Wow, orange barrels. That takes me back. That was my first trip, in 1977. I got a single barrel from a friend who had had a bad trip the night before, and wanted to divest himself of all drugs. He urged me to only take half.
I probably would have been happy to have taken the whole, but it happened that we were going to a rock concert at Monash Uni that night, so I split it with my girlfriend (who had had LSD before). The split wasn’t exactly 50/50 so I got a bit more than half.
We dropped shortly before our friends arrived to pick us up. First effects were apparent in about 15 minutes, and when we finally tumbled out of the car at the venue (about 40 minutes) we were laughing hysterically.
The doors hadn’t opened so we sat around with others on the steps outside the venue. We met some other friends of my friends (who I didn’t know) but were clued in that my girl & I were tripping, and that it was my first time. This was really fortunate, as they were all supportive and friendly, plus they were “experienced” whereas my friends knew little about LSD. So a good set and setting emerged without any real planning. We also got given a couple of grass cookies. I don’t know if that potentiated the experience.
Sitting on the steps, I noticed that the tiles had a really pretty pattern printed on them. I pointed this out to a straight friend and he looked at me funny and suggested that it was the light coming through the window behind me. “Right” I thought, “Dallas Brooks Hall – stained glass windows”, so I turned to look, but there was a just a plain glass window. I looked back at the tiles and the patterns started to kaleidescope . I was agog. I really didn’t know what to expect, but even this was amazing.
It got a lot more amazing when the doors opened and we got into the foyer. This area features a huge concrete wall with a circular stained-glass window in the middle. The wall looked like it was made of molten lead, with huge patterns kaleidescoping in 3D across the surface. At a micro level you could see the strands in the carpet waving around to produce similar fractal images.
The peak of the trip came when we went in to watch the first band. They were a two-man electronic outfit. I doubt they were much good, but of course sounded amazing. The OEV at this time were incredible. All the leads behind the synthesisers became snakes writhing around. One of the performers played a sax solo, and aged to 10,000 years old before our eyes. A girl sitting in front of me had long curly hair which suddenly stood out from her head and braided itself into plats. What a riot.
After the first act we went back to the foyer where wild hallucinations continued. We started looking through a student newpaper and the images morphed into 3D cartoons. I pointed to a picture that looked like a bearded teacher we knew, and hair started pushing out of the page to extend the beard.
A little later we went for a walk outside to a café in the student union, again the hallucinations were impressive. At t he café, however, I noticed for the first time that I was coming down (I was a bit disappointed by this). This was probably 5-6 hours after dropping.
We went back to the venue for the headline act. Somehow I got separated from my friends, but it didn’t bother me, I just found a seat and enjoyed the rest of the concert. At the end, we all met up no problem.
This was by far the best trip I ever had. I took LSD probably another 100 times, but only once got close to the magic of that experience. It was incredibly clean – no mind-fuck, no body-load. Of course, I could certainly understand how such a powerful experience could go bad, as happened to the friend that gave me the barrel. It would be terrifying.
Now a word about potency. I had long assumed that my barrel was the product of Richard Kemp of “Operation Julie” fame in the UK. I’ve more recently changed my opinion, as the dosages don’t work out. My barrel was almost certainly “sunshine” at 300 ug. This would make my dose around 175ug, which is completely consistent with the effects of LSD at that dosage.
By coincidence, a couple of months ago I was playing golf with a friend (a 60 year old) who mentioned the words “orange barrel” It turns out that in his hippy days (again 1977) he hung out with friends who had a large stash of OBs. He says they used a razor to shave bits off an OB for a dose. Only the “hard core” would take a quarter or a half.
Sorry for the long post, but that’s what I know about OBs