DOSE: T+ 0:00	1.25 hits		AL-LAD
T+ 3:40		oral	Alcohol - Hard

BODY WEIGHT:

160 lb

In summary, this was a fun experience in an ideal environment, an open area music festival.

My SO (Cindy), her friend (Nancy), and I were attending a major electronic music festival when we decided to augment our experience with AL-LAD. Nancy was unaware that this was taking place but as you will see, our social interactions were more or less par-for-the-course with that while sober.

We were excited – given that the first day of the festival we were entirely sober. I enjoy attending multi-day festivals at least one day sober. A number of our favourite artists were attending. The production and sound quality was extremely high, adding to the hype of the experience.

There were numerous stages and each had its own identity. This really made it feel like one was moving between environments while walking around. For example, the bass focused stage looked like a wasteland with combusted cars and plenty of pyrotechnics.

Medical background: No prescriptive medicine or other over-the-counter medicine. Both users in their twenties.

Note: Cindy and I have had AL-LAD before and had candy-flipped with it and MDMA a few months prior.

Trip report
---------------
At around 9:30pm while it was still light out, we were waiting in the queue to go on the Ferris wheel. We decided to dose 1 and a quarter tabs and washed it down with water.

+ 15min: Almost immediately, the body load started hitting us. It was stronger than prior experiences yet mostly bearable. No visuals or change in mind sets were perceived while we were waiting to board the Ferris wheel but this felt like the anxious come up that accompanies most stimulants. We had a bit of fidgeting and just assumed this was part of the come up.

+ 35min: We were finally boarding the ferris wheel. There may have been some slight time distortion at this point. Cindy started having some auditory distortion and felt an uncomfortable pressure in her ear. I did not feel this but we have discovered she is predisposed to having more auditory and less visual distortions than me on this substance. Thankfully, we had brought ear plugs to soften the overwhelming sounds coming from the festival. We did notice some change in our mental processing of the festival but nothing to note.

+ 40min: For some reason, I had a lot of energy while in the Ferris wheel and proceeded to spin the pod around. Naturally, Cindy, having ear issues, did not take kindly to the spinning and I had to sit down to help her relax. She felt better and we spent the remainder of the ride looking at the amazing sights. We felt the presence of time distortion, like it had came to greet us, and it was thoroughly enjoyable to ride the Ferris wheel for what felt like 15 minutes.

+ 55min: The ride had ended and we departed. We noticed that Cindy was sweating profusely – little did we know things had just begun. The most notable thing we noticed was that everyone seemed to scurry past us like upset ants. In retrospect, this was most likely due to the wide-angle effect the AL-LAD had on our vision. We decided to purchase some lemonade from the various vendors that populated the festival. It was sweet but messy; covered in sticky red juice and we ended up disposing of it even though it was 3/4 full.

The body load was still rearing its ugly head so we decided to have a drink from the alcohol tent since it was nearby. As we were walking, we noticed that the AL-LAD was really starting to kick in at this point, likely the remaining quarter. It definitely increased the wide-angle vision and time slowdown. We reached the tent and Cindy had great difficulty finding her credit card. At the time, I just jaunced inside, super focused on entering - completely forgetting that Cindy was still looking for her card. As I went inside, several girls were spraying people with water to dissipate the heat from the hot sun. I was having a blast but soon noticed that my girlfriend wasn't nearby. I had taken at least 30 steps at this point and turned around to find Cindy still looking for her credit card. My vision had become extremely narrow with tunnel-vision at this point and all I saw was her. Every expression on her face was grossly exaggerated, not in what I saw, but what I felt. She was probably slightly distressed yet my mind interpreted the expression as being extremely upset. It was very difficult to understand. Her face looked very different. She looked like she was wearing mascara and eyeliner even though she wasn't. Her eyes looked smaller and sunken in while her nose and mouth looked bigger. Her hands looked like claws. I rushed back in slow motion (time was still not linear at this point) and helped her. I placed my bag on the floor to look through it and bending my knees felt like I was descending several floors. When looking up at my girlfriend it felt like she was really high up. For the remainder of the trip, all distances seemed really exaggerated.

