DOSE:

3 hits

LSD

(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

It was early December of 2016 when George texted me asking if I'd like to trip the next morning with him and Paul in the canyon. It was around 1 am, I was up late as usual. I wasn't enthusiastic about it but I said why not, I always wanted to go hiking while tripping, and George would be pushy if I said no. I had tripped on acid maybe 20 times before this, and my max dosage was 5 hits. I had only ever had one mildly bad experience, but nothing horrible.

He picked me up around 6 am. It was colder than I had dressed for, a chilly 50 degrees. We went to the convenience store, had coffee, and stocked up on water and snack foods, then headed toward the summit of the canyon. When we got to the summit, Paul pulled out the acid. It was a Sonic the Hedgehog print, and at the sight of this horrible video game character I got my first bad vibes. George at first was questioning, saying he didn't wanna drop until we reached the waterfall at the bottom of the gorge. But we had only planned for a day hike, and since the acid would be peaking right around the time we reached the waterfall, we each took 3 hits.

The descent then commenced. It was around 7 am. I distributed apple Trident layers gum to Paul, George and myself, a brand I still cannot chew because of the memory I would soon attach to it. The acid took a while to kick in. We must've been an hour and a half into our journey before I began to feel any effects, which was unusual for me. As we reached the bottom of the canyon and headed toward the waterfall, I could finally feel it. Everything was beautiful, shimmering and breathing. We crossed the water on a log foot bridge, standing outside of time and admiring its beauty. We walked into a great opening and I let out a primal yawp. This was the best trip ever, in terms of the visuals I was perceiving.

We then began to walk through a small forest. It was dark but beautiful. Around this time was when things began to foreshadow the dark turn ahead. George commented that the forest reminded him of Aokigahara Forest - the Japanese wood of the suicides near Mt. Fuji infamous for the high incidence of people killing themselves in it's vast expanse. But at the time I thought nothing of the comment.

We then exited the densest part of the forest and began walking along the stream that would culminate in the waterfall. The rocky climbing, up-and-down motion was tiring. We took a break to eat. I took out a pastry and began eating it when I was suddenly overcome with the feeling that I was drowning, not on water but on air. I pulled out a bottle of water and poured in onto my face, trying to 'breathe' it. I quickly snapped out of it and began repeating 'I'm going to be ok. I'm going to be ok.' George was eating beef jerky - in retrospect, not a good thing to eat on acid - and seemed to be feeling bad vibes himself. We both told Paul that we should return to the jeep, but Paul insisted we trek further. He said we had to see the waterfall.

So we continued onward until we reached the falls. It hadn't rained in a while. The water was weak flowing, and the barren, desolate, neutral toned rocky landscape where once water flowed abundantly was menacing. An old man was there before us, and as we approached the falls, he was walking back in the direction he came from. He asked us how we were doing and tried to strike up a conversation. I did my best to play it cool, telling him we were hiking and really not much else. Despite how nervous I was, I was surprisingly more extroverted than I am usually. I did not feel like myself.

George's mind was at this point thoroughly warped. He thought every elderly man he had ever met was now the same person. Thinking this was the gentleman who owned the local burger joint, he praised the dude and said he loved his burgers. The man was confused. I have no recollection how that topic was ended, but before the man continued back home, he said he was enjoying this hike for the first and last time, before he was too old to see it. My memory here begins to get spotty, but I believe I started accidentally talking about mortality, saying something along the lines of 'Yeah well me and my friends are still young. We aren't going to die soon like you,' but the way I said it was in no way intentionally rude or mean.

This is where time stops. George begins shivering, and for what was either 3 minutes or half an hour, Paul and I huddled up to him, afraid that we would all soon die from the environment. George was going back and forth between the best mood he had been in and the deepest pits of existential horror. At one point, trying to encourage and help him, I pointed to the wilderness surrounding us and told him I was proud of him because he created it all.

While walking up the falls, several odd statements ensued. I became convinced that Paul was an ape. This was both physical, he's a very brutish looking dude, and because George and I often jab at him for being very primitive. Helping George climb up a particularly steep area, he looked at me wide-eyed and then called me 'brother', hugged me, and said 'thank you for saving me, god', addressing me as a deity. I, looking around, said, 'wow, this environment looks so real, the developers really outdid themselves on make a convincing video game'.

