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Comparisons
LSD & DOC
Citation:   bluedolphin. "Comparisons: An Experience with LSD & DOC (exp48025)". Erowid.org. Nov 26, 2005. erowid.org/exp/48025

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
2 hits oral LSD (blotter / tab)
  T+ 5:00   smoked Cannabis (plant material)
  T+ 10:30 4.0 mg oral DOC (powder / crystals)
BODY WEIGHT: 150 lb
The Timing Of & Order In Which Things Happened

Day 1
4:00pm -- 2 hits of blotter LSD was eaten by me, 2.5 hits by my friend
11:00pm -- Some weed was vaporized (and continued to be done so throughout the night, every few hours or so)

Day 2
2:30am -- 4mg of DOC was eaten by both of us
10:00am -- The approximate time I fall into a not-quite-sleep-but-maybe trance
3:00pm -- I become conscious again (or wake up?) and feel quite rested, still tripping.
10:30pm -- I fall asleep.

Day 3
3:00pm -- I start writing a trip report, and having smoked a bowl I notice definite after effects of the trip.



Why Trip Again?

This is a question that has become harder to answer lately. But, in this case, I just happened to have four and a half hits of LSD and I wanted to share them with my friend Jeff because I would be moving away from him in less than a week. I have many reasons for moving, but parting ways with Jeff is the one thing that really sucks about the whole situation. Let's say I have about four 'best friends'. Unlike some people I never try to narrow that list down to one person, and actually hope that list grows over the course of my life, but either way Jeff would defintely be one of those people.

So I had to take the acid with him. More acid will always come around. It's not like I have 'acid hookups' or anything, but it just does. Plus I hadn't taken LSD since... well, shit, probably since the last time I ate like 8 doses + 4 rolls which turned out to be meth bombs and flipped out for a few days. No wait, haha, actually I took it once towards the end of the summer. But anyway it had still been a while.

And really quite a while since I had any kind of LSD trip like this!

DOC wasn't even part of the plan yet


I Put Two Tabs Of LSD On My Tongue, Jeff Took Two And A Half

I gave him the extra half hit because I'm pretty good at tripping out at lower doses, and also I had no idea if these hits were weak or good or what. I gave away most of the 10-strip I started with to three friends and they had mixed reactions. So...

We went for a walk. First we walked over to his house, not so far from mine. Then we walked over to a nearby lake. By the time we got there I could tell my vision was getting sharper and I could feel the acid was definitely starting to work. Mostly this was manifesting in things looking very beautiful and serene. It was really nice out though. When we got back to my place, where we intended to spend much or all of the trip, we decided to keep walking. So we walked up to a small hill nearby and watched the sun, low in the sky with all kinds of clouds of all different types and layers moving across the sky. By the time we walked back I was feeling the LSD much more definitely, and objects that had simply appeared brighter, sharper, and more outstanding several minutes ago were now starting to subtly rearrange themselves into materials made of shifting, moving patterns, and the larger object itself was starting to shift, grow, or shrink in a cyclical breathing-like way.

So we went back to my room. I don't really know what we did during the come-up. Except, come up. And as it turned out we came up quite high. I remember at 7:00pm we finally realized the time, and I thought, wow, usually I'm not tripping this hard until several hours from now, hahaha.

Around this point several other kids came in my room. They're cool kids, and they've all tripped before and knew what we were up to. However as soon as they came in it was really quite obvious that Jeff and I had so much of a stronger bond than I ever would/could/should/wanted with these other guys. I think Jeff was thinking more or less the same thing, because we sort of shut these other guys out. Basically conveyed the idea to them that we were tripping face to the point where we're too deep inside our heads to chill with them. Which we were.

I think I told them I'd chill with them later for some late night drinking, maybe.

So now it was just myself and Jeff again, sitting across from each other in my room. But things were starting to get a little crazy. For example, if I looked at Jeff he would look like an Egyptian Phraroah. In full costume! And then the 'scenery' behind him would take on an Egyptian theme. If I looked at Jeff right in the eyes I noticed my visuals and trip in general would intensify almost exponentially.

I mentioned to Jeff, 'If I look straight into your eyes, everything goes crazy', or something along those lines. And then we realized we were having more or less the exact same trip. The same thing was happening to him when he stared into my eyes.