+ 1:10h: We went inside the alcohol tent and walked to the nearest bar. At the time, it felt like we were enclosed inside the tent, separated from the festival. However the next day, we came back to the tent and noticed that it had an open top, there was not even a hint of being enclosed. Clearly the tunnel vision and narrowed perception were at play here. We ordered a watermelon vodka and a berry vodka and proceeded to walk out. As we were leaving, one of the water girls had a bunch of sponsored bandanas with various logos printed upon it. I waved it like a flag as I went through the exit and I honestly felt like I was the last float at a parade, signaling the end of the festival. I felt that everyone was cheering me on and bidding farewell to the amazing festival. In reality, no one was paying attention and there was still another day left. Again, I would like to re-iterate, it seemed like AL-LAD over-exaggerated any perception of what was happening . Clearly, in the music festival setting where everything was epic, thoughts followed amicably.

+ 1:30h: My girlfriend and I were feeling a bit overwhelmed at this point. This was around the peak. We decided to find a place to sit down. Holding Cindy's hands was tough (something about our fingers being intertwined was too complicated to handle). We held hands like Winnie the Pooh and Tigger with their thumbs and four-melded fingers. At first, we sat down outside the alcohol tent but then decided to look for our friend with whom we had arrived. Earlier Nancy had had a nosebleed and we let her sit with the medic until she recovered. We were both very aware that we were peaking (and in no mind to interact with our sober friend) and just walked past the tent to see if she was there but she was nowhere to be found. Luckily, we had brought radios with us and we turned ours on just incase she decided to contact us. We walked to a nearby fence and sat down, again experiencing the multi-floor descent of sitting down on our bums. Very disorientating. We sat upon the bandana that we had procured earlier.

I started asking Cindy a lot of questions about what to do next. For some reason, I seemed to hear / process the questions moments after I had said them, i.e., there was a notable lag. Cindy must have been experiencing this too because she looked clearly overwhelmed. I gave her a hug and told her it would be OK and she started crying to relieve some stress. Afterwards she immediately felt better. We watched in silence as people scurried across our field of vision, seeming to move with the franticness of ants being sprayed with a water bottle. This may have been due to our tunnel / wide-angle vision and it was a comedic spectacle.

+ 2h: After calming down, we decided to try to contact our friend again. We had pre-picked out a meeting spot in case any of us got separated from each other. We tried radioing her while walking to the meeting spot. We got there but I had read my watch wrong and it was not the top of the hour as planned. Our meeting spot was near one of the stages. While we were waiting, the music had a strange effect on our moods. The music was building up to a drop and we felt a lot of tension during the build up, both in our bodies and minds. Once the beat dropped we felt sheer relief. It was both fascinating and uncomfortable and we quickly left the area. We went back to the medic tent and Cindy inquired about the status of her friend. She found out that she had been discharged about 2 hrs earlier. Cindy said that it was tough to act normal while talking to the medics but the medics didn't question her so it must not have shown.

+2:15h: We started walking around the festival, marveling at the sheer size and scale of the event. Walking took forever. Everything seemed brighter and the lights were a true pleasure to observe. I needed to pee so we asked a medic where the nearest bathroom was. We followed the directions, but we felt lost. When we finally found them, I eagerly went inside. Strangely, it was a difficult experience – it was dark inside and I was seeing hallucinations upon the walls and the reverberations from the nearby stage creating a strange shaking sensation. We continued walking and we passed by a VIP entrance to a backstage area.

