SickPunk
Bluelighter
I.) Prologue
The friend who was hosting our trip was at a drama banquet until around 10:00 PM, so we knew we would be off to a late start. We had purchased 4 hits of acid off a friend who had already dropped some from the same batch, and told us it was both potent and safe. Our group consisted of 4 individuals, all with varying levels of drug experience.
II.) Cast of Characters
C: Myself. I've been smoking pot for around 4 years, but only for about a year as a regular activity. Before then, I'd smoke at a party, which was maybe once every 2 weeks to a month. Now, I smoke 2-3 times a week on average (it's a lot easier to smoke in university than it was in high school - less homework), and have done shrooms ~10 times, often coupled with a lot of cannabis and alcohol, and usually around 5 grams.
K: He's been smoking regularly for a few years now, and has tried shrooms numerous times. He said he's also tried acid, but didn't specify frequency. He's experienced, but tends to get really energetic and freak out a tad on shrooms, so I was glad we had a sitter.
J: The least experienced of our group. He basically started smoking when I (and many of my friends) started smoking regularly, so he got thrust right into it (we didn't pressure him, though). He's done shrooms probably about as many times as I have, and is usually very passive on a trip.
M: The most experienced. Smoked all through high school, did shrooms many times, but never tried acid. Still, my favorite friend to trip with, bar none.
MW and MT: Our sitters. Both experienced with shrooms and cannabis, but not acid. Trusted friends.
III.) The Trip
We dropped acid around 10:00 PM in J's bathroom. The paper was small... a square less than half a CM on all sides. We placed the paper on our tongues, and moved it around for 15-20 minutes as per a friend's instructions. After the 20 minutes had passed, we went outside to smoke two bowls between all of us. K opted out, as he had experienced a bad trip in the past after combining shrooms and cannabis. After going inside post-session, J, M, and myself began to feel the effects. No hallucinations yet, but we began to feel somewhat uneasy and "different". We were watching Waking Life, end enjoying it mostly on a sober level. We got occasional bursts of energy, but were mostly sober. I decided to draw.
I got out my clipboard and a pen, and began to draw. This is when I observed that I was tripping. Not only were the drawings really, really strange, but the pen was acting oddly. After laying down a line, it didn't statically remain on the page... it instead would follow the tip of my pen, and eventually settle to a location on its own. I mentioned this to the group, and several observers who were there temporarily came over to look, and commented that the drawings were very detailed and "good". This is surprising, since I hadn't drawn a single picture aside from doodles in nearly a year. Before then, I was an active artist.
Friends began to mention their trip, M especially. His eyes looked like saucers to me, and his face even looked different. He had a very intense look on his face. K was upset that he was feeling no effects, and repeatedly mentioned that it must've been the bowl we smoked that did it for us. J claimed to be feeling no effects, but this was likely psychological; he's a bigger gentleman, and has in the past expressed doubt that pot and shrooms would affect him. The size of the hit only added to his concerns that such a "little" thing could "fuck him up".
J's entry into the trip began when he told us that a snake had just run across his ceiling. We began to joke with him about his claims that LSD wouldn't affect him, and the change in him was now quite apparent. K was still not tripping out. I can't recall if some people went to smoke another bowl or not, but if they did, K took part in it, and returned tripping out quite a bit. He began to growl and make other animal noises. He got into several small fights with two of the people there, who were both his good friends and had no problem with it. He would occasionally growl and run upstairs, which caused J some level of concern. He later fell down the stairs.
At this point we decided to put on some music. We selected Kid A by Radiohead. The music didn't inspire many visuals with me, but the music felt markedly different. It felt more liquid, and made me feel as if it was surrounding me. Some friends left to go to Sobey's for snacks at this point, and so I ended up in a very comfortable chair, and began my most active drawing session of the night. I tried to draw a friend, but the picture turned out much different. Pictures will follow. We also smoked a bowl, given by the subject of my most recent picture. This gentleman, who was very experienced with cannabis and shrooms, remarked that I seemed very normal, and had he not known, wouldn't have assumed I was on acid. I've received these comments before on shrooms.
