DOSE: T+ 0:00	0.5 hits	sublingual	LSD	(blotter / tab)
T+ 8:16			Pharms - Diazepam

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

13:17: It's a sunny spring afternoon, and I've decided, somewhat spontaneously, to drop some acid. More than seven months have passed since my first and only previous trip, which was rich but also a little bit harrowing. I don't want this experience to be quite as intense and so I'm doing approximately 65μg instead of 125. Or at least I think I am -- I cut the tab in half, but who knows how evenly the substance is distributed throughout the sheet?

13:21: As far as my "set" is concerned, low-level anxiety has been simmering all weekend. It was briefly dissipated last night by a couple of bumps of ketamine, but I struggled to get off to sleep. I didn't feel entirely clear-headed when I got up this morning, but the sunlight is a balm. I ate a substantial meal about an hour ago. I haven't had a drink since Friday night.

As far as my "setting" is concerned, I'm on my bed, in my room. I don't expect to leave the flat for the duration of the trip.

As far as my objectives for this trip are concerned, well, I want to tackle two things. Firstly, my issues with alcohol. And secondly, the question of how to go about regaining my intellectual curiosity.

13:29: I hope that I've placed enough beneath my tongue to lift me off baseline, but not so much that I'll be trapped in thought-loops for hours on end, coming to the usual morbid conclusions.

13:33: I don't feel anything yet.

13:47: It's hard to say whether or not I'm feeling anything. I'm listening to "Source" by Tycho.

13:54: I put on "Your Love" by The Prodigy and it seems to have unleashed something -- a not unpleasant tautness in my legs.

14:09: A languour has come over me, but I also feel quite nauseous. There's a pronounced ball of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. My head thrums, and I feel warm all of a sudden. This must surely be the prelude to breaking on through. . .

14:29: I continue to feel nauseous and uneasy.

14:47: I am most definitely under the influence. Nausea is still the prevailing sensation, but I feel light on my feet. My legs, both of them in their entirety, are like erogenous zones now. I've paused Music for the Jilted Generation to think. My sense of self is fucked, so I can't understand that -- despite the irony that is this isolation -- my actions have effects on other people. I mean, not many other people, but parents, friends and so on. It's time to shed the negativity if I can.

14:53: 'I've been drunk most my life, don't ask me why.' Don't ask because there are no reasons -- no good ones, anyway. I need to confront my drinking problem. I think I'm scared that I won't be able to cope without it. I've relied on it in so many ways, in so many situations, and it's true that without it I wouldn't have done, or been able to do, half the shit I always wanted to. But I can't go on as I am. It will bring me and my relationships -- in the broadest sense of that word -- to ruin. What stops me, then, from cutting it out of my life completely? What compels me to go back to it after doing my day or two of penance? I don't know shit about neural pathways -- I can't speak to the stuff that happens behind the scenes. All I can do is look at the evidence of my own behaviour.

15:01: Do I like myself? What is significant about the way that I would approach that question? I know what is bad in myself, and contemptible, and I live under the assumption that everybody else knows too. The reality is that they don't -- not necessarily -- and that in any case they don't care. But where does that assumption come from? What I definitely don't like about myself is this tendency -- amplified by alcohol -- to overshare. Do I do it because I want to be seen as troubled? Do I do it because my friendships are, in the final analysis, unfulfilling? My friendships! The acid is really seizing hold of my mind now, as must be obvious. I start with the seed of a single thought and end up wanting to pursue a hundred others. The nausea remains. I think it's time I returned to my music, at least for a bit. There are no real visuals to speak of.

15:13: "Jackie's Daughter". The visuals may be trying to assert themselves now. I'm trying to take on too much here. Relax.

15:18: "Eat Shiitake Mushrooms": the song that reminds me of the early days of mine and S's 'situationship'. We never quite gelled, S and me, and that is a matter of regret. But I retain a deep and abiding respect for who she is as a person. It verges on admiration -- but admiration from afar. All of a sudden the possibility that there are people out there with whom I might share a greater, more lasting connection exhilarates me. In certain ways, this 'situationship' has been an education. In certain ways it will be formative. I don't regret it in the slightest, but it couldn't have continued.

15:24: My parents. I recognise the need to cleave closer to them and their path. I understand that I've betrayed them. I betray them every day. And for the first time now I threaten to become tearful. But yes -- I've let them down. What has been done cannot be undone, no matter how hard we try to repress it. What I need to do is demonstrate to them that I've drawn a line under all that shite.

15:30: The fear that you don't matter to anyone except your parents. The fear that you do.

15:38: It's true that on acid you become attuned to the smallest things. I'm sitting on the carpet by my floor-to-ceiling windows and my eyes are drawn to the lone white gulls that circle above the streets of Tower Hamlets, all the way up to Canary Wharf, and also to the mass of weeds on the roof of the building next to mine. The breeze blows through the weeds, and the sun continues to shine, and I'm reminded that I would quite like to be in nature. Indeed, is London really the place for me? My job isn't mine, my behaviour isn't mine, my utterances aren't mine. What do I mean by 'mine'? I'm not trying to absolve myself of anything by the way. All I'm saying is that my life doesn't feel like it's my own. The fact that I should be sitting here now, contemplating the things I'm contemplating, is at some level ridiculous. How the fuck did I end up where I have? Then again, if you break it down it's not that mysterious. I'll revisit these ramblings tomorrow and guffaw at them, I'm sure.

