LSD

DOSE: T+ 0:00 1 hit LSD (blotter / tab) T+ 1:30 1 hit LSD (blotter / tab)

I go to a school in a small city, and I've been trying to get my hands on psychedelics for my entire time at college. I have a goal: trip before graduating. Unfortunately, this was obviously not going to happen. Two days before graduation (the night before my practice ceremony) a friend (experienced with psychedelics, but not lsd, if I recall correctly) calls me at 3 pm and tells me she's on her way to a connection. She buys two strips and we end up with a group of five people, including myself, interested. Due to some scheduling conflicts, we all took a tab at around 10:00 PM. For reference, we have M, W, K, B and myself. All except myself and B have done some sort of psychedelic. I don't know M very well, but he's a good friend of W and K, and my intense excitement and anticipation totally wiped out any concerns I might have had about tripping with someone I didn't know. I was too excited to be worried.

At about 11:30, myself and K decide to take a second dose. That famous 'I don't think it's working' mindset kicked in, and, despite what one may expect, it was a great decision. A few minutes later, another friend, D, shows up, and she takes a dose. This is two days before graduation, so the campus is pretty dead. Only seniors and their guests are on campus, there are no parties, and absolutely nobody is walking around at night. So, becoming rather antsy, the six of us decide to go explore. As we're leaving the dorm, D takes a second dose and I notice that I'm feeling an intense sense of euphoria and complacency.

M produces a bottle of glow-in-the-dark bubbles. Unfortunately, they work about as well as normal bubbles. As I start to notice how particularly green the trees are, and how appealing the chairs all lined up for graduation on the quad are, we leave the porch and go for a walk. We have a camera obscura on campus, which essentially amounts a very dark room in one of our gardens. By the time we get to the camera, I'm experiencing incredibly bliss. Frankly, I'm wondering if this LSD will produce visuals, and I'm rationally aware of my disappointment, but that doesn't matter at all. I'm having a great time. We get into the camera obscura and somebody breaks out glowsticks. Some of them have broken, so we discover that we can paint the walls with the stuff inside. It's pretty, but I'm still wondering if this was as good as it got.

Remembering the glow-in-the-dark bubbles M pulls them out and we notice that the bottle is an irradiated orange color. In the dark, it's like a little star. We frantically get some light in the camera to make sure everything is non-toxic, and M starts doling out the soapy glowing liquid. My mind pretty much stops as soon as it's in my cupped hands. I can see fractal-like lines in the liquid in my hands, and I realize that there is literally no end to what I can see in the liquid. I'm staring into glowing orange infinity. The fractals become little slices of organic and synthetic life. I feel like an entire universe is being held in my hands. Across the camera, M flicks his fingers at the wall and there are suddenly stars all around us. Everyone becomes Jackson Pollock. We paint the walls so thoroughly that, for a few minutes, I lose all sense of location and time. I'm standing in empty space, staring at the cosmoses that we're panting on the wall. It was one of the most peaceful, complete, and breath-taking things I have ever felt. I realize I'm experiencing a pretty intense bout of ego-death, which was something I was concerned about when reading about Lucy. It feels completely natural, however. I am totally at ease with everything that is happening in and around me.

I lose sense of time at this point. I'm standing in the camera obscura for what seems like hours, painting stars on the wall. D, K and I eventually just huddle around each other and watch the galaxies in our hands. The water is incredibly soapy, so whenever we try to hold it, the liquid shifts and moves and entire celestial bodies breathe and form life.

Eventually we run out and we could all use a thorough handwashing. B tells us to follow her to the creek, so we traipse across campus to wash our hands in the running water. She takes us to a point almost entirely across campus, and we step down through the undergrowth to the water's edge. Everything is silent except for the sound of water, and we all quickly become enraptured. M splashes some of the rest of the glowing concoction around so we can see in the pitch-blackness and I experience such a rush of awe at the sight and sounds of what what was happening around me. The water is moving slowly, and M dumps the rest out into the water so we can see the water's edge, and I'm one of the last people to lean down to wash off.

Everyone else at this point is up a little hill, a good fifteen feet away from me. As I dip my hands into the creek, I'm having an almost religious experience. As someone who practices nature-worship, this moment was one of the most profound and meaningful of my life. I feel like I'm at some water god's altar; like I'm stepping into some holy realm. I think I'm quietly crying at this point. I feel totally embraced and comforted by the night around me, by the sound of the water, by the glow of the universes splashed onto low-hanging tree branches. I'm quietly crying at this point. I feel totally embraced and comforted by the night around me, by the sound of the water, by the glow of the universes splashed onto low-hanging tree branches.