Ltd Ed 'Solve et Elucido' Art Giclee
This reverberating psychedelic giclee print is a gift for a
$500 donation to Erowid. 12" x 12", stretched on canvas, the
image wraps around the sides of the 1" thick piece. Signed
by artist Vibrata, and Erowid founders Earth & Fire.
Making Snowballs With My Feet
LSD, Etizolam & Alcohol
Citation:   Anatoli Smorin. "Making Snowballs With My Feet: An Experience with LSD, Etizolam & Alcohol (exp114004)". Erowid.org. Jan 27, 2020. erowid.org/exp/114004

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
36.5 ug oral LSD (liquid)
  T+ 2:44 12 oz oral Alcohol - Beer/Wine (liquid)
  T+ 5:21 1 mg oral Etizolam (liquid)
  T+ 7:13 12 oz oral Alcohol - Beer/Wine (liquid)
  T+ 7:13 2 oz oral Alcohol - Hard (liquid)
  T+ 7:13 2 mg oral Etizolam (liquid)
  T+ 9:23 12 oz oral Alcohol - Beer/Wine (liquid)
  T+ 9:23 1 mg oral Etizolam (liquid)
  T+ 9:40 12 oz oral Alcohol - Beer/Wine (liquid)
  T+ 9:40 0.75 oz oral Alcohol - Hard (liquid)
  T+ 11:21 1 mg oral Etizolam (liquid)
  T+ 11:21   repeated vaporized Cannabis (extract)
BODY WEIGHT: 191 lb
Background Information:
In the realm of substance experimentation I consider myself something of a seasoned veteran. I have extensive experience with stimulants, dissociatives, opioids, opiates, benzodiazepines, tryptamines, and phenethylamines. Many of my experiences involve research chemicals and unique combinations of substances.

I take 5000 IU of vitamin D3 daily along with 2400 mg of mesalamine for a lifelong stomach condition. I do not consider either of these to be a contributor factor in this experience.

The entirety of the experience in the report below was spent in the company of my life partner Kai and my trusty dog Gee. We spent the day together in our home and on the rural road on which we live. The set and setting were absolutely prime for the experience; a controlled and optimized space plus well intentioned adventuring.

A combination of written notes and audio recordings were used in the creation of this report. I am confident that the timestamps are accurate.

The material ingested in the experience described below was sourced from a vetted individual. The volumetric dosage preparation technique is described below.

Tolerance was a complete non factor on the day of the experience with the exception of alcohol. At the time of the experience I was consuming 4-8 drinks per day.

My history with LSD is relatively extensive.
My history with LSD is relatively extensive.
My past includes frequent ingestion and infrequent ingestion, in small [10-50 ug], medium [50-150 ug] and large [150 ug – 1.5+mg] dosages. LSD was not the first psychedelic I tried, but it was the first I fell in love with. I had positive experience after positive experience. Each time I explored the substance I discovered new ways to think, to see, and to be. I was all in. This honeymoon phase lasted a long time. Several years in fact. When the streak came to and end, it was a bitter, disastrous, scarring end indeed.

The beginning of the end was a day on which I ate a fairly high dosage of LSD [~600 ug]. No other substances were involved besides cannabis (smoked plant material), which I had a strong daily habit of at the time. Things were going swimmingly at a small private music event during which I even met one of my all time favorite musicians. Somewhere around T + 3:30, I simply become lost in my mind. This was the first time that the thought loops, confusion, and general wonkiness of my brain had turned truly negative and no matter what I tried; meditation, food, conversation with a sitter, deep breathing - things would not turn around. I patiently waited for the hours to ooze by as one must do, and eventually returned to sweet and beautiful baseline.

Unfortunately, these same inescapable mazes of negative thoughts, especially those centered around the fear of tripping too hard, plagued my LSD usage for 15-20 experiences in a row. No matter what I tried, I held severe nausea in my stomach and was infected by the uninterrupted worry of tripping too heavily until I passed the peak intensity of each experience. Only then could I let go and begin to enjoy myself. As this pattern showed no signs of breaking, I stepped away from LSD and most other longer acting psychedelics (phenethylamines and tryptamines primarily) and began deeper exploration of other mind altering substances.

