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Hysteria and Enlightenment
LSD
by vedu
Citation:   vedu. "Hysteria and Enlightenment: An Experience with LSD (exp116421)". Erowid.org. Sep 29, 2022. erowid.org/exp/116421

 
DOSE:
0.5 hits oral LSD (blotter / tab)
BODY WEIGHT: 52 kg
It was the end of an academic semester and we were about to leave our university hostel for our summer break, when one of us suggested that we do acid. The plan was made- we procured it and planned to do it in the evening. Our source said that the dosage was 150mcg per tab. We were a group of seven people with varying levels of experience with the drug. Some had done it multiple times, while some had never done it. Since it was my first time, I chose to take half a tab to be on the safe side. I split the tab with a friend while the rest of my friends had a full tab each. This trip report describes a condensed version of this experience that I can never forget.

6:13 PM
My friends and I were in a room on the top floor of the hostel building where we popped the tabs. I started sucking on my half tab while we had a good time talking and listening to music. A friend, N was playing a VR game.

6:30 PM
I left the room and went to the balcony in the hallway where I could see a panoramic view of the outdoors. The view was so breathtaking that I called my friends there and we enjoyed the scenery outside. One of them started playing Shpongle on a speaker. It went perfectly well with the view - there was a thunderstorm approaching from one side while the sun was setting on the other. The clouds were casting God rays. Trees were waving with the wind and the vegetation with the village scenery went on for miles. Even without experiencing any effects, it was a breathtaking sight.

6:35 PM
I started to feel mild euphoria and a rush. Others also started feeling similar effects and were giggling and having weird expressions. My friend "R" started to feel an energy going through his body that made him clench his fists and groan. I noticed that I was fixating on objects and glancing at their details more frequently than usual. Something definitely felt off. I was automatically smiling, having random bouts of giggling and I felt a strong rush of energy in my body.

6:43 PM
We went to my room as it had moody, colourful lighting and it was well decorated with posters and artifacts. We continued to talk and listen to music. The rush became more intense and it felt like I was starting to go crazy. Energy was building up in my body and I didn't know what to do which made me nearly panic. Amidst the buildup, there were short periods of relaxation that would come and go in waves. A feeling of nausea started creeping in and my stomach was churning.

6:55 PM
I was hyper aware and everything was intense and overwhelming. The energy increased even further and my face and limbs started to go numb. Talking and doing basic tasks was getting harder. The nausea occupied my senses and I felt like I was made of vomit. Things felt dream-like.

7-7:20PM
(what happened from this time period is a blur)
The numbness, rush of energy, nausea, and confusion continued and it felt like I would explode. The muscles of my mouth had tightened (this continued throughout the trip). It started to look like everything was grainy. My vision and body was vibrating with the energy and it felt like I could see in thousands of frames per second. I was in complete sensory overload. I could feel heat and cold simultaneously on different parts of my body. When I ate biscuits, their texture felt intensified. Even music felt like it had some sort of texture. Hell, everything felt like it had a texture!

Because of how overwhelming it was with people around, I decided to go to the hallway for a moment to fill my water bottle from the dispenser. As entered the hallway, I was hysteric after looking at my surroundings. Everything was swaying and it felt like things were loosely held together. Reality was beginning to disintegrate. Meanwhile, my friends were also starting to trip. R was blowing on the lights, having trouble holding a cigarette, and gawking at his surroundings.

The day to day things that I was thinking about before the trip felt distanced from my headspace. I let go of my phone and stopped taking trip notes for a while. Aspects of the trip like visuals, the body high, and my bodily feelings of hunger, nausea and so on just stopped mattering and felt pointless. Everything felt one and it became pointless to tell things apart. My inhibitions reduced and my conscience was affected. I could tell why people can do crazy things on acid.

As I went to different rooms with my friends, I realized that I was getting loose and falling apart or melting into the ground. What I knew as 'I' was just a bunch of loose concepts which I was holding onto. I imagined that if I were to drink water, it would flow out through the gaps in "my" disintegrating body, which was now becoming part of the surroundings. When I did that just to be sure, it obviously didn't happen the way I thought it would.

