DOSE: T+ 0:00	1 hit	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)
T+ 3:00	1 hit	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

130 lb

Nearing the end of a sunny late spring day in the Pacific Northwest, I decided 'now is the right time'. I had been doing research on LSD off an on for the past decade, determined to someday try it, but only when the time was right. While I have experience with a handful of drugs, I am by no means a stoner. I hardly even drink. I'm not against it I just prefer to do things in moderation and under relatively specific circumstances. I had acquired a couple tabs from a trusted friend 2 months earlier, and was just waiting for the opportune moment. This was it.

I had previously asked my friend D to tripsit me when the time came. He was available and down to hang out with me all night, so he came over. I was actually house sitting at the time, in a really nice, big house owned by a retired University professor. It was filled with many types of houseplants, exotic art, and also contained (when he felt like being inside) a very talkative and extremely large cat. I felt like it was just the perfect setting to trip.

I took my first tab as soon as D told me he was leaving his house (he lived about 10 minutes away) and started to keep a journal. I set a bunch of alarms on my phone, one every 30 minutes for 10 hours, to remind me to take note of what I was experiencing. This trip report will consist of my typed up journal entries, transcribed voice recordings that I made, and some things I wrote immediately after coming down, along with some further reflections and other details that may explain things, give context, or other wise be of interest.

T: 0hr

This tastes odd. It takes longer to dissolve than I had expected. I feel like an idiot for eating paper. I make a pitcher of pink lemonade, and repeatedly almost choke.

T: 0hr30m

I feel a little light. I'm probably imagining it. I'm drinking some lemonade. I should probably turn off the answering machine beeping before it drives me mad.

T: 0hr:44m

Not imagining it. Real. I like it.

T: 1hr

I failed to skip a line [in the notebook, as I have previously between entries], FUCK! It'll be okay. I feel soooooo good! Like happy! And tickled! I just want to flex all my muscles until they POP. Oh, my handwriting sucks. I hope I can effectively keep this journal [for the duration of the trip]. Pink lemonade was a risky choice. Ugh. Mucus. Oh, so we're in past tense now? Or were. I've always been shit at that.

T: 1hr15m

OK I just feel like saying something. I'm really enjoying silence right now. I'm a very visual person, and I'm not like, hallucinating or anything. I just feel like my visual input is really important. It's like 90% of what I care about.

T: 1hr30m

Oh, just kidding, I'm hallucinating as fuck. It's beautiful! I can't stop smiling. How bad is my writing? I'm under drops of water. I feel like its physically happening to my eyeball.

T: 2hr

I already hate the fact that I need to write and can't just instantly communicate. Focusing on writing intensifies visual hallucinations. So much vibrating and squirming but its so pleasant. I find it odd that it's pleasant as if I should be repulsed. I'm giggling at my writing. It's very poor.

T: 2hr30m

I have to focusintenselytowriteanditsveryunpleasantsoI'mgoingto stop I JUST

FOCUS

VERY IMPORTANT the beautiful sunset more colors than I thought were possible I had never felt so HAPPY I'm going back.

T: 3hr

Just took the 2nd tab. I feel intensely compelled to document, but not in a medium I can understand. I'm sorry!! I'm worried I won't remember. How about 'yellow'?

At this point I was feeling quite loopy and wanted to lie down. I told D that I was going to go chill in bed with some blankets for a bit because I just needed to. In between writing my journal entries, my interactions with D were fairly limited. When he showed up he proclaimed 'I just took a shitload of shrooms before I left.' Since we had previously (on a different day) agreed that he would be sober while I tripped, I was disappointed in him and slightly concerned. Ultimately, we got really giggly about nothing in particular and each wandered around the house looking at things, and I mostly forgot about it.

He seemed content with hanging out in the living room so I went and snuggled into the bed. I probably laid down in the bed for about 2 hours, I was very relaxed and slightly overstimulated by all the visuals which were increasing in intensity every passing moment. I really did not want to move. I decided to continue my documentation of my trip via voice memos on my phone. I have transcribed them here.

