		 DOSE:

		 sublingual
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		 smoked
		 Cannabis

		 smoked
		 Tobacco - Cigarettes

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   135 lb

My Most Noteworthy LSD Trip

This is the true story, of a most harrowing and roller coaster-like trip on LSD, taken by me and two friends back in 1993. There

Was my white friend Drew, whose house we were at during the trip, and my black friend Brandon, who supplied the LSD. We dosed at about 9:00 PM.

Dosage: Now this part is interesting, and to this day I'm still not sure exactly how much LSD was taken by me, and here is the reason.. Brandon asked me if I wanted to 'dose', and I said excitedly, 'I sure do!'. So he took a sheet of white blotter LSD out of his pocket and then out of some cigarette cellophane. He wanted to have circle shaped tabs of acid, so he had taken a paper punch and punched out the circular pieces. What remained was a square piece of paper with a bunch of holes in it. The sheet of acid looked kind of like a 'paper snowflake' that you make by folding up some paper and cutting little pieces out of it, then unfolding the paper. Brandon basically took a huge piece of this 'holey' paper, (about 1/4 of the entire sheet) and told me, 'open your mouth and lift up your tongue' so I did, and in went the acid! It must have been between 500 to 1500 ug, assuming 100 micrograms is the standard for one dose. I am guessing the amount I took was fairly high, because at the time of this trip I was already an experienced user, having tripped about 7 other times before, but never reaching the kind of intense clarity and distortion that was about to unfold in my mind.

The trip begins:

About 45 minutes after eating this rather Large 'wad' of white blotter paper, I started to feel something. It was an excited feeling, but anxious too, because I knew that I had just ate a lot of acid. Indeed I had, and about 1 hour into the trip I began realizing what I was in for. The room started spinning wildly, and so I sat down on the living room couch downstairs, by myself. I looked across the room at the wallpaper which was a simple diagonal mesh pattern with diamonds in between the lines. The wall seemed to be 'breathing' in and out, which I've heard is a common effect while on LSD, but the wall was moving pretty far in distance as it did this. I began to notice that the pattern of the wallpaper was making some kind of 'noise', and I didn't want to hear it anymore so closed my eyes.

I then stood up off the couch to see if I could walk, and that's when I felt the most terrible pain in my stomach. It hurt SO BADLY, that I couldn't even stand up straight. So I stood hunched over, my body basically forming a 90 degree angle, and I held my stomach in my hands and held on for dear life. I wondered how it was that I could be feeling a large butcher's knife stabbing at me, when there was nothing there! Oh the pain! Would it ever cease? All I wanted to do was stand up like a normal person! So, I kept fighting to right myself up, thinking that if I just kept stretching slowly, I could stand all the way up again. Whatever the case may have been, I would soon discover that this was VERY GOOD acid.

90 minutes into the trip: My friend Drew, whose house I was at, came downstairs crying. He was beginning to trip too, in fact all three of us were starting to trip pretty hard. He said that he had just gotten off the phone with his girlfriend and they had a huge fight. So, he was going to drive his car into the suburbs of Chicago, to her house, by himself (and tripping on acid!), a 45

minute trip, one way! I wished him good luck, and off he went. [Erowid Note:
Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]

With Drew gone, I thought that I would wander upstairs to his bedroom and see what Brandon was up to. He was playing video games and so I sat down on the couch behind him to watch. The game was Wipeout XL for the original Playstation One. Wipeout XL is a spaceship racing game that has amazing, colorful, tunnel like tracks, That the space ships speed down culminating in an incredible 3-D effect. It's a very trippy game, even when you're not on drugs. When I closed my eyes, I could still see the screen, as if my eyes were still open! Closing my eyes caused me to 'become' the Spaceship. I became very content to lay back in the couch with my eyes closed and 'see' myself speeding down this futuristic race track. The music of Wipeout XL was cutting edge electronica from major techno artists like The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, and my all time favorite tripping song by CoLD SToRAGE called 'Canada'. The music was just so intense, and it complimented perfectly as I

hovered down the race tracks in my mind, at blinding speeds! This was so much fun, and it went on for about an hour.

 2 hours 30 minutes in: Brandon finally noticed me, sitting on the couch behind him, and he got in my face. He was smiling wide and his teeth were so white compared to his skin, they seemed to be glowing. But all was not well, I believed that I had called him a 'n-word', and that must be why he was getting in my face and being so excited. Brandon was saying, 'You called me a n-word! What do you mean man? How could you call me that? Oh man you're in big trouble! How could you do it, oh... How could you!?'

I was so frightened that in my psychedelic haze, I had accidentally let it slip out and called my friend the n-word! This was disastrous! I felt all of these strangely amplified emotions slapping my body, as if I was walking through an automated car wash and being hit by the spinning cloth brushes. Then I opened my eyes, and Brandon was still sitting in the same place playing his video game. None of it had really happened! My eyes had been closed the entire time! I had never called him a

name, and he had never gotten in my face! It was all just a dream! My mind was simply dealing with the complex emotions and issues of racism, and I had just had an LSD-induced waking dream with my eyes closed! I sat there stunned for the next 30 minutes, really not wanting to close my eyes anymore.

4 hours after dosing: I went downstairs to find that Drew had gotten home from his adventure. He was tripping real hard, and told me that the cops had pulled him over, but because he was crying so much they didn't notice he was tripping. He told me that it was almost impossible to drive, that all the street lights were creating these long trails and everything was so blurry. He said that dealing with his girlfriend was really hard, and that her emotions were very strange to him, while on acid. I congratulated him on surviving the police encounter and his girlfriend, then we went upstairs into his bedroom, and smoked some marijuana with Brandon.

Around this time, Brandon completely disappeared, and I never saw him again for the duration of the trip. I have no idea where he went, and he was nowhere to be found the next morning.

4 hours 30 minutes in: Drew began playing video games on the Playstation and I was becoming fascinated with his electronic Casio piano keyboard. We were both in his bedroom just doing our tripped out thing. As I played the Casio piano, I realized that I was a virtuoso. I knew entire symphonies and could play them with ease. The Casio sounded so much like a real piano, and I was in heaven, composing music for what seemed like an eternity.

After jamming on the piano for about 30 minutes, I noticed that something was amiss. Upon further inspection, I realized that there were no batteries in the keyboard! And then it hit me! I came to the realization that the LSD had unlocked a part of my mind that had powers to know the exact pitch of every key of the piano! As I pressed the keys, my mind would recreate the correct tone at a volume that was so loud it seemed to be coming from the Casio! I had been fooled for half an hour by this neat illusion. My friend Drew asked me what the hell I was doing. I shared the revelation with him and thought he would be excited too, but he just thought I was being loony, and continued playing his video games.

5 hours in: Peaking very hard still, I was exhausted from playing the piano, so I sat down on the couch in Drew's room and began smoking a cigarette. I closed my eyes. I saw nothing but darkness and yet there was some sort of pattern to the blackness, as if there were spider's threads running horizontally and vertically everywhere, but it was barely noticeable. I was floating in this gentle 'fabric' and I was in DEEP space. I mean I was doing some kind of HEAVY astral travelling. I was FAR, FAR away, from planet Earth, and I could feel God speaking to me.

I was FAR, FAR away, from planet Earth, and I could feel God speaking to me.

 I didn't hear words, but rather felt them, and God told me that everything was LOVE. There was nothing else, just love and perfection. I felt loved by God and the universe, and He revealed all the secrets of the universe to me. All I had to do was float there and become wise and all knowing. All conflict that had ever existed in me or outside of me just melted away, and I was a super-being of pure consciousness, and my body disintegrated into the ether.

Then I awoke to find the room full of smoke. LOTS of smoke. I could barely see to the other side of the room. I could barely

Breathe and my eyes were burning! In my deep, astral-travelling bliss, I had inadvertently dropped my cigarette into Drew's clothes hamper. It had been smoldering for quite some time. Drew was screaming at me telling me to wake up, there was a fire! I had started it! The house was on fire at 2:00 o'clock in the morning, we were tripping hard on acid, and it was ALL MY FAULT! As we were trying to figure out what to do next, and making a lot of noise, Drew's mother opened the door and walked in. She gave us both a funny look and said, 'Put the fire out and try not to make so much noise' and then she went back to bed.

Well I had quite a reaction to this fire, my eyes were open but I could see nothing in the room, instead a strange little movie was playing inside my head. All I could see was the planet Earth floating in the blackness, and there was one giant house sitting on top of the planet, it was Drew's house, and it was on fire. I was floating rapidly away from the Earth just looking at Drew's house burning there and it was the end of the world. And I was very sad.

But everything turned out OK in the end, and that was basically the end of the trip. We got some sleep after that and in the

morning I went home. That was the last time I ever took LSD.

Exp Year: 1993	ExpID: 87819

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 17

Published: Apr 19, 2018	Views: 1,710

[ View as PDF (for printing) ] [ View as LaTeX (for geeks) ]
[ Switch Colors ]

LSD (2) : Mystical Experiences (9), General (1), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		 2 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		 2 glasses
		 oral
		 Alcohol - Beer/Wine

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   215 lb

It was the end of winter, sometime in late February (not sure of actual day).  I had been on a fairly decent abstinence of psychedelics; almost 2 years, when I was invited to sample some 'green pyramids' to celebrate the birthday of someone near and dear.  I quickly accepted, looking for one last experience before jumping headlong into life (i.e. marriage, children, responsibility).

