VictorBorge
Bluelighter
The other day I had a day off with nothing to do, and decided it was time to see what a high-dose LSD trip was really all about.
My prior experience with acid had comprised several pleasant but not earth-shattering experiences in the 100-200ug range, and one really nice trip that was more like 300-400ug.
My original plan this time was to drop a little more than before (400-500ug) initially, and then redose after a few hours if the trip was going well. This was probably not the best idea, but I felt like taking the risk for the sake of experience.
9:20am – having smoked some cannabis right out of bed (not my usual practice, but today is special), let the THC come most of the way down, and eaten a light breakfast, I pop four microdots in the mouth and swallow with some water. The dots are so tiny they stick between my teeth and have to be “swished” out with water. Hee hee! I do some chores and start preparing mentally for the trip.
10:30am – listening to music, the come-up feels strong and certain. My living room persian rug is starting to look really cool. I do notice my heart is pounding a little hard and I have to keep concentrating on slowing and steadying my breath. This seems like a combo of THC anxiety and tension over my impending experience, and doesn’t bother me. I begin to regret smoking the pot before this trip, but feel confident that it will be out of my system before the peak hits.
11:30am – I’m starting to peak and, hyperventilating tendencies notwithstanding, having a great time. I’m in the living room listening to my band’s new demo recording, and it sounds really great. I start jotting notes about the recording like “guitar kicks ass on this part – grabs yer attention!!” and then going back over the letters of these words again and again until it looks like shadow script (or maybe the illiterate scribblings of a three-year old.) I seem much more preoccupied with penmanship than usual, yet ironically unable to manipulate my pencil enough to do anything about it. The stimulation from the acid has me doing calisthenics and stretches on the carpet in front of the stereo while listening and jotting these notes. And pretty soon, yup, I’m jogging in place, waving my arms and singing along. Hope the neighbors have gone to work by now!
I lie down on the couch and my heavy breathing starts me thinking. My body is just craving oxygen. In a flash of insight, I make a connection: oxygen is a drug just like any other chemical we put in our bodies – and we’re totally addicted to it! This is a vast, life-affirming discovery that I am positive no one has made before in the history of mankind, and I rush to my desk to jot it down on a ripped up scrap of paper. Now my penmanship has become big, brash and with lots of double-underlining:
Oxygen is a drug.
We are all addicated to it.
These words completely fill an 8.5x11 inch piece of paper. Writing them so quickly and surely makes me realize I am destined to be the world’s greatest cartoonist, so I grab another sheet and start confidently on a free-form sketch than turns into a weird horse with wheels for feet. But I now come to realize I am forever fatally flawed as a comic artist, because my attention keeps going to smaller and smaller details, like the horse’s eyelashes, while I compulsively leave the bigger parts like the body unfinished. I am fine and dandy with this self-realization, though, and proceed with some more philosophical scribbling instead. I’ve forgotten most of it now, but it included
Spirituality = being in the spirit of the moment!
and
ego = I = eye!
At this point the visuals are pretty fantastic and I close my eyes to reveal a completely vivid and random CEV of a streetcorner, with buildings, pavements and even sky entirely composed of crumpled up street signs, like a grand piece of concept art. “Wow,” I keep telling myself helpfully. “I can really see it!”
So now, of course, things are going so darn well, it’s time for some more acid. I drop another two dots, bringing me easily into the 750ug range. And here we go.
12:30pm – Now for what I was really looking forward to all week: watching The Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring DVD while tripping on a mega-dose! I go to the DVD shelf, carefully alphabetized of course, and when I get to “L” I find to my chagrin that I seem to have lent out Frodo and Gandalf to a friend. After racking my brain I finally recall who I lent it to, and, when I realize it was over a year ago and he never bothered to return or even mention it again, which is just like his lazy bad-friendship ass, I angrily dash him off an e-mail asking for it back in casual but less-than-polite terms (I believe I addressed him as “mo-fo”).
