		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 1 drop

		 LSD
		 (liquid)

		   T+ 0:45
		 1 drop

		 LSD
		 (liquid)

		   T+ 0:00

		 Alcohol

		   T+ 0:00

		 smoked
		 Cannabis

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   120 lb

My boyfriend and I had previously always considered trying acid, but we bought into the rumors about it making you crazy or making your brain bleed. We still wanted to try it, but felt extremely cautious about it. So when it turned up in my kitchen along with 3 of my hippie friends we’d invited over, I knew we had to at least buy it and decide later. We bought 2 doses of 2 hits each (estimated at about 400 ugrams per dose) mid-week and said we’d decide by Thursday night to do it Friday if we chose to take it at all. We researched the rumors surrounding acid and found them to be deemed a bunch of bull instituted by ridiculous anti-drug propaganda like Reefer Madness and generally negative governmental connotations of it.

I am especially inexperienced with drug use, having just started using cannabis regularly last year. The first drug I ever used was Dramamine, though. My boyfriend and I also shared that experience together a couple months before I first smoked pot. I experienced flashbacks almost daily from using Dramamine up until my acid trip.

Thursday night we decided together that we were having a pretty good week, that we were happy and that with our out-of-town friend coming to hang out on Friday with us that we’d probably have a pretty good time doing it. We had a nice relaxing Friday, he went to work and I had no classes so we both did low-stress level activities all day. I visited him at lunch which put us both in a good mood for the rest of the day as well. I went to work for 5 hours and came home after, ready to trip.

Our friend came over at about 10 and I took 1 of my two hits. We all had a drink and smoked a bowl together. My boyfriend said he was ready and he took his two hits and I took my other hit about 45 minutes after my first one. We were excited rather than nervous, which helped the general mood and anxiety you can feel after first dosing. We started out just chilling out, waiting for it to hit when I started sitting on the floor and began collecting things in the room I really liked. I gathered them up and sat down in the pile of them and started watching Alice in Wonderland that we had put in earlier. I became overwhelmingly happy looking at my pets who I really love and at pictures of my boyfriend and me in my scrapbook. I started crying because I realized that I have a wonderful life and that I’m so lucky for everything I have. I had been raped about 4 years ago and at this time during my trip I started telling my boyfriend that I felt like that had no importance and effect on me any longer. I was so happy and realized how much I enjoyed my life that all of my past eventually became entirely unimportant to me.

Nothing was melting at this point, but I became very in love with colors. First, purple that was in a Jimi Hendrix poster on the wall and then I started to love pink, too. I have a pink stuffed flamingo and old pink chuck taylors that I also started to feel extremely attracted to. I also got out my guitar and an old stuffed animal I’ve had for almost my whole life. As I held the stuffed animal, she began to feel real and like a child. I held her like a baby against me very carefully and I noticed that she was a hue of yellow instead of brown like she really is. I also had fabric swatches and some fake sunflowers that I liked looking at for an extended period of time as well. At this time I kept bothering my boyfriend to look at stuff because I thought he could see the same things as me and he was starting to get frustrated and we’d argue and confuse each other pretty badly.

Before I started getting too out of control collecting stuff, our sober friend asked if I could get him a beer to distract me.

Before I started getting too out of control collecting stuff, our sober friend asked if I could get him a beer to distract me.

 I got one out for him and I noticed the Hello Kitty magnetic clips on the fridge and also became obsessed with those. He told me just to bring both to the table where he was. I stopped short of the table to look at the carpet and noticed that all the fibers looked like meal worms and were moving all over each other. I was still pretty with-it in the mind so it didn’t scare me because I could remember it was still carpet. I laughed and took him the stuff. He put the clip on his shirt so I’d stay sitting down at the table in order to let my boyfriend look at things for himself. I did for a long time, and the above the table gave me a feeling of an interrogation room and it made me nervous. I looked into the living room and it seemed like the room had stretched and I wanted to go over and be with my boyfriend. I started to get up but our friend called him over so I was happy and the light looked like sunshine instead.

He asked if he could take pictures of our pupils because they were pretty big and he took pictures of us before I started thinking that my whole existence is this acid trip and that my only purpose is for these pictures to be taken and that the only thing anyone will ever know of me are these pictures that will be published and looked at and used as an example. I started to freak out and think this over and over so our friend put the camera away and told me that everything was okay and that I should sit down and make him some “acid art.” I thought it was a great idea and felt better, but my boyfriend said that he felt trapped inside and wanted to go outside, would our friend please take us? So after a confusing 20 minutes of forgetting and remembering that we wanted to go outside, we finally left my apartment, both of us trippers with a stuffed animal.

The cold felt like a blade through me vertically and I tried to not let it consume me. We went up and sat in our friend’s truck and really started to trip out. The lights from the city were beautiful and branches of trees moved like blooming flowers. I kept thinking that the lights behind me were cars coming in to park but there were none around. My boyfriend asked me what I was looking at and when I told him he said he saw the same thing. We got the skateboard out of our friend’s truck and my boyfriend went and was able to do this AMAZING trick and landed it primo on its side. He tried to do something simple and he landed his knee on the edge of it and scraped himself but he said he didn’t want it to hurt so he didn’t let it hurt.

On the way back inside I began to see rainbow fractals all over the place. They left a pattern on everything I looked at, even my hands. I looked in the sand outside and it looked like living stone cacti, very beautiful. Once back inside, we passed a wall where I always see a Dramamine flashback. I see it everyday. It looked like a piece of paper with a list written on it, but this time I passed it without seeing it and I asked my boyfriend where “the rules” went. I explained it to him and told him they were gone now. We shrugged and went downstairs back into my apartment. We started to go into our bedroom which looked normal when we first went into it. My iPod was playing different music than what was playing out where his friend was and it gave an entirely different feeling to us. We felt calm and close to each other and we lay there for a few minutes just looking around. The ceiling has a stucco pattern in it and it looked like butterflies bordered in pearlescent rainbow colors. It was beautiful and I loved it. The papier-mâché butterflies I have hanging from my ceiling swayed to both of us and the dotted pattern on their wings traveled around and around their outline. The color book picture on my wall swelled and shrank and the stars in it twirled. It was very cute looking to me at the time.

