(not a dmt experience but didnt know where else to put)
Fear and loathing in Barcelona We were still somewhere in my apartment when the drugs began to take hold.... Our first intentions had been to have a normal night of fun for New Years Eve, or as normal as an acid-induced psychedelic frenzy can be. My friend was consuming the problem/wonder child for the first time, and I had imagined that a homely music jam session, followed by a round around the city for a small amount of unpredictable weirdness, and a finishing off by coming back for some philosophical conversations over a joint and some good mind-bending music would be a good first tour into Uncle Cid's Jester Realms: Little did I know how far we would diverge from the plan, or how far we would diverge
into The Plan: indeed it seems like
all energy flows according to the whims of the Great Magnet. The first signs that things would not happen as expected came early, but at the time it was indeed too early to pay them any heed. I thought I still had plenty of drops in my acid vial, but turns out when I look at it, I can see there's at most two drops inside. “This makes no sense”, I think to myself... After fruitlessly trying to come up with all the possible explanations, I decide I might as well do the final vial wash and get the whole thing over with. For those that aren't familiar with this, vial washes are always unpredictably strong, since for some reason it seems there is a large quantity of acid that does not come off with the last drop and can be retrieved by washing the vial with alcohol and drinking it. I wash the vial with a bit of vodka and give a quarter of the wash to my friend, explaining him the strength unpredictability but that judging by my previous experience, it probably wouldn't turn him into a
monster with six huge hairy tits growing out of his back... I wasnt so sure
my back would be so safe, consuming all the other ¾, but given our safe initial setting plan, I was willing to take the risk.
The first hour passed unnoticed, just chilling and listening to music, still a couple of hours before NYE. By the time the clock ticked the beginning of that second hour, I knew this would be a memorable trip, but not
how much so... At this point me and my friend (lets call him my attorney) had moved the furniture out of the way from the living room, had prepared a football out of a shirt and some socks and were playing like kids as if it was the most casual thing in the world. When we finally get tired of the game, B shows up. I had even forgotten he was gonna come, since the day before he had already said he wasnt taking any drops for NYE.
I open the door noticing the first visual disturbances with the tracers in my peripheral vision as I walk and the objects move past, and B immediately sees in my eyes I was already going far. We all decide to have a little jam session, as we wait for NYE. So for another hour, with me and B on the guitar and my attorney on the percussions, we were sucked in by the worlds of melody and rhythm expressed in our music. It was flowing very well and we had great fun, but NYE was approaching and we had just a few minutes to go. We go to the terrace of the building where there is a nice city view, and just as we arrive up there and ask ourselves “is it time yet?”, we hear someone screaming from another building and decide that is as good a sign as any that
its time. My friends open up some champaign and scream, while me, with the guitar still in hand think to myself “what would be a chord that represents the new year?”. Sol comes out, and it seemed to make perfect sense that this is the New Years chord, so I play it in rhythm (or in no-rhythm) together with all the New Year screams and shouts that come up from random balconies around or from the near streets. It was time to go and join the madness for a bit, we thought to ourselves. And so we went...
Each in his own bicycle, we ride down the streets thinking we would reach downtown, see some funny things and eventually come back. The ride was awesome, we chose one particular street with the separate bike lane for safety and simplicity, and were laughing and shouting in short bursts of interaction with the rapidly-passing street scenes. It was only when we turned the last corner and reach the point where the Ramblas, the main street of the city, meets the port, that it finally dawned what we had gotten ourselves into: Masses upon masses of drunken monsters releasing all their western society yearly frustrations in uncivil behavior they seem to call “fun”. The most “sane” conversation bits I could hear from these lizards was something akin to: “bwarghhhh, lets get fucked up, yo!”. It was as if a whole stadium filled with bazooko-circus-meet-hooligans type of characters had been just been let loose, and we were surrounded by them! I would like to have seen the expression change in my face, from child-like innocent fun, to terror-glazed eyes
At this point it was obvious we were not safe, but it wasnt clear yet if physically or just mentally. In any case I could not stay around for much longer watching the freaks climbing in the public monuments, breaking glass bottles around, vomiting, shouting obscenities to random women and other not-very-trip-friendly behavior, to say it very,
very mildly.
I said to my friends “im going home, there's no way I stay here!”. But they are able to convince me that we are already all the way there, that soon enough we will get home, so we should at least go along the Passeig Maritim (the street parallel to the sea) to find a more quiet spot and rethink our plans. But wherever we looked, the madness only seemed to get worse. B pointed at one direction and said: “what if we go this way?”, and just where he pointed suddenly monsters started shouting with their guttural alien-speak, pushing each other as more bottles were broken,, more weird scenes, more broken bottles. “We'll never get out of this place alive, they'll rape and eat us alive before we can reach the end of the block”
“Jesus, bad waves of paranoia, madness, fear and loathing.... Intolerable vibrations in this place. Get out! The weasels were closing in. I could smell the ugly brutes. Flee!” Thankfully my attorney saw a clear way out and wisely advised us to take it: a street that dropped down just parallel to the elevated large sidewalks where the beasts were. We took our chances, and went for it. At top speed, in our bikes which now seemed like armored vehicles, our sole reason to be alive, we dropped down the lane as the drunk demons literally tried to stop us, probably finding “normal people in bikes” reason enough to try to disrupt it. So dodge-cycling around these people, it wasnt anymore a run for our mental safety, it was getting more and more dangerous as we rode pass them: as the street dropped and the sidewalk became elevated in relation to us, now the real danger was of things getting thrown from above by drunken people. Our fears became reality as a broken bottle flew around and some lizards who were pissing on the side of the sidewalk saw us passing and turned to literally piss on us (thanks god we weren't hit). The situation was so absurd that all I could do was to try to go faster, as me and my attorney laughed maniacally in disbelief!
