		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 3 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

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

		   T+ 2:10
		 2 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   155 lb

A little background information. At age 15 throughout 10th grade of HS I dropped Lucy every other day and was able to even keep composure throughout high school while doing so. Never once did I have a bad journey or anything that felt remotely wrong at this point in my life. At this point in my life I was a worry free kid. The drought set in and my life changed drastically. I got into hard substances and became very depressed with my life. My last trip with Lucy was on February 13, 2004, 11 days before my daughter was born. It was a rough one but I had my daughters mother who I was very close with at that point to guide me through. She had also been my chemical companion throughout various past experiences.

Alright so here it is all laid out. Not a very perfectly planned journey by any means but I did learn a few very important lessons about my life and life in general and all around it was a very good experience. Throughout the night before dropping I had around 4 or 5 beers. Around 4:25a.m. I decided to dropped 3 hits of the condor blotter which I recently acquired from a loving brother. The first hour was spent in my room just laying down watching TV I don’t exactly remember what was on the TV at the time. When it reached 5:25a.m. I was feeling nothing so I decided to drop one more. Layed there and watched some more TV until it reached about 5:40 a.m. when I felt like I had diarrhea coming on from some little caesars pizza and crazy bread I hate ate a few hours earlier. My mother was just getting out of the bathroom and getting ready to head to work.

I got up and went into the bathroom and opened up the window nice and wide which faces to the east. While sitting there I could feel it coming on slightly and in my mind I got very excited and felt as if I was purposely purging out all of the negativity in my life. I felt nothing but good vibes radiating at this point. After getting out of the bathroom I went back into my bedroom around 5:50a.m. and sat back down and took a nice swig of beer and could still feel it coming on slightly. It felt like as soon as I sat down my mother called me from downstairs to print a report for my little sister because she couldn’t get it to print. I went downstairs with minor anxiety and printed it and headed back to my room.

At this point it was 6:00a.m. Once getting back into my room I laid there feeling out Lucy and letting her get a good feel of me. Everything felt right at this point. Everything was beautifully coming together but I was not totally satisfied. Around 6:15a.m. I went to grab for the last 2 hits and my phone started ringing immediately as I reached. It was my mother asking me to wake up my little brother for school. I felt like this was an omen not to drop anymore because she had stopped me while my arm was outreached. I woke up my brother and went back upstairs. Sitting on my futon things were starting to take hold even stronger but I still was not satisfied and while looking at the last two hits I thought to myself “well I can either sit here and have a low to mild experience or I can see how far the rabbit hole will go with all of these”. Seeing as this has been my first experience in over a year I dropped the last 2 hits.

At this point it had reached 6:35a.m. The sun was up in the east but my windows face the north and the west so my room was fairly dim at this point. This is where things really started to go into overdrive. Laying on my futon I was watching “Funny Farm” because it was on HBO at the time and seemed suitable and non violent/threatening. At around 6:55a.m. it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was totally blown away. I laid completely flat on my back on my futon breathing deeply in and out keeping a good mindset and watched spots on my wall begin to swirl and take on what looked like a life of their own moving in various motions.

At this point all was good and I was enjoying. I turned back to the TV and it was annoying me so I shut it off and laid back watching the ceiling. The visuals were utterly phenomenal. At first in a good sense but then they started to get a dark feeling to them. I brought my blanket up over my head and shut my eyes and inside my mind I was having some very wild visuals that I have never experienced to this intensity before. Things that seemed to look like skeletal figures with geometric lines forming their shape. Utterly amazing but at the same time frightening.

It felt as if “the demons” (how my mind put it at that time) were closing in on me. I felt like I was fading out and I became very closterphobic and felt as if something was making it hard for me to breathe while under my blanket. Very overwhelming feeling. I pushed off my blanket and laid on my side staring at my futon gazing into what looked as if it was the fourth dimension. While gazing it became dark again and what looked like a demons face came before my eyes totally white face made up of total energy nothing physical with black eyes.

This messed with me bad so I sat up and tried to regain composure. At this point only a very small amount of time had passed. It went from 6:55a.m. to only 7:15a.m. I couldn’t believe my brothers and sisters hadn’t even left for school yet because I wanted to go downstairs where it was more open and bright. Things were very intense so I decided to try and give my daughters mother a call who used to be chemical companion and would guide me through when times got rough. With 3 back to back failed attempts at calling I think it set me off very bad.

I laid down on my back again and stared at the ceiling. The next visual was the most intense I have ever seen in my entire relationship with Lucy. Above me on the ceiling were physically lifeless forms. They were made up of complete energy with a light white glow. They were in a circular shape all connected at the head, arms at their sides, and legs spread out. They were moving in a circle in a counterclockwise position. I felt like fading out again and began to but things started feeling negative and I felt as if “”the demons”” were grabbing for me.

I closed my eyes and I was seeing some very cool but scary visuals. Things that looked like ancient egyption pyramids and peoples of that time along with skeletal figures and demonic looking faces. I needed somebody to be there with me and help me understand and comfort me. I attempted to call my daughters mother again with no luck and became upset and realized that it had only hit 7:40a.m. and that my little brothers and sisters were gone at school. At this point I totally lost track of time up until the end.

Downstairs I went and turned on a fan and pointed it at the couch and headed to the bathroom. In the bathroom nothing too spectacular happened. Just the usual off and crooked look to everything. I came out of the bathroom and laid down on the couch and watched the TV hoping it would keep me leveled off.  This did not work and I found myself gazing off and getting an overwhelmed feeling of anxiety. I forgot the purpose of why I was journeying in the first place and only wanted to come down. Things felt off and not right and generally blue. I tried calling Erica one last time with no luck. The air from the fan started to annoy me so I turned it off. I stared out the window and became annoyed because I couldn’t go outside feeling that overwhelmed and not knowing the purpose of what I was doing in that realm and feeling like nothing was being accomplished and very overwhelmed of the intensity of what I was seeing.

I had to figure out something to do. Right in front of me was my answer. The computer. I walked up and hit the mouse and the screen saver shut off and Windows popped up. I looked at my desktop and it was distorted looking, the buttons seemed larger, the color was off, out of the corner of my eye the printer looked like it was lifting off the desk and coming back down over and over again everything on the desk out of the corner of my eye was floating and pulsing. Exact words that came flying out of my mouth was “F*** That.” I got up and sat back down on the couch. Everything was just so very intense and I felt so lost after only a few minutes I jumped back up and made my way back to the machine determined to get here to talk with some people I knew would understand where I was at and be able to help me through.

The visuals were still intense and throughout my whole time on the computer it was very intense. I felt like I was inside the monitor at some point and others I just watched everything on the desk float. I made my way to a web forum I visit frequently with little trouble. I’ve been a computer nut since I was 11 years old. I went to a post I had made earlier when I had first dropped. On the screen I read a fellow brothers post that I hadn’t previously read before dosing saying “It’s been a long time coming. You know what to do.”

It’s like exactly the opposite what I had been thinking but I could relate so well. That I had no clue what I was supposed to be doing. I had totally forgotten the purpose of my journey and why I was gazing into the astral plane. I have so much respect and appreciation for everybody who helped me out throughout that thread especially in the beginning. Everybody was throwing short and compact hard hitting good spirited punches at me. I will never underestimate the value of words even on a computer screen ever again in my life. Where I was at that point in time I was clinging on those words. I will also never forget what you guys did for me. You may not realize it but I’m telling you, you truly helped set me in a good place. I have much love for you and I feel a much deeper connection with this forum then I previously had.

Sitting with my face close to the monitor I felt like I had a connection with each and every one of them. It was absolutely beautiful. I could honestly feel their good intentions and felt like I was making a connection with their spirits through their words and avatars. It was like I have known all of them my whole life and they understood me and where I was at that point. I became very calm at this point. This is when I could not connect to the forums. I had just started to feel better and I felt like something very demonic was keeping me away from the love I was feeling while here. While here I felt as if all of the negativity in my body was being purged with the help of the vibes I was receiving.

I went back and laid on the couch and reached out and felt like I made a spiritual connection with my uncle who I was very close to growing up. He was like my role model and I respect him. He is a very wise spiritual man. I felt overwhelmed with good vibes again and once again felt like I was purging out the negativity in my body. I called him and when he heard me rambling about how I dropped 7 doses and was tapped the f*** in and didn’t remember what I was supposed to be doing here and I am totally lost and on and on and on he laughed.

He said 'Matthew you need to go outside. It’s a beautiful day and the earthly spirits will love you right now. Get up go outside and lay down in the grass and let yourself be engulfed with the positive spirits who will help you figure out what you are trying to do here.”  I replied saying I cannot go outside. He shot back “It’s not that you cannot go outside it’s that you are setting boundaries for yourself as you always do. Let go of your boundaries and travel outside.”

