Respect for the Forest LSD Trip

Respect the Forest

            It was around 5 AM on a Wednesday morning when I decided that today was the day, and so it was. I woke-up exhausted from getting no sleep all last night, but this was my own fault for thinking to much. My mind was filled with extravagant visuals and dreams of which I had pertaining to this very day. I pull off the covers and head straight for the shower; forgetting to grab clothes or a towel. Turning the water on I begin to become in a trance with the fact that today was the day. The day of all days; the day I learned what respect for the forest really meant. Upon finishing my shower I walked out of my room and proceeded to my bedroom. Opening my mini fridge which was attached to my desk was a hassle because it was in the cubby very tightly. Reaching in, I grab a small bag which contains the prize, the sacrament, and the respect for the forest.

            What is in this bag? What can be a prize, a sacrament, and the respect for the forest? Two hit's of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide or better known as LSD. Many might argue that taking such drugs would be a bad decision simply because they don't understand what it means to me, everyone, and everything. This drug is not something you abuse; this drug is not something you toy with. LSD, or Lysergic Acid Diethylamide is a highly psychedelic drug. It will induce auditory, visual, and even coma like states. Every experience is uniquely different than the last experience, and every experience has a 50/50 chance of being a bad one. What most people in modern society don't understand is the bad experiences often lead to life lessons you could not learn by yourself. Many active LSD users agree that it will teach you that life is just a mental race, and you learn to take control of the race. If your brain wants the rabbit to win the race it will, but if it wants the turtle you are going to work for it. This "work" I speak of is a mental wrestling match.

            Enough about the drug itself, lets get back to the experience that was about to unfold. I opened the bag, and pulled out two Bottle Cap candies and began to suck until they slowly dissolved in my mouth. The moment they finished dissolving I could feel a change in overall mental status. I was not hallucinating, hearing things, or anything of that such. To put it plain and simple after you trip the first time the next time you put  it in your mouth, you know. Even if the effects of the LSD have not kicked in you are fully aware of what is about to happen. The people who embrace this feeling, this emotion, this event, and the rollercoaster of what is about to happen are the ones who have a good trip. If truly embracing a good trip means you must fight through a few bad ones to get it than so be it. That is what you must do to understand the complexity of what is happening to you when you take LSD.

            Thirty minutes has gone by and I am starting to notice that my brain is toying with itself, I am trying to comprehend what is real and what isn't. This means that the LSD is starting to work. Upon gazing at the walls, I notice that it will occasionally move in a swirl like pattern. My girlfriend and I are talking on the phone just generally conversing while I wait. I start to feel a deep compassion for the voice on the phone, but I kick it off as butterflies. But as she talks her voice sounds more and more comforting, and I start to realize this. Who is this Woman? Why do I feel so in tune with her? Why can't I see her? Where is she coming from? Oh, my phone.

            After an hour has rolled by I am still on the edge of reality and my trip. I start watching the Fresh Prince of Bellaire on TV. For some odd reason, my brain is uniquely focused on the sweater Will is wearing throughout the whole episode. It is so bright, colorful, and very eye catching. I am starting to notice in the corner of my eye things look different. Walls are moving in an almost simulated way, and this is starting to become my focus of attention. I look up at the ceiling above my bed and notice the bumps on my ceiling look like they are a straight line sending off bubble messages to each other. A circle of the bump would break off and travel to another where another would break and head to a different. They were passing each other messages I was sure of it. The walls were not talking through words, but through bubbles.  I didn't want to say anything, I just wanted to stare into them.
            Hour and a half mark rolls by and I find myself downstairs playing a First Person Shooter game with this voice. We are a team, communicating, working together, and just really understanding. I of course am to distracted with the realistic environment in the game. It is an insane rush of colors and my brain becomes confused. The screen starts to melt down all the way, and every time I blink it reappears back to normal. But, really what is normal? Will reality ever come back? All questions shooting through my head as I begin to slip into a deep trance. Me and this voice decide to watch Avatar, by James Cameron. In Blu-ray quality it is a movie filled with amazing action scenes and special effects beyond any sober persons imaginations.

            Two and a half hour mark I start to realize that the violence in Avatar is to much for my brain to experience. Why do people get excited at things getting killed? Why do people get excited at danger? These questions phase through my head and I turn the movie off because I couldn't handle it. I walk over to my computer with this voice talking over my shoulder, but truly on my head. I feel as if my head is disconnected from my body floating behind me. I can't describe the euphoria rushing through my brain, but it was amazing. I turn on my computer and get on to talk to my friends. I have basic conversation of which I can not remember. They convince me to play a game of Snipers Only in a online FPS called Combat Arms. I chase them around as every box, gun, ground, and wall on my screen morphs. They are circling around me, and I can not focus on anything. The whole screen turns into an utter swirl, and I have an odd urge to stick my hand inside the screen. After testing this ingenious idea several times I bow out to my friends and tell them I must go.

