DOSE:	10 g	oral	Mushrooms - P. atlantis	(fresh)
	1 cup	oral	Tea
	1 cig.	smoked	Tobacco - Cigarettes

BODY WEIGHT:

9 st

My son (Whom I will refer to as J) ordered 30g fresh Mexicana Truffles and was very happy to receive his order plus a free 15g bag of Atlantis Truffles. He consumed his at a friend’s house and told me about his trip. I was curious to try this myself, so a few days later he offered me 10 grams of the free Atlantis Truffles he had received. Although I was apprehensive as I’d never taken psychedelics before, I wasn’t convinced that it would have any effect on me apart maybe that I’d feel a little weird and possibly nauseous.

I had read some trip reports on forums and had heard that it is worth asking ‘the mushroom’ a question; apparently the introspective nature of the trip could help one learn things about oneself. I had no idea of what question I was going to ask of it, I just knew that I wanted to understand its true nature. As it happened I failed to come up with a question, and decided to take the plunge regardless.

J chopped 10 grams of the sclerotia into tiny pieces and piled it onto a tablespoon along with several small chunks of milk chocolate skilfully balanced on top. The sclerotia looked and tasted like sour walnuts, but the chocolate had managed to mask the unpleasant acrid aftertaste. Once I had finished chewing I knew the only thing left to do was to wait. J was my sitter but wanted me to have my own independent trip, he went back to his room but periodically checked on me and told me to call for him if things took a turn for the worse.

Nothing happened for nearly an hour until I felt a slightly creepy sensation , but it wasn’t frightening as much as it was odd. The feeling persisted for 10 minutes before wearing off and my legs began to feel cold, other than this nothing else was happening. 10 more minutes passed and the yawning started – despite not being tired I couldn’t help but yawn at everything, I was convinced that the trip wasn’t going to happen.

The yawning stopped suddenly and I was getting bored of waiting for something to happen. I sat on the sofa with the intention of watching TV but felt restless and didn’t feel like watching, I didn’t even feel like listening to music.

Glancing around the room I noticed that the lounge door was shrinking and moving backwards slightly and so were the walls and curtains, this made me think of Alice in Wonderland which I thought quite entertaining. Black and white patterns like tribal tattoos were floating across the rug which then seemed to move away as bright colourful patterns drifted around the room. My legs were still cold but I forgot this in my fascination of the shapes and colours whirling about.

Shortly afterwards, J came down to see how I was doing. I had propped myself up against the right-hand side of the sofa to enjoy the colour show and he asked if I wanted to hear any music but I told him that I was already listening to a bird which I could distinctly hear singing as it flew up from the area in front of me, over some trees and then into the distance. I told him that I was okay and would call him if I needed him.

Although the swirling patterns of shapes and colours were incredibly involving and seemed to be drawing me towards them, part of my mind was very clear as if it were unaffected and slightly removed from what I was seeing. I distinctly remember thinking that actually the colours were almost too strong and vivid. They instantly changed from bright primary colours to softer yet bright fluorescent pinks, purples and blues.

Even though they were still moving about in front of my eyes I could see and hear the same bird from earlier, it was in the distance but I could see that it had long colourful tail feathers rather like a bird of paradise but not quite as colourful. It seemed to be making a musical call as if to lure me into following its sound. It did this repeatedly, flying up from a little way in front of me then up over what looked like jungle trees and foliage.

This felt visually and audibly enticing but I held back as naturally I have never liked jungle settings – they always make me feel claustrophobic and uneasy. As this reminder passed through my mind the jungle scene seemed to move further away and it looked more like a forest, there was a clearing in front of it and I could see more of the sky. I preferred being shown this setting more and felt more at ease as a result.

I noticed that the patterns had stopped whirling and were more like moving strands forming across my eyes. These seemed faintly pink as if picking up some of the colour from the previous patterns, until the pink faded away and I could see that the strands were actually white. At this point I began to feel incredibly uneasy. I had the distinct impression that I had been enticed into something almost like a web. First, colours had been used to attract my attention, then the bird song my mind was following and now I was getting caught in these web-like strands.

The clear part of my brain told me not to panic. “You don’t want a bad trip”, I thought to myself. I remembered what J had told me about his trip and I thought how strange it was that this trip seemed to be completely different. Immediately I heard a voice as clear as the sounds in the room: “We are a different creature.” Startled, I looked around the room but I knew I’d heard this in my head. It sounded like one voice but made up of many voices.

I was still sitting up with my eyes open. I could see the furniture and everything else in the room even through the white strands were still moving across my eyes. I wasn’t scared at this point as I became fascinated with the realization that this voice came from an organic being, yet at the same time it also felt like it could have been from an alien being. Not so much a spaceship/sci-fi alien but an organic alien. I can’t quite describe it but what further fascinated me was that I knew:

It/They were a sentient being.
It/They knew of themselves, and that they also knew of the type of mushroom J had tried but weren’t connected to it in any way. I don’t know how it was happening but I was rapidly getting some insights about this being.

