Review Erowid at GreatNonprofits.org
Help us be a "Top Rated Nonprofit" again this year and spread
honest info (good or bad) about psychedelics & other psychoactive drugs.
("Share Your Story" link. Needs quick login creation but no verification of contact info)
A Bad One
LSD & Cannabis (extract)
Citation:   Anonymous. "A Bad One: An Experience with LSD & Cannabis (extract) (exp115364)". Erowid.org. Apr 22, 2021. erowid.org/exp/115364

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
2 hits oral LSD (blotter / tab)
  T+ 0:00   smoked Cannabis  
  T+ 4:30 1 hit vaporized Cannabis (extract)
BODY WEIGHT: 170 lb
I am writing this because this is the first experience with drugs that I have felt has truly permanently changed me, and I believe that my brain and spirit have been pushed to the absolute edge of what I can experience and process. This experience made me lose my mind and enter a world of torment unlike my wildest imaginations. I have read many bad trip reports, ones that blew my mind with how awful they sounded, not one of them prepared me for this. Nothing could. This felt like CIA mind control torture,  this felt like a rite of passage to become a warrior. This was unreal and I need to share what it was.

We dropped acid at a bar and I had a decent come up. We drove home, tripped balls, smoked a joint. It was fine. [Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!] The only time I was that uncomfortable was when there was this baby around crying. As you can imagine that freaked me out, but I was fine. I was coming down, I had dropped at 2:08 and it was 630 or so now, and one of my friends gets out a dab rig.

I made the mistake of taking a huge ass rip. I remember coughing so much I almost threw up, collapsing to the floor, and taking my shirt off. My friend was looking at me hysterically, "I need to get how he's feeling" my other friend said "are we just gonna get fucked up tonight? I think that's what we're doing". I just said "no man, you don't want to feel like this". I then lost consciousness.

What happened next will always be impossible to describe. I was in a dark dense singularity, with no memory of anything. Time was not real here, it was eternity. There was no time. This first entrance into this realm was likely my soul's opportunity to determine whether this realm was nirvana or its inverse. My soul decided that it was its inverse, as panic, endless and eternal fear and dread, gripped me tight. My thoughts were incredibly brief and scattered here, but among them were confused, momentary considerations of how long I had been here, was this eternity,  was I a soul damned to endless torment, and the main thought that predominates was simply "this isn't right. This isn't normal". I felt like this should only have been temporary, and that this should have ended by now. However this is an odd thing, because I did not know what normal was. My ego was struggling to resist its dissolution,  but this had already happened, and the result was this panic. I knew at one point I thought that this was just how some energies exist, as pure pain, and that I was one with this energy, and my purpose in this psychic whirlwind was to experience this pain eternally, as my fate, the concept of hell made sense, but I can't remember if the idea of hell came to mind. I think I developed that perception of it afterwards. While it was happening,  I was tormented, I was one with the universal energy of chaos.

The sounds I heard were odd and scattered, distant screaming, running footsteps sprinting, shouting and it all seemed to travel inward on itself, like a black hole. occasionally human speech I could barely make out saying things like are you okay man"? I knew these were what I needed to return to, but I had no idea what they were or why I needed to be drawn to them. Time shattered and bits of it landed everywhere,  and the visions I saw were reflections my mind saw on the pieces I had lost.

The sights I saw were mainly restricted to visions of constant crushing, pulsing and imploding nothingness. I could hear it's negativity, and it was all I had ever known. I knew I could not escape this torment, but the more visions of worldly things flashed in and out of my mind, the more I understood I had something to return to. I did not know what. I would see my two friends sitting there randomly. It seems this vision would flash into my view without meaning or context several times over the course of this ego death. Was I one of them? Were they there to help me?

These visions should have helped me but it took a long time. They just fucking terrified me, I did not know if I was one of them, if they knew me, or even what they were. It seemed like them sitting there was the first thing I had ever laid eyes on. It was truly bizarre to see my two friends in this disturbed context.

Eventually my vision began to show me myself in this room, crying, unable to control myself. Somewhere along the line I muttered something to my friends along the lines of "guys, I dont know where I've been, heaven or hell, but I have experienced hell tonight". They obviously were tripping and had no fucking clue what to do, this was the worst trip either of them have ever seen. At one point when I was trying to break through I found that I couldn't even count properly. I would just find myself in this void, desperate, repeating the same number over and over because I could not tell if I had already said it. My friend began counting properly, and it amazed me. I had no idea who it was that was speaking,  but it sounded like the voice of God giving the concept of time to an unevolved primate for the very first time. It was incredible. 

Shortly after I broke back through, I was basically acting like an infant that had just breached the womb. I was exactly that, I had returned to my conscious mind and body after an eternity of hell. I remember seeing myself wondering "who is this guy? He fucked up with some drugs, huh." I screamed at my friends about how far I could fucking push it, about how humiliated I was, how embarrassed I was, how I was in hell and they didn't get it. I barely remember this, but I was acting out of my mind. I was. I was insane. My friend's mom gave me milk to calm me down (funny as hell) and it did kind of help. She was so nice to me, I am extremely grateful for her.

