Path: weeds!utopia.hacktic.nl!hacktic!sun4nl!mcsun!fuug!anon
From: an17016@anon.penet.fi
Newsgroups: alt.drugs
Subject: What I did Last Monday - By FwapNimmer SmapKnockle
Message-ID: <1993Apr13.210634.25267@fuug.fi>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1993 20:33:26 GMT
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Reply-To: an17016@anon.penet.fi
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        A slight uncertainty arises as to where to start my explanation of
this experience, because it eventually seemed to have found root in events
months before it actually took place. Nonetheless, I will do my best to
accurately describe the facts in rough chronological order, and to denote any
comments that I am adding as hindsight, as opposed to events/thoughts of the
time.  I expect that I'll still be remembering things that I left out for a
few weeks after I finish this file, but I hope it's relatively thorough.  This
may read a little choppily, because as I remember new things, I have to pick
where to place an account of them, but do your best - I'm posting this so that
the alt.drugs.veterans can anylize this experience to death.  It was
unbelievably powerful, and I'd like to hear as much as I can about it.  I came
out of it with a wonderful outlook on life, partly because of the realizations
I had about my life and the problems with it, party because I felt that I had
found the answers to most of those problems, and partly because I was still
alive at the end of it all.

        My recreational legal drug use had never produced what I would refer
to as a "trip", but instead, a wide array of buzzes, nothings, highs, stones
and such.  Mostly sensual experiences, with a dash of thought alteration,
basically.  I longed to experience the altered perception and psychadelia
documented in so many books, posts, and files I had collected.  I had always
prided myself in my habit of thoroughly researching a substance to the point
at which I could surprise almost anyone I met with a fact about it before I
would even consider ingesting it.  I've always had very clear boundaries
between substances: those I do/would use if given the chance, those I avoid at
all costs, and those on which I have yet to gain enough information.

        I had put D-lysergic acid amide on my list of substances on which I
had sufficient information to warrant experimentation, and apparently this was
either a premature assumption, or I made a few errors. Regardless, I ingested
7.2 grams of Heavenly Blue Morning Glory seeds, which should be approximately
280 seeds.  This was done over the course of about 45 minutes, and I had
another 1.8 grams to round it off to 9 handy when the phone rang.  The phone
conversation was more important to me than the last 70 seeds, so I talked.
About an hour later, at 9:45, I was tripping.
 
        I couldn't decide whether to lie down on my bed or sit up on its edge,
and my constant motion was a bit of a problem to the phone conversation,
because the phone in my bedroom rattles when moved.  To make things worse, I
couldn't stop trying to describe the breathing of the walls and the
multicolored mirrored spheres I saw spinning out to no end when I closed my
eyes.  It was thoroughly breathtaking, and I was almost giddy by the time we
decided to hang up, about 3 minutes later.  This left me free to watch the
happenings around me.  The breathing walls were neat, and somewhat of a sign
to me that I had done it - this was to be a fun ride.  But more profound were
the mirror balls.  Closing my eyes produced a vision as if I were literally
surrounded by floating silver spheres which were slowly rotating around each
other, and reflecting far-off shapes of red, yellow, and green.  I could have
watched them all night, but I had other plans.

        I was still coherent enough to brush my teeth and wash my face, and I
did so.  I went out into the living room to get my CD player, and carefully
returned to my room.  My CD player hadn't been working consistently, but my
other choice was to carry my stereo down the hallway, and I didn't trust my
vision or coordination well enough for that.  I expect that it still wasn't
working, but I was too far gone to care.  Anyhow, I plugged in the player,
took off my shirt, carefully put the little Morning Glory bags into a drawer,
and searched for Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.  It took me a long time
to focus on the CDs well enough to pick it out, but eventually located it.  I
was unbelievably anxious to lie in my bed, close my eyes, and listen to my
music, and I remember smiling like an idiot through the entire preparation
process.  When I had finished, I put out the lights, applied my headphones,
slipped into bed, and pressed "Play".
 
        If only I had videotaped myself.  I spent the following 42 minutes 57
seconds listening to one of my favorite albums as if I had never heard music
before, and freely associating every concept that came into my mind with every
other that I had pondered that evening.  My thoughts were racing, and I seemed
to be pointing to them with various body parts as they passed me.  I'm not
sure how to best convey this concept, but as I connected my thoughts, I
attempted to whisper them to myself, and they were speeding by at such a rate
that the only things I spoke were along the lines of "O.k.- and then-  but
that means- so that- but- ha!- and- ha!" and I would preceed to emit a
whispered gasp of understanding, as if connecting these thoughts had explained
a major portion of my life.  Occasionally, I would decide that it would be
best if I calmed down and slept, but that could only last for a few seconds,
for as I would begin to ponder the act of calming down to sleep, I would whirl
into another episode of free association.

