DOSE:	100 ug	sublingual	LSD	(blotter / tab)
		smoked	Tobacco - Cigarettes

BODY WEIGHT:

110 lb

'Painting Realizations: 10 Things I Learned From My First Trip'

Before starting this report, I’d like to explain who the people involved in my life that will be mentioned are.

I’ll refer to myself as Len. I’m an international student who has recently moved to New York City to attend college. I don’t want to disclose too much, but I’ll tell you I used to live in Europe. I’m currently studying Communications, though for some time I have wanted to switch to Music Business. I am not very happy with my living arrangement within the University - I live with 11 other girls in a loft, which is always dirty, as they don’t clean up after themselves. I feel disconnected with them, and I am not too comfortable in that environment.

I have shared this experience with two other girls, who have now become my Acid Sisters. The first is my closest friend here in New York, Summer. Summer and I have been friends for almost a year now, and we have a lot in common spiritually, which I was aware of even before the trip. The other girl is Dianna. She’s been friends with Summer, also for a significant amount of time, but before this experience we weren’t awfully close - nevertheless, I did like Dianna a lot.

We were sober-sat by Louise (though she prefers sober-played-with), and her sort-of-boyfriend Frey, who I went to high school with. Louise is Dianna’s suite mate, who shares the apartment in the dorm with her, and she was there as we dropped in Dianna’s room. We were meant to originally do it in Summer’s room, but her roommate (who isn’t too fond of psychedelic substances) was there, and Dianna’s place was bigger anyways.

Another thing I should mention is that at one point in this story, Dianna’s current sort-of- boyfriend, Mark, stops by. I am not too fond of Mark for two reasons. First, the only time I hung out with him, Summer, and Dianna, during the previous week, he seemed somewhat pompous. He would recite textbook-like phrases, and I’d stand there, high as a kite, watching as Dianna wrote it all down. It almost seemed like the Mark-cult, which I was definitely not eager to join.

The second reason comes in handy, because it also provides some backstory for some of the things that I saw, and felt, during the trip. Earlier on the month, I’d began a sexual relationship with this guy called Seth. I, stupidly enough, fell head over heels for him. I think everyone around me realized that he didn’t care for me... except for me. Don’t get me wrong, I had reasons to believe that wasn’t the case, but I was somewhat blinded by other convictions as well. When we tripped, I hadn’t seen Seth for about two weeks, and we were no longer involved, as he had ‘ditched’ me accidentally one night, and I had decided I’d had enough, so I deleted his number and texts from my phone. Summer had run into him, and he kept claiming he was going to reach out to me, but when I contacted him and was ignored, I decided to let it go and give up. It wasn’t easy, and I kept blaming myself for it, seeing Seth as a special, wasted opportunity I had thrown away. I was simply unable to move on, or realize better would have come along eventually. Because both Mark and Seth were film students, they shared a lot of classes, which brought about a certain hostility between them. Mark despised Seth, and claimed he was extremely pretentious and aloof (which is true enough, but save the aloofness, also applicable to Mark himself). That very same night we hung out, he declared ferociously “Fuck Seth!” to which I amicably replied, “Hah, been there, done that”. He was visibly irked out, and said to me, “Wow, I’m sorry you have to live with yourself, after that.” I didn’t feel particularly insulted, but rather undermined and skeptical about this guy’s supposed ‘caring, gentle, spirit’. I just didn’t see it.

Now that everyone has been introduced, let’s begin at the beginning.

This whole venture began about five months ago, when, before meeting in person, Summer and I decided we wanted to explore psychedelic endeavors - she proposed eventually taking shrooms and listening to Lou Reed (who is a somewhat mythical figure to me), which I was all in for.

We felt ready around the beginning of October, back when I met this kid called Dylan West - whom we all just called West. I’d describe him as a fuckboy junkie extraordinaire; he’s the kind of guy who’s currently trying to grow pot in his dorm room, dabs indoors with the smoke detectors all over the place, trips almost on a bi-weekly basis, and has a penchant for smoking up with steamy showers in the bathrooms indoors. As soon as I decided Seth was a no-go, I had ended up West’s world. I slept over at his place for the entire weekend, two weeks before tripping, and we eventually hooked up at one point. I knew he was the right person to ask for a hookup.

Predictably, New York City drugs are expensive. West recommended one gram for each of us as a threshold dose (both Summer and I are 5’2’ and about 110 lbs., so it typically doesn’t take a lot for us to be affected), but his dealer’s prices would have forced us to spend ti50 on it, which he said wasn’t worth it. Earlier on the week, a friend of mine, Remy, had taken shrooms, and was only able to trip on 2g. This would have brought the total of our supposed expenses to $100, which I just could not spend on drugs (yet I have probably already spent it on cigarettes, go figure). West then recommended us just going with acid instead. I was reluctant, since I believed shrooms would have been a better initiation, as they were more ‘natural’, and I wasn’t too eager to put such harsh chemicals through my body. West claimed it wasn’t much of a difference, and that he had started with LSD anyways. That wasn’t enough to convince me, since one of West’s go-to catch phrases waking up in the morning was “I need to get fucked up before breakfast. Sobriety is overrated.” I didn’t wish to end up like that, so I checked in with Summer and she was okay with acid instead of shrooms. I was desperate to begin my career as a psychonaut, so I gave in at my best friend’s request.

We met West’s dealer three days before tripping, and paid about ti45 for two tabs of, supposedly, ‘pure-ass acid’ that we placed in a fire-engine-red Italian Sicilian Orange Tic Tac box. Turns out, it was a great container, as the red filtered out most light from the substance, and acid is best kept in a cool, dark environment. Summer and I had planned to trip on Saturday night, but we had decided to head to a frat party on Friday, where she didn’t have a great experience, and needed one day to recover.

I.

On Sunday morning, I was very upset. My room in the dorm was so messed up from me attempting to re-organize it that my bed was entirely covered in plastic bags, so I decided to sleep on the couch of the common area. My roommate hadn’t noticed me, and accidentally locked me out of our room, before leaving for her hometown for fall recess break. Because this wasn’t the first time that this had happened, I flipped out. There was outright screaming on my part in my native language, and I am not ashamed to say I talked to myself as a means to release stress. I had to go downstairs with the previous nights’ makeup, my pajamas and no shoes, so I felt extremely embarrassed. To add to that, Summer called to let me know that Dianna was going to join us, and she had decided to split her tab with her. I felt abandoned by her, and unwilling to accept it, (I now understand that this is definitely none of my business to control and decide).

I definitely think that that freakout was one of the best things that could have happened. Back when Summer confessed to me that she didn’t want to trip on Saturday, she was particularly shaken, which brought me to have negative feelings regarding the Seth situation. Releasing all of my stress and anger put me in one of the best mental places for the trip, and I felt powerful and reinvigorated. I ran some errands throughout the day, and met Summer around 7 PM. We went to our respective homes, so that she could pick up the Tic Tac box, and change into more comfortable clothes. On our way back to Dianna’s, we saw Frey and Louise, and they told us they were going to swing by later, which I was happy and excited about.

II.

We briefly saw Mark outside of the building of Dianna’s dorm (Summer and I lived in the same complex - which I will refer to as Blue C - while Dianna lived in Square Hall), as he exited, and told him about our subsequent plans. He wished us well, and we walked in the building.

As soon as we saw our trip location, I was positively satisfied. It was a dorm apartment, so it wasn’t enormous, but definitely bigger than Summer’s. There was a small hall and a living room area with a round circular table and a couch, as well as a decent bathroom and average-size kitchen. Dianna also said we were welcome to go to her room whenever, since her roommate wasn’t home, but we remained in the common area for the initial part of the night. One of the reasons why we had also decided to do it at Dianna’s was because she had prepared endless tubes of acrylic pigments and large poster-size paper for us to paint on.

I read a list of precautions and possible acid-induced negative thoughts that we might have had, so we could prepare for the worst in case of bad trips. We all turned out to have had designated tasks: I was the well-read expert, Summer had to physically take care of the stuff, and Dianna was more concerned with preparing activities to keep ourselves occupied during the night.

Summer placed four different pieces of blotter paper on the table. One of them was a small 100 microgram square, which was for me, and two were tinier half pieces. There was also a little extra bit that Dianna and Summer also split. All in all, I’d say they had about 50 micrograms each as their ultimate dose. (One of the reasons I was initially opposed to them splitting the other blotter was because their doses would have been significantly lower than mine, which I thought would have put me on a whole different level of experience, and I didn’t want to be alone. Luckily, this didn’t turn out to be an issue for any factor, besides duration of our trips, but I’ll get to that later.)

We were all pretty unaccustomed to acid consumption, so we placed the blotters underneath our tongue and waited, as I’d read was the most traditional and effective mean of consumption. This was about 8 PM.

For a little bit we just chilled out and talked, then Frey and Louise came back with their takeout food. We chatted up with them for some twenty minutes, and I discussed music with Louise. I was very reassured, as she and I were passionate about similar artists and genres, and I immediately thought she was going to be a brilliant DJ for the night. Summer then suggested us grabbing dinner, since we hadn’t had much food (we both don’t eat a lot... I’d been so upset I was mostly hunger-less the whole day, and had only had a couple of slices of bread and a Special K bar, along with my coffee, as breakfast). We briefly stopped by CVS, before the acid started to hit us, and I picked up some sushi, while she opted for veggie dumplings.

We went back to Square Hall, at Dianna’s, to eat, and immediately after I was done, I felt my muscles tensing up. I had a specific tense spot between my shoulder blades, which had me lifting and narrowing them. I immediately announced to Summer I was “tensing up”, and she nodded saying she also started to feel physically different (she mentioned something about not being able to feel her left arm and leg tension). I don’t remember Dianna being particularly affected by that point, but she decided to sit on the floor, and began painting.

Summer mentioned the blotter not dissolving yet after about 30 minutes of having taken it (she ate afterwords) and Louise recommended switching location to the rooftop of the mouth - this is possibly something to keep in mind for the next trip, as it immediately dissolved afterwards. I had accidentally swallowed my blotter earlier, which was probably one the reasons, along with the larger dose, why my trip was somewhat ‘delayed’ when compared to theirs. Dianna was a true trooper, who kept the blotter underneath her tongue until it dissolved - and it took a long time: about an hour, but she began coming up immediately after it was absorbed.

III.

I had previously recommended us performing an activity while waiting to come up, as I’d read it was much better to casually notice we were tripping, rather than waiting for tell-tale signs. I joined Dianna on the floor, and began to stroke swirls in an abstract manner (regardless of my background as an art student, I’m not much of a painter.)

About an hour after we dropped, I began to feel different. The muscle tension increased, and as I was prompted to look at my hand, I realized it felt disconnected from my body. It wasn’t like a phantom limb, where I didn’t feel it - it just felt foreign and far. As soon as I looked up at my surroundings, I realized everything felt slightly foreign and far. The circumstances were weird, and I asked myself what was so peculiar about the reality I was in. “This feels weird,” I said. Louise looked up at me with a concerned look, and asked, “Bad weird?”. I considered, and had a hard time deciding: my feelings, thoughts, and emotions, were getting hazier and confused, “Not really... not bad and not good, just weird”. This sense of weirdness persisted throughout the whole trip and well-into the next day. I later realized it was this weirdness that caused me to dissociate from my immediate reality, and re-evaluate the world around me.

My painting style was then forced to become different, as my movements became more erratic as a result of the growing muscular tension, and I decided to instinctively pick up colors, and just ‘throw them around’ on the paper. Instead of swirls, I began to shade, mix, and create shapes of various sizes and forms. I disrupted the harmonious green-teal-gold scheme I was working with, to add traces of red, peach, yellow, and navy. I felt euphoric and inspired, as if I’d just had two pops of Adderall or Ritalin (I sometimes take ADD prescription meds - despite not having ADD - as a way to concentrate on studying, and stay up all night). Dianna began talking, and I found everything she had to say extremely funny. Her, Summer, and I were laughing loudly at the most random comments made by each other, Louise, or Frey.

Louise’s roommate, whose name I forget, was at the apartment too, and prepared brownies. I wasn’t particularly hungry after the sushi, but decided to try one, as they looked very good. Unfortunately, I think she baked them with the wrong ingredients, since they tasted like garlic. The smell was so strong, I didn’t even want to be next to the batch. Neither Louise, Frey, or herself seemed to notice any of this, or chose not to say anything, like Dianna. Summer and I both agreed they were really bad.

The sense of weirdness slowly pervaded everything around me, and it evolved into an inability of my brain to properly process, and make sense of, my surroundings. It wasn’t like I didn’t understand anything anymore, but more like my immediate reality just didn’t compute. Why was I there out of all places? Why was Frey, whom I went to school with, there? Why were he and Louise involved now? That was all so random. I couldn’t justify any of it, and was very bothered by the fact.

Acid attention-span is notoriously limited, so I shook my worrisome thoughts away, in favor of a deep desire to leave the room. Dianna and Summer followed me, as we headed to the floor’s hallway to look at the traffic and cars through the window. That was the only part of the trip where I felt extremely energetic, and I had a deep desire to release this energy by running around. Dianna, Summer and I ran around the stairs, laughingly numbed down. All across the stairway, there were signs up, which depicted an apple and a cigarette with a red cross over it. Summer remarked that it was the most messed up ‘no-smoking’ sign she’d ever seen, and I explained that the apple represented New York City, the Big Apple, so it did make sense. I realized that if I concentrated, and really looked at something, I could make sense of it, so I got very excited. We were about to run further down, when Louise came back to get us, and lead us back into the apartment.

