sparkle_jez
Ex-Bluelighter
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2003
- Messages
- 1,079
LSD+Mushrooms: The nightmare of possessing ultimate knowledge
June 27th/28th 2004:
Drugs Consumed:
LSD . Unknown quantities. Somewhere between 2.5 to 6 tabs.
Mexican Cubensis(?) Mushrooms. Fresh. Approx. 20 Grams.
Alcohol. Red Wine. Approx. 1 litre. Beer. 2 pints.
Background/Setting:
It was the last day of the Glastonbury festival. I decided that I wanted to trip properly to send off the festival with a bang.
The two or three days leading up to this had been difficult. I had fallen out quite badly with one of my best friends, who we’ll call J.
We had had a major disagreement and it had put me in a tense angry mood ever since. However, by Sunday (the 27th) the tension had appeared to have subsided, and I had basically decided that I wasn’t going to let it or him spoil the festival for me.
So Sunday, I wake up, and start drinking early. I’m going to make this day one to remember to make up for everything I tell myself.
I am feeling good, and me and J are getting along fine again it seems. We are spending most our time in The Glade watching some awesome Psy-trance Dj’s, dancing our asses off, and generally having a great time.
After a few hours of this, I start thinking about how much better the music would sound on some drugs. I ask around, and couple of minutes later I find a guy selling ecstasy and LSD tabs. I buy 6 pills, and put them safely in my wallet saving them for the night. Didn’t want to start that early, the time only being about 5PM.
I also bought 4 tabs of acid. It looked very dodgy, and the dealer even admitted it was weak and I’d need 4 or 5 to feel anything at all.
I was quite happy to take acid this early due to it’s long duration, and besides I thought, I still had all this ecstasy on me for later anyway. So I happily ate 2 of the tabs.
I dance more, have a couple more beers, but I just know in my heart I’ve been ripped off with the acid. I drop the other 2, and I wait some more. Nothing. I’m pissed off, I’ve wasted my money, and so when this girl asks me if I have any pills, I sell her a couple to make at least some of the money back.
By about 6.30PM, I think I’m maybe, just maybe, feeling a tiny bit, but this turns into nothing. I know been ripped off, I know it, either that or I’ve drunk too much and it’s masking the effects. Either way, it is no where near what I’m looking for. Me and J are tired now, so we go back to the tent for a bit. J eats a tiny bit of his Mexican shroom, a few grams. Then we walk to the cash machine to get some more money.
J is starting to piss me off again. He is moaning that he doesn’t like the effects of mushrooms and is preaching his new “I’m high on life, you shouldn’t do drugs.” philosophy to me. He’d been doing this all weekend, and it had been really getting on my tits. It was one of the things that lead to us falling out. I am a little harsh to him and tell him if he doesn’t like drugs, then why the fuck is he trying mushrooms and drinking?
When we hit the line for this cash machine, it’s apparent that it’s going to take at least an hour to get to the machines, so J moans more, then goes to get some food. To be honest, I’m glad he’s gone for a while, and I start talking to this bloke and this girl in the line and we are laughing and joking when J comes back. I introduce them, and thankfully he stops moaning and shuts up for a while. I’m in a better mood again.
Hour later we finally get to the machines and we all get some more money out. The two people in the line I met , M and N, decide to tag along with us because we are heading up towards to the stone circles (notorious for it’s open drug dealing!) to try and score some decent acid, or anything interesting we can find. N says last year his friends managed to get hold of some mescaline, but we all knew that wasn’t going to happen!
So we get to the stone circles, and there’s a nice fire going in the middle. We sit around there for a short while, shouting out “has anyone got any acid!?” (this is the normal way to score drugs at the stone circles), but it becomes apparent we’re going to have to do it the proper way and go on a proper mission asking everybody we see (this always works for me)!
Well, we ask everybody, literately everybody, and at one point I don’t even realise I’m asking a steward! Luckily he doesn’t care and just laughs. But, it looks as though we’re going to have to go and try somewhere else when we come across a group of hippies sitting by the sacred tree. We ask them, and they point us to a man back towards the stones.
Success! The man is selling ’x-men’ tabs (yes, I’m serious!)!
I explain to him my situation, explain I’ve been ripped off already , so I’d like him to be honest with me. I ask how much I’m going to need, honestly. He says, it’s pretty strong, it depends on how often you do it. I say, not too often, only a few times a year really. He says I will probably only need one.
N wants some too, and I’m thinking maybe I’d like to take some home, so I manage to get 5 tabs for 20 quid. Not bad I thought. Maybe a little too good.
So, we go back to the fire at the centre of the circles. J and M ask how it went. We say very well thank you! We split the tabs, 2 and a half each. I decide to drop a half there and then, as does M. It’s about 8.30PM now, and so I suddenly realise I’m missing Billy Bragg! So we have to say our goodbyes quickly to M and N and we part and go our separate ways.
