The Trip

The Trip

Sep 5, 2014

TRIGGER


A house party.

ECO


A year or two after Fodder purchased his first house, his roommate and $REDACTED would throw a house party. They would invite several dozen friends, but more than one-hundred people would show up. It was insane.

Fodder would have an enjoyable enough time (alcohol and weed will do that to a person), but he didn’t really interact with anyone. He didn’t know any of these people, and they certainly weren’t HIS friends. Fodder didn’t have any friends.

Near the end of the night, Fodder would be presented with an unexpected opportunity: somebody was selling Psilocybin mushrooms. Being the curious person he was, Fodder would purchase some.

He would wait until later to try them, though.

A week passed. The trashed house had been cleaned, and Fodder’s roommates had a weekend to kill. They decided to use the mushrooms.

What followed was one of the most memorable experiences of Fodder’s life.

The group would mix the mushrooms with ice cream. Then, they would go for a nature walk. By the time the mushrooms had kicked-in, they had reached an open field, where they lay, watching the setting sun. Fodder had never seen anything so beautiful.

Later, they would find themselves back at the house, moving from room to room, listening to music and having deep philosophical conversation. Fodder had never felt so connected with other people.

Finally, they would move into the back yard, where they sat in lawn chairs for hours, smoking cigarettes and watching the stars. They spoke about the cosmos, and the nature of reality. They spoke about the most interesting of topics - most of which have escaped Fodder’s memory at this point.

It was here that Fodder recognized an emotion that he had never experienced before: empathy. He had never felt this sense of oneness with the people around him. With the universe. He was at complete peace. He was happy. Everything made sense.

Reality is so much different than the shit we have to deal with every day.

Fodder would come to learn that mushrooms are something like a truth serum. He would admit several things to his roommates that he would later come to regret.

At one point, his roommate would leave for work, leaving $REDACTED behind with Fodder.

Screwing-up his courage, Fodder would confess that he had lost his faith in God more than one year ago. He had been dealing with the emotions, alone, for many months.

$REDACTED would cry. He would beg Fodder to reconsider. The conversation was messy, and it was nothing that Fodder expected. He had hoped for support. He had hoped for a compassionate ear.

But $REDACTED was young, and he couldn’t provide that. He just didn’t understand.

Fodder would later find that there was nobody who understood.

CAT


data.stats.symptoms [
    - empathy
    - love
    - peace
    - sadness
]

ECHO


They told me (they told me)

How I should be

But I broke the mold somehow!

— from A Day to Remember - “My Life for Hire”