		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 3 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (cookie / food)

		   T+ 3:30
		 3 g
		 oral
		 Mushrooms
		 (dried)

		   T+ 4:00
		 1 bowl
		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

		   T+ 4:30
		 1 tablet
		 oral
		 MDMA
		 (pill / tablet)

		   T+ 5:00
		 1 tablet
		 oral
		 MDMA
		 (pill / tablet)

		   T+ 9:00
		 1 tablet
		 oral
		 MDMA
		 (pill / tablet)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   135 lb

Esthetic Evolution. The hippest among us describe it as the single most exciting event in our great state of Idaho (although, that’s probably not the most difficult title to attain).  Every year come June the isolated hick settlement of Twin Springs (Population: 5) gets swarmed by a thousand ravers, Burning Man veterans, e-tards, drunkards, acid freaks and other various individuals that the County Sheriffs would most certainly frown upon. Set upon the top of a grassy plateau, with rivers below and mountains above, the scenic location becomes the center for a community built fundamentally on the principle of self-expression, in true Burning Man spirit.  People are given the opportunity to build their own self-contained, autonomous society with its own aesthetic and ethical standards.  Nothing is forbidden.  Everything is permitted.

The sets of music each night go from 7 PM to 7 AM.  I knew that I would need a lot of chemical energy to get through that much music.  The first night I conserved my energy.  I dropped a hit of my sugar cube LSD to gauge its potency.  The trip was average, but I needed a gram-full pot brownie to really get me going.  I went to a sleep at a conservative 4 AM, partly to conserve my energy for the next night, and mostly because there was a lot of THC in my system and I had little choice.  The second night was going to be the main event.  Jedi Flipping.  I’ve found few recorded cases on the mixture of LSD, Mushrooms, and Ecstasy, so I decided it was territory I needed to explore on my own accord.  Besides, who wouldn’t want to be a Jedi?  It’s not like I’d be the only one at the festival completely twisted on hallucinogens.

I had a pretty good inkling of what Jedi Flipping was going to do to me, and I knew it would be above and beyond anything else I’d experienced up to that point.  And, at the ripe old age of 17, I was not exactly inexperienced with mind-bending drugs.  I’d had around 25 mushroom trips, 5 acid trips, and 5 experiences with MDMA (but always in the form of molly before this).  I’d hippy flipped once, candy flipped once, wasted a lot of time getting stoned, and experimented with a few other oddities (Salvia, Morning Glories, Hawaiian Baby Woodrose).  The shit I steered clear of was alcohol (for the most part), opiates, and hard stimulants.  But if it had the potential to be mind opening, I wanted to try it.  Ever since first reading Huxley’s “The Doors of Perception,” in 8th grade, I wanted to chase ultimate psychedelic experience.  In my area, these drugs are by no means easy to come by (although I learned the hard way it’s easy to get ripped off).  I stumbled onto pot in my search, but wasn’t able to get any illegal psychedelics until the summer between Sophomore and Junior year.  Junior year saw great escalation in my psychedelic drug use.  First mushrooms, then acid and ecstasy as they began circulating.  I liked tripping.  I wanted to trip in every possible set and setting, just to see the different directions my mind would go.  I’d trip with small circles of friends, I’d trip at large parties, I’d trip alone, I’d trip while seeing a gig, I’d trip while playing a gig, I’d trip at school, I’d trip in nature, I’d trip at 3D movies, I’d trip any day and any way.

But that’s more than enough about me.

The Esthetic Evolution experience is primarily a social experiment, so it’s just as important for you to get to know my friends.

First there was The Prince of Persia, or Prince for short.  The nickname came from the fact that he’s half-Persian, off-white in a state completely dominated by Caucasians.  Me and him go way back.  Back to the days of the elementary school playground, back to junior high when we first started playing our guitars together, back to starting our first band in high school, and all the while getting into smoking dope, ‘shrooming, and rolling together.  The night of my Jedi Flip would be Prince’s first time on LSD (though not for lack of trying, we’d had experience getting ripped off together too).  He’d done ‘shrooms quite a few times, so I told him to go ahead and opt for two hits for optimum visceral experience, and he planned to take his ecstasy on the comedown.

Next we have J-Nug, quite possibly my favorite person in the world, and certainly the funniest motherfucker I’ve ever met.  Most people tell jokes, but J-Nug lives a joke (and at everyone else’s expense).  Many who meet think he’s a douchebag, which probably stems from his habit of insulting everyone around him.  But largely, it’s a persona he’s taken on for his own personal amusement.  Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and wearing a superhero’s cape around the festival, he looked like the high, drunken badass he was.  Even though he’d very conspicuously spoken about his love of “gettin’ faded” for years, it wasn’t until a few weeks before Esthetic that he actually began drinking or smoking, and he certainly wasn’t at a stage where he was getting into ‘shrooms, ‘cid, or X.  Still, considering he was a relative newcomer to substances he could hold is own with the best of them.

Then there was Jersey.  He’s from Jersey.  And he’ll let you know (usually by saying “I’m from fuckin’ Jersey!”).  He’s just about as nice a kid as you’ll ever meet.  However, as much as we like hanging out with him sober, when you put any amount of mind-altering substance in his body and he can turn into a total babbling idiot.  He becomes like a horribly well-intentioned retard you don’t have the heart to tell to shut up, projecting every goddamn thought that pops into his head.  He had gotten earned some derisive nicknames in his time.  One of them being “The Two-Beer Queer,” fairly indicative of Jersey’s chronic condition of total lightweightedness.   But Jersey was also convinced that he wanted some LSD for the night.  I wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea, but there was really only one way to find out.  “What the hell,” I figured, “if you’re good for the money I’ll give you a dose.”  As J-Nug so eloquently put it, “The One-Drag Fag frying on acid?  That is gonna be a fucking sight.”

And finally, there was D.  D doesn’t have any dumb nicknames, so I guess he just gets to have his name shortened to one letter.  He’s the one who gave us a ride up in his big ol’ Suburban, “The Red Rocket.”  He was Jersey’s best friend and the group Mom, too.  Always wanting to know everyone was all right.  If you were on powerful drugs and you weren’t in D’s sight, then in his mind you had either died or were in the process of dying. The top priority was to ensure your safety.  I’m not sure what the trip would’ve been like without him there to look out for us.

Enough background for you?  Shit man, you have no patience.  I’m getting to the exciting stuff.

________________________________________________________________________

Saturday, June 19 2010.  7:30 PM.

We all take our acid.  Sugar cubes dissolve nice and quick, it’s not like blotter where I'm swirling the tabs around under my tongue for five or ten minutes.  Pop a cube in my mouth and a minute later I’ll have nothing but a residual sweet taste and the satisfying knowledge that I have 100 micrograms soaking into my system.

Three hits seems like a good dose for me.  I figured with a day-after tolerance I’d need to double my dose to get effects comparable to last night’s trip.  And why not drop another for good measure?  There’s nothing to lose.  Prince has had his two hits.  Jersey’s dropped his.  Shit, I don’t know about that kid though.  We’ll see how this goes.

We’ve been sitting around camp getting stoned all day.  It’s not as interesting as it sounds (and it doesn’t sound that interesting), but it provided some much needed R&amp;R.

A little more sitting around, and the initial effects are coming on.  It starts off softly.  My vision gets sharper.  Everything comes at me crystal clear.  It’s a feeling like I’ve spent my whole life looking at the world through one window pane, and somebody just sprayed some windex on it and wiped it down.  This acid is clean, too.  There’s very little body tension, just that oddly euphoric psychedelic energy that comes in sheets through my whole body.  It’s not speedy by any means, just a feeling that every action is performed with great purpose.  It won’t be long now until I’m launched into outer space.

We can hear the first pulses of the electronic music in the distance.  J-Nug is sipping on some bizarrely appetizing mixture of Tiki Punch and Vodka.

“I hope it gets more poppin’ up there tonight,” he says, looking lazily up towards the source of the music.

“I dunno man, it was pretty poppin’ up there last night,” I tell him.  In reality, it’s not like I could judge.  I was tripping balls last night.  Pot has a way of bringing out everything that’s weird about an acid trip (and acid has some weird places to take me).  My immediate physical surroundings were not of the biggest concern to me when I was raving…

“Yeah, I know it was poppin’ last night,” J-Nug says, “I just hope it gets more poppin’ is all.”

Jersey is looking off in the opposite direction.  Across a dirt road, there’s an old school bus that’s been completely spray painted over with Alice in Wonderland themed graffiti.  It’s got a flat deck strapped to the top and a couple couches and chairs where people can lounge.

“Bro, that looks sick,” Jersey says.  “I’m gonna go kick it up there.”

“I’m coming with you,” D adds, hurrying to catch up to him.

Me and J-Nug follow suit.

Prince has been sitting in the driver’s seat of the Red Rocket ever since we dropped our acid.  He’s starting to look a little zoned.  “You comin’ man?” I holler through the car window.

“Naw, man. I think…” he trails off, looking like he’s carefully considering something. “I think I’m just gonna sit in here.”

I shrug.  “That’s cool.”

We walk across the road and climb up a ladder propped on the side of the bus.  As I pop over the last rung, I see a girl on one of the couches waving a peacock’s feather in circles a few inches from her face.  She’s entranced.  She looks serene.  She must be on LSD.

