Mushrooms and brownies, experienced, Panic and Amnesia
I had this long dream in which…
At 6:00 p.m. I ingested one magic brownie. My partner “E” came home at about 6:40 p.m. and we were late for the show. On the subway ride there, E ate her brownie and mine began to kick in. We arrived at the venue about a half hour later and quickly found our friends. One of them had brought a large bag of mushrooms with her and she suggested that we go into the park to eat them along with the extra brownies I brought. There were enough mushrooms for everybody in our group to have 3.5 grams, but some chose doses smaller than this and I think E and I may have taken slightly more to compensate.
We made our way back to the venue and through a brief security check. We worried that our backpack might be a problem, but they just made us dump our water. By now, I was very high from the brownie and I was very glad I could follow our friends to our seats way up in the balcony section.
I remember red lights being the primary lighting as we walked in and I could feel the balcony floor shaking beneath my feet from the dancing crowd. Everyone at the concert was up and dancing to this rhythm that I simply could not find. I continued to stand at my seat and wiggle and sway in a pathetic attempt to appear normal, but I could barely make any sense of the music or how to move. As I looked around, I became slightly uncomfortable at the prospect that everybody at this show was probably on a lot of drugs, which meant they may be as out of control as I was.
Then I looked down and my friend was rolling a joint. This set off waves of alarms in my paranoid head and I could not believe that she was doing this out in the open. I told her, “I don’t think smoking [cigarettes] was allowed in this place.” to which she replied, “This isn’t a cigarette,” as she proceeded to hand me the smoking gun. I inhaled and then offered it to our other friends who both declined in a way that made me, again, completely aware of various paranoid implications of smoking illegal substances in public.
I sat down.
The mushrooms had clearly begun taking effect a while ago, but it wasn’t until I sat down that I explicitly recognized this. I still could not hear anything resembling music, just a kind of buzzing that was very loud. E was to the left of me and I held her hand. I remember one time looking over at her face and it was not staying still or in place at all, but this is the only visual effect that really stayed with me and it was transient. I continued to travel to far off places in my seat until all at once; everybody around me was standing up again.
I either could not stand up or I didn’t want to and this was enough for E to ask, “Are you alright?” The question hadn’t occurred to me before this and I was surprised that I didn’t know the answer. I notice that I was sweating profusely and I asked E if she was also. She responded, “No. Not at all.” At this remark, I began to think that maybe something was really wrong. I proceeded to experience an increasing sense of dread expanding in my body to the point at which I felt I was going to die. My heartbeat sped up and my breathing became very quick. I could not find any of my bearings. A heat was growing inside me and I felt like I was going to faint. I felt like I was going to die. Sensing some of this, E was able to convince me to get up and get some water.
We made our way through mazes of beer carrying obstacles in baseball caps and finally to the bar. The bar tender then directed us to a water fountain downstairs. After a few hardy gulps, I felt much better, but it was not quite enough to stay there anymore. Leaving was another difficult maze marked by various red exit arrows that seemed to lead us in circles. When we finally got to the door, the woman there wouldn’t let us leave until she was sure that we knew we couldn’t come back.
Once outside the commotion subsided. It had become much colder and we were both only in T shirts as we walked back through the park. After she was certain that I was better, E took a moment to fully express how worried she was for me and began crying, but this was met by both of us with some humor and we continued walking the scenic route back to the subway.
On the subway, we tried to act normal and apparently, we were fairly successful. With little giggles here and there, we would remind ourselves that nobody else knew we were tripping. We transferred to the bus and were on our way home. When we got out at our stop, E tells me that she doesn’t know where she is. I explain to her that we’re on our street and our house is just down the block.
And then she begins to say things like, “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who we are or where we were, I can’t remember anything. I don’t know who you are. Did we eat something?”
At first, and at several other points later in the evening, I thought these questions were some kind of joke and I told her my name and hers and that we just left a concert and that we had eaten psychedelic mushrooms and that everything was ok, with little sense of the personal seriousness with which she was asking the questions.
We get to our house and she says, “Are you sure this is our house? I’m not ready to go in, let’s walk around some more.” So, we take a little walk around the block and again, she begins saying things like, “I don’t remember anything. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know who I am, etc…”
Again, I replied with answers that seemed obvious to me at the time, but the repetition of these questions made me believe that she really didn’t know and this scared me. We went inside our house, which she didn’t recognize, and into our room, where her amnesia persisted.
