yardbirdrc
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2011
- Messages
- 160
Date: August 7th, 2010
Time: 12:00pm - 10:00pm
Drug: Lysergic acid diethylamide
Dose: 1 Blotter (0:00) + 1/2 Blotter (+1:30)
Location(s): Rocks State Park
Baltimore
Prelude:
It had been over a year since I had last done LSD, or enjoyed any psychedelic for that matter. Things had been buckling down for me at school, and I simply didn't have the time to lose my mind for that many hours. I kept a small stash of high quality cannabis for the weekends, and for all intents and purposes, that was it for me. I was psychedelically dormant.
After the school year had ended, I'd been working 2 jobs, and I barely had time to do anything but that. Around the beginning of July, I started getting the itch to trip. It starts out with visual things. I'll see something that will remind me of what things look like under the influence of some drug, and it'll make me want to do it again. Sometimes it will be a particular mindset or state of mind that will remind me. Thinking about a certain drug casually like this will lead to thinking about it in detail, which will then result in weeks of reading every scrap of information that I can find about it. Sometimes this process ends in actually taking a drug, sometimes not. It's just what I call the itch, something internal that tells me that, at that time, I'm receptive to a psychedelic experience.
The time I had taken LSD previous to this, I had done it with a close group of friends, and we had ventured out into a state park for several hours. Keen on reliving what ended up becoming one of the best days of my life, we decided to set aside a day to do the same this year. I still had 5 hits of acid I had bought at a previous date and had yet to try, and I bought 2 more a few weeks before the date we set. Other people in the group also bought acid, and we were all set.
Then, the itch left. I still knew that I wanted to trip on something, but I wasn't in the state where I'd be willing to do it no questions asked. Thus, the day arrived with a decent amount of anxiety on my part.
The doses were planned as follows:
Myself - 1 hit previous batch (red blotter) + 1/2 hit new procurement
Nate, Alex - 2 hits each of the recent purchase
Cheeseman - 1 hit recent purchase
Mikey - 1 1/2 hits recent purchase
The location was chose was Rocks State Park in Jarrettsville, Maryland. It was the location for the filming of the movie "Tuck Everlasting". There was a sprawling area of waterfalls called "falling branch", and then a separate area of trails, the highlight of which was the "king's chair", a rock that juts out high above the forest below.
Chapter 1: The Initialization
We arrived at the visitor's center and dropped our doses. I dropped 1, with the intent of taking the remaining half later if I felt the need. We collected a bunch of maps and used the bathroom, then drove the 5 miles from the visitor's center to the parcel of land known as "falling branch", where the waterfalls were. We immediately noticed that the area was by no means secluded, and there were many families swimming at the falls. Foregoing the very populated area at first, we took a trail that led us to the top of the falls, where there was knee deep water to wade in. I took my shoes off and left my backpack on dry land, and ventured in. Within 10 minutes, I slipped on a rock and fell, cutting both my feet very deeply (great start to an acid trip). I put on shoes and socks, and ventured back into the water. We waded up stream for a ways, where we eventually found some nice serene pools with fish where we could relax. It was about this time that we started feeling the initial effects. We decided to take this opportunity before the trip really started kicking to drive back to the trails where there were less people, but not before standing under the waterfall! I waded through the falls and water beat down on me with tremendous force. When I found myself on the other side, I was laughing hysterically. Everybody was. At this point we knew our money was well spent. We piled in the car and headed towards the trails, all feeling pretty groovy, but not too crazy. We listened to the grateful dead, a band I had never listened to, but enjoyed immensely at the time. We arrived safely at our destination.
Chapter 2: The Climb
We began onto the trail headed towards the King's Chair, taking a shortcut that a random mountain biker had suggested. My head was churning out beats like a dance club, and I was bobbing my head a lot, so I grabbed my ipod and plugged myself into some J Dilla. Eventually I mellowed out and decided to just listen to the nature around us. There were people around us on these trails as well, but not nearly as many. We made it to the King's Chair pretty quickly and ventured out onto the peak. At this point, I was at about the level of intensity that previous 1 hit acid trips had given me. Looking out over the peak at the trees was pretty stimulating. I rolled a cigarette and just took it all in. I had recently quit smoking tobacco all together, but I had heard nictoine + psychedelics is a good combination, and I was right - rolling and smoking cigarettes throughout the day grounded me at some times when I really needed it. We left soon after, so that some families could venture out onto the peak in our place. At this point I was feeling pretty good. From the peak we had seen a large stream or creek with people swimming, so we decided to try to find that. We made our way down the mountain's face, which was actually relatively easy. Along the way we explored some more rock formations, but Nate's fear of heights made the need to traverse the rocks more imminent. Not feeling anything too crazy, I decided I could handle the remaining half a hit, so I took it at this point. We stopped by a relatively remote area of rocks to contemplate smoking a bowl of pot. When we stopped, we started to notice the rocks morphing and emitting slight patterns. By the time we made it to the bottom, we were still tripping steadily. We crossed a road, and we were at the creek we had seen.
Chapter 3: The Descent
The water was much deeper here, and the current stronger, but there were just a many people. We set down our bags, I took off my glasses, and we got in the water. I was very aware of the currents in the water pulling me in different directions. Mikey commented on this a lot, he late would go on to say that the trip was very physical for him and that the currents in the water and the feel of the sand were some of the best moments for him. We laughed quite a bit, I began to wonder if it was really noticeable, but not having my glasses, I couldn't read the faces of the other visitors. We began to make our way downstream. I got sucked into a rather large waterfall, that looked very much like I could simply ride it to the bottom. I thought about it for a few minutes, but decided it was ultimately unsafe. I pulled myself out of the current and walked to the next section on land. My friends felt differently, and let themselves get sucked down the waterfall. This was a terrible idea, and they got cut up pretty badly. Some people nearby commented on how unusual it was that they decided to do that. We decided to leave this area.
