		 DOSE:

		 1
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (edible / food)

		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   135 lb

Here follows the events of my first acid trip in all its glory. For the purposes of this recollection I shall be C, and my tripping partner will be L. At the time we were both 18, the summer of 2007. Other characters such as J, P, and many others will be named as they appear. As a preface I will say that I had been trying to obtain a hallucinogen to experiment with for over 6 months. Prior to this my only experience with drugs had come from smoking copious amounts of marijuana for about a year and half, and a week prior to this experience I had take a half eighth of Psylocibin Mushrooms (with L) which resulted in my first mild psychedelic experience. Suffice to say LSD was a much larger experience on the whole.

I acquired the acid at a party of all places. I had been talking to my friend L about our recent ‘shroom trip and a very strung out kid walked up to us and said, “hey man you wanna buy some acid?” Classic, I thought as he told me. Absolutely brilliant. I paid $20 for two hits on shock tarts. I was a little unsure about that but I could see the drops on them so I thought “well fuck why the hell not.”

Exactly a week later, on a Saturday, my friend and I parked at a local elementary school. Yea that’s right a fucking elementary school. It was actually a pretty sweet spot because the woods behind the school were frequented by bikers and hikers out getting their kicks on the paths that lacerated the woods. We figured we pop the acid and spend 6 hours or so wandering in these woods looking for glorious things. It was actually a fairly good plan. We just didn’t realize how much walking this would actually entail.

We parked the car and grabbed all manner of shit that we might need, stuffing our pockets with the stuff. Pipes, papers, weed, iPods, and any other shit that could help chill us out. We snapped into a smart march and made our way into the woods. My friend was getting antsy so I pulled out the acid. I looked at both shock tarts carefully. Red and green. I had really wished they were red and blue, I’m a big fan of the matrix. In any case I took the red one and put it on my tongue and he did likewise. There was no taste beyond the sugary sensation of the shock tarts. So here I was finally trying the fabled stuff that had inspired so many songs and powered a counter-culture movement. After about 3 minutes the stuff had dissolved in my mouth and I thought there’s nothing I could do to stop it at this point, I’m in for 12 hours.

I really think that’s one of the great things about slow acting psychedelics. That waiting period before they kick in gives me time to accept the fact that I'm in for a ride before the mental distortion kicks in. I sort of resigned myself to my upcoming fate, even if it is only temporary.

Anyways so at this point we’re walking through the woods and it’s about 11:00am. I remember these times very clearly because they seemed like the most important things in the world at the time. We began walking and L told me what to expect because he had done it once before and I settled in to wait. We walked past all manner of shit along the bike trails: old bikes, a rusted car, a washing machine all kinds of shit that just shouldn’t have been there. Slightly disappointing but hey you can’t let stuff get you down.

The first moment when I began to feel the effects was when we sat down to rest on some bike jumps. They were real big things that the bikers around my town keep up very meticulously. I was on a bank of sorts and my friend on a taller more normal looking jump when I realized that I was expected a stoned feeling, when I should be expecting something more similar to my mushroom trip the week prior. I looked hard up at the leaves and as I leaned my head back I did feel a bit of a rush up my spine…but maybe I imagined it. Either way this got me pumped and I jumped up and clapped my hands. “Bro let’s get going!” I said. L consented and we began walking more vigorously through the woods. I figured I wasn’t tripping and I needed a little bit of help so I pulled out my iPod, but it on mono and put one headphone in so that I could still listen to L talk.

The choice of what song to listen to was agonizing, not because I was tripping yet, but because I take my drugs seriously (perhaps a folly of mine). I finally settled on a one two punch of “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit” both by Jefferson Airplane. This was a GOOD decision. Somebody to love made me feel pumped, and White Rabbit absolutely weirded me out. In a good way. You know how it is.

So L gets this powerful thirst and we’re at our first point of crisis since dropping. L says he is feeling the acid a little but we need to find water really badly. We didn’t bring any with us which was a big mistake as it was probably 95+ degrees out. After much deliberation we decided that we would simply walk back to the elementary school and use an outdoor water fountain. I think I really like that about acid. When I'm in trip mode I really sort of use Occam’s razor as a decision making process: the simplest solution is probably the best. So we walked the half mile back to the elementary school.

It was between those jumps and the school when I began to feel the effects of my LSD. We came up the crest of the hill, and a set of power-lines that snaked along the side of the bike path (which at this point was wide enough to accommodate a truck) seemed to stretch on forever. It was as if the horizon was farther away than should ever be allowed by a rational sane world. The puddles along the side of the path were quite brown. Very, very brown actually.

At one point we saw a small toad on the side of the path and L and I stopped and debated for a short time on whether or not the toad was actually there. The conversation started as a joke about how some people expect the impossible while tripping but turned into a conversation and investigation into existentialism and what I like to think of as “theory of communication.” After such an intense discussion my mind was pretty much in overdrive thinking an analyzing. I find that a trip is best with alternating moments of analytical thought and pure feeling and “being in the moment” and not thinking anything. Of course at the moment I had no idea that this was a good thing and I was just happy to be having such deep emotionally stirring thoughts.

The next thing I saw was absolute beauty. I live in North Carolina, which is known for its red clay dirt. As I walked onto the campus of this small elementary school the ground was covered in red clay, small grey and black pebbles, and blue gravel. No painting ever had more beautiful colors than that red, grey, black and blue. LSD is amazing like that. That’s what I tell people when they ask me about it. “What’s it like man?” Everything is beautiful I tell them.

Anyways we went and got our water from a water fountain, which had a drowned cockroach in the bottom. Pretty gross but we were desperate. We walked down to one of the playgrounds and marveled at the colors of the play structures there for a while until we were interrupted by a group of small children (very strange as it was a weekend and they had nobody supervising them). I think some stuff happened to fill the next half hour but it’s unclear to me now. Eventually we had decided that we needed to walk to Weaver Street (a local organic foods market full of stoned hippies). The only problem was its distance, something like 3 miles away (I was so amazed by the distance we walked that day I calculated it using Google earth, the school was 2.86 miles by the path we took).  Once again we marveled at the ridiculousness of modern society. Why shouldn’t we walk a few miles to obtain foodstuffs, it was done by our ancestors for millions of years. So we walked. And we discussed how certain themes in music and literature reflected this “traveling mindset” that we were experiencing. The only example I can think of at the moment is “Ramble On” by Led Zeppelin.

So there we trekked, over hills and along roads, along railroads, under bridges and over creeks. We finally arrived at a park where we walked through a family reunion with a good deal of African Americans people and fried chicken. It was pretty funny at the time. Anyways when we got to this park I experienced one of my most amazing hallucinations of the trip. There was a large American sycamore across from the bench we were sitting upon and I pulled on L’s arm “holy shit dude look at that!” The bark of this tree was literally slithering up and down and melting into the ground. The movement was just like watching lava flow, but over the surface of the tree. I looked at the ground and the grass sparkled and flowed as though underwater. I looked up and my whole field of vision swam like…an octopus’ garden in the shade. Don’t know if that’s what Lennon was going for, but it’s sure as hell how I felt (I make that analogy in retrospect).

The next part of the adventure involved walking into the bathroom at this park, which was not only dirty but had no light. As I walked in and the door close behind me rushing sounds emanated around my head and my vision became very enclosed and narrow. I placed my hands under the running water in the sink and splashed some over my face. I cannot describe what I felt because I forgot it just a moment later, but let it suffice to say it was intense.

I emerged back into the light and things really began to break down in terms of what I remember. Time got very jumpy as we walked across another parking lot and began walking into town. For some reason I did not get paranoid as we walked along a fairly main artery into town. L began to speak of the absurdity of large SUV’s and how they should be made illegal and whatnot (granted we saw more hybrids than we saw SUV’s in our town, but L is very passionate about such things).  At one point in this conversation he uttered the words that stuck with me forever “cars are so loud and unfortunate.” It was at that moment that my entire worldview changed and I’m pretty sure I’ve never been the same. I can’t explain how, it was a very subtle change. But violent movies aren’t quite as appealing anymore, angry music seems immature, anger in general is bizarre, and television commercials and the way people act on them seem downright strange. I feel as though it retuned my bullshit detector to high.

We finally made it to Weaver Street, and after a quick stint walking inside, which resembled very much walking around in an aquarium, we exited with some sushi and mixed wheat grass drinks or something nasty like that. We ate and drank quickly but remarked later that we hadn’t really been hungry. While we ate I began hearing a bizarre “whooov” noise in my left ear which I convinced myself was a hallucination because I didn’t want to turn my head and look “sketchy.” Well this of course was ridiculous and I looked and saw that it was a young mother on the lawn where we were sitting, blowing over the surface of an empty bottle to make that very distinct noise to entertain her child. I had a moment of connection with her where we locked eyes, and I was sure she knew I was tripping, and that she had tripped before. She gave me a smile and as I turned back to L I said “dude lets get out of here.” The ground wiggled to reinforce my decision.

