           BODY WEIGHT:
	   135 lb

When I was nineteen, I was blessed with a wonderful mystical vision: I experienced the light of God. That is, I experienced what Tibetan Buddhists call Osel (or “Primordial Clear Light”), and Hindu yogis describe as Sahasradala Padma (“Thousand-Petal Lotus of Light”). Chinese Taoists call it Ming (“Transcendent Luminosity”). Sioux Indians name it Wakan Tonka (“Great Spirit”). Muslims refer to it as Noor (“Divine Resplendence”). It is also Kavod (“Eternal Flame”) that shines at the altar of Judaism; the same radiance of which Jesus said, “If your eye is single, your whole body will be filled with light.”

The word light is not used here as a figure of speech (symbolizing a brighter, sunnier, higher aspect of ourselves and the cosmos). All these names and images refer to actual light: self-luminous, all-pervading energy. It is the living force—radiant consciousness—ablaze with bliss. Communion with this holy light, absorption in it is unspeakably pleasurable. Yet in my case, the event of drowning in the ocean of brightness left a great disturbance in its wake that took decades to resolve

in my case, the event of drowning in the ocean of brightness left a great disturbance in its wake that took decades to resolve

.

Let me tell you my story.

In 1972 I was a sophomore at Boston University, a teen-age son of 20th-century America, who listened to Led Zeppelin cranked up loud enough to vibrate my teeth. I was not exactly preparing body and mind for a direct encounter with the divine. My Jewish religious training had consisted of attending Sabbath services and Sunday school as a boy, which felt like sitting for several hours a week in front of an unplugged radio. Until the age of about nine, I had believed in and prayed to the Judeo-Christian Deity, but by the time I was ten or so, I began to aggressively disbelieve in an anthropomorphic Father-God. Natural science and science fiction became far more inspiring, meaningful and beautiful to me than conventional religious dogma. At age eleven, I had quit attending the synagogue.

Even so, there was a mystical streak in me that I had noticed from my earliest memories. It showed itself as a keenly felt sense of the mystery of the natural world and human life. This feeling of wonder or awe would sometimes rise in me as a bodily thrill until I had to laugh or shout.

As a college freshman I took a world religions course because I intuited something fundamental to the religious urge in people, something prior to arguing over the different notions of God, something primitive, below the abstract verbal mind that has created all the historical schisms of exoteric beliefs. I wanted to find this most basic truth at the root of all faiths. I longed to be like a lover—a naked beginner in the embrace of Living Nature. I personally wanted to know “It”—the real God—for I somehow understood “It” to be the depth and ground of my own heart. Thus, I sought contact with my deepest heart, from which I was seemingly in exile.

The next year, as a sophomore, I took an excellent class on Eastern philosophy. We read the Heart Sutra of Buddha and essays on Zen by D.T. Suzuki; Psychotherapy East and West, by Alan Watts and Modern Man in Search of a Soul, by Carl Jung; the principal Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita of the Hindus; the Tao Teh Ching of Lao Tzu; the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. I began to have grand insights into my own condition, though I understood only a fraction of what I read.

Then some classmates invited me to their apartment for a dinner discussion of the profound teachings we were studying. Steve had been a Theravada Buddhist monk in Thailand for two years, meditating seventeen hours a day; John was an avid student of yoga and Vedanta; and Sean had deserted the French Army and walked through India for three years, meeting holy persons. In contrast, I had neither meditated, nor done yoga, nor spent time in the company of anyone who was especially wise and free.

After dinner, riding the crest of the moment, everyone but Sean took orange sunshine LSD together. It was my sixth psychedelic trip. We took turns reading aloud from the Old Testament’s Genesis and from Be Here Now, a primer on Hindu mysticism. After a while, Steve read to us from The Psychedelic Experience, a “trip manual” by Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner, based on the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (also called Tibetan Book of the Dead).

Early on in the six-hour LSD high, I began to feel the same deep awe that I’d enjoyed as a boy, only stronger now than ever. The emotion seemed to expand and fill body, mind and room as a tangible presence: a sphere of invincible energy and happiness. I was sitting on a ratty carpet on the living room floor of a cheap apartment in Cambridge, immersed in a force field of great joy. I looked at Steve with drunken love and said, “The Holy Spirit is upon us.”

But I began to notice an apparent limit to the spirit, like a knot or cramp within the otherwise boundless force and presence. It gradually became obvious that the knot was “me”—or everything I held onto as “myself”. I saw that the whole melodrama of “me” (as a separated or independent and limited identity) was based on this unconscious habit of withholding (contracting, recoiling from whole and infinite being). “Me” was only a construct, not ultimately real (not a real entity or identity), but merely an act (like a fictional stage character) within Free and Total Being. And mistakenly (ridiculously!), the sense of identity had been bound to this mere role, this temporary personality, this psycho-physical ego (as if Life and Consciousness were an isolated self that is born to change and die). Such phony (separate) identity was the cause of all fear—the refusal to love and shine completely; the resistance to change and death, and thus, to all of life and relationship.

Within Consciousness, the dream of “me” was suddenly released. In that instant, came the deep heart of understanding: The totality of conscious being is the real and living “Person”, the all-inclusive Identity of everyone and everything. As the sages have put it, “There is only God.”

I fell onto my back in tears with the overwhelming relief of this realization of transcendental (unlimited) life. I surrendered utterly to my felt-intuition of the Great One. Rapidly, a marvelous change occurred. Layers of subtler self-holding fell away and I melted into the heart of God. I did not just watch this self-transcendence occur, as if from the bleachers. Ego-“I” dissolved in the all-effacing light of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.

To the extent the experience can be described, it was something like this: In the first few seconds of self-surrender, a glorious golden light filled mind and body and all of space. Mind (or attention) was captured by the light and drawn inward and upward toward an infinite locus above. Outer awareness disappeared as attention, body and world were resolved into the unity of the light-source—like an iris blossom refolding and returning to its bud. Just at the brink of ego-death there was an instant of fear, but I knew there was no turning back, no stopping this expansion beyond all limit. And I knew that whatever this sacrifice led to, it simply was Reality.

Therefore, I silently prayed, “Have mercy on me,” and in the next instant the light became so supremely attractive it absorbed the fear along with everything else into its dazzling singularity. As the last bit of self-hold evaporated, the golden light increased to “white,” or rather, it became perfectly clear, pure, unqualified, original. There was no more expansion, no more ascent; indeed there was no more “up” or “down,” “in” or “out,” but all of existence was radically equal and whole—the same absolutely bright fullness (or emptiness).

I was conscious as limitless radiant being, identical with the Self or Source of the universe. I don’t know how long I remained consumed in that domain of ecstasy, but it was utterly familiar, not new or shocking. It was Home, eternally. That Which IS (or the One I AM).

Of course, I came down. With a splat!

Crashed, as they say; and back again from the ego-centered point of view of a white, middle-class American kid who had grasped only a fraction of what he had read from the Oriental mystics, the experience of the light was not only incomprehensible, it was terrifying. By the following afternoon, I felt so upset, I was pale and shaky. After all, what was so attractive about the dissolution of ego, the death of “me”?

I felt so upset, I was pale and shaky. After all, what was so attractive about the dissolution of ego, the death of “me”?

 I had developed a painful case of psychic indigestion.

At first I tried to resist the revelation of the light, the divine intrusion on my independent, private life. I wanted to say, “Go away, I’m not ready for this. I just want to be me. I want to stay me.”

Lost and scared, I compulsively tried to secure the threatened ego, reinforce its boundaries and make it solid, immune to change. It didn’t work. There is no way to go on as an isolated self once you’ve tumbled into the heart of infinite life, even if only for a timeless instant. (As the Muslim poet Kabir said, “I saw that for thirty seconds, and it has made me a devotee all my life.”)

WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, READ THE DIRECTIONS.

I did.

I began to study the teachings of the Eastern and Western mystics in earnest. (It is noteworthy that all of them warn not to delve into mystical experience without proper preparation and a guide who knows the territory.)

It took time, more than a decade, but gradually my anxiety and confusion waned and was replaced by a growing understanding. Along the way I discovered scores of historical sources in which ego-loss in the radiant, transcendental being is described. Classical yoga provides a Sanskrit term for the experience: nirvikalpa samadhi. Many teachers quickened my awakening; not the least among them my wife and our two sons.

This does not mean I fitted the revelation of the divine to my everyday life—like pocketing a shiny new coin and then continuing on my private way. No. The divine is senior to self and world and will not be owned. Therefore, I did the reverse: I submitted my life to the divine; I became a devotee of God. Not the Almighty Absent Parent who never speaks through the dead radio, but the same wonderful, living Source and starry Process that a naturalist can love with awe.

