mushroom experience not consistent: would like info

[gib65]

Hello,

I just got myself a stash of mushrooms. I'm having mixed experiences with it, and I'm starting to get the idea that the mushroom experience isn't always consistent.

I'm 40 years old and the last time I did mushrooms was in my early 20's, and it wasn't a hell of a lot of experience. So I'm *sorta* a newbie to mushrooms.

Anyway, I did 1 gram of my current stash and it was pretty much as I remember. Started acting all wacky and giddy. I consumed them on an empty stomach while drinking rum. They hit in about half an hour.

Since the experience was pretty decent and I felt like I could go out in public like this (like to the bar), I decided to do 1 gram again (this was about 4 or 5 hours later, once they more or less wore off, this time about an hour after I had dinner). I went out to the strip club but I didn't feel a thing all night. It was as if I had built up an immediate tolerance from the first round.

Going with the tolerance theory, I decided I'd try it again in about a week. So the following week, I did about 1.5 grams. I consumed them on a full stomach and went out to the bar. It took about 1.5 hours before I felt something, and the experience was kinda different from before. It was more like my experiences with 4-ACO-DMT (I think) in that it wasn't the wacky giddy feel I got the first time but more like a warped kind of head feeling with auditory distortions. The wacky giddy feeling is fun, the warped head space is "weird" and at more intense levels might be uncomfortable. I know the feeling started coming on part way through my second beer, and I know the first round (the wacky giddy feeling) came half an hour after sipping on rum, so I'm wondering if alcohol acts as a catalyst (but this wouldn't make sense out of the second attempt where I went to the strip club and had a beer and a few shots of tequila).

I also read that the blue bruising you see on the stems comes from the psilocybin (the rumor is, the more psilocybin, the bluer the bruising). But I also read that this is a false rumor. I know the first time, I consumed a lot of blue. The second time, no blue at all. The third time, no blue at all (but a higher dose).

So I'm just wondering if there's a "proper" way to consume mushrooms, a way that makes the experience more consistent. How do the following affect the experience:

* Consuming on full vs. empty stomach.
* Consuming with alcohol vs. no alcohol.
* Consuming first time vs. 4 or 5 hours after vs. a week after (in terms of tolerance).
* Consuming blue vs. no blue.
* Consuming stems vs. cap (<-- I haven't tried the caps yet but I heard the caps contain way more psilocybin than the stems.)

Does anyone know how the above affect the mushroom experience?

 

[pupnik]

you got the tolerance thing right,
the setting thing not so much.

At home for a 'virtual' first time thing it worked great
At the bar after a week and a bit higher dose (and some body load from digestion) the setting influence was a damper - an affront to your stoned senses.
Staying home would be better for the higher dose, or just one gram after a week off at the bar without a full stomach.

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

Setting/set and dose play a huge role in the effects mushrooms give you. They aren't really a go to the bar and meet strangers kind of drug. They are better suited for exploring your own mind or bonding with close friends.

Mushrooms also have an unforgiving nature at higher doses. I've had incredibly beautiful experiences with close friends on 2 grams but 2.5 grams of the same batch with some people I didn't know very well put me into a hellish experience that made me contemplate suicide just to escape it.

Absolutely don't disrespect mushrooms because like you noticed they have varied effects depending on dose and set. You might get lucky and go out and have a great time at a bar while on mushrooms or you might fall apart and start to become erratic and paranoid. For this reason it's best to stay out of public while on psychedelics.

Also they induce tolerance very quickly and redosing in the same day is usually a waste. I found psilocybin tolerance doesn't increase as fast as LSD but you still need at least a couple days if you hope to keep tolerance down.

The most consistent way to consume them is to chop them up into small ~1-3mm chunks, then swallow them on an empty stomach. Alcohol isnt going to help, so just skip it.

 

[gib65]

Thanks both for your feedback,

I'm surprised to hear that setting can have such a drastic effect. I know on a drug like pot, if I take a high dose out in public, I can get paranoid, but if I take the same dose alone at home, I'm fine. But the general "feel" of the high is the same. In the case of mushrooms, I wasn't really paranoid at the bar--it was more of a "weird" quality to the high rather than a "wacky/giddy" quality--almost like it was a completely different drug. Can setting really have that effect?

I know that with a lot of drugs, the quality of the high can change depending on dosage--would a difference of 1 gram vs. 1.5 grams cross over a threshold with mushrooms?

And what about the blue bruising vs. grey no bruising? Is it true that the blue bruising is a sign of higher potency. I can see this being an old wives tail since no bruising might mean just that: no bruising. Doesn't mean it's got any less psilocybin in it.

But what about stems vs. caps? Do caps usually carry more psilocybin than stems?

I guess the best thing to do is to grind the entire stash up in bits and mix it thoroughly. That way, the entire batch will be more or less equally potent all throughout.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

 

[Volsam]

Setting has a tremendous effect when it comes to any psychedelic, especially psilocybe mushrooms.

Dosing dry mushrooms is very approximate and hard to do it right. For a better consistency I recommend to pulverize some your stash thoroughly in a blender, weigh it and put in capsules where you would know the exact weight for each capsule. Personally advise against cooking it with chocolate - makes me nauseous that way.

Not sure about the blueish spots but caps feel stronger than stems, subjectively.

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

Im not sure about the blue or grey bruising, you might want to do your own research on that. I believe caps are more powerful but again not sure. if you want to be able to dose appropriately and consistently it's better to grind up the caps and stems together to get an even mix.

