tetragonos
Bluelighter
My friend Anthony had had these mushrooms in his closet in a plastic bag for maybe a week, in a plastic bag, "fresh" as it were, so by the time we got to the cow paddock on Stoney ##### Road (where they were originally picked), they were slimey, almost glowing blue. They definately had some sort of glowing quality, almost like they were radioactive. I remember joking with him a little about it, how gross they looked. But we gulped them down over the course of about 20 minutes, complaining all the while, but the soft drink helped dull the taste a little. Interestingly, I haven't been able to stomach any mushrooms of any description in any regular food after that experience.
We then trudged off maybe 400 - 600 metres away to the place where we would experience the main trip. Basically, it was the side of a hill, looking onto the opposite hill side, and some mountains behind that, and lots of rainforest. We were basically in an old, barely used cow paddock (there were some cows there but it wasn't highly populated with cows like a regular cow paddock would be). The terrain was hilly, with overgrown weeds (that the cows refused to eat) all over the place, with patches of (cow-edible) low grass mixed through-out, thus allowing you to walk pretty much anywhere. We got to the place (I believe my more experienced friend had tripped before at this very spot). This was fairly early in the day, lets say about 11am. We were right beside the rainforest edge of the paddock and we were in shade and I was in agreement that this place looked good. Considering I had never had any sort of psychadelic trip before, it certainly seemed as good as anywhere else in this paddock. From (my faded) memory, I was perhaps thinking "does it even matter?! It's just a grassy patch where we can chill". But with hindsight, it's very important.
We must have looked quite strange if anyone had saw us. Anthony was quite experienced in the art of mushroom tripping and had all the essentials, a backpack filled with stuff, a towel (to lay on), a battery powered stereo. I guess we looked like we were heading to the beach, really. Quite a strange thought considering we were way way way up in the hills, in the rainforest. Neither of us were very talkative so we just laid down and waited for the trip to kick in, wich maybe took about twenty minutes (we had eaten them quite a bit earlier).
The very first effect I got from it was with my head leaning to the right (away from the open hill sides and horizon to my left), laying down, noticing that the trees in the rainforest seemed to be growing downwards, towards the earth. It was too subtle to mention though. Then after a while, I closed my eyes and I got some extremely powerful visuals. It was a circle of maybe twelve faces in a ring. Each face was mine, and they were all softly laughing at me. It wasn't like some crazy laugh, they were just looking at me and giggling at the scene I appeared to be in. Fair enough really, but to me, a newbie, I got quite freaked out by it. I leaned my head the other way and maybe even got up from a laying position and expressed my worry to Anthony - "I think I'm going crazy!!. I wasn't expecting this!!". He leaned over nonchalantly, but extremely caringly, and said "it's just what happens, this is what happens and there's no reason to be scared or afraid. Just go with it".
His words calmed me down so much, and it was exactly the help I needed to ensure I was on a good trip for the rest of the day. Humans are so weird. Simple words can affect us more than any hallucinogenic drug. It all went a bit blurry after that. I remember looking at a blade of grass and just being in wonderment about nature. How something can sprout from the earth and grow towards sunlight. Later, a horse came up to us, obviously we were the most exciting thing to ever happen in his recent life, and he got a bit too friendly and nosing through our stuff and whatnot, so Anthony started shoo-ing him away, and he exclaimed "you'll be six feet under pushing up mushrooms when I'm done with you" and it was THE most funniest thing I had EVER heard. I cracked up for ages over that. Anthony didn't see the humour in it because he was pissed at the damn horse for annoying us.
That was all in the initial peaking stage of the mushroom trip, from then on, it was a smooth(er) ride. Somewhere back there, we had been arguing (not seriously) about what to listen to on the stereo. The only thing I had brought with me was my Metallica tapes, and I really wanted to listen while I was tripping. Anthony however, had faaaar better taste than me and had brought along his collection of The Smiths tapes. I was a fully fledged metal head at that stage and The Smiths just seemed like the worst possible listening choice ever. In later years, I came to love The Smiths and hate Metallica, so I have no problem admitting that he was right. He was a cool guy though, so we got to listen to Metallica for a little while.
After a while, we switched to the radio. Now, this was North Queensland in 1990. I think we only had 3 (maybe 4) TV channels then, and there was really only 2 radio channels to listen to, so I think we ended up listening to 4CA. We had a choice of 4AM (basically rock hits) or 4CA (golden oldies). Many years later, I would rediscover 4CA as great listening material while on acid. There's a whole other story to get into there but I won't. I will, however, say that we should look back more to the hits that were coming out in the late seventies, early eighties. Great stuff, and surprisingly filled with subtle drug references.