Also, I began to meditate. I practiced a simple technique of focusing on the in and out of my breath while sitting quietly. After fifteen years of this simple practice, I experienced a “return” to the light. While deeply in tune with the breath, my attention spontaneously became focused in the mid-brain, between and behind the eyes. Thus my “eye” became “single.” My whole body was filled with light, as Jesus promised. I sat in a swoon and received the golden light into all my parts. At the time, I wrote an essay proclaiming: “Holy light is not a metaphor. Dazzlingly alive is the eternal spirit.”

But I was still afraid.

I was afraid of madness—the utter sacrifice of self and all limit. No knowing. No controlling. No “me.” I was afraid of drowning in infinity.

Six years later, in February 1993, a turning point arrived. I stood on my balcony in a contemplative mood, feeling into life, and I recalled a line a friend had told me years before about “meeting God halfway.” That notion now seemed absurd, as I saw that God Is Here, already all the way present. Nothing is hidden or withheld. I said aloud a motto that summed this up: “The gift is always given.” It was a beautiful, religious sense of being lived and loved and breathed by God.

Suddenly, a tremendous Force pressed down from above my head, through my brain and nervous system, with such mighty light and bliss that I fell to my knees and was pinned, overwhelmed bodily by the tangible brightness, as one might be overwhelmed by a terribly powerful orgasm. I gasped and sobbed from the potency of the joy. The God-pleasure—the saturating fullness and Touch of the light—became so intense I felt my bones might crack.

When I stood up, I had changed physically.

And my meditations changed. For several years, I’d been aware of powerful, “electrical” surges in my nervous system during meditation. I had focused on the breath and ignored these stirrings of the kundalini. But now my meditation sessions became sheer energy work-outs. Even so simple a practice as following the breath now felt like contrived self-effort. My method of meditation had been rendered obsolete. Instead, I would sit and the kundalini would flame through my head and eyes and spine and toss me around like a mad dancer. I laughed and cried. I growled. I shouted. I made spontaneous chant-like intonations. I saw archetypal visions.

It was painful and blissful—indescribable. I was suffering, but unable to budge a finger; afraid, but unable to make a single response. I was being meditated.

I became constantly aware of the tension around my heart, the tension of “me”—of holding on to myself. The presence of spirit had become a great current and my misery was my resistance to it. But I was reluctant to sacrifice “my life” completely.

Eight months later, in October 1993, I had grown so exhausted with the effort of preventing my own death, that I lay down on my bed and said, Okay, I give up. Take me insanity, or take me God, or take me whatever you are, mighty river. Sweep me to my destiny.

Abruptly, I began to lose “face.” Panic came on strong. I cramped up in a ball like a fetus. I became an electric buzzing cloud and then everything dissolved and I entered the light and bliss and freedom of ego-death; beyond the golden light into the clear light of void. No self. No thing. No bounds. The rapture only lasted a few seconds, but it was enough to see that all was okay. I had allowed death to occur, and it was not annihilation. It was only the loss of an imaginary limit—a phony identity.

The next day, I spontaneously entered nirvikalpa samadhi again, while soaking in the bathtub. The episode lasted several minutes and was completely free of fear from the beginning. The bright pleasure simply increased until the separate “I”-sense was overwhelmed in light.

From October on, each time I sat to meditate, I entered the shining void (at times remaining in samadhi for an hour or more). It is like entering deep sleep while remaining wide awake. It is luminous clarity: dreamless awakeness—pure consciousness without content other than its own uncreated bliss.

After a couple months of this, I dreamed one dawn in January 1994 that I was on a stage before an audience. A coffin was displayed on a stand and I was lying in it, facedown and naked. An emcee was on stage, and it was clear that I was to perform a Houdini-like escape act: I was supposed to free myself and emerge from the coffin.

I began to chuckle. What was the big deal? I was already free. The coffin lid was open, and I had no chains or shackles on me in the first place. I simply stood up.

Next, I was holding beautiful blue pearls in my hand, and the emcee told me to string them together as fast as I could. I started slipping the blue pearls onto a string, as a timer with TV-game show music ticked in the background. The emcee shouted, “Hurry, get as many beads on the string as you can!” For a few seconds I rapidly strung pearls, but then I stopped and looked across at the emcee. Why do I need to do this? I thought. This is your game, not mine. I gazed at the audience and all eyes were upon me. I smiled at the people as I stepped off the stage and began handing out the blue pearls, one to each person.

Then I woke up. It was a sunny winter morning in Tallahassee, Florida. I went downstairs and sat to meditate . . . and . . .

There was nowhere to go.

I strolled outdoors into the woods around my home. I saw no dilemma at all, within or without. No thing to seek. No experience to shed. No limit. I was not a something that could travel to someplace. I could not go deeper or higher through any means.

I burst out laughing from down in my belly. THIS IS IT. What a punch line! I thought the moment of satori would never end. But by the afternoon, when I went to pick up my sons from elementary school, I realized that satori, too, is only a state. It comes and goes. Nothing lasts.

And guess what? I don’t care in the least. I am not dismayed when ego appears, or when it disappears. I am no longer at war with ego or void. They are twin aspects of consciousness itself. I don’t take sides at all.

Reality is not samadhi, the extinguishing of all forms. Reality is not even satori, the natural mode of egolessness. Reality is no special state at all; no special condition. Reality is the IS of all possible states, their origin and unqualified basis, perfectly open and unbounded; pure capacity. Fundamentally, nothing has changed or ever will, and what I’ve come to understand was already only so: Just this.

From a certain perspective it can seem a big deal: I’ve grokked my own essence, and it is reality (or Buddha-nature). Or, as the Persian poet, Omar Khayam, put it: “I am myself, Heaven and Hell.”

But on the other hand, Buddha-nature and a buck will buy me a buck’s worth of groceries. No big deal. No special status. Nothing special at all.

These days, I sometimes meditate for pleasure and refreshment, like drinking a delicious tea. And I occasionally enter spontaneous mystic states during meditation.

I occasionally enter spontaneous mystic states during meditation.

 Even so, not any of it is necessary; and none of it is greater than simple happiness. Samadhi or no samadhi, satori or no satori, ego or no ego—there is no limit, already. No dilemma.

Nothing is more than wonderful. This moment is wonderful. Nothing is more than whole. This moment is complete. THIS is as God as it gets.

Truth (or joy) is not exclusive, not hidden, not vague or abstract, not elsewhere, not different than the stream of life. Birth and change and death are aspects of a single process, the only event: the activity of (or within) Reality. Nothing exists but Bright Mystery, which forever flows as all the possibilities of life in all the worlds. As Lao Tzu put it: “The Way that can be deviated from is not the Great Way.”

It is not that I am now at every moment floating along in a mood of blissful clarity, or that my neuroses have utterly evaporated. “After enlightenment,” I still at times feel frustrated, angry, and so forth. I also feel saddened by the intense sufferings of our human world family. But I do not resist any of it. Whether pleasure or pain is arising, I understand the empty and inherently free nature of the stream of endless changes, and I see there is no escape, nowhere else to go. I can only be whole (without alternative), abiding as the Heart.

It took twenty-two years of spiritual searching from the moment I first encountered the “clear light mind” to finally accept the wholeness that I am, the same totality that is true of everyone.

Friend, hear what I say: The Divine you seek is your own identity, before all ego-dilemma. Therefore, be already at ease. Relax into your own life-process. Trust in happiness, luminous and clear. Reality is Wholly Spirit, the Light that, while transcending every personality, also shines as all our life stories. In the midst of experience we are fundamentally free, beyond words and beyond worlds.

Exp Year: 1972	ExpID: 115273

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 19

Published: Apr 14, 2021	Views: 1,536

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Meditation (128), LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Post Trip Problems (8), Mystical Experiences (9), Retrospective / Summary (11)


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

		   T+ 0:00

		 smoked
		 Cannabis

		   T+ 4:30
		 1 hit
		 vaporized
		 Cannabis
		 (extract)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   170 lb

I am writing this because this is the first experience with drugs that I have felt has truly permanently changed me, and I believe that my brain and spirit have been pushed to the absolute edge of what I can experience and process. This experience made me lose my mind and enter a world of torment unlike my wildest imaginations. I have read many bad trip reports, ones that blew my mind with how awful they sounded, not one of them prepared me for this. Nothing could. This felt like CIA mind control torture,  this felt like a rite of passage to become a warrior. This was unreal and I need to share what it was.

We dropped acid at a bar and I had a decent come up. We drove home, tripped balls, smoked a joint. It was fine. [Erowid Note:
Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!] The only time I was that uncomfortable was when there was this baby around crying. As you can imagine that freaked me out, but I was fine. I was coming down, I had dropped at 2:08 and it was 630 or so now, and one of my friends gets out a dab rig.

I made the mistake of taking a huge ass rip. I remember coughing so much I almost threw up, collapsing to the floor, and taking my shirt off. My friend was looking at me hysterically, "I need to get how he's feeling" my other friend said "are we just gonna get fucked up tonight? I think that's what we're doing". I just said "no man, you don't want to feel like this". I then lost consciousness.

