DOSE:

2 g

oral

Mushrooms - P. semilanceata

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

92 kg

This experience tok place in my own home. I was alone, and listening to a Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research playlist on Youtube.

Background

I’m a 35-year-old British man, diagnosed with Bipolar 2 in 2014 following a major breakdown and second suicide attempt. I was first diagnosed with depression at 15.

While making good recovery from the sound and fury of my 2014 breakdown, it’s given me cause to regather and reconsider my life. I’d been curious about the effects of psilocybin on mental health for a few years and in late 2015 decided to give it a go.

For the three months prior to this experience, I had been taking small, barely threshold doses of liberty caps 2-3 times a week, interleaved with a slightly higher dose every two weeks or so where I took an evening aside to write and think about any issues and thoughts that had arisen. Dosing in this way has been undoubtedly useful, reconnecting me with an appreciation for life lived in the moment. Although happy in my atheism and comfortable in my rational materialism (for want of a better description), I have started meditating and incorporating forms of spiritual practice into my everyday life.

This high dose was an intended culmination of the past three months. In order to diminish tolerance effects, the two weeks prior involved no dosing at all. I had intended to step up my meditation practise but if anything it fell away - a brief depressive lull and a new job got in the way. Given this, I considered putting this off until the time was ‘right’, but throughout this process I’ve found that too much planning is generally misguided - the psychedelics take me where I need to go, not necessarily where I want.

Foreground

As I say, I’d experienced a brief depressive lull a few weeks back. This resonated with something which had emerged in one of my fortnightly dosing sessions - an underlying sense of grief and sorrow I experience, behind the heartbeat of the world.

I noted this grief as I emerged from the lull - and while I could intellectually grasp it - grief for life’s transience is in the same breath joy for its presence - it still haunted me.

Going into this session, I’d wondered about exploring these themes - but I feared going too far. I was going to be alone, after all, and this was a higher dose than I’d ever taken before. I hoped - more gently and more generally - for some resolution to my knotted neuroses. I already knew, viscerally, that psilocybin loosened up the knotted threads of my psyche somewhat, and I hoped for a continuation of this.

I was also, however, fearful. I was taking a higher dose than I’d ever taken before, I was doing it without a sitter, and although I knew that I would be physically fine I couldn’t be certain how my mind would cope. I worried I was being an idiot, wanting too much of a good thing.

Also of relevance; just over a year ago a dear friend and lover - Phil - was tragically killed in a traffic accident. Though the grief has faded to the background of the everyday, not a day goes by when I don’t think of him.

He was a musician.

Here is my report

---

Vignette

I can’t have been more than 8, possibly much younger.

That day, I’d gone walking with my dad. The day was wide and blue and full of sun and spring. We’d found a tree swing, I’d jumped on it and dad had pushed me and the big blue world swept up around under and over me and I laughed.

I lay in bed that evening, thinking how much fun I’d had, a warm warm glow. Then ice, then an unwelcome chill, as I realised I could never have that day again, never ever. It had gone now, and I could never get it back. Never ever.

---

The morning after

I open my mouth, soft; a brief gasp of air escapes, a kiss? A moan? The world catches my breath.

I open the curtains, pull back the net; Louis Armstrong sings to me, telling me it’s a beautiful world.

It is a beautiful world.

Gray skies, rain, wet tiles and wet roads. My breath mists the window as I, as I gasp, near moan, breath dissolves into the moment. It’s a beautiful world.

I have bacon for breakfast.

---

The night before

I lay, closed my eyes, felt myself a child, a baby, infinite arms holding me in infinite tenderness, stroking, stroking. The world pulsed, melted, I pulsed, melted, world, I, world, world, melted.

Celestial, purple erotic, rolling roiling bliss, ecstasy, now now now. It’s all… we’re all… I… … …

Shudder, I can feel it, the music’s taking me to remembrance of Phil. Shudder. Shudder.

Quake.

Howl. Wordless howl, I feel my body arch my mouth gape, fill the world with pain and anguish and falling forever into black and nothing and nothing even as celestial purple blue, brilliant white light, even as melting, I feel, gape, howl, soundless void of

I know, I know I whimper. I know, I understand, but it hurts.
I know, I understand, but it hurts
I know, I understand, but it hurts

Quake, shatter, blossom, melt, it hurts it hurts it hurts

Please don’t ever take the pain away
Please don’t ever take the pain away
I know I understand but it hurts
Please don’t ever take the pain away

Waves roil over me, in me, would never take the pain away, could never take the pain away, the agony is ecstasy, without grief love is not, without the soundless void my mouth agape and grimacing there is no bliss, this is bliss, could no more take the pain away than take stillness from dance, or silence from music.

It’s ok.

Thank you.

I love you.

Lost, found, like a wave in the ocean. Dissolved, beautifully, blissfully, agonisingly.

I never realised how many different kinds of love there are, and how they all pulse forth expressed as one, how life feels them all for itself over and over, forever blossoming, forever falling, forever joyful and grieving.

I love you I love you, I murmur, saying the words as a child to its mother as a mother to her children as a lover to his lover, friend to friend, I love you I love you I murmur, feeling the force of the words the meaning of them, every singe kaleidoscopic syllable and tone of love.

I love you I love you I love you I murmur, saying it as the world to myself as myself to the world, begging for forgiveness and comforting with infinite love, a lover in passion a throwaway comment to a friend a parting kiss a greeting touch, I love you I love you.

It’s OK.

Thank you.

---

Who knows how long that lasted? An infinity, eternity, outside time outside self, the concepts had ceased to hold meaning.

I felt I was weeping emeralds.

---

It was intense. Too intense for comfort, especially alone. I pulled myself together on occasion, texted friends, even scrolled through Facebook a bit; trying to make sure I kept touch with the ground, once my ego began to condense.

Still.

Argo Part’s Cantus in Memoriam Britten struck me, exquisitely beautiful, a haunting paean, suspended once more I wept, it seemed a memorial to Phil, especially as the video was filmed in the Royal Albert hall. Proms.

I listened to the classical scores and wondered that I’d never truly appreciated their intricate beauty before, wondered that anyone ever listened to anything else. I wept, gently. I wept. Emeralds.

---

Imagine, the most intense and mind-blowing sex, fierce and boundless, ravenous, unstoppable. Imagine the fury of it, the soul shattering moment as you cum, as you explode. Imagine that, turned up to the nth degree, infinite, boundless, howling, gasping, wordless, celestial.

Alone, in bed. Wishing I had someone to hold, holding me. Waves of bliss recede, my… me… my… I’m… gasping, still. Post orgasmic chills. But no one to speak with or hold me or kiss, or tell them I love them, I love them I love them, and it’s OK.

I fall asleep eventually. It’s OK. I’m OK, I’m better than OK. I know, I understand, and it hurts. Please never take the pain away.

---

So.

I wake. Headache from dehydration, and I’ve not slept properly. No worries, those will all resolve themselves.

I get up, open the curtains, pull back the net. Louis Armstrong sings to me, telling me it’s a beautiful world.

It is a beautiful world.

Exp Year: 2016	ExpID: 108215
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 35
Published: Apr 13, 2016	Views: 6,427
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Mushrooms - P. semilanceata (90) : Depression (15), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), General (1), Alone (16)