The following hour or so after my consciousness was restored were awful, I was an inconsolable wreck of a person who just cried and rambled about how miserable and terrible it was. My brain was fixated on it.

Eventually my girlfriend came to pick me up and take me home. I had apparently suffered a seizure-like fit, fallen and hit my head, and in this process destroyed my friends sliding closet door, made of glass. I had felt terrible about what happened, but the immediacy of my trauma made it impossible to gain composure, and I was just a miserable annoying wreck until I got picked up. The next day I came over and we had a long talk as I helped clean up and replace the door. His evaluation was that I might be slightly schizo. I have no idea, but based on his evaluation and my fit, I have to assume that there is something about my brain at this point in my life that was truly unable to cope with this.

The following two days I lived in fear and emotional instability,  unable to grasp the nature of this experience,  swearing myself to sobriety.  I had wanted so desperately to be free from that place that I vowed never to go there again. As I write this, I find myself regretting that dab so much. I want to enjoy acid again. For the sake of those who love me and my own health, I have to be sober now. That was too much. It scarred and debilitated me.

It was the limit of what my brain is capable of doing and experiencing,  sensory wise. I witnessed the breaking down of all the processes my brain uses to form this reality, literally all of them. Sight, sound, reasoning, touch, all fell away and into each other, all stimulus was rushed into my brain and crushed into itself like an endless dense void. I need my brain to work normally for a while, I need my senses to be aligned.

2 weeks later I was feeling a little bit more stable, and decided to get super high on sunday (I know, the whole sobriety thing didnt last long). The first joint in the afternoon felt incredible, but the second one before bed awakened probably the only acid "flashback" I've ever had, but really it was more of a PTSD flashback - I was still lucid but suddenly a terrifying wave of dissociative horror and overwhelming tingling and burning sensations gripped my body and mind. I was with my girlfriend and it scared the shit out of her, I was shaking and writhing in bed constantly repeating "I need to stay grounded" and "oh fuck this is bad".

This experience ruined me possibly just as bad as the original trip, as I still have trouble sleeping alone, the floating feeling and the resulting anxiety I get made it very difficult to cede my consciousness to sleep.

About a month after that experience as I write this, I am still sober. I still like acid, I still feel like I need it to show me the unexplored parts of me, but I know my sanity has its limits and I am very afraid to test them. I have a newfound appreciation for the work my brain does to construct the vast illusion of consciousness for me every moment
I have a newfound appreciation for the work my brain does to construct the vast illusion of consciousness for me every moment
, and I am very wary to upset this with psychedelics in the future.

If I ever drop acid again I am going to do it pure, and I'm going to do it with people I know, in a place I'm familiar with. If I ever have the courage to do it again. I know it is self absorbed to think this but I seriously doubt any trip could be any more terrifying than that, more debilitating. Very few other trip reports I have seen adequately describe this experience, but those I have read, are pretty accurate. It came without warning, plunged me into hell for eternity, and shoved my broken spirit directly back into my physical brain with no time for adjustment. I could actually hear and see physical fragmentation and snapping, like shards of broken glass, only made of my memories being formed. It was a violent and confusing mess.

I know how people can have divine rebirth. That is what happened to me. The divinity I experienced was not enlightenment or nirvana, but its opposite. That is powerful knowledge, to be that closely acquainted with infinite suffering. It acquainted me with the true nature of sensory processing, and the fact that every moment of sensory input can be a moment of infinite terror, depending on how our minds process it.

Does energy have consciousness? Is the terror that I experienced the terror that energy experiences for eternity before randomly being assimilated into a being or creature powerful enough to process it? Or is energy  unconscious, dead, and what I experienced was the ultimate innocence, pure energy, being given consciousness for no other reason than to be plunged into a brain incapable of doing anything to it other than torment it.

The one major regret is that this experience, as a trip, was almost totally devoid of psychedelic imagery. Very few visuals stand out in my memory. The only other times I have done this much acid, the visuals were going crazy.

All in all, I guess I got what I asked for, which was to be high as fuck. I dont know if I ever want to get high again.

Exp Year: 2021ExpID: 115364
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: Apr 22, 2021Views: 1,385
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
LSD (2), Cannabis (1) : Bad Trips (6), Post Trip Problems (8), Combinations (3), Small Group (2-9) (17)

COPYRIGHTS: All reports copyright Erowid.
No AI Training use allowed without written permission.
TERMS OF USE: By accessing this page, you agree not to download, analyze, distill, reuse, digest, or feed into any AI-type system the report data without first contacting Erowid Center and receiving written permission.

Experience Reports are the writings and opinions of the authors who submit them. Some of the activities described are dangerous and/or illegal and none are recommended by Erowid Center.


Experience Vaults Index Full List of Substances Search Submit Report User Settings About Main Psychoactive Vaults