What happened next will always be impossible to describe. I was in a dark dense singularity, with no memory of anything. Time was not real here, it was eternity. There was no time. This first entrance into this realm was likely my soul's opportunity to determine whether this realm was nirvana or its inverse. My soul decided that it was its inverse, as panic, endless and eternal fear and dread, gripped me tight. My thoughts were incredibly brief and scattered here, but among them were confused, momentary considerations of how long I had been here, was this eternity,  was I a soul damned to endless torment, and the main thought that predominates was simply "this isn't right. This isn't normal". I felt like this should only have been temporary, and that this should have ended by now.  However this is an odd thing, because I did not know what normal was. My ego was struggling to resist its dissolution,  but this had already happened, and the result was this panic. I knew at one point I thought that this was just how some energies exist, as pure pain, and that I was one with this energy, and my purpose in this psychic whirlwind was to experience this pain eternally, as my fate, the concept of hell made sense, but I can't remember if the idea of hell came to mind. I think I developed that perception of it afterwards. While it was happening,  I was tormented, I was one with the universal energy of chaos.

The sounds I heard were odd and scattered, distant screaming, running footsteps sprinting, shouting and it all seemed to travel inward on itself, like a black hole. occasionally human speech I could barely make out saying things like are you okay man"? I knew these were what I needed to return to, but I had no idea what they were or why I needed to be drawn to them. Time shattered and bits of it landed everywhere,  and the visions I saw were reflections my mind saw on the pieces I had lost.

The sights I saw were mainly restricted to visions of constant crushing, pulsing and imploding nothingness. I could hear it's negativity, and it was all I had ever known. I knew I could not escape this torment, but the more visions of worldly things flashed in and out of my mind, the more I understood I had something to return to. I did not know what. I would see my two friends sitting there randomly. It seems this vision would flash into my view without meaning or context several times over the course of this ego death. Was I one of them? Were they there to help me?

These visions should have helped me but it took a long time. They just fucking terrified me, I did not know if I was one of them, if they knew me, or even what they were. It seemed like them sitting there was the first thing I had ever laid eyes on. It was truly bizarre to see my two friends in this disturbed context.

Eventually my vision began to show me myself in this room, crying, unable to control myself. Somewhere along the line I muttered something to my friends along the lines of "guys, I dont know where I've been, heaven or hell, but I have experienced hell tonight". They obviously were tripping and had no fucking clue what to do, this was the worst trip either of them have ever seen. At one point when I was trying to break through I found that I couldn't even count properly. I would just find myself in this void, desperate, repeating the same number over and over because I could not tell if I had already said it. My friend began counting properly, and it amazed me. I had no idea who it was that was speaking,  but it sounded like the voice of God giving the concept of time to an unevolved primate for the very first time. It was incredible.

Shortly after I broke back through, I was basically acting like an infant that had just breached the womb. I was exactly that, I had returned to my conscious mind and body after an eternity of hell. I remember seeing myself wondering "who is this guy? He fucked up with some drugs, huh." I screamed at my friends about how far I could fucking push it, about how humiliated I was, how embarrassed I was, how I was in hell and they didn't get it. I barely remember this, but I was acting out of my mind. I was. I was insane. My friend's mom gave me milk to calm me down (funny as hell) and it did kind of help. She was so nice to me, I am extremely grateful for her.

The following hour or so after my consciousness was restored were awful, I was an inconsolable wreck of a person who just cried and rambled about how miserable and terrible it was. My brain was fixated on it.

Eventually my girlfriend came to pick me up and take me home. I had apparently suffered a seizure-like fit, fallen and hit my head, and in this process destroyed my friends sliding closet door, made of glass. I had felt terrible about what happened, but the immediacy of my trauma made it impossible to gain composure, and I was just a miserable annoying wreck until I got picked up. The next day I came over and we had a long talk as I helped clean up and replace the door. His evaluation was that I might be slightly schizo. I have no idea, but based on his evaluation and my fit, I have to assume that there is something about my brain at this point in my life that was truly unable to cope with this.

The following two days I lived in fear and emotional instability,  unable to grasp the nature of this experience,  swearing myself to sobriety.  I had wanted so desperately to be free from that place that I vowed never to go there again. As I write this, I find myself regretting that dab so much. I want to enjoy acid again. For the sake of those who love me and my own health, I have to be sober now. That was too much. It scarred and debilitated me.

It was the limit of what my brain is capable of doing and experiencing,  sensory wise. I witnessed the breaking down of all the processes my brain uses to form this reality, literally all of them. Sight, sound, reasoning, touch, all fell away and into each other, all stimulus was rushed into my brain and crushed into itself like an endless dense void. I need my brain to work normally for a while, I need my senses to be aligned.

2 weeks later I was feeling a little bit more stable, and decided to get super high on sunday (I know, the whole sobriety thing didnt last long). The first joint in the afternoon felt incredible, but the second one before bed awakened probably the only acid "flashback" I've ever had, but really it was more of a PTSD flashback - I was still lucid but suddenly a terrifying wave of dissociative horror and overwhelming tingling and burning sensations gripped my body and mind. I was with my girlfriend and it scared the shit out of her, I was shaking and writhing in bed constantly repeating "I need to stay grounded" and "oh fuck this is bad".

This experience ruined me possibly just as bad as the original trip, as I still have trouble sleeping alone, the floating feeling and the resulting anxiety I get made it very difficult to cede my consciousness to sleep.

About a month after that experience as I write this, I am still sober. I still like acid, I still feel like I need it to show me the unexplored parts of me, but I know my sanity has its limits and I am very afraid to test them. I have a newfound appreciation for the work my brain does to construct the vast illusion of consciousness for me every moment

I have a newfound appreciation for the work my brain does to construct the vast illusion of consciousness for me every moment

, and I am very wary to upset this with psychedelics in the future.

If I ever drop acid again I am going to do it pure, and I'm going to do it with people I know, in a place I'm familiar with. If I ever have the courage to do it again. I know it is self absorbed to think this but I seriously doubt any trip could be any more terrifying than that, more debilitating. Very few other trip reports I have seen adequately describe this experience, but those I have read, are pretty accurate. It came without warning, plunged me into hell for eternity, and shoved my broken spirit directly back into my physical brain with no time for adjustment. I could actually hear and see physical fragmentation and snapping, like shards of broken glass, only made of my memories being formed. It was a violent and confusing mess.

I know how people can have divine rebirth. That is what happened to me. The divinity I experienced was not enlightenment or nirvana, but its opposite. That is powerful knowledge, to be that closely acquainted with infinite suffering. It acquainted me with the true nature of sensory processing, and the fact that every moment of sensory input can be a moment of infinite terror, depending on how our minds process it.

Does energy have consciousness? Is the terror that I experienced the terror that energy experiences for eternity before randomly being assimilated into a being or creature powerful enough to process it? Or is energy  unconscious, dead, and what I experienced was the ultimate innocence, pure energy, being given consciousness for no other reason than to be plunged into a brain incapable of doing anything to it other than torment it.

The one major regret is that this experience, as a trip, was almost totally devoid of psychedelic imagery. Very few visuals stand out in my memory. The only other times I have done this much acid, the visuals were going crazy.

All in all, I guess I got what I asked for, which was to be high as fuck. I dont know if I ever want to get high again.

Exp Year: 2021	ExpID: 115364

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 22

Published: Apr 22, 2021	Views: 1,330

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LSD (2), Cannabis (1) : Bad Trips (6), Post Trip Problems (8), Combinations (3), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		   repeated
		 smoked
		 Cannabis

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

		   T+ 10:30
		   repeated
		 smoked
		 Cannabis

This is a vivid account of my first experience with LSD.

A little background information to set the mood. I am an anonymous twenty-year old female from Mississippi. The small town I live in is considered a metropolis, but in retrospect of other states it is still very much a small town. Not much to do, not much to see. One night recently, a trusted friend and dealer of mine offered to sell some acid he'd recently bought from New Orleans. LSD is something that I always knew I wanted to try; I had only heard wonderful things about it, but naturally, I had my doubts. I consider myself a chronic smoker of cannabis, every day usually when I can get it and multiple times a day. But I had not gone farther. The friends that I had along for the trip were my best girl friend,  A, her boyfriend who we'll refer to as L, and his best friend C. All three of them had experimented with Molly and shrooms, to which they did nothing but rave about. It was a big step - one I had to seriously consider. But I figured it was a summer's night and I am only going to be this young for so long.

We needed a place. All of us were home from college, staying in our parents' houses respectively. I came up with the solid idea that we should rent a cheap hotel room - nothing fancy, just a room. It was ingenious, and it was settled. The next night, we would bunker down in a $50 per night, double bedded room and have a night I will remember for the rest of my days.

To prepare for such a night, we made a trip to Wal-mart, where we stocked up on activities. None of us were really sure how we would feel or react, so we wanted options. We loaded our buggy with crayons, coloring books, light up toys, and various snacks and beverages. I also bought a journal, with the intent to document this experience hour-by-hour. Then, after purchasing our drug of choice, we arrived at the hotel around 10:00 PM.

