		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 100 ug

		 LSD

		   T+ 8:30
		 1 hit
		 smoked
		 Cannabis

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   350 lb

There have been new experiences for me this past year. I went from never having tried drugs, even weed, to becoming an experienced psychonaut.  My first time on psychedelics was a very pleasant one but had been very muddled. It was a night fueled with meth, weed, 25i, and inhalants. Not a smart choice. But after having a wonderful night on shrooms, I wanted to experience LSD. Being a part of the [ ] community has taught me so much about the best parts of drug use and exploring one's mind.  So naturally I talked to many people about their own experiences with LSD and decided that this journey would be one that I would take slowly.  With that in mind, I decided to try a small dose, 100ug, to whet my whistle.  My LSD arrived, and as fate would have it, dosed onto my favorite thing on the planet. Orange pez. It was as if the world were tempting me with LSD-laced, sugary, golden perfection. Always a great sign.

I had a playlist prepared. Music for me, as with so many others, is key with any trip.  My tastes are not limited to any particular EDM or one genre. Rather, it's a collection of songs I have picked up over the past year.  Anytime I hear XXYYXX About You, I am brought back to listening to it for the first time with my friend [ ] and talking about religion and war.  Hearing Bliss n Eso;s Field of Dreams brings to mind another friend talking to me about picking up the pieces of my life. So having my playlist ready was key for me.  But as I began to prepare to dose, I was in the [ ] Tinychat room with friends.  Most notably, one of the founders of [ ].  We talked a bit and I saw that he was currently djing for the [ ] radio station.  So I thought I would tune in for a bit to see what he had on tap.  I was not disappointed.  He had so many great songs on the line up for me.  If you ever have the opportunity to have a personal dj for a trip, 10/10 would recommend.   From the Beatles, to EDM, to rock and indie songs, everything molded my sensations and feelings. Songs were beautiful and varied and seemed to speak to me on a higher level.

I dosed at 9:30 pm and began feeling a body load that was new and unusual for me.  It was akin to the anticipation one gets when getting ready to ride a roller coaster.  The chatting in line with friends, getting the giggles when you finally sit into a seat, the way you feel when the straps come across your body that will hold you safe from certain death, the initial excitement of the huge contraption taking off with your fragile human body inside, the rush of the climb of the first hill, and the explosion of butterflies in your chest as you see the descent into gravity-decimating fun that is ahead.

I had a grin on my face from those first feelings of anticipation and a nervous energy that felt amazing.  Jokes and things my friends were saying were funnier.  Colors became more vibrant, slowly at first, then more and more as the trip progressed.  I liked the feeling of connectivity that being on a solo trip can bring but also was directly linked with my friends through [ ].  This dual level of connection is unique but also beautiful,

I listened to music as though I had never heard it before. Chills ran over my skin and hearing the combination of music and my friend's voices coming through my headphones put me in a mood of delight and whimsical excitement.   My friend [ ] talked to me in his beautiful Welsh accent and told me he was linking a song called 'Vein of Stars' by The Flaming Lips.  'It's the only song that kinda makes me ok with the idea of dying.  Not that I want to die, but that the peace of it is ok'.  This struck me as the most enveloping and beautiful idea.  I felt the lyrics wash over me and I understood wholly what he was saying.  The LSD trip was both outwardly receptive to the new experiences as well as inwardly reflective on my insignificance of my life in the grand scheme.

My feelings of wanting everyone with me were fairly overwhelming.  I wanted to see their faces, hear their thoughts, know their minds.  Each person came in to the tinychat channel, partially because they knew it was my first trip and partially because they wanted to see how I was faring.  I listened to conversations like I hadn't understood things before.  Words held weight for me.  My dearest confidante and friend, [ ], said something that struck me as insightful and encompassing.  He said, 'I am glad to see you enjoy this trip so much.  It is your first one.  There have been lots of other people who have been on the same trip as you.  But this one is uniquely yours'.  It made me feel the theme of the trip, connectivity, as a universal and yet primal need.

It made me feel the theme of the trip, connectivity, as a universal and yet primal need.

There are always firsts for any user.  The first time you try a drug you can read about it, study it, prepare for it, but in the end you must experience it.  I came into this trip with preconceived notions, like any of us have.  Walls didn't disintegrate into pools of water.  I didn't see my face melt away in a mirror.  The low dose helped give me a gentle nudge into the new realm of psychedelics that I hadn't experienced before.  I wouldn't have traded it for another trip.

At 6am, I was feeling the come down from my trip.  I could feel it wane and yet the feelings of happiness and being at peace with the earth were still very strong.  More than anything, I wanted to share it with everyone.  My friend [ ] recommended that I smoke some weed if I had any.  I found, quite literally, one hit left within my pipe.  A small toke was all that was needed to help me regain some of the high I had felt a few hours before.  I gathered up my laptop, my blanket, my tripping hat (a silly blue owl hat with ear flaps and for some odd reason, a tear drop below its eye) and walked to the backyard to watch the sunrise.  I continued to have my webcam on and talked with everyone about how thankful I was that they had gotten to experience this trip with me.  I listened to the birds sing.  I watched the clouds slowly melt from the sun's kiss.  I looked at the colors of the sky and imagined how it must have been for the first person to ever take LSD.  They saw the same sun rise as I was seeing.  But this trip was uniquely mine.

Exp Year: 2014	ExpID: 102840

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: 31

Published: Jun 4, 2016	Views: 15,409

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LSD (2) : Alone (16), Glowing Experiences (4), First Times (2)


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 1 hit
		 buccal
		 1P-LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   T+ 1:00
		 1 hit
		 buccal
		 1P-LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   T+ 1:00

		 smoked
		 Cannabis

		   T+ 1:00

		 oral
		 Alcohol - Beer/Wine

		   T+ 2:00
		 1 hit
		 buccal
		 1P-LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   T+ 2:00
		 250 mg
		 oral
		 MDMA
		 (powder / crystals)

		   T+ 3:00
		 3 drops
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (liquid)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   160 lb

Substance: 1P-LSD, MDMA, LSD

Anticipations:

Known results from 1 square of 1P-LSD by itself.  Known results of up to 10 doses of LSD by itself as well as in conjunction with up to 0.5g MDMA. Known results from up to 0.7g MDMA by itself.

I anticipate that a combination of the substances, at higher doses, and timed intervals should reveal intensified visual and noise hallucinations.  With the presence of MDMA, I anticipate that the experience will be enjoyable.

Setting:

The weather is sunny, hot, and humid; with a light breeze.  It's 5:00 PM when I arrive home from work and begin experimenting.  I have eaten nothing since lunch time.  I should be home alone until about mid-night.  Situated on a hill with a great view of nature.  I have the freedom to do as I please.  No medications or abnormal substances had been ingested for at least 3 days prior to the experiment.

Dosage:

3 squares of 1P-LSD, 0.25 grams of MDMA, 3 drops of LSD

Methods:

Let 1P-LSD blotter sit in mouth for around 10 minutes before swallowing.  Take 1 square at a time, separated by 1 hour. Wrap MDMA in thin paper and parachute with a drink. Drop 3 doses of liquid LSD onto hand and then lick it off with tongue.

Time Stamps:

5:00 PM

I take 1 square of 1P-LSD and 0.25 grams of MDMA.  I go into the yard and do some chores.

6:00 PM

I return to the house where music is playing and take another square of 1P-LSD.  Tiny vibrations cause a fuzzy effect to my visual senses of everything around me.  I feel intimate and euphoric connections.

I am sweating but very relaxed.  I drink a beer and smoke some weed.

6:30 PM

Noticing vibrant colors more, heightened awareness. I have a feeling of slight anxiety since my motivation to be productive is slipping away. I am definitely feeling in the groove.  Savant is playing on the computer and I increase the volume. I am still sweating heavily. I am only able to concentrate minutely – I cannot seem to direct my focus and concentration; a sense of fait controls it all.  Slight speedy feel – to just dance would be perfect.

7:00 PM

I notice that it’s been another hour and so I take another square of 1P-LSD. Swooshing of movement.  I cannot seem to keep a smile down. I begin to share my experience with a friend and my wife and make them aware of my research trials.

I experience a sensation deeper than hearing – a tickle of something more (like sounds move through my brain causing a sense of feel and a real physical presence within me).

Sounds and atmosphere directly affect the visual appearance of things (colors and shades). There is an Aura of light, color, and sound present in all that I perceive – each directly affecting the other.

7:30 PM

I am absorbed in the trip and really feeling the roll. There is a wave and pulsation to everything in my vision. My limbs and body parts all seem to be far away and small. I am surprised at how well I am able to do things.  The river's current is so strong, yet alteration takes but a twig. Things that are in my vision begin to move and dance freely as if they are not tied to the place where they are. I feel deep rhythm. I have slight stomach discomfort – possibly caused by a shift in music / Ora.