I have known full well that the time would come; the time where I wanted, perhaps even needed to leverage LSD as a tool for learning, assessing a new stage in life, and creative critical thinking. This time is now. I have felt it growing for months now, and I am confident that an attempt, a first step, is due to occur. Being the cautious person I am, I elected to avoid the diving board and the deep end of the pool. A gradual building of dosages over multiple experiences seems to me the perfect way to put my toes back in the water. If things don’t go well; no harm no foul. If they do; I’ll proceed with the next step up in dosage in the next experience.

For this journey I prepared the dosage by placing a blotter laid with 255 micrograms of LSD into 35 ml of agave-based ethanol [40% ABV]. This was stirred and shaken every thirty minutes for the first five hours, then left overnight until the morning when the same agitation schedule was resumed for the two hours prior to ingestion. The result was 7.3 ug/ml of LSD. All of the volumetric process was performed with clean and freshly calibrated syringes.

Wanting my body to be nourished later in the day while my appetite is likely suppressed, I prepare a simple breakfast. A single fried egg, runny as a nose with a cold, hot melted cheddar cheese, as sharp as a samurai’s sword, both atop a lightly toasted everything bagel. After enjoying the salty sustenance with Kai, I wait fifteen minutes and then it is time.




T + 00:00 [9:45 AM]
Rather unceremoniously, as shots of tequila tend to be early in the morning, I toss back the 5.0 ml [36.5 ug of LSD]. The taste is unaffected by the LSD’s presence. I fill the shot glass with tap water (well water) and drink again. I repeat this several times to ensure I ingest the entirety of the intended dosage.

I immediately make my way into the shower, to freshen up for the day.

T + 00:24 [10:09 AM]
The shower is completely normal. This is great news! No anxiety, concerns, or stomach discomfort! I know I have chosen my dosage correctly if none of these are present.

I dress in a comfortable pair of pants, a soft shirt, and my favorite pair of wool socks. Lets do this!

I don’t believe I detect any psychedelic effects yet. The tingle of excitement, tail end of the O-DSMT I took last night, and the tiny bit of tequila serve as camouflage for the entrance of the LSD to my mind and body.

In my eagerness for things to begin, I am playing the “do I feel a little different?” game with myself; searching for the smallest detectable difference between my sober existence and my current one.

I believe I have achieved a ± on the Shulgin Rating Scale. The movement of my arms is awkward. I test my coordination and do not find anything wanting in this department. I sit on the couch, waving my hands back and forth, and probably looking slightly insane. I register that I am commanding my appendages to move. They are obeying my directions and doing so with normal precision. During my limbs' journey through space however, they don’t truly register as my own. They are distant, less sensitive, and almost rubbery in their interaction with the air.

Kai and I have some music playing, mostly gentle lo-fi electronic. It sounds pleasant, but not enhanced in any way at this point.

Focusing my vision is a challenge; my eyeballs feel like they are vibrating and I struggle to hold my gaze in one place for very long. Colors are starting to pop with more saturation. My eyes are drawn to parts of the room where texture and patterns are prominent. I meander around the main room of the house, exploring this new “pattern detection ability”. The windows are due for a cleaning, the streaks on their outside seem not only to grab my attention, but to be pleasantly spaced and shaped. There is no active re-organization or movement from the window stains but my brain recognizes patterns where there are none. Smears, stains, and dust appear as faces and geometric shapes. The dirty windows are just so beautiful!

My wandering leads me back to the couch, where the stone fireplace and wooden coffee table attract my gaze like a magnet. The tight lines in the wood grain appear in high contrast. After forcing myself to look away, I find the visual magnet attracted to an area of the fireplace that is lightly darkened from heat, soot, and flame. The texture of the soot-covered stones is magnified; each crack and crevice seems twice as deep and defined as the rocks.

T + 00:53 [10:38 AM]
My mental age is rolling backwards; a child-like state of mind is replacing my analytical “grown up” mind. I don’t have to pretend to have fun while I play games with Gee. Tossing toys for her to fetch and crawling on the floor to romp around feels normal and natural. There is no pressure or awkwardness for being silly and fully engaged in this nonsense. I also do not feel badly about quitting playing when it no longer suits me. I am doing what feels right without analyzing my actions. After all, I am just playing with my dog while slowly coming up on some LSD: how much calculated analysis should I put into such a scenario? It seems obvious that the answer is: very little. Normally I would overanalyze. This reprieve from my sober mind-state is a liberating and enjoyable.

