DOSE:
200 ug
oral
LSD
BODY WEIGHT:
160 lb
Overview details written approximately 2 months after the experience; majority of report written the day following.
30 year old male; 2009. I am familiar with several psychedelics and experienced to the point that I am comfortable taking them alone in moderate doses. I have taken LSD three times. Light breakfast. No herbal supplements, unusual foods, prescription drugs, etc. I spend the weeks before thinking a bit about what I want to get out of the experience, in what is becoming an annual ritual.
The purity of LSD is rarely a consideration and I consider this material well assayed by friends. Dosage is supposed to be 1 dose (100�g) per drop but I of course lack tools to verify this. I've taken one dose of what was indicated to be 100�g from this source before, and this time took two as that experience was pleasant but never left ++ territory.
The physical effects of LSD are relatively familiar and in any case not interesting to me in this case so I encourage reading other LSD descriptions for that.
--- Begin
It's a sunny day in the middle of a window of rainy ones - my good fortune (and good planning). We sit outside, getting a late start around 10am. 200�g (approx) in tapwater-brewed 'Splashdown' tea in the back yard with L�. Sunny morning. I am excited but apprehensive, though I'm not sure why. I have a vague worry that I'm not in the proper mindset for this, as dissatisfied as I am with some life fundamentals - work, money, and the like. Fascinating that after 15 minutes the LSD is completely metabolized in the body and nothing has 'happened' yet. Neural explosions are beginning, cascading upward to consciousness.
I've edited this document after the fact; such additions (almost solely additions) are [bracketed].
I have two 'goals' in mind, if that's the right word. I don't press, only offer up a subject and see if it is taken up. I am interested in understanding more my relationship with my body; specifically, my asymmetry and the pain I feel in my hands and back and head. I have realized that frequently my frustration and bad mood are the product of pain I am so inured to that I am consciously unaware of it. I'd also like to understand why I don't feel hungry often enough, and in general repair my connection to my body, damaged by illnesses and attendant emotional struggle.
I'd also like to understand how I can proceed with my study of science; it seems a pointless exercise, arbitrary and capricious. I love science, and I am amazed to discover that not only do most people involved in it not revel in it, but that they are absolutely rigid with anxiety and fear, and caught up in their social/political academic game. I don't know if I care to succeed at it at the cost of participating in their model, whether it is worth the stress of the degree program, and how I can justify researching tiny details of such a huge world to little real avail.
--
My alert is as always a slight lightness at the brow and a tickle in my shoulders and a desire to take full, deep breaths rather than what seem like habitual shallow ones.
The onset consists of waves of the sensation - my attention begins to detach, wander, and small details of the landscape jump out. The lines of a leaf are more vibrant, the regularity of the lattice behind the plants becomes especially salient and clear. I feel euphoric, and my shoulders drop and I relax. I am tempted to laugh out loud.
Sound is a clear indicator; the air becomes crystalline, and my field of perception becomes spherical and much larger. I am not hearing with my [attention-limited] ears any longer, but with my whole perception. I can hear a dog barking echoing from the wall over my right shoulder from the window to my left, a truck downshifting on XX street a block and a half away, hear the dampening effect of the warmer, moister air next to the grass of the lawn as a tangible presence.
Some visuals begin; straight lines become chrome-edged, curves heavily shadowed in black. In general I don't pursue visuals, favoring instead Large Thoughts. This marks the last point I find 'normal' attention forced upon me for the remainder of the experience and I decide to move inside and lie down.
We go inside and I lie on a large pillow L� kindly sets up, in the sweet spot of the stereo. First I am in the front room; trucks going by outside are loud and obnoxious. I make small talk about the trucks and can tell I am beginning to have difficulty communicating; everything feels socially awkward, as though the timing were all off [and such chit-chat is inappropriate]. This is the incorrect way to talk, now, and I am a a bit ashamed and as always startled by how much time we spend saying such things. I am chilly, or at least trembling slightly. I sit on the pillow and L� puts the goat over me. My teeth chatter; mild nystagmus, some large-muscle tension. This phase lasts half an hour. I am happy but a bit distracted. L� helps me move to the living room to better enjoy the silence.
The temporal progression is not clear from here out until I start to come down. I'll speak of the major experiences instead.
The Mirror Game
[Later voice: This is a fascinating example of dehabituation and using the insight provided by the experience as a biofeedback to examine my own body. I have a fair amount of experience with biofeedback in physical therapy.]
I go into the bathroom, which has got to be every trip sitter's least favorite part, I am thinking to myself. What is he doing in there? Should I interrupt? The very thought that I am thinking these things [, worrying from someone else's perspective] is an indication of how strongly the tendency to imagine things from others' points of view asserts itself. One time while I am in there I am gazing into the mirror. The visual aspects of this I'll described below; here I'm concentrating on my body.
I notice suddenly that I am standing with my weight mostly on my right leg, and that my right toes are curled slightly against the ball of my foot. It feels entirely natural or habitual but suddenly stands out. This makes my balance entirely wrong; I can feel it. I have noticed this before, but now it is clear that this throws my right shoulder up, clenches the muscles of my back and neck. My entire right side is clenched. I remember the first time I took LSD, the nerve on the bottom of my right foot being so painful. Today it is again, as is the spot between my index and middle finger. (A nerve? Have to check.) I habitually curl my foot to protect this pain.
