In the middle of June, 2010, a friend and I walk around outside his apartment. We clown around as usual, throwing pine cones at each other and laughing like a couple of eight year olds. Nearby us, in a neighboring yard is a scrubby pine shrub and as we draw closer to it something orange-red hiding underneath catches my eye. I bend over to look more closely. It’s a patch of Amanita muscaria.

“Dude, no way!” I yell, or something equally profound.

This is truly a masterful example of synchronicity, for we have never seen or heard of these mushrooms growing anywhere in our vicinity and, not only that, but four years earlier I’d ordered a batch of Amanitas from Washington and consumed them with this very same friend. I haven’t seen or really thought of them since.

They’re flecked white on top and growing under a pine, I have no doubt as to what they are. My friend has no interest in them, so I harvest quite a few and take them home to dry. This turns out to be quite a chore, and an unsavory one too since I have to pull several maggots loose during the process, but I get it done.

My intention for the fungi is to smoke them in a mixture with Cannabis. Previously, when my friend and I consumed them we’d made a stew. This produced mildly interesting effects both times. But the second time, when we smoked some sativa in addition to eating the caps, was much more interesting.

It’s the night of June 28th, around 11:00 pm, when I finally decide to light the fuse and, hopefully, blow my mind. I’m doubtful of this, though. So far, these mushrooms have been very moderate in their effects.

Cliché or no, thunder cracks outside my window as I pull a small plastic baggy from out of a drawer. In it are several dried, orangey caps and crusty, gray stems. I take them out and shove them into my pipe along with a few pinches of green Cannabis sativa buds. It’s rainy outside and I put the pipe in my pocket before walking downstairs.

My dog, Remy, greets me at the foot of the stairs. He hops and bounces off my leg, letting me know he’d like to go out as well. I walk down to the porch and put his leash on, then step out of the door into the pattering black rain.

I head up the hill behind my house and when I get to the top it seems darker than usual. As I put my lighter to the pipe and flick it, the brightness is nearly blinding. Remy glances up, momentarily curious, then returns to snuffling along the grass.

With a sense of invincibility, I suck huge clouds of smoke into my lungs. I hold it for thirty seconds at a time, counting in my head, “one mississippi, two mississippi. . . .” Usually when I smoke I tend to be a little more conservative, but not tonight.

After six solid hits, I stuff the pipe and lighter back into my pockets and head back to the house. Nothing seems particularly out of the ordinary. I don’t even feel as stoned as I think I should.

Remy bounds ahead of me up the steps to the porch and I follow right behind him, but I fumble to open the door. I step inside and stop to take my shoes off but find this simple task has become a gordian knot. I chuckle quietly as I kick them off.

I put Remy in his crate for the night and stumble upstairs to my room. Something about the act of movement seems funny. There’s this trail of consciousness dribbling down frame by frame through each step I take on the way up, like the way the notes in a piece of music relate to each other while remaining simultaneously in their own perfect, self-contained universe.

Yes, I’m definitely high.

I reach my bed, wrestle vigorously with the sheets as they’ve become devious and never-ending since the last time I saw them. But eventually I settle in, turn out the lights, and throw on a pair of headphones. The music makes shapes in my mind’s eye, beautiful geometric patterns in pastel colors, familiar yet strange. This isn’t quite the kind of stoned I’m used to. My thoughts turn into waveforms that dance curiously at the edge of experience.

Yes, I’m definitely very high.

My heart starts to palpitate a little and I shift my legs and curl my toes nervously. I haven’t been this high since the last time I took psychedelics. In fact, it’s like I can sense somehow that the world of psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide hides just around the corner, I’m practically there.

“It’s okay, everything’s going to be alright,” my thoughts say, “everything is going to be okay.”

It seems exceedingly strange that my thoughts are speaking to me. It’s like the focus has shifted, after having been blurry and shallow for a long time. Suddenly there’s a great depth of field and I realize I’m not my thoughts. But they continue to reassure me and take on an increasingly profound tone. “Fear begets fear,” they say, “and love begets love.”

