If someone ate a magic mushroom...

[UserName]

Is it possible that he might hallucinate an imaginary person? And subsequently have a discussion with said person?

[shadowsdad]

I think William Burroughs had conversations with cockroaches while on hallucinatory drugs. (I forget which low-budget movie was made about it, but you actually have his character talking to the creature and the creature talking back. If the character BELIEVES he's talking to an imaginary person or an insect or whatever, then it can be filmed from their perspective.)

As an actor, I have conversations with imaginary characters all the time (when rehearsing at home) -- why couldn't it be filmed as if that person was real? That person certainly is to me!

But to get back to your point, consuming magic mushrooms gives you a lot of leeway as a screenwriter with who's talking to whom/what. And some mushrooms definitely have hallucinatory effects. I've been around friends taking mushrooms who talked me through the space-ride they were on and the creatures they were meeting "out there". It sure as hell was real to them! And it was fascinating to go vicariously along for the ride. (I didn't take mushrooms, because you often have to throw them up when they're half digested to make sure you're not poisoned but absorbed enough to get the effect. I hated the idea of making myself throw up. Or poisoning myself for that matter.)

[UserName]

Perfect! Thanks Shadow.

[shadowsdad]

Boy, it's not often one gets THAT reaction. Glad I could help, User.

[Manilow in Blue]

NAKED LUNCH is the film you are thinking about.

[Writing Again]

A golem, as I recall, can be fashioned by believing in it.

It starts out as kind of an imaginary friend and then takes on more and more reality.

A golem, as I recall could be made from sticks, or bits of mud, but that was not always necessary.

I think there is a creature similar to the golem, that is believed in by some people in the Himlayas.. the same folks who believe in Big Foot.

Been a long time since I read these stories, but I think this is where I'd start.

[kahaokamoku]

When I was in high school, the jocks used to go camping after the football season was over. This is Hawaii. We did that our Junior year, but all we did was fight over girls. So no girls were invited anymore in our senior year. Things got quieter. No more cops and no more fighting except for one incident.

Well, we were into basketball season. After a game, we went to the camping site. The center of the football team came with us. The center does not do drugs.

When we arrrived everyone was sleeping except one guy who was the quarter back on the team. They had made some chili and rice. There was four of us up. The center ate the chili and rice. We drank beers. The center started hallucinating and real pissed. The quarterback started laughing because the chili was spiked with magic mushrooms. I never saw so many tents fly up in the air. Guys were being thrown out of their sleeping bags. It took about six of us to hold the center down. Everyone was up after that.

I used to crack up watching the "hippies" walk through the cow pastures in the morning while looking for that morning reality.

[Keymaker]

I've done shrooms a lot. Probably more than I should have. I have never, in any of my travels heard anything about people intentionally throwing shrooms up so they don't poison themselves or whatever, (although I've seen plenty of people get sick on them, but that's another story)

Anyways, from personal experience I think it's a bit beyond the pale of 'shrooms to hallucinate a person and a conversation, but movies and writers have a long history of over-exaggerating the effects of drugs, so I don't think anyone would have a problem with it in a script.

Don't do drugs, kids.

[khabs]

to investigate conversation with "imaginary" entities while under influence it's probably best to read Castaneda.

i will say that conversations is possible and very real, but i don't need mushrooms or pejoti for that.

how imaginary or real is any of this, belongs to another thread
|I

[esdavis88]

Yeah, I agree with Key. Out of all the folks I know who have done Shrooms, not once have any of them seen someone that wasn't there, enough that they would talk to them and hear that someone speak back.

But, Acid! Now there's a drug I can tell you some stories about. That's more of a "hello little blue man, would you like to keep me company" kind of a drug.

I'd go with that.

[johanh]

it all depends on the mushroom ... "magic mushrooms" come in many varieties - the most popular probably being Psilocybe cubensis which by no means is the most potent. Some people do react on mushies with nausea, vomiting, stomach pains but rarely if they are for the psilocybe variety.

