DOSE:

1 hit

oral

LSD

(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

205 lb

The Light and The Void

Writing this about an experience from several years ago, at the Oregon eclipse.

Some context:

I had been getting very little sleep (~6hrs/night) for the four nights prior to this experience, between getting things settled with my job, and getting down to the festival. I waited in line for about 12 hours prior to getting my ticket scanned, and had slept in a park the night before, because I was too cheap to get a hotel or airbnb, and it felt adventurous to just wing it. This is all noteworthy because I was exhausted when I decided to take the acid, but I thought the energy of it would balance things out, and my excitement for the festival was overflowing. In retrospect, it would have served me better to rest more before this, but all's well that ends well I suppose, and this experience moved me.

I should also note that after sharing this batch of acid with fellow psychonauts, the feedback has been uniformly some flavor of "holy shit... this stuff is nuts". I was not new to LSD, but none of my previous trips had thrown me into similar territory as I was about to enter. Looking back, I do believe this was legitimate LSD and not some weird research chemical - I had verified a sample with an Ehrlich reagent, and subsequent experiences were always strong, but definitely LSD. It was just some very special stuff :)

I ingested (supposedly) 220ug LSD from blotter paper as the sun began to go down.. I wandered around the grounds a bit, and eventually made my way to a stage that had deep house music. I am not normally a house music person but decided to explore it and be open to it. As the come up unfolded, I had several waves of an uneasy feeling, paired with what seemed like fatigue.. There was a very disorienting and blurry quality to the experience. I had to sit down for several periods of time to try to get my head on straight, but seemingly to no avail. Some friendly dance floor neighbors talked to me a bit, but the interaction felt incredibly awkward, as my thoughts were jumbled and unfocused. I found myself yawning a lot and continued to feel tired and uneasy.

After several waves of this, I decided that maybe I just needed to chill for a few minutes somewhere away from music. I made my way over the hill behind the stage to a small lake nearby, and sat down on the hill. I probably sat here for 5-10 minutes and continued to have a very tired, blurry, and uneasy quality to the trip. I decided that actually, I might just need a nap, though I couldn't quite figure out what the implications of doing so were. This was a night I'd planned to be out and listening to music and dancing… And here I'm so tired that I'm fixing to nap..? What? I'd taken acid probably 30-50 times before this point, but had no frame of reference for how my body felt. This situation was setting off alarm bells in my head, but I told myself there wasn’t really anything I could do other than try to give my body what it was asking for.

I close my eyes to nap...

At this point, I really lose track of how time unfolded.

Behind my eyelids, I'm in complete darkness. I.. what.. am.. I? My physical body and my surroundings begin to fade from my awareness as I see a singular point of white light form. It exits my body from my heart's center, the center of my chest. I experience a sense of wonder as I observe the light. It's beautiful… radiating outward into the darkness from a point…

The other part of what I now experience is essentially a void of nothingness... blackness... emptiness that is vast and unforgiving. The light is the only thing that exists... It's this singular point of white light, and a vacuum of darkness on all sides. I realize with growing horror that the darkness is everywhere, on all sides, exerting an ominous force onto the singular point of light. VAST darkness... infinite darkness...

VAST.

I feel a sense of dread as the darkness exerts growing force onto the point of light. I recognize that the light is everything that exists... and yet here I am. Doesn't that surely mean that I am the light? Whaaaaat the fuck? Is the void death? Unrestrained nothingness, forever, in every direction... I am not sure, but I'm fucking terrified.

The realizations and mental reasonings described above take place in what feels like a flash. The blink of an eye. Time snaps forward and I simply react. Not with my physical form (which I am still unaware of), but with my mind. I exert immense mental force outward from within, forming what feels/looks somewhat like fire or like a whip. I lash out at the void with all my energy, desperate to drive death away and protect my(?)self from it... the light explodes outward, driving the void away.

My eyes snap open.

I have no reliable sense of how long the experience lasted. I would guess between one and ten minutes. At this point, I'm deeply shaken by what I've seen and felt, and I'm not sure what to make of it.

I sit and collect my thoughts, and the experience begins to fade. Tripping is weird sometimes because something absolutely wild can happen, and a few minutes later, you can be so engrossed and present in whatever you are doing, that you kind of forgot about what happened 5 minutes ago. That’s kind of what happened. I think I was so focused on being present in the next moments that I compartmentalized the utter madness I had just experienced.

So naturally, I then go and party until the sun is nearly up. Had a great time for the rest of the night and the electric feel of the acid completely wiped away my initial tired feelings.

I think I'm still processing and integrating the experience after several years... I ponder it at length on occasion...

One day, it struck me like a lightning bolt that what I experienced was oddly similar to how the big bang is described. A singularity, which was at one point, everything in existence. And an explosion outward into everything. To me, this is one of the most thought provoking experiences of my life... What does this say about time, consciousness, the material universe, perception, the human experience, etc etc etc...? I make no claims whatsoever, but will forever be changed from this experience.

Wow.

Exp Year: 2017	ExpID: 116366
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 23
Published: May 24, 2022	Views: 1,256
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LSD (2) : Festival / Lg. Crowd (24), General (1)