Where In The World Is Evan?

It was with great amusement that I read about a recent study on the effects of psilocybin. It says much about the scientific community’s closed mindedness regarding psychedelic drugs that 40 years since it was isolated as the active ingredient in magic mushrooms (and after thousands of years of shamanic use) a study reporting what any first time user could tell you is considered “breaking news”.

After experiencing qualified success with the Amanita family of mushroom, some weeks ago, my interest in more conventional magic mushrooms was renewed. As convenience would have it I was able to locate a reliable source of Copelandia cyanescens within the wildlife reserve of a nearby public university.

Although I cannot be sure enough in my memory of recent months to say with complete certainty, I can recall taking psilocybin based mushrooms on at least ten occasions during a six week period immediately following the events of my last blog entry. One might go so far as to say that through various mushroom related activities (i.e. reading research papers and field identification guides, picking wild mushrooms and processing them for consumption) mushroom taking became my primary, and on some days, sole occupation.

I shall not attempt to reconstruct the events and circumstances surrounding all of these trips, and nor will I bore the casual reader with the complex pharmacology of my related experiments with the organic MAOI, harmaline. Instead I will be focusing on my final three trips, the first of which occurred on the night of 18 June.

After making repeated mushroom collecting trips to the same region of the wildlife reserve the average weight of my harvest had been steadily decreasing. Consequently I greatly expanded the size of my operational matrix. After a couple of hours of searching, and just before I was about to pack it in for the day, I discovered a large patch growing in an isolated spot sheltered by the rotting trunk of a fallen eucalypt.

After air drying and powdering the harvest I packed them into clear gelatine capsules for convenient storage and consumption. It wasn’t until they were fully processed that I realised the true size of my find… 78 capsules (approximately 15 doses).

After consultation with my housemates we decided that we’d try a small quantity to determine appropriate dosage (being an organic source, potency can vary significantly) and save the bulk of them for the forthcoming winter solstice party.

When it came time to take the caps, I changed my mind and instead of taking a moderate five cap dose I decided to take 10. The early stages of the trip were relatively uneventful as we made a brief foray up the street to buy cigarettes. By the time we’d returned I’d become quite comfortable with my trip and augmented it by smoking some pot. I closed my eyes for a while to focus on the patterns forming across my vision and by the time that my hallucinations had begun to slightly diminish everyone else had seemingly fallen asleep. As I sat around feeling somewhat restless I decided that the only solution to my unsated desire for conversation was to take more mushies.

In retrospect my attitude at this time was somewhat arrogant—I was convinced that because I’d tripped on so many prior occasions I didn’t need to exercise caution in administering high doses. Needless to say I was soon disabused of this fallacious notion.

Initially I took five more caps, however, after smoking some more pot I decided to take another five again. Before those additional caps had a chance to kick in I had a brief conversation with L, who’d recently reappeared, about having just upped my dose. The other participants soon began to regain interest in external events, and a consensus was reached that we should attempt to finish all of the caps between the five of us.

Leading by example I took another three caps, very shortly followed by another two, to make a nice round figure—25. Realising that I didn’t have much time before I was about to lose physical connection with my body I smoked some more pot as quickly as I could and lay down on the ground next to the heater and pressed my fingers into my closed eyes.

Throughout the experience that followed my subjective perception of time was so skewed that I will not even attempt to quantify the passage of objective time—the experience seemed to last an eternity and yet be over in an instant at the same time.

Initially, my field of vision was illuminated by an ever changing array of two-dimensional geometric patterns. The patterns continued to increase in complexity and colour depth with each passing moment. I soon lost all conception of bodily form and 3-D space—there were only the patterns in my mind.

A fundamental shift occurred as the patterns began to recede from their 2-D plane into the hitherto forgotten third dimension of space. The patterns continued to dance and play across my vision, however, they now lacked the appearance of solidity. Instead they appeared to form the very matrix of space—I saw the universe laid bare as a limitless void throughout which patterns of energy and light danced, forming the very connections that allow physical space to exist.

