Second dive

The first experience with mushrooms was positive, pleasant, and comforting, overall what I could rate a plus 10 on a scale of valence between pleasant and unpleasant.

The second dive was dramatically different, a paradigmatic case of bad trip, with loss of personal identity, confusion, paranoia, desperation, hopelessness, and the visual manifestation of anxiety and depression in the form of a desert landscape emanating unspeakable terror. Which sets the second data point on the scale at a solid negative 50.

Set and setting

During the week after my first experience with mushrooms I felt down again, depressed and anxious. I conjectured it might have been due to serotonin depletion, even though it is less common with mushrooms compared to stimulants like MDMA. Perhaps it was just the aftermath of my first pleasant experience, an experience that I more or less consciously hoped would solve some issues. It was fun seeing the visuals and feeling the warmth and comfort of the mushrooms, it was also nice to cry a little thinking about people I care for. But there was no emotional or existential breakthrough, just for the novelty of having hallucinations and of being in a psychedelic state for the first time.

On new year’s eve I was feeling particularly depressed and anxious, mostly because of attachment issues. I went on a couple of dates during those days and they were ok, but there was no spark, no genuine connection, no sense of sitting across from a stranger that yet felt like home, like we’ve know each other before and we were finding each other again, or that we’ve always sensed each other’s existence and finally met (a low bar, I know). I was also worried about a dear friend who I felt was going through a lot.

I was planning to do shrooms with friends again, but I also didn’t feel in the mood for a playful or social session. I felt I wanted to go deeper inside, I hoped those radiating waves of warmth I experienced last time would help dissolve the strong and relentless grip of anxiety on my stomach. Conditions were not good and I couldn’t make it work with my friends, but I was home alone and faced with the void of a day with no plans so I decided to dive alone. I informed a friend who was on call in case I needed something.

The dive

I decided to stick to 3g but this time all at once (not 2g + 1g booster like before). I found a single big ass mushrooms that weighted 2.85g. I reasoned that having a bigger cap the potency would be similar to the 3g of caps and stems of last time. I chopped it in four pieces and ate it faster than last time.

The session started at 1:35pm with estimated return around 5:45pm. I was anxious and worried, that was all I could think about. I wrote down the following resolution:

I will see what the medicine brings. I will surrender, I will not try to focus on anything or act intentionally, at most I will open or close my eyes.

I knew the effect would come up in roughly 45 minutes. After eating the mushroom I was bored, so I started listening to Music for psychedelic therapy by Jon Hopkins again, I watered some plants, sat down by the window and started knitting.

1:55pm: notifications off, world out.

I laid down and looked at the trees out of the window, maybe closed my eyes. I don’t remember how it started. I just remembered that it was sudden. I got into this deep state. Maybe I partially fell asleep I have no idea. It hit me so hard, and it took me to a completely different place from the other time.

There was no peaceful sensation, no waves of radiating warmth in my belly. I was cold, the music felt unpleasant, overwhelmingly sad, and changing song didn’t help, everything felt wrong and off. I recall at least three separate parts of the experience, but I am not sure about the order, so I’ll just describe them in what I feel is the most plausible.

I remember lying down on my couch with eye mask and airpods on. I listened to music but every song felt sad and unpleasant. I then started drifting in and out of a strange state. Maybe I dozed off at times, I felt like there was a fixed image in my mind of some strange interior space, with walls looking like the geometric 3D surface of a CGI rendered cave or of a climbing gym. It was dark but I could see the walls had a vague dark red hue. I might have been listening to this song. When I saw the cave time didn’t flow and there was no me, my personality and self felt like they had dissolved. Everything was still and there was no change. At regular intervals however I felt a vibration, something in the music or maybe a shiver. The vibration brought change, and with change time resumed its flow. In these brief moments I also felt I regained a minimal sense of self, I felt I was back, the sense of things was back, I was aware again I was in my room but I had to hold on to the thought very hard to remain in control. These are the moments when I took a sip of water because I was always immensely thirsty. I remember at times I was feeling like I was suffocatingly, that I had to periodically open my mouth and check that I was still breathing. As soon as I let go of this control even minimally I felt I drifted away again, I felt the meaning of things crumbled again, my knowledge of my surroundings and my personal identity disappearing, and my self-awareness dissolving. And there was just the cave and time stopped flowing again.

