DOSE: T+ 0:00		smoked	Cannabis	(daily)
T+ 0:00	3 g	oral	Mushrooms - P. cubensis	(capsule)
T+ 1:30	0.5 g	oral	Mushrooms - P. cubensis	(capsule)
T+ 0:00	1 tablet	oral	Pharms - Diazepam

BODY WEIGHT:

175 lb

I’m writing this about my ex-housemate and friend of mine, who in the interests of privacy I will call John. John was 33 at the time, I was 28. We were good friends and had been living together for almost 2 years, but I had moved out a few months prior to the event, for various reasons. John’s general deterioration being one of them.

We had taken many drugs together; I won’t list them all here but we weren’t inexperienced users, and had taken a wide variety of substances from opiates to psychedelics and many things in between. We’d both been daily weed smokers since our teens. John was a heavy drinker, in hindsight probably an alcoholic. I myself had experienced an opiate overdose and benzo addiction, resulting in hospital visits and a detox, so was also not a stranger to the pitfalls of drugs. But nothing prepared me for this night…

We were both fond of psychedelics and had frequently used LSD, Magic Mushrooms, Ketamine, 2CB etc. together. I’d also used various other tryptamines (DMT, Mescaline etc) but John hadn’t. He was more into Cocaine. I was particularly fond of Magic Mushrooms and consider them and other entheogens to be in a league of their own.

On this particular evening I had 10 capsules of 4-AcO-DMT and 3.5g of PES Amazonian mushrooms. I had decided I was going to keep the mushrooms for myself as I preferred them, and would give John and his girlfriend, Susan, some of the 4-AcO. We had all tripped many times together and had a lot of fun; I was confident they could handle themselves. Susan had tried 4-AcO once or twice but John hadn’t. I had tried it a few times but not in high doses, 25mg being the max and split across a few hours.

They both took one 25mg capsule each at around 5:30-6pm on a Saturday night. They had been drinking alcohol and smoking weed all day. I ate 3g of the mushrooms. We all sat and smoked weed and listened to music while we were waiting to come up, and they continued to drink. I’m not much of a drinker and don’t like to mix alcohol with psychedelics, so I abstained. John was egging me on to do some 4-AcO on top of the shrooms which I thought would be a bad idea so I refused, although after 90 mins or so I dosed another mushroom capsule, bringing me up to 3.5g (which in hindsight was a ridiculous dose to do in that environment.)

As I dosed this additional capsule John had decided he wanted to take more 4-AcO as it was only about 7-7:30pm and he wanted to have a ‘strong trip’ and was already really feeling the 4-AcO effects. He erroneously took this to mean that the trip wouldn’t last long enough. He took one capsule then another (I regret to say I egged him on) bringing his dose to 75mg< (don’t ever do this!!!) Susan also dropped another bringing her up to 50mg.

Time gets a little fuzzy and confusing after this for the next hour or so. I remember sitting in the lounge and John repeatedly exclaiming how good the visuals were, how good he was feeling, how 4-AcO would be the perfect drug to go clubbing on. I noticed it had hit him harder than any other drug I’d ever seen him on but didn’t think much of it. He then became a little weird exclaiming loudly ‘THINGS ARE VERY VERY GOOOD’ to no one in particular and waving his hands enthusiastically. He repeatedly said this to Susan (who was also coming up hard) and would insist she agreed, leading him to say ‘Things are really, really good, aren’t they? Things are really, really good, aren’t they? Things are really, really good, aren’t they?’ over and over again, which I found slightly annoying, but I was coming up myself and wasn’t paying too much attention. He then started saying how happy he was, how he couldn’t believe how good things were, and exclaiming ‘I’M SO HAPPY, I’M SO PLEASED, THINGS ARE REALLY REALLY GOOD RIGHT NOW, WE’RE IN SUCH A GOOD POSITION’ etc etc. I recall him telling Susan that they were going to go to their boss and ask for a raise (they both worked together) and that things would be EVEN BETTER.

As the shrooms started to take effect I began to find it extremely funny that he was repeating himself over and over again and started hysterically laughing. Susan too started laughing, and she and I were in hysterics in the lounge while he was telling us how happy he was (this was all very good natured) and his sentence was, for ages, something like ‘Things are SO good right now, I’m SO happy! We’re in SUCH a good position! You can laugh but it’s true! Things are so good right now! We’re in SUCH a good position! I don’t know why you’re laughing, because it’s true! Things are SO good right now!’ and basically just going on and on in a loop. I’d never seen him so happy. At some point he convinced himself he could make us all billions of pounds from a business he’d set up, and this became an unfortunate theme of the evening. He was also jabbering away about Elon Musk.

