DOSE:			Cannabis	(daily)
	repeated	smoked	Tobacco - Cigarettes
	3.5 g	oral	Mushrooms - P. cubensis	(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

I should start by saying that this was my first journey with shrooms, or any psychedelic for that matter. My report starts kind of slow, but I feel the information is completely necessary. I have done other drugs: marijuana every day, popped some opiates and muscle relaxers, cocaine a few times, and E, which apparently considered a psychedelic, but I did not know at the time. I’ve never had a particularly bad experience, as I’ve only taken E at raves and had a great time at every single one. I won’t ever do coke again though, that’s for sure. So, needless to say, I’m rather inexperienced, and didn’t do any of the proper research before ingesting and eighth of Gold Cap shrooms a couple friends and I had gotten through a connect my sister had. The friend, D, was a less experienced (minus a few opiates he’s tried that I haven’t) drug user than me. He had essentially got me into marijuana, but after that I’ve experimented a bit more than he has.

We bought the shrooms and tried to set a date that worked for both of us, because D works a lot. About 3 weeks had gone by since the purchase when we finally had a Saturday night where D’s parents would be out of town and I didn’t have any plans for the weekend. It had taken us forever to finally find these mushrooms, we’d been trying to “see crazy shit” for some time. I know now that I should have done a lot more research on the plant before I ate it, but I’d heard word of mouth, and heard about bad trips, set and setting, etc. A couple people I knew had said they had had a bad 2nd trip and never done shrooms again, and they said stuff like “Oh yeah, the first one was awesome but the second one...I don’t really wanna talk about.” One had moved on to LSD and loved it. I knew tripping around people that weren’t wasn’t usually a good idea, and that if you were having a bad day/week, anything like that, psychedelics are not a good call.

This was the knowledge I was armed with, and I’ll be the first to say I didn’t follow many of these rules. D told me that another friend, M, wanted to get in on our experience and eat an 8th with us. Sounded good to me, I’d played tennis with these guys for 4 years in high school, I trusted them, and M was experienced with shrooms, so this made me feel more comfortable. I also knew a sober sitter was something we needed, so I told a few friends what our plans were for that Saturday, and I thought having a few close friends there being sober would be a good idea. I’d never had a bad time at D’s place. I smoke there at least a few times a week and we rage every time his parents are gone.

I woke up on the 26th of November and cleared my bed from my room, because I had been waiting for a new one to be delivered for 2 days. D wasn’t off work until 5pm so I had some time to kill. Throughout the course of the day, my bed was not delivered, and I’d gotten in a ridiculous fight with my sister, B, and strongly considered calling off the nights events, for myself anyway. I talked to D over text message about these thoughts and he said “Hey man, forget about it. When you walk into my house tonight it’s a whole new environment and experience.” I took this to heart and decided that after all this waiting I wasn’t going to let my day ruin a chance at my first trip. Around 4:45 pm I showered, got my things and my mind ready, and B, my buddy J and I arrived at D’s around 5:40. When we got there we called M and he said he’d be there shortly. We ran out to pick up a 20 sack of some bud and waited for M.

Finally, at 6:30pm when M arrived, it was time. We decided to man up and eat the shrooms straight, even though we’d heard they taste like shit. R, another buddy from high school and my short college tennis career, came over and chilled while we ate them. Like I said before, I ate the 8th I had saved, and M bought an 8th from the ounce D had. It took me close to 15 min to get all the shrooms down. They didn’t taste all that bad but I had nausea almost immediately. It was 6:45 when they were all in my body, so I tried to keep track of the timeline of them kicking in.

At about 7 pm, the guys decided they wanted some stuff to drink for the night, and D’s parents hadn’t left him with very many. R had left already, and B doesn’t have a driver’s license, so J volunteered to take D’s car to the liquor store around the corner. B and I were to stay and chill till they got back, keep an eye on the house, shit like that. The nausea was getting worse, so I decided to try and smoke a bowl to calm my stomach, as weed usually does. I started to pack up a bowl and for some strange reason decided I didn’t wanna be left alone shrooming when I had no clue how I’d react. I sent B out to see if the guys were still in the driveway, and thank God that they were. I trust my sister completely, but she doesn’t have any prior knowledge with people on psychedelics, and I didn’t wanna stray down a dark road this early and have no help. I know now that nothing would have happened, it was just to early in the night, but I didn’t at the time and I was feeling super uncomfortable from the nausea and uncertainty, so my sister and I went with the guys.

