Set and setting are absolutely crucial to taking a dose like this. I was in an extremely good mood going into the trip and had been preparing for this experience for months — slowly building excitement and confidence for plunging into this realm where I had no idea what to expect, which is why I believe it turned out so well for me. My previous highest dose of mushrooms had been 3.7 grams. This was my very first heroic trip.
I went into this experience first by fasting the entire day besides a few light healthy snacks (fruits and veggies). My original plan was to dose at 7:00PM. I first climbed into bed around 6:30 so that I could start meditating to keep myself as peaceful and relaxed as possible before dosing. However, I ended up falling asleep until 8, which actually was a bit nice and refreshing. I woke up ready to trip, so I crushed up the 6.3 grams of mushies and mixed it into a mango smoothie and downed it. I then returned to my bed, put on some meditation music, and waited for the trip to come.
About an hour in, I was tripping pretty good, but not near as hard as I was expecting. I decided to turn off the music and lights to see if I'd be able to experience a heroic trip as Terence McKenna suggests — being in a completely dark and silent room. I laid there for what felt like an eternity, but the trip was just not getting much more intense. By this point I was very disappointed and thought I might have just had an off batch.
I decided then to just let my mind wander, and ended up thinking for what felt like a good amount of time about our current world and society and government, finding all the flaws in it. After a while of thought, I needed to go to the bathroom (as I do quite often with mushies). Once I got back in my room, I laid down in my bed again and INSTANTLY my entire room became alive like I was in some magical land like Avatar or something. Everything had this aura/glow to it and I was experiencing very intense distortions in my environment — didn't really look much different whether my eyes were opened or closed.
Then entity contact started coming into play. I started seeing all kinds of faces resembling entities that were interacting with me — mostly neutral or antagonist entities, either resembling a very colorful version of the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland or just other very crazy looking faces. They were messing with me in a way that my trip would seem to be getting more intense like I wanted it to, then it would die down again, very slowly rising and falling until my peak. Every time it died down, I would see these entities again almost appearing to be laughing.
My trip started getting more and more intense, so I decided I was going to meditate again to deal with it. I meditated until I felt myself not coming up anymore and no longer had any sense of my self or really anything. For all I knew at this point, everything that was happening was real and I was like this observer watching all this, traveling through this realm of insanity, with no memory of anything pertaining to my actual life.
During the most intense part of my peak, there's not really much to talk about except that my visuals were so intense whether my eyes were open or shut that I felt like I had gone completely crazy, but I was okay with it. It was almost like I had completely disassociated from my body. I was not able to move whatsoever except for my eyes or my mouth.
I was also experiencing extreme auditory hallucinations and distortions. Hearing loud screams or just other very loud psychedelic sounds, and I had absolutely no comprehension of the English language. Any words I might have been able to make out on objects in my room just looked like mysterious foreign symbols to me. I also remember around this time seeing some Aztec-like writing being written out across my ceiling, and I interpreted it as the mushroom Gods giving me their blessing.
After this, my closed eye visuals actually began to display images of my actual thoughts. I would think of an object, and would immediately see what looked like tiny thin lines rearranging themselves and changing color to form the new image that I was thinking of. I decided to think of a strawberry, and as soon as I did, I saw a strawberry as clear as day through my closed eye visuals, colors on point and everything. I then decided to imagine taking a bite of a strawberry, and suddenly I saw a strawberry with a bite taken out of the tip — and what made this even more incredible was that I even TASTED the strawberry. It didn't taste exactly like a strawberry, but moreso like a slightly psychedelic strawberry.
When I finally felt like I had returned somewhat to reality and was able to actually move and get up again, I became flooded with a huge sense of excitement and happiness and immediately jumped up from my bed to go talk to my roommate. Even though I could move and communicate by this point, I was still having super intense visuals although my headspace had calmed down a lot.
Overall, this was a very fun experience. I will definitely be doing heroic doses again in the future. If any of you are contemplating doing a heroic dose and feel like you might be ready, by all means, do it. Just be sure to prepare for it much beforehand. Treat it almost in a sacred manner, and you will probably receive good results.
I'm currently a firm believer that all lower to moderate dose mushroom trips are entirely just preparation so you can experience the real thing. The real trip happens with heroic doses.