Chapter 4: The Re-ascent
I was very anxious at this point. Until now the trip had been going pretty smoothly as far as my emotional state, but when we began climbing back up the mountain along a trail, I commented that I was feeling emotions I hadn't felt before. They weren't clear emotions, but it was more like my emotional states all started to mesh together, and then ebb and flow to create new combinations. It was so foreign to me that it was a little unsettling. We climbed up some steep rocks and perched ourselves on top as we once again contemplated smoking bud, only to realize we were tripping way too hard to add anything else to the mix. Alex, Nate and Cheeseman climbed up a little farther than me and Mikey. I rolled another cigarette and tried to get my bearings. At this point I was tripping harder than I had previously ever tripped on LSD. I felt like I was becoming connected to the rock I was sitting on, not melting into it per se, but more like feeling tendrils of energy coming out of it and connecting with tendrils of energy that I was emitting. As I looked at the leaves around me, they were intensely green, and also reaching out to me with their energy. I was experiencing a peak, one of a few I'd experience over the next several hours. After the sun warmed me a bit, I calmed down, and we continued up the trail back to the King's chair. After looking around quickly there, we decided to take a trail we hadn't taken before.
Chapter 5: The Plateau... are we ghosts?
The red trail, as it was called, emptied us out into a vast flat expanse (previous to this, all the trails had been hills) populated sparsely by tall trees. There was a playground full of children, and a family picnic of some kind was going on. The air here was different somehow, and kind of eerie. As I walked I felt like I was bouncing, and suddenly a young bald child in a tuxedo ran out in front of us. This was a real child, not an apparition, apparently there was some kind of ceremony going on. There were nicely dressed red headed children everywhere (except the one that was bald). My shoulder began to hurt (my left elbow and shoulder constantly were aching throughout the trip due to the fall I took in the very beginning). We were feeling pretty crazy at this point, but it was still not significantly more intense than my one hit experiences. Later I would come to view the time we spent in this little area as the "antechamber". After we left here, we truly began to trip. We sat down at a bench in the vast plateau and I wondered if the bench was here when there were no people around. I envisioned a solitary bench in these woods at night time, with no people around for hours. For some reason this felt like time being wasted to me. Certainly at some given time there are people doing things elsewhere, but right here at this bench, there is nobody. In this location that time is wasted, the bench has no opportunity to fulfill its purpose, it's just idling. "Poor bench", said Alex. I began to wonder if we were dead with all these well dressed children around.
We ventured farther through the plateau until we reached an abandoned parking lot area, and beyond this there were more trails, and more woods, with no people. We found a shady spot and broke out the marijuana. Things were pretty intense for me at this time, but I could definitely handle more (so I thought). I had already dropped my other half a tab hours ago, surely some weed couldn't hurt. We smoked 4 bowls in succession, a fairly large amount for us. I rolled a cigarette, my companions jeered me for smoking something so damaging to my health and addictive. I began to think about and discuss the shifting cultural attitude towards tobacco, or rather to question whether or not it's shifted at all, as at the time I didn't have any way to really research it and find out for sure. I surmised that when Native Americans (for some reason, possibly a slightly racist one, tobacco made me think first of the Native Americans) imbibed tobacco, they must've known that it was addictive (because they used lobelia to treat tobacco addiction) and harmful to your health, although they didn't have a concept of what a chemical is, let alone nicotine, and why something like that could cause that behavior. They just knew that this plant changed the way they felt, they had no idea why. As a person who heavily researches the psychopharmacology of all drugs I put in my body, this was mind boggling. It really was a wild frontier for the early drug users. "Wait, early?!" thought I. No, this has been the norm for thousands of years, until relatively recent history. It is in fact much more unusual in the grand scheme of things that in these past hundred years we have come to understand (at least somewhat) in a physical sense why a certain plant will effect us a certain way. With tobacco, culturally, was it looked down upon back then as my friends looked down on my smoking then? Did their children beg them to stop for the sake of their health? Juxtapose that image with that of the "peace pipe" we so commonly envision, and the actual historical data showing that tobacco was held in high regard. But is that any different than today's society? We simultaneously condemn and worship tobacco, that's a certainty.
But let's go back to discussing remarkable modern age of drugs shall we? While we smoked I talked at great length about why I am interested in psychedelics. As I mentioned, there is a long history of drug use, a history that has shaped religions and cultures that have died and that still exist (probably more than many of their adherents would care to admit in this modern drug fearing age). For the vast majority of that history 2 things were true. First, people didn't understand on a physical or scientific level why eating a particular mushroom or cactus would drastically alter the way they perceive the world. Hell, science didn't even exist for a lot of that time. Second, people were stuck with what we got. The things we could use to alter consciousness were limited to those plants that happened to harbor some chemical that fit into our neurons' receptors. That selection was limited even more for a large portion of the time by the regions in which they grew. Then something remarkable happened. Within the last 100 years, we gained the ability to make our own substances that alter the mind. I don't know now, nor did I then the first "man made" psychedelic (that is, something that would not otherwise exist in nature), but I have a guess that it would be LSD. The moment that molecule was forged, we took away some of nature's power and mystery (but in a good way). We took our minds' destinies into our own hands. To sit down and design a drug based on science we have collected as a society is a tremendous contribution to humanity, if not the most tremendous. What future lies ahead of us as a global society that has that power? Now there exists this dichotomy as a result, the so-called "classic" psychedelics, and those that we humans have created. "Isn't that interesting? Extraordinary.", I said, having just expressed something important to me with more eloquence and with more complete thought than I would've been able to with a sober mind (I wish I had a recording, because the written explanation feels much less complete than what I actually said). And this is a SUBculture! This is something that the average person wouldn't think about in their daily life. If you asked a person on the street what some of the most significant contributions to society made by science have been, very few would say "LSD" or "the ability to design mind altering drugs", when these things should be near the top of the list! Within the past few years I can name at least 3 documentaries about psychedelics and the people that pioneered this new modern age of drug design that all have yet to be completed due to lack of funding. Why aren't we utilizing this incredible power we have? Why does nobody care? Suddenly I realized how deep in thought I was, and not only that, but I was thinking about the thoughts I was thinking, and about how they were being thought. It was like I could examine the separate particles of a thought before they formed even the most minimal thought or whim.
"Psychiatrists MUST have access to this", I declared, no, demanded. "This can help a ton of people".