Jersey sits down by her on the couch and begins to strike up a conversation.  I don’t pay attention; I’m sitting on the edge of the bus and letting my legs dangle, sitting in silence with J-Nug while he munches on a bowl of dry Frosted Flakes.

I look out over the camp.  What an incredible sight.  People are wandering around in lavish costumes.  It’s nice to see people as fucked up, freaked out, and into drugs as I am.  Some of them have it together.  Others don’t.  Some are curiously roaming around with eyes glazed over, while others have let their minds deteriorate to a more primal state.  They’re running and jumping, screaming and yelling, acting on every single impulse.

I look up at J-Nug.  “It is going to get fucking wild tonight, man.”

He doesn’t look back, but he nods in acknowledgement.  He’s more focused on his Frosted Flakes.  I look back over the grassy plateau.  The sun is setting over the mountains, casting subtle shades of violet across the sky.  I focus on the peaks and see them like a time-lapse photograph.  Over the course of a few seconds I can see hundreds of trees sprout up, grow, flourish, reach their peak, and then slowly wither and die before completely disappearing.  There is already a certain fractal nature to the geometry of a mountain face.  This becomes greatly exaggerated while tripping.  As the light of the sun shines down through the cracks of the rock face, the sensory input hits me in two discernable planes of geometric patterns.  It’s sort of like the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Thank God for the third hit.  Acid visuals are always grand, but this is nothing short of spectacular.  And to think, I’m still just coming up.

At this point, J-Nug has stuck his entire face into his plastic bowl of Frosted Flakes.

I want to divert his attention towards the sunset.  “Would you look at that, man?”

“That is nice,” he admits.

He looks back down at his Frosted Flakes.  I can tell he’s about to stick his face in again, but then looks back at me.

“I mean, that is fuckin’ nice, man.”  He doesn’t want me to doubt his sincerity.

“Dude, Prince has just been sitting in the car for like thirty minutes,” D points out.

I look over towards our camp.  “Yeah.  I better go check on him.”

I walk over to the Red Rocket and Prince is staring intently at the logo on the center of the steering wheel.

I open the passenger’s side door.  “You all good?”

His concentration on the logo is broken.  He looks away, towards me.  “Yeah.”

“Your acid kicked in?”

He looks at me like I just asked if the sky was blue.  “Yes.”

“Yeah, mine too,” I giggle.  “You should’ve fucking seen it on top of that bus, man.”

“Yeah.”  He pauses and stares into the distance, choosing his next words carefully.  “I guess I just didn’t really want to be around Jersey when I was coming up.  I mean, I can get a little uncomfortable when he gets the way he does, y’know?  I just didn’t want to start the trip off in a bad way.”

“I got you, man, don’t worry about it.  He seems to be handling the acid well so far, though.”  I feel the suspension sink down in the back of the car.  J-Nug, Jersey, and D are sitting on the bumper, talking to our next-door neighbor while he smokes a cigarette.

It’s bizarre to see him up and about.  The night before he and his friends from Oregon had a vial of some fairly weak acid. In something of a drunken stupor, this neighbor thought it was a good idea to drink everything they had left, a good half a vial.  He claims to have no recollection of the next ten hours, but I personally watched him lie underneath the shade of our car, getting up only on occasion to pace back and forth and forcefully vomit clear liquid.  It was as though he’d only taken time to put two things in his system: drugs and water, and his body was violently rejecting both.  Luckily, he seems to have fully pieced his mind back together.

Prince and I get out of the car and join the party.

“What’s up guys?”  I give my psychedelically inclined neighbor an obligatory nod.  He nods back, cancer stick dangling from the corner of his mouth.

Jersey turns to Prince and I.  “Dude, is it normal that I’m not feeling my acid yet if you guys are?”

“Well, you gotta remember that we had more than you, so we came up harder and faster.”  But from my observations of the past forty minutes, Jersey had been just as bug-eyed and giggly as the rest of us.  He’s fallen into a common syndrome for a newcoming tripper.  “I think you’re feeling your acid, dude.  You just don’t realize it.”

Jersey looks confused and annoyed at the response.  “But I thought I was going to see cartoons?”

Our neighbor chuckles.  “Is it his first time?”

“Yeah.”

He turns to Jersey.  “It’s not like you think.  It’s not like any other drug.  There’s no definitive moment when it hits you. It creeps up gradually and kicks your ass before you know it.  A lot of it starts with you just getting into the body high and letting your mind wander, and then you’ll stop thinking altogether.  You just need accept the fact that you’re frying, because all you have to do is go with it.”

This motherfucker actually knows what he’s talking about.

Jersey still isn’t convinced, “I just want to take it to the next level.”  He turns to me, “I’ve got the money, could I please get one more hit off you?”

“Shit!” I yell in frustration.  I just got ten hits yesterday, and now I’m down to one.

“Look man,' I try to level with Jersey.  “I’m a greedy motherfucker, and I wasn’t exactly planning on having all my acid eaten within a day of getting it.  If you want to take your trip to the next level, you should smoke.”

Hmmm… on second thought, I’ve seen Jersey smoke before.  Maybe that’s not a good idea for him.  I mean, pot and ‘shrooms go great together, but pot and LSD can be a very odd and dangerous combination.  Especially if you’re the One-Drag Fag.  I reconsider the proposition.  “Well…”I trail off.  “I guess it’s not like that one hit would do me that much good anyhow.”

“I am definitely glad I opted for the second hit,” Prince chimes in.

“…and I’ve got the money…” Jersey reminds me.

I mull it over in my brain.  Jersey is looking up at me pleadingly, anxiously.  I carefully consider the circumstances.

“Fuck!” I finally burst out.  “Go ahead.  The last hit’s in that big red water bottle in the tent.'

“THANK YOU!” Jersey practically runs back there.

“Such incredible generosity,” our neighbor says, sarcastically, as he extinguishes the butt of his cigarette on his car’s bumper.

I pretend I didn’t hear him.

D looks at me.  “Yeah, man.  You don’t need that hit.  I mean, how many ‘shrooms are you going to take tonight anyhow?”

The neighbor looks up, with a newfound interest in our affairs.

“I’ve got a little less than an eighth.”

The neighbor raises his eyebrows.

D is shaking is head in disbelief.  “Jesus Christ… 3 hits of acid, an eighth of ‘shrooms, and all that ecstasy too? Just do me a favor and please don’t die, ok?”

The neighbor lets out a low laugh.  “Jedi flipping, dude?”

I look over and he flashes me one of those rare smiles you encounter to varying degrees throughout your life.  The kind you get from someone who knows exactly where you’re coming from and what you’re going through.  The kind of smile that goes up into the eyes, making them narrow on the face.  The smile of shared experience.

“You are in for one helluva time.”

Saturday, June 19 2010.  9:30 PM

The second hit of acid wound up hitting Jersey pretty hard.

He was looking at me with his eyes half shut, speaking blissfully.  “Oh man.  I just feel so good it’s just like my whole body is—“

He trailed off; his train of thought got derailed.  I know the feeling.

After some time his smile melted away and he began to look very solemn.  His eyes opened wider and wider, until I thought they’d pop out of his skull.   “My… whole body… is…. FUCKING!”

The final word had a force that nearly knocked me off balance.  Shit, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had.  Everything around me was warping, swirling, growing and then shrinking again.  My brain had turned to rubber and was being stretched out for miles in every imaginable direction.

It took a second for what Jersey had said to set in.  When it did, a laugh escaped me from the inside out.  It kept going until my eyes started to water.

I yelled back behind me,  “Prince, you gotta check this kid out, man!”

But it was too late.  I had turned away from Jersey for two seconds, and when I turned back around he was sprinting away in the opposite direction, ripping off his shirt as he went.

“Holy shit!” I howled.

D was concerned, though.  “What the hell, dude?  He better not wander off and die.”

J-Nug shrugged.  “So what if he does?”

“He’ll be fine.  I mean, he’s just trippin’ is all,” Prince concluded.  His pupils were massive.  He knelt down and picked a blade of grass, inspecting it carefully, following it closely with his eyes.  He held it up and aligned it with the light of the sun, before letting go to watch it float away in slow motion.

“Good God,” he announced, “I am just frying through my goddamn skull.”

“You’re not alone,” I told him.

Everyone in sight was as openly inebriated as we were.  I could focus on any one person and see their trip as plain as day.  Their face would go through the entire spectrum of emotion.  They’d smile, but soon frown.  They’d look at peace with the world, but their look would soon subside to one of shock and confusion.  Their actions made little logical sense, but I always understood where they were coming from.  They could spend a whole two minutes laughing at the sight of their own hands.

A blonde-haired kid about our age approached our group, sitting on the bumper of the Red Rocket right next to us.

“Heeeey guys… howwuh you dooin?”  Man, this kid sounded like he was cognitively impaired and had just downed a fifth of Jim Beam.

I laughed anxiously.  “Um….”  I was a little taken aback with how he had just invited himself into our group.

Suddenly he jerked his head away and jumped back as though he saw something unspeakably terrifying behind us.

“WOAH!  WOAH!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, eyes popping with each exclamation.

“Holy fuck, what are you on right now man?”  I had seen some strange behavior so far, but this by far was taking the cake.

“I am on… molly,” he smirked.  “She is my besssssst friend.  Woah, woah… WOAH!  WOAH!”

“Yeah I’m down with molly, man,” I told him, trying to ignore the ear-piercing shouts he used to punctuate his sentences,  “but Lucy has always been my main squeeze.”

