DOSE:	2 tablets	oral	MDMA	(pill / tablet)
	2 hits	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

75 kg

I am 19 now, and i am a law student. i come from germany, and i live there again now. but when i was 17, i went to university in London for a year, and there i got very badly hooked on cocaine. I basically was bang on it for about 8 months before i stopped it. I was doing a gram per day, every day, more on weekends, and i was doing other drugs as well (ketamine, ecstasy and speed, mainly). Cocaine in my opinion is the most intelligent drug there is, because you will NEVER realise that you are actually addicted to it. I was totally convinced that i did not have a problem with it. I was very logical, giving other people advice on their life, i was always the first when it came to helping others. But i didnt realise that i was a complete mess myself, the drug tricked me into believing that I didnt have a problem.

When I compare it to any other drug, I see the difference: with alcohol, when I drink, I feel that I get drunk, and when I drink loads, I am very drunk, and at some moment I reach a point when I am wasted and puke, and I know that you have overdone it and probably will stop drinking more. When I take ecstasy pills, I will drop a few, maybe a few more, I will be buzzing, but at some point I will be buzzing so hard, or I will mong out as the evening goes on, that I know you dont do more pills, because they wont have any effect anyway. same with weed, there is only so much I can smoke, at some point I will be lean and stoned and you will have had enough. So there is a saturation that happens. Well, this did NOT happen with cocaine. When I take cocaine, I feel good, I get a kind of buzz, but I cant really tell WHAT it is that makes me feel good. the buzz is subtle, and I dont actually FEEL the buzz as much as I might have expected. I think 'oh, it's not actually that strong' and this is where the drug's intelligence comes in.

Because the buzz is not that overpowering, I can do more. in fact, I will want to do more, because I think I can increase the buzz even more. I want the buzz to be 100%. But as you do another line, yes, maybe the buzz is 100%, but the drug increases my expectations upwards, so that again I dont feel 100% buzzing. I kinda want more, I want to increase the buzz to '110%' for example. And this is the difference: I will never reach a limit where I know 'enough, no more'. (at the beginning when I had coke sessions, my body puts a limit to it as my nose blocks and its hard to snort more, but when I got used to it, my nose will stop giving me too much hassle after a while, or I will just get used to it.) so in fact, there is no way of me realising that I have done enough coke, or gone over the top, because my brain gets tricked by it. I could swear i was ok, just like i can swear now i am typing on my pc.

Now, after this rather lenghty introduction, which is as long because it is important for me to realise the way that coke works and because it shows, that some addicts have very very little chance to get out of it by motivation alone as we are controlled by the drug, i will come to the part how lsd has saved me out of this heavy cocaine addiction:

I went to a psychedelic trance rave in london. Psy-trance is acid music. it is trance music with a different beat pattern, a very atmospheric feel to it and a lot of twisted and trippy sounds. Plus a psy trance song is built like an acid trip: it doesnt follow the usual pattern of intro, breakdown, drop/main part, breakdown, drop, lead-out like normal electronic dance music, but it starts somewhere, evolves, changes, the melodies keep changing, the sounds change, it takes you on a journey and you dont know what to expect next, and it ends at a point where it makes sense and the story of the song is finished. (If you are interested, i suggest listen to tracks by the group 'infected mushroom') so i went to this psytrance rave. i didnt know anyone there cos my mates are not into this kind of music, and i was impressed by the atmosphere there. everyone was so friendly, open, and quite obviously many were on acid or mushrooms. they were even selling mushroom tea, its was a nice setting.

i had dropped a pill or 2, and i went dancing in the main arena, the lasers and lights were amazing, and the music was banging and intriguing at the same time. I was dancing next to some young guy with his girlfriend, and i got talking to them. I subsequently found out that he had acid, and i had done it before and i wanted some. little did i know how strong his stuff was. He put a drop on my hand, and i licked it off. i continued dancing. the last acid i had done wasnt that strong, so after about 20 minutes i asked him for more, and i took another drop. i was enjoying the rave loads, but apart from a few little colour changes the acid didnt seem to have much effect on me, even after 1 and a half hours. i went to sit down in the chillout room. there was a nice light in there, it was a very warm atmosphere. I was now seeing a few more colour things, and i realised the acid probably WAS doing its job.

