DOSE:	3.4 g	oral	Mushrooms	(dried)
		smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

135 lb

The mushrooms tasted bad.

Though this is something to be expected, I couldn’t help but be disgusted by the disgusting texture and even fouler taste. Nonetheless, I choked them down while trying to overcome my gag reflex as it sent the mixture of orange juice and mushrooms up my throat. I was able to finish them, but not without the familiar nausea in my stomach. I smoked some cannabis that was offered to me with relief, as it helped calm the nausea in my stomach. Despite my difficult experience with eating the mushrooms, I felt excited and ready for my next trip.

I had chosen to trip in my boyfriend, Alex’s house. I had tripped here many times before, so I didn’t feel uncomfortable with the setting. This time, Alex had chosen to abstain, due to the fact that he wanted to save his share to use with his other two friends tomorrow. Our other friend, Mark, on the other hand, had just so happened to bring mushrooms with him on the same day that I had my own. He, on the other hand, was already tripping.

I was growing impatient waiting for my trip to hit. I tried to amuse myself with things like talking with Alex and Mark while listening to music. However, none of these things seemed to soothe my impatience. Eventually, I walked outside and looked out at the street. I focused on the street, and noticed that it seemed like it was swaying, almost like a bridge would in the wind. I blinked, and the vision passed.

I looked over to the porch to see the house cat, Buddy. I tried to pet him, but he immediately retreated to his bed on the porch. I guessed that he probably didn’t want to feel any of the crazy energy that was coming from me. I looked down at the floor of the porch that was covered in dirty footprints. I continued to stare, and eventually it seemed that the footprints came together to create a pattern of some-sort. Again, I blinked and it disappeared.

It had started.

However, I was till impatient for the full effects; I walked into the living room to find Alex and Mark. Mark had set up some of his music, and it had a pleasant and trippy beat to it. I lied down on the ground, and looked up at the ceiling. I could see a little bit more colors than I normally did when I was sober, but nothing incredibly impressive. I continued to mediate, until I came to a question.

What did I want from this trip?

Alex and I had an open relationship. We always had for the year we had been together, but it wasn’t until recently that he was actually taking advantage of it. I had taken advantage of it before, but the occurrences were few and far between. The open relationship had been….stressed, for some time, due to the fact that Alex had told me he wasn’t in love with me, and that he could leave me for someone else. This was not a reassuring way to handle a relationship, however, recently that had all changed. Alex did admit that he was in love with me, and that he wouldn’t leave me for someone else. Though this was relieving and reassuring, it felt like the jealousies and insecurities had been left alone to fester and grow. Even with Alex saying such things like that, I still found myself jealous and scared. Thinking about this, and the fact that now knew that Alex was in love with me, I found the question I wanted answer.

Why do I need to feel jealous? Why did one choose to pick fear over love? I pondered over this, and eventually came to the conclusion that it was my choice to act the way I did. I had full control over whether or not I picked knowing that I was loved, or picking fear and jealousy.

This was probably the most important thing I brought back from the trip, even though it came in the beginning stages of it. Knowing this made me feel empowered. As I felt these emotions, I could start to feel the vibration of the music pick up. I sat down on the ground, and felt it move throughout the carpet and up into my body. This is was….an interesting sensation, to say the least. I concentrated on this for awhile, and then started to talk to Alex and Mark again. Alex turned to Mark and told him that he thought it was time for him and I take a shower together. Alex and I had talked about this previously and agreed that it might be interesting for me to have sex with him while on mushrooms. I, at the time, thought this was a good idea due to the fact that I had sex with Alex on mushrooms beforehand, although it was on a very low dose.

This was the probably the worst thing I could have done while under the influence at this time.

As I came into the shower, I turned the water up. I typically like the water in my showers to be hotter than most people can stand, but I could tell I was taking it to an extreme. Alex came in, and had to turn the water down due to the fact he couldn’t manage to stand in it. He told me that I was really hurting my skin by doing that, which could be seen by how red it had turned. This didn’t really concern however, so I laughed it off.

