Ego rebirth

Introduction

Trip Report — Sun. March 15, 2020 Preparation: Lemon tek (letting the mushrooms sit in lemon juice to convert the psilocybin into psilocin. Basically it anticipates the metabolization process that would normally happen through stomach acids during digestion), then made a tea with Psilocybe Cubensis (7 medium-sized mushrooms, didn’t have a scale to weigh them). Estimated equivalent: 3–4g dried Introduction: Yesterday I had the most intense experience of my life, whether in terms of visual/mental stimulation or pleasure/suffering. I experienced states of pure ecstasy, had 2 ego dissolutions (ego deaths), and went through repeated births, almost like I was constantly being reborn. I was experiencing emotional paradoxes, feeling joy and sadness at the same time. I could be smiling and laughing uncontrollably while simultaneously thinking about sad things. I also had some pretty deep introspection that followed directly from the intentions I had set for myself a month or two ago. Intentions are really important because once the rocket takes off, the only thing still connecting you to “yourself” and your ordinary paradigm is your intentions. Whether you’re experiencing ecstasy or absolute horror, whether you’re fighting your demons or transcending them and enjoying it, your anchor is your intentions. At one point during the trip I kept repeating “Surrender” and “You’re safe” to myself because the stimulation was becoming so intense that I was starting to lose contact with the outside world. It’s the first time this has ever happened to me, but thankfully I had already done 6 or 7 medium-intensity trips before this. If a trip this intense had been my first one, I’m 99% sure I would’ve ended up in the hospital. Reading about this stuff beforehand, set and setting, being willing to “surrender,” not fighting the substance, letting it take you wherever it wants to take you and show you whatever it wants to show you — all of that is really important. The experience brings you back to this primitive state where all you can do is be humble in front of the scale and complexity of things, the world, the mind, etc. I also think it’s important not to take mushrooms purely recreationally because during the difficult part of the experience (after the 2 ego deaths), around 4 hours after ingestion, I entered a state of INTENSE confusion. Time made absolutely NO sense anymore. I got stuck in a time loop. At one point I even felt like time itself was flowing backwards, and I was obsessively checking the clock on my phone every minute just to reassure myself that I hadn’t gone insane. I know that fear of “going crazy” wasn’t really justified because I already have some experience with drugs and if I was going to lose my mind I probably would’ve done it a long time ago + it’s apparently a fear that a lot of people experience, even very experienced people. You just need enough lucidity left to tell yourself that everything you’re experiencing is the result of the interaction between psilocybin/psilocin and your brain. I’m not saying that makes the confusion and panic disappear, but at least it can give you a slightly stronger feeling of control. Trip report with approximate timestamps:

Onset

6:30 PM

First glass of the tea.

6:50 PM

Second glass (second infusion using the same mushrooms to make sure I extracted as much of the active compounds as possible).

7:00 PM

Joint (didn’t finish it).

8:00 PM

I started watching music videos on YouTube during the come-up because I was starting to think the mushrooms weren’t going to hit that hard and I was disappointed. I listened to some Tame Impala, then French 79, and during one of the videos I started getting slight visual hallucinations. I could see the patterns on the wallpaper in one of the scenes moving and rippling, and I was wondering whether the video was really that trippy or whether I was the one being launched into space.

8:20 PM

More vivid visual hallucinations started. Colors and patterns on the walls. Different color tints covering reality almost like filters. Slight distortions of shapes and faces. Physically I felt kind of heavy. After around 20 minutes I thought, “Okay, let’s move on to the therapeutic part of the trip,” so I turned the lights off, put my pajamas on and got really comfortable in bed.

Peak

~8:40 PM

I started thinking about different things related to my intentions: my relationship with my family, my place within my social circle/society/the world/the universe, my desire to become more connected to other people and more empathetic, etc. I entered this kind of introspective process that felt almost like an internal dialogue. At one point I asked myself, “But what even is consciousness?” and started laughing because the question felt both completely absurd and extremely relevant at the same time.

~9:00 PM

Ego death #1.

