Since the accidental "Big Trip" that I covered in my last post, I have truly come to realize its power and intensity in ways that were not apparent when I wrote what I wrote. I don't want to retell that story (you can read it if you're interested) but in short, my scale broke I made tea with an unknown amount that I estimated to be about five grams of dried cubensis but was, in fact, probably in the range of eight or nine grams. Since then, I bought a new scale and have taken several extremely intense trips in the range of five to seven grams and none have approached the level of ego disillusion that I experienced that night and none have ripped me from my body in that very real, not-at-all-metaphorical kind of way. However, I have nearly perfected my "tea" recipe, and I introduced my sister to mushrooms for the first time (with a proper dose) to spectacular results.
I had been telling my sister about my recent mushroom adventures and she was somewhat intrigued. Having done acid a few times in her life, she had some inkling of what a psychedelic experience is like but the descriptions of her previous trips sounded weak. She and her much more psychedelically experienced boyfriend expressed interest in taking a trip to my city to take a trip with me.
They drove down here and I acquired the ingredients for the tea that I have been perfecting over the last few months.
My original mushroom tea, as I was first taught to make it by my father nearly twenty years ago, was little more than low simmered whole mushroom broth with grape juice mixed in to kill the flavor. This was effective but I believe that simmering the mushrooms overheated them and leaving them intact left a lot of the drug behind in the discarded mushrooms. That being the case, I began researching alternate preparation methods and experimenting with additives that I believe help to increase the intensity of the experience and reduce the undesirable side effects of the fungus.
My sister arrived and it was time to begin preparing the tea while dosing the accompanying substances. I ground sixteen grams of the cubensis into powder and began boiling the water for the tea. I have found that the addition of a cannabis edible or two to the trip seems to make the it a bit more visual so I insisted that we each eat two single dose edibles while the tea was being prepared. I had also stumbled across some information recently that suggested that pure raw cocoa contains a mild maoi as well as a few other drugs that are said to make the trip more euphoric and less sedating so I also insisted that we each eat a tablespoon of the chocolate powder. This method of ingestion was disgusting though and needs to be tweaked (maybe it could be shoved into capsules or made into sweetened drink).
Once boiling, I removed the water from the heat and let it settle for about two minutes before adding the mushroom powder to the pot to steep covered for twenty minutes. In the meantime, we retired to smoke a hash oil dipped joint. After the allotted time had elapsed, I strained the mushroom tea into a large measuring cup and put the mushrooms back in the pot with fresh water and two bags of green tea with ginger and simmered the them for another twenty minutes before straining that tea into the the one quart measuring that contained the cup of "first brew." I decided to use ginger tea as an additive in the hope that the ginger would help reduce stomach discomfort and that the caffeine in the tea would, along with the chocolate, help to counteract some of the sedation that comes along with taking mushrooms.
Once the brewing was complete, it was time to make the drink. Split three ways, there was enough tea to fill the bottom third of our cups. I filled them the rest of the way with grape juice. This has two benefits; first, it kills the flavor of mushroom very well and it adds acidity to the brew which is alleged to help potentiate potency. To top it all off, I added two droppers full of high dose CBD oil for anxiety relief during the come up and to add some element of physical relaxation to the trip along with another tiny pinch of cocoa powder for good luck.
I was prepared for what was coming, my sister and her boyfriend were not. He was quite experienced with mushrooms but not tea. She had no mushroom experiences at all and no perspective on how intense a properly high dose of a psychedelic drug can be. We drank our tea smoked a cigarette and by the end, we were beginning to feel the first effects and from there, it was like riding a fucking rocket ship to another universe. Tea comes on fast and hard and the additives in the drink did, in my opinion, influence, lengthen, and intensify the experience in a very positive way.
My sister's boyfriend and I were doing fine but my sister was having a rough time; constantly becoming dissatisfied by the music and wanting to switch whatever song we put on to something classical (some comedian she likes had talked about tripping to it Rogan and she got it in her head that this would make for a "good trip"). I sensed that she was fighting the experience but I was too debilitated by my own come up to say anything. Her boyfriend changed the music to something classical while she complained once again which caused me to cackle at her futile attempt to take the wheel back from the mushrooms.
A few songs played. They were nice enough but I found them boring and not particularly compatible with the weirdness of a trip. I was peaking too hard to really care that much though. However, once we were all well enough to stand and smoke another cigarette, I finally spoke up.
"This music fucking sucks. It's like boring old lady music. Look at the commercial!" Between songs, YouTube was advertising some toenail fungus cream. "That is who listens to this music; sour fucks with fungusy gross toenails."
She laughed but decided she was done with the trip (as though that was an option) and was going to close her eyes and "nap" while we listened to whatever we wanted. She closed her eyes and sat on the recliner but we did not change the music. Instead, we proceeded to brutally rip on every classical performance that autoplayed. Weirdly, this seemed to improve my sister's mood. She stopped trying to control things and found that it was more fun to listen to us talk shit than experience the music she had desperately hoped would save her trip.
"Who talked about tripping to classical music on Rogan?" I demanded.
"Nick Kroll,"
"Fuck Nick Kroll. That guy fucking sucks and he trips to boring old lady music."
"I can already tell this dude is joyless," I announced loudly as some guy played cello in an art filled room. She laughed. "I bet he practiced his whole life just so he could play this boring ass song in that ugly fucking room." She laughed harder and that back and forth went on for hours.
The trip was filled with intense visions for all of us but we eventually came back to reality and I questioned my sister and her boyfriend about their experiences. He said he had a great time and an intensely visual trip. At the end he said "you make a damn fine cup of coffee."
My sister went on longer and said, her trip was several orders of magnitude stronger than her acid experiences and significantly more visual. She also said that she was having a hard time in the beginning but decided to "let go" and let the trip happen once I started making fun of her boring old lady music and that the night improved greatly thereafter. She described the common coming home again feeling, said she saw creature filled landscapes behind her closed eyes, and felt like she was at times melting into a marshmallow on the chair. Finally, she said that she is interested in taking a more extreme dose in the future.
It was a great night overall. I am left wondering what I should call my drink though: Benny's Brew, the shamanic sacraments (that one accounts for the weed cookies and chocolate powder too), Dream Tea, Purple Punch. I am open to suggestions.
Peace.
The images in this post are taken from the free image website unsplash.com.