		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 1 hit

		 LSD

		   T+ 0:30
		 1 hit

		 LSD

		   T+ 1:30
		   repeated
		 smoked
		 JWH-018
		 (powder / crystals)

		   T+ 6:00
		 2 carts.
		 inhaled
		 Nitrous Oxide

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   190 lb

One rather ordinary night, around 11 or so, my best friend R called me up to say that some people he knew had some LSD for sale and asked if I was interested. Neither of us had been able to get it before and we both had always wanted to give it a try, so I eagerly agreed and headed over to his place. We met up at our mutual friend S's, and he and his girlfriend drove me and R to go pick up the goods.

It was almost midnight when R and I each took our first hit, and about 30 minutes later we both dropped a second one. S and his girlfriend dropped us off at R's house, as I had never experienced LSD before and thought it prudent to just leave my car at S's for the night. The two of us just sat in the living room watching TV and waiting.

Due to some recent trouble, R is subject to regular drug screening, and as a result is no longer able to use MJ, a drug that the both of us had been regular users of beforehand. Somewhere along the line, R made the discovery of JWH-018 in the form of K2 'incense' at the local head shop. The effect was close enough to MJ (and legal to boot!) that it wasn't long before we had both all but replaced THC with JWH-018 as our recreational drug of choice. After a bit of mulling about on the internet, we discovered that we could (rather easily) procure the pure, white, powdered form of JWH-018, dissolve it in alcohol, and apply it to our own smoking herbs (R and I are both quite fascinated with herbology, and thus keep and grow several species at any given time) at about 1/30th the cost of the ready-made commercial blend (and about 1/10th the cost of standard, mid-grade MJ).

Sometimes when R and I are in the mood to get particularly high, we will take a small knifeful of powder and dump it straight onto a freshly-packed bowl of herbs. As we sat there at 1:30 AM, sober as judges, waiting for the fun to start, I told R to break out his bag of powder and pack one such bowl, to take our minds off the waiting.

The effect of JWH-018 in small doses is, as far as R and I are concerned, nearly indistinguishable from the effect of high-grade MJ. In larger doses, especially when freebasing the powder, the effects get more unpredictable. Accelerated heartbeat, nausea, sweating, and anxiety were just a few that I noticed the first time I 'oversmoked.' However, as time went by and I became more familiar and comfortable with the effects, I found that after smoking high dosages I would experience a high much like the one I had experienced the first few times I had smoked MJ, i.e., the giggling, giddiness, elation, and overall 'geeking' that newbie smokers often describe. Basically, the stuff gets you higher than snakes on a plane.

Within a minute of taking that first hit, I began to feel the familiar warming sensation of my cannabanoid receptors being agonized. Within five minutes we were both geeking our butts off. The transition from the cannabis-like high of JWH-018 to the psychedelic trip of LSD was a very smooth one. I can't even be sure exactly when one faded to the other, but at some point R and I got up and just started walking around the house, focusing intently on different objects, pictures, plants, and so forth, in an attempt to prompt the visual and perceptual distortions that LSD is said to bring.

While intently studying a somewhat abstract oil painting of a wetland scene, I began to see the shapes of all sorts of animals coming and going amongst the splotches, much in the same way I used to find shapes in clouds as a kid. The effect was a great deal more subtle than I had anticipated, especially considering that I taken a double dose. Because of things I'd read and heard, I was half expecting to see Optimus Prime walk through the front door and start making out with my high-school biology teacher. What I experienced was much more reminiscent of the types of visuals I had seen as a young child, when my still underdeveloped mind would play tricks on me (and before my parents discovered that my eyes required rather strong corrective lenses). When I closed my eyes, colors would come and go somewhat like a kaleidoscope, but again, this was nothing unlike the sorts of things I saw as a kid whenever I closed my eyes to go to sleep at night, mayhaps only a bit more intense. There were a few times when I could swear I could see the brushstrokes of reality, and the space between the building blocks of existence, but these sensations were more metaphysical than optical, though they were accompanied with some blending and visual distortion.

I would like to go on record as saying that as a visual/auditory hallucinogen, LSD pales in comparison to Salvia divinorum, Psilocybe mushrooms, Datura, nutmeg, and even over-the-counter Benadryl which is indeed a deliriant/hallucinogen that I would advise against using it, as I have been hospitalized and my best friend prior to R actually died due to overdose. The only concrete visual hallucination I experienced all night was the rather frequent occurrence of little red dots in my field of vision. But again, this was something I had seen many many times as a child, typically when I would focus intently on the night sky, and is even still a rather frequent hallucination in my adult life whenever I have been driving for too long, been awake well past my bedtime, or (most typically) both. I would also like to go on record as saying that as a psychoactive in general, LSD is probably the best I've ever had, including MDMA (and none of the crash/hangover either). The minor visual distortions coupled with the long-lasting and constant sense of euphoria and oneness with the universe makes for one hell of an overall trip.

Several more bowls of snow-capped damiana and mugwort throughout the night did nothing to enhance the visuals, though the overall experience of being super-high and super-tripping was intensely stimulating and enjoyable. It was quite a marvel to me that I could be so 'messed up' and yet still be coherent, cognizant, and aware of my surroundings, fully capable of both rational, linear thought and abstract, imaginative dissociation.

Somewhere between the haze and the clarity it occurred to me that I had read once upon a time that inhaling nitrous oxide while in the midst of a full-fledged acid trip is regarded by some as one of the most intense and euphoric drug experiences under the sun. And as luck would have it, I was in the middle of a full-fledged acid trip, and there was an open grocery store within 5 minutes walk. At that point my lackadaisical romp through the magical forest evolved into a divine quest for the 'holy grail' of psychoactive experiences. I wondered with anticipation what dimensions a hefty dose of JWH-018 would add to the equation.

R was too lazy to take the trip with me, but fortunately enough his 1-year-old pit bull/lab mix puppy 'Rover' was more than up to the task. Puppies are a great thing to have with you on an acid trip, by the way. After one last snowy bowl of herbs with R, I set out with Rover on our brief journey to the supermarket just before sunup. When we arrived, I spent about 20 minutes trying to get Rover to stay put at the door. For 'some reason' it just hadn't occurred to me to bring a leash. After being followed through the door a half dozen times, I finally decided to just carry her with me, get 2 cans of whipped cream, and go. We got a few funny looks, but the employees were understanding, all things considered. I could not, however, shake the feeling that at least some of them knew something was up.

Once Rover and I were safely outside, we headed around the building to go home the back way. Once we were safely behind the store, I popped open the first can, checked my 6 o'clock, and huffed a great big lungful. Within seconds, the whole world exploded in a web-like matrix of little red dots. The euphoria that ensued was the most intense I have ever felt. Feeling compelled to share my joyfulness, I turned the whipped cream can down and sprayed a hefty dollop onto the pavement for Rover, who proceeded to go nuts, lapping excitedly at the white fluff.

At this point I found it utterly impossible to contain myself and burst into loud, guffawing laughter. 'THIS WAS SO WORTH THE TWO BUCKS, ROVER!' I howled at my canine companion, who just stood there, wagging and lapping. A minute later, when the rush had subsided, I finished off all but the last bit of the first can, and used the last bit of pressure to squirt out the sludgey cream at the bottom, first into my own mouth, and then on the pavement again for Rover. Again I burst into laughter, spewing white foam everywhere, which just made me laugh harder. 'I'M FOAMING AT THE MOUTH, ROVER!' I gushed. It was about that moment that I happened to look around and notice in the distance, on the opposite bank of a nearby drainage pond, a figure by the water, probably a local denizen out for a morning walk, just standing there, half-staring in my direction. 'OK, Rover, time to go,' I said abruptly and started walking as fast as I could back towards the house. Rover lapped up the last bit of whipped cream and followed close behind. I can only imagine what that person had to be thinking.

