How to Clean Purple Boba Stains Off Your Ceiling: My Experience Macro-dosing Psilocybin Mushrooms

4950 words published on Jun 3, 2021

Let’s add this article to the “Gee, I sure hope this doesn’t ruin my career / social life” list.

I’ve taken mushrooms in small doses before and had only positive experiences so far, but I’d heard that a large dose often provides meaningful, life-altering experiences. I’m generally only a casual drug-user that doesn’t do the varsity-level stuff, so I hesitated for a long time, but my curiosity never dissipated.

[Aside: I took a few photos while tripping — as if I could capture what my mind was seeing at the time 😅 — and I’ll be sharing some here.]

Preparation

During the pandemic, I read the book Trip by Tao Lin. In hindsight I’d say that my experience with psychedelics is quite different from Lin’s, but it was still an interesting read. Lin has certainly spent more time and thought on the subject than I ever will.

Me reading Trip by Tao Lin sitting in a parrot-shaped innertube while on a camping trip. — Photographic evidence that I do, in fact, read on occasion.

When I finished the book, I think that solidified my decision to try and take this journey entirely on my own.

I settled on doing about 3g of dried mushrooms, based on my body weight and limited previous experience with the substance. This is roughly 4x the dosage I’d had previously.

When I made this decision, I told a few people. Mostly because I wanted to have some “emergency contacts” that knew the full context of what I was doing in case anything went wrong, or if I needed to talk to someone without attempting to catch them up with what I was doing while feeling the effects.

Tips for My Trip

Telling people provided another benefit: the helpful tips they suggested.

Build safe spaces.

I moved into my own condo in April and have been spending much of my time customizing it to be a comfortable and ergonomic place for me.

The friend who helped me decorate taught me about treating portions of my space as individual “moments” — I compare the concept to set pieces in movies. Because of this design philosophy, each zone in my home has a clear intention for what to do and feel in that space.

A view of my kitchen from the living room. A wall of large photos of family and friends. A table with a water jug, a purple boba tea, and other condiments. — In this moment I was feeling appreciation for the photo wall in my kitchen. Whenever I need to be grounded and remember my loved ones, especially the ones who are far away, I walk up to that wall. It also shows that I was making sure I stayed hydrated, and provides foreshadowing for what eventually happens to that purple boba drink. (the other items on the table were left there from the previous night)

This turned out to suit my experience well. No matter where I went in my home, I felt my mood shift for that space. I could let my muscle memory handle more of my actions than I would if I had a less focused layout. I wholly endorse this tip both for interior design and for tripping on mushrooms. (And if you need an excellent interior decorator in California, message me and I’ll refer you.)

Put your phone away.

I put my phone on silent mode and left it on my desk in a boring corner of my home where I’d be unlikely to impulsively grab it but could find it if I wanted to.

In practice, I kept wanting to use it. In the early stages I was taking photos and writing down what I was feeling.

Just a list of rambling thoughts that I express the most meaningful of elsewhere in this article. Oh, and one about how I have the urge to wear a sundress. — (They’re in reverse chronological order) The random ramblings of me tripping without auto-correct turned on, with the symbols and keys on my keyboard moving as I typed them.

As time went by, I also sent text messages to some of the people I told beforehand to expect me to be weird that day. With the exception of a single post I made when I thought I was coming down, I stayed away from social media.

This definitely had potential to go terribly wrong, so I wouldn’t suggest ignoring this advice the way I did. But I was lucky to not do or say anything I regretted later. And after all, I’m still sharing this whole experience with whoever googles me at this point anyway. 😅

Clear your schedule.

Leading up to the day on my calendar with the little 🍄 emoji on it, my mission was to clear my to-do list and make plenty of space and time for me to recover. Forgetting to do things is one of the leading causes of anxiety for me, so seeing clear checkmarks next to tasks I track helps me relieve those feelings. I wanted my head to be as relaxed and clear as I could get it for this.

