DOSE: T+ 0:00	1 hit	oral	LSD	(liquid)
T+ 1:30	2 hits	oral	LSD	(liquid)

BODY WEIGHT:

200 lb

I have always been terribly interested in LSD. As a teenager I was obsessed with the hippie counterculture of the sixties and its psychedelic mind set. After much self-debating and endless hours of research on the drug, I dropped acid for the first time on my twenty second birthday - less than two months ago.

I did it with two girls who I became very close to in college. They are both very experienced drug users and extremely trustworthy, loving people. I wanted my first experience to be with them. They did a lovely job setting the mood. They threw a miniature surprise party for my birthday and just generally got me completely psyched up about tripping (i.e. presenting me with a birthday card showing a badly-drawn girl with large, fried-egg eyes and a caption that read, 'Just do eet!').

When the time came to drop, the girls took their hits right out of an eye dropper full of liquid acid and presented me with a sugar cube that they had dosed with one hit especially for me. I was extraordinarily hesitant about putting that thing in my mouth. I had gone round and round with myself for months about the ins and outs of trying acid. Would I have a bad trip? Would I freak out? Have a seizure? I have never been a terribly happy person. I am currently, and was at the time, on antidepressants, and consistently suffer from bouts of extreme insecurity and pessimism. Everyone had told me that acid magnifies your emotions times 1000. What if LSD made naked all those hidden parts of my mind and I just lost it? Partly from the completely positive encouragement of my friends, and partly from pure exhaustion from overanalyzing, I just did eet, and munched on the small, sweet block that would take me... I didn't know where.

We were going to a concert at a small club. After we dropped we all got ready and left at about ten pm. On the way to the club, the cassette that was playing in the car kept screwing up and slowing down, and I thought I was tripping. I asked my friends if they heard what I was hearing, and they burst into laughter. We joked about it the rest of the way.

When we got to the club, we went to the upstairs balcony, where it was very quiet and cool and we just sat by a window and talked. Eventually, I began to feel... different, but nothing special. I felt a little like I did when I had tried ecstasy, just a general feeling of calmness and well being. Colors and sounds also began to distort ever so slightly. When I closed my eyes, some red lights behind me that were actually pretty dim seemed blindingly bright in my peripheral vision. I also often felt as if someone were standing next to me or behind me or that someone was walking towards me, but, when I turned to look for somebody, no one was there.

My friends decided to drop a little more. It had been about an hour and a half at this point, and I was feeling fine, so I decided to take one more hit. When L dosed me, though, she squeezed too hard and I got two. 'What the hell,' I figured, and lapped them up. It tasted interesting - slightly metallic.

We finally got up and went downstairs and right up to the stage. The show was about to start and there was a very palpable excitement in the air. I heard someone call my name and turned to see my sister. We hugged and talked and she said she would like to drop (she is a relatively experienced LSD user). L dosed her and we stood talking some more. Suddenly, one of the amplifiers on the stage emmitted a horribly loud, booming buzz of feedback. At that instant, I truly felt my trip kick in head first. The buzzing must have lasted three seconds, but it felt like an eternity. I felt a hole spread in my chest (not unlike the chest holes I feel sometimes when I smoke really potent pot) and my body felt as if it would be rammed into the vibrating ground. It was exhilerating and scarily trapping at the same time. My sister left to get a beer from the bar and promised to come back.

The show started and I was zinging. People around me were passing joints and I accepted a few, though no marijuana high would ever show its face through the electric curtain in my head tonight. I had never FELT music as I felt it that night. It flowed through every part of my body and mind and I had no choice but to dance.

And I did wig out - just a little bit. My sister had been gone for a while and I began to get worried. The rational part of me knew that the crowd had simply gotten too thick and she couldn't make it back up front, but my acid clouded mind was conjuring up a million places she could be - trampled under the crowd, out in the cold alone and tripping by herself, maybe she decided to leave and was in a car accident. These thoughts haunted me every time I turned around and couldn't see her in the audience. I got so worried at one point that N (my sister) became my whole world. People began to look like her. She has shocking bottle red hair, so my vision took on a magenta tint. I heard her voice behind me and turned to see strangers talking. The bongo drummer in the band was N for a second. And, I can never say for sure if this phenomenon took place in the realm of vision or mind or memory, but I was peppered with triangular shards that contained her face and voice. I equated it to watching a movie in a theater, and sometimes you see those strange black circles that pop up in the corner for a fraction of a second. That is what it was like. Like clips from a movie. Shards of glass where she was trapped and wanting a way out...

