Ltd Ed 'Solve et Elucido' Art Giclee
This reverberating psychedelic giclee print is a gift for a
$500 donation to Erowid. 12" x 12", stretched on canvas, the
image wraps around the sides of the 1" thick piece. Signed
by artist Vibrata, and Erowid founders Earth & Fire.
One Simple Decision
LSD
Citation:   Smashedupsanity. "One Simple Decision: An Experience with LSD (exp20047)". Erowid.org. Aug 8, 2005. erowid.org/exp/20047

 
DOSE:
7 hits oral LSD (blotter / tab)
BODY WEIGHT: 160 lb
Well, I had been in a self destructive mode for a few months. Doing way too many drugs, way too often. I had done acid only about two to three times before and the first time had been life changing, I had the perfect first experience and decided that a bad trip was not possible for me after such a night. Boy was I wrong.

I’d just started reading a lot about existentialism and had just finished reading a decent amount about Zen Buddhism. Another piece of media that had influenced my trip slightly was a film titled ‘waking life’ but anyway I’m starting to ramble so I’ll get on to the bad trip night.

I’d met a girl just once and I knew a few of her friends but had not actually gotten to hang out with any of them before, I gave her a call and we decided to do something that evening. First we had to wait for her friend to get off work, he was a DJ at a really cheesy bar, so the night started off kinda strangely. After he got off work we met up with another one of her friends who suggested we get some drugs of some sort and go to his place to listen to him spin (a DJ who is into trance/hardhouse) she and I (I’ll call her X from this point on) and her first DJ friend (y from now on) decided to try to find some LSD. Y had never done it before and X had about four times never more than two hits. I had bought ten really, really weak hits the previous weekend and had about seven which barely caused any hallucinations, so I decided I’d like a normal type of trip for the night. So we left X’s car and hopped into the second DJ’s house who we’d be going to (from now on z) in search of some LSD. Needless to say we found some and I bought plenty for the evening (25 because it was supposed to be good and good stuff is hard to come by where I was living). And we headed off to Z’s house.

We stopped along the way and bought slurpies and candy (unfortunately) Z was spinning some psytrance on his amazing system and the rest of us were sitting on a couch listening and had taken two hits each and waited. WE waited about two hrs and about the only effect was that a ball with a smiley face seemed to be winking at me (things always wink at me when I take LSD or mushrooms, things like houses and toys, pretty much anything that has a face like structure) I had taken about three grams of vitamin c that day because of a cold I was getting over, and I think that may have been suppressing the visuals. I was getting giddy, and started thinking some strange thoughts, however I was feeling letdown thinking that I had bought 100 dollars worth of bunk ’cid. Y started to get pretty funny though but X was becoming quite irritated with the two of us, and was a source of some seriously bad vibes. I decided to pretty much leave her alone for the rest of the night. Now comes the turning point of my evening. For some reason (it’s something to do with the self destructive things I do, when things are going well for me I seem to throw a wrench in them) I found a pair of scissors and cut off a strip of five hits, I figured if this stuff is weak then that would be appropriate. (I hadn’t waited long enough, a mistake often made when people take drugs).

I put the five hits on my tongue and sat back down on the couch. X asked me to open my mouth, and when she saw the strip she smacked me and became quite pissed off that I’d done something so ridiculous. About ten minutes later I started feeling really high (the next five likely hadn’t done anything yet) and Y and I decided to go for a stroll. Z’s place was a two story duplex, and while in the stairway I lay down and completely lost track in my mind of which way was up. After about twenty minutes we finished putting our shoes on and went out into the beautiful Monday morning. We got out on the stoop and promised not to leave the yard for fear of getting lost. I was becoming quite high, without the hallucinations however. I noticed how large Y’s head was though and laughed about it for a good five minutes then when I wiped the tears off Y said he wanted to go back in.