I looked out the window and it all looked so big out there. I haven’t been out of my house at all in literally 3 or 4 months, except for a few times with my daughters mother. I ditched most of my friends due to my anxiety that I have a hard time controlling. I just couldn’t do it. My uncle continued to laugh and told me that everything would be alright and to keep purging out the negativity and that’s the reason I had come to purge the negativity, the boundaries, the fear of responsibilities and maturity, and thinking to much of what other people think of me. It still didn’t seem to clear to me at this point. What he said made since but he cut me short because he was at work leaving me confused and sort of upset with him.

I got back on the forums. The pictures they all posted were absolutely beautiful. They produced some wild visual distortions and I had to close some of them because they were very intense. Especially this one picture of a trippy girl From time to time between posts and such I laid down on the couch. I watched the ceiling and many geometric patterns that looked like grafitie letters and designs were pulsing on the ceiling and changing form constantly. At one point the ceiling looked as if one big spiders web. I think the web represented many personal problems of my own that I have weaved. I could see it perfectly but became lost inside of it and lost my way.

At one point I tried to call my daughters mother again and things were slowly coming down at this point. This time she answered and I tried to tell her where I was at but she didn’t want to hear me. She started screaming nonsense at me that I couldn’t understand. One thing I did understand was her last line. “How often in the past year have you been here for me Matt? I was there for you last time this time you are on your own.” It made perfect sense to me and I needed to hear this from her. It helped me contemplate on many personal issues and set me back on track as to what I was doing and trying to accomplish.

Things slowly faded out. Visuals became less and less robust. The mind grip let go slowly. Around 1:30 p.m. The effects were totally gone for the most part. The afterglow is still upon me as we speak. From 1:30p.m. – 4:00p.m. I laid on my futon and contemplated many personal things. I have come to some conclusions and some things are still left unsettled.

All in all it was a very very good experience. It taught me a few valuable lessons and left me with a few questions to answer on my own. I am anticipating my next meeting with Lucy with open arms which probably will not be for a while.

And this chapter comes to a close. That was a long time coming.

May 20, 2005

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 43207

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Apr 19, 2007	Views: 30,263

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LSD (2) : Alone (16), Difficult Experiences (5), Relationships (44), General (1)


		 DOSE:

		 9 glasses
		 oral
		 Alcohol - Beer/Wine
		 (liquid)

		 4 joints/cigs
		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

		 1 hit
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   82 kg

Set

I have quite a sensitive mind to chemicals. If I don't maintain a tolerance level for alcohol it can drop to the point where one beer will have a noticeable effect, to get stoned I only need a few drags. My previous encounter with LSD was one dud hit a few years back which effected me more then anyone else.

I was back in my home town after a few months away. I had moved to another city where I was busy failing college. I had not maintained a tolerance level for alcohol. I was depressed. In the new city I had found it difficult to make friends I could relax with because my previous friends and I had built one of those internal logic systems of humour and unspoken philosophy without branching out enough.

In the new city I had become introspective with too much time and too much Spliff. Smoking Spliff was making me paranoid. My life had fallen into rituals of image maintainance - fake smiles and laughter. A shit life. I fucking hate fake smiles. When I got back I couldn't click with my old friends, things had changed, cocaine had come into the group and they didn't want me to know about it. I got an immediate inferiority complex and started shutting down. I got a stiff-in-my-joints-while-sitting-because-movement-might-betray-my-awkwardness kind of awkwardness. Also, I was feeling guilty for going off to visit my friends without really saying hello to my family.

We were parked at some arb place in the city and there was to be a party at an old friends house which I found myself dreading. Why can't I enjoy this like I'm supposed to? What the fuck is wrong with me? I thought constantly. I was passed beer in a quart and I found myself getting embarrasingly drunk. I was constantly relating what I was actually doing and saying to what I should've been doing and saying, like some one would ask me a question and I would mumble something inane, the person would move on to find a better vibe quite quickly and I would be left thinking about what I could've and should've said etc.

Not a state in which to smoke a Spliff but when it came around I could not face the task of explaining why I didn't want any. I got bad stoned. It was one of the coldest days I had ever felt too so I was shivering like a bastard. I got some depressing news that the friend we were going to see was now into herion.

Setting

We got to the friends house whose parents were away, his buddies from college and assorted people were there. Our group was a deep house cocaine good vibey loving type of people (and me), there was a harcore tattoo tribal piercing heavy metal type group, and a few yuppie celine dion liking music is not of much importance type group. And some what might be called dirty hippies I guess, I think they were junkies. I feel I was way too analytical in noting these distinctions, but I was in that frame of mind, trying to quantify, understand, reduce.

I bumbled through hellos sat awkwardly and then wump, LSD. 'Hey dude do you have 80 bucks? (South African Rands) It's a bit expensive but the dude has some Hoffmans. They're fucking strong.'

'Uh, yeah.' I said and gave the money. I looked at it, put it in my mouth and swallowed it down with beer.

After I’d swallowed I realised I would much rather be far away from those people, in a bath, reading some really nice book. Escapist thinking. It came on quite quickly, within twenty minutes I was feeling it, and an hour later I was completely wrecked. Everything I wanted to escape from had a crotch which was rubbed in my face.

Equals

I realised I was going to die. The nakedness of the realisation was total, no abstraction whatsoever. You Are Going To Die One Day. It might as well have been within the hour. I saw all my internal organs sitting inside where I still harboured childish notions of internal structure. No, You Are A Pile Of Guts. GUTS? I thought. I HAVE GUTS INSIDE ME??

My internal organs were there right under a thin flat of skin. This freaked me out. These Guts Will Rot One Day. Fuck. My friends were laughing, delighting in the wonder around them while I was a million miles away. My Mom Will Die Before Me And Rot. Fuck. Your Body. My fucking body will die? Dead? Me? What the fuck am I? What The Fuck Am I? I just didn’t have a clue. I tried escaping to the bathroom.

Oh God the mirror in the bathroom. I didn't see myself in the mirror at all, nothing of me was there. No familiar face that I’ve seen each day without concern. How I was moving this was a mystery. It was horror. This covering, thin thin thin covering of skin. And that dripping red flesh moulded onto a white bone skull. A knife could easily peel that away.

(I just want to point out that there was no danger of me harming myself even though I was completely wrecked on LSD. I’m quite positive of it.)

The physics of being able to peel your face off easily are obvious, but I realised the full implications of this possibility. You Can Physically Dismantle a Human Body Into Various Parts. What?? And digging through the pile of guts, 'where are you?' would reveal no little silver glowing orb that was consciousness or spirit.

I realised that right that very second someones body was being sliced open by a murderer. Someone was being eaten alive by a wild animal, face ripping off, the thing fucking roaring with as it does it. No Mercy. Although I don’t know if it was anywhere near the real horror, I couldn’t imagine feeling any worse if I was watching a mauling first hand. Maybe the difference was duration, I would get flashes of the total feeling that I was somewhat able to recoil from.

I got back to the crowd and they’d moved outside into the freezing cold. My fear of opening up and talking kept all my unfolding revelations inside, and from the outside I suppose I was just a strange person who was completely off his face and worried looking but otherwise calm. My eyes were probably looking in two different directions.

I didn't want life, I didn't want to be stuck in this sensitive pile of guts. Who the fuck would stick you in a pile of guts and leave you to rot away? What sick joke was this? Then my heart dropped, it suddenly hit me that it's entirely possible that we are a mistake. That human consciousness is anomolous, evolution fucking up. For thousands and thousands of years no one has been able to conclusively prove otherwise.

God? The word was a noise the mouth makes with air and gristle. Religion could simply have evolved through natural selection to keep humans sane and motivated to the end of their lives. What a sick joke. What a legacy. Stuck in a pile of rotting guts to die. WHY? What If I Didn’t Want This? Where Is The Choice?

Everything was life or death and my friends were giggling and opening things and eating things, I felt nothing for them, no love. Visuals were constant but they were meaningless. The cloudy night sky was a misty inner dome of a dark cathedral with hundreds of carved gargoyles staring out of the gloom. Friends faces were simultaneous layers of skin, flesh and bone. I saw piles of guts, stomachs, livers, breathing lungs under rib cages. I lost the abstractions. Spines jutted from the back of jerseys and elbows were just protrusions of the underlying skeleton. Thin paper skin covering these. It seemed everyone was just ignoring these obvious betrayals. 'High cheek bones' and 'beautiful knees' but they are just skin covering bone. I stared at my hands and they freaked me out, they were pads. If we had three fingers since memory then we wouldn’t think anything of it, I began seeing everyone with three fingers.

Thankfully it all faded after eternity.

