It's been a while since I've written up a report, I've had some great and ineffable experiences over the last few months but nothing this intense so I thought it'd be worth mentioning... I pieced this together from my initial writeup I sent to a few friends the day after it happened with additions of what I've remembered over the week... Sorry in advance if it's a bit choppy.

Panaeolus Cyanescens: Me and my girlfriend (M) thought we'd test these out as they had been sitting around for a while. 1 gram, which the consensus would agree being the equivalent of a 3g cubensis trip... Before I start getting into it, I'm quite experienced. Growing my own shrooms has given me the opportunity to take heavy doses regularly. On nights when people around me have lost their shit on 2g, I've been pretty steady on about 5g (in addition to a lot of weed)...

Probably should mention: we were both completely sober, stable and respectful prior to the trip. Dosed up on a mg scale... Far from reckless.

We each take 1g of powdered P. Cyans right on 6pm... Effects start kicking in after about 10-20 minutes. I know something isn't right when *M*, who seems to metabolise shrooms differently (needing an extra gram or so to catch up) agrees things are coming on fast.

I was actually starting to get a bit anxious as it was not the standard trippy feeling. I knew this was going to be intense but instead of things melting, breathing etc, things became really disorientating. I thought "I'm going to have a bad trip, I'm not going to be able to keep my shit together but I'll try not to freak out M". I've had plenty of unnerving trips before, but not at 20 mins in (knowing the peak is going to knock me around hard).

So before an hour had past, the bad trip was on... It wasn't the mental aspect but the physical aspects that were starting to scare me. We were feeling sick and being totally fucked (intoxicated) wasn't helping especially while the psychedelic terror was edging in. I thought "I'm gonna go outside, lay on the ground, get some air and hopefully things will be less overwhelming".

I pace around for a while, laying outside isn't going to help...I sit down and it feels like I can't co-ordinate my hands so well, I have to 'concentrate' to breath and I'm scared my body is going to let out on me. I was hoping that time would speed up, everything would pass through my system and I would be fine but I started to enter the void.

I remember on the come-up I felt really fucking cold (and sick), shivering while wearing a jumper and wrapped in a blanket. I went for a shower to warm up which sincerely made me nervous. Patterns on the tiles morphed ridiculously like I was *totally* powerless over hallucinations. As real as I see this text on a screen. The 'breathing' of the shower seemed like it was going to come to life and wrap around my body like some mental molestation. Really creepy.

Afterwards, with M in the background starting to freak out we just agree "things are really bad", I was on my way to the bedroom and hoped I could sleep it off or something.

I don't know if anyone else has witnessed psychedelic induced "palsy hands", it's scary to see it happen to other people, but terrifying to think it's next on the agenda of the night... Things became even more confusing, I was struggling physically.

The trip: My whole perception was skewed, I could hardly tell where I was which became totally overwhelming in the worst way, I was hoping I wouldn't lose my shit/pass out etc. Instead of trails, my vision starting jolting or strobing/delaying... It was like I could feel the drug circulating through my body - with each heartbeat time or perception slowed/fastened. I had *complete* auditory hallucinations and I'm surely not exaggerating this, if anything it was way more intense than what I could portray. I walked past the TV and sound turned. The warping was like time stretching. Think of a tape playing and then slowing down while the chews (dropping an octave/tone) and then catching up. The voices on the TV sounded alien, I could not interpret plain English... Language, time, etc etc was exiting my world and a new level of ego-death was emerging.

We laid down on the bed as I knew my body wasn't going to function in terms of walking, talking or in general doing anything other than let out on me... My "rationalising" was 'try to sleep it off'. This was 7pm! One hour had past... The bedroom was hell... Nothing more than; "let's ride this out, and 'hopefully' we'll come out of this fine"... I knew it wasn't going to happen, but there isn't much else to do.

