My trip to enlightenment on Penis Envy mushrooms

"Nothing matters and everything matters." "I'm just a figment of what is possible in this vast universe." "Who I thought I was isn't real." "What in the fuck was that all about?" 

Just a couple of thoughts out of the thousands that came flooding in after my first experience with a psychedelic. I was overwhelmed completely. I didn't know whether I was having a panic attack for the first time in my life or if I felt completely at peace. The trip became an infinite onslaught of thoughts as I struggled to wrap my mind around the experience that had just occurred. Truth be told, I never in a million years could have pictured myself willingly ingesting "magic" mushrooms, let alone be prepared for the trip I was going to go on that life-changing evening. In order to properly explain and dive into the full detailed experience I had with the widely-known Penis Envy mushroom, I first must get into the details of how I found myself completely blown away on the couch after a four-hour trip, with the love of my life, B. 

An unconscious mind

Like many, many other areas in my life, I found myself basing my opinions and beliefs around psychedelics and "hard drugs" on the opinions and beliefs of other people. I grew up thinking that I had zero reason to become a "junkie" and lived with an internal fear that the day I ventured too far out into the drug world, I would become an addict. Now, while these thoughts may hold legitimacy and are most definitely not uncommon for people to think, they drove me away from experimenting with most "drugs " and I simply had no desire to wade in those waters. I can't say I had the same thoughts on beer at all, but that's a topic for another day. 

Let me continue by saying that I have no regrets with how things played out in the mindset I was in and that it is completely okay to no want to try psychedelics. It doesn't make you any more or less of a person. It's simply the story to my life and how I ended up on that couch. All of that to say that I never really pictured myself wanting to partake in psychedelics. I had read a lot about them in the past and was exposed to them countlessly in pop-culture, but the curiosity spark never happened and the next thing I knew, I was 31 by the time I had the opportunity to go on my first trip. 

I'm not sure why the universe decided to choose me to awaken from the sleep-walking state I had been living in (a topic for a whole other post), but it did so through the form of putting my lovely girlfriend in my path. B had already experienced enlightenment in her life prior to meeting me and for a long time she tried introducing many spiritual concepts and ideas to me. She would take the time to explain life from her perspective and used resources like youtube videos and books to get me to see the picture she was painting. The problem was that while I had a basic interpretation of what she was showing me, I could never truly link with any of it because of the state I was in. An unconscious mind. And in that state, I only saw what I wanted to see. For a long time, I had told myself that I didn't necessarily believe in any one thing after an upbringing centered around religious ideas. But for the first time in my life, as I was coming down from the center of the universe, from the center of myself, I felt in every part of my being that I had witnessed the truth at last. 

The Penis Envy Mushroom

One idea that B had been bringing up to me for a while was the idea of trying psychedelics together for the first time. Neither of us had done it but she had been doing research and looking into different trip reports online. I remember sitting on our porch one day a while back and her bringing up for the first time that she would do anything to take a trip to Peru and try the Ayahuasca experience. Again, being in my unconscious mind, I thought I knew what she was talking about but I knew nothing. I didn't feel the connection she had with wanting to experience the effects of this so-called "medicine" so I simply listened and stored the information in my head. I had suggested that in order to get to that level, we would want to start off with trying other options and then work our way up from there. I remember seeing her eyes light up with excitement and thus began the first steps to the rest of my life. 

In the following months, we came across the opportunity of acquiring a strain of magic mushrooms called Penis Envy mushrooms. We agreed that we would take them together and that we would experience them in the comfort of our home. We struggled with coming up with the "right" way to ingest them as everything we read suggested a couple different methods but decided we would know when the time came. After getting our hands on these mushrooms, life happened and it took us weeks to eventually hammer down a date that felt right for our experience. Within those weeks, everything I read about the particular strain we had suggested that they were not for first time users. The Penis Envy mushroom was not to be taken lightly as its potency was, at a minimum, twice that of your average magic mushroom. It was suggested that even experienced users should start off with a low dosage and work their way up. It was around this time when I began to get a little nervous for what was about to happen, but I ultimately ended up telling myself that it was no big deal. I told myself that it would be similar to smoking weed and that B and I would be giggling the evening away watching a movie or something. I could not have been more wrong. Ever.

My enlightenment experience

On the beautiful Saturday evening of our trip, we decided that we would split our mushrooms down the middle and take about 2 grams each. We also decided that we would each eat a gram of the mushrooms whole and use the remaining amount to make into a tea to sip on. We read about the pros and cons of eating a mushroom whole and we immediately found that the taste of the little guys was pretty unpleasant as we chewed them in our kitchen. The texture reminded me of popcorn in my mouth but with the taste of something much more earthy and bitter. B then took the remaining 2 grams, ground them down, and made a tasty tea that was much more pleasurable. We took our tea outside, sat on the porch, and soaked in the outdoor feeling in our neighborhood as we drank our tea in anticipation. B had read that brewing a tea with the mushrooms could intensify the effects of the psilocybin so we were giddy, knowing that they could kick in at any moment. 

