After an almost two month absence I decided it was time to revisit the Mushroom. There were several reasons for my long absence. My last ayahuasca trip had left me a little wary of trips that might make me physically ill, and even though I knew shrooms wouldn't make me a tenth as sick as ayahuasca had, there was still a degree of reluctance to risk it. Also, I had been experiencing a lot of stress in my life and I knew mushrooms would force me to engage it head on, something I wasn't sure I was entirely ready to do. And the recent availability of LSD had engaged a fair amount of my tripping time. In any case, I finally decided it was time to talk to the Mushroom again.

I prepared with a 23+ hour fast and some extra meditation. I made a tea of approximately three grams of mushrooms using the same method I have previously used. Before ingesting it I said a prayer that I wrote to the mushroom. The prayer went:

O Mushroom
I seek thy blessing
I ingest thy essence
O Mushroom
I have done these things
Prepared the temple
Stilled the waters
O Mushroom
I have brought thee forth
I thank thee
I love thee
I ask thee
Show me a vision of truth
Show me what I need to see
Amaze me!
I ask thee three times
Aum

With that I drank my tea and went into my room to await effects.

The effects came on a little slower than I am used to. However, they were very uncomfortable. I went into it with a somewhat challenging attitude towards the mushrooms. Also, almost immediately after drinking the tea I had a sudden flash of doubt, that "Uh-Oh, should I have done what I just did?" Both of these things are a bad idea, and together they added up to an uncomfortable basis to build my trip on.

I started to have paranoid thoughts and feelings and became preoccupied with death. I felt overwhelmed by the mushroom sensations and trapped in my trip. I had a desire to cry out or be sick. I think most/all of my nausea was caused by psychic tension and by me fighting the experience.

I had a very vivid sensation of the mushroom wrapping itself around my thoughts, intertwining itself into my essence, and interpenetrating my being. I felt my mind deconstructed, pulled apart and encapsulated in psychogelatin and rebuilt. The sensation of the mushroom as an alien intelligence was entirely convincing.

I had expected this to be a heavy trip, but I wasn't prepared for the degree of trauma it engendered. It is very possible that I built my harsh experience from my expectations, but it is also possible that I just correctly predicted that the turmoil of my mind was going to spill over to the trip. Either way, I was thrust into a schizy, paranoid state of mind. Even though I knew intellectually that I was in no danger, I couldn't shake the sense of foreboding. Every perception I had twisted itself and made me edgier. I'd realize I was getting upset over nothing, but the fear would remain regardless. For an hour I writhed on my bedroom floor, wondering if I were dying or in some sort of danger. Then I stabilized into the peak of the trip and suddenly realized I had been persecuting myself for the last hour, which broke the dark aspect of the trip almost instantly.

As usual, everything that had been on my mind for the preceding few weeks made an appearance in my trip in strange and unique ways. Two science fiction novels I had read (Footfall and the Mote in God's Eye, both by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle), a game I like to play, work and everything else was thrown into the stew, cross referenced, sliced, diced and resynthesized.

My time sense was extremely screwy. I lost all sense of sequence or causality. I wasn't sure (and still am not sure) whether I had done certain things during the trip, before the trip or had only imagined them. This seems to confirm an intuition of mine that consciousness and the nature of time are closely intertwined and when you alter one, you alter the other.

After a while I got up and left my room, going into the bathroom. While I was in there I realized how silly the whole early, negative part of my trip had been, and started laughing. And kept laughing. Soon I was on the floor in the hallway laughing uncontrollably, almost hysterically at my earlier state of mind. It was an incredible release not only to the tension of the early part of the trip but also to the general psychic tension I had been carrying with me from my day to day life. After what seemed like quite a while of lying on the floor laughing my ass off I felt wonderful. I got up and walked around my house chuckling at how silly I had been.

I thought about smoking some 5-MeO and even went as far as getting up to get the things together to do it, but finally chose not to. I noted that it was hard to make decisions and even harder to act on them once the decision was made. A decision might be made and then sit, "queued up" and waiting on action indefinitely. Often things never get done, as the moment passes, enough time passes that the decision is no longer relevant.

I opened the door and stood on my front step looking out at the night street and reveling in its beauty. After a while I went out and lay down on the lawn and watched the stars for a while. This was very pleasant and led to thoughts of outer space and space exploration. The night was beautiful and I found myself feeling wonderful and very, very relaxed.

After a while I got bored and decided to return inside. I thought again about smoking MeO, but decided that it wasn't the right time. Instead I put on some music and kicked back to relax. My roommate and some friends showed up about an hour later. We all smoked some pot ands talked for a bit before heading off to bed.

This trip, much like my previous three gram experience was in many ways as intense as a five gram trip. However, it wasn't as completely involving or all encompassing. In a way this made it easier (though still futile) to resist the experience, which helped lead to the unpleasant nature of the early part of the trip. Even though the first quarter of the trip was dark enough to qualify as a "bad trip" in most people's eyes, the overall experience was very positive. Afterwards I felt psychically rejuvenated and cleansed. Though I would never have chosen this trip, I think I got the trip I needed all the same.