The following is copypasted from what i posted in a thread on another board some time ago, so maybe this sounds familiar to some. I did some proofreading and worked over it, though. It's also a bit long, but i guess it has to be. Enjoy.
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Part 1 : Peaking
You emerge from silvery mist to walk another planet, an enchanted place where everything is connected and vibrating with a strange energy.
You feel as one with nature, you realize you have taken a step to the other side, gone down the rabbit hole that leads inside the worlds hidden in your head.
Blank surfaces become like a canvas for intricate geometric patterns that oscillate like the pictures in an optometrist's vision tests, arabesque water marks that flow across everything.
Your body loses it's outside boundaries, you cannot tell anymore where the world ends and you begin as parts of you circle around you like an asteroid belt and float away in the wind.
You melt into the furniture while a tree is growing out of your head and the person sitting next to you is covered in shining golden light.
Pulsing in sync with the music, the pictures on your wall bubble, breath and expand in unbelievable plasticity.
The bass line reforms itself inside of you, as a column of metal balls that replace your spine, exploding in a shining metallic taste as they reach your mouth.
You know all of this isn't real, are fully aware that it is just the result of a tiny amount of an exotic chemical that triggered a chain reaction in your brain, but it all seems so incredibly real and clear and tangible.
You take a sip of orange juice and the corner of your mouth explodes into swirling fractal patterns while the juice transforms to rubbery plastic worms crawling down your throat.
Your sense of balance and direction is turned upside down and for a brief moment, you feel what zero gravity must be like.
Closing your eyes, you are surrounded by drifting, rotating geometries, filigrane ornaments that draw you in, revealing layer upon layer of their complexity.
You have to open your eyes again, as it becomes so intense that you feel slightly nauseated.
The room is splashed in bright, vibrant colors drowning out all contours, an intense, wet tone of green lined with golden streaks that fold into each other with a whispering sound that gives off the smell of melting plastic. All senses are interconnected, all boundaries broken down, there is no separation between being and consciousness, between you and the world.
In fact, there is no you anymore, the entire universe has molten down into one all-encompassing, multisensory hallucination in which that what used to be you has dissolved completely and without leaving any trace.
What the hell is going on here? Well, let’s just go back a couple of hours.
Part 2 : Comeup
At first there's excitement. A feeling that something great and unique is building up, something that is pulling at your guts, trembling in your bones. A sense of energy, not the straightforward jolt of amphetamines, more like a fuzzy kind of static. An upbeat, friendly shakiness, accompanied soon by slight, but bearable nausea.
I'm out in the woods near my hometown in Germany, having swallowed a small piece of blotter paper with a supposed 200 micrograms of LSD on it one and a half hours ago. A usual dose for potent blotters over here, where acid is still sold in high doses, but more than I expected, as I will soon find out in a flurry of new, breathtaking impressions. Deep inside, i have been waiting for this day for over a decade, probably for all of my life. With me is a friend who has taken acid several times before and will not trip, instead acting as ground control during my experiment.
We are on a clearing where i have spent many a summer evening in my youth, partying with my friends, getting drunk and toking up. Now, ten years after these pastimes of an adolescent small town punk kid, I am here again, feeling the first surges of something incredibly synthetic and alien, amused at the idea that the occasional passers-by will probably think that the two of us are smoking pot, when we are actually up for…this.
I walk among the trees, on the springy forest floor, feeling that something is odd with my sense of balance, enhancing the bouncy feeling the ground gives off.
I pace up and down the clearing, all the while feeling that something is happening, but there are still no notable visuals yet, one and a half hours after dropping.
Colors have changed a bit, there is a golden tint to the leaves since about ten minutes, contrasts are slightly enhanced, but that's it.
Then i look up in the sky and it hits me.
The clouds.
The clouds are swirling, moving, fraying at the edges.
There is a texture lying over them, barely notable at first, a fractal patterning.
Excited, i run to my tripsitter, who is smoking a joint on a nearby bench, and tell her what just happened.
She is glad that i finally get visuals and tells me to look at my hand.
It is pulsing, breathing, morphing like crazy, all lines standing out in amazing detail as my flesh shrinks and expands in otherworldly, surreal clarity.
I am completely baffled, it looks so incredibly real, even though i know it's just an illusion. Absolutely convincing. Best special effects I’ve ever seen.
I step out into the sun and suddenly decide that i want to lay down in the blooming meadow that grows here.