Alex put his arms around me, and I started to lose myself. My eyes closed, and my body relaxed as I started to see visions. When I closed me eyes, I saw Alex but as some sort of…tree spirit. The bottom part of his body was a tree trunk, but his upper body was mostly human aside from the fact that he was covered in soft blond fur. The hair part probably came from the fact that I could feel Alex’s chest hair against my face and upper part of my body. The vision was filled with many blues and greens, and was a very calming and comforting image to behold.

When I opened my eyes, I was almost surprised to find that I wasn’t in the vision I saw. I looked up at Alex and gave him a smile, and started to see his face morph. When I’m on mushrooms, it’s common for me to see people’s faces gain things like freckles or even some more wrinkles. I still found him to be handsome, however.

This is where things turned from comforting to sexual. I couldn’t seem to bring myself into a sexual mind space, as I only tended to get distracted by the hallucinations I was having. Things started to morph and move, and sound started to alter. I noticed that I was starting to hear similar music that I had heard upstairs, but it had a different….sound to it. I knew the kind of music I was hearing could never exist in nature, so I was very distracted in listening to that and soaking it up as opposed to being sexual. I drifted in and out of the experience, often times even forgetting that I was being sexual. I would be pulled back into it, however, by sudden strong sexual feelings that would come and go as the experience went on.

We started to have sex, and the feelings were made interesting by the mushrooms. However, I was still distracted by the visuals and other feelings I was having. I knew I wasn’t going to orgasm, so I noticed to just patiently wait until my partner had. Alex suggested that we had sex “doggy style” as it was easier for him to finish in while we were in the shower. Normally this kind of sex would be something I enjoyed, however, I felt myself hesitate for a moment, feeling that I at least wanted to have intimate sex while under the influence of these mushrooms. Nonetheless, I agreed.

My emotions started to go haywire when we began to have sex again. I just wanted my partner to finish, but it was taking a bit of time. Suddenly, sound started to intensify. The water droplets hitting the bath became so loud, it was as if someone had just placed my ears next to a jack hammer, even though it didn’t cause any pain. Being a person who is sensitive to sound, I started to become somewhat frighten by hearing this. I wanted to speak up and tell Alex to stop, but I felt like I had lost my words. I could not bring myself to speak and express my needs to Alex, which normally wouldn’t have been a problem.

This is the hard part thing to write. As we continued to have sex, my mind went into a mind state that was very disturbing. Even though I was having consensual sex with the person I’d been having sex with for almost a year, I felt almost as though I was being….”raped.”

(I want to stress that I’m using the word rape LIGHTLY here. I don’t think this experience was anywhere near as traumatic as what a rape victim has gone through. However, while I was under the influence of these mushrooms this was the word that came to me, and the feelings I felt. Due to this, I feel it’s important to use the word rape, to stress just HOW powerful mushrooms can be, and just how out of my mind I was.)

The mixture of the extremely loud noises and overwhelming feelings made me feel like it was even harder to communicate. I could feel tears building up inside me, and I started to cry at the same time Alex finished. Alex, confused, immediately put his arms around me and held me while I cried. Now that the experience had ended, I was able to communicate what I had felt. I felt embarrassed when I explained it to him, but he assured me that it was okay, and that I was going to be fine. He held me there for awhile, and my feelings started to return back to normal. (Or, as normal as feelings can get under the influence of mushrooms.)

A few minutes later, I found myself on Alex’s bed with him and Mark. I can’t quite remember how the mental change happened, but I was in a depressive wave of thoughts. I started to feel like my life was meaningless, and that I’d end up having the same life that everyone else has in life. There would be little excitement in between the major landmarks I was “supposed” to hit. School, a career, marriage, children, retirement, death. What else in life could I do? How could I escape this pattern and still live a “productive” life? These thoughts were extremely depressing for me, even more so because I didn’t feel like I had the ability to speak. I wanted to tell Alex and Mark that they didn’t need to be there, on the fact that their presence wasn’t really helping pull me out of this thought loop. (Not that it was making worse, however.) I managed to tell them that I missed Hawaii, and that was the end of what I could express.

