Ego Death and Loss of Reality

LSD

Citation: Punktuality. "Ego Death and Loss of Reality: An Experience with LSD (exp34238)". Erowid.org . Nov 21, 2004. erowid.org/exp/34238

DOSE:

oral LSD (liquid)

BODY WEIGHT: 100 kg

This report is easily the most intense experience of my life. I respected LSD before for its ability to change ones perception but I am now totally humbled by what it has the power to do in very high doses. I have taken LSD before about 20-30 times and considered myself experienced, having tripped on doses of 5-7 hits quite often but this experience totally changed my opinion of the drug. On a higher dose it may as well be a completely different experience. I have emitted a lot of the less important details for the sake of brevity.There were 5 of us and we got out 5 sugar cubes and dropped 5 drops onto each. However when we got to the 5th cube we only got 2 drops out and the bottle was empty. The empty (yeah right!) bottle still had residue on the inside that you couldnt squeeze out. It was a tiny plastic bottle used for mint breath drops so I was offered to eat the bottle. J had previously eaten another bottle and said there was a lot in there still so I cut the tiny bottle in half with a knife and chewed on it for about 10 minutes. Everyone else had there cube of 5 drops and I ate the bottle which I now guess to have easily 10 or more drops.I soon realised that there was an insane amount still in the bottle when heavy visuals started happening in as little as 15 minutes. It felt like I was peaking after 30-40 minutes. Besides the usual melting walls and sliding floors I was getting quite intense colour shifts that were unlike anything I had seen before. Soon the ground was swirling with the most intense fractal geometrical patterns I had ever seen. The world was exploding in life. I was tripping harder than everyone else (who were off the planet regardless) and I suggested we go outside as the cramped inside of the house was getting too much for me. I walked outside and the frost covered ground was like silver. I remember looking at two friends and they looked like some kind of mole creatures, which was the first disturbing part of the trip. The others soon joined me outside and we decided we should climb a mountain that is just near our house.At this point (approx. T=2 hours) reality started to slip away totally. Normally on acid (highest doses prior to this was 5-7 drops) I have got amazingly changed perspective on the world but at the end of the day everything was still real and tangible. From this point on I was honestly not sure what part of my experience was real and tangible and which was just a construct of my mind.I remember climbing up an alleyway before the mountain which had stairs and rails and covered in trees and plants it seemed to go on forever and it seemed like I was climbing through it for hours (its probably only 15 metres) I cannot stress how much it actually felt like forever in its most pure definition. It was like I was stuck in a 2 second loop of time that kept repeating itself without stop. Eventually a friend came and got me and snapped me out of my infinite stairway dream and raced me to the top. We were at the base of the mountain and getting up was really a bit of a blur. I remember climbing again for what seemed like forever. The long grass underfoot was entangling me. The grass no longer looked anything like grass or any earthbound form of vegetation. It was actually bright neon pink in colour and seemed to be laid our in patterns one might make in one of those spirograph things. I had never seen any visuals to match this. I kept climbing, but in hindsight the thing that seemed really strange was the fact that I wasnt put off by this pink grass which was more a part of my mind than reality but I just smoothly fell into a mindset of accepting this new reality as truth. By the time I was at the top of the mountain I was barely cognitive of any sense of self. I have experienced ego-loss before on LSD a humbling feeling of oneness with the world but I experienced total and utter ego-death while there. I was no longer myself. I just was. The others seemed like ghosts wisping past me and any conversation was totally lost on me as my mind was busy building a new reality in front of me. That is what it seemed like my mind was literally wiped clean and I started gathering information in order to create a new mindset a complete new way of thinking. You cannot adequately describe in words what this feels like because your entire mind works in a completely new and alien way that describing to someone who has not experienced it is futile because they are trying to comprehend it using the sober method of thought.I honestly cant remember everyone else leaving but at some point I realised I (whatever I was) was alone. Apparently when the others left I told them I would stay for a while but I have no recollection of that which scares me a bit. I dont think they realised how distorted my reality was at this point. With no company to latch me to any lingering traces of the real world my mind went on a journey through forever. I remember being wrapped in a scarf that G must have given to me which felt like a warm vine entangling me. It was more a part of me than a piece of clothing. I remember looking out over the mountain at the city lights which my mind recognised more in terms of concept than as actual tangible objects. I turned around and more hills and a beautiful landscape scene greeted me. I kept looking from the lights to the hills back and forward in a looping cycle that seemed more like a dream than a real world event. The grass was still pink and seemed like nylon cord more than organic. The city lights seemed like ribbons of light, the concept of streetlights was lost on me. I kept looping through a pattern which is what I imagine insanity to be, I would look at the street lights, spin around, look at the hills, rub my neck and