Trip report from a festival on the weekend

On Sunday I tripped at a festival in Sydney called Days Like This! I dosed at 11:30, just before getting off the train. I walked to the venue and first noticed the effects just after 12 as I was waiting to go in. This was my first trip by myself. I couldn't find any friends who wanted to go to this with me, as it cost over $100 and the line-up was fairly obscure. The main reason why I wanted to go was to see Quantic & Nickodemus play.

I went in, and looked around. Hardly anyone was there yet, and 2 of the stages weren't set up yet. There wasn't really anything to do and hardly anywhere to sit. I found a seat in the shade, and suddenly realised I was tripping quite hard. The combination of the music from all the stages was a little irritating. I didn't know quite where I should be, so I went inside to the dance music stage.

Here I saw Harmonic 313, this crazy dubstep DJ. This went off. It felt like I was being zapped by space invaders or something.

I strolled around for a while, trying to find someone good to see. Whenever I walked past the food stands I felt sick. I started watching this acid jazz/house DJ called Flevans. I found an uncomfortable place to sit. I didn't really care. I just needed to sit in the shade. For some reason, I didn't feel the energy that I normally would from acid. And I didn't have that big grin you usually get from acid. And no pupil dilation. Maybe it had something to do with the crippling 40 degree heat.

I was looking around at the people at the festival, trying to work out who were dickheads. For a festival, there were surprisingly no dickheads. There were a group of 3 guys dancing who kind of looked like assholes, but I couldn't tell. One sat next to me and started doing something with his phone. He says to me, "Who am I kidding, I can't work this." It took me a while to register what he was saying, then I asked if he was fucked too. And he said he was on acid. I told him I was too, and he didn't seem the least bit surprised. I don't know if he already guessed this or what.

Next, I watched hip hop group Dilated Peoples. Their set felt like 5 minutes. Songs finished when it seemed they had only done one verse. It was ridiculous. I left early to go see Cat Power. Her haunting voice really touched me. She could sing such long notes. It was beautiful. By now it was about 5:00 and the acid was wearing off. Finally Quantic was on. It was just a DJ set and he only played 2 songs of his own in the first hour and a half, so I went to see dubstep artist Joker. This was really going off.

It was really frustrating trying to dance when there was no room, and some weed would have been really handy here as the trip was going away fast.

I'm not sure if it was a good idea to trip in this environment. It wasn't as visual as it should have been, and the music was too loud to really get the right appreciation I usually get from acid.



Sorry I was a little verbose.

 

Damn dude was that your first fest? I would have been dancing not sitting! You gotta talk to people too, Im sure if you just put yourself out there you would have been smoked up on many a joint.

 

I like this. I'm doing some creative writing about someone on drugs...but I've never done a drug in my life, so it's kinda hard. lol. I want to read more trip reports!

 

Hah! Good luck with the creativity and all.



http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=362653&f=126

Thats a link to one of my DPT trip reports. I try to word my TRs so everyone can understand.

 

dilated peoples is the shit.

 

I smelt lots of joints. But there were dogs at the entrance, so I didn't want to scab someone's doob if they had risked shit to get it in there.

 

Also, I didn't feel like dancing so much because I was heaps tired for some reason, and my legs ached. And I didn't feel like being social because whenever I said something, the first word that came out of my mouth was the completely wrong thing. It was really hard to understand people over the loud music, and hard to understand their intent in my condition.

 

Hey man, there is nothing to understand. Those people are there for the same reason you are. Just let go and love, you will be welcomed with open arms.

 

Haha. Yeah, I'll need luck. Thanks for the link!

 

I try to write about all my trips. I've been a little lax lately, but I plan on writing a book detailing my 13 trips in the past year.

 

I'd love to read that book. Do you have a link to your other trip stories?

 

In my limited experience, true.

 

I am learning this right now in my life. It is a surprising lesson that urges me to let go of so much and give so much. it feels healthy.

 

Here's one about mushrooms. http://www.shroomery.org/10448/Echo-and-the-Bunnymen-relieved-me



And here's one about my first acid trip.


My friends and I had been trying to get a hold of this stuff all year, and finally we did, on the 18th of April, coincidentally one day after the anniversary of Albert Hoffman's first trip.

So there's myself (Jeremy), my girlfriend, my mate and his girlfriend, and we're all very close friends, and we went camping on the Central Coast of NSW, Australia, 3 hours from my home, with the intention of a nice getaway for tripping. As it was the school holidays, the campsite was reasonably full, but the beach was empty enough if we wanted to get away from people.

