Route planner Coming down
Coming down from Hollandia, the evening and the day after
The end of a strong truffle trip: the evening at base camp, sleep, the next morning, delayed headaches, travelling on and spacing the next trip.
The comedown from Hollandia is gradual. Most effects fade between the fourth and sixth hour, but you are not sober yet: Dutch public health information warns that you still cannot drive safely after the main effects have passed (DRUGSinfo). Plan the rest of the day as base camp, and the next morning as a rest day.
The evening at base camp
The end of a strong trip usually feels tired, hungry and slightly open, with occasional short waves of the earlier effects. Practical things help most:
- Eat something simple. Soup, bread, fruit or a meal that was prepared in advance. Many people are very hungry by now.
- Drink water. Not alcohol, which blurs how sober you really are.
- Stay in. The evening after a strong trip is a poor time for a bar, a party or a long walk through a busy city.
- Do not drive or cycle in traffic. Driving after truffles is prohibited in the Netherlands (Jellinek), also when you feel clear again.
- Keep company. It is easier to have the sitter or a friend around until you go to bed.
A warm shower and fresh clothes are a simple way to mark the end of the route.
Sleep
Falling asleep can take a while after a strong trip, as thoughts and images keep running. Many people find it easier with a dark room, an eye mask and something calm to listen to. There is nothing to force: the night after a trip is often shorter than usual, and the next morning is there to rest.
The next morning
Expect to feel tired, a little slow and sometimes emotionally sensitive. A delayed headache is a known after-effect. In a controlled study at Johns Hopkins, psilocybin caused headaches that grew more frequent and more intense with the dose; they started late, were neither severe nor disabling, and none lasted longer than a day after the session (Johnson et al., 2012).
Many people want to talk about the trip or write down what they remember on the first day. Notes made then are often clearer than memories a week later. If the trip was hard, going through it with the sitter, who saw it from the outside, makes it easier to put in order.
When something lingers
For most people the effects are completely gone within a day. A small group reports longer-lasting difficulties. In the survey by Carbonaro et al. (2016), 7.6% of people whose worst experience was more than a year ago had sought help for psychological symptoms that persisted afterwards. Research guidelines also describe a rare condition in which visual changes persist after the drug has worn off (Johnson et al., 2008).
If anxiety, unsettled feelings or visual changes stay for days, talk to a doctor. In the Netherlands the Drugs Infolijn of the Trimbos Institute answers questions on 0900-1995.
Travelling on after your trip
If you are visiting the Netherlands, leave any remaining truffles there. Fresh truffles are legal in the Netherlands, but psilocybin is a controlled substance in Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and most other countries, and carrying truffles across a border counts as importing them. See where this route is legal. Also leave a full day between a strong trip and a long drive or a flight with connections.
Before the next route
Tolerance to psilocybin builds quickly and crosses over to LSD (Isbell et al., 1961). A second trip a few days after the first one is weaker and harder to predict. Many experienced users leave at least a couple of weeks between trips, and use the time to decide whether the next route should be the same height, lower, or one rung higher on the strength ladder.