I went out because we wanted to start collecting stuff again and I smoked some more weed before going back in with our stuffed animals from earlier. We only stayed for a couple minutes more when I went back to our room because we missed our friend and wanted to hang out with him. We drew some stuff for a while and I began to feel like a little girl and I felt like my boyfriend was a little boy and his head got bigger like a little kid’s proportions and his eyes got bigger also like a little kid’s. I thought he looked cute rather than scary and really enjoyed it. I allowed myself to also feel little, which might explain why I was obsessed with pink and purple as well. I also like yellow and orange a lot more now, especially along with pink and purple.

I have always felt like I haven’t grown up mentally even though I know more things as I get older. I feel the same in my head that I had since I was in kindergarten, but after being a little kid again and “growing up” and learning after the whole trip, this feeling was gone and I feel grown up now.

I feel grown up now.

 We colored and wrote down lots of things before we wanted to go outside again. I wasn’t particularly fond of outside, but my boyfriend wanted to have a good trip too and I thought he was looking for something in his trip that was outside so I said we could go.

We walked outside a long ways, half way around most of my apartment building’s complex until we found the playground. My boyfriend wanted swings, but there were none so he went down the slide while I was distracted by a bunny a few yards away. I walked toward it and told our sober friend that I saw a bunny. I really liked the bunny and the grass around him looked like peacock feathers. I got really happy again and our friend asked me if I thought the rabbit might have some tea. I thought that it might be a possibility so I said maybe excitedly and I walked towards the bunny more. I wanted to ask him if he did have tea, but he hopped away and my boyfriend was also done sliding. A car went by and startled us and some people were walking around getting home from the bar and I got a little nervous again.

Our friend said we should keep on walking to see what else was outside and we continued to walk around the complex. As we walked, my boyfriend and I talked and the number 4 kept coming up over and over again. It seemed like we’d each say the same 4 sentences over and over just in different places. I kept saying “It’s cyclical.” He got confused and we stopped talking a lot because I was getting upset about the same things being said over and over. We got halfway back to my building when I thought I saw 2 cops. I got incredibly scared and convinced myself within a couple seconds that we’d been reported for suspicious activity all night and that they were following us. I started walking really fast and I got so upset that I started gagging like I was going to puke. We walked down to my building and went inside and I puked all over the floor. I ran inside my apartment, upset that I left a vomit trail for the imaginary cops to my door and I rinsed out my mouth and my hands in the bathroom while I realized that I was on acid and that I was doing nonsensical things. Our friend cleaned up the hallway while my boyfriend tried to calm me down. I was so confused. I knew my reality was different but the cops was the only thing that could be in my trip and real life so it took my boyfriend and our friend about 40 minutes to convince me that I had made up the cops and that there were none at all. We all agreed not to go outside again until it was light and I felt better and after time had gone by with no one at our door, I was fine again.

For the rest of the night I was happy because as we made our “acid art” I realized how good I am at sketching and allowed myself to be continually good at it. My boyfriend and I were drawing together now instead of on separate paper and we realized that it was better this way because we could trip cooperatively happily and teach each other and learn a lot of things. Near the beginning of our drawing my boyfriend and I started confusing each other again and he said, “It is cyclical.” I said, “See!?” And from then on, we were completely cooperative in our tripping. I was saturatedly happy and found that if I was thinking something, my boyfriend would say it exactly as I had thought it. I liked this and felt linked to him by this. We filled tons of pages with out theories on what a trip is and different things we had questions about in life. We watched the Yellow Submarine several times, loving it each time. It didn’t warp because it made so much sense when we watched it on acid. It’s like it was tripping with us.

We stayed happy the rest of the night and hung out with our friend, made art and wrote stuff down. We thought that babies might see what acid trippers see when they are happy in heaven and when they’re born until they grow out of it. I also felt that every classification of importance for living things is completely un-validated and ridiculous. My tolerance for people of different races and classes was completely renewed and I felt like my little animals were just as important as any of us humans in the room. We also found out that we had complete control of our trips and how happy they could be just by wanting it to go a certain way and simply allowing it to. We also got a couple periods of time for 2 to 5 minutes where everything would completely clear up and look normal again before we’d start tripping out completely again. We just expected things to be good and they were. I also wanted to be left handed and simply allowed myself to be. I can still do it now, three days after the trip. We looked in the mirror for a while together and I looked at myself, changing from resembling a tiger all the way to making myself smile and look like the Cheshire cat from Alice earlier. It was fun.

I made us a giant breakfast at around 5:48 AM of toast, eggs and hamburger with cheese on a communal plate. I just kept adding to it and adding to it because I knew that it would turn out amazing. The noises that came from the oven were so noisy! The hood vent was incredibly loud and I could just hear everything at once so sensitively. I remembered to turn off all the burners on the stove and to turn the oven off too. After we ate, our friend put up the picture he made us all night in the kitchen and we discussed what we liked about it and how good it was. As we stood in the kitchen, I could hear our speech echo around in my ears and it made me laugh because it was so odd. After that, our friend went to bed and we went into our room, too.