As we turned out of the neighborhood and onto the main road, D and M started talking about how the shrooms were taking effect. I felt nothing. I tried to focus on passing tree’s and lights but they all looked normal. I was EXTREMELY cold and was starting to shake and sweat, but I shook it off as my nerves mixed with some excitement for what was to come.

We got back to D’s place and I sat down on the couch and found a blanket. I sat under it shaking, it was around 7:30, and I thought the effects might be setting in now that I had time to sit on the couch and think. D, M and J had gone outside to smoke a cigarette, but I was still too cold at this point to join. B decided too smoke the bowl I had packed, and when we did, it took away all the little alerts I was getting from the shrooms. I didn’t know why, and it scared me. I was starting to hear some crazy laughter from outside and assumed the D and M were starting to get the full affects, and it pissed me the fuck off. I didn’t know why my friends were feeling it and I wasn’t, and the marijuana hadn’t taken away the nausea as I’d hoped. Weed always helped when I had a stomach ache, headache, that kind of thing. At this point I was getting worried, and on the verge of being down right scared that the shrooms were reacting badly with my body. To avoid letting these thoughts lead me down a path I didn’t want to venture, B and I smoked another bowl and went out to join the laughter in the backyard.

I stood to walk through the kitchen to the sliding glass door and my legs got wobbly. I managed to get outside without much trouble and grabbed a seat in a chair. I lit up a cigarette to share with B, and watched D talk gibberish and have fits of laughter. His eyes were dilated and completely black like his pupil had taken over. I was jealous and wanting my own experience to kick in. I noticed M staring at me, and I asked how he was feeling. “You’re C, I know you, but you look like someone else. Someone else that I know.” I connected, understood what he was saying, and he started laughing. For some reason I did too. I was beginning to feel spacey and everything seemed funny as hell. My nausea had subsided a bit, and I noticed an intense body high coming on. It wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

At this point, my best friend, we’ll call her K, walked into the back yard with another good friend, he’ll be called Mountain Man. Hugs were exchanged and I was extremely happy to have K there finally. I had been texting her and expressed that I didn’t like the way things were going, as had B, and she had rushed over. She was fully aware of my first psychedelic experiment taking place, and had to go to a close family friends dinner before she could come help. I offered her a stog as my nausea came back. The cigarette gave me something else to focus my attention on, and I was grateful. I asked B to get me the blanket because of how bad I was shaking and she did, that helped a lot and after 15 min or so we all decided that music and warmth was a better call. It was dark anyways and there wasn’t much to see in D’s backyard.

Mountain Man was out appointed DJ, mainly because he and I share the same taste in dubstep, which I was excited to listen too while tripping. I took my seat back on the couch and covered up; I was starting to get cold again. I’ve since read that Mushrooms may have an effect on your body’s ability to regulate body heat, and I think that’s what was happening to me that night. I’ll have to do more research. K was sitting next to me with the others scattered around the room. D was sitting in a chair in the kitchen and looked like he was having a blast, and he looked at me and said it looked like I was having a bad time. I guess he could see the discomfort on my face. I wasn’t having a good time, but I didn’t want to be the seed that started 3 bad trips and a night for my sober friends that I wouldn’t want to imagine. I told him that now that we were all inside I felt like I could relax. But, thankfully, when the dubstep beats started to flow through the room, I actually could relax. For a while.

The mix of music and K sitting next to me kept me slightly grounded as the trip got heavier. I laid back and closed my eyes and started to breathe a little heavy, but I started to get some alerts again. Dancing images behind my eyelids were forming around the sources of light around the room. I was happy, because it took away some of the doubt about the purity of the shrooms, or of the possible bad reactions to my body. Mountain Man then put on Troll by George Lenton, and my nausea flooded back, stronger than it had all night. Normally, I love this song, out play it even. But the intro is a very depressing monologue, and D, M and I weren’t feeling it. He threw something else on, and I was good.

