DOSE:	150 ug	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)
		smoked	Cannabis	(flowers)
		inhaled	Nitrous Oxide	(device)

BODY WEIGHT:

170 lb

This was my first acid experience. We had decided to drop on a Friday afternoon on campus at our university and spend time exploring the place. We met up in the courtyard of an empty building for the drop. It was around 4:45 in the afternoon, and it was a beautiful day. When the time came, I pulled out two blue tabs from my backpack. K put one in his mouth and I followed. I was so nervous. The last time I had a formal trip on shrooms I experienced a ton of anxiety on the come up. K had been reassuring me that this was entirely different, so after I dropped, I managed to calm myself down and surrender to the experience.

I’m not sure exactly what my expectations were for the trip. I quickly noticed how easy it was to maintain lucidity. It was really easy to rationalize what was happening and maintain my wits. As we started walking toward some nearby cliffs overlooking the ocean, I began to feel a slight tingly body high. It felt like I weighed 5 pounds less and the skin enveloping my protoplasmic self was made of fluffy warm clouds. I had no visual hallucinations yet. Colors just seemed to pop out a little and I had a keen interest in looking at the world around me. The come up was quite pleasant up to this point. Not intense or overwhelming like with shrooms. It felt like the hand of LSD was gently guiding me into the experience; doing its best not to scare me and encouraging me to enter this new plane of existence.

By the time we got to the top of the cliffs, my body high was getting really intense and the world started to breathe a little. The universe was losing its rigidity and things were taking on a slight fluid character. Sounds also had a deeper character to them. My hearing was more pronounced and it was easy to pick out different timbres. K and I sat there for a little and listened to Stairway to Heaven, and I felt like I finally understood the meaning of the song. Rock formations were also kind of weird to look at. They didn’t seem to be made of rock. It was some other earthy orange material that seemed to almost radiate orange light. This orange hue spread throughout my vision, leaving the world slightly brighter and more sunshine-filled. Random graffiti art and various bright colors popped in Day-Glo fluorescence. I still had no visual hallucinations, but was definitely feeling the effects of the drug at this point.

As we walked down from the cliff overlooking the ocean, I started to feel quite small. I had been on this trail plenty of times, but it felt like I was experiencing it for the first time. The world felt extra 3 dimensional. Acid made me truly see three dimensions for the first time. The movement of two bodies in three-dimensional space felt different. We started walking on a path behind a hotel. I was beginning to hallucinate. It wasn’t significant yet, just slight distortions in my vision, but it was definitely noticeable.

Walking onto campus, my surroundings became really interesting. Plants and signs seemed to glow and move, and the world was teeming with life. We eventually made our way back to campus and sat on a table to take in the experience a bit. The world felt so warm! Everything was breathing and seemed immersed in a warm orange Jell-O. Colors were so beautiful and seemed to separate into their separate RGB wavelengths as they reflected off whatever matter they were emanating from. We wanted to watch the sunset, so we looped through the medical school toward a building with an overlook.

On the way I saw a little English sheepdog puppy that I got to play with. It felt like a little fluff ball of clouds! I could have stayed there and played for hours with it. It was so cute! I genuinely felt like a kid. The grass also felt so soft and welcoming. It didn’t feel like I was on Earth anymore. Everything felt almost animated. It was like I was seeing the world for the first time.

I laid in the grass and stared up at the clouds. I was sinking and floating at the same time, almost as if I was a buoy floating in the sea of the universe. Clouds separated into six to eight-leaved flowery patterns. They looked like a hybrid of the clouds in SpongeBob and flowers made of kaleidoscopic patterns. I could have laid there for hours, but we wanted to watch the sunset.

To get to the overlook, we had to take an elevator. This was freaky. Being in a confined space really freaked me out. It was weirdly like Joker’s lair from batman video games of my youth. We got out and walked across the roof, and I started peaking. Colors on the ocean were distorting significantly. Light took on wave-like patterns, almost as if reality were a slightly perturbed body of water. Chaotic waves and patterns danced around my vision. It was beautiful. We sat in silence for a while. I thought about my fraternity brother who recently passed, and it made me kind of sad. I was feeling so many emotions at the same time. Happy, sad, awestruck, inspired, and really jovial. It was wonderful.

At this point both of us got kind of hungry. We had been walking around for hours. Regardless, the world was so beautiful. Colors popped and danced around like crazy. Buildings seemed double the size they normally would be, and it felt like I was in an animated movie. Eventually, we got to ordering food. This was so difficult. Focusing on one thing was extremely challenging. Sitting in the restaurant, all the neon signs glowed around me. I weirdly felt like an anime character in a brightly lit city. Everything was just so beautiful.

We arrived at home and my friend E got there shortly thereafter. I had really wanted to see her for some reason. At this point, I was feeling the effects of the drug start to wear off, so I smoked some grass and did some whip-its. Wow. Straight back to the shadow realm. Different visual depth layers started to shift and tilt in front of me. These were some of the craziest visuals I’ve seen. Chunks of space moved in and out of one another, patterns on the wall shifted around, and the fabric of reality was waving like a flag. I was seeing spinning clocks that melted like the painting Persistence of Memory. I was a little bit anxious, but mostly just awestruck at the amazing visuals I was seeing. My friend E said my pupils were like dinner plates, which I thought was hilarious.

