DOSE: T+ 0:00	50 ug	sublingual	1P-LSD	(blotter / tab)
T+ 1:25	50 ug	sublingual	1P-LSD	(blotter / tab)
T+ 1:55		oral	Kava
T+ 2:25		oral	Alcohol - Beer/Wine	(liquid)
T+ 3:40	50 ug	sublingual	1P-LSD	(blotter / tab)
T+ 4:40		oral	Alcohol - Hard	(liquid)
T+ 10:00		oral	Diphenhydramine	(pill / tablet)
T+ 10:00		oral	Melatonin	(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

This was not my original plan. Having tested 1P-LSD at the 50mcg level and found it mild and pleasant, I had wanted to try out a slightly higher dose (75mcg) in a more social setting. New Year's Eve seemed like a good time - there was a great local show going on just a few blocks from my apartment, and with everyone being wasted anyway I could easily blend in. Then there was a brutal cold snap that killed any desire I had to leave the apartment. It was a downer, but I adjusted - now, the plan was to take a full 100mcg dose in the comfort of my own apartment.

It was probably for the best that I didn't go out. What I experienced was sublime, but it could have easily gone in a much darker direction.

BACKGROUND: TL;DR version, I had a very complicated life before psychedelics ever entered into it.

I've been working overseas on and off for the past decade. On my last trip a few years ago, I had met a woman I planned on marrying as soon as my life had stabilized. That never happened - she was too bound to her highly traditional culture and I couldn't be a part of it. Much later, while I was still fighting my way out of the ensuing depression, she suddenly turned up in the United States, now with a young son from what had amounted to an arranged marriage. Next thing I knew, I was jaunting back and forth across the country to help her get away from her abusive, sociopathic husband, bonding with her son in the process.

I had hoped that we could pick up again once the ex was finally out of the picture, but it's become obvious that this will never happen. The woman has continued to keep me a secret from her culturally homogenous community and now has little time to even speak with me. As a result, I now have emotional connections with a young boy to whom I have no legal, paternal or communal ties, something that is maybe apropos as I was adopted myself. Now, add into all of this two other pieces of information that I can't confirm - One, there is a small but non-zero possibility that I actually have a biological son; and two, I have come to believe that my own biological mother, who died at 34 years of age before I had the chance to really meet her, may have ended her own life.

It's against all of this that I've decided to go back overseas again. This wasn't my original plan either, but I adjusted.

SET AND SETTING: My apartment, New Year's Eve. The outside temperature is hovering around zero, with fierce winds pushing it even farther into the basement. I have some high-quality bourbon, a bottle of wine with a dubious vintage, a lot of leftover food, massive amounts of candy and twelve ounces of unflavored kava to serve as an anxiolyc. As with my first experience, I check my temperature and pulse first and confirm that both are normal.

I was torn between recording these experiences as they happened and piecing it back together after the whole episode was finished. After about the third time I wrote 'Things are returning to normal' in my trip journal shortly before something new and unexpected cropped up, I decided that there was wisdom in waiting. This has left me to reassemble the events from my journal and from notes scattered across computers and notebooks.

+0:00 - I decide to administer the 1P-LSD in half-doses so as to better track the effects. After taking the first 50mcg, I prepare a light dinner - tortellini and marinara.

+1:25 - Thus far, the comeup is proceeding as it did in my previous experience, with a mild euphoria (comparable to alcohol or cannabis) and subtle tactile/somatic sensations. The only thing that's off is that my energy level is very low. Since everything is 'normal,' I administer the second half-tab. I now have 100mcg in my system.

+1:55 - The effects are still subtle but they're ramping up fast, with strobing in my peripheral vision. I get the kava out of my fridge and slug it down. Raw unflavored kava is a particularly foul-tasting beverage - something like muddy river water with a strong medicinal foretaste - so I down it in as few gulps as possible. The last thing I need is to taste it after my senses go haywire.

+2:05 - It's about here that I step into a very strange delusion that will last for about an hour. The tactile experiences have hit an early peak - I am simply buzzing with electricity. Looking around my empty apartment, all I want is someone with whom I can share this. And then, somehow, I am sharing it with someone. I don't actually see the woman at all, I simply know that she exists and I can feel her presence across distances. The experience is erotic but not coarsely sexual - this isn't pornography, but a powerful feeling of youthful love the like of which I haven't felt in years.

