DOSE: T+ 0:00	1 hit		1P-LSD	(blotter / tab)
T+ 2:00	60 mg	oral	Codeine
T+ 2:00	50 mg		Cannabidiol
T+ 0:00		vaporized	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

11 st

Transformative First 1P-LSD Experience

As always with psychedelics, set and setting are the key factors determining how I experience the drug. Whether I'm feeling at ease in a safe and comfortable environment with trusted people can make or break the trip, so this is very important. A lot of time was spent cleaning my room, getting rid of unnecessary clutter or any weird stuff that might upset me during the trip. My ‘They Live’ mask had to go away in the cupboard, for example, as did my scary drawing of David Cameron.

I was with a trusted friend who was experienced and knowledgeable about what we were gonna be taking. As this was my first time I did 100ug, which was a fairly modest dose, and my friend did 50ug and acted as a trip sitter for me so they could check if I needed food or water. In terms of my own psychological profile, I have no family history of psychosis or schizophrenia, some family history of depression, I have had paranoid experiences with weed, but that came down to excess and circumstances. But generally speaking, doing a moderate dose of acid in a comfortable, safe environment with trusted people as a one-off wasn’t going to be particularly dangerous for me.

We had a big lunch and waited about two and a half hours before starting at quarter past 3 in the afternoon. This was to allow the food to digest and avoid any nausea from coming up on a full stomach. I took 100ug of 1P-LSD, doing a quarter of a tab every 12 minutes to get a more gradual impact of the effects. For coming up at the very start, we watched some Knowing Me Knowing You and I’m Alan Partridge, because if anything’s going to get me in a happy, giggly mood, it’s Partridge.

Lots of people say that coming up on acid is the most nerve-wracking and difficult part of the trip, but I actually really enjoyed noticing subtle differences in everything that became more and more pronounced , e.g. the opening sequence of Knowing Me Knowing You grabbed my attention more, as did the colourful lights on set and the posters in my room. One thing that really took me by surprise was that tactile sensations were way more pronounced for me than auditory stuff, and I spent a lot of time hugging my favourite blanket. It was like every sensory input was becoming super high definition.

Gradually, everything started to feel more and more vivid and strikingly real. Colours became more saturated, and I noted that the bin was the reddest bin I’d ever seen; sitting next to the heater I looked along it and thought it was really cool. Looking at my posters and flags, the colours were really bright. I played with this little puzzle thing for a bit which was surprisingly difficult. The difficulties in carrying out basic human tasks were something that I found very amusing rather than startling, which really helped with my attitude throughout the trip.

I’d occasionally check the metronome on 120 beats per minute to see if there was any time dilation (the feeling that more time has passed than there actually has been). Strangely enough, the actual ticking of the metronome almost always seemed to occur at the same pace. 120bpm did seem to sound like 120bpm. It didn’t sound like it was wildly off-kilter. Though when checking it sober the next day, I think it did sound very slightly faster on acid, which I think is really interesting – so time feels like it’s going slower, but tempo feels the same, if not quicker. What an absolute mindfuck.

As I get higher it becomes harder and harder to eat, but if I don’t eat I’ll be the hungriest person I've ever been, so I had a banana and a couple of tangerines at around 5pm, and after eating I took 60mg of codeine and 50mg of CBD. The codeine is a strong painkiller, used in this case to remedy any stiffness or aches that I might notice more, and also to help keep relaxed. (My friend said it would make me ‘Mr Floppy’, which sent me into a fit of giggles.) The CBD is a cannabinoid which counteracts any anxious or paranoid feelings from the weed. This is a necessary precaution to take, because thanks to prohibition, I don’t know how strong it’s gonna be. That’s government drug policy for you, keeping us safe since never.

As the trip unfolded I was beginning to feel more and more like a child. It was like there was a younger version of myself that was speaking to me and saying, “Come on, don’t be afraid, let’s go outside and play!” So I said to my friend that I’d had an excellent idea, which was to go outside on the links and look at the tree bark (they told me earlier that tree bark was brilliant to look at when tripping). I live right next to a big grassy area with some trees and a little golf course. So we went outside. Leaving my flat, I remarked that we’d just left the world of my bedroom, and were now entering the realm of the stairwell. It was like we were coming down from the biggest castle tower ever.

