Diary Of A Trip-Sitter
I spent the evening with two friends while they tripped on magic mushrooms. Here’s what we all discovered.
5:20 PM
The magic was administered roughly 20 minutes ago. Scarlett and Sophie both ate roughly 2.5 grams of dried shrooms and they’re now in that awkward, anxious stage, waiting to feel the effects.
‘Nothing’s moving yet,’ Sophie just said. ‘Isn’t the wall supposed to be melting?’
I’m trip-sitting for two of my closest friends tonight. Sophie has never taken psychedelics before, but I own an abundance of candles, a giant Buddha I bought for €5 at a flea market, and some Palo Santo scented incense sticks, so I figure I’m as qualified as any other unqualified person when it comes to this.
And where better to do it than in the cushiony comfort of my living room?
I’ve even made a special playlist. The girls are currently enjoying Buddhist and Sikh mantras; tracks like Ong Namo by Snatam Kaur, and Devi Prayer by Craig Pruess and Ananda, and other spiritual-themed stuff I honestly have no idea about… I took quite a lot of it from various Spotify playlists with titles like Journey to the Ether.
I have some other special tracks up my sleeves to surprise them with, too, some of which are a bit more upbeat.
Before we kicked things off, I sent them both an email to tell them how we should prepare. I know most of what to do from doing it, or not doing it myself. Here are my top pointers, if you’re thinking of tripping, too.
- Do not eat before the trip. A light breakfast 6 hours prior is fine, but nothing after that
- Write down your intentions for the trip. What do you want to address or focus on?
- Have some fresh fruit ready to help raise blood sugar levels and boost your mood
- Have more food ready for after the trip. You will probably feel like something healthy
- Put all gadgets away, especially mobile phones
- Have warm blankets ready — it’s normal to feel cold during the come up
- Create a create a calm vibe with crystals and/or candles
- Make a plan and do not deviate from that plan, i.e, stay inside if you start there
I told them, going into this, you need to either have a healthy mind, or the willingness to explore what is unhealthy about it. Both agreed they feel nervous, but ready for the ride. I’m feeling quietly confident that this night will be a success.
5:40 PM
The spiritual music was fine for the ‘ride in’ apparently, but now that Scarlett and Sophie are both starting to feel the effects of the mushrooms, they want their own music. I’ve just been asked by Scarlett to put guitar solos on, while Sophie wants to hear an album called Temple Time. Also, their loins appear to have turned to fire.
‘I’ve never been this horny, God help me,’ Sophie just groaned from the sofa.
‘I know,’ Scarlett wailed, writhing on the shaggy grey rug. ‘I need to have sex so bad!’
They’re listening to Temple Time, which sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard in a temple, but the search term ‘guitar solos’ was too generic and Scarlett yelled ‘no’ to every track I played.
I can hear them still giggling in wanton lust of giant penises. This is a very happy trip for both of them so far, which is good because there was a period of 20 minutes or so before, where Sophie ran to the bathroom, convinced she was about to throw up. The shrooms were making her nauseous.
The overall feeling of bliss however, should have been a given; there was a lot of love in the chocolates they ate. The mushrooms were gifted to me by a lovely bubbly lady called Sara, who I met at an event aptly named the Open Your Heart Retreat last summer.
Sara grows the magic mushrooms in her living room cupboard, and whipped up a batch of chocolates for me from her latest harvest. These dark, sesame-seed-coated ‘moonicorn balls’ are what I fed the girls 40 minutes ago.
Sara showed me her crystal-laden laboratory when I went to collect the goods. Shelves of grow kits were standing on heated slats in a line in the cupboard. Some had tiny mushroom heads poking out of the soil already. Others were almost ready for picking. Quartz, celestite, hematite, bunches of sage and rainbow-coloured streamers all dotted and dangling around the rows made a party of religious devotion around them.
Sara meditates with the cupboard door open, so the mushrooms can feel how much she loves them. She told me this as we reclined on a sarong-covered couch, while her longhaired, sexy Dutch boyfriend blended fresh green smoothies in the kitchen.
