Newsgroups: alt.drugs.psychedelics

I remember my first year at university...  I had a very good 
friend Cory that I would study with from midnight to about 6 or 7 in the 
morning every night.  During the wee hours of the morning we would take 
study breaks and debate philosophy or argue moral issues for fun.  We 
became very open about our ideologies and eventually one night I said, 
"You know what I've heard so much about, but never tried?  I've always 
been curious about hallucinogens..."  My friend replied that he too was 
curious about these drugs and that he'd be interested in setting up a 
'scientific experiment.'  He was in his third year of bio/psych and I was 
just starting my psychology degree.  So it started....
	We researched the many hallucinogens for the next two months.  I 
spent hours in the library reading and visiting friends to interview them 
about their personal experiences.  Feeling comfortable with our choice, I 
returned to my home town to find some acid (the drug we had decided 
upon).  My friends had all said that a half hit would likely do for my 
first time and that if after an hour I had only minimal effects I could 
always ingest another half tab.  I ended up buying 5 hits total for me 
and my friend.  I thought, "hey, if it's weak we're better off having 
extra and who knows, maybe we'll really like it and want to have some 
more around."
	We had planned to drop on the Friday evening and had set up 
several perceptual experiments that we wanted to perform.  It was 
Thursday and I had been studying all day and night.  I popped by Cory's 
dorm room to say 'hi' only to find that Cory too had had a brutal study 
day.  He turned to me with a great big smile and said, "want to do it 
tonight?"  "Sure!" I replied.  So, we started our tape recorder and 
pulled out our journal book for the night.
	Journal entry #1, "12:01am first dose - 1/2 tab each, haven't 
eaten recently."  From what we had both heard, the expected onset time 
would be 20-30 minutes, so we waited...  10 minute mark, nothing.  15 
minute mark, get ready!  20 minute mark, nothing yet, should be soon!  25 
minute mark, still nothing but get ready!  30 minute mark, nothing...  35 
minute mark nothing...  40 minute mark, still nothing...  "Hmmm," I 
thought, "this should have started to affect us by now...  Well, I have 
been carrying this stuff around for a week in my jacket wrapped in 
tinfoil; perhaps the agent has been partially leeched out and the tabs 
are weak..." 
	So, at this point we made what was still a somewhat rational 
decision...we would increase our dose by one more tab each.  It seemed 
logical, if the drug was too weak to affect us we should increase our dose.
	50 minute mark, nothing.  60 minute mark, nothing, this stuff 
should have started ages ago!  My friend thought that we had been ripped 
off, but I doubted that my old school friend would have done such a thing 
(especially since he had tried the same batch of acid with positive 
affect).  70 minute mark, nothing....  So, at this point we made a 
decision which to today I still can not see the rationality of...we 
decided to take the rest of the acid.  A total of 2 1/2 hits each and we 
had never touched the drug before in our lives.
	We moved from the dorm room to the kitchen to sit and talk.  The 
nice thing about this area of the dorm (known as the 'cell') is nice 
because it has only 3 rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen and is sealed off 
from the rest of the residence for privacy.  So we sat in the kitchen 
eating chips and pop, when all of a sudden my friend Cory point to the 
pop can and exclaimed, "Oh my god Greg!  Put the pop can down and look at 
it!"  I set the pop can down on the table and looked, the can started to 
breathe...in and out, smaller then larger.  "Cool!" I thought....then, 
"Shit!  We've taken 2 1/2 hits each and it's starting to kick in...better 
hold on!"  The kitchen was the best place to be...so many small and 
interesting things to look at.  
	We went to the sink that had little droplets of water in the 
bottom of it.  By 'unfocusing' our attention, we could cause strange 
effects to occur.  The sink became this rushing current of rapids pouring 
down into the drain.  A blink of the eyes and it was the sink again...