M stumbled out of the bathroom and sat down on the floor and asked, “Why do we do things?” My initial response was laughter, because it seemed like such an easy question. But as it started to play out in my head, it formed into, “Why am I doing this?” Then the panic set it. I had waited for a long time with insane curiosity to do shrooms, but at this moment, it felt like I shouldn’t be, that I had somewhere else to be and stuff to do, and the shrooms were preventing me from accomplishing these things. But I didn’t have anything to do. I was completely free of responsibility at the time. But not in my mind. It felt like the lights were all draining around me, and it was getting too much. I had to move, get up, smoke a cigarette; just do something. It was near 40 degrees F, and I couldn’t handle myself inside. I convinced D to let us sit at his kitchen table near the sliding glass door and open it, blowing the smoke and ash out the door. Normally, this would be a “What the fuck are you thinking” type answer from D, but he just looked at me and said, “Do whatever you want man. It’s your house”, and he wandered off laughing.

By this time the music had changed again and I could feel the beat POUNDING in me like I was inside the speaker. I was still really scared, and the cigarette wasn’t helping me this time. I was beginning to go into panic mode. I was feeling serious discomfort and I was having an argument with my own brain about what I was SUPPOSED to be doing. How could I be arguing with my brain? My brain is what feeds my thoughts during an argument, and now every protest I had was shot down easily. It’s like my brain was feeding me questions it already knew it could answer. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t what I’d heard about shrooms. Had everyone lied to me? Was this going to be terrible and would I stay with this feeling in my body forever? I was getting unbelievably pissed at my own mind, and feared things would soon get REALLY out of hand. We finished the stog and I got some water and curled up on the couch. It was somewhere in the 8 o’clock hour now, and J said he would be walking to the store to get himself some alcohol. He left and I put my head back in an effort to calm myself.

After 20 minutes or so, K said she was going to head to a coffee shop nearby too see another one of our close friends CH. No. K couldn’t leave. I asked how long she thought she’d be gone, and she said an hour and a half. I was starting to feel disoriented; she may as well have said forever, my sense of time was completely fucked. I asked if she really had to go, because the thought of her leaving terrified me. “Fuck CH. You’re like my anchor right now” is what I replied with. K sitting next to me was helping me calm down focus on constructing coherent sentences, instead of digging deeper into my nagging brain’s game. She didn’t want to go; I had told her what was going on every step of the way since I ate the shrooms, so she knew where my mental state was. She wanted to be there for me and I could see it in her eyes.

K got up to leave and I stood with her. My legs felt normal but as I hugged her at the door the wall behind her looked like a clay-mation movie, and the lights started to drain again. Mountain Man was going to stay, he had driven himself even though he was at the same place as K before hand, and he wanted to stay. This helped, knowing he’d be on the music all night and would play whatever I needed if I needed it.

J had not yet returned from getting himself alcohol, and this was just another thing for my unstable mind to contemplate. I wasn’t really worried about him getting jumped or anything like that; he’s a big dude and can handle himself. But he was already a little drunk and he isn’t super familiar with the area we were in to the best of my knowledge. I needed to focus on something else, and with K gone, B stepped in and helped me.

By this time I have no idea what time it is, and I was still at war with my mind. I wanted something, but I didn’t know what. It was like I’d talked about it earlier in the night, something basic, and I just couldn’t fucking remember what it was no matter how hard I’d try. I remember telling the people around me that. I talked with Mountain Man for awhile about high school and his football team, and that I’d read about what some players were doing today in college, but this couldn’t get my mind off what I needed, whatever the fuck it was.

J finally got back and that cheered me up; all of us were still completely safe. M and D were outside laughing and I decided I was sick of all the anxiety and the fear. I had eaten these shrooms with these guys to see what the whole experience was like, and to share it with good people. I got up, went out back and sat at the table with the guys. And when I got there it was like the laughter took me over, and I was finally settled in. Pure joy. Happiness and love washed over me and I laughed. This was what I was waiting for, and I didn’t fight it.

M, D, and I smoked a couple cigarettes and went inside. M started dancing all crazy and walked to the window, we were all laughing. I sat back down by B. I can’t exactly remember what happened for a short time here. The walls were moving and looked cartoonish. Not like we were in a different world, but it looked like someone had taken some colored pencils and redrew D’s wallpaper. Every person in the room looked completely normal, but not their surroundings. B got up and went to the kitchen table to get D’s bong and pack us a bowl, and for no reason at all, D, M and I laughed, uncontrollably, for what seemed like 15 minutes. I remember vividly M saying at some point during our laughing that I looked like I was losing my mind. It just made me laugh harder. It was probably less time than I actually remember, or it could have actually been that long, I don’t know. B got up and looked annoyed, and I apologized and asked if we were too much for her. She sat down and assured me we weren’t and she was having a good time too, and took a fat rip off D’s bong.