+2:25 - I uncork the wine and get out some leftover summer sausage and garlic and herb cheese. The wine is bitter and aggravates my indigestion, but I'm so deep in the delusion that I hardly notice. I am now confessing my love to someone who doesn't exist as far as I know. When I let my thoughts drift, I can actually feel my hands caressing her skin, and the sensations run both ways as though I'm feeling what she feels as well. I can't see her face, but as I'm taking notes I automatically type out a name.

+3:05 - By this point, the love delusion is over. The enchanted electricity has returned in force, and I am also aware that time is seriously distorted. I'll run to my trip journal to record some new sensation, thinking that it's been a while since I added anything, only to realize that it has been less than ten minutes since my last entry.

+3:30 - The visual effects are starting to get interesting. They are still only obvious in my peripheral vision, but they are far more intense. Bright spots erupt into bursts of color or shimmy back and forth, while colored sparks appear in the darker areas. At some point during this phase, I grab some scrap paper and spontaneously write some free verse poetry, something I've never been able to do while sober.

+3:40 - Something inside me is screaming 'go deeper.' I find the leftover half-tab from my earlier test, cut it in half and pop it under my tongue. I've now taken a total of 125mcg this evening, though I swallowed the quarter-tab pretty quickly so I'm not sure how much of the chemical absorbed into my system. I really don't know why I did this, but then I don't really know why I got the 1P-LSD in the first place. Perhaps my subconscious mind has its own whims that I can't truly understand. I've spent many, many years trying to step away from myself - maybe this is how I had to do it.

+4:40 - I'm feeling an odd sense of normalcy - clearly I'm still flying, but I'm not feeling impaired at all. I feel very coherent and in command. I go ahead and administer the remaining quarter-tab (total dose for the evening: 150mcg) and pour myself some Woodford Reserve. For a change, the bourbon is anchoring me in reality.

+5:15 - Well, so much for 'normal.' I close my eyes for a few seconds and I witness some truly remarkable visuals behind my eyelids. I'm experiencing synesthesia, seeing the lower registers as shorter wavelengths (i.e. bass looks purple and treble looks red). I lay back on my love seat and put on a few local-ish acts to test it out. The different types of music produce subtlely different visuals - Kawehi, which is a sort of electropop, produces evolving geometric shapes, while the slower and more emotional music of Your Friend produces floral patterns that are more fluid.

+5:40 - I try to see if I can control the closed-eye visuals. Rather than letting my mind wander, I give my consciousness a nudge, putting partial focus on the woman I'd seen earlier with hopes of forming her face. As features flow in and out of my vision, I realize that she looks a lot like the protagonist in a novel I've been writing. I'm not sure if that's pathetic or amazing.

+6:00 - My mind is positively exhausted. I set aside my journal and try to power down my neurons. For me, this entails putting on YouTube garbage in the background while I work through my Steam backlog. I'd been playing a sci-fi horror game called Prey, but I've already had tentacled horrors creeping into my dreams even with no psychedelics in my system so I opt for some more casual fare.

+7:10 - I'm finally coming down. My focus is extremely tight and I have this rush of energy, all of which makes me wonder if I'll even be able to sleep after this.

+10:00 - After a lot of water and a diphenhydramine-melatonin cocktail, I go to bed. Sleep does not come easily - the quiet and darkness has made me well aware of 1P-LSD's staying power. I'm still experiencing the tactile sensations and visual hallucinations - they're subtle, but still enough to keep me from fully relaxing. I finally slip into a dreamless, sedate slumber.

AFTERMATH: I feel like I just flew around the world in an airship made from my own head. At the 50mcg level, 1P-LSD is a hell of a party drug, but that wasn't what I was looking for. If I wanted to cut loose, I could have quaffed a few beers or bummed a spliff off of one of my pothead friends. This was a wholly different beast, and having seen it for myself I can see how some people view these trips as insightful.

I might return to the lysergamide well one day, but not any time soon for a few reasons. One, this was exhausting, both mentally and physically. I wish it were as simple as a hangover that I could fix with a few bottles of water, but the intermittent indigestion and slight headache were the least of it. The full-scale assault on my senses and my feeling of self was simply draining. Second, as I said at the outset, this could have gone very, very badly. Perhaps one has to stand at the summit of paradise to see how deep the valleys go, and I see now how easily I could have landed in one of those valleys if the circumstances were slightly different.

If I learned one thing from this, it was how to step away from myself. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time, to the point where I fantasized about claiming some new fictitious identity and vanishing into the sunset. It turns out that I didn't really need to go that far. I just had to dissolve the old me in a little acid.

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 111443
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 31
Published: Jan 17, 2018	Views: 4,617
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