	There was a poster around campus that week for a band known as 
Anonymous...  It was a picture of a punk rocker's face with really 
strange shadings that had obvious done with pencil.  There happened to be 
one of these posters printed on green paper on the kitchen wall.  We 
watched the poster for a moment.  The hair on the top of his head 
receeded and disappeared while the shading on the face became more 
pronounced turning the face into that of a 'wolfman.'  This is how our 
experiment became coded as 'The Green Wolfman Experiment."  The face 
cycled back and forth between that of the punk rocker and the wolfman, 
back and forth like the waves on the shore.
	The kitchen was full of such wonders.  The doors on all the 
shelves buldged inward and outward.  The hairs on our arms interweaved 
continually and the hairs on our legs grew straight out.  The once plain 
walls were full of intricate little patterns as was the carpet just 
outside the door...as though some person had come by and impressed these 
patterns into their surfaces.  I was somewhat disappointed though...  I 
moved my hand back and forth in front of my face...no tracers...  I had 
heard so much about tracers and I had none (but then again, I was only 
experiencing the onset of my first half hit...).
	It just so happened that the residence was having a formal that 
evening and people were milling around the floors providing a good cover 
for the two of us;  if we acted strange, we could always have replied 
that we had had too much to drink.  Cory's eyes lighted up and he 
exclaimed, "I want to get socially interactive!  Let's go out to the 
party and talk to people!"  I was a little nervous about this and really 
wanted to just stay in the kitchen; however, he convinced me and out we 
went to the party...
	Wouldn't you know the first person we started to talk to was the 
person in charge of the entire residence system!  Surely this was not the 
person to talk to while we were so affected by acid.  Eventually Cory 
became confused by something she had said so we found a corner, sat down, 
and went back over the tape recorder to straighten things out.  
	TV!  I wanted to see the TV!  So we went to the TV room and I 
watched the television for about 5 minutes but there was nothing special 
about it.  This was rather disappointing, I had hoped that the television 
would have warped or characters would have behaved differently or atleast 
something.  I started to talk to a friend sitting next to me on the 
couch.  As we talked, I was staring at his eyes...they were huge and 
angular...much like those in Japanimation.  I couldn't break my gaze at 
his eyes until suddenly he blinked...and his huge eyelids came down and 
back up in what seemed to be a series of still photographs taken 
milliseconds apart.  I complimented him on the largeness of his eyes and 
then excused myself.  
	Cory and I sat down in a hallway of the residence, it was time to 
try our time perception experiments.  A friend of ours, Sean, had sat 
down next to us to chat (but had no idea what we were up to).  The 
experiment was as follows.  Person A would have the watch, pen, and 
journal.  Person B would have to estimate the elapse of 30 seconds by any 
means possible to them and tell person B when that time had elapsed.  
Person A would then right down the elapsed time and ask person B how much 
time they estimated had actually passed.  I was first to be person B and 
Cory was first to be the recorder.
	"Ok, start....now!" Cory said.  "1 and... 2 and... 3..", I 
thought but was then distracted.  "I'm sorry Cory," I appologized, 
"there's no way I can do 30 seconds...  We've got to cut it down to 10 
seconds..."  "No, keep going Greg, you can do it..."  "No, seriously, 
there's no way I'll make 30 seconds..."  Cory smiled, "I'm still timing 
you!"  "Stop!  Stop!  Now!" I shouted.  Cory looked at the watch and 
wrote down the elapsed time. "What's your estimated time?" Cory asked. 
"Oh my gods!  Atleast 5 minutes have gone by!"  I exclaimed.  Cory shot 
me a strange look, wrote down my time, and said, "Actual time...11 
seconds..."
	Cory didn't believe me, he thought I was just pulling his leg.  
So he became person B and I became the recorder.  "Ok, start....now!" I 
said as the second hand reached 12.  Cory started to talk to our friend 
Sean.  They talked and talked.  All of a sudden Cory looked alarmed and 
turned towards me, "Stop! Stop!  Oh no!  I forgot all about the 
experiment!"  I wrote down the actual time and asked him for his 
estimated time.  He replied, "Oh man!  Atleast 15 minutes have passed 
by!"  I grinned, "Actuall time:  15 seconds!"  The time dilation was 
fantastic!  I had never experienced anything like this before in my 
life...but there was more to come still as only the first amounts of acid 
had been absorped into my system.