At a certain point, my friend K smoked and laid on the couch quiet with his eyes closed. For some reason, this made me really worried about him. We had planned to fuck around and watch videos for a while, and I was worried he might have been having a bad trip. I kept asking him if he was ok and he told me he was fine, but I couldn’t shake the thought. This sent me down an unpleasant thought loop that slightly tainted the rest of the trip. I couldn’t shake the thought that I had messed up in some way. Our trips had been intertwined and now I was confronted with their separation. I had to make this trip my own, but I didn’t know how to do it and didn’t necessarily want to.

My roommates K and J kept telling me to chill out and stop tweaking, but this just made me more frustrated at myself. I decided to go on a short walk and listen to some music. I put on “Riders on the Storm” by the doors and wow, it was so fun. I was grooving and dancing down the street. It felt like I was in a maze, but for some reason it didn’t freak me out. At a certain point, I got paranoid I was being followed, so I went back inside. Unfortunately, my frustration and worry about K was still there. Why couldn’t I just enjoy the experience on my own! I was expecting someone – or some thing – to guide me through my subconscious, but that wasn’t going to happen.

This was the first lesson LSD had to teach me. I spend way too much time looking to others for guidance in life. I try too hard to build my experience in the universe off the experiences of others. This is what happened with K. We had started the trip together, and I had expected to stay intertwined with his, and this was not a realistic expectation. I was trying to experience the trip with him and through him instead of making it my own. This is also how it is in real life. I’ve spent so much time wallowing in jealousy and awe at K, trying to construct myself into someone like him. I can’t do that. And I shouldn’t do that. I immensely appreciate the person he has helped me become. He feels like the older brother I wish I had; teaching me numerous lessons and showing me the ropes for things I would never have learned in school. I would not have unlocked my full potential without him, but I need to acknowledge that I can’t and won’t ever be him. He occupies and controls his own space in the universe as much as I do with mine. And that’s the extent of it. Just like on this acid trip, I cannot expect my experience of the world to be like his. I need to respect our differences more, otherwise, I’m not being authentic to myself.

Confronted with this issue in my trip, I ate a bunch of food and went upstairs. I was kind of bored of tripping at this point, so I decided to take a shower. So calming! The water felt so warm and nice. When I got out I decided to try experiencing closed-eye hallucinations, so I turned out the light and closed my eyes. Blackness. I saw cool kaleidoscopic patterns, but it was all on a black background I didn’t like. I turned on the light to try again, and this was really pleasant. I was seeing really cool patterns and chains of different colors moving about. Sets of eyes and DNA fragments of fantastic color danced around my vision. It was awesome, but strangely tainted. It felt like I wasn’t fully experiencing it for myself, and I realize this was the lesson the LSD was trying to teach me. I needed to just appreciate the experience – and life – for myself and only for myself.

Suddenly I felt something hitting me with a yellow hammer, and I realized it was me. I was completely self-sabotaging and hurting myself. I didn’t know what to do, so I got closer, and suddenly “I” blossomed away, leaving behind dazzling light and tranquility. I’m too hard on myself. I need to be kinder to myself, because in the end, I am the last person I’ll ever get to talk to. If I’m unable to fall into the arms of my own warm embrace of self-love, how can I expect to do it with others? Moreover, how can I expect to give it to others? I wish I had experienced these realizations earlier in the trip so I could have dived deeper. At this point, I was merely scratching the surface of what LSD had to teach me, so I knew I had to do more at some point.

Once I came out of my astro-projection, I went downstairs to smoke more grass and do another whip-it. Wow that whip-it was intense. It got me incredibly high and it felt like reality got put on pause. Once I was reasonably high, I went upstairs and somehow managed to fall asleep.

Overall, LSD was a great experience. The visuals were the most beautiful I had ever seen on a drug, and I felt like I wore a smile for most of the trip. Despite this, I can’t help but feel slightly disappointed with how it ended, and I know this is the wrong word to describe it. I’m slightly depressed at the moment, and I can’t not acknowledge that. There was a dazzling afterglow, but the negative thought loop I experienced weirdly tainted the latter half of the trip. However, the “bad trip” I experienced was nonetheless extremely insightful. I learned I need to be kinder to myself; walk through this life at my own pace and on my own path. I spend so much time trying to follow in the path of others, almost like a drafting effect. Instead, I need to beat my own way through the bushes. I know I need to follow the path of least resistance, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy. This path is on average least resistant, and I now feel I can acknowledge that.

I also spent so much time wanting to be with friends. I appreciate them so much, but I now have a deeper understanding that my only true best friend is myself. The relationship isn’t that strong yet, but I’m going to work on it all the way until I die.

Exp Year: 2021	ExpID: 115449
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 23
Published: Sep 1, 2023	Views: 305
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Nitrous Oxide (40), Cannabis (1), LSD (2) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Relationships (44), Music Discussion (22), Nature / Outdoors (23), Glowing Experiences (4), Difficult Experiences (5), Combinations (3), First Times (2)