		 DOSE:

		 4 lines
		 insufflated
		 Cocaine
		 (powder / crystals)

		 2.6 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   105 lb

The following is a recount of my experiences on the night of 2/12/08 and the subsequent morning. While I remember most of the night in vivid detail, I include only parts of the trip here for the sake of brevity.

It was a boring Tuesday night and my friends S__ and J__ and I were hanging out in my dorm room feeding off of each other’s depression. Our first mistake was in deciding that cocaine would cure our ills. At around 7:00PM we began our yip-fest and over the next 30 to 45 minutes finished what J__ had with him, probably around 1.5 grams. After smoking lots of cigarettes, conversing at a mile a minute, and blasting hard techno on my sound system for a bit, we returned once again to the subject of our boring lives and more pertinent, the prospect of our quickly worsening Tuesday night.

Out of coke and about to come down, we searched for other drugs to stave off the crash;

ordinarily we would have gotten drunk, but once the conversation moved to the 8 hits of notably strong LSD in my freezer, I knew there was no turning back. Still high on coke, we made the executive decision to split the 8 strip of thick white blotter paper between the three of us (2 and 2/3 hits each) and thus began our trip at about 8:00PM.

I suggested that we begin the come-up in the dark to the cliché yet exquisite sounds of dark side of the moon and thus began the spiritual journey. At the time, I had taken LSD in between 30 and 40 times, often several hits at once, but had never tripped as hard as I did then. I suspect now that the paper we ate that fateful night was more potent than the stuff I was used to, which combined with the quantity set me up for failure. I can usually detect the bright fuzzy colors and stomach-swelling of a come up around 30-40 minutes after I have dosed, but this time I experienced a sickening distortion in the pit of my gut halfway through ‘on the run’ only 15-20 minutes after taking the hits.

We turned the lights back on and agreed that the trip was unexpectedly intense and that we would be in for a long night. After realizing that by taking the elevator, we would risk riding with sober people, we elected to take the 15 flights of stairs down to street level. Upon breaking out into the open, I remembered that New York was at the time amidst a blizzard, and we stared around in mildly apprehensive bewilderment at the chaotic scene of downtown Manhattan. After briefly attempting to light a cigarette, I threw it to the ground and closed my eyes overcome with the intensity of the body high. I looked up to the black sky as a thick ethereal breeze engulfed my body and swirled around me, then back at my friends as our gazes met, all slack jawed, our bodies awkwardly rigid.

We realized that negotiating with the security in my building for every cigarette break or adventure would be impossible and that we would have to relocate our trip. Considering the hostile outdoor environment, we decided to hike to the apartment of one of J__’s friends, M__. The 10 block excursion was nerve wracking but amazing. We all concurred that we had never tripped close to that hard and that we were uneasy about the prospect of being in that state all night. We arrived at the apartment but were told that we had to leave for an hour because our host would be busy with something personal.

It was as we left that I became aware that something was amiss with my mental state and ability to function adequately. In attempting to explain the ground breaking conclusions I was reaching with every passing second, my friends stared at me blankly or laughed. I realized that once an idea crossed the boundary between thought and words, it completely fell apart and made no rational sense to others. The result was that I would begin to explain something but stop mid sentence after either realizing its lack of coherency or forgetting what I was talking about.

We settled down in the warmth of a subway station on a wooden bench and gawked at the aliens making their way to and fro for a small while, and then set about determining the time that had passed. All three of us were quite uneasy about being in public and couldn’t wait to return to the warmth and seclusion of M__’s apartment. I was aware of the phenomenon of being slightly confused and spacey while tripping, but we were hopeless. I determined that our two primary goals were to one, figure out what time it was, and two, figure out what time we had left the apartment. But this was no use; we were so distracted that we struggled with the concept for what must have been close to 20 minutes before giving up and venturing outside once again.

After standing soaking wet in the snow and mind-numbing winds and intermittently grappling with the confusion of a phone conversation with M__, our ticket out of the frosty hell, we made it back to the apartment on time. I had a briefly terrifying moment before going inside in which I convinced myself that another tenant of the building had called the cops on account of our suspiciously psychotic behavior loitering by the doorway. As a result, I took off and booked it down the street chased by swirling blue and red lights and sirens before my friends caught up with me and dragged me out of my delusion and back into the building.

I was so thankful to be inside that I lay face-down on the floor for a while enjoying the ripples of energy coursing through the wood and the explosions of color inside my eyelids. We conversed for a bit but the more time I spent thinking, the less I could speak. I would sit in the corner and become immersed in someone’s conversation, forgetting my physical existence completely. I would often misinterpret and twist the subject of someone’s discussion to be that of some unexplained grave danger that we were in, like when I thought the cops were chasing us. I asked everyone in the room several times, “is it serious?” after greatly misjudging the severity of a look of disappointment or frustration on someone’s face.

I was startled when M__, our babysitter asked me if I was ok, because up to that point I had assumed my state was no worse than that of my friends. This experience became the spawn of a rain of doubt regarding my sanity. Only a minute or so of deep thought after this statement, she opened her mouth to speak to me again but her voice slowed and then sped up as if being scratched on a record, rendering her words then, and all speech thereafter, completely unintelligible to me. This freaked me out beyond belief as I had never experienced hallucinations of this severity, so I stood up abruptly and looked around to see how my friends were reacting to the craziness, but was met only with concerned stares.

As my subconscious raged forward, dragging me from thought to thought with uncontrollable speed, I found myself getting so caught up in my own hypothetical situations that I lost track of which ‘reality’ was accurate and which were just my wandering guesses as to what could happen. In an attempt to back-track along my rapid chain reaction of delusions to reality, I just became more lost in my brain’s muddled theories—all of my senses completely consumed by each hallucination. My world of suppositions manifested itself visually as a sort of ‘electric sheep’-esque jumble of neon lines, ever twisting and morphing 3-dimensionally with new branches of possible scenarios multiplying by the millions, each fading in and out super-imposed over the others.

I very quickly deduced that I had gone mad. I thought that insanity was just a jolt slightly out of one’s native reality; this offset forced me to float endlessly along the infinite rift never knowing quite which parallel reality was the real one, but always just one step behind. This idea fit in with the conception that whenever a decision is made, a new parallel universe spawns for each possibility. This results in a tree of absolutely unfathomable size of which our universe is only the end of one twig at any given point in time. I had always wondered about those who talk to imaginary people on the subway, and it all became clear that night. I thought I was a new member of the club and we would all share this disconnect from reality together.

I had momentary visions of staring up from a stretcher and seeing my parents leaning over me, silhouetted by the bright hospital lights. I assumed that I would only have these momentary glimpses of my original reality but would be mostly trapped in my dysfunctional brain for the rest of my life. I saw a masked doctor with thin spectacles approaching my face with a long thin glass tube and I gagged as he forced it down my throat. I was blinded as the world filled up with brilliant white light and multicolored stars arcing over my field of vision, and my ears began to ring as the volume of my roaring auditory hallucinations peaked. I felt like sobbing but could not make a sound, I had let my family down—I took too many drugs and now it was too late—I would never see them again.

Evidently, my two tripping companions were so freaked out that they tried to call 911, but were fortunately dissuaded by our host, who had seen the effect before and knew that time was the only cure. In retrospect, a trip to the local emergency room would not have helped things. They held my hands and called to me trying to catch my wandering gaze, but I just stared off into the cosmos, my head wobbling slightly. I proceeded to spend the next few hours navigating my alien planet trying to find a way out, whilst my friends periodically beckoned to me in vain staring in to my (un)seeing eyes.

After a while, I reasoned that I was, and always had been, a single consciousness separate from or devoid of all senses—a brain in a jar, and thus effectively alone in the universe. I thought that because I had discovered this sickening truth, I could never forget and go back. I felt my stomach drop upon the realization that all of my friends and family had always been simply creations of my own disturbed mentality, but even more so that I would be alone for all of eternity with only my thoughts to accompany me. My friends tell me that I staggered around the room while moving my arms as if climbing through a dense jungle, and made futuristic spacey sounds with my mouth which I perceived then to be the noise of passing fluidly between thousands of layers of realities.

From the outside, I was apparently speaking gibberish under my breath and roaming around the room agitatedly. But on the inside, I was walking around what I believed to be my own imagination staring with longing sadness at the ideas that I had mistaken to be my friends all my life. As I had aged, my brain fashioned a different interpretation for every concept that I learned, each experience and companion becoming a stepping stone in what I perceived to be the story of my life. Unfortunately, that day my compounded knowledge was finally broad enough to allow me to realize the gravity of the situation, and I would have to live with this reality for all of eternity.

I thought back on all the memories I had amassed laughing, playing, and arguing with friends with a mixture of longing grief and horrifying revulsion. The truth was too much; I thought about how I had taken my reality-based life for granted dreading only petty grievances but had never even come close to guessing the severity of my fate. Fairly early on this nightmare, I completely forgot that LSD was at all involved as I was for some reason completely convinced and thus consumed by the anguish of meeting my grim fate. This almost immediate irrational loss of hope could probably be explained by the come down from the coke.

