A Peek Into A Bad Trip
LSD
Citation:   deala. "A Peek Into A Bad Trip: An Experience with LSD (exp109286)". Erowid.org. May 29, 2020. erowid.org/exp/109286

 
DOSE:
2 hits oral LSD (blotter / tab)
BODY WEIGHT: 160 lb
This story that I’m about to share took place not too long ago. I wanted to write about it as soon as possible because the experience is very fresh in my mind. Acid is one of those drugs one absolutely cannot underestimate. No matter how big your ego is, or how tough you think you are, acid will tear it down and bring you to your knees while you grovel in awe of the beauty in the world, all while contemplating deeper thoughts than you thought your brain could muster. And while acid for the most part is a wonderful drug that enhances the subconscious to new dimensional levels, if the right precautions are not taken, the substance can turn on you, and make the world dark, twisted, and terrifying. This latest trip I had gave me glimpses of both sides of the drug, and while for the most part the trip was positive, due to my lack of preparation, I took a peek into the world of the dreaded “bad trip” and am now infinitely more respectful of this molecule because of it.

My experience began when my buddy, K, got a text from his acid dealer that he had just got a new shipment of tabs to his house off the deep web. I had had 5 experiences with acid before this
I had had 5 experiences with acid before this
, the last of which took place about a month and a half before this trip. That last trip had been my highest dosage yet (around 400 ug) and had been overwhelmingly positive for me. Because of this, I was itching to get my hands on some more Lucy and foolishly assumed that this trip couldn’t be any less positive than the one before it.

K, my other friend, E, and myself set aside a Saturday to trip on this new batch of acid. We decided we were going to tell our parents we were going over to our other friends house for the day, when in fact we were going to go down to the small beach and park that is a mile or two away from K’s house. I was slightly nervous about this decision because that left us out in the open for the entire trip without a safe house to retreat to, but my ego took over and told me that nothing could ever go wrong with my acid experience because I knew how to handle myself.

This was my first big mistake. My next mistake was not eating anything the day of the acid trip. It was around one o’ clock when we dropped and I had not eaten breakfast or lunch and had no sound means of obtaining food for the entire trip. Not believing this would be a factor, I decided it wasn’t a big deal. We dropped in my car which was parked outside of the park by K’s house then decided to take a walk to the beach and come up there. We each took 2 tabs. This was less than my previous acid trip that was extremely positive so I thought I could handle this just fine.

Around the 45 minute to an hour mark we began to feel the first effects of our 8 hour endeavor. It started off with a very heavy body load and all of the colors around me looking very bright and HD. I am really not a fan of the acid body load, and began to feel very weighed down. Feelings of anxiety crept into my mind because the body load began to become so intense I could not physically stand upright any longer. I asked my buddies if they minded sitting down for this reason, and they happily obliged. We took a seat on a grassy hill that overlooked the bay and put on some tunes. This was when the hard visuals began to kick in. I remember looking at a tree in the distance that seemed to be swaying in the wind, only there was no wind, the tree was swirling and moving all around almost as if it was alive. I soon began to realize all of the plants around me were doing the same thing, swirling and swaying in counter clockwise circles. Then my whole visual plane began to move, like my vision was a television screen someone was rocking up and down and side to side. Fortunately when the visuals began the body load subsided, and I was able to stand on my feet again. That was when we decided to start walking.

Acid gives me an incredible amount of energy, and our walk soon turned into more of a hike. We walked down this very long path for what seemed like 10 minutes but in reality it was more like an hour, all the while my visuals were getting more and more intense. I began to see hovering shapes above the path we were walking on, and people who walked past us looked the same size 100 yards away as opposed to right next to me. The trip so far had been a blast, I was fully enjoying myself and was loving the beauty of the world and all of the insightful thoughts I was thinking. I remember talking intensely about how all of human warfare has just been the perfection of the sharpened stick, and how human progression was absolutely astounding. We stopped at another part of the beach and my buddies decided to smoke a spliff. I decided to not partake in this because I sometimes get bad anxiety after smoking cannabis and did not want to ruin my experience with the Lucy.

As my friends were smoking, I began to feel funny, but I could not quite put my finger on what was wrong. It took me a long while to realize what I was feeling was hunger, and that I really needed to get some food into my system. I told E and K this, and since they had just smoked some maryjane, decided that they probably wanted food as well. We decided the best place to get food was at our friends house who we told our parents we were going to be at, and we began the very long walk to his place. We had reached his street when I had the thought that maybe we should call him and warn him we were going to come over before we just showed up unannounced tripping major balls, and I dialed his cell. I vividly remember the numbers on my phone appearing to be three dimensional, and floating around the screen like sail boats in a pond. Somehow I managed to call him, and told him we needed to come over to grab some food, to which he responded that under no circumstances were we allowed to come over, because he did not want us tripping balls at his house. While this is a semi-reasonable thing for him to say, especially if his parents were home, acid me took that rejection very very badly, and felt terrible that I had even called to ask him to come over. This is where my trip went from overtly pleasurable to downright terrifying.