My set was great, attitude adjusted, I was ready to go.  We (good friend, one brother and me) had dropped 2 hits apiece around 6pm.  Within 1/2 an hour, all we had to do was look at each other to know it was time to get moving.  We bundled up (can't believe how heavy my coat is!) and went outside.  The air was so crisp and clear and clean that I could feel it, but not as an indication of cold.  Rather enlightening at the time.  We walked for about an hour(?) to a nearby park.

I have been to this park a million times in my life...and it has never presented to me as being as VAST as it was tonight.  The area of expanse was overwhelming to me, I could not comprehend how vast a space this was.  I was compelled to discuss this with my companions, but they were totally enthralled with a stand of weeping willow trees that, on first glance seemed to have the appearance of a fountain, with the branches extending upward slightly, then spilling down to the ground.  At this point I'm thinking (saying?) 'this is gonna be fun tonight!'  We're about 3 hrs into it now.

We actually make a group decision (a miracle!) to cut through the park ad head to another friend's house where a small gathering of other friends was taking place.  The walk through the park was of an indeterminate time frame (remember...it is vast!) when we finally reached the house.  I'm rocking at this point, still climbing.  I go to knock on the basement door and watch my hand get engulfed by the wood fibers of the door, but it's soft!!??!!  I turn to my fellows and mention that 'I hope they can hear me knocking in there because this door is so damn soft it's eating my hand.'  As soon as I turn around, a friend of mine opens the door and extends us an offer to come in.  She was smiling at us...she knew, right away, of what was afoot.

This is where it really gets intense (in a good way).  Sophia, the friend that opened the door, runs a hair salon out of her basement.  There are lots of mirrors and haircutting apparutus filling this space...what a treat!!  I immediately became fascinated with the old-time 1950s hairdryers she had positioned above each chair (you know the kind...looks like a helmet), I sat in a chair and pulled on of these things down over my head and staring looking up into it, each hole in this thing was flowing with color, nothing tangible, just color, lots and lots of colors.  Hues of blue and red, purple and orange that I had never seen before.  Intense visuals!  I tried to explain to Sophia, she just looked at me, laughed and told me to enjoy all the sights, she would stay close. I continued to explore the combs, brushes, powders and sprays (smells good).  Too much fun...

I was offered a beer, it was ice cold and complemented the 'trip taste' I had in my mouth perfectly.

I was offered a beer, it was ice cold and complemented the 'trip taste' I had in my mouth perfectly.

  The group that was already at the house before we arrived started to watch Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' on video.  I settled in to watch with the others and was instantly transfixed by the music (they were piping it through speakers) and the images on the screen.  As the movie continued to play I found that I was feeling the music, physically feeling it.  This was overwhelming!!  I tried to explain to the others I had dropped with, but they were off on their own tangent.

Time was warped in a big way at this point (+6:00).  I decided I needed to go to the bathroom, so I got up and drifted across the room (am I invisible?) without disrupting anybody.  As usual (for me anyway) the routine of evacuation of bodily fluids is always interesting.  I make my way back to my seat, Sophia comes over and asks me what took me so long.  I had no clue what she was talking about, I thought I was in and out of the bathroom in about 3 minutes.  She proceeded to tell me I was in there for 50 minutes!!  I couldn't even tell her what I was doing, I had no clue.  She took my hand, led me up to the kitchen and gave me another beer.  We spoke about what I was experiencing, the intensity, the visuals, the 'out-of bodiness' feeling.  I tried as best as I could to bring her there since she was experienced, but I was having difficulty communicating.  She led me to the couch to sit for a while, she was always so good to trip with or have around when tripping, and she just started touching me, not in a sexual way but in a gentle way.  The way it felt made my head swim in acceptance.  It was such a positive, friendly, thoughtful experience to sit with her at that moment in time.

That moment is gone, has been for a long time, but it is one of the fondest memories I have in my life.  I do believe the total experience I had that night was worth the willingness to try one last time before committing to reality.  Peace.

Exp Year: 1990	ExpID: 46669

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Apr 19, 2018	Views: 1,497

[ View as PDF (for printing) ] [ View as LaTeX (for geeks) ]
[ Switch Colors ]

LSD (2) : Guides / Sitters (39), General (1), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 7 drops
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (liquid)

		   T+ 0:00
		 8 g
		 oral
		 Mushrooms - P. mexicana
		 (sclerotia)

		   T+ 0:30
		 2 drops
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (liquid)

		   T+ 5:00
		 1 glass
		 oral
		 Alcohol - Hard

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   80 kg

I am a 29-year-old university teaching assistant (IT) and have medium experience with magic mushrooms, salvia divinorum, spacecakes, smoking weed, and acid. I never did drugs before I started my PhD and gained access to scientific article databases with credible sources of information. I would describe myself as a calm/self-controlled person more introverted than extroverted and prefer taking drugs alone because social activities and norms become difficult for me when on them.

Just for the measure, 1 drop of LSD I had was enough for a nice trip. I had taken 1, 3, and 5 drops from the same source prior to this experience. Several friends of mine were also satisfied with the 1-drop trip. I would never do a dose this high from a source of unknown potency.

T: I took 7 drops LSD and 8 grams not really cracker dry truffles mexicana.

T+30m: Letters on the computer screen started moving, surfaces started breathing, and my attention was for 5-10 minutes shifted to the shapes of the surface of my wooden desk that started morphing and bleeding in brown and black colors. I felt that the effects would still get stronger, but not unhandlable, and I felt the urge to go deeper down the rabbit hole, as if I was close to the source of the eternal wisdom or source of self and wanted to reach it. But this urge was more like a drunken feeling of 'let's do this' without considering potential consequences of the act. I took another two drops, although I felt like I could suck up the whole bottle of acid I had. I returned to the room and started eating some snacks. The music was so intense it was designing the fabric my trip was made of. At some point I changed from Asian dub foundation to Sigur ros. The video of Sigur ros (user-made video) made me nervous as it was designed as a transparent collage of three images: sunset, seascape, and fireworks. It looked so tasteless I was convinced it was a trick of my mind, especially the fireworks part, but couldn't really check. The continent shapes on my scratch-off silver world map on my wall was melting and dancing every time I looked at it. The dark blue fantasy pyramid picture on my wall was changing colors in a beautiful way as well. Self-designed visual beauty. But nothing you can't do with digital technology anyway. White edges I would look at would soon start turning black as when the paper catches fire. I really enjoyed this. If I were an artist, I would probably do this more often for some inspiration.

T+90m: The effects started getting stronger now. Very nice visuals wherever I would look: Shiva, Aztec motives, light colors splashing, spectral leaking, reflecting and mirroring everywhere. I was amazed by this beauty and playfulness of my mind. I would disappear into ~10min thinking sessions and then re-emerge to reality and make a few steps around the apartment.

I would disappear into ~10min thinking sessions and then re-emerge to reality and make a few steps around the apartment.

 I was aware that I was not fully aware of my surroundings and that I would be safer with a sitter, especially if the dose was any higher. I could make sense of the reality, but my mind would wonder off and leave the body unattended to its autopilots and reflexes or just lying on the bed. I had my thoughts and fantasies take me away with motives including Brazil and Middle East, I would wander through thought recursions measurable in non-measurable concepts and non-concepts impossible to describe in words. At least on two occasions it seemed to me I had a parallel life right now somewhere in the Middle East, or a previous life there.

It was also now that I got lost in my thoughts and experienced an ego death of some kind. I wasn't aware of my body any more and somehow the whole of myself was reduced to an abstract concept and processes. As if I was a baby. All my brain drivers got turned off and I had no language to think in, no verbs, no actions, no mental processing capacity, just my consciousness as a blank method, a constructor to be written on the class of Me. If you are a programmer, you'll know what I mean. I soon got back from this thought and regained awareness of my body and started thinking about the experience. It seemed to me now that ego death, once it occurs, is not that bad at all, and that it was actually only a side process of lesser importance in that what I had experienced.

I realized I had no idea of what I was getting into as I took acid and that what just happened in my mind was of great importance. But for whom? For my physical self? For my reduced self? For what was left after the ego death? Uncertain of what I was supposed to be, i.e. who should be learning from this experience, this question was bothering me for a while. Was this who I really was or was this my reduced self doing too much drugs? Was this a breakthrough from the real world to the imaginary world of drug-induced hallucinations or exactly the opposite? I laughed out loud more than several times realizing how strange it was that someone in the universe is going through this right now, or more precisely, that the universe itself was going through this right now. For a while I was thinking about my girlfriend, and our relationship. About the fact that I will die and how pointless the physical life is, when things that seem equally real can happen in a second in this drug-induced state. I felt as I had lived the entire life of another person from the Middle East (no idea why exactly there) in less than a second. What a terrible waste of time, matter and energy this life is. Why would this really be happening? Unless this 'real life' is not really happening and it's all just a dream and a hallucination.