If you’re like me and feel the shadow of unfinished work hanging over you, I absolutely recommend following this tip.

Oh, and give yourself a full day off after for recovery. If you’re doing it solo without anyone coaching you, I think I’d up that to two days. I was still a fraction of my normal self at work on Monday.

Consider your nutrition.

Eat a good breakfast. Right before dosing, be sure to use the restroom. Have healthy easy-to-grab snacks around. Nothing that requires knives, the stove, or the oven. Impulse control can be an issue, so let’s not tempt fate. I stocked up on:

Baby Carrots
Cucumbers I sliced that morning
Dips for the veggies
Seasoned Cashews and Almonds
Jerky of various types
Salami (pre-sliced)
Single-serving chocolates

Another tip I got was “don’t take other substances at the same time” (caffeine, pot, etc.). In hindsight, I think taking a small (2-4mg) dose of an Indica edible with the mushrooms may have cut down on the strain a bit, especially when I was trying to fall asleep. My jaw was sore the next day, so I must have been grinding my teeth. But that’s just a theory about my own brain.

Listen to Soothing Music.

My living room from the couch perspective. A colorful and eclectic Mexican mask hangs on the wall and the television displays Spotify playing music. — This was the first spot I plopped down after settling in at home with the effects kicking in. The mask on my wall was the centerpiece for my living room, and we designed it around it. It was an excellent focal point for me visually. I stared at that mask for what felt like hours (but was probably 10 minutes) while Kalbi ravenously licked my hand, as he tends to do. All the weird little parts of it moved and spoke to me, mostly saying variations of “this is trippy, dude” if I remember correctly.

I threw this advice away immediately and played my “Latest Stuff” playlist that has the last six months of all kinds of cross-genre music I’ve found. This is my least-curated playlist, and this was perhaps a lapse in judgment. It might’ve been better to use one of my curated Chill lists instead.

Close your eyes.

As a lifetime ~~sufferer~~ haver of ADHD it’s hard for me to close my eyes and have no stimulation for more than a few minutes, so I didn’t spend much time following this advice. It might’ve been beneficial to do it more, but I’d need someone else there coaching me through the experience to reign me in if I wanted to accomplish that.

This is another great example of a “moment” we designed into my home. This photo is definitely exactly the mood I wanted for my bedroom, and I captured feeling at ease in this space. (This room has curtains now though)

There were too many interesting visuals to ignore. Plus, most of what I saw was positive, and about half of what was going on inside my head was negative so closing my eyes didn’t seem great at the time.

Thank You, By the Way

I’m not going to name any of the people that helped me at various steps along the way, for reasons that are probably obvious, but you know who you are and I appreciate you. ❤️

Day-of Prep

When the big day arrived I:

ate a hearty breakfast with protein and vegetables
picked up a comforting non-caffeinated beverage
used the restroom
took the mushrooms

Then I walked Kalbi (only within the courtyard of my condo complex) to get some sunlight and nature as the effects started slowly creeping up. Once I started feeling them, I headed back inside.

What I Did While Hallucinating

Kalbi (my dog) wagging his tail in the hallway of my building outside my door. — We had come back inside from our walk and the repeating geometric patterns of the hallway centered around this excited tail-wagging boy were doing weird perspective tricks I’ve only seen previously in Kubrick movies and homages.

Much of what I feel uncomfortable sharing are anecdotes of what physically happened. The easiest thing would be to delete this entire chapter, but I’m not doing that. The purpose of taking this journey was to break decisively out of my comfort zones and examine my true self. So, while I will not be sharing explicit details, here are some of the things I did while on mushrooms.