        Each of the connecting phrases I muttered (and then, but that means,
so that...) was accompanied by a physical movement.  My movements had become
very smooth, things such as running my fingertips down my face, wrapping my
arms slowly around myself, bringing my knees up to a rough fetal position and
then back... All very fluid, smooth motions.  But, when my thoughts were
jumping, each jump seemed to be accompanied by a single muscle moving, and
each of my limbs was accomplishing its current goal in motion by waiting for
one of its muscles to get its turn to move. At the time, I was only aware of a
singular sensation of motion that was felt first in a leg, then an arm, then a
foot, and such, but when I gasped with understanding at the end of my line of
thought, I would find my arms twisted into unnatural positions around my body
and each other.  I occasionally took breaks for breath (I was gasping out all
these thoughts to myself, and my breathing was abnormal enough as it was
without trying to keep quiet) or to feel my face, shake my hair (it felt
different every time I did that, but it usually felt like only a comparatively
few thin flowing strands, and it was electrifying to feel it rub against my
back) and play with other sensual abnormalities of the trip.  I was not tired
in the least, and this continued until the last track on the CD.

        Apparently, I picked a bad time to try to settle down and sleep,
because at the moment I stopped thinking wildly, "Eclipse" began to play.  I
had already been making seemingly astouding discoveries about everything I
knew, and anyone who knows the lyrics to Eclipse is aware of the connection
therein.  Basically, I was now told that Everything I touch, see, taste, feel,
love, hate, distrust, save, give, deal, buy, beg, borrow, or steal, All I
create, destroy, do, say, eat, everyone I meet, all that I slight, everyone I
fight, all that is now, all that is gone, all that's to come, and everything
under the sun is in tune - but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.  Awaiting that
ending, each line sobered me as I became very... wary.  Not frightened, but
aware of the depth of the experience, I guess.  I'm not certain how to
describe it, but I was laying there astonished at something, and when the song
ended, I very slowly and almost absentmindedly removed my headphones.  My mind
was, in effect, blown.

        From this point, my chronological order is likely to be less than
accurate.  I honestly cannot recall what happened next, but I vaguely remember
the same sort of racing thought I had just expereinced, but more slowly.  The
topics seemed to be drawing to a close, and not towards an end I wanted to
reach.  I could do nothing to stop it, so I was forced to lie there and watch
my mind connect thoughts that I was just as willing to forget.  The visuals at
this point were very vivid, but I regret that I cannot specifically explain
any of them.  They were basically graphical representations of the thoughts I
was having.  Finally, my thoughts had all been connected to form only a few
basic concepts which I preceeded to intertwine to form one.  Suddenly,
everything was before me.

        I felt as if I was faced with a choice.  I could see a swirling
representation of everything that exists, interacting with everything else
that exists to form an everything that was itself as well as its parts.  I
understood what this collection of things I saw in front of me represented -
it was an omniscience that COULD stem from the realizations I was having that
night.  I had been lucky enough to be given the decision, apparently, but it
was not an easy one.  I could either leap forward into the all-knowing mass of
everything before me, or make my way back to my home, and to this reality.  I
felt as if understanding all there was to know would be a method of nullifying
my existence, because there would be nothing towards which to climb, but also
that returning to my reality was a "death" of some sort.  I'm not certain what
it was that I feared, but I felt certain that I was risking death by
returning.  (Perhaps I was seeing the omniscience as a form of immortality - I
do seem to remember a sense that it would be a connection with an all-powerful
consciousness)...  I chose to return, although I do not recall actively making
the decision (I'm tempted to think that the drug was simply wearing off).  I
do have a vague memory of visualizing all the thoughts I had intertwined
rapidly untangling, as I recursively regressed to the point at which I began -
my mind had many many different concepts to consider, and they were not all
connected.  It was quite a bit of work to return, but eventually, I opened my
eyes, and saw my room.
 
        Well, it was SORT of my room.  Almost everything was out of place,
with the exception of the clock.  The clock insisted on misbehaving, and I
often found that two checks of the clock that seemed to be in rapid succession
produced readings of 1:30 and then 1:55, for instance.  My first goal was to
slow the clock down, or speed it up, whichever it happened to need, until it
was correct, so I could form some sort of an anchor to something roughly
tangible.  Finally, when I was convinced that I was relatively back to
reality, I was brave enough to roll over and look at the floor.