	My visual field was vibrating.  Full of patterns.  Everything was 
patterned...and vibrating.  I went to the washroom and as I came out Cory 
was talking to a friend of ours.  As she walked away, Cory turned to me 
and said, "Look!  She has a metal plate in her forehead!"  I looked and 
sure enough there it was...a Frankenstein metal-plate forehead!  We 
laughed...  But I was becoming aware of an apprehensive feeling...I 
wanted to go somewhere...  Maybe the kitchen... Maybe the dorm room... I 
just felt like we had to go somewhere...  Somewhere better.  Anyways, we 
were sitting on the floor of the hallway with Sean debating about at 
exactly what time we had taken what "dose" and Sean became curious.  
"Dose?  Dose?  What did you guys take?" he asked.  I looked at Cory and 
he at me.  Cory replied, "LS...."  "....D" I finished.  Sean said, 
"Ohhh..."  At this point Cory and myself became worried thinking that we 
had upset Sean or that perhaps we shouldn't have told him.  But Sean 
turned to us and said, "Guys, it's just that we're in a hallway by the 
doors of people's rooms!"  Cory and myself looked up in surprise and sure 
enough that's where we were!  Our bubble of perception had become so 
small and concentrated on what we were doing that we had forgotten where 
we were and that we should be careful with how loud we talked about what 
we were doing!  Sean merely smiled and laughed...he then became our 
ground man for the night.
	Things were getting pretty intense at this point, we had 
plateaued at a very high peak of the drug's effect.  Where there had been 
no tracers before, they were everywhere!  When I moved, everything in my 
field of vision blurred off with tracers like looking between two 
mirrors.  I felt I had to go somewhere, it was winter and I figured some 
cold air might do us good.  We went out into the snow and marvelled at 
all the patterns in the snow.  We watched two trees that grew and grew up 
to the highest reaches of the sky.  A friend had said to go and look at 
stoplights, saying that the lights would change to different colours.  We 
decided against going off campus since the drug's affect was so great and 
we didn't know what to expect.  After all, I didn't want to pass out and 
be found in a snowbank some days later!
	We went back in and returned to the dorm.  I was unable to write 
and unable to focus on one thing for too long due to all the patterns in 
my head.  Not only that, but my thoughts had become lightening fast and 
branched out from one another...I would have one initial idea and that 
idea would have five sub-ideas...those five sub-ideas would have 
sub-ideas of their own and so on!  An infinite and parallel labyrinth of 
active thoughts all perceived at incredible speeds.  All these 
perceptions were very overwhelming.  I turned to Cory, "Tell you 
what...we've seen what we've come to see and we've done one of our 
experiments...  Let's call it a night aand crash out..."  Cory agreed and 
he tossed me a sleeping bag as he hit the top bunk.  
	I layed there on the floor.  My mind racing and spinning...lost 
in the eddies of perception and thought.  Time was dilated now to an 
unimaginable extent.  I looked at the bottom bunk where Cory's room mate 
was sleeping...He was a Jehovah's Witness and actually kept Watch Tower 
magazines under his pillow...  The moonlight was coming in through the 
window and struck his head, giving him the impression of having a halo 
about him.  I laughed, even through my current state of stress and 
anxiety, at the contrast between the peacefully sleeping JW and me 
tripping out of my mind on the floor mere feet away. 
	I layed there for what seemed like hours.  I couldn't sleep, I 
wasn't tired in the least.  It was as if the actual mechanism for sleep 
had been removed from my system.  Sleep just did not exist.  I looked at 
Cory on the top bunk and thought, "That lucky bastard!  Probably asleep 
right now and away from all this stuff..."  I quietly called out, 
"Cory?"  And the response came back, "Yeah?"  Apparently he was in the 
same boat I was.  