I can feel the atoms that make up my physical body. The particles that are resonating though every inch of my body, in all directions, are impossibly small. I examine this physical condition further.

I can’t claim feelings of euphoria, but my physical body definitively feels positive. My muscles, flesh, and organs are all in a good mood.
My muscles, flesh, and organs are all in a good mood.
Not high, or rushing: just positive.

The proverbial sands of time are draining from the cosmic hourglass quickly: almost double the rate I would guess. I’m continually surprised as I check in with the clock for note taking purposes.

A feeling of returning home sets in. I feel almost sleepy. Letting my eyes drift out of focus and then pulling them back to attention is an unusually comfortable variety of visual focal failure.

T + 01:07 [10:52 AM]
I’m past a + on the Shulgin Rating Scale now. A quasi-synesthesia takes form as my “I”, my internal sense of ego or being, becomes the music playing from above me in the loft. The sounds of the music intertwine with my thoughts in a beguiling way. These sounds and my “me” manifest as immersive closed eyed visuals. Magnificent teal and mint colored globules slowly float through a black abyss. These are not just moving pictures on the back of my eyelids. Each colored shape shifting blob is a pieces of my mind and at the same time parts of the music. They/I expand and contract as the characteristics of the song change. I watch the shapes morph while I feel my body and mental state swell and contract in unison. What I see is what I feel and vice versa.

Attempting to control the shapes is fruitless, but seemingly not beyond possibility. The realization of the phenomenon I’m experiencing startles me out of it. This is just like realizing that I am amidst a lucid dream. The excitement of realizing it is happening ruins the dream by waking me up. My melding with the music slips away after the momentary lapse in the connection brought on by my excitement.

My dog Gee is particularly pointy. Her hair specifically. It is as if I can see each follicle of hair from multiple angles at the same time. The coloration is all wrong also. The brown in her coat is perfectly matching parts of the room. Gee’s fur, the mantle, and the surrounding stones of the fireplace simultaneously drift across the ROY portion of the color spectrum.

Gee’s agouti is transfixing. Running my hands through it brings forth an explosion of color. Hey fur flips directions, exposing its secondary tone with mind-boggling fluidity. Similarly, the other objects in the room share this mysterious ability to flow from one color to another without any noticeable transition.

I’m scribing some comments in my notebook about the experience. The pen is too heavy to write properly with. I’m physically weak, similar to how my hands can feel weak in the morning shortly after waking up.

The air is clearer than normal. It is like there is less material between me and the objects in the room. Everything in my vision is clearer, sharper, and slightly more color saturated. The farther away objects are from me, the more noticeable the effects are. Staring at the timber beams on the ceiling and the railing along the loft’s edge, I'm seeing greater detail from this distance than ever before. Splinters of wood on the railing and the wire brush strokes on the steel balusters are obscenely obvious. The main structural beams appear closer than they truly are. I can see minute details of swirling wood grain hiding in the barn-wood's diverse grays. With my attention on the two prominent structural beams, I slip into a more passive state of observation. The entire vaulted ceiling tilts like a ship swaying on the ocean. The line down the peak of the “A shape” of our ceiling folds flat, first on one side and then the other. Once the top of the room has gone completely horizontal, the outer edges of the ceiling hinge downward, making the pitch of the roof steeper, the center angle more acute. This folding to and fro, back and forth, repeats two times before returning to normal. The angles on each side of the roof return. It seems like the start of breathing visuals, but like the entire house was breathing, rather than individual components.

T + 01:19 [11:04 AM]
I grow colder and colder. No matter how many layers I add to my outfit; wool socks, long underwear, and sweatshirts, I cannot get warm. My extremities suffer the worst. This does not feel especially positive or negative, but the inside of my head is being invaded by a pressure that simultaneously shrinks and expands my brain matter, which is definitively negative. It feels wrong, like a headache, an itch, and a bruise happening all at once.

