1) Terence McKenna says that the best way to smoke weed is once a week, using strong weed and doing all this in total darkness, total silent and alone, I tried this and it works great for me… but I wonder what is the best way to use Psilocybin in order to stimulate personal and spiritual growth (how, how much and how often)?

2) What do you think is the difference between regular mushrooms users who only have positive experiences most of the time, when they have bad experiences they know how to come out of them and keep on using Psilocybin for personal growth VS. People who have bad experiences and later need psychiatric help?

3) What do you think about the Thai (Kho Sumoi) mushroom, what are the qualities of the trip on this mushroom, and what is the best type of mushroom to use for personal and spiritual growth?

4) When I read about how to make Shroom tea I hear to just drink the tea, don’t you also eat the mushroom pieces that you made the tea from, and how much do I need to use if I want to make a tea?

5) Holandia Truffles – I have 30gr now and I plan to take them on the weekend with a friend, what I can expect if I take 15gr on an empty stomach?

6) This question is probably stupid, but I read here a lot about “SWIM” in the trip reports, is it a code name for “friend that uses”? What dose “SWIM” means exactly?

Thank you in advance!

1- Terrence also advocates taking mushrooms solo in the dark as well. I believe he liked the dose range of 5g.

2- Personally the mushroom has been pretty harsh on my body and mind each time I've taken them. I've had a classic freak out that I rarely experience from anything else each time I've taken it. I haven't needed any psychiatric help from it, but I did learn that "we" just may not vibe so well, so I don't really touch them much anymore. Everyone will react to these substances differently, so for the regular mushroom user, clearly the benefits outweigh the risks of a bad trip.

3- No clue

4- When you make the tea, you would filter out the mushroom pieces. I find it to seem more potent in tea form. The dose is up to you.

5- Dunno

6- SWIM stands for "someone other than me" or "someone who is not me". Its use has become superfluous and unnecessary.

I know about that, so the real question is how often should one do this kind of trip so it will still be healthy and productive?



But why don't you eat it, isn't here still some Psilocybin in the filtered mushrooms?

I can't answer everything, but i will share my opinion on what I can:

1) In my opinion, best way to use any psychedelic is up to you. If you feel you are ready, then take it. I would not suggest taking it more than once a month.
The best WAY to take them is in a COMFORTABLE place, if it's your first time then include people you TRUST, and have a sitter. Turn off your phone, and prepare some good music. Before the trip reason with what your intentions are in taking the trip. Meditation before the trip can bring benefits as it 'clears/silents the mind'.

2) I think the person who know can come out of a bad trip we're mentally prepared before the trip. Once a bad trip hits, they accept the fact and go with the trip, instead of resisting the experience and causing an actual 'bad trip'. Even experience users can have a bad trip. You will learn from every experience good or bad. Some take it for the laughs, that's fine. I assume close minded people are more vulnurable to 'bad trips' if they have not looked into themselves 'spiritually' before... because once you are on the ride, you will come face to face with everything, maybe even experiencing an ego death which can be the 'scariest' part before it occurs.

3) No clue about Thai mushroom, though I believe all psychedelic mushrooms will potentially give you equal 'personal growth'

4) Not sure, but for MAXIMUM effect it is obviously better if you eat the shrooms you made tea from, incase some psilocybin was not extracted.

5) Not sure about Holandia Truffles, but apparently 15 grams is a 'regular' dosage.
But if it your first time, then I suggest trying less. Around 10 grams. But don't take it from me, im just guessing on this one as I have no experience with them.

6) SWIM is 'Someone who isn't me' . People use it instead of the word 'I' to avoid claiming they took the drug, for legal reasons. So when someone uses SWIM, he is referring to himself, without mentioning it

So you say that "resisting the trip" is what causes the mental breakdown in some people?

I ask because I want to create a profile of people that tend to get hurt from Magic.M usage, it's for one of my projects that I'm working on right now that is meant to educates people about Magic.M smart usage(will share links next month)...

Halfway through answering I realized I made no sense hah. I don't have an answer to this question, but if an answer which makes sense arises I will share it.

There are very wise and intelligent people on this forum which i'm sure will answer your questions very well.

I appreciate your project, good luck

My most epic freakout ever was rue/shrooms (huge dose). But rather than needing psychiatric help, it WAS my psychiatric help, and really aided in refocusing me on the important things. It's been 15 years and I'm still integrating that one.

Stick to smaller doses and there's less chance of that kind of thing. Generally, shrooms are pretty friendly, though, and if you go in with the right intent you'll most likely be in good shape.