Back at the house, R had already gone to sleep, so Rover, Rover's 3-month-old pup 'Fluffy' (puppies having puppies, what a world we live in), and I divvied up the remaining can of whipped cream and all plopped down on R-'s sofa. Despite having been awake now for just over 24 hours, I did not seem to be able to fall asleep. Aftershocks of the nitrous would occasionally run through my body, and I would giggle uncontrollably in a way that to me felt like my larynx was somehow leaking laughter whenever I exhaled. Ultimately, this subsided and I was able to finally drift off shortly before 9AM. I awoke about five hours later feeling rested with no trace of any sort of hangover, aside from the disappointment that it was all over.

 [Erowid Note: Unconfirmed Death Report. This report of a death was submitted with no verifiable details, no contact information, and no way to confirm any element of it. Erowid is choosing to publish this report to invite public comment and to allow anyone who knows about this event to submit details which we can verify.

Neither this report nor any report of a death should be considered reliable -- nor much weight given to it -- without details that can be verified through hospitals, police reports, family members, or news reports. If you have information about this or other deaths directly resulting from the use of any psychoactive substance we cover, please contact sage at erowid.org.]

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 86991

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 26

Published: Dec 31, 2012	Views: 6,753

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LSD (2), JWH-018 (483), Nitrous Oxide (40) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Combinations (3)


		 DOSE:

		   repeated
		 smoked
		 Cannabis

		 0.25 oz
		 oral
		 Mushrooms - P. cubensis
		 (cookie / food)

		 3 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		 0.125 oz
		 oral
		 Mushrooms
		 (cookie / food)

		 0.125 oz
		 oral
		 Mushrooms
		 (dried)

		 1 tablet
		 oral
		 MDMA
		 (pill / tablet)

		 3 hits
		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   215 lb

This one day-long adventure of pure insanity was essentially my introduction into the world of psychedelics. I had tripped before off of low quality acid, low amounts of mushrooms, salvia (though strong, salvia really didn't strike me as pleasant or like it had much to offer), morning glory extract (also quite lacking something but with the bonus of nausea too!), DXM and other terrible OTCs such as dramamine. I had an extensive past with MDMA but I don't think this prepared me for anything except maybe the heavy body-load. But I had not even come close to pulling back the veil so to speak, and I was made well aware of that one fine day at a wonderful musical festival out in Amish country in upstate New York. This experience really taught me two important lessons: firstly, that psychedelics need to be respected or they will kick your ass and shatter your world views into smithereens. And secondly, that being an atheist is impossible if you take enough acid/mushrooms.

I had never been to any kind of outdoor music festival before and came from a pretty small town. The idea of being around a couple thousand like-minded people, and their drugs, seemed so amazing! A good friend of mine's dad had been going to this festival every year for a long time; it was basically a tradition in their family. It was a bluegrass festival out in Amish country and could not have been in a more perfect place. The stage area and vendors area was on a huge gently rolling grassy field. The camping places and trails in the woods section were the coolest place to be though. There were miles of complex trails all filled with the nicest hippies and most colorful campsites I have ever seen.

Well, when my friend asked me if I wanted to go and explained to me what it was about, I was instantly sold. I started saving up immediately and soon had a couple hundred dollars put aside for the event. Roughly 8 of my friends and one of their dads came along as well. He was really cool though and was okay with us tripping and such. I even actually remember him commenting on how good the mushrooms were this year and thinking I wish my dad would say that kind of shit!

So once we arrived, we all set up camp in various spots, but we had one main campsite we would all congregate at most of the time. We lined our campsite with hanging Grateful Dead tapestries and a few of the hammocks that were brought along. Having a hammock nearby was one of the most essential items there.

As soon as the last tent was up, the coolers of beer and Grey Goose were filled with ice, and we had a little to eat. We set off into the deep trails to seek out the psychedelics we were all so excited to have such easy access to for once in our lives. Walking down the paths, people crossing by whispered nuggets, doses, fungus and other wonderful options. The first substance I got my hands on was some decently potent Psilocybe cubensis mushroom chocolates. I bought three. Each chocolate contained an eighth and I quickly gobbled down two and proceeded to locate a weed man, get some dank, and roll a joint to smoke. Hanging out at the campsite, the aroma of campfires and clouds of dank weed filling the air was intoxicatingly wonderful. I wish I could make an air freshener with that smell so badly.

While we were getting the fire going and meeting our neighbors, I realized how open everyone was, it was awesome, very refreshing. People would stroll right through our campsite and offer to trade shit and sell shit. Sometimes people would just plop down and smoke with us; it was a very friendly environment. Well while we were chilling in around the fire, still only an hour into the festival, not even past 10 a.m., the first sight of acid came into view, and I was ecstatic. He had these rainbow-colored geltabs, so I bought three and quickly gobbled those down and couldn't wait for things to get interesting. At this point, I was starting to feel the shrooms very hard, but there was something about the festival's people and just overall atmosphere that made me feel so safe and happy all over. I was lucky to never feel any anxiety.

A friend and I roamed through the forest labyrinth for a couple hours. I felt like a machine, walking aimlessly and completely lost, path after path. I saw some things I can't explain. We weren't really seeking out anything in particular, but great acid is rare and was definitely on top of my radar. The acid I had taken before was synergising with the mushrooms well; my visuals were smooth and flowing. Stopping to piss and being in the portapotty was insanely intense, a claustrophobic person's nightmare. I watched and felt the walls close in until I couldn't see, and the toilet warped down into a single point, and expanded, and repeat. I am pretty sure I didn't even piss in the toilet, but at least I didn't get piss on myself. Once I was outside and walking again, the visuals were much easier to manage. I didn't feel out of control at this point. Somehow I was still holding it together, but that was soon about to change.

Somewhere in the deep woods, I met a man who looked more like Ozzy Osborne then the man himself, and appropriately, his nickname was Ozzy too. He was about to show me that there is clearly a difference between weak acid and strong acid, and earlier, it was a tad on the weaker side. I bought 3 blotters, blank manilla-colored hits. When he gave them to me, he uttered a word of caution and asked if I knew what I was doing, and to only take one, and told me they were very strong. I smirked and said I did and put them in my pocket for later that night. I was feeling like I had really found the best acid in the festival, reassured by the nature of the old wise hippie I had just met. So we decided to head back to the campsite and drink a beer and relax and enjoy the visuals complimented by hippie screams, bongo drums and an array of festival sounds that were as humorous as they were slightly unsettling at times.

While we were just hanging out we kept ourselves occupied with beer pong and a lot of weed smoking. It was a very relaxed place and I don't think I got paranoid the entire festival, even when I was losing my mind. I definitely had enough drugs in my system and probably should have just rode out what I was on, but stubbornly I decided to go a lot further. The night's doses seamlessly brought back my slowly dwindling effects from the morning's consumption. My next meal came free from a very generous scruffy-looking fellow whose book bag looked quite full. When he asked me if the tent I was next to was mine and asked if he could weigh out some mushrooms in it, I immediately lied and said it was mine knowing this would be very beneficial. He opened his book bag and revealed at least a half a pound of heavily blue-stained mushrooms and weighed out several smaller bags. When he was done, we smoked a bowl and before he left, he offered me a small handful which was roughly an eighth.

It was starting to get dark, maybe it was around 6 or 7 p.m., and I was in need of a head change. I decided it was a good time to eat my free eighth of dried mushrooms and decided to finish off my last chocolate as well. My friend had also eaten a chocolate or two and we decided once again now would be a good time to hit the trails and see how much crazier these people were when it got dark. I was not disappointed by the crazy level by any means.

