Cosmic, existential terror on an infinite scale...

...If you're into that kinda thing

TW: Suicidal thoughts.

I'm a middle aged woman with Autism, ADHD, anxiety and depression. I estranged my family this year due to a lifetime of mental abuse by my mother.

Today is Christmas Day. I am alone. The house is cold and quiet. I imagine how millions of people are sat around their Christmas tables with their families, laughing and joking. Making beautiful memories together. I don't feel jealous, or sad. I've been preparing myself for this. I am indifferent.

I did plan to do shrooms today to take away the pain of feeling alone. Wait, I've never done them before...

Let's rewind a bit.

Earlier in the year I learned how scientific advancements are providing consistent evidence that psychedelics can help with mental health. I have also seen thousands of anecdotal reports that confirm the same. 

I've tried everything in mainstream science. Anti depressants, propranolol, therapy, meditation, CBT, DBT. It all fails me! 

But this look promising, I need this. I don't know if I can survive much longer.  

I tried to grow GT's for months in the hope of having them ready for Christmas, but the blocks kept stalling and failing. I live in a big cold house and keeping the conditions perfect in Winter is tough. But at the start of December I finally harvested 200g wet. I was so happy, the shrooms could finally take away the pain. Over the following weeks I practiced shrooming. I've never done it before.

Practice

I started low, I ate a single pin. It did nothing.

A few days later I did 0.2g. It did nothing.

Some more days later I did 0.4g. It did nothing.

Baby steps, right?

Until I took a leap of faith...

The breakthrough

Last Friday, 19th December 2025. I jumped to 2g. My room mate was going to be out all night, so I could bunker down, get comfy and control my setting.

Holy fuck! It took about an hour for them to kick in, and I had an incredible trip. A breakthrough. It was amazing! I cried and I laughed. I dealt with so much of the shit from my life. It felt like I was in paradise. I was my own perfect Utopia. Music felt magical. The visuals, the feelings, the emotions. It was all just beautiful!

After it was over, I felt amazing. I felt some kind of healing had occurred.

I wondered how it was possible for anyone to ever have a bad trip. I unpacked my family traumas, I dealt with all of my problems, and it was beautiful.

It felt like the world was perfect, and I wanted to keep it that feeling. But of course it ends...

I did get to keep the afterglow and the mental health repairs as a beautiful souvenir, so that was nice.

I wanted the same for today to take away the pain of a lonely Christmas. 

For Christmas I asked Santa for Euphoria. Just another taste of happiness...

...but what I got was cosmic, existential terror on an infinite scale! Time stopped. It held me by the throat and wouldn't let go.

The horror begins

A couple of days ago I used a coffee grinder to grind my shrooms down to powder! Hmmm...

Last night, Christmas eve I did 1.2g of my powder, it was meh. I felt just kinda lethargic. I spent time in VRChat, and the experience was pretty mid!

For todays experience, I realised I must have built up a tolerance last night. So today I needed to offset it to have a good time. I weighed out 3g of my shroom powder. I figured after last nights tolerance build up; 3g of powder should probably hit like 1.5g maybe 2g.

I intended to sleep the day off. Fuck Christmas. I woke up at about 5pm. Had a coffee, went for a shower. Prepared my nest on my bed, and put my snuggly warm clothes on. I prepared my playlist and my visuals, then settled down.

However, it did not hit like 1.5g as expected, it hit like a fucking train the size of the infinite fucking multiverse.

7.20pm 

I took 3.2g. A little over. It's fine. I bult tolerance last night. Wait and relax. Feel content.  A little anxious I guess.

7.40pm

Liftoff happened. Holy fuck that hit fast?! 20 minutes? WTF? Feels good though, must have been because it's powder. Fuck, that's right it is powder... I chewed dry on the 19th. That's an unknown variable + I don't know my my exact tolerance from last night. Holy shit, I might have fucking fucked up here. Heart rate raises. I can feel it drilling through my chest.

8.00pm 

I'm still climbing. Heart is racing more. Fuck, maybe I don't have tolerance, and I just took a low orbit heroic dose? Fuck. Panic hard, Still climbing. Fuck this is awful, I fucked up, I need to get off this ride. I fucked up hard. Reset, reset, let me off, I fucked up. 

8.20pm 

still climbing. Heading towards 9pm and still climbing higher and higher. Reality is a concept now. I am not part of it.

I am terrified. Real existential dread. I didn't sign up for this. I fucked up the variables. Too many unknowns. Last week the visuals were shy, in the corner of my eyes, when I looked at them they'd go. This time they were right there. My fingers went long and wiggly. Cables looked neon.

My cat jumped up on me. I think he knows when I'm afraid. His fur felt incredible to touch. But he started to stretch and become long and wiggly.

I tried to give myself up to the shrooms and let them have me, and suddenly the euphoria hit. 

