I did shrooms (i.e. magic mushrooms) for the first time last month! Folks were very curious about it on Twitter and Instagram, so I thought I’d put together this little FAQ about my experience…
Q. Why did you do it?
A. I’ve been vaguely curious about psychedelics for a long time, but lots of other drugs in that category have tons of bad potential side effects or are much harder to get your hands on, so shrooms is the one that mostly caught my interest. I also know lots of people who’ve tried this drug, so I was able to amass a wide array of shrooms advice and stories from people I trust, making me feel even more curious about giving ’em a shot.
Q. How did you prepare for the experience?
A. First, I talked to a lot of shrooms-savvy friends about my various fears and apprehensions; their wisdom calmed me down a lot. I did a little research, but not much, because I didn’t want to cloud my experience with preconceptions. I discussed with my friend Brent the logistics of him being my “trip-sitter” (more on that in the next question).
As far as more immediate, right-before-the-trip preparation, I laid out a notebook and pen next to me incase I had any thoughts or ideas worth documenting, placed a can of seltzer next to where I’d be sitting (hydration is important!), and set up a weird monkey documentary I felt like watching.
Q. Did you have a “trip-sitter”?
A. Yes! A long time ago, my friend (and Question Box cohost) Brent offered to take on this role for me if I ever decided to try shrooms, and I was delighted that we managed to line up our schedules and make it happen. I took a bus from New York (where I was staying with my partner) to Philadelphia (where Brent lives), and stayed with him for most of the weekend so we’d have plenty of time for prep and comedown.
Brent has done shrooms a handful of times and is very thoughtful about them, plus we’ve been friends for nearly 5 years so I’m comfortable being weird around him and I trust him deeply. He did a minor dose of shrooms at the same time as me, because he wanted to “be on my level” somewhat while remaining lucid enough to take care of me as needed, and he was truly the perfect companion for this experience. He procured water and snacks for me when I requested them, loaded up videos and songs I asked for, put up with my antics, and pushed me further in the esoteric directions that my various “galaxy brain” thoughts pointed me toward. I really lucked out!
Q. Were you scared/nervous?
A. A little – but I knew I would almost certainly be safe because I was in a safe location with a safe person. Mostly I was afraid the drug would give me severe anxiety or even a panic attack – including possibly from intense dizziness, which sometimes afflicts me when I get too high on weed – but the negative effects of the drug were pretty minimal, actually. I found I was able to “steer” myself away from troubling thoughts and sensations by just moving my focus to something more positive, like listening to songs I like, watching funny videos, and telling stories.
Q. How did you consume the drug (and how much did you consume)?
A. The dose Brent advised for me was 2 grams, which (from what I understand, having looked into it further after the fact) is on the lower end of a medium-sized dose. I think this was the right call; we wanted it to be big enough that I would definitely feel it, but not so big as to be terrifying to li’l ol’ anxious me.
Several of my psychedelic-savvy friends told me that eating the mushrooms can upset your stomach – which, obviously, isn’t great when you’re in a state of intoxication that makes everything feel more vivid – so I imbibed mine in a tea. Brent and I went scavenging in a dollar store for a mesh tea infuser, and then he weighed out 2 grams on a kitchen scale and ground it up in what appeared to be a weed grinder. He then put that in the infuser and steeped it for 12+ minutes in boiling water along with 2 decaf orange tea bags and some lemon juice and honey. I thought it would taste gross but it was actually delicious and easy to drink.
Q. What are some do’s and don’ts that you learned?
A. I’m no expert, but I know that mindset and setting have a big effect on what kind of trip you’ll have (more on that in the next question). It would be a bad idea to take shrooms while in a less-than-good mood, or in a location that makes you feel uncomfortable or anxious. It helped that I knew Brent would’ve been more than willing to call the whole thing off if my mental state had felt off-kilter, but luckily it didn’t.
Brent also told me that singing helps a lot if you ever feel yourself starting to go off the rails during a trip. I found this to be very true: singing (or even, in some cases, playing the piano) brought me back to a calm, happy place, time and time again. I also drank water pretty continuously throughout my trip and adopted the mantra “Breathe and water! Breathe and water!” which helped immensely when I started to feel a bit panicky or dizzy.