When Dianna, Summer, Louise, and I went back to the apartment, the weirdness continued. Sitting back down was difficult; I felt so hyperactive, but I let my movements guide me on the canvas, continuing my shading. Immediately, when I looked over at her, I noticed Dianna wasn’t as keen on keeping herself as grounded, and she began to giggle all over the place again. I can’t really remember how much time had passed while we were like that, but before I knew it, I noticed Dianna asking Louise to paint her feet.

Louise picked up a clean, fine brush, dipped in purple paint, and began drawing steady swirls all over Dianna’s feet, who felt giddy and excited. She laughed and waved her long arms in the air, as she announced how liberating it felt. Suddenly, Dianna was so into the whole painting experience, I noticed her taking off her t-shirt, revealing a sports bra. I asked her whether she felt cold, but she was way too exhilarated to answer, or care, probably. She began painting her own tummy in a dark teal color, and at every stroke, she felt more enthusiastic and free. It was beautiful for me to watch that, and I felt like I was seeing all of Dianna expressing her artistic nature - (Dianna is currently studying screenwriting, but in her spare time she sings, acts, and plays the trumpet. She defines herself as a full-fledged artist.)

“This is what I was meant to do!” she continued to exclaim, “this is just what I needed! I’m releasing all of my artistic energy, and this is wonderful. It feels so right!”. Upon seeing her so relieved, about something as, supposedly, trivial, as splashing paint on her bare tummy, I felt envious of Dianna for a split second. She was like a little kid, rediscovering the joy of colors all over again, and I wished I could feel like that about paint too. I wanted to find something to also feel liberated and lightheaded. All of a sudden, Summer, who had been sitting in a corner, blasting out some dank tunes, got up and demanded Dianna to paint her calves. Dianna picked up the navy brush I’d been using, and began drawing patterns on Summer’s calve.

Now, I really don’t remember how what happened next initially developed, but I suppose it spawned out of a conversation I wasn’t paying attention to. I was extremely concentrated in identifying how I felt, and settling down the weirdness. I think I spent a significant amount of time staring at Frey and Louise, who were also playing a drawing game (they were attempting to construct a character, by each drawing a head, torso, and legs in turn, and then comparing the result). I was really trying to spot the ‘little things’ that made me think of them as a couple: sneaky kisses, graceful grazes, and just overall looks. I found it fascinating.

But back to what I missed, as soon as I turned around, I noticed Dianna had written ‘Fuck Misogyny’ on Summer’s tiny calve. I laughed very loudly, which prompted them to laugh more with me. Dianna then realized she “wanted more paint!”, and went to change into shorts. I started to feel a sense of extreme euphoria: I wanted to laugh, I wanted to paint, and I wanted to feel everyone around me on a deeper level. It was a strange sensation - something I thought as more akin to MDMA (which I haven’t tried, but am intending to soon).

Dianna raced back in a pair of short shorts, and I still wondered how she wasn’t freezing, since we were all wearing hoodies but her. She looked down at me, and asked, with a huge grin on her face, “Len, write ‘Fuck Misogyny’ on my thighs! In red! I want it to look ginormous and aggressive!”. I found the request hilarious, and agreed immediately. My muscles were still tense, and I felt strangely antsy (similar to the Ritalin-antsy I feel when I cruise), so the result wasn’t the best. Not to mention, I accidentally misspelled ‘Misogyny’ and had attempted to correct it, making the letters even more daunting and bolder-looking. Dianna was, nonetheless, very pleased with the result, as it wrapped around her back, and she had the last syllable visible only from behind. It was at that point that she said, “You need some color in you!” and sprinkled my hair and forehead in lavender.

Something you must know about me, I am extremely paranoid about my hair. I need to constantly straighten it every time I wash it (it’s naturally frizzy/wavy), and I’d just done that for the occasion, earlier on the day. Having paint in my hair would have made it crusty and dirty, so as soon as I saw it there, I exclaimed, “Dianna! Not my hair!”, still laughing, of course. She conceded, but didn’t let go of my face, “Okay, but you still need some more color”. At that point, Summer came up from behind, and began painting the back of Dianna’s legs, who then sneaked up on me, and stroked a huge red line on my face. I hadn’t even realized it, but a painting battle was ensuing. Dianna was so into it, she began painting both herself and us, by squeezing the tubes directly on our skin. She recommended Summer and I both change in shorts and sports bras, so we could all paint each other.

I am not the kind of person who typically agrees to this kind of stuff. I am not entirely comfortable with getting down and dirty, but I thought to myself, ‘I’m on acid, might as well!’ and as soon as I had mentally accepted the fact I was going to get painted all over, I felt extremely ecstatic. I wouldn’t say my emotional responses were slowed down or delayed, but rather amplified: I processed everything with intensity, and was determined to survey my stance on every event that took place. Obviously, because of the confusion and haze of weirdness, I didn’t reach very promising conclusions. It was very basic business - either something made me very happy, or very confused.

When I went to Dianna’s room to change, I realized I didn’t even care about being nude with the door open. I have always been very confident and at ease with being naked, but it was always with people I knew. In this case, in order to put Dianna’s clothes on, I needed to go full topless for some seconds, and Frey was right there in the living room, which was directly adjacent. I found myself so contented in my own skin that I wouldn’t have minded being full-on naked and dancing. Still, I did realize that it wasn’t an option, because of our hosts.

This is something worth mentioning: when I was on acid, I was perfectly able to put myself in the shoes of a sober person. I could immediately imagine how Louise and Frey, and even Louise’s roommate, must have felt seeing that weird spectacle, and I initially apologized for it. Thankfully, Louise happens to be incredibly awesome, so she simply smiled at me and said, “Len, you’re on LSD, it’s bound to get weird. Stop apologizing.”

Our acid-uniform was extremely revealing, but it was absolutely perfect for the incredible amounts of paint we were about to pour on each other. I was wearing brown lipstick, and immediately realized it couldn’t stay on. I needed to be fully naked, fully raw, so I quickly went to the bathroom to remove it. It was laborious, but entertaining; I tried to use tissues and water, but it smeared a red stain all over my chin - which only made me laugh more. Most people say mirrors aren’t a good idea on acid, but I have to disagree. I loved looking at myself so happy and carefree.

Eventually, I realized that Dianna actually had makeup-remover wipes, and attempted to use them to remove the red smear on my face. I was somewhat successful, but at one point I remembered I was about to get paint all over it anyways, so I just left and ran back out. The sight I was greeted with was peculiar, to say the least: both Summer and Dianna were dipping their hands in paint, and plastering each other with it. I immediately joined, with black and gold
palms, but as more paint accidentally got in my long, blonde hair, I felt even more uneasy. Louise, who was watching from a distance, offered to put my hair up in a top knot, and I thanked her endlessly. I remember thinking that she was being like a little guardian angel for us.

And, like that, we drifted into another dimension. We painted our cheeks, our bellies, our chests, our legs, our arms... and it was beautiful. I wouldn’t say that for me and Summer it was as liberating as it must have been for Dianna, who is much more connected to painting than us. Yet, it was something filled with beauty. We were in a daze of colors and easygoing uneasiness - it was weird, but it was okay! That’s when the perception of time went out of the window. I frankly don’t remember for how long we painted each other for, but it was like a sacred ritual, so it was worthy of being timeless.

At that point, an RA knocked on our door. It was Sunday night, and starting 11 PM, all halls of our university force us to turn music and voices down for ‘quiet hours’. I hadn’t factored time in, so I immediately jumped to the conclusion that this person clearly knew we were on LSD, so I ran to Dianna’s room. She saw me and smiled anxiously, “Len, you can’t hide! This doesn’t even look suspicious... they can’t know! What would they write us up for? Being fucking weirdos covered in paint? Isn’t that what college is all about?”. For someone on acid, that was series of very logical arguments.

Sadly, I couldn’t be as logical as Dianna, so I still felt worried. Louise answered the door, and, like we suspected, the RA only wanted us to turn the volume down a bit, to which she agreed, and he, supposedly, left. I don’t think he paid attention to, or saw, the three of us. I stumbled upon the mirror as I walked back to the living room, for what I thought was going to be round two of paint, and everything changed.

As soon as I saw myself, I was shell-shocked. My face striped in red and gold, my legs scribbled in teal and navy, and my tummy yellow and purple - I felt so feral, so animalistic, so wild. I felt like a ferocious version of me. Summer and Dianna turned around to tell me how beautiful I looked, which only fueled this sensation more. Summer’s face was half-black and half-teal, and she also seemed real and majestic... and Dianna? Dianna’s face was green! She looked like mother nature! I felt connected to the two of them on a deeper level, like we were a tribe of painted Indians (I’m pretty sure that if I’d taken two tabs - like we plan to do soon - and felt a more intense high, I would have started to do some powwow dance shit. Summer had been dancing all night already, as she has had dancing training background, and was so in-tune with the harmonies that played, I loved watching her).

We had never looked so beautiful, to me, but the more I scrutinized my appearance, the more I came to the realization that the paint had to come off. I looked at Dianna’s tummy, the first body part we had painted, and noticed the previously moist pigment had now solidified, and seemed fibrous and hardened, like it was about to crack at any minute. The paint was now a fraud - a courageous cover hiding my true self, and I had to let go of it immediately. My soul had to be completely naked for the trip, and this paint was covering it! Sure it had been fun, but like all things it had to end.

As I began to scrape the hardened paint off of my chest, I realized what I just thought. I realized how immersed into my own thought process I was, and I slowed down. I rubbed my skin slowly and, frankly, it became even a little painful after a while (when I looked at the mirror, the peeled parts were all visibly sensitive-looking and reddened). It didn’t matter though, because I was letting go of what covered me to reveal my true self and begin my trip - and there was no better come up. Feeling my flesh through my flesh was almost like a paradoxical surreal experience: my sense of touch was confused as to which surface was actually part of my own body, and which simply encrusted it. I gave myself warmth and protection; I suddenly felt very warm and cozy inside.

The more I embraced myself by rubbing it all away, the more these thoughts seemed to have appeared. I thought about feeling at one with me - about wanting to keep hugging and touching myself; about nourishment. In particular, the nourishment of my soul, and how much feeding it must have been doing through my endless turbine of volatile, airy emotions.

IV.

At this point, I’d crossed the event horizon. The thoughts about spirituality, and communion with the self, clouded up my mind at every dazzling fingertip motion I made on my surface skin. This is the moment where I truly realized I was very high. My trip had actually commenced, and there was no going back now!

On an important note: I wasn’t impeded. I feel like movies, television, songs, or even just people’s verbal or visual descriptions and portrayals of being high on LSD are very much different from what you end up feeling, at least from what I ended up feeling on my dose. I wasn’t ‘totally fucked up!’, like I could have never stepped out of it. In fact, I’m sure that if I had been given some sort of fairly easy task, I would have been able to complete it (obviously nothing that required lots of creativity, as letting the mind run wild is what ultimately tripping is all about, and would definitely stimulate it.) Basically, I could have kept my cool, no problem there.

The problems seemed to arise when I let myself zone out: my intellect drifting in and out of reality, and its metaphysical formations. Whenever I retreated into my own little world, I saw what was around me as a fraud - as a metaphysical landscape which, despite striving fearlessly, was definitely not the actual truth that I was exposed to on a daily basis. I was stuck in this dream-like haze, absorbing everything else around me, and soaking it in my melted brain’s acid- juice. Still, I’d like to stress how much mentally hampered I wasn’t. I was on drugs, sure, but when drunk, or stoned, I’m usually less likely to be at a complete cognitive loss. I mean, nothing goes on, as far as brain functions go, when I’m on those substances. Acid was much more like there was too much going on.

Speaking of, everything was too much. This particular state caused me a lot of what is commonly known as ‘distress’. I’m saying ‘commonly known’ because the word closest to describing how reality affected me at that point was ‘distress’ - yet it holds a really negative connotation. I want to highlight the fact that the distress I was feeling wasn’t entirely negative, oh no. This goes for anything else that might follow in the report: even if it seems like I’m describing negative emotions, they most definitely weren’t. Most of my trip was tainted by euphoria, wonder, and confusion - but overall, it was a very neutral experience, which made it much more complex, and interesting.

So, back to the distress. I believe it was caused by the fact that everything around me was too much to handle. I looked over at every single random object around, and it amazed me. It wasn’t like it seemed new, or I was seeing it through new eyes - no; I knew exactly what everything was, but I couldn’t register it. I couldn’t compute or understand it. Everything seemed to have a point, and objects just didn’t. They just lied there, and the fact that they did was baffling me. It was funny, and, as always, confusing, at the same time. Everything sparked a whole new trail of thoughts and observations, so when I was forced to just look at things, I couldn’t. I had to sit back, and actually observe them, considering them in the most holistic way possible.

This, in turn, prompted me to think of acid as a little lens that zoomed into my feelings regarding everything. The intensity of emotions I felt was incredibly amplified, and I mean, I don’t consider myself as particularly apathetic on a daily basis, but I’m not very in tune with what I feel either. As I kept peeling scrapes of paint off of my belly, I was trying to identify how I felt - but I felt so much. At the same time. And I couldn’t break it apart, no matter how much I tried, all I could do was just sit there and feel it, soaking it all in, like a little sponge.

Dianna and Summer, who were definitely more socially engaged with each other by that point, just kept peeling, until one of them (I honestly cannot remember who it was) suggested to hop in the shower. Dianna thought it was a magnificent idea and, with a cheshire-cat worthy grin, sprinted to the bathroom to get the water running. Summer followed her with excitement, but I wasn’t as joyful, all of a sudden. The feeling of weirdness from before had settled in with extreme intensity, and my inability to process my immediate surroundings sent me mentally far back to civilization. I thought about the concept of a shower - and how that involves getting hair wet.