Before dropping, we had all taken about three flows of bud in the car, so we were already quite high.

The initial drop (around 10:30) - Room 217. After unloading all of our belongings and getting settled in, we immediately wanted to take the acid. None of us were sure how long it would last into the next day, so we figured the sooner the better. Gathered around in a circle on the beds, A passed out the tiny, yellow blocks of paper to each of us. Each paper contained 2 hits of LSD. Me and A were encouraged to take only 1 hit for our first time, because we were females. But both of us decided that if this was going to happen, it was going to happen epically. None of us spoke for a few seconds. I remember saying a silent prayer to whoever is up there just before - 'Please let me come out of this alright.'

The instant I put the paper under my tongue, I felt it releasing. The taste was terrible. A mixture of something that belonged under a car hood and a cleaning product you find under a kitchen sink. I felt it running into the back of my mouth and down my throat. Disgusting, but a taste I could bear. We were all silent for a few minutes, looking around to see what everyone else was feeling. After about ten minutes, all except L decided that it was okay to take the paper out. Our dealer told us that when we started tasting just the paper we were in the clear.

I didn't initially feel anything special. A and L, who still was sucking on the paper, went outside to retrieve something forgotten out of the car. I put on some tunes - I brought my iPod cube along that changed colors - and began to dance. C joined me. When they came back in, L began to feel sick. He retreated to the bathroom, and began to vomit. Everyone was a little worried; we thought that if he was puking, he was puking up all of his acid. There was nothing worse than the prospect of having a sober guy in the room while the rest of us were tripping heavily. Luckily, the nausea passed. For about twenty minutes, I felt very little effects. I was already stoned coming into it, so it just felt like I had smoked some really premium weed. But there was this internal happiness that I couldn't explain, like I knew I was about to have a fantastic night.

11:00- Me and C continued to move about the room, chatting and laughing about whatever. L and A had moved to the bed, lying down and staring at the ceiling. A calls me over - 'You should look at the ceiling.' I glanced up quickly, not really seeing much of anything. But I decided to give it a try. I laid down, C beside me. It was like a switch had instantly been flicked on. The ceiling was no longer just above us, lifeless and off white. It was breathing. The longer I stared, the more it moved around, in swirls and melted patterns. We were all amazed, constantly asking each other if we were all seeing the same thing. We were. Vomiting, as it turns out, had not affected L's means to trip at all. It had already been released in his system.

I thought this was all really cool, but I had yet to experience the realm of what it really means to hallucinate.

11:30 - The walls, made out of the same stucco paint as the ceiling, were now transforming. The patterns of the gathered paint were now turning into little soldiers. The whole wall looked like an army of tiny men in uniform. Somehow, we all found our way to the floor. Sitting in a circle, Indian style, we began to observe each other. I started with L. We looked into each other's eyes, both bearing the same wide-eyed expression. L's eyes were literally black, pupils completely dilated. This gave him the appearance of being soulless. I didn't like it at all. Also, and I remember this vividly, he began to go in and out of age. When I say this, I mean his hair went from being brown and his skin smooth, to being gray and wrinkly simultaneously. I didn't express this to him. We were both too shocked to speak. C expressed that we should put on some dubstep music, Skrillex to be more specific. Immediately, this became known as something none of us wanted. The beat was too heavy, the bass line too dark. It was eating away at me, and after a few seconds we begged him to turn it off. Looking down at my skin, I realized that I was changing colors. I remained somewhat tan, but the veins of my arms and legs were pulsating wildly. Faces and bodies were not at all okay to look at, at this point.

I began to focus on the walls. It brought me to tears. My mind knew that this wasn't actually happening - but was it? I was seeing it here, with my own two eyes. It may not have been reality, but whatever it was, I found it extremely breathtaking and beautiful. In fact, the whole damn room looked beautiful. This shitty, one star motel had transformed into a world of beauty.

This shitty, one star motel had transformed into a world of beauty.

It was then that I noticed a magazine we bought earlier in the evening - Elle Magazine, with Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake bearing the cover. The more I stared, the more I realized that they were staring back at me. It was not just a photograph anymore; these two people were really in the room with me. I could see wind whipping through Mila's hair, Justin bit his bottom lip. It was as if they were asking me to join them in their own little world inside this paper. An example of what I was seeing can be the way photographs are seen in Harry Potter - moving, living images. Suddenly, both of their eyes looked really dark and hypnotizing. It began to substantially scare me. I tossed the magazine across the room, face down.

12:30 PM - I don't remember who's idea it was to turn the lights off, but somehow the room went dark, all except the glowing, color changing iPod dock cube. L and A found themselves in their bed, curled into each other and squirming about. I looked over at them, instantly drawn to the potential touch of another human being. A called me over. I laid with them for a few minutes, and then things took a turn from friendly to sensual. Within minutes, we were all naked. I realized that C was not around. I called for him, and discovered that he had been in the bathroom by himself for an awfully long time. He came out, and looked completely bewildered. Apparently, he had been staring at himself in the mirror, something that I knew would not be advised at this level of brain activity. He looked extremely freaked out. But soon, he joined us in the bed for our cuddling session.

I have never been with another girl. I consider myself an advocate for gay and lesbian rights, but I myself am attracted to men and men only. But suddenly, I didn't care who I was touching. None of us did. Everything felt right. And I was completely engrossed in how turned on I had become. L and A continued on their pursuit for an orgasm, and began to hook up. I moved to the other bed with C. We hadn't done anything sexually, all he did was touch me, and I found myself yelling, 'We need a condom!' He had to constantly remind me that we were not having sex, but damn it, whatever was happening to me felt fucking incredible. I don't remember how many times I came, but it felt like a constant orgasm. Soon, we were all naked.

1:00 AM - C had seriously begun to freak out on me. He later told me that every time I looked at him, all he saw was a demon-like character looking back at him. He declined sex, which normally would have injured my feelings a tad bit. But where I was psychologically, I was fine with it. I reassured him it was okay, and he didn't have to do anything he didn't want to. I also found myself back in bed with L and A.

This was easily the most extreme, intense part of my trip.

I kept exclaiming for the air to be turned up, as I felt like at any moment I was going to burst into flames. But my skin was ice cold. I could no longer tell the difference between hot and cold.

Time also lost all meaning. A song that was playing felt like it was playing for seriously half an hour, and it had only been three minutes. Technology also lost all recognition. C's open laptop screen was swirling, unable to be comprehended. I tried to focus on what the song was called, but found that the letters and numbers were all jumbled.

Laying in the dark, in a sweaty bed, with the room glowing and changing colors rapidly to pounding music, I began to lose myself. I can't count the number of times I found myself shouting - 'I'm losing it!' Reality was gone. I tried my hardest to remember how I'd found myself in the room. But it felt like I had been there for months, not hours. I remember yelling, 'How long are we going to be here! What if we're stuck here forever!' I had to constantly bring myself back to prevent from seriously having an anxiety attack.

2:30 AM - The instant we turned back on the lights, the mood lightened. I learned that my perception of reality and what I was feeling was solely sensory. My mood altered with every song that came on, and it seemed like we were all changing together. Me and A remained nude, while the boys put on some pants. This was the first time for me to go into the bathroom and peer into the mirror.

First off, observing my naked body, I realized that I had no qualms with being naked. I am neither fat nor skinny, average is the best description. But I felt beautiful that night, like I never had to put on clothes again. But as I looked into my face, I realized what C had been talking about. The mirror was a scary place. My face was changing constantly, not at all appearing like my own. It felt like I was looking at someone who looked exactly like me, but it was a different person. A scary person, who I wanted nothing to do with. From then on out, I decided to leave the mirror alone for the night.

Around 3:00 AM - C remembered that he brought his acoustic guitar, and let L play it. Suddenly, me and A remember all of our activities that we brought. I busted out the Play-Doh, she grabbed the coloring book and crayons. The Play-Doh was so complex at that time. Every time I squished my hands into it, it transformed into some kind of new face. It was freaking me out. I gave the Play-Doh a rest. A now began lighting the tips of crayons on fire and letting the wax drip onto the paper. Suddenly, she was asking, 'Can I draw on your guitar?' I of course expected C to say no. It looked like a pretty nice brand of instrument. But to our surprise, he was completely down. She melted crayon wax all over its front, and I drew on it with Crayola markers. I wrote things like, 'Bold as love' and 'Words mean nothing'. I drew a little bird that I remember thinking was so good, but the next day looking at it, it looked like a giant blob with a beak. C loved every bit of it though, claiming he felt like 'Jimi Hendrix with a guitar like that'. We sat around like this for hours, in a dream like state, singing and harmonizing and laughing and tripping out of our minds.

5:30 AM - One of the main things we wanted to do was watch the sunrise. But the prospect that anything was outside the door of that motel room was too hard to grasp. C was the first to walk outside. I remember calling for him, scared. He didn't bring a cell phone, and we were not in a good part of town. Tripping up and down the sidewalks alone didn't seem like a good idea at all. 'What if he never comes back?' I asked.

