After some time away from both psychedelics and raves I combined the two again with nearly disastrous results. It started out with a party I wasn't sure I wanted to go to. My most recent job required me to work Saturdays on a regular basis and I was usually too tired to do anything after getting up at 7:30 a.m. and working a nine hour shift. The party was at a terrible location, a place I didn't really ever want to see again. L was determined to go, however, and managed to convince me it would be worth the effort. Besides, it was Halloween, and I wanted to do something to celebrate.

I was pretty sure I didn't want to trip, but decided to bring some LSD, just in case. I figured it was better to have it and not want it than want it and not have it. Before leaving for the party my roommate M and I smoked some fine cannabis, which got me quite high.

We arrived at the location and waited outside for around twenty minutes before getting inside. The location was as dirty and crowded as I remembered it to be. On the up side, the music sounded damn good and there were incredible visual displays going on screens on both sides of the room. We moved up front and started dancing.

Dancing felt great, but I was a bit rusty. It had been months since I had been out dancing. I thought about the LSD I had and decided it would be just the thing to unkink my knots and let me get my groove on. I had been too stressed lately and I knew that a night of seriously getting down could do incredible things for my state of mind. I took the two hits out of my pocket and swallowed them.

Fifteen minutes later I became aware of a tension in my solar plexus, familiar from many other acid trips. It was strong and I had a premonition that the trip would be powerful. I asked L if she was tripping off of the hit she had taken and she said she wasn't feeling much. We danced for a little while longer as the effects continued to ramp up. In almost no time I was tripping along at a pretty good clip. I was getting lots of colors behind my closed eyelids and everything was shimmering and threatening to break into multiple images with my eyes open.

L and I went to sit down and catch our breath for a few minutes. Once I sat down, I noticed that I was really zoomed. Things were moving much more than they should have been for the amount of acid I had taken and the length of time it had been since I had taken it. I closed my eyes and was immediately enveloped by phantasmagoric patterns on bleeding neon colors. Not only that but I was beginning to slip away from myself, forgetting where I was and what was going on.

I decided to meditate for a few minutes and try and get a grip on what was happening. Closing my eyes, I took a few breaths and began counting each exhalation. The room began to slip away, along with my conception of who I was and what was happening around me. My consciousness observed all of this happening with a sense of calm, almost detachment.

L spoke to me, saying she was going to get some candy and would be right back. I opened my eyes and acknowledged this. After she left I closed my eyes and returned to the deep psychedelic state I had been in. The trip very much wanted to go out of body, out of "reality", into a full ego death type trip, but I didn't feel comfortable letting that happen. I began meditating again, concentrating on where I was, who I was and what was going on.

This worked for a while, but the trip proved too powerful for me to guide alone. It had been awhile since L had left (maybe ten minutes, longer than I thought it should have taken for her to return) and I decided to go and look for her, to see if she could help ground me a bit.

I wandered around, tripping hard. I was tripping harder than I had expected to peak and the peak was still probably forty minutes away. I was a little worried at this time.

I became more worried as I was unable to find L. I felt lost and confused and helpless. I had exactly two dollars and my ID on me, nothing else. She had our keys, money, everything. I was nearly panicking when I finally found her. I grabbed her and asked where she had been, in a not too nice tone of voice. She shook me off and stalked away. Oops.

I followed her, calling her name. She ignored me, stalking toward the front. I finally grabbed her and managed to turn her around. She took a good look at me and her demeanor changed. I guess it was totally obvious that I was on the verge of completely flipping out, because she took my hand and pulled me aside to talk.

She asked me what was wrong and I found I was unable to tell her. I was very relieved to be in her hands and I let go of whatever was holding myself together. She was asking me questions, which I was having a hard time responding to. I did manage to communicate to her that the trip was hugely uncomfortable and overwhelmingly intense. She asked me if I wanted to leave and I responded that I did not think that was a good idea.