She handed it to me and when I did the same thing, the ecstasy I was feeling only intensified. I began to think of K and how worried she was for me when she left. I HAD to let her know things had changed for the better and that I didn’t need her to rush at the moment. It was the least I could do for making her feel bad about leaving in the first place. I text her something like “I’m so happy K. I don’t know why, but I am. Have a good time with CH!” She replied almost instantly with joy and happiness for me and that made me cry. Had to hide that of course, so I wiped my eyes. I knew the bad times the trip had brought were over.

J and Mountain Man had gone outside for a stog and the rest of us stayed inside. M got to the entertainment center and unplugged Mountain Man’s phone. He would start to look for something on his own phone and get side tracked talking to someone or tripping out on the floor or the wallpaper. I didn’t like this. I had hardly noticed the music to this point but something playing in the background was giving the trip a good atmosphere. I would ask him to get something playing and he’d apologize and look at his phone and trip out on his fingers or some shit. For about 10 minutes this went on, until Mountain Man and John were done with their cigarette. M put some rap on and I was NOT feeling it. The energizing dubstep we had as background music was uplifting and my favorite genre. I like rap too, for sure, but I wasn’t about to listen to shit about “Fuckin his bitch” this and “I’m hard cuz I went to jail” that. I didn’t want anything bad creeping into my mind, and I felt this might be a catalyst to scary thoughts.

I started to stare at the blanket I was covered up with, and started to see faces. I’m not sure what they’re called specifically, but I saw the sad and happy face masks that you see a lot in Mexican culture and tattooed on gangsters. I noticed the happy face smiling at me, and then slapped the blanket and it changed to the one that was crying. It didn’t scare me, and I got stuck slapping the blanket for a few minutes. I got myself back together and gathered my mind, and suggested we go out back.

This trip to the back yard was the most beneficial part of my trip to me personally. We took our seats around D’s back table and smoked a cigarette, and I was consumed with emotion. I couldn’t say more than, “Oh man, I’m so happy right now.” Not in the “losing my mind” crazy talk sense as the laughter attack before, but completely calm and content. All I could think about was that I was having an amazing time with my closest friends and I didn’t wanna change it for anything, ever. I thought about K, and HAD to make sure she was having a good time with CH. She was, and that put my emotions over the top again. At some point while we were out here, R returned, and with that he brought thoughts of tennis and school with him. Now, I had recently decided to put school on hold and get a full time job and move out of my father’s house because of the mounting tension between him, B and myself. Deciding not to register for the upcoming semester had also been a choice to end my 9 year tennis career as captain on a college team, my one true goal I had actually accomplished. Needless to say, this was not an easy decision, but it was one that I felt had been coming for a long time, but writing about it right now still gets me emotional.

That night, I decided I didn’t want to quit anymore. I wanted to get back in school and just learn. Learn everything and anything there was about everything and anything, including how these shrooms could possibly alter my consciousness. I told R that I’d have to talk to him later (about getting back on the team). Then, a really close friend of mine, and B’s ex, JO popped into my head. He had been going through a tough time and I hadn’t seen him in a couple weeks. I hoped so bad that he was having a good night like I was. My phone lit up with a text and, believe it or not, it was JO.

“How’s your trip going bro?! I’m chillin with G right now!” G was an old friend of JO’s and a somewhat mutual acquaintance. He’d moved after high school and JO hadn’t seen him in a long time. This put me on a new emotional level, and I had already thought I couldn’t get higher. After that moment, every light I looked at was extremely bright and sparkly. I was so happy that JO was able to see an old friend and have his spirits lifted. Tears filled my eyes again and I’d say I that’s one of the happiest time’s I’ve had in all my 20 years, but then it struck me, would I ever be this happy again?

Now, in the anxious “I don’t know what the fucks happening to me” state I had been in earlier that night, this thought would have made me flip my shit. But with the happiness and joy I felt, I was clear minded about this realization. I thought it over, and knew the shrooms were making me like this, and I hoped and prayed I’d take this euphoria out of my trip. I cried again. I didn’t wanna scare/throw off the guys or scare any of our sober sitters with tears so I held it in. I was unbelievably, indescribably happy. I was even texting JO about how I wanted so badly to take this overwhelming free emotion back to reality with me.

