		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00

		 insufflated
		 Cocaine
		 (powder / crystals)

		   T+ 0:00
		 2 - 3 hits
		 smoked
		 Cannabis

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

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

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   110 lb

Last year my life has changed considerably and I have been busy focusing on the subjects of ego and at times fighting it in myself or others. I came back to my home country for Christmas and didn't socialize much, every reunion with friends made it seem like they cannot comprehend my current state of affairs. I decided to spend a New Years Eve all by myself in my big and well equipped attic room and set up some goals for next year, meditate on my reality and ask the invisible forces to teach me to focus. My friend (let’s call him Ken) who has been around for many years asked if he can come with his girlfriend (let’s call her Barbie) for two hours. I didn't think they would affect my trip and invited them readily.

Throughout the day I had sniffed 3 mini lumps of coke (one small line altogether) to finish my carpentry project faster and smoked 2-3 hits of cannabis sativa. Last time I smoked and dosed around 8:30 and prepared my space for a eventful night.

Around 9:30 I dropped the first tab and started drawing. I was still working, feeling excited and giddy when Ken and Barbie arrived around 11. I invited them to draw, but the only piece of paper I could find was a pencil sketch of my self portrait from years ago. They decided to work on the existing structure instead of drawing something new and I joined in, covering the surface with tangled thin lines, looking like blood vessels or nerves. Each one had a specific style but I was the only one who reached further and further, covering with my tangles whatever they colored. I didn’t see anything wrong in it and they didn’t express their opposition. I pointed out that our energies and world views translate onto paper, but Ken immediately opposed it, saying it’s random. I didn’t feel like fighting for it, especially since if I only left their company I would get lost in a world of colors and subtle hallucinations which I preferred to his dominant, male and square energy. None of them acknowledged that I was tripping and treated me in any special way. We barely noticed midnight and wished each other good year which left me with a cynical aftertaste. My sister whom I consider to live in denial in shallow waters came up with her phantom, awkward boyfriend and the four of them gathered around the drawing while I was cringing like a chimp in front of the computer. I didn’t like their official, boring vibe. I invited them to draw (they were officious and reluctant, didn’t want to interfere, blah blah yadda yadda) and the way they all communicated with each other made me sad. Why were they all so happy to act like boring old people? I was aware that my normal life far away from this country was much more wild and weird, which none of them even wanted to be. Their existence around me made me think of myself as a spoilt child and them as my toys.

My sister and her shadow left and I realized that Ken’s presence has a very square, forever organizing energy. He took away my focus and changed the mood in the room. It was not fascinating and magic anymore, it was a big square. I saw how he had always been like that (square only intensifying with age) and that my style was thin tangled lines, surrounding his squareness as it proceeded steadily, trying to put everything in his order. I observed the couple drawing and pointed out things about their style, feeling like their therapist, but they didn’t want to pick up the ball and open themselves up. I felt that they were closed tight and my ways didn’t work with them. I tried few things like movement, dance, but their grey shallow vibe didn’t inspire me.  They smoked some weed and I gave them wine, hoping to make them relax into wilderness. I was taking photos of them trying to see what I wanted to see but I always saw squares, inability to open, to be flexible. Was it only them or me as well? I admit I couldn’t even remember my techniques of opening people, I was feeling unsuccessful, the colors were pastel and dull. Ken, met my comments and remarks awakening his inner ape, primal male ego. I saw a monkey in his actions, aware of losing his influence and one of his females breaking out of his square which was dangerous for Barbie, his mate who was observing me from her submissive position, craving for more expression. I took some photos of the ape exposed and he wasn’t happy. We fought for the camera and I let go, he deleted them.

I realized I was in a strange state of mind and those things happening were not what I wanted. I started dressing Barbie up and taking photos of her while Ken was observing like an owner.  I realized the weird masquerade to please males. How I am also his female, for many years spending time together and now I take upon myself the role of a stylist of his treasure, the meek, docile, submissive, beautiful Barbie. She had no power in her, expressed no original thoughts that would oppose his, so she became a mannequin. She did things I asked her to do, but always looked at him for permission and I lost interest in her very quickly. If I only had her on my own! Ken the warden was always around, observing and squarely approving or disapproving.

Around 2am the vibe was still the same and I took another tab of acid, looking for the depth I was missing. I wanted them to leave, but it all felt like a mess. I wanted to solve this, to create a breakthrough, something to blow up and people to open themselves, but I was stuck in shallow water, in the despair of inertia, no growth.

I wanted to solve this, to create a breakthrough, something to blow up and people to open themselves, but I was stuck in shallow water, in the despair of inertia, no growth.

  Ken looked like he wanted to communicate with me, but all he did was defend himself. He didn’t think that a psychedelic trip reveals any truths – it’s all enlargement of a random moment, fleeting element. In his square world there is no place for magic and he doesn’t appreciate my style anymore – style that is forever searching for depth and meaning, while he built a very functional square structure. We grew up to focus differently and our worlds have a very slight chance of coexisting. Any question that would risk penetrating his square into greater depth was left unanswered or thrown back at me. There was no feeling of love or communication, although I could see him saddened and trying to understand or communicate with my world – he simply couldn’t.  He considered a change in him but didn’t see a point in revealing to me his primal, shifting self. Every time he defended himself I saw the square, every time almost convincing me. It’s easy to follow the square. I saw them as my dolls that I didn’t know how to play with, scattered around the floor, not happy, painfully sane, not how I wanted them to be. I want people to express themselves beyond norms. They left around 4, after another heavy talk that again didn’t open anything.

I came to my kingdom feeling defeated and tried hard to change my point of view, but even though reality was splitting in front of my eyes into tiny pixels I could move and rearrange with my finger, there was no driving force, no light, no feeling of growth.

I called my man who lives on the other side of the globe. His baseline personality thinks in a very psychedelic way, always aware of the matrix, his hidden agenda to break out of it so he quickly tapped into my frequency. I expected him to entertain me, change my mood, help me make it different and he readily played along, but very quickly I would see the masquerade, multitude of things we can do with another human on the phone, roles we can play to fill up the empty space of matrix, rearranging our consciousness and atoms to influence others. When there’s nothing piercing the structure into the greater depth, nothing lost and separated how can anything new be created?  Now and then I would get lost in the colors of the drawing I was admiring, aimlessly moving the colors and depths. Long silence on the phone, when I knew the futility of my trip as long as I stay the observer. He was telling me about growth, always growing, his driving force and I would see impossible landscapes full of greenery sprouting into life, exciting, new and beautiful, although still squarely turning inside the matrix-square. He understood me, because he knew the square very well and wanted to break through it. Locked in this computer-like game interface I was craving primal, warm familiarity, love, closeness, but whenever he acted it out for me it seemed fake. Everything was fake, built of lumps of the same stuff. Nothing was satisfying. After a long talk that slowly took the stagnant qualities of my trip I decided to hang up and focus on myself. I was not able to create a positive change with another person, even with the ego fighter I value so much. Problem has to lie within me.

I wasn’t connected into anything bigger, but stranded in a game where nothing happens anymore. I searched for god, for light to direct me and drive me and started listening to “Science of being great” by W.D. Wattles which is my habit to program myself into growing a strong structure of principles that I believe I am lacking. I sat upright observing my surroundings. Things. Made of little things, tiny atoms. My reality was vast and empty like an atom. I want something so I live, work and move. No matter what they are made of they are still in here, part of the square. The book sounded like it was a salesman, pushing to me a very attractive worldview – the driving force and light are mine if I only want them and apply changes in my thinking. I was trying to focus on gratitude but in my vibration it was not conceivable. Seeing things around me – my paintings, a big map of the world, hearing the reassuring voice of a salesman,  I saw my personality projected onto the 3d canvas and I knew it was a point to check and reset my life programs. I could see all the programs I was running – doing no harm, looking for depth, obeying the male, indulging in expression, escape from being normal and boring. The book was programming me to want certain things and  following the words I noticed how it makes it impossible to leave the square, the game matrix. However positive and growth promoting, this could be exactly what we listen to submerged in our incubators in “Matrix”, priming us so skillfully that we never notice we are in it. I followed one desire and fear after another, to and fro, and couldn’t conceive of what could be beyond. I was trapped in this empty atom of the game, aware of the thin lines I have built that hide nothing, no principles, no light. Just empty space I can furnish with beliefs. What I want and fear creates my life and is the only driving force. But my ship is big enough to have more power, a bigger light driving it.

Things were glowing and unreal, if I looked at them closer I would see more visual depth, splitting into impossible images, but instead of fooling myself with trippy patterns I chose the overview. I listened to some music but my mood was lacking warm cheer and inspiration I had been hoping for. Searching for the driving force in the song lyrics I realized it is only praising and describing itself and it can be as fake as everything else. If the artist believes in it, it will be well received. I made some line drawings I didn’t like and went to bed around 7am, feeling troubled and concussed. I howled like a wolf and understood why they do it, the primal scream of being locked and craving to know more. I wanted to scream “Fuck the square” but I knew I am a part of it and it is within me. The square is always there, the matrix we exist in is very shallow. It’s for us to discover and build a deeper thought structure which will prepare a deeper truth to emerge for next generations.  As I lay there I was thinking about changing my patterns. Be more piercing, turn the square around. Whenever I meet the square I will know it and the only way to change it is right through it. You can never move things as long as you stay an observer. What lies beneath?