The amount of amazing drum circles and glow stick-wielding, face-painted hippies I saw was overwhelming. We hopped from drum circle to drum circle, meeting the strangest people. The drums had a physical effect on my body; I felt almost orgasmic roaming through the morphing forest, every drum beat making me more delighted. It was at some point during this hour or so of roaming when I discovered the first MDMA I had come across. They were in the form of pressed tablets with towers or something engraved onto them. My proudest moment of the whole festival was convincing this dude that if he gave me an Ecstasy pill for free that when my friends saw how good I was feeling, they would come buy one. I don't think even one of them came back to the dude.

It was getting to a point where we were slightly lost in the paths and still coming up from the mushrooms and knew we should navigate back to the campsite while we still had some sanity left. When we were finally back, I decided to take that plunge with what I had left, and really enjoy the night. I casually put the 3 blotters of potent acid under my tongue for at least 20 minutes before swallowing. It was still early as far as festival time goes, maybe around 9-ish at this point. The quarter of shrooms I ate roughly half an hour earlier was coming up strong, and I knew the acid would soon begin to take hold of me and I knew I should get comfortable, so I climbed into an open hammock one of our friends had brought.

Within the next hour or so, I started drifting in and out of one of the most disconnected states I have ever been in. I was slipping in and out of consciousness. I had no recollection of who I was, where I was, why I was there, I couldn't conjure up a single memory from my entire life. I just laid there, and I existed as a piece of ground or a rock, I don't know how else to describe this really, total ego death I suppose, but it felt like real death by all practical definitions. It was a timeless place in that hammock. I could hear hundreds of conversations going on around me and I was somehow following all of them. I could see the trees above me reaching down and tickling my face and I felt totally at peace somehow, even without any sanity left in me. Everything was completely alive, almost dancing, everything was buzzing with energy. I felt totally integrated. I just felt like a part of everything, like a nerve in a cell or something.

This is the moment that shattered my atheistic views that I had held onto for years, but that took the whole next day to really figure out. I can't put words on the things I experienced in that hammock, but I really felt like I experienced the whole of existence. I knew that I was just a small piece of something much bigger, I knew I was only a single piece in the vastly complex universe. I writhed and died and was reborn the entire night. I must have blacked out from time to time because there are large chunks I can't remember at all. I remember seeing people walk by occasionally and luckily they were always in good spirits, I was going in and out and could barely even say hi. It was obvious to anyone the trip I was on was a strong one.

I died and was reborn in that hammock that night and may have never actually slept, but I remember waking up, well, sobering up, a little. The trails and morphing were gently present throughout the morning hours. I got up and decided to go out to the main stage area before anyone else got up. It was early, maybe around 6 a.m. or so. I took a shit, found a vendor selling locally grown amazing beef, got a huge burger with every topping they had, and came back to the campsite to have a beer and fill up my gurgling stomach. I was definitely out of it but still pretty capable of functioning and still had a ravishing appetite. As strong a trip as I had experienced, I was surprised how forgiving it was on my body.

I didn't take more than a hit of acid on each of the next two days, one each night, but after going through such a weird trip the night before, it all seemed very manageable in comparison. After day three, we all packed up and headed back home. I still feel a special connection to that place in upstate New York because it changed my life completely. That day, I realized that it doesn't matter what it is called, God or perhaps the collective consciousness, something big was responsible for all of this, and it was a part of me, and I a part of it, and everything, every single thing on this planet and dimension, was connected. Along with a spiritual enrichment, I also took back a new respect for the drugs called psychedelics. I realized that they were as far from a normal 'drug' as one could get, and could easily teach lessons, big lessons. I learned more about my spirituality and about the potential strength of the psychedelic experience than I had in my entire life of 18 years up until that point.

The amount of shit I consumed and the casualness on my part was very stupid and I am well aware of that, and though it was a hard lesson, I wouldn't trade that for the world. I am forever humbled and am so happy to have survived that night with my mind intact. Never underestimate the power of these substances. They have the power to put you in your place, shake up your whole world, shatter your philosophies. The first time can be quite traumatic. It was beautiful at moments but also terrifying during many throughout that timeless night. I learned more about myself and about the universe then a person ever needs to, and I still am struggling to figure out what happened there in upstate New York.

Ḱ∀ℛℭЇℵØḠ€ИℐÖṲŠ

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 94150

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 18

Published: Jan 5, 2013	Views: 6,853

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MDMA (3), LSD (2), Mushrooms (39), Cannabis (1) : Festival / Lg. Crowd (24), Nature / Outdoors (23), Combinations (3)


		 DOSE:
 T+ 0:00
		 0.5 hits

		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   T+ 1:00
		 2 hits

		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   T+ 1:00
		   repeated
		 inhaled
		 Nitrous Oxide
		 (gas)

		   T+ 7:00
		 2 hits

		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		   T+ 8:00
		 1 capsl
		 oral
		 MDMA
		 (capsule)

		   T+ 8:00
		   repeated
		 inhaled
		 Nitrous Oxide
		 (gas)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   152 lb

My friends and I set up a party at a rented house in the country, complete with lights, turntables, speaker stacks, and a visualizer. I began the night at around 10:00 p.m. with a half a hit of “Yoda” blotter I’d received on the playa at Burning Man 2007. This acid is very clean and despite its age and the environmental abuse it had taken on the journey home from Burning Man, it came on within a half an hour. I bumped it up with approximately two hits of plain white unscored blotter about an hour later, and was tripping fairly strongly by 1:00 a.m.

Time after this point becomes difficult to estimate, as the LSD takes a single minute and stretches it into hours. The visuals were fairly standard for the drug: a warping of perspective, trails, visual and audio echo distortions. I recently began a transition out of my present career path and I spent this portion of the experience mulling this over. It seemed ridiculous that I haven’t yet figured out how to make a living doing what I love and that I’ve instead spent years chasing money and trying to fit in the things that satisfy me around the edges of my career. The more I thought about this, the stupider it seemed.

My friend M is a great psychonaut and he began to trip me out by leading my mind in circles – talking to me as if he were me, which made me feel as if he were reading my mind. I’d lost the ability to speak coherently at that time, so I just stared at him and grinned, which tripped him out. During the night we took hits of nitrous oxide, which enhanced the LSD visuals. The wallpaper was breathing and with the aid of the gas any complex pattern would split out into a threefold symmetry of truncated triangles and Julia sets. It was so beautiful.

We were listening to electro house with a very sexual beat. I could feel A (who was deejaying) using his music to manipulate our hallucinations. The sex-vibe got stronger and stronger and eventually I decided to give in to it. My husband, T, was sleeping in a room down the hallway so I went to him and made love to him. I was not able to orgasm, as my body was too tired and the acid had me flipped way out past the point of the kind of intellectual disengagement I need in order to climax, but I was able to get him to come, which made me happy. Afterward I couldn’t sleep. The small noises of the house created images in my mind – stilted aliens stalking around in the darkness. I left my husband to sleep, got up, and took a shower. Then I rejoined my friends in the party room.

I took another two hits of the same plain white blotter that morning at around 5:00. Unfortunately as my body got more tired, my mind started to wind into a tighter and tighter loop. I became convinced that I was on the wrong track and that I’d somehow made a shameful mistake. Taking drugs was not the way forward. It was a juvenile thing to do, really. Life is about balance and responsibility and I had been neglecting that responsibility. Beauty doesn’t come soaked into a square of blotter; it’s something you work at on a daily basis, like building a muscle. I saw that I had been failing in my efforts to create beauty because I’d been failing in my responsibility to take care of my body and my life. Furthermore I was treading on someone else’s ground – some alien race that had been waiting for me to wake up from the trance that we call “human reality.” Some of my other friends took MDMA at around 5:30 and though I wanted to experience the “candy flip” I didn’t want to ingest it because it’s very hard on my body and I was halfway convinced that the alien race would be so disappointed in me.

