DOSAGE, SET & SETTING
What dose should I take?
“when you are hallucinating the person that is asking you if you want more drugs, it’s safe to say that you have probably taken enough already.”
Dosage is a difficult question. To keep it simple,
I’d suggest a first-time user of psychedelics should take 10g in total. Less than that may be a bit disappointing (unless you are happy with a very mild experience) and more might feel a bit too intense. Choose the type (Tampanesis, Mexicana or Atlantis) depending on whether you want a slightly milder or slightly stonger experience, but I’d suggest sticking to either Tampanesis or Mexicana for your first trip.
For other users, there are two variables to consider – the type and weight. 5g of Tampanesis might be barely noticeable - a slightly stoned feeling. 20g of Atlantis is quite insane and not necessarily in a good way. This gives you a fairly narrow range of dosage between a mild trip and a very strong one. To try and judge a suitable dose for the kind of trip you desire is not that easy.
A box is designed to be a full dose for one person, so as a rough guide, 10g can be considered a light-medium dose, 15g a medium-heavy dose and 20g a very heavy dose. This will also depend on the type of
sclerotia you are eating, with Tampanesis at the lighter end and Atlantis at the heavier.
When choosing how much to take, you should consider your previous experience with psychedelic drugs, who you are with, what level of effects you want to occur, and what you intend to do while under the influence. To be out and about in the city (which I would not recommend for a first-time user), stick to a low dose.
Speak to the person behind the counter in the smart shop and ask for advice, they have probably taken the stuff many times in different settings. They may also be able to give you a factsheet similar to the one reproduced at the beginning of this thread. Even if you know exactly what you want to buy, even if you have used the stuff before, the staff can still offer useful tips and information.
It’s advisable to split your dose into two portions, eating the second portion after one hour or 90 minutes. If you don’t like the effects or they are stronger than you expected, you don’t have to eat the second portion. If you are planning a heavy trip, or you want to be extra-cautious, you can split the dose into three and ramp up the trip very gradually. Splitting the dose into more than 3 is just confusing. After the trip has peaked (maybe 3 hours) tolerance to the drug will increase and any further doses will have limited effect, so don’t bother trying to take more when you feel yourself starting to come down.
For a first-time user, taking 10g in total as I suggest, don’t expect much to happen with the initial 5g portion - but the margin between “I should have eaten more” and “Oh my God this is horrible make it stop” is not as wide as you might think. You can increase your dose during the trip but you can’t reduce it!
For those familiar with mushrooms, 15g is a reasonable proposition, with the type used depending on whether you want a slightly milder or stronger trip. For someone used to eating a light dose of 35g Mexican cubensis mushrooms, a 10g dose of Mexicana
sclerotia might be roughly equivalent, although that’s an educated guess! You may want to buy 15g with the intention of eating 10g, leaving you the option to boost the trip if it’s not strong enough.
A gram of fresh
sclerotia is generally reckoned to be roughly equivalent to 2 grams of fresh cubensis mushrooms, so by weight
sclerotia is actually twice as potent as cubensis mushrooms (purely because fresh mushrooms contain a lot more water than
sclerotia does).
Anyone used to eating a 12g box of Hawaiian mushrooms would find a 20g box of Atlantis to be comparable, although the
sclerotia takes effect much more slowly. A 20g box of Atlantis eaten in one go is a very large dose, enough to cause fairly major delusions – e.g that you are in contact with God and the aliens are coming. Indoors in a controlled environment, that kind of dose may be OK with a bit of previous experience (split it into 2 portions), but outdoors in a city you are asking for trouble. Be careful! A
sclerotia trip starts off very slowly and then just builds remorselessly to its peak.
Don’t attempt a heavy dose of
sclerotia unless you have tried
sclerotia (or shrooms) before and are familiar with the effects. Even with experience, it is not easy to predict exactly what kind of trip a particular weight of a particular type will produce.
