		 DOSE:

		 3 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   145 lb

Did you ever want to wake up from reality?  Sure, it sounds great...something out of the Matrix right?  Well let me tell you right now that you won’t be happy with what you wake up from, and that acid is not just some fun drug to give you a light show...and it isn’t the way to some greater truth either.  Last weekend I reached the peak of what acid tries to show us, and it wasn’t at all what I wanted to see.  This is what happens when you lose your grip on reality.  It’s long, but it’s very important.

A large portion of my life was determined to come closer to the truth of our existence, and to find the meaning in it all.  Despite what some of my friends now think, my life was basically led sober.  I didn’t smoke pot until high school, and it was very infrequent, cigarettes only started when I was 16, and I didn’t drop acid until September of 1999...first semester at college.  I will try to relay last night’s experience to you as best I can, it is up to you what you believe and what you don’t...I’m just telling you what happened, and what’s true to me.

To start with the basics, you have to understand some of my own mindset in order to understand how acid affected that mindset.  When I was in second grade I started getting nightmares...and I stopped sleeping.  After a while, the nightmares went away and were replaced with vibrant, realistic dreams--although the insomnia was, and is, still a problem.  The dreams were so real that at times I was sure that they were more of a psychic connection to something--dreams foretelling events.  I began meditating, researched different religious views, taught myself lucid dreaming, and a portion of my life was spent just searching for some great truth; some answer to our existence.

I was introduced to acid by someone who I thought had answers, in all actuality, he had just burnt himself out so badly that he was perpetually tripping; he neglected to mention that part.  In the beginning, my trips were wonderful.  The first person I tripped with led me on an intellectual journey, which was just what I was looking for.  I soon began to love acid, I believed it was helping lead me to some sort of enlightenment.  Above all, my mind was so intact during tripping, that I honestly didn’t believe that I could have a bad trip.  That’s one beautiful thing about acid, how you can control it so well, just takes a strong mind...a strong mind that I thought I had.

With an interval of tripping at least once every two weeks, my time in meditation became much more realistic, and much 'deeper.'  In fact, the last time I meditated before my last trip (which happened to be in class), I actually saw visions and was brought to such a state that my teacher's voice became obsolete.  This, coupled with a new set of intense dreams that woke me up in tears, left me with a frightened, yet curious feeling.  I knew that many religions believe that a series of intense dreams means that a change is coming, I didn’t expect this.

I took three black pyramids with my friends Blair and Chris.  I had taken pyramids before, but never that many...two normally fried me out pretty good.  I also gave blood the day before.  Everything was all right until we were on the roof.  On the roof the world began to be completely unrealistic...but it was somehow soothing, so I didn’t really think about it.  Before I knew it everything around me had become a dream world (note, I was off the roof by then).  Blair and Chris weren’t Blair and Chris in real life, but dreams; images of my mind that didn’t exist.  I don’t know exactly when the changeover occurred, but once I was there that strong mind that I’ve always had retreated way behind my eyes...and I watched myself perma-frying on acid.  I knew there was something wrong, but I couldn’t quite get it across.  I mentioned dying, I mentioned not coming back from the trip, but how were my two companions to comprehend my actual meaning when they were tripping just the same as any ordinary person, on LSD.  During the dream, some other consciousness inside me took over.  I can’t decide whether it was created by the acid, or brought out by the acid...most likely the latter.

While in afterglow, I’ve been going through the pictures in my mind...trying to piece together exactly what I was doing.  I just remember everything being so foggy, just like a dream...and I felt like I was just floating around in a world created by my mind.  Blair and Chris were completely freaked out, I thought it was a game...Blair decided he had to drive me home, it didn’t even cross my mind that he was tripping and it was dangerous.  I was gone, I was in lala land...and that’s just fucked up.

They dropped me off in my dorm room, and left me to whatever was going on inside my head.  When they left, I started noticing how real my room was.  It had never looked that real in a dream before.  I pulled my covers over my head to sleep, and then it started to sink in that something was seriously wrong.  I jumped out of bed and looked around, and I saw the room from a mind that was perfectly sober.  I relayed the night through my mind, and I reminded myself that I had taken acid.  However, acid had never done anything like that to me before; I’d always been in such control.  Then what I had to figure out was how my mind seemed as if I had just woken from a dream, as if I hadn’t taken acid at all.

I turned on my TV and as I watched the faces swirling in rainbow colors, I suddenly realized that my body was still tripping, hard.  I had woken from whatever cocoon I was in, mentally, but my body was still there.  That’s when it all hit me.  I suddenly realized that somehow I let go of reality, and that now that I had control of my mind I had to struggle to keep it.  Being in an empty dorm room made it difficult. I could hear noises of people turning on and off showers upstairs.  I heard people talking in the hall...I even thought I heard my phone ringing, but there was no one there.  I was without any contact to real living people, and I was in a small, brightly-lit dorm room, completely fucked out of my mind.

The first thing I felt when I 'woke up' was completely outside of myself.  I was always such an introverted person; I’m content with being alone.  I know that to other people I have many 'nafs', as the Hindus say...or masks, for us Westerners.  However, to myself, I felt comfort inside of my own mind, and I knew myself very well.  When I broke out of the dream-world, those masks left me.  That comfort zone, left me.  And I was very, very alone.

My first hypothesis was that I had snapped out of my other body and that that body was completely perma-fried somewhere back in reality.  From there I wondered if I had snapped into another dimension and was forced to now walk around an empty world that looked like the old one.  I was even convinced for a while that I had died, it was the only thing that really made sense.

I had hypothesized that the world is full of new and old souls (I’ve always felt I was an old soul, even before I heard the term).  I thought that since I could wake up from the dream-state of reality, that it was like any other dream state.  Normal dreams are created by the one consciousness of the dreamer.  So to wake up from 'reality' made me believe that we were all connected to one consciousness, but until we all, collectively, realized it, we couldn’t move on.  This is what kind killed the idea that I may have popped into another dimension without everyone else.