Those who suggest vomiting is a requirement are probably not discussing any of the popular magic mushrooms. Rather experiments into toxic mushrooms such as Amanita muscaria, the Red Fly Agaric, which the vikings used during berserk raids. Certainly very posinous if ingested directly.

http://www.erowid.org/plants/amanitas/images/archive/amanita_muscaria_muscaria1.jpg

Many mushrooms work similarily to LSD, peyote and san perdo cacti (mescaline source). Ingestion of a boil of san pedro will in most cases lead to vomiting or intense diarreha at the beginning of the effect. Since the effect lasts a long time - who cares :p

some useful links

www.magic-mushrooms.net (http://www.magic-mushrooms.net)
www.shroomery.org/ (http://www.shroomery.org/) (check out the chemistry section at www.shroomery.org/index/par/3170/pag/4 (http://www.shroomery.org/index/par/3170/pag/4) )
www.erowid.org/psychoactives/psychoactives.shtml (http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/psychoactives.shtml)

info on effects: www.geocities.com/HotSprings/5257/effects.html (http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/5257/effects.html)

[taurbabe]

I can't believe someone would actually ingest a magic mushroom and then throw half of it up before digestion just so that they don't....... die? http://rilngard.com/forum/emoticons/shrug.gif

[johanh]

taur - most peops do dumb things in youth - some dumber than others :)

actually the vomiting is part of the body defense system - like when you drink too much alcohol - how many DD'rs have vomited on account of being too drunk?

[JakeSchuster aka Ostroff]

In the Sixties hallucinogenic mushrooms were commonly served in mashed potatoes to help keep them glued to your stomach. In those years, I took tons of LSD and other hallucinogenics and, all save for my last trip, I never saw anything that wasn't directly connected to reality (i.e. shimmering walls; the color blue growing vivid; ice-cream going down warm). On my last trip--15,000 micrograms of a slightly different LSD (I was told it was LSD-24, as opposed to the standard -25)--I was standing in front of a mirror, lighting a Camel, when I disappeared.

Thus ended my drug years.

[kahaokamoku]

I had a room mate in college who used to do a lot of hallucinogenic drugs when he was younger. He told me when he was high he used to go to the soda section in the market and watch the colors all come together.

[johanh]

jake

"I was standing in front of a mirror, lighting a Camel, when I disappeared."

that single line is movie material :D

[JakeSchuster aka Ostroff]

johanh, I've been saving up my drug experiences for a script yet to be written or even planned out. The life of a dealer (as I, like many users, was) back then was interesting and full of peril. I remember once being asked to go to Grand Central Station to pick up a duffle-bag full of Owsley acid tabs sent to us by a San Franciscan known only as Super Spade. Someone in the store where I worked happened to open the latest Time magazine to read that Mr. Spade had been found in San Francisco Harbor--or at least his head had been found, then an arm, a leg, eventually his torso. Clearly this was not the result of a swimming mishap.

Knowing that a lot of very good acid was awaiting us for redistribution, and also knowing that the Feds were probably waiting for little ole me to pick it up sort of put a damper on the day. I didn't pick it up.

And now I'm a semi-respectable father and writer.

[Cleo]

Don't know what would happen, but didn't Lewis Carroll base his Alice in Wonderland Adventures on drug use? I remember reading that some years ago, but I can't find the article.

[JakeSchuster aka Ostroff]

That was the Sixties take on the two Alice books (Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" is the guilty party here). Alice drinks various potions that make her either very big or very small, and it was assumed by many in my generation that Carroll obviously was an acid head. Of course he--the Reverend Lewis Dodgson, as he in truth was--was nothing of the sort. A mathematician, a writer, a photographer, a puzzle-maker; but not a druggie.

[Cleo]

Thanks Jake for the info. It did seem a bit off.

[johanh]

jake - why are u saving it? - personal experience is the no.1. writing tool

[johanh]

aw !#@%... i just messed up my 666 :(

[JakeSchuster aka Ostroff]

Good question (and sorry about your 666). I'm saving it because it's essentially a number of episodes without a story. I went to (the wrong) college in a part of the country that was completely unlike where I came from, a guy came up to me the first evening I was there and said--I kid you not--"Now that you're not living at home, wouldn't you like to try one of these?" And he handed me a joint. "You probably won't feel anything the first time," he said, and half-an-hour later I was a giggly mess barely able to put one foot in front of another. Things took off from there, there was the odd aventure or ten, but, just as Cameron Crowe's experiences as a budding rock journalist needed a firm frame to be effective, so, I'm afraid, do mine.