Exp Year: 2015	ExpID: 107657

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: 25

Published: Oct 22, 2022	Views: 905

[ View as PDF (for printing) ] [ View as LaTeX (for geeks) ]
[ Switch Colors ]

LSD (2), Cannabis (1), Cocaine (13) : Combinations (3), General (1), Various (28)


		 DOSE:

		 1 hit
		 sublingual
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   115 lb

Just over 6 weeks ago, I had the most life changing experience of my life. It was around 9pm, and my roommate was out with friends; meaning I had the place to myself. I had taken LSD a handful of times (with and without others/sitters) and had incredibly positive experiences and thought that tonight would be no different.

Let me preface that I am an intensely strong believer in the idea of intentions for tripping. Basically, if you take a substance with specific intentions, your trip will reflect those intentions. It's kind of like set and setting but a little different.

Anyways, I had recently had a strong psychological trip a month prior and wanted to see more. I wanted to seek out the truths of consciousness and the universe. So with my intentions clear, I took the blotter paper and stuck it underneath my tongue, waiting for the effects to kick in. I always clean my apartment and fast before a trip, for anyone curious.

T+30 minutes after taking the acid, I was sitting in a phone call with a friend and just talking. It started as small stomach aches and tightness of the skin. Gradually, it felt as if I could feel all my organs working inside of me.

It started as small stomach aches and tightness of the skin. Gradually, it felt as if I could feel all my organs working inside of me.

 I could feel my stomach churning and contracting. I decided I should lay down and just try to relax. So, I hung up the phone and did just that, laying on my bed.

The discomfort only grew in intensity. I was practically wailing in pain from the feeling of my body getting tighter and tighter, like my skin was getting stretched across my bones. The thought had crossed my mind that I had taken LSA or NBOME, as LSD had never caused feelings this uncomfortable before.

I called someone more experienced with drugs than myself; a close friend at the time. I explained the situation and the pains. He assured me it was just acid, and told me to calm down, the normal stuff.

Finally he said, "Just lay down and try to enjoy your visuals." I was going to say I didn't have any visuals, when I looked up at my room. My eyes practically shot open when I admired the extensive fractalizations covering my room. The lights made my room look like a stellar supernova of colors and textures layered over my room. I watched in awe for a few minutes before the trip turned sinister.

With each breath I took, it felt like the world was getting smaller and smaller. My anxiety was steadily growing, and I was trying to explain my thoughts to my friend. He continued the "you're just high" lines no matter what I said. The more and more we talked, the more it felt like he wasn't even real, and that I was experiencing a charade or practical joke; and I was the punch line.

This feeling persisted, and soon I was overcome by the idea that something was very very wrong, out of place, or that something horrible was about to happen. I relayed this to my friend, who unsurprisingly said "you're just high" and this was the beginning of a very very dangerous thought loop I got caught in.

"S" I said "You need to be absolutely deadly serious with me right now." I said it like I was about to die, because it felt like I was. "If you were part of some cosmic facade, and this life wasn't real, and you were in on it, would you tell me?"

He reacted somewhat neutrally. "Idk, man. You're just high and need to chill out." He said.

 I maintained my composure as best as I could, under the circumstances I believed this was true. I reiterated the severity of my seriousness. "S, if you are lying or fucking with me right now, I swear I will steal a car, take my gun and drive to your house to kill you." I said.

Without much hesitation, "I'm not fucking with you, you're just high." He said, and this did me in.

After those words, I was convinced of my suspicions, and felt as though I was just the universe's laughing stock. Like my whole life was a joke and everyone I interacted with on a day to day basis was in on it, and knew all my thoughts at all times, every second I was alive. It felt like everyone in the world was watching me and laughing at me through this screen I couldn't see, and it sent me into this crazed state of crying and trying to just turn off the high.

I told myself I just need to go to sleep and that when I wake up everything would go back to normal. I got ready to do just that when the intrusive thoughts came. I started to question if anything at all was real, and a voice inside my head just kept replaying the sound of my own distorted voice saying "is this real?" In a mocking tone inside my head. Horrible imagery soon followed. Every time I looked in my room, or out into the hall, I imagined a monster or a demon would scoop me up and take me away and do horrible things like torture or rape me. It felt like the acid was alive and conscious, and was telling me that I am stuck with it forever. I was scared the nightmare wouldn't end, and I was never going to be sober again.

To try and escape my thoughts, I walked out into the hallway and barged into my roommate's room. He had come back home and was sleeping during my fiasco. When I barged in, I woke him up and he said I was just speaking garbled nonsense. Like everything was English but all my words were messed up, and I looked half cognizant.

He asked if I had taken any drugs, of course in my delirium I admitted yes, and he suggested I lay in bed with him and just try to calm down and sleep it off. I remember getting in the bed and my body just freezing. I couldn't talk, move, I could barely think. It felt like I was paralyzed.

I laid there and the thoughts were out of my control. It felt as though my memory was getting worse and worse, like my thoughts were not my own anymore and new memories were being implanted into my brain. My memories got further and further away, until it felt like all that I could remember is that I am being toyed with by a god; and the god was acid. The acid made it so I couldn't remember my thoughts from a second ago, and so I just kept thinking the same thing over and over. I kept asking myself in my head what's happening, what's happening. I was told by my roommate I just kept mumbling garbage the whole night, occasionally saying my name.

This I remember, as I was scared that if I didn't keep saying my name I wouldn't remember it anymore. This went on for hours, as the next thing I can recall is it finally beginning to settle down around 5am. I looked at the time on my phone and decided I can finally just sleep it off. Big mistake.

Once asleep, after the ordeal I was told I urinated 3 times in the bed while completely unconscious and unresponsive. I went back to saying things in my sleep, horrible things I would never say out loud like "Go get the gun and shoot me in the head, it will make me feel much better" and "fuck me good you stupid n word" and "being god feels horrible" without ever responding to my roommate, who had been awakened by my verbalizations of visions. During this time I kept seeing myself die and get plopped back into a separate world that looked identical to my own, like I had just killed myself and my consciousness was transferring to a new vessel.

I saw visions of myself as a baby in open fields from eons ago before humans. Beyond this, I got incredibly intense geometric imagery. One example I remember very clearly was this tesseract shaped die with a myriad of colors covering it being thrown down into a black pit and a colored trail whispering down behind it, almost painting the void. This moment felt like my life was the tesseract and I was throwing it away.

The next thing I remember is shooting awake and leaning upright like I had just woken up from a nightmare. I was now laying on the floor. My roommate had moved me but at the time I was unaware.

I looked around with the most worrisome and fearful expression. "Where am I?" Of course I recognized that I was still at home with my roommate but something was off. My eyes were absolutely filled with sparkling colors of light that painted my periphery. Everything and everyone had exaggerated features, including myself. I could see long patches of hair extending out from my normally smooth skin. My skin was taught around my bones in my hands.

The worst feeling I had was this perpetual feeling of people touching me. It felt like people were groping and grabbing me but I couldn't see or move them. The feeling intensified and persisted and snaked over my whole body. I stood up and waved my hands all around myself like I was swiping feelers away. "Stop touching me" I said, and repeated over and over.

This feeling never stopped, and I looked at my roommate who was sitting down across from me. "What's going on…" I said to him, and he looked at me very intently.

"You're on Acid, it's a psychoactive substance that you took." The calmness in his voice and sinister tone was only reinforcing the fact that this game I had been playing was still going on. I started freaking out more and more, touching the walls around me and hyperventilating. One of the only more intense feelings than the touching was this psychological attack I was undergoing. Doing anything at all inside my head made me believe the acid knew what I was going to do, and planned for it, and that the decisions I said yes to in this reality affected worlds where I was but couldn't see, and in those worlds someone was taking advantage of my body without me knowing, and that the touching was me feeling those realities.

I was convinced all of it was true and I had finally figured it out. So I tried my best not to think at all and to just do things as randomly as possible to throw off the acid in my head. This backfired, as every decision I tried to make made me believe that I really didn't have a choice and that the acid knew everything without exceptions

every decision I tried to make made me believe that I really didn't have a choice and that the acid knew everything without exceptions

.

My roommate was just about done with my horrible trip and psychotic behavior, so he said to leave the room but I resisted, as an effort to spite the acid controlling him. He forced me out after I had started wrecking the room even more, and I was now in the living room. The touching just never ended, and eventually I was in for a rude awakening.

5 minutes passed and a pair of paramedics walked through my front door, along with some firefighters. They stepped inside and I cowered away from them. My roommate stepped outside of his room and told me he had called them to see if they could fix me. Of course, in my head, I thought that these people were going to make this reality like the others I was feeling, that they were all going to grab me and take me away to a place that no one would hear me scream and take turns defiling my body.

