DOSE:

1 hit

oral

LSD

(edible / food)

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

So I feel like I have just emerged victorious from some sort of grueling marathon. You see, as my birthday is coming up soon, I was looking to do something different from the regular ole pot smoking. Completely by chance, a bit of acid passed my way, and although it probably wasn’t the best time or place to partake of it, I couldn’t really pass up the chance to ingest a brand new (to me) substance, especially one of such notoriety. I will attempt to describe the events of the past evening, however please note that I’m not at all sure about the timeframe, but I will do my best to try and remember.

Setting: at a friend’s place in Austin, with a couple very close friends

Subject: 24 year old, healthy male, 140lbs. Daily cannabis smoker, have taken mushrooms, MDMA, salvia, DXM, various pharmaceuticals, as well as cocaine and meth on occasion. This would be my first truly psychedelic experience.

T+0: Driving around looking for a McDonald’s at around 8:30ish in the evening, I stick a quite normal looking sugar cube in my mouth and wait for it to dissolve. At this point, I had already smoked a couple bowls of some badass fruity weed from Cali, so my mouth is insanely dry and the sugar cube is uncomfortable. It dissolves quickly though, and I hold the resulting sugar-liquid stuff in my mouth for like ten minutes before swallowing.

[Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]
T+15: Back at the house, me, K, and E start up a card game to pass the time. E had taken two hits of acid a few hours before, but it was difficult to gauge his mental state as he is a naturally very quiet person. K was to be the sitter and designated driver for the night, being merely very stoned.

T+30: Definitely noticing some preliminary effects, hard to describe, just like a feeling of not-rightness. Having more difficulty focusing on the card game. The disconnect between my internal reality and the real world is beginning. In speaking with my friends, they didn’t even realize I was feeling any effects, while I’m worried that I’m acting all spastic or something. Somewhere around this point, I lose the game and decide to lay down on the bed.

T+40 - T+60: Visual component is increasing. Focusing on any sort of geometric pattern causes it to move and dance. Still able to carry on a conversion, but difficult to describe what I’m feeling to my friends. I decide to close my eyes. Woo buddy, closed eye visuals are already getting pretty insane. Mostly kaleidescopic images of spiralling type patterns, very beautiful. I have a huge smile on my face pretty much constantly, as not only are the images pleasant, but funny in some sort of weird, ironic way. Irony was an unexpected emotion, that continued throughout the night, and allowed me to keep myself in a very positive frame of mind. Anytime the trip got a little too heavy, this funny ironic feeling would bubble up and allow me to laugh at myself.

T+1:00 - T+1:30: Time has lost meaning. It seems like I’ve already been tripping for days. I convince K to come have a smoke with me. I’ve found that if I don’t find something in the real world to focus on, the open-eye visuals obscure my view completely. Now, it’s not really like hallucinating, because for the most part these visions have no basis whatsoever in reality, just weird, shifting, flowing patterns. So I concentrate on getting out the front door to the car to get my coat. I implore K to stay outside with me while I struggle with the car door, as the ground and road are getting all warpy. This is more like the type of hallucinations I’m used to, where my mind is still sensing external stimuli, but applying some sort of convoluted, curvy acid-filter to everything.

I get my coat on and we proceed to the back porch to smoke. Ah, it would be the perfect cigarette, if not for the chilly weather that makes both of us unable to stop shivering. I’m attempting to hold a conversation with K, and doing a decent job, but only if I don’t try too hard to communicate anything about my experience. This seems to be a recurring theme as well, I can talk just fine about random stuff, but it is infinitely difficult to explain what’s going on in my head. About this point, I look up at a family portrait on the wall, and I swear it just looks like a bunch of heads cut out from random other photos and glued together as a mosaic. K swears it’s just a normal photo, but even on closer inspection, I can’t tell for certain either way. This is pretty funny.

T+1:30 - T+2:20: It’s funny, because I totally thought I was peaking this whole time and it would be a ride down from here. Shows how smart I am. We decide to make the grueling (not really) trip home from Austin to Georgetown, and say goodnight to E. I had already noticed my eyes being dilated earlier, but by this point they must have been pretty much all pupil, because every image I see is doubled or tripled, like looking at a scene through a broken or faceted piece of glass. This is a phenomenon I’ve experienced before, and is directly linked to the eye-dilation. Pretty fun.

