Thanks guys!
On Joe's advice, I ended up grinding approximately 5.25 grams of dried mushrooms (split amongst three people) in a mortar and pestle and steeping them in hot water with some orange marigold tea. I brought this all in a thermos to the park and it made consumption completely inconspicuous. Thanks Joe, it worked like a charm and was delicious!
I found the experience quite rewarding. I gather that the dosage wasn't high enough for strong hallucination but the world did take on a pronounced ripply condition for several hours. Buildings swaying in the wind with the trees, ground rolling back and forth in waves, and so on. In all honesty, this was exciting for a bit but the novelty wore off quickly.
The come up was marked by a feeling of neutral anticipation followed by brief panic. We were all lying on our backs, wearing sunglasses waiting for the effects to hit us when I began to feel myself descending into a negative place. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to take off the shades and sit up and right away I felt my trip correct itself.
The most pronounced effects were a body high, a head rush, feelings of mirth and euphoria (all of these much like the effects of being stoned on some very good weed; this was also predicted/preempted by Joe) at first, followed by a lasting calm. Coming down and for several hours afterward, I felt wonderfully at peace, very in tune with the human condition and my relative position to the world, content and completely un-self-conscious. I feel completely normal at this point but that state of mind has lingered to some extent, and I feel like I've grown from it.
There was a moment several hours in where I briefly felt violently unpleasant. The sun had disappeared, it was starting to rain, and we all had to use the bathroom, so we decided to leave the park. I was not at all ready to re-enter the outside world and by the time we had reached the street, I had to stop and warn my friends that I felt like shit. My vision blurred around the edges, I felt a mad head rush and general weakness and nausea. Overwhelmed and in great need of a bathroom, I hopped a low stone wall back into the park and urinated under cover of some trees. Almost instantly I felt better, suddenly aware of the cold sweat enveloping my body but relieved.
It appears that unpleasant moments are greatly satisfying in retrospect, once you have overcome them.
Several minutes after this episode, I suggested (to great approval) that we return to the park. As it's occupants rushed out, madly racing for cover from the rain, we boldly walked back in, soaked to the skin. We came upon an abandoned swing set and sat down, spending the next half hour in deep contemplation, occasionally sharing an insightful thought. I thought about how city-dwellers are conditioned to avoid the elements at all costs, sitting in the rain, appreciating the sensation of water on my skin and chills through my body. We pour water over our body each morning to cleanse ourselves, soak in it to relax, pay $5 for a plastic bottle of it, but any time it comes from the sky we fear and avoid it. This struck me as counter-productive and absurdly silly.
I realized also how we crave release as humans, imagined in vivid detail the pleasure of dryness and warmth following wetness and cold. I've come away with a greater appreciation for sensation and a slightly increased ability to relish the moment.
All this for $15. It's been a beautiful Wednesday.
tl;dr A+ would shroom again