I am rational enough to check for glass shards and dog shit beforehand, then i dive into the grasses growing almost two feet high and lay down on my back.
The plants take up my entire field of vision now, their stalks shining in iridescent, hyperintense green, the blossoms glistening in metallic hues of magenta and grey, with golden highlights. The weeds seem gigantic, like an enchanted forest. A bright-orange ladybug crawls over them, i am almost overwhelmed by the beauty of the scenery, feeling as one with nature.
A wave of euphoria and love for all living things washes over me.
I have landed on planet Lysergia and i come in peace.
I close my eyes, radialsymetric tribal patterns form in an instant, with incredibly sharp outlines, reminding me of Gothic and Celtic ornaments at the same time.
They drift and pulse, lit by an orange background shifting to bright gold.
I open my eyes again, looking at pixellated clouds, grinning happily and stupefied, feeling like a cheerful five year old.
Part 3 : Going down and second wind
I'm 5 hours in now. From one moment to the other, everything stands still.
Where i previously needed the help of my tripsitter sometimes to not get lost in the unfolding sensations, i am now stuck in a state where nothing happens.
I'm no longer melting, my bookshelf doesn't thrash around like crazy anymore, my posters have stopped moving, colors are back to normal.
I think that i only feel the weed and that the trip is over.
I'm totally wrong.
As soon as i have said that, the monitor of my computer is surrounded by a shimmering field of distorted light, like the heat over blacktop on a hot summer day. It is growing, expanding.
I look away, it's gone, everything normal.
I look back, it's there again at full force.
I can repeat this as often as i want, it always works.
I know that i'm still tripping now, i constantly repeat phrases like "it's definitely still there" or "but it's far out", plus the acid has massive effect on my emotions.
I feel dysphoria and depression almost as strong as the previous euphoria and excitement.
I make the mistake of trying to sit it out.
If you ever go tripping yourself and are in such a situation, don't do that.
Change something about your setting, get outside or whatever, keep it going.
Waiting is pointless, you have to turn things around.
For me, this turnaround fortunately happens when the sun is setting.
A new wave of hallucinations surges up, a bit less intense than the previous one, but still putting every experience i've had with weed or shrooms to shame.
A close friend of mine calls me, he doesn't know that i'm tripping, i don't want to alarm him and decide to tell him about this tomorrow and shake him off for now.
Problem is, he just keeps talking…and talking…and talking.
While my hallucinations are still becoming more and more intense the longer I focus on a stimulus, in this case, the feel of the telephone receiver in my hand.
My hand is melting into the telephone, the whole thing is turning into a bone-like structure straight out of a H.R. Giger painting, wrapping around my head.
It's not pleasant, but i still find it amazing. I laugh about it afterwards, i laugh about all the slightly disquieting or disgusting hallucinations i have during my trip.
The slimy and swampy stuff, the abject and reptilian, windows to a primal, primitive part of my brain that originates from a time before the dinosaurs walked the earth.
The body high is still enormous, i keep on mutating like crazy.
I turn into a sail blowing in the wind, into a metallic statue, a Dali clock, my trip leads through half of evolution and art history at the same time.
I sit back in my reclining chair and am flying through strange galaxies while spaceship control panels manifest around me, gesticulating to my sitter with thumbs up gestures out of Top Gun or Battlestar Galactica.
We talk a lot, i have sometimes trouble following the conversation, but can articulate myself almost normally.
She tells me about her dog and i see it before my inner eye in the style of Monthy Python animation. I report this and in my head, i hear a voice shouting "no one expects the Spanish inquisition!".
This is fun, it feels good again, it's relaxed and i enjoy myself once more.
I've turned things around.
I compare the effects of acid on the brain to a complex analogue synthesizer, as i have a strong urge to explain what's going on and this idea just crosses my mind.
Sometimes, when i work with these instruments, with all the switches and sliders that produce these insane, weird and amazing sounds, i get to the point where i do too much and only static noise comes out.
Then, i have to reset the whole thing to make it work again.
The last hours where exactly like this.
The trip had grinded to a halt and the sundown was like a reset.
I feel so relieved now.
I especially love what happens to my sense of touch.
Letting cool water run down my arms feels so refreshing and liberating, as if i'd wash down all the morass from the prehistoric swamps i've waded through today. I do it over and over again.
I've gotten into new clothes, a fresh shirt and a cozy tracking pant i sometimes wear at home. Simply changing to these clothes feels rejuvenating and comforting.
I walk around barefoot on my carpet as if i would do so for the first time.