It takes a far bit of time getting to Billy Bragg, about half an hour, and during that time I get it into my head that I’ve probably been ripped off again, so I drop a full tab of acid.
About 45 minutes into Billy Bragg I think I’m starting to notice something. I’m feeling slightly anxious, and I’m sure some the lights on stage are flickering. I’m feeling slightly uncomfortable. In retrospect, this must’ve been the half tab kicking in, but at the time I put it down to J just pissing me off. He was trying to get me to go and see another band, tugging away at my arm trying to make me leave. I tell him he can go if he wants, I’m not missing Billy Bragg for anything! He is a fucking legend! So he leaves.
I am still convinced I’m feeling nothing, and put all the feelings down to placebo and my annoyance with J. So I make one of the stupidest naïve decisions of my life and take the last tab!
Suddenly J comes back and says he couldn’t be bothered in the end, so we watch the rest of Billy Bragg before rushing over the see Morrissey on the main pyramid stage.
J asks if I’m feeling anything. I say, not really, I’ve been ripped off again, Glastonbury is really going down hill you know, you can’t even score decent acid here anymore…. With that, I make the second most worst decision of my life, and I buy 20 grams of Fresh Mexican Mushrooms off a stall next to the pyramid stage. I eat all the caps in front of two policemen, which was a weird surreal experience in itself! But I wretch when I try eating the vile stalks, so I don’t bother, and I wrap them back up and put them back in my pocket for later perhaps. I still remember I have the ecstasy, so I’m thinking about hippie flipping. But for now me and J go to watch Morrissey….
The ‘Experience’ (Nightmare!)
5 minutes into Morrissey I know I’ve made a series of very big, bad, ugly mistakes over the past few hours!
To quote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “Panic! It shivered up my spine like the first waves of an acid frenzy!”. Indeed, this was sheer panic.
This wasn’t the usual slight feelings of anxiety and discomfort associated with normal doses of LSD, this was like slipping and falling down ,down , down into oblivion….Reality wasn’t becoming ’different’ or ‘distant’ , it was crumbling away before my very eyes. I am struggling to maintain, I am uneasy on my feet. I want to fall over and sink into the mud, but there 80,000+ people surrounding me, and music is blaring out, pulsating right through my body, and seeping into every pore of my body, causing muscle spasms. I begin to tremble. I cannot stand still. I need to get away. Now.
I tell J how I’m feeling. He just thinks I’m pissing about and tries sketching me out, waving his hands in front of my face telling me not to worry, it’ll settle down in a minute.
I keep telling myself not to panic, but I know this is only the beginning. The mushrooms are yet to kick in, and that other tab will kick in soon….Even as I write this, 6 days later, my hands are actually trembling and I’m feeling very anxious. It’s a grim flashback, and this is the only real time since I’ve actually sat down and thought hard and tried to remember every detail of what happened. It is actually very unpleasant writing this section of the trip report, which might give you an idea of how traumatic this trip was.
Anyway, I give it 5 more minutes, and it’s just getting stronger and stronger. I need to get out of the crowd I decide, maybe go and sit down for a bit. J is concerned now, but is doing his best to keep me cool. He keeps telling me “Don’t worry. Don’t panic. Nothing you took today can really hurt you.”
I keep saying, yes, I know that’s true, I know it wont hurt me, but that’s not the point. I’ve taken far too much, and I know I wont be able to handle this, and the worst thing is it’s only just beginning…
We walk over to the food stall, J get something to eat, he asks if I want anything. I say no, I’m feeling very nauseous, please can we keep moving.
I’m getting very very strange bodily sensations., most of which are not pleasant. This massive pressure in my head is building, right on the temples, it feels as though I’ve triple dropped 3 ecstasy tablets, that same feeling you get on the temples, the neurons going into overdrive, the seritonin flooding into your brain. This isn’t at all nice, and it’s making me feel very ‘giddly’ and I almost keep falling over. I’m so dizzy.
My ears are starting to pop which is fucking scary, and it feels as though there are bubbles in my brain that keep popping on the inside of my skull. I look up to the sky, and I see its made up of triangles and fragments, some of these shapes are starting to fall away, break off and smash into the other pieces, I start thinking the sky is falling in.
I’m going into extreme sensory overload, all he people around me, I can’t understand what they are saying, they are speaking in some strange alien language. Is everyone taking the piss out of me? No, I’m just paranoid. Everything will be cool I keep telling myself. Just don’t panic, that is the worst thing you could do. Just go with the flow.
All the movement everywhere is followed by tracers, which isn’t good when you’re amongst a noisy crowd of 80,000+ people. To say it was disorientating is a massive understatement….
