		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 1 tablet
		 oral
		 LSD

		   T+ 12:00
		 0.5 mg
		 oral
		 Pharms - Lorazepam

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   200 lb

Dose: 1 barrel-shaped tablet; actual dose of the medicine is unknown.  It was given to me by an experienced psychonaut who vouched for its purity and potency.

Set: My intention was to let LSD take me wherever it wanted to take me.  I was particularly interested to experience ego dissolution and to discover what remained after the mind was obliterated.

I am a self-professed agnostic and do not have any spiritual side to my understanding of the universe.  I was open to having a spiritual/mystical experience and was eager to experience the oft-cited underlying noetic sense of unity/all-is-one.

I was committed to trusting the molecule and my own inner healing intelligence. I was hoping for some beautiful closed and open-eyed visuals.  I hoped to see what might be behind the free-floating anxiety I occasionally suffer from.

My intention was also to have fun with the man who agreed to sit with me.  We’ll call him “W.”

Setting: I took the medicine at W’s house.  W is an MD who has been trained as a facilitator/guide for people doing psychedelics as part of scientific protocols.  He shared his beautiful house two blocks from the ocean.  He offered to provide dinner and breakfast the next day.  We agreed that I drop at 2PM and I would stay the night.  He had a wonderful sound system and a playlist of music that he curated himself specifically for people who are tripping.  Spacious, comfortable, relaxed, and safe.

T: 0:00 I swallowed the pill with a sip of water and did 15 minutes of my usual meditation practice.

T: 0:30 My body was beginning to tingle, and I experienced subtle vibrations at the periphery of my visual field.  I began to feel gentle waves of energy the way it feels halfway through the first cup of coffee in the morning—only much more wavelike.  W was tinkering with his laptop. Impulsively, I sat down on the armrest of his chair and rested my head on his shoulder, asking if he minded if we cuddled a little bit. (He’s straight and I’m a gay man.) He was fine with that.

Very soon after I felt like it was time to “go in.”  I put on a soft sleep mask and a set of killer noise-reducing headphones and laid down on the couch.

(Note: times are VERY approximate and are reconstructed from a review the next day with W.)

T: 1:00 The music took on a depth and richness that was breathtaking.  I felt the music in layers that I could slip in between.  My mind seemed to be turned off, so I wasn’t really thinking about anything.   I just kind of merged with the music.  We started with music I brought on my iPod, all trippy electronic stuff from the 70’s plus a few more current pieces.

T: 1:30 Halfway through a Sigur Ros song, I had to lift the eye shades and take off the headphones.  I remember saying that this was “way too much music to absorb.”  The room felt like it was undulating and I was a little nauseous.  I told W that I didn’t want to be responsible for the music and asked him to take over.  What I really was saying was, “I don’t think I am in control anymore,” and wanted him to take over.  I laid down on the couch.

I had this sense that things were building in a way that I couldn’t explain.

I had this sense that things were building in a way that I couldn’t explain.

 My visual field was distorted as if it were a wet painting that someone was running their fingers through—like finger painting.  I started to get a little anxious, so I asked W if he would hold my hand.  He did. Almost immediately I began crying—deep racking sobs.  W came to me on the couch and held me against his chest while I cried more-or-less continuously for the next two hours.

Very little of “me” was there any more.  I don’t really remember anything very specific from this time.  My mind was in pieces.  Language was unavailable.  To the extent that there was any “self” there, “I” knew I was the source of an unimaginable volume of radiating love and gratitude for R’s presence.   I knew I was safe, and I was ready for what might come.

T: 3:30 I started shaking. I have peripheral neuropathy in my feet that makes them feel intensely restless and like there are minor jolts of electricity shooting through them.  Only now it was happening to my entire body.  All my muscles began to spasm in involuntarily contractions from my core out to my fingers and toes.  Bolts of electricity coursed through my body and gave off brilliant white crackling sparks.

Everything was completely black around me.  I was absolutely disincorporated.  I directly felt what was going on in my body, but I was diffusely separated from what was happening.  I remembered my intention and decided not to try to resist the spasmodic electrical discharges, but to trust my inner healer.  I was certain that this was what was supposed to happen and was happening for a good reason.

During brief periods of consciousness, I felt like I was adrift in infinite blackness.  I knew the blackness was in no way malevolent, but what simply was.  The elements of my personality/self floated in the blackness in fluid puddles like oil packets in water.  Occasionally, it occurred to me to wonder what the blackness was or what might be on the other side of it—if there was another side.  I pretty much decided that the blackness was “everything/nothing,” but I didn’t feel like I had the energy to be too curious.  I was content just to float in between the spasms.  This continued for about two hours.

Occasionally W would say things to me.  One thing I remember was that he thought there was something inside that needed to be let out and he asked me if I could let it out.  I think I just shrugged.  At some point W changed my shirt because I was drenched in sweat.  I don’t remember this.

T: 5:30 The shaking stopped and I began to recover a sense of my surroundings.  My cognitive processes were still totally scrambled, but I was regaining a sense of self.  W kept asking me things like what I wanted to do or if I were too cold.  I kept answering him with, “I really don’t have any capacity for measurement or comparison.”  This seemed amusing.  I just wanted him tell me what to do.

At one point, I found myself in the bathroom.  I’m sure W took me in there.  I don’t know if I asked or he suggested.  I was not wearing my glasses during any of this, which left me unable to distinguish much visually.  In addition, visual reality was again undulating and distorting.  I tried to remember the mechanics of peeing standing up, but this was mostly muscle memory. I wasn’t sure whether the urine was going in the toilet, on the floor, or in my pants.  This was really upsetting and made me feel guilty for maybe making a mess.  I crawled around on my hands and knees with toilet paper determined to clean up anything that needed cleaning up.  Fortunately, I found no mess and my clothes were dry—I think.

Somewhere over the next two hours, W cooked dinner while I lolled in and out of consciousness on the couch.  The smell of cooking meat was vile and the cilantro was so pungent it was painful.

T: 7:30 W told me the next day that around this time I was starting to reincorporate and kept making suggestions of what I might like to do.  I had no ideas.  I was still profoundly incapacitated, so he had to walk me everywhere.  He had this amazing patio with outdoor flame heaters.  I found myself unable to tolerate more than the dimmest lighting without actual pain in my eyes and a flooded sensorium.

As W escorted me around, it occurred to me that this is what it would be like to be old and in a nursing home.  I flashed on a friend of mine who had recently died of cancer and I thought this is probably what he felt like in the last days of being in the hospital.  Oddly, this was not a depressing thought, but a neutral, affect-free observation of what the future might hold.

W kept trying to engage me in conversation, but I couldn’t make words work.  Another flash: like how it must feel to have a stroke.  I was feeling tremendously grateful for W’s diligent caretaking and at the same time guilty for making him have to do what felt like to me such a lot of work.  I kept trying to ask how I could pay him back or what I could do to pay it forward.  He was SO gracious and kept saying he was enjoying himself and felt privileged to be with me during my journey.

T: 9:30 Still unable to make words work very well, control over all my other functions was gradually returning.  I kept asking W to tell me stories.  I was definitely responding to him as a father figure and found great comfort in being treated like a son—which is weird because I’m probably 20 years older than he is.

As it was nearing midnight, I could tell W was getting really tired, so I finally convinced him that I was safe to be on my own (as long as he put out all the candles).  He told me I could do what I wanted as long as I promised not to go outside.  At this point I was getting a lot of trails and colorful vibrations at the edges of objects, especially things with bold designs. I really liked this.

My cognitive faculties and motor coordination were still pretty scrambled, so after W went to bed, I wandered around the house remembering how to do things and practicing basic motor skills.

By about 1AM I felt like food was a thing that could be reintroduced into my reality.  The flavor of pesto on a cracker was sharp, explosive, and rapturous to my entire body.  I practiced locating all the things I had brought with me (phone, iPod, tablet, wallet, glasses, etc.) and was very relieved to discover I was beginning to be able to function again.  I texted some friends to practice word-using, and opined that I had just been through something immense and that I would need some assistance “fitting the pieces back together again.”

T: 12:00 I was still seeing colors on the edges of things.  My mind was very awake and racing, but not in a “speedy” kind of way.

T: 12:00 I was still seeing colors on the edges of things.  My mind was very awake and racing, but not in a “speedy” kind of way.

  My body was definitely tired.  I decided I was ready to be done with tripping and took 0.5 mg of lorazepam.  This put me to sleep for about 2 hours.

T: 16:00 I woke up as the sun was rising.  I got dressed and walked down to this AMAZING little beach where families were out with their kids and guys were fishing.  I felt rested, but very “inward” like I was still not ready to interact with other humans verbally, but being nearby was pleasantly reassuring.   I felt battered, but alert. After a while, W came by on his hoverboard thing.  We went back to his place and had a really nice breakfast, while he filled me in on what happened that I couldn’t remember.

Integration: Three days later as I write this, I am still unclear what happened and what it all meant.  I was surprised that after my mind was removed what I found was a deep, endless blackness.  I’m wondering if this is what death is like; returning to a black everything/nothingness.

I puzzled with an impending old age (I’m 65yo) and I wonder if I was projecting myself into that possibility.  I am realizing that I have a lot of anxiety, not about dying but about being incapacitated and in pain.  Perhaps I don't have anything to fear? I had a lot of energy in me that needed release.  Why it came out in tears and shaking/spasming electricity I have no idea.

There are a lot of unresolved feelings relating to my dad and a strong desire to be forgiven by him that were definitely needing to be experienced.  Pervasive was a yearning to be taken care of by a man.