Under that impression, I ran to the kitchen and took an empty liquor bottle in one hand as a weapon to defend myself. Everyone exasperatedly yelled at me to drop the bottle. At first I hesitated, but eventually set it down. Quickly they rushed me and grabbed me, holding my hands over my head and pushing me into a gurney where they strapped and bound me. I was kicking, screaming and crying for help the entire time, thinking this horrible nightmare was just starting.

They wheeled me into an ambulance and shut the doors. I cried and cried and begged them to let me go but insisted "this was for my own good." They sat in the back with me as I looked for a way free. The female paramedic offered me a stuffed animal exactly like one in my room and it only kept me in my craze. Things all around me continued to change as I looked. ID's on each officer had slight variations each time I looked, names would change, my body would change, like I was just being thrown into a slightly different reality every second.

I had arrived at the hospital and had some time to calm down, decompress and rationalize what I had been experiencing. Only then did I realize what I had done. I was kicking and screaming about invisible people and crying about things that didn't exist, acting like a deranged psycho. The doctors gave me anti-anxiety medication and it solidified my comedown. Once I felt mostly back to normal I was checked out with my roommate and sent back home.

As I said before, this was about 6 weeks ago. Everyday since this experience I have had horrible anxiety, ego dissolution, panic and anxiety attacks, mental breakdowns and slight physical symptoms similar to the touching phenomenon from the trip. I have been struggling with my normal life, staying social and keeping up with my job; it has not been easy.

This trip really messed up my life and the worst part is I still get horribly intense cravings to go back to being high. The feeling that reality is fake and that everyone knows everything about me still haunts me in my daily life. I am going to do my best to stay away from acid as long as I can, but I'm scared my borderline addiction to psychedelic worlds outside of my perception will convince me that being sober is just a facade and that getting high on acid will help me find the truth, only to dive me deeper into this void of insanity.

Exp Year: 2022	ExpID: 116764

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: 21

Published: Nov 2, 2022	Views: 646

[ View as PDF (for printing) ] [ View as LaTeX (for geeks) ]
[ Switch Colors ]

LSD (2) : Guides / Sitters (39), Post Trip Problems (8), Bad Trips (6), Alone (16)


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 0.5 hits
		 sublingual
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   T+ 8:16

		 Pharms - Diazepam

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   140 lb

13:17: It's a sunny spring afternoon, and I've decided, somewhat spontaneously, to drop some acid. More than seven months have passed since my first and only previous trip, which was rich but also a little bit harrowing. I don't want this experience to be quite as intense and so I'm doing approximately 65μg instead of 125. Or at least I think I am -- I cut the tab in half, but who knows how evenly the substance is distributed throughout the sheet?

13:21: As far as my "set" is concerned, low-level anxiety has been simmering all weekend. It was briefly dissipated last night by a couple of bumps of ketamine, but I struggled to get off to sleep. I didn't feel entirely clear-headed when I got up this morning, but the sunlight is a balm. I ate a substantial meal about an hour ago. I haven't had a drink since Friday night.

As far as my "setting" is concerned, I'm on my bed, in my room. I don't expect to leave the flat for the duration of the trip.

As far as my objectives for this trip are concerned, well, I want to tackle two things. Firstly, my issues with alcohol. And secondly, the question of how to go about regaining my intellectual curiosity.

13:29: I hope that I've placed enough beneath my tongue to lift me off baseline, but not so much that I'll be trapped in thought-loops for hours on end, coming to the usual morbid conclusions.

I hope that I've placed enough beneath my tongue to lift me off baseline, but not so much that I'll be trapped in thought-loops for hours on end, coming to the usual morbid conclusions.

13:33: I don't feel anything yet.

13:47: It's hard to say whether or not I'm feeling anything. I'm listening to "Source" by Tycho.

13:54: I put on "Your Love" by The Prodigy and it seems to have unleashed something -- a not unpleasant tautness in my legs.

14:09: A languour has come over me, but I also feel quite nauseous. There's a pronounced ball of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. My head thrums, and I feel warm all of a sudden. This must surely be the prelude to breaking on through. . .

14:29: I continue to feel nauseous and uneasy.

14:47: I am most definitely under the influence. Nausea is still the prevailing sensation, but I feel light on my feet. My legs, both of them in their entirety, are like erogenous zones now. I've paused Music for the Jilted Generation to think. My sense of self is fucked, so I can't understand that -- despite the irony that is this isolation -- my actions have effects on other people. I mean, not many other people, but parents, friends and so on. It's time to shed the negativity if I can.

14:53: 'I've been drunk most my life, don't ask me why.' Don't ask because there are no reasons -- no good ones, anyway. I need to confront my drinking problem. I think I'm scared that I won't be able to cope without it. I've relied on it in so many ways, in so many situations, and it's true that without it I wouldn't have done, or been able to do, half the shit I always wanted to. But I can't go on as I am. It will bring me and my relationships -- in the broadest sense of that word -- to ruin. What stops me, then, from cutting it out of my life completely? What compels me to go back to it after doing my day or two of penance? I don't know shit about neural pathways -- I can't speak to the stuff that happens behind the scenes. All I can do is look at the evidence of my own behaviour.

15:01: Do I like myself? What is significant about the way that I would approach that question? I know what is bad in myself, and contemptible, and I live under the assumption that everybody else knows too. The reality is that they don't -- not necessarily -- and that in any case they don't care. But where does that assumption come from? What I definitely don't like about myself is this tendency -- amplified by alcohol -- to overshare. Do I do it because I want to be seen as troubled? Do I do it because my friendships are, in the final analysis, unfulfilling? My friendships! The acid is really seizing hold of my mind now, as must be obvious. I start with the seed of a single thought and end up wanting to pursue a hundred others. The nausea remains. I think it's time I returned to my music, at least for a bit. There are no real visuals to speak of.

15:13: "Jackie's Daughter". The visuals may be trying to assert themselves now. I'm trying to take on too much here. Relax.

15:18: "Eat Shiitake Mushrooms": the song that reminds me of the early days of mine and S's 'situationship'. We never quite gelled, S and me, and that is a matter of regret. But I retain a deep and abiding respect for who she is as a person. It verges on admiration -- but admiration from afar. All of a sudden the possibility that there are people out there with whom I might share a greater, more lasting connection exhilarates me. In certain ways, this 'situationship' has been an education. In certain ways it will be formative. I don't regret it in the slightest, but it couldn't have continued.

15:24: My parents. I recognise the need to cleave closer to them and their path. I understand that I've betrayed them. I betray them every day. And for the first time now I threaten to become tearful. But yes -- I've let them down. What has been done cannot be undone, no matter how hard we try to repress it. What I need to do is demonstrate to them that I've drawn a line under all that shite.

15:30: The fear that you don't matter to anyone except your parents. The fear that you do.

15:38: It's true that on acid you become attuned to the smallest things. I'm sitting on the carpet by my floor-to-ceiling windows and my eyes are drawn to the lone white gulls that circle above the streets of Tower Hamlets, all the way up to Canary Wharf, and also to the mass of weeds on the roof of the building next to mine. The breeze blows through the weeds, and the sun continues to shine, and I'm reminded that I would quite like to be in nature. Indeed, is London really the place for me? My job isn't mine, my behaviour isn't mine, my utterances aren't mine. What do I mean by 'mine'? I'm not trying to absolve myself of anything by the way. All I'm saying is that my life doesn't feel like it's my own. The fact that I should be sitting here now, contemplating the things I'm contemplating, is at some level ridiculous. How the fuck did I end up where I have? Then again, if you break it down it's not that mysterious. I'll revisit these ramblings tomorrow and guffaw at them, I'm sure.

15:48: I'm ready to evolve. But I suppose I'm looking for a satisfactory reason.

15:54: I'm not making any progress. It's like I'm writing for the sake of writing. I want to say something about the elephant in the room, namely late capitalism, but it's probably for the best I don't, even if declining to do so makes me feel guilty. Two and a half hours after dosing the tab is still rolling around in a pool of saliva beneath my tongue. Watching cars motoring along both sides of the A12 I'm reminded of what Brooks Hatlen says in The Shawshank Redemption: 'the world went and got itself into a big damn hurry.' And for what? 'More salaries, more calories...'

16:02: I get the distinct impression that I'm embarrassing myself with these streams of logorrhoea.

16:05: I'm watching a video on YouTube of an illegal rave that took place 30 years ago. I can't put into words what I feel when I see this heterogeneous mass of kids expressing themselves in the way that they are, so freely and authentically, unburdened by the fear of judgement. I can't put into words how much I wish I could have been there with them. My sorrow at the impossibility of visiting or reproducing that time is like a wound that hurts too much to be touched. How is it possible to feel such a connection to something that reached its zenith before you were born? And where are all these ravers now?

16:13: 'Far better, to mourn for rave, to point to its absence, than to pretend that it could be re-lived -- since re-living was what Rave precisely was not doing. That was what Rave was: an alternative to (Indie) re-living.' I will never not be obsessed by this.

