I haven't tripped for many years, because I no longer need it. Having said that, I'm going to admit I've had many fantastic experiences on lsd, psilosibin, mescaline, and stp. When I took my first trip (LSD) an older friend gave me this advice; "The most important thing is to always "maintain" It was his contention that a person could act, and react normally around parents, cops, and other authority while tripping and not be discovered. Dilated eyes would be the only give away, but avoiding eyes is not an option. Most people won't notice anyway. Just look 'em in the eye and act normal. Maintaining also means making logical decisions as it pertains to your own survival while tripping. The ability to "maintain" under any circumstance, tripping or not, can save you're life! My attempt here will be to present a few of my own personal experiences while tripping and how completely unpredictable events tested my ability to Maintain....I hope others (experienced others) Will post some of their own horror stories! OK here goes.. 5:30 friday evening I peel out from work early. I see a friend of mine at the bank and he says he can get some good blotter, but I'm going to have to meet him at this party on the other side of Denver. I would have skipped it but my girlfriend loves to trip so I bit and got directions agreeing to meet around 8 or 9. I should mention here that my girlfriend and I were 18, High school sweethearts, and had just moved in to our own first apartment. We were in love and it was some of the sweetest times of my life . Anyway, by the time we scored the acid it was 10:00 and getting late for tripping,so we take the acid as soon as we get it. Well, we're still at this party when it kicks in (kicks in hard) and the hustle and bustle of the party begins to get a little grating so we decide we need to go home and we suddenly realize we've got to drive back across the city. I had reasonable experience driving on lsd so we jumped on the highway in a freezing rain. Now we're trippin very hard with a lot of colors, and the twinkling droplets of freezing rain landing on the windshield are causing my eyes to not to see through the glass, but to focus on the colors and patterns on the inside of the windshield! At highway speed this is not cool so I gripped the wheel hard, narrowed my eyes and pushed on. I could barely make out the road from hallucination when I finally made the exit, only to have a cop follow me all the way home! When we finally got inside the apartment and closed the door, we fell on the floor and practically kissed the ground, we were so relieved we made it. The story doesn't end there. It's always a series of unfortunate and unpredictable events that cause the worst acid bummers. Things can build in the unmaintained mind and cause a breakdown in the ability. Not 10 or 20 min. had passed when we were jarred by a violently urgent pounding on the door... I open the door to a fireman, eyes wide as saucers, telling us we need to evacuate because of flooding. . I thought fuck , that little creek out back? No way, its like 3 inches deep at most! He says a dam burst or some shit and we can go to this gymnasium/ shelter if we want. I'm thinking, fuck I just barely made it home and now I have to get back in the car and drive? So I'm just about to tell the fireman that I'm inebriated and I'm not in any shape to drive, when my girlfriend starts to crying. She just can't take the flood freakout and just breaks down, crying uncontrollably and wants to go to her moms instead of the shelter ( I had already decided there was no way we were going to the shelter) so I agreed. BIG MISTAKE. Her mom made shit worse. Feeding her fears even more. Eventually,my poor girl cried herself to sleep in my arms. Shoulda skipped that trip... ZW eace:
Shit bitch. That's a hectic story. I guess if you're going to trip you should be in a safe, secluded environment where you don't have to worry about authority and shit.
