Chapter 11: 70mph (A Bad Trip)
.8 grams dry mushroom.
I can’t blame the mushroom. I did it to myself.
Things don’t always go as planned.
That day, I needed a win.
Instead, I got bitch-slapped by the cruel, bitter consequences of my own decisions. At this age, one should know better than to ignore their gut instinct.
It was one of those days where nothing feels right. You know the ones.
The days where you have tasks to complete that you’d rather ignore for a few more days/weeks/forever. Visits with friends or family are soured by a weird vibe in the air you can’t put your finger on. Your partner is a little on the quiet side and you can’t help but wonder if a fight is silently brewing, though you’re trying to convince yourself you’re just being paranoid because you probably are. The roads are too busy. The crowds too plentiful. Even the crashing waves of the ocean are obnoxious. And if you’re really really lucky, as I was that day, the universe has just marked you with two scarlet letters: M.I.
Menstrually Incapacitated.
But whatever, man. This was our day out. Our predetermined date day. Penciled in between that week’s work tasks and project tasks and home tasks and mom tasks. So let’s turn it around.
Let’s park the car.
Walk on the grass.
Find a shady spot to kick back for a few hours.
Gaze out over the ocean.
Eat that mushroom and have a transcendental experience.
Ideal, sure. But everything in my brain was screaming, No!
We were only a 30 minute drive from home, yet on this particular day, that 30 minute distance felt more like a cross-country-multiple-layover-remote-destination in a different time zone.
But this was our day. So I ignored my growing trepidation, crossed my fingers, and consumed my wee lil’ psilocybin mushroom.
I was responsible. I had my boyfriend with me, my trusty mushroom-sober trip sitter. But as the mushroom kicked in, bicyclists began whizzing past me at dizzying speeds. And as I grew more and more paranoid about the length of time I’d been staring at the same cloud (surely someone had noticed my odd behavior by now), a universal lesson was unfolding right before my eyes.
Don’t ignore your gut.
I cannot possibly stress to you how many people were in this park. A madness-of-crowds kind of number. A make-an-antisocial-girl’s-skin-itch kind of number. A get-me-out-of-here-immediately kind of number.
There were hammocks of every color strung across trees, blaring speakers of every musical styling imaginable, crying babies, children poking dead fish with sticks (literally, for 20 minutes straight; kids really love to poke dead fish), parents gazing lovingly at their toddlers (how annoying!), people peppering the grounds with peanuts to watch the ensuing squirrel battles, rollerskaters, rollerbladers, skateboarders, hoverboarders, kite flyers, bickering couples, gossiping neighbors, bragging bachelors, instagramming tourists, and the stench of sun-baked urine wafting from the nearby public restroom. There was even a mustached dude practicing the art of the tightrope across a cable tightly fastened between two trees.
Fuck my life, amiright?
I had five solid minutes of peaceful cloud gazing before it all began to turn.
First, I lost the ability to determine sun from shade. Everything went dark and muddy. My heart started racing. My skin started crawling. My peripheral vision tightened, causing me to feel enclosed and panicked. The ocean brought no more comfort than the pretty plants or the soft grass or the snippets of other people’s happiness bouncing all around me. I was shackled inside my own mind. I had a death grip my water bottle, and had to pry apart my own fingers to prevent knuckle injuries.
Every errant shout made me jump. Every passing bicyclist made me jump.
I felt like the hapless victim in some bizarre psychological experiment on anxiety. The grass glowed until it was no longer green but more of a “limey” yellow, and this served not to entertain, but to highlight my own otherworldliness. My outoftouchness. I wanted to curl up on the sand and go to sleep until it was over, but, ya know, I was trying not to be weird.
We soon made our way to a bench, and watched the water through what would otherwise be a lovely gap between tall palm trees. But I couldn’t see the leaves. All I saw were the trunks, looking more like metal bars than tropical flora. And home was no longer 30 minutes away. It was 30 hours. 30 days.
And then it all became crystal clear.
I was trapped here.
Jailed.
I was never getting out. I was going to die in that park. Surrounded by piss-stained air and tightrope-walking hipsters.
