Good And Bad

Friday night - time to head down to the city for party & weekend chillout after a long week of studying/procrastination. Have recently began experimenting with lsd in the form of "Hoffmans" - relatively mellow tabs that come in three varieties: 800s (~80microg), 1500s (~150microg), and doubles (up to ~300microg). Up until the night in question lsd was entirely positive and mostly used in a party setting, when it would be known that in a few hours the party would end and by the time the peak we (me and friends) would be in nature (or some other kind of nice relaxing post rave chillout). I am very into goa trance & psychadelic trance raves, and combining these techno styles with a moderate dose of lsd makes me feel like I am some kind of space traveller being hurtled through space with all the other dancers (Very fun!).

My regular source randomly was not around and I asked another friend if he had any left. He was happy to oblige and presented me with a familiar tab and also with a warning: "be careful" he said "this Hoffman is dangerous. I took a tip (less than a fourth) and was tripping really hard... one time I took a half and nothing much happened."

My curiosity was peaked, especially because I had told myself that this would be the night I would finally reach a new tripping level as I have recently been stuck in the texture shifting/objects breathing land but with no progress beyond that (I missed the special feeling of discovery that came with my very first trip, the feeling of significant change of > awareness). But.... I am a careful, slightly paranoid person... and so I decided to go for a fourth of the tab just to get a taste, and then if it is all that eat the rest on another occasion. So I chew on the fourth for a while and swallow it down and I start looking forward to the party.

Slinky Wizard will be playing, and I really really enjoy the DJing of one of the members (can't recall name oh well) so I am happy.

We show up at the party minutes later (I took the tab on the way out) and it looks really nice. The music from inside sounds awesome, the ppl look friendly, and cops show up AND leave (a very good sign that there will be no trouble from them). So most of my friends go inside and I am sitting outside with the remaining few who are still debating wheather to go inside (prices for these things are steep).

Level1 (00:15 - ~01:30 from droppage)

I am starting to feel euphoric and happy. That familiar feeling of expecting lotsa fun rises into my belly (actually the belly feeling is probably from the small amount of speed they put in the "Hoffman" to make it more of a party compatible drug) and I am having a blast talking to people and looking at people and wandering around and all that. I suddenly have the bright idea that I don't really feel like dancing tonight - instead I feel like heading back to the very interesting pad of my friends and chilling there instead (lots of fun things to do there). The friends who were outside decided this was what they wanted to do too but they were like "are you sure you want to go home tripping... don't you want to go to the party?" (the tripping/party combination is the accepted form of experimentation... also tripping/nature... but tripping/stay at home is not too common). Anyway by the time we get to the house I am still not feeling much and attribute this to the fact that I took a little. We watch Alice in Wonderland (Disney) without the soundtrack and with psychadelic trance and techno blasting (one of the ppl who lives there is a trance DJ so there is plenty of interesting stuff to put on the DAT).

Alice in Wonderland is tripper's heaven! It is soooooooo funny! I burst out laughing almost every other minute. There is not a second of the film that is not brilliant, or that lapses into less than hysterically psychadelic mischief (at least it seemed that way). I remember Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee hopping around and of course the Mad hatter's insane eyes rolling arounddd. *whew!!!*

Level2 (~01:30 - ~03:00)

At this point I started to notice that the trip was really kicking in. Another resident of the house is an incredible artist who paints psychadelic pictures that look like wacked out hallucinations (more detail later) - really really brilliant. And what's more she painted all the walls of the living room with really great beings writhing in vibrant colours and intricate webs etc... etc... . In addition to the usual colours she adds special colours that make the paintings glow in the ultra violet light which is a totally new dimension altogether.

So her paintings are into major major breathing and colour cycling and I am enjoying this a great bit (Alice's adventures have by now ended much to my dissapointment). I decide to leave the room where ppl are watching MTV (and of course accompanied by more trance blasting throughout) and head out to the entry room (dining room sized) where the artist friend left an unfinished painting the size of the entire wall (large!) along with paints and all that stuff strewn about. The contents of this painting are very significant in the trip :)

I head back to the living room and amuse myself for awhile watching the walls play tricks on my mind and just enjoying the relaxed atmosphere. I start noticing that it is not just the paintings that are moving and undulating - but rather my entire "vision data" that is being altered and thus the paintings (which were what I was focusing on) of course are part of this. This type of effect I have not reached yet so I was in awe. I realized that not just my vision could be controlled but also the other senses. This was great fun.