After about an hour and a half, some more friends were invited over and started drinking. My friends tell me that I interacted vaguely with the inebriated newcomers staring blankly or pointing and mumbling to myself. I remember wishing so intensely for the end of my terrifying trip that I tried to terminate my life, realizing to my dismay that a being cannot manipulate its own tangible existence if it has no physical ties to reality. While I was sitting on the couch, my friend handed me a cup of water but I tried to dive into it hoping it to be a portal out of my insanity. In reality, I just pressed my hands together pointing into the cup as if to dive into it, and spilled it all over myself and the bed I was sitting on. A couple people thought I had pissed myself but after relocating me to the floor and smelling the sheets, they deduced that it was just water from the cup.

I also became very hot and restless as I had been constantly clenching my muscles in torment, so I attempted to walk through my clothes, which seemed reasonable at the time. In reality, however, I just pulled and twisted at my clothes for about 20 minutes until I managed to get my jacket, hoodie, and shirt off. I then sat half-naked on the couch staring into space and sporadically burying my face in my hands and the armrest. My experience here was a strange and seemingly random fluctuation from extreme euphoria more intense than even any roll I have ever had, and unexplained mental agony more intense and horrible than anything I had ever experienced. I believe this to be the deepest part of the trip as my malfunctioning cortex reached a peak of chaos and misfiring neurons.

By far the worst part of the trip, this odd split-second oscillation lasted for what seemed to be an eternity while I frantically grappled with my quickly scarring brain trying anything that I thought might have even a remote chance of alleviating my state. Retrospectively, one of the scariest aspects of my night is that I knew I would give anything to die, and could have seriously hurt myself or worse. Believing that I had been not only myself but everyone else in my life growing up, I thought that regaining a sense of identity might help. I was surprised and momentarily calmed to read familiar names in the contact list of my phone after taking it out of my pocket, and put the device in my mouth in a desperate attempt to consume this pleasing reality.

Searching for patterns in the fluctuations, I thought for a bit that subject of my thoughts had an obscure and twisted relationship with the state of my mood and tried to figure out the nature of the pattern. I passed rapidly over random concepts and words in my mind and spoke them aloud in order to try and instigate a mental reaction, stopping briefly on obscure and sweeping concepts that seemed to resonate such as three, life, music, love, and god. The only consistent correlation I found, however, was between focused thinking and better mental stability. I found that if I gave up and let go, my subconscious was allowed complete control of my focus sending me spiraling through a vortex of bizarre and disturbing images and thoughts, while if I made a significant effort to focus my energy on a rational idea or memory desperately staving off distraction, I was more calm and level-headed. This balance was manifested visually as a slippery balance beam that I was charged to walk along, weary though I was, without sliding down the sharp slopes into the infinite abyss on either side; it is reminiscent of grinding a rail in Tony Hawk.

After about five total hours of feverish schizo-hell, to everyone’s surprise and relief, I managed to blurt out in comprehensible English that I was going to go home. Intending to rush to the dorms before I lost my sense of reality once again, I opened the apartment door and stumbled down the stairs of the building outside into the cold. S__, who lived in my dorm as well pulled on his shoes and took off in hot pursuit, believing me to be the victim of some terrifying delusion that might chase me in front of a speeding taxi or into a couple of cops. I slowed to a brisk walk and he caught up.

I said “man I feel like I just woke up” twice but otherwise, we finished the 25 minute walk in silence trudging through the icy sludge. For the duration of the walk I assumed the worst, expecting not to reach my dorms on account of not being back in reality yet.

He asked if I wanted to make some pasta as we entered the elevator in our building, but I responded that I wasn’t hungry and really just needed to pass out. Before departing at his floor, I told him that I would be curious to find out his side of the story the next morning and that I would divulge mine as well. I was confused when I came to realize that I was definitely in reality because I couldn’t remember a clear-cut point at which I came back. I just knew that I was gone, and then I noticed that I was back, so a large part of what I had assumed to be delusion could have actually been real.

Surprisingly, though I was still tripping, I had little trouble falling into a light restless sleep, probably on account of my extreme fatigue. About four hours later, I woke up to my alarm and had to go to physics class. I felt displaced and uncomfortable all day as if I was still not totally sure I was in the correct parallel universe, and had great difficulty communicating with my friends normally.

A mild after-image of this feeling stuck with me for about a month before it faded to a mostly unnoticeable level. I also had nightmares for several weeks and was worried for a while that my brain had been permanently damaged. I made several mistakes that night and consider it without doubt to be the worst night of my life, but at the same time value the things I learned about myself greatly. If confronted with those decisions again, I would definitely act differently, however I do not regret the night as I feel it shaped a part of who I am now. I was humbled by the experience and treat drugs differently now. I value my sanity and embrace life knowing that it was just a nightmare. I treat others differently as my ability to empathize was greatly augmented when I perceived all others to be part of my own consciousness.

Not to be pious or cliché, but I realize more now that everything is a matter of perception; if one experiences what he/she believes to be absolute fact, there is always another angle from which there is a different and equally valid truth.

I tried one hit of acid five weeks later and found it to be a stressful situation not worth the trouble. I had to concentrate heavily to hold on to reality and even lost it for about 30 minutes 2 or three hours into the trip before I was able to grab hold again. I have decided that I have reached my threshold and can therefore no longer enjoy tripping on acid.

In addition, I consider LSD to now be a danger to my mental health and will not do it again. I am disappointed greatly because of my prior love of the drug, but am content with the fact that I am probably better off without its presence in my life. I would recommend nothing but extreme moderation with regard to LSD. Before this trip, I had countless wonderful and enlightening experiences with acid and I thought I knew its power. I had even seen other people go ‘round the bend, but assumed naïvely that I was above all that. At this point in time, two of my friends have had similar experiences and cannot enjoy acid anymore either. The chemical has perplexed scientists for decades with its unpredictability and extreme potency, and it has been suggested that it can push people with a possible predisposition over the edge into permanent schizophrenia.

I consider myself lucky to be ok now, because by the time you find out that you have a schizoid predisposition, it may be too late. My dad’s half-sister died in a mental institution, and it is believed that she was thrown into schizophrenia by LSD use.

From my personal experience with LSD, I would suggest that one of the only ways to keep one grounded in reality is to keep his/her mind working. If you or a friend is slipping away, thinking and most importantly conversing with others actively can be very effective.

I have tried mushrooms and MDA in moderate doses since without any sort of schizophrenic psychosis. I believe LSD itself to be my problem, not tripping.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 70185

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Jun 4, 2009	Views: 77,950

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LSD (2) : Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Post Trip Problems (8), Overdose (29), Bad Trips (6), Difficult Experiences (5), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		   repeated
		 inhaled
		 Nitrous Oxide
		 (gas)

		   repeated
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   140 lb

I have quite probably taken more Nitrous (at least in Whippit form) than anyone else alive. So I feel compelled to share with all of you - my experience.

Excessive Nirous Oxide abuse can cause permanent irreversible brain damage. I am Patient Zero, so please, everyone, read this all the way. If I had been fortunate enough to read what I am about to write, 30 years ago, my life would be very, very different. I could just post the facts, but if you will walk with me through my life, you need never run the risk of having what happened to me, happen to you. If you are a serious Nitrous user, reading this could help save your life. It's going to be quite long - but it is important to me to paint the whole picture. I also hope that it might prove entertaining - and some of you might recognize yourselves in the narrative - and those who feel a sympathy with my feelings - those who relate to my expression and understanding - those who think yes, Yes, YES!! are the ones who need to read this the most - as you are in the greatest danger - or could be if you are not careful. I am being honest about some stuff that I have hidden from others all my life - some of it is quite embarrassing - but I choose to share the humourous aspect with you all. I can't be the *only* lunatic in the world.

This is *not* an anti-Nitrous post. This is information that has only recently become available. Personally I wish our atmosphere was Oxygen and Nitrous Oxide instead of Oxygen and Nitrogen. So without further ado...

The tale begins in the dentists chair. I was 9 years old. I had never taken any drugs, and was not looking to at the time. But I had a phobia about dental work, and the new dentist told me that he would give me 'laughing gas', and it would remove my fear. So he attached the mask to my nose and told me to breathe normally. After about 20 seconds I began to feel a tingle, quite pleasant, which was getting stronger with each passing second. The dentist asked me if I could feel the gas yet - and a drug addict was born. I told him 'No, I don't feel anything', so he turned it up. By now I was really starting to feel *amazing* - it was fantastic. But it was more than just tingles and physical well being. Even though I was only 9, I started seeing patterns - in everything - a deeper connection - set of connections - a lattice that embraced reality, but which had a meaning - a message - beneath the surface - something *important*. The dentist asked me once more if I felt the gas. I told him that it was starting to take effect, but was not very strong - despite the fact that I could barely string the sentence together - as I wanted him to turn it up even more - which he did. The last thing I remember hearing was the dentist saying to the nurse, 'This one likes to fly high'.

