LostAtomsk
Bluelighter
As the title indicates, this is a trip report about a bad trip. I'd like to use my account as a word of warning of anyone who would think of doing the same thing as me. I've outlined the parts where I made some crucial mistake. Skip the preface if you're just interested in the story. This took place somewhere early december, 2015.
Preface
Set and setting were good: had my appartement to myself, the girlfriend was out shopping most of the day. Overcast day in Western European winter. Had some food at hand, music was ready to go, sofa all comfy, guitar plugged in. Good to go.
Downside: I had a social appointment later that day. I've tripped on two tabs before and know that I'm able to partake in everyday activities a good 7-8 hours after dosing. This worked out more or less with my schedule, if I dosed around 9 am.
Woke up around 9 am, showered, had a healthy breakfast, took some multivitamins and dosed soon thereafter. (~ 9 am) I had weed, hashish and 2 tabs of 1P-LSD at my disposal. Hashish/weed is regulated where I live and easy to get in certified retail locations, so I wasn't dabbling in questionable street stuff.
The Good
Watched that Daft Punk animation short movie, featuring a lot of their songs. Very pleasant to roll in. About an hour into the animation, I started to feel the effects head on. Colors swayed off of my TV. The songs opened up to me. Open headspace, euphoria. All was well. After the animation finished, I plugged in my guitar and played around a bit. During trips, I am addicted to fuzzy guitar sounds, so I cranked my big muff pedal and strummed away. This is an intense experience for me. I'm a poor guitarist, mind you, I'm no virtuoso, but on acid, strumming those strings makes me feel like I'm playing around with the resonance of our reality. It's addictive, even. So far, so good. Good trip, good times, good drugs. I had a lot of busy working weeks to reflect on and really longed for a cosmic road trip.
The Bad
When I got tired of that, about 4 hours into the trip, I set up some Steven Wilson to listen to. I had read somewhere that weed potentiates your trip, but in a mellow way and I had some available. At that point, I made my first, most crucial mistake. Some facts:
- I was alone, only my gf knew I was tripping, but she was out
- I have too little experience with weed or hashish
- The times I tried weed or hashish, the experience left me very underwhelmed (de gustibus et coloribus...). I feel cold (very cold hands!) and my heart starts racing. The headspace makes me feel like higher self or soul or ... is spinning out of control. Colors are more vibrant and I usually feel somewhat woozy
- Moreover, I had the choice between quality weed or quality hashish. Hashish has a stronger effect on me, so I went with the resin.
Really, really wish I hadn't done that. This was the catalyst for things to turn south, very quickly. I grabbed my pure pipe, added some resin to it and smoked it. I'm bad at smoking, in the sense that my lungs react violently to anything other than air. One of the reasons I picked resin over weed, is because the smoke of resin is a lot smoother on my lungs.
The effects where noticeable very quickly. Pure 1P-LSD visuals are already very impressive to me, but the resin kicked it up a notch. Still, there was a distinct difference. It's as if the hashish was layered UPON the acid experience, like two see-through pages on an old projector, with the hash being the uppermost, dominant layer. The visuals therefore were no longer the LSD, wavy, rippling, peaceful, "passive" visuals, but turned into bubbling, meandering visuals.
Whilst smoking, I was overlooking a defunct pasture, with just grass, greenery and trees in the background and the grass seemed like a sea of green bumpy two-eyed creatures with a very empty expression. Something pulsed in between them, like energy beams in the form of lightning strikes that branches out into different forks.
Those visuals were still pleasant but to me, seemed a bit divorced from the gentle, wavey acid experience that I had come to love so much. This was harsher. Still, I made nothing of it and was still enjoying the trip.
I suddenly remembered that social visit later on that day and realized I might have a marijuana scent on me, unless I showered. This was crucial mistake number two. I should've cleared my schedule for the most obvious reasons. I had only caused myself an anxiety that I could've handled sober, or coming down from acid BUT I had just mixed two substances for the first time and had no idea HOW powerful the combination would be.
I was not expecting what would happen to me in the next few hours. At all. Ho-boy.
The Idiot
The effect of the resin was still building in effect and at some point, I felt something. This wasn't headspace, these weren't visuals, this was something entirely different. I'm writing this down, a few weeks after this happened because I still can't wrap my head around it. Thinking about it, makes my hair stand on end.
At some point after doing the resin, I was preparing things for my shower later on and I stopped in the hallway, in a door frame. I was only dressed in sweatpants and for some reason, I instinctively put my hand on my chest, over my heart. This felt calming. When I get high from weed/resin, I feel like my mind is looping around my physical body at a high speed, in a oval shape. Think of it like a hula hoop being spun around my head at a high speed. This increased in intensity until everything resonated, vibrated and little details were lost in the OEV as swirls that couldn't keep up with the vibrations.