The next hypothesis was that since I popped out of my own consciousness that my life would just be a chore, since it’s no longer real to me.  I didn’t know how I would be able to continue, and for a second actually contemplated suicide.  The only reason that I didn’t, was that I remembered how much my life means to me.  I’ve always thought it to be so wonderful to just be alive, and I knew that I was still young and had a lot ahead of me...so I just wanted to fight to stay lucid while my body tripped out.

The first thing I needed to do was to make contact with someone real, to force myself to believe that there was some sort of reality, even if not to me, to the other people living it.  So, I called a trusted friend of mine, whom I had taken on her first trip.  She was very patient with me as I told her of what I had experienced, and threw out ideas at her.  At that point there were some conclusions that were so real that I couldn’t doubt them.  I concluded that there was no God, or higher power (due to how alone I felt).  I concluded that new souls are reincarnated until they become old souls and are ready to move on.  I concluded that when they moved on they would be new souls and have to learn again to fend for themselves (again due to how alone I felt).  I concluded that life indeed was a dream within a dream (thank you Poe), but that the knowledge of that didn’t solve a thing.

Mandalin brought me back to the house where my tripping companions were (who hadn’t gotten back, so I left a note).  She then brought me to the first person I tripped with, since he had mentioned snapping four times, he had a lot of explaining to do.

We debated a little bit, over what it all meant, but then I had to ask him, if I would fully recover.  He said that he sees a rainbow pattern all the time, but he’s teaching himself not to see it, and he has trip willies and acid mouth randomly.  He also mentioned that every time he’s really hungry, or tired, or stoned, he starts tripping.

This brought my mind back to something I had read on a FAQ sheet about LSD.  It had said that flashback are caused due to the high amount of psychological stress to the brain, not from the acid staying in your brain or your spine all the time.  So I logically knew that the only reason for my body to continue to suffer ill-effects from acid was the fact that I was now fighting so hard to clear my head, that I had somehow twisted my brain to believing that the side-effects of tripping were real.  What I had to focus on is that the world around me is real--to me and the people in it--but the effects of tripping were a drug that would wear off as long as I didn’t cling to them.  The hardest thing to get rid of was the pattern.  As soon as I 'woke up' I saw a very vibrant, moving, rainbow pattern that surrounded everything.  However, through intense focusing, I was able to rid myself of it...I’m sure it’ll return at random.

In afterglow I fought a constant battle between two halves: the part of my mind that had it all figured out, and the part of my mind that was just a little girl who was in a little dream world.  On one hand, I know that I freaked the hell out of the people I tripped with, but I didn’t know it at the time.  I know that I ruined two friendships, and possibly more than that.  I know that I did things while I was frying that I didn’t mean to do, that weren’t real.  Whatever dream I was in, it wasn’t coming from my own thoughts...it was coming from whatever small child lies inside of me.  However, I know that Blair and Chris will never truly believe that, and to them I’ll just be a really fucked up girl who wigged out on them.  I don’t have enough apologies for that.

On the other hand, I had to deal with everything I had just seen, and try to put myself back together so that I wouldn’t crack...and I was very, very close to cracking.  After having my reality ripped out from underneath me, I had to choose what to accept.  This is what I’ve learned: acid is a drug that stimulates a dream world.  If you take too much, or let yourself go to much, the world will become a dream...in other words, it is possible to actually lose touch with reality; no matter how 'put-together' you think you are.  Now, whether that dream-world is actually a view of our reality in a new light, or just a trick of the brain, that I can’t say, but I can say that to stay sane, you have to admit the possibility that you were just under the influence of a drug which showed you one view of what the 'truth' may be.

Above all, I learned that I was asking the wrong questions.  What I was shown through acid, I had already hypothesized...but for some reason I thought I had to experience it before my time.  What I know is that even if we had the answers to what comes next, no matter how wonderful or horrible, we don’t want to know, it doesn’t matter now and our brains do not have the capacity to rationalize it.  What we have, is a life, a reality.  Whether it’s real or false, it’s real to us, and that’s what we need to keep in mind.  Instead of asking for answers from another realm, just enjoy the one you’re in, and try to better it.

If you think that I’m being ignorant by trying to push away what could be real knowledge, then fine, go for it...it will be the worst experience of your life if you actually experience it--and I know you still won’t believe that, I didn’t, but at least let me now say, 'I told you so.'  Live the dream; there’s nothing wrong with dreaming.

Exp Year: 2000	ExpID: 294

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Aug 20, 2001	Views: 36,328

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LSD (2) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Difficult Experiences (5), Various (28)


		 DOSE:

		 2 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   105 lb

Sunday, September 16, 2001, the day after my trip.

This report details my first encounter with any drug other than alcohol or marijuana. That drug is LSD. It left me depressed for several days, but in retrospect I see that it was a very positive, if not entirely life-changing experience.

After a major letdown on Friday, (I was very close to getting shrooms but the guy never came through for me) yesterday I finally got my hands on some acid. I bought 2 blotters of unknown quality at around 4:00 PM. For some reason I decided that it would be best to trip alone, at night, in the dark-- McKenna style.

The next 7 hours were spent cleansing my personal space. I cleaned up my room, my computer, and myself. I intermitently watched TV, listened to music, and read the Shroomery. I was quite concerned about having a 'bad trip' so I tried my hardest to stave off any negative emotions. Unfortunately the harder I tried the easier they overcame me, and at one point I seriously considered postponing my trip until a later date. Things seemed to get better, though, as I neared midnight, and by around 11:30 no traces of anything were left other than pure excitement mixed with a bit of first-trip anxiety. At least, nothing I could detect.

