		 DOSE:

		 oral
		 MDMA

		 oral
		 LSD

MDMA and LSD Therapy in the Treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in a Case of Sexual Abuse

1st Adam Trip: 125 mg March, 1984 MDMA

2nd Adam Experience: 125 mg April 14, 1984 MDMA

LSD Report: Saturday, April 21 300 mg with 65 mg MDMA

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Background

Marcela: Born in Medellin, Colombia, August 15, 1958.

I came from a family who never spoke about heritage. Our culture was Spanish, our tradition unique and this was all that mattered. All I knew was that we were not Catholic and that, unlike all my friends, I hadn't been baptized and would not have a First Communion. We were a minority in a country where 90% of the people are Catholic.

As I grew older, thoughts about where we had come from became very important to me. At home, we never spoke about emotions or thoughts that bothered us. My father had been raised never to show his emotions or speak about them, and my mother was too busy as a child taking care of five younger brothers and sisters while my grandmother worked, to ever think about having emotions. I learned very fast not to ask questions and always pretend that everything was all right. Looking through old trunks and reading old diaries I came across my father's heritage. His father and mother had gone to Colombia from Spain. They were Jewish and had to leave everything they had behind, including their lives as part of the Jewish race. They had suffered a great deal and maybe in an attempt to forget the past, they had never spoken about it.

My father was the only one to move away from the capital where they all lived. He lived in California and Florida for some time and returned to Colombia with a head full of Western ideas. Education was to him the most important thing and he worked very hard to see that my brother, my sister and I could attend the best English-speaking private school in the city. He believed that knowing other cultures and languages was very important for a good education, English being the most important one. Today I believe he was right and I am thankful to him for having given me the opportunity to learn English.

The English language became the focus of my own education. The United States and the stories my father told about it were fascinating to me, and the thought of some day coming to the States (a trip promised to me when I learned the language well) was alluring.

For many years, even as a young child, I felt out of place in Colombia. My grandmother on my mother's side was traditional Colombian with the exception that her family was also a minority, being Protestants. I was very close to her and learned a great deal from her. She was a strong woman, proud of being a Colombian, and I adopted a lot of her beliefs. Her husband had come to Colombia in a boat (no one knows where from). The boat experienced some trouble and had anchored in a small town on the Pacific Coast where my grandmother lived. He was nineteen and was adopted by a Colombian family who gave him their last name. My grandmother married him shortly after that. All my grandmother knew was that his first name was Oliver. She never asked any questions in regard to his past and he never volunteered any answers. They were married for ten years until my grandfather died of cancer at the age of thirty-two.

So basically the only culture given to me was from my grandmother. I also studied the Jewish history and felt very much a part of it. It seemed to fill a great emptiness in my identity, but it also made me feel like an outcast since no one else in my family shared my inclinations.

I came to the States in 1970 at the age of twelve and lived with a family, friends of my father's. For the first time in my life I wasn't disappointed by my expectations. I loved the snow, the architecture, the language, and the people. I adjusted to the culture very well and even if it was difficult being away from home at that age, for a whole year, I took advantage of the language and tried to learn it as best I could. The only thought in my mind when I returned home was that I wanted to live in the States. I was soon enveloped again by my own country with one great difference: I had something to compare it to. The poverty , the corruption, the ignorance, and conformity of my people became impossible for me to ignore. I had learned that showing your emotions and speaking about them was not a sign of weakness. Back in Colombia I was once more faced with the idea of ignoring everything around me and pretending that everything was okay.

I became rebellious against my family, who had always pretended to be well-balanced. I saw the reality of it, how we respected our father out of fear instead of love, how my parents never showed any love for each other and were married simply for the sake of the family. I saw my mother's suffering because she didn't have her own identity. She had been married at the age of fifteen to a man twenty years older, whom she saw as a father, never really as a husband.

I began to live by the motto: 'You are a true revolutionary only if you truly love,' Che Guevara's words. I loved my family and my country and felt that only through revolution would it have a chance to go forward. I was a true idealist who thought that love conquered every problem and was willing to give my life the name of true love. At the age of seventeen, I left school and home, not having gotten any results at home; instead, I caused great chaos and pain to my parents. But instead of understanding and love, I found corruption and violence. My idealism was rapidly replaced by a horrifying reality. I came to believe that love itself was just an idealistic word that could destroy me, and felt that the only way to live was by ignoring all emotions (precisely that which I had for years fought against).

In an attempt to save myself and no longer my country, I returned to the States with the hope to forget the past. I lived withdrawn, not allowing myself to feel pain or sadness or happiness, spending my time studying in the hopes of finding something that would fulfill me in some way. I got a scholarship to go to school. But after the first semester, realizing that learning was not everything, that I couldn't fulfill myself, that I couldn't ignore the rest of the world, I tried suicide feeling that there was no other escape.

I had failed at being a good writer and a good artist, both being my most important goals. I also failed at suicide and was put in the hospital for a month, where I learned the true meaning of indifference. I felt that people there only cared about the superficial self and that it was too much trouble to really find out what was wrong. I played their game and left the hospital, 'cured.'

The next few years were dedicated to my studies and I tried to be the best student that I could possibly be; always trying to keep my own ideas about literature and art. I had wonderful teachers who encouraged me to paint and write, giving me good constructive criticism. My work fulfilled me and I saw these as the best years of my life.

The problem then was that I was blinded once more by idealism and didn't think as to the practicality of my career. Upon graduating, I was faced with the uncertainty of how to make a living, realizing that I couldn't make it with my writing or my art. So I had to leave aside that which had fulfilled me and try to find a job that would support me.

So now, at twenty-five, three years after my graduation, with a feeling of restlessness and emptiness, I struggle to find a job which can fulfill me. I know that I can dedicate myself to my work if it means enough to me. That in itself would be enough to give me courage to face everything else around me.

My idealism? It is still there, refusing to die, but even though I blame it for all the pain I have felt, I must admit that it has been idealism which has given me hope, and hope which has helped me cope.

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1st Adam Trip: 125 mg March, 1984 MDMA

It is difficult to speak of emotions, especially when those are painful to remember. Often I have avoided my own thoughts for fear that they would crush me, and have lived in an oblivious state for months at a time until one day I collapse and have a nervous breakdown. The has been my life since I can remember.

Never having taken any kind of psychedelic drug, I was very reluctant to try Adam, mainly because I was afraid of losing control of my mind and allowing my emotions to take over. My decision to finally take it was partially from curiosity and the hope to give a good experience with Ron.

At the time, we were in a hotel in Washington, D.C. I took the Adam at 11:00 p.m. (125 mg) About twenty minutes later, the effects started working but they seemed purely physical. My legs felt as though they had fallen asleep and my head felt very heavy. My eyes focused on the wall immediately in front of me and it took great effort to move. All of a sudden I began to cry, not knowing really why. I wanted to speak but didn't know what to say. My mind was filling up with the past memories and I felt the need to start by telling Ron my life story. Not a very happy one I might add, having been very ill as a child with a lot of physical pain and being kidnapped at the age of four. There were so many things that I wanted to say that often my sentences were not coherent and I would jump from one thing to another, later realizing that I hadn't finished my sentence.

At times I felt I was an observer, the words seemed to be coming from another self yet I could identify with them. There was a lot of pain reviving memories that I had wanted to forget. One of them was my terrible fear of cockroaches. When I was kidnapped, I was tied inside a bag which had cockroaches , leaving me with a terrible fear of them. But at the same time I felt a tenderness towards Ron for just being there listening. It was hard to remember the horrors of the past but I didn't feel lonely or lost. Ron filled the room and that was all that was important.

The feeling of tenderness and peace helped me to speak of fears that before had been too great to even think about. I was faced with reality and at that moment my greatest fear was that of losing Ron. I didn't want the night to end, despite the fact that there was so much pain and I couldn't stop crying. My biggest fear was the thought of facing the next day, the reality which existed outside that room. I wanted to be assured that the closeness wouldn't end there, that the tenderness was real and not evanescent. I was living the pain of the next day and realized that the suffering was so great because the love in that moment was so strong.

Sleep was impossible, even though I was totally exhausted by 5:00 a.m. The experience had left me vulnerable and I felt a great sadness. Thoughts of the night kept drifting into my mind and I realized with horror that the most vivid memory was that of wanting to die. This is me was nothing new, wanting to die has been on my mind since I was very young and I have tried suicide twice, when I was fifteen and again at twenty. But now I could see clearly that I had been ignoring my depression for months and that nothing really had changed since the last time I tried suicide. I wanted still to die more than anything. Linking my past with my present was horrifying. I couldn't find a place in the world. I couldn't relate to anything around me and there were no alternatives.

The next day, I wanted to stay in the hotel and talk to Ron. I wanted to understand our relationship better, feeling that the night had only been the beginning of the unraveling of our own confusion. But we had deadlines to meet, life had resumed, and facing it seemed a greater challenge than before. We drove to New York City in a snowstorm. I wanted to keep on driving forever, to never arrive in New York, to simply hold on to Ron and stay that way. I didn't feel capable of dealing with anything but our world inside the car.

