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Buddha's Little Helper
LSD
Citation:   arahat. "Buddha's Little Helper: An Experience with LSD (exp38140)". Erowid.org. Aug 23, 2005. erowid.org/exp/38140

 
DOSE:
12 hits oral LSD
BODY WEIGHT: 240 lb
This is an account of my last experience with LSD, which, incidentally, led to the greatest moment of my life.

Setting: My Basement
Set: Fairly nervous. Have taken acid over 25 times, but the last time, a rather nasty trip caused me to nearly kill a couple of friends of mine. I enjoy the drug, so I decide to do it again, just by myself (not particularily smart with hallucinogens).
Dose: 12 tabs

Now, first of all, a little background. I am a Buddhist. I converted over five years ago to Buddhism, and have since been trying to live a Buddhist life. I am quite experienced with Vipassana (Focus On In And Out Breathing) and Metta Bhavana (Loving-Kindness) Meditation. However, at the same time, I love drugs. Not the intoxicating ones like alcohol or opiates, no. I like the stimulants and the hallucinogens (rather strange, since I suffer from an anxiety disorder which makes taking hallucinogenics a risky proposition). It was my experiences with drugs (starting with Cannabis) that led me, ironically, to Buddhism. Psychoactive chemicals showed me, above all else, how totally fragile reality is, and how transient our own existence is. Now, the fifth Buddhist precept prohibits the taking of intoxicants of the mind 'causing heedlessness'. Since converting, I have significantly lowered my drug intake. This particular experience was my 25th time doing LSD. My 24th time had happened a few months earlier and had resulted in a rather nasty police encounter. For my 25th time, I took 12 hits, way too much (far more than I had ever taken). I have a relatively low tolerance to psychedelics so I don't know why I took that much. Even now I couldn't say. All I know is this: The experience has altered my life forever.

I ingested all twelve hits at about 8:00 P.M. For the come up, I turn on some Debussy (I'm into classical shit) and sit back. I did not keep track of the time, as I have done acid many times before and there was in fact no reason to do so. After about 20 minutes, I felt the first waves, manifesting as minor auras in the air around me. What amazed me here, was the speed at which I went up. I got up and went upstairs to pour myself some orange juice. By the time I returned downstairs, I was tripping hard. The entire room was lodged on acute angles, introducing a creeping Hill House atmosphere. I sit down and close my eyes, watching the CEV's. I lay here as the trip fully came on, and somewhere I started thinking 'Oh Fuck! This is not slowing down!' I just kept going up and up, and every time I thought the trip was starting to plateau, another insane piece of psychedelia would manifest itself.

I started to panic. Now, since I have an anxiety disorder this is not good. I went into the washroom and splashed water on my face. And then I looked in the mirror. Now, the oddest thing happened: Reality snapped back together. The waves that were traversing through the air ceased, breathing surfaces died, and the angles returned to their normal state. This scared me more than anything, because I knew this was not normal. My body felt very strange, inflated, and suddenly the thought occured to me that in order to avoid panicking, my body was exerting a level of control over the acid. I don't know if this is possible or not, but I suddenly felt something I have never felt in my entire life. The best possible way I can define it would be as an inhuman state of pure reason. I suddenly realized, as I looked in the mirror, with no visuals manifesting themselves, that I had not a single emotion in my body. I looked around me, and everything I saw I had power over. It was as if I had internalized the hallucinations so that I could utilize them to my own ends. I remember staring in the mirror and deciding I wanted my eyes to bleed, and they started to. It occured to me, that in this highly fucked state, I was a complete god. Every single action I performed was dictated by raw logic, as if I was some divine computer.

At this point, and I do not even know why, I decided to meditate. Having little patience for my normal ritual, I sat down in the Lotus Position and began Vipassana. In this meditation, one lets their mind go lax, focusing attention on the breath, allowing thoughts to enter and exit the mind without grasping or manipulating them. As I sat there, eyes closed, I decided to let loose the hallucinations. Insane 4 dimensional objects appeared in my mind's eye, manifested in front of me. It should have been extremely difficult to focus with the things I was seeing, but for some reason it wasn't. I do not know how long I sat there for, but, after what seemed like a very short time, something snapped. I don't know if it was my ego giving way, or my confined consciousness expanding or what. Suddenly, I felt a greater bliss than I have ever experience in my entire life. It spread throughout my body, taking away all weight, unlearning everything I had learned, shattering language and destroying perception. I once heard a Buddhist monk say that happiness is a response to the five senses, bliss can only come from within. And, I do not doubt that this was bliss. I was free of my body, free from me. I understood things that were beyond all human comprehension.

Eventually, this state started to break apart, shattered almost completely by the idea that it was just the drug doing this. Suddenly, I reentered my body, and opened my eyes. There was a clock over on the far wall and it read 12:00 A.M. I figured I had been meditating for about four hours. But the strange thing was, the acid was entirely gone. I mean entirely, no after effects, no anything. I stood up and suddenly fell down. My legs were completely asleep. As I sat on the ground waiting for them to come back, I thought about my experience. Now, everything I looked at, I looked at from the vision of a being who has seen the ultimate truth, even though I could not comprehend it. I finally stood up and went upstairs, noticing that everything in the world felt amazing, and that I felt totally and completely content, something I had never felt before. When I got upstairs, I noticed, to my complete shock, that the date listed on my computer was October 10. I had ingested the acid at 8:00 P.M. on October 8th. I had been meditating continuously for 28 hours.

Suddenly I realized, that for the most part, what I had experienced had been a result of deep meditative absorption, not the trip. I quickly decided to test this theory, and resumed meditating. Amazing. I was able to achieve a level of concentration I never thought possible. For the first time in my life, I became convinced that there is a state of supreme bliss which Buddha called Nirvana. From this day forward my entire life has changed. My perception of reality is completely altered, and I am entirely happy, seeing things in a clearer light than ever before. I do not know if I will achieve Nirvana in this lifetime, but I now strive with firmness of mind to that point. I have incidentally given up all drugs, but I will forever remember the LSD, and the trip that precipitated the greatest discovery of my life.

Exp Year: 2004ExpID: 38140
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Aug 23, 2005Views: 25,944
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LSD (2) : Mystical Experiences (9), Alone (16)

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