DOSE:	3 hits	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)
		smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

Halloween: Trips and Treats!!!

It is a damp Saturday morning on the University of Oregon’s campus. Morning clouds drift around the sky as slight rainfall gives way to pockets of blue sky.…

My friend and I, we’ll call him J, had purchased a ten strip of blotter from a kid down our hall a couple weeks past. But with midterms just finishing, we weren’t able to find any opportune moments to indulge in our psychedelic adventure. We both had been smoking pot on a daily basis and had begun to experiment with LSD and mushrooms. Having enjoyed each trip, we both were very comfortable tripping together and had no doubt that we would once again, have an amazing day. But after a strange turn of events, another one of our friends, we’ll call him A, had decided to buy three hits and wanted to try LSD for his first time with us. We all woke up by nine and ate breakfast, planning to drop no later than ten in the morning. We each took three hits and began to walk towards Hendricks park, where we had decided we wanted to begin our journey. Little did we know Hendricks Park would soon become the battlefield in which A would fight to grasp for his perceptions of reality.

As we walked the half mile or so to Hendricks, we began talking about previous trips and what A should expect once the acid should start to kick in. We arrived at the park no later than 20 minutes after putting the blotter on our tongues and I could already tell that it was beginning to kick in. J and A sat on a bench near the entrance of the park while I went to the public restroom. As I stood in front of the urinal, I looked at the wall in front of me. The tiled wall began to slide downward towards the floor, or perhaps I was floating upwards away from the floor; this visual is very common when I need to pee on the ‘come-up’ and always an indicator that the L is starting to kick in. I could tell that the come-up had begun and the trip was rapidly approaching. I joined my two friends on the bench which overlooked a stunning view of Eugene, the clouds beginning to swirl as though mixed by a giant, invisible ice-cream machine. I remember being pleasantly surprised by how quickly the visuals were beginning to set in. The come-up is usually my least favorite part of LSD trips, mostly due to the nervous feeling I get in my gut, as body-sensations make their way throughout my muscles and skin. The three of us joked about the visuals that were getting exponentially more prominent, and decided that it was time to get up and wander around.

We walked throughout the Rhododendron garden which was at the top of the park, and were blown away by the immense beauty of the trees and plants that surrounded us. Hundred foot Douglas fir trees swayed with the wind, and the beautiful plants that encircled us took on the most vibrant green and earthy tones I had ever seen. We stood awe-struck as a grey squirrel jumped from one tree to another, creating a tracer of four or five identical squirrels.

Feeling somewhat exposed in the garden, J directed us towards a map of the park so that we could find some actual hiking trails, but upon looking at the map we realized it was nearly impossible to read. The trails looked like mazes and just finding our own location was a nearly impossible task. We decided just to continue walking around the garden until we received a call from my roommate, K and our other friend R, who had arrived at the park and were planning to trip sit with us. Little did we know how fortunate we would be, having two sober minds with us to clean up the mess that A was about to make. I remember upon first seeing R that I had never fully appreciated her beauty, especially that which manifested in her eyes. Her electric-blue eyes were unlike any pair of eyes I had ever seen, they were the color of the Caribbean, mixed with a cloudless summer sky. My first impulse was to give her a bear hug, but I restrained myself and just decided that a simple ‘hello’ would suffice. Thankfully, R and K were able to find some trails and we set off towards the giant fir trees that had been beckoning to us all along.

At this point I would say I was mid-way through my peak, the visuals were VERY intense and I remember feeling as though energy was literally pouring out of my body and then making its way back into my pores, where it would repeat this process over and over again. I would go from feeling unbearably tired, (a strange occurrence that happens to me on psychedelics), to full of energy, feeling as though I could sprint through every trail in Hendricks park. At one point I looked at the trees and felt as though they were trying to chase me—I wasn’t ever scared of this consciousness—but simply felt as though they wanted to play a friendly game of tag or something along those lines. Each tree was unique and began to take on certain personalities as I looked at them. Certain trees were grumpy, or happy, some were old while others were young, and at one point I remember looking at a group of trees that actually looked as though they were athletic (I don’t know what gave them this characteristic), but I remember thinking they were likely the ‘jocks’ of the forest. In my own little world I became oblivious to what was going on around me, until I heard K say, “Hey A, you don’t look very good man, you doing alright?”