He sank deeply into thought.  Lucy?

I could see the gears turning in his head.  Who’s Lucy?

“Y’know, Lucy… in the Sky… with Diamonds…” D clarified.

Finally it clicked for him.  A grin crept across the width of his face.  “Well… as for Lucy.  I guess you could say that…. she’s my friend too!”  He erupted into hysterical laughs, but they soon faded back to screams.

“WOAH!  WOAH!  WOAH!” He ran away from the camp.

I looked at my friends.  Had that just happened?  I didn’t even know what to think anymore.  How could so many people’s heads be this fucked?  Or is my head so fucked that I don’t even know the difference, and everyone else is just acting normal?

“Fuck that kid dude.  That kid was fucking annoying.”  J-Nug got more and more insightful as he sent more and more vodka down the hatch.

I saw an unmistakable tall figure walking towards camp.  I prodded J-Nug,  “Hey dude, look, here comes Jersey.  His shirt’s back on...  I figure that’s a good thing.”

J-Nug looked up, unenthused.  “Fuck this kid dude.  This kid is fucking annoying.”

He came up to camp as though the way he sprinted off earlier was nothing out of the ordinary.  “Hey guys, you guys want any hamburgers?  Man!  There’s this lady back there giving out hamburgers!”

He looked me square in the eyes.

“I’ve never felt this…”

None of what he had to say concerned me very much.  I was more interested in the fact that he was chewing on a stick about thick and long as my goddamn forearm, holding the whole thing up purely with the strength of his jaw.

Prince grabbed it from his mouth.  “Come on, man, seriously?  You don’t know where this stick has been.”

Jersey snatched it right back.  “It’s my cannibalistic biting stick!  We decided I needed a cannibalistic biting stick!”

His anger quickly turned to remorse.  He handed it back to Prince, apologetically.

“Throw it far…”

Prince laughed, “You wanna play some goddamn fetch, man?”

Jersey gave no clear answers, but certainly smiled a lot.

Prince shrugged and thrust the stick over his shoulders, winding up for a big toss.

I had no clue what was going on, but I knew I had to stop it.

I grabbed the stick before Prince could get it airborne.  “Look man, I’m all for it, but this is not the time nor the place!”

Jersey shook his head at me, disappointed.  “You’re no fun.”

I was shocked.  No fun?  And to think I gave this rat bastard my acid.

“Say, Jersey, what do you think of the ol’ LSD?”

“It… it is my favorite.”

“That’s what I thought.”

I sure showed him.  What was I showing him again?  And why is Jersey taking off his pants?

“Um….”

“I’m just changing into shorts dude.  I wanna go dance soon.”

The music had been going for a couple hours, but we hadn’t even gone up to the stage yet.  In fact, most people hadn’t.  I think we were all too fried. But as nightfall approached, we knew that’s where the party would find itself.  It was about time to head up to the main attraction, The Dome.

The Dome was an extremely psychedelic place to situate yourself.  It was made of metal piping (kind of like scaffolding except it was in the shape of a… dome).  The pipes formed various geometric shapes all around.  Triangles, pentagons, hexagons…  The sound system was like none I’d ever seen or heard.  Every frequency cut through crystal clear.  The music couldn’t just be heard, it could be felt.  The bass hits rumbled me from the inside out.  The mids enveloped my whole body while the highs assaulted my frontal lobe.  But like any respectable display nowadays, the Dome had to hit me on all sensory levels.  Behind the stage, loops of film were rear-projected onto massive screens.  There were LED lights powerful enough to shine patterns on mountain faces a few miles away.  And, most importantly, the top of the dome was rigged with powerful pyrotechnics.  The bass drops were accompanied with 20-foot spurts of intense flame.

The next few hours are a blur of raving with a head full of acid.  Eventually J-Nug came up and tapped me on the back.  He pointed back towards camp and made gestures that unmistakably communicated his desire to roast a bowl.  I walked with him and Prince.

There’s a part of me that wishes I had brought a flashlight to Esthetic.  It was damn near impossible to see three feet in front of me at night.  On the other hand the lack of sensory input, as always, produced stunning visual effects.  As we were walking, I was treated to incredible technicolor fractals all around me.

We got back to camp.  “I think I’m gonna drop my first roll,” Prince said.  “It’s really getting started in there.”

“Go for it dude, I’m gonna take my boomers,” I told him.  I fumbled around in the tent for my big red water bottle that I’ve always used to store drugs in.  Finally I found it and twisted the cap off.  I pulled out the biggest ziploc bag stuck my nose in.  It smelled like my favorite thing in the world, that bizarrely dungy scent of psilocybin mushrooms.

________________________________________________________________________

Saturday, June 19 2010, 11:30 PM.

Most people are not big fans of the taste of and smell of mushies.  Personally, I have grown to love both.  Even if they smell like shit and taste like dirt, I have grown such a good association with the trips that the sensations leading up to it always excite me.  I popped them in my mouth, chewing ‘em up nice and slow, savoring it.  Even after I swallow, the taste lingers for some time.  It’s nice.  It makes my mouth feel warm, and before long the feeling has crept into my entire body. The body tingles start in my soul and seep up through the pores of my skin, bubbling over like magma from a thick reservoir deep down beneath the surface.  Before long I'm completely bug-eyed, with mouth agape and an indescribable feeling that my brain has been plastered on the outermost walls of the galaxy.

I do a lot of drugs, but I do mushrooms too.  They’re not drugs.  They’re much bigger than drugs.

I’m starting to feel them come on when we sit down to smoke a bowl.

“Will you pack this, dude?” Prince asks me.  But one look up and he changes his mind.  “Actually, you’re frying pretty hard.  I won’t make you think about it, I’ll pack it.”

He corners the bowl, drags slow, and holds the hit deep in his lungs.  He throws his head back in relaxation when he exhales, thick white smoke hanging in front of him.  Prince is a man who loves his weed.

“Master Kush.  This is some dank shit dude.”

He’s right.  The bowl makes its rotations knocks us all out.  It’s the kind of stone that goes right to your body.

“This weed is just taking me to Cloud 9,” Prince said.

Each word came out so slowly it was as though I could see each one formulate in front of Prince’s mouth and float away before the next one came.  Time was slowing down like a locomotive.  The sounds themselves were damp and muffled, like how a good DJ will start off a breakdown with the resonance backed off all the way, giving the track a drowned out sound like I'm hearing it underwater.  But I always know he’ll slowly bring it up higher and higher, then higher again, maybe kicking the drums back in before the treble is piercing my ears and the tension is so high I can barely stand it.  But when the bass drops back in (and in the dome, flames spit out overhead), I can take comfort in the fact that the party will rage on until the whole cycle repeats itself.

D and that giggling freak Jersey walk up to the car.

D yells in to us, “Get out of the car so I can lock it up.  Oh, and grab all the water out of the trunk and put in the tent.  I’ll be damned if you guys are gonna get dehydrated when you’re rolling.”

I step outside the car and am hit with a wave of vertigo.   “Woah… shit…”

J-Nug nods in agreement.  “It’s good bud, doggie.”

Yeah.  Good bud, that’s for sure.  Good ‘shrooms too.

Shit.  Three grams and I'm getting up near a spiritual dose.  I try not to smoke at spiritual doses.  Half eighth and I can toke my heart out, but three grams… Am I really ready for this trip, stoned of my ass and with a mind already warped by LSD?  Did I finally overestimate my own ability to keep it together?

Wait, what time is it?  It’s too dark to see my watch, let me grab my phone.  12:08.  Cool. What’s that mean, again?  When did I take those mushrooms… am I peaking yet?  Or am I gonna go further out, still?  Am I ready for this?

Ready or not, here it comes.  I’m feeling it all through my body.  Waves of tension come through the top of my skull, down my torso, and phase through my arms and legs until they finally reach my outer extremities.  Fuck, I’m in for something big.

Something’s coming for me.  The whole world’s rumbling.

“Wwweee’rrreee gggooonnnnnnaaa hhheeeaaaddd bbbaaaccckkk tttooo ttthhheee dddooommmeee.”

I nod.  “I’ll come with.”

Why did I say that?  Who am I talking to?  I can’t hear my own voice, but I can see the sound project outward and reverberate.  Yes, I have certainly said something.

I don’t know how long I’ve been following these people for.  It’s felt like ten seconds and it’s felt like two years.  Wait, where did they go?  I wish I had a flashlight.  Who are they again?  I stop walking.  Why would I even want to walk… why would I start?  It’s certainly easier to stand.

Darkness is no longer dark.  These patterns can be ignored no longer.

All around me there are swirling vibrations.  They have no color; they’re beyond it.  They’re moving constantly, spiraling upward like Da Vinci’s early conceptions of helicopters. They’re dependent on one another, drawing on each other’s energy for stability, forming grand double helixes like colossal strands of DNA.

But all things come to an end. Nothing ever lasts forever, right?  Each end of these things is fixed onto something definite.  Each half is distinct, the bottom and the top.  It’s like it’s a circular vortex, spinning…

Wait a minute…  I recognize these fuckers!  They spun me all to hell the last time I tripped 20x Salvia.  These are my thoughts.  Good thoughts, bad thoughts…  They can be friends or foes, and they’re not afraid to switch on a dime.   Trust me, I’ve seen it happen, and it can be a very ugly thing.