I froze right there and noticed I could focus on a random point, like a bathroom tile and then and there, the intensity of the vibrations/resonance increased up to a point where the linearity of time stopped and unfolded like a million "snapshots". No 2D-snapshots, but fully 3D snapshots. I remember breathing in heavily, cause my body and my head to raise and move backwards only slightly and I could actually see myself, outside of myself, in different "slides".
I felt absolutely submerged in a higher/lower sense of reality. I was still there in the linear timeframe, but I could see ànd experience myself outside of it. I could even look into myself and could really hear the air being pulled into my lungs, which was a very strange sound to hear. I would hear that, fragmented into the different slides. Very confronting, because it made me aware that I am nothing more than a clump of flesh and bones.
This is where the panic set in. Death. There were three components of me: the ego, which was (felt?) absent, the physical body, which was standing there like ragdoll and the higher self, which was floating around, attached to my body like a balloon tied to my head. The onset of the panic was the inherent, unsettling, mortal fear that this balloon was about the snap loose from my body and leave my physical body. Leaving me either stuck in this realm of timeless sensation I could make no sense of or worse: dead. Gone.
At that point, my heart rate only increased and I tried to focus on the task at hand, which was preparing for my shower, which only INcreased my anxiety, because I was experiencing something I had never experienced before, was not expecting this, was not prepared for this for AND I needed to reach baseline in a timely manner. That was the tipping point. I spiraled out of control. That's where sane me left and insane me came into play like a morbid deus ex psychedelica. I started looping, going from one room to another, trying to get a grasp on the situation which was, in every sense: absolutely impossible. Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure I was going through a fight or fright instinct and whereas I usually take situations head on, this one just kicked my ass.
I grabbed things from one room, displaced it to another. Tried to calm myself with some music, but was too out of it, to even manage a computer mouse or keyboard. Tried to drink and then suddenly panicked if I had talked out loud, or was only thinking. (There's a few other residents in my building) I honestly didn't know. This went on for what seemed like an eternity. Slowly, I brought myself to the realization: I'm having a bad trip and I need to break the downward spiral. Nothing worked, because I had reached the mental rock bottom way too fast. That spinning sensation I had around my head, I was now experiencing as if my higher self, my spirit, soul or whathaveyou, was being thrown around my apartment. Like an angry toddler that was flinging my sense of self around, bouncing me off the walls. I feared for my life and tried to stop the spinning, because I had the innate fear that if "I let go", I would be gone in the blink of an eye. I was hanging from my own mental sanity, me existence and clawing to stay alive.
I could see myself, pacing up and down my apartment, and at the same time, seeing slightly translucant versions of myself, spinning around me. I was still holding a hand over my heart, this time to reassure my physical self my heart was still beating. I finally got the wits and concentration together to call for help. Over google hangouts, I reached out to my usual trip friends. My brothers from other mothers. The people I have shared many trips, many times, many great vibes with. I don't rely on people all that often, but I relied on them. They're a baseline in my life. I didn't want to alarm my girlfriend, because I was in no condition to manage a coherent conversation and she hasn't tripped before. Moreover, I wouldn't want her to have an accident if she were to panic.
My friends responded, we had a phone conversation and that helped a bit. The first friend came by, talked to me, albeit very nervous, because holy shit, I was OUT of it. Having to socially interact, I realized I was a madman, because I was no longer entirely under control. Having him there, calmed me down somewhat, because I was happy to know I was actually there and he played some guitar. I remember that, it helped me ground myself a bit. Truth be told, it was also somewhat unnerving (reflecting on it), because he was experiencing me at my worst. I realize now, that I am very guarded or private about my faults or weaknesses and I was now unwillingly, unknowingly, forcibly exposed. I had no guard, whatsoever. A stupid thing to waste time on, because I was in safe hands. He made a polite and calm request for my girlfriend to come over and at that point, the only thing that kept me from being all over the place, was pacing up and down the room. I don't remember much of this, but based on my friends account, I kept going back and forth between the window and my kitchen to see if my girlfriend was arriving.
And then - she arrived. Along with my other friends. I'll never forget the sensation the feeling I had when my apartment was flooded with the people that came to save my life. Because that's how it felt.
