My 1st Lsd Trip Report (dec. 2016)

[gleb]

This is gunna be divided into chronological sections. This trip spurred a dramatic internal reorganization and changed the trajectory of my life for good. I believe it to be responsible for deepening my interest in Truth to the level it is now and briefly turning me into a hippie.

I can now contest to the huge power of entheogens. TREAT THESE SUBSTANCES WITH RESPECT. If you're taking them for spiritual/personal development reasons, I urge you to thoroughly research the experiences of others and make sure that you are well versed in personal development phenomena beforehand. There was a long stretch of time afterward where I felt clinically insane and would be in tears wishing I could go back to ignorance of these subjects we discuss on this forum. I simply wasn't ready for what happened, so there are still parts of me that are ambivalent to the idea personal development.

The change of my mental landscape took months to process. The rug was pulled out from under me, hard. If you're not ready for something like that to potentially happen, don't take psyches. 

Without further a-do, let's dive in!

 

LIFE PRE-LSD

I was in college when the idea of taking a psych hit me. After my first semester, I wrote myself a 5 page paper (scientifically sourced) highlighting the pros and cons of taking acid. Convinced of its safety profile, I obtained it from a friend of mine. About a week after that a close friend of mine and I took it in his basement. 

The idea of drugs turned me off for the first part of my life. Before this trip I had only smoked weed twice and drank less than 10 times. I was really into body building at this point. I was also pretty big into no-fap at this time too - well passed the 90 day mark. I was aware of meditation and practiced loosely. I was also aware of the Ultimate Truth thanks to Leo  . I would watch his videos but never really practiced, just masturbated to the theory. My interest in these subjects were just budding at the time. I also had no anxiety or depression prior to this - they were more than likely suppressed. 

This was prior to Leo talking about psychedelics. I'd like to thank PsychedSubstance for being a heavy catalyst in peaking one's interest of these subjects. I wanted a revelatory experience and things just fell into place for one to happen. I told my Mom and Dad before hand what I was doing and my reasoning for it. I offered them to read the paper I wrote and of course they turned me down. They were disappointed. My Mom wouldn't talk to me for a while. Why would any orange colored, right-winged household want to turn their world upside down? 

 

THE TRIP

December 11th, 2016 is the night that we took it. We overlooked a couple of things. We didn't test the substance, nor did we have a trip sitter. We laid blankets out on the floor and had music going on a record player. Our intention for the trip was exclusively introspective. I wrote out a list of questions to ask myself. Unfortunately, I don't have the list any longer because I got upset one day after the trip and threw it all away. Extreme denial  . It included questions like "What is time?" "What is the meaning of life?" "Who am I?" etc. The classics. 

We dosed up. The tabs weren't bitter or metallic tasting. In-fact, there were many times we doubted whether or not we got scammed. The person who sold them to me told me they were 100ug doses. I don't know about the validity of that statement, honestly. 

It took over an hour for the effects to come up. Emotions were intensified and album covers gave me strange feelings. It wasn't hectic at all. Just subtle.  Visuals were nothing like I expected. They were mild. Colors were contrasty and my vision felt HD. This was the first time I could manually zone out with my vision. That stuck from the trip. Fractals were delightful. My body felt light and I felt more athletic than usual. My balance was extraordinary. 

The first things I noticed were my hands. By god people, I attest to this day that our appendages are the most peculiar things of our physical body. My friend explained our physical characteristics as "foreign" and it felt like a perfect word for them. We are alien. Nearly the entire come-up was spent contemplating the profundity that we are organisms. That was a realization that I never considered, it was almost as if we went third-person on our conceptualization of ourselves. Everything was new. 

The peak is where it gets juicy. Eventually I got to a point where I was squatting with my notepad trying to make sense of what I had written. Every once in a while I would scribble down a hieroglyphic that only made sense to humans. The realizations seemed profound but when they devolved into a ink splotch on paper the magic was stolen.  The entire notion of writing my thoughts seemed futile. How are we supposed to express what's going on inside? The expression is never as accurate as what's actually happening and it seemed like it was losing it's value once I tried to analyze it. From that point, I applied that to thinking. When we analyze, we're losing the magic. We're losing what's presently going on. Thoughts like these came by the bucket load. 

At this point I was pacing back and forth with the amount of revelatory information being presented to me and I would occasionally mutter something to my friend who was supine on his back, wide-eyed at the ceiling. I would say, "I feel this..." and " I feel that..." and at one point a freight train hit me. I was actually stopped dead in my tracks. The question gives me goosebumps as I write this but the next thought that came up was "But who is I?".

Almost immediately after that, something strange began happening. My thoughts and emotions seemed distant and my identification with them was not present. It felt as though the pallet or stage on which these sensations were happening on suddenly became recognizable. It was so still. It was so vast it was startling. I have no idea how long it lasted. What I did say to my friend afterward was "The real me is not scared".  

