I tried a couple times as a teen. As far as I know it is a toned down version of the jenkum gag (I understand this isn’t necessarily true, but that was my experience). Shit tastes awful and does nothing. Bad time. You’re legitimately better off trying Salvia (also a bad time, but at least I got to experience my body splintering into a hundred thousand wasps).

I’ve also had ‘bad’ trips on acid and mushrooms, but those bad trips were intelligible. Staying awake for 40 hours THEN dropping acid and watching Scarface on the floor of my friend’s bedroom, THEN going to see my inlaws was an AWFUL experience, but it would have still been awful without the acid. Going for a hike, getting covered in DOZENS of ticks, putting it out of my memory, taking shrooms hours later, then finding ticks in my bed was a bad time, but it still would have been a bad time without the shrooms. Other than shit like that, I’ve had mostly positive experiences. I dropped acid and watched Requiem for a Dream for the first time (literally begging for a ‘bad trip’ but also possibly the funniest thing I’ve done in my life) and it wasn’t even that bad. The movie was fucking weird, but I didn’t have an existential crisis about it.

In general, I noticed my brain making all sorts of weird connections that it wouldn’t ordinarily make, and I felt like the experiences were somewhat insightful. I wouldn’t describe them as ‘pleasant’ though. It’s a journey. To this day I try to always have a handful of psychedelics on hand, but even when I am bored out of my mind and have nothing to do for 48 hours, I don’t look to them as some trivial thing I can do to pass the time.

(this is a shitpost. I’m not lying about anything, but none of this is advice).