DOSE:	0.5 g	oral	Mushrooms	(dried)
		smoked	Tobacco	(plant material)
	0.7 g	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

125 lb

Two months ago I tried mushrooms for the first time. I have read other people’s accounts of the drug and yet my experiences seem completely undocumented. I didn’t have any shocking revelations or hallucinations, but the drug had a profound effect and (literally) altered my perception since.

I had discussed getting mushrooms with a roommate of mine for a few weeks beforehand and she finally got around to buying some and distributing it to me. I was incredibly nervous at the point when I finally bought them, and I kept asking myself “why do I want to do this?” I was scared, of course, of having a bad trip. After buying the little bag of dried mushrooms, I quickly stuffed them in a drawer in my room and tried not to look at them until I had to. I had only experimented with weed and alcohol, so this was my first real “trip.” I stayed up late the night before worrying and the next morning me and four friends (including my boyfriend) got up early, packed and headed off to the coast to trip for the whole day.

After we got there my boyfriend and I made peanut butter, jelly and mushroom sandwiches while the others swallowed their LSD-coated altoids. I ate maybe the equivalent of one small mushroom, but it was enough. As I sat on the beach I could feel my heartbeat increasing and the excitement building. It was a peculiar feeling, I felt quite sober, and I didn’t have any feeling of loss of ego or self. But there was this sense of uneasiness within me. It was almost like a physical uneasiness, like my brain was uncomfortable. I started seeing things, floaters and stars flashing through my field of vision. I looked at the sand, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The patterns were incredible. Looking back, I realized that I spent almost the entire day playing with the sand. And so did everybody else. It was difficult to communicate, we kept misunderstanding each other, so we would often just wander alone around the beach. The effects finally wore off in the evening, and I concluded that mushrooms were safe I would trip again. I hadn’t taken enough and I wanted to do it in a different environment, in Portland, (where I lived).

So I convinced my boyfriend to trip one more time with me the next week and bought more mushrooms from my friend. This time I ate two, and we headed up to a friend’s house across the river and began our trip in a graveyard (sounds like a bad idea I know but it was sunny and graveyards are pretty). Once again I felt the uneasy feeling returning to me, and more flickers in my vision. I looked down at the sidewalk and saw what was like a massive fingerprint visual that emanated out of the center of my vision. It wasn’t anything physical but more like an imprint in the same sense as a floater. I described it to my boyfriend but he couldn’t relate. We arrived at my friend’s house and I began to feel more and more uncomfortable being in his house. It seemed dark and unhappy and I felt trapped. We smoked a hookah out on the porch which helped to relax me a little but made me feel sick after a while. I was very preoccupied with worrying about if we were burdening my friend by just showing up tripping.

We went to the grocery store to get hamburger ingredients for lunch which was a bit of a challenge, I was so distracted by the colors of the produce and a bit too confused for a public place. It’s strange but I would go back and forth from feeling quite sober to tripping out. When we got back I felt pretty unhappy, and went in the backyard and felt bad about myself, thinking that my boyfriend didn’t like me. My friend broke out a bong and I thought “why not I feel terrible anyhow” and had a few good hits. It was like a 180. I went from feeling terrible to feeling incredibly content and self-loving. I explained honestly and calmly to my boyfriend about how I had been feeling and he reassured me that he cared about me and I felt even better. We left and wandered back down through the graveyard, this time it seemed absolutely beautiful. I had to stop a few times just to take in the enormity and astounding beauty of life and nature. I talked to my boyfriend about how when we died we became providers for more life, because trees and plants grew out of our ashes. The trip ended nicely thanks to the weed, but one thing never went away.

It has been two months, and I am still seeing more floaters and the fingerprint in my vision. This has bothered me more than anything about either trip. My vision has never gone back to the way it was. I read about this online, it is called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. I really want to trip again (I am in Japan studying abroad, so no drugs for me until I get back) but I’m worried about making my visuals worse. They say in time it should go away, but who knows, it’s been two months and it has only gotten worse. For the first month or two I only saw more floaters. But recently one morning I was waiting for the bus and I saw the fingerprint, coming out of patterns in the sidewalk. Now I see it all the time. No one I have talked to can relate. Mushrooms, in a strange sense, have never left me and only the future will tell if I ever return to the same visual state I once had before trying the drug.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 66460
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 6, 2016	Views: 10,293
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Mushrooms (39) : HPPD / Lasting Visuals (40), Health Problems (27), Small Group (2-9) (17)