DOSE:

1.25 hits

oral

LSD

(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

Pre-Trip Musings

Friday night I was at a keg party, tossing back some beers and having a pretty good time, when my friend Nick approached me and asked if I wanted to take acid on Sunday. Initially, I was unsure. Among the many considerations I had to take in to account was the fact that I didn't exactly feel like taking LSD. Since there have been times when I felt like doing LSD pretty frequently (and did so) I thought I might as well give my poor battered brain a break from psychedelics as long as I don't feel the urge to trip.

And the fact that he wanted to take LSD was another concern. First, I only had a little bit of blotter stashed away and it was damn good stuff so I was going to save it for a summer festival, or maybe a candyflip with my girlfriend.

I did happen to have a little bit of 2C-E that I hadn't had a chance to properly trip on yet (I had tasted 3-4mg, which didn't do anything positive for me). So, because I was honored that of all people Nick had asked me to be the one to trip with him, I told him that I would certainly be there with him, and almost certainly take a psychedelic with him that night, although it would most likely not be LSD.

Now, I've tripped with Nick a few times over the past few years... a few times on DXM, a couple times on morning glory seeds, once or twice on shrooms, and a couple times on LSD. For the most part, though, he doesn't trip very often at all and stays away from nasty drugs. I basically turned him on to LSD earlier this year and now it seems to be by far his favorite drug. These days I am pretty picky about who I trip with and the environment I trip in. Luckily Nick had not yet been crossed off my list of people I like to trip with, or else I would have had to make up some excuse why I couldn't do it ... Another factor that made me choose to trip with Nick is the fact that he is an exceedingly smart guy and is earnestly interested in finding answers to the 'big questions' posed by the introduction of a psychedelic drug to one's mind. In other words, he approaches psychedelics with respect, which is something I try to do. Especially with LSD, because of the many psychedelics I've tried, LSD is by far my favorite and has brought me the deepest, most relevant experiences. So I try not to fuck with that.

Let's Trip

Sunday afternoon came along and I wondered how much 2C-E I would eat. But then Nick came over and opened up a bit of tin foil containing about 1.25 squares of purple blotter. Mmmmmm LSD.... so of course I had to open up my own little bit of foil which contained my own tiny stash of the very same purple blotter (which had been stored not-really airtight and room temperature for the last 3 months). These blotters were really of top quality - I had eaten just 1 a few months back and had a very colorful +++ trip, although that particular trip was a bit too hectic for my tastes because there were so many people tripping at my place that night and I was worried about drawing any unwanted attention.

Anyway it took me about 10 seconds of staring at my blotter before I decided I should definitely take LSD and save the 2C-E for another time.

Since Nick had 1.25 blotters left, which happened to be about 40% more LSD than he'd ever tasted before, I decided to dose the same amount. After we each drank a big glass of red wine we took our doses. I noticed that Nick had eaten 1 blotter and left the .25 blotter bit in his foil.

'Hey, you forgot some!'
'Yeah... I don't know...''
'What are you going to do, waste it? That's the last of your acid so you better eat it now... plus that little bit could make all the difference.'

I actually had no idea that the extra sliver of blotter paper would make the big difference that it did.

Stage 1: The Rocket Ride

After we dosed we spent some time looking at funny web sites and listening to Sound Tribe. We both noticed the faint metallic taste in our mouth that LSD always seems to bring. The come-up was happening fast, in stark contrast to the long, gradual come-up I experienced with this LSD last time. Nick seemed to be coming along about five minutes behind me.

The first things we noticed were a mood lift and a lowered threshold for breaking out into laughter. Right after this, I was getting kind of fidgity as I felt the rushes of restless energy start to flow through me. This felt somewhat like amphetamine, but my thoughts and actions were far more scattered. We kept looking at funny web sites because there isn't much else to do while you're waiting for a trip to kick in. Also I was a little nervous about people coming around during the trip, and I'm sure Nick was a bit anxious about tripping in general, so it was something to take our mind off the come-up.

Not half an hour after putting the LSD on my tongue I was getting visuals. The floor was shifting in segments, just a little at first but quickly increasing. Wood grain began to flow, and soon I could make out the faint neon-yellow-electric ora which seems to enervate off objects on LSD.