I dropped both hits simultaneously at 12:00 AM and sat down at my computer to listen to some music and chat with a few friends over MSN. It should be noted that I had fasted the whole day prior to this. With that in mind, I noticed the effects almost immediately-- within 10 minutes my monitor became much brighter and I had to physically turn down its brightness level for it to remain comfortable. Whenever I looked at my lamp its imagine lingered in my mind much longer than it usually does. By the 20 minute mark I had definite visual distortion going on; the best I can describe it is like a film had been placed over my eyes. I had trouble focusing them but I could still look past the 'film' and see the object in perfect clarity. For some reason I had no desire of doing that, so I just relaxed and let my vision become increasingly more foggy. Obviously it became harder to look past the film, but I still didn't mind.

Half an hour had passed now and all my anxieties about it being 'fake' acid were lifted. Colors were brighter than ever and a comfortable haze had settled over my vision. I began to feel a strange tingling in the back of my skull, like it had been stuffed with cotton. Audio distortion was also becoming obvious. I could still hear the music perfectly fine, but sounds coming in from the street sounded completely different from what they actually were. For instance, I heard the revving of a car's engine as a cow's mooing.

I was also noticing some slight tracers in moving objects. I had a really brightly colored rubber ball, and when I threw it in the air and caught it again it left a definite trail. On a personal note, these tracers were not the streaks of bright light I expected them to be. The ball left transparent, picture-perfect images of itself in the air where it had just been. These took a second or two to fade and were really interesting to observe.

Then the first signs of hallucination began to make themselves seen. As I was taking down some notes on my pad, I saw the phone breathing out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look at it, but it was perfectly still. This was beginning to get interesting. I didn't acknowledge it at the time, but I was already becoming increasingly spooked. Here I was, in my little room with a single light on, my parents safe asleep, listening to strange sounds coming in from the street and watching my phone plot against me while I wasn't looking.

I didn't see it then, but it was the beginning of my downward spiral. I decided that now was the time to say my goodbyes and turn off my computer. I logged off MSN but had trouble turning off my monitor; I became so engrossed with the mouse pointer that I completely forgot that I intended to turn the whole damn thing off. 10 minutes later I snapped out of it, turned off my monitor, and oozed down my chair to explore my carpet. I tried walking and running and jumping around, all of which seemed much faster than normal. In fact I could moved so fast that at the time it boggled my mind.

I closed my eyes and was greeted by some very nice closed-eye visuals but for some reason I couldn't keep them closed. I was just plain unable to shut them for more than a period of 3 seconds, even though I was really interested in what I was seeing. They were just plain too bright to watch comfortably. I lay down on my bed for about 10 seconds; couldn't keep still there either, so I bounced back into my chair, happily turned on my monitor, and proceeded to log back on MSN. I spent the next 2 hours talking to several bemused friends (none of whom had ever done anything close to LSD) and listening to Loreena McKennitt and The Doors.

In retrospect this was not the smartest musical choice, but I had hurridly assembled it and it seemed like a great selection at the time. McKennitt made me sad, so sad in fact that I began to cry. It was so hauntingly beautiful that I just couldn't restrain myself. The raw emotional intensity of the psychedelic experience made itself obvious to me right then and there. The Doors, on the other hand, had so many varied emotions. I felt joy with one song, sorrow with another, and utter exhiliration with a third. I don't know whether I enjoyed this rollercoaster, I really don't.

One of the strangest things about this trip is that I very rarely had an opinion on anything. I just watched (or listened to) it all go by, sometimes bursting into laughter, other times into tears, but always indifferent. I enjoyed both laughing and crying, neither one more than the other. One of my friends was having some problems that he related to me; those also made me cry, yet I still didn't mind. And so it went on, up-and-down, for the next couple of hours.

I want to stress again that I didn't really care about anything, I was just enjoying my trip and all the wild emotions and thoughts it brought with it. At that point I was still enjoying the trip, but the feeling of this particular 'enjoyment' is impossible to relate. It's not the sort of enjoyment one gets from watching a good movie or seeing his favorite team win. It was something other, something unexplainable. The easiest route to go would be just to say that I didn't care-- laughing, crying, sad, happy, etc didn't really matter. I was content with anything my mind could throw at me. Anyway, I dawdle.

It was late and my friends were logging off one-by-one, until I was finally alone at around 3:00, 3 hours into the trip. That's when it hit me. Hard. I realized that my only contact from the outside world had been cut off, and that I now would be left alone to ride out whatever I faced. I regretted not having a friend nearby, but I also assumed that I now would be left in peace to explore my altered state of mind. Almost immediately, I took out the CD, turned around in my swivel chair towards my bed, and planned to turn off the light. I got immediately sidetracked, however, just as I would many times during the rest of the night.

My blanket was glowing with a sort of eerie inner light, and I could see patterns moving on its surface. It was a very simple, repeating texture, but I had never seen anything close to it, especially not on a piece of cloth which I usually sleep under! It made me a bit frightened, however, as I began to envision the glowing as a product of something other-worldly. I then noticed that the various creases and ripples in my blanket were moving all over its surface, as if snakes were crawling around underneath it. I couldn't keep track of the individual 'ripples' but I could quite clearly see them moving all over. Suddenly, the ripples began to gather themselves in a single area of my blanket's surface. The pattern they formed reminded me of an eye with its accompanying eyebrow suggesting an angered expression.

At this point I panicked and snapped out of the hallucination. I saw that the 'eye' had been there all along, a product of my ineffecient bed-making. My mind had managed to block it out for most of the duration of the hallucination until I saw the ripples 'gather' there. I found that very interesting, and I still do. Observations like this make me want to do LSD again, just to see what other strange tricks my mind can come up with to play on me.

The next hour passed faster than any time period I can relate to. It was spent crawling around my bed in slow motion, where all kinds of different 'scenes' were taking place. My digital clock was doing something, I didn't understand what. It made me uncomfortable, though, so I switched it on. And lo, what should I hear? A late-night talk show host discussing the WTC bombing. Bah, that kept me away from the radio from the rest of the night. It should be noted that as soon as the stimulus disappeared from my vision any emotion associated with it disappeared-- I was like an infant that only comprehended what was in his immediate field of vision.

