screwy reviewy: magic mushrooms

I really had no idea what I was in for. I had been piss drunk, I had been too stoned(from canna-brownies) to effectively hit the toilet while urinating. I remembered that psilocybin mushrooms is considered a less intense trip than LSD. The problem is, my experience, like all of ours, is limited by itself. I hadn't used LSD, so how could I know what was less intense than it?

So, I tripped my ass off. Every room was it's own world- and that's what "governed" the trip. I would stay in a room until it became too intense, and then move to another. When I would walk, every single wall of my usually boring home was brand new... literally I was confused as to what I would see when I turned my head.

Which brings me to another thing that I "didn't understand" until doing it. I figured that psilocybin was a pretty mellow experience because I wouldn't hallucinate. As in, I wouldn't see things that weren't there. While this is true, I didn't realize just how much your mind can make with what already exists. Everything I already saw or heard was playing tricks on me. Spacial relations were randomized, and audio in particular was repeated, amplified, or otherwise messed with.

At first being excited and euphoric about my state, I "asked questions" about other things in my life. When I asked about what role liquor should play in my life, I of course had to take a shot of it. I poured a shot of rotgut rum which forever has a place in my freezer, and while looking out the window at what seemed like the desert, I drank it, to my surprise, slowly. I remember trying to notice a gag reflex, and I just didn't have one whatsoever. When I was finished, Everything was the same. Of course it was, but for me this answered something: liquor was nothing, like water. LSD has shown a 50% success rate in treating alcoholics. I can imagine it's through similar soul-searching. Seeing just how intense magic mushrooms were was another re-enforcement. Even when I was black-out drunk, it was nowhere near as intense. Liquor remains in my mind like water. Whether drunkard or abstainer.

Then, I had a "friendship trip". I literally thought friends were the most important thing in the world. Calvin and hobbes strips seemed like an awesome re-enforcement of that idea. I read through some of the book, although I focused on the images. For me, this is unusual. I always read the text, and sometimes at the expense of the images. This time, I could read strips that had their own life without words(some of them had no words anyway).

Finally, and this could be considered the "bad" part of the trip, I thought I had lost my mind. I was finally sick of this trip, I just wanted sanity to come back. I imagined that I was one of those "final trippers"(which don't actually exist), that is, someone who went tripping on drugs and never came back to reality. The horror of this was excruciating. I was long past feeling gleeful about tripping, I just wanted it to end now. Imagining that it wouldn't, ironically enough, made me paranoid. The last hour, I tried to sleep, totally exhausted, but was unable to. I lay awake, the whole carnival ride still going in my room, and I just reminded myself of the simple pleasures in life, down to a shower, a cup of coffee, taking a shit, normalcy. Yet another thing I didn't understand until doing it was "not wanting to repeat the experience". I felt like my psyche had taken about a thousand shits, and I wanted now to start fresh.

When I could tell it was wearing off, I had a strange manic episode where "cleaning up" seemed incredibly important, which was unusual for me. Every dirty piece of clothing in my room, the stubble in my chin, the dirty dishes in the sink. I just wanted to make it all go away, and did make some of it go away on the spot. This feeling remains with me now, that I have alot of cleaning up to do, and I feel desperately I need to start fresh.

So that's it! besides these "episodes", my usual state was overstimulation and confusion. Looking out of windows continually reminded me of the desert, because there were no leaves anywhere(ironically, that's because it's winter). I would start obsessing over what season it was. that was re-enforced by the fact that I couldn't tell if I was warm or cold, hungry or thirsty, etc. An unusual amount of my attention was devoted to my physical well-being, and at times I had the vision of being very frail and elderly. That is why, hereafter, I can't imagine wanting to feel that way again. It was worthwhile, definitely, but now I realize how much I took sobriety and normalcy for granted.

To feel normal, day-to-day, is more than okay. It's great.