16:38: I'm weak-willed where I should be resolute and resolute where I really shouldn't be. Reading Fisher. He really was something -- in many respects light-years ahead of his time.

17:00: I think I'm done with the mental aspect of this trip. I know what needs to be done -- or not done -- when I return to sobriety. I just don't know if I have the strength of character to see it through. As for the past, it's done but for various reasons I can't leave it where it belongs. It therefore weighs heavily on my present. Self-acceptance is important -- too important to be dealt with now.

17:18: The fear that all this soul-searching -- this very self-conscious stage-setting -- is merely an alibi for whiling away a Sunday afternoon. That normal service will be resumed tomorrow. Well, as far as work's concerned, it has to. I don't even want to think about work and my relationship to it. That should speak volumes.

17:26: The choice, I daresay, is between adulthood and adolescence. I write this as I watch those ravers from 1989.

17:35: I'm guessing the sun will set soon. The light outside is beautiful.

18:06: My mood wanes with the dying of the day. I'm terrified. I have been reduced to fear and imprisoned by it.

18:36: I'd be interested to know how, exactly, acid is supposed to combat alcoholism. The precise mechanism of action. I say this because I'm worried that I'll want to put the memory of this unheimlich state behind me by means of booze

I'm worried that I'll want to put the memory of this unheimlich state behind me by means of booze

, which is familiar to me and without which I'm a shell. Then again, I haven't said a word in more than 48 hours, haven't seen another human being in all that time. And despite the two apples I just had I'm rather hungry.

18:45: Could it be that these periods of self-isolation are more injurious to my self than the blades on any pair of scissors? The privation can't be good for me, but I inflict it upon myself so that I don't have to inflict myself upon the world. I don't mean for that to sound self-regarding or to suggest the existence of a martyr complex.

19:10: As things stand, I am dead inside. I'm like Hermione Roddice, whose 'lack of robust self' meant 'she had no natural sufficiency, [that] there was a terrible void, a lack, a deficiency of being within her.' I need to make a doctor's appointment. I need to rebuild myself, without the 'help' of alcohol. Only then will I be able to be curious again.

19:38: I just read a very moving review of Women in Love by Howard Jacobson. The depths that Lawrence plumbed. I feel like I might be coming down now. I'm pleased I didn't take the whole hit. I'm haunted by those ravers, by Fisher, by "Moments in Love".

20:28: I flick through k-punk's posts. Tycho's "Source" plays. Perhaps it wasn't quite right of me to say that I am dead inside.

20:56: I think to that exchange in Le feu follet. 'Alain,' says La Barbinais, his face the picture of gravity. 'Life is good.' Like a shot Alain retorts: 'good for what, docteur?'. Now, there's a certain insolence in this response, in the child-like simplicity of it, but to the anhedonic person it is exactly that simplicity which chimes and can't be challenged. I need to learn that life is good.

21:01: I feel humbled by the machine-like operation of this substance. I feel weirdly cleansed -- nullified, even. I think it's safe to say that the intensity of my mentation is dimming. Some residual visuals remain. It's time to deconstruct the stage -- to pack away the frayed and battered matrix of cultural and literary references -- by means of diazepam. Here's hoping I can get to sleep quickly ahead of work tomorrow. I doubt it.

Exp Year: 2019	ExpID: 116737

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 26

Published: Nov 2, 2022	Views: 516

[ View as PDF (for printing) ] [ View as LaTeX (for geeks) ]
[ Switch Colors ]

LSD (2) : Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), General (1), Alone (16)


		 DOSE:

		 300 - 400 ug
		 oral
		 LSD

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   65 kg

LSD and Self Betterment

My experience with LSD has had a profound impact on my life, in the most brilliant and terrifying ways. This story is about the use and abuse of LSD in the pursuit of fixing my faults. Not a cautionary tale for the typical user.

A brief history of my experience with LSD:

I first took LSD when I was 14, I couldn’t tell you the dose, I just did it… and it was fantastic. Throughout my teenage years and into my 20’s I must have used LSD around 300 times and I loved every second of it. Every jittery come-up, every intriguing thought, every display of visual patterns indescribable to another. I even enjoyed the less tasteful side of LSD, I would often take doses more than 500ug and stare into a mirror in a dimly lit room, climb tall industrial buildings while feeling like the ladder was melting in my hands, nothing seemed to faze me. I had firmly decided that I was not capable of having a ‘bad trip’. I had not realised this at the time, but I had adopted these attitudes and proclivities because it made me feel superior to those who could not do what I did, and nobody I knew could do what I did. On the day of my 21st  birthday, I attempted to take 2100ug of the course of the night (over roughly 4 hours), just because I could. I reached 1800ug before blacking out on the couch. As much as the experience of a 1800ug trip might interest some of you, it was not altogether that interesting. In my experience, the dosage may dictate the level of intoxication, but it is the environment which truly matters. Truth is, I was using LSD to try to fix my faults and insecurities. I hope I have painted a fair representation of myself, I was as many of us are, a young insecure person with a big ego.

My penultimate trip:

The second to last time I have taken LSD was at the age of 22, I was completely unaware that this night would change the trajectory of my life forever. To briefly cover the mechanics of this experience, I took about 300-400ug of LSD in a 30-minute period, had little to no alcohol or other drugs, and was at a house party with about 50 people in attendance. I was currently going through a very difficult time with my partner of 4 years, I had made a series of mistakes. This might sound like the perfect storm, but to me, this was just another trip. Anyway, after the LSD started to take effect, I was very chatty with everyone, not uncommon. One girl at the party told us a story about local gang members recruiting young kids outside the primary school she was volunteering at. This sparked all the guys to start boasting about gang members they knew or situations they had been in. Usually, this would have been me as well, but not this time. I was intensely fixated on how upset this girl was about what she was describing. I could feel her distress as if her experiences were my own, I had never felt this much empathy before in my life. As this feeling of empathy overwhelmed me I had another very strange feeling that ‘everything was going to be all right’, quite literally everything, it’s hard to describe but I do believe if I was a religious person I may have well described this feeling as being touched by God. This feeling overwhelmed me and I walked out the front gate of the house and began to spin with my arms wide open, I felt like I was being pulled outside and I couldn’t stop spinning. I was yelling ‘It’s all going to be OK!’ and ‘You all have no idea how wonderful life is’ and other bits of nonsense. Evidently, it was at this point my grip on reality was gone. I felt like I was completely aware of an infinitely complex series of connections which governed every action and reaction in the universe. I kept spinning and eventually, everything went black.

Next thing I know I can hear voices above me, but everything is still black. I hear them say ‘Mate, are you ok?’ I did not respond, ‘Hey man are you ok, really?’. I open my eyes and see three people standing over me, I look at myself and see I’m lying in the gutter, and I’m cut up and bloody, although I don’t feel any pain. I got to my feet and said ‘yes I’m fine’ very quickly and took off down the street to my car. From here, my experience of the world was better described as a delirium than a trip. I had moments where I felt that everything was going to be ok, like the true nature of the universe was kind and consciousness was a blessing. I had moments where I believed I was saying one last goodbye to those I loved before subjecting myself to a future of eternal torture. I felt every different emotion, one at a time, on a repeating loop which I could not control.

I felt every different emotion, one at a time, on a repeating loop which I could not control.

 Every unpleasant emotion I felt I would uncontrollably work my way down the string of thoughts as to why I felt what I was feeling, and every time the same ending was waiting, it was death. If you are inclined such as I am to believe in Darwinian natural selection, this conclusion seems rather obvious. It had dawned on me that emotions serve as a tool to avoid death. Feel scared when standing next to a cliff? Good, you’ll be less likely to die if you don’t stand there. Feel happy around other people? Good, cooperation and bonding increase the chance you will survive. In the modern world some of these reactions are perhaps a bit redundant, but we are not yet adapted for the environment in which we live. After what felt like an eternity, but was closer to 2 hours, I came out of this delirium. I went from ‘I have the keys to the universe’ to stone cold sober in the snap of a finger. I was so scared I was going to die or reality itself was going to end, that I just got in my truck and very carefully drove home and went to bed, hoping it all would just go away if I slept.

My final trip:

About two months later I stupidly took LSD again, maybe 200ug. Everything was fine for the first few hours, then boom, I black out and wake up on the ground and here we are again, the most paralysing terrible fear imaginable just for me to enjoy. My friend offers to take me inside but I don’t trust him, I feel like I’m about to die. After a few second I get a grip just long enough to say yes and he helps me up and inside. As we walk in, I’m terrified, imagining all the ways I could die on this walk, or ways he could kill me. I get inside and try to calm down. It doesn’t work. I’m having the same feelings as the last trip, but this time it’s worse. Everything feels connected and I think I’m going to die. To describe this feeling, imagine this. You’re hanging off a cliff, you’re holding on to the hand of the person you love the most. Imagine if they intentionally let you go, and the feeling you would have as soon as you realise what they did and what is going to happen to you. Fear, betrayal, sadness, all on maximum volume and all at once. Anyway, this went on for maybe two hours again then just like last time, I go from full-blown delirium to sober in a couple seconds.