And it'd be an historical piece of sorts. The drugs we did back then were pretty well covered in "The Trip", "Easy Rider", and so forth. And though a well-respected script consultant whom I know once suggested I instantly write a script about my Sixties experiences (which included a number of magical musical moments, as well), I'm still waiting for a story.

I suppose something about the past coming back to haunt someone who'd caused someone's death back then. Of course I didn't, as far as I know, but, hey, drama's the name of the game, right? So it'd be a picture about a bunch of middle-aged guys trying to find out who killed the guy with the long hair. Not very exciting.

And I'm still wondering if that duffle bag is still at Grand Central.

[Augie Kestrel]

A guy I used to run into at a local diner told me that he and his buddies did 'shrooms all the time. He said they couldn't find one of his friends one day. They went outside and found him up a tree. They asked him what he was doing up there.

"Hiding from the lions", he replied.

I have no idea if such an occurrence is typical of 'shroom users. It just struck me as pretty damn funny, so I remembered it.

The guy who told me this story worked for the city Parks department. So did most of his 'shroom-in' buddies. A local TV consumer reporter did one of those undercover "your tax dollars hard at work" stories. They followed the park workers around with a camera hidden in a van. All the guys did was lay around, instead of cleaning up the parks. The TV crew got their entire day on tape. Not a lick of work out of any of 'em.

Some of the guys were suspended as a result. A few were fired. The guy told me that what the footage didn't reveal was that he and his buddies were all messed up on 'shrooms the whole time they were being taped.

[JakeSchuster aka Ostroff]

Acid--drug of choice in the Sixties--was much worse. I remember once being driven down Second Avenue in NYC and seeing a guy on a bad trip who'd torn his eyes out. I also remember the guitarist from a well-known band who told me that Danny Kalb had freaked out on the hallucinogenic STP. Danny was, and still is, a great guitarist, equal to Clapton and Mike Bloomfield, who'd essentially lost his mind. Thankfully he's back in the business. But for a while we all stopped and thought about it a lot.

Mushrooms were a rarity in the Sixties. They by rights were a Native American ritual taken over by us pathetic white boys. They were natural hallucinogenics, while we were taking things made in labs.

[WinterMuse]

Shrooms don't, in my experience, take you that far. Something like peyote or DMT would.

[JakeSchuster aka Ostroff]

Isn't peyote--also known as buttons--a mushroom? If not, I was eating tiddly-winks and, after throwing up, seeing, well, not a hell of a lot. Pills were easier.

[johanh]

jake
peyote is a cactus, the active ingredients basically mescaline but not pure - a number of alkaloids - give a somewhat different effect from pure m

peyote has a very long history both with aztec and native american folks

san pedro is another cactus that is a natural source of mescaline - long history of use by incas etc since its natural habitat is parts of south america

interesting that both regions have a mescaline source but from differing sources

[JakeSchuster aka Ostroff]

As I said, johanh, that was way back in the Sixties, and my memory is, well, a little shaky. Can't understand why. Thanks for the correction, though.

[Rembrandt Writes]

The quinessential film for the subject is

Altered States

Excellent screenplay by the way. Good film for those under the influence...I guess:D

The writer of the original novel was featured in the last SCR(I)PT mag.

...and that was a BAAAAAAAAAAAD trip!!! >D

REMb

[velysai]

My old roommate once told me that she was slipped acid one time. She freaked out because the walls started moving and when she ran out into the hall, the walls were undulating. She also told me that she had a friend who would do acid and have conversations with imaginary people, so it's totally possible.

Someone said mashed potatoes earlier. Brownies are popular, too.

[Rembrandt Writes]

Just to set the record straight...

Those walls were BREATHING...living things BREATHE;)

And she was not talking to other people, she was talking to person she was before the world boxed in her mind with walls to the perception that we cannot understand the infinite, when in fact, we were born with the ability. It's called FAITH.

That's why you should NEVER take acid if you can't handle the truth. Jack Nicholson spoke about this.:lol

REMb

[JakeSchuster aka Ostroff]

Other piece of good advice is never to take acid without the presence of a guide. Back in the 60s a number of us were trained to be guides both to help newcomers to the experience or to tame a bad trip. My last acid trip was so harrowing that the person I trained--a college roommate--had to be called in to save my life.

[Rembrandt Writes]

Funny how that LAST trip was always the BAD one.