In what was plausibly the transition to the next phase of my peak experience, I emerged from this torpor state and started feeling more present, but still profoundly confused. Now with open eyes and looking at the sky out of the window I didn’t know who I was, there were many versions or many people and I was lost and didn’t feel I was any of them. The only thing I could remember was my name.

I now started feeling strong emotions which were gone for a while. All I could experience was depression and anxiety, that pain and tight hold in my stomach was stronger than ever, I felt immense sadness and fear together with a feeling of existential catastrophe. I can’t recall the exact sequence of events. I remember thinking that reality was just so full of pain and horror.

I remember listening to two songs by Apparat and Squarepusher and feeling immense sadness. I felt anxious about the present and I started thinking about the friend I was worried about. I kept seeing images of his apartment from inside and outside, and when I was inside I felt his presence but he wasn’t there, and that feeling was scary and filled me with sadness. It was similar to the feeling I experienced in the past when a close friend took his life, during those first days where I could still see his recent posts on social media, his presence was still strong but he was gone. Then the feeling of anxiety and depression acquired a much more generalized and abstract nature. The next day I have found a voice note from around 4:30pm (t+2h00) stating:

Fragmented identity…

I don’t know who I am………

Desert landscape…… ………. ……….

Fucking scary.

Pain through and through, desperation through and through.

There was a single image in my mind. The image was of an empty desert, with light-brown sand, a tall cliff on the left, and nothing but dust and rocks. It was profoundly terrifying, it felt huge and sinister, the sky was clear and bright but it felt dangerous and incumbent like an imminent storm. It looked like one of Dali’s surrealist desert paintings, but emanating the glooming menacing aura of a Lovecraftian distorted and cursed dimension.

The closest image I could find on the internet is from Dali desert, an extremely barren valley in Bolivia named because of the resemblance to the painter’s surrealist landscapes. The experience seems to fit perfectly with what psychonauts describe as unspeakable horrors: “the experience of prolonged exposure to indescribable scenarios and hallucinatory content of a scary and disturbing nature”, in my case of the sub-type “landscapes of an intrinsically sinister and threatening nature” accompanied by the “immediate sense that ordinary life is a thin shell over a comparatively horrifying reality which cannot be dismissed or escaped from”.

I remember seeing this desert and feeling suffocating and immensely thirsty. Occasionally I was able to open my eyes and take a sip of water. Looking around the room was disorienting and unpleasant, the only visuals that were consistently appearing were green-blue eyes in the joints of my hanging plant and in the painting on my wall, eyes that looked very much like a Google Deep Dream image. This also happened the various times I got up to go to the bathroom.

The last memory of the peak of the experience I have is about feeling this pervasive sense of impending doom, realizing that that this was a bad trip, but also realizing that there was no consolation in the thought of going back to normal, because real identity was bad, because this anxiety and depression are in the real non-psychedelic world, not a product of the trip. I wrote:

Why would I want to do this again? It’s scary. But this is just how thing’s are in reality.

There’s no way out of existential terror.

GO BACK ON SSRI NOW

The last thread of my peak experience was this phase where my personal identity was back, and I felt depression, loneliness, social anxiety, and paranoia. I was lying on my bed and I was scared, I thought about all the people I know and I felt this deep incommunicability, this sense of extreme isolation. I felt that no human connection is ever genuine, I felt isolated and alone in the world, that I was intruding on the world, that nobody I could talk to would understand but would just push me away. I saw through their eyes myself as an outcast lost in mental illness, I felt their disdain. I considered many times calling the only friend who knew I was tripping but every time I stopped. I wanted to hear her voice and thought it would calm me down, but I also thought: what if when we talk she sounds cold and annoyed, what if it doesn’t help, what if I can’t express myself… what next, if she can’t help, there’s nothing else. I again felt that this is the default condition in life. Social bonds are contingent and instrumental, no one really knows you for what you are and you are not able to share the truth with anyone. I felt lonely and isolated, I felt that this was the true core of my depressive feelings: the inability to genuinely connect with anyone. The thought that this is just how life is and there is no alternative was devastating.