The consequences of my actions:

After my final trip, the thought pattern I described didn’t go away like it had the previous time. It followed me 24 hours a day. It was not usually as intense as feelings of impending death, but sometimes it was. My reality was destroyed. I would sometimes feel like the world around me was nothing but a dream I had conjured up to forget the fact I was the only being in existence. Imagine existing forever and alone, no fate could be worse. I was completely out of touch with reality.

After ~9 months of living like this I had my eureka moment, I was having a rather serious panic attack where I was convinced if I went to my window, opened my curtains and looked to the sky I would see an asteroid which would end life on earth (ridiculous I know, but when you really believe it’s very compelling). I had a moment of realisation of how much all this was affecting my girlfriend and decided enough was enough. Two possibilities existed for me.

1.	I’m right and reality is a lie created to torture me, if so, then I can’t avoid my fate so let’s get it over with.

2.	I’m wrong and my disconnect with reality is meaningless and is only hurting the person I love.

So, I go to the window, push through all the paralysing fear and look out, and nothing happens. So there it was, I had faced what I had truly believed to be death and spat in its face. I thought all my problems were solved and I would become the person I dreamed of

I thought all my problems were solved and I would become the person I dreamed of

, free from all anxieties and negative proclivities. I had conquered death, everything else would be easy. This is not what happened.

This moment did change my life, in that I become reconnected with reality after this. Three years later and I still sometimes fall into the pattern of thinking in which reality is a lie. It doesn’t really bother me anymore. I am not yet the person I want to be, I still have my anxieties and my short comings. I am still ignorant, and I am still arrogant, and it still impacts my relationships with people. But I finally can get over myself and recognise these flaws, I finally can improve as a person. The past three years of my life have been torturous but have undeniably been the best years of my life. At the time of my penultimate trip, I was working a low-end job, had all but ruined my relationship, used a variety of hard drugs 3+ times a week and had no life prospects. Now I am married, spend my time sober, work out and am close to completing a university (college) degree. I owe this change to a variety of influences but I know that I would not have listened to these influences if I had not had this experience.

Was it worth it:

Yes it was worth it, but I would not wish this experience on anyone. I had no trajectory in life and to be honest I had nothing to lose. If this process had killed me it wouldn’t have been a loss to the world, my ego and laziness would have inhibited me from ever doing anything more than mindlessly consume, I would have achieved nothing in my life. The only reason I’m out the other end of this experience is that I accepted that harsh fact.

Consciousness has the amazing ability to torture itself for seemingly no reason, accepting there is a reason is the first step to overcoming it.

Exp Year: 2019	ExpID: 116665

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 22

Published: Nov 15, 2022	Views: 619

[ View as PDF (for printing) ] [ View as LaTeX (for geeks) ]
[ Switch Colors ]

LSD (2) : Large Group (10+) (19), Post Trip Problems (8), Bad Trips (6), Retrospective / Summary (11)


		 DOSE:

		 200 ug
		 oral
		 LSD

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   60 kg

This one trip, I think I'll always remember it. I experienced music like never before. The way music should be experienced. I live in a town. Neither big nor small, just a town. I like it here, I have a lot of nature but still the convenience of pubs, shops and super markets. I live in a apartment with a bunch of people. I've only had experience with illegal drugs for a couple of months and I've only ever taken LSD. I was lured in by the stories and of course, I was still blown away my first time. I've taken LSD 4 times since then and had both good and bad experiences. Most of them I don't want to miss, even the bad ones. I'll accept and try to learn from bad and good experiences alike. That said, I still aim for positive experiences.

The day I had this particular trip was a Tuesday in early April. I had taken a day off because I went to a concert with two friends beforehand. The band was Franz Ferdinand. Not especially my cup of tea; but nonetheless, I went to have a good time. And good times were had. Exceptionally good times. Good music, everyone around me was happy and most people danced and let themselves guide by music. Even the opener, Teleman, was great.  I recommend checking them out. Anyway, I also danced away, spend some fun time in the moshpit, listened to the fine music, which was mixed well, sometimes closed my eyes to take it all in. So, I was contemplating dropping some acid on this fine evening, but it wasn't set in stone yet.

Arriving home after the concert I was in exceptionally high spirits and even though I was mightily exhausted, I still decided to go for it. I took the trip. It was around 1 o'clock and the other people in the apartment were already sleeping since it was a week day. So I decided to stay quiet. I turned on my laptop instead of my desktop because I don't want to make too much noise. I put on the headphones. I was coming home from a concert but I haven't had enough music. While waiting for the trip I started drinking cola since a) I heard caffeine mixes well LSD and b) I was pretty tired. I was fully prepared when the trip started. It started fast and strong, earlier than I was used to. My media player blasted some Plini into my head, great, energetic instrumental rock music.

And when I finally hit the peak I knew. I knew this was awesome. Sitting on the bed, I closed my eyes, shredded my air guitar like some kid and was having a great time. I wasn't just listening to music. I was experiencing it. It was flowing into me and I was flowing into it. We kind of became one, but we both were more like two different liquids, not quite mixing, but there was no real hard border between us. My mind did the visualization with me rocking around to the music while light from a lamp dropped through my eyelids, feeding the visualization. To say it was a visualization would be lying. It was connected to all senses. I didn't just see the music, I wholly experienced it. Moving my feet mixed with the experience the music created, I could even see it mix visually, like moving my foot would create a ripple in the visualization. The whole music was truly 3D, every sound had it's own place in space, not just left and right as would be expected with stereo headphones, listening to stereo music.

And the music ceased to be just music. Every song became a whole story of a world. Every note was an event, some action, in this story. Every note was as meaningful as the stories of our own history books. It felt like... LSD and music belonged together. Like two magnets having a plus and minus pole, there was LSD and music. They can exist alone but fit so well together. They snap together and fit.

Every note was as meaningful as the stories of our own history books. It felt like... LSD and music belonged together. Like two magnets having a plus and minus pole, there was LSD and music. They can exist alone but fit so well together. They snap together and fit.

After some time I wanted to experience another band (and with it another world) and spontaneously decided to listen to The Dark Side of The Moon. Same as before, different stories. Every note had a tremendous impact on my mood. Just one 'sad note' and I was really sad. One happy part and I was really happy. One time I even realized I was pretty sad and asked myself: Why am I so sad? And I realized it just was the music. Oh I'm tripping!

After 6 hours the album came to an end and 3/4 of an hour had passed. Grinning like a bastard, I closed my eyes again, rocked around, playing my air guitar. I spend about 3 hours like this. I was euphoric. I was in such a good mood that I though I dared to go out even though I know it could turn the trip around.

I've never been outside on acid before. Not on the peak at least. Or at night. I still had about an hour on the peak. So I tried to be as quiet as possible leaving the apartment. Of course, it felt like I was making all the noise in the world. Somehow, it still worked. I closed the front door behind me, exhaled. Then I put on my shoes and jacket. I didn't want to do it inside because of the noise. The outside was glorious. It was a bit cloudy but the few stars I could see looked like whole galaxies somehow. I didn't know why they were so big. It kinda was a bummer though that the rest of the clear black was filled with red and green lines. Can't have everything on LSD.

Like a kid I enjoyed seeing the scenery and walked down the street. On the corner I spent a lot of time putting in my earphones from my mp3 player. It took me ages to untangle the mess of the cables. I managed to do it and put on some music. Then I strolled around experiencing the town by night. It was around 4 o'clock. The plants looked awesome. The houses looked cool. A long street with its orange street lamps expanded into infinity. Vine growing on houses was exceptionally interesting. Their shadows were 3d. When I passed a school I realized the gate was open, so I entered. A bit reluctantly though. After walking down the way for some 30 meters I realized the shadows on an object to my left looked kinda strange. Shadows on LSD are pretty crazy, they change the depths of an object. I knew this, but this still looked a bit different.

I couldn't really make sense of it. Then I realized the shadow was more complex than normally. After realizing this the whole shadow 'manifested' itself in 3d over the object, kinda like a spider web, but not as symmetrically, more tangled. It was really, really big and long. It stretched all the way back to where I was coming from. Only then I realized it was created by light of a street lamp passing through a net of a soccer goal. The shadow was pretty crazy to look at. It was a black 3d thingy floating in the air. Anyway, I didn't like spending more time then necessary on the school grounds, so I left. Shorty after I left, someone walked past me and got into a car and drove off. I felt a bit of paranoia rising but managed to calm myself quickly. Still, who got into a car at 4 o'clock? On a weekday? In a town like this?

I spent more time walking around seeing other thing. Tried to enter the woods, but the shadows on the ground kinda made me stumble around so I deemed it a bad idea. So I continued walking the streets. When I started feeling exhausted I decided to turn around and close a loop to my home. After that I though about how great an experience this was. I looked over the rim of the tea cup. Again. It would change me. Again. And that was when I argued that if this were to happen again and again I would turn crazy. Because how many times can one look over the rim of the tea cup? How often can one be changed by LSD? I was going crazy. Somehow, I couldn't find a counter argument to this. However, I was able to drop it after a little while and began to relax more.

