The term “heroic dose” was first used by the author and famous psychonaut, Terence McKenna to describe a recommended dosage of psilocybin mushrooms. McKenna often recommended that when ingesting hallucinogenic or psychoactive plant medicines that one should take a substantial dosage in order to fully experience the effects of the substance and the journey within. A heroic dose is typically considered to be 5 grams or more of psilocybin.
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The following is a piece of my heroic dose story. My only regret in sharing it is that words do not do the experience any justice.
A few years back my friends and I bought an 8th (roughly 28 grams) of psilocybin mushrooms and eagerly divided the amount among the four of us. This was not our first time taking mushrooms but my friends none the less aired on the side of caution and only ate a portion of their share. I excitedly chewed and swallowed my entire 7 grams.
Within 30 minutes or so I began to notice the effects. I remember feeling a bit disoriented like I was a floating head drifting through the room. A conscious balloon that had forgotten it had a body. My body I viewed as a clumsy thing that I was trapped inside of, but which also grounded me to the material world of reality. I wanted to escape its confines. To burst outward and be free.
I asked my friend if he could turn into a mouse or a fox and I truly believed that he could if only he set his mind to it.
Outside the snow glittered on the ground and I walked through it without a care. I felt untouchable. I laughed at how ridiculous it was for me to believe that such a beautiful thing could cause me harm.
I didn’t feel cold or wet.
I felt that I was literally creating reality in my mind, so why should I hold onto beliefs that limit me with fear?
I looked around, breathlessly at the world’s beauty. I stood in awe as everything around me sparkled with a radiant energy.
The same energy.
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Suddenly I felt overwhelmed. Everything that surrounded me was alive.
Not alive in the sense that a human being or an animal is alive, but alive in that everything within my perception was made of the same energy. There was no difference between the energy that made up my body and the energy that made up the trees, the sidewalk, the buildings or the snow. It was all the same energy flowing through the various material objects of my perception.
Each object vibrates at a different frequency which causes light particles to reflect back to the eyes at different speeds. The whole process creates our perception which is a very realistic illusion that the world is made up of separate objects.
The atoms which made up the houses and the trees and the sidewalk, were all alive with the same energy, much like the cells of a body are all alive. The body is made up of individual cells and each cell contains life.
Humans exist with every aspect of themselves being alive and now I was seeing that the rest of the world exists in this state as well.
It was all very clear to me and yet I was confused. I could sense it but my brain fought to understand it. I could feel it searching for logic to explain this great mystery. A mystery that is always present but that normally exists below my conscious awareness.
Finally in its struggle, my brain formulated the idea that I was trapped inside the belly of a large worm. This was symbolic of course. The world around me looked the same as it always had, but it was how my mind attempted to make sense of the information overload.
The human body is made up of different parts – a heart, a liver, the lungs and the intestines...etc. All of these parts are each made up of individual living cells that are alive in and of themselves. I was like a single living cell that was existing within an organism that was much larger.
The entire world around me and perhaps the universe or even god itself, existed as one living organism, that was made up of seemingly individual parts, that all had the same living energy flowing through them. One thing that could not be separated.
And there I was, an awakened single cell, standing inside the belly of the worm in awe at my surroundings and my newly found awareness.
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