My First Real Dance With Psilocybin

I’ve dabbled with mushrooms for about a year now, MDMA a couple of times, have had some beautiful experiences. But nothing compares to the experience I had a couple of weeks ago.

This experience was something that I will never forget. And I believe that everyone should experience the intense and beautiful feeling of magic mushrooms. I also highly suggest that you test your mushrooms using an Ehrlich test kit before ingesting them just to make sure they are pure.

A friend and I decided to take some mushrooms I had lying around, seeing how it was a lazy day at the beginning of the semester with no absolute obligations. I took about 4 grams (my highest yet), and he took maybe 2.5 (his second time, I think). 

The early stages of this trip sort of fade from my memory, but I remember us having a good time relaxing, with the effects starting to permeate our sober minds. The room was beginning to breathe, and I began to feel a little off. I’ve started to realize that my surroundings have become a part of me in shrooms. When I take a deep breath, they breathe with me. Colors intensify, materials expand and become more intense. The visuals are impressive, and I’m immensely enjoying the calm natural feeling of the mushroom.

After some time, we realize that there is a light snowfall outside. We decide to go out and have a snowball fight. As expected, it was terrific, and simply enjoying such a youthful experience was comforting. However, after we headed back inside, the effects had somewhat worn off because of the exercise. We decided then to eat the remainder of the mushrooms. I ate another 3, and my friend had another 2.5, I believe.

After ingesting a quite revolting mix of mushroom powder and yogurt, I sat back to relax and took it all in. My mate was not feeling anything still, but things were beginning to get weird for me. I stared at a poster for about 15 minutes, watching it melt off the wall. I was absolutely loving this and was to some degree focussing on it with my mind as to not lose the effects.

Now, This is Where Things Start to Get Really Crazy

I go downstairs to my room to lie on my bed, as the trip is slightly overwhelming. However, I’m not freaking out as I’m eager to explore the depths of my mind. As I’m staring off into the distance, focusing on who knows what and pondering every nook and cranny of the universe, something inexplicable happens. My vision switches like a trigger, and I find myself not looking through my eyes anymore. Instead, I’m seeing something connected to what I’m feeling. 

It seems as though I observe the fabric of the universe. 

To this day, I do not know what happened, but let me tell you, it was absolutely mind-blowing. I can equate to this because my third eye is opened. 

After this, I had to lay down, and for the next “what-felt-like-eternity,” was in a different universe. It’s hard for me to remember, but a few things stand out.

I felt the presence of “god, universal love, the divine,” whatever you like to call it. 

It was there, and I was no longer thinking with my mind. Instead, I was being told the truths of the world as if someone was reading it off a script. I knew them to be accurate, with 110% of my soul. I was told to follow my heart with everything I do and that I do not need judgment, that it is a plague. 

I then realized with absolute certainty that I was in the spirit world and that this world is actually a spirit world. While examining the spirits, I saw and read them, including my own. I seemed to understand the nature of souls in the same way the universe’s methods were explained to me earlier; I just knew.

At one point, I saw an entity that looked very similar to an extraterrestrial. The entity was surrounded by energy; it was as though it had always been there, hiding in this extra dimension. I do not know whether this has significance. I did not see this with as much “truth” as I did with everything else. Apart from me, it may have just been my conscious mind just creating images. 

Pure Bliss

The last thing that happened to me was the most personal, and it was towards the end of the heavy tripping. My aunt passed away a couple of years ago, and she was like a second mother to me in my earlier years. I saw her clear as day, and I just knew it was her. I felt like I was in heaven with her, and it felt great to be there peacefully with her, just being. She told me how much she loved me, and I could just feel it with every bone in my body. 

I considered myself to be somewhat emotionally numb, draining myself in pot and alcohol at the time of her death. But the last year or so, I’m starting to revert to my old self more and more and to feel her love was just so amazing. 

I recognized it instantly, and it felt like I was at her house as a kid watching a movie on the couch with her. I knew I could not stay, and she knew that I knew. She told me that I have to wait to make this world better for everyone else. 

