I’m pretty new to shrooms and also just psychedelics in general, and the trip I’m describing is my second ever shroom trip.

For context, my first was yesterday, and I took somewhere between 1 and 1.5gs (my scale only does whole numbers haha), just to warm myself up into the experience.

That trip I felt really anxious on the come up, probably not helped by trepidation of first time on psychedelics, especially thinking about the dangers of the drug during my fairly extensive research. It definitely wasn’t a bad trip, just saw a fair amount of open eye visuals and felt a little nauseous which I know is pretty standard. Also loads of introspective discussions with myself. The come down was great though, I was just in an amazing mood and had a great sense of resolution.

The reason why I briefly describe this is because it was wildly different to my trip earlier today.

I took the shrooms (somewhere between 1.5 and 2 grams) at 14.02, sat in my room with my bedside lamp on with gentle mindfulness music playing and started doing mindful breathing exercises. This made a huge difference because ever time the anxiety started I could pull myself back to my breathing.

Once the open eye visuals started, i got a little more anxious as felt like I was losing control a little, but was able to rationally explain to myself that this is precisely what I was expecting. I spent the next hour and a half sitting upright with my eyes shut, taking in the closed eye visuals, and I, surprisingly considering my small dose, genuinely felt like I met other entities - there was definitely a form of communication between me and these entities.

I was being ‘shown’ countless different non-Euclidean rooms or planes of existence, but the entities were basically ‘telling’ me that I had to reach a higher state (i.e. a higher dose of shrooms) for them to take control of me and show me what they wanted to show me.

The first strange thing that happened was that i saw a series of thin rectangles in a 2d line, which symbolised a generic human life. Two of the rectangles, one towards the left and one towards the right, i understood symbolised the birth and the death days/periods of this generic human life. I was filtering through them, left to right, but as soon as I was about to get to the one past the death day i felt the entities stop me - which consisted of an overwhelming sense of fight or flight and extreme heart palpitations to the point where i gasped and clutched my chest because it felt like it was about to explode; and I wasn’t high enough to have imagined this feeling. I tried to access the post-death rectangle about 5 or 6 times, each with the exact same result, and with the entities ‘punishing’ me in increasing severity.

After the peak, i could continue exploring these strange rooms I mentioned, but could clearly feel that there were no entities guiding me. I was excited to tell someone about what i had seen, even though I was still tripping (still had fair amount of open eye visuals). However, about roughly 20 minutes later, i started down this spiral of thoughts that got more and more introspective and downright depressing.

I have been taking shrooms for two reasons; 1. Recreationally, but also 2. At the same time to try to better understand myself and to use them as a tool to understand some of my challenges in life that I know come from within me. So, i welcomed the introspective thoughts. However, i felt myself become more and more depressed, eventually my thoughts consisted of how small i was compared to the universe and the insignificance of a single human life, and i could see myself only as meat with bones and electricity, which was deeply existentially upsetting, to the point where i would not be able to continue living if this feeling had lasted more than say 1 day.

I started distracting myself by watching YouTube, which did end up helping, although i had extreme detachment from reality for another few hours and felt like i was merely a shell for my mortal consciousness. I’m feeling a little better now though.

I felt as if my life situation was hopeless and that I was stuck feeling miserable forever.

The reason why I’m writing this post I suppose is because I’m deeply unsettled by this trip, even though I would definitely class it as a ‘good trip’, and was wondering if anyone else has had similar experiences and/or any advice on how to unpack it, as I am completely lost on what to do about this experience.

I am immensely grateful for any replies. Thanks a lot