Date: Feb 28, 2015

PRE-CONDITIONS
(mind)Set: confident and ready, but still somewhat nervous
Setting (physical location): In front of my alter in my bedroom w/ little brother.
time of day: 11am
last meal: Ate poorly the day before, only coffee, whey protein, and water before trip.

PARTICIPANT
Gender: (male)
body weight: (175lb)

BIOASSAY
Substance(s): Mushroom Dust (PES Hawaiian)
Dose(s): 2.5 grams
Method of administration: ground into a powder, mixed in orange juice, soaked for 10 minutes.

EFFECTS
Administration time: 11am
Duration: 3 1/2 hours
First effects: 10 minutes
Peak: 1-1.5 hour
Come down:2.5 hours
Baseline: 3 1/2 hours.

Intensity (overall): 6/10

Assessment
Pleasantness: (3/4)
Unplesantness: (2/4)
Visual Intensity: (2/4)


REPORT:
This trip didn’t go exactly as planned. After last week’s fairly heavy dose with little brother indoors, we both agreed that this weekend we’d go out for a 2-day hike and shroom as soon as we hit the trial. We planned to hike through the come up, peak, and come down, and then be at camp by the time we were baseline. It’d would be the first time we’ve tried such a trip together.

A massive storm moved into our area on Friday though, so as we were sitting in the car, gear loaded, and on our way to the trailhead (a 2 hour drive away), the radio started issuing severe weather warnings. I tend to be very heavily affected by overcast weather when I’m tripping, and neither of us wanted to spend two days soaking from the rain and be tripping in the mean time, so we called it off. We went home and got stuff ready for our backpacking trip that is going to start later this year (several thousand miles on foot, and will take several months).

We got a lot of stuff done around town and at the house on Friday, but we both decided that we should trip on Saturday so that we can at least practice that some more—thus preventing the weekend from being a complete waste.

When Saturday morning rolled around, I wasn’t really feeling it 100%. I felt poorly on account of not eating well in the preceding days, I hadn’t been to the gym in a week because of last weekend’s flesh suspension, and in general, I wasn’t in a place where I was confident going into a trip. Little brother was still excited about it though, so we both went to the gym after coffee, did an hour of cardio, then headed back home. I made up my mind at the gym that I wouldn’t trip that day, but when we got home and little brother said he still wanted to, I decided that it would be worth joining him. I’d just take a lighter dose than the 4 grams I ate last weekend.

I decided to eat 2.5 grams and little brother ate 2 grams. I expected that it would be a pretty light trip since I had taken a 2.5 gram dose three weeks ago out on a camping trip and didn’t find it to be very intense. This turned out to be an unsafe assumption.

We both ground our mushrooms up into a powder and mixed them in orange juice. We let them soak for about 10 minutes then drank them down.

I planned to keep myself occupied on the come-up by grinding bud for our backpacking trip—we have a small grinder and have a lot of bud to grind in the next few months before the hike. I did so, but only made it to about 10 minutes before it started hitting me. The mushrooms hit me hard at the start of the trip—HARD. I was taken aback because last week I ate 4 grams and this week I had about half that dose and the come up was faster and heavier; the body load was really heavy.

I was okay because I knew that it was only a 2.5 gram dose, but it was startling how heavy I was tripping by the 30 minute point. It was almost like I was peaking by that point. It was pleasurable, but it was also pretty intense. I could identify visual patterns everywhere, although there wasn’t warpy-bendy visuals.

At the 30 minute mark I asked little brother to go downstairs and grab me something to eat—he was tripping too, but not nearly as hard as I was. When he went downstairs, I laid down on the floor and closed my eyes. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it was intense. I could have functioned, but it was just hitting me hard.

I tried crawling into my bed and under the blankets to just close my eyes. When I did, it was very pleasant, but for some reason that I can’t remember, I had to discontinue after only a couple of minutes. There was some reason to it, but I had to get back up and sit in front of the alter. Little brother came back with cereal for me, and I tried eating it down. It was Raisin Bran and I had no interest in eating at all when he brought it, but I wanted my trip to settle a bit. I was also getting an abnormally high level of nausea and felt that I might puke, although I never did. After I ate a bit of cereal, the nausea completely subsided.

When he brought the cereal, I ate it bite by bite and washed it down with water. I told little brother to make sure I don’t choke because it’d be really dumb for the guy who loves mushrooms and has mushrooms tattooed on him and has a mushroom necklace at the time to die while tripping on mushrooms. It was very important that I don’t do that.

The trip was honestly quite comparable to the 4 gram trip on the way up and all the way to about the 1 hour point (maybe just a bit more intense in the first 30 minutes). I was fully peaking by 60 minutes, but at that point, unlike the 4 gram dose, I didn’t keep going higher from there. At the 1 hour point I was about as “high” as I was going to get. It was mostly enjoyable at that point, but like I’ve said, it was intense.

Little brother started harvesting a small mono tub that wasn’t quite ready to be picked, but we both decided that it would be appropriate to harvest now if only for the reason that we were in a special state of mind and it would be “special.”