            Three hours or so into my trip I begin to have an urge to go outside, to see the outside world, accepting it for what it is. I spent 5 to 10 minutes getting myself ready for the journey. I decided to bring my dogs along to help stabilize my walking. Standing there in front of the door I look outside and begin to worry that if I go outside I will never be able to come back in. The voice on the other end says, "It's okay Conner, you'll be fine." Agreeing and feeling that the voice would never lie to me, I open the door and lock it behind me. The door slams shut and I am hit with a wave of visual hallucinations, cars going by that have distinct lines behind them, and kids walking throughout the neighborhood. I start to question myself if there is any kids outside, and remember they should be at school. At this moment, everything changes. There is no kids, and no cars and I am walking down the street alone. The wooden fence next to me is freaking out, it feels insecure that I am talking next to it, and I give it space. I wondered as I was walking why it felt so insecure, and if I did something wrong to it. Shaking my head I realize I was just worried about a fences emotions. Walking down the street seemed to take an eternity and it was incredible. Every house had a different story with a different family, and every family had a past. The grass all around me is waving in the wind to a synchronized pattern almost to a song which began to play in the back of my head. I walk to a crossroads, do I go left, do I go right?

            I chose to go left and walk down the street. This street seems to be endless, and uphill test of will. I see a mountain over the horizon of the hill. I want to get to the top of this mountain, so I trudge on through the muck. The ground I am walking on mimics that of quick sand, for every step I must take is harder than the last one. My body is being pulled along by two scavengers. My 9 month old beagle puppies, and they stalk through the grass smelling everything they encounter. I close my eyes for a brief second and I begin to see myself walking through really tall grass. Blink!    I am back walking, and I have no idea what just happened. I think I took the perspective of my animals. They were in tune with my psyche. Proceeding to walk up this hill to reach the top of the mountain, and the goal of my life. My dreams and every wish lives in a cave at the top of this mountain. I am mumbling random thoughts out which my voice can not understand. She just continues to reassure me that everything is okay. The street is expanding as I walk down it, and every time I turn around to look back I increased my distance monumentally which seems to confuse me. How did I get that far, because every time I look back the road stretches almost tenfold. I lose sight of how I got on the road, and why I was on it to begin with.

            Continuing up this, I reach the top of the hill and am disappointed to see that there is no mountain. It is in fact hundreds of miles in front of me off in the far distance. There is a field off to my left hand side which I gaze into. In the air in the exact middle of the field is a giant bird. This bird must have been the size of my dog, and I was fascinated with it. I never saw it fly up, and It was not moving. This bird was literally flapping it's wings like a mad man, and not moving in any direction. I stopped for a minute to stare at it, and it was amazing. I closed my eyes and I was face to face with the bird I could see its every flap, and every movement. I open them again and I am back on the ground staring up at it. The bird doesn't move, still flying in place. I stand there looking at the bird for what seems to be a period of a half an hour which in reality must have been 30 seconds to a minute. I blink and the bird simply disappears, but was there even a bird? Did I even see a bird? Where did it go? How did it go away so fast? What was the bird doing? How could it be flying in place?

            Walking down the road I continue to process the vibrant colors of the plants growing all around me. Flowers seem to be budding out into beautiful colors and then retracting back to a leaf status. I see a crosswalk in front of me in which I feel like I need to ask it if I can cross. I ask the crosswalk politely in my head if I may cross the street, and it agrees. I continue to proceed across the road, realizing I wasn't walking on a crosswalk, but next to it. I was careful not to step on it, for it might get angry. I am on the other side of the street. Looking at a path that leads straight into the forest, but the voice tells me not to go down it. I want go down this path, and there is a kind of sparkling line that wants to pull me down the trail. I see birds flying and bushes moving, but I feel as if I need to head home I have been outside for hours. I head down the road, and half-way back I stop dead in my tracks.

            My eyes close and I begin to feel every emotion the forest has ever felt. The disrespect of the construction workers chopping them down. The wind blows on the leaves, and in my head I believe I can hear a distinctly loud whistle coming from every tree in the forest. Every leaf, every plant, every flower begins to whistle at me, and I don't understand what it means. I immediately come to the realization that I was walking in the grass next to the forest and the dogs were pulling me through it. I take a big leap over to the sidewalk were I feel comfortable. I walked all over the grass, and this was exactly what every other person on the planet has done. They have taken advantage of the beautiful thing in which the forest is. Tree's are not a single living thing, grass is not a single living thing, and flowers are not a simple living thing. They are a whole, a connected soul together joined for one purpose, and this purpose is life. Why should we harvest them, and use them for our own selfish needs? Are we going to reincarnate in a later life as one of them, and feel the cruelty to which we did. I begin to talk of the sidewalk as being my friend, because the sidewalk avoided walking on top of the grass. I began to babble on to this voice in my head that I could not walk on the grass because it would disrespect the forest, and that was something no living thing should experience. I walked down and stopped and stared for must have been in my trip thirty minutes, but was truly only 10 minutes. Everything around me was going crazy and I was filled with a deep emotion for the trees, and how they felt. A tear ran down my cheek, but only one. This emotion was stopped by that voice in my head, telling me everything was okay, and it loved me.

            I continued my walk home and everything was morphing, but my brain could not get it's mind off the fact that the forest talked to me. I felt what it felt, I heard it's cry for help. It's whistle of cries. It's deep torture for what we were doing to it as a whole. I loved the forest, and my new mission was to respect it, and make the cries heard. Make people sit down and listen to the whistles of the tree's. I opened my front door, and shut it, forgetting all that had just happened to me, I am home now.