DOSE: T+ 0:00	2 g	oral	Mushrooms	(ground / crushed)
T+ 0:05		smoked	Cannabis
T+ 0:00		smoked	Tobacco - Cigarettes
T+ 0:00	1 cig.	smoked	Tobacco - Cigarettes

BODY WEIGHT:

130 lb

Background

The Summer before my senior year of college; actually it’s the Friday before classes start, and I have been dying to try shrooms for the past two months. See, two months ago, I got out of rehab (for an eating disorder). The way I was able to delve into the deepest parts of myself for those six weeks I spent in treatment left me craving more. I wanted to jump headfirst into the deepest parts of my subconscious and uncover the things I couldn’t see.

I had been contemplating the meaning of life; trying to pick up the pieces of and create a new person from the remnants of myself. I wanted insight; I wanted to see the world in an utterly different way. So when the opportunity presented itself, I didn’t hesitate. I knew I was in a place in my life where I could handle ripping off the bandage and facing the truth head-on.

I had never done shrooms before. I had taken LSD three years before and had a horrible trip. That was part of the reason that I wanted to take the shrooms, I wanted to have a better experience with psychedelics. I had been smoking pot everyday for a few months and that was basically my experience with drugs. My fellow travelers would be my two best friends, Ari and Kat. Ari had never taken shrooms before and Kat had taken them once last summer. We all decided that we would trip together that Friday.

Experience

15:45- I arrived home from work to Ari and Kim sitting on my couch chatting together. I greeted them in passing as I headed to my bedroom. I had been anticipating this moment since I got the shrooms two days before. I grabbed the bag from where I had it concealed next to my bed. My heart started racing in excitement when I saw the dried fungi.

I got the shrooms from a guy I know from college. We are of the scientific persuasion, and he had explained to me, with the use of a chemical synthetic scheme, the necessary chemical transformations needed to convert psilocybin, the non-psychoactive pro-drug, into psilocin, that lovely compound that would catapult my consciousness into the lovely unknown. This process which normally happens due to the acid of your stomach, can be performed prior to consumption by mincing the shrooms and then putting them into a shot with cranberry and fresh lemon juice, allowing the effects to be felt sooner.

16:00-So I whipped up three shroom shots, each constituting about 2 g, and took them into my living room. We sat in a circle and looked at each other for about thirty seconds, each waiting for the other to start drinking. We laughed and I just downed my shot. After Ari and Kim followed my lead, we all sat down on the couch together and I realized that the time had come.

16:05- Ari had packed a bowl while I was making the shroom shots and she asked me for the lighter. She took the first hit and then passed it to me. I took a hit as well. Ari and I smoked until the bowl was cashed; Kim had decided she didn’t want to smoke.

I felt the weed take effect quickly. I let myself sink deeply into the couch. My head felt empty, like it was full of air and the pressure of it was making my forehead feel tight. My eyelids were heavy but I wasn’t tired, I felt completely relaxed. I let everything go and I just laid my head back and looked at the ceiling.

16:45- We started to feel some of the effects of the shrooms. Everything was starting to look sharper. I could see great details in the couch cushions. Ari was on her laptop and Kim was resting her head on my shoulder. Ari looked up quickly and reminded me that we wanted to listen to Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon while we were tripping. So I started it. Kim had never heard it and I knew that it was perfect.

When the first song struck its first note, Kim’s eyes became very wide. She looked over at the string of flower lights we have strung above our door. I could see the wonder bubbling up in her eyes. “My trip just started.” She said.

I turned on the visualizer on my iTunes and became enthralled with the images. I could feel the vibrations within my core and I started to feel one with the images on my screen. When lines shot out of colliding spheres, I could feel them connect with me through the screen. I forgot that the music and the images were separate entities. I started to feel an interconnectedness that wove through the fibers of the universe.

16:57- My trip started. I looked up at the print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night that we have on the wall in our living room. The colors started melting together. They were swimming in the image. I started seeing more patterns in the painting. Different symbols and meanings. I didn’t know what to think, so I turned back to the visualizer.

Kim started laughing hysterically. She was staring at the flower lights again. “They’re spinning,” She said in ecstasy. Ari was still on her computer. I think she was playing Sims. I realized that I was really hungry. Somehow, I was able to tear my eyes away from the visualizer and look at Kim who was staring intently at the clock on the wall. “It’s melting.” She said. Her hands mimicked a circle extending outward.

“I’m really hungry.” I said with a smile. I knew I couldn’t drive, but I wanted to walk to the gas station two blocks down the street.

Kim’s eyes lit up, “Me too.” Ari seemed interested as well, but as we made our way outside, she decided that she didn’t trust herself to walk to the store, so she decided to stay behind and smoke a cigarette. As I lit up a cigarette also, I allowed myself to observe the feeling of the sun on my skin. I could literally feel each photon being absorbed by my body. I looked up into the branches of the trees above me. The sunlight was streaming gloriously through the leaves. Each ray of light ended in bursts like stars. I could see all of the colours in the spectrum. Each ray was a magnificent amalgamation that I realized was always there, but I just never took the time to see it.

Kim and I started walking, and I was overtaken by the stimulation of each individual piece of nature. Each blade of grass encompassed unsurpassed detail and beauty. My head was spinning from the sheer image of the world through my eyes, which felt opened for the first time.