7:30-8:00PM
The kind of visuals that I was expecting had begun. Things were distorting and changing colours. Lighter coloured objects had a gradient going from pink to green. I could notice details in things that I normally wouldn't. Walls looked like they had stains and patches of brown.

8:00-8:30PM
We realised that we had to mark our attendance in the register at the gate.We had to do this while tripping balls and not arousing suspicion. We went in pairs. Walking down the stairs was difficult. As I reached the attendant's desk on the ground floor, I was experiencing peak visuals as I saw the open book. I lifted the pen, found the row of my name, navigated to the day's column, and signed in the box. All of this while the book was warping, swaying, and changing colours under my hand.

In N's room, I began to realize that my way of thinking and looking at the world was changing in some way.

Me: "You remember how ten minutes ago I was fucked and couldn't understand anything? Now, I have grabbed onto one bit of reality and I'm holding on to it just to feel what it's like and it's fucking amazing!"

I meant to say that my episode of confusion and de-realization brought by the come up was ending. The unpleasant physical symptoms had reduced. There were a few things which were constant and I could grab onto them to make sense of what was happening and enjoy the trip.

We were watching trippy videos with psychedelic music and the visuals and scenes shown on the screen bled into the surroundings. They weren't just confined to the screen.

8:30 - 9:00
I was on a different plane of thinking. I felt that the reality of daily life was a foreign concept. Mine had disintegrated and I could begin to see the other side through it. Hunger started to set in so I went to my room, found a packet of cake and sat on the bed to eat it. I took a moment to look around and I was awestruck. My room, in all its detail and beauty, was breathing, swaying, changing colours, and in a way, almost trying to talk to me. Sometimes, objects, especially heaps of clothes felt like they were people. I went back to trying to open the packet with all my might and then ate the cake.

I came to the realization that while recording my experience, I was using the limited language of reality to explain something that is devoid of that mundane reality- this was simply a futile exercise, like how explaining three dimensional space to a two dimensional being would be.

I found myself in N's room again, having deep conversations about the nature of the drug and how we were feeling, while he mixed a bowl of curd rice in a comical way. His face, way of interacting, his quirks, and so on made me develop a higher connection to him that made me tear up. I then realized that everyone's face had developed funny, cartoonish features.

9:00-11:00PM
I went from room to room (rooms of people who were also tripping), had conversations with them and watched videos while we experienced the effects of the drug.

We looked back at the time when we popped the tab, and it felt like an eternity ago. For me, time was non linear and I couldn't tell what happened in the correct order.
We looked back at the time when we popped the tab, and it felt like an eternity ago. For me, time was non linear and I couldn't tell what happened in the correct order.
I was having profound realizations about the nature and meaning of reality that I simply couldn't put down in words. I would repeatedly try to explain it but fail in the process. My mind was working in a totally different dimension. The problems that humans face in day to day life felt stupid. I thought that I was superior to those who were not tripping.

Four of us went to the top floor again, to look at the nightly scenery and talk about what we were feeling.

Later, I found myself in my room, with the comedown starting to happen. While talking to my roommate, who was not part of the trip, he said that I was appearing totally normal. I made him record videos of me trying to explain what it felt like. At one point, I wasn't sure if I was coming down. I didn't want to be in that dimension of thought forever.

After a while, I remember being in the hallway with my friends who were also coming down. I was extremely relaxed, care free, and felt brave and wise. I thought that I could face any situation in life in this state. I could see life from a bigger perspective. We sat on the floor and continued to talk about the experience. I felt so relaxed that I unbuttoned my shirt and lied down on the floor.

12:00 AM
I was starting to feel sober and my superior thinking powers were fading away. Real life things such as hunger, bodily functions, and so on were now part of my headspace. I was still very relaxed, enlightened, and I felt like I was invincible. I watched a movie with my friends in N's room and then went to sleep in my room.

7:00 AM
I woke up early in the morning feeling completely normal. I had never thought half a tab would do this to me. The trip affected me in ways that I had never expected. There were three versions of me - the one before the trip, the one during the trip, and the one right after the trip, with all of them being totally different. Now I get what LSD is. I definitely see myself doing it again, but not anytime soon.

Exp Year: 2022ExpID: 116421
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Sep 29, 2022Views: 280
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LSD (2) : General (1), Small Group (2-9) (17)

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