Personal Thoughts

This analogy just came to me: An uncontrolled release of pressure is an explosion. Which damages the vessel. Fuck. But a controlled release can be entirely beneficial…

I think these kind of experiences are necessary for a person, even the negative ones. But I think mine was too much at the wrong time. In my opinion it should not be dick around stuff, but a controlled and regulated event. It just makes so much sense to me. Naked blasts of truth and there isn’t a religious use for it? Please. Because what happened to me was too much of a burn, I’m now pretty much scared shitless of facing any truth again, I’ve gone back to my escapist ways. What I propose to myself is a sorting out of my mental negativities, face my fears etc. and then try LSD or some substance again with a braver outlook. If I can crack that then I will write up on the glory, which I’m sure exists in equal quantities as the hell but I’m yet to experience it fully. I’ve had glimpses on odd Spliff revelations, but nothing full on convincing.

I need to be convinced. Faith based religion does not really work for me, so I need to find a person who has gone into these experiences and come out with some kind of map towards compassion, who has some kind of useful systems/techniques in place and who treats these events with utmost reverence and respect. Because to not feel love for my friends was fucking aweful. (I see this as a five to ten year plan, nothing to be taken lightly. My soul on the line type of thing.)

Although this blasted me into an existential nightmare with lingering effects and what it uncovered has not been covered over again, I think it’s better I deal with it now than perhaps after I die? There where there might be less footholds to return to. Though it was the cause, I don’t think LSD was to blame for the bad experience, it just accelerated and amplified what was naturally residing in my psychology.

Thanks for letting me share this, it has helped me. I never realised how bad it actually was.

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 60828

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: May 6, 2007	Views: 28,016

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LSD (2) : Large Group (10+) (19), Relationships (44), Bad Trips (6)


		 DOSE:

		 250 ug
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   80 kg

I started by taking two tabs in my room at +0.00. The guy I got them from said that each tab was 100-150 micrograms. The tabs tasted slightly bitter/metallic as soon as they touched my tongue, but after they were wet they had no taste. I left them under my tongue for 30 minutes, then chewed up and swallowed. Apart from the utter excitement, around the +0.30, I started to get my first effects. Uncontrollable laughter and a general feeling of something happening, something changing. After about +1.00 I saw the first signs of visual distortion, the face on my digital clock is flat, but it looked like it was bubbling up and the numbers were morphing. I could look at my clock, then look at the wall, and still see the time on the wall. At this point I realised I’d finally got good tabs, and was pleased. (last holidays I bought bunk tabs)

I decided I go out to the kitchen and get a drink of water, and have a look at what was going on out there. As soon as I walked out of my room I realised how much of a bad idea that was. I felt extremey uncomfortale walking around, with everything feeling so foreign and knowing I might run into my parents at any minute didn't help either. I made it out to the kitchen and filled up a cup with water. I headed back and had to walk past my mums room who had her door open, she called out to me and and I jumped about 20 feet in the air and spilt my cup on the ground. My mum didn’t notice that I'd spil my cup or jumped, so I walked back over to her. She said 'you can have your pens there in my cupboard'. ‘Pens, what are pens’ I thought, not being able to think clerly caused me not to really understanding the concept of this word, I sort of looked at her confused and asked ‘Can I have them?’ she looked at me very strangely and said yes. I realised how dumb I was and immediately thought my mum knew that something was wrong with me. I walked into the cupboard, grabbed the pens, and as I picked them up I completely forgot how to act around my parents. The person who I really was just became so foreign, I had completely forgot who they were, let alone trying to act like them. I walked out and my mum was staring at me real weird, or so I thought, I quickly muttered, ‘I can’t sleep, im very tired, I’m gunna make tea’ then ran out. I got back to my room and thought for sure my mum knew I was on some sort of drug. I kept seeing her face in my mind, it looked as though she was analysing me, she knew something was up. Being around people who aren't tripping and even worse who you don't want to know that you are tripping is extremely weird. I felt so de-tatched and so far away from her, like on a completely different plain or level.

Now I had to go back out to the kitchen and make tea! Not cool, I was coming up really fast and getting more confused by the minute. I walked back out to the kitchen, boiled the kettle and as it came to a boil the sound slowed right down. I could hear every pop of each bubble, the sound of the bubbling and click when the kettle had finished was slowed down so much. The usual ‘click’ of the kettle button which takes around half a second to click, took what seemed like 2 or 3 seconds to finally stop. All while this was happening, everything was moving, sort of stretching and shifting, everything around me, which continued all night, the strange thing was, although I always thought hallucinations were going to be cool on acid, visal or audio, at this point all they did was confuse me more, I didn‘t find them cool. I didn’t experience any anxiety or fright, I just was confused, I was trying to piece together what was happening, while the acid was completely ripping away these pieces and any sense of logic. After the kettle boiled, I ran back to my room with a cup of water, completely forgetting I was supposed to make tea, luckily my mum didn’t see me on the way back. I got back to my room, and this is where things started getting really intense.

I think it was around +2.00 now and I got back to my room and jumped in bed. There were many times throughout this trip I had to coax myself out of a bad trip. It was a very mental trip, I had to face any fears or worries I had ever had with acid or anything else which arose. Luckily, instead of becoming impulsive and letting the paranoia feed, I had researched these worries and knew it would be OK. I was able to think bad thoughts through before indulging in them and bringing on a bad trip. The first fear which arose was when I realised if my parents came in I could not act sober. I would probably not understand a word they were saying, let alone be able to talk with them. It scared me, and I started to feel nauseous, then I realised, they have never came into my room during the night, why would they start now. I felt much better and started listening to music. I saw the album art on the screen changing colours, and becoming extremely 3D the longer I stared at it, it did this all night. It was a psytrance band, so the album was ‘trippy’, I understand why psychedelic art was invented in the 60s  . I remember at one point myiPod and my hand actually shrunk, the bottom half was the size of a matchbox and the top half growing out bigger than normal. The clicker wheel turned cheese yellow. Another time my iPod actually started to melt away in my hand and I could feel it melt. Now as I was lying in bed, I had no idea what was going on. I was losing touch with reality at light speed, yet the clock was moving so damn slow. I thought two tabs might have been too much, because at the rate I was watching myself go up compared to time was scary. After about 10 minutes of deep thought (it's very hard to focus on anything whilst on acid), I realised the come up on acid was about 2-3 hours long, so realised I probably had another hour of going up. At this point I completely lost all familiarity with myself and my surroundings. Everything became amazingly foreign. This was the most frightening and confusing part of my experience. It would have been around +2.30, and I kept forgetting where I was, who I was, falling into these deep mind traps then jumping out of them for a split second just to touch with reality one last time.

I stood up and didn’t know what to do. I felt like I was enjoying myself, but so confused as to what was going on I couldn’t make sense of anything. I realised how fucked up I was and being so unfamiliar with my real self, thought there was no way I could come back to myself or being sober. Reality and soberness just seemed so distant and far off, it scared me. Although the acid was telling me I was never going to be normal again, I knew deep down I would be back to myself again by normal, and just stopped thinking about it and enjoyed the experience, knowing that one simple thing was probably the most important aspect in warding off a bad trip this whole experience. Things kept happening in which the trip was so close to turning bad it wasn’t funny.

My dog started barking and yelping outside, I didn’t know what my dog was at first, I thought it was some alien creature come to get me, then slowly I realised I had a dog, and immediately thought it was a puppy theif (recently heard about them on the news), I thought someone was trying to steal her. As soon as I thought this the sounds morphed into grunts of a human and yelping of my dog. This was very hard to deal with as I love my dog very much, but I tried to convince myself it couldn't be real. I thought to myself if I was asleep, there is nothing I could do, with a head full of acid, there’s even less I can do. I wasn’t sure if the sound of my dog was real or fake, but I warded it off to deal with in the morning. The next thing I know I feel this incredibly uncomfortable urge, creep up on me. It hits me like a pile of bricks. I have no idea what this is. After analyzing the feeling for a while, my best guess is that the water I drank now has to be pissed out, so I stumble to the toilet.

I get outside my door and hear my sister talking. The words are all jumbled and fragmented, and IMPOSSIBLE to understand. They echo over each other and sound like complete gibberish. I had no idea whether she was talking in her sleep or talking to my mum. I think it’s OK to go the bathroom, but I don’t want my mum to think I’m still awake, as I already thought she suspected something, so I leave the bathroom light off. Bad idea. I get in there, close the door and the whole room is close to pitch black, I can only mae out outlines. The walls start to rise up around me and start dancing around in circles. I get very frightened and have no idea how I am supposed to get out of the bathroom. I put my hands out and walk and hit the shower. I know I am close to the door, and used the shower to guide me there and turn the light on. I walk over and try to piss, it takes about 5 seconds for anything to happen, but when it does happen, it feels like everything in my body just lurched out through my piss. Very strange feeling. I wash my hands and look in the mirror to see my face. I used to have mild acne, but it’s cleared up, so there’s still a few red scars/spots left, my face becomes covered in the red spots which turn into big red pimples and I grow hair all over my face. Normally I would think that was awesome, but I just thought it was confusing, not scary or fun, just weird. Another time, a little while after that I had to do another piss. The feeling was still very confusing to identify. The same thing again except this time when looking in the mirror I saw my skin not melt away but sort of become really tight on may face, so my head took the shape of a skull.

