A very nice walk in the woods indeed, made some good memories.

It was a long time ago.  Late winter, I think, sometime in the nineties.  I was afraid to try 'shrooms because I'd heard they could upset your stomach.  I didn't like that idea at all.  I also wasn't sure if 'shrooms were gonna be poisonous or not, I didn't know a whole lot about mushrooming back then.  So I waited until other people who were going to try them anyway, had tried from our batch of shrooms and could report back how they reacted.  They had no particular trouble, and I cautiously decided to try the mushrooms.  I'd never actually eaten any kind of mushroom in my life up to that point, I was quite the picky eater, so it was a big deal for me.  I had no real upset stomach at all as it turned out, and while I wouldn't eat 'shrooms on purpose for the taste, the taste wasn't anywhere near as bad as I'd been led to believe.

Anyway, I don't know what dose I got, but according to people I met later, it would've been a low-end recreational dose from the effects I experienced.  It was pleasant.  It felt like being in a fantasy novel.  I didn't want to be indoors anymore, so I went and took a stroll in the woods.  My sense of smell seemed enhanced.  I could smell the dirt and the earth and the fungus around me.  I seemed to be able to see every facet of every crystal of ice and snow on the ground.  There was maybe a couple inches at most of snow hanging on here and there.  I loved smelling and staring at the rotting logs and wood.  I looked down a lot, and I loved seeing and smelling everything at ground level.

I felt kinda floaty.  Never was I scared.  Never did I hallucinate anything outright, although I imagine some of the enhanced senses were partially hallucinatory, my mind filling in the blanks more vividly for me than it usually does in everyday life.  I felt light as a feather.  And I had an enjoyable day.  It was like taking a walk in the woods normally is, only more fun because of all the smells and sights that seemed more vivid and interesting than usual, the floaty feeling, and that odd sense of being in a fantasy novel, or maybe a fairy tale, but the happy kind of fairy tale, not the old dark creepy kind.

I didn't encounter anything or anyone odd.  I barely talked to other human beings that day, I preferred solitude a lot back then.  And I was not on a particularly high dose.  It felt like I came down too soon.  But I never did shrooms again.

At this stage in my life, I look back on the shrooms as a fond memory: Something I did that was enjoyable, and may never do again.  I have a lot of memories like that, not just drug memories.  Things I did once, will probably never do again, but enjoyed myself at the time and don't regret it.  And I see it as a personal decision, whether or not to try something like this, and whether or not to continue.  For me, it's not worth the neuropsychiatric risks, both in terms of personal health and family history.

But I do look back on my one mushroom trip with fondness.  It was nice.  Not earth-shattering, not profound, nothing particularly spiritual that wouldn't be there without the shrooms, nothing superlative in any way.  Just... nice.  Pleasant.  Fun.

We're talking decades, though.  One reason I'm unwilling to do it again is my brain was growing at the time I took them.  It's an adult brain now.  It might have an entirely different response to shrooms.  I have no desire to find out.  I have nothing against the decisions other people make, but I'm pretty sure I'm through with shrooms -- I had an experience, it was  good one, and leaving it at that ensures that my memories of it will always be untainted by a bad trip or something.  And I'd rather just have those good memories, and feel lucky that good is the kind of memories I got out of randomly trying mushrooms on my own at an unknown dosage. Young man's immortality syndrome strikes again -- but like most kids, I lived to tell the tale mostly unscathed.  I knew kids even then who weren't so lucky, though.  I know better than to bet my sanity on always being so lucky.  If I got more out of it, then maybe I'd take the risk, and I don't begrudge anyone else their right to take the risks all they intend to, but for me, I'm just not at this point in my life, willing to take them myself.

But I would say, from my experience, that it's perfectly possible to have a really nice time at low doses, if that's what you're after.  It's only one experience with this particular substance, but it was memorably pleasant and possibly, for sheer pleasantness, the best of my experiences with substances of this type, even though most of my experiences were with different substances entirely.  I know this sounds kinda lame and unspectacular, but it's what I experienced and I truly enjoyed myself a good deal.