DOSE:

15 g

oral

Mushrooms

(fresh)

BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

This should be an object lesson in when NOT to do mushrooms. I was recently on a trip to London after finals with five other people in my senior class (Dave, Ed, Martha, Margaret, and Cate, which aren't their real names, if that matters at all). We had found a remarkably cheap deal for a round trip on British Airways, since this was the off season. Before the trip, Dave asked me if I wanted to buy mushrooms there, since they are legal when fresh. I excitedly agreed. Before that trip I had done DXM six times, nutmeg twice, kava once, and pot twice, so I was not incredibly experienced, but I knew how to handle myself in a tripping state thanks mainly to the DXM.

When we got to Camden Square, which had stands up that said in big colorful letters 'Magic Mushrooms', tensions were high. We had decided, on the off-chance that we couldn't find any shrooms, that we should make a 'pre-emptive strike' on our sobriety, so we all had a few shots of vodka before getting on the Tube. Unfortunately, when Ed gets drunk he is more of an asshole than usual. He and Margaret (sober) dragged the other two girls off to a bar while Dave and I went looking for shrooms. I was sober by that point (not a big drinker), but Dave, who handled the transaction, was not, so he wasn't really paying attention when the guy told him that they were especially powerful mushrooms. The girls wanted to stay out, so me and Dave took the Tube back to the hotel with Ed, who was sullenly drunk. Out of nowhere, Ed decided he wanted to go back to the bar. So Dave angrily took him back while I went on back to the hotel. When Dave got there, we divided up the shrooms into roughly 15 gram portions (fresh grams), and ate them with chocolate. I was very excited, since shrooms were the first drug I had ever been interested in, thanks to Bill Hicks.

My mindset was certainly escapist at the time I took them. I was in a bad mood because everybody on this trip seemed to hate someone else on it, and what with Ed demanding to be led back and forth. I was looking forward to the shrooms as a way to get away from it all and cut loose after a long, tiring, jet-lagged day. This is probably not the best mindset to have when doing psychedelic drugs. Also, we were in a tiny hotel room in a labyrinthine hotel, far from the wide fields I'd heard about in the Bill Hicks routine.

All of this faded from my mind once it started to kick in, and I felt specTACular. I saw trails, and wierd little pinpricks on the ceiling, and my body felt light and I just felt so HAPPY. Dave, who had done shrooms once before, sat there smiling and watching TV. It was wonderful until a few minuted later, when I opened the door for Margaret and Cate. Cate was drunk, but they managed to tell us that Ed had literally dragged Martha up to his hotel room, refusing to let the other girls into the elevator. We started to freak out, since Margaret was the only sober person there and the rest of us were either drunk or shrooming. So Dave and Margaret went to Ed's room to see what they could do. They brought Martha back into our room (Ed apparently hadn't done anything), and Margaret went to bed in a huff. So it was two tripping boys and two drunk girls stuck in a tiny little hotel room, and I really started to trip my everlasting balls off.

First, I thought that my Coke was a monster of some kind. Every time I put it to my lips I realized that I was kissing the gaping maw of some salivating she-beast, and I had to slam the can down in horror and disgust. Soon I wound up under the desk, frothing at the mouth and making animal noises. Then Cate, who was messing with me all night, told me there was something in the closet. I went to the closet (naturally) and I realized that the WAS something in the closet, except it was invisible. I decided to go in the closet to see if it would show itself. While I was in there, I heard vomiting noises from outside, which was Martha gagging. Dave, who remained remarkably clear-headed ALL through the ordeal, took her over to Margaret's room to sleep. Then Cate took her back to Ed's room under the assumption that Ed had sobered up.

That's when the mushroom trip started to go bad. I began feeling very intense deja vu, such that I began to be convinced that I was in a time loop. Cate came back and started messing with me again (she was still a little drunk) and then left again. I told Dave that he should leave, so that I would be alone. My reasoning was this: if I was alone, it would be an experience I hadn't had yet, so I would break out of the time loop. I kept making a 'prophecy' that Cate was going to come back in the room, since I thought I was just reliving the last five minutes over and over again. Eventually Dave left to go make sure Ed wasn't doing anything to Martha or Cate, and took my key with him.