Phew, I did it. I let go. Everything is amazing. I finally let go and enjoyed the euphoria. 

Then the mushrooms come back and say "Nope, fuck you, we have you for 5 hours now".

Just that concept installed some unknown primitive fear. I realise I have fucked up terribly.

WTF is time?

At some point I put Avengers Endgame on because I love the last half, all the payoffs from the entire MCU always make me feel good. I hoped I could get lost in it and time would pass... but nope it was so weird. The characters were all pixelated, and wobbly. They looked like oil paintings, but the paint was flowing like a river. They sounded like their voices had been slowed down to sound really deep and every word dragged on forever. 

I remember at some point during one of my thousands of unconscious episodes, I heard some music which made me excited. I realised I know this music, something good is associated with this particular sound... It was dramatic and I felt hopeful. I surfaced from a trance to inspect the source of this sound, I looked at my TV and Captain America caught Thors hammer for the first time. I saw his face, and it looked normal. It was only a few frames of him holding the hammer, then I was gone again. Another trance!

Fuck, this isn't helping. Not at all. I don't even know what this movie is. What are movies?

A new character gets introduced

I'm pretty sure my room mate is home now. she's been with her family all day, but it's late at night so I'm sure she's home? We're not close. We just exist im the same house and occasionally chat.

In the middle of one of my waves I call her to come and be with me. I explain I've fucked up badly. She knew I was going to do shrooms, but knows nothing about them. It takes her like 60 seconds to come to my room, but in my time dilated head, it feels like hours.

Time does not exist in the traditional sense for me anymore.

10.00pm (ish)

I get back to my room with my room mate. I flop on the floor. In between the waves I tell her all the info she needs to care for me medically. Every variable. 

She's frantically using AI to educate herself on speed-run. I can see she's so tired.

A wave hits, I pass out for some time. I have a battle of existential terror. My mind wants to stop seeing the shapes and feeling the things. I want to get out. I am petrified. Fuck it is so unspeakably intense. Then I wake up... I am fucking exhausted but I survived it. Im grounded in reality again.

Fuck that was awful... it must have been like 30 minutes...

Nope. 1 minute has passed!!! One fucking minute!!!

I am exhausted from a battle with existential cosmic horror. An experience that I cant even put into words... and it has been 1 minute. 

My brain still understands that shrooms last 6 hours. I'm in this trip until 1am. I have 3 hours to go!!!

10.01pm...

I explain to her what just happened while Im lucid. She calmly tells me it's ok and keeps reassuring me. She is an expert on this shit now. Thank you AI. 

She reassures me by saying "I know it doesn't feel like it, but this will end, it wont last forever). She's caring for me, and she understands that to me it is an eternity. She has no problem repeating herself. This is good. She repeats herself a lot throughout the night.

While I'm briefly here in reality, I can hear the sound of hopelessness in her voice as she frantically taps away on her phone, becoming PHD level in shrooms. She tells me she's here for me. Her words drown into the universe. The walls breathe, the shrooms come for me again. I pass out. Another cosmic battle with the mere concept of existential dread. I beg them to please let me out. 

"I'm begging you, let me go." 

I try to fight, but I understand nothing. I dissolve into less than a concept. I am fighting so hard not to go fucking insane. Have I already gone insane? Is this what it's like forever now? I'm fighting for an hour against something I cant even put into words. I have no fight left. I am literally nothing. Im exhausted. But at least an hour has past. Yep, that was intense, it was at least an hour, maybe more...

Look at my watch ready to feel the joy and hope of how much time has passed.

10.02pm 

It's been one fucking minute. I am lucid again. I tell her I can't do this. I cant do it anymore. I say out loud "How has it been only a minute?". I put my head in my hands, but they melt through my face. 

I need it to end. I want to kill myself. She tells me no (obviously)... and to be honest, even if I tried I would fall unconscious before getting to the knife then forget what I was doing.

Death feels like the only way out, but even that is out of reach.

I go unconscious again. Another battle. This one more intense more gruelling than the last.

Fuck, fine I will try and give myself up to the shrooms again. 

"Fine, take me. You can have me. Just please stop the terror. 

I feel the shrooms respond: "Too fucking late for negotiations". 

I fight my way back to reality. I gasp. My room mate is startled. I must have been away for an hour this time. That one was so intense. I look at my watch...

10.03pm

Time has dissolved. I don't even know how long ago I took them. I know the time was 7.20pm, but that means nothing to me. I know that 1am is the end but that also means nothing to me. 3 hours to go? What even is that? It means nothing. I ask her if I'm close to the end. She doesn't respond, she doesn't know what best to say. 

I give her more info. Then pass out again.

The cycle repeats. I don't remember what I've told her, or what I haven't told her. I don't remember who I am, what I am. My cat comes to me again but he is just a long, winding, wiggly entity that makes no sense to me. He feels nice though. I like how his fur feels. It makes me feel at peace. OMG respite. Thank you Loki. 

