DOSE:	2.5 hits	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)
		smoked	Cannabis
		smoked	Tobacco - Cigarettes

BODY WEIGHT:

78 kg

I've seen many a dawn break across the long-suffering night's sky. Each time searching for that imperceptible moment when night becomes day. A gradual lightness eventually breaks the back of a mysterious darkness. But no sunrise was quite as dramatic or brilliant as the time I did acid with Flex. It is common knowledge that the most important part of taking LSD is the careful selection of setting. So allow me to explain my property. A crow flying across the North Eastern Victorian sky would see a simple land of squares. My property resides in the centre of five squares. A property of one hundred acres (484,000 square yards) comprising flat fields, rugged bush land, and a house like a shoebox. The house we were in is psychedelic by its nature. It is composed of one large open room comprising of the kitchen, dining room, and loungeroom. The furnishing includes indigenous artwork (gathered from volunteer work in Indigenous communities mainly in the Northern Territory and New South Wales) and intricately patterned rugs. The roof itself is a grainy-sloped wood. Under the influence of any psychedelics the house would come alive. I’d spread a number of art-books throughout the house in order to add to the experience. These included a Salvador Dali book, a book titled simply ‘Renaissance Art’, and a carefully sequestered H.R. Giger book.

The acid trip began at eleven-o-clock at night and would range across this area, from feline antics in a kitchen oven, to a fiery crescendo on a verdant hill beneath the stars with The Beatles in the background.

Flex and I drove to my empty house after his band had played a local gig. Arriving at ten PM we began preparing the house. He set up the music while I closed the curtains. After coffee and a shower we took out the five acid tabs. We took two and a half tabs and waited. After an hour in order to speed up the onset (and intensify the trip) we each smoked a bit of marijuana. We milled around worrying that the tabs might be inert. The first sign of things to come was when we noticed that a large Indigenous dot painting that hung n my loungeroom was beginning to animate, as the yellow and red dots shifted and twirled. With the onset of effects we walked around the house for an indeterminable amount of time enjoying the tame visuals. I munched happily on a packet of potato chips while Flex gazed at the tile floor. I didn’t know it, but things were soon to enter a new level, a hallucinogenic intensity that I had never experienced before.

As Flex put on the song ‘Feels Like We Only Go Backwards’ by Tame Impala I saw the mirror like door of my oven and sat down in front of it. I gazed at my warped visage. My face darkened and isometric patterns began to twirl. “I’m seeing the most amazing thing I’ve seen in my life.” I said to Flex.
“What’s that?”
“Everything is going like really weird… like into weirdness. I’m turning into a cat.”
He sat down beside me on the tile floor and said simply, “You have a very shiny oven.” I stared at the reflection as my face twirled and spun. I glanced at my friend’s reflection and saw that he now had an impossibly long goblin-like face. Looking back at myself I saw that I was now growing whiskers and my face was taking on a feline form, I could see a tail as well poking up from my clothing.
“I’m in a box turning into a cat!” I cried.

“You actually do look like a cat.” Flex said. I watched as my face became more and more cattish. I was in the grips of the acid euphoria.
“Such weird things are happening to my face right now.” I said.
“Same.”
“Like my face is melting, and there are all these patterns, all going across my face. And my entire face is all vibrating and moving along with it.”
“That’s incredible. My face is just becoming so warped when I stare into it. I look like I’m 60-years-old. Also I don’t really trust these guys.” He said pointing at the mirror. “I feel like we’re a bit of a duo, and they’re a bit of a duo, and I don’t really trust them.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Yeah they’re just sitting behind glass watching us - talking about us.”
Then my face began to become less conventionally cattish and shifted again so that now I appeared like a Navi from the shitty movie ‘Avatar.’ “It’s amazing how much more intense this has become since we looked at the oven. Like I’m on a whole other level now.”
“I know what you mean.” He said.
“As I’m looking at myself, I can see my face with war paint on it… with cat’s teeth.”
We both laughed, and he pointed at the mirror, “I like it when this guy is happy and has a smile on his face.”
Then there was some banging from outside, I assumed it was my dogs who were in the laundry. But then there was the unmistakable sound of a door opening. My brother walked into the kitchen.
Flex turned to him “Hi I’m Flex.”
“I’m turning into a cat!” I said.
“Oh, cats are the worst things to turn into.” My brother replied matter-of-factly.
“What have you guys taken?” He asked.
“Acid.” I replied.
“Okay have fun.” He said as he walked to his room. Fearing that I had been looking at the mirror too long I suggested we go outside. Flex agreed.

