dose: 55 fresh grams of Psilocybe Subaeruginosa
Boiled with lemon juice into tea. Remnant mushrooms eaten.
Come up: 20 minutes at most
Peak: 3-4 hours
Come-down: 1 hour, but very gentle.
It started fairly generally.. SWIM had picked the mushrooms earlier in the day and they had not started to auto-digest or dry-out by the time i ingested them. Came on all as usual.. Swirling patterns, a push to keep my eye closed for long periods. Normally i wouldn't write a report for an experience so personal to me, but i don't know any 'psychedelic' people other than the one person involved whom i'm unable to talk to about the experience so..
I have had two rather irking issues in my life recently:
1. I have a child that was unexpected and unwanted. I have kept it together, and been a great father for the past 18 months. My son is happy, healthy and absolutely amazing. A source of inspiration. But i am young, and ambition, and enthusiastic and a little bit crazy. Can i really deal with raising a child? Firstly, am i able? And secondarily, is it too much of a burden on the original thrust of my lifetime (research, University, regular travel, drug use etc..).
2. His mother can be one of the hardest to deal with people i've ever met, but i absolutely love her with all my heart and wish nothing but the best for her. But that doesn't change how hard she has made my life in various ways by being uncommunicative, inconsistent, untrusting, self-deprecating etc. I've had to move in and out of having energy available to give to this particular relationship and we've been through every type of relationship you can imagine (except perhaps something sexually extreme without emotion).
These two issues, though i had thought very little about them in the days leading up to the trip, were ever-present and i was almost violently pulled into the classroom that i guess the Mushroom felt i needed to be in. To start with it was incredibly hard to grasp. Amazing, beautiful visuals in fractal and cartoon forms blowing my mind.. This woman appeared in a number of different contexts in a few visions over about 20 minutes. The unending, boundless Love that the Mushroom imbues me with was no match for my roughshod personal perceptions of this woman. I was ignoring all of the negative effects the relationship has had on me as a human being. I was stretched thin, exhausted, romantically burned and honestly i had been convinced i was an out-right bad person in some respect. The incredible sadness and regret that came along with these emotions were so powerful i had to beg for help from 'the teacher' but all that happened at that stage was that the vision reduced down to nothing but this woman standing before me, seemingly unaware i was there, going about her business. Speaking to people, smoking a bong, drawing and importantly, giving opinions on all of the action. Everything she said rubbed me the wrong way. It was a crystallized version of her inability to be honest and communicative in 3-D reality.
One line kept coming through my head as i navigated these thorny feelings.. "Bring her here... Let her see". Her attitude towards psychedelics has always been a little less than constructive though always positive.
As i had been recently feeling a 'bad person' had become of my i instantly dismissed this as arrogance or at the very least wishful thinking. As soon as that thought took hold everything became violent. I was FORCED to own that arrogance, and own that wishful thinking to such a degree that i no longer saw it was negative or a detriment. At that moment it was clear. It was incredibly clear that i had let myself take on the guilt of someone else's judgment and had been doing so for a long, long time. My 'Love' had become dedication, almost ritual and was no longer healthy. I was no a bad person. I had not failed myself, at least not to the degree i'd been lead to feel.
I then went through a brief period of unadulterated hate toward this person. "Look what you've done?? Do you realize who you are?? Are you really that nasty?? " Questions like this. But the vision switched again to this woman, this time, in a situation that we had been through together in which she was amazingly loving, tolerant and also physically absolutely stunningly beautiful. THIS is it. I felt inherently, THIS is her. THIS is the human being that you had so much love for. Her mistrust, bad decisions, incommunication etc.. etc.. etc.. were not her. They were her fears expressing in ways even she could not possibly understand. It was no kind of revelation that people behave this way, or go through this passages but it was a revelation that i had lost myself in whatever our relationship happened to be. I had lost my ability to Love without judgement. It felt good to be back. It felt good to want her to see this. It felt good to know she needs to go through some self-reflective pain. And it felt good to know that i am allowed to have absolutely nothing to do with that if i wish.
My son only appeared in the final half-hour or so of the experience. He appeared as a young man. He had understood the relationship his parents held, and not only that he seemed to be frighteningly aware of how much we Love each other. He seemed aware of himself as a symbolic incursion to this reality of our Love and affection. He used no words, but smiled as if to say "I'm here, Dad. Deal with it or don't. I already know you Love me more than you could Love a living thing." I knew then, that the flow of Life shall provide me with what i need to get on with it. The flow of life is not bound to our attitudinal beliefs though i can be influenced by such. The relief of releasing my judgments of his mother allowed me to see clearly for once that this is 'Life and life only...". and i could not have been happier.
The comedown, again was very gentle. I smoked and listened to some music and eventually fell asleep for a good 10 hours. I have a new-found resilience to this woman's bullshit and new-found strength in dealing with the stresses of having a child so young.
This woman and I (though her attitude toward it is very inconsistent) are going to take a trip to this space together sometime very soon. There's a lot to untangle and i believe she needs the support and Love that comes from this transcendent space to be honest with herself mostly, and secondarily me so that we can move on with our lives harmoniously whether we have a part in each other's lives or not.
I have two doses of 2-250 mic clean LSD and it just starting mushroom season here. Could be interesting. Hopefully i'll be able to fill in a report on that experience/those experiences sometime in tbe near future.
Haha, starting to feel like this trip report will turn into some sort of psychedelic soap-opera.
"It's very difficult to love somebody that fucks you up" - Personal conversation with Graham Hancock, 2011.