Important note: The AJ that I refer to is my boyfriend. I have to provide a little backstory here about why so much of this trip became centered around him. At the time of this trip, we had been seeing each other for about 5 months. He was in college in a different city a couple hours away, so we saw each other about every other weekend. Things had gotten really serious a couple months earlier when I casually mentioned that I was going up to [city] to buy LSD from a friend. This led to an all night conversation (via text) during which he expressed extreme distrust of the drug, and did not want me to use it. I tried to explain that it was very low risk and was important to me. I know that he had dated a drug addict before and was sensitive about these things. Ultimately the conversation led to me saying I would gladly delay my taking it if it made him uncomfortable, that I placed a greater importance on our relationship, and we told each other that it was love for the first time that night.

Eventually AJ said he had loosened up his feelings about it, that he trusted me much more than anyone else he knew in his life who he associated with drug use, and I took that as more or less a go ahead, but I certainly wasn't going to be in his face about it. It was ALWAYS meant to be a personal journey for me. I had decided on this occasion that I would tell him after I had done it, so that he wouldn't worry about me from afar, nor would I worry about him worrying about me.

Our relationship was (and is still) one of immense passion and I have always had very strong feelings about him. I did not want to lose him but I also very much wanted this for myself.

Well..on to the recordings. The headings above the recordings are the filenames as they were in my phone, some of them were changed.

Recording 1

I’ve been making it a goal to document my experiences, on the half hour, every half hour, at the very least. I am free to do it more frequently should the urge arise. [sighing and giggling noises] Hang on.

Recording 2

Ok. I am having a hard time talking into this because I just want to laugh. The reason that I’m making this recording is that i don’t think I’m going to be able to write. Every time I try to focus on writing, the visual hallucinations get really intense, and its really hard to….[giggling]…I don’t want to sound like a crazy person.

Recording 3

Its fair to say that I am definitely going to sound a little bit like a crazy person. [sigh] Part of the issue is that I’m trying to be kinda restrained. I’d like to not feel that way, but I’m not alone in the house…so I can’t be free. Not truly.

Recording 4

I have decided, firmly, that: Fuck Cats.

Recording 5

[giggling] Jesus Christ, um, ok. [way more giggling] I am now on recording number 5. And I swear I am sticking to the original plan [uncontrollable laughter] of why I am fucking making this recording. Oh my god. [laughing] Nope! Not happening.

Recording 6

This is a very serious subject matter. It’s greatly profound, and it’s of grave importance that I communicate this clearly, eloquently, and with proper levity.

Recording 7

Except I keep trying and giggling and stuff so yeah, clearly this is just the pinnacle of human existence.

Recording 8

AJ, I forgot to use your name in all the other recordings, cause…the underlying feeling is I’m not telepathic, and that’s really frustrating. Like I feel like I should just be able to instantly impart emotion and sensation into somebody else, and that was what I wanted to do. Why I started making these recordings and then I started getting giggly cause its supposed to be serious. I just wanted you to know that I was having what I perceived to be a profound experience, and I was thinking about you, and like that experiencing it without you is kind of a deficit in my experience. But that’s ok. It was just like the realization that you couldn’t just feel what I felt, filled me with a real sadness. i’m just experiencing emotions like purely. [laughs] It’s definitely extremely pleasant. I’m actually just trying to stay really calm right now so that I can talk. Probably a lot of what I’m saying sounds completely insane. I just realized that. I don’t really know when I’m speaking out loud versus when I’m just thinking. This like line between consciousness….that part all makes sense. It’s all very blurred. Like I get why that’s always brought up. It’s just like you feel like you should be able to know and feel everything at the same time, and you kind of do, and it’s really awesome. Hey this recording went like a full fucking ten times longer than all the other ones. Good job, go me, I’m gonna stop it now.

The Most Important One (allegedly)

Holy fuck, okay. Hopefully I remember to rename this accordingly. Just, disregard all the other ones. This is what’s important. I was having a profound experience, or what I thought was one, whatever, doesn’t matter. And I missed you during it. That’s the sweetest thing that I can give you. Also I’ve been talking about this for fully a half hour now, fuck.

((SIDE NOTE: The 'profound experience' I am referring to here was essentially me watching a particularly beautiful sunset. I'm sure that sober it would have been quite spectacular, one of those really dramatic sunsets with sweeping clouds and varying shades of purple, orange, and magenta. I was experiencing some distinct time dilation, as I know logically a sunset only lasts a matter of minutes, but it felt like hours that I was staring at the sky in pure awe. I have never seen Aurora Borealis in person, but the way the clouds shimmered and waved reminded me of it. The entire time I was watching this I felt utter joy, the likes of which I cannot remember experiencing before.))