We stepped outside onto my patio. It was well lit and surrounded by a fairly lush garden. I lit up a cigarette and we lay on the grassy lawn. We stared up at the sky. I could see white lines connecting all the stars. I’d see faces and shapes emerge from the sky as the heavens blinked and twinkled every colour. The grass spun and twirled in squares. I felt completely at one with nature. The smoke I blew danced in the air like a beautiful grey ghost. Flex and I spoke about the size of the universe and how small we all were. I suddenly felt like I could see the world. I saw my property floating in a completely black space. All that existed was that which I could see. My house and the area in front of my house that we sat was simply by itself flying through space. I wondered at this, and felt as if I could see the strings holding up the world. I got up and walked. It felt as if I was a giant with uneven legs. As I walked closer to my patio I felt like I was shrinking. When I arrived at my table I felt like I was only two feet tall. I walked around some more and suddenly I felt like I was walking through the space between time and between moments. I reflected that the world and time is like exhibits in a museum being put on for the benefit of the viewer, and I could not see the museum because I’d been trained to walk between the pictures and moments, rather than through the cosmic gallery in which the pictures hung. In those moments I knew instinctively that our world existed in a black cavern spinning on a string, with pricks of light creating a mural. I could see into the corridor of life. Things were getting too intense. I turned to my laptop and wrote two sentences, “Ben Askot, I’m the DJ of the human soul. Sit back in the universe café while I twirl you up something. Some experience.” I hit the enter bar a number of times and wrote, “SIT HERE AND LOOK DEEP WITHIN YOURSELF, IN THE OVEN… INTO THE CAT EMPIRE IN YOUR KITCHEN.”

I went into my darkened room and turned the fan on and lay in my bed. In the dark I imagined myself as a giant lying in a giant desert. I lay there in my bed for around twenty-minutes and emerged feeling much more collected. I walked out to find Flex sitting on the couch looking at the Salvador Dali book. We sat on the couch admiring his artwork and then went back outside. We lay under the stars and I felt myself sinking into the earth and could feel the earth spinning on its orbit. The sky was filled with shooting stars and periodically the world would flash into a brightly animated form. As I lay under the stars on the grassy hill The Beatles were playing. I felt the music through every part of myself. As I listened I could actually feel the texture of the music. The climax of ‘A Day In the Life’ seemed to last forever and with each note my body rose higher.

When it finally finished I fell back to the earth exhausted, I felt as if every part of my body had been exercised and stretched by the experience of listening to that song. When ‘The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill’ came on something bizarre began to happen. I noticed that steam came out of my mouth when I breathed. I had not had a cigarette for a while, and it was a warmish night. Then this steam started to stream from every part of my body like smoke. I saw my face from a profile view and saw that it was flowing out of my face as well. Then I smelled the smoke and could feel the fire. I saw my shoulder and body were consumed with fire. While this was happening I could hear in the background, “Hey Bungalow Bill, what did you kill? Bungalow Bill.” The feeling was so intense and so real, the fire filled my vision and I could feel the heat (though no pain) I could feel myself dissolving into the air. I lay there for some time as my body dissolved in the flames. Flex lay oblivious a few meters away. I got up and was relieved to find I was not actually on fire. I walked again to the patio, Flex and I stared at the plants for sometime. One plant resembled hands and these hands swayed and reached menacingly into the air. I walked to our pool and looked out into the paddocks. Inside the pool the light rippled off its blue walls.

I considered this water and thought that perhaps we’re all submerged by water that dims our awareness of everything that goes on around us. All the stimuli is drowned by this water and becomes less intense and more ordered. The soundscape of the world rendered mute by that film of water. Flex and I spoke of blindness, how if you were to suddenly get vision the world would be a mess of colours and stimuli, because it is our brains that eventually draw order out of this chaos. Throughout the trip I experienced a kind of nausea. I was usually able to ignore it and at some points it was overtaken by a kind of euphoria, but I could never shake it completely. I was also perturbed by a facial numbness and fluctuating temperatures (sometimes I’d be too cold, then too hot, or feverishly sweating) all these effects were fairly easy to ignore or treat though.

