Stumbling on mushrooms with 12 of your best friends and a dog

I’ve had some life-changing psychedelic experiences over the years, from dripping LSD in the middle of a hurricane to drinking a peyote concoction for a week – I’ve taken a leap into the depths of psychedelics.

While every journey is unique and sometimes scary, some journeys shape you for life. One of these trips happened to me while I was traveling in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico to a small town called San Jose del Pacifico.

In fact, I was on my way back from the beach at the foot of the mountain. San Jose was near one of the peaks of the mountain at 2440 meters (8000 feet) above sea level. To reach the destination, you’ll need to drive two to three hours through a series of mountains on a narrow two-lane highway, where speeding buses often carry passengers – and in some cases chickens – between the scattered towns.

Needless to say, the trip to San Jose is not for those afraid of heights. The road, which is not maintained much, often has large chunks missing, which in turn turns the dual carriageway into a one-way tightrope walk. One wrong move and you’ll fall a few hundred yards into a pine canopy.

After bursting your ears from the sudden change in air pressure and successfully riding higher than the clouds, you find San Jose del Pacifico. If you don’t know of its existence, you could drive straight through and never know it was there.

As you drive through town, you’ll notice a few accommodations that promise the authentic “cabin” experience. A few rustic restaurants, the houses scattered in the forest – there is “something” appealing about San Jose.

Perhaps it’s the myth of San Jose that makes it special, or that there are over 300 different species of mushrooms native to the area. Supposedly, the Beatles stumbled upon these mountains with Maria Sabina. However, this was not my motivation to go.

A few years ago a friend told me about this place in the mountains where you can rent a cabin cheaply, buy mushrooms, opium and weed for next to nothing. He even told me who to meet while I’m there to get the best stuff. A few years later I was hanging out with my wife and she had been there before – and knew the person I was referring to.

That was settled and we both decided to go on the journey together. We reached our destination, traveling with a group of other travelers a week before. In total we were about 12 people who went through the entire “mushroom experience”.

I will now explain more how to get the full “Oaxacan Mushroom Experience” below.

While the group experience was “fun” and definitely a nice psychedelic trip, I wanted a more intimate experience with the substance. I’ve always had a “pulp” to mushrooms and to this day am fascinated by all types…not just the psychedelic ones.

My wife didn’t want to make the trip a second time but was cool to kick back and smoke some weed while I tripped. That’s just one of the reasons I love this woman!

Nonetheless, after a few hours of snaking up a mountainside and checking into our cabin, I was ready for the trip. I spoke to the guy who was supposed to be making the arrangements for the experience and scheduled it for 7am the next day.

The day of the mushroom journey…

I usually like to take mushrooms on an empty stomach, which is why I planned the trip so early. That’s because I didn’t just want to do a mushroom trip, I would do a temascal, a Mayan sweat lodge.

It’s an enclosed space that often looks like some kind of igloo, with a fireplace in the middle. After you climb into the room, which is by no means spacious but not entirely “tight” either, the guide begins loading hot rocks into the center of the room.

Once the entrance is closed, it turns pitch black and the temperature begins to rise rapidly. This is because over the next 2-3 hours I will be taking a mixture of herbs and plants from the area and pouring it onto the heated river rocks.

This creates steam that fills the entire pitch-black space. Needless to say, it gets hot in there.

You work up a sweat, it’s hard to breathe and all the time you sit in pitch black darkness with only your thoughts and a bucket of “mountain tea”. Every now and then the guide opens the bolt, throws in another hot stone and sends me on my journey.

After hours of sweating out the impurities in my body and essentially engaging in somatic meditation, I crawled out of the darkness like a newborn born of Mother Earth herself. The cold mountain air on my skin contrasted with the damp interior of the Temascal, and the subsequent soak in the mountain tea helped to close my pores.