By 6:00 a.m. I was sitting on the bed, holding this capsule of “molly” in my fingers, almost completely unable to make a decision as to whether or not I wanted to take it. M interpreted my brain for me – he really was reading my mind. “Do I want to eat this? What if this is all a big mistake?” Finally I just gave him a look and swallowed the capsule.

I followed this up with some more nitrous. Within a reasonable amount of time the MDMA began to relax me and let my mind flow more freely. The music that A was spinning was immensely powerful. I sat on the couch next to J, who is one of my best male friends. We had connected very strongly through a hallucination out at Burning Man one year, and I felt that lightning-bolt connection come back between us. I was astounded by the amount of love I felt for this guy. It was like white light. Love and respect. I just wanted to sit next to him and enjoy the fact that he was alive, because that was the best thing ever to happen.

I was caught up by the molly and loving the whole universe. I’ve hardly ever felt a candy-flip this intense. I felt drawn entirely out of this dimension and toward a completely different reality. As I was lying on the bed I could feel the grip of my mind wanting to let go, so I took another hit of nitrous oxide and off I went.

I’m a head and I know my way around inside a trip. There are levels within hallucination. Level zero is the mundane reality we inhabit on a daily basis – I call this the shared human dimension, even though it’s obvious to me that we’re all carrying around our own realities in our minds. We agree that “this is real” and nothing usually challenges that. Level one is a small dose of LSD or mushrooms – enough to tweak your experience a tiny bit – enough to challenge your perspective but not enough to throw you into a mental loop. Level two is where the looping starts. Your mind begins to follow patterns and if it gets trapped in an interaction you can start having a bad trip. McKenna insists that bad trips are due to doses that are “too small.” I’m beginning to agree with him. Level three is where you begin to realize that the tide is stronger than your grip and you let go of the instinct to try to control your experience. It’s where you start to find out who you really are. Level four is a place I’ve only been a few times, usually via DMT or some combination of LSD and sleep deprivation. It’s the “bubble dimension” where I’m in a kind of cosmic petri dish and all my friends turn into Higher Intelligences who are guiding me to Wake Up. This is literally my experience and it’s oddly consistent through different trips.

This time, I got through the bubble dimension and into level five. I can’t say that I’ve ever been there before and certainly not to this extent. Yet, while I was there, I recognized it as a place I’ve always existed and a place I’ve always gone to one extent or another when I get high, even if it’s only smoking a little weed. The shared human dimension seemed like the most petty of cardboard constructions. I was flowing through a labyrinth of multiple higher dimensions. There was nothing concrete, only intention and energy. I was visited by words from no proper language: “Hatherhew” was a word that described the place, or my experience of the place, or perhaps my leftover resistance to the complete ego dissolution that the Higher Beings were inviting me to experience. “Tench” (while I believe it’s the name of a kind of fish in English, actually) described the experience I had with J: a complete touch, a full holding and understanding of the joy that comes from encountering and engaging a being separate from yourself while maintaining that separation.

The ecstasy of this experience completely destroyed me. I was not human any more. I was not the person I’ve known since my brain contained enough cells to achieve self-awareness. I had lost hold of my identity. I’d never had an identity. All that was left was this: I AM FEMALE.

I don’t think I’ve ever fully understood how the foundations of my gender boiled down before. There in the labyrinth of dimensions I finally got it. It’s as simple as this: the female contains the potential to create new universes – new dimensions – because she can create new human life inside her. The male is the catalyst. My husband and I have had some medical issues that have stopped us from having kids yet and I’ve been highly ambivalent about getting pregnant in any case. But here, in the labyrinth, I understood that this really was my sole purpose: I contain universes and they want to come into being. Further to that, I understood (rather than intuited) my role as having the ultimate power to choose and the responsibility to be my own doorkeeper. Males seduce; females choose. It’s imperative that a male know how to create a seduction because a female’s first instinct is always to say no – and the more experienced she becomes, the firmer that “no.” A female can resist a seduction easily if it’s inept but a good seduction leads her into a quandary that can only be resolved adequately by having sex and making babies. Without the male, she would not feel that biological urge to reproduce so strongly and the species would falter. Seduction, thus, is poetry. Strip away everything we think we know about being human, and the only thing left that matters is sex.

At the turntables, A was still spinning beats that had sex woven all through them. He’s a legendary ladies’ man with a voracious sexual appetite and he knows the power his music has to grab a woman by the crotch. Between him at the decks and J on the couch, I felt the two of them near me in the labyrinth like the spinning twin centers of an animated Julia set. Inviting, inviting, inviting. I became suddenly aware that this was more than just the platonic love I’d been experiencing up until then – it was proper seduction.

I have never felt so thoroughly seduced in my life. In the shared human dimension I was limp and ragged and noncommunicative and probably pretty unattractive, but in the labyrinth I laughed easily and indicated no, no, nooooo...but that I was so flattered. The seduction ramped up to another level and I hit the nitrous again and again. I was grinding away my own defenses even as the internal inconsistency became a loop that wracked itself tighter and tighter. I was standing on a razor’s edge and this was the highest art, to just maintain it while pushing it as far as I could. Here in the labyrinth this was a very good seduction and I was in a quandary. The call to let go of my defenses became an imperative and I faltered in my self-confidence. What if they were right? What if all of this had been a preparation and that the next step – the one that I yearned for – into the eternal continuum of the labyrinth could only be facilitated by entirely releasing my separation throughout the levels? My god, was I supposed to have group sex with these men?

No and no and no and no because my body still existed and the rules that governed that dimension thus still applied and they trumped all. The separation held. I heard A take a shower in the bathroom next door. I felt his naked physical presence calling to me and I felt my own refusal to heed that call. I heard the guys talking about my state of vulnerability but it was joking: nobody would actually cross that line. This, I suppose, is trust. I thought later on that perhaps I’d been irresponsible or undisciplined to engage in the line of action that put me into that kind of public trance, though it was highly enjoyable at the time. Even after I resurrected myself and began to move my body around the shared human dimension again, I was still struck dumb by sex. It was as if I had the word “FUCK” printed across my eyes, so that everywhere I looked I saw it. It was my constant companion for the next 18 hours or so; everyone I looked at, male or female, was a potential partner. Sex dripped from the walls of the house. The smell of my own body seemed to radiate an invitation that my actions and words would not back up. The quandary persisted for at least 24 hours before my state of constant arousal began to wane.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 75715

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Jan 6, 2013	Views: 9,251

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LSD (2) : Combinations (3), Sex Discussion (14), Pregnancy / Baby (33), Relationships (44), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		 oral
		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

		 smoked
		 Cannabis
		 (plant material)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   180 lb

The experience I will relate took place in The Great Sand Dunes National Park of Southern Colorado. The setting of these Dunes was to me like no place on this Earth, I felt throughout as if I truly were a traveler on a foreign planet. The place was completely natural; massive dunes shaped only by the wind: the perfect setting for what I would experience.

My friends and I traveled to the Dunes specifically to camp for two nights and to have an LSD trip. The intention for this venture was to have a ‘spiritual experience’, not to use the LSD for recreation: to see crazy visions, or just get fucked up – but to truly use the drug to its potential as an entheogen. (I use this term now but at the time I was only aware that LSD and other ‘hallucinogens’ could be used for spiritual reasons, but not aware of to what extent they actually were. I have since realized that my experience fits right in with what others have experienced with God.) In the time leading up to the trip, my friends and I had been in a class at university on spirituality and nature. We no doubt had been in the spiritual mindset for some time – and with such growing interest that we planned this adventure. In taking the class and reading the various literature, I became intently aware of man’s connection to nature that seemed to be lost with almost everyone in the world. During the class we had visited some spiritual centers and had seen people who LIVED in that state of ultimate connection with nature, something I had never seen before or really even fathomed. It was in this spirit that we set out on the adventure.