Still, my mood wasn't as good as before. It's good that I am already on my way home, I thought. My mind went reeling again and I became stuck in a small though loop which then somehow popped after I though it through logically. It popped like a bubble, became untangled like a bow on a shoe. Not even 5 seconds after this, I didn't even know what I was going on about. Kinda funny, I still don't know. It was time I got home. To make matters worse a car came around the corner, the driver looked critically at me ('Look at this guy, he's on LSD, I'll call his parents and the police'-critically, of course) and after some 30 meters the car parked on the side of the road. I knew it was just coincidence.

But seriously! At 4 o'clock? On a weekday? In a town like this? I walked faster. I went a little paranoid, heard things everywhere, needed to check corners for people watching me. However, this time, I was still quite sane and could see through it soberly. I could think through it logically and knew I was just on LSD and this situation was making me a bit paranoid. But that's OK, it will pass, I knew. Still, I was relived when I arrived home. I stayed quite again, somehow as I sneaked into my room. I lied down on the bed and turned on some music again. The relaxation was washing over me. It was good to be at home, safe.

I was really exhausted this time and tried to relax more. Sleeping wasn't an option. It just doesn't work for me on LSD. But I tried. And as always as I try when on LSD, I had grotesque and horrible hallucinations / dreams. After a few hours enough was enough, it was morning, 7 or 8 o'clock, I got up and took a shower. The rest of the day went normally, but I was severely exhausted, staying up about 37 hours in total.

All in all a really enjoyable trip with a bad end I could have avoided. Hopefully, I can manage the next time and have a 100% positive trip.

Exp Year: 2014	ExpID: 103191

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 26

Published: Nov 21, 2022	Views: 578

[ View as PDF (for printing) ] [ View as LaTeX (for geeks) ]
[ Switch Colors ]

LSD (2) : Various (28), Music Discussion (22), Glowing Experiences (4), Difficult Experiences (5), General (1)


		 DOSE:

		 1 hit
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   135 lb

There are days when a lot of weird shit happens, but then there was this day.

I’ll never forget how I felt in that moment. As I came out of the cave, and my eyes adjusted to the bright sunshine, for a moment, I lost all sense of what was real, of what was possible, and of whether my vision was a hallucination. As reality clarified itself, my brain felt as if it were doing a backflip, straining to accept that the vision was real.

Two days prior, I had departed on a backpacking trip in a remote desert canyon of Southern Utah with my dear friend, who I’ll call Eric.

Research led me to find a route rarely traveled, but among those who knew it, it was understood to be spectacular. A remote desert canyon of sandstone washes, rock arches, and deep varnished cliffs full of archeological sites — mainly of the ancestral Puebloan people, known by some as the Anasazi.

After a long drive out from California, and a few hours on a rugged four-by-four road, we reached our starting point. From the dusty parking lot, we could see through pinyon pine, sand sagebrush and Utah juniper over a vast landscape striated with multicolored sandstone.

The full route through this canyon was off-limits due to flooding that had washed out a bridge at the end, so we were going to have to do it as an out-and-back. Our goal was to find a very famous and beautiful pictograph, an ancient mural on the wall of a remote cave. This pictograph was known for being extremely colorful, perfectly preserved after 700 years.

Whether we would make it there on our timeline was unknown — and whether we’d make it there after dropping a strong tab of acid was even more unknown.

The plan was to take 130 micrograms which we had bought off the dark web, with assurances to its purity and strength.

I must admit I was trepidatious about this, because in this particular part of southern Utah, the weather is generally brutal most of the year. In the winter, it's freezing cold, dropping down to the minus temperatures and snowing. In the summer, it’s blazing hot, hitting 110, 112 degrees much of the time.  The shoulder season is short, and I was fully anticipating, given our timing there in mid-September, a day of tripping balls and sweating balls. A long psychedelic day in the blazing sun with no shade is an extreme experience, and one that I take seriously, but not one that I fear. It's one I've done many times before, but one that I think you have to fully prepare yourself for.

Physical discomfort paired with the psychological vicissitudes of an acid trip can create a certain type of cocktail that doesn't always go down smooth, but we felt ready.

Physical discomfort paired with the psychological vicissitudes of an acid trip can create a certain type of cocktail that doesn't always go down smooth, but we felt ready.

 Just before descending into the canyon, we signed the log book. It showed who went in and out of the canyon. This is a safety measure so that the rangers can find you if you've been missing from your car. Ahead of us were two names in the logbook, with only one way in and out.

This meant that in this entire zone there were only two other people ahead of us. We signed our names in the book along with our expected departure date and started down the dusty trail, skirting downhill past boulders, scrubby pinyon pine, and ridged pinnacles of living cryptobiotic soil, peaked like tiny dark sandcastles.

Not 10 minutes into our hike, two people came hiking out. It was the two folks who had signed the log, a man and a woman. We greeted them briefly. This left not a single soul in front of us in the massive canyon ahead.

The hike down was beautiful. We got lost briefly as the trail disappeared into a sandy river bed. We had to backtrack to the last known location across the river through some dense brush and find it again. By the time we made it to our final campsite, the sun was going down in a glorious golden hour.

We pitched our tents, stashed our food in our bear boxes, and went to the nearest stream to fill water. Near this camp was a rare thing in the South Utah Desert — a permanent water source. A pond fed by springs held probably 20,000 gallons of water, placid with an ultramarine blue color reflecting peachy clouds above. Fish, tadpoles and frogs leapt and croaked in the dark water.

The springs gushed down wide steps of creamy sandstone, cascading delicately before a final plunge five or six feet into the pond. We washed our dirty feet in the stream, rinsed our faces, dunked our heads. There was no sign of humanity other than he tread on the trail. Swallows swooped in their sunset acrobatics overhead. We went to bed that night blanketed by the milky way, in one of the darkest parts in the country, stars bright enough to read by, excited for the day to come.

In the morning, we woke early. I got up and made coffee. Just as the water finished boiling, the flames started to sputter and hiss, dying. There must have been a leak in the gas can. This full can, our only one, which should have lasted us both through the entire trip, was completely empty. Thankfully we had our coffee that morning, but we would have no way to cook the rest of our food. Eric and I looked at each other. We knew that this was not the most fortuitous way to start a strong acid trip in the depths of a remote rugged wilderness, but there was nothing we could do. We knew that we'd be able to cold soak ramen and eat soggy, mushy meals. We filled our Ziploc bags of food with cold water, stuck them in our bear can and left them by the tents. Before hitting the trail, we wondered if we should put our rain flies on our tents. Although the sky was clear and sunny, as the days before had been hot, in the eighties, we decided to attach our rain flies on our tents, just as a precaution to keep the dust out.

Before hitting the trail, we took a moment to take our sacrament, two small squares of paper, a tab of acid on each of our tongues. We toasted to 10 years of friendship, loaded a pack with water, snacks, maps, and the camera, and hit the trail heading downhill into the canyon.

We had no real idea where we were going. There wasn't much of a trail to begin with — more like an interwoven array of different paths heading off into different zones of the canyon. This canyon was wide and flat at the base, with steep sheer walls a hundred feet high on either side — opioid, white globules of elegant Navajo sandstone, striated with red, purple, and orange.

We decided to follow our noses rather than following a map. We didn't use any gps. All we did was go where it made sense to go.

After passing a magnificent rock arch we saw our first significant archeological site. We approached it cautiously, as if entering a graveyard or an abandoned church.

Out of the steep red cliff wall, a stone the size of a bungalow had sheared clean off the cliff and fallen onto the ground, creating a platform that was angled sideways — wide, beautiful, jagged, beautiful, smooth, clean rock.

It would've been impossible for me to tell if this stone had fallen five years prior or 10,000 but for the fact that atop it was constructed an elegant Ancestral Puebloan village of stone houses and a Kiva, gorgeously mortared together with mud, the round dwellings littered with tiny bits of patterned ceramic potsherd, ancient, dry, practically fossilized corn cob husks, and surrounded by blooming squash plants — probably planted by the people who disappeared from these lands due to drought 700 years ago.

Above this beautiful site, you could see an array of hand prints in white paint silhouetted against the wall. 30, 40 prints next to each other in a series of cascading lines, high overhead.

We lay down on our backs, looking up at these prints. Hand shapes the same as ours. We were gleeful with the beauty of this place, and as we gazed at these hand prints, they started to blur. I started to sense a sizzling sensation behind my teeth. My eyes started to feel fuzzy as if they were vibrating, my hands started to tingle as if touching ice.

The acid was kicking in —  strong. We looked at each other. There wasn't anything that needed to be said. We both knew what was happening. It felt like a sign this place had kicked off our trip.

Time to go. We scrambled out of the archeological site. As we came out from under the cliff overhead, we saw that the sky didn't look the same as it had before.

