Story 15

This is a trip that happened I took about 2 years ago and was the last time I ever took acid. It was in the desert near yuma by the arizona border. Me and 3 other friends (I'll refer to them as D, R, and M) had wanted to explore some abandoned mine shafts in the area and thought it would be an interesting trip. I had scored a sheet of blotter and had a nearly full tank of nitrous so we drove out. We decided not to drop until we got there seeing as it was about 4 in the afternoon and we had a specific place in mind we wanted to be and wanted to make sure we were able to find that place (it always seems really easy to get lost on LSD) It took about 4 hours to get there driving through some really pretty desert. So we got there and divided up the tabs. R, M, and I had one tab (I knew this was potent blotter), and D had two because he had dropped 3 days before. We all took a couple nitrous balloons while waiting for it to kick in and walked around the sand mounds near the car, not wanting to stray too far from the car for the first hour or so. It kicked in strong and I remember the three of us (M passed on this one) taking a balloon while standing (an unusual practice for us) and feeling as though I was standing on a wire. I think I passed out while I Was standing and somehow managed not to fall down. I remember falling a little forward then balancing, falling back and then settling down in the center. When I came to I opened my eyes at and looked at D and R. They were staring at me wide-eyed. We had all come out of it at the same instant. That was when things started getting really trippy. I think I felt as though the feeling of falling off balance was a premonition of some sort and that something was going to happen. My mind thought of when Gandalf was in the Mines of Moria and fell down the pit with the Balrog leaving his companions to find their own way out. Then (around 9pm, I can only guess, all I remember was it was dark dark and it was early august) we smoked a bowl and then decided to start hiking down a dirt trail in search of some mine shafts. I remember looking at the ground and it appeared as though the sand was getting sucked into little holes a few centimeters in diameter and then I would walk a little further and there would be deeper holes that were sinking faster, then a little further and there were man-sized holes around me growing. I got a little freaked and decided to stop looking at the holes and concentrate on something else. I said to my friends that this place was really desolate. The only sound was the freeway which was really far away (we had driven about an hour on a dirt road to get where we were, but it was in the middle of nowhere and I guess there wasn't much to slow the sound). The sound of the freeway was weird too, it seemed to change between sounding like a helicopter and a freeway. I wasn't sure if it was the sound reverberating off the foothills or the LSD. I remember M was saying that he was getting some crazy visuals (he always used the word crazy when we tripped) off the sand and our flashlights. We all agreed. I said it would be pretty weird if we saw something in that sand, like a bug or something. Then all of the sudden there was a scorpion right at my feet. I kind of jumped back a little no quite sure if it was real. I couldn't believe I actually saw it camoflaged on the sand with everything moving and melting and sinking. We looked at it for a while moving our flashlights at different angles wondering if it was going to move and being ready to bolt if it did. I talked about how I always wanted to have a scorpion as a child because it was cool how they killed other bugs, how it had that nasty looking tail that would raise up and inject a deadly toxin that would paralyze its prey until it devoured it with its pincers and mandibles. D stepped on the scorpion and none of us had any problems with him doing it either. So we kept walking along this dirt road and talked about how good it was that we parked where we did because the road got really bumpy and the sand was getting softer. Then we came upon a bus stop. It was fairly new looking (metal wasn't scratched), with a pole on either side that supported a cover over the bench to block the sunlight. We tripped hard on that and could not figure out what the hell a bus stop was doing out here in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road that a bus could never drive on. So we smoked a bowl and sat at the bus stop contemplating when the aliens were going to drop down at their bus stop landing site and pick us up. When we were reasonably convinced that the aliens were not stopping we figured we better find the mines and headed back down the road. I remember us all looking at the stars when we got up and seeing a shooting star (or maybe just a really bright tracer) about every 30 seconds. We all laughed about how many shooting stars there were not really knowing if they were real or just hallucinations. The odd thing was that many of them did produce a little light that enabled us to see the landscape for a fraction of a second. They all kept walking and I stood there for a while longer not realizing they had left. I remember feeling some burning hot drops of something hit my head and heard what sounded like rocks hitting the ground all around me. I ducked my head and closed my eyes and then it was gone leaving nothing except a freaky feeling in my head. I was thinking about time a lot that evening. What remained constant over time. Where did we come from, how will it end, how did it start. What held time together, and what could unravel its fabric. I tried not to think about it because when I did I started getting these hot and cold flashes and the stars would start swirling around above me and I didnt want them to start falling again. The flashes would come and go, I remember shivering for a while (wearing only a T-shirt because if you live in southern california you know that the santa ana comes in august and the air is really dry and really warm) and then a warm almost hot gust of wind would blow over me and stop the shivering. I commented about it to my friends and they said they hadnt noticed it. Just