Hello everyone,

Last year I had an unbelievable experience with b. caapi (vine only). I have wanted to do it again for a while, but the retreat I went to was a bit expensive so I have been trying my own home brews of caapi and cacti for months with no success. Most recently, about a month ago I ingested about 17 g of dried san pedro powder. I now realize the dose was too small and all I got was a body buzz.

A couple weeks ago my buddy was talking about "the best shrooms" him an a couple other guys have ever tried. Since I had such a good experience with b. caapi, I began to think that shrooms were probably quite similar, and that all psychedelics were just as amazing. I took about 2 g of unknown dried shrooms and had what seems to be a pretty classic bad trip: I became somewhat convinced that reality is just a simulation, just like the Matrix movies. There is some sort of superior beings that trap us all in this matrix, and death simply allows us to be disconnected from this fake/simulated matrix and all the heart-ache and trouble that comes with it. Even cancer was nothing to worry about it because it simply frees your body-less consciousness from the matrix.

Luckily my mind is reasonably fortified and I am able to resist these beliefs, thanks partially to my previous caapi experience. The hardest part is the idea that believing that my bad trip was false is really just sinking down into the unconsious/sleepwalking dream that is the matrix. I now believe that shrooms are a vile drug and will not do them again. It seems to me that if one is ever going to explore reality, consciousness, and their mind that they drug should bathe them in love and positivity or else the mind can go in the wrong direction. Shrooms do not seem to provide this wich is part of the reason I think they are a dangerous and vile substance.

Any comments are welcome.

I've done shrooms several times and had some truly enlightening experiences

I freaked out one time. Really dark, did some ugly shit, ended in hospital


Shrooms were only partly responsible. The irresponsible participant and their irresponsible actions were largely at fault.

I dare say DMT could do something similar, if you could physically act while under the influence. Thankfully you can't

I've had the exact same feeling, but it was actually from weed. I am an avid smoker and built up a tolerance to it smoking everyday for years. I took a few month tolerance break and when I had my first sesh since that break I smoked like I still had the tolerance. I didn't. I was so high, I wasn't hallucinating, but it just seemed painfully clear to me that 'reality' was unauthentic. At the peak of it I experienced my internal monologue echoing and it become clear to me that my identity only existed while million of individual synapses fired in unison. Feeling terrified that I was becoming "fractured" and had somehow split my mind I begun chanting a mantra in my mind which I often use when overwhelmed with anxiety which is just "ommm" The interesting part was when I did this, my monologue was still echoing so at first it 'sounded' like a choir singing in harmony at first until they all 'merged' back into a single unified monologue.

The insight this gave me was that the story, experience and identity I live through is never anything more than a 'hallucination' my brain is constantly creating. We all live in a simulation in this way. There is not a thing, any of us experience that isn't just a subjective metaphoric interpretation of unverified information.

There is however, a lot beyond our own subjective experience. A true 'reality' or a deeper truth exists and physics points to this. I like to think of it this way, if our existence is the matrix, and we are just computational software, we still exist and are just as real as the entities in the 'higher reality'. While our experiences could technically be artificial, we would actually exist in higher reality as the electricity running through the computer.

It sounds like you 'had too much too fast' which isn't the fault of the mushrooms. Taking half the amount would have probably resulted in a much more lucid, grounded, and uplifting experience.

Psilocybin mushrooms are called 'magic' for a reason, and suffice it to say the magic is real. However, if you have more than you can handle, especially when lacking a relationship with the mushrooms, things can easily get out of hand, and potentially spiral out of control.

Unfortunately, delusional thinking is an occupational hazard of tripping on psychedelics, especially when biting off more than one can chew.

Set and setting make a huge difference, but proper dosage is also crucial in terms of determining the quality of an experience.

In any case, I think it's fair to say that a lot of the people here and elsewhere have experienced similar things, so you're in good company...