I played music and sunk into my couch with Kalbi on my lap.
I laid in bed and stared out my window and at my hands and arms.
I stripped naked and “danced” in every room in my apartment.
I took a shower, which felt so good that I had a full-on ecstatic episode in my bath tub.
I writhed around in the bathtub in a strange non-sexual ecstatic fit.
I pulled down my shower curtain and wrapped myself in it, imagining it was a magical cloak.
I rolled around naked on my couch with a fluffy blanket I found a new appreciation for.
I violently thrashed around* in an attempt to test physical reality against the free-ness of my mind. I expected the walls to shatter the room around me and reveal the true universe.
I smashed my hands and feet into my bathtub several times.*
I ran headfirst into a mirror.*
I threw my nearly-full boba drink at my ceiling in my living room at full force and smashed it so that the entire room was covered in purple splatter.
I spiked a plastic container of olives into the floor, distributing a variety of delicious olives across my living room.
I failed to shatter the universe.
I cleaned everything up while still high.

*Luckily, the only damage done was a few bruises.

What Happened In My Head

If there was anything that I needed recovery time for, it was the magnitude of information I was perceiving simultaneously. I overclocked my brain.

Here are your core personal philosophies, all at the same time, all of their ramifications, and what they all mean when layered upon each other across the entire universe.
Psilocybin

By the time I started coming back to reality, I thought I’d been high for days but it was only 5-6 hours. I was more exhausted than I’ve ever felt in every way: physical, mental, pain, sensory overload, and a general feeling of being completely spent.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve condensed the things I thought about into a few categories.

Aesthetics

My life orbits around my aesthetics. Before this experience, I hadn’t put that much thought into this, but the visual hallucinations I saw during this amplified my awareness. I often make important decisions based on which option more closely feels right for my aesthetic sense.

When I took this, I could see bands of colored light in pale purples, blues, and pinks refracting off each individual hair on my arm. I wish I could capture a video of this kind of thing, because it was **beautiful**.

As one of my notes I took attempted to explain, my aesthetics boil down to the way that natural light breaks apart and reflects off of the tiny blonde hairs on my arms. I love drastic contrast, and prefer to live in the space between more common colors.

View from my bed through my window to see another residential complex across the street and a clear blue sky. — When I looked through my bedroom window, the buildings across the street looked like an Edward Hopper painting. You can see in the photo that the screen was doing a little work to make it look surreal, but my brain was obviously doing extra work too.

Being so centered on aesthetics is a mixed bag. It means I enjoy things that are stylized or carefully crafted even more than most people do, but it also means that I’m incredibly critical of everything I create… and usually that’s not constructive. Now I have a bit more awareness of this part of myself, so I’ll be keeping tabs on it.

Infinity & Time

If you asked what my greatest fears were a few months ago, I’d probably talk about losing my memory, losing my ability to move and speak, or a fear of being trapped someplace with nothing to do. All of these are based on the ways I’ve seen family members suffer and die.

These are still frightening for me, but I think I understand these fears better than the over-arching one I was thrust into while tripping.

The main character of 127 Hours shouting with his arm stuck between rocks. — In 127 Hours, the main character is climbing alone and gets his arm stuck. It’s based on a true story. I will *not* actually watch this movie because it might break my brain.

The true fear at the core of them is a fear of infinity. More specifically to my sense of it, a fear of things staying the way they are in this moment (or an imagined future moment) forever.

Even in my new home that I love and customized for myself, the idea of staying here forever was torture. The idea of eating only my absolute favorite food for the rest of eternity would feel similarly torturous. Part of my realization was not only that I’d be stuck in a loop, but that I’d be able to perceive it and unable to do anything about it.

I’m still processing this, but I haven’t found any practical use for this new clarity yet. The answer is still just “Yea, that’d suck. Hope that doesn’t happen! 🤞”

Death and Afterlife

I’ve been obsessed with death for as long as I can remember, and my realizations about my fears of the infinite shined some new light on it.

My aversion to belief in an afterlife is part of my resistance to religion. To me, there is little distinction between Heaven and Hell. In both cases, I’d be stuck someplace for eternity without control over who I’m with or what I’m able to do.

I view death as a respite. Perhaps it’s obvious that I realized this long before my first suicide attempt as a child. I have this idea that death will be an end of consciousness, awareness, thought, and sensation.