Recording 9

Ok, I’m letting myself off the hook for abandoning the document stuff every half hour thing. Mostly because I am documenting it, just in a different way. But I also just have to accept that if I want to enjoy myself I can’t force myself to write. It just…its….unpleasant. So, I do want to document whats happening, so that I can remember, and for I dunno, informational purposes I guess. I just have to do it in ways that feel natural, I guess.

Recording 10

What could be more natural than curled up in bed with an iPhone. I can’t imagine anything. It’s beautiful [laughs]

Self Awareness

This is cliche as fuck. I think I’m gonna title this one “self awareness” and…it’s not funny.

Recording 11

Oh I keep being super not scientific about this. Like the whole reason why I wanna document things…I just keep ignoring the things that I would want to write down, like what the actual visual effects are, and what I’m avoiding when I’m not writing. All the colors. Just, every color. Especially the like, uh, the acid ones. [laughs] derp. You know the neon, whatever. All that. Is just happening. But when I focus really hard, like on writing for example, cause like right now I’m just letting my eyes do whatever the fuck they want. Which is…I don’t even wanna know…what it’ll look like. Just, its all over the place. Ohhhh no….the creature is up. It’s fine. He just goes…..you know…nature is calling…I can assume [crashing noises] Fucking christ, some things never change. Ok. The colors. That’s what I’m avoiding. It sounds really nice. That’s the thing…all the physical sensations, all the visual sensations, are things that should not be pleasant but are. Thats the crazy thing. And the only thing that’s unpleasant is resisting it. Let the vibrations happen and it just feels really good. But like you try to hold still so you can sense them, and everything starts to go all like, putrid, and the colors, instead of being this like harmonious rainbow fractal awesomeness is like bruises and sickness and like vomit. It’s really gross and you want it to just not be happening anymore and it’s super easy to make it not be happening anymore. All you have to do is relax and stop resisting. Time is a little bit different, which is what I expected, which is why I set alarms for myself so that I could document properly. I’m just a step ahead of myself the whole time. Anyways, feels like it’s been like 3 hours and it’s been 3 minutes and that’s just the nature of this, I suppose. I’ll stop.

Recording 12

This is a….mad props to myself for my restraint and not sending these.

((SIDE NOTE: I wanted very desperately to share with my boyfriend, as I was feeling a profound amount of love for him, but it was the middle of the night and he had class in the morning, and in the back of my mind I was worried he would become upset and not understand if I told him that I was tripping.))

Recording 13

Oh god! Not sending them until some time that I will send them, and that I’ll just have arbitrarily decided is the OK time, so that I can continue to congratulate myself. Ohhhh I get it, this is fun, this is a fun game. I’m really sad that you’re not doing this game with me.

((This made complete sense to me at the time, and I do know what I was driving at. Basically I was becoming increasingly aware of myself, my attitudes towards myself, and the way I justify my behavior. I was pleased with the objective level of insight I was feeling.))

Recording 14

This is me being sad again at my failure to commit to writing in the notebook. I wanted to have that artifact. And now I’m not gonna have that artifact. I’m just gonna have like, part of one. That annoys me.

Recording 15

This is also important. I feel like I am just completely objectively evaluating everything. Like I…ff…I’m just going off an an—whoooo, I dunno what that’s gonna look like in the finished recording, but I just got like my….it’s 11 o clock alarm, in the middle of trying to say a sentence, and uh, yeah. I have no fucking idea what I was talking about. Probably something super important and you know about consciousness and all that bullshit—ooh spiders!

Recording 16

Yeah I keep thinking I’m seeing spiders like really creepy big daddy long leg ones, and they’re trying to cuddle me, [laughs] and its great. I want them to cuddle me.

Recording 17

I still don’t have fucking wifi on this phone right now. I’m using….data…in the middle of I’m laying in bed. Comfortably, I could fall asleep at any time, just happily with my phone trying to internet, as kids do….just not on wifi. [laughing] why does this enrage me so much?

I went to excruciating effort to rename this

D’s in the living room, and I don’t know who he’s talking to, and I really really wanna know, but I also really don’t wanna get up or care about anything other than how comfy I am.

Recording 18

I really like the liquid part. The part where I feel like I’m just…in liquid. That is very appealing. I just wish I was more warm. I’m gonna complain about being cold constantly. And the way my glasses feel on my head. No, those things aren’t worth complaining about actually, those things are fine.

