Respect The Game... (Psychedelic Mushroom Trip Report)

(from Winter 2013)

Today I took my first heroic dose of psychedelic mushrooms… A heroic dose, according to Terence McKenna, is five dried grams… The most I have ever done was around 3.5 grams, and while at the time I thought that was more than enough for me, I found today’s journey to be a vastly different experience… I’ll do my best to translate this trip as best I can, though first I’ll share some background into my history with these potent plant medicines, or entheogens…

More than twenty years ago I was a senior in high school, and enjoyed LSD on a weekly basis… I knew nothing about shamanism at the time, and it was mostly recreational and silly… I never saw any profound visions, though I did write a lot while under its influence… Since then I have only taken acid every few years or so, and my conclusion of it is basically that it’s a great way to become acquainted with visionary journeys… It seems like more of a window than a door, though it did serve to open me up to other possibilities…

At age 22, I ate my first real dose of psilocybin mushrooms, and it changed the course of my life… It was the first time I ever saw anything bizarre, the most striking vision being of my hands and arms… I could see right through the skin! Every muscle and tendon was there for me to examine… When the Presence arrived, it sort of made itself known in an elusive way… I was cocky and proclaimed, “Show yourself!” to which I was instantly pressed down upon my bed, unable to move… It only released me when I completely surrendered all control… That was so shocking that I learned reverence right then and there, and it has never quite left me since…

Other great mushroom trips have happened since, but only maybe 4 or 5, as I don’t really seek them out, and when I do get some I usually wait for the ‘proper’ moment to take them… No more monkey business, I guess… Still, every other time than today was always in my body, looking out and catching a hint of that Other whom some call God or higher consciousness… Over the years I have done a lot of reading in various directions about different psychedelics…

The next to find me was DMT… I have written other accounts of my DMT experiences, but I must mention it here, since today was more like Spirit Molecule than any mushroom journey I have had… DMT always offers me ultra-rich landscapes, with vivid and fleeting brilliance… They are very personal to me, but that may simply be me, I do not know… And I have never yet had the opportunity to try ayahuasca, the Amazonian brew which has now spread far and wide throughout the world…

Okay, so I acquired these mushrooms after reading about McKenna’s account of an ideal heroic dose… He said something like, “If you haven’t taken 5 grams, you haven’t taken enough…” I figured he knew what he was talking about, yet I was still very apprehensive about finding the proper set and setting… I did all the research I could, and found ways to make it a smooth experience… Also, I am getting ready to write a fiction story where my characters take psychedelics and journey out of their body, so I knew I needed to get this firsthand perspective before I even tried to write about it…

I chose to do them by myself, in an empty house… Because I didn’t know how long this heroic dosage would last, I waited until people I share space with left for the day, and ate them at 8 am in the morning… Night would have been easier, but I managed to cover the window with a towel to keep the light as low as possible… I didn’t plan on getting up from my bed, I knew it would be an inner journey… Also, before I took them I spoke aloud my intentions, which were about healing and finding direction in my life… The actual ingestion of them went quick, I simply chewed them thoroughly one at a time… Once they were all inside me, I drank some water and laid down… Oh, and luckily I thought to put earplugs in…

It couldn’t have been more than 20 minutes before I began to see dim patterns dancing around… This entire trip I didn’t feel giggles or wiggles, though sporadic moments of euphoria did have me celebrating later… But at about 30 to 40 minutes in, there were definitely other beings with me… I have to curtail my desire to figure out who or what they were, but they were certainly with me… While they constantly shifted in form, their manner and personality was like a signature… At a very specific point these Beings were talking through my thoughts, with words I could understand… I asked again for fair treatment, and protection from anything that might hurt me… As the effects of the psilocybin grew stronger their communications became clearer, the visions brighter and ever-shifting…

I kept hearing the word, “MELT” like it was something I needed to do… I kept saying yes, along with sort of chanting the word, ‘Love’ when I deemed it appropriate… Suddenly everything was electric and fast-paced, the way only a DMT trip has been for me… I kept surrendering any resistance to the trip, and then they said something like, “LET’S GO!!” and we were off… To me it felt like everything sped up and we were rocketing through hyperspace, just slowing and stopping at random in different scenes… Each time we slowed down, the sounds slowed as well, with many bloops and shwings and neon forms everywhere… All of this was still probably in the first hour…