The come down

When the phase of intense paranoia subsided I felt drained and lost, I was still scared and I felt a sense of oppression. I decided to go for a walk since there was still some light outside. In this phase I kept feeling how scary the experience was, and I kept alternating between feeling lonely and cynical, and feeling that I did have friends and meaningful connections. Meaning was slowly returning. I called a friend and talked with him for a bit explaining what happened, which helped a lot. Finally the friend I tried to contact found my call and told me she was on her way to my place. While waiting for her I had the realization that ultimately what I experienced were two of my big fears: loneliness and rejection. The former is a direct cause of my depression, of the hope I will meet someone who will be able to give meaning to my life when everything else can’t. Rejection is however what causes my fear and anxiety to genuinely connect with people: there is so much at stake that the thought of a possible failure, of being vulnerable and opening up only to then experience rejection, is simply paralyzing. I realized what could have saved me in my moment of despair was the knowledge that there was someone next to me, holding my hand and sitting through the pain with me. Someone I felt would have stayed with no reason besides pure love and compassion. And I realized that I can perhaps be that for someone else, and that by helping them out I would end up helping myself. That there’s so much love I would want to give, that giving it would make me much happier, but that my fear of intruding and of rejection often are just an insurmountable obstacle. But I felt a strong resolution to give my best, because love begets further love, and one can still give love regardless of whether others decide to accept it.

After my friend arrived we walked in the dark on the frozen lake, the night city lights and the starry sky were magical. We then went back to my place to warm up, had soup and talked until 10pm. My thoughts process was still altered but I kept having insightful thought and little emotional breakthroughs. I was processing the fear of the experience but also started to see its value and what it taught me. We hugged and lied down on the couch next to each other without speaking, we listened to music an occasionally shared emerging thoughts or asked each other what we were feeling or thinking about. We both fell asleep for a bit, then she left and I moved to my bed. I was alone again and I didn’t know what to expect for the night or the following day.

After-effect

I managed to sleep ok that night. I woke up around 6am and was still thinking about the experience. The prospect of a day off from work without any plans is often tough: on one hand I look forward to it as an opportunity to relax and disconnect, on the other it always ends up being depressing because I never feel in the mood to actually do anything. I haven’t been in the mood to do things alone in a while, even things that I like such as going for a hike. This is a hallmark of depression for me: the things I like to do lose their meaning, I feel that doing them alone doesn’t count, but I am also not in the mood to do things with friends. This triggers a spiral of anhedonia, apathy, and acedia, in which I just spend time thinking about all the things I could do but can’t bring myself to actually do any of them, combined with the sense of anxiety that I am wasting precious time not doing anything.

I woke up around 6am and my apartment felt a little oppressive, so I decided to walk to a coffee shop to read and maybe start journaling what the fuck happened. I could still feel the fear and anxiety, the sense of loneliness and emptyness of the day ahead. In the five years I have lived in this city I might have waked to the main square a handful of times. When I walk or drive around town I rarely look at buildings and places, and when I do they usually feel anonymous, empty, fake, without history or relevance. To use a metaphor, they feel like randomly generated areas of a simulated world that gets rendered only because I’m passing through: in reality buildings are empty, they feel like cardboard reconstructions for a movie set, and you can feel that something is off, they are lifeless, impersonal, and inauthentic.

I noticed something different this time. I was listening to music and still in my head, but I found myself stopping in front of building and shops I never closely looked at. I saw a a yoga studio, a hidden Chinese restaurant, the entrance of an apartment complex, and they felt less fake, less inauthentic. I thought about the people going to that yoga studio every week and entering that door, about the owner of the restaurant putting the open sign in front of it every day, and I got a small glimpse of that sense of familiarity that perhaps they feel looking at those building. I wasn’t feeling any beauty, joy, or connection with these people, but the sense of familiarity and authenticity of these places was definitely unusual. I felt again that every corner of the world is just as important, it has its past and history, it just is and by virtue of that is as authentic as every other corner of the Universe. Again there was no beauty and this was no transformative realization. But it was remarkable that the feeling of sloppily rendered reality wasn’t as present, that feeling whatever I look at is unimportant and inconsequential because there is an entire Universe around it where the real action happens, and that every place is of unspeakable irrelevance simply by virtue of being only one out of an endless number of places.

