DOSE:

3.5 g

oral

Mushrooms

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

60 kg

A few days ago, I had my first mushroom trip. I am not entirely new to psychedelics, having tripped on LSD around 7 times and microdosed a couple more. I was with some of my friends with whom I have tripped before (let's call them A, B, C, D and E) and two other friends we recently had been getting along with quite well who weren't really into psychedelics (let's call them X and Y). For context, we are all aged 19-21.

We were camping in the middle of the nature, and thought it was the ideal place to try the golden teacher mushrooms we had bought a few months prior. I took about 3.5 grams of the dried shrooms. A, B, C and D took a similar amount, while E took only a gram, and X and Y just took a bite to see what it tasted like. We just chewed and swallowed them. It tasted bad, but not as awful as I expected, and the mushrooms even had a smell resembling chocolate. We dosed at about 3:30 PM on a really hot day and after a few minutes proceeded to walk to a river beach nearby our campsite.

On the way, the effects started setting in: me and B talked about having shortness of breath, and the colors seemed a bit brighter/more saturated. We stopped along the way to rest in a shade under some trees; on the floor, there were some odd-shaped leaves that looked like maggots, which was tripping some of my friends out, so we soon started moving to the beach again. At this point, sounds were getting trippy, and I felt like people speaking in the distance were much closer to me than they were, so it was like I was hearing everybody's conversations despite not being able to distinguish any words, which gave me a bit of anxiety. The walk was extenuating (the day was really hot and the sun was very strong), and I noticed some more effects as I started to smile and giggle unintentionally.

Once we got to the river beach, some of my friends went to the water, while me and the rest went to sit under the shade as there were a lot of people in the water and we wanted to be a little more isolated. I felt uncomfortable being surrounded by people I didn't know, but the trip was setting in and I didn't have the willpower to convince the group to go anywhere else.

As the time passed and we were well into the comeup, things started to get difficult. A and C were pretty overwhelmed by the experience and got anxious. C even asked me, stressfully to find her a spot she could vomit on, and started panicking a little bit. She also asked me a little bit desperately how long the trip would take, to which I think I answered something along the lines of "total time is about 8 hours" as I too wasn't able to think about something that could calm her in that moment.

At this moment, my trip started going downhill as well. Everyone's stress and anxiety got to me, A threw up, and as the trip got more intense I lost part of my ability of making sense of words. I remember repeating the word "mushroom" a couple of times, as well as the name of my hometown, not knowing entirely what the words meant. At some point a bell rang, probably from a church, but I wasn't able to discern where it was from and it was so loud and significant! so it worsened my anxiety.

Eventually, I started looking around and for some reason everyone seemed desperate (probably I was projecting my own feelings on them), which made me panic a bit. I started to think the area we were on was dangerous (hence everyone's desperation) and that we could die if we stayed there. Someone also mentioned "fire" and, as my country was ravaged with fires, I entertained the idea that some surrounding forest could be on fire, which could be why everyone was in a hurry, which really got to me. I remember that the thought "we need to go back to the campsite" crossed my mind, but I wasn't able to convey that to my friends or even get up, so I just stayed there, sitting/laying on my towel on the ground. I felt like I was in hell, I needed to fight for my life but I couldn't make sense of anything or even get up. It was extremely uncomfortable and even desperating.

I don't have a clear memory from the part that follows, but I lost even more control. I remembered noticing some wounds on my body (sunburns, a broken nail) which worsened my fear of dying, but I soon brushed that thought away, arguing with myself that I wasn't in the correct mindspace to examinate my wounds (thank god).

This was the last bit of sanity I would display for a while, though: I started to trip harder, my head was a mess, I couldn't make sense of any words and don't remember what I was seeing. I remember grunting and almost roaring for no apparent reason. At some point I even licked my leg (I really would like to know what I was thinking at that point). My behaviour also freaked my friends out a bit. I was supposed to be the most experienced with psychedelics and am normally a pretty calm and collected individual, so it must have been pretty worrying for them.