	We returned to the kitchen.  The acid was in full-blown affect 
now.  During the week I had had a pain in my chest that had been with me 
for a few days (probably a bruise from sparring).  My body-perception was 
normal from my head down to my shoulders but then my body narrowed down 
to an infinitely thin point at this point in my chest, flowed down about 
three feet, curved around behind my back and up over my shoulder where it 
then flowed off into infinity.  My body just kept flowing down through my 
chest and off into infinity through this strange curved pattern.  I had 
also lost the comfort that one normally has of one's body.  It was as if 
my body no longer existed...that warm cozy cloak I had worn for all my 
life was now gone....leaving emptiness...void...nothing...  This gave me 
great feelings of insecurity and distress.  I explained to Cory that I 
wished I could wrap myself up in a great big comforter or perhaps put a 
ballon inside my side and inflate it so that I could feel the reassurance 
of my body again.  In times of stress, one can always retreat to one's 
body and hug one's self for comfort...for me this was gone.
	As I was washed over by my perceptions and thoughts, I discovered 
I had lost another form or retreat and comfort.  Whenever you are 
stressed or overwhelmed you can always close your eyes.  Away from the 
world and safe in the warm darkness or fleshy colour (if it is a sunny 
day or if a light is near by).  I was overwhelmed and closed my eyes to 
escape all the visuals for a moment.  But when I closed my eyes, it was 
still all there!  Even more so somehow!  I realized that I was here for 
the full-haul on this trip...  It was obvious that the drug didn't affect 
the outside world reaching my retina, it was affecting my brain's 
processing of the visual information and my other internal processes.  
There was no escape...but that was ok...we had prepared ourselves so well 
that we knew we were on a drug and that in a few hours it would be gone.  
All we had to do was wait out the intensity.
	At this point, my space-time perception had become greatly 
affected.  The best way to explain it is like this....  Imagine that 
space-time is an infinitly long cord going infinity far in both 
directions (past and future).  Now, imagine our perception as an 
infinitly thin plane cross-secting this cord at any given point.  Our 
plane of perception moves an infinitly small amount of distance in an 
infinitly small amount of time in a forward direction along this cord of 
space-time--thus being virtually continuous.  What happen to me is that I 
took a 'chunk' of this space-time cord and sliced it into five sequential 
slices.  I was aware of my normal visual field, but I was also aware of 
an infinitly large blackness reaching out in all directions (visual).  It 
was upon this infinite blackness that I placed these first first slices 
of space-time chronologically with the first on the left movig across to 
the most recent on the right.  I then took the next 'chunk' of space-time 
and sliced it again into five sequential slices and overlaid these upon 
the original five.  The first five 'clicked' back one position but I was 
still aware of them.  I then kept taking more and more chunks or 
space-time as time passed and kept overlaying them upon the groups of 
five that were accumulating.  These five groups clicked away and trailed 
off infinitely away from me and upwards as they got farther moved from 
myself.  Points of interest here were that I was simultaneously aware of 
1) my normal perception, 2) my current five chunks of time, 3) all 
previous slices, and 4) this special infinite space in which I was 
perceiving space-time.  As well, if one experiments with the edge of the 
visual field by moving your hand past the edge of your eye, you will 
notice that your hand gradually fades as it loses acuity and finally 
disappears from perception.  However, all my slices of space-time had 
definate edges on them...like freeze-frames from a television show.  They 
were square screens showing reality.
	Sean had come into the kitchen again and said 'hi.'  He had just 
finished brushing his teeth in the kitchen sink when Cory came up to him 
trying to explain the rushing water effect in the sink.  As Cory was 
intensely focused upon the sink and his explanation Sean reached around 
and turned the water on full-blast.  Cory stumbled back from the sink 
shaken... "Oh wow!  Don't do that man!"  Cory shook, "It's like somebody 
whispering, 'come here...  come here... I want to tell you a secret...' 