The next morning I was left alone while Ron went to work. We were to meet back at the hotel at 3:00 p.m. to go to the airport. My loneliness had arrived at a point of despair. I walked the streets with no destination. I went to the museum hoping to be consoled by the paintings that so often had inspired me but found no courage to look at them. I sat on a bench hoping to simply die. By this point I was determined to kill myself and my immediate decision was whether to see Ron one more time or just leave then. Being sucker for punishment I couldn't leave without seeing him one more time. I felt that he should know my fears, and that I owed it to him to try to explain.

It wasn't easy trying to explain why, at the age of twenty-five, I wanted to die. I told him that this time I honestly thought I had reached rock bottom and that I couldn't survive anymore. Ron was so worried and his eyes were full of sadness, I should have left without explaining. He had only one request: to wait a few days and call him and his friend Rick. At the time his request seemed too much, just facing the next hour was torture. Leaving Ron to go get my plane was the hardest thing I have ever done. To me, this was the last time seeing his face. I felt already dead.

The rest of my trip is a blackout to me. I don't know how I got home or why I was three hours later, according to my friend who was there to pick me up. He saw me and thought he was looking at a ghost. All I could say was, 'If you really care for me, help me die.'

I have little recollection of the next five days. I was taken to the hospital where they gave me tranquilizers. The doctor spoke about depression being an illness that could be cured with medication. He asked me to rest for five days while taking the tranquilizers and 'anti-depressant' drugs and to come back to see him. At the time, nothing seemed better than to take the pills and forget the world, which is just what I did, refusing to eat or get out of bed. My time was spent in thinking of ways to die. I realized that I had never had a meaning for living except that of not hurting those who cared about me. But I didn't want to lie to myself anymore. I had been in hospitals and taken anti- depressant drugs before. All these had done was help me cope with an everyday life on a very superficial level. The drugs had made me feel numb to the extent that I wasn't even feeling sadness for my mother having cancer. The idea that I was looking at everything in my life as though it really didn't belong to me, as though my own mother was a total stranger whose death wouldn't affect me, was more horrible than death.

I was not willing to continue in this way. I was weak and felt that there were only two alternatives: to kill myself or to go see Rick like Ron had wanted me to. I remember Ron's sad eyes and decided to call Rick.

I arrived in Sarasota, FL a few days later, being often confused as to why I had come. All I did was cry. It was hard being with Ron's friend in a house where we had been together. The memories overwhelmed me with pain because I felt that they were gone forever. But somehow, because Rick knew Ron and he seemed to understand, I started confiding in him. There was nothing but tears and sadness but Rick was there to listen. In a way, my hope was for Rick to understand my reasons for not wanting to live, accept them, and later explain to Ron. But Rick's reasons for helping were deeper than that. He wanted to help me find reasons to live. At this point we came to the conclusion that it would be better not to take the anti-depressant drug and try to face and get to the bottom of my fears and suffering.

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2nd Adam Experience: 125 mg April 14, 1984 MDMA

After a week of pain and trying to think of nothing but my emotions, Rick suggested taking Adam again and I did. I knew that for me it would be painful, but also different than the last time. Now we were dealing with lifelong emotions and not just my situation with Ron. I was afraid I didn't want to relive the bad memories but now that my emotions were so vivid, I wanted to get to the bottom, to be able to combine all my new emotions with the past and try to understand my life and my depression as a whole. It was my last attempt to survive and I had nothing to lose.

I took the Adam at around 5:00 p.m. Rick and Flo were with me and again I felt a wonderful closeness and trust in them. They helped me up the stairs. My eyes were closed and even though I felt that I was falling off the edge of the stairway, I trusted them totally and was never afraid. This was a wonderful moment.

My perception was very keen, I seemed to be a lot more aware of that moment. Like the first time, there was a flowing of emotions and I started to cry. Flo and Rick's presence gave me reassurance and I was able to trust myself to go deeper into my past and speak of painful aspects of my life. I knew that they were there to help me and I felt the need to pour out my agony. My emotions were becoming too much too handle, they seemed to be poisoning my veins.

By this time, I was scared to keep going deeper into my past. Rick asked me to be silent for ten minutes and think and feel what was happening to me. It took a long time before I could do this, always fearing that I would simply go mad. When I finally accepted it and did it, I could feel the pain take over my body so that the suffering was physical as well. I was alone in this suffering. I felt that I had to go through it if I was to accomplish anything. This was an important challenge because after ten minutes of too much pain, I was able to trust myself to speak of what was once too painful to remember.

I spoke of rape which occurred eight years ago. For eight years I have kept the most horrible aspects of that day hidden in the back of my mind, and it was only then that I realized how the little details that I had wanted to ignore were eating me like a cancer. We can ignore cancer but it soon takes over. The memory became very vivid in my mind and the suffering more intense, but still I wanted to talk about it and felt that I could deal with the pain, that this was a start to try to defeat the cancer. Rick and Flo's presence and the Adam made it possible for me to speak and try to see things from a different view.

By talking about it, I was able to face the fear of the experience and to understand what it had done to my life. It was frightening to think that I had tried to ignore that day to the point where I didn't know where the pain came from, nor did I remember what had happened. I had gone through life having nightmares and feeling guilty, telling myself it was not normal to be affected by something that had occurred such a long time ago.

I spoke of my guilt. All my life I have felt guilty for one reason or another; for my parents for not loving each other, for being ill and inflicting pain on others, for not being able to do anything for my country, for being selfish and too sensitive. Guilt had made me an outcast and I walked around alone and depressed and found little meaning my life.

When I was raped, what I now remember most vividly and as the most dangerous and destructive feeling, was a sense of emptiness. I didn't feel love or hate for the people who had hurt me. I didn't feel anything toward myself and even less for life itself. This is the reason why I don't like the anti- depressant drugs, they make me feel the same way. I continued living because I didn't even care enough to kill myself. I remember crossing the street and thinking, 'If a car hits me, fine. If it doesn't that is fine too.'

I had given life its chance, eight months before the rape I had run away from home because I couldn't stand just living without a meaning, starvation seemed a better way. In search for meaning I had trusted people who later raped me and left me with the threat that they would one day find me to kill me, not wanting to kill me then because they knew that leaving me alive was far more torture. It's much worse not to feel anything than to feel something even if that something is sadness.

I decided if I was to continue living, the only way to do it was to be isolated from the rest of the world. A complete change in life became a necessity. My own country was too much of a reminder of my existence, so I left with the idea never to see my country or those I loved again. I wanted to find a place where no one knew me and where I wouldn't have to talk to anyone. I came to the states and accepted a scholarship to study Literature and Art. Books became my only companions. I went to classes Monday through Friday, never speaking to anyone and on Friday I would take Valium and sleep until the following Monday. Convincing myself that this was the best way to live, I continued in this fashion for another year, a total of two years after the rape. But this too became too painful and I just couldn't understand why I was living anyway, so I tried to kill myself, taking an overdose of Valium.

I was sent to the hospital for a month where doctors make me feel worse by telling me how many things I had going for me and how many people were so much worse off than I was. I'll never forget their phrases, which seemed to hurt me like daggers: 'You have so much to look forward to,' 'What do you know of suffering if you are only starting to live?', 'There are so many people who love you,' etc. My only feeling then was that if I didn't know about suffering because I was too young, I never wanted to find out about it. My feelings of the hospital were that the doctors and counselors only cared that I remain alive. To them this meant success, it didn't matter how I lived as long as my heart was beating they had done their job. I remember my counselor telling my parents how well the anti-depressant drugs were working. I got a pill in the morning and another one in the late afternoon, keeping them under my tongue until I was away from the nurse, then throwing them down the elevator. They were helping me a lot!

With the doctors' feeling of success because I promised not to kill myself or take the Valium again, I left the hospital to face the world again. Living a type of vicarious life, I went through school and in May of 1981 I graduated with a B.A. in Literature and Art, and returned to my country feeling the obligation to try and help the people there as best I could. I taught for a year but returned to the States with a feeling of hopelessness. There was nothing that I could do to change the country and I couldn't live there ignoring the poverty and the corruption. I felt defeated and guilty. Back in the States, I taught for another year, but teaching made me a hypocrite because I wasn't able to teach what I believed in and the way I thought best.

So finally once more my emotions caught up with me and I was closer to death than I've ever been before.

Adam has helped me look at all this suffering, see my life, as a whole and understand it better. It has given me the courage to face the fears instead of ignoring them, to know that the most important thing is to struggle to trust myself. I don't know what my life will be like now, or how much I want to live, but I do know that the experiences I have gone through even though painful, have also been full of trust and tenderness and there is not the feeling of emptiness. I am not leaving a hospital with a prescription for anti- depressant pills in my hand. But rather, I'm leaving a friend with the hope to see him again and the courage to try to face my fears and life.

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LSD Report: Saturday, April 21 300 mg with 65 mg MDMA

'To be educated is not only to be proficient in mathematics, history, or geography, it is also to have the ability to understand this extraordinary thing called death-not when you are physically dying, but while you are living...Death is the unknown, and what matters is to know of the unknown while you are living.' --J. Krishnamarti

It was the experiencing of many deaths that is helping me live now.

