DOSE:

1-2 g

oral

Mushrooms - P. cubensis

(fresh)

BODY WEIGHT:

85 kg

substance: Psilocybe cubensis "Ecuador"
dose: unknown, minimal
user: 40yo, ♂, ~85kg

(early 2023.) I half wake up in the middle of the night; at first only the faintest veil of awareness is present. The room is completely dark and silent. I'm annoyed. There's a strong lingering sense that the dream I just had was a pleasant one, but it faded out of memory in an instant. All gone; no recollection whatsoever. A sense of loss creeps over me. The pose I'm in is a bit uncomfortable; probably that's what woke me. 'I should roll over...'

'Wait!' There's a slight residue from the dream space. It almost feels like... being on mushrooms? It has a bit of tension, it has a bit of warm pleasantness. This must have been a nice dream indeed, and a very vivid one. I'm puzzled, as I never experienced such aftereffect with any previous dreams. Not that I dream often, but still, it's a strange unusual sensation. Definitely pleasant. I lost everything from the dream except this feeling, and now I'll have to roll over, and if I move, this as well will be gone. (*1) Slowly I turn to lie on my other side. At once that strange afterglow feeling evaporates; as expected.

Disappointed, I sit up on my bed and open my eyes. Suddenly it hits me; almost like smashing into a wall unexpectedly. This presence which unbeknownst to me has been lurking in the dark like a predator, watched me sleep unsuspectingly, preparing... and when the moment came, it striked down on its helpless prey as fast as the blink of an eye.

"BAAAAA!" like a deep powerful gong in my head, but without voice. The silence is screaming deafeningly. It's not sound, just pressure. It's intensity. 'I know this feeling!' The unmistakable mushroom space startles me. I almost panic. 'What's going on? Am I still dreaming?' Confused, I stare into the darkness, and see faint rainbow shards flickering everywhere. 'This can't be! Is this really happening?'

I try to deny what I see, but no use. The walls are vibrating with the glassy shards; and the vibration rapidly escalates until I can't take it any more. I close my eyes in fear of an actual earthquake. This feels like just before the peak of a trip. The storm is coming; no, it's already here! 'Breathe! There's no escape from it. Try to breathe deep! You've been through similar experiences. You can do it.' - I try to encourage myself in vain while the body is gasping for air.

I have to test the severity of the situation. Probe the charge of the creativity field so to say, as if measuring electricity in the clouds to predict the likelihood of lightning. Closed eyes, deep breath. Like snapping my fingers mentally; a spark is released and it instantly explodes into a fractal of cream and brown flowers. Try again; firework this time, and rainbow fractal. Again; exploding crystals, probably pink. 'Holy fuck!! This is not a joke.' It feels as intense as it ever gets. 'But I didn't take anything... or did I?'

Gathering all willpower; with trembling hands I reach for my phone to check reality. Tap the screen; it says "01:00". (*2) Instantly my denial falls apart as memories return, and I put together the events which lead to the current situation:

There was a grow experiment of Psilocybe cubensis "Ecuador" with a single failed mushroom which never developed a proper cap, only a stunted stem. After days of fruitless hoping I gave up on the runt, and decided to remove it from the substrate jar. There was no point in drying out and preserving this little material. It could have been 1-2g fresh, 3g at most by the look of it. That would equal about 0.2g dry. So I picked the stem and ate it fresh as it was, confident that it would not have any detectable effect as it was a microdose. Admittedly, the stem was intense blue inside. It has already been standing there for nearly a week, and must have been accumulating psilocybin all that time. (*3)

"BAAAAA!" the gong is bellowing at me mercilessly. The intensity of the mushroom space is rising exponentially. In less than a minute it builds to overwhelming levels. Breathing feels hard. 'What to do? Music! I need music to control this.' No time to be picky, so I go for something calming; Killigrew - Immortal Love album. My shaky finger can barely press Play while the letters on the screen appear smeared; then I collapse back onto the bed.

