shrooms nr i think my life these days could use a bit of a shroom high 171103 ... raze "this stuff tastes like ass," gord says. "they grow it in cow shit. you just chew it like it's food and swallow it." each gram lives inside its own wadded-up piece of tinfoil. they remind me of the foil balls my grandmother used to make so i could play her fisher-price tabletop tennis game when i was a kid, only these are messier. we each get two grams. whatever i'm expecting the stuff to look like, it doesn't look like that. it looks old and dried up and dead. i chew it and swallow it and wash it down with beer. i wonder if i've just eaten cow shit. probably. the three of us smoke a joint to help the high come on. we try to record a song i've written about a relationship falling apart. the song does the same thing the relationship did. i'm too happy. i can't sing the words with any conviction. i start singing about crystal meth and even that sounds like a celebration. i look at tyson. all we can do is smile at each other and laugh. he stares through the transparent patch on the top head of my snare drum, a gift from a different drummer who dished out ten years worth of damage in two days when these drums were only a week old, and blisses out to the warm glow of the hardwood floor. we record more music. it's a bit of a mess, but it's a fun mess. we talk about living together and partying and making music all the time. i learn my basement is haunted. they sleep over. in the morning there's a handwritten note from gord: "hey man. thanx a lot for the hospitality. last night was a blast. but i have to split. it's like 10:30 or something right now and the wind is calling me so see ya all L8R. P.S. you might want to lock your front foyer door." "leaves your front door unlocked," tyson says, laughing. "anybody could've just walked right in while we were sleeping." the second time it's just me and gord. i can't tell if my sideburns are straight. we start walking to the gino. brodie sees us while he's driving by. he stops and gives us a ride the rest of the way in his van. he talks about cannabis-infused honey or honey-infused cannabis. whatever it is, he's in love with the stuff. gord has more shrooms than we've eaten. brodie takes a look. he palms some. he thinks gord won't notice. he notices. he just doesn't say anything. three bands are playing at the gino. one of them is tyson's hardcore band. they play the same set they always play. mike screams, "pick up the boys, let the weed flow," and rick chokes thick riffs out of his guitar, and tyson becomes a different drummer than the one i hear when he's at my house playing my kit with the see-through snare. a band called curse the sky plays next. they're from guelph or kitchener or somewhere. their stuff is pretty typical death metal, but they've got a breakdown in one song that almost forces my lips back over my face. and metal isn't even my thing. this breakdown is so deep, so thick, so GOOD. it grooves. it makes me think. i need to buy a twelve-string electric guitar. i need to write a metal song with a breakdown in it, and instead of playing these chugging riffs tuned down lower than whale shit, i need to play clean arpeggios on top of the drum hits. kick against the violence until it bleeds melody. then kick it again. the third band is kanada. they play the weirdest set i've ever heard them play. almost every song is instrumental. it isn't the usual high-energy punk thing they do. it's surf music mixed with ska without the horns. maybe they ate some shrooms before the show too. outside between sets i smoke with gord. i start to get paranoid. i mention the ziploc bag full of joints in my coat pocket. i say, "i shouldn't even be here." some guy i don't know who isn't looking at me says, "uh oh. someone's getting busted." it'll happen. i know it. i play out the movie in my mind. back inside the gino, i see two cops come over to arrest me. they cuff me. i look to gord for help. he gets this sad, resigned look on his face and says, "i don't know him, man." nothing happens. after the show i tell gord about the movie i watched and how he had one of the starring roles. he starts laughing. "i wish you would have said something. that guy's just a skater. he's no narc." the third time it's me and gord and amanda. we smoke on the porch and play with glow sticks. i ask her why people always smoke when they do shrooms instead of letting the mushrooms do the heavy lifting on their own. "you gotta keep the natural with the natural," she says. gord asks to hear some of the stuff i've been working on. amanda sits at the computer while i listen to myself sing, "she doesn't know what she wants," in the other room, over and over again, and i look at her and wonder if it means anything to her even though it isn't about her. there's something in her face i read as horrified recognition trying to disguise itself as indifference. but maybe i'm just high. the fourth time it's me and gord and julie. in the middle of one of the strangest nights in a series of strange nights that make up the slowest, strangest summer of my life, we walk to the river and sit on some rocks. "this is as close as we can get to nature," gord says. "and it's just a big fuckin' ditch." i've never heard him sound so bitter. the fifth time it's just me. i can't sleep. i eat some shrooms that are three or four months old. i don't expect them to do anything. i don't keep the natural with the natural. i don't have any pot. i listen to "ten years gone" and it feels like i've never heard the song before. i decide it isn't just the best thing on "physical_graffiti". it might be the best led zeppelin song of all time. i follow it with the first suicide album. "frankie teardrop" scares the shit out of me. a farfisa organ, some kind of crude synthesizer, a drum machine created by a company that made bowling pinsetters, a few effects pedals, and a fifties rocker who crawled out of the swamp twenty years too late. how can that sound so evil? the last time it's just me again. it's the only time i ever see anything that isn't there. i see faces rearranged, an eye where an ear should be, the head swollen into some strange shape i can't describe. it's also the only time i get sick. i puke up a purple feeling and learn this important lesson: harry connick jr. is not conducive to a good trip. 210812 ... unhinged don't even get me started my outdoor treasure hunt of the past ten months and my autodidact gobbling of almost all the books about fungi in the seattle public library system that i can actually check out has definitely given my mental and physical energies a good focus during this crazy time though 210813 ... kerry i would love to learn how to hunt mushrooms and not poison myself. this woman i used to work with would go mushroom hunting and bring them into work in one of those plastic bags that used to hold sliced bread. a bread bag? i don't know what to call it. they were oyster mushrooms and they were delicious. first time eating shrooms in high school, i'm with ellen and jackie and we're driving around and i have to pee so we stop at kroger but they're too scared to go in and i get lost trying to find the bathroom. 