At this point we decided, allright, well, let's stare into each others eyes and trip out for a while.

And then we both reached a very profound state of being. Through our eye contact, and the level of trust we had with each other, we were somehow communicating -- but at the same time, not -- and, well, this is pretty much unexplainable. This would be the first of several phenomena to amaze us both during this trip.

The visuals were totally off the hook when I was staring into Jeff's eyes, and he into mine. I saw him turn into Buddha, surrounded by a beautiful psychedelic outdoor location that was constantly in flux. I saw him turn into several deity-looking things, many of which had perpendicular heads like those in the work of Luke Brown.

That image by Luke Brown reminds me of what I was seeing. Especially the perpendicular head thing. Jeff said he was seeing perpendicular heads just like that too.

I also watched Jeff age, and he turned out looking a lot like his father. Then I watched Jeff shift into various versions of himself in every different race. These visions continued, taking themes from various cultures and points in history. It was like the LSD was showing me alternate versions of Jeff that were also him at the same time. Or could be him? Or were him? Or he might be again?

By this point we were both amazed, and had confirmed enough things about each other's experiences to realize we were riding the same wave. We began to get into some pretty interesting discussions regarding the nature of time, space, how all this could be possible, whether it is real or not. Big questions. And some of you might know it is difficult to communicate on a strong LSD trip. For one thing, it could be difficult to form coherent sentences one minute, and then the next minute I might be able to explain something really really well.

For another thing, my mind was often trying to tackle several topics at once, meanwhile observing beautiful visuals and other psychedelic distractions.

But we conveyed a lot of our philosophies to each other, meanwhile having them challenged by the very nature of what we were currently experiencing. We challenged each other intellectually, going back to redefine things, going off on tangents, coming back to the original point when he or I would remember what we were talking about,... 'Oh yeah!'

At some point Jeff noticed the copy of Be Here Now sitting on top of a stack of books in my room. Or maybe I noticed it and caused him to notice it. He observed that, in spite of me obviously thinking this book is some good shit and really consider it the best book I've got, he never really read it.

I think he knew he could easily get sucked in to the book if he were to pick it up. For it seemed, not so long ago, we had come to the agreement that the best way we could possibly be spending our time was doing the exact thing we were doing. Which to me, was interacting as humans, and great friends, learning from each other... I mean, we both play guitar and love to jam, but both agreed that even trying to jam on LSD -- at least on *this* trip -- would probably be awesome, but we'd rather sit and talk.

So I said, 'A lot of what I'm trying to get at is expressed more clearly in that book up there.'

But I tried not to push. It was his choice, and he finally decided to open it up.

So we read that together for a while. The brown pages, of course . With Jeff sitting next to me, I found myself reading this book much more critically minded than the last time I had read these brown pages. There were some points we got, some points we found to be elaborations by Ram Dass that don't really get to the real points. I won't get into Be Here Now much. Everyone should make up their own mind if they want to read it, and then make up their own mind if they agree. I think we both found the book really cool to read, although we never finished it.

Around this time... 12:00am? ... another guy came into my room and put on a CD. I had no idea what it was but he kept looking at me like I should know. I couldn't figure it out because he kept skipping into the middle of tracks and giving me what seemed like 5 seconds to figure it out. I was like, throw me a friggin' bone here buddy! But then I heard the guitar. Well, fuckin A, if it isn't Trey Anastasio's new CD! Wow that sounds pretty good!

Thanks for the CD but you gotta go... we're too deep inside this trip.

Jeff asked him if he had 'just walked into my room'? A very good question, I thought, but put pretty bluntly. Then we made fun of other people, and it was pretty funny.

I should probably mention that I felt incredibly dank during this whole trip. It was incredibly easy on my body, and I didn't feel tense at all like I have many times before on LSD. We both agreed, many times, that this was some bomb acid.

So, as our peaks wore off, but we were still quite tripping, we decided to have a mixed drink. Why? Tradition perhaps. Or perhaps we felt like we 'got the trip'. It was in no way intended to end the trip, deny the trip, or anything like that.

But then something occured which caused us to stop drinking before we'd even finished our first drink. See, we had both tried DOC recently and found that, at lower doses, it resembled very much a lower dose LSD trip. We both became fascinated by the possibility that DOC could match what we'd just experienced. For some reason this question was really quite relevant to what we'd been discussing.... were there really several paths to the same peak?