T+180m: The effects were getting weaker now, and I was spending less and less time in thinking sessions. It wasn't over, however. I still experienced weird moments when I realized I don't have language and my mental processing was that of a child. I had my mind insert random forgotten memories and details forming them into thought recursions and distractors. Soon after that I had a feeling that I was just re-activating some mental processes I learned as a child: the process of processing reality. Of analyzing visual stimuli in time and responding with a reaction. I remembered not having words for these as a child, but that I was learning them and started using them. They didn't have names as I didn't know words at that time, but they were 'something' and I understood that. If I were a computer, my experience was as if I had my hardware drivers for certain brain regions uninstalled, and then compiled from source and installed again after a while. In reality I guess this means my brain regions got desynchronized and stopped working together for a while causing this temporary loss of reality-processing abilities. This process wasn't unpleasant, it just was there. At the time I didn't really realize that this was probably my earliest memories as a baby, but in retrospective I believe that they were. If not memories, than the same things I experienced as a baby - not knowing how to process sensory input and not knowing how to PROCESS and that I SHOULD PROCESS reality. ANd then slowly learning how to do it.

T+300m: I went to the balcony and changing my environment landed me back to the ground more or less. I enjoyed a glass of whiskey watching down on the street from the 3rd floor. The visual distortions were still present and remained all until I went to sleep after midnight, but didn't bother me too much any more.

T+420m: Almost back to normal. Slower and clumsier than usually, but performing my daily chores and waiting for my girlfriend.

Went to sleep after midnight. You might think that 6 hours is a short time for a trip on that much acid and shrooms, but I usually have effects wear off faster than online resources would claim.

I usually have effects wear off faster than online resources would claim.

Next day very tired (but also had to wake up relatively early). One day later still distracted and tired, and a bit depressed after I returned to the world not shining in bright changing colors and crazy creative thoughts all the time. No wonder I guess, my dopamine receptors were overloaded during the trip.

In conclusion, a positive experience with positive insights, childhood memories revived, impossible abstract thoughts. But LSD remains what I already thought it is; a chemical agent to introduce me to unusual brain states by desyncing brain regions and firing neurons and memories that don't get fired in everyday brain usage.

Exp Year: 2016	ExpID: 109094

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 29

Published: Apr 19, 2018	Views: 2,382

[ View as PDF (for printing) ] [ View as LaTeX (for geeks) ]
[ Switch Colors ]

LSD (2), Mushrooms - P. mexicana (193) : Alone (16), Combinations (3)


		 DOSE:

		 oral
		 LSD

		 oral
		 Cannabis

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   115 lb

My spine is in the process of straightening after 26 years of gradual curving. I've grown two inches in the last year - I was 5'4. Now I'm 5'6'. My eyesight is improving dramatically - I can read text from further away than I have since childhood, and am beginning to see the world in 3D once again.

I was given a diagnosis of functional scoliosis at the age of 17. However, I had begun to experience the symptoms - vicious throbbing migraine headaches with severe sensitivity to light and sound and a gradual degradation of vision in my right eye and of mobility in my right hand - as early as age five.

The migraines were devastating. They were catalyzed and intensified by sensory input. The pain was concentrated on the right side of the head, specifically the right eye, eyebrow, and temple. Once the pain started, the only way to gain any relief was to go to sleep.

My eyesight in the right eye begins declining around age seven - about the same time as the migraines are intensifying. Year after year eye doctor visits reveal a further one-point decline in the acuity of my right eye. In less than three years I go from perfect 20:20 vision to needing glasses to see more than a few feet in front of my face.

The disorientation of suffering mind-altering severe pain several times a week while in school results in my spending a year of school in a supply closet. I develop serious social anxiety and begin to establish obsessive compulsive thought patterns in an attempt to find control in an uncontrollable situation. (If I put the pencils away just so, I won't get a headache tomorrow.)

By age 12, the migraines are so bad that my family doctor decides I must have brain cancer. I remember sitting in the sterile beige office of a downtown high-rise, having my head measured by a sterile beige doctor. 'Your head is abnormally large. We need to do an MRI.'

My parents decide against putting me through the MRI machine, for which I am most grateful. I obviously didn't have brain cancer, but after that I get to have multiple brain cancer related anxiety attacks a year.

By the time I reach college, another type of chronic pain begins to manifest - shooting sciatica-like pain originating in my left hip and extending all the way down to my foot. Again, the only sure solution to this pain is sleep.

A visit to the family doctor yields a diagnosis of functional scoliosis, and no particular recommendation for what to do about it. He does suggest that I take as many as five over-the-counter ibuprofen every time I start to feel a migraine come on. This is effective in stopping the pain, and so for the next eight years I take between five and 25 ibuprofen a week. I'm still apologizing to my liver to this day.

At the age of 20, I'm given a prescription for Relpax, a migraine medication that functions similarly to ergotamine. In sharp contrast to the other prescription medicines in my life, which are rapidly deteriorating my physical and mental health, Relpax is a miracle. I take a single pill at the beginning of a migraine, experience a pleasurable tingling in my lymph nodes (a sensation I will experience again four years later while coming up on LSD for the first time), and fall into a deep dreamless sleep. After taking just twelve of these pills over a period of month, the migraines stop and don't return until I begin the process of healing my spine years later.

Although the migraines are gone, I still experience constant back and hip pain, which often wake me up from sleep or prevent me from sleeping. I remain mostly sedentary (other than walking several miles a week) for the next six years.

At age 21, I am diagnosed with major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and avoidant personality disorder. At age 24, I am diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Prescriptions for Xanax and SSRI antidepressants leave me with a benzodiazepine dependency, severe obsessive compulsive tics and anxiety (whenever there isn't a certain amount of Xanax in my system), and the firm belief that I am severely, permanently mentally ill.

This self-perception begins to shift when I discovered LSD while living overseas at the age of 23.

My first LSD experience shows me a strong, capable side to myself that I have not experienced before. I know within an hour of taking my first dose that I need to find a reliable source, and that I need space to work with it alone.

Through a series of mind-bendingly bizarre misadventures, I acquire a small stash of paper LSD and my own room in an apartment on the edge of one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. During my three-month stay there I have four LSD experiences – each time, I take 100 mics, followed by another 100 mics several hours later. Each time, I feel the knots of anxiety embedded in my brain loosen and release, and wake up the morning after in a world that contains exponentially greater hope, freedom, and joy than it had the day before.

The OCD symptoms I have been developing (obsessive-compulsive laundry-doing, repetitive door-checking, etc.) decrease steadily during this three-month period.

The OCD symptoms I have been developing (obsessive-compulsive laundry-doing, repetitive door-checking, etc.) decrease steadily during this three-month period.

 At present (age 28) I no longer experience obsessive-compulsive thought patterns, and am not significantly impaired by anxiety or depression.

At age 24, after my four initial solitary LSD sessions, I'm still taking tons of ibuprofen, am still dependent on Xanax, and am completely detached from my body and the messages it is sending me. This all changes when, at the age of 25, I start practicing yoga - my first foray into physical exercise since my early twenties. I take to it immediately and start practicing for several hours a day, four to five times a week.

Just after my 26th birthday I begin to experience a dull, heavy ache in my right shoulder, often accompanied by the return of the migraine headaches, which I have not experienced since my experience with Relpax at age 20.

I go to a chiropractor in Chicago. He takes x-rays of my cervical spine and tells me that many of the vertebrae are significantly dislocated. 'You have a lot of work to do,' he says. He begins to teach me how my everyday ways of sitting, standing, and walking are not stable or sustainable, but I struggle to put his suggestions into practice in my life.

A few months later, I move to California. The shoulder pain and headaches become daily experiences, and I begin working with a talented chiropractor neurologist. She does gentle adjustments with an Activator Adjustment Instrument, applies electrical stimulation to key points on my shoulder, cervical spine, and lumbar spine, and encourages me to balance the hemispheres of my brain by stimulating the left side of my body and pursuing creative activities (which I do by learning to read Braille with my left hand and taking up music again).

She also gives me several sessions of balloon sinuplasty - inflating tiny balloons into my sinuses. During one such session, during which she successfully inflates the balloon into all six of my sinuses, I feel tiny little bones inside of my head shift, pop, and adjust.

I receive a recommendation for a medical cannabis card at this time, and begin using cannabis regularly for the first time in my life. As I am experiencing significant pain every day, I am consuming edibles in fairly high quantities on a regular basis - 40-80 mg THC 4-6 times a week. The cannabis medicine significantly reduces pain and inflammation and allows me to feel emotionally stable, peaceful, and content, even when my body hurts.

After four months of treatment, the chiropractor tells me I can start coming in every six weeks for maintenance, as I am in good shape. The treatments have reduced the daily pain somewhat, but it is still ever-present. I feel a little different, but not much.

I have to give up my daily yoga practice, as I find that many of the positions trigger shoulder pain and headache. I spend several months doing very little physical exercise other than walking (five to six miles a week).

One month after concluding my weekly chiropractic appointments (just after my 27th birthday), I take 100 mics of LSD with a friend. We are lying down in bed during the come-up. When I move to get up, my lumbar spine cracks - loud as a gunshot. My friend is startled. My body feels wonderful, and I feel as if I am seeing a little straighter than before.

During the experience that follows, I feel more grounded and stable in my body than I can remember. We go for a long walk to a park at the top of a hill. I dance for the first time in a long time and experience unparalleled freedom. And in the morning my body doesn't hurt.