A sense of wonderment fills me. Walking from one room to another feels like an adventure. My own home feels like a foreign land, filled with excitement and unknowns. I ponder the idea of walking to our garage (one hundred some-odd feet away from my front door). It seems as though this might be a grand idea, who knows what amazement I would find there?!

A trickle of reason still exists in my mind. I realize there is a fair chance that I could make my way into the garage only to find myself a little high, standing in a very ordinary garage: bored and unimpressed.

This feeling that even the smallest tasks are great challenges, and familiar places are foreign, is a classic effect of LSD for me. I’m very surprised to find it present at such low a dose. It is extremely convincing and authentic.

T + 01:30 [11:15 AM]
Texting is difficult. I get mentally tangled as I read and re-read my drafted replies. I can’t tell if I’m getting my point across with any sort of accuracy. My phone is abandoned on the coffee table. I have been sucked into the device for a few minutes, locked into the pattern of reading an incoming message, then repeatedly questioning my response before going back to read the original incoming message. Breaking this cycle feels good. I feel as though I’ve “snapped back”, suddenly a little closer to reality than I was moments before. Kai, Gee, and I decide to go for the ultimate adventure: a walk up our road.

Day old snow crunches beneath our boots. The thick fir trees that line our single lane dirt road are burdened by the load of ice and snow. The wind is calm now, but its recent presence is visible in the snow drifts. The needles of the more exposed trees are completely frozen, each needle a dazzling tentacle reaching out, asking the shining sun to melt its beautiful encasement.

I feel at ease. Strides are not cumbersome in the least. I talk idly with Kai about how I am feeling as well as some other chit chat type topics.

After just over half a mile up the road, we pass a neighbor on his way into town. We are friendly, but not well acquainted. The first few minutes of conversation are smooth. I don’t even think about the fact that I’m a bit overdressed for a casual walk and have my camera with me, which one might think is unusual for an everyday dog walk. As the LSD’s effects rise inside me again, I begin to wonder if I’m sounding weird or intoxicated. I find myself wanting the interaction to be over as soon as possible.

Luckily this happens naturally and we part ways. Kai assures me I sounded and looked completely normal, although we did share a good laugh about my attire. I overdressed, and as a result become warm from walking. Upon encountering our neighbor I had multiple layers tied around my waste in a comedic “I’ve never hiked before just bought a complete outfit at an outdoors outfitters shop” sort of way.

Another half mile up the winding road reveals a stupendous view of the mountain ranges that border us on two sides. While I appreciate the scenery, as I always do, there is no special connection to the view, or any strong visual effects.

T + 02:01 [11:46 PM]
We turn around and begin the return journey back down to our house.

I’m going through cycles of being sweaty and hot then shivering and cold. Perhaps this is just occurring as I pass from sun to shade. I cannot make good sense of the outside world and my relationship to it. The effects are intensifying. Walking is beginning to feel strange. My coordination is different. Not in the stumbling impaired manner that can come with alcohol, dissociatives, or benzodiazepines. This feels more like my legs are rubbery and both ultra sensitive and numb at the same time. The strangeness brings about some frustration. I find myself falling behind Kai whose natural pace is quick. My thoughts rapidly shift now that conversation has ceased. I’m frustrated and confused. Confused because I don’t know why I am frustrated, and frustrated because I don’t understand why I am confused.
I’m frustrated and confused. Confused because I don’t know why I am frustrated, and frustrated because I don’t understand why I am confused.
Paradoxical confusion swirls around me. All I know is I want to get back to the house and be off my feet. I need to rest and be comfortable. I feel almost desperate.

I trudge one foot in front of the other, now alongside Kai but unable to say much. All mental capacity is committed to concentrating on walking the slippery road and longing to be home.

For a few strides I can feel the ground through my boots. How is this possible? Is it the ground? Or just snow compressing beneath my feet? What on Earth is this? I am making snowballs with my feet. This cracks a smile across my face momentarily. Are my legs numb? Or the exact opposite? Hyper-sensitive? Tingly. Yes. Whoa. I can feel each follicle of hair on my legs contact my pants as I walk, the legs tingle with ferocity.

Why am I thinking like this? My mind races with questions. It seems unable to to track back and answer one question before firing out several more.