After hours of the outside lights being on, the air was thick with light seeking insects, and also the bats that ate them. As we stood in the patio a tremendous moth began flying around and banging into things. The moth appeared to us to be at least as large as a crow and was brown with brilliant green stripes across its body. It landed on a pole. Flex was deathly frightened of it and I picked it up with both hands and offered to take it away. I could feel it squirm underneath my hands and I threw it up into the air. I returned but so did the moth. It looked bigger than ever and was making a terrible din. Flex expressed a desire to go inside and I agreed. We entered the house. We both felt exceedingly hungry but couldn’t find anything we wished to eat. We played some music and were fascinated with the empty noise created by the subwoofer. It was the sound of being ready to make sound, but not quite making it.

I lay on the kitchen floor standing at the greenish ceramic tiles. The tiles began to turn into a satellite map. And I imagined myself as some giant satellite astride the earth, focusing in on the mountains. Looking at the tile I felt like I could see my house from the air. After a while staring at tiles and carpets and looking at art we went back outside. One thing that stood out for me on LSD was the calming effect of a cigarette. For some reason the LSD made me enjoy smoking more than I ever had before. It also instantly made me calm. Whenever I felt nervous or like the trip was getting too much, a cigarette instantly made me feel calm and happy. At this point our trip seemed to have peaked visually. The intense visuals and warping seemed to have receded and while we had the twirling colours, tracers, and other visual stimuli, powerful hallucinations like my body turning into smoke, or Flex’s perception of himself aging were not as common. Consequently the experience became less about riding it and we were able to talk and interact more freely. While the visual hallucinations were not as prominent the acid was still heavily sparking our minds. Beside the pool we spoke about God and dharma, and tattoos that we wanted. We sat down and talked about Jack Kerouac and what “beat” is.

As dawn began to make its circadian appearance we walked into a paddock to watch it. We each took a seat on a rock and saw the light begin to creep up the hill. The light chased away the blanket of darkness that had enveloped this Australian valley. In the dim dawn light a kangaroo walked by us. It stood a mere 15 meters away. It paused looking around while balanced on its hind legs. It seemed able to sense our presence if not see us.

It stretched itself out and scratched its stomach with its claws and ate some grass. I coughed and it looked straight at us. It was an odd moment where for ten minutes Flex and I stared at this beautiful creature. Eventually it bounded away. All through our vision specks of light roared into life and receded, and I still sometimes flashed into a cartoonish view of the world. As the light crept up the hill and shifted the colours around it, I knew that it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. After that we wandered around the newly lit gully and enjoyed its vibrancy. The morning light obscured much of the visuals. While the world we saw was much brighter we did not see many actual visual effects of the LSD, this late stage of the trip was simply watching the effects diminish. We prepared a breakfast of fried homegrown tomatoes. Flex wanted to go to the tomato patch in his socks to which I simply replied, “Put on some crocs, we’re not animals.”

We ate with gusto and then watched part of ‘Finding Nemo’ eventually we both fell asleep at around eight and woke up at twelve. At the end of the experience I felt incredibly refreshed and can only look back at the acid trip as an enriching and enjoyable experience.

There is a habit for people into psychedelics to believe that “everyone should experience this.” I have no illusions about psychedelics; they can create a kind of intellectual narcissism in those that don’t question the new perspectives they are shown. They simply know that not everyone who has used them has experienced it, so feel like they’ve been bestowed with some kind of unique insight. Psychedelics are an interesting and useful tool for many people, but should always be reflected upon and certainly not unquestioningly praised. Rather they should be treated as all drugs are respected and understood. I understand that what’s helpful for me, isn’t necessarily helpful for everyone and it’s a personal decision to try drugs. With that in mind I would say that this use of LSD was probably the most enriching and enjoyable experience I’ve had with psychedelics and am extremely glad that I could have these experiences, though would urge others to evaluate for themselves if they wish to try it.

Exp Year: 2013	ExpID: 99314
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Oct 26, 2017	Views: 2,008
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