based on true events
Do psychedelics have beneficial properties? To each their own, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Before technology surpassed the age-old VCR video tape recorder, this was a hot commodity. We decided to swap ours for something edible. The exchange happened at exactly six o’clock near a bench at the Borden Park entrance. We traded one recorder for a thirty-two-ounce bag of magic mushrooms, which was the equivalent to four cups of a psychedelic backlash!
This would be our party snack when we were asked by a mutual friend to attend their party and to bring our drug of choice. With eager anticipation! This wasn’t going to be just any banal bash with silly treats and social baby duck drinks, sitting around a square-board monopoly game. It was way more than that!
What could I say, we were senseless youths without jobs or school, and as poverty would have our idle hands confined to our neck of the woods, we hung with some not-so-wise vagabonds. Imprudence was everywhere and we were on top of Mount Stupid with the opportunity to prove it!
The promoting of magic mushrooms was everywhere, countless stories about mind-blowing visual sensations and a keen sense of awareness. People described their experiences as shapeshifting, being light on their feet, graceful, and adaptable to whatever environment they were in. Most recalled their inability to stop laughing. That was enticing! Who couldn’t use a whole lot more happiness in their lives?
We just had to encounter this trip down psychedelic lane of hallucinations and exaggerated behaviours in an altered state of consciousness—whatever that meant. It sounded anything but boring, and we were eager to gobble down some shrooms for the first time!
With our hair pimped and a final choice on what to wear, we set aside our nervous giggles, put on our big girl attitudes, and headed out.
Upon our arrival, the place sure lacked in the passion department. It was more like a graveyard. There were a few people inside, three on the couch, two on the floor, and all were completely despondent. The old proverb came to mind, “not my drama, not my issue.” And so, we passed them by.
The kitchen was a bit livelier—not much—but at least the six people slurring were standing. Actually, the whole place was a turn-off. My friend and I contemplated whether to leave, but the walk home was ten blocks and we had nowhere else to go, so we opted to stick it out and see what the night would bring.
So, just before we changed our minds, we delved into our large Ziploc bag filled with dried mushrooms. Every swallow was utterly disgusting! My gag reflex was in hyperdrive with each handful of twiggy shrooms. With a near puke and then a gulp of water, I got 'er down! The cycle was on repeat with each handful: twig, puke, gulp, over and over. It was ridiculous, since I couldn’t even consume green beans because of the odd twig. And here I was choking on dried-up dung, desperate for a buzz. Ugh...
We had no idea how long before the effects would take place. If it was supposed to be within minutes, those were flying by quickly. Nothing was happening. We didn’t know how much to ingest and continued to munch down to a half bag. After that, I was done. One more bite, and it would all go to waste down the toilet. There wasn’t enough water in the world to wash away the aftertaste.
While we waited for whatever to happen, we snooped the cupboards of this strange place and found a deck of cards. Well into the fourth game of Crazy Eights, somewhere between a normal feeling and a twitch at the corner of my eye, was a tiny face. It morphed into a red devil head and sprouted horns. When I reached for it, my hand swooped around in slow motion as if it had a cursor lag. When we spoke, it seemed to be a conversation at a distance of single syllable echoes. Everything was trailing behind as if delayed in reaction. I giggled. She giggled. A sense of tranquility set in.
based on true events
We made our way from the kitchen into the living room where the couch crew still slouched in place, half-alive. The air shifted. No—my air shifted. The room snapped with static. I felt an absurd, contradictory rage of excitement and agitation hitting me at the same time—like I wanted to run a marathon and break all the furniture doing it.
From that point on, I couldn’t tell you what my friend was going through. Her remarks are in my memory, yes—but only in small, floaty fragments, like echoes caught in a fan.
And then—like a jump cut in a horror film—a guy leapt up out of nowhere.
He was holding a butcher knife.
It gleamed, massive, gleeful. He swung it up high, then brought it down in a slow-motion arc until the blade’s tip met the center of my forehead.
“I’m gonna cut you to pieces,” he said.
I laughed.
Then screamed.
Then laughed again—without any say in which one should win. My brain couldn’t pick a lane. Euphoria and fear played tug-of-war in my chest, and my mouth just followed whichever one pulled harder.
The guy turned from me and swung the knife toward the others, making sweeping gestures as if blessing them with murder. “You’re next!” he shouted, circling us all like a preacher in a blood-soaked sermon.
The rest of the room stayed completely frozen—numb. No one screamed. No one ran. Just blank, slumped bodies like extras who’d missed their cue. Except for him.