I really didn't understand what was going on. I manage to get back into my room and lay down. It is silent. I begin to hear this audio hallucination, it sounds like mechanic bubbles popping, the silence sort of bending back and forth. Any time in which there was silence throughout the rest of the night, I would hear this strange noise. I watched a movie on my iPod, and turned on an episode of ’heroes’. It's like there are frames missing as the film sort of skips a beat. The characters have a soft glow, sort of aura around them, which occasionly becomes stronger for a few seconds when they move. Watching it some parts completely scared the crap out of me, I saw a guy jump off a building, then guns and shooting and some guy all alone in the middle of the desert get stalked. Concentrating on the movie was impossible, so I sort of just stared at the screen while my mind jumped from one thought to the next. At one point, I became convinced I was going to lose control of my actions and kill myself. It was quite scary but I tried to stop think about it, and reasoned with myself to make sure I knew I would never kill myself, and felt a little better.

I tried to get up and draw, but as soon as I stood up I forgot what I was doing. It took me around 10 minutes to walk half a metre across my room as I' realise what I was trying to do for a split second, take a small step then forget again. I ended up getting to my desk, but was too fascinated with the construction of a chair, that I forgot about drawing. I finally ended up realizing I wanted to try and draw, and sat down, but I didn’t know what to draw. Any decision I had to make like choosing a song, episode, what to draw etc. took almost 10 minutes to decide. My mind was racing so fast, if I didn't pick straight away I'd forget about it for another 5 minutes. I picked up the pencil and drew a face, whenever I pressed the pencil on the paper I saw squiggles in the paper come all across the paper and I could see right in the texture of the paper. When there were a few things on the page, I sat back and looked at the paper and could see all the drawings move around the page. Took me about half an hour to try and draw anything as I’d get halfway through and forget what I was doing.

I gave up trying to draw and just sat on my bed, amazed at how unfamiliar my own self was and my surroundings. I remember at one point every time I looked at the clock, the time would be further back than last time I looked. I think knowing the time on acid is pointless as I never would understand what it meant. Then another time I was holding my iPod and the song sped up in fast forward, I heard it speed up then go back to normal and saw the blue bar speed across the screen. I hadn’t touched the iPod, so it wasn‘t me fast forwarding the song. There was a tarp outside, anytime the wind blew it, it would echo very strangely, it scared me at first, as I had no idea what it was, but I remembered the tarp and calmed down. The audio hallucination were amazing in retrospect. The way they echo and slow down is really cool. When I was tripping, I'd hear something echo or slow down, but my perceptions being so altered, I had no idea what it was.

Somehow I stumbled across almost controlling my audio hallucinations. I could think up words, say them in my head and hear them out loud as they would echo in my ears. I could think up any song I had recently listened to, and play it in my ears, without speakers or earphones or anything. Again though, being so confused it wasn’t special to me, just confusing as to why it was happening but still slightly interesting. By +4.00 or +5.00, my head started to clear up, and I began to surface back to reality. The first 4 hours of my trip were the most intense and confusing of my life, I had no idea about anything, almost like being reverted back to a baby or child and experiencing everything again.

Everything was so unbeleivably foreign, I had no idea whether a chair was as normal or a hallucination, and thought both were just as interesting. It’s very hard to explain. The best I can put it, is as being a baby, in a sense. As human beings, we think it awesome that a baby gets to have so many new experiences. Even the simplest of things like a chair or flashing toy can be of great interest to a baby. Yet take the baby to a theme park, although to us, a theme park is much more interesting than a chair, to the baby it is no different, just another new experience. The baby takes all the new experiences, and doesn’t question if they are normal or not. That is how I felt. The hallucinations were the same level of interest as a chair to me. Both new experiences, both very confusing, both equal in their intrigue. I always imagined the hallucinations would be fun to look at, because they’d be awesome sober, but when tripping they were just another added bit of confusion to my jumbled world.

Well after that intense 4 or 5 hours of my trip, my mind started to clear up, and I started to float back to reality again. It got to the point, where I felt, in my mind I was normal, I became familiar with my surroundings and somewhat more familiar with myself. I ended up spending the rest of the night watching the hallucinations at my computer screen, while trying to make sense of what had happened. After a while I got bored, and went to look in the mirror again. I felt very clear minded at this point, the only part of the acid trip left was the hallucinations, or so it felt. While I was sitting at the computer, the mechanic bubble sounds still played, when it rained heavily it sounded like a machine. The sound wasn’t all in one long sound, but it would rain, then stop and echo, then rain, then stop at echo, sounded like a washing machine in a massive cellar. I felt quite exhausted, mentally and physically, so headed back to my room. On the way I stared into the mirror and saw myself grow hair all over my face, and then morph into some giant ape like being. I fumbled around a bit more, till the hallucinations and almost completely ceased. It was around +7.00 or +8.00 when I went to bed. I drank some chamomile tea, and fell asleep, I remember I was still getting slight visuals as I fell asleep.

I Woke up feeling basically normal no hallucinations, no hangover no nothing, except a slight feeling of dis-attatchment with reality. It’s just confusing merging back into this life which was so foreign only a few hours ago. I’m still in utter confusement/astonishment over how powerful and intense this whole experience was. I am still slightly confused as to what happened, it‘s like I‘ve been hit by a ton of bricks. In my naivety, when the trip was at it’s most intense, I only had my room to explore as my parents didn’t fall asleep till late. Although I was really only exploring my mind, I would of liked a larger environment to experience other objects in such a perplexed state. Once my parents went to sleep, the intense phase had passed and I just sort of mellowed out. I was super confused and could of easily done something stupid, a trip sitter would have been preferred to help me out. But the powerfulness of LSD still amazes me, I was completely shocked and would have never expected what happened, to happen. Although I was prepared to accept anything, the intensity still overwhelmed me. I think if I am to do it again, I will make sure I have a much better environment and a sitter, but overall, the experience was not frightening, it was not bad either, it was not fun or exciting, but simply astonishing now and confusing at the time. All in all, it was quite rewarding in experiencing new perceptions.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 62094

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: May 22, 2007	Views: 25,487

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LSD (2) : Alone (16), Music Discussion (22), General (1)


		 DOSE:

		   repeated
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   repeated
		 oral
		 MDMA
		 (pill / tablet)

		   repeated
		 oral
		 Mushrooms

		 inhaled
		 Nitrous Oxide
		 (gas)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   145 lb

In fact, at this time, I feel that I can only allude to the incredible nature of my experience. I will present evidence that supports the reality of my experiences as something that extends far, far beyond a marginal, odd or unique drug trip. Indeed, what I am attempting to report to you is a series of experiences, that started directly on Easter weekend of 2004, but that has roots extending as far back as 2001.

Well, I shall begin.

Without attempting to describe, explain or otherwise describe the exact nature of what has occurred, I shall state very plainly that I have experienced a state of mental activity that is incredibly different than any I had experienced before. Through my own inquiries, I have been able to find descriptions of experiences that seem closely analogous with my own, yet none that I have been able to identify as being identical. Many of these similar stories were interpreted in ways that were unfortunately vague, mystic or otherwise untenable when subjected to serious reflection. Inquiry into neurology, or psychology also yielded little information regarding directly correlative experiences. My quest for understanding has not been fruitless, as it has allowed me to understand and assimilate my experiences a little better. It has taken almost three years to finally feel that I have acquired enough of an understanding to begin serious discussion.

I am twenty-three years old, and male. I was born on the twelfth of March, 1983. I have been so profoundly impacted by these experiences, that I have enrolled in a University’s Cognitive Sciences program in an attempt to understand what has occurred and share it with the world. I live in Canada. I have several friends, including my fiancée who have supported me through these events, and their psychological repercussions. They are willing to validate any accounts, or aspect of my experience, as they were active participants in my life during the most intense incursions into this ‘altered mindset’ of which I speak.

I will, as briefly as possible, try do outline some of the key events. Exacting detail, at this time, is impractical as the events have unfolded over a period of several years.

Part 1 - Prehistory

-In the years 2000-2003 I was an active and often times heavy user of psychoactive substances. I displayed a particular affinity for psychedelics, though most often mixed several drug classes. I have extensive experience with psychoactive mushrooms, LSD, MDMA, PCP, mescaline and opiates.

-In early 2003 I began serious inquiry into theories involving complex systems. This inquiry -though unstructured and highly informal- became something of an obsession in the year to follow.