We opened the blinds a little bit and saw that it was approaching sunrise. I made some more art out of my crossword puzzle book by pasting it into a flower and gluing buttons I had in a jar on it too. I really liked it and then we decided to turn the black light on and lay in bed together. The black light was amazing! All the colors it turned things in the room to were beautiful. We watched as a pink bracelet I had on turned from light yellow back to pink, to yellow and back again, over and over. We were quite amused for a while before we decided to go shower and try to sleep. We tripped each other out in the shower by recalling things that happened the night before. We got out and went back into our room where my boyfriend took pictures of me because I decided that I was beautiful without any makeup on and that I wanted to remember this later. We sat on the floor and smoked again and took pictures until the battery on his camera died. We had sat for an hour and 10 minutes. We laughed because it only seemed like 5 minutes. We lay back down and I tripped for the next 5 hours before trying to wake my boyfriend up who got about 2 hours of sleep.

We got ready and headed out to see my parents for lunch. The day was lovely and we felt trippy still and just very, very happy. We realize now that we refrained from swearing for 2 days after and that we only just got back to normal feeling about 4 days later.

we only just got back to normal feeling about 4 days later.

 We both had depression pretty badly before we tried acid, but even now we are not having problems with it whatsoever. I even had some sexual side effects from my depression like having low to no sexual response to advances made by my boyfriend, but now we have normal sex where we both get excited in a synchronized way. We miss each other very badly when we’re not together after being together during that whole night’s events now. We can’t stand to be apart even more than before we did acid together. We both agree that it was one of the best life experiences we’ve ever had and that we learned so much from trying it. I do want to do it again, but it was so special to me that I probably won’t do it more than 4 times in my whole life so I can remember each trip separately and vividly.

Overall, this was a very good life experience and I think it went well because we researched it, surrounded ourselves with a good, sober friend who helped us to play into the good parts of our trips, and also with the movies, music and activity of drawing that we chose. It was definitely worth completely trashing our house that had been clean for the preceding two weeks. We are all back to normal now, including the house that is clean again, and we treasure and pore over the art we made and the pictures that were taken all throughout the night. We’ll always remember this.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 70216

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Apr 8, 2016	Views: 84,130

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LSD (2) : Glowing Experiences (4), Guides / Sitters (39), Relationships (44), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)


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

		   T+ 0:20
		 1 cig.
		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

		   T+ 1:30
		 101 mg
		 oral
		 MDMA
		 (powder / crystals)

		   T+ 3:00
		 43 mg
		 oral
		 MDMA
		 (powder / crystals)

		   T+ 4:15
		 15 hits
		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   165 lb

This all happened a while ago, and I regret not writing about it until now. As with many drug experiences, memories seem to fade even faster than they normally do. Luckily, most details of the evening are still fresh in my mind, as I expect they will be for some time. I realize that this is a very long story, but I can’t make any apologies for that; it’s just as long as it needs to be. If you don’t want to read yet another first-time MDMA story, feel free to skip down to Part II where the shit hits the fan.

Part I

It was the first concert of the year, and my two friends and I had been looking forward to it for weeks. I was especially excited for the show – it was one of my favorite artists, and it would be the first time I attended a show high on anything but weed. The three of us each had molly – 150mg for me, 100mg each for my two friends. I had never seen a chemical so pure before. It wasn’t powder, it was legitimate crystal. I had never rolled before, nor had one of my friends (we’ll call her Evelyn. She was the driver that night). In addition, my other friend and I (we’ll call him Jerry) and I were also planning to take a hit of acid. I had taken acid once before, from the same strip, and I knew it to be rather weak. I’d say I reached a + on the Shulgin scale, ++ once I smoked. We also rolled up the last of our blueberry kush in a joint to smoke before the show.

On the day of the concert, a confluence of odd events occurred. Evelyn saw a black cat on the railroad tracks outside her apartment that had been sliced in two by a train. Later, when she was on her way to pick me up, her car got a flat tire and we had to wait an hour at a Wal-Mart while it got replaced. As we drove on the highway to pick up Jerry, we were pulled over for going 86mph. [Erowid Note:
Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]   Evelyn wasn’t lucky enough to get off with a warning (female cops...) and as we continued on with a speeding ticket in hand, we were at least glad to agree that it was a good sign that we had gotten our police encounter over with for the day.

The concert was about an hour and a half away, and we left with plenty of time to spare. Jerry and I placed our hits under our tongues when we were about 45 minutes out; Evelyn, who had never done anything stronger than cannabis, abstained. We both still felt at baseline when we arrived at the venue. We parked the car and searched for a place to smoke. We settled at a wonderful, isolated spot behind the venue. The view was gorgeous – we were near a river, and the lights from the nearby metropolis twinkled in the ripples of the water. I felt huge. The blueberry high mingled with the burgeoning acid trip, and I felt the world ebbing with my breath. I was filled with a familiar sense of peace. I grinned at Jerry and said “I think this stuff is stronger than the last time.” He smiled back.

I could feel the acid creeping up as we checked our tickets, stood in line, and waited for the opening act to perform. I was an acid novice, so it’s hard for me to qualitatively describe what the drug was doing to me. It was stronger than my last hit, yes, but still not strong, probably not even 100mcg. Nevertheless, I clearly felt under the influence of a psychedelic. My vision breathed as I did, and I felt a fundamental calmness mixed with excitement. A new sort of energy coursed through my body, the sort that I imagined when I heard people speak of “channeling energy”. The night was off to a great start.

This seems like a good point to pause and describe myself a little. I had tripped several times before – the aforementioned LSD, mushrooms, and 2C-E mostly – and smoked heavily. I had never tripped in a public setting before, and in fact had always doubted that such a thing would be enjoyable. I had also never taken MDMA before, but it had been at the top of my to-do list for years.  I am, by nature, introverted and not a little shy. It was something I used to really beat myself up about; I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was always being judged for being quiet or a bore. As I came to realize that other people spent about as much time judging and criticizing me as I did them (that is to say, not really at all), my insecurities faded but my proclivities remained the same. I didn’t usually seek company and had a hard time talking to others. I was fascinated by the potential of MDMA to break me from my shell. I had heard from friends and numerous online reports about how drastically MDMA could increase sociability, empathy, sensitivity – all things that I felt I lacked and wanted so badly when I saw them in others. And, secretly, I badly wanted to dance. Music had always moved my soul, but not my body, and I was far too self-conscious to give it an earnest try. Aside from a few white-guy head bobs, I had never danced, and I privately doubted the ability of even the great MDMA to change that.