But at this point, some filthy, raunchy Bassnectar had come on and  I was feeling very sexual again. I laid next to A and L for a while, and began to partake in whatever they were doing. Suddenly though, when the song changed, sex became very boring. I got up and went to fiddle with the music. L and A kept calling me back, obviously with the intent of having a three-way. But I was not interested at all anymore.

6:00 AM - C convinced all of us to come outside. It was strange, too bright, too many things happening. But one thing was for sure. The sunrise was incredible. We were no longer tripping constantly, but it was coming to us in waves. The clouds just seemed to be like waves, riding the sky.

8:00 AM - The waves were becoming less and less intense. Now, I just had a very calm appreciation for everything around me. I laid in C's arms, while L and A made love on the other bed. It was a very natural feeling. Slowly, we progressively decided that we too should try out sex. We weren't at the point where we were hallucinating anymore, but everything still felt right.

Sex whilst coming down from a trip is incredible. I did not experience it whilst fully tripping, but honestly, I don't think I could've handled it. A simple touch sent me over the edge; actually getting physical with someone might have blown my mind past the point of recuperation. There is still that feeling of confidence, but now I felt like I was getting to know C on a more spiritual level. I knew exactly where to touch him, and the same went for him. In between, we would just lay there and let the music guide us.

9:00 AM - After smoking a few flows, we were all feeling extremely chilled. A blanket has never felt more comfortable, and I have never wanted to be next to a man so.

At this point, we all decided to try out sleep. It had been a long, tremulous, eventful evening. I have never slept harder in my life.

When we woke up, it was already past time to check out. Luckily, the motel manager was cool with a late checkout, but as we all gathered our belongings, I couldn't help but feel sad.

I have never felt more in touch with myself, what's around me, and who is around me.

I have never felt more in touch with myself, what's around me, and who is around me.

 I didn't want it to end, and while I still felt that blissful buzz, the trip was over.

When we left that room, we were all changed people.

These are strictly personal; every trip is different, I know that. But words to the wise....

Don't trip with anyone that you do not want to be naked with. Because my grandfather could've been in the room with me, thank goodness he wasn't, but I still would've taken off my clothes.

Let your mind wander, but don't lose yourself completely. Of course it was interesting and fun while tripping to allow myself to think deep, dark thoughts. But thoughts are all that can be produced from this. I distinctly remember thinking at a point in the night that I could kill every person in the room with me. And while I thought this, I also had the notion that if I did kill my friends, they would all soon wake up and just laugh it off. Death didn't seem possible. I reared myself back in, obviously not acting on these thoughts. It was easy to get lost. I just had to find my way back.

I personally cannot wait to drop again. It was an overall positive experience, that I will never forget.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 92139

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: 20

Published: Jun 24, 2021	Views: 1,275

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LSD (2) : First Times (2), Glowing Experiences (4), Sex Discussion (14), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		 2 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   65 kg

Product: White on White Blotters, 100-110ug per tab. The source was a highly recommended one and another product of theirs was supposedly tested by a third party and found to be pure LSD and close to 100% of the advertised quantity. Personally I cant make any statements regarding quality/quantity, but I can tell you what it did to me.

Set&amp;Setting: I'm around 30 yrs old, male, have some experience with mdma/exstacy/speed/shrooms and smoke weed for most of my adult life. Aside from this daily cannabis use, I had a very sober 2015 so far. I'm very interested in spirituality, especially non-dualism, and concepts like ego-loss, transcendence of mind&amp;body and the beautiful oneness of all are familiar to me. Theoretically, i.e. not experienced. I'm not in a very stable place right now, meaning no real job, no girlfriend/relationship for some years, and no idea how or when this is going to change.

I decided to trip alone for my first time (friends I wouldve tripped with werent available) and I was going to start with 200ug or two 100ug 'White on White' blotters. I live with two roommates who were present and knew I would be tripping. I trust them, they are good people. The week before I read a lot of reports  and checked out what is scientifically known today. Also, I mildly conditioned myself by always repeating and being aware of the facts 'I wont die' and 'It will be over after a day'. I didnt have any special plans; for my first time I just wanted to see what it would be like. What would happen. I was excited.

Bicycle Day: I had gotten the tabs the day before, but it was late and I wanted to start during the day. So I waited one night, which wasnt easy. I was very excited and only slept a couple of hours. (Sidenote: It can be hard to tell if I feel anxious, nervous or excited. I chose to see it as excitement. Stay positive.)

I started my day leisurely with cereals&amp;fruit&amp;tea, showered and cleaned the apartment a bit. After that I went outside to walk around in the sun and find a rose which I could pluck and take home. They are supposed to be beautiful on LSD (also, I read King's Dark Tower not long ago).

I then prepared my room, meaning: water, pen&amp;paper, fresh sheets for my bed, phone on airplane mode, logging out of all social media and opening a few tabs with music. After everything was ready I took a quick look at the time and I shit you not, 4:20pm. Lets go!

4:20pm. I put two blotters on my tongue, sucked and chewed them around a bit and then swallowed. I put on the movie Lucy which was recommended somewhere and waited.

It didnt take long, maybe 15 minutes, and I started to feel something. My hands and feet got sweaty and my excitement quickly morphed into euphoria. Another 15 minutes later colors became more vibrant and had a mild glow. By now the movie had become the least interesting thing to see. I checked for tracers by waving my hand but I didnt see any. Didnt matter, I was coming up fast. I started laughing/giggling just because I felt so good. It might have been slightly on the hysterical side.

5:30pm. Pretty exactly one hour into the movie it started to buffer, so I paused and looked around the room. Textures had started moving, the letters on my keyboard wobbled and time and space began to stretch. At this point one of my roommates came by wanting to know how it felt.

Roomy: Hey, is it already kicking in? What are you seeing?

Me: Unnbeelievvabll... Itss...it...amaazinn.

I could barely talk. Time and space were off. I thought the sentence, but by the time it had reached my mouth I was already so far ahead in my mind. So much was happening in what I knew must be seconds, but it didnt feel like it. It didnt feel like hours either, I was just registering too much for just one second. Every texture was moving. For example: My desk is completely white and smooth except for a scorch mark the size of a quarter. This mark was a pit, it had depth, and little geometric forms and lines were tumbling out of it only to dissolve on the white desk. This motivated me to put the paper in front of me and pick up a pencil. With that I started seeing traces. When I put the pencil to the paper, the point of contact became the source of an abstract drawing which spread out over maybe half the paper. It was amazingly detailed and constantly moving. I have no idea what it looked like.

The reports I had read often said that it could be uncomfortable to have non tripping people around, no matter if they knew or not. I was sure I wouldnt mind having my sober roommates around. I was wrong. The thing is, they couldnt understand. Our realities were so far apart, and I couldnt communicate to them what I was seeing, and that kind of broke the illusion. With my eyes I saw unbelievably beautiful patterns on the floor, through their eyes I saw a drugged up idiot staring at a normal floor. It didnt make sense, I couldnt bring the two pictures together. My guess is that it got to do with my insecurities and is not necessarily a characteristic of LSD.

6:30pm. Around this time I wanted to explore the apartment. I knew there was the rose in the kitchen and some fruit salad in the fridge. Also I felt like I had to be a little bit active to show my roommates I was able to and that everything was fine. I felt they wouldnt understand that everything was fine if I was just sitting around tipping a pen to paper.

At first I didnt think I could walk, but when I tried, it worked. It was really weird, everything was moving and the proportions of my body felt wrong, but it worked. I could even dance and jump around to create massive waves where my feet touched the floor. When, after a couple of minutes, I arrived at the kitchen door, I instantly noticed the rose. It was too much to look at. I turned to the fridge, opened it, laughed and closed it again. There was too much going on in there. I could make out the fruit salad, but there was no way I couldve gotten it out of there. (Sidenote: Looking back, I now think I couldve done it, but I didnt even try. My mind said no and I listened). On the way back to my room I made a quick pitstop to relieve myself. It was a little weird but worked fine. As I stood before the door, ready to leave the bathroom, I had a brief flash of panic. I wasnt sure if I could open the door. But then I just did it and it was easy enough. Still I got the feeling how the trip couldve turned bad there and I made a mental note to remember that getting out was easy.

Back in my room I sat down at my desk and thought about what to do next. Now, afterwards, I feel like this is a bad spot. Tripping and not knowing what to do next cant be right. Everything around me was moving in awesomeness and I didnt want to settle on anything. Didnt want to go deep into anything. I'm pretty sure I was fighting it, or trying to get some control. I wasn't aware of it, I was just thinking 'Holy shit, what now?'. I started feeling overwhelmed so I closed my eyes and instead of the expected darkness a whole new space opened up. I instantly named it, or knew its name to be Headspace.