Part 2 - Precursor Experiences

Part2A- The First Experience

On Easter weekend of 2004, while on vacation with a friend in Montreal, I had my first relevant experience. My drug use had begun two nights previously, in Ottawa, with LSD and MDMA. The LSD had the ‘Illuminatis’ pyramid. The MDMA was not pure, and contained quantities of stimulants, suspected to be methamphetamine. On Thursday, I stayed awake with friends and consumed one tab of the LSD, and one pill of MDMA.

When I arrived in Montreal on Friday, I again stayed awake the entire night. My friend and I went to a rave, and I consumed only MDMA, although my friend had brought some of his own. I consumed two of my pills, and two of his. His contained some variety of hallucinogen, supposedly 2-cb.

On Saturday, we stayed in. I consumed two more pills, and two tabs of LSD. Several hours later, the LSD had yet to take effect. I consumed 4 more tabs, but still found no observable sense of being on LSD. Convinced I merely found a dry spot on the sheet, I consumed several more MDMA pills. There was no observable sense of LSD intoxication, merely a mildly hallucinogenic quality to an otherwise unremarkable MDMA buzz.

The next afternoon, after having slept for perhaps 6-8 of the previous 72 hours, my friend went to sleep. I was still unable to rest, and laid on my hotel room bed with my eyes closed. I started to contemplate an aspect of my inquiry into systems theory, and set my sights to a visual model I had been thinking about. I found my ability to manipulate my visualizations extraordinarily enhanced. It had been about 15 hours since my last does of LSD, and about eight since my last tab of MDMA. I felt relatively lucid.

As I contemplated my visualizations, I suddenly found my model changing with remarkable speed, and branching into extraordinary realms of complexity. I had a breakthrough, and epiphany, and it was so sudden and large and inescapable that I was left trembling.

The nature of the epiphany is unimportant at this time, though I am willing to describe it in greater detail. What is important is what followed.

Shaken, I woke my friend and started talking excitedly to him about concepts of scale and scale-ability of systems. Finding him, of course, completely unable to follow my train of thought I simply imparted the magnitude of what I felt I was occurring and ‘gave myself’ to the experience.

The revelations didn’t stop. My thoughts coursed from one topic to another, with incredible fluidity. Every thought sparked another, every question answered promised to lead to another, greater epiphany. Walking out into the world, I found that every action appeared as a descriptive metaphor for what I was thinking. I couldn’t stop thinking, and I couldn’t stop coming up with answers. Systems theories are heralded as a means to unite the splintered factions of science on an unbiased and neutral framework. Systems theories are intended to calibrate existing understandings with an awareness of complexity. In the time that followed, I would apply my intuitive understanding of complexity to every topic I could consider.

Stepping away from what I was thinking, and examining what I was sensing, I found that I was able to watch in detail any item in the periphery of my field of vision, as though my eyes  were trained on it directly. Indeed, my peripheral vision became the visual realm I came to occupy during that time. I felt no need to look directly at anything.

I was immersed in a world of stunning visual clarity and indescribable intellectual understanding. I was immersed so completely, that I was almost unable to speak. The thoughts wouldn’t stop. Neither would the constant stream of descriptive visual/situational metaphor. Neither would the strange awareness of my peripheral vision. None of it seemed hallucinogenic. It all seemed, shockingly, startlingly clear.

I should at this point mention that this state persisted -though I experienced a gradual decline in intensity- for a full three weeks.

I was unable to be around people for any length of time, for their peace more than mine. I would sleep little and try and communicate my thoughts constantly, desperate to etch some sort of record of the thoughts I was having, but unable to write quickly enough. In a few days, I decided to (though I should perhaps say, was inescapably compelled to) meditate and fast outside for a week. During that week, I slept outside, and subsisted off of salted tea and a zip-lock bag of dried rice. I lost 6 pounds.

I wrote extensively, though mostly the writings were socio-political. Mostly I meditated and tried to work through the conflict between wanting what was occurring to continue, and needing it to stop due to my overwhelming exhaustion.  During that time, I discovered that I had developed an incredible ability to maintain complicated rhythmic patterns. I was also able to write quickly and legibly, though not perfectly, forwards, backwards, upside down and mirrored with either hand. My meditation skills were dramatically improved, and I was able to perform such bizarre tasks as to make objects I was looking at disappear from my field of vision. This last aspect was particularly interesting, though I will describe it in more detail another time.

All of these skills faded, as the ‘fugue-state’ as I would come to call it, subsided. This was the first experience I had with the fugue-state. It was the longest in duration, though I would come to understand that this particular experience of it was still very different from the state of mind that would eventually evolve.

Part 2b - Aftermath

The months that followed were chaotic and strange. I was driven, and intoxicated by this experience. It was several orders of magnitude greater than any ‘intoxication’ I had ever felt. Nor had it felt like intoxication, in the sense that it is usually characterized by difficulty in performing normal functions, or understanding information. The experience of the fugue state is, in my own description, an experience of searing lucidity.

I cannot necessarily claim that I handled this first experience with grace, as I had yet to learn that while some of the thoughts I would have were in fact startlingly accurate, many others were misleading and confusing. Some of the ideas and theories that I literally ‘thought up’ without having any significant prior understanding proved to closely mirror contemporary theories. This simultaneously had the effect of bolstering my confidence that something of great significance had occurred, while reducing the level of scrutiny I applied to the other insights I had gained.

I became convinced that I had been granted insight and understanding that was unparalleled in the realm of normal human experience. I also became convinced that the cure to the confusion that followed from the weeks of explosive mental activity, was to be another incursion into the fugue-state.  The idea seemed sound enough, as it quickly became obvious that I had no real way of expressing my thoughts to others, or assimilating the ideas I was having into my daily life. It seemed to me that if I was to experience it again, but this time with purpose, that I could fill in the missing information that would make everything else that had happened fit together and make sense. This would not be the case.

Months passed, and during those months I engaged in the most frequent psychedelic use of my life. A good friend of mine purchased a thousand lot of acid, and I began to dose 2-3 times a week, occasionally taking as many as nine hits simultaneously. The LSD on that sheet was excellent, but I was unable to repeat the experience that began in April of the same year. My highs were the same as any other LSD high, a state that I am very familiar with and can navigate without any difficulty. The were characterised by all of the hallmarks of LSD intoxication, fractal patterns, tracers, ‘time-shifting’, increased alertness and energy.

After months of seeking, and dosing LSD and MDMA regularly, I began to ease my use. I began to believe that what had occurred must have been an isolated experience. As the months had passed, the memories of the experience began to become relics, and I began to doubt their authenticity. Perhaps, after all, I had been imparting a false sense of relevance and value upon my perceptions. Perhaps I had merely triggered a schizophrenic episode, and in my confused state had, for the first time, become completely unable to distinguish imagination from reality. As the months dragged on, I began to let go of my faith in the relevance of the fugue state. I then resolved to mark it as merely an interesting chapter that, even if it was a false and maddening experience, had granted me insights of incredible value. I came to believe that I any benefit I had drawn from what had happened, I had drawn from the process of healing from madness.

Part 3 - The True Experience

I shall let you know in advance that to describe the sensory experience of what occurred next will take significantly more text than I will dare to write here. I will, of course, describe what it is like to experience the fugue state itself at another time. Here, I seek only to present the chain of experiences that revealed this state of mind as a real, and incredible thing, and not just a drug-frenzied decline into madness. In fact, it has since been revealed that drugs are a tool with which to access it, though it is quite a separate mental process. Drugs are what revealed the fugue to me, but are themselves, not the fugue.

I will also clarify, before I continue, that the chaotic and difficult behaviour that is so tightly interwoven with this story is a result of the difficulty in assimilating the experiences themselves. The first experience lasted, somehow, three weeks. I have never relived exactly what occurred during that time. The following experiences were much shorter, with after effects dissipating in a couple of days, yet took the better part of two years to integrate fully. I have since learned how to experience the fugue, without being traumatized by it, and will soon begin further explorations.

Part 3A - The X-Box

I experienced the full, undeniable fugue state sometime in October of the same year. I am not certain of the date, as the next few months were maddening and incredibly complex.

I was visiting a friend of mine, on two hits of the same LSD I had been abusing for the entire summer. By that time I was so familiar with the high, that others wouldn’t even notice I was intoxicated until I told them. On this particular evening, however, I felt like I was on something else entirely. The high was unfamiliar, intense and uncharacteristically confusing. There are some important qualities of this setting that I must identify. One is the arrangement of her living room. The other is that she was playing a video game.

The room was dimly lit, with candles spread at curious and asymmetrical intervals. She had her television stacked on some milk crates, centered spatially in the center of the room, so that it appeared as a pillar in the middle of the floor with a television on it. She was playing a video game on her x-box. I don’t know what game it was, but what was important about it was the following: it had a first-person vantage point, a floating point cursor in the center of the screen, and the level she was playing had the character advancing through ‘mist.’

