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The Day I Died
Mushrooms - P. cubensis & Cannabis
Citation:   Dethrox. "The Day I Died: An Experience with Mushrooms - P. cubensis & Cannabis (exp21177)". Erowid.org. Sep 9, 2007. erowid.org/exp/21177

 
DOSE:
4.5 g oral Mushrooms - P. cubensis (dried)
    repeated smoked Cannabis (plant material)
BODY WEIGHT: 126 lb
It was a regular Friday, nothing really ominous or special about the day, and I had no plans. I was on MSN and I talked to one of my friends from Bangkok, because we were supposed to meet up the following day. As things turned out, neither of us were able to make it on Saturday so we decided to meet up today. I had some weed, and he had received a quarter ounce of mushrooms. Being rather inexperienced with the drug, I didn’t know exactly what to expect because I had never gotten hallucination from the previous times I’ve eaten them. I decided, or rather justified to myself, that it was ok for me to eat the shrooms because they were organic, and I was going to stick to organic drugs.

My mom dropped me off to UBC where I met pram at about 8:00. We chilled for a while, smoked a joint or 2 and were having a good time when we decided to pull out the bag of shrooms. Looking at them, they seemed so harmless; a shriveled up cardboard-like substance. We poured the whole bag (about 8-9 grams) out onto the table and scoffed them down with some M&M’s. He had done mushrooms before and like me, never felt what we had been told we were supposed to feel. The whole time, we were wishing that we would start seeing hallucinations. I feel like such an idiot now saying that. He said that orange juice was supposed to enhance the high so we each drank a carton of orange juice and brought a bottle with us.

After eating the shrooms, we decided to take a walk down to the beach because we wanted a serene place to chill out, enjoy our high and reminisce. We felt completely normal and up to the long 30 min walk, so we set off in high spirits, laughing and complaining every second that the shrooms weren’t kicking in. We came to a place where there were two paths to take to get to the beach; a shorter way which would have involved us going down stairs in pitch black, or the long way which was a walk along a quite road. After a little debate, we decided to take the long route, an action that saved our lives.

We started walking and talking, feeling fine until my friend stopped all of a sudden and told me to listen. I stopped and listened, and he said “I can’t hear a thing man. Just stop and listen and see if you can hear anything”. I stopped, didn’t move a muscle and listened. There was nothing, no movement at all. It was so quiet that I could have heard a dust molecule brushing against my jacket. At that point I felt like crying, it was the most oppressive, foreshadowing moment of my entire life. We continued walking until we reached a half-way point. I was starting to feel the effects of the mushrooms and my friend wanted to take a piss, so we stopped and sat down. That was when his Shrooms started kicking in as well.

At this point, it was a rather euphoriatic experience, I was just starting to enjoy the high. He was tired and he asked me specifically if we should walk back or continue down. I reasoned that it was same distance back to UBC as it was to the beach; so we plodded on. I started to feel really high and the hallucinations started to appear. The ground changed colors, the patterns of things started to get distorted and the rocks looked like they were melting and dripping. It all seemed quite cool; my mind was on its own tangent, with its own hallucinations when I close my eyes. All the way down, my body was aching to lie down; I must have told (my friend), a hundred times that there were good places to lie down. He assured me that the beach was not too far and to keep on walking so we did.

I started to feel trapped in an infinite déjà vu loop, everything looked like I had seen it before up until the hospital. We came to a place where there were hundreds of trees on either side of us. It looked like a cave leading to an unknown destination as the trees on both sides were leaning to touch each other. We stopped and commented on it hundreds of times, sort of scared about continuing though. We walked and walked until we clearly saw the sea through a barrage of trees. Every second minute, I would stop and walk into the trees and my friend had to stop me, it looked as if the sea was right there and all we had to do was take a few steps to get there. Neither of us were sure of the ground, whether I was right or not because we were too fucked up to assure each other of anything. He kept on telling me that the place he wanted to go was just a little up ahead, and I think I have to go back there too see whether I was just tripping or not.

I started having closed-eye hallucinations as well, the colors were swirling in my head and different patterns started to develop and circle around and around, scaring me. Then it stopped and there were creatures on thrones in my head, glaring at me. I remember that they clearly told me that they were now in control of my mind, and then they started spinning while I was stumbling in reality. I opened my eyes and everything felt strange and distorted, like there was someone or something controlling my mind.

We eventually reached the place he wanted to find, and we sat down on a line of rocks next to the sea. The sea was tripping us both out, I had the constant illusion that the water was at the same level as us. I got closer and closer to the water till I saw almost in it and the illusion remained. I felt like lying down so I dragged myself off the rocks and lied down on the sand. I told my friend to come lie with me but he was afraid of leaving the rocks, even though the distance between us was only a meter or two at most, he was under the impression that I was leagues away with dangerous barriers separating us. I had to go back and bring him to sit on the sand.

We were feeling scared at this point, but not too scared. The trip hadn’t gotten too out of hand. As we were sitting, two guys came up and met us and started talking to us. My friend thought they were cops and I thought they were muggers but they turned out to be UBC kids who were mushing as well and we smoked a joint together. The joint seemed to last forever though, it was suspended it time. I could tell whether we had been smoking the joint for hours or seconds, it felt like eternity. The joint felt like it was twisting and dripping out of my hand until I just dropped it in fear, then it crumbled beneath my hand.

