DOSE: T+ 0:00	18 g	oral	Mushrooms - P. tampanensis	(fresh)
T+ 5:00	1 cig.	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

I had been to Amsterdam in the past, twice before--once with my parents when I was too young to have any interest in psychoactive chemicals and once more with my brother when I only smoked cannabis. The third time, when I experienced for the first time the true awesome power of Psilocybin, was right after new years 2005 with my girlfriend.

I live on the east coast of the united states, and my experience with mushrooms had been relatively limited and uninteresting. It is difficult to find good-quality mushrooms, and each time I tried them I felt physically ill, but otherwise the same--in fact, I felt more high drinking cough syrup than eating them. This being said, I had very little idea of what I was in for.

We had arrived in Amsterdam around midday and immediately dropped our bags off in our hotel and hit the streets to find and smoke as much cannabis as our wallets would allow. Needless to say, this did not pose much of a problem, and we soon found our way to a Coffeeshop. We purchased the 2004 Cannabis Cup winning marijuana strain 'Amnesia Haze', and set in motion the rolling and smoking of it. Amnesia Haze deserves a post just for itself, but suffice it to say that after smoking less than an eighth of the joint I had absolutely no idea what was going on at all.

We left the coffeeshop and wandered around until we found ourselves in the Magic Mushroom smartshop. The proprietor was very friendly, and we asked about mushrooms, explaining that we knew very little about them. She pulled out a color-coded chart with pictures of the different strains and explained a little about each one, finishing with the Philosopher's Stones, which was her favorite. She described it as 'a really nice head-trip, with a lot of laughing/smiling, and you'll talk a lot. Everything you say will seem like some kind of amazing revelation. It's great!' My girlfriend and I were both sold.

She explained that it's illegal to dry the mushrooms, so we had to buy them wet, which meant buying a box of 18g. If we hadn't been so completely gone at that point we may have taken more into account the fact that she had told us that 6-9g was a light trip, 9-13g was a medium trip and 13-18g was a heavy trip. We each bought one box of 18g and left the store. I can't really remember what else we did that day, but we ended up back at the hotel and passed out in preparation for a full day of tripping.

Just before noon we headed out to the local grocery store to get something to eat with the shrooms (quick note: these were actually truffles, not mushrooms). We ended up buying crackers and some delicious cheese. I'm not a mushroom-kinda guy. In fact, mushrooms make me want to vomit, so choking down 18 grams worth of disgusting truffles was no easy feat, but about thirty minutes after starting I had finally finished. We both sat in the tiny hotel room watching some dutch television for about twenty minutes longer until I looked over at my girlfriend and noticed she was staring at the wall with an expression of mild fear mixed with bemusement. I followed her gaze to the wallpaper pattern of small triangles and asked what she was looking at. she replied 'The wall looks like it's moving'.

I explained that when the eye focuses on something, it actually moves around the object imperceptibly, but the effects of psilocybin make it noticeable. I didn't know if this was correct, but it seemed to make sense. She didn't particularly seem to care, as she was totally engrossed. A few more minutes pass and I begin to feel something starting right behind my groin and in my thighs. It is a familiar feeling and when I look at the wall, and sure enough, it's moving. She has changed her focus from the wall to the buildings outside and seems to be completely comfortable with this new perception and points out excitedly 'Holy shit! The buildings are moving! Do you see that?' I look outside and it seems as if though the buildings on either side of the street in front of us are moving up and down and towards and away from us.

The shrooms are hitting me hard at this point, but I am nowhere near peaking yet. Judging time has become an impossible task, and after some time we decide to head out into the streets of amsterdam. It's still a bit cold as it is January, and I put on my jacket and grab my backpack. I am very high and only barely manage to remember to grab a map, our key and a deck of cards. I leave my wallet behind and all other valuables. I am ready to go very quickly, and I look over at my girlfriend who is staring quizzically at her jacket. 'Whose jacket is this? This isn't my jacket.' She is very confused and the jacket is in fact hers. This continued for a while, but eventually I managed to convince her to put on the jacket and we left the building.

The air was incredibly fresh and delightful. We began walking without any idea of destination. I am feeling wonderful. We cross a canal and the shrooms are still hitting me harder and harder. My girlfriend is peaking and has lost all sense of the outside world. She extends her arms and twirls around staring up at the sky. I begin to get very uncomfortable, thinking that everyone around us is staring at us, knowing that we are tripping. We stop at an intersection waiting for the light and I look beyond my girlfriend at the top of a building.

