too far out. Sticking with the knowledge given us by folk like Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna is the way forward – the old Set and setting is always important and so is perhaps working out your own personal ritual to further set the vibrations for the sun.

I have flown since but never again will I disrespect the sacred. Take care be safe and enjoy the all that is.

Much love

x

Exp Year: 2009ExpID: 93961
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 37
Published: Feb 12, 2020Views: 1,001
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Mushrooms - P. semilanceata (90) : Large Group (10+) (19), Entities / Beings (37), Difficult Experiences (5)

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