DOSE:	9 glasses	oral	Alcohol - Beer/Wine	(liquid)
	4 joints/cigs	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)
	1 hit	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

82 kg

Set

I have quite a sensitive mind to chemicals. If I don't maintain a tolerance level for alcohol it can drop to the point where one beer will have a noticeable effect, to get stoned I only need a few drags. My previous encounter with LSD was one dud hit a few years back which effected me more then anyone else.

I was back in my home town after a few months away. I had moved to another city where I was busy failing college. I had not maintained a tolerance level for alcohol. I was depressed. In the new city I had found it difficult to make friends I could relax with because my previous friends and I had built one of those internal logic systems of humour and unspoken philosophy without branching out enough.

In the new city I had become introspective with too much time and too much Spliff. Smoking Spliff was making me paranoid. My life had fallen into rituals of image maintainance - fake smiles and laughter. A shit life. I fucking hate fake smiles. When I got back I couldn't click with my old friends, things had changed, cocaine had come into the group and they didn't want me to know about it. I got an immediate inferiority complex and started shutting down. I got a stiff-in-my-joints-while-sitting-because-movement-might-betray-my-awkwardness kind of awkwardness. Also, I was feeling guilty for going off to visit my friends without really saying hello to my family.

We were parked at some arb place in the city and there was to be a party at an old friends house which I found myself dreading. Why can't I enjoy this like I'm supposed to? What the fuck is wrong with me? I thought constantly. I was passed beer in a quart and I found myself getting embarrasingly drunk. I was constantly relating what I was actually doing and saying to what I should've been doing and saying, like some one would ask me a question and I would mumble something inane, the person would move on to find a better vibe quite quickly and I would be left thinking about what I could've and should've said etc.

Not a state in which to smoke a Spliff but when it came around I could not face the task of explaining why I didn't want any. I got bad stoned. It was one of the coldest days I had ever felt too so I was shivering like a bastard. I got some depressing news that the friend we were going to see was now into herion.


Setting

We got to the friends house whose parents were away, his buddies from college and assorted people were there. Our group was a deep house cocaine good vibey loving type of people (and me), there was a harcore tattoo tribal piercing heavy metal type group, and a few yuppie celine dion liking music is not of much importance type group. And some what might be called dirty hippies I guess, I think they were junkies. I feel I was way too analytical in noting these distinctions, but I was in that frame of mind, trying to quantify, understand, reduce.

I bumbled through hellos sat awkwardly and then wump, LSD. 'Hey dude do you have 80 bucks? (South African Rands) It's a bit expensive but the dude has some Hoffmans. They're fucking strong.'

'Uh, yeah.' I said and gave the money. I looked at it, put it in my mouth and swallowed it down with beer.

After I’d swallowed I realised I would much rather be far away from those people, in a bath, reading some really nice book. Escapist thinking. It came on quite quickly, within twenty minutes I was feeling it, and an hour later I was completely wrecked. Everything I wanted to escape from had a crotch which was rubbed in my face.


Equals

I realised I was going to die. The nakedness of the realisation was total, no abstraction whatsoever. You Are Going To Die One Day. It might as well have been within the hour. I saw all my internal organs sitting inside where I still harboured childish notions of internal structure. No, You Are A Pile Of Guts. GUTS? I thought. I HAVE GUTS INSIDE ME??

My internal organs were there right under a thin flat of skin. This freaked me out. These Guts Will Rot One Day. Fuck. My friends were laughing, delighting in the wonder around them while I was a million miles away. My Mom Will Die Before Me And Rot. Fuck. Your Body. My fucking body will die? Dead? Me? What the fuck am I? What The Fuck Am I? I just didn’t have a clue. I tried escaping to the bathroom.

Oh God the mirror in the bathroom. I didn't see myself in the mirror at all, nothing of me was there. No familiar face that I’ve seen each day without concern. How I was moving this was a mystery. It was horror. This covering, thin thin thin covering of skin. And that dripping red flesh moulded onto a white bone skull. A knife could easily peel that away.

(I just want to point out that there was no danger of me harming myself even though I was completely wrecked on LSD. I’m quite positive of it.)