then was when I noticed their faces start contorting a little. It was just subtle at first, the shadows would move around their faces and give them a sort of spooky look like when you were a kid and used to hold the light under your chin. I started looking at the stars again and had this sudden fear of imminent disaster. There was a vortex forming in the stars, it looked like a whirlpool and the stars were getting sucked into it leaving trails of light in the wake behind them. I looked over at M and he looked at me and screamed "Nooooooo!" "holy shit did you feel that?" I said. There was like a quivering feeling throughout my body like the energy had been sucked out of it and all that was left was a sort of jello squishyness. R and D were worried, they didnt know what had happened and asked M why he yelled. I said that got a really bad vibe and he felt it too. Neither one of us could explain it. The vortex was gone the next time I had the courage to look up at the stars. We kept walking and tried to put the incident behind us. I dont know how long we walked. We didn't talk much for a while, just walked. I got another feeling like a wave of ecstasy washed through me. All I could do was stand and feel it. It was like pure love in the form of physical sensation. It was weird, almost like an orgasm, but a lot more feeling. I felt so much love right there and I told my friends. It was kind of weird because I had known M since the fifth grade, D since high school, and R for about a year. None of us had ever said that before. They looked at me and told me they loved me too. Oh yeah we're all straight btw. We, especially me, said that alot later on to try and keep myself sane, for some reason it seemed to help keep the visuals of my friends faces from getting too contorted. We came upon a fence and that was where we had some trouble. I realized I was tripping balls, harder than I ever had before. My emotions were soaring from fear, almost terror, to pure love, to inquisitive wonder. The visuals were beyond anything I had ever seen. The mountains were rising and falling, the hills growing and shrinking, the colors of the sand expanding and contracting and still forming those queer holes. I held out my hand and moved my cigarette really fast and it looked like a movie that had a really low number of frames per second. The arm would be in one place and then in another and I wouldnt see it in between those places but the cherry on the cig left lines that showed it must have been there. I felt that I was experiencing less of time as it passed. Like I was getting gyped out of those intermediate steps of time between when my arm was in one place and then the next. I told my friends I didnt want to go in the mines. I would hang out outside and trip by myself if they still wanted to go, and that I was afraid something was going to happen, which I really did believe although I cant exactly say why. R, who didn't know M and D very well said he was going to stay above ground too. D and M tried to convince us to go in and then decided that there was no convincing me, which meant there was no convincing R. So we decided to walk up to the top of the hill to see if we could see the freeway from there. We stopped about halfway up (it was steep) and decided to kick it for a while. We all stood in a circle smoking our grits and talking about what we were seeing, thinking, and feeling. That was when I noticed their faces really start changing. R was a little heftier than the rest of us around the waist (but by no means fat). His stomach seemed to grow larger and his sideburns turned greyish and little crows feet developed next to his eyes. I couldnt believe what I was seeing so I looked at M. His lips and skin seemed to turn white and bloated and deep sacs under his eyes gave him the appearance of something between a corpse and someone who hasnt slept in a week. D was the worst of all. The only way I can describe what he became was that he looked like the lord of the underworld in the movie clash of the titans. His skin folded upon itself forming deep wrinkles . His mouth grew larger, his nose became bulbous and evil looking. I could almost see little horns protruding from just above his forehead under his hair. His ears grew points on the top of them and hair started growing out of his nose. It freaked me out hardcore and I asked him if he was okay. He looked at me inquisitively and all of the sudden his face was normal again. "Sure, is everything all right with you?" I lied and told him I was fine (It wasnt until about 3 weeks later that I told him what I saw and he since then he has used 666 as his code when he pages me). Things started getting really weird from then on. The temperature was fluxuating more rapidly. The tracers from the stars were more frequent. Bushes and other plants seemed to grow as I looked at them, like I Was seeing time accelerate. The holes were everywhere. The mountains were sinking and growing more. All I could do was try and maintain some semblence of self existence. I felt the oneness really strong too. That was not a new feeling because I had tripped a lot before and knew it well. I Was thinking a lot about reincarnation and the joining into the Brahma and what it would feel like. I couldnt imagine it being more insane than what I was seeing around me. We sat at the top of the hill for a long time once we got there. The walk down looked very intimidating, large boulders, steep sandy declines, and we were wondering if we would ever make it down. I began noticing that when my emotions started going haywire, like when I would start freaking out, time would start fucking with me more, so I tried to remain stable. When I made connections with my friends it seemed to stabilize time and my emotions as well as reset time to wherever I guess I thought it should be. Eventually the sun rose. