DOSE: T+ 0:00 150 mg oral Dimenhydrinate (pill / tablet) T+ 1:30 500 mg oral DXM (liquid) T+ 3:00 2 hits oral LSD (blotter / tab) T+ 10:00 1 bowl smoked Cannabis (plant material) T+ 13:00 2 bowls smoked Cannabis (plant material)
BODY WEIGHT:
190 lb
Shelter, music, water, companionship, oh how much more appreciative a person can be of these things when they become a neccessity, like trying to talk yourself out of a particularly strong trip gone wrong. I had been planning for this night ever since my friends asked me to housesit for them months ago. They were leaving on a vacation for a week and needed someone to stay there and feed their cats. I would be able to bring inside anything I wanted and have full access to just about everything. I had the whole house to myself and as long as I didn't throw a huge party or make a big mess, things would be fine, or so I thought.
Now a little bit about myself. I didn't start doing drugs until a few years ago. Before that I was pretty clean, conservative, and somewhat straight-edge, just like the rest of my friends that I hung out with. It was one night at a rave and my first experience with Ecstacy, that changed all that. Since then I've been trying just about anything I could get my hands on: stimulants, plants, pharamacueticals, barbituates, OTC's, and psychedelics. I would read up on whatever I could first. It proved indispensible when I finally made the decision to try out DXM. And yes of course, I had done acid several times before. I would never try out a combination like this unless I have done the drugs seperately. Therefore, I felt that I was in perfect condition to experience dextromethorphan and lysergic acid diethylamide together.
As always, I tried reading up first on what I could find. The meager handful of reports wasn't too much of a help this time, but I pretty much got the idea that this was a crazy and potentially dangerous combo, but if you mixed both drugs together too early on, you'd end up vomiting and wasting your trip. And we couldn't have that, especially when LSD isn't that easy to find in my area. Luckily for me I had already two tabs saved up from the 3rd annual SF Love Parade a few weeks back. And DXM would be as easy to obtain as going to my local store and picking up two bottles of robotussin, which I did. I triple checked both bottles to ensure they contained dextromethorphan hydrobromide only. I also picked up a packet of Dramamine, or motion-sickness pills, to help combat the nausea I would more than likely feel from either drug. It's active ingredient, dimenhydrinate, also acts as a psychoactive if taken in higher amounts. I would know, I've experimented with that drug as well.
Now I had a 3 day weekend from work, and my plan was to do this on a Sunday, but I came home from a party late so I did it early Monday evening instead. I should have gotten a sitter, but I couldn't find anyone that I trusted qualified enough for the job. So I made the tough decision to trip solo this time, although I did hope the two cats I was watching over be enough companionship for the night. I woke up late Monday afternoon and rushed to get what chores I needed to do out of the way. I stayed in a positive mood, eager to get mindfucked and in high hopes of having a good and perhaps meaningful trip. That mood was killed briefly, from a phone call by my mother, telling me she had a dream that I had died and wanted to make sure that I was alright. Talk about bad timing, but in spite of all this, I felt that I stayed positive enough. I bought the DXM and Dramamine that same night and ate a light meal at 5. At 6 pm, I consumed 3 dramamine tablets.
7:30 I consumed roughly one and a half bottles of Robo. Disgusting yes, but I had a pitcher full of Cherry Kool-Aid to help wash it down. I would have downed both bottles, but still haunted by my mother's words, I decided to lower the dosage. Besides I could always smoke a bowl. I discovered a while ago that DXM and marijuana synergize wonderfully together, and strengthens the effects of DXM. So that if I still needed a boost, I could rely on that. I also reasoned that taking the DXM first, then the acid an hour and a half later, would be perfect. One, it would reduce the likelihood of vomiting, and two, that would mean both drugs would kick in at roughly the same time. DXM usually takes about 3 hours for the effects to fully kick in, and LSD about an hour or so. Yes, I really wanted to make sure this trip would be what I was looking for, although I still didn't have a specific answer in what that was, but we would find out!