From that moment, I knew that I had to obtain Nitrous Oxide again at some point. I had imaginings of listening to music while feeling that way and how awesome it would be (and I was right, of course). It stuck there - in my memory - unforgettable - I was 9 - and I no longer saw the universe the way that I had before.

Jump ahead 11 years. I'm 20, and I found acid about six months earlier. I'm in Amsterdam, having left South Africa to avoid military service. I'm a musician and making a living playing street music. We're on acid all the time, taking larger and larger doses each time. It's classic. I'm the messiah and I'm going to save the world by turning everyone onto LSD. I'm Ken Kesey, I'm Ram Dass, I'm Neal Cassidy driving the bus to the next Acid Test. I'm on a mission. I have found the ultimate truth, and I believe that I have the ability to express it. It's straight out of the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I am The Merry Prankster - doing ever increasing doses of LSD because I believe that there is a reality behind this one, and I am going to evolve and become a transformed being - a metamorphosized, evolutionised, mental telepathical Guru. I even have a following. There are 5 of us - and I am the leader. I'm the fucking chosen one. This is why I am alive - this is why I exist - I am the new Messiah!@!

It's funny looking back on it now - a bit embarrassing (OK - a lot) - and I have never told *anyone* about this before - like who would admit this shit - but it's important to paint the whole picture.

But LSD is not a beast to be tamed. Oh, I *believed* that I was in control of the acid - that *I* held the reigns. I had become its master, and its servant. But I was treating it disrespectfully - and when you do that, the Acid inevitable turns around and slaps you down a peg or two. In my case it was all the way down from my lofty delusions of grandeur, to a smear on the roadside. A new acid had come out - called simply 'Mandala' (Amsterdam 1981). The dealer told me that it was not 'commercial' acid, a bit stronger. And to boot, a *half* a hit was a whole. I had been dropping between 5 and 10 at a time, and I did not assume that this half hit of new acid was going to top my multiple ingestions from the weeks before.

But I learned that day that what I had been taking was not truly LSD - but a pale shadow of what *real* LSD is. All my research - all my dosing - nothing - had prepared me for what happened. It was *phenomenal* acid - I had never seen such colours - and it warped dimensions that I did not recognise anything around me. It was too much for downtown Amsterdam, so we all jumped on a tram, laughing uncontrollably all the way home. Once home it was even stronger, having really kicked in. I made a big hashish pipe and took a huge hit of really good Afgan hash.

And then I completely lost my mind.

I had to reconstruct it all afterward, with the help of my friends. There was a huge flash - and reality had shattered - literally. It was as though everything I had been seeing was made of glass - like a mirror, and the hashish exploded the acid so hard and fast, that I suffered a psychotic break. More to the point - from one moment to the next I had total amnesia. I was with my closest friends - a girl who had come over to Europe with me who was like my sister - I had known them all for years - but I recognized no-one. And I did not know who I was - or where I was (and I don't mean which town - I mean which *Universe*). I was a total blank - wiped clean - nothing left. I realized that I was bleeding - in my throat - it had turned to glass - and shattered - blood was everywhere, and my life started slipping away - I collapsed slowly to the floor - and died.

However, a while later I appeared to be conscious. SO this was it - I was dead. This must then be the afterlife. A man walked up to me and looked at me curiously - and then said 'Are you OK?' But what I heard was 'A R E Y O U O K A Y' in a kind of deep Twilight Zone surrealism. Who *was* this person. If I was dead - perhaps he was me - a reflection of me - on the other side of the shattered mirror that was reality - so I said 'Who *are* you?' And he said to me 'You know who I am' - which I heard in a big boomy voice as 'Y O U K N O W W H O I A M!!!' The poor guy - he didn't have a clue what was going on - none of them had actually realized yet that I had quite literally lost my mind - all of it. So I deduced that if he were me - a kind of 'afterlife' version - that we would have the same mother as I - so in an attempt to confirm this I asked him 'who is your mother', to which he replied 'You know who my mother is...' which I heard as....

OK - you get the picture. I treated LSD as though it was something that I actually had control over - that I was bigger than Acid - that I was beyond a bad trip. I will end this part of the tale of this day here, but know that it took the rest of the day to reconstruct my *basic* ego - just knowing who and where I was. I still felt broken glass in my throat from where it had shattered when the 'mirror' shattered. I could no longer sing. When I tried I was overwhelmed by an abject terror, and shut down. It was weeks before I could sing again (which I needed to do to survive) - and I continued to have terrifying Flashbacks for the next 6 months.

This was the most phenomenally life-changing experience of my entire life. I was afraid - afraid to do acid - I had been so humbled - so beaten - so kicked in the teeth - any 'normal' person would have just said 'That's it! Never again!!'. But I could not do that - live in fear the rest of my life, because i had experienced this overwhelming and incomprehensible annihilation of ego. I had to face my fear. I had to get back in the driver's seat - I had to understand what had happened in order to be whole again. And there was born a true and devout Acidhead - for life (still going strong). I needed to *understand* myself - how my brain worked - and LSD was the tool that had both damaged and which would repair me.

The experience kind of put a crimp in my plan to save the world, as I realized that it was *completely* unethical to turn anyone on unless they truly desired to be turned on. It was a full year before in mid winter, Christmas time in Konstanz, Germany, that I did my next truly superb LSD - only this one was as soft as the other one had been hard - and finally - utterly high, I looked in the mirror and was no longer afraid. I finally had all of my mind back - and my fear was gone (but my respect has never faltered).

And now the long awaited return to the topic of Nitrous Oxide.

WHo would have thought - who would have guessed - that Nitrous Oxide - laughing gas - was used to make whipped cream. I found out from a young freakzoid heroin junkie in germany - that 'whippits' were Nitrous. Finally!! The 9 year old boy in me shouted in glee. I knew it. I knew I would find it again. And this time I was going to really get to know it. I remember buying the whipped cream machine, and a box of the cartriges - I remember my total excitement - my fear of disappointment - what if he was wrong? I wound in the first cartridge (neglecting of course to add the cream). I hyperventilated for a minute, breathed all the way out, and inhaled the entire contents. Within 5 to 10 seconds I recognized the feeling - my insides screamed in glee - and for the next minute my world was perfect. it was exactly as I had remembered it - only more so (I have since figured out through much experience that the reason that breathing Nitrous Oxide through a whipped cream syphon is so much stronger than from a tank is because it is *compressed* in the machine. It's like taking Methamphetamine instead of plain old Amphetamine. I also learned over time that I can load about 2 to 3 cartridges into the machine before breathing - and that the more compressed the gas, the more intense and powerful the rush).

This is my encapsulated life story, so I have to jump to pivotal moments if I am going to keep your attention. Let's just say that over the course of the next year I did *hundreds* of boxes of Nitrous - maybe a thousand. And the more I explored the Nitrous reality the more sense it made - of everything. I was starting to feel that I understood the intrinsic nature of the universe - not just in the sense of thoughts - but in perceptions - understandings. There were times - and I am sure that most of you can relate - when I felt that for a moment I *truly* understood the universe - as it *really* was - and it was *so* simple - and funny - fucking hilarious!! I would experience the moment and crack up laughing uncontrollably - because I understood the core of the essence of God - the universe - matter, gravity, light, energy, quanta.

But as we all know - the profundity of Nitrous is fleeting, and after the epiphony it fades so quickly that one can't quite remember what it was that one was thinking - and why it was so funny. This, I found to be the curse of Nitrous - to have this understanding - so plain and simple - even expressible in mere words - if I could find them - or once found, if I could not lose them. How, I wondered, can we extend this experience - make the come down slower so that it would be possible to bring back some of this universal intrinsic truth to the real world.

On a beautiful summers day of 1982, I discovered the chemical synergy that I have affectionately referred to for the last 30 years as 'GASCID' - as in Gas and Acid = Gascid. And from that moment, my life changed almost as profoundly as the day I lost my mind - because it was the day that I found my answers - all of them.

I had done some acid - not a lot - maybe half a hit. I was still very cautious, after my annihilation a year earlier, and the theory was twofold. If I did Nitrous right at the end of an acid trip - like 8 hours into it - when everything had resolved on the Acidic level, perhaps a) the Nitrous would boost the strength of the acid to give me a momentary high that was like 5 or 10 hits of *really* good acid - and b) that perhaps the acid, would help to extend the duration of the Nitrous, and give me a little more time to try and bring back some of the deeper essence of the experience.

I was extremely careful. I'd lost my mind once already, and I was not keen on a second round. My first hit was miniscule. There was a very slight shift in my perceptions. I took a little more and felt the Nitrous very vaguely, but in a way like never before - and in a good way like I had never imagined. By the time I was on the last cartridge, I took the entire thing, and I experienced for the first time in my life, the Holy Realm that is Gascid.