Things move away and get closer on their own as if they are breathing. An in and then out – chattering / shuttering of visuals; like waves of becoming overwhelmed.  I have a huge feeling of being swept away, like so much is coming in, over, and onto me. Colored dots and foreign specks independently invade my entire visual scope. Feeling the need to breath, feeling a flood over all of my senses.  Feeling the need to yawn. Where my mind is clear – it’s crystal clear, everything else seems to be blurred out and hazy. Very acute awareness and deep feelings of emotion and natural universal connection.

7:45 PM

Listening to #1 club hits 2014 Best of Dance. Visual hallucinations are vivid and intense.

8:00 PM

I notice that its 8:00 and take 3 doses of LSD.  I am already completely consumed in the music and the feelings. Genius thoughts go through my mind, but too fast to grab at. To concentrate beyond waoh is very difficult.  Almost consumed in my trip.  I feel a peace though, and a good understanding of what I am getting into. A sense of calm about it all; as, by the second – more and more sensations come in upon me. I am comfortable.

more and more sensations come in upon me. I am comfortable.

8:30 PM

Nearly incapable of focusing outside the trip. Still becoming overwhelmed.

8:45 PM

I am so into the music – I am just sitting and feeling. A truly magical place lies just beyond what I can see. I go to water the plants…

10:00 PM

Finally settling into my state and gaining the ability to focus and concentrate. Feeding the plants was good for helping me to relax and pass the time. I begin straightening up the house – still experiencing intense hallucinations. I can function within the trip.

11:00 PM

I had lost track of time and was slightly startled by the sound of the truck coming up the driveway. My wife arrived home and I went outside to greet her. She was aware of my experiment and was very gentle in our interactions. We spent probably an hour on the porch in the calm cool summer breeze while she played a card game and I mostly stared into space. The stars seemed to be dipping, shooting, and dancing all through the sky. There was a depth dimension to space and I could visualize the vastness of the universe; like how the sky which we see is but a tiny portion of the mass we call space.

12:00 PM

My wife and I ate bagels with cream cheese and watched Game of Thrones in bed briefly before falling asleep. No issue falling asleep or staying asleep.

6:00 AM

Woke up to my alarm with some slight grogginess and fatigue but hardly more than normal. After a cup of coffee and getting some morning chores done, I am ready for the day and off to work like normal. Some slight fuzz brain during the day and a minor headache. Headache relieved by ibuprofen.  No real lasting side effects besides a calm and sense of understanding and fulfillment.

Conclusion:

I am pleased overall with the experiment. I believe that starting a trip with some MDMA does enhance the onset and noticeability of the hallucinations caused by 1P-LSD. I believe that separating the doses of 1P-LSD by 1 hour caused for a hallucination onset that was manageable and not too much at once. Spanning the intake of 1P-LSD and LSD over 3 hours caused for about 4 hours (6PM – 10PM) of peak time.

The presence of music is key in carrying senses into a vivid hallucination state. Next time I would do the dishes before beginning the experiment as unfinished chores caused some anxiety. Any future experiments should include the intentional and scheduled consumption of water.  I believe this would lessen the grogginess and fuzz brain during the following day.

It is likely that my empty stomach aided in the intensification of hallucinations but the feeling of hunger was present, uncomfortable, and distracting throughout the trip.  At these doses, a light meal prior to the intake of substances would not be expected to effect the intensity of hallucinations by very much.

Exp Year: 2016	ExpID: 108676

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 25

Published: Jul 22, 2016	Views: 5,372

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MDMA (3), 1P-LSD (682), LSD (2) : Combinations (3), Alone (16)


		 DOSE:

		 500 ug

		 LSD

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   59 kg

I want to try and give here a phenomenological description of a chemical self-induced psychosis (bad trip), which I experienced about 15 years ago, most likely in 1995. The peak of that experience was the temporary complete eradication of my consciousness and personality in an extreme state of pure anxiety. Following that description, I try and describe the process, that 'rebooted' my personality, and interpret the underlying psychological processes.

My personal background and trauma connected to the event is, that my parents divorced when I was 7 years, experienced a mild sexual abuse from13 to 15 years of age, as I also started drinking and smoking around 13 years. Hash and more 'hard drugs' beginning with the age of 16. By the age of 20 I was an 'acid head', enjoying much time on LSD and psylos (hallucinogenic mushrooms). The experience is located in a house, that had been a squat for over 10 years, but now the occupants were moving out and the owner regained control of his property. The atmosphere was depressed and the future uncertain. I was on my way to this house from our home in the village (Funny Farm), and administered to myself orally the strongest dose of lysergic acid dietylamid (LSD) I ever took, about 500 micrograms.

In the evening, only two of my friends stayed with me in the living room of that house, all others were in the city, partying. I held a big cup of tea in my hands, and felt the chemical starting to exercise its effects. For a moment I had the impression that the cup in my hands was my brain, which I drank from. Then this comfortable warmth spread through my body, a feeling of  'coming home', which signalised the start of the trip. The feeling, that my brain opened up to all knowledge and all wisdom was freely accessible and became a part of myself, and I a part of it.

At one point the walls, floor and ceiling began to merge into each other, the world began to flow like a river. I experienced myself as part of everything and completely integrated in the 'Big Picture', an atom in an ectoplasmic sea, an illuminated being of eternal dimensions. These optical and emotional hallucinations, as well as the 'grand thoughts' have been a general part of my LSD experiences and the reason why I took it.

But then something exceptional happened: The trip hit hard. So hard, that I completely forgot that I was under strong chemical influence. This was usually a safeguard, to remember, while tripping, that it's all part of the trip. Now this was gone.

This was usually a safeguard, to remember, while tripping, that it's all part of the trip. Now this was gone.

 A few weeks before, I read George Orwell's novel '1984', which plays out a terrible vision of the future, with a complete monitored and surveilled world with a secret 'thought-police' and constant war as a means to control society and production. The anti-hero in Orwell's novel was captured by the thought-police and tortured in the Ministry of Love, in room 101. In this room the prisoners are faced with their inner worst fear.

The walls around me acted like bubbles that are about to burst. I found myself in a reality, I could not comprehend. I stood before one of my friends and begged him, 'Help me, please, please help me!' None of them knew that I had taken LSD. Neither did I. Now the anxiety centers in my brain really warmed up, and naked, total fear spread to each cell in my body. I realised, that my two friends were actually members of the infamous thought-police. I knew they came to expose me and torture me in room 101. In panic I stormed out of the living room into the kitchen and took hold of the bread knife. I wanted to defend myself by all means possible. I waited in the kitchen. Nobody came. If they would have come and forced me out, I would have killed them. Then I reasoned with myself and thought, that this was not the solution. They were the almighty thought-police, and already in my head. So maybe I was the problem. And that could be solved by a strike to the heart with the bread knife. But something inside me knew, that this also was not a solution. So I dropped the knife and went back into the living room.

Now I was in room 101. I did not know my greatest fear, but there it was. It filled me out, each part of my body and every angle of my thoughts. No escape. There is no God. The walls were thin as paper, and they were about to tear. And behind the walls was evil. Not a relative evil, but the ultimate, all consuming, destroying, powerful evil. And I lost all hope. On LSD time is perceived very different from the regular, common perception. Sometimes time is not perceived at all. Only eternity. Here and now, nothing else. To my great despair, this was the state I found myself in. A prisoner of the ultimate evil, without hope, without time. Nothing human to be found. My friends were sleeping, and I, or the last rudiments of 'I', were dissolving in eternal horror and hopelessness, all strength drizzled out of my body.

And at last there was nothing more.

REGENERATION AND THE LOGIC-MACHINE

Of course, I cannot describe the 'state of nothingness'. Let the philosophers discuss it.

Consciousness is registering a cramp, there is transparent liquid vomit on the floor.

Consciousness registers 'I' am vomit.

Consciousness registers wooden floor under the vomit.

Consciousness registers 'I' am wooden floor and have always been wooden floor.

These are the first conscious moments after my personality had been dissolved by anxiety. I am laying on one of the sofas in the living room, opposite on the other sofa my friend sleeps. I am registering the whole room, not really sure of what I am and how I fit into this scenario. Slowly my body feeling returns to me. I conclude, that I am not the wooden floor, since 'I' and the wooden floor have very distinct and different proportions. There is a division, a separation between 'I' and the rest of the room. This division came to my awareness by the increasing feeling of my physical form. Very shortly, when my consciousness registered the sofa after the wooden floor, I thought to be a sofa. But this happened almost simultaneously with recognizing myself lying on that sofa, so I had to smile at the thought of 'being a sofa'.

Now I saw my friend sleeping on the other sofa, and went softly to him, kneeling at the sofa. I compared myself to him, and came to the liberating conclusion 'I am a man'. This whole process of regeneration did not take more than a few seconds. That which started the process, I call 'logic machine' and explain it further in my following interpretation of this phenomena.

PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE OF THE LSD-PSYCHOSIS

The whole experience from the beginning of fear to nothingness had a duration of about 3 hours, as we later recapitulated. I now start the interpretation with the last paragraph, 'Regeneration and the Logic-Machine'. In the first parts of seconds of the conscious awakening, there is no form or division. All that registers is one. This I interpret as a revival of the symbiotic state, where the child does not make a distinction between itself and the mother, as described in Mahler's Object Relations Theory (Objektrelationsteori).

The description here goes only as far as to the point of separation, where I draw a line between 'I' and 'you' (my friend on the other sofa).

I thought a lot about, how I came from 'nothingness' to 'I' through the consciousness. 'I am the wooden floor' is an extreme strange state of being, like a small flash of consciousness, that has no critical sense, but accepts all. I believe that the Logic-Machine is part of the origin of my personality, that dates back into my earliest childhood. It registers the surroundings and put them into relation to self. Because I had a healthy and safe childhood up to the first seven years, this part of my personality had not been violated. This fundamental structure made it possible for me to heal the condition the bad trip had caused me. That is, why this condition also not was a real psychosis, but only like a psychosis.

The worst thinkable fear, expressed in the experience with one sentence: 'There is no God' (read: there is no goodness, mercy or love). Psychologically seen, the situation was a reproduction of the divorce. The underlying fear is the fear of separation, which is the base fear of my existence.

That fear was made very real in the divorce of my parents and the intimacy of my childhood had a sudden end. Through the deep impact of LSD, I was able to dive into these areas of my subconsciousness, and was confronted with the inner terms and trauma that resulted from that time.

All relations were hurt or disappeared, when I lost faith in others during the divorce. The separation was reality, with all the ugly consequences, to my subjective experience and perception. For most of my adult life, I believed the divorce happened when I was 10 years old. Later on, through talks with my Grandmother, I learned that I was 7. That meant, I suppressed the first three years after the divorce from my consciousness.

The 'ultimate evil', that destroyed me, is a projection of my own Lifeworld (oplevelses verden), which I split in order to bear with the emotional trauma (Liv Strand). The experience of this evil is a direct result of my fear of separation, not accepting the terms of the divorce, because of the heavy emotional crisis.

When I am in the kitchen during the bad trip, I contemplate suicide. Something inside of me rejects this as a doable solution. When I was in my early teens, I learned the technique of auto suggestion, reading about it and also having my mother explain it to me. I used this for myself, because I had the impression, that life would be extremely difficult to deal with. I adopted subconsciously the attitude, that 'I would never commit suicide, no matter how bad things turned out. No matter how bad things go, it will be good again'. This became a deep conviction for me. And I believe it was the reason why I survived the situation in the kitchen.

The hallucinations and grand thoughts had their origin in the impact of the lysergic acid on the brain and are a natural effect of the acid consumption. Those were not part of my personality, but a desirable and coveted result of LSD intake. That is why this experience was not a real psychopathological psychosis, but merely a pseudo psychosis. I felt inspired by Timothy Leary in these days, who was an American psychiatrist who believed LSD could be used to understand man's mind.

Jan :)

written in Hamar, Norway, 2008.

Translated into English and edited in Haugesund, Norway, 2015

Exp Year: 1995	ExpID: 108950

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 22

Published: Oct 1, 2016	Views: 9,181

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


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 1 hit

		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   T+ 0:35

		 smoked
		 Cannabis

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   165 lb

When I took this drug, I took it because I wanted to change my life.  When I was a child I was badly abused by my best friend.  When I came to college, I was in many ways a person deeply handicapped.  I was painfully shy and struggled to talk to strangers.  I was extremely apathetic and I rarely did my homework.  I had no experience with intimacy.  These were all of the things I believed about myself at that time.

I had read about people having life-changing experiences using acid, and I increasingly felt it was something I would like to do, and that maybe it would effect a positive change in my life.  By this point I had fairly extensive experience with alcohol and marijuana but I had never done any more powerful psychedelics that commonly come to mind such as shrooms, etc.  I told a friend of mine (Arthur) about my interest in acid and, having experience with it, he volunteered to see if he could find some at school so we could do it together.

I didn't know what I really expected out of taking acid.  Vaguely I had hopes that it may turn me into an extrovert or help me become sexually successful, but really I was just looking for a way to turn around what I perceived to be a very negative life trajectory that I was on.  I felt like I wasn't as happy as everyone else and I wanted to be happy like them.

Eventually, my friend Arthur got his hands on two tabs, and we decided we'd take it together one weekend when he was home for spring break.  It was late March and the weather was relatively warm and clear, although it was windy.  Inevitably I felt a little bit of apprehension, but I was mostly relaxed and I wasn't too troubled by ruminating on the coming trip – I stayed very present minded and just went with it.  My only fear was that I would have a bad trip, and even then it was a fear faintly held and I didn't waste any attention on it.

At a little before 1:00 PM Arthur and I took our tabs and we decided to walk out to an area of my campus where there's a farm and some trails in the woods that we thought would be a good place to come up.  I immediately noticed a metallic taste when I took my dose; I knew LSD was supposed to be tasteless, so I mentioned it to Arthur and he said it wasn't LSD but it was probably NBOMe or something similar.  He had taken this specific substance before, he told me, and it was definitely acid.  I wasn't concerned.

As we walked out to the farm I began to feel hot and I was being extremely talkative.  Both of these Arthur attributed to my excitement/apprehension, and he was almost certainly right.  When we got to the woods, there was a fallen branch that we had to duck beneath to start on the trail.  As I went under it, I touched it with my hand, and for a fleeting second I felt this weird connection with ancient humans.  I thought about how people for millions of years had walked through the woods, maybe even these same woods, and had maybe even put their hand on this same tree, in this same place.  This was my first indication that something unusual was beginning.  It had been probably 35 minutes.

When we got into the woods, Arthur took out two joints and we sat down on a dry log.  He told me it was a good idea to smoke while we were coming up, especially for me, so that the transition to altered consciousness would be less jarring.  Before I had even finished my joint, I noticed how unusual this high was in comparison to times I had smoked before.  There was a super-real quality to the world around me, and my thinking felt very abnormal and disordered.  It's very difficult to explain; I want to say that it felt like my mind was crowded and cloudy, almost as if lots of little thoughts were passing under the lens of my awareness

it felt like my mind was crowded and cloudy, almost as if lots of little thoughts were passing under the lens of my awareness

 – never in their entirety, but in little fragments – discrete segments of bigger thoughts, confusing and strange because their meaning was lost entirely now without their full context.  Despite how this description may sound, I was having a very good time at this point and I still was really excited.

When we left the woods and started back to campus, it was very apparent now that I was tripping.  My vision was really wavy and fairly heavily impaired.  I remember we stopped briefly to look out over one of the fields, and it looked like the grass was literally rippling as if it were a liquid surface.  I also had the strange sensation that we were inside a giant snow globe type structure, almost like a big biodome.

When we were back on campus Arthur and I were walking towards my dorm, talking about what we wanted to do.  I suggested we should buy snacks, but when he asked me if I felt I could handle interacting with the employees, I felt an abrupt apprehension.  I began to think I probably couldn't handle it at all, and I imagined it going very wrong.  At this moment, there was a kid in a grey hoodie with a backpack walking towards us on the sidewalk.  His hood was pulled up.  As he passed we made eye-contact, and for a moment I had the sensation that we were in a wintery, Eastern European type city; I could imagine as if there were big concrete buildings on either side of the road, and light flurries of snow falling all around in the air, and a sky blotted out with heavy white clouds.  We passed each other and the vision faded.

This was an extraordinary experience, really beyond my ability to rationalize or make sense of, and I immediately told Arthur I thought we should just go back to my dorm and relax for a while.  When we got back to my dorm, the first thing I noticed was how heavily distorted my vision was.  My hallway looked like a funhouse, as if it were twisted into a spiral.  As best I could, I navigated us to my room and maneuvered inside.

We both sat down.  I opened up my laptop and Arthur suggested I should play some music.  Immediately, I was deeply disillusioned and even perhaps unsettled by the sound of music.  It sounded depressingly flat, dull, and lifeless – far worse than I typically felt listening to music on weed, worse even than I felt listening to music sober.  I wasn't into the music at all, and I found it hard to even concentrate on.  After only a few songs, I stopped playing it.

Feeling markedly more anxious now after my musical debacle, I went online and, partly for the tongue-in-cheek 'trippy' factor, I decided to read The Waste Land by TS Eliot.  This proved to be a similarly bad decision.  I found myself disturbed, depressed, and generally frightened by reading the poem.  I had an uncontrollable, unpleasantly intense empathy with the words, and I found myself being emotionally deflated by this surreal, devastated, fractured, dark world being spoken of.  I thought about the emptiness of it all, about how these Victorian era people were all fake cardboard cutouts of people, living entirely through rituals they used to keep themselves comfortable while the internal issues they couldn't deal with sucked Europe down into an era of war and a cold cultural vacuum.  Very upset, I closed my laptop.

Arthur and I decided we should watch some TV.  At this point I was beginning to feel a definite claustrophobia.  My dorm is not very large, and my roommate and I were not much enamored of interior decorating, so the walls were essentially just blank plaster with conspicuous pipes poking out of the ceiling in some places.  It felt industrial in a terrible way.  All I wanted now was to relax and laugh a little, so we turned on cartoon network.

