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Its only a tab, I can fuck around!
Well you have read the title so you can probably guess at how this will go.
The Tl;dr is that I went into a trip with expectations of how it should go and the trip responded by fucking with me and teaching me a hell of a lot more respect than I had had before.
Some Background: My first psychedelic experience was with LSD this past summer. A friend gave me a tab (somewhere in the neighborhood of 170ug) and I had an amazing time.
My second was with a low dose of cubensis (unsure of exact strain) but I had an excellent time and with the assistance of my weed pen had a fairly deep and insightful, if short, trip.
The shrooms were about two months ago now and I have been wanting to have another trip to resolve some confusion which arose from my last trip. I am on the spectrum and both of my last trips pointed out how I was confused as to why I am going to school and why I had made a lot of the decisions about my education and career that I had. From my last trips I knew that these had something to do with my masking behaviors to be more likable to nerotypical people. I am about to start my last semester of college and I really wanted to have another trip before I got caught back up in the mad dash to finish.
Yesterday I got my hands on a tab of what is some fairly nice acid, around 130ug. This was a lower dose than I had previously done and all of my massive two trips of experience had gone very well so I was pretty confident in my abilities to handle it. My last two trips had been with friends and this was about to be my first solo trip. I got home from work, cleaned up my room, and dropped at about 5:00pm. The tab started to come up and I was just as excited as I had been in my last trips. I was anticipating that this trip would be similar to my first time on acid. At first I was having a great time, I was listening to music and I tried to play a rhythm game only to find that my sense of time was somewhat lacking. (The game was Sayonara Wildhearts specifically, it's an excellent game not trip related just general recommendation).
The trip had started off good but I wanted more (my first mistake). I was expecting stronger visuals than I was getting (experienced people are probably shaking their heads at this point) and unlike my previous trips I was fairly coherent. I started to doubt the quality of the acid that I had gotten, thinking the tab was bunk. I texted my best friend about my suspicions and we ended up calling for a while, I was fairly lucid at the time and my friend was fairly high. I was thinking that the trip wasn't as much as I wanted and trip me thought it would be a reasonable idea to hit my weed pen to see if I could "get the trip to happen" (that was my thought process at the time, not exactly smart I know). As the weed hit I suddenly felt the trip lessen, the visuals I did have started to go away and my time perception returned to normal. I started to get anxious. I felt simultaneously more normal than any of my previous trips but at the same time the world around me was different enough that I knew something was indeed going on. I hit my pen at about 8:00pm and was getting nervous about the lack of effects.
My roommates were home at the time and one of them has taken more acid than 99% of the population will see in their lifetimes, so I decided to venture out of my room because at this point thoughts of "oh no did I get a fuckin research chem oh god" were starting to surface in my mind and I wanted to see their opinion of my state. I told them about how I thought it wasn't a good tab and that nothing was happening and they were completely unconcerned beyond telling me to not touch any more weed tonight which I was inclined to agree with. I could tell they thought I was tripping way harder than I realized. I went back to my room and put on a record but noticed I was getting progressively more anxious. I was regretting hitting the weed, hell I was regretting touching the tab in the first place. It was about 8:45 at this point and I was peaking on the tab but didn't realize how hard I was tripping. I started to get paranoid. Had the friend who gave me the acid lied to me? Were they playing a joke on me? Were they getting scammed and were just not clever enough to know it??
Being aware enough of the spiral I was fast approaching, I went out to the main room where my roommate was hanging out with a friend and I laid on the couch, at this point convinced the tab was either way lower dose than reported or a research chem of some variety. I was doing my best to let the trip take me where it wanted and I started to calm down at this point. By 9:30 I was off peak and on the comedown. To say that this could have ended way worse than it did would be a massive fucking understatement.
Almost immediately after the peak was over I realized exactly how my inexperience had fucked up what I had hoped was going to be a great night. I suddenly realized yes, this was good acid. Not only that but I had really tripped. And tripped hard. While I didn't see the trip at the time my entire perception of the world had changed. I went into the trip with expectations about how it was going to go and made assumptions about my own knowledgeably about psychedelics that I just was too inexperienced to make. I came closer to panicking than I ever thought I would because I tried to control the trip and in my impaired state only made it far more intense without realizing it. My first trip had shown me the sheer power of these compounds and had, in no uncertain terms, told me that if I fucked around with them I would find out. I went in arrogant and unaware of my arrogance and was taught a lesson in humility. My entire reality was shaped by my anxieties, the logical faculties I rely on in my daily life on were completely subverted by the trip without my realizing it. I have more reverence for the trip than I had previously.
As I have been processing what all I experienced on the comedown, I realized that I hold as rigid of expectations for myself as I did the trip. I am an autistic person and have struggled with fitting in my entire life. Nowadays I can almost pass as neurotypical in some contexts because I have developed an amazingly complex range of masking strategies. I can figure out what people expect from me and change how I present myself to them and they will be more likely to accept me. I knew I had been masking like this for years but what I didn't realize was how my conforming to expectations had gone beyond a facade and began to fundamentally change how I view myself. I found a box I could fit in and defined myself by the expectations of the box. Most people I work with and go to school with expect me to have a good grasp on what is going on, to understand the hard concepts from classes, and most importantly I expect myself to always be able to meet these expectations. I cannot show my lack of experience and knowledge in any area because I always have to be "the girl who just knows".
I went into an acid trip with a rigid expectation of how it should work and how I should experience it and that just wasn't how it worked. The trip put me in my place and showed me how I create the reality I live into through my expectations. I got lucky on this trip in that I wasn't home alone and I only took 130ug and I didn't touch any more THC than I had. I have read many trip reports of bad trips and mixing substances to dangerous ends and thought that because I knew about the risks I was somehow shielded from making the same questionable decisions that lead to these places. This trip was a difficult one for me but so far has been the most productive one yet. I gained a newfound respect for psychedelics tonight, and learned a lot about myself. I am now more fascinated by them than I have ever been before and am finally starting to give them the respect and reverence they deserve. This trip taught me the power and beauty and cleverness of psychedelics.
My roommate dropped their friend off after I had peaked and they were confident I would be okay on my own. When they got back they asked how I was doing and I said yeah that was some good acid and they smiled and said "you got your ass handed to you". I was inclined to agree. We talked for a while and they knew exactly what kinda trip I was on and both knew me well enough and had enough experience to let it run its course. Yes, I got my ass handed to me. But I did so in the most healing and insightful way possible.
I think this was the most productive and insightful trip I have ever had.I look forward to experiencing more trips as I go through life, though I will probably wait a month or two before trying anything again.