After the 1 hour point, my trip was a lot more managable; it was really just the come up that kicked my fanny this time around. I spent a lot of time during that first hour thinking that I couldn’t do this for a fourth week in a row (this being my third weekend trip on mushrooms consecutively). I just had too much stuff to process from my last trip still, and although the plan behind this trip was just to continue “practice” for the backpacking trip we’ll be doing later in the year, I just needed a break. I knew I’d make it through though.

After the 1 hour mark, I grabbed a notebook. Little brother was harvesting mushrooms (very slowly—lol!) and I wanted to try writing while in the peak—a task that I’d never tried before. I have to admit that it was very difficult to do. My handwriting was very strange and each letter was somewhat of a struggle. It wasn’t impossible, but it was certainly challenging. The writing that I produced was directly from the mushroom, providing advice for my life. I don’t know how much y’all care to hear about this stuff, but in brief, the mushroom told me to get my diet back together and it told me what actions I need to take before starting the big backpacking trip later this year. It showed me how I need to make amends with my ex-girlfriend, even though I don’t want to. It showed me that I need to explain my behavior towards her and how I have really hard feelings about the dog we had together but she’s taken after the breakup. It told me that if I don’t want to hear this stuff, then I shouldn’t ask. They were heavy truths for me to deal with, but I understood their necessity in my life.

Last weekend (after tripping w/ little brother on Friday), I was talking to someone at the flesh suspension event, and she said that she used to LOVE mushrooms, and one of the greatest memories of her life has to do with eating mushrooms with friends and wandering around in the woods. But she told me she can’t do it any more—she said that whenever she trips as an adult, it’s all “doom and gloom” and the mushroom makes her feel super critical of her life and that she’s wasting her time on earth. I told her that I understand and that I get that from the mushroom too; the difference however, is that I WANT that in my life—for me, that’s a way for me to face hard truths that, if I take them seriously, they will make my life in the future better than it would be if I didn’t address these issues. I looked at her, and I could see how this would be challenging—she’s a mess and has A LOT of issues (although she’s still a REALLY good person at heart).

For example, when the mushroom tells me to clean up my diet, that isn’t too big of a deal. I’m in my late 20s, 6% body fat, 6 pack abs… yada, yada, yada, but there are still weeks where I could be doing better, and that’s what the mushroom told me this past Saturday. For the girl who said she can’t deal with those messages from the mushroom, she’s severely overweight, and I can see how hearing that from a talking vegetable would be kind of difficult to deal with.

After about 10-15 minutes of writing, little brother and I both decided that we wanted to go out for a walk (we’d planned this before dosing). We were both feeling the come down but were still tripping pretty readily. As we started on that walk, and just before then, I started playing with this idea having to do with religion, atheism, and christianity. I realized that I need to find a way to tell christians that I believe that I am god without them seeing me as immediately delusional. It is my belief that we are all God in a literal sense (see the Alan Watts talk on dreaming—it’s on youtube, and if you haven’t watched it before, it’s a MUST!). So when I tell them that, I want to find a way to explain it so they can keep retorting to me that, by my definition of “god,” they too are god, which is exactly the point. I want to find a way for them to come to this conclusion on their own by trying to disprove my “absurd” claim.

I won’t pretend that I got 100% to how to do this, but as little brother and I started walking around the neighborhood for an hour or two, I started talking through the idea and then decided that I wanted to make it into a piece of writing. I’m almost done with the first draft at this time, but as little brother and I walked around the neighborhood, I talked aloud, and told the “story” a couple of times, tweaking details with each retelling.

It basically goes like this: Christian missionaries conquer a continent, then they go into the jungle to find un-contacted “savages” to convert them to christianity. In trying to explain to the “savages” what God is, the missionaries find trouble, because the savages think that they are God. The missionaries question the savages to get a better understanding of why the savages believe themselves to be god, and then they retort that, based on the “savage logic,” if *they* are God, then so too are the Christian missionaries “god.” And that’s exactly the point. The missionaries become frustrated, leave the savages in the jungle, and return to the main continent where everyone agrees that man is on earth and God is in heaven above.

…anyways, that’s the idea that I’m trying to work with.

After we walked around the neighborhood for an hour or two, we went to a local tavern, drank a couple of beers, and I started writing this story. And that’s how this trip ends.

Lessons to take away from this trip: DO NOT underestimate a 2.5 gram trip! Eating a little bit of food right after eating the mushroom powder seems to settle the stomach a bit and subside the trip’s intensity. The afterglow after this trip was AMAZING, and it lasted from hour 3-6ish.

Although little brother and I both agreed during the trip that we’d probably need to take a week off after this one, we’ve collectively decided since then that we are going to go back to the original plan, and this coming Friday we’ll be going out on a 3-day backpacking trip; we’ll trip as soon as we hit the trail head, and a trip report shall follow.

Thanks for reading guys. Love you all!

Interesting thoughts ScientificMethod

I had the exact same thing happen to me. 4g prior was manageable, then 2.5 months later was ridiculously strong. Who knows if it is the random genetics of the mushrooms or our metabolism and other factors. Probably all of the above.