In the AL-LAD's combination of wide-angle / tunnel-vision, the entrance looked like a blip in my visual field. I saw someone go inside and walked up to the bouncer guarding the entrance. I had some small talk with him and he said I could go inside with Cindy. Inside was a small VIP looking table set up and a set of stairs to the backstage of the artist performing. Upon attempting to walk up the stairs, the second bouncer, seemingly more strict, asked for our bands. Evidently having none, he said that we should leave but seemed reluctant. I didn't press, because, as previously mentioned, our attitudes seemed grossly exaggerated due to the AL-LAD.

+ 2:30h We felt really remote and far away from our designated meeting spot so we decided to go to the second meeting spot to meet our other friends. The area was filled with pyrotechnics and huge stage sets. It felt massive. We stayed there for a while but they never showed up. At some point, Nancy showed up, having heard earlier our discussions about meeting here. We were both relieved to meet her and horrified because she was so excited about her solo adventure that she began rambling about everything she did. This was obviously overwhelming in our mental state but we persevered.

Cindy ended up leaving to find the bathroom with Nancy and I stayed waiting for my other friends. In Cindy's absence, several people asked if I was OK, sitting on the ground, and I responded with a resounding 'yes!'. It was very calming to watch people scurry to and fro around the stages and the pleasant thumping of the wall upon which I rested was enjoyable. At some point, a woman approached me. The face distortions that I often experience while on AL-LAD made her face appear grotesque but I accepted the experience for what it was and obliged interacting with her. This was her third time attending this festival and she had collected quite an assortment of kandi. She noticed I was wearing a tie-dye (rainbow coloured) t-shirt and gave me a rainbow kandi to match. It felt very heart-warming to receive something and made waiting for Cindy more bearable. Cindy and Nancy arrived after 10 or so minutes and were each also bestowed kandi from the mysterious woman.

Cindy told me that it was very hard to act normal around Nancy while going to find the restroom. She covered it up by asking Nancy questions to keep her talking. It was hard to walk because everyone kept walking every which way. The port-a-potty was very small and it vibrated with the music from the nearby stage, which made it very stressful to use. By the time Cindy came back, she was very happy to see me. I was shocked to see her and this was shown on my face.

+ 3h: After the woman left, we decided to walk around. Cindy and I wanted some fruit so we went to the fruitstand. At this point, our peak had passed and AL-LAD had slipped to the background instead of the foreground where it had dominated the past two hours of our experience.

+ 3:15h: We got our fruit and decided to head back near the entrance so we could leave earlier on the shuttles. We sat in the stands where we could see the entire festival. It was nice to sit and enjoy the residual visual effects of AL-LAD while looking at the various stages.

+ 4h: On the shuttle going back to the hotel, Cindy felt that the lights still looked like they had the halos. I felt that it was just the reflections on the window pane.

+ 5h: After arriving back at the hotel, we said bye to Nancy and went into our rooms. We were still feeling some visual effects. The blanket on the bed looked like valleys and mountains moving up and down. We laid down and tried to sleep.

+ 5:15h: After trying unsuccessfully to sleep, we decided to have some naughty times, during which Cindy had some CEVs: seeing the lights like those at the festival making shapes and exploding tremendously.

+ 6h: Afterwards, we tried sleeping again. This time, we were successful after putting on some soothing music.

After waking up, Cindy's face finally looked back to normal.

Next day: felt completely normal. We enjoyed talking about the experience and spent the last day of the festival enjoying the music.

Summary: This was a great experience and really made us appreciate AL-LAD more. In the past, we had only done this together at home to get a feel for what to expect and we were extremely grateful to have done so. The extra quarter definitely made the experience stronger and more psychedelic. If we were to do this again, we would definitely consider 1 and a half. Again, just based on this quarter alone, we wouldn't jump more than a quarter at a time in increased dosage as we feel the effects did not scale linearly, like with a cup of coffee or MDMA.

Exp Year: 2015	ExpID: 106702
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 26
Published: Dec 11, 2016	Views: 2,641
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AL-LAD (603) : General (1), Festival / Lg. Crowd (24)