But not this time.  I’m in control now.  How should I let these things spin me, when it’s really me who spins them?  This vision is familiar to me.  I remember it from the time I Hippy Flipped.

It’s the one cycle that all the others are derived from. It starts in my mind and projects upward to the highest imaginable peak.  Here I find concepts, ideals, the way things ought to be.  It’s the infinite truth of the yin.  It is completely unbound by time, because it can apply to any and every moment.  I'm in control of it; I can mold it any way I please.  Everything’s perfect for me there, because it’s a construction I’ve created by and for myself.  I think that, as day turns to night, this must be the place I visit in my dreams.  But as much as I’d like to, I can’t stay there.  I have to sink downward, past a crucial split.

From there it swings to a low valley, where everything is contained within the finite point of the present moment.  Here I find the other truth: not the truth of concept, but the truth of action.  It’s unbendable. I cannot change what I’ve done once I’ve done it, though it’s easy to wish I could.  That’s how people get hung up here. The heart of the yang is so immediate and tangible that I can lose sight of the other side of things.  On one hand, a thought without action is rendered meaningless. No-one will congratulate me for what I regulate to the realm of my own mind.  On the other hand, an action without thought is rendered dangerous.  Then it becomes the epicenter of miscommunication, giving rise to conflict and confrontation.  Actions have a lot of weight, for better or worse.

But in the big scheme, I rise back up from this point.  The cycle enters back to my body through the chest, hitting the heart as it goes.  It pumps the blood and circulates the oxygen and oxygen that animates my being.  Then, at some ineffable chakra between the aorta and the cerebral cortex: Ouroboros. The serpent eats its tail, and the whole thing starts again.

I’ve seen this all before.  I’m comfortable with it.  I guess maybe it’s time to turn my head.

Visions like this are inescapable and infinite in this darkness.  But in the distance I see a source of light, a source of sound, a source of creation.

I begin walking towards it, taking note of the fantastic sights around me.  Three dimensional patterns are beneath me at this point.  I’m seeing cubes that seem to occupy a fourth spatial dimension.  I heard of these fuckers in Accelerated Math Analysis, but not like this, not hundreds of them looking me in the face.  What’s the word for these, these shapes have a word…

“…tesseract, yes, certainly… they’re tesseracts.”

I’ve arrived at my destination.  Look at these shapes, look at these lights.  This is a truly intricate hallucination.  Or is this the part that’s real?  The line is getting fuzzy.

No, no.  This is the Dome.  This is what I came for.  But why is everyone looking at me?

Are they just looking at me in all my dosed glory?  Are they looking at my raggedy, torn up jeans and button-up shirt, two sizes too big, with the pattern of an American flag sewn across?  Are they looking at my pupils, the size of flying saucers?  Are they looking at me because I wandered in here mumbling about tesseracts?

I need to avoid their stares.  Just turn around and walk away.

But I turn around and the stage is blocking my path.  Oh wait… maybe that’s what these people were looking at.

Maybe I should turn back around and explain myself.

There’s no point, really.  The ability to communicate a rational thought in English left me a long time ago.

Everything has left me, really.  I’m a blank slate, regressed to a completely infantile frame of mind.  When I was first born, I hadn’t placed any filters on my thoughts yet.  There was only one thing going to my mind: pure human experience.  As I was raised, there needed to be filters placed on these thoughts, purely for the sake of survival.  As a biological organism, I cannot survive if I have no larger scope on the nature things, nothing to fill the void that exists beyond the definitions of the present moment.

The most basic of these thought filters is the filter of language.  This is what children pick up first.  They learn that that a certain concept is intrinsically linked to a specific vocal expression, the most comprehensible and basic ideas being “Yes” and “No.”

From there we have to filter our experience further.  To be able to express more complex thoughts, we need to follow the collectively agreed upon pattern.  This becomes the subjects, the predicates, the rules of grammar.  It becomes the language.  It becomes a specific pattern in thought that we adhere too, even though it’s not the only pattern out there.

Experience needs to be filtered down if we have any hope of being a functioning member of society.  If we didn’t filter it, we’d constantly be like me… a freak with all his senses overloaded.  If we can’t filter our thoughts down to something expressible, we cannot communicate with other human beings.  We can’t collaborate with them.  We can’t survive.

Programming a sound into a synthesizer works in a very similar way.  You start with a basic, initialized waveform.  If you play the synth at this point, it will simply sound a pitch.  From there, a producer will run it through filters, oscillators, envelopes, and modulators, which will cancel out some frequencies and thus emphasize others.  This is known as subtractive synthesis.  You can start with the form of a sine wave and create a literally infinite number of unique sounds, not because you added anything to the initial waveform, but because you took things away.  In this same fashion, you can encounter an infinite number of unique personalities in your life, all crafted by filtering out parts of the waveform of basic human experience.

Psychedelic drugs take off all my mind’s filters, oscillators, envelopes, and modulators.  I can see my speech, my mannerisms, and everything that shapes me as a human being manifest itself into patterns coming towards me from every imaginable direction.  There’s an innate humor present in a drug trip, and fundamentally it is self-deprecating.  I'm laughing at myself.  I'm laughing because I see how I’ve been stumbling through my life in one particular way, when there’s a million different ways I could go, and I'm laughing because I think myself a fool for missing things so fantastically different yet so apparently obvious.

At this point, I’m laughing quite a bit.  Things are getting very bizarre.

I look up towards the light show.  My head cocks to the left.  My joy leaves me.  My smile leaves me.  The steady pulse of the music puts me in a trance. My whole body starts to sway backward and forward.  If you were to get up, stare at one point high on the wall of the far side of the room, and proceed to draw large circles with your head, you would be making about the same motion I was.

The entirety of human experience as I have ever known is beginning to fold in on itself.  Time is compressing.  Everything I’ve ever perceived and ever will is pushing into itself like an accordion, until it becomes a single, comprehensible axis on a higher plane.

I have finally come to the edge, and whether I like or not I’m getting pushed over into a new dimension.  I’m aware of my surroundings in the immediate physical realm, but it’s no longer of any concern to me.  The world has been rendered insignificant.  The universe as I have ever understood it is just one universe.  One of many.

Now that universe has subsided to a gigantic, rushing, fractal pattern (more specifically, The Mandelbrot Set), in which I can perceive not only our universe, but parallel universes as well.  I see every course of action that could have been possibly been taken throughout the history of time.  Whether or not that was the course of action that actually was taken is no longer significant, it is simply one manner in which things could have unfolded.  In a sense, actions have lost all their weight.  I’ve been freed completely from the prison of the present moment.

What is action? Why does it matter?  I’ll spend the whole night drawing circles with my head if I damn well feel like it.

Now there’s no way anyone around me could not know I’m tripping.  I see people walk by and stare at me, some give me two thumbs up, some are simply taken aback, and others seem legitimately concerned that a kid so young has gotten so screwed up.

A lady comes up to me.  I figure her to be in her sixties, certainly of the older crowd that attends an event like this.  She’s too old to rave, but here for the concept.  She’s an old hippy.  I figure her for a Burning Man veteran.  Hell, she looks like she could have even lived through the Haight-Ashbury scene.  Clearly though, she knows what I’m going through.

She speaks to me.  “Trpinipg?”

Every one of my senses is too warped for me to hear her correctly.  I’m sure I have the same look of confusion as the WOAH-shouting candy flipper I encountered earlier that night.

“Um…”

She speaks again, louder, clearer.  “Tripping?”

I respond the only way I really can: I giggle.  I make a Herculean effort to say “Yes,” or even to just nod, but I can’t.

Still, she understands.

She smiles.  I’ve seen this before, the same smile my neighbor gave me when he heard of my plans to take these ridiculous drugs.  The smile that has behind it some incredible telepathic meaning that I wouldn’t want to disgrace by trying to put into words.  It’s the smile of shared experience.

She clasps her hands over my face.  It takes me by surprise, this sensation.

“Cold,” she says.  “Hands.  Cold.”

“Yeah, her hands are cold,” I think.

By only giving me a few words to link up, she made me create a communicable thought, something I hadn’t done in a long time.  She didn’t try to talk me down.  She helped me help myself out of my trip.  Shit, how long was I gone?  Is there any further out to go? And, most importantly, how long until I get stuck out there again?

Boy, am I tripping.  Thank God I get off on this kind of thing.  I knew this would happen.  I came prepared.  When my head has gone out to play like this, there’s only one sure-fire remedy to keep me engaged.  There’s only one thing that will fix me tight onto positive vibrations and never let me let go.  Rolls.  Thizz.  E.  Love Speed.  It’s all about the Ecstasy, and I brought three of the best pills money can buy around here.  But time is running out.  I need to get back to camp.  I need to pop at least one of those magic little e-bombs in my mouth before I get catapulted back out to the astral plane.

I have to find my friends again.  It doesn’t take much looking.  I tap D on the shoulder.  I can tell he’s relieved to see me.

“DUDE!  Where the hell did you go?  I thought we’d lost you.  Shit, man, I thought you were dead.”

“I might have been.”

J-Nug is crunkenly waving his hands in the air.  Jersey is all smiles.  The acid is still going strong.  Prince is already rolling.  He dropped when I ate my mushrooms.  It’s funny how easy it is to tell when somebody is on a roll.  They seem so content, so at peace with themselves and the world.  I think to myself, “There’s no way somebody could be that happy for no particular reason unless they were rolling.”