A few days before taking LSD, when I had finally decided to take it, I had a dream about three people who went through different deaths coming back to life in a cycle, always staying for a shorter period of time. I was an observer, yet a participant as well, but because I was an observer and knew everything that was happening to these people. I was unable to warn them about danger or to change their destiny. Two of the people in the dream had struggled with their love for each other, always being together but death always separating them, until their return to a different life where they had to find each other again. In their last cycle one of them was a flower and the other seaweed. They were together and it seemed to me that finally they would be together in death forever. They had to suffer horrible deaths and be separated but at the end they got their peaceful ' heaven.' As a participant I struggled with the different lives and felt great pain, but as an observer I was calm and accepted these cycles. There was the knowledge that no matter what I tried to do or say the cycle was to continue its regular course. My task then was to accept and try to understand. It would be much easier then to fight the cycle.

I mention this dream because it has a lot to do with my experience three days later, when I took the LSD. My mind was advising me what to do to make things easier, yet I wasn't aware of this until after the experience. Now I know that if I hadn't tried to fight what was happening to me it would have been easier.

I took the LSD at around 1:30 p.m., thinking that things would get back to normal by sometime around 8:00 p.m. Sometimes it's better not to make assumptions, I didn't get to sleep until 10:00 a.m. the next morning. About twenty minutes after I took the drug I started feeling that I was no longer in control. Having prepared myself for the worst or the best, I had organized all my belongings, all my clothes were clean, I finished the book I was reading, 'Woman in Love,' had written letters to people dear to me and had brought with me my pad and paints hoping to be inspired and paint my last , best picture. I was preparing myself for death, a physical death, but had never imagined another type of death. When the objects in the room came alive and everything seemed to be breathing, I panicked and told Flo that I had gone too far, that I wasn't ready for this. I couldn't believe they had allowed me to do this to myself. At this time my nausea began, a terrible nausea that stayed with me until late the next day. I wanted to go back in time, to start all over, but like in my dream there was no returning.

Rick asked me to lie down. Everything seemed to be falling on top of me. My eyes were fixed on the window which was getting larger allowing me to see the sky. The sky looked beautiful for a minute, but then the little specks on the window became large insects smiling at me, and the fan above me a helicopter making an incredibly loud noise that made my ears tremble with pain.

I started to experience different deaths simultaneously. It was as though there were screens all around me, all showing a different movie, a different death, my death. I was a participant in each one of them and the person on the bed was the observer feeling the pain of these deaths. Feeling the pain of one death was bad enough, but feeling the pain of four at the same time seemed more than I could bear. My attempt to explain what was happening at once. I could only say short phrases and ask for help. The best way in which I can explain the events is to separate them into different screens and experience them now as separate entities.

Screen One: I was in the desert, very hungry and hot, someone was making me walk and I kept falling on my knees. There were airplanes flying above me, their noise becoming intolerable. The desert was so vast and lonely, there seemed to be no type of life around and the sun which has always meant life to me, was now my enemy burning my head and the soles of my feet. The people there were trying to starve me while they ate gourmet dinners. They were laughing hysterically and pointed at me while I was burning and starving to death. My body was swelling as though being bitten by a snake, I could feel the venom in my veins burning me; finding no escape. I wanted to vomit but was unable to. The burning was too much to bear and I felt I was losing my mind. My associating with this death is the fact that ten years ago I ran away from home and went to a very hot city where I didn't eat for two weeks. I remember vividly losing my mind to the point that I no longer knew who I was.

Screen Two: I was totally deformed. My feet were elephant feet. My face was melting into my shoulder, I couldn't move, I could feel the skeleton of my body, the hollows around my eyes, the mocking smile my teeth created. I tried to speak but my tongue was ten times its size and was pasted to the back of my mouth. My eyes were crossed so that everything else looked distorted. Rick's face was melting and his eyes were getting larger and larger until his whole face was an eye. Flo's face seemed to reproach me, she was smiling but her smile was that of a dead person, it was becoming a skeleton as well. I couldn't stand looking at them, but couldn't take my eyes away. Something in the back of my neck was pulling me beyond the bed to some horrible darkness. I was struggling to remain on the bed, but there on the bed were horrible insects that turned into deformed fetuses with long tails. There was nowhere to turn to.

Screen Three: I was looking for my grandmother. She died three years ago and as she was dying she was explaining what beautiful things she was seeing. Her only wish for many years was to die and go to heaven. There was never a question in her mind that there was a heaven. She believed in it with faith and even though she wanted death thirty years ago, she waited patiently for her turn to come, suffering a great deal while she lived. I was looking for her death because I believed there I would find peace. But instead I became her in life. In her actual life she had suffered great depression when two of her sons were killed by the police for not having military cards. They were killed within weeks of each other. One of them was 17 and the other 20. She was not allowed to see them and the police reported that they had been shot at in self- defense while they were trying to rob a house. This was more than she could bear and her anger was such that she lost her mind and refused to leave the police department until justice was done. The government institutionalized her and it took a month before my mother was able to get her out. She suffered a great deal in the hospital where she was put in a cell with very ill people and dirt all around her. She was fed very little and was not allowed to see her family. I was experiencing her suffering and anguish in this institution. The hopelessness and fear, the rotting of my body and worst of all I experienced going through electroshock treatment. In trying to find my grandmother's peaceful death, I had found her moments of torture and greatest pain. I realized with horror that my grandmother's death was not mine, that dying didn't necessarily mean peace.

Screen Four: This was the most vivid and real death that I was experiencing because it led to a real event in my life. I was being strangled by someone. His strong hands around my neck were making my nausea worse and were preventing me from vomiting. I couldn't see anymore and my strength was leaving me. I was terribly cold and felt totally alone. In the distance I was crying for help and could hear Rick's voice telling me that if I allowed the hands to kill me I could go beyond that. It make sense to me but I was unable to stop fighting. Then I started to experience what had happened almost nine years ago. I had totally blocked this incident out of my mind, all the time being very afraid when people put their hands on my neck but not really knowing why. It was all coming back as I was being strangled. In the actual event, I left work at 6:00, Mario (a man who later raped me) was waiting for me, he was drunk and angry because I had refused to see him a few days earlier and had told the porter of my apartment building not to let him in. We had been good friends, but he and his girlfriend Joan had been pressuring me to take drugs and sleep with them. I wanted to avoid them but they were very persistent.

Mario started hitting me and dragging me through the street. There were people watching but no one dared to do anything despite the fact that I was saying that he was trying to kill me. He was dragging me to his apartment where he said he would kill me. I noticed that he had a knife in his back pocket. When we got closer to his apartment I panicked and grabbed a little girl who was playing in the street. By this time Mario started strangling me and I could feel my grip letting go of the girl. I was losing consciousness but could hear the girl screaming in the background, everything seemed so far away. There was a lot of commotion and the voice of a man telling Mario to let go. There were other hands on my neck and I could feel his hands letting go but then his teeth bit into my neck. The man was asking for a stick to put between Mario's teeth. I fainted then and when I woke up I was lying on the bed of the girl who had saved my life with her screaming. I thought I was still being strangled but realized that I had a wet cloth on my neck and that Mario wasn't there. This was the beginning of a horrible month. And in this day, the beginning of a horrible night.

All the while, Rick and Flo's presence seemed to be getting farther away. I was no longer inside my body and was looking at them from a few inches above. My only link to them was Flo's hand on my foot. I remember Rick telling her to massage my foot. Their voices were so far away and difficult to hear because of the noise of the airplanes and the screaming of people. I knew they were trying to help me, but their voices didn't make sense. I couldn't grasp the meaning of their words. It was as though some evil inside of me was preventing them from helping me. I could sense their frustration as they repeated themselves. Rick was telling me to go along with it, to allow myself to burn, to be strangled, to die and then move on to something else. I was trying to be rational, to understand his words, but they were more than I could cope with. I was drifting farther away. From above, their eyes blinking in slow motion. I could feel myself entering their eyes and feeling what they were feeling. Their eyelashes magnified all around me. Flo's face was glowing in the sun. She seemed to symbolize peace, yet I couldn't reach her. I could see her and Rick close to each other, Rick's eyes full of love but I couldn't grasp their love and their peace. It was too frustrating seeing them there while I was suffering so much that I had to turn away from them knowing that I was turning away from the only peace there was.

About two hours after I had taken the LSD, Rick asked me if I wanted to take Adam. I would have tried anything at this point and thought that the Adam would help me cope with the pain, so I said yes. It didn't ease the pain but it helped to open up my emotions that were bottled up inside. I no longer was in the desert or in the mental institution, or was my grandmother. I was there in Rick's room. All the screens came together into one and I started to relive my past experiences. The room was filled with different people. People from my past and who had hurt me, and the people who were trying to help me. Rick's voice became Ron's and I could feel his warmth and presence somewhere in the distance. Rick's eyes seemed to be calling out to me, but then all of a sudden he started to transform into Mario. His toes and legs were Mario's Yet I knew that it was Rick. It was horrifying seeing him as the man who had caused me so much pain. Ron's presence was drifting away and Mario's was becoming stronger. Ron represented the one part of me that Mario hadn't taken, it represented my last hope, my love, but Rick was telling me to look closely at his toes, to really see that even though they looked like Mario's they weren't. I knew that they were not Mario's, I was not afraid of the body hugging me because I knew it was Rick's. But Mario's presence was taking me back in time to the day he and Joan raped me. The only reason I could deal with it was because Rick was so strong in being Rick that even though his body was Mario's , Mario could not take over his mind and I could turn to him for support.