Around this time one of my friends who knew I was tripping that night sent me an instant message:

'the electric yellow has you by the BRAIN BANANA haha'

We both thought that was pretty funny, and then started thinking about it and realized it was pretty much an accurate statement. The restless, almost nervous energy was building and sitting at my computer became too intense. Now, I've experienced this restless LSD-energy plenty of times before and I know there are basically two options: First, there is the option to allow yourself to bounce off the walls and get wrapped up in a whirlwind trip. Some people routinely choose this option, but I personally find much greater value in the alternative. The second option is to channel all this energy, learn to control it, and to direct it throughout your body. I find that I can direct the majority of this energy into the palms of my hands, and by sitting cross-legged I can enter a state of deep relaxation.

And I would personally prefer to be deeply relaxed than to be jittery, tense, and without focus.

I guess Nick hadn't yet figured out how to control this energy because as the trip was getting stronger he started wandering around and looking fairly confused. I have a lot of faith in LSD's intent, so to speak, so unless somebody is obviously distraught or having a truly bad trip I tend to let them work out their own issues while tripping, so I didn't intervene as he wandered off in apparent confusion. Besides, forming sentences was becoming difficult and I was really in no position to be a trip sitter.

Now I was alone in my room, and the Sound Tribe was starting to sound a bit too repetitive and 'electronic' for me. So I switched to The Breakfast, starting at the first track of one of my favorite live shows. Ahh, much better. I closed my eyes to check out the CEVs, because 15 minutes ago there had been none, and I was amazed by the beautiful waves of technicolor which flowed around in infinite 3D space behind my eyelids. As each psychedelic wave washed over me I felt a feeling of peace that I have only experienced a handful of times on LSD.

After a few minutes I broke my trance and opened my eyes to see that everything was breathing, flowing, and patterning very nicely. My eyes were also playing tricks on me. For example, I kept thinking I saw somebody walk by the entrance of my room out of the corner of my eyes, and then I would quickly look and nobody was there. This happened a few times and I decided it was probably because I didn't know what Nick was up to, so I went to check on him. He was downstairs watching TV, which seemed really strange to me. He said something like, 'TV is good'. At the time I thought his trip must not have been that interesting for him, and watching TV was just about the last thing I felt like doing, so I went back upstairs and got lost in my thoughts for a while.

Next thing I knew it was probably half an hour later, because I had been so absorbed in deep thought and surfing the cosmic peace-waves in my mind that I didn't really know what was going on around me. I wouldn't say this was a result of a dissolving ego... I was just extremely relaxed and in a very groovy state of mind. Dispite my relaxed state I noticed my body was a bit tense and my heartrate was elevated (though not to a distracting degree) but I didn't dwell on that.

I decided it was time for a change of scenery, so I went over to my girlfriend's room which is brightly decorated with nice tapestries, colorful lights, and is generally a pretty sweet environment to be in while tripping.

Nick happened to be in her room too, still seeming very confused and asking my girlfriend stuff like, 'You're sober, right?', and frequently asking me, 'How long ago did we eat that?' For a while I could not answer his questions about time because though I was pretty sure what time we ate the acid, and I was pretty sure what the numbers on the clock read, for some reason my brain would not do the simple math needed to answer the question. My concept of time was totally out of whack. Eventually I realized that it had only been about three hours since we had dropped the acid, even though it felt much longer.

So I spent some time with Nick and my girlfriend basically hanging out. My girl has taken her share of LSD and psychedelics and she did an awesome job putting out a positive vibe during our time spent with her, even though she was worried that Nick had gotten in over his head.

Stage 2: A Spiritual Cleansing

Pretty soon she left to cook some dinner and I laid down on her bed while Nick laid down on her floor below the bed. During this time the rough edges of the come-up had smoothed out and I seemed to have settled into an intense, but comfortable plateau.

The visuals were absolutely stunning. I have had more outrageous hallucinations in the past, but the beauty of what I saw that night was unmatched. In addition, as with past LSD trips, the visuals I experienced were deeply symbolic and directly linked to my thoughts and feelings. The razor-sharp and crystal-clarity of my thoughts during this period was a complete contradiction of stereotypical impressions of LSD as a drug which has a huge mindfuck. While it certainly is true that under the wrong circumstances, LSD can be a confusing mental funhouse-from-hell. But I was so deep in the groove and in such a state of beautiful calm that my internal dialogue was as clear as it would be if I were sober...

... as clear, yes. The same? Hell no! But back to those visuals...