7:30pm. This Headspace was the most insane thing I had experienced so far. It wasnt like I was standing or sitting in a space or world similar to ours. I'm not even sure how many dimensions it had, although it was at least partly 3 dimensional. I could see bright, abstract patterns move or rather develop in this space. It was brighter than my room, and that sensation alone, that I closed my eyes and my surroundings got brighter, was disorientating

that sensation alone, that I closed my eyes and my surroundings got brighter, was disorientating

. After a short while, I think, I had figured out a little bit how it worked. I wasnt a body but more a cell, or maybe even a point. Sensations had different representations from the other world. Whatever I heard I would also see as patterns of light. And the sounds came from new directions. When, for example, I heard one of my roommates, I logically knew they were to my left, but in my Headspace the sound ... I dont even know, was part of that space maybe? With its own location from where it came. Something like that, but different.

I wanted to listen to music, so I opened my eyes again and instantly got hit by strong vertigo. The change in perspective was too sudden and extreme. First I'm hanging or hovering in one point and can see, hear and feel the space around me, and then I'm suddenly sitting in my chair looking straight ahead. It made no sense. It felt like both spaces existed simultaneously, and I could switch between them just by opening/closing my eyes, but it made me very nauseous.

8:00pm. I barely managed to start a song and put on my headphones. I had started, without really choosing it, Acid Rap by Chance the Rapper. I remember thinking how intense it was, and that I, at some point, noticed that it was over. Besides that I have no memory of listening to a 50+ minute album. I dont know if I passed out, or closed up or what happened. I remember pulling off the headphones and curl up in my bed, and I think I found a place inside my head where I could stay, but for the next 6-10 hours I dont know where or what I was. There is very little memory, I think I just remember a few small reality flips. At one time my other roomy came by and asked if I was okay. I remember this in two steps. The first one was 'waking up' with a shock while simultaneously registering that he was close to me and had asked if everything was alright. The second step is me quickly 'going back' whilst muttering 'all goood'. There were a couple of similar little events, like me suddenly noticing something from the other world. But I have no idea what was happening in my Headspace. I just know I felt good.

05:00am. The next clear memory I have is 'waking up' or 'coming back' from wherever I was. The sky was already bright, so it probably was around 5am. I was still seeing visual effects, but way more mellow than before. My body didnt feel quite right, my hands felt and looked way to big. They were morphing from triple the normal size to more or less normal and back. The body feeling I had reminded me of the cortical homonculus (I had to look that up), a physical representation, a neurological map of the body (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus). I kept lying in my bed and probably snoozed a bit, but after a while I was so bored, I had to get up.

08:00am. My visuals were gone completely, but things still looked pretty. I felt very exhausted, in body and mind, but more or less normal. I knew I was still not fully back, still away from my former self. I was very calm and kind of empty. I took a shower and went outside. It was a beautiful day and I would spent the next 3-4 hours walking slowly through nature, occasionally stopping, but mostly wanting to move. I tried to think about what I had experienced, but I dont think I got a better sense of it then I have now, 2 days later.

All I know for sure is that by taking the LSD (if it was LSD) I had opened a door to another world. I'm sure of that. I cant really say what/where/when this world is, what happend there or who had been there, but I really want to find out. Oh, and there was definitely a vast distance between me on LSD and the me before LSD. This distance alone had created a new perspective on pretty much anything, I just didnt look at anything while so far away. Or I dont remember.

Conclusions:

- I'm very sure I was overwhelmed, which wasnt a bad experience, but not really useful either, and I think I wasted a lot of LSD's potential that way.

- Its a trip, you are going somewhere. It really didn't hurt to know a little bit about that place. The more single experiences I read, the better my understanding of what might happen.

- Set&amp;Setting! I know it is important, probably the most important factor of the trip. I'm not sure how it really works, but before/while/after the trip I was happy about having cleaned and decluttered my place, feeling excited, ie being nervous but not scared. I was glad I made sure there werent any disturbences. My sober roommates werent a huge problem, but they made me feel self-conscious and inhibited, so the next time I really want to be alone or have everyone tripping.

- Next time: I will again take my time with preparations, they are part of it. I will take half the dose, so 100ug, maybe even in 2 steps at T:0.00 and T:2.00. I have to read about that :) I want to put some focus on the difference between open and closed eyes, the different worlds, while keeping an open mind for wherever the trip leads me.

I wish you all the best in all the worlds!

Exp Year: 2015	ExpID: 106908

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 30

Published: Oct 1, 2021	Views: 832

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


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 100 ug
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (edible / food)

		   T+ 1:00
		 100 ug
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (edible / food)

		   T+ 1:00
		 175 mg
		 oral
		 Pharms - Venlafaxine
		 (daily)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   250 lb

200mcg LSD, 60 Yo Man on SNRI, Nice Trip

I had my first LSD experience on two 100 mcg mints, over a roughly six hour period. Set and setting were excellent, and the trip was positive and fun.

I take an SNRI anti-depressant (175 mg of Effexor / Venlafaxine daily), and although there's lots of speculation about possible interactions (Serotonin Syndrome, inhibition of LSD effects, etc.) on the web, I just YOLO'd, and I didn't experience anything negative in that regard. Your mileage may vary!

Other drug experience: I smoked some weed back in college a million years ago, and I've been using it again a bit recently, but so far it doesn't interest me that much, so whatever. I have a glass of wine or a beer with dinner most nights. Coffee and sugar and chocolate are excellent.

The setting for this acid experience was excellent: a bright and airy AirBnB loft in the outer burroughs of NYC on a lovely September day. My guide was a sex worker / escort that I'd seen before and like a lot, who'd offered to get the tabs and guide me in my first experience.

Expectations: I have a friend who took higher-dose LSD trips back in like the 70's, and she's described it as transcendent and life-changing. I've meditated quite a bit, and I've read about how psychedelics tend to produce good experiences when expectations and setting are good. My guide had assured me that there's really no such thing as a bad trip. So I was expecting a good experience.

She arrived at about 10:15 am, and we each took a 100 mcg mint at about 10:30. She put on a playlist of appropriate downtempo tracks, and we lay in bed talking and lightly making out. By 11:30 I was feeling a sort of nonspecific euphoria but no other effects, so she gave me another 100 mcg mint. By 12:30 I was feeling stronger effects, which lasted until roughly 3:30. By 4 or 4:30pm I was feeling mostly normal again, although the euphoria lasted longer, merging into the general normal feeling of having had a really good day.

I don't have a good memory of the order of events, interior or exterior, between 12:30 and 3:30, but I'll describe the general kinds of experiences that I remember.

One effect, that I also get from alcohol and weed, is that my conscious mind and my verbal centers sort of feel far apart. Like I'm listening to myself talking from a distance, and I don't necessarily know where the sentence started or where it's going. And sometimes when I feel like I should be saying something, it's hard to start talking, because words are far away and hard to find. This effect was mostly at the start and the end; during the peak, words weren't really relevant, see below.

Sex: My guide told me that most people aren't that interested in sex while tripping, although some get extra-interested. I brought her to orgasm (or to faking it really well, you never know) with my fingers early on during the 100 mcg phase, and she brought me off with her hands toward the end. It felt very intense, and like it lasted a very long time; excellent orgasm, A++, would recommend. In general, though, the sex wasn't the center of the experience; the basic cuddling / touching was more important.

Normal interaction: apparently we had some relatively normal interactions during the trip, because I remember her talking to me about some of her hobbies and showing me pictures and videos on her phone, and apparently I said sensible things. The oddest thing about that part is that I don't remember where it came in time compared to everything else.

Visuals: I didn't have much in the way of visual effects, aside from two things. I saw a sort of lacy texture overlaid over everything at times, with my eyes open or closed. And I saw (what should have been terrifying but was very cool) a long shape like the underside of a lobster, with lots of arms and feelers and hands and eyes, waving around in a very alive way. I saw that with my eyes closed, not for a long time. It wasn't threatening or aggressive, just a kind of symbol maybe of how strange and complicated all of reality is.

Peaking: some time after she gave me the second 100 mcg mint, I remember her saying that she was afraid she'd given me too much. I heard her, even though I was somewhere far away at the time, and consciously decided to come back far enough that I could reassure her that I was good; so I did that. The overall feeling was that I was floating at the center of ultimate reality, outside time and beyond words, for hours or days or centuries or forever, in an indescribable bliss (although "bliss" is just a word, and this was beyond words). At the same time I was intensely aware of how we were spooned together, with my arms around her and my fingers touching and caressing her skin; somehow the tactile feelings and the music were intimately part of the ultimate truth that I was floating in.

At some point I said to her that we invented language in order to be able to talk about this experience with each other. I also said that every time the music changed, it was like a new aeon of the universe was starting. Which sounds like the kind of thing people say while tripping, doesn't it? Heh heh. But they are what I felt, in some way.

As I came down a bit, it felt like I was consciously choosing to re-enter time and concepts, at that particular place and time, as if I could maybe have chosen to stay in timeless ultimate truth, or to come back to reality as any other person, in any other time and place. It wasn't bad, even though I was leaving perfect bliss; it was more like everything is equally perfect so it was fine to come out.