        There was my CD player, next to my headset, and the cord strewn over
the general vicinity.  I reached for the cord, and touched nothing but carpet.
I looked again, and realized that I hadn't reached for the cord, but for part
of the sculpture of the carpet.  Suddenly, the floor was different - I was
better oriented, I could see where the cord actually was.  I pieced my room
back together this was, noting when my senses were and weren't correct, being
extremely proud over having changed something physically and having it remain
changed when I returned to it.  The next step was my bed covers.  The turning
and twisting I was doing over the course of my thoughts had twisted up my
sheets rather nicely, so I decided to untwist them.  My sheets are covered
with irregular stripes, and in my current state, these were very misleading. I
untwisted completely four times before it was actually physically completely
untwisted.  When I felt the bottom sheet form a consistantly flat covering
over me, I was even better oriented.  It was now, I decided, well past time to
get up, use the bathroom, and get a drink.

        I turned to my door.  I reached out to grab its edge, but my hand
seemed to roll around a fourth side before I could see where the actualy three
I was concerned with were.  I pulled, and was startled by a loud knocking
sound.  I looked around, and noticed my hairbrush near the door's path.  As a
reality check, I closed the door, mover the brush, and re-opened the door.  It
did not knock. I was proud.  I closed the door, stood up, and replaced my
clothing on my body.  Feeling the sensations of fabric running along my skin
replaced much of my anchor in reality, also.  I quietly opened the door again,
and walked down the hallway.  I walked into the bathroom, and my perspectives
in there helped set me straight, because the bathroom was one of the last
rooms I visited before the LSA took.  The shower curtain, the sink, the tile,
my sister's little jar of sea monkeys in the corner...  They all seemed right,
and I knew I was closer.  The only thing that startled me was the cloth above
me and to my left.  I stared at the designs, though, and realized that my
mother had hung wet clothing over the curtain rod to dry, and this reminded me
that time had gone on even after I'd closed my bedroom door the evening
before.  Things looked promising, but I was still in my own little altered
state, not actively noticing the things around me.  I left the bathroom and
went further down the hallway to the kitchen.

        Without filling in any details of the parts of the kitchen itself,
relevant to this action or not, I did nothing but the following: I got a
glassful of juice.  It wasn't until I took a large drink that I realized
everything around me - and it was exactly as it should have been.  The juice,
however, was not from the same fruit as that which I had been drinking with my
seeds, and the new taste surprised me - waking me to my surroundings.  I was
quite impressed that this had such an effect, and I went around touching
things..  The dog's leash, the microwave, the table.  I read a bit of the
newspaper.  I had to get back to bed, I decided.

        My room was still foreign, however, and I had some reality to set back
into place.  I had made quite a few things in my room do what they should, but
I still could not form one clear picture of my surroundings.  I spend the time
to come playing with objects, re-learning their tendencies, and interaction
with other objects. For instance, one of the more interesting was when I saw
my juggling bags on the floor.  I picked one up, tossed it and caught it, and
finally decided to toss it off the edge of the bed.  It landed on the ground
with a thud, and I became more aware of gravity, and where the floor was.  I
played with my clock radio, making it pop with noise by turning on the radio
with no volume.  I turned the light on and off a few times.  I opened my door
and did the same, feeling it necessary that I was vulnerable to being "caught"
while doing this.  (I would suggest that since I quite often have a very real
sense of where my family is, and whether or not they can discover me in any
act they would not approve of, I was attempting to create a little mild
paranoia to which I could relate).

        Throughout this entire ordeal, there were a few things that recurred.
For isntance, When the room was particularly silent, I could hear my watch on
the bedside table.  Its band has been broken for ages, and thus it's well
buried by other bedside table-type items, and I wasn't used to hearing it.  In
order to concentrate on it, I would mutter "ticktickticktickticktickticktick".
I quite often looked myself over, to see how familiar I looked, and I
occasionally would find it necessary to sepecifically check the familiarity of
my genitals (with and without the door open).  One of the strangest actions
was tickling my gag relfex.  It wasn't as responsive as it usually would be,
and I think that the closer it came to responding as I was accustomed, the
closer I felt to reality. Occasionally, I would feel something unfamiliar,
like a 1mm thick disk, I think, and reach for it, but it would always fall
farther down my throat, and I felt as if I were curling my finger into my
throat, through my tounge, and back around in a full spiral.  I finally
stopped this habit by staring into my throat via my mirror while doing this,
and at first my throat appeared as a terrifying cavern of death, but it
gradually became the back of my mouth as I remembered it. Rubbing my hand over
my face to confirm that it was the face I remembered would (naturally)
occasionally cause my hand to brush over my lips, and the feeling reminded me
of a specific intimate encounter of the past. Also, I noticed that my inner
lip produced a much more smooth sensation across my hand than I would expect
from saliva.  Whatever I pictured myself doing, I would proceed to do, because
I knew that confirming the images in my mind was the only way to convince
myself that I was perceiving things as they were.