If you are planning to trip outside, you really need to limit the dose to something easily manageable (preferably at a dose that you have experienced before). Even if you are with experienced friends, there is no guarantee that you won’t get separated and wander off by yourself, lost and confused. You may trip with friends, you may have a sober friend to act as a “sitter”, but ultimately the only person able to deal with your mental state when you are tripping is you.
How should I take them?
The simplest way is just to eat
sclerotia raw, giving them a very good chew before you swallow (to help absorb the drug better). The texture is better than mushrooms (similar to nuts) but the taste is arguably worse (a sour, bitter flavour). You might want to give the
sclerotia a rinse before you eat them.
Sclerotia doesn’t store well outside of a fridge, so buy it on the day you intend to eat it.
Where is the best place to experience sclerotia?
“this is a very small room to be going insane within”
Tricky. Amsterdam is not an ideal location for a first-time
sclerotia tripper. Too many people, too many bicycles, too many canals. Ideally you want a relaxed indoor location (e.g your home) or a safe, secluded outdoor location that you know well, with trusted friends. Neither are easy to find in the middle of Amsterdam. You will probably have to decide between your hotel room or a public location in the city. Wandering aimlessly around the streets is a bad idea – if you want to go outside, plan a specific destination and try to avoid the need to cross busy roads while tripping. Whatever you intend to do, plan it carefully, don’t just take the drug on a random impulse and wait to see what happens.
If you are in a group and not all of you are tripping, you might be able to blend in at coffeeshops and bars without attracting too much unwanted attention. Not everyone in your group may want to try
sclerotia; those people can act as a “sitter” to keep an eye on you, reassure you and stop you getting lost or doing anything silly. Just be sure you can trust them not to start messing with your head! If there are two of you, maybe one person can trip while the other sits, and vice versa the next day, although of course it’s nice to share the experience with someone else tripping at the same time.
Out of doors, and depending on the weather, possible locations might be parks, museums, the botanical gardens or around the fairground that occasionally sets up in Dam Square. I’d suggest the zoo, but then again many of the animal enclosures are unfenced, with only a small moat to keep the animals in, and those lions look so friendly….maybe the zoo is not such a good idea. If you are planning to be outside, be very careful to take a
small dose (no more than 10g), split into 2 portions so that you can control the strength of the trip better. Don’t fall into the canals, watch the car, bike and tram traffic, and don’t draw attention to yourself – acting crazy on
sclerotia may be fun for you, but to everyone else you are just another weirdo druggie tourist to be avoided.
A hotel bedroom is a good place to stay safe and avoid anxiety from crowds. If the trip gets a bit too much you can sit in bed and ride it out in peace. More than one person tripping inside a hotel room could get a bit noisy, so it’s perhaps not a good option for a group. Wherever you are, make sure you have some water with you, as you will probably feel a bit thirsty during your trip.
If you are alone, with no experience of psychedelics, taking
sclerotia for the first time (not an ideal scenario), I strongly recommend you stay in your hotel room. Be very cautious; try a 10g dose split into 2 portions, waiting an hour before eating more. If you ignore sensible advice and take too much, hide under the bedclothes and wait until the madness subsides. It sounds silly but trust me, I’ve been there. Unlike most problems in life, hallucinations will go away by themselves without you needing to do anything. An MP3 player with a suitable playlist is a good idea - music is very enjoyable while tripping. A notebook is useful for solo trips, so you can note down your mad ideas (reducing the urge to find a random stranger to talk to!) and read them back when you are sober.
I took sclerotia two nights in a row but the second time was not so good. Why is that?
When you take
sclerotia, your body reacts by altering the chemical output of the brain to compensate. As a result, taking the same quantity of the drug again within a few days will result in a reduction of effects (this tolerance lasts for about a week). It’s probably best to take
sclerotia only once during a short visit to Amsterdam – the experience is intense and not the kind of thing you want to repeat quickly. If you are on a longer visit from overseas, you may want to fit in two experiences a week apart, but avoid taking the drug when you are tired (when you have just arrived) or the night before you leave (you may not be in the mood to check out of your hotel and take a long-haul flight the morning after a psilocin trip).