The world that is Gascid is a story unto itself with so many facets. I am not going to try and define any of the experiences right now - too much of a tangent. I became a student of Gascid. I had found what was - at least for me - *the* key that unlocks the doors to everything - and more importantly, it was the most exquisite experience that can be. It is heaven to me - a perfect state of being - the thing that we all at the core wish to experience - even once.

I had found the key - a gateway - a wormhole to what has for me become not so much a drug synergy as an actual *place*. I devoted my life to this 'faith' of mine - and my quest was to bring back some of these truths, and to find a way to share them with others - which I did in fact accomplish. I have kind of built an environment that almost *guarantees* arriving at this place. There is technology involved - it's all very complicated.

But this post is not about Gasid - it's about Nitrous, and the risks.

Over the next 12 years, I did Gascid about 500 times (and we're talking full blown 4 hour experiences with like 10 boxes of Nitrous each time). It is my world - my reality - my Guru - my god - and myself. I have no doubts - no hesitation - no lack of understanding - and it just got better all the time, as I learned to 'pilot' this space/time/ship that I built over the course of those 12 years.

I eventually left Europe and moved to Canada, got a new life and a new wife, and continued building and discovering. It was very hard at times. Terribly lonely. From my perspective I had found *the* answer. And what's more is I could pretty much prove it. And took a few select people on a trip around the universe. But it was *so* lonely. All I wanted to do was share what I had found. But very few people knew about Nitrous back then. I began to get adamant about finding proof - finding a way to bring back something significant enough that would *make* people take me seriously. I knew that if I told this all to a shrink that I would be labelled a schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur. But *I* knew that all a doubter had to do was come for a ride and see for himself. They would find their own truth - not mine - everyone has their own truth. All I had found was the medium in which to fairly reliably produce a very specific experience - and to be able to return and continue the thought - any time.

I was frustrated. My wife was not too supportive of this - and I wanted her on my side, so I tried even harder to find some tangible evidence that the work that I was doing was valid - telepathy - psychokenesis - some small evolutionary step that would demonstrate that what I was doing was *valid* - and that I was not just another nutter who did too many psychedelics.

This was the time that I almost completed my space/time/ship. It was an entire room, with a 'drivers seat' positioned in the middle - there were spinning wheels and stroboscopic lights - all synchronized to music - my own of course which was writted specifically to induce certain types of trance using light and sound to guide the subject on a 'solid' path. I was so *close* - but relations were getting strained with my wife, who thought that I was obsessed. She was right of course. I was. And why not? This was the most important thing in my life. It was the one thing in which I truly had unshakable faith. I *had* to find some evidence of the validity - I needed *support* on this - not criticism. I at least deserved a chance to demonstrate it to someone else - to have the years that I had invested validated by another fearless soul who was willing to walk through the gates of heaven and be embraced lovingly by the universe.

And now we start to approach the moment of truth - the point - the reason that I have written everything that came before now.

I am a scientist - not just a druggie. I don't just *take* drugs - I study them. I prepare myself, I am informed - I know the risks - I am *careful*. But this was before the Internet. The only knowledge that existed was in books - and almost no-one knew practically nothing about Nitrous. It had just slipped by - owing to the fact that it was legal - and a secret known by not a lot of people back then. According to Peter Staffords Psychedelic Encyclopedia at the time, Nitrous Oxide was a perfectly safe drug. There were two, and only two dangers. The first rule was - don't breathe directly from a tank - you can freeze your lungs. And the second rule was - don't tie a mask to your face, because if you fall unconscious, you will eventually die from lack of oxygen. That was it. Other than that - it was safe - they give it to *kids* for fuck sake.

I don't know exactly when it went from genuine psycho-scientific-spiritual research to addiction - but it was marked by the fact that I started doing Nitrous without doing acid. I know myself - I'm an obsessive raging fucking maniac when it comes to drugs. I have no brakes. So I made a deal with myself many years before (after doing way too much Nitrous for way too long and having spent a small fortune on it) that I would *only* do Nitrous if I had done acid. I tried to keep it to once a month - but not always - I kept it at least to once a week. But I was so intent on finding my 'proof' - *quickly* - that I made an exception - just once. then again. and again.

I really couldn't afford it, and I knew my wife would be pissed at me for wasting money - so I kept it to myself. After all, I was almost there. 12 years of exploration and design was finally going to come to fruition. I almost understood it all - I was so close. And the Nitrous would run out and I would go to the store and get more - and then be wracked with guilt over it. And suddenly I realized that I was addicted to Nitrous Oxide. They had said nothing about addiction in the books. But I had been doing it every day for about 6 weeks, maybe more - and had been doing it excessively before it became daily. And when it ran out I just could not cope. This was not a drug withdrawal like an opiate - this was madness incarnate. I could not *stand* being in my body - it was blindingly intense and wouldn't go away.

The next weeks are only a vague memory - with scattered images and vague recollections. I could not afford to keep taking the Nitrous - but I could not survive stopping. I wanted to call out for help - but who the fuck would I talk to. There was no Internet - very few people knew about the recreational legality of Nitrous. I felt so stupid - how do I even begin to explain to someone that I inhale the whipped cream charges - they'd probably lock me up. So I had to stretch the Nitrous I had - breathe very, very little in between, hold my breath for minutes at a time. Not breathe - as much as possible.

I was losing it. I knew that. I was starting to go crazy - even by my own standards - and those of you who have actually read this far can probably understand that I am a rather bizarre individual. I don't remember much of the last weeks. I felt like I was dying - slowly. My thoughts were scrambled - there were 'dark patches' in my consciousness. At one point I thought I might have been possessed. I had gone from what I considered to be a self-respecting scientist (of the whackiest of varieties) to a fucking loony. I was lost.

I was doing a gig on Vancouver Island, sitting on the beach doing Nitrous all day long in tiny little gasps. The first night I noticed that I had lost the feeling in the tips of my fingers on my right hand. The next day, my left hand. By he time I got home, my hands and feet were numb. Two days later my entire body had no sensation, and I had completely lost my motor control. Then I was in the hospital - and the year that followed never became cemented in memory.

People - Please pay attention - this is not a well-known fact. Not a lot of people have screwed up quite as badly as I did - and it's never been made public in a big way.

The effect of Nitrous Oxide is *cumulative*. [See Nitrous &amp; B-Vitamin Dangers]

If I remove the mental, and psychological, and emotional horror that followed, I'll tell you that the physical sensations finally returned - as did my motor control. But the problem is that I had damaged my brain - and the signals that should have just reported to my cerebellum that I was in fact alive and moving, were mistransleted by my brain as Pain signals. In short - when my feeling returned, I was in unbearable pain - everywhere - non stop - every freaking day of my life for the last 14 years.

I nearly commited suicide so many times. Not because of depression or sadness, but because I simply could not imagine waking up every day to *this* - suffering - and *nothing* to be done about it because it is not physical as such - it's neuropathic pain - and it did not heal - and there is no treatment. I have spent 14 years wishing to god that the internet had been around just a little earlier - because once it arrived I found another person who had done what I had done - and who had suffered identical damage. I only found this *two* years after the fact.

I could describe my suffering over the last 14 years - but I hope that I have successfully illustrated my point through this post. Nitrous is *amazing*. Gascid is *everything* that I have said it is times a *million*. There was nothing wrong with my perceptions - only my obsession, and total lack of self restraint. I had my cake - and I was eating it - and I could have continued to be privvy to what I consider to be the best chemically induced experience that there is. I found heaven - and I was such a glutton that I destroyed it through my greed.

I still believe *absolutely* in Nitrous - and particularly gascid. It is simply the best. Nothing is better - not even love.

I am almost done. There are so many aspect of this story that I left out - because we're talking 15 odd years - hundreds, maybe thousands of *cases* of Nitrous (and about 750 hits of acid). All I wanted to do was share it with someone else.

I have told only a handful of people about this - and I have never told the whole story at once. If even one of you reading this, ran the risk of making my mistake - and if this post at some future point helps to prevent that eventuality from becoming a reality, then exposing myself in this way will have been worth it.

Please friends - be careful. If you ever find Heaven - take care of it.

Exp Year: 1981-2007	ExpID: 79725

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Aug 5, 2009	Views: 174,730

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LSD (2), Nitrous Oxide (40) : Alone (16), Mystical Experiences (9), Glowing Experiences (4), Addiction &amp; Habituation (10), Health Problems (27), Combinations (3)


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

		   T+ 0:00

		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

		   T+ 4:30

		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

		   T+ 9:00

		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   115 lb

First, I have to apologize if this is incredibly long.  I have a tendency to be rather verbose with this kind of thing.  Here’s a bit of background:

This was my first encounter with LSD, and though I've smoked a great quantity of pot, I’d say I’m only somewhat experienced in the world of drugs.  I’ve taken mushrooms and MDA/MDMA 4 or 5 times each, and though I had some pretty troubling experiences with some of these, I have always felt that tripping has helped me for the better in whatever place I am in my life.  My boyfriend of several years, who I will refer to as B, has been my partner in all of these tripping adventures.  He is far more experienced with psychedelics than I.

