I was feeling pretty lonely and despondent for a while. A bad breakup from a long time ago was still on my mind, the everyday stresses of life were building, and my awareness of social issues was becoming too painful. I wasn't at a low point per se, I was just feeling down for a while. This last time I ate mushrooms with the intent of having a deep introspective journey, and I certainly succeeded, though not at all in the way I expected. They were way stronger than I thought but it was still a rewarding experience. Now I'm much more satisfied with my life as is, nothing has changed except my attitude but I'm much more at ease on my own and the other things that were bothering me aren't as mentally oppressive as they used to be.
It's not really possible to describe in words what the experience was like but I'll give it a shot. I hope someone finds it interesting and if not writing this will help me sort out what happened.
My plan was to go on a hike, it was the first warm day after a recent snowfall and I wanted to see the wilderness with snow on the ground. I made myself a peanut butter and mushroom sandwich, ate it at the trail head, and started hiking. After an hour or so I started noticing the first effects, lights and colors were brighter and my depth perception felt more real. The landscape stood out way more than it usually did, kind of like the difference between a 2D picture and then seeing the real thing, except I started out with the real thing which then just got better.
Then things started to get bad. I started to think this was a terrible decision because I'm still in school and don't want to fuck up. I'd already dropped out once and psychedelics could really mess me up for a while. I was tearing into myself, loathing every recent decision I'd made and shouldering the blame for every single one of my troubles. I was angry, sad, frustrated, every possible negative emotion at once, and to top it off the hike wasn't as nice as I was expecting. The snow was still thick and I only had hiking shoes so I was slipping and my feet were soaked. As the visual distortion started to kick in I realized I was lost, I had completely lost track of the trail I was supposed to be taking. I was still on a trail, so I wasn't dangerously lost, but I occasionally passed other people and I was clearly in distress. I could barely read my handwriting on my directions and couldn't think clearly about where I was. This was in an area I'd hiked before but I began to panic. I'd planned ahead though and my friends knew what I was doing and where I was, so I called them to get help. They gave me directions and picked me up on a nearby road. It turned out I'd hiked uphill about 8 miles in 3 hours and came out about a 30 minute drive from where I'd planned to.
While hiking I'd been hating myself more than I ever thought possible. It wasn't depression, I cared too damn much about it to be ambivalent. My hatred came from acute awareness of all of my weaknesses. Every decision I'd ever made when I should have known better, every moment of cruelty or lack of compassion, every inadequacy stood out in my mind like brain freeze that refuses to go away. I flogged myself for everything I was ashamed of, bleeding on the inside and nearly weeping on the outside, it was the worst kind of misery. A jail cell in hell where I'd installed the bars myself.
When I got home I took my 'abort pill,' some medicine that would end the trip pretty quickly. Just as I began to lie down in my room though, everything started to change. The visuals were coming on strong, every decoration in my room started to come alive. The painting of a tree started to grow, I could see the leaves waving in the wind and the bark pulsing with flowing sap. My hands were glowing, twinkling in the faint light, and I was totally at peace. In my room I was in a safe place so I could enjoy the rest of the experience. It became the exact opposite of what I'd been feeling hours earlier.
Everything in my room took on a powerful meaning; my books, my guitars, my lava lamp, everything was exactly were it ought to be and it occurred to me that everything I needed for a happy life was right there with me. I closed my eyes and could see brilliantly colored fractal patterns, flowing in and out of each other, and started to connect them to what I was thinking.
I became one with the universe, totally and completely. We have always been one with the universe but we can hardly ever feel it. I felt it so deep in my being that I wept with the realization that I wasn't alone because it was impossible to be alone. I was part of everything around me, part of my friends, my house, my family, everyone and everything was me just as much as I was them. It was total bliss, as close to nirvana as I can imagine being.
Then time began to unfold. I had the feeling that this moment was going to last forever, because it was forever. Past and future no longer existed, each was a foggy memory or a foggy prediction of what happened and what might happen. The unity of the universe's various opposites became a chain of pairs, formed into a circle, where it is only possible for us to experience a finite few at any given time. Nothingness and existence, life and death, love and loss, separation and oneness; as I felt each I was only able to feel those directly connected to the present sensation. I started laughing and I couldn't stop, everything made so much sense. All the confusion and lack of understanding was simply a function of some other understanding. Just like the uncertainty principle, we can only know a few things at a time, and all my fears about the unknown just floated away. Time didn't exist anymore, I was going to be in this state of flowing understanding forever. Imagine the crest of a single wave, flowing through the ocean. My understanding, my experiences, my existence, was the crest of that wave. In everyday life that's all we know, and that's all I could know at the time, but I felt the existence of everything else. Even if I couldn't experience it then, it was there and I was inseparable from it. I fell in love with everything, it was such a powerful feeling that I was laughing and crying with more emotion than I'd ever felt before.
Then my perspective started to focus in on myself. As I saw all of my troubles and worries in the context of infinite love, beauty, and existence, I started laughing again. None of them mattered, they weren't real and they wouldn't last. My life, my actions, and my subjective existence were all totally insignificant and it was the most empowering realization I've ever had. All the pressure to succeed, all the fear of failure, all the demands placed on me became so trivial they might as well have never existed. I was free, to do, think, and love however I wanted. If my life was nothing and everything at the same time, then every desire and every dream of mine was something inherent and inseparable from the universe. Every wrong, every evil, every cruel or spiteful action or thought I'd ever had or committed was against myself. And every love, every caring or compassionate act, was me loving and caring for myself. Then I realized that most of the people around me had never felt this way, and their judgement, dislike, or jealousy were just a part of me, so I had no reason to care what they thought. All the fucks I once gave flew out the window, and I started to sing.
"I don't give a fuck, I don't give a fuck, I don't give a fuck fuck fuck fuck, FUCK!"
It was the best song ever.
After singing for what felt like hours but was only a minute, I started to calm down. I was rolling around in my bed, which felt more comfortable than a womb could ever be, and started to go into denial about shrinking down into my body. I was one with the universe, my consciousness had transcended all of time and space to contain the entirety of existence, but now it was time to be human again. I was a little sad about it but knew it was inevitable, and knew that all the things I'd learned and realized were still true. So I took a shower and went to play some video games.
I didn't reflect on it too much for the rest of that day, it was too fresh and too raw. The next few days though I was able to feel the residuals of all the peace and love I'd been a part of. I didn't realize it at first but I was utterly content with the same life that was just not enough before my trip. After writing this out, I understand why a little bit more.
This trip was waaaayyyy more intense than I had expected or wanted, the 'abort pill' I took certainly cut it short but that's not saying much. All the fear and self hatred from the first half made me want to die, I wanted to die more than I'd ever wanted anything. Then I had exactly the opposite experience, I loved everything and didn't care whether I was alive or not because that love transcends everything. Life is an adventure, an 80 year vacation from my normal state of being, and I'm going to explore it to the fullest.
Mushrooms are a powerful drug that should not be toyed with. They can be incredibly rewarding and unbelievably painful. You may come face to face with all of your inner demons and may not be able to escape their fury. You may feel an omnipresent love, a compassionate force so overwhelming that all human evils appear to be nothing more than little annoyances. You may walk through hell, float through heaven, and then come back to earth knowing the difference between the two. After a journey like that, it's impossible to keep the same perspective on life.
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