Recording 19

I’m gonna take a break from making the recordings for a while. I realized that I’m safe from having to display them, cause, I’m in the other room of my laptop. And thats where I recorded the initial greeting, the introduction, so to speak. And uh, I just could not in good….good conscience, introduce something so poorly. There is already an introduction. I will leave it until I can comfortably access it. So…all of these recordings will follow that. I’m gonna just try to get warm now. I feel like this sounds really way more sad than it is. It should not sound sad cause I’m smiling and I’ve been smiling the whole time.

((Right after taking the first tab I recorded a video, about a minute long, which I intended to send to AJ in the morning along with all my other data collected.))

Love

[sigh] There’s always like 2 degrees of separation from my intention and the finished product, so this is going to be, I guess the finished product. AJ. Hello. I’m making it for you. I fucking love you. That’s all. That’s literally all. oh…

Recording 20

I don’t know if I made note of it earlier. I know that I remarked it aloud to myself, and the universe, and anyone who was listening…[sigh] no. Uh…[sigh] man, talking is just…not easy. Ok. [laughing] Oh my god. I’m actually fucking full on deleting this one. This….this uh, this marks a milestone. No. I won’t delete it, cause then I’ll never know that I said I was gonna delete it. But know this: I felt at some point that it needed to be deleted. Ok. I’m, I’m finished.

Recording 21

What I meant to say is that it’s just literally impossible to have a bad time doing this. Whoever said you could have a bad trip is fucking retarded, and a liar, its…not possible. Everything is fantastic.

((Famous last words anyone?))

Recording 22

With the exception of the fact that I am still really fucking cold and….just…be warmer!

Recording 23

I am going to enjoy listening to these later. This is a fact.

Recording 24

I was way more deeply affected by the jarring nature of the alarms than I thought…oh my god it’s really…I should not have made them. I have like….four more?!

Recording 25

All I wanted to say is that the physical effects are much stronger than anticipated.

And this....this was the final recording I made before shit got weird. The next section of this report is what I wrote up the following day after coming down and reflecting. I never finished the story intially because I grew frustrated with my inability to properly convey what I experienced. I do remember it relatively well, and will try to summarize it now, 6 months after the fact.

I have to say that my ultimate conclusion from the waking nightmare that was “my trip” was not surprising. Well, it was somewhat surprising in that I was incredibly impressed by the immense creative power of my brain. That is astonishing. What I mean is that if I was seeking an answer, the answer I got was that I understand myself and the things that are important to me.

The world around me became immensely beautiful. It filled me with such astounding joy. I wanted so badly to tell AJ that I love him, that I really love him from the deepest and truest part of me. I remember saying that I wanted him to be there, but I really didn’t, not physically. I wanted us to be one, and I have no other way of explaining that. Perhaps the resistance to telling him, and the anxiety underlying the keeping of my secret was part of what led my happy dream to becoming a nightmare. I believe it was a combination of things, though.

Once physical sensation became something completely foreign and alien, I started to inspect my body. I remember resisting thinking negative thoughts about it, but I couldn’t help it. I was advised to stay very hydrated (I understood why, later, because drinking water was fucking impossible) and my belly swelled painfully with the liquid inside it. I curled up under the covers because I was cold, and held myself. Because the nerve endings in my skin were not firing in a familiar manner, my body felt strange and different. When my fingertips ran over my buttocks and thighs, parts of my body that I know to be strong and lovely, the skin felt soft and melting, and my muscles fell away, atrophied and wilted.

I thought about looking at them to confirm that they were still there, but I was afraid of what I’d find. I was afraid I’d see myself for who I really am, ugly, withered, sagging. This thought became reality and I could see myself without looking and it was truly horrible. I knew that I was merely dreaming, and allowed even the bad thoughts to come, because I was curious. I fell into a black hole in the bed, my body parts swelling and swirling into a spiral/pretzel type object. I was inside and outside at the same time. I saw my skin stretched and puffy, just a mass of fatty limbs, a completely inhuman form. I relaxed and thought “of course this is how you see yourself. Don’t be afraid, you knew all along.”