On cartoon network they were showing Adventure Time.  I love this show, but it turned out to be a very poor choice while on acid.  The episode we tuned into was one in which this elephant character (can't remember her name) has some apples stolen from her, and the protagonists go looking for them so she can bake an apple pie.  Adventure Time is a trippy show, and this is a notably surreal episode.  What winds up happening is the elephant lady finds the apples hidden in her own cupboard, and incredibly, she calls the police on herself since she evidently stole her own apples.  At the time, this freaked me out, because it was such a strange story and I couldn't tell if it was really happening or if it was some crazy hallucination I was having.  I remember I kept asking my friend, 'is this really happening?' 'is this real?' over and over again, and to make matters worse, he largely wasn't responding to me or he would just say 'I don't know'.

The episode ended, and another show came on.  This was some kind of live-action show that apparently is a mixture of comedic skits and candid-camera type pranks done by a group of photogenic teens.  I was already unsettled at this point and my mood did not improve watching this show.  It had a kind of 'wacky' vibe, with a lot of fast cuts and kooky effects, that made it stressfully inconsistent and all over the place.  I couldn't settle into whatever was going on screen before it would switch again.  To me in my altered state, each new narrative or skit they would jump to seemed bizarre and meaningless, like self-contained pieces of disturbing art, unrelated to each other and making no collective sense.  I was specifically very frightened by this one prank they featured where I guess they had a bunch of grown-ups gathered together under the auspices of watching a concert, but instead of actual music being performed one of the cast members stood on stage and delivered this kind of weird belching or growling sound.  A sizeable number of audience members had apparently asked the network to conceal their identities (lol) so their faces were blurred out; the collective effect of these things was, at the time, incomprehensibly disturbing.  I began to also hallucinate (I think?) that there were black bars drawn across the eyes of various audience members, as you might see in redacted photos of crime victims or something like that.  Beholding this hallucination was perhaps the most unsettled that I felt during the entire trip.

At some point I eventually went back on to my laptop to try and listen to music, thinking that upbeat songs might improve my mood.  Unfortunately, music remained 'upsetting' (this is the best word but still not a good one) and to make matters much worse, the album art of the song I was listening to featured a mug shot of Frank Sinatra from when he was apparently arrested as a young man.  The association with crime was negative in itself, but I also hallucinated at this time that there was a black bar drawn across his eyes as well, like the people on the TV.  This little experience put me close to a state of outright despair, and I had a terrible body anxiety, kind of like a restlessness.

Around this time I have trouble putting events in exactly the correct order.  I know that at some point, some of my friends who lived on the same floor as me came over to my room to see what we were doing (they knew that I had taken acid earlier in the day).  What I can't remember is whether or not Arthur and I had already gone outside and come back in before they stopped by my room.  Let me tell the events in the order of most emotional coherency.

So after we had watched Cartoon Network for a while, I was miserable and very anxious in every sense, as I have already said.  During the period when we were in my dorm room, Arthur had also frequently mentioned his sense of unease to me as well, so we were both feeling similarly.  At some point he suggested that we should step outside for some fresh air.  I happily agreed and we went downstairs to go sit outside near this cool little gazebo in the middle of my residence area.  Almost instantly after we had left my building, my mood began to improve.  I especially enjoyed the sun, which was out and shining brightly, and it brought my mood up in a way I can't really describe.

We were just sort of sitting there on the bench, not really saying much, straight chilling, and as we did so my mood continued to get better and better.  Pretty soon, I was actually feeling better than baseline – I was feeling really great!  A big stupid smile took over my face as I just sat there on the bench and let the sun shine on me.

A big stupid smile took over my face as I just sat there on the bench and let the sun shine on me.

  I began to feel a rush inside of me, exhilarating, like a pent up energy.  I don't remember exactly how the thought came into my mind but I remember I started to explain, with great enthusiasm and euphoria alike, to Arthur how the meaning of life is whatever you want it to be.  For some reason, this terse kernel of knowledge excited and uplifted me so much.  It felt so simple and intuitive, and I couldn't believe that there were people who asked themselves what the meaning of life was and wondered about the point.  The point is whatever you want! I thought to myself.  It's completely up to you!  If you think the point of life is to travel the world then the point is to travel the world and if you think the point of life is to eat as much cheese as possible then that's the point of life, to eat as much cheese as possible (I thought exactly this).  It was so beautifully simple.  It was perfect, and I know it's true.

At some point – not exactly sure where in the chronology of things – we were in my dorm room and my friends came in, like I had said.  I'm not sure if this happened only one time or if it happened a few times, I think probably the latter.  The highlight of this part of the experience was when I had gotten an inspirational burst of thought, just like the one I had outside of the bench – which makes me think this might have happened after that experience.  But regardless, I had this sudden and powerful thought ('insight' is probably the better word) about how the world is made.  I conceived of everything as part of a great spectrum, between two extremes, of absolute perfection and absolute imperfection.  Absolute perfection, I realized seamlessly and without manual reflection, is God.  And absolute imperfection represents the no-essence, having no energy, no character, no qualities, no mass, nothing.  And all life, I felt, was engaged in a constant struggle to move toward perfection – everything, all the time, is moving toward a state of perfection.  And perfection is so much a part of our 'quest' as humans that it defines what we are all about, and all the things we paint, and build, and write, are attempts to capture perfection that we discover in the world around us.  Nobody paints an ugly mountain, I think I might have said literally.  They paint beautiful mountains, the ones that speak to us because of their perfect quality.  And it just made so much effortless sense to me.

I explained all this to my friends, our sober visitors.  They did not take me seriously and generally did not engage with my idea.  I remember in all of my interactions with them during the trip I always felt this awkward sense of separation from them.  They didn't get the things I was trying to talk about and they didn't try to.  To them it was a joke.  It frustrated me until I let it go and focused myself internally.  We did not actually spend much time with them.  I remember Arthur specifically did not like having them around very much because they upset his mojo.  He is very zen and he likes his tranquility.

Another thing that happened at some point is that Arthur and I took a walk.  I think after we had come back inside for a while we grew restless again and embarked on another soothing sojourn into the natural world.  At first, this walk was extremely stressful.  I remember I was very agitated by the traffic going by as we went down the sidewalk.  The cars exuded an air of great menace and danger to me.  At one point we went across a crosswalk and it was a hellish nightmare of a three-second experience.  There was an indescribable amount of body tension and there was this big SUV type car inching through the intersection as we crossed which put me on the highest alert.  I was intoxicated by drugs, so I wasn't even sure if I was supposed to cross or not and I was deathly afraid of breaking the rules and thus getting hit.  Eventually, we reached this kind of enclosed neighborhood near my building and I calmed down.  It was peaceful there and very wooded, with no cars.  I don't think anything of note happened on this walk – we went a little ways until we were purged of our anxiety and then we started back.

Eventually, my friend Douglas who had just finished moving back onto campus came over to see how we were doing.  We sat down with him at a picnic table just outside the room to my building.  I remember he told me how large my pupils looked at the time.  It was around dinner time so the three of us headed off to the dining hall which was just across the street from my building.

One of the big takeaways from the dining hall was that food was very bland.  I was reasonably hungry, but every bite that I took of my pizza was just really bad.  Again, the word I want to use here is 'disappointing' or 'upsetting'.  I think the big thing I need to communicate here is that substantially the reason why it was a bad experience was because I felt let down, like it failed my expectations.  I had had pizza before and loved it – I love pizza!  This time the pizza was bland and chewing was a huge chore.  It upset me that the pizza was not tasting and feeling good like I had always known it to do.

Also in the dining hall I experience some not-insignificant paranoia.  There was a person sitting at a table on the other side of the room and a few rows back from where I was, who I thought was watching me.  I was afraid that he was going to beat me up.  There was no reason at all for thinking this, except that he was a little intimidating physically, but I kept thinking that we were making eye-contact and that he was staring at me angrily.  Nothing ever came of this and we left the dining hall after I gave up on finishing my food.

After eating, we went back to Douglas' dorm which was on the other side of the campus.  We spent a little while there playing Mario Kart and listening to music.  Music remained dull, although at this point I was definitely coming down.  After chilling a while Douglas decided to smoke a bowl so the three of us all headed out to the woods, where we had originally gone after dosing, so he could smoke.

On the way there it was growing dark.  In this period I experienced some of my last 'trippy' thoughts, prominently including the sensation that eventually 'everything will happen' because of the infinite nature of time.  Arthur countered that an infinite system doesn't work in this manner.  I argued that because the universe continually contracts, reinvents itself, expands, and then contracts and regenerates again, surely after a certain point enough unique universes will have generated for every conceivable possibility to have manifested itself in reality.  I think my point was dismissed as naïve.

