drugs
Clear, and persistent visions. This is the best way I can describe the feeling of taking a mild hallucinogenic. Aleksander and I decided that for my birthday, he and I would go to Golden Gate park and take some mushrooms, something I had never done before, and Aleks had done once, in Indonesia.
We had a wonderful plan worked out, It was warm, sunny, and school was over with; we couldn’t have asked for better circumstances. The plan was, take the mushrooms, go get on the bus, and go into the park, by the time the mushrooms kicked in we would be sitting in the sun, laying in the grass.
I was told to boil them in water with three tea bags. I didn’t have tea so Aleks and I went to the store to buy some. We agreed that lemon spice tea would be best.
This particular fungus is really, very ugly. The effects of the mushroom are due to its poisonous nature. Looking at them your body has an instinctual reaction to their shape and color; the mushrooms say, “Don’t eat me little animal”.
So, boil, boil, boil. Both of us are nervous, and worry that I’m not preparing them correctly, so we get the scissors, and cut the mushrooms into tiny pieces, while they boil. The smell of the lemon spice tea it very strong, and we decide that that is a good thing, as the “shrooms” are supposed to taste like ass.
Three thirty rolls around, and we decide we need to start now, because the effects are supposed to last four to six hours. We fill my French press with hot tea, and mushrooms. The water has turned an opaque brown, not a scary brown, but a light caramel, not unlike coffee and a dash of cream. Two glasses are poured, and we cheers, then hesitantly raise our glasses to our mouths. When you are expecting one taste and you get another, it can be shocking, a bad example is when I was eight or so, in the Bahamas, my mom was making drinks for everyone, the drinks were cold and yellow, I thought they were lemonade, they were not. Anyway, back to my story, I was expecting a foul witches brew, and what I got was actually quite pleasant. Lemony and earthy, we both drank our tea with gusto. Halfway through, we became worried, it shouldn’t taste good, we thought, maybe we did something wrong. Maybe we did, maybe we didn’t, but we decided then and there to eat the boiled mushrooms as well. Aleks went first, and he actually chewed them! I couldn’t bear the thought, so I did my best to swallow the pieces like pills.
We were off, out into the world, analyzing our bodies every second, fixated on the thought of “Do I feel anything?” We are on our first block towards the bus, when Aleks says “Shit! My inhaler!” Okay, so now we have to walk four blocks uphill to his place, get the inhaler, and then go down eight blocks to catch the bus to the park. We make the bad decision to walk through the Tenderloin, the worst neighborhood in San Francisco. I haven’t begun to hallucinate yet, but I feel…off. I’ve broken the cardinal rule of hallucinogens: take them when you’re someplace safe, and comfortable. We walk past crack heads, drug dealers, and homeless crazy people. Baaaaaaadddd juju. As an aside, Aleks walked right into a large plume of crack smoke by accident, something he was very unhappy about.
We finally make it to the bus, and we talk, still not feeling the full extent of the drug, and I mention Aleks’ trip to Norway, for his brothers wedding (which he is leaving for the next morning). I suddenly see a look of surprise cross his face, and then a panic sweeps over him, “My I-20! Fuck!” turns out that he needs to pick up his forms for getting back into the country. He needs to pick these forms up from the school registration office across town (wrong way), and he needs to pick them up now.
So now we’re on a bus, heading east (wrong way), and we are both starting to feel it. Getting off that bus was a salvation, even if we were still in the middle of the city with loud cars and thousands of people, it was nice to be off the bus. We walk into the school, and hop in an elevator. “Four please.” I say to the girl by the numbers. She hits four, the doors close, and we go down. We are making a stop at the basement first apparently, a small turn of events that bothered Aleks and I more than just a little. Then we go up to two, the elevator stops, the doors open and the girl walks out. The doors close, and we go down. What!? This is very upsetting in our current state. We go back to one, the doors open, and we franticly push four, and door close.