The physics of being able to peel your face off easily are obvious, but I realised the full implications of this possibility. You Can Physically Dismantle a Human Body Into Various Parts. What?? And digging through the pile of guts, 'where are you?' would reveal no little silver glowing orb that was consciousness or spirit.

I realised that right that very second someones body was being sliced open by a murderer. Someone was being eaten alive by a wild animal, face ripping off, the thing fucking roaring with as it does it. No Mercy. Although I don’t know if it was anywhere near the real horror, I couldn’t imagine feeling any worse if I was watching a mauling first hand. Maybe the difference was duration, I would get flashes of the total feeling that I was somewhat able to recoil from.

I got back to the crowd and they’d moved outside into the freezing cold. My fear of opening up and talking kept all my unfolding revelations inside, and from the outside I suppose I was just a strange person who was completely off his face and worried looking but otherwise calm. My eyes were probably looking in two different directions.

I didn't want life, I didn't want to be stuck in this sensitive pile of guts. Who the fuck would stick you in a pile of guts and leave you to rot away? What sick joke was this? Then my heart dropped, it suddenly hit me that it's entirely possible that we are a mistake. That human consciousness is anomolous, evolution fucking up. For thousands and thousands of years no one has been able to conclusively prove otherwise.

God? The word was a noise the mouth makes with air and gristle. Religion could simply have evolved through natural selection to keep humans sane and motivated to the end of their lives. What a sick joke. What a legacy. Stuck in a pile of rotting guts to die. WHY? What If I Didn’t Want This? Where Is The Choice?

Everything was life or death and my friends were giggling and opening things and eating things, I felt nothing for them, no love. Visuals were constant but they were meaningless. The cloudy night sky was a misty inner dome of a dark cathedral with hundreds of carved gargoyles staring out of the gloom. Friends faces were simultaneous layers of skin, flesh and bone. I saw piles of guts, stomachs, livers, breathing lungs under rib cages. I lost the abstractions. Spines jutted from the back of jerseys and elbows were just protrusions of the underlying skeleton. Thin paper skin covering these. It seemed everyone was just ignoring these obvious betrayals. 'High cheek bones' and 'beautiful knees' but they are just skin covering bone. I stared at my hands and they freaked me out, they were pads. If we had three fingers since memory then we wouldn’t think anything of it, I began seeing everyone with three fingers.

Thankfully it all faded after eternity.


Personal Thoughts

This analogy just came to me: An uncontrolled release of pressure is an explosion. Which damages the vessel. Fuck. But a controlled release can be entirely beneficial…

I think these kind of experiences are necessary for a person, even the negative ones. But I think mine was too much at the wrong time. In my opinion it should not be dick around stuff, but a controlled and regulated event. It just makes so much sense to me. Naked blasts of truth and there isn’t a religious use for it? Please. Because what happened to me was too much of a burn, I’m now pretty much scared shitless of facing any truth again, I’ve gone back to my escapist ways. What I propose to myself is a sorting out of my mental negativities, face my fears etc. and then try LSD or some substance again with a braver outlook. If I can crack that then I will write up on the glory, which I’m sure exists in equal quantities as the hell but I’m yet to experience it fully. I’ve had glimpses on odd Spliff revelations, but nothing full on convincing.

I need to be convinced. Faith based religion does not really work for me, so I need to find a person who has gone into these experiences and come out with some kind of map towards compassion, who has some kind of useful systems/techniques in place and who treats these events with utmost reverence and respect. Because to not feel love for my friends was fucking aweful. (I see this as a five to ten year plan, nothing to be taken lightly. My soul on the line type of thing.)

Although this blasted me into an existential nightmare with lingering effects and what it uncovered has not been covered over again, I think it’s better I deal with it now than perhaps after I die? There where there might be less footholds to return to. Though it was the cause, I don’t think LSD was to blame for the bad experience, it just accelerated and amplified what was naturally residing in my psychology.

Thanks for letting me share this, it has helped me. I never realised how bad it actually was.

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 60828
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: May 6, 2007	Views: 28,070
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
LSD (2) : Large Group (10+) (19), Relationships (44), Bad Trips (6)