Tea can be effective and a good way around the bitter squeaky experience of chewing them. Crumble them, drop the pieces into a shallow frying pan with a cup and a half of water per person. Simmer under a lid for a few minutes till the water turns light brown. Filter the chunks- they're not good for much at this point. Choose your shroom quantity the same way you would if you were simply eating them.

Cubensis will probably deliver the most consistent results.

Sounds will manifest as visuals... So silent darkness is a good baseline to start with. Music can be amazing on shrooms, but I recommend something mellow without lyrics. Spongle is a great example, and you'll find a lot of other recommendations under music/art/literature.

Also keep in mind that bad trips can be great teachers.

Hi,

I thought (or read/heard elsewhere) that Terence was a daily smoker of Marijuana...
(just the first reaction to your interesting questions).

I don´t have much to respond to your remaining answers, as I don´t know

"SWIM" is (in my understanding) a nickname which you use if you don´t want to say that "you" did this or that. SWIM = Sombody Who Isn´t Me. Everyone knows that SWIM = "me", but people seem to be affraid of talking freely (= I did this or that) in these times. I am from Europe, so I am perhaps less suspicious about my government´s abilities, and therefore, I don´t use the strange "swim" camouflage

Set and setting are usually the problem with bad trips.

Never underestimate the power of these things .always take the time to set up the right environment . Nature is the best place for mushrooms in my opinion .

apneaboy, Shalom!

I will answer your questions according to my personal experience on the subject.


Terence McKenna says that the best way to smoke weed is once a week, using strong weed and doing all this in total darkness, total silent and alone, I tried this and it works great for me… but I wonder what is the best way to use Psilocybin in order to stimulate personal and spiritual growth (how, how much and how often)?

-I think if you have the free time avaliable, taking mushroms two or three times a month is by no means unhealthy, in my opinion. Personally I see nothing wrong with using mushrooms on a regular basis because of the very low toxicity. I usualy make it a general rule for myself to wait at least 5-7 days in between journies so there are for no major tolerance issues.


2) What do you think is the difference between regular mushrooms users who only have positive experiences most of the time, when they have bad experiences they know how to come out of them and keep on using Psilocybin for personal growth VS. People who have bad experiences and later need psychiatric help?

In my opinion, people that have a solid philisophical motivation for using psychedelics, whether it be spiritual or psychologicaly based... have a better chance of bouncing back from a bad experience than do people who are just playing around, partying, or tinkering with their mushrooms without any real good reason.

Limiting your own personal expectations about how the trip will go, also tends to help IMO.
Also, I believe if one is to truly become a person of knowledge, then one must be willing to see everything, both good and bad in order to learn the true nature of the universe.

3) What do you think about the Thai (Kho Sumoi) mushroom, what are the qualities of the trip on this mushroom, and what is the best type of mushroom to use for personal and spiritual growth?

-I have actually grown this strain and I loved it. I have also grown Koh Sumoi Super, Lipa Yai and Thai mystery..and I like them all but I did perfer Lipa Yai over the others because it seemed to provide great clarity of mind for me.
These strains have smaller mushrooms but are quite potent, I do enjoy working with them because of their mighty potentcy.

-All and all though I would have to say that the south american strains are the best way to go however. They may not be a potent by weight as the Thai but they tend to be musch more gentale and teaching than the Thai strains. My favorite strain to date is Guadalajara, it has a special teaching ally with it that reminded me of Ayahuasca a little bit. Brazillians were also very nice to workd with...


4) When I read about how to make Shroom tea I hear to just drink the tea, don’t you also eat the mushroom pieces that you made the tea from, and how much do I need to use if I want to make a tea? I have heard alot of recipies, personally I just grind the mushrooms into a fine powder and put the powdered mushrooms into about 100-150ml of hot water, then I just take the shot, powder and all. My favorite way to take mushrooms is to powder them and put them into capsules...i then punch little holes in the capsules before I take them.


5) Holandia Truffles – I have 30gr now and I plan to take them on the weekend with a friend, what I can expect if I take 15gr on an empty stomach?

-Actaully I have never had truffles, so I'm not sure. Unless they are alot weaker than cubensis I would say 15grams is too much, but again I'm not sure.

6) This question is probably stupid, but I read here a lot about “SWIM” in the trip reports, is it a code name for “friend that uses”? What dose “SWIM” means exactly?

I asked the same question once.

This post says it all: Stop Swimming

Hope this was semi-helpful.

"I thought (or read/heard elsewhere) that Terence was a daily smoker of Marijuana..."

He smoked cannabis all day long every day. He said he was the heaviest cannabis smoker he knew.