I take LSD again in August (at approximately the same dose), and experience something similar - a massive “thunk” from my lumbar spine, surprised friends, and a significant visual adjustment. I went into this trip with some muscle tension and neck pain, so although I feel great after the adjustment, I begin to experience a severe migraine around hour five - radiating out from the mass of tension at the back of my neck that has been building for decades. I spend several hours doing yogic breathing exercises, at the end of which I throw up and fall into a deep sleep. All pain is gone when I wake up.

In March of the next year, I microdose with LSD (10 mics). I stretch out in my chair, and experience a third loud lumbar adjustment. An hour later, running to catch a bus, I realize I am moving faster than I ever have on these legs. Surprised at my speed of movement, I almost fall over my own feet.

In the coming months, it feels as if every bone in my body adjusts at least once. The daily pain begins to decrease until I am only experiencing mild pain a few times a week, and debilitating pain once every few months (usually due to physical overexertion and sensory overstimulation). My experiences with LSD during this time allow me to feel the straightness of my body, my physical potential when aligned. These experiences act as a “blueprint,” informing my constant attention to and adjustment of my posture.

These experiences act as a “blueprint,” informing my constant attention to and adjustment of my posture.

 I also experience significantly improved visual acuity during these psychedelic experiences.

A physical exam in May of this year (2013) had me at 5'6' - two inches taller than I was when I moved to California. My eyesight without glasses is significantly improved. I can feel my right eye getting stronger, and am beginning to see in 3D further and further away.

Now, at age 28, physical pain and discomfort is fairly mild and infrequent. There are still ups and downs as my muscles and bones become accustomed to standing, sitting, breathing, and sleeping in new positions. My muscles ache regularly, but it's a healthy ache. Too much stimulation or exertion can still trigger migraines, but I am learning how to hold my body to prevent them and reduce their intensity.

I believe that the primary medicines responsible for my healing have been cannabis and LSD. Cannabis allows my muscles and mind to rest when the challenges of my constantly evolving structure become too intense. LSD catalyzed the first major shifts in my spinal structure and gave me the experience of a straight spine, providing me with hope, encouragement, and wisdom that strongly impacts my mental experience of my body in everyday life.

Chronic pain no longer significantly inhibits my life. For the first time as an adult, I am in a strong, flexible, capable body, and I am enjoying it tremendously. I am able to ride a bike for several miles a day (impossible for more than a few minutes a year ago). I hike, dance, and practice yoga. I recently took up Aikido, and spent several hours at a rock climbing gym last week which, to my great joy, was exhilarating and did not overstrain my body.

There are still days when I stay home despite a desire to go out because my body is too tired and achey to keep going. Now, however, I see a future with less pain that my past. I trust that my spine will grow healthier with age, rather than twisting more deeply. I'm beginning a new life, and am impossibly grateful.

Pain is inevitable, yet it is the basis for healing. Suffering is samsaric, yet it is the basis for enlightenment. Through this experience, I have gained incredible body awareness and a deep gratitude for my physical form, which I once resented. I dedicate my experience to the benefit of others who are experiencing chronic pain due to misalignments of the body.

Exp Year: 2012	ExpID: 101858

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: 27

Published: Apr 19, 2018	Views: 3,268

[ View as PDF (for printing) ] [ View as LaTeX (for geeks) ]
[ Switch Colors ]

LSD (2) : Various (28), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Health Benefits (32), Retrospective / Summary (11)


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 1 hit
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   T+ 7:30
		 1 hit
		 smoked
		 Cannabis

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   64 kg

Lately I've been experiencing with drugs a little. In the last months I did cannabis, MDMA and mushrooms. The most fascinating drug of them all however, was LSD. Before taking LSD this day, I have taken LSD twice, all by myself. These were very pleasurable and insight-giving experiences, so I was not afraid taking it once again, also by myself. But I really didn't know what I was in for this time.

Instead of using the weaker blotters I had used in my previous trips (about 80 µg), I managed to get my hands on stronger ones of +/- 120 µg. But I was sure I could handle these stronger blotters. So I took one, put on some music and waited for the trip to begin.

At first things started out really good. The trip was gradually building to its peak at which I was having some great insights, wondering about the definition of time and feeling like I was the king of an alien race invading earth, to make humanity better and blessing them with the gift of psytrance (which I was listening to at that moment). During the first hours of my trip, I drank a lot of water, eventually leading to a full bladder. So at + 3:30, I went to the toilet. That was when things started to get really nasty.

When I was at the toilet, with no music surrounding me, I picked up a conversation between my neighbor and a friend he had over. At one moment one of them said the word cancer (which is sometimes used as a curse word in my country). This was the turning point for me, since I watched my grandpa suffer and dying from cancer a few years ago. Since then I hated it when people used the word cancer as a curse word. All of a sudden I became very afraid and had the idea that when I would flush the toilet, I would get sucked into it. I don't know why, but I flushed it anyway. I held on to the doorknob and got out of the toilet as fast as I could, running back into my room as fast as I could.

Back inside my room I tried to turn my trip back around into a good trip. This was not working, so I took some vitamin C and decided to eat a tangerine because I believed it would stop the trip earlier. But while peeling the tangerine, I became even more afraid, believing that if I wouldn't eat it, I'd die. It all happened in a flash, and after eating the tangerine it felt as if I had gone into a coma.

At this moment, it was as if an alternate me was watching this happening. He was frightened to see me almost dying, but he somehow got me into my bed and told me this was the safest place I could be right now and telling me it would all be over in a few hours. In my 'coma', I saw my parents and sister standing around the bed. They were all very sad and this really scared the hell out of me.

I 'woke up' after what seemed to be an eternity, even though only a few minutes had passed in reality. I felt like I was in a hospital fighting to stay alive, surrounded by a lot of horrendous visuals which I was afraid I'd never lose even though I told myself I would. During my 'hospitalization', it was where I really learned to know LSD, contemplating life. But one thing really stuck during these hours: I would never take LSD again.

It was at + 6:30 when the LSD had worn off enough to do other things, even though the tormenting visuals were still all over the place. I ordered a pizza and ate it, but I did not enjoy it. In a desperate attempt to get me 'back to earth' again, I decided to smoke some pot at + 7:30. It helped for a second, but the high of the weed had soon disappeared into the still present LSD trip and got me only more paranoid.

At + 8:00, I decided to take a shower. In the shower I continued to trip really bad, and it even got me into a short-lived acute psychosis. I had the feeling that nothing made sense and not knowing whether things were real or not.

I then put myself to bed, all I wanted was to sleep. But the visions continued to haunt me for four more hours, after which I finally fell asleep.

Looking back at the trip, I really underestimated the power of LSD. In the past it had helped me to build more self-esteem and I was convinced a bad trip would not happen to me. I couldn't have been more wrong. The next day, I threw all my remaining acid in the toilet and swore to never use it again. This experience has erased all the fun and benefits from LSD for me. From now on, I will deal with my problems in real life and not while under the influence of psychedelics.

Exp Year: 2014	ExpID: 103417

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 20

Published: Apr 19, 2018	Views: 2,016

[ View as PDF (for printing) ] [ View as LaTeX (for geeks) ]
[ Switch Colors ]

LSD (2) : Alone (16), Bad Trips (6)


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 300 ug
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   T+ 0:00
		 1 line
		 insufflated
		 Ketamine
		 (powder / crystals)

		   T+ 0:20
		 300 ug
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   T+ 0:00
		   repeated
		 insufflated
		 Ketamine
		 (powder / crystals)

		   T+ 1:00
		 20 mg
		 oral
		 Pharms - Diazepam

		   T+ 0:00
		   repeated
		 smoked
		 Cannabis

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   12 st

PRELUDE

Just to set the scene a little, the date was January 2nd, I had taken a week off work, and the previous day I had indulged in some fairly low key New Year’s celebrations with a close friend of mine, some drinks, and some cocaine. As it turned out I overdid it a little here and had a pretty terrible time in the intervening period with nausea, an erratic heartbeat, and worrying I might have actually damaged myself, something about which I am still a little concerned.

I should note that I believe 12:00 PM on January 1st I dosed 10mg Diazepam in an effort to slow my heart and just to relieve some of the awfulness – I am aware of the long half-life of Diazepam and most benzos in general so it is possible that this affected the trip somewhat even though I dosed over 24 hours later.

Anyway, I woke up quite late on January 2nd, maybe around midday, and reheated some pizza that I had made the day before before putting on a TV show (I think Vikings). I knew that I had basically a whole week of chilling that I had been looking forward to for a while, so I was overall in a pretty good mindset, but I have had a lot of uncertainty in the last few months about the future of my life, basically in my current job I run a company which I find myself having less and less interest in, and am finding myself being less and less OK with doing something purely for the money, and not pursuing something with more meaning, both in an absolute sense and in a personal sense of doing something I am truly passionate about.

I am just mentioning this to set the general scene of my state of mind... apprehensive about the future and decisions I am going to have to make very soon about the way my life is going to go, but also, in the moment, looking forward to just being able to take some time to chill out.

DOSING LSD &amp; COMEUP

Anyway at about 3 PM on January 2nd, almost on a total whim, I found myself digging through my stash for some tabs of high strength LSD that I had been hanging onto for years. They are alleged to be 300ug which, is to me, quite believable – the last time I did one was actually back in 2013 – and was in a totally different setting with my (now ex-) girlfriend at the time and 4 other friends, 2 of which I have totally lost contact with following the end of that relationship and that phase of my life. So this is only my second time doing LSD specifically, but I consider myself experienced with psychedelics in general.