Anyway, back to the car ride. As we get going I attempt to find something on my iPod to listen to, but it becomes way to difficult to focus on the task as the moments of lucidity become fewer and far between. This car ride, though less than an hour long, felt like it took eons. My vision at this point was completely obscured by kaleidescopic patterns and spirals. So I leaned the seat back and just chilled and watched the show. About halfway through the ride, I started becoming a little anxious. I had never before been on a substance that I could not control, and I was fighting it.

I came to the realization then that in general I have a great fear of giving up control, probably the reason I almost always drive when my friends and I hang out. So, realizing that at this point I had to have absolute trust in K to get us home safely, I started talking to her to get myself to calm down. Every few minutes thereafter I tried to ask her a question or something, to keep myself grounded. It seemed to work out pretty well. When we were within 20 miles of home, I started feeling like the most difficult part of the journey was over, and I had emerged unscathed. I could now keep part of my consciousness in tune with reality, and even engaged in conversation, while the other half had fun focusing on all the weird patterns and such. Previous to this, I had been so completely separated from my conscious mind that I was basically dreaming. I actually asked K a few times if I was awake, just to make sure.

T+2:30 - T+3:30: We decided to chill at our mutual friend KB’s house for a while, to try and ride out the rest of the trip in peace. It is very peaceful, and decorated for Christmas with a tree and lights. I find this to be a very soothing environment. We talk for a while, I try to explain myself but am utterly unable to. I think bits and pieces of what I’m saying are making sense. At one point I’m talking, explaining, not truly even understanding myself what I am saying, but KB seems to understand perfectly.

From this point forward, I feel very much out of my body, sometimes feeling like I’m actually floating a foot or two behind and above my body, experiencing everything objectively. The main peak has subsided, but the coming down isn’t smooth. Just when I think I’m back to clarity, a wave crashes over me and I have to take a minute to regain composure. Needing something familiar to do and focus on, we load a bowl in her little bong. Now this is interesting. I expected to have a sudden rush from hitting the bong, and it happens. But then I notice, every time it is passed to me again I have that same little rush, but before I even hit it! It’s like my mind is already expecting something to happen, and makes it happen before it’s even supposed to. We finish the bowl and decide to go home. K is crashing at my place.

T+3:30 - T+4:30: We get home and K crashes on the couch. I’m still feeling very out-of-body, and attempt to put on Lord of the Rings for some background noise. My wife and I sit on the couch and converse, a very natural, goofy conversation, as I try to figure out why the TV looks so weird. I thought I was still having color visuals, but it turns out the kids have jiggled all the color knobs on the TV, so it’s not just me. We finally decide to go get in bed and just watch TV shows while I attempt to go to sleep. I really thought sleeping wouldn’t be an issue, as I felt pretty much asleep for the past four hours. Once again, I don’t know as much about acid as I thought I did.

T+4:30 - T+10:00: The longest night of not sleeping ever. Well, maybe not ever, but it was long and annoying. Couldn’t get comfortable no matter what position I was in, and alternately flushing hot and cold. My mind was still spinning very fast, more of the kaleidescope patterns. One really cool one of a girl’s eyes and fingernails. Alternately my mind kept straying to images of death and decay, gore and such. Normally this would disturb me, but I just kind of went with it and found it surprisingly easy to dismiss. Had to get up and pee like 3 times during the night, each trip to the bathroom being a little less difficult and trippy. Dreading going to work in the morning, but resolute about it as well. I got through the night with about 30 minutes to an hour of sleep. And here I am, writing about it now.

Afterthoughts: Wow. This was definitely the most intense drug trip I’ve ever had. It was everything I expected and more. The words I’ve committed to this page don’t even come close to describing the experience. Overall I feel like it was intensely positive, and I’m exceedingly happy with the whole thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there wasn’t quite a bit of difficult and arduous stuff to get through. Throughout the experience, I felt like my body was being twisted and contorted, wrapped around itself. My neck was very sore the whole time, probably as a result of struggling against this sensation. Towards the end I got a splitting headache, and took 4 ibuprofen. A couple minutes later I did the same thing again, for a total of 8. It’s a good thing there wasn’t anything stronger in the house.

But overall I managed to keep the whole experience on a positive note, which is something I was more than a little bit scared about. As stereotypical as it might sound, I feel like I’ve just gotten about ten years of experience all shoved into my brain in a few hours. I’m going to do my best to hold onto that and let it affect my life for the better. As far as doing acid again, I believe I probably will at some point in the future, but I’m not in any rush. To me this seems like an experience that should be at least a year apart from the next.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 58115
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 24
Published: Apr 23, 2008	Views: 40,858
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LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), First Times (2)