T + 02:22 [12:07 PM]
We made it. I’m a mess as I come through the door. Kai is kind enough to clean up Gee’s paws and shut the door behind us. I strip off my shirt and socks, leaving a trail of discarded clothing behind me as I make my way for the couch.

My hair is slick with sweat as I run my hands through it. I close my eyes and cradle my head in my hands. I try and reel myself in as best I can. I still feel slightly out of control or confused but don’t have a real reason for any of these feelings. I rationalize with myself: there is nothing wrong, I’ve made it to the couch where I had promised myself everything would be alright during the walk home, and this is just the final upswing to the peak of the experience.

T + 02:25 [12:10 PM]
The internal conversation seems to be working. My mind is already less rattled as I comfort my physical body using blankets and pillows. Out of the shadows of a negative headspace, a smile creeps onto my face as I peer around the living room, inspecting it for visuals.

I find a notable alteration in my ability to focus my eyes. I can focus on a wider range of depth than normal. As I write in my notebook, not only is the page in focus, but also the floor behind it, as well as the items in my peripheral. Foreground and background are strangely visible in full clarity and detail.

T + 02:37 [12:22 PM]
I touch down for a moment: the effects have dipped slightly. This allows me to do some self checks and note taking.

Energy is folding inside of me. Slow moving waves of heat and vibration stack on top of themselves like pahoehoe lava moving across the ground. Slowly this intensifies between my ears, each fold of my brain detectable as a line of energy or vibration that has pressure on either side of it. My brain feels squishy. The room seems to have a similar “energy”, a physical force pulsing through the air. My folding pressures interact with that of the room, transferring from one to the other: me affecting the room and the room affecting me. The synergy of this is of a kind nature. I am not under attack or imposing myself on anything. The give and take seems familiar; like it is happening all the time but I am unaware of it.

This exchange between the environment and myself is intriguing and generally pleasurable. The feeling that has concentrated in my skull however is a source of distraction and discomfort. This is the most annoying part of the experience at this point.

My eyes are pleasantly dazed. They drift rather than dart around the room. They float from one area of the room to another without particular intention or effort on my part. Slow moving angular curiosities manifest in my macro view of the world. The vaulted fir ceilings are doing the same flattening and unflattening as earlier. The pace of the movement is much faster now however. The dormers in the loft, which add a second angle to the pitch of the roof, oscillate out of sync from the movement of the main ceiling.

The clink of the Kai’s fork against her bowl jars me out of my trance. Although she is seated at the other end of the couch, it sounds as though she is standing over me hammering the fork and bowl together like a drummer beside my head.

I struggle to communicate with Kai; we seem to be in different worlds, separated by some invisible mental barrier.

I’m cold! Sensations from reality are rushing back. Although I’m partially under several blankets, my shoulders are still bare and the air that touches them is icy. A dry tee-shirt is just the ticket. It brings not only warmth but also a sense of security and safety. Now warm, I am able to let the LSD wash over me.

Colors are shifting all across the stones of the fireplace and hearth. Browns turn to oranges which in turn flow into the spectrum of reds. Not only do the hues and saturation change, but the temperature of the colors does also. Cool, warm, cool, warm. Things shift slyly, yet out in the open at the same time. The only similar visual trickery from sober life I can come up with is how the sun displaces shadows with light and vice versa as it dances around clouds in the sky.

In addition to coloration, the spatiality of the fireplace is out of wack. As a whole unit, it looks short and wide, retaining its width but reducing its height by perhaps 25%. I don’t see it stretch, but suddenly it is normal height again. A single blink later and it is squat once more – how did I miss the transition again?! I purposefully do not look away – but the size alteration somehow slips past me time and time again. Giving up on the macro scale changes I focus in on the details a bit more. Each block of stone comes to life. As the grid of square cut rocks wave and ripple with movement around the flame-filled center, I can’t help but think of Hogwarts.

My focus drifts from the stones themselves and re-centers on the squirming, squiggling strings of mortar that usually go unnoticed between each piece of rock. The gray material seems to be a single entity, wrapping itself around the more colorful stones. It shrinks itself narrow, then expands. None of the breathing, wiggling, or re-arranging is fast or chaotic. The visuals are syrupy and slow.