Within what I perceived to be anywhere between 20-30 minutes, I began to feel some of the effects. Internally, I began to feel "full" even though it had been earlier that day since I had eaten anything. My stomach and chest began to feel as if I was nauseous but it was also clear to me that nothing was going to come up. I then realized that I felt something close to being lightheaded but it provided me with a visual focus that I hadn't felt before. As I looked around at my surroundings, colors seemed to get more vivid. The grass and plants on our lawn felt alive. Of course I've always known that those things were alive, but I could actually feel them living and breathing. The clouds in the sky looked like they were made by someone's brushstrokes. The movement around me caused by the wind felt intentional and like it was meant for me, personally. The lawn in front of me began to sway back and forth, left to right, and I was mesmerized by its movement. I knew then that my trip was beginning, but I also felt to my core that something big was about to happen. I can't really explain the feeling I had in that moment. Only that my awareness was brought front and center and that I was being challenged to witness what I was about to see. With that feeling, I decided to go inside the house and sit down on the couch (which just felt like the best thing to do then) to strap up for the ride. 

What happened next, nothing could have prepared me for it. As I was sitting there, awareness and consciousness still intact, my perspective of my reality around me began to melt away. Quite literally, objects in my view around me appeared to become fuzzy and melt towards the floor. I found myself trying to blink multiple times and open my eyes widely to somehow make sense of what I was seeing but objects continued to melt away. I then started to lose sense of the dimensions around me. What logically made sense to me cognitively started to no longer make sense at all. How tall I was, for example, or how far away from the TV I was, or how far up the ceiling was to me in comparison to how far down the floor was all seemed to no longer matter. The space around me was simply fluid and all of the human-made concepts of dimension no longer existed. It was truly frightening. And that's when I noticed it. I was in front of a window that was facing the front porch outside and when I looked through the window, I noticed that time had seemingly stopped. When I did finally realize again that there was an "outside" through the window, it had gotten dark. But when I looked out there, it was as if I was staring at a TV screen with the movie paused. Nothing moved, nothing happened, and the world simply felt still. 

As I tried to wrap my head around these experiences, I truly began to lose every sense and definition of the word "time." The world around me had slowed down to a complete stop and then the concept of time completely disappeared. When that realization slowly hit me, I began to feel a growing sense of fear due to the idea that maybe I was losing my mind. What I noticed next was that sounds around me began to come across to me as vibrations. I could feel sound. And not just the sounds that were made around me like when I moved around on that couch, for example, but the sound of quietness. Of stillness. It all had a vibration. Within those sounds, I then heard something (or someone) try to communicate with me. At least, that's what I felt in the moment. I know that as a reader, this comes across as strange or impossible. I was once there too and would think the same thing sometimes when listening to others and their experiences. But the vibrational sounds came through plain as day. Something was saying something to me, only I couldn't understand it as if I was on a different frequency. What I did understand in that moment is that whatever or whoever was trying to get across to me did not feel familiar. I didn't get a sense of having encountered an energy like that before. I just knew that it was trying to tell me something. I tried hard to listen or to feel the message, but then out of nowhere, the sound stopped and didn't return.

There were a couple of things that anchored me down to my human reality as I was completely losing it in our living room. Each time I looked at our cats (Severus and Raava) I remembered temporarily that there was a time before I had taken the mushrooms. I also found myself using the digital clock on our stove in the kitchen to remember temporarily that something like time did exist. Ultimately though, B was also tripping balls in the same space as me and she was a constant reminder that I was there to care for her if she needed me during her experience (that's a story for her to tell). Those 3 ideas kept me from completely feeling like I was descending into madness as I began to completely lose my sense of self. It was then when I truly began to panic a little. Heading towards the peak of my trip, my ideas and memories of who I was began to completely dissolve. I began to forget my existence and everything that came before that moment in my life. I felt like I was being wiped clean, a floating consciousness made of nothing and everything at the same time. I was aware of my body when I looked down at myself, but it was a body shrouded in insignificance. In that moment, that body needed nothing. What was hunger? What was touch? What was needing to go to the bathroom? What was sleep? What was an itch? What was a shoe size? All insignificant in that moment. I began to wonder if I would remain in this state forever. If anyone who knew who I was would understand if I remained in this state. If anything really mattered at all. And then my mind exploded.