I was watching her play, but noticed immediately that the game didn’t make any visual sense. All I could see was fractal or recursive shapes that would re-orient around the screen as she moved the character. Whenever one of these shapes moved to the center of the screen, and she advanced the character towards it, the shape would extrapolate more fully, and then very suddenly it would appear on the screen as an easily identifiable object -a flower. I would then hear a ‘munching’ sound as the character ‘ate’ the flower for health. I asked her to explain the game to me, and she started to describe the rules of play and storyline. I quickly stopped her and pointed to the screen, and asked her how she was even navigating! All I could see was recursive-fractal shapes and occasionally a flower that would appear in a startling and comic fashion.

Confused, she simply slid over on the couch and handed me the controller. The screen still looked the same. I pushed the ‘up’ button and suddenly, as if by magic, the game appeared as any normal game would. I could see that the polygon shapes I had been observing were actually trees emerging from the mist, and that the flowers were at the base of the trees. I could see paths through the trees, and found it easy to negotiate the game. I handed the controller back to her, and slid back over. Once she began to move the character, I completely lost the normal game image and was slammed back into weird-polygon land.

I was fascinated. I had never experienced anything like it. I was, no matter how hard I tried, completely unable to see what was going on in the game. I could only identify shapes, and I could find no way to reclaim a visual understanding, without myself being in control of the character. Amused, I leaned back on the couch and began to contemplate the relevance of this experience. Reality, it turned out, was up for playing tricks on my brain. For the first time, I was able to watch and experience that old philosophical assertion that cognition -though responding to an outer reality- is in fact a highly interpretive act.

As I mused on this, my gaze fell upon the white ‘+’ that marked the center of the screen. Its position was static, relative to the rest of the furniture. It appeared as though it was etched in glass, through which we were watching a game take place. I let my gaze relax and started to welcome the familiar stream of beautiful fractals that my mind was generating in my peripheral vision. I should, at this point, clarify that I felt quite intoxicated. As I watched, the polygons on the TV screen -themselves recursive drawings- began to move off of the screen and into my field of vision. It was as if I was watching them float right out of the TV screen and into my mind. As I let this visual effect wash over me, the light from the candles started to do the same. Suddenly, every object in the room seemed to be making fractals manifest in my vision. As my eyes stayed fixed upon the ‘+’ in the middle of the screen, every object started to ‘emit’ fractals into my vision.

I continued to watch, and then felt this odd sense of rushing upwards. A warm and insistent pressure flooded my mind, and suddenly, the fractals re-aligned with their sources and the world rushed into this incredible and indescribable realm.

I sat there, trembling. I turned to my friend and said, very calmly “L? Would you find it strange if I said that right at this very second, God was speaking with me?”

She looked only slightly puzzled and said, “Well, You are on acid.”

Part 3B - Into the Night

I hugged my friend tightly and explained that I had to go outside. I had to be out in the night, I invited her to come with, but she declined.

I walked outside, my heart beating rapidly. The most dramatic sensory aspect of the fugue state is visual. The best analogy I have ever come up with, even after three years of contemplation, is to liken the experience to solving a ‘magic eye puzzle’ (stereogram) with everything in my field of vision. As I walked, I found that I could observe everything in my peripheral vision with ease.

I could listen to, and understand, multiple conversations simultaneously. I could listen in on the couple walking behind me, and the couple ahead of me. It seemed as though I could hear things clearly, despite ambient noise pollution and distance. My posture, which is notoriously poor, straightened. My breathing was slow, deep and thirst-quenching. There was absolutely no sense of intoxication, in fact, the normal experience of reality is significantly bland and confusing in comparison.

A myriad of descriptive visual metaphor appeared around me. Everything described something, and every thought led to another effortlessly. The night would come to be marked by synchronicity after synchronicity, although these were revealed through a curious faculty of attention, characteristic of the fugue.

It was as though I had been teleported into a different world. One that the first experience in April had only alluded to.

I walked rapidly, aware that I was a slightly alarming presence to some passer’s by. I looked sternly, straight ahead, my gaze unmoving. But I walked tall. I remember my trench coat flaring wide and flapping behind me. My jacket was open. I was quite comfortable with the cold. My thoughts raced, but mostly I was awash in a sense of amazement at just how incredible this world was.

I went as quickly as I could to my girlfriend, S’s work, a bar. It was the bar we had met at, where she now worked as a server. As I approached the bar, I experienced another amazing perceptual shift. It was very smooth transition, but I now found that I was moving slowly in comparison with everyone else. Although, I must say that it seemed as though I was moving at an ordinary speed, and everyone else was dramatically sped up. I could perceive their paths, as they walked, and see the patterns that they formed as they interacted with each other and the environment. The rest of the world seemed unchanged. The leaves of the tress moved at a normal pace, as did the birds and a dog that somebody was walking.

I went inside the bar where S worked, and got her attention. She guided me to a seat on my own, as she could obviously tell that something was very different. I sat in booth, breathing very slowly and deeply. The people in the bar were in a frenzy, it seemed, especially the servers. My first thought was to compare them to honey bees.

S soon came over, and I told her a bit of what was going on but that I’d have to explain later. She told me that a couple of her customers were from my home town and that she’d mentioned this fact to them. They, apparently, were amenable to my company and I was ushered over to their table.

The content of the conversation was rather unremarkable, as I certainly didn’t dare explain what was really going on. What I remember most was that I had a keen awareness of their non-verbal signals. It was an attentive awareness, in that I was fully conscious of their body language and what it meant. My aptitude for conversation was greatly increased, and I was able to engage them both easily. When I felt that I was beginning to overstay my welcome, I left and walked home. It would be several hours before S was to come home.

When I made it back to the apartment, I grabbed my address book  and looked for someone to call. I couldn’t find anyone who seemed ‘right.’ I found my attention repeatedly being drawn to my roommate’s address book, which was open to his boyfriend’s phone number. I didn’t want to call it, mostly because I didn’t want to inadvertently traumatize, or over-involve someone I lived with. Every time I tried to find someone else, though, my attention would re-direct itself to my roommates’ address book. Now I was actually sort of mad with myself. I really didn’t want to see him.

I decided I was going to go back out into the night, outside had been a much livelier place. As my hand touched the doorknob, the phone rang. It was my roommate, M.

M, as it turned out, was high on Ecstasy and wanted me to be home when he got there. So I waited. And he came home. I tried to explain what was going on, and tried to draw his attention onto the channel I was on. He didn’t get it, but it turned out he was just about the perfect person to talk to.

After a few hours of trying to describe to M what was happening, S came home, and I tried to explain it to her. She quickly fell asleep. I was unable to sleep, so I set myself a goal. I was to lay in bed, on my back, and not move at all until morning.

What happened that night is mostly internal. Mostly thought. Though I shall explain that the theme of rapid and multiple synchronicities continued through the night. And that every time I had an ‘epiphany’ as I lay there thinking, the digital clock read as a palindromic number.

In the morning, the experience continued. I felt deep serenity, and was very energetic -though not hyperactive or over stimulated. I had an interesting experience with my two cats, that lasted for a couple of days.  I found that they seemed aware of my mindset, and desperately sought my attention. I followed them around, and they led me from place to place, where they would circle until I found what they had led me to. Usually, it was a mess, their water needed to be changed, for example. Occasionally, it was a toy they’d lodged under the edge of a piece of furniture. Whenever I did what they led me to, their behaviour changed to enamoured affection, before they led me off to the next task.

The sense of spatial vision stopped after I finally slept, as did the awareness of conversation and sound. What was occurring with the cats continued for several days, as did my energy. I solved every problem I could think of, did all of the cleaning, and was amazed at how many things I was suddenly noticing that I had simply never observed before. These things ended after a further two days.

The synchronicities didn’t.

Part 4 - What Came Next

Again, I dove right back into LSD and consumed it several times a week. Again, the fugue-state eluded me. This lasted for almost two months. I had been a disastrous wreck for much of that time. This time, the idea of losing the fugue and not being able to reclaim it was terrifying to me. I wish I could accurately portray my behaviour during this time, but it’s difficult. This second experience was even more traumatic than the first, for not only had I been shown an incredible and revolutionary transformation of my entire inner world, but I was unable to perform it a second time. After a few weeks, I began to get depressed, and concluded that it had been a repeat of my first experience in April, and that it represented an episode of drug -induced psychosis.

Beekeeper M.

A good friend of mine, was having a birthday party. It was the second or third week of December. I invited to come with me, my girlfriend, and two more friends. One of them was beekeeper M. As you may guess from his nick-name, this M is a beekeeper and lives on a farm outside of the city.  M is also a deeply religious Seventh Day Adventist. His personal interpretation of his faith, allows him to consume psychedelics, although he had a long history of psychedelic use that occurred at a time when his views were more liberal.