The room was trippy, things were glitching and occasionally vision was processing like a smashed TV set. I was facing the most intense psychedelic terror I've ever been through... We were questioning what the fuck had happened, trapped in a timeless void... Everything was put into question and not as some general night of tripping - discussing theories of the universe with friends type stuff - but trying to gain piece of sanity through reasoning... The Brain in Vat theory was ringing through my head... Questioning our age, work, family, existence to try to get a grip that in some point in our life, we did have grounding because the whole "we took a drug" didn't hold much rationality.

My ego was torn to shit... I know people talk about “ego death” and I’ve been there before, but this was 10 times as intense. I could feel myself concentrating on breathing, like I was nothing more than an organism trying to stay alive, no different to a tree or bacteria. As if my existence was to take in air, warmth and the occasional nutrients. And considering that - without ego - is a mindfuck.

I could feel myself cycling in and out of 'consciousness', like every now and then I would come up 'for a breath'; you know: wide eyed and amazed and then back to the terror. I could articulate something for a second and then the next wave would come over me. I was starting to lose control of my arms like I had pins and needles, I was 'clammy' all over, feeling the lack of blood flow in my arms and though I could feel things weren't right, I couldn't physically correct it.

M, sitting next to me, at some point said "you don't look alright, you're shaking pretty bad". I said something like "things are surely *fucked up*, I can't function my arms too well but I can feel that I'm physically calm and that I'm not shaking"... She started crying and doing a "fuck, fuck, fuck you're scaring the shit out of me what am I going to do"... The explanation was something along the lines of:- I was convulsing, and nodding unconscious.

We had a good idea of time, knowing we started at 6pm... We came out of the bedroom at about 9pm... The fact we endured that shit for over 2 hours is just amazing. M said "I was certain I'd be sincerely going to the mental institution, that I was never going to come out of this trip and be insane for life"... I had the thoughts of "I need to kill myself to get out of this" and even then; I believed my mind would still exist above my corpse like a projection only spending an eternity insane. It seemed so real, more real than anything I've experienced in life. We snapped out of the trip simultaneously, out of nowhere it was over like someone flicked a switch.

I think that's about it... I remember coming out of the trip feeling profound, we had a good laugh about everything.

However: This was the scariest night in my life... I feel that, if someone put a gun to my face and threatened to kill me, it wouldn't even register on a level of terror in comparison. I just hope I can take something out of it... The feelings are fading, I don't want to be ignorant to my thankfulness that I've got a piece of sanity.

yea boy

pans are no joke. anyone who says lsd is more powerful than mushrooms has never done pans.

Hmm, ive been taking lots of good sized cube doses lately..maybe i need to try some of these pan cyanescenes soon. Have you tried psilocybe cyanescens?..I really like them..if so how do they compare?

1g!!!

That sounds a little beyond my worst with around 10g of cubes.

Funny though, that in a twisted kind of way I'm quite intrigued

fwiu, they have similar alkaloid content. i think pans are slightly larger

Measured out to like 1.004g exactly... It's what I'd imagine taking in over 8g of *strong* cubes straight up. And I agree, LSD has nothing on this... With Acid-terror, you can still walk around, talk and rationalise things with some sense of clarity.

I'm at that point where: I've experienced heaven and hell through tripping and taken what I need from it. I always have uniquely strong cubes on hand which I'll stick to from now on.

If I were weaker willed, I would have called an ambulance or my parents. I've been trapped in the loop quite a few times but this was beyond every negative experience combined. I don't know what would have happened if we had taken a larger dose, or if anyone else was tripping with us.

I'm always intrigued too, even when people have fucked up trips heh. It is great to have come through it, experienced it and be able to look back on it but I wouldn't wish this experience on my worst enemy.

I'm glad you and your girlfriend came out of the ordeal more or less alright.

I'm intending to raise some pans over the next month or so. After reading this report, it's safe to say that the starting dose will be no higher than between 0.05 - 0.1g.

