On Saturday January 31 I ingested approximately 1 gram of powdered cubensis mushrooms in orange juice following a 24 hour fast. I then left with a friend to perform an errand. He was driving.

We were in the car about 15-20 minutes altogether. On the way back from the errand, maybe 15 minutes after I drank my oj/mushroom cocktail I was beginning to feel the mushrooms starting to work. It was very mild compared to how a five gram trip feels coming on. Five grams comes on like a tidal wave, while this was more like the gentle lapping of waves on the beach. I felt mildly "high".

By the time we arrived home I was starting into the trip. I felt a psychedelic sparkle pervading me. I was smiling and happy. My friend started preparing a mushroom tea he was planning on taking with his wife. As he was doing this, I lay back on the floor, looking at his ceiling as it started to ripple and flow. This was approximately T+45 minutes.

I lay there for a while. I got somewhat chilly and asked for a blanket. I think that mushrooms mess with my ability to regulate my body heat, or at least with my perception of it. I often feel chilled.

About this time my friend and his wife drank their tea and shut off the lights. I got the urge to lie down and did so. I briefly thought I was going to be pulled into the mushroom trance, but it never quite manifested. Instead I lay on the floor in the dark while my mind wandered. There were brief flashes of visuals, but nothing spectacular or very involving.

I lay there for about twenty minutes before deciding to leave. The pleasantly altered state I was in was more suited to relaxation than vision seeking, and my companions had taken significantly higher doses. I decided to head home.

The short walk home was very pleasant. The air was cold and crisp and everything had a psychedelic glow to it.

When I got home I decided to take a shower. I lit some candles for illumination and climbed in. The warm water was very relaxing. I felt a little unsteady, as though the mushrooms had affected my equilibrium a bit. The air was steamy and appeared reddish from the candle's glow. I sat down and let the water pour over me for around 20 minutes. It was a pleasant, relaxing experience.

After drying and dressing I went into the living room and sat down. I put on the Orb's UFOrb album. It sounded cool, but I was unable to really get into it. My trip was very mild, especially compared to what I am used to. I remember thinking "Why does anyone bother to shroom at this level?". It didn't have many of the defining mushroom characteristics, and it was mild enough that I could more or less ignore it.

At this point I decided to smoke some cannabis. My general feeling on smoking cannabis while tripping is that it isn't worthwhile. While it often intensifies the trip, it can also bring it down, and it tends to "muddy it up" either way, adding it's own definite signature. However, this trip was already so mild as to be almost not there, so I decided to give it a shot.

I loaded up a bowl and smoked about four large hits of it. This was approximately T+2 hours. I set the bong down and lay back and closed my eyes. Immediately, patterns sprang to life on my closed eyelids. They increased their depth and complexity steadily and began to flow into one another. These visuals were very beautiful and engaging. I was pretty blown away by their beauty. They followed the beat of the music, morphing and undulating as it did.

While this was going on, I felt like this display was a message from an alien intelligence, or intelligences actually, that of the plants I had ingested. One vision in particular, a sort of exploded fractal that seemed to glow with the light of the sun and that was split into fragments across my field of vision, seemed to be how a plant "saw". I had the thought that entheogens are the voice of the planet. I also had the feeling these visuals were a reward for recent changes in my relationship with cannabis, since I have taken a more sacred attitude towards it.

I spent a good thirty minutes tripping on these fantastic visuals. I was made aware of how powerful and interesting drug combinations are, and of the possibilities of combining mushrooms with other entheogens. It seems to be very much a synergy effect, where effects that aren't present in either drug (at least at a given level) are created by combining two or more of them.

I listened to the rest of that album and then to the one that followed (Tricky's Premillenium Tension) which was also great. I am still not too sure if mushrooms "like" music, but the combination of mushrooms and weed was great, allowing me to get really into what I was listening to.

After that, I decided to go back and look in on my friends. They had had an intense trip and were still tripping fairly hard. We exchanged information as to how our trips had gone. I noticed they had some nitrous balloons and asked if I might have one. They readily assented and I filled a balloon and inhaled it. The world began vibrating and humming and I sank into the familiar nitrous feelings, warm and tingly and floating. It seemed to last quite a while. After coming back I asked for another and did it lying down. This one took me even deeper, as I vibrated in and out of the universe to the sound of their voices echoing in a timeless void. I lay back in a trance for a few minutes, until one of them turned on a light. All in all, two very nice nitrous balloons.

We loaded up and passed a bowl around and then I headed home, where I listened to music for a while before heading to bed. I slept a solid eight hours and woke feeling fine.

This was a pretty nice trip. One notable thing was the lack of nausea. Mushrooms tend to upset my stomach quite a bit, but this dosage was virtually nausea free, which was good. I had thought the trip more a less a waste until I smoked the cannabis. I was impressed what one gram of shrooms and a few hits of low grade pot could accomplish. I may explore this combo further at some point in the future. It seems promising.

I am also reevaluating my feelings about mixing cannabis with other entheogens. Although I still don't think much of casually smoking it during any trip, I do think it might be profitably mixed with other drugs. I will probably explore this further as well.