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Insanity: The Fear of Losing Control
H.B. Woodrose
Citation:   Azathoth. "Insanity: The Fear of Losing Control: An Experience with H.B. Woodrose (exp78215)". Erowid.org. Jun 18, 2013. erowid.org/exp/78215

 
DOSE:
10 seeds oral H.B. Woodrose (seeds)
BODY WEIGHT: 72 kg
One Tuesday morning, at around 1 o'clock in the afternoon, during the Easter holidays, me and my good friend decided to try out H.B.W. It was the perfect moment to try out our first psychedelic experience for we were staying in a friend's country house along with a bunch of other people we knew very well and far away from the stress and paranoia associated with big cities. I had about 3 days to stay there so it was all fine and dandy and I figured 3 days was plenty of time.

1 PM. So as I said, one Tuesday morning me and my friend (let's call him 'A') each dropped 10 grains of H.B.W into coffee mugs. We filled the cups with about 2 fingers of pure water (and not tap water, because its chlorine destroys LSA, or so I've heard) and closed the mugs with a solid surface so as not to let any air escape. I'm pretty sure 'A' did the bastardly deed of stealing one of my grains, but it would not change anything to the oncoming effects he later experienced. After leaving the grains in the water for about 20 minutes, we both quickly drank the water (which had turned yellow) and thoroughly chewed on the remaining grains. We had not eaten anything before taking the grains so we stupidly thought we could eat afterwards: “A” Ate a few strips of bacon and I ate a few chips.

1:30 PM. We walked out of the kitchen into the living room. The inexorable nausea was coming quickly after a few minutes and I felt the mild pain in my stomach, but nothing too harsh, though 'A' suddenly felt drowsy and needed to lie down in one of the unoccupied beds upstairs. I sat down on one of of the living rooms chairs while some guys were watching television and waited for the effects to hit me. I had no idea how much time the onset or the coming up were going to take. Nothing happened for about an hour so I believed the grains were not working. Sadly, I had taken every grain I bought, and I felt slightly bummed that this experience was wasted so easily.

I decided to check on 'A' lying down on one of the beds upstairs. He seemed to be sleeping, but after examining him for a few seconds he muttered that he felt like he had taken a sedative. He told me he wasn't experiencing any visuals either open eyed nor closed but his thoughts were racing and his imagination had a raging boner. I felt even worse that I was feeling absolutely no effects (except the nausea) even though he was, as he had taken precisely or at least approximately the same dose as I had.

This bad feeling turned into a physical bad feeling and I raced to the bathroom only to stay there 20 minutes waiting to puke, but nothing was coming out. I came out of the toilets and 'A' had left the room. He was downstairs smoking a cigarette and talking to people. I decided to start watching a film to forget about my lack of luck. I watched 'Saló or the 120 days of Sodom', Pasolini's masterpiece, with my friend for about an hour and a half. After a while I started to feel pretty heavy and weak: thus I believed this was due to my lack of sleep and excessive alcohol abuse over the last few days so I climbed into my bed and relaxed. I stayed there for a while with my eyes closed as one of my friends watched the film with 'A' who had finally decided that his trip was over.

3:50 PM. Progressively, my imagination was running wild, which is usually normal in the moments before I fall asleep, though something was different this time. The nausea was slowly creeping back. I felt that my legs were getting heavier. I stretched out and it felt so good. Suddenly, the need to vomit surged out of my bowels and I was running to the toilets upstairs. My friends, still watching the film, were laughing at my violent and amusing change of state. I lifted up the toilet seat and puked like a robot about 5 times. I thought it wasn't going to end, but after a short while it did. I became dizzy, and I thought it was because of the pressure I had put on my head.