~9:10 PM

With the music playing, I could see 3D patterns moving through the darkness above me like some kind of living ceiling. The further I went, the more insanely pleasurable the music became. I was listening to Temples, MOSSY, Tame Impala, the new Tom Misch and Yussef Dayes album (which absolutely sent me to the moon), Unknown Mortal Orchestra, etc. Basically the most psychedelic music possible. At one point it became so pleasurable that I literally thought, “Nobody deserves to experience something this good.” Imagine having a continuous orgasm while experiencing closed-eye hallucinations, while at the same time every thought/reflection that crosses your mind somehow “materializes.” It’s incredibly difficult to explain with normal human vocabulary, but basically it felt like some kind of Nirvana, especially after the 2 ego deaths I experienced. To try to describe the ego death a little: I was contemplating the concept of ego and individuality and trying, unsuccessfully, to understand it. Right now, if I think the word “ego,” I immediately associate it with something. Yesterday it was more like the mushrooms had brought me back to a primitive stage, before nature gives you an ego. Like a baby that’s only a few weeks old, or some “primitive” form of life like an insect or an earthworm. I started questioning the importance of pleasure and suffering. We like to think of ourselves as these incredibly advanced organisms, but in the end we’re still governed by pleasure and pain. Actually, I’d say that’s probably the only real motivation human beings have: maximize pleasure and minimize suffering, as much as possible. Our limbic system makes us primates, and I think the next stage of evolution would be reaching a point where our actions are no longer motivated by pleasure or pain. But right now that’s basically inconceivable because we perceive the world through the prism of our individuality and our desires.

Offset

10:00 PM

Feeling of loneliness amplified by melancholic music.

10:36 PM

Strong desire to move, to make use of the physical body in order to get pleasant sensory feedback / soothing stimulation.

After 10:40 PM

Intense confusion. Time loops. Extremely strong desire to become sober again. Desire to regain a sense of individuality. Contemplating insanity.

12:56 AM

Residual visual effects.

Conclusion / Aftermath

Basically, those were by far the most intense 6 hours of my entire life, and I’m almost tempted to say it was the most beautiful experience of my life despite the bad trip around the 4–5 hour mark. I actually hate the term “bad trip.” I prefer calling it a “difficult experience” because in the end, looking back at it, you can learn a lot from it. I like making the analogy with parental punishment. When a parent punishes their child, behind the punishment there’s love and a desire to help the child develop in a healthy way. And again that brings me back to this idea of the limbic system making us primitive beings governed by pleasure and suffering. Strangely enough, out of my 7 or 8 trips, I’ve had 4 medium-intensity ones, and every single time there was a difficult (“bad trip”) part either at the beginning or the end. I guess that’s just something I have to deal with. I experienced something so insanely orgasmic around the 4-hour mark that I honestly just accepted the bad trip afterwards as a way of balancing things out. I told myself that nature balances itself out and that I shouldn’t try to fight anything. Post-trip (after 9 hours of sleep, breakfast, etc.): I feel peaceful and happy to be completely sane mentally and physically + back on Earth and comfortably wrapped up in my ego again. At one intense point during the trip I even remember telling the mushrooms: “You can take me wherever you want, as long as you bring me back afterwards.” We’re always trying to escape through distractions, psychoactive substances, religion, etc., but in the end one of the most priceless things we have is our ego. Without the ego there is no experience. After this trip, my fascination with psychedelics is only going to grow, and so is my respect for them. Random stuff: - At one point I was thinking about a shaman I had seen in a YouTube video talking about psychedelics in broken English, repeating, “this is medicine, this is medicine,” and I completely understood what he meant by that. - At one point when I was lying in the dark, the hallucinations — abstract figures constantly moving, intertwining, merging into each other, etc. — appeared to have some kind of consciousness of their own. I understood what people mean when they talk about the “spirit” of a plant or the “spirit of nature.” - I thought about religion and how religions were created, and it suddenly seemed obvious to me that the consumption of psychoactive/psychedelic substances probably has something to do with the development of different religious traditions. I already knew about that idea on a rational level from things I had read, but this time I could actually feel it deep inside me. During a psychedelic experience that intense, combined with a partial and primitive understanding of reality (like people would’ve had around the time early religions and cults were being formed), it’s very easy to have what feels like a mystical experience and then try to make sense of it by introducing some transcendent entity into the equation. I almost started questioning my agnosticism. - At one point I was thinking about people living in extreme conditions and it helped me put my own situation into perspective. The compassion I felt towards them helped me get through the bad part because it forced me to feel grateful for what I have, etc. - I don’t think I’m going to take mushrooms again for quite a while. By the end of the trip I felt like I had traveled around the world several times. It’s incredibly stimulating and enriching, but it’s also exhausting, and personally I don’t think you can afford to do something like this every two weeks. Obviously, respect to the people who do.