J gets his food and I just don’t know what I want or what I need to do to keep it together. I tell him I’m having to use all my effort and mental energy just to keep from screaming out and losing it. I tell him I’ve never tripped so hard, not even close, and that if we don’t do something soon very bad things will start to happen….
This kind of talk freaks J out completely, and I can see the concern in his eyes, which freaks me out a bit. When he has to hold me up to keep me from falling face down in the mud, and when I start being unable to talk, stuttering at every word, with complete and utter brain freeze/mind fuck, beginning to panic and wave my arms about like a lunatic shouting out: “Look at the fucking stage! It’s fucking melting! I pay good money to come here and they make the stage melt away! Is this some sort of sick joke!?!?! You’re all sick! Sick!”.
J grabs me and shouts “What the fuck is wrong with you?”.
We pause for a moment, I look into his eyes , he looks into mine. His eyes tell me that this is all going horribly wrong. I’m getting visions of me ending up in a hospital by the end of the night, and I manage to spurt out a mumbled: “help!” before rolling my eyes back again and almost collapsing, J catching me again at the last moment.
J decides enough is enough. “Right, we need to get help…I’m going to have to find a steward.”
“Yes, please!” I plead.
There is a 10 second pause here, where I am on my knees breathing heavily, trying to calm down, get it together just for a second, J is stood on the spot looking around for a steward. Then suddenly I am hit with a wave of euphoria and remember where I am. I burst out into absolute hysterical laughter.
“What the fuck are we doing!? (laughter) We’re at Glastonbury, and you’re about to approach a steward to tell him your friend took too much acid and we don’t know what to do!” I am laughing so hard. This is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. I am on the ground , rolling about in the mud in uncontrollable laughter. J just looks absolutely stunned. Then helps me up. I have tears in my eyes from laughing so hard, and I think I almost pulled one of my muscle sin my stomach.
I am suddenly feeling better. I am still tripping uncomfortably hard, but if I can manage to maintain it like this for a few more hours, I might, just might be able to hold on. I find I can talk a bit better, although I’m still slurring a lot, and I’m still finding it very difficult to walk.
We decide to regroup and retreat back to our tents. The walk back was long, and I had to keep hold of J some of the way, but at one point we were running about and sliding all over the mud which was fun.
Then we get back to our tents.
It’s getting dark, and now I’m not feeling so good again. Another massive wave consumes me all over me again. This must be the last of the acid and the mushrooms, I think.
J goes to the toilet, and I ask him to be as quick as he can, things are getting evil. I try talking to some other people on the camp site, but again, I lose the power of speech, so I clamber into my tent to wait for J to return.
This is where it get’ s very nasty.
In my tent, it is dark, I can’t see much. My bag next to me turns into a small plump Nepalese woman, and on my right there’s a bald guy from New Zeland. They are both laughing at me and talking to me.
The Nepalese girl isn’t saying much, she is just giggling. The New Zelander is asking questions about me.
The girl was basically representing the drugs, my paranoia, anxiety and fear. The bloke was representing my introspective self. He was reassuring, peaceful and caring. He was vastly intellectual.
These two people didn’t really have any physical form, they were just entities (Nepalese and New Zeland….two places I‘ve been thinking about travelling too next year. Very strange).
I was sat in my tent for about 30-45 minutes before J came back, in which time I keep going through 4 stages of existence and emotion: Fear, Euphoria, Enlightenment, not in any particular order. But these were rapidly changing. 1 minute I’d be laughing my ass off, next I would be in tears with the classic feeling and thought of “What the hell have I done to myself!? I am talking to people who aren‘t there! I‘m turning into a schizophrenic!”, then I’d settle down again and start talking to the guy to the left of me. I saw some pretty amazing stuff, truly life changing revelations about myself..
Trouble is , it would focus on the stuff in my life that was getting to me, and it would magnify it a thousand times. Usually you have some sort of control to fend off these bad feelings and direct yourself away from this, but the drugs were in complete control here, I wasn’t myself anymore. Indeed, I did at times lose all memory of my life, my reality and myself. There were points where I was looking down into the tent at this person who was me, and was wondering who it was, with two people sat next to him!
This is almost impossible to put into words, but at some points I’d have ultimate knowledge. I knew and understood everything about the universe. I saw how everything worked, I saw hundreds of dimensions, with billions of beings living in these higher dimensions, I saw and became one with space and time. For a brief moment I knew what it was like to be the creator of it all. I cannot put into words or describe this, I just knew it all.
This knowledge, however, was obviously too much and I came back into my body and the normal dimensions of everything returned. I would remember who I was again, and be reborn again, I would remember where I was, and what I was doing, and this sudden displacement from ultimate knowledge and awareness tore into my psyche, and I came back to reality with a crash, to find myself completely alone in my new found knowledge. How could I possibly relate to any human being again after being shown such things? More so, what was the point in existing and in life if I knew it all? This makes me burst into tears. I’ve never cried as hard or felt such loss.
