DOSE:

3.5 mg

oral

Mushrooms

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

Mr. Jones, a strange man who lives nearby gave me this on a mangled piece of paper. I thought it should see the light of day:

1992: The story begins in an upper middle class suburb. Typical of these situations, recreational (and otherwise) drugs were prevalent. Having been experienced with marijuana for several months, my friend and myself decided to try 'magic mushrooms.' Now, even back in those youthful days I knew enough to try and learn about whatever substance I was going to ingest beforehand. I did some reading (this was before the internet) and felt somewhat comfortable about what I learned. I soon found out no words could adequately prepare me for my first truly psychedelic experience. That feeling of madness, the feeling that things are just rolling or flooding by me, the loss of control will still come as a surprise.

I acquired 1/8 oz. of dried material from a fellow student and my friend acquired the same amount from a different source. I hid my mushrooms alongside some pot in my room (parent's house) and waited for an opportune time to do them.

One Saturday I went out to take the SATs and came home to find my father looking rather upset. He had gone into my room and successfully searched for my drugs. My parents are extremely straight, not religious but had never really done anything except alcohol despite having lived through the 60's and 70's. He very angrily told me to get rid of the offending material and said that he never wanted to see anything like this again. Why he didn't destroy the stuff himself, I'll never know. So, my method of 'getting rid of it' was to bring it to my friend's house for use later that evening.

Setting: later that evening. Friend’s parent’s suburban home. Parents out for the evening, sitting on the stone patio with friend and his girlfriend (I had none). Friend and I each ingest all of said material (1/8oz each) by chewing whole pieces and putting foul tasting powder into tea. Mindset: a little nervous and certainly freaked out by my father’s discovery earlier that day. Curiosity.

As we sat, waiting for the effects to come on, there was (what I recognize now as) typical pre-psychedelic tension in the stomach area combined with a bit of heightened nervous energy.

The Come up: The patio was created out of differently colored interlocking stones which began to look quite a bit more interesting than before. The lines between the stones became neon and rose up out of the ground creating and sort of neon grid in the air. The grass also became intensely colored in neon-like light even though it was quite dark out. My friend is feeling close to nothing. I feel a bit out of control, but nothing serious yet. The white stucco wall that we face on the side of the house is acting kind of like a movie screen. I can see claymation movies and weird faces drifting by (a black man with John Lennon glasses and a bandanna). This is appr. +1 hr.

I begin worrying about having to go to the bathroom. I go to take a piss, but nothing comes out and feels like I have to shit, but again nothing. I head outside, shaking it off and an trying to get happy again. My mind wanders and I begin having paranoid fantasies about my friend trying to get rid of me so that he can have sex with his girlfriend. This isn’t entirely crazy as it actually happened a few times in the past. It’s worrying me greatly and I’m sad that I’m with such backstabbing people. At times, I reach down between my pants, convinced that I’ve shit them. I never did, but this feeling would continue throughout the experience it and mar it significantly.

+1.5 Poison is coming on very very strongly now. Confusion, a feeling of total loss of control, especially when it has to do with my bowels.

+2 run upstairs to friend’s room in an attempt to be alone, listen to music and chill the fuck out. Can’t figure out how to turn on the stereo. Friend does it for me then returns downstairs. He’s feeling only mildly buzzed, has no sympathy. I’m left lying in his bed, listening to music that is taking strange turns. I have no idea what I am listening to, but the lyrics are changing to things like, '(my name) shouldn’t have taken those mushrooms, his father warned him…' and other doom-laden messages. Time is going nowhere. I sit with my eyes closed, watching flying Greek statues and bizarre matrices form for what seems like hours, but when I look at the clock, less that 5 minutes has passed. CEVs extremely strong. Open eye trails.

+2.5 Am now getting convinced that this will, in fact, last forever. I have permanently screwed up my brain. The shame. I have disappointed my parents and fucked my entire life up. I hear my friend’s parents come home and begin 'hearing' them making arrangements to call an ambulance or get me committed. Keep having to look around to make sure I haven’t vomited all over the place without noticing it or shitting all over myself without noticing it. Even hallucinated vomit on the bedspread. It was neon.

