DOSE:	3 g	oral	Mushrooms	(dried)
		smoked	Cannabis
		vaporized	Unknown

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

First Psilocybin Mushroom Experience

Introduction --

This is my experience/trip report of my first ever psychedelic experience. I had been planning on doing it for over a year, but I have heard a lot about how important your state of mind, set, and setting are to the entire journey. I also read a little about Terance Mckenna and his philosophy on magic mushrooms.

With that in mind from the start I didn't take any of it lightly, for me this was more than a party drug, more than just trying to get 'super stoned'. I considered it almost sacred, I think of myself as a fairly deep thinking, spiritual, individual. So after doing my research and getting myself into an open mindset, I pondered thoroughly what I wanted to gain from it : An introspective experience to learn from, to grow as a person, to gain a new perspective on life, death, my relationships, my job, my spirituality, and anything I can learn from altering my state of consciousness. Anything that came from it, good or bad, terrifying or beautiful I would accept it and not fight it and just let the mushrooms show me whatever it wanted and then I would go from there.

Joining me on the trip was my lovely girlfriend, Mavourneen, who has tripped on LSD before but never tried mushrooms. We went in this without a sitter, just she and I. We share a high level of comfort and trust with each other and this is just how it worked out.

Ingestion--

Around 7pm on the night of the trip my girlfriend and I packed 3 dried grams each into sandwiches, hers in a peanut butter & jelly, mine in a peanut butter sandwich. This seemed to mask any and all flavor of the mushrooms, they didnt have much of a smell either so it was honestly not bad at all to eat, so we ate them with some purpose and within a few minutes we were done. Also, as a preemptive measure for any nausea we smoked a bowl of marijuana and headed to her room.

Set and Setting --
We chose sundown because we wanted to get the best of both the daylight and the night in our journey, she made her room super comfortable, and being an art lover like myself her walls are decorated with multiple tapestries, paintings, multi-media art, visionary art, rainbow christmas lights around the edge of the ceiling and incense to help create a meditative atmosphere.

Come up --
Around 40 minutes or so after eating I begin to feel my heart race, I acknowledge it but dont panic as I'm used to this response after having a lot of marijuana only it wasn't marijuana. This feeling only gets uncomfortable when I cant seem to find the right breathing pace, I felt a little hyperventilated and my arms and hands start getting a pins and needles sensation.

We decide to get up and stretch, which feels great on my body, by now I'm feeling very uplifted, warm, and giggly. I can't help but relate it to the feeling I had when I ate roughly 45mg of THC, only somehow more intense. Standing up begins to become a chore, I'm a little light-headed and stretching has done all it can do.

Approaching an hour or a little longer while laying on our backs I begin to notice the light shining onto the wall and ceiling from the Christmas lights, they're more vibrant than before. I look at the tapestry on the ceiling, the big sun on it has rays and other planets and stars behind it, the whole thing looked a little 3-D, and was shimmering and moving ever so slightly. We look outside at the last of the sunlight, the grass is bright green like no grass I've ever seen. I'm beginning to see how light bends and curves and distorts around the blinds to my eyes and it just makes sense. The complexity of how light waves worked didnt need an equation to be explained, I just witnessed it and understood it.

--The Trip--

The visuals are becoming very intense at this point, the light shining on the ceiling from the Christmas lights were dancing side to side, as if they were little fire spirits welcoming us into their realm, I felt welcomed, I look back to the tapestry at the sun on it and the other planets and the rays are definitely alive and moving, the other planets begin to rotate and the whole thing has depth and vivid color to it. I still feel like me, just euphoric and happy, we've already laughed and giggled so much before the visuals started by the time they did it was like we were seeing the world for the first time. All I knew for sure was I kept feeling like my hands were wet, the vape I was holding I thought was leaking multiple times just to see that it wasn't and my hands had gotten a little clammy but the wet sensation was multiplied to the point where I found myself laughing and trying to dry them again and again.

The next stage in this process was the feeling internally, my thoughts, my inner voice, it was all beginning to feel unfamiliar, but I still had a strange amount of control over what I wanted to think about or feel. Each thought I had I could let it go and feel it disappear, or I could get closer and deeper into it. It felt like a vacuum pulling my conciousness inward. At this moment I realized that my thoughts had an almost physical existence in my head, they had gravity and getting close to them pulled me in and I could go on forever thinking about it. I visualized my thought as a small black hole and there were tons of them forming every time I started thinking about something new, I could let it go, or jump into the rabbit hole.

Next the visuals are so intense and not just effecting the items I look at, but my entire field of vision is engulfed in a pulsating, color changing, smoky(ish) veil. All the while everything is alive, I stare at the bathroom floor and watch the textures in the linoleum tile grow like small glaciers beneath my feet, I can't help but stare in awe at the detail of what im seeing. I looked at the painting Wonder by Alex Grey, the veins in the man's face grew and blue pulses of blood shot through them, the blue parts in his body radiated a slight haze like smoke coming off it. It was one of the most beautiful things I've seen with my own eyes.

