Battle Against my Own Brain

It was a typical Saturday afternoon. A week prior, I had made plans with 3 of my friends to trip on some verypotent liquid LSD we had picked up recently. I was given a serious warning from my dealer not to consume more than 3 drops. He sincerely claimed that the vial needed to have a warning label on it. His source had driven several hours to another city just to obtain the acid, because it was such a wicked batch. It was supposedly "barely diluted". Being my usual skeptical self, I decided I was going to ignore his advice and go balls deep to see what beautiful places my mind could take me to. My friends were very inexperienced with LSD for the most part; 1 friend (who will be called JAM) had tripped a total of 7 or so times, another (D) a single time (actually 2 days before this trip), and the other (KA) was dropping for his first time for his birthday. The day seemed all too perfect for anything to mess up, despite the fact that during this time in my life, I had had a myriad of personal issues and insecurities (that could possibly lead to bad experiences, but I didn't completely take that into account).

I'm honestly starting to get slightly uneasy even thinking about the experience I am about to describe.

Around 3:30 P.M., my friend (KY, he was sober) picked me up from my house. He was with D and KA, who were minutes away from consuming their acid. We drove to my other friend's house, where my personal stash of acid was sitting in the freezer. The LSD was dropped onto sugar cubes. Our plan was to drive to our friend JAC's house and enjoy the ride in a safe setting, while the people that opted not to trip smoked marijuana. 

I walked into his house and saw a couple of my friends there. We briefly conversed and smoked a bowl of CBD-rich marijuana (an anti-psychotic chemical in marijuana that reduces anxiety) for a few minutes as a "way to ease me into my trip". I pulled a whopping five sugar cubes out of the freezer and shoved them in my mouth, then licked a bunch of sugar crumbles off the foil. My friends were a bit shocked I was willing to go that far, but they sort of already were used to my tendency to consume large quantities of psychedelic drugs. I talked with them for another 10 minutes or so, then I went back to the car. On my way to the car, I noticed I was starting to feel increasingly disoriented. It wasn't that euphoric, confusing sort of disorientation, it was more of a "I'm losing my mind" sort of thing. I felt slightly anxious, but I assumed the negative feelings would pass as soon as the acid took full effect. A couple minutes after I got in the car, D ate 2 sugar cubes, and KA ate 1.

Little did I know.... the experience was about to get very, very ugly.

Ten minutes into the car ride and twenty minutes after eating the sugar cubes, reality was beginning to dissipate. I started wondering what the fuck was going on around me, and why I was feeling so uncomfortable. This was an awful, unenjoyable come-up; it was something I wasn't used to. I started telling my friends I was really scared, and the intense anxiety was gripping every single fiber of my body. By the minute, I was starting to panic more. I had the sense that I had taken WAY too much LSD at once. In all honesty, I wanted this overwhelming experience to be over. Unfortunately, it was only the beginning of an unimaginable nightmare that would show me the "evil" side of LSD and completely change my opinion about the drug in general. 

25 minutes after taking the sugar cubes, we arrived at JAC's house. By that time, I had serious difficulty walking straight, and I was already having severe visual distortion. All movements were followed by strobing trails composed of detailed patterns, kaleidoscopes, and rainbows. These visuals that I would have usually considered beautiful were now viewed as a reminder that I was in the middle of a trip that I so desperately wanted to end. 

When I got inside his house, I saw a few more of my friends, including JAM, who had consumed 2 sugar cubes. I felt embarrassed because I obviously looked like I couldn't handle my shit; maybe this was just an extreme amplification of my general self-esteem issues. Their faces were menacing and demonic, and this truly frightened me. I fled to JAC's room.

This is the point where I lost track of time, so there is no point of trying to estimate anything....

JAC followed me to his room and did his best to comfort me and talk me out of my bad trip. It was a completely ineffective attempt. I could barely understand a word coming out of his mouth because I was distracted by the spiraling display of binary coding when I closed my eyes. It was like a a vortex of numbers and letters, and I felt like I was infinitely connected to them in some type of unexplainable way. A couple minutes later, I started crying hysterically. I watched my  external environment turn dull, bleak and depressing. The floor, which was covered in complex fractals, started to wither away and die. It was as if it had human emotions and was feeling every bit of suffering I was going through at the time. My joints felt intense sensations of painful electric shock, but I could care less because of how awful I was feeling already in that moment. 

