Amsterdam: The Mushroom Affect

The word psychedelic was first used by the Greeks as a way to describe a drug that makes manifest a hidden but real aspect of the mind. Yesterday morning I woke up, sat straight up, and in so doing slammed my head against the top bunk bed I was sleeping under. In this state of confusion and intense pain, I said out loud to nobody in particular the first thing that popped into my head: "Lets do drugs." An hour and a half later, myself and three others who responded to my rhetorical statement were walking through the door of the shop where we were to buy the mushrooms. The guys I was with had done shrooms countless times so they opted for the Hawaiians, the most potent form of mushroom with "intense visual affects." The woman recommended that I take the Tai mushrooms but my friends feared I would experience no visual alteration, a fear I shared. Against her suggestion and my better judgement (its debatable whether or not I even have any of that left), I purchased the Colombian Mushrooms. After a short bike ride, we cozied up on a park bench and started on our mushroom-sandwiches. At this point, one of the kids i was with whipped out a fat blunt. I looked down at the box of magic mushrooms on which were written three simple rules: 1. Do not mix with alcohol. 2. do not mix with other drugs 3. do not eat more than one box. So naturally I smoked this weed and was high in the sky in no time. After an hour or so of sitting around in this park, I was noticeably altered. For one, when I closed my eyes, strange shapes of magnificent colors were rotating in amazing patterns. Beyond this, I would compare it to a really really good full body high. Everything moved slowly and was a bit distorted, and everything was hilarious. The stupidest things would send us into fits of laughter which were actually so intense that I was crying at times. Anyway, at this point we made our way to the Van Gogh Museum.

The "reducing valve" concept, first described in Aldous Huxley's book ""The Doors of Perception," explains that psychedelic drugs reduce the brain's filtering ability, and thus one will experience mind expanding, or consciousness expanding,, as the drug "expands" the realm of experience available to conscious awareness. I have seen Van Gogh's before...I painted as a child and a teenager, and even did a replica of "Starry Night" for my 10th grade advanced drawing and painting class. But my experience in the Van Gogh Museum was unlike any other experience I've had with art. One of the most striking things about Van Gogh that distinguishes him from most of the other post-impressionist painters is the flow that his paintings have...they make you feel like you can actually be swept up into them, especially if your mind is open to the realm of possibility beyond the normal physical limitations imposed by our logic oriented brains (aka your on drugs). In this heightened state I actually traveled into his works...I walked through the corn fields and felt the breeze on my face...I smelled the flowers and felt the rain on my back. It was, I kid you not, one of the most powerful experiences of my life, which is actually a sentiment that 1/3 first-time mushroom users share after their first trip.

We left the museum and blazed yet again to kill time after eating the second half of the box, in my case what was left of 35 g of "colorful and slightly visual" mushrooms. In about an hour a new feeling much more intense then the previous one overcame me. At this particular moment in time, we were on our bikes, a terrible decision on my part. In the course of 5 minutes (or maybe it was ten? or Twenty? I had no concept of time or, as usual, direction) I hit two different parked bikes and briefly believed a trolley bus was chasing me. I was also under the illusion for quite some time that the black kid in the red shirt who was biking in front of us for a while was out to get me...even though I couldn't explain why. His body expanded and contracted in front of my eyes, which was awesome/alarming/confusing. While some people claim this "paranoia phenomenon"' that's associated with mushrooms is the reason nobody should do them, I was actually quite entertained at the time. How often does one have the opportunity to see a minority expand and then contract or be chased by a trolley car? Very amusing. At last we reached our destination after countless near death collisions with moving vehicles and pedestrians, most of which I can't actually remember and was told about afterwards. Our destination was the first and only bar I would go to that night...It's called the grasshopper. It is also a coffee shop...and yeah, you guessed it, I blazed again. At this point I was messed up...and to make matters worse the guys had ordered me two pints. Why I drank those I couldn't tell you but after breaking 2 of the 3 rules on the box of the mushrooms, one thing was clear...I was fucked up. I somehow stumbled up the stairs to the bathroom to piss. On the way out some guy and girl were fighting about a coin the guy had thrown on the floor and the bathroom attendant/tax collector was joining in on the side of the girl. As I attempted to leave this battleground, this semi-attractive-until-she-talked southern woman somewhere between 25 and 30 touched my shoulder and said: "My are you cute." This shocked me, and I was frozen, unable to move or respond. Like in second grade when a girl approaches you in class and you don't know what to say...that kind of frozen. The only thing that was going through my head was: "No fucking way this is happening to me right now," as if some terrible tragedy had befell me. She kept talking to me although I don't remember what I said or if I even responded at all, but at a certain point I told her verbatim: "I cannot deal with this...with you, right now. Please let me fall down the stairs alone." She then asked the natural question: "Are you Okay?" I'm about to say yes when it occurs to me that in fact I am not. "No. I am not okay." She says: "Drugs?" I say: "Lady, You have no idea." At this point my vision gets shaky, similar to the feeling one gets while looking into a distortion mirror, which fortunately subsides after a few seconds. She asks me where we're sitting and I, for some reason that I still cannot tell you, decide to tell her exactly where we are sitting. She says she'll meet us down there in a few minutes. At this point, I book it down the stairs somehow managing not to fall. While our table was right at the base of the stairs, it took me 5 minutes to find the guys. I reach our table out of breathe and announce that we have to leave. The guys ask me if I got in trouble at which point I just start laughing. It took us 10 minutes to stop laughing before we were calm enough to pay for the check at which point we got the hell out of there before Mrs. trailer trash couldmake it down there. We decide it would be a good idea to change for the night so we go back to the hotel but at this point the alcohol has hit me and I'm flying. I am no longer capable of riding a bike and so I walk my bike in a zig-zag path down to our hotel, again taking out pedestrians and parked objects along the way. When I get to my room I lie on my bed for a minute because the world is spinning. Every time i close my eyes I see these little grateful dead bears prancing around along with other multi-colored shapes and, as you probably guessed, I found this hilarious. At this point I had managed to remove my shorts from the lying down position but I had not yet put on my jeans. So here I am in a hostel room with 9 other people who are getting ready to go out and I'm lying on my bed eyes closed laughing to myself....oh, wearing only boxers and my "real men wear pink" T-shirt. Eventually I passed out after remembering to set my alarm (Somehow), but when I woke up from what was supposed to be a 2 hour nap it was 9 am the next morning. I promptly got high and sat down to write this...