I began discussing the physical effects of the drug. At times it was quite pleasing, but sometimes it was a little uncomfortable. I described my "bones" as "smooth wooden hard ground joints rubbing against each other". Then I was talking about how when I was perched on a rock earlier, it felt like my surroundings were coming into my eyes and "slapping me in the face". This was apparently just one too many penile double entendres for Cheeseman, who burst out laughing. Nobody else realized it until he explained how ridiculous I had been sounding. Unusual...I would've normally picked up on something like that.
We talked like this and smoked for about a half hour before we decided to venture onward.
The next set of trails was very long and the surroundings were pretty similar to each other. Cheeseman knew where we were based on the map we had gotten from the visitor's center, but I wouldn't have been able to navigate at that point (he was pretty coherent as he had only taken the one hit). On the way we stopped a few times. At one point we looked at a tree with a spider web on it, and it was simultaneously moving towards and away from me. Visuals were increasing. We sat on a log and talked about whether or not we could drive to Baltimore yet. I looked at alex, and he looked me in the eyes and said emphatically "I'm FUCKED up." I've been friends with Alex for a long time, and we've done a lot of psychedelic drugs together, but I've never seen him phased like this. Alex ALWAYS keeps his cool, but I guess the 2 hits were getting to him. We finally found ourselves out of the woods. We had decided earlier that we would take the drive to Baltimore when we were sober enough to drive, and Cheeseman claimed that he was. I trusted him, because he would not have lied, and indeed for the entirety of the drive he not only navigated us to baltimore out of the sticks through shoddy GPS satellite reception, but controlled the car normally, so I assume that during this time period the trip had already ended for him. I asked him a few times later, and he insisted this was the case. However, those of us that had taken more than 1 were about to realize that we were nowhere near finished.
Chapter 6: The Ride
We piled in the car and Nate asked if we were too fucked up to drive. I was. Cheeseman assured us he was fine. Classic rock was put on the radio and we began driving. I don't remember much of this time period, I do remember some isolated details. At one point I remember saying "look at it out here!" because everywhere I looked everything was stunningly beautiful. We were driving through deep rural landscapes, nothing but the heat from the sun, the wind from the window, and deep green vegetation, peppered occasionally with some type of house or long abandoned shack carrying some insignificant but oh-so-significant minutia - a pile of firewood next to a red wagon, an old horse grazing, or a small home garden. There would be a field of golden crops with a solitary tree at its center, or something similar, and I'd just be floored. As the sun beat down on the car the sky rippled, and as we took turns and changed the direction from which the sun was coming, it would go with the ebb and flow of the trip. The road looked like a cartoon of a road. These were the strongest visuals I got during the trip, and the strongest I'd had from LSD ever. One hit trips were nice for feeling great for a full day, but at this level I was finally getting a feel of what LSD was really about. I closed my eyes and saw multi colored worms crawling, which eventually turned into thin stalks of pointy flowers flashing colors. With my eyes closed the physical effects became clearer- I was on fire with pleasure. It was kind of edgy almost, I was just full of happiness and energy, the heat of the sun fueling this. Throughout this period I was squirming (we were 5 deep in the car), constantly changing position and saying "oh my god" or "holy shit". Nate broke out a gummi lunchbox and some multiflavored twizzlers and I happily ate candy, which tasted pretty good. We decided to stop to get food, not because we were hungry, but because we felt we had to eat as it was almost 6pm and all we'd had was small snacks. Cheeseman pulled us into a McDonalds, and offered to get us all food. I asked for a McDouble, and I followed him in to use the bathroom. In the bathroom the "on fire" feeling was back full force, due to the orange tiles and the hum of the fan. The whole room felt like it was on fire with energy. I went back out to the car and half laid down in the hatchback, looking insane to passersby. Those of us still in the car were having panic attacks. "Why has he been in there that long?", "Where are we?", "I'm fucked up", etc. Finally he came back, but realized they forgot one of the snack wraps, so he went back in. About this time a couple came out and saddled up on a motorcycle parked besides us. They were taking a while, and I was imagining them talking about us and making mean looks, really just bugging me out. Finally Cheeseman came back for good. I bit into the burger and it was the worst thing I'd ever eaten. I could taste every single awful part of it. My body just didn't want food, but I managed to force most of it down.
About 5 minutes after we left McDonalds I had to pee again. 30 minutes after that, things were getting pretty serious in my bladder, but we were pulling up on Baltimore. Or not...it turned out to be another smaller city! Baltimore was still over 30 minutes away! But there was nothing but open highway...things were getting bad. We came to a stop at a light slightly outside of the main city of Baltimore. In an attempt to find a place where I could pee, Cheeseman pulled us into a neighborhood. Immediately we realized this was a mistake, and as it turned out it would end up being the beginning of a long journey in search of a bathroom that would actually prolong the drive by quite a while and take us nowhere near any bathrooms. As soon as we made the turn, we were face to face with a firetruck blaring its sirens. It came to a stop right in front of us, and fireman rushed out of it to meet a police officer talking to an upset looking woman on her stoop. What the fuck? Is this real? We couldn't back up either due to traffic behind us, so we were just stuck there for a while until we decided to try to squeeze past the truck (successfully). We immediately realized we were in the ghettoest of ghettoes - easily the worst part of any town I'd ever seen. There are a lot of details that go into making that so immediately clear, and in my altered state I quickly recognized them all (but I'd be at a loss to list them here). We progressed further into the neighborhood until we got closer to baltimore, and things started getting bigger, but just as fucked up. We passed a huge university and I begged to pee there, but we couldn't merge to make the turn. All the buildings were tall houses or storefronts that were long since abandoned, or at least looked like it. They were blown out and boarded, but there were still tons of people hanging out on the stoops and walking by talking to each other. We explored a town area, with tons of houses, but nowhere to pee, not even a church. We then went back the way we came, and made a turn that took us onto a golfcourse. There were trees to pee, but people everywhere playing golf. What the fuck is going on here! I've had to pee for what seemed like an hour. We ended up in a strange park. There was a large body of water with a trail surrounding it where people could bike or walk or drive and park, but none of those people looked healthy or even like they were enjoying themselves. We arrived here after having explored a whole other area with no bathrooms, so by this point it was mission critical. At first we stopped near a building that looked like a visitor's center or pavilion. As I approached it (running) I realized the building didn't really look like anything, none of them did. In fact for quite a while we'd been driving past buildings like this - huge, but indistinguishable. What was this building used for? What is this place we were stuck in? As I approached the door I saw a sign hung above it that said, in huge red letters, "NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS". I almost shit and piss myself. I ran back to the car screaming, and I asked a guy walking past where the nearest bathrooms were, but he had no idea (or at least I think thats what he said). We traveled the circular trail some more until I saw a wooded area. I asked them to stop the car, grabbed my phone for some reason, and I ran as fast as I could towards trees I saw in the distance. As I was running, I could hear a police siren from nearby, and a helicopter was flying overhead, giving me the illusion that I was a fugitive trying to pee in secret. I founds some woods with no people nearby and peed for an eternity. As I did, I heard music a few hundred feet away, and later we would drive past a concert of some kind. We made our way from the park towards inner harbor using the GPS, and we were taken through even more incredibly impoverished neighborhoods. We repeatedly saw people on corners at bars or liqour stores holding their hands out to cars as if they were half pointing at something in the distance, or hitch hiking, but they were actually selling heroin and/or crack. We stopped at a McDonalds to ask for directions because the GPS was bugging out, and across the street there was a small mechanic's shop with a sign out front that said "OBAMA GOLOBOL JUXTICE". This whole part of the trip made me think about how fortunate I am to live in a house and to eat food, and how the lives of the incredibly poor were so much different in every way from mine, but probably also very similar in a lot of ways.Eventually we ended up in inner harbor, and by this point, after tripping so hard for the entire car ride, we were starting to feel like we were on the tail end of the last wave.
