DOSE: T+ 0:00	1 hit	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)
T+ 2:00	1 tablet	oral	MDA	(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

135 lb

Let me start out by saying that the large amount of driving that I performed during this experience, as told in this report, was incredibly irresponsible and dangerous, possibly one of the more irresponsible things I've ever done whilst tripping. Don't ever do what I did! [Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]

That said...

It was the day before my birthday in November of 2005. I planned a Fear and Loathing styled experience for myself the night before my actual birthday (the day of my birthday, or rather, the afternoon was going to be spent with family, so I had the night before to go completely off the deep end). I had my friend T acquire a few tabs of acid and some pills of ecstasy. What he ended up finding for that evening was several pills of [what was tested to be] MDA, without any MDMA, and real LSD (supposedly at least, I figure the vast majority of tabs have LSD on them -- chances are it was real LSD, it felt like it anyway). So, we decide to drive north on Highway 14 from Los Angeles to trip in the desert overnight. We dressed warmly and headed out in my beat-up '94 Oldsmobile.

Of course, the irresponsible tools that we were, we decided we couldn't wait to drop, and ingested our tabs of acid halfway to the desert. We figured that it usually took us an hour to come up, so by the time we hit the sands, we'd be frying and it would be timed perfectly.

But, you know, that sort of thing never, ever works out as planned!

At least, not with me, anyway.

So, we were driving, and it was taking us a lot longer than we expected. We really didn't know the area that well. I always considered myself to have an impeccable sense of direction, and I figured if I just kept driving northeast on the 14, we'd invariably hit some form of desert eventually. But we just kept driving through town after town, past Palmdale, and there wasn't really anything worth stopping for. And, suddenly, we were tripping on LSD. Oh yeah! We forgot about that.

It started as a tingle in my head and a faint stimulation, like I just downed a few energy drinks. The funny thing about LSD, is that I don't really know that I'm tripping, until I'm tripping, and then there's absolutely no question -- I'm totally fucked. I didn't notice how wacky things were getting until the lines on the highway were starting to squiggle, like in 'squigglevision' on Dr. Katz, and my friends' voices were starting to echo and sounded far too dramatic for the kinds of things that they were saying ('Dude! Whoa! I want some Cheetos!'). I was getting pretty paranoid about being caught, especially because we had a few leftover tabs of LSD and the MDA pills which we hadn't even eaten yet. We decided to give up driving to the desert, and we turned around and started our journey back to LA. I guess we figured we'd be more comfortable in a place we knew well. What we should have done was parked somewhere and rode out the trip, but I already told you, we did all sorts of irresponsible things. We should have been locked up!

Well, we made it back to the San Fernando Valley (where we all lived, about 20 minutes north of downtown LA), about an hour and a half after we had taken the acid. My two friends who were with me, T and D, were both their silly, stupid, frying selves, and I was just focused as all hell trying to get us somewhere with a reasonable degree of safety. After hitting the surface streets, and driving around for a few minutes in total, complete confusion (it felt like the city was a gigantic, wacky miniature golf course), we gave up and parked the car about ten blocks from my friend E's house. E knew what we were up to, and he had let us know earlier that we could crash there for a bit whenever we were ready. We took him up on his offer. At this point, since I felt infinitely safer that I wasn't driving, I ate one of the MDA pills. D also had one at this point.

Sitting in my friend's house, the visuals were not terribly intense, but the high definitely had a big mindfuck, especially with what I saw inside. At this point in his life, E was a heroin addict, and his girlfriend, K, was a stripper and a complete coke fiend. They were both doing these drugs, these disgusting, ego-building drugs, while I was trying to trip and dissolve my ego. There they were, emaciated, sitting in bed, doing junk and snorting coke, and it just looked like a bad movie. I'm sure I would have been okay with the scene while sober, but man, while on LSD, it just felt weird seeing them like that. I wanted to save them, but I knew they had to save themselves. It also didn't help that we had the movie Monster playing on the television. Talk about what not to watch during a psychedelic experience.