8:00 Sleepy, disassociated. The dramamine was making me feel much more tired than normal, but it appeared to be soothing my stomach. I was burping quite often, but it wasn't too uncomfortable. I passed the time away by hooking up my PC that I had brought, to my friend's 32 inch flat screen t.v. in the living room. I imagined it would be nice to trip out to electronic music and winamp visuals. I also covered the windows in the front with a couple of beach towels tacked onto the walls. The t.v. faces out to the window and I didn't want any passersby to see the visuals playing and get suspicious. The towels oddly enough added another subtle psychedelic touch to the room. I also plugged in a long, cylindrical lava lamp in a corner of the room next to the t.v. and set up a blacklight on the opposite end of the room. Now the room looked much more magnificient and inviting. It will most certainly do for tonight.
9:30 I hang up my cell phone. My short term memory is getting bad and keeping a conversation is getting difficult. My friend 'A' wanted to see how I was doing. At this point, she is the only friend who knows what I am doing tonight. I had to tell somebody after all in case I went 'Missing.' I am surprised at how quickly the drugs seem to be working this time around. I had only eaten the two acid tabs 20 minutes ago and already I am getting some closed eye visuals. I better hurry up and get a tracklist formed on Winamp before I forget.
10:30 I've been zoning out for the past hour and have forgotten at times that music was even playing. The winamp visuals look great, the flat screen seems to be doing a fantastic job in displaying the colors. I had been getting sucked into them from time to time and all sorts of memories flood my mind in correspondence to them. My short term memory is terrible though, for I forget what I was thinking about when the next visual plays. One of the visuals in general, looks like strips of paper that are oozing out blood. A rather gory visual, and unpleasant thoughts start forming. I try to ignore them though and start paying attention to my heart. It seems to be beating much faster than normal, and harder. The beats feel like someone is kicking my chest cavity from the inside. Before I know it, all sorts of thoughts relating to heart failure come up. I try to take my thoughts off them and focus more on the music, but the doubts of surviving this night has already become planted in my mind.
11:00 Everything feels wrong. My heart is beating uncontrollably fast and I'm feeling shortness of breath. I try to find a song on my computer that will relax me, but all I can find are dark and trippy tracks. One of them actually starts playing: Infusion-Legacy (Junkie XL Remix). I couldn't have picked a worser track to play, and somehow, the mouse isn't responding in my attempts to turn off the song. Such dark breaks, and in my altered state, became one of the most haunting and sinister tracks I've ever heard. I am hopelessly sucked into the song and someone seems to be telling me a story. About people being given false promises and delusions of fame, wealth and recognition, and what evil things they had to do and will do in order to receive them. That once those deeds have been committed, their gifts are short-lived, as the vile thing they did would come back to haunt them, and ultimately destroy their life.
Now as I listen to these stories, I start finding terrible comparisions with them and my own life. That I had been lured into the strange and mysterious world of psychedelics by being offered promises of spiritual enlightenment. I had believed it all, and by taking them, have sinned, by poisoning my own body, Life's sacred gift. From there it was all a downward spiral of remorse and self-pity. I couldn't stop my own paranoid thoughts. I looked at my computer, side panel removed, wires and cables jutting out, the very rig I had assembled two years ago, in which I tried to find some comfort in, strangely enough. But it seemed that everything I gazed on just sucked me in deeper than I ever wanted to go, much like a salvia trip.
And so without warning, the various cards, electrodes and buses turned into a set of walls and ceiling which engulfed me. My own computer had now become my own personal Hell, imprisoning me inside, surrounding me with blinking lights, sharpened fan blades and the like. That the very tools I had used to escape reality would become my prison, tormented for all eternity with cold unforgiving machinery and horribly disjointed electronic music, so that I would forever curse the very things I used to enjoy. I could think of no worser Hell than that.