Level3 (~03:00 - 10:00)

The effects were not stopping and things seemed to get less and less normal as time progressed. I decided I needed a breather from the stimulus filled living room and walked back out to the entry. The feeling was much different. All of a sudden I felt like I was totally alone - as in noone else on earth existed...this was a nice thing... sort of like an exaggerated monastary feeling of serene isolation. Anyway the room seemed smoky and otherworldly and like some kind of special place (some kind of gate to another dimension perhaps). I looked into the picture....;)

Non tripping description of picture:

Very beautiful bright colours... red, green, orange, yellow, blue. There is a sharp blue creature in the top left in the direction of a ship floating in the cosmis plasma that is everywhere. Lurking behind is a huge green like jabba the hut like creature (looks like him but in a positive way - hard to explain - but the creature is not evil). It is my favorite picture of my friend (perhaps due to the trip but who knows). Is is about 2 meters by 2 meters in dimension (large).

back to the dream...

So I am immediatly addressed by the blue creature. "What!" he throws at me. Over and over again. As if he is in the middle of some incredibly important task (rabbit in Alice?) and I am interrupting him. He is sharp and one could mistake him for being hostile, but I know he is very friendly entity with a rough edge. We get to know one another very quickly. At this point I realize that he is no longer on the tapestry (cloth, whatever) but has jumped out into my dimension! (basically my first 3d hallucination) This startles the hell out of me! I have never had a real vivid 3d hallucination and this was incredibly funky. He jumps right back into the picture as if to make me feel more at ease and continues his interaction with me in this more "comfortable" mode. The thing is, we don't really communicate about anything real but it feel like some kind of exchange is happening. I let him know how things are on this side and he lets me know what is going on in his side by pointing me to various parts of the pictures with his "points". At one point he points to the bottome right and that is when I see the blob like Jabba the hut like creature. At this point the trip is very strong so I am unable to make the entities jump back into the picture and they are basically with me in the room. All but the Jabba the hut creature who is swimming in the pink aquarium of plasma and nodding his head at me and blinking his massive eyes at me. He is not friendly like the blue creature, but not hostile or bad either. He refuses to communicate and he just looks at me all the time as if I am a little fish he has decided not to eat. This pisses me off a little bit. I then went back to the living room.

Bad trip

I guess my attitude now about what happened is that I'm glad things went down in that particular way and that a bad trip is not fun but can be handled in a constructive way. Also, as can be hinted by this triptale, an unpleasant experience can happen as part of an otherwise really fun trip, and the bad and good can come in any order. Basically what happened to me is that the trip was just too damn powerful for what I expected it to be. I mean, fine, the tab was a double..precautions should be taken... but what the hell I only took a fourth! This is not a lot on any tab of lsd! The most it could have been is around ~100 which is not even supposed to be a real psychadelic dose. But I can't argue with what happened, and perhaps the lsd was not equally distributed on the tab (probably what happened). Anyway I started to doubt that it (the trip) would ever end. The moment I thought this stupid though, I started to panic. My body got physically anxious (as in chills and all that anxiety related stuff) and I felt really unhappy. I had the thoughts about oh no how could I do this to my self and my family and all that, and now I can't go back to school and will spend the rest of my life in an asylum. Actually this panic was really short lived, due to the fact that I was still quite in touch with reality inside my brain... and I told myself that this is just a exaggerated trip thought and that in reality I will emerge from the trip just as always. For the rest of the trip I just sat around and concentrated on negative aspects of the trip such as "damn I can't remember anything but NOW" and *voila* I proceeded not to be able to remember anything (my name, etc..) but this was all on a conscious, rational, level, that was somewhat within my control. This leads me to the conclusion that I actually desired in some way this negative, scary feeling. That I somehow was interested in exploring such random thoughts as "what if it never ends" and "I can't remember anything." This didn't make it any less scary or real though. I just flowed with it till I reached my house later that day and had rather peaceful sleep. Woke up and still felt very edgy and unsettled for the rest of the day. By the next morning everything was ok.

I felt like the lsd was having revenge on me in some incredibly wierd alien way. But then I convinced myself that was a stupid thought.

It feels as though I conquered a hurdle with that trip, and I feel a little bit safer now every time I trip. As if I have received an additional psychological tool to deal with the dark thoughts.

I have never had a total evaporation of my personality, however, and I suspect that dealing with a bad trip when there is _no_ contact with reality is a totally different experience, and one that I hope will not come with too much of a vengeance. Dosing at such levels is currently beyond me, and will stay that way for awhile until I feel ready.

Another lesson to be learned from this dream is that just because you eat one fourth of a tab doesn't mean you are getting one fourth the lsd, so watch out on those doubles!

Well that was my dream. Of course I would never do something like that in real life because drugs are illegal and bad for you.