Earlier in the day walking around my elementary school while undergoing such profound leaps of perception had been very eye opening, and had brought about something of what Tim Leary and his Ilk would call “ego death.” In light of this L wanted to visit his elementary school so, being the liberating walking-light-beings that we were at the time, we decided to go. We had a small mishap crossing the street on the way there, but drivers here are nice and break for absent minded professors from the local university, so had no problems stopping for some local acid freaks either. We arrived at the school and spent a good deal of time staring at the tables and grass. I talked to a friend on the phone briefly and he agreed to pick us up later that evening when we were done tripping.  We lay in the grass for a while and watched the clouds float in one direction, and then stop and race back the way they had come. Bark still crawled on the tree if one looked at it hard enough and other weird shit continued to happen. This detour added a good half mile to our return journey to bringing the total distance we had walked up to 5 miles.

The next half hour or so was spent in intense deep conversation about life and the universe and the next thing we knew we were back at the elementary school which we had started at. The route we took was very indirect and involved a lot of walking around in the woods making our total distances for the day an eventual 8 miles. We walked around the school again marveling at how gravel showing through imperfections in the concrete would swim like the stars in a galaxy (seriously that is the only way to describe it). Anyways this continued for another half hour or so until I rolled a joint that was pretty much the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Again. We both talked to our parents on the phone (a difficult task) and waited for our ride to come pick us up. A guy name J who I had talked to on the phone earlier and a girl P (who has recently had her own amazing acid experiences, but at this time had not even considered it) picked us up and brought us back to J’s house.

We were terrified of having to face his parents, but when they said hi to us it really wasn’t that bad. Once in his room everything sort of ended. I kept trying to make stuff move with my mind but it was mostly over. The only moment when I felt it again was when about 10 people walked into that same room later after L went to pick them up (he was “good to drive” at this point). I could feel their combined energy wash over me. The rest of the night consisted of smoking massive amounts of dank marijuana and listening to chill music. I talked to some other people who had tripped at other times and we shared experiences. In the immortal words of General Tarken: This will be a day long remembered.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 66912

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 18

Published: Apr 22, 2012	Views: 17,836

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LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Music Discussion (22), Glowing Experiences (4), First Times (2), General (1)


		 DOSE:

		 5 drops
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (liquid)

		   repeated
		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   140 lb

This was written 24 hours after the trip started.  May 2009.

J and I took roughly 5 or 6 diluted drops of the acid each, A took 1 diluted and D took 1 1/2 sticks of gum with 1 1/2 hits not diluted.  J took 2 at the same time as A and D, while I took 1 and through the day J and I kept the vial and continued to drop on our hands and tongues.  A and D stayed on campus all day and J and I drove out to the desert canyon in Taos se llama Diablo.  Driving in, there was a lot of road construction in progress, and a black pipeline was being installed underground alongside the road and on past the canyon to the right.  The tube was pretty much as straight as it could be for such a long construction.

 [Erowid Note:
Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]

We started our hike by climbing the incline around the side of a hill at the mouth of the canyon and continued around the edge until we came to a cliff, which seemed to open out into the rest of the enormous basin.  Then we turned back and left at sunset.  J was taking photos and I was sketching in my sketchbook as we were coming up, not knowing whether or not we would trip too hard.  I had brought along my didgeridoo and at moments when it was easy for me to catch my breath and recline, I would alternate between playing didgeridoo, throat singing, whistling, and any combination of the three.

Recently after having experimented with Tuvan throat singing while under the influence of THC and various hallucinogens including: Salvia, Psilocybin, LSD, and DMT, I realized that no matter what substance I inebriate myself with, the throat singing is such a natural sobering process that it cuts through literally anything.  I lay down with eyes closed or open and become as relaxed and impervious to distraction as possible, and see no visuals, experience no abnormal bodily sensations, and no distortion of reality or the sounds I am creating.  I have recreated this experiment various times at different points of the day and the results are the same.  What I experienced yesterday was completely consciousness-expanding in every way.

We walked around a bit, we took our time and stopped at various different vantage points around the top of the canyon.  I played didgeridoo periodically, but mostly we were trying to get out further and see more so we spent the majority of the first few hours walking, sitting down every once in a while at a place that was calm (there were few still areas, mostly everywhere was rushing wind,) and smoked some marijuana while we took in the scenery.  There were no other people that we could tell were out there.

I went out on a rock ledge hanging at the top of a cliff and brought my didgeridoo.  I found a crevice the size of my body with arms outstretched holding the didgeridoo at various different angles for reverb.  I looked straight up through the narrow crags of rocks above me and saw a jet flying in front of the sun, and a bird flying below it, all within the same line of vision.  I looked down and saw 3 different cascading landscapes declining to the canyon floor where a tiny vehicle was stopping and two ant-like figures were emerging.

I completely lost myself.  I was in the middle of the depths of space created by man and nature, with his technological achievements aiding his conquest of extreme distance both high above nature and deep below it.  All was in alignment with the sun and the momentary vertigo of imagining the sun being stationary in relation to all of these objects spinning almost with a clocklike precision in the trajectory of their centripetal force in their orbit around the sun.  At this moment I was not only motionless, but because of my extremely relaxed breathing that is required for didgeridoo/throat singing, I felt like I was completely at home in this place of intersecting planes and holons.

After that experience I needed to get back on solid ground, and quickly.  I tried getting the didgeridoo up on top of the rock I’d climbed down from, but J wasn’t there so I waited a little while for him to come back so that I could climb back up again.  While waiting I experienced some very anxious feelings of slight vertigo and fear of losing my footing.  Once I got back on the ground I felt much better and invigorated.  I drew a note in my sketchbook about theremins and sine waves versus triangle waves.

We smoked a little and walked around some more, occasionally he’d stop to take pictures and I to sketch the scenery.  I realized after the first cliff experience that this was going to be a very fun trip.  The next hill/cliff we came to seemed much larger than the last, we climbed to the top of it and I stood momentarily at the highest point and tried to take in all my surroundings at once, but got vertigo very bad and had to lay down.  I don’t remember how much time we spent there, but we left our bag and shirts by that hill and continued with our sunglasses, didgeridoo, and marijuana.

I’m having trouble putting the cliffs in the right order in my memory but I’m pretty sure we came to the next one and saw it was like planes of bedrock twisting up from the ground like a waffle cone or cinnamon sticks, layers of different colored stone in gradients that were vibrant enough to touch.  The wind tunnel created by all of these obtuse angles was one that visibly had ripped a fully-grown tree out from under the stones it had grown in between, and twisted and warped the bark of a closer, much older tree.  At the top of this marvelous formation was a near-perfect spiral ascending to the uppermost point.

We climbed this, and I got very freaked out at the top, this cliff was different in that it not only was at a distance away from the main upper plateau, and thus elevationwise, was isolated from any other high points, but it was very peculiarly shaped, for such a spire-shaped abutment.  Closer inspection of the structural framework beneath this rock showed that it had practically erupted from the ground in an almost shell-like spiral, with intersecting planes the entire height of the rock, so at odds with each other that I started to think I was standing completely perpendicular to the orientation of gravity.

Playing the didgeridoo here was probably the most unnerving experience I had had so far.  I went from climbing near-vertical cliff face, to straddling seemingly loose foundational boulders and losing my breath due to the fear of dying as a result of some vertigo-induced malplacement of my appendages, to reclining as comfortably as I could afford on the edge of some jagged rocks on the brink of complete gravity distortion while I lay my head back and attempted to feel completely at home, sober, and calm as I throat sang and waved my didge around.

The resulting effect was one of laying horizontal on a surfboard while riding the pipeline of a standing wave of solid rock and air pressure flowing in every direction with a 10,000 year cresting period.  While blowing through the didgeridoo as it was pointed downward directly at the wind tunnel forcing its way up, it took a large amount of force to move the air downward.  The personal reenactment of the hero’s journey in every moment of this trip was evident.  After a long time trying to become comfortable on this amazingly complex and disorienting environment, we walked down to a valley and made our way to the final, very large hill at the edge of the cliff.

Near the bottom of this valley we picked a spot under a bush where it was nice and shady to relax, smoke, and then meditate.  We were situated to the left of a large, living bush and to the right of a slightly smaller, completely dead bush.  The shadow from the living bush covered us and most of the dead bush, so I assumed it was the living bush’s greed for light that extinguished the life of the now-dead bush.  Luckily, we nomadic homo sapiens escaped the destructive power of the bush’s shadow quick enough to continue our journey.

