DOSE:

1.6 g

oral

Mushrooms

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

It was freshman year of college. We were breaking out of the molds, breaking all the rules, seeing, tasting, touching all that had lain hidden behind the boundaries of strict homes and watchful parents. And of course, that included the drugs. Especially the drugs. We loved them. Still do, really...

In the past 3 months, our little group of friends had discovered acid. It was plentiful in LA at the time, and we spent many a wonderful Saturday night tripping and walking around our college campus. One of the guys, BM, was much more experienced with the drug scene than we were; the rest of us were long time potsmokers who were new to acid and to MDMA. He had done more drugs than we had heard of, and he was our fearless (and quite knowledgeable and responsible)leader, and we followed him excitedly into whole new vistas and lifetimes. I digress. Sorry.

Anyways, BM told us that one of our dealers had a pound of mushrooms that were supposed to be really good, and encouraged us to try what he thought of us a 'more natural, smoother' psychedelic. New experiences? We were there! So we gathered up our meager college allowances and went to see the man with the mushrooms. BM suggested that we each just have half an 8th, since it was our first time and these were said to be quite potent. We all agreed, and made our purchases. There would be 6 of us -- myself, BM, 2 male friends, D and I, and I's quasi-girlfriend, B. We had all tripped together before. And the 6th guy was A, an eccentric but lovable Panamanian student who could put you on edge just by smoking pot around you. So jumpy! But he wanted to trip, so we invited him.

That day I had eaten maybe half of my lunch, a Carl's Jr. meal that I couldn't stand. I'm not a big Carl's fan. It sat heavy in my stomach, mixed with a bit of nervousness. I had chatted with some people who had already done these particular shrooms, and those people had been blown away... one guy said he had puked them right up, tripped balls when he was puking, then was sober once it was out. I didn't want anything like that to happen. We all bought orange juice to drink, got several packs of cigarettes, an 8th of bud, and bribed B's roommate to spend the night somewhere else so we could have her hotel room to ourselves. (Our college bought a hotel and turned it into a dormitory. Pretty cool, no communal bathrooms.) We all gathered in the bedroom and took out our ziploc bags. BM had invited 2 other people to trip with us, and they hadn't made it, so he had an extra 8th. He elected to take 4.2 grams of mushrooms and save the rest for another day. I felt my stomach get queasy, which happens when I'm nervous. I excused myself and went in B's bathroom to make myself puke. I'd rather see Carl's Junior coming up now than while I was seeing things. And I didn't want to puke while tripping and lose the trip.

After that unpleasant business, I returned to the bedroom feeling much better and found that everyone else had just finished eating their shrooms. I took mine, not enjoying the dry texture or the pungent taste, but finding it to be not nearly as bad as I had expected. We all washed our drugs down with OJ, and sat back on the beds to play Radiohead and the Beatles as we waited for the come-up. BM explained that it would probably be about 45 minutes before we felt anything, so we settled in and considered smoking a bowl. About five minutes after I ingested the shrooms, I began to feel funny... There was a fluttering in my stomach, and I began to ache. By T+0:10, I was tripping. So was everyone else.

BM laid on his back on the floor and watched the ceiling. (I can only IMAGINE what it felt like to be on 4.2g! I was on 1.75! And BM says the dosage:effect ratio is exponential... wow...) This tripping was nothing like my experiences with acid. I felt like I was trapped in some sort of void. My heart pounded, my breathing was labored. I was dizzy and very, very afraid. I don't have the slightest idea what it was that I was so afraid of! But I was gripped by fear. I was cold. I looked around the room. B and I were cuddling on her bed. BM was lying on the floor. A was wandering around the room restlessly. D was lying on the other bed, shaking. I scooted back on the bed to where he was and asked him if he was okay. He told me he was afraid, that he wasn't sure about this mushroom shit. He asked me if I would lay next to him. I was already very queasy and frightened, and I had a feeling that laying next to him while he shivered (which he was doing profusely) would only aggravate my tension. But he was a dear friend, so I snuggled up next to him and closed my eyes, praying for the nightmare to end.

I couldn't even really tell you much of what happened for the next 4 hours. It's mostly a blur. I kept trying to watch G-Force 2 on Winamp, listening to music, hoping to get distracted by visuals and body buzz and bring the trip onto a higher plane. No such luck. I didn't even have real visuals, just slight blurrings of objects -- more what I would see right before going to bed after a night on acid. Not at all like what I was used to. I was so afraid. D was having an experience similar to mine for about an hour and a half. As we both lay there, him shaking and me wanting to die, I realized that these shrooms were electing not to remain in my digestive system. For the first and last time of the bad trip, I somehow got off the bed and went to go puke. When it was all out, I gasped for breath and stared at the contents of my stomach emptied into the porcelain bowl. I was partly relieved, partly sad. It was over. I would be okay. But everyone else would be tripping and I'd be sitting there. As I watched, the puke suddenly began rise from the toilet and come after me. Yikes! I quickly flushed the toilet and concluded that I was, indeed, still tripping.

