My First Time Trying Shrooms Was Great, But I‘d Never Do It Again
By: Fred Gebhardt
Tags: Cannabis, Mental Health, Lifestyle, LGBTQ, Psychedelics

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There I was, lying shirtless on an oriental rug next to a riverbank, eating bite-size sandwiches and profusely dripping in sweat. Every inch of my skin was either sticky or wet. I felt a mess. The rest of the riverbank was filled by other gay men just like me, surrounded by their friends, laughing among themselves. Crumbs from cakes and croissants were getting everywhere.

It had been somewhere in the mid-90’s all day; the sun was torture. Even the shade of the redwoods was no escape. And of course I forgot my sunscreen at home in my rush to pack. No stores within at least a hundred mile radius. Surely I was as red as a lobster by now.

And then we heard a voice call out, “Time for high tea, come one, come all!”

We lined up and, one by one, we were served our dainty cups of tea and told to drink slowly. “The dose is pretty high, honey.” I nodded and went to sit on the oriental rug again with my partner, pinky finger raised and laughing.

Being the adventurous 22-year-old I was at the time, I sucked it all down in one gulp and regretted that decision almost immediately. This tea was made with hot water and magic mushrooms. No added sugar. No fun flavoring. Nothing between you and that earthy grit.

I gagged.

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I’m normally a pretty reserved guy when it comes to larger social gatherings. Annually avoiding the loud San Francisco Pride parade has always been pretty normal for me. Folsom Street Fair usually sees me leaving at around noon. And going to the gay bars? I have to be fairly drunk to have a good time or to introduce myself to anyone.

So when my partner suggested that we drive 3 hours north to go camping in the woods at a wifi-less, clothing-optional, queer-only resort, I had to make sure he was talking to the right person. This was not on my bucket list by any means.

The idea of going up to the woods to escape from the hustle and bustle of the Bay Area was definitely what sold this whole trip for me, though. There was a different hustle and bustle there, one that lasted the entirety of the weekend retreat. The handful of toilets and showers on the property kept breaking, so plumbers were constantly being called. Meals were never prepared on time. Setting up and taking down each of the Pagan rituals felt like one car crash after another. Pure chaos at its most flamboyant.

Of course, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot of organized planning. The whole idea was to create an oasis for queer folks that flew in the face of the lives they left behind for that weekend. The rigid structure that I was used to was ripped away from us and replaced with a go-with-the-flow attitude that I hadn’t yet been able to embrace. All of this colorful disarray culminated in the one last loosely-organized event of the weekend: High Tea by the Riverbank.

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My partner eyed me as I laid on my back, waiting for something to happen. But for a while, nothing did. Looking up, the leaves in the trees swayed back and forth. The river next to us caressed the rocks gracefully. The laughter around us became infectious. And then, out of nowhere, I felt it.

A chill started at the back of my neck and slowly crept its way up my scalp and the psychedelic kicked in. It felt like a shiver making its way under my skin, a wave of cool air rushing over me. That’s when I realized that I was perceiving my surroundings differently.

Trees above me were glistening, shimmering in the light. Chirping birds were singing a harmonized melody. Water flowing through the river sounded like a deep ocean tide. Everything was so much more than it was before. I no longer noticed how much sweat my body was producing. The stinging of my skin was non-existent. In fact, I didn’t even feel the rough scratching on the rug that I was lying on.

I tried to verbalize this sensation to my partner, but half way through, I realized how absurd it all must have sounded and I started to laugh at myself. How could I possibly describe this transcendent beauty in a way that could even begin to make sense? Even now, writing the description of this one moment seems particularly nonsensical.

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Before that moment, I had never been high in my life, not really anyway. A few puffs of pot here and there, sure. That might result in a light-headed buzz, but never to the point of altering my perception of everything around me.

My mental health has been a struggle for a long time and the chemical imbalance in my system isn’t something I want to experience again. In the moment, it wasn’t clear to me what was going on, but looking back a few years later, it was clear that the psychedelic was really affecting me in profound ways.

The highs were my highest highs, but the lows were just as low.

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After two or three more waves of chills hit me, I felt like I was somewhere totally different. A paranoia set in. What had been bright and shiny leaves, were now dark and dead. Every step I took felt like I was taking it through thick mud. The fog rolled in and I thought it was out to get me. In reality, this was probably because it was now dark and night had come to the forest. But to me, it felt like a shift from happy and bright and gloomy and depressive in a mere instant.

Back at our tent, I laid my head on my partner’s lap and started to cry uncontrollably. Why? I couldn’t tell you. I don’t think I even knew back then. But it just felt like all my depressive thoughts had come together at once to confront me. I wasn’t good enough, I had no place in the world, I had no reason to go on.

Very melodramatic and dark, but after about an hour or so, my body had had enough. I fell asleep within seconds of my head landing on the pillow of our blow-up mattress. I could feel my partner wrapping himself around me to keep me warm.

The next morning, we drove back to San Francisco. I spent most of that drive looking back on my first shroom experience. Why did I have such a bad reaction to the come-down? Was it something that I would ever want to try again?

Even today, I don’t really have many concrete answers. But I know that the whole experience was definitely one that denoted a pretty big shift in me as an adult. I had done something wildly out of my comfort zone and had come out of it with a lot of new experiences.