Tangerine trees and marmalade skies...... (My Experience of Substance Abuse)

Member Name: GentleGenius

Product:	My Experience of Substance Abuse
Date:	03/12/08 (347 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: For some, opening of the mind in a good direction

Disadvantages: Flashbacks, can de-stabilise someone for life, the whole experience can be utterly terrifying

Cast your minds back, if you can, to the very early 1970s....the era of the long-hairs, cheesecloth, patchouli, espadrilles, tie-dyes, Kensington Market and afghan coats.

I was young, I was curious, and it was in fashion. I'd been in the company of lots of other people who were using it regularly with no problems, and they all seemed to have a very good time. I was told that it's safe so long as you use it with a certain mindset, and that it is who you are rather than what it is which can make it potentially dangerous (that's something I still agree with). Before I did it, I researched it thoroughly, and learned that as a substance, it is actually harmless from the toxic point of view, but that for some people of certain psychological types, it can mess their minds up forever (a cruel experiment was once carried out whereby a cow was given 6 gallons of it to drink, and though she suffered severe mental disturbance until it wore off, there was no physical damage whatsoever). Only a miniscule amount of it is needed - an amount which is less than what would cover a pinhead - to produce what is the most powerfully mind-altering experience that mankind can have.

If you haven't already gathered, I am talking about the drug LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) - more affectionately known as acid....one acid pill (of the strength they used to be back in the 1960s and early 1970s) being something like 800 times more powerful than the effects of ingesting a whole gram of high-grade cannabis.

One night whilst at a small social gathering around a friend's house, I was offered a little red pill. I had been offered acid on occasions before, but had always refused - this time though I took the plunge and swallowed the red pill. I immediately began to feel nervous just in case I was the type of person who'd be susceptible to bad trips, but was told that Dave (not his real name) was "babysitting" the rest of us, and would make sure nothing bad happened.

Rock music was blaring from the record player, a few joss sticks were burning, and I looked at the other people in the room....waiting for something to happen. After about 20 minutes, I told the others that I wasn't feeling anything; Rob (not his real name) answered that I wouldn't feel stoned, but that very soon I'd start to notice certain things changing all around me. I followed his advice, and just sat on the floor, leaning back against someone's (not sure whose!!) legs, whilst idly sipping from a can of Coke.....I had noticed that the room begun to look a little strange; sort of yellowish. Angles on furniture were beginning to look sharper, and colours looked cleaner and brighter, with much more depth and richness than usual.

My mind began to wander, but I didn't think of this as anything unusual or to do with the acid, because I daydream all the time; then Dave said something to me. His voice sounded odd, as if it had been put through a synthesizer....so I looked at him. As my eyes swivelled towards him, I saw a flash of swirling colours which swept across the room in line with my eyes, then vanished. Dave's face appeared odd, but in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on. It still looked the same as usual....just weirder. I stared at him trying to make his face look normal again, then I noticed these two red blotches growing in the middle of his cheeks. For some reason I didn't like that very much, so I cast my glance elsewhere. My eyes rested on the wallpaper pattern, which was zig-zags and squares in different shades of brown, and in the middle of every square on the wallpaper, an image of Dave's face with the red blotches on his cheeks, was imposed. For some reason I found that funny, and couldn't stop laughing. Nobody took any notice, which I was relieved about as if they'd have asked me what I was laughing at, I wouldn't have been able to say.

Everything settled down for a while, and I began to really get into the music with a depth of involvement that I'd never experienced before. I can't remember what was playing (would have been some kind of early 70s rock music, as that's what my crowd were into), but the music was coming at me in jerky, zig-zag lines of colour, mostly blue and red. This was more of a mental impression than a visual hallucination - a syndrome known as synesthesia, which is a kind of crossing of sensory perception, where we can perhaps hear or taste a smell, see a sound, or touch a thought. I was enjoying this colourful display in my mind, and when the track on the album changed, I stood up to go to the loo.

The walk to the loo (which was the adjoining room) seemed like hundreds of miles, and I felt as though I was walking above the floor, rather than on it. Once inside the loo, I did what I went there for, and while that act was taking place, I noticed there was a small splinter of wood on the door. I studied this splinter of wood, and had never seen anything so beautiful. I could see it in a million dimensions, and felt as though I could even tell what tree in what forest of the world it had come from. The fibres of the wood splinter were undulating gently, curling in and out of one another in a sort of purple-ish hue. Then what seemed like less than a second in time later, somebody was banging on the door, calling my name and asking me if I was OK. I shouted back that I was, and I quickly made myself "decent" and returned to the room where everyone else was. They all asked me where on earth I had been and what I'd been doing - they thought I was ill or something, so had sent Dave to check that I was alright. I couldn't understand what they meant, as I'd only gone to the loo and come back again as I or anyone normally would, but I'd apparently been sitting on the loo for more than half an hour, totally having lost all sense of time whilst studying the wood splinter on the door. That half an hour had felt like less than a minute.

I took my place on the floor again, and as I sat, I felt the tufts of the carpet as if they were huge stalks of corn brushing against my legs. The noise it made was almost deafening, and I looked around, startled and fascinated simultaneously. Mostly, the other people in the room were being quiet....just sitting, tuning into sounds, colours and images of their own....and the music played on. I began to feel cold, and noticed that the curtains were swaying back and forth....I asked Dave if we could perhaps have just one window shut, as the wind was blowing up and I was chilly - he told me all of the windows were shut, and that it was just the acid making me perceive the curtains as blowing around. He stood up, went to the bedroom, returned with a pink blanket, and wrapped it around me. It felt beautiful, as if I was a baby being nurtured....I suddenly became aware that I was sucking my thumb. The rational part of my mind told me it was a stupid thing to do, but it was so comforting, that I carried on - after all, nobody else was taking any notice.

