I had to include more background than normal but it's relevant to the report so bear with me Old Country, New Traveler This is my....seventh? acid trip. I can't believe it's to the point where I'm losing track. It's also a point at which the main difficulty in tripping is avoiding the urge to re-create previous trips. As the yogi Rajneesh said, the mind cannot come up with anything new, it only parrots what you have already fed it, and you are not your mind. It wasn't originally my idea to trip at this time, but my wife's, herein called "J". I had mentioned not having the time or venue in which to eat acid for a while and she offered to trip with me (her 2nd time) during an excursion to see my relatives in Utah. We had booked a night at a bed and breakfast inn in a quiet valley a bit away from SLC/Provo. I knew the valley well, but the B&B was new. Not long before we planned going to Utah, J decided that she probably was not up for tripping after all, and since we wanted to be together in the same existence, I'd forgo it also. I did not mind and requested that sometime after the vacation she take the kids to her parents for a day so I could finally fry. Since we weren't going to trip I took the liberty of enjoying some oxys I was saving, not to any lavish degree but enough to render me "not myself" and lacking much natural vibrancy. On the epic car voyage to Utah J decided she was willing to trip after all, but she understood if I wasn't up for it. I had mild WD's and I honestly did not feel like tripping in the least. I just wanted to slowly taper off the small amount of opiate I had and trip when I was back to normal. But I said we'll play it by ear and I won't really know how I'll feel until we're at the venue. I told her I should have brought my best self to the b&b regardless of whether we brought Lucy. After a couple days of therapeutic socializing with my parents and siblings the thought of tripping loomed in the back of my mind. I knew I needed to stop building it up in my head as some challenge to be met, and I started to flip my attitude to a calmer, more laissez-faire one. By the night before we were to be at the B&B I felt ready to trip. But by morning all that was gone; mornings are tough when I'm coming off oc's. Even by the time we got to the b&b I did not feel up for it. I remembered my first acid trip camping, roughly a year before. I didn't get a speck of sleep the night before and felt fully like scum with no desire to trip. But I ended up tripping resplendently and I remembered that it was over a gourd of Yerba Mate tea that my soul turned and I felt the reassuring invitation from Lucy and decided to trip. So I followed the same game plan, I turned the decision over to the gourd, using hot water from the lobby. As I meditatively drank it all my hesitations melted away and I decided that of course we would trip and wondered why I ever held back. The room was at the top of a 5 story building that used to be a flour mill, built by the Mo's in 1858. WWII put it out of business and it became a private residence until a lofty family had a vision of a B&B in 1985, the dream was realized in 1996. The room was ornately remodeled and had a gas fireplace and a jacuzzi tub and a shower with double heads and the only sound was the waterfall beneath our outdoor patio. The room's interior design was gorgeous but reminded me of my mom. It was so mormony. Nevertheless I would have been insane not to trip in such a setting. The view was of...Utah, but it was quasi-alpine and I had been away a long time and it was decidedly beautiful.
By the time we were able to dose it was almost 6 in the evening. I always prefer a large dose but we did want some sleep that night so elected on taking 2 tabs each. These were said to be stronger than average blotters with an image of Ganesha on the back of a cluster of them. Owing to my quick metabolism I felt the energy and reality of Lucy within 10 minutes of eating them. I also knew despite my prior misgivings that this was going to be an amazing and positive voyage. My previous trip was solo and I was grateful to have a partner this time; my heart was already flowing. The comeup was fun and pleasant, except for having to terminate a spider on the ceiling per J’s request. I yanked something wrong in my lower back which I interpreted as karmic revenge from the spider, but now I had an unwanted challenge. The cid had the potential to make the pain seem worse than it was, but at the same time I didn’t want to let an injury go unaddressed. J told me that it was probably a muscle strain and it would relax when I