I returned to the bed and lay down. D decided his stomach needed purging as well, and headed off to the bathroom. I lay on the bed and shook a lot. I was sweating profusely, but I was freezing. And I gradually became aware that I was out of my body. Instead of utilizing this freedom to do something productive, or have a better trip, I hovered above my bed and watched myself. It was like a movie... a very bad movie. D returned from the bathroom feeling refreshed. 'I feel so much better, you guys!' he exclaimed. Anyone who's done a lot of tripping will probably agree that one of the main topics of conversation during a trip (at least for newbie trippers) is the progress of the current trip so far. You always comment on how you WERE feeling, how you feel now, etc... He stood in front of a black light and faced the room with a big toothy grin, talking excitedly about how awful he had been feeling, and how it had all just turned around and he was now doing great! I tried hard not to be jealous of his feeling better, and of the fact that I was the only one now who was having a bad time. The guys had been smoking weed since we first ate the shrooms, but I hadn't because we had to go outside to smoke (B's roommate wouldn't allow it in there) and I didn't feel capable of moving. In retrospect, I think it would've had a profoundly calming effect on me if I'd just made myself go outside. But hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it?

As D gushed about his newfound good trip, I shuddered and began to freak out as I watched his face contort in the black light. His pointy incisors grew into fangs. His spiky hair became horns. His face was glowing in strange colors, and I shrank back into a corner and hugged my knees, rocking and barely managing to ask him audibly if he could get away from that light. He immediately complied, but I rocked and hugged my knees for what seemed like an eternity. It couldn't have been more than 30 seconds. I gradually became aware that everyone had turned their attention to me, and as they became worried, the stability of their own trips hung in the balance. I forced myself to stop doing that and lay back down.

A was talking to, watching, and trying to collide with his mirror self that he had discovered on the closet door. It was alarming from my perspective. BM was laying on the floor, and I can only imagine what he must've been seeing or thinking. B and I were still cuddled on the bed, watching The Yellow Submarine. D wanted to go smoke a bowl. He coaxed BM up, and tried to convince me to get up, too. It just wasn't an option for me. Right before they left, D mentioned that he'd recently had a dream about his grandmother, who had died about 3 years earlier.

A, BM, and D went out to smoke a bowl. B and I stayed cuddled on the bed. They hadn't really said or done much the entire trip. I could say the same for myself, but in my defense, I was more frightened than I had ever been in my life. I still can't think of any time I've been more afraid. They were just enjoying the ride, and each other's company. It was silent after the 3 guys had walked out, and I got to thinking about a dream I had had about my father a few months after he died. I told them about it, this dream where my father called, and I wanted so desperately to talk to him, and I told him I loved him... and in the dream, he impatiently told me he just wanted to talk to my mother... That dream is always painful to think about, because my father and I were very close, and he never would've done that in reality. But I had a lot of fears after he died; fears that he would be disappointed at the woman I had become. I didn't think he would accept me as I was. I finished my story, and the silence that permeated the room afterward was pregnant with meaning.

Now that I had the bed to myself, with no shaking D to further alarm me, and now that there was nothing in my stomach for it to reject, I tried to lay on my back and just calm myself. I closed my eyes and was transported to blackness. There was my dad, just standing there. He was right in front of me. It was strange, because everything in the background was black, but he was in white. He looked about 8 feet tall, which was a shock, because he was 6'3' in real life and looked about 4'10' because he spent the last 14 years of his life in a wheelchair. He sat me at a long table and started talking to me. I have no conscious memory of the exact words that came out of his mouth, or how long we sat there talking. It was like a dream, where you suddenly realize that things have been conveyed to you without words, or even with words, but time has passed and you are further along in the dream. But I know what he was saying. He was telling me how much he loved me, and how proud of me he was. He told me that my mistakes weren't so bad, that he knew I would find my light at the end of the tunnel. He loved me. That was the most important thing.

Suddenly, the table and chairs were gone. I was now at a distance (back in my body, perhaps?), watching my dad. He was standing in white, and everything around and behind him was black, as before. And in his arms he held a girl in a white nightgown, who lay limp as a ragdoll. I squinted and realized that it was ME in his arms. He began to walk/float away, and suddenly I was having a pleasant trip. My dead father carried me from a bad trip to a good one. That's a profound and exhausting Saturday night!

The next 2 hours entailed smoking weed, walking around campus with the whole crew, and explaining my experience. I was barely tripping anymore, still no visuals or anything, but a light trip nonetheless. A pretty typical comedown, it was just unexpected after this. We all chatted about the shrooms, and BM admitted that aside from salvia, these particular mushrooms were the 'biggest mindfuck' he had ever had. Granted, his dose was more than double that of anyone else in the group. But BM is a horse. If it killed him, then I wasn't surprised it kicked my butt. I just won't underestimate mushrooms again!

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 13430
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 23, 2002	Views: 46,520
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Mushrooms (39) : First Times (2), Mystical Experiences (9), Small Group (2-9) (17)