We were stuck. If we went back the way we came, we would not have food, and if we went to the nearest store that had food, we would have to walk another mile or so on major busy streets to get there. Neither of these prospects enthused me, and I began to feel very conflicted on what to do. I decided for the group that we had to get food in our system, as it had now been about 3 and a half hours into our trip and I had not eaten anything all day, and we began the journey to the nearest place to eat.

While walking, I began to feel overwhelmingly lethargic, my legs wanted to give out, I was sweating, and my head began to pound. I kept telling my friends how much this walk sucked and how I did not want to continue, but they reminded me that we had to get food and we couldn’t just stop in the middle of the street. While I knew that we couldn’t stop, I kept complaining aloud to my buddies, saying that I’d rather get hit by a car than walk any longer, and that I’d kill to take a shower. E and K kept telling me to stop complaining and to just go with the flow, but I physically couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just kept repeating how I’d rather die than be out in the open any longer, and slowly this statement turned from hyperbole, to an actual thought. Once I realized that I was seriously considering suicide my mind began to panic, wondering why I could not muster the energy to just walk to food like my friends were. At around the same time, the cars that were around us began to sound like jet engines, and the smell of exhaust and dirt overwhelmingly filled my nostrils. I also began to feel incredibly trapped out in the world, and I began to panic over the fact that we did not have a house to retreat to, and I was going to have to wait out the rest of this trip in the dirty, nasty city.

Finally we reached a place to eat. I watched as the man who was making me my sandwichs face contorted into grotesque positions, and how the meatballs he was putting into the bread looked utterly disgusting. I got my food as fast as I could and walked out the door, I had to beg my friends who wanted to sit down in the store because all I wanted to do was get back to the beach where we first began to trip. I started to have paranoid thoughts about my friends, and I thought that they were talking about me behind my back, whispering about how I couldn’t handle my drugs and how they wished I would just leave. This of course was not true, but my paranoid drugged up mind began to resent my two best friends, a feeling which terrified and deeply saddened me. Waves of depression started to wash over my psyche, I have struggled with depression in the past and this felt like that times ten. I thought my only friends hated me, and that I was going to die alone with no connection to anyone in the world. I wanted to go home so badly, and deeply contemplated calling my parents to pick me up, a thought that I hated to even think about.

This was when I started to have my first dark visuals, faces on posters and people on the street began to look like skulls, and I kept thinking that there were bees flying around my ears. I also began to feel as if I was badly sunburnt to the point of my face being swollen. I felt ugly and un-presentable to the world, and that everybody was looking at me and judging me. I took maybe two bites of my sandwich, and then threw it away. I tried to focus on my breathing and continue walking towards the beach, but it was an almost impossible task. But somehow, I made it back to the beach where we first started coming up on acid in one piece, and once I was back away from the peering eyes of sober people, off the streets with all of the deafening cars, and with a little bit of food in my stomach, my trip began to ebb back into a positive light
with a little bit of food in my stomach, my trip began to ebb back into a positive light
.

This would not have been possible without the help of my two wonderful friends, who when realizing that I was under serious stress talked to me and kept me calm on the walk back, trying to reassure me that everything was going to be fine and that it would soon be over. This is something I am immensely grateful for. This terrible aspect of the trip that was the worst thing I had ever experienced at the time when looking back on it now has taught me a couple very valuable lessons, number one being to not underestimate the power acid can have over my psyche. Once the molecule takes hold, I am no longer in control, and the drug will take me wherever it wants to take me. Number two is to always have a place to retreat to if the trip becomes too intense, the lack of a safe house caused my drugged brain to believe I had no place in the world, and that I was going to be stuck outside forever. And finally I learned that you gotta eat some damn food before you trip, your body will forget while you’re trippin and you won’t understand why you’re so tired midway through. We were walking for probably over half of this trip, and my legs by the end of the day ached worse than they ever had before. This is the only time in my experiences with Lucy that a negative side has emerged, but looking back on it, it was exactly what I needed. I now realize what I need to do in order to ensure a fully positive trip, and it checked my ego not only with dropping acid, but my life in general as well.

I wanted to share this story not only to entertain, but in hopes that if others read, they can take something away from my experience, and apply it to their own trips in order to make sure nothing unexpected happens.

Exp Year: 2016ExpID: 109286
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 17
Published: May 29, 2020Views: 1,462
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LSD (2) : Bad Trips (6), Personal Preparation (45), Difficult Experiences (5), Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53)

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