Prince is dancing harder than I’ve ever seen him dance before.  He’s had a Yellow Puma.  Supposedly, they were cut with coke.  But when pushers have pills, they’ll always say it’s cut with coke.  It sounds much more exotic that way.  The fact of the matter is there’s not a whiff of coke in those pills, but certainly some straight amphetamine.  As for how much amp there is, only two people know:  God and the Chemist.

Prince turns to me smiling.  Now, there’s a significant difference between a roll smile and a trip smile.  A trip smile is akin to the expression I get when I’ve just heard an incredibly bad pun, and softly laughing is the only way to ease the awkward tension that’s thick in the room.  A roll smile is more like an elated smirk, a display of absolute understanding usually only seen by those I care about the most, to let people know that I appreciate them for who they are.

“THESE PILLS ARE FUCKING SLAPPERS!”

Prince tells me what I can already see.

“Hell yeah, dude.  I need to get back to camp and drop one.”

“I’ll come with you.  I’m gonna take my molly.”

We walk back to camp.

“How are the ‘shrooms treating you?”  Prince asks.

Shit, I can’t think about that now.  If I start trying to tell him where my head was just at, there’s a good chance I’d go back there again.  There are more pressing matters at hand.

“Well, the pot sure made it come on fast.”

Prince chuckles, “Yeah.”  He pops a capsule of good brown molly that came through town a few months back.  We heard later that the chemist said it was pure MDA.  And, the chemist is one of two people who would actually know.

It’s dark, I can’t see where my hands are going.

“What are you looking for?” Prince asks.

Hmmm… what am I looking for again?

“I’m looking for a, uh…”

I keep my drugs inside my big red water bottle, but I can’t for the life of me remember the term “water bottle.”

“Shit, I’m looking for a…”

Prince is holding a plastic water bottle.  I snatch it out of his hands and point to it, and then point to it again.  I’m getting in a trance again.  I can’t think, I just keep pointing and pointing.  Prince is taken aback, watching me and laughing.  My mind is going.  I can’t lose it again, this close to finding my ecstasy.  Shit, I can’t believe I’m about to take more drugs.  I keep pointing and Prince keeps laughing.  It takes a lot of willpower, but suddenly, there’s a burst of communicative energy.

“The word!  I’m just trying to think of the next word!  My thizz is in one of these….”

Suddenly, it comes to me.

“WATER BOTTLE!  Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for goddammit!  A water bottle!”

It feels like a great victory to have pulled myself out of the trance.  Communication, that’s what it’s all about.

Prince has a light and helps me find my bag of pills.  They’re so little and adorable.  I take them in my palm and shine a light on, admiring the press.  Two Blue Rolexes and one Green Puma.  The press is clean on them all, with finely detailed logos.

Now, I’m someone who does his research before going in on a pill.  Pillreports.com, and Ecstasydata.org are lifesavers.   All evidence I had access to led me to believe the Rolexes would be very MDxx high (subjective experiences suspected MDA), and I paid top dollar for them. The Green Puma was more akin to Prince’s pill.  Good amount of MDMA, good amount of amp.  The Puma will be speedy, I figure I’ll save it for last, to really keep me going even after the sun has risen.

Shit, I can’t believe I’m about to take more drugs.

Sunday, June 20 2010, 12:30 AM

I can’t stand the taste of Ecstasy, but it’s necessary.  I always chew up my pills, for two reasons.  1) It gives a horrible chemical taste to remind me that I’m putting horrible chemicals in my body.  2) It makes them come on faster.

Rolls on their own are ok.  I’m in the minority of users in that I don’t do back flips over how fantastic the effects are.  I figure I have the same aversion to ecstasy that some people have to cheesecake.  It’s too light, too sweet, too rich, and too fluffy.  Still, I will never how a person could dislike cheesecake.

The problem with rolling is that it will take me to the most incredible places, but give me no clues as to how I got there.  It launches me upward, keeps me on top of the highest mountain for three hours, and instantaneously tears me back down.  This is when it's easy to crash completely, to lose sight of the beautiful feeling that once seemed so obvious, and come to the conclusion that the only way to get back to that space is to take more ecstasy.  This is what can render the experience meaningless.  I dance through the comedown.  Close my eyes, get some water, shit, do what I need to do, but make sure I keep dancing hard as ever.  I need to expel my own energy in order to integrate the ecstasy experience.

The full glory of a roll unveils itself when mixed it with hallucinogens.  The psychedelics give me the bigger picture needed to grasp the experience as it’s happening.  I don’t have to go through the trouble of comprehending a roll after a depressing comedown, you can work to understand the roll and its implications at the peak.  There’s this wonderful interplay between the head and the heart when the peaks overlap, the trip’s introspective understanding mixed with the raw emotion intensity of MDMA.  The interaction between the drugs is unspeakably beautiful.

I always feel a roll come on faster than a trip.  For the first twenty minutes, the buzz is nearly imperceptible.  I step on the dance floor and it’s business as usual.  There’s repetition in dancing.  Whether we know it or not, we always get locked in to a similar groove.  In ten minutes or so and something strange happens.  I'm not even thinking about it, but at some point there was a moment where my inhibitions completely dissolved.  My body is moving into spatial dimensions it’s never considered before.  I'm feeling the music from the inside outward, and motion has become effortless.

The only thing more remarkable than what’s happening to my body is what’s happening to my mind.  Insecurities have evaporated.  There’s no shame in myself, anything I have to say or do.  But the really heavy thing is this sense of obligation to try and bring others to my level.  When I see someone, I smile.  Not because I'm amused, far from it.  I smile because I want people to know that I accept them.  I want them to know it’s perfectly ok to be who they are.  I want them to know all the things I know.

I spaced my Rolexes 30 minutes apart.  I’d had my fair share of rolls before, but nothing like that.  Nothing that pure.  Nothing that clean.  That was even better than the best molly I’d ever got in on.  Somehow people have been suckered into this notion that molly is more reliable than pills. “Hey, I don’t even fuck with pills maaaan, it’s all about the molly, maaan, you gotta go molly, you gotta go puuuuure.”

Fuck that noise.  If you think what you get is pure because it’s in the form of a nondescript white powder, then I don’t even know where your head’s at.  Even if it’s got that nice brown tinge, how do you really know what you’re getting?  At least with pills there are online resources, places where you can get a good idea what’s going in your system before you get in on a batch.

And the Rolexes were a helluva batch.  Incredibly MDA high.  No wonder I got charged extra.

Something funny happened to me over that roll, something that’s never happened to me before.  There’s a gap in my memory.  People frequently drink to the point of blacking out, but I’ve never come close to the experience myself.  This was the first time anything like that happened to me.  But I wouldn’t call it a black out; I’d call it a white out.

1:00 to 4:00 AM that morning must have been an experience unlike any other.  That was it, that was the Jedi Flip.  The ‘shrooms and the X synced up perfectly.  It was essentially a Hippy Flip superimposed on the latter half of an acid trip.  There are only bits and pieces of it I can recall, but they’re permanently carved into my mind like beautiful portraits, scenes from the best movie never made.

I recall at one point I was raving up front by the stage and the mixer and the turntables.  A man with a cowboy hat leaned in towards me.

“Why don’t you jump up there?” he said, pointing to a spot on the stage right in front of the speaker cabinets.

I couldn’t tell whether he was joking or serious.

“Go on,” he said, grinning.  “Dance your little heart out.”

“Yeah,” I thought, “why don’t I jump up there?  Who’s to make me stay down here anyway?”

I leapt up and turned around to face the crowd, pointing upward, beating my arms in frantic circles to the beat as the kick drum boomed.  People appreciate any such show of energy, I think.  People gathered around and threw their arms up like mine.  The man in the cowboy hat was jumping up and down, screaming, cheering, eyes rolling up into his head.  He was elated, I think, by the fact that his idea had been acted on.  It didn’t matter who had done the acting.

It wasn’t long though before a crew member pulled me down.  “We can’t let you stay up there.  It’s a safety hazard, for you and our equipment.”

“Makes sense,” I said.  I was, after all, on some very unpredictable substances.

He acted like he didn’t want to have pulled me down.  “Do you want a cigarette?” he offered, in consolation.

“No thanks.” I told him.

“Well… You gotta light?”

I reached in my pocket and flicked my bic.  I held it up to the cigarette dangling from his mouth and the flame danced and flickered in the wind.  He sucked the smoke in like it was soda through a straw, his jaw slowly lowering to create suction. The cherry flared up and the end of the stick was glowing.  It always amazes me how easy cigarettes light.  It’s all the chemicals they treat it with to make it burn even.

He exhaled and gave me a nod as if to say “You’re alright,” before I went back on the dance floor.  He had long silvery hair and spoke with a thick English accent.  He must have been there with Meat Katie: a breaks DJ, a Londoner, and the headliner of the festival.  I had been psyching myself up for Meat Katie’s set.

Problem is, I do not recall Meat Katie at all.  He was playing at the height of my Jedi Flip.  It trips me out that I can recall a small encounter with a crew member vividly, but I can’t even picture Meat Katie’s face when he was the one making me dance for hours on end.  There’s a lot of things I don’t remember.  I’m sure I was dancing the whole time, though.

Several months later I went to a friend’s house to smoke hookah while his parents were out of town, and the 21 year old “house sitter” was throwing a party there.  I walked into the living room where there were all these young adults sitting around and playing drinking games when suddenly one screamed out, “DUDE! I HAVE A PICTURE OF YOU!”  I looked over my shoulders, was this motherfucker really talking to me?  I don’t even know this guy.  Maybe he’s just drunk.  But he leapt up, whipped out his camera, and handed it to me.