Looking back, this seemed like the psychological turning point of the trip, though not quite the pharmacological one (the second two hits were still not absorbed). I was so ready to watch that movie, but now what?? The only other thing I can think of is “Powaqqatsi”, the sequel to perennial tripper favorite Koyanisqaatsi. So I pop that in and proceed to be very bored by it. I’m still getting major visuals, the whole screen looks like it’s been digitally compressed and filled with artifacts and discolorations, even though it’s a beautiful and crisp film, but I’m just not connecting with it. My energy is gone and my mood is decidedly heading towards flat. Who the fuck cares about these slow motion images of Pakistani day laborers and this damn ambient tribal Philip Glass music?
Thinking the problem is I must be hungry, I grab some food and come back to the TV, but I can barely eat. The thought of food is almost repulsive. I swallow what I can and keep watching, growing more and more restless. I keep getting up and circling and sitting down again like a dog. I can’t get comfortable on the sofa, I can’t enjoy the movie, I can’t enjoy anything!
1:00pm - Remembering some sage trip advice I heard once, I decide to alter my activity to try and get the trip back on track. So I shut off the movie, and catch a few seconds of television before I turn of the TV set. I distinctly remember being more repulsed by daytime TV than I ever have in my life, and realizing why so many people report that TV is the LAST thing they want to see while tripping. TV off, I do a quick check of my e-mail (which proves very difficult to manage in my current state of impairment), and put on my coat to go for a walk. It’s a sunny day out so I grab my sunglasses too. I realize the glasses have the light-tinted pair of lenses in them and I need to switch them out with the dark ones to get any kind of sun protection. This process is even harder and more frustrating than checking my e-mail, I drop the glasses all over the place, get them dirty, clean them, dirty them again and now I’ve started to curse under my breath. Then I begin to notice in the mirror that my coat isn’t fitting right, it’s like kind of skewing on my shoulders or something, and I can’t fucking fix it. First I can’t enjoy anything, and now I can’t even fix anything right! The beginnings of panic are creeping in.
1:30pm - I go out on the back porch for about 30 seconds and realize that in the sun it’s warmer than I thought, and the coat I’ve got on is too heavy. I go back in and put on a lighter coat. I go back out for another 10 seconds until I decide it’s too bright, and I don’t want to go for a walk after all, the outside world is weird and a little scary, and why don’t I just go back inside and lie down and try to relax, which I do, only that’s driving me crazy after about another 30 seconds, the bedroom is too bright and the walls are too bright and I can’t get comfortable. Time for another change of venue so I go to my PC to play a new computer game I just got, which I have to install first, but the installation doesn’t work, great, I wasted my money on a crap product, thanks a lot Electronic Arts, and I just can’t get COMFORTABLE anywhere, but I stick with it and try a different game, and it takes for FUCKING EVER to load up, so I check the news on-line while I’m waiting, and for some reason seeing the front page headline with Dick Gephardt’s big sad face just sends me over the edge, this is intolerable, and I get up and start pacing, and decide to go for a walk after all, but instead I go lie on my bed again, and it’s just as bad as before, only worse, and now I’m dry-sobbing and sitting on the edge of the bed whimpering, and finally I say the hell with it and put my coat on (the heavy one again) and some different sunglasses and take a deep breath and head out the door, hoping that if I can get my blood pumping and some oxygen in my brain maybe I won’t go completely insane, only as I leave I’m already muttering under my breath, “I’m losing my mind I’m losing my mind,” even though with some shred of intact ego I know I’m not and eventually this trip from hell will be over, but that’s sure what it feels like, like going crazy to the point where I’d really, honestly, truly rather be dead. I can't sit still, I can't move around, I can't exist without feeling overloaded and overstimulated and incapable of dealing with anything.
So I go walking around the neighborhood, but it’s not helping, I can barely even tell I’m outside because I’m really trapped in my own head now, instead of repeating “I’m losing my mind” now I’m going “Where am I going? What am I doing? Why am I doing this?” The walking does feel nice and brisk and I briefly consider taking a really REALLY long walk, like walking for the rest of the day, maybe all the way downtown, ten miles each way, but instead I just go home and bring in the mail and start going through it, and try to eat some lunch and tell myself it’s OK.
