So, finally after about a year of sitting on some mushrooms I had purchased, I had my first trip this weekend along with my girl. I’ll describe the trip in case anyone’s interested, and I’ll ask a few questions along the way on the chance that someone here knows.
The bag of mushrooms I bought said 8.5g (dry) on it, so I split it into four quarters of about 2g each. Now, I don’t own a very sensitive scale (I’m considering investing in one), so I had to eyeball it. It looked pretty good to me, but might I have been off by a lot going this way? You’ll see why I ask if you read on. Anyway, my girl and I each ate 2g worth. Originally I had considered a few different methods of ingestion and finally we settled on just chewing and eating them straight (with a little thing of honey in case we wanted to dip). They actually weren’t that bad, I was pretty surprised. Maybe we lucked out, but neither of us were too bothered by the taste. We ate them in about 5-10 minutes.
We took some advice and didn’t plan anything particular other than having good music on hand (with the hope that we’d be able to operate the mp3 player :P). I started feeling mildly lightheaded within 10 minute. My girl was feeling slight lightheaded just a bit later, though not as bad. It came very quickly to me that I was having a hard time moving from my place. I certainly felt sedated and not able to think too quickly. My girl on the other hand, was quite capable. Very soon I was quite queasy and my girl hauled me into another room to help calm me. This was a good idea. I calmed down immediately, but the queasiness was still there. I started feeling really good mentally. Colours were popping out. The room had a beautiful colourful theme that changed depending on what I was focusing on. I still felt totally sedated, and my queasiness only started easing up after 30 minutes or so. Do most people experience such queasiness during the come up? Would it diminish if I tried again? If I ate in a different way would it diminish the chance of this?
About an hour or so into it, my stomach is feeling just fine and I’m enjoying the trip more and more. But it’s confusing. The room we’re in keeps changing dimensions, feeling at times vast, and at times constraining. So does the couch we’re laying on (in various odd positions). I keep relating this info to my girl in a matter-of-fact way, and she’s giggling intensely and apologizing for it. I assure her that her giggles are just fine. For this part of the trip, that was the limit of her experience: everything was funny and light. Sounds like a good trip too, but she was let down that she didn’t get to have visual or auditory hallucinations like I did. So the question is of course, did she not eat enough or are some people simply immune to such effects? I find it hard to believe she ate that much less than me, it looked pretty close. But maybe somehow the weight was out of wack with the size of the shooms. Or was her experience simply that different?
Anyway, at 3 hours since first bite I’m confident enough to stand up and move around much more and the visual hallucinations are striking. Faces pop out of nearly everything. Dimensions are totally out of the ordinary. Things change and surprise me. Colours are deep and gorgeous. It feels like I can see every strand of fur on my cat, and his (normally black) coat has a beautiful deep purple highlight to it. But I know what’s going on and am able to think straight if I try. The girl says she feels much taller (I don’t see it). That and the giggling.
We head back to the original room and we set ourselves down to listen to music. The girl is reading depth into the lyrics of what we’re listening to and it seems pretty good. I’m too distracted by the heaving shelves in our Ikea LACK. The books on each of the square cubbies seem to multiply as the shelves open themselves up, like accordions, for breath. As before, the dimensions are off, but now I’m noticing it with all the little objects in the room. My girl and I like to record ourselves for fun, and just handling the little voice recorder is quite weird. In real life it’s long and thin. In mushroom land it’s short and stubby. And it too is heaving, the small stereo speakers at its top acting as its gills. Believe it or not, at this point, as we’re recording ourselves I feel otherwise clear of mind. Something is different, there’s no doubt about that, but I feel relatively sharp in my head at least.
We listen to more music and the edges of the song feel three dimensional and engulfing. The sound is absolutely gorgeous. My girlfriend is (extra) gorgeous. Her boobs seem to be exploding out of her top. I feel a sense of love so strong. I see ourselves years down the road. I feel incredibly happy and content. She is feeling happy as well. Things are light and amusing and enjoyable for her. She’s also having deep thoughts. I’m entranced at points by the grain of the wood floor. It feels like I can look deeply into the details of anything with a texture to it (and particularly anything with a natural pattern).
The bathroom is a wacky adventure in itself. I feel like I’m in cartoon land. Everything looks silly. Even I look silly in the mirror. I feel incredibly light in my mood. This is important for me as I can get stressed out in life when I know I shouldn’t. I don’t think I had that stressed feeling for the entire trip, and I’m hoping there’s something to learn there. It certainly feels like it. Anyway, it’s about that time in the bathroom (maybe 4 hours in) that I start to realize that I’m a monkey (or monkey man rather). I proclaim this to my girl. My fingers feel long, I look around at my cell phone, the remote control, my pipe and other things, and I admire my monkey man tools. The pretense of our current human culture feels so transparent it’s just plain silly. I feel good about where I am in life. I like being a monkey man in our time and wonder what the future holds and what I can accomplish in a world where most people don’t realize they’re just smart monkeys with neat tools. I feel good about my potential.
We decide to venture to the outside world at around 4:30 or so. Most of my visual hallucinations are gone by this point but my mind is still in mushroom mode and colours are still quite wonderful. I decide to have a puff of weed before heading outside and it certainly adds to the good vibrations. We venture to a park and I’m overtaken by emotion in one of our many conversations. We venture to another park and watch the many people go by. Everyone is truly a character. Their faces are all so wonderfully distinct. Unique facial features seem to stand out even more on mushrooms. But people seem somewhat transparent too. The way they interact with each other, the styles they dress in: all an act. Most people are suppressing their true selves by what our culture deems acceptable. Now I’m sure that’s obvious to a lot of people, but it became downright silly on mushrooms and the point was made well. It led me to many very interesting thoughts. Smells were amazing outside.
We got home at around the 6 hour mark and our trip was pretty much done. We both felt somewhat different for the rest of the day. We drove to a restaurant for dinner that night and the girl popped in a Rufus album (not my typical choice). “Wouldn’t it be a lovely headline: Life Is Beautiful, on a New York Times.” I agreed with all my heart.
We’ve been left thinking about the experience. I had many revelations, and what’s more, I saw the direction to others, and am excited to try again and see what comes out. The girlfriend, of course, wants to know if she got ripped off or if that’s the limit of her experience here. We’re both going to try again before the end of July if we have the time.
Congrats on your first trip.