Saturday, February 28 I celebrated my birthday with 5 g of mushrooms. I prepared with my usual 24 hour fast. I spent the day cleaning my house and hanging out with my daughter. I also talked to both my mother and grandmother on the telephone. It was a lovely day that put me in a great mindset for my trip.

At approximately 8:00 p.m. I did my daily meditation and started some water to boil. After finishing my meditation I went and poured one cup of just boiling water over my powdered mushrooms. I let this steep for 10 minutes, then poured it into a second cup containing a bag of peppermint tea. I then poured another cup of just boiling water over the mushrooms to steep for another ten minutes while I sipped the first cup. The taste was surprisingly pleasant. If you like peppermint tea, this mixture is highly recommended. After finishing the first portion I added the second to the cup and let it steep with the bag for a few minutes before quaffing it. I then added a small portion of warm water to the cup and drank it, to get any alkaloids that might have stuck in the tea bag. I also prepared a third extraction to drink later, which I forgot to do.

By the time I finished the first cup I was getting gentle alerts. As soon as I finished the second cup I had to go and lie down as the effects suddenly got rather intense.

I made it into my room and more or less fell onto the floor. I wrapped my arms around a bundle of bedding and lie there breathing heavily. My roommate and a friend were in the next room playing on the computer and talking. I was aware of them, but was neutral to their presence. After five or ten minutes they left the house for the evening.

I managed to make myself comfortable and got my bucket ready in case I needed to puke. My stomach felt really good compared to what it usually does on a five gram trip. I did have some nausea, but it was minor, comparatively. I never felt I was in any real danger of vomiting. I think my nausea would have been even less had my tea been cooler or warmer (I drank it lukewarm).

The effects ramped up quite quickly. I experienced the by now familiar outer space noises the mushroom precipitates. Being a big fan and amateur composer of electronic music, I have to say I find these sounds very interesting. I have been trying to reproduce them electronically with some success. Another fascinating audio phenomena I have had with mushrooms is seemingly perfect recall of music I am familiar with, to the degree it seems I am actually listening to the cd play. This time around (although later in the trip) the music I heard was Tool's Aenima, an excellent and powerful album. It is strange that while I rarely have any desire to listen to music on mushrooms, it is often playing in my head in fine detail.

As everything was coming on, I began to feel slightly uncomfortable and a bit afraid. I can't say of what exactly. A friend of mine had recently had an experience that had turned him off of mushrooms, which might have had something to do with it since I had been thinking a lot about it since it occurred. In any case, as my fear was starting to take shape I had an inspiration to try chanting. I chanted "Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Swaha" (Beyond Beyond Beyond the beyond To thee Homage) which immediately transformed the energy into something far more friendly. I chanted this twice, and would have continued, but it made my nausea slightly worse. And twice was enough to dispell the bad energy that was building.

As all this was was going on my ego was rapidly being dissolved. Again I experienced what seemed to be fragments of other people's lives. These impressions are fleeting, but I think that as I gain familiarity with the experience I can "tune in" to a greater degree to this phenomenon. The people I "visited" this time included a young Asian woman in a shop of some kind, looking at fine porcelain. There were others (including a scientist of some sort) but I can't recall them now. This sensation is extremely convincing. It's like I switch places with them for a brief moment, but it's like I am really there.

Weird body distortions also played a part in this trip. I felt I was split into sections that were lying on the floor, discontigous "chunks" of me spread all around the room. I can understand how these kinds of perceptions could be rather disturbing to someone, but I always find them kind of silly and fun. YMMV, of course.

I have noticed that whatever I am reading seems to make an appearance in my trip. This time it was selections from TIHKAL by Alexander and Ann Shulgin and bits of JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (especially the part about Bilbo's birthday party...). In this case it wasn't scenes from the books so much as it was flashes of insight and correlations between the books and events in my life and trip.

Another thing that I had read that made an (unfortunate) appearance was a strange paper my roommate had come across. This paper described a conspiracy between our governmment and aliens to conceal the alien's existence and plans, which included the end of the world. It was a bizarre, paranoid fantasy that I found mildly amusing, but I was distressed to see parts of it appearing in my trip. Luckily, I was able to recognize it for what it was, ridiculous, unfounded speculations, and drive the images from my mind.

The best and most satisfying part of the trip involved my interactions that day with my mother, grandmother, and daughter. I felt in touch with this thread of existence that extended through time from my grandmother, through my mother and me and into my daughter. I felt a lot of very positive, maternal loving feminine energy. Some of this energy manifested in the form of Salvia. I had images of the plant, and spoke the name "Ska Maria Pastora", not a name I usually use for it. The love I felt for the plant was wonderful. I felt the plant's existence as a thread through time as well. I felt an enormous amount of love for all these beings, and their love for me was clearer than it had ever been. I have always been very close to and deeply respectful of the women in my life, but I feel my perceptions of them on mushroom trips has really helped me to get in touch with my own feminine side, which I am greatly thankful for.

My awareness of and joy in all that loving energy brought me to a deep reservoir of utter bliss. I understood again that the universe is LOVE, and I lay there reveling in this perception. I spent close to an hour lying on the floor, smiling, glowing, immersing myself in this tremendous feeling of total rightness. I thought of most of my friends and sent some of that wonderful energy their way.

Around 11:15 I turned on the lights and sat up. I was still tripping pretty good, and any movement of my head brought on an explosion of color and motion. Even holding still, patterns would erupt on things and then disappear. I decided to go visit some of my neighbors, so I spent the next twenty five minutes getting ready and then headed over.

The particular people I was visiting I don't know all that well. They are friendly, and I have hung out with them on several occasions. When I went in they were watching TV. I watched a little and was again reminded why I hate television by a particularly banal SNL skit. After a few minutes we went into one of the guy's room to smoke a bowl.

As we sat there smoking pot, we started to talk. One of the guys mentioned DMT and we were off. I began talking about entheogens, ayahuasca, and using these things to pursue a spiritual path. Mostly I talked while they sat and asked me questions from time to time. I was going off, but in a good way. I felt very lucid and I think I expressed myself very well. In fact, I think I spoke far better than I usually do. It was like my speech centers were supercharged. I know I made a hell of an impression on them. I talked their ears off for almost an hour before I decided to move on.

I walked to a couple of other friend's houses, but they were already alseep. I decided to go home and chill out for a while before bed. I put on Tool's Aenima and smoked some cannabis. Around the third song I did a balloon of nitrous that was pretty nice. Not nearly as impressive as it would have been an hour or two before, but still very cool.

My roommate came home around this time and I gave him some mushrooms (I like to give presents on my birthday). We sat around and listened to Tool and Steely Dan before he headed off to be alone and I went to bed for the night.

This was a superb trip. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday present. I felt very in touch with where I came from and where I was going. Spending the day with my daughter helped to make it extra special, as all her wonderful, loving energy carried into the trip. I feel very close to my mother and grandmother as well as a result. If you have a birthday coming up, you might think of making it a reBirthday. I can't think of a better way to celebrate who you are!