So we take the acid at 10:30 on a Saturday morning, Che Guevara was on the tabs; a relatively boring piece of blotter art. My friend’s girlfriend has the idea of drawing houses every hour, to document how weird her thoughts get. So they all draw stuff, but I can't draw, so I don’t.

Half an hour later, my girlfriend has drawn an angel, who is roasting a chicken on a spit in her stomach, and we start to realise the acid is taking hold. I walk outside the tent and the mushrooms on the ground appear very interesting, and so does the sky and the distant houses, atop the cliff. We then decide to walk over to the beach, which is only metres away.

I pinpoint this moment to be where everything gets crazy. By the time I'm on the beach, the clouds are moving really fast, towards me. This excites me much more than it frightens me, and everything feels epic and sensational. I begin to gnaw on the sand through my towel, not quite aware of how bizarre that activity is.

I feel like putting on some music, so I get out my iPod and choose a song by Röyksopp. It starts to play, but no noise comes out, and the bar that marks the progress of the song isn’t moving. While the screen is becoming really colourful and shaky, I'm sure that it's not the acid making this strange thing happen. I get my friend to look at it, and he resets the thing, and informs me of the dreaded red X that has appeared on the screen. My iPod is broken. And I had put such effort into constructing a 60-song trip playlist. Bummer.

We have to stick to my friend's iPod, but this doesn't quite do. Throughout the trip I keep craving songs, wanting to hear what they'd be like in this state. However, I've forgotten how much music I have on my phone.

We spend 3 hours on the beach, but it felt like 30 minutes. I have sort of taken upon a Raoul Duke persona, a la Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and I smoke a cigarette with a holder, while I furiously scribble on a piece of paper. When I say I scribble, that's exactly what I mean; I have lost the ability to write. I manage to put together a few words that I find interesting or profound, such as "Vegetarian" and "Poor fish".

A campsite ranger comes to check our booking, and there is a slight complication, as she can't find that we've changed spots from the night before. My friend goes off to get the forms, and things feel like they could go to shit. I reflect on my behaviour, and realise just how strange I am acting. There is a possibility that someone could be on to us, especially as I stutter on words when speaking to the ranger. I go back to the tent, and we sort of hide for a while, after my friend has informed me that the ranger has been taken care of.

I'm not sure what happened between now and 4ish, when I found my friends showering in their swimmers, or in the case of my girlfriend, her clothes. They told me that this was really refreshing, but I declined, because I didn't want to bother changing and emptying my pockets, which at the time were stuffed with peanuts, cigarettes, my phone and my scribblings.

The next thing I remember is lying in my tent, observing the cool patterns created by the rain cover rippling against the tent. I listened to Jefferson Airplane on my phone. Somewhere around this time I saw lots of bugs in the toilet, and the cracks between the tiles swelling. This was fascinating to watch. I could make the swelling stop for just a second, but then it would go crazy again. It was like the acid was telling me, “Hey buddy, you can’t get rid of me that easy”.

Then we decided to go for a walk to the top of the cliff, while the sun was setting. It's pretty amazing, but the wind is most intense. I'm fascinated by the rocks and interesting plants up here. The sky is beautiful. It stretches so far out to see. The four of us had a group hug. We had a real moment up here. To discover a new drug, that opens your eyes in such a profound and enlightening way, can be very powerful in terms of bonding a group of friends. The experience is completely different from anything we’d felt before. No drug we had taken was close to the insanity, ecstasy and wonder we had experienced in the hours before. Although we had come down a lot by this point, it was almost like this was the climax of the experience, as this was a reflective period.

We continue walking and a woman passes us and warns us of a snake up ahead. This scares me and I am on the constant lookout for snakes. We go that way to a little beach, finding no snakes. We start walking back past where we saw the woman but I'm still looking. I see what looks like a root, and ask my friend what it is. He says it’s a snake and we are all like, "Oh shit. What do we do?" We stay still for a few seconds and the snake moves into the undergrowth, so we run, making lots of noise to scare off other snakes. Then we're back down on the beach and it's all good.

We chop up some weed, and my girlfriend cooks a delicious tuna and chick pea dish. I am starving as I have not been able to eat all day. The food is great, and the weed really hits the spot, bringing back the heightened thoughts I've had.

I go to bed at around 10, just as I suspect the trip to be ending, but I realise I feel much higher. This is good, and it helps to bridge myself into my dreams.

This has been a truly epic day. Sometimes a second feels like a week, and sometimes an hour feels like a minute. While my trip mightn't have been as profound as my friends', I felt like I had learnt to observe the world, and the control I have over myself, in a completely new light. I give it 9/10.