I started feeling the horror of that day and started vomiting. Getting sick was more than a physical illness. I was vomiting from my soul, getting rid of pain, of an evil that had been

destroying me. I felt then, the need to tell Rick what they had done to me, having always kept it to myself because I thought that by not speaking about it somehow eventually it would be erased from reality and all would become a horrible dream, a part of my imagination.

I felt that it was too late to pretend that it hadn't been real and feared that Rick was going to hate me. I don't know why, maybe because I have hated my own body, it being a reminder of evilness and corruption. But Rick didn't feel disgust towards it, he didn't see it in a different way. I was trying to see it through his eyes, to understand that it was not impure, that it didn't have to be a reminder of cruelty. All these years I have hated looking at myself in the mirror because all I have seen was what was left of me when it was all over; a body full of bruises and bites with broken bones. I remember the first time I looked at myself a few days after it happened. I couldn't recognize myself. The girl that I had known was lost forever and this that was left was an empty distorted body with no soul. I was surprised when people came to see me and knew who I was. I felt nothing, not even the physical pain, and accepted the fact that Mario and Joan had taken whatever beauty I had had.

But this day was not the same day and though I felt the anguish vividly, my body was whole with no bruises and I was in the room with only Rick. Rick was telling me that they hadn't taken everything, that I knew how to love now, how to trust. It was this small part of me that they hadn't taken, the part I was fighting for, the part Ron represented, the part Rick was trying to make me see. My body wasn't disgusting to him, even after he knew all that had happened to it, and I didn't have to blame myself for something others had done to me. I realized that my guilt and shame came from the fact that I wasn't strong enough to push them away, that I wasn't careful enough in trusting them, that I hadn't gone to the police because I felt pity for them. I have had to carry the guilt of thinking that by letting them free they could have done the same thing to someone else. Back then I really didn't care. But now I knew that I was not to blame, that if I could confront the Mario that was there in Rick's body, I could hate what he did and I would know that he hadn't taken everything.

I felt I was getting stronger with Rick's help. Mario was grabbing me inside and wouldn't let go. I wanted to vomit so badly, feeling that if I did I could be rid of Mario, at least he would be outside and no longer be a part of me. But I needed more strength. Then Rick asked me what were the things I like in Mario. This was a shock to me and my mind went blank for a second. It was harder to remember than the pain itself. I thought of the first time I saw him playing with his dog, feeding a starving dog on the side of the street. He was kind to animals and seemed to understand them well. I remembered how he helped me free a chicken who was tangled in a wire and how he had nursed it back to life. It was when I thought about this that I started to vomit. There was so much pain in the thought that the same hands that had been so delicate helping the animals were the same ones that had almost killed me, that the Mario and Joan who had walked into my apartment with all intentions of violence were the same people I had loved because of their tenderness. Vomiting was the most painful horror. I felt their hands gripping me inside, destroying me, but I didn't care if I died because I knew that by throwing them up they would no longer possess me and I would at least die without them inside me. I think that I was able to vomit because I was denying nothing, not even the fact that I had loved them.

Later I felt that I had gotten rid of so much but I still felt a nausea, there was still a burning lump in my stomach. But no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get it out. It seemed to be the only part of them that remained. Maybe it will always be there and I will have to learn how to live with it. But they don't have to dominate my life.

My physical discomfort interfered with the peaceful moments that were also part of this experience. They seemed trivial compared to the pain, but now I hold them close to me and they help me cope.

Rick was holding two sticks of incense, he gave me one and we both were moving them to the rhythm of the music. The music was peaceful and the patterns and colors of the incense were beautiful. I wanted to remember them so that I could later paint a picture of them. My attempts at doing this have failed. Every time the sticks touched I felt that it meant trust and there was a bond between us that was wonderful. Then I was giving Rick a foot massage and it felt so good to give him comfort that it gave me comfort too and was helping me cope with my discomfort. Rick suggested a warm bath because I felt so cold and my skin ached. The warm water was soothing and I was able to rest a while.

At around 5:00 a.m. , without realizing it, I started to chant a Buddhist prayer and felt the devotion and faith of Mitsuyo, a Buddhist friend, who had introduced me to Buddhism. I had always admired her faith and spirituality and how I felt I was with her and couldn't feel the faith that she had spoken about for so long. This too was a beautiful moment.

I then felt that it was so painful to love, that knowing that I could still love was what had caused most of my suffering. But the emptiness and pain of not loving was so much greater, without love there is so much beauty that we can never experience. I felt that I had to hold on to the love instead of fighting it and that I had to try deal with the pain that it caused me because it is better then emptiness.

At around 8:00 a.m. I was exhausted and drained. I was getting used to the lump in my throat and the awful headache. It was no longer driving me crazy. I didn't feel very much, I was too tired to even move.

Days later, when Rick asked me how I felt, I told him that I felt empty as though my veins had been drained of their blood and as though my soul had been taken away. I thought that maybe it was my mind trying to tell me to give it a break but Rick said something that I couldn't forget. He told me that maybe I was empty because I had let all that pain out and now it was up to me to fill the emptiness.

It seems hard to do, but maybe there is a chance that I can fill that emptiness with new life. It scares me and I feel very lonely. But this experience has made me realize that death is not necessarily the right answer, or the most peaceful alternative and by realizing this it has given me the courage to at least try to find meaning and reason.

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Exp Year: 1984	ExpID: 9813

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Oct 4, 2001	Views: 44,619

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LSD (2), MDMA (3) : Guides / Sitters (39), Health Benefits (32), Retrospective / Summary (11), Combinations (3), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		 600 ug
		 oral
		 LSD

From the MAPS Bulletin - Volume 9 Number 2 Summer 1999 - pp. 11-14

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Successful Outcome of a Single LSD Treatment in a Chronically Dysfunctional Man

Gary Fisher, Ph.D.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Editor's Note: MAPS publishes accounts like the one below because they are reminders of the sometimes surprising powerful effects that psychedelics can have. This account is by the same therapist who worked with psilocybin and LSD in the treatment of schizophrenic children in the early 60s (see MAPS Bulletin 7(3) 1997). Gary Fisher shares here the story of a man's single session with LSD. Fisher's account reminds us that the sitter, the preparation and the setting for a healing session with a psychedelic are integral parts of the drug's therapeutic effect.

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In the 1960s I was conducting an LSD research project at a West Coast medical center on the use of LSD for intractable pain in terminally ill cancer patients.[1] During this project the head of the Department of Psychiatry asked me if I thought it possible to 'work in' an LSD treatment for the son of a CEO of a major corporation in the city. The message I got was to be cooperative. I met with the father and he told me that his son had had extensive and prolonged psychiatric treatment. He had been hospitalized at two of the country's most prestigious private psychiatric institutions but after eleven years of hospitalization and intensive psychoanalytic work no changes had occurred.

For the following four years he saw a number of psychiatrists, tried every psychiatric drug available and even had a series of electro-shock treatments. The only procedure that he had not endured was psycho-surgery and the father was most reluctant to think about that alternative. The son was twenty-nine years old at the time, and had been in the psychiatric world for over fifteen years. He had never finished high school, never had a job and never had any friends. He had numerous diagnoses from a host of diagnosticians ranging from chronic schizophrenia to severe narcissistic character disorder. He never improved from any treatments, currently was not in treatment, and had run out of options. Although he had had numerous medications currently he was not being medicated because they made him feel worse.

There was never any history of illegal drug usage. He spent his day in a darkened room constantly accompanied by a male psychiatric nurse. His activities were restricted to listening to the radio, watching TV, some reading, playing cards, and eating. The father requested that I see him at their home as the son refused to leave the house.

When I saw David he was almost friendly but a little aloof and formal. He had obviously read extensively in the psychiatric literature, and named off multiple symptoms from which he was suffering. His presenting symptoms included being phobic about most things in the world, being in a constant state of anxiety and fear, unable to sleep (having night terrors if he slept) and experiencing a constant range of distressing bodily sensations and recurring feelings of loss of reality.

On interview, although he was loquacious, his affect was shallow and his self-descriptions were rehearsed - he was an old hand at being interviewed by psychotherapists. He was pleased at having attention again as after his two prolonged hospitalizations he had been secluded for two to three years in his room with his attendant, not even venturing to other parts of the house or yard. He did not evidence signs of acute psychosis. He elaborated in great detail about all the prestigious people and institutions where he had been treated, always ending with a sad and heavy resignation that they hadn't been able to help him. He had no memory deficit and could describe in detail the variety of professional people that he had encountered. After about two hours he queried me as to my credentials - my academic vita, experience, training and professional affiliations.

He obviously didn't want to be treated by a nobody, only collecting trophies of victory worthy of him. Evidently I met his standards as he said he would cooperate with the LSD treatment. After my meeting with him I assessed him as 'the most untreatable psychiatric patient in the world.' His father was an enormously successful, famous and powerful person, but David was, too. He would go down in history as the man who defied the psychiatric world to treat him. This was his claim to fame. The contest read David vs. LSD and, I wondered, who would win this one?