While meditating in lotus position, the two of us tried spine-straightening techniques as well as very deep breathing that I exercise in my didgeridoo playing and throat singing.  We were amazed by the complexities of the living and dead branches and fractal, spiral, self-referential, self-organizing patterns in the bushes, and remarked how the pattern would be much more complex if the individual points were aware of themselves and therefore also of the other points.  I closed my eyes briefly and saw spiraling waves cascading around each other, we imagined an old person trying to paraphrase their life to a young person in three words, and deduced the most mathematically all-encompassing phrase would be: Spirals and waves.

When we both tried the lotus position, I experienced after a brief period when closing my eyes, the sight of a field of spheres arranged in a triangle, and each near-diamond shape between the spheres was filled with fractal, self-organizing patterns with a spiral to each.  I experienced being reborn into my body very mildly and comfortably.  I felt an incredibly compassionate feeling in my chest as I sensed I was vanishing back into nature.

I played around with a dry stick and easily broke all the tiny branches off of it in a fluid mental and physical process.  I held the stick between my fingers and tried to enjoy the tactile sensation of its bark against my increasingly sensitive fingertips to the point where I forgot I was there.  I practiced focusing my eyes on as close a detailed picture of the stick in front of me as I could see, because my focus was all thrown off by the cliffs I had just experienced.  The focusing process was very slow, but it was an excellent meditation.  By the time I was done I was sure that I was at least slightly more able to see the stick, clearly, as it truly was.

We talked and smoked for a good while, and the breeze picked up so strongly that I experienced chills through my body.  It was unbelievably refreshing and energizing, in combination with the lotus position, which in combination with the LSD, was like a battery of energy just charging up.  I have read up and found out that meditation and yoga have been scientifically proven to reverse the aging process on our bodies and minds.  This is clearly evident during the strenuous process of rock climbing, which requires all the muscles in the body to be tensed, as well as flexible, in order to shift energy to any necessary point.  I have found that doing yoga while under the influence of a psychedelic is extremely calming and enlightening because it controls what I see and feel and helps guide it in a positive direction, while also eliminating restlessness, which is a crucial point to achieving an effective meditation session.

This time, my body did not naturally crave the yoga as it usually does, because the need to cautiously and controllably conduct my body’s movements was fulfilled by the rock climbing and only brief stretches were needed to achieve a continual state of positively flowing circulation, respiration, and subsequently, cognition.

Time flew by underneath that bush, neither of us remembered how long it had been, but eventually we got up and made our way up the next hill, where we found 3 or 4 large cone-shaped piles of stones on top of the largest boulders sticking out from a corner in the cliffs.  This was apparently the climax of many people’s hikes, and I speculated that the accumulated energy of the other cliffs and hills that were necessary to pass over in order to get to this point self-manifested in the form of people’s motivation to build organized natural sculptures at this place.  I placed one small stone at the top of one of the pyramids and recognized the significance of my earlier premonition of a pyramid made out of spheres.

To the one side that we had not seen yet, was a near-endless expanse of interweaving riverbeds and rock formations, covered in greenery.  Also the very end of the man-made pipeline we had seen earlier.  Either it was not designed to extend any further, or it was not visible to us on the mountain that the remainder of the pipe was underground from that point on.  Plateaus and more cliffs, ravines, and crevices continued to our left, and on the horizon in every direction, the rocky mountains of New Mexico merged with the haze and clouds in the distance.  In front of one range, the city of Los Alamos was visible, and in the opposite direction, the mountainous Sangre de Cristo range adjacent to Santa Fe was visibly still capped with snow.

When we headed back, we touched upon many of the same spots, though the experience was obviously very different and equally as enlightening.  The sun was now going down and we still had the urge to gloriously take our time in leaving, stopping to rest in many different places, but not smoking very often.

When we went back to the cliff at which we had left our bag, I tried standing on the highest point again and was able to take it for a few more seconds this time, before losing my confidence and scrambling back to a more stable place.  I tried leaning back to play the didgeridoo on this rock, but the sight of the entire canyon behind me flailing around was seriously messing with the fluids in my inner ears so I had to close my eyes in order to relax enough to play the didgeridoo.  After about a minute of playing my breath just wasn’t becoming relaxed enough so I stopped and let J try and play.  Everyone who tries playing the didgeridoo the first time can’t stop laughing once they figure it out because their lung capacity only provides for short flatulent-sounding bursts of air.  This kept us both amused for a while.

The rest of the trip had brief instances of intense deja vu as we passed certain flowering cacti that we recognized from earlier, and approached a rock formation that both of us had been to earlier at 2 separate occasions, which caused us to reassess our insect-like role in the dynamic homeostasis of nature.  As we came nearer this formation, we were descending a lightly curved plane that became more complex as it neared the edge of the canyon, and on the other side in perfect alignment with this complexity, more stones seemed to come closer and form a bridge across the gap to the plateau facing us.  As we slowly shifted our gaze drawing nearer the illusion seemed to become more and more real, and other possible canyons emerged in between points on the ground that could easily have been separated by a large distance, but in actuality were continuously connected.

After walking a little further, we approached an almost garden-like area, surrounded by a semicircular natural retaining wall of black rocks, in the center of which was the only single aloe plant we had seen on the entire journey, and it was blooming with beautiful yellow flowers.  It was very zen-like and psychedelic.  After getting slightly lost on the way back down, we eventually found roughly the same path we used to ascend the first hill, walked down, and I felt like the gravity of the mountains was displacing my body to a lower, more natural and stable center on the flat ground.  Of all the surfing analogies that come up during an acid trip, this was the most intense, because as we were coming up, we were impatiently climbing the mountains, and by the time we came back down to the ground, we were so calmed and tired and satisfied it was like we had just surfed over the tops and backs of all these cresting waves and exchanged our energy with that of the ancient in the rocks, and the novel in the sunlight.  We came back and rode the length of the pipeline out onto the pavement again, bringing the only linear aspect of the trip full circle.

We drove back to see what A and D were doing.  Apparently even though they had taken far less than J and I, they both had excellent and fulfilling experiences, so we decided we still had a lot left.  This trip had so many elements to it, when trying to imagine a picture in my memory to associate with this entire experience, so much uncertainty is waving around associated with the amazing distances and sensations I opened my mind to, that it’s impossible to nail down a single true exemplifying experience.

The scopes I explored were groundbreaking and not a single moment was anything short of uplifting and instructional.  The mathematical elements, spirals, waves, lines, circles, spheres, triangles, pyramids, cones, and so on were so varied and diverse but all seemed connected.  Yin and Yang were constantly present and continually showed me their ever-complex relationships and ever-present balance.  I saw very little wildlife apart from birds and insects, plantlife was very diverse and included grasses, trees, bushes, flowers, and succulents, and the contrasts between the deep red earth tone and the bright, translucent yellow-green of the grass in the sun were in such high contrast and such equal distribution that we were both constantly astounded by what we were seeing.  Dead trees as well as living ones fascinated us with their organic forms and vibrant yet somehow pastel colors.  The light from the sun gave everything a shine during the day and a glow at dusk such that the reflected light was at once bright white and clear and rosy pink with a hint of blue.  Imagining the canyon being turned upside down in my sleep and the next day I get flashbacks of slight vertigo.  I am still in the process of reflecting on this experience.

Exp Year: 2009	ExpID: 78686

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: May 1, 2012	Views: 10,971

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Yoga / Bodywork (202), Music (457), Meditation (128), Breathing (470), LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Nature / Outdoors (23), Glowing Experiences (4), Combinations (3)


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

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

		   T+ 0:00
		 250 mg
		 oral
		 Pharms - Lamotrigine
		 (daily)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   135 lb

(note:  I've removed all gendered pronouns and initials regarding those who were with me at the time; this is conscious, with apologies for any bad grammar as a result.  I've referred to them by roles - Guide, partner, Synesthete, and Philosopher.)

First, a few facts about me that might shed some light on what happened; the rest is experiences, thoughts, and actions, but the facts are relevant here.  I'm 22, diagnosed bipolar type II nearly two years ago, and taking 250 mg of Lamictal once per day.  I am also on hormonal birth control (a monocyclic), though this was on the last day of my 'off' week.  Other than the Lamictal, the LSD was the only foreign psychoactive that I introduced into my body that weekend.  I wrote this about 34 hours after taking the LSD.

Why did I take LSD for the first time when the risks are large for bipolar folks?  I was curious, honestly.  My parents were very open about drug use - my sister took many things before going entirely sober - so I had no negative stigma to work through.  I hoped to get some insight (in both the psychiatric and spiritual senses) into my illness, and to see what, if any, effects the LSD would have that I couldn't duplicate or find in a manic state.  I got all of these things out of it, and more.