I saw all manner of archetypal imagery, from Chinese lions and Aztec gods, to even McDonald’s logos and Christmas trees… I recall wondering if this were common to all people who took a heroic dose, or if this were tailor-made for me… The Beings answered this, “TAILOR-MADE FOR YOU, BUDDY!!” Now BUDDY is a term which has irritated me in the past… Calling me BUDDY, maybe this was an attempt to put me in my place, or maybe it was a cosmic joke… I did have to remind or request again and again for them to be gentle…

Nothing actually threatened me, but not everything I saw was nice and pleasant… I should have known, when I asked for healing, that I had to see the problem to be healed from, eh? Sometimes a figure would simply enter the scene as if from an adjacent room, in a suit or tie… Other moments the Beings would be chanting, “BACKWARDS? FORWARDS! BACKWARDS? FORWARDS!” over and over, and my experience followed their direction, like an instant replay… Backwards and forwards…

This would probably have been absolutely overwhelming, except for my prior experiences on DMT… It was like a slowed down version where I could explore more deeply and recall with far greater clarity… The most intense moments of this stage was where the scenes I was in were chopped up in triangles and reassembled at random… All the pieces fit together, but didn’t connect to each other… Like if you cut a photograph up and rearranged the pieces… Along with that, sounds were scrambled and glitchy… I remember asking if all of life was just a hologram, to which the Being replied, “DON’T ASK THAT QUESTION!!” and melted before me! Sometimes these Beings appeared as four-legged cartoons with fangs, pawing at me in wonder… Those are the moments I reminded them to please be gentle, and they would sort of respond as if, “OH YES, OKAY…” and change their form to something more appealing…

Next, I was aware I had to pee, and they said, “GO TAKE CARE OF THAT, THEN COME RIGHT BACK…” I found myself back in my body, did my business, and jumped back into my bed… Also, when I say left my body earlier, I was still aware, on some level, of my breathing the entire time… I spoke phrases of assurance to myself in that first launch, like, “You’re not going to die, you’ll be fine… I love you… Hang on!” These things just came out of me, though it was like I was coaching my trip as well as having it… That phenomena alone is very mysterious to me… How could I be both experiencing all of this firsthand, yet simultaneously observing it from an outside perspective? Even when everything I have ever known melted away, there was still something in my consciousness recording it all… Mysterious!

As I went down the second time, I immediately launched back into hyperspace… In one place the Beings said things about the purpose of Life being to PLAY, to HAVE FUN… One shot a jellyfish blob of ectoplasm through a halo of light, then indicated I should do likewise… Suddenly another blob of light danced around, orbiting itself and interacting in strange ways… I remember thinking, “Did I do that?” This part of the journey was very much a playground, or a romp through fantastic circus arenas of entertainment… The observer in me was too overloaded with information to thoroughly savor it all…

Then we went to what felt like a sort of surgery place, or an operating room… The Beings said something like, “OKAY, HOLD VERY STILL WHILE WE…” and suddenly my brain buzzed with high-pitched pressure tension… It felt like they first removed my mind from my consciousness, then inserted something in my head, then replaced my mind or soul back into my consciousness… That is just my guess… While they were performing this, I felt farther away from them, as well as from myself… But it didn’t hurt, and they never explained the purpose of this action… I simply remained calm, because when mushroom Beings suggest I hold still, I am not going to argue at all…

These Beings communicated to me the entire time, and even among themselves… They constantly took new forms and were sometimes scary looking… Mostly they were fun and even obnoxious, encouraging me to be the same… At a certain point later, everything changed in tone and color, and I knew that a new and Superior entity had arrived, because the mushroom Beings sort of cleared out for a bit to make way… This one was a huge Lucky Cat diety, with sacred fires burning everywhere around it like torches… The cat’s eyes were also flames, and I found this striking… But I don’t remember us interacting much… I was in awe of it… Each different place I was taken to felt like it lasted about 30 seconds, and recounting it now feels like showing someone a photo album of an overseas trip…

