I had never eaten the Alice in Wonderland/Mario Brothers/Santa Clause and his Reindeer mushroom. It is one of the eight major teacher plants. It is technically not considered a psychedelic in how it reacts to your brain and body but extraordinarily it still mimics a psychedelic experience. I knew this experimental day would be different than others. People that I know who have taken Amanita have not said the most wonderful things. Most have just gotten sick and purged and sweated profusely and not exactly had a pleasant experience. My Shaman friend who was involved in giving them to me, mentioned he recently had a conversation with the plant and it was giving up on humans. They’ve been trying for thousands of years to have an effect and although it might have worked for some time, it doesn’t seem to be working now and are giving away to its relatives, the psilocybin mushrooms, who seem to be having a better connection point with more people right now. From my experience after today it seems like the shaman was at least partly right. It was a tough day.
I laid the Amanita’s in front of me. My mentor and friend gave me enough for what he said would be a dose that would make me have an experience with the plant. For me this would probably be a higher dose due to my sensitive nature so I was excited he didn’t give me more. I laid the mushrooms down in front of me and asked them to have a conversation with me. I asked the plant to show me what is has shown thousands before me over the thousands of years. I was in deep gratitude to be able to experience this day with Amanita and that I had come across it in my life. Mushrooms have been around for 18 million years and Amanita has been interacting with humans for just thousands of years. The scope of the plant would go far beyond anything I could really grasp in my human consciousness but I was willing to partake like so many had done before me.
At noon, I ate the heads of the mushrooms. Note that when eating Amanita Muscaria the caps are what you want while the stems do not have any mystical ingredients. The mushrooms smelled sweet and tasted on average a little better than psilocybin ones. I took them then went about my day for the next hour doing normal things like laundry and some cleaning. Sometimes I like to do somewhat normal things to where I’ll naturally realize that eventually something is having an effect on me. Sort of like realizing at some point that someone is banging on the door and obviously “a guest” has shown up, and now it’s time to cater to them because they will not leave for many hours.
An hour in, I looked out the window and that familiar psychedelic feeling was upon me. Not that the world or room was magically dancing or melting around me but just that my attention and focus was a little less specific in its trajectory. I would look outside and easily lose my focus while staring at a tree. It was getting harder to focus with my normal consciousness and sight. Amanita was acting upon me. The guest was ringing the doorbell and wanting to come in to have a chat. I sat down to read and although I finished a chapter, my attention wasn’t totally on the book. I started to feel like I had to go to the bathroom. I did and I’m glad I had a toilet and hadn’t left the house. This was my first purge. At around two hours, the mushroom was beginning to fully converse with me. My mouth began to water and little feelings of that I might throw up came on. I grabbed a bucket and had it near me and would occasionally spit in it. There were times my mouth would suddenly be drooling and my nose was running. I also realized how much I was starting to sweat even though I was getting extremely cold. I had on sweat pants, long socks, a shirt, a sweater and my clothes were getting moist. Sweat was dripping off my brow and rolling down my cheeks. My body was so cold. I grabbed a blanket off a bed and wrapped myself up in it and laid by the fire that was raging. It was an extremely uncomfortable experience that lasted about an hour as I was just sort of teetering in this liminal space and halfway conscious. I knew I wasn’t in any danger, but just having a purgy experience that I was ready for. I kept trying to focus on my breath and the breathing would make the nausea go away but it was still there looming. Finally I went through about 3 rounds of throw up purges and dry heaves and one bathroom run. The purges were intense. Not many plant medicines make me throw up but purging has a way of feeling good after the fact. It was as intense as anything I’ve been through before. It was uncomfortable, and I was laying there sweating profusely and freezing my ass off and trying to sit with the pain and discomfort. Not exactly a fun experience.
After about an hour or two of this, I decided that I needed to do something about how cold I felt and since I had the resources I did something about it. I passed by a mirror at this point and my eyes looked as dark and sunken as they’ve ever been. My face had suddenly aged. I looked dead. Looking into mirrors on psychedelics can easily lead to a wormhole of thinking. I brought my throw up bowl with me to the bathroom where I put the shower on as hot as it would go and then laid down and allowed it to flow over me and fill up the bath tub. The feeling was magical as I felt warmer and wasn’t wearing sweaty clothes anymore. I laid in the bathtub turning on the shower every now and then to fill up with hot water. The warm water stopped the cold feeling and a relaxation took over, although mucus and spit was still accumulating in my mouth which I deposited in my bowl. I would close my eyes and be in a sort of dream like state but not necessary experiencing rapid hallucinations. There were moments when I’d see something totally wobble through into my visual minds eye. It was as if a ripple of water had been cast on one side of my subconscious and when it reached the shore of my inner eye it would ripple and wobble into my visual scope. It’s hard to explain and I’m doing my best to find the words but I can’t seem to define it any other way. When my eyes opened, I knew what I was looking at, but, it’s funny, because it felt hard to actually look at something. It felt hard to think about anything else but my breath. My mind was empty. It felt good to be able to sit for long periods of time without thought. Amanita was in my body and mind, and my eyes and wandering brain were not the focal points.