Thank you for writing this report LoveTheUniverse. I would have started with probably .25g had I not read this.

Thanks Dimitrius, there's always something to learn from either good or bad experiences. I'm glad to be physically fine and thankful for renewed sanity heh.

I guess it's still all relative to physical size, experience and potency... I've had some dull shroom experiences from around 6-8g (probably due to growing them poorly) compared to heavy experiences from 3g.

Probably best to test the waters on anything new. If I were to do this again, I'd just take 1/2 a gram followed by another 0.5g an hour later...

Glad you guys came out ok.

It’s interesting, I know there is still much debate among mycologists over whether Panaeolus cyanascens and Copelandia cyanescens are the same species. However, a friend who introduced me to the joys of growing mushrooms has grown both from spores, and he found Pans to be lower yielding, smaller mushrooms and fussier to grow than the Copelandia.

He also found that the trips produced by the two were very different, with Pans producing a dark and intense trip by comparison. His favourite species (and mine) is Copelandia (the 'Hawaiian' strain), he doesn't like cubensis. Now, I know this strain contains a very high ratio of psilocybin to psilocin, which is one of the reasons they retain potency so well when dried, even at room temperature. The different strains of Pans and Copes all vary considerably in the ratios of psilocybin/psilocin, with some of the Pans containing almost all psilocin as oppose to psilocybin. This might be one of the reasons why the Pans hit you both so quickly and can be powering, like a psychedelic freight train, your body didn't need to convert the psilocybin into active psilocin.

I've never tried Pan cyans so can't comment personally, but Copelandia cyanescens is definitely my favourite species to work with I have tried so far...much more visionary, lucid and crystalline than cubensis (which also nice) can sometimes seem 'cloudy' or 'muddy' by comparison. Definitely potent though, I wouldn’t take more than a gram these days (a waste otherwise as quite low yielding, despite their potency). Half a gram of my home grown ones can still provide a thoroughly deep experience, and I seem especially sensitive to the visionary aspect of mushrooms these days.

SWIM can resonate with this trip report; he believes that the pan cyans are the worst mushrooms out there and a sure-fire for a bad trip, at least for himself. He had consistently bad experiences ranging to horrendous bad trips straight from hell when eaten in 3g doses to just "not feeling right" or "feeling poisoned and disoriented" in 1 g doses. He gave up with these mushrooms. Same goes for pan trops.

There are a lot of people who report that the pan cyans are some of the best experiences out there, that they drive you through the experience in a limousine etc etc but clearly there are individuals whose physiology just can't cope with something in the chemical make-up of these little guys!!!

Bancopuma, SWIM would regard panaeolus cyanescens and copelandia cyanescens the same, could you please point to any reading with regard to the panaeolus vs copelandia mycodebate?

Huh....I wonder what kind of trip the Panaeolus (Copelandia) cambodginiensis, Sandose Domesticate from Florida will produce?

I've never had anything but cubensis, which I've had more than enough of....enough for a lifetime.

SWIM has only consumed the Copelandia cyans (hawaiian), and reputes them to be the best mushroom experience by far. Very clean trip, zero body load, clear head space.

^^All of my experiences with Copelandia have been as described above.

On the Pan/Cyan species front, this might be nothing more than speculation. Or it might simply be different strains of the same species...there does seem to be some considerable variation with the Pans...some people reporting absolutely sublime, blissful experiences, and others experiencing very dark and overpowering trips.

From my friend's guide: http://www.mushrooms.20m.com/copelandia.htm


"Copelandia cyanescens is fairly easy to grow and gives a reasonable yield. My specimens were grown from spores supplied by Pacific Exotic Spora. There are different opinions on the taxonomy of species in Panaeolus and some mycologists do not recognise Copelandia as a genus. The mycelium grows rapidly on malt dung agar (MDA) and fruits abundantly when horse manure is added to grain. Although the fruiting bodies are small they are extremely potent. The Copelandia casing layer eventually succumbs to blue mould and must be discarded although it should yield around 40 g of mushrooms (fresh weight) per 100 g rice/horse manure.