Eventually, though, things took a turn. I started to make sense of words again, our other friends came back from the water and everybody started talking. The conversation seemed to me as if everyone was catching up to one another, like we haven't been together for some time. This lead me to think that me and my friends only ever really meet when we trip, because that's when we can truly connect. We talked about the changes on our bodies since we last "met" (haircuts, skin tanning, etc), which made me think our "trip selves" were an alter ego to our real personas that only existed when we were tripping, and that all of the surrounding scenario (the trees, mountains, river and even all the people around us) was a product of our tripping minds. At this point, I interpreted the convoluted comeup as us letting go of our "real selves" and entering the mind of our trip alter-egos, so we could truly connect.

Now, me and my friends are the only group we know that does psychedelics together, and we usually feel that we are more "connected" or close than any other group we know. In the trip, I had the "realization" that we had this special connection because of psychedelics and felt completely connected to all of my friends, even X and Y, who weren't tripping. The trees above us were swirling with stunning patterns, and I felt the ground was positively alive and emanating energy. Everyone and everything looked and felt so beautiful, and I had no thought other than being in a stunningly beautiful place with the people I was most deeply connected in the world.

The sun was setting in front of us over a mountain overseeing the river, which was full of people happily bathing in the water or calmly paddling on canoes. I still thought all of these people were the product of me and my friends' minds and so I also felt deeply connected to them. I felt like my insides were dancing to the sound of nature. It was pure bliss. Everything looked like a painting, the most beautiful one I had ever seen. I even saw the area we were in as part of a planet facing the sun, one of the most beautiful hallucinations I ever had, and that made me think about the power of psychedelics; we could create a world as we wished, with the most wonderful landscapes, in which people could truly connect with one another.

Eventually, though, the magic started to fade. Someone said that X and Y were making fun of us. Not in a malicious way or anything, but that made me lose the feeling of being connected to everyone. The landscape, despite still being beautiful, was not magical anymore. My friends started to speak about "real" things, such as going back to the campsite and taking a bath. I was informed that X took a lot of videos and photos of us tripping. Again, I don't think it was with malicious intent, but it made me a bit ashamed, especially of the insanity I displayed during the comeup.

My friend D started getting really sad, and B talked about how we should have done this in a more isolated environment because we may have bothered the people around us, and how she noticed Y was uncomfortable about this. This comment made me drop my illusions about everyone else being happily there with us as a product of our imagination and gave me a reality shock: we were just young people stupidly tripping in mushrooms, potentially bothering or creeping out everyone around us. No one was being particularly friendly to each other, especially when comparing to when we were tripping, where I felt everyone loved each other.

A said that my presence further overwhelmed her during the comeup, since I was behaving so weirdly. Which saddened me, since I usually act as her "safe haven". Some jokes were even made about me grunting or licking my leg, again not in a malicious way, but all of this feelings put me in a terrible mood. We eventually went back to our campsite before the sun completely set at around 9PM, I think and everything was mostly ok, despite D being really sad and I barely talking.

This trip made me reflect about the reasons I lost control during the comeup, as well as the supposed special connection me and my friends had. I identified some negative characteristics in them I hadn't really thought about before and the same with myself and questioned (I'm still questioning) if our group is really that special compared to the other groups we know.

Overall, I don't think I regret this trip: I felt some wonderful things (despite fueled by illusions), but there were also some pretty terrible moments, and things are definitely worse now than before we took the mushrooms. I can't stop thinking that it worsened everyone's opinion of me. I also noticed that one of my major flaws is to desire that everyone approves/ admires me, but I think that the trip has kickstarted some reflections that will help me become a better person, as well as maybe ultimately improving my relationships with my friends and with everyone I might meet.

Exp Year: 2022	ExpID: 116567
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: May 6, 2025	Views: 15
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Relationships (44), Loss of Magic (34), Nature / Outdoors (23), Mystical Experiences (9), Difficult Experiences (5)