Difficult experience
Where to begin…
I’m a 40M, fairly healthy physically. I go to the gym, box, and play football. I’ve got a wife and a young son, a loving family, a good job, and a solid life on paper.
Personality-wise, I’m quite addictive and obsessive. I’ve done my fair share of raving over the years and have had some proper multi-day benders. I can definitely slip into “sesh gremlin” mode.
Alcohol is probably my main issue. It tends to lower my guard and before I know it, I’m chasing whatever else I can get my hands on.
I bought some mushrooms a while back (not sure what strain). I’d been microdosing for a few months and honestly, it seemed to help with my anxiety and rumination, especially around existence and death.
My first proper trip was around 3.5g, but it was dampened by cocaine and alcohol. Even so, it was a positive experience — visuals, energy, good feelings.
Fast forward to recently
I went out with my dad and drank in the pub, and it was a genuinely great father-son night.
I got home, and while my wife and son were asleep, I made a very bad decision.
I took an eyeballed dose of mushrooms. No scales. No thought.
Looking back, it must have been somewhere in the region of 10–14g.
What followed was, without exaggeration, the most terrifying experience of my life.
It felt like I stepped completely outside of time and space. The fear and anxiety were beyond anything I can describe — English doesn’t have the words for it. It was pure, overwhelming existential dread.
The entire experience revolved around my deepest fears: existence, death, nothingness — on an endless loop. It felt like being trapped in it forever.
At points it felt like I was being “shown” something — that being alive matters, that existence is something we’re here to experience, and that nothingness or timelessness is too much for the human mind to comprehend.
But at the same time, it felt like hell.
The worst part is that my son was awake… or at least I think he was. It’s hard to separate what was real and what wasn’t.
I remember him being there, laughing, jumping on me, while I was completely losing control — shouting, clapping, crying, hysterical. His laughter, in that state, felt like something out of a horror film.
I genuinely believed I had died and that this was punishment. That I was in hell.
At one point, I pushed my 5-year-old son over and made him cry. That’s something I’m struggling with a lot. I did hug him and apologise straight after, but it shouldn’t have happened.
My wife didn’t know what to do.
The anxiety didn’t just stop when the peak ended. It lingered for nearly 24 hours. I’ve only just come out the other side of it.
I don’t think I want to completely write off mushrooms.
I know the dose was reckless and way beyond anything sensible. That’s on me.
And strangely, part of me feels like I did confront something real — my deepest fears, pushed to the absolute limit.
But it was dark. Really, really dark.
If nothing else, it’s made me take a long hard look at my relationship with drink and drugs, and how quickly things can spiral when I’m not in control.
If anyone’s had similar experiences or has advice on how to process something like this properly, I’d genuinely appreciate it.