My hair was still in that top knot Louise had solidly pinned up in place an hour before, (I actually have no idea how much time had passed. Dianna had devised a system where she would give Mark a call every hour, in order to keep track of time, but had given it up after the first two calls, as we had decided to succumb to acid and lose ourselves in its timeless dimension), but it wasn’t going to save much from the furious dorm-room nozzle sprinkling Dianna’s bathtub was equipped with. In the real world we could have found a way for me not to get my hair wet, but thinking systematically about real-life practical solutions seemed like a removed concept. No, I knew that if I stepped in that tub, my glorious straightened locks would have turned into the unruly lion’s mane I was born with.

It probably seems a little weird to you that I’m making such a big deal out of... well, hair. But it defined me. It still does. My hair is one of my favorite things about me, and I love to have control over how it looks, styling it to my liking. Getting it wet made me fearful and anxious, but I felt even more fearful and anxious, as soon as I realized my friends had left me in the living room. I’m sure Louise and Frey were caught up in their own little romantic game to mind my uneasiness, but I still decided to join Summer and Dianna in the bathroom, instead.

I saw them immediately hop in the tub, and turn, the shower on. Dianna took off her bra, and did her arm-wave thing again, her eyes squint-shut and her mouth wide open, soaking in the warm liquid droplets all around. Summer kept her top on for a little while, as she tried to only wash the paint off of her feet, but Dianna pushed her right below the water. She looked peaceful and exhilarated, letting out a loud, genuine laugh. It was so nice to see the two of them so happy. It warmed me up inside, when the rest of what was around me seemed cold and meaningless.

They were somewhere else, but I wasn’t with them. I was caught up in figuring out a way to get the paint off of my body without getting my hair wet. I sat by the tub, in front of the sink, with knees up to my nose. I found that I still couldn’t help but touch myself, I needed to feel my body there, with my mind. I was afraid that if I didn’t, everything would have disconnected. I stared at my legs a lot, but I wasn’t exactly ‘tripping’; I mean, by that point I still hadn’t felt extremely visually engaged by the trip. It seemed a little like weed, the colors looked nicer and brighter, but I hadn’t seen.

I wasn’t thinking about that at the present moment, I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. Dianna and Summer pulled the shower curtains over, so that the water wouldn’t have gotten me wet, and that prompted me to shut the door of the bathroom. I stretched my legs and decided to look at what was ahead of me, for a second. Oh man, was it complex. The little tiles squared off every single centimeter of that wall, compressing the whole white thing in small little grids. And the more I heard Dianna and Summer laughing, the more the tiles seemed to reflect that - they were the manifestation of those timid little shrills and squeaks that occasionally escaped from their vocal chords. And that’s when I saw.

I looked down at the mirror, and then at the sink. I was particularly fascinated by the the lower part, as I’d never previously even paid a single mind to it. I wasn’t looking at the pipes either, it was just the lower part of the sink container, as I saw it from ground level, that astounded me. I noticed it was white porcelain, and that it had tiny holes at the side. I kept staring at them in amazement, those holes were beautiful: small, delicate, circular, and harmonious with the rest of the design. The beauty ended quite rapidly though, as the smallest of the holes began to slowly expand, and then diminish in size again. Yeah, the sink was definitely breathing.

I edged closer to stare at that spectacle, and watched carefully, as the hole, which, by that point, had definitely become the sink’s mouth, opened and closed ever-so-steadily. But it wasn’t a calm inhale and exhale... it was gradual, but by no means relaxed. It was frantic, lonely, and bleak. I heard Summer calling my name, wondering why I hadn’t jumped in, but Dianna quickly explained to her that I was “gone into my world”. Then again, I totally understood everything, I did hear them - I just chose not to care; the sink seemed like a such a bigger deal at the moment.

And that’s when I had my first realization, as I stroked the cold porcelain, I felt out of breath myself. It’s the loH, I thought. That loH is making me suffocate; this sink is just as much me as I am breathless, and it. I kept studying the respiratory patterns of the sink, and noticed it slowing down even more, to the point of stopping. As soon as that happened, I opened up the shower curtains, and with what I assume was a terribly bewildered look on my face, I announced, “I need to move out of that loft.”

Summer smiled open wide (because of a previous incident, which is definitely a story for some other time, Summer really wasn’t fond of my loft mates, and had always been favorable to the idea of me looking for somewhere else to live in), and her eyes lit up even more, “Come on in!” she encouraged me, nodding off to the tub.
After having suddenly realized that it was the loft that had made me feel toxic all along (not talking about the trip here, just my state of mind during the day), I felt the sudden need to be clean. To wash it all away, and screw my hair! Yet, I wasn’t fully convinced.

“But, my hair!” I complained, “It looks disgusting in its natural waves.”

Dianna grinned, “I have a straightener,” she said, “It’ll be fun. Come get clean, Len!” And like that, as she spritzed water onto Summer, who sat there and took it all in with her eyes closed, I realized I had to do that: I had to get clean. I took my top off, stepped into the tub and felt the water on my skin, so warm and comforting. As I rapidly undid Louise’s top-knot, I felt even more liberated, “Girls, this is my cleanse,” I announced boldly.

Once I sat there, there were few more moments where I embraced and rubbed my flesh. I don’t know whether it was because I felt vaguely cold, or because I wanted to get all traces of paint out, or just because I wanted to keep experiencing the touch of my own skin, but it was effective for all three of those reasons. I cannot tell how much time I spent in my own little tub cocoon: it could have been seconds, minutes, hours, or even days. I remember, at one point, commenting on how it even felt like weeks.

Sitting there wasn’t as euphorically entrancing as it looked, by the way. As soon as I settled, I just thought... again. I loved to fall into pensiveness, but the more I came up, the more thoughts I had. I couldn’t really concentrate on one single thing; everything induced me to question it. I was so removed from the reality around me that everything was overwhelming, and arising simultaneously. But instead of staying separate and going nowhere, it was like all of those questions united into one big reflection - and, after reaching such a promising conclusion on my living situation, I began evaluating other aspects of my life. All of it, all at once.

As my mind grew heavy, I noticed that Dianna was right, and I was in my own little world. I couldn’t be social at that moment; I mean, it’s not exactly like I couldn’t, more like I really, really, didn’t want to. Not through words at least.

I evacuated my mind to look at my fellow trip members, and they seemed to be just as engaged as me. Dianna sat at the end of the tub, lying with her arms spread out on its edge, while Summer had her legs crossed to my right. The more I watched them, the more I felt like I wanted to be in their heads. I wanted to feel what they were feeling, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it, so I chose actions to portray my words.

I reached out to them, and embraced their shoulders. They moved closer to me, and we stood there like that for another timeless while. I gripped their wet arms and bodies in shower-soaked glory; feeling their entities in there, in the same position, in the same place - both mentally and physically - was wondrous. We were naked, in every sense of the word. We were all experiencing so much, and the more we touched each other, the more we felt it all around us: our adventures slowly merging together, in one moment of shared acid communion. It was magnificent.

That’s when we realized that there was no going back, that after this experience, we would have been bonded for life. It wasn’t just about dropping, and experimenting, with friends anymore. It was about acquiring a new, elevated connection, with each other. I loved them; probably more than I loved my thoughts - and they became my thoughts, as the force of their love and attachment overcame me. I loved love, and I loved to love. So much love.

Summer, then, decided to head out. I asked her, “Aren’t you finding this paradise?”, to which she just looked at me and remarked, “I was like that two hours ago!” with a big smile on her face. She thought she wasn’t affected by the substance anymore, but I didn’t believe her. I let her go, since I figured she probably wanted to be alone for a bit. Dianna and I both agreed that we needed to be warmed up a little more before leaving.

Dianna leaned her head back on the edge of the tub, and we both retreated back into our own respective dimensions. I was still in a haze of confused emotions, running one after the other, and often together - but all were tinged by love now. I thought about people that had left my life back when I moved here (before leaving, a bit of a mess happened with my old friends in my so-called hometown, and I had been alienated from my social circle) and then, it hit me that I still loved them. But not in a way that was holding me back, in a way whereby I thought of the good times we had had, how much they made me grow, and how thankful I was for all those experiences. I realized life was a constant running course, but that the feelings associated with particular moments would always be there, and I could choose to bring those back, as opposed to the hostility that subsequently overcame our relationships. That didn’t matter, because it was a negative emotion, and I loved too much to feel it.

My sea of feelings was briefly softened by Dianna, whom I realized I was lying on top of, only when she put her head up again, and attempted to explain, “Oh I was on such a good trip Len... I was on a spaceship... but then I became the ship... and I was flying, oh it was beautiful!” and I could see it. And it was. Picturesque. But I couldn’t talk about that now, no matter how much I wanted to be visually engaged, I just needed to share emotions.

“I feel so much love right now,” I communicated casually. My tone seemed almost sleepy and uninterested, but I figured I was simply physically consumed, and mentally overwhelmed, by the experience. “Don’t you?!” Dianna asked excitedly; she seemed to definitely relate, as her eyes lit up. “There’s so much love in this apartment now, I couldn’t be any happier!” she exclaimed. I simply smiled. Smiling was weird, tense, but so natural. I remember back when we were painting, I couldn’t help but smile - like I had to tense up my muscles, and do it. But as I grew more pensive, I felt a decided separation from the come-up to the actual trip. The come-up was happiness, the trip was love. I separated them, deciding that, while happiness was beautiful, this was so much more engaging. Experiencing that much love didn’t make me want to smile. No, it just made me more of a sponge, and I just kept absorbing it all around me.

“And the fact that there’s so much art in here!” Dianna added, “I just, I just think this is what I’m meant to be doing, you know? Like all of this art is my calling... all of this art and love”. I would have spoken, but articulating a response took too much effort. (Honestly, I probably did, I just cannot remember what I said... I cannot remember how this particular conversation went, sadly, so I’m probably paraphrasing what exactly was said. I remember that I just kept going on and on about feelings, while Dianna expanded upon her affinities with art).

“You’re such an artist though, like, you actually are!” valley-girl speak was what was most articulate of me. I thought in very complex terms, but I was only able to express them in condensed form. If I attempted to exposed my theories, as I thought them out, I would have not made any sense whatsoever... but more about that later.
Dianna smiled, “So are you”, she said. And it was true: we were all artists, because we were all lovers. We were one and the same. Everyone. It was such a universal discernment, that I was sure, no, I knew, that she just had had the same thought. Dianna’s blue eyes immediately widened, her smile grew wider, and with a startled look on her face, she declared, “Oh Len, I just realized something, listen to this!”

I knew that was cue for me to turn around and sit directly in front of her. She spoke animatedly, and eloquently elucidated to me my second realization:
“Love is art, Len. Love is the abstraction of everything behind art.”
That made sense! I chimed in, “Yes because we communicate what we hold dear to us, what we’re passionate about!”
She nodded, “Yes, exactly! And art is just the tangible expression of love. The physical in what connects us and makes us feel. And it’s just so powerful, you know?”

This may sound like gibberish to you now, but it still makes perfect sense to me. To put it more fluently: art is a tangible manifestation of what arouses feeling in us, and regardless of what those feelings are, love is usually involved, as we create work based on things that we actually care about; while love is the conceptualized notion of all that’s behind artistic creation. See, it is an intelligible theory.
Immediately after reaching that enlightening conclusion, Dianna felt at a good mental place and got out of the shower. I knew I needed to stay for longer, alone, and trip a little bit. I thought that acid was going to transport me places randomly, but I had complete control on the level of immersion I wanted to experiment with, and now it was the time to dive. I leaned back and assumed Dianna’s old placement, but probably didn’t look as majestic (my arms and legs are about half her length’s!)

But instead of being richly involved into another world, I remained in the dimension of feelings I’d been previously exploring, until i closed my eyes. Closing my eyes was interesting. I’d say I wasn’t Tripping hard!!!1111,, but I definitely had compelling closed-eye visuals. It was mostly mandalas, and typical LSD-esque tubular designs, moving around in teal, golden orange, and this iridescent purple/magenta color. All the shades were extremely vivid, but the shape of what I was looking at exactly seemed unclear. It was all relatively dark, and I had to dig deep to let it fully overtake me. All in all, I thought that I hadn’t taken enough of Lucy’s juice to be actually optically enthralled, but boy was I wrong.

I decided I’d had enough of looking for an outer body experience, to then end up finding spiral patterns. I felt weirdly jealous of Dianna, and how, even with just half a blotter, she was able to feel and envision so much more than me. Maybe a change of scenery would have helped, I considered, so, with the little dexterity I had left, I turned off the shower and got up, determined to go out...only to realize my clothes weren’t there.

“Dianna!” I called out.
I heard her laughing, “Yes?”
“I think I left my clothes in your room... can I borrow some PJs, or something?” I asked. I sounded very normal, which was strange. Was my trip already over?

“Sure, one minute!”, I heard her exclaim from afar. She sounded so far, all the way in another room. Another room was another dimension... and I kept feeling bizarre: I wasn’t high anymore, I told myself. Yet, the feeling of peculiarity and weirdness was still there. The whole reality around me was uneasy, and standing there in the cold, topless and in soaked shorts, didn’t make things any un-uneasier. I decided to act sober, so that the trip would have further diminished, despite it had seemingly died out already.

Again, time was confusing, so I don’t know how much of it passed, but I stood there, like that, for a significant amount. I remember thinking how Dianna was taking forever, and I wanted to have some clothes on my body already! “Dianna, can I borrow a towel, at least?” I finally asked.

“Oh RIGHT. I’m so sorry Len, this has all ben so confusing!” I heard her, afar again.

