I wrote this in January:
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I am going to be naughty and write this post while I am in lab. Partly because I can sort of get away with it right now, and I also know that if I don't do it now, I will never get it done this week while it is still fresh in my mind. I haven't had the chance to talk to one of my friends about specific questions I asked at one point, but I think I remember enough of it to put it together.
Before I took the tab(s) on Saturday I was actually rather anxious/stressed. It wasn't conscious though, it was just that emotionless sensation of stress/anxiety I get (happens frequently). I knew it had to do with anticipation and excitement, and some uncertainty mixed in. I told myself I would take it at 2pm, and I waited until that moment on the dot. The tab was just this tiny 1/8th inch square of thick paper, and it tasted like nothing. It's strange to think that tiny little square would cause so much. Even the chemist in me who knows how LSD works on a detailed level is still impressed by the wild effects of this imperceptible compound. Anyway, for the first 30 minutes I sat at my computer antsy as can be "when's it gonna start? Is it a dud? Is it gonna be enough?". I found it rather ironic that my primary worry is the trip wouldn't be
strong enough, despite the fact that I was warned these tabs were quite strong and "one is more than enough for a first time". Eventually I started to noticed bits and pieces of it starting. Mostly the gut sensation and sense of excitement that starts off a psychadelic trip. I would frequently get up and go to the bathroom to check my pupils, or look at objects/patterns to see if I noticed any visual disturbances. I couldn't observe any mental unusualaties. After an hour I was solid that it was starting, and based on the come up time (it takes 2 hours to reach peak), I was guessing that I could handle something stronger. I told myself that I wouldn't take the second tab until 2 hours though, just in case it was too strong. At 1.25 hours though, I decided "fuck it. I'm bored, this isn't strong enough, and I know I can handle more. Down the hatch!" and I took the other tab I had. This proved to be the right decision.
I sat in my room for another 45 minutes as the effects started to kick on. After 90 minutes I noticed visual disturbances. The paint on my wall has a texture pattern to it, and I first noticed it looked unusual right on the ceiling in front of my window. The borders where the paint sunk into the ceiling a few milimeters seemed less defined, and it constantly buzzed/jumped/moved in different directions by a few milimeters multiple times a second. It looked really interesting. I remember looking at it and thinking to myself "it's like my eyes are trying to focus on the lines, and they physically can't do so". Really though it's my brains processing of the visual information that's changed. Your eyes themselves remain unchained on LSD aside from pupil dilation. I watched a few youtube videos which were alright. I was somewhat surprised that I was disinterested in watching videos as it visually didn't look as immersive as I anticipated. Music and sound took on a new depth though. I was more immersed in it. It was like I was listening to it with my eyes closed in a sensory deprivation tank, in the sense of that's how immersive it felt. Yet I was still alert and doing other things.
2 hours in, I decided to walk to the park near my apartment. It's quite big and only a 10 minute walk. I was a bit neverous because I would be out in public tripping on a drug, but I had intrinsic faith I would be fine. It's sort of how I approach drugs. I have immense self-trust that even if I am thrown completely out of whack, and am not in control of myself, I will never put myself in any kind of danger, risk, or risk of being caught. Because of this, I can "let go" and let it rule me. I stepped outside and looked at all the plants and trees as they took on a whole new light and image. The greens (I live in Oregon so there is moss on everything and winter is never brown) stood out, and almost pulsated and flashed. Focusing on trees would result in the branches and everything around it to buzz and jump around. It was like someone took a camera and put it on a vibrating table that didn't vibrate at a consistent rate. Everything had this sort of effect. Even my own body. I got to an intersection at the road and stood there as cars drove by. I remember thinking to myself how ordinary I appeared. I was tripping very hard, and yet I was still "cool".
I was at the park for an hour simply taking in the scenery. Looking at all the plants, looking in gardens. There were several points where I wanted to wander into the wooded areas, but decided against it as I didn't want to draw attention to myself (there were others in the park). I had my headphones in the whole time, and I was just in a sense of awe and appreciation of all the sensations. The music felt rich, the ground felt soft under my feet, I was comfortable, calm, everything looked visually alive. My mind was moving very quicky, but about nothing in particular. As I left the park I stopped on a bridge over a river. As I looked down it occured to me that my fears had left me. All of them. Meaning, I no longer feared death. I could have very easily flung myself over the bridge and died (it would have at minimum injured me badly). I did not care, and I was aware of all this. It was as if my self-awareness had been blown into multiple layers and I had to process one of them at a time. I had to mentally "search" for the stream that said "dying is wrong", and I obeyed it. This all comes down to the self-trust I have in myself. Even in the absence of understanding, I will never violate axioms I set for myself even if I no longer get them. The water at the bottom of the bridge looked like a strange fluid of a new viscosity. Not like water actually is.