In the woods, Douglas smoked, Arthur was chatting with him, and I sort of went off a little bit (not very far) into the woods to think.  I was really enjoying looking at trees and running my hand along the bark.  Suddenly I had my last great burst of thought.  I had a vivid and exciting vision of the Ancient Mediterranean and hoplites and sun-bleached walls of stone, and for whatever reason I burst out saying that Hannibal (the Carthaginian statesman) did not really lose to the Romans after all, because we still remember him and everything he did to this day.  My point was received with the polite appreciation of true stoners.

It was dark when we got back to Douglas' room.  At this point I was no longer feeling any of the effects of the drug from before.  Instead I began to feel some after-effects, most notably including an excruciating vasoconstriction in my legs which is probably one of the most uncomfortable things I have ever felt in my life.  I was also feeling very 'out of it' and disconnected from everyone else.  When I got back to my dorm, my roommate was there with some of the people from my building.  They talked while I stayed mostly silent.  I felt so different from them, so much not a part of what they were doing and talking about and their activities.  It was profound.  That night, it took me a long time to fall asleep.

When I woke up in the morning I felt a little groggy, not dissimilar to the feeling I get after using marijuana the night before.  During the day I experienced no major side effects.

This experience had a long-term impact on me, specifically with respect to my use of marijuana.  Speaking only of this substance in itself, I found it to be a very clean and cerebral trip.  There were some visuals early on but they were not the prominent part of the experience.  The effects of this drug, for me, basically manifested as flashes of thought or 'insight' that came into my head without effort.

Exp Year: 2013	ExpID: 106589

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 19

Published: Nov 5, 2016	Views: 8,809

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LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Nature / Outdoors (23), First Times (2), General (1)


		 DOSE:

		 15 mg
		 oral
		 Pharms - Escitalopram
		 (daily)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   125 lb

So far I have tripped a few times in the last year, once before I was on medication and then again after.

Both times I took 1 tab around 10 am.  My first trip was very intense, I was out camping and had an incredible experience being in nature.  At the time my anxiety and depression was in a pretty good state so I felt safe to trip even with my mental health conditions.   I had quite a few good days and there was nothing heavy weighing on my mind.   The entire trip was positive.  I didn’t want to sit back and do too much thinking, that was one specific goal I had discussed with my boyfriend just to be safe, but the day was full of exciting activities so I never got stuck in my own head.  It certainly helped to be with my boyfriend for the day.  He knows my conditions very well and knows what to do if I ever need help (even while tripping).  This made me feel incredibly safe so if things started to go south I wouldn’t be lost in my mind.

My second trip was a few weeks ago.  I’ve been on Lexapro for about 6 months now and my current dose is 15 mg taken at night.  Again, I took one tab and embarked on a fantastic adventure.  I did notice my trip was less intense.  The first time I felt like I was on another planet and the second time I was much more aware of my surroundings.  I did notice my visuals were less by a lot, but I definitely felt the feeling of being on a trip.  It felt more emotional than visual.

I did notice my visuals were less by a lot, but I definitely felt the feeling of being on a trip.  It felt more emotional than visual.

  I was able to do a little more thinking this time and got to look at my depression from another angle.  However, I felt very safe to do this and I conversed with my boyfriend about it beforehand to make sure we were on the same page and he could keep an eye out.

I did not notice any after effects of the acid on my depression/anxiety on my first trip.  However after the second one, it relieved my symptoms for about 2 days and then I had a bout of depression for about a week that was stronger than usual.

Exp Year: 2016	ExpID: 109504

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: 23

Published: Nov 18, 2016	Views: 6,773

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LSD (2), Pharms - Escitalopram (304) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Depression (15), Combinations (3), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		 oral
		 Alcohol - Beer/Wine

		 1 hit
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   repeated
		 smoked
		 Cannabis

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   70 kg

Setting: New England- Australia.

Mindset: Apprehensive but open minded, had previous high dose LSD experiences twice in the month prior to trip that had been very thought provoking and strange.

It was Christmas Eve and my partner and I had decided to spend it away from our families and closer to nature. We had travelled out of town to our favourite spot. It was a hot summer day but you could feel in the air that in the afternoon we would have a thunder storm. The area we were in was beautiful it was mostly open pastures nestled between the mountains there were very few people around. Creeks, rivers and brooks weaved the valley floor and we spent most of the morning exploring Indigenous sites in the surrounding valley.

We had lunch at the local pub and a few beers before dropping the acid in the early afternoon. These were by far the strongest tabs I have ever had and I cannot even guess what the dose was. But one tab was enough to catapult me toward another reality. Prior to tripping I had some reservations about the coming weather. The clouds were looming large and thunder was echoing in the distance. However, common sense was outweighed by a desire to dive deeper into hyperspace. Previous experiences with this batch of tabs had yielded vivid, Aztec like sacred geometries that I have since experienced simply using Cannabis. (Maybe some HPPD? Either way it's quite pleasant)

As we dosed up and rolled out the picnic blanket we sat watching some cattle graze in an adjacent field. I checked my phone and sure enough the icons begun to morph and dance on the screen 'This is it' I thought. As the trip really started to accelerate I had a feeling that I was heading into an alien unknown. It was at this point the storm begun. A light rain fell and for the most part it was pleasant but as the acid kept increasing in intensity the rain become more of a menace. Eventually the rain picked up and we (having no shelter besides a small tent) decided to sit in the car and wait it out. Hardly an ideal place to trip. We sat in the car and watched the cattle unfazed by the storm. I had hoped that the storm would pass and we would be able to sit outside as the damp air and hot weather had made the car somewhat of a sauna. However, the rain increased in intensity. I sat there thinking 'here they come' feeling as though a presence was breaking through reality to try and make contact. My visuals were at first closed eyed only, small black squares had started to appear and spin rapidly forming complex geometric patterns. They seemed to invite me to follow them and I refused, instead focusing on other things and steer the CEVs. Failing to shake the black squares I opened my eyes and stared at the rain falling on the windshield. The rain slowly became overtaken by the 'pattern' a common experience we had both had staring at our bathroom wall whilst tripping.

The Pattern: A cobweb like image that becomes apparent particularly on textured surfaces on moderate LSD doses. It appears to spread centrally from the visual field in a t like configuration. Prolonged focusing on the pattern tends to increase it's intensity and slowly it spreads to fill the visual field entirely and interact with the surrounding environment. The pattern for me is associated with information being transferred.

So at this point I was seeing 'The Pattern' then those little black squares became apparent in the raindrops and they began to align along the vertices of The Pattern.

At this point my partner was enjoying watching the cows whilst I was fighting back a complete breakdown of my reality. I knew the experience was becoming too intense for me to resist so I just decided to go with it.

I just decided to go with it.

 After a while I felt the intensity drop slightly and I became more comfortable with the head space I was in. The Pattern persisted but the 'pulling' sensation from the squares had stopped. In fact, they seemed to have retreated. By now the body high was intense, I felt hot, thirsty and my whole body felt like it was glowing. As we had been tripping for about an hour or two now we had decided to smoke a J at what we estimated was the peak of the experience. Previous experiments with Js and Acid have resulted in an electrified feeling with synaesthesia, colour splitting and increased 3D open eyed visuals. We were keen to replicate these effects and observe them in further detail.

The rain was still pouring but the car was becoming uncomfortable so we suited up in the most 'rain proof' clothing we had. None of which bar one rain coat was actually weather proof. However, we had hit our tripping stride and took it all as part of the fun. We set out with J in hand to smoke by the river and enjoy the light show. Basically, from here on out the rain just continued to increase in intensity.

Once we had found a nice tree to stand under we lit our little dude up and happily blazed it whilst staring into the bushland. This is where it got weird. I started to see the Pattern again so I asked my partner what they were seeing. They described to me that they were seeing the bathroom wall pattern spreading out over everything. I told them I saw the same thing. Then in the centre of the pattern an Icosahedron/hexagon like shape begun to emerge it was spinning and covered in 'Aztec' patterns I described it to them and they reported seeing it too. Fascinated by the shared visual experience we kept discussing the pattern and the shape we were seeing. At this point I felt as though we had entered some kind of 'Goosebumps' Episode. Two kids, sneaking out, smoking weed, seeing an alien object. This thought really stuck in my mind and basically consumed my reality from here on out.

As we observed the visual phenomena I noticed that the shape had begun replicating and it now formed a grid (if you search on Icosahedron grid you'll see some similar depictions of what we saw). My partner also reported seeing this grid emerge - we kept relaying to each-other our experiences and what we were observing. The grid appeared to expand infinitely in all directions through the earth and up into the sky. We stood on sections of the grid as we saw it and continued to confirm what we were each observing. As we continued to examine the visual phenomena we were experiencing we both saw a black square emerge from the centre of a section of the grid. I asked my partner what they made of it and they said it was ‘everything, all religion, all life, all beliefs, all things’ I confirmed that was the same impression I was getting. Spooky.