Preparation

My attempts at conducting our standard pre-session preparation were to no avail as he showed no interest in hearing about how this work was done. The session room was set up with the standard regime of music, flowers, artwork, artifacts from nature and tasty food morsels. Two other experienced sitters attended the session. The session was conducted in private quarters in a closed psychiatric ward of a large urban hospital.

The format of the session was that developed by Hubbard [2] and the Saskatchewan group [3] with the key concepts of 'set and setting,' the focus of the endeavor being that the individual experience a transcendental state of consciousness. Sherwood, Stolaroff and Harmon precisely describe this process:

The concept underlying this approach is that an individual can have a single experience which is so profound and impressive that his life experiences in the months and years that follow become a continuing growth process...

There appears to emerge a universal central perception, apparently independent of subjects' previous philosophical or theological inclinations, which plays a dominant role in the healing process. This central perception, apparently of all who penetrate deeply in their explorations, is that behind the apparent multiplicity of things in the world of science and common sense there is a single reality, in speaking of which it seems appropriate to use such words as infinite and eternal. All beings are seen to be united in this Being...

Much of the 'psychotherapeutic' changes are seen to occur as a process of the following kind of experience:

The individual's conviction that he is, in essence, an imperishable self rather than a destructible ego, brings about the most profound reorientation at the deeper levels of personality. He perceives illimitable worth in this essential self, and it becomes easier to accept the previously known self as an imperfect reflection of this. The many conflicts which are rooted in lack of self-acceptance are cut off at the source, and the associated neurotic behavior patterns die away. (p. 77)[4]

The session begins

Since he was so resistant to change, I felt he needed full dosage: 600 micrograms of LSD.5 I suggested he lie down, relax, close his eyes and go with the music. He declined this offer saying that he preferred to sit up but after a few moments, observing that the sitters were going to close their eyes and listen to the music and not engage him in small talk, out of boredom he picked up one of the art books and began casually leafing through it. I had told him the session would last many hours, at least eight and possibly up to twelve, so he knew he had a lot of time to kill.

After about thirty minutes he began to look stressed. He was obviously feeling the effects of the drug and I asked him what he was beginning to experience, explaining that it would be helpful to communicate the changes he was experiencing so that I could give him some hints about how to use these changes. He pulled himself together and quickly said 'Nothing's happening.' And that was that. So it went. He squirmed, trembled, sweated profusely, his eyes bugged out, he turned blotchy red, hyperventilated and looked like he was going to explode.

To any of my gentle queries he responded with a firm 'Nothing's happening.' Finally he said, 'Since nothing's happening I think I will just lie down for a while and listen to the music.' The other two sitters and I simultaneously chorused, 'Good idea.' He lay on the couch; clenching his jaw and his fists, he would shake, perspire, groan, moan, make feeble guttural noises and then jolt back into the present time, look over at me and in a weak, feeble voice, say 'Nothing's happening.'

This was turning out to be one of the most heart wrenching LSD sessions I had ever sat through. We knew there was nothing we could do but wait for him. We waited ten hours and his position never shifted. For the complete time, he never appeared to have any respite from this intense agony. He was totally exhausted and looked absolutely devastated. After ten hours, all he could muster was, 'I guess this drug doesn't work with some people' and all I could manage was, 'Well, we don't know a lot about this treatment yet. We all have a lot to learn.' Both sitters and I agreed we had seldom experienced such an exhausting session. He stayed in the hospital overnight with his private attendant.

'Nothing happened'

I met with him the next morning and he appeared overwhelmed with fatigue, still maintaining that he had no reaction whatsoever to the drug. During this follow- up meeting, I casually mentioned that because of all the different medications he had taken over the years, perhaps he had become drug tolerant and needed a second session with a much higher dosage. At this news he went stark white and was totally speechless.

I then said that this one treatment was a special circumstance set up just for him and that we were not able to do further work with him in this hospital. That information got him breathing again and he looked as though he had just received reprieve from a death sentence. I mentioned that a colleague of mine had a private hospital in Holland where he used LSD and other psychedelic compounds in a series of treatments over a number of months. I suggested that he consider this if I was able to make such arrangements with this psychiatrist.

Visibly shaken by this proposal he finally muttered that his father would probably not consider financially supporting such a costly undertaking, especially since he had absolutely no response to his first treatment. I left it at that, indicating I would contact my Dutch friend [Dr. G.W. Arendsen-Hein] to see if he could accommodate him if his father was amenable to the expense. My Dutch colleague agreed to treat this man at his residential hospital near Ederveen, Holland with the stipulation that I accompany him and participate in the first three sessions. I agreed and next contacted David's father who agreed to finance the venture.Note 1

I called David and told him that I had been successful in arranging this treatment program for him. He said he could not fly alone, that I would have to accompany him. I explained that had already been arranged and I would stay in Holland for his first three sessions. After a very long silence David agreed but said he could not go until he had attended to a number of personal matters. I asked him to let me know when he thought he would be ready to leave. That telephone conversation was the last contact I ever had with him.

In about three days I called his house and his mother answered. David was out and she was most anxious to talk to me. She said he had gone out by himself the day after my conversation with him - this was the first time he had gone out in several years. He had told her that when I called to tell me that he would call me when he was prepared to set a date to leave, as he was busy attending to personal matters. He did not inform her as to the nature of these personal matters but she was so ecstatic that he was going out of the house that she didn't want to 'push it.'

I called in about a week, also not wanting to push it. She answered again and reported that he was gone a good part of every day but when he was home he told her that if I called to tell me that he was resting but that he would call me back. He was always either out or resting when I called.

David moves out

After a couple of months of this he moved out of his parents' home to his own apartment and started to do volunteer work in a library. His mother contacted me, updating me on his new life and his father called me on two occasions, saying that one LSD treatment had produced more results than the previous fifteen years of psychotherapy. To his parents, LSD was a miracle drug.

After about a year I stopped contact with David's mother. At that time he had a part-time job, still did volunteer work at the library and she was sure that he had a girlfriend but he wasn't very communicative about his activities. He made contact with them on his terms and limited to the times he set. They didn't push him. My understanding of some of this was pretty simple. He couldn't tolerate another LSD session; whatever he went through he knew he couldn't do that again. He also couldn't lose face and he was fortunate in having parents who were so grateful for the changes that had occurred that they didn't require explanations from him about what had happened.

Since David chose not to divulge his experiences, one can only hypothesize what occurred. Clearly he had been in great turmoil and severe anguish throughout his session. Observationally he had what is popularly referred to as 'a bad trip.' A bad trip is when an individual uses all his energies into combating the pending loss of ego control. The ego, in fighting to stay identified with what is 'known,' creates a living hell - everything turns to negations, everything is experienced as threatening and dangerous. All of the rejected aspects of the self are projected onto the external world and one experiences 'reality' as demonic - such is the stuff of psychosis.Note 2

David undoubtedly had endless duels with his devils. The central and challenging question remains: 'Why did David decide to change his life, to give up his 'uniqueness' in the world and join the human condition with the rest of us?' His circumstances allowed him to remain at home living his life as he had lived it - being uniquely 'untreatable' and that LSD therapy would be just another unsuccessful attempt to change him.

I posit that he saw what a horrific price he was paying to maintain this ego position; he saw his 'victory' as empty; that his special place in the world was a meaningless one. That he took on the task of going out into the world he had left as an early teenager is quite astounding; that he did it on his own, even more astounding. It was a testament to the strength of his ego.

Part of his unwillingness to share with me the results of his treatment session could have been that he identified me as a father. I was a powerful person who had powerful 'medicine' and powerful connections. He wasn't quite ready to embrace as an ally this kind of potency - he was more willing to take on the world at his pace and on his own terms. I suspect that he knew that I knew something about this world of altered consciousness, that I was dedicated to help him explore it, and this was a mystery to him but he was not ready to take on this task. He decided he would rather become an 'ordinary' person.

From the first day I met David I never treated him as a 'patient,' I never engaged him at the level that he had always functioned - therapist and patient. I treated him as though he were a perfectly rational and sane person. I never talked 'therapy talk' with him, never interpreted any of his behavior, never psychoanalyzed him. I was always respectful of him, never played the role of the doctor, and although I listened to whatever he said I never responded or engaged in any conversation related to his psychopathology. I was very quiet with him and any comments I did make were extremely benign.

Although almost nothing is known of this man's experiences with the non-ordinary realities induced by the drug, what we do know is that profound changes occurred in his behavior following these experiences; be became a functional human being after fifteen years of extreme dysfunctional behavior - this was a remarkable phenomenon.

Addendum

The purpose in reporting this case study has been to give testimony to the fact that psychedelics are powerful tools for an individual to use in accessing those forces in his psyche which determine the course of his life. In the revelations that occur in these states of expanded consciousness, one has the opportunity to explore and understand what is needed to be known in order to acknowledge the essential worth of the self and to discover the humanistic-spiritual existential 'laws.'

These processes are the same for everyone, regardless of one's status in life's many hierarchies. One's station or condition in life is not at issue - only at issue is the proper use of these materials administered in a safe and protected environment by sitters who have travelled the path of self-discovery themselves and know that each person can, with the help of enlightened guidance, achieve profound depth of understanding.
 Notes

Note 1 An interesting aside that baffled both David and his father was that I never charged for any of my services. I felt that this fact was an additional phenomenon that helped penetrate David's view of the psychiatric world wherein therapists' only interest in him was for his monetary value. He never raised the issue, nor did I.