All around it was a very positive experience, just about as I'd expected. It was deeper than the meditative experiences that I've had; in meditation I sometimes feel like I'm accessing a deeper layer of reality that is beyond words, but in this trip I felt like I was there for a timeless eternity of time.

Exp Year: 2021	ExpID: 115801

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 60

Published: Oct 6, 2021	Views: 1,165

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LSD (2) : General (1), Glowing Experiences (4), Sex Discussion (14), Guides / Sitters (39), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		 2 hits
		 oral
		 LSD

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   155 lb

___________________________________________________________

A Summary of my Experiences with LSD and its Spiritual Current

___________________________________________________________

Firstly, I should say that I don’t condone reliance on psychedelics as a means to experience the spiritual dimension (or the natural state, if spiritual dimension doesn’t work for you). An article I once read described acid as ‘a helicopter ride to the top of the mountain’, it shows you the peak, but you can’t stay long. You still have to climb the mountain yourself to be grounded in the experience, but these ‘helicopter rides’ can be an excellent source of inspiration to keep climbing. However, it is also in maintaining a practice of consciousness in daily life that we prime ourselves for, to quote Jesus, “the coming of the Kingdom”, which is more effortlessly found in acid. So this practice is the important element here, and therefore one should not become too reliant upon LSD.

Visuals

Many people who haven’t dropped acid, and perhaps some that have, believe it is the visuals, and not the experience, that is so fascinating about acid. This journal is not about the visual effects of acid, which it goes without saying are present in every trip. So I’d first like to describe some of the visual side effects of the drug.

Colors are more vivid. This is evident when looking at something like a flower or autumn leaves, which will never be more beautiful than through those lucid eyes. This is also evident when looking at a rock, and finding what once seemed grey is swimming the subtle spectrum of the rainbow. It’s also clear when looking in the mirror. All the subtle hues present in the skin leap forth like a painting.

Everything seems alive, it ‘breathes’ or ‘flows’ with a certain dynamism, even static objects. This can result in typical sights like breathing walls, and also in the dancing sea of colors of one’s face in the mirror. Sometimes this dynamism is more extreme and seems more like the object is sort of melting, and once it resulted in my Christmas tree swaying and churning in a bold dance.

___________________________________________________________

The First Trip

___________________________________________________________

Now, I suppose I should begin with a brief overview of my experiences on acid prior to the first spiritual experience. The first time was the most intense, I can only surmise that this was a combination of its novelty and the energy-level of the setting, which, with something like 8 people at my house that night, was understandably high. There were moments I termed “excitement grenades”, in which the circle of our babble would rise in energy level higher and higher, like a rollercoaster approaching the crest. Then boom!, straight down a hill, the volcano erupts, and the excitement explodes as the group scatters. We’d then coalesce again, and ask “What just happened? What just set us off?”

Prior, if I recall correctly, to these ‘excitement grenades’, the group collectively experienced a symptom I call “fizzling out”. We were in the kitchen, and there were perhaps three one-on-one conversations running simultaneously. You would listen to a conversation, and then realize, as the speaker rolled the sentences past, they gradually degraded, until he was speaking gibberish. You would then realize your sentences ended similarly, and I recall that it reminded me of being like a child, “reverting to the mind of a 5 year old”.

Later in the night the energy levels subsided, and a large portion of the trip was spent sprawled out in the den with the lights low, listening to music (obeying the necessary clichés, the music was Marley, and the room was lit by the glow of a lava lamp). It was at this point in the trip that I notice a deep peacefulness, a stillness. While we all would, at some point, invariably get caught up in conversations and chores and missions around the house, it was here that we laid such missions aside, quit trying to “do” or “solve” anything (for the trip was like a riddle with an answer perched forever on the tip of one’s tongue). In this room, in the low ebb of our energy, it was chill. The chillest that chill had ever been. There was just being, just enjoying, not trying or pursuing anything.

This, in its essence, was still an experience of that spiritual dimension, the natural state. But it was not the intimate experience of that state, it was in that state, but not in recognition of that state. That can be said of any moment of our lives I suppose, but it was here in the peaceful “stillness” of the room that I could ‘feel’ it’s presence, while in daily life we are almost always numb to it. It was in this sort of state that I, had I known what I was looking for, could probably have turned to face it, and experienced a “knowing” quite separate from the “feeling.”

___________________________________________________________

The Fist Intimation

___________________________________________________________

Before I start, I think I should explain the days leading up to the trip. Trips magnify whatever you bring into them, they amplify your current state. So here’s what I brought into this trip:

A week before I ‘dropped in’, I had a peculiar experience. I was laying in my bed (technically a couch) one night, staring up at the ceiling. All of a sudden it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was going to die. I don’t mean that I had an intellectual comprehension of this obvious fact, but that I felt this truth experientially. It was a sort of short-circuiting that bypasses the intellectual understanding of mortality, which can never really fully confront one‘s own impermanence. I would die. I would blink out of existence and never wake up, not the next day, not in ten billion years. Gone. The “I” that I knew myself to be would, someday soon (a day, 80 years, no real difference) cease to be, was no more permanent than a gust of air.

So there I was: twenty years old, and had just realized that I was temporal. And with this realization came a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety, a tension that I kept knotted up for a full weak, a burden that consumed every thought. It was this pressure, I believe, that built so much that when the acid finally washed me out, the weight of the fall made something snap, and for a brief moment, I knew intimately that-which-cannot-be-expressed.

That weekend after ‘hell week’, my friends and I were tripping with two of their friends, new acquaintances of mine. The acid had raised my spirits, and for once my mind could enjoy life without lamenting the temporality of it all. I left the group to go to the bathroom, which is where it happened. I know the bathroom is sort of a funny place to meet God, even more so if he greets you at the end of a piss, before you even get to shake. And that’s what happened.

Acid seems to increase my awareness of my body, and any tension my body is holding. Often it’s letting me know through my spine, a constant discomfort that a bipedal creature can learn to ignore, but never really escape. There’s nothing to do with tension but release it: by popping your back, sneezing, achieving orgasm, or pissing. So there I was, having just pissed, and with my hyperawareness of my body, I tried to relax a little further after the main event, to relax every muscles so that I emptied every last drop. And when I did so, when I fully released my muscles, I let go completely. I let go so thoroughly that something snapped, and I experience what Zen Buddhists would probably call ‘satori’, a brief flash of the other shore.

The next thing I knew, I was bawling my eyes out, gripping the sink. I looked up in the mirror. Tears were streaming down my face, but I had a deep sense of peace. Everything clicked, the fear that had been in the background had vanished completely. I walked out of the bathroom, but must have looked like quite a wreck, what with the weeping and all (another form of release, I might note). So they rushed me out of there so as not to cause a scene, and parked down the road while I tried to explain I was fine, and I stumbled awkwardly over trying to express what had just occurred.

___________________________________________________________

The Waterfall

___________________________________________________________

While I had accidentally stumbled upon, as Jesus called it, “the Kingdom of God”, in that bathroom that day, there was a later trip when I turned to it intentionally, and had my most intimate and sustained experience of that state that the sages and mystics knew well. I am reluctant to say that I ‘sought’ it, because it comes by grace and not by effort, though by our efforts we can make sure that the soil is fertile and the seed can take root. The days prior to this trip were quite peaceful, I had stopped getting stoned, and masturbating, and googling porn, and the like. I was more conscious in my daily life, and didn’t get caught up in internal monologues as frequently as is regular. It believe that it is because of this, and of course my setting (good, chill friends and the beauty of nature) that I was able to have such a profound and effortless experience of that stillness-of-stillnesses.

First, let me describe the setting, as it’s said every trip consists of [mind]set and setting. Four of us went, Me and three friends, one of them my girlfriend, the other two former roommates. These were all people that I knew well, trusted, and respected, and have a decent amount of overlap in mindsets. The location was a huge cave that sat beneath a waterfall, which emptied into a pool before continuing as a shallow creek. It was also our first time hiking out here, and I think novelty can aid the appreciation of beauty as well.

The trip began as usually, with the feeling of an enormous amount of energy surging up within oneself. It would occasionally (rather often, actually) escape in fits of giggles, the only seeming way to release this energy buildup. This energy one feels is a bit difficult to describe, but it’s almost as if there’s more than your body can hold, like the energy is pushing against the borders of your form, like a chick just before hatching. I retrospectively decided that this energy, this tension, is probably resistance to Being, to the state I will try to relate to you. It’s a necessary part of the trip, and perhaps what Tolle referred to when he spoke of the ‘violence’ that he felt on LSD. It is the buildup before the plunge, when gravity pulls you to the bottom.

