Profound yet discouraging mushroom experience

Not really sure where to begin..I'm still trying to process/remember/make sense of everything that happened, so I guess I'm just going to jot things down as I think of them. I took under half a gram of apes Sunday afternoon..the ones I have are extremely potent, so this was far from a typical "microdose".. I also think I'm very susceptible to the effects of mushrooms for whatever reason. 

I had a really relaxed and somewhat excited mindset going into the experience. I was at home with my husband who was also taking them with me, and I felt ready to explore my mind and face whatever came up. After about 45 minutes I was overcome by a sudden feeling of anxiety, not tied to any particular thought, just kind of happened out of nowhere and it was unsettling. I had a moment of regret, but consciously chose to not linger on it as to not throw off my mindset too much. 

The visual distortions began slightly after that. I was enjoying them for the most part, but they were a lot more intense than anything I've experienced in the past. The whole room was wavy and it was making me a little nauseous. I closed my eyes and was flooded with tons of fast and detailed visuals - shape after shape, character after character, face after face appearing in front of me so fast that it was hard to focus on anything in particular. A lot of the visuals came along with really pleasant and positive emotions - I felt connected to the earth and was feeling very thankful for my human experience. 

I opened my eyes and looked out the window and everything seemed a little more defined than usual. I was seeing geometric-like patterns on my neighbor's lawn and kept blinking to see if they would disappear but they didn't. It was beginning to get dark outside at this point, and I became very aware that anyone who drives or walks by could clearly see me sitting up by my window because my living room lights were on and curtains were open. With my shroomy perspective I thought the concept of privacy was really funny and unnecessary. I didn't understand why humans all try to hide from each other by closing their curtains at night, or why strangers often ignore each other or avoid eye contact - aren't we all just humans, having very similar human experiences? Why do we go to such lengths to hide from each other and differentiate ourselves from other people? 

I decided to try closing my eyes again to see what came up - this time I was flooded with tons of different looking eyes - a lot of bird-like eyes, along with other animal eyes, and human eyes. One eye that appeared multiple times freaked me out - it looked like a human was holding a sheet up in front of their face with a hole cut out just for their eye to look through - the eye kept blinking at me and it creeped me the fuck out because of how realistic it looked. Lots of characters kept appearing as well, and a lot of them had a sort of ominous presence to them - very unsettling. 

I opened my eyes again, looked back outside, and suddenly my neighbor's house (same one that previously had geometric patterns on the grass) started looking smoky to me. It seemed like the inside of their house was catching on fire, then suddenly the entire outside of the house had a smoky haze around it. I was somehow aware that this was all just in my imagination and not actually happening. I was suddenly overwhelmed by strong feelings of childhood trauma. (My house caught on fire in the middle of the night when I was 14 years old - my bedroom got the worst of it, I lost everything, and I will never forget the screams of my downstairs neighbor who was trapped in his bedroom full of flames, which was right below mine. I will never forget the sounds he made or the smell of the smoke or the feelings of fear that my dad and cats weren't going to make it out alive - my dad stayed inside to look for my cats while me and my sister stood outside. The man in the burning room called out to us to save him but we couldn't seem to do anything to help him, we reassured him the firefighters were on their way - needless to say this fucked with me for years). Oddly, I've always felt a weird feeling of embarrassment or shame when telling people that my house caught on fire, and I've never fully been able to understand why until now. While on shrooms, all the details of that fire came back to me, and as I watched my neighbors house surrounded by imaginary smoke, I realized that if his house actually was on fire, the only important thing to care about is whether or not the man living inside made it out ok. Nothing else should matter. I looked around my house at all of my possessions, and I realized that if my own house were to catch on fire again, the only thing that would matter is whether we all make it out safely. Things can all be replaced, but humans and pets cannot. By looking at it from this perspective, it became clear that my previous feelings of embarrassment and shame about the fire had nothing to do with the actual fire, but more to do with my perceived loss of identity at the time. I felt broken or empty after that all happened, because everything I owned had disintegrated into nothing beyond my control, and we were homeless for a few months staying with relatives. I now realize the only reason I felt ashamed of this experience was because I strongly identified with my possessions at the time. As I looked around my current house, I was overcome by the relieving feeling that my possessions are not ME, they do not define me, and they do not matter. All that truly matters is what is alive. I don't think I can do the feeling justice with words, but it felt like I gained a new and healing perspective, and it helped me feel more clearly that I shouldn't tie my identity to material items anymore (I've always believed this, but have struggled to fully feel it until now). 

TONS of more shit happened on this trip. Lots of other dark feelings came up - particularly around faces that I saw with my eyes closed that appeared to be doctors standing over me. (I have a childlike fear of going to doctors because of an irrational fear that they're going to tell me I'm seriously sick or dying, so seeing these doctor-like figures staring down at me brought on tons of anxious feelings). I even saw an older woman's face in a coffin being lowered into the ground, which I interpreted at the time as the mushrooms fucking with me because of my fear of death. I don't really know what to make of that as I reflect back on it now. 

But anyway, after a while of uncomfortable feelings and disturbing visuals, my husband came over and sat beside me. Once he was next to me and hugging me, my trip completely transformed. I was overwhelmed by feeling that I can face anything scary in life because I have him by my side. I felt calm and safe in his arms, and incredibly thankful for him. I started feeling like him and I were dialed in to a clearer frequency or something like that..it felt like we were able to communicate on a higher plane or level than I would've been able to with anyone else. I somehow felt even closer to him than I ever have before, which is crazy to me because we're already a crazy level of close with each other. The most notable feeling I am left with is this new found closeness - I feel more in-tuned to his wants or needs, and slightly less like 2 individual people, more like 1 coexisting unit.

As the trip wore down and visuals started to subside, I was left with a strong dissociated feeling from myself. I remember looking in the mirror and seriously having the thought "oh wow, I'm inside of this attractive, native-american looking character" - this is very weird to me because when I'm sober I don't think I look native american at all (even though my ancestors were), and I certainly don't default to thinking of myself as attractive. The rest of the night I had an intensely bad headache, and off and on feelings of being down emotionally. Depressive feelings lingered off and on throughout the entire next day (yesterday) as well, and I kept having the desire to connect more to "normal life" - aka, parts of my life that have nothing to do with psychedelics. This is the only time I've had these "come down" types of feelings after taking mushrooms, so it's all been really confusing to me. If I try to identify what's at the root of what I'm feeling, I think it has something to do with realizing that I might not be as mentally strong as I thought I was before this trip. Something about this experience left me feeling defeated or discouraged, and I'm not entirely sure why because there were plenty of positive aspects to my trip despite all the darkness that came up. I'm a little afraid to take them again, and probably won't for awhile. This report is extremely long so thank you to anyone who actually read all of this. I kind of just wanted to get down it all down while fresh in my mind so I can go back to it later with hopefully a little more clarity/a fresh perspective.