Before deciding to take LSD with trusted friends, I delved into research.  I was particularly concerned about the interaction between Lamictal and LSD; I know (as much as I trust other peoples' experiences) that Depakote, another popular bipolar anticonvulsant, can attenuate the effects of LSD substantially, and I know that lithium can cause serious convulsions and grand mal seizures.  Lamictal was approved for treating bipolar disorder in 2003, so there are very few writings of people taking it concurrently with LSD; in fact, I had a great deal of trouble finding any experiences of medicated bipolar patients taking LSD, because apparently most of them are perhaps wiser than I.  The mechanism of action for Lamictal is unknown (though sodium channel mechanisms are suspected), but serotonin doesn't seem to be strongly affected, so I decided that it was probably not going to end too badly as long as I kept my mind free of fear, stress, and anxiety.  Lamictal's half-life is short, so there was no question of going off it that weekend.

I was offered the chance to try LSD at the start of January; it took me nearly three weeks to make my decision.  These weeks involved consulting with other (unmedicated) bipolars familiar with many drugs as well as my partner, who is not inclined to try such things.  The other three people who were to travel with me were all more experienced than I, one of them quite experienced, and were all people I had known for more than four years, two of them my current housemates.  This particular set of LSD had been tested already with many people, so we knew the batch was pure and of a reasonable strength - definitely a plus for me.

I am very thankful to Erowid for providing such a wealth of information; I was able to read up on experiences, side effects, time courses, and the like, and was able to mentally prepare myself.  I do believe that going in without preparation would have probably been a disaster; as it was, things ended well, but there were some tense moments.  The advice to breathe, let things go as they would, and remember at bad times that 'this, too, shall pass,' was exceptionally helpful.

We spent Friday and Saturday cleaning up the house and the chosen room to avoid bad associations.  I'd been having a bad week at work, but I worked very hard to avoid stressing out and triggering a bipolar episode; this included stress relievers such as lots of hot showers, meditation, and deep breathing and also avoidance of stressors in general.  My housemates prepared one bedroom for the trip - futons on the floor with bright Indian-patterned covers, pictures on the wall, music, colored lights, incense, and the lot.  They took time to answer my questions - would I eat or drink?  What would we do? - and asked me questions of their own - how much would I like to be guided?  What kind of music did I prefer?  I am quite grateful.  It turned out that the non-housemate was ill that weekend and so avoided partaking, but came and sat with us as a sober Guide who was nonetheless very capable of seeming tripping when that was helpful.  I found Guide's presence very soothing.

We opted to take the LSD at 1300 on Sunday.  On Sunday morning, I awoke after a reasonable amount of sleep, made pancakes, and took a long hot shower to relax and focus myself.  Although I understood that food might be problematic, my metabolism wants calories every few hours, so stocking up seemed like a wise choice.  Based on my inexperience and possible medication interactions, I opted to take half of a hit to start with.  I ended up taking the other half around 1500, after feeling no adverse effects but also being somewhat bored with the proceedings.  I had lost sense of time at that point, so Guide helped bring me the other half after querying me over a half-hour period as to when I wanted more.  I did keep a watch on my person - otherwise my clothing was loose and my hair up, as per advice - mostly on the off chance that I needed it to help regain my sense of time - but it was only occasionally helpful.

By about 1400 things were starting to go somewhere.  I stared for some ten minutes at a piece of ramen left on the mattress, and began to realize things were more than just my imagination - something I was somewhat nervous about - when I lost the feeling of connectedness to my right arm.  Things also started being very funny and oddly connected; very much like the feeling of free association that comes with bipolar mania, but without the speed and pressured speech.  It was helpful to realize that the overlap of symptoms was present but the main drive behind them (energy and mood) wasn't.  This helped me remove some negative feelings towards free association, which I think is a good thing.  The music was very helpful - I'm strongly musical and would go insane without it in general life - and helped calm me down.

I started having some distress when we went to go explore the world of cheese.  Synesthete, who appears to prefer using LSD to explore the senses, synesthesia, and the like, offered me some.  I became quite distressed at the fact that I couldn't eat it.  I had lost my sense of appetite - not a need to eat, but simply the awareness that eating was possible, let alone necessary - and I had forgotten how to chew and swallow, so I feared to eat lest I stop breathing (and trigger an asthma attack).  Lying back on the futons on a pillow, next to Guide, I began to mildly freak out about the loss of chewing ability.

I became fully aware that the drug was doing something (not just my mind, but the LSD itself) when I noticed the walls throbbing and breathing.  A batik hanging on the wall breathed in and out, swirling colors - it was beautiful but honestly at that time a bit much.  I spent a lot of time staring out the window at the snow, noticing the rainbow patterns, and moving around to see if changing my physical position might help with my mental distress.  I was aware at that point that if I let myself freak out any further I would probably trigger a very bad mood episode; the part of my brain that observes my behavior (that psychiatric insight again, I call it 'the observer') was tripping just as much as the rest of me, and was hence less help than I'd hoped.  I tried to relax, keeping the advice in mind - let it go, go with the flow, and remember that this isn't infinite, though it may seem that way.

At some point Guide suggested that we try moving the mouse to show the screensaver on Guide's laptop, pictures of a bike trip.  I found those exceptionally calming; I am very comforted by nature, and having seen the pictures before found them relaxing.  My distress evaporated at that point and I began to lie back and enjoy the effects of the LSD.  Philosopher's pictures on the wall, black and white prints from an art class, shaded back and forth from printer black and white to gelatin silver in various tones - truly beautiful - and I saw a chrysanthemum flowering on the white ceiling.  Tracers began appearing, as well, and rainbow floaters - I spent time moving my hands to watch them.  My sense of time was truly gone at this point; I watched my watch for pure amusement's sake, and felt that I had never done anything besides lie in the room and stare at beautiful things.

Our musical choices cycled - at one point Synesthete became unhappy because the music 'had knives,' so we switched to more ambient things.  There was some Delirium, comforting because I knew the CD in and out, and other things that I was unfamiliar with - the Boards of Canada ('Aquarius' sticks in my mind - orange, yeah, that's right), as I was sitting on an orange pillow), Jethro Tull later on, and more.  I mostly sat and watched things, reveling in a loss of sensation of time and a general feeling of intense euphoria.  Certainly there were times when I was more or less euphoric, but I was never bored and, after the beginning, never distressed.  I am quite thankful to my Guide and my housemates for making my first experience a trusting one.

Around 1800 I began to be hungry - well, somewhat.  My stomach hurt (a key clue!), but I had no sense of food and thought I might live on sunbeams.  The Guide and my own slight sense of self told me to go seek calories and try patiently to eat.  I ran into my partner, who had been trying to avoid us all day, but found us entertaining and fun to play with.  My partner fed me various things - juice, dried fruits, nuts, and made me smell spices and teas and describe my thoughts on them.  We apparently amused each other, and I did get enough food into me.  At some point I felt a slight desire to go back to the music room and did so, happy that I was able to affect my environment and avoid any distress.

Guide left around 2000, going home to rest and recuperate, after being satisfied that I was taking well to the LSD and was unlikely to have further issues.  After some more time spent relaxing and briefly talking metaphysics and photography with Philosopher (who seems to be as quiet on LSD as otherwise, and particularly very introspective), I came to the realization that I wanted to be both Philosopher and Synesthete - Philosopher's introspection and thinking, Synesthete's exploration of the world with newfound senses.  I spent much time staring at the ceiling and seeing beautiful rainbow patterns and knotwork.  I wasn't convinced that this was the One Universal Answer, but I found myself at tears anyways because of the wonderful unearthly beauty of things.  A quiet ecstasy.

Around 2100 Philosopher and Synesthete asked if I would be okay for the remainder of the trip, expecting that I was coming down somewhat; I was unconvinced of my coming down (though they were right, as I found by comparing effects to earlier experiences) - I believe they wanted to go someplace private and experience each other, which didn't bother me at all.  They left me the room (Philosopher's, as it happened) and the music.  I found myself a bit at a loss for musical choices, so I spent a lot of time staring at the floor-to-ceiling mirror in Philosopher's room.  I had been warned about self-esteem and mirrors, and had avoided them earlier, but found now that they were a very powerful tool for me.  The mirror showed me how much I cared for myself and shored up my self-esteem in new and wonderful ways - definitely a big help at the time and one that I hope stays with me.

At that point I began being a bit at a loss for activities, and so sought out my partner, asking for pretty pictures; I wanted to look at more pictures of nature.  We eventually discussed synesthesia before adjourning with me to the kitchen, where we made delicious cookies and talked about my experiences thus far, what I had felt, and my hopes for the rest of the trip.  I was very labile at that point, and could go anywhere mentally depending on what I heard and saw.