J eventually comes back and apologises that he was so long. He finds me sobbing, and I say it’s too much , I can’t handle this anymore, if I don’t do something soon I swear I’m going to kill myself.
J is comforting best he can, but again I can barely talk and I’m crying and panicing and screaming and holding my head in my hands, a seering pain right behind my eyes (imagined?). He is desperately trying to look on the map for the medical tent.
We have to walk 10 minutes or so to the tent, but I’m relieved I’m going to get help now.
When we get there, a nurse comes over asks J what’s wrong. He explains. She tries talking to me but I can’t really understand, and I open my mouth to say “Look, I know there’s not a lot you can do, but I just need to go somewhere quiet for a while, somewhere safe, somewhere warm.”, but nothing came out . I also should’ve explained how badly it was raining at that point, and I had no dry clothes, it was night time now, I was freezing, my tent was soaked, and I was getting a bad chest infection anyway. So I was feeling very vulnerable anyway.
A couple of nurses wrapped me blankets, which helped quite a bit, and were just keeping me calm best they could. Shortly after a doctor comes along, tries talking to me, I manage to say something but by the look on everyone’s faces it made no sense.
He says it’s probably best if I go to the other medical tent by the pyramid stage because they are dealing with this type of thing and have a psychiatrist there (they have special things for this set up at Glastonbury these days do they!?), and so he gets two medics to drive me there.
When I arrive, I’m sent through to a very warm room with beds all over the ground. It’s very peaceful and quiet, and there are 4 nurses in there, plus a doctor/psychiatrist.
J explains what’s happened, tells the psychiatrist how much I’ve taken because I’m too confused, and two nurses talk to me and tell me to lay down while they cover me with blankets and generally keep me comfortable. I’m calming down a bit now, I know I’m in safe hands.
Anyway, J says he hates to be selfish, but he wants to go and enjoy the rest of the night and needs to meet up with other friends. I agree it’s ok because I’m feeling better and I feel in safe hands. So J goes.
The psychiatrist comes over to talk to me, asks what’s going on. He actually turns out to be a really cool guy, and looks on his papers and laughs when he reads out “6 and a half hits of acid 20 grams of mushrooms…(pauses)” then bursts out laughing. “Jesus? So you’re seeing a lot of stuff now then!?”
I find this funny. The guy has a good sense of humour. I start laughing a lot. He plays on this , and basically uses humour to try and calm to down….It works!
To cut a long story short, I calm down, and although tripping hard still for the next 2 or 3 hours, it eventually wears off, and I realise I’m actually in a really cool place! I’m tripping my tits off, in a really comfortable bed, wrapped in blankets, with some really gorgeous nurses surrounding me looking after my every need! I recommend tripping in hospitals! It’s the coolest setting!
So, by about 2 or 3AM I’m actually feeling okay, pretty good in fact, except the cold has really made me quite ill, I’m coughing my guts up. The only other thing wrong is I’m getting a bad stomach from the shrooms, and I do vomit a couple of times from the nausea….
I speak to the psychiatrist/doctor again, and he says it’s probably a good idea if I stay here the rest of the night because I look and sound pretty ill an drained. I agree that’s probably a good idea under the circumstances.
So, rest of the night I’m coming down off acid/mushrooms, chatting to nurses and other people in the room next to me! I’m actually in a good mood, and I start saying to this nurse “Thanks a lot! You’ve all been really great! I’ll have to buy you some flowers! I can really feel the love and care in this room, it’s amazing the job you do!” She’s quite amused and asks me what acid and mushrooms is actually like and we get talking for a while, I almost ask for her number, but unfortunately find out she’s engaged! Shame!
Surprisingly, there were a couple of other people that came in that night with the same problem as me! So at one point we had 3 people having really bad trips trying to explain to the psychiatrist what they were seeing and feeling!! Pretty hilarious, wish I had a camera at the time!
Anyway, so that’s all there is to tell really! I got some sleep, went back to my tent early morning, found J, went home very disorientated but just about intact!
The ‘comedown’ , however, was severe. Everytime I thought back to what just happened I felt like almost crying, and I felt very emotionally unstable for 2-3 days after, like a very bad MDMA/Speed comedown, but more manic. I’m also sure I was having visual distortions such as ’halos’ around objects for 2 or 3 days after, which was feeding a sense of anxiety.
I was a general shattered mess, and it was only really a couple of days ago I began to feel normal again. I have put the pieces back together now though, and I have actually managed to turn some of this experience around from a purely negative experience into a highly positive and beneficially life-changing experience.
I won’t be taking unknown quantities of psychedelics ever again though, and I’m de-toxing at the moment because I feel I really need to spend some time with my feet firmly planted back in reality.
I wont be touching any psychedelic drug for months.