3:00pm – by now the worst is over and I play a computer game for the rest of the afternoon, which is one of those mind-puzzle games like Myst which almost seems to be speaking a different language than me, I’m still so addled, but it distracts me while the trip wears down, and I finally manage to eat a proper meal and regain some blood sugar. I’m meeting some friends at a restaurant for a late dinner and although I’m not looking forward to it, since socializing seems really impossible right now, and consider calling them and saying I’m sick, I know that’s wussy and I can force myself to go out and it’ll be good for me, and I do and it’s fine, but not at all fun.
3:00pm Day 2 – I’m finally starting to feel more or less back to normal, though still on the depressed side of normal. Trip officially over. Phew. The end.
So my commentary on all this is twofold:
1) For me anyway, there really is such a thing as too much acid, and just the fact of the amount taken actually can cause, by itself, a bad trip (as opposed to just increasing the risk of a good trip going spectacularly bad). Throughout the worst hours of my experience I could feel, in the deepest core of my spirit, that I was literally DRUNK on acid, and had made myself quite sick. It was physical, not mental, and I just wanted the damn drug out of my system. This was a good lesson for me to learn, and I now feel much better about going back to low and medium doses where my experiences have been uniformly positive, and controllable. I just don’t see the appeal, or even the potential, in higher doses anymore. I may never be able to do enough acid to truly smash my ego as I had always hoped, but I can live with that.
2) The aftereffects of this trip were much more severe than I had expected. I generally have read and heard that after a bad trip ends, many people end up feeling elated and grateful and, by comparison anyway, happy. As stated above, though, I experienced horrible depression for one to two full days afterwards, like the acid had completely skewed my mood-regulating neurochemistry. This may be something that varies from person to person.
I’m curious if anyone else has ever had this kind of acid experience. I don’t really believe in the “bad acid” theory of bad trips, but I suppose the batch I dosed from this time could have had enough impurities to have caused some of my reactions described above. But I doubt it. Even my really good 350ug trip was followed by a day’s worth of flat mood.
The only other drug I was on during this trip was Tylenol, and I’ve never read about that having bad interactions with LSD. Right?
Thanks for reading.
My prior experience with acid had comprised several pleasant but not earth-shattering experiences in the 100-200ug range, and one really nice trip that was more like 300-400ug.
My original plan this time was to drop a little more than before (400-500ug) initially, and then redose after a few hours if the trip was going well. This was probably not the best idea, but I felt like taking the risk for the sake of experience.
9:20am – having smoked some cannabis right out of bed (not my usual practice, but today is special), let the THC come most of the way down, and eaten a light breakfast, I pop four microdots in the mouth and swallow with some water. The dots are so tiny they stick between my teeth and have to be “swished” out with water. Hee hee! I do some chores and start preparing mentally for the trip.
10:30am – listening to music, the come-up feels strong and certain. My living room persian rug is starting to look really cool. I do notice my heart is pounding a little hard and I have to keep concentrating on slowing and steadying my breath. This seems like a combo of THC anxiety and tension over my impending experience, and doesn’t bother me. I begin to regret smoking the pot before this trip, but feel confident that it will be out of my system before the peak hits.
11:30am – I’m starting to peak and, hyperventilating tendencies notwithstanding, having a great time. I’m in the living room listening to my band’s new demo recording, and it sounds really great. I start jotting notes about the recording like “guitar kicks ass on this part – grabs yer attention!!” and then going back over the letters of these words again and again until it looks like shadow script (or maybe the illiterate scribblings of a three-year old.) I seem much more preoccupied with penmanship than usual, yet ironically unable to manipulate my pencil enough to do anything about it. The stimulation from the acid has me doing calisthenics and stretches on the carpet in front of the stereo while listening and jotting these notes. And pretty soon, yup, I’m jogging in place, waving my arms and singing along. Hope the neighbors have gone to work by now!
I lie down on the couch and my heavy breathing starts me thinking. My body is just craving oxygen. In a flash of insight, I make a connection: oxygen is a drug just like any other chemical we put in our bodies – and we’re totally addicted to it! This is a vast, life-affirming discovery that I am positive no one has made before in the history of mankind, and I rush to my desk to jot it down on a ripped up scrap of paper. Now my penmanship has become big, brash and with lots of double-underlining:
Oxygen is a drug.