He was small, wild-eyed, and rail-thin—like a demon who’d burned out his last calories clawing up from hell. His long black hair was greasy, clinging to his face like wet strings. No bangs. Just a massive, forehead-forward mug and those tiny, dark, glass-bead eyes. And he kept leaning into my space, his face ballooning in and out of proportion, like a fish at the edge of the tank.
Isn’t it ironic that I can recall this guy so vividly, yet not my friend? Her voice is a faint thread; his face is etched into my brain like a burned-in afterimage.
Did I imagine him?
That’s the thing about shrooms—sometimes they open doors you didn’t mean to knock on. The experience took over. I was no longer tripping. I was trapped.
We managed to escape the house—don’t ask me how—and the fresh air outside hit like a slap and a kiss at once. For a split second, I felt clarity. Then came the blood.
People on the street had blood on their faces. Not dripping, just there—smudged like war paint. They stared at me, wide-eyed and motionless, like I was the one out of place. Their lips didn’t move, but I swear I heard whispers: She doesn’t belong. She’s seen too much.
The devil himself was back—closer now. Inches from my face. He smiled. Then didn’t. Then smiled again. He motioned for me to follow him into the alley.
I did.
He led me into shadows full of piled-up bodies—some breathing, some not. Behind me, I could hear my friend calling out, her voice thin and weightless like it was caught on the wind. I turned to her, or maybe I didn’t. I couldn’t lock on to anything for more than two seconds before it all mutated again.
I moved through it like water—hallucination to hallucination, slipping in and out of delusions with no footing. This wasn’t fun. There were no kaleidoscopic giggles or melting rainbows. No sweet revelations about life. Just dread.
I was followed. Hunted. Haunted.
And the worst part? I couldn’t react. My body was numb—like I had the volume turned up on panic but the remote control had no batteries. I felt everything, but I couldn’t do anything.
Then the rage hit.
It took over so fast it cracked something in me. My nervous system became a live wire. I exploded, shrieking warnings to the world. THEY’RE COMING! I screamed into the face of a woman passing by. I shook her shoulders violently. “THEY’RE RIGHT BEHIND ME!”
She dropped to the ground in terror, scrambling backwards. Her mouth opened to scream but nothing came out. She looked at me like I was the devil now.
I didn’t care. There was no time.
I ran through the streets banging on shop doors, yelling about the end times. I told them to run, to hide, that the devil was near.
No one answered.
No one flinched.
They were just… moving. Barely. Like zombies. Indifferent. Dead behind the eyes.
I screamed louder, clawing at every passerby. “CAN’T YOU SEE WHAT’S HAPPENING?! WAKE UP!”
I don’t know how long I ran like that before hitting the subway terminal. I jumped the waist-high toll gate and fell into a crowd of more blank faces. More empty souls. My panic peaked. I grabbed another man by the shoulders and screamed into his face—
And that’s when he slapped me.
Hard.
based on true events
He shook me up, and threatened to contact the police if I didn’t get on my way. I told him he’d better hurry and call them, because the demons were coming. I bolted at a cartoon speed stuck in midair. My legs were moving, but my feet didn’t seem to be transporting me anywhere. He still had me up by the collar of my shirt, insisting he would hold me until the police arrived. Somehow, I managed to scramble from his grip.
Time was irrelevant and had no bearing on my altering states of perception. The next thing I knew, I was calmly sitting on the grass with my legs crossed at the back end of a medical centre, examining the fuzzy brown veins in my arms and legs slithering like snakes. None of it too concerning under my overwhelming exhaustion. I laid back on the turf, observing the stars gliding with individual synchronistic rhythm inside a beautifully choreographed universe. Each plasma was within reach, so I plucked out a star of my own. It slipped through my fingers and toppled over itself down my arm, landing peacefully onto my chest.
The morning’s sun was its usual forgiving self, waking me with tenderness under a new day at the side of some unknown commerical building.
The recollection of the night before hit me with sickening embarrassment. All of it reiterated—every delusional performance caused me to flinch in complete disgust for having been a raving lunatic. I feared being recognized as such.
Fact or Fiction:
This is the truth as I know it to be. After having ingested a noxious consumption of magic mushrooms, I suffered what some people referred to as a “bad trip.”
And yet, clinical studies continue. Governments test psilocin—the hallucinogenic component of mushrooms—for potential in treating panic and stress disorders.
Morally, I’m not sure I get it. What I experienced? That wasn’t healing. That was horror.
shrooms | Black Out| SPEED | SNOWED
TRIPPIN | THINSLIT | HEADTRIP | HOLSTERY
MARIJEEWIZ | ROOFIES | WHITE NIGHT | HOOKED