When I relaxed more my body became pure color, shards of black, white, green, and blue, continually breaking and reforming into extremely intricate patterns. It was sort of beautiful, but in a different way from the happy colors from earlier in the evening. These shards were painful, and menacing in their speed. They did not ebb and flow, like the happy colors. They whipped and swirled like a storm.

At this point I still was not truly scared. I was an observer. I knew what I was seeing and feeling was the pure representation of the negative feelings I have about my physical self. It was interesting. At some point the swirling storm settled, I returned to my bed, and I knew that I needed to get up. Mostly because I needed to pee, but also I felt that I should change my environment. I felt that I had been lying there for a few days.

I remember turning over in bed, feeling the blanket slide over my skin, the mattress give way beneath me. It all felt so strange and different. There were holes everywhere, and everything that moved fluttered and skittered about. I had to move very slowly because sudden movement was guaranteed sensory overload. Pulling the blankets back was a true exercise in bravery. The gaps in sensation on my skin meant that the feeling of fabric dragging over flesh felt like the stabbing legs of giant insects walking over me. The erratic manner in which the blankets appeared to move added to this illusion. I felt extremely uncomfortable, and though I didn’t feel intensely bad, I felt that the time of happiness had ended.

I walked across the floor, my bare feet on the wood felt like they were made of a shifting sort of swiss cheese. It occasionally gave way and my foot fell into nothingness, like when you think you’ve descended the last step on a staircase, but there is really one more. Somehow I did not lose my balance because of this, but I was very hesitant to touch anything. My phone was still in my hand, and I felt it so firmly and heavily in my fingers, as if it were fused to me. I went into the living room to tell D, and my phone recordings, one final message before descending into hell. “The physical effects are much stronger than anticipated”.

I tried to record a new message. I wanted to say that I was starting to become afraid, that I was having a bad time, that I was unhappy. I couldn’t speak. I said “it won’t let me say bad things about it”. D asked what it was. In my head I answered “my trip”, but I couldn’t say it aloud. I dropped my phone onto the red leather chair, it sunk deeply into it, impossibly deeply, and became immersed in the leather, which more resembled a very thick paint. “I guess I’ll leave that there,” I thought to myself, somewhat amused.

When I turned my attention to the restroom, a terror so absolute gripped me, I was completely immobilized. At this point I realized that my trip had personified itself, and he did not want me to communicate anything negative. He also wanted me to do certain things, and did so by making anything else impossible. I stared at the door to the bathroom. Tears welled up in my eyes. “D,” I said, “I need you to help me.”

“Help you with what?”

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Ok, you need me to walk you there?”

“I mean I need to pee, but not in there, it won’t let me,” I laughed at the absurdity of this statement. I tried to will myself to walk to the bathroom but my body just would not move. Forcing it caused immense feelings of fear and anxiety. I took a step in a different direction, which was fine. Fascinating, I thought to myself. At that point I knew what my trip wanted me to do, but I still denied it. I started to laugh hysterically.

((SIDE NOTE: as a child I was extremely phobic of bathrooms because of some traumatic experiences at a very young age. Bathrooms and urination have been a strange fixation in many ways throughout my entire life for probably a whole host of weird psychological reasons that I wont get into here, just know that they exist and I am aware of them)).

“I can’t believe this,” I said. “I figured out the rules to this game a while ago. Lose yourself to the trip and everything is fine. Resist and face consequences.” I started to shake and bounce a lot because I had to pee so badly. I didn’t really want to do what I needed to do, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I asked D to come with me, and he accompanied me as I very easily walked to the front door.

When I was outside, I knew that it was cold, but I couldn’t really feel it. Everything was covered in ice. “That frost isn’t really there, right?” I asked. D merely told me that it was, indeed, quite cold. I squatted on the front porch and pissed, hard, over the stairs. The relief was overwhelming. I felt mildly ridiculous but at the same time part of me knew why I needed to do that. It felt very meaningful.

When I returned to inside, I grabbed my phone from the liquid chair, and laid on the couch. My body felt better, and I felt better. My skin was still falling away in pieces, and it was very hard to move without a lot of discomfort. My arm against the back of the couch felt like it was made of hornets nest. Pieces of reality fell away, leaving a honeycomb type pattern. A fly buzzed around my head. I felt repulsed yet fascinated. What is my brain doing? I wondered to myself.

