TIFU by sending my roommate’s friend into a bad mushroom trip through a song

Obligatory “this actually happened a month ago”.

My roommate and I like to indulge in mushrooms here and there. A couple days before the college semester started my roommate decided to bring his 4 friends from home up to try mushrooms with us. It’s important to note that 2 of them are semi-experienced trippers and the other 2 are brand new. My roommate and I are still the most experienced out of the bunch, so we each take 2.5 g (forget the strain but it wasn’t PE), and everyone else takes 1.5 g to get the same experience as each other. Our first fuck up was not finding a trip sitter, as me and my roommate didn’t have one our first time and we were fine.

So we take the mushrooms and walk to get takeout Chinese for later that night. I ate a hot dog right before that was making me sick to my stomach as I was coming up, and one of the new friends (we’ll call him Sam) was feeling the same. I knew we were in for a ride when I start seeing hieroglyphics only 45 minutes in.

I can’t trip without listening to music or some sort so when we get back to the apartment I ask if music was ok, everyone agrees, so I put on my hipster indie rock playlist on the speaker. Pretty soon the other new tripper (we’ll call him David) realizes the place messed up his order so we have to re-order, but we also have to wait until it’s ready, meaning we’ll be fully tripping when we go get the food.

We’re sitting there, vibing when one song comes on, “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings” by Father John Misty, and for those who don’t know, this song revolves heavily around death but I don’t fully realize it was this song playing until I heard the line “we should let this dead guy sleep”. I figure it would be kinda weird if I skipped the song so I waited until it finished, then “Someday” by The Strokes came on and my mood instantly changes to happy again. Halfway through the song though, Sam asks me to turn the music off because it’s disrupting his trip so I oblige, but I continue the playlist privately through my AirPods.

A few minutes go by, I’m deep into examining my own hand and suddenly hear a dreadful groan, “oh noooooo”. Fuck. Sam’s having a bad trip and I’m tripping too hard to speak in sentences. Oh well at least there’s 4 others that can help him. Nope. At that moment the food’s ready, so David, along with my roommate and his other semi-experienced friend (he’ll be John) leave to get the food. I decide to stay back because someone who lives there should keep an eye on Sam, and the other semi-experienced tripper (she’ll be Madison) stays as well.

Sam’s not having a good time at all. He’s shaking his leg violently and once in a while lets out a loud groan. I’m tripping far too hard to help him in any productive way, so Madison tries to help but she can’t stop staring out the window. I start spiraling and thinking about my grandparents’ recent deaths, but I’m an experienced enough tripper that I know how to stop a bad trip when I feel its onset, so I start thinking about my place in society instead, leaving me to realize I’ve revolved a large part of my personality around different aspects of my college that won’t matter next year since I’m a senior.

So here we are; Sam’s groaning with his head in his lap, Madison’s staring out the window and I’m having an existential crisis, also staring out the window watching the trees swirl together. Suddenly, the other half of our group busts into the room with the food, and in this exact moment “Daylight” by Matt and Kim starts playing through my AirPods. It’s like the gods themselves noticed our spiral and decided to send in their heavenly reinforcements. They put down the food and excitedly claim “guys let’s go outside!! Let’s go to the local park”. At this point I realize I desperately need to go outside, but I refused to wear any college clothing due to earlier. So we go to the park, I’m listening to “Mountain Sound” by Of Monsters and Men while we tackle some trees with branches, and I randomly find an intact coconut (we’re in New England). At this point Sam’s calmed down enough to explain how he saw way too many visions, including the end of the world, which he wouldn’t elaborate on. He never said it was caused by the song but I have no doubt in my mind it was. Whoops.

TL;DR: Played the song “Hollywood Forever Cemetery” during a group mushroom trip that caused my roommate’s inexperienced friend to spiral and see the end of the world.