u/kvothei

I started foraying into psychedelics a couple of years ago. Before that, I had done only the occasional hash or weed and a very infrequent drink (not the biggest fan of alcohol, tbh). Since then, I have done mushrooms three times, and a couple of days ago, on Friday, I had my third acid trip. But this one was different. VERY different.

For those not well-versed in the jargon, psychedelics are substances that alter perception across senses (vision, hearing, touch, smell), mood, and cognitive processes, primarily by binding to serotonin receptors in the brain and triggering profound changes in consciousness. These experiences are commonly called "trips." LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) or acid is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug. An LSD trip can last from 7 to 12 hours, depending on factors.

There were three of us. One friend who has done literally every drug under the sun, and I mean every single one, multiple times, and has since decided he's completely done with all of it (he relapses all the time lol). A friend who had never touched Acid before and was doing LSD for the first time. And me.

The plan was simple, the new guy does acid, the veteran sits completely sober, and I, who wasn't really in the mood, would just smoke some weed and keep company. As you guys can probably tell by the title, the plan did not materialize.

On the way to the dealer, I got talked into it (big surprise, ik). So we ended up: new guy on acid (he doesn't smoke), me on weed + acid, veteran on weed only. We got two tabs, one DS3 and xtal (types of LSD, feel free to look them up), picked up alongside a few grams of Purple Haze Cali weed (indica and sativa both), Red Bulls, and snacks. We popped the tabs at 1 am.

I have done acid before. Once at one tab, once at 1.5 tabs, same dosage. I thought I knew what to expect. I fucking did not.

The combination of LSD and Purple Haze sent me somewhere I had genuinely never been.

Within the first hour, the lights got a little brighter, very typical acid onset. By the time we reached the park, a 40 minute drive, the car felt like a spaceship. Not in a scary way. In a "I am floating through the most luxurious vessel in the universe" kind of way.

Then we smoked the first joint. And then it hit.

The only way I can describe the euphoria that followed is this (the analogy I have been able to muster so far, with more thought I will probably be able to articulate it better): think of the most intensely pleasurable feeling the human body is capable of producing. The peak of a really good orgasm, maybe (?). That intensity of which is so high it barely lasts a second or two before it fades. Not only does it only last for a second or two, the intensity of the feeling is so high, that you cannot comprehend it lasting for more than a couple of seconds, because you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself. Now imagine that feeling sustained, for five hours straight. Across every sense. Every pore. That’s what it was. (read that again).

My vision was extraordinary. We were standing on an elevation in the park, overlooking the entire sector below us, and the houses looked like cloth tents to me. Like, think of a Bedouin tribe in an ancient Arabian village or an army camped for the night. A whole sea of them spread out beneath us. With all the lights, glowing like lanterns beside each one. And the sounds, my god, I could just hear everything - owls, bats, birds, a motorcycle moving a kilometer away, the rustling of every individual blade of grass. I was feeling the universe without any filters. The smell of lit cigarettes from literally across the park, where the other two were standing, reached me like waves. And underneath all of it, this feeling on my skin, like every nerve ending had been switched on at once, current in my every pore.

Unlike mushrooms, which make you want to sit completely still and go inward, acid gives you this restless butterfly energy in the pit of your stomach. I kept moving. Circling the park again and again, mouth literally hanging open in awe, unable to process the fact that the human body was capable of feeling this much. I remember telling my friend multiple times that night (and telling everyone else I have since narrated this story to): "I did not know the human body was capable of feeling this much euphoria."

No sense of time whatsoever. I would check my phone and the numbers meant nothing. It could have been five minutes or five hours. Genuinely indistinguishable to me. You lose complete sense of time in a psychedelic trip.

At some point (two joints in), we ran out of rolling papers and drove to the only shop open at that hour, the tuck shop at the nearest PSO. We smoked a third joint. The trip deepened.

And then the sunrise happened.

I was doing laps of the park track with my face ajar when the sky started shifting. I stopped. Just stood there, mouth open, completely frozen, just watching the sun come up. A dog wandered over and lay down at my feet. I sat with him for a while, just rubbing him, while the birds got louder and the grass came alive. Millions of tiny bugs moving in it, things I never notice in daylight, let alone at dawn. No sense of self, I was just one with the universe. Those who have been on a psychedelic trip before, will know exactly what I am talking about.

It was one of the most profound moments of my life. Completely at one with everything around me.

After the sunrise, we went to the nearest Quetta and had chicken cheese parathas and chai (how Islamabadi of me ik). The three of us sat there having what I can only describe as the most animated conversation about AI and the future at 7 am. If someone had overheard us, they would have thought we were absolutely insane.

We tried to find a padel court. It was closed (idk what we were thinking at like 9 on a Saturday). We went home.

I got back at 10am. Slept maybe three, four broken hours. Woke up at 2pm.

Here's the kicker. I run a book club with a former university professor of mine. We have session weekly or sometimes fortnightly on Saturdays. And on this particular day, I was supposed to lead a review of "Stoner" by John Williams, (no, the novel is not about a literal stoner, it's just the last name of the protagonist, sorry to disappoint), a quiet, devastating novel about a man who lives his whole life feeling slightly out of place in it. On three hours of sleep. Still in the afterglow of a 150ug trip.

I rode there, it’s like 10-15 minutes away, headphones in, some Coldplay, some Led Zeppelin playing. Sun on my face. I was singing out loud on the road, completely unselfconscious. The world still had that post-trip glow to it, bright, alive, like everything had been freshly painted.

I reviewed the book. Had a wonderful conversation. Nobody knew.

The irony of discussing a book about a man who never truly feels alive, on a morning where I felt more alive than I ever had, was not lost on me.

Need book recommendations to understand pawn structures.

Need book recommendation to understand pawn structures.

The most insane Acid trip of my life