I was definitely still tripping - it had only been 10 hours - but I was coming down at this point, and it was much less pleasant than the upswing and middle plateau.  I was tense all over, and therefore sore as though someone had beaten me with a baseball bat (perhaps due to my chronic pain syndrome?), and in particular my jaw (which I'd read about and hence wasn't particularly stressed by) was as tense as all - light massage and a hot shower helped with both, but sleep was more restorative.  I spent a lot of time pacing and dancing to the music we put on - last.fm's Chill-Out station - as we made cookies.  Synesthete came out, affirmed that I had done the right thing by seeking out my partner, and was ecstatic over the cookies (cardamom with chocolate).

Around 0100 I started thinking about sleep, as I had work the next day, and I took a hot shower with my partner in the bathroom with me for company.  I had a lot of trouble sleeping, and ended up doing so around 0300 with the light on; I nearly had a bad experience involving seeing lots of eyes in the darkness, but I had heard that darkness triggers such things sometimes and my partner was clever enough to make me turn the lights back on.  At 0400 I woke up and realized I'd slept, and fell asleep again, sleeping it off until 0800.

Today has been very strange - I feel half-awake, as in a dreamworld, due to lack of sleep, I think.  Work was thankfully very rote, routine, and I had a lot of time to reflect and listen to music, which I did constantly from 0830 to 1500.  I took a short nap, then saw my psychiatrist, who didn't appear to notice the lingering mental and physical effects.  If he'd asked, I would have told him, but it seemed somewhat less relevant at that point, as the short nap had removed the last of the distressing physical symptoms.

At this point I am feeling physically a little abused - I ate a very large, vitamin-heavy dinner - but generally pretty okay.  And my mind is quiet, at peace, and has learned what it wanted to know - I know the conditions when I would want to do this again, and perhaps I shall someday - and I am in general much more at peace with my disorder than I have been for a while.  We'll see how the coming weeks and months go, but above all I am grateful that I tried LSD.  I got what I wanted out of it, and I also got a lot more - inner strength proven and an absolutely wonderful trip.  I can't say that it was incredibly good, and it definitely wasn't bad, but 'what a long strange trip it's been!'  Next time, if there is a next time - more music I know well, nature (a cabin in the woods makes sense now), and more things to look at and listen to.

Thanks, world, people who make such things, my Guide, friends, partner, and all of you who wrote things that helped me prepare and achieve such a very incredible experience.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 68733

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: 22

Published: May 16, 2012	Views: 41,903

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LSD (2) : Music Discussion (22), Guides / Sitters (39), Hangover / Days After (46), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		 1 hit
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   155 lb

I’d like to begin this report by telling you guys a little about myself. I am seventeen, take absolutely no medication, and have already experimented with a small variety of drugs such as marijuana, MDMA to a minor extent, and LSD. Although I have already dropped acid once, it was at a concert setting so I was not able to fully gauge the intensity of the trip due to the atmosphere, let alone enjoy it to the fullest. I was also with a friend who, even though is pretty funny, I am not too fond of. Before you decide not to read this, let me say that it truly felt like it was my first experience with the drug. Since that one time, I have always wanted to try it once more with a special person who I would be able to fully express my feelings and emotions with, while in a more comfortable setting.

I have become increasingly close with my friend who moved here to Miami from New York about nine months ago; we’ll call her S for the remaining of the report. I pretty much consider her as a sister by this point. What gave me the idea to try it with her was a recurring dream that I had in which we both took it and biked through the forest and ended up in the most serene setting. In this vivid dream we both lied down on a long sloped grass hill with a large lake at the bottom while we watched the sun set behind the mountains (I have no idea where I even conceived this place considering there are no mountains anywhere near Miami). After this I told her about dream and asked her what she though about making it happen. She has not done any drugs before in her life, so I was surprised to hear that she was open to the idea. I assured her that the drug is not what the media portrays it to be, and that we would plan it out perfectly so that nothing could go wrong. Although she was originally going to try smoking weed before this, it never quite happened and I am actually pretty glad. She is the most active, hilarious girl I know, so I would hate to see her so lazy and out of it after smoking. I asked her to trust me about the misconceptions about LSD, and reassured her that everything would be ok. We planned to trip the next weekend.

I was giddy with excitement on Sunday morning when I drove to her house to pick her up. Although we were both slightly nervous, we both had a great mindset because it was a beautiful day, and we had no obligations to take care of. Once we were at my house we prepared our backpacks with water, iced tea, sunglasses, an extra pair of clothes just in case anything happens, a bowl of mixed fruit, and headphones. Our plan was to bike over to a nearby nature trail and have a picnic by the lake. We went into my room, hesitantly placed the blotter tab on our tongues, waited for it to dissolve, and swallowed at precisely 1:40 P.M. We hugged each other in anticipation of the great adventure we were about to experience, and sat on the couch to watch TV while it kicked in. After about ten boring minutes we decide to just leave on our bike ride.

My bike was previously making a really loud screeching noise but I fixed it by loosening a bolt near the front tire only slightly. We slowly pedaled on back roads just casually talking about what was to come. We both had that feeling of anticipation, that something was off but we couldn’t tell what just yet. As we neared the nature trail, we began to feel the first small effects. As an uncontrollable smile fell upon my face, everything seemed a little bit brighter and more beautiful. When we stopped to make sure we were heading in the right direction, I spotted one of those lizards that run on their hind legs. It was very similar to those “Jesus lizards” that run on water but it was over concrete. She didn’t see it so she sarcastically joked about me seeing things. As we arrived to the park, our first decision was to go through one of the trails.

By the time we both got to the trail it had been about 50-60 minutes since we took it so it just started to hit us and the nature surrounding us was quite beautiful. By this time my bike had also started making the noises that I thought I had fixed earlier, but I did my best to ignore them. We rode over the narrow concrete road as we passed hundreds of mangrove-looking trees on both sides. We looked directly in front of us as we flew by the trees at a high speed. We then both looked down at our tires spinning ever so slowly over the ground and bursted out laughing. We must have been going only two miles per hour but the nearby trees that raced passed us on both sides made it seem as if we were going so fast! Up ahead on the road we saw that a mucky substance consisting of leaves, dirt, etc. Completely covering the road. I picked up some speed to that I could pedal through it easily and reached the end of the mucky road pretty quickly. I heard S behind me say, “I don’t like the muck” and I looked back to see her standing next to her bike waiting in the mucky road. We both made eye contact and laughed uncontrollably. She walked it out to where I was and we continued on our way. After about five more minutes we decided to turn back and head towards the lake for our picnic. Once we were off the trail and back in the parking lot, we went over the curb and stopped to make sure no cars coming. We both noticed a patch of dried mud that had a smooth grey appearance. My noticed visual was when I focused on the patch and saw it morph slightly. We took note of this, agreed that it looked liked quicksand, and crossed the street to begin our picnic. By now my bike was making a horrid screeching sound so I was glad to finally get off it. We parked our bikes next to this old concrete structure that looked like it was built in the 1800s and walked near the lake to set up our blanket.

By now it must have been about 1:30-2:00 hours since we took it. We were both pretty hungry so we took out the fruit salad in my bag and started picking the fruit by hand and lifting it up to our mouth. We opened the top and as we both went for our first piece of fruit we bursted out laughing. Right on the top was the biggest chunk of pineapple we had ever seen! “Looks like the supermarket got lazy,” I said. It must have taken S about four separate bites to finish that one chunk. After about ten minutes of eating I realized that we brought plastic forks to eat the fruit with. S said to forget about the forks, “it’s only another thing that can go wrong” I chuckled and accepted the fact that eating it with our hands felt so much better. For some reason, the cold, slimy fruit that would have made us feel so awkward at any other time felt amazing in our fingers. Once we got to the bottom of the fruit bowl there was really only a few chunks of fruit left so out of laziness we tossed them in the grass instead of walking back to a trashcan. Back towards the concrete structure there were three kids of about six or seven years old playing with sticks with two adults following them. I couldn’t help but laugh because of the way the two men were dressed. One of them, who I presumed to be the father, had a long ponytail of grey hair, was dressed in full hiking attire, and even had a long stick he was using to hike with. The other man who looked like he was about 25-35 years old was dressed a little more normal but was wearing a safari-like sun hat. I couldn’t help pointing out to S that if you took the kids out of the picture, it looks like these guys were going to spend their day deep inside the African Sahara!

Since we didn’t bother looking at our phones much to check the time, these are estimates (2:00-3:00 since we took it). Towards the peak of our trip, we decided to lie down and relax. As soon as my back made contact with the ground, I felt a wave of relief. I had never felt so relaxed and in unison with S and everything around me. We wanted to listen to some music now so S took out her iPod Shuffle and began skipping through songs. Since she shares it with two of her sisters, nothing too appealing came on so I decided to plug in my music. After two minutes of indecisiveness, I chose D’yer Mak’er by Led Zeppelin. The music sounded amazing and I felt like I was transported back to the seventies. But once the song reached the point where Robert Plant starts screaming, S read my mind and asked me to change it. As we continued to listen to some tunes, we put our shades on and stared up at the clouds. The clouds moved slowly in every direction and the edges of the clouds swirled slightly, it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. After what felt like an hour of just looking up at the sky, S needed to go to the bathroom. When I checked my phone, only twenty minutes had passed since we first lied down! We were both completely shocked by how altered our time perception was and agreed that this trip was going to feel like forever. I had no Idea where the bathrooms were but S said she saw them earlier before we went on the trail, so we made it our “mission” to find the bathroom. I hopped on my bike after having completely forgotten about the noise and as I took the first pedal, my bike screamed like a banshee. I felt everyone’s eyes on me but I laughed it out. I told S that my bike was pretty bipolar because every now and then it would be quiet for a while, but as soon as you got accustomed to the silence, it would start screeching again.