I feel suddenly that I am a sort of radio and right now I am tuned into a very high frequency. In fact, I sense strongly in a very tactile way (almost but not quite touch) that the source is a chamber-like space above the top of my head, from which the thoughts drip down into my brain. They continue to assert that the root of all fear is illusion. As it continues, the pitch and frequency of the broadcast increases. It builds, and builds, and builds, until the words become a whirring, metallic whine that jolts from the back of my neck, up through my brain, and out of my forehead. It feels like an electric shock and my eyes burst open. There are vague blobs of something buzzing and bouncing around the room.

Confused as to what is going on, I turn and flick on my bedside lamp. I grab a notebook and pen and jot down some semi-coherent scribbles about a strange bolt of energy and a thought-voice. Then I turn the lamp off again.

Immediately, I notice a great deal of light coming through the window. I think there must be a car parked outside with its headlights aimed at my room and I lean over to look outside. Puzzlingly, nothing is there, but I quickly realize that it must be the extreme dilation of my pupils causing the light to appear extraordinarily bright. I turn to lie back down, only to discover yet another disconcerting phenomenon. As I move towards the bed, the motion comes in distinct, separate stages, rather than a fluid transition. Each instance of movement freezes like frames on a filmstrip played in slow motion, until at last my body reaches the bed.

Yes, I’m definitely very, very high.

I flick on the lamp again as unease builds in the pit of my stomach. Looking over, I spot my copy of The Portable William Blake. I snatch it up and flip to my favorite piece, “The Marriage of Heaven & Hell.” My eyes fall immediately on a particular passage where he states that what we think of as the physical body is, in fact, a portion of soul which is discernible by the five senses. I follow this thought to its logical conclusion and see that all things are “a portion of soul.”

Fear grips me. “This is not for you,” it seems to say. But I see something about Fear that I haven’t seen before. It isn’t a part of me, but separate, self-perpetuating like a virus.

With this insight, Fear steps up its game and throws everything it’s got at me. Thoughts rip through my stomach like, “What if this trip never ends?” or, “What if you go insane?” And then, it plays its last, best card, “What if you die?”

What if I do die?

But something wakes up, something that has nothing to do with me, with the story of my life, my strengths and weakness, desires and anxieties. Love is the word for what it is. It shines its light into insanity and does not find Fear. It shines its light into loss and does not find Fear. It shines its light into pain and does not find Fear.

But Fear is like a cornered animal now, blinking its beady black eyes. It cries again, “What about DEATH??

And the light of Love shines into the chasm of death and finds nothing but itself. Fear is not there. Fear does not exist.

It’s only been this One, all along, as every body and every galaxy and every atom, and there is nothing else.

Just like that, my surroundings melt back into awareness and I’m lying on the bed. Every molecule vibrates in ecstasy, and I can’t imagine why I was ever afraid. Everywhere is home!

I look up at the ceiling and watch it breathe in and out. To my astonishment, patterns form words in the texture that say, “It helps you express yourself.” I close my eyes and open them again, but they're still there. I smile as I drift off to sleep.

In time, fears return, the dream goes on, but every now and then, I get a little reminder, “Hey, don’t be afraid, it’s just you.”

I got some amanitas awhile back, but haven't found the balls to try it yet. Some of the stories about it aren't so positive. I don't think I've heard of smoking it before, might have to give that a try. I'd hesitate to combine it with cannabis... since weed seems to increase my paranoia, I'd be worried amanita would just amplify that, like cubensis seem to. But maybe it would just give me a different perspective on my fear like it did for you, and that's definitely something I could use. Something to think about.

Beautiful story. I think the writing has wonderful imagery - most important advice my old writing teacher ever gave me was 'show the story, don't tell story'.

But I don't really know how to explain this, and I'm sure you don't need me in order to figure it out. I guess it comes down to whether or not you think exploring this particular niche is worth facing the potentially uncomfortable side-effects.