As we were going outside, I thought, ‘okay, this substance has reduced me to an absolute mess, I can’t even human, I’m a moron struggling with even the most basic of human tasks, this is hilarious’. My friend said to me that I had to act normal, and that made everything hysterically funny. When you’re in a situation where you have to conceal laughter, e.g. a funeral, everything is so much funnier. You might think this is true when you’re sober, but when you’re on acid this effect is magnified a thousand fold. Your brain cells are like, “Don’t laugh? Right okay, this is a very serious situation guys, so let’s get to work, get cooking with gas and turn the world into the funniest fucking comedy show anyone’s ever seen. This is serious business.”

Looking at the tree bark was nice; I saw breathing hexagonal patterns in it. We walked across the golf course on the links, which had the greenest grass I’d ever seen, plus more hexagonal patterns. We went along ‘the eternal path’ to a bench, where we sat for a bit and tried not to laugh as people walked past with no idea of the fact that we were basically on another planet. I looked at the trees that were directly above us and it was like there was this vast, sparkling canopy engulfing the world. It was an incredible sight. We considered going to the park to play on the swings but we saw a cop nearby so we went back.

When we returned from our hilarious moron quest outside, around 6ish, we went back to my room in fits of laughter, and topped up with some more weed. We looked at this Boston album cover, and it was like we were looking into a whole different world; it was all 3D, and there was a perception that there really was a whole other planet inside the album cover. We also looked at some expressionist paintings, particularly Van Gogh's Starry Night, and the sky sparkled and breathed. I stared at the hexagonal patterns in my jeans, which became more pronounced, and started lighting up and breathing.

Here, things started to get really intense, personal and powerful. I started to feel more like myself than I’d ever felt. I looked around my room and thought, ‘Holy shit, this is so fucking me right now, this is absolutely incredible; I’m more me than I’ve ever been’. I thought about a friend I have with PTSD who uses magic mushrooms to deal with trauma, and remembered them saying to just let it happen. I felt really grateful to have their support as a person and thought about how I was a part of the housing community we stayed in.

I felt like I was just letting go. When I have an orgasm, I am totally in the moment and I just let it happen. I'm not worrying about anything; I just focus on the sensations, enjoy the moment and let go. That was what this was like; I was just totally immersed in the moment to the point where I just sort of lost control, surrendered and let it happen. All of the best orgasms I’ve ever had, while really great, were nothing compared to the absolute brain-gasm that I was having. It was indescribably good, and I really felt a lot of love for myself.

I was listening to some music, which really resonated with me emotionally (The Stone Roses, I Am The Resurrection), and I listened to it very carefully. At this point I had a personal revelation, which I would like to keep private. Nevertheless, this was incredibly positive, and put me in a totally carefree mood. I kept laughing, and tears of joy were streaming down my face. I then spoke to my friend about how I’d realised something and we talked about how epic everything feels on acid. It was about 7:30pm and I was peaking.

So for example, they went to get me some yoghurt from the kitchen, and I was in tears of joy, like “Oh my god, you’ve brought me yoghurt, that’s so kind of you, thank you so much.” And then I got the giggles, because I realised, “Hey, I am so fucking gone right now, this substance has reduced me to tears at the sight of mere yoghurt.” Once again I was facing a new chapter in my gigantic moron quest, in which I had to carry out the monumental task of eating some yoghurt. And that was hard because the spoon was like a gargantuan platform upon which the vast rolling hills and valleys of yoghurt-y gloop were situated. Eventually I did manage to eat it, despite having my mouth full of yoghurt and tears streaming down my face forever and ever, in eternity.