And then shouting as loud as possibe into your ear except with your 
entire sensory/perceptual system."  We all had a good laugh over that.  
But overall it was too intense...I sat back in a large chair...
	I turned to Sean and asked him to turn the lights off in the 
kitchen in an attempt to settle my perceptions...  As Sean was about to 
do this Cory argued no, leave them on...  We then got into a fun-spirited 
debate to see who could get Sean to turn the lights off or leave them 
on.  Finally I said, "Look Sean, the lights are doing me more harm than 
they are doing Cory good...turn them off..."  Sean agreed to this.  But 
before he could act, Cory stood up and said, "No man!  I want to get 
things loud in here!  I want to get my stereo and play some loud 
music...  Or get a really loud band in here!"  "Oh!" I thought amongst my 
perceptual rollercoaster, "Stereo...  Band...  Music...  Loud..."  There 
was just so much happening that I thought I could just be perceptually 
sea-sick, I thought, "yeah, you know...I could just be perceptually 
sea-sick with all that is happening...in fact I think I will...I think 
I'll puke..."  So I stood up, walked over to the garbage bin, vomited and 
sat back down in my chair.
	Sean and Cory looked over at me nervously, "Are you ok?"  "Yeah." 
I responded.  "Would you like some water?"  "Sure..."  Sean brought me 
some water and I had a sip.  It was now that we were experiencing the 
suggestability that can be found in this state.  At one point I used the 
expression of something "splitting in two."  When I used that phrase, 
Cory felt his body actually split in two.
	There was also an emotional aspect to the experience.  Shortly 
after this Cory stood up and said, "Oh my god!  I've got an assignment 
due Monday!  What am I doing here on acid!  I going to fail my course!  
And my girlfriend is going to be here tomorrow!  What if I'm not back to 
normal!"  He then caught himself being swept up in all this emotion and 
smiled realizing its irrationality...  He was almost finsihed the 
assignment and had another three days to finish it and his girlfriend 
would not be here until well after the drug wore off.  He explained his 
emotions as the worst possible gut-dropping feeling in the world, as if 
he had just killed his family.  We laughed over this and all the odd 
perceptions and behavior we had experienced. 
	Sean disappeared for a minute and came back, "Hey guys! There's 
overturned furniture up on 3rd floor!  Want to go up and look at it?!"  
Cory wanted to go, but I wanted to stay put.  Cory asked if I would be OK 
on my own and if he could go.  We looked at each other straight in the 
eyes then in what was perhaps the most emotional experience of my life.  
I could have hugged him.  In the middle of all these temultuous 
perceptions, we were the only two people on the entire Earth who were 
sharing and aware of them.  It was a bond of friendship we have never 
lost, even to today.  Cory left me with the tape recorder and they turned 
out the lights leaving me in my chair with my leather university jacket 
over me.
	Where once there had been no effects from the drugs, that was all 
that existed then.  All of a sudden the doorbell to the outer door rang, 
"Shit..." I thought, "I'm in no condition to be interacting with people 
right now."  So I stayed in my chair.  The door rattled and then someone 
opened it with their keys.  I heard people walking towards the kitchen 
from the outer door, two guys and a girl.  They stopped at the kitchen 
and smiled in at me, "You look like your pretty comfortable there!"  
"Yeah, had a bit too much to drink tonight so I think I'll just crash 
here..." I replied as the world swirled within and without me.  "Ok, well 
sleep tight!" she laughed and they left.
	At this point in the trip I became something that I can not put 
into words...  I became atemporal.  I existed without time...I existed 
through an infinite amount of time.   This concept is impossible to 
comprehend without having actually perceived it.  Even now in retrospect 
it is hard to comprehend it.  But I do know that I lived an eternity that 
night...
	Eventually Cory returned and asked, "How long was I gone?"  I 
replied, "I couldn't honestly tell you if my very soul depended upon 
it..."  And I was honest.  He could have been gone 3 seconds, 15 minutes, 
hours, days, months, or years...I had no idea.  All I knew was that he 
was the best sight that my eyes had ever seen at that moment of my life.  
