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LSD + Cannabis - exp. - The Nature of Tripping [bad trip in the woods]

bluedolphin

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Feb 19, 2003
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LSD - exp. - The Nature of Tripping [bad trip in the woods]

This, the most anticipated trip of the summer, was a real let down in a lot of ways.

Pre-Trip Introductions and Ramblings

The trip that was about to take place was planned perfectly, and everyone was super excited. The trippers would be myself, my girlfriend, and my old friends Kara and Jake.

Kara had asked me if I could "hook her up" with acid for about a year now, and it just so happened that I finally had a little bit to share. She had only taken LSD once before, a couple years ago, and she recalled this experience fondly so I was excited to share the experience with her once again.

I had tripped with Jake before. Once, at a Phish show where he sort of wandered off, so we didn't actually trip together, and then once again just about a month ago when we ate some fantastic mushrooms and I lost my ego in the woods. ( see my Trip Report ) This trip had revealed a few personality traits about Jake that made me a little uncomfortable, but I had a great time nonetheless. Regardless, I invited him to trip with us to return the favor. Additionally, he had never taken LSD before, and I was excited to show him why I considered LSD the best psychedelic drug.

And of course there was my girlfriend Psilosara. Some of you who frequent this forum, and inevitably end up reading some of the many trip reports I write, are probably familiar with her. She is my one love, my grounding force, and she also likes to take LSD. Why not bring her along too? ;)

Myself? Well, I'd eaten some LSD from this same batch just a couple weeks before at a friend's apartment. As I already knew, the LSD was of good quality. I'll admit my frame of mind has been out of whack lately. I haven't been spending much time at home, I've had anxiety attacks followed by deep depression, and I only have sporatic and strange forms of employment. Basically, when I hear that Modest Mouse song "Float On", I think, "that's what I'm doing".

And then there was my friend, who we'll call C-Slice. He was going to trip with us, but Kara decided the night before that C-Slice creeped her out, and she refused to trip with him. I had the pleasure of breaking this news to C-Slice, and apologizing on her behalf. It sort of pissed me off to have to do that, especially since the others just wanted to not tell him and instead tell him the wrong meeting time and place, or something. Fuck that shit, I thought, that's not how we do this. If we're going to give someone the boot, somebody's at least gotta tell him straight to his face. So I did that, and felt like an asshole doing it. Upon doing so, the seed of regret had been planted inside of me.

The Trip

So it was 12:00 noon and the four of us parked a car on the bottom of a mountain and began to walk up a steep and rocky trail to the summit, which was only about a half hour's climb, where we'd find a place to trip out. At the bottom of the trail I gave everyone two microdots, except myself. I ate an extra large mutant microdot which looked like it was two normal microdots fused together.

We climbed this trail, and it was really hot out so we were all drenched in sweat by the time we reached the top. The actual top of the hill was a good couple hundred feet off the trail, so we decided we'd claim the top of the hill for our own, as it should prove to be a secluded and scenic location.

Sitting around, over the next couple of hours I observed my friends display the early signs of a trip setting in. A little bit of extra laughter here, a little bit of extra attention paid to a bit of moss there, and some muscle twitches over there. Of course I was already feeling the complex tryptamine surging through me. My hands were shaking a bit more than usual and I could feel the energy surging through my arms. My stomach had tightened just a bit, but nothing uncomfortable or really distracting.

Jake had brought a guitar up with him, and we took turns playing it as our trips set in. About two hours after dropping, I noticed some visuals like rocks breathing and patterns forming in the nature around us. Jake and Kara seemed a bit impatient, but I assured them there was another two hours to peak. This particular LSD seems to hit people a little later than a blotter does, most likely because of its microdot form. I dunno, it just does. So we walked around and explored our surroundings, talked about weird subject matter, and enjoyed stretching and feeling the wind blowing over the hill.

Fast forward three hours, and we are all peaking. At this point I feel like I need a change of scenery, and suggest going for a walk. I know the trails around this area well, and I know there are some particularly nice areas only a few minutes away. Why not explore rather than sitting in the same place for the entire day?

It was not just this particular spot that was getting to me. It was Jake. I thought I could barely stand to listen to him brag about how much ganja he sells one more time. "It's not about the money." Yeah, riiiight. Furthermore, I was tried of listening to him dominate the conversation by constantly changing the topic to something which allowed him to show off how well traveled he is and what a deep thinker he considers himself.

Furthermore, whenever I couldn't give a shit about what he was talking about, and spent a few moments looking around at nature or thinking to myself, he would direct his conversation at me. Of course I wouldn't know what he was talking about because I stopped listening, and then he would say something like, "BD is zoning out again," or "It's okay, just go back into your own little world." Then he would look to Kara and my own girlfriend of almost four years for some sort of reinforcement for this condescending behavior.

