Two Days of LSD Psychosis

LSD

Citation: Sam A.. "Two Days of LSD Psychosis: An Experience with LSD (exp73806)". Erowid.org . Jan 2, 2013. erowid.org/exp/73806

DOSE:

1 hit LSD (blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT: 145 lb

My LSD experience was the craziest time of my life. Literally.Prior to my first and only LSD experience I had been using marijuana for less than a year and I had tried coke twice, nothing else. I didn't even drink much before this year, I don't even like using pain killers and I don't take any prescription drugs.I probably started doing drugs because I lost interest in following the rules, the established order, that had gotten me nowhere. After college I had no where to go. I was the perfect child and student, nothing exceptional, but nothing bad either.After college I applied for the CIA (this becomes important). After being rejected I decided illegal substance use wasn't a big deal anymore.I then got a job teaching English abroad where I met a lot of other English teachers, people who thought like me, people who were the most interesting, intelligent, amazing people I had ever met. And they were all drug users. It was because of them, and their stories, and their accomplishments, that I decided taking drugs would not screw up my life.I was very close friends with Matt, Al, and Rich by the time I decided to try LSD with them. They had all taken acid, shrooms and other psychedelics before. I trusted them, especially Matt. He was older and more experienced and I was a little in love with him.We jointly bought a sheet with ten tabs on it through Matt's local friend, we'll call him John. Of the ten tabs, I went in on one, John took three, Matt and Al each paid for two and Rich had the last two. John took his three almost immediately, the rest of us were waiting for the right time and place to take them together. It never came, we decided to do what we could and took them the night of Al's birthday, before some of us left the country. It was Monday night, around 11pm.Although I originally planned on only taking half a tab, we all ended up taking extra dosages because the effects took so long to kick in, it was about an hour and a half before we felt anything. Bad idea.I took one tab, Matt and Rich took one and a half, John took one, bought off of Matt and Rich, and Al took two.I was completely unprepared for what would come. I did no research before hand, I hadn't understood what happened to other people when I heard their stories. All I knew about hallucinogens was that you saw things.I saw some great things. Dragons in the clouds, fairies in the bushes, dinosaurs in the cobblestones. It was all beautiful and animated and great. Then I realized that everything I looked at was far and close at the same time, everything was big and small. I felt like I was in one of those model train set worlds.I told everyone this and they just laughed at me. I told everyone I felt I hadn't been properly prepared for this. Rich said that no one ever is. I told them that I felt like I was sensing everything at once, or maybe I was in multiple dimensions at the same time. Rich looked at me seriously for a second and said yeah, but you can't think like that and then started laughing ridiculously. Everyone else started laughing too. That was the perfect man, Matt said. I didn't understand but I got lost in the visions again pretty quickly.Until I got more and more upset that I couldn't understand anything! When I focused enough to talk again all I could say is I have never been this out of my mind! They just kept laughing and ignoring me. And they were playing frisbee! How could they play frisbee when it kept twisting in the air? I couldn't believe that they were tripping too. They were acting normal, just laughing a lot, and not catching the frisbee. At this point I was standing in the middle of the frisbee game, my hands half raised, staring at the dinosaurs moving around, crawling on each other. I feel like someone's missing. Rich said. I looked around, realized where I was. Shit. You're talking about me! I exclaimed, because I wasn't playing frisbee, and I was the only one tripping (or so I thought). There's no way I can play frisbee in this state of mind, they shouldn't be able to either.I started to cry, because my mind was so fucked and I was pissed that these guys, who were supposed to be my friends, had gotten me into this without proper warning or taking any precautions. What if something bad happened! None of us would be able to handle it, none of us are sober! This was really stupid, I can't understand anything. That's all I was thinking as I cried in despair. For about half a minute. Then I talked myself out of it. Okay, this is stupid and useless, I can't act like this around these guys, especially Matt, I might as well enjoy these images while I'm stuck in this state. I still feel like someone's missing. Rich said again. OH, I get it, I need to play frisbee, that's what he's trying to tell me. Playing frisbee was the best idea ever. It was something to concentrate on and it looked amazing. Even if I could never catch the damn thing. It kept twisting, getting smaller and bigger, and entering different dimensions.I couldn't figure out why they would ever stop playing and they kept moving. I couldn't figure out how we got from one place to another. But it didn't matter anymore, it was just fun. We all stopped playing and gathered up. Not sure why. But while we were all huddled together in a group, one of the locals came up to us. He didn't speak much English, he only talked to John. I tried really hard to make sense of the situation. The stranger was trying to sell us a book, he said it was old, really old, he said he was a traveling scholar, just trying to make some extra money by selling it.This is when my mind started to take off. I stopped seeing pretty, fun things. I started getting wrapped up in stories in my head. Paranoia and delusions started here.Why is he here, now, at this time of night? was the best I could say to try to help the group realize that this was a scam. I thought they all understood: after all, no one was buying the book. Except John, he kept talking to the guy. And he almost sounded like he was trying to convince us that this book was worth buying.He's in on it! He got us the acid, he was using his cell phone all night, even though the rest of us chose to turn ours off to avoid freak outs, and he was trying to hide its use. That's why he was so adamant about buying a hit off of us. To make us believe that he is tripping too. He told this jerk where to find us while we are tripping balls! That asshole. Matt sees it, he knows we've been betrayed! He looks ready to kick his ass! But Matt didn't.Other things happened. I saw people in the shadows, they were cops. Now John was an undercover cop. And then Matt was too. Al, Rich and I were going to jail. Then everyone was undercover but me, I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's why Rich kept saying I feel like someone's missing. They were all working to bring down a huge drug ring, but they liked me enough that they were trying to find a way out for me.I ended up running away from them, in order to save myself. Now I was alone and afraid. I even threw away my phone