Jerry had described the first band’s sound as “some high school kids who play pop music and made it big somehow”, so as they walked onto the stage, I was expected something like a watered-down Belle &amp; Sebastian. Luckily, their live show transcended the album and by the second number I was sold. Jerry was acid-grooving to the music, while Evelyn and I stood near the back and bobbed our white heads. Occasionally I would look at Evelyn and smile, as if to acknowledge how ridiculous it was that there was a rocking band playing with dozens of dancing and free souls all around us and we were too self-conscious to do what everyone else was doing (although for all I knew she didn’t want to dance, and that is, of course, perfectly fine). The joy of the crowd should have been infectious, but I felt slightly too awkward to really get into the spirit.

Jerry and I wanted our roll to peak during the headliner, and the perfect time to take our capsules was as the second act set up. Evelyn bowed out of taking the molly, so Jerry and I each placed capsules containing 100mg of MDMA in our mouths and washed it down with the most expensive bottled water I had ever drank. By this time, the acid had reached its peak effects while the cannabis high was weakening by the minute. The second act began performing – blaring glitch-hop that seemed out of place with the other music, but I loved it regardless. The light show danced overhead in purple and green, the audience became more and more energetic, and I began to play the do-I-feel-it-or-do-I-not game. As the second act wore on, I began sensing a new kind of energy, which increased by degrees until I was convinced that something was happening. But still, it was just that – an energy, but none of the characteristics that I had come to expect.

I do remember the first instant that I knew I was rolling. I was bending my knees and bobbing my head to a particularly intense beat, and a singular thought entered my mind: “My jeans feel really, really good right now…”

And that was it. My jeans rubbing against my legs as I moved felt good in a way that nothing had ever felt good before, like a magical, perfectly soft fabric rubbing along the smoothest skin. And at that instant, the other effects of the drug began to fill me. The music took on wonderful new qualities – where before the music had seemed almost too loud, I now relished in the volume. My senses were hungry for everything, and I devoured the lights, the now-beautiful clothing and movements of those around me, and the MUSIC. I had the thought some months before, while listening to a sprawling ambient Shpongle track while on 2C-E, that psychedelics didn’t just improve music but totally altered it. It was like software running on different hardware; like it pushed separate and previously unknown switches. MDMA is similar, I think. I didn’t simply begin to enjoy more the music I had been hearing, it took on a brand new quality. I could feel the pounding bass shake my body, but it resonated throughout every part of me. I was like a starving man, and the music was my feast.

And I danced. My inhibitions were wiped away at once, but it wasn’t just that. It was like I knew just how to dance, like I had always known but had never embraced it until now. One of my greatest fears about dancing had been that I simply didn’t know how. That night, I learned how easy it is. I didn’t have to know what to do, I just did it. My body, the music, and the drug corroborated to make my movements virtually unconscious. The urges of movement that had peeked from my depths whenever I listened to good music were finally exercised. I moved my feet, my hips, my arms… I just did what my body told me to do, and I loved it deeply.

The second act left the stage, and the three of us sat down at one of the small tables in the back of the room. Getting off my feet was an amazing feeling; all the energy that I had been expending on the dancefloor now surged through my body, bouncing around on my insides at a hundred miles an hour. Even something as simple as breathing was a delight. I felt like I was humming in harmony with the vibrations of everything around, and every breath was perfect, just like it was supposed to happen. I had the hugest grin plastered on my face, and at that moment I couldn't understand why there was so much sadness in people when everything was so, so beautiful...

I turned my attention to my two friends. Jerry was smoking a cigarette and wore a smile to match mine. We exchanged a look, and I'm sure he understood what was on my mind just as well as I understood what was on his. I turned my attention to Evelyn, and in an instant every kind thing she had ever done for me flashed into my mind. I was struck by the things she had done for me out of the goodness of her heart, and I was awestruck by the simple beauty of that. Any time that someone does something out of the goodness of their heart, it is a beautiful and sacred gift and I won't forget it.

My friends and I guzzled water and talked; I don't remember about what. As the headliner was setting up to perform, I remembered that I had another capsule containing 50m of molly in my pocket. I hesitated – I already felt great, did I need more? Might it be too much? I thought back to last year, to the first time Jerry and I had ever tripped. We had taken Hawaiian Baby Woodrose seeds, and I had said I didn't want to smoke because I wanted to experience the trip on its own. “Alright,” Jerry said, “but for what it's worth, maybe it's not about having a Hawaiian Baby Woodrose experience but about having an experience. It can only make you feel better.” I had no answer for that then, and I didn't now. I happily swallowed my capsule just before the band came onstage.

I've avoided mentioning the names of the artists at the concert, since that lineup only played a few shows together and (for reasons that will soon become clear) it wouldn't be too difficult to identify my friends. Suffice to say, however, that the headlining band was perfect for the state of mind I was in that night. The acid and the MDMA had peaked, and the music was warm, familiar, and childlike. My dancing became more varied, but more importantly, I had fallen in love with my movements. There was nothing, I thought, that I would rather be doing at that moment. Not content to stay in one place, I started dancing in circles around Evelyn, who would laugh at the spectacle. Every time I saw any positive emotion on her face, I felt my soul lift correspondingly.