I glanced out the window and noticed that my neighbor's hedges were teeming with life, and I was both fascinated and frightened by it. I made my way back to my pillow and lay down on it, staring up at my ceiling. I have a rack of those art gallery-type or concert spotlights (I don't know what else to call them) above my bed, and the one immediately above my head looked like a huge gaping maw about to swallow me. I slowly willed it to stretch down and expand, hoping I could get it to swallow me. Who knows, maybe I could get something really interesting to happen? Likely something would have happened, if not for this interesting fact: I couldn't keep focused on anything for longer than 10 seconds.

However much I become engrossed in a pattern or 'scene' that was going on I could not watch it for more than a tiny stretch of time. It became extremely frustrating, and when I tried to combat it the trip seemingly went away. Thus, I was forced to dart back and fro constantly looking for new patterns to explore, else I wouldn't see anything at all.

Obviously I didn't have the willpower to keep my mind on the light that I was forcing to swallow me and keep the trip going at the same time. This is the best I can explain it as; everything literally died away if I tried to combat my urge to look at something new. Anyway, this restless behavior seemed perfectly normal at the time and I don't know why I tried to fight it. This is how the hour and a half was spent, just writhing on my bed looking at everything I could but unable to look at it long enough to grasp.

Something else really strange was going on. I had recently added several Motorhead songs to my collection, and was devoting more attention to them than anything else. Anyway, during the whole 'Bed Period', as I like to call it, I had 3 or 4 notes of the same Motorhead song playing over and over in my head. It wasn't a particularly good song, not one of my favorites, so I wasn't too thrilled about having to listen to the same part of it over and over again.

I began an increasingly bothersome monologue in my head about the things I was going through, and it reminded me that I had had none of the 'glowing' or 'spiritual' or 'eye-opening' or, hell, even fun experiences that I so wanted. This annoyed me to no end, but neither the song nor the voice were under my control. I was forced to ride it out. It became too much to bear, though, so I switched on my light and turned my monitor back on.

It was now 4:30. I popped in a Future Sound of London CD, put on a nice WinAmp visualizer, and just watched it. I felt nothing. The music was hollow and empty, and the visualizer brought no feelings with it whatsoever. I just sat there in a stupor and watched the pictures move across my screen, listening to the meaningless music drifting over me. Keep in mind that I usually _love_ the Future Sound of London and always get a kick out of watching visualizers.

Noting the futility of what I was doing, I wondered what it would feel like with headphones on. I plugged them in and was pleasantly surprised that the music sounded much better and I could feel it inside me, although I still didn't care about it. At 5:00 I went back to my bed, headphones on, FSOL playing, switched off the light, and passed out immediately. No warning, nothing. As I turned the switch on my bedside lamp everything went dark and I found myself bolting upright at 10:30 AM, 5 and some hours later. This is when things started going bad. Really bad.

When I think about it, the trip itself wasn't that bad, just a lot of sounds in my head and some uncomfortable hallucinations. Plus a whole lot of indifference. This, however, was a fully sober, waking bad trip. I felt empty both in mind and body; I was hungry from the fast of the day before, and it's impossible to describe the state of mind I was in: Just empty. No emotion at all, nothing. A little disappointment here and there maybe. I put on some favorite tunes (Black Sabbath) and I heard nothing.

That is, the music which usually moved me and influenced me now had absolutely zero meaning. It's like I was listening to somebody banging pots together. I put on CD after CD, alas, in vain. Music had lost all meaning to me, it had become random vibrations coming from my speakers and nothing more. This greatly depressed me, I didn't know what to do.

I spent the next 4 hours talking with somebody who did a great deal toward helping me make odds and ends of my experience and with his help I came to several conclusions about my trip and life in general. It felt _really_ good because my eyes had been opened to aspects of human interaction that weren't apparent before. Ones that I usually chose to ignore, I should say.

I expected these realizations during my trip, not in the aftermath, and it was very peculiar to notice that I was still thinking the way I did when I was dosed. It was just a lot clearer, minus the visuals and strong emotional response. I suppose my brain was making up for the absence of other people during the night by providing the same sort of state the day after, once I started communicating. This sort of insight and self-exploration was my original purpose for the acid, and I think it's ironic that I only saw it the day after.

Around 2:30 PM, 4 hours later, I happened to glance out my window. I literally almost fell out of my chair. Running up to the window, I was graced with one of the most beautiful views of my life. I saw the trees, the grass, and the clouds in a way that I had never seen before and it was so breathtaking that I just stood there with my jaw on the floor. Everything was so vibrant, colors so bright, contrasts so sharp. It was amazing. At that point I knew that I HAD to go out there, so I quickly said my good-byes and spent the better part of the day sitting on the grass watching the clouds drift and the river flow by. It was stunning.

During this time I also took the opportunity to write several pages about my experience and the revelations earlier in the day. I hadn't felt this great in a very long time, and as I walked the street I just smiled broadly and exchanged greetings with every person that walked by. On the way home, however, things sadly became quite a bit darker. I felt inexplicably depressed and seriously began to doubt the things that I had written, the ones which rang so true just minutes before.

I got home and proceeded to read several trip reports on Erowid and other places. This was a mistake, as it made me feel even worse, since I couldn't find anyone with anything even closely related to what I was experiencing. I hadn't eaten in some 30 hours, yet my appetite was at zero. I forced myself to eat, though it didn't help my situation any.

Music is still meaningless to me, my experience overall seems disappointing, and my 'insights' seem trife and foolish. I feel as empty as I did this morning. I haven't been as depressed in a long time, I guess that's why I wrote this. There are some other things which I wanted to say, but this has dragged on long enough and I doubt anybody will actually have gotten this far anyway.

Oh, I'll do acid again for sure, it's unavoidable. But what if this same thing happens? I read about everyone's wonderful experiences with it, and that's what I genuinely wanted. Instead I got an empty trip devoid of any happiness or joy, not to mention severe post-depression. Maybe there's something I'm missing; all I know is that I feel like shit right now and last night was like a pointless uninvolved dream.