relaxed. I was glad that she was there to tell me that, but I laughed because I wouldn’t have hurt myself if I wasn’t killing her spider foe. But she did provoke the notion that even if I wasn’t frying, the same idea of the pain going away if I relax would still be true. I laughed at the irony of how the acid world is not a different one than my own, only an amplified one in which the workings of the mind and universe are exposed to an obvious degree. There was never any need for anxiety since I had no desire for an anxious trip. J responds atypically to the comeup, hers are very delayed and begin much more abruptly than others. Her first side effects are feeling cold and wanting a hot bath. She was quick to exploit the jacuzzi tub. I usually feel a tad short of breath and want fresh air. I visited the back porch to take a hit or two of cannabis and enjoy the snowstorm. I find nursing the pipe to be a better approach when tripping, and not to have a "session". During this part of the late comeup I took my first small step into transcendence by losing myself in the falling snow, feeling among the flakes of brethren. My spirit began feeling vast and uncontained and I shed a few tears at the beauty of experience. It was short lived as it was very early on and the dose was low. J kept talking to me from the bath and I told her I couldn’t understand her, that I was busy trying to situate myself. I knew from my last trip to not lean on J too much for the experience, that last time there was an ironic clashing of illusory dualism from me trying to get closer to her. The irony and ecstasy became known when I gave up the illusion that she was a separate entity and stopped trying to get any closer to her. This time I ignorantly went about my own trip and found it to be edgy. I stared out a window to the snowstorm and felt all reality liquefy and proceed onward in time with the storm, including myself. Arms, legs, face were all becoming adrift in the quantum stream. This was a surprising but very familiar feeling, of having to let go of myself. I make the thought abstract when I’m sober but now I remembered. It really is just letting yourself go. I could feel most of me slip away with the current, even to the point that the only remaining portion was a speck in the back of my throat. I sensed how the normal borders of my body are really just the outward shell of my mind, and now my mind resided in a tiny corner in my throat. I was not fully dissolved but it was still early in the trip. My heart was racing but it felt fully normal. It only freaked me out when I checked my pulse. Sometimes that helps, sometimes not. I tried joining J in the tub but it was mostly weird. I wasn’t fully peaking and had weird body sensations. The hot water made my hands feel numb and tingly, almost to a worrisome degree until I remembered I can get lightheaded in hot water. I got out, drank some protein shake and had a couple tokes and underwent various weird, quasi-dissolutions laying naked next to the fire. J was still speaking to me from the bathtub and I wondered why, didn’t she know I wasn’t up for conversation? But I wasn’t letting go very well by myself and thought maybe I should just listen. Her comments actually had consistency; she seemed to be saying the same thing over and over. By the time I could make it out I was able to hear that she was talking about the trees outside the building, how they were swaying in the wind, but were reaching up to the sky like fingers and she wanted to go out and touch them back, they looked beautiful but were yearning to touch. This started to blow my mind and humble me pretty fast because I always had a deep connection to the personality of trees, perhaps more so than a given psychonaut. And J’s description of those trees seemed way too relevant to my current state; I knew what was possible right now but did not know how to engage it, like fingers reaching into the empty expanse of sky, at the same time swaying in the wind. I suspected that our minds were linked at this point, and that our energies were one cohesive, flowing mechanism and that I couldn’t hide anything from her. I had to stop reaching, stop forcing.
you know all the theorbomine in yerba mate makes it feel like your in love meaning... yerba is always gonna say yes was addicted to that stuff like crazy for three years because of that anyways. Nice story so far, that does sound like a great setting
haha that's so true about Mate. It's always gonna say yes. that's so great. I live for that frothy yerba. makin one now. I'm hella addicted and lovin it (two a day). drink of the gods.