I closed my eyes for a while and watched time elapse in large pink clouds behind my eyelids. I was visualising a million clocks, and from somewhere a group of monks was chanting a madrigal that heralded the start of a new phase of life....this new life would be a warm bright green, just like the emerald I felt was stuck in one corner of my mouth. I chewed on the emerald, swallowed it, and it rested....with a warming sensation....in the middle of my stomach. I found that feeling very reassuring and safe, so I opened my eyes....as I did, there was a huge bursting feeling around my mouth, and a large bouquet of roses spewed forth from my lips; I could even feel the green stems and the soft petals brushing against my tongue. I wanted to cut these roses off and save them for posterity; I opened my bag and took out a pair of nail scissors, all set to gouge half my face out with the intention of cutting the roses from my lips....thankfully the hallucination only lasted a split second, passing quickly before I could do myself any damage - then Dave walked towards me in what looked like slow motion....he took the scissors from me and placed them back in my bag.

Rob was sitting cross-legged on the floor, drawing on pieces of paper with coloured felt-tip pens. I was fascinated by the colour combinations he was using, so moved in closer to get a better look. As I walked over to where he was sitting, the room tipped away from me, the floor slanting downwards as if a sheer precipice - then immediately, it sprang back up the other way and was a solid wall in front of my face....before re-settling into its rightful, flat position. That image was a little unnerving, but I was by now aware that this was the acid working which was giving me these strange illusions and hallucinations. I watched Rob creating his abstract pattern with the paper and felt-tip pens.....his shoulder-length blonde hair was sparkling, giving off little ripples of blue electricity, as he lay on the floor, childlike, scribbling away. The orange blocks that Rob was drawing, were interspersed with blue and yellow stripes.....I then became very nervous and frightened, because it appeared to me as though the blue and yellow stripes were fighting with one another for supremacy over the orange colour. I told this to Rob - he just smiled, and said "Orange always wins".....on hearing that, I felt very sorry for the blue and the yellow.

One of the girls was sitting sobbing in a corner - Dave was trying to comfort her. She kept on saying repeatedly that nobody believed her.....when Dave asked her what, she replied that she hadn't yet been born, but people kept telling her she was being ridiculous, and they couldn't see that she wasn't yet in existence. For some weird reason, I could understand what she meant, so I just said "I believe you" - she said "Thank You" in what sounded to me like a deep, booming and rather echoey voice which reminded me of a scorpion.

There were periods during the acid trip where there were no illusions or hallucinations taking place at all.....though I later learned that in itself is an hallucination.

What I've described above is only a handful of strange visions, sensations, mental images and visual hallucinations I had during that first acid trip. Though there were a couple of uneasy moments, for the most part it was a very enjoyable, surreal experience which I repeated several times over the next couple of years - none of my trips were ever bad....I was lucky!

That night, Dave drove me home....I crept indoors trying not to wake the other people in the house, and I went to bed. I lay down with the light on, watching the most incredible light show take place on the ceiling, before dropping off into a shallow, somewhat fitful sleep in which I was travelling on a red laser beam faster than the speed of light, through time and space, hurtling beyond the edge of the universe and into another dimension.

The following day when I awoke, the trip had worn off and I had no after-effects other than feeling a bit mentally delicate. The world had gone back to normal, lost all its colour and vibrancy, but at least it was a safe and predictable world.

I'm not sorry that I took acid, as combining my first trip with all the others which followed later, the drug helped me tune into a part of my mind I'm sure I'd otherwise never been able to access, and that part of my mind has stayed open - contributing greatly to the creation of the person I am today.

I certainly wouldn't recommend anybody to dash out and immediately start taking acid in order to have these startling visions, openings, increased levels of awareness etc., as in the years following my first trip, I did see a few of my friends suffer from some very unpleasant experiences whilst under the influence of LSD.....just to mention one as an example; a very good female friend of mine who sadly is no longer with us (incidentally, her death many years later wasn't drug-related in the slightest) was run over by a car and had to spend a long time in hospital recovering from incurred injuries. It was January, a cold dark night, and whilst on a powerful acid trip, she decided to go for a walk at 2am in the middle of the nearby motorway wearing nothing but sunglasses and a scanty bikini - hallucinating wildly, she believed she was strolling along a tropical beach in hot sunshine. She stood, arms stretched in an almost messiah-like fashion, in the path of a car travelling at approximately 80mph; the car struck her, and she ended up having to spend 7 weeks in hospital, followed by a 15-week period of convalescence.

I'm not proud of taking acid in my youth....but I'm certainly not ashamed. It was something I simply grew out of, and is one of my life's more rewarding experiences, on a uniquely personal level. Why did I take it in the first place? I simply wanted to know what it felt like, first hand....and yes, the warnings passed to my generation by our worried parents and the sensationalist media, were ill-informed and panic-induced. Of course it is true that acid is an incredibly powerful drug, but it's my opinion that the danger in it lies from the fact of it not being intoxicating....e.g. you don't feel "stoned" whilst you are on acid.....you feel the same as you do in your ordinary state of being, which makes all the weird stuff that's going on in your head, very real at the time. If you felt intoxicated/stoned whilst under the influence, I believe it would be much easier for someone having a bad time on acid to put it down to having taken the drug. It also has to be said that probably similar to alcohol, acid doesn't bring anything out that's not already there....it acts as a trigger.

Thanks for reading!

Summary: The social climate isn't right these days to get the best from the experience