She also told me she holds ‘moonicorn’ ceremonies for women to trip together in safety. During these, she and her housemates give people free reign of the apartment and she always sets up a “surprise” in the top floor bedroom. I signed up on the spot for the next one - who doesn’t love surprises?
The girls have finally fallen silent to a track called Nuit d’Afrique by Kora. A quick check-in reveals they are both lying flat on their backs on the carpet. I don’t really know what else to do now. Trip sitting is a bit boring actually. I’m going to have a glass of wine.
6:05 PM
Holy shit, Sophie just had an orgasm. At least, some sort of loaded moan of elation just escaped her mouth, followed by a deeply satisfied drawn-out sigh. The track that moved her was Spirit Bird by the Australian musician Xavier Rudd. I’ll remind her of this later.
Maybe I should write to Xavier, too: “Dear Xavier, just in case no one’s told you yet, your voice officially (well, in my house at least) propels women on psilocybin highs into transcendental ecstasy. Nice work.”
It’s been just over an hour since they munched on the moonicorn balls. This Temple Time playlist, which Sophie requested, still seems to be doing the job (and by job, you do know what I mean).
I’m sitting at my kitchen table feeling lifted by the swelling violins and sweeping crescendos, but I’m a bit disappointed that my own carefully-arranged playlist was not up to scratch. I tried to sneak a track or two from it back in anyway. After all, the tracks on my list were all deemed ‘awesome to trip to’ by people on the Internet.
But the girls screamed no to Pink Floyd, no to The Rolling Stones. They settled for a minute on Led Zeppelin, but quickly called out and said it was scary. I didn’t even dare play Enya, which is another offering on a playlist created especially for trippers by psychologist Bill Richards, Ph.D.
Richards, who works at Johns Hopkins University, has been researching whether psilocybin can help cancer patients feel less depressed and anxious, and also whether it can help smokers to quit. He swears by tracks from the masters; Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss… Enya… which help relax his patients and ease them into a good trip.
Perhaps I should offer to assist him. His esteemed position might easily persuade Xavier Rudd to sing for tripping women in real life; see if that cures anyone of anything. His voice alone has cured Sophie of something for sure; she’s never looked this happy to me, ever.
7:15 PM
Scarlett has been searching in vain for guitar solos on my laptop.
‘It’s really hard to use a computer,’ she announced as her fingers fumbled on the keyboard. I could see the work of the shrooms in her saucer-like pupils as she grinned and wobbled on sock-less feet.
I told her we probably shouldn’t play music Sophie doesn’t want to hear, especially because this is Sophie’s first trip. On reflection, maybe I should have set up another room, so they could both do their own thing if they wanted to — like Sara’s surprise in the upstairs bedroom?
A rookie trip-sitter’s error perhaps, but I also know Sophie doesn’t want to be alone.
When Scarlett left the room, Sophie allegedly felt like we were talking about her and excluding her from our fun. It must have messed with her head because for the next 20 minutes she clung tightly to my hand while she swayed and moaned and ran her fingers through her tumbling brown veil of hair.
‘I wish I could show you what I’m seeing,’ she breathed, eyelids fluttering. ‘I see how music is so important. Music is everything.’
For the most part, Sophie is experiencing total magic on this journey. I’m actually really envious, and annoyed with myself for ruining my own first psychedelic trip with a loud pub and a homeless woman and an amusement arcade (long story) — it never hits you as powerfully again, after your first time — so they say.
But I’m really, really beyond grateful that now I get to help someone else to do everything I didn’t back then. In my living room, Sophie’s free to drift at leisure into altered perspectives, and orgasms, knowing no one will try to fry her mind.
I excused myself to use the bathroom. When I went back into the living room, Scarlett had taken up hand-holding duties and Sophie was sniffing and sobbing.
