Psilocybin experience

I don’t think there’s enough acclaim I can share about taking shrooms.

Whether it’s a macrodose (my fave) or a microdose, I’ve had such great experiences with it, that I always suggest the practice to anyone who’s seriously looking to try it for self development reasons, and a desire for some type of easily attainable/not mortally dangerous transcendent experience. Something different outside the “self help hacks” of the mainstream.

Most people I hear about that take psychedelics, or try messing around with psilocybin to any degree, are what I define as “party mode” dosers.

They want to drink, smoke, get high, take all sorts of “recreational drugs” like cocaine, acid, molly, and whatever other whatnots exist in that world—and they mix them so they can have a cRaAAaZy night.

That’s not my jam at all. I don’t believe in mixing shrooms with any other substance (except maybe smoking a bowl while I wait for them to kick in). I like to take them on their own, and NOT go out and party. 

I take them to go deeper inside my own mind, to expand my understanding of concepts I’ve been struggling with (whether that means earthly problems or esoteric conflicts, etc), to feel more real, and to have a multitude of epiphanies that I can then apply to my life in practical ways. Vague.

Specifics…

While everyone’s experiences will differ, and even one person’s experiences will differ from dose to dose, it’s cool to wonder at, and consider the possibility of self exploration through the utilization of these wonderful fungi. 

Teensy disclaimers: 

• Some of these concepts might be kind of difficult to understand unless you’ve taken shrooms and seen the effects for yourself. 
• Since I know I could wax poetic about shrooms all DAY, maybe I’ll also throw in a couple things I hate/am annoyed by about shrooms at the end of the list—you know, for a ”balanced perspective.” 

Here are the things I’ve gone through, deeply appreciate, and LOVE about the effects of psilocybin:

1. That you can have different experiences of a shroom trip depending on the dose amount, your mentality about tripping, as well as the environment you choose to take them in. No experience is ever the same.

There is something to be gleaned from each time: new adventures, new wisdom, new everything. Thoughts, moods, goals, and your expectations of the experience itself can highly vary. As well, the setting you choose to be in when you want to trip makes a huge difference. I always take them in one of two settings: I’m either alone at home, or at home with only the people I trust. Even though shrooms don’t make you crazy or anything, it’s always important to feel safe and secure. Especially when I’m coming down from them, I don’t ever like to feel like I have to be somewhere, or go anywhere. I want to already be home comfortable to let the residual effects run their course rather than rush myself to “get back to normal.”

2. How it feels as they start taking effect in my body.

The ‘cybin kicking in can take different amounts of time until you start really feeling them in your system. It starts for me as a type of discomfort: my body recognizes that something is starting to feel…different. There is a foreigner in our system. No pain, no panic. Just a difference of how I feel in my own organism. But when that feeling of a brand new visitor is gone, I ease into the new perception I have. I like the contrast of the transition.

But sometimes, when the feeling isn’t immediately clocked in an obvious way, the giggling gives it away. I start laughing, it feels good, there’s no reason for it—other than my body is feeling good. It’s not a joke that sets it off, it’s not a tickle, it’s just my body feeling a type of joy. The feeling is hilariously divine.

3. How many messages you can receive, and how many adventures and lifetimes you can experience within one trip, because time truly is a construct.

I love sleeping because I love to dream. I have so many adventures when I sleep—things I wouldn’t—couldn’t do—in the real world, because of the many laws of the universe, and my time here is finite.

But when I’m on shrooms, everything is possible, and even though I know it’s “only” happening in my mind, the experience, the feeling of having lived it, is real. It’s better than a lucid dream. And I can experience multiple lifetimes at once, instead of only 1.

One of my favorite memories of a very sizable dose I took, was the connection I was able to make with mom, whose human body died a few years ago, and who I’ve never stopped grieving over:

I was lying down on my rug at home, eyes closed, feeling like I was all of outer space. I had a playlist going through the entire high, but at one point I remember that ALL I was experiencing was reunion with her. I had many stories and experiences throughout all the hours I was tripping, but when Ray Barretto’s El Negro y Ray started playing, I fell deeper into my voiceless conversation with her. (I say voiceless, because it isn’t necessarily that I’m using my body’s voice, but rather the internal voice that supersedes all other things)

I don’t remember what I was struggling with in my life at the time, besides the grief of having lost her, but for some reason, I believe she communicated with me through this song. There are no lyrics in it, only instruments. But with every sound of a drum, a trumpet, literally every sound made in that song, it was her saying “I love you,” not as we would hear it with our voices in real life, but with a knowingness of the feeling she was sharing with me. She was speaking to me through the sounds.

I saw nothing and everything. Some of the imagery, I remember as if El Negro y Ray was playing through the colors and playful vibes of Melody Time (instead of the cartoon’s actual music). I’m not an artist, so I can’t replicate what I saw, but the overall feeling was a wonderful, beautiful chaos of love—where it felt like no matter what I was trying to say to her like “but mom-”, or trying to say anything other than feeling her love, it felt like she was “wrestling” me to make sure I heard her, understood her, felt her love, and didn’t try to distract with any doubts or other ideas of the moment. At the time, somehow I thought that can’t be more important than the struggles of this real life, my struggles etc. But she always knew best. She broke me down with unlimited I love yous, to make sure I knew she loves me and that we’re always connected, and that I was just suffering because of the illusion of our separation. I was crying joyful tears and laughing with her, how I remember we would when she was alive.

And that realization was peaceful, freeing, and an overwhelm of the love I know I’m capable of. That feeling of radiating infinite love and understanding, like I could BURST out of this physical body because of just how much love I’m capable of. I could die from this tiny body not being able to handle that level of power. But it would be the most wonderful death.

