This is a quick log of a week where I ate varying amounts of freshly picked liberty caps 7 days in a row as an exploration into psilocybin tolerance levels. I (as most others) have read that at least a week, preferably two weeks, should be spent in between trips to reset tolerance. I wanted to see what happened if I just kept dosing every day for a week.
The set & setting was on a peaceful mountain cabin, while on vacation, so I had no complex tasks other than doing dishes and similar things. Most doses were eaten on a relatively empty stomach, with at most a light meal being ingested a few hours before the shrooms. The timepoints (i.e. Late evening, Mid-day etc. refer to the time of day I ingested the shrooms.)
For reference I assume the amount picked the first day amounted to roughly 1 gram dried liberty caps (judged by effects), and I estimate the dosage of all the following days from this first dosage. I never weighted nor dried anything, so all doses here are rough guesses from eyeballing fresh amounts.
Day 1: Late evening. Ingested equivalent to 1 grams dried liberty caps. Won't focus too much on this part since it would only constitute a normal low-dose shroom trip. I felt very at ease and happy in the moment for most of the trip. Very calmly talkative, immediately becoming aware of internal feelings rising up and being able to address them head-on when they did. Very therapeutic dose for relaxing and talking with my partner, and also a very nice dose for intimacy. About 2 hours after ingested dose partner went to bed and I spent the remainder of the trip also in bed in total darkness and silence with ear plugs to block out breathing and snoring noises. This was a very nice time where many clear visions emerged from the darkness, such as looking straight up and seeing a plethora of fishes and sea creatures swimming peacefully above me, as if I were in a glass tunnel below a huge aquarium. This made me realize I have spent many of my previous shroom trips in conditions that were too light, darkness really makes the visions pop out, and provided clarity of mind. Fell asleep a couple hours later, had a good rest.
Day 2: Mid-day. Equivalent to 0.5 grams dried. Nothing very special this day, tolerance is very obvious. Yet some effects seem less affected by tolerance than others. No visuals nor bodyload, but mind feels slightly stoned and slowed down in a pleasant way. Thoughts appear only when they are needed for problem solving, otherwise mind feels like in a meditative state. Flowing through the day, being present and non-present at the same time. Feeling fades 3-5 hours after ingestion, suggesting this is from the dosage of the day and not an afterglow from the day before.
Day 3: Mid-day. Equivalent to 0.5 grams dried. Almost exactly the same as Day 2, won't reiterate it here.
Day 4: Morning. Equivalent to 1 gram dried. About an hour after ingestion mind goes beyond the slightly stoned feeling of Days 2 and 3, and I become somewhat unpleasantly confused and slow. Conversing requires concentration, and is not flowing like the previous days. Went for a nature walk, which immediately cleared the mind and made the experience more crisp. Visually, everything looks a bit sharper than normal, equal to maybe 50µg LSD. The meditative state returns, and I can walk and walk happily, looking at the trees and the landscape around me. A childlike fascination is present.
Day 5: Evening. Equivalent to 0.8 grams dried. Slightly stoned and calm mindset persists. Shooting with the longbow feels very natural, and I actually shoot better than normal (objectively, judged by points scored while shooting at a target). This is a phenomenon I have experienced before, where I feel a primal state awakening inside me while on shrooms, the mind becoming empty and the body shooting the bow without thinking, the eyes only focusing intensely on the target, not consciously aiming at it with the arrow. A background tinnitus-like ringing is sometimes present, like a weak version of what one sometimes hears on the first stage of a DMT blastoff.
Day 6: Mid-day. Equivalent to 2.5 grams dried. This was on a completely empty stomach, and effects became very obvious within 20 minutes of ingestion. About one hour after ingestion, I was properly tripping, but this did absolutely not feel like a shroom trip. This felt distinctly DMT-like, like having an IV drip constantly keeping you at 30% of a proper DMT dose. Intense ringing in ears as a manifestation of reality becoming so invasive (but not in a bad way) and
present around me that I could only sit down on a chair outside and look straight ahead. Walking was slightly difficult, but would after a few minutes diminish the effects. When sitting down again and being quiet, effects would ramp up again. The DMT-like effects lasted 1.5-2 hours, and are absolutely something I would like to experiment with again in the future. Even though I am not able to articulate it properly, these hours felt profound and were much more intense than the first day (even though for instance visuals were much more intricate the first day). Everything around me was filled with itself, the grass, the shrubs and the trees, and it was as if they could burst at some points, where when they burst, cracks would appear in the dream of reality and I would be able to peek beyond these props as they were, on the stage of the "Big Dream".
Day 7. Mid-day. Equivalent to 1 gram dried. Relaxed and clear headed, once again going with the flow, effortlessly going about the day.
All in all, I found that with a tolerance, small doses can be useful for relaxing and going about the day in a slightly stoned way. Compared to smoking small amounts of cannabis, I found shrooms in this way to give less confusion, but also a larger potential for mood swings. Whereas with cannabis, I get a non-caring happy attitude, shrooms on a tolerance gives the same ease of mind and flow, with less confusion/laziness and more presence for the people around me. This is not to bash on cannabis, just using it as a comparison
Additionally, 7 days of cannabis use would leave me hazy for a few days afterwards (I don't smoke regularly these days), while after these 7 days of shrooms I felt almost exactly like before the week started.
The Day 6 experience felt valuable to me, and I am stoked to experiment more with it in the future. I cannot stress how distinctly DMT-like this experience was. I know they have very similar molecular structures, and it may just have been this particular trip that by chance felt DMT-like, or it may have been due to eating a medium-dose of shrooms while having a small tolerance giving a new cocktail of effects than before (maybe tolerance builds in different parts of the brain at different rates, thereby producing new combinations of effects collectively since some parts of the trip are more suppressed than others). Maybe it was due to spending several days in a row in a more or less shroom-affected state, priming the mind for being more receptive to DMT-type experiences that normally reside within psilocybin-experiences. More research needed!
(And probably a wise idea to use dried and weighted doses next time, so I know how much I took).
I would love to hear about similar experimentations and experiences, especially with regards to the DMT-like state of Day 6.
Cheers
-HS
Intensity increases exponentially until you reach the I of the storm.