Worst trip of my life

Me and my friend whom I'll refer to as Derek took an enormous amount of acid (I took seven tabs, he took six) and thought nothing could go wrong. That day, I nearly died and almost harmed some of my closest friends, and my faith in psychedelics was essentially shattered.

Setting

A small college apartment, around 3 pm. Me and Derek decided to trip in the living room, and in his bedroom is his roommate and my friend whom I'll refer to as Roger. 

The plan was me and Derek were gonna watch this playlist of youtube videos while we tripped. Pretty standard stuff, we had done this many times before. However, this time was pretty significantly different. We decided that we would each take an enormous amount of acid in an effort to have some kind of spiritual experience, as we had both tripped many times before and not seen any type of vision or eye opening revelations, and it was my ill-informed logic at the time that the best way to cause something like that was to just take a fuck load more than we ever had before. 

Thinking I could handle seven tabs was my first mistake. My second mistake was going through with it on a day when I really wasn't feeling my best. I was nervous about taking that much and didn't really feel too confident about it, I figured that I would feel better once the trip started. Really really dumb idea.

So the stage was set, and disaster was just waiting to unfold. I got out of class at 1pm, and headed over to Derek's apartment so we could trip.

3pm. With some mild fear and anxiety disguised as half-hearted enthusiasm I drop the seven tabs and Derek takes his six.

At first, it's not so bad. We're watching music videos and some other trippy shit and I feel ok. Still a little nervous but we talk and laugh a little and the visuals start being cool. 

About an hour in is when things start getting bad.

I start to feel uneasy. Disturbingly, my visuals stop being the usual geometrical patterns and fractal images that I usually see and begin to transform into eyeballs, face and figures reaching towards me menacingly. When I close my eyes I see the same shit but ten times worse. It began to be too much for me. Derek does his best to comfort me but my fear is growing. Next is when things began to turn dangerous, for myself and anyone else around me.

I began to have the delusion that someone that I knew, a mutual friend of ours, was on his way to the apartment to kill me. This was, of course, completely false and a paranoid delusion of my own making. This person and I were not close and I always had the impression that he tolerated as a friend rather than actually liking me, which I didn't understand because I liked him. 

Anyway, I became more and more certain that a malevolent, supernatural version of this friend was on his way to undo my existence, and there was nothing Derek could say or do to calm me down. Deep down I knew that my fear was irrational, but nevertheless it grew and consumed me. I was drowning in  negativity and fear and started to become agitated. My fight v flight instincts kicked in because of my feeling of an approaching threat, and I started to become mean, angry and physical.

The straw that broke the camels back so to say in this situation, was the added effect of not being able to tell reality from delusion. I was tripping so hard and my ego had been so stripped away from the acid and fear that I could no longer tell what was real. I didn't think my surroundings were real, I didn't think Derek was real, I didn't even think that I was real.

That, combined with the unshakeable fear and sheer terror led to what happened next; the worst experience of my life.

My mind snapped entirely, and I entered a state of pure, drug induced psychosis. I had lost my mind. I had no control over any thoughts or actions. I could only loosely watch my behavior fron the backseat of my mind, unable to think rationally or stop myself in any way.

During this time, I spoke indecipherable madness, broke two little fish tanks, mistook Derek for a malevolent spirit, nearly attacked him, stripped naked, cut my feet wide open from the broken glass from the fish tanks, tried to cut myself with knives and other kitchen utensils, and screamed incredibly loud, primal screams. 

Derek and Roger evacuated the apartment for their safety while they called everyone they could think of to come help me. It took the presence of around 12 people to stop me from being violent. It took an additional 3-4 hours for the actual psychosis to stop. While they watched me continued to say crazy meaningless things and occasionally lunge at them like I was some kind of animal waiting to attack. 

When all was said and done, I had experienced the worst time of my entire life, throughly and severely embarrassed myself in front of many, many people, nearly killed myself and my friends, and lost the trust of many of thode people.

Before that, I had a great appreciation for the potential of psychedelics to expand and improve the mind. I had mild plans to grow mushrooms of my own so day and to advocate for expanded research of psychedelics.

Mushrooms used to give me total clarity of mind and a great feeling of self-confidence and euphoria, but ever since that day psychedelics have made me feel confused and muddled, and I still get visuals consisting of threatening figures and eyes reaching towards me and staring at me.

Not sure how I feel about psychedelics anymore. Maybe they'll work for me again one day, maybe I'll just have to find a different hobby. 

Thanks for reading. Questions comments concerns and advice are welcome.