DOSE: T+ 0:00	2 hits	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)
T+ 0:30	1 bowl	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

200 lb

I had been doing psychedelics for about a year before this. My first trip, on LSD, changed my life. I went from a lazy but intelligent bum who didn't care too much about school to an incredibly motivated student overnight. That being my first trip, and it having such a profoundly positive effect on me, LSD has been my favorite drug ever since. I've tried a few other psychedelics - shrooms, 2-CE, and salvia - but they've only ever just been fun and didn't really have any profound effect on my life. Subsequent acid trips weren't as life-altering, but I had never had a bad trip. I had never tripped incredibly hard, either. That would change this day.

My friends and I had just acquired some blotter paper that was supposed to be extremely potent. I've had very weak acid before (my first trip was on 7 hits of some pathetically weak stuff), and thought I had very strong acid, but I was wrong. My friends and I all decided to take two hits. One of my friends had tried it earlier in the week and said that we were in for a crazy ride.

15 minutes after dropping, I started to feel the effects. That's much quicker than acid usually works for me - I'm usually the slow one that doesn't experience anything for an hour and half. My friend offers me some weed. I'm not a huge fan of weed, but it has always enhanced my trips in the past, so I figure why not. I should mention that weed affects me differently than most people - just getting moderately high makes me start tripping while on no other drugs, and smoking while tripping usually more than doubles the intensity of the trip.

After smoking, all the patterns around the house start becoming much more intense and apparent. I had only dropped like 30 minutes earlier, and this was usually something I didn't start seeing until a good two hours after dropping. I go into my friend's room and we chill for a good 10-15 minutes. My friend owns a sitar, and every single note I played on it sent an orgasmic feeling running up and down my spine. I notice that the room is starting to look like a forest. That was sort of weird - I had never tripped so hard that the room transformed. Eventually, the entire room was a forest, with my friends sitting on what looked like tree stumps, and the sitar looked like a bamboo tree. I could still play it like an instrument, but this was starting to creep me out.

Next, a movie was put into the TV. I can't recall the name of it, but it's a rotoscope film about a post-apocalyptic future where everyone is hooked on drugs. I hadn't seen it before, but the intro was very unsettling. Some guy wakes up covered in insects, and he is jittery and afraid. I start to have irrational thoughts - what if I'M covered in insects?! My heart starts racing faster and faster. I can hear it pounding in my chest. I pull out my phone and see that it hasn't even been an hour since I dropped. Realizing that this is the start of a bad trip, I decide to try and do something about it. I start thinking that I should call the hospital. I open up my phone and start to dial 911, but luckily I stop myself and decide to see if I can calm myself down by heading to my room.

I leave the room and walk down the hallway. Another one of my sober friends grabs me and brings me into his room. He shows me a picture of some sort of angel shaped cloud on his computer, and I think that the angel is coming out of the screen and I just run out of the room wordlessly, doubtlessly confusing him (he didn't know that I was tripping). I continued down the hallway, and it felt like the entire hallway was collapsing on me. The ceiling, floor, and walls were all curved inwards. As I walked down the hallway, parts of my vision began to look like fireflies, popping in and out of existence. I thought that this was pretty cool, but my heart was still pounding in my chest. That was the only sound I heard.

I get to my room and spend a minute or two pacing back and forth. I still had some of my wits about me, so I tried to calm myself down by just thinking. That wasn't working, so I left my room and visited a very experienced psychonaut friend of mine down the hallway, who was sober. I asked him what to do if I was having a bad trip. He had never had a bad trip, but he told me to just try to calm down and remember all the fun trips I had had. I told him that I wanted to go to the hospital, and he said that that wouldn't do anything. They would just strap me down and I'd have to wait there until the trip was over, which would doubtlessly be even more miserable. For some reason, the fact that the hospital couldn't help me calmed me down a tiny bit. I was on my own - I had to calm myself down.