I wrapped myself in a towel and made my way to the cabin. There, on the table, I saw my mushroom tea – prepared. My wife sat next to me and asked me how things went at Temascal… I replied, “Good”.

That was of course an understatement. It was fantastic and something I will definitely repeat at some point in my life. Hell if I can build one one day I’ll be very happy.

When I was good and ready, I took the mushroom tea and swallowed about 7-8 small psychedelic mushrooms in one gulp.

The climax begins…

There’s one thing you need to know about me. I’m the canary in the coal mine when it comes to psychedelics. I’m usually the first to feel it usually about 15 minutes after taking what I’m taking. That doesn’t mean I’m “at my peak,” just that I’m becoming aware of the effects very quickly.

This time was no different. Mushrooms give you a momentary feeling of “nauseousness”. At least this has been a consistent experience when consuming shrooms.

It’s not unbearable nausea, more like the kind of nausea you get from reading a book in a moving car. Still, the nausea started about 15 minutes after ingestion and at that point I took a joint and decided to go for a walk.

What’s unique about tripping on mushrooms in the San Jose woods is that you’re thousands of feet above sea level, and while it’s easy to climb down – the way back up isn’t. Many “trippers” have gotten stuck on the side of the mountain because they thought it would be a good idea to explore the area during the trip, only to find they hadn’t brought enough food or water with them for the way back.

I’m a cautious gonorrhea. I don’t like putting myself in situations where I have little control. And so I only went so far that I couldn’t see anyone and could just be by myself.

Mushrooms are a very “earthy” drug and when you take the drug in its natural environment you become intimately connected to your surroundings. I made friends with the soil and enjoyed its touch and smell. I sat down and didn’t care if I got some dust on it.

To someone on the outside, this probably looked like a deranged lunatic losing his shit and rolling in the dirt, but at that point I was just going with the flow.

The trip picked up in intensity pretty quickly, forcing me to move to a less “earthy” area. I strolled cautiously to this vantage point which the guide took us to earlier and which he claims is one of his favourites. To his credit it was a magnificent rock on the side of the mountain with no obstacles.

You could see valleys and clouds and was a few hundred meters from the summit. This would be where I would spend most of my trip. However, I had to make sure I had “stuff” so I could fully enjoy the moment.

And so I stumbled my way back to the cabin.

Midway…

When I made it back to the cabin, the exercise got my heart pumping and suddenly I was in full psychedelia. I saw my wife speaking to the guide and just pointing out the water and some food and a chair for me to take. They understood.

My wife asked: “Are you good?”

I replied, “Oh, I’m fine…”

And with that, I left with some weed, some water, and some nuts and made my way back to the rock. At this point I was in full swing.

We’ve reached the top…

Sitting there in my folding chair on a rock on a mountainside, I began to notice that hallucinations occur in the “space between” things. For example, if there were branches, the journey took place on the space between the branch and the tree.

I continued to see Mayan figures of people and animals dancing in the “spaces”. I sat there wondering what it all meant and whether or not I was just witnessing the forest spirit. At one point I noticed some clouds forming a halo above me…

The halo merged with the sun and I could see fire emerging from the halo’s exterior, flaring toward the center. I lay flat on my back and was in awe of the majesty I was seeing. I may not have consciously understood what was happening – but to my soul it felt like witnessing a sacred moment.

I thought to myself, “Maybe that’s what Moses saw when he went up that mountain and came back with engravings on stones…”

Eventually the halo disappeared and what was left was a moment I can only describe as a “Great Big Blob”.

Wtf is a “Great Big Blob?”

As I lay there, immersed in one of the most vivid psychedelic experiences of my life, my perspective changed completely. I no longer saw empty space as empty, but as a soup of molecules, all vibrating at different frequencies that created the illusion of matter.

Like pixels on a screen, although we appear to be “separate,” this is just the illusion of who we are in time and space. Ultimately, however, we are all part of this cosmic soup of an existence that my consciousness assigned the term “The Great Big Blob”.

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