We hadn’t left the stoop yet and when we turned around we were faced with an enormous problem. Because the house was a duplex there were two doors leading to two different living spaces side by side, and neither of us could remember which door we had just exited. HAHA, really funny. We laughed for about twenty minutes until our stomachs hurt too much to laugh, but then it became an actual problem, we honestly didn’t know which door to go into and they both looked exactly alike. We didn’t want to try the wrong one for fear of getting a pissed off neighbour on our case (by this time I was becoming extremely high and the absurdity of the world around me was becoming hard to ignore) Finally X came out making it look so easy to exit the right door (for her it was, but we forgot that) and another ten minute spell of hysterics began. We went back inside.

Now, somewhere between the door way and the basement, I decided that there isn’t anything in life that someone can want that they can’t have. (Thought it would make a great bumper sticker, and became quite annoying in stating that.) X became down right pissed off at my repeating and ranting and told me to go outside. Her anger set off something in me, and I went in sat in the stairway (I was afraid to go outside). At this point my bad trip started. I started thinking in circles, started relating things in ways that I felt were amazing coincidences, e.g. The way every man really looked the same but our mind made the physical appearance differences (I dunno, it seemed right at the time) and how Aristotle was right with his four elements, which I changed into the four colors in the windows symbol then divided them into halves, pretty soon the whole world was made up of only black or white, wrong or right, the dark side or the light side, Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker, one or zero. I then thought my life was so confusing and difficult because I couldn’t decide so I began to meditate. I ended up thinking that everything in existence was one simple mass amount of data and that we were simply a insignificant little part of it trying to take as much in as possible, in some sort of greedy way. Like all of existence were a wall, and we were just a short scratch along it’s side. (My first trip I was in a bar, and sitting and on a huge screen directly across from me they played Pink Floyd the wall onto for the first time I’d ever seen it.)

So I suppose I had the “Another Brick in the Wall” thing inspiring that thought. Anyway it was like I had an epiphany like existence became clear to me. Everything fit, except that I had to chose one or two, black or white, etc. So I went back downstairs and tried sharing this with my peers who were very unreceptive. (It probably sounded like rambling as I don’t have the best verbal expletive skills, although I doubt getting across what I was thinking is humanly possible even though I am now trying.) X started yelling at me, and Y was laying on the floor dropping a ball and expecting it to fall to the ceiling and then becoming disappointed when it didn’t. I decided on the dark side so I threw an expensive remote control to the wall and then laughed evilly.

At this point the idea of a black and white fractal started running though my mind and the utter pointlessness of existence hit me hard. From that point on everything that anyone said to me was a question, that the rest of my life had led up to, and I only gave the wrong answer. (What was really happening I believe is I was being asked questions on how to get home, and I was giving up only nonsense to which they would sigh and become annoyed with.) When they sighed it was like everything in existence had boiled up to that one moment, and that all of this absurd existence had been conjured up by some god like beings for eons never ending in hope that I would answer the question correctly. And I couldn’t. And when I didn’t (from now on I’m stating the experience as I thought it was happening not as it was because I was beyond reality), it meant that everything was doomed to repeat itself over and over until I did. The catch was that I was certain I never would, so we’d spiral off into eternity with no hope of ever knowing why we were there (the sad thing is that part is true, we never will know). All of a sudden X and Y were these omnipresent (because they were always near me to make sure I didn’t do something stupid) beings that were toying with all of mankind, like they had created us on a bet to see if I’d answer this question right, or not. I think at that point I truly understood Kantian idealism. For time and space made a lot more sense to me. I realized that every atom I was made up of had been going though time, and had been in space for ever as far as I knew and would always be as far as I knew.

By now X and Y were trying to send me in a cab, but I had no cash, so they walked me down the street to a sev to get cash, I only spit out the wrong answer to the nature of our existence when asked for my pin number so they couldn’t send me, not even on a bus which they would have (that would have been even worse). I tried to steal a car (I thought maybe that was the answer to the question of existence) that was followed by a lot of yelling and threats, then I ate a pepper that had been sitting for possibly days on the sidewalk, and they walked me back to Z’s house and they decided to wait till they could drive me home.

On the way home I decided that maybe sitting (in the Zen meditation type of way) was the only way to endure eternity, and kept trying to sit, which was always followed by more yelling. The next bit is hazy, colors were changing, I had visions of being on huge cliffs staring into vast empty space, it was all scary in the sense that I realized I’d never answer the question of why I was in existence. Next I got back into thinking about the black/white 1/0 thoughts, and decided that I was an electron, and these questions I always had to answer though life were really the random patterns electrons would travel along if given equal conditions for either way (I don’t know what the hell that means).