Anyways, somewhere in that maelstrom of thoughts involved in the first peak, Anthony mentioned something about some puppet we both knew from TV. Neither of us could remember his name but we remembered tiny little fragments about his behaviour etc. Squeaky voice, we had both watched him on TV, he had sidekicks etc. We both knew WHO it was but not WHAT it was. We couldn't even remember his name. This puppet was a recurring theme throughout the whole day, he kept coming up in conversation, but for the life of us, we could not remember his name.
After the peak, and the corresponding "mid-part", we eased into the comedown. To my left was the most amazing horizon containing every single weather pattern you could imagine! I could see the sunny day we were having, then the cloudy day the next town was having, and the rainy day the next town was having, etc. On and on into infinity. This is probably the hardest part to describe. It really did stretch on to infinity and I could've told you the weather conditions in any town in the direction I was looking. We spent what seemed like hours looking out into that horizon. Then we looked down to the hill just below (opposite us) and realised those cows looking at us had been there for as long as we had, just staring at us. Jokes soon ensued about them eating the same mushrooms we had, and how they were staring back at the same trippers that they are. I know if I was caged into a boring cow paddock, I would be shrooming too, it makes sense. Humans are just animals after all. They know which weeds to eat, and which to avoid, so I know they were tripping too, just staring at us, and it made such a good thing to stare at. In the end I felt kind of bad about staring at them and thought maybe we shouldn't stare at them and then they'll stop staring at us.
Then came the breakthrough!!...We realised that the puppet we were talking about all afternoon was "Sooty"! Sooty was one trippy fucker, hehe. We laughed for a long while but realised that it was a bit of an anti-climax really. Nevertheless, it was so satisfying to nail it down, and both be in acknowledgement that we had found what we were looking for (in more ways than one). So alas, it was time to pack up and go home. We were still both tripping pretty badly but I was impressed how quickly we packed up all the stuff. We got it all together, headed off towards the road, scraped through the barbed wire fence and onto the road homewards. Anthony's house was within reasonable walking distance but mine was a long, long way away, so it struck me then that I have a mammoth task ahead of me to get home. The way ahead stretched on and on ahead of us, but the actual road went off to the left a long, long way, like a U shape off to the left. We were tempted to venture through the rainforest gully ahead of us, but ended up (wisely) just following the road.
We walked and walked and walked, going past a side street where my friend lived, and not long after, that friend drove past, by chance, and realised it was us, and stopped. As long as our trip was, he saved us about half of that trip. Let's say he saved us an hour of walking. We finally got to Anthony's (parent's) place and had his anti-drug parents in our faces, offering to drive me home and asking me what was wrong, but I just said I have to go, nothing is wrong, grabbed my bicycle and rode off. I had a great ride home, although it was rather tiring, and I got home, excused myself from staying for dinner with my parents, and went to bed. All was well with the world and I had a new realisation of everything around me which has stuck with me ever since.
We then trudged off maybe 400 - 600 metres away to the place where we would experience the main trip. Basically, it was the side of a hill, looking onto the opposite hill side, and some mountains behind that, and lots of rainforest. We were basically in an old, barely used cow paddock (there were some cows there but it wasn't highly populated with cows like a regular cow paddock would be). The terrain was hilly, with overgrown weeds (that the cows refused to eat) all over the place, with patches of (cow-edible) low grass mixed through-out, thus allowing you to walk pretty much anywhere. We got to the place (I believe my more experienced friend had tripped before at this very spot). This was fairly early in the day, lets say about 11am. We were right beside the rainforest edge of the paddock and we were in shade and I was in agreement that this place looked good. Considering I had never had any sort of psychadelic trip before, it certainly seemed as good as anywhere else in this paddock. From (my faded) memory, I was perhaps thinking "does it even matter?! It's just a grassy patch where we can chill". But with hindsight, it's very important.
We must have looked quite strange if anyone had saw us. Anthony was quite experienced in the art of mushroom tripping and had all the essentials, a backpack filled with stuff, a towel (to lay on), a battery powered stereo. I guess we looked like we were heading to the beach, really. Quite a strange thought considering we were way way way up in the hills, in the rainforest. Neither of us were very talkative so we just laid down and waited for the trip to kick in, wich maybe took about twenty minutes (we had eaten them quite a bit earlier).
The very first effect I got from it was with my head leaning to the right (away from the open hill sides and horizon to my left), laying down, noticing that the trees in the rainforest seemed to be growing downwards, towards the earth. It was too subtle to mention though. Then after a while, I closed my eyes and I got some extremely powerful visuals. It was a circle of maybe twelve faces in a ring. Each face was mine, and they were all softly laughing at me. It wasn't like some crazy laugh, they were just looking at me and giggling at the scene I appeared to be in. Fair enough really, but to me, a newbie, I got quite freaked out by it. I leaned my head the other way and maybe even got up from a laying position and expressed my worry to Anthony - "I think I'm going crazy!!. I wasn't expecting this!!". He leaned over nonchalantly, but extremely caringly, and said "it's just what happens, this is what happens and there's no reason to be scared or afraid. Just go with it".