Hope this is a valuable harm reduction lesson as well as a good trip report!
-jez-
June 27th/28th 2004:
Drugs Consumed:
LSD . Unknown quantities. Somewhere between 2.5 to 6 tabs.
Mexican Cubensis(?) Mushrooms. Fresh. Approx. 20 Grams.
Alcohol. Red Wine. Approx. 1 litre. Beer. 2 pints.
Background/Setting:
It was the last day of the Glastonbury festival. I decided that I wanted to trip properly to send off the festival with a bang.
The two or three days leading up to this had been difficult. I had fallen out quite badly with one of my best friends, who we’ll call J.
We had had a major disagreement and it had put me in a tense angry mood ever since. However, by Sunday (the 27th) the tension had appeared to have subsided, and I had basically decided that I wasn’t going to let it or him spoil the festival for me.
So Sunday, I wake up, and start drinking early. I’m going to make this day one to remember to make up for everything I tell myself.
I am feeling good, and me and J are getting along fine again it seems. We are spending most our time in The Glade watching some awesome Psy-trance Dj’s, dancing our asses off, and generally having a great time.
After a few hours of this, I start thinking about how much better the music would sound on some drugs. I ask around, and couple of minutes later I find a guy selling ecstasy and LSD tabs. I buy 6 pills, and put them safely in my wallet saving them for the night. Didn’t want to start that early, the time only being about 5PM.
I also bought 4 tabs of acid. It looked very dodgy, and the dealer even admitted it was weak and I’d need 4 or 5 to feel anything at all.
I was quite happy to take acid this early due to it’s long duration, and besides I thought, I still had all this ecstasy on me for later anyway. So I happily ate 2 of the tabs.
I dance more, have a couple more beers, but I just know in my heart I’ve been ripped off with the acid. I drop the other 2, and I wait some more. Nothing. I’m pissed off, I’ve wasted my money, and so when this girl asks me if I have any pills, I sell her a couple to make at least some of the money back.
By about 6.30PM, I think I’m maybe, just maybe, feeling a tiny bit, but this turns into nothing. I know been ripped off, I know it, either that or I’ve drunk too much and it’s masking the effects. Either way, it is no where near what I’m looking for. Me and J are tired now, so we go back to the tent for a bit. J eats a tiny bit of his Mexican shroom, a few grams. Then we walk to the cash machine to get some more money.
J is starting to piss me off again. He is moaning that he doesn’t like the effects of mushrooms and is preaching his new “I’m high on life, you shouldn’t do drugs.” philosophy to me. He’d been doing this all weekend, and it had been really getting on my tits. It was one of the things that lead to us falling out. I am a little harsh to him and tell him if he doesn’t like drugs, then why the fuck is he trying mushrooms and drinking?
When we hit the line for this cash machine, it’s apparent that it’s going to take at least an hour to get to the machines, so J moans more, then goes to get some food. To be honest, I’m glad he’s gone for a while, and I start talking to this bloke and this girl in the line and we are laughing and joking when J comes back. I introduce them, and thankfully he stops moaning and shuts up for a while. I’m in a better mood again.
Hour later we finally get to the machines and we all get some more money out. The two people in the line I met , M and N, decide to tag along with us because we are heading up towards to the stone circles (notorious for it’s open drug dealing!) to try and score some decent acid, or anything interesting we can find. N says last year his friends managed to get hold of some mescaline, but we all knew that wasn’t going to happen!
So we get to the stone circles, and there’s a nice fire going in the middle. We sit around there for a short while, shouting out “has anyone got any acid!?” (this is the normal way to score drugs at the stone circles), but it becomes apparent we’re going to have to do it the proper way and go on a proper mission asking everybody we see (this always works for me)!
Well, we ask everybody, literately everybody, and at one point I don’t even realise I’m asking a steward! Luckily he doesn’t care and just laughs. But, it looks as though we’re going to have to go and try somewhere else when we come across a group of hippies sitting by the sacred tree. We ask them, and they point us to a man back towards the stones.
Success! The man is selling ’x-men’ tabs (yes, I’m serious!)!
I explain to him my situation, explain I’ve been ripped off already , so I’d like him to be honest with me. I ask how much I’m going to need, honestly. He says, it’s pretty strong, it depends on how often you do it. I say, not too often, only a few times a year really. He says I will probably only need one.
N wants some too, and I’m thinking maybe I’d like to take some home, so I manage to get 5 tabs for 20 quid. Not bad I thought. Maybe a little too good.
So, we go back to the fire at the centre of the circles. J and M ask how it went. We say very well thank you! We split the tabs, 2 and a half each. I decide to drop a half there and then, as does M. It’s about 8.30PM now, and so I suddenly realise I’m missing Billy Bragg! So we have to say our goodbyes quickly to M and N and we part and go our separate ways.