I now see that my views are just as faith-based as the Christian afterlife I was taught as a kid. I have no evidence to lead me to believe that death would be a final peace. That’s what I want it to be. As much as I want to consider myself a rigorous secular person, one of my primary drives is a fairy tale I’ve been telling myself since I was young.

I have no intention of stopping, of course.

Now I walk the earth with a lessened feeling of certainty, which has a bit more anxiety attached to it. But it comes with an end to my feelings of superiority over people who are religious, follow horoscopes, get psychic readings, or other types of [mostly-harmless] superstition in the world.

In general, I feel less judgmental than ever and I see this as a positive change.

Control Over My Own Life

I also completed a journey I was almost finished with in regards to my own death. Much as I hate it, the clichés ring true, as usual. “Life goes on”, [select “peaks and valleys” quotes], [appreciating sunny days more because of rainy days stuff], and of course…

Jeff Goldblum saying "Life (uh) finds a way" from Jurassic Park

Whenever I struggle to find purpose or meaning it always ends up here. A shrug and “I guess I’ll make the best of it one day at a time” mantra. More introspection about this has certainly thrown a wrench in my desire for control over the time and circumstances of my death. Perhaps that’s an exercise in futility. Perhaps I’ll live to be 100-something like some of my great grandparents. Eh. We’ll see.

Individualism vs. Hive Mind

Kalbi and I are one. We went through this journey together, and he never signed up. And neither did any of you, but you were all there too.

Overlapping Timelines

The Doctor and River Song in the episode "The Husbands of River Song" — River Song has one of the best long character arcs in the history of serial storytelling.

I have this personal philosophical exercise that I’ve held beneath the surface and talked about only in small doses. A concept that I’ll try to use the idea of the “soul” to illustrate.

There is only one soul. It does not follow the rules of linear time. Each of us are the same mind, experiencing life and death over and over in different bodies and circumstances. You are me, I am you. All that differs is what point we are at in our journey.

And yes, animals are included in this ecosystem.

Following this mental exercise, it leads me to some ideas. Because time isn’t linear, it doesn’t matter who is “later” in that process. None of us have an older soul that knows more than the other. We’re inhabiting a different body at a different time under different circumstances.

I Hope You Enjoyed The Show

While I was tripping, I felt that everyone could see everything I did. And I mean everyone; strangers, people on the other side of the planet, ancestors, aliens from outer space, you name them and they saw me prancing around.

I even texted a few friends while I was feeling this and asked them things like “You see this, right?”

Screenshot of a text conversation I had with a supportive friend where I ask them "You see this, right?" as if they could literally see me. — They thought I was asking if they could see my messages, but their response was confirming my idea that everyone could see *everything*.

And I felt fine about that. It was comforting because it meant that everyone saw me all the time, and that I was more understood (on some level) than I realize in my sober life.

The Practical Use of Magical Thinking

I try to hold onto a piece of this sensation: the feeling that even if others are behaving as if they don’t understand me, there is some level in our shared soul where they do.

See how irrational that sounds? This is why I don’t often talk about it. It’s not something I truly believe, but it’s a useful perspective to manufacture for myself. I believe this point of view helps me foster empathy in myself, especially for the most difficult people I encounter.

My Relationships

Strong feelings arose when I believed that my closest relations, living or dead, could see what I was doing and feeling.

I felt guilt about the ways I’ve treated people. For some of them, it was specific things: bullying my younger brother, being an asshole to my exes, disrespecting my elders, being a brat to my parents, [etc.]. Others were a generalized form of guilt that pervaded every life I’ve ever touched.

Following that came a feeling of gratitude for the grace and understanding that loved ones have had with me, dealing with my bullshit over the years. Memories of times when people supported me, even when they knew I was doing something crazy, also came up in this feeling.