Normally I would have said, "My own little world? What the fuck are you talking about kid... my own little world doesn't revolve around listening to your verbal masturbation. That's right, poking this rock with this stick is exponentially more interesting than you. Put your fucking shirt back on and get over yourself."

But as many of you know, tension on LSD must be avoided at all costs. Especially at the peak of a trip, and with nowhere to go besides this hill top for the next several hours. So, feeling absolutely no need to explain myself, I said nothing. While there was a thunderhead slowly gathering humidity inside my brain, I remained neutral in outward appearance.

Psilosara was rocking back and forth in her camp seat, and I wondered what she was thinking and experiencing. I could feel the tension oozing out of her, but I didn't ask her for three reasons. First, I no longer felt like I was in the company of trusted friends, and any conversation I was to have with her, I wanted to be private. Second, I am always very respectful of people's rights not to reveal their thoughts, especially in front of other people, until they are ready to do so. I wish people would extend me this courtesy more often. Third, every time I looked at her or tried to start conversation, she was focused on the shirtless wonder boy. I thought it was strange that I could hardly make eye contact with her without her eyes darting towards this source of constant annoyance.

Anyway, Jake decided to roll a spliff (weed/tobacco), and I felt it was late enough in the trip for me to smoke. I took probably 8 or 10 drags from the spliff, and instantly my trip went from a high ++ to a +++.

And instantly my heartrate shot up from slightly elevated, as is normal under the influence of LSD, to VERY elevated and beating extra hard. I became hypersensitive to all my physical functions and it made me very anxious. FUCK. I've been here before. And now I'm back here again. I did this shit to myself and now I have to deal with a hyperactive heart for the next hour... two... three? I'm seriously amazed my heart puts up with this shit.

No, I didn't think I would die or have a heart attack. I've had a few panic attacks on weed, and one particularly nasty one on weed + DXM, where I did think I was going to have a heart attack. Apparently my heart can take it, but there's no way to calm yourself down when your heart is beating way faster and harder than normal. Of course the buzz focused itself into my left arm where it took on the feeling of a numb left arm. I'm no stranger to such psychosomaticism. I willed the buzz to focus in my right arm, and then move up to my mind. I've trained myself to do this.

Then I lay back and crossed my arms over my chest. This is to prevent confusion between my actual heart rate and the frequency of the tryptamine buzz, which is a bit faster than my actual heart rate and can be confused for a heart rate if I am not monitoring it. Maybe you think if I just ignore it, I'll calm down and it will slow down. No. However I can slow it down somewhat by focusing on the beats and gradually imagining that my heart is beating slower than it actually is.

During this time I couldn't have cared less about what was going on around me, except for Psilosara sitting to my left. She knew what was happening and put her hand on my chest for a moment, and as she did my heart calmed down to a level I could cope with.

But like I said my trip had elevated significantly since I smoked the spliff. I stared up at the trees and saw that each one was glowing brightly against the sky. The clouds were constantly shifting and changing shapes. The trees, however, were taunting me. I wanted to stop looking at trees, I was sick of all these damn trees, but no matter where I looked there were trees. I tried closing my eyes but the CEVs were not pleasing to look at. So I stared at the trees and made the entire forest turn into a fractal pattern. Well, that's cool, I guess.

Then I heard Jake mention something about me being in my own world, zoning out looking at the tree tops. I harnessed my negative energy and directed it in a beam right at him. "I want you to feel what I am feeling!"

Right after that, to my great satisfaction, he appeared to be struck by the intensity of the trip. He laid back and stared at the tree tops himself. Up until this point I felt he had showed little appreciation for the LSD which I had worked hard to obtain for him, saying things like, "I tripping, I guess." and complaining about the lack of visuals right after being convinced that a stick in the dirt was a snake about to attack him, and also right after mentioning that the whole world looks like its being seen through a trippy filter.

Stuff like that really makes me want to keep my stash to myself. (not that I have a stash anymore)

After a while of intense thoughts, including some messed up thought loops which I managed to wrestle my way out of, I was ready to move around and get up. My heartrate was still very elevated but not any more than if I had just smoked a bunch of pot. So we began playing a mobile frisbee game. See, most of our throws were pretty good but pretty often we'd ricochet off a tree or throw it in the totally wrong direction, so the frisbee would land away from us. Then we'd just move our game to where the frisbee landed, and so on. This went on for some time, until our game ended up moving too far down the hill and we were attacked by deer flies and mosquitoes. We realized that we were pretty much trapped on the top of our hill, as the bugs were really starting to come out.

What is there to say about the rest of the trip? Coming down was a long, drawn out process. We were stuck up on the hilltop until almost 10:00pm because we didn't want to return to civilization (or anybody's house while their parents were still around, as we weren't near anyone's apartment at the time).