I was wrong. I looked into the mirror and, lo and behold, my pupils were as big as Elton John's anus! My face was constantly morphing, and with a maddened childish glee I ran downstairs to proclaim that the grains were finally working, after 3 hours of digesting! The effects came on slowly. I sat down in the living room on a chair facing the colourful patterns of the opposite wall. I stared at this banal thing for a few minutes until I noticed that the wall was sliding and the patterns were meshing into each other, as if this bed of purple and blue tulips were being blown by the wind. I did not marvel at this change of perception, I simply acknowledged it and took it for a sign that the grains effects had barely started coming. I stood up and left the living room for the garden.

The sight that I beheld was incredibly glorious! The rain had left a coat of dazzling diamonds on the explosively coloured flowers of spring, while the wind shook the great trees that looked immense ad noble. After a night of rain the sky was clearing itself and the clouds were patchy and incomplete. I looked to the sky; the clouds were titanic angelic ships sailing across the Klein blue of the spring sky. I stood there like a fool with my mouth open wide in astonishment until 'A' came out and told me in a calm and gleeful voice to sit down. I took a chair; the few drops of rain that had found a way onto it were shining with a blinding brightness. To the eyes of my friends I seemed hyperactive and excited as my dilated eyes darted around the garden like bees. One of my friends started talking to me. It took me a while to grasp the flow of the conversation and I was constantly asking him to please repeat the sentence. After a hard time of trying to understand what the bloody hell was being told to me I gave up listening for it seemed a waste of my time to listen to seemingly inane gibberish during a psychedelic experience. I was fearful that this might lead to them thinking I was blatantly ignoring them, but they understood my condition and I started roaming the garden looking for more eye candy.

The clouds were starting to cover the sky again and the light that managed to shimmer through those holes in the clouds was astounding. For a minute, my weak sense of perspective led me to believe the clouds were right there in front of me, and the light was shining right through the trees at me. I was overjoyed. I decided to climb once more into my bed and enjoy the closed eye visuals. I looked around the room: the patterns on the bed sheets around me were writhing like snakes and falling into each other, the small shelf on the wall had books coloured so that they stood out a lot and the room was lit in a dim red light (which is actually how it normally is). I was experiencing a pleasant sensation overload: the TV outside sounded as if it were around me, as did the people speaking in the living room as well as all the small sounds of movement, doors slapping and a ball being kicked. Sounds echoed abruptly and seemed to emanate from my own mind.

7 PM. My eyes were darting around very quickly, for there was simply too much to comprehend. Thoughts were emanating from various objects around. The effects were becoming stronger and I was losing myself to the inane flow of my own thoughts and the amazing CEVs I was experiencing: golden-velvet human eyes in triangles over a blue sea, eyes on top of thrones, dolphins raping humans (disturbing). Soon enough, this trip was turning into something I couldn't quite control. The incessant flow of my thoughts was accelerating to the point of incoherence and I was worried for my sanity. From time to time, in the glimpse of a second I was able to tell myself that this was just a drug, that my family has never had accounts of schizophrenia, that I was overreacting, but none of these phrases could slow down the unstoppable force of insanity I was experiencing. For an hour, I lived in the hell of what is described as schizophrenic psychosis. Time was eternal: I was stuck in this madness for ever. I tried listening to My Bloody Valentine or Ozric Tentacles, music that usually calms me, but the lyrics of the first made absolutely no sense and the latter's progressive rock was dissonant and giving me the creeps.

After a long while I managed to hang on to the thought that this was all temporary and it would change again. And it did. I was still insane but I managed to walk up to the toilets upstairs and stare at my constantly morphing face. The black and beige granite on the floor was swirling like a maelstrom and distorting itself to the point of becoming grey. I looked out of the window: two of my buddies where doing some Krav Maga in the garden, and as they jumped around they seemed to be made of a extensively stretchable material. I came back into my bed, and being unable to object or even talk coherently, some friends walked into my room and drew stuff on my face with a UV marker. I was desperately trying to get them to help me, but they started leaving the room and I couldn't speak. 'A' walked in and approached his head to my face and stared at me. His face was taking on completely different dimensions and his typical Joker smile made him look terrifying to my poor tripping mind. He left, and once again I was alone.

