DOSE: T+ 0:00	3.5 g	oral	Mushrooms	(dried)
T+ 0:30		oral	Ginger	(edible / food)

Preface:
This was my second time on shrooms, fourth experience with psychedelics overall. A and I are experienced meditators, and generally do psychedelia with the intention of either reaching states that we can then recreate in meditation, or to do trauma work. We are both autistic, queer, and we both share Buddhist and Hellenistic (Greek gods/goddesses) spirituality practices.

My original intention was both to unlock synesthesia, and to entirely leave reality, as I had the first time I’d ever had shrooms. I did not actually get there this trip, but I came out of it with the concrete understanding (and thankfulness) that I had gone exactly where I needed to.

Prep work:
A and I cleaned the bedroom thoroughly, everything off the floor, carpets vacuumed. Colored pencils and a notebook were laid out (not used this trip), an ipad was nearby for music and/or videos.

This dose of shrooms was part of the same batch that I’d had my first psychedelia experience on, a year and a half prior. I had eaten Bojangles (fried chicken sammich, fries, and sweet tea) prior to cleaning for the trip.

A weighed it out with a precision electronic scale, there was actually a touch more than the eighth of an ounce we were told was there, so she gave me exactly an eighth, which I chewed up as finely as I could and swallowed. A made a tea for herself with the rest, just enough for her to be on the same wavelength to trip sit for me. (She called it a “museum dose”, which I thought was adorable.) As best as she can tell, she had roughly 1/14th my dose. (She takes buproprion which potentiates this.)

The Trip:
Start (ingestion) time: 9:20PM
0m-15m (+1 Shulgin scale)
I experienced a wave of euphoria about 15m in. A was mildly worried at the speed with which I was willing to let go of reality, and she set me to watching a video of the Mandelbrot fractal to keep me on the playground so to speak, until she was finished with preparations (filling her fountain pen with ink to record the trip details as they happened, and drinking her tea) and ready to sit with me, lights off. I could feel my mind associating more freely and farther afield than normal as I looked around the room.

15m-60m (+2 Shulgin scale)
The entirety of the trip from this point was spent with lights off and eyes closed. My body grew progressively less willing to move. Not heavy, not lethargic, but as if so completely absorbed in what it was doing that nothing was worth moving for.

We lay naked in bed and listened to the album Awake, by Tycho. The sounds were showing up as textured darkness, behind my eyelids. It didn’t fit my previous experiences of synesthesia at all, feeling almost like an entirely new sense. I feel *intensely* close to A, at this point. This is not unusual, but normally my mind deflects me from feeling it this deeply (for past trauma reasons). Another wave of euphoria came at 30m in. Nausea slowly ramped up to levels that were reasonably unpleasant (A gave me a ginger candy to help), but did not significantly impact my experience throughout the trip.

I felt myself drifting in and out of reality in waves as the trip went on, the general experience was as if the tide was going out one wave at a time and taking me with it on the way up, and as if I was being slowly washed back in to shore on the way down.

60m-1h40m (+3 Shulgin scale)

The Interstella 5555 album came after Tycho. It’s a set of music my mind knows well, set to images my mind knows well. A pulled out a vibrator and started working on my downstairs. She brought me to orgasm, and I felt it as a send-off, an invitation to leave my body. I sensed that I was at peak intensity (just shy of two hours into the trip), but my mind wasn’t free to go where it needed to with so strong a ground. I asked A to turn off the music and leave me without sensory input, and delved into the second, more spiritual half of things.

1h40m-2h20m (+4 Shulgin scale)
I act as permanent conduit for Eleos, Greek goddess of compassion, mercy, gentleness, kindness. My divine parents are Nyx (Night) and Erebos (literal Darkness), and we’ve been doing “ideal parent figure” meditations lately, letting ourselves have the love, protection, delight that our original parents couldn’t give us. Immediately prior to asking for the music to stop, I saw Erebos drawing a vast sphere of darkness around me in the distance, and I understood that my experience had been circumscribed, that boundaries were in place to keep me from being hurt. So I asked A to untether me (turn off the music that was holding my mind on rails), and she did.