Then the mushrooms return. I forget everything. I pass out. A few cycles go past without me looking at my watch. Battle after battle. So much fighting.

10.10pm

I ask how long my room mate has been here. She tells me she's already been here with me for ten minutes. She says it like an achievement.

Fuck, I thought I summoned her like 3 hours ago! Hopelessness returns. I cant do this. I ask her to consider ways of knocking me the fuck out. Of course, there's no safe methods.

Ride it out. Keep rollin'

I battle through, hours and hours, days, weeks, years, time? wtf even is that?... Claiming each minute of time as new ground. I forget what the target is. 1am? What is that?

...and then it's finally over.

Pure bliss. I survived it. It's finally over. Everything feels incredible. I'm back in reality and I did it. I feel pure relief. Literal euphoria. I fucking survived it. I am lucid!

I told her I'm back and I made it. I have just been through like 100 waves since I last spoke to her, but they finally ended. 

THE TRIP IS OVER!!!!

Reader: Have you ever seen the movie; The Descent?

I wake up from another trance.

10.12pm

No, please no! I am in hell. This is my eternity now. The theme of this trip is fighting the concept of time. The concept of fear. 

I wish shrooms manifested spiders, or scorpions like the propaganda tells us. I could rationalise that and tell myself it's not real. But how the fuck do I fight THE CONCEPT OF TIME???!!!!!

At this point I can't put into words how terrible the remaining 2 and a half hours are. It is literally impossible! But through this trip report, you can get a glimpse into the cosmic terror I have survived.

The light in the darkness

At some point during my waves of lucidity, I asked her to write notes on my computer screen so that I could glance at them whenever I became lucid. 

These notes helped to ground me every time I lost track of reality and thought it would never end.

She wrote the time I dosed, the time it will end, how long I've been rollin' for, and in massive bold text:

IT ENDS IN 2 HOURS AND 50 MINUTES!!!

She would occasionally update the numbers, and I have to say this was the single most amazing tool to get me through this shit. 

A constant reminder that it really does have an ending, even if it feels a long way off. 

Seeing the numbers count down gave me hope!

12.50am

For real this time. 

I skipped a lot of the story of course, but I finally got here. However, I'm still rolin' hard. 

There's only meant to be 10 minutes left??!!!

I battled through that eternity, minute by minute. Cosmic battles, over and over again, and it's still rollin' this hard. 

My room mates timer says there's only 10 minutes left, but nothing has changed.

Have I permanently broken my brain? 

Fuck. It's still just as intense. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck!!! I've fucking broken my brain.

1am

My room mate announces it's 1am and I made it. And like some magic fucking spell I was grounded. For real this time. I cried so fucking hard because I was back. She was quite clearly relieved too. 

How the fuck did it just end like that? Like as if she just turned it off with those words. This baffles me even now.

Over the next hour, I felt lucid. I occasionally went into a trance briefly, but she kept telling me the space between them is growing each time. I have never felt such relief. 

The shrooms popped back in to my thoughts every now and again to punch me in the vagina with paranoia...

"Hey can you be 100% certain it's over? What if this is just another wave? What if this is just false hope again? What if you're Sarah in the cave? "

I wasn't certain... Fuck! I kept expecting to wake up from another wave... But I never did.

For the next 30 minutes my life started flooding back. How much of a failure I am, how terrible everything is. My family, Christmas, my looming eviction in July. But by 2am, I levelled out mostly.

4am debrief

Almost 9 hours after I dosed and I am traumatised. I think I have PTSD. At this point I am tempted to give them up completely. 

I think I have done permanent damage to myself... at least, it feels that way. 

I don't know if I'm going to wake up in another wave again? 

I decide to write this trip report in a Discord group while it's still fresh in my head.

But wait... Did I even type all this? I'm really fuzzy.

Am I Sarah, back in the cave? I'm 99% sure I'm back in reality.

1pm, (12 hours after it ended)

I stayed awake watching Youtube videos. My eyes are raw, I'm so tired. 

Some people replied to my Discord thread. Humans are pretty cool.

I finally feel safe enough to go to sleep

27th December 2025

I am safe now and I am over it. 

I've read tons of other peoples bad trip reports and they all have a theme. Fucking time loops!!!

Hmmm, interesting.

Sat playing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and I suddenly think about the timer my room mate made.

Everyone needs this timer system, but most people don't have a trip sitter.

So I will be your trip sitter!

In this moment, I decide the community needs this tool! I have to create a website right now. 

One final point

This is not the end of my psychedelic journey, it was just the horror episode.

Even bad trips have value. In this case the moral was:

"Well shit, maybe IRL isn't so bad after all?!... I wonder what else shrooms can teach me?".