The Day Time Stood Still
Amanita pantherina
Citation:   Neon White. "The Day Time Stood Still: An Experience with Amanita pantherina (exp105493)". Erowid.org. Aug 8, 2017. erowid.org/exp/105493

 
DOSE:
70 g oral Amanitas - A. pantherina (tea)
BODY WEIGHT: 140 lb
Walking home from my first tai chi class, I am feeling happy and very well balanced. I'm looking on the sides of the path for edible or medicinal plants, as I am a herbalist, when I walk by a remarkable mushroomscape, recognizing the definitive spotted caps of the Panther Amanita! I took two medium sized caps and left the rest, wrapped them in some paper and brought them home.

I had found some A. Muscaria before and knew how to prepare them, and after some more internet research I decided to treat them the same and give my Panther shrooms a soak in nearly simmering water, aiming for 190F, for an hour or so. I started sipping the tea of that at around 1315, and at 1405 I wrote my first report as I finished the last sip and had chewed a few pieces of cap and stem.

2:05 Kinda wishing I'd weighed those mushrooms, but with their unpredictable potency such info probably wouldn't be that helpful anyways. Have been thru some mild nausea, but am ok now. Effects are beginning, mild/medium euphoria/elation, softly increasing. Fuckin things are delicious, I'm thinking of frying up the caps with some butter.

Further reports were noted:

2:12 Face, hands, feet feeling warm and kinda strange, like a bit numb and tingly.

2:53 Strong effects now, a vibration in my center a bit longer than half a second in intervals is happening, kinda up and down. Time, I'm becoming aware of it as a physical dimension, this is the up down dimension I am vibrating up and down to. When I think of another moment a part of me goes there like flipping a rolodex, I can sense the different moment somehow, but can't see it tho. Slight nausea, getting harder to type, thumbs twitching. Other than that, I feel pretty damn good.

In total, I drank all of the tea, and ate only a small portion of cap and a bit of stem. It would prove to be a high dose... For the record, I picked some more of those mushrooms today and weighed the approximate dose I took for this report, and it was about 70 grams fresh, maybe up to 100g. That was probably a stupidly high amount to take, but in the end, I didn't die, it was fun overall, and as I write this the following day I have no hangover and actually feel better than I've felt in a long time.

I remember looking into the fire and remarking that the fire seemed like it was standing still, and the rest of the world was just whipping by in constant change. After that I went outside, walking with some difficulty. I followed a chicken around for awhile, fed her, then picked her up and held her for awhile (to her general dismay). Then I went and got one of the rabbits, a half wild one that had escaped years ago, who I had recently recaptured. I took him to the bus where I live and was sitting on the step with him on my lap, just petting him. That was the last thing I would remember of normal reality for about 8 hours.

My watcher came upon me there after about half an hour, with a far off look in my eyes, hardly breathing, the poor rabbit sprawled across my lap apparently looked quite distraught, but hadn't left me in all that time, and I find it strange that he didn't take the opportunity to flee once my hands fell away from him in my torpor. She said he looked messed up, breathing heavily and moving in a jerky fashion, as if he were intoxicated as well. She spoke to me but I wasn't responding, and I was convulsing regularly with a full body twitch. I remember none of that.
She spoke to me but I wasn't responding, and I was convulsing regularly with a full body twitch. I remember none of that.
Apparently she told me she was gonna put the rabbit away and I was like, 'Nooo! Shhhhhh...' rolling my eyes around as I looked at her.

During that period I have memories of being very altered; my perception of time highly so. It seemed as though time was a series of moments, and between the beginning and the end of each moment was an infinite time that I experienced as a physicality, like a wave. The moment that we experience in normal consciousness is like a peak of the wave; it is the beginning and the end of an infinite amount of time that passes in between. How I experienced that was, the moment of 'happening' would occur, and then I would go down on the other side of it like down the wall of a giant wave and the physical world would kinda sink into the surface of it a layer at a time. It was literally an eternity before I came up on the other side to the next moment, like an infinite amount of time the experience of which was profoundly lonely and disorienting. Then the process would repeat over and over, advancing about half a second each time.

I can't even describe how disturbing this was, but at one point the joke of the universe was played on me, and when I got to the punch line I laughed harder than I've ever laughed before. You can't imagine how long the lead-up to the joke was, like several lifetimes, and when the punch line happened I seriously busted a gut like never before; I could hardly breathe. And do you think I can remember what the damn joke was? I remember chuckling to myself after I almost literally pissed my pants laughing, saying, 'I get it, I get it.' But I can't remember what I got... I have a kind of strange memory of the experience kinda folding up in a swastika pattern.