I realised after (?) amount of time I was laughing hysterically and uncontrollably, had been for a while, and was feeling a bit sick and struggling to breathe. It then came to me I was starting to trip serious balls and needed to calm myself down a bit. I’d been laughing with my eyes shut for some time and sounded maniacal. Susan was also laughing her head off while John was repeating himself louder and louder and starting to sound agitated. I looked over at him and saw he was pretty much lying on top of her shouting at her about how good everything was, how he’d made us all billions of pounds, and he didn’t know why she was laughing about it. His eyes looked like a crazed animal. I felt uneasy and went into the loo to try and calm down, adjust to my trip, and get away from the calamity.

I sat on the loo and heard John repeating himself, which made me laugh even more (but in an insane ‘too many shrooms’ way). I then started to get a very bad feeling because I realised, he had become extremely loud, and could hear him over the thumping music, still stuck in a loop and repeating himself. My fear increased because I was already having pretty intense open eye visuals and the walls/doors were all sliding and melting around; I knew I’d taken a high dose and needed to be in a calm environment. I decided I need to get some fresh air and try to adjust to the trip so I went and sat out on the roof above the street.

I had an anxious feeling at the back of my mind that something wasn’t right with John, but honestly, I just didn’t want to believe it, and I was so high I didn’t really know what was going on. Little did I know the sheer terror that was about to unfold. I sat on the floor outside and tried to breathe; I felt like I was in a desert and could see things scuttling around in my vision. I knew I was in for a ride and asked the mushrooms to help me, if things went bad. Good move, because they sure did. Seconds later John came tumbling out of the window at me, staggering around the roof, shouting at me about how he’d made billions of pounds, how he didn’t understand why we were laughing at him. I definitely was not laughing at this point and freaked out told him to go back inside to the lounge and chill out (he of course couldn’t even hear me, I think he was completely gone by this point) but I remember Susan managed to get him inside, only because I saw him slam into the window a few seconds later, whilst still staggering around and shouting at her. My sense of dread was steadily increasing.

I went back into the house a few minutes later and it was like something out of psychedelic hell. There was loud, loud, dark Drum ‘n Bass blasting, windows and doors open everywhere, Susan leaning on the kitchen sink trying to steady herself with her hair all over her face, and John screaming in her face to stop laughing at him, waving his arms around and going on and on about ‘the business’ and the ‘billions of pounds’ and ‘Elon Musk’ – it was absolutely crazy. He was so agitated and staggering around smashing into things, I could see his energy levels rising, I could see the veins bulging in his arms, and his eyes were COMPLETELY gone, like huge black holes, I’ve never seen anything so scary in my life. His skin was going grey and he looked totally demonic. His hair was sticking up and it even looked like his tongue was pointy. He didn’t look angry, he looked completely crazed, totally possessed, almost grinning. It horrified me to think people can actually look like that, truly like something out of The Exorcist and even that was nothing compared to this. He couldn’t hear a word either of us said but was shouting and babbling so fast he could hardly keep the sentences coherent and the words would run into each other.

I realised that we were all totally out of it, in way over our heads, and in a terrifying situation. I started desperately trying to gather my things so I could leave and he saw me and ran toward me yelling at me to stop laughing at him and going on about the business, and how ‘obvious’ it was that he’d made billions of pounds. I said, in a scared voice, ‘nobody’s laughing John’ (nobody had laughed for ages at this point) and tried to reason with him a bit, pleading with him to go sit down in the lounge, so we could talk about ‘the business’, smoke a joint etc. Obviously, nothing would get through.

I realised this was some serious shit so I got my Valium out and took some and I also handed some to Susan and told her to take it so we could come down a bit and try and get a handle on the situation. I said to her ‘we need to get him to take this’ and we tried in vain for a while to get him to take it, she was even putting it in his mouth and trying to get him to chew/swallow it, but he was so agitated and crazy and shouting so much it wasn’t happening. I kept trying to reason with him and saying ‘John, John you need to take this, I’ve taken some, Susan’s taken some, you need to take this’ but he had no clue what I was saying and kept shouting at us about the imaginary business.

At this point I was tripping hard and petrified, I thought ‘fuck this, it’s not my problem’ and said to Susan ‘sorry, you’ll have to get him to take the Valium, I’ve got to go, this is too much’ and went and gathered up my stuff to leave, with John following me around shouting at me the whole time. I put my stuff in my bag and ran out the door, as I was turning to shut it, I saw a look of pure terror on Susan’s face which will stick with me for the rest of my life and honestly hit me right in the heart. She was 39 years old and had been around the block a few times (she was 12 the first time she dropped acid) but I could see in her face she’d never seen anything like this.

I shut the door on them both with John still shouting and I made it all of about 5 steps away before I turned around and went back. The mushrooms were screaming at me to go back. I knew at this point that I had to metaphorically run back into the flames. I went back to the door and opened it (I still had a key from when I lived there) and said ‘Susan, do you want me to call someone? Ambulance?’ she looked really scared, nodded and said ‘yeah, yeah I think we need to call someone’ and this is where shit got haywire. I gave John one last chance and said ‘John if you don’t take the Valium, I am calling the police’ and he continued to shout at me, so I knew I had to make the call.

As the front door was open and John was still screaming at us NON-STOP about ‘the business’ and ‘billions of pounds’, I went outside to call 999, at which point he chased me out onto the street and was literally running/staggering behind me as I was frantically on the phone to the operator trying to explain what was happening. I told them my friend had overdosed and had a psychotic break and they needed to send an ambulance. They could hear him in the background screaming.

The next 45 mins was just hell. We lived right on a busy main road and there were loads of people around in nearby pubs or just walking around. John stood in the middle of the road almost getting hit by cars and started jumping up and down in the street on the spot, like a frog, screaming at the top of his lungs about taking over the world, making billions of pounds, being Elon Musk, why were people laughing etc etc. the same delusional shit over and over again. Needless to say this attracted a LOT of attention – people started shouting out of their windows from their houses at him to ‘shut the fuck up’ – people were running up from the road and the pubs as they thought he was attacking me and Susan, Susan was frantically trying to restrain him from chasing me while I was on the phone to the operator, all the while I can see John turning an even worse pale grey colour, his whole body was pulsing, his veins were bulging, he looked like his head was about to explode, he’d smashed a window by the house and cut his hand so was also bleeding.

He was clinging his hands to his chest and screaming ‘I’M SO PASSIONATE ABOUT THIS’ I have honestly never seen anything so deranged and scary in my entire life; his clothes were soaked in sweat, his eyes were giant, cartoon and inhuman like, he wouldn’t stop running around, jumping, smashing into things; I became petrified he was going to have a heart attack (which I found out later he nearly did). I’ve never seen that level of energy in anyone and I knew his body wouldn’t be able to cope much longer, it was horrific.

We managed to get John back into the house with Susan (I stayed outside on the phone to the operator, crouched on the pavement in terror, trying not to completely spin out myself) I tried to ring Susan a few times and her phone rang out, I honestly thought he had killed her. The 999-operator said as he was being violent, they needed to send police and the paramedics couldn’t enter the scene until the police got there. The ambulance turned up first but the police couldn’t find the house so it was an agonising wait. It was truly a nightmare scenario.

Finally, 8 cops showed up and I opened the door for them but told them I wasn’t going in there. They made me wait outside with a policeman and kept asking me what he had taken (nobody had heard of 4-AcO-DMT ) but they managed to get John into the ambulance and to the hospital. He was still telling them he was Elon Musk but by this point was now also claiming to be God, a rich man and shouting random numbers. They had to blue light him on the way to the hospital as his heart was beating over 200bpm. He spent the night in high-dependency hooked up to all kinds of drips. I found out later that while we were waiting for the police, he’d attacked Susan and tried to strangle her, she was covered in bruises, earrings ripped out etc. All the while telling her to stop laughing.

I saw him a week after for a couple of hours. He said he would ‘100%’ take the drug again, just not such a high dose. I told him I don’t think it agreed with him but he insisted he would be fine taking it again at a lower dose. I knew he was pretty much gone when he said this and that the bad trip had been the culmination of years of drug and alcohol abuse. Apparently, he remembered none of it. I haven’t seen him since and he no longer responds to text messages from myself or anyone I know so I have no idea what’s happened to him. This happened exactly one year ago. I’ve never seen Susan again.

I have since had a bad trip on mushrooms (my first and only bad trip) after using psychedelics for years, and I realise now that if one messes around with hallucinogens, there will come a point where they slap you down hard. These things are unpredictable and must be treated with the greatest of respects above all else. They own us.
Peace, look after yourselves, and be careful <3

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 113319
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 28
Published: Jul 2, 2019	Views: 1,400
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Second Hand Report (42), Train Wrecks & Trip Disasters (7)