The Exhibit of Life: A trip report (Psilocybin)

{Please excuse possible incoherency or difficulty reading as my mind was a bit jumbled trying to get these absurd events on paper....}

                    It was entirely too great of a day to sit inside and learn the popular Dutch "Jumpen" dance via youtube video's so we decided to go to the bookstore and read a book I had been wanting to read called "Be Here Now" by Ram Dass. As we walked in I knew this was a great day and a lovely time to begin the early phases of my serious adjustment from pre psychedelic life to the skewed idea of reality I proudly hold today. We found the book and I sat down to read it. As I read it I began to realize that I hadn't the slightest fucking clue about what Mr. "Dass" or whatever was talking about. Something about needing to die before being reborn. So I had been trying to gather up the nerve for about a couple of months to score some psilocybin mushrooms after watching some friends trip and reading multiple reports on erwoid.org. I had previously only tried cannabis and MDMA and was looking to fuck with my skin encapsulated ego a bit. So I called my friend who I knew would have them, as he has mentioned getting them before. I figured, like with most psychedelics or mind altering experiences (namely MDMA) I would put the shroomies away for a long time and keep researching the subject and trying small bits of it to get used to baseline effects.

            So I went and picked them up and proceeded to take them over to a very close friend of mines apartment to examine them. There were 5 of us over there, three of my good friends and one of their girlfriends. I decided upon taking a bit to try them out as I was entirely too excited to simply put them aside. I filled the small of my palm with some shake and a whole mushroom (about 1/2 eight) upon  temporarily conquering my anxiety I ingested them and waited even more anxiously for the effects to kick in. I was sitting on the couch and we were all hanging out and listening to music like usual. Suddenly I feel /hear a vortex pulling me down ward. I had been told before that this vortex marked the beginning of the trip for many people... and so it was true.

       I immediately got nervous and jumped up out of my seat to go talk to my more experienced friend about what was going on and to gain reassurance that I was in no physical danger. I then went out onto the balcony and examined the world around me as the visual effects began to kick in. The trees had beautiful bright colored blossoms and were dripping with beautiful crystal clear water droplets. I suddenly realized that the four walls around me were not enough. I asked my friend who I trusted most and who owned the apartment to go outside with me so as to not do anything stupid in public. During deliberation of whether to walk outside or stare out of the door, I began to lose touch with my bodies natural temperature gauge and became super comfortable with the idea of going outside despite the chilly night's air. My friend gave me a tour of the grounds which I had not previously seen, or so it seemed. The world around me became so vivid and clear that it was almost cartoony and the tints and colors and contrasts were blowing my mind. As I traveled deeper than the rabbit hole I found my self in wonderland.

        I suddenly got cold and told my friend I was ready to go back. I walked back in and was immediately drawn to the Salvador Dahli picture of Abe Lincoln on the wall which was shifting into absolutely absurd shapes and that is when things became a bit overwhelming. The walls began to take on a life of their own and as I would concentrate on each wall individually it would breathe and flex. This was my first experience with distorted reality and I knew not what to do or how to handle it, so I got a bit more nervous and exclaimed  loudly "WOOOOOOOW" as nervous laughter began pouring out of my over stimulated cranium and vibrating off the tip of my tongue. "Are you guys seeing this?" I asked. I turned around and one of my friends began to seriously fuck with my mind. He began making all of these evil faces and shaking his head from side to side. I asked if he was really doing it or if I was just hallucinating. All I got back in response is more of the faces and a lot of laughing from everyone around me and this is the point where I do not know what part of my story was real and what part was in mind.