Chapter 7: The Landing
And there we were - a short walk and we were sitting with our feet over the edge of the harbor. I rolled a cigarette to compliment the last sparkles in my visual field as we overlooked boats (one of which was named "Hyp-Nautical") bobbing on the acid-tinged waves with the big Domino sugar sign in the background. There was still some daylight, but the nightlife was beginning. The harbor was flooded with people of ALL kinds. People watching during this period was amazing. As we sat at the harbor a man tried to sell us cards that said he was deaf. We declined. 30 seconds later, a raft floated by on the harbor, and as I looked at the passengers I saw them conversing in sign language. It was one of those moments where something just clicks, and gains a larger significance, or at least just the illusion of one. We walked around the harbor people watching. It was the most diverse group of people i'd been around in quite a while, people from literally everywhere I could think of, and speaking tons of different languages - it was a beautiful way to spend a comedown. There was a boat docked there from brazil, and we watched the people on board. We made our way to a hookah bar that my girlfriend and I had eaten at towards the beginning of our relationship, and knew was good. At this point we were peacefully in the afterglow, and we ate mediterranean food with our hands while we talked about the trip over a hookah. After we arrived back home we made a bonfire and smoke some more pot, and took some shots of liqour (I don't usually drink alcohol). I emptied my pouch of tobacco into the fire and I haven't really thought about smoking since, although I know I will again the next time I trip - it was all too valuable.
Conclusion/Reflection
My previous adventures with this substance had all been with one hit of blotter. I knew from the first time I tried LSD that it was one of the most extraordinary drugs I had ever done, or ever would do, despite the fact that all it made me do at that dosage was feel kind of silly and add a tinge of beauty and significance to my surroundings. At this level, though, it was like meeting LSD for the first time all over again. Having fully pronounced visuals and being pushed to the edge of losing my cool left me feeling like I had gone waist deep into this substance after only getting my feet wet previously - I felt "accomplished", like I could finally say I knew my way around this chemical (or at least, moreso than before. I can't imagine doses above 2 or 3 hits yet...). I don't know if I ever want to go head under. LSD was exceedingly good for me at this dose, but there were elements I was not a fan of, and that I feel could be more of a problem at higher doses. For one, especially during the car ride, it was very edgy. Certainly there's a degree of anxiety with taking any psychedelic, but this was definitely the drug talking. My mindset was actually quite calm, but I felt kind of artificially rushed. I've always heard people say that LSD is distinctly "synthetic", and I was definitely aware of that at this level more than with one hit. There were a few times where I felt my control slipping a little bit, which I guess is something I'll just have to get used to as I explore this world of perception-altering drugs (I guess that's kind of the point isn't it?). I'm hoping mescaline proves less "pushy", and hopefully within a month or two I will have performed my first extraction to find out. I'd like to explore some deeper, more challenging headspaces but the thought of using LSD to do that makes me apprehensive at this point. Anyway, at the time, this experience was just what I needed. I came out of the day feeling exhausted, but mentally incredibly refreshed after such a dull long year of stress - and I met/saw/interacted with a lot of cool people and gained a lot of memorable stories.
I plan on taking LSD at the one hit level with some copious amounts of marijuana at an upcoming hip hop festival. I think the cannabis definitely brought out a lot of the visuals during this excursion, it was right after we smoked that things started to get intense in the visual field. Hopefully one hit plus some weed will bring out nice visual effects without all the heady edge and make for a nice day out enjoying some music in a lighthearted setting.
The most valuable aspect of this experience to me was the ability I had during one of the peaks to evaluate my thoughts as they came to me. I meant what I said: I demand that this be available to psycho-analysts. In the future when I have the resources to do such things, I plan on doing whatever I can to support this idea. Another really interesting aspect that I touched on but never directly addressed was the importance of details contributing to a whole. I was very keen to hone in on details of my surrounding during the time I was on the drug, but looking back on the experience, and even looking back on the past while I was still tripping, I couldn't remember any of them, but I could remember the emotions that the details evoked contributing to a whole, overall feel and general memory. I don't remember the details about the landscape during the drive that made me feel like I was surrounded by beauty the likes of which I'd never seen, I don't remember the exact details of the faces I saw in the slums of Baltimore that made me connect with and reflect on what life must be like for those people, and I don't remember all the different kinds of people I saw in inner harbor that reminded me that my culture was but a very small part of a huge global patchwork, but I do remember those thoughts and feelings (I'll probably never forget them), and I feel that these broad, retrospective emotions were directly created by the detailed information I took in while my mind was so receptive. I guess that's how all memories are really, the details fade and leave a footprint, or sometimes no trace at all. With this particular chemical in my brain, though, it was very apparent that I was forming memories, and significant memories at that, as they formed. I watched them grow from the details up.