Wednesday, September 19, 2001, 4 days after my trip.

The depression is gone :)

I'm pretty much back to baseline, 4 days after my trip. But I'm not the same-- I've been changed in a permanent sense. My eyes have been opened to many aspects of life, interaction, and my own mind. I had been depressed in the weeks and months prior to my trip, depressed and exhausted from the lifestyle I was leading. This is what caused my uncomfortable experience, but it had some very positive consequences. It made me take a look at who I was, and why I was that way. I began thinking about the people around me, about the way that they are, and why.

I have a new appreciation for my mind, and the beauty of the world around me. For the first time in a long while, I'm happy just to be alive. I feel connected with certain people, distanced from yet others. I'm not too worried about the latter; I can see through these people like glass now. My musical tastes have also been slightly altered, as I no longer seek solace in the negative energy I used to feed myself through certain music.

Things like meditation, keeping a journal, and taking walks out in nature are starting to become part of my routine. I no longer allow myself to be consumed by the digital world. Make no mistake; I don't praise acid as a magical eye opening one-shot-wonder. My experience had a direct correlation with the lifestyle I was leading, kind of like several years' worth of emotion compressed into a single 5 hour long vision. THAT is what caused the above realizations.

The drug can only take me so far. In the long run, this journey is mine and mine alone. And that's a great feeling :)

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 9696

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Sep 28, 2001	Views: 32,993

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LSD (2) : First Times (2), Glowing Experiences (4), Nature / Outdoors (23), Music Discussion (22), Depression (15), Alone (16)


		 DOSE:

		 oral
		 LSD
		 (liquid)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   165 lb

We had been planning a camping trip for a long time, and I had been saving the empty vials of some truly wonderful acid for months in anticipation.  Two hits had previously provided me with the hardest trip of my life. (!!!) I've used lsd dozens of times, but needless to say, I was somewhat apprehensive about ingesting an unknown quantity of the liquid.

T+0:00 - We slice open the Sweet Breath bottles with a razor blade and begin to suck.  My friend N eats all of his, and I sadly, save the cap and nozzle for later.  I'm nervous but excited as I taste all the liquid that's caked on the inside.

T+0:10-0:15 - The acid doesn't take long to show itself.  My previous experience with this batch took about 30 minutes to get going, so I assume that this will be more powerful.  N is also feeling it as we settle down at the campsite to view the trees.

T+0:30 - Tripping. Oh yes, tripping.  N is VERY tripping.  I'm laying on the ground staring up at the trees as he sits down next to me and calmly informs me that he's lost his wallet in the woods.  Twinge of nervousness.  He's obviously very out of his head, so dealing with finding a small leather wallet in the forest might be a problem.  He takes a few minutes to collect himself, then expertly wanders into the trees and locates the billfold in minutes. What a professional. Back on track! Let's go to the damn beach already! No no, the others aren't ready.  Two other friends are on the same batch, but only 1 hit.

T+:45 - Beach! Beach! Ha! Little boys with toys.  We all pack into a giant car and trundle off to a cheesy little tourist beach on lake Michigan.  Someone throws what I would later discover to be Wagon Christ into the CD player. Amazing backwards noises and insane psychedelia. Quality album.  Both N and I are having crazy auditory hallucinations, but it's clear at this point that he got a lot more chemical than I did. Sigh. Should have eaten the whole thing. Still could... but, I'm tripping madly anyway. Save it for a rainy day.

T+1:00 - 3:00 - I will say only this: as far as toys go, lakes and sand have no equals. Gah.  At this point, and as the trip continued, I really wasn't able to determine how much I had taken.  The low visual level seemed to indicate less than 2 (as two drops had knocked my eyes out of their sockets...) but the intensity of the pure psychedlia was out of this world.  As I said before, insane auditory hallucinations.  Weird, dissonant backwards noises, children laughing, etc.  N had a great deal more of the same. Pretty cliche in some cases, but very powerful.  This wasn't the experience I expected, but with acid, it rarely is.

T+3:00 - As we left the beach we had to wade back through the more populated area that we had left behind upon arrival.  Antsy parents yelling at children they perceived to be in imminent danger of having fun, middle-aged men with Birkenstocks frying wienies and wearing ray-bans, their wives laughing nervously after EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE... all of a sudden I was struck by the powerful urge to fornicate.  It felt, well, more honest.

T+3:10 - We left a parking lot full of SUVs to go to the local market where we all purchased ludicrous amounts of snack food.  Three hours into a trip and we were all stuffing our faces and laughing like a bunch of stoners.  How ridiculous.  Good time though.

T+3:30 - Now the fun REALLY begins.  We're back at the campsite and wily enough to convince our token sober boy that we can drive.  FOOL! He hands N the keys and we tear off down the winding Michigan highways.  Oh yes.  Don't drive on acid kids, it's VERY dangerous, blah blah blah.  I've never been very good at listening to my own advice. SIGH. Still, we had determined that our ultimate goal for this adventure was Toast, and the nearest grocery store was 15 miles.  Everyone has to have a dogma, right? Why not elevate toast to the divine? IT'S GOOD! In any case, we arrive in a shitty little tourist trap and buy our 3 dollar loaf of bread.  My turn to drive!  What an amazing experience.  I LOVE driving on acid.  I understand most people are appalled at this practice, but really, it's my  favorite part of tripping.  My mind is flying at a mile-a-minute, examining my life, examining the world around me... yet another part of my brain is intensely concentrated on the road and driving.  What can I say. Everyone gets off somehow.  I've got a sick thing for putting egregious quantities of psychoactive chemicals in my body, then hurtling myself and 2 tons of steel down the road at 70 mph. As N says: Glorious.