At this point, the subject observed that I had begun to trip out hard on the picture I was drawing… I had to explain to him that while drawing, my pen began to move in reverse, and the lines were being sucked back into the pen. This freaked me out, as I realized that I hadn't drawn anything at all in the last few minutes.
This is the point at which things get rather hazy. I will attempt to explain the experiences, but they may not be in the proper order. I believe I attempted to draw for quite some time, and probably had a lot of very tripped-out ramblings. Either way, enough time passed that the bulk of temporary visitors had left, and eventually K, M, MT, and MW left to buy more snacks and go on an adventure, leaving myself, J, and a passed-out drunk individual named AE alone in the basement. We were completely okay with this for quite some time, and were watching a movie. I cannot recall which movie it was.
We began to get very concerned that our friends weren't coming back, as they had been gone for quite some time. For at least a half-hour, we sustained a conversation of:
J: "Where'd they go?"
C: "I don't know; where'd they go?"
J: "I don't know! Maybe they went home!"
C: "No! They still have K and C!"
J: "Where'd they go?"
C: "I don't know!"
...And so on. Eventually, I decided that it was a good idea to turn out the lights. There was too much happening, and I desired to make the room as simple as I could. Belying this, I also popped in Altered States on DVD and put Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots into the CD player. Surprisingly, this calmed me down a lot, but J was not so lucky. We put the lights back on and put something else in the DVD player - I think it was Seinfeld. Either way, my urge to simplify the room was not sated in any way. I began to clean very fervently, starting with the end of the basement we weren't in. Somehow, I cleaned it up to the point that it had looked before anyone had arrived. I was very proud of this, and mentioned it to J, who looked back and was very happy that it was so clean. I moved on to the somewhat messier room we were currently occupying. It was much more work than the last room, causing me to frequently stand and marvel for minutes on end. I began to clean it up quickly, with J directing certain choices from his chair. We spent a long time reflecting on things such as the remotes... moving them a few centimetres on a table would make us both very happy, that it was "where it should be".
Ultimately, the room was very clean. We both decided it was a good idea to smoke a bowl, in order to return us to the state we had been in before the trip. I realized that was the reason that I had cleaned the room up so well. We smoked a bowl, which took a very, very long time, as neither of us could manage large tokes and passing the bowl was a chore. We again wondered where everyone had gone. We also decided that this was the time to enjoy some snacks, as J would not feel obligated to give them to everyone. I drank a can of root beer, and we ate several chocolates. They were delicious.
I believe it was around 2 AM when our friends returned. I saw K first, and had never been so happy to see him. I hugged him and freaked out, explaining how J and I had no idea where everyone was. We all sat down and were much happier for it.
Again, details have become fuzzy. I remember hanging out upstairs with only K, J, M, and myself present, and we had some amazing jams on piano. We were playing mostly random notes, but occasionally, we would actually play real music. I remember in particular a section from a jam of M, and myself where at one point everything lined up and we played this beautiful descending melody that was actually being harmonized in a real way. K and myself also had a very productive jam, as both of us actually have musical training. He stuck to playing a bass line, occasionally remarking "I never thought of doing it like that... it's just... patterns, I never thought of doing it like that". He was unable to explain any further. In particular, K had trouble explaining his thoughts to the rest of us, prompting me to tell him that it wasn't worth it trying to justify his thoughts to reality, but instead to simply ride the trip. He agreed, and had few problems later.
At one point I played a massive chord that caused K and I to both basically collapse. It was a strange chord that included the root, 4th, major 6th, minor 7th (yes, a semitone apart), I think the... major 10th, another note I can't remember, and the root two octaves up. It felt... actively chimey, and felt almost like a massive crystalline piano had been dropped on me. I spent a few minutes just arpeggiating and exploring that chord. At this point, several shadows on the wall seemed to the form the shadow of a massive creature, and K and I went downstairs to escape it. We then put on Lateralus with the group, and I made more drawings.
Somewhere in all of this, MW and MT decided we were fine, and left. We still had several hours of the trip left in us. M wisely escaped upstairs as we reached the end of Lateralus, but K, J, and I weren't so lucky. We felt we had experienced hell itself (if you know the CD, you know what I mean).
Several minutes earlier, K, M, and I had decided to return upstairs to go "creature-hunting". This was tempered by my desire to finish a drawing, and later by smoking another (and our last) bowl. Eventually we got upstairs, but the shadow was gone.