4. How everything looks and feels so real:

This one is SO hard to explain to someone that’s never taken shrooms. Of course everything in the “real” world is REAL. But when you’re dosing, you get what that truly means. ALL of your senses can sense more, feel more, your biology is enhanced in a way that’s inexplicable to someone in the “sober” world.

I break it down into three aspects…though they’re an amalgamation:

1. How my body feels.

How my body feels is transcendent. I know this organism I live in is alive, but on shrooms, it feels really true. I can see and feel the machinations. I’m aware of every organ inside my body, of my skin. Even just looking at my arms I could seem them truly breathing—this marvel of biological engineering. 🤯

Normally I prefer to keep my eyes closed for most of the experience, because of all the awesome things I can see without needing to only look at my physical surroundings. And one of my favorite experiences is how my vision changes. The higher the dose, the more apparent this is, but I love seeing imagery through the lens of iridescent geometric prisms, kind of like pixels. Nothing about my surroundings has changed, I’m not imagining things that aren’t there, it’s simply that I’m seeing things for the true miracle and magic that they are.

2. How my mind perceives.

Freedom is the most elevated feeling. When I close my eyes, I’ve felt like I was existing as the space surrounding me and permeating everything. It’s what I imagine meditation to feel like. Freedom from judging all my thoughts, and simply existing as an observer of creation, only being the awareness of consciousness. 

There is a quieting of my human mind that is unlike anything else when I’m tripping. Even if there were sounds on throughout the experience, I’ve had this capability to isolate my thoughts where they are both the most silent part of my processing while I’m focused on a conversation or activity, yet the most powerful thing where it’s been possible for me to drown everything else out to simply focus in on what my mind is experiencing. If I was ever to say I’ve experienced the wonder that is a mind palace, it’s on shrooms.

The wonder never ends for me. I feel engaged in the moment, truly present. And when the geometric prism movement starts, it feels like opening my eyes isn’t the most appropriate response. Opening them feels like I’m peeking behind the scenes, like the world is under construction—the illusion is being built, and in order for me to enjoy the “real” world, I should keep my eyes closed while it’s forming, deconstructing, and transforming. Like, Andy’s coming.

As if everything only exists, or can change because of my eyes, my observation.

I don’t have to interact with anyone or anything to be entertained. I simply exist in my boundless mind. 🧘

3. How nature and my surroundings look.

Everything is breathing. This accounts for everything in my surroundings: walls, furniture, pillows, anything. But in particular I’m blown away by being so in tune with nature. Nothing looks different, there aren’t any “magical” things going on with all the real-life things I’m seeing. But it all looks so…real. Like you can truly see the trees breathing and I’m in touch and highly aware of the LIFE FORCE in front of me. It’s not even enough that I appreciate and enjoy the beautiful nature around me, I want to BE it. 

There’s no way to truly describe it to someone that hasn’t seen it or felt it for themselves.

5. Sex and orgasms.

And how much more enhanced it is.  I don’t think there’s a product in the world that could enhance it more for me than shrooms.

You know that feeling when you’re close to orgasm, and you know that if you don’t get there asap—if you hit that wall—you’ll lose the ability to get there?

(in that moment, anyway)

Well, on the ‘cybs, I’ve gotten to that point. I know the wall is right there, and I thought I’d lose it, but then, DOUBLE the allowance of that original limit was available to get to that amazing feeling, and it was much stronger than usual…

Once, I spent the first hour of a trip loving myself because I felt so amazing in my body. I wanted to feel how strongly, and how much, and for how long I could go. It got to the point that I was consistently between crying and giggling because of how sensitive my body was. I mean the tears were just flowing, and the giggles abounded. As it was all happening multiple times, I was almost to the point of paralysis from the delicious sensitivity. It was truly ecstasy.

6. Experiencing a shedding of the ego.

Most ego-discussing communities would probably refer to this as a full ego death. Maybe they have a point, but I believe that the only true ego death is upon death of our biological body. I do feel fully detached from my human self in those moments, but I return to “reality” and forget how to keep up that feeling. So for my purposes, I simply call it a shedding—of the many layers we can metamorphosize out of. It’s very real and very profound to feel truly detached from the identity(ies) we create for ourselves in this physical life. To lose the attachments, to not feel human selfishness and the illusion of scarcity, this idea that we are only pure awareness of our life experience, and not actually suffering from the feeling of the illusion of separation from our own self and others. Feeling unity with all of nature and existence.

It’s a euphoric freedom I believe we should all get to feel: to observe our physical entity from outside of it.

7. That point of the high, where you know you’re starting to come down from the effects.

You know it will be soon, but time is relative, so that “end” could still be a couple hours away. And even though I want to stay in this altered state, and it starts feeling bittersweet that I will go back to “normal” perception, I look forward to how I will process all the musings and lessons once I’m off them. I look forward to making more connections from my epiphanies as I think about and process the experience over the next few days. It feels to me like a preemptive nostalgia.

* * *

The aforementioned balanced perspective:

The thing I HATE about shrooms:

The smell, the taste, and the texture (hyeugh). All of it is trash to my palate. I don’t even eat “regular” mushrooms in real life, because I can’t stand them.

So maybe this aversion makes the experience of having to ingest psilo shrooms that much worse for me. Plus, no matter HOW I’ve made myself a shroom concoction, I’ve never been able to mask all those factors. And every time I’ve mixed them with a juice, or smoothie, or other “masking” agent, it’s tainted the flavor of that item even if I used to enjoy it on its own. 🤢🤢🤢🤢

The plus side though, is I finally found a shroom chocolate that has NO disgusting flavors, textures, or olfactory insults that I can actually enjoy and not almost puke every time I want to expand my mind.