Isaac Jordan said:
Man that all resonates hard.
I had a group of friends that I tripped regularly with in my early 20s. We had a blast. Acid, mushrooms, morning glory seeds, we took anything. We learned more about life in a few hallucinogenic trips than we did in 12 years of schooling.
Your bit about being in public reminds me of a mushroom trip I did with a friend at the Getty Museum. We were both experienced at that point and both felt totally comfortable having vivid hallucinations around hundreds of complete strangers. These were very potent, very good quality mushrooms.
The only time we lost our shit was when we went to the cafeteria. Neither of us were hungry but we figured that was because the drug was suppressing our appetite, and that our bodies probably needed some calories. We were definitely overthinking it and obviously we would have been fine not eating anything.
Anyway we get in line and the ludicrous-ness of the cafeteria really hit us hard. Just looking at a Caesar salad all wrapped up in plastic made us break out into completely unhinged, childish laughter. We were completely incredulous, "WHY would anyone do that man?! Wrap up a salad, in PLASTIC?!" We put the salad on our tray with some trail mix and Reese's Pieces.
We sat down in the middle of all these distinguished tourists and visitors, French and Japanese tourists dressed in suits and shit, looked down at our tray, and kept laughing hysterically at our choices. "THIS is what we chose for lunch? Salad and candy?!" It spiralled downward pretty rapidly from there. Upon opening the bag of trail mix, the bag was stuck and wouldn't open, so my buddy used some brute force and when it finally popped open there was trail mix flying everywhere, onto other peoples' tables and at this point people started looking at us sideways like, "Who in the hell let these maniacs in?"
We're sitting there eating what's left of the trail mix off of the table, and one of us says, "Trail mix is such a metaphor for life, man. The sweet stuff, it's hidden in there." This prompted more ridiculous laughter. I had a notebook that I kept with me (I still have it, full of insane scribblings) and I started to write down what we just said about the trail mix metaphor, and then we couldn't figure out who had said it, me or him. Most of our conversations started going down that path, with both of us not sure who had said what. Sometimes there would be talking, or quiet, but one of us would say, "What?" and neither of us could remember if we were actually in conversation or not. We were literally in a dream state. We'd take a break and go into the impressionism room and stare at all these paintings that were moving around and appeared to be backlit by moving lights. Personally, I felt absolutely connected to the painting and the artist, and that I could get inside his head as he was making the painting. At one point I went into the garden and meditated (I was very into meditation at the time). It was like someone stuck a flux capacitor to my cerebral cortex. Even doing breathing meditations took my head into outer space. I spent what felt like 4 hours staring at a perfect flower, my brain in a completely different dimension. Like I said these were good shrooms.
It was a fantastic trip and very profound, the kind of day that sticks with you forever.
Well, a few years later I was dating this girl and figured hey, she's done mushrooms before, it'd be fun to take her to that same museum and take mushrooms together, maybe recreate some of that magic.
Nope. She got sick. We're sitting there in a garden, surrounded by tourists, and she stands up and projectile vomits everywhere. I had taken mushrooms and acid so many times I forgot that many people get sick on mushrooms, and now here I am in this situation with my girl puking her guts out in front of a crowd and it's making a scene. I kept my cool, put my arm around here, "Must be something she ate! ha ha..." and quickly rushed her off to the women's bathroom. She was in there what seemed like an hour. It could have been 5 minutes, I was high as a kite. Then I started getting paranoid that she was having a bad trip in there and was probably sitting on a toilet staring at the wall and freaking out.
Finally she came out and bless her heart, she kept her shit together pretty well. We decided to get the fuck out of there and we get back to the tram, and the tram was down. It was 92 degrees out, we're having a pretty sour trip, everyone around us has their arms crossed and is angry and impatient, and we picked up on those vibes x 100. It's the closest thing I've come to a bad trip. I tried to keep things upbeat and eventually I started joking with her, "Hey, you know what, obviously this wasn't meant to be. Let's just laugh at what else could possibly go wrong." and that seemed to work with her. We finally got back to my car and I drove us to the beach but by that time the shrooms were wearing off.
Anyway it's a lesson that's happened several times with me and psychedelics. When you try to recreate an absolutely heavenly previous experience, things can go terribly wrong. Those incredible experiences happen due to a convergence of unique circumstances beyond our control and it's not something you can force.