Thanks for the response, IcecreamPheonix! I posted this in the lsd forum, but I wanted to posted it here as well. I'm sure I'll get more mature responses (like yours) here. Here's my next tale of horror, and its another flood, fucking up another perfectly good trip. (or?) You be the judge. PRIMAL FEAR:The awareness that there is an immense, impersonal force out there that could annihilate you at any time. Primal fear is one of the coolest things lsd can help to induce. How people handle that feeling is another thing. I believe this is the main reason for acid freak-outs. The rush of thoughts and feelings can seem overwhelming to the point where some might feel out of control of their mind. Hoffman himself said he thought he was possessed by a demon! ( Yeah, he was a scientist, but he apparently was also superstitious. Go figure.) Now when you find yourself facing a real threat to you're life while trippin', that's when the fun begins.... Flash flood in north Tucson 3:30 AM I had just dropped this dude off at his Godfathers sprawling Rancho mansion in the hills of north Tucson. Its raining like fuck, with plenty of thunder and lightning and I get kind of lost on my way back to the highway.. Now, anyone in Tucson knows how cool big storms are. 'specialy when you are trippin'. And I was, to use the popular vernacular " Trippin' balls!" I needed to pull over anyway cuz the rain was making it hard to see. It was very dark with all the clouds and no moon, the only time you could see your surroundings is when the lightning flashed. So I'm sitting there, grooving on the lightning and thinking all kinds of cool shit about lightning... when during one of the flashes I notice that I'm surrounded by water! I am parked on a long, straight road built up three or four feet above the desert floor, in the middle of a flood plain! Now the water is beginning to come across the road when a rush of thoughts suddenly hits me. Every year, scores of people are trapped in their cars and washed away. People in this part of the country hear the warnings all the time on television and radio. "During heavy rain, stay out of low lying areas or broad flat plains" I know I'm a long way from high ground so I needed to get the fuck out of there now! I fire up the car, blast off, but now the water is coming over the most of the road and I'm having trouble keeping the car from hydroplaning. I hit one deep wash and nearly lose control. Primal fear kicked in hard as I realized the severe gravity of my situation. I could die. But just then, in the middle of a sure death four wheel drift, I felt something like a little tickle somewhere behind my sternum. I giggled a little then and screamed" YEEEHAAA". Then I let off the brakes and just drilled the gas pedal to the floor. This maneuver stabilized my trajectory and now I'm tha muthafuckin' "Dukes of Hazzard" blastin' down the road, grinning from ear to ear! I got my ass out of there and by the time I made the highway my mind was as clear as glass. I didn't even feel like I was really tripping any more, just felt very serene. And happy to be alive. ZW eace:
Jesus! That's an even more epic story. What's with the floods? I'm kind of glad there's a drought where I am. We're also in the middle of a heat wave right now. Where does the expression tripping balls come from?
zombiewolf, it has been quite a few years since i tripped on acid too. every time i tripped it was like i was living in some kind of david lynch movie. one time i went to a midnight showing, of david lynch's movie eraserhead. JESUS MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST... THAT WAS ONE HELL OF A WAY, WAY BAD TRIP! i though i had drop some really bad acid! i 'maintain.' what you call 'maintain,' i have always called 'detachment' and, you and your friend are right, it works wonders when tripping! detachment/maintaining is what got me through that movie. afterwards, i was sweating, shaking, and crying, until i came down from tripping. i had nightmares for one hell of a long time after that; and, yet, it proved to be one hell of a way, way, way, great growth experence for me too! i guess you could say, i was given a rotten limon and, i was able to make limonaide out of it. a few months back i rented a horror from russia entitled 'visions of sufferings.' the first time i saw it, i thought i was having a flashback! no, i was not. this is the first movie i have seen, that comes closest to my experences while tripping. i even went out and bought a copy of 'visions of suffering on dvd too. what is great about this movie is, that, a good deal of it has to do with people tripping in it. i can say that in all the trips i took, i did experence the light, but, is was one hell of a way, way, way strange light though!
Icecreampheonix, I don't know what is up with the flood thing. Mabey just mother natures way of telling me I should have more respect for the power of water! ( Actually I wouldn't develop a healthy respect for it until I took up Sea Kayaking). As for "trippin' balls" it's just that I've recently heard alot of American kids expressing it like that, so I was just tipping my hat to them a bit. In my day we would have just said, "I was trippin' my ass off" or some such thing. blackcat666, I like your use of the word detachment. That works too. I agree David Lynch movies are very freaky. I've never been very good at watching movies while tripping...I always seem to get distracted by the room I'm in ( I really don't like to be indoors while tripping) The smell of the theater, people eating, etc... However, I do remember seeing Stanley Kubric's " The Shining" on mushrooms, at a premier theater (70mm Dolby). Very intense. ZW eace:
