DOSE:

1 hit

oral

LSD

(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

90 kg

Set/Setting

I had a some acid – a drop on a rizla paper – that had been given to me by a friend and had been lying around in a bag for a few weeks. I kept thinking about it and wondering when would be the right time to take it.

My life is in the middle of lots of transition at the moment: over the past 6 or so months, I have quit a job, left the flat I was living in and, following a three-year relationship breakdown, gone traveling in Asia for three months, only to return to London and fall into a limbo before finally accepting the decision (that I had made previously) to leave and move to another city. For the past week, I've been staying in the flat of two friends in Bristol. They were both away for a few days, so I had the flat to myself. I had been feeling the urge to do some psychedelics for a while, and this looked like the opportunity I had been waiting for. Despite all the fluctuations, I have been feeling as though the things I am putting into place at the moment are positive, and so felt that now might be a good time to put down a psychedelic 'marker'.

T+0: I took the tab at around 9 in the evening. Throughout the evening, I had been unsure if I was actually going to take it, wondering if it was the right moment. But as with all things, sometimes the decision has already been taken and it is just a question of accepting it. I did go into the experience with a certain amount of nervous energy, however.

T+1.00: I spent half an hour or so tidying kitchen, making the room I was staying in comfortable, and assembling playlists, as my main intention for the night was to listen to music and 'climb inside it' as I had on previous LSD experiences. I began to feel the first effects an hour or so afterwards: the usual first tingles of excitement, as well as a sensation that the usual waking hour activities, such as a operating a phone, were becoming slightly more difficult to do (as well as being less necessary).

T+2.30: It was as I was sitting in my room that the first visual effects began to make themselves felt. Things around me were beginning to flicker and fluctuate. I should mention that at this point I had started watching a film – Holy Motors – a very strange film in which a man being driven around Paris in a white stretch limo takes on various guises, including an old beggar woman, an assassin, a dying millionaire etc. It made sense for a while, before the themes of body transformations began to get a bit too strange to deal with. With hindsight, this was not best way to start the trip, as some of the logic of the film probably seeped into my acid-soaked consciousness at that point.

T+3-4.00: The visual effects peaked at this point, I had long switched off the film as it had become incomprehensible, and was listening to music on headphones instead. At their most intense, the open-eye visuals manifested in a rippling sensation across all surfaces of the room, the boundaries between various physical objects began to dissolve completely, as did those between myself and the room, so that the bed, the chair, the walls, the desk, myself, were all beginning to morph into a continuous 'block' of energy of some kind, in which everything was rippling and vibrating.

Closed-eye visuals: there were several themes throughout tonight but I will try and describe the most noticeable:

Feminine/sexual energy: A recurring theme when I take psychedelics is a very strong connection to what I perceive as an extremely strong feminine energy. Sometimes this manifested itself in a overtly sexual manner: women's bodies as effortlessly fluid, pulsing entities, in tune with music. At other points it was just a closer connection with the feminine within me: at one point I visualized a female person, almost my female equivalent sitting where I was, headphones on, smoking a weed pipe and blowing smoke out the window. At certain points, I was experiencing what I can only describe as a form of ecstatic sexual energy, a warm and intense feeling in which I visualized some of the women I had felt connections with throughout my life. One woman, who I had met while traveling, kept reemerging throughout the experience. Sex has been lurking at the back of my mind for a while, as my sex life has almost entirely disappeared over the last few months. There was also a sensation of craving physical and emotional connection. I wonder whether this sensation of intense feminine energy coincides with the Hindu notion of Shakti, as the cosmic/divine female energy.

A day or two after the trip, I remember discussing with a male friend the differences between psychedelics and cocaine. We both felt that cocaine, as a more ego-focused drug, was in some way very much a 'male' drug, whereas psychedelics, with their boundary-dissolving qualities, are somehow more 'female'.

I also remember thinking how this essentialist notion of sex/gender – as two tangible poles – is in contrast to how I usually think about gender, as something much more socially constructed and constituted. I then also thought about whether this 'feminine' quality of LSD experiences was in part due to my own sexuality. Would gay men, for instance, experience the same thing?

Psychedelic architecture: The other intense vistas that I experienced were of vast caverns, landscapes that were moulded by the music I was listening to. They were like huge subterranean caves, fluctuating and brightly lit.

I also saw a physical modelling of my own life as a vast spiral emerging out of a street, at first glance seemingly made of stone but also very much part of the natural world, adorned in leaves and blending into the environment. It was both a physical object and a relationship to the things around it, expanding upwards and in many different directions. The words are feeble but that is the closest I can come to describing it.

The moment and the mind: At it's most transcendent, I felt I was able to largely control the experience, by sitting still and focusing on breathing when the visuals became intense.

I had a awareness of an undulating moment and being part of it. There is a space/time I have sometimes been able to access on LSD which can only be described as ecstatic – existing outside of ordinary time in which everything simply flows.

However, the main tension of the experience was between the direct experience of the moment and my mind stepping in to name or define things, as though my conscious mind was always on hand to say: 'ah, so now you're experiencing this...' this acted as a barrier to complete ego loss in the moment and something I became very aware of as the night wore on. I wonder whether it is time to start taking slightly larger doses, so that the mind can pose less resistance and has to surrender completely to the moment.

Questions: I remember feeling a certain satisfaction with the fact that I was able to be on my own and trip, feeling comfortable with myself and secure with the fact that I would be ok. Some questions that arose were: why are you taking this? Where are you trying to get to or what is it that you are seeking? But if tripping is seen as a form of traveling between layers of consciousness and exploring the caverns of the mind, then the journey is in itself the purpose.

Physical side-effects: there was a significant body load from the acid, and a slightly spiky edge that meant my body couldn't entirely relax and I experienced a degree of shakiness throughout. I smoked a bit of weed but this only reduced it by a small amount.

The grotesque: as with most trips, there was a darker component to the visions, which emerged later, as most of the open-eye visuals had subsided, and I my body was feeling tired while my mind was still racing and awake. At this point, distorted and mangled, sometimes mutilated body forms started to make their way into my consciousness. I imagine the film I had been watching earlier had a part to play in this. However, I didn't feel frightened by the images but instead accepted them and let them pass.

Just before I fell asleep, I had a wave of intense, graphic and somewhat depraved sexual fantasies, some of them fairly violent in content. I imagined doing things (and having things done to me) to and by friends and people I knew that I would never ordinarily fantasize about. Despite their graphic nature, they were also somehow childish, as though my mind was processing the idea of sex and human bodies from the point of view of an infant who is still only becoming familiar with the notion of sexuality and is still a little bit disgusted by it all. I was shocked by some of what I saw though, and remember thinking if those were my actual desires or wants.

I eventually got to sleep around 4 or 5 in the morning. Overall, it was a positive experience, and despite feeling a little jangled the next day, I always feel quite surprised and how quickly the mind returns to 'normal' consciousness.

Exp Year: 2014	ExpID: 103803
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 30
Published: Oct 4, 2021	Views: 454
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
LSD (2) : Alone (16), Sex Discussion (14), General (1)