DOSE: T+ 0:00	2 capsls	oral	Products - Other
T+ 0:30	2 capsls	oral	Products - Other
T+ 1:30	2 capsls	oral	Products - Other

BODY WEIGHT:

10 st

Reflections On A First Psychedelic Experience

This is a reflective report on my first psychedelic experience, which occurred more than 12 years ago when I was 17 years old. The experience was with 'Space Cadets' tablets which were sold as legal highs at the time, and described as being akin to LSD or psylocibin mushrooms. The exact chronology is hazy, so I have attempted to include a rough timeline as well as a more detailed breakdown of the effects experienced, as well as a retrospective comparison with a couple of other psychedelic or semi-psychedelic substances I have experienced in the years since.

***
FORM

'Space Cadets' legal high capsules. Main active ingredients are Morning Glory, Hawaiian Baby Woodrose but in unmarked quantities (the packaging notes that Morning Glory is the primary active ingredient). Also includes sidia cordofilia and guarana as mild stimulants to counteract the often sedating nature of LSA-containing seeds; and GABA.

They're sold in a six-capsule recommended dose. The packaging states that two capsules will provide a noticeable change in perception but that six is recommended for a full experience. Up to 12 can be taken for a very intense experience.

We choose to take six each, spaced out to counteract the nausea and reduce the intensity of onset.

***

SET & SETTING

We spend the entire duration of the experience outdoors in our small town. There's a park, and quieter areas of nature around the outskirts; or we can head into the centre if we want a bit more stimulation. As the experience manifests we realise that being in nature, away from people, is far preferable.

As for mindset - well, we're all in our late teens and this is the first psychedelic experience we'll have had. Realistically we know very little about what to expect - but at this age, one's sense of risk is diminished. All of us have had some experience of mental health problems as teenagers - but on the day itself, we feel refreshed, excited, curious and optimistic.

Past psychoactive experiences are at this stage limited to alcohol and cannabis in relatively small quantities. No prescription medications.

***
ROUGH TIMELINE

t+0:00 - Ingest first two capsules on an empty stomach.

t+0:30 - No effects. Ingest second two capsules.

t+1:00 - Nausea. A slight energy. A feeling that something is changing. But mainly nausea.

t+1:30 - An intensified buzz, a slightly on-edge feeling and body high. Things start to feel a bit strange. Nausea subsiding. Noticeably inde the influence, but not a truly psychedelic mindstate yet. Ingest final two capsules.

t+2:00 - Strong body high. A buzzing excitement and significantly rising intensity of the senses. The world feels simultaneously sped up and slowed down. An indescribable sense of otherness, which is simultaneously anxiety-inducing and hilarious. Some nausea, coming and going in waves. The experience is noticeably stronger than 30 minutes ago.

t+3:00 - Peak. The mind begins to wander more. The psychedelic headspace comes in waves, and the transition is jarring but amusing. 'Snapping back to reality' has me and my friends in fits of giggles, as we share how weird our inner thought processes have become. But it's easy to get lost in our thoughts once again. Physically, I feel floaty and disconnected from the world. I've forgotten about the nausea now.

t+4:00 - The experience is calmer than an hour ago, but the psychedelic headspace deeper. I am more at ease with letting my thoughts take me where they want to go. It is no longer funny, and instead comes with feelings of the profound. I feel much more lucid, more able to lock onto and explore ideas and concepts.

t+5:00 - Heading back to baseline. The intensity has subsided considerably. There is a sharpness, a clarity, to my thoughts and emotions, which are still noticeably affected by the drug. I am able to engage in complex, coherent conversation about the experience and what it has shown me.

t+6:00 - The effects have mainly worn off, but there is a prevailing sense of clarity to my thoughts, feelings, emotions and beliefs. I feel physically exhausted but mentally refreshed, the way one feels after a good holiday. As I walk home, I make some resolutions for the future, about how to live a better and more fulfilling life.

t+8:00 - I have been as yet unable to sleep. There is a residual strangeness to my perception, difficult to put my finger on. There is also some anxiety. My thoughts race and I have trouble relaxing. I worry - even though logically I know otherwise - that I have somehow poisoned my body.

t:9:00 - Around this time I finally fall asleep, and wake early the next day - after maybe five hours of rest - feeling a little tired but otherwise normal.

***
THEMES & OBSERVATIONS

GENERAL SENSORY INTENSIFICATION
There are little to no overt visuals, either open- or closed-eye. However, everything looks, sounds, smells, tastes and feels the same... only more so. Entering a shop to buy a bottle of water, everything feels a little too much - the buzz of the refrigerators, the brightness of the flourescent lighting, the heat of the building's interior. Coupled with this sensory overload comes a rising anxiety: being outdoors in the darkness is much more pleasant.

PERCEPTION OF SCALE AND DIMENSIONS
Perception of size is warped. Distances feel longer, objects seem larger, even though they don't look bigger in a literal sense. A friend and I become amused by the length of benches ('wow, park penches are *so long* aren't they?!'). A walk across a small park - maybe 100 metres - seems like an epic journey. I feel relatively smaller in the world than usual.