8 PM. I mustered up the courage to see what was going on in the garden. The house was empty, for the guy whose house this was got the impression that I might turn berserk and thrash around the house. I stepped into the garden, and as some people watching the two guys do Krav Maga turned their heads to see what I was up to, I started feeling paranoid and believing they were scared of me and didn't want to talk to me. My incoherent thought process had since left me, but the feeling of paranoia was nearly as overwhelming. Then it started raining. I helped them pick up their equipment for the fighting and came into the living room. The setting sun looked like fire on the horizon. Sanity was coming back to me and I was increasingly feeling better though sad that I had had such a horrible experience. I crashed into a comfortable sofa and looked around: the wall seemed to be morphing as well, and holes were being dug by invisible forces into the yellow paint. The colours of the television were crazy and extravagant, as were the people acting out the soap operas. 'A' sat beside me and asked me if we could jam, as I was sure he noticed my sadness. I tried playing along with him, but it was hard. It was like learning to play the guitar all over again. Thankfully, this activity kept my mind off my bad experience and as we played a few bluesy numbers I started feeling much better and euphoric. I felt weird coming down (slightly) back to reality, as if my eyes were shrinking (which they were). I finally got up, and started fully enjoying the hallucinations. The flowers on the wall were morphing into these sleeping, violet human faces. The sensation overload I was feeling early on was turning into this feeling of being encircled by loving friends, indifferent to my current state but who would be there for me if anything went wrong. It's strange, but this sensation overload is nearly exactly the same experienced by Raoul Duke in 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas': this state of confusion, where the immense mass of information received is strangely interpreted. I was starting to move around like Robert Plant much to my friends' and my own amusement.

9:00 PM I left the living room to look at the garden again. I think that at this point the effects were wearing off but still very present. The stars were very shiny. So were the puddles of rain on the round and dew on the flowers. My friend comes out to talk to me; I now fully understand what she's saying but she still thinks I'm in the 'ignoring' mode. We stepped back into the house just when dinner was served. Sitting at the table was like a new glimpse into the terror of insanity: the table is rocking, eating is hard as I seem to no longer posses any saliva, watching people talk is hard because their face twist into perverted grimaces. I start feeling bummed again, but then I once again tell myself that this is just one last wave of negative effects from the drug. After a good dinner I sit in my room and start enjoying the last of the sensory overload until 'A' walks in and starts talking to me, asking how it was like, if I was still on the bad trip. At this point, the feeling of anxiety tied to insanity had vanished. I realised the trip was nearly over.

What followed was the end of the trip, spent at a small table where a circle of my friends and me smoked hookah. A great sense of comic awareness was dawning and I found myself laughing - I have a hard time expressing my amusement - at the stupidest of 'A''s antics, the girl beside me being drunk and thus depressed and silent and the other Brazilian guy talking about who knows what that is supposed to have to do with a philosophy based on an opposition to a negative aspect of life.

I slept very well and the next day, even with just 4 hours of sleep, I felt more fresh and open-minded than I had ever been before. Cleaning the house was fun, as was watching 'The Phantom Menace' and watching the clouds outside that still seemed to be humongous.

Overall, even with a bad trip on my first experience (I'm sure that it was tied to the unusually large first dose of about 10 grains), I felt this has been an enlightening moment. I take more interest in colour now, though my interest in music has slightly decreased. Patterns on walls or anywhere take on more significance. My imagination has increased in potency and I still manage to perceive quite lucid visuals when I close my eyes these days. I'm definitely trying this again or LSD, and I'd like to recommend it to people who feel good in their own skin and who can find a safe and familiar place where to take the trip.

Exp Year: 2009ExpID: 78215
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 18, 2013Views: 12,892
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H.B. Woodrose (26) : First Times (2), Bad Trips (6), Hangover / Days After (46), Small Group (2-9) (17)

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