Upon that ghastly vision, I panicked, and stumbled towards the kitchen. One side of me felt numb, empty, while the other side felt painfully overstimulated: sight, sound, etc. All my nerves seemed to have hardened like wires, and at any moment, could snap in two and I would become paralyzed. The pain and panic were horrible. I searched the kitchen like a madman, hardly able to grasp cabinet drawers or remember that I was looking for food, trying not to look at the tiles that were melting into a reddish, muddy sand. The entire kitchen had a menacing feel to it, and sometimes I would think that the microwave, oven, or some object would try to attack me. Somehow I fill 3 glasses up with water, kool-aid, and milk. It didn't even dawn on me to drink one of the glasses until I had all 3 filled, but once it did, I drank vigorously. I found a butterfinger on the counter that I must have placed there beforehand, and I take huge bites of it, only to reel back in horror, as the candy feels like sugar-coated glass shards in my mouth. I find a loaf of bread by the sink and I stuff slices into my mouth, trying to do everything I could to abort the trip. The bread was comforting for a brief moment, but as it dissolves, I believe that I have spider webs inside me. Horrified again, I spit the the bread out in the sink, and continue to ingest liquids.
11:10 I have done nothing now but pace back and forth with an empty glass in hand. I become stuck in a time-loop, and feel like I have been doing this for hours, rather than minutes. My mother's own voice echoes in my head, 'I had a dream last night you died,' A thousand different thoughts race through my mind a second, yet none of them can offer a solution to my predicament. I've never felt more helpless and as close to insanity as I felt now. I could imagine my friends shaking their heads at me as I laid there, dead on the kitchen floor, disgusted by the idiot druggie who did too much. And yet through this thought, another side of my mind began to awaken. An inner voice told me not to give up. Through it, I could feel a power well up inside me I had never felt before. A strength and determination to battle my fears of death and humiliation.
Where was this coming from? As depressed and disillusioned I had been with the world before, never did I feel such a strong desire to live, as I did now. I wasn't going to allow drugs to be my demise, and I wasn't going to let this night be yet another sad example for harsh anti-drug laws. I knew that eating and drinking would not stop the trip, only lower its intensity, but that's what I needed. I'd have another 8 hours or so before I started coming down so I better get my thoughts in order. So that's what I focused on, regaining control, and pushing all the negative thoughts out. And just when things appeared its bleakest, as quickly as it came, the fear had vanished.
11:45 I sat huddled on the floor, back leaning against the couch. My face felt wet with tears. I am left with a soothing calm and tranquil thoughts. My mind is still racing, but it feels more controlled. I can feel another presence in this room, one much greater than my own, chuckling in amusement. I can hear it say to me, 'If you wanted a spiritual experience, the LSD alone would have sufficed.' I agreed. I could still feel the wretched cough syrup swirling through my bowels, irritating my intestines. But its effects seem to be fading. I take a few deep breaths and take a look at my surroundings.
Everything felt normal again, not menacing like before, and the walls and ceiling seemed to have a vibrant and earthly glow to them. The hardwood floor slowly moved, like one giant conveyor belt, and the chairs in the dining room appeared to have grown eyes and appendages. They were arranged in a circle around the table not for dining purposes, but because they were congregating and discussing things in a language I could not understand. I left them be, grabbed another glass of water and headed to the living room. I could feel the presence follow me, and ask me what I was going to do next. I told it I was going to listen to music, now that I felt much better than before, and it chuckled again and left me be. I was able to navigate through my computer again and find an album I knew I wanted to hear: Shulman-In Search of a Meaningful Moment. I turn it on, with Winamp switched to the Milkdrop avs. Maybe now I can finally start enjoying this trip.
1 something am The album is over and I am left speechless. Never have I listened to music in such clarity, with such emotion! It was like a storybook had opened in my mind and the music read the story to me. The sounds were so rich, not just the bass but the mids, highs, everything. I've listened to that album several times before, but never in this way. Shulman is a genius. He must have practiced tweaking his sounds on acid, because all those magnificient synths were played and mastered so perfectly! Wonderful tripping music, this was.