Her steps edged closer, with a tense kind of grace. She seemed to float amidst gravity, her euphoria lifting her up, as she opened the door.

“Here,” she handed me a large white t-shirt, you know one of those they hand you somewhere you’ve actually been to, along with a pair of checkered pink and black bottoms. They were a little large on my small frame, but it was comfortable. Actually, it felt amazing. Like every inch of the fabric was cuddling my body. A pajama acid hug. The whole thing was so pleasing that I didn’t even mind my wet, long hair looking especially brown and curly in its state. I’d stood there so long it wasn’t even dripping anymore, just a little damp. Not to mention, my underwear had gotten soaked with Dianna’s shorts, from before (we never took our bottoms off, in the shower) and so I was having my first, and painfully necessary, college-commando experience. Even letting my lady parts breathe helped me calm down.

When I realized I was done dressing up, and had to head to Dianna’s room, I committed myself to keep what ended up being my sober-façade up. I can be completely unaffected by all of this, if I choose to, I reminded myself. So, one step after the other...- this is so weird.

As soon as I opened up the door, and saw Louise sitting there with Frey still, I knew this wasn’t over. It was too weird to be over. Too unusual. Too peculiar. My steps were fragmented, and tentative, and everything seemed suddenly extremely uninviting. The kitchen didn’t look like a kitchen, the common room didn’t look like the common room we’d been hanging out in, and Dianna’s room was another dimension. The dimension where my sisters and I had to step and be together in, immediately, I thought. I needed someone that could relate to what I was experiencing as soon as possible.

I walked in, to Summer’s velvety voice greeting me with gusto, “Len, wazzup!”
I felt myself frowning, despite not wanting to, “This is so weird,” was all I could say. Summer grinned, her blue eyes trying to perceive exactly what my state of mind’s valence was: good or bad weird? As if I’d just read her mind, I added, “Good weird, but still weird”. She nodded, and returned to whatever it was she had been doing on Dianna’s bed.

I think I should mention there were two beds on the room, positioned parallel to each other, with a vast walking space in the middle. I sat on the left side, on Dianna’s roommate’s bed (whose name I forget, as she wasn’t there that night), while Summer had been chilling on Dianna’s mattress, which was so messy that I think part of it might have been exposed. Still, not any messier than my mattress.

“Maybe it’s the SSRIs, you know? I read some people can’t really trip on those,” Dianna said, as she restlessly walked around the room. She kept stepping back and forth, while scratching and caressing her body. I was past that phase, but I still stroked my cheeks and chin way too much for my own good.

“Yeah, I don’t know. It’s not like I’m not feeling it, just not really anything too intense. I’m not affected by it.” Summer said. I connected the dots, and realized that Summer had probably lamented not being high, while I was still in the shower. I related to that, since it was just what I’d been thinking of, but things were about to change. Plus, quite frankly, Summer has a high tolerance when it comes to substances, albeit being even a couple of pounds less than me, and roughly the same height. I knew my girl, and I knew that merely half a blotter wasn’t going to, necessarily, be life-altering for her.

Me, on the other hand... I was a different story that was about to turn to its climaxing page. I am known to be moody, and it isn’t unusual for my state of mind to shift rapidly from hour to hour, depending on the circumstances. Acid really didn’t help with that. Its little lens zoomed in that shift, and before I could even process what my name was, I was back in the feels-dimension.

I felt everything. Everything that was inside that relatively small dorm room was transmitting some sort of energy that I absorbed in subtle, but extremely potent ways. Every single entity in the room, be it Summer or Dianna, a sweater on the floor, a sham-less pillow on the bed, or a picture of an asian little girl, was feeling with me everything. No, I guess a more accurate description would be that every single entity contributed to characterizing the room’s feel, and that feel in turn affected me, as the setting was pivotal to the experience. I was the room, or better, I was what I felt like in the room.

I looked around me, and the weirdest part was that all of these feelings came about on a purely superficial level. It wasn’t like I had immersed myself in the details surrounding many of the times thrown all over the place. Just by looking, just by simply noticing one, tiny little thing, the whole feel became different. It became richer, it expanded and grew inside me, until I couldn’t process it anymore.

I chose to focus on illustrations and decorations, since they were mere replicas of reality, and everything seemed like an unauthentic copy at the moment. Dianna had decorated her side of the cream-colored wall with a series of Keith Haring-themed designs, but one of them particularly stood out to me: it was a blue faceless stickman (his typical shapes) standing on a huge marine-mammal looking yellow creature. Its eyes were widened, just like its mouth, and it seemed like it was suffering from the weight, or perhaps the supposed motion, of the person on top of it. It made me very pensive.

At first, it sparked within me very literal thoughts. I imagined humans, and how terrible our relationship with animals really is, despite how much we pride ourselves in being the ‘protectors of the sea’, which made my vibe drop significantly. I thought about a particular instance in Sixth Grade, when one of our Middle School Orientation teachers had forced all of the grade in the our auditorium to view a then-recent video of seal violence in the arctic. I remember how disgusted and appalled I felt, but that only translated into resignation - not even sadness, just a desolate feeling as I decided that it was in human nature to be cruel, and not every animal could be free.

It was in human nature to be cruel. Like Seth. Seth had been cruel to me. And he always popped up. I don’t know why I had some sort of notion that I was over him, or that drugs would have made me over him, because despite the deeply-felt heart-to-heart I’d had with Summer the previous day, he was still there! Still monopolizing and dictating me and making me wonder, what had I done wrong? Why had I lost him. Why didn’t I see him anymore. Wait. I was the one not seeing him anymore, not the other way around!

As I still stared at the blue stickman, I realized I was it. I was the stickman and Seth was the little seal, because I had always been on top of him (technically, in more ways than one, but I’m trying to be serious here, so I’m keeping it on a strictly emotional level). Yes! I thought to myself, yes, yes! I was the one with the power, and he was just a tiny little fragment of my life.

And that’s when my third realization hit me: nothing really mattered. Everything seemed extremely small and insignificant, all of my relationship problems, I mean. Seth didn’t matter anymore, he was just another guy. A guy I’d been heavily infatuated with, granted, but at the end of the day just another stupid, socially impaired guy. He was going to be part of my journey through life, of course, and he had changed a lot of me within this journey - but he was just a part. A preLy short-lived part, at that.

And soon, everything in the room became scarily meaningless.
Now, I’ve mentioned in various other parts of this report how meaninglessness was a crucial component to most of what I felt... but now, it had become extremely so. Not only was I unable to process the inner meaning of everything, but it ceased to have a purpose altogether. Everything was nothing, at the same time.
I’ve always been a bit of a nihilist, but I never realized how much frustration this could have ended up costing a day-tripper me. I looked at the Keith Haring designs, all of them, and they bothered me because they were so open ended, they meant so much, yet nothing at the same time. The conflict my mind was feeling, in searching for a meaning that was everything and everyone, and nowhere and nobody, simultaneously, made me feel so irritated that I had to engage with humans.

I hadn’t realized it, but Summer had approached me, while I was feeling the empowerment (I think I mentioned to her how I was the blue man, and Seth the seal, my seal). She smiled really wide, and, I don’t know why, but my vision chose to fall somewhere it never does: her nostrils. I kind of noticed how Summer had particularly big nostrils at that angle - she was looking down at me - and the blackness of her nostril was just spooky. The shape of it, weirdly angular, and her flesh so pale around it... it just made me feel gloomy and odd, and I perceived a macabre presence. The macabre presence of death - of the endless blackness in her little nasal holes.

“I saw death. In your nostril!”, just like that. Fragmented sentence escaped day-tripper me.

That made her crack up big time. Summer quickly erupted in a long, loud string of laughter that made me feel, all of a sudden, warm inside again. The human presence, the human spirit, or humanity in general - they all reminded me that we weren’t robots, that we weren’t programmed to be cruel, to loathe, to hate. That was another instance where Lucy reminded me to love more, and hate less. Even Summer’s death-shaped nostril deserved some love, because it was part of my best friend, in the good and the bad.

And love was quick to wrap me up in its arms again. Love was quick to take me in, with all of the wonderful other stem of heart-warming emotions I’d associated with it. I thought about my reality, and how much love I felt in this new place, a new place I’d moved to in a whim, surrounded by people I didn’t know, and how they did love me already, and how I loved them. I felt far, again.

I was far away from my sassy mother, from my hot-headed father, from my sweet doggie. I was far away from the incidents with my friends... but what got me going was the fact that I was so far away from the friend I loved the most: Lorence. Back in my home country, I’d met Lorence about a year earlier, at my former best friend’s party. Lorence and I quickly bonded over music, and subsequently became bandmates. Throughout the year, our relationship had tightened, and
he was (still is) one of the people I cared to keep up with and carry on in my life. He had been close friends with Frey as well. And it all connected - the meaningless meaning was meaningful again. I realized how much I loved him, and how much love there was between us despite the distance: what a beautiful friendship - he is my brother.

And that, that’s what made me break down in tears.

Summer had been making some videos of us, (she still saw herself as the ‘sober one’, and Dianna was sitting in a corner, still in the grip of the mysterious ants that had made her manically break down in laughter) so that we could watch them afterwards, sober. I have seen these videos numerous times, and, according to the footage, I was laughing initially.

Something happened along the way that prompted me to fall into thought (this is probably when I looked over at the Keith Haring sticker), and there is a pretty disturbing moment where I hit my fist repeatedly against the bed, while moaning in frustration. I think that’s when the lack of sense of reality got really intense, and everything felt like ‘too much’, so nothing it meant was ever enough. I think that was my release of the weirdness. After that fisting session is where I break down and cry. You can also hear Summer, and her lovely voice, singing to me a kind of lullaby, and exclaiming, “Wow, you’re having a revelation, aren’t you?”

I nodded, and, apparently, felt very uncomfortable at the fact that she was filming, since I exclaimed, “Stop looking at me! Stop filming me! Stop fucking filming this!” as I wiped a tear away from my eye. Summer is Summer, so she obviously didn’t. I looked straight at the camera for (what I realized later were) several seconds before resuming the tear-fest and, with Dianna- like wavy arm motions, announced “I’m letting it go; so much.” And I was. I let go of Seth, I let go of the drama, of glorifying nostalgic pasts that had never existed in the first place. And it was beautiful.

The video appeared to end right when we all began to laugh at my hideous gospel-like intonation. I remembered we laughed extremely loudly, to the point where I think Louise and Frey must have gotten scared at the door. Or maybe not. Probably not, no, they probably knew even better than us.

So, I just told you what I was experiencing at the moment, and what I was physically doing. Notice how different those episodes and reflections seemed? On acid, progression and synchronicity don’t really exist. A thought flows into the other, which flows into the other, and it all melts together in reactions and feelings. So, while this was going on, I still had the ‘we’re all so small!’ realization fresh in my mind, which made me cry even more because I saw our reality as perfect, as little, as functional - when compared to the space and solar system. Because no matter small, it was still all love and beauty.

Unexpectedly, (by now, at least) I don’t know how long the crying went on for. I don’t think it was that much, the tears were quick and cold, but it was so intense it slowed down. I cried every single happy feeling I had ever had in my entire life... or so it seemed like I was doing. It was like every happy moment in my life, which had caused me to feel happy in the past, was uniting in a explosion of euphoria and fulfillment. Through the tears I was releasing all of it: I was crying my life away.

The emotional liberation I partook in had definitely drained my mind, and I was ready to lean back and trip it out. I sprinted to the living room, and, with shaky hands, picked up my laptop and headphones. Back in Dianna’s room, she was lying back on her bed, making funny faces and giggling as she stared at the ceiling. I decided to do the same thing, but with probably much different music.


What to listen to became an overwhelming dilemma. I had awaited this moment for so long, that when it actually came, I was extremely conflicted. Since thinking about all of the possibilities overwhelmed me, I decided to let my thoughts melt into my one catchphrase for the trip, “I’m so far”, I whispered, sighing. Immediately, I knew that I had to put on Spring Hall Convert by Deerhunter, as the lyrics of the outro clearly sing out, “So far away...”.

I remember once reading, when I was fourteen, on the lead singer’s blog, about the origins of that song. There was a bright picture to go along with it of a girl; she was spreading her palms open wide below her chin, letting her long fingers frame her face, as a light shone directly on her peaceful expression. She had her eyes closed, and a soK, serene smile. According to the singer, Bradford Cox, that song was actually about states of consciousness, and morphine, (he has Marphan’s, so he wrote it at the hospital, while he was very sick) - but the picture was taken during an acid trip. During my own trip, all of those elements linked together: the peacefulness, the serenity, the pink shining light, the states of consciousness... that was the quintessential acid song, and if you ever trip yourself- I urge you to listen to it. It’ll enhance the experience, no doubt. I mean, it’s preTy amazing to me on its own, and it’s very amazing to me on weed... but on acid? It was fucking incredible. It was auditory LSD, it was auditory art, it was auditory love.

As I was transported through my hearing into another dimension, I decided to let sight join me in my venture. Turns out, visuals were much easier to attain once I just looked for them. The ceiling above us was this textured, off-white-yet-off-cream color, but the various granules of shadows that hit it transformed into shapes in no time. They began waving around, enlarging and retreating, a little like the sink before. It didn’t take too long for them to become mitochondria-like pieces of paisley, and then little snakes! They had a very specific green-yellow- purple color scheme, which I found wildly entertaining: why would I remember color theory while tripping out? Because this is a magical substance, my friends.