look at the ground I repeated this pattern for what seemed again to be nothing less than pure forever. It took the most intense amount of willpower to snap out of this cycle. While looking around at the alien scene in front of me my mind raced and thought about things in a way I have never experienced and find hard to verbalise. I went into deep thought and pondered life and death I pondered reality I even pondered the concept of a concept for a while. I was not thinking in a normal conscious sense, I was far beyond any cognition of the normal world which included my mind. Looping concepts ran through my head, not in chronological time but rather in the form of pure thought. Ideas and loops like:Life  death  birth  mother  father - life  death  birth  mother  father etc. etc.Food  Warm  Air  Live - Food  Warm  Air  Live  etc etc.While this was happening I was aware of little or no visual or physical stimulus whatsoever. I was in a dreamland of the mind and this is where I (whatever that might have been) seemed to exist. Eventually I broke out of this repetitive chain of loops. As I came out of this bizarre and alien state of mind tiny traces of the real world started to creep in. A friend called me concerned at why I was up here so long and said I should come down because they were making some special tea. I had no idea how long I had been up there. I was still half in this dream world but made a conscious decision to walk down the mountain back to the house. Making a conscious decision was quite a task considering I had just been trying to work out what the hell consciousness was. As I walked I really wasnt sure if all of this was even real I may as well have just been curled up dreaming it all. I walked down the steep hill a different way to the one we came and it seemed to go on forever like the way up even though it was just a short walk. I arrived at a barbed wire fence and considered jumping it but my sensibility which had only just started to find root again decided I would probably hurt myself. I carefully examined the fence and squeezed through two non barbed wires unscathed. Finally I got to the bottom of the hill and hit a road. It was so relieving after having seriously been considering that this walk might in fact go on forever. I realised where I was and started walking the road back home. The moon was in the sky and was insanely bright. The moon has been out during the day lately and it was like watching a moonrise. I was totally amazed with how bright it was even though it was now daylight. It was right at the end of the horizon I was walking towards and seemed to totally suck me towards it. The strange thing was that as I was walking and reality came flooding back it was the real world that started to seem alien.When on LSD (lower doses) I get a certain clarity in my vision that makes the real world seem crystal clear but my view of the world now almost seemed too clear there was so much clarity and detail that it seemed like a dream, I was amazed at how beautiful the world is. I always appreciated the world and how amazing it could be but this new perception took it to a whole new level. I cannot emphasise how detailed the world seemed it was like the opposite of a dream visually it still seemed unreal but the level of detail far exceeded what I knew to be reality. After a few minutes I turned down the street towards my house and saw the other guys sitting out in the park watching the sun and the clouds. They cheered as I walked toward them and I breathed a sigh of relief as confirmation of reality had been achieved. The moment I saw them was really my first realisation that I was actually not dreaming and this was in fact all induced by a drug I seemed to forget that while I was up there. We went inside and the house was warm. I sat down and just rested for a good while and tried to assemble the mess that was my mind back together.The events on the mountain really did seem to deconstruct my mind and, as I came to, I had to reconstruct it from scratch. It is a totally overwhelming experience to say the least and not for the faint of heart or mind, but was totally amazing. I talked with the guys for a while about what exactly happened last night and they filled me in on some points that I really couldnt remember. I had a cup of coffee and walked outside again. I was still tripping very hard visually but I was cool with that, my mind had been exhausted and I was just glad that my mind had stopped racing. I decided I needed sleep, or at very least to lay down and rest. My body and mind were both just totally depleted of energy.I wrote down a few words in a book I keep summarising my experience and view of the world and reality:There is a certain place where ones mind is free to float in an infinite sea of forever. Ones mind is as much a reality as the physical world that we cling to. The mind and the physical are not two separate entities on different planes of existence. There is an infinite fractal architecture linking the mind and the body woven into itself forever. The entity we know as consciousness is a combination of our minds taking stock of the real world and the real world creating tangible realisations of what the mind would perceive to be true. The idea of forever lends itself to an infinite void of conceptualisation that can only be countered by stopping to realise the moment that is now.That night LSD really handed my mind to me on platter and let me see inside. It was an amazing experience to have total ego-death and to question ideas like self I and real with total conviction. But it is also an experience that gave me a huge appreciation and respect for the drug. High dose LSD is not for everyone but in the right conditions with right mind set it can be amazing. I wouldnt say this experience was good or bad I was in a world in which those concepts where non existent it was simply an experience and a reminder of how fragile reality actually is.