[Later voice: Later, I suddenly remembered a summer in childhood when I acquired a sliver of glass in this location; I cut it out myself. This strikes me as bizarre and silly but the thought leapt to mind and fits and is provided without editing.]
I shift my weight to make it evenly balanced between my left and my right foot. My smiling face in the mirror begins to repaint itself as sinister. The stubble on my cheek grows coarser, my eyes droop, and my face in the mirror becomes a symmetric version of just the left side of my face, angry and ugly. I shift to my habitual, mechanically bad pose, and my smile returns; the stubble diminishes; I look happy and my face is right-side symmetric.
This is not going to be easy. My body and my mind have a commitment to this unhealthy posture.
I hesitate briefly - I feel a pressure to not do anything 'too weird'. I can't imagine why. This comes up other times as well. [The internal monitor is so strong.] I take off my shirt; I can feel warring selves who feel this is 'too weird' make my movements clumsy. I identify with the ones who are doing the shirt-removing, discard the nay-sayers. [More on the perspective of 'fractured' selves as an analogy for conscious attention later.]
I watch my shoulders; I flex, stretch, rock my back. I grip both sides of the sink and gaze into my own eyes, and begin. I move from one foot to the other, mixing in a bit of left foot gradually, watching my visage distort and become angry. I balance and remain patient, let the torment subside, until it settles into a blend of familiar and sinister, happy and angry. The anger and sadness tug at me; like any potential focus, I can feel the pull to identify wholly, to fall into [associating with] the negative identity. To do so would mean being overwhelmed by fear or anger or tears [giving up to ridiculing myself for this exercise, or to let the awareness of the pain submerge, and lose my ability to work with it]; I can feel them welling up within me. Neither, though, is it safe or right to ignore the sadness and deny its existence. Instead I must integrate them, observe both. I can see that I am smiling. I continue this process for as long as I can. I want to reach a point of balance, then identify with it, make it my new physical condition. Again I think of the biofeedback training I've done: I need to use this state of heightened perception to identify the healthy posture so that I will recognize it later, so I can strive toward it. My perception is too clouded by pain and habit most of the time.
There is more about this right/left symmetry in the morning, below.
Eventually I decide I have made as much progress as I can without incurring too much cost to be useful. I am grateful to myself for this opportunity.
Food
L� makes me some eggs. They are perfect, just soft enough and just runny enough, with delicate traces of mint leaf and salty blue cheese, and two pieces of perfectly toasted bread, one with piquant meyer lemon preserves and the other just with sweet butter. I weep. I want to tell her they are fantastic, but every time I try it sounds so habitual, so trite. They are Good Eggs. I don't want to sound like I'm ready to converse; I just want to tell her how much I appreciate such exquisitely crafted food. I make some noise to this effect and drop it. A few moments later she appears with a glass of water, well timed. Her concern for me is enormous and perfectly phrased; not intrusive, not demanding, always only present and ready to withdraw.
I don't want to stay on the bed where I ate; she is reading there and the presence of another person makes me itch to communicate verbally, and I am incapable of it [and don't desire it]. The failure is distracting [; it is the wrong thing to try to do]. I return to my pillow in the living room, I think; perhaps this is when I go outside. She asks if I want company and I don't, but it is hard to tell her no. I worry I will make her unhappy, by rejecting her company, by leaving when she has designed such exquisite music for me, music which has guided much of the rest of my experience. There is a lesson here, I note, in my worrying too much about my responsibility for others' feelings.
Sex
I'd like to make love, though it's not a strong desire. I don't suggest it for a few reasons. One, I'm not sure how I'm interacting with L�. I don't know if I would come across as a drooling barbarian. The subtle parts of sex may not work, and I don't want to just paw at her. I know this is a dangerous thought, even as I am thinking it, but decide to save it for another time.
I also worry that it won't go well - in that it may not be the great extra-verbal bridge between us that I feel it should be. That thought scares me, and I don't want to make the risk right now. Another (or the same) lesson, another thing to discuss later with her.
Finally, I have no idea what my attention span is. Sex may take a million years, and I may have to stop and wander off on another pressing mission. Again, I don't want to intrude.
I do wonder, though, what an orgasm might feel like in this state. I think of what she did to me a few nights ago, and cannot fathom being on the receiving end of such pleasure again. Considering the plate of eggs made me cry, I imagine the singularity experience of orgasm - not so different in some ways from this loss of self - may gild my mind with diamonds and silver. However, it took me several minutes to thank L� for the eggs, and I think my verbal abilities amount to single words right now. I can't imagine myself croaking, 'sex?' and then waiting - or worse, wandering away. I know this will be funny later, but my tolerance for conflict [especially navigating social interaction] is very low right now so I don't pursue it further.
God
I saw god. Oh, should I have saved that one for last? I saw god. Oh, should I have saved that one for last?