We decided to go for a hike, in an effort to channel and subdues the tumult that arose within our cores. It was successful, and we the fits of giggling and laughter became more sporadic. The energy had been channeled, outward into the world. Next would come its inward journey, the journey Home. After walking along the pebbles of the creekbed for a ways, we decided to return to the campsite. My girlfriend remained, and I didn’t wait for her, as I could clearly sense that she wanted a lower energy level than could be found in a group of four, and would prefer to be alone. I myself had at times felt the longing to be alone, to let the energy level come to a standstill. I refer to this longing as Gravity, or Psychic Gravity, or the Pull. I refer to it in a poem as “I looked at you/ and you returned my gaze”. Some describe it as being pulled toward an abyss, a black hole, or a void.

By the time we had returned to the camp, the Pull had become overpowering, and I told my friends that I thought she had the right idea, and I was going up the hill to be alone. When I had finally found a secluded spot among the trees and stony hillside, I let myself sink down to that place called the Tao by some. Everyone has different analogies and visual images for this experience, mine seems to be sinking. Think of everyday, non-lucid life (being rooted in the thinking and reasoning mind, susceptible to desires and emotions and various acts of the will) to be the sloshing surface of a river current. The Pull draws one from that surface, toward the total stillness of the Riverbed. It’s the innermost heart of man, preceding all else, The Source, The Substrate. It is the Substrate not just of oneself, but of all that is, be they other people, other animals, or ‘inanimate’ forms. All rise from this point, and eventually all will sink back into it. It is the point of birth and death.

Eventually my friend, who had also gone to spend time alone, walked past my meditation perch. We locked eyes for an instant, and I knew, could feel, that he had just risen from the place I’d been, that he had experienced the same state. Later, all four of us would try to express the state to one another, to communicate it in some way, but it is, by its nature, impossible of being communicated. When we locked eyes, we knew nothing needed to be said, there was no desire to communicate it at this point. We just knew it, and knew the other knew as well.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 91467

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 21

Published: Oct 10, 2021	Views: 1,145

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LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Mystical Experiences (9), Retrospective / Summary (11), General (1)


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

		   T+ 9:36
		 1 tablet
		 oral
		 Pharms - Diazepam

11:13: I'm in my room, which is bathed in morning sun. About 90 seconds ago I placed beneath my tongue a hit of acid, the first I've ever taken. My understanding is that it contains a dose of 125 micrograms, although I know I can't be sure.

As far as my 'set' is concerned, I guess I feel alright. My last meal was 14 or 15 hours ago. I'm listening to Trane's Sun Ship.

11:23: I think that one of the trickiest aspects of this trip will be keeping the tab in place. I should be better at this, shouldn't I, given my familiarity with the sublingual route of administration.

11:28: Already I feel different somehow. This music -- "Attaining" -- is hospitable.

11:38: I'm experiencing butterflies so strong that I had to sit down. It's like their giant wings are abrading my insides as they flutter.

12:04: I feel anxious, and unsteady on my feet, but at the same time I'm beginning to feel orgasmic. I realise that is far too crude a word -- too trite, too clumsy.

12:25: I feel amazing -- like a coiled spring. The tensity, and the sheer pleasure of that tensity. This music -- Bicep -- is almost too much to bear. I think it would be folly to try to step out of this experience in order to describe it. Just feel, mate, feel. There's no need to record everything.

12:28: I am positively vibrating. It's like I want to burst out of myself.

12:59: I'm feeling no less euphoric. The visuals are really beginning now. My carpet squirms with fractals. The tab -- a little mushy now -- is still beneath my tongue.

13:02: This screen is bulging and pulsing and warping, and fractals try to impose themselves upon it. Nothing is static; everything seems viscous. Is some of my physical energy starting to dissipate now? Will it give way to (greater) mentation?

13:27: I realise now that I am in the hands of a very powerful instrument. These visuals are unlike anything I've ever experienced before, but it's the mental aspect of the trip that threatens to overwhelm me. Looked at one way I'm just in a particularly elevated form of my usual hyper-anxious state.

13:43: I could allow myself to be shredded by this substance, but the effects it's producing in me -- aren't they sort of, well, normal? They're nothing I can't deal with; they're not telling me anything about myself that I don't already know. Perhaps they should be? I'm struck by the banality of these words -- their limpness compared to what I'm going through right now -- the ultra-heightened state of my sensorium.

I'm struck by the banality of these words -- their limpness compared to what I'm going through right now -- the ultra-heightened state of my sensorium.

13:53: Pondering the impossibility or otherwise of truly relating to other human beings. Understanding it's a hunger that cannot be sated.

13:55: One of the powers of this drug is that it's forcing me to identify and confront what is most ugly in me.

13:59: I think a lot of my ugliness stems from my desire to be a 'man'.

14:04: If only I could jettison that desire and all that clings to it.

There is also the matter of my physical ugliness, but isn't it pointlessly masochistic to flog that dead horse? I look at myself in the mirror, albeit from a distance. I see self-evolving variations on a fundamental ugliness. Some more attractive than others, but isn't that the point?

14:15: Why do I want to be a 'man'? Insecurity. Uncertainty. My stature. My background, and the effect this had -- continues to have? -- on my socialisation.

14:20: It'd be criminal to trip without listening to Shpongle. For a decade their music (among other things) has sustained the flame of my desire to trip. I'm therefore going to try as best I can to muffle my thoughts for a while and luxuriate in "Monster Hit".

14:23: There's no such thing as a prelapsarian time as far as the self is concerned.  I can pretend that x was the case before I did y or went and said z, but the reality is that my entire history has been stained with embarrassment and the embarrassment of embarrassments. What is it that Alain Leroy mumbles when he staggers sweating from the restroom? 'The humiliation of it all.'

All this, then, points -- and can only point -- to one end. 'Suicide has the power to transfigure life, with all its quotidian mess, its conflicts, its ambivalences, its disappointments, its unfinished business, its 'waste and fever and heat' -- into a stone-cold myth'. The sentence -- Fisher's -- rings coldly, sardonically even.

For in the final analysis, a myth is what it is. The paraphernalia of suicide can be glamorous, but it barely conceals the sordidness of the act itself, the desperation.

14:34: I'm not overly concerned or distressed by my thought-processes. I guess it's good -- or not so good -- to know that they continue to revolve around the same sick ideas.

14:43: My black skinny jeans lie in a heap on the floor. I can't help but see them as a pile of rags containing the gaunt dead body of a thing I couldn't really call a baby.

15:04: Can I believe that nearly four hours have passed since I put that square of blotter-paper underneath my tongue? It's still there, by the way.

15:08: Promise. Collapsing. Inexorably. And then, always, the logic of suicide, like a stain I can't scrub away.

15:15: I carry around with me the 'energy', or whatever it is, of Death. I am a 'gnawing little negation' -- and destined always to be so.

15:19: I'm poring over a Basquiat, namely Riding with Death (1988). It astonishes me -- the sheer fucking fatalism of it. Here we have a work which sees its creator prophesy, with stark and sombre certitude, the event of his imminent death (and imminent it was).

15:20: It's funny to think now about how good I felt during the early stages of this trip. I felt blissful. I want to recapture some of that euphoria now, more than four hours after dosing.

15:32: I turn off the music, lay down on my bed and close my eyes.

15:54: I thought I would get some food, so I went into the kitchen. A was in there packing away her things. I told her I was tripping. With the wisdom of one who has been in my current position many times before, she recommended that I go out for a walk and into nature, which I will do once I've finished eating these bran flakes.

15:57: I'm reading all about coelacanths. What bizarre fucking creatures.

17:11: The only thing that drugs reveal to me is the stubbornness of what I knew already.

17:14: The curse of not quite belonging in the world. That feeling never goes away -- it's like I'm a left foot in a right shoe.

17:21: There is a tranquility now though, as I sit pharoah-like on my graffiti-blazoned throne. Watching the waters of the canal, flecked as they are by points of sunlight. Attuned to the existence of the littlest insect but not desirous of human company. I should have come out sooner than I did.

20:37: The three preceding entries were composed as memos on my phone, for I had by that time ventured up Three Mill Lane and then along the "River" Lea. I walked for a while before sitting down to think -- think hard -- and take in some lingering visuals.

20:49: I've showered, changed and changed my bed-sheets. I've taken most of a Valium and had plenty of water. But I'm still not back to baseline. A said to me a few hours ago that tripping on acid is a 'commitment'. She is so right.

Life could have been so easy. I could have just done what my parents wanted for me. 'No flowers grow upon busy machinery', but at least that machinery would have worked.

20:55: I need some time to digest this trip -- to understand its meaning. But at the same time I reckon I'll be able to get up tomorrow and dismiss it and go about my business. I know exactly why -- vide some of my earlier entries.

Ten hours after lift-off, I'll finish this trip report by quoting Fisher again: '[d]epression is not sadness, not even a state of mind, it is a (neuro)philosophical (dis)position.'

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 115915

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 25

Published: Nov 21, 2021	Views: 1,300

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LSD (2) : General (1), First Times (2), Mystical Experiences (9), Music Discussion (22), Guides / Sitters (39), Various (28)