When I arrived at the coffee shop I read a bit while listening to music. I then started journaling and often times I stopped because some thoughts arise in my mind. These thoughts were about people I know and people I just met. Similar to the places I observed in my walk, these people now felt more three-dimensional, they felt less like automatically generated NPC characters and more like real human beings with their story and path in life, with their joins and sorrows, and they all felt valuable and equally authentic. Some felt more interesting and close than others of course, but in general they felt like real people with whom there could be a connection, each of them worthy of digging below the surface to see who they really are and what journey they are on. Looking around the cafe this also applied to the people around me, which didn’t feel like NPCs as strong as before. Again there was no affection or strong positive emotions towards them, but the fact the mere intellectual feeling of their authenticity and depth was definitely a change in my perception of other people when I’m not on SSRI.

I decided to go for a walk and maybe go to another coffee shop. On my way I decided to walk through a park near the lake. This place is important because a dear friend showed it to me, it has a powerful memory attached to it and I felt intense feelings walking there. I sat on a swing and contemplated the frozen lake. I was stil feeling anxious and some emotions from the day before kept bubbling up. Especially the sense of loneliness and the fear for that desert I saw, for that state of the mind that felt real and inescapable. The day before I felt totally powerless and lost when faced with this apocalyptic metaphysical void. Now it was different. I was listening to Thunderbird by C418 and a feeling started emerging in me. The dark-synthwave music made feel like I was an explorer or a warrior moving my first steps in an unknown land. The first dive on mushrooms was mostly exploring the commands, I learnt I could look at things and make visuals appear, I could close my eyes and dive deep inside, and that I had agency and this tools, which I was free to use. After the first trip I got out the test area and faced the real world. I was without guidance and without a map, and my second trip was the attempt to visit a new unexplored area. This area however turned out to be where dangerous beasts live: I felt like I was in my underwear, without a shield and without a sword, without a buddy to tell me something looked off, and I went straight up into the depth of the den of a fucking level 100 beast, despite all the signs that the path was for advanced travelers (the advice to never trip alone at the beginning) and the pile of skulls at the entrance (my feeling of anxiety and depression before the trip). I sat there, scared shitless, looking at a sleeping beast that didn’t even bother to bite me. It was huge and its mere presence was frightening. But the beast didn’t kill me, and I made it out of the den alive.

I felt that psychedelics are no joke and that they are a powerful tool. I felt that, perhaps, the beast can be approached again if only I spent some more time finding the right tools, choosing my equipment, spending more time getting used to fighting monsters of level 1 to 5, and perhaps most important of it all, finding other fellow explorers with their own beasts to hunt, to travel side by side, watch each others backs, and be ready to pull each others out of the lion’s den if shit gets too real.

I started pacing around the swings and felt a sense of empowerment, of energy, of hope. It was going to be hard I told myself, it was going to suck, but it feels it is worth it, precisely because it’s inevitable: it’s either the way of pain and fear, of losing control and exploring the darkest recesses of the mind, or it is the way of negation, of building a mile-thick concrete wall around the door of the mind to seal it shut and avoid any breach, the way of the SSRIs.

