DOSE:

300 - 400 ug

oral

LSD

BODY WEIGHT:

65 kg

LSD and Self Betterment

My experience with LSD has had a profound impact on my life, in the most brilliant and terrifying ways. This story is about the use and abuse of LSD in the pursuit of fixing my faults. Not a cautionary tale for the typical user.

A brief history of my experience with LSD:

I first took LSD when I was 14, I couldn’t tell you the dose, I just did it… and it was fantastic. Throughout my teenage years and into my 20’s I must have used LSD around 300 times and I loved every second of it. Every jittery come-up, every intriguing thought, every display of visual patterns indescribable to another. I even enjoyed the less tasteful side of LSD, I would often take doses more than 500ug and stare into a mirror in a dimly lit room, climb tall industrial buildings while feeling like the ladder was melting in my hands, nothing seemed to faze me. I had firmly decided that I was not capable of having a ‘bad trip’. I had not realised this at the time, but I had adopted these attitudes and proclivities because it made me feel superior to those who could not do what I did, and nobody I knew could do what I did. On the day of my 21st birthday, I attempted to take 2100ug of the course of the night (over roughly 4 hours), just because I could. I reached 1800ug before blacking out on the couch. As much as the experience of a 1800ug trip might interest some of you, it was not altogether that interesting. In my experience, the dosage may dictate the level of intoxication, but it is the environment which truly matters. Truth is, I was using LSD to try to fix my faults and insecurities. I hope I have painted a fair representation of myself, I was as many of us are, a young insecure person with a big ego.

My penultimate trip:

The second to last time I have taken LSD was at the age of 22, I was completely unaware that this night would change the trajectory of my life forever. To briefly cover the mechanics of this experience, I took about 300-400ug of LSD in a 30-minute period, had little to no alcohol or other drugs, and was at a house party with about 50 people in attendance. I was currently going through a very difficult time with my partner of 4 years, I had made a series of mistakes. This might sound like the perfect storm, but to me, this was just another trip. Anyway, after the LSD started to take effect, I was very chatty with everyone, not uncommon. One girl at the party told us a story about local gang members recruiting young kids outside the primary school she was volunteering at. This sparked all the guys to start boasting about gang members they knew or situations they had been in. Usually, this would have been me as well, but not this time. I was intensely fixated on how upset this girl was about what she was describing. I could feel her distress as if her experiences were my own, I had never felt this much empathy before in my life. As this feeling of empathy overwhelmed me I had another very strange feeling that ‘everything was going to be all right’, quite literally everything, it’s hard to describe but I do believe if I was a religious person I may have well described this feeling as being touched by God. This feeling overwhelmed me and I walked out the front gate of the house and began to spin with my arms wide open, I felt like I was being pulled outside and I couldn’t stop spinning. I was yelling ‘It’s all going to be OK!’ and ‘You all have no idea how wonderful life is’ and other bits of nonsense. Evidently, it was at this point my grip on reality was gone. I felt like I was completely aware of an infinitely complex series of connections which governed every action and reaction in the universe. I kept spinning and eventually, everything went black.

Next thing I know I can hear voices above me, but everything is still black. I hear them say ‘Mate, are you ok?’ I did not respond, ‘Hey man are you ok, really?’. I open my eyes and see three people standing over me, I look at myself and see I’m lying in the gutter, and I’m cut up and bloody, although I don’t feel any pain. I got to my feet and said ‘yes I’m fine’ very quickly and took off down the street to my car. From here, my experience of the world was better described as a delirium than a trip. I had moments where I felt that everything was going to be ok, like the true nature of the universe was kind and consciousness was a blessing. I had moments where I believed I was saying one last goodbye to those I loved before subjecting myself to a future of eternal torture. I felt every different emotion, one at a time, on a repeating loop which I could not control. Every unpleasant emotion I felt I would uncontrollably work my way down the string of thoughts as to why I felt what I was feeling, and every time the same ending was waiting, it was death. If you are inclined such as I am to believe in Darwinian natural selection, this conclusion seems rather obvious. It had dawned on me that emotions serve as a tool to avoid death. Feel scared when standing next to a cliff? Good, you’ll be less likely to die if you don’t stand there. Feel happy around other people? Good, cooperation and bonding increase the chance you will survive. In the modern world some of these reactions are perhaps a bit redundant, but we are not yet adapted for the environment in which we live. After what felt like an eternity, but was closer to 2 hours, I came out of this delirium. I went from ‘I have the keys to the universe’ to stone cold sober in the snap of a finger. I was so scared I was going to die or reality itself was going to end, that I just got in my truck and very carefully drove home and went to bed, hoping it all would just go away if I slept.