After returning downstairs, I had my most active freakout of the night. I began to wonder why, if my mind can create completely realistic hallucinations both visual and conceptual, I should believe that everything in my life up to this point wasn't a lie. I was yelling this, but wasn't angry... I simply felt this point deserved to be made. I had this discussion with K, and we reached no conclusions. I later tried again with M, again to no avail. This is an idea that will always trouble me... If our memories are nothing but perceptions, what is there to make us know that the perceptions are of real experiences? If we can receive information from our senses, and our senses can be bluffed, we have no reason to believe we are anything but a brain in a jar. At some point I decided not to worry about this anymore.
I remember this as the end of the trip. We watched an episode of Seinfeld, turned off the TV, and I fell asleep on the couch. I slept for 3 hours, tops.
IV.) The Aftermath
I hated the morning after. I had a headache centred in the back of my head, and felt very uncomfortable with everything, as if being in a mostly realistic dream. I had to make a long drive to bring M back to his house, and I hated driving... the trip seemed to take hours, when it had only been around 20-30 minutes. I got home, and attempted to relax by watching a movie and eating lunch, and my mother began to nag me about a mess I'd left upstairs. It was breadcrumbs, and this minor incident started a yelling match, simply because my head was killing me and I needed to be away from this horrid woman. This inspired me to go to sleep early, and I slept from 6:30ish to 4 AM. Deciding there was nothing to be done at 4 AM, I fell asleep again and woke up at around 10:30, after a night of vivid and emotionally painful dreams (Being forced to return to grade 8 and correct all the mistakes I'd made between then and now; being cast in a movie with the one who got away, and having to partake in a kissing scene while her boyfriend watched, and she acting as if she had no idea who I was). I then began to write this report.
V.) The Verdict
It was the most intense trip I have ever experienced in my life. I am undecided about trying it again, but it definitely will be at least in the summer. I need some time to evaluate it all. I probably won't do shrooms again for a while, and I will probably take about a week off from smoking to clear my head. It was a good trip, but it was still hard to take. I need to get things sorted out first.
The friend who was hosting our trip was at a drama banquet until around 10:00 PM, so we knew we would be off to a late start. We had purchased 4 hits of acid off a friend who had already dropped some from the same batch, and told us it was both potent and safe. Our group consisted of 4 individuals, all with varying levels of drug experience.
II.) Cast of Characters
C: Myself. I've been smoking pot for around 4 years, but only for about a year as a regular activity. Before then, I'd smoke at a party, which was maybe once every 2 weeks to a month. Now, I smoke 2-3 times a week on average (it's a lot easier to smoke in university than it was in high school - less homework), and have done shrooms ~10 times, often coupled with a lot of cannabis and alcohol, and usually around 5 grams.
K: He's been smoking regularly for a few years now, and has tried shrooms numerous times. He said he's also tried acid, but didn't specify frequency. He's experienced, but tends to get really energetic and freak out a tad on shrooms, so I was glad we had a sitter.
J: The least experienced of our group. He basically started smoking when I (and many of my friends) started smoking regularly, so he got thrust right into it (we didn't pressure him, though). He's done shrooms probably about as many times as I have, and is usually very passive on a trip.
M: The most experienced. Smoked all through high school, did shrooms many times, but never tried acid. Still, my favorite friend to trip with, bar none.
MW and MT: Our sitters. Both experienced with shrooms and cannabis, but not acid. Trusted friends.
III.) The Trip
We dropped acid around 10:00 PM in J's bathroom. The paper was small... a square less than half a CM on all sides. We placed the paper on our tongues, and moved it around for 15-20 minutes as per a friend's instructions. After the 20 minutes had passed, we went outside to smoke two bowls between all of us. K opted out, as he had experienced a bad trip in the past after combining shrooms and cannabis. After going inside post-session, J, M, and myself began to feel the effects. No hallucinations yet, but we began to feel somewhat uneasy and "different". We were watching Waking Life, end enjoying it mostly on a sober level. We got occasional bursts of energy, but were mostly sober. I decided to draw.