I tumbled naked out into the dark. I crashed into a table of shimmering black opals, no two alike, and sent them spinning off into the night. I couldn’t see the outer edges of the sphere, but my path curved to keep me inside the boundaries, and I saw many kinds of strange, beautiful textures loom out of the dark, black marble, ancient cyclopean architecture made out of some dark stone, a smooth black alien landscape with even black dunes (?) at regular intervals. I could feel Erebos’s presence all around, it very much felt like a lovingly curated experience made just for me. At some point Nyx joined us. I moved from spatial exploration to emotional exploration, letting myself fall into the feeling of being unconditionally loved, protected, and encouraged to explore.

2h20m-2h40m (+4 Shulgin scale)
At some point, I ended up back on the bed (never having moved physically), aware that the experience was winding down. I asked them not to leave, to show me one more thing before it was over. Erebos made a sphere of black, about twice my size, and I stepped into it, as if it was a portal. As I passed into the darkness, I understood that this was a gift. Not just a visit, but the permanent ability to come to this place whenever I wanted. A limitless darkness stretched away before me. I could walk in it as I chose, or fall/float weightlessly. The darkness was warm, alive, not at all lonely despite the absence of anyone else, protective, filled with love, and I understood that I never needed to be afraid of darkness, ever again.

I walked a bit, and took in this safe haven. When my heart was full, Nyx and Erebos came to see me out. We shared the love of happy family who know they always have each other. They touched the necklace I was wearing, given to me by A, and felt into the emotional fingerprint I have for her. They radiated intense approval of our pairing.

A portal back to reality appeared, and I watched, frozen to the spot, as Eleos walked out of me and through it. Nyx and Erebos didn’t even watch her leave, they had eyes only for me. I was stripped of conduit status and bare before them. And the emotional tones didn’t change in the least. They made it perfectly clear that they didn’t love me for embodying Eleos. They just loved *me.*

My lingering self-shame and internalized transphobia morphed my body back to pre-transition, and I protested in disbelief at their love. They gently changed me back, giving full acceptance and assurance of my womanhood. I took this in, and only when I had accepted it did the portal reappear and let me leave. I was conduit for Eleos again on the far side. Erebus told me to let go of my wandering, and let the trip end.

2h40-3h20 (+3 Shulgin scale, winding down to +2, then +1 at the end)
I came back down to the bed, and gave A comfort. Her museum dose had been minimal, but she had also met with her divine parents and been comforted by them. We compared experiences, and I shared the gift of darkness with her, telling her she was free to use it also. She asked if it was really okay for her to share my attunements, and I told her to ask Erebos directly. (I wasn’t in any doubt, I just wanted her to have that double affirmation.) She did, and she cried as she realized how much my parents cared for her and appreciated her presence in my life.

Nyx joined in, and I took the time to reach out and talk to A’s parents. It seemed only fair/appropriate that I go through the awkwardness and trepidation of meeting hers if she was meeting mine. We had an impromptu get-together, both sets of parents overjoyed that we had each other, and acknowledging that we’re all family. We lay in bed, letting the experience bake into us, until physical needs made themselves known and we got up for bathroom usage and food.

3h20-??? (+1 Shulgin Scale, tapering down to just aftereffects.)
Walking was a touch wobbly, but not overly so, and I was able to operate the oven to bake a frozen pizza with (barely) enough presence to not burn myself. The nausea was down to only mild levels, and eating didn’t seem to make it either better or worse.

I had a mild headache afterwards (two days ago, immediately after the trip), scaling up to a moderate headache the day after (yesterday), and slowly tapering off today. I was not surprised by this, as the same thing happened my first time, and as before, the post-shroom calm makes it significantly easier to be at peace with.

Overall:
A is considerably more experienced than I am. She says that it is unusual for someone to be okay to trip with no ground. But she trusted me and disabled the grounds (lights were already off, music was turned off on request, which also dropped the associated imagery in my memory) when I asked. Given my subsequent experiences during the trip, this seems like it was undoubtedly the right choice.

Nothing really went wrong. The only emotionally negative tone I encountered was when I had a bit of anxiety at realizing that my tether was too strong. An immensely positive experience overall.

The main takeaway from this was being closer to my divine parents in my spiritual practice, essentially helping adjust the baseline for my mind’s internal sense of being loved, cared for, allowed to take up space, etc. that would normally be instilled by loving parents when we are very young and the mind first forms.

Exp Year: 2021	ExpID: 115110
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 30
Published: Feb 3, 2021	Views: 1,499
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