Some time passed and we were still sitting at the back table. I was happier than anyone could have ever been in the world, and I loved it. I had to pee, so I got up to go to the other end of the yard. It’s late November, 2 days after Thanksgiving, and people around our town seem to forget there’s a holiday between Halloween and Christmas, so lights were up everywhere already. I walked to the end of the patio and stopped. I saw a HUGE baby on a roof probably 100 yards away, in green footy pajamas with a hood. It looked like she was playing with toys and she was as happy as I was. I watched for what seem like eternity, but it was probably 2 or 3 minutes. I walked to a bush, giggling the whole time because someone else was as happy as I was. I felt some strange connection. I did my business and smoked a cigarette and when we tried to go back inside, D had locked us out. R and J had left to get alcohol, and D was the only one inside. He had gone into the bathroom, and I started to worry for a minute, because he’d tripped pretty hard in the bathroom earlier. He finally came back and opened it for us, laughing the whole time. I was told later, because I pulled someone aside and asked, but the baby was 2 inflatable gifts with red and green wrapping paper and a gold ribbon.

Inside, walls were breathing. I sat on the couch and got lost in the patterns on the wallpaper. I sat there and still felt happy, but not the same kind of happy. I mentioned to my friends that I thought my trip might be over, but B told me to make sure I didn’t think it was, because she’d seem someone do that and they always come back. I should have known, from rolling, because E comes back on me when I least expect it. I was super fortunate for her suggestion, because shortly after, I peaked.

I sat with J and B and R for awhile before joining M, D and Mountain Man in D’s bedroom. This is where I would spend the rest of my trip. They were just sitting around, M and D on the bed and Mountain Man in the computer chair. When I got there, it turned into a 4 man party.

Mountain Man shut off the lights and put on some dubstep videos for us. There was one that had some bees and kids screaming and it was too much for me. I walked to the other side of the bed and lay down; watching the light show the video was throwing at the ceiling, grey, white, blue and red. I relaxed and thought about how perfectly the lights and the song mixed together. I thought about life and what it meant to me to exist, and be alive, and what it meant to live, and I’d felt like I’d figured it all out. I felt a connection to the others so great that I felt I could feel their life’s energy and what they wanted most.

After the videos we put the lights back on and got lost in a few optical illusions. J came in and watched for awhile and said it was too much for him because he was too drunk. Too much for a drunk guy? How was that possible when there were 3 of us on shrooms? This made me laugh for a few min and stop paying attention to the room. When he left I moved back to my original spot on the bed and close to where J had been standing.

And then, for no reason, thoughts of death crept into my head. Before I’d done shrooms I’d seen a video on Tosh.0 about a guy who tripped the fuck out on shrooms and kept saying he was going to die. I saw him strapped to a stretcher trying to break out and screaming that he was going to die. I checked it out later on the internet and watched the whole thing, the guy’s fine after. I knew that, but I fell into a loop of telling myself I was going to die, and the scenes from the video exploded into my vision, like a floating TV was in the middle of the room. This went on for probably 6-8 minutes in reality, but it felt like the end of time in my mind, and it was the end of my sense of time for now. But I knew I wasn’t going to die from shrooms. I think my mind was just trying to get across to me that at some point my life would have to come to an end. For some insane reason, I was perfectly fine with it. Even now thinking about dying isn’t something I like to think about but the smile never left my face that night.

B was hungry, and being her older brother I felt I HAD to get her food, but I was in no state to drive. I text K and asked her if she’d get B some food and she said she would, and that she’d be back to D’s soon. I was happy to hear that, because she was planning to spend the night and I’d have her here again if shit went back where I didn’t want it. I cried again, thinking about how good it was to have a person like K in my life; she’s my best friend and one of the best people on the planet. Memories of picking each other up while one was drunk flashed through my mind and the room dissolved for a second. It was like I was in a dream.

R, J and Mountain Man kept coming in and conversing with M, D and I. These exact conversations I have absolutely no recollection of, because I had laid back on the bed and got lost in my thoughts of joy and kept having slight fits of laughter. I kept thinking about how much I felt D and I needed this, I feel like we both lead fairly stressful lives, and he seemed to be having a blast as well. I had found a pocket knife (which D later gave me as a memento) and played with it for a long time. The guys were hungry and someone brought in a bag of pretzels and they started throwing them around the room. A few hit me, but I hardly noticed at all. D had been rambling all night about how I looked like some Eskimo thing he had seen on the internet at one time and Mountain Man had found it for him. That was the happiest I’d seen him all night, because he felt like we all finally understood what he was talking about, even though most of us had seen it before and we had told him this. He would just say “Oh” and laugh every time. Right after that, K returned with food for B and CH was with her. As soon as they walked into D’s room I got up and was the first to hug them. I told her how happy I was to see them and have her back, and she sat and talked with me for awhile. I finally thought to look at the clock, and it was 10:30 pm, 4 hours in.

