Shroomin'

I started this series back in 2018, with a question: “Why would a 65 year-old man want to go fucking around with psychedelics?”

 I just did, that’s why.

I wanted to re-visit some of the experiences I had back in the day,  and maybe add some new ones.

 The covid panic derailed those adventures, and the next couple years left me in no frame of mind to go messing with psychedelics. It is not possible to maintain a good mind set in a world steeped in lies, and gone mad with paranoia. Much in our world changed in 2020, and none of it for the better. Then, in August of '23,  I got sick with it. It beat me hard, and it took over six months to get back to something like normal. Now I’m dealing with breathing issues, but I’m OK as long as I take the meds. Not all pharmaceuticals are evil.

So now, it’s May of 2024, and we’re waiting out the cold gray So Cal weather until summer lights up in July. I’m seventy one, and my smoking days are over. I’m back to work on the stones, but it’s very difficult to stay optimistic these days. I try to disengage, and retreat from news and world events.

And I miss getting high, especially when working on the stones. Best I can do anymore is to catch an edible buzz. But the gummies don't work like smoking, and you can't do edibles more than about once, or twice a week. The tolerance builds up very fast, and goes down slowly. So getting high has become something I set aside for once every week, or so. I'll wait for a night when Mary turns in early, and I've got the house to myself. I'll get a shower, climb into my robe & slippers, chew a handful of gummies, and just spend some quiet time with all the odd thoughts that float through the mind on a nice buzz. Maybe put on the headphones for a tune...

How about doing mushrooms, J.W.? They were next in line for the OGH series.

Well…

I first read about psilocybin mushrooms in the old Time Life Science book, The Mind. This would have been back in 1965 when I was thirteen or fourteen, before my freshman year in high school. It just sounded like an amazing experience, something I knew I wanted to try. Mushrooms were supposed to be a part of the whole hippie thing, but I never ran across them until 1995.

I remember asking the guy who sold them to me, "How much should I take for a first-time?"

"Do an eighth,"(3.5 grams) he said. 

That was way too heavy. Without going into detail, I can describe that first mushroom trip in four words:

 "Please. Make. This. Stop." 

 But that was a long time ago. I did mushrooms several times after that first unpleasant encounter, but always at lower doses, usually just a single gram, but no more than a gram and a half.  At those doses you sort of feel it, and the experience is sort of interesting, but that’s about it. Taking just a little is not even a preview of coming attractions compared to the real thing.

 Over the last year or so, I finally got to thinking about going for a serious event again. I even prepared a proper, if modest (2.5 gram) dose. Stepping into a psychedelic event of any magnitude is like working up the nerve to leap out of the plane on a sky dive. And I knew firsthand what a too-heavy experience was like. So I chickened out, and nibbled off about a gram. Not much to report. Tried again with just-a-little, and got not-much.

I was irritated with myself for being so damn timid. It was time to go for it. So, once again,  I chopped up two and a half grams of some very potent mushroom, mixed it in with mashed strawberries, and froze it.

Thursday, 4/11/24

It was about half past eight when I took the little plastic container of strawberry and mushroom out of the freezer, and set it on the counter to thaw. I ate a couple of cannabis gummies,  not enough for a real buzz, but enough to take the edge off the nervousness, and put me in the right state of mind for a major event.

I took a hot shower, got comfortable, and walked into the kitchen. I could feel my adrenaline rise as soon as I popped open the cold plastic container. The mouthful of frozen strawberry mash went down in one icy gulp. It was just a couple minutes after nine.

Despite the mild cannabis buzz, my excitement swells into anticipation, and starts edging up into apprehension. Maybe I should get dressed, and put my shoes on. What if I want to go for a walk? Is it warm enough?  Should I turn on the heat? Should I turn off the computer? Yes, go do that… I’m seasoned enough to expect this little case of the jitters. Even so, I take my own advice, and shut down the desktop. Take a deep breath. Relax your shoulders. Breathe. It’s OK.

Now, we’re dialed back down to excitement. Nothing for it now but the waiting.

I was in the living room, sitting in the green chair when the first alert showed up about twenty minutes later. Suddenly, I’m starting to feel dull, flat, lethargic, almost apathetic. I don’t want to move. It’s very easy to just sit, go blank, let my mind drift as my eyes go out of focus on whatever I’m staring at. All those questions and concerns were pointless; it doesn’t matter what I’m wearing. If I want to go for a walk I can change. Why was any of this a big deal? I get out of the chair, and walk around the room, adjust the lights, then sit back down. Soon the dull flatness warms into a kind of ebullience. I’m a little weightless in the tummy. Ebullience flows into elation, blooms into euphoria, and I’m smiling. Here we go!

The unfolding sensation is pleasantly dreamy, a little drowsy, a little lethargic. It’s easy to just sit and stare, sink into the dreaminess, and pop back to attention, only to slide in to the dreamy again, each time sinking in a little deeper, and a little deeper.

I close my eyes and there is a soft aurora; waves of color shimmer across my eyelids in the dark. Thoughts begin to tumble through my head. God and Nature, and the reason is Life, and Beauty and Truth are the Goodness of Creation… and the tumble of thoughts flows like a base note in the visual music playing across my eyelids. The intensity creeps steadily upward. Then the Voice of the Mushroom speaks to me through this tumbling flight of thought. I remember this ‘voice’ from many years back. It had upbraided me for charging into this world unprepared.