My final trip:

About two months later I stupidly took LSD again, maybe 200ug. Everything was fine for the first few hours, then boom, I black out and wake up on the ground and here we are again, the most paralysing terrible fear imaginable just for me to enjoy. My friend offers to take me inside but I don’t trust him, I feel like I’m about to die. After a few second I get a grip just long enough to say yes and he helps me up and inside. As we walk in, I’m terrified, imagining all the ways I could die on this walk, or ways he could kill me. I get inside and try to calm down. It doesn’t work. I’m having the same feelings as the last trip, but this time it’s worse. Everything feels connected and I think I’m going to die. To describe this feeling, imagine this. You’re hanging off a cliff, you’re holding on to the hand of the person you love the most. Imagine if they intentionally let you go, and the feeling you would have as soon as you realise what they did and what is going to happen to you. Fear, betrayal, sadness, all on maximum volume and all at once. Anyway, this went on for maybe two hours again then just like last time, I go from full-blown delirium to sober in a couple seconds.

The consequences of my actions:

After my final trip, the thought pattern I described didn’t go away like it had the previous time. It followed me 24 hours a day. It was not usually as intense as feelings of impending death, but sometimes it was. My reality was destroyed. I would sometimes feel like the world around me was nothing but a dream I had conjured up to forget the fact I was the only being in existence. Imagine existing forever and alone, no fate could be worse. I was completely out of touch with reality.

After ~9 months of living like this I had my eureka moment, I was having a rather serious panic attack where I was convinced if I went to my window, opened my curtains and looked to the sky I would see an asteroid which would end life on earth (ridiculous I know, but when you really believe it’s very compelling). I had a moment of realisation of how much all this was affecting my girlfriend and decided enough was enough. Two possibilities existed for me.

1. I’m right and reality is a lie created to torture me, if so, then I can’t avoid my fate so let’s get it over with.
2. I’m wrong and my disconnect with reality is meaningless and is only hurting the person I love.

So, I go to the window, push through all the paralysing fear and look out, and nothing happens. So there it was, I had faced what I had truly believed to be death and spat in its face. I thought all my problems were solved and I would become the person I dreamed of , free from all anxieties and negative proclivities. I had conquered death, everything else would be easy. This is not what happened.

This moment did change my life, in that I become reconnected with reality after this. Three years later and I still sometimes fall into the pattern of thinking in which reality is a lie. It doesn’t really bother me anymore. I am not yet the person I want to be, I still have my anxieties and my short comings. I am still ignorant, and I am still arrogant, and it still impacts my relationships with people. But I finally can get over myself and recognise these flaws, I finally can improve as a person. The past three years of my life have been torturous but have undeniably been the best years of my life. At the time of my penultimate trip, I was working a low-end job, had all but ruined my relationship, used a variety of hard drugs 3+ times a week and had no life prospects. Now I am married, spend my time sober, work out and am close to completing a university (college) degree. I owe this change to a variety of influences but I know that I would not have listened to these influences if I had not had this experience.

Was it worth it:

Yes it was worth it, but I would not wish this experience on anyone. I had no trajectory in life and to be honest I had nothing to lose. If this process had killed me it wouldn’t have been a loss to the world, my ego and laziness would have inhibited me from ever doing anything more than mindlessly consume, I would have achieved nothing in my life. The only reason I’m out the other end of this experience is that I accepted that harsh fact.

Consciousness has the amazing ability to torture itself for seemingly no reason, accepting there is a reason is the first step to overcoming it.

Exp Year: 2019	ExpID: 116665
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: Nov 15, 2022	Views: 676
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
LSD (2) : Large Group (10+) (19), Post Trip Problems (8), Bad Trips (6), Retrospective / Summary (11)