Note 2 Common experience among seasoned psychedelic voyagers in that the nitty-gritty psychodynamic work is accomplished during so-called 'bad trips': that is, where the condition of one's humanity is illuminated. Having pleasant aesthetic and sensory experiences is important for people who never experience such phenomena, but for the usual person, a pleasant ego time doesn't touch the hidden internal conflicts which cause the difficulties in life.

References

Fisher, G. Psychotherapy for the dying: principles and illustrations with special reference to the utilization of LSD. Omega, 1970, 1, 3-16

MacLean, J.R., MacDonald, P.C., Byrne, V.P. and Hubbard, A.M. The use of LSD-25 in the Treatment of Alcoholism and other Psychiatric Problems. Quart. J. of Studies of Alcoholism, 1961, 22, 34-45.

Blewett, D.B. and Chwelos, N. Handbook for the Therapeutic Use of LSD-25: Individual and Group Procedures. Unpublished Manuscript; Regina, Saskatchewan, 1959.

Sherwood, J.N., Stolaroff, M.J. and Harmon, W.W. The Psychedelic Experience - A New Concept in Psychotherapy. Journal of Neuropsychiatry, 1962, 4, 69-80.

Fisher, G. Some comments concerning dosage levels of psychedelic compounds for psychotherapeutic experiences. The Psychedelic Review, 1963, 1, 208-218.

Exp Year: 1960	ExpID: 9890

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Oct 10, 2001	Views: 61,317

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LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Guides / Sitters (39), Retrospective / Summary (11), First Times (2)


		 DOSE:

		 300 ug
		 oral
		 LSD

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   180 lb

About a year ago, at the age of 31, I had the beginnings of a spontaneous kundalini awakening that has been facilitated in part by psychedelics. I was not aware of kundalini as a general phenomenon, but I had been practicing sexual abstinence and having a lot of very intense, life-changing spiritual realizations for about a month, when I then imbibed about 100 mics of very clean LSD on New Year's Eve, 2000-to-2001.  This trip greatly intensified my spiritual awakening, with quite positive effects. I quit drinking completely that night (after about 20 years of heavy alcohol use), started exercising like mad, and lost about 50 pounds over the course of the next four months. I withheld all orgasms for weeks at a time (even while engaging in sexual activity), and worked on driving the energy up my spine.

At the same time, my life became immediately imbued with amazing synchronicities, and I discovered yoga and kundalini. I was reading huge quantities of books about Eastern mysticism, psychedelics, Stan Grof's stuff, and so on. Finally it all made sense!! I had entered into what seemed like a permanent state of inebriation, to the point where marijuana literally became impotent, and so I gave it up as well. I dramatically improved the quality of my diet, eating almost nothing but organic fruit, vegetables and soy products in quite small quantities, and began to really taste food for what seemed like the first time in my life.

At the same time though, I seemed to be struggling with my own self-identity and purpose in life. At the peak I seemed to have delusions of grandeur about myself, considering myself a messenger from God, and sometimes acting like an ass as a result. I was sleeping only 2 to 4 hours a night, and driving my wife nuts with manic behavior of all sorts. I never got depressed though, just plain manic! Life seemed magical and yet I was aware that I was bordering on what might have been described as mental illness, at least from the perspective of an outsider. My family was worried about me and the dramatic changes in my personality, although when they talked to me in person and saw the physical improvements, they were greatly reassured. I enjoyed the experience, but at the same time several knowledgeable people told me that I needed to balance myself, and that it might not be a bad idea to back off a bit. So somewhat reluctantly, I did. I eased up on the yoga, ate a little more tamasic food, engaged in more frequent sexual releases, and generally slept more.

Over the course of the next year I did indeed achieve balance, and found myself much more serene, humble and generally normal-feeling, for better or worse. At the same time, I lost much of the magical quality, the amazing synchronicities, the natural intoxication, and the feeling of being imbued with spirituality and God-ness. Also, I was aware that my awakening had been incomplete. I had been studying kundalini awakenings of all descriptions, and I had not yet experienced the full-blown psychic and physical manifestations.

After some time, I enhanced my yogic practices once again. I had been purifying my body through fasting, exercise and sexual abstinence for two weeks. I then took about 300 mics of the same very clean LSD, and after about an hour, my hips began quivering uncontrollably at a certain frequency, which I have experienced before while on tryptamines and which I had surmised was kundalini energy. During an extended sexual encounter with my wife, I experienced one of the most intense orgasms of my life, and at the end of it, very powerful shudders and waves of energy began to pass through my body, starting at the root chakra and passing up through the spine. It was very much like being at the end of the tail of a big electric rattlesnake, and being whipped about uncontrollably, but not uncomfortably so.

I was subsequently filled with an unimaginable degree of ecstasy and very profound insights, many of which revolved around sensing the presence of a female Goddess archetype in my wife. I sensed a truly frightening degree of power coming from this Goddess, but I also felt protected and loved, and damned lucky to be so! During continued sexual activity, at the minutes just prior to orgasm, I became aware that there was a fluid being secreted from the upper, forward part of my throat/nasal cavity, roughly at the height of the nose (amrita). It seemed closely related to the extended sublimation of semen, which I had been practicing for some time.

The remainder of the evening was filled with hilariously amazing synchronicities and realizations of startling intensity. In the aftermath, I felt wise and content; not delusional and manic.

I have discovered that, for me, the awakening is something that takes place over a long period of time. In fact, it really started when I was an adolescent, and then returned after nearly twenty years of semi-dormancy. It comes and goes, in fits and starts, with what seems like an intelligence of its own. I can't really force it; it isn't the automatic result of the yogic practices, but it does seem to coincide with them somewhat. The occasional use of LSD has been quite helpful no doubt, but essentially I get out of tripping only as much as I put into it beforehand.  The greatest change generally comes after I have been purifying my body and exercising for an extended period of time. I try to adopt an attitude of gratitude prior to the trip, and I usually make an offering of some sort by helping out the local homeless folks with generous gifts of food and cash. Also, the experience of orgasm while tripping, especially after a period of abstinence, is extremely intense and transformative.

I feel unspeakably fortunate to be blessed with such a vast amount of sheer ecstasy, and at such a spiritual level.  It never fails to leave me completely awed and deeply infused with gratitude!

 Thank you GOD!!!

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 10774

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Nov 24, 2001	Views: 48,140

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LSD (2), Yoga / Bodywork (202) : Sex Discussion (14), Retrospective / Summary (11), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 16 mg
		 oral
		 2C-I
		 (powder / crystals)

		   T+ 1:30
		 1 hit
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   70 kg

I've taken 2C-I about 10 times. I find it to be one of the most positive, yet most gentle, psychedelics out there. Extremely intense visuals without ever being overwhelming. I've followed a progression from a safe, home environment to outdoors, at art festivals, to having this substance in a club setting, surrounded by sweaty people in crowds, and the worst side effect I've ever had was getting very hungry. I've even started to experiment-- taking MDMA towards the aftereffects.

2C-I is so slow and gentle, I've had people at T+2 hours insisting that it isn't working, but they're giggling at the trash on the sidewalk. Seriously: don't drive. I initially thought that the 2C-I experience lasted about 4-6 hours, though I'm thinking now that it's more along the lines of 8-10-- incredibly slow and gentle in the come-on and the come-down.

This particular evening, I'd planned to go to an outdoor arts festival, with music, costume, lights... I was covered in fur and expecting an excellent time, and I thought that 2C-I was a perfect experience for the evening.

About 1730, I dropped a gelcap with ~16-18 mg of 2C-I powder in it. At about 1845, I was just on the edge of feeling warm, loved, extra-sensitive to its effects-- and all the art (incredibly cool while sober) was just getting nicer and cooler. As stated earlier, I think this is a tough material to judge 'where you're at', but I'd say I was at a nice, pleasant, +1/+1.5.

A friend showed up, who had recently failed to procure a quantity of LSD. Unknown to me, however, he had managed to get a small quantity, and a small square of paper was placed right on my tongue. My judgement was a bit impaired, and it was a Sunday night (I have a day job...), but I figured: you only live once, so let's do it right. Onwards and upwards.

Now some folks have a bit of stomach cramps with 2C-I, some folks get a bit queasy. I have none of that. Within 30 minutes I was feeling about a +2.5, and everything had just gone completely amazing. Certainly a part of this was set and setting (art, great people, etc.), but my entire world just went completely positive. I'd put it at a +3 or +3.5 within an hour. I stayed there for at least two hours, and quite possibly longer (it being impossible to keep track of time at this point), talking to people, dancing, and mostly wandering through the crowd, finding incredible friends, new and old to talk to.

There were photos that pretended as if they were blacklight photos, but they weren't. There was an incredible sense-- somewhat like the first time I did MDMA, when hugging friends-- of some sort of spiral energy signature going through both bodies. There was a Gigeresque alien playing with puddles of light on the ground. Fortunately, photos proved that this was a man in costume later. I remember thinking 'well, I'm on drugs, and it looks pretty cool, so I'm just going to accept it'.