We sat together, her talking and me zoning out in a major way. Everything around me was totally confusing. I had only the vaguest idea where we were and what was going on. Being Halloween, everyone was in costume, so everywhere I looked there were freakish displays. The whole thing was overwhelming and the part of my mind that processes that sort of thing and allows me to operate and interact just shut off, leaving me unable to communicate or interact in any but the most basic way with anyone.

We moved back inside the main room, to some seats. L was still talking to me, trying to get me to respond in some way. I went in and out of awareness of her presence. Most of the time I was far, far out. I felt like I was experiencing some aspect of the universal mind, being bombarded by the sensations, thoughts and feelings of everyone around me simultaneously. This was kind of neat, but too overwhelming to be enjoyable.

L asked if I minded if she went to dance for a while and I managed to nod my assent. When she left I closed my eyes and went inside again to try and make sense of what was happening. Inside the swirling chaos that my mind had become I found a core of sanity. A small, calm voice informed me that I was a human being, that I not only knew how to navigate the interior and exterior chaos I was experiencing, but that I was really quite good at it and even found it enjoyable the vast majority of the time. It went on to say that if I just maintained, everything would resolve itself in very short order and I would be fine. Then it was gone.

I suddenly felt better. Tired, overwhelmed and uncomfortable, but no longer on the verge of flipping out. I managed to have a bit of a conversation with some guy on Ecstasy sitting next to me. I gave him a backrub that served to further ground me. I realized I was tripping as hard as I ever had tripped on LSD.

L returned to check on me and I was able to interact with her a bit more, though I still couldn't express myself verbally. It was like I had lost the ability to speak. It seemed far too difficult to put my thoughts together well enough to be understood by anyone else.

I spent another forty minutes or so putting things back together before feeling good enough to walk around with L. I still found myself largely unable to speak, and I think I may have weirded a few people out with my behavior. Within three hours of taking the acid I was more or less reintegrated as a human being, able to talk and interact with others. I was still really spacey and tended to drift off into strange reveries at the slightest provocation. I felt much better, if a little shell-shocked.

Part of me wanted to go home, but the music was awesome, so I decided to try dancing a bit and seeing if I could turn the evening into something positive after all. It took me a few minutes, but soon I was getting down in a major way. I suddenly felt great, I felt like everything would be OK, and I was having a good time.

The rest of the night was spent dancing and hanging out with L. The music was superb, some of the best performances I have seen at a party. The vibe was also pretty good and I felt a lot of my stress and worry evaporating. I talked to some of L's friends and enjoyed the remainder of my trip.

When the party closed down, L wanted to go to an afterparty. I was tired, but agreed we could go for an hour or two. We walked, then drove around aimlessly for a while. Finally we followed some of her friends out onto the highway. Unfortunately, we missed the exit and ended up lost, trying to find something that apparently did not exist. None of this would have been too bad, except for the fact that there was a girl in our car that was driving me insane. I know I need to work on being more tolerant of people's idiosyncrancies, but I felt too wiped out to be very tolerant. By the time we dropped her off I was in a terrible mood. L and I ended up fighting about it and I broke down into tears, something I do not do very often. By the time we resolved things I was totally exhausted, mentally and physically.

This trip was a weird one. I don't know why it was so intense. I have taken the same acid before, twice. It seemed to be good, but not unusually potent. I usually suck on it rather than swallowing it, but if anything, I think that should have reduced the effects, not intensified them. I can only figure that my stress and exhaustion combined to throw me into a much more intense trip than I was expecting. There may have been other factors as well, it is difficult to say. It served as a bit of a reminder that these things are not toys and I need to tread carefully and be prepared for things like this to happen occasionally.

What I recall of the content of my trip while I was out of communication was rather extraordinary. Like I said, I felt in touch with the universal mind for most of it. I also felt a deep love for L and a feeling that the troubles that we have been having as a result of our moving in together are all normal and resolvable. It was therapeutic and would have been fantastic if I had been in a setting where I could have concentrated on it and gotten more out if it.