For days before and right up to and through my entire experience I had been meditating on a passage from the Tao Te Ching that was shown to me earlier in the year – the only passage I knew from it as I had not read the Tao Te Ching. I will attempt to relay the passage:

----------

Those who know do not talk.

Those who talk do not know.

Keep your mouth closed.

Guard your senses.

Temper your sharpness.

Mask your brightness.

Simplify your problems.

Be at one with the dust of the earth.

This is primal union.

He who has achieved this state

Is unconcerned with friends and enemies,

With good and harm, with honor and disgrace.

This therefore is the highest state of man.

---------

And so to the experience itself. The first day we all took one tab, for some people it was their first experience with LSD. I had spent the previous summer experimenting and getting just glimpses of what I was to realize this time. The thing about the Dunes is solitude. Essentially a desert, we were cut of from any human connection (and really and animals at all). After spending some time letting the drug take effect, I attempted to do what I really wanted to do – to be alone in the desert. This initially proved unsuccessful as I could not really get far enough from my compatriots. As night fell, everyone returned to camp to eat. It was after this meal that I got my chance to be alone. I had seen the zenith earlier in the day – and could still see it as this whole experience takes place under a full moon. I decided to hike out to the zenith, the highest dune in the very center from which all other dunes seemed to be created. The hike proved longer and more difficult than I had expected, but I just kept repeating the passage over and over again – yearning to understand its meaning. Finally I reached the zenith and sat to meditate – totally alone, the most alone I have ever felt in my life. I instantly realized the joy of true solitude and its importance. I sat calmly there for I am not sure how long, just repeating the passage over out loud at first and then only in my mind. What I felt was my body ceasing to be my body, but simply an extension of the earth – of the sand, not different from the sand on which I sat. I felt that our bodies our mobile extensions of the earth – like moving trees. And because we move about we somehow feel ourselves to be something other than that which makes up all life – plants, even the sand. I felt that “If I am this earth, then why would I do anything to harm it?” Everything became so clear, so simple in that state. The trouble is translating that to everyday life.

At this point I was under full effect of the drug – and realized how much easier it was to meditate with LSD – and how much deeper I got. I felt as if I had experienced primal union. I was at one with the dust of the earth.

Now I decided to head back to my camp as my friends were possibly worried or at least wondering where I was. The walk back I spent reciting the passage out loud, while trying to maintain footing on the high dunes. I found that the best way to walk them was to stay on the straight line that was sometimes visible and sometimes not. Walking on the sides, which looked more inviting, proved to be much more difficult if not dangerous. The Middle Way. So simple. So so simple. When I finally reached my friends I felt some extreme separation from them, and I was struggling with the beginning of the passage:

Those who know do not talk.

Those who talk do not know.

How do I relate what I have experienced to them under these restrictions? All I could say was “Go to the zenith.” I yearned to tell them everything of my experience, and I am still caught as to what to do about telling people about the ‘joys’ of what I know now is ego-death. I have obviously decided to relate them – mainly because I feel it will lift some of that pressure.

I finished out the trip that day by sleeping outside under that full moon and stars with my friends, indeed an enjoyable experience.

The following day was to entail the same as the previous. The mood that morning was serious and pensive. When I awoke – apparently the last to awake – I saw silhouettes of my friends far away each on top of a separate dune in meditation. We were having the spiritual experience we perhaps naively set out to have.

We chose to take the doses a bit earlier in the day this time so that we might experience the beautiful sunset. A few friends – those whom the day before had been their first trip – chose not to partake this time. So this time I took 2 tabs to start – I would take another late in the day. After our dinner this time the weather began to shift and a violent windstorm came through the dunes. Our tent was situated in a saddle – and the wind ripped it right out of the ground and broke one pole. So now came the peril of trying to decide what to do with out busted equipment during this crazy storm – at this point the LSD was in noticeable effect and only served to make the stress of the situation more stressful. After much debate we decided to move further into the dunes rather than hike out to our cars. We eventually found a beautiful bowl sheltered from the wind where we made a makeshift camp. After that was settled – I was itching to get back to the zenith and experience primal union again. I would not be denied – I had to get there no matter what.

This time three friends wished to join me, and I kindly obliged. We set out for the zenith through the powerful winds whipping sand into our eyes. At some point along the way we stopped to stand on the edge of a dune and lean into the wind, suspended in air as if lying down, held up by what one friend called “the power of God”. And it truly was. I have never experienced a force of nature so powerful – the very same force that shaped those very dunes from infinite particles of sand. We pressed on toward the zenith, and one friend decided to turn back. The three of us pressed on , and when we were in sight of the zenith – along the very top spine of the dunes with no protection from the wind – the other two decided to turn back as well. They wished me luck, and I asked them to shine a light later so that I might find my way back to camp. And so I walked along the Middle Way of the dunes toward my goal. I reached it, but under much different conditions this time. I got to the top and took another dose first thing.

When I sat to meditate, the violent wind was stinging my face, but I tried to continue regardless. After much struggle to attain this primal union again against the wind, I slid down the west side of the dunes in chase of my hat which the wind had blown off my head. I was incredibly surprised to find there to be no wind here. The dune itself shielded it. And so there I sat with the San Luis Valley before me. I sat for a long while while the third tab took its effect – and after struggling mentally to achieve the peace I had realized the night before, I decided I had better try to get back to camp somehow. I decided to take a wandering way back, not in any rush, I wanted to explore the dunes in all their mystery. In my excitement for my newly found quest – I ran down into a very deep bowl similar to the one where we had relocated our camp. Only once I was down there did I realize what I had done. I tried to find the wall with least slope for which to climb out of, and tried one unsuccessfully, realizing how deep I was and how steep the slope was.

I finally chose one I slowly made my way to the top, on my hands and knees, pulling myself up by digging my bare hands into cold wet sand. I felt myself reverted to basic instinct – I had to get out of that hole and this was the only way. My fingers found strength they never had, and eventually I made it out. But in the process I died – that is to say my ego died. And I was no longer in control of my own fate as I thought I had been my whole life. If I was to survive the rest of the night it was because God wanted me to, I was at his mercy. This feeling only intensified throughout my wanderings that night – during which I was truly lost in those dunes and thought that I might never make it out. I buried the remaining LSD once I realized that I did not now how to get back to camp. I wandered for hours, but somehow I knew that I would make it if I only kept going, if I submitted to God’s will over my own. When I came to this realization that I was nothing, I sat down and just gaped at the feeling. “This is what it is to die” I thought, “And its not so bad.” But then I thought about living and how that feels and then realized how precious life is – that we can feel and be hurt and be loved and everything. Nothing is nothing, and that’s fine. But while we are on earth we get to LIVE. Living, feeling, something I will never take for granted again. About this time I came upon the only animal I saw the whole time – a rabbit or something which fled quickly when I saw it. Life. What was that rabbit doing out in the dunes? It was living – doing what it needed to do, not questioning its purpose. It was alive, and that is enough. Shortly thereafter I saw the holy beacon – the light from my camp my friends had set to guide me home. I was now very far away from that light – but now I knew the direction and eventually made it there. The journey from that point was an exhausting one. I ran out of water and had to make frequent stops. I felt the wind giving me breath – God giving me life. And just enough to make it camp. I got there, barely able to stand, turned off the light and crawled into my sleeping bag. One of my friends lying next to me said:

“Are you back?”

