DOSE:

1 hit

oral

LSD

(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

This may serve either as an enticement or caveat for psychedelic trippers. I've gone into an egoless oblivion twice on tryptamine psychedelics, once on mushrooms, and once again on lsd about 7 years later. This is a report on the latter lsd experience, in which I was out of my life/body/identity for around four hours. That's a long time when you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground and are bent over in time warped tryptamine space!

I was renting a small cottage by myself in the Indian Himalya, in a place close to the origin of the ganges river, which also registers the area as very sacred to hindus. I was interested in esoteric types of Indian mysticism such as aghora tantra and advaita vedanta and this interest led me, I believe, to experience what I did when I did. I feel strongly in the saying 'be careful for what you wish for, because you may get it.' I put a lot of mental thought into cosmic consciousness and the void, and I got an unexpected and massive taste of it.

A very young German man I met in a small himalyan town gave me a hit of acid, and warned me 'This is VERY special acid. Maybe only take half.' Seeing the tiny hit of blotter, I truly had my doubts that it could have much effect on me. I've tripped many many times. I was very wrong about the acid. It was stronger than anything I've ever had by a long shot. And that was from one hit! I was also having numerous stomach problems at the time, which is a common experience in India. I was taking some antibiotics which were very strong. I wonder sometimes if this had a chemical reaction with the acid, strenthening it considerably. It may just have been truly special acid. I don't know. I tend to think that it was because of my intense practice that month with vedanta, which relaxed me to the point where some acid thrown in the mix would trigger a full on psychedelic blow out.

I chose a day to take the acid. I tried to clean my head out of it's rubbish for about a week prior to the chosen date. I know that nothing can can prepare one for a wild and unique trip, but I still think that these type of preperations are helpful. There was, however, no way to prepare for what would happen to me.

I meditated for two hours at sunrise, than dropped the whole hit and went into the forest. At first it came on very sweetly, after about 45 minutes. I sat on a rock about halfway down the mountain and felt the magic of the sunlight. It was warm and loving and I felt very good. I remember thinking that the acid was indeed very clean and gorgeous feeling. I foolishly thought that I was having a blessedly beautiful trip because of all of my preparation and mental training. Slowly, though, the trip began to escalate.

I was very happy and delirious, and I think a peculiar kind of drunkenness was around me because I didn't really notice just how out there I was getting. My sense of time was totally shot. Some farmers off in the distance where shooting their rifles to scare away a mischevious band of monkeys who regularly raided all of the crops on the mountain. The last thing I remember while I was still lucid, that is I still new my name, date and location, was the sound of the riotous monkeys screaming and running down the mountain sounding like charging bison or something. I remember feeling some fear because I didn't want to deal with those monkeys in my state. They are very intrusive and clever little bastards!

I had nothing to fear with the monkeys, but rather had much bigger things ahead. This is when I lost consciousness. It was around two and a half hours after dropping the hit. I was so far inside my mind that I had no clue who or what I was. I've heard of others who reach this state with acid, but it seems rare. I encountered not a single person for several hours, leaving me on my own to decipher this new universe which seemed to be made of pure thought.

Looking back on it I have many memories of what I felt, but at the time I was lost in a place where there was no up, down, left right, sight, sound, scent. I tested this new world to see if there was pain, because I remembered pain, and I tested it by reaching out a grabbing briars with my hand. As the thorns dug into my hand I remember laughing because it wasn't at all painful but rather ecstatic! Thousands of colors shot outwards from where my hand contacted the thorns! My senses had blurred togethter fully and I felt that I was invincible.

I continued the experiments, thrusting myself into thickets and letting all of the thorns cut my body. It just felt liberating. My reality had truly crumbled. I felt that now I truly 'knew' that pain and all material was a product of the mind and I didn't need to be a slave to it. Reality was finally peeled aside, appearing as an illusion. It's strange that as I thought this, I didn't even know my name, but I thought in terms of vedanta philosophy.

I wonder if I could have gone farther. I wonder if I could have really hurt myself in that state. Without fear of harm or dying, I could have jumped off a cliff or who knows what. Fortunately I didn't. I did climb up onto the roof of my cottage and stare into the sun, an acid trip cliche. This is where I felt that I may be a being who is 'between worlds', something that had recently died. I felt this once before on mushrooms several years earlier. I was there again, but of course I had no context and no way to find myself to compare this current trip to the previous one.

I began to feel that there was a 'mystery'. When my old reality slowly creeped back, there was a fear. I knew that I knew something, but what? Where the hell is this place? It seems familar, but how? Being in India, on the other side of the world, made it even more surreal, because it clearly wasn't MY world or MY familiar territory. The setting lent itself to me feeling that I had somehow (died? entered cosmic consciousness? gone insane?) sublimated into an alien place.

At one point a felt such a profound emotional pain that I screamed at the top of my voice to try to purge the horror from me. I was standing in front my cottage. As I screamed I thrust my arms behind me and smashed a window out with my elbow. the glass cut my arm open. The pain felt magnificent. Again I wonder how much further I could have gone hurting myself.

The scream alerted the farmers up the hill, whom I was renting the cottage from, as to my strange state, and someone came down to see after me. I did not recognize the man, although I knew him well as we had talked often. I thought that he was a 'concept' in my brain, a part of my mind which was oriented to challenge me somehow into solving the 'mystery'. I thought that all of these bizarre and alien feelings I was having was me entering another level of consciousness, that the mystery I was feeling was the 'test', the challenge, like in classical literature, 'before entering these gates you must face a great challenge.' I thought this man who came down to see me was like an adversary, a program sprung from my mind. His questions to me (are you okay? what's going on? etc.) seemed like game. I remember, embarassingly, that I was laughing and yelling at him.

He went back up the hill to his home which had no phone, and debated with his family about whether or not to go up the mountain and hitchike to town to get the police. He was certain I had cracked up.

I started to come down from the acid after about 6 hours after dropping. When the man came back down to check on me, I decided to ask him the key question, 'who are you?' I was beginning to think he wasn't my 'adversary' but rather a friend from my 'former life'. He told me his name and instantly I knew all that had happened. I 'remembered' that I had taken acid, after four hours of raving and wandering around!

I was astonished. For the second time in my life, I had gone totally off the deep end tripping. I was covered with cuts and my arm was bleeding rather a lot where I put it through the window. I was embarassed at acting like a lunatic and frightening my very gracious Indian hosts, but more important was my sense of amazement.

I wasn't scared, though very disturbed by what I'd seen. I had felt a great joy as well as a total abyss where no love exists. There were many things which are far too complex or deep for me to even put into words.

I was seeking a spiritual experience, and I got one. I wasn't ready for it. I haven't tripped since then, 4 years later, because I feel no need. I want to explore that area more, but I need to find a different approach. The potential was there in that trip to have really hurt or possibly killed myself. I'm still gathering bits and pieces of mental debris from that mind explosion.

Exp Year: 2000	ExpID: 33841
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 6, 2007	Views: 16,571
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