Important to note: I'd had about 8 hours' sleep in 3 days. I'd been out clubbing with an inordinate amount of mdma 2 nights before, and had had a small abount of 5-MEO-dipt the night before that. I hadn't expected to feel as marvelous as I did.

I've had a pretty wide range of experience with psychedelics: 5-meo-dmt, 5-meo-dipt, 2ci, mdma, mbdb, lsd, psylocybin, thc and cannabis, etc. This is, quite possibly, the highest I've ever been. Caveat: I've been a lot higher before, however, at any of those points, I started to become less and less functional -- floppy and tired yet wired (foxy, E), or plain wandering in other universes (5-meo-dmt).

At about T+8 hours, we packed up our art installation, got someone who hadn't been indulging to drive us home, and chilled and chatted for ~ 3 hours. At T+11 hours (from the 2CI), my girlfriend and I went to bed, and were still chatty-- we were both quite enjoying a warm body glow, positive experience, a little bit overwhelmed, a little tired, a little --very little-- cracked out. I really think that if we hadn't both had a 7AM alarm impending, we wouldn't have had a bad time at all.

All in all, I'd have to say that this is a combo that I am willing to try, again.

and again.

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 10046

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Dec 1, 2001	Views: 29,931

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LSD (2), 2C-I (172) : Festival / Lg. Crowd (24), Nature / Outdoors (23), Glowing Experiences (4), Combinations (3)


		 DOSE:

		 1 hit
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   155 lb

I am presently aged 45, and took LSD at aged 16, during 1972.  I can honestly say that the trip experience was so profound and real, that it has affected me ever since.

My parents were on holiday, and I tripped at home, with a work colleague, who was not a good friend, just somebody I knew.  I thought LSD was going to be all flowers and pretty lights, etc., and was looking forward to the experience.   We bought the black microdot tabs from a dealer that he knew, who warned us that the tabs were strong, and to make sure we were somewhere safe.  On the way home on a bus, we dropped the tabs. We got home OK, and decided to go to a local shop.  The time was around 5-6pm. After about half an hour, we started to feel a bit light headed, and giggly.  We returned home, and sat in the front room, and put on some Deep Purple on the hi fi. I can remember moving my hands, and seeing the fingertips trailing behind, and the seeing the walls swaying.  Also, sounds coming out of the hi fi speakers were in colour.  Then, bang.   I lost an hour or two here, my colleague said that I just wandered round and round in circles, in a trance state.  I can vaguely remember seeing my mind on different planes and levels, shooting out into infinity.

I then came round, and noticed the guy with me staring at me in an all-knowing way.  He had tripped before, and I began to get the AWFUL feeling that he had tricked me into taking the tab. As the time went on, I began to get paranoid, and started to realize that this trip was going to last for eternity, and, in fact, my whole life previous to this, was also part of the trip. I saw my parents sitting on the sofa laughing at me, “you've been conned again” on their faces.  I looked at the guy with me, yes, I now realized I knew him, I'd always known him, for eternity, I was in a death trip now, I was sucked into a spiral, everything I looked at, I knew what was coming, DEJA VU on a massive scale. Fear is not a good description of the horror of this experience.

Several times in the trip, I became 'aware' and tried to tell myself, this is stupid, you are you, I repeated my name over and over.  At one stage, I decided to go for a walk.  It was dark, about 11pm. We caught a bus, God knows how.  Walked round a town centre.  It was raining.  The rain hit my face and felt like acid burning holes.  I looked at the guy with me, yes, his name, everything, he was the bastard that always tricks me into taking LSD, and I fall for it every time, for infinity -whoosh  - away again down the deja vu spiral, horrendous sickening fear.   At one stage in town, I looked at an EXIT sign.  Yes,  ex it,  this is it, it is the trip, whoosh - away again.  Managed to get home safely by walking home. We had left the front door unlocked, but got lucky.   I then spent the next 2-3 hours battling with my sanity, as time and time again I suffered the realization, and gut-wrenching fear, that I had done this millions of times before, and could never escape it.   I eventually came down at about 4 am, staring at a gas fire, in a state of shock.

The following days I wandered round in a daze, trying to come to terms with what had happened to me.  I only took LSD one more time after that, a half a tab.  To convince myself it was OK.  It wasn’t.  I went to rock concert at a stadium, it was dark, I saw the EXIT signs, I was back on the same trip, panicked, left early, and went home, lay in bed in a state of fear.

The following year, I smoked some weed, became paranoid, and suddenly flash backed, I was still on the trip.  I ran panicking, it’s all I can do for a few seconds, then the feeling goes.  I tried sniffing solvent, bang, whilst high, I got the same feeling, still on the trip, panicked and ran again.  People look at me strange, I’m not surprised.    The years went on.  I married and had children, got a good job.    Whilst at work, I had to go into a dark hall, with an illuminated exit sign, bang, - you’ve guessed it, I flash backed again, deja vu, the people with me are all part of the conspiracy. And it goes on.   I’ve had about 7 or 8 flashbacks, some being as far as 8 years apart.  The last one was last week.  I was in a panicky situation involving my job, involving danger. I was dealing with something, when I had the realisation, deja vu feeling again, OH NO, is what I say.  Christ, it’s a nightmare.

So, during my life, Ive tried TM, Buddhism, Martial arts, various other spiritual paths,  I’m lost, I’m searching for sanity,  I honestly don’t know, 29 years later, what is reality.   When I die, I hope it’s blackness and peace, and not part of a neverending trip, and I’ve got to suffer the experience again.

My advice to anybody reading this who hasn’t tripped yet,  DON’T.

Exp Year: 1972	ExpID: 8336

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Nov 24, 2001	Views: 80,485

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LSD (2) : HPPD / Lasting Visuals (40), Post Trip Problems (8), Bad Trips (6), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 1 hit
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (liquid)

		   T+ 0:30
		 1 hit
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (liquid)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   200 lb

My first LSD trip was actually kind of an accident.  The guy I usually buy shit from had been talking about some shit he had, hash and opium, but by the time I got around to hooking up with him he was out of hash and the opium was 'bottom of the barrel,' if you will.  I ended up buying four hits of acid, each dropped on some sort of gummy candy.

The night I got them I popped one in my mouth, around 9:00 PM.  I have tried morning glory seeds before, to no great hallucinogenic effect (in LARGE quantities), so when I wasn't feeling much more than slight dizziness after about a half hour, I dropped another.

I was lying on my bed, blacklight on accompanying numerous blacklight-sensitive gadgets.  Jimi Hendrix's Woodstock '69 recording was playing, a sound-sensitive light toy on top.  I first noticed a significant increase in energy.  Soon I found myself smiling broadly, immersed in the music.  I began to notice the walls rippling slightly.  This proceeded for an indefinite amount of time (LSD was not good for my time perception).  Eventually, I left to go get an issue of HighTimes from the other room.  I took it to the bathroom, where the lighting was better (my room has no normal white lights).  For the next hour or two I scanned the magazine, not moving forward or backward in the pages, just around.  I didn't really read (I remember trying and not being capable of mustering the concentration to comprehend each individual word).  I smiled broadly and laughed.  I was in a state of complete bliss, every color swirling and melting, every word evading my gaze.  I would try to scan every picture and segment of text on a page without being evaded by any, and felt quite proud of myself when (I believed that) I did.

I eventually got up and left.  Everything was shifting and melting.  The patterns on the carpet, the blankets on the bed and the patterns on the pillow, even the dog's bed in the corner.  I peeked out the window over the water and was surprised to notice that it looked oddly normal.  I left the room and went to the computer.  The background at the time was a landscape with mountains in the distance and a sun in the sky that had been re-textured in a sort of tie-dye.  The colors bled and swirled.  I switched, with some effort, to a chat window I had left open and attempted briefly to decode what was being said.  I soon left out of boredom.

This is when my trip took a bad turn, around 12:30.  My dad was still awake, watching the olympics (in Sydney, where it was just morning).  I realized that I wouldn't be able to talk to him or explain why I was awake in my state, so I turned off the blacklight (the only light) and the stereo.  I became very tense and remained so until around 4:00 when I fell asleep.  I couldn't keep from clenching my fists and grinding my teeth, often biting my cheeks as hard as I could to prevent the feeling of teeth scraping against teeth.  I wandered the hallway after my Dad went to bed.  Everything was still melting, only now the colors weren't emphasized as they had been; hard lines solidified and the colors around them turned dull.  I attempted to listen to music to mellow me out, but everything I tried to listen to sounded harsh and grating, from reggae to Jimi Hendrix's blues to hardcore to comedy.  By 2:00 or so I just wanted it to be over.  I kept checking the time, as if searching for some anchor to reality.  I found myself become more and more paranoid that I had somehow permanently damaged myself, and often repeated my name, birth date, etc., to myself to prove to myself that my mind hadn't been destroyed.  Finally, I fell asleep around 4:00.

I woke up around 7:30, when I needed to leave for school, to my parents shouting at me for being so reluctant to get out of bed.  I quickly put on deodorant, brushed my teeth, and dressed, leaving with an english muffin in hand that I didn't feel like eating.  For the first half of the day I remained paranoid, my senses and mind somewhat dulled.  I felt like I had a fever, experiencing slight delirium and cold/hot sweats.  School was hell, but I was afraid to tell anyone because I thought they would find out that I had taken LSD.