yeah man Utah is loaded with places to trip. probly one of the most unique and diverse topographies for that very thing. culturally on the other hand.... I got back in the tub with her, but unlike before I left a modest distance between us so I wasn’t resting any weight on her and it was just me and the water and her and the water. I didn’t really know anything about what was going on but I knew I had her with me. I allowed myself to stare at her and to let the gratitude flow until I shed tears. She asked why I was looking at her and I said I just wanted to look and it made her smile. I let her energy flow through me and it was warm, pure and nourishing. Her demeanor changed as she felt me siphon her vitalizing forces. The experience was so familiar and maternal, almost like I was in a pool of amniotic fluid in the womb. J’s personality was vast and incomprehensible, like unto mother earth. She was all around me and all throughout me. There came an intriguing and perhaps Freudian phenomenon: the maternal nature of it combined with J commenting on the personality of the house, led me to think of my mom. J might have been picking up on the rich history of the house dating back to the mid 19th cent., but the only personality for me was that of my mom’s. It was only the renovation that resembled her but it was hard to get past. When I thought of her the energetic link between us was severed, and the personality of my mom was abundant. I may posture this as something rather unpleasant but it was in fact highly relevant to my life and was beautiful in a specific but ineffable way. J clearly knew what was up and I said it was me who altered the energy. It was highly funny to me at the time how in synch our minds were and how I couldn’t hide anything from her. Thoughts of my parents have entered other trips and I never let it bother me; they are in my blood and we are of the same divided consciousness. I relaxed my mind and put my hand on J to try to reconnect, but it was forced and my hand appeared to be a few weak tree limbs, attached to my trunk of an arm. My flesh appeared grey and lifeless and in my mind it was one divergent branch off an evolutionary tree. I could feel my immediate family and our common characteristics, like nearsightedness. We were one local divergent family connected to an infinitely repeating branch system, like the simple diverging/converging diagram they use to illustrate evolution, but very tree-like. Our family’s traits came about through no more divine means than the reason some trees have purple leaves. I saw our nearsightedness as something of a gift so that we may be more inclined to reading what others have written, and those others that wrote were just other branches on this otherwise singular organism. We were just the latest version of an evolving creature, and our literal nearsightedness compelled us to look back upon ourselves in awe and an extent of understanding. That was a cool trip but I wanted to let myself dissolve. I let my head bob gently and paid attention only to that. My mind was vacant and I sensed whiteness. My bobbing head was riding the ripples of a pure and tangible current, coming from an invisible, perhaps spherical source; the same way the expanding spherical aftershock of a star gone nova would influence nearby planets or asteroids. But this was not abrupt and destructive; it was gentle and constant. I had no eyes to see it but I felt it with my whole self. I was not aware of my body, only of my bobbing head floating on this energy current. This is one of those states to which it is difficult to find any satisfying words to append. I flirt with such words as transcendence, satori, nirvana, but I’ve used those words too eagerly before and the very concept I try to convey is rendered self-destructive; it is a state without concept or term, only experience and a very simple, complete awareness. J said that the water was cooling off and since the faucet was next to me that I should provide more hot water. After an absurd comedy of errors trying to calibrate it to the right temperature, I let the heat flow and the Aquarius in me emerged. I wasn’t creating the water, but I was offering myself as a conduit for it to flow. I created a circular current in the tub with my hands, distributing the hot water. My mind played off this act with so many cosmic variations I cannot list them. I felt like the flame under our consciousness that burns steadily; traces of this flame seep through the masks of our egos and differentiate us. At our core though is that one singular flame that we somehow fuel. Our death means its life, just like burning, dying logs mean hot fire, a most energetic and alive thing.
this is one of the best reports i have ever read i am hooked on every word. i know exactly what you mean with every sentence, so much so that I am surprised that other people think that way and see those things. wow
I lived there with my first wifey from 81-87. You were either mormon or make it clear that you weren't. We weren't. Mormons in construction are mostly jack mormons they cuss talk dirty but you can always see the "jesus shorts" sticking out when they have to bend over. Met some great stoner "long hairs" back in the day Utah had lots of coke, crank and wow acid. Never did crank. got hooked on crack for a few months but never did since. Lost my acid connects. They were young chicks that hung out with the biker types. great places to trip there in all seasons.
