5 tips for your FIRST magic mushroom trip
written by ZS
Set, Setting, Sitter, Intention, and Maintaining a Positive Headspace
So you’re going on your first trip, and not a vacation trip—well, not really—, but just like flying overseas for the first time or sailing across the great blue sea, you’re gonna need to keep a few tips in mind, and we’re here to help!
1. Set
Let’s take an inward look at what you’re working with—your “set.” AKA, your mindset.
Imagine you’ve been carrying around a set of tools in a toolbox wherever you go. Some of those tools are painfully heavy, while others are so light you may forget about them. Some are rusty and you’re not really sure what to do with them, while others are polished and sparkling, eager to fix something up, but they’re all there for a reason.
This is where the psychedelics come in.
Psychedelics reveal many of these tools (the good, bad, and ugly aspects of life), and offer you an opportunity to really work with these tools. Therapy works similarly—your therapist helps you pinpoint the stressors, shortcomings, and goals of your life, and what to do about them. But instead of a therapist, the experience makes it clear that while therapy is an irreplaceable and deeply beneficial aspect of life, you do in fact have what it takes to work with the tools in your toolbox.
Your mindset—or ‘set’—is what you’re entering into this experience with, internally. And they will come into play during a psychedelic experience, one way or another, so it’s important to be aware of your set. Take some time to look inwards before your trip and understand what aspects of your life may surface during the experience so that you’re not caught off guard when that embarrassing memory from a few years ago resurfaces.
2. Setting
The setting is probably the most straightforward tip of all, it’s where you are physically. Simply put, the space that you inhabit during a psychedelic experience will affect the experience.
A comfortable, safe environment is key to facilitating a smooth, productive, and enjoyable trip.
This comfortable, safe environment may look different for a lot of people—for you, it may be your room or on the couch watching a comfort movie, it may be sitting in a forest on a warm, sunny day with a trusted, sober trip sitter (which is always recommended, more on that in our next trip tip)—whatever that environment is for you, it will serve as an anchor to ground yourself. It’s especially important to understand that the average psilocybin trip lasts from four to six hours, and an LSD trip can last up to twelve hours; so remaining in a safe space from start to finish can be very, very important.
Trips can be excellent, healing, and even very fun experiences, but they can also take you to places you may not expect, so having some disciplined say over your physical environment can be a vital reassurance for you that you haven’t really gone anywhere scary—at least not physically.
3. Sitter
Another pretty straightforward tip revolves around the topic of your trip sitter. That is, as mentioned before, a sober friend who you trust to watch over you as you embark on your trip. It is after all, a trip, and if no one knows you’re going on this trip—even if it’s a mental/spiritual trip, as opposed to physical—and God forbid, if any kind of emergency arises, you’re gonna want to have someone present to help you through it without delay.
“But what if I don’t have a trip sitter? Can I still take a full dose?”
Well, we can’t stop you, we can only advise that you make the safest, most beneficial decisions. Sincerely, if you’re going beyond microdosing, it’s always strongly advised to have a trip sitter, especially if you’re inexperienced. While psilocybin in particular has proven to be one of the safest “drugs” out there, you do not want to risk having a bad trip with no one to help you through it. After all, you want to have a smooth, productive trip, and having a trusted and capable trip sitter who understands and respects your goals, your headspace, and the ins and outs of a psychedelic trip—whether they’ve experienced any for themselves or not—can be the key to seeing that smooth, productive trip through to a positive conclusion.
4. Intention
A lesser-known tip for any trip—especially your first—is your intention. Your intentions may be specific, they may be broad, or very unique to you, but no matter what, it’s always good to have an idea of what you’d like to gain from it.
Psychedelic experiences are unlike the experiences provided by other substances like cannabis, and while a cannabis high can be a special experience in and of itself, psilocybin in particular almost always guarantees a deeply emotional and healing experience, so going into it with intention to improve your quality of life can be truly beneficial.
Maybe you’re hoping to get a new perspective on life, or maybe you want to grow in appreciation for your loved ones. Maybe you want to grow in appreciation for life itself, or you want to dig into the sources of your shortcomings—and we all have shortcomings—with the intention to uproot some nasty old habits and improve yourself.
Whatever the intention, let it be productive, because again, while the benefits of cannabis can be great, sometimes you lose what you’ve learned amidst the high, but what you learn through a trip, can stick with you for life—for the better!
5. Maintaining a Positive Headspace
Our final tip for your first trip is a bit more broad than the previous four. How do you maintain a positive headspace when you may not feel fully in control of your thoughts and sensations? The question may sound a little intimidating, but it’s like meditation—which is actually one way to maintain a positive headspace through a trip—allow yourself to loosen your grip on things, even just a little, and as the popular phrase goes, “go with the flow.”
Psychedelics work their magic best when you accept that loosening your grip is one of the best things you can do. So often, we blur our perception of reality by convincing ourselves that we’re in more control than we really are. The fact is, we have very little control over many things in life, and psychedelic experiences will often help us to understand that this is actually okay, having too much control can be really stressful, that’s a lot of responsibility for just one person!
Another quick note—prepare yourself for heightened awareness, but don’t let that intimidate you!
Consider “mushroom trip hallucination simulation” videos, you may have seen them on Youtube, or something like them in plenty of films, and while some simulation videos and some films get the experience across more accurately than others, none of them offer you the same physical and emotional sensations that you may become very familiar with during your trip. It’s not abnormal to feel a slow and steady shift in your physical state—you may feel heavier, or you may feel lighter, you may feel more energetic, or you may feel like you want to go to sleep.
During my first trip, I had a moment where I felt my legs becoming frustrated by my own laziness. They wanted to be used, to feel valuable again like they did when I was going to the gym every day, so I got up and started doing squats right away, and my body thanked me for it.
You may become more aware of your own body than you ever thought possible, or more aware of just how much you love your family and friends, the earth, or even just how nice it is to snuggle up under a soft blanket. And a lot of these realizations can bring with them some very intense emotions—remember, just ride the flow of the current. Your trip may bring you to tears, maybe even more than once, they may be tears of joy, or they may be tears of grief, and that’s okay! Emotions are perfectly normal, tears are perfectly healthy, don’t be afraid when they wash over you—after all, they are your emotions, there’s no need to run from them.
A Final Note to
Keep in Mind,
Before we come to a close, there’s one brief piece of advice that should be made abundantly clear:
Not unlike cannabis, psilocybin (magic mushrooms) comes in multiple strains, all of which have both unique and similar effects on the user. The strain, the contents of your stomach, and the dose that you take will all determine what your psychedelic experience looks like—sometimes literally.
Keeping this in mind will help you and your trip sitter understand that just because either your trip sitter’s experience(s), or the anecdotal experiences of others have played out one way, does not mean that you will have an identical experience. Expectations are normal, but expecting to have the same experience as someone else is likely to hurt more than help.