The shapes kept vibrating and moving around to the rhythm of the music, and I was in heaven. I was away. I was so far. They put on a real show, not too long after that. They spun, circled, and jumped at a steady and wondrously syncopated pace. It was like they were putting up a performance especially for me. They danced for me and my mind only. For the benefit of my entertainment, there I was. And there were them. Even though I thought I was the only person to see them, they didn’t feel like they were part of my mind. They felt like something else. Utterly and entirely disconnected with my cervical perception. And looking for them was strenuous. Strenuous, but amazing, and well-worth the effort. Truly mind-blowing.

We remained like that until I had to change the song, and that’s the first time I had access to a clock ever since we dropped. After calling Dianna, who had still been staring at the ceiling and enjoying herself quite a bit, on her bed, by tapping her feet, I felt like I need to let all of my sisters know, “Girls... my digital clock here says it’s only ti AM. It’s only ti ftUYS!”. I’m not sure what I was expecting, probably some sort of insane time vortex to swallow me, and let me out when it had passed through normal perception. It felt like the whole night had passed. Like a thousand nights had passed, actually. How could it only be one?

My question wasn’t really answered, as Mark stumbled upon the door of Dianna’s room, opening it loudly, “Dianna!” He exclaimed, reaching out for the bed, “You have no idea... I was editing the footage for the, um, the movie... then, then I decided to smoke up a bit before coming over. So I got the munchies, and I raided my suite’s fridge for something to eat... I found these cookies, and they were so good... I had like three of those, man. But they were edibles... so I’m about to pass out...” his speech wasn’t upbeat as usual, but lethargically entranced into the dimension of sleep.
I could imagine what being high and sleepy on weed would have been like, but I was so far! I was on acid, and that sight just saddened me. Weed seemed to be dull and boring, while I was in that state. Don’t get me wrong, I would have gladly smoked my way out during the come down, but all the euphoria and inspiration I was feeling on acid would have been dulled out at that point, and by then I realized that this trip wasn’t about enhancing visuals (which weed would have definitely aided me in), no, this trip was me exploring the realm of feelings. A realm I don’t feel incredibly comfortable with on a daily basis.

Because I’m not particularly attached to Mark, and because I definitely didn’t feel like I could confront repressed feelings in front of him, I knew, as soon as he lied on the bed and Dianna sat next to him, that I had to leave. I couldn’t be in that room with Mark.

Everything that was beautiful became corrupted. All the feelings of peace and empowerment were wiped out by anxiety and weakness. Mark’s energy wasn’t my energy, and I wanted to leave immediately.
“I...I have to go. Now.” I declared, clumsily grabbing my headphones and my laptop, and heading straight out of the room. Summer decided to leave the lovebirds alone, and followed me back into the common area. I read up that whenever the trip takes a sudden, negative turn, it was a good idea to change my surroundings. I headed out in the hallway, in my pajamas. I had made the smart decision to ‘borrow’ a blanket from Dianna’s and wrapped myself around it.

I went back to the spot where we looked at cars, sat on the railing by the balcony, and realized Summer had followed me there. She sang such a beautiful melody, I can’t recall what it was, but her voice was beautiful and it made it sound... so far. I was far. I was far from her. I was far from singing. (I should mention, I used to sing too... in New York I still haven’t goTen the opportunity, or the balls, really, to go for it, and her nonchalance while exposing such talent brought me to a ‘realization’ - the use of the quote marks is pivotal, in this case).

I teared up at the thought, and then attempted to present it audibly, “I know my calling,” I felt the speed at which the cold tear dripped down my cheek, “I’m a messenger; I’m not an artist... I just wasn’t meant to be” I repeated bitterly. Summer frowned, “What? What makes you say that?” she asked. She seemed visibly startled, like I’d just asked why it was wrong to commit murder.

“I’ve been a sponge for this whole trip. I’ve just been absorbing so much, and you girls produce! You and Dianna, you guys are so talented, and I just want to know people as talented as you. My talents, well, they don’t really come through. I quit them, because they didn’t fit in my life, and it means they’re not important to me. I’m a messenger, I hold a voice, not the voice”, yeah that should be close to what I said. I wasn’t really explaining myself, as much as I was giving her excuses on my artistic laziness. To this day, this remains one of the most daunting moments of my life. I was so sure my future and destiny would have led me to a longing for creativity myself, that it scared me. Forever wishing, forever absorbing, and never creating.

Summer was not convinced at all by my argument, but had probably realized how so far I was, that she didn’t have the strength to prove me wrong. We theorized on the nature of direction (“Why do cars even move?”), the meaning of light (“Why are lights on, why are lights on...!”), and the altitude of New York City (“Imagine jumping...!”), before heading back inside. I was much more inquisitive than Summer, who, at every question, decided to wisely admit she just “didn’t know!” with a smile of sincerity painted on her face.

Once we were back in, I noticed Frey and Louise had put up some of our creations from earlier on during the night. They also showed us the results of their drawing game, which were interesting, to say the least! They were fun to look at, although they made me feel weird. As always, the acid-kind of artificial unsettlement in a reality that did not compute. At all. Louise then began to critique and comment them in a way I found so bizarrely formal, “I like the negative space up here!” she said, pointing to the white part of the swirls that I’d been working on right after dropping. I hadn’t even realized I’d left a space... “We should hang it up!” she suggested. Summer seemed to think it was a great idea, but to me the painting was mediocre, and I laughed at the thought of someone wanting to look at it everyday.

We then stumbled upon other swirls I’d made, on another piece of cardboard, which looked weirdly familiar. “Oh my god, this is definitely a thing... like a person, look at the face. It’s cool” Frey added. I inspected the lines and the strokes, then seeing that yes, it was someone. I don’t know whom, but someone indeed. A blue face on a sea of red and gold features. Picturesque. Too bad I don’t know where that one ended up, that one was the only one worth looking, I thought.

Immediately after that, Louise and Frey adorably followed through their nightly routine of sleeping. Frey was going to sleep with her in her bed, and they were both going to crash. I was comforted that no normal people were going to be awake now. I needed to retreat into acid, after that intense hallway calling. Summer and I sat on the couch, and with shaky hands, began to type out our feelings. Me by pressing fingers, on this very same keyboard I’m currently pressing fingers on, and her by tapping her phone’s screen. She came up with a magnificent poem, of glistening quality. Me, on the other hand, I did.. well, I did this:

‘WHAT ARE WE MADE OUT OF?
WE CAN BE EACH OTHER WITHOUT OUR BODIES.... BUT WE REPRESENT MORE.
IF I TOOK MY SYMBOLS OUT OF ME - LIKE MY CLOTHES - WOULD I STILL REMAIN? THEY REPRESENT ME THEY REPRESENT ME AND I KNOW BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS AND WE ALL ARE AND I AM BECAUSE I KEEP BEING. I KEEP BEING AND I KEEP LOVING AND I KEEP EXPRESSING ALL THE LOVE AND ALL I WANT WITHOUT ME.'

I guess that was an attempt at explaining the fourth realization of the night, which dawned upon me as I was pressing said keys! I realized that on a day-to-day basis it was only what I had to define me, not who I was. It wasn’t about my qualities, or my personality traits, no, it was about my clothes and my nail polish and my makeup and... it couldn’t be that way. Not anymore. This experience was way too spiritual for me to deny my existence as a spirit. As a formerly incredibly nihilist-absurdist person, - I find comfort in chaos - I just couldn’t accept meaninglessness anymore, no I had to build up my soul and believe in something greater than me. Something intangible. I needed to be more.

Back in Dianne’s room, we could infer what was happening from the noise. She was clearly trying to get a quickie on with Mark, “Please, please, please!” we heard her tender voice beg, but it was to no avail. Mark was braindead on the sleep-syndrome, and not much fun was to be expected from more time there. She then walked out and came to check up on us. She looked visibly less literally ‘antsy’ and euphoric than she’d been all night. And that’s when I had the most sparkling, brilliant idea of the night, “Let’s go out,” I proposed.

Summer, who wrote a play called Insomnia: The Musical, was clearly in for aimless walking at night on acid, and Dianna agreed on the premise that we were going out to pick up food for her. Since I hadn’t had anything since the sushi, and had to keep my motor running for the trip, I agreed. We quickly went back to Dianna’s to pick up our clothes - we all gave up on bras... or other soaked underwear by that point - and put them on. I wasn’t the least bit impaired, nor did I have trouble putting my clothes on, but I was still so far. I was still in an impossibly weird, nonsensical, and removed abysmal world of non-realities.

I looked at the first ‘paining’ I’d made, as soon as I had my beanie back on. My way-too-material heels squeaked on the ground, and my way-too-material brown lipstick was thoughtlessly re- applied by me, with ease. This was almost automatic to me, and that’s when the painting spoke.

“Len,” it called me. Now, it’s not like I could hear the painting as a specific person, I knew it was mostly me doing the talking... but it seemed to come from the direction of the painting. So I aTribute the conversation I had as a conversation with a painting.

“Len, you made me!”, it reminded me, “You made me. You created ME. You can create. You can be!” that was true. Dianna and Summer had noticed my affinity towards the painting, and called my name numerous times as I headed over to touch the paper, “Summer is right. You’re wrong” yeah, yeah I was! Just because I was experiencing so much, and forced to absorb it, it didn’t mean I was never going to be able to produce artistic material ever again. Much on the contrary...

“You can do an be whatever you want! You’re here. If you made it here, you can definitely make anything. Stop trying to stop yourself. Quit qui^ng...” the voice of the painting grew fainter, and as I kept stroking it, it has said whatever it had to say, and quieted down in my head.

I looked back at the girls, who were still attentively watching me, “The painting just spoke! It spoke to me. The painting spoke to me! It told me that you were right, Summer, you were right and that messenger shit is stupid. I can be and do what I want” I declared my fifth realization, happily. If I have enough inspiration to produce, I will. Eventually.

“THANK YOU!” Summer conceded loudly. And now, it was us against the City.

V.

This might, perhaps, get a little repetitive, but once we had made the decision to go to food (yeah, that was our destination), we felt, preTy much, sober. This might have been because, once you go back to a place of lucidity and intelligible, non-crowded thinking, it is hard to accept you might fall back in the trip.

The type of hunger that we were feeling, by the way, was very unlike standard munchies from Mary-Jane. Lucy’s hunger was more along the lines of knowing that we were going to be awake for a long time, and having to keep our bodies running, in order not to fall asleep.

Throughout the whole day, I’d only had a Special-K Bar, coffee and the sushi from before, so I wanted to fill myself a bit. Just a quick snack: not like I needed food, but I wanted to nourish my inner self.
When we headed downstairs, I remembered how I, originally (before the trip commenced), felt extremely worried at the idea of going out, or even having to sign myself in and show my face to the guards, high. My pupils were as wide as saucers, and I was still very physically tense and jittery. Thankfully, going out was actually painless. I tried to use my University ID to walk out, only to be reminded by Dianna that I didn’t need it to exit... yeah, still very much not sober, am I?

As soon as we went outside, in the cold breeze of early October, the wet tips of my hair tingled, and I felt almost like a sphere of energy forming inside me. It was regenerating, and it made me immediately fall within the trip again. I looked at cars, and how their bumpers looked like faces. I smiled and waved at them. Cars were like domestic animals: they reflected the people inside, so if I made friends with the cars, I would have made friends with everyone inside them.

My childhood memories were back in the prime-time periphery of my mind. I remembered, back when I used to play this game, when I was in grade school, where I waved at drivers in the highway. Sometimes, they thought it was cute, you know? They smiled and waved right back. Others, just ignored us. Luckily nothing ever obscene happened (let’s thank the innocence of my home country for a second here). Anyways, the cars were the owners. The owners were people. I was a person. They were like me! They were like me, and they also lived in my world. A sense of belonging in Union Square suddenly washed up over my body, and New York City had never felt more like my home. I was that little kid on the highway again, seeing everything, and recognizing it as new. I suddenly wondered, what would smoking be like?

I picked a cigarette from my fresh pack of Marlboro 27s (oh, Europe thank you for making me smoke), and lit it up. Let me just say, even sober, I have a peculiar relationship with smoking- time. Some cigarettes burn away within the shuffle of one song when I commute home, while others seem to take ages to ash out as I walk through avenues and avenues. This one, to my amazement, was a strange example of the laTer category.

It lasted forever. Maybe it was because Dianna was in a hurry to get to CVS - the closest destination to pick up some quick snacks at - but I felt like I stood there, huffing and puffing out in the middle of the night, for a very long time. Smoking always mellows me out significantly - I mean I’ve been smoking for almost a year now, and sometimes, I still feel dizzy and lightheaded from cigarettes. Drifting in philosophical endeavors was calming, and as always, a given, as soon as I was mentally solo.

Any activity I performed by myself encouraged me to re-evaluate my relationship with others around me, and as soon as Dianna and Summer began to walk around and observe the city lights without me, I just kept studying my cigarette and asked myself, “What the hell is the point of smoking anyways?” I might have said it out loud, but I can’t remember. I smiled ironically, realizing how helpless I was in determining the answer to that conundrum.

I walked over to Summer, and, holding my cancer stick, declared amusingly, “This is the most meaningless act someone can ever perform”. She smiled and raised her shoulders. What I loved about Summer is that she never had forced me out of my habits: here she was, completely relating to what I said, even if it was un-relatable for her. Nevertheless, it was pointless for something to be pointless on acid, so it suddenly came to me.

The packs of Lucky Strikes that Lorence and I had ‘split’ (he bought them, and basically picked a couple up and leK the rest for me, that bastard), social cigarettes over beer outside in the cold winter, nights of post-joint chain-smoking all summer long... it was all in my past, and it all shaped who I was. It was a stupid habit, yeah sure, but one that I could not shake. A little passport of memories that had impacted me just as much as my clothes, or ideologies.