So, there I was, enjoying my trip, but it was a 'sobering trip' in a way. What I mean, is that I wasn't completely depressed, or anything, I was just given a huge dose of reality, mainlined intracranially into my brain. People were fucked up sometimes! And, not to mention I could have ruined someone's life had I careened into them with my Oldsmobile while tripping. I had to be more responsible. I also took psychedelics like this for granted. I always, deep down, assumed it's all just fun and games -- just visuals and a laugh. I kept forgetting how deep and [almost painfully] introspective a trip could be.

Then the MDA kicked in, and I started to sweat. I took a shower, and it felt amazingly good. I felt like I was in a giant waterfall of amniotic fluid. Like a womb. It was intensely pleasurable. The visuals kicked in a bit more, and I began to have a much better trip at this point. I felt a tad more disoriented, so I was incredibly pleased to not be driving. MDA, to me, is very disorienting -- it produces almost a delusional state in higher doses. At this low dose, it was manageable, but on the whole, I've never been a huge fan of MDA. I was annoyed that I couldn't have found some actual MDMA to go with the LSD. The only real meaningful thing the MDA added was a wonderful, buzzing body high. I didn't get any particularly enhanced visuals, much to my disappointment. But, hey, I felt great, so what did it matter if I was disappointed relative to past experiences? I felt like I just acquired star power in Super Mario. I was invincible.

D started having a bad time, though. He was sweating profusely. He wasn't having a panic attack, and he wasn't in any physical danger, but he was having a very intense trip. He started having what Ann Shulgin calls 'flooding', where out of nowhere, you start having revelation after revelation -- far too quickly for your brain to process information comfortably. He started rolling around in the grass out back behind the house, and asking questions to us over and over. He asked us if he was doing okay in life. And, he asked us if we thought he was gay, because he wasn't sure. His pupils looked like two giant jet-black pancakes sitting on the whites of his eyes. Me and my friend S, a very zen sort of individual, who was also there (and completely sober) was talking him down calmly, and answering all his questions to the best of his ability. To me, he looked like he was melting into a puddle of his own sweat, but after talking to us for a while and drinking a ton of water, he relaxed a little.

After a few hours, S offered to drive us to the beach to watch the sunrise. Me, T, and D (having completely mellowed out) hopped in S's car and we headed out. Having been disturbed by the overwhelming imagery and revelation of my acid/MDA trip, I decided to give my last MDA pill to T, who hadn't had any yet. I couldn't even stomach the idea of any more drugs. When we got to the beach in Malibu, it was close to morning, probably around 5am. We saw a reporter for the local news giving some kind of weather report out near the beach, and we briefly thought about doing goofy things behind her for the camera -- but then we realized, hey! Our parents could have been watching! So we smartly abstained. It was probably the first intelligent thing we did all night.

Lying down on the beach, watching the sunrise, was very therapeutic in a way. The cold, damp sand felt wonderful under us, and I don't even think either of us said a word for the next few hours. We were each encapsulated in our own universe, dealing with our own demons, and thinking about the situation intently. I began to feel, over the next few hours, a bit dirty and gross. This was probably attributed to the MDA comedown. The LSD high was definitely fading away too, but I still felt completely scattered and tripped out. I thought to myself, 'What am I doing here? Why am I doing this to my brain! This is too much.'

Ever since that night, I haven't touched any traditional psychedelics. I felt like the whole experience taught me a huge lesson. Psychedelics aren't all fun and games. They aren't light drugs. If you take enough, they're as hardcore as the rest. They will absolutely fuck with your mind. It taught me to never take psychedelics for granted. I clearly wasn't ready for what I was attempting to do. Now, after a couple of years, I feel like I'm almost ready to use a psychedelic again, but I'm treading carefully. My trip, while it was fun at times, was also a bit harrowing on my soul. I don't think I got out of it all that I could have. I can't use psychs like I would heroin or coke -- I can't use them as a party condiment; I can't simply take them as a social enhancer. There's no separating the 'high' of it all from their ability to distort my mind, invert my perception of my environment, and toy with my emotions.

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 67831
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 6, 2008	Views: 42,446
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LSD (2), MDA (34) : Difficult Experiences (5), Nature / Outdoors (23), Post Trip Problems (8), Combinations (3), Small Group (2-9) (17)