This trip started mid-day on a Saturday, the day after me and a group of friends had gotten supremely wasted the night before. It was me, Kaleb (M), Will (M), Zack, (M), Amelia (F), and Nell (F). We weren’t sure how strong this acid was going to be, so we all took small amounts at 2:00pm (I took half a tab), and then a little after 3:00pm we took some more (another half) because no one was experiencing many effects yet. Nell never took any. From this point onward, I only have a slight idea of the timing of things that happened, so I won’t bother too much trying to add in time stamps but I’ll do my best. After maybe an hour or so, it really started to kick in. We were watching a show called <pending>, and it has some somewhat dark scenes in it although it is altogether a comedy. Particularly there was a scene in which one of the characters tries to commit suicide, which was not a particularly good start to the experience. After we stopped watching, me and Zack went outside to smoke some weed. I think this was a mistake, as I believe this is what led to what I’m about to explain. After this, I started to get some weird vibes from Will, and as a result kept looking at him for somewhat extended periods of time, at least I think, at this point time was moving very very slowly. 20 minutes felt like an hour, at least. Whenever I looked at him, he would give me this side-eye and say “why is this guy looking at me weird”, or some variation of that. He must have said that around 40+ times during the time we were tripping, at the beginning it was almost every time I was around him. At a certain point, I decided I just needed to be alone for a bit and chill out, so I went inside and laid on the couch for a bit. This did not help much. I was laying in silence, and my mind was coming up with disturbing images and sounds. I do not remember the images well, but I remember hearing an overwhelming number of voices that I couldn’t understand, occasionally overpowered by Will’s voice saying disturbing things. I somehow became convinced that he wanted to kill me. Still, a part of my rational mind was still there, telling me he wouldn’t do this, but the fear was still very much there and felt very real. I wished for nothing more than to be with my girlfriend, away from everyone else, but I decided to stick it out there. Once I left the house, things were a little better. Will had mostly stopped saying I was looking at him weird, which was relieving. Still, I spent most of the rest of the trip on a couch outside with Kaleb and Amelia while Will and Zack did their own thing. The trip was overwhelming them as well, and they ended up drinking a bunch of beers, which calmed them both down but also put them on a different level than that which the three of us on the couch were on. We sat there and listened to Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd for essentially the rest of the night. We eventually started to talk, after it got dark, and things got deep. When I say deep, I mean we talked about emotions in ways that many of us, including myself, have never really expressed to other people. The only person I have really opened up to before in the way I did, is with my girlfriend, and it took years for me to get to that point with her. I felt extremely connected with my friends this night, and although we were already close, I feel this experience brought us much closer. I connected more especially with Kaleb and Amelia, since they were more on the same level I was and were much more willing to talk about harder topics. I won’t go into detail about anything we talked about, but just know that for me to express any real emotions to friends is something that I have never really done, and so this experience meant a lot to me in that way. Eventually, we decided to move the couch down to a spot we could see the stars and moon better. We were on the comedown at this point, and nothing too eventful happened but we did continue our deep conversations until about 4:00 in the morning when we finally decided we could sleep. At 3:00 or so, we made some Mac n cheese on a camping stove because we had all barely eaten all day aside from a bit of pasta at maybe 5:00 and breakfast. I’m writing this a few days after the fact, and I will say that this experience has had a lasting effect on my life, at least as far as I can tell right now. I still feel more connected with my group of friends, and am now comfortable talking to them about emotions and harder topics which I was not before. Overall, although a good chunk of the trip was actually extremely scary and I felt a real fear for my life, I am glad I had this experience for the benefit it had on my relationships with my friends.
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