We are all addicated to it.
These words completely fill an 8.5x11 inch piece of paper. Writing them so quickly and surely makes me realize I am destined to be the world’s greatest cartoonist, so I grab another sheet and start confidently on a free-form sketch than turns into a weird horse with wheels for feet. But I now come to realize I am forever fatally flawed as a comic artist, because my attention keeps going to smaller and smaller details, like the horse’s eyelashes, while I compulsively leave the bigger parts like the body unfinished. I am fine and dandy with this self-realization, though, and proceed with some more philosophical scribbling instead. I’ve forgotten most of it now, but it included
Spirituality = being in the spirit of the moment!
and
ego = I = eye!
At this point the visuals are pretty fantastic and I close my eyes to reveal a completely vivid and random CEV of a streetcorner, with buildings, pavements and even sky entirely composed of crumpled up street signs, like a grand piece of concept art. “Wow,” I keep telling myself helpfully. “I can really see it!”
So now, of course, things are going so darn well, it’s time for some more acid. I drop another two dots, bringing me easily into the 750ug range. And here we go.
12:30pm – Now for what I was really looking forward to all week: watching The Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring DVD while tripping on a mega-dose! I go to the DVD shelf, carefully alphabetized of course, and when I get to “L” I find to my chagrin that I seem to have lent out Frodo and Gandalf to a friend. After racking my brain I finally recall who I lent it to, and, when I realize it was over a year ago and he never bothered to return or even mention it again, which is just like his lazy bad-friendship ass, I angrily dash him off an e-mail asking for it back in casual but less-than-polite terms (I believe I addressed him as “mo-fo”).
Looking back, this seemed like the psychological turning point of the trip, though not quite the pharmacological one (the second two hits were still not absorbed). I was so ready to watch that movie, but now what?? The only other thing I can think of is “Powaqqatsi”, the sequel to perennial tripper favorite Koyanisqaatsi. So I pop that in and proceed to be very bored by it. I’m still getting major visuals, the whole screen looks like it’s been digitally compressed and filled with artifacts and discolorations, even though it’s a beautiful and crisp film, but I’m just not connecting with it. My energy is gone and my mood is decidedly heading towards flat. Who the fuck cares about these slow motion images of Pakistani day laborers and this damn ambient tribal Philip Glass music?
Thinking the problem is I must be hungry, I grab some food and come back to the TV, but I can barely eat. The thought of food is almost repulsive. I swallow what I can and keep watching, growing more and more restless. I keep getting up and circling and sitting down again like a dog. I can’t get comfortable on the sofa, I can’t enjoy the movie, I can’t enjoy anything!
1:00pm - Remembering some sage trip advice I heard once, I decide to alter my activity to try and get the trip back on track. So I shut off the movie, and catch a few seconds of television before I turn of the TV set. I distinctly remember being more repulsed by daytime TV than I ever have in my life, and realizing why so many people report that TV is the LAST thing they want to see while tripping. TV off, I do a quick check of my e-mail (which proves very difficult to manage in my current state of impairment), and put on my coat to go for a walk. It’s a sunny day out so I grab my sunglasses too. I realize the glasses have the light-tinted pair of lenses in them and I need to switch them out with the dark ones to get any kind of sun protection. This process is even harder and more frustrating than checking my e-mail, I drop the glasses all over the place, get them dirty, clean them, dirty them again and now I’ve started to curse under my breath. Then I begin to notice in the mirror that my coat isn’t fitting right, it’s like kind of skewing on my shoulders or something, and I can’t fucking fix it. First I can’t enjoy anything, and now I can’t even fix anything right! The beginnings of panic are creeping in.