         As my friend continued to make faces he grew horns and, his naturally red hair and face got even more vividly red. I began to talk to tell him to stop it and I realized that I was speaking gibberish and getting the same in response. At this point I knew I was fucked and had no way to relate to the human beings around me. I was leaving this world and traveling even further down the rabbit hole. I stood up and left the room at that time to walk around and examine the multitude of trippy posters around the apartment which also continued to look less and less believable. I suddenly felt the urge to go to the restroom as my entire body felt wet and warm but cold and dry at the same time. I felt I was in a cold wet suit but immersed in a dry pool of warm water. I went to the bathroom and sat down on the John with pants down as I figured out that I would not realize if began to urinate or otherwise. I got lost in the multitude of sound and vortexes around me and stared intently at an odd picture of a paper pig on the bathroom wall. Next thing I know the bathroom feels like a ship that is preparing for lift off and I am literally being caught with my pants down as I am "fueling up". This feeling comes and goes as I relive the moment over and over like a tape recorder on constant rewind and intermixed within the tape somewhere is me walking in and out of the bathroom and various other rooms of the house. When the rewind button let go I found my self walking through the small hallway leading from the bathroom to the bedroom, as I waved goodbye to my friend who had been fucking with me earlier. He was walking out the door with his girlfriend and that made two less humans in the house to deal with, and one less "demon" as my friend had earlier made himself out to be.

         I went across the hall and into the bedroom where I saw more posters!! (Posters were not fun anymore and they were fucking everywhere) These posters were of Coors light girls and they were playing all sorts of tricks on me. The girls had many different shades of skin put together in a mosaic on their body and were moving in weird laggy patterns as they began to make faces and grow horns as they shook their heads in the same way my "demon" friend had been doing earlier. It seemed as though he had set the tone for my trip and it was not set in a quality direction. So after I realized I still had a body with feet and legs that could move me I went over and sat on the bed and decided to lie down and close my eyes, hoping it would be normal again. As I closed my eyes I saw that I could no longer tell the difference between the world around me and the world behind my eye lids.

         I opened my eyes(I think) again to notice the digital clock making weird patterns that made no sense at all. I had no perception of time and no perception of space. I kept forgetting I had ingested a mind altering substance and when I remembered long enough to calculate according to the clock how long it had been since I took them, the time made no logical sense to me whatsoever. I got lost again jumping through realities while lying on the bed with my eyes closed, only to be opened when I felt I was running out of breath. Every so often (I can’t recall the time intervals...anywhere from milliseconds to an hour) I would "wake up" from a "dream" and take a series of deep breaths as if waking up from a nightmare. Then the pattern once again began playing over and over again like a tape recorder and I kept dying and being reborn as the same person in the same time and space. I was still myself, but I was a big head floating in space with the cosmos, including our solar system, orbiting around me. 

        Then my friend came in and offered me moral support to which I had no words to say as I could not conceive the concept of words but he almost brought me back to reality. He then brought me apple sauce which was something completely foreign to me with little rubber balls that I perceived as planets I was chewing on and I suddenly lost grip of "reality" again. I once again "woke up from the dream"  and found that I was drooling apple sauce on the bed and never actually swallowed or chewed it. I closed my eyes again and saw only mild level closed eye visuals of odd bondage scenes containing myself and people I knew well but not at all in a sexual way as I began to slip in to this scenario and found myself inside of this room for a couple moments before returning back to baseline upon (I think) reopening my eyes.

         I lied for a while on the bed looking up thinking "WHUUUUUUT THAAAA FUUUUUUCK WAS THAT!!??!!?" Eventually I got up and rejoined my two remaining friends in the living room and began spouting off about how I plan to entitle my trip "the exhibit of life" and explaining my knew found ideas on god and life and other deep deep deep materials which I was seeing in an entirely new light. We spent the rest of the night flipping through radio channels and listening to music I never liked before (such as country) and laughing hysterically at the absurd Irony of the music and the lack of complexity in the lyrics which I found to be very satisfying. I fell asleep that night on my friends couch with my head phones on, playing a track I had created with a computer music studio, which was influenced by the conflict in Israel and listened intently with great compassion and understanding until it became too much for me, and I fell asleep.

      I can honestly say that trip has made me a better person and a deeper thinker as well as somebody who is very thankful for their existence and reality and especially thankful for a chance at having such an amazing psychedelic journey. I now understand full well what the wonderful Ram Dass speaks of in his book and I own the book and read it quite often and would highly recommend the book to everyone.