It turned out that the bathroom was about sixty seconds away so it wasn’t as much of a “mission” as what was about to come. I waited outside the bathroom as she walked in and not even fifteen seconds later she came out with a frown on her face. “that was quick,” I joked. She said there was a spider in the stall and she can’t do it. I started laughing while thinking to myself “is she serious?” So I took a look inside and at first sight it seemed fine, but hanging right above the stall was the biggest spider I had ever seen! The entire place was covered in insects! I went outside in embarrassment and told her to try the last stall, which was the least insect-ridden. After waiting for her to come out I decided that I also needed to pee. “Can’t I just go in the women’s bathroom where I know it’s safe?”

“No we need to be normal people” She laughed. So I went across to the men’s restroom and finished up in a sec.

(3:30-4:30 since we took it) We decide to look for another spot to chill, so after a few minutes of noisy biking, we found a nice clearing with a picnic table. We decide to sit on the top of the bench like the “cool kids”. She had brought her sketchbook and colored pencils so it was the perfect time to start doodling. We both collaborated on a drawing on the same page and when it was done, it was the most disgusting, dog/rabbit-looking creature I had ever seen. I laughed so hard at what we created and determined it was best if we try drawing individually for a few minutes. She ended up drawing a picture of us sitting on the bench and titled it “The Best…” She said she was about to write “trip” but I insisted not to just in case her parents came across the sketchbook. I took a colored pencil and filled it in, The Best “Picnic”. Then she got her pencil, crossed out picnic and wrote “Thing”. We both laughed at this war we were having and ended up talking the rest of the time. We looked back where our bikes were and saw the same three kids with those two creepy adults following them. We both noticed a really pretty bird that was in the tree, and little-by-little, more and more birds showed up. These weren’t pigeons and crows either; these were some pretty exotic-looking birds. Before we knew it we were standing under a tree full of these awesome birds that had colorful patterns on their tail wings. “What are we doing here? This is like a prime bird-watching location,” S said. We laughed and ended up sitting back down on the bench. As we came down from our peak we talked and messed around for another hour or so before hopping on our bikes and leaving the park.

(5:30-6:00 since we took it) Once arriving at the checkpoint we previously stopped at on the way over here, S spotted the lizard I saw earlier. It easily could have been a different one but it was cool to see one in the same exact spot as earlier. I later figured out that they are called Basilisk Lizards. As we neared my house, S exclaimed, “We didn’t listen to Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds!” So I pulled up the song on my phone and we began to listen to it. We were practically drenched in sweat, wearing dorky bike helmets, and could barely hear the song due to the loud screeching of my bike. “It’s like the ending of a really bad movie,” S said. I started laughing uncontrollably. Even though we were coming down from our trip, it was definitely one of the funniest moments of the day.

We were both starving when we got to my house so we immediately started making sandwiches. After barely putting anything but meat and cheese on the pita bread, S goes for a bite but I told her to wait, this sandwich has to be epic. So we each put two sandwiches of meats and cheese in the toaster and placed our condiments in between each of our two sandwiches to make something that was worth the wait. About 45 minutes later we scarfed down the food and I went back to the sketchbook to look at what we drew. I saw The Best “Picnic” drawing and crossed it out and put The Best Sandwich.

As soon as we finished eating we jumped in the pool to relax. S insisted in taking my surfboard in the pool so I couldn’t tell her no. We paddled around in “the flattest ocean you will ever surf in” and I tried teaching her how to duck dive, which she almost got (She at least learned how to sit on the board). After a great day we dried off and I took her home.

Exp Year: 2012	ExpID: 96427

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 17

Published: Oct 3, 2012	Views: 9,721

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LSD (2) : General (1), Nature / Outdoors (23), Music Discussion (22), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		 2 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (pill / tablet)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   160 lb

I have never been an advocate of using powerful hallucinogenic drugs, at least I have never actively suggested it to people. I have, on the other hand, a deep seated belief that if you feel drawn towards doing it and you feel good about it, go for it.

This report follows my second experience and is recounted almost minute for minute taken from dictaphone recordings I made of the night. The recordings spanned a massive seven hours of total record time, most of which filled with speech and description, some of which...well lets just say some of it makes little to no sense at all or is just noise.

RECORDING 1 - 21:28

'It is approximately.....some time at night....half nine, about half nine, and I have just placed two tabs of tasteless printed paper under my tongue, we are all in agreement that this is LSD. No effects yet as I am sure you understand. I am with my two good friends from work who have opted to observe and not partake (they shall be referred to as richmond and charles for the purposes of this report) and the environment is a very comfortable new house with which I am very impressed...*cheers from richmond and carl are heard, though their voices are inaudible*. I shall be documenting the experience in full.

RECORDINGS 2-4 21:55-22:35

21:55'Mild shuddering has become apparent though its not discomforting or anything, its just a little difficult to relax in this chair. I am pretty thirsty, I wonder if thats because I am thirsty or if its the drugs?'

22:15'I am rather comfortable now, feel very very warm...Charles, is it hot in here or is that me? *charles replies that it is just me*, i suppose it is just me, I'm not hot anyway, just warm'

22:35'I haven't said anything for like, ages. I thought it was wise to tell you, even though you probably know, that Charles's room is rather big, I can see every corner from where I am sitting, even ones behind my head. If I try hard enough I can drag them around...*charles and richmond laugh*, they think its funny...blagging a**eholes right there man'

At this point in the evening I was experiencing a great warmth coming from the centre of my body, combined with a deep stillness. If I sat too long my feelings and emotions seemed to mesh with whatever I was touching. I describe this in recording 5.

RECORDING 5 23:10

'It's just totally...I can't communicate I don't know how to communicate. GODDAMN! I wish I could just, communicate! What is it with language man?! I've totally become entwined with this box, you can't have it back, my fingers have sunk into it its like, its like, my soul and the boxes soul have become a supersoul'

RECORDING 6 23:50

'I don't even know what they're both talking about...*you can barely hear richmond trying to explain his question, he is asking me who I think should be president. For lack of a better answer I say Hunter S Thompson, unable to fathom that he is dead*. At this point the lack of concept has taken full hold, I can no longer form ideas in my head or understand simple statements without great effort. The room has descended into a colourful dream world not unlike the artwork of yellow submarine. Walls glazed with oranges and purples, objects shuddering on their spots and morphing into sea creatures and goblins, many of which seem to lack any real form but make perfect sense to me. It may be worth noting that several objects in the room distorted into what I now consider to be meaningless shapes, but at the time they conveyed great meaning to me, and were recognised for their ideals and not their image.

RECORDING 7 00:04

'They put on this song, this blagging song, it's giving me instructions...*the song is giving instructions on surviving a zombie invasion, I became convinced that the house was surrounded by zombies. I saw them out of the window, black hulking masses crawling around buildings. I was not alarmed, merely interested and focussed on the instructions I was being given* I HAVE to follow them...they're all over..I dont know if I should go outside...I can't even have an idea! you know you're messed up when you can no longer form an idea'

RECORDING 8 00:47

'Theres just no point, I cant even form a sentence, I cant speak to this blagging machine....Charles you have a f**kin stripey assed living room man'. I had become obsessed with the walls of the living room, they were striped with colours I had never seen before, colours I doubt I could describe or recreate now. For the purposes of this report it is worth mentioning his walls are painted grey with no stripes.

The recordings beyond this point become rather abstract and are not worth transcribing. I experienced strange visuals involving guitar strings and shuddering of objects. Richmond would close his eyes and shake his head violently from side to side at the end of each sentence, charles become a jesus-like deity in which a white halo appeared behind his head as he spoke. I ascribe this halo to the fact that he has long hair and a beard. I placed my face on their front door to check for zombies, when I experienced the most immersive and overwhelming visual I could have possible imagined.

The door split open around my head and I fell through. Suddenly I found myself flying in an orange and purple mist, surrounded by dizzyingly high black towers. I looked down to the ground some thirty feet away and observed thousands of tiny glowing orbs that were whizzing frantically between the buildings, their movements affected by noises I could hear from charles's living room. Richmonds voice strongly affected the ambient light.