Set and setting has a massive impact on shroom trips and psychedelics in general, that includes weed, although for most people weed is much easier to control. Jumping from 1g to 1.5g will yield stronger psychedelia but it should still be very controllable.

Once you get around the 2g mark it starts to become more unpredictable. In my experience 2g is the perfect dose if you want an experience that has the potential to be truly beautiful but also is more manageable if you get into a bad headspace.

If you want an intense psychedelic experience then you'll have to go over 2.5 grams and from there it'll be unpredictable. The best way to keep control of a psychedelic experience is to make sure you have no responsibilities, you are in a safe comfortable environment, and you chose people you trust to either trip with you or trip sit you.

 

[ChipTrippyFox]

Mushrooms and any psychedelics have a tendency to amplify what you're already feeling.
So with that in mind it's best to be in an environment that is familiar and predictable.

Mushrooms aren't a "feel good" drug, they are an introspective drug.

This is just an asumption but perhaps you felt weird in the strip club because your subconscious felt like there was a lot of weird and (for lack of a better term) "fake" things happening there.

 

[Tranced]

Thanks both for your feedback,

I'm surprised to hear that setting can have such a drastic effect. I know on a drug like pot, if I take a high dose out in public, I can get paranoid, but if I take the same dose alone at home, I'm fine. But the general "feel" of the high is the same. In the case of mushrooms, I wasn't really paranoid at the bar--it was more of a "weird" quality to the high rather than a "wacky/giddy" quality--almost like it was a completely different drug. Can setting really have that effect?

I know that with a lot of drugs, the quality of the high can change depending on dosage--would a difference of 1 gram vs. 1.5 grams cross over a threshold with mushrooms?

And what about the blue bruising vs. grey no bruising? Is it true that the blue bruising is a sign of higher potency. I can see this being an old wives tail since no bruising might mean just that: no bruising. Doesn't mean it's got any less psilocybin in it.

But what about stems vs. caps? Do caps usually carry more psilocybin than stems?

I guess the best thing to do is to grind the entire stash up in bits and mix it thoroughly. That way, the entire batch will be more or less equally potent all throughout.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

I think that if you keep doing mushrooms in bars and strip clubs then you're probably going to find that they can be wildly less consistent than you've already realised.

I think strip clubs in particular are surely a terribly volatile environment for doing mushrooms/psychedelics in.

 

[Xorkoth]

Set and setting are some of the very most important factors for psychedelics. The "set" of your mind (your emotional state at the time, whether things are worrying you or not, etc) can cause two identical trips with no tolerance involved to be vastly different even without figuring in your setting. Your setting will also vastly influence your trip. At home by yourself with music playing will produce an entirely different trip from going out to the bar. With a close friend or two out in nature will be way different than either of these. Psychedelics are complex in their effects, they're not like other drugs where they produce a specific effect which will be more or less the same wherever you are. Personally I hate taking psychedelics and going to bars, sounds like a bad time to me, or at the very least pointless. I like to take psychedelics while hanging out at home by myself or with friends, or maybe at a show at a place where other people are going to be tripping, or my very favorite is while I'm out in nature, camping or on a hike or something. Especially with mushrooms, I would only want to take them in nature because it's where they really shine.

Ultimately, mushrooms only give that giddy feeling fairly reliably at low doses. At higher doses, they will powerfully deconstruct your ego and make you really think about and confront yourself. Some of my most terrifying trips have been from mushrooms, as well as some of my most wonderful and sublime and life-changing trips. I find they're less recreational than LSD.

I do consume psychedelics with alcohol sometimes, but usually on the come-down, if I drink before a trip, the trip never really develops. I don't like alcohol much with mushrooms or most other tryptamines, but I enjoy it a lot with LSD and some other things. In my opinion, alcohol and mushrooms don't really mix well.

Also, the amount of food in your stomach greatly affects the drug's absorption (most drugs in fact). With a full stomach, it will take longer to hit you and will hit you more slowly, leading to a weaker and longer-lasting experience. With an empty stomach, or nearly empty, it will hit you much faster and peak harder.

I believe the level of bruising only indicates how much they've been bruised from handling. In fact the bruising indicates that some of the psilocin/psilocybin has oxidized from exposure to air, which means it's been destroyed. Also I think the cap vs stem thing might have SOME merit as I know some species of mushrooms actually do contain different concentrations in the caps and stems, but I've never been able to notice a real correlation in psilocybin mushrooms.

Finally, yeah, grinding your stash up to normalize their potency is a good idea because then each dose will be roughly as potent as the last, but they will degrade much faster, so you should keep them in an airtight container in the freezer to prevent breakdown. Also, even if you have the same set and setting, same dosage, and no tolerance, two trips can be quite different. This is because psychedelics are such powerful substances. Any thought you have can lead to various aspects of the experience coming out. My first trip ever, I ate 1.75 grams of mushrooms and literally woke up to realize that we're all the universe experience itself subjective... probably the most powerful experience of my life and my life has been different since then (this was 16 years ago now). My next trip was a few weeks later and I ate 3.5 grams and the trip was very different, nowhere near as powerful, same batch of mushrooms too.

 

[BreakingBud]

There are many contributing factors that help determine what effects and feelings you get during your trips.

1. Setting/Environment
2. Dosage
3. Quality of the mushrooms