Age: 27. Male. Timing of dosing is doing this whole ordeal at the end of a saturday and experienced through the night until morning the next day. Unknown dosage (4 chocolate bars with PE strain but exact dosage is unknown). physically healthy but in probable need of ergonomic therapy for preventing and treating musculoskeletal injury/astrophe. I will also get into that because there was a bit of intensified lower backpain and other forms of pain such as sore feet (from pacing around a hardwood floor and being on my feet 5 days out of the week) because of the profession/career I'm working in. (Warehouse/distribution). Will get into some depth about that later.
Disclaimer and early warning: This experience report includes some politics. I was going to put that right into the title but couldn't find the wording. Nothing that is particularly and outright polarizing and it's important to note about that particularly that they directly relate to the experience itself and many of the self reflections and introspection. In short I just have some thoughts and realizations about health insurance, my employer's role in influencing the opiate crisis, and about private equity/stock buyback/dividend programs at my workplace which create and institute dysfunctions, barriers, and breakdowns in efficacy of standard protocol.
Um, essentially I work for a private healthcare distribution center that provides over the counter products and food products to pharmacies. It pays well compared to retail jobs in the area and is one of the few jobs with compensation incentives (healthcare insurance, life insurance, 18$ an hour fulltime with potential for becoming a salaried manager through working through the company in leadership roles (all without going to college, really just requiring a high school diploma or GED, elbow grease, and genuine interest in handling responsibility)
IF these topics/concepts aren't your cup of tea or if it's one thing that ruins the report I earnestly apologize to you. It's still the thoughts I had; many of which I would say are some of the most profound connections, realizations, epiphanies, and "Ahh-ha!" moments I've made analytically. Ever. ... In my lifetime. Background/set: I'm open toward trying psilocybin as a potential therapeutic treatment for mental illness. What am I trying to treat? Well, that's a large question to answer however I think that I can actually explain it in depth and hopefully report anecdotal testimonial through a simple bioassay. Allow me to go into depth about my personal ongoing struggles and barriers with caring for my mental illness which likely encompasses PTSD, eating disorders, depression, a learning disorder (ADHD), substance use disorder, and loneliness/isolation/detachment. There is overlap between the different things I'm looking to treat and many larger root causes for why and also how come I have these problems and mental health concerns.
I do not currently see any form of doctor and for years have stubbornly decided not to seek medical attention. For anything. It's a shame that I do not and while much of that has been because of not having access to a quality healthcare insurance plan and also because of a lack of agency or knowledge of navigating the complex bureaucracy therein; I have actually genuinely considered actually (and finally) taking a minute for myself to attend to much neglected needs such as my health.
I'll try to reiterate that there's a lot of things overlapping and connecting to larger root causes.
To provide context I have had a few red flags raised that have me concerned enough to start caring for myself. I.e. I've had a couple particularly bad days... Not in a row but they constitute as definite symptoms of larger problems at hand.
Can you imagine an entire day when you have had suicidal thoughts? More than once and in a single particularly bad day accompanied with some drinking alone in the privacy of your home? Drinking that is relatively moderate but either way and nonetheless a problematic coping mechanism with potential to become more harmful over time.
Can you imagine navigating through the complexity of intergenerational trauma passed on through your parents? To provide context can you imagine that from both your father and your mother? Both have abandonment issues. Both have literally been abandoned and in turn abandon as a form of learned behavior; passing on trauma through detaching from authentic interaction. Essentially I realize that the problems I have with both of my parents (a dad with substance use disorder and hardcore pharmaceutical opiate addiction. A mother that has a number of barriers between authentically interacting with her son and caring for herself. It's worth noting that she hoards both physical clutter and animal hoarding and one common part of why people tend to become hoarders is due to abandonment issues stemming from trauma - essentially you hoard physical trash and too many animals as a coping mechanism because of deeper abandonment that stems from a larger point of the problem. That is a major oversimplification but I'm trying to understand her point of view and hopefully support her. Same with my dad but he has other completely different problems including early onset parkinsons. I will also get into how his health insurance is becoming a growing barrier; hopefully without getting heavy into politics but I'll have to talk about those barriers anyways so please just know I tried to avoid the political discussions but they've thoughtfully came up)
If you can imagine, I just have been having some bad days, weeks, years; it's been messy. It's been messy and dysfunctional, messy but functional, all sorts of overlap.
I think that the diatribe I've provided is enough background and context to explain nuances I need to get out of the way. Lets begin getting out of the background/context portion of my testimonial and into my experience.