At this point I had a flash where I could see a torus with lights ascending and descending it, it was a representation of the cycle of life and death and the infinite nature of existence and consciousness. As the flash passed the black square became much larger and formed a tunnel at this point we decided to move on because we were both getting really tripped out and felt like we were being beckoned by the grid. We also realised that we were soaked from the rain and should probably find shelter. As we turned to walk back along the road to the camp site I observed the grid in the sky but in the sky between two mountains there was a large Icosahedron it stood out of the grid and took on significance of its own in my mind. On this return walk things became more and more intense. The pooling water on the ground was glowing green, blue and magenta. It appeared that these three colours were being projected off everything around us and were streaming into our bodies. The colours were made up of small packets of hollow squares that spun in response to external sounds.

It was at this point I felt that we were being followed by ‘something’. I had an unshakeable feeling that there was an object floating above us – like that green spinning gem from The Sims or something and it was trying to communicate. We headed back to the camp site and took shelter under a pagoda. I was now in full trip mode teetering on the edge of reality. We stood holding each other trying to look as straight as possible. We both felt as though we were ascending that we were about to take off and go somewhere else. By now I had completely bought into my Alien abduction narrative. Piecing together the puzzle that we had found ourselves in. We had gone camping in bad weather conditions, ill prepared, dressed in appropriately and had taken psychedelics I thought to myself “maybe this is it, this is how you exit our reality- this is what happens to those couples that report being abducted” this idea less than impressed my partner and I had completely shit on their trip and spun them into a negative space. As for me I was convinced that we were about to be abducted. Behind my head I could feel them, it felt as though sharp surgical instruments were probing my mind, crunching grinding sounds filled my skull. I could smell DMT, I felt bubbles travelling up my spine and through the back of my neck,

I closed my eyes and the tunnel that I had seen smoking DMT appeared, peering through was an odd face. The rising tones and high pitched ringing set in and I felt that same beckoning feeling again. I resisted. I didn’t want to go (even though I really did). I knew that if I went with it I would collapse, I was already freezing cold and soaking wet. There were other campers around and I’d draw to much attention if I just collapsed. Besides the only explanation I’d be able to offer for my present condition would be Aliens and that would surely end with a trip to the emergency department. My partner was now quite concerned and suggested we move elsewhere. We returned to our tent to lie down but found it flooded. To me this was another synchronistic sensation- they wanted us to go with them- my partner despite how scared they later told me they were handled this all really well. We ended up back in the car- in our underwear, drying ourselves out and trying to survive. In the car continued to have incredible visions of the grid, of eternity of life, death and rebirth.  Eventually, after nearly 8 hours of insanity I felt able to sleep- so when the rain stopped we went back to the tent and begun the long spiral back to earth.

Some of the other sensations experienced through this trip involved complete disassociation with reality, lost time, a very real sense that reality was a projection of the mind, that my partner and I were somehow one and that we shared a reality and a destiny, that everything was an illusion, that we could ascend to become part of the grid, consciousness is eternal and somehow linked to the grid.

Long strange trip.

Exp Year: 2016	ExpID: 110183

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 25

Published: Mar 29, 2017	Views: 12,329

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LSD (2) : Nature / Outdoors (23), Entities / Beings (37), Difficult Experiences (5), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00

		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   T+ 4:00
		 200 mg
		 oral
		 MDMA
		 (powder / crystals)

		   T+ 0:00

		 oral
		 Alcohol

		   T+ 8:00
		 200 mg
		 oral
		 MDMA
		 (powder / crystals)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   200 lb

Introduction:

It was early May during a visit to New Orleans for a close friend’s bachelor party that coincided with JazzFest. I had previous experience with MDMA, shrooms, and hippyflipping, but had never met up with Lucy beforehand. My close friends were a mix of experienced LSD users and debutants like myself, so the groom and I coordinated with a college friend of mine that could acquire a fair amount. I’m generally an optimistic person with an openminded worldview that rides the line between extrovert/introvert, and I can often be a little too rational/logic focused in how I see the world (dorky engineer).

I flew in the day prior to the bachelor party guys and in the safety and comfort of my friend’s house, who provided everything, had my first LSD experience. Through uncertainty about the early onset effects, we re-dosed twice throughout the night (+1.5h and +4h) and I ended up having the most abstract philosophical conversations with her about life and self. Ultimately I lost complete touch with where, why, how, and caught myself in magical loops of fragmented sensations of time and space. It was the most intense experience I’ve ever had, in an interestingly beautiful way. Fast forward 15 hours and the effects had finally waned down.

The Main Show:

The real intriguing experience came the second day of the weekend with the bachelor party guys. After describing my experiences to them I felt confident that if I could handle a pretty moderate dose for a novice in a private setting that a low dose in public would be more than manageable, and the thought of candy flipping entered my mind—since we managed to obtain a couple grams of really nice crystalline MDMA along with a 10 strip for the weekend. The blotter strip was not perforated, so each of us tore a roughly square-ish size strip to have on hand to go to Jazzfest. I first dosed mine—actual dose is unknown (but the experienced guys later say it was really strong stuff)—at 245pm during a beautiful sunny afternoon and some funky brass band lighting up the crowd.

As a dorky engineer, I’ve developed a habit of using my phone’s stopwatch to keep track of my drug experiences after consuming anything. I easily get lost in the moment and with MDMA, shrooms, or even a lot of pot, will experience various amounts of time dilation. My stopwatch is the foundation to keep me grounded to the reality of the experience if need be; a reminder that it is in fact a temporal experience if it becomes uncomfortable.

At +45min I started to feel a slight body high coming on. It began to feel like I was floating within my body. Shortly after the first band stops playing and we walked to another tent to see some blues. I dosed about a half hour after everybody else, so the group was coming up together in staggered stages. We sat down in rows of seats in the blues tent and quickly my buddy and I decided that we’re already too high and loving the music to be stagnant and sitting down. At +1h15min (ish?) three of us split from the group and head to another stage to see some bluegrass. I began to feel a little anxious about how floaty I was feeling. My body was functioning fine, I could walk just fine, but I had minimal grasp upon what my body was in terms of space anymore and it felt somewhat numb. I could see my extremities and had heightened tactile sensation but I was only really aware of that touch when I was focused on touching something.

When 430pm rolled around we decided that we should get a spot at at the main stage to see Stevie Wonder. I bought a drink on the way and spent several minutes trying to focus on counting my money before walking up to the counter. The entire world had the same idea, and the three of us mistakenly believed that we could see holes in the crowd that would allow us to move to the opposite side of the stage. I have no idea how long it took us to move to where we did, but we were immediately engulfed in a sea of strangers and energy that became entirely intolerable. I was floating through the world and felt immense anxiety and claustrophobia. Voices from people around me no longer were comprehensible and I had to focus immensely upon the stage to prevent a panic attack from building up.

We finally all looked at each other with a common understanding of the situation and decided to escape. I don’t think I would have been able to connect my feelings with the physical process of crying from how anxious I was, but it was one of the strongest desires to withdraw that I’ve ever had. My mind felt connected to the present moment in fragments and abstraction

My mind felt connected to the present moment in fragments and abstraction

 but was lost from perceptions of past and future. In hindsight I know it became a loop of feeling frightened from the tight crowds (literally we were squished against people on all sides), reminding myself that I was on drugs and it wasn’t forever, deciding that I was okay and would be out of there soon, completely forgetting my previous thoughts, and repeating the process. The fucking Stevie Wonder Incident nearly led to a complete breakdown around thousands of people.

After an eternity (530pm, +3h) we managed our way out and I felt an immediate sigh of relief. The visuals had been going strong for a while but were limited to heightened colors, pattern shifting, and some shapes breathing. Somehow the rest of our group ran into us in an effort to get into the crowd just as we escaped. We walked to the next stage to see Snoop Dogg, which was much less crowded and a lot more relaxed. Everything was improving but it took me a while to recover from the anxiety beforehand and move onward with the trip. My hearing was distorted and the voices of strangers were difficult to really comprehend. It was like my energy was in tune with our group, the music, and natural world sounds, but was filtering out others. Quickly we determined that the sound quality was poor at this stage and we ventured onward to see Meghan Trainor, which despite being all about that bass, ended up being the most beautiful part of the day. The crowd had amazing energy that we all tuned into really quickly and we began to dance through the late afternoon sunshine.

When my stopwatch read +4h I took 200mg MDMA. After 30min the festival was over and we decided to walk from the fairgrounds to the French Quarter to see our next show (Greensky Bluegrass) at the House of Blues. I feel kind of aloof to the world walking through the streets. There are immense colors on all of the houses and vast disparities between dilapidated shacks and stately mansions along the way. Someone suggests food, which sounded completely repulsive, despite only eating breakfast so far. All of a sudden (+4h45min?) the pulsating world around me became a vibration of color and light as the MDMA began to take effect. I am not only looking at brilliant murals with street music all around me, but the world is an impressionist painting. All around me I see vibrant pastel colors that flow with dancing lines, blurred transitions, and breathe in the vibrations of the world.

I, am, impressionism.