At that point I was alone in a dark room in a large hotel, peaking.

I heard the phone ring, and since it sounded like a frog, I became certain that I was a frog, and started leaping from bed to bed. Eventually i answered the phone. It was Cate, saying 'get Dave, get Dave'. I figured she was messing with me, when I started thinking 'what if Martha is in trouble?' I turned the lock in our door so that it would be propped open and went next door to Cate and Margaret's room. I knocked on the door. No answer. The hallway is breathing. I go back in my room, slowly losing my mind. I remember that Dave told me to wash my mouth out when I was frothing. I go in the bathroom and wash my mouth out. I start thinking horrible thoughts like we bought toxic shrooms and now I'm slowly dying. I kept thinking 'No, it'll be okay' and then realizing that I had no reason to think that. I went back over to Cate's room and knocked hard on the door, saying 'Cate, get out here, you're my only connection with reality.' And I meant it. I could feel myself losing control. I ran through a set of fire doors next to Cate's door, and then turned around and realized that I couldn't get back into our hallway. Actually, I was pushing on a pull door, but I didn't realize it in the state I was in, and promptly lost it.

I saw two people getting out of the elevator, and grabbed one of them hard at the shoulders. I asked him loudly to PLEASE take me down to the lobby. He said yes in a sort of wierd alien language that I could just barely recognize as a British accent. His face was also alien, with that sort of upsidedown-teardrop face and unplaceable eyes. He brought me down in the elevator and pointed out the reception desk, then went back up. I walked into the lobby and found myself surrounded by aliens. By this point the pleasant woogly feeling I'd had near the beginning of the trip had changed into feverish discomfort. The deja vu was incredibly intense, and I had the feeling as though I had known about events before they happened. It was as if events were unfolding according to some higher plan, and I was hurtling grimly towards my inevitable demise. It sounds absurd now, but at the time the idea was utterly terrifying.

I walked up to the recption desk and stared at the receptionist for about a minute, punctuated by him saying something along the lines of 'may I help you?' I was thinking that maybe I was dying, or going insane, and that I needed to find a way out of this time loop. I thought of killing myself, maybe by banging my head against the marble reception desk. I realized, deep down, that I couldn't let myself do this, so I said to the receptionist 'I think I'm going to kill myself.' He looked at me, said 'um....' and then I said 'I need somebody who speaks English' and then I said that I needed my friend, and said his name. The receptionist looked him up and called up to our room, where apparently Dave was. I found this odd. When the receptionist handed me the phone, I said 'Dave?' and he said 'Who is this?' and I said 'It's me! Stop messing with me! Stop messing with me!' And then he hung up.

I was in Hell. Literally--I realized that I was not dying but in fact already dead, and I had been condemned for my sins to live forever in the mushroom state in a repeating loop in this hotel lobby, surrounded by aliens who didn't care and didn't speak my language, and worse, my friends had forgotten who I was. I was on the verge of testing my limits by running out naked into the London streets when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Dave and Cate, looking very scared and only slightly alien. Cate told the receptionist that I had had a little too much to drink. They led me back up to Cate's room, where we spent the next forty-five minutes coaxing me down from the purest existential terror I had ever felt. I had to keep moving, stretching my legs, looking around, talking, and holding onto people to convince myself that this was indeed the real world. I started coming down, and when I had only a strong buzz I got into a long conversation with Dave, who you will remember was also tripping, about how this experience was somehow 'separate' from the rest of our lives back in the States at school. Then he decided that there was nothing stopping him from pouring orange juice on the rug, so he did. And I fell asleep.

The moral of this story is that the first time you do shrooms, or, hell, ANY drug, you should HAVE A SITTER THERE AT ALL TIMES, even if they're tripping too, just so you have a connection to human reality. Also, don't do drugs just to escape a bad mood, but be in as positive a mindset as you can. Also, avoid complex places that you are unfamiliar with. Trip somewhere familiar or open. Though this experience didn't necessarily turn me off of mushrooms, I won't be doing any drugs for a few weeks. Except maybe kava again. Yeah, maybe.

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 39919
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 27, 2005	Views: 16,664
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Mushrooms (39) : First Times (2), Difficult Experiences (5), Small Group (2-9) (17)