VIVIDNESS AND UNCONTROLLABILITY OF IMAGINATION
The 'mind's eye' becomes more active, and is triggered seemingly out of nowhere. There is no effort in imagining things in excellent detail. While these do not manifest in literal visuals, there is a richness to the imaginative state, and that state feels pulled from my control. While walking across the aforementioned park, a restaurant on the other side evokes an image of heading across a field toward an open-air concert, the restaurant pictured as the stage, the park the field on which it sits. At another time, the feeling of epicness to the world makes me imagine flying across water, the grass underfoot becoming a vast expanse of ocean in my mind's eye.

PERSONIFICATION OF NATURE
On multiple occasions during the experience we walk across a park. On every occasion, the trees in the park seem to become a personification of the psychedelic experience. At first this is slightly frightening - they seem menacing, somehow, up to mischief. However, when I am able to push past this anxiety, their personality changes: I feel that they were guiding my experience, watching over me, ensuring my friends and I are safe. I come to think of them as an older sibling - teasing, prodding, not always being nice, but ultimately loving and caring and invested in my safety and happiness. While I am always aware that these are feelings brought on by a drug, I am struck by a sense that the drug is manifest in the trees themselves: that they are its representatives, acting as our guides for the evening.

TIME DILATION
The experience is largely over within five hours, but I feel by the end that I have been on an epic adventure. In fact, 'time dilation' is slightly wrong. It doesn't feel necessarily like the experience has lasted longer than it has; more that I begin to see time as relative, a measure that doesn't map onto the lived experience. There has been a sequence of events, of thoughts and feelings, that time can't accurately convey. This feeling is most manifest after the obvious peak, when the experience is calmer and more lucid, and is one of the last feelings to dissipate when heading back to baseline. (At the tail end of a later experience, I write in my notes: 'Tonight I have learned that time does not exist.' The next day I will look back at this and laugh, but in the moment it feels like the most profound revelation of my life.)

IMPORTANCE OF THE INSIGNIFICANT
I find I become 'locked on' to ordinarily insignificant things, and my mind creates a narrative that makes them seem vitally important. This effect manifests mainly in the latter stages of the experience, when the peak intensity begins to subside. Walking along the road, I consider the millions of tiny micro-organisms that will be underfoot. I feel that if they didn't have an important role to play in the world, they would not have survived since the dawn of time. I try to put my feet down more softly, so as not to damage them. I am holding a large bottle of water and, as I walk, the contents slosh from side to side in the bottle. This, I feel, is a representation of the energy of life - constantly moving backward and forward, enimating life and energy into the world. I make sure to allow the bottle to rock back and forth so the energy can be maintained.

***

COMPARATIVE NOTES

In the years after this experience I will go on to try a couple of other psychedelics and semi-psychedelics on a number of occasions.

Compared with 2C-B, the LSA experience is far less visual. It is also, paradoxically, both deeper and more clear-headed and lucid. 2C-B makes me feel confused, scatterbrained, like I can't keep up with my thoughts, but is lacking in true insight. By comparison, LSA - while creating a more pronounced changed in psychological perception - brings my thoughts and feelings into a far greater clarity than in everyday life. The agitated, energetic body high of the onset is similar, though 2C-B brings with it less a feeling of nausea, more a dull stomach discomfort.

Compared with MDMA, the visual experience of LSA is very similar: an enhanced perception of brightness coupled with a vividness to the imagination. But there is little similarity to the headspace. LSA provides none of the forceful joy and pleasure of MDMA. Instead, it is markedly neutral and objective in tone, allowing clarity untainted by emotional response. The dreaminess of MDMA is also completely at odds with the sharp relief of the offset of the LSA experience. Unusually among my friends, I find that MDMA is the most nausea-inducing chemical I have tried, and I will often vomit during the onset. By comparison, on all three occasions I have tried LSA, I have felt nauseous but not felt the need to vomit.

***
OVERALL REFLECTION

This was my first psychedelic experience and I still remember it with huge fondness. It is perhaps to this day the most enlightening, eye-opening experience I have had on any substance and piqued my interest in other psychedelic compounds.

The experience was both challenging and rewarding, which I have come to understand that the most fulfilling psychedelic experiences are. There was a sense of 'pushing through' the challenge in order to access the reward, which felt theraputic.

But it was also simply a lot of fun at times. Weird, otherworldly, exciting and hilarious. While anxiety was present at times, as was some not insignificant nausea, my memories are of the positive experiences of that evening.

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 111107
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 17
Published: Mar 3, 2026	Views: Not Supported
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Products - Other (550), Morning Glory (38), H.B. Woodrose (26), Sida cordifolia (785), Guarana (117), GABA (362) : First Times (2), Combinations (3), Glowing Experiences (4), Small Group (2-9) (17)