After these came a comforting feeling of being loved and accepted for who I am. There need not be any secrets among loved ones. I often feel like queer folk who come out only to find family members reply with “Duh! We knew for a long time!”, and I have to give my community more credit for knowing me, even if I don’t directly tell them everything.

I felt I could see everyone else too, and I saw a universe full of living things doing their best with the hand they’re dealt. I had the desire to reassure the world. That’s what led to this social media post that some of you saw that day.

A social media post I wrote: I feel the overwhelming urge to simultaneously say I'm sorry, thank you, I'm okay, and you are too.

A Newfound Appreciation for Eyelids

I now understand why people who have glasses don’t wear them all the time. I understand blinders that narrow our vision and the opaque walls and doors that we wrap around ourselves. It’s not just so others can’t see us, but so that we don’t have to see everything all the time.

I experienced what I can only describe as omniscience, and after a couple hours, I grew to hate it.

I don’t want to know and care about everything. It’s simply too much to handle. If anything, this validates my recent efforts to reduce the breadth of my media consumption and the mental health improvements I’ve felt since. I will continue to focus more on what is closest to me; both geographically and emotionally.

My Relationship with My Physical Body

A big theme of my trip that I didn’t expect was my lifetime struggle with self-hatred. Everyone told me that taking this trip was going to open up the things I was unconsciously trying my hardest to hide from and force me to face it. I think this is the topic that best fits that description.

The Ecstasy of Self-Love

At some point while dancing around naked in my home filled with floor-to-ceiling mirrors, I came upon an incredible feeling that I had not experienced previously in my life. An appreciation for my own physical beauty. Flaws and all.

It felt like I was looking at someone else. I had a detached feeling from my own reflection that allowed me to see past my own self-hatred and see only what was actually there. A middle-aged, hairy, cis male, overweight-but-fit, tattoo-covered body. I was able to objectify myself for the first time, and it drew a sharp contrast from the way that I normally see myself.

Almost all of what fell away was complete garbage: a combination of depression lies and internalized insults that I’ve soaked up and harbored since childhood. After coming back to my senses, I felt a clear need to take out the trash.

More On This Later

As I started writing this body image section, it got to be way too long for a sub-section of a mushrooms post, so I’m going to write it as its own article and link to it here when I have the courage.

High-level takeaway: I need to ~~stop hating~~ start loving my body. I’m working on that now.

The Big Come Down

There was a moment when I began to feel that I’d crested over the peak, and I began to come down from my high.

Consequences

The most obvious things to deal with were all around me. I had to clean up the messes I made in my living room, in my bathroom, and on myself.

If you clicked on this article hoping for a picture of my boba tea and olive oil soaked living room, I’m sorry to disappoint you. When I was in the moment of recognition that my actions do in fact matter and have consequences, I was past the point of taking photos. Today, writing this article, I wish I did take one though.

The cutest dog ever sitting on an artsy patterned rug. — As consolation, here’s a picture of Kalbi sitting on the part of my rug that still has some slightly purple stains left on it. (my new sofa will cover this section, luckily)

I had to make sure Kalbi was okay after basically being pulled along on this journey with me. He was fine; just worried about me with a tummy full of olives and taro milk tea, which I hastily confirmed were not bad for dogs to consume in small amounts. Good thing I didn’t throw my cashews…

I started cleaning up, wrongly thinking I was close to done with the effects. As I scrubbed away at all the purple spots, they seemed to come back as soon as I looked away. Olives and tapioca bubbles reappeared after I gathered them and tossed them in the trash. My perception of time remained wibbly-wobbly. It was probably a failure to realize how big of a mess I’d made in reality.

Once I got near-finished with cleaning — I continued to find purple spots in surprising places for nearly a week — it began to feel like I was forgiving myself. I’m hard on myself when I make mistakes, and I’ve worked on that for years in therapy and with loved ones who occasionally witness me beating myself up.

Cleaning my mess and seeing time rewind back to the neatly organized home I had that morning gave me an interesting perspective on how actions we take afterward can heal and forgive, which is unquestionably better than dwelling on the mistake.