The rest of the trip was mind bending, the only way I can describe what it felt like was my reality, the core of my reality, what tethered me to 'real' started to break down minute by minute. I became very, very, self-aware. Not only self-concious, but acutely aware of my existence and my ego inside. I could hear my subconscious questioning everything that happened, trying to place some meaning to it or figure out where it was all going. This feeling was so intense at certain points all I could say at the time was 'and then?' 'What does that mean?' But it seemed like something knew my subconscious was desperately trying to find a ground to center itself on to build a time lapse and flow of events that made sense, because almost every time I thought 'what now?' There was a shift in my thought pattern. Like the moment got closed up in a box and pushed aside and a new one was born, and when I tried to figure that out it repeated. This kind of loop broke down the meaning of everything. The only thing I knew was I knew nothing, and that we as a species knew nothing. I was humbled greatly by it, it felt like something was trying to get me to stop assigning meaning to everything, to calm down and just live.

I had moments when I looked at Mavourneen and she had six eyes, a pair above and below her real eyes, but she looked aged, almost like I could see exactly how she'd look as an older woman. This thought came back to me later on when I closed my eyes. Life, it seemed, was just a flash. A dream. I repeated that in my head. And I became flooded by sadness, not the kind of sadness you think of where you want to die or give up. Just an acknowledgement of what I was in this life, a mortal human.

This feeling stuck with me and I didnt really like it at first, but I reminded myself that it would pass like every other stage in the trip, so I rode it out. And I broke through to a point where I saw all the beauty in my existence, and it wasn't in my car, my job, money, my family that has disowned me, or a religion. It was love, pure unconditional love that I felt for my girlfriend, and the few close friends I have. I told them I loved them and I didnt appreciate them enough. After each confusing moment, or sadness, or feeling like I was losing my mind, I would break through to moments of pure happiness and euphoria. I laughed so much and wanted to cry my eyes out because of how happy I was and lucky I felt to be alive.

Then I would almost live it over again, I'd become sad, I'd realize before I knew it my life was going to be concluding I was going to get old and I didn't want to waste the prime of my life stressing about what comes next, the insufferable ego inside me that's constantly trying to figure out what the 'here and now' means so it can figure out what comes next. I felt the 'here and now' throughout my trip and I loved it because it didnt need anything to follow it up, each moment was beautiful as I lived it just as it was.

I theorized that life, being so hard to understand was made up of only what I allowed myself to see. If I want happiness and beauty I have to direct myself to see it. But when I get caught up in the meaningless and mundane, that's all I experience, I get stuck in depressing loops where I start spraying blame and anger out. But my mindset made me think, 'it's all you, you're telling yourself what things mean, how you feel about them, and who is at fault.' I basically realized how much I get in the way of myself and how I need to be in tune with my life better.

Come Down ~1130p

I couldn't place exactly where I felt myself coming down, but I knew that the peak of the trip was over. It was almost like I took a deep breath and everything just slowed down, control and sense came back to some level enough for me to feel almost sober for a moment. My mind kept trying to gauge how sober I was and I found it impossible. I felt sober, but then I would feel unfamiliar and in such deep thought I knew I wasn't. While the visuals had almost completely stopped my mind was still reeling from what had just happened trying to pick the pieces up and put them together. I got a headache around my eyes and temples, I decided this was probably some after-effect of having my mind put in hyper drive and my reality being disassembled and rearranged over and over again. I wasn't unhappy with it, I just felt tired and was perfectly happy laying in the dark just thinking and listening to music. This is where I noticed auditory sensations had really come on after the trip rather than during. Music was hypnotic and easy to listen to the layers, each instrument, the effects and how they all got along together. Being a musician this was a very exciting thing to hear, it was like getting lost in music for the first time.

Although I was tired I found it difficult to fall asleep, I either didn't want to fall asleep yet, or I was so caught up thinking about the experience that I wasn't sleepy at all. In the midst of this I heard a voice come up and tell me to take my clothes, ring, and necklace off and in that moment I felt like I couldn't take it all off fast enough. My jewelry and clothes felt foreign and almost ugly, I felt like it wasn't me. So I joined my lady under the blankets totally nude and totally satisfied with my existence. Some things made no sense and had no words to describe them, but it didn't matter; not everything needed meaning to be fulfilling, not everything needed words to define moments to make it any more or less profound.

Skin felt so warm and comforting and I almost felt like a child again, no worries, nothing weighing my mind down. With that I finally began to doze off and fall asleep around 145 am.

Summary --

With everything said, the only thing I can really say to bring it all together is: this experience, if you prepare your mind and setting can be one of the most unique things you can live through. It engulfs every sensation, every perception, every thought pattern. It boils you down to your core, and separates meaning from all things and lets you see them as they are, separate ideas. You realize things about yourself that you love, things you want to change, things that have been in your personality since you can remember. It is introspective, beautiful, euphoric, terrifying, and eye-opening. It's therapeutic and I honestly can't wait to take it again, but not in the same way I would want to smoke marijuana, or drink, or do any other drug. To me it's a spiritual inquiry about myself and the universe. Almost a ritual that changes how I see everything literally and figuratively. While it was extremely enjoyable it isn't something I'd want to do every day or weekend. But I feel within a few weeks I will probably start planning for the next one.

Exp Year: 2017	ExpID: 110359
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Jan 22, 2021	Views: 1,163
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