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 112379

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 65

Published: Sep 29, 2018	Views: 2,820

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LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Guides / Sitters (39), General (1)


		 DOSE:

		 1 hit
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   115 lb

It’s the last day of our honeymoon. We’d scrambled to find a camping spot for our acid trip, and the place we found is perfect and serene. It’s part of a larger, established campground, which we’re not used to since we usually stay off of logging roads. But it’s a Tuesday night, it’s fairly secluded, and we don’t have to worry about bears or wild animals while we’re tripping.

Our campsite is right on the edge of a lake, and Ryan has set our tent and hammock up off to the side, nestled in the fir and aspen trees. There’s a mountain on the other side of the water. It’s a large enough lake that there are waves lapping up against our shore.

We each take one tab at 5:30pm, as soon as I get back from paying for the campsite. It’s our first time tripping with just us alone, and the third altogether. We’ve had a short honeymoon, just a road trip down to the Redwoods and Crater Lake. It’s been a long summer with the preparations for our wedding. Small as it was, only forty-five people, it was quite an ordeal. Over the last few days, I’ve loved our time to relax together, and now I’m totally ready to explore acid with just us.

After we eat our tabs, we eat a small dinner, salad and chicken hot dogs. We lay in our hammock for a little bit, but one of the trees is too flimsy and we’re basically on the ground. Aspen leaves are sprinkling down on us as we adjust and try to get comfortable.

I start to feel the effects of the acid in the hammock: my body feels light and airy, and the colors are becoming more vibrant. Ryan’s feeling it, too, and we decide to sit and watch the sun set over the water. There are various logs up against the shore, so we sit on one as the water laps up against rocks. Over the next hour or two, we watch the sun go down behind the mountain. As the light fades, everything takes on a purple hue. We see lights across the water twinkling at us. Bats come out and catch bugs on the water, swooping back and forth in front of us. Stars appear in the dark sky. Ryan and I talk about how beautiful the earth is and how much we can hear and see. Once it gets dark enough, I lay on one of the logs and stare up at the stars.

It starts to get cold though, and we retreat to our tent about 8:30pm. We try to get comfortable, knowing we’ll be here for a while. Finding our beanies, our extra layers, all the blankets we brought. On acid, I’m constantly reminded of how much stuff I have. It seems any time I’m on acid, I get caught up looking for something.

On acid, I’m constantly reminded of how much stuff I have. It seems any time I’m on acid, I get caught up looking for something.

 I have no memory of where I put it last, and I have to sort through all the unnecessary clothes and food and shoes I’ve accumulated.

All bundled up, we sit around, feeling the effects of the acid and talking about it. We talk about our honeymoon so far. I feel connected to everything around us. The critters we hear outside, Ryan, the trees, the wind. We consider taking a walk, but we refrain, too cold and afraid of running into people.

It’s maybe 10:00pm. It’s very dark in the tent, but the visuals from the acid are making everything rainbow. I don’t know what triggers it, but I leave my body and enter some kind of void. I feel like I’m in the space between light and dark. I can finally breathe, and I understand that I’m not Emily anymore, I’ve become something else. This void feels like space because everything is so dark, but I’m surrounded by twinkling lights. It all makes sense, and it’s very familiar.

“What do you call it?” I ask, wondering how to describe what I’m feeling.

Ryan says language can’t describe it. I’m struggling with what I’m experiencing and I want to talk about it, but my words are a jumble and Ryan is a jumble, too. Everything he says, I question. I question his memories (I have none at this point), I question how we got here, I question what any of this is. When he uses my name, I bristle. I call him Ryan, but at one point ask, “Am I Ryan?”

He feels like he made it weird by mentioning his dad, but I have no idea who that even is. He reaches for me, but I move away. A few minutes later when I reach for him, he moves away. I feel like we’re in a struggle where we’re never going to come together. Like the sun and the moon, always chasing each other. We bounce from one corner of the tent to the next.

I think we’ll always be in this tent, trying to meet in the middle. We aren’t Ryan and Emily anymore; we’re also my sisters and my brother and all the other people we’ve tripped with before, and also some kind of gods. I feel like we’ve been here before. I keep telling him that: “We’ve been here before. Haven’t we been here before?”

Ryan says something about Diamond Lake and camping, but I don’t understand that, either.

I somehow end up sitting on top of him. I do something that makes him say, “Ow!” and I come back to my body, just a little bit. I fall to the side and Ryan holds me. He is talking about God and love and warmth and light. I listen and try to talk. I feel like some of the wildness has left me, but I’m still not sure what this body is or who Emily is. We talk about the spirit and the soul and I try to describe the feeling of being outside of the physical world, but then I get thirsty or cold or have to pee. I keep saying, “But I have this body, I have to keep coming back to this body.” I am full of disdain for it, the thing that is keeping me from the void from before, where I felt like I belonged.

Ryan, though, is grounding me with words that actually make sense. “You just have to keep yourself warm and eat and we have to remember God and love and family. And we’re going to go home and start a new life and make a new family together.”

I ease back into reality, slowly. I let him talk about us and the mythological meaning of marriage. I feel like our souls have known each other before, and our wedding was a link in our eternal story together. I start to understand that I’m an eternal being, just like Ryan. I have always been, I am, and I will always be, and in this life, I get to experience time and death. This night is a bridge between the two worlds, where I am fully aware of both sides of my coin.

I think of my brother and how he described God on our last acid trip, with a group of a dozen people, most of them strangers to me. He said the Hebrew word for God -- Yahweh -- could be a play on how to say “I was, I am, and I will be” all at once, a way to describe something timeless and eternal. I feel outside of time, like the past, present, and future are stretched out before me. I don’t see the past or the future or understand them, I simply feel it. It’s as though I have one foot in the river of time and one anchored on the solid ground.

I can hear everything around us, and there’s a soft hum from the world. We hum the “Om” sound and it feels like our spirits emanate from us with the sound. We recite “Hare Krishna” and talk about how God is for us, with us, and ahead of us.

My entire body is humming with energy. We keep using the word “dance” to describe it. I have an autoimmune disease that leaves me sore and stiff, but on acid, I am light and free and painless.

I have an autoimmune disease that leaves me sore and stiff, but on acid, I am light and free and painless.

 When I move, colors wave through my body. When Ryan speaks, rainbows ripple through my mind. I’ve tapped into some kind of synesthesia so that everything is connected and one thing always emphasizes something else.

Throughout the night, we listen to the waves of the lake, we stare at the moon’s reflection on the water, we watch the stars, we visit the horrific bathroom trying to poop (we don’t), and we are constantly trying to get warm under our insufficient blankets and sleeping bags. Ryan smokes a cigarette, and he says it will be his last one. He started again a few weeks ago, amidst the wedding stress, but now he’s facing the facts about what they really do to his body.

We smoke some weed, talking about the goddess Kali and how smoking cannabis has been a spiritual rite for many cultures. I haven’t smoked weed on acid before since I was already enjoying myself so much, but since Ryan is smoking, I want to, so we can be on the same level.

Ryan tells me I scared him earlier, that he was worried I wasn’t going to come back to him. We talk  about wild feminine energy and about yin and yang. Throughout the night, he keeps talking about darkness and the devil and good and evil, but I have trouble feeling the same urgency and doom when thinking of evil. I know there is light and good and love and there is also dark and hate and anger, but I don’t know if they’re adversaries. I don’t even know if you must avoid one and only seek out the other. How can there be a sun without a shadow? They are both necessary to life.

But I recognize that I grew up in the light, loved by my family and blessed to be able to feel safe and travel, and now I can flirt with darkness because my foundation is in love. Some people have struggled with darkness since childhood, when it was cast on them unwillingly, and they fight to find the light when they don’t have role models who have shown them how to live in it.

I’m talking about human mythology and how the world is made up of two planes, the visible and the invisible. And for thousands of years, people have been talking about the invisible world through myths and spirituality and religion. I tell him I understand that we’re eternal beings and we will die but our souls will live on, somehow. In another life, in another dimension, I’m not sure.

I realize Ryan has fallen asleep on me. It’s 6:30am but I feel so awake and like I’m still tripping. I sleep for an hour or two, but my body is uncomfortable and still buzzing with energy so I journal, trying to capture some of my emotions. I unzip the tent’s door and watch everything outside. The fog rolls out as the sun rises, and the birds are waking up, searching for food. I feel like this is my first glimpse of the world, and everything is so beautiful. I take off a sweatshirt and realize I stink, so I decide to walk to the showers to clean myself off. I can hear every bird flying away as I walk by and see every bright leaf fluttering in the wind. The place feels like a magical wonderland. I’m sore from the long night, but my body also feels fresh and new.

The whole day, as we ease back into ourselves, is surreal. I wake Ryan up around noon, and even though I enjoyed the alone time, I’m so glad he’s awake again. We talk about our experience, and at times, it seems like we’re talking about what it means to be mortal and trapped in bodies.

I just want to be home, but as Ryan says, “There’s still work to do.” We have a three hour drive ahead of us and we have to eat breakfast (we forgot olive oil for the eggs we brought) and we have to pack up our things. When I was younger, I would play a game in my mind. I pretended I was Emily’s identical twin and I had to act just like her or people would find out I wasn’t really Emily. I would take in everything about her life as though it were brand new and I would go through all the motions, just as Emily would. I feel like that now as we fold up the tent, search the car for my phone, and give Ryan directions. This entire life is odd and new, but familiar and comfortable at the same time. I know I’m Emily, but I also know that everything I’ve created for myself is temporary and so much of what I focus on pulls me from the real magic of the universe. I get caught up in stress and plans for the future and idealizing who I am when I could be watching the sunset or enjoying music or laughing with Ryan.