Nearly two years prior to this event, B acquired several hits of LSD from a friend, who referred to it as “24-hour acid” due to the rather extensive duration of the trip.  Despite B’s repeated attempts to get me to take some over the past couple of years, I felt a bit too threatened by the idea of an acid trip lasting a full 24 hours, leaving it to sit unused in the back of our freezer.  Last Monday, B’s birthday, I finally felt it was time.

About two weeks prior to tripping, we decided that the three-day weekend we had planned would be a great time to dose, allowing us plenty of time to come back to reality before we had to return to our jobs, just in case the acid lived up to its name.  This proved to be a very good idea.  Being the somewhat neurotic individual I am, I stressed and agonized over my decision to trip for the full two weeks leading up to it.  Was this the best time for me to take it?  What if I have a bad trip?  What if I can’t stop focusing on my breathing or my heart rate and I freak out? Will this cause me to go insane?  Eventually, I realized that the more I thought about the possible negative outcomes of tripping, the more I was programming myself to have a bad experience.  So, for the final two days before tripping, I did my best to shove my anxieties aside, and tried to picture in my mind what the best, most fun trip would look like.  Looking back, this was vital to achieving the correct mind state.

The day B and I dosed, we woke ourselves up at about 9:30am so that we’d have enough time to get ready leisurely, as well as get some food in our stomachs and pick up some fresh fruit before our planned dosing time of noon – if this stuff really lasted 24 hours, we figured, we’d better get started early.  The following account states approximate times; I cannot be entirely sure of the order in which these events happened.

T: 0.00 hrs:  At about 12:45, B and I finally took the acid, each of us putting two hits on our tongue.  At this point we decided to smoke a little pot, just to calm the butterflies I had in my stomach and to quell any potential nausea.  B started to play a streaming lecture by philosopher Ken Wilber concerning the use of ethenogens in spiritual practice to give our trip an interesting starting point.  Almost immediately I started noticing a change in my thought processes, though I recall wondering if it was a placebo effect.  My thoughts began to associate with other things in my head more freely, in a manner I frequently experience while high.

T:  0.20 hrs:  The lecture is becoming too cerebral to follow.  I can feel little rushes of energy up my legs and back, though it is minor.  I suggest to B that we go for a walk outside and enjoy the fall foliage while we come up.  Stepping outside, I’m amazed by the flowers in our apartment courtyard – how could I have never noticed what an amazing pattern the petals make?

T: 0.40 hrs:  Colors and patterns in nature have become really interesting, and B and I are feeling very talkative.  I find myself noticing the grain in the wood on the telephone poles, the different colored chips of rock in the concrete sidewalk below our feet, the way the leaves arrange themselves on the tree branches.  Walking feels comfortable; I feel like I could spend hours walking like this though the neighborhoods if I wanted to.

T: 1.15 hrs:  Nature is still fascinating, but no more so than it was an hour ago.  I begin to wonder if keeping the acid in the freezer for so long has caused its potency to deteriorate.  B and I aren’t feeling as talkative, but we are still very comfortable.  I had been initially expecting the “coming up” period of LSD to be similar to mushrooms – an intense “rushing” sensation coupled with a strong desire to move around – but I find that this is not the case at all.  “Is this all there is?”  I wonder aloud to B.  He’s convinced that we still have plenty more coming up to do.  My thought processes are a little random, but still not much different than if I were stoned.

T: 1.45 hrs:  I can finally start to feel myself coming up more, though it feels like a pretty gradual process.  B and I decide to start heading back home.  Around this time, we walk though a little garden area full of exotic plants and flowers which someone has planted on a stretch of sidewalk between the street and a fence.  It appears to us as a gateway to some kind of adventurous place.  I start collecting little “treasures” from the ground:  colorful autumn leaves, enticing flowers.  I find the texture of a particular flower petal to be astounding.

T: 2.00 hrs:  While walking back home, we come across a squirrel eating a plum in a tree.  We stand quietly and watch him for a while – his antics are hilarious.  Nearby we discover a tree which has been decorated with a little door and various lawn ornaments. I decide that elves must live inside.

T: 2:15 hrs:  As we near our house, I suddenly start noticing smells very strongly.  Car exhaust bothers me; I want to go back inside.  Suddenly, I start coming up very quickly, and B decides to start playing some music once we’re in the house.  We have a 200 gig library of music, yet finding something we enjoyed was tough.  House music annoyed me, trance music annoyed me … for a while we listened to a few compilations from Jungle Sky Records, but we quickly decided that we needed something which we wouldn’t have to change and monitor constantly.  It was time for Promised Land – the four-disc drum and bass compilation from Mutant Records that has seen B and I though nearly all of our trips.  It’s really the perfect tripping music - interesting, and with a great beat, but calm and chill enough to keep anyone relaxed and stabilized.  Occasionally my mind shifts to my body, how my pulse is heightened, how weird all the veins in my hands look.  However, whenever this happens I just calmly remind myself that my body is doing a great job taking care of itself, and that there’s no need for me to interfere with it by being overly-conscious of my breathing and heart rate.   I shift my attention to a piece of cool art on the wall or an awesome picture on the computer, and the concern passes.

T: 3:00 hrs:  I look at the large print of a rocky beach we have on our living room wall, and notice that the tide appears to be rapidly flowing in and out.  The visuals have begun!  Around this time B puts our computer (which uses our LCD television as a monitor) into screensaver mode, which is a slideshow of thousands of high-resolution nature pictures I’ve collected.  The landscapes are simply captivating.  For maybe the next 30 minutes, I experience some intermittent nausea, though I never come close to actually throwing up.  Around this time I begin peaking and the day’s events get very blurry. The concept of time has begun to lose its meaning.

B is feeling restless, and decides that we should play some video games.  He turns on some tetris-like game he recently downloaded and hands me the controller, but I have great difficulty focusing on the game.  The intense visuals I am now experiencing are very distracting, and they overlay my entire field of vision – spiraling, geometric shapes appear to burst out of the art on my walls, out of the patterns on the couch, out of the dots of paint on the ceiling, and these are far more entertaining to me than the video game.  At some point, the visuals begin to change into paisley-like patterns.  “Wow!”  I announce.  “All 70’s art makes sense!”  It is plainly obvious to me at this time that the patterned art typical of that era is the direct result of LSD.  Eventually B gets tired of playing the game by himself, and shuts it off, bringing us back to the nature slideshow.

T: 4:00 hrs:  For a long while, I simply laid on the couch staring at the walls and enjoying the visual show.  Eventually I noticed a notebook of blank paper and a pen sitting on a side table.  I pick it up with the full intention of drawing a masterpiece, despite my severely limited artistic abilities.  I begin to draw some spirals, trying to capture the incredible visuals I’m experiencing, but the pen is hard to control.  I wind up creating little messes of squiggly lines, which I find hilarious.  I decide that one of them looks like an owl.  At some point I try to write down a line of thought that had just occurred to me which I found extremely amusing; I scribble the words “My pants are a storybook / and an owl / but I might write myself out of them.”  Acid humor is strange, indeed.

T: 4:30 hrs:  After a while I bore of drawing, and B suggests we smoke some pot.  We both take a few hits and discover that we don’t notice any effects from it at all.  We decide that smoking now is probably a waste, and that we should wait until we have come down a bit before attempting that again.  Shortly after, I realize that I really have to urinate, despite the fact that I haven’t been drinking much at all.  I stumble to the bathroom, and the whole experience is very confusing.  I am thankful that my body remembers how to sit down and pee correctly, for this process is far too complicated for me to figure out on my own right now.  As I stand to leave, I take a glance in the mirror – bad idea.  My face looks like a mass of red dots, and I can see every pore in my skin magnified a thousand-fold.  My pupils are enormous.  After gawking at myself for a few minutes, I decide that the mirror is way too scary right now, and I plop back on the couch next to B to enjoy my visuals some more.

T: 5:45 hrs:  Looking back, I must have laid on the couch in quiet contemplation for quite a while, for the next thing I really remember is my roommate, who I will refer to as “G”, walking though the front door, just getting back from work.  “Dude! This is SO different from mushrooms!” I recall shouting as he walked in.  In his suit and tie, he reminded me of a cartoon pig somehow.  I whispered this to B, who knew exactly what I was talking about.  For some reason, everything G says and does is hilarious to me; I can’t stop giggling like a crazy person.  A few minutes later, G came out of his bedroom with his shirt off.  His mass of chest hair is very odd looking to me at this time.  “Dude!  Your chest is a vortex!!!”  I announce.  He demands to know “what the hell that is supposed to mean.”  I find my statement so funny that I laugh about it for what seems like ten minutes.