Life is fully saturated. How can this be? My mind becomes clear as the MDMA overrides the fog of confusion from the acid and coincides with complete euphoric levitation. I transcend. My abstract oneness with the world undergoes a metamorphosis. To what I’m not sure. Still my awareness of self and space is warped and abstract, but instead of slight anxiety toward losing my body I feel like I fly through space and adapt my body to the energy and feelings of objects and colors around me. Our walk must have been several miles as it became dark. Street lights highlight the beauty and surreal nature of the world around me. I am still entrenched in the fleeting focus and abstract experience of Lucy but with a filter of clarity and outward confidence that jettisons me into conversation with everybody whose energy I am drawn toward. Our adventures end up in small alleyways with brilliantly lit art stalls that are overflowing with life, beauty, and textures that speak to me.

When we reach the House of Blues we have a couple drinks and I fumble my way through the entrance in slight confusion about how I get in. I am overconfident in my logical abilities. The opening act, a solo guitar player, moves my ears through the universe as the world reverberates in pulsations. I don’t know if it was synesthesia per se, but the sound manifested itself in visual vibrations from the building and people. At +8h I decide to re-up the MDMA and have another 200mg. I don’t feel any transition between the molly doses and the next several hours are spent dancing in tune with the world around me. This is easily the most MDMA I have ever had in one day, but it never feels like I’m rolling too hard and out of it like one might see at a lot of festivals. It’s a gentle crescendo of blissful existence that at +10h begins to come down from the psychedelic visuals gradually. My spatial awareness became more focused but remained slightly fragmented, in a strange sense that left me feeling exposed to the world but not vulnerable. At +12h the acid trip has waned and left me at the same time that the show ends.

Conclusions:

We wandered out into the streets of New Orleans and with a subtle roll from the MDMA feel like the day's experiences and journey was a complete catharsis. From the anxiety and introspective abstraction of Stevie Wonder to living in the world of Renoir I am left with a profound sense of beauty and bliss for the world and mankind.

I feel comfortable navigating my way through my initial LSD experiences and know that in the future I can consciously navigate my way through the world to prevent/turn around a bad trip segment. My first candy flipping experience had no big come down (aside from sleep deprivation over the whole weekend, and I generally don’t have bad come downs from MDMA either). The solo heavy LSD night, a night of MDMA, and a day/night of LSD/Molly from the bachelor party have left me with a heightened sense of empathy and compassion toward others several days out. Overall it was a beautiful experience that I am curious to explore in a coordinated situation again in the future.

Exp Year: 2017	ExpID: 110444

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 28

Published: Jun 6, 2017	Views: 5,529

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MDMA (3), LSD (2) : Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53), Music Discussion (22), Combinations (3)


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

		   T+ 0:30
		 .5 bowls
		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

		   T+ 1:30
		 .5 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   T+ 5:00

		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

		   T+ 11:00

		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   180 lb

The end of Summer has always been a tough time for me, but this year especially so. My girlfriend had moved away, I was falling behind at work, smoking weed every day, and I wasn’t applying myself in any aspect of my life. I was slowly becoming completely numb to emotions. I’d stop talking to people, including my friends and family, stay up all night, and put off indefinitely any plans to help myself get back on my career track. I couldn’t focus on anything, and my bad habits were getting worse. It came as a huge surprise when I got a text from a good friend M saying she’d acquired some LSD for her birthday and wanted to take it the following weekend.

I’d always bought into rumors about LSD; that it would make me think I could fly or that I’d crack my back years down the road and suddenly be tripping again. I thought of it as an unsafe substance, and was very hesitant to reply to M’s invite. I’d been smoking marijuana for the better part of 5 years at that point, but the only other illegal substance I’d ever taken was about a gram of magic mushrooms a few years previously, which hadn’t been so much of a “trip” as a “pleasant, long lasting buzz”. Still, I was intrigued, and spent a good amount of time researching the effects of LSD and the potential dangers of its use. I was amazed to find how benign it seemed, and every positive trip log I read bolstered my confidence. I decided that it was worth a try, if only for the psychotherapeutic nature of the drug, and that it might be a fun weekend activity.

It was a cloudy October morning when M and I decided to embark on our journey to Wonderland. She’d gone through each room of her house and written notes such as “Think happy thoughts!” and “Bon Voyage!” and on the second floor she’d set up a “trip room” complete with a plasma orb, candles, and a surround sound system. We drove to a local diner and had a big breakfast over discussions about what we wanted out of our trip. We decided we would use it for self exploration and meditation, and that we were determined to bring something back from the experience and not just get fucked up. When we got back to her place she performed a banishing ritual to cleanse the room of negative energy, and we each put a single tab on our tongues (we had been warned it was high potency).

I was quite excited, as I never thought acid was something I’d try, and I really wasn’t sure what to expect. After about half an hour, we weren’t feeling anything, so we shared a bowl of marijuana and put on a standup special featuring comedian Bill Hicks (incredibly relevant). At about T+1.5 hours, we still weren’t feeling anything unusual, so we split another tab and began drawing pictures with colored pencils and markers. It wasn’t long after this that we realized we couldn’t stop smiling. I wrote out the word “ENJOY” and my drawing was getting quite colorful and abstract. M was reciting beautiful quotes by Terence McKenna and drew an image of the winged serpent Hadit around which she jotted down passages from Thelema’s Book of the Law. I’d never had so much fun coloring before, and I was overcome with feelings of joy and well being.

I put on a pair of amber-tinted sunglasses, and noticed that the colors of the room were growing extremely vivid. We saw the walls meeting at strange angles and pictures on the walls all looked skewed and trapezoidal. We looked down at our hands and our flesh seemed to be pulsating and transparent. I felt I could actually see the dark streams of blood flowing through my veins, and my skin was ultra high-definition. I can only imagine what Albert Hoffman (the first scientist to synthesize and accidentally ingest Lysergic acid diethylamide) must have thought of this! We put down the coloring supplies for a minute and went upstairs, because M wanted to change her shirt. I was very happy with my comfortable clothing while on acid. Loose fitting pants, no shoes, and a soft shirt all enhanced the experience.

It was about 3 hours since we’d taken the initial dose, and we could tell we were starting to peak. We left M’s room and headed for the “trip room”, but collapsed with laughter in the hallway and just stared at the walls and ceiling for what seemed like an eternity. The irony that we were lying in a hallway just feet from the “trip room” hadn’t escaped us, but we couldn’t have cared less. We were literally crying with laughter over the simplest things, and I was overcome with a euphoria I’ve never felt from taking a substance, many times more powerful than the low dose of shrooms. We eventually perched ourselves halfway down the staircase, and began a profound discussion about how all matter on earth had once been released from a massive supernova, and that everything we’d ever seen was made of stardust. Though I felt I’d always understood this concept, my altered state of consciousness made it much easier to comprehend, and I couldn’t help feeling a deep oneness with all the world and its inhabitants. I wondered if each star in the Universe held an incredible hyper-conscience and that when they explode, each individual particle retains some of that knowledge and expression, only to coagulate elsewhere as life.

By this time the weather had cleared up and the sun was shining, so we went outside to sit on M’s back deck. I cannot express enough how wondrous and exciting nature seems on LSD. A gentle wind through the grass or trees will make them seem as though they’re breathing, and even something as simple as an insect landing on my arm was fascinating. In light of our previous conversation, I was reminded of my favorite Douglas Adams quote, “Consciousness is the Universe’s way of appreciating itself,” and this rang truer than ever in my mind. We were about 4 hours into our trip now and the sun was beginning to set, creating glorious golden outlines on the few wisps of clouds floating overhead. They would undulate and change direction like someone was painting them in real time, and both M and I were deeply moved by the atmosphere’s shining splendor.

Our discussion moved to the nature of energy, and how every living thing on the surface of this enormous churning engine we call Mother Earth is fueled by energy from the Sun. We were reminded of a quote from the Bill Hicks special we’d watched earlier, “Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is really energy condensed to a slow vibration; that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we’re just imaginations of ourselves.” Every word of this quote made utter and complete sense to me at this point, and it was as though I could see the energy permeating everything around me. Everything from M’s old dog to the neighbors’ backyard barbecue to the squirrels and the trees they lived in seemed like fountains of energy erupting from the surface of the dense mass that is our world. A warm and exceedingly friendly glow enveloped everything and everyone. This was the highlight of my trip, and I remember it vividly.

At T+5 hours we came back inside, smoked some more cannabis, and continued our drawings. We put on music by The Books and other upbeat, happy songs from M’s collection. We each felt like we were 5 years old again, drawing abstract shapes and colorful patterns and letting the pencil flow across the paper wherever it wanted. I was amazed at how easily I could manifest the images in my head, and how seemingly random lines would form new elements to the drawing. I began to draw a mountain and realized it looked more like the outline of a sleeping panther. When M saw this she laughed out loud, and continued drawing brilliant patterns that filled page after page. We made hot chocolate and decided to have a period of quiet self reflection before finding a new activity. This may have been a mistake, as we didn’t have much to distract ourselves from our own thoughts.