We had brought about fifteen pairs of rainbow glasses to the show (if you don't know what those are, they're cardboard glasses with plastic lenses that act as prisms and show spectra of color surrounding all sources of light), and I had been sporadically wearing a pair throughout the night. Jerry was standing near the speakers to the right of the stage, and he motioned me to join him. He had been talking to a guy with light gloves on, and almost before I knew what was happening, I was getting my first light show. My jaw dropped, and after I had almost immediately put on my rainbow glasses, my jaw dropped to the floor. I can't describe in words what it looked like... it seemed like every color, everywhere, times seven. “That was amazing, dude!” I shouted when he was finished, and gave him a hug. He was sweaty; I didn't care.

Inspired, I took the other pairs of glasses out of my pocket and dashed to the back of the room. The first person I offered a pair to declined but, undeterred, I looked for a new target. I greeted an attractive blonde girl in the middle of the room. “I like how you dance!” I said, and handed her a pair. Her face lit up when she put them on. She thanked me and gave me a hug, and I went off in search of someone else. I found a group of a few guys who were clearly having a good time. I tapped the nearest one of the shoulder and offered him the glasses. The instant he put them on, his face lit up with delight. He started laughing and flashing the biggest smile I had ever seen. “Try this fucking things on!” he shouted to his friends, and I watched their reactions as one by one they too suddenly burst into joy and delight. With each person that put them on, my mood lifted and lifted until I was in perfect bliss over how happy I had been able to make these strangers. The glasses made their way back to the first man, and he tried to give them back to me. I waved my hand. “They're yours,” I mouthed, and danced away.

The rest of the show went like that. I danced, making sure to buy a bottle of water whenever my mouth felt dry (and once tipping the nice ladies at the bar $5). I only stopped dancing a few times to hug Evelyn. She's a lot like how I described myself earlier, and it seems like sometimes we have a hard time talking to each other for that reason. It was an amazing feeling having those barriers broken down and being able to see and talk to my good friend the way I had always wanted to.

But of course, the show had to eventually end. We filed out almost immediately. A part of me was disappointed, and I still wanted to do nothing but dance to loud electronic music. As soon as I stepped outside, though, I knew that was just where I wanted to be. It was a cool night, and it offered a whole new range of sensations than the loud and stuffy room in which I had spent the last few hours. My skin tingled, the cold air refreshed and reinvigorated me. The three of us quickly found a bench of the street near the river. It's hard for me to describe just how everything looked at that moment. Everything took on an ineffable quality, like a sparkle, and like breathing. The river stretched on and on, as far as I could see, and a rainbow of colors reflected and refracted on its surface from the buildings on the other side. I looked at Evelyn; she smiled, and I at last realized what a beautiful girl she really is. I looked at Jerry, and all the qualities I admired and loved in my old friend seemed to be painted on his face. The world there on that bench was, in a word, perfect.

“You know,” I began, “I've always thought that if a person says something about somebody when they're not around, then you know they really mean it, right? Well, Evelyn, I was talking to Jerry the other day and I said 'you know, Evelyn is a pretty cool kid.' And he said 'yeah, Evelyn is really cool.' He said that, Evelyn! He didn't have to say it, but he did!”

Jerry smiled hugely and nodded. “It's true, I did say that!”

We continued in this fashion for a few minutes, taking delight in the delight we brought our friend. There was a pause in the conversation. “Jerry,” I said abruptly, “square up!” I immediately sat upright and extended my arms as wide as I could. He did the same, and we hugged. I don't think we had done that in years. “I love you, man,” I said, and he replied the same. “We don't do that enough, man” Jerry said, and I agreed. I hugged Evelyn and told her I loved her too.

We still had a little bit of weed left, and after making sure that no one would walk up on us, we each took two or three hits from Jerry's one-hitter. The weed brought back some of the feelings I had earlier, but I felt like it augmented the acid more than the MDMA. We laughed and talked for a few more minutes before Evelyn decided that she was cold. We agreed to talk back to the car to get a jacket and warm up. I stood up and walked away with two of my closest friends, on top of the world, full on the life and love that had always surrounded me but that I had never noticed before.

Part II

It was much warmer in the car. I hadn't noticed how the cold had affected me, but I was glad to be out of the breeze. My friends and I continued our conversation from the bench with unabated good vibes. After a few minutes, one of us in the car commented on a group of young men on bicycles slowly riding up the sidewalk about ten feet in front of the car. I won't mince words – these were some shady-looking motherfuckers and they had clearly either just gotten in some shit or were about to. And in fact, just a few seconds after we noticed them, a police cruiser rolled up behind them and turned its lights on. We quickly assessed the situation: it was 2am in a bad part of town, we were the only car in the lot, and it looked like they were there to sell us drugs. Even if it didn't we all agreed that this was not a place we needed to be. We pulled out of the lot and got the hell out of there. We drove around aimlessly for a minute, looking for a place to settle. But before Jerry could say that we were going the wrong way down a one-way street, we slammed into the side of a police car. [Erowid Note:
Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]

I don't remember what happened immediately after the crash. I saw right away that we had hit the car as it was traveling to the left. The two vehicles were sprawled across the intersection at odd angles. I couldn't see the damage to Evelyn's car, but I saw that we had hit the police car in the back, not the front. The officer appeared to be unharmed, and so did we. We were in shock. All I remember until I was taken out of the car was Evelyn's crying, and Jerry and I trying to tell her it would be okay. But she was beyond consolation. My heart went out to her in that moment, and I will never forget that look in her eyes.

I don't remember how long it took for backup to arrive on the scene. It seemed like ages, but with the volume of cops in the area, it couldn't have been long. Police were everywhere around the intersection, and they continued to arrive as events transpired. An officer came to my door first.

“Step out of the car.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“No, you're not.”

“Do I have to get out of the car?”

“Yes, you do.”

I got out. I was terrified. I didn't know what the laws regarding people in my situation were, and I didn't know if it mattered. We didn't just hit any car, we hit one of their own. I didn't have anything on me, but I was high as a kite and I didn't put it past the police to make my life very difficult anyway.