“Yea, what time is it?”

“About 4 am, goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

And I slept so soundly that night I cannot even describe it. I had experienced ‘primal union’ in two different ways over those two days. The first was because I sought to, and did so in a controlled way, and it was enjoyable. The second night I got greedy, in my ambitions to reach that point again as well as with how much LSD I consumed. That time my ego was killed (crushed) and I was forced to survive without it. I know now what is important (GOD) and what is not (ME). I got the spiritual experience that I sought, and I am grateful for it even if it almost killed me.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 68179

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Jan 16, 2013	Views: 6,290

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LSD (2), Cannabis (1), Meditation (128) : General (1), Combinations (3), Glowing Experiences (4), Mystical Experiences (9), Nature / Outdoors (23), Multi-Day Experience (13), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		 2 hits
		 buccal
		 LSD
		 (pill / tablet)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   165 lb

I consider myself fairly experienced with psychedelics and for the most part prefer solo trips. Up to this point I’ve taken mushrooms, 2cb, 2cc nbome, 2ci nbome, 4-aco-dmt, dmt, cannabis, salvia, and lsd, my favorites being 4-aco-dmt and lsd as both have propelled me into an intensively transformative and useful headspace. My inspiration stems mainly from Terence Mckenna, Rupert Sheldrake, Ram Dass, Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Amit Goswami and a number of interesting individuals in my personal life. Most of my trips are accompanied by music and are prepared for with study, meditation and an empty stomach.

Setting: The previous weekend had been a fairly traumatic one yet it seems the positivity that I’d been able to muster throughout seemed to open up an awareness that I was eager to test.

To ensure I have enough material to ponder during my trip, I fill my chalkboard with some ideas I’m currently mulling over, including interaction through quantum entanglement, rebirth, multiple realities, the lapis philosophorum, fractal leveling, and what cause our act of perceiving might have on holding our reality in place. I've found that my mind tends towards trips without a valuable lesson for my sober self, ie: pondering the psychedelic soup, dancing and singing to music, so I hope using this as a baseboard will catalyze a creative breakthrough that will have some sort of lasting importance in my life.

Next I pick out the music I will play during the trip and set it up on the laptop which I hook into the sound system I have stationed at the front of the living room. Lastly, I prepare some food to eat later on: a stalk of celery with peanut butter and one without, a stack of crackers, two with peanut butter, a bag of unsalted almonds, an apple, a yogurt cup, and some grapes. I’m finally ready to begin.

3:45PM: I place the two blotter tabs on my upper gums in the same way that one might take 2cc nbome. I believe this makes the drug reach the blood and therein the brain more quickly. The blotter tabs were advertised as 200ug each, though I had not tested this to verify. I’ve taken these before though and it seems an accurate estimate. [Erowid Note: Claims of measured microgram dosages for LSD are usually unsupported. Quantitative measurements for LSD are very difficult to do and cannot be done casually. Without further detailed information about how the measurements were derived, it is reasonable to assume that most statements of microgram dosages of LSD on blotter or in microdots are either misinformed or overstated.]

I clean up my room during the initial come-up and afterwards rest in the living room, listening to relaxing chakra meditational music and thinking about how quantum entanglement might be observable in psychedelic space. A thought comes to mind from a lecture I had a few days ago, where the teacher was talking about full duplex communication in networking, and I relate the two concepts, where only an entangled mind could both speak and listen at the same time, and that such a mind is one that I need to work more on.

4:40: My awareness has noticeably expanded, it seems in the same way that I feel my glasses press down on my nose, the glassy black entertainment center which stands in the front of my living room too presses against the floor, both of which I can feel as extensions of my physical body. When I close my eyes and reach out I can feel the life force in the trees which surround my house and I catch a memory of a past 2cc trip where I had done this same thing. I write in my journal that the music I’m listening to “reflects my soul from every physical point it touches.”  I become aware of the energy my heart is generating, my stomach’s energy, my feet and legs feel full of energy, and a sexual energy is also vibrantly making itself known. These could be experienced as a body load and uncomfortable, but I figured “it is what it is” and was able to read it without getting caught up in it. I walk into my room which has incense burning and I become elated with how good it smells. I exclaim that it must be the best smell I have ever smelled in the history of my lifetime. Its wondrous influence makes me extremely happy.

4:45: I attempt to introduce a playful variable: a glow in the dark ball which I had used on my past trips. I throw it around, juggle it, squeeze it, drop it and hurriedly pick it back up, and have a thought, which prompts me to leave my toy. Psychics are people aware of the wave-mechanically transmitted data that the firing of neurological pathways produce. I am also caught up in a darker thought of contemplating the nature of a delusion. How can someone be deluded if it exists outright for them? Is it possible consensus reality is a collective delusion? These thoughts unsettle me, perhaps luckily, the trip ends this transmission and my body begins vibrating more furiously.

5:04: I write “It’s becoming hard to do anything physically, clammy hands, legs, etc.” The energy is becoming overwhelming, though the energy is not emotionally connected to anything, so it is somewhat enjoyable. The dominant thing here is the physical sensation. I change the music to a youtube video called Zen: Music for Balance and Relaxation (Full Album.) The music has a consistently critical yet soothing undertone. It seems to provoke my mind just enough to constantly explore, peace appears to be earned in this music through acknowledgment of pervasive suffering and simple solutions.

5:15: The physical sensation begins to take a negative turn and I write “Blissful awareness is turning into fitful imagination.” Nothing too vivid is happening here, but I begin to see images seep from my subconscious as what I would now call a body load reaches its height. This is the transition it seems where the imagination takes an active role in perceiving reality, it felt like crossing a liquid radio channel.

5:17: Two minutes later I find that the music and my thoughts are being evoked almost visually, I say almost because it seemed archetypal, like the vector equation was there, but it hadn’t been processed into explicit imagery yet. I write “Music is beautifully complementing my thoughts like a fractal realization growing more pervasive in the membrane of imagination.” It would seem the body load has lessened and the trip is again quite enjoyable.

5:22: I write “RAM DASSY pov.” I recognize the music as being very Alan Watts like (Zen-like) and the awareness I felt as being very Ram Dass like (God-like). I feel an intense connection with everything around me. The simple awareness that I had experienced before has evolved into waves of information coming from both my surroundings and non-locally from inside my mind. An LSD-awareness begins to emerge. I feel I am beginning to recognize patterns that I simply did not have the ability to otherwise. Note that the body load has been recognized somehow to be information and is now much less a factor.

5:53: I spend ~30 minutes getting accustomed to the newfound headspace and it seems I’ve reached a peak. The information data stream is taking many different forms, I see flowing rivers of geometry, shifting into a stream of 0/1 bits, and back again when I close my eyes. The data stream grows stronger and stronger and I decide to change up the music. I find Kundalini-First Chakra on youtube. The music progresses and me with it until it reaches climax.

“Now focus on your pineal gland. Lounnnnngggggg. Lounnnngggggg. Lounnnnggggg”

*thunder sounds*

“Kundalini Huh du Heinem”

I realize that this is the moment when my being will be utterly exposed to the incoming energy that I now feel coursing around me. My abdomen seems to open up and my body integrates into the data stream and I feel the core of my being open up. I feel that there is no hiding any more, I must let go of what is restricting my integration and understanding. I let go, but it seems there was not enough energy to complete it, I feel I may have missed my chance to open up whole-heartily, though I still feel refreshed, enlightened, and awakened. I write “First peak passed felt outside merging with inside.”

Beyond this I have no more time stamps and for the next couple of hours time itself becomes a “slippery concept” and description becomes more difficult. I write “My being is seeking integration into the family soul collective, and I may be realizing its existence for the first time.” I have before experienced what I consider to be my family’s subconscious “valley” on a fairly large 4-aco-dmt dose, and it seems that now I’m being confronted with the possibility of revisiting this place.