We put on the album 'Lateralus' by Tool (one of my personal favorites), and upon hearing the title track our conversation turned to the nature of spirals and fractals. How so many things in nature from waves to snowflakes and even plant life form according to the golden ratio, and how the more you zoom in microscopically or zoom out macroscopically, you’ll discover repeating shapes and patterns, each piece resembling the whole. In fact, even in my picture spirals began to appear all over the place, whether I meant to draw them or not, and I could tell our set and setting was having a strong influence on my thoughts.

At one point, probably around T+6 hours, M disappeared into the bathroom for a very long time. When she finally came out her entire demeanor had changed. Her eyes were darkened and she looked like she’d been through hell. I asked her what was wrong, and all she could say was “the mirror, man, don’t look into the mirror unless you really have to. I’m serious.” Of course, I had to see what was so special about the mirror, and I was not prepared for what I saw. My face looked aged and pockmarked, I couldn’t find an angle in which I looked like my mental image of myself. It was like looking into the eyes of a stranger who bears only a fleeting resemblance to how I’d always seen me. Furthermore I was completely two-faced. One side of my face seemed to smirk involuntarily, giving my countenance disturbingly asymmetrical features. I was profoundly disturbed by this, and when I emerged from the bathroom M confirmed that she’d witnessed the same thing. We tried to ignore this and continue our drawings but the song “Ticks and Leeches” (the darkest, heaviest song on the album) came on. We’d each heard the song a million times and were mesmerized by drummer Danny Carey’s polyrhythmic assault that intros the song, but at this time the sun had almost fully set and the room was quite dark. The whole atmosphere seemed bleak and evil.

We turned the lights up a bit though not all the way, and though we stopped the song midway through we couldn’t find a new song fast enough. At this point we realized the trip was about to take a turn for the worse. I became silent and introspective as I sat on the floor contemplating mortality, while M wandered into the kitchen where I would later learn she became inundated with every tragic and terrible experience she’d ever had in that house. I suddenly found myself unable to communicate even my most simple thoughts. This inability to form sentences frustrated me greatly, and as my thoughts began to race I realized I was trying to tell M that I’d discovered the reason for living, but that it was impossible to describe. I was so close though, and I tried to draw the mental image I had of this grand puzzle that I’d just solved, but I was stopped at every turn by circular logic, and though I was pouring emotions out onto the page I could only get out one word at a time or scrawl a few random circles. Soon I realized that I must sound and look completely insane, so I laughed and crumpled up the page, which made me feel even more insane. I tried to collect my thoughts and repeat out loud the infinite loop that was swirling around in my head, but all that came out were bits and pieces of coherent language with no link in between. I tried again, and realized to my horror that I was saying exactly the same words as before, still devoid of meaning to an audience. M seemed to understand what I was getting at, and this only encouraged me to try again, but again I unintentionally repeated the same disjointed phrases. I was overcome with frustration at this point, and decided that if I burned this crumpled page of notes, it might end my muddled thought process. I grabbed the page and a lighter and went into the kitchen, burning it over the sink and blowing the smoke out the open window. It didn’t help…

Every minute became a day from the Bill Murray film “Groundhog’s Day.” The same thought process would repeat in my head, I would say the same confounding bits of dialogue about how I had realized the meaning of life but could not express it in words, and each time I would utter the word “recursion” the entire process would repeat. However, unlike in that movie, the time between recursions was getting shorter and shorter, and I felt that I was spiraling down into my own head. It was T+6.5 hours now and we were up in the “trip room” with all the lights out, just losing our grip on reality. I tried to write again, but the only word I could write was “Madness” as I realized I must really be going nuts. All of my thoughts were now stuck in an infinite loop that was tightening with each revolution. I began to recall a forum post about some guy who knew someone who tripped so bad he never came down. This thought was trying to overcome all others, insisting that my life was over. I was somehow able to maintain control of my actions despite the chaos going on in my head, and I gestured to M to put on a happy song or cartoon to distract us. She put on “The Angry Beavers,” the theme song of which is so wacky that I laughed out loud at how perfectly it fit with the insanity in my head. I could not have picked a better soundtrack to my own mental demise, and I just lay there on the floor laughing as I experienced complete ego death.

I was no longer myself or anyone I knew. I had completely frozen in time, and all I could think of was that I had become nothing more than a malfunctioning collection of biochemical processes incapable of self-identity. In other words, the lights were on but no one was home. M called her experienced friend, L from whom she’d acquired the acid, and he did his best to comfort us. He agreed with every ridiculous phrase I managed to mutter to myself, and kept reassuring us that he knew what we were going through. This reassurance did nothing more than convince me that acid was some big joke being played on humanity. As if my life to this point had all been a divine test and I’d failed by putting a tiny piece of paper in my mouth. I was completely solipsistic by now, nothing existed outside the turmoil I was experiencing. I was entirely convinced that I could just as likely be babbling to myself in a straight jacket as sitting upstairs in my friend M’s house tripping balls on LSD.

I sent wild texts to another friend of mine, begging him to reassure me that time was still passing and that it would all be over soon. His immediate reassurance that I would come down and his attempts to distract me with humor, coupled with the helpful advice of the sober L’s disembodied voice over M’s speakerphone finally put the spark back in my eyes. Eventually, each new recursion brought small waves of understanding and reassurance that I was still in control, and I slowly built back up my sense of self, brick by brick. L explained to us that acid has the tendency to take any emotion you’re experiencing and turn it up to 11. I tried my best to ignore the ideas that had gotten me into this mess in the first place, I took deep breathes and assured myself that everything was going to get better and that I’d be ok. We went back downstairs, turned on all the lights, and I explained to M what had happened over and over again, each time able to recount a bit more of my thought process and subsequently feeling that much better. We took turns recalling our bad trips and what we each suspected to be potential catalysts. We decided it was a combination of the darkness, the angry music, and the gravity with which M had described her initial mirror experience. As if I knew what I was doing I walked back to the bathroom mirror to have another look and try to reverse the process that had all started just an hour before. As I approached I saw myself from a third person perspective and it felt as though I were walking backward through knee-deep water. This time I smiled from ear to ear in the mirror and was relieved to see my old humble reflection. I urged M to do the same.

After about 15 minutes or so, we thanked our respective trip sitters, and gave each other a huge hug having just survived the dark depths of our minds. We noticed that our drawings had gotten jagged and malevolent just before this heinous mood shift, and all the black colored pencils were worn down to nubs. I was still irked by the sense that time wasn’t passing, and that my thoughts would continue to spiral around and repeat themselves forever, but turning on the TV really brought me back to reality. Something as mundane and familiar as car insurance commercials were now revealing to me that we were still in the same world and that time was still passing as it should. I suddenly remembered why I love TV in the first place, it’s an excellent distraction from reality. I was now content again to finish my drawing, which at this point had become an epic chronicle of my entire trip.

We smoked some more weed, watched movies, and listened to some more light music until 3 in the morning before deciding to turn in. It had been nearly a 12 hour trip in total, and we were both mentally and physically spent. I felt as though my brain had just run a marathon, and my legs were getting numb. I slept like a rock. The next morning before going out to lunch (we hadn’t eaten since breakfast the morning before save some popcorn) we looked at the artwork from our trip. My word “ENJOY” had become “ENJOY THE RIDE,” which I think perfectly describes the mindset one should be in to get the most out of their acid trip. Do not try to control or suppress the drug, or it will break loose and run wild through your mind. Do not underestimate the drug, as it will show you just what it’s capable of. Simply let it take you where it takes you and try to stay positive, stay in the company of friends, light, and mellow music, and don’t focus on having a bad trip or else you may bring one upon yourself. If you do have a bad trip, change your environment, take deep breathes, and try to find a way to anchor yourself to the real world be it through a distraction such as a movie or TV show, or through a friend who can talk you out of your own circular logic cycles. Start a timer if you have one on hand or on your phone to assure yourself that time is passing linearly.

Overall it was a remarkable journey through my brain. I would equate my experience to visiting Six Flags and riding all the rollercoasters. They all have their ups and downs and they’re each intense and exhilarating, but even though the last one makes you throw up your lunch you can still look back on your day and realize it was worth it.

It is interesting to note that the drug seems to have done wonders for my psyche. T+3 days and I no longer feel depressed or hopeless, I’ve gotten more work done per day than I previously had in a week, and I don’t crave marijuana the way I used to. I’m able to focus and speak my mind, and other than a little cognitive weariness the following day, I experienced not a single ill effect from the trip. LSD is indeed an incredible and powerful drug, and I will surely be using it again. However, for me it seems to have the tendency to “pull back the curtain” and shove reality in my face whether I wanted it or not, and any problems I may have suppressed were right there waiting for me.  For now though, I have no regrets and a newfound respect for what I consider both potent medicine and a damn good time.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 93133

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 24

Published: Jul 8, 2017	Views: 7,529

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LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Hangover / Days After (46), Nature / Outdoors (23), Glowing Experiences (4), Difficult Experiences (5), First Times (2)