Just want to remind everyone how positive these fungi can be.

I was 18 and enamored by Terence McKenna, as many adolescents are. I craved this mystical experience; it seemed to call to me. I chose not to indulge at home or in darkness but in a place where I felt most at home—the woods of the Pacific Northwest. I had a friend who happened to be my tattoo artist, a middle-aged Buddhist Wiccan who was a sergeant in the Army and played women's professional football. She loved Donald Trump but also attended Native American Sundance rituals and hiked intoxicated on peyote and cannabis for days. Her home was a beautiful geodome house filled with skeletons, tapestries from Peru, firearms, antique German and French furniture, and an altar to her grandfather, a large cult leader and one of her mentors.

I ingested 3.5 grams of Ape mushrooms with Pink Floyd blaring from a record player as I gulped my tea down. As I waited, I felt the dread—why here, why now, why, why, why? As time passed, I could feel my blood flow through my body, starting from my heart and being pushed into my fingertips to be pulled back and rejuvenated with oxygen again. The lines in my hands became increasingly vivid, the colors began to fade and swell, and I felt like I might drown in my sweat, the screams from the beginning of "Breath" furthering my confusion. Then, right on cue, as the song burst into psychedelic bliss, so did my consciousness. I saw the Peruvian tapestries come alive—a giant eagle flying next to an alpaca, the furry pillow next to me dancing like a little tiki warrior. The pillow invited me to dance, so I obliged. My host walked in on me waltzing with the pillow and broke into hysterical laughter, inviting me to do the same. She motioned for me to walk out into the woods right against her backyard. It was a beautiful Washington summer day, timidly warm at 74 degrees. The grass seemed to sing to me, the faint echo of Pink Floyd still in earshot. As I wandered farther into the woods, what felt like miles (300 feet), I came across an opening beside the creek that ran through the property. It seemed as if the universe beckoned me to take a seat and prepare to take notes. As I rested, I looked up at the tree on the other side of the creek bed, its roots growing into the bank and creek, defying all reason, and I began to feel the peak of euphoria and awe. I looked up at the tree; its leaves seemed blissfully to suck up the sunlight, fulfilling their very purpose. I began to see the tree morph into perfect geometry, a representation I can only express as the information it held being condensed into a "physical manifestation," a synesthesia of all the information of the tree being represented in my visions. I then saw a turtle come and rest upon its roots, and saw the turtle morph into a tree, and remember uttering the prophetic psychedelic babble, "if a turtle is a tree, then a tree is me." I had a truly deep realization of the interconnectedness between living things, how this tree provided shelter for so many animals. After about 90 minutes, I decided it was time to come back. When I returned, I was greeted by my friend with a hug, some laughs, and a tray of fruit. I began to come down, but the feeling of joy for life has never left me to this day. It has waned here and there, but the ember of my love for nature and this world was truly instilled in me that day a decade ago. I have had many other positive trips too in the meantime, some frightening but ultimately enlightening. I do not live as some wook either. I am a computer engineering student and feel almost as at home in the city. What has happened is I do feel disconnected from many because of the true stupidity and hate we see in this world, but I think that is more natural than the alternative.