Psilocybin Trip Report – physical healing attempt

Trip Report – physical healing attempt
Psilocybin Cubensis May 2007

Background: 

This one completely different than any other for me. My now ex wife had been deathly ill after a rare complication from a surgery and finally we had found the cause to be the fact that in this surgery they had cut the main trunk of the vagal nerve near her stomach and she had a very bad reaction to it. This has left her with severe nausea vomiting every ten minutes for almost two months straight and she had begun to speak of suicide. Add to this that pic line for nourishment had become infected and almost gone to her heart only stopped by first line intravenous antibiotics. This woman was the strongest human being who I had ever met so for her to speak of suicide both alarmed me and made me realize just had bad was her suffering by that point. We had finally discovered at this two month point that the sedative Lorazepam (Ativan) that relieved the nausea for up to two hours allowing her some respite and some much needed rest. In my own work with the mushrooms, it had been suggested that they could help in the healing with this reaction to the vagal nerve being severed but this would require her to take them, something she was not prepared to do even in a well state. I found some information on enema dosing but she was not game. I should say that I never suggest them to anyone only in this circumstance was the exception. Finally I determined to do them myself in a healing attempt but had little faith in it or in myself as a healer but was desperate and my thought was that it could not hurt. I really felt that if she herself would do it, it would help but it appears this would be the closest I could get to that happening. 
Dosage: 

I had been saving aborts for a while had in mind for some special occasion and I can't quite say why other than I felt they may have a certain … flare? I measured out six dried grams of mixed cubensis from five different strains and looked at the gnarly pile in the palm of my hand with satisfaction thinking well this application qualifies as a special occasion, I suppose.

Set and Setting: 

Mindset in this case kind of dovetailed with setting, I feel. My wife and two dogs are in a motel having sold our house right after she had this surgery that was suppose to be a rather simple affair, mind you. Now I am trying to get her in with a specialist at John Hopkins since the surgeon apparently hands off the 1% of the patients who have a negative outcome to lawyers so as not to slow down the assembly line work of his medical business. We were suppose to be heading out west for a summer of car camping having sold everything and then driving through Mexico to Belize where we were going to move and buy a jungle lodge to run.

Now we are staying in a motel near the hospital that is not in the best neighborhood. My routine for tripping is in the morning on an empty stomach with two of my most trusted plant allies, coffee and cannabis. For coffee I had to walk about a 150 yards to a 7-11 going through a small, urban forest strewn with a varied and disturbing array of litter including panties and condoms. I am glad to see my wife is still sleeping when I return. I sit and write up intentions reading them over emphasis upon this being a healing attempt for my wife so I am determined to not get carried off in any other directions in this trip something so far never attempted and for which I have little confidence in pulling off, really. I had always gone in with only the best intentions and the very thought of trying to direct the experience felt like something of an anathema to me so this trip now felt daunting and challenging to say the least. I should say that for me this was never about something happening within my own mind but about an interaction with a separate entity or at least with a symbiotic entity created by the Psilocybin interacting with my own nervous system. So now I speak to (this entity) prayerfully asking and asserting at once what I need from this experience. I had only recently recalled that years earlier I had been given my power animal in a dream and that it is the Great Blue Whale. Large part of my preparation is looking at pictures of Blue Whales then closing my eyes and visualizing them in my minds eye. This I continue doing even while eating from the anomalous little pile of aborts on the desk before me. Their smell and taste are especially strong. The only real faith I can muster this morning, try as I may, is not in myself but in this Blue Whale power animal. For whatever reason, I do have a lot of faith in the Blue Whale Power Animal.

My wife continues to sleep probably beyond exhaustion and I have to give thanks to the Ativan – and no cannabis didn't help at all, unfortunately. I am now not looking at the time as is my custom but at some point I feel like it is starting to come on seems like maybe a half hour or so has passed? One of my only three power items is a little brass bell it's handle shaped and imprinted with the shell of a tortoise and I close my eyes and ring it gently next to left ear to see if there are any closed eyed visuals but no so I decide to go into the bathroom and brush my teeth of the lingering funk of the aborts. The sound of the bell it's vibration is also intended to dispel any negative energy or spirits as well. 

By the time I am in the bathroom, I feel them coming on strong now so much so that I feel looking in the mirror may not be the best thing at this point since I do not want to get carried away into a heavy trip but to focus on the healing attempt and while not even sure this strategy is best, I go with it. But suddenly I find myself closing my eyes as my head tilts back still standing in front of the bathroom mirror as my head explodes with visions the likes I've which I had never known before. I am in a desert landscape and arising from the dust like a dust devil is a whirlwind vortex rotating counter clockwise as I stare at it in wonder it becomes a double helix of a DNA strand whirling formed of skull masks that look like Aztec Death Masks shaped like human skulls and there are .. millions of them? They are the grains of sand forming this rising vortex whirlwind and within the eye socket of each mask I see human eyes that are alive staring out and, as is not uncommon I had noticed even tripping on LSD, I seem to be able to see each individual mask, each set of human eyes, as well as the whole whirling DNA strand of masks rising up into the sky at once and as I actually tilt my head back, I feel myself falling and snap open my eyes holding fast onto the sink now and staring at myself there in the mirror, eyes lit up like car lights in the wet night.

Whoa. I smile, you little stinkers, I knew you would try to carry me away! I whisper to myself in the mirror.