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. The colors spanned the entire spectrum. There was not a single cloud in the sky. From the top of the hill we could see for miles around. Something peculiar caught my eye. On one side of the mountain there was a large burned area. It was like a great black circle of charcoal. It was completely black absorbing all the light. On the opposite side of the mountain was a lush green valley of almost equal size. I kept looking from one side to the other wondering what it meant or if it meant anything at all. The sun was straight ahead, if I stood facing it the valley was on my right and the burned area was on my left. I was standing balanced between them. After the sun had risen a bit we walked down the mountain (at my request, for some reason I wanted the comfort of a couch to sit on, not that I was anywhere near sleeping, I think I just wanted to stop seeing time). The drive home was the most difficult ride I had ever experienced (I wasnt driving luckily). Every time I looked at something out the window I saw it decay and grow old as though time was aging things around me, but I was staying still. The plants were turning grey and withering all over and then I would look down and look up again and they would be green again and begin turning that yellowish color and then grey again. My brain was hurting, I felt like I was dying. Needless to say this was during the time when I should have been coming off the trip (everyone else was sleeping except the driver). The mountains were continuing to sing and grow only now there were bridges, overpasses and underpasses giving me a whole technological overtaking feeling. There is no other way to put it, I was scared. M, who was sitting next to me in an almost catatonic state didn't notice me staring at his face watching it wither and the lips turn white and chapped. His hair grew little grey streaks and wrinkles formed all over his skin as it became white and blotchy. I remember I touched his shoulder to get his attention and then he turned to me and his face turned totally normal and I was like holy shit! I think M was on the same level as me (at least more so than D or R) because he would show a noticable change in his face when everything "resetted" back to the way they were supposed to be. We stopped at a gas station to get some drinks and refuel. I bought a snapple, kiwi strawberry. That drink was reality. Every time I took a sip of it I could feel it in my body. It rejuvenated everything. I drank a little looked up and it was green and lush (hard to believe in august). But something was wrong, it started turning grey faster now. I just tried to keep my head down looking at my legs for the rest of the drive. I stayed at D's house for the rest of the day. Walked down to the docks and looked at the water, it was moving yet standing still that weird way it always does when your tripping. This was probably about 15-17 hours after I dropped. I was tired as hell but I couldn't sleep at D's house. I got a ride home from M after coming back from the docks and asked him if he could give me one of those hip flask bottles of vodka (hes an alcoholic btw). When I got home I pugged the whole thing and laid down to try and sleep. I woke up about an hour later with a completely numb left arm after some really disturbing dreams. I couldn't sleep for more than an hour or 2 for the next 2 weeks. And almost every time I did fall asleep I would wake up with a numb left arm and/or leg. I also had some of the most intense real dreams/nightmares ever. I remember one morning I woke up from an especially vivid one and sat up and then my snake (A 5 foot columbian red tail) smashed her head against the plastic wall of her enclosure. Freaked the shit out of me, I dont know if she was in my nightmare or not but she has never done that before or since. Most nights I would usually stay up and watch tv or play video games. During those two weeks a lot of weird things happened to me. I had a couple instances when I felt like I was rising out of my body. That was pretty scary. I got in my first (and only)car accident. Well it wasnt an accident, I just locked the brakes and changed lanes because this guy in front of me was going like 35 mph and the car ended up on the drivers side, luckily not too much damage done, it was a junker anyways (thank god i wasnt riding my motorcycle, agnostic btw although I still have doubts about whether I should be, leaning a lot more towards buddhism nowadays). My senses were all fucked up for a while too. I could hear things happening about 250 yards from me sometimes, like a conversation but I couldnt make out the words, then I would go outside and look around and see 2 neighbors talking at the other end of the block. Airplanes were haunting. I lived near an airport and I was used to them, but they seemed to take a lot longer to pass. I could see emotion a lot easier too. I looked at many of my friends and teachers in a completely new way. One of my professors who was always somewhat timid seemed like a frightened rabbit while teaching the class. Another one, who I always thought of as a little teddy bear had a white aura around his body (but he was still as boring as he was before). It took me about a month before I could eat meat again without having severe stomach cramps. Vegetables and fruits gave me so much energy that I would often times have trouble relaxing after a full meal. I've always been something of a non-emotional, non-sensitive person until that episode. Now I feel vibes a lot more from people, and often times places. I'll never forget a couple days after the trip I was sitting in a swing with a childhood friend at the elementary school we used to go to together and getting the most spooky vibe that really made me want to run out of there, but I didnt mention it. About 10 seconds later she said she just got a really weird feeling and wanted to go home. I can't clearly explain how that trip has changed my life, I hope this email has revealed it a little bit. I'm still debating whether I want to do it again or not. Even if I wanted to I dont know if I could get ahold of any. If I did, it would probably be shrooms anyways because they were a lot less intense. uh, oh yeah, im not writing this in an attempt to get people to not use acid, its an amazing drug that has changed me profoundly (some good some bad, but more good i think), just realize when you've done enough and don't push the limit.

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