The lights were getting bright and wavy, as I laid back on the bed thinking about how happy I was to be there, with the people I was with. Just the fact that I was happy, alive, and me, and I thought that was all I’d ever need. All the doubts I had ever had about myself and where my life was going had left me, and being ME was finally good enough. At some point during this train of thought I was distracted by a text from B. Even though she had eaten and smoked some bud, she still had a headache and she said she wanted JO to pick her up. This stopped all the thoughts I was having and made me focus what brain power I could control on convincing her to stay. The screen was blurry to me so texting wasn’t the easiest task, but I could get it done. She’s one of the “I want to sleep in my own bed” types, which I get. Plus a headache around a bunch of people fucked up on a few different things isn’t ever fun. I thought of going home too, how nice and warm my bed sounded, but there was no way I could let my dad see me like this. K came in to check on us, and I asked her to see if Mountain Man would take B home, as he lives close to us. I told her that I didn’t think B leaving with JO was a good idea, and she agreed.

Thoughts of things that could go wrong if JO got pissed at B about something filled my head, and I got scared for a minute again. I saw JO’s car turning crazily into a field and rolling, at a very specific corner on the drive from D’s house to mine. But soon K came back in and said Mountain Man would take B home, and I was back in euphoria land. I got up and walked out of D’s room to say goodbye to my sister and my very good friend, and thought about how thankful I was for the both of them when things were heavy in the beginning of the night. I knew they’d always have my back too. We exchanged hugs and goodbyes, and I told B to text me when she was home. I went back into D’s room with the guys to finish what we’d started together.

After B and Mountain Man left, my memory gets kind of hazy. It was somewhere around 11:05 pm, almost 5 hours in. The vivid real hallucinations had gone away, but lights and colors were still different and really bright, and just off. The claymation world I had lived most of my trip in had, for the majority, faded. If I focused hard enough on the ceiling I could fall back into it for a few seconds but it never fully immersed me again. D talked about how he felt like the others involved had missed out on something amazing that we got to experience. M and I agreed, and we talked a while about how we were happy that we had chosen to shrooms together. D called us the “3 Kings”, because all night our friends wanted to see us, know how we were feeling, and made sure we had whatever we needed. Again, we all agreed, and repeated “3 Kings” a few times and laughed, and we still talk about it to this day. We smoked 3 bowls of “Durban” weed from D’s bong on his bed, (this was the first bowls D and M had smoked all night) and at some point he spilled some smelly ass bong water on his sheets, which we laughed about. We talked for awhile, and I talked about how happy I was, still, and said word for word, “Fuck being sad ever again. It’s a waste of time. Fear? Fuck that too. Be happy.”

After that, I don’t remember much conversation because my mind was focusing on the fact that my thoughts were coming back together and our words were making more sense. It was sometime around 11:30 when M suggested we join everyone that was still there. As we got up, it was like the second we crossed the threshold into the hallway the shrooms had left us and the trip was over. Since everything seemed fine, K decided to take the short trip to CH’s to pick up her truck, and then she would be back to spend the night. D and I took seats in chairs on the opposite side of the room and M sat on the couch. J was passed out in another chair near D, and R was sitting on the floor next to D’s chair. K and CH hugged us and left, and we talked for 10 minutes or so about what we had just done and the experience, but not in any great detail.

We sat in silence for around 5 min, and at 11:45 pm, D had a seizure. I watched in a few seconds of shock and terror as my friends eyes rolled into the back of his head, his arms tweaked in all directions, and he lost complete control of his body for a good 10 seconds. Everyone was stuck in their seat watching this unfold, and I got up, ran across the room and grabbed D’s face and gave him a few taps on the cheek. Then a slap. Then a few slaps. He wasn’t responding for a few seconds, but I touched his chest and could feel his heart, and that he was breathing. I was screaming, “D! Look at me! Please say something man, ANYTHING!” He opened his eyes, and looked like he was gonna cry for a split second. I asked him to say something again, and he said something like “Yeah man...I’m okay...”.