It was one for the books. %)
Time: 12:00pm - 10:00pm
Drug: Lysergic acid diethylamide
Dose: 1 Blotter (0:00) + 1/2 Blotter (+1:30)
Location(s): Rocks State Park
Baltimore
Prelude:
It had been over a year since I had last done LSD, or enjoyed any psychedelic for that matter. Things had been buckling down for me at school, and I simply didn't have the time to lose my mind for that many hours. I kept a small stash of high quality cannabis for the weekends, and for all intents and purposes, that was it for me. I was psychedelically dormant.
After the school year had ended, I'd been working 2 jobs, and I barely had time to do anything but that. Around the beginning of July, I started getting the itch to trip. It starts out with visual things. I'll see something that will remind me of what things look like under the influence of some drug, and it'll make me want to do it again. Sometimes it will be a particular mindset or state of mind that will remind me. Thinking about a certain drug casually like this will lead to thinking about it in detail, which will then result in weeks of reading every scrap of information that I can find about it. Sometimes this process ends in actually taking a drug, sometimes not. It's just what I call the itch, something internal that tells me that, at that time, I'm receptive to a psychedelic experience.
The time I had taken LSD previous to this, I had done it with a close group of friends, and we had ventured out into a state park for several hours. Keen on reliving what ended up becoming one of the best days of my life, we decided to set aside a day to do the same this year. I still had 5 hits of acid I had bought at a previous date and had yet to try, and I bought 2 more a few weeks before the date we set. Other people in the group also bought acid, and we were all set.
Then, the itch left. I still knew that I wanted to trip on something, but I wasn't in the state where I'd be willing to do it no questions asked. Thus, the day arrived with a decent amount of anxiety on my part.
The doses were planned as follows:
Myself - 1 hit previous batch (red blotter) + 1/2 hit new procurement
Nate, Alex - 2 hits each of the recent purchase
Cheeseman - 1 hit recent purchase
Mikey - 1 1/2 hits recent purchase
The location was chose was Rocks State Park in Jarrettsville, Maryland. It was the location for the filming of the movie "Tuck Everlasting". There was a sprawling area of waterfalls called "falling branch", and then a separate area of trails, the highlight of which was the "king's chair", a rock that juts out high above the forest below.
Chapter 1: The Initialization
We arrived at the visitor's center and dropped our doses. I dropped 1, with the intent of taking the remaining half later if I felt the need. We collected a bunch of maps and used the bathroom, then drove the 5 miles from the visitor's center to the parcel of land known as "falling branch", where the waterfalls were. We immediately noticed that the area was by no means secluded, and there were many families swimming at the falls. Foregoing the very populated area at first, we took a trail that led us to the top of the falls, where there was knee deep water to wade in. I took my shoes off and left my backpack on dry land, and ventured in. Within 10 minutes, I slipped on a rock and fell, cutting both my feet very deeply (great start to an acid trip). I put on shoes and socks, and ventured back into the water. We waded up stream for a ways, where we eventually found some nice serene pools with fish where we could relax. It was about this time that we started feeling the initial effects. We decided to take this opportunity before the trip really started kicking to drive back to the trails where there were less people, but not before standing under the waterfall! I waded through the falls and water beat down on me with tremendous force. When I found myself on the other side, I was laughing hysterically. Everybody was. At this point we knew our money was well spent. We piled in the car and headed towards the trails, all feeling pretty groovy, but not too crazy. We listened to the grateful dead, a band I had never listened to, but enjoyed immensely at the time. We arrived safely at our destination.
Chapter 2: The Climb
We began onto the trail headed towards the King's Chair, taking a shortcut that a random mountain biker had suggested. My head was churning out beats like a dance club, and I was bobbing my head a lot, so I grabbed my ipod and plugged myself into some J Dilla. Eventually I mellowed out and decided to just listen to the nature around us. There were people around us on these trails as well, but not nearly as many. We made it to the King's Chair pretty quickly and ventured out onto the peak. At this point, I was at about the level of intensity that previous 1 hit acid trips had given me. Looking out over the peak at the trees was pretty stimulating. I rolled a cigarette and just took it all in. I had recently quit smoking tobacco all together, but I had heard nictoine + psychedelics is a good combination, and I was right - rolling and smoking cigarettes throughout the day grounded me at some times when I really needed it. We left soon after, so that some families could venture out onto the peak in our place. At this point I was feeling pretty good. From the peak we had seen a large stream or creek with people swimming, so we decided to try to find that. We made our way down the mountain's face, which was actually relatively easy. Along the way we explored some more rock formations, but Nate's fear of heights made the need to traverse the rocks more imminent. Not feeling anything too crazy, I decided I could handle the remaining half a hit, so I took it at this point. We stopped by a relatively remote area of rocks to contemplate smoking a bowl of pot. When we stopped, we started to notice the rocks morphing and emitting slight patterns. By the time we made it to the bottom, we were still tripping steadily. We crossed a road, and we were at the creek we had seen.
Chapter 3: The Descent
The water was much deeper here, and the current stronger, but there were just a many people. We set down our bags, I took off my glasses, and we got in the water. I was very aware of the currents in the water pulling me in different directions. Mikey commented on this a lot, he late would go on to say that the trip was very physical for him and that the currents in the water and the feel of the sand were some of the best moments for him. We laughed quite a bit, I began to wonder if it was really noticeable, but not having my glasses, I couldn't read the faces of the other visitors. We began to make our way downstream. I got sucked into a rather large waterfall, that looked very much like I could simply ride it to the bottom. I thought about it for a few minutes, but decided it was ultimately unsafe. I pulled myself out of the current and walked to the next section on land. My friends felt differently, and let themselves get sucked down the waterfall. This was a terrible idea, and they got cut up pretty badly. Some people nearby commented on how unusual it was that they decided to do that. We decided to leave this area.
