Date/Time: March, 2018/approx. 10:30 PM
Age at time of experience: 44
Weight at time of experience: Approx. 195 lbs.
Substances/Doses:
Mushrooms - 4 grams (tea)
Cannabis - smoked
Escitalopram - 5 mg. (prescribed daily taper dose)
Setting: at home
Companions: solo
I was very enthusiastic going into this one. About six weeks prior I’d had a really profound, unambiguous, entheogenic experience on 5.5 grams. I wanted to hear the voice again.
I straightened up my apartment, did all my dishes, made my bed, and lit my room only in white Christmas lights. I made a musical playlist entirely of Ravi Shankar, Philip Glass, or both of them together. The music choices were based not on familiarity or suggestion. I’d never really spent much time intently listening to either artist. I just knew that I wanted the music to be instrumental and stimulating but not harsh or aggressive.
I put 4 grams of mushrooms through a coffee grinder and then made a hot tea, double-steeping the powder with lemon-ginger tea bags for a total of approximately 30 minutes. I don’t remember what (if?) I’d eaten earlier in the day but when I drank the tea, my stomach was empty. After chugging it down (and also eating the spent mushroom paste) I took a couple of of bong hits and then a hot shower. I then dressed in clothes that were comfortable enough to lay around in but presentable enough to go out in public wearing just in case the unexpected need or urge to do so arose.
Around 11 PM the familiar, queasy waves of the come-up were reaching a giddy intensity. My vision felt sharpened and I decided it was time to lay down and settle into this trip. I took a couple of hits off my bowl, coughed a little and took a drink of water. I then put my headphones on, and laid down on my bed, and pressed play on my remote. I closed my eyes.
Almost instantaneously, as the first long run across the sitar began the first raga I listened to, my consciousness seemed to slide right into a vision of the alien landscape I’d seen in my previous “heroic” dose. The place I now refer to as the TRON VALHALLA. I chuckled a little at how this soundtrack and this effortless transition into a visionary state seemed almost like a cliche of a Beatles-era cinematic representation of the psychedelic experience. My critique immediately receded when I heard THE voice say, “Welcome back.” I found myself not looking out over the Tron Valhalla from above like my previous experience but flying around in it as if in a small spacecraft without any visible controls or containment structure. The smooth, alien surface of the structures that hurtled past my vision seemed illuminated by a black light that came from nowhere. They were covered in swirling, complex, geometric patterns in a color palette of pastel blues, pinks, whites, and purples. The raga pulsed in my ears and I felt like every note of the sitar or the tabla was essentially connected to my being and to whatever was propelling me around this space, stimulating my flight and exciting my mood. I remember physically feeling cool and comfortable, even though I had no conscious sense of my actual body. Awed, I watched this science fiction-like spectacle unfolding all around me. I felt that I was not alone in this space and I did not fear this presence.
The focus of my vision shifted from the passing landscape of the Tron Valhalla to a point closer to me. A series of lights in a scrolling grid pattern materialized before me as if on a pop-up display except without any physical monitor. A pair of metal hands with long, articulated fingers appeared in front of this display. I’m not sure if the voice said anything about it but I remember feeling like I understood that I was under examination. The examination wasn’t intrusive but more like when you go to the mechanic and they hook their diagnostic computer up to your car. I remember a voice saying something like, “OK! Let’s see what we’ve got here!”
In deft, effortless movements, the metal fingers began flicking through these lights. I could physically feel this tickling of the metal fingers inside my brain like a vibration or a really low level electrical current. Sometimes the lights would be flicked away by the fingers, others were pulled to the side, some others got something that looked like a little massage before being scrolled past. In a way it was like my first time ever watching the “Repair Permissions” utility run on my Mac’s hard drive. I didn’t understand any of the process or the what the reports meant but I could see that errors were being noted, isolated, and - if possible - repaired. It felt like I was being worked on at some kind of alien brain health spa. I remember laughing and saying out loud, “How could anyone think this is bad for you?!”
The diagnostics check faded away and I was then presented with a new series of visions - seemingly curated by the metal fingers - all of which carried with them more-or-less explicit suggestions for me.
First there was a vision that contained percussively hammering flying objects. Vintage metal typewriters were flying in a swirling, flowing formation like a swarm of oversized, intently working insects. Their type bars hammering down on spinning ink ribbons, printed pages flying from whirring platens and fluttering away like leaves in a breeze. In the same formation there were drums being struck by drumsticks and hammers striking metal. But the dominant images and sounds were the keystrokes in the flying typewriters, the cylinders throwing off sheets, and the ringing of carriage return bells. I felt a strong implication that I need to be creating art and music and writing and that I’ve always known that that’s what I need to be doing.
Next, I had a vision of myself in an earnest conversation with my long-time boss. For many years we were close friends outside of work. In recent years our friendship had grown distant and our work relationship fraught (for me, anyway). I’d spent many nights stewing over this and much effort avoiding dealing with these problems directly. But then there he was in my trip and we were sorting it out. In this vision I felt safe to felt safe to take ownership of my side of our issues. I don’t remember the words that were exchanged in this conversation but the tone was healing and positive.
Lastly, I had a vision of me with my family. I’ve always had issues with my parents and for many years I was estranged from my entire family. In this vision, I was at a family gathering of a loudness and warmth that hadn’t been remotely approximated since the death of my my maternal grandfather 15 years ago. I was sitting at my parents’ dining room table and I broke down in tears in front of all of them. I told them how sad I was and how disconnected I’ve always felt, both from them and from myself. How, as we all grow older, it just gets sadder and sadder for me to feel like I’m not allowed to have an authentic relationship with any of them. I sobbed and sobbed. I remember feeling something like an embrace come over me but, when I think now about what I saw, I don’t remember this embrace coming from anyone in the room with me. I just felt unafraid of my pain and had a feeling that accepting myself was the way through my family issues.
The visions started to fade but the strong emotions stayed with me for a while. For the rest of this trip, I remained prone on my bed and I cried. I felt very tempted to call both my boss and/or my mother on the telephone but I thought better of it. It was past 2:00 AM and these calls would have made either of them really worried. Part 3 of Philip Glass’s “Music In 12 Parts” was playing and, for the first time in this trip, I got distracted and annoyed by the music. I turned it off and put another Ravi Shankar album on.
By the time the mushrooms had mostly worn off, I was done crying and felt completely drained. I got up and it felt very still in my apartment. My cat, who’d been outside my bedroom door the whole time had a spooked look in her eyes. I was also really hungry and I ordered a bacon-cheeseburger with fries and a milkshake from a diner. This choice seems a little incongruous with having just had a spiritual experience but I guess old habits die hard. I went to bed soon after eating.
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