I stayed in the tub for what must have been a few hours. I never got uncomfortable and my mind never wandered. I had a certain focus but it wasn’t on anything in particular. It was easy to not get distracted. The medicine was very direct. It wasn’t filling my mind up with a million things or making me focus solely on something very intensely like what can usually happen with many psychedelics. It wasn’t a numb feeling, just a nothingness feeling but it wasn’t like I felt like I was focusing on nothing but I guess nothingness was the focus of the plant. It felt primitive. It felt connective because of the simplicity. The normal distractions that fill up my mind weren’t there. It was easy to not “go there” and I was very much in my body and not in my brain. It felt relaxing to able to feel this “just being there” feeling. It felt wonderful to not have my mind racing in a million directions like it can easily do. It felt great to not have my mind so stimulated like it can be on other psychedelics. It felt great to be at ease. The plant was forcing me into ease. Forcing me into a simpler thought process and a simpler life orientation. I was still feeling a bit nausea at times, but I never threw up again. It was easy for me to focus on my breath. Amanita was having a directness with me. It wasn’t allowing me to use my “normal” human brain. It was just allowing me to exist while being directed at nothingness.
When I finally got out of the tub I put on new, dry clothes. I still felt cold but not as cold as before but I still wrapped myself up in a blanket and went and sat by the fire. Again, it was easy to just sit there and just be. Something I have improved upon A LOT in the recent years of my life but something that doesn’t naturally come to me. My mind felt empty. Things that I would normally be thinking about weren’t coming up, and if they did they just came and went, not feeling any more significant than happening to see a bug on the ceiling, and then I would calmly go back to my own void of “nothingness” focus. I would look at my phone and not be motivated by it, whereas normally on psychedelics it just wouldn’t make sense. All I wanted to do was listen to peaceful piano music. This was extremely relaxing and the piano notes increased my relaxation and my interest in the moment and it was astounding to notice how easy it could be to just let something relaxing have a positive effect on you. The piano notes were making me feel warm and in flow. They were making me feel connected to something else, a connective feeling that even the plant enjoyed and allowed me to tap into. After about another hour of this, I wanted to watch an episode of my favorite show, “Narcos.” It was easy to just watch the story and feel deeply inside the characters for what it was rather than my mind jumping all over the place and wanting to know the end and getting impatient. It was easy to focus on one thing, but that one thing was all encompassing. It was easy to just take in and allow it to happen in front of me. I was in a very relaxed state. Everything felt super focused but not in a forced way, just in a non-distracted way.
The night went on and even many hours later I still laid in bed and was cold when usually I am very hot and don’t use any sheets and blankets. It is some days later now and I still have a level of focus. Things are not penetrating me in the same way or for as long Thoughts that usually create tension and anxiety and stress seem to not have the same affect. This is similar to other psychedelics but whereas other psychedelics might seem to bring out an exuberance I still feel a very consistent calmness and directed focus. It reminds me of the day after experiencing a mega dose of LSD (4 hits) but yet different as that was a bit more energizing with focus. I keep thinking about what I’m striving for in my life and what I strive for with my days and my to do lists and me watching myself and others watching me. It makes me feel an equal ease for getting things done vs not getting things done. My to do list and daily happenings seem more irrelevant. But not irrelevant in that they don’t matter but just that it doesn’t matter how much I judge myself over what I deem myself pressurized to do and accomplish. I do with my day what I do with my day and less is more. Mushrooms have been around for millions of years. They are a mystical organism that gives us experiences about that history and their relationship with everything along the way. The calm, bluntness of the plant influenced me. It made me feel happy about what I’m doing with my day to day despite if I “achieve” anything. Less is more coupled with consistency really made an impression on me. What is meant to be achieved will and my energy will naturally lead me to that. Existing in itself, felt like achievement after this experience.
I think the shaman is right that Amanita is going into a sort of hiding, especially when it’s cousin the psilocybin mushrooms is having much success healing humans at the moment. Not that we don’t need Amanita’s teaching desperately. Anything that helps modern humans in our tech age not get lost in our own minds or lost in distraction with screens or lost in thinking about a million things is a great benefit to us. Amanita’s focus is more on sitting and trying to be okay with pain and discomfort and being in the present moment. It forces you to not think about anything. Not unlike Ayahuasca in some ways but at least Aya comes with these sacred geometric visuals that one can get lost in that carves out a story and experience with them. I think our culture is so visual that anything that doesn’t cater to that will be taken in less. Plus, Amanita is painful and I felt like I was dying with cold sweats and throwing up. It seems like a plant of the old world. A world that was perhaps more harsh, more deathly. Maybe Amanita will have a place again with us in the future but right now I can’t see it taking. It will loom in the distance, what’s a few thousand years or even a million to a mushroom? They will just sit and wait patiently doing their thing and observe how these humans will either destroy themselves or engage with plants and nature more.
Would I take it again? Yes I would, but not for some time. The experience was tough but I think it was one that was important for me to go through and see more of what the major teacher plants bring to the consciousness table. The level of intensity is insanely high with these plants. They have a positive effect on us because they give us these insanely traumatic painful experiences that are coupled with enlightenment or endarkenment that bring about an eventual ease at having trodden down tough paths. Uncovering what lays at the end of these tough paths is the benefit of psychedelics; taking on psychedelic trauma in order to process trauma. For a white, heterosexual, middle class man like myself, I think it is important for me to go through such things and feel what it’s like to sit with pain and discomfort. It is something my demographic has had to go through much less than others and that equalizing effect gives perspective and empathy for recognizing those who have gone through or are going through painful life experiences. These plants force you to interact with your relative shit. They lead you to decomposing your thoughts and taking on things that will make you better. I look forward to the day when Amanita will be something that is prescribed to people to help them, rather than just something that some guy writes about on the internet that most people know absolutely nothing about.
The Avid Fan 
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