I saw the world through the eyes of the enlightened

Substances: Mushrooms
By: Amelia Kelly
E-mail: squeaks_@hotmail.com
Webpage:

The morning after a Paul Simon concert I was woken by a phonecall. At 5pm. As you can imagine, after Paul Simon concerts, hangovers and early morning/evening phonecalls cease to be as annoying as before. It was one of my mates with some excellent news regarding mexican mushrooms.

Let me set the scene. These guys rented out a chalet by the lake for the summer from a man who'd obviously never heard of inflation. I'm talking all wood and windows and the lake is right outside the front door. Ten minutes walk down a winding country road brings you to a hotel but that's pretty much it for a mile or two.
So armed with five cups of tea and bathed in the cozy glow of the lake house we braced ourselves for drinking and munching what could be likened to a whole pile of warm slugs in slug juice.

Nobody even realised it was working until it was brought to our attention that we were playing with an egg. We called it Egg and when it broke from a fatal crack to the ceiling, we tried to pick up its remains and hide them in a Dutch Gold box. Now armed with the knowledge that we were tripping off our tits we left the lake house for a bit of a wander.

The driveway is like a tiny forest and it was pitch dark. Walking under those trees is where it kicked in. The world became like the negatives of a photograph and white moonlight was seeping through the trees and the treetops were like spider webs. By the time we got the the country lane, it became perfectly obvious that all the bushes were made up of colourful letters, mostly Ls and Rs (although Hynes argued that there were definitely some vowel present) and I was smoking cigarettes for dear life. Lights in the distance were amazing pinpricks of wonder and delight as we approached a swimming area before the hotel.

But before we got there we were stopped in our tracks by a mystery substance. The tarmac of the road beneath our feet had given way to sand and we celebrated this by rolling around in it for a while trying to establish its identity.
That's when Shanders became distracted by a pole, the pole which would, for one night, become his best friend. Unfortunately this pole was actually IN the lake. Shanders then tore off his shoes, socks and trousers and ran towards it. He must have run for miles. Which isn't true in the physical world since the water was only knee deep. Tino followed him. I should probably point out that Tino had a guitar strapped across his back and was looking particularly tall at this stage.
The lake looked amazing. The ripples were psychedelic in a purply kind of way on an otherwise picture-still surface. The sky was a red liquid covered over by some solid black almost majestic-looking clouds. At one stage Tino and Fagan stood still in the river, Tino with his funky hat, acoustic guitar and astounding height, and Fagan looking awe-inspiring and intensely knowledgable. Jesus and the Tall Guy were testifying. Myself, Shanders an Hynes watched them as if they were some sort of religious encounter. "Screw this!", cried Shanders, "I miss my pole."
Swimming in Ireland is no enjoyable walk in the park. Even in August can it be a heart-strengthening, blood-thinning gruelling experience and enjoyment is reaped soley upon enduring the test rather than the activity itself. We all swam in the river that night, especially Shanders, who couldn't leave his pole. I was, on separate occasions, convinced there were at least twenty of us, that a stick was looking at me funny, that one side of the sky was about to attack the other, that Shanders' hands were made of marshmallows, and that we had all lost our clothes.

When we got home we watched Gump and Fagan started talking to himself while making toast like he was a TV chef. When Forrest went to Vietnam, Fagan donned a combat jacket and became War Chef, a name he just can't seem to get rid of.

Then I recall that a few mates of ours arrived pissed drunk and the taxi driver smoked a few joints with us but that's a different story.
It was my first mushroom experience (infamous words, I know) and I saw the world through the eyes of the enlightened.