It takes a far bit of time getting to Billy Bragg, about half an hour, and during that time I get it into my head that I’ve probably been ripped off again, so I drop a full tab of acid.
About 45 minutes into Billy Bragg I think I’m starting to notice something. I’m feeling slightly anxious, and I’m sure some the lights on stage are flickering. I’m feeling slightly uncomfortable. In retrospect, this must’ve been the half tab kicking in, but at the time I put it down to J just pissing me off. He was trying to get me to go and see another band, tugging away at my arm trying to make me leave. I tell him he can go if he wants, I’m not missing Billy Bragg for anything! He is a fucking legend! So he leaves.
I am still convinced I’m feeling nothing, and put all the feelings down to placebo and my annoyance with J. So I make one of the stupidest naïve decisions of my life and take the last tab!
Suddenly J comes back and says he couldn’t be bothered in the end, so we watch the rest of Billy Bragg before rushing over the see Morrissey on the main pyramid stage.
J asks if I’m feeling anything. I say, not really, I’ve been ripped off again, Glastonbury is really going down hill you know, you can’t even score decent acid here anymore…. With that, I make the second most worst decision of my life, and I buy 20 grams of Fresh Mexican Mushrooms off a stall next to the pyramid stage. I eat all the caps in front of two policemen, which was a weird surreal experience in itself! But I wretch when I try eating the vile stalks, so I don’t bother, and I wrap them back up and put them back in my pocket for later perhaps. I still remember I have the ecstasy, so I’m thinking about hippie flipping. But for now me and J go to watch Morrissey….
The ‘Experience’ (Nightmare!)
5 minutes into Morrissey I know I’ve made a series of very big, bad, ugly mistakes over the past few hours!
To quote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “Panic! It shivered up my spine like the first waves of an acid frenzy!”. Indeed, this was sheer panic.
This wasn’t the usual slight feelings of anxiety and discomfort associated with normal doses of LSD, this was like slipping and falling down ,down , down into oblivion….Reality wasn’t becoming ’different’ or ‘distant’ , it was crumbling away before my very eyes. I am struggling to maintain, I am uneasy on my feet. I want to fall over and sink into the mud, but there 80,000+ people surrounding me, and music is blaring out, pulsating right through my body, and seeping into every pore of my body, causing muscle spasms. I begin to tremble. I cannot stand still. I need to get away. Now.
I tell J how I’m feeling. He just thinks I’m pissing about and tries sketching me out, waving his hands in front of my face telling me not to worry, it’ll settle down in a minute.
I keep telling myself not to panic, but I know this is only the beginning. The mushrooms are yet to kick in, and that other tab will kick in soon….Even as I write this, 6 days later, my hands are actually trembling and I’m feeling very anxious. It’s a grim flashback, and this is the only real time since I’ve actually sat down and thought hard and tried to remember every detail of what happened. It is actually very unpleasant writing this section of the trip report, which might give you an idea of how traumatic this trip was.
Anyway, I give it 5 more minutes, and it’s just getting stronger and stronger. I need to get out of the crowd I decide, maybe go and sit down for a bit. J is concerned now, but is doing his best to keep me cool. He keeps telling me “Don’t worry. Don’t panic. Nothing you took today can really hurt you.”
I keep saying, yes, I know that’s true, I know it wont hurt me, but that’s not the point. I’ve taken far too much, and I know I wont be able to handle this, and the worst thing is it’s only just beginning…
We walk over to the food stall, J get something to eat, he asks if I want anything. I say no, I’m feeling very nauseous, please can we keep moving.
I’m getting very very strange bodily sensations., most of which are not pleasant. This massive pressure in my head is building, right on the temples, it feels as though I’ve triple dropped 3 ecstasy tablets, that same feeling you get on the temples, the neurons going into overdrive, the seritonin flooding into your brain. This isn’t at all nice, and it’s making me feel very ‘giddly’ and I almost keep falling over. I’m so dizzy.
My ears are starting to pop which is fucking scary, and it feels as though there are bubbles in my brain that keep popping on the inside of my skull. I look up to the sky, and I see its made up of triangles and fragments, some of these shapes are starting to fall away, break off and smash into the other pieces, I start thinking the sky is falling in.
I’m going into extreme sensory overload, all he people around me, I can’t understand what they are saying, they are speaking in some strange alien language. Is everyone taking the piss out of me? No, I’m just paranoid. Everything will be cool I keep telling myself. Just don’t panic, that is the worst thing you could do. Just go with the flow.
All the movement everywhere is followed by tracers, which isn’t good when you’re amongst a noisy crowd of 80,000+ people. To say it was disorientating is a massive understatement….
J gets his food and I just don’t know what I want or what I need to do to keep it together. I tell him I’m having to use all my effort and mental energy just to keep from screaming out and losing it. I tell him I’ve never tripped so hard, not even close, and that if we don’t do something soon very bad things will start to happen….
