LSD - Canada Day

I had tripped mushrooms twice, and salvia twice at this point in time, so I wouldn't consider myself experienced with psychedelics by any means. I was however, eager to try this substance I had read so much about. It was Canada day, perfect weather, time off work, everything was great. Three of us found ourselves in the middle of what I believe is the oldest park in our city. Large trees and green grass everywhere. There is a small little hill there, surrounded by trees that were planted in a perfect circle. We sat down there and put the tabs on our tongues, one each. We played some music from a portable speaker one of us had brought while we awaited the come up. MGMT's "The Handshake" made sense to play, as I've always personally thought the lyrics "We got the handshake under our tongue" referred to LSD. Over the course of about 30 to 60 minutes, we walked around the park, itching to feel the first effects. I was on a swing, staring at the water spraying up from a nozzle in the water park there. I remember just feeling the air rush around me, mesmerized as the water glittered in the sunlight and seemed to hang there while my eyes were on it. I got off the swing and stared in awe at the sun's shafts of light shining through the trees, and the seeds from the cottonwood trees catching the light, it was surreal, and peaceful.

Today, I wish I would have stayed in the park until I was fully tripping, because it was truly one of the most beautiful things I've ever witnessed, but we decided to continue on to the celebrations that were being held in a coulee nearby. When we started walking, I felt a surge of energy start in my stomach, and rise up through my entire body. I felt like I could literally just explode with happiness! It felt very pure and very real. I felt extremely giddy, like a little kid at disneyland. I was trying to explain it to the other two who were with me, but I suddenly realized that they were also in the same headspace as me, and I had a reassuring feeling that they knew exactly what I was feeling. So we kept walking, cars were passing us, people were walking, life was happening around us like usual but I felt like I was in a little bubble that contained the three of us.

We arrived at the edge of the coulee, and had a fantastic view of the entire situation. Hundreds of people were all walking, and so many things were all happening at once. I decided to put on my glasses (which I never wear, but took for this special occasion) and view the entire scene. I could suddenly see everything SO clearly (both physically, and mentally), it felt like every person, everything, down to the last footstep was being processed by my brain. Every single person of the thousands I could see, had a long history, family, friends, dreams, goals, fears etc. and thinking about that absolutely blew my mind to pieces. We all tripped out over that for a while as we watched the masses down below, then decided to head into the heart of the beast.

We descended down a path, directly into the coulee. Things started getting very up close and personal. I wasn't fully peaking yet, but was fairly close at this point. I wasn't scared of being in public with all these strangers, in fact it was actually pretty exciting. We kept walking, and the crowd seemed to grow and grow as we walked deeper and deeper into it. After 15ish minutes, we stopped near a garbage bin to asses the situation and decide where to go next. I was staring at the letters painted on the side of the bin and they seemed to move slightly. This point was, for all of us the first of the visuals that were to come. We decided to head up a path on the opposite side of the coulee to an area with less people. We headed up the path and found a spot with far less people than the area we just came from. As we walked to an area covered by shade, I was staring at the trees and had a startling realization that trees as I see them must be like blades of grass to an ant. That is to say, everything big is just a big version of something small, everything is relative.

As we sat under the tree, some younger teens called over to us and asked me my name. I was a bit confused, but answered with my name. One of the girls called back and said "You're attractive!". I was very confused and didn't know how to handle this type of situation in my current state, but managed to say thank you in return. This then lead me down a rabbit trail of what is and isn't attractive, and whether or not attractiveness is actually just a general consensus of the general public, and whether or not it is entirely subjective. I snapped out of this thought as I stared up at the blue sky. It was the bluest blue I had ever seen, and after a second or two or staring at the clouds, they began to swirl in beautiful patterns. I had never experienced visuals like this before and was ecstatic that I was finally seeing things move around! We just sat on the lawn, probably looking like complete tools, rubbing the grass and staring at the sky for who knows how long while countless people walked past us heading into the coulee. I didn't mind though, it was too enjoyable to be ruined by some random person's opinion of me.

When we decided to finally move on, we were all definitely peaking. I felt like my thoughts, instead of passing through my brain like normal, now had to go through multiple filters and undergo extensive studying before my brain was done processing them. Time had lost most of its meaning, and my head for lack of a better explanation felt "full of acid". We arrived at the college just at the top of the coulee, and found a small cement building that I believe contained supplies. We climbed on top of it and were pleasantly surprised to find that there was a protruding ledge that would cover our heads when we sat under it. We sat there for the better part of probably 2 or 3 hours. Lost in time and strange conversations, watching the walls inflate and deflate. All of my senses seemed to be more sharply tuned into reality than they normally are, and I felt an overall elevation in my senses. Unfortunately, one of the conversations sent me over the edge for around 30 to 45 minutes. Talking about life and death and god is interesting, but when you start thinking about what happens when you die on acid, things can get scary, at least for me.

I stared up at the sky in despair, wondering why on earth everything is the way it is. Who am I? Why am I here? Am I alone? What happens when you die? Scared and feeling completely alone, even in the company of two other people I felt a pain in the middle of my head. I believed that core components in my brain were being overwritten like a hard drive in a computer, permanently. I started freaking out a little bit on the inside and asking myself why in the hell I had even taken acid in the first place. I CAN'T GO BACK NOW. MY BRAIN IS BEING PERMANENTLY OVERWRITTEN WITH ACID AND THERE'S NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT. Yes, that was really going through my head. Looking back, this is completely silly, but in the moment, I was scared shitless. I really did feel this pain however, but this was probably more to do with the fact that it was very hot out, I had been walking all day, and I'd drank hardly any water. I had forgotten to do routine things like drink water and go to the bathroom. I hadn't forgotten HOW to do them, but those built-in reminders that your body lets you know about had seemingly been shut off for the day.

I managed to calm myself down after a while and felt much better. The fireworks were going to start in about 20 minutes, so we decided to go back down into the coulee to get a better view. It was dark out now, and a band was playing loudly in the middle of the park. We walked down the many large steps into the middle of the coulee. There was an entire ocean of people, swirling glowsticks and loud noises. I've never felt so confused and disoriented. This was a sensory overload to the max! We decided this was a little too much to handle at the moment and went back up to the safe spot we had found earlier. By the time the fireworks started, my visuals had calmed down quite a bit and I was definitely not peaking anymore, but was still high. The fireworks didn't look any different, but they FELT different. I could feel each boom in the middle of my body and it felt fantastic. When watching the fireworks, it was very trippy because we saw them first, then heard the boom a second later.

From there we walked for about another hour back to the park we started at. I was up until about 5 or 6am and hadn't eaten anything all day, so I was exhausted but couldn't sleep for the life of me. This is pretty much the end of the most interesting parts of my trip. If anyone is interested in more, I can post it in a comment below. A rating and comment would also be much appreciated!