DOSE:	1 tablet	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)
		smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

165 lb

I was always interested in the the effects of LSD and mushrooms long before I was ever involved in drug use myself, mostly because I knew it had inspired some of my favorite musicians, authors, and other figures I admired. I was experienced with marijuana, having been smoking for the better part of a year and had been actively looking for shrooms for close to two months at the time but the connections kept falling through. When my friends told me they had an acid hookup who was good I bought three hits, one for me and two of my friends who I will call C and J, with a kind of nervous excitement.

My friend C ended up taking his hit a few days before J and I, and I spent the day with him to see how he reacted. His trip seemed very mental, though just from smoking weed with him on a regular basis I knew he often ended up in his head while I tend to be enthralled by how things look and sound and was expecting a very different trip than the one he had.

J and I took our hits at approximately 4:30 in the afternoon a few days later in our dorm. I noted the blotter paper had a vaguely metallic taste. I kept the paper on my tongue for about 20 minutes until it dissolved and I swallowed it. After swallowing our paper J and I went downstairs where he smoked a cigarette (I don't smoke) and then we went into the store and each bought a bottle of orange juice to sip on while we waited for the effects to set in.

Back in our dorm we were starting to feel the onset of the acid. I had butterflies in my stomach and was feeling very excited, though I can't say for sure if this was the effect of the drug or just my natural excitement about what was about to happen.
To occupy our minds for a while J put on “Wasp/ Behind the Wall of Sleep/ Bassically/ N.I.B.” by Black Sabbath with the Classic iTunes visualizer on. I'm not sure at what point during the almost ten minute song I actually began tripping, but when it finished and I pulled my eyes away from the screen the effects of the acid were definitely hitting me. The outline of my hand specifically seemed to undulate, like it was breathing.

[Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]
It was at this point that J and I gave C a call to drive us around and smoke some weed as we had planned. He took us out and we drove around our usual burn routes and the three of us smoked two bowls I believe. The music playing in the car was all encompassing. I was trying hard to keep up in C who was quite talkative (as he tends to be when high) but the sensory experience was too powerful and I really didn't hear much of what he had to say from the back seat. As we were driving I watched the clouds which had some of the most interesting visuals of the entire trip, the clouds seemed to bloom outwards into starburst shapes in time with the music we were listening to. We parked beside a river which we had planned on going to watch but J vetoed the idea in favor of sitting in the car and listening to music. I was fine with that idea at the time, enjoying the view of the bushes outside (the branches of which were waving around in a very lifelike manner) though in retrospect I wish we had gone out to enjoy the river. Inside the confines of the car I started to get sucked into my mind and grew somewhat silent.
It's hard to explain, but it was as though my mind split into two halves, one that was caught in a standard stream-of-consciousness and one that was watching the other half critically. The second, critical half kept questioning if I was tripping (as the visual effect of the drug was quite different than I had anticipated) despite the fact that I obviously was. Every now and then I was struck by an epiphany, that the only reason my mind was acting strange was because of the drug and then I would be happy to watch the world for a while, but then I would sink back into the uncomfortable mind patterns. A change of scenery probably would have done me good to keep my mind occupied, but in the end J and I went back up to our dorm thinking that the familiarity of our dorm was what we really wanted.

In the dorm I laid down on my bed while J chose music. The acid was making me feel completely strange by this point, though it isn't anything I can really put my finger on. Everything simply seemed completely alien to me on a fundamental level , I remember even my blanket felt strange. J put on the Klaxons, a band that I wasn't familiar with at all, which added to the alien nature of the world around me immensely.

There is a period of time here that I lost. I don't know how to explain it except in contrast to how I felt when I snapped out of it: When I sat up what felt like an eternity after laying down on my bed (though it was probably not very long at all) it was as though I suddenly remembered who I was and where I was, and yes, I had in fact taken acid earlier. The period of time in which I was laying down was one without thought, not even comprehending everything that I was seeing, hearing, and feeling. The one solid memory I have of the experience was the poster beside my bed, a Klaxons poster to match the music. The poster is set up like a collage and all the pieces of it were moving around each other in a fluid and slightly disorienting manner.

After snapping out of my trance if you will I was quite worried about the road the acid was taking me down. I was aware that the trip I was having was not what I really wanted to have but just the fact that I knew I wanted to have a better trip seemed to calm me down. What I really wanted was something normal to grab on to instead of the strangeness I had been going through and thinking about my trip as just the effects of a drug was a good start to grounding myself in reality. J had also been having a mental trip and was for us finding a change of scenery. My depth perception was all messed up as we walked down the hallway to the elevator, it almost seemed like the floor was slanted.

Outside, J called another friend of ours, B, who invited us to his room to play a round of Nazi Zombies. I got myself under control in B's room while he and J played videogames but still had an anxious, nervous undercurrent to everything I did. After a few minutes we had to leave B so he could study so J and I stepped outside and I called a friend of mine, M, who was a very experienced tripper. I told M I was on acid and he immediately asked if everything was beautiful and perfect. I told him it was more strange than I had expected, almost too disjointed from reality and he helped to talk me down. Just hearing his voice practically lifted the anxious feeling from my trip and made me feel comfortable again. He told me some websites to go to and by the end of our conversation I felt like I had risen above the trip and it was no longer in control.

After talking with M I was feeling tons better, but J was still floundering with the drug so he and I decided to go on a walk around the campus. Being outside felt much better and we found a good spot to sit on campus underneath a sort of bridge that connected two halves of a building. We probably sat for an hour or more, sometimes silently sometimes talking. Outside I finally returned to some visual effects of the trip; the bricks in the wall across from me seemed to be moving, every other row seemed to be scrolling to the left or to the right. I talked about how I underestimated the acid, how it was completely different than I had anticipated. He said that he too wasn't having a “normal” trip but had been spending most of the time thinking about his life, school, and other concerns that he had been having. We decided that while we weren't having a normal trip it was still positive in the end. It had put things in a new perspective for both of us. Sitting outside there calmed us both down and put us in a sort of self-cleansing state of mind. The total experience had left me emotionally exhausted, the way I feel after a heavy cry and something I hadn't felt in a long time.

By this point it was after 10:00 pm (it was the first time I really became aware of time) and me and J decided to go to his friend A's house. I was feeling down from the acid by this point (though still slightly disjointed from reality, like after a weed comedown) so I drove us to A's place where he and his girlfriend had been drinking wine. The four of us all drank a bunch of wine, smoked a lot of weed, and watched Across the Universe. The movie, alcohol, and marijuana all combined to bring back the tripping state of mind (though with virtually no visual effects) and left me feeling very comfortable, much more so than I had felt at any other part of the night.

In the end, it was a good experience in that it taught me how to trip. If I could go back I would probably do it slightly differently but I'm glad I had the experience. I wish I had understood the drug more before I took it so that I could have prepared myself more fully but I feel that now my next time will be much more positive throughout. More than anything this trip made me respect LSD more than I did. As J said to me: “People think that acid is just like a cool light show or something, but really it can put you in your place.” It was, ironically, quite a sobering experience.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 85095
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Nov 12, 2018	Views: 943
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Guides / Sitters (39), Music Discussion (22), Bad Trips (6), First Times (2), General (1)