“You can get a non-human perspective on human issues” - Terence McKenna

With this potent prescription, McKenna reports being able to communicate verbally with the galactic intelligence of the mushroom spirit. He could ask it questions and it would reply in easy-to-understand English. To anyone not familiar with the far-out world of psychedelic experience, this sort of trans-species shamanic dialogue seems batshit crazy, but I ate it up with cat-killing curiosity. I’ve experienced some physics-defying “miracles” before and I couldn’t put it past the realm of possibility to be able to communicate directly with a conscious entity of another biological kingdom. Sir Terence recommends eating this dose on an empty stomach and steering the trip with cannabis. When things get a little heavy, or you find yourself lost to fear, simply spark up a J to change course and center yourself a bit.

With the words of my psychedelic forefathers in mind, I ate my hefty dose, rolled several joints, and, with zero foresight, decided to take a quick nap before the storm rolled in. After roughly an hour, I woke and sparked the first joint to attempt to usher in the beginning of the mushroom journey. I remember very little of what happened next. I think the nap was a very poor move, because I awoke in a groggy state, immediately got weed-stoned, and then proceeded to get slammed by the mind-melting train of psilocybin perception. There was no moment of clarity before the storm rolled in; half-asleep I set sail to the mercy of the cosmic seas.

I don’t remember any wild visuals or super-profundo revelations in the beginning of the trip, but the next thing I do remember was feeling a sort of mental claustrophobia. Like my head was becoming denser. Thinking back to McKenna’s advice that weed can recenter a trip, I reached to spark another joint but couldn’t seem to find my lighter. I panicked a bit because I saw weed as my captain’s wheel. I thought, “no lighter, no mary jane, no control,” and I frantically searched around my bed. Despite my tense energy, I tried to be as quiet as possible as not to wake my roommate. That’s right, I had decided to embark on this hair-raising trip with my roommate/good friend passed out in the next bed over, thinking I’d manage just fine and wouldn’t interrupt his slumber. Probably not the best idea, but you live and you learn, right? After another minute or two of very antsy and ineffective searching, I accepted that the lighter had been hidden by supernatural forces and I would have to direct my attention elsewhere. I kept thinking about lighters though. I managed to entirely forget in the moment the three other lighters in the room that I easily remembered in the morning, and also deemed it impossible to leave the house to the corner store without waking my other housemates. With seemingly zero access to my favorite herbal medicine, I felt imprisoned in a paranoid psychic hell. I just wanted to mellow out.

I was super, super, super high on mushrooms at this point, the point where everything you look at seems to be lined in shimmering rainbows and melting into everything else. I have forgotten some of the details of my looping thoughts, but I remember the sensation that they were growing tighter and tighter. I was swept up in an ever-accelerating fear feedback, and my body began to reflect this inner turmoil. Sweating bullets and breath racing, I felt utterly trapped in a state of heightened psychedelic insanity. Looking back, it seems like such an avoidable problem, but in the thick of it, the light of awareness had grown very, very dim. It felt like I was drowning in fear. It felt like I had zero control over my body and my mind. I felt both paralyzed and about to explode. I was afraid to reach out for help, knowing my roommate had to get up at 5am for work, but I just had to make contact with a more peaceful consciousness to save me from this mental doom.

Head like a hurricane, feeling like death, I broke my fear of being a nuisance and called my roommate’s name in a distressed whisper. He woke immediately: “What’s up?”

“I can’t really talk... aaagghhh... I am way too high right now and just need to hold someone’s hand.”

“I gotchu dude.”

We connected and I tried to explain myself, feeling the need to justify why I had to wake him in the middle of the night. I could barely get my words out.

“My head’s...  stuck in loops... feel like shit... aaaagghhhh...”

He calmly reassured me, “it’s okay dude, you’re okay, just breathe.”

I felt like a helpless baby.

He’s seen me in some rough places before, but, in my head, this was easily our most intimate moment as friends. With a whirlpool mind and sweat-drenched body, I silently and fearfully latched onto his hand as if my life depended on it. It felt like it truly did. 

It took maybe 10 minutes before I began to come back down to earth. The calm energy of my friend helped still the frenzied thought-demons in my mind. My breathing finally started to slow and the mental storm clouds began to dissipate. The strange, strangling fear rolled away almost as suddenly as it had come. I was still very, very high, and still a bit dizzy, but the worst had seemed to pass. I ecstatically said to my friend, “Thank you, thank you, thank you! Dear God, thank you for being the best friend ever. I owe you my life.”

Then I got up, went to the bathroom, took a very mystical sit-down piss, and, breathing in the fresh light of a different room, I slowly came back to my often-forgotten “calm center.” I’m here. Now. Breathing in, breathing out. I’m back. I’m alright. It’s all alright.

Feeling much better, I got back in bed, still very high, and a blissful sensation of gratitude swept over me like a warm summer breeze. I’m alive! Still here! Breathing too! Holy, holy, holy shit, that was awful, but man, I made it! What was that?!?

I remember the word surrender popped into my head at this point, and I meditated on it for a while. Surrender. Surrender. S u r r e n d e r. I recalled that, during my little panic attack, I felt as though I had zero control over my entire being. Surrendering to the storm was the only option available, but I resisted it until the very end. It had felt like I was drowning in thought. When I finally did surrender, my fear immediately began to dissipate.

I realize now that I had entered the trip under the illusion that I have control over my destiny. I thought that I would be able to enter a highly-unstable mystic headspace and safely navigate any scary seas with the reliable help of my trusty friend marijuana. I honestly thought I was going to just waltz stoned into the infinitely-bejeweled cosmic architecture of inner space, become lost in blissful ecstatic awe, and casually converse face-to-face with the essence of the fungal over-mind. Now that’s a trip! What an innocent and beautiful sandwich of bullshit expectations I had packed for my mental picnic! How could I think it would be so easy?

This trip reminded me that I must empty myself before I can receive. I came into this learning experience with a head full of expectation and I had that gorgeous rug of illusion violently pulled out from under me. Falling on my face, reduced to a pathetic speck of fried-out trembling fear, I was reminded that this life is not mine. I am just along for the ride, eternally at the whim of the cosmic plan. I thought I needed some far-out telepathic gnosis that evening, but in reality I needed an ego-check. More like an ego-beatdown.

Despite a persisting fascination with the possibility of experiencing the mystic wonders described by other mushroom voyagers, I am retrospectively more than satisfied with the dreadful “bad trip” I encountered. It humbled me and reminded me of the strength of the energies I am working with.

I see a little more clearly now that what happens to me is not up to me. My life is not in my control. The mental line drawn between “what I do” and “what happens to me” is arbitrary. They are one and the same. All I can really do is trust the process and just watch it. It’s always for good. Just watch it. 

And never forget to love it.

☮ ♥ ∞