Sure enough there I was, Jedi Flipping.  I was drenched in sweat.  Every part of my body looked like it was caught midstream in some heinously intense motion.  My eyes were closed, and every muscle on my face was tensed up in pleasure.  Apparently that’s just how I look when every motion I make brings orgasmic sensations through my entire body.  Apparently that’s how I act when every pore of my skin is ejaculating the pure light of God.  Apparently that’s what makes me white out.  Apparently that’s the kind of thing that total strangers find picture worthy.

And to think, if I hadn’t been wearing that same oversized American flag shirt, he wouldn’t have recognized me at all.

Sunday, June 20 2010, 4:00 AM

“We’re gonna go to sleep.”

All my friends are calling it quits.  I don’t blame any of them.  J-Nug and D have been running solely on alcohol and cannabis, neither of which are exactly known to keep people awake.  Jersey’s trip is done, and Prince is in the throes of an X crash.

My pills are wearing off too, but I knew that would happen.  That’s why I came prepared.  The Green Puma will do me nicely.  My reservoir of natural energy has been fully tapped, but with enough amphetamines in my system I won’t notice the difference.  I better chew it up now.  If I sync up the come-up of one roll with the comedown of another, the transition is very smooth.  At this point, the feelings of a crash must be avoided at all costs.  Sometimes I can’t recover from a thing like that.  I reach in my pocket watch pocket and put the e-bomb on my tongue.

There it is.  There’s the bitter taste.  There’s the chemistry working.  I’ve bought myself three more hours in the zone and I should make them count.  I’m on the tail-end of the mushroom trip, and there’s a minor but still perceptible afterglow from the LSD.  But there were a few hours there where it was all overlapping.  The ‘cid, the ‘shrooms, and the X all piled on top of one another to from this otherworldly trifecta of pure psychedelically indulged bliss.  I guess that makes me a Jedi now.

But what in God’s name drives a person to do a thing like that?  I’ve taken these three powerful allies and used them in such an indulgent, hedonistic fashion.  The LSD and the Mushrooms together were the kind of experience that could drive you completely off your skull.  And what was my remedy for that… taking more drugs?  Maybe this isn’t even drug use any more.  Maybe this is abuse.  Am I doing this for personal growth anymore?  Have I been using these drugs for so long as a mere escape from reality?  If that’s so, then what makes me better than an alcoholic, a coke fiend, a popper or a junkie?

Maybe they’re right, those people who seem so concerned about my habits.  Those people who insist I have a drug problem.  Those people at parties who always tell me that what I do is “bad for my brain” while I can smell the alcohol on my breath.  Those people who insist that tripping will cause some incurable mental disorder.  Those people who doubt that I’m in control.

It puts me in a bad mood to see people talk like that.  It’s so often that when they say it, they have such a genuine look of concern on their face that I can barely stand to look at.  I can’t bear that they’re that concerned.  Furthermore, I can’t bear that they’re that concerned about me.  And most of all, I can’t bear that they’re that concerned about me for no good reason at all.  It used to be I’d try to spit statistics at people, explain to them how scientifically safe these things are for my brain, especially in comparison to their substances of choice.  But anymore I’ve given that up.  I just let them feel sorry for me.  If it helps them feel better about themselves, then I guess there’s no harm done.

But when I take one look around me, at everyone still thizzin’ at 4 AM and dancing their asses off, I can see that same look of concern all around me.  I see water jugs being passed around communally, everyone concerned with the level of collective hydration.  I see everyone smiling, concerned to let others know that everything is all right.  I see people concerned with the happiness of themselves and all around them.  And when I see things like this, there’s nothing better than the underlying feeling that I’m a part of something good, some incredible positive vibration that we’re somehow all spinning around on.  There’s nothing better than to think about all those people who are worried about me, and to understand they’re concerned, fundamentally, out of love.  There’s nothing better than to know that there’s people who care that much.  But, most of all, there’s nothing to better than to know that those people are wrong.  Am I out of control?  Fuck no, I’m a goddamn Jedi.  That’s as in control as it gets.

By 7 AM, the mushrooms had certainly worn off.  The acid had subsided hours before.  My roll was coming to an end as abruptly as the music was going to.  There were only ten other freaks left in the dome.  One look at any of us and you’d know that we all had lost our minds at one point or another during the course of the night.  How else could we think that dancing to 160 BPM psy-trance after pulling an all-nighter was a reasonable investment of energy?  As the final hits of the music faded away, one girl among us rounded us all up, had us lock arms and do a circular Russian dance in one final act of celebration.

“WE MADE IT THROUGH THE NIGHT!  WE MADE IT THROUGH THE NIGHT!”

I looked down at my feet as I stumbled out of the dome and onto the dirt.  My body was done.  It was time to crash.  It felt like a Herculean effort to keep my eyes open, or to even stand up.  It was hard to stop from collapsing right there on the spot.  Off in the distance, somebody was watching me in my stupor, laughing at the sight.  As I approached, I made the figure out more clearly.  It was my neighbor.

I was drenched in sweat when I walked past him, giving him the slightest nod I could afford.  He slapped me firmly on the back as I passed.  He still had it.  That same smile.  If a picture can say as much as a thousand words, that smile can say as much as a thousand pictures.  I’d seen it on the old hippie woman, pulling me out of hyperspace, I’d seen it on dozens of dedicated dancers, completely loaded on X in the wee hours, and I’d seen it on this same man the previous evening, when he learned of the insanity I planned to embark on.  It was the smile of shared experience.

“What’s up, Obi-Wan?”

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 86863

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 17

Published: May 18, 2011	Views: 130,054

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LSD (2), Mushrooms (39), MDMA (3) : Glowing Experiences (4), Combinations (3), Festival / Lg. Crowd (24)


		 DOSE:

		 2 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   repeated
		 inhaled
		 Nitrous Oxide
		 (gas)

		 1 bowl
		 inhaled
		 Cannabis - Hash

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   160 lb

Prior entheogen experience: modest– 3x LSD, 15x Psilocybin mushrooms, 1x Ketamine, 1x N,N-DMT (breakthrough), 5xN,N-DMT (sub-breakthrough, still strongly visual), 3x Ayahuasca, 12x MDMA, 1x Mescaline cactus, 1x 2C-B, 4x Salvia

Rx meds: mesalamine (timed release); OTC: multivitamin, 5-HTP (100mg/day for the past 8 days: safety measure from the previous week’s MDMA experience), various micronutrients, glucosamine sulfate

Worldview: in flux; years of mostly-materialist agnosticism beginning to feel stale/insufficient. “Out like a light” view of death fading in certainty, more interest in cosmology and new views of the structure of reality. Background in Zen meditation (simple awareness practice without theological components) with a strong intellectual and intermediate visceral appreciation for “oneness” and the unreality of ego-separation, roughly intermediate student level of practice experience.

Set: Intensely curious with mild apprehension and recent sorrow. The month prior included some unraveling of my recent first experience with smoked N,N-DMT and its worldshattering mysteries. I broke through at the first attempt and despite a great deal of prior reading was completely unprepared for its sheer intensity. This seems to be somewhat par for the course, and having returned fully intact, energized and fascinated by the palpably living quality of our shared/unified reality I was excited to take an LSD tryp with an exploratory purpose – to set my spiritual eye on fire and apprehend some hidden aspects of my own psyche and our universe. I had worked meditatively and introspectively to integrate the DMT bizarreness as fully as I felt able and now it was time for a new lens to continue that work and acquire/generate additional insight. The time was chosen carefully; my work is demanding – requiring focus and rapid processing while multitasking and I didn’t want any “out of phase” period afterwards compromising my obligations or adding pressure to the experience itself.

As the chosen week drew nearer, a piece of shocking news came: a good friend of mine from graduate school had taken his own life – a gentle person whose gruffness was transparently defensive and easily dissolved, a good man with a strong mind and exceptional ability to see value in others. May his transformation be blessed. I gave the next several days over to mourning. After the highest waves of sadness had broken and the day chosen for the tryp was at hand, my first instinct was the protective brain’s reminder: “a recent emotional upheaval is a dangerous time for strong entheogens”. Good advice, generally speaking. But this was also a time of great joy: my upcoming engagement to L, a new family (hers) giving genuine love and acceptance, and being reunited with a sibling and family after years of living far apart. I sat with the conflicting possibilities and came to feel that in a time of huge change, an earnestly sought spiritual voyage could have strong healing and connecting power. I discussed this with my partner, L, and she agreed that it felt right. It was to be her first encounter with LSD and my fourth; I last took LSD roughly 4 years ago.

Setting: Outdoors in a relatively secluded city neighborhood park and in our apartment, decorated and arranged by L in a nest-like configuration with soft comforters, pillows, and drapings, all with rich colors and patterns. Gorgeous day, temperate with abundant sun and a light breeze.

Materials: 3 “double” hits of blotter LSD (which seems to be a reasonably accurate estimate based on past experiences; he said 150 ug/hit was the potency) obtained from a friend with high standards, 14 8g cartridges of Nitrous Oxide with dispenser unit, and some “bubble” hashish from the same friend.