Fear and struggle continue. I try to resist, to stay in control, to not get nauseous from panic. Gasping for air, I know letting go is the only way. I can't stop this, so I'll have to wait it out. 'Breathe!' I take in the air as deep as I can. The intensity is channeled into visions, and the fear gradually fades. I relax and close my eyes.

Fractal fireworks, crystals, colors. In the outside reality the body is convulsing, but it's quite pleasant so I let it do its thing uncontrolled while I go deeper into the mental experience. Space cracks like glass under tension, and a shiny surface like a mirror appears; then it splits and reflects itself, then splits again and again until there's nothing else in my field of view but reflective shards and planes and angles: the Mirror Garden. A labyrinth of illusions from which I feel I'd never find a way out. If I go in there, I'll forget which one of me is real and which are reflections. Sensing the edge of insanity I hesitate, then draw back. I scrap the design instead, and create a new one. Breathing deep.

Fractal upon fractal, mirror upon mirror. The radiating intensity of the gong. The dripping crystal clarity of sound like melting ice. (*4) Warmth, softness and creativity. And above it all, the ever present Mushroom Truth talking to me in a mute language beyond my understanding. It's a deep chant of silence, not voice, not even a transfer of information. It's pure logic, interrelatedness flowing into the mind; the very fabric of the psychedelic world. That is, the only world, because right now there's no other. It's distorting space with pure will, revealing its ultimate power. Feels like I'm in a temple of some sort. Not a temple of a fairytale-religion, but a place to worship the Truth.

I spend about five minutes submerged like this, then the intensity subsides and the visions fade. The storm is over, and a pleasant warm afterglow remains. I'm capable of acting again, so I look at the phone: "01:37" 'Has it been that long?' Those five minutes were more than half an hour! Of course, on the peak there is no sense of time. It just happens.

The following few hours are spent in slow descent, with a fragile balance between grace and anxiety. I avoid negative feelings by channeling the intensity into doing something useful; analyzing this low-intensity experience. (*5)

Footnotes:

*1:
Experience shows that rolling over from one side to the other has an instant dream-killer effect. Regarding this phenomenon my theory is, that the change of direction of gravity inverts the blood distribution pattern between the brain hemispheres; so that the initially lower hemisphere, which had increased blood supply due to the hydraulic pressure, will get on top, and be drained of blood. This partially deprives the previously dreaming brain area of oxygen, and mitigates its activity. The theory supposes that dreaming happens on the particular side of the brain which is in lower position. There also seems to be a specific tendency of each hemisphere to generate dreams, making it possible to influence the frequency of dream occurrence by positioning either the more or less dreamy hemisphere in the active lower position. Using this technique I could avoid having any dreams for years, simply by sleeping on my side which tended not to dream at all. Sleeping on my other side resulted about 1-5% chance that I would wake up with a remembered dream. (This method was useful during long periods of depression when I could only have stressful dreams.)

*2:
It's a bit suspicious that the time was exactly 1AM when I looked. Maybe there were minutes displayed, but in that mental state I failed to interpret them.

*3:
This gave me an idea how to produce potent material: When the mushroom is ready to be picked, remove the cap but leave the stem standing. This way the mushroom can't mess up the growth chamber with its black spores, and the stem can keep accumulating potency. I'm not sure if this would work, but worth a try. (later edit: I never did the experiment to test this idea.)

*4:
An often mentioned quality of psychedelic drugs is their alleged enhancement of music and sound perception. Michael Pollan writes in How To Change Your Mind (2018): "There is research to suggest that people hear music differently under the influence of these drugs. They process the timbre, or coloration, of music more acutely - a dimension of music that conveys emotion." This theory becomes doubtful in the light of the present experience. So far I always placed a strong emphasis on the quality of trip music, playing only FLAC files or other lossless formats, and listening on high fidelity speakers or earphones. In some instances it did feel like I was perceiving minute details of sound which I never noticed before. Due to the unexpected start of the present trip, such careful preparation was not an option. I could only start music on my phone, and listen on its tiny speakers, which is the lowest possible sound quality. Despite this, music enjoyment and perceived clarity was as good as ever. The question follows: Does the user truly gain increased ability to notice details in sound, or does cognition and judgment deteriorate, making in comparison the same or even much worse quality sound feel subjectively better compared to the user's dumbed down state.