This evening, M and I consumed both LSD and mushrooms, one tab and one gram for each of us. When the party turned out to be a bit of a dud, we went back to my apartment. I was tripping strongly, when I suddenly felt a strange sensation come over me. I had been pulled into the fugue. I looked around the room, my eyes wide.

M was right there with me. Grinning.

S and my roommate M weren’t. M, my roomate, had consumed mushrooms, but S was only drunk. What occurred next can’t even be explained. Beekeeper M and I were communicating, without words, although I would not dare to call it telepathy. It was as though the world was a record, our attention was the needle and M and I were in the exact same groove, at the exact same time. The experience is indescribable, and has never been repeated.

I spoke to M, and asked if it was really happening. He assured me it was. I said “Are you serious? It’s really this easy?”  He assured me it was.

The evening played out the way the other’s had, although this time I had someone else experiencing it with me. The synchronicities piled up, as though the world was communicating with purpose. On top of that, it was also communicating the same things to M. We actually talked about that one, just to make sure.

It seemed as if every thought I had was put there. It felt as though M and I were having a conversation with each other, and also having the same conversation with our surroundings. I was cut lose, and was starting to lose my grip. I asked M “Is this God?” and he said “Yes.”

I lost it. Completely.

What followed was nearly violent, and a little terrifying, and not just for me. I was so shocked that at some point, I found myself in the un-rented apartment next to mine, vomiting for hours with more force and violence than at any other point in my life.

I hope that I can communicate just exactly how traumatizing that moment was. In the span of perhaps fifteen minutes, I had received confirmation that I was not alone. And I was not insane. The experiences that had dominated my life, driven my abuse, made me set aside all else in a desperate attempt to comprehend it had suddenly been proven real. Even if it was just drugs, it was happening to someone else. And that someone else was my best friend. And that someone else had just told you that the presence we were both talking to was, in fact, God.

I lost it. And I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Part 5 - More Experiences

A few weeks later, I was now indulging for a different reason. This time, I was pursuing the fugue with certainty and purpose. Conversations with M, who believed very thoroughly in “God’s plan” confused me further, as I had never been religious before. Up until this point I had been very firm in my belief that God was unknowable, and that it was therefore a pointless endeavour to try and please it. If God even existed.

The compounding of further synchronicities, too innumerable at this point to catalogue in any meaningful way, combined with M's religious certainty, again left me rushing to categorize my experience as divine. I won’t try and defend my judgment during this time, as I had endured a great deal of psychological trauma, and was still heavily using LSD. I was barely sleeping. I thought constantly.  I kept on engaging experience after experience, repeatedly shocking myself. I left myself no time for recovery.

Within a week, I was on acid, visiting my friend L, with whom I had first experienced my first full fugue-state. I didn’t dare tell anyone the thoughts I really had going on in my head, and I had as yet no words to describe the experiences. I had not partitioned the different aspects into workable concepts or ideas. I was right in the thick of it, and convinced that I had been granted direct access to God.

Her boyfriend was also there, and within a short time I was in the fugue again. It happened suddenly, as though my attention were simply drawn to it, by some chance event. I talked excitedly with them, sharing with them the searing lucidity I was experiencing. I introduced them to circular logic by having a conversation that was entirely circular. They were also on the same LSD that I was, which was of the same variety that our entire social group had been using for the previous 6 months.

My girlfriend had been pretty badly shaken up by my behaviour, and I decided that it was best to expose her to me when I was in the fugue and wasn’t freaking out. She to this day has never consumed LSD. L and her boyfriend were definitely not sharing the fugue-state with me, as M had done earlier, but were definitely intoxicated and willing to go along with me as the guide.

We got back to my apartment, and after a short time, S and I started to get into an argument and my friends left. I found it absolutely impossible to communicate with her in a normal sense, and started to try and explain what was happening with the use of metaphor. Again, I laid awake in bed all night in deep internal reflection. Again, the strange attention sharing activity with my two cats persisted for about two days.

Part 5B - Continuing

I abstained from engaging in my pursuit of the fugue, confident now that I would be able to find it again in the future, and confident that it was a true experience. It quickly became apparent that I was deeply affected by what was happening, and that I needed to stop and recover. I abstained from psychedelic use until my birthday in of March 2005.

During this period of abstinence, I thought about what was happening constantly. Every waking thought that was free from the obligation of a task turned to trying to understand and integrate the fugue. Everything from what had happened to my mind on a neurological level, to trying to incorporate it in my goals for the future, as I knew it was now inseparable from my life

Until this point, however, LSD had always been an integral part of the experience. I just presumed that, though the experience was real, it still required LSD to be initiated. I was wrong.

On my birthday, almost 11 months after my first experience in Montreal in 2003, I was having a wonderful birthday party. I had taken pill of MDMA and two grams of mushrooms, in a tea. I was enjoying myself, and at some point sat down  to play Gran Turismo 4 on my PS2. I picked up the controller, pressed a button, and instantly found myself immersed in the fugue. I was amazed but delighted.

The fugue, it turned out, was an experience that didn’t necessarily need LSD. This confirmed that, first and foremost, it was something that was occurring during states of extreme mental excitation.

The rest of the evening passed with all of the hallmarks of the fugue excitation, but this time it was less intense. It was, in fact, enjoyable. The party continued, and I enjoyed the benefits of having access to such searing clarity. With mushrooms, the shared attention experienced with the cats, lasts 1 day easily, and a second with effort.

Part 5C- The Dentist

At this point, I won’t include detail of my trips, and will just give what further information I feel is necessary to complete my presentation.

After several months, I had engaged in several more trips, on both mushrooms and LSD. I found many interesting things, which I will not bother to elucidate here, as this text is already far too long. After many more experiences, the fugue became more and more of a tool. It became a state I would engage in to heal myself. I no longer experience psychedelics in the same way as other people, or the way I did in my youth and experience the fugue every time I consume them.

To add to the evidence that the fugue is not necessarily associated just with psychedelics, I shall inform you that I have also experienced it while I was having my wisdom teeth extracted. Obviously I had been given nitrous oxide.

Conclusions

Here, I presented only the key events that led me to recognize that the fugue is a very real experience, and that it is an inherent quality of the mind. Needless to say, the thoughts and conclusions that I’ve gained from years of contemplating the subject are too numerous to express here, as are the details of my more recent trips. It should be sufficient to say that the fugue state has become a valuable tool, and that I have explored it deeply. I have discovered much of what it is (a state of mental excitation) and what it isn’t (a direct link with God) as well as how to handle the incredible amount of information that flows through.

Listed here, though, are several key points that explored the transition of from ‘bizarre drug experience’ to ‘valuable tool of awareness.’ I have experienced it with two others, Beekeeper M and an analogue version with my brother in law, S. That it has occurred with two of my closest friends is a matter for later consideration, though I shall assert that they are both deeply religious individuals and have interpreted their experiences as such. Sadly, our collective disagreement on how to interpret the experience has been a divisive issue. M is a Seventh Day Adventist, and believes that his experiences shall have profound consequences in his faith. S is a practising druid, and believes that this ought to be kept secret, and shared only with initiates. I, of course, have chosen to subject my experiences to the rigors of scientific inquiry.

I have also experienced this state one a variety of drug types, and combinations. Some of these drugs are completely unrelated, as in the case of my nitrous oxide experience. It should be clarified that there is still a sense of awareness as to what drug I’m on at the time, that there is an experiential difference between the fugue on LSD, on mushrooms, on nitrous oxide, on MDMA.

During my subsequent experiences, I realised that accessing the fugue requires either an accident of attention, or an intent. I soon learned how to intentionally to access it, as well as how to lower its intensity. I have yet to disassociate the experience from drugs, although the threshold quantity required to access this mindset has lowered significantly.

I have also learned to recognize aspects of the fugue state in normal waking life, as well as when I consume marijuana. Although this usually only leads me to small realisations about how to better get along in my immediate environment, it serves as a means of clearing up mental blockages.

There is much, much more that can be said on this matter. After three years of exploration, trauma and recovery.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 61093

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Jun 20, 2007	Views: 105,814

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MDMA (3), Mushrooms (39), LSD (2) : Various (28), Depression (15), Entities / Beings (37), Mystical Experiences (9), Retrospective / Summary (11)


		 DOSE:

		 1560 mg
		 oral
		 DXM

		 6 hits
		 oral
		 LSD

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   87 kg

I hadn't done DXM for a few weeks.  Then two days before this trip I dosed 600 mg over a bit over 2 hours followed later when I was coming down with 390 mg and then a few hours later 390 again.   The initial trip wasn't that strong but this led to a strong sigma later and that's amazing.  The nice thing about sigma too is that I clearly remember what happened, unlike with normal DXM trips.