I touch my hair and it feels like cotton.
I let my fingers run through it and am just glad to be alive and to be here to feel all this.
Part 4 : The long, slow comedown
It's 2 at night and we decide that we should probably get some sleep.
I take a look at the Russian matrushka wood doll my sitter brought along as a trip toy, a figurine whose vibrant deep blues and reds and floral patterns i had immensely enjoyed earlier that day.
The flowers printed on it had rotated, stretched and waved like crazy.
Now they stand still.
I pick it up, look over to my sitter and say "the batteries are all empty".
After my visuals have moved slower and slower, they now have stopped.
I also have regained my sense of the boundaries of my body.
I still feel the acid's effects in the backgrounds, my thoughts are much more visual and vivid, but i feel more of the weed at this time.
I prepare the couch for my sitter to sleep on and after we have shared a last joint, i turn off the lights and cuddle up on my mattress.
The problem is, i can't possibly get to sleep.
Whenever i close my eyes, i see patterns and get nauseous after a couple of seconds so i have to open my eyes again.
How should i sleep this way?
I lie awake for hours, thoughts spinning.
Getting darker and scarier.
I'm afraid of the bag lying next to my bed.
I know it's fully irrational, but i can't turn it off.
I have to hide that thing, it frightens me too much.
My thoughts start to loop around the fearful idea that i cannot fully come down, that i have done permanent damage to my mind.
When i'm not thinking about this, i get struck by nagging questions about my life, what i am doing with it, where my lifestyle of constant partying, doing drugs and sleeping around will lead me.
Going through torturous self analysis, i finally overcome my fears, make decisions about my issues, make the decision to snap out of the feedback loop i'm in, gather my strength and finally defeat my fear and insecurity.
Relieved, i turn on the globe next to my bed. The small blue ball pulsates slightly, visible proof that i'm still tripping a bit.
I smoke a cigarette, it feels relaxing and calming.
I eat some chocolate, glad that i can eat again without problems.
It tastes absolutely delicious.
Following a sudden idea, i take a book from my shelf, one about prehistoric animals i've treasured since my childhood.
When i dropped the acid, i was in a small geological park with stones from different prehistoric eras. The one that stuck in my mind came from the Pennsylvanian period.
I flip through the book until i find the chapter on that and realize that the picture looks exactly like the prehistoric swamps i've seen and inhabited today, the reptilian state of mind that was one of the leitmotifs of my trip.
Subconsciously, i must have connected the buried childhood memory of reading this book and the stone in the park, which sculpted impressions throughout my trip.
During this introverted part of my journey that puts some order into what I have experienced, another most impressive thing happens. Entity contact.
In a meditative, calm state, i visualize standing on a mountaintop in Croatia, looking down on the clear, blue waters of the Adriatic Sea. As i turn around, i face a goat of titanic proportions, it's white fur ripped by the wind, towering black horns crowning it's head, gigantic nostrils blowing out breath in a hint of sheer, animalistic power, eyes gazing at me in purest malignancy.
"I am older than time!" whispers the entity in a blood-chilling voice.
Unbelievably tired and jaded i respond "Yeah, so what? Me too."
I actually feel this way now, after 15 hours of tripping that felt like 15 billion years.
I also realize that the entity looks exactly like the devil in the Crowley tarot, is making a Simpsons reference and i don't believe in the devil anyway, all of which makes it very easy to respond in the way i just did.
Even though i was scared by much more minor things (plus a brief, terrifying vision of vampiric cyborgs) just one and a half hours ago, this being cannot instill any fear in me.
I feel as if i have grown beyond this, as if i have passed an ordeal, a psychedelic rite of passage.
The sun rises and light pours into my room, soft and beautiful, gently highlighting the contours of my furniture and my beloved acoustic bass guitar.
Rectangular patterns dance on my ceiling, stars in prismatic colors float through the air.
I am experiencing the last effects of my blotter, known as Rolling Stone because of the copy of Rolling Stones album artwork on the sheet.
Before my inner eye, a wide, dusty plain unfolds, looking like a sight from either the start or the end of the world, or both.
A large rock rolls across it, moving slower and slower, but never fully stopping.
The scenery is as epic and magnificent as it is melancholic.
Finally, i fall asleep from one moment to the next.
Part 5 : Aftereffects
After 4 hours of sleep (no dreams i can recall), i woke up again, realizing that my trip was over.