This kind of talk freaks J out completely, and I can see the concern in his eyes, which freaks me out a bit. When he has to hold me up to keep me from falling face down in the mud, and when I start being unable to talk, stuttering at every word, with complete and utter brain freeze/mind fuck, beginning to panic and wave my arms about like a lunatic shouting out: “Look at the fucking stage! It’s fucking melting! I pay good money to come here and they make the stage melt away! Is this some sort of sick joke!?!?! You’re all sick! Sick!”.
J grabs me and shouts “What the fuck is wrong with you?”.
We pause for a moment, I look into his eyes , he looks into mine. His eyes tell me that this is all going horribly wrong. I’m getting visions of me ending up in a hospital by the end of the night, and I manage to spurt out a mumbled: “help!” before rolling my eyes back again and almost collapsing, J catching me again at the last moment.
J decides enough is enough. “Right, we need to get help…I’m going to have to find a steward.”
“Yes, please!” I plead.
There is a 10 second pause here, where I am on my knees breathing heavily, trying to calm down, get it together just for a second, J is stood on the spot looking around for a steward. Then suddenly I am hit with a wave of euphoria and remember where I am. I burst out into absolute hysterical laughter.
“What the fuck are we doing!? (laughter) We’re at Glastonbury, and you’re about to approach a steward to tell him your friend took too much acid and we don’t know what to do!” I am laughing so hard. This is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. I am on the ground , rolling about in the mud in uncontrollable laughter. J just looks absolutely stunned. Then helps me up. I have tears in my eyes from laughing so hard, and I think I almost pulled one of my muscle sin my stomach.
I am suddenly feeling better. I am still tripping uncomfortably hard, but if I can manage to maintain it like this for a few more hours, I might, just might be able to hold on. I find I can talk a bit better, although I’m still slurring a lot, and I’m still finding it very difficult to walk.
We decide to regroup and retreat back to our tents. The walk back was long, and I had to keep hold of J some of the way, but at one point we were running about and sliding all over the mud which was fun.
Then we get back to our tents.
It’s getting dark, and now I’m not feeling so good again. Another massive wave consumes me all over me again. This must be the last of the acid and the mushrooms, I think.
J goes to the toilet, and I ask him to be as quick as he can, things are getting evil. I try talking to some other people on the camp site, but again, I lose the power of speech, so I clamber into my tent to wait for J to return.
This is where it get’ s very nasty.
In my tent, it is dark, I can’t see much. My bag next to me turns into a small plump Nepalese woman, and on my right there’s a bald guy from New Zeland. They are both laughing at me and talking to me.
The Nepalese girl isn’t saying much, she is just giggling. The New Zelander is asking questions about me.
The girl was basically representing the drugs, my paranoia, anxiety and fear. The bloke was representing my introspective self. He was reassuring, peaceful and caring. He was vastly intellectual.
These two people didn’t really have any physical form, they were just entities (Nepalese and New Zeland….two places I‘ve been thinking about travelling too next year. Very strange).
I was sat in my tent for about 30-45 minutes before J came back, in which time I keep going through 4 stages of existence and emotion: Fear, Euphoria, Enlightenment, not in any particular order. But these were rapidly changing. 1 minute I’d be laughing my ass off, next I would be in tears with the classic feeling and thought of “What the hell have I done to myself!? I am talking to people who aren‘t there! I‘m turning into a schizophrenic!”, then I’d settle down again and start talking to the guy to the left of me. I saw some pretty amazing stuff, truly life changing revelations about myself..
Trouble is , it would focus on the stuff in my life that was getting to me, and it would magnify it a thousand times. Usually you have some sort of control to fend off these bad feelings and direct yourself away from this, but the drugs were in complete control here, I wasn’t myself anymore. Indeed, I did at times lose all memory of my life, my reality and myself. There were points where I was looking down into the tent at this person who was me, and was wondering who it was, with two people sat next to him!
This is almost impossible to put into words, but at some points I’d have ultimate knowledge. I knew and understood everything about the universe. I saw how everything worked, I saw hundreds of dimensions, with billions of beings living in these higher dimensions, I saw and became one with space and time. For a brief moment I knew what it was like to be the creator of it all. I cannot put into words or describe this, I just knew it all.
This knowledge, however, was obviously too much and I came back into my body and the normal dimensions of everything returned. I would remember who I was again, and be reborn again, I would remember where I was, and what I was doing, and this sudden displacement from ultimate knowledge and awareness tore into my psyche, and I came back to reality with a crash, to find myself completely alone in my new found knowledge. How could I possibly relate to any human being again after being shown such things? More so, what was the point in existing and in life if I knew it all? This makes me burst into tears. I’ve never cried as hard or felt such loss.