I get back to my apartment shortly before it got dark, and the walls were moving even more. Well, the surface patterns anyway. It occurred to me how hard I was tripping. While at the time I was not aware this process had begun (I only gained conscious awareness of it in hindsight several hours later), but my ability to understand many of my memories, and knowledge of the world began to slip away from me. I spent some time exploring my body. It seemed like my surfaces had become softer, fluid, and lacking any defining borders. My skin was a different color I could not describe. My face in the mirror was familiar and alien at the same time. It dawned on me that food was something I wanted to test. I was told that LSD makes food unappealing. I felt neutral towards it. Then I asked myself "...food? What exactly is food?", I couldn't quite understand it's purpose. Which was odd, and I knew it, but it only sparked an "that's interesting" reaction to my reduction in understanding. I got my wallet and walked to the near by convience store to buy some chips. I crossed the street (checking for cars) on the way, and it occured to me that I no longer understood danger either. I knew getting hit by a car was bad, but the concept of it was alien, and I didn't fear it. I simply obyed to not do so. Buying chips was strange. I entered to store and it dawned on me that I couldn't understand money. I grabbed chips and candy almost on autopilot without speaking, and after leaving the store (I paid with my debit card), I had no idea how I managed to do that. It then occured to me that I forgot what the 5 senses were. During the 3 minute walk home I tried to recall them, and it was all but impossible. I knew there were 5, and I knew they were important, but I didn't know them.
Some time passed with enjoying sensations, testing food (it was largely unchanged for me, so it was not a highlight worth mentioning, but I tested it out for a solid 20 minutes), and reading a few things online. I knew that concepts were still slipping me, and I wanted to see how off I was, so I asked my friend if I could come over. She said sure, and I walked over. Upon arriving, I realized I had a bit of latent fear. I had a bad memory from a trip 5 years prior to this on mushrooms were being around a friend and my mother was bad because I self-restricted (I was afraid to be "seen in an altered state") how I externally appeared so strongly, that I "over-controlled" the trip resulting in internal freak-out. My inital reaction stemmed from that alone, so I primed myself by saying if I do anything wierd, wrong, or they want me to leave to tell me and I will do so. That made that apprehension go away totally. It was just her (INFJ 5w4) and her roommate (ISFP 6w7). I sat on the couch, looked at them... and all was gone.
What I am about to describe dawned on me in hindsight about an hour
after this, but it only makes sense if I explain it from the standpoint of realizing as it happened, so bare that in mind. I looked at her, I looked at her roomate... I had no idea who they were. I knew they were my "friends", but I didn't even know that. All I knew, is that based on a very distant gut feeling, and the environment I was in that I knew them. However, "them" wasn't even a concept, and I wasn't consciously aware of my gut feeling. As I looked at my friend sitting next to me, I saw her as an object with no identity. I didn't see a person. In fact, "people" did not exist. I mean, I literally saw her with my eyes, but my brain did not "process" what I literally saw. It was unable to interpret it. What I saw, was an object with a series of properties. Further, these properties were unknown to me, and incomprehencible. The exact same thing applied to her roommate. I also realized that I didn't know who I was. I was also a thing with a list of properties. I had no sense of self, "self" didn't exist. In fact, I could not define or tell where I began, where I ended, nor could I tell where my friends began or ended. The border that defined who I was, or who she was was not there and while I knew we were separate, I could not tell us apart.