We decided to try crashing out again for awhile and returned to the dorm 
room.  
	As I laid on the floor I thought, well, I came into this with a 
philosophical/scientific purpose, I might as well keep work at that 
goal.  So I started to analyse me speeding and labyrinthing thoughts.  I 
had two theories based upon the correlatory nature of my thoughts (A is 
like B, B is like C, D is like F, etc...) :   1) perhaps this was a 
process that was always occuring in my brain looking at all different 
avenues of logic or possibility before choosing the most appropriate.  
All these hundreds of lightening fast related thoughts were a natural 
process that I was only now aware of by means of the drug I had 
ingested.  Or, 2) perhaps this was a dysfunction in my brain due to the 
drug and was created soley by the drug interaction. 
	So I decided on another experiment.  I would take two random 
things and see how this system correlated them.  I chose 'the world' and 
'a loaf of bread.'  My brain thought of thousands of correlations (they 
both have a crust, they are both soft in the center, they both have 
things living on the outside of them, etc...).  I wish I had been able to 
right to record more than these few that I can remember to see if they 
all made sense the next day.  However, I was in no condition to write...
	I laid on the floor for ages waiting the drug out.  Finally, my 
perceptions went from 'clicking' along to a short moment of continuous 
perception, and then back to clicking.  Eventually the moments of 
continuous perception became longer and longer and the 'clicking' moments 
shorter and shorter.  I was almost completely back to my normal 
perceptions.  But, I could still force visual effects to occur by 
unfocusing my attention to make the ceiling buldge and breath.  I called 
over to Cory and he was at the exact same stage and also just as wide 
awak as I was.  We got up and I went home to grab a quick shower.  An 
hour later we met for breakfast.  We both ordered huge amounts of food 
but barely touched our plates.  We spent most of the morning talking over 
the experiences of the night before.
	We were surprised by the absolute parallel of our two trips 
(perceptions, duration, cycles, etc.).  But then again, we had both gone 
in with alot of research time put in, both had the same attitude towards 
'the experiment,' had similar body structures, were in the same 
environment, and had taken the same amounts and batch of LSD at the same 
times.  There were only the more extreme space-time effects that were 
unique to myself.  
	Later I went back to my home town and my friend asked me about 
the acid trip and how much we had taken.  When I told him we had taken 2 
1/2 hits each he was shocked.  He said, "Greg, you guys didn't take 2 1/2 
hits of acid each, you took 5 hits each.  I've been doing acid for years 
and I've never had acid that strong before!"  Cory and myself had a 
retrospective laguh over that one...  
	As I walked home after my breakfast with Cory, I just took the 
world in...  All the sights and sounds of the early morning, and the 
feeeling of my body and mind.  I was glad to be back to reality...  I had 
gone beyond the experiences of my life and beyond the experiences of all 
my friends who had done acid for years just hours ago.  I was glad that I 
had gone so far, it gave me enough insight into myself and the world that 
I could think a lifetime just on the one evening's experiences.  It was 
impossible to understand reality and our perception of it without having 
a contrast to our 'normal' reality.  I now had that.  And enough insight 
to make my entire lifetime philosophically worth while.  In the midst of 
my extremely intense trip I promised myself that I would never do acid 
again (altough a couple of days later I found myself pondering what it 
would be like to take a smaller dosage!).  But I have never regretted my 
experience...
 
G.
 
(Sorry about the length, I hope this will be of use to some people 
interested in the acid experience and what the pros/cons can be of it.  I 
neither encourage or discourage drug use...I only say to those who ask me 
about drugs that if they are really interested in trying a drug to go out 
and learn about it first and know what they are getting into.  Learning 
about the drug is also an important mental preparation that can add much 
mental support in the middle of a trip.  If you understand something 
strange, you will not be afriad of it.)