On the drive home, we talk about God and we listen to mewithoutYou. The scenery is beautiful, the colors still so vibrant. I doze off here and there, but the energy is still humming in my body. When we get home, I read William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell out loud as Ryan cleans up some pocket knives he bought from an antique store. I’m struck by some of the images, so close to how I felt on the trip. One stuck with me, a proverb from hell: “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.”

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 112422

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: 30

Published: Oct 7, 2018	Views: 2,893

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LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Relationships (44), Nature / Outdoors (23), General (1)


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 20 mg
		 oral
		 Pharms - Escitalopram
		 (daily)

		   T+ 0:00

		 oral
		 LSD
		 (liquid)

		   T+ 1:00

		 oral
		 LSD
		 (liquid)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   70 kg

Trip Report: 225 micrograms (give or take), ingested in thirds, with the first third ingested an hour before the second two; 20 mg escitalopram (SSRI) taken the morning of the trip

TL;DR: Hurled into the deep end of a swimming pool filled with honey

I am writing this primarily so that people can get some insight about the SSRI/LSD combination. It is often said SSRIs are trip killers or inhibitors but I did not find this to be the case, with my trip even lasting much longer than 12 hours.

Background: I take 20 mg of an SSRI, namely escitalopram (brand name Lexapro) in the mornings daily for social anxiety and panic attack disorder, and this day was no exception. I have no other psychological disorders or health problems. It is said SSRIs have strong inhibitory effects on LSD. I did not find this to be the case, but it could be the LSD was especially strong or I am uniquely sensitive—this trip seemed as strong or stronger than several others’ who had ingested equal or greater doses, but it’s impossible to know this for certain. I have no previous experience with LSD

I have no previous experience with LSD

, but around 9 years ago had a profoundly negative hallucinogenic and paranoid delusional experience reminiscent of a brief episode of schizophrenia after smoking cannabis that may or may not have been laced with PCP (whatever the case, the effects were nearly identical to descriptions of the effects of PCP). This experience was nothing at all like that in any way. I have smoked cannabis countless times, but only do this occasionally. I have also tried salvia years ago but barely experienced any perceptual changes with it.

Note: Some of this has been edited to include information learned afterwards

5:30 am (time elapsed approximately 15.5 hours)

As I write this it is difficult to keep attentive to the task at hand.  I cyclically zone out (around every 5 seconds) and become distracted by non-thoughts and forget what I was doing. It is as if a resurgent wave has taken ahold of me, or maybe I’m just paying more attention to it in solitude. My skull and body feels tense, like there is an internal pressure pushing outwards, but it’s not painful at all, and is easily ignored. I also feel a positive internal energy and am simultaneously tired and wakeful. The computer screen begins to warp and twist and move in strange ways or expand as if I’m being sucked into it or that its shape is coming towards me to envelop me, all the while its contours are shifting in dynamic, motion-like ways (but which are never mistaken for real motion on the part of the object). The letters and words move like waves. Sometimes my slideshow of desktop wallpapers changing, for instance, to an aerial photo of Saint Helena that seems extremely bright and colorful, distracts me and I have to stare at it for a little while. The fabric of the percept seems to have a fuzzy, multicolored character lurking closely beneath its surface, but not in a menacing way. In fact the perceptual distortions are pleasing and reassuring—phenomena that I now greet as old friends who I missed dearly after having to see less of them as the first waves of the trip tapered off, although they were always there if I devoted my attention in that lazily unfocused way required to find them (this last word I accidentally wrote as “me” instead of “them” at first and that too may be apt).

We had started by diluting one drop of LSD in a glass of water. Some people drank an entire glass. This was reckoned to be 300 micrograms or more. Others split the water in half  (150 mcg) and drank that, or split the half in half (75 mcg) and drank that, all very approximate. I drank half of a half glass of water. I was extremely nervous but also resigned in an upbeat way to what was to occur, secure in the knowledge that I was in safe place, wasn’t taking very much, and my SSRI would inhibit the effects (and that, should something go wrong, I had Klonopin, a trip-killing benzodiazepine, in my pocket). I had written a list of goals to shoot for, mostly vague things like “presence, peace, openness, connectivity, oneness, clarity, appreciation, pay attention to time, let go, relax” but also concrete things like “try reading, learning a language, and playing chess.” I had hoped for cognitive enhancement but in reality impairment was so substantial the latter tasks became extremely difficult (chess was not even attempted).

I began a stopwatch to keep an objective measure because of the known effect of time dilation. Everyone nervously waited for something to occur and listening to music while sitting on the geometric patterned carpet in H’s bedroom. We all tried to stay positive and reassuring. Initially, K was going to be a trip sitter, which was also reassuring. At about forty minutes I began to notice numbness throughout my body coupled with a gradually increasing euphoric feeling that became extremely intense. At about this time someone asked if anybody was getting anything and I immediately, impulsively said “oh yeah” although what I was experiencing was a tiny fraction of what would occur next. X was laughing uncontrollably but said she wasn’t feeling anything.

The next thing I noticed which was quite saliently different was the undulating floor. Not the carpet but the perceptual experience of the floor itself, although it couldn’t be said that I was tricked into thinking it was actually moving. At this point I was feeling very good and the euphoria became an all-embracing pervasive ecstasy filling my torso primarily but also my other limbs and a strange sensation in my head like tension which would remain with me through the trip and wax and wane but was never so unpleasant I couldn’t be distracted from it. It could not be described as pain or a headache but more like a tightness or internal pressure. I determined that whatever was occurring was very good and I would be a little disheartened if the lightly undulating floor were all I could feel and so I decided to take more. Our spirit-guide shaman (experienced user/provider) was able, somehow, miraculously, while tripping hard, to deploy fine motor coordination, normal communication, and generally a functional level of behavior in assisting C, X, and myself in our goal to increase our dosage (they each had something less than half a dose extra). At this point I had a sip of a glass with one full drop in it (probably amounting to something less than 75), but decided it was still not enough and had a further quarter drop diluted, as did K, who decided she should have something to join this bizarre experience (I suppose 75 for each of us) leaving me with a total of something like .7 drops or what J guessed would be 200-225 micrograms (based on his assessment of a single drop—he nor I didn’t do the math explicitly at the time). In fact I’m also just realizing as, I write this that that was the amount I took, and seems like a very large dose now compared to my initial intention to only take 50 micrograms.

In any case my euphoria was really kicking into high gear when I returned and I was unable to suppress my laughter (which I tried anyway so people didn’t think I was too crazy but everyone else was having the same problem—I seemed unusually hard hit by this euphoria however). Laughter was also very infectious, like it is in elementary school. I was overcome by how good and perfect everything seemed to be.

I was overcome by how good and perfect everything seemed to be.

 Nothing could be better than the ecstasy I was feeling. It was impossible for me to understand how anybody could ever have a bad experience like this. I was getting a serious kick out of all the visual hallucinations or distortions or whatever they were and I found it all absolutely hilarious. The music sounded very good, and I was able to tune into all the different layers of the audio. The music included Herbie Hancock and later, Talking Heads (“Once in a Lifetime” made an especially strong impression) and Parliament (the album “Funkadelic”), after which the music got trippier, like acid house and trance. At this point looked better or more radiant than normal, but it could also be that they had flushed faces, I certainly did and could feel a warmth under my skin and something like tightness or pressure throughout my body, like my blood vessels were dilating. I couldn’t be sure but I had the feeling acne was worsening or breaking out, but that might have been just a feeling.

We were contemplating a fern plant on the mantle and trying to decide if it was or was not moving and were having a hard time with this task. It became clear it was definitely part of the trip, but additionally the fern was taking on multi-dimensional shapes and patterns that seemed to alternate. There were moments of intense social cohesion and extreme suggestibility where we were all very willing to assent to any suggestion or description somebody was making about their experience and project our experience onto it, or just look at a person and laugh. This made the vibe or atmosphere have a quite tangible or thick quality to it that positively affected our own intense emotional experience. At some point people got extremely interested in the center of the fractal pattern carpet but I was more tuned into social frequencies at this point. Some very abstract conversations were had, usually initialized by trying to understand what was going on but then flying off in a lot of strange and expansive directions (one example concerned Wittgenstein’s private language argument, the beetle in the box, and constructing a language out of shared experiences/phenomenology to communicate our atypical experiences, and how language in general is rooted in phenomenology—oftentimes long-term cultural patterns and shifts were invoked in these kinds of conversations). It was very easy to lose thoughts, or trains of thoughts, or fail to remember them (storage and retrieval became difficult in the short-term); it was, as H said, like C was trying to catch his thoughts with a butterfly net, “Ah what was I thinking? Oh yes, caught it,” he would say. Lying on the floor I began to see more complex visual distortions, like the movement of some kind of silvery structural sinew surrounding this paper lantern (I christened it “the orb” because the words “lamp” and “light” escaped me) hanging from the ceiling. These outlines moved and danced to the music, as did the shape of the object itself in weird dimension-defying ways reminiscent of a live-action cubist painting. I decided to lie down on the bed and let it all wash over me.