It would seem in retrospect that my integration into the collective was characterized by the metaphor of a microscope which moved from a wide view to a refined, smaller view. I begin to feel what seems to be a peripheral schema which I have developed from. Surrounding all sides of the fractal which I now associate to my conscious thoughts, I become aware that I have grown from a huge history of both conscious subconscious habit, I feel past lives and beings feeding perfectly into the being that I am, past times and future times all seem tangible and able to be manipulated from where I now stand.

A thought arrives. I decide now is a good time to eat the snacks I have prepared. I take the sweet tea out of the fridge and take a sip. It is wonderfully sweet and affects my entire being. I now feel the collective consciousness that I am now a part of all reacting to this sweet tea and it evokes responses which identify the different entities that I am a part of. I also identify a metallic taste and can’t tell what it might be from. I wander around the house feeling different entities slip in out of my being which at this point feels more like a server rack than a self-contained unit. I make my way back to the fridge and pull out the rest of the goodies. A stalk of celery with peanut butter and one without, a stack of crackers, two with peanut butter, a bag of unsalted almonds, an apple, a cup of yogurt, and some grapes.

As the trip progresses, the beings move from 19th or 20th century plantation owners (which the sweet creamy peanut butter provoked, peanut plantation?) down to my immediate family. I feel a sort of primacy moving through the layers of history, like I’m connected by the physical sensation that the food provided. When I arrive at the current time stream I am infused with the immediate presence of my family members, none of whom are actually here. I feel the amalgamated mood of this collective conscious weigh down on my perception and I catch glimpses of a person’s eyes flashing towards me, sparked by the look of a lampshade, or by the positioning of the couch. The description may sound vague, however the identity of each individual was quite pronounced and I could identify by name each presence. The mind space implied to me that I was in direct contact with these people, on a very deep level, and that though they may not be aware of the connection, it did appear to be genuine.

~8:40: The connection with this tremendous conscious awareness seemed to catalyze the development of my personality and I was quickly transformed by this connection. Though difficult to describe, it seemed that my pushy intellectual thoughts became raveled up with a level of compassion and love that felt irresistibly genuine and gravitational. I was the emotional center and my being felt reflected, just as it was in the music, except this time through the interconnection of the presence I was entangled in, and in doing so, I became so much more than I could have been on my own. I was laughing a lot and reveled in the thought of being a monkey in his family stomping grounds. I write “I’m a monkey, my monkey nature.” Every action pushed through the family schema became magnified and the fractal boundary of my being seemed to deepen and concresce with joy. Many other people seemed to be present as well, including a few friends, all of whom I sent extremely positive and loving signals to. I expect when I see them next I will be ever more open and loving of them.

~11:00: The trip now begins to wane out and it would seem my being rests with that of my uncles’. I look down at my hands and they too seem integrated just as my mind is integrated, I see reflected in them the presence of them; large, fumbly, compassionate, humorous, primordial/natural, and very loving. I lie down in my bed for the night and play some guitar, yet find it hard to find any proficiency playing even the most rigorously memorized songs. In retrospect, none of my uncles play the guitar, so it is possible that the morphogenetic resonances related with the guitar were weakly engrained, or maybe it was the clammy hands :P. It takes a long time to get to sleep and for the rest of the week I am left with a sense of peace, well being, compassion, understanding, and openness.

In closing, it is difficult to relate the nature of really any sort of psychedelic trip and I’ve left a lot out that I knew I’d never be able to describe. I hope anyone looking to do psychedelics does so for creative inspiration and makes use out of the unexpected results that often come from trips. It is now a week after the trip and I still feel the expanded mind that I had felt in the first hour. My dreams have become more vivid, I feel connected to the people around me in a way I didn’t think was possible, and I am planning on moving out of my father’s house as I’ve realized what I need. It’s the love on that deep felt level that counts, and when that goes missing, ego controls motivations and life becomes a dreary place indeed.

Well… I guess that’s all I have to say for now, thanks for those who read through the whole thing, I’m still working on my writing skills and descriptive faculties, and I will hopefully be writing more of these.

Exp Year: 2013	ExpID: 99562

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: 19

Published: Mar 12, 2013	Views: 5,416

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LSD (2) : Alone (16), Music Discussion (22), Glowing Experiences (4), General (1)


		 DOSE:

		 LSD

		 2C-B

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   108 lb

Warning: this report contains graphic imagery of sexual assault.

My previous experience with drugs has been varied, and when this experience had occurred I had used LSA, LSD, 2CB and mescaline and never had any kind of uncomfortable experience. LSD had given me a few useful insights, but nothing as difficult and life-changing as this one.

My mindset was generally good on the day, although I had recently begun therapy to address a sexual assault I experienced years ago, which had a huge impact on my mental health and my subsequent sexual experiences. It should really have occurred to me that perhaps this was a risky time to use psychedelics.

The setting for the trip was my boyfriend's room in his shared house, let's call him B. We were spending an evening together tripping and the plan was to take LSD and a bit of 2CB and listen to music, talk and enjoy each other's company.

The evening was fairly unremarkable in that I was having the same visuals I usually seem to experience (B took on a 'cobweby', 'Hallowe'eny' appearance and grew bat wings; he appeared to be smoking countless pipes, cigars and cigarettes; I kept hallucinating that I had spilled my drink, etc.) and having a wonderful time.

I can't say what it was exactly that cause my mindset to change, but I was curled over hugging a cushion and all of a sudden I felt torn apart by an emotional pain so powerful that I can't even begin to put it into words. I looked up and blood gushed from the walls and ceiling and I had what I can only describe as a flashback of my assault from the point of view of my vagina. I could vividly see the man who assaulted me kneeling over me and I felt that I was my vagina being penetrated and violated.

B quickly realised that something was happening to me, and began to try to talk to me. At this point B, the drugs (which I will refer to as Lucy) and I took on roles of different parts of my subconscious. B asked me questions about what was wrong, so I felt that he was the part of me that wanted to talk about the issue and try to resolve it. Lucy kept trying to distract me and 'trick' me out of talking with pretty patterns and irrelevant delusions, and I was scared of talking, wanting to say things but unable to communicate. We went in circles and I tried to 'trick' Lucy into believing that I said enough so that she would leave me alone and let me be, but I felt this urgency to communicate and kept repeating the phrase, 'I'm only tricking myself,' which I feel is very reflective of the way I deal with the mental health professionals who try to help me. I trick them into believing I am doing well, but it's me that suffers because my issues remain unresolved.

This went on for about an hour. At one point I believed that time had stopped and at another point I believed that days had past, that I had lost my mind and there were people waiting outside to take me away to a mental hospital (which actually felt like a relief at the time for some reason). One thing that I kept returning to was the deep ball of pain that ripped into every fiber of my body. I cried and moaned and felt the pain, the helplessness, powerlessness, fear of my assault and relived it again and again.

Feeling that pain was one of the most liberating things I have ever felt. As suddenly as the uncomfortable part of the trip had started, a wave of relief washed over me as though I had cast away a crushing burden.

I spent a little more time with B, and then we went to bed. After a few hours' sleep I awoke still seeing unusual colours and patterns, but feeling very emotionally fragile. The next day I awoke feeling better in myself and more positive than I have in a very long time.

Although at the time this trip was one of the most emotionally painful and draining experiences of my life, I don't call it a 'bad' trip. It was extremely uncomfortable, but it has helped me to confront issues that have been ruining my life for years. In the years since my assault, I had never once allowed myself to feel any pain at all. I believe that this experience has unlocked something in my memory and allowed me to truly begin to heal and recover.