From beneath my plane of vision rose a platform of indescribable light and beauty. As it rose it shifted slightly in orientation, such that I was able to view its upper surface. From out of the infinitely tangled pattern of light human forms began to emerge. The platform became covered by hundreds of monks wearing pagan robes, and chanting Buddhist mantras. The intensity of their chant washed over me and my senses became suffused with a powerful synesthesia that transcended any previous appreciation of sound.

The platform continued to approach until it obscured my vision of the surrounding void, and began to zoom in on the lowered head of one of the chanting monks. Without warning they raised their hooded, faceless heads in unison, exposing a pit of perfect blackness.

My vision became enveloped by the edges of one monk’s hood, and the perfect blackness within. The hood then peeled back revealing the grotesque face of the Maya god Quetzalcoatl—the feathered serpent. The platform then receded revealing that all of the monks had transmogrified into various members of the Maya pantheon. Their forms became difficult to focus upon as they burst with such radiant colours, with every part of their bodies in constant motion.

The chanting became more frenetic and punctuated by sharp noises as three dimensional space collapsed into a monochrome two dimensional surface. The gods’ faces froze and morphed into stone inscriptions on the front of a giant vertical stellae. As the platform receded again, 3-D space was restored and a colossal step pyramid became visible, towering above the stellae, and surrounded by a teeming green jungle. The platform soon disappeared beneath the line of my vision and my awareness of physical form gradually returned.

I opened my eyes to find myself lying on the floor in the living room of my house. Looking around I saw that J was still asleep on the couch (he’d begun snoring) but the others were all gone. I looked at the clock and realised that several hours had passed. Raising myself off the floor I walked outside to find K, a visiting friend of J’s, sitting by the door smoking a cigarette.

Feeling somewhat rattled by the experience I’d just had, I sat down and lit a cigarette to calm my nerves. My thoughts began to wander and before I knew it they had begun spiralling into a very negative mindset. For the next two hours I experienced a uniquely detached personal hell.

I saw myself with a sense of extreme clarity, which cut through my sense of ego and dissected my personality in a fearful way. All of my problems become magnified and a duality of hopelessness and resignation took hold. I saw myself as a twisted degenerate monster, and yet I felt no remorse or contrition for the actions that had made me such.

I tried to think of joyous places, people and moments from my past, but the very thought of happy times only drove my depression and my yearning deeper. I attempted to verbalise these thoughts in an effort to externalise them, but my depressed ranting was repeatedly frustrated by an inability to convey thoughts into spoken words. My mouth would seize up in mid-sentence and render me unable to finish what I was saying.

I retreated into my thoughts and in time was able to sleep.

When I woke the next day I felt traumatised by the intensity of my experience. Unable to integrate the amazing highs and lows of my trip I turned to pot to shut off my confused thoughts and emotions.

I have only the most marginal recollection of the two weeks that followed as I devoted almost every waking moment to being stoned—smoking as many as 40 cones per day. After a week I went out to a party where I took 5 mushie caps, while drunk and stoned, but didn’t experience any effect. Two pills of ecstasy later and my body seemed to physically rebel against the very possibility of being happy and I was racked by wave after wave of violent nausea.

The following weekend I visited my father at his beach-side home, and spent a couple of hours talking about my decent into depression. That night we took mushrooms together as I resolved to make sweeping changes in my life.

The experience was quite positive, but was an odd one to share with my father. It did not provide the closeness between us that I had hoped for, but it nonetheless strengthened my resolve to make the changes I saw as necessary. Before psychedelic drugs became illegal one of the most promising therapeutic uses for psilocybin was in the treatment of substance abuse. There is something about the psychedelic experience that allows sufficient catharsis and strengthened psychological commitment to make positive life changes.

On the following Monday I give up cigarettes, pot, pills, mushrooms and all other illicit drugs with relative ease. Three days later I got a job, for the first time in over a year, and started the slow process of rebuilding my life.

Despite the horror of the latter part of my experience that night I still believe the philosopher Alan Watts when he said “…as threats to mental health they [psychedelic drugs] can hardly match the daily drivel assailing our thoughts through radio, television and newspapers.”