Procedure:

T+0:00: Having returned from family visiting, L and I take the LSD – 2 double hits for me, 1 for her. She wants a moderately visual experience with most of her rationality intact, not a bad way to get familiar with a very new molecule. We clean ourselves and tidy our space while we await the first effects.

T+0:30: Unmistakable body sensations reach a point of balance, buzzing and humming feeling of energetic activation, subtle deepening of colors. We sit on the couch leaning against one another and pick through some music, settling on Van Morrison for the sweetness and slightly hilarious vocal affectations.

T+1:00: I stand to go to the bathroom, feeling different, more careful and aware of my movements. Enter the bathroom, check eyes: pretty wide, about 70% dilated. Watching my arms as I urinate I notice dark patterns weaving themselves across my skin. I remain in the bathroom for several extra minutes watching the interplay of symbols: they are large, spanning several inches each and connect and flow into each other. I am shirtless so I look in the mirror to see them spread onto my chest, up my neck and into my face. They are power symbols, reflecting my duty and capacity for healing and teaching (I am a doctor so this directly addresses one of my primary life missions).  I return and tell L a bit about what I’m seeing as her tryp is slower to arrive, hoping this strong positivity will calm her mild anxiety and beneficially influence her experience. She is glad for me.

T+1:30: L suggests we head outside as the daylight is just starting to fade and we had planned to experience full daylight, sunset, and darkness during our experience. We walk slowly to the nearby park, delayed by my periodic desire to admire the wonderful array of plants our neighborhood offers: old trees, huge flowering bushes, grass and clover, etc. The plants rhythmically move and sway before me (not moved by wind) and seem to vibrate.

T+1:45: We succeed in our 5-block walk and arrive at the park. One end has families and dogs; I am drawn to their vividly living presences but know better than to allow myself to be seen in this mode of being. Brief reflections on the sad cultural state that demonizes such a useful, meaningful tool and leads us to mistrust strangers in general. We walk to a quiet corner and lay out a blanket to rest on. Looking up at the sky, the clouds form growing skeleton-pinwheel shapes that emanate outwards and dissipate in the glowing blue background. Lightly colored transparent beams connect like widely spaced latitude and longitude markings. Imagining the impossible distances beyond that blueness is exciting but taxing to the brain in this slightly fuzzy headspace. We remain until sunset; I am enthralled by the play of colors, especially the aliveness of the firey pinks and reds. L is somewhat disappointed in the lack of a stronger visual component; I feel responsible as the more experienced person for having helped her to choose a dose that may have been too low, but her occasional difficulties with depression have made me very cautious and protective of her mental well-being and I try to gently remind her of this need for safe experimentation.

T+2:30: We return home and L immediately suggests changing the living room into a more nest-like configuration. She is feeling ancient, primal energies and wants to encourage them to unfold within her. I help at first but her eye is keener and each layout choice has a purpose that is much more hers than mine. I retreat to the nearby couch and page through a recently-acquired copy of Alex Grey’s “Transfigurations”.  The “Psychic Energy System” painting is especially alive for me now, with radiant electricity emanating from the body surface and lines of intertwining life-energy suffusing its internal structures. I feel rapturously grateful to share this precise and delicate anatomy and picture my various bodily systems fully enmeshed, working with and for one another, perhaps feeding and interacting with phenomena we have only minimally understood as a species.

T+3:00: Nest complete, we remove most of our clothing- the freedom is wonderful. We lie upon the soft space L has created and turn most of the electric lights off in favor of large candles. I initially question the wisdom of open flames but we give it a try and it turns out beautifully. The half-dimness increases the intensity of the bright, patterned visuals and prompts me to close my eyes in earnest. I am lost in a sea of intricate, bright geometric patterns that spin, twirl, and re-arrange themselves rapidly. The detail is exquisite and so small that I can barely make out the finest shapes within shapes. L and I experiment with various cuddling/relaxing positions and each brings its own body-taste-feeling. L suggests playing a recording of an accompanied female chanting – many “Om” syllables with a tone of protection and purification. I am mildly dubious but each of L’s decisions so far has been just perfect for the experience and so I agree. I reflect that she is very patient to conduct these negotiations with me when she has had such clearly brilliant ideas. The chanting is perfect: the right frequencies, the right volume, the right mix of words and power-sounds, and a new type of sacred feeling permeates our space.

T+4:00: Visuals intensify, with closed eye patterns becoming a sea of interlocking blue and yellow and green and white eyes. I can’t help but feel that this is a response to having recently encountered Alex Grey’s work and as I have this thought the eyes catch fire and move upward, upward to congeal into a radiant crystal unfolding and vibrating with shifting colors and light. It feels as though the crystal has many, many projections into other states/people/dimensions (this characterizes the primary closed-eye visual theme for the rest of the tryp, with many variations). I feel deep self-love at finding such a beautiful image in my mind and this love transforms into a love for the cosmic reality that has manifested itself in my temporary form/container. I share a few of these thoughts with L and she provides lovely reflections mixed with her own insight and experience of reality. I look at L’s mostly nude body and experience a renewed appreciation for its perfect assembly of shapes and lines, textures and depths. I share in the sense of primal power and perfect structure when I look at my own body, contracting muscles to watch tendons slide, tracing veins and feeling the pulse of my arteries, all imbued with sacred symbolic pattern-images.

T+4:30: L has been very quiet for some minutes, eyes closed with an appearance of serene introspection. She begins to cry gently and softly, mostly with silent tears and the occasional more forceful exhalation. I take her hand tentatively and she responds with firmer pressure, communicating that she is alright, that the things she feels are handleable and for her. Her eyes open and we embrace. She has explored some difficult inner places and found her own strength, resilience, and power-qualities: love, drive, passion, cheerfulness, supportiveness. She is joyous. I feel the time has come to add some nitrous oxide to the tryp; having only once combined it with a “true” entheogen (psilocybin mushrooms) I am very excited to see what LSD will unfold into with this unique potentiator applied. I explain a bit to L about my experience with the combination, gently remind of the need to go slowly at first, and make the preparations. Two cartridges are released into the machine and I sip at first, then inhale deeply as the first rising vibrations are felt as safe and pleasurable. Visual patterning is brighter with open eyes and assumes a more melting/flowing/exploding character. I finish the container and close my eyes with my breath held for about 20 seconds. As I exhale, the intensity continues to build and multiply and I am spiral-sucked into BEING the patterns I see. I taste-feel new extra-corporeal aspects of myself unfolding into unseen realms and churn-blossom into a multi-consciousness shared being, our tendrils embracing with an alien-tinged love anything we can envelop. Collectiveness becomes unity and a certainty that there is only IT and I am a container for a small piece of IT for a small time. There are small fleeting worries of “is this too much?” but I can pull back slightly or push forward into it, like a well trained muscle being contracted and relaxed. This lasts for maybe 10 minutes and variants of this metamorphosis accompany my subsequent inhalations.

T+5:00: L decides she would like to add some nitrous oxide to see if her mild visual effects might intensify. She sips first also but immediately feels ready for more and more, finishing the two-cartridge dose quickly, then lying back. After her exhalation, she arches further backward, not straining but close. Her expression remains calm and deeply aware so I have no concerns for her well-being. Her eyes remain closed for a time and when she opens them she describes what she has seen: a bright, multicolored shifting Celtic-type-knot patterned rope twisting upward toward a glowing white light, pulling her towards its radiant center with near orgasmic intensity of connectedness.  Her energy is palpably sacred and deeply respectful and my love for her flares at her capacity to experience such profound connection. She immediately begins tidying and organizing the used canisters which we have scattered throughout our nest. She does this with reverence and no sense of external obligation. As she does so, she explains what she has learned: that the combination of nitrous with an entheogen is its true purpose, that to use it recreationally as we have (albeit infrequently) is too far from its full potential to signify appropriate respect. I am struck by the truth of her words and wholeheartedly commit to this new place for a substance I had once used with relative frivolity. She makes a small altar for the dispenser and unused containers and gently enfolds the expended ones in a soft cloth. We continue to talk and share our feelings and thoughts about reality, the nature of ourselves, the meaning of each other in our lives, and what our passing from this life might entail.  Again and again I am awed at the depth of intelligence, wisdom, contemplation and feeling in this fellow-human, my sweet-spirited love-partner.

T+6:30: I am so thoroughly engaged by the process of writing, drawing, creating that I can think of little else. My pen is carving into the paper and the ink looks like sheer blackness of the void, dripping around my lines and bleeding slightly through where I let the point linger. It is breathtaking.

T+7:30: L feels the true end of her experience drawing near and requests some valium to help smooth the comedown. I am on it – quickly rushing to obtain and share anything she would like to have. I fail to consider at this point that I am still in full peak and very much want her company for the rest of that intense time. This will dawn on me about 30 minutes later when she begins to exhibit signs of fatigue. At this stage we conduct a brief but immensely powerful death-ritual for my deceased friend. I share and visualize/channel his many admirable qualities, speculate on the lack of self-created meaning that may have contributed to his self-caused end, and affirm my promise to positively connect with and nurture as many living beings as I can.

