DOSE:	2.5 hits		LSD	(blotter / tab)
	few hits	smoked	Cannabis	(flowers)

BODY WEIGHT:

130 lb

I should note that I am recounting this experience almost 6 years later, but to this day it remains the most profoundly transformative experience of my life, and much of my memory of its events are still intact. Hopefully in sharing it, someone else may be able to relate - you never know what may come.

On December 8th, 2011, a friend of mine from college (I'll call him 'Q') came up from New Jersey to see Dark Star Orchestra at a venue near my house. I had recently acquired a 5-strip of LSD from a random hippie on a train who was going to see this exact band in NYC about 10 days earlier. This LSD had been on somewhat of a journey itself - the night I bought it, me and two friends were arrested by an undercover cop for possession of a small amount of pot that we were bringing to a different show that night. Fortunately, the LSD made it through the holding cell undiscovered and we got off pretty easy with misdemeanor charges. Anyway, I wasn't really aware of what I was getting myself into when Q and I split the 5-strip that night, which I suppose is partly why the experience that followed was so shocking and profound. In addition, at this point I had been taking SSRIs for several years, and was already dabbling with the idea of coming off of them. What was about to ensue would form a sharp contrast with the path that brought me there.

We dosed at home and took a short drive to the venue, parked in the lot, rolled up a few joints, and started walking toward the show. Not long into our walk, Q starts feeling it, and mentions that it's very good L, but I'm still not sensing anything. We get in, and the first set kicks off. A few songs in, we spark our first joint. And that's when it hits. It took only a couple puffs for me to go from not feeling anything, to being in full-blast psychedelic trip.

To this day, after dozens of trips, I have never come up as quickly on a psychedelic as I did in that moment. It took only a couple puffs for me to go from not feeling anything, to being in full-blast psychedelic trip. I had tripped before, I told Q, but I had never tripped like THIS.

I was panicking - I felt like I was completely in over my head. I grabbed Q and brought him toward the water fountain so I could get a drink and a moment of quiet. Then we went outside and sat on the steps with everyone smoking their cigarettes. I remember feeling a tremendous sense of convergence. Like everything that is, was, and ever will be was crashing onto a single moment: NOW. I had reached the ultimate turning point, and there was no turning back. But there was no choice in the matter - fate had pushed me over the edge. To quote the Grateful Dead:

'The wheel is turning and you can't slow down
You can't let go and you can't hold on
You can't go back and you can't stand still
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will'

Precisely.


After a few moments of waiting outside and talking with Q about how I was feeling, he told me he had 'a benzo in a thought' for me. 'Be the seer, not the seen'. For a moment, this helped, and I was able to look around in the experience without feeling like things were crashing down on me, as if I was tripping rather than 'being tripped'. A few moments later, I insisted that he drive us back to my house. I couldn't go back inside.

[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 in the car, and he reminded me that he was on the same dose of acid that I was. I knew he had driven greater distances on psychedelics before, which in retrospect should have been a warning rather than an encouragement. Nonetheless, I had to put my trust in him to get us home. We managed to squeeze my car through the tight exitway unscathed and proceeded to hit the road. It's during this period that the epiphanies began.

It's extremely difficult to recall the actual content of my revelations here - Q would probably be a better source for that - but I distinctly remember the feeling of epiphany after epiphany pouring out of me, as if I was giving birth to a new worldview by shedding the layers of my old one. I was hoisted high above my life, able to see my path clearly from an objective observer's point of view. It was here that I realized that I had been living my life numb, with blinders on, unaware of the magnitude of existence and the so-called 'spiritual' dimension of being human- that we are part of a story unfathomably larger than ourselves, and our job within it is to grow and learn as much as we can in our finite time.

I also recall my first experience of a 'feedback loop', seeing firsthand that thoughts and perceptions can perpetuate themselves and that this is how belief systems crystallize in the mind. My body was vibrating intensely, and I was going in and out of energy releases, wherein I would shake off all the excess tension I had been accumulating over the years. Interestingly, this 'trembling' activity would become a focus of my yoga practice over the next several years.

As we drove home, I realized that my parents would still be awake because we had left the show so early, so I had Q stop at a nearby parking lot to wait it out. We sat in my car for what must have been hours, watching the ice patches forming on my windshield move in and out of mitosis. We talked about life, the universe, and everything in between. The revelations continued, and the sense of wonder that accompanied them was the most tangible I had ever felt in my life. At some point, I remember coming to feel that I 'didn't care anymore'. This wasn't a kind of apathetic not-caring, but more of a feeling that I didn't need to inhibit myself out of self-consciousness. I could let my guard down.

When the time was right, we drove back to my house, pulled into my driveway and stepped out of the car. At once we were greeted by a magnificent full moon that peeked from behind the clouds, surrounded by a huge 22° halo, which I had never seen until then and haven't seen since then. The sense of wonder was stronger than ever, and I felt like the universe was right there with me. This image has been burned into my mind as the most prominent moment of that night. For reference, Alex Grey's painting 'Wonder' is the most accurate depiction of what this was like.

We spent the rest of the night in my basement, watching space-themed documentaries and continuing our dialogue from the car. The stars often seemed to pour out from the television and fill the room. I had such high energy that I couldn't sleep that night, and instead rode the trip out, still vibrating from the immensity of what I'd just experienced. In the morning, my friend bid goodbye and I made my way to the airport, where I was to fly to spend the weekend with another friend in Madison, Wisconsin. When I got to the airport, I checked my phone and saw a message from Q: 'Good to see that the fire has been lit...' I boarded my flight.

I was still riding the high from the night before and spent my travel day lovingly admiring every moment. I felt so much less self-conscious, so much less inclined to bend my personality to suit the people I would meet in Madison that weekend. I was light as a feather, and I could just be myself.

The aftermath of this experience is a whole story of its own, and was often grueling, but I won't bore with the details. It took years for that trip to integrate, as I had gone from having no interest or inclination toward anything spiritual to suddenly having an awakening, with no context in which to place it - like a bolt of lightning in an otherwise dark night. I made many mistakes, the first of which was thinking that I had been 'saved' or 'cured', and not realizing that this was only the very beginning of a much longer and much deeper journey. I quit my anti-depressants cold-turkey, which was an extremely bad idea - I would've come off them anyway, but the withdrawal was long and grueling. However, ultimately I found that I no longer need them to have a fundamental sense of happiness and purpose. Still, it took years for the 'karma' to burn off.

I am extremely grateful that I was in Q's company that night - had it been with anyone else, I may not have received the guidance that I needed, since he had been through similar awakenings of his own. He also had a keen interest in esoteric Buddhism and wisdom traditions as well as meditation, which rubbed off on me over the next year and became a shared passion. I am extremely grateful for this too, because mindfulness and the buddhist tradition has become a deeply integrated part of my career path, and my interest here has led to my desire to take the next year off as a retreat year where I can dig further into the source of my awakening from that night, December 8th 2011. Indeed, this was the single most pivotal moment of my life to date, and I am fortunate to have been in a context wherein I could benefit maximally from this night.

Exp Year: 2011	ExpID: 110789
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Jul 18, 2025	Views: Not Supported
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