Summer still stood silent, and I smiled at her, even more abused when I added, “But it does have meaning... for me,” She looked back and raised her eyebrows, “Really?” she asked. I couldn’t tell whether she was actually interested, or in her own world, faking it, but I thought it was important to respond, and present my sixth realization, “It keeps my home alive, within me. That’s what habits do. Habits are just our ways to remind ourselves that we’re our own home. They’re familiar, and keep a bridge between all the change... they just don’t change.” Obviously I was speaking for myself: a lot of people have found health and benefits in stopping to smoke, or whatever nasty thing they might have been doing. But I am not planning on it, I need to remind myself that I have a home within me, one that won’t change no matter where I go.

When I was finally done, we were ready to walk inside CVS and get something in our tummies (honestly, smoking has never made me feel less hungry, if I really wanted food), just as we were stopped by a young woman wearing a maxi-skirt and a brown leather jacket. She stopped us when she heard Dianna discussing the possibility of going to a more traditional restaurant, where we could sit down and be served.

“Oh girls, if you’re looking for somewhere to eat you could go to the Cafeteria” she said. I’m sure whatever the name of the place was, it wasn’t Cafeteria. Something along the lines of that, though. Dianna smiled and Summer responded, “Oh we were just there earlier today, it was great!”

“Ah, shucks!” she said. She was holding a large tote bag, which she pushed over her shoulder. I observed her quietly, my first stranger on acid! She looked so quintessentially human, and in that basic humanity, I found an endless sense of peace and beauty. It was almost artistic, and art was love, so I quickly started to feel an overwhelming rush of love for that woman, “You’re beautiful” I remarked, interrupting the conversation she was having with Dianna, which was probably normal and boring anyways.

“Oh wow, thank you!” she said. I don’t think I’d make the same observation in a sober state - this girl had crooked teeth, unruly frizzy hair, and was slightly short and stubby. Yet she was perfect, naturally effortless in her harmonious self, and I couldn’t hold it in from her. As she walked away, she recommended some website for...something? Like a natural-remedy doctor, I think. I didn’t know, neither did I care too much. I kept watching her small feet stumble through in heavy, dark boots. How could I tell her how faultlessly she moved? “Your color is green!” I announced as she headed in the subway. She frowned, and was probably a little weirded out, “Ah. I guess I’ll keep that in mind!”, she said skeptically. Maybe she thought I was stoned. Maybe she recognized my condition!

Dianna laughed loudly as soon as the girl was gone. “And your color is teal!” I said to Summer. This color assignment wasn’t really based on anything more than my personal state of mind. I don’t normally think people have ‘colors’, and nor do I ‘see auras’ or anything... everyone simply had a color that communicated their personality.

How I came to those conclusions, I wouldn’t know. It was some trippy synesthetic association I embraced, not much more to explain.
The girls agreed with me, and quickly jumped on the bandwagon, “What’s my color, Len?” asked Dianna. I looked at her, her big, welcoming smile and tall, yet delicate, frame. “You’re like, a light... light blue.” She nodded slowly, probably trying to envision herself as a light blue, “Yeah!”, she acknowledged my judgment. “I can see that too”, Summer added. Dianna suddenly looked at me and emphatically remarked, “You’re definitely red. Like an intense, blood-red.” I smiled, “Crimson” I translated. I stroked my leK wrist, where my King Crimson-themed Larks Tongues on Aspic taToo lied. Man do I love that band.

Then, finally, we walked inside CVS to get something to eat. Lucy’s distractions were entertaining, but we still had a goal. Humanity pulsed within that store, which I never notice on a daily basis. I always thought that CVS, Walgreen’s, or Duane and Reade were very plastic- looking places, sterile conglomerates for munchie-related needs. But in that moment, it definitely wasn’t. They were still places for our needs, of course, but they were human, and life flowed within them. The music that played, some sort of 80s female-sung pop, was being chanted by a human, for humans. The magazines I looked at depicted humans, and other humans read them. CVS represented the mirror to my little human reality - a small corner on the small universe we inhabit. Tininess was incredibly comfortable, and incredibly human. Yet, not many of the commodities in the store made sense to me; in fact, I was still having a hard time processing the point and reality of objects around me, but I was still connected to this world. Undoubtedly so. Sadly enough, Dianna immediately realized that she the food was barred: “Guys, the food is barred down. Let’s go up” she proposed, running towards the escalators. I knew the chances of us finding food upstairs were slim - the second floor mostly stocked up drugstore beauty products and pharmacy-related health items. But I wouldn’t have missed the escalators for the world. Only the one going upward was properly working, and it felt amazing to be basically lifted up; so different from the everyday, almost chore-like, feeling of upward escalators - I was ascending.

As we thought, upstairs was just makeup... and I had already too much of that, so we went straight down. Going down wasn’t as magical as going up, since I actually had to use my legs. It was heavy-handed and slow. As I tiptoed my black heeled mini-boots on the pavement, I felt like I was a mammoth approaching. Yet, we’d just crossed another bridge on our quest... it was taking us somewhere else, which made me thrilled and excited.

Time was not one of our concerns on acid, so Dianna suggested us heading to Grand Central Station. I think she had some sort of asian or indian food craving, and told us that they had all kinds of restaurants inside. Off we went, just to ‘check it out’, first and foremost. My friends and I like to keep our options open when we go out: we rarely make plans or agree on timing, but in that moment, it seemed like we had all the time in the world, to see all it could have offered us.

We entered the subway with dwindling conviction. I marched onwards, assertively leading the way, while Dianna followed in a haze of longer steps, but Summer seemed to hesitate behind us. As soon as we arrived underground, she stopped to look at us in the eye, “I don’t have my phone,” she remarked. Dianna smiled, adding “Neither do I!”

Summer turned to me, “Len?”, she called. I had considered taking my phone with me to blast some trip tunes as we walked along, but it felt unauthentic. So far, acid had warped the reality around me in a way that I had never experienced before, and I wanted to see what it could do with the natural sounds and rhythms of the city street-life. Reality needed to bend itself, in order for me to be legitimately surprised by it, and if I was listening to music, I would have altered the process drastically. So, in answer to Summer, “Nah, no phone on me”.

“One of us should have a phone. I think I’ll just go get mine from upstairs. It’s also a good idea to let Louise, Frey, or Mark know that we’re going out” she said. Her argument seemed reasonable, but I was able to tackle it, for the sake of our destination, “Frey and Louise are probably asleep, and Mark totally crashed on that bed, though. Do you think we really need to wake them up? We’re just going to go to Grand Central, grab a bite, and come back.” I made it sound so easy, and it was... for people not on psychedelic drugs.

What followed was the most lingering moment of the Trip, the most annoying part of it all - climbing the stairs up, and down, up, and down. Dianna and Summer could not, for the life of themselves, make a sensible decision over whether to get the phones or not. I wasn’t going to go, regardless: I’d made my decision, and I needed to progress and move the night forward. What frustrated me about them two, in that moment in particular, was the fact that they were messing with the flow of time and events. They kept going back, and forward, wasting precious minutes, and unable to decide upon a direction. Thankfully, under my council, we decided to all ditch phones and embark on our little technicolor adventure.

If I had to choose one single adjective to describe sitting in that subway, I’d pick climactic. This is interesting, since taking public transport is one of the most bland things we do, on an everyday basis, or so I thought. I mean, if I were to take the subway today, I’m preTy sure I’d still feel preTy bored with the experience, but there is something undoubtedly fascinating with sharing space amongst strangers - united by the need for a destination. The subway appeared to me as a metaphor for my trip. It was a very paradoxical and meta-moment.

I looked around, wondering how frightened or foolish I looked, as I couldn’t help but feel extreme amazement: American trains were so different from the ones in my hometown. The digital destination maps, the clear lights, the improvised ads... it all made me curiously compelled... because, yet again, none of it made any sense, or mattered. The subway was a powerful metaphor, of course, but I still couldn’t process it in terms of its separate components. I remember, particularly, how startled I was by the mechanics of transportation. It seemed like such complicated subject matter that I felt a deep respect towards whomever was in charge of taking care of it.

On a more personal level, I suddenly started to stare at the two middle-aged men sitting in front of me: one of them looked Hispanic and pensive, while the other was a sleepy Asian. Such different people, probably with different lives, and different destinations. Yet for a few moments, they sat next to each other - closer than they must have goTen to the ones they actually longed for. We were all heading somewhere - to progress, to paTerns, to dreams. Their destination was just the same as mine, fulfillment.

I honestly cannot find the missing link between this consideration, and what then evolved to become my seventh realization on acid. I immediately knew, the more I looked at those men, that I wanted no more secrets in my life, no more games, no more lies. I just wanted to be clean, out in the open with all of my feelings and emotions (something I’ve always kind of struggled with). Secrets seemed like such an immature and trivial convention, with their scope being solely to prevent bonding, and deeper connections, with others. The only way to form these relationships was by being raw, and true to myself. To all of me. And that made me smile a lot.

I thought about the mess that took place back home, before I leK, and once again, I felt surprisingly good about it. Originally, I was apprehensive and almost threatened by the possibility of that incident enticing bad thoughts, but it really didn’t. I felt clean about it, because I had come clean for what I did. I had confessed and stated the truth, and I was so happy that it had actually taken place, because it gave me a chance to realize who my real friends, through it all, actually had been. I felt lighter, more genuine, more real.

Once our stop was up, we exited right at Grand Central. No surprise to me, the station was closed. “Oh crap!”, Dianna exclaimed, “I forgot it’s 3:30, and it closes at 3!” she added, looking alarmed. But just as we were about to lose our peppy, wheat-blonde torch to light up our night’s attitude, her sunshiny smile came right back up on her face, “Let’s go to Times Square!”

Without a word, Summer and I both knew that was exactly where we had to go. The premise of being in the most famous visually appealing place in the world, on the most famous visually appealing substance in the world, was alluring the three of us in the same exact way. And, at that point, we also had a similar level of lucidity within us, which made it very easy to find the right way towards midtown, just some twenty blocks away.

I can’t even begin to explain the satisfaction of reaching such a fun, bright-looking, spectacular part of New York... mostly because I was unable to process it myself. I was back in sponge-mode, taking in and absorbing all the feelings I could take in and absorb. Visually, it was a really heavy part of the trip - not because of any hallucination, but because the colors were so rich and vibrant that they made the city look alive. Another bit and trace of human soul, of human visibility, and humanity itself. Every single color told me a story, and transmitted a feeling. (I wish I could make more clear associations between colors and moods, but I never wrote any of it down, so I’m afraid I have forgoTen exactly what ‘vibes’ I got).

A highlight of our ocular tour downtown was the enormous and flashing Desigual store. Some animations were being displayed on giant LCD screen panels; nothing fancy, just color blocks flashing and alternating - an epileptic’s nightmare. The shades were all neon, and all kinds of them appeared, but one particular succession that stayed with me was red-yellow-green, which filled me up with hope and happiness. I guess I do remember one of the associations I made, green = hope. Forever and always.

When we got close enough to see the actual clothes, I was stupefied. On a central, headless, white plastic mannequin was placed a 60s-cropped dress, embellished by an optical illusion checkered black-and-white print all over it, which seemed to shake at every movement of my pupils. That dress was the staple definition of my old Literature teacher’s style, and I was sent back in my memories, as a cold tidal wave of old experiences washed over me.

Let me explain, for a second. This teacher, whom we’ll call Ms. Potter, to make life a little bit more interesting and magical, was never particularly fond of me. I have never been famous for my native-language literature abilities, but the exam grade I received, at the end of my two years of IB Program, had definitely proved her wrong and exceeded my every expectation. But it wasn’t in hatred that I thought of her, no. It was because, one particular afternoon of early 2012, when I was an overweight, fifteen-year-old brunette, as she was explaining the way humans relate to one another, she had advised us, “If you want to learn how, and what, things you say can affect the meaning of what’s being understood by those around you, you should study Communications, like I have”. The topic had never particularly intrigued me, but Potter had a very considerable amount of knowledge on a vast array of interesting subjects. Unknowingly, I realized I had followed her footsteps, and I was studying Communications. Me, the now-skinny, eighteen-year-old blonde had demonstrated her that she had misjudged me, and that I did have a lot to offer. I felt complete - almost to the point where I wanted to send her an email when we went back to Dianna’s. Eventually I smartly decided against it, since my last aTempts at prose were pretty horrifying.

Dianna, Summer, and I eventually found a deli that was open, and seemingly low-key. I picked up a box of hummus and pita chips, Dianna a croissant and a burrito, and Summer didn’t get anything, since she claimed “to have been eating cookies all night long”. I knew that wasn’t true, but I respected her decisions and well-being, so I let her be in harmony with herself. Really, the food and eating it turned out to be the most uneventful part of our commute back through the subway. I noticed that Dianna was studying the jelly texture of her brioche incredibly amusing way: she would squeeze it up in a nut-like shape, and then turn around to me while giggle-whispering, “Doesn’t it remind you of a vagina?” (which yes, it totally did, by the way).

Once we were back in the Union Square subway, Dianna paced up her walking and straightened her face with a pensive thought, “Sometimes I feel like I’m not doing anything here...” she wondered out loud. This one hit me, like a slingshot in the back of my brain, and I had a brand-new weapon to argue against her: my eighth realization.

“That is absolutely not true. You’re doing so much, all the time. Even now, you’re walking, you’re breathing, you’re talking, and thinking! That’s a lot, and it’s all simultaneously. It’s amazing how much we can do, without realizing. We’re constantly doing something, moving, accomplishing, progressing. We can’t help but do.” I definitely wasn’t that eloquent when I commented, but in a nutshell that was my thinking. This is true, sometimes I still take for granted the amount of things I do - reminding myself that every action, every process, every succession is important, fundamental for my sanity and well-being.