I continued looking at her and this whole time I am asking questions. Very basic questions, as I didn't know what was going on. I wish I could remember all I asked (my friend knows but I have yet to talk to her), but one of the first ones I asked was "what is food?". I didn't know what it was. I knew it was something important. I knew it was something that us "objects" needed to put inside of us to exist. I didn't understand what it did. It also occured to me that I didn't understand what elements were. I didn't know chemistry. I didn't know matter. Physical material was a totally alien concept to me. I asked her "what is matter?". I asked "what is temperature?" when she referred to her leaving the stove on. "Is that bad?" I asked. I didn't understand that high temperatures resulted in fire. I couldn't picture atoms, molecules, etc in my head. I had no template. I asked them how unusual I was being, and they said not hugely, but I was asking a lot more questions than normal, and they were pretty basic. "I don't like asking questions?" I began to ask questions about who I was, and what I liked, and I completely forgot who I was. "do I like puzzles?" "what is science?" "what do I do?". Every question was genuine, I truly had no concept of anything I asked. It was like I was re-discovering the world, and re-discovering myself. I knew somehow, somewhere I knew these things, but I was unable to interpret my memories. They explained these things to me, and they wouldn't sink in, and many shocked me. When I asked "I don't like wrong things?" they responded "oh you HATE wrong things and wrong people." My response was "...really?" I was genuinely surprised to hear it. It made it sink in how "lost" I truly was. Yet, all I could respond with was objective fascination by it all. I wasn't scared by this. Somewhere in me I knew I would get put back together, that I would "see" them again, and the world would not be so detached.
What I experienced was effectively
ego-death. I lost sense of self, and basic concepts. I was at their house for a solid 2 hours. During this time, "time" was meaningless to me. I knew it still existed, and I knew it was passing, but I felt like I had "stepped aside from time" and was existing parallel to it. I basically had no concept of it despite knowing it existed. Eventually things started to come back to me, starting with when my friend gave me a stuffed pepper to eat, to which I replied "food! this is food... right? I am supposed to eat it? I need it to exist?", I started to grasp at the concept. I was voicing outloud some of my "inappropriate urges". At one point I felt the urge to just pick it up with my hands and nom it like a caveman would, but I didn't and acknowledged this to my friends. They thought it was funny and actually wanted me to do it. As my facilities came back, I told my friends what I was now understanding. They seemed thouroughly amused by it all. Eventually I began to notice the objects around me and all of the movement and visual disturbances they were exibiting. I was existing so much in my head for the hour prior that despite all of the insane visuals, I didn't "notice" them during that time. My friend gave me a laser pointer, and when I moved the dot fast enough, the dot would blow into 7-8 different spots and scatter off into random directions then fade out of existance. I played with my phone, listened to music, flopped on the couch to stare at the ceiling, and just enjoyed my moments.
During this time I sent EJCC a message to tell her what I was doing, and eventually I decided to go back to my apartment to talk to people on vent for a while and see what's that like. I was was right at the end of the "peak" at this point. When I got drove back to my apartment, it looked wild. The faster things moved, the more the borders of objects vibrated, jumped, and glowed. Cars driving on the road carved a ditch below them as if they warped space-time around them. When I got back, I logged into vent, started to talk to people, and just enjoyed the socializing. Much of the time I spent on there was actually processing all of the above. Reflecting and piecing together what had happened. I have had multiple relizations about myself and my nature, but I have to reserve that for another post because this is about the experience itself. I spent several hours on vent. What was interesting is for most of it I thought the high had died down quite a bit, but I was actually quite wrong. I was on the come-down, but still tripping quite hard. A curious pattern I noticed was to external observers, I didn't appear that particularly high, but internally I was MASSIVELY tripping, much more than I appeared. I actually didn't consciously realize that until Wind Up Rex asked me a "kill/fuck/marry" question, and I compleeeeetly short circuited, which oddly happened several hours into the vent chat. I was just simply so calm and at peace with everything that was happening to me. All of my lost concepts resulted in a "hmm... that's very interesting" thoughts, and just peaked my curiosity. At no point was I scared, or fearful. Yet, objectively I should have been terrified.
The whole "subjectively cool, objectively scary" bit is a major portion of my relizations from this all. I'm so used to plunging internal depths and have experienced a lot of emotional stuff internally all the time, that... well little of that scares or shocks me anymore. Most of it now I respond to with curiosity. I'm so used to the void that I respond with "ok void, chop me up to bits. you know the drill". It still hurts, but I guess I am numb to the process. I was reflecting a bit on my old days when I used to believe in astrology and my rediculously strong connection to Pluto. The analogy and represention of it all still sticks with me, and ultimately it's just my nature. In a way, if I
don't experience this sort of stuff, I don't grow, progress, or improve. Not drugs, but just the idea of going through immense destructive internal pain. It's a way of life.
Anyway, I'll muse on that in the future. Ultimately I'd rate the experience as 8/10 and I will definitely do it again, and at a much stronger dose. The only downside of it is the come-down is kinda drawn out. I'd rather just go back to normal, or go back up to full-blown high. And the fact that it's very hard to sleep even after the comedown finishes. I took 20mg of melatonin though and conked out.