I have always been a little apprehensive about solo tripping, which is why I haven’t done it more often, but for some reason today I just thought, I’ve been holding onto these tabs for years, I don’t know if this is the right time, but I’m going to do one of these today. About 20 minutes later I took another, for reasons which I was not at the time entirely clear about, to bring my total dosage to 600ug.

I then went back into my front room and sat down again to continue watching the show I was watching. I am pretty sure at this point I did a line of Ketamine, given that I had some laid out on the coffee table in front of me. I quickly realised that I wasn’t able to follow the show I was watching at all, I was starting to get the first alerts of visuals, colours looking brighter, objects breathing, and shimmering… I’m not sure what was happening on my computer monitor but whatever it was the colours and backgrounds of the show were starting to bleed out of the screen and into the surrounding room.

I’m not sure how much time passed here with me just sitting on my sofa, looking around the room and becoming more and more confused but I would estimate 40 minutes to an hour… I started to get a definite sense of unease at this point, I realised I had dosed a powerful psychoactive almost on a whim, possibly in a bit of a confused haze from the day before, and some of my worries about my sober life started to play on my mind… I started to think, what if something happens, what if I need to deal with something? I’m completely alone in my flat, have no trip sitter, perhaps not even in the best state of mind to trip…

Quite possibly I was not in the best state physically to trip either due to the previous day’s over-indulgences in alcohol and other substances, followed by hastily and lazily prepared pizza with little in the way of actual healthy food. I also started to experience some kind of temperature confusion in my body, like I wasn’t sure if I was too hot or too cold.

I wasn’t sure if I was too hot or too cold.

 At this point I went to get a blanket, fiddled with the temperature control on my heating a bit, and actually also got a bowl in case I needed to actually throw up.

SPIRITUAL REVELATIONS

I tried to quell these feelings but eventually I just couldn’t take it and thought, oh fuck, I think I might need to jump off the acid ship here. I paused the show I was watching which I no longer had any idea what was going on in anyway and went back into my bedroom to get 20mg Diazepam more. Again, this was perhaps 40 minutes to an hour after dosing although I am estimating timeframe a little… I laid down on my bed under the covers and closed my eyes, just trying to surrender myself to whatever was about to happen, still quite uneasy but also vaguely confident in my relative physical safety, and tried to just surrender myself to the oncoming psychedelic hurricane that was starting to tug and ripple the outer layers of my consciousness and the way I understood who and what I was…

The displays going on behind my closed eyelids at this point were mesmerising, infinite fractal patterns, cathedrals of incomprehensible, nonsensical, but also celestial and exquisite beauty, simultaneously somewhat devoid of any comprehensible meaning and also somehow the most meaningful thing I had experienced in my life up to this point… I’m not sure if at this point I was listening to music or just lying in wondrous, bewildered silence but at some point I went to fetch my laptop and put on some music feeling a need to have some kind of anchor for my sense of self and my sanity. Before this however the fractal closed eye visuals were moving in time to some kind of otherworldly music inside my own head. Lying there on my bed, I thought at points I was actually seeing into the infinite, into eternity…

The fractals cascaded deeper and deeper into thousands of labyrinthine staircases inside maze-like libraries of souls, which I understood both to be representations of individual thoughts and impulses and synaptic connections inside my own mind, exchanging knowledge and information like microscopic societies of little beings, like the mitochondria of the cells of my body… but equally, I understood this to be an internal reflection of the transcendent but ever-present influence of every part of existence and everything that ever was and ever will be… I felt at this point like I had been granted witness so a transdimensional, ethereal, incorrigible and undeniable Holy and Sacred Truth that everything that ever was and ever will be has always existed and is always all around us, at once moving, changing, but equally unchangeable, still, serene…

For a timeless moment I lost myself in this scintillating, brilliant light in the bright sky of eternity.

I felt also at this point an immense sense of gratitude at everything that ever made me who I was… every long lost ancestor of the past, everyone I had ever met, or who had ever changed me just by my knowing them, everything that was already encoded both within myself and within the fabric of reality that had moulded me into the person I was and am today… I could not help but feel that we are all one cooperative, eternal, connected society of souls, and fractal composites of souls, and the line between the abstract and the real and the meaningful and the meaningless ceased to exist or, at least, ceased to have any relevance in my consciousness.

I sat up in my bed and opened my eyes, and the room was aglow with an otherworldly haze, soft ghosting tracers everywhere. My ceiling has a design of textured paint, and it was a churning, breathing, roiling sea, alive and animated by the magic of the drug. I looked up at the lampshade on my ceiling and was reminded with a faint sense of amusement of a trip I had approximately the same time a year ago (actually my first solo trip on a “true” psychedelic) on 25mg of 4-AcO-DMT where there was a point that I actually felt like I was in the presence of god, had actually witnessed god in my lampshade, and it was so beautiful and moving at this point that I was moved to tears.

I couldn’t stop this same feeling starting to envelop me again, of being in the presence and even under the protection of some godlike, divine entity that was just looking after me. It did occur to me at this point that the Diazepam I had taken was no doubt muting the experience to some extent, although it wasn’t enough to stop the brilliant, sunlike luminosity from blazing through… It occurred to me that the Valium was like a thin net curtain, a shade hung over the window through which the brilliant sun of the 600ug of LSD was blasting its light through the window of my mind.

Conversely, or perhaps, not conversely at all, I had the feeling that the chemical itself, LSD, as much as this is somewhat at odds with my usual rational beliefs even as I write this now, was benevolent, in some way a sentient and real entity, which was at once synonymous with “God” and the Universe, protecting me from the effects of my on-a-whim dosage from bringing me to harm.

I closed my eyes again, just to bask in this feeling of pure, euphoric, psychedelic and holy bliss, and began to feel again like I was being granted a glimpse of something beyond the consciousness and rational reality which we know and understand, and again I surrendered myself to the onslaught of multidimensional fireworks behind my eyelids.

I felt like I could see into the mechanism of my consciousness, like my psyche was a computer program executing commands at a layer beneath my conscious knowledge, but which was also and always the effect of the eternal presence of the beings which are simultaneously representative of, and actually in some sense, are, everything that is already, eternally encoded into the fabric of reality.

I opened my eyes again, and again felt this presence of overwhelming, heavenly love, this presence in the room, shining ever more brightly through the weak curtain of Diazepam, just letting me know it was allowing me this glimpse to the other world, this other plane of boundless, scintillating, indescribable beauty of everything that ever was and will be… infinity.

At the same time, I felt a little embarrassed, and like a child being gently scolded in some way, for what was in a sense, undoubtedly somewhat reckless and unplanned… I felt that this entity was telling me that it was letting me see just enough of The Light that it knew I could deal with without just losing my grip on sanity forever, but at the same time telling me to take this as a lesson, and to learn from this experience. It was at this point I felt an overwhelming urge to get some kind of item of religious significance, to take some kind of action to express these feelings of divinity and holiness washing over me… I went digging for a small wooden cross which my mother had given me recently.

Usually I am not religious in any way, and am essentially agnostic, functionally atheist, even, but I just wanted to take this religious object and feel it and just try to thank this entity and all the entities and forces of the universe that make up the wonders of existence, the hidden and unhidden workers behind reality and the forms of life and ways of living both known and unknown to human beings but that still make us all what we are… I sat on my bed and realised I just didn’t know how to proceed, so while looking up at my lampshade, cross in hand, I just picked some random names of gods out of the air and said something like “Odin, Vishnu, God, thank you for protecting me!” …I am pretty sure I just laughed out loud at this point, both at the absurdity of the situation and of my actions compared to my usual beliefs, the fact I was praying to gods in which I didn’t explicitly believe but which at the same time I know, without doubt, I felt, were in some sense truly real words or expressions for things which we do not have the sapient capacity as human beings to fully understand… but also I laughed just from pure existential joy at being allowed to be alive.

REVERSE CAUSALITY

At this point I began to get the sense that although I didn’t seem to have a good reason to trip before, actually this was the reason… “I”, or some composite of the selves that seemed to make up the entity which I usually perceived to be myself, had, independently of chronology and the usual order of events, and the usual arrow of time, made the decision after the fact to take LSD in order to show myself these sacred truths that were being revealed to me… like a future version of myself, or a part of myself, or this protective entity I was experiencing, or parts of existence itself – and honestly, all these things were seeming in some sense like one and the same at this point – had reached back in time and caused me to decide to take acid, so that I might come to the point where I was able to make that decision to reach back in time and make an acausal decision, like I was within and experiencing a paradoxical psychedelic Closed Timelike Curve… this made perfect sense to me at the time although it’s hard to rationally justify it to myself now, although in a way, I still kind of believe that that is what happened.

PERSONAL REVELATIONS

Anyway, I was suddenly struck with a hunger to write something down, and find some kind of outlet of expression for the feelings welling up within me. I got up and went hunting around my flat for some paper and a pen. Everything looked different however, and I struggled to remember where things were or to find both things at the same time, so disorientated was I still mentally… I remember opening a drawer in my kitchen where I keep cutlery and various bits and pieces, and it was like I had never opened it before, everything within it was unrecognisable… my sense of proportion and scale was way off, although my memory of standing in my kitchen is such that although everything looked magical, and strange, the visuals were still yet to peak in intensity, and my memory of this part of the trip is largely a mental one, of emotions, feelings, and realisations.

