DOSE:

0.0625 oz

oral

Mushrooms - P. cubensis

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

It was the last day of classes my freshman year. My school has a large event where most people drink themselves stupid and forget all their worries for a day. Well me and a friend decided that this would not do, so we picked up some mushrooms instead. I had never shroomed before, but had done a decent ammount of other drugs including acid a few times. My friend had shroomed numerous times before.

I think the trouble began the night before when I decided to watch Darren Aronofsky's 'Requiem for a Dream'. It's an excellent movie, the only problem is that its main theme is the degradation of human existence due to drugs. I already had a question or two in my mind about where drugs were taking my life, and this movie didn't help any.

Anyway, the next day I woke up around 10 and the plan was to eat a little lunch and then eat the shrooms and head down to the event. I found that I couldn't down much food, which isn't rare for me, but this time it wasn't because I felt full so much as jittery. I figured I was just nervous about the coming experience (it had been a while since my last real drug experience, and the movie was of course still ringing in my head) and that I would just get over it and have a good time: bad idea.

I was able to eat the mushrooms (1/16 oz...nothing major) with the aid of a granola bar, and we headed down to a friend's room that was right next to the party. The whole way down the jitters wouldn't leave me and so I got more nervous. Finally after spending a couple minutes in the room I felt like I was gonna pop. The nervousness had turned into nausea, and I ran to the bathroom. I began to puke up what little I had eaten at lunch as well as various stems and parts of the granola bar. At this point I wasn't feeling the effects of the mushrooms, just sick. I kept thinking that this would just pass and once I puked it up I would be fine to go about my fun.

I will sum the next part up as quickly as possible, but don't let this distract you from the gravity of the situation. My friend who was also shrooming and another friend who was only slowly sipping a beer watched for the next two or so hours as I writhed on the floor of the room, assuming the fetal position whenever possible, in sheer terror and agony. Though I wouldn't say as much to my friends, thoughts that I was dying would not leave my head. Even the fact that my fellow shroomer was experiencing none of these problems did little to calm me. The nausea wouldn't go away, and the initial psychadelic peak was upon me. The combination of mind-fuck and nausea was terrifying as I was almost unable to tell the two apart. I kept thinking over and over how thankful I was that I had done psychadelics before and was able to partially able to tell apart the two effects, but this was no consolation.

I wanted to go outside and be taken to the hospital and have my stomach pumped (as it was such a large-scale event the school supplied an army of EMT's) but knew that I had already emptied everything out of my stomach so that would do no good. I made several more trips to the bathroom, each of which consisted of me collapsed on the floor by the toilet and the occassional vomitting. Because I was now peaking, unless I was extremely deliberate about it, my attempts to converse resulted only in mumbles and jibberish, which my shrooming friend wasn't alarmed by but my beer-nursing friend was not prepared for.

All of this was compounded by the dual factors of psychadelics' ability to make everything seem alien and the fact that I was in a room which, though I'd been to it many times, was not mine. Thus I was curled up on the floor of a room I could hardly recognizing, bringing back images from Requiem of the various drug addicts in run-down shady buildings nearing the rock-bottom of their existence.

Over a period of about 30 minutes, my state went from curling on the floor in fear to laying on the bed marred only by a slight sense of nausea and continued uneasiness. I was able to see that the worst of it was behind me, and that it was going to be better, but I coudln't tell how much better, or whether I would be able to leave the room all day.

Fortunately, after maybe another half hour I felt well enough to finally venture outside, a chance that my two friends welcomed as they were growing tired of babysitting me. As we walked up the hill past the drunken masses, the uneasiness began to subside and for the first time that day I was enjoying my trip. I was a little perturbed that I had missed the entire peak while vomitting and writhing, but I was to learn that, unlike acid, the post-peak plateau is far more interesting than the peak itself.

We spent the next at least 4 hours sitting under a tree in the quiet section of the event. You can think of it like the chill room at a club; We weren't completely removed from the envigorating energy of the drunken masses, and yet thankfully apart from it. It was here that I experienced probably the most blissful period of my life thusfar. Sitting on that hill under the tree, I felt like Buddha upon reaching enlightenment. It may have even been heightened by the fact that I had undergone such a tortuous experience not an hour earlier. We simply sat under that tree and watched the various drunk people stumble their way past us, which was especially fun because we were on a steep embankment which is difficult to maneuver sober, let alone more drunk than you have ever been before.

Another notable feature of the trip was my inability to discern negative motives in people. From time to time drunk people would come pretend to be nice in order to try and get a cigarette or just to call us losers (this was one specific occassion where a drunk couple explained that we were missing out on the fun on the other side of the slope, unless of course we were 'on acid or something'... hehe) Anyway the amazing thing was that I was simply unable to tell that anything but true bonding was going on here. Granted this would not be good all the time, but for someone as cynical as myself it was a welcome relief from brutal reality. This is also in direct contrast to the exaggerated cynicism that acid sometimes gives me.

It is also of note that this whole time (except for the couple times we lit up joints), I was only mildly 'fucked up', with minor visuals/tracers, and yet I would have it no other way. The sheer ecstasy (I use this term, and even though I've done E a few times in the past, I can say that the psychological euphoria I felt during all this felt far more real and deeper than anything E ever gave me) was so noticable that I wouldn't have it ruined with some sort of dopamine rush or reality-twisting visuals.

So what is the moral of this story? I know its cliche by now, but never underestimate the power of your subconscious when it comes to psychadelics. If your mind is suggesting you shouldn't do something (as it did when it gave me sustained and uncontrollable jitters), then you would do best to listen. This isn't saying you should become its slave, but just keep in mind that it will have a greater effect on a tripping than it does on a sober one. What got me through more than my experience with acid (which told me that my entire body wasn't being poisoned, but instead there was the nausea and the intended psychadelic peak seperately) were the friends with me, one being sober and the other showing no signs that the mushrooms themselves were tainted. Always be mindful of the setting and remember that it includes both where you are and who you're with.

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 7217
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 26, 2003	Views: 8,844
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Festival / Lg. Crowd (24), First Times (2), General (1)