T+8:00: L is visibly fading and with the dimming light of her consciousness comes a strange pang of fear at being alone for what I anticipate will be 4-6 hours of strong tryp. Especially having just invoked the strong concepts of death by suicide and the difficult memories of such a recently lost friend. I am fully in control of my linguistic faculties so I’m able to emphatically but respectfully request that she summon her full energies, overcome the benzodiazepine avalanche, and stay with me through the coming hours. I see the expected emotions play across her features: concern, annoyance, fatigue, deliberation, and finally resolution. She will try but cannot promise. This is not initially comforting, as I feel the possibility of her involuntarily leaving me for the sleep realm as something neither of us can fully control. I thank her for her intention and take several minutes to sit silently, eyes closed. I feel the fear balloon, crystallize, and I simply surrender to the experience, witnessing it and my thoughts in the manner of quiet awareness practice.  This gradually allows the stronger fear to pass although L’s drooping eyes and slumping posture bring some recurrence of anxiety from time to time. I offer a compromise by taking 3mg of valium and a long draw of hashish smoke to try and bring on sleep earlier, knowing inwardly that it will make no difference when my senses are so fully ignited. If anything, the hashish minimally increases and subtly alters the tryp, perhaps adding an edge of slight unease. I try to engage her in conversation which is limitedly successful until, after a second emphatic request to truly awaken if she possibly can, some inner decision is fully made in her mind and it’s like a light is switched back on. We converse in the intensely meaningful ways we had been earlier, talking about her recent outdoor experiences, the friends she made there, the skills and lessons she learned. I am again enthralled by her wisdom and sense of purpose. A light is kindled in me as well and my tryp reclaims its uninhibited, joyous character.

T+8:45: L suggests a ritual bath as a tool of purification and self-discovery, mentioning that it has been useful for her in the past, with no entheogens required.  She asks me to choose a color that symbolizes or evokes a meaning for me. I consider for a few minutes, then choose Green. She suggests I prepare the bathroom by arranging its contents in a deliberate way while she assembles items that I can choose from to comprise the bath. She informs me that her role will be a silent one as I make these choices. While I perform the basic setup with a bright green towel in front of the tub, clearing counter space and neatening, providing symmetry and cleanliness, she places items just outside the door’s threshold. She has brought me a large leaf-cluster with a hexagonal inner structure, clusters of small flowers from our earlier nest, a large thin leaf like an oversized quill, a large sprig of fern, two ornamental trays of candles, two eggs from a friend’s yard-chickens, vessels with coarse salt and olive oil, a tall empty vessel, and the altar holding the nitrous dispenser and two cartridges. She sits nude with legs folded underneath her as I spend about 20 minutes choosing from the items and laying them out in a way that attempts to symbolize self-healing, self-knowledge, erosion of fear by direct engagement, and the sanctity of life [some of my arrangement was simply instinctual with the meanings overlaid later; L affirms this strategy as an important feature of many symbolic events]. Tonight is my first experience with self-created ritual and it is immensely assuring and empowering so far. L draws the water while I fill the tall empty vessel partially full of red wine and place it last, within reach of the tub.

T+9:15: I enter the tub, L watching me silently with love and respect as I arrange myself in a position of aware-uprightness balanced with reclining comfort. I am radiantly grateful to her for working so hard to overcome exhaustion and then rebounding into such an awake, teacher-guide state of consciousness. The water feels electric and soothing at once and I experience waves of symbol-meaning as L places the items I have arranged one by one into the tub with me, saving the coarse salt and olive oil for next-to-last. As the globules of oil shimmer and shift in my visual field, she offers me an egg. I take it, marveling at its structural perfection as it withstands my grip, only breaking after I use my thumb to snap a hole into its domed top. I see/feel a living, congealed mass, slip from the broken shell whose crystalline fracture patterns are a lesson encapsulated. The mass at first leads me to see/feel an early-stage embryo sliding through my fingers but I am not disgusted or afraid of this possible truth, simply awed. As it drops into the tub with me I see it is only yolk and let it fall into the hexagonal space at the center of the floating leaf-cluster.  L leaves quietly as I contemplate this combination of intricately formed natural elements, pieces of beings so like and unlike myself.

T+9:45: I pour 1/3 of the red wine into the tub, watching the red billows spread downward with a frantic twisting and emanating movement that the LSD creates. Here I make a sign of consecration, fill the nitrous container with the two cartridges and respectfully inhale as deeply as I can. My visual field assumes blue-grey and deep brown color tones with twisting brown stripes forming on the walls, bathroom fixtures, and tub in front of me. These interleave and vibrate furiously but with passion, no malevolence. I close my eyes and feel my inner space open, allowing me to make contact with parts of my body-self, especially the distributed mysterious nexus-network of the immune system. For me this is intensely meaningful, not least because I have an immunological disorder that causes the body to destroy its own tissues in painful and potentially dangerous ways. I have chosen a relatively inactive period of the disease to conduct this journey but it’s always there, and I realize in that moment that it is the source of my earlier fear, a part of myself that literally attacks the rest, an ever-present reminder of my own inevitable death and the potential for much suffering.

I pour the rest of the wine into the tub and willingly embrace that my own blood too will flow out from me if my body wills it so. I shed tears of gratitude and forgiveness as I drain the water, rubbing the essences of the different sacramental items into my skin, feeling the areas and organs worst affected by the disease and forgiving them for the pain I have felt from/through them, thanking them for holding out and continuing to function, blessing them for the time when they can no longer work as they have.

T+10:30: I rinse with a brief shower and dry off, thanking L again for helping to prepare and guide me to such a helpful and meaningful experience. I share the source of my earlier fear and welcome her decision to sleep when it is time. She wants my company and I decide that although I have no capacity for sleep I will stay with her in bed, trypping fiercely in the dark as a test of my newfound courage. She invites me to share one or two more insights from the bath before she sleeps and again I am struck by her compassion and selflessness. She is usually in bed by 9 pm and it is now close to 5 am. She falls asleep as I give her soft touches - small recompense for her immense gifts to me, and to allow myself the comfort of physically connecting with her once more. I feel her pass into unconsciousness and delve into my solitary space knowing that my own decomposition/death is the fear-point and allowing the imagery to reflect that. I see electric bones connected to gossamer wires, twisting and distorting but I feel calm. I turn, eyes open, to look at L’s face and in the darkness I see her forehead crumble away, showing skull then brain, then deep in the brain a blue starlike geometric center, radiating and pulsing softly. It is an intense thing to see but not unpleasant and I expel another burst of gratitude for the hard-won ability to watch quietly and for such a wonderful companion.

T+10:45: The next 5-6 hours are spent admiring the crystalline closed eye visuals, shimmering eyes multiplying and layering, movement through pulsing geometric landscapes, feeling open to vastness. There are brief lapses into sleep, 20-30 minutes at a time but largely my awareness remains sharp.

T+17:00: Awake from a brief sleep-period and prepare for the day. We had planned to meet some friends for a bike ride and although L and I gave ourselves the option to withdraw I feel so energized and desirous of seeing them that I throw myself into preparation. Before long though I am compelled to draw, with ink and paper, some of the more important stylistic/thematic elements of last night’s visual experiences. It is difficult, as I’m not a practiced artist and have very poor penmanship even, but I concentrate and none of my pen-strokes prove to be wrong. I shed a tear or two as I recall the significance and dedicate this first act of visual-art creation in many years to the distributed essence of my deceased friend. I resume packing up bike gear and find L awake, surprising given her brief opportunity for sleep. She wants to join in on the ride which brings elation and thanks for her continued perseverance and sense of intentional togetherness – she has been through a lot and keeps on going for both of us.

I defecate for the first time since the initial hour of the tryp and notice blood. It is an unusual but not unheard of symptom for this level of disease activity and I am grateful for the lack of pain. The bodily self-forgiveness I felt and extended last night remains as I interact with these somewhat-difficult quirks. It is possible the increased activation of my sympathetic nervous system by LSD is the cause of this trouble, but just disrupting the circadian rhythm can exacerbate it, as can emotional stress of the kind I’ve been processing for the past near-week. [Symptoms abated shortly after this episode and remained mostly inactive thereafter; no true flare-up was triggered]

L suggests I consider decorating myself in some way to consecrate the ending stage of the tryp. I still have closed-eye visuals and so I perform a brief nitrous ritual which brings back a heightened sense of sacredness and open eye patterning with slithering, spinning light/dark-circles roaring to life for 10 or so minutes while I decide how to adorn myself. I end up with the fern sprig tucked behind my left ear and two mud-symbols painted on my bare chest and left arm, made from nearby yard-dirt mixed with leftover olive oil and fresh water. I feel power and mercy coursing through my whole being as we finish preparing and leave to meet our friends. [I gave serious consideration to the safety factors involved with a bike ride in my post-tryp state; reflexes and balance felt completely unaffected and my mental clarity was similarly unfazed.  I found myself being a bit more cautious than usual, if anything]. All my senses feel heightened and colors remain a bit richer than usual, although on a bright and gorgeous day it can be hard to differentiate. CEVs remain minimally present for another 4 hours. I thank everyone quietly for their presence in my life and feel like a better listener than usual. I have the opportunity to pet two beautiful dogs which I would not always choose to do, but am now thrilled with, feeling their gentle animal spirits that hold such mixed seriousness and silliness, much like myself and all of us.

Blessings to you all, we are one.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 91993

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 30

Published: Nov 30, 2011	Views: 33,002

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LSD (2), Nitrous Oxide (40), Cannabis - Hash (93), Pharms - Diazepam (115) : General (1), Combinations (3), Nature / Outdoors (23), Music Discussion (22), Entities / Beings (37), Guides / Sitters (39), Relationships (44), Small Group (2-9) (17)