I got out my clipboard and a pen, and began to draw. This is when I observed that I was tripping. Not only were the drawings really, really strange, but the pen was acting oddly. After laying down a line, it didn't statically remain on the page... it instead would follow the tip of my pen, and eventually settle to a location on its own. I mentioned this to the group, and several observers who were there temporarily came over to look, and commented that the drawings were very detailed and "good". This is surprising, since I hadn't drawn a single picture aside from doodles in nearly a year. Before then, I was an active artist.
Friends began to mention their trip, M especially. His eyes looked like saucers to me, and his face even looked different. He had a very intense look on his face. K was upset that he was feeling no effects, and repeatedly mentioned that it must've been the bowl we smoked that did it for us. J claimed to be feeling no effects, but this was likely psychological; he's a bigger gentleman, and has in the past expressed doubt that pot and shrooms would affect him. The size of the hit only added to his concerns that such a "little" thing could "fuck him up".
J's entry into the trip began when he told us that a snake had just run across his ceiling. We began to joke with him about his claims that LSD wouldn't affect him, and the change in him was now quite apparent. K was still not tripping out. I can't recall if some people went to smoke another bowl or not, but if they did, K took part in it, and returned tripping out quite a bit. He began to growl and make other animal noises. He got into several small fights with two of the people there, who were both his good friends and had no problem with it. He would occasionally growl and run upstairs, which caused J some level of concern. He later fell down the stairs.
At this point we decided to put on some music. We selected Kid A by Radiohead. The music didn't inspire many visuals with me, but the music felt markedly different. It felt more liquid, and made me feel as if it was surrounding me. Some friends left to go to Sobey's for snacks at this point, and so I ended up in a very comfortable chair, and began my most active drawing session of the night. I tried to draw a friend, but the picture turned out much different. Pictures will follow. We also smoked a bowl, given by the subject of my most recent picture. This gentleman, who was very experienced with cannabis and shrooms, remarked that I seemed very normal, and had he not known, wouldn't have assumed I was on acid. I've received these comments before on shrooms.
At this point, the subject observed that I had begun to trip out hard on the picture I was drawing… I had to explain to him that while drawing, my pen began to move in reverse, and the lines were being sucked back into the pen. This freaked me out, as I realized that I hadn't drawn anything at all in the last few minutes.
This is the point at which things get rather hazy. I will attempt to explain the experiences, but they may not be in the proper order. I believe I attempted to draw for quite some time, and probably had a lot of very tripped-out ramblings. Either way, enough time passed that the bulk of temporary visitors had left, and eventually K, M, MT, and MW left to buy more snacks and go on an adventure, leaving myself, J, and a passed-out drunk individual named AE alone in the basement. We were completely okay with this for quite some time, and were watching a movie. I cannot recall which movie it was.
We began to get very concerned that our friends weren't coming back, as they had been gone for quite some time. For at least a half-hour, we sustained a conversation of:
J: "Where'd they go?"
C: "I don't know; where'd they go?"
J: "I don't know! Maybe they went home!"
C: "No! They still have K and C!"
J: "Where'd they go?"
C: "I don't know!"
...And so on. Eventually, I decided that it was a good idea to turn out the lights. There was too much happening, and I desired to make the room as simple as I could. Belying this, I also popped in Altered States on DVD and put Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots into the CD player. Surprisingly, this calmed me down a lot, but J was not so lucky. We put the lights back on and put something else in the DVD player - I think it was Seinfeld. Either way, my urge to simplify the room was not sated in any way. I began to clean very fervently, starting with the end of the basement we weren't in. Somehow, I cleaned it up to the point that it had looked before anyone had arrived. I was very proud of this, and mentioned it to J, who looked back and was very happy that it was so clean. I moved on to the somewhat messier room we were currently occupying. It was much more work than the last room, causing me to frequently stand and marvel for minutes on end. I began to clean it up quickly, with J directing certain choices from his chair. We spent a long time reflecting on things such as the remotes... moving them a few centimetres on a table would make us both very happy, that it was "where it should be".
Ultimately, the room was very clean. We both decided it was a good idea to smoke a bowl, in order to return us to the state we had been in before the trip. I realized that was the reason that I had cleaned the room up so well. We smoked a bowl, which took a very, very long time, as neither of us could manage large tokes and passing the bowl was a chore. We again wondered where everyone had gone. We also decided that this was the time to enjoy some snacks, as J would not feel obligated to give them to everyone. I drank a can of root beer, and we ate several chocolates. They were delicious.