As soon as I started analyzing what was happening is when the resistance came. I burst into tears. I was suddenly on my ass blubbering about the beauty of what just had happened. An entire new domain of life opened up inside of a 15 minute time frame. It was too much but just enough at the same time. Fuck people, how do you explain this? 

The rest of the trip was spent contemplating this experience with great joy, and at one point I could logically explain to you how I was no different from a couch cushion. It lasted over 15 hours. 

LIFE AFTER THE TRIP

The first moth after this experience was beautiful. It felt like the afterglow lasted for days. I would tear up at nature and enjoyed being by myself for long periods of time. I was obsessed with what happened and kept researching psyches and reports of non-duality. And then, the purging came. 

I woke up one morning at 5 am frantically wondering if I was dying. It was a full on panic attack. I had no idea what was happening or what to do. It was very painful. I went to counseling services later in the day in tears wondering if I had gone mad. By their estimation I had extreme anxiety. The months following this were spent in very dark corners of the soul. Every action, every thought, every emotion, every inch of my being was being analyzed. There were many times I called home to my mom crying that I didn't know what was happening. Suicidal thoughts were prevalent. I spent a lot of time in bed contemplating existence and researching enlightenment and doing some practices. 

Around spring time 2017 I had a few more moments where I felt I had gotten close to disappearing but there was resistance that came up. I experimented with psychedelics again but never again came close to it. The following trips were less introspective, more of them spent in nature caressing tree bark and wondering how a frog can sit in one spot for hours. Every time I smoke pot it's in hopes of reaching that state again or contemplating my existence.  

These days I'm stable. No more depression and very minimal anxiety. My thirst for Truth is seemingly unquenchable, however. I've begun seriously implementing practices and am now truth-seeking for the long haul. I've got the first year planned out with what habits I want to build and what book I want to read. I haven't taken a psychedelic in 8 months. 

 

I still think about it every morning when I wake up. It's haunting. And I don't know if I love it or hate it, but I want to see more. Once you peel back the first layer, you gotta keep going. 

 

That's all I've got. Be careful out there  

 

Edited August 9, 2017 by gleb
Title Bug

[Real Eyes]

Thanks for sharing your experience.  Absolutely agree on the part about making sure you are ready for these substances.  Everybody has a tendency to think that they are the exception to the rule about needing preparation, but once the trip starts getting wild, they will be humbled.  

I think a reasonably long, consistent track record of meditation is an absolute prerequisite of even dabbling in these substances.  And only take them when the set and setting are perfect.  

[gleb]

@Real Eyes Can't agree more. I wish I would have meditated for at least a year before diving head first into them. A grounded internal environment is crucial for understanding the trip. 

[nexusoflife]

@gleb

Thank you for sharing this. This is a very interesting trip report to say the least. You did good in conveying in detail what happened. It’s also helpful that you separated this post into three parts.  I noticed that there were some things in common between our experiences with psychedelics. Although I have never done LSD I have had some similar experiences with psilocybin mushrooms. For example I too felt blown away by the overall profound strangeness of the human body.

2 hours ago, gleb said:

The first things I noticed were my hands. By god people, I attest to this day that our appendages are the most peculiar things of our physical body.

When I looked at my hands after the trip I had almost the exact same response that you did!

Regarding resistances and questions, in my experience I’ve learned that it’s not always wise to ask questions during a trip. Psychedelics are like teachers and we are the students. Asking questions and intellectualizing the process is like speaking out while the teacher is lecturing. It’s not going to go well for the student. During my mushroom trip I had to learn that the hard way. This is especially important on higher doses.  If you read my trip report with psilocybin you’ll see just how insane a high dose of a psychedelic can be.

After a psychedelic trip or unitive experience a lot of repressed stuff comes up afterward and we have to clean it up whether we want to or not. In short purging sucks but it’s necessary to go through. From your post it sounds like you went through “the dark night of the soul”. I’ve also had my experience with that crazy process and sometimes I feel like I’m still going through it. However my depressive phase occurred long before I began using entheogens. The feelings of total confusion, isolation, sadness for the world and wishing to return to “blissful” ignorance are feelings that I have known all too well.  I’m glad that you were able to process all of that and continue on your path of self-discovery.

Lastly meditation is one of the most important daily practices that you can have in your life. It has completely changed my state of mind and I would not be who I am today if not for meditation.

2 hours ago, gleb said:

Once you peel back the first layer, you gotta keep going.

Exactly!

Good luck to you on your journey.

Edited August 10, 2017 by nexusoflife

[ZenSwift]

Very insightful trip report. Notes taken. I think the potential for being in a world of suffering is not emphasized enough. I'm starting to understand that it's unavoidable if you're looking for the truth and Awakening.