At this point I guess I began to reach the peak of the trip and time began to get very weird and very dilated. Looking at the ceiling (especially the intricate molding), which at first was just kind of moving and dancing (fluctuating) to the music, then moving back and forth joyously with horizontal lines expanding and contracting and breathing and the patterns achieving some kind of extra dimensional layer, I eventually felt like I was falling into the ceiling in a series of increasingly complex telescopic distortions. At this point I began talking, which was a bad idea because my cognitive abilities were severely impaired and memory short-term memory essentially nonexistent (even memory of who I was became strained—the tether to reality had become rather tenuous). I had noticed earlier that my attempts at speaking were not fluent and stutter-like, and my attention span had dropped precipitously to maybe 5 seconds, and it was difficult to keep track of very recent memories or follow any line of reasoning or conversation. But at this point when I spoke I had some thought about how, although I had seemed to be staring at the ceiling for a lifetime the time read only 1 hour 40 minutes and I said something like “it’s only been forty minutes” and George said “40 minutes since when” (this absurd line of questioning became something of a theme) and I realized I was truly insane, and his statement brought me tumbling into a new reality in which I realized the previous one or ones had been wiped out. I was very confused and rapidly asked myself, “Has this happened before? Is this real? What just happened? Where did I just come from? What am I talking about? Who I am even talking to? Have I been talking to myself? Have I just projected my own internal monologue onto other people expecting them to know what I’m thinking?” and then quickly, “Whatever just go with it, everything’s fine—actually much better than fine, fantastic!” This was one of the few moments when anxiety almost breached my euphoric bubble.

I thought a good metaphor for what was happening is tumbling, as in a tumble-dryer, and I found out this is a defining feature of hard tripping. “So time is definitely doing some weird things…” said C later (who incidentally was eminently quotable on that day), after his peak had subsided from the park enough for him to contemplate what was happening. Each moment felt like it could have lasted a whole lifetime. From this point on I realized I was thinly attached to reality and I kept experiencing this tumble-dryer like series of re-awakenings where I thought I managed to grasp clarity or some inkling of “real” reality before it dissipated and I’d crash into a new one. Like waking up over and over again. This continued in a pretty serious way and I was having a lot of difficulty having any kind of intelligible thought or conversation as I was being constantly woken up in a new reality like this, and I guessed at this particular time it was hitting me harder than the others, but the others would get there too very quickly.

I think it was at this point we began recommending various objects to get perceptually lost in around the room, with E saying “I’m still at the table” in response to C’s “meet me at the carpet,” (previously after having been enthralled with a red lighter and a painting, and a stationary man outside the window who was indeterminate between a man and a rock). At the same time I was really enjoying the multidimensional motion of the “orb”—a hanging paper lamp. We decided this recommendation service was much like Tripadvisor, and found that so hilarious it hurt to laugh.

There were moments of intense group focus where for me the salient aspect was feeling the vibe and cohesion of the group

There were moments of intense group focus where for me the salient aspect was feeling the vibe and cohesion of the group

 rather than the object that absorbed our attention, like a watercolor postcard of chain of monkeys and the central spiral of the carpet. Someone suggested to take a walk but I thought “no way” in this condition and I think the vibe for most people was very much like, “I’m just trying to hold onto this rocket ship for dear life.” However after maybe thirty more minutes of getting lost in euphoria, tumbling reality, and perceptual changes which were often wavy or oscillatory in nature and allowed for an extreme zooming on details which could sometimes explode and overwhelm until you’re snapped back into a new reality, we eventually decided we were sober enough to take a walk. Of course were by no means anywhere close to sober at this point and at least on person reached their peak outside. For myself, I was having trouble discerning what was real and not real and staving off the feeling that I might be dreaming this entire thing.

As a side note, the order of events reported throughout the peak stages (first four hours) is almost certainly inaccurate, as memories became extremely jumbled and detached from distinct locations in time.

Upon entering the landing of the stairs, the change of scenery threw me into completely new perceptual territory. It was impossibly yellow and felt like I was stepping out into a Mediterranean country. The light from a skylight was glowing with ethereal warmth that had an indescribable emotional quality (certain emotions, though positive, were not like ones I had ever encountered before). The spiral stairway also seemed like an M.C. Escher painting that would go on and on for infinity, though I felt it more as dilated rather than eternity. Getting outside gave the illusion of sobriety but quickly relapsed into the series of reawakenings from before. The vague social anxiety about being seen in public was not very strong. Many individuals in the group had the feeling that we had left someone behind, and when one of us voiced this, we all agreed we had that strange feeling, although we were all present in fact.

Walking short distances felt like it took a very long time. We found a place to sit in the park right outside the flat after what seemed like eternity and began to contemplate nature and our surroundings. The conversation got very weird at this point and concepts seemed to take on a fractal quality once again. “Water is another thing topic we could really get into,” C had said earlier as we were leaving the flat, indicating that really any subject could have this quality. An off-handed comment by E to the effect that society is an amazing thing sent me down a conceptual rabbit hole thinking about the workings of society and all its people as components in a well-oiled machine, whose components are not aware that they are operating within the confines of such a machine, along with the somewhat grandiose idea that only we have transcended its confines and attained a higher plane of awareness. Somehow I was able to carry on a decently intelligible conversation about the merits of drug legalization with H. The girls reported feeling empathy with the plants and in touch with nature or Mother Earth as a whole but I didn’t really get that feeling. C and others were really fascinated with bicyclists (“that was a thing” said C much later, which led me to think I’ll have to remember the day as a series of “things” or strange phenomena). A was having paranoid thoughts that everyone was staring at us, although it could have been that he was staring at them, and they were staring back. I too had an inkling of paranoia in public but it was easy to ignore.

The grass seemed highly perceptually stable compared to things in the room before. We determined that low-light environments involve the greatest perceptual disturbances. Nonetheless lying on my back looking up at the sky was incredible. If I let my attention become slightly less focused but still attentive very strange things began happening. On a less intense level some of these things are still happening now: fluctuation, undulating, warpings or wormings of letters and words and the screen itself and the desktop background, which is now of a Tokyo city skyline. In particular, looking at the blue sky I could see geometric patterns began to resolve out of the fuzziness, like three-dimensional polygons tracing the inside of a giant dome. The lines or outlines of the polygons were radiant and rapidly shifting across the colors of the rainbow, and at their intersections were silvery, shining “diamonds” I suppose (in the sky, yes) that became sparkly because of the background wave-like motion going on or oscillatory reverberations or something. The sky was all quite fuzzy and filled with phosphenes but the geometric patterns stopped abruptly at the tree canopy. Some people couldn’t decide whether the sun behind the clouds and fog was the moon or not. The fog over the steeple was very cool. One person suggested the sky looked purple, and at first I didn’t see it, but maybe because of suggestibility it did begin to take on a more violet hue. In trying to argue for the existence of the sun and the nonexistence of the moon currently, I somehow ended up seeing two or possibly even three suns at once, but these might have been tracers as I moved my head.

I mentioned how it was good at least that things were still obeying multisensory integration, e.g. voices synchronously attached to mouths and. Additionally the present was still flowing as normal even if in a stutter-step fashion, with event bundles trundling into each other in fits and starts. It was like we were being pulled into a new event by some salient phenomenon(a), at which points the boundaries became a little fuzzy. We also determined around this point that we were experiencing intense dyschronometria, or inability to judge intervals accurately or compare them in any meaningful way. At one point E remarked that there are some invariant features which must be necessary to consciousness, the backbone of it so to speak, which even the trip can’t wash away, for example the “the black is still on the dog,” of a dog walking by, which we decided was quite good—at least there was that. Similarly the auditory track wasn’t leaving the visual and time was still synchronous. This entire time I was getting very strange signals from my entire body, my muscles, and my internal organs, almost mimicking the oscillatory waves found in the visual field, but usually much more saturated. I went through periods of pervasive numbness and also pervasive euphoria regularly, which may have distracted from other interoceptive signals. When this subsided I could feel that my stomach was just slightly upset.

We decided it was too cold and went back inside, although I was not very cold, and continued to trip in the flat, although by this point it was less pronounced, but still occurring in waves. It was still possible to get quite lost in the ceiling, but by this point C talked in the past tense about how, “that was really quite something. Quite something indeed, yes.” We were almost like wine experts discerning subtle textures and tastes—as the peaks subsided we were now able to apply ourselves to more fine-grained exploration without so much “tumbling” as before. Waves and undulations continued to characterize a lot of my vision, especially of patterns, and horizontal lines especially were discernably weird and warping. In addition the feeling that the ceiling was expanding and moving towards me, or dancing and moving along to the music, continued. I experienced two distinct moments lying on the bed when I felt like, after I had closed my eyes, my euphoria may be transforming into dysphoria after a negative looping introspection but I was able to distract myself from that by standing up. It also might have been that the SSRI was still protecting me from negative thought loops. Tastes, especially of chocolate—a dark chocolate bar filled with raspberry— and lime and coriander popodom crisps were fantastic and multi-layered. My ginger ale tasted especially shiny and euphoric. An red apple had a really unpleasant aftertaste.

I tried to play Amazing Katamari on my phone and even though I had very little high-level awareness of what I was doing I was totally immersed and sucked into the phone screen and the colors and animations were stunningly vibrant. Although I could barely form a sentence or remember that I had been playing I somehow performed very well and lasted a very long time on one life. Afterwards I tried to just enjoy the music and feel at one with the universe and kind of melted into the bed.