Re-Learning How to Exist

I never heard anyone describe this sensation to me, but when I regained lucidity, my body didn’t work anymore. And for about 24 hours, I wasn’t sure if I would ever feel normal again.

Hunger Without Appetite

This was a feeling I took especially hard. Since re-organizing my digestive system, I’ve gained a pretty acute sense of when I’m lacking in certain nutrients. I felt groggy and had dull hunger pains because of my lack of protein and vitamins, but whenever I tried to eat anything I could only take a few bites before feeling uncomfortably full and mildly disgusted.

I ate what I could that evening, which was less than a quarter of a can of tomato soup that barely tasted like anything. I woke up feeling even lower on fuel, but still not hungry. This compounded badly with my bruises and full-body soreness.

Luckily, later that day in the afternoon I went to one of my favorite ceviche places in San Francisco with a friend that knew my situation and the smell of the food there re-awakened my taste buds. Once I got my order and took it to a nearby park, I could eat more and felt ten times better within minutes.

Here’s a semi-candid picture of me shortly after I was able to eat again. If you know me, you can probably read on my face that I’m nowhere near 100%, but I felt significantly better than I had for hours before that.

Regaining My Senses

When I’d heard this idiom before, I always thought it meant my mental capacity coming back to rationality. But for a long time after taking my macro-dose, all of my senses were either dull or firing confusing messages at me.

It was difficult to balance. I had trouble typing on both my mechanical keyboard and my touchscreen devices. I was easily disoriented by sounds, not able to track what direction they were coming from. I could see fine for the most part, but the exhaustion combined with the other effects made it so I wanted to close my eyes more often.

As the day after continued to progress, I could swear I felt my synapses slowly re-building their connections again. The sensation of slowly pulling on a tight long-sleeved shirt and pants that had been rolled up into a ball. I had to steadily keep pushing and stretching into the fabric to straighten the sleeves and legs out.

By that evening, about 6 hours after I was able to eat the ceviche, I felt mostly myself again physically. I finished my leftovers and even snacked more. I fell asleep at the ungodly hour of 8pm that night.

Comic that lists healthy everyday activities, including battling existential dread. Don't let it set in! — And still battling the fresh existential dread at the same time.

Mental Processing

I’ve been trying to write this article for a few weeks. And this isn’t my normal brand of procrastination and perfectionism. I was — and still am — still processing everything I felt and saw that day.

It was disorienting, but this was the part I signed up for. I was less ready for the physical effects than I was for the time spent in meditation afterward. I have no way of knowing how far along I truly am with figuring all of this stuff out, so maybe another post will come out later that adds to this.

Would I Do It Again or Recommend This?

It’s only been a few weeks since my experience, and right now my answer is no. If you’re considering doing a macro-dose, I at least recommend you don’t go solo. It would’ve been much less scary with someone with me, even if that may have prevented some of the nudity and self-love stuff.

A big thing the few people I’ve spoken to about it have asked is if I’d had “a bad trip” but the concept of good and bad is even more meaningless to me after this experience. I only know what is. I know that sounds so pretentiously Yoda-esque to say, but I don’t know how else to explain it.

I walked away from it feeling traumatized. That was the most thoroughly-felt sensation I had in the days after. But what did I expect? The only thing that could provide the life-changing shifts in perspective I was chasing would have to be traumatic, right?

While I was high, I described it in a message to a friend as feeling like I exploded and had to gather all of my pieces and put myself back together.

I don’t know what other kind of trip I could go on, because every aspect of my personality had its place. I had ecstasy, pain, fear, laughter, love, and hate all in a chaotic cacophony that I couldn’t turn away from. I value the control I have over my mind and senses. I don’t think I’ll ever do this again, but we’ll see how I feel about it a year from now.

Oh… and all-purpose cleaner with a scouring sponge worked fine for those ceiling stains. (See? Not clickbait!)