I knew though. I held myself together. I told myself that it was ME fucking with ME, and that I could control that. And I did. I took hold of A's hand and squeezed it hard. Instantly she could tell I was having a tough time and she just smiled and squeezed back. As we held hands, we danced, and we began to clap out the rhythm of the music together. We stumbled a bit at first, but the synthesis became perfect... we were improvising, filling in gaps in the beat and adding our own sequences, and it was perfect. We were truly, mystically connected through the music, and it was beautiful. When the song was over, we hugged and kissed each other. We didn't have to say a word.

So I forgot about my sister (who, by the way, wound up having a great time that night while avoiding stampedes and bad vibes), and the rest of the night was cake - and wonderful. Of course, the crowd was very tight, so people were constantly bumping into me or rubbing me as they passed. But I felt each touch in detail. It was like my body was being licked by giant tongues from all directions. And I danced and danced. The music was strange and a feast for all the senses. I felt as if I finally came to a long sought understanding of psychadelia. I heard strange things in the music. Exaggerated chords became a woman screaming. Any miniscule buzz, bleep, or bell echoed through me. At one point, during a song peak, I threw my head backwards and felt as if colors were rushing up my neck. I didn't really SEE colors when I closed my eyes, rather I thought them, and they became visual all the same. I travelled through tunnels of liquid metal, swirling vortexes of tie dyed patterns, bright, checkered rabbit holes with millions of branches. When the band took a break, I felt as if I had lost something, as if I had been holding the music in a ball in the pit of my stomach and it had flown away.

During intermission, my friends and I sat outside to cool off. We smoked cigarettes and laughed at everything. We were simply, unabashedly giddy and happy. We spent the second half of the concert on the balcony, where it was much less crowded. I didn't dance much this time around. I mostly sat and thought, just watching people and feeling good. When the show was over we met up with some other friends and stood around until we were kicked out. For the rest of the night, I felt terribly inarticulate and tired. I could barely open my mouth, let alone speak. If someone asked me a question, I nodded a yes or no answer. My body was worn out, but my mind was still sizzling with incomprehensible colors and thoughts.

We went home and sat up talking for a couple of hours. We were all starving and had leftover tetrazini from earlier in the evening and big cups of cranberry juice that tasted incredible. In the end, I was the only one left awake. This turned out to be the most difficult part of the trip for me. I had a terrible time trying to go to sleep. There was beautiful music playing on the stereo, but it eventually became grating noise as I grew more tired and irritable. I fought, punched, and kicked this thing called sleep in the teeth. I thought I had forgotten how to fall asleep, that I would simply be awake forever and always be tripping, and I should just accept it. When I closed my eyes, it was as if someone had turned on a strobe light in my brain. A bright light flashed and whirred. Sleep came eventually, after about three hours of tossing and turning, teeth gritting, cursing, and begging.

In the end, I guess I was left mystified by the whole experience. I don't think I really learned anything about myself or about others. It didn't profoundly change my perspective on anything. Rather, it just served to enhance things I already knew intuitively. Interconnectedness, hidden psychic abilities, an electric rhythm and pulse behind - everything. I do think that tripping is a sort of intrusion, though - an intrusion into a part of ourselves and the world that maybe we are not supposed to see because the potential for exposure and artificiality is just too great. But that's just what makes it so damned intriguing, eh? I am in no hurry to try acid again - it was too intense and physically draining for me to do routinely - but I definitely think I will try it again in the future.

Exp Year: 2001	ExpID: 4648
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 30, 2001	Views: 40,226
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
LSD (2) : Club / Bar (25), Music Discussion (22), First Times (2)