Part Two, In Which We Take DOC

Given our current situation, it seemed, why not?

We took a moment to think very clearly. We will be tripping pretty much all day tomorrow. We know this. There is a good chance most of that time will be spent in this room, deep inside our heads. We know this. We don't have much food besides some cereal and soda and water. We know this.

Ok then, let's do it. And we both dosed between 4-5 mg of DOC, having estimated that this would be a good dose to attempt to recreate the intensity of our LSD experience. We were not trying to aim for the *same* trip. But to see what DOC would do at the same level.

Skip forward a little while after eating the DOC, and its about 3:00am and we've come down off the LSD peak for sure, and can feel the DOC creeping in. We take advantage of this time to play some Tekken 5 in the living room because we know nobody else will be around and Tekken 5 is the shit. We had some pretty sweet fights in Tekken. The funny thing is, even though we were probably talking a little bit of trash talk (as is customary), we were complimenting each other on good combos and well fought fights regardless if we won or not.

I went to pee and in the bathroom I noticed a can of shaving cream glowing, and then it levitated. I knew this wasn't the LSD anymore. In fact, I could notice a distinct difference in the way DOC takes a material and rearranges its appearance in your mind. LSD came from under the surface... DOC comes out of the air and everywhere in between.

Soon we were getting pretty high again, and decided to head back into my room and hang out. During this period I was thinking in a very scientific manner, organizing all the differences between LSD and DOC in my mind because I felt I should really be taking advantage of being able to make such a great comparison between two chemicals which have been compared a lot lately, including by myself.

It took a little while, but a couple hours after we dosed the DOC we were back to a similar level of intensity that the LSD had given us. In my mind this was a pretty great acheivement. The differences were subtle, but many, and obvious. One of the first clues to the differences was the body feel. DOC simply felt a little different. LSD felt like pulsing, flowing, 'lysergic' energy flowing through me. You have to have had LSD to know I suppose. DOC felt very smooth, and also can't really be classified as having a 'buzz', euphoric as well but nothing like MDMA, focused as well, but not like amphetamine. Maybe like a very smooth subtle amphetamine, but distinctly psychedelic. Almost like an amphetamine, but I also found it very relaxing. I could relax in any position. Well, anyway, it feels very *good* and I wouldn't agree that it feels just like amphetamine. Also, increasing my dose with DOC doesn't seem to give me any extra energy. The body feeling was equally smooth as 2mg.

But the trip was very different. Jeff was the first one to notice the 'spirals'. I believe almost anybody who's tripped at this level on DOC knows what I'm talking about. Suspended in the air, there are spirals of energy that you can see. Some of them flow through the air like DNA strands in 3-D. Some of them form in objects and seemed to draw me in.

Actually, there was quite a bit of activity going on in the space between objects. The air was thick with what looked like sine waves of energy, composed of bright fractal dots and tiny circles radiating different colors. The majority of them were mostly-white light but some of them were extra colorful. Also, there were clusters of these colored energy orbs that would form in three dimensions at different places in the room. These moved about with what appeared to be some intent. Intent of what or who?, we wondered.

Objects were in flux / motion / patterning similarly to the way LSD made them, but there was a clear difference in the way in which this took place. DOC visuals are like an overlay, adding dimension/color/movement/pattern to something from the space between your eyes and the object. LSD appears to come from within, and even on higher doses of LSD I've never seen so much activity in the space between.

Also on DOC, twice, I saw a glimpse of some kind of portal or window into some other kind of space. I didn't get a good enough look at them.

Jeff and I tried staring into each other's eyes again, to see how it would compare to the LSD earlier. Like before, the visual intensity increased dramatically, but the nature of the visuals was different. Instead of historic/cultural themes, they were a unique kind of repeating pattern. Like, things in my vision would get reflected into mirror images, forming a pattern that would slowly overtake almost all my visual field. Jeff's face itself, if that's what I was looking at, would distort but seemed a little more alien -- or at least less like something I could associate with something else -- than with the LSD.

So the DOC matched the LSD in visual intensity, but it was different. Hopefully that was described well enough.