Remember watching a movie, where the hero is facing impossible odds and he seems to be winning but then suddenly, the evil overlord has a trick up his sleeve and leaves the hero cornered. No possible outcome. The protagonist: beaten, broken, battered and out of options, cowering in the shadow of his enemy. But then suddenly, from the hill top, several glorious, battle clad warriors emerge. Sunlight bouncing off their pristine, shiny armors, storming down the hill on their steeds, thrusting mighty swords in the sky, roaring battlecries. The horns are sounded and the evil army is split apart and vanquished. That's the sentiment I had. I had never, ever, EVER in my entire life faced a hardship where I relied on other people so much as I did then.
My girlfriend was initially pissed off and pacing around the room. This was possibly very dangerous, because I was not capable or shielded to handle this. She tends to have a very sharp temper
I just grabbed her, teary eyed and begged her to stop and just hold me. She dropped her hostility and did as I asked. That was that. Then and there, I had come to realize, that I needed her - I just needed her to be with me. Sappy as it might sound, I'm going to say it anyway, having her arms locked around me, broke the spell. My friends saved my and my girlfriend brought me back.
Gradually, I sunk back to baseline. Oddly enough, there were short relapses where I could feel the intensity increase and decrease, until I eventually returned to a normal acid trip. During that period of time, I was apparently capable of holding some conversation, but I don't remember much of it. The bits I do remember, where the bits I realized I had no concentration to partake in dialogue. I just remember one of my best buddies sitting next to me, confessing "My bladder is full" in the most timid fashion and laughing. I needed some comical relief
In retrospect:
I shouldn't have mixed two substances, one of which I had too little experience with. Especially not alone. Moreover, the experience I had, wasn't all that fantastic to begin with. I should've cleared my schedule and try to "rush" a trip.
I'm very grateful for my friends, but I still feel very exposed about it. I've had to fend for myself since I was little and have always managed on my own. This was the first time in my adult life that I had to cry for help and that pisses me off. I'm still more or less dealing with that and it isn't easy.
I was out of whack for the next few days. Took me a few days to get to my normal self. I'm very thankful that I walked out of the situation alive and I'm even thankful I experienced what I went through. The deeper level was in fact very impressive and I do no want to do away with that moment, just because I lost control.
Last but not least: now that I can assess the situation more clearly, given the time that has passed, I won't be making the same mistakes again. BUT! I won't stop me from being curious, nor will it stop me from tripping with my friends or even alone. I believe this is what life has to offer our souls. Or as one of me dearest friends iterated several times, that unfaithful day:
"you live, you learn"
Preface
Set and setting were good: had my appartement to myself, the girlfriend was out shopping most of the day. Overcast day in Western European winter. Had some food at hand, music was ready to go, sofa all comfy, guitar plugged in. Good to go.
Downside: I had a social appointment later that day. I've tripped on two tabs before and know that I'm able to partake in everyday activities a good 7-8 hours after dosing. This worked out more or less with my schedule, if I dosed around 9 am.
Woke up around 9 am, showered, had a healthy breakfast, took some multivitamins and dosed soon thereafter. (~ 9 am) I had weed, hashish and 2 tabs of 1P-LSD at my disposal. Hashish/weed is regulated where I live and easy to get in certified retail locations, so I wasn't dabbling in questionable street stuff.
The Good
Watched that Daft Punk animation short movie, featuring a lot of their songs. Very pleasant to roll in. About an hour into the animation, I started to feel the effects head on. Colors swayed off of my TV. The songs opened up to me. Open headspace, euphoria. All was well. After the animation finished, I plugged in my guitar and played around a bit. During trips, I am addicted to fuzzy guitar sounds, so I cranked my big muff pedal and strummed away. This is an intense experience for me. I'm a poor guitarist, mind you, I'm no virtuoso, but on acid, strumming those strings makes me feel like I'm playing around with the resonance of our reality. It's addictive, even. So far, so good. Good trip, good times, good drugs. I had a lot of busy working weeks to reflect on and really longed for a cosmic road trip.
The Bad
When I got tired of that, about 4 hours into the trip, I set up some Steven Wilson to listen to. I had read somewhere that weed potentiates your trip, but in a mellow way and I had some available. At that point, I made my first, most crucial mistake. Some facts:
- I was alone, only my gf knew I was tripping, but she was out
- I have too little experience with weed or hashish
- The times I tried weed or hashish, the experience left me very underwhelmed (de gustibus et coloribus...). I feel cold (very cold hands!) and my heart starts racing. The headspace makes me feel like higher self or soul or ... is spinning out of control. Colors are more vibrant and I usually feel somewhat woozy
- Moreover, I had the choice between quality weed or quality hashish. Hashish has a stronger effect on me, so I went with the resin.