1:30pm - I go out on the back porch for about 30 seconds and realize that in the sun it’s warmer than I thought, and the coat I’ve got on is too heavy. I go back in and put on a lighter coat. I go back out for another 10 seconds until I decide it’s too bright, and I don’t want to go for a walk after all, the outside world is weird and a little scary, and why don’t I just go back inside and lie down and try to relax, which I do, only that’s driving me crazy after about another 30 seconds, the bedroom is too bright and the walls are too bright and I can’t get comfortable. Time for another change of venue so I go to my PC to play a new computer game I just got, which I have to install first, but the installation doesn’t work, great, I wasted my money on a crap product, thanks a lot Electronic Arts, and I just can’t get COMFORTABLE anywhere, but I stick with it and try a different game, and it takes for FUCKING EVER to load up, so I check the news on-line while I’m waiting, and for some reason seeing the front page headline with Dick Gephardt’s big sad face just sends me over the edge, this is intolerable, and I get up and start pacing, and decide to go for a walk after all, but instead I go lie on my bed again, and it’s just as bad as before, only worse, and now I’m dry-sobbing and sitting on the edge of the bed whimpering, and finally I say the hell with it and put my coat on (the heavy one again) and some different sunglasses and take a deep breath and head out the door, hoping that if I can get my blood pumping and some oxygen in my brain maybe I won’t go completely insane, only as I leave I’m already muttering under my breath, “I’m losing my mind I’m losing my mind,” even though with some shred of intact ego I know I’m not and eventually this trip from hell will be over, but that’s sure what it feels like, like going crazy to the point where I’d really, honestly, truly rather be dead. I can't sit still, I can't move around, I can't exist without feeling overloaded and overstimulated and incapable of dealing with anything.
So I go walking around the neighborhood, but it’s not helping, I can barely even tell I’m outside because I’m really trapped in my own head now, instead of repeating “I’m losing my mind” now I’m going “Where am I going? What am I doing? Why am I doing this?” The walking does feel nice and brisk and I briefly consider taking a really REALLY long walk, like walking for the rest of the day, maybe all the way downtown, ten miles each way, but instead I just go home and bring in the mail and start going through it, and try to eat some lunch and tell myself it’s OK.
3:00pm – by now the worst is over and I play a computer game for the rest of the afternoon, which is one of those mind-puzzle games like Myst which almost seems to be speaking a different language than me, I’m still so addled, but it distracts me while the trip wears down, and I finally manage to eat a proper meal and regain some blood sugar. I’m meeting some friends at a restaurant for a late dinner and although I’m not looking forward to it, since socializing seems really impossible right now, and consider calling them and saying I’m sick, I know that’s wussy and I can force myself to go out and it’ll be good for me, and I do and it’s fine, but not at all fun.
3:00pm Day 2 – I’m finally starting to feel more or less back to normal, though still on the depressed side of normal. Trip officially over. Phew. The end.
So my commentary on all this is twofold:
1) For me anyway, there really is such a thing as too much acid, and just the fact of the amount taken actually can cause, by itself, a bad trip (as opposed to just increasing the risk of a good trip going spectacularly bad). Throughout the worst hours of my experience I could feel, in the deepest core of my spirit, that I was literally DRUNK on acid, and had made myself quite sick. It was physical, not mental, and I just wanted the damn drug out of my system. This was a good lesson for me to learn, and I now feel much better about going back to low and medium doses where my experiences have been uniformly positive, and controllable. I just don’t see the appeal, or even the potential, in higher doses anymore. I may never be able to do enough acid to truly smash my ego as I had always hoped, but I can live with that.
2) The aftereffects of this trip were much more severe than I had expected. I generally have read and heard that after a bad trip ends, many people end up feeling elated and grateful and, by comparison anyway, happy. As stated above, though, I experienced horrible depression for one to two full days afterwards, like the acid had completely skewed my mood-regulating neurochemistry. This may be something that varies from person to person.
I’m curious if anyone else has ever had this kind of acid experience. I don’t really believe in the “bad acid” theory of bad trips, but I suppose the batch I dosed from this time could have had enough impurities to have caused some of my reactions described above. But I doubt it. Even my really good 350ug trip was followed by a day’s worth of flat mood.
The only other drug I was on during this trip was Tylenol, and I’ve never read about that having bad interactions with LSD. Right?
Thanks for reading.
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