true hallucinations.htm - Shroomery

true hallucinations.htm
tripping? But that is not the only difficulty with telling this story. The events at La Chorrera generated a great deal of controversy and
subsequent bitterness among the participants. Several ideas of what was taking place were represented, each basing itself on data unavailable
to or deemed irrelevant by the competing interpretations. What some of us took to be a metamorphosis toward the transcendental, others took
for an outbreak of obsessional fantasy.
We were poorly prepared for the events that overwhelmed us. We began as naive observers of something—we knew not what— and because
our involvement with this phenomenon went on for many days, we were able to observe some aspects of it. I feel satisfied
that the method of approach described here is generally effective for triggering whatever it is that I am calling the alien contact experience. (It
may also be dangerous, so don't try this at home, folks.)
Our first Stropharia trip at La Chorrera occurred on the twenty-second of February, 1971, only a little more than twenty-four hours after our
arrival at La Chorrera and following the four-day walk through the jungle from San Jose del Encanto on the Rio Cara-Parana. My journal
entry on the following day makes it clear that I was spellbound. It was the last thing I could bring myself to write for several weeks. All day I
was suffused with contentment. I knew only that the mushroom was the best hallucinogen I had ever had and that it had a quality of aliveness
I had never known before. It seemed to open doorways into places I had assumed would always be closed to me because of my insistence on
analysis and realism.
I had never had psilocybin before and was amazed at the contrast with LSD, which seemed more abrasively psychoanalytic and personal. In
contrast, the mushrooms seemed so full of merry elfin energy that casting off into a visionary trance was all the more enticing. I sensed
nothing of the magnitude of the forces that were gathering around our small expedition. I was thinking only that it was great these mushrooms
were here. Even if we didn't find oo-koo-he or ayahuasca, we would always have them to fall back on, and certainly they were interesting.
Our plan was to spend about three months slowly getting to know the botanical and social environment of the Witoto, who were living
traditionally in a village about fourteen kilometers down a trail from the mission at La Chorrera on the Rio Igara-Parana. We knew oo-koo-he
was taboo, so we were in no hurry. The day after our first mushroom experience was spent checking our equipment, after the rigors of the
overland walk, and generally relaxing in the casita to which Father Jose Maria, the Capuchin in charge, had kindly shown us. We gathered
more mushrooms that afternoon and dried them near the cooking fire.
We decided we would take mushrooms again that night. I pulverized them into a snuff, which we all took. It was delicious, like some
chocolate-related essence, and it was generally thought a success. I felt elated and very pleased with everything and impressed with what an
extraordinarily beautiful place we had come to be in.
But it was a different sort of experience. We were exhausted from the trip the night before, and as we all sat around waiting to get stoned,
there was a lot of bickering between Vanessa and Dennis. Apparently he had had enough of her and said, "You know, you're pretty weird, and
I'm going to tell you why," at which point he launched into a long monologue of accumulated gripes.
The next day was spent relaxing, catching up on insect and plant collecting, washing clothes, and chatting with the priest and brother in
residence, who were both part of an austere Franciscan order that did missionary work. Through them we put out the word that we were
interested in people who knew things about medicinal plants.
That afternoon a young Witoto named Basilio came to the ca-sita and, having heard of our interest from the priest, offered to take us to see his
father, a shaman with a local reputation. Basilio assumed we were interested in ayahuasca, the better-known hallucinogen in the area, which is
generally available for the asking.
The oo-koo-he was a much more sensitive subject. There had been a murder at La Chorrera a month or two before we arrived— actually
several murders—and Guzman claimed they all had to do with oo-koo-he. Supposedly a shaman had murdered one of two shaman brothers by
painting the top rung of a ladder with a DMT-containing resin. When the victim grabbed the rung, the resin had absorbed through his fingers
and he had gotten vertigo and fallen, breaking his neck. The shaman whose brother had been killed struck back by causing an accident. The
alleged murderer's wife, daughter, and grandchild had been in a canoe above the chorro and, unaccountably unable to reach the shore, they had
been swept over it. It was generally assumed that they were victims of magic. Only the wife had lived through it. It was not the time to be
poking around asking about oo-koo-he.
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