Two day later the afterglow had ended and I was feeling annoyed over how I couldn't get my Audiostrobe circuit to work as well as I wanted and I just impulsively decided to do DXM.  I did 390 mg followed by another 390 maybe half an hour to an hour later.   This was just a normal DXM trip, though probably a bit less intense and more sigma-like than usual because of my recent trip.  I came down quicker than usual too.

As I was coming down I decided to take 390, then another 390 mg and then 6 hits of acid.   I was just being impulsive and letting myself go where my impulses took me.  (This isn't the way I usually am but around that time I had decided to follow my impulses)  I started out the trip in the bathtub in total darkness.   I wanted to just face myself, not do anything or talk to anyone.

As I was coming up the only sound was the sound of water turbulence as the bathtub water was being slowly renewed to maintain temperature from the showerhead which was submerged.  I love water while tripping... there's just something special about it... maybe because that's where life started and somewhere deep down there's some special affinity towards it.   (Just a theory).

As I came up the first sign of that was that the high frequency water turbulence sound changed and later it became almost melodic (even though it was a constant sound).   I started seeing some visuals in the darkness and body image became very distorted.   At one point I mostly shut off the water and unplugged the bathtub so it could drain. I knew that later on I might be too fucked up to do that or even to avoid drowning.

Now at some point something happened.  I left the universe and I became aware of the 'multiverse' outside that this universe is a part of.  That's basically the same thing I noticed and posted about before.  I wasn't alone in this space... I saw a networked grid of other presences.  I thought that these were probably other users of psychedelics who were at the moment also in this space but in retrospect they were probably just sort-of mirror images of me.  I sort of communicated with them about various things including where they were in this world at the time and how they had gotten to this space.  I tried to find someone I knew but I'm not sure if I did.

I became Morpheus... I was the one who had totally figured it out and I was going to lead humanity to a higher awareness and a higher state of being.   In this world I was a shaman but beyond that something far more powerful.  I also was God... it's not like me became God... it's just like my point of view melted into the point of view of God. There was no me anyways.  I felt like I was in control of some fundamental things about consciousness and like I was freely going between various planes of existence.

Now at some point this went bad.  I think this happened as I was coming down.   I started thinking that maybe I had gone insane and I was in a mental institution.  I thought I was totally incapable of contacting the external world... like inside I was conscious and sane but outside I could have been a vegetable or a total lunatic and there was no connection between me inside and what my body was doing outside.  I had some vague mental hospital visions.

Then I thought that I had died and I was trapped in a 'box' with no way out.   I thought that this is what happens when I die; I lose sensory input and ability to do anything so for an eternity I’m confined, I do nothing, I just see darkness, and I feel horrible suffering.  (Later on I thought maybe that's what hell is.)

Sometimes I also thought that maybe I had played too much with consciousness and going into different planes of existence and I had just ended up in some trap, and now I was trapped for all eternity.  Before during this trip I had loved psychedelics... they were the key to the universe. Now I hated them...  I 'realized' why there was all this anti-drug stuff, psychedelics make me feel like they're showing me the universe but really they're just evil and they're luring me into this trap, and once I fall in it's too late because nobody has gotten out.  (In retrospect I don't know if the box was my bathroom in total darkness or total sensory deprivation.)

Then I thought that someone had found me unconscious and called an ambulance and now I was in a hospital and they were taking heroic measures to save me.   I saw some pink light and I thought that they were operating on my brain and I was seeing through a hole in my head. At one point I thought 'oh no, not my brain' but then later on I thought 'please, do anything, just save me, I've learned my lesson, I won't take drugs ever again, I just don't want to be stuck in this compartment of void for all eternity.'   Sometimes I thought that they were succeeding and other times I thought I was a hopeless case.  Most of the time I thought I was a pretty hopeless case.  When I thought they were succeeding I wondered what it was like to wake up in the hospital with all sorts of tubes and wires stuck to/on me and how much pain there was going to be.

Eventually I felt my body and I realized that maybe I wasn't dead after all, but it took me a while before I took this seriously. During the same time I was slowly becoming more aware of games.   I got up and I tried to find the way out of the bathroom.  Normally that would be easy but now I could only use trial and error.  At one point I thought that I was dead after all, that the cops had come and shot me and that I was dead not because of the psychedelics but because of the war on drugs.  I quickly came out of that and I found the way out of the bathroom.

This was an immense relief.  Much to my surprise I found that I didn't seem that high (but considering what followed I was still pretty high).  I quickly 'realized' that all that fear about being dead was stupid because if I die I'll just go through that multi-dimensional space that the universe is in for a while and then I'll be reborn soon enough.   I felt I had it figured out... this (that I couldn't die) was the secret of the universe... the thing that everyone wanted to know.

Then I thought about life, and I had it all figured out.  Life was a game... someone would make up a game and everyone else would then play that game.  That was the best we could do... there was nothing else to do... if it wasn't for that I'd be in the void doing nothing and I'd be stuck for all eternity.  Whoever made up the current game was God at the moment.

Then I thought that drugs and police was the game. It was set up so that there were some things, designated as drugs, which could get you high, but there were these other people in the game, the police who were going after the people who had drugs.  So the game everyone was playing was how high could I get without being busted.   The police somehow 'knew' through some form of ESP who was getting high and if they felt that someone was getting too high they'd bust them.  I felt that I had just gotten too high and I was in real danger of that because of the ESP and because maybe I had made too much noise before. Though I also thought of the amount of illegal drugs I had and I thought 'come on, nobody is going to want to bust me because of that', and I thought that was probably the only reason it hadn't happened.

Then I thought about drugs themselves and I 'realized' that drugs were evil because they lead people to just do drugs and get high but people should be contributing to society, inventing and making new things.   At first I thought my Audiostrobe circuit was an example of that but then I 'realized' that it was evil because it was about getting high.

I 'decided' that I wasn't going to do any more drugs that I was going to go away to the country I come from (just to get away from here), get a job there and move on with my life.   I wanted to call my parents and tell them about it but it was the middle of the night. I felt as if my father was actually awake, totally aware of what I was up to and awaiting my call, but I somehow managed to reject that as crazy and decide that calling my parents in that state and at that time was a bad idea.  I also 'decided' that I wasn't going to interact with drug users because I just needed to get away from drugs.  (This decision didn't last.)

At some point during this I again broke off from this universe and I ended up in that other multiverse outside it.  The main thing I remember was Osama Bin Laden surfacing in this universe and starting to warp it.   This became more and more distressing until I said something like 'fuck Osama Bin Laden, you suck' and that just vanished.  I 'realized' how he was evil and why I had to hate him.

At some point I started 'feeling' that the cops were coming.  I actually 'felt' where the car was, how it was getting closer, how they were getting out of it, etc.  I started flushing all of my drugs down the toilet.  It wasn't just because of fear of being busted; I also felt that drugs sucked and I wasn't going to do them again.   I felt that this trip was awesome... it had done some great things to me... but this was it... I had gotten the message... it was time to hang up.  (In retrospect I feel bad about flushing the acid just in the sense that I pointlessly destroyed perfectly good stuff.  I also did not 'hang up', though I still feel perhaps that was the right thing to do.)

I eventually felt mainly sober but I felt different.  I had a weird feeling of clarity though and I wasn't feeling any of that background anxiety that I was used to.  It seemed like I had accepted everything. No, I didn't like it... there were some really bad things to accept... but I had accepted everything.  I wanted to go to sleep but I couldn't.  I still occasionally saw visuals.

In the morning I cried about my life... I cried about all the problems I still had to deal with. About all the unfairness and hurt I had experienced before... about how my parents never seemed to care about me being happy and how they hadn't done anything to help me there... about how now I had to play all the games that everyone else played but I was behind because I had a late start in life.   The crying wasn't that bad though... it wasn't good but it was no worse than how I normally feel... actually it felt better than holding it all in.

I was wondering if I should kill myself, not immediately then and there but soon.  I thought that I had so much work to do, so many changes to make, and that's all just to have a normal life. The sort of thing that people take for granted.  Maybe it was best to not go through that trouble and just kill myself.  I wasn't thinking of doing it then... actually, in a way I knew I couldn't get myself to do it then or ever, and I was crying about that... that I was totally incapable of doing the one simple thing that would solve it all.

Soon after that I went to sleep.  I woke up mostly feeling sober but with some intensified visual noise.  I felt okay... not good but it seemed that something bad broke... I felt a sort of calm honest acceptance of facts about my life and I knew what I had to do to now in life.  (I had no thoughts of suicide anymore.)  I felt that this trip was important... that it was the beginning of the end of this phase of my life.

The calmness lingered for a while.  I also got an impression that I should believe in some sort of afterlife.  Eventually the trip was forgotten and I didn't really get any lasting help from it.

Exp Year: 2002	ExpID: 31509

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Jun 25, 2007	Views: 47,510

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LSD (2), DXM (22) : Combinations (3), Difficult Experiences (5), Alone (16)