The Time Magic Mushrooms Let Me Know Who’s Boss

This is what happens when you don’t know the importance of set and setting.

TRIGGER WARNING: People who’ve had traumatic experiences with psychedelics may find this content distressing.

Circa 2003

I’m 16 and walking home one evening with a mate (well, he’s less a mate and more a part of my friendship group). Anyway, somehow the subject gets onto the fact he’s been growing magic mushrooms.

Of course, I eagerly jump at any chance to get high (especially in new and exciting ways). So when he offers to swap a few shrooms for some of the weed I have on me, I think, “Score!”.

(Oh, how gloriously naive I am. How little I know of the whims of the mushroom spirit. Well, you can bet your bottom dollar I’m about to find out.)

I practically run home, a bundle of fleshy, moist mushrooms in my school bag, my brain buzzing with anticipation.

The house is quiet enough. My mum mainly confines herself to her bed so I know I won’t be disturbed. It’s just me in my little boxroom with my newly acquired prize.

Having heard about mushroom tea, I decide to brew some. I stick The Fellowship of the Ring in my PS2, sit in my little egg chair, sip my bluish broth, and watch.

The tea tastes foul (as expected) but such things are of little concern to me. I want to get messed up! See trippy stuff, and feel euphoric!

After finishing the tea, I munch the rest of the shrooms and wait.

But then…something isn’t right.

It starts with a feeling — discomfort, nausea, unease.

The feeling grows, and grows, and grows.

I am beginning to realize that watching Lord of the Rings may have not been the best decision. I forget how dark it is. The sweeping shot into Mordor when Gollum is being tortured to ominous music — yes, this was definitely a bad choice.

The faint outlines of grotesque and what could only be described as evil faces begin to form on the glowing mountains of Mordor. They start to fill the entire screen. Now they are bleeding out into my room. I abruptly turn off the film.

But it’s too late.

The feeling I was experiencing before? I am now that feeling incarnate. Fear, nausea, discomfort all turned up to 11.

What before were faint outlines have now consumed my entire environment. My room is twisting, morphing, transmogrifying into interweaving faces made of eyes and teeth and flesh.

I close my eyes…but it’s worse. Far, far worse. It can only be described as a twisting, demonic tapestry. How is this coming from me? How have I trapped myself within a hell-realm?

What do you imagine hell looks like, feels like? Well, that’s where I am. It is hell-made flesh—and there is no escape.

Nothing I do grants respite from what I’ve done to myself. My perception of time is warped, almost as if what I am seeing, experiencing, what can only be described as evil, has also become time — a 4th-dimensional trip to the underworld.

I do not know how long this ordeal lasts, but eventually, to my intense relief, reality starts to creep back in. The monstrous faces become fainter, and I begin, once again, to experience more palatable feelings.

Then something indescribable happens.

With hell finally receding, I feel the presence of (for lack of a better word) “God”.

Indeed, the feeling is so intense, so beyond rational talk of drug-induced euphoria, that I am even compelled to say, “Oh my God...”

I can’t stress enough that at this moment, I feel the divine. I know it to be incontrovertibly true and understand its boundless nature.

After emerging from Hades, it feels unutterably amazing.

What did I learn?

Psychedelics are not to be taken lightly. They are certainly not a party drug and everyone will have different reactions to them. Just because you might be able to get wavey at a festival on acid, doesn’t mean someone else won’t have a potentially damaging experience. Case in point, for years after (usually when I meditated) I would see a faint imprint of the demonic faces from that fateful night.

I believe the universe gave me the equivalent of a slap on the wrist for my naive attempt to escape and get high; to treat the gift of psilocybin so carelessly. The result? The mushrooms truly did show me who’s boss. You may believe my communion with the divine was just a hallucination, but nobody can know the truth of my experience — only I can know that. I don’t wish to try and convert anyone, but there is a good reason the ancients called magic mushrooms the flesh of the gods. These mysterious fungi dragged me through hell to feel heaven, and I sure as hell don’t want to go through it all again! As Alan Watts says:

“If you get the message, hang up the phone.”

It would take many years and hard-earned lessons before I took the message to heart. But, eventually, it got to a point where I would never pick up the phone again.

Some final words

After decades of misunderstanding and demonization, psychedelics are finally receiving support as a viable means of dealing with a range of mental conditions, including PTSD. The practitioners who sit for people understand the cardinal rule I didn’t know at the age of 16:

SET

AND

SETTING

Your environment, intention, and state of mind when using hallucinogens are of the utmost importance. By writing this, I didn’t want to turn you off psychedelics. They can, among many other things, be a powerful means of healing, growth, and transcendence. My personal experience is a clear-cut case of someone who didn’t observe the importance of set and setting or have an experienced sitter to guide them. 17 years after this, I witnessed my partner experience a much more positive, life-changing trip.

Despite how terrible my first foray into psychedelics seems, I don’t believe there is such a thing as a “bad trip”. Ultimately, I’m supremely grateful for everything it taught me. Just remember, if you’re thinking of trying psychedelics, I urge you to do your research and treat them with the respect they deserve.

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