Lying on our bed, she told me that she wasn’t sure what she was doing in this room and she didn’t know how she got there. She was very lucid, but simply had no personal memory. I explained to her that we lived together and that we’ve been together for years and I showed her happy pictures of the two of us. Then, she took off her pants and underwear, but the mood was far from sexual. I almost felt like I didn’t know who this person was and I knew she didn’t really know me. I would try over and over to make her believe that this amnesia routine was just a joke, but it didn’t work. She couldn’t remember anything.
She continued to interview me for more clues as to what was happening, asking again, “Did we eat something?” to which I replied, “Yes, we ate psychedelic mushrooms.”
“Do we do this often?”
“We do it occasionally.”
“Does this always happen that I can’t remember anything?”
“No, this is the first time.”
It was now about 3.5 hours after the mushrooms were eaten and I was feeling quite sober and racking my brain for answers as to what was happening. My amnesiac partner offered that maybe she has Alzheimer’s disease, while I contemplated the idea that maybe she was having a psychotic break.
After an hour or two of this state of confusion, I began trying to force her to guess the answers to questions that I thought she should know like, “What is my last name?” or “What kind of car do you drive?” and sure enough, she would get the right answers even after her repeated statements of “I don’t know.” While I continued in this fashion, she would occasionally close her eyes and say, “I don’t think I’m ever coming back.” or “I’m dying.” “I can’t remember anything.” To which I would correct her and say, “You’re not dying and you’ve been remembering all of the answers to all of the questions I’ve been giving you.”
Gradually, she started to sound like my E again. She would have small epiphanies here and there remembering that she didn’t have to go to work the next day or remembering her brother’s pet’s names and I felt like the situation was finally fairly under control.
I started to lie down around 1 or 2 am and while E was not 100% back yet, I think she also went to sleep at around the same time. When I closed my eyes, I noticed that there was quite a bit of visual activity still fluttering around that until this point, I hadn’t noticed at all.
The next day, I woke E as soon as I opened my eyes to check if she had gotten her memory back and I was greatly relieved that she had. She then proceeded to tell me that she remembered everything that had happened the night before including not being able to remember anything. The rest of the next day was nice and easy.
I had this long dream in which…
At 6:00 p.m. I ingested one magic brownie. My partner “E” came home at about 6:40 p.m. and we were late for the show. On the subway ride there, E ate her brownie and mine began to kick in. We arrived at the venue about a half hour later and quickly found our friends. One of them had brought a large bag of mushrooms with her and she suggested that we go into the park to eat them along with the extra brownies I brought. There were enough mushrooms for everybody in our group to have 3.5 grams, but some chose doses smaller than this and I think E and I may have taken slightly more to compensate.
We made our way back to the venue and through a brief security check. We worried that our backpack might be a problem, but they just made us dump our water. By now, I was very high from the brownie and I was very glad I could follow our friends to our seats way up in the balcony section.
I remember red lights being the primary lighting as we walked in and I could feel the balcony floor shaking beneath my feet from the dancing crowd. Everyone at the concert was up and dancing to this rhythm that I simply could not find. I continued to stand at my seat and wiggle and sway in a pathetic attempt to appear normal, but I could barely make any sense of the music or how to move. As I looked around, I became slightly uncomfortable at the prospect that everybody at this show was probably on a lot of drugs, which meant they may be as out of control as I was.
Then I looked down and my friend was rolling a joint. This set off waves of alarms in my paranoid head and I could not believe that she was doing this out in the open. I told her, “I don’t think smoking [cigarettes] was allowed in this place.” to which she replied, “This isn’t a cigarette,” as she proceeded to hand me the smoking gun. I inhaled and then offered it to our other friends who both declined in a way that made me, again, completely aware of various paranoid implications of smoking illegal substances in public.
I sat down.
The mushrooms had clearly begun taking effect a while ago, but it wasn’t until I sat down that I explicitly recognized this. I still could not hear anything resembling music, just a kind of buzzing that was very loud. E was to the left of me and I held her hand. I remember one time looking over at her face and it was not staying still or in place at all, but this is the only visual effect that really stayed with me and it was transient. I continued to travel to far off places in my seat until all at once; everybody around me was standing up again.
