Yep, me again. And no, it’s not the threatened review of my brand new, shiny, lickable and superfast iMac. It’s coming. So is xmas. Xmas will not come first, because as we all know, coming first is rude.

As I was threading my way through the rush hour traffic this morning, struggling to get myself home, I started thinking how much I could really do with get seriously out of my skull.

What I mean is, I could really do with a psychedelic trip that got me totally off my face. I need to see some pretty colours!

I’ve done acid a handful of times, the last time around 10 years ago. I also used to enjoy magic mushrooms, around every week or so. I’ve lost count of the number of shroom trips I’ve had.

Magic mushrooms grow wild all over the UK and a friend of mine would take an annual pilgrimage to the West Country every autumn to collect them. He was always very generous with them and I ended up with a few trips yearly.

Then, in 2003 I discovered that fresh magic mushrooms were available, legally to purchase and consume. I didn’t believe it at first, that you could really buy them that easily. At first, I thought it was some sort of a scam. How wrong I was!

I first ordered them from EDIT my friends who are now the exclusive distributors of my NLH deluxe bong. They arrived the following day and were exactly as described. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I started researching shrooms, learning about different strains, potencies and dosages. With my friend’s West Country shrooms, I never measured them; they were dried and relatively easy to consume, if not totally disgusting.

Fresh shrooms are even nastier, slimy and cold, with the flavour of what I expect the insides of a rotting corpse might taste like. Gross!

I started out on 30 grams of Mexican p-cubes, which is a reasonable, but not overly strong dose - for me anyway. Over the few years I did them regularly, I worked my way up to higher doses, peaking around 55 grams or so.

The trips were amazing, I got to hang out with the mushroom god. Search for him on my site, if you want to know more. Basically, if you eat enough shrooms, the mushroom god visits you and shows you the pretty colours!

Shrooms take a while to hit you. On an empty stomach, it would take 60-90 minutes before feeling the first effects, with a peak reached anywhere from 2-4 hours and lasting for 4-6 hours. It pretty much wasted a whole day, but what way to waste it!

Psychedelic drugs enhance your perception; the simple way to understand it is they make the synaptic nerves in your brain fire faster, giving you more sensory input. Your vision sharpens, as does your hearing which makes music sound amazing. As you get further into your trip, patterns in things swish and swirl, wood grain flows like a river.

On one particularly pleasant trip, on some Colombian p-cubes, right at the point where I peaked, I saw a burst of rainbow colours in the air, in a sun-filled room. It was astoundingly beautiful and completely unexpected. Colombians are apparently known for the colours they produce, but try as I did, I was unable to repeat the experience.

No two trips are exactly alike, which is why I had no chance of repeating my explosion of colour by premeditating it. Shrooms take you on the journey, though I can’t say I really lost any control. Except once…

For my birthday a few years back, I had some Hawaiian shrooms, which are very well known for their ultra-high potency. I had tried them before, electing to experiment with the recommended starter dose of 10 grams. They didn’t do that much for me. Then, I did something stupid, I doubled the dose.

Bad move! I had a seriously strong trip which ended with me hiding under my duvet with my eyes closed for several hours, still seeing a multi-coloured geometric pattern stretched from right in front of me, all the way to infinity. I couldn’t see what my eyes were seeing, I could only “see” what my brain was generating. Kids, I seriously recommend you do NOT try this at home!

A few months after that, the government put fresh magic mushrooms into Class A, which is the same category as coke and smack….the fuckers! In no way are shrooms anywhere near as bad for you as heroin or crack. Used responsibly, they are very safe, good fun!

Thanks to the actions of some stupid tourists, the Dutch have just banned shrooms as well. So much for tolerant Holland! The tourists in question were all drinking as well, but booze had nothing to do with their unfortunate incidents. Sure thing! Booze never causes anyone any trouble, does it?

I think I read that shroom farming is a 14 million pound a year business in Holland. That’s an awful lot of money to be just throwing away. And people will still want their shrooms, they will just have to go underground for them.

I haven’t had any shrooms since the government outlawed them. It’s not because I haven’t had the chance, one can still get them, if one knows where to look - like online! You can still get grow kits from Europe, if you really want some and they’re dead easy to grow. I haven’t had any shrooms because I don’t do Class A drugs and haven’t done since I gave up coke and E’s over 5 years ago.

I still love weed and continue to sample lots of different legal highs, and as of today, I wouldn’t mind something psychedelic. I don’t think I will actively seek anything electric, but should I be offered some shrooms or even a blotter, I would be sorely tempted to accept the universe’s generosity. I could really use a little break from reality right now, I think it would do my mental health a world of good.