I was watching the ceiling for a while because it was so fascinating. It had a rough stucco texture and segments of the ceiling would crawl, lift up, float away, and change colors quite dramatically. While this was happening I was aware of the walls changing colors, patterns forming on the walls and all kinds of objects, and the lamp in front of me (which has five bulbs, all different colors and pointing in different directions) moving around quite freely. I noticed an aloe plant on top of a shelf which was planted inside a nice piece of pottery. The leaves/branches of the aloe plant were in motion like tentacles of an octopus under water and in my mind this plant took the form of LSD. I wouldn't go so far to say it was an entity, but it did take the representative form of the parts of my mind that were under the control of the drug.

This aloe plant then seemed to mediate between my visuals and myself, both directing the visuals (because it was the LSD) and assigning meaning to them. Immediately after this I noticed that some segments of the ceiling would blur, regardless of my attempts to focus on them, and then these segments would violently shake, before finally the other normal segments (if you could call them normal, they were still squirming around and changing colors quite dramatically) would overtake these messed up segments. Very quickly it became obvious to me what was occuring. These segments represented parts of myself; some which were pure and some which were impure. As a segment of the ceiling began to blur and vibrate, I thought about what aspect of me that might be, and when I realized what it was (sometimes thanks to the aloe plant) it would be overtaken.

I was witnessing a war between good and evil in my own brain and it seemed like the good was kicking some serious ass. Then this very thought seemed absurd to me, for the aloe plant seemed to be telling me that 'of course the good always wins'.

When there were no more impure segments of ceiling left to be flushed out I looked back at the aloe plant just in time to see a translucent spiral coming out of the plant and heading towards me. At the very instant that spiral touched me I felt my spirit being quickly scrubbed down, as if the aloe plant was giving me a final spot-clean. This happened almost instantaneously, and in my mind there was no doubt about what was going on. When it was finished I felt totally pure and clean, and even more relaxed than before.

It's a Long Way Down

Though the visuals were still stunning, I felt there was no more need to stare at things. I heard The Breakfast playing from my room and thought it sounded pretty sweet, so I left Nick laying on the floor (he hadn't budged) and went over to my room and laid on my bed. I probably spent 45 minutes listening to the music, feeling that every note was perfect, and watching the visuals behind my eyelids react to the sound.

After a while my girlfriend came into my room and laid down on the bed beside me. We talked about the evening, how my trip was going so far, and how Nick was doing. I felt that I was starting to come down slightly, and after talking to her for a little while I said I'd go down and eat some food because I realized I was very hungry (LSD always makes me really hungry at some point during the trip, plus I hadn't eaten much that day).

So I wandered downstairs, looked at the food, and then wandered back upstairs without eating. I went back upstairs because I wanted a sweatshirt, but once I got back upstairs I felt like staying there. So I listened to music some more, spent some time looking at my feet and thinking that feet take a lot of bullshit compared to other parts of the body.

Then my neighbor came by and I gave him some pot to smoke. He also ended up smoking a little DMT he had, which was a pretty halarious process. I was pretty much coherent by this point but still tripping at about 50% intensity of the peak. This ended up taking a while, and then I wandered over to my girl's room to see her and Nick watching Ice Age on DVD.

About half-way through Ice Age I guess Nick started remembering who he was. Apparently he experienced complete ego loss and that's why he was watching TV... to relearn how to be human. And apparently he was even further gone than I thought he was for quite a while. Luckily my girlfriend is awesome and she chilled with him through rough times he had when his life, memories, and humanity slipped away from him.

When he came back to reality he seemed overwhelmed by the intensity of the experience he just had, and was amazed how strong the experience was and how much difference that extra 1/4 tab of LSD made. To be honest I didn't expect to trip as hard as I did either! But LSD doesn't seem to demolish my ego so much as let me pick it apart and toss out the parts I don't like, at least at the doses I've taken. Mushrooms, on the other hand, have a tendency to tear my ego to shreds. I find this is only useful once every long while, so I much prefer to work with LSD.

After that we drank a little wine, ate some food, watched Beavis and Butthead, and chilled out, both of us in awe of the power of LSD.

I got to sleep around 4:30am (12 hours after dropping, which is pretty good for me), got a solid 7 hours of sleep, and woke up feeling great the next day.

LSD remains my #1 psychedelic ally... and it never ceases to amaze me. My dose felt like 100ug, maybe slightly higher (1.25 tabs from lavender crystal). Keep in mind that my friend Nick is sensitive to acid, and I tend to get a lot of mileage out of relatively low doses of LSD too. So your mileage may vary. But, when I hear people say it takes more to get much in the way of visuals, that pretty much just cracks me up :)

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 46857
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 4, 2005	Views: 39,243
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
LSD (2) : General (1), Glowing Experiences (4), Mystical Experiences (9), Small Group (2-9) (17)