Eventually, Alex and Mark coaxed me into getting off the bed and walking around outside. I was walking slowly, and couldn’t really keep up with them, nor did I care too. I wanted to be left alone to my thoughts. Alex would stop when he felt he was getting too far ahead of me, only for me to reassure him that I was okay by myself. Going outside helped eased my mind state to the point that I could talk, but I didn’t really want to. As I walked, I looked up at the tree branches to see that my mind had turned them into a spider web pattern. The light from the streetlights highlighted the spider web branches, making the imagery even more beautiful. I could only turn my head curiously as I looked at them, still too trapped inside my own head to appreciate the beauty I was seeing.

Mark and I stopped in a park while Alex went over to the corner store to find himself some food. I started to examine a tree that shimmered due to the rain that had just passed, once again ignoring the uniqueness it possessed due to my negative thought pattern. I talked to him about how I felt like most people (including myself) were just trying to work through the muck of daily routine for the few blissful and beautiful moments that seemed too few and far between. I didn’t want life to be like this! I wanted beauty, I wanted transformation, I wanted growth! I didn’t want to continue to be stifled the way I felt I was, but could see no other way around it due to having to make money, having to work and having to go to college so I could wrap myself up into debt so that I could just get a career. How was I supposed to find what I wanted out of life when I had to put so much energy into things that didn’t seem like they mattered? Mark didn’t have much of a response. (Mark is naturally a very pessimistic person.)

Mark and Alex returned back to the house while I stayed outside. I hovered under a tree to think, but I don’t remember much of what I thought under the tree but I know it still wasn’t taking me out of my thought loop. I returned back to Alex’s house, only to see that his roommates were throwing a party for Stephen. I didn’t much like Stephen, so I wanted to stay as far away from him as possible while I was tripping on mushrooms. I retreated to Alex’s room, and sat alone trying to figure out my thoughts. Alex would come downstairs occasionally to check on me, until eventually I told him that I was going to be fine on my own and that he could go have fun. Again, his presence didn’t really make a difference in my thought pattern so it was more just a matter of waiting to come down. Eventually I did come down enough that I could do upstairs to the party, but I mostly kept to myself during the night.

Retrospect: Though this trip was not enjoyable at the time, in hindsight it taught me a lot. The next day I went for a long walk in the spring sun, thinking about what had occurred that night. I realized that I had forgotten many beautiful things that I had in my life, and it certainly wasn’t as depressing as I had made it out to be. But it also influenced a good amount of change in my life. After that trip I worked harder to find meaning in my life, and not waste it away stuck in this routine. There was always travel, and there is STILL so much the world has left to offer me. After all, I’m only 18. I haven’t even experienced all the wonders I know I’m going to find, and plus, I haven’t even met half the people I will know in my lifetime. Though there ARE the unnecessary things to go through in life that don’t matter, there is still so much beauty and wonder in life if we stay open to it. During my trip I saw so many beautiful things, but my mind stayed closed to them because it was too caught up in its own thoughts to realize how much beauty does surround me at every moment.

As a final note, I’d like to mention that I learned that a bad trip isn’t to be feared. The next time I encounter a bad trip, if I do, I hope that I can see it as the learning experience it is and try to move past the difficult feelings I encounter.

(Background Info: I’ve smoked cannabis, salvia, taken MDMA, Hawaiian Baby Woodrose Seeds, some very weak LSD, and have also eaten mushrooms several other times before this trip. I do not take any medication, but I do take a multivitamin every day.)

Exp Year: 2009	ExpID: 77849
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Jan 19, 2017	Views: 10,280
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Mushrooms (39) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Sex Discussion (14), Bad Trips (6), Difficult Experiences (5)