DOSE:	repeated	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)
	2 g	oral	Mushrooms	(ground / crushed)

BODY WEIGHT:

180 lb

The day began, for me, when I was awoken by a phone call from a friend of mine, D. D and I have known each other for our entire lives, and have a history and connection that makes tripping together such a special event. I answered the phone in my still mostly-asleep state of mind, but I was quickly waking up: this was the day, after all.

A week earlier, D and I had taken a very light dose of mushrooms, just to get a feel for them as it was our first time. We had each taken LSD prior to this, as well as having used a large amount of cannabis. For the first light dose, though, we had taken roughly 1/2 gram each. From such a small amount, we felt the effects quite strongly (though a large amount of cannabis had been consumed beforehand). 'Next week', we had thought out loud. 'Next week we'll take 2 grams.'

And so as I answered the phone, the excitement began to set in. D informed me that he would be done with work soon (he works over night) and would arrive at my house by 9 or 9:30 AM. After we were finished on the phone, I immediately brought myself out of my slumber and into action; cleaning the house and preparing myself for what lie ahead. I had been anticipating this day for the preceding week and was so ready to have an experience. I had no expectations, aside from the expectation that my mind would be blown to pieces, only to regroup itself and attempt to extract meaning in the process. D had several things which he wanted to gain from the experience, especially a better understanding of what it is to learn from and interact with everything around you.

So after much delay on D's end, he finally arrived at 10:15, and he had brought 'presents'. He had a bag of dried cherries, a bottle of sweet almonds, a bag of white cheddar popcorn, a bottle of orange juice, a wheat pull-apart bread and a peachcake.

We left the 'presents' on a table and went up stairs to kick the day off with some cannabis. D always gets quality cannabis and he had a vaporizer that he set up. We sat there and vaped as the anticipation grew. Finally after twenty minutes we decided to go downstairs and start.

And so it began:

T = 0:00 = 10:50 AM.

We powdered the mushrooms in an electric coffee grinder and weighed out 2.0 grams each. We then added the mushroom powder to orange juice and drank it. The taste and texture were, for us, completely inoffensive in the thick orange juice. After we each washed out the glasses to try to get every bit of the mushroom powder from them, we went to look at the 'presents' sitting on the table. We decided to heat up the wheat pull-apart bread to give it that 'right from the oven' feeling, which we decided would take about 10 minutes. We sat and watched TV waiting for the oven to heat the bread and the mushrooms to do their magic. We couldn't focus on the TV due to our excitement and anticipation. Our motto was 'let's do this!'.

After ten minutes (T + 0:10 = 11:10 AM) the timer went off and we took the bread from the oven. We hungrily tore into it before deciding to bring it and the other 'presents' up stairs to start the trip.

We came up stairs, not yet feeling the effects. We sat down in my room, which had changed substantially since high-school. Now it was more of a living room than a bedroom, though the bed remained. There were two large chairs and a small table between them. D set up his vaporizer again as we began to settle in for the journey. We vaped another bowl while watching TV.

After the first show we watched, we were already feeling the effects coming on strong, so we turned the TV off as we were starting to experience the wonder of the world around us. At this time, my visuals became overwhelmingly apparent, and as I looked around in amazement, two-dimensional images became three-dimensional. One picture in particular, hanging on the wall, became indescribably three-dimensional, as though it had always been that way. The picture was a painting of a house, surrounded by water and thick undergrowth, with trees in the background. It seemed as though there was a depth to the image. Looking around, I saw butterflies encased in glass slowly start to flap their wings. I saw patterns dancing in the woodwork around me, as I began to lose connection to my perceived reality and enter the mushroom world.

At this point the mental trip hadn't caught up with the visual onset, but I did find myself physically impaired. Communication with D seemed difficult, and there were no words to describe my experience anyway. Everything moved and had its own pattern of movement.

This is where the trip began to come on fully in my head, and I began to feel anxiety. I was not willing to sit there and be horrified for 6 hours, though, and so I refused to give in to the on-coming fear. Instead, I focused on breathing. I felt as though my body had need of something else, aside from air, and that my body was being deprived of it, slowly suffocating me. I continued to focus on my breathing and on calming thoughts, and after an unknown amount of time, I decided that I had calmed down and would not be bothered with the intense feeling of suffocating and anxiety that had tried to consume me. During this time the visuals did not become frightening or threatening, they just kept dancing and moving. D kept asking if I was alright, and I always answered that I was. I decided then and there that if I decided that I was alright, then I was. It was a choice to decide to give in to fear and anxiety, or to roll with it and try to understand it. After that, I stood up and announced that we should move downstairs. I immediately felt the anxiety vanish and all that remained was a curious state of mind.