I decided to take Psilocybin on the weekend. It's after lots of hard work from a five day in a row working week with a three day weekend. It's after I went over to my sister's home to visit with her, her boyfriend, my dad, and I. (we also made lots of curry, talked about cactus growing, and a whole bunch of etcetera that is definitely out of scope and I won't get into it; point being I am in a pretty happy mood after socializing with family. Good stress relief and it's an authentic relationship/activity so it's a good setup for being in the desired mindset for undergoing a psychedelic experience with a focus on using that experience as a therapeutic aid).
I took the mushroom chocolates, 4 out of 8 pieces to a bar that roughly contains about 4 grams but it's hard to really know hence i'm listing this experience as an unknown dosage. I started sifting cactus potting soil (i'm starting some seedlings) and did that for a bit until I started to feel some effects and put all my objects associated with cactus seed growing into a neat organized pile off to the side under a kitchen table to sit there until I can finish sifting.
As effects begin to set in I had some preflight anxiety and intensification of lower back pain. The backpain; that's pretty much because I work at a distribution center. I know that Amazon has failed to implement ergonomic protocol which benefits their workforce through preventing musculoskeletal injuries through simple pre-work and/or after work stretching. (We do not do stretching after work or in-between breaks, however). We do our standard stretches before work at our start up meeting but sometimes we either rush through or don't do all of the stretching. (somewhat? --> ) Thankfully there's folks/people from higher ranking leadership positions at work who are a little more of a hardass about ensuring that ergonomics are actually important and implemented but it's also straight up becoming more relaxed and basically neglected which is creating lower back pain and neck pain for me and other employees who work job functions that include lots of stooping, lifting, movement, and task management. Many peers will blast procedures like this as being outright too strict about doing the stretching properly and holding supervisors accountable over it but I've decided I'm going to become more adamant about it because we aren't going to let ourselves be another crummy Amazon facility with an epidemic of lower back and neck pain! (And to be honest, why don't we as employees just wanna spend 10 to 15 minutes of one or two of those hours doing stretches? Well, I'm figuring that out lol)
Following my period of preflight anxiety and intensified lower backpain I did stretching to help ease tension in my muscles. I did the mountain pose, lifting my arms to the ceiling. I paid attention to signals of pain from my body to avoid stretching in ways that aren't feeling comfortable. I did a lower back stretch where you pull your arm out and turn to a side which if you do that gently can be very helpful at easing lower back tension in your muscles. And finally I layed down on the ground face to the ground. Pulled my arms up to stabilize and gently and stretched myself backward and then curled into a downward facing stretch where I have my rear end raised and arms pulled forward and then finally doing what is called an inchworm where you put your two hands on the floor and your feet on the floor and slowly move/inch them together until you meet the two sets of appendages and finally stand upright.
After that or somewhere between that, sifting cactus soil, and pooping I was watching youtube.
Going to my history: I remember having Democracy Now playing in the background from autoplay when I emerged out of the bathroom. (I didn't select the video, it just came on from autoplay in case my wording confuses anyone) It was "The Belmarsh Tribunal D.C. -- The case of Julian Assange". That was super heavy on politics and I didn't want to watch that while tripping because it's too much to get into for the moment. So my first video after changing to something that would be better to watch was entitled "Male Orcas = Nature's "Man Baby"" by The Young Turks which was on my feed and caught my attention and got into how there's some interesting research showing that when mother Orca whales have male offspring they are more likely to stop having children and that it's apparently linked to males being much more needier toward their mothers. The hosts discussed why that is an evolutionary reason (in short there's lots of things going on here. Low supply of Salmon. Evolutionary explanations for why that is. There's some etcetera I don't wanna get into).
Then There was "Congress Takes Aim at Cannabis, Considering Regulation crack-down" also by The Young Turks. I watched that one and after that felt like going onto science/nature oriented content.
That brought me to Bizarre Beasts. I started with "Fig Eat Wasps Before You Eat The Fig" and it gets into the mutual relationship between fig wasps and figs. Then "The World Used To Be Full of Giant Tortoises". Then "This is Not A Crab". Followed by "Not a Vampire... or a Squid". "This Frog is Bad At Basically Everything" came next and I was tripping enough to get super fascinated by the pumpkin toadlet which is so small that it can't properly jump. Super cute! It's so adorably tiny. It's little arms can't even jump. It's major defense mechanism is being bright colored and highly toxic if eaten. Just absolutely the cutest and most adorable thing I've ever seen!.
Then I watched " Fly Through The Water Like a Deep Sea Skate", "Is This Weird Animal Our Closest Relative?", "A Year of Beasts!", "Living Soap Bubbles With Tentacles", "A living Tube With Little Tube Feet" which was about sea pigs and made me giggle and laugh that there are apparently little tubes with tube feet in the ocean swimming around without a brain. (I need to note also that much of these videos at this point are fascinating, captivating my attention, and stimulating my sense of interest and wonder - Bizarre Beast's definitely makes it into my recommended biology related content).