RISK, HEALTH & SAFETY ISSUES
Why all the safety warnings and instructions? Are sclerotia dangerous?
“There are instructions and there are warnings and there are tigers in the trees that will eat you alive and are waiting in the containers of the drugs on your table”
When used irresponsibly, almost any drug becomes potentially dangerous, and psilocin (the drug contained in the
sclerotia) is no exception. In terms of what psilocin does to your body, it’s a very safe drug with a long history of usage. It does, however, have a short-lived but very powerful effect on your brain. Don’t worry about what it’s doing to your body; it’s far safer than alcohol in terms of toxicity, and it would require an unfeasibly large dose of
sclerotia to overdose as such (although in psychological terms, it’s very easy to accidentally consume more than you will feel comfortable with). There is no noticeable hangover from the drug, although you may feel a bit tired the next day.
The long term effects on mental health are not fully researched, but there is no evidence that mushrooms or
sclerotia cause problems. However, if you were already going to experience some mental health problems in the near future, or there are reasons why you are at risk (e.g family history of mental illness), it would not be too surprising if the intensity of a strong psychedelic experience accelerated the onset of your problems. Be aware that some of the effects of psilocin do mimic various mild states of psychosis, so that “feeling of going insane” is not too surprising.
In small doses
sclerotia generally provides a fun, giggly experience with a small amount of closed-eye visual hallucinations. With moderate doses the drug causes very vivid closed-eye and also some open-eye visuals, along with very bizarre thought patterns. With high doses, you will experience a type of temporary insanity (delusions) during which, although you should be able to maintain control of yourself without too much difficultly, you may believe all kinds of crazy nonsense - even though you may be very aware that it’s crazy and caused by the drug.
Visual hallucinations are easy to recognise, difficult to confuse with reality, interesting to watch, and are unlikely to cause you problems. Delusions are unpredictable, can be frightening, and may lead you to do or say strange things that you later wish you hadn’t. A good setting, a sensible dose, a calm atmosphere, prior research and sympathetic friends should help you to avoid problems. Make sure you follow the warnings to “never consume more than one box” and avoid alcohol, otherwise you may put yourself in danger, especially in an unfamiliar environment such as a foreign city. This is powerful stuff!
The main risks of this type of hallucinogenic drug, especially if you take too much, are:
1) Accidental injury due to inattention or distraction (for example when crossing the road).
2) Dangerous/suicidal behaviour influenced by negative thoughts or delusional beliefs (unlikely, but possible if a high dose is consumed with alcohol or other drugs in a poorly-chosen setting, or the person has been recently experiencing high stress/depression/mental illness/suicidal thoughts). An example is
this unfortunate guy. Note that this kind of news reporting doesn’t always give you the full picture, and
there are sometimes a range of personal factors and a mixture of drugs that combine to end in tragedy.
3) Bizarre behaviour attracting attention and leading to intervention by police or ambulance services (not such a problem in a country where the drug is legal, but best avoided!)
What sort of thing? How about being
tazered nude on your front lawn? Avoid high-dose trips in public settings. Don’t give the government reason to ban
sclerotia – keep the dose sensible and look after your mates. Don’t call an ambulance just because someone is panicking about having a bad trip. Reassure them.
4) Possible triggering of underlying mental disorders - if you are on the verge of insanity, can hallucinogenic drugs push you over the edge? The idea that psychedelics trigger mental disorders is a bit of a scare story, but psilocin is a powerful drug that could potentially aggravate existing or hidden psychological problems. You need to be in a good overall mental state before you take
sclerotia, as you are likely to intensify your existing feelings, good or bad. The build-up and peak of a trip can be very intense –
sclerotia is not a drug for quiet relaxation.
