Good to have you back Mike! How was the trip? Give us the highlights buddy.
The main highlight for me was a rather insane mushroom trip on Saturday night.
Out of the 7 of us staying together only 3 of us decided on doing them (and one person jumped in at the last minute)
So we took the mushrooms and met the others at a café along with the other 6 people staying separately - had a laugh in the huge group & started tripping a little but only a few colours going crazy & some visual buzzing which was pleasant.
The other 6 decided to go back to their apartment at about 11, so the rest of us strolled off to another Café (Hill Street Blues, for anyone who's been). All was well in there - we played a bit of pool, smoked a few joints and had a laugh.
That's when the mushrooms hit me like a brick wall.
I had a coke, I kept lifting the glass & trying to meet the straw to my lips, but I couldn't do it. Then I realized if I aimed at my nose that I'd get my mouth, but I kept forgetting to aim for my nose - I'd aim for my eye, then hit myself in the nose. This got annoying fast, so I threw my straw at one of the other guys, then victoriously lifted the glass to my lips & spilled the rest of the drink down the front of me.
After that everything settled back down a little & we played cards (though I had no fucking idea what was going on - I was fairly sure I could change my cards to be whatever I wanted them to be, though it was hard to tell, because whatever card I got was fucking exciting at the time)
Things got weird again when the waitress came to order more drinks and I had to give her a 5 euro note. I'd been thinking about the whole prostitute situation & decided against, but then I saw this stunning waitress on the first day and there was a moment of "man, if she was a prostitute, I'd probably change my mind". We flirted a little bit back and forth over the weekend which was ego-boosting, as she pretty much ignored the rest of the guys outside of taking orders.
For some reason my mushroom-addled mind was terrified that she'd get confused when I handed her the cash and think I was trying to pay her for a fuck. I asked for the coke and she said "OK one coke, two euros then, please?" and my response was "Um, OK so this is 5 euros but I only want the coke so can I get three back? They're not for you or anything"
Luckily this came out as "um aotbnjldnh90iopnjganarguob three? rgadararg" along with me throwing the note at her. It was enough to freak me out, though because I was pretty sure everyone was looking directly at my thoughts.
After that ridiculously nothingy incident I just wanted to leave so I spent the next 20 minutes basically just asking when we were going back to the hostel & making sure people were aware that I really wanted to be back there. When we finally left, we took the long route through the red light district alleyways because my friends were cracking up & I wasn't able to communicate how much it was spinning me out.
Oh, and I kept being absolutely paranoid that I was going to shit myself for no reason other than hearing a story about how one of my friends did so in Amsterdam a few years ago. I forget what he was on when that happened. My pre-occupation with wondering whether I was imagining the shit working its way down the insides of my trousers (which thank fuck I WAS just imagining) led me to walk directly into a guy who looked like he was going to kick the shit out of me until my friends rallied around and told the guy to move on.
When we finally got back, I went to bed & spent the next 3 hours turning my light on and off at various intervals. Every time the light was out, I felt like I was floating to the top of the room to look down on everyone, so I kept needing to double-check that I still had a physical presence in the world.
Probably sounds a bit boring and stupid, but it was an awesome, terrifying night. Would definitely do it again, but probably somewhere more familiar next time.
Other than that there was a lot of smoking in cafés, a fantastic hash vanilla cake, a less fantastic hash brownie, lots of walking, my shoes fell apart so I had to trawl Amsterdam to find new ones, lots of pool (I mostly lost) & .... yeah, just constant smoking, really.
Was awesome.