By the afternoon most of the symptoms had passed.  Although the latter portion of the trip wasn't extremely pleasant, and it fucked up the next day, I would still try acid again simply for the bliss I felt during the beginning (although next time I may only drop one hit).  I have gotten some advice on ways to lessen the comedown, most of which involve knocking yourself out so you can sleep through it all.  Overall, I would grade this an expanding experience, if not thoroughly positive.

Exp Year: 2000	ExpID: 3045

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Dec 6, 2001	Views: 33,974

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LSD (2) : First Times (2), General (1), Alone (16)


		 DOSE:

		 650 mg
		 oral
		 DXM
		 (powder / crystals)

		 2 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (liquid)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   155 lb

On the Saturday night before Easter 2001 I finally tried this combo. Around 11:00 PM I measured out 650 mg of Dex on a Deering 10g scale and dosed it in open gel caps. This dose is a low 3rd plateau for me as I weigh 155 lbs. The highest dose of DXM I have taken is ~780 mg. I then went outside to sit in the cool night air. My brother had gone to bed and I was alone. After an hour, I felt the Dex coming on so I popped 2 sweet tarts with a drop of acid on each. I let the tarts dissolve in my mouth. Soon I felt somewhat nauseated but I never puked. I thought this was strange because I usually throw up on Dex. As I began to feel the trip accelerate I popped my hypnotism tape into the walkman. I had been listening to this tape for 2 months, every night at bed time. On the tape, the hypnotist guides me through progressive relaxation, then into a state of hypnosis, then through guided imagery, then gives suggestions, and then guides me out again. I have become somewhat sensitive to the hypnotic state by listening to the tape so much.

On the tape the hypnotist tells you to feel yourself going down. This particular time, I went WAAAAAAAAY down. I felt myself falling through different dex dimensions. Finally I reached a point where all there was was me as a disembodied mind and my environment as a set that my mind existed in (like a set in a play where one can go behind the set as well as in front of the set). But I got the idea that really all there was was just me. I felt like the set was an extension of myself. I kept switching back and forth from being the set and being an individual on the set. The set was a strange version of my neighborhood or the view I had from my back porch. Occasionally I would hear and see things from 'the sober world,' but they quickly became incorporated into the strange dex world as I would swtich back into that dimension. I have done Dex 3 other times before that night and have noticed that Dex is very similar to Salvia. Both produce worlds that have the same 'feel' to them. Both dimensions seem like an extension of myself or I am an extension of them. Both feel like a lucid dream and I find myself using 'dream logic' while tripping on these drugs. I also kept getting this deja vu effect like in lucid dreams.

Every Dex trip has incorporated elements and experiences from the previous trips. Curiously, during the trip before this one I met some Dex entities that said 'Welcome back!' Anyway, this deja vu effect started to manifest in other ways. I kept hearing this police helicopter fly over my house. Then I would hear a train whistle. Then water in the gutter of a house across from mine would rush down the drain pipe with a loud splashing noise. This pattern happened over and over and over again and I kept thinking 'did that just happen?' Soon my wondering if the pattern just happened again became part of the pattern. This happened after the hypnotism tape was done and I was too fucked up to put on any music. As a result, I had no guiding ground for the trip and the manic acid-driven need to figure things out kicked in. I convinced myself that I had become caught in a mind loop that consisted of a dirty dark dingy depressing version of my neighborhood. In other words, I was in hell. The continual pattern of sounds were driving me mad and I was becoming very freaked out. I have tripped alone quite a bit in the past and talked myself out of bad trips before. These prior experiences probably saved me. I made myself gain more awareness and forced myself to teeter inside and up into my room. But the acid theme was still strong and I still kept hearing the same helicopter thunder over my house and the same train whistle mournfully follow. I fell into the classic panic that I had finally tripped one too many times and was now stuck in some dimension.

Finally I looked at my clock and saw that time kept moving forward. This meant that I wasn't in a time loop after all. I also put on some music and realized that this too was progressing and not looping. I spent the rest of the morning enjoying music and getting wrapped up in manic post-acid-peak philosophical speculation. I eventually fell asleep around 10 am.

This combo was not very fun and I have since decided that I am not going to do dex again and probably won't do acid for a very long time. Both drugs seem redundant now and the deja vu effect makes the dex world smaller each time I do it. It is ultimately becoming boring.

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 7486

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Dec 6, 2001	Views: 55,107

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


		 DOSE:

		 6 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   130 lb

Set: VERY tired from the

Setting: A small rave at a bowling alley (my first rave).

We entered the rave at the very start, around 11:00pm.  All of my friends were going to be rolling, but I'd been tired of it lately and hoped that I could find something a bit more interesting somewhere at the rave.  My hopes were fulfilled.  I told the guy I wanted 3 hits, and he asked me to buy at least 20, but I didn't have the money.  He told me 3 would be fine, so I tore what appeared to be 3 hits off of what I thought was a 10 strip (it was unmarked) and took it.  About 15 mintues later, I realized that he had wanted me to buy 20, and the 10 strip looked a bit wide, and...you get the picture.

All times except start are estimated, because I was really not paying that much attention.

12:35am - Took the acid.

01:30am - Definitely going to be an interesting night.... I don't sweat that much normally.  The floor was breathing and fractals were appearing in the wood.  Time slowed extremely, was actually wishing there were lights on in the room so I could see my visuals better. :-)

02:45am - Sat down for a while.  As usual, my friends who were rolling were bitching about the music or something and blaming it for 'killing their roll.'  Perhaps the fact that ecstasy only peaks at around 3 hours or their negative attitude is what actually killed their roll, I'd say.  My arm was pulsating and there were little black worms crawling all over it into my skin.  This made me happy, because I'd been wanting to get a larger dose of acid at some point.

03:00am - Went to bathroom.  Mental note:  Don't go in that bathroom again while tripping.  Sinks overflowing, somebody shit on the floor in the stall, puke in water-filled sinks overflowing.  Didn't especially bother me, but the fact that it didn't bothered me more, because it normally would have.

03:30am - Like I said, this was my first rave.  When I first arrived, I remember that the first thing I noticed was that nothing made a damn bit of sense.  It was completely silly to an extreme I had never seen before.  Suddenly though, I looked around, and it made absolute sense.  Not that any group of people there fit together, it was just that the whole thing made sense.  It wasn't about 'PLUR' like everyone says.  There were many people there being mean or rude, and many being very nice.  There were the same ratio of nice people to jackasses that there is everywhere else I go.  The way it made sense was the same way a crowd of people walking down the street makes sense.  It was just another thing people do.  As with many acid headed thoughts, it is impossible to describe in English.  One thing I distinctly remember was laughing my ass off at the thought of massive groups of people being incredibly impressed by somebody swinging around glowsticks on a string.

04:00am - Began watching the DJ.  I saw the passion he put into his music and realized one of the things I have been missing in my life for a long time.  Passion for what I do.  Vowed to change this, and have been so far.  At this point, glowsticks were leaving tracers that consisted of the color of the glowstick and bright neon purple writing in some asian language.

04:15am - Could feel the bass with every single hair on my body, and felt electrified by it.  Dripping with sweat as well, even though I was just standing there.  I had several important realizations about my life that I won't really discuss here....

04:30am - Danced a while.  The floor seemed to be covered with water or something slippery that was keeping me from dancing properly.  Sat down and watched the lights, which immediately began burning, with long colored flames rising into the air.  Greeted a friendly police officer as he walked by.  Absolutely no paranoia.

05:00am - Watched the DJ some more, and felt my fingers melting together.  Hmm....  Wow, the guy who sold me the acid was getting the next record for the DJ.  What a small world. :-)

06:00am - Just spent the last hour watching some friends dance with lights.

06:30am - #1 way to fuck with someone who took lots of acid:  Turn on all of the lights in the building suddenly, after it has been dark for the past 7.5 hours.  Wow.  Time to leave, so we went outside.  That was when I truly realized how much acid I had taken.  The sun had risen and everything was a beautiful ultra intense pastel color.  The clouds were rippling and shooting across the sky at extremely high speeds.  I was cold, so naturally the trees became covered with frost and icicles.  The condensation on the windows of the car turned to frost, too (it didn't, I verified it with my friends), and slowly melted as I warmed up.  On the drive home, houses in the distance were pulsating and sinking into the ground, and a radio tower duplicated itself about 99 times, filling the horizon with copies.  Thought a lot about my life on that ride, until about 10 minutes from home when I thought a lot about peeing. :-) Felt, smelled, tasted, and saw a smell at the same time.

08:00am - Back to the dorms, time to sleep.  I can sleep on basically any amount of anything if I feel like it, and since I had only slept about 5 hours the night before I definitely felt like it.  Still patterning on walls, and hearing and seeing techno with my eyes closed.

Slept till 1:00, and woke up feeling EXTREMELY happy about where my life is headed.

Exp Year: 2000	ExpID: 3174

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Dec 13, 2001	Views: 31,309

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LSD (2) : Rave / Dance Event (18), General (1)