yep I was raised Mo, so I'm going to be a bit biased. I even served the 2 year mission here in the PNW, which is how this place got into my blood. I was drawn to it well before then. The culture in UT is actually rather unique, but sorta mass marketed. I have many jackmo friends, but there's a serious shortage of culture in Utah's counterculture, but they do their best in such a controlled environment. We were often consigned to toking bowls while driving around in a car, because there were so few trees to duck into, and you basically have several dozen sets of parents to rat you out to your own parents at any given time. The whole mormon saga is altogether hilarious, fascinating and sad to me. But like I say I am a 6th gen. ethnic Mormon so my take is likely not as objective. But something like Mo'ism can't be fully understood unless you've been emotionally involved with the inside, and then de-conditioned from it on the outside. Writer, thank you man. you gave me a compliment-high. I dig your writings also. I'll post again in a few hours. peace and laters
By and by my body grew weary of being in the tub and I wanted to burn a cone, but J elected to stay. It’s great to be naked on acid…but I looked in the mirror expecting to see a new version of myself, but it was the same confused fella that I brought to the place. I found it odd but was in a good place so didn’t think on it. I wanted to smoke a bowl while listening to the waterfall and breathing the fresh air. I had to drag a chair around and find bedding to wrap my naked self in. I had to calibrate the door so it was open to let in just the right amount of air. As I settled into the chair I found these actions ridiculous and it was going to be another one of those allegories that show that I can’t worry about being perfectly comfortable to do a certain thing, but to just effing do it. But as it turned out once all my conditions were met I was deeply comfortable and ready to puff. But then the décor radiated my mom’s personality again, and I felt like a young teenager naked except for a couple sheets, sitting at my conservative mom’s kitchen table about to smoke a fattie. Annoying for a second until I realized this set the stage for me to toke comfortably with this context firmly in mind, to be at peace and proud of the special herb despite the abounding essence of mom. It was a good and relaxing toke and I was proud to offer up one of my favorite things to the mom that I love. Then I thought about the herb and how it was delivered to me by mother earth and the whole maternal affair of this trip seemed to complete a full circle and I could move past it. J had showered after quitting the tub. I found it hilarious and awesome that she knew what she wanted to do and was grooving on it. When she was done she lay on the bed mesmerized by the ceiling saying how amazing the shower and the soap were. I knew that trippers did rave about the shower thing and since I was getting distracted by nonthings maybe I’d give it a whirl. She told me to make sure I used the handmade soap compliments of the place. They made it the same way monastic monks make bread, though I don’t know why I likened it to that. I started showering and my mind was totally distracted by the unexpected thoughts of how I oughtn’t be so timid about transcendence, and wondered why I’m not more bold and explore the other parts of the pharmacopeia of entheogens…DMT, mescaline, more exotic mushroom species, etc. All the thinking made for a pretty lame-ass shower experience. Then I remembered the soap J mentioned. It didn’t seem like any spectacular idea but paying attention to the few words she expressed had helped me before. Wowza was she right about the soap. I was basically lathering up newness and ecstasy in my hands. The smell was indescribable and I breathed in the scent deeply like it was the breath of the gods, the deeper the scent penetrated my lungs, the more thoroughly each cell of my body were fed and awakened. A completely new and powerful creature emerged from my center and flowed out my pores. I saw my body for the first time as I lathered my limbs and chest. I was astonished and in awe of the skin and muscle (not that I have much). My mind was silent and humble in some remote sector due to this overwhelming presence of natural perfection. I beheld a veritable god, not me burnabowl but me the human. I wept at the sight and feeling of the human creature and laughed at the blasphemy one normally has to seek a god outside of such a preexisting, amazing evolutionary accomplishment. I could not believe the strength that was in my arms, the tight bonds between muscles and bones. The way my joints and ligaments were infused with amazing tenacity made me wonder if I’d had arthritis before. I’ve experienced this before on acid; my joints and back getting stronger and more youthful, but this was to such a greater degree I felt like I needed to go bench press the couch or something…. Until I noticed the intricate detail of my fingerprints and wrinkles on my hands. There was such vast personality in them resulting from my genes and what my hands do. In each wrinkle and crevasse was ensconced a different chapter of my existence. And then my thoughts went toward what my hands were actually made of, the cells that comprised them, and where the cells came from. They were made of the things I had eaten and drank over x amount of time, and those things came from somewhere else, and so on. There wasn’t any beginning to my essential makeup; I was just the tangible result of continuously migrating matter. Everything I was made of had been everywhere else. In this sense I was everything and everything was me. The raw strength had been tempered down and balanced by this microcosmic side of things. I beheld the large and muscular, the tiny and cellular that constituted me, all things with a specific place and function and my existence depended on every last bit. There was another scenario in the soapy lather. One bubble was so vulnerable and would pop so easily, yet this lather was made only of these little fragile bubbles. Without the collection of them there would be no lather. I felt like a new and complete creature, only by noticing what I already was. This was followed by a deep incomprehensible calmness/contentment and I began rinsing off the lather. The rinsing effect was also internal; the water poured through my whole being, rinsing away the mental and sensual clutter I’d carefully crafted around my original perfection. I knew I’d build it up again and that would be okay, but it was beautiful to just be a part of the flowing water for a while and not much else but falling back in love with existence.