Suddently some guy that i had never seen before appeared from nowhere and sat down in front of me on the floor, pointed a finger at me and shouted 'PASKAL!'. I got a weird feeling creeping up on me, i felt quite weird, my skin was tickling. I couldnt believe there was a guy there who knew my name. Baffled, I asked 'what?' 'PASKAL!' he said again, in a very sharp voice. He was about my age. He had dark hair like me, quite skinny, in fact he looked a bit similar to me i suppose. I noticed that he was very edgy, kind of moving his bodies in an edgy way while talking to me, and he frequently touched his nose too, like someone who had just done a big like of coke. in fact, he was quite aggressive even in his way, and he was looking my directly in the eyes, with brown eyes like me. I said 'What the heck, how do you know my name??' I was very intrigued, and i wasnt sure where this was going. His answer made me shiver: 'Well PASKAL, i know a lot about you. I know everything about you.' he had an evil look and a slight grin at the same time and i didnt feel comfortable at all. he continued 'I am a hallucination. Yes, Paskal. I am part of your brain. I am part of you!! I am inside you! only you can see me!'

I was scared, but i didnt want to show it. I tried to remain 'on top' of the situation, tried to be clever, and with the firmest voice i could put up with, i asked him 'Well, if you say you are part of me and only in my brain, then what is your name?' And his answer was, and i will never forget the way he said it: 'My name is Charlie! Now how did you know that, PASKAL??'

Charlie, for those of you that come from different parts of the world, is a common english name for Cocaine. I was staring at him, i couldnt say anything else, my whole body felt weird and buzzing and i felt so weak at the same time, and scared. And then he said something which was incredible: 'Now tell me to FUCK OFF, PASKAL! Tell me to go away, and I will go away!!' I think i managed to stumble a weak 'go away'. he grinned at me in an evil way, got up, and left through the door as quickly as he had come. I sat back down, and it hit me instantly, that i had a problem with cocaine, that cocaine was in my brain and was controlling my life. I kept thinking that and panicked even more, i realised that i was not in control and something was happening with me that i could not control. I couldn't take it anymore and i knew i had to get out of this room. I looked up and around me, and it was all weird. i couldnt hear any music, the light seemed kind of pale, it was bright, but dark at the same time, and i could not see any faces, it seemed like people were looking the other way. in fact, when i looked at someone, his head turned the other way, as if i was someone that they dont want anything to do with. I got up and hectically walked around in the chillout room, looking at the people, thinking what the freak is going on here? But everywhere i was passing by, i could hear people whispering about me. 'Paskal is losing it' 'Paskal is going crazy' 'Paskal is changing personality' 'Paskal' 'Paskal'.. oh my god, i panicked and ran into the corridor and downstairs to the front entrance of the club, where things were looking a bit more normal again but i was still tripping hard and panicking, i ran up to a bouncer and begged him to put me into a safe taxi (it was in one of the roughest areas in london) so i could get home..

When i was in the taxi and the surroundings had changed, i was kinda ok, and another phase of the trip began. I was seeing nice colours, and the road which was kinda wet was looking awesome, as if diamonds were all over it. When i arrived home, my friends were there and i was ok, in fact the second part of the trip was well nice.

It was on that evening that i realised that i was addicted to cocaine and that it was controlling me life. That evening, it was my subcosciousness talking to me, and showing me what is going on inside me, even warning me! I realised how charlie was messing with me, and how intelligent it was. and it was a big experience to me admitting that something had managed to control my life like that, and for the very first time in my life, i had to actually admit defeat to something. It was cocaine - paskal 1:0. Realising that was the first and most important step to stop taking it, and i owe that to LSD. It opened my eyes. I did not stop taking coke instantly, but whenever i did a line after that, i knew that i was fueling 'Charlie'. I did, however, make the decision to move back to germany, out of the druggy surroundings that i was living with in London (clubs, friends and dealers).