An overriding thought pattern of “let go, everything is okay, you are everything, everything is good, you are at peace” took hold. I tried reading Steppenwolf, which was lying on the bed, and found reading to be quite difficult but also really interesting and I was very interested in what was being said but I was distracted by conversation. Others were lying on the floor and I could see the floor breathing in tune with E’s breathing. The collective social unit seemed to have a palpable positive vibe influencing me and there was a general feeling of shared experience and commonality. Conversation had a grounding and sobering effect, which was probably good, possibly essential. Being alone would be substantially less tethered to reality I thought. From the bed, intently gazing through the window intently I momentarily saw the edges of the window melt or “run down the sides”—this seemed to be an elaboration on the more general phenomenon of seeing silvery outlines to shapes which move and alter of their own accord. I migrated often to the floor from the bed and back and finally ended up in a red armchair by the window looking out onto the foggy park. At this point I think C said, “so this acid thing, there’s something to it,” which, typically for him, was an understatement of colossal proportions. He had a special knack for remaining absolutely calm and scientific even through the peak of his trip in the park when he said, “I believe I may have gone insane and I fear this might last forever.” He was also apt to say “ah yes,” and “indeed” whenever a new reality came upon him, very much like a wine expert tasting different notes. A even thought that at one point in the park that C’s voice had become his own inner monologue and was verging on descending into a panicked rabbit hole thinking it might be stuck like that forever.

In any case, I was contemplating a particularly bulbous and attractive tree through the glass, which was radiantly shimmering and shifting colors (mostly vibrant greens and golds but occasional pink, red, orange, and purple as well) and I could see various patterns take hold and become more solid objects. One of these was a Star of David, but also salamanders and other things, and I could see sometimes little spiraling round things like eyes appear from the fuzz, and it all seemed quite a lot like Google’s Deep Dream visuals. In the background I saw another tree resolve into a grotesque demon like shape, possibly having sex, it was unclear (with what I don’t know, just suggestive of that). None of this was scary however. In fact contemplating the tree and the fog through the window I approached the deepest level of serenity and peace I had ever felt in my life for what seemed to be a nearly eternal length of time. My body was completely insensible or numb at this point and I felt like was embraced by the universe, which of course, was me.

Besides this deep inner peace, probably the next most remarkable thing was listening to the introduction to a Wagner opera (Der Ring des Nibelungen, Das Rheingold Act 1: Prelude-Part 1), which is one extended chord representing a river, I later discovered. I did not know this before a couple days later when I found a description on youtube by the user Wagner Leitmotifs, but specifically the music was a spread chord of Eb major: “the opening of Das Rheingold is the most fundamental interval of music—an octave of Eb major on bass followed by Bb in bassoons, making a perfect fifth, and then 8 horns one by one with the same motif, the simplest chord, the major triad. This building up, not only of complexity, but also in pitch and volume represents the development of the universe from the primal nothingness. It is pentatonic as it represents nature.” I was lying on the floor. The walls, my internal being, my physical body, and my hands (which I was holding up) were all moving of their own accord with the vibrations of the music. I felt like a thinly stretched piece of string and the water of reality was flowing all around and through me. It was an intensely euphoric, connective, and serene experience, with waves of pleasurable bodily feelings of a never-yet-before-experienced kind, which was very different from the euphoric, tight-chested energy of the early parts of the trip. I felt as if I had reached the highest heights of awareness and connection, bordering on or maybe even submerged in nirvana. All anxiety and thought had dissolved completely. In that moment I had attained harmony with the universe (again, it must be said, and in a different and more palpable way than before when I was sinking into the chair and gazing out the window). I said to C, who had put the music on, “Thank you so much for this incredible gift you have just given me.”

Throughout the trip, everything was fascinating, every small detail and its intricacies. I took a look at the postcard that the others had been blowing their minds at by looking at earlier but which I hadn’t yet seen and zoomed in very close to this one tiny little man standing on a dock in this seaside town in the South of France (“an insignificant detail,” as C might say, “…in the grand scheme of things”) and felt an enormous amount of empathy and compassion for this man and sort of felt his life extended forwards and backwards from the moment captured in the postcard.

I should also mention that in the bathroom, despite problems with something like dizziness but which was not, and the feeling of the wall moving inwards and outwards besides me, I also looked deeply into my reflection and noticed that I looked some years older than I really was and more detailed and colorful, like a finer resolution. Also in the bathroom it seemed like the lightbulb in the ceiling was strobing or flickering regularly, although I don’t believe it was.

At around 10 pm, on the way back home through the fog I was still noticing disturbances in the force—things were very far from being normal and everything took on a kind odd tone, especially the random passerby, almost like we were walking through a world that wasn’t our own but merely observing as entities they could not see. The light through the fog was also cool, and I was really intrigued by a growth on a tree. When we got home I made pasta for myself, E and C, who were still tripping, and drank a beer. I had cottonmouth and felt very strange in my body, and very tense in the facial muscles and my skull, and also felt tightness in my shoulders. Looking at the ceiling I could tell waviness was still occurring and tracers from my hand movements were still present as well. We watched Planet Earth on the projector but the ceiling and the perceptual changes were far more interesting. A timelapse video of autumn foliage changing colors reminded us of what we had seen in real life not long before. When they left I realized I was still tripping fairly heavily with the visuals and distortions and it was very intense to splash cold water on my face, despite a feeling of something like numbness, but which isn’t numbness. We had determined our memories were severely affected and even in conversation at home coming down it was difficult to keep thoughts straight and be coherent or carry a sentence through to completion. Nonetheless we agreed it was tapering off. However, after they left it might have been another wave came onto me (maybe because of staggered ingestion) and so I sit watching the computer screen warp and twist. Mostly I’m writing to preserve memories that I worry might be extinguished. Hopefully this will not be the case.

Trying to understand it all as it was unfolding was quite interesting, and also that we were able to keep somehow lucid and attached to at least a present that was tumbling into the next, even if beyond the moment was contentious. The layering was ever-present as well, stacks upon stacks, whether it was layers in a conversation, which took on ever greater and more expansive shades of meaning or literal visual cascading and collapsing, or even an introspective spiral. The entire world became deeply imbued with fractal geometry, including the matryoshka doll-like stacking of realities or time slices or events that continually tumbled into the next one and replaced it, only to be obliterated and overlaid by a new moment or event package or whatever it was.

Event segmentation seemed to have gone haywire in a major way, and I was curious whether there was some root cause that took precedent over the other perceptual disturbances and gave them a form in its shadow, like this stacking, tumbling feature, increasing complexity. Some of us seemed to turn our telescopic gaze inwards, an act fraught with peril in my opinion. As for me I tried to avoid introspection and focus outwards (or when I didn’t, I would bottom out at some kind of “everything is alright, make peace with the universe and yourself” kind of sentiment). I was in any case profoundly captivated by the “external” (i.e. exteroceptive plus interoceptive) distortions taking place, which fully occupied my rapt attention for most of the experience, such that staring into the ceiling became an event to be celebrated, more fascinating than anything we tried to play on the computer (although I did have the feeling that a certain sea-life video was eerily corresponding to unrelated music from the stereo and that characters in the Safety Dance music video had grotesque facial expressions and a quite special significance). In general the shape-shifting that was going on often seemed to synergize or bounce and move along with the music that was playing. There were really interesting cross-modal effects all around, and time itself might have been involved in that, or at least event boundaries.

Update at 6:30 am (time elapsed 16.5 hours—unusually long by now)

Low-light conditions in solitude seemed to bring out the trippy aspects even more and returning to the trance-like unfocused focus state (default mode network/resting brain state?) also allowed the visuals to run free. I was continually testing to see whether the trip was still occurring, staring at the horizontal beam of the window frame and watching it warp and move. I then focused on the corner of the room, which was rippling towards me in concentric circles spiraling outwards, along with undulations in the wall and ceiling. In my strange focus mode the effects seemed to become magnified and black-ish cracks seemed to appear at the wobbly intersections between shapes in my visual field (e.g. wall and ceiling joint) where it almost seemed as if the fabric of reality was coming apart; being shaken apart. The room has been shaking and vibrating in its entirety like there is an earthquake. Thick rainbowish fuzzy borders around shape boundaries, distinct from the thinner, often dynamic, silvery outlines persist. The fingerprint-like fuzziness permeating vision resolves itself in complex ways and patterns, constantly shifting in an indeterminate way. Shadows and light seem to become objects in their own right with their own boundaries demarcating lines and thick borders. Rapid blinking produces geometric shapes like I had seen in the sky and radiant phosphenes, eventually mutating into a full telescoping geometric pattern kaleidoscope effect, that I imagine can become a much more intense part of a peaking trip. Distorting shapes (e.g. of the pillow and blanket) could be felt even with my eyes closed (distorting after-images?).

The next day I still felt slightly cognitively impaired (especially memory/ability to recall recent thoughts, attention, sequential thought, and ability o follow external thoughts, read or spoken, in sequence, for an extended time), but deeply good and peaceful too, and found the memories of the previous day’s perceptual alterations irresistibly funny. Although in the morning checking for visuals seemed normal, when I listened to the introduction to the Wagner opera again and lost focus in my vision I was able to see geometric patterns with gold color-shifting outlines against my wall and waviness along with the rainbow-fuzzy object border at the juncture of the wall and the ceiling. This was only present when I attempted to return to the perceptual state I was in on the trip, and not without effort. There did seem to also still be motion of right angle junctures in low-light conditions and a high degree of technicolor fuzz, and although I was able to convince myself that might be a normal sober thing I hadn’t noticed, it was definitely not, as it went away later that night.

The next day also included a distinct afterglow where everything seemed subjectively better, like a reverse hangover

The next day also included a distinct afterglow where everything seemed subjectively better, like a reverse hangover

, but especially affecting mood, however contrast was also turned up and colors seemed more vivid and objects more beautiful. There was a feeling that everything was right with the world. At the same time my body felt exhausted, as if I’d been strenuously exercising all night when in fact we’d mostly been lying around. We attributed this to our brains having been working extraordinarily hard to process and resolve the barrage of data during the trip and the length of time it was in this state, which had depleted our energy or something. I realized that I startled quite easily, especially at movement in the periphery (like a person’s sudden movement) which may have appeared closer than it was or (as I read happens) because my peripheral had become unnaturally wide. Very late at night I felt slightly anxious and an occasional fleeting sense of unease, but this may be from not eating (appetite is still slightly suppressed) and nutrient depletion. The next night I slept deeply for 13 hours and had very vivid and emotionally intense dreams. I have a vague feeling of having been born again and the day before the trip seems like ancient history. My brain/mind also feels like it is has been rinsed or washed. Overall a very positive experience.