I was sitting down on his couch, but the entire world was wavering and shifting - sort of like going back and forth over an entire image with the blur tool in photoshop. The only colors I saw were dismal greys and blues. I thought the couch was going to lift up off the ground. My heart was still pounding, but I was still managing to keep my wits about me. Part of me was telling myself that there was nothing to be worried about - I was just sitting on a couch, and nothing was happening around me. My subconscious was panicking for no reason. I nervously glance at my phone over and over. Minutes seemed like days.

Another psychedelic-experienced but sober friend of mine comes into the room. He has had a bad trip before, and starts relating to me very well. This isn't helping very much, but I notice that my mind is starting to drift away from reality. I felt like I was going to pass out from the unbelievably intense anxiety I was feeling, and this was very soothing to me. I definitely wanted to pass out. As I feel like I'm drifting out of consciousness, I start tripping far beyond what I knew tripping could be like. Rivers of beautiful color started rushing past my head, strange green tentacles with eyeballs began growing out of the floor, and the world itself was dissolving.

The next thing I remember is floating on my back in a warm yellow colored river. It is calm and serene, and I have no idea who I am or where I am. That was OK, though. I am floating towards an amazing mansion made out of red light. The sky is made out of shimmering green and blue jewels. Instead of grass, the ground is just a translucent green color. My worries and anxieties were completely gone.

Next, my dream world shifts. All I see is a very expensive looking leatherbound book, floating in a sea of color. The book opens, and the golden pages fill with words. I can read the words, but I do not know their meaning. Very slowly, meaning comes back into the world. I start to understand the words. I feel like I'm very young again, learning to read for the first time. I realize that I'm reading my own biography. I then realize that I've completely forgotten who I am. The panic starts again. I fear that I've completely lost my mind. I don't remember taking a drug - I don't even remember what a drug is. I start feeling as though I've gone completely insane.

This panic attack isn't nearly as strong as the earlier one. Instead, I feel a mad scramble to memorize what is written in my biography so that I can remember who I was. In the book is my name, my major, where I go to school, the names of some of my friends... They all look completely foreign to me. Moreover, my biography is telling me that I took something called 'LSD', a drug that makes the world seem crazy. I have no idea what LSD is, or what drugs are. My entire universe still consists of this book floating in a sea of color.

After a few minutes of this, reality starts leaking back into my head. I realize that the book I was holding is actually a piece of paper my friend gave me, because I had been sitting on the couch asking who I was. He tells me to just keep reading the paper over and over, and I'll start to remember all of it. He calms my mind by describing to me exactly how I feel - that I've gone insane and forgotten that I've taken a drug. He tells me that the same thing has happened to him before, and he is still here. He tells me that I had just been sitting on the couch for the past half hour, and I'm just fine.

I still feel like I need to memorize the facts on the paper, since I don't remember who anyone is or what anything is. I do need to pee really bad, though. I carry my piece of paper with me to the bathroom so that I don't forget who I am. After peeing, I come back to the room and notice that the paper is gone. This is very frightening to me, since I see losing the paper as a metaphor for losing myself. My friend quickly runs and brings it back to me. This soothes me.

After some talking, I am pulled out of the pit of despair and begin having an amazing trip. I start to remember who I am, and everything seems new again. I feel like I have been reborn. My entire psyche was pulled apart and then rebuilt, and I have survived. The world seems fresh and interesting. The rest of the day was spent in absolute euphoria, as I gleefully enjoyed every sensation as though it was brand new again.

Overall, the trip was definitely a positive experience. Being pulled out of absolute misery by my friends made me appreciate friendship on a whole new level. Even bad trips can be an opportunity for growth. That being said, my next trip was pretty much a train wreck. It wasn't a bad trip in the normal sense, it was just an entire day of feeling very physically unpleasant followed by a week of snappiness. It's taken a couple of months for my mind to return to almost-normal, and I've been avoiding psychedelics in the interim until I feel completely ready to head back down the rabbit hole.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 78253
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 23, 2010	Views: 18,163
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