lsd
My First psychedelic experience: lsd.
A bit of context about the situation: I was 25 years old and my virginal body at that time had not even received one single beer in its system before welcoming the almighty glorious and holy acid. Why?
I grew up in the hardcore punk scene being part of the Straight Edge movement. For those wondering what the fuck is that; to keep it short: It is a current of thought within the scene against the use of any type of drug.
I embraced that way of thinking when I was 14 years old and as a proper teenager, I took it very very seriously. Weed: Fuck it! Alcohol: Fuck that shit! Cocaine: Death before ingesting that garbage!
- I don't even think about speed, That's something I just don't need. Always gonna keep in touch, never want to use a crutch. I've got straight edge. - Minor Threat
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LSD: ...mmm. Wait! This thing sounds actually very interesting. Magic Mushrooms: Ok, this also seems pretty awesome. Ayahuasca? I remember to hear about it when I was little (as a kid I was going a lot to the Amazon jungle due to my father´s job)... Well, maybe one day I always thought.
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The life changing moment
Despite being a super close minded teenager against drugs; in a very natural way I had always have a sense of respect and sort of curiosity for psychedelics.
Those were my thoughts and lifestyle for 11 years until that sunny afternoon in Buenos Aires when a very good friend of mine dropped the bomb:
"Hey, I have acid. Do you want to try it?
...and that was it ladies and gentleman.
In that second my life was about to change forever;
not even giving a second thought. I said yes!
What an epic ride life has been since that moment!
Let me share with you the beginning of my journey to become the professional (yet always beginner)
+ 10 years of experience - Psychonaut that I am nowadays.
Set: Fueled by a fucking fire and a lust for life for being back in my favorite city in the universe.
Setting: The wild streets of Buenos Aires.
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Doze: 1/2 Acid (...and a Sprite).
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I became a mix between Neo starting to decipher the codes of the Matrix and Winnie-the-Pooh just tender and experiencing the warmth.
first moments
I was happy to receive the acid from the hands of the particular friend who gave it to me, as I have always considered her one of the brightest minds that I had met. I knew in advance that she has done it a couple of times before, so I felt in a way an important sense of safety. We were with an expert!
My other friend was a newbie just like me, about to be baptized in the psychedelic world in the wild and sacred city of Buenos Aires - Argentina.
The roles of "expert" and "apprentice" that the situation offered, without knowing it, played a part that provided me later on during the integration of the experience, an insight that will impact my ways and improved my life forever.
My body was clean as fuck to welcome the sacred holy liquid compound. Feeling ready for the unknown, I ingested a little piece of paper walking down the road towards the city airport Jorge Newbery, commonly known as Aeroparque.
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The sun was setting in the horizon when I suddenly felt an electroshock traveling all the way up through my vertebral spine, destination: My brain! Passengers, we are ready for departure, fasten your seatbelts! My eyes just exploted from one second to another into a rainbow of colors... I couldn´t believe it! My next step felt like floating on a cloud, the wind caressed my skin and I was aware of every single sensation of my body all at once.
Psychological Predisposition towards LSD: Possitive.
Pre-Assupmtions: Could make people smarter or instead fry brains, LSD stays forever in the system after consuming it.
the first psychedelic strike
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A couple of grandparents appeared in our visual field. They just had finished setting up two beach chairs in front of the airport to watch the planes land. A feeling of tenderness began to invade me and at the precise moment we reached them, the grandfather extended his hand to his wife to officially start to contemplate the spectacle together. I had to stop immediately in awe of the beauty of seeing the couple enjoying something so simple in what would become one of the most marvelous postcards in my memory for the rest of my days.
I swear by all the gods that I could feel the love they had for each other, that I could see how their energy communed and became something bigger. To this day, this moment is one of the most surreal and precious things that I have had the opportunity to contemplate.
Holy shit! From such a remarkable lovely moment, no idea what happened in between but we found ourselves in a dark empty dead end street in a sort of a trash deposit!
What the hell! Winnie-the Pooh was not swimming in honey anymore but in a lot of trash...
Taxi Experience - Buenos Aires
TAKING THE EXPERIENCE TO THE STREETS!
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Any of us had an idea about where we were at that moment and some anxiety just started to kick in. A light of car approaching blinded me.
Fuck yes, it was a taxi! Our savior!
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“To China Town please” I still have cero idea why I said that…
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I don't remember anything that happened inside that taxi but I will never forget it.
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A lot of funny events happened in China Town: I was terrifying of crossing the street because I thought that a train was coming and I was going to die run over by it.
I grabbed a handrail with all my force for a while with my friends confused and laughing the shit out of me at the other side of the road. In my head I was trying to make sense out of the situation: "Ok man, you took apparently a very strong drug, you have seen in movies that drug addicts die hit by a train. Just stay here, grab the handrail and don´t move, you are going to be fine".
I made it Bitches!
My vision was so blurry that I couldn't tell if the train was coming or going but I made it: I survived!
Someone came with the idea of go for some food to try to calm us down a bit.
That sounded smart but was in vain! We spent our last money in a lot of things that we couldn't even chew! The acid just kept on the rise and the lights of the night were getting brighter and brighter.
fitst time i couldn´t eat fries... ​
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I started to wander "why I am in China Town if this is Buenos Aires" with a gigantic and somehow strangely dish of fries in front of me.
I suggested that we should go home and everyone agreed.