So we made a fire and fed it for quite some time, sitting around with little left to say and nothing left to do. At one point I asked Psilosara if she wanted to join me for a walk, hoping we could discuss things in private and enjoy a change of setting. She refused, saying that she didn't want to split up the group. I jokingly said, "What, these kids?"... but I was dead serious. I saw no reason to give them any consideration. If Psilosara wasn't there I would have gone for a walk myself, and probably not come back.

Eventually though, it was time to head back. Our original plan, which I was fond of, was to walk back down though the woods to Psilosara's house which was directly off the same trail which took us to the top of the hill, but on the other side of the hill.

So we turned on our headlamps and went down what I thought was the same way we came up, but somehow didn't run into the trail. But since I know the geography of this wooded area pretty well, I just started wandering back and forth systematically back in the direction we had missed the trail. Jake continued to piss me off by constantly questioning my navigation, and suggested we go down the hill in the completely wrong way, away from any trails at all, and tried to rally support for this, the completely wrong direction. This pissed me off because I wasn't in the mood for getting totally lost in the woods far away from any trails or roads. Fortunately Kara agreed that we should keep heading back in the direction that I was taking us. So we walked this way, but Jake jumped ahead and led us, found the trail (of course), and took credit for saving us from being lost in the woods.

Then we went to Wendy's drive through and ate chicken.

What did I learn from this?

1. Be more selective when choosing who to trip with. No more going into trips "for other people". Often when I trip with others my intent is for their delight, not my own. No more of that.

2. The woods do not nescessarily provide endless entertainment for a tripper.

3. People who obviously trip face and then complain about the quality/potency of the drugs can suck it.
 
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^^ I like your third point the best. =D

I sometimes find that even the most carefully "planned" trips go really wrong, whereas spur-of-the-moment trips have sometimes been among the best I've had.

I came very close to tripping on acid with a couple of friends in the woods a few weeks ago, and decided not to for basically the same reasons. I had no experience tripping with them before and wasn't sure how they would take it, and I knew if I was with them they would potentially have ruined my trip, and/or had bad trips themselves. In the end I'm glad I didn't do it; although I do hope to trip with those guys someday.

Sorry your trip didn't turn out so well. :(
 
Man, I'm sorry you had such a shitty time. As I was reading your report, when you mentioned in the beginning about how it was that dude's first time on acid, I immediately thought to myself, "Damn, Blue Dolphin is a better man than me, because I swore off tripping with acid-newbies YEARS ago." Then of course, as the report progressed, it was evident that you were having the same kind of experience that led me to swear off tripping with acid-newbies. Acid is SOOOOO magical and sacramental to me that there is NO way in hell I will ever again take it with anyone who doesn't feel exactly the same way about it as I do (I've always loved how D.M. Turner labelled it "the molecule of perfection"). Anyway, as I'm sure you would agree, sometimes it's important to have experiences like these for the simple fact that it puts things into perspective, one way or another. I like the three conclusions you've drawn... especially number 3! Also, number 2 is a very important lesson I learned as well. Hiking is one thing, but just sitting around at the top of a hill.... well that's probably better reserved for the shorter-lasting trips.

Anyway, now you should at the very least know WHY acid never found him in the past. He didn't deserve it.

Church
 
1. Be more selective when choosing who to trip with. No more going into trips "for other people". Often when I trip with others my intent is for their delight, not my own. No more of that.

Very good call.

Sorry your trip turned out the way you did. At least you learned some valuable lessons.
 
Awesome trip report! Good to hear that you got something out of it at least, even if it wasn't quite what you were expecting. Had you noticed these personality traits in Jake before the two times you tripped with him? Just wondering cause you say he is an old friend, I found it curious that you might only have discovered this after tripping with him.

Thanks for sharing.
 
Very interesting how tripping can bring to the surface problems that are normally hidden in relationships just like it can bring to the surface problems in one's own mind. Thanks for the report man I enjoyed reading it.
 
Sorry for that jake character. Definitely seems like someone who would not be fun to trip with what so ever.

Also, I really respect how you called,explained and were straight up with the person who was going to trip with you but couldn't because the others didnt feel comftrable aroudn him. Your friends seemed rather shady by planing on telling him dthe wrong meeting place or whatever. So thats really cool that you were straight up man.

Also, you should let that jake kid know how fucking lucky he was to actually experience LSD. Because there are people out there like me and millions of others who have nothing but trip reports, erowid, Timothy leary books, and hope to come across LSD someday. He should really consider himself lucky that one you hooked him up with your obtained stash and secondly that he had the oppurtunity to experience it.

Peace
 
I'm impressed you stuck with it, even after you wanted to split away from the other 2. Call it selfish if you will, but I do what it takes for me to remain positive whilst tripping, and if that means leaving the group to do so, then so be it.