Q. What was your mindset going in, and how did that affect your experience?
A. It was a chill Saturday. Brent and I had just gone for brunch with some pals, and then walked around in the wintry sunshine for a bit. I was feeling happy and relaxed. I wouldn’t recommend tripping when that’s not the case!
Q. What did it feel like?
A. The main thing I noticed, feelings-wise, was a vast heightening of emotion. I’m already an extremely emotional person so this was a bit disorienting and overwhelming at times. At the peak of the trip, I found myself oscillating wildly back and forth between laughing hysterically and weeping inconsolably. Sometimes I would have a thought about something I wanted to say and be too overcome with emotion about it to even get the words out.
Speaking of words: I also got very talkative. Brent and I found this highly amusing because, in our friendship, normally he is the one who rambles on and on while I listen (and I say that in the most affectionate way possible)! It felt like my thoughts were coming much, much faster than they normally do, to the point that I would often interrupt myself several times a sentence to go on some tangent that felt very important at the time. I told stories, made jokes and puns, sang lines from musical theatre songs that our conversation reminded me of, and just generally said aloud every thought that popped into my head. As someone who is shy and quiet in many social situations, this felt quite odd!
After a certain point in the trip, I also developed a strong compulsion to dance or march around almost constantly – so I did, often while continuing to carry on a conversation with Brent about completely unrelated stuff. Shout-out to him for remaining completely cool and calm while I did ballet in his living room.
One more observation worth noting: my chronic pain, which has otherwise been quite prominent lately, totally vanished for the duration of my trip. I didn’t notice it or think about it at all, not even once. Wild.
Q. How did it change your perceptions of things around you?
A. So, the thing that surprised me most about shrooms was that it didn’t make me less aware of what was going on around me, like weed and booze often can – it made me more aware of everything. I “got” every joke or reference I would normally get while sober, I could perceive with normal or slightly heightened acuity the emotional states of the people I was talking to (just Brent and, via text, my partner Matt), and I was more than able to follow along with songs/videos/movies/conversations.
I definitely noticed some weird visual effects, but they weren’t really at the level of what one might call hallucinations or visual distortions. For example: at one point I thought I saw a cat running around under Brent’s chair in my peripheral vision; a few seconds later, I thought that the rumpled cardigan lying next to me on the bed looked like a live rat about to attack me (but I was also conscious that it was still a cardigan and I was actually safe), and once I thought it looked like Brent’s shirt was attached to a bike propped against a wall several feet behind him. I was very aware at all times that any distortions in my perception were due to the drug and weren’t real, which I gather isn’t always the case when you’re on shrooms.
Q. How similar are shrooms to other drugs you’ve tried?
A. The only thing I can really compare it to – based on this one experience – is that it was like being on a really strong weed strain and a big dose of caffeine simultaneously. I have never personally taken a combination like that, but it sounds about right!
The mental agility was the main thing that set shrooms apart from other drugs for me. On weed and booze, I often feel that my thoughts and reactions are slowed down or muffled; not so with shrooms.
Q. Did you experience any epiphanies?
A. Not really. A few times, I observed that I was feeling like a different kind of person (either like I’d momentarily taken on the attributes of a specific friend, or like I was accessing “bro-y” or graceful or juvenile parts of my personality) and Brent prompted me to reflect on what that meant about my own identity – its pieces, its composition, its potential artifice – but I felt hesitant to wade into such upsettingly philosophical waters. Maybe next time.
My chattiness and impulses toward dancing and marching made me wonder if it might be good for me to incorporate more of those behaviors into my everyday life, but I’m still pondering what that might look like for me.
Q. What was your favorite part of the experience?
A. Making puns and terrible musical theatre jokes with Brent was the most fun part of the trip for me. My brain felt really sharp and quick, so I was even more inclined toward the type of silly wordplay we get into whenever we’re together – and it was fun seeing him crack up so hard at my absurd antics.
