"Trapped in a Trip: The Night I Questioned Reality"

During my freshman year of high school, some friends and I were at my other friend Trey's house, chilling in his backyard and doing bong rips. We were all really stoned. After a while, my best friend and I decided to buy a half-ounce of mushrooms—I don’t even remember why. It took a while for the plug to come, and by the time we actually got the shrooms, it was already dark.

After we got them, we decided to take them. I don’t know how much I initially ate, but I’d say it was about four or five full-sized shrooms. Then, we all went back outside to smoke. I’d say we were out there for at least 30 minutes. After that, we came back inside, and I started to feel the body high from the shrooms and weed. It felt really intense. I don’t know how to describe it, but my skin felt tingly and weird.

Since we were at Trey's house, his older brother was there. He was a senior in high school at the time and was just chilling with us. We were playing Xbox—probably Call of Duty Zombies—and he was playing with us. At some point, he told my best friend and me that he had mushroom pills he had made himself. Since we were already tripping, he decided to take some, and after coming back from smoking, he offered us some of the shroom pills.

We took them. I don’t know how many grams were in one capsule, but they were pretty big. I don’t know how much I took, since this was a while ago, but my friends told me later that they think I took 15+ grams of shrooms that night. After that, I didn’t eat any more because I started to feel really strange, but I didn’t care—I thought it was normal since this was only my first or second time doing mushrooms. So I ignored it and kept playing Zombies with my friends.

I’d say about an hour passed, but honestly, I couldn’t tell because, toward the end of the night, I started to feel completely detached from the concept of time. After we stopped playing Zombies, we were just chilling, talking, and doing dumb shit—probably—but things started to become really intense. Out of nowhere, my friends all started staring at me, and for what felt like an eternity, my friend Trey looked me dead in the eyes and, in a calm, normal voice, said:

"Guys, I think we should all kill Dayshon."

After that, my friends took turns repeatedly stabbing me with a really long kitchen knife. I was sitting on Trey's bed when it happened. I remember being able to feel the knife pierce my skin and enter my chest. The pain was excruciating. I felt everything. I wasn’t counting, but it felt like my friends stabbed me at least 50+ times. I remember curling up into a ball, just bleeding out on Trey's bed. There was so much blood—it never stopped pouring from my body. It was like a never-ending waterfall of blood.

Then, things got even weirder. I could hear my entire immediate family—my mom and sisters—on the phone with 911. I distinctly remember one of my sisters' voices. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but it sounded like she was telling the operator, in a panicked voice, that her baby brother had just been stabbed and killed by his friends.

The blood kept pouring. It was never-ending. I was lying in a pool of blood, and at some point, I started seeing everything in third person. My vision had this strange rainbow effect—like everything had a rainbow filter on it. It’s hard to explain, but at the same time, it felt like everything was spinning and swirling. It was as if I was trapped in an infinite death loop that was never going to end.

I kept thinking to myself, How am I still alive? I had lost more blood than humanly possible—enough to fill a bathtub. I was basically fully submerged in my own blood. The last thing I remember was hearing my family sobbing. Their cries of sadness echoed through my mind. Then, suddenly, reality swirled and collapsed in on itself—

And just like that, I was back.

It turns out that none of that actually happened. I had fallen asleep. My friends told me that after we stopped playing Zombies, I passed out and was asleep for so long that they got worried. They tried to wake me up, but I wouldn’t wake up. They even lightly shook me, but I still wouldn’t wake. It got to the point where they started contemplating calling 911 because they couldn’t tell if I was breathing or not.

When I finally woke up and realized that the whole horrifying experience was just a dream, I was relieved—but at the same time, I remember thinking, How do I know if the current reality I’m in is actually real?

For weeks after, things still felt strange. It was hard to explain, but my life didn’t feel real. I kept questioning whether I was still tripping—or worse, if I had actually died that night and was now trapped in some fabricated reality created by my brain in its last moments to keep me from slipping into eternal darkness.

Even now, two years later, I still question whether this reality is real or not.