I was shocked, to such a degree I forced myself out of the door and back into their living room.

It was time to ascend to my room for the night, which was a converted loft room with a confusing velux window which opened upward. The flight of stairs panicked me, I felt a sudden urge to have all lights on but charles would not allow it. We ascended in the dark, the stairs conspired against me as my vision was now entirely black. Around me, only wood and carpet, deeply menacing emotions emerged from every surface I touched as they curled and contorted as if to engulf my physical form and eventually control my mind. I got over this fear and managed to reason past the nightmare of this short flight of stairs, we continued to climb until the light of the bathroom freed me.

The final three or four hours of my trip were spent listening to Jefferson Airplane. The music took on a whole new level inside my head, new meanings were discovered and fantastic visuals emerged from every note. Sound and music were being translated into language which only I could understand, and whenever I opened my eyes, the tune would distort the room around me to match its movement.

A perfect experience.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 72025

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Oct 21, 2012	Views: 8,214

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LSD (2) : General (1), Music Discussion (22), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		 3 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   160 lb

This could also be a report of my 5g mushroom trip from 3 weeks ago, minus the nausea, as it was very similar and equally terrifying but somewhat more devastating afterwords, because it was from LSD, which had been very gentle with me up until yesterday...

I've taken LSD numerous times over the past couple of years. My 1st experience was with half a hit of a strong blotter, unperforated, no taste/body load and lasted around 12-16 hours but every time after that, it was an 8-12 hour thing with very minor body load and and nothing but positive experiences. I always wait 2 weeks between trips, even tho the literature says a week should be fine...  I'm 28, in pretty good shape and try to live a healthy lifestyle, I watch what I eat, I lift weights, run and don't drink or smoke.

The most I've ever taken was 3 hits, a couple of times, and the last time, although I felt it was a bit too overwhelming, was a very positive experience. It was from the same sheet I took this dose off of. Around that time, I was also experimenting with growing my own shrooms and had some fruiting so I made up my mind to take Terence McKenna's favorite heroic dose of 5 grams couple weeks later with horrifying and decimating results which brings us to 3 weeks after that mushroom trip, which was yesterday, when I took 3 hits...

I work nights and sleep during the day and after getting home from work Friday morning, I passed out and woke up at 6pm.. I was trying to decide if I should go ahead and trip now or tomorrow and after a couple of hours of back and forth, decided to go for it.  By now it was a little passed 8pm. A friend called and said she was gonna stop by with her bf to pick up some stuff for the weekend so I had to wait for them to show up. They finally show up around 9:30 and leave at 10, I'm finally free of any obligations and it's been 12 hour since I last ate so my stomach is totally empty.  Perfect! I cut out 3 hits from the unperforated sheet of what used to be 25 hits, now looking like some weird tetris block... I put in under ny tongue and let it fully absorb for about 10-15 mins and swallow. By 11pm I start to come up, feeling the energy/anxiety building up in my body, some visual distortion start to appear and I start hearing slight echoing effect I always get with LSD. So far so good, I get under the covers and turn on my mp3 player which contains my fav music and some Terrence McKenna lectures for later on when I'm coming down, like I always do..

It's around 11:15 now and I'm getting hit pretty hard but nothing shattering, it's just really good with a hint of overwhelming, like the last time I took 3 hits, no biggie, I'm feeling good.  But another 15 mins pass and something's different... I'm getting stronger sound distortions than usual, people talking downstairs, in the background (the TV was on in the living room) sounds very low pitched and echoing harder than normal but when I turn the music back on, it sounds fine... Hmm, this is interesting... I try not to pay too much attention to this and keep enjoying the experience but something else seems wrong now... The music I'm listening to all of a sudden sounds like it's slowing down to a crawl but the pitch remains the same. Wow, this is kinda freaky, so I feel like I should get up and look around to see what other strange effects I notice... Wrong move... When I stood up and I feel dizzy, feeling as though I'm short and stretched sideways. Running out of breath or I also feel it's harder to breath and I automatically reach for water and drink from the bottle like my life depended on it. Some of it run down my face. I'm now thoroughly convinced I'm having a bad reaction to this chemical. Feeling like I'm going to fade away amd I'm not ready to die here like this, not yet! I definitely have issues letting go. But how can I not? What will my parents think when they find my lifeless body? What will happen to all those that I care about? C'mon! Get it together! You're not gonna die, you're gonna pull thru this and you're gonna fight!  If I say things, if I sing, if I act hyper, I can jumpstart my heart and have it beat faster and stronger so I can't slip into unconsciousness and die... Sheer terror at this point...

Collapsing back on the bed, I put on some music; well, hit play again, since I had paused it previously when I started to freak out and get scared because I could hear it getting fainter and actually slowing down to a crawl, which obviously meant (at the time) that my heart was also slowing down... My senses are severely distorted and wouldn't sync up, for instance, when I would get up to turn on a light, I would see me getting up but somehow felt like my body was still on the bed, trying to catch up to what I was seeing, which was me standing up now, or was it the other way around, was I still lying in bed, just thinking about standing up and visualizing it, I just wasn't sure anymore...  I kept mumbling about the chemical effecting my blood pressure and tried to make myself remember the words blood pressure medication and adrenaline (like my life depended on being able to remember these words after the trip) but somehow just couldn't utter them...  This was almost a repeat experience of 5 grams of mushrooms I ate 3 weeks ago, when I had the most horrific trip of my life... Except this was going to last twice as long.  That last notion was enough to freak me out even more...

This cycle kept continuing for couple of hours where I would sit back in bed and calm down for 10-15 minutes, then this would happen all over again, it was happening in waves, like it would as if it was psilocybin... At this point I had many crazy theories as to what was happening.  One of them was I was having a mushroom flashback while I was tripping on LSD, which was the only plausible explanation because of the similarities...  Looking back now, maybe I would have had a very profound experience if I had just let go and accepted that I was 'dying' and allowed myself to let go but it's really hard when your mind actually believes that you are and utterly convinces you that 'now you've done it!'

Anyway, then when things finally started to calm down, still some OEV's and distortions but nothing of the so called life threatening experience, I started getting that uncomfortable body load feeling and had the revelation that this part of the experience totally depended on how the peak experience was. If it was a good trip, then there would be little to no body load, no physical manifestation, no build up of toxicity but if the trip was difficult, the end result would present itself as a lot of body load. This also made sense at the time and I kinda chuckled at my own cleverness for figuring this out. Now I had to think of ways to get rid of this body load and I remembered I had some herb stashed away so I prepared that and took a hit... When I laid back down on the bed, a sense of calm started to appear all around me, a body buzz started and I had the revelation that this was what had been missing from my trip to calm my nerves all along... Now I was feeling more relaxed, less anxious and I wanted to put back on some tunes... The OEV's also strengthened but it was different, the patterns on the walls wren't really swirling but they were, pulsing now...

The music was sounding heavenly and I couldn't help but marvel at how clear it sounded and kept chuckling, saying 'oh my god..' and 'this is awesome' every now and then..  and it was. The feeling continued for about an hour and I kept taking an additional hit every other hour till the 12th hour mark to prolong the expereience and relaxation. This definitely decreased the feeling of body load... I just tossed and turned in bed and listened to some Terence McKenna lectures, now having a better understanding of what he meant when he said 'difficult experience.' I just never thought I would have this sort of reaction from LSD which has been gentle with me up till this point. I still feel it was the 5g of mushrooms I took 3 weeks ago that changed something in my brain chemistry.

I've now been awake for 26 hours and felt like I have insomnia. Although there were no OEV's or visual disturbances anymore, I still got a slight CEV, some white energy thing just burning and radiating like the sun, or even boiling... I also feel anxiety and slight depression, probably because I was worried that I won't ever be the same now. I've thought like this on mushrooms previously when I completely feel like mentally challenged and that it's gonna be permanent but it always goes away and I come back to regular consciousness after 6 hours or so, so it should have cleared up by now but it hasn't. It's also possible that I feel this way because I haven't slept and I'll feel better once I do but what use is that if I can't fall asleep?  What if I'll never be able to go to sleep again?  What if I'm still like this tomorrow when it's time to go to work?? Negative though loops still continuing, residuals of a bad trip no doubt or it could be an instant flashback, right after the come down, I don't quite know how those work. Not knowing when (if) it's going to stop is depressing and equally terrifying.

The music I listened to while I was tripping was also giving me anxiety when I thought about it, for no good reason. My head feels like it's heavy and kinda numb, almost as if not from LSD but from the weed I smoked, it's just not clearing up and lingering for way longer than I want it to...  I have doubts about re-trying these experiments now, this might very well be the last time I touch these things for a while.  A few more hours pass and it all starts to finally clear up, very slowly.  I'm starting to get a minor headache and it feels as though I'm going to finally start recovering.  I've never been so happy because of a headache! I can feel my head again.  I quickly swallow an Advil cap, anticipating some relief by the time I'll lay down to go to sleep... I was able to go to sleep around 1am, after some 30 hours of being awake.