My mindset follows suit – or is it the other way around? Either way, I've achieved calm. The stable environment, being in one place rather than moving, is comforting and allowing me to enjoy the experience with my guard down. Yes, I am sure now. The setting is the source of the slower flow to my existence.

T + 02:44 [12:29 PM]
I open a light beer [12 oz 5.1% ABV]. The taste is unaffected; cold and refreshing, but without much depth in the taste profile.

A sense of antsiness manifests in my jaw and teeth. I’m not clenching or grinding but I’m holding my mouth in such a manner that my teeth almost touch. In this position a steady minor tremor is felt through my lower set of teeth.

T + 03:30 [1:30 PM]
The effects feel steady now. I always find the final escalation up to the peak of an experience’s intensity curve to be the most rattling part of the experience. Any progression in intensity can be unnerving given my history with this substance and as such, the ultimate version of this is the final wave upwards to the apex. I now know that I have survived the last climb and am settling nicely into the end of the plateau of the substance.

T + 04:05 [1:50 PM]
I comment to Kai that I think time is passing quickly. Amidst writing that the “past hour and a half has flown by”, I realize that I have read the clock incorrectly and it has only been thirty minutes. This is a bit of a shock – time is passing slowly not quickly!

A twinge of hunger stings my stomach, perhaps the first signal that I may be on my way back to baseline.

All the notable effects are dialing back simultaneously. My brain feels more normal, I’m not nearly as conscious of its physical presence as I was early. There is less stretching and folding happening between my ears. I also seem more connected to Kai. My ability to converse is improving drastically.

I find it odd to know the LSD will ease me back to baseline slowly (pyramid shape intensity curve); in contrast, the dissociative substances I have been using more often recently tend to march to a crescendo then die off quickly.

T + 05:07 [2:52 PM]
The decline is now definitive and steady. I’m happy about this. Today has been a terrific re-acquaintance with this substance. The experience was mostly positive. It lacked the signature difficult and bad trip characteristics that have plagued me with LSD. There was just the right amount of challenging moments to remind me about the power of this chemical. It has been well balanced and useful: exactly what I intended to achieve today.

On paper, the comedown should mirror the reverse intensity of the comeup. However, being on the other side of the “mountain”, I feel more in control and comfortable. Overall I am very happy with the day except the pressure in my head that continues to annoy me.
Overall I am very happy with the day except the pressure in my head that continues to annoy me.


T + 05:21 [3:06 PM]
The effects of the LSD are really dwindling now. I’m off baseline, but the experience feels as though it has concluded. The lingering discomfort of the body load in my brain is unpleasant and annoying. I find myself dwelling on the sensation. To combat this sensation I orally ingest 1 mg of etizolam in a propylene glycol solution. I am pretty sure the benzodiazepine will ease the mental tension and smooth out the final descent off of the LSD.

T + 05:50 [3:35 PM]
I finally move from my nest on the couch. I relocate to the loft with Gee. She is so soft to pet! I’m sitting on the floor inundating the poor pup with love. Some of the simple child-like mindset lingers on – resurges in fact. I’m smothering Gee in hugs while giggling softly: everything feels so incredibly right in the world.

The etizolam is assuaging my mental discomfort and in doing so, allowing the more enjoyable overshadowed effects of the experience. My mood has drastically improved since the ingestion of the etizolam.

My notes read:

Love

Openness

ALL FEELINGS

I do feel that all my emotions are close to the surface. Every feeling I feel is genuine, true, and deep. When I feel an emotion, it envelops me quickly and I don’t question it at all.

T + 07:13 [4:58 PM]
Kai and I have been chatting intermittently while listening to music. All visual effects have long since departed but the alterations in my mental space are still present. The magic brought on by the etizolam has been fading for the past half hour or so. With this dwindling, the uncomfortable folding in my head has resurfaced. It is far less intense than earlier, but still unpleasant.

I chase the disagreeable feeling away with alcohol. I open a beer [12 oz 5.1% ABV] and pour a whiskey [2 oz 40% ABV] over ice to enjoy in tandem. I ingest two more milligrams of etizolam.

T + 07:29 [5:14 PM]
The benzo and booze have not yet taken full effect (I have now finished both drinks). The stretchy headspace has lessened but it's still there.