I second this. Great writing! I am inspired. Reminds me of a few things I tend to forget when I haven't tripped for a while. Looking forward to reading the rest.
one of the most beautiful truths one can come face to face with oh man, and showers. SHOWERS. that is all!
thanks yall. I was amazed at how this trip turned out considering how I felt beforehand. I always make it much trickier than it needs to be; it really doesn't matter how you feel beforehand, because that feeling is a manifestation of the very mind that you relinquish. Once my mind started working again it was at noticing the way my hands were held with my fingers pointing upward to embrace the flow of water. I tried to understand the source of the water since the spout was only a conduit, not a creator. A visual popped into my head in which my hands were only the latest in a long ladder of reaching hands, whose bottom or beginning was nowhere in sight and probably nowhere in existence. Each generation of hands had been reaching for the source of the water, and after they could no longer reach, a new set of hands grew and continued the reaching. Each pair of hands was held roughly in circle shape and their successors reached with a slightly different shape of hand, and the differences in each generation sealed the cracks in the predecessors’ hands, creating a perfect and watertight tunnel through which the water flowed. The water would not flow if there were no hands reaching for its source, and the hands would not reach if there wasn’t any flowing water. Then I started to study the gnarly patterns in the marble that was around and underneath me. That was a lot to take in; each square inch told endless stories about life, relations, the cosmos, everything. I’ll only mention one and that was what seemed to see a small childlike figure blowing bubbles, except the expulsion of breath and the bubbles were in the likeness of one cloud of stuff, like a gaseous nebula being pulled into a black hole in a funnel shape. The stuff the kid blew out took various forms in itself. Its material was divided into parts who then became aware of themselves and various forms of drama took place within the cloud, fighting, love-making, all the human activities. And then their gas bubble selves wore out, dissipated while the bubble blower watched, amused. Once the cloud had dissipated he blew another bubble and the process repeated itself. I could only make out the human-like dramas within each cloud, whenever I tried to study the bubble blower he vanished but I knew he was somewhere cause he kept blowing the bubbles. But I could never really observe the observer. While that shower was the peak of the trip, there wasn’t much division between comeup, peak, comedown. It was more constant without sudden leaps into different realms or into transcendence, the first time a low-dose produced that effect for me. I think this resulted in my previous expectations of how a trip works out, drawing sharp distinctions between pre-peak and peak. I can’t even have it my way with the basic timeline of a trip, it was just another way to get humbled. The steadiness may also have to do with how chill J was the whole time. She said later that she was connected to me the whole time, and even though I severed myself from her, she was connected to me for all of it and was perceiving as connectedness what I perceived as severed-ness. My aquatic adventures found their end and I dried off. I looked into the mirror again expecting my same old ludicrous self but my reflection was that of a new/familiar celestial entity recently emerged from the cocoon that before had comprised my reflection. I hadn’t been trapped by the cocoon but nourished by it and now it had been naturally shed away and a new youthful brilliance shone from under my exterior. Light seemed to be shining from my eyes. My pre-trip concerns were nowhere in my mind; I didn’t even remember what had troubled me before. When I tried to remember them it made no sense why I had any issues; they were so small and inconsequential I laughed at what I choose to cling to. At this point I was stable and I could engage in normal activities, only now I was sooo excited to be alive and to do human things. I was in a helluva setting and I began my night of music and playtime. To be cont.