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 111972

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 20

Published: Oct 18, 2018	Views: 5,055

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LSD (2) : Music Discussion (22), Glowing Experiences (4), Combinations (3), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 4 glasses
		 oral
		 Alcohol

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

		   T+ 7:30
		 1 cig.
		 smoked
		 Cannabis

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   122 lb

Last night I had an experience that gave me newfound respect for the power of LSD. I have tripped acid and shrooms each about a handful of times scattered over the course of the last 3 years, usually taking care to keep my trips spaced out chronologically so I have time to fully “recover.” I think it takes some time to get reacquainted with reality after a powerful trip. Before last night, the last time I had taken LSD was October 2015 (3 months ago), after having tripped in both May and June of the same year.. all great trips.

Last night I had been drinking for a while already and was definitely feeling the effects of that at the time I dropped tab. I will cut to present tense now to make this easier to recount.

I’m downtown with my boyfriend and some of our friends, shooting some pool and just kicking back, everything is cool so far. Around 12:30 AM we make the moves to leave and everyone is lingering outside the bar getting in that last cigarette. I make my way back to P, my man, who surprises me by saying he wants to trip tonight, that this girl here was ready to sell him some tabs right now. This is surprising because he has sworn off psychedelics for the last 4 years. Also surprising because it’s generally a hard rule with me that once 1am is on the horizon and nothing wild or compelling is happening, it’s time to pack it up, go to sleep while everything is still good, and not introduce any major game changers to the night such as LSD. I have seen that things can go very wrong very quickly and leave me wondering when that even happened.

Mistake number one on my part, as I see it now, was drunkenly agreeing to eat that tab. I firmly believe, ever since my first trip which I found very spiritually transformative, that acid is NOT a “turn up” drug, it is something very serious and heavy on my brain, not just something to party with. I’m also kind of a homebody and definitely just a social drinker, so it being close to 1am and me already a good bit sloshed, I feel like I’ve done my part and I wanna go home and snuggle up with my honey, smoke a doob and go to sleep. But P has other plans and being drunk, I ignore my instincts

being drunk, I ignore my instincts

 – Mistake number two as I know when things start feeling a little hairy, that’s when I need to trust my intuition and do the best thing for myself, which for me would have been the plan I just described.

I even tried to pass the tab off to my friend T after having had it on my tongue for only 5 or so minutes, but then changed my mind (to T’s disappointment) because I wanted to be with P while he went through his first trip in a while. Fuck it, I said then, it’s one tab, I have done more than this before and had the time of my life. Why not? Now you know a little about my philosophy on mind-altering substances in social settings, I had to get that out of the way so you understand a little bit the “type” of person I am. From here I can just tell the story. I’ll timestamp according to the moments that had significance to me.

12:30AM: P and I eat our tabs standing in front of our bar. It’s been a chill night so far, downtown is kinda dead on a Thursday night but like I said we have a solid group of the homies there with us and it’s been good. We decide to call it a wrap, we wanna go back to his and throw on some records and see where this acid takes us, we start scheming for a ride back to P’s. (A quick note of context, just last weekend I was driving in my car and got t-boned on my driver’s side, so at the point of this story I am newly car-less and have 9 fresh stitches over my eyelid where I got slashed by glass from my window in the wreck. Had I still had my car, I probably would’ve DD’ed my friends downtown, stayed sober, thus maintaining my sense of gut instincts for self preservation and this trip could have been avoided. But anyway.)

1AM: P’s buddy C offers us a ride to P’s house on his own way home and we accept, but only after P and I get into a little drunken spat as I realized and vocalized that I really hadn’t wanted or planned on tripping tonight. It’s not as if he forced me to eat the tab, understand I was drunk and feeling a little prissy and uncertain. Spontaneous trips can be great, don’t get me wrong, I just can’t shake off the feel that the odds are stacked against me at this point in the night, and I’m lashing that sensation out on P since it was his idea. So I rip the tab off my tongue and throw it on the ground at his feet (this was also awhile after I had contemplated passing it off to my buddy T) and P points out that it’s already done its damage. And I am truly feeling unsettled, like the way it usually goes when I am on the verge of tripping balls.

However remember, I am also drunk, and thinking maybe this queasiness and the fact that I’m feeling a little spinny is just due to all the beverage and the fact that I have already had a long day and definitely not enough to eat (mistake number 3, I wish I never tripped on an empty stomach because while it’s not like I feel hunger in the midst of my trip, I do feel that my body needs some damn nutrition and sustenance if it’s going to endure an 8+ hour hallucinogenic adventure where my appetite usually becomes the last thing on my mind). Plus I feel that I can direct my trip in the way I want it to go by trying not to overanalyze my situation and just take everything as it comes. Of course with this drug I don’t really get a choice, but it still comforts me to think about that in those uncertain moments before the acid makes itself at home in my brain.

1:30AM: P and I are at his house, we have made our way upstairs and are in his room, as I still deal with this increasing queasiness and the sense of something being dramatically “off” or not quite right. I often feel this uneasy sensation immediately preceding a heavy trip. When I start questioning myself “am I about to trip, is that what this is?” that is the go-to sign that in a very short amount of time I will indeed be tripping balls. The more intensely uncomfortable I feel in the moments before my trip, the more intensely and vividly I seem to experience the trip itself. So my instinct is telling me this is going to be very intense, because I feel fucking STRANGE.

This is like the normal come-up queasiness, but much, much worse. I feel paranoid, skittish, anxious, that I have made a grave error and am doomed to experience whatever effects this tab is going to have on me. NOT good and a very far variation from my normal “keep it lighthearted, go with the flow, try to control your trip by reminding yourself to let go of control” mindset. I’m trying to voice this to P but he is drunker than I, and evidently not feeling the L yet. He keeps saying, “I’m telling you, that acid was junk, you just think you’re tripping and your imagination is running with it.” But I think he was just saying that to comfort me, and really was feeling “off’ too, because of what happens then.

~1:45AM: Our friend B comes knocking on P’s door. BANG BANG BANG! All P’s roommates are asleep, we’re both sprawled out having wasted no time getting naked, and now B is totally hammered and appearing out of nowhere on the porch after us parting ways with him downtown. On top of this, B had already been giving P shit earlier that night and they were kind of throwing aggressions back and forth while we were downtown. I attribute this to drunk boy behavior, they have been friends for 7 years, close enough to get annoyed with each other now and then and not fall out over it. So this scared me, when rather than going down and telling B to go home or just asking him to please shut the hell up and offering the couch to sleep on in return (which would not at all be out of character for P):

BANG BANG BANG! P and I both: “what the hell?” he checks his phone, the ringer is broken so he doesn’t get notifications, but of course now we see backed up messages from B “you home? I am coming through” “be there in 5” “I am on your porch” etc. Ok, nothing serious, we were downtown together not that long ago so he probably assumed we were awake and just drifted through. But P loses his shit! “Fuck no… after he was being a dick to me all night. My roommates both work in the morning and now I have to explain this shit tomorrow,” etc, he goes downstairs and I hear him SCREAMING. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE” and all this horrible shit to B. I can’t even hear B’s answers because P is so fucking pissed and loud. To be fair, B was really being a dick earlier and I witnessed that, but damn. I mean jeez P. Well mission effective, both P’s roommates come out asking questions. Meanwhile I am naked and afraid, if you will, in his room still, ears to the ground trying to decide what to do. I don’t want P to come back up here and me in my frazzled state have to deal with him all angry.

Understand this. My sweetheart is as gentle as a lamb. I love it about him, he never would lay a hand on me and sometimes he’s polite to me even when we’re fighting, which is both charming and infuriating. He is a mellow fellow to the core. I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen him truly angry. So for him to have snapped on B like that is totally out of character and I know there is another factor to P’s reaction, and I’m thinking the acid because my nerves are on edge right now too. Without thinking it through I get dressed, go downstairs and slip out the door, which P has just slammed in B’s face. B is bewildered on the porch but I have no explanation for him and just feel the need to flee.

My house is 4 blocks away from P’s. I practically run there, feeling paranoid about being alone on the street at 2am, being a 120~ pound female with no self defense experience. My roommates are still downtown together and I know there’s no guarantee at this point that they will end the night at our house. I decide the best thing to do is sleep this off, being that I am still not quite tripping, and as of yet just feeling really unsettled. I slither into bed and pull the blankets over my head. P is calling me, where did I go, why the fuck did I leave, etc, and things start to get confusing. I find myself calling him back but unable to express my feelings or motives for leaving. Instead I say to him, as I realize it myself, “I do not want to be alone for this.” I feel so internally jumbled that I know this is going to be a strange trip. I have exceeded the point of being able to assess my feelings and say to myself “maybe this is just because I’m drunk.” I know with all certainty that this feeling is not normal and I do not want to experience it alone when P is just 4 blocks away. However he does not want to come to me and I hang up on him, frustrated, crying.