My body reflects the etizolam while my mental space is an interesting mix of the ingested substances. My arms lack euphoria but they have shifted into a state of pleasant weightlessness. I’m spacing out but am regularly interrupted by spurts of rapid thought. These are mostly organized but also a bit random. Thought loops and confusion are absent.

ZIP!

ZING!

Electrical currents shoot through, in, out, and around my body and mind. Similar to the involuntary muscular jerking felt as one falls asleep, but without physical manifestation: these jolts of energy ricochet around my internals.

T + 08:27 [6:12 PM]
I’m acting as though I have not taken LSD now. The afternoon seems far behind me. Sure, lingering effects make themselves known from time to time, but normality is taking over again. As usual, recalling a psychedelic experience is challenging, the details slipping through my grasp like a dream after waking up. This combined with the etizolam I have ingested has me wondering if I will be able to recall the parts of today that were not notated meticulously.

T + 09:23 [7:08 PM]
A milligram of etizolam is washed down with a delicious light beer [5.1% ABV 12 oz]. I have not yet felt the onset of sedation or inebriation from these substances. They are, alongside the power of time, banishing any persisting effects of the LSD. My head is a bit empty.

T + 09:40 [7:25 PM]
I hurry down a beer (5.1% ABV 12 oz] and toss back some tequila [40% ABV .75 oz]. I finally feel fully departed from the LSD.

When a ethought does drift through my barren mind it seems more cosmic than when I take etizolam on its own. I think a good deal about personal relationships, the specific actions that are common or absent. There are no revelations, but the thoughts are deep are pleasant nonetheless.

T + 11:21 [9:06 PM]
My mind feels drained, not just blanked out from the benzo, but exercised and fried from the mental exertion brought on by the LSD. Although it is early, I decide to press onwards towards sleep. I drop a final milligram of etizolam into my mouth from the syringe, and begin to repetitively take hits from my cannabis pen vaporizer. This only serves to enhance the intensity of the etizolam. No classic cannabis effects are noted.

T + 11:59 [9:44 PM]
This is the earliest I have laid down to sleep in a long while. I believe the benzos are acting in tandem with the mental and physical exhaustion that come from a full day in a psychedelic state. I drift into a deep sleep with almost zero effort.




Additional Commentary

At the peak of the experience, I was between a + and a ++ on the Shulgin Rating Scale. If this was my first experience on psychedelics, I’d probably have assigned this intensity a ++. Given my history with stronger dosages, I know this is not accurate. I find it interesting that changing the flavor of the mind altering substance, from my dissociatives preference, seemed to allow me to be deeply immersed by the LSD on a small dosage.

I came away from this experience with a newfound excitement for LSD and similar substances. Two months later, I have still not acted on this excitement and experimented again in this genre. Part of this is due to the fact that the materials require a full day. Additionally, the body load, which manifested in my head, is not something I wish to revisit, especially at an increased intensity. Besides these two logical reasons, something else, something I cannot put my finger on, keeps me from selecting LSD when choosing a substance to ingest.

I didn’t return to an actual “baseline” while awake due to the other substances ingested, but the LSD’s main effects drew to a close around 5:30 PM [T + 7:45]. The mental folding annoyed me a bit longer than this, but this felt more like a hangover than the end of the experience in earnest.

I was exceptionally surprised by the “wonder” and surreality I felt. It was the “first time” feeling. This feeling had been absent from many, not all, but most of my LSD experiences in the past few years. Discovering that the magic has not been lost forever was a major takeaway from the day.

The visuals were enjoyable, but light. I did find myself wanting more from the experience in this department. The effects were on par, if not more intense than I figured they would be at this dosage. Unfortunately the physical sensations detracted greatly from my ability to enjoy what visual effects did arise and the headspace I reached. I wonder if this unpleasant balance of effects was because of the dosage . . . Would a larger amount have tipped the scales to make the ratio more enjoyable?

The experience was well rounded. A prime example of the difficulties and golden pleasures accessible through this substance. A kind but earnest example of a day spent in psychedelia.



Exp Year: 2020ExpID: 114004
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 29
Published: Jan 27, 2020Views: 5,927
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LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Combinations (3), General (1)

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