After holding on to a modest stash of tabs for over half a year, I decided the time was finally right to embark on my first ever LSD trip. I believe this is actually my first time attempting to write a real trip report, so bare with me
PRE-CONDITIONS(mind)Set: Positive and curious mood
(physical condition) Set: Have been experiencing stomach pains and gastrointestinal distress for a while, otherwise in good health
Setting (location): Alone in my living room, atmospheric indirect lighting and candles, calm music. Later went for a walk.
time of day: Midnight
recent drug use: One cup of coffee and a beer a few hours prior, was definitely sober when dropping. Normally consume cannabis on a daily basis but it had been 4 days. Last psychedelic experience was 2.5g of mushrooms a few days into the new year, so it had been a while since my last trip.
last meal: Mashed potatoes with freshly cooked spinach and cheese.
PARTICIPANTGender: m
body weight: 65kg
known sensitivities: none.
history of use: Have been using cannabis on a daily basis for around 8 years, switched to vaporizing and oral ingestion the past two years. Some experience with relatively light doses of salvia, lots of experience with mushrooms (60+ trips, most around the 3g range, highest dose taken 3.7g).
BIOASSAYSubstance(s): LSD
Dose(s): Initial dose ~90µg, ~115µg booster dose taken at T+3:00, two hours into the experience
Method of administration: Tabs taken sublingual, then swallowed
EFFECTSAdministration time: 450mg magnesium T-01:00, ~90µg LSD T+00:00, ~115µg T+03:00
Duration: 12hrs
First effects: T+00:40
Peak: T+1:30-5:00
Come down: T+06:00
Baseline: T+12:30
Intensity (overall): Very visual, mentally surprisingly manageable
Evaluation / notes: Couldn't have wished for a better first encounter with this magical substance. Most visual trip I've had so far, though I was a bit surprised at the relative lack of a mental workout.
AFTER-EFFECTSHangover: Experienced a lot of nausea on the comedown, but this faded away entirely once I came back to baseline.
Afterglow: Had a lot of energy the day after, and was definitely quite emotional for the rest of the day. Afterglow was definitely not as prominent as with mushrooms for me.
REPORTHaving read a lot about the vasoconstricting properties of lysergamides, I decided to take 450mg magnesium beforehand. I have never taken a magnesium supplement before so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect.
After having cleaned up my house a bit and having dimmed the lights and lit some candles and my fireplace, I broke out my tabs.
The tabs came from a trusted source and should be dosed at 115µg. Different batches from this source have been tested by Energy Control and were found to be dosed accurately, though I have not personally tested these so I can't be 100% sure of their accuracy. I had been holding onto these tabs for half a year, but they have been stored in aluminum foil in a ziploc at temps slightly lower than room temp, away from light, moisture and heat. I'm fairly sure they haven't degraded much if at all.
I tested a small sample of a tab using Ehrlich's reagent, which displayed the expected purple hue.
I found it quite hard to cut off a small sliver, and believe I lost around 25µg to the test kit.
I took the remainder of the tab and let it dissolve under my tongue.
The first effects were noticed around 40 minutes in, where my vision seemed to get a bit "hazy", for lack of a better explanation. The remainder of the trip timeline followed Erowid's LSD timeline pretty much to the T. At around one hour in I started feeling giddy, my muscles relaxed and I experienced a warm, glowing feeling throughout my body. I laid down on the couch and was pleasantly surprised with the body high, since I was expecting muscle tension instead of the relaxation I was experiencing. Soon after, the first visuals appeared, as was to be expected in the form of crawling patterns on my wallpaper. They seemed quite similar to mushroom visuals, but far more rapid-moving. For the next hour, I listened to some relaxing 60s/70s folk, and basked in the lovely euphoric body high, occasionally hopping onto the Nexus chat.
Three hours after taking the initial dose, two hours into the experience, I was feeling great but felt that I wanted to go a bit deeper as it seemed that I was going into the peak though mentally not much was happening for me yet. I cut a second tab in half, but decided to take the whole tab seeing as I might have already built up some tolerance, and I would not have such a good opportunity to try LSD again for a while. I wanted to go in a bit deeper to really see what it had to offer.