Somehow, just a little while after this part of the trip, I stumbled to his backyard, where a group of 8 or so people were sitting. While looking for a chair, I lost balance and fell backward onto the ground. I continued to see more incredible vortexes of numbers and letters spurt out from every direction. People were starting to wonder if I was going to be okay, and a couple people tried to coax me out of my state of panic. There were a couple kids there that were under the influence of MDMA, and they definitely were giving off the most compassionate vibes. 

During my friends' attempts to help restore me to sanity, they asked if I knew what time it was. I responded with "8:00 A.M.". That was quite enough of a response to prove I was completely and utterly going nuts and there was no real way to help me. 

Eventually, most of the kids at the house retreated to a canyon nearby JAC's house to enjoy their highs. I stayed with JAC and a few other people who I cannot clearly remember. They smoked bowls in his backyard while I silently laid down in another room. The trip was getting worse with each passing moment. 

Once night fell, I was full-on peaking in JAC's room. I began to literally have no idea who I was, where I was, or what drug I was on (or what drugs were in the first place). At some point at the beginning of the peak, I realized that I could not recognize the room I was in. Suddenly, I started seeing several cop cars pull into the room and put their sirens on. Yellow caution tape magically appeared around them as well. This was one of my worst nightmares coming to life before my very eyes. There was a line of already-arrested criminals in handcuffs next to the cop cars, and they were all complaining that I had snitched on them for some unspecified reason. I knew I was in for absolute hell. Before I could see what was going to happen next, I was unexpectedly teleported to some sort of heaven/paradise-sort of setting. It was indescribably euphoric and magnificent. I can't remember any details, but I loved every second of my stay in that 
wonderful place. My stay there was cut short when I was suddenly teleported through some type of time-warp tunnel, where I experienced every ounce of pain any human being could ever possibly experience at one time. I saw many miserable people I had seen throughout my life, including the homeless and starving. I felt as though I was experiencing every single thought I had ever had in my entire life in a single second. My brain's sensory filter was gone; every last bit of information that could physically be processed at once was flowing through my head at light speed. 

The time warp tunnel took me to a prison facility. This was no ordinary housing unit for criminals. I saw hundreds of pitbulls, white supremacists, and naked black men running around. It was a state of sheer pandemonium. I was taken to the showers where I was bitten repeatedly by pitbulls and raped by the white supremacists and black men simulatneously. I felt every single sensation, including their penises in my anus and the razor-sharp teeth of the vicious dogs. 

Who knows how long this actually went on for, but eventually this torture ended and I was back in JAC's room. I saw all of my friend's faces covered in knife wounds and deep, bleeding cuts. Puddles of blood were all over the room. It was a grotesque sight. It was better than that hellish-peak, though.  

I looked at the clock, and it read 9:00 P.M. (or something along those lines). 

Minutes after I came back to earth, I started having epiphany after epiphany. I realized the dire importance of treating all humans equally, no matter how they are born.... no matter how much, or how little they have. It is out of their control, and it is crucial to make the world a better place by treating other humans with the utmost respect at all times. I had literally experienced the pain the least fortunate human beings had endured. I saw how cruel the world we live in can be. It touched me deep within the core of my soul. 

I wish I could have remembered everything else I said. All of my friends told me that I had said some of the most profound things they had ever heard. I'm still trying to integrate that part of the experience. 

The rest of that night included me smoking bowls of White Widow with D and KA. We attempted to talk, but the acid made it near impossible to have a sort of normal conversation. Fortunately, I was able to get a couple hours of sleep that night because of the weed I smoked earlier. I left with KY and D once morning came around, and they dropped me off in my neighborhood.

The next day was relatively miserable. I felt emotionally "naked". I felt very sensitive and self-conscious, but getting a good night's sleep later that day ended any residual negative emotions from the trip.

I decided that I'm going to give my brain a bit of a rest after that trip. Though it was miserable, I feel as though it has helped me grow a lot as an individual. I can't even fully explain why. This was a definitely a psychedelic experience that will stick with me until the day I die. Hopefully the next one will be more pleasant.