All of a sudden I am frozen in place and I feel as though the universe collapses down onto me. I see a brief color shift, like the tint on a tv were adjusted to some absurd setting, and a flash of white that translates into an intense non-existent shiver that knocks me out of the trance. My girlfriend has been watching me, and asks me if everything is alright, that I look like I've just seen a ghost. I don't know what to say, because I can't describe what just happened. That is the beginning of my spiral into terror.

The light turns green and we cross the intersection, wandering along the sidewalks, still with no destination in mind. Soon we are walking along a canal and I cannot stop my inner monologue. I feel as if I have finally realized my role in the universe, and it is completely insignificant. It is incredibly depressing as I realize that nothing I do will have an impact on the universe. We sit on a bench to roll and smoke cigarettes, because I hope that it will take my mind off of this one truth. My girlfriend is totally unable to roll the cigarette and she seems to be feeding off my totally negative energy. This in turn affects me negatively because I fear that she is feeling the same hopeless thoughts that I am. I roll a pathetic cigarette and we share it, sitting on the bench, staring into the water.

The wind is blowing across the water creating a rhythmic pattern of dancing ripples and we are entranced. My thoughts switch from desolation to amazement at the mathematics I'm witnessing in front of me. I am almost happy again, but I am still filled with a weight of anxiety and my bad mood quickly regains control. I tell my girlfriend we need to choose somewhere to go. We decided to go into the first coffeeshop we pass and take off.

At some point along the way we notice the sky. The clouds seem to be moving very quickly and it is an amazing site. I am again briefly distracted from my pain. I'm still not sure if it was the drugs or if the clouds actually were moving that fast. We walk down a street that is covered in the shadows of a row of buildings and a feeling of extreme danger comes over both me and my girlfriend. 'I don't like this.' she whispers to me and I agree. We speed walk down and away from the street and find ourselves in front of a coffeeshop that we quickly enter. A sort of relief fills my body, but it is short lived.

We sit down and decide to play cards. Bob marley is playing on the stereo and I begin to relax more. I am shuffling the cards and the music changes and the anxiety begins again. I order a fruit drink and sit down, my extremities tingling in what seemed like some kind of parasthesia. We are trying to play po soy dos, but when I look at the cards the symbols melt and move and I cannot tell which cards I am holding. My girlfriend experiences the same problem. We buy a pre-rolled joint and begin to smoke it. The familiar feeling of a thc high breathes into me and I think to myself 'At last! Something familiar!' But I am mistaken. It is merely psychosomatic.

Some people leave and we take their table on some low cushions and I feel comfortable and my girlfriend feels comfortable. We continue smoking the joint and I am able to make some conversation with her (I have been totally silent for most of the time). We sit for what seems like maybe seven minutes and all of a sudden two dark-skinned young men enter and sit near us. They were completely non-threatening and I'm not consciously a racist, but both my girlfriend and I become immediately anxiety-ridden. With no more than five words spoken between us, we put out the joint, stand and leave.

We decide to head back to the hotel. 5 hours must've passed since we ate the shrooms at this point. We have absolutely no idea where we are. We walk to a busy street corner where there is a map and my girlfriend begins to look at it. She can't make sense of it and gives up almost immediately. She is very worried now, and I attempt to look at the map. Everything on the map is swirling and moving and it is very difficult to focus, but I somehow find where we are currently and where we need to go. I'm still surprised I managed this. We stand at the busy intersection looking both ways with horror, as there are three separate lanes of traffic for each direction buzzing by us. We are too scared to cross during a break and are forced to wait for several minutes.

My memory becomes fuzzy at this point, but it begins getting dark and we are still walking. My negative energy is so powerful that my girlfriend has lost all joy in the shrooming experience, and walks on in silence. The darker it gets the more nervous she becomes, and the more nervous she becomes the higher my anxiety.

We reach the Amstel River, on course to the hotel, and sit on a bench to regain our composure. The clouds are backlit by the moon, and still moving rapidly. We both gaze in to the centers of the clouds and see shapes and faces. We laugh and are happy again, anything that we will ourselves to see, we can see in the clouds. This continues for a number of minutes and we finally rise and continue back to the hotel. It is a straight path now, and we begin recognizing streets and buildings. When we reach the hotel, I exhale an enormous sigh of relief and we hurry up the stairs to our room.

The remainder of the evening is spent watching tv, my girlfriend back in high spirits, and me silent, brooding about the hopelessness of my life, and contemplating what difference it would make to myself, to the people I know, or to the universe at large if I were to simply disappear altogether. I go in and out of nausea and fall asleep convinced that I hear ghosts trying to get into our room from the floor above.

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 46490
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Sep 17, 2007	Views: 7,187
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Mushrooms - P. tampanensis (133) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Bad Trips (6), Difficult Experiences (5), First Times (2)