This part of the trip I refer to as 'the state of perpetual realization', as D and I were constantly making seemingly life-altering realizations. I laid down on a sofa as D sunk into a large chair. D and I were talking, very quietly, but in a quiet house, our words seemed to be the only things we could hear. I was vaguely aware that we were going in circles with our realizations, but I didn't care. My understanding of life, the universe and everything was constantly changing. I had realizations about the working of time, how billions of years of time had all come to this moment. We were just riding the slow ride of time passing, and eventually time would move beyond us and on into forever. But this was not terrifying, but rather enlightening. I felt as though I understood my place in space-time, as though my understanding had been turned off my whole life but now was turned on.

I eventually got up and went to the bathroom, which was rather uneventful aside from a quick thought given to the window behind the toilet. I saw some people on a golf cart at the country club in the background, but didn't seem too impressed or confused by this. I came back down and sat down on the foot rest of the chair D had been using (the kind that is a separate piece of furniture) and we began writing in a notebook D had brought. He was using pen, but I had a pencil in my hand for some reason, so when I asked for the book, I began writing in pencil. I felt as though I had a connection to every time that I had ever hand-written something, which was not often since leaving high-school. Suddenly I realized that every action has its own feeling, and the feeling is a connection to all the other times you have performed that action. I felt a child-like excitement as I constantly remembered and forgot many secrets of the universe, but one I kept coming back to was the idea that in an unconscious universe, it seemed as though the meaning of everything was to find consciousness, like a beacon in the dark. It was as though the entire universe existed just to see what could be, and life (or more exactly, consciousness) was the ultimate goal of everything. Through that moment, at that place, I felt as though the universe had achieved its goal, as though we were, in that exact moment, the exact thing that the universe wanted to find. I struggled with the question of 'okay, we're here. Now what?'.

I became convinced that this awareness was always present, we simply tuned it out. Our minds are capable of interpreting so much information, and they constantly do, but they also constantly suppress and discard so much information. Consciousness cannot coherently deal with such awareness, and so we learn to shut out things deemed unimportant.

Eventually we moved back upstairs, and the trip seemed less intense but as present as it had been before. My visuals had faded, though the mental trip remained strong. We found a joint we had left ourselves and smoked it, quite satisfied at having left ourselves such a wonderful gift. My altered state of awareness, the feeling of 'coming home', though I had never taken mushrooms before, was stronger than ever. Slowly I could see the light outside fading, and D suggested we vape more.

Suddenly my visuals had returned, but they were different. This time rather than having things changing and morphing, I began to lose my ability to focus on any distant object. D was not 6 feet away, but I could hardly make out his face. When I could see it, it seemed strange and unfamiliar. So I began to focus on my own hands, and realized what incredible tools they are. I felt like my hand was an incredibly complex machine, and felt a physical force pulling my fingers into a closed fist. As I moved them up, they would quickly snap back down. I realized for the first time how complex our hands are and what potential they posses. I decided that the human hand is the greatest tool of all, because it creates all other tools. I then realized that creating tools is the most selfless thing to do, because it facilitates the lives and jobs of others. For every job there is, there is a tool to make it easier. Because of this, making tools is a personal way to help others accomplish their tasks and goals.

And then we remembered the food sitting before us.

Up until now, I had not wanted food as I had felt a heavy body load and felt overly-full. But now we remembered food, and were hungry. We tore through the remnants of the wheat bread, which felt very dry and strange in my mouth. I could not tell the difference between my mouth and the bread I had put in my mouth. Somehow I managed to not bite my tongue, so it was alright.

Seemingly reading my thoughts, D suddenly declared, 'Peachcake.' I looked down at the box, still wrapped with a bow. I quickly did away with the ribbon and had the box sitting on my lap. I was unsure whether or not I even wanted to eat it, but I found it hilarious as it sat there on my lap. D handed me two small plates he had brought up and a knife to cut it. I cut the cake and somehow took it out without touching it, again amazed by my own hands. I handed D the plate and cut another piece for myself.

And then, peachcake. I had never tasted something so wonderful, so moist and sweet and fulfilling. It was like being given the ultimate reward for having taken such an intense journey, whose end still had not come. But it was alright, as this felt better than an end to the journey. We devoured the cake, leaving only a small piece when we had finished.

Soon after we felt sober enough that D went to sleep on the couch downstairs, as he had been working the entire night before tripping and was mentally and physically exhausted. I was also exhausted and slept for a while, eventually waking up, still feeling the after-effects of the mushrooms.

I learned a lot about myself from this trip. But the thing I will always remember is that when I get down, I just remember what positives exist. Just remember, wandering down that confusing and sometimes dark path, there is always peachcake.

Exp Year: 2012	ExpID: 95146
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 23
Published: Jul 19, 2020	Views: 1,199
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