I decided then to walk toward the other coffee shop, but as I started walking I have found a little board-walk passage between a group of houses that feel to inviting to move on. Still listening to C418 I started what I can only describe as a psychogeographic dérive, the act of drifting around places following only what the landscape affords, following traces and being carried by only my intuition on the most interesting direction. The boardwalk brought me to the shore of the frozen lake, which looked beautiful and scary at the same time. I decided to walk on the ice, it was light blue with areas where frozen bubbles below the surface formed swirls and intricate trails. I was now listening to Fake triplets and I felt like an explorer on the surface of an icy planet, I had the same feeling I got playing Minecraft and exploring the Nether high with friends late at night. I saw a bluff in the distance and that cliff felt huge and intriguing, I felt something important was there and I decided to cross the frozen lake to go explore. I humored myself in pursuing this state of excitement. I was in a state that reminded me of my childhood, when I would spend my days climbing trees and exploring the woods around my house, with friends or alone. Back then a small stream of water felt like a river, I could cross it jumping from rock to rock and in my mind I could feel the roaring water, the danger of the deed. As a kid I was able to create meaning on demand. It was sufficient that someone said “This tree is our fortress” that immediately the tree was the fortress, and we had to climb up quick before the wolves arrived. It was a little like that, I felt that I had the power to look at the bluff and make myself believe it was an important place worth an expedition, that somehow getting there was meaningful because it felt it could unlock a place of the mind. So I kept walking, occasionally dancing to the hard beats of the dark-synth music, and as I approached the bluff I saw a huge staircase that went up at least three flies of stairs and connected the top of the bluff to the shore of the lake. Climbing the staircase was again an amazing experience, every couple steps up I could see the frozen lake from a new perspective and it looked like the surface of an alien planet. The view from the top was breathtaking, I could see the other side of the lake where I came from, I felt at the top of a fortress in the Nether, and I felt a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

I soon realized that was private property, I was in a big ass villa’s backyard and I decided to go back to the city center through the road rather than the lake so I got awkwardly told off by the residents of the house.

As the day went on I fluctuated in and out this playful and explorative mood, but the effect was fading. Towards the evening I felt physically tired but mentally and emotionally rested, I felt that the knot in my stomach was gone. It was years since I spent almost eight hours alone walking around a city, just listening to music and fantasizing about the places I was seeing. It felt refreshing, and the biggest realization I had was that for the whole time it was enough to be by myself. At times I wished I could share this playful state of elation with friends, but being by myself was enough, it was meaningful, precious, comfortable, complete.

I spent the evening with some friends and shared my experience of the previous two days. It was heartwarming how much interest and support I felt in listening to each other’s stories, and I had a delicious Tom Ka with coconut milk and tofu. The only sad note was that that was the last night I could see a dear friend before she returned to her country of origin for two months. The following week looked challenging, both because I didn’t know what to expect from the integration process, and because that process had to happen without her. And I still had to figure out what to do with the tools I acquired, and if and when I would decide to dive again. But I felt it was going to happen, that it would take time to get accustomed to safer territories and doses before attempting a deep dive again, but it had to be done.

Answers to self

You said it felt really good, it felt familiar and like going back home, you were sad it was going to end so soon. Will it leave you with more joy than the one you experienced while tripping? Will it make you enjoy life more, or make you wish to escape from intersubjective reality immersing yourself deeper in the mycelial cocoon?
The positive or negative valence of the experience seems to correlate with the after-effect of the next few days. Positive experiences like the first dive were pleasant but in the following days I felt down, depressed, and moody. The second dive was terrifying, I felt pain and fear, no physical or emotional warmth. And yet the knot in the stomach was gone, my usual state of anxiety and depression for the following week was barely noticeable. With a limited sample of 2 data points the current hypothesis is that pleasurable experiences are peak in the hedonic curve to which perhaps a dip will necessarily follow, while bad experience are a dip from which the tendency will be to bounce back up. To be investigated further.

Thoughts for the future

Master the mild trip: try a low dose (e.g. 1g) and see how that goes. Is it enough to cause visuals? Can it enhance the experience of activities such as a hike? Can you be social?

In line with the idea of getting accustomed to low-level monsters it would be useful to master the mild altered state. If I start feeling anxious or see the onset of a bad trip, will I be able to manage better than last time?

Dive deeper: try a higher dose (e.g. 4g) and see where it brings you.

The first two experiences on 3g (with and without booster) were intense, but I was still partially in control. Thr closed eye visuals were present but faint, they were mostly static images and they felt more like imagination than actual vision. Is it possible to have more vivid closed eye imagery? It should be, because in my understanding this is what psychonauts refer to when they talk about higher levels of geometry.