Now, in terms of thought, DOC seemed a bit more clear-headed. We were still talking about much of the same concepts during the times when we weren't trying to figure out all the fascinating things we were seeing... as it was our first DOC trip at this level of intensity it was pretty novel. However it seemed as if the LSD took us on more of a directed 'trip' than the DOC did. I found I had more control over the direction the trip went with DOC, if that makes any sense. Almost like LSD trips are predetermined and DOC trips are of your own making.

Closed eye visuals were very fast-paced on DOC. If there was any way in which this trip seemed to have an amphetamine like energy it was in the pace of the movement of patterns, spirals, and pulsating orbs in my closed eye visual field. Occasionally something photorealistic, apparently created by my imagination (for example, three dimensional neon noodles dancing in patterns on top of a solid rotating plane of some kind) would break through. At one point all this hectic motion behind my closed eyes formed a tunnel which spiraled downward (I believe my head was facing down at this time...). I traveled through this tunnel until I saw something undefined. Too bad it was undefined, because it seemed to be the source of the spirals.

Music appreciation is greatly enhanced on DOC. I can compare this to LSD again: On LSD the music playing seemed almost like a soundtrack to our trip... in other words the music got deep inside my head and was almost un-noticeable until you stopped to notice it, and then realized what a major role it was playing. On DOC I was really drawn to the music, and payed deep attention to every note. The music also seemed 'fitting' to the trip but I was much more aware of it. I listened to Trey Anastasio's new 70 Volt Parade album which had been brought by earlier and thought it was fantastic. Both of these substances are incredible for appreciation of music, but music seems to be perceived differently. I was definitely more 'into' the music... in fact, very much into the music on DOC. Perhaps it has a greater degree of music euphoria, while the LSD has a greater capacity to warp the music into your other senses and thought process.

At around 8:00am we decided to watch the movie Kingdom of Heaven, as our peaks had died down on the DOC a bit and we were starting to get a little worn out from so much active thought. This movie turned out to be extremely confusing, and we both thought it pretty much sucked because we couldn't figure out what was going on in the plot. Everyone seemed to be acting irrationally. During this movie I spent more and more of my time with my eyes closed, and realized I could fall into a kind of trance that was incredibly relaxing. Actually, I became convinced I could fall asleep easily, now, only 8 or 9 hours after eating the DOC. Jeff agreed that this trance state was possible and could perhaps even lead to sleep.

So we parted ways, as he walked back to his place and I lay in bed.

.......

I regain consciousness and look at my clock. 3:00pm! What just happened? Had I slept? Huh. Well I really wasn't sure but it really felt like no time had passed, and I also felt somewhat refreshed and much more energetic. It was like I had slept, but I couldn't tell if I really had.

I also 'woke up' still tripping at a light ++ level, which is a very easy trip on DOC. I took a shower and enjoyed that, then took a quick drive to get some fast food because I was really deprived of food by that point, having only eaten a sandwich in the last day and a half. Or two. Or who knows.

I chowed down on my Burrito Supremes and watched some TV. Really not much to say, except that I remained tripping mildly until 10:30pm when I fell asleep until 1:00pm today.

Today I still feel a strong afterglow, from a mix of both DOC and LSD. After smoking grass I was lifted back to a very light ++ that was definitely remnants of the trip, not just because it was good weed

......

So, that's that. Back to back LSD > DOC. What a trip! Definitely no regrets with this one.

For the record, I preferred the LSD over the DOC, but not by much. If I had taken the DOC first I suspect it would have been much more intense because DOC does have a longer peak and overall duration than LSD, and there would have been a lot of overlap. But I do feel that any lingering LSD played a minor role on top of the peak DOC experience.

The DOC was more clear headed, but also more confusing because I had never tripped *like that* before. Definitely a lot of cool and strange phenomena going on in a DOC trip, and it definitely seems like a good drug and very nice to my body as well. However the LSD trip had an air of importance and perfection that the DOC did not quite have.

But that was some pretty damn good LSD. Most other acid trips would have a hard time beating that DOC. It's not a contest though, although I thought of it that way at times during this extended trip... as it seems they can coexist very well with each other.

Exp Year: 2005ExpID: 48025
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 26, 2005Views: 34,798
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LSD (2), DOC (357) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Multi-Day Experience (13), Mystical Experiences (9), Glowing Experiences (4), Combinations (3)

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