Chapter 4: The Re-ascent
I was very anxious at this point. Until now the trip had been going pretty smoothly as far as my emotional state, but when we began climbing back up the mountain along a trail, I commented that I was feeling emotions I hadn't felt before. They weren't clear emotions, but it was more like my emotional states all started to mesh together, and then ebb and flow to create new combinations. It was so foreign to me that it was a little unsettling. We climbed up some steep rocks and perched ourselves on top as we once again contemplated smoking bud, only to realize we were tripping way too hard to add anything else to the mix. Alex, Nate and Cheeseman climbed up a little farther than me and Mikey. I rolled another cigarette and tried to get my bearings. At this point I was tripping harder than I had previously ever tripped on LSD. I felt like I was becoming connected to the rock I was sitting on, not melting into it per se, but more like feeling tendrils of energy coming out of it and connecting with tendrils of energy that I was emitting. As I looked at the leaves around me, they were intensely green, and also reaching out to me with their energy. I was experiencing a peak, one of a few I'd experience over the next several hours. After the sun warmed me a bit, I calmed down, and we continued up the trail back to the King's chair. After looking around quickly there, we decided to take a trail we hadn't taken before.
Chapter 5: The Plateau... are we ghosts?
The red trail, as it was called, emptied us out into a vast flat expanse (previous to this, all the trails had been hills) populated sparsely by tall trees. There was a playground full of children, and a family picnic of some kind was going on. The air here was different somehow, and kind of eerie. As I walked I felt like I was bouncing, and suddenly a young bald child in a tuxedo ran out in front of us. This was a real child, not an apparition, apparently there was some kind of ceremony going on. There were nicely dressed red headed children everywhere (except the one that was bald). My shoulder began to hurt (my left elbow and shoulder constantly were aching throughout the trip due to the fall I took in the very beginning). We were feeling pretty crazy at this point, but it was still not significantly more intense than my one hit experiences. Later I would come to view the time we spent in this little area as the "antechamber". After we left here, we truly began to trip. We sat down at a bench in the vast plateau and I wondered if the bench was here when there were no people around. I envisioned a solitary bench in these woods at night time, with no people around for hours. For some reason this felt like time being wasted to me. Certainly at some given time there are people doing things elsewhere, but right here at this bench, there is nobody. In this location that time is wasted, the bench has no opportunity to fulfill its purpose, it's just idling. "Poor bench", said Alex. I began to wonder if we were dead with all these well dressed children around.
We ventured farther through the plateau until we reached an abandoned parking lot area, and beyond this there were more trails, and more woods, with no people. We found a shady spot and broke out the marijuana. Things were pretty intense for me at this time, but I could definitely handle more (so I thought). I had already dropped my other half a tab hours ago, surely some weed couldn't hurt. We smoked 4 bowls in succession, a fairly large amount for us. I rolled a cigarette, my companions jeered me for smoking something so damaging to my health and addictive. I began to think about and discuss the shifting cultural attitude towards tobacco, or rather to question whether or not it's shifted at all, as at the time I didn't have any way to really research it and find out for sure. I surmised that when Native Americans (for some reason, possibly a slightly racist one, tobacco made me think first of the Native Americans) imbibed tobacco, they must've known that it was addictive (because they used lobelia to treat tobacco addiction) and harmful to your health, although they didn't have a concept of what a chemical is, let alone nicotine, and why something like that could cause that behavior. They just knew that this plant changed the way they felt, they had no idea why. As a person who heavily researches the psychopharmacology of all drugs I put in my body, this was mind boggling. It really was a wild frontier for the early drug users. "Wait, early?!" thought I. No, this has been the norm for thousands of years, until relatively recent history. It is in fact much more unusual in the grand scheme of things that in these past hundred years we have come to understand (at least somewhat) in a physical sense why a certain plant will effect us a certain way. With tobacco, culturally, was it looked down upon back then as my friends looked down on my smoking then? Did their children beg them to stop for the sake of their health? Juxtapose that image with that of the "peace pipe" we so commonly envision, and the actual historical data showing that tobacco was held in high regard. But is that any different than today's society? We simultaneously condemn and worship tobacco, that's a certainty.
But let's go back to discussing remarkable modern age of drugs shall we? While we smoked I talked at great length about why I am interested in psychedelics. As I mentioned, there is a long history of drug use, a history that has shaped religions and cultures that have died and that still exist (probably more than many of their adherents would care to admit in this modern drug fearing age). For the vast majority of that history 2 things were true. First, people didn't understand on a physical or scientific level why eating a particular mushroom or cactus would drastically alter the way they perceive the world. Hell, science didn't even exist for a lot of that time. Second, people were stuck with what we got. The things we could use to alter consciousness were limited to those plants that happened to harbor some chemical that fit into our neurons' receptors. That selection was limited even more for a large portion of the time by the regions in which they grew. Then something remarkable happened. Within the last 100 years, we gained the ability to make our own substances that alter the mind. I don't know now, nor did I then the first "man made" psychedelic (that is, something that would not otherwise exist in nature), but I have a guess that it would be LSD. The moment that molecule was forged, we took away some of nature's power and mystery (but in a good way). We took our minds' destinies into our own hands. To sit down and design a drug based on science we have collected as a society is a tremendous contribution to humanity, if not the most tremendous. What future lies ahead of us as a global society that has that power? Now there exists this dichotomy as a result, the so-called "classic" psychedelics, and those that we humans have created. "Isn't that interesting? Extraordinary.", I said, having just expressed something important to me with more eloquence and with more complete thought than I would've been able to with a sober mind (I wish I had a recording, because the written explanation feels much less complete than what I actually said). And this is a SUBculture! This is something that the average person wouldn't think about in their daily life. If you asked a person on the street what some of the most significant contributions to society made by science have been, very few would say "LSD" or "the ability to design mind altering drugs", when these things should be near the top of the list! Within the past few years I can name at least 3 documentaries about psychedelics and the people that pioneered this new modern age of drug design that all have yet to be completed due to lack of funding. Why aren't we utilizing this incredible power we have? Why does nobody care? Suddenly I realized how deep in thought I was, and not only that, but I was thinking about the thoughts I was thinking, and about how they were being thought. It was like I could examine the separate particles of a thought before they formed even the most minimal thought or whim.
"Psychiatrists MUST have access to this", I declared, no, demanded. "This can help a ton of people".
I began discussing the physical effects of the drug. At times it was quite pleasing, but sometimes it was a little uncomfortable. I described my "bones" as "smooth wooden hard ground joints rubbing against each other". Then I was talking about how when I was perched on a rock earlier, it felt like my surroundings were coming into my eyes and "slapping me in the face". This was apparently just one too many penile double entendres for Cheeseman, who burst out laughing. Nobody else realized it until he explained how ridiculous I had been sounding. Unusual...I would've normally picked up on something like that.