I realize suddenly I am exhausted – I had spent 12 hours earlier today in the studio, attending my classes and making progress on projects (I am an interior design student) and on top of that had not really had a sufficient dinner, as I had had a class from 5-7:30pm and had gone straight to P’s afterward, where I had begun drinking. So I am feeling weak and glued to my bed. But I know I need to go back to P’s, and the more I think about it, my limbs begin sort of tingling, like I am somehow simultaneously full of energy, envisioning myself running and skipping the four blocks back to P’s, and also excruciatingly tired. Still crying with no explanation, just feeling frazzled, I suck it up and throw off the blankets, change into sweatpants, and made the walk back to P’s. At this point he is not answering my calls. It’s been about 15 minutes since I hung up on him. Knowing his phone doesn’t ring and the door is locked, I might have to just turn around and go back home once I get there, I take my chances.

During the walk is when I feel I begin to truly trip. I am no longer afraid of the dark streets or paranoid of meeting strangers here at this hour, being more focused on the appearance of my shadow cast on the sidewalk in front of me by the streetlights. “It’s like I am walking with a friend,” and other vague scattered and disassociated thoughts follow. For a moment I feel compelled to lean against the wall of a house on the corner and stare up at the sky, which is vividly blue and shining bright with stars. I can’t tell if I am cold or not (it’s January). I have the urge to run all the way back downtown, feeling a strangely intense desire to skip down the middle walkway of the city park (which is about 15 blocks away from my house), I envision myself running around the central fountain under the streetlights, riding my bike through the dead streets in the middle of the night. At the same time, I feel as if there is an invisible string tying my forehead to the pavement, pulling me down. I feel like I need to lay down, but that if I lay down, I will be similarly convinced that what I really need is to run around and expend some energy.

I keep walking, calling P the whole time, alternately leaving mostly unintelligible messages in which I profess my need for company and plead for him not to have fallen asleep. Reason being that he is a very heavy sleeper, almost nothing will wake him up from a good slumber, I know if he locked the door and went to bed I’m fucked. I’m on his porch and still no answer, the door is locked, the windows are dark. I knock softly three times and sit on the steps to call him again, unsure of how to proceed. Mercifully his roommate comes to the door after about a five-minute period of silence, saying he thought he heard a knock. Thank god, as I was feeling too timid to knock again and had just been sitting there, my thoughts swimming.

2:30AM: I go upstairs to P and this is where things turn heavy, as I am grappling with the onset of this strange new type of trip in which I feel the return of that constant ominous presence that lurked over my come-up. I am crying again and P, who has now finally realized the acid was not junk, is cupping my face and snuggling me and only making partial sense. In fact I briefly suspect he is sleep talking and ask him, “are you awake?” which confuses him, so I know he is awake and definitely tripping a little bit. From here on though I cannot describe what he was feeling because I was completely lost in myself.

For the next six hours I lie next to P, at some point again ripping off all my clothes as I desperately try to make myself more comfortable in any way possible. I grind my teeth, turn over and over in his bed, and sob endlessly. I remember, at several points, him holding me while I cried so hard I shook, and then we would pause and laugh as he made some crazy observation of his own trip, and suddenly I was sobbing again with no explanation. I remember putting my hand to my face and feeling no semblance of my own face, just rubbery foreign lips covered in leaky snot and tears. I remember actually feeling awed by the sheer quantity of snot on my face, thinking wow, that all came from me, it feels satisfying to cry this heartily. Yet with the exceptions of fleeting observations such as that, it was, in short, awful. In the intervals of P taking a break from consoling me to deal with his trip on his own side of the bed, I keep turning over onto my stitches and am only dimly aware of how painful that really is. I have flashes of memories also from this time period of lying on my back and touching my hip bones, looking down my abdomen at my ribs and stomach and being distracted from my tears for just long enough to question, whose body is this? I didn’t recognize it as my own. I felt it looked malnourished and was almost repulsed. What’s more painful is this sensation:

Between the hours of about 3 and 8AM, what I remember most vividly is the feeling that I had accumulated all the suffering and emotional anguish in the world and was tasked with the responsibility of letting every cry be heard

what I remember most vividly is the feeling that I had accumulated all the suffering and emotional anguish in the world and was tasked with the responsibility of letting every cry be heard

. I felt that I had no choice but to match every single cry of loss and pain that had ever occurred in the history of humanity. The tears just kept coming, I was even amazed at how long I would go on sobbing without taking a breath, until my sides hurt and my cries made no sounds. I had no personal, logical explanation for my tears and yet felt wholly justified in my endless wailing. I envisioned an infinite sea of people- like when you see footage of a music festival and the camera pans out in an aerial view of a huge crowd- and they all saw me too, but that huge crowd was crying in unison, some screaming, some silent and lost in their pain, but just all of these humans crying and suffering, and I felt somehow that it wasn’t enough for them to all suffer individually. I felt that I needed to echo that pain as if to validify it, as if to say, I know you all are hurting, and I am hurting too, just for you. Their pain was my pain, and so it felt natural to cry for so long and so strenuously given that we were all suffering so much in our own private worlds. What I am emphasizing though is that although I knew my crying wasn’t due to any personal factors, it still felt deeply personal. I felt as if I had nothing in this world, as if I had never had anything at all, and somehow had lost everything anyway. It was baffling and agonizing. The overwhelming sadness was too much to take. I remember P asking me numerous times, genuinely concerned, “why are you crying so much?” and my genuine answer, I feel like I want to die.

Describing these feelings in Earthly terms sounds pretty grim. The truth is that this feeling wasn’t all scary. Like I said, it felt natural to cry about everything I had lost, everything I had never lost or even wanted, and everything that had ever been lost to anyone. The tears just kept coming as I kept finding new sources of pain inside myself. I wasn’t scared, just tremendously hurt.

~8:30AM: I “wake up.” I never actually slept, but large chunks of the night that I spent facing the wall, curled up on my side with my back to P, are completely lost from my memory. I look around P’s room feeling like this is not where I have been for the past 6 hours, I was someplace else, but knowing with absolute certainty that I had not slept. It was as if I had been erased from the physical world while I spent some time grieving for all of humanity in my own private world. What I am saying is I feel like I literally disappeared into my own head for a span of at least five hours. This does terrify me.

I unsteadily walk to the bathroom at this point and go pee. My lips feel rubbery and numb; in the mirror I realize I have bitten off lots of skin there while crying. My head is pounding and in addition to the pain in the stitches over my left eyelid, both eyes are swollen with tears to the point it looks like I got sucker punched twice. I carefully wash my face, clean my stitches and spend some time looking in the mirror.

Here I experienced something that has happened to me on acid exactly three times before. I look at my reflection and have the sensation of looking at another person, a stranger to me. There is no sense at all of my self residing in that body. I observe my facial features and naked body out of curiosity, totally free from self consciousness. It was unsettling the first time I “left my body,” but I have come to see it as a rare and precious experience and treat it as such when it happens. The harder I stared though, changes began to occur. I felt almost intrusive, in the way it is uncomfortable to openly stare for great lengths of time at someone you don’t really know. Standing before my reflection truly was like standing before a mysterious stranger with whom I felt no more than a distant connection. I looked into “my” eyes and thought things like, “you look aloof but I know you.” And I grappled with the intense strangeness that I was observing this other person from behind her own eyes and she didn’t even know it. It was like my thoughts and the body and face in the mirror were two parts of an equation that you know is true, but just don’t add up.

Soon my reflection’s head begins subtly shrinking while her hand, which has come up to rest under her cheek, slowly grows. The result is unsettling and revolting on a primal level and I turn away as my face begins to warp. I have regained only a partial sense of self, I don’t feel at one with the body in the mirror but I know now that it is mine and I will come back to it soon. I don’t need to look in the mirror any longer and see my face distort into something else, now that I feel connected to my face again I find the changes to it personally frightening. Feeling like I have been run over by a train as I gradually “reenter” my body, I go downstairs for a glass of water, which feels like it weighs ten pounds in my hand. I have to lean on the sink and hold the glass with both hands to drink steadily. I leave it downstairs because I am not strong enough to hold it in one hand while climbing the stairs and holding the rail with the other hand. I feel that if I don’t hold the rail, I will either fall down the stairs or float away.

P is sleeping in his bedroom. I have the sensation that the bed, which actually is about knee-height for me, is level with my chest, and the far side is higher up, so it’s tilted towards me. P is splayed out on top of it, somehow precariously balanced on this slope. I blink my eyes, the bed is so tilted, shouldn’t he be sliding onto the floor? It is deeply unnerving. I lie down but my head still aches and I am in physical pain, and as I close my eyes my rushing thoughts take over, but there is nothing substantial there, just choppy memories of the prior six hours, and fleeting observations about the night which come together like puzzle pieces. I make a long note in my phone detailing the feelings from the worst part of the trip, as they are still fresh and coming back to me and because, still riding out the tail end of my trip, I know I will want to hear my own words in this state once I’ve come down. It takes about twenty minutes to record everything I want to say. When I’m done I roll a joint and smoke it very slowly, feeling myself gradually calm down and listening to P breathing next to me which I always find very soothing, and he feels very warm. I snuggle up and the toke puts me to sleep until 11am.

Now it’s about 6pm of that same day. I still haven’t slept beyond those 3 hours and I feel very bad. My head hurts, my limbs ache, I find that walking feels like floating and sinking at the same time. I have a shift at my restaurant in half an hour and debating how to tell my manager I physically cannot do this right now without losing my job. Oh well. I wonder what was it that made this trip different from all my others.

I wonder what was it that made this trip different from all my others.

 Was it my attitude going into the trip, i.e. “I don’t think I really want to do this right now but I have no choice”? Was it the acid itself? Was it just that the universe decided I am finally ready to open this door into myself, and to see the dark side of acid?