I believe it was around 2 AM when our friends returned. I saw K first, and had never been so happy to see him. I hugged him and freaked out, explaining how J and I had no idea where everyone was. We all sat down and were much happier for it.
Again, details have become fuzzy. I remember hanging out upstairs with only K, J, M, and myself present, and we had some amazing jams on piano. We were playing mostly random notes, but occasionally, we would actually play real music. I remember in particular a section from a jam of M, and myself where at one point everything lined up and we played this beautiful descending melody that was actually being harmonized in a real way. K and myself also had a very productive jam, as both of us actually have musical training. He stuck to playing a bass line, occasionally remarking "I never thought of doing it like that... it's just... patterns, I never thought of doing it like that". He was unable to explain any further. In particular, K had trouble explaining his thoughts to the rest of us, prompting me to tell him that it wasn't worth it trying to justify his thoughts to reality, but instead to simply ride the trip. He agreed, and had few problems later.
At one point I played a massive chord that caused K and I to both basically collapse. It was a strange chord that included the root, 4th, major 6th, minor 7th (yes, a semitone apart), I think the... major 10th, another note I can't remember, and the root two octaves up. It felt... actively chimey, and felt almost like a massive crystalline piano had been dropped on me. I spent a few minutes just arpeggiating and exploring that chord. At this point, several shadows on the wall seemed to the form the shadow of a massive creature, and K and I went downstairs to escape it. We then put on Lateralus with the group, and I made more drawings.
Somewhere in all of this, MW and MT decided we were fine, and left. We still had several hours of the trip left in us. M wisely escaped upstairs as we reached the end of Lateralus, but K, J, and I weren't so lucky. We felt we had experienced hell itself (if you know the CD, you know what I mean).
Several minutes earlier, K, M, and I had decided to return upstairs to go "creature-hunting". This was tempered by my desire to finish a drawing, and later by smoking another (and our last) bowl. Eventually we got upstairs, but the shadow was gone.
After returning downstairs, I had my most active freakout of the night. I began to wonder why, if my mind can create completely realistic hallucinations both visual and conceptual, I should believe that everything in my life up to this point wasn't a lie. I was yelling this, but wasn't angry... I simply felt this point deserved to be made. I had this discussion with K, and we reached no conclusions. I later tried again with M, again to no avail. This is an idea that will always trouble me... If our memories are nothing but perceptions, what is there to make us know that the perceptions are of real experiences? If we can receive information from our senses, and our senses can be bluffed, we have no reason to believe we are anything but a brain in a jar. At some point I decided not to worry about this anymore.
I remember this as the end of the trip. We watched an episode of Seinfeld, turned off the TV, and I fell asleep on the couch. I slept for 3 hours, tops.
IV.) The Aftermath
I hated the morning after. I had a headache centred in the back of my head, and felt very uncomfortable with everything, as if being in a mostly realistic dream. I had to make a long drive to bring M back to his house, and I hated driving... the trip seemed to take hours, when it had only been around 20-30 minutes. I got home, and attempted to relax by watching a movie and eating lunch, and my mother began to nag me about a mess I'd left upstairs. It was breadcrumbs, and this minor incident started a yelling match, simply because my head was killing me and I needed to be away from this horrid woman. This inspired me to go to sleep early, and I slept from 6:30ish to 4 AM. Deciding there was nothing to be done at 4 AM, I fell asleep again and woke up at around 10:30, after a night of vivid and emotionally painful dreams (Being forced to return to grade 8 and correct all the mistakes I'd made between then and now; being cast in a movie with the one who got away, and having to partake in a kissing scene while her boyfriend watched, and she acting as if she had no idea who I was). I then began to write this report.
V.) The Verdict
It was the most intense trip I have ever experienced in my life. I am undecided about trying it again, but it definitely will be at least in the summer. I need some time to evaluate it all. I probably won't do shrooms again for a while, and I will probably take about a week off from smoking to clear my head. It was a good trip, but it was still hard to take. I need to get things sorted out first.