At some point I shed tears at one of these video's, I think that it was "Not a Vampire... or a Squid" because at this point I really thought about the wonder of our oceans and the wonder of our planet and how our oceans are threatened with anthropogenic (i.e. human caused) mass extinction... And it made me realize that I'm fully capable of pursuing a biology career................
The rest of the video's from Bizarre Beasts were "The Two-Legged Reptile That Hears With Its Skin", "A Feast of Bones", and finally "How An Invasive Snail May Save An Endangered Bird".
After all of that I begun to pace, sit, think, brainstorm, and self reflect about my career. What was going on in my mind?
Well.... at work we are about to have a town hall this upcoming week and also our company has sold the Distribution Center "and will lease it back to us". A lot of people in our start up meeting do not know what private equity, stock buybacks, and dividends are. I brought it up immediately and asked a dumb question to the guy making the announcement and reassuring us not to be worried "Is that like...... a stock buyback?" and no.
Technically.. It is not a stock buyback technically it's probably a private equity firm which will use dividends and stock buybacks to inflate and manipulate profits. And the private equity firm is going to take "extra left over revenue and reinvest it into incentives" which means... they are going to take a lot of revenue that can be used to do some of the following: 1) replace old, outdated, equipment with new working equipment that doesn't have defects. 2) give employees raises 3) make significantly higher quality improvements to some of the very poorly produced training video's 4) fund more continuous improvement events like Kaizens (which is a Japanese term meaning continuous improvement), and I can go on and on about it and poke holes through and through until I've broken a natural law of physics but the point is the revenue doesn't go to any of this; it props up the workplace and supply chain bare bones and puts multiple million's of dollars into a dividend or stock buyback.
I had all sort of brainstorming going on for addressing it in the town hall, anonymously submitting my question to the town hall using the QR code, how I should address it with peers and others in leadership positions, how important it will be to use effective verbal and written communication, and it brought up lots of things to think about. I realized I do not want to work where I'm at forever.
My genuine passions and end goal would be either: to pursue something akin to forensic psychology/analysis with a specific and specialized focus in far right domestic terrorism such as white supremacists and things of that nature OR a focus on destructive cults, pyramid schemes, and things of that nature OR (and most desired of all) going into a highly specialized biology career such as microbiology. It would mean being in an academic setting throughout the rest of my life..... but it'll sure beat being a lowly essential worker propping up a private equity firm devouring millions of wasted USD! lol
I realized that would be things that I'd have to attain through recovery from substance use disorder and that I'd need to probably look toward going completely sober for a very long time, possibly the rest of my life. As well as seeking treatment for mental illness and trauma in order to properly treat mental illness which would impede any strides for success. It would mean being very driven for success. It would mean being extremely hard working. It would also mean that if I follow through and work very hard to achieve my desired goals that I could be extremely happier for the better! Illuminating so many possibilities that I had never considered before... and unfortunately highlighting so much wasted potential for someone so young with their life ahead of them..
At some point I heard my neighbors yelling. I was sort of still tripping. By now my dad has gotten up. Throughout it appears he's going through some health issues. He'll nod out and droop in his chair, light a loose cigarette that eventually burns a hole in a pair of pants or the chair and repeat. His legs are swelling up from congenital heart failure which is a harsh sounding word for retaining too much water (that's the way my sister put it but it's hard to say he may have suffered a stroke at some point). He refuses to take concern seriously or has trouble understanding how deeply concerned some of his behavior appears. He'll complain to me if I rub his shoulder and ask "Hey dad are you okay?" and say "I'm fine" with slurred speech or tell me that i'm making him feel bad vibes because i'm bringing up negativity. It's a major problem I deal with all the time because he doesn't want to go to urgent care; he stubbornly thinks that his fragile body is actually really invincible and still young and healthy. Love him to pieces but it's very difficult to know that he's probably going to be dead one of these days despite it being completely preventable.
I remember talking to him. By now I'm definitely not peaking anymore and am plateauing and coming down. We talked about tobacco cessation. I prompted/pitched some ideas to him like the idea of seeking counseling and changing his health insurance policy so that he is not on the private and fraudulent Medicare Advantage program that he signed up for because cable television is pushing Medicare Advantage ads targeted to seniors before the annual deadline for enrolling (which is already passed, said and done; goodnight Irene
) and well I think I'm gradually making progress on that and This coming Monday I take him to a heart specialist so.... yeah. So many things I care about... .....