5) Psychological difficulties during the trip. It’s not always fun in there. Anxiety, uncontrollable thoughts, dwelling on difficulties in your life, a sense of dread, a feeling of going insane, a complete loss of personal identity, the awful knowledge that the giant lizards are heading for your planet….
6) Drug Combinations - combining
sclerotia with alcohol and other drugs is a bad idea and will increase the chances of any of the above problems. Alcohol makes your behaviour less inhibited, so you are more likely to do something stupid instead of just thinking crazy thoughts. Combining
sclerotia with cannabis use is normally OK (don’t try it unless you are already familiar with cannabis) but be aware that it may make the trip feel more intense. In terms of prescription drugs,
sclerotia should be avoided by anyone on MAOI type anti-depressants, due to the way the two drugs interact (in any case it wouldn’t be a good idea to take hallucinogenic drugs if you are depressed enough to need medication).
7) Mild nausea, vomiting, upset stomach – unlikely, but some people may find that
sclerotia doesn’t agree with them very well. It’s common to feel some very light nausea during the initial stages of the trip. Eating on an empty stomach (4 or 5 hours without food) helps avoid this. I suspect that one of my
sclerotia experiences caused my bad diahoerrea the following day – this could be due to contamination of the
sclerotia with bacteria, or possibly a consequence of the other alkali substances in the
sclerotia upsetting my stomach somehow. All my other mushroom and
sclerotia trips have been fine, without anything but the mildest nausea. Psilocybin itself is not likely to make you sick, but eating any kind of raw mushroom or similar uncooked foodstuff may occasionally upset your stomach. You may want to rinse the
sclerotia in water before you eat it.
Remember - you can avoid these problems by eating a modest dose in a relaxed, safe environment.
So what happens if I have a bad trip?
“I see bones. Bones. Frameworks of bones. Bones everywhere. The stuff of nightmare. A TV that is switched off and transmits awfulness….persecution on all channels…… this is 16 shades of hell.”
“this is terrible but I like it”
Don’t Panic! Oh, you already are. Maybe you are very, very scared and realise with horror that you are having a “bad trip.” So what? Being a little bit scared is part of the attraction, like watching a horror movie or trying the thrill-rides in an amusement park. Don’t think the trip has gone bad, it’s just more difficult and frightening at this point than you expected. As long as you are not in physical danger (e.g lying in the middle of the road), just accept what is happening and try to change your mood to something more positive if you can, and ride it out if you can’t. If you are having a panic attack, concentrate on breathing deeply and slowly.
If you are an anxious person and the idea of a bad trip really bothers you, I’d avoid taking the drug in the first place, as you will make it more likely to happen. In any case, there’s rarely a trip that is so bad that the total experience can be considered a “bad trip”. More likely is that you may experience periods during the trip where you feel unsettled, anxious or scared. It’s normal for the initial stages of the trip to be a little bit edgy, before the experience fully takes hold. The best advice is to stop trying to fight the experience – you can’t really stop the effects of the drug so you might as well learn to enjoy it. A bad trip is better than an average day at work!
In psychological terms, a bad trip is not much different to a nightmare (albeit an extremely intense, vivid, panic-filled nightmare) – it seems very unpleasant at the time but afterwards it’s difficult to understand what was so scary about it. If you feel bad, just remember that the effects are caused by the psilocin and will go away by themselves eventually. As the drug takes effect, the experience can become very intense, but you can expect to feel calmer once the trip has peaked. Maintain a sense of humour, and remember that many, many people have experienced the same feelings as you. Deal with each moment as it arrives. Ride it out.
Think about the crazy stuff that is happening in your head and smile – psilocin is a fundamentally silly drug with powerful and unusual effects that should be respected but not taken too seriously. It’s quite possible to switch your mood to something more positive with a bit of effort, so don’t feel that any negative thoughts or unpleasant imagery are the beginning of some terrible bad trip which you won’t be able to escape. In any case, even if you end up dwelling negatively on your personal problems, these kind of difficult experiences can be viewed positively if they enable you to confront issues from a new perspective. The end of a nightmare-fuelled bad trip can feel surprisingly peaceful – when you’ve faced all your fears there’s not so much left to worry about.