J eventually comes back and apologises that he was so long. He finds me sobbing, and I say it’s too much , I can’t handle this anymore, if I don’t do something soon I swear I’m going to kill myself.
J is comforting best he can, but again I can barely talk and I’m crying and panicing and screaming and holding my head in my hands, a seering pain right behind my eyes (imagined?). He is desperately trying to look on the map for the medical tent.
We have to walk 10 minutes or so to the tent, but I’m relieved I’m going to get help now.
When we get there, a nurse comes over asks J what’s wrong. He explains. She tries talking to me but I can’t really understand, and I open my mouth to say “Look, I know there’s not a lot you can do, but I just need to go somewhere quiet for a while, somewhere safe, somewhere warm.”, but nothing came out . I also should’ve explained how badly it was raining at that point, and I had no dry clothes, it was night time now, I was freezing, my tent was soaked, and I was getting a bad chest infection anyway. So I was feeling very vulnerable anyway.
A couple of nurses wrapped me blankets, which helped quite a bit, and were just keeping me calm best they could. Shortly after a doctor comes along, tries talking to me, I manage to say something but by the look on everyone’s faces it made no sense.
He says it’s probably best if I go to the other medical tent by the pyramid stage because they are dealing with this type of thing and have a psychiatrist there (they have special things for this set up at Glastonbury these days do they!?), and so he gets two medics to drive me there.
When I arrive, I’m sent through to a very warm room with beds all over the ground. It’s very peaceful and quiet, and there are 4 nurses in there, plus a doctor/psychiatrist.
J explains what’s happened, tells the psychiatrist how much I’ve taken because I’m too confused, and two nurses talk to me and tell me to lay down while they cover me with blankets and generally keep me comfortable. I’m calming down a bit now, I know I’m in safe hands.
Anyway, J says he hates to be selfish, but he wants to go and enjoy the rest of the night and needs to meet up with other friends. I agree it’s ok because I’m feeling better and I feel in safe hands. So J goes.
The psychiatrist comes over to talk to me, asks what’s going on. He actually turns out to be a really cool guy, and looks on his papers and laughs when he reads out “6 and a half hits of acid 20 grams of mushrooms…(pauses)” then bursts out laughing. “Jesus? So you’re seeing a lot of stuff now then!?”
I find this funny. The guy has a good sense of humour. I start laughing a lot. He plays on this , and basically uses humour to try and calm to down….It works!
To cut a long story short, I calm down, and although tripping hard still for the next 2 or 3 hours, it eventually wears off, and I realise I’m actually in a really cool place! I’m tripping my tits off, in a really comfortable bed, wrapped in blankets, with some really gorgeous nurses surrounding me looking after my every need! I recommend tripping in hospitals! It’s the coolest setting!
So, by about 2 or 3AM I’m actually feeling okay, pretty good in fact, except the cold has really made me quite ill, I’m coughing my guts up. The only other thing wrong is I’m getting a bad stomach from the shrooms, and I do vomit a couple of times from the nausea….
I speak to the psychiatrist/doctor again, and he says it’s probably a good idea if I stay here the rest of the night because I look and sound pretty ill an drained. I agree that’s probably a good idea under the circumstances.
So, rest of the night I’m coming down off acid/mushrooms, chatting to nurses and other people in the room next to me! I’m actually in a good mood, and I start saying to this nurse “Thanks a lot! You’ve all been really great! I’ll have to buy you some flowers! I can really feel the love and care in this room, it’s amazing the job you do!” She’s quite amused and asks me what acid and mushrooms is actually like and we get talking for a while, I almost ask for her number, but unfortunately find out she’s engaged! Shame!
Surprisingly, there were a couple of other people that came in that night with the same problem as me! So at one point we had 3 people having really bad trips trying to explain to the psychiatrist what they were seeing and feeling!! Pretty hilarious, wish I had a camera at the time!
Anyway, so that’s all there is to tell really! I got some sleep, went back to my tent early morning, found J, went home very disorientated but just about intact!
The ‘comedown’ , however, was severe. Everytime I thought back to what just happened I felt like almost crying, and I felt very emotionally unstable for 2-3 days after, like a very bad MDMA/Speed comedown, but more manic. I’m also sure I was having visual distortions such as ’halos’ around objects for 2 or 3 days after, which was feeding a sense of anxiety.
I was a general shattered mess, and it was only really a couple of days ago I began to feel normal again. I have put the pieces back together now though, and I have actually managed to turn some of this experience around from a purely negative experience into a highly positive and beneficially life-changing experience.
I won’t be taking unknown quantities of psychedelics ever again though, and I’m de-toxing at the moment because I feel I really need to spend some time with my feet firmly planted back in reality.
I wont be touching any psychedelic drug for months.
Hope this is a valuable harm reduction lesson as well as a good trip report!
-jez-
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![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
