DOSE: T+ 0:00	3 hits	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)
T+ 0:10	2 hits	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

170 lb

Three and a half years later I am recalling this event. I have experimented with many different drugs, most on just one occasion or two if I felt the first time I had not gotten the full experience.

The one and only time I took LSD was in the summer of 2004, at the age of 19. I had been curious of LSD initially about 3 years earlier in high-school. I grew up in the far south suburbs of Chicago. A lot of my friends had tried it when I was about 16 with interesting reviews. But when I decided to join in the fun was just when the supply disappeared for 3 years, unlike any drought that anyone around had heard of, and I knew all the right people with reaching connections. There just wasn't any around. I've heard it had to do with an extremely large bust of a nationwide supplier around that time. Anyways after 3 years a reliable friend and source attending DePaul University offered an opportunity. A friend of mine and myself after consuming nearly a 750ml bottle of Ketel One Vodka with red bull decided to take the 1 hour drive to DePaul to get some LSD.

[Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]

We had taken Psilocybin mushrooms before, I having had some wild trips, but him seeming extremely resilient to them. My friend Matt hardly tripped at all from a quarter ounce of shrooms months previously that caused everyone else to trip hard from an eighth ounce.

When we got to DePaul in Chicago there were about six others who took the blotters, 1, 1 and a half, up to 2 a piece. The price was $10 each for a rare opportunity. My friend Matt and I being drunk wanted to buy 10 for $90 and take them all. The supplier would not negotiate but did give us 10 for $100 after we promised to only take 2 each. We lied, we initially blatantly took 3 each in front of the group just as they began to peak from 1 or 2 each. We were drunk and not thinking straight. Then after 10 minutes when it hadn't kicked in we decided that it must be weak and took the rest. 5 blotters each for our first times.

My compassionate dealer/friend knew we were fucked way before we did. He wasn't compassionate enough to supervise us for the next 10 hours, apparently he had a test in the morning, but he did give us some soothing advise as the beast began to kick in 30 minutes later. My friend and I were escorted outside to a corner convenience store and told that no matter how intense our trip got that within 12 hours it would be over no matter what. Our trip, mine and my friend Matt's were coming up so fast that we needed that reassurance. Simultaneously our drunkenness was coming down. After my dealer/friend left us even after I begged him not to, myself and Matt sat in his parked Jeep on the corner in the University Dorm area freaking out as our trips escalated. We went from being shocked at the intense come up to being very scared very quickly. For each of us our only safety valve was each other, and our cell phones, both with less than full battery charge.

Describing the drug effects we had at this time is difficult, especially his, since I am not him. I personally remember helplessness. I knew I couldn't mingle with people without them seeing that I was really fucked up. I knew I couldn't relax, we felt that were unsafe there from, and unsafe from any outside human interaction, especially police. My only comfort was that I wasn't alone. Matt began calling his closest friends, all the while we were sitting in his parked Jeep. He was telling them how fucked up he was, scared, and in need of help, but unable to describe where he was or how he/we could be helped. He actually attempted to call the pastor at his families church, which he had on speed-dial. It was unsuccessful.

We began to talk about how what we were doing was so wrong and how we we're putting our kids at jeopardy, the kid's being the most important thing. I had a 1 year old at the time, he had one on the way. I have never been more horrified. Matt's cell phone began to beep from a low battery. I just didn't want to face this trip, when seemed to be gaining intensity exponentially, alone. My vision was distorted, my mind distorted 10 times worse. Then Matt tells me that he has to go home. I begged him not to, I told him he wouldn't make it 2 blocks, he would crash, and end up in jail or a mental institution when the authorities found him in his condition. I couldn't talk him out of it and wouldn't not go with him. He took off, speeding away, nearly going off the road into a road sign 30 some feet ahead before squealing around the corner and out of sight.

[Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]

I was alone, scared to death to have any interaction with another human, who I felt would surely see I was insane, and I would be arrested, interrogated (which seemed like it would be worse than a beheading), and put into an insane asylum. I came to the conclusion that I had to just keep on going until the trip ended. It was torture and I knew it would be an eternity. It was pitch black, everywhere I looked I seen some sort of a threat, paranoia, hallucination, darkness. It was midnight and I was in an area just off campus with very few lights and campus security that at the time seemed to me like the most threatening vehicle imaginable cruising past about to stop me at any moment. There was no way possible that I could speak to a person in my state.

My cell phone was my only lifeline, it was low on batteries but provided the time. My only hope was the time, that it would pass enough until my trip became manageable. I would look at my cell phone and see a time of 12:47, I would walk what seemed like hours, pacing around neighborhood sidewalks that seemed to take the will that climbing Mount Everest would. I knew I had to keep on moving no matter how endless it was, it was my only hope to live out the remaining 60 or so years of my life in the manner that I was accustomed. I would look to my only lifeline, my only hope for inspiration that some time had passed and I was closer to the come down. I would resist looking at my phone as long as possible so that when I did more time would have passed. Then when I finally did, it would read 12:48. One minute of actual time passed had been such a mental labor that another 12 hours seemed beyond impossible. Although I had never been very religious, I turned to a higher power in my time of need, and thought of my son to get through the next 5 torturous hours.

Then within minutes of sunrise at 5-something a.m. My entire world transformed from hell to an uneasy but improving heaven. The sunlight shined upon building and trees. I had the great privileged of walking through the DePaul public plant and flower garden area. It was the most beautiful place I had ever experienced. At around 6 a.m. I entered this public area that had to be an extension of the DePaul horticulture department that euphoriated me in an unimaginable way. The paranoia was subsiding while at the same time the visual hallucination had become more vivid than everything in the fresh sunlight, on a dewy 60 degree early morning. I was learning to control my trip to make plants and buildings come to life, to move and breathe in a way that was more satisfying and entertaining than the greatest sexual encounter of a lifetime, and I'm a borderline sex addict. More people began to flood the streets gradually that morning just as I was gradually more comfortable to see them in passing.

While this part of the trip was so addicting I also at the same time knew that I had to get home. I was exhausted, has a disgusting layer of abnormal sweat covering my entire body, was freezing to the core after a night of 50 degrees in jeans and a T-shirt, and longed for the comfort of home and my bed. I attempted to ask for connecting train directions to the suburbs at an entrance to one of the smaller lines I encountered, but when I approached the woman at the window her face morphed, and I couldn't get a word out. I ran away after my mouth wouldn't work. I was still too fucked up to figure out train routes, ask for directions/help, or work a pay phone.

An hour later I built up the nerve to ask another train employee at a different stop for instruction but just as before could not speak when I approached her, I mumbled and then briskly escaped. It must have about 11 a.m. when I finally was able to get a hold of my long lost friend Matt, who had left me hours earlier. I reached him from a payphone to his cell, and to my honest amazement he actually made it home, 40 miles in his state. I thought he would have crashed for sure. He told me it took him 4 hours to get back, a 1 hour drive, he said he had gotten lost all over the city, gotten direction from the homeless, and from addicts. He nearly crashed repeatedly, couldn't see anything but shiny lights on the expressway, but somehow made it home. And somehow made it back to get me around 3 p.m. After about 15 pay phone calls to his cell while he was en route for about a combined 60 total. In our states' of mind it was not easy to give or receive good directions.

Overall it was one of the greatest experiences of my life, in ways that I'm at a loss to describe with words. It is an experience that I am extremely grateful to have had and do have come out of safely. I have not taken LSD since then in the past 4 years or so, but may be open to it in the future. It seems nearly impossible to get as much out of a potential future trip as I did from my first. I'm not ruling out another experience of this magnitude, but if I never trip again at least I will know that I definitely did not go through life without having a REAL trip!

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 69082
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Jan 11, 2013	Views: 20,400
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