Will I be able to control myself during the trip? What if I decide to jump from a building?
If the idea of loosening your grip on reality really bothers you, I’d think very carefully before trying
sclerotia. In general, magic mushrooms &
sclerotia make you lose control of your thoughts but retain control of your behaviour, so with a bit of mental effort you can behave sensibly. Like alcohol, the effects depend strongly on the user - one person may be a total liability after a few pints of beer while another is not noticeably drunk. With
sclerotia, factors to consider are the dosage, previous psychedelic experience, age and personality of the user, and especially the setting for the trip.
A scenario might be that you are alone in your hotel room. Everything is feeling just amazing and you want to go down to reception and tell the beautiful receptionist how amazing everything is. Is this a good idea? You might be a bit fucked, and it might seem like a good idea at the time, but you are still capable of thinking to yourself: “would I do this sober? Is this the kind of thing I wanted to avoid doing during my trip?” In that respect, it’s slightly similar to alcohol – the drug may cause you to want to do or say something, but you are still capable of making a judgement along the lines of “if I was sober I would probably think that this was a really bad idea, so I won’t do it.” Of course, with both alcohol and
sclerotia, if you take way too much (or combine them) you may have little control over your actions. If you normally have trouble controlling yourself when drunk, don’t touch
sclerotia.
As for jumping from buildings, it’s been done (resulting in the shroom ban), but usually by people combining magic mushrooms with alcohol and other drugs, or people who were suicidal / mentally unstable in the first place. If you don’t normally climb out of windows while sober, there’s no particular reason you would suddenly decide to do it under the influence of
sclerotia. If taking
sclerotia indoors, a hotel room without a balcony is preferable– you are unlikely to do anything stupid, but just the knowledge that it’s there can make you feel uneasy if you keep dwelling on urban myths about trippers thinking they can fly.
Psilocin is unusual because you can maintain a kind of mental clarity even on fairly high doses, but at the same time you are capable of believing the most incredible delusional nonsense. You can be aware that your beliefs are delusional but still believe them (like a dream where you know you are dreaming but the dream doesn’t stop). I’ve had some very strange delusional beliefs, yet I’ve been capable of writing them down, so I couldn’t have been totally “out of it.”
The higher the dose, the worse the delusions get, but this shouldn’t become a real issue unless you ignore the sensible warning to “never eat more than one box.” The second box is more often than not
Pandora’s box and is likely to tip the experience into something darker and more delusional, at least in my experience. On a very high dose, there is a potential danger that, for example, you believe you are God and are capable of anything, that your death wouldn’t matter, that this life is not real and so on.
However, you are more likely to sit and ponder this than do anything practical to demonstrate your powers, and you may still be capable of choosing to behave normally, even if your thoughts are bizarre. Think of the stereotypical “crazy person” who appears to be normal in most respects but is convinced that he is Napoleon. A high-dose mushroom tripper is in a similar state - able to behave rationally, aware of his surroundings but convinced of any number of weird ideas. Of course, there are no guarantees about how any particular individual will react, and if you take a really stupid dose you may lose contact with reality entirely. Very high doses have their place, but it’s not Amsterdam – away from home, in a densely populated city, you cannot control the conditions well enough to ensure your safety.
A common feeling during a trip is that you want to tell anyone and everyone about your amazing insights into the mysteries of the universe. This is a bad idea, but if you plan carefully what you intend to do during the trip, and stick to it, it’s not hard to avoid trouble. Set yourself some ground rules before you take the drug – a mental list of things you want to avoid doing during the trip, such as opening the windows, going outside, making a lot of noise, phoning your parents, talking to random strangers and so on. Of course, having a sober, experienced sitter helps, and is a very good idea for a first-time user. In short - this is a drug with some strange effects, but on a sensible recreational dose they are manageable if you use a bit of common sense.