T+5:30ish - We're now on top of a mammoth sand dune overlooking lake Michigan.  Everyone's here. Even the other tourists.  Snap. Flash. Click. Wind. Shut up Timmy.  Our entire group cracks wise about the 'scenic.'  There it is! The scenic! I'm gonna get some of it! Roll all over it!  Oh crap, I've got scenic in my shoe! We went! It seems that to many of these people, the actual experiencing of the experience isn't at all important. They're all caught up in what this vacation is supposed to be.  Doing so much that they never really see it. WE WENT!

A child exclaims, 'Look at the sun!' and everyone laughs.  God what a sight.  A lake spread out farther than we can even perceive... a red ball of fire diving into it... we have to turn our heads from side to side just to take everything in.  So large, so grand, so FUCKING AMAZING.  And someone behind me is chatting about what so and so did at the charity auction and wasn't that awful and oh my god she didn't!  Feh. Unfortunately, that's not a hallucination.

T+6:30 - The rest of the night is spent laughing, talking, brooding and eating around the camp fire.  We play guitars (the auditory is still fantastic) quite a bit. We play some Frisbee.  More toys for boys to play with.  I eventually sleep at about the 12 hour mark.

Overall, this wasn't a life-changing trip, but it was entertaining as hell.  I really can't say conclusively how much I got out of that empty vial, but N got a lot.  Based on his reaction I'd throw out an arbitrary guess of 3-6 hits.  Not bad for a freebie.  The bulk of this trip (for both of us) was examining the people around us.  It was pretty, well, sick.  But it provided (and always does provide) a fairly sobering view of one's self.  We laughed a lot at other people, but we laughed even more at ourselves and our own absurdity.  Ridiculous boys playing with ridiculous toys.  We nearly fell down laughing during our Frisbee game.  This was also the STRANGEST trip in terms of physical urges.  We had the MUNCHIES!  I can almost never eat on acid, especially while peaking.  Then the urge for sex.  Still, for both, I lay the blame on setting.  I believe that the people around me channeling their primal urges into silly social games triggered these responses in me.  Everyone else had similar effects though.  I wouldn't attribute it to the chemical, as earlier trips failed to produce munchies in anyone.

When one views his or her own human fallibility through the gross example of thousands of others, it should make you feel small and humble, right? Or not.  I generally find it pretty liberating and entertaining to admit my fellowship with the festering masses.  Just a silly boy.  Time to find some new toys I suppose.

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 9633

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Sep 30, 2001	Views: 34,364

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


		 DOSE:

		 2.75 g
		 oral
		 Mushrooms - P. cubensis
		 (tea)

		 250 ug
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (pill / tablet)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   124 lb

Background: This was my first session with a career psychedelic sitter. Twelve days before, I had participated in a group ayahuasca session. A friend and I were attended by the sitter and her co-sitter, as if we were having solo sessions, but we were in the same room (setting: bedrolls, eyeshades, music in the style of holotropic breathwork). I anticipated this was going to be my first full-on high-dose ego-death session. Two days later, we were to participate in a group ayahuasca session. We met with our sitters for dinner the night before:

We talked a little bit about the work we would be doing the next day and then on Saturday, with Grandmother (ayahuasca). I felt, 'this is right and good,' i.e. it was going to be safe and right for me to journey the next day with these sitters. Fast forward for a moment -- in retrospect I see that comments that were said at the table became reassuring features of the following day's journey. For example, in discussing methods for self-growth, one sitter said 'look at [such-and-such experience] as something for your toolkit.' This was a metaphor that really worked for me. A toolkit represents preparation (having all your tools ready in one place), discernment (the right tool for the right job) resourcefulness and self-reliance, all things that I value. [This may seem like a detail to which I'm attributing too much importance but it's been an important metaphor for me in processing the huge volume of information I got over the next couple of days]. The sitter suggested to us that the addition of mushrooms to the LSD grounding for an otherwise more mental journey (this is how I interpreted it, at least.) We were told to not eat anything after 9 a.m. and to be where we needed to be for our session at noon.

That night, I had a frightening dream. I dreamed that I was partying with friends, in a casual setting. We were in front of a stage, but some ways away from it. In the dream, Panyin (my closest friend and co-tripper for this session, she is sometimes a companion in my dreams, too) went and did cartwheels on the stage. She was up there doing cartwheels and she fell and hit her head on a piece of machinery that was behind the curtain of the stage. She went unconscious -- the blow had been so hard that I was alarmed and had a distinct feeling that it could have been a fatal blow. I became quite concerned at what the right course of action would be -- should I call 911 immediately or should I go consult some of our medical insurance papers? (we had just received papers about a feature of our insurance that lets you call a nurse for advice over the phone). I was busy trying to decide this. And at the same time my intuition was telling me this was a dire emergency and she very well could DIE and she would be gone and that would be it. I woke up very upset. It was so disturbing that I didn't tell C when she woke up. Then I forgot about it, we ate breakfast and drove to our session. [in retrospect -- I remember had had a dream similar to this before, 7 years earlier, that deeply imprinted on me]

We get to our session. The sitters have prepared comfortable bedrolls for us on the floor and are arranging the music details. Panyin and I do some stretching. I feel very serious. We sit down to have tea with our sitters and one of them asks if we had any dreams the night before. My eyes tear up. I tell my dream, feeling anxious. The sitter tells me in a matter-of-fact tone that what will probably come up for me during my journey is the ego-death stuff, 'getting out of my head' (as in getting hit on the head and going out like in the dream). I have a sinking feeling as when faced with the inevitable.

When we are given mushrooms (2.5-3 grams) to hold in our hands and pray on for our intention, that sense of inevitability is even stronger. I am surprised at how much I am holding in my hand and awed at what I am about to do. I remember that my setting is perfect. I try not to think too much about it and just go with it.

Someone has found a stuffed animal to put on my pillow. This is reassuring -- I had mentioned the night before that I had forgotten my own teddy bear. The sitter tells us the Rules and tells us some things we can remember to help us navigate:

	1) there is a beginning, a middle and and end.

	2) we all hold space on this planet -- sometimes you're in a difficult place, but it's just you're turn to be there in the 'hot spot' for a while, that's all.