I knew that heaven was pure bliss, but I realized that although it existed, it doesn’t mean that the sadness on this earth doesn’t exist. I learned that we must use humor to bridge the gap between our world and the holy living.

At the end of this last experience, I looked up to my ceiling. I saw a group of heavenly beings reaching out their arms as if they were hanging on to me as I came back into this world. I put my hand out and grabbed their hand before they left. It was eerie at this point, as their hand felt as real as any humans but seemed to be entirely composed of energy.

Spiritually Intact

The past few weeks, I have been spiritually intact and have felt the presence of my aunt several times. I seem to be seeing energy fields a lot more. Although I know they will probably fade as time goes on, I understand that this is not all we see.

And that we are all incredibly interconnected.

I should also note that I am not a religious person in the traditional sense. I describe these events in terms of god and heaven because I am almost sure that’s what they must be. I am not, however, trying to persuade anyone into religious beliefs or quantify anything; they are simply my thoughts.

Australia lacks political willpower to adopt pill testing

Australian governments shy way from pill-testing, despite harm-reduction, being part of the three pillars of National Drug Safety. Evidence shows that through increased education of pill-testing to inaccessible drug users, it can become a useful tool for preventing direct and indirect harm reduction, according to the authors of the Medical Journal of Australia.

At a recent music festival, Dr. Jody Morgan and Professor Alison Jones, the Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute and from the University of Wollongong, surveyed to determine how drugs are used in comparison to the overall younger generations drug use. According to the survey, 73.4 percent of people at the festival used drugs, compared to 28.2 percent of the average youth population. Among the list of drugs, MDMA, or ecstasy, was reported to be used as high as 59.8 percent, compared to the overall use of 7 percent.

“Concerningly, the 2019 Global Drug Survey identified Australia as the country with the highest number of MDMA pills consumed on a single occasion (average, 2.0 pills v global average, 1.0 pills),” Morgan and Jones commented. “Supporting this, a survey of Australian music festival attendees found that almost half (48 percent) of 777 respondents taking ecstasy pills reported simultaneous consumption of two ecstasy pills.

“Evidence of the dangers associated with this behavior can be seen in the global statistics, with 2.3 percent of Australian users seeking medical attention following MDMA use compared with a global average of 1.0 percent,” said Jones and Morgan.

Because there’s no “gold standard,” the Australian government doesn’t have a system in place for pill-testing, according to Jones and Morgan. Different techniques, accuracies, qualitative and quantitative results, and how results are presented are all variables in pill-testing that factor into what makes an official policy.

Pill-checking models have two-models for classification:

Private Posting – Results of pill-testing are provided directly to the patron who submitted the pill; Face-to-face interaction alongside a health care provider is practiced, while the public becomes informed about the more severe drugs in circulation. The Loop has used this method in the United Kingdom, and trials by Groovin the Moo in the Australian Capital Territory during both 2018 and 2019.

Public Posting – Results of pill-tested are posted on the internet, each pill given rankings determining safety hazards, such as “good/bad” or “green/orange/red.” This method was used by DanceSafe in the United States, and by the Drugs Information and Monitoring System in Netherlands.

“Common arguments against pill-testing include: the testing technique is not accurate enough to identify all components; the techniques available onsite cannot provide a quantitative analysis required to prevent overdose; complaints from policymakers about lack of proven efficacy of harm reduction from pill-testing; an overall feeling that pill-testing condones drug use; and the fear that dealers will use pill-testing results to promote their brand,” Morgan and Jones said.

To both Jones and Morgan, all of the arguments can be addressed through using pill-testing as a single component rather than a larger harm reduction strategy.

“In any best practice system, there will never be a circumstance where health care providers tell patrons that their drug is safe to take,” said Jones and Morgan. “In fact, as Dr. David Caldicott, who was involved in Australia’s pill-testing trials in 2018 and 2019, has explained, the exact opposite is true, with all patrons informed at every step of the process that no amount of illicit drug consumption is safe.”

According to both Jones and Morgan, despite harm reduction being a focus for the Australian government, pill-testing isn’t being considered.