I did move back to germany about a month later, and i stopped taking coke. I am so glad that LSD helped me with that. Quite ironic actually that one drug helps you come off another, lol.

i know i have talked a lot about cocaine, and little about LSD in this post, but it is the essence of my encounter. However, there is something about this that i want to say, and about the way I see LSD.

My LSD trip was amazing, because there's something very very philosophical to it. I take a drop of liquid, and when I do it, I am still in 'reality' (let's just leave the term like that, i dont want to go too far). The trip actually starts the very second that I take the drop, but I dont feel it. It can vary how fast I start feeling it, usually after half an hour till 2 hours after I dropped it. So I am still in reality, everything is normal. I feel normal, I see things normal. But slowly, very slowly I enter another world. I see small shadows where there arent supposed to be any, I see small movements where there shouldnt be any, and as the trip goes on and I look around myself, I will find that there is nothing that really stands still, everything seems to be 'active', be it subtle colour changes, shadows, anything. a plain white wall will appear like there is liquid on it or something, its really hard to discribe. But, as all these things came about very very smoothly, I dont realise the transition from 'normal' to 'trippy'. I forget I am on acid, and now this is my reality. And then, suddently, I will see something which does not fit into the image. Something happens which you KNOW cannot be true. Like when i met Charlie. My rational thinking tells me 'this is not possible, this is not true.' but in fact it is possible, because you see it. He was there, i could see him, i could hear him talk, he was 100% credible. And this, at that moment, re-defines your standards of 'reality' and 'possible'. I know that this cannot happen, but yet it has happened. and as I believe what you see, I increase my horizon and I accept what I see as part of my reality. I am baffled, I am stunned, because I would never have imagined, that everything I have been told in life, all standards that have been set and all my logic that I have acquired, is in fact wrong and irrelevant at that moment and there ARE things which I didnt think they could exist. I realise, that in fact 1 + 1 does not always equal 2, but it can equal 3. And that is amazing.

When I see a hallucination like that, which doesnt fit into my thinking pattern it is really really important that I accept it, and that I face what I see. I get the chance to 'deal with it' kinda thing. Sometimes, like in my case, it will be an inner self, somthing subconsciousness, talking to me. It might scare me, but it is important that I accept what I see and that I am open to see more, not trying to be on top of things and to control the trip, because I can't. Ican play with it when I am more experienced, yes. I can challenge my hallucinations, but only to see where it's going, and not to be stronger than them, cos if I do, it can go horribly wrong, just like it nearly did.

LSD to me is a very rational drug. That means that anything I see makes sense. This is where the credibility of it's hallucinations is based on. And if I see something which seems to threaten me, I need to be strong. I must have a strong personality and I need to step back and say 'hey, how is this actually threatening me? It's there, it's real, yes. But it can't hurt me'. I always hear the advice that people give 'you have to remember that it's not real and that it's only the drug'. I find that it's a stupid advice, because at that moment it is real, and at that moment I am on the drug, and even if I realise it's the drug that is doing it, it's still there and I am still confronted with it. So the best way to trip, is to be open for what is coming to me and to be prepared for something amazing. Let go of the ego, and let the drug take me on a journey, on a trip.

At the end of the trip however, i have always experienced the same feeling: I arrive at a point where I realise the trip is over, and it all makes sense. Anything I have seen on the trip, it is gone, but it made sense and it was all part of it and it was necessary for me to see it. Every person has different trips, and they are all made for each individual. And at the end it will ALWAYS make sense. I will feel good, most of the time, and even if it was a horror trip, I will admit that what I saw was all part of it, and belonged there. It is like a trip that made on holidays: I leave my home or whatever, I travel somewhere, I see things, meet people, do things, it moves on, and when you arrive back at home, it is like you have been round in a circle: I arrive where I started and it all worked out.

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 37004
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Apr 19, 2006	Views: 67,455
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MDMA (3), LSD (2) : Rave / Dance Event (18), Entities / Beings (37), Music Discussion (22), Glowing Experiences (4), Addiction & Habituation (10), Retrospective / Summary (11)