Really, really wish I hadn't done that. This was the catalyst for things to turn south, very quickly. I grabbed my pure pipe, added some resin to it and smoked it. I'm bad at smoking, in the sense that my lungs react violently to anything other than air. One of the reasons I picked resin over weed, is because the smoke of resin is a lot smoother on my lungs.
The effects where noticeable very quickly. Pure 1P-LSD visuals are already very impressive to me, but the resin kicked it up a notch. Still, there was a distinct difference. It's as if the hashish was layered UPON the acid experience, like two see-through pages on an old projector, with the hash being the uppermost, dominant layer. The visuals therefore were no longer the LSD, wavy, rippling, peaceful, "passive" visuals, but turned into bubbling, meandering visuals.
Whilst smoking, I was overlooking a defunct pasture, with just grass, greenery and trees in the background and the grass seemed like a sea of green bumpy two-eyed creatures with a very empty expression. Something pulsed in between them, like energy beams in the form of lightning strikes that branches out into different forks.
Those visuals were still pleasant but to me, seemed a bit divorced from the gentle, wavey acid experience that I had come to love so much. This was harsher. Still, I made nothing of it and was still enjoying the trip.
I suddenly remembered that social visit later on that day and realized I might have a marijuana scent on me, unless I showered. This was crucial mistake number two. I should've cleared my schedule for the most obvious reasons. I had only caused myself an anxiety that I could've handled sober, or coming down from acid BUT I had just mixed two substances for the first time and had no idea HOW powerful the combination would be.
I was not expecting what would happen to me in the next few hours. At all. Ho-boy.
The Idiot
The effect of the resin was still building in effect and at some point, I felt something. This wasn't headspace, these weren't visuals, this was something entirely different. I'm writing this down, a few weeks after this happened because I still can't wrap my head around it. Thinking about it, makes my hair stand on end.
At some point after doing the resin, I was preparing things for my shower later on and I stopped in the hallway, in a door frame. I was only dressed in sweatpants and for some reason, I instinctively put my hand on my chest, over my heart. This felt calming. When I get high from weed/resin, I feel like my mind is looping around my physical body at a high speed, in a oval shape. Think of it like a hula hoop being spun around my head at a high speed. This increased in intensity until everything resonated, vibrated and little details were lost in the OEV as swirls that couldn't keep up with the vibrations.
I froze right there and noticed I could focus on a random point, like a bathroom tile and then and there, the intensity of the vibrations/resonance increased up to a point where the linearity of time stopped and unfolded like a million "snapshots". No 2D-snapshots, but fully 3D snapshots. I remember breathing in heavily, cause my body and my head to raise and move backwards only slightly and I could actually see myself, outside of myself, in different "slides".
I felt absolutely submerged in a higher/lower sense of reality. I was still there in the linear timeframe, but I could see ànd experience myself outside of it. I could even look into myself and could really hear the air being pulled into my lungs, which was a very strange sound to hear. I would hear that, fragmented into the different slides. Very confronting, because it made me aware that I am nothing more than a clump of flesh and bones.
This is where the panic set in. Death. There were three components of me: the ego, which was (felt?) absent, the physical body, which was standing there like ragdoll and the higher self, which was floating around, attached to my body like a balloon tied to my head. The onset of the panic was the inherent, unsettling, mortal fear that this balloon was about the snap loose from my body and leave my physical body. Leaving me either stuck in this realm of timeless sensation I could make no sense of or worse: dead. Gone.
At that point, my heart rate only increased and I tried to focus on the task at hand, which was preparing for my shower, which only INcreased my anxiety, because I was experiencing something I had never experienced before, was not expecting this, was not prepared for this for AND I needed to reach baseline in a timely manner. That was the tipping point. I spiraled out of control. That's where sane me left and insane me came into play like a morbid deus ex psychedelica. I started looping, going from one room to another, trying to get a grasp on the situation which was, in every sense: absolutely impossible. Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure I was going through a fight or fright instinct and whereas I usually take situations head on, this one just kicked my ass.
I grabbed things from one room, displaced it to another. Tried to calm myself with some music, but was too out of it, to even manage a computer mouse or keyboard. Tried to drink and then suddenly panicked if I had talked out loud, or was only thinking. (There's a few other residents in my building) I honestly didn't know. This went on for what seemed like an eternity. Slowly, I brought myself to the realization: I'm having a bad trip and I need to break the downward spiral. Nothing worked, because I had reached the mental rock bottom way too fast. That spinning sensation I had around my head, I was now experiencing as if my higher self, my spirit, soul or whathaveyou, was being thrown around my apartment. Like an angry toddler that was flinging my sense of self around, bouncing me off the walls. I feared for my life and tried to stop the spinning, because I had the innate fear that if "I let go", I would be gone in the blink of an eye. I was hanging from my own mental sanity, me existence and clawing to stay alive.