My nightmare only became truly scary when D decided to go to the store. I was already somewhat uncomfortable with his presence, but I also did not want to be alone. He said he would be right back. Once alone I remembered the rules. Give in to the trip and he will take you for a ride. Don’t resist. I buried myself in blankets and closed my eyes to enter a world of Gigeresque horror. My world was a liquid gray and green, melting into black void. The black void took the shape of holes, which stretched the gray and green goo into thin lines between them. A vast network as far as my eyes could see, if it was my eyes that were seeing.

This network zoomed away from me and I realized I was looking closely at the eyes of an enormous insect, the size of a universe. It’s face was incredibly detailed, and slightly glowing, as if it were an image on an old computer screen. My skin was the insect, and the insect was me. Bright green lasers crisscrossed the void, forming patterns. I was so cold. I was under piles pf blankets but I could not feel them. “How can I warm my flesh when my flesh is not real?” I thought. I battled with succumbing to the feeling, the imagery, I wanted out. It had been years and D was still gone. Maybe he was not coming back. The silence of the house felt oppressive, rather than peaceful. I felt deep loneliness.

I turned and picked up my phone. It stretched and contorted in my hand. I struggled to read it, or even hold it. The lock screen displayed a notification. “AJ replayed your snap”. Suddenly struggling to swim back into reality, my mind raced for a memory. What had I sent? I don’t remember talking to him. I opened the app, the snap was replayed 19 minutes ago. What have I done? Let me apologize, I pleaded with my trip. Let me make it okay. I don’t want him to be scared, he can’t know that I am scared. I am strong and I am fine.

I tapped his name but nothing happened. The letters were just pushed out of the way. No! I thought, why won’t you let me? I fiddled with the other functions of my phone, which was now trapezoidal in shape and a foot long. The screen was all gray and would not display color. I returned to snapchat. It was frozen. My trip won’t let me talk to AJ. But maybe I had? My eyes bored into the text that read “19m ago”. Hadn’t minutes passed? What was happening?

D returned. His presence in the house was overwhelming. I silently sat with my anxiety. He laid on the floor eating chocolate. I didn’t want to look at him. I wanted him to leave, I wanted someone else there. Someone who was safer. I was not sure that the person who had come into the house was really D at all.

I checked my phone again. “AJ replayed your snap 26m ago”. So time was really passing, apparently. I tapped his name and nothing happened. I tapped another name and a chat window opened. I don’t want to talk to T, I thought, I don’t want to bother him. Returning to the home screen I tapped AJs name, and still nothing happened. His name swelled to a much larger size on the screen. I was frustrated. I knew I wasn’t going to send him anything, I just wanted my phone to work. My phone working means things are real, this was not real, and I became extremely afraid.

I suddenly realized that D had been chewing on food for an incredibly long time. I could see him, hunched over, out of the corner of my eye. Just constantly eating, so fast, so viciously. I was disgusted.

“I want M,” I said. “Help me call M.”

“Why would I help you?” D asked accusingly. I looked at him, and his face was that of a demon. His eyes hollow holes of glowing white. Black ink flowed from the sockets. I looked away. That’s not real. Fuck that can’t be real.

“please, I can’t make my phone work, call M for me.”

He took my phone and said “Is this person EXPECTING you to call them?”. I felt very personally attacked and wracked with guilt after this question.

I hesitantly said yes, even though that was not exactly true. I found M's contact page and he helped me put it on speaker. I listened to it ring for an incredible time, and then it went to voicemail.

“Call again,” I pleaded, feeling panic.

“Are you sure you’re not bothering them?” D asked, in a very mocking tone.

Yes…I thought…I am bothering her….but I need something to be real…and we called again. No answer.

I thought of who else I could call, but my phone was frozen on her contact info. My trip wants me to contact M, and no one else. But she was not there. I struggled to operate my phone. I got to my contacts list and scrolled through it. None of the names would work except for M's. Fuck.

I opened snapchat again. “AJ replayed your snap 34m ago”. Fuck.

I opened my contacts. Scrolling, scrolling, frozen, M. Open. Send text message. Fuck I can’t type. Go back. Scrolling. M. Go back. Scrolling. Frozen. This went on for almost an hour. Finally something clicked and I remembered how to make technology work. “Siri, tell M: ‘I need you.’” Message sent.

Snapchat. “AJ replayed your snap 34m ago”. No...almost an hour has gone by. At least half an hour, but not even a minute has passed?

This is a nightmare, I told myself, and I will wake up. I just have to watch it play out. Yes.

