My first ever trip report (3 months ago)

A few months ago I started looking into mushrooms after hearing about the research that has been done around them and PTSD, anxiety and depression. A couple of years ago I landed a good job which started going south when a new boss came in who was all smiles on the outside, but an evil obnoxious asshole under the surface. This meant at the age of 32 I had my first breakdown from stress and anxiety which sent me to a psychiatrist for the first time in my life.

Anyway... I started getting into the research, which lead my to Reddit (which is by far the best place to learn these things) and I was on my journey. After a few weeks waiting on a spore print from overseas, it finally arrived and I quickly made a spore syringe and put it in the fridge. That then somehow disappeared, my wife or I must have thrown it out during a fridge clean by mistake.

Five weeks later my new print arrived and it went right into a syringe, safely in the fridge. You know what happened next, jars, sterilising, waiting, myc growth, rip apart into a tub, regrow the myc, let the light and air in and bam! Pins.

Now we come to Sunday, December 2, 2018. I woke up and realising my mushrooms were now mostly dry. I could wait til the next weekend or do it now. I measured out 5g (still a little rubbery and wet, so it was more like 2g. I cut them up, melted down some fruit and nut chocolate, mixed it together and viola, a gross mess of poop splatter (it didn't melt well). I kissed my wife and kids and went into my office where I ate said poop splatter at 10:30am.

At 11am I had the sudden urge to hurl, so I sat in front of the toilet for 5 minutes before it passed, luckily without a facial explosion. I sat down in my recliner with my headphones on and let it happen. By the way... five weeks earlier I randomly chose 24 songs that I “thought” might be good trip songs, this detail is quite important on my journey...

For the first hour I was voice messaging a friend, which helped me keep a record of what was going on. At 11:37 I started seeing the stars on the background of my phone moving, and the posters on my way begin to shift ever so slightly, almost like waves gently washing up on the shore.

This is when my journey really began...

I started noticing that I was in 3 separate worlds, the open eye world, where things moved in strange ways. The eyes closed world where emotions hit me harder than ever before and I would see faded glimpses of things, and the darkened world (hands over closed eyes) where I saw deeper colours, fractal shapes.

These worlds kept trying to show me things about myself as I was on my way up to where the mushrooms were trying to take me. I kept checking my phone and opening my eyes which made me stay tethered to reality.

“They're telling me I need to put my phone down, I feel like I'm pressed up against a wall and can't push through because I'm holding on, dammit I'm back. I need to put everything aside, I'm taking too much form this world, it's my own fault, I have to go now, properly, I need to commit and throw my phone away".

I have a vague recollection of seeing a shadowed outline of a figure, who was telling me that today wasn't going to be the day that I was going to meet my real self again, and that I had to be OK with that and accept that. I accepted that and I was thrown into something amazing. End of august rush song “some day we'll be together”. I don’t' think this trip today will get me there, there's not enough fuel left in the mushrooms, but that's OK.

I felt my consciousness separate from my body, but I didn't get to go with it through the barrier into where the shadow told me I couldn't go today.

“No one will believe anything I say after this, I feel like I’m communicating with “the guy in the tower”, the guy behind... my Oz, I’m gonna be my Oz”.

I then met my senses, which was so strange. I met my muscles, my nerves, my eyes and every other part of my body, or the parts of my physical brain that controlled my body. They were all introducing themselves as they seemed to be preparing for the return of my consciousness. It was like, while my consciousness was gone, my physical body wanted to do a full body check-over to make sure I was in good condition for the return of my mind. I felt love, the insane love that my physical body and brain had for my consciousness.

It felt like hours where my body was singing praises and showing my beautiful images in anticipation for the return of my consciousness. Somewhere around this point my body stood up, and was looking after me, which feels so strange to remember. It was talking in third person about “looking after this guy”. My body got up and went to the toilet. It then sat down and ate some food and drank some water then sat back down and said “OK, let's get this guy back.”. Remembering this feels so strange because it was me, but it felt more like someone had taken over to look after me.

“I'm from what he calls the eyes closed world, I'm trying to control his body, he finds you very important (message to a friend) and he wants you as his tool for remembering all of this because he believes that you'll remember and believe everything that happens.”

I then said “I have to put his headphones back on because he's going to to go on a big journey in the next song”. That's when Ed Sheeran's 'I See Fire' started and it put me in a place where I felt fire burning inside myself, almost like emotions I've never felt before. I said “this damn fungus entity loves Ed Sheeran”, and I laughed...

It was here when I realised that the mushroom is just a tool of our subconscious, because our consciousness has lost touch with ourselves. Everything from “reality” creates calluses on who we truly are inside. Stress, anxiety etc. “Our real selves are callused and that's what's in our world, under the callus is the real us and we are so much more, and ourselves are trying to tell ourselves that”.

After some time, I felt that my consciousness was on it's way back, and I felt the love and appreciation it had for my body. One of the most intense feelings I ever had was feeling my consciousness “dock” with my body again and the mutual love they felt for each other. Once this had stopped, I was comforted and reassured that I could no longer be in that third world, where my eyes where covered over as I didn't have enough “fuel” left.

I was so sad, but accepted this and just laid there with my eyes closed normally, enjoying the feelings on the way back down, almost like the farewell tour. “It made me so sad, that we as humans don't have the language to comprehend the part that our consciousness controls our body, science just doesn't have it right and there's so much untapped”.

I took my headphones off and opened my eyes and just sat there trying to comprehend what had happened. It took almost 2 days to feel 'normal' after the trip. Like my body and consciousness were still taking time to completely reconnect all of my senses back together.

I'm looking forward to the next time, but it taught me patience, I know that it's there for me when I feel ready, and I'm looking forward to the lessons I will learn. Next time though, no music, as I felt it really drove everything and I want my mind to be free to show me what it needs to show me.

Much love to you all.