So last week I had the good fortune to experience P. azurescens for the first time with my girlfriend, and my mum had a session where we sat for her the following afternoon...WOWZA!!! It was consumed in the form of a chocolate, also imbued with lion's mane mushroom (for proposed synergistic neurogenic effects) and mono atomic gold (personally sceptical of the claims made about the latter). Setting was a cosy bedroom environment with candles, incense and a specially selected psilocybin playlist. We each ate 2/3 of a chocolate, which is equivalent to around 2.5 of dry Azurescens mushrooms. What amazing mushrooms...completely distinct and unlike any other mushroom I've ever had, and I'm a pretty well travelled psilonaut... This experience for me was very interesting...much more fast paced than my usual mushroom experiences, and much more electric feeling. The peak came on disconcertingly quickly after I first started to feel effects, and the speed and driving electric intensity of its onset was very different to other mushroom experiences I've had previously and it caught me off guard, for 10 mins or so I really felt like I had bitten off more than I could chew, which I've not really experienced with mushrooms before. These mushrooms didn't feel earthy in the way all my past mushroom experiences have done...these were experienced on a more cosmic, transpersonal level. It reminded me of a more light filled DPT or DMT experience in some respects during the peak (while very much having its own character), given this high speed, high vibrational electric intensity...very colourful and light filled, with a lot of rainbows and very visionary, including powerful open eye visuals, which I don't always get strongly with mushrooms, my journeys are often more internally visionary. Once things settled down a bit, I found myself in a supremely exalted, blissful, majestic state of bemushroomed consciousness, it really didn't feel 'earthy' in the way mushrooms usually do, I remember remarking I couldn't believe that these came from the Earth...I was in a bejewelled and very golden realm that was regal and resplendent (not sure how much my knowledge of the monoatomic gold factored in, but this was experienced by my mum and girlfriend on these mushrooms to), very sensual, and had a spiritual kundalini-esque feeling, with lots of bodily vibrational and electrical feelings in my hands...it was a physical experience while at the same time feeling clean and easy on the body.
Interestingly, there was very little personal content, shadow or inner work as all three of us have experienced previously with high dose P. cubensis trips...these mushrooms seem to take one to realms beyond that and were experienced by all of us as being much more benign, positive, nurturing and cosmic feeling than P. cubensis. It was also interesting to note that the Imperial College psilocybin-depression 'psilodep2' playlist...such a fundamental part of previous P. cubensis experiences...had little effect on us in this state, and only some songs caught our interest or attention. So perhaps there are better mushroom species for inner work, yet at the same time it is nice to be able to reap the benefits of a psilocybin defrag without having to go through something gruelling. In previous P. cubensis session we would be prone to lying down with eye shades...in these experiences the eye shades never made it on, although there was some much enjoyed closed eyes time. In spite of the lack of personal inner work, we rocked/are rocking a great afterglow, which seems to occur irrespective of one's degree of inner work, it seems more physiological in origin. My girlfriend is a therapist who works with psilocybin, and for her this was a unique experience, in that all of her previous psilocybin experiences (almost all with P. cubensis) have been very challenging and often dark in character. I had said she may find that different species have different characters and experiential effects, but she was sceptical until she experienced the Azurescens...this was her first time experiencing a truly blissful, exalted, cosmic and transpersonal experience with psilocybin, and she likened to a similar very profound and positive San Pedro cactus experience she had a number of years ago.
I know some people hold the view that there is no difference in experiential qualities between different mushroom species, a view I have to say I find rather odd, and feel is likely down to a lack of experience with the various different species. P. azurescens, as well as being the most potent magic mushroom species known (at least on average), also contains high levels of psilocybin analog baeocystin. Beyond one or two bioassays with the latter substance, there has been no human research using it, and talking to psychedelic pharmacologist Prof. David Nicholls, he states that it has different receptor affinities than psilocybin, leading one to suspect it likely has distinct effects...so its presence alongside the psilocin/psilocybin may well modulate the experience, and I suspect varying quantities and proportions of alkaloids like this, norbaeocystin and other tryptophan derivatives and psilocybin precursors occurring among the different species are likely what give rise to the commonly perceived differences in experiential qualities between them. All three of us experienced P. azurescens to feel remarkably different in character to any previous P. cubensis experiences. So if people are curious to explore this for themselves, I would encourage them to ingest other species...there is definitely more to the mushroom world than P. cubensis. I look forward to experiencing this mushroom again, but I feel I'll be content having a lower dose next time, they may feel benign but their power is definitely worthy of respect!! Has anyone else experienced these and noticed any differences?
Edited by Samwise, 05 January 2019 - 04:22 PM.