And what a nightmare it was. Here is where I am picking up the retelling 6 months later. Eventually D asked if I wanted him to leave. Maybe he picked up on the fact that I was extremely distrusting of him. I told him that was fine, that I was just going to ride this out by myself, maybe I'd get a hold of someone else. I was honestly terrified of being alone, but I was MORE scared with him there. I probably looked relatively fine, I'd just been bundled up on the couch not doing much but messing with my phone and internally panicking for quite a while.

At this point D had not ever done acid before, so I don't think he really knew how to take care of me at all, not to mention he was tripping on shrooms as well. When he left I felt a sense of relief but I also felt utterly incredibly alone and scared.

I knew that I was just on a drug, and that it would wear off and everything would be fine. I knew that everything I was thinking and feeling and fearing were my thoughts and maybe I had the power to turn it around. I came to the conclusion rather quickly that I lacked the fortitude to turn it around, and began to really feel pure dread.

I didn't want to talk to AJ. I don't even know what I was thinking about that. I kept trying to come up with some reason that he'd replayed a snapchat when I didn't think I'd sent him one for hours. I was very afraid that I had sent him something recently without remembering it, and that it would clue him in to the fact that I was tripping. Time was passing so slowly that even the idea of waiting out the trip seemed agonizing and impossible.

I wanted to cry. I ended up calling a lot of people, but no one answered, probably because it was 1am on a Tuesday. Finally I got a hold of someone, a fellow psychonaut, the friend who had sold me the drug. He was awake. He lived about an hour away, but I convinced him I was wigging out bad and needed company.

He agreed to come but a deep paranoia had gripped me. Everything he said carried a similar mocking tone, the one I perceived D as speaking to me in earlier. I realized that I must be imagining it, but this led me to wonder what else I was imagining. Maybe I was imagining this phone call. I got up from the couch. Moving around was still difficult but I was desperate to get a grip on reality. Still on the phone with my friend, trying to make casual conversation and seem like my normal self again, I paced around the house.

I insisted that my friend stay on the phone with me, consumed with the idea that if I hung up the phone, it would be revealed that it was all in my head, that I never called anyone, that I was alone and fucked up forever. I kept obsessively asking him where he was. Very familiar with the route between his town and mine, I checked his information against the time. I was suspicious that he was still at home, in his bed, just laughing at me.

He suggested that I drink some water. There was a glass sitting on the table that I had poured for myself hours ago. I sat down in front of it and stared at it the way a chess grandmaster stares at his chessboard, contemplating his next move. Drinking water seemed like a monumental and impossible task. For some reason the idea of drinking water frightened me. I reached out and touched the glass, but I never got farther than that, choosing to get up and walk away instead.

I still find it odd how I continued to be afraid of drinking the water. I kept going back and forth between determination to do 'normal' things, and exercising willpower, and wanting to just stop giving a fuck. But I was worried that I was brain damaged somehow, that I'd done something very wrong, that my relationship with AJ would be ruined and he would be devastated. A part of me was very aware that these were somewhat valid emotions and I couldn't help feeling them as intensely real because of the drug. After all, earlier in the evening I had experienced pure joy in a similar manner. This was of course, much less tolerable.

My friend had apparently gotten lost on the way, taken a wrong highway exit, and wanted to get off the phone so he could use his GPS. I was utterly convinced that this was some kind of trick. I still was not sure I hadn't dreamed up this entire phone conversation. I 'knew' that if I hung up I would wake up from some stupor having not called anyone at all, still alone, still psychotic. I begged with him, practically crying, to stay on the line.

Thankfully blessed with a very good sense of direction and knowledge of local geography, I was able to navigate him to the house. I had opened the front door at some point, to get some fresh air. The door opened to a semi closed off porch, so I couldn't really see the street from inside the house. He told me that he had arrived and was parking. I could hear the sound of an engine running outside, and then a car door opening and closing. A sense of relief like no other washed over me. The room seemed brighter, I was smiling.

'See you in a second,' I said, and hung up the phone.

Black.

Silent.

Grey clouds filled my vision, and everything looked like a typical haunted house. 'No! No! No!' I screamed inside my head. How could I be so stupid as to hang up the phone? But no, hanging up the phone did not suddenly cause him to blip out of existence. He was never there. My consciousness had given me hope, built up over the course of an hour (which felt like eternity on Acid Time), just to take it away. To punish me. I needed to be punished because I am a bad person who lies and and is lazy and hypocritical.