‘It’s all so beautiful. I wish… I wish I could show you,’ she wailed. Scarlett on the other hand, didn’t look so happy. Scarlett has a lot on her mind. She’s leaving Amsterdam soon to go live with her new boyfriend in Spain. She’s leaving her job, her friends, people who speak English… it’s a lot to take in.
It’s taken her a long, long time to release any of those pent-up emotions. She’s been pottering about the living room, refusing to sit still, playing with her phone and my computer, but just now, as though she was psychically connected or something, Sophie said: ‘Let it out, Scarlett. Let it all out.’
As if on cue, Scarlett burst into tears. Some comforting cuddling of great length commenced between the three of us. It feels like a breakthrough.
8:45 PM
There’s been a lot of laughing and a lot of crying tonight, but the moonicorn balls are slowly losing their grip on the girls. I made them some pumpkin and carrot soup while they floated back to earth, because I had it myself after a trip once and it was the nicest thing I’d ever tasted.
Sophie and Scarlett are both in the living room, spooning it from bowls and saying things of a similar effect. ‘This is exactly what I need right now!,’ Sophie just said, ‘what a night!’
Lots of people say they only want fresh fruit and veggies after a psychedelic experience. Maybe when your neurons have been through the wringer, and you’ve just spent the last few hours feeling at-one-with-the-universe and everything in it, tucking into a dead bit of cow just isn’t an option.
Your big, wide-open, peace-loving heart says no.
Of course, I do have only two documented cases to prove that pumpkin and carrot soup is the greatest cuisine you can whip up for trippers so far, so I won’t be calling Johns Hopkins University with my findings just yet.
An hour or so after the soup, Sophie says the experience has been ‘beautiful,’ and ‘wow, wow, wow.’ Scarlett says the experience has been ‘emotional.’
Oh and Sophie has confirmed she definitely did have an orgasm. She was orgasming on the beauty of life itself, apparently, helped along by Xavier Rudd. If only we could tell him!
Tonight I learned that you just can’t presume to know what kind of music another person will like when they’re tripping. Music really does influence the way your journey unfolds. You can see sounds and feel colours on psychedelics; if the music’s bad you might go down some dark and scary paths.
If I’m trip-sitting again, I’ll ask people ahead of arrival what their favourite music is and get something suitable ready. But I’ll definitely sneak some Xaviar Rudd in there, just to see what happens.
Sophie will go home relaxed and refreshed to her boyfriend, and Scarlett will call hers and tell him how excited she is for a new chapter, living with him in Spain. She says she feels clearer and calmer about everything now. Fear of detachment was holding her back, but now that’s gone and she’s excited for a new chapter.
I’m sure people would pay more than the €10 Sara asks for, per chocolate treat. But she won’t advertise and she won’t charge more. Even her full-day moonicorn ceremonies are only a modest €50.
There are huge price tags on lots of 2–3 day psychedelic retreats now. But it seems that if you want to open your mind in a safe, guarded space there’s something to suit all budgets.
As a trip-sitter doing it in the safety of your home, as long as you’re calm and collected and quiet, and ready to help with a hug or a blanket if needed, you’re probably going to be OK. But of course, don’t just take my word for it!
I’m super happy that my friends felt like they had a safe space to land when they took the jump into the unknown, and that neither of them had a bad trip. But I was kind of expecting a positive outcome.
The only thing you can control — like I aimed to do — is the set and setting, really, when you’re trip-sitting. Once the spirited psilocybin has attached itself to your sweet little serotonin receptors, everything gets messed with; your mood, your vision, your ability to sleep, your decision-making skills, your propensity for thinking logically.
It’s good to be somewhere you know quite well because on high doses, everything gets squiggly and distorted with your eyes open.
Looking in the mirror can be a terrible idea — you might not even recognise your own face. I could be wrong but personally, I feel like the visual distortions might have something to do with the fact that on psilocybin you’re freshly attuned to everything being energy.
Energy moves all around us, all the time. We just don’t usually register it happening.
As for Sara’s special moonicorn balls? Maybe all that crystal-worship and meditation really did inject more love into her living room cupboard of magic mushrooms.
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