His words calmed me down so much, and it was exactly the help I needed to ensure I was on a good trip for the rest of the day. Humans are so weird. Simple words can affect us more than any hallucinogenic drug. It all went a bit blurry after that. I remember looking at a blade of grass and just being in wonderment about nature. How something can sprout from the earth and grow towards sunlight. Later, a horse came up to us, obviously we were the most exciting thing to ever happen in his recent life, and he got a bit too friendly and nosing through our stuff and whatnot, so Anthony started shoo-ing him away, and he exclaimed "you'll be six feet under pushing up mushrooms when I'm done with you" and it was THE most funniest thing I had EVER heard. I cracked up for ages over that. Anthony didn't see the humour in it because he was pissed at the damn horse for annoying us.
That was all in the initial peaking stage of the mushroom trip, from then on, it was a smooth(er) ride. Somewhere back there, we had been arguing (not seriously) about what to listen to on the stereo. The only thing I had brought with me was my Metallica tapes, and I really wanted to listen while I was tripping. Anthony however, had faaaar better taste than me and had brought along his collection of The Smiths tapes. I was a fully fledged metal head at that stage and The Smiths just seemed like the worst possible listening choice ever. In later years, I came to love The Smiths and hate Metallica, so I have no problem admitting that he was right. He was a cool guy though, so we got to listen to Metallica for a little while.
After a while, we switched to the radio. Now, this was North Queensland in 1990. I think we only had 3 (maybe 4) TV channels then, and there was really only 2 radio channels to listen to, so I think we ended up listening to 4CA. We had a choice of 4AM (basically rock hits) or 4CA (golden oldies). Many years later, I would rediscover 4CA as great listening material while on acid. There's a whole other story to get into there but I won't. I will, however, say that we should look back more to the hits that were coming out in the late seventies, early eighties. Great stuff, and surprisingly filled with subtle drug references.
Anyways, somewhere in that maelstrom of thoughts involved in the first peak, Anthony mentioned something about some puppet we both knew from TV. Neither of us could remember his name but we remembered tiny little fragments about his behaviour etc. Squeaky voice, we had both watched him on TV, he had sidekicks etc. We both knew WHO it was but not WHAT it was. We couldn't even remember his name. This puppet was a recurring theme throughout the whole day, he kept coming up in conversation, but for the life of us, we could not remember his name.
After the peak, and the corresponding "mid-part", we eased into the comedown. To my left was the most amazing horizon containing every single weather pattern you could imagine! I could see the sunny day we were having, then the cloudy day the next town was having, and the rainy day the next town was having, etc. On and on into infinity. This is probably the hardest part to describe. It really did stretch on to infinity and I could've told you the weather conditions in any town in the direction I was looking. We spent what seemed like hours looking out into that horizon. Then we looked down to the hill just below (opposite us) and realised those cows looking at us had been there for as long as we had, just staring at us. Jokes soon ensued about them eating the same mushrooms we had, and how they were staring back at the same trippers that they are. I know if I was caged into a boring cow paddock, I would be shrooming too, it makes sense. Humans are just animals after all. They know which weeds to eat, and which to avoid, so I know they were tripping too, just staring at us, and it made such a good thing to stare at. In the end I felt kind of bad about staring at them and thought maybe we shouldn't stare at them and then they'll stop staring at us.
Then came the breakthrough!!...We realised that the puppet we were talking about all afternoon was "Sooty"! Sooty was one trippy fucker, hehe. We laughed for a long while but realised that it was a bit of an anti-climax really. Nevertheless, it was so satisfying to nail it down, and both be in acknowledgement that we had found what we were looking for (in more ways than one). So alas, it was time to pack up and go home. We were still both tripping pretty badly but I was impressed how quickly we packed up all the stuff. We got it all together, headed off towards the road, scraped through the barbed wire fence and onto the road homewards. Anthony's house was within reasonable walking distance but mine was a long, long way away, so it struck me then that I have a mammoth task ahead of me to get home. The way ahead stretched on and on ahead of us, but the actual road went off to the left a long, long way, like a U shape off to the left. We were tempted to venture through the rainforest gully ahead of us, but ended up (wisely) just following the road.
We walked and walked and walked, going past a side street where my friend lived, and not long after, that friend drove past, by chance, and realised it was us, and stopped. As long as our trip was, he saved us about half of that trip. Let's say he saved us an hour of walking. We finally got to Anthony's (parent's) place and had his anti-drug parents in our faces, offering to drive me home and asking me what was wrong, but I just said I have to go, nothing is wrong, grabbed my bicycle and rode off. I had a great ride home, although it was rather tiring, and I got home, excused myself from staying for dinner with my parents, and went to bed. All was well with the world and I had a new realisation of everything around me which has stuck with me ever since.