20 minutes after taking the booster dose, the visuals kicked into high gear. The patterns on my wallpaper swirled around like snakes, eventually forming a kaleidoscopic mandala. Contrary to the OEV's I was used to on mushrooms (which seemed to sprout from the center of my point of focus), these visuals sprang forth throughout my entire visual field, as if the entirity of every patterned surface (covering my entire living room) swirled as one. The center of my vision turned kaleidoscopic as I stared in awe. There was definitely a bit more "melting", or "dripping" going on than on mushrooms, and I also noticed that the swirling patterns seemed to drift around in a wavy movement, bobbing up and down while moving from side to side, which I likened to a ship in the ocean waves. Occasionally the patterns rotated in a mechanistic sort of way, leaving behind trails as they did. Strangely enough, a few times a section of my mantlepiece which was in my peripheral field seemed to disconnect and float away while the rest of the scene remained in place. It quickly reset to its original place and this happened a few more times.
During the peak I felt like I was slightly dissolving, similar to the mushroom peak, though I felt mentally I could have pushed further still and could have easily held a sane conversation with a sober person. After a while I stood up to kindle the fireplace, and danced a little in front of the warm flames. It was at this point that I noticed the kaleidoscopic visuals receded or zoomed towards me as I moved back and forward, which was a very interesting visual that had never happened to me before.
I spent most of the trip alternating between cosying up to the fireplace and lying on my couch, dancing to the music and staring at the intricate swirling visuals. I started to notice how colors were very saturated and neon-like in a way I had also never experienced before, and that certain colors would switch/cycle from one into another fairly rapidly. I've had this happen before on mushrooms, where blue/green hues slowly alternate a little bit, but never in such a drastic way like this. The colors and switching of colors was definitely the most mindblowing of all for me.
At around 6AM I started to feel as if I was coming down. As I had spent the entire trip inside I was very keen on venturing outdoors, though it was very cold. I put on an extra hoodie and jacket and went for a morning walk. This proved to be one of the best walks of my life. Trees on the horizon melted and bent, everything was covered with a fine layer of glinting frost. The colors were magnificent. By this point, I could not stop my amazement over the wonder of color. I took a long stroll through my neighborhood as the sun came up and the sky went from dark to bright grey-ish blue. I arrived at a small park with some steep hills to climb, it felt as if I was on a proper adventure. I stopped to rest and stared at a tree. The crown of the tree cycled through the colors green, yellow and red while the sky changed from blue to purple and back again. I could not believe what I was seeing, and how I seemed otherwise mentally near-sober while this was happening. Simply astonishing!
I spent a good 15 minutes admiring the shapes of large ice crystals in a patch of frozen water, and the light reflecting off of it. The sun has risen by this time and the contrast between the white frost, the sky and the red stones of the houses seemed to render the scene in pastel colors. I experienced mild trails all throughout my walk, as if there were tiny extra lines around every hard edge. This gave a bit of a fuzzy look to everything. The trails casted off the rocks below my feet seemed to add extra dimension to them in a weird way, as if they seemed to really pop out, very hard to explain. I noticed I could powerwalk like I never had before, as if I could go on forever. I had to turn back two times once I realized I got a bit lost. After a good hour I started to get cold and my feet were getting a bit tired and I headed back home, where I spent the remainder of the trip relaxing on my couch, and attempting to get to sleep (which didn't happen). I actually stayed up, was entirely back to baseline at around 13:00, felt energized and ready to start the day. I had a wonderfully active day without having any headache/tiredness and didn't get to sleep until 23:00.
Now for the only bad part of the trip: All throughout the trip I noticed a "minty" taste/sensation that seemed to emanate from within. At first this was quite pleasant, but as I came down the minty taste got more intense, and when coming down I noticed it was actually a more metallic taste. I had been experiencing stomach issues for a while before the trip, but this taste definitely didn't gell with me during the final hours. I vomited right before I took the walk (though it wasn't too bad), but while I thought this would be it the minty/metallic taste stuck with me all the way until I had entirely come down around 12:30 and I vomited a bit more during the final 3 hours. During the come-up I had drank a glass of blueberry/mint tea with an orange squeezed into it, which seemed similar to the minty/metallic taste of the LSD. This might have made the nausea worse than it perhaps could have been had I not drank it. My stomach was sure glad to be rid of the drink as it reminded me of the nauseating feel.
I was a bit surprised how my trip was hypervisual, yet I didn't have much if any true introspection or insights. Perhaps this was set/setting/expectation related, I'm not sure. I now realize that I didn't take the time to close my eyes and really center my attention inