DOSE:	1 g	oral	Mushrooms
		oral	Vitamins - Niacin

BODY WEIGHT:

135 lb

My men's group was set to go on our annual kayak camping trip down a Florida river. This year we chose the wildest, most beautiful stretch of the Suwannee, from its outlet at the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia down to Fargo, a 3-day trip. On three previous trips over the 16 years that we have been river camping, the group has tried to have a group journey with a psychedelic (one attempt on LSD, and two attempts on mushrooms). I say "attempts," because for whatever reasons, the medicines had lacked potency and nobody had felt much of anything. I had opted out each time, because I was taking Prozac in those years.

Recently, I cultivated psilocybin mushrooms and for a month I have enjoyed microdosing on .05 to .1 gram. The experience is calmness, openness, and lucidity. The world is subtly brighter and more vivid, without any unpleasant side effects. In short, microdosing on shrooms is everything Prozac was supposed to be, but always failed to be.

I had already kayaked on a big lake and on the Wacissa River while microdosing, and I loved it. So I researched a stronger dose that would still be safe for kayaking with [the men's group]. On four different websites, I read about a "museum dose" (.5 to 2 grams). This is a dosage that is supposed to allow you to visit a museum and really grok the art, without attracting undo attention from the security guards, because you still have your shit together. Okay, "museum dose" sounded good, and I opted for 1 gram --- the middle of the suggested range.

On the morning after the first night on the river, after everyone had repacked his tent and stowed his gear, I distributed 1 gram dried B+ shroom taken with a mix of lemon and grapefruit juice, to which I had added ~ 150 mg. niacin per person. The group usually has eight guys, but only six could make it on the trip. One friend took a bit less than 1 gram and three men took closer to 1.5 grams.

Thanks to the lemon tek and niacin, everyone came up very fast and we were all tripping within 15 minutes. I was beginning to peak at only about a half-hour into the experience.

Once on the river, the medicine's effects came on strongly and I felt my whole nervous system getting powerfully activated. Suddenly, a flock of ibises exploded overhead in a noisy beatific vision that made me gasp with awe. (I would call it an "exaltation," but that term is reserved for a flock of larks.) The energy surging through my body-mind was getting steadily stronger. I did not feel nauseated; not exactly, but I felt "super-charged" to an uncomfortable degree, and I knew the full effects had not yet been reached. Uh-Oh! Behind me on the water, my friends were overcome with sickness and were making loud retching noises, which made me feel guilty and worried about how they would fare as the trip progressed . What had I gotten them into? Would they be angry with me? I did not yet consider that being on the river was dangerous, so I was not yet afraid, just bummed that my brothers were not having a joyful experience, and things were probably going to get worse for them. However, within the next 20 minutes, my worries for my friends and for myself turned into fear for our survival.

The now-thunderous energy was starting to over-amp my nervous system and was making me swoon, carrying my awareness out of the body-mind plane of attention, into the luminous domain beyond this world. I would "melt" into the Brightness, then I would "come to" and find myself drifting with a strong current down the Suwannee River. Not safe! I told my two friends paddling near me, "This is dangerous! I've got to get off the water!" One friend suggested, "Just surrender, Mark. The river will take care of you." I told him I could relate to the communion he was enjoying, but, in my case, if I let myself surrender, I would quickly pass out of this world, and it seemed quite possible that, while slumped in my seat, I might hit debris and spill from my kayak and drown.

We then came upon some dry land, but there were chairs set up there and shotgun shells on the ground, so my friends opted to keep going down the river. I followed them, but I said, "Guys, I really NEED to get off the river as soon as possible!! I'm coming undone!" As luck would have it, we were now in a swampy part of the river and there was no more high ground with oak trees and solid land. I felt desperate, and pictured myself lying on some muddy patch of low ground in the swamp, safely off the river. But I had seen alligators, and though I deemed it unlikely, it did not seem impossible that a gator might pounce on my sprawled body while I was oblivious to the world. At this point, I put on my life-vest, which despite my fear, made me laugh, because the vest was way too small for me and it had one busted strap and the second strap had been mostly chewed through (a few years ago, the closet where I store my camping gear had a mouse infestation). All this while, I knew the way to engender a "bad trip" is to resist the flow, but I HAD to resist, because I couldn't let myself disappear in a deep swoon.

This portion of my trip --- being forced, for safety's sake, to stay connected to the body-mind --- felt excruciating, like a nightmare. I hated that I had put myself and my friends into such a dangerous position. I had to trust that the three friends whom I'd heard retching behind me would be wise enough to get off the river, but I again thought that my friends were going to be very unhappy with me for the ordeal I had initiated.

Finally, we saw high ground. I beached my kayak, managed to drag it onto shore, took several stumbling steps and collapsed on my back. Now I could let myself "die." I did not even attempt to resist what was happening. Immediately upon letting go, the energy surging through the whole body with what felt like explosive pressure --- as if the body was an over-filled balloon -- overwhelmed ordinary consciousness. Attention could not possibly hold on to the experience of bodymind (= world). The thunderous force exploded all limits. The painfully intense sensation was of bodymind disintegrating into the energy that flowed upward and merged above in an all-consuming Brilliance. This upwardly flowing dissolution (“All that rises must converge”) occurred in waves, and after each ego-death, I would come back to bodily awareness for a few seconds, just long enough to orient to the fact that I was sprawled on my back in the sun and was probably getting sunburned, but I was helpless to do anything about it until I rode out the peak.

I clearly remember a typical moment of this ordeal of disintegration-reintegration-disintegration (or death-rebirth-death). With closed eyes I was peering from within a billowing sea of bluish-green light that rolled over me and through me like a wave sweeping from left to right, and I was surprised to feel and see the light moving, as if it had substance or pressure – liquid light. Then the sea-tinted light increased in luminosity until it shone electric white and I drowned (was absorbed) in the luminous singularity. In each climax of ego-death, there was no more ego to feel anxious about what was happening, but with each few seconds of being back in the bodymind mode, I’d think, “I trust I’ll get through this, but I sure want it to end soon" or "I hope my friends are safe!" or "I hope my friends don't hate me!" Then I'd be swept up and consumed by the light above. I recalled a line from the Vedas: "Man is the food of God," and a quote from Gordon Wasson, "Ecstasy is not fun." A friend had parked his kayak in the river near where I lay sprawled and he asked me if I was all right, and I managed to say "I'm okay," and I thanked him for watching over me.

Subjectively, the peak state felt like it lasted several long hours, but the friend told me later it had lasted only about an hour, and that I had been moaning and writhing. I felt so relieved when that stage finally subsided and I learned that all our friends were on dry land and would join us soon.

Amazingly, I didn’t get sunburned! All my friends survived and were well enough that night to sit around a fire and drink beer and laugh about "technicolor puking". None of them blamed me for their experiences. All's well that ends well.

That was my 14th psychedelic trip (5 on mescaline, 2 on LSD, and 7 on shrooms), and my very first "bad trip" --- or more accurately, a good trip, but with a hellish ordeal in the middle that lasted about an hour and a half. (The trip started off in a positive way, and ended up in a positive way.) Of the six men who tripped, only two others reported "bad trips" --- both of them among the retching dudes. One of the three retching guys said he had a wonderful trip!

In retrospect, what the hell happened? OF COURSE, IT'S DANGEROUS TO TRIP ON A RIVER! Lesson learned. But what was with the intense reaction to that small dose? "Museum dose," my ass! It was a museum dose if it's inconspicuous to sprawl on the marble floor of a museum while writhing and groaning. My last full-fledged trip on mushrooms had been more than 35 years earlier, but I had tripped on them six times, all very enjoyable experiences, and none of the people I tripped with back then had gotten terrible, lasting nausea, but only a queasiness when first coming up. My hypothesis is that "lemon tech" is the culprit. It made us get off too quickly, and our nervous systems couldn't handle the rapid onset and got overloaded.

In any case, I think I'll stick with microdosing from now on, which was the main reason I cultivated the mushrooms in the first place.

Exp Year: 2022	ExpID: 116213
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 69
Published: Mar 10, 2022	Views: 4,229
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66), Vitamins - Niacin (230) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Nature / Outdoors (23), Train Wrecks & Trip Disasters (7), General (1)