Even eyes open just looking at myself there staring back, I feel myself again going now going away and I close my eyes and call upon the Great Blue Whale and visualize the Whale in my minds eye and to my astonishment, it works and dispels the Aztec Death Mask DNA strands obviously trying their best to take me away. Normally O my would that have worked a real attention getter! The healing I assert and open my eyes returning quickly to the bed fortunately only a few steps away in the hotel room. As I lay down next to my still unconscious bride, I feel a little better about my intention to not be carried off into this trip but rather to try to bare down on it with some control. This is such a counter intuitive thing for me to do. I lay on my side with my wife on her side behind me and she curls up next to me and puts her arm over my side and I pull it gentle over and place her hand upon my heart and hold it there with both my hands and I pray and breathe deeply and before I know it, I'm in this strange lucid dream state that I had once before on my first high dose experience. As before, it is very real and does not seem at all like a dream rather like I am in some alternative reality. My last thought I could recall was upon The Blue Whale visualizing it mainly, the vague thought of “help me”. I am aware that I am within a mushroom experience that is the strange thing and I am standing upon what seems like clouds but it is solid and standing next to me is The Blue Whale. I look over at it in wonder. It is enormous and it is as if it is standing upright next to me towering above me like a building.

A stern, demanding voice startles me away from the Blue Whale, “Why are you here!” It booms deeply.

I see then before me and just above two men who look like business men (maybe doctors?) only they are in white, flowing robes like perhaps priests might wear? The are standing behind a pure, white marble alter that comes up to about their waist and behind them is a single white column and from behind the column shines a blindingly white light but I stand with the whale just in the shadow of the column enabling me to see them but still they are cast in a halo glow. The one on my right had spoken but both of them are glaring down at me and I have the strong sense that I am not suppose to be here. They are obviously not happy about it! I cannot speak the deep, boom of his voice has rattle me to the core as my mind fumbles, “for the healing” but before I can translate it into words, the other one on my left says in the most disdainful tone speaking to the Blue Whale, “THIS is what you bring us, now?” And the way he says “THIS” is clearly referring to me and clearly implies that to these two I am evidently less welcome than dog shit on the bottom of your shoe.

The Great Blue Whale says simply, “He is with me” and just rewriting this years later now brings me to tears how it made me feel. I have never felt so comforted and validated in my whole life before or since. 
The two look at each other then and I sense that the Blue Whale clearly pulls some weight with them. A significant beat passes then the disdainful one on my left says prissily almost, “Well, alright then so it shall be!” and he then takes is right arm and winds it around in a full circle dramatically once, twice, thrice and with the third circle flings something invisible at me underhanded the way one might pitch a softball and I feel an electric shock in my heart and “wake up” there on the bed feeling my wife's hand blown off my chest just as I make a startled cry and fly out of the bed. My wife wakes and looks at me and I somehow manage to say, “it's nothing” and she rolls over to her other side and goes back to sleep while I try to catch my breath with some difficulty. I am trembling and very aware of what just happened in fact just being back in the room instead of there where I was is blowing my mind and I find myself looking around the motel room in wonder, “what the hell,” I mutter softly. Both my dogs are now at my feet and I manage to kneel and pet them and tell them everything is alright. They are obviously disturbed. I plop down in the straight back chair at the desk next to the bed and put my head in my hands, closing my eyes -

MISTAKE!

I open my eyes immediately just closing them and I'm gone again and I think about it now trying to reason with myself, grappling with what just happened – what DID just happen? I think back to it and replay it in my mind that electric jolt to my heart from that … that … what? Priest? Healer? How could a healer be such a fucking asshole? Did it actually blow her hand away or did I throw her hand away when I startled and jumped out of bed – yes, I think that must be it, I pushed her hand off me is all? I think well maybe the fact that her hand was on my heart was why he sent that charge into it? I take the joint I had rolled and step outside to burn one trying to get a handle on things. The dogs want to go out but just the thought of placing leashes on them and then holding onto the leashes – O that is far too much! It would be all I could do to light the joint. By the clock, it looks like I had been out maybe an hour, hour and a half? Very strange, I think, now outside smoking gratefully, usually so much happens and I feel like how does all that is in the trip get packed into so little real time back “here” but this time I find myself wondering what happened it seemed pretty fast “in the trip” just the Great Blue Whale and I standing before the two … asshole healers … then boom I'm out and back here and yet had to be over an hour's time passed?

I test closing my eyes and powerful closed eyed visuals explode each time and I think well OK the healing is over maybe so I can just relax and enjoy this? But somehow that feels wrong and I resist it and just want to come down. I am oddly down like I can walk and function pretty well, considering? I go back in and began writing it up and it is very hard looking at the computer screen the letters are very tiny and seem to be at the end of a long tube and as I write it up, I think that I should cut my finger and have my wife take some of the blood. No, that's crazy!

No, do it.

I get some yogurt out of the fridge and spend a long ten minutes having a surprisingly difficult time just pricking my finger but finally did so and bleed a single drop onto a small spoonful of yogurt and look at it bright red against the pale vanilla yogurt - “Inoculation” comes to mind strongly. The mushrooms are insistent, “Inoculation” they mean for me to inoculate her with some of them that is in my blood, however tiny an amount that it might be. They are adamant that I do so. I wake her as gentle as I can and to my surprise, she takes the teaspoon of yogurt smiling and then just goes right back to sleep.

I sit on the floor and cry then thinking, “OK this is over”. And it is. I considered it a failed healing attempt nothing dramatic happens in terms of my wife's healing. I spend the rest of the day it seems fully coming down.