“Do you have any drugs on your or anything I should know about?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, you mind if I search you so I know you're telling the truth?”

“Yes sir, I do mind.”

“I need to search you so I know you're not carrying a weapon or something you can hurt me with.”

I didn't know if that was true or not, but I realized that I wasn't going to keep this man out of my pockets. I consented, and he started to pat me down.

“Is there anything that's going to poke me in there? Nothin' sharp?”

“No, sir...”

Once satisfied that I was clean, he had me stand with another officer off to the side while they dealt with my friends.

The cop they stuck me with was a real “tough guy,” one of those who are out to give you a hard time.

“So why didn't you want to be searched earlier, huh?”

“I'm a man of principle.”

He shook his head. “It just makes you look guilty...” He sounded somewhat disgusted. I didn't reply, and instead watched what was going on with my friends. Jerry was going through the same ordeal that I had with the cop. My heart sank. He wasn't clean – he had his one-hitter, and worst of all, he was carrying Evelyn's capsule of molly. I prayed that he had the presence of mind to swallow it in the car.

The exchange between Jerry and the cop was becoming heated. I was situated too far away to make out what they were saying, but I could tell that Jerry was standing his ground in refusing to be searched without being charged with a crime, and the cop, sensing that he had his man, was insisting with every-increasing fervor that Jerry let himself be searched. I don't know what the breaking point was in the standoff – I expect that the cop threatened to call in drug dogs and it would only make it worse for Jerry if he did. In any case, I watched as the officer reached into Jerry's pocket. He found a cigarette pack and looked inside. He looked at Jerry, and I watched his lips form the words “you are under arrest...” Jerry turned around and held his head high as the cuffs were placed around his wrists. He was led to the back of a squad car, and the police turned their attention to Evelyn.

Evelyn proved to be a much easier target. Jerry and I had a few run-ins with the police between this, but she was much more naïve. To give you an idea of the environment she comes from: She grew up on a small farm in a very conservative family in the South. Her parents are unambiguously racist. When she was in high school, she was literally almost disowned for briefly dating a black guy. In spite of all this, she is an extremely cool person, very open-minded and modest and thoughtful. She had been smoking infrequently, almost exclusively with me, since last year, but that was it. This is all by way of saying: she was terrified, and didn't know what to do. Her parents still play a highly active role in her life, and she had just gotten high and ran into a police car. I don't think anything worse could have been happening to her right now in her eyes.

Evelyn was right next to me as the police asked her questions, so I could hear every word that was said.

“Did you have anything to drink tonight?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you smoke anything?”

“Yes, I did.”

“When?”

“I smoked with them about an hour ago.”

I froze. I was less concerned with being implicated in anything myself at that moment, but I knew she had just given herself away. There wasn't anything she could do to help herself now. But I can't blame her for it. Even if she had denied it, even if she had passed the field sobriety tests, they would have taken her in to get a blood test and it would show that she'd smoked. The cop just nodded. “Alright,” he said, “we're going to give you some sobriety tests now.”

I didn't watch as she performed them, though I did smile when I heard her absolutely nail the backwards alphabet. I had been too distracted to realize that my trip was still going strong, but now, as I sat in short sleeves in the October night, in a strange city surrounded by hostile police, watching these friends who I respected and loved on the brink of being hauled away, I plunged into negativity. I was still terrified that I was next. I was obviously lowest on their list of priorities, but once they had put away the big fish, what would happen to me? Was I an accessory to something? I was plagued by doubt, and I was plagued by the injustice the universe had just shown me. In an orientation for my job this year a few months earlier, I had been asked  who my hero was. I thought a moment, and replied “my friends.” It was these two I had in mind. Jerry was my best friend since sixth grade, my roommate, my trip partner. So much about how I saw the world, I owed to him. And the goodness of Evelyn affected me in the same way. We all have friends, but few and far between are the friends we can truly say we respect, who connect to us on a deeper level, and who inspire us to better things by their examples. These were smart people, all of us on full scholarship at our school, people who committed themselves to living harmless lives. And yet here they were, facing an infinitely frightening uncertainty.

It was no comfort to me that I couldn't even blame the police for what they were doing. Yes, if our drug laws were the way I thought they should be, Jerry would be in as little trouble as I was. But I couldn't ignore the fact that we really did hit a police car, and but for half a second's difference, we really could have killed him. I couldn't expect them to act any differently than they did, and yet it all seemed so unfair. I sat, shivering, for what seemed like hours. I became frantic, and my fear worsened. By and by, my thoughts dissolved into one shaking mantra: “I want this to be over. I want this to be over.” I'm not proud of my lack of courage at that moment, but it is what it is. It's an experience that I hope I've learned from.

One of the officers approached me. I froze up.

“You're free to go,” he said. I couldn't believe it. My disbelief must not have shown, because he continued unabated.

“Do you have anyone you can call that can pick you up?”

“Yeah, I'll call my girlfriend.”

“How far away does she live?”

“I think it'd be a couple of hours from here.”

“Alright. There's a hotel a couple of blocks away. If you want, we can drive you over there.”

“Er... no thanks, I can walk,” I said, wanting nothing less in the world to be in the back of a police car at that moment.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I am.”

They were done with me, but I still had one thing to ask.

“What's going to happen to them?”

“Well, she's going to jail for a DUI. And the other one's going in for paraphernalia.”

My hopes brightened at that last statement. If it was just paraphernalia, and not possession... that must mean they didn't find the molly! Holding this one bit of good news in my heart, I took my phone out of my pocket and walked off.

It was a hard call to make. My girlfriend (we'll call her Ally) has been Evelyn's best friend since their freshman year of high school; in fact, that's how Evelyn and I knew each other. I don't need to repeat the phone call here – I told her what happened, she asked if I was okay, I said yes. She told me to just find a place to stay until she could get there. I thanked her profusely, and when I told her I loved her, I don't think I had ever meant it that much before.