I think "guide" is an excellent euphemism for "EMT".

Jake
WOW MAN....
Oh...I think that's puke!
WOW...
Turn his on his stomach..quick!

Group
WOW.....

LOL

REMb

[JakeSchuster aka Ostroff]

Ah, yes, I fondly remember the last-minute crises when someone was freaking out on Tenth Street. I forget the actual quantity, but a certain amount of Vitamin C and Niacin usually calmed the freaker down. I remember counting them out for someone at a table at the Eatery on First Avenue. It was either vitamins or a trip to the emergency room for thorazine and a police report.

But guiding is a way of simply talking someone through the rough spots of an acid trip, and knowing how to steer the tripper into calmer waters when panic--as it inevitably does--sets in.

Never saw anyone puke on an acid trip. With peyote, yes.

[Rembrandt Writes]

O I was just kidding.

I've heard the "bad" trips (working in ER) usually are because the medium was mixed with other agents that were toxic, i.e. strychnine...microdot doses were famous for this. Strychnine is in rat poison and causes a rise in blood pressure, rampant thirst, and psychosis. Niacin dilates blood vessels and lowers blood pressure, so a jug of juice and niacin makes sense.

REMb

[JakeSchuster aka Ostroff]

Right you are, Rembrandt. Back in the old days it was virtually impossible to get acid without a second, often unknown, drug attached to it. Owsley, who produced his famous purple tablets (usually with Batman engraved on them) used speed, and his stuff was very, very reliable. We used to buy 'em in quantity for a nickle a tab and turn them around for twenty bucks a pop.

Oh, man. Why the hell do I still know these things?!

[Pandoraisme]

Jake,

"Oh man. Why the hell do I still know these things?!"

You're not smoking enough pot? ;)

Pandoraisme

[JakeSchuster aka Ostroff]

I rely on Ketel One and Famous Grouse these days. Somehow they sharpen the memory.

Maybe I should start mixing them!

[Writer1]

rules...NEVER trip alone...Never stare at yourself in the mirror...

[English Dave]

As most of the audience won't know about the exact effects of shrooms, and those who know won't care, write whatever you like. But I have second hand knowledge of a Woolworths lifting off the ground and landing on me......him. I think imagining someone would be okay.

[DrumDog2112]

About 8 years ago, after a J*cksonville J*gu*rs football game, me and two buddies dropped two hits -- each -- of some really powerful cid. We decided it would be cool to hang out at their grandparent's house. Now, grandma and grandpa were supposed to be out of town... Well...

We started to peak (ie, the beginning of some intense hallucinations), and when we got to said grandparents' home, they were there... and they wanted to take us to a local steakhouse.

Stupid and too stoned to NOT try and talk ourselves out of the invitation, we decided to go with them. Now, if anybody has dropped acid, you know food is the last thing on your mind. Especillay a fvcking steak.

So, there we were, in the middle of a restaurant -- the food had just been delivered to our table -- and, keep in mind, we're at the two-hour mark of our peak... Trying to hide our laughter from two oblivious grandparents, who think we got a little drunk at a tailgating party.

I decided to hit the bathroom, trying to keep cool... and I had the genius idea of deciding to wash my face. Then... I stared in the mirror... My face, well, started out looking normal... But as time progressed, my face shifted into odd formations -- then, ultimaely, I found myself staring at a Jaguar.

My buddies came into the bathroom, freaking out -- three to-go boxes between them. They thought I might've been missing. Come to find out, grandma and grandpappy had already eaten and were ready to leave.

ME: How long have I been in here?
BUDDIES: About an hour.

AS a previous paster stated, never take acid and stare at yourself in the mirror.

Shrooms? Never tried 'em. I got in trouble trying to look for them, but that's another story.

[Writer1]

Too funny.

This brings back old memories/flashbacks...smiles.

Always trip with buddies...never alone.

Never look in the mirror...NEVER!

Never go to a Tim Horton's at 3am when you're tripping on peyote.

Never break into/onto the field of a professional baseball team and play baseball at 4am on acid unless you're driving daddy's caddy and there's no dope in the car.

Always go to a West Texas "boot hill" graveyard at midnight on Halloween...very cool, especially if the security guard you encounter is satisfied with your explanation for being there..."we're not gonna wreck anything, we're just gonna talk to the spirits, man."