I looked over towards A, whose appearance I can only describe as a sloppy mess; his hair was matted down and looked very sweaty. His skin was pale and his pupils were ENORMOUS, I thought that perhaps he had seen a ghost or something, and not a friendly ghost. It was obvious that the three hits were getting to him, and that he was starting to head towards a bad-trip. For the next hour or so (this is an estimation, I had no conception of time at this point), we tried many different techniques to get him on better vibes. We tried throwing an apple around in a circle to get his mind in a different place, and made countless attempts to comfort him. But no matter what we said he continued to get worse and worse. He told us that he forgot who he was, and had no idea who we were, and kept asking if this experience was even real, at one point even saying that he thought he must be dying. He kept repeating the same thing over and over again “A. L. (first and last name) prisoner in a narcotics bust??” He kept asking K if he was being arrested and whether or not he was going to die. J and I were starting to get bad vibes and I am not going to lie, at one point I felt as though I was going to start bad-tripping, but thankfully never did. We made the decision to head back towards campus and get A into his room, in an environment that he knew a little better. But this would prove to be a very difficult task.

As we began to walk towards campus we realized that A was having a hard time simply walking. Every 10-15 steps he would stop walking and ask where he was, or simply collapse onto people’s yards and begin to cry. At one point I sat next to him and tried talking to him, holding his hand and looking into his eyes, I told him that we were there for him and that we would never let anything bad happen to him. I meant every word I said but couldn’t help but feel scared at the same time. As I held his hand and looked deep into his eyes I felt as though I was holding and looking at death itself. The expression on his face was absolute and utter terror, there is no other way I can describe it. His hand felt bone-chillingly cold in my hand and as I tried to reassure him, I couldn’t help but feel frightened myself. Things didn’t get any easier once we are back on campus either; K inevitably had to carry A on his shoulder to get him to keep walking. The campus was bustling with people due to the fact that it was Halloween and USC was playing Oregon in one of the biggest football games of the year. We immediately attracted the attention of everyone we walked past, and I couldn’t help but feel self-conscious and rather regretful for the situation I put myself into. But thankfully we met up with A’s roommate and got him safely up into his room where a few of his closest friends were waiting to help calm him down.

I never actually got inside A’s room but as I walked down his hall to help get him inside the visuals kept getting more and more intense. I remember seeing a picture of a lost cat on a flier and then immediately seeing a pattern of the cat all over the textures of the walls and carpet. My sense of smell was also heightened and I remember getting a distinct whiff of chicken noodle soup. The smell was so strong that I almost gagged, and immediately wanted to get the hell out of that hall. Once A was in his room we left and K and I went back to my dorm, while R drove J around the Eugene countryside. K and I needed to get our minds off of the traumatic experience and we figured the best way to do so was to watch an episode of Flight of the Conchords, our favorite TV show. The visuals were amazing while we watched our show, the screen had lost its rigidity and I could often see the show playing on the wall behind my laptop. Once the episode was over we turned on some music and lay down on our own beds and waited for J to get back from his drive with R. I would close my eyes and see the most brilliant colors and patterns as they would morph and lose shape to the music. At one point I was so overwhelmed by the music I was hearing, (even though it was being played through my crappy laptop speakers) that I felt like I could literally cry out of sheer joy. Eventually J came back to the dorm and we decided we should go back outside and enjoy the rest of the beautiful Halloween afternoon.

We went to a grass field outside our dorm and tossed J’s Frisbee around for a while, discussing how terrifying the whole ordeal with A was. The Frisbee felt amazing in my hands; I felt as though I had absolute control over my throws and was equally confident about catching the disk. The grass felt amazing under my feet and even though it was wet, I couldn’t help but want to roll around in what I described as the ‘hairs of the earth.’ The blue sky was a perfect background for J’s white Frisbee; and instead of seeing one individual disk in constant motion, I would see four or five Frisbees each with a long trail of white color behind it. I was also able to look at certain things and get a distinct feeling in my body, smell in my nose, or taste in my mouth. More often than not I would get these sensations simultaneously, for example I could look at a pile of leaves on the ground and not only would I get an earthy taste in my mouth, I would also get an indescribable feeling all throughout my body. Just before going back inside the dorm I got a call from A, he said he was doing a lot better and that he wanted to meet up and talk about what had happened. Coincidentally and unknowingly, he was calling me from across the street, so as soon as I picked up the phone we made eye contact, a very strange occurrence in itself, even stranger and slightly confusing while still tripping. K, J and I walked over to him and his friend and discussed what happened. To my amazement he said that besides the peak, he had adjusted and was now enjoying the trip very much, (this was a relief because I felt pretty disappointed that his first experience with LSD was such a frightening one). He and his friend didn’t want to watch the football game which was about to begin, so we departed from them and headed back to my dorm to watch Oregon absolutely murder USC. Go Ducks!