If it wasn't completely against all reasonings of HM and a waste of a dot, I'd have suggested feeding jake more acid until he got lost in his own head and cried for a saviour ;)
 
Wow, another great report. You should publish a book about all your experiences, I'd definately buy it. You have the unique ability of remembering even the smallest details about your experience as far as what you were thinking, what you saw, heard, etc. and translating it all into words. Most people can't do that, I know I can't. All your reports are so vivid and crystal clear, I feel like I'm actually there when I'm reading.

Anyways, I'm sorry to hear you had such a bad time. Jake was definately the cause of all of your problems. I guess you learned the hard way never to trip with him again. At least you didn't go off the deep end and attack him or anything :). I don't think I would have had as much self control as you did. Instead of poking a rock with that stick I'd be poking out Jake's eyes screaming, "try and look at my girlfriend now you stupid mother fucker!!" :)

Put your fucking shirt back on and get over yourself.

Hahaha, thats exactly what I think when I see people like this. Best line of the whole report :)
 
Doooofus said:
Had you noticed these personality traits in Jake before the two times you tripped with him? Just wondering cause you say he is an old friend, I found it curious that you might only have discovered this after tripping with him.

Kind of. He is an old friend, but not an old *good* friend, you know what I mean?

I've been around him since writing this and its not like his very presence pisses me off normally, I just think he's a tool.

And Meanie... he's got 3 more hits which he wants to take all at once next time (about 300ug). Hopefully that snaps him in half and makes him beg for the mercy of the lysergic gods =D
 
People like that spoil the experience into a bad trip not freaky but just mind-bogglingly boring as the trip just loses its magic to a social context that has no philosophical or interesting conversation whereas i like to talk without my ego and revel in the pure mystery, ecstasy and mysticism derived from these drugs, i guess with some people losing their ego is an impossibility, i had the exact same problem; however, i didn't keep my cool and he thought i was going berserk with all my nitrous, the sound made him freak out a bit and with me breathing it in and out it was kinda understandable.

yet another nice report:)

peace

iopener
 
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I plan on writing my own report from this experience, however because your report clarified some confusion for me, here's my response:

Great job, however a harder one to read emotionally, again literally your writing is clear and honest.

Jake and I have been going to school together since we were five, never friends til high school, and though we've been fairly good friends, I've always wondered what conflict there is under the surface: he has always seemed a contradiction of sorts, and it wasn't until I tripped with him that I saw this inner turmoil, so to speak.

You first report with him merely glazed the surface of what he might be under the harder influence, but because you were so free and perhaps more of a leader you got a more comfortable experience. I'm glad for that, and sorry that he reacted the way he did this time, after your first report I was hopeful you guys were gonna be happy trip buddies.

You captured this difficulty well bd, he just seemed to struggle, with the acid challenging him (in only the best way I think) and his veil of vanity fighting back.

I really enjoyed your report even though it reminded me of a very difficult experience. I was uncomfortable remembering how the tension detracted from my being able to communicate well with you, and I hope that my report, including my first discussion of some ego loss, will clarify for you my experience as yours did for me.

I was very happy to read that my hand and little cuddle was beneficial to your state, as it was for me.

The woods were such an interesting trip buddy, they changed it not how we expected from the people who rave about hiking all day on some psychedlic or the other. The woods did not give so much freedom but seemed somehow a limiter, and how frustrating is that. So it was a day of sitting, worsened severely by the addition of pot I think.

Maybe jake turned to pot for the familiarity, when the rest of him wanted to be twisted and turned around in the face of the acid. Oh, that glorious acid, it was perhaps too much for him, he protected himself by ignoring it when he could. When the acid gave him a scare though, holy shit was that a sight. I wonder what this next trip will be like for him with three hits, because I can't imagine he could keep the trip under wraps like he tried to with us.

I only hope we can trip again soon with Kara, she was supercool and, well this is far too long. I promise to write my own, I hope this didn't take over yours. Looking forward to doing it better next time.

peace
 
BlueDolphin - First of all I would like to agree with everyone who complimented you on your trip report writing ability, it is simply fantastic. It's almost like you can just play back the entire trip in your memory like a video. That's incredible... I'm a lousy trip report writer so I don't write any trip reports for that reason. I wish I could write like you can. Keep it up :)

But anyway, I know Jake's type. I've tripped with these kinds of people before, and it's no fun. For this reason I only trip with "real" trippers these days, it's just a waste of time to entertain the kiddies. Know what I mean? Their ego is too big to let go of, and it really gets to me. Tripping with experienced friends is just so much better of an experience, being with people who know how to make the best of it, and are very familiar with the effects of psychedelics. These kind of people know how to get the most out of a trip, both in terms of spiritual content and just plain ol' fun.

Great report, I'm sorry it turned out that way.

Better luck next time ;)

john
 
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