Conversing with the roommate has pulled me and B out of our contemplative state for a while, and we start walking around the house playing with things.  By this time, Bear and I are both feeling pretty hungry, so Bear went to the kitchen to grab the container of fresh fruit he bought to munch on; he hands me a strawberry on a fork and I can’t figure out how to eat it.  I recall that I bought some pretzel-type snacks the day before thinking I might find them appealing while tripping;  I go to the kitchen and stuff a few in my mouth, chew a couple of times analyzing the texture, and promptly spit them out into the sink.  Crunchy snacks are great when you’re stoned, I realize, but not appetizing in the least when this high.  I down a glass of orange juice as a substitute for real food, but this only makes me hallucinate more.

T: 6:30 hrs:  I’m very surprised to find that I’m still tripping hard, as I expected to be coming down by 5:00 pm or so.  In fact, I still can’t tell if I’m getting higher or not.  I realize now that I will definitely be awake to see the sun rise.  G is in the kitchen making dinner, and I decide to take another shot at eating.  As I walk into the kitchen, a giant kiwi in a hanging fruit basket catches my eye.  I pick it up and decide that it looks like a big hairy testicle.  Hilarious!  I decide that I definitely want to eat this hairy piece of fruit.  I grab a bread knife to cut the kiwi, but quickly realize that although knives are hilarious, I probably shouldn’t be hilarious with knives.  I hand the knife to G and ask him to cut it in half for me.  “Just cut it in half?  That’s all you want me to do with it?” he asks.  I grab the kiwi half, stare at it for a second, and then smash the open side into my face and start laughing hysterically. G hands me a spoon to eat it with, but I don’t know what to do with it.  I get fruit juice everywhere, and I crazily run to the bathroom to wipe my face off with a towel.  Damn it, I can’t eat the kiwi either!  I have failed on my quest to eat something.

T: 7:45 hrs:  G suggests we watch the movie The Big Lebowski.  I think this sounds like a great idea, but B resists – the first time he saw this movie was coming up on acid, and it frustrated him because it was too confusing.  Somehow I talk him into it, and we begin the movie.  A preview for a claymation-style movie (I think Corpse Bride?) preceding the movie scares me a little – the faces of the characters appear to be melting off their skeletons.  I remind myself that this is just some stupid preview, and not the actual movie, and this calms me down.  As the movie begins, I find myself very entertained by the kitschy theme of the movie, and I simply love the neon-lit bowling alley and the cheesy music.  This movie is far better on acid, I realize.  Luckily, B thinks so too, and he isn’t bothered by the movie at all.  I find myself strongly identifying with “The Dude” and his quest to get back his awesome, trippy rug.

T: 9:00 hrs:  About an hour into the movie, we pause to attempt smoking pot again despite how high we still feel.   It still does nothing.

T: 9:30 hrs: As the movie ends, B and I are as high as ever, but our roommate G decides to head off to bed.  We resume the music and the wallpaper slideshow on the TV, and for the rest of the evening, B and I lay sprawled out on our living room couch in deep contemplation.  Somewhere around 11 pm, as I lay on the couch staring at the gorgeous pictures, my mind wanders to random memories of my life.  I recall a time when I was about eight years old, laying on the couch half-asleep under a fuzzy blanket in the wintertime, while my mom watched an old movie on television;  is that moment really happening right now?  Am I only dreaming about the day I took a walk and ate acid?  It feels as if time is only an illusion, and all my memories are happening simultaneously.  Was I tripping then, snuggled up on the couch when I was eight?  Am I really tripping now?  I decide that I love all my memories, that they are mine and only mine, but that they are a thing I posses, like lamp or a refrigerator.  My memories are not what makes me up – what I am truly made of is timeless.  This thought is very comforting to me.

At another point, I begin to experience ego loss, and feel myself as other people in my life.  I feel myself becoming B, seeing the world the way he does, and appreciating the magnitude of the love he has for me.  I feel the events of his childhood, his estrangement from his parents, and how all of these things have colored his life.  At this time he reports experiencing the same thing towards me, and we spend a good length of time gazing at one another and somehow communicating non-verbally, bonding on a very intimate level.

Later I find myself extending this sense of becoming another towards my younger sister, to whom I am not very close; I see the struggles she has dealt with in her life, and feel a bit of sadness for her current circumstances.  Then I feel myself become my mother, with whom I have had a difficult relationship through the past several years.  I begin to intimately understand why she had acted the way she did, why she brought certain individuals into her life, and felt sympathy for her in the first time in years.  I saw her struggling over the miscarriage she had prior to my sister’s birth, and how the longing and grief she felt from this event carried over into other parts of her life.  In that moment, I loved her as a child who makes foolish mistakes, but who only seeks love and recognition.  This progresses into a strong feeling of empathy for all of humankind, all conscious beings, and I strongly sense the idea of a universal spirit.  I relate this to the complex patterns still overlaying my vision, and see them morph into “tribal art” which resembles Southwest Native American tapestries, than Chinese, than Indian.  I realize that this mind state I’m experiencing has been found by all the mystics and shamans and priests of all of Earth’s cultures, and that these same visuals influenced the art of each respective culture in a similar way.  All of these realizations comfort me in my decision to major in cultural anthropology, something which I had been stressing over lately.

T: 14:00 hrs: Around 2 or 3 am, B and I notice that we’ve finally come down a bit.  We’re exhausted, but sleep still seems impossible.  For the next hour or so, we try to shift into more comfortable positions on the couch and turn down the lights, as we gaze at the nature images on the TV screen.  I no longer have the intense geometric patterns overlaying my field of vision, but things are definitely still enhanced.  The images of trees seem totally alive to me, and a bobcat in a shot that keeps reappearing seems to stare into the depths of my soul.  It is not frightening, but it is still awe-inspiring.

T: 15:30 hrs: By around 4 am, we realize that the sun is going to be rising soon; B suggests that we should at least attempt to sleep, so we turn off the lights and head to bed.  Frustratingly, I cannot seem to get comfortable, and I toss and turn for what seems like hours in bed.  My body is exhausted, but my mind is still racing, and I find myself pondering many of the same ideas from earlier in the night and reliving other memories in barely cohesive fragments.  Lying in the dark without any visual stimuli, I began to explore the contents of my subconscious mind, for better or worse.

At some point, before the sun begins to rise, I felt ready to extend my sense of becoming another towards one last person: my father.  Our relationship had been rocky at best since my early teenage years, due mostly to his alcoholism, and several months prior he had attempted suicide for the third time.  Reluctantly, I felt myself become him, too, and I see him grieving over the untimely death of his father and his subsequent committal to drink.  I see him as a young man, full of life and energy, and then as the hardened corporate executive he had become, and his complete disappointment with himself and his life as he lost his job that year due to consequences of his alcoholism.  I felt his sadness, but I was comforted by the universal spirit that permeated me.  I knew that his extreme grief was only caused by a false sense of isolation, and that whether or not he found his way in this lifetime, that same universal spirit would always be a part of him.  I was finally able to be at peace with his recent actions.

Around this time, I also begin to grow concerned that I have gone permanently insane.  I cannot remember what normal feels like, and I am unsure if I will ever be able to sleep again.  The objects in my bedroom look strange and unfamiliar; even threatening.  I am especially haunted by the orchid painting that hangs to my left.  I catch it in a glance and decide it’s far too trippy for my taste at the moment.

T: 18:00 hrs: The sun begins to drift through the cracks in the blinds.  I cannot tell whether or not I have slept, but I am utterly exhausted.  I decide that I will stay in bed until the orchid painting to starts to look like an orchid.

T: 22:30 hrs:  After hours of tossing and turning, glancing at the clock every 20 minutes, and gazing at the undulating wall of clothes at the foot of my bed, I am happy to see that the orchid is just an orchid now, and decide to get up.  B, to my right, seems to have finally passed out.  I can feel my ribs pressing into the bed, poking out from my abdomen due to my lack of food, and feel cramped and uncomfortable.

I arise slowly and throw on my bathrobe.  I quietly walk to the kitchen and prepare myself a bowl of oatmeal, and decide to do a bit of yoga while the water boils to ease my bodily discomfort.  I can acutely feel my feet sticking to the yoga mat and the softness of my robe against my bare flesh; I am no longer hallucinating, but sensations are still greatly amplified.  My breakfast is totally unappealing, but I choke down as much as I can, knowing it will make me feel better.  Thankfully, I now have the ability to eat.  As I sat quietly by the window eating my oatmeal, I decide that I am like a Buddhist monk, eating his morning bowl of porridge after prayer.  My thoughts are no longer disjointed, but I am highly contemplative of the world around me.

T:  23:30 hrs: B is up, and we decide to take a shower.  I can see each individual droplet of water beading up and falling as it hits my body.  The feeling of the spray is delightful.  After such a long night, it feels wonderful to finally wash the acid-smell off my body.  I notice that my pupils are still completely dilated; they will remain this way until late into the evening.  Shortly afterward we decide to venture out into the world for lunch.