after Al texted call us when ur safe.I sat down and cried, and thought. I thought about everyone who was involved. They were all in on it. Everyone I had met in this crazy country. But wait, that doesn't make sense. Something else is going on here. Something bigger, stranger. Then it struck me! I was never actually rejected from the CIA. My entire time abroad was a recruitment/training process. I had passed, this was the final test. I was in the CIA!I became really happy, laughed at everyone and everything, everything I remembered about the past I made it fit into the puzzle. Every book I read, every person I met, everything that anyone said to me. It was all a part of some big master plan. I ran around the city looking for clues, playing games, talking to people, entering open doors and climbing on things. All because I believed I was in the CIA, the city I was in had become a movie set, and everyone in it was actors. The city became my playground as I enjoyed justifying everything that had happened in my life. Now all I needed to do was find the way out of this movie set in order to finish this final test. At one point I thought I was poisoned, I thought I might die, but I found an antidote. At other times I thought I needed to strip naked and run into the woods because of something a friend had said. At other times I thought I needed to walk home.Eventually I decided I needed to climb up a brick smoke stack in order to see the boundaries of the movie set and to conquer my fear of heights. One of the guys I hung out with in this city (thus he was in on it too) said that everyone has a fear of heights and being alone. Not everyone, I thought, just me. I need to get over those fears. It was about 9am now. I climbed up the smoke stack. I got to the top, it was beautiful, I was happy.But there was a commotion below me. The actors on this movie set had brought out a fire truck, presumably to get me down, but I knew it was fake. I climbed back down. There were police there now. I got to the bottom and I knew I couldn't let the police catch me. I ran away. But I wasn't quick enough, they caught me and I couldn't get away. All right, I thought, they wouldn't capture me if I really wasn't supposed to be caught. I need to find another way out of this. They took me into a nearby building.Believe it or not, the nearby building, the place where the smoke stack was located, the place I chose to climb up to the highest height I could find, was on the grounds of a mental hospital.I didn't think this was strange, I thought the room they took me into was just another set, full of more actors. They asked me if I have ever talked to a psychiatrist. No, I haven't. Oh, I get it, in order to get into the CIA I need to go through psychiatric therapy. They told me I have problems, that I'm depressed, that I have a death wish, that I've had lots of doctors (this, I thought, was referring all of the friends I had met here), that I'm not normal, that I need help. I thought all of this was about the problems I needed to get over, and how I'm special and that's why I'm in the CIA.A lot more happened to me in the hospital. I was there until around 11am the next morning. I was in a mental hospital, I talked to mental patients, I acted completely insane, I was completely insane and I talked to the woman lying in the bed next to me about everything I thought I could consider a mental problem about myself. Except being crazy. The whole time I thought it was a game and/or a test. The test/game was to find a way out after I explored my psych. I was discovering things about myself, but a lot of it was bullshit I thought the CIA would want to hear. Like not wanting to do any more drugs.They had to strap me down and give me drugs (I don't know what) to get me to sleep. In the morning things didn't make as much sense, but the fact that I was there, in this fake hospital, convinced me that everything I had been thinking was true.Eventually I found a way out like a good spy should. I calmly talked to the staff about how I did not belong there, that if I had problems they should be taken care of in my country, that I had no insurance so they should get rid of my free loading. They had me sign a no consent form and let me go.I walked back to my flat, started packing. The only clue left that was left, that I thought was right, was that I needed to go home by getting deported.I hadn't eaten or slept much, at all. I ate, then slept, before actually packing. When I woke up it was because Matt, Rich and Al were outside, making noise, looking for me. They told me they had filed a missing person's report, they asked what happened to me, I lied. I asked what happened to them, I thought they were lying. None of it made sense. I thought I would never see them again. What were they doing here? I was confused and wanted to be alone, but I knew I needed to talk to them. I did. Only a few times did they say things that I could fit into my story. Nothing was making as much sense as it did before.It was about 48 hours after I had first ingested the LSD. I stayed with my friends, I started to think that maybe, just maybe, I could be crazy. But the hospital. That was real. How could that be?I finally asked to talk to Matt alone. I didn't know how to start, I still thought I should be playing the game, not telling the truth, I'm a spy... I think...What's up? he said.You know how you said that if you're really crazy you won't know it?Yeah...Well, either I'm crazy, or you're in the CIA.I looked at him, waiting for someone to finally really confirm everything for me. His reaction was not what I was hoping for.What? There's no way that's possible.Then am I crazy?Is that what you're asking me!?Okay, let me tell you why I think that. I'm going to tell you what actually happened to me...I told him. I was convinced. But he just kept shaking his head, and occasionally saying fuuck and LSD is a powerful drug. I was still trying to convince him. But as I went through my story I occasionally saw myself as other people must've during that time. I got to the end of my story. None of that was real. he told me. He had to tell me again and again. We had to go through specific things. None of it. He told me.I broke down. It took another day before I was fully out of it. Before I could think straight again. It's been about a month now. I think it took that long for me to feel completely grounded in reality.I never imagined that I could ever go that far out of my mind.Now I really believe in the value of LSD for psychiatric purposes. I was in a very good state of mind when I took it, the only pressing issue for me has been what to do with my life and I feel like I received some valuable insight about that, at the very least.In the end, I think it was an amazing experience. Amazing. I faced all of my fears, I realized what was important to me, I realized I do not want to be in the CIA, and considering no real damage occurred, I had a great time. I had the time of my life.I feel like I should never do LSD again, my brain and LSD do not seem to get along. But I want to. I want to play frisbee and see dinosaurs and dragons dancing around in the clouds and bushes. Unfortunately, the fear of going psychotic again is still strong and will probably stop me for a long time.