Its been 11 hours since I grounded up 5 grams of fungus and soaked them in orange juice. I still feel out-of-focus but I really want to get this experience out of my mind.
Saturday
My trip started saturday evening. I was trying to do homework but the allure of tripping on the mushrooms I had just come into possession of sapped my motivation. I took about 1/3 of what I was told was 8 grams of mushrooms. I ate them raw and washed it down with water. I read that setting is a major factor on the direction a trip will go, so I put a Carl Sagan playlist on my 46 inch television and let it buzz in the background while I futilely attempted some homework while the mushrooms metabolized.
45 minutes in I felt a hollowness forming in my core while my extremities began to numb. It was nice. A phrase I would use to describe it was that I felt "stoned." I set my homework aside, closed my eyes, and just allowed the experience to unfold. The hollowness gave way to a warm buzzing feeling. I felt alive. The music that accompanied Sagan's voice was richer than I was use to. I loved it.
I found myself laying sprawled across the floor, staring at my ceiling. I could see movement. No hallucinations, but a flow, like currents mingling with one another, dancing across the ceiling. How long I laid this way, entranced by the dance, I don't know. The clock said 8:43, but I didn't know what that meant.
I started doing yoga. I had energy that needed an outlet. The yoga gave way to various exercises that ended in dancing. I was fucking dancing. For hours. I was so happy. The dance was waltz like. In my mind, I danced with every girl I had ever made love to and every girl that I wished I had. My mind was so clear. I could feel where their curves would be, how their weight would shift, how dancing is a kind of fourplay. I entertained how almost everything we do before sex is fourplay, but the illusion of romantic love was nicer.
As I danced, my mind churned. I wish I could recall more clearly the thoughts I had, but tragically I can't. I remember laughing, laughing often. Life is full of paradoxes I understood Alan Watts's idea of "The Cosmic Joker." I like the idea of sitting outside the system we call life and mocking it, but that is a luxury I don't want for myself. Its a kind of enlightened snobbery. I want to understand the rules that govern the system, exploit them to get the power to change them. But this is a digression I'd like to keep to myself for the time being.
This night cumulated with me crying tears of joy caused by the glory that is The Office. I sat, pupils the size of quarters, mouth full of processed awfulness, laughing from the deepest part of my belly, tears spilling out, so god damn happy. As I tried falling asleep, I watched the first part of a documentary called "A Radient Child." I didn't know it, but I was sowing a setting I would be reaping the next day.
Sunday
I woke up 5 hours later, and robotically put on a documentary about fractals. I slipped in and out of consciousness while the hour long video hummed along. As it ended, I made my way to HEB for food. I knew I would not be driving the rest of the day, and that food would be precious. I had also downloaded all of Bach's work, along with some other instrumentals. I wanted to experience them in the altered state.
I grounded up the rest of my mushrooms. As I churned them out, the pile grew to an intimidating size. I was a little anxious. This would be the most mushrooms I hand ever taken. I soaked them in orange juice. After setting the setting with some Joe Rogan, I gulped down the tonic.
I started watching "Anima" as my body assimilated the fungus. My memory here starts to falter. I can't help but think its defense mechanism. I glimpsed madness, but more on that later.
About 45 minutes after drinking, I was feeling disappointed. I wasn't hallucinating, I felt a little stoned but nothing mystical or transcendent. I have a little concoction of 'smart drugs' I take every morning, which I hadn't taken this morning, and so I went to the kitchen and consumed that as well. Shortly after my body broke that down was when my mind just...I don't know.
This will be hard to explain.
I found myself, again, in an X, facing the ceiling. With Anima providing context, I cried like I cried the first time I took mushrooms. Its a different kind fo crying. I didn't feel sad. I didn't have any of the physiological queues that prelude crying, I just laid their stoic, water flowing from my eyes. It felt good. I found I could control it, and so I made it continue. How long this lasted; long enough.
I don't know when it started. The best I can describe it, is that my mind began offering counter points to all the systems we as humans give meaning to in order to function. Fuck, its hard to articulate. I read a lot of philosophy and the tome I'm shoveling through now, "Godel, Escher, Bach," was weighing on me. I got down to the crux of it all, why is being alive meaningful. This question is almost comical when associated with a college student doing drugs, but I wasn't laughing. I wouldn't call it a "dark place" but my mind lost its filter. I felt I was "losing my mind" because my mind was recalling so much information that it was paralyzing.
I can't remember the details, but I came to a point where I thought I was going to die. No panic, no pain, nothing physical. Just that the inability to filter out all these ideas would cause my mind to just shut off. I was sitting on my back porch, enraptured by the visual acuity mushrooms give you, when I glanced down at some fungus growing into a dying piece of wood we'd call a pillar. The image and clarity of the mushroom summoned thoughts of Terrence Mckenna, mushroom connoisseur and someone I admire, and his mushroom shaped brain tumor...my thoughts were getting out of control.
So I went for a run. And the god damn world became so fucking beautiful I could barely process it. The weekend rain had rejuvenated the organic life in my neighborhood. Every house was exploding with color. I could see individual blades of grass. I could run in almost a musical way. I was in love with the moment.
The sky was stupefying. It made me want to be a god damn painter. I lack the vocabulary to describe the magnificent colors that splattered the Texas skyline. The rain clouds melded with fluffy white masses, with the setting sun radiating behind them. It was sexual how beautiful it was.
This lasted for hours. I don't know how long I ran, maybe 5 miles. The energy mushrooms gives me is something I'd like to study and utilize. I had never run that long without stopping before. I never got short of breath either. I may have been more in sync with my body. I'm not sure.
Again, as if I were caught in a strange loop, I ended up on my back, laying in my driveway, peering up at space. It was night now, and the soft orange glow each porch light gave just made my happy. I laid there for maybe 30 minutes, just laying there, my mind at peace. It had been a good trip.
Now
Its almost 1, 13 hours since I took the 5 grams and my pupils are still dilated. I'm not tired. I'm not sore. I'm still a like shaken by what I experienced midway through the trip today. I'm not sure what happened My mind doesn't seem to allow me to revisit those thoughts. I'm not worried. I don't think it was a bad trip. I want to go further. I think I enjoyed the madness in retrospect. I love you. Thank you for reading.