It was a crisp fall day, and the changing color of the leaves was really beginning to show.  High altitude currents of air blew the wispy cirrus clouds across the sky at great speeds, as often happens here in the fall, and the effect was nothing short of ethereal.  B and I sat down in the back of our favorite restaurant, not wanting to be too close to other people.  I saw a young man walking past the large windows near us, and I briefly saw the world through his eyes; I felt his comfort in the worn jacket he wore, feeling what it would be like to have put it on many times before.  B and I ate quietly and comfortably, though we must have worn odd expressions, as the waitress asked us if we were alright – “You guys look like you just lost a puppy or something!” she remarked.  Maybe we hadn’t experienced a tragedy, but we had experienced a life-moving event.

As we walked through the city after lunch, I told B that I now understood the answer to everyone’s ultimate question – What is the meaning of existence? What is the purpose of my life?  The answer was... that there was no answer.  Everything just is.  Manifest existence came into creation for the sole purpose of being, just to experience life.  What answer could possibly be more profound than that?  The world was beautiful, in all its cruelties and misgivings, and I was content with that.

T: 30:00 hrs: By evening my sense of appetite had returned somewhat, though I was still unable to eat anything near a regular portion of food.  I found myself craving snacks familiar to me in my childhood, and I indulged by buying myself a small box of oreo-type cookies to dip in soymilk.  I still felt the lingering effects of ego-loss, and my “regular” analytical, sarcastic personality had not quite yet returned; I found myself approaching the world in a childlike manner, and using vocabulary I would not normally use.  I felt a strong desire to be cared for and coddled this evening, though thankfully B pandered to my behavior.  I also experienced some lingering jaw tension, though a few hits of pot helped to combat this effect.  By midnight B and I were finally able to sleep, and we awoke feeling refreshed and rejuvenated late the next morning.  The sense of calm and equanimity I gained through my trip persisted into the following weeks.

Afterthoughts:  This was a tremendous experience that no doubt would have gone differently had I not been in a comfortable environment with people I completely trusted.  I now think that LSD has some obvious therapeutic effects, though the experience is so intense that I doubt I will partake more than once or twice a year.  I have since tripped once more with the same group of people (G dosed with B and I this time), and although it was not the same earth-shattering experience as my first trip, it was still an overwhelmingly positive event.  I am happy to have had the opportunity to let this drug show me parts of the universe and parts of my psyche which I had been previously unaware of, and I would love to return back to that place at different stages of my life.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 76926

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Mar 24, 2009	Views: 69,946

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LSD (2) : First Times (2), Hangover / Days After (46), Multi-Day Experience (13), Relationships (44), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Mystical Experiences (9), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		 2.5 hits
		 oral
		 LSD

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   140 lb

I had tripped twice before, taking 2 hits both times, and had experienced an overall pleasant and beautiful trip both times. They were only very mildly hallucinogenic (wavy walls etc). Because of this I was very enthusiastic about acid and felt cavalier about its use, thinking to myself that I wanted to try four or five hits the next time, and explore what I considered the peaceful world of LSD further. My third trip was the most insane, arduous experience of my life up to this point. I tripped for a total of seventeen hours.

A close high school friend and I decided we should trip together during Christmas break in my hometown of 3 years, a Chicago suburb. I had brought five hits with me, and was eager to take them all, but my friend was having trouble procuring any for himself. Then I heard from a friend I had bought my acid with. He had split his five hits with a friend, and he described his experience as ‘not in reality.’ He also advised me: ‘Don’t do five hits, you will die.’ This was enough to convince me to split my LSD with my friend T, and so around 8 at night we took the hits, put on a massive amount of clothes and began walking to Thatcher Woods, our designated tripping spot.

It was a cold night and there were 3-4 inches of snow on the ground, but it wasn’t an issue. As we were walking I began feeling the warmth of energy rising up and through me, causing me to laugh and feel intensely content, as had happened in my previous trips, and we were both very excited. Eventually we reached a suitable clearing in the woods, and sat down. The woods were beautiful and completely secluded. The energy flowing through my body felt more rapid, and then it was building and building and began whirling through my senses, which I perceived as a sort of bizarre dizziness. Then T pointed at the treetops above us, and I looked up.

The trees were swaying animatedly, and the longer I looked the stranger they became. They began transforming into billions of detailed rainbow fragments put together masterfully, but then would revert back to some sense of normalcy in color again. The sky turned purple and began coming down towards me, overwhelming me. It melded with the trees in a glowing display, shrouding the trees which began resembling massive beautiful peacock feathers protruding from the ground.

This already was more than I had imagined was possible to perceive, and definitely more than I was prepared to handle. I could feel shifting and a sickening peeling in my brain and I began panicking, muttering frantically and told T that I was very, very scared, and was having a panic attack. I suggested that he call for help, either parents or 911, but fortunately he had tripped harder than I ever had and told me to just sit and breathe for a second, which I did reluctantly (he added later that me telling him I was having a panic attack almost caused him to have one as well). I calmed down slightly, and the horrible sensation in my brain that had caused me to panic had ceased. Sitting there I could feel my mind blasting and firing away at a pace it had never even approached before.

We began striking up an animated and basically nonsensical conversation about anything and everything. The entire world began existing in a rhythm which I could sense internally. I began speaking constantly and only in rhymes and rhythms, certain lines appealing to me in particular (e.g., majestic just got hit by the magic stick, moving through the groovy gravy, sipping on the world syrup). We began riffing off each other completely naturally, finishing each other’s sentences and thoughts, and (at least I) felt unified with him and the surroundings through this rhythm, this groovy gravy that the world was now immersed in. While in the forest certain things, sounds or movements, at times caused my entire body to spasm uncontrollably, as if my brain had been zapped. Though I felt liberated and overjoyed at the rhythm I could sense, incredibly unpleasant sensations such as the spasms and indescribable feelings in my head would come and go and it became very important to stave off these horrible feelings.

For some reason I pulled out my phone from my pocket. Forgetting why I’d taken it out, I was suddenly overcome by euphoria and threw my phone as far as possible. I saw its light illuminate as it landed. As I walked over to get it I could hear ice groaning and cracking beneath me (we had been debating for some time whether we were in fact sitting on top of a frozen river or not, although it had been much funnier before.) Frightened, I asked T to retrieve it for me. He did so, and gave it to me. I saw that it was completely mangled. When I tried to open it (it was a flip phone), it came apart. I’d had that phone for three years. It had three years’ worth of friends, acquaintances, loves, ideas I had written down with text, even some rough recordings of musical ideas. Losing all this hit me extremely hard, and I was stunned. I felt intense despair and self-disgust at my recklessness, my pointless gesture of throwing the phone, pointlessly breaking what I’d had for years. In my mind it was synonymous with the very basic action of disregarding and hurting people that you loved just to test them. I realized that my phone was named Oliver and told this all to T. While consoling me, he advised that I just let go.

At that moment the concept of letting go took on not just letting go of my phone, but of anything transient. I suddenly knew that my entire life was just like my phone and that I was a speck, a zero dimensional point floating in an abyss. I began letting go. Bizarre alterations in my mind continued rapidly. When I voiced certain thoughts to myself, I found I could trace them back to some subconscious memory or lesson that I had, and I was able to analyze the cause of that thought, that fear, whatever it was, and if I chose let it drift away. For example, I was cynical about many things at heart and was able to trace that cynicism to an event that occurred when I was 15. I innately knew the reasons for aspects of my character and could trace them back to concrete memories, but was scared to let them float away and forever alter my psychic makeup. For what seemed like a small eternity I went off alone and sorted through fragments of my subconscious, which seemed to be floating through my conscious mind like flotsams in an ocean.

Afterwards I reconvened with T and attempted to explain what had been going on in my head, but soon realized it was pointless to try. T understood the incomprehensibility of the situation perfectly however, using a John Lennon quote: ‘A profound whatever.’ At that moment I felt a spasm in my head which seemed to be describable only as a profound whatever. Suddenly I knew that my life, all existence, was just a profound whatever, although over the course of the night more and more ways to describe that feeling popped into my head. I felt like all of literature and music and dance, etc was seeking to capture that profound whatever. I suddenly had this bizarre cognitive breakthrough that ‘everything is everything else.’ Although it sounds ridiculous, I just knew it to be true during my state. All of existence was not just unified, it was all just one very detailed particle.

We stayed in the forest for what seemed like forever, basically shooting the shit and engaging in hilarious yet rhythmically primal banter. I found that this banter was the best part of the trip, feeling intensely adept with language and amusing ideas which T was able to reciprocate and be a part of. This gave my swirling mind an outlet and comforted me that I was with another human being who I trusted. Eventually we left the forest with the vague plan of heading back to my house.

