DOSE: T+ 0:00	3 caps	oral	Mushrooms	(plant material)
T+ 6:00	1 cig.	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

115 lb

Living in Germany, planning a trip up to Netherlands doesn't need too much planning or money. Dexter, my boyfriend Dylan, and I took a two-day trip up to Maastricht. Dexter bought a box of Mexicans (mushrooms for a visual trip) from one smart shop, and Dylan and I bought a box of Philippines (also SUPPOSED to be for a visual trip, but ended up more of a mindfuck than anything else) to split. We walked over to a coffeshop to take them. The lounge basement at the coffeeshop has every available surface plastered with graffiti. It was in this room where the trip started.

We'd gotten the mushrooms as soon as the smart shops opened, so it was only 10:30 or so in the morning and we had the place mostly to ourselves. As soon as I took mine, I pulled out a sketchbook and markers I'd brought just for the occasion and began to draw. I wasn't too aware of what my friends were talking about in the background. Within only fifteen or thirty minutes, what I was drawing seemed to take on much more depth. Everything in what I can see now is a completely flat picture took on the essence of three dimensions. Only swirls and lines in different colors, some seemed to jump out more than others, and if the picture was close enough to my face, it completely engulfed me.

Dylan kept glancing over at it every once in a while, astonished each time he saw something there that hadn't been before. Dexter saw it briefly, also in awe of how cool it had turned out. I soon tired of drawing, wanting more interaction with my friends' trips. The colors in the lounge had changed. Everything seemed bigger than it had been, and farther away. My depth perception was thrown off even further by the endless layers of graffiti, and reaching out to touch a wall, I realised I actually had to lean over to be able to reach it. We were with another person, but he wasn't tripping. It was his idea to leave this coffeeshop and go to the car (we hadn't budgeted a hotel into our stay) so that he could eat ice or something (don't ask, this kid was crazy, but that's a WHOLE other story).

So we follow him to the car and we all get in, the three of us are laughing because we could not figure out why the hell we were in this crazy car. Water was spilling everywhere and everyone seemed to be in a state of uncontrollable laughter until it was finally too much and we all poured out of the car. We couldn't trust ourselves to roam the city, so we walked to the closest coffeeshop. On the way we passed under some trees to find a leaf that had decided to stop falling halfway on its course to the ground, suspended in mid-air. We all saw this, and it was just so strange that it made me incredibly happy that I could witness something that was then so amazing on my first time on mushrooms.

We made it to the coffeeshop. It is one of the boat coffeeshops that they have in Maastricht, so it was prone to rock with the waves. This place later came to be referred to by us as the 'trip box'. We went straight to the lowest floor and staked out a couch in the corner for ourselves for the next few hours. The couches were high, allowing for some privacy from the rest of the shop. It was here that Dylan's and my trip put us in a state of complete separation from reality. Dexter seemed more composed the whole time, as he was only on a visual trip. We were also on a visual trip, everything seemed to breathe and secondary and tertiary colors seemed to break into their primary composites, side by side, but Dylan and I became baffled about many things. We couldn't figure out what we were doing. We felt like we were supposed to be doing something other than just siting in this coffeeshop tripping out, when in essence that's all we'd gone there TO do.

It was also baffling just how tolerated tripping out was in this country, and we kept asking each other 'can we just trip out here? Does anyone care?' to which the decided answers were yes and no respectively. We couldn't quite figure out how people just accept and follow laws made up by what often seems to be a faceless body of power. We found it odd that there are so many more rules when one is out in public as opposed to in their own home. It felt good to lie down and sprawl my body out over the couch, and it felt good to touch something as intriguing as another human being. I stayed cuddled up next to Dylan, who was a big part of my comfort zone. I wished that we had a more private place to go, because I felt an almost irresistible urge to touch, feel, kiss, and fuck this living being sitting beside me. I didn't act on this in public however, as I was still on a trip about public codes of conduct.

My mouth amazed me. The texture of cold, clear water through a straw was something to be swished around and savored. I felt a pressing urge to use the bathroom, but after walking around the whole coffeeshop in confusion at not being able to find it, I had to get help. The mirror in the bathroom showed a girl with the strangest red color of hair and eyes dilated to the size of saucers. I left the bathroom and saw that this coffeeshop was cooler than most others because they set out free gummi bears and chips for their patrons. I grabbed a gummi cherry candy and a gummi bear covered with sugar crystals. I've never tasted anything so delightfully sweet and chewy. I wandered back down into the corner where everyone was sitting, and lay back down to resume the fun.

We're convinced that the coffeeshop owners knew we were tripping, because the music changed from happy hardcore (really bouncy techno) to death metal (in a coffeeshop! They're crazy!) to things you'd hear on the Top 40 all in a matter of a few minutes. There were TV screens in every direction. They were in sets of three, each screen with a different picture, each set with the same three screens. The one in the middle was the one I focused on, running home videos over and over. We stayed long enough to see the same ones at least three times. One of the videos featured a cat, and I instantly wished I had a cat to play with. I thought that would have been the coolest thing on my trip, so see and play with another species of animal. The faces of the people began to warp and bulge, causing me to wonder if that was just the shrooms' doing or if it was those coffeeshop owners trying to trip us out again.

We noticed that everywhere was cast with a purple glow, as from a blacklight, but there were no such lights in the entire area. There was every color except purple, and somehow we ended up with purple glows. We kept coming to realisations of 'what it all comes down to,' and each one was a different thing, from the need for money, to finding this kind of escape, to control, to sex. We wondered about things like 'Why do we do anything? No matter what we do, we're just going to die anyway, and the world won't stop or care when we do.' We didn't think this in a bad sense, but more of a sense of awe. 'Even if you have no house, no money...even if you're arrested, your life goes on,' which is a strange concept to actually feel, rather than just subconsciously know, because we as humans just feel it would be the end of the world if any of such things happened to us.

The realization that our lives just goes on for so long brought us to the concept of time, which none of us could really express in words. It was just too mind-boggling, and we were confused enough already, so we shied away from that subject. All we knew for sure about anything was that we were so far gone, we couldn't see how it would be possible to ever go back to 'normal' after realising everything that we had. Most of these realisations are fuzzy now, and even the ones I have expressed couldn't possibly hold the same meaning to any sober mind. The trip began to wear off at around 4:30 in the afternoon. We were still tripping out, complete with visuals, but we were much more connected back to the real world. After some time, it was almost completely gone, and we were all very restless of sitting in this coffeeshop. We smoked a blunt (that seemed unusually HUGE) of White Widow, and then we left.

Since then, I can't wait to do them again, and as soon as possible, I'm growing my own. Shrooms are the shit. :)

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 66465
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 4, 2010	Views: 5,542
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