210813 ... unhinged regional field guides are very helpful. i have also found wild oysters...they like to pop the bark off newly fallen logs and break down hydrocarbons into their elemental parts most of the time shroom poisoning is violent expulsion out both ends. the worse food poisoning i ever had from overly spoiled mushrooms i bought at the grocery store. it felt like someone was stabbing me in the gut. violently and repeatedly. i have never eaten my wild finds. i just take their picture. agaricus augustus, oyster, morchella. just cook them first and eat small amounts so that you know they won't bug you i still prefer snapping pics myself 210813 ... ovenbird I didn’t go near anything resembling a mind altering substance in my youth. I was terrified of the very idea of drugs and I mostly stayed away from alcohol too. My own brain is prone to all sorts of theatrics, so I don’t need chemicals to induce altered states. However, when I turned 40 I read Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind. At that point I had been dealing with anxiety and depression my entire life, and had not fully recovered from my most severe mental health collapse that occurred when my son was born. The book presented research and anecdotes about the power of hallucinogenic experiences and therapies for people suffering from a variety of mental health concerns. I was suddenly convinced that psilocybin could potentially rewire my anxious brain and help me to feel connected to myself, to others, and the world again. I was deeply intrigued. Intrigued enough that I purchased twelve microdoses of psilocybin from a local company that seemed as reputable as an illegal operation can be and waited in horror for them to arrive in the mail. I was so desperate to shift something inside myself. I wanted the world to feel vibrant again. I could remember being a child, how every day felt like it was brimming with possibility. I hadn’t felt that way in over a decade. I was too afraid to try a hallucinogenic dose of shrooms, but I was hoping that my extreme physiological sensitivity would make a microdose an effective tool. I researched appropriate dosing. I talked to a few acquaintances who had had success with hallucinogenic therapies. Then, on a day when I had no responsibilities, I swallowed two capsules of fine ground mushrooms, and waited. I had been told that a sub-hallucinogenic dose wouldn’t produce any overt effects, but that the world might feel more “sparkly.” That is what I wanted. It had been so long since the world felt sparkly. I was struggling to see the beauty in my days. Everything felt flat and grey and cold. I went for a walk to distract myself from the anxiety of wondering what this drug would do to my mind and body. When I got home I spent hours writing in my journal. While the ritual of giving myself unstructured time and space felt good, I didn’t experience any effect from the drug itself, except that I got a headache later in the afternoon. I tried a few more times, but headaches were the only real effect. I was deeply disappointed, and too afraid to up the dose to see if that would make a difference. I still have eight doses sitting in a box on my desk. They feel like a magic potion gone wrong, though I sometimes think about trying again. Two years passed and I continued to struggle with anxiety and sleep challenges and bouts of depression. Then blather landed in my lap. And it did all the things I had hoped psychedelic therapy would do. It provided a touchstone for presence and seeing. It gave me a framework for developing a consistent mindfulness practice. It created a foundation of connected exploration. And suddenly the world felt sparkly. I started to feel like I was seeing things for the first time, with awe, with reverence, with joy. Every time I went out into the world I felt like I had an opportunity to bring a treasure home, a gift to give to this strange red place. And I began to realize that I didn’t need substances to alter my nervous system, I just needed motivation to see differently. I needed a way to generate meaning in a life that had come to feel devoid of meaning. I’m still intrigued by hallucinogenic therapy, but I no longer feel desperate. I’m sleeping better than I have in fifteen years. My nervous system is building a resilience that I never thought would be possible again. It turns out that this twisty tangly web has twisted and tangled new pathways in my brain. I’m sure someone could write a fascinating academic paper about this, but for now what I can say is that a daily blathing practice has had an objective impact on my life. And gratitude is way too small a word. 260312 ... Jus This was beautiful Ovenbird. I'm so glad this place has helped you cope with your depression, anxiety, and sleep issues. I really relate to the loss of that "sparkly feeling". I read somewhere that when flamingos have babies they lose their pink. That's the perfect metaphor for that flat feeling. And I think you did the right thing in not upping your dose by the way. Mushrooms can be *intense*. I once saw UFOs in the sky above the Ambassador Bridge, they were little glowing dots that would come together and split apart. It definitely didn't help my anxiety lol Anyway, glad you're here :) 260312 ... ovenbird Thank you, Jus! The flamingo metaphor is perfect. Having babies has been such a wild ride and trying to find myself in the aftermath has been quite the journey. I'm really glad you're here too. 260312 what's it to you? who go blather from