DOSE:	6 g	oral	Mushrooms
		insufflated	MDMA

BODY WEIGHT:

225 lb

I had been cautiously interested in the idea of doing mushrooms for most of my college years but never had the courage or opportunity to try them. In 2011, with my last year of school winding down, I decided it was time to set aside my anxieties and jump in with both feet. My best friend, Ryan, and I set a date a month in advance to take the mushrooms during our Christmas holiday break. A large part of our reason in choosing that date is that I take Methylphenidate to treat ADD. I was well aware of the fact that this drug in combination with the mushroom could result in me either not feeling them or having a nightmarish experience. Neither one of those outcomes sounded favorable, so I was going to allow myself 13 days off my medication so as to “cleanse” my system. We had also procured about a gram of pure MDMA to further enhance the experience. Weeks passed and finally, the day had arrived.

Ryan came to the house I shared with several college friends (none of whom were home) at about noon on the day we were to dose. Also present was my good friend Jay. Both of them had a wealth of experience with mushrooms in the past but Jay would not be taking any on that day, he had volunteered his services as a trip sitter. All three of us understood the importance of creating a safe and positive setting so we took our time in properly “shroom-proofing” the house. Namely, unplugging the phone (although, in hindsight, we may have made some telemarketer’s day) and hiding all of the knives and other potentially threatening objects. The latter, we trusted Jay to do so that we couldn’t retrieve them once we were in the woods. We cranked the heat and covered all the light fixtures with colored scarves. After about 45 minutes of work, the place was ready to go. The last pre-trip task was to divvy up the MDMA because we knew we wouldn’t want to deal with it later. The plan was to nasally intake MDMA as the mushrooms peaked or, about 90 minutes into the trip.

At 2:23 pm PT, I was standing in the kitchen with Jay and Ryan holding my portion of boomer in my palm. I was taking one last moment to consider what I was about to do to my brain when Jay asked if I was going to, “eat ‘em or just fucking stare at them?”. I responded by shoving them in my mouth.

After Ryan and I and finished choking down all the musty remnants, we went outside to smoke cigs and wait. I hadn’t eaten anything that day and neither had Ryan so we figured we’d feel the effects in about half an hour. We were almost spot on. At about 3:00pm, we were standing on my porch just watching it rain when I blinked. An unassuming and inauspicious act under most circumstances, but when I opened my eyes again, everything had turned green. Allow me to explain what I mean by first stating what I don’t mean: blue and red and orange did not suddenly all change to green, it was more like I was looking at the world through a green spotlight filter. At any rate, this was fucking fascinating. I told the others and they informed me that I should buckle up because I was about to be shot to the moon. I laughed, that sounded like fun. I went back inside and Jay turned on the iTunes visualizer through my big ass flat screen. I’ll never forget what he played; it was the album Senior by Röyksopp. Now, I’d gotten super high on pot and stared at that thing before and found it to be pretty interesting, but nothing like this. It was as if I was traveling through space and time. The room and the tv disappeared, all I could see was the screen, it filled my vision and engulfed me. My internal dialogue sounded something like this: holyshitholyshitholyshitholyshit. I was in the fucking woods. I could feel the power of the mushrooms washing over me again and again like having buckets of wonderfully warm water poured over my whole body. I also felt this weird rushing sensation in my head like I was speeding towards something at light speed. I was confused by this because I happened to be perfectly immobile on my couch. I started to panic. Jay noticed this and came over to me; he sat down next to me and gently rubbed my scalp and told me everything was good and that he cared about me and everything would be okay. I immediately felt better and that was the last negative thought I had.

Fast forward about twenty minutes and I’m lying on the carpet staring like a vegetable at the ceiling which, by the way, was moving. In fact, the whole house was breathing. Instead of being alarmed by this, I felt a new found connection to my house. I smiled and timed my breathing with that of the walls. I swear I had never been that happy before. After I had spent a solid quarter hour breathing with the house, Jay informed Ryan and I that it was about time to take the MDMA. Let me say this: while I cannot speak to how anyone else might experience the combination of these two drugs, I found it to be absolutely miraculous. Having said that, here’s why I feel that way. When I snorted that line of molly, I was frying hard, I was in the woods, I was fucked up. My mind was racing at a million miles an hour and I couldn’t seem to pin down any idea for more than a second. I was becoming woefully difficult to articulate the things in my head. Not ten minutes after the molly, I was in the fucking zone. I should note before continuing that Ryan and I were both studying fiction writing at college and it had become our goal to compose a story whilst on mushrooms, I had my doubts about this being possible but here’s the rest of the story without further interruption.

As the molly began to take hold, we all stepped outside to smoke what would turn into like half a pack of cigs. I had brought my personal writing journal out with my to show Jay a piece I’d been working on. This plan went well, with one notable exception: the words were swimming around the page like fish. I handed the journal to Jay to let him read it on his own and that’s when shit got real, or unreal, haven’t decided yet. I closed my eyes to enjoy the colors I was seeing and then I just dropped, hit the deck, whatever you call it, I was down and unaware of the physical world. What I saw before me as I was laying on my porch was incredible, it changed me. I was walking down a city street, it was dark and raining hard. The place looked deserted, dilapidated. At the end of the street I was walking towards, I saw a massive office building. It’s more rundown looking than the rest. The windows are covered in grime and mold. I walk up to the door of this building and pull it open, a musty, dead smell overwhelms me as I enter. I head up the stairs and see nothing but floor after floor of file cabinets. I try to unlock some of them but they’re all locked. Eventually, I reach the top floor and make my way to an office in the far corner of this floor. In the back corner of this office, I find a switch. I feel compelled to flip it and when I do, something amazing happens: the entire building, the entire city comes to life right then and there. I can actually feel all of that energy pulsating through my whole body. Now I’m above the city and I can see it glowing in the rainy night as I rush upward towards the clouds.

The next thing I know, I’m back laying on my porch and Ryan and Jay look worried. Apparently, I hadn’t been out for more than a minute but they couldn’t wake me, I was gone. The strangest thing was that I could still feel the pulsing energy of the building I saw. I knew then that the image I saw was an image of my mind, a mind that had suddenly been turned on for the first time in 22 years. I cried, I sat there on the ground and cried. It was almost ten minutes before I could compose myself enough to explain what had just happened. They were in awe. I stood up and took a deep breath and it felt, as I would loudly announce, like the first real breath I’d ever taken.

Ryan and I spent the next 45 minutes trying to collaboratively dictate a stylized version of my mental vision. We got it all down, all two paragraphs of it. Two paragraphs took almost an hour. Shrooms right? We spent the next four and a half hours running around the house listening to Pearl Jam, talking about advanced linguistics and the origins of the universe.

Eventually, we did begin to come down and fall asleep. It took me months to fully process the gravity of the image I’d seen while I was laying on the porch but that image stays with me, there is scarcely a day that I don’t think about it. It was the most profound experience of my short life and I strive every day to live like the lights in my office building are on.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 98336
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: Oct 5, 2022	Views: 368
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MDMA (3), Mushrooms (39) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Glowing Experiences (4), Combinations (3)