Despite the fact that mine was a response to Dianna’s complaint, the person who was most impacted by what I said was Summer. She seemed visibly shocked - her eyes widened, she shook her head, looked over and proceeded to thank me for saying that. I, like a good old snarky asshole, simply smirked and encouraged not to thank me for saying the truth. I liked my newfound wisdom, it built in me solid confidence and strength.

On our way out of the station, we saw an elderly woman, who wore an all-black outfit consisting of leather pants, a cowboy hat, and cowboy boots. Her straight red hair was up in a tight ponytail. She noticed the giddy looks in our faces, and immediately smiled back, telling us, “You three look beautiful together! For how long have you been friends?”

I don’t know why I felt entitled to answer that question the way I did, I let my soul speak, “Forever”. I knew that that experience had made Summer and Dianna think the same, so, in their discrete laughter, I sensed newfound comfort in our friendship. I loved how at ease and in- sync we finally were.

She smiled, small, golden teeth emerging from thin, purple lips, “How long has that been? Seventeen, eighteen years? Nineteen or twenty?” she asked. Dianna smiled and confirmed, “Yes, more or less our whole lives!”

“Well, you do look pretty young! How old are you?” she asked again, but before Dianna could say a single word, the woman went on, “No, wait! I’ll guess it. Wait!” I found that woman hilarious; we hadn’t even moved ever since she’d stopped us! She began to close her eyes, rubbing her palms together, and followed by asking Dianna a series of questions regarding her mountainy preferences, to then suggest a series of unlucky guesses, “Is it Novembah? Octobah? It’s gotta be late-Octobah-early-Novembah!” her New York accent came through with its full force on the last desperate guesses, “No, not really, I’m sorry!” Dianna added. Like it was her fault.

She, then, moved on to me. One penetrating look, with her almond-shaped, glassy brown eyes, was enough to declare, “Oh you girl. You girl, LOVE a camera. And the camera loves you”. I wonder why she didn’t even aTempt to guess my birthday, which is what she immediately moved on to try with Summer. I didn’t catch what she asked, because, as Summer was supposedly beginning to answer back, we felt the cold, aseptically artificial breeze of a new train racing by. “Oh that’s my train. I will see you, girls. Stay friends! Please stay friends!”, the woman said goodbye to us and ran downstairs, her small legs shaking furiously along with her frantic exposed tongue.

We leK it unspoken, but all of us felt that was another sign, one that indicated how helplessly we’d been bounded through this experience. Who that woman was didn’t matter; the fact that she was terrible at guessing birthdays didn’t matter; what mattered was the fact that we heard it from another voice: Stay friends! Please stay friends! And we were going to. And we are going to. Besides that, that interaction was just funny - it was just so obviously spiritual that it made me automatically take acid less seriously, as I nonchalantly commented, “Damn. That lady was tripping harder than us, guys!” Dianna smiled and asserted, “Oh next time, we’ll have some of what she’s been playing with”.

By this point, both Dianna and Summer were coming down. Dianna still seemed preTy out of sync with reality, and I could see the cloud of acid-weirdness still dissipating over her mind. Her movements were still a little racy, and she was restless, but didn’t seem to be too involved with herself anymore. Summer was a little more complicated to figure out, because her accounts of the story differ. In an upcoming part, I will provide evidence to support the fact that she was still pretty high, but throughout the whole trip, and while reviewing her experience in its entirety, she generally claims to have not experienced much, visually at least. I’m not sure how true this is, but this report focuses on my story, my feelings, and my observations - so I will note my inferences.

On another note, two half-blotters weren’t guaranteed to be particularly powerful, no matter how expensive and pure the acid we got, presumably, was. We were looking at about five hours of tripping and two of comedown on first-time users, like Summer and Dianna. I had had a full one, on the other hand, so I was nowhere near being done. Oh no. I was about to explode.

VI.

When we came back, everyone in the suite was asleep. Summer and I sat by the living room, while Dianna was determined to wake up Mark, and test sex on acid. I was beyond thrilled to finally get to my snack - and am happy to report that eating with Lucy makes it even more fun! Even a pre-packaged and uber-processed hummus treat was heavenly, mostly because of the creamy texture. I was fascinated by how the crispy, hard chips mercilessly drowned in the dense sauce, and I moved it around multiple times, just to watch it dissipate. Eventually, I ran out of chips, and proceeded to dip and feel the sonftess of the chickpea-flavored condiment hands on - oh yeah, I used my very own index finger to ravish anything leK in that plastic box. Food was meant to be eaten and enjoyed, and I oughted to appreciate every last bit of it.

Deciding we weren’t sleepy just yet, Summer and I turned the lights of the common area back on, and pulled out my laptop, to relax on the web a little bit. I was still convinced we were all coming down, so I visited a website off of my saved Reddit thread of cool links to check out while on LSD. The first one brought us to a remarkably trippy interactive visualizer, made up of retro-pixelated blobs of vanishing colors. As I moved the cursor, the particles of turquoise, bright yellow, and green hues would break apart in tiny red and pink ones, something which totally astounded me. I felt like my brain was melting as I stared at the screen, completely lost in those visuals. I guess that the thought that made me realize I was still feeling the acid was the simple fact that I was being entertained by that one single animation for too long, and a bit too intensely (I’m usually one of those tab-whoring, three-hundred-miles-per-second, avid multitaskers, and have a hard time focusing on only one webpage, when I’m at the computer).

I tried a few songs to accompany the visualizer, but nothing was weird enough. I wanted something fucked up - something so completely uncanny and off-sounding that I could have rejoiced at its peculiarity. Summer gave me a few suggestions, but everything sounded too conventional. “No, I need avant-garde shit!” I said. And as soon as I did, I knew a record that was uncomfortably smooth enough: Tim Buckley’s Lorca. I remembered it because of a particular comment on its Rate Your Music page, along the lines of ‘I’ve heard stranger things before, but this is the one Tim Buckley people will frown at you for playing at a party’, and I really wanted a party of heavy frowns, right then and there.

We stayed like that for some time - again, I can’t tell you how long precisely, but it was quite consuming. The blobs on the visualizer began to look like lilttle faces even more than usual - I have extreme pareidolia on any kind of substance: I see faces in everything and everywhere, except for people’s features, where, ironically enough, they should actually belong. All the colors were turning into separated units of light and expressions. It was a kind of ordinarily divine, but I still assumed it was the end. It was very similar to feeling really stoned... nothing too out of normal highs.

When the album ended, I found myself at a loss of what to do. The visualizer had been entertaining, but I’d had enough. In the mean time, Summer had been writing haikus and lyrics, which made a lot of poetic sense, and I felt very jealous of her ability to create things that were so beautiful. I shook it off immediately, and invited her to sponge-out with me, “Have you ever heard of ODDSAC?” I asked.

“Nope,” she answered, facing the screen. I smirked, “Oh you’re in for a treat. It’s this movie made by the members of Animal Collective, a few years ago... it’s like a visual album. They even screen it here in the city, sometimes”. As an avid AnCo fan, I knew about the short film, but I’d never considered watching it while high. I knew it was weird enough to do the trick though, so we tried it.

It’s not my place to describe, or figure out, what exactly is going on in ODDSAC. It’s a glorious mesh of visual, and hypothetical, scenarios that I recommend you check out for yourselves - so I will not spoil the surprise. I think we were about ten or fiKeen minutes in, when a very giggly Dianna and a tired-looking Mark emerged out of the room. For the movie, we’d turned the lights back off, and their tall shadows announced to us they were going to be taking yet another shower. Summer decided to take a nap, as she felt very sleepy, and I was ready to follow her.

We lied down in the dark of Dianna’s room, in her roommate’s bed. Summer was quick to settle into sleep, but, as soon as the lights were back off, I was in another universe. The springboard darkness gives anyone tripping is formidable, to say the least. When you’re voided, your brain just works to fill it all back in with visuals. My dose was preTy weak, so that’s why I think I was able to maintain my cool for so long, when out in the open. There was no chance I was immersed in complete darkness at any point before that part of the trip, and as I had already noted, closed-eye visuals were much clearer than open-eyed ones in the light.

It all started with little sparkles of rainbow light, flying around in front of me. I didn’t realize they were hallucinative in nature, at first. I just thought that it was late, I had been up and running for a long time... this must be some sort of trick my eyesight played on me, after brain had been processing information for a long time, which does happen sometimes. The truth, preTy literally, slapped me in the face approximately ten seconds, when the sparkles began to move... tiny little freckles of multicolored, intangible rain.

And the more I looked, the more concrete they became. From sparkles, they became hairs, then wires, and then threads. I saw the colors flowing within them, pouring pigment sliding from end on end - it was all extremely hypnotic, I mean, I felt like I probably had this staggered look on my face, as I saw everything flying, and turning, and twisting. It was mesmerizing.

They kept getting thicker, and thicker, until they turned into little pencils. They broke apart, and turned into classic B orange pencil-shaped rockets, which launched across the room in constant takeoff. As soon as they were in flight, they’d disappear, and new ones would form and fly. It was a spectacle, and it made me understand that I had taken acid, and that I was tripping, pretty badly, too.

My stimulation prompted me to experiment with closing my eyes again, and my lord, am I glad I did it - it was insane. At first, I got the same hazy, dark fractals from before, but they seemed much more detailed. Still hazy, but detailed. They didn’t stick around for too long, as the mandala I saw broke apart, and turned into a tunnel I was catapulted into. That’s when I got why they call this ‘tripping’. I thought I was in the front row of a roller coaster, which would take me to different sights, and stop at certain locations for a few seconds more.

One of such stops was a discotheque. Not a club, not a bar, not a venue, but a disco-disco. There were bright magenta lights, and I saw a gorgeous african-american woman dancing. She had long, smooth legs and a sick, huge afro. She definitely didn’t match my initial expectation of what I imagined Lucy must have looked like, but is now the most concrete envisioning I have of her - she was the acid!

The roller coaster took me closer to her face, and as she waved her body from leK to right, I saw her big, velvety lips becoming larger, and larger. Then I radically turned leK and saw even more lips. There were lips of all kinds appearing before me: illustrations, animations, the Rocky Horror lips, my friends’ lips, the Flaming Lips... just so many mouths smiling and frowning, smirking and crying, through their teeth. Surrealistically majestic splotches of red and pink light bathed the scene with spice and gusto. It was great.

Then, it all got really dark again. The roller coaster took me to a lot of spooky sights. I saw multiple devils, and interpretations of what the word ‘demonic’ meant. I saw pure evil, and all that it embodied, but I wasn’t affected. All of the skulls and skeletons (which, let me tell you, I’ve been terrified of in the past), and smiling crows, and dolls turning their heads... they just didn’t affect or scare me, at all. They were just inevitable. It was like, ‘oh yeah, there’s bad stuff in life’, but it is part of life itself, so I couldn’t avoid it. Nor did I want to. I wanted to face my evils, like I knew I was supposed to everyday, in reality.

At one point, Summer leK to go talk to Dianna and Mark, who were out of the shower, and chatting in the common area. I was too immersed in my trip to care to hang out with others, so I just stayed in the room. I went back to the rocket-pencils and threads of light, which were now all happening at the same time, and it was glorious. They were joining together and spinning in circles, creating rainbow ferris wheels that circled at 3000 miles per second.

Unfortunately, I, yet again, wasn’t really paying attention to fact that an outer world existed, so when Dianna stepped in, announcing Summer was going to return to Blue C, I wasn’t too thrilled. Summer encouraged me to stay and take a nap, but Dianna reiterated how worried she was about the possibility of her walking back by herself. We were just three blocks and half a street away, but I sensed that I was being kicked out.

“Yeah, I’d definitely feel better if you went along with her” Dianna said. “Sure, no problem” I responded, wide-eyed.

I went back to the common area and picked up my boots again. Putting them on wasn’t exactly challenging, but I definitely made no sense. I was overwhelmed by the reality of objects once more, and everything amazed me, in a way it never had. This state was probably reflected on my face, as Dianna brushed by my shoulders and asked, “Len, are you okay?”

“Wa-wa yeah!” I responded, feeling like a little kid. I am a child, I’m a lover being born, my mind sang lyrics, and my mouth clipped sounds. I was feeling fried, “Girls, I don’t think I’m done
tripping just ye-et!” I announced excitedly. Dianna and Summer looked down at me with worried looks, and, as Summer helped me up, she spoke the words I could have never, “No, you’re definitely not.”

VII.

Summer seemed tired as we made our way downstairs again. My little computer of a mind was trying, more or less helplessly, to process the elevator, the exit, the cooler air outside... but still, nothing made any sense. As soon as we were in Union Square again, I asked Summer how she was feeling: “Are you still tripping?”
She gave me a smirk, “Nah, I was done for hours ago!”
The fact that she was in a post-trip mindset, and knew I was still way up, made my shield of vulnerability weaker, and I put down my guard to tell her exactly how I felt. I was scared I wasn’t going to remember it, and would never be able to share it with her again in the future. That moment was all that mattered, and I needed to get emotional immediately, before I would have been European and proud all over again.

“Summer, I... I... I... I just love you so much. You’re just so important to me; you’re like my soulmate, and after this, but, but even before, really, nothing is going to keep us away from each other’s lives!” I addmitted, excited.

Her eyes lit up, with an acid-enhanced glimmer, “Oh stop!” she requested, flattered, “I’m so thankful and happy that you’re here, and that we did this together... you know what it is? I’ve been trying to find it for a while, and now I know. You bring color, that’s what you do in my life, you bring colors,” I’m aware this sounds like acid talk, but trust me, for Summer that is the most natural and effortless thing to say.