Some part of me still knew that everything that was happening was just being created by my own mind, and that I clearly had some fucking issues with self esteem I needed to sort out. I just needed to wait for the drug to wear off. This didn't really calm me much though, because minutes felt like hours, and I had, by my estimation, at least 4 more hours of this to endure completely alone.

I started to cry. And then...I heard something. Footsteps.

J had arrived after all. Only seconds had passed, my mind slowed them down to an eternity of agony. But there he was, his usual goofy self. We sat on the couch together and I tried to explain everything that had been happening. Quite poorly, I imagine. I still felt as if everything he said was dripping with sarcasm, derision, and disgust. This actually comforted me somewhat because I figured this was me projecting my insecurities in a very extreme way because of how the drug was making me feel emotions. I just kept telling myself he was talking normally and I was reading this tone into it.

What ended up saving me, because I was still paranoid that none of this was actually happening, but that I was making up my own personal hell because I felt like I deserved it, was watching a youtube video. J and I are both fans of this one movie review channel, where they do reviews that are about an hour long. One had just been released the day before and I watched it then. At least, I started watching it, but got distracted and did other things while it played in the background.

Seeing the familiar first 15 minutes of that video, followed by snippets of of the vaguely familiar and snippets of the unknown, was immensely reassuring to me. I felt that there was no way I could keep up hallucinating this entire video with such accuracy. It had to be real. J was really there, I was really fine, I wasn't eternally in my own personal hell.

When the sun came up about an hour and a half later, J decided to go home, because he had other obligations. I was coming down, and watching the sunrise was like being fucking reborn. Alone in the house as it filled with light, I settled into a chair and felt extremely satisfied with myself, like I had just exorcised a demon from me. I took a selfie. My hair was disheveled and my pupils were dilated. I sent it to my best friend with the caption 'Dragon Slayer'.

And I really felt that way. I reflected on everything that I had felt and thought over the past several hours, and it all made profound sense to me. I vowed to love myself a little more, doubt myself a little less, and to appreciate the people I care about. None of the paranoia or bad feelings persisted. They were part of me that were always there, and I looked at them in a microscope for a while, and accepted them.

I ended up talking to my dad that morning. We have a very special bond, but we are not very affectionate. I went disc golfing with him, and it was honestly one of the most beautiful things ever. It was still early morning, everything was covered in dew. It being late spring there was maximum green and flowers everywhere. I was definitely still a little high at that point, feeling familiar feelings of contendedness and a strange good energy. After our game I told my dad I loved him for the first time in probably 20 years. I told him that he was a good father and I hoped he understood how much I appreciate him.

He seemed surprised but happy. I was too. It wasn't until around T+20h that I was confident all the effects of the drug had ended. I did continue to find myself in a somewhat different mindset for the next week or so, though. Very positive, reflective, and accepting.

((SIDE NOTE: When I told AJ about what I had done he FLIPPED HIS SHIT. We almost broke up over it. Apparently my anxieties were somewhat well-founded. He came around eventually and has since tripped himself, afterwards apologizing to me profusely for not trusting my judgement and for being so judgmental himself of a beautiful experience.))

((ADDITIONAL SIDE NOTE: I am assuming that my dosage was around 200ug, not exactly an advisable beginner dose, though not exactly a hero dose either. From my conversations with friends and reading various trip reports online I've found that by and large the level of visuals and dissociation I experienced were more on par with 350+ doses. Like I said in my opening, I don't use drugs of any sort very often. I was raised atheist but have always had a spiritual side to me from a very young age and would wander off into the woods by myself and meditate, often achieving a state of waking dream which I found very enjoyable.

I also suffer from some moderate mental illness (Bi-Polar Disorder, Body Dysmorphic Disorder), as well as a type of migraine known as kaleidoscopic vision. A lot of the visuals I saw in my trip were actually things I have seen before, completely sober, since long before I ever touched or heard of psychedelics.

It is my suspicion that because of the way my brain works, I was already very 'primed' for a psychedelic experience. 4 friends of mine have taken similar or higher doses from the same batch and got nowhere near the level I did.))

Exp Year: 2017	ExpID: 111357
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 29
Published: Aug 16, 2018	Views: 2,208
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