Now that I was away from the police, I was faced with a new problem. In my hurry to get away from the scene of the crime, I neglected to ask exactly where the hotel was. I had a vague direction, and I determined to walk that way until I found it; damned if I was going back to ask. Now a new anxiety began to creep in, since it was now very late at night and the part of town I was in looked none too friendly. Thankfully, fate smiled upon me, and I came upon the hotel after only about ten minutes of walking. I braced myself for whatever was to come, and walked in.

Part III

The lobby of the hotel was fairly small, with pairs of cushy chairs lining the glass walls. I approached the woman standing behind the long reference desk. She put on her best friendly face and introduced herself as Cindy, and asked if there was anything she could do for me. I took my best shot: “Is this somewhere I can just... stay for a little while?”

Her look told me that I hadn't expressed myself clearly enough. I hastily told her my story, why I was in town and how I ended up in her hotel at two in the morning. “Wow...” she muttered. “Why was she driving?”

“I didn't really think she was high,” I replied, and it was somewhat true.

Cindy still understandably seemed to regard me with a bit of skepticism. She didn't seem keen on letting me stay in her lobby forever, but she said I could sit there for a while. I was more interested in chatting with my new acquaintance, and I asked whether it were alright if I stood at the desk and talked to her, or if I should sit my ass down. She looked bewildered. “That's a sit-your-ass-down face,” I decided, and plopped down on one of the chairs against the wall.

The distance didn't keep me from conversation with Cindy. It already seemed like the scene with the cops was in the distant past, and now I was reminded of the mixture of psychoactives massaging my brain. The MDMA made me sociable and honest, the LSD put me in a peaceful state of mind, and the cannabis gave the whole thing a slightly surreal twist. I was fascinated by what I was able to do. If I had been in that lobby sober, I wouldn't have uttered a word to her. I would've replied to what she was saying, but I wouldn't have taken any pleasure in the conversation. But as it was, I was beginning to clean bits of her life story. She had a boyfriend, and he had a son from a previous marriage. The ex-wife, the boy's mother, was rather insane, and made life difficult for all of them by her constant intrusion. Cindy had to work the late shifts at the hotel, which obviously interfered with her family life. However, she had an interview for some sort of management position in the hotel. She was experienced, and she liked her odds. My soaring empathy elevated this woman in my eyes; I was happy and proud for her that she was so capable and determined. I assured her that she and her family would be fine and that I was proud of her.

Before long, though, we had a visitor. A taxi pulled up in front of the hotel, and a rugged brown-haired man in his 40s stumbled out of the cab and into the lobby. He was beyond drunk; he staggered up to Cindy and leaned over the desk for support as he explained his situation.

“I need... to pay the cab driver, and Imma get a room.”

“Alright,” Cindy replied. “You should go do that, then.”

The man paused. “I needa pay the cab driver, and then I'm gonna get a room.”

Cindy wasn't blinking. “Alright, well, you should go do that, then.”

Pause. “I don't have any money.”

Cindy was handling the situation with the measured patience of a woman who had done this many times before. “How were you going to get a room, then?” she asked calmly.

“Oh... I have a card, but I need cash for the cab. He don't take cards.”

“How much is the fare?”

“Five dollars.”

His words hung in the air for a few seconds, when I hopped up out of my chair and approached him while reaching for my wallet. “Here, man, just take this,” I said as I handed him a bill. “Go give this to the driver and we'll figure the rest out in here.”

Once the cab was taken care of, a new problem arose. The man had no form of identification on him, which meant he wasn't allowed to get a room. He would have get another cab, which meant braving a walk to the ATM a few blocks away. Cindy explained that it was near a White Castle, and his face brightened. “Listen, do you guys want any White Castle?” he drawled. Cindy and I shook our heads. “Well, I'm gonna get us some anyway,” he said, each word slowly uttered without ever changing the look of his face. I asked if he could check out the scene around the White Castle to see if there was a wreck there, or police cars. I figured this was a longshot. And away he went, thanking us for our help and confirming the directions as he left. “We'll never see him again,” Cindy said as she lit up a cigarette.

Cindy and I resumed our conversation after the man left. I found out that she had been diagnosed with cancer when she was a teenager, but had luckily made a full and relatively quick recovery. After I expressed my congratulations, her voice lowered. “Actually, though... they think I might have it again,” she said with the voice of a person sharing a secret. “In my colon.”

As she described the various medical procedures that led to this hypothesis, I was struck by three things in particular. I strongly got the impression that this new cancer was something she hadn't told many people about. It was certainly very recent, and private; yet here was this woman spilling all of this to a stranger clearly out of his gourd. I was also surprised at the frankness of her descriptions. Examinations relating to colon cancer are obviously a very private matter that people would typically shy away from relating, yet once again, here she was telling it all to a stranger. And finally, I was impressed with her composure. She delivered the news of this latest cancer almost as if it were a joke, like and-as-if-my-life-weren't-fucked-enough, and I never detected any fear on her face or in her words. My curiosity won out.

“Cindy, you seem really... calm about all of this. Aren't you freaked out, or scared?”

“Well, the way I see it, I already beat this thing once so I have that going for me. And if it ends up being the death of me then, well, I guess it'll kill me.”

I was in awe of this person before me, who had just confidently delivered a big fuck-you to death. We will all die, and most of us will come to peace with this fact before our time. I imagine that most who are able to achieve this do so by simple acceptance. They realize that it's a part of life, and they can control how to approach it. Some remove the taboos, appreciate it, joke about it. Death can't be defeated by fighting, but only by laughter.