Rather than being clear and blue, clouds threatened. The temperature had dropped, now in the mid seventies. The swirling clouds overhead were actually starting to spit a delicate misty rain, so light as to be almost imperceptible. Eric and I looked at each other worriedly. I was halfway through reading the Secret Knowledge of Water by Craig Childs, a book about desert flooding and how easily it can take a life, so I was perhaps overly attuned to that possibility in a canyon. But, the base of this canyon was wide. There was no reason to panic.

We continued bopping down the trail. Despite my expectation that it would either be blisteringly hot or freezing cold, the air was perfect beyond description, probably 73 degrees and warm. The misting spit of rain tickled my face with cool dewdrops. I often find that acid can make it hard to distinguish hot from cold, but in this case, both hot and cold were in fact happening at the same time, on every square inch of my body. It's like I was being kissed all over my skin by a glorious tickle of warmth and cool. It was delightful beyond description, true bliss as we bounded down this trail. Practically skipping, the acid was now fully on — my face felt plasticky, my cheeks stiffened in a goofy smile as I looked around at the canyon. The rock walls shifted like double vision atop each other.

There was no need to look at the map because it was dead obvious where we were going next. On our left, there appeared to be a cave cleaved into the side of the cliff. We approached cautiously. You never know what can be in these things. But we were also cautious because it seemed to hold a power that was so obvious it didn't need to be discussed aloud.

It was a narrow hallway between 40 foot high stones that had been cleaved in two. We skirted down this hallway 50 or 60 feet into the cave to find that the cleft in these two rocks made a perfect strip of light that was exactly bisected by another cleft in the rocks at a perpendicular angle from above, creating a cross of white light shining onto the floor, a perfect X in the back of his dark cave. It was soft, diffuse light, but as bright as day. I stood in the depths of this cave in the middle of this X and looked up through the beams of light towards the roof of the cave. Drizzles of rain were descending slowly through the beam of light, illuminated perfectly falling delicately upon my face. I felt as if time stopped, as if the world spun around me yet in this place all was still. It was transcendent.

I stood in this cross of light and looked up for a long time. After all, when's the last time you got rained on in a cave? Eric came and joined.

It felt like a blessing. It felt like a sacred place. It felt like we were on the right track.

We stayed in that cave for quite some time. Eventually we felt it was time to go. I'm not sure what pulled us out, but I was in front as we exited the darkness of the cave and came out into the light. My darkness-dilated pupils were overwhelmed by the glaring sun. I couldn't see. I squinted, holding my forearm over my head to reduce the glare.

As my eyes adjusted and I was able to look out on the landscape for a moment, I thought I was completely insane.

It felt as if my brain was swelling, expanding beyond the limits of my skull in order to comprehend what I was just seeing, because what I was seeing in that moment made absolutely no sense.

I looked over at Eric with wide eyes. Surely he could not be seeing the same thing I was seeing. Surely this was a dream or a hallucination caused by the acid – which was definitely really strong. His eyes were just as wide as mine. We looked out at the spectacular desert landscape to see it covered in snow.

It felt like it was about 73 degrees outside.

The gorgeous opioid formations of stacked Navajo sandstone reaching hundreds of feet into the sky on all sides of the canyon were dusted with a layer of powdery white sugar, gleaming in the midday sun, as great purple and silver clouds swirled overhead, delicate as a watercolor painting.

I held my palm out in front of me and watched a single snowflake fall slowly to land upon the middle of my hand and immediately melt into water.

I turned to Eric again. Now we were screaming, now we were crying. No fucking way. No fucking way. No fucking way. There's no way. 73 degrees out, and snowing.

There was no way to rationalize what I was seeing, so all I could do was submit to its reality as we stood and watched the dusting of white snow across the edges of the canyon melt to a dark iridescent silver and pour off the sandstone outcrops like mercury waterfalls drizzling thin shining lines off every visible surface down to the canyon floor.

It had probably only been snowing for a few minutes, and it was gone in even less. We had come out of the cave at just the right time to see it.

It was as if Mother Earth had wanted to give us a sign that said both “You are blessed” and “I could kill you.”

It was scary to know that the weather could change like that in any moment. I've been backpacking solo for many years, and I have a deep reverence, respect, and caution around the variability and unpredictability of weather — but nothing prepared me for that. There was no way that should have been happening. It made no sense.

Well, we said to each other, that was the most amazing thing we've ever seen. We both agreed, not much could be more incredible. It wasn’t just that the scene was hard to believe; it was also stunningly gorgeous. One of the most beautiful vistas I’ve ever seen. Mind you, the acid was still strong as hell. If Eric hadn't been there, I would've thought that I was just hallucinating the whole thing. There's no way I would've believed it.

Only thing left to do was to find that petroglyph we were looking for. Too bad we didn't know how far it was. We didn't even know what landmarks to look for. All we had was trust.

We followed the canyon down, avoiding turnoffs, crossing a wide valley that had surely at one time been abundantly planted with squash, maize, and peppers. In times with more water, this would have been an incredible place to live. We crossed a wide meadow, golden with dry desert grasses, and saw, hundreds of feet away on the far side of the cliffs, a sheer wall, hundreds of feet high, cleaved with a crack down the middle. 40 or so feet up this narrow crack was a cave the exact shape of human skull. You could see the nose cavity and the eye cavities in the side of this wall, and inside of that cave, 40 feet up this cliff, was an ancient Puebloan granary.

Eric went to its face two or three hundred feet away, while I watched from afar. By the time he got there, he was tiny.

It was ominous. It was foreboding. It felt like a warning, it felt like guarded place. It felt like a place beyond which not everyone should go.

It continued to drizzle and spit rain. Thank God we'd put our tent flies on. I turned around and looked across the canyon valley, the clouds overhead dripping purple, gold, dark gray, pale white, and turquoise blue above the curvatures of the canyon walls, feminine in their grace and earthly in their power, spinning and spiraling through the lens of the LSD.

A light wind rustled the tawny desert grasses, shimmering wet in front of a landscape shining red and gold. It was so beautiful. It was so beautiful. All of a sudden my legs completely gave out and I fell to the ground, collapsed into kneeling. Utterly overcome by weeping, I gasped heaving sobs, a rain of tears on my face, weeping and crying, deep guttural grief release from the bottom of my diaphragm. I could feel my entire chest heaving off and on, spasming, heaving hugely under the strain of releasing this deeply buried grief. Yet the feeling I released was not sadness. My trauma had been alchemized to joy. The acid opened a pathway for the force of the land to enter through my feet, to see me and be seen through me, to make me part of it. This land, which has seen its own share of grief, its own share of trauma — it was still a wild place. I believe certain places on earth hold a more potently direct channel to the energy of the Earth Center, to the force that binds all things. I have stood in desert canyons and in jungle waterfalls where it seemed the veil was thinner, where it seemed the gods could reach out and pierce my soul without hindrance. And in that moment I was overcome by their grip. I felt the pain stored in my body crushed by a hand infinitely stronger than my own, crushed to a powder and then blown away like ash into the desert wind.

I wept and I wept with joy. The joy that anything in the world could possibly be this beautiful. It seemed alone reason enough to go on living.

I got up, picked myself up off the ground, dusted the dirt off my knees. I turned around to see Eric 300 feet away watching me. I smiled and walked across across the valley floor.

Well, that was pretty cool. He said, Yeah, I said that was pretty fucking cool.

We meandered on. It was getting late into the afternoon, and at this point we both wondered if we were ever going make it to the petroglyph. I was wondering if we should consult the map, but I knew somehow that it would be better not to. It was better to follow the flow, to let the acid guide us, to let the land guide us, to let it be what it was. Perfectly imperfect.

Just then on the ground in front of me, I saw an old Army ammunition box, forest green, dented and chained to a tree. Eric went over to it and opened it up, but I knew why this was there. I looked above us, and in a cave 20 feet overhead I saw the very petroglyph we had been searching for.

It was spectacular — perfectly preserved, vibrant blue, vivid red, and a clear, pure white. It made the visage of a shape-shifted shaman character, like a turtle person, beyond gender, beyond species, holding a staff in their hand, an otherworldly figure in an otherworldly place. We knew that it had been radiocarbon dated from before the year 1400, making it over 600 years old.

Eric was perplexedly reading the entries in a small small visitor's log which had been left there by the National Park Service as I gazed up at the petroglyph, a huge shit-eating grin on my face. He was reading the log unendingly because he hadn't yet realized that it was right over our heads. I said, Eric, look up dude. He looked up and immediately lost his shit. Of course everything had just worked so well, the perfect flow of the day coming to a perfect conclusion, never looking at a map and yet somehow ending up at exactly where we had wanted to go, just minutes before we felt it was time to turn back. It was truly incredible. Staring at the rock art and letting the acid mutate it in my vision, it seemed to resonate into the rock. Perfectly harmonious with the space around it, as if designed by the world, as if designed by the finest architect, as if it had evolved into that space. I believe it did.