I got all huggy with my friend at various points because it was all quite a lot to take in, so I was happy to just sit down and listen to some music. After this we were going into the evening and I started having some pretty strange experiences. For a few moments, I felt like I’d forgotten that I existed. There were various points where I felt like I wasn’t really there. When you’re sober your senses take in information, and there is a ‘you’ there to process it. Here, it was like my senses were taking in information but ‘I’ wasn’t there to process it. If you haven’t experienced this, this will sound like absolute word salad, but it’s the best I can do.

I didn’t really notice it happening; I just remember ‘waking up’ at one point and my brain was like, “Oh. Hello there. My name’s Chris, I play the piano and do political stuff, I’m in my room,” etc. It sort of reminded me of the IT Crowd, where whenever someone phones the department with a technical issue they pick up the phone like, “Hello IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?” It was like someone had hit the reset button, and this was me starting up again with a clear head.

We were well into the evening and I felt really tired because I didn’t sleep very much the night before from being so excited. Being tired on acid was weird, especially the time dilation. My friend would say something to me, I’d respond in a few seconds with something like ‘wait, what?’ but it’d feel like I’d just fallen asleep for several hours and they were waking me up. It felt like I was in a dream world, and was quite disorientated.

I left my room and went for a piss. But hey, on LSD, you never just leave your room and go for a piss. You take mammoth footsteps, like the big friendly giant strolling across worlds in the vast corridor to toilet land, and a new universe opens up in front of you as the great falls of urine come gushing forth, narrated by Morgan Freeman. Upon the return of my voyage to toilet land, I briefly became the heater for a few minutes, which was nice because you know, it’s always good to have a purpose in life.

So, having been down the castle tower, along the eternal path over the plains to the bench where I saw the gigantic sparkling canopy engulfing everything; having returned back home to brain-gasmic revelations and worlds of yoghurt in tears of laughter; having died and come back to life again, travelled across worlds to visit an alternative universe in toilet land and having briefly become a heater – so a standard day at the office really – I think I’d seen enough, so I was ready to come down from about 8 onwards.

My friend lit a candle and put my LED lights on; I queued up some of my favourite music (which took about half an hour because it was still very difficult to human at this stage). I lay there in my bed, staring up at the ceiling, and I thought about the big questions – life, the universe, and our place within it.

To be honest, I’m still very much an atheist. If someone’s a religious person they might end up having a conversation with god while they’re tripping. For me, I just thought, “Well look, we’re all just self-replicating, carbon-based life forms, there’s no actual purpose to our existence, we’re basically here by accident, we get 70-odd years to live which is nothing in the grand scheme of things, so we might as well enjoy it while we have the opportunity to and it’d be a shame to waste it.” What are we doing with ourselves if we’re not trying to get as much as we possibly can out of life?

Yes, LSD is a powerful hallucinogen and it makes me see things that aren’t there, but that’s not where the beauty lies. I think the real beauty lies in seeing the perfectly ordinary things that have always been there, and learning to appreciate them more with that same childlike curiosity and sense of adventure that’s basically beaten out of us as we navigate through one shitty institution after another.

For me, that appreciation of the ordinary has carried on after the trip, so now, when I go to get my regular supplies at the supermarket, I don’t just ignore the flowers that have always been there on display – I stop to look at them, because I’ve got nothing to lose from it and if I don’t, I might not be getting all of the satisfaction that I could be out of that situation. Life is too fucking short to not savour every single moment of it, so I might as well throw myself into the world and enjoy it while I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to do so.

So yeah, those are some of the lessons I’ve learned from the trip. In terms of life experiences I think that this was one of the most important things that’s ever happened to me. I’m the happiest I’ve been for several years, I’ve been given quite the wake up call, and I don’t see myself needing to do this on any kind of frequent basis beyond maybe every six months to a year , just as a way of hitting the reset button and seeing where I’m at. Overall this experience has left me with a whole new appreciation for life and has been a real shot in the arm for my self-esteem and confidence.

Exp Year: 2016	ExpID: 108917
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Aug 1, 2016	Views: 3,720
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1P-LSD (682) : Combinations (3), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)