I gazed back at the ambient walls in the room. I could swear that the colors and fractals I saw were actually responding and even dancing with the music that had been played. It was incredible, the entire living room now seemed to be filled with positive energy that I could actually see and appreciate, and I eagerly projected my own into it. Now this was a trip! I quickly go back into the kitchen of mud and tile, pour myself more water. I must stay hydrated. I go back into the living room, reveling in the sight of all the beautiful fractals, and even the cats lying on the couch eye me with a strange curiousity.
Out of my own curiousity, I decided to gaze at myself in the mirror placed in the living room. But curiousity killed the cat. I saw a truly sad and pathetic version of me. I was thin, malnourished, scarred, deformed, I had only a flew blotches of normal skin placed in random spots, as if I had suffered third degree burns. Why would I be seeing myself as this, at a time when I was actually enjoying my trip? Surely I wasn't such a bad or selfish person, I was always nice to others! I demanded an explanation to this grotesque carcicature of me. And then I saw the veins coarsing through the deformed skin. They were black, flowing with poison. It was like seeing a visual representation of all the drugs that I had taken, including tonight, which had done severe damage to my body, much more than I had expected. I realized then, that I needed to change my lifestyle. Either stop the drug usage, or drastically reduce the amount. This was my wake-up call.
Strangely enough, the hideous me, was then transformed, into a healthy but...Polynesian form of me? I stared dumbfounded at the image of a stranger who seemed to be smiling back at me roguishly. And through the mirror, the living room background disappeared, in its place was a darkened cavern, with lighted torches placed amongst the rugged walls. Deeper into this vision, it felt like this, alternate me belonged in a tribe of some sort, and heeded by the calls of his chief, was now preparing for battle. A battle that would determine his fate, as well as his honor, in the tribe.
The vision disappeared and I was left dazzled. What did it mean? Was it seeing a window into a past Life, a lesson designed to teach me something? Or just a colorful figment of my own imagination? I didn't know, I just didn't want to look at mirrors anymore. I then thought about the friend I was housesitting for. He then appeared in my mind (Not the mirror) as another warrior of the same tribe. Wait...what? 'Stay with them,' the voice said. The same voice that seemed to have talked to me earlier. 'The next step in your life will happen, if you stay with them.'
Everything seemed to go crazy again. Was this really what I was searching for? Crazy visions that I could not discern their meanings? I felt like I had gone in deeper than I ever had before, but it left me with more questions than answers. The confusion was starting to overwhelm me. I needed some fresh air. I went outside onto the sidewalk, and the night air felt good, but the rest of my surroundings did not feel as tranquil or beautiful as the living room did. It felt desolate, empty.
I looked up at the moon. It looked just like the moon, except that it had a huge tribal shaped crimson and silver halo around it. I marveled at its sight, and before long, I could hear voices. I heard shouts and cries of both men and women, of pain, regret, anguish and despair. Shouting, chanting, hushed whispers and all the like, I just couldn't make out any words. It was almost as if I could hear the prayers of those speaking to God or whatever entity that they believed in. They all had their different reasons for praying, but all had a common purpose: the search for answers or guidance. And it seemed to me, that most of them believed that they weren't getting through at all, which caused even more frenzy and anger in their voices. I shook my head in grief and dismay. So many people seemed to be in pain in this world.
I could have questioned the point of existence, I could have asked 'it' if we were only meant to suffer in Life, but I was too tired, and this trip had lost its novelty. Instead I walked back inside to the sanctity of the living room. There, 6+ hours into the trip. I was finally able to pack a bowl, and smoke some fresh herb. I didn't want to go deeper or search for answers in this trip anymore. I was feeling disillusioned with everything again, and rather than dwell on the things I had seen and felt, I just wanted to relax, and pretend the rest of the world didn't exist. And by doing so, I was left in peace. But that greater presence that I had previously felt, who may have been my guide during the trip, faded away.