Exp Year: 2012	ExpID: 95945

Gender: Female

Age at time of experience: 21

Published: Apr 6, 2013	Views: 10,873

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LSD (2), 2C-B (52) : Difficult Experiences (5), Sex Discussion (14), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Small Group (2-9) (17)


		 DOSE:

		 LSD
		 (blotter / tab)

           BODY WEIGHT:
	   210 lb

It's been four months since my 'summer of love' ended. It started with two small squares of white paper on a train headed to NYC, a chance to see psychedelic art in rare form, and a once in a lifetime experience.

The LSD was what really mattered to me and what stuck with me over the course of that summer and on into the future, and it's what I want to talk about. I feel the details about all of the drugs I tried that summer are inconsequential, but I also feel like some listing is necessary. I tripped a few times on 2C-I, which produced strong visuals unlike anything else. I did shrooms once, which gave me weak closed eye visuals. I had done salvia at points in my past and I did DMT (the only drug I ever did without researching to some extent) once when I ran into some friends who had been telling me about it for some time, after getting far too drunk at a party. The come up felt so intense that I never touched it again. Of course there was always pot, which was a staple around the house.

I did LSD quite a few times with a variety of people and over the course of that summer I learned to enjoy music in a way I never thought possible, learned to create art and music on my own in a way I never felt I could before, confronted my demons to make my self a better person, and had a 'farewell trip' that seems to have hallmarked the entire experience, but that also left me with a bittersweet taste in my mouth.

At the Whitney’s Summer of Love exhibit I remember others in my group being quite daring and acting a little too crazy for the environment, doing things like laying on the floor telling random strangers that the real art was on the ceiling, looking not at the video but rather the colors it threw against the sound absorbing foam on the ceiling, but I was calm, a child of the universe, wide eyed and curious. I remember staring at works for what seemed like forever, walking up close and backing away, looking from the left of the right. I grasped art in a way I never did before, despite the art history and the drawing class. For the first time I appreciated pure form, pure shape, pure color, and how they worked in concert.

I was always fascinated by music especially jam bands and 60’s rock. I never could bring myself to dance or to create music. Even though I had tried my hand at playing bass, I couldn't see past the fact that I was the judge of what was good. Being in the crowd for the Allman Brothers on 2 hits of acid changed that. I remember really dancing for the first time in my life, seeing and hearing music at once. I felt a part of every person in the crowd and on the train ride home I could recite and elaborate upon the guitar solos in my head, my mind at some point grasped the music on a fundamental level.

As the summer went on I found myself doing acid with separate groups of friends, which compelled me to do it more often than I would normally have. The trips with other people seemed from the start to be uneventful, with little visuals and nothing profound for me to chew on in my mind. I felt like I was treating acid without reverence.

It wasn't until I was driven home after one such uneventful trip, after I thought I had long since come down, that I had a visual that night, while playing bass in my room. I got to the root of all that held me back as a creative spirit and as a person. I learned that the events of my childhood had taught me to always doubt myself and to never try for fear of failure: I couldn't dance out of fear, I couldn't draw anything that wasn't a carbon copy of reality, I couldn't play my own music, I couldn't look people in the eyes and I couldn't believe that a woman would love me. I had this demon it seemed feeding on my energy, my self-confidence. As I played I realized that I had the ability to make music and always had, I was just deaf to it all this time, my foot danced automatically when I was on to something and lines of energy, and neon flowers began to surround the fret board and dance along my white walls. Over my last semester at college I took a music theory class and I get better at bass every day to this day but if not for LSD I know I would not have this joy in my life.

After this I decided that LSD was best spent on creative ventures but never seemed to have the opportunity or desire to do it alone. I still wound up tripping for what seemed like no reason until eventually I began to feel like I wasn't going to take anything more from the experience. It was at this time I began to worry. People had begun asking me for acid even though I didn't deal; all my friends seemed to be in over their heads with everything they did and I began to feel like I needed to use the 10 hits I was saving in some sort of grand goodbye to college and to LSD, rather than hold them and risk incarceration or screwing up my future.

That night started at 7pm in my apartment. My roommate had never experienced acid in its full effect because of how much he drank at all times. A girl I liked who I knew had done acid and some of her friends who were also experienced had come over and I gave out 5 of my hits to them, asking first if they had ever done acid and informing them of all my safety precautions. I didn’t want anything bad to happen. They all turned out to be less than savory people, wound up leaving the apartment against me and my roommates wishes and had generally sullied the bonds of a tripping group, which I regarded as sacred.

As I came up I was faced with the 'what to do now' problem and in the excitement grabbed a felt pen and my sketch pad which was being used more like a notepad since basic drawing class had ended, and found the one blank page that didn't have a phone number, or rummy score, or assigned sketch on it. I commenced to create a pen drawing unlike anything I ever thought possible, it was also the first time I ever did anything in pen, always having hated the permanence of it. In what was an instinctive, intuitive, fluid process, I made a drawing of a psychedelic landscape which looked like many things from many angles. It became the object that seems to define that entire summer. I wish I could link to it and still maintain my anonymity.

Later that night I thought about why LSD, which had opened so many doors for me, had to be made illegal, lamenting that fact until I realized that half the people in my group had left and I couldn't stop them (though I tried) and that one had driven (all be it only 2 miles and only on half a hit). I realized in the wrong hands acid could be a terrible thing and that not everyone was like me. I also realized that in breaking the law myself I made it ok for all those people who shouldn't be doing acid to break the law themselves and that I was a hypocrite.

It's now been months and I constantly think about the implications of that summer, as I did on my farewell trip. In fact every time I smoke weed I get higher than I ever did before, experiencing closed eye visuals at some points and a strong feeling of paranoia at other points, all of which is about doing drugs, going too far, making myself stupid in some way, or ending up a failure. I came to the conclusion that it was also time for me to move on from weed and I feel like in some strange way this is my mind telling me that I shouldn't smoke any more either. I had no choice but to agree.

It feels so strange that the 'mother of all drugs' was the drug that suddenly made me feel I couldn't do them anymore. I even quit smoking cigarettes, not wanting to feel controlled by an external force. Although I feel booze is an essential part of American life and feel no remorse there (it's funny how a commercial makes something feel guilt-free). Even so, I can’t imagine myself having not done LSD. I feel I have only changed for the better and that LSD was possibly the most therapeutic experience I have ever had, yet at the same time society tells me I should be ashamed of what I did. I suppose this wouldn't bother a true hippy, but hippy was put to rest, set ablaze in 1967, and I'm still alive today.

Yesterday I sat down, completely sober, and drew something abstract again that turned out quite well, I was delighted to see that I still had the ability even without the acid. Yet the implications of this are huge as well, since I will never really know why I still can. Is it possible I never really came all the way down? Maybe. Did acid teach me something? Of course not, how could knowledge come in chemical form? What really did happen?

I like to think it opened a doorway to what was always there, to the unconscious mind, allowing the two which always acted so separately to act in concert, to communicate, and that my subconscious taught me a few things. I feel like a trip lingers on in your mind and the decisions you make on acid while in contact with this other part of you, whether you call it the unconscious or the soul or spirit, stay with you, guiding you in the future. In my case I feel this is for the best and it's something I can live with, something I must live with.

This is the strange grey line my life has become, loving everything about my psychedelic summer, and what it has taught me, and at the same time feeling guilty for imbibing of it. I made it out of college with a degree, no debt and a good job, yet sometimes I feel like I cheated fate in not burning out like so many do, and that I cheated life by subverting my own mind to become who I am.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 69290

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Published: Jun 27, 2013	Views: 5,795

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LSD (2) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Small Group (2-9) (17)