Panaeolus cyanescens (spores from PES) is also very potent but has a weaker mycelium which gives smaller specimens and a much lower yield (10 g per 100 g rice/horse manure). The casing layer also succumbs to blue mould. These tropical species grow at similar temperatures to Psilocybe cubensis. Spores of Copelandia cyanescens and Panaeolus cyanescens are virtually impossible to distinguish. Both are lemon shaped, give black deposits and measure around 9 x 11 µ (each division in the photomicrograph below is 1.8 µm).

It is my personal view that Hawaiian Copelandia cyanescens offers the entheogen user a more enjoyable experience than the more easily cultivated Psilocybe cubensis. In fact I would place it in the premier cru of psychedelic plants, alongside the indigenous Liberty Cap (Psilocybe semilanceata) and the various DMT containing plants."


It might just be the differences between strains, but I do trust my friends experience with both. I definitely find Copelandia more easy going than cubensis, despite them being much more powerful...for me a much cleaner trip, very DMT like at high doses, but a much warmer space.

I was thinking this would be the case and it definitely makes sense... It's strange, as everything I had read pointed to it being an intense and unique trip, but now it's interesting to see people say it could be quite dark. As Infundibulum mentioned "feeling poisoned and disoriented", that sums it up completely... With every bad trip in the past, there's at least good aspects beforehand and afterward whether it's the 'enlightenment' or experiencing ridiculous hallucinations. But this was just bad from the start... Instead of that glowing atmosphere/experience, I could imagine what an animal would go through after it ingests poison (and calling it 'tripping' heh).

I wouldn't mind growing other species if there is a legitimate difference in experience... At least for the hobby aspect or to share amongst friends (if not to go 'all out' myself). However, I'm shutting down the greenhouse and opting for tubs (out of paranoia, and efficiency heh). Seems everything other than cubes are a bit more specific to conditions and probably wouldn't do too well in this setup though.

ssoo... what's the difference between copelandia and panaeolus? i was under the impression that they were synonymous, the former being the more antiquated term

Most likely. I'm just stating my friends experience growing spores from both varieties/strains/species from the same spore vendor. And he noticed a considerable difference in the experiences both strains provided. Copelandia cyanescens is one of his favourite psychedelics, consistently, while Pan cyans he found dark and intense and wouldn't ever take again.

Personally I think there may be more variation among Panaeolus cyanescens strains than Psilocybe cubensis strains in psilocybin/psilocin ratios. Some strains also contain the serotonin precursor tryptophan, which may modulate the experience, while others of this species contains more urea, a waste product of human metabolism, which again might do the same.

Clearly (at least, to my mind) there is something else going on here beyond the 'set and setting' scenario being responsible for an experience. Some people are reporting the Pan cyans provide a "very clean trip, zero body load, clear head space" and "much more visionary, lucid and crystalline than cubensis" while in contrast to this, others are reporting "not feeling right" or "feeling poisoned and disoriented" with the same species. I know we all react differently to these things as individuals, but I suspect there is something more going on here, with genetic or other variations affecting the biochemistry of these mushrooms, and I think more research would be interesting.

LTU, there are several examples of pans (copes) growing well in tubs, some with automation setups and some with manual misting and fanning. I'll send you the links if you want em.

Copes (pans) grow just fine in tubs, the only way I've ever grown them (see previous guide). If you can grow cubensis from scratch, you are more than capable of growing pans to.

Good post. I've been planning on growing pan cyans for awhile now. I hope I don't get the wrong strain. I've been wanting something better than cubes. If someone could post or pm me a source within the US of spores of this "coplandia" species/strain in which you've had good experiences, as explained above. I'd be very grateful. I've had enough of my share of dark and bad trips for awhile.