I don't remember who chose the means of transportation or how we were able to pay for it, but suddenly we found ourselves inside a public bus on our way to a safe space after a couple of hours of being teletransportating us through the streets of Buenos Aires.
In that bus, the most important moment of my first psychedelic experience was yet to come.
During the whole trip until that moment, I was mostly inside my own thoughts completely in awe about my surroundings and not interacting much with any of my friends.
Being locked in the bus hall, the time to talk arrived. First I saw my newcomer Pshyconaut peer: How are you, I asked…
Fucking hell! What the fuck! What a panicked look she had!
My reaction was like: Oooook, I will slowly turn my head to my other friend Maria Isabel, the expert.
“What a crazy trip right? Holy mother of God” I said.
She just stared at me, she didn´t show any excitement or any possitive human emotion. Stereo silence, total seriousness, her eyes were killing me!
Fucking hell! That moment was so uncomfortable that the first thing that came to my mind was to think that I did a bunch of stupid things while tripping balls without even noticing.
She was there just looking at me with annoyance, shame or whatever. It was bad! My first time doing this acid thing and I screwed up big I thought. I began to apologize to her, I didn't know exactly for what, but just in case.
She did not speak to me anymore that night.
In Search of Serenity: The Orange Juice Solution
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We finally got home, only God knows how, and my debutant peer one broke the silence:
"I need to call my boyfriend or my family, where is my boyfriend, I need him to come over and pick me up, this is wrong, I'm freaking out!"
The expert did not say anything and I embarked on the mission of trying to calm my friend down, the only thing that occurred to me in the middle of the chaos was to offer her orange juice! What the hell... Why orange juice? There was not even oranges in the kitchen and I had to get out to get her some orange juice!
Outside world, ready or not, here I go again!
Oh my god, have you ever noticed how big and majestic are the vending machines at the petrol stations? I stayed for probably half an hour marveling at the colors of the Coca Cola cans, Sprite was great, Fanta was a spectacle, it was beautiful! Religious experience thousand percent!
Difficulty level of operating machines: Hard.
Difficulty level of interacting with the cashier: Hard but funny (mostly for him).
Difficulty level of remembering where your home was: Very hard.
I returned home victorious with an orange juice for her, a Sprite for me and nothing for my other friend. Fuck her for being so judgmental towards me, I thought.
I walked through the door and the atmosphere was fucking strange. One friend was in a corner next to the phone still with the panic vibes and the other on the terrace, oblivious to the others, silently judging the ridiculousness of the behavior of these two apprentices that appeared in her life for some kind of bad karma and that she hopes will never see again in the days of her life.
my first music experience on acid"
For my part, I felt extraordinarily good, and at the same time terrible for not being able to help my friend and for being judged to death by my other friend.
At that moment, the gods sent me a signal in the form of sound: a beautiful song began to play from the YouTube playlist that we had put in order to hide the awkward moment we were going through.
Fucking hell! I'm seeing the music! It´s traveling through my pants!
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Soundtrack 1: XXYYXX - "About You"
Soundtrack 2: XXYYXX - "DMT"
Soundtrack 3: If These Trees Could Talk - "Solstice"
My body started to melt again, the sounds were unbeilable! I had never perceived music that way, what was that! Incredible, for real that was a complete eargasm. The message of the Gods was clear: Enjoy yourself my man... and that´s what I did! Fuck everybody, I'm having the time of my life.
Don´t look to the mirror!
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The pleasure of listening to music was heavenly, I was reaching the Nirvana but I had to comeback back because that fucking Sprite made me want to pee... Fucking hell! I went for the first time in the night and boom: The Mirror!
I had heard that the last thing you have to do when you are on acid is to look in the mirror, an action that will take you directly to the most feared places by the human mind and that will leave irreversible consequences that will traumatize you for life.
Following the advice of collective wisdom, I approached the sink with my head down looking at the floor to wash my hands and thus avoid eye contact with myself at all costs.
The water on my skin felt incredible, I wanted to feel it on my face too so I washed it and by natural reflex I raised my head and looked at myself in the mirror: Oops!
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​What a blast! Animal traits? Fuck yeah!
I spent a fairly long time exploring the image in the mirror. It is very hard to explain with words what happened there, the only thing that I can say is that I saw and felt a lot of wonderful things. It was a travel inside myself through my own eyes. Crazy!
Mirror Time: A lot.
Freaked out: Not even for a second.
Mirror Experience: Would recommend. Fantastic.
The night ended pretty much on my own enjoying music in a way that I didn't even know was possible.
My first time doing acid remains as one of the best days of my life.
The wrap came the day after when everyone was back in our feet. The first thing I did was asking my friend, the expert, if she was still mad at me.
the wrap
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"Why you didn´t say a word to me last night" I said.
She replied: "Man, I was so high that I couldn´t even talk."
Boom! Epiphany moment!
One of the biggest truths of the world was revealed to me in that instant!
We spent so much time and energy trying to please others or willing to be accepted that we even create fantasies about what others think of us... She actually was not giving a single a fuck about me, she was living her own experience!
On the other hand, I spent a lot of time trying to help my friend, when the only one who could help herself was herself.
This whole experience was a powerful reminder that others' opinions are often just stories we tell ourselves. What truly matters is living our own experiences, focusing on self-reliance, and letting go of the need for external validation.
Finally, I asked my friend: Can you give me your dealer's number?
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LSD message echoed: within lies the power.