She continued, “Especially with your hair all curled up like that, you remind me of Penny Lane from Almost Famous!” she remarked again. I was just as happy and hugged her tiny self. Wrapping my arms around her, I felt my bulky headphones weighing down my handbag: music. I needed music again!

After a five-minute long, heartfelt embrace, I excused myself, and plugged in the headphones to my phone - which is my main source of music streaming. I was still way up there, so I conceded myself an artificial, soundtracked, short walk back to Blue C. I decided to play some traditionally acid-y modern music, so that it wouldn’t have felt en[rely out of place and touch with my times.

In terms of processing reality, this was the most intense part of my trip. As soon as “Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind” by Tame Impala, began playing, nothing made sense. Nothing made sense on a whole different level, a level so overwhelming and so intense that I just had to accept it, and succumb to my mental impairment. Trying to find an explanation on the most everyday - or, in this case, everynight - elements that I encountered down the street just was too much.

I immediately recalled seeing one of West’s friends, about two weeks earlier, on magic mushrooms. He kept mentioning how reality seemed like “too much”, but I wasn’t able to understand what he meant by that. Now, I definitely did. The paradoxes and problems with everything seemed all-too clear, and shapes and sizes uniting together made everything even more complicated.

The intensity of those sensations was so heightened that I had to vocally express it, like when I was back in Dianna’s room, slamming my fist on her roommate’s bed. I released my energy by spinning around, twirling down the street, delightfully exhausted. As I saw cars passing, I felt even safer seeing the world continue running, and never stopping. This was my world, and I belonged, and knowing that was all I needed to entice an overwhelming wave of happiness, that, coupled with the phazed-guitar of the song, turned off my mental intelligence completely. I began expressing that sense of comfort with very loud, strange noises. They sounded like moans of pain, the ones we make when we’re stressed out and need to release stress. I mean, I definitely felt all-too relaxed, if anything, but my brain was so puzzled by what was around me that I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t hold it in, “MMMMM... AAAAAAAAAH....MMMMM!!!”

As we reached the market in front of Blue C, and I noticed some workers moving around, carrying grocery stocks in large, metal carts, I smiled at them, and at the blaring lights of the store preparing to open. A new day was dawning, and it was beautiful for me to witness it. Looking back, I guess I’d recommend acid for people with depression, or whoever feels tired and useless with the world they live in. It is such a revelatory experience for all that we take for granted. Even a store opening up just didn’t make sense, as a whole: it was all made of small parts - the connection between every single task was what made us able to perform activities. I was never an existentialist, but in that moment, I understood entirely what the philosophy entailed, and it was the truth.

Acid has changed me in that sense: I can’t be the nihilistic, life-is-just-a-giant-absurdist-salad thinker I used to be. Sure, I still love Camus and Nietzsche, but I regained so much more belief in human relationships and connections. Especially in terms of how much we all need each other to carry out our lives, and this assigns meaning to our actions and activities - our motivation to deepen the affinities between us, and others.

When we walked inside Blue C, Summer made sure I had my University ID prepared at the entrance to enter in the building. Yet, yet again, I wasn’t impaired. Tapping the card and pressing the digits that represented my birthdate wasn’t difficult, it was natural, it was all that I needed. I remembered my birth, and where I was now, and the recurring thought of how far I’d come from my Nowhereland made my knees weak with joy.

Quite literally, seeing as, as soon as we entered, Summer felt the need to sit at the columns that supported the three massive towers of Blue C. It was our courtyard area, and despite the air getting gradually cooler, as fall grew harsher, I wasn’t bothered by being outside. No, I was glad I was. Summer was sitting in front of me, her knees in her hands, her head resting on the wall. She looked at the cloudy moon we were having that night, and I thought about how her round, pale face was a moon of its own. It was all I could focus on, and as soon as I set my eye-spotlight on it, all the posters and signs that were up started to melt again. My brain rejected anything
that I wasn’t intently making the object of my attention, I observed. My reality was too intense and complicated, and I couldn’t even focus on it anymore.

Because of my state, Summer offered me to go to up to her suite. I accepted eagerly, seeing as the loK, which I clearly didn’t belong it, was most definitely not where I had to be. When we stepped in, Summer’s suite mate, Amaya, was still awake, video chatting with some of her Indian friends. She was originally from Mumbai and oKen missed on sleep to keep in touch. We asked her what time it was, and she replied, “It’s six thirty AM now, I might go to sleep soon!”.

For some reason, seeing a new person and a new environment revamped my acid-minded state, to the point that all I could see of Amaya was her radiant beauty. She emanated a sense of well- being and my eyes widened as I stared at how regal she seemed: her tan skin, large brown eyes, and rich black hair made her look like an Indian goddess. I remembered how once, when I was telling her about Seth, she told me that I was “actually perfect,” and that I needed to find someone who would appreciate it. In that moment, she was the one who was perfect and beautiful, and I felt like I had to tell her. So I did.

“Amaya, you’re so beautiful!” I said, in an unusually high-pitched singsong voice. Just like everyone else, on acid, she had a color, “Your color is like an amber orange gold. You’re so beautiful!” I repeated, startled at my sight. As I spoke, I paced back and forth all around the suite. A place that I was so used to seeing seemed so different, and I thought that if I explored it all through I would have regained the familiarity. Amaya, initially amused, looked, to an extent, concerned and said, “Oh my gosh, you’re drunk, aren’t you?”

She helped me into her room, “Sit, sit, you’re drunk. Sit!” I wasn’t surprised she misunderstood what substance I was on, mostly because Amaya doesn’t really give into the outer-wordly, psychonautic ventures we partake in. She quickly introduced me to her friends on the other end of the globe through her large computer screen, and I waved excitedly, “Guys this is Len, she's drunk... she’s a little off, but she’s fun!”

“Nah, May, I just dropped a tab of acid” I remarked nonchalantly. I had never been in Amaya’s room, so a new place helped me settle down. Immediately as I said, I heard a loud collection of delayed gasps coming from her computer, “WHAAAAT!” her friends exclaimed in unison with her. “Why did you do that?!” she asked. I smiled calmly and said, “I don’t know, it seemed like a fun time. It’s great, really” I awkwardly responded, looking around all over her small dorm.

Summer briefly walked in to inform me that she was going to sleep, as she had to take a train to Long Island to see her friend Lola, later in the morning. I decided to follow her, but as soon as I asked her whether I could crash there, since her roommate was absent, I had the horrible sensation she wanted me out of there immediately. I kept insisting I had to leave, and that irritated her to no end. She finally exploded on me and accused me of “acting like a bitch!”

It was just a split second of rage, but it was a kind of rage I had never seen on her soK features. Immediately after the release of her emotions, she apologized, affirming she had been consumed by what had overtaken her. I didn’t care much of it, since the room was dark and I was distracted by the visual patterns that were forming on her pale face. Her bed, which was positioned way up, was hard for me to reach, so she helped me up, and we sat watching her roommate’s polka-dot comforter change into a variety of shapes.

They melted and moved downwards, falling into the endless ground, and breaking apart to regenerate again. They were black, and the rest of the baby pink blanket formed a series of tubes that would connect rainbow pipes from dot to dot, sparkling as they moved. The beauty of that vision had me entranced.

“I’m so glad we listened to West and decided to take the acid instead of the shrooms,” I said. That prompted Summer to ask me a vaguely unrelated question, “Would you ever do West again?”

I thought about it, but it was hard to come to any sort of long-term conclusion on casual relationships on acid. Deep within me, I knew my relationship (and I don’t mean romantic) with West was more or less meaningless; it was something I had thought about while I was sober. Yet, on acid, I had no opinions, no desires, no sense of what made sense and what did not, so, I ended up repeating “I don’t know” at least fiKeen times. Yet again, I was a neutral sponge.

That was when my ninth realization washed upon me: everything fluctuates, especially moods and feelings. Nothing had remained the same, and nothing ever would. Life was about bonds being formed and destroyed; people bridging out into our lives and then leaving, often without a physical trace. No single thing ever really stays, it all becomes something anew. From the bed, I looked to my hands, and my chipping nail polish, and I saw beauty in it too. The beauty of breakdown and decay, the beauty of the real end of everything. Not because it revealed my naked nails and prompted a new canvas, rather the decadence itself had a particular fascination about it. I was intrigued by life running its course, tangibly and emotionally.

I was overtaken by emotion and found myself retreating within, so I leK Summer alone to get her sleep and walked over to the mirror. The last time I’d seen myself was before we’d leK for Times Square, so I wanted to check on how my lipstick and wild hair had been doing. It seemed amusing to me how people don’t recommend looking at their own reflections in the mirror on acid, yet I would have been way unhappier with my appearance if I’d been sober: my hair had fluffed up significantly, and all that was leK of my dark brown stain was a dry-looking line along the outer edges of my lips. I looked so different than I used to on a daily basis.

My pupils were almost occupying the entire rim of my iris, and one could barely tell what my eye color was. The more I looked through that thin stroke of hazel-brown, the more I penetrated my soul and saw within me. The trip I took inside myself helped me better articulate my fourth realization, turning into my tenth. My essence, now displaced and unfamiliar, seemed absent from my reflection. I could be without my body, because all I needed was clothes and accessories to define my iconography, as opposed to my soul.

It was an ebbing sight and feeling, to know that my commodities seemed more representative of my persona, rather than my character. I knew what the purpose of my trip had been, right then and there, I needed for my soul to be sole definitive factor of me. I needed to feed my spirituality in order for that to become the only nourishment that mattered.

I kept breaking through the surface of that mirror: fucked up hair, barely any makeup, no underwear... and I saw the truth beyond me; everything I ever meant and represented, and it had never been any clearer. I was just there, as myself, as the one, true me. And I could only see it through, and because of, acid.

After that, I was ready to let my mind hallucinate me to sleep. The paTerns that I saw would have been my lullabies, I thought. I went inside Amaya’s room, in order not to disturb exhausted Summer. She was preparing to sleep too, and, seeing as her roommate Maria wasn’t there, invited me to crash on her bed. I readily accepted, and watched as she turned off the light. I looked around myself, saying goodbye to my acid-sight, and ready to feel it all falling back into everyday place.

Obviously, it’s not like I had tremendous amounts of control over what I perceived, and Amaya did have a night-light, or some derivative that reflected light, and the room wasn’t pitch black. I was able to see her Suits large poster hanging off the wall: it showed two shadows of tall men wearing suits, both black, blurred out silhouettes, against a purely white background. I saw them melting and morphing in front of me. I felt like I was watching an optical illusion, as they blended and harmonized with such a contrasting, solid, backdrop.

I kept my eyes open for a few more moments, and as I listened to Close Chorus by A Sunny Day in Glasgow, I saw the threads of light return, and become little nals, that flew around all of us and made me feel peacefully, dizzy. They began to quietly explode, becoming fainter and fainter, until I had to squint to properly see. They were the sleep-inducing fireworks of the night, a perfect way for me to finally close my eyes. At that point, I saw magenta-pink and black fractals, nothing too generic, and always dark... until I lost myself into sleep, consumed by the fantastic trip I’d had.

VIII.

I estimate that I fell asleep about an hour after I arrived at Summer’s, at 7 AM. Considering we dropped our doses at 8 PM, I was really satisfied with my eleven-hour-long acid ride. Especially if we factor in that it was just one tab, it still gave me a rich, but not-too-intense experience, a great introduction into the world of psychedelics.

At about 9:30 AM, Maria came back. I don’t really know much about her, but she seemed nice as she requested me to sleep on the couch, which I was more than happy to do. I had a horrible headache, so I was excited to continue my resting phase. When I got up, I could tell I’d definitely come down, and there were no more visuals or intense feelings, but the world still didn’t make much sense. There was something just off about the world, at that moment.

I actually woke up at 1:30, with a deep desire for a rich brunch. Not really because I was hungry, but the idea of scrambled eggs seemed familiar enough to stimulate a link back from the off- world. I said goodbye to Summer, who lamented being extremely tired and still having to visit her friend in Long Island, and joined Amaya downstairs to get a meal in me. I am not going to lie: I was [red. I was exhausted. I could barely process what the next day was going to involve.

I was definitely down by that point, but I still struggled in processing everyday furniture. I don’t know why objects were so tough on me, but they just looked complex. As we prepared to head to the cafeteria, we passed by the courtyard which had circular tables and benches all connected to each other, and those still seemed weird to me: why; what does this mean? What does it represent? It doesn’t make sense, I concluded.

Eating was peaceful enough, and as Amaya met up with some other Indian friends, I leK to go back to my loK and do a reading. Concentrating without falling asleep was hard, and at one point I saw the words wave and dance around a bit, but it was all tiredness and brain chemistry feedback from LSD. I decided to pick myself up and have dinner with Remy, as we were supposed to exchange psychedelic stories. It was raining faintly across the sky, and it was that rain that represented my spiritual growth.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m very sensitive about my hair. Not only was I rocking my wavy locks, but I noticed the raindrops were soaking me - and I didn’t care. Their delicate texture reminded me of the threads of light, and as my phone screen got wet too, I saw the drops becoming rainbow- colored on the screen, a totally regular, everyday thing. Yet, to me, it became something more. A flashback to my unforgettable experience: it made me want to cry; it reminded me of happiness, and belonging within the universe as a part of the human population.

Now, whenever I think about being on acid, my heart thumps and drops a little bit, as I struggle to remember what feeling all of that love was like. I want to learn how to love more, and hate less; how to incorporate this richer knowledge and peace into my life. It was a life-changing first, and definitely not last, experience with LSD.

Exp Year: 2014	ExpID: 105058
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Jun 28, 2018	Views: 1,239
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