15:48: I'm ready to evolve. But I suppose I'm looking for a satisfactory reason.

15:54: I'm not making any progress. It's like I'm writing for the sake of writing. I want to say something about the elephant in the room, namely late capitalism, but it's probably for the best I don't, even if declining to do so makes me feel guilty. Two and a half hours after dosing the tab is still rolling around in a pool of saliva beneath my tongue. Watching cars motoring along both sides of the A12 I'm reminded of what Brooks Hatlen says in The Shawshank Redemption: 'the world went and got itself into a big damn hurry.' And for what? 'More salaries, more calories...'

16:02: I get the distinct impression that I'm embarrassing myself with these streams of logorrhoea.

16:05: I'm watching a video on YouTube of an illegal rave that took place 30 years ago. I can't put into words what I feel when I see this heterogeneous mass of kids expressing themselves in the way that they are, so freely and authentically, unburdened by the fear of judgement. I can't put into words how much I wish I could have been there with them. My sorrow at the impossibility of visiting or reproducing that time is like a wound that hurts too much to be touched. How is it possible to feel such a connection to something that reached its zenith before you were born? And where are all these ravers now?

16:13: 'Far better, to mourn for rave, to point to its absence, than to pretend that it could be re-lived -- since re-living was what Rave precisely was not doing. That was what Rave was: an alternative to (Indie) re-living.' I will never not be obsessed by this.

16:38: I'm weak-willed where I should be resolute and resolute where I really shouldn't be. Reading Fisher. He really was something -- in many respects light-years ahead of his time.

17:00: I think I'm done with the mental aspect of this trip. I know what needs to be done -- or not done -- when I return to sobriety. I just don't know if I have the strength of character to see it through. As for the past, it's done but for various reasons I can't leave it where it belongs. It therefore weighs heavily on my present. Self-acceptance is important -- too important to be dealt with now.

17:18: The fear that all this soul-searching -- this very self-conscious stage-setting -- is merely an alibi for whiling away a Sunday afternoon. That normal service will be resumed tomorrow. Well, as far as work's concerned, it has to. I don't even want to think about work and my relationship to it. That should speak volumes.

17:26: The choice, I daresay, is between adulthood and adolescence. I write this as I watch those ravers from 1989.

17:35: I'm guessing the sun will set soon. The light outside is beautiful.

18:06: My mood wanes with the dying of the day. I'm terrified. I have been reduced to fear and imprisoned by it.

18:36: I'd be interested to know how, exactly, acid is supposed to combat alcoholism. The precise mechanism of action. I say this because I'm worried that I'll want to put the memory of this unheimlich state behind me by means of booze , which is familiar to me and without which I'm a shell. Then again, I haven't said a word in more than 48 hours, haven't seen another human being in all that time. And despite the two apples I just had I'm rather hungry.

18:45: Could it be that these periods of self-isolation are more injurious to my self than the blades on any pair of scissors? The privation can't be good for me, but I inflict it upon myself so that I don't have to inflict myself upon the world. I don't mean for that to sound self-regarding or to suggest the existence of a martyr complex.

19:10: As things stand, I am dead inside. I'm like Hermione Roddice, whose 'lack of robust self' meant 'she had no natural sufficiency, [that] there was a terrible void, a lack, a deficiency of being within her.' I need to make a doctor's appointment. I need to rebuild myself, without the 'help' of alcohol. Only then will I be able to be curious again.

19:38: I just read a very moving review of Women in Love by Howard Jacobson. The depths that Lawrence plumbed. I feel like I might be coming down now. I'm pleased I didn't take the whole hit. I'm haunted by those ravers, by Fisher, by "Moments in Love".

20:28: I flick through k-punk's posts. Tycho's "Source" plays. Perhaps it wasn't quite right of me to say that I am dead inside.

20:56: I think to that exchange in Le feu follet. 'Alain,' says La Barbinais, his face the picture of gravity. 'Life is good.' Like a shot Alain retorts: 'good for what, docteur?'. Now, there's a certain insolence in this response, in the child-like simplicity of it, but to the anhedonic person it is exactly that simplicity which chimes and can't be challenged. I need to learn that life is good.

21:01: I feel humbled by the machine-like operation of this substance. I feel weirdly cleansed -- nullified, even. I think it's safe to say that the intensity of my mentation is dimming. Some residual visuals remain. It's time to deconstruct the stage -- to pack away the frayed and battered matrix of cultural and literary references -- by means of diazepam. Here's hoping I can get to sleep quickly ahead of work tomorrow. I doubt it.

Exp Year: 2019	ExpID: 116737
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 26
Published: Nov 2, 2022	Views: 555
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LSD (2) : Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), General (1), Alone (16)