Q. What was your least favorite part of the experience?
A. Toward the beginning of the trip, when the effects were only just starting to set in, I got a weird, heavy, tingly feeling all over my body, kind of like when your leg falls asleep, but everywhere. It was accompanied by slight dizziness and anxiety. I got through it by continually reminding myself to breathe and drink water, and things got better from there.
Q. How long did the effects last?
A. I started to feel “normal-ish” after about 4 hours, but it took another 3-4 hours after that for me to return to total normality. In that “still slightly high” period, I was still inclined to constant joking, giggling, and physical activity, but it felt more like something I had control over.
Q. Can you really do shrooms safely if you have mental illness(es)?
A. Numerous people have asked me this and I don’t think I’m ever going to be a better advisor on this topic than your doctor/therapist. I don’t know much about the mechanisms of shrooms’ potential negative effects (psychosis, panic, etc.) – sorry!
I was fortunate that – as I described above – I was in good spirits at the time of my trip, and had built a morning to precede it that was calm and cheerful. My mental and physical health issues weren’t especially flaring up at the time and I was totally fine. I’ve heard some other depressed, drug-knowledgeable people say that they wouldn’t take shrooms if they were having an active depressive episode, and I think that’s good advice – this drug will tend to amplify whatever’s already going on for you emotionally.
Q. How else did you keep yourself safe during your trip?
A. I gave Brent the phone number of my partner Matt, and vice versa, so that they could stay in touch if anything bad happened to me. (These are two of the people I trust most in the world.) Multiple other people also knew where I was and what I was doing. I drank water continuously all day. Crucially, I put my phone into a mode that would prevent me from (easily) accessing social media sites and my email, because – knowing how I typically behave when I’m intoxicated – I figured I might have the impulse to write some silly stuff online, and I wanted to keep that from happening if possible!
Q. Is there anything you would do differently if you could do it over again?
A. The literal only thing I can think of: I was keeping notes in a notebook, and I wish I had been typing them instead. My thoughts and ideas were coming very fast, and there’s just no way I could record them all longhand. Creative inspiration is one of the main reasons I’m interested in drugs in general, but they only help with that if you’re able to record your ideas as they come!
At one point, Brent offered to leave me alone for a while, because (according to him, and I’m paraphrasing here) some of your best and deepest insights can come when you have little to no external stimulus to distract you from your own inner world. I was ultimately too scared and asked him to stay with me instead, because the thought of him leaving made me feel panicky in a way that’s hard to describe – like without him, I would get sucked into a whirlpool or fall off a cliff into my own psyche. I would imagine that I will spend some time alone with my thoughts the next time I trip, though, if just to see what that’s like.
Q. Could you/would you/did you have sex on shrooms?
A. In this case, I did not, because me and Brent are not that type of friend!
Leading up to my trip, I asked many people for their shroom-sex thoughts and experiences – including Ashley Manta, the eminent sex-and-drugs expert. One pal of mine (the boy formerly known as my “rope bondage beau,” who I’m still friends with) told me that he’s had sex on shrooms and it was amazing, but I think everybody else said some version of, “You won’t even be thinking about sex!” or “You won’t be able to have sex!”
When I took stock of the trip in the days afterward, one thing that stuck out to me was that – as far as I can remember – I literally did not think about sex one time all day… which, as you can imagine, is quite unusual for someone like me! I am definitely interested in trying sex or masturbation on shrooms, because I think it would be fascinating and strange, but I think I would have to set things up beforehand (lube, toys, condoms, etc.) so that I would even remember to attempt sex. It felt like there was so much more pressing stuff to do and say and think about!
Q. Were there any lingering effects?
A. I had a sort of hangover-esque feeling for a few hours, plus some pronounced fatigue/sleepiness that I don’t normally get from hangovers – but other than that, not really.
Q. Would you do it again?
A. Yes! I semi-accidentally acquired way more of the drug than I actually needed, so I have enough left for probably 2-4 more trips. I am very curious about tripping alone, as well as tripping when I’m with my (ideally sober) partner – I think they would find my giggliness and sensitivity amusing in that state, being a sadistic daddy dom and all!
Have you ever tried shrooms? What was your experience?