 “Well,” it spoke, “You’re back. We’re glad you finally returned. You were well prepared this time. You are welcome here; relax and enjoy…”

As if I had a choice. The mushroom voice joins the tumble of thoughts and voices, and reassures me that all is well. Colors become lights. Objects in my field of vision relax into a flowing mosaic, and then I move, and it all floats back to normal.

 It’s a little after ten as I step  out onto the back porch. The night is cold and overcast. The huge ash tree out front spreads a black web of branches like a huge lace fan against a roiling pewter sky. The  branches resolve into geometric patterns, that slowly morph into symmetrical rows, and I turn my head to look round the yard, and it all begins to float beneath my gaze.

How long have I been out here? Go back in the kitchen. Only a few minutes. How can that be? I return to the living room, and sit there for what feels like a very long time watching the visual symphony unfold. The furniture the artwork, the lights morph into pure plastic form, and glowing color. I come to attention. Go check the time. Not even ten thirty. How can this be?

That dreamy, sleepy, buzz steadily grows more intense. The drift into the hallucinatory dreamworld begins quicker, and grows longer and deeper. The return to attention comes more slowly, then before I can take a breath, I’m sinking back into the vision. My eyes relax, and my entire field of vision flows into a fluid mosaic of soft lights. I close my eyes and the aurora shimmering across my eyelids becomes a living kaleidoscope.

 The intensity rises; the event grows bigger and deeper, the hallucinating, more profound. My hold on reality is slipping, and I’m very much aware that I can’t make this stop. There’s a feeling of being pulled out to sea, and I notice, with some odd detachment, that I’m a long, long ways from shore. Even so, I know to stay calm, and just let it flow. The Voice of the Mushroom  periodically reassures me that I’m welcome, here, Enjoy the beauty; please enjoy your stay...

I go back out to the porch. The silhouette fan of the ash tree sparkles in pin lights, flows like a liquid. I sit, and watch, and the tree-fan weaves into Celtic patterns then shimmers into a Tolkienesque woodland scene which grows into a medieval village straight out of a Breughel’s painting. I pull back from the dream trance, but this morphing and moving and glowing just keeps rolling along, and I quickly start sinking again. Once again, I’m aware that I can’t make it stop, and it takes some vigilance to relax, and just let it all happen. Even if it’s overwhelming I still have to ride the wave. There is no bailing out.

Again, the reassuring Voice rises above the cascade of thoughts: “Relax, You are welcome here. You are loved. Enjoy the beauty.

As if I had a choice. It's barely ten forty five. I feel like I’ve been here for hours.

I‘m OK at this stage, but I’m wondering how much longer this is going to last. Time is flowing through gelatin. The clock hands won’t move… I make it back into the living room, and survey my artwork, my sculpture and graphics, and they all pulse, and shimmer with life, but it’s hard to focus on any one thing as my field of vision so quickly goes kaleidoscopic, and I’m so, so drowsy, and it is so easy to just sit and hallucinate on whatever random thing catches my gaze.

 Close my eyes, and I completely disappear, I become Emerson’s transparent eyeball, my thoughts weave into a fugue with God, Love, Goodness, Sin, Redemption, Truth, Beauty, and a thousand, intertwined voices past and present while my field of vision is a cascade of rotating colored fractals spinning into infinite depth. How long have I been here? When does this stop?

And then, there came one moment when the trance, and the visions became almost imperceptibly less intense than the moment before. With some effort I rise from the chair and check the time. Just after eleven. By eleven thirty, the descent becomes perceptible. The peak experience has passed, and now I know for sure that I’ve made it.

I breathe a sleepy sigh of relief. That was all the fun I could stand, and then some. The experience was gradually fading. By midnight, the sense of intensity was gone, but I was still hallucinating a little, and still very stoned. And so drowsy, so very, very drowsy, so dreamy, so sleepy, so glad I’d made it through. A good, good trip, but, so, so drowsy...

I got to bed about one in the morning. It didn’t take long before I drifted off with that voice still murmuring in my head, saying something about probably not coming back here, and I understood. I had a wonderful event, but the mushroom sets the terms, and there is no negotiating with the shroom. Not that I wasn’t welcome back. I can return if I want to. It’s just that I got what I came for, and, well, you know…that’s all.

 It’s been almost six weeks since I did the shrooms. Despite the sleepy, drowsy nature of the buzz, I didn’t sleep well that night, and I was a little burned out the next day. In the aftermath I find it much easier to disengage from the World, and current events. Things I don’t care for have become things I don’t care about. The madness of this age and time rolls on, but now it’s easier to step aside, and just get out of the way. This is a great benefit, and I hope it lasts.

So that winds up the “On Getting High” series of essays. I originally wanted to include a serious LSD trip in the mix, but I don’t really feel inclined to do it.  I don’t cast anything in concrete, but I rather doubt I’ll go for another event. At least not here and now, in the midst of a cold gray spring. We’ll see how I feel when the sun returns in July.