No there is not point in eating the mushroom pieces after you make tea if you make it properly..unless you like extra gut cramps.

It would be great if you cold expand on that trip and what you learned from it if it's not too personal and you are willing to share.



What is the best way do make the tea?

Hi apneaboy,

I see that others have already answered your previous questions, and I have to thank you for bringing them up, because certain aspects shared here are new information to me, too.

About the tea, I like to grind my mushrooms using a weed grinder, because this way I get very small pieces. The smaller the pieces, the bigger the exposure to the liquid (and more successful of an extraction). Then, I just pour hot water (not boiling, just hot) over those bits, and leave it for about 15 minutes (I also like to add some fruit tea or any other tea, so as to mask the mushrooms taste and smell). Strain the mushrooms and drink the liquid, preferably over the course of 15-20 minutes. The faster you'll drink it, the more pronounced the initial effects. Or at least that's how my body seems to interpret it. You'll feel the initial effects after about 15 to 40 minutes after ingestion, depending on stomach contents as well.

3 grams of ps cyanescens alone in the dark would be ideal for me.

On your question about bad trips...

My only serious "bad trip" was caused by eating mushrooms shortly after learning of my GF (now ex GF from YEARS ago) almost cheating on me, with a guy who apparently was going over to my house with a friend of my gf's while I was going to be tripping. I found out he was going to my house on my way to the place we were traveling to to trip. I contemplated on not taking them, but then I decided I wasnt going to worry about it, and if she was going to be that way then I was better off without her.

Turns out I couldnt convince myself enough, and it effected my trip immensely. It wasnt that it was on my mind and I couldnt stop thinking about it, actually I wasnt thinking about her or the situation while tripping, but it made my trip dark and scary. I didnt tell the sitters that I was having a bad trip until after a few hours of the bad trip.

Once I started to come down a little I was able to enjoy the trip much more. the whole experience was one of my strongest, and on only about 1.8 grams of what we were told were brazilian/belizean cubensis. I got scared to take mushrooms for awhile. But I have since tripped about 4 times now, and I experience no negative effects from having that experience. I did learn some from it, but it was really hard to integrate cause I was mostly trying to ignore everything I was feeling.

I can see how this kind of experience could cause some people to require psychiatric help, if I wasnt so intune with my body and mind it would be difficult to deal with the experience I had, much like any traumatic event, some people have strong enough minds and some dont. Some expereinces are harder to deal with as others arent. Depends on the person place and experience IMO.

Ok, here's a slightly edited version of an earlier post of mine with a brief description of that experience...

I do tend to place a seemingly disproportional value on my bad trips. I think it's because they can be so productive, especially during the reflection process later. At the time, they are overhard and overlong and no fun at all. I've had four significant bad trips- one on DMT (a tied-to-the-car-and-dragged experience with no memorable detail), two on LSD (one was a re-dose of 600 micrograms five hours after the initial 800... I'll never do that again!) and one on shrooms. As it was a sort of heaven-and-hell experience, I'll share that one.

It wasn't just shrooms... That summer I'd been playing around with powdered psilocybin preceded by 100 mg of cooked-down Syrian rue seed, which more or less doubles the visual content. It had so far been productive and punishment free, so I was gradually upping my dosage. On the day in question, it was 7g psilocybin.

Anyway, things were going great- best ever, really... Whole history of the universe written through a hyperdimensional crystal tapestry. And it just kept getting better, building and building over the course of several hours. Picked away at an almost-finished painting for a few minutes, had major breakthroughs. Amazing, amazing... Then the experience started to fragment.

By this point I had no concept of self whatsoever. What I recall in retrospect: periods of apparent nothingness, interspersed between flash vignettes of myself basically tumbling through the house like a drunken sloth- leaving my clothes in a heap; running my hand across the popcorn ceiling, watching the little foam beads go pop-popop-pop-pop; peeing in the corner.

My next memory was a formless void. After an eternity, this undulating field gradually materialized, like a sheet the size of the universe blowing in the wind, wrinkles of all scales forming endless fractal patterns flowing through it. Slow,titanic, infinitely distant. No memory whatsoever of my Earthside life. I was the mind of the universe, and I had failed. It was a failure so spectacular that I had gambled everything in existence on the success of my failed venture. Its wreckage was spreading and cooling, forming an ever-thinning cloud of cosmic debris. And I had nothing left; nothing but the rest of all eternity to contemplate my failure.

Then I experienced an unexpected return to time, to the movement of events. A new idea, like a distant glimmer of light: "you are on drugs. You will come down." and with that, the welling up of hope.