My trip sitter was blissfully unaware of my state of mind. Probably because I did everything I could to hide it. He was having such a lovely time. He had been successful in his quest to drown our weird “off” morning in salty ocean water, sitting on that bench in the park. His face was gilded by sunlight. And an effortless smile.
But the squirrels were looking at me.
Judging me.
I hadn’t brought peanuts like the other park visitors, and they could smell the absence of legumes all over me.
That was it. I was finished.
I could only hope my sunglasses hid my tears as they began flooding down my cheeks to pool in my neck. I swiped at the pool every few minutes to dispel the evidence. I didn’t want to ruin our big day out with my bad trip meltdown.
I tried to breathe through it. But those prison trees kept getting taller, denser. The sun was beginning to set, and the reduction of light made everything appear darker (yes, I suppose a reduction of light is prone to make things darker, but this felt…different). I was moments from the freak out zone when he suddenly asked, “Are there too many people for you right now?”
“Yes,” I said honestly and calmly.
“Are you doing alright?”
To which I began sobbing as I choked out, “NOOOOOO!”
My facade crumbled.
Trip sitter: you’re up, buddy.
I appreciate that he tried to stifle his laughter when I told him we were trapped in this park forever and escape was not an option.
My trip sitter has stellar dimples when he smiles, so I was able to forgive his amusement of my torment in record time.
May this serve as a valuable lesson on the importance of having a trip sitter. (And whenever possible, find a really cute one with dimples.)
“We’re not trapped here,” he said, once he finished laughing and shaking his head. “The car is right there.”
And it was.
The car was right there.
He walked me to the passenger side where I tried to heal this experience with the reticent silence of a 30 minute car drive home.
If you have consumed mushrooms at all, do not drive that day. Ever. You may think you can, but you cannot.
You simply can’t.
Don’t do it.
Super serious.
As a passenger in a car, the world outside the windshield is still a crazy, chaotic mess. Even at low speeds, you’re convinced you are moving too fast. But I think this serves to highlight an important distinction in our evolution: humans are not designed to move through the world at 70mph. It feels like imminent death, and yet on any given interstate, we travel that speed—or more—nearly every day.
If a psilocybin mushroom is good for only one thing, it is to show us that we need to slow down. Physically and mentally. For much of that ride home, I closed my eyes. Between here and there, ten thousand road signs competing for attention. Stores and malls and alternate lanes and turn lanes and bicycle lanes and exit lanes and angry honks and LED ads and waving SALE flags and signs flashing GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS in glowing neon.
Our brains have evolved to mindlessly process all of that nonsense while also keeping our eyes on the road and not running into that other car that’s also going 70mph less than 24” from our own. Every day. All day long.
That particular day, the mushroom did not turn its back on me. I turned my back on it. I expected the mushroom to pull me out of a bad day, when in reality, I passed along my bad day to the mushroom. It’s a partnership, and I was a terrible partner.
By the time we arrived home, I felt like I’d been strapped by my neck to the hood of an Indy race car, and only by the endless grace of the universe had I survived it. I checked my watch. It had been less than an hour and a half since my mushroom first kicked in at the park. And 1/3 of that time had been spent driving home. My prison-park ordeal had lasted less than one full hour. Mushrooms do funny things with time. And movement. And visual stimulation. The car ride alone felt like an hour and a half.
No, humans are not designed to move through the world at 70mph.
But now I was finally, blissfully, stationary.
Lesson learned. Set and setting. I am not more powerful than the mushroom. I concede. Next time, I will trust my gut and wait for a better day.
My trip sitter walked me (slowly) back to our home where I basked in the creature comforts of a more familiar environment. We ordered takeout. He had a Cuban sandwich. I had shrimp and grits. It was delicious.
Full disclosure. I was a bit concerned about this unexpected negative turn of events. Incredibly concerned, actually. My mushroom experiences thus far have made such a deep rooted positive impact on my daily life. Surely I could assume the bad ones would have similar staying power. I’m happy to report in retrospect that they did not. This was merely a blip on the radar. A curious happenstance in an otherwise smooth flight across the friendly psilocybin skies.
I woke up the next day refreshed and inspired to redo this little day trip.
Another time, another mindset.
Same trip sitter.
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