We make it up to four (alive) and we both quite enjoy the muffled silence of a carpeted hallway. The art on the walls is also quite engaging (mind you, we still are not hallucinating). As I wait in the waiting room, as one is wont to do, the ticking of the four clocks (aligned to different time zones) has me on edge. I am ready to go, and apparently so is Aleks. We are now on our way to Haight and Asbury (cliché) so that Aleks can buy me a tee shirt for my birthday (Ha! Noble goal sir, but you’ll never make it!). We are now traversing via taxicab, and with the passing of every minute, the effect strengthens. We hop out of the cab, and again I am met with the sensation of being released from a box. As we walk we quickly realize that the Haight on a busy day, is just a little too intense for us. We go into the tee shirt shop, and look for sunglasses (Aleks has them, and I decide I need a pair) but no luck, and we are outta there. We decide that the best course of action is to make a B line to the park, and to not stop for anything or anyone.
Ahhh the park! We’ve made it. Now here is where the clichés reach epic proportions. The entrance to the park is a tunnel, outfitted with stalagmites to look like a cave. At the entrance to this cave there is a man dressed all in black, with a grim reaper hood, playing a black electric guitar. Wait, it gets better! We enter the cave, and there are tiny little grackles twittering around. Aleks asks “What the fuck!? Are there bats in here?” We both are laughing so hard we are crying. We exit the cave, and it opens into a large grass field. The sun is warm on our faces, and we try to contain our laughter, so that we can appreciate its majesty. Then to top off our funny little trip to the world of hallucinogenic clichés, there are hippies, playing the drums and doing…wait for it… magic! Swear to god, there is a bunch of hippies doing goddamn magic tricks in the park. Levitating wands, balls, and sticks dominate my attention.
The only time I really “trip” is when I look up at the sky for extended periods. The clouds form and swirl in unique and amazing ways. No I didn’t see “things” I just was able to focus on the beauty that was already there.
The best way I can describe being on mushrooms is this: You are told to look at something, a leaf for example. Something you’ve seen almost every day since you were born. Now try your best to remember when you were six, or seven, and you went into the woods in the middle of summer when the trees were in full bloom, and the leaves couldn’t be greener. You look around with awe and wonder, the dirt under your feet is something worth exploring, and each leaf, you notice, has a unique shape and texture. Each item in that forest is beautiful and new unto itself. You had no thoughts of money, or work. Stress is a word you don’t know. The only thing that is important to you now is the appreciation of the world around you. On mushrooms, you realize that a leaf isn’t just a leaf, it is rare, and unusual, a treasure. Each tree is gilded in green gold, and this treasure, hidden in plain sight is now visible to you, as it was when you were young. And just so you know, looking back I don’t think “Man I can’t believe that I thought that leaf was special when I was on drugs” I think, “ I can’t believe I’ve been ignoring the beauty of things for so long”
Okay, back to Aleks and I. We took a walk into the more secluded areas of the park, then climbed a hill off the path, and found a large tree with giant, low hanging branches, overlooking the HIV memorial. We sat in the tree, and I did my best to begin writing this post in my head. I didn’t want to lose the sensation. We didn’t talk a lot, we just sat and enjoyed our journey in our own way. It was starting to get dark, so we decided to head home. We were both REALLY hungry, and we needed some food. We both thought that we were done tripping, until we got into the cab, and the radio was tuned to the LONGEST advertisement about preventing teen suicide. It was so the opposite of what we wanted to hear that we just started laughing uncontrollably. We laughed all the way back to my place. When the cab stopped Aleks gave him the money, and before the, prior to this, silent, cabbie would give us the change he told this long winded story about how the other day he picked up two people who looked like the elderly couple from Rosemary’s Baby. Theatre people, he called them. I think he did this to try to freak us out.
We sat in my apartment, waiting for the pizza I ordered, and honestly, we got a little depressed. Gone was the majesty of the park, with its bright sun, and green leaves. Now we were back, in my (mildly) dirty, dark apartment, playing video games, and listening to music. We just enough left in our system that the pizza took 42 years to arrive. As soon as we got some food, and I turned on all the lights, and we watched Seinfeld, our little grey cloud cleared right up.
Aleks went home soon after that, and began to pack for his flight.
Overall, I would say that taking psilocybin mushrooms was one of the more enjoyable drug experiences I’ve had (not that I’ve had many (mom)) because I didn’t feel like the joy I felt exploring the park and looking at flowers, and leaves was artificially created by the drug. The drug only points things out for you to look at, and reminds you that things are beautiful, that life is beautiful.
-end-