you made me realize lately when i trip on anything i'm always mentally HUNTING for the peak. thats a destructive behaviour to have . . . i will try and accept what is given from now on
Remembering the sequence of events after that is tough as if I was a little kid going from thing to thing without concern for time. There was so much energy and celebration in that top floor room I wondered why no one had come up to join. It was getting pretty late and the other honeymooners in the building were most likely keeping quiet, but I was loud and flamboyant. I desperately wanted to go invite everyone up to our place and share the weed and love, plus a decent bottle of wine. There were bound to be some non or jackmormons, but even if they were zealously faithful mormons I “knew” they would come partake! They were my people and I just wanted them there. Then I realized maybe a b&b is not really a party environment. I ate some fruit and hummus with my finger. Hummus makes my feet powerful on acid. I like to keep essential oils around when my senses are this wide open; the sedative effects are amplified and you become the plant it’s derived from in a way (ylang ylang, patchouli, cedarwood, peppermint, etc.). The most incredible was when I applied some medicated chapstick and it prompted a series of rainbows ejaculating from the top of my skull that trickled down around me like confetti, and various other visuals and feelings. I get sort of a chapstick high even now. As J lay and stared at the ceiling, I managed some music from the laptop. I’d been hearing about wifi for so long and didn’t know what the fuss was, but being surrounded by rural quiet and often intimidating snowstorm it was like a conduit to everything else. Wifi felt to be a highly mystical force that enchanted and confused me. I felt like a monkey pounding on the keys. As hard as it was to navigate I found Bob Dylan’s “like a rolling stone,” yeah that one floored me and I cried. When he started on the harmonica it overtook me so much it was like I was the air that Dylan breathed through the thing, I was his air in a way and I could feel his story better since I was part of it. I think J picked up on that vibe since she said at that point how see understood why I liked Bob Dylan so much, and that she could feel the energy and kidlike celebration of the song that I was feeling. It was just and proper that she absorbed some of my music after she converted me to country on a previous trip. I noticed a lack of energy and remembered when I do late-night trips I’m not immune to the requirement of sleep. I knew sleep was impossible and I didn’t want it. It took a while to think of it but I was struck with the epiphany of having a Yerba Mate tea. I remembered the hostess said they kept hot water in the lobby 24/7. I looked out our front door for the first time and looked down the many flights of stairs. It looked just like that one trippy painting with all the staircases leading in all directions. I wasn’t about to go down 5 trippy stories and then back up with hot water. J told me to use the microwave to heat up water. I don’t know how many have used a microwave on acid but it is an event. At first the disruption of energy in the room really scared me and I stopped the process and said it was using cursed energy to heat the water and I was going to drink a psychically toxic beverage if I used it. J told me I was an idiot and to just do it otherwise I’d have to climb down to the lobby. So I tried again and just paid attention. The thing was like an energy vacuum for the whole room and even myself; I could feel it concentrate the surrounding raw energy and infuse it as heat into the water. Instead of fear I was in awe and I kind of understood how a microwave worked. It was like there were a dozen people standing together in the center of a trampoline and I was on the edge being pulled to the center, but this was in a three dimensional sense. When the ‘wave shut off all the energy in the room went back to normal right when the machine beeped. Now I had respect for the hot water because me and everything in the room had gone into its making, and laughed that I had considered it cursed before. I likened it to some spilled tea and saying that some stains were better than some others. The tea made me dance to Daft Punk. I couldn’t understand how music so relevant came from a keyboard.
The rest of the night was a lot of nonspecific fun and laughter that wouldn’t make for writing that I find too interesting , but we both seriously needed it. But I want to add a few things in no particular order. Throughout the night I gravitated to the fire. This was an artificial gas fireplace but it still was an amazing stage for visuals as fire always is. The most recurring visual was the logs taking shape of withered, wrinkly hands; palms up, one hand resting on the other at a 90 degree angle, as if offering something. As I studied it, more hands appeared above the others, each on top of the previous as if the former was offering the latter in its palm. And the fire was above it as if it were the collective offering. The hands individually were only offering more hands, but the sum total of all their efforts was the constantly burning fire. This was familiar but I had no extrapolations, it was just the most complete and sufficient vision. I would often be trying to do something that J asked for only to get hypnotized by the fire and forget that I had been doing anything. The weather was funky. One minute there would be a blizzard with wind hard enough to cut the power out of the place for a few minutes, causing multifarious scenarios in our heads about getting snowed-in and stranded from our kids. It gave us solace that we knew we were in Utah where they were used to it and had hella ample snowplows. For some reason I thought what if the place caught fire? On the