I either could not stand up or I didn’t want to and this was enough for E to ask, “Are you alright?” The question hadn’t occurred to me before this and I was surprised that I didn’t know the answer. I notice that I was sweating profusely and I asked E if she was also. She responded, “No. Not at all.” At this remark, I began to think that maybe something was really wrong. I proceeded to experience an increasing sense of dread expanding in my body to the point at which I felt I was going to die. My heartbeat sped up and my breathing became very quick. I could not find any of my bearings. A heat was growing inside me and I felt like I was going to faint. I felt like I was going to die. Sensing some of this, E was able to convince me to get up and get some water.
We made our way through mazes of beer carrying obstacles in baseball caps and finally to the bar. The bar tender then directed us to a water fountain downstairs. After a few hardy gulps, I felt much better, but it was not quite enough to stay there anymore. Leaving was another difficult maze marked by various red exit arrows that seemed to lead us in circles. When we finally got to the door, the woman there wouldn’t let us leave until she was sure that we knew we couldn’t come back.
Once outside the commotion subsided. It had become much colder and we were both only in T shirts as we walked back through the park. After she was certain that I was better, E took a moment to fully express how worried she was for me and began crying, but this was met by both of us with some humor and we continued walking the scenic route back to the subway.
On the subway, we tried to act normal and apparently, we were fairly successful. With little giggles here and there, we would remind ourselves that nobody else knew we were tripping. We transferred to the bus and were on our way home. When we got out at our stop, E tells me that she doesn’t know where she is. I explain to her that we’re on our street and our house is just down the block.
And then she begins to say things like, “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who we are or where we were, I can’t remember anything. I don’t know who you are. Did we eat something?”
At first, and at several other points later in the evening, I thought these questions were some kind of joke and I told her my name and hers and that we just left a concert and that we had eaten psychedelic mushrooms and that everything was ok, with little sense of the personal seriousness with which she was asking the questions.
We get to our house and she says, “Are you sure this is our house? I’m not ready to go in, let’s walk around some more.” So, we take a little walk around the block and again, she begins saying things like, “I don’t remember anything. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know who I am, etc…”
Again, I replied with answers that seemed obvious to me at the time, but the repetition of these questions made me believe that she really didn’t know and this scared me. We went inside our house, which she didn’t recognize, and into our room, where her amnesia persisted.
Lying on our bed, she told me that she wasn’t sure what she was doing in this room and she didn’t know how she got there. She was very lucid, but simply had no personal memory. I explained to her that we lived together and that we’ve been together for years and I showed her happy pictures of the two of us. Then, she took off her pants and underwear, but the mood was far from sexual. I almost felt like I didn’t know who this person was and I knew she didn’t really know me. I would try over and over to make her believe that this amnesia routine was just a joke, but it didn’t work. She couldn’t remember anything.
She continued to interview me for more clues as to what was happening, asking again, “Did we eat something?” to which I replied, “Yes, we ate psychedelic mushrooms.”
“Do we do this often?”
“We do it occasionally.”
“Does this always happen that I can’t remember anything?”
“No, this is the first time.”
It was now about 3.5 hours after the mushrooms were eaten and I was feeling quite sober and racking my brain for answers as to what was happening. My amnesiac partner offered that maybe she has Alzheimer’s disease, while I contemplated the idea that maybe she was having a psychotic break.
After an hour or two of this state of confusion, I began trying to force her to guess the answers to questions that I thought she should know like, “What is my last name?” or “What kind of car do you drive?” and sure enough, she would get the right answers even after her repeated statements of “I don’t know.” While I continued in this fashion, she would occasionally close her eyes and say, “I don’t think I’m ever coming back.” or “I’m dying.” “I can’t remember anything.” To which I would correct her and say, “You’re not dying and you’ve been remembering all of the answers to all of the questions I’ve been giving you.”
Gradually, she started to sound like my E again. She would have small epiphanies here and there remembering that she didn’t have to go to work the next day or remembering her brother’s pet’s names and I felt like the situation was finally fairly under control.
I started to lie down around 1 or 2 am and while E was not 100% back yet, I think she also went to sleep at around the same time. When I closed my eyes, I noticed that there was quite a bit of visual activity still fluttering around that until this point, I hadn’t noticed at all.
The next day, I woke E as soon as I opened my eyes to check if she had gotten her memory back and I was greatly relieved that she had. She then proceeded to tell me that she remembered everything that had happened the night before including not being able to remember anything. The rest of the next day was nice and easy.