I was amazed by this and wanted to call out to J to tell him about this but my lips started to tingle and swell and I couldn’t move them. I realized that I couldn’t feel my legs to stand up either and I started to panic. Luckily with the clear part of my brain I told myself to calm down and that if there was a fire for some reason I’d know to get up and out of the room! My common sense thinking managed to re-assure me.

Suddenly I felt myself being forced right over to my left side. The upper part of my body landed on the seat at a right angle with my legs still in the same position as before as if I was paralyzed and I didn’t have time to stop myself. My ears were quickly filled with a noise similar to cicadas only somehow more musical. It wasn’t uncomfortably loud and I could still hear the sound of the singing bird making the same call over and over but I wasn’t seeing a forest this time - I was seeing more and more white strands over my eyes and less of the room behind them.

I could feel that these strands were all around me. They were stretched out to the left and right, above and below and I felt that they were gently vibrating through their entire lengths. In my mind’s eye I saw that I had been caught in them just like a fly in a web, I knew it was because I had followed the sounds and colours, I had simply gotten too close to them. It was nothing personal. This is just how this organic being is. It attracts anything that gets close enough to it. I didn’t feel like a fly that would get eaten by a spider, there was no prey-like feeling attached to this ‘web’ so I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen next.

Instantly I saw an image which was exactly like the pictures you see on medical documentaries when they show the neural pathways of the brain. I saw and felt 3 or 4 pulses of light speed through these pathways which belonged to my own brain.

As the shock of this hit me my eyes widened and I was aware that they were flickering rapidly around the room. At the same time I heard the voice say “We are”. I knew instantly what this meant; somehow I had become one with this being – permanently. And whilst I had got to know It, It had also known me – not just as a personal individual, but as another organic being. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that understanding could be a two way street?

I felt myself going downwards as if being absorbed into the ground, for a moment I imagined that I was in a grassy area near some trees and I could see the hem of J’s jeans. They looked huge and when I looked up I could see him towering above me like a giant, he was looking in the distance and calling me but I was tiny and he couldn’t see me near his feet.

“I’ve got to call him down here.” I thought. “What if I disappear forever?”

I quickly told myself “Don’t be such a wimp.” I quickly told myself, “You’re obviously at the peak of the trip. Your eyes are all over the place. It’ll all be over soon.”

The next thing I knew I was in a space underground, It didn’t feel claustrophobic (Thankfully!) and wasn’t particularly dark. In fact there was even a light area which I felt I could easily move towards and I knew that if I did I would find myself in an entirely different place which once again, made me think of Alice In Wonderland again for some reason.

My eyelids started to close and I had a feeling that if they were to do so, I would fall asleep and wake up as if from a marvellous dream (the same as Alice did). I didn’t want this, I wanted to stay awake and be aware of my whole trip - the problem was that I didn’t know how to get back above the ground and I didn’t want to stay here. I started getting panicky so I thought that if I called out to J and he could pull me back upright and I’d be okay. My lips felt looser and not swollen anymore so I tried calling him but I obviously didn’t call loudly enough as he didn’t hear me.

For a moment I felt afraid and very alone. Trying to avoid feeling even more scared I forced my lips and called out louder. Immediately I heard 3 separate and distinct knocks (as if on some kind of wooden door) and I felt a rapid vibration through the web-like strands to the right of me. It was as if I had attracted the attention of this organic being(s), which nearly freaked me out until luckily J came into the room. He pulled me upright from my sideways position and I was okay.

The strands started to fade as the trip was ending but I still felt part of them even when I was drinking tea and smoking a cigarette in the dining room. I think a joint would’ve been better as the trip finished but apart from that I felt deeply happy inside, like I’d been on an amazing adventure.

Over the next couple of days I didn’t get any ‘flashbacks’ or things like that but I experienced a few further insights about this organic being and learned some more things about it, including how it deals with minor viruses. Nearly a week later I came across a website with an article about these truffles I took.

Somebody had asked what the difference between magic mushrooms and sclerotia (Truffles) were, so the website showed an animated illustration of magic mushrooms above ground and how their spores are released creating mycelium underground. I had a hunch that the strands I had seen in my trip may have had something to do with the mushroom worked, but as I watched this I realised this wasn’t what I’d seen on my trip - I must have imagined the whole experience.

I was kind of disappointed…until they showed the same diagram, but for the sclerotia.

I couldn’t believe I saw - here were the strands from my trip…on my computer, yet on my trip I had been literally inside them. I was able to show J exactly what I had seen and to this day the similarities astound me.

What was I shown in my trip? Was it a coincidence that I had seen the very essence of the sclerotia itself underground? I thought back to the question I had asked before I even ingested the mushrooms: “I just want to understand its true nature” I was shocked but also very, very grateful – ‘Respect the mushroom’ indeed.

Exp Year: 2012	ExpID: 100374
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 53
Published: Mar 9, 2018	Views: 4,742
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Mushrooms - P. atlantis (856) : Alone (16), Guides / Sitters (39), Entities / Beings (37), First Times (2)