I talked a little with my tripsitter, telling her that i was glad to have made the experience, but would not want to repeat it, that i in fact believed all of my occasional experimentation with drugs would be over now, as any additional experience would either pale in comparison or be too much to for me to take (I’m not so sure about this by now, but time will tell).
After some suggestions on how to integrate my experience, she left and i decided to take a bath.
Standing naked in front of my bathroom mirror, i was overwhelmed with relieve to have made it through with my mind intact.
I had tested acid, but the acid had also tested me.
And i had passed.
I felt triumph, exhaustion, awe, relieve, unhingement, but as well the feeling of recovery from it, the feeling of being reborn.
I started to cry briefly, in the way you sometimes see soccer players cry when they have won the world cup, raising the trophy up to the cheering audience, the entire tension of the tournament suddenly lifted off their shoulders.
Some months later, i read an article about Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon. He said that he could never explain what it had been like to stand in a crater in Mare Tranquilitatis, looking down on his home planet from such a distance, seeing that blue ball floating in space.
I don't know either, but i wouldn't be surprised if that feeling would seem familiar to me.
I had finished an expedition into territory no man had entered before, the uncharted depths of my unconscious, the parts of my sensorium that had never been used by me before.
Since that day in early June, i have often felt that i have made an experience most people could never fully grasp, a minor, but personally important incident that sets me apart from those without contact to heavy psychedelics, by no means in a way that puts me above them, but certainly in a way that sets me apart.
I have observed small, but undeniable changes in my personality.
After having been one with nature, i never litter anymore.
After seeing what was previously unseen by me, i have found a greater appreciation of psychedelic and floral patterns.
After having made it through what in retrospect seems like an epic quest, a rite of passage, i am more at ease, am less shaken by many things.
I have gained new perspectives on many philosophical questions, especially those regarding the body and identity, and an increased interest in art and science.
I have also experienced adverse effects in the time immediately after the trip.
I had several flashbacks, especially after marijuana use (effects of cannabis have also become more psychedelic in general).
They have become less frequent now and I have learned to actually enjoy them.
They will probably fade entirely one day and I have stopped to worry, as they cause me no harm and proved not to be the first forebodings of greater problems. But in the beginning, they have been frightening at times.
In the week immediately following my experiment, i have had difficulty concentrating on anything besides my encounter with LSD, having to sort out, integrate and archive the overwhelming impressions i had to face under it's influence.
I can only advise everyone willing to experiment with this substance to take enough time to reflect upon it's use and employ techniques such as writing a trip report, drawing pictures of the visuals if possible, talking about the experience and so on.
I also felt worn out, vulnerable and kind of dumb or dull in the first days afterwards, this continued for almost a week, with gradually decreasing effects. I was totally shaken by what i had gone through, it went to the core of my being.
The worst part of the recovery was that i sometimes feared to develop psychotic symptoms, although there where no actual signs of it.
I attribute this partially to the difficult parts of my experience, but as well to the general cultural depiction of LSD's effects.
I can by now say that this fear was completely unsubstantiated and irrational, but it greatly concerned me at that time.
I have recently also gone through an episode of depression, but i doubt that it was caused by taking acid.
In fact, i am now certain that it already lingered in the background before and was directly responsible for the difficult episodes in the second half of my trip.
If i had known and addressed these issues properly before, i am certain that i would have had a better experience with less troubles afterwards.
This way, i have to view it as a way to help me realize underlying problems and ultimately face and solve them.
I am still grateful for what i have been shown by Mr. Hofmann's fantastic invention, it is an experience i will hold dear and treasure for the rest of my life.
I would probably also repeat it sometime at a later point in my life if conditions are good, though I can not say for sure if and when I ever take a strong psychedelic again.
But for now, I would rather focus on advancing myself on my own, without chemical aid.
In summary, i can safely say that LSD is incomparable to any other drug i have ever taken, that in fact a profound experience with this substance is something fundamentally different from other forms of recreational drug use, more like an adventurous journey than a mere state of inebriation.
It is a demanding drug, but if used rarely and with due respect and preparation and by a healthy, stable individual, a substance with controllable risks and great potential, as well as probably the most interactive state of altered consciousness one can find.
Many of it's risks are exaggerated, some are rightfully addressed, but too often in a wrong, in fact unhelpful way.
I hope that my account can help others who wish to explore it to better prepare themselves for it, that it furthers understanding of this chemical among those who have not yet taken it or decided for themselves that they will not explore it and that it has inspired and entertained both those readers experienced and inexperienced in the use of LSD.
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