During this walk we continued our cosmic banter the entire way. While walking there was a strange sensation that it wasn’t T and I who were moving, but rather the entire universe was sliding by while we watched. Still, it was very important to keep our legs moving, as if on a treadmill, or the universe would just stop. It was euphoric and during the walk at certain intervals we would suddenly ‘know’ that we had lost that round, but win bang go, we would win the next. Our conversation and actions would reach intense inspiring climaxes but could be lost in a second, and when it was lost I knew that I was starting existence over again, that little unique fireball of neurons was lost forever. It was like lighting fireworks and watching them flare, some of them beautiful and overwhelming.

We finally got to my house, but I wasn’t ready to go in. Instead we stood at my street corner (although I literally was incapable of standing still), where we continued rhyming and grooving. I began crafting characters and bizarre storylines which me and T became, such as Cheesy Steve, Friar Bobkins, Fruity Susan. I felt euphorically free to be and say anything at all. My hat became the symbol of all things good and pure in the world, and I would throw it on the ground, mock it, then be almost brought to tears and beg T to pick it up, that the world depended on it. I could detect language nebulas revolving around certain groups of words, knowing which words were in the same nebula by letting my brain feel them out. Italy and Sicily were the center of one nebula. Quiche and teeth were at the center of a particularly nasty nebula.

I began flitting from different moments in my life and reliving the emotions and sensations of the times, going back years and years and even feeling a strong emotional connection to a period of my life in Hong Kong from 1st-2nd grade, when every Saturday morning my dad would drive me and my brother along the underwater highway connecting Hong Kong to Kowloon to play ice hockey, and I would sleep with a stuffed dragon in the backseat. Somehow I remembered vividly riding on the back of my magical dragon as it raced through the ocean, guiding me safely through the waters while I slept, and it was the most beautiful feeling to relive, regardless of whether it had happened or not.

Eventually T grew tired of the cold and decided to go home. He had been hinting at it continually but I had just kept firing rhythm at him, and eventually he left. I was still boiling with thoughts and little segments of rhythm, but I forced myself not to talk to myself – I feared it would caused me to go spiraling into the madness at full speed. So I somehow managed to find my house key beneath all my layers of clothes, and went inside. It was 2 o'clock at night, which was incomprehensible to me –it felt like eons had passed since I first began tripping.

By myself in my dark house the trip became much more dark and frightening. I flitted about for a little, marveling at the purity of water among other things. Finally the craziness in my head became too much. I needed a human outlet, but I couldn’t wake any of my family. I decided to use my laptop to find someone to talk to. I went into my room and booted up my computer – the screen made my eyes recoil at first, it was a writhing mass of colors and 3 dimensional activity, but I was slowly able to focus and use it despite the intense visuals. I went on Facebook and began talking to anyone who would respond. The typical pattern would be that I would spout complete randomness, they would have some confused response and then I would get bored and move on. In one online conversation a friend asked me how I was and I instantly without any premeditation replied that ‘I feel like I’m dying a million times while I laugh about how much I hate jews.’ I was scared to be alone and was trying to stave off that truth at all costs.

I sent a few garbled emails* and then put on Bjork – it was amazing. The music was so pure, and especially the song Frosti, which hearing caused me to visualize a delicate, beautiful ice contraption. Songs were like human lives, they were so detailed and wide ranging, they were a journey, sometimes heartfelt, sometimes beautiful and serene, sometimes very clichéd and unimaginative. Everything was everything else, and songs were a lifetime in 3 minutes. The song Hidden Place (also by Bjork) made me love my room as I looked around and I began dancing but eventually settled into just watching my hands swirl through the air. I also scrutinized things I had hanging on the wall and was disgusted by certain things which I could so clearly see were just extensions of my ego, and tore them off.

My room was where I settled down for the long haul, and tripped for another 9 tormented eternal hours. There was absolutely no possibility of sleep. I began going through the same wheel of emotions and feelings over and over and over again, until it was all like clockwork. Love, carelessness, anger, awe, euphoria, intense psychotic pain, it all came and went in a pattern that I knew was always there but hadn’t been aware of. By the end I had experienced every emotion so fully that I was just weary from them and worn out by endlessly going through their wheel. I laid in bed clutching my stuffed dragon and listened to Bjork, and John Lennon (who’s music I found was all completely in understanding of life on acid). I was still hallucinating. In particular my ceiling fan in the dark was constantly morphing, at one point becoming a powerful rainbow pharaoh glaring down at me. Closing my eyes was even worse though, as I could feel all my senses exploding and saw red fireballs and felt as if I was staring into my own mind.

I spent a long time in the bathroom, just looking at myself. My ego was so destroyed at this time that I didn’t even know who I was looking at. I tried to detect myself in my eyes but it was all futile and hopeless. I felt like a cog in a machine who had suddenly sprouted a consciousness and was now staring at itself, helpless to be anything but that cog. I tried to think about love and all of the good things but there were painful moments in the trip where it was simply impossible. Several times during the night I cried as the psychotic turmoil became too much and I pleaded to regain my sanity.

There was still beauty, though. As the first rays of sunlight were coming in through my window they illuminated all the countless dust particles in the air, fluttering about, moved by unseen forces. These small particles also were lives, propelled every which way and completely without control. Nevertheless I was struck by their beauty as they whirled to and fro, in wonderful patterns. By this time there had been brief moments when the trip had lapsed slightly, and given me hope. But at 11:00 AM my brain was still blazing and there were still some visuals, and I knew that I needed to tell my mom. By this time I was genuinely worried that I would never in my life be able to sleep again, that I would have to be taken away, that I would never be normal again. I had seen too much and couldn’t function any more. However, I somehow grasped that a mother’s love was a saving grace of the world, an astoundingly beautiful thing that could help me calm down my mind. I hadn’t told her I loved her in years and tripping rhythm had made me realize that I had to tell her, or I would never be at peace.

I went downstairs, where my mom was reading. At first I acted normally and tried to eat some cereal, but could only manage a few bites. Eventually I made clear that something was wrong, that I was on acid and that I needed help. She sat with me and I poured out all my fears, that I had no reason to live, I had just lived longer than I ever wanted to in one night, that there was no point to anything. That we were all basically automatons griping about nothing and placing meaning into completely meaningless lives. She just talked with me and shared the same sentiments and told me not to think like that, and gave me a huge hug, and it felt so comforting and lovely to be back in her embrace after years of nothing more than basically formal contact.

My younger brother came downstairs and the three of us began what I perceived as an immensely rhythmic conversation, much like the one during the height of my trip, and it filled me with a good feeling and a sense of being home in life. Finally my mom got some Nyquil for me as I had told her about my fear of not sleeping (although was a bit freaked out at the prospect of taking more drugs). For some reason it was very difficult to tell her I loved her. But once I managed it I felt a huge wave of relief wash over my mind and a new sense of wellbeing. My brain was still flying but it was winding down. I then lay in bed while my mom read to me, and finally at some point around 2 oclock, listening to Ben Harper’s Welcome to the Cruel World, I managed to drift into a few hours of sleep.

The trip was everything that exists in its extreme. It helped me recover my relationship with my mother, gave me a unique, enigmatic bond with my friend T and gave me a glimpse of the internal mechanics of the universe (at least, it felt that way). The cost though was the most alien, surreal and heart-wrenching night of my life. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

*sent to a friend while tripping, to give a sense of where my mind was at:

'Go'

well let me tell you bout the fabric of life it ain't nice sugar and spice no none of that, everythings just going fucking fucked up, like eight things just happened in my mind that i don't have a word for so i just used 'fucked' to describe them all and i don't know anything any more its where i am my fingers so elusive spidery on the keyboard splitty splat ratat hammersplat gotcha, sorry. everything's fucked. i'm currently in the midst of it, sugar and spice, it ain't nice, suzy cream chese, i've got rhymes eight or nine see them see how many rhymes i keep them in a massive planet here in the back i put it behind that loud bitch everything is just all over go catch it its gone already its just gone and so im just typing to u after it all leaves not really sure whats being hit my minds just gotten fucking good at this it just sees what it wants to see on the screen. holy shit im really fucking good at this. my thoughts are appearing before me. this is new. sugar and spice. NEW NEW NEW its new wave. everglade ocean spray ella did i tell you about ella she was a lot of everything and she had sequins, well i don't know whatever the fuck those things are, just something that was good ok, she was good. she was the best. so now i write about it while the crest of everything climaxes up and out into the sea of me spreading out my fingers spout the words flaxen relaxin i think i should seen this soon running out of room. um i guess i should call this something. what is this? well just 'random ranting and shit'. well that doesnt capture it. hmm ' everything'. dont like the zing. 'sugar and spice'? well thats nice, but what about acid? oh well dont go for asking because you'll get fucked in an elephants ass kid, jesus sucked Michael Moore's dick just since he asked, that motherfucker i spread overhead, oh right sugar and spice. i found everything. well but you know. but here i am. but you know. go we win victory bring out the band theyll play something nice. alright ill call it 'go'

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 83544

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 18

Published: Mar 23, 2010	Views: 76,879

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LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Relationships (44), Families (41), Mystical Experiences (9), Difficult Experiences (5), General (1)