	3) If you find that you're lost of confused, pick an element of the music and just follow it, it will carry you and keep you moving so you don't get stuck. (now in reading this later, I don't think my sitter was a Deadhead, but this certainly sounds like a familiar message...)

We sip our tea and then take the 250 mcg LSD. We lay down and put on eyeshades and earphones. I feel a little anxiety but not outright fear.

Now the rest is a little hard to re-construct from my own memory. I remember not getting a whole lot of visual imagery until quite late, after the time that Panyin took a booster. It may have been about T+4:00 or so.

My session's 'work' was focused on a difficult place I reached at around t+4:00 or 5. What happened before it is harder to remember; I remember listening to the music and feeling my Observer commenting on how the choice of music can affect the place a traveller is in; in retrospect I had not surrendered to the experience, nor was I resisting it, I felt deeply in it but not very very deeply. I had some insights at this phase, one was that lessons don't have to be sternly imposed; we can learn lessons by being shown things (this related to ideas about parenting and my relationship with my parents, i.e. the archetypes of Father who gives punitive lessons vs. the Mother who shows by gentle example).  I had to get up and go pee at one point and I kept my eyes closed the whole way to the bathroom (lead there by one of the sitters) because I in fact wanted to stay 'inside'. But when the sitter asked me if I wanted a booster I had trouble connecting with whether I felt 'yes' or whether I felt 'no' and giggled at the prospect. I didn't know, and because I didn't know I felt a little disappointed. The thought also briefly went through my mind, 'shit, I can't take more, I'm a coward.' [in retrospect, I can understand the thought, but I don't think I can ever be that hard on myself again] I imagined I was going to slowly come back to the straight world without bringing back much, while Panyin continued to trip next to me. But then I realized I didn't feel like more LSD was what I wanted to do. I suppose I lay back down then and put the eyeshades back on, maybe out of a feeling of resignation.

The chronology of the rest of this trip is completely pell-mell because I got into timeless moments and linear time went to the background for a long while. I started to panic and it snowballed. At one point I even tried to run from the room and had to be physically restrained! I had taken off my eyeshades, and the sitter was ok with that, but after a while she suggested I put my eyeshades and said, 'there's nothing out here, go back inside.'

I took notes two days later and the next few pages are derived from those notes:

I was calling out loud to Gaichi (boyfriend) and to Panyin because I was in a space where I had no reference points and I really didn't know who 'I' was, all classic 'bad trip' stuff. I was trying to call to him (Gaichi) so there would be someone who recognized me and who could in turn call me back to myself. This was a difficult place where I really was seeking reassurance -- I kept asking the sitters, 'Is it OK?' and was told 'you're doing just fine, just keep breathing,' and I was having trouble remembering to do that. Then I got fragmented and confused and all this stuff was happening at once -- I couldn't remember what I was doing there in the room or why or anything. I had a vague recollection that I had taken something but even that was unclear because there was no past in that moment. I vaguely wondered 'does it look like I'm having a bad trip?' and I kept moving on past that thought because my setting was one where 'bad trip' doesn't exist [good thing, too!]. But I would wonder, 'am I supposed to try and snap out of this?' I wondered if the people around me wanted Samanthe to come back and should I comply, I couldn't tell what they wanted but I was vaguely concerned about it (my 'trying to please people' programming going strong).

Panyin just couldn't stand my anguish without doing something so she came over to be with the sitters attending me. She appeared to me to be looking at me very worriedly and that scared me a little, because if *she* looked worried then there must be something wrong (this reminds me of the dream I had the night before, where I looked down worriedly at Panyin after she fell and went unconscious). I wondered if the neighbors could hear me and I clapped my hand over my mouth ('don't want to impose, don't want to do something that's bad or wrong'), because I screamed twice, as if something really big had smacked into me or shot through me. It felt like birthing, and orgasm, and dying, all at once. I didn't have a choice about it. I felt like I was cycling in and out of consciousness in microsecond intervals. At one point, when I called to Panyin, the sitter gently reminded me 'Panyin is having her own trip.' This kind of brought me back to the current time-space, but I was still confused, and I was worried that I wouldn't pop back up in the same 'place' (i.e. Samanthe, my ego self, my familiar personality) the next time I went 'unconscious'  but maybe there was a chance I would pop up somewhere different on the karmic wheel, like a beggar in the streets of Bangladesh.

I hallucinated that my sitter growled at me, 'come on, you can't let us down now, we've put so much work into you,' which made me slightly paranoid. I imagined that another mentor friend was in the room in spirit and that I needed to 'come back' or I would really be letting her and everyone down (as in everyone else who values this work). I saw a brief image of papers, like scientific papers with citations at the bottom, and it didn't make sense to me, they didn't seem important to me, because I had no sense of the past. I vaguely reminded myself of all of the books that have been written and the other physical manifestations of human existence that I was imagining as my anchor or trail of crumbs back to 'my' 'life.' I also had a vivid impression that reality was all inside the room where we were, and that I would be there forever. I realized we were all women in the room and I felt a twinge of embarassment that I had called out to my boyfriend, as if it were improper to not stay in the present (the present trip being, 'you are here with two woman sitters, no need to call out for anyone not already here'). It was like a lesson about being where you're at, relating to the people in your presence, and not being somewhere where you're not, relating to people in your head, if that makes sense.

I think the sitter did say to me at one point when I called out for Gaichi,  'Gaichi's not here, he's in your head,' and that was at first bewildering but made perfectly good sense.

I don't remember if the messages in the following three paragraphs came through before or after the difficult part of the session. Even though they were not original in content -- in fact they were pretty archetypal -- I experienced them *viscerally* which had a bigger impact than mere 'book learning':

I realized my mother and my father are not my only teachers and parents -- I am the child of everyone I have ever met and not met, and my parents are also brother and sister and children to me. It was a clear message that my parents aren't really my 'parents' -- as if I unlearned the conditioning about what parents 'are.' Basically, they were my portal into this world and I also happened to have learned many things from them. They are not gods. I was seeing from a broader (less unconsciously child-like) perspective what they really are in my life.