Midway through the game J and I decided that we wanted to go to a park off campus to smoke a couple bowls. Sitting on a wooden bench atop a large grassy hill we smoked and talked about our childhoods and how much we had changed just in the past year. By this time it was dark outside and our night visuals were going strong. Each toke from J’s chillum brought more and more vivid visuals, (keep in mind we had dropped about 10 hours from then, so I was pretty surprised that we were still even getting visuals). We looked at the clouds which formed a giant opening around the moon. The outer edges of the clouds seemed to form a side-view face of what appeared to be a monkey smoking a joint, the end of which was making a stream of smoke that swirled around the starry sky. I thought this was hilarious and was convinced that our predecessors have been getting high since the beginning of time. The trees were also fascinating to look at; each branch looked like an ink blot, and kept expanding and contracting, giving the trees the appearance of breathing. J and I sat on that bench for a long time discussing our childhoods and the strange tendencies we used to have when we were kids. We also talked about our trick-or-treating strategies that we used as kids and how Halloween is a really underrated holiday. But the best part of this section of the trip was just before we were going to spark the first bowl we heard an epic and profoundly inspiring roar from Autzen stadium, which was a couple miles from where we were smoking. This roar would continue throughout our sesh and bring joy to our hearts as we knew that it signified a bone-crushing tackle, or another unrelenting first-down. We were pretty bummed that we couldn’t be at the game, but still felt like we were there in spirit and hoped that the Ducks would win all the same.

We got back on campus to watch the end of the game as the Duck’s embarrassed the Trojans on national television over in R’s dorm. At this point we knew that the campus wasn’t going to be quiet for long, a celebration of epic proportion was about to ensue. We spent the next couple hours jumping from one party to the next, but oddly enough this was one of my least favorite parts of the night. Usually at the end of my trips I feel talkative and social, but this time was different, I think mostly due to the whole experience with A, I felt awkward and tired and mostly wanted to relax and call it a night. J and I decided to leave and go toke some more bowls over at another one of our favorite spots. We walked across the Willamette river and over towards Autzen which is surrounded by a majestic forest. Autzen and the surrounding woods were completely deserted at this point, as the entire population of the stadium was getting belligerently drunk back on campus. We capped off the night with a couple more bowls and some good discussion about our friendship and how odd it was that we had known each other for such a short amount of time, yet felt such strong bonds of camaraderie and friendship. We slowly progressed back towards campus where we departed our separate ways and back into our own rooms. I felt physically and mentally exhausted and my dorm shower never felt so amazing on my sore and deprived body. Then I wrapped myself in a soft blanket, turned on some quiet music and drifted into a deep, blissful 14 hour sleep…

In retrospect: This goes down as my favorite trip, even after the whole ordeal back at Hendricks Park. I urge anyone that is contemplating taking psychedelics for their first time not to jump into it recklessly! What happened to A was terrifying but could have gone much worse; it also could have been easily avoided if I or J had tried to convince him not to take three hits. Although looking back there was no way we could have known how he would react to the substance. Make sure you are ready for the experience and plan accordingly, this means really thinking about how much you should take. I also feel that the best way to calm someone who is really bad-tripping is to relate to them and try to show them love and compassion, this seemed to work the best while dealing with A, although it obviously didn’t work well enough. Also, a side note: I felt I was pretty dehydrated and regretted not having a water-bottle handy. But most of all have a good time and try to take something meaningful out of it!

Exp Year: 2009	ExpID: 82974
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Jan 18, 2024	Views: 36
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