We talked like this and smoked for about a half hour before we decided to venture onward.
The next set of trails was very long and the surroundings were pretty similar to each other. Cheeseman knew where we were based on the map we had gotten from the visitor's center, but I wouldn't have been able to navigate at that point (he was pretty coherent as he had only taken the one hit). On the way we stopped a few times. At one point we looked at a tree with a spider web on it, and it was simultaneously moving towards and away from me. Visuals were increasing. We sat on a log and talked about whether or not we could drive to Baltimore yet. I looked at alex, and he looked me in the eyes and said emphatically "I'm FUCKED up." I've been friends with Alex for a long time, and we've done a lot of psychedelic drugs together, but I've never seen him phased like this. Alex ALWAYS keeps his cool, but I guess the 2 hits were getting to him. We finally found ourselves out of the woods. We had decided earlier that we would take the drive to Baltimore when we were sober enough to drive, and Cheeseman claimed that he was. I trusted him, because he would not have lied, and indeed for the entirety of the drive he not only navigated us to baltimore out of the sticks through shoddy GPS satellite reception, but controlled the car normally, so I assume that during this time period the trip had already ended for him. I asked him a few times later, and he insisted this was the case. However, those of us that had taken more than 1 were about to realize that we were nowhere near finished.
Chapter 6: The Ride
We piled in the car and Nate asked if we were too fucked up to drive. I was. Cheeseman assured us he was fine. Classic rock was put on the radio and we began driving. I don't remember much of this time period, I do remember some isolated details. At one point I remember saying "look at it out here!" because everywhere I looked everything was stunningly beautiful. We were driving through deep rural landscapes, nothing but the heat from the sun, the wind from the window, and deep green vegetation, peppered occasionally with some type of house or long abandoned shack carrying some insignificant but oh-so-significant minutia - a pile of firewood next to a red wagon, an old horse grazing, or a small home garden. There would be a field of golden crops with a solitary tree at its center, or something similar, and I'd just be floored. As the sun beat down on the car the sky rippled, and as we took turns and changed the direction from which the sun was coming, it would go with the ebb and flow of the trip. The road looked like a cartoon of a road. These were the strongest visuals I got during the trip, and the strongest I'd had from LSD ever. One hit trips were nice for feeling great for a full day, but at this level I was finally getting a feel of what LSD was really about. I closed my eyes and saw multi colored worms crawling, which eventually turned into thin stalks of pointy flowers flashing colors. With my eyes closed the physical effects became clearer- I was on fire with pleasure. It was kind of edgy almost, I was just full of happiness and energy, the heat of the sun fueling this. Throughout this period I was squirming (we were 5 deep in the car), constantly changing position and saying "oh my god" or "holy shit". Nate broke out a gummi lunchbox and some multiflavored twizzlers and I happily ate candy, which tasted pretty good. We decided to stop to get food, not because we were hungry, but because we felt we had to eat as it was almost 6pm and all we'd had was small snacks. Cheeseman pulled us into a McDonalds, and offered to get us all food. I asked for a McDouble, and I followed him in to use the bathroom. In the bathroom the "on fire" feeling was back full force, due to the orange tiles and the hum of the fan. The whole room felt like it was on fire with energy. I went back out to the car and half laid down in the hatchback, looking insane to passersby. Those of us still in the car were having panic attacks. "Why has he been in there that long?", "Where are we?", "I'm fucked up", etc. Finally he came back, but realized they forgot one of the snack wraps, so he went back in. About this time a couple came out and saddled up on a motorcycle parked besides us. They were taking a while, and I was imagining them talking about us and making mean looks, really just bugging me out. Finally Cheeseman came back for good. I bit into the burger and it was the worst thing I'd ever eaten. I could taste every single awful part of it. My body just didn't want food, but I managed to force most of it down.
About 5 minutes after we left McDonalds I had to pee again. 30 minutes after that, things were getting pretty serious in my bladder, but we were pulling up on Baltimore. Or not...it turned out to be another smaller city! Baltimore was still over 30 minutes away! But there was nothing but open highway...things were getting bad. We came to a stop at a light slightly outside of the main city of Baltimore. In an attempt to find a place where I could pee, Cheeseman pulled us into a neighborhood. Immediately we realized this was a mistake, and as it turned out it would end up being the beginning of a long journey in search of a bathroom that would actually prolong the drive by quite a while and take us nowhere near any bathrooms. As soon as we made the turn, we were face to face with a firetruck blaring its sirens. It came to a stop right in front of us, and fireman rushed out of it to meet a police officer talking to an upset looking woman on her stoop. What the fuck? Is this real? We couldn't back up either due to traffic behind us, so we were just stuck there for a while until we decided to try to squeeze past the truck (successfully). We immediately realized we were in the ghettoest of ghettoes - easily the worst part of any town I'd ever seen. There are a lot of details that go into making that so immediately clear, and in my altered state I quickly recognized them all (but I'd be at a loss to list them here). We progressed further into the neighborhood until we got closer to baltimore, and things started getting bigger, but just as fucked up. We passed a huge university and I begged to pee there, but we couldn't merge to make the turn. All the buildings were tall houses or storefronts that were long since abandoned, or at least looked like it. They were blown out and boarded, but there were still tons of people hanging out on the stoops and walking by talking to each other. We explored a town area, with tons of houses, but nowhere to pee, not even a church. We then went back the way we came, and made a turn that took us onto a golfcourse. There were trees to pee, but people everywhere playing golf. What the fuck is going on here! I've had to pee for what seemed like an hour. We ended up in a strange park. There was a large body of water with a trail surrounding it where people could bike or walk or drive and park, but none of those people looked healthy or even like they were enjoying themselves. We arrived here after having explored a whole other area with no bathrooms, so by this point it was mission critical. At first we stopped near a building that looked like a visitor's center or pavilion. As I approached it (running) I realized the building didn't really look like anything, none of them did. In fact for quite a while we'd been driving past buildings like this - huge, but indistinguishable. What was this building used for? What is this place we were stuck in? As I approached the door I saw a sign hung above it that said, in huge red letters, "NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS". I almost shit and piss myself. I ran back to the car screaming, and I asked a guy walking past where the nearest bathrooms were, but he had no idea (or at least I think thats what he said). We traveled the circular trail some more until I saw a wooded area. I asked them to stop the car, grabbed my phone for some reason, and I ran as fast as I could towards trees I saw in the distance. As I was running, I could hear a police siren from nearby, and a helicopter was flying overhead, giving me the illusion that I was a fugitive trying to pee in secret. I founds some woods with no people nearby and peed for an eternity. As I did, I heard music a few hundred feet away, and later we would drive past a concert of some kind. We made our way from the park towards inner harbor using the GPS, and we were taken through even more incredibly impoverished neighborhoods. We repeatedly saw people on corners at bars or liqour stores holding their hands out to cars as if they were half pointing at something in the distance, or hitch hiking, but they were actually selling heroin and/or crack. We stopped at a McDonalds to ask for directions because the GPS was bugging out, and across the street there was a small mechanic's shop with a sign out front that said "OBAMA GOLOBOL JUXTICE". This whole part of the trip made me think about how fortunate I am to live in a house and to eat food, and how the lives of the incredibly poor were so much different in every way from mine, but probably also very similar in a lot of ways.Eventually we ended up in inner harbor, and by this point, after tripping so hard for the entire car ride, we were starting to feel like we were on the tail end of the last wave.