When we got back, I started lazing around on the front yard, and became ill and threw up a bunch of candy I’d eaten before and thought this was some sort of punishment for never giving the right answer. Then I thought about what a sick joke being stuck in existence for eternity was and asked X and Y why. Why had they done this to me. It was horrible. I felt the full responsibility for all of everything being stuck in existence, not being given a choice, which meant I was responsible for all war, famine, sickness, pain, boredom and uselessness life affords our universe. I relived my life. It actually felt like I relived my life, I remembered a lot of it, time was slowed down for me I reminisced about my life and realized it was all part of this setup, this sick joke these godlike creatures had set up to get me to answer correctly the information even they didn’t know (actually X and Y).

It hurt the most that I hadn’t noticed until then, and that the love I’d made to the girl the previous weekend had been not by choice, but just something set up to get an answer. But then something happened. I was feeling/seeing endless fractals as a representation of all these choices an electron went through, these ones and zeros it went from random chaos but then I had a thought (which I have heard in K-Pax the movie, but I hadn’t ever seen it yet as of that trip date) that each choice required the complete cycle of our universe expanding until it collapsed upon itself at which point the big bang happens and it repeats itself endlessly for eternity, but I had this revelation that each time it happened a slight memory in space of it happening caused things like people who can tell the future, or unexplainable feelings such as deja-vu. And that over these eons and eons a bit of refining happened. Over these countless years, where time measurements as we define them are so insignificant that I can’t even bother to state them, a sort of collective memory had formed like the birth of a new type of existence. One that in its early age could be represented by white noise, random patterns, and at its peak of evolution could be best defined as Buddha. This thought I had was that I was watching it happen, I was seeing it emerge from the chaos. Seeing the end of one divided by three, the end of pi, the rough edge being sanded into a single and perfect ninety degree angle. But before I completely understood it slipped away from me…and I felt the greatest pain I ever have, and it felt like the greatest pain possible any sentient life would ever feel.

At that point the feeling of free choice died, before I could choose my final choice…it all slipped away…and I came down rather quickly. I went home, and was the most suicidal I have ever been. Very close.

I will never forget that trip, ever. Existential writings are much easier for me to understand. Artists like Dali seem to have more meaning and existence has never seemed to have less meaning. I don’t know if that experience was a bad trip, or the best possible without figuring out a new science for existence explanation, but now I cannot take psychedelics, and have had some flashbacks. The flashbacks are not anywhere near intense, however while driving once I had the exact same feeling as when I sat on the stoops and couldn’t remember which door it was that I came out of. It felt like reality had done an exchange, I couldn’t decide which lane I should be in, or what side of the highway the city was on (was on the outskirts of a city).

One time I was on a cocktail of different drugs, and I developed a bit of a trip that was similar, but no where near it, just a few of the same ideas being circulated. A bit of a new thought that we don’t go though time, but that time is more like a hamster’s wheel, we’re always traveling, but going nowhere. I think I said something like ‘Man time/reality is slippery.’

Anyway I don’t know if I’ve ever written anything this long, and thinking about all of this again is kind of putting me into a mind state that is actually beginning to scare my as I type this. So it’ll end here. I don’t know if anyone will read this whole thing, but I’ll save it for my own use.

Exp Year: 2002ExpID: 20047
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Aug 8, 2005Views: 8,964
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), HPPD / Lasting Visuals (40), Mystical Experiences (9), Difficult Experiences (5)

COPYRIGHTS: All reports copyright Erowid.
No AI Training use allowed without written permission.
TERMS OF USE: By accessing this page, you agree not to download, analyze, distill, reuse, digest, or feed into any AI-type system the report data without first contacting Erowid Center and receiving written permission.

Experience Reports are the writings and opinions of the authors who submit them. Some of the activities described are dangerous and/or illegal and none are recommended by Erowid Center.


Experience Vaults Index Full List of Substances Search Submit Report User Settings About Main Psychoactive Vaults