        I finally turned away from the room, and towards myself.  I looked in
the little mirror on my headboard, and I did not recognize my physical self as
it currently is.  I reminded myself of the 7th grade me, except my hair was as
it currently is.  The most profound differences were my facial features, and
the presence of a large amount of acne that wasn't there when I went to sleep.
I tenatively rubbed one of the pimples I saw, and found nothing but flat skin.
Good.  I felt my entire forehead and face for bumps, and found my complexion
was much clearer than the mirror suggested. I looked back, and I was a much
closer to normal.  I looked back at my floor, to re-confirm the stability of
reality, and noticed my CD player.  I pressed play, and when I heard sound, I
picked up the headphones.  I didn't wear them, but I moved them around, and
oriented myself to the sound.  It helped tremendously, as did proving that I
could change things by playing with the skip/search buttons.  Finally, I
stopped, and removed the CD.  I looked at it, had some profound thoughts about
creative energy in the mind, glanced at my guitar, and then back at the CD.  I
turned it around, to see my face in the back, and what I found was a small,
frightened, unfamiliar face with meek features.  Suddenly, the face rapidly
transformed into dozens and dozens of other unfamiliar faces, until I looked
away, and placed the CD in its jewel box.  I looked in my mirror, and I saw my
face.  Comfort.  But suddenly, the right half of the mouth in the mirror
twisted into the most angry snarl I'd ever seen on my face, and then quickly
calmed to normal.  The left half followed suit, but this was more feirce.
Finally, I physically curled my face into an ugly, angry snarl, and silently
roared, feeling a large amount of negative energy being dispersed in that act.
I could tell that this was nerely over.

        Suddenly, however, I began feeling that, even though I'd regained most
of my reality, that I might have caused some sort of permanent psychosis.  I
wondered if it would be too late to save me, or if there was still time, or
perhaps if there would only be time if I sought help immediately.  I was faced
with the issue of coming to my parents about the night's experiement.  I
suddenly felt that I had no choice but to tell them, but there was still
enough sense in me not to.  I knew that this would HAVE to wear off, but I
also wasn't certain what would be left behind.  I opened my door again, and
sat down on the carpet before the tile of the hallway.  I breathed.  It was a
very liquid, unfamiliar breath.  I suddenly decided to breathe very rapidly.
And the quiet sound of my hyperventalation produced a spinning sound in my
head as if the noise were actually produces by a large spinning wheel that
made little gasping noises periodically.  The sensation reminded me of the
sensation I had earlier on in the trip of many small things meshing together
to form a large whole.  My breathing returned to normal, and I began to cry. I
hadn't cried in a long time (I'd needed to, I think...) and it was a very
heartfelt cry.  I was careful not to bawl and wake people up, because sitting
in my door put me within a meter of my parent's door.  It was a gasping, teary
cry.  I rubbed my eyes, and the moistness reminded me specifically of the
sensation I had earlier rubbing my had inside my lip.  I had some
philosophical realization about the connection between my intimate activites,
drug activities, and the sorrow/pain I was crying for.  After 5 minutes, I
calmed down.
        
        I got up, took one more trip to the bathroom, and while there, my ears
were bombarded with sounds.  I recognized my parents' TV, which I had turned
off as soon as I was coherent enough to do so.  My father's alarm clock, which
wouldn't be going off this early, was buzzing in my head.  My families voices
were audible in the far distance, and I realized that I'd been hearing them
throughout the past hour or two.  I was a bit afraid that I wasn't perceiving
anything correctly, and they were in fact right over me trying to wake me, or
something of the sort.  Finally, though, I left the bathroom, checked their
room, and they were still asleep, the television off, the alarm silent.  I
smiled.  Things were right, things were good.  I walked back to my room.
Looking it over, I realized that it was back in order, I checked the clock - I
had a couple hours of sleep ahead of me.  I stared at my bed.

        I slid into my bed, and as I did, I could see, hear, and feel the
remaining uncertainties and inconsistancies of my surroundings disappearing as
the sheets sliding down my arms produced the most familiar feelings I'd felt
all night.  I slept.
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