Those of us who practice the entheogenic religion have our own holidays, much like Christians have Easter and Christmas. One of these is the celebration of Albert Hofmann's first intentional LSD trip. This day has come to be known as Bicycle Day, in honor of the bicycle ride he took that day. This Bicycle Day I chose to celebrate by ingesting what I figured would be one of my largest LSD doses ever. At 4:20 P.M. (the time he took his dose) after a 13 hour fast I ingested 5 drops of liquid with a word of thanks to Dr. Hofmann.
Since I don't have a bike, I decided to take a walk instead. I put on a sweatshirt and sunglasses and headed out the door. It was a slightly overcast afternoon, but otherwise pretty nice. I walked in a direction that I hadn't explored before. About a block from my house I saw a stick lying in the road in front of me. It was about 3 1/2 or 4 feet long, maybe an inch in diameter. It looked like a good walking stick, so I picked it up.
Within 30 minutes I was aware of the first signs that the acid was working. A slight change in my perceptual field/consciousness and a positive, "up" feeling let me know that it was starting to take effect. As I continued to walk, it became more and more prevalent. By the time I returned home (T+45 minutes) I was going pretty good.
When I arrived home I sat down on my front step rather than going inside. Although it was overcast, it was rather beautiful outside and I wasn't in a hurry to get in the house again. I sat there, watching the clouds swirl and pulse with color. I still had the stick I had picked up and I spent some time examining it, thinking of what I could do with it. At one point I closed my eyes. I was quickly immersed in a colorful inner world. The sounds of passing cars became angular streaks of color passing behind my eyelids. A really cool synesthetic effect.
My roommate had arrived home while I was sitting outside. He opened the front door and informed me I had a phone call. I went and talked to a friend of mine who indicated that he and another friend were going to come over for a while. Talking on the phone wasn't precisely difficult, but it was strange.
After I finished the call I sat down on the couch to await my friends' arrival. As I sat there things got trippier and trippier. Everything seemed to spawn after images that would hang, glowing in the air for a few seconds each time I moved my head. After a few minutes, my friends J and L arrived and sat down. These two people are two of my best and oldest friends, but lately I have seen less and less of them as our paths have diverged.
L asked me if I had any cannabis, and if I would mind if she had some. I told her to go ahead and she and my roommate smoked a few hits each. We all sat and talked about various inconsequentials, mostly just catching up on what we had been doing since last we had seen each other. I was fairly quiet since the acid was working in earnest. It was hard to even see my friends, as they were wreathed in shimmering auras of color that expanded outwards from their bodies to a distance of roughly six inches. Very interesting effect, but somewhat distracting.
After they had been over for a half hour or so, I mentioned that it was Bicycle Day, and that I had taken some acid. They hadn't realized I was tripping and had just assumed I was stoned. As the acid peaked and stabilized I was able to join in more of the conversation. I found a lot of it really amusing. The whole experience was enjoyable, and I felt very close to my friends. Their presence seemed to ground me and keep the trip from really taking off. Instead of the really far out, spacey aspects or deeper, introspective effects I usually get, this was more of a bonding, loving trip.
After two hours or so J and L left. Afterward I put on some music and kicked back to enjoy it. For the next hour or so I sat on the couch grooving to Soul Coughing and chatting on and off with my roommate. Although I enjoyed the music I feel that it also helped to ground me. If I had put on some spacey electronic stuff at that time I probably would have gone a lot deeper. But, the tone of the trip had already been set, so I decided to go with it.
My setting at this time was fairly generic. I was sitting in my living room, with the lights on. Although I was still tripping pretty hard, I felt "normal" for the most part. An excellent illustration of how set and setting can affect a trip. Although I was on one of the larger doses of acid I have taken, the fact that I was in the company of nontrippers, in a straight environment really affected the intensity of the trip. Based on the early part of the trip, my visuals throughout, and other trips from this same source I believe it could have been quite a heavy trip had things been a little different.
I spent the rest of the night sitting on the couch listening to music. After four or so hours I smoked some pot, and continued to smoke off and on for the rest of the evening. While I was sitting on the couch I felt slightly trippy, but there weren't any obvious visuals. When I went into the darkened bathroom however, colors and patterns sprang to life in the air in front of me. I was tempted to just sit in the darkened bathroom and trip out on visuals for a while, but decided against it.
My roommate went to bed around 10:30. I played some more music on headphones for an hour or so then went into the bathroom. I glanced in the mirror and stopped to look at myself. It seems like when I am tripping I am able to see myself more clearly, without a lot of the preconceived notions I have about myself interfering. After a few minutes of examining my face, it began to change. At first this was subtle, but it rapidly accelerated. Before long, it seemed my face was flashing between my familiar features and many others. I would briefly become someone else, then it would change again to yet another person, and again, and again and then back to my face, then someone else, etc. This went on for a while, maybe twenty minutes or a half hour. It was very cool, one of the most vivid and realistic transformations I have encountered on LSD. Besides my features it seemed to affect my clothing as well, as several times I appeared to be wearing a leather jacket, furs, and other strange clothing. I briefly wondered if I were seeing ancestors, other trippers, or what. Regardless of what it represented it was fascinating.
When I tired of this I returned to the darkened living room and put on more music. While I was sitting on the couch listening to it I became aware of something nagging on my consciousness. My last few acid trips have been fairly productive at dredging up repressed or forgotten events and forcing me to deal with them. This was no exception. As I was sitting there I began recalling an event I have more or less blocked from mind for the last twenty years. For the first time in memory I was able to accept it and begin to deal with it. I also had a realization about this traumatic event's effect on my past and present behavior. Although I wasn't able to work through it completely on this session, I did make significant progress. I plan on dedicating another trip at some point in the future to coming to terms with it and moving beyond it.
I fell asleep around 12:30 or 1:00 a.m., awaking at 10:00 or so the next morning. I felt great. Although it wasn't a spectacularly impressive trip it was very productive and entirely positive. Besides spending the afternoon with two of my favorite people in the world, I was finally able to begin dealing with an issue that has been repressed for years. I look forward to its resolution.
A wonderful Bicycle Day! As is so often the case, I didn't get quite the trip I expected, but I got exactly the trip I needed. Thanks to Albert Hofmann for discovering this wonderful tool, and also thanks to the nameless underground chemists that make it available in this dark age. I hope everyone everywhere had a great Bicycle Day!