I think at some point he said he was hungry and was thinking oatmeal. I asked if he wanted oatmeal and yogurt and he said not mixed together so I asked if he wanted them separately and he said yes to that. so I opened a Greek yogurt brand new (salted caramel flavor, limited/seasonal) and he asked "why don't you ever buy flavored yogurt?" in slurred sentence and I said that it was flavored as salted caramel and handed him the whole container with a plastic spoon that came with a French Press we bought years ago. He said "I don't want the whole container" and I told him it was okay, to just eat what he wanted to and started on the oatmeal by pouring out water used to brew coffee and then made a single serving of quick cook oatmeal. He likes it plain-jane with lots of sugar. I cooked it in less than 4 minutes by using high heat for maybe 2 minutes and turning the burner off and letting the heat and steam evaporate excess water and finish cooking the oatmeal. I put his food into a bowl and he poured lots of sugar into his oats and sat back onto the couch and ate his oatmeal, nodding out here and there with his head slumped over.
[Edit: I mention "I looked through the eyehole to their door" -- I wanted to clarify that was some bad communication. I looked through the eyehole from within my apartment and not through the eyehole into their apartment just in case the wording of that sentence created confusion and miscommunication. I have already copied and pasted this and submitted the experience report to Erowid and it is possible that the Erowid report will contain the problematic wording but i'm going to resubmit the report containing this edit herein which will also be the version I'm posting to some message boards like Shroomery and DMTNexus. I sincerely apologize for that!]
Near this time frame when the neighbors were yelling and fighting with each other.. the T.V. my dad was watching was too loud to hear what was going on with the neighbors to check on them. I knew them and worked with both of them at a previous food service job. I heard the male yelling at the female and the argument sounded heated and violent like a domestic dispute. I looked through the eyehole to their door and saw the female leaving and I heard her crying. At a point when I finally get my coat on, pants on, my doggo on a leash i hear the police talking to her and put my dog back into the apartment and politely ask "Is everything okay" and asked if she was okay. She was in the middle of telling the officer she'd been slapped and choked and was crying and the two officers were doing their jobs extremely well. One officer was talking to her, I gestured in a friendly manner to sit down at the steps of the apartment to talk to them and make sure she's okay and that everything was going well and told them I had heard some of the commotion and the other officer asked me to come over to talk just asking what I had heard and I told him I'd heard the commotion but hadn't knew what was going on and I told him that I'd leave them to it. This was a very good response from law enforcement. I think the officer who pulled me aside could see my eyes were thoroughly dilated the officer's never asked about it and for a time where we constantly hear about police responding to situations like this with instances of using excessive force or exerting their authority over drastically it was so refreshing to see the police responding to a domestic dispute between two people (both of whom are black/people of color) and to see law enforcement essentially perform their job functions how they genuinely should without there being any issues was genuinely a good feeling!
I calmed down my doggo. His name is "Zybo". Zybo was barking and woofing at the commotion. He knew that something was going on but I beckoned him over to where I was sitting and held his shoulders to calm him down and he stopped barking and stayed by me between my legs while I comforted and calmed him telling him stuff like "Calm down baby, there's stuffs going on" accompanied by shoulder and neck rubs. When it appears that everything calmed down and had settled I walked him. By now day is breaking
Thank you to all who have read my personal testimonial and bioassay and I again apologize if anyone wasn't looking for an experience report detailing all of the perspectives I've brought up. My plans for the rest of the day are to listen to a whole bunch of Adia Victoria (blues singer, I'm typing a the last third of the report to Adia Victoria playing on Autoplay) and I'm probably going to pull up my Hulu account and rewatch a documentary called "Fire of love" (2023) which is a documentary about the volcanologists Katia and Maurice Kraft. I would like to rewatch it, it's super romatic and beautiful. I may also rewatch "The Territory" (2023) after because that also sounds good.
In conclusion I had a very profound experience that gave me a lot of insight into my own human nature. I rediscovered a passion for analytical critical thinking. I brainstormed more regarding my workplace than I have ever before at any point in my working life in a single night regarding thinking about Kaizen or continuous improvement and begun to see and envision how that relates to everyday life. I would prefer to go to college (hopefully I can figure out scholarships or grants) to pursue something that is better than working essential work, dirty work, manual labor, whatever you want to name it. Preferably I want to pursue biology and specifically hone in on pursuing my major as microbiology and getting a P.H.D. Maybe having some dabbling interest in computers so that I can construct with it as an asset and use computer software to create models and simulations needed for representing biological processes. Hopefully there's a bright future ahead of me. I know without a shred of doubt that if I can become totally sober and pursue literally any pursuit of higher education and get to do something that keeps me away from a room with a bottle of wine or a distribution facility that that particular definition will mean to me: success.