I reviewed the crucial nature of storytelling -- the stories and myths we tell and

listen to create us and create the world, and the art that artists make creates the world. Artists are sacred and to be revered because they show us things that *can* be and that have been and should be remembered. If we forget stories we forget who we are -- *remembering* is very important. If we don't do that we lose ourselves. I thought of great writers (interestingly the ones who came to mind were all women) and imagined how crucial their work is to the process of remembering.  Because the stories we tell wind throughout 'time' and create it, the result is that time really is non-linear. Our ancestors are not just in the past -- they are here and now. I also realized the importance of telling our own stories to other people -- of speaking out instead of just keeping it all inside, of finding one's voice and having the courage to use it.

It is really essential to be nice to oneself, to pamper oneself, to seek out quality and beauty for oneself in order to create a beautiful and true existence. This message came in at the end and throughout the next day when I started to interact with the world again.

Things that kept me going through the experience:

 there's a beginning, a middle and an end (said just like that, by the sitter)

 Prayer: 'How may I best be of service, how may I serve thee God.' (this may sound awfully conventional and I don't even really pray to 'God' but in the midst of my intoxication it provided some comfort)

 Sometimes you're in a difficult place, but it's just because it's your turn to be there.

When Panyin and I were back at our room for the night (at about T+8:00, following a simple meal of soup prepared by the sitters), I tried to go to sleep. But my mind was flooded with thoughts, mainly variations on the theme of karma. I wondered if perhaps I had fulfilled the duties of this incarnation and might pass away in the night and be reborn somewhere else in my sleep. This was disconcerting. I thought about my life's work and my primary relationship and the family of humankind and my mind was exhausted with the bigness of it all. I didn't become frustrated, I was patient, and this was because the context for all this was a good one.

We are all one -- the many faces of God -- each person carries in them a seed of all archetypes. Just because we are born to a family doesn't make that our only family -- sometimes our birth family is not even our family at all. So, it's important to not be hung up on the family trip, however, it's very important to honor parents and grandparents on the principle that they have come before us and are also participating in this trip/dance. It is also important to honor and speak to other archetypes in parents and grandparents (i.e. brother, sister, lover).

(end of notes)

I had so many thoughts that night. I thought a lot about money and other types of currency (words are a major currency -- the meanings we attribute to currency of any kind allow us to co-create our reality) that we exchange as we dance the human interaction dance/flow and create our world. I thought about 'trips' -- each persons has their trips. And we can choose to perceive them or not, and participate in them or not; ultimately it's up to us (I was getting lots of lessons on 'free will.') I saw the fragility of life, how unpredictable our lessons can be, no matter how carefully we plan, and that is awesome. Because of the fragility of life, it's foolish to overdevelop one relationship at the expense of others because ultimately you rob yourself -- if that person dies, you have missed out on all the other interactions (this thought probably related to my perceiving my parents as codependent). If you also are developing relationships with other people and a principle in your life dies, then you carry them with you forever and you also have other people there to help you grieve. All of the 'stuff' that was coming through and the observations above were understood on a deep deep visceral level, even if at first glance they appear trite or self-evident.

The next day, I was not very grounded, and I couldn't drive. I could barely talk. I reminded myself to be really nice to myself. It was then that I decided that I would not be participating in a group session with ayahuasca the next day. I had a lot of things to process and had no use for another day of 'churning the waters.' Too much to integrate already. At 2 pm or so (T+25:00) I finally took 4 mg of Valium because I craved some respite. I was *so* grateful for it. I slept for 2 and a half hours and when I came out of it I was *still* totally spacey. Panyin and I went to see a movie. I estimate it took my about 30 hours to get back to baseline.

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

The next day, I sat with eyeshades during everyone else's experience. I felt my chronic shoulder pain acutely. After about an hour, I was telling myself over and over again, 'be gentle with yourself.' I felt the pain shift and diminish. It came back, and I just reminded myself, 'be gentle with yourself.'

After many hours, I fell asleep. When I woke up on Sunday, I wrote the things above. I also took notes while another woman shared her notes, because her words spoke to my experience and stimulated my thoughts: Embodiment -- learning self-affirmations through the body (movement &amp; breath) -- assures that those lessons will stay with us and be with us when we need them...  Men are subtly taught that their bodies are less valuable than women's, that theirs are expendable (mainly through wars). This erodes their humanity and their nurturing. They really need nurturing, and so do women. Healing ourselves is our gift to the world. Work with the plant to learn things, different aspects of the Self. We need Sanga--community--to share, to become ourselves, because living among people not of our community can become confusing. Be gentle, develop beauty. Do not delay pleasure that can be felt now. Connecting with the same gender is important, to become human, to learn to avoid playing roles which don't fit us. We are what we take in--it is divine. We are the Creator, being created, and creating. Respect each other's truths--it is all part of God/Universe.

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

Notes, 2001: It's really enjoyable to re-read what I wrote, and flesh it out, with the perspective of two years. It feels good to see I've applied some of what I learned, and that what I haven't yet applied, I still see myself doing in the future. This trip feels like a part of the fabric of my life. It was incredibly difficult to endure. And it felt like I endured it -- I am learning that I want my life to be about experiencing, not about enduring. I can see now how I was imagining that the 'right' way to trip was to do a high-dose LSD session, and I dutifully followed the imperative even though I was terrified. I'm a little better about not being so hard on myself these days. I'm not sure if I would go to that fear space again -- I think probably not. But I don't feel like repeating LSD or mushrooms like that again -- I prefer ayahuasca. The LSD felt too mental for my taste, and mushrooms feel just plain weird. But I am so grateful I went where I did with this trip!

Exp Year: 1999	ExpID: 9764

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Oct 4, 2001	Views: 73,189

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Mushrooms (39), LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Guides / Sitters (39), Bad Trips (6), Combinations (3)