At the end of the street we saw there was no way out: we reached a point where the crowds from different streets coalesced and continued walking in a zombie frenzy to the beach, where they likely would perform their satanic rituals by eating alive the unfortunate psychedelic freaks who had the bad idea to go out on the streets on a day like this. We saw one small square that was empty just in the middle of where the different marching lines of lizards coalesced, and we went for it. We reached the square, abnormally peaceful and yet right in the very center of all the lizardry communion, with nothing but a few meters separating us from them. We said to each other: “This is
it! We've reached the Main Nerve”. We were right at The Center, The Vortex. We looked at each other in a mix of fear, twisted laughter and apprehension for the future. Needless to say the acid was hitting VERY strong for awhile already, and my gigantic reality-consuming pupils were feeding on everything I saw, as the whole scenario was melting, overlayed by moving patterns, giving an extra surrealistic edge to an already surrealistic scene.
We were contemplating what to do. B, who had not taken any acid, was saying how it was fine, we were safe there, people were not throwing bottles there, everybody was peaceful. I said “well how long before one drunken beast looks at us and decides to break our safety perimeter and put us in danger? Even if most monsters were harmless, it only takes one badly intended or over-drunk (or both) out of these hundreds to fuck it all up, and by the looks of it, chances are soon enough this will happen. Lets just get out!”. My attorney was being the mediator, and tried to find a point between us. He said “ok so what if we get out of The Vortex and find a more reasonable spot, towards the outside of the city center?”. So we went for it and decided that on the outskirts of the city center we could go to the Ciutadella park and sit down for a bit of fresh air, and decide whether to go home or not.
At this point any street or alley, no matter how quiet and harmless-looking, seemed like the potential lair of the freakiest beast just waiting to jump out of the darkness as we passed by. The charicatured freaks all around made for a menacing setting, but we had to go out and we went for it. After a not-as-troubled-but-still-crazy-ride we reached the park and stopped near some benches. With my brain exploding from the recent over-stimulation, we sat down for a while to recollect at what we just went through and decide what to do. For me it was reasonably clear, now that we were out of The Vortex we should just continue going direction home and get the hell out of this public socially-sanctioned madness. B was in the mood for drinking and meeting some girls, and my attorney, who was greatly enjoying his fear and loathing first trip (what an introduction!) said that I was making sense in wanting to go home, but that before we go home we could give one last try to a bit more “sane” public setting, if we went to a place where the more 'alternative' people gathered and see if we can at least end the night with a bit more hope for humanity. After some long minutes of back-and-forth discussion, I conceded to their plan if and only if they had full understanding that for my vial-washed mind, the public crazyness was just too much so I had the full right to use a “smoke bomb” and dissapear at any moment to go back home if I felt any menacing vibrations once more. They said ok, and off we went, for the last little moments of crazyness before the night was over.
Passing beside some highclass fancy clubs and all the posh people, goth bars, tourists and their sunglasses (at night) with flashing LED lights and neon bracelets, and some other random assortment of characters in this street-zoo, we finally reached where my attorney and B had thought about: the “trippy square”, a spot who's name is given for the local slang for acid blotter, from the days when this was a hippie psychedelic gathering place. The name has little meaning now: while there are still dreadlocked hairs and loose-cloth clothes around, it has definitely changed from a hippie flower-power place to a more junky anything-goes place. If we had previously reached the Main Nerve of the mainstream monsters and thought we couldnt get any lower, we were wrong.... We had just decended another level: The trippy square was the Main Nerve of the Underworld. We set down on the square next to the junkies, as the “alternative” monsters passed by. I asked my attorney “why are people so strange?”. B said “nah man, everybody is normal, you are probably strange to them too”. To which I answered “maybe but, why do so many people have abnormally big heads like
that?”, and we all laughed. At this point some very weird obviously not sober punks with their spiky and colored hair and clothes walked towards us (or rather, fumbled and stumbled towards us). I was feeling the menacing vibrations again, but waited in hope they would be fine. They sat down beside us. One of them broke our safety perimeter and asked something which we deciphered to be “do you have some speed ?” We said no, and at the same moment some very very weird rasta dude with his twisted eyes almost falling came towards us. Menacing vibrations rised up again and I knew it was time:
*SMOKE BOMB*
It was enough.... I rode back home without looking back, knowing my friends had a more sane state of mind and would come back if they also wanted (they did soon enough). I finally reached the safety of home, took a long thorough shower like a person that had been exposed to a dangerously radioactive environment, made a sandwhich, rolled a joint and crashed. This was a night I'll never forget. I would never repeat this again, im not an adrenaline-seeking teenager anymore. If I had known what was gonna happen I would most probably not go through it, but one thing led to another and there was no turning back once the clock was set in motion. Now that im through, im glad I survived this real-life fear-and-loathing, and can now look back as an amazingly crazy day. I tried to describe it a best as I could, but there was just so much more I can never express. In any case im glad I was able to put this out. Now back to my calm lifestyle, and to my future homely safe or nature-oriented psychedelic trips..............................
PS: I do not advice anybody to go through the situation this story reports. It would drive many grown man crazy. These are the ramblings of a mad man put by destiny in unexpected situations. All caution and care for setting are as always adviced in any psychedelic experience
