“But, I’m a Mormon!” I cried in despair to Daniel Pettersson, who had managed to persuade me during the summer break to try magic mushrooms with him. The type of mushroom was Psilocybe cubensis. I hadn’t even drunk alcohol or smoked a cigarette before. ”It’s like chugging Coca-Cola and chewing bubble gum,” Daniel assured me, “It’s no big deal!”. “Screw it,” I thought, “God has never loved me anyway.” Down went the moldy little mushroom. Not long after, we stopped by Gunnar, who had supplied Daniel with the drugs. When the door opened, Gunnar stood there — sweaty, disoriented, unsteady on his feet, struggling to form coherent sentences, with a glazed look in his eyes.
Daniel froze, partly out of concern for Gunnar, but also because he feared this might trigger a bad trip for me. With a series of awkward laughs and somewhat forced gestures, Daniel did his best to smooth over the situation and quickly led me away. “Everything’s going to be great, Gunnar!”. Oh, we’re having such a blast! But we really need to get going! Have fun!” he said, quickly shutting the door and changing the subject.
We headed towards Rönningesjön, walking along the beach, past a dog swimming area, until we reached Virauddsängen, where we sat on a park bench, somewhat isolated from the rest of the world, and started laughing. We both began to feel as though, during the walk, our faces had taken on the properties of plasmic modeling clay — strangely elastic and malleable.
The clouds in the sky started to form geometric, kaleidoscopic patterns, and the sand on the ground seemed to flow gently towards the sun. Soon, I could hear the trees speaking to me. As Daniel and I watched the people who appeared around us, it seemed as though they were all moving according to predictable patterns, like pre-programmed characters from a video game. This led us, for a time, to seriously consider the possibility that the reality we were in was a Nintendo simulation.
The deeper we dove into the trip, the more life became something to marvel at rather than an impossible puzzle to solve. At one point, on the path towards Ängsholmsbadet, my entire field of vision shifted, as if I were seeing the world through a wide-angle lens, while it felt like the entire sunset was swallowing me whole. I jumped over giant leeches that seemed to cross my path as I made my way back through the forest’s undergrowth to the Mansion on Källparksvägen 11, where I lived at the time.
Once safely back in my room, I put on “Clipper” by Autechre on my newly purchased sound system and crawled into my mattress. But before I did, I opened my window, seeing all the plants in my garden moving, and dancing naturally, uninhibited, perfectly in sync with every note of the incomprehensible music playing, experiencing as if I myself was conducting all the movements of nature surrounding me.