Paul is a very easy going, passive man who doesn't hold aggression towards anyone. George on the other hand is very pushy and willful. At one point Paul said something about some cheesy psychedelic rock band. An inside joke with us is mocking Paul's very narrow, limited taste. George calls him a void of a man because he really lacks depth, and doesn't ever really express himself beyond dopey yes/no terms. This must've really enraged George, because he then proceeded to punch him. I could feel reverberations through the atmosphere. Suddenly I became convinced that George would kill Paul, and then God would smite us. I broke it up and got George off of him. Things went back to normal. Or as normal as they can be, I guess, and we reached the top of the falls.

At one point we had to cross the relatively shallow stream. Rather than stepping on the stones to stay dry, I waded waist deep and began to tell Paul and George about my fear of drowning and of bodies of water, which is rooted in an early childhood near death experience.

George pulled out his phone. I associate phones with bad trips because mine was heavily linked to my first, relatively mild bad trip, so I avoid them altogether in trips now. I looked at his screen. He had his girlfriend's last name listed as 'blah blah blah'. I felt like this was some glitch in the system of reality and, alarmed, I wagged my finger and said 'no phones'. George looked astonished, as if I had just revealed the nature of reality to him, and adamantly threw his phone into the stream, something which we only later found out wasn't a hallucination.

For the next six hours, I relived my entire life over and over, at least 5 times. I recalled vividly the last time I had hiked in this canyon, with my father years before, and had illusions of killing him. I heard sirens all around me. I began writing in my notebook. I had no idea what I was writing at the time. George told me to write something in his handwriting with my hand, and then began ranting about how much he missed living in California. He became convinced that his uncle (who raised him) was dead. I retorted by saying our favorite professor was still alive, thus his uncle couldn't be dead. For a while we rocked back and forth in our separate insanities, me pleading for my mom and him for his uncle.

At one point I began narrating his consciousness - something I really have no other way of explaining. As he began ranting about his hatred for his cousin, I critiqued various aspects of his personality. This was a major event for him, but for me it was mostly impersonal and I don't recall much of it.

I sat down cross legged and closed my eyes. I was trying to snap out of it. But suddenly I felt like I was falling down a massive, endless pit, totally devoid of light. All around I heard the sounds of people coughing, choking, water splashing and occasionally a scream. I felt like I was in another dimension, beyond life and death. I felt like I was living in a facade, a simulation , and I had taken acid as a way to break free of this Matrix-like Baudrillardian nightmare, and now my interdimensional overlords, or God, or the aliens or whatever were punishing me for it, sending me through a void of information overlord and breaking my mind with a jackhammer.

I came to and checked my watch. It was now 3pm. I had lost consciousness some 5 hours before. But suddenly I began to feel okay. Things still felt weird, but I could tell I was sobering up. George also snapped out of it at the same time. What was happening to Paul all this time? He was somehow totally unaffected and managed to have a good trip. I have scattered memories of him waving his fingers at us and saying 'snakes', at which point they looked like snake emojis to me, as well as him standing on a tall rock and calling himself the Lizard King. He did nothing to help us during our bad experiences. During all of this, I recall voices sounding like they were backtracked and just incredibly off, like the voice of the dwarf in the dream sequence of Twin Peaks.

After coming back to a relatively sound state of mine, I ran to the base of the waterfall to take a piss. It felt like it went on forever, and while I pissed I felt as if I was being stabbed all over my body. I looked in my journal. I had wrote 'please someone help me. My name is Harry. I have taken a substance I do not know what. My address is 123 Sesame Street. Please call this number and have them come pick me up. Please have mercy upon me God'

We descended back to the base of the waterfall. He grabbed at his pockets, realizing he didn't have his phone. We both simultaneously recalled him tossing it into the stream. He rushed to the stream and found it, terrified that it was destroyed. Miraculously, it survived over 5 hours totally submerged and still works perfectly to this day.

We walked back to the jeep, a journey which lasted about 3 hours. We didn't talk much, all of us trying to come to terms with what had just happened and focusing on getting back to the jeep before sunset. We were all still tripping heavy, but the worst of the mental tripping was gone, and it was now primarily visual. My phone began ringing constantly as I regained cellular service. I had tons of messages from my girlfriend, and a large amount of social media notifications. Talking to her was a great relief and definitely helped put a band aid on my psyche until I could sort this all out.

[Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]
We got into the jeep and began the long, cautious drive home, with bright street lights becoming overwhelming and a total inability to see where cars were as they created long, lasting motion trails. It somehow didn't turn me off from psychedelics permanently, but it utterly shattered all of my previously held philosophical beliefs and for the next week I was incredibly depressed and emotionless.

Exp Year: 2015	ExpID: 110123
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 17
Published: Apr 25, 2025	Views: Not Supported
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