After this talk, Cindy began walking to the front door to have a cigarette outside. I remained sitting. There was a small part of my old introverted self that didn't think she'd want to have me around while she smoked. But before Cindy opened the door, she looked at me and said “well, aren't you coming outside?” I smiled hugely and followed her out. It was such a morale boost to have someone truly desire my company. Outside, it was colder than it had been all night,  but my psychedelic jacket kept out the chill. Cindy and I continued talking, and when replying to a question I had asked, she broke off mid-sentence. “Oh my god,” she said. “He's back.”

And indeed, the man from the cab had returned. He hadn't sobered up one bit, and in each hand he was carrying a massive White Castle bag. I greeted him excitedly, and asked whether he had the cash for another cab. He looked at me with glassy eyes, and replied “naw... I couldn't find the ATM.” I shook my head and without any surprise in my voice, I asked him to come inside and sit down and we'd figure something out.

From here, the night finally began to come to a close. We decided to call another cab for the man and let them figure it out when it got here. My girlfriend called me to tell me she was close and to make sure she was in the right place. I was having a lot of fun with Cindy, but I was elated to get that call. I was drained. The MDMA was finally beginning to wear off, and I could tell I was on the acid comedown as well. I didn't “crash”, but it was now very late and I had spent the last several hours partying or stressed. I wanted to sleep in my bed, try to put this day behind me. Thoughts of my friends came flooded my mind, and I saw them alone in jail, with no way of knowing what would happen to them next. I felt survivor's guilt, though I chided myself for it. My best friend from high school is pretty reliably awake late into the night, and I texted him to explain the situation and to ask him to find out potential penalties for what my friends were arrested for. My heart sank when I heard that Jerry's MDMA could land him up to a year in jail, and I hoped once more that he had eaten it.

Soon afterward, my girlfriend arrived. I was overwhelmed with gratitude, love, relief when I saw her. While Cindy was in the back office typing something up, I hastily wrote her a card thanking her for her kindness and wishing her good luck on her interview the next day. I shouted a goodbye to my new friend, got into my girlfriend's car, and finally drove away.

Epilogue

The next day, I walked to my bank and emptied out my account. Evelyn's bond was $500, and I had just over that in savings. A friend and I drove to the town the next day intent on freeing her, but when we arrived we were told that she was already gone. When I inquired about Jerry, I was informed that his bond has been posted as well. A bit confused, we returned home. We found out that both of them had been freed by their parents, and were waiting at home. The legal details began to emerge. I won't bore you with the details, but in the end, Evelyn got a DUI and a few months of probation, while Jerry is on a diversion program. Assuming he passes all of his drugs tests for three months, the charges will be dropped and erased from his record.

That night obviously left a great impact on me. Each main part of the evening taught me a particular set of lessons, it seemed.

At the concert, I was finally freed of my inhibitions and had what I still call the time of my life. I discovered an appreciation of dancing that was particularly infectious the first few days afterward, when I just felt like dancing everywhere I went. It was as if I could feel the rhythm (or, rather, the beat) of the universe. I still get a sense that all of these aftereffects were largely the result of one moment at the show, when I just Got It. It was sublime, perfect peace and bliss. It was an amazing feeling of appreciation of everything and especially everyone around me, connectedness with the ground I was standing on, awash in the goodness of humanity.

I suppose you might expect me to say the the crash scared me straight... unfortunately, you'd be wrong. But there was a lot I took away from it. First of all, my single piece of advice to anyone reading this is to absolutely minimize the time you spend with drugs on you in a vehicle. When you're in your house, you're in one small spot where the police never are. When you're driving, you put yourself in the situation to cover the most possible ground while the most possible police cars are also covering the most possible ground. And if you have the misfortune of being young, male, and especially not-white, you're at an even higher risk. And while I'm not here to criticize high drivers - I feel safe riding with a number of friends when they're stoned and trust their abilities - this is as good a time as any to reflect on your high driving, whether you honestly think it impacts your reaction time or anything like that. If you are a great high driver, then knock yourself out. But a little self-honesty can keep you safe in unexpected ways.

When I was at the motel waiting, I had the unique (for me) opportunity of going through the entire friendmaking process in only a few hours. For someone who has always had difficulty speaking to strangers, the memory of that is invaluable. I was able to draw on that experience, and not only did it make it easier for me to communicate with others, I began to truly find pleasure in it. I felt like my barriers were broken down, and I realized that those barriers were only put up by me to keep myself from having any fun.

After having an experience like that, it is sometimes difficult to understand how people could not be lining up to have one like it. One person I talked to said that he didn't want the euphoria that came from a chemical like MDMA, but rather he found his joy through love, beauty, etc. It was only a few weeks later (always too late on a good comeback) that I found a quote from Jonathan Ott, author of the Psychedelic Encyclopedia: “we're all on drugs, all of the time.” It may be an oversimplification to say that oxytocin is the “love hormone,” but it does play a role our subjective experience of many aspects of love. But what makes his oxytocin-based love more valuable and true than my MDMA-based love? Our emotions are made possible by the cocktail of endogenous drugs flowing throughout each of our brains. What matters is what you feel, and if you feel it, it's real. The experience I had that night was real, and it was powerful. The drug was responsible for the effects on my mind that night alone, but the long-lasting changes the experience left only occurred because I allowed myself to grow from the experience. The MDMA, LSD, and cannabis were tools – indispensable ones, in this case, but tools nonetheless. They allowed me to improve my mind within its own framework.

And in spite of the crash, the worry, and the fear, I still count it as one of the best nights of my life. It's psychonaut wisdom that bad trips are often the best ones, because you learn more about yourself during a turbulent psychedelic experience than during a happier one. Myself and others in the psychedelic community often forget that the principle is only an instance of a larger truth: that difficult times and risky situations not only show you who you are, but by pushing the boundaries of experience, you show yourself what you are capable of.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 89042

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 19

Published: Feb 2, 2012	Views: 132,523

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