M asked D if he knew what had just happened to him, and he said “Yeah, I closed my eyes for a second.” He had no idea he’d just had a seizure. We calmed him down and I sat back down and pulled out my phone to call K. She had to be close by. That very second, she walked in the door. She was happy to see us, but could tell quickly by the look on all of our faces that things weren’t okay. She asked what happened and I told her just to come out and smoke a cigarette with me. We walked outside and I explained to her what had just happened, and while I was sitting there, the same intense anxiety from earlier in the night set in. I was cold and sweaty again and my vision got blurry. I started to cry a little, and ask I asked myself what we had done. K calmed me down, but I was still sure I was going to pass out, and I was scared if I did, I’d have a seizure too. K got me some water, because I had ridiculous cottonmouth, but when I tried to drink I got nauseous again. B text me and said she was home, and I told her “B, don’t ever do shrooms. Don’t ask why, but I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow.” She said “OK” and I said goodnight to her. R came out and took a leak and we decided we should all get some food, especially D.

K drove me to the McDonalds 5 minutes down the street and we hit the drive thru. We were back at D’s place by 12:20 am and D was in the bathroom hunched over the toilet. He’d thrown up a little didn’t look like he was having the best time. I told him the food was there and that he should come eat, he said he would. After I finished my food I went to check on D again and he was in the fetal position. I helped him get up and he came out and ate a couple fries. I asked him how he was feeling and he said he didn’t feel too good, his body felt tired, and he wanted to sleep. I made him eat a little more and he said he’d get us up around 10 to clean before his parents got back, and he went to his parent’s room to sleep. R was passed out on the floor by now, and M was eating his food.

K and I went out and smoked a cigarette. I decided my mind was still going too fast to sleep, and suggested some bowls. We went back into the kitchen and found my weed and pipe, and I packed 4 bowls. M joined us for the second and was done and back on the couch by the third. K finally decided she was high enough, and we said goodnight to M and went to D’s room. It was 2:00 am now, and K and I lay there for awhile, talking about all the crazy shit I saw and what our group of friends went through that night, and I was happy. J came by the room sometime before 4:00 am and I told him what happened with D, because he was passed out when it happened. He freaked out for a second, but I told him everything was cool and he went back to sleep. After that, K and I rolled over in different directions and I tried to sleep. For a second, I thought I was hearing voices that I couldn’t understand, but I decided it was just D’s fish tank and passed out shortly after.

I woke up around 9:00 feeling decent, but the back of my eyes hurt. I found J awake in the living room and we smoked a cigarette, and started to clean up. He told me D had woken up around a half hour before me and thrown up a little, and then talked to J for a bit and passed back out. We had the entire place spotless and Febreezed by 10. We woke K up, smoked a couple bowls and then I told D we were leaving. The three of us left, and K, B and I hung out the rest of the day.

For myself, my very first shroom experience was a success. I’ll be the first to admit, I didn’t do anywhere near enough research beforehand. First off, I learned that smoking weed can nullify the come-up, and intensify the peak, which is what I would use to explain the anxiety and fear I was feeling before I was consumed by the shrooms. And secondly, going it to it with the sole purpose of “seeing shit” isn’t the way to go at all. Psychedelics are a very different class of drugs, and they require and deserve the utmost respect. Now, a month and a half later, it’s hard for me to turn on a computer without reading and learning everything I can about them.

I’ve been asked to shroom with a friend once since then and turned them down. Not because I won’t do them again, but because I believe they are something to do only when you feel the time is completely right. Bad trips are very real and very easily brought on. I take a bit of pride in the fact that I was able to get my mind in the right direction, but not in a “holier than psychedelics” kind of way. The mind is a very complex place, and psychedelics can bring out the best, most euphoric workings, or show you sides of your mind better left unexplored. And being unprepared is the best way to buy yourself a bad night. I’m looking forward to trying LSD one day, when the time is right and I feel I’m mentally ready. Until then, I have this one to remember. It brought me a lot closer to my group of friends and made me appreciate every single one of them for different, specific reasons. And I’d never change that.

Since writing this in November, D has had another seizure. He went to the doctor, but was too afraid to tell them what caused the original seizure. I’m not sure what will happen, but I hope my friend will be okay.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 95887
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Dec 25, 2012	Views: 12,808
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Difficult Experiences (5), First Times (2)