Chapter 7: The Landing
And there we were - a short walk and we were sitting with our feet over the edge of the harbor. I rolled a cigarette to compliment the last sparkles in my visual field as we overlooked boats (one of which was named "Hyp-Nautical") bobbing on the acid-tinged waves with the big Domino sugar sign in the background. There was still some daylight, but the nightlife was beginning. The harbor was flooded with people of ALL kinds. People watching during this period was amazing. As we sat at the harbor a man tried to sell us cards that said he was deaf. We declined. 30 seconds later, a raft floated by on the harbor, and as I looked at the passengers I saw them conversing in sign language. It was one of those moments where something just clicks, and gains a larger significance, or at least just the illusion of one. We walked around the harbor people watching. It was the most diverse group of people i'd been around in quite a while, people from literally everywhere I could think of, and speaking tons of different languages - it was a beautiful way to spend a comedown. There was a boat docked there from brazil, and we watched the people on board. We made our way to a hookah bar that my girlfriend and I had eaten at towards the beginning of our relationship, and knew was good. At this point we were peacefully in the afterglow, and we ate mediterranean food with our hands while we talked about the trip over a hookah. After we arrived back home we made a bonfire and smoke some more pot, and took some shots of liqour (I don't usually drink alcohol). I emptied my pouch of tobacco into the fire and I haven't really thought about smoking since, although I know I will again the next time I trip - it was all too valuable.
Conclusion/Reflection
My previous adventures with this substance had all been with one hit of blotter. I knew from the first time I tried LSD that it was one of the most extraordinary drugs I had ever done, or ever would do, despite the fact that all it made me do at that dosage was feel kind of silly and add a tinge of beauty and significance to my surroundings. At this level, though, it was like meeting LSD for the first time all over again. Having fully pronounced visuals and being pushed to the edge of losing my cool left me feeling like I had gone waist deep into this substance after only getting my feet wet previously - I felt "accomplished", like I could finally say I knew my way around this chemical (or at least, moreso than before. I can't imagine doses above 2 or 3 hits yet...). I don't know if I ever want to go head under. LSD was exceedingly good for me at this dose, but there were elements I was not a fan of, and that I feel could be more of a problem at higher doses. For one, especially during the car ride, it was very edgy. Certainly there's a degree of anxiety with taking any psychedelic, but this was definitely the drug talking. My mindset was actually quite calm, but I felt kind of artificially rushed. I've always heard people say that LSD is distinctly "synthetic", and I was definitely aware of that at this level more than with one hit. There were a few times where I felt my control slipping a little bit, which I guess is something I'll just have to get used to as I explore this world of perception-altering drugs (I guess that's kind of the point isn't it?). I'm hoping mescaline proves less "pushy", and hopefully within a month or two I will have performed my first extraction to find out. I'd like to explore some deeper, more challenging headspaces but the thought of using LSD to do that makes me apprehensive at this point. Anyway, at the time, this experience was just what I needed. I came out of the day feeling exhausted, but mentally incredibly refreshed after such a dull long year of stress - and I met/saw/interacted with a lot of cool people and gained a lot of memorable stories.
I plan on taking LSD at the one hit level with some copious amounts of marijuana at an upcoming hip hop festival. I think the cannabis definitely brought out a lot of the visuals during this excursion, it was right after we smoked that things started to get intense in the visual field. Hopefully one hit plus some weed will bring out nice visual effects without all the heady edge and make for a nice day out enjoying some music in a lighthearted setting.
The most valuable aspect of this experience to me was the ability I had during one of the peaks to evaluate my thoughts as they came to me. I meant what I said: I demand that this be available to psycho-analysts. In the future when I have the resources to do such things, I plan on doing whatever I can to support this idea. Another really interesting aspect that I touched on but never directly addressed was the importance of details contributing to a whole. I was very keen to hone in on details of my surrounding during the time I was on the drug, but looking back on the experience, and even looking back on the past while I was still tripping, I couldn't remember any of them, but I could remember the emotions that the details evoked contributing to a whole, overall feel and general memory. I don't remember the details about the landscape during the drive that made me feel like I was surrounded by beauty the likes of which I'd never seen, I don't remember the exact details of the faces I saw in the slums of Baltimore that made me connect with and reflect on what life must be like for those people, and I don't remember all the different kinds of people I saw in inner harbor that reminded me that my culture was but a very small part of a huge global patchwork, but I do remember those thoughts and feelings (I'll probably never forget them), and I feel that these broad, retrospective emotions were directly created by the detailed information I took in while my mind was so receptive. I guess that's how all memories are really, the details fade and leave a footprint, or sometimes no trace at all. With this particular chemical in my brain, though, it was very apparent that I was forming memories, and significant memories at that, as they formed. I watched them grow from the details up.
It was one for the books. %)
