Thanks for the welcome, everyone.
And sure Voidmatrix, I can elaborate on that situation more. Though the whole thing makes me feel like a naïve child in hindsight. Apologies if the following is a bit long.
So, there's three main events to what happened. Three trips.
First, there was a camping trip where me and two friends took LSD. I took two tabs, and my friends took one each. About an hour after taking our tabs and chilling around our campsite, one friend wanted to take a walk on a nearby path. I said sure, but then was hit by a wave of psychedelia that made me need to sit down for a bit. I told them I needed to sit down for a few minutes, and that I'd join them after that. I expected they'd be back within maybe an hour tops. They were gone for 5 hours. Our water was in the locked car at that point, and they had taken the keys with them. Needless to say, it was not a fun time. I managed pretty well, but by the three hour mark I'd gotten very worried about them. And dehydrated. And it didn't help that the camping spot my friend picked was pretty close to 2 others. I had pretty bad social anxiety at that point even just sober, and the proximity made me anxious of people seeing us.
The second time, me and three friends (including the 2 from the camping trip) decided to have a trippy movie night together. All was well for about an hour and a half, until one friend decided that they wanted to drive to their other friend's apartment to hang with him and go swimming. Bear in mind, this friend who wanted to drive was on shrooms, 6 grams of shrooms specifically. We were all tripping on a similar dose, except one friend who took 3 grams. Basically, none of us had any business swimming, much less driving. I proceeded to tell that friend, multiple times, that it's a very bad idea and to not do it, but that friend kept arguing about it. I said they could get an Uber if they really wanted, and they still argued with me about that too. Eventually I faltered in my assertiveness, and they ended up driving over with our other 2 friends in tow. I then worried for the next three hours, after which they returned, thankfully both alive and without the police.
From just this, I've learned three things. One, people are more prone to putting themselves in danger while tripping than I previously thought. Two, what I considered a manageable dose was too high. Three, that friend was a bad one. I've learned more really, but these are the most easily conveyable things that come to mind. Mainly, I became aware of a lot of things I was doing wrong with how I handle giving mushrooms to others, some more obvious in hindsight, some less.
But the cherry on top was, like I said, while still processing these bad experiences (but not fully realizing the harms that they caused to my psyche) I decided to try for my strongest trip yet. A whole flush of fresh mushrooms, cooked into a meal. I had the idea for this trip for a while, but the timing was very unfortunate. But though the trip was very difficult, and cemented my need for a hiatus, it went well all things considered. The fuller story of this trip is one for another time though. The relevant realizations are as follows. First, the come down from a very lonely and mind-shaking experience is a lot harder when you've recently started to let go of your only in-person friend group (another much more flagrant and non-psychedelic related breach of trust happened after the events of those other two trips). Second, I started to accept just how traumatic those other two trips were for me. Third, after that trip, I realized I could now get into a psychedelic headspace while completely sober. This is what
really scared me at first, as I was concerned I may have shroomed myself into a latent psychosis, mainly because the first few times this happened was in the form of random flashbacks. I was worried that they would progress into something worse, or that my mental situation really was worse and I just was already delusional enough to not notice. But, now, I don't really have flashbacks anymore, and if I do they are pretty easy to manage and dispel. And being able to look back over the year since, I can see that they never did progress into anything more than what they were at the beginning; a very trippy headspace with some visual distortions. An interesting and perhaps positive facet of this though, is that I can now see what people mean when they say that psychedelic-like states can be achieved through sober meditation.