I once spent a year living in the Amazon, in a remote community of indigenous Waorani people, being incorporated into their community and into their family. I learned that many of their traditions and practices were in perfect harmony with ecological cycles of the land, but not out of a discriminating “A or B” choice, but out of an evolutionarily balanced co-adaptation. Meaning these people did not long ago sit down and decide “we are going to make choices that are good for the land instead of bad for the land.” But rather, these people and the more-than-human world around them co-evolved together to a place of ecological balance and harmony where all their collective decisions balance each other to a state of equilibrium. I’ll share an example to illustrate this point. The Waorani diet was largely dependent on Howler Monkey meat as a key protein source. They ate howler monkeys constantly, a main source of essential nutrients. Without this, their diet would not sustain them. However, if you obliterate a species population by overhunting it, you too will die.

There is another species on which the Waorani rely  — the Chontaduro plant, also called the peach palm. For just three or four months of the year, this tall, spiky-shafted palm tree produces thousands of bright orange, apple sized fruit, which are delicious and extremely rich in nutrients.

But not just any nutrients— it's rich in some of the exact nutrients that Howler Monkey meat is unable to provide. These nutrients are an essential part of the yearly intake of the Woarani for their nutritional needs. And the three to four months of the year when the Chontaduro are ripe for harvesting just so happen to be the same three to four months of the year when the Howler monkeys are giving birth to their young, and raising them to be independent. They call this “Monkey Fattening Season,” and there’s no need to hunt Howler Monkeys because there are also many Chontaduro to eat. Around the time that the Howler Monkey young are independent and safe to roam free without their parents, the fruit are no longer ripe, and hunting monkeys again becomes a necessity. In this way, Waorani hunting and foraging habits maintain perfect equilibrium with the ecological system that keeps their food system intact. They do not slow down hunting Howler monkeys because of a sense of scarcity — they have an understanding that their forest is endlessly abundant — yet their systems are co-evolved to perfectly maintain ecological balance. Humans can be a part of an ecosystem, not separate from it. Human engagement with land can come from a place of deep, harmonious oneness — beyond the logical, rational decision-making of any individual, but from a place of both ancestral knowledge shared through tradition and also a deep attunement to the land. That's what I thought as I gazed at this petroglyph, perfectly placed in this cave where it would be protected for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Eric and I plopped down on the ground, resting in the shade under a beautiful cottonwood tree, gazing up through it at the swirling grey sky above. As I relaxed my eyes the canopy of the tree swirled kaleidoscopically.

When I take psychedelics, I invariably find myself thinking about the wrongs that my species has done to the planet, to each other, and to the species around us. I invariably think of the cruelties of my people — White people, colonists, and the genocide they inflicted upon the original stewards of these lands.

Psychedelics break through habits. Psychedelics can open blind spots, and circumvent entrenched mental pathways, leading to new routes. This is of course why they are illegal.

Acid makes people question things that they have not previously questioned. The validity of the nuclear family, the utility of gainful employment, the merits of capitalism. This is what we learned in the late sixties. If acid led people to buy beers at a football game, it would be legal — in fact there would probably be government subsidies.

Yet acid leads us to question our beliefs. Many of those beliefs are the societal structures on which power stands. When examined, the foundations of those castles of power are revealed to be mere sand, nothing more than a collective imagining, which dissolve under our clear gaze.

In that moment, lying in the shade of that cottonwood tree, thinking about the injustices we wreak upon each other, upon ourselves, I started to wonder if justice is just a social extension of natural ecological systems.

Eric asked me if it was time to go. I came out of my self-indulgent, semi-sensible daydream, the canopy still a spinning Rorschach above me. I got up and shook the dust off my butt. Acid is a trip.

We hiked back toward camp. Hey Eric, I said. Remember when it snowed? He looked back at me wide eyed, remembering the sight. I don't know if  I'll ever see anything that incredible again.

As we walked back, we expressed our gratitude to each other. I told him how grateful I was to have him. He told me how much he loved me. He told me that he thought I could be more open, open to his help, open to his support. It's something I have a hard time with. I can be stoic, I can be closed off. It was hard to hear.

The hike back to camp went quickly. We wanted to get back while there was still some light so that we could take a dunk in that pond and rinse off the day's dirt and grime.

We dumped our stuff at camp and continued on to the water. We got to the pond just as the sun was setting, a silky sky of white and pink, like the inside of the seashell, red ochre gleaming a thin trace at the horizon line. Birds swooped and chirped, singing songs of a complexity we can feel in our bodies. We can know their meaning, even if we tell ourselves we don't understand it.

Eric was about 10 minutes behind. When I got to the pool, I went down to the water's edge and peered in.

There are days when a lot of weird shit happens, but then there was this day...

First there was the snow in the desert sunshine. That was one thing. But looking into this pond, I thought to myself, there's no way that I'm seeing two incomprehensible things in the same day.

I'm not a professional naturalist, but I know a thing or two about the wildlife of the American West, which is why I was utterly flabbergasted to see in the water an animal swimming which I could not categorize. It's not that I didn't know what animal it was, it's that I didn't even know what general category of animal it was. It was something the likes of which I had never seen.

I stared at it carefully as it swam through the water. It was least 12 inches long, as thick as my forearm. It had four legs like that of a salamander, and an incredibly long, thick fishtail like that of a very mature tadpole – but it was huge.

But the thing that really set it apart from any other creature was that growing off of its head was a plant. At least that's how it looked. It appeared that its head was growing four- to six-inch long dreadlocks of leafy seaweed, billowing in the water as it swam. There's nothing I could say other than it looked like a Pokemon. Five, six, seven, eight of them drifted in the water, gently propelled by their tails, using their hands to grasp at leaves like frogs. And all the while their hair waving like some sort of living plant. I was fucking losing it.

Looking at these animals, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Eric! I said, Eric! Come here! He was moving slowly, but he finally made it down and I pointed. Neither one of us knew what the fuck it was. We couldn't figure it out. They reminded me of Axolotls, which are tiny amphibians from Mexico, but there’s no way that’s what this was, and I knew there were no Axolotls in the US.

We looked at them for a really long time, and decided that we were not gonna figure this out here, so we might as well just get in the water. As expected, they disappeared.

We bathed in the cold water, rinsing the grime off our bodies, feeling completely refreshed as the sun dipped further behind with the horizon line. A great peace fell over us. The acid was really coming down now, sinking into a deep sense of calm. Eric felt some quivering shakiness in his legs. I felt a little bit jittery in the stomach, but nothing troubling. All in all, it had been a day beyond all perfect days. From having just enough fuel to make coffee, to coming up on acid in an ancient village, to feeling the rain on my face as I stood in the crossbeam of light in the depths of a cave, to the time that it snowed in 73 degree weather, to the granary in the skull, to my deep grief release in the beauty of the wilderness, to the incredible visage of that ancient petroglyph, to a mysterious unknown creature, and now to a perfect bath.

We sat drying off, and as we got up and started to head back to camp, I said to Eric — Hey man, just so you know, just because this was a perfect day and nothing could have possibly been any better, doesn't mean we're not gonna have to finish with a Ziploc bag full of disgusting, cold, soggy mealy noodles. Fuck. He said, God dammit. I was laughing like a hyena at this point. Nothing to do but get to it. Let's eat as soon as we get back before it gets cold, so that at least we're not sitting in the cold eating cold soup.

You're right, he said. We got back to camp, sat down and pulled the Ziploc bags out of the bear cans. We opened up the bags to find them steaming. I took a bite of the soup. It was hot, not just lightly warm — steaming hot, like the perfect eating temperature for a bowl of soup. The bear can must have been acting like a greenhouse, cooking our noodles. It was too good, the perfect endcap at the end of a too-perfect day — getting a hot meal, despite all odds.

Eric and I climbed to the top of a sandstone outcrop, looking out as darkness fell over the valley. We toasted each other. We toasted our day. We toasted to our acid and all the magical benefits it can bring when done properly. We knew there had been a bit of risk in making this choice to take a big dose in remote wilderness with no sober person for miles. But we had made the right one, a little bit of risk for a lot of reward. We toasted to our friendship, and we went to bed.

Addendum –

A visit to the naturalists at the National Park headquarters gave us no help on figuring out what those mysterious Pokemon were in the pool. After some lengthy research of my own, however, I figured it out.

When Western Tiger Salamanders are in their larval stage, they are very small, and have a tail – as well as external gills, growing from the sides of their heads. As they mature, and seasonal water supplies dwindle, their tails shrink and their external gills disappear so that they can breathe air and survive without water. However, in rare cases where these salamanders are living in permanent water sources (most commonly cattle troughs), there are cases when they never fully leave their larval stage, and continue to grow without ever shedding their external gills. They also get much larger than they otherwise would. So the result is an extra large, freakishly grown “Paedomorphic” salamander, which are sexually mature but in a stunted larval stage, with huge, plantlike dreadlocks growing out of its head. Ta-Da.

Exp Year: 2020	ExpID: 116881

Gender: Not Specified

Age at time of experience: 30

Published: Jan 1, 2023	Views: 583

[ View as PDF (for printing) ] [ View as LaTeX (for geeks) ]
[ Switch Colors ]

LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Nature / Outdoors (23), Glowing Experiences (4), General (1)