When I woke up the next day (today), I was fully back to 'normal,' no hints of the haze or anxiety/depression I felt the day before... Now I'm wondering if these things actually precipitate or exacerbate a latent or existing mental disorder I might have...

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 69495

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Oct 23, 2012	Views: 24,608

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LSD (2) : General (1), Difficult Experiences (5), Music Discussion (22), Hangover / Days After (46), Alone (16)


		 DOSE:

		 1 bowl
		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

		 2 hits
		 sublingual
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   135 lb

 It was a cool, windy day in the green mountains of southern California. It was September of 2010. Me and 3 friends drove up the hill loaded with snacks, object manipulation toys, and acid. We parked off the side of the road 10 minutes worth of dirt roads away from the town/lake. There was a campground nearby but no one staying there. As soon as we got out of the car, we ate some food, smoked a bowl of some Sour O.G. , and dropped 2 of the little purple squares printed with alex grey known as 'Purple Nebula' I have to say that this acid is some of the best i've ever had. Ive taken a 7-strip of equal strength and quality acid and did not go nearly as far as I did the other day. I had one of the most intense experiences of my life. Through the continual use of psychedelics and meditation, my mind has become capable of much more than I ever thought possible. I am becoming increasingly effective at utilizing and integrating the substances that will help us find the answers to all our questions. Every person is capable of doing what i did and more- even without the aid of psychedelics. However they provide a much faster route.

We took the acid and hiked up to the highest peak around. We stood atop a giant boulder and enjoyed the view of the creek running along the base of the powerful pine trees that inhabited the land. We meditated in the breeze until it was time to walk back and post up by the car. By the time we got back, the landscape was starting to glow. The purple bushes that lined the ground appeared to form clouds of purple mist. We smoked another bowl and I leaned back against the car to enjoy the ride. Little did I know i was about to embark on the JOurney of a lifetime

The giant pine in front of me started to take on the appearance of a tall woman looking down on us. Or should I say THE woman that seems to almost always appear when the hallucinogens are in me. I have been told that this is my spirit guardian. I believe this because her presence is comforting. It felt like she was watching over us. I received some reassuring information about my spiritual path in the form of extremely pleasurable chills down my spine. Basically I was shown that there is no going back, and that once you believe its true (ascension) then you are on the fast track to freedom. It was very comforting and let me know that I will succeed in the end, if i choose to do so, which i do. I accepted and aknowledged the fact that its going to be very difficult and painful, and stuck with my decision to continue.

This all happened within a matter of seconds, and afterwards i was extremely thankful. I felt very enlightened and satisfied. For the second time in my life I found myself on my knees saying 'I get it now...it all makes sense....thank you' I cant explain any further what i was thinking about, but at that moment there was not an ounce of confusion in me.

I walked back to the car and silently enjoyed the view. One particular tree displayed a double-helix shape. A waving, shimmering net was displayed across my entire field of vision. I had never seen such elaborate detail in my scope of view.. Im comparing it to the Net of Being picture , by Alex Grey, no coincidently the same artist whose picture was on the tabs. I did not see the same faces in the picture(during this trip), but instead the same style net that Alex did such a good job at printing. I later read that the person who discovered that DNA was in the shape of a double helix was on LSD.

Within a few minutes I could see the same web of rainbow light connecting the plants that I have seen on mushrooms. It was visible in only certain areas. Before long the trees and bushes came to life and were staring back at me with dozens of tiny eyeballs scattered throughout the forest. The tree tops began pointing upwards. Judging by the way the visuals were unfolding, my attention was quite clearly being directed towards the sky, one sign at a time. I had an overwhelming occurance that told me that not only do i need to start letting things go more often, but in fact I needed to start practicing letting go right now. Whenever I tried doing or thinking of anything but NOTHING, i was confronted with physical feelings and emotions that were both undescribable and unenjoyable. I knew full well what I needed to do. I turned my gaze up and surrendered to the power. The physical sensations increased VERY quickly along with my heartbeat and the visuals. As my eyes started to tear i witnessed the most beautiful display of colors I have ever seen. The image was kalidascoping into infinity while the layers of the universe were peeled back one by one. No words will ever do it any justice. I slowly and naturally lifted my sight higher and higher into the sky, using every effort not to blink, move, or think.

The only thing that I can say is that I was being progressively tunneled into the sky, out of my body and away from the scene that was left to the far outskirts of my vision. The PREVIOUSLY INVISIBLE stars and planets in the day-lit sky were closer than the forest floor I had left behind. My state of consciousness was totally transformed as I refused to accept this physical body as my own. My own heartbeat raced faster and faster until the beats were overlapping, and the noise it made turned into the noise we hear on DMT. The electronic/metallic buzzing/ humming sound. The pulse of the universe. I had reached a new high. I had everything there was, is, and will be in my grasp. Complete free will in my arsenal. I knew that anything I wanted to know or do, anywhere i wanted to go or see, was just an intention away. I was completely and utterly connected. Submerged in the vast pool of knowledge. The soup of consciousness. The entire multiverse at my fingertips. And what did I do? I headed straight back to earth

When I broke the trance I was in, it felt like i had traveled light years. I was utterly exhausted and out of breath. My journey had drained my energy. It was urgent that I passed along the information I had just received to my friends and my own rational mind. It felt as if I had just rocketed up into space, and was now slowly descending. I was seeing through my eyeballs, although it still felt as if i was high in the sky. Over the next 3 hours my mind was completely blown as I tried to make sense of what just happened. I knew one thing for sure, and I immediately told my girl friend that 'its up there whenever we are brave enough to go.' I had heard of shamans doing what I just did, but never expected to get there so soon! and with only 2 tabs! Set and Setting seem to matter more than dose. I had been there a few times before on mushrooms on DMT, but this was the first time i was able to comprehend and aknowledge what exactly had just happened to me. In the future i hope to more effectively navigate and utilize the realm I discovered.

 We all began manipulating our objects. I started the long, arduous task of wrapping my brain around what just happened. My integration was visually represented with symmetrical patterns that encompassed my entire view- breaking down and replicating each time I took a step towards releasing the pressure I had built up in me, by explaining or teaching what I had brought back with me. Along with the shift in patterns, I was returning to earth little by little. I still felt very detatched from my body.

During this process, I can only tell you a few things that happened. It was very odd and I was a little frightened when I consciously did the splits, painlessly stretching my legs farther apart than they have ever been. We all reached new levels of performance with our objects. I witnessed my girlfriend successfully do a trick that she has never come close to accomplishing. When all 4 of us focused our attention on her contact ball, she was able to execute it with perfect form. Out there i knew that with my flower sticks, I could have done ANY trick I wanted to. However i chose to focus my energy towards more important things, such as rethinking my life. I felt very COLD, not only my body but my soul. I yearned for the warmth of friendship and compassion. I decided to make up with 2 of my friends that had been completely removed from my life. I realized how much love I had to give, and how much the world needs it. When it was time, we left feeling very accomplished and enlightened. As soon as I got home I made a huge pile in the backyard of uneccessary clothing, papers, and linens (including my old military uniforms), and set it ablaze. It was time to clear up the physical, mental, and emotional clutter that had been plaguing us. My girlfriend and I had a long, structured, intellectual conversation until 5 A.M. when we finally crashed.

By now I have relived the moment long enough to explain what I learned while I was up there. Again, the main theme of this trip was Letting GO. I realized that letting go is a matter of comfort and preference. If we hold on too tightly to our drama, life will get uncomfortable, because we will be carrying around un-needed grief, guilt, and anger. We will be upset if we refuse to forgive and forget. However, we don't always want to let go of everything, do we? I already knew, and was shown again that we are here on this earth by choice. I needed a reminder that we have complete power to leave ANY time we want. I know that if I would have kept going on my voyage, and continued to 'let go', that I would have never come back. I would have gone so far and become so overwhelmed that when I turned around to come back, I would have completely forgotten about this reality and moved on- never to return. I didn't completely let go because I chose to be here- just like you. I knew I had to come back because it was my responsibility to bring back the knowledge I was given to be shared with as many people as possible.

So here it is folks: the choice is in your hands. You are here because you want to be. No one is stopping you from walking out the door right now. We will have to leave this world eventually and let it ALL go. It is inevitable. Why not make the most of it while your here? We obviously live in a very exciting situation, and the world is about to go through intense changes, whether you like it or not. It is your decision if you want to stay around for the aftermath.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 87507

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 19

Published: Oct 31, 2012	Views: 13,826

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LSD (2) : Glowing Experiences (4), Nature / Outdoors (23), Performance Enhancement (50), Small Group (2-9) (17)