In another moment I felt that an entity took me to a drastically faraway place… This Being was slightly different from the mushroom entities, and I had a subtle inkling that this was my Operator, or the Player which uses my character in the game we call Reality… There were computers everywhere and lighted buttons lining every surface, but it also had a flimsy quality to it, as if it were the very edge of it all… This Operator spoke into my head, “THIS IS AS FAR AS ONE CAN GO…” and we spent some moments bouncing off a barrier that had some Nothing on the other side… I asked again about whether physical reality is just a holographic simulation and got the reply, “NEXT QUESTION…”

Later, the mushroom Beings were back, giving me some understanding into my current life, even hints of things to come… I asked about Good and Evil, and human suffering… I was reassured that it is far more important to enjoy the story of our existence than to strive or try to avoid suffering… One Being popped in and said, “YOU WANTED HEALING? YOU’RE HEALED!!” then almost as if to befuddle me, added an afterthought, “AND THERE WASN’T EVEN ANYTHING WRONG!! HAH HAH!!” It wasn’t quite mockery, they really did a lot of things to and for me… If anything, I was invited to share each and every joke they made about me…

All that was about 50% of the total hyperdimensional scenes I encountered… I feel lucky I remember that much… With DMT I only recalled about 5%... Anyway, I had to pee again, and felt the Beings chiding me about drinking coffee before I ate the mushrooms… I got up to go, and they said, “PUT CLOTHES ON THIS TIME…” so I did… After urinating, I let the dogs out of the room I had placed them in so as not to bark and jar my trip… I happened to glance at the clock and saw it was 10:30 am… All that in 2+ hours!! I was amazed, but also felt like having a cigarette… Old habits die hard…

The dogs knew something was up… They were genuinely spooked… I had to bend over and pet them several times to let them know I was okay… As I went outside to smoke, still with my earplugs in, the bright sunlight hit my sunglasses… I tried holding up my finger to see if a bird would land on it, but the bird just cocked its head sideways and stared… I began laughing at how silly much of our modern culture is, and found the mushroom Beings answering, “RESPECT THE GAME…” This phrase came back several more times through the rest of the trip, though after the smoke I didn’t crawl under the covers, just laid down on top of the bed…

I did make one more nominal excursion into the Out-There, but this was more self-reflective in nature… Sort of like a boot-camp on how to be a better me… At one point I recalled the Sacred Mushroom video I had watched the day before, and how I had concluded from it that Jesus must have been a mushroom, based on the communion sacraments of eating the flesh and drinking the blood… I asked the Beings if this were the case… The reply was laughter, and then, “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU’VE BEEN TALKING TO???” Honestly, that wasn’t any stranger than the rest of my experiences today, so I just filed it away for later after a respectful thank you…

Next time I saw the clock it was 12:30 pm, and I was barely tripping any longer… There were still some lingering effects for the next couple hours, but much more like I was accustomed to from lower doses… I kept feeling excited by the words, “RESPECT THE GAME!” There were so many incredible events which happened, but this one overarching phrase has become the theme for this entire journey… To learn to love my circumstances, that is my mission… The Beings were absolutely clear that I needed to finish the novel I mentioned earlier, especially when I asked about how to help ease the suffering of the earth… Not to change reality to get what I want, just “WRITE THE STORY!” was a strong message… In fact, I got the assurance that reality CAN be changed in any manner of ways, but too much too fast would shock the whole system… “RESPECT THE GAME!” becomes profound in that regard, like both a warning as well as an encouragement…

I am still amazed that this heroic dose happened so fast and ended so quickly, about 4 hours in the DMT dimensions, and another two just to come down… My previous lower doses have been twice as long… I know there are a lot of variables, so all I can do is just learn from it and move on… I don’t even know if I will do another heroic dose anytime soon… I can’t say, ‘Never’, but I am in no hurry to partake… Having my ego obliterated and then re-learning my own name and storyline, that isn’t ever going to be recreational… Time will tell, to be certain…

(Author’s note: 4 years later, I suspect these mushroom beings would say anything to troll my soul! Who knows if they exist, or if Jesus was a mushroom? I still have not completed the novel I described in this trip report… I went to live in Asia instead, and binge-watched a LOT of tv and movies… I have now sort of come full-circle to where I was… Unemployed in Texas, constantly making art… I have 5 more grams sitting in a drawer, waiting for a day of days… That won’t be a sequel to this report… These things never are… Yet I will endeavor to convey the best and worst, should I undergo the journey…)

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