I had never had a “bad trip” with acid before this. Only one bad experience with mushrooms that does not even begin to compare to the pain and discomfort of last night. Now I know acid can be life altering and enlightening, but it can also turn me onto some things in myself I would rather not see, and be life-altering and enlightening in that sense too. I am still searching for an explanation, and to fully regain my sense of connection with this reality. I think I have seen all there is for me to see in that particular book and will probably not be doing acid again. I think there is an extent to which it is healthy to separate the mind from the body, the ego from the soul. For every individual it’s a different line. I have crossed that line of my own and no longer feel comfortable leaving my body.

Now sober, the note I made in my phone at 8am reads as if written by a crazy person, which I guess it was. One quote of my own stands out to me: “I have felt the pain of everything at once.” After this long-winded story, that sentence alone sums up my trip. I am exhausted. Be safe everybody.

Exp Year: 2016	ExpID: 107759

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: 19

Published: Mar 26, 2019	Views: 9,583

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Alcohol (61), LSD (2), OBE (332) : Combinations (3), Relationships (44), Bad Trips (6), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		 3.8 g
		 oral
		 Mushrooms

		 smoked
		 Cannabis

		 2 hits
		 oral
		 1P-LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   210 lb

I've been told by a friend that I should try and get this off my chest, so here we go. Also, some details are left out, and names are changed. Just in case, ya know?

A year before this incident, I tried my first psychedelic; 1.5g of mushrooms. The trip was incredibly intense for the dose and I vividly remember being so damn amused by every little change. It was love at first CEV.

It was love at first CEV.

 After this, I began smoking weed frequently, and would try both LSD and Mescaline before the year's end.

Two weeks before the anniversary of the Alpha Trip (as I had taken to calling it), I decided to celebrate the momentous day by going further than I ever had, and blasting straight to space. The weeks flew by and my preparations were going well. I had gotten ahold of a half-ounce of mushrooms from a friend that grew them locally, and had driven around a nearby city for far too long until I found some acid.

Three close friends and myself had requested 3 days off, and hunkered down with plenty of food, drink, and too many drugs. For me at least, even the chillest psychs can be really taxing on my mind. At any substantial dose it is very easy for my trip to turn bad, another lovely gift from my anxiety. I spent the day prior meditating, and trying to clear the nervous energy I could already feel. The rest of the day was spent cleaning and beautifying, anything to help with making the trip more comfortable.

At around 10:00, after giving everyone time to wake up, we decided to split the mushrooms first. The entire time weighing everyone's doses out I could feel the nervousness coming back. We ate the mushrooms, tried (and failed) to get the taste out of our mouths, and I began packing a bowl. The bowl got passed around, and before long it was ash and I felt my nerves start to relax.

Before I go much further, let me brief you on my fellow trippers. Matt, one of my closest friends, has what we've joked is aphantasia. Every time we've done L or mushies before, he's never gotten a single visual. At this time, he was engaged to Renee, one of the worst people I've had the displeasure of meeting. My favorite person ever, Luke, is my oldest friend. He trip-sat the Alpha Trip and is kind of the cool uncle to our friend group, despite being the youngest. Isaac, Matt's brother, was a psych virgin, and is the mediator of the group. I can't tell you how many times he's broken up stupid fights.

Continuing on, at around 10:45, I begin feeling what I think are the mushrooms. I knew I was in for a ride, as all previous trips took almost 2 hours to kick in. For some ungodly reason, Luke convinced me to finish off the dust from the bag. Around this time, Luke gets a phone call. It's work! Demanding he come in! So, crazy bastard that he is, he puts on his work clothes and goes in for a shift. Not 30 seconds after he leaves, Matt's fiance Renee gets home. First thing through the door she is ranting about some bullshit that doesn't make any sense to anyone but her. Matt quickly tells her that we've dosed, and that she needs to relax. He ends up convincing her to come to their bedroom and leave Isaac and I alone. So in an hour, this trip has gotten quite a lot more uncomfortable, but I can't back out now! To ease the transition, Isaac and I decided to take 2 tabs of acid.

Until about 12, I was on my laptop, playing music and browsing Reddit, laughing my ass off at the stupidest shit. Isaac is right there beside me, dying along with me. Shortly after 12, when our laughter has subsided and the trip was really coming on strong, Isaac decided to retreat to his room and read (to this day I don't get it). Now that I am beginning to trip pretty hard, I go around the room, turning off the bright lights, leaving only a light pink mood light on. I sat back down on the couch, and the lighting from my laptop screen was like smoke, just pouring off the edges of the light.

From this point on, the trip began getting so intense I was losing track of both time and conscious thought

 the trip began getting so intense I was losing track of both time and conscious thought

. It took everything I had to steady my shaking hands and focus my eyes, and I eventually managed to get in a pair of earbuds and play some music. Stereotypically, I started with Pink Floyd, and progressed to Kiev and Red Hot Chili Peppers. The whole time, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. There was a beautiful endless field of these pulsing pyramids, each one green, blue, and purple, all moving to the rhythm of the music. When I changed the music to RHCP (The Getaway), the pyramids became these dancing figures. They were female, and they sang along! The more I got my whole body grooving to the music, the happier they were and the prettier the colors.

Suddenly I was vomiting. A lot. I'm not a very quiet person when throwing up either, it sounds like I'm dying. Matt came out of his room, saying he was pulled out of his rabbit hole by the sounds of death. When he saw the mess, he carefully pulled me to my feet and guided me to the bathroom, where he told me to get in the shower. I somehow managed to get my clothes off and climb in. The water was cold, and I could feel each and every drop leeching life out of my very being. Every drop was a small malevolent universe, and each one that hit me was destroyed, taking my essence with it. I was wrought with fear, regret, and guilt.

At some point, probably a minute later (felt like an hour), I managed to climb out of the shower. I just changed right into a pair of clean clothes, no drying off. For the life of me, I couldn't get the strength in my hands to turn the shower off. So I simply curled up in the corner, wet, cold, and losing my mind. The visuals were so intense at this point I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or closed, and I was trapped in a really nasty thought-loop. I became convinced my grandfather was watching from heaven and was so disappointed in me. I became convinced none of my friends or family actually cared about me. I was also afraid for poor Luke, tripping while at work. (Although honestly he would do shit like that often.) I was internally just begging for death, but I was afraid that if I did die I'd be stuck in this hell forever.

At some point, I "saw" a sort of tear in the middle of my vision, like I was seeing my nose from inside. The tear slowly opened, and these beautiful 4-D fractals were pouring from the edges. I saw, in the tear, a face. It was colorless, with this strange iridescence around it. In the same instant I recognized it as a face, I saw myself, as a child, giggling and enjoying a warm summer day with my mom. I saw myself, as a teenager, sneaking out of the house. I saw my first car accident. I saw myself, older now, being handed my baby daughter for the first time. I saw myself as an older man, sending my children off to college. And I saw my deathbed. My sister, my wife, my two kids, sitting at my side, tears running down their faces as the EKG flatlines.

And I saw it again. All of it.

And again.

And again.

Over and over, faster every time, until I realized what I was being shown. Not just images, but a lesson. How could a stick figure truly perceive depth? How can a human truly experience time? I was shown the loop; past, present, future, they are the same. The suffering, the happiness, and the boredom are all concurrent. I was in the middle of puzzling out how the loop caused the trick of consciousness when the bathroom door opened.

Matt and Isaac were standing there, looking concerned. I mumbled out "I can't turn it off. I tried." Matt told me it was perfectly fine, and turned it off for me. They lifted me to my feet and guided me back to the living room. The patterns in here were so intense they were all I could see. The couch, the tapestry, the curtains, all bleeding over everything else. Thankfully, my insane revelations had stopped. I fell on the couch, and curled back into a ball, shivering. I don't know how long I laid there before I asked for a blanket, only to be told I was staring right at one on the couch. I could not see it an inch from my face, but I could feel it (though the sensation felt very delayed) and so I crawled underneath it.

For about an hour, I was curled there, writhing, and saying every crazy thing that popped into my head, just spilling my guts. Thankfully, Matt and Isaac were very patient, asking questions and listening intently. (They told me later they were trying to find any logic in my madness and failed.) All of a sudden, in one instant, the fog lifted and the trip relaxed.

All of a sudden, in one instant, the fog lifted and the trip relaxed.

 I sat straight up, pulled the blanket off my head, and grinning at Matt, said "Well I'm glad that's over. I feel much better now." Shortly after I asked them to put on Dark Side Of The Moon, and we sat for awhile, as I listened to them talk about their relatively chill, fun experiences.

At 6:00, Luke got home and I just wrapped him in a hug as soon as he got back. We sat and talked about anything and everything under the sun for the better part of two hours. I had this full body glowing euphoria during. Around 8:30, I smoked another bowl, feeling the last of the psilocybin leaving my system, and quickly fell asleep.

That next day was the most heavenly afterglows I have ever had, it felt like a whole day of peaking on a small dose of molly. Following this, I had about three months of sporadic depression. Since that day, despite having really dark moments, I no longer fall into months-long bouts of depression, and my anxiety is a lot more manageable now. I have also experienced some noticeable persistent hallucinations, namely light halos, level 3 geometry when my eyes are closed, or when staring at single-color surface, and very faint auras.

All in all, this was the most difficult trip I've ever had, but not the last! I learned a lot, and was forced to confront a lot of demons. I would also say that I have been more extroverted since the trip, going out of my way to be social, as opposed to near recluse status.

Exp Year: 2016	ExpID: 113067

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 19

Published: May 6, 2019	Views: 8,933

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Mushrooms (39), LSD (2) : Difficult Experiences (5), Depression (15), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Combinations (3), Small Group (2-9) (17)