While I was stumbling around my kitchen in a manic, hallucinatory daze, with a pad of paper in one hand and feeling like finding a pen was the most important thing in the universe at this point in order to get my feelings down onto paper, I suddenly realised I was no longer worried about the state I was in. I had a strong sense that what was unfolding in my mind was going to change me, and change the direction of my life, and I felt a sense of divine purpose and clarity… however, I was uncertain still in exactly what way it was going to change me

I felt a sense of divine purpose and clarity… however, I was uncertain still in exactly what way it was going to change me

, and when I tried to think about true life decisions I have been trying to make, I did not feel like I had been granted any definite answers.

However what I did have was a very strong sense that, whatever I decided, it would be OK, and I felt that the same entity that I had felt earlier was protecting me was in fact entirely synonymous with every decision I had made, and every event that was out of my control, that had happened to me in my life so far… suddenly I was struck with a great sense, standing in the middle of my small kitchen, in my modest sized, fairly sparse flat, that I had absolutely everything I needed.

Usually in my life I worry a lot about, I guess, normal things that a lot of people worry about, how to ensure I am financially secure, how to make sure I keep myself healthy, maintain healthy relationships, generally make sure to keep the ship of my own life on a somewhat even keel while sailing across the great dark and stormy sea that is the wonder of an individual human’s life… but I was suddenly filled with a great sense that I was someone that I could trust, that even if within the psychedelic rollercoaster of the trip, and no matter what the near future would bring, I could trust myself to guide myself through my own life… and I could trust these unseen entities, forces of nature both comprehensible and incomprehensible, to guide me in a way that would result in things working out the way they were supposed to go… in my mind at this point however, there was not really any distinction between trusting myself and trusting the Universe, but just a great sense that I could surrender myself to the winds of eternity.

At some point while looking for a pen I remembered that I had some ice cream in the freezer, dug this out, and just stood in my kitchen alternating between laughing and crying with absolute wonder… I remember just saying out loud to myself… “I have everything I need!” …and being so moved by this sense of euphoria that this feeling brought me.

At some point, I managed to locate a pen and stumbled back into my bedroom… closer to the music, as my laptop was in there, and this intensified the trip a little. As I laid down on my bed I realised that the pad of paper I was holding was a notepad that I had written in as part of the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy that I had started recently. The page I opened was something where I had written an analysis of my thoughts as part of a “Thought Challenging Exercise” to challenge some self-defeating core beliefs I have held since childhood… I was just so moved by the memory of this process, and my eyes happened upon a particular sentence that I had written in challenging my beliefs about a recent budding romantic relationship that had not worked out, I don’t really want to share the sentence because I feel it is a little personal but it was just about not making negative assumptions about my own nature based of isolated events, and that sort of thing… anyone who has undergone therapy, CBT, or thought challenging exercises can probably guess the general content. At this point my own handwriting was dancing and twisting on the page, the page itself shimmering with otherworldly light, like some kind of sacred document… again I was moved almost to tears, but my emotions were not negative, but full of optimism and hope and happiness… at this point I tried to write but was frustrated that I just couldn’t seem to actually think of a way to write down what I was feeling…

VISUAL PEAK

After trying and failing to write something more coherent I wandered back into my front room sat on my sofa and looked at a clothes rack I had sitting on another chair. As I looked at it, it was like the visuals of the trip began to ramp up in intensity, it shimmered and contorted, different colours and fabrics of my clothes all twisting like shape-shifting serpents, morphing and coiling in time to the music, suddenly it was like I was witnessing in my clothes rack the evolution of life on Earth from the dawn of time where the clothes rack was some kind of mountainous, amorphous and natural terrain, transforming and shifting into the distant future and turning into some kind of futuristic glimmering megacity… at this point I just had to look away I was so overwhelmed by what I was witnessing.

When I looked away it was like the air itself in the room was at once viscous like some kind of gooey substance, and also brittle and actually starting to fracture, and through these cracks, again it was like I could actually see and feel this light and energy from the source of all life seeping through the cracks. And then suddenly, it was like I was in another place… I was still in my flat, but simultaneously in a parallel world, a place always adjacent to our normal sober, waking reality. Again I was overcome with euphoric wonder and a feeling of being touched by the oversoul that created and controls the universe, as well as an overwhelming sense of faith that he/she/they/it whatever would I’ve me the strength and the wisdom to decide what to do and do what needed to be done in my life…

GRADUAL COMEDOWN

I could honestly write a lot more, but, I think the rest of the trip is much the same so if I continue to write it will probably get a bit repetitive. The rest of the trip consisted of me stumbling around my flat, listening to and tripping out to music, occasionally being overcome with a sense of otherworldly, heavenly wonder, and touched with psychedelic, euphoric, bliss… I remember towards the end I rolled an absolutely terrible joint, masturbated, probably did a few lines of Ketamine, and eventually tried to resume watching whatever episode of whatever TV show I had been watching at the beginning.

I have a distinct memory of sitting on my sofa and just being overcome with ecstatic euphoria, and just saying to myself “THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER! THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER!” …at I believe maybe 4:00 AM on January 3rd, approximately 13 hours after dosing, I was still too stimulated to sleep and ended up dosing another 20mg Diazepam.

AFTERMATH / THOUGHTS

It’s probably worth noting that I did not absolutely take to heart the sense of purity and divine purpose to change my life around in some unclear but spiritually true way right afterwards - this trip was actually the beginning of a week-long binge of sorts during which I took 2C-B, a lot of Ketamine, 4-HO-MET, some more cocaine on one night with friends, and then eventually the same dose of acid but without any Valium this time about 6 days later, to cap off my drug holiday, so to speak.

The second acid trip was not as psychologically intense, although I was a lot more aware of some of the more subtle visuals, whereas I think the first time round the Diazepam masked a lot of these effects until close to the peak when they just blasted through and I witnessed the evolution of life on Earth in my clothes drying rack.

Retrospectively I did not feel entirely good about combining Diazepam with acid the first time round, or even, in fact, Ketamine – although I do think that given the spontaneous and somewhat unplanned nature of the trip it probably was somewhat necessary the first time round because I wasn’t quite ready, psychologically, for the sheer unbridled power of what the dosage would surely have been without something to soften it a little… After my second acid trip however with a few days to spare I decided to cut short my week long binge and locked away all my drugs in my drugs box for a future time.

A lot of the realisations I had however have stayed with me, specifically my feelings about just being able to trust myself… I’m not sure what the future will bring for me, but I do feel a lot better about the uncertainty. This also reminded me how much I absolutely love psychedelics… I have been indulging in a lot of more harmful drugs recently, cocaine, alcohol, nicotine in smokeable, cigarette form, weed in, again, smokeable form… and this really made me reconsider the reasons I choose to have drugs in my life, which ultimately is for beautiful experiences like this trip, and not self-destructive, harmful reasons.

Finally, this trip really made me question a lot of my feelings about the nature of reality, and concepts of “God” for lack of a better word. Ultimately I am still effectively an atheist, I believe in human reason, I’m not going to convert to any one religion… but this feeling I experienced of being touched by something more than human, and of being, for lack of a better word, blessed, is something which I am still attempting to come to grips with in my psyche and my view of reality. I don’t think that this feeling is in any way really incompatible with a largely materialistic view of the world, but it truly did remind me that there is something magical and transcendent about human sapience, and the apparent reality of the immaterial qualia behind our materialistic attempts to explain an, in many ways, inexplicable world.

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 111474

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 29

Published: Apr 25, 2018	Views: 2,410

[ View as PDF (for printing) ] [ View as LaTeX (for geeks) ]
[ Switch Colors ]

LSD (2) : Glowing Experiences (4), Mystical Experiences (9), Combinations (3), Alone (16)


		 DOSE:

		 1 hit
		 sublingual
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   117 lb

BACKGROUND:

In terms of my drug background, I had my first cigarette and drink at 15, started drinking fairly heavily from 17-19, tried weed at 17 (I am not a big marijuana smoker given my development of migraines around 19-20) including edibles once in my early twenties. There was one experience with weed in my late teens where my friend ended up hospitalized and the paramedics informed me that we likely had ingested weed traced with something, most likely angel dust. That was accidental, not purposeful, and was a horrible night altogether. But in other words, I’m not a heavy drug user. I also had a slight dependency on sleeping aids when I was 17, and also went through a pretty significant depressive period around that time. I would say that at my current age (24), I have (or had) a significant amount of anxiety from a very high-pressure job and work environment, as well as a somewhat toxic social circle. I’m currently in a different country studying abroad, and the opportunity came up to try LSD. I’ve always wanted to try acid (bucket list) but figured that I’d never have the opportunity in my lifetime, as it’s not a common drug back home.

SETTING:

I took the drug with one of my flatmates here, who also was trying it for the first time. We wildly underestimated what we were getting into. Our dealer had told us that it was very light, and for him, he could function and walk around while tripping for between 4-6 hours, with the peak lasting 1 or 2. For me, the total trip lasted 17 hours

For me, the total trip lasted 17 hours

 (dropped the tab at 4:15 p.m., took it out of my mouth at 4:45 p.m., slept at around 9 or 10 a.m.), while my flatmate tripped for about 15 before passing out. I cannot emphasize enough how much I did not know how my own body would react to a drug. We got VERY lucky being in a mostly positive environment when tripping. If we had made the decision to drop the tabs at a nightclub or party this could have been an entirely different experience. For most of the experience I was relatively comatose, and while my flatmate could talk and was somewhat better at walking around, we couldn’t have functioned outside of the contained environment we were in.