5 am I had played music through most of the early morning, just trance and progressive house, nothing too fast, and had even danced around with some LED glowsticks that I had found for a little bit. I had remembered seeing a couple at the party two nights ago, who were frying balls on acid. They seemed to have a wonderful time that night, and spent most of their night together, playing with lights and making shadow puppets on the walls. I was happy for them, even though I could not be on their level that night. Now that I finally was I had to see what I could do with the lights, and I actually impressed myself. I let my body fall in rhythm with the music, and its energy flowed into me, taking control of my body and pulling off moves I had not thought of before. By the time I had finished and the energy had left me, my body trembled in shock, shaking from the loss of that energy. It was an incredible experience and I longed to repeat it again someday, but I stopped that night due to exhaustion, plus that shock...I couldn't believe I had felt so drained. I needed softer music, ambient.
6 am After playing several chill-out tracks/albums, the most notable for me was BT-This Binary Universe. Talk about great comedown music. The deep ambient sounds worked wonders in forgetting most of the negative aspects of the trip, and became a trip of its own. The album had me imagining myself interacting in scenes of the near future. Of being in a bookstore, smelling coffee and reading magazines. Being in a crowded intersection, with newer model cars driving through freshly paved streets and watching people walk by in newer styles of dress and fashion. And lastly being inside a skyscraper which held a mall, amusement park, and restaurants all in one. Once again, BT is completely ahead of his time with this release. It is truly music of the future, and will take some time before other producers catch up to his style. I had my best visuals saved for this one, Tripex 3 by Ben Marsh. The album and the avs complemented each other very well and helped me in going through my pleasant voyage into the not too distant future.
When the album was over, I imagined a new generation of trippers and thrillseekers, using elaborate setups in the comfort of their own homes, taking psychedelics and enjoying the best devices the 21st Century has to offer. Crystal clear 6 channel speakers, 50 inch flat screens and plasmas displaying beautifully rendered 3D scenes, hypnotic visuals, or even natural scenes they may have videotaped themselves. And intelligent lighting which changed its opacity and color depending on the mood of the music. Things you had to go to a concert or a club to enjoy a truly massive experience, could now be done all at home, in a more controlled environment. If only hippies had PC's back then, the sort of things we would have today. I marveled at the possibility of owning a home and having my own chillroom setup for relaxation and tripping. The technology would only get better.
7:00 am and 2 more bowls later. My eyes are burning from the cannabis, the LSD is almost gone and my throat feels like a desert. Both the dramamine and the weed had given me the worst drymouth ever. I am completely exhausted from the whole ordeal and pop 2 Tylenol PM to help me sleep. Those things work quite well. I also put on the History Channel documentary about LSD and Ecstacy usage. I figured it would be most appropriate, after a night like this.
8:00 am, I finish the documentary and give thanks to Timothy Leary and the Counterculture. Who'd a thought their legacy would still live on, and at a time where once again the nation was torn by a war. The living room is a total mess, much appearing like a wild party had just happened. I'd clean it up later. For now, I head off to bed and let the Tylenol PM work its magic.
So there you have it. My 13 hour speel with cough syrup and high powered acid blotters. This trip had it all: voyages to Hell, Heaven and back, experiencing the full spectrum of human emotions, visions of the past, glimpses of the future, and an introspective analysis of my present. And I got to listen to some damn fine music. I would never do LSD and DXM together again, but I do not regret doing it. I suppose it was everything that I was looking for in a trip, but I still never seemed to discover specifically why I wanted to do it. It only spawned more questions than answers, but perhaps it is better to keep some things unanswered. I don't want to learn too much about existence, the universe, or even my own future. It would steal away from the fun in living, and the fun in just wondering. I suppose I'm just a dreamer, and that I love dreaming because even if things don't make sense, there's still some fun in wondering about it all. And there's still fun in living, as sad and hopeless as things sometimes may seem.
If there's anything I'll remember most, it's how much I wanted to live when things got at its worst. Maybe I got a second chance that night. Either way, I won't be taking things for granted this time around.
Exp Year: 2006ExpID: 57246 Gender: Not Specified Age at time of experience: Not Given Published: Jan 17, 2008Views: Not Supported [ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
DXM (22), LSD (2) : Difficult Experiences (5), Music Discussion (22), Combinations (3), Alone (16) -->