top floor we’d have to jump into the small waterfall to get away. Since the power inside was erratic we would go to the balcony and be with the storm. J said that she communicated with the storm and that it wouldn’t cause us any trouble. And then another minute everything calmed down, the snow stopped, the temperature increased by ten degrees or so, and a symphony of stars appeared overhead. Utah tends to have weird weather, but this was either climate change or we were tripping or both. J started falling asleep and the window looking out to the eastern sky was my new obsession after the weather cleared out. I could see the stream below, the starry sky and the snowplows working hard in the distance even though it was getting on to 4 am; I felt a lot of gratitude that they were so prompt about it. There was something very magical about seeing the plow cut through the snow with its lights shining forward like it was its own entity. Sitting naked next to that view and a fireplace, with weed and headphones…immeasurably “right.” It was a form of deep alone-ness. Not loneliness, where you miss another, but delighted in being alone as if there was no other. The world was in my hand and the world was viewing back at me; I felt a profound “we” within myself. I had wanted to hear the Grateful Dead on cid and “That’s it for the other one” came on. I memorized many of their songs when I was 13, but I never got them till this. The parts of the song I used to think were weird were amazingly relevant in this state. I don’t know how they captured it so well in song; I really rode that song, taking the journey they were describing. Another good artist was Deuter; really nails the rebirth vibe. I felt like vines and flowers were growing out my chest and filling the room for my viewing pleasure; they grew a bit more each time my heart beat. I came across the tiny amount of ‘contin I had left. No more than 20 mg that I’d been saving to lessen the mild opiate wd’s. But I forgot I ever had the wd’s; I knew they were long gone and probably mostly a product of my imagination in the first place. They had gone down the shower drain with the rest of my perceptual constructs. The drug before me at first seemed dirty and debauched, but that was only because before I had used it in such a manner. The drug itself was without a moral designation and everything has a place, and this was a good place so I did 4 or so mg’s. Instead of the remaining bit being the last remnants of a careless ‘binge’, it was a genuine gift from my now dead self that he wanted me to enjoy, and I did so in bliss. Eventually I found the bed and was surprised at how terrible the mattress was. I could not get comfortable and when I closed my eyes not only did they feel like they were cutting me in between my eyes, there were some disturbing ones like a humanoid figure whose hands and feet were being held in the hand a giant, and the giant had his foot on the figure’s back, so the limbs stretched like rubber as the giant pushed down with his foot. It wasn’t as macabre as it sounds, just a good description of how tired I was. But it was a little scary to see it like that and if I just kept my eyes open all I saw was a black and white yin-yang in the ceiling fan over the bed. But I didn’t sleep and wondered if weed would help me fall asleep so I nursed a bowl in bed despite the sign on the nightstand that said no smoking, including the threat that bats will come in if you open the window. Bats wouldn’t bother me though; I’ve hung out with a bat on acid before. Each time I looked at the bowl there was another yinyang in it, both a green and black one when I started burning it and a grey and black one when it was spent. The last thing I remembered that night was seeing those yinyangs in various places. I may have slept a couple hours but it was acid sleep which I do not understand. In the morning I was excited to go and see the other people at the breakfast table but was too damn comfortable in bed so we missed out on it. We packed up our bs and I was seriously considering leaving a couple Ganesha tabs on the pillow for the cleaning lady. We took in the setting a bit after checking out and then hit the road, encountering more blizzards. It was unsettling a bit over some mountain passes but J was driving and said she and the storm had an understanding and it would deliver us home. Made sense to me. Mostly we just talked about different parts of the trip and what we experienced individually. J said this trip was much more positive and therapeutic to her and she got more out of it since she knew what to expect from having done it before. I told her I was lucky that I didn’t have to go seek these experiences with someone else and sneak around, but I could just have both worlds in one with her. Once we got to the city there was a freeway offramp with a duck on the road that was wounded and only slightly out of the way. It caused me deep anxiety and I had to call someone, and after being transferred a few times I was told they knew about it and were dispatched. Of course I would have done it if I wasn’t in an acid afterglow, but being in that state I could either feel what the animal was going through or my mind sure convinced me I was feeling it. Being around my parents and siblings was a lot more comfortable and I felt more present and that I could communicate better. I also played the drumkit better than before the trip, and it wasn’t just me thinking I was better; there were beats I couldn’t quite do before but now I could, like the drums to Phish’s “all things reconsidered.” Also I noticed I couldn’t stop dancing when I was around friends even when there was no music. This trip shed me of a lot of unnecessary burdens that I’d been carrying for a few months, like a defragmenting of my mental hard drive. It’s good to do your own brainwashing. THE END