The same general idea can be broadened and applied to psychedelic revelations. During trips the user commonly experiences a sense of ultimate truth, revelation of great knowledge, mental download of life‑changing information from hyperspace. On several occasions I had the feeling of having found what I was looking for, taking notes or trying to remember The Truth, only to find when I sobered up that I had trivia or practically nothing. I wonder, is there really a truthfulness in psychedelic experience which is unspeakable in this sober world, or does the user get stupefied under the influence of the drug so much that even the most basic notion feels subjectively like a genius idea.

*5:
I was curious and worried about the breathing difficulty which I experienced during the last three trips. I wanted to find out if this was imaginary, or if psilocin really blocked automatic breathing and could cause risk of suffocation if overdosed. Of course I know that only opiates block the breathing reflex, and psilocin has no dangerous physiological effect in any dose, but that's not how I subjectively felt. From the present experience I drew the conclusion that psilocin does not block normal breathing, however the intensity of the psychedelic experience necessitates extra air intake.

The intensity needs surface to crystallize on. This surface can be the user's flesh convulsed and weighed down, it can be a tactile sensation and pleasure, it can be a thought process. The point is to channel, distribute and use up the energy of the stimulated mind in order to prevent it from becoming overwhelming. Very useful things to be familiar with for the peak phase: fractals and mirror illusion. These channel the energy into infinity. An explosion is only an explosion if there's an opposing force holding it back. The struggle against each other creates the pressure wave.

(These are just observations I made while studying my experience, and may be subjective ideas.)

Conclusions:

After trip 5, which ended badly, for a long time I had no intention to take mushrooms. Trip 6a was a careful test with only 1.21g dry Psilocybe cubensis "B+" to find out if going back to a psychedelic experience was safe. As it turned out, if you mess up your room and leave, it will be waiting for you just the same when you come home. Returning to the psychedelic world with trip 6a, I found exactly what I left behind at the end of trip 5: unprocessed anxiety and regret. Consequently, trip 6a was nothing else but several hours of being trapped in an experience which I wanted to get out of, a nervous struggle to hold on and wait it out, wishing all the time for the trip to just end already. No lessons were learned; nothing worth recording in a trip report. Otherwise 6a was low intensity thanks to the small dose. The idea was to gradually increase the dose when I felt comfortable to do so. After the anxiety of 6a I certainly didn't feel ready for an increase.

Pity that the dose for trip 6b has not been measured accurately. In retrospect I estimate it to be no more than a few grams fresh material, which converts to somewhere around 0.1-0.3g dry weight. That definitely qualifies as a microdose. I'm very surprised that it produced a detectable effect at all. While it wasn't a profound experience, I did lose sense of time and connection to reality for at least half an hour. That puts it in the medium intensity category, certainly much stronger than 6a, despite the much lower dose.

Since these were low value experimental trips, basically just careful attempts to regain my confidence after the last challenging experience, I decided to think of them as "trip 6a" and "6b" instead of "trip 6" and " trip 7". They certainly didn't give me the knowledge and gained experience of two full trips.

The surprisingly strong effect of this latest tiny dose makes me question the dependability of the dose‑effect relation of these mushrooms. How can I choose the dosage wisely if potency seems to vary five to tenfold, or if the depth of the experience has little to do with the amount of psilocybin ingested?

Exp Year: 2023	ExpID: 118474
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 40
Published: Nov 19, 2024	Views: 15
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Train Wrecks & Trip Disasters (7), Alone (16)