What Is Experience?

A tale from magic mushrooms

Jaebien Rosario
3 min readMay 12, 2022
Photo by Ripley Elisabeth Brown 🧿 ៚ on Unsplash

This college semester has been fascinating. It was my first time experimenting with various substances, including magic mushrooms or shrooms. I’ve taken shrooms at least three times this past academic year.

The first time it was considered a “microdose” of shrooms, I felt pretty good and connected with my body.

The second time I ingested a lot more, about 3.5 grams of it compared to the measly 1.5 from the first time. The second experience had me open up my consciousness, I experienced indescribable phenomena, saw patterns that were similar to a collider scope, and felt connected to what I perceived to be other lives.

The third time I consumed about the same amount of shrooms as the second time. I smoked some weed before I ingested the shrooms this time. My head began to spin and within the hour I quickly dissociated with my surroundings.

I knew exactly who I was, I could look at each object and tell what it was, but for some reason, I felt disconnected. I felt outside of myself but connected at the same time. The absurdity of existence fully hit me, human beings somehow evolved to think of abstract ideas like buildings, cars, TVs, and iPhones.

Why couldn’t we have been lizard beings? Why was I me and not someone else? What is reality…

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Jaebien Rosario

I love science but I talk about entrepreneurship and online writing here. Sign up to my newsletter: https://thewritersparadox.substack.com/