For me, there were three different stages of the drug: the come up, the peak, and the come down. The come up lasted maybe 3-4 hours, the peak was maybe about 2, and the come down was the rest of the trip. That being said, acid makes it hard to track time. For reference, I’m writing this 2 sleeps after my trip (my sleep cycle now is pretty much fucked), and my brain still feels somewhat fuzzy and after-glow-y. I can describe that part after this. Again, I cannot emphasize enough how I could not predict how my body would react to a hard drug like acid. My flatmate was completely fine and went out partying again last night, whereas I needed to stay in and pretty much decompress. I am also a fairly low-weight, shorter (5”4/5”5) female, and alcohol also hits me faster than other people. I suspect that if one knows that drugs like alcohol/weed hit quickly, one may also be strongly affected by acid.

Here’s a break-down of my experience:

COME UP:

We dropped the tabs expecting for this to be a MAX nine-hour experience, and so we took them in the late afternoon. We used tweezers to hold the LSD, and placed it underneath our tongues. We were sitting in our common area (thank god we had a space to chill in) with another friend who was watching over us as much as possible, although she would come in and out to attend classes – we definitely tried to have a non-judgmental and chill babysitter during this process.

I felt nothing when I took out the tab for about half an hour, and then I started to feel something come on over me, akin to a headache. My friend felt pretty nauseous, although I wasn’t affected in that way. It almost felt like my brain was experiencing waves of ‘buzzing’. The experience was INCREDIBLY SIMILAR to sleep paralysis or lucid dreaming.

The experience was INCREDIBLY SIMILAR to sleep paralysis or lucid dreaming.

The first thing that I noticed was that I started to not be able to stop laughing because the chairs were suddenly floating. It was ridiculous, because the rest of the room was still pretty much normal, but the chairs were floating. The drug hit me very quickly compared to my friend – at this point, she was still completely normal. I would say it was almost as if she was 2 hours behind everything that was happening to me.

Next thing I know, I’m barely able to move and I realize that holy fuck, this is a drug. Not a drug like alcohol or weed – LSD is a DRUG, and this is why our high school teachers warned us against them. I’m lying on the floor laughing hysterically and touching the carpet, because suddenly there are rainbows and refractory patterns EVERYWHERE and the carpet isn’t a carpet but a sea of little rainbow antenna dudes carrying me up in waves, and the room is spinning, and I can’t stand up. And the rest of the world is still ‘in place’ and normal, and I can see my two friends staring at me with concern asking if I’ve gone insane, but I’m just looking at the carpet with disbelief.

My body is wracked with hot sweats and then cold tremors, and my hands are shaking, and I start tripping balls. The little rainbow antenna dude lead my eyes towards a shadow under the chair which is now a raven sweeping over a giant field of rainbow crystal tiny buildings.

Time is at once years long and seconds short.

At some point our babysitter brings our dealer into the room, who is pretty much astounded at how much my friend and I are tripping (my friend started by this point). I can’t tell whether he is himself or another guy that I know, and I also can’t tell if he’s in the room. Auditory loops start happening. Nothing really makes sense in terms of time.

My friend and I also, at one point, when our babysitter had to go to class, grab lights in her room and drag ourselves from her room back to the common room linked together by the cord. Darkness and glowing lights are incredible. It’s like seeing a thousand tiny beautiful glass snowflakes. I’m intimately aware that I am on a drug. Outlines around objects turn into pulsing and spiraling rainbows. Everything is spinning. Gravity no longer works right.

At another point, I find myself standing in the hallway on a metal grate thousands of miles above a rainbow swirling universe with space-ships shooting rainbow coloured fire at me. The walls around are spinning and melting.

At even another point (time makes no sense), I am lying on the floor in the common room, on a raft surrounded by dead people (blankets). I’m not concerned by this, because I remember from other trips that I read years ago that it’s important to not be bothered or turn things into a dark trip. I’m actually having a great time on the raft.

The important thing to note about LSD, which I did not know before I took it, is that it is a HARD DRUG. Hallucinogens are NOT BULLSHIT, which is what I kind of expected before taking it. The best way to describe it is being drunk inside of a lucid dream. Keeping my shit together required immense focus. This is not a drug that should be used lightly.

PEAK:

I’m lying with my friend in the common room, and am completely incapable of walking. There’s a metallic taste in my mouth. The buzzing swelling over my body has gotten as extreme as I’ve ever experienced. Everything is a swirl of rainbows and patterns, and if my mind latches onto an idea it plasters it everywhere. The radiator spins off of the wall, revealing a world of rainbows behind it, while barely hanging on. The dirty basement window, which looks pretty ordinary normally, is suddenly an aquarium, and trees and plants in the darkness start glowing and shifting light. I keep thinking that it’s December because everywhere is ‘snowing’ beautiful rainbow colours. Alternately the trees start growing beautiful luminescent tentacle arms and then screaming faces and then flowers and birds, etc. It was gorgeous.

I stare up and everything is spinning and whirling. I am pretty sure I am dripping snot, sweat, and drooling at this point, lying on my back. The ceiling starts to come off more and more, and I’m intimately aware of my brain pushing it up. I keep hearing auditory loops – I think that something bad is happening to my other friend, so I keep hearing her yelling (almost in a parallelogram fashion – I can’t quite explain it) for our other friend, and I figure that they are in the hallway. (In reality, at this point, our babysitter was rollerblading outside the common room because she got bored since I was just staring at a wall and our other friend was with a fourth friend in a different corridor.) I’m playing the song LSD by Travis Scott for maybe five hours straight, and it’s the best song I’ve heard in my life (also the music video is the most accurate LSD experience that a sober person could understand). I can’t handle any type of sensory stimulation like movies or music videos, just quiet music in the background.

There’s a whirling dark hole above my head, and I don’t remember much of this part, but it was definitely the peak. I thought I was going to die. My heart beat was racing and time made no sense. I just remember talking myself through it – that this is a drug, that I am having a good trip, that I am fine. At different points I feel myself dripping down into a ‘bad trip’ but I ‘pull myself out’, for lack of a better word. When hallucinations become ‘scary’ or bad, I simply accept them as they are, don’t freak out, and move forward.

When hallucinations become ‘scary’ or bad, I simply accept them as they are, don’t freak out, and move forward.

 I truly believe this thought pattern, at different points, saved my experience.

At one point I (or I hallucinate that I) am trying to kill myself, and put my hand over my face to try to stop the breathing with my rainbow coloured hand. I’m still not sure if I did this in reality or just in my trip. Something tells me to stop (maybe my sober mind), and I put my ‘hand’ down, and keep focusing on breathing and keeping myself alive.

When the ceiling comes off of the room, revealing a dark rainbow spinning galaxy around the edges, something screams ‘get out’ or ‘get back’ or ‘grab her down’ – I’m not quite sure. I shudder pretty much back into my own body and stop trying to do that. If this makes any sense, I’m pretty certain I was close to the max amount of LSD that my body could handle. At another point during the peak, I rise out of my body and look at the others in the room. I keep trying to get out of my body but that’s the furthest that I can get after that moment.

At various points I keep thinking that our babysitter is gone from the room. She keeps being replaced mentally by hallucinations that she’s a different human being. She tells me after that I kept poking my head out of the enclave and asking her if she was still there. Also at different points I was apparently talking without making any noise, which scared her. At this point she’s with me for most of the night, and LSD amplifies your emotions, so I’m super grateful towards her (although concerned that she isn’t focusing as much on our other friend, who is more explorative and running around). I have strong negative feelings associated with our fourth friend, who promised to babysit but in reality kind of ditches us. It gives me a lot of clarity, afterwards, that she (the fourth friend) isn’t mentally capable of being the type of person that I was hoping she would be as a friend.

COME DOWN:

My friend, our babysitter and the fourth friend come back into the room. I’m still completely tripping balls, and we have a conversation for about two hours that makes no sense. Our fourth friend is a pretty terrible babysitter and keeps laughing at my friend and I, which pisses me off immensely and is a horrible idea during a first trip. My friend who is tripping is also much more vocal than me and keeps trying to explain the experience, whereas I want to just be in a corner by myself and enjoy it. Again, different trips for different people. I’m getting super annoyed by how much she is talking and how much our fourth friend (and occasionally our babysitter, who is quieter but joins in on the laughter occasionally) is being selfish and just wants to know about the experience for herself, rather than letting us enjoy it.

Music is still incredible. I manage at one point to, once our fourth friend FINALLY leaves and my other friend shuts up, convince our babysitter to give me back my phone (she took it from me, which was a good idea at first), and I listen to the same ‘LSD’ song by Travis Scott on repeat for pretty much two or three hours while staring at the wall. For me at least, music is absolutely incredible. My brain gets stuck over and over on the song and it’s unbelievably awesome. By far, this was the best (and most fun) part of the experience for me.  During the come up I also listened to Debussy, and it was AMAZING. The hallucinations begin to match the song, and I could delve deeper and deeper into the dream while mellowing out. At one point during the come down birds started chirping outside, and it was also absolutely gorgeous.