I could see myself, pacing up and down my apartment, and at the same time, seeing slightly translucant versions of myself, spinning around me. I was still holding a hand over my heart, this time to reassure my physical self my heart was still beating. I finally got the wits and concentration together to call for help. Over google hangouts, I reached out to my usual trip friends. My brothers from other mothers. The people I have shared many trips, many times, many great vibes with. I don't rely on people all that often, but I relied on them. They're a baseline in my life. I didn't want to alarm my girlfriend, because I was in no condition to manage a coherent conversation and she hasn't tripped before. Moreover, I wouldn't want her to have an accident if she were to panic.
My friends responded, we had a phone conversation and that helped a bit. The first friend came by, talked to me, albeit very nervous, because holy shit, I was OUT of it. Having to socially interact, I realized I was a madman, because I was no longer entirely under control. Having him there, calmed me down somewhat, because I was happy to know I was actually there and he played some guitar. I remember that, it helped me ground myself a bit. Truth be told, it was also somewhat unnerving (reflecting on it), because he was experiencing me at my worst. I realize now, that I am very guarded or private about my faults or weaknesses and I was now unwillingly, unknowingly, forcibly exposed. I had no guard, whatsoever. A stupid thing to waste time on, because I was in safe hands. He made a polite and calm request for my girlfriend to come over and at that point, the only thing that kept me from being all over the place, was pacing up and down the room. I don't remember much of this, but based on my friends account, I kept going back and forth between the window and my kitchen to see if my girlfriend was arriving.
And then - she arrived. Along with my other friends. I'll never forget the sensation the feeling I had when my apartment was flooded with the people that came to save my life. Because that's how it felt.
Remember watching a movie, where the hero is facing impossible odds and he seems to be winning but then suddenly, the evil overlord has a trick up his sleeve and leaves the hero cornered. No possible outcome. The protagonist: beaten, broken, battered and out of options, cowering in the shadow of his enemy. But then suddenly, from the hill top, several glorious, battle clad warriors emerge. Sunlight bouncing off their pristine, shiny armors, storming down the hill on their steeds, thrusting mighty swords in the sky, roaring battlecries. The horns are sounded and the evil army is split apart and vanquished. That's the sentiment I had. I had never, ever, EVER in my entire life faced a hardship where I relied on other people so much as I did then.
My girlfriend was initially pissed off and pacing around the room. This was possibly very dangerous, because I was not capable or shielded to handle this. She tends to have a very sharp temper
I just grabbed her, teary eyed and begged her to stop and just hold me. She dropped her hostility and did as I asked. That was that. Then and there, I had come to realize, that I needed her - I just needed her to be with me. Sappy as it might sound, I'm going to say it anyway, having her arms locked around me, broke the spell. My friends saved my and my girlfriend brought me back. Gradually, I sunk back to baseline. Oddly enough, there were short relapses where I could feel the intensity increase and decrease, until I eventually returned to a normal acid trip. During that period of time, I was apparently capable of holding some conversation, but I don't remember much of it. The bits I do remember, where the bits I realized I had no concentration to partake in dialogue. I just remember one of my best buddies sitting next to me, confessing "My bladder is full" in the most timid fashion and laughing. I needed some comical relief
In retrospect:
I shouldn't have mixed two substances, one of which I had too little experience with. Especially not alone. Moreover, the experience I had, wasn't all that fantastic to begin with. I should've cleared my schedule and try to "rush" a trip.
I'm very grateful for my friends, but I still feel very exposed about it. I've had to fend for myself since I was little and have always managed on my own. This was the first time in my adult life that I had to cry for help and that pisses me off. I'm still more or less dealing with that and it isn't easy.
I was out of whack for the next few days. Took me a few days to get to my normal self. I'm very thankful that I walked out of the situation alive and I'm even thankful I experienced what I went through. The deeper level was in fact very impressive and I do no want to do away with that moment, just because I lost control.
Last but not least: now that I can assess the situation more clearly, given the time that has passed, I won't be making the same mistakes again. BUT! I won't stop me from being curious, nor will it stop me from tripping with my friends or even alone. I believe this is what life has to offer our souls. Or as one of me dearest friends iterated several times, that unfaithful day:
"you live, you learn"