I also had a profound encounter with god, and goddess. After going through this series of infinite times, I found myself knowing everything there is to know, and being all powerful, and I said, I Am God. And there was a female presence with me. It's really hard to describe the way it happened, because these eternal moments kept happening all through this, but somehow she got me to say that she was God, and that I couldn't speak. And then just like that I had nothing and found myself completely speechless and thus powerless, like a baby in her arms. She fucking tricked me into giving her the power of god, and she made me make myself mute so I could never undo what she had done. 'You fucking bitch...' I silently said, although apparently I did actually say that out loud because my watcher told me that I'd called her a fucking bitch, lol. I was so mad at her, and it felt like the ultimate betrayal. She somehow knew everything, even how to make me say whatever she wanted me to say. And she used that knowing to make me undo myself. But I think in the end, I forgive her. She did it because I, the god, am the beginning, and she, the goddess, who is me from the opposite side, is the end, and I was always leaving her alone to do my trip through the eternal. We only got to be together for one moment in that whole time. And being alone for eternity is literally like hell, the worst thing I have ever experienced. She took my power and used it to create this universe so that we wouldn't have to be alone anymore, we could always be together.

I wish I could describe better what it was like. Ascending the wave towards the moment was an excruciatingly slow process, with layer upon layer of physical reality kinda rising up out of the surface of the wave. I remember watching my watcher's face rise out of it, and feeling so sad for that part of her, because she would be left behind forever in that moment, alone, and I was the last person that she would ever get to see before she went through eternity alone. I couldn't bear not to touch her, because it was the last time she would ever get the chance to be touched. Ugh, there was something really significant about that particular moment; a choice that seemed really important, but as the moment arrived I could see that the choice was not going to be the way I wanted it, and it seemed like the world was over. I just remember utter despair as it began to materialize, and saying the most despondent, 'Ohhhhhhhhh nooooooooooooo!' And after it was over I watched as my watcher sort of sank back into the surface of the wave. As her face went in, I kissed her like it was the last time she would ever see another living soul, her mouth was halfway disappeared into the surface of the wave. And then it was another eternity before I saw her again, and finally the nightmarish eternity after eternity came to an end, because I fell asleep.

I slept for about half an hour, and when I woke up my perception of time was still majorly altered. Time was still like a physical dimension and three dimensional space was majorly strange in a way I can barely describe. There were waves going through me at about half-second intervals, and every time a wave passed through I would get a strong twitch. I remember marveling at a cup of water in my hand, wondering how the water didn't fall out of the bottom, since the far side of the cup was in a different time from the near side. Actually the time dilation effect seemed to be centered on my body and radiated outward. I was conversing with my watcher, lying on the bed together, and she said that she could feel some of the effects that I was describing, as if proximity to me was making her trip as well. Indeed, in a radius around me I imagined that I could feel the inside of things, and I specifically remember feeling the inside of her hand. At one point I realized I was separate from my body, and left it behind, but I don't remember what happened.

I also became grotesquely aware of my physical self as being like a history of who I am, but not actually who I am. Who I am is this moment right now, and with the amanita I experienced it directly, as though the lens of my personal self were absent. My body and mind were like the addition of all the moments that I had previously been in, like a big photo album, but it was not 'me', I was that I Am. Physical touching was just pure ectasy, and I knew in those moments that, that was what was real, the love that I can feel when I touch someone, and I feel them touching me back, or when I look into the eyes of someone who is looking back at me. It's like I can really see THEM, who they really are, behind all the ego bullshit. I looked into my watcher's eyes and I could see her behind them, and she was so damn beautiful. And when she looked away I could see her looking through the lens of her ego, and all the experience that was there in between us, I could see it like a photo negative with a light shining behind it. There was so much pain there. And I remember sitting up and realizing that I had the same lens; that I carried around all this pain that I looked at the world through, and I realized that I really needed to let it go.

I felt so profoundly grateful that I wasn't alone. After going through those godawful eternities over and over, I was so sick of being alone that I could barely stand to leave my watcher alone, even though she was totally exhausted at the end of a long day of dealing with my crazy trip. I had been totally disassociated from my body for pretty long periods of time, and apparently was basically going crazy jumping around and smashing my body into things. At one point I sat on the wood stove. Right now my face is a bit marked up and I banged my nose pretty hard; lucky I didn't break it.

I wish to God I'd been with an experienced sitter who may have been able to get me to explain things before I forgot. There are things that happened in this trip that are impossible to describe as I remember them, and I feel like I lost things in forgetfulness that were vitally important to remember, like the sublime joke of the universe. My only regret is using a sitter who was not familiar with entheogens. She kept my body safe, but she had no interest in what I was experiencing or in trying to help me remember any of it.

I come away from the experience with the conviction that everyone should try this trip at least once. I could not appreciate how precious this moment we live in is until I had seen it through amanita tinted eyes; until I had been through that abyss of eternity and emerged from the other side. I come away with a totally new appreciation for life, and for the company of others. When I saw the sun rise this morning, I knew that I was changed and that if I let it, my life will be changed for having been through this experience.

Exp Year: 2014ExpID: 105493
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 34
Published: Aug 8, 2017Views: 16,858
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Amanitas - A. pantherina (71) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Overdose (29), Guides / Sitters (39), Train Wrecks & Trip Disasters (7), First Times (2)

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