My friend (the tripping one) is still super vocal, and after a while I get tired of listening to the song. My babysitter was lying beside me because she was pretty much certain I was going to die curled up into a ball clutching my phone, drooling and staring at the wall, but our tripping friend comes back and sits down with us and continues to talk, as she’s more vocal than I am.

I recognize at this point (she’s younger than me) that this trip shouldn’t be about me just selfishly enjoying it, but also trying to talk through her issues. We get into a pretty deep conversation while still tripping about her own life, and I keep feeling pretty deep guilt about letting her do hard drugs with me when she’s younger (still an adult, but with less life experience). I mention this repeatedly to our babysitter. Our tripping friend starts crying and going through her own life experiences and what she needs to improve in her life, and at this point I feel like there is a rainbow of white light bathing underneath my body connecting me to her. It was pretty powerful. We talk about how we need to stop being kids just staring in a corner doing LSD, which is a pretty powerful metaphor for the rest of my life – it’s important to also turn away from the corner and bathe in the rest of the sober, real world. At one point while crying (I’m crying as well because the emotions are overwhelming and I’m also still tripping – she is bathed in gold, rainbows, and is alternately a cat or balding, which is completely normal in the trip) she turns to me and asks me “but ______, you always look out for me and help me analyze my problems, but who is looking out for you? What are your problems? Why are you doing this trip? I know you think that I am a younger version of you which is why you always worry for me, but who is worrying for you?” and I start pretty much bawling my face off for a good five minutes. I’m not as vocal as she is, but it was still a pretty deep conversation and one that I will take with me for hopefully years to come – especially the metaphor of a young boy staring into the corner instead of turning around and seeing the rest of the world.

The next (what feels like a hundred or so hours) is just spent with our babysitter eventually going to bed because the trip is largely over, but we’re still hyper stimulated, tripping, but exhausted. At various points I end up walking around the table for about two hours, trying to make myself tired enough to go to sleep. Eventually we drink milk, and that makes me feel nauseous and the trip finally starts to come down. By 6:45 a.m., my friend has a short nap and I grab my stuff and take a shower while still tripping. To explain, the floor is still moving, there are rainbows everywhere, I am hyper stimulated, but for the most part I am SOBER within the hallucinations, which hadn’t happened before. I return back to the room and my friend is gone to her room, so I knock on her door and check on her before going back to my room. I pass out sometime around 9 or 10 a.m.

CONCLUSION:

The first stage, for me, was tripping on certain visuals while being still aware of the rest of the world. The peak was physically a bit of a nightmare to get through, and I’m pretty certain that I took close to my maximum dose possible, as most of this trip was me comatose on the floor staring at the ceiling drooling and shaking, which I did not expect when I dropped it. The come down was brutally long. I wish I had on hand some sleeping pills so that I could fall asleep and get out of the trip faster than the 17 hours that it lasted.

The closest metaphor I can give to an understanding of what LSD is like is being drunk inside of a lucid dream. A lot of art makes a lot more sense to me now. Every Windows Movie Maker filter is one hundred percent real. At one point I thought I was inside a literal bubble. Peoples faces shift and change. I stared in the mirror and saw a spiral of rainbow light going around one of my pupils, while my face aged and became normal again. All of this happened not while I was LUCID, but I was INTIMATELY aware of the fact that I was ‘high’.

I took LSD because it was a bucket list item for me, and because I was curious if I could gain a spiritual understanding of the world or ‘see God’. I realized during the trip that I can’t hack my own brain (LSD is functionally ‘hacking’ the brain for pleasure and hallucinations) to understand the world – my brain only understands what I understand. However, LSD was an effective tool in sorting out a lot of emotional questions that I thought were complicated (but really weren’t). That being said, it also is EVIDENTLY a party drug. I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity again in my life to take it (which is probably a blessing), but if I did, I would take a quarter or half of a tab and go enjoy music or art.

I would take a quarter or half of a tab and go enjoy music or art.

 I would never recommend that anybody take LSD, though. This was a HARD drug. Weed and alcohol are a joke compared to acid. A complete, and utter joke. a friend exaggerating while drunk and pretending to go swimming while in the bathtub, or saying that they’re the prime minister of the world before sleeping in their own vomit? That is nothing, and practically a lie.

I don’t think I knew what I expected before taking LSD, but it blew away my expectations. It was a fantastic, and powerful, but at the same time, completely horrific experience. I look back on it with intense positivity but also way more fear than what I had expected, going into it. For me, this was more of a tool of self-reflection – my friend, on the other hand, went out partying again last night, while I’m still emotionally a bit depleted. I keep feeling alternately completely fine and beyond positive, and having moments of really wanting to take the drug again psychologically, and then going a bit down and thinking that I nearly killed myself (and how stupid it was to just put a tab in my mouth without really planning anything out). I’m still pretty faded, but I feel OVERALL pretty positive, just drained.

Takeaways:

I got really lucky in relying on my past knowledge when tripping, which I completely had forgotten that I should have done. I’d suggest being prepared before taking it, but I know that sometimes that isn’t possible. The first question one needs to ask oneself is why you are taking the drug, and what you want to get out of it. For me, the self-reflection has been the BEST part of the trip by far. I would not have had this much emotional benefit if I had not taken the drug. At the same time, it is INCREDIBLY powerful, and I did not know how my body would react. I'm an adult, I made an adult decision. But I would only do the drug if I one hundred percent wanted to do it. Anybody who recommends that another person take LSD is an idiot, and probably doesn’t care much about their mental state. Be careful of these assholes.

1.	Having a babysitter. For me, I would have enjoyed the trip more if people had been less verbal and vocal, and simply chilled with me or beside me. I also wish that our babysitter was someone who took the drug before, but beggars can't be choosers. I didn't know what I wanted until I tripped myself. But it was very important to have a non-judgmental person with me who could at least get authorities if I started not breathing or freaking out. Someone to talk me down, at least. If I had had negative feelings towards my babysitter, those would just have been amplified during the trip and made things bad. I made sure to choose positively.

2.	Recognizing that the effects of the drug on my dealer or on others could be very different on me. Guys who bought from the same dealer as us had literally no hallucinations or just mild visual patterns, while I was stuck in a 17 hour JOURNEY.

3.	Being in a safe place. I would not trip around parents or judgmental people. I made sure there was somewhere I could go to if I started feeling overwhelmed, like a nook or cranny to lie in and think about things. I wouldn’t recommend being around sober people. Dropping acid and then walking around during the day for my first experience would have probably been a bad idea, because I didn't know how I would react to the drug.

4.	If I had an underlying mental illness (not situational anxiety or depression, but a significant history of schizophrenia in my family, etc.), this would not be the drug for me. I would not take LSD if I was taking medicine for mental illnesses or suspected that I likely suffer from one. I think that the acid has really helped me reflect on my situation back home (as I’m currently abroad) and how I can fix my own situational problems, so it can be positive for minor spurts of sadness/anxiety, but I would not do it if I were dealing with something more significant. If I were running away from issues in my own life, I would not have been able to run away from the trip.

5.	Keeping sleeping pills on hand or milk to abort the trip early: I’ve heard it’s a placebo, but I swear that milk worked well for my friend and I (better for me – she thinks it’s a placebo but I don’t). Once I hit the 13-14 hour mark, I was exhausted and wanted to get out, even if it was a positive experience. If I ever did the drug again (five or ten years in the future at a music festival at a lower dose), I’d definitely bring sleeping pills.

6.	Asking myself why I'm taking the drug. Even now when I sit and reflect on the drug, I keep having weird moments of wanting to take more of it, and combine it with other mood-altering drugs for a party experience. I think this drug has a powerful capacity for spiritual and self-awareness purposes, but also can easily be abused by fucked-up kids looking to kill their minds. I’m personally very satisfied with the self-reflection, but I can feel the pull towards going deeper and deeper into the dream.

7.	Taking the drug on a day when for at least 24-48 hours afterwards, I didn't have to do a ton of mental thinking, go back to work or have exams/tests in university/school. I was pretty wiped out after the trip (alternating headaches, exhaustion, feeling really great – the afterglow, and then feeling back to very tired), although my friend wasn’t.

Overall, I look back at this with a WOW, I can’t believe that I had the opportunity to do this awe-inspiring drug, and I’m so glad that I did. That being said, I am way more wary of drugs that I ever was in the past. I had no idea. LSD, as I said before, is a HARD drug. I took the steps away from mood-altering substances into a serious hallucinogen. I was hacking my brain. It is the one drug that I think is completely not over-hyped. What a once-in-a-lifetime experience, though. This trip report only reflects on brief moments during the trip itself - there are still moments of tripping that I remember but am too exhausted to type out. It's a long, difficult and arduous (but fun, beautiful and INCREDIBLE) JOURNEY. If you choose to do it, please be careful. Know yourself (love yourself) and what you want.

Exp Year: 2017	ExpID: 111305

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: 24

Published: Apr 29, 2018	Views: 2,402

[ View as PDF (for printing) ] [ View as LaTeX (for geeks) ]
[ Switch Colors ]

LSD (2) : Personal Preparation (45), Hangover / Days After (46), Guides / Sitters (39), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)