+3 or so. Things start to calm a bit. Time distortion has cleared slightly, which has improved things immeasurably. Still very worried about loss of bodily function control.

+4 Genuine feeling that 'The Storm has Passed.' I think I even exclaimed, 'the storm has passed! I feel like I’ve really weathered something!'

Was a rough time, but learned a lot. Including, being rather careful with dosage, a lesson I will take with any drug in the future. The bad trip can be a very very useful thing. (As long as it doesn’t go too badly, of course). At this point I was not certain I would do mushrooms again, but… I did. A couple more times. Much smaller dose, more approximating a weird level of mj inebriation, never enough to have a really bad time again.

Until 1997. The setting: my apartment, shared with 3 very good friends (2 male, one female). We were seniors in college, and just graduated that day. Parents just all left town (along with a significant portion of the population) and we are worried about the future but happy to celebrate our life together. We have 1/4 oz. dried material divided up and taken after dark. This is obviously less than my awful dose, but more than I had taken in a while.

We haven’t been outside for ages and haven’t really made any plans to do anything, but after half an hour of waiting for something to happen, decide to go for a walk. What we found would change our lives forever.

Madison, WI is located on an isthmus between two lakes and is not known for its fog. But that night was one of the foggiest nights I’ve ever seen. The temp was mild and spring (which arrives late) had finally come. We are all starting to come up a bit as we hit the streets. Across the street from out apt. is a church that now has been converted into a large, bizarre house where 12 or so students share the living space. Outside, through the fog, we can see a fire glowing. As we head over there, we notice that there is an X-mas tree ablaze in an oil drum, and several folks are standing or sitting around it. It really appeared to be a strange pagan festival that welcomed us into tripsville. The people there were all very friendly and even thanked us for stopping by.

We headed to the park, which looked onto one of the lakes. The streetlights, which are surrounded by trees, are casting the most unbelievable silhouettes in the tree branches. Their yellow light, through the fog, makes me think that this is what it’s like on the surface of Venus. The lake is a total void. Black. You can’t see more than 3 ft in from on you. We continue walking until we get to a small park, with a bench that has a trimmed weeping willow tree above it like an umbrella.

We sit, surrounded by fresh herbs (for some reason they had been planted in this park) and the willow, smoking cigarettes, feeling entirely together. Despite the lack of light, all the greenery has taken on marvelous bright tones, everything is alive. The wind is nonexistent and as we sit, the cigarette smoke hangs in the air as if we were inside. We play with it between our fingers and laugh triumphantly. Nothing has ever been this marvelous.

As we walk further I feel as if we were all on a big couch together, just taking in all of the familiar sights of our college years. Also, with the fog, it feels like we’re inside a giant terrarium, with mist coming from the heavens and landing on all the springlike greenery.

So to speed this up. One of my fellow travelers started to get overly nostalgic, decided to go home and was threatening to lapse into 'the terror.' We, thankfully, talked him out of it. Yes, at one point the ground bubbled a bit and some tracers went across my field of vision and we sat for a while molesting tulips while closing our eyes. The slightly panicked friend found himself rolling around in the water-covered grass with a tulip in his mouth laughing like a little girl being tickled. We felt up tree and just kept repeating, 'Oh my god. I’ve never seen anything quite like this. These trees are so beautiful.'

This being a nature trip we also went and felt up the slimy rocks on the lakeshore and put our hands in mud. Completely marvelous.

The only time I felt a bit freaked out was when we were sort of far from town and saw a man walking past us on a nearby path talking to himself. I pictured us all getting axe murdered by him and experienced, momentarily, the feeling of helplessness that I would be going through during that ordeal. It was at this point that I said, 'Hey, how bout we go back into town.' It was agreed upon without a problem. Once again we sat on the moving couch and traveled through what felt like the little train-set town we lived in.

The next day we awoke feeling ready to move on with our lives. I’ve never done mushrooms since and am thrilled to have the last time I did them also be the best.

Exp Year: 1992	ExpID: 15469
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Sep 23, 2005	Views: 6,989
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