Kim had the giggles really bad. She laughed uncontrollably all the way to the store and then some. All of the brightly coloured packages in the convenience store were dancing off of the shelves. The colours blended together, and everything looked absolutely delicious. I would pick up an item and begin walking towards the register, but then I would circle back around and grab a few more things.

I encountered the only real drawback from my trip while we were at the store. Time passed so slowly. It was like syrup flowing out of the bottle, and you are just so ready to eat your pancakes. I wanted to get back outside, to just sit in my backyard and look up at the trees. Which is what we did.

17:50- We sat down around the fire-pit in the backyard and I observed every tree in my yard individually, and in great detail. I wanted to memorize that moment. To remember it in gory detail so that every time I looked at those sights I would see them in this pristine state. I again started thinking of how I had been living my life up until this point. I didn’t realize that I had lived in such a state of darkness; such a state of ignorance.

There I was, a senior biochemistry major, who graduated a year early from high school. When I say that I’m intelligent, I say it in the most humble way possible. It is indeed the only part of myself that I think is remotely praiseworthy. (Did I mention I’m also horrifyingly self-deprecating?) But in that moment, I felt like an ignorant child, seeing the world for the first time; and I realized that the things I don’t know vastly outweigh the things I do.

I felt so small. I understood the vastness of this planet, and the infinite abyss of the universe. Rather than feeling insignificant, this understanding filled me with a comforting humility. I understood that if I let myself feel disheartened by this realization then it served no purpose. We are all minuscule details in this greater cosmic picture. And maybe what we do really changes nothing in the long run. But it changes us.

As my mind raced around and around with one epiphany after another, I thought that it didn’t much matter if I changed the world. It doesn’t matter if I have recognition and success. For how can I enjoy these things that are so much larger than myself when I can’t even appreciate the minute space that I inhabit.

I have spent my entire life searching for meaning through the external means. Yet every plaque, every award, every trophy never changed anything. It never made me a fundamentally happier person. When I looked back, surrounded by unspeakable natural beauty, at the way I had lived my life, I began to understand why I had been so unhappy.

18:45- My mind was starting to go into hyper drive. And it’s hard to describe exactly what I was seeing and thinking. I looked at Ari and Kim who had been having conversations while I stared intently at the trees. Kim was laughing at a joke Ari said, and I interrupted them. “I’m so glad you both are here.” I said. I knew I needed to articulate to them exactly how thankful I was to have them both as my friends. As we were sitting in my backyard, I was beginning to understand that my life was becoming exactly what I wanted it to become. That when I allowed myself to let go, things fell into place, and my life felt right.

Having Ari and Kim with me while I was in that state only added to the pleasure of the experience. I saw them joking and laughing together, and I felt like I was in my own version of heaven with my two best friends who wouldn’t have met each other without me. I felt like the luckiest person alive.

That’s a good way to describe my overall feeling of this frenetic portion of my trip. I felt like the luckiest person alive. I could feel the underlying connection between everything that happened. Everything I saw was somehow related to what I was thinking and vice versa.

I started to think about the beginning of the universe. The Law of Conservation of Matter, and how everything around me was made up of atoms that had been around since the beginning of time. I am composed of the same elements and molecules that make up everything else in this world. And I could see, in that moment, how much deeper a connection that was than any arbitrary emotional tie.

From the smallest bacteria inhabiting the thermal vents in the deepest stretches of the ocean, to the birds flying thousands of miles to give birth to the next generation, I saw myself in all of them. I experienced their world, and I was overwhelmed by being taken so outside of myself. As I looked back, I could see that this was the moment when I destroyed a part of my ego.

I truly felt that I was seeing the world through different eyes. Everything was the same, and different at the same time. I have always had this feeling that I am seeing things differently than everyone else. An overwhelming sense of isolation. But that was completely abolished. I realized that the world through my eyes was the exact same world that everyone else sees. The only difference was what I did what those observations. I can choose to see beauty in anything. In the way the street lights cast shadows through the trees onto the side of an Arby’s. If beauty is indeed in the eyes of the beholder, I understood that I could find beauty in everything.

20:00-The rest of the night held no spectacular activities. I mostly sat on the couch and marveled at the beauty I saw through my new eyes and reflected on the incredible insight I had gained into myself and the world around me.

As a scientist, it took me slightly aback that I had been so blind to the simplest beauty all around me. I couldn’t believe that I had missed so much. But I knew that is what I would take from this trip: an appreciation for the exquisite radiance of the world around me. And to remember that whenever I feel sad or disheartened, I need only look around me to find inspiration for another day. For now I understand, I choose everyday to see the world’s loveliness or to see its repulsive aspects. And choosing to focus on the beauty doesn’t imply an ignorance of the apparent darkness in this world. It’s simply a reframing. It is simply my choice to not let the negative overpower me; to not allow the darkness of this world to extinguish the light within me, and the light within each and every quotidian item or creature.

And if I am surrounded by beauty, if I am surrounded by light, I keep the darkness at bay for another day. This is what I was searching for in treatment. The realization that I control my life, and I can choose my own happiness. This was the moment when I shifted from feeling I couldn’t control my depression or my anxiety or my eating disorder to seeing my power and strength.

This is my recovery.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 92694
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Oct 24, 2022	Views: 1,082
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Mushrooms (39), Cannabis (1) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Glowing Experiences (4), First Times (2)