ENIGMA

Identification & Description

Enigma’s claim to fame is that it doesn’t exactly produce mushrooms. When it begins to fruit, it pins just like ordinary P. cubensis, but then something odd happens. The pins don’t start to form caps. Instead, they just get larger and larger and eventually merge together, forming masses of fungal tissue that may resemble brains, cauliflower (the plant), or cauliflower mushrooms. They never make spores.

The masses—blobs—are dense, slow-growing, and often bluish. They can be quite large.

The Enigma blobs may look extremely unusual, but they can be used exactly like psychoactive mushrooms can. They can also be preserved in the same ways, but drying or by immersion in honey. The blobs are actually a better candidate for honey than most mushrooms.

Trip Effects

Trip effects are essentially the same as for any other P. cubensis.

That is, some people claim that different strains produce qualitatively different trips, while other people say a cube is a cube, or that the only difference between strains is potency. There is no definitive resolution to that debate. But few, if any, claims are made that Enigma has any kind of distinctive style that marks its trips as unusual. It’s simply a bizarrely-shaped growth-form, a novelty product.

Like other psilocybin trips, a trip with Enigma usually involves a combination of altered mood, altered perception, and altered thought-patterns.

It’s the altered perception—the hallucinations—that really gets the most attention from non-users, who often speak of psychoactive fungi simply as hallucinogens, as if making people see things were the only thing psilocybin does. Actually, the alteration of perception is a very dose-dependent effect, so that people taking an extremely low dose might experience altered mood and thought-patters without any hallucination at all. Larger doses make thinks seem weird (walls may breathe), but only at very high doses do the hallucinations start to seriously compete with reality.

Actual psychonauts are more interested in mood alteration and especially thought-pattern changes, which can include important, even life-changing, insights.

In most cases, mood alteration means euphoria and deep feelings of connectedness—however, extreme anxiety states are also possible. Many people say that what psilocybin really does is to deepen and intensify whatever emotional state the user has going into the experience. Making sure that one’s mental state is relaxed and positive and that the surroundings are safe and comfortable is therefore just one of a list of recommended safety practices it’s important not to neglect.

Psilocybin also has other effects that don’t quite come under the heading of “high” or “tripping.” These can include problems with balance and physical coordination as well as nausea and vomiting. In some extremely rare cases, psilocybin has caused convulsions and even death. Psilocybin is one of the safest ways to alter the mind, but it’s not altogether risk-free. It’s important to learn and practice the safety procedures, and to not trip alone.

Potency and Dosage

Enigma is reported to be more potent, sometimes much more potent, than most other P. cubensis strains. That means that to get the same experience, you need a smaller dose.

Dosage is important with any form of psilocybin because the relationship between dose size and trip effect is not obvious and gradual, like a dimmer switch. Instead, there are effects that are absent at low doses and then suddenly appear as the dosage increases. Hallucinations are the obvious example, but unwanted or even dangerous side-effects are more likely at higher doses, too.

It’s always best to err on the side of taking too little, rather than too much. A weaker-then-expected trip may be disappointing, but a stronger-than-expected trip could be dangerous.