There was a moment when even our cats or the digital clock in the kitchen or my beautiful girlfriend could no longer anchor me. I was aware that I was in the middle of letting go completely to the magic mushrooms but was also aware that I should not let go completely due to the concern I had for B and what she was going through only a few feet away from me. What came out of that was me landing somewhere in the middle where I could still communicate with her but a portion of my being was elsewhere, in a different dimension. And what I saw there shook me completely. It was me. 

It was something that I can only describe as an out of body experience. I had never experienced anything close to what my understanding of an out of body experience is prior to the shrooms, so this state was brand new to me. Only I didn't know it. In that plane, nothing else existed but everything was existing. Nothing had come before it and nothing would be coming after. Everything just "was." There wasn't a definition for what I felt there. No preconceived ideas or thoughts were allowed there. And there, I was simply shown a visual of myself moments before I had eaten my first mushroom in the kitchen. I saw the entire kitchen as if I was the lone member of an audience watching that being calling himself "me" preparing to go on his first trip. And what I was shown disgusted the "me" in that out of body plane. Because what I saw was a young man who was truly fooling himself. The way he walked, the way he gestured with his hands, the way his facial expressions showed on his face, his demeanor, the energy he gave off, and his mere presence. All of it gave off such a feeling that the "me" in the out of body plane could hardly take it. It was overwhelming and became too much to handle. That's when the "download" happened. 

I became aware that I was back on the couch talking to B, and in that awareness, a wave of information filled my consciousness. Within that information, I saw an alternate version of myself that never came into fruition. A genuinely happy being, with pure intentions and a sincere heart. A being with purpose and an array of emotions that he could tap into. A complete opposite of who I was and the struggles I've had to deal with since I can remember. Within that information, I was shown the truth about myself which in short, is the truth to everything. Simply put, I was in my own way. As we all are in some way. I was stripped completely of my ego and was forced to look into it and truly understand it. I saw that it was me all along who was creating narratives in my own mind. I saw that it was me who made excuses and found reasons to not be happy or feel purposeful in my life. I somehow created this fictional world within myself, filled with fake narratives and lies. I spent years of my life pretending to be everyone and everything except myself. I allowed the narratives of our society to take complete control of my viewpoints and strip me of my emotions. It was all my own doing and no one else's like I sometimes felt in my life. I was the victim in most of those narratives. And I saw it all as this overwhelming amount of information crashed into me. I could write for days about everything I saw and felt in that moment of enlightenment. I was in awe as I saw every component of my life broken down to me in vivid detail. The parts of me that had complete control over who I was were as clear as day. And that's when I truly began to feel.

I've always been a pretty "emotionless" person for as long as I can remember. Always in the middle of the spectrum, not feeling too low or too high most of the time. Every day was simply a day to tackle and get by. However, when this "download" was complete, I began to experience sensations that I knew I had been missing within myself. When I looked at B, every argument or disagreement that I ever had with her seemed to dissolve. I realized that every negative feeling that I ever had in our relationship didn't matter and that it was insignificant compared to what truly mattered. And that was love. I felt an overwhelming sense of empathy for her and as we sat there and talked as we were coming back down from our trip, I felt at peace for the first time in my life. Everything she wanted to discuss from her own experience made me feel completely connected to her thoughts and emotions. The blinds were off. And I loved it. I simply felt love in my core and gratitude for the experience I was able to go through. An unfaltering gratitude that I still feel to this day, weeks later after the trip. Ultimately, I felt free. Free of the preconceived thoughts and feelings coming from the fictional life inside of me. I was ready to widen my horizons. I was ready to feel like I should have been feeling since I was born. Free from fear. Free from caring what others think. Free from the facade. After laying there on the couch, thinking about what just had happened, I finally felt like I was able to talk about some of the experiences that I went through, so we sat outside on the porch and I shared.

To this day, I truly believe that this experience on Penis Envy mushrooms was the most impactful and life-changing moment of my life. It was something I was never ready for but it was everything I needed. I can't help but think about moments from the trip on a daily basis as I try to incorporate what I learned to my every day life on this plane. Do I think that I have gone through a complete "ego death" on my path to continued enlightenment? No. I can still feel parts of my ego connected to who I am, but I'm learning how to live with those parts in a healthy way. My first trip on mushrooms was simply the beginning of my journey. Perhaps one day I will get the opportunity to completely let go and surrender myself to the experience fully so that I can continue to discover ways in which I can change for the better. For now, lots of time in contemplation and information gathering is to come! I encourage anyone who is reading this to search for your own ways to change for the better. Awakening out of your own life in which you are sleep-walking is possible. 

My parting thought I'll leave you with is a quote I heard on a youtube video from actor Carlton Totten after his first experience with magic mushrooms: 

"There was me before mushrooms..and there was me after mushrooms."