Fifth dive
The desire to explore never left, but life circumstances brought me to take a break from diving too deep for a while. Over the course of a few months I have experimented three more times with doses around 1g, two times while hiking, and once at a dance party (which I was happy to discover was attended by a good number of burners).
None of these experiences was insightful enough to justify writing about it. The last of them however left me curious to do mushrooms again at a concert or party, to see what it feels like to journey in a highly social environment.
The opportunity presented itself when I decided to travel to a big city a couple hours away and go to a rave party. I have decided to add a level of risk and thrill to the whole experience, and started chatting on Grindr with people from the city who might be interested in doing psychedelics and go to the party together. I have quickly found someone who seemed nice and trustworthy, but also proactive and wild enough to join the experiment.
Everything was settled: I drove a couple hours, checked-in at a cheap hotel located not too far from the party venue, and prepared to meet my brand new rave buddy, which I will call Tom. Tom and I decided to meet at a restaurant and grab a bite before heading to the party. I was hesitant to eat at all, since so far I always did mushrooms on an empty stomach, and it seemed to work well. This time however I decided to experiment on this respect too, and I had a medium light dinner (constituted mostly of vegetarian dim sum and spring rolls). I also used the dinner as an opportunity to get to know my new friend and to gauge how trustworthy, risk-prone, and dangerous he might be. It turned out he worked as a nurse and never tried mushrooms before, which I considered a good sign. I also discovered he was familiar with other drugs, e.g. weed and MDMA, and had a wild experience with DPH (diphenhydramine, the antihistamine sold as Benadryl), which at recreational doses can cause lucid-dream like states, full on delirium, hallucinations of insects crawling on surfaces, and of the infamous “hat-man”, a tall, slender figure wearing a wide-brimmed hat lurking over you while you rest in a confused and delusional state. Tom seemed a nice person, and I decided to go on with the plan.
After dinner we went back to my hotel room, and both of us took 2g of mushrooms. As usual, I ate the mushrooms with dark chocolate and pieces of raw ginger. We then headed towards the party venue, which was roughly 30 minutes away using public transport. I was expecting the effects of to start soon, as in the past I always felt warmth in the belly, shaky legs, and a bit of tension in the jaw as first physical signs that things were moving. While Tom and I were waiting for the effects, I spent some time asking him about his hopes from the experience, telling him roughly the timeline and what to expect in terms of progression of effects, and discussing ground rules. We agreed to inform each other if we weren’t feeling well, if we wanted some time alone, and if we wanted to leave early from the party. I realized he was a good communicator and I felt comfortable with him, as comfortable as one can feel with a new rave buddy at least.
Dance-floor dive
We got to the party venue, made our way to the dance floor, and at around the t+1:00 mark I still hadn’t noticed any physical effects. Tom told me he felt a bit of warmth in his belly, and I concluded that having a light dinner beforehand must mask the usual physical sensations quite a lot for me. The dance floor was very crowded, the music was expectedly loud, there were laser lights and screens with visuals and the senses were definitely overstimulated. For a good half hour we kept dancing, every now and then I checked whether staring at something any visuals appeared, but there were too many visual stimuli, lights changing too often, and I couldn’t notice any movement or patterns out of the ordinary. Around t+1:45 I asked Tom what he was feeling and he said he felt a little high but nothing more. We then decided to take a break and explore the quiet areas of the venue. It was only when we got to the back room and started engaging in conversation that we noticed the effects.
I invited Tom to sit and look around at the painting on the walls or even just at the tiles on the floors and decor on the ceiling. It was then that he started laughing, looked at me surprised and said there was a dragon head in the patterns on the floor. I was able to see some visuals too staring at surfaces for a while, but the quality of the visuals was much weaker than most experiences I had before. I wondered if it was due to eating food beforehand, being in a stimulus driven environment, or the batch of mushrooms having lost some potency after some months.
We spent more time resting and enjoying the psychedelic state together, every time we engaged in conversation we realized how thoughts were following uncommon paths and communication was funny: Tom told me each thought would start a chain of interesting and unpredictable associations, and that he couldn’t express what was going on in words but it was enjoyable and novel to him. He said it felt peaceful and safe, he wasn’t scared at all, it was a comfortable and pleasant state to be in.
We spent some more time sitting next to each other, talking, resting our heads on each other’s shoulder, then went back to the dance floor. We then spent a couple hours dancing in the crowd, smiling at each other and at other fellow dancers, who all looked friendly and nice. Dancing and occasionally meeting the eyes of strangers felt much less awkward than usual, and the music felt more engaging. I stopped focusing on my visual experience and instead closed my eyes and paid attention to hearing, touch, and emotions. Moving the body felt particularly good, and it felt even better when Tom and I started hugging and dancing close to each other.
This was the first time I’ve experienced physical touch on psychedelics and there is a certain added quality to it, both on the perception and on the action side. On the perception side, slow and gentle touch felt nice, and more desirable than strong body contact. On the action side, it felt more natural to explore whatever felt good, and I was less concerned than usual with how that would look from the outside. The image that came to mind is that more enacting the usual routine appropriate to the dance floor of a crowded electronic music party, Tom and I were cuddling with each other in the midst of the crowd. It felt cozy and sensual, more natural and less mechanic than any time I danced with someone without being on psychedelics. This was the time I had an interesting realization on the difference between sensual and sexual touch. In the middle of all the dancing on top of each other, hands started getting beneath clothes, and the touch that at first was gentle and affectionate became passionate and erotic. It was fun to explore each other’s bodies and the feeling of naked skin felt so much better than the one of clothes. But contrary to past times when something similar happened, going from sensual to sexual touch did not escalate into full blown libido. In a different situation this would have resulted in me dragging Tom to the men’s rooms to take care of carnal desired. This time it was more like the sexy cuddles you have with your partner when you’re too tired to have sex but too horny not to fool around before sleep. And it was delightful.
Aftermath
After the party ended we left from the venue and walked for a bit to get to the subway. I took this opportunity to ask Tom about his experience, and he said a couple of things that stood up. The first was that the experience was amazing, that it was fun and comfortable, and that despite we just met, he did feel we were connected in a way that he hardly ever experienced with a stranger before. The second was perfectly captured by him saying: “This is what I always wished weed and alcohol felt like!” And I couldn’t agree more. My general conclusion after this experience is that taking mushrooms at a dance party is a bit of a waste: there is nothing comparable to the level of insight, introspection, and meaning one can get by doing even half the amount in a quiet environment or hiking in nature. This said, I definitely did have a better experience than if I hadn’t taken any, and even more importantly, I had a much better experience than if I had smoked weed or drank alcohol before the party. It goes without saying that at much higher doses the intense sensory stimulation might not be an obstacle but rather synergistic to a very intense psychedelic experience, which is something I will explore in the future. For the time being, however, I was happy to realize that a low dose of mushrooms is totally manageable in social contexts with high levels of stimulation, and that it does indeed help in creating a bond with other people, even strangers just met, that it makes dancing and moving one’s body more enjoyable, that it makes music more interesting, and that in general can serve as a much better social, emotional, and experiential lubricant if compared to more common and socially accepted substances such as weed and alcohol.