This was short-lived, and almost immediately forgotten: a new feeling set in, one of.. dread. Something distant and terrible, something potentially violating.

Fortunately, before this terrible thing could arrive, I remembered myself again. Hope returned:not only would I come down soon, but I have this amazing life to return to, a great partner, meaningful projects... The vision glimmered in the dark like a diorama in a museum, bathed in golden light. But then this vision faded...

It was the darkest thing I had ever seen, sucking all light from my vision, towering above the whole world, blotting out the sky. And it was focused on me, laser-like in its intent: Rape. Eternal satanic mind-rape. There was nowhere to escape, no such thing as "where", really... Only total, abject terror and panic. But even this was soon forgotten completely, replaced by:

Not only would I come down, not only do I have this sweet life to come down to, but I am privileged to be part of something larger: a quest, a global-sized, species-wide quest, a journey to bring all knowledge,all learning, all the lessons and passions of history into a final crystallization of creative intent; I pictured myself standing before the easel in a cathedral-like space, the canvas ten feet tall, brush in hand, wailing away at this painting; a golden tower of crystal fire, a tower of language and truth, a thing of such beauty it felt almost wrong to see it coming from my own brush...

But then this faded. And by now I was starting to recognize the pattern, and I knew what was coming next. Everything became cold, all light was sucked from my vision, all went flat...

...And I woke up. Naked, very cold. In the basement, in a pile of rubble. With several broken bones.

And I tell you, brothers and sisters, there is nothing that will sober you up quicker than that kind of rude awakening. This was one of those hopefully once in a lifetime "almost died" trips.

I think that my biggest problem that night was not having a sitter. When venturing that far, don't go it alone!

I think the input of intense pain into my nervous system had a lot to do with where my experience went. Even with no body awareness, I think this kind of high-bandwidth input is hard to ignore. Otherwise, it would have been one of the greatest trips of my life. Well, in reality it was. Even a day later, back from the hospital and orthopedic surgery, ass thoroughly kicked, I was starting to understand the value of the experience.

Now I wouldn't necessarily class this as a "bad" trip, so much as a heaven/hell experience. Because it contained so many strong affirmations about my life path, that made the rough parts way more tolerable and gave them context.

I'll quote a poem from Orion:

Hell in a heartbeat
Heaven in a breath
Death a part of life
Life a part of death

I love that poem because it's so small and simple yet embodies the big polarities. Occasionally you'll get a trip like that. It's not limited to shrooms in particular, either. Psychedelics are not always the gentlest of teachers.

I really have no idea why people obsess over Terance Mckennas words. Find the way these things work with you..it's a personal relationship.

BROTHER-MAN!!! That was captivating as it was inspiring! Your writing is wonderful.Thank you for sharing this, I have so many questions.
First though your courage, strength and character are apparent in your ability to see this as a positive experience. After getting my ass kicked repeatedly in Peru with Ayahuasca I began to understand just how important these difficult ones really are. For me they were a god sent. I often tell people nervous about having a "bad trip" that they should be so lucky.

Its interesting that your experience is one of my worse fears and often creeps up on me causing pre-flight anxiety and a few times pure terror on the come up. My biggest fear is that I will hurt myself or somebody else if I get to out of control.
Its why I no longer feel comfortable breaking through alone. I have vaped hundreds of times alone always but then I had a few hard ones that rocked my world. I came to with my face just 1 inch from the searing hot glow plug of my vapor box and that really scared me. Since then I only can feel confident or even enjoy dmt and high doses of other psychs in the company of a trusted person.

So if I may ask what did you break and do you have any idea how? That must have truly scared you none the less. Im glad you are ok and you got all you can from it.

You should talk to Icehouse sometime. He is the only other person I know that has taken over 7g of mushrooms, cyans no less, with syrian rue. Ironically he also ended up in the hospital.

Cheers mate

We have this air shaft through the middle of our house, goes through all 3 floors. There's a fireplace in the basement with an angled metal hood over it- that may have broken my fall on the way down. I remember brief flashes of walking around on a ledge where we normally keep plants... That would have given me about a 12 foot fall. Or I might have just fallen down the stairs, although I would have then had to roll unreasonably far to end up where I did, so it was probably the ledge. Either way, I have no memory of the incident, and waking up in that situation was just a little bit of an unexpected shock. My left elbow was broken- required hardware to put it back together... Along with two ribs, which take freaking forever to heal.

I think another reason I look at this experience as positive is because of the sheer depth and power of the visions... As an artist, I feed on that stuff.