We decided to get up and move somewhere else for a reason I can't remember but we settled on a log near the sea, and this is when things started to take a turn for the worse. I couldn’t tell what time was, where we were or what was happening. I was in my own world where space and time meant nothing, there are too many messed up feelings and illusions and perceptions that I felt. My friend was really starting to feel messed up, asking me if I was ok to lead us back because he was totally gone, shivering with a glazed look in his eyes. He started to look at me and see my brother and that scared me too. Sometimes when I looked at him, I didn’t recognize him, he was a stranger to me; but then he was him again.

I don’t know how long we were sitting there for because we had no concept of time. I was feeling lightheaded and nautious and we both wanted to get back to the dorm. We then realized that we had walked too far and it would take us too long to get back. I didn’t know the way but we knew the general direction. We got up anyways and I started to walk along the road when I realized that my friend wasn’t following me, he was looking around everywhere with one arm stretched out. I went back to him and we put our arms around each other so we wouldn't lose each other.

I was so scared, I thought I was going to die. I knew I was going to die, my whole body racked with pain and shortness of breath. I collapsed in the middle of the road. I told my friend that I felt like I was going to die and I couldn’t go on, and he felt the same way. I couldn't breath properly, I was hyperventilating at times and completely not breathing at other. My whole life seemed to be ripped apart on that ground. My whole concept of space and time and life made no sense to me. I was thinking about how kids overdosed on drugs; How it didn’t necessarily take too much of one drug at one time, just one instance where they had the wrong reaction to the drug. How stupid it was for kids to throw their lives away like this, for what? Was it worth it? I felt so shamed of myself, one of those kids whose too cocky and arrogant to realize that what happens to other people can happen to me. Just because I was brought up in a rich, sheltered background didn’t give me any immunity to death by drugs.

I was crying so bad, I knew I was dead. I said my last words to my mother, My little brother, my dad and my older bro, the people that meant most to me. I was twitching and shivering on the ground with my head on his lap, praying to god not to let me die like this. I wish I could have been more help to my friend and not brought him down with me, but I was in a bad state. I felt like unless we had hospitalization, we were going to die.

I don’t know how to describe my feelings. I didn’t know what reality was and I was trying to compare the reality an hour ago to my reality now. I was thinking about what people do every day, the routines of daily life. What do people do, teenagers. They go to a movie and go to bed. BED BED! I wondered if I could just sleep and be ok, but that didn’t make sense to me either. Sleep didn’t make sense to me, nothing did. I needed to call someone, talk to someone, do something to bring me back.

My friend told me we couldn’t end it like this and that I had to get up and do something. He said to call his buddy from the room but I called my mom, I was mashing on his cell phone which wouldn’t illuminate so I dropped it on the floor and searched for my phone. I found it but it wouldn’t turn on. I begged the phone to turn on, did everything I could when it finally illuminated. I quick dialed my mom’s cell phone but she wasn’t picking up. I was curled up in a ball on the ground repeating to my self “Please pick up, god, please pick up.” and no-one picked up. I panicked and forgot my home number, luckily I had it stored on the phone and called. Mom picked up the phone and I freaked her out, telling her that I felt like I was going to die and saying goodbye and sorry.

I can’t explain it to you in a way that would make you understand. It was like someone who’s being led down death row to the electrocution chambers, they know the whole time that they are going to die and that every step they take is another step towards death. I was almost ready to give up everything and just lie down on the road to await my fate when my friend had a car pull over. He shouted at me to get up and I pulled strength from some deep recess of my being and got up off the ground to the car. We talked to the guy in a slur, I don’t think he was sure if we were going to try to mug him or something. I gave him my new cell phone as assurance and asked him to take us to a hospital or we were going to die. I called mom from the car and told her that we were in the car, but we were so relieved just being in a car, away from the cold darkness and uncertainty. Those people who picked me up will always remain in my memory and teach me a lesson. I hope that one day, I can repay the favor by doing the same thing for another kid who is in the same situation. If he hadn’t picked us up, I don’t know where I would be right now and to be frank, I don’t want to know.

He dropped us off at the hospital where we were freaking out, asking to see a doctor right away but they told us to wait outside I felt like I was going to die hundreds of times on the spot but they still made me register. During the registration I passed out once or twice but rather than be concerned, the clerk got annoyed at me. Apart from that, the doctors were pretty nice and they gave me warms blankets and some medicine for I was shivering uncontrollably; a condition unrelated to the cold.

Those blankets were the nicest blankets I’ve ever worn. My friend came in and got checked up later than I. When we were both sitting down together, I grabbed him and I gave him a big hug, so happy to be alive. I was crying, I’ve never been so happy in my life. I couldn’t believe that I was still alive after all that, after I was certain I was going to die. There was a point where I wasn’t sure whether I was dead or alive.

I’m ok now but I’ve learned many a valuable lesson from this experience. First, bad trips can happen to anyone. It also taught me a valuable lesson about life. If I died then, all the people to whom I held petty grudges would have regretted not making amends for stupid causes. I've learned that I have to be the bigger man, no matter what. Even if I am wrong sometimes, I can lose the battle to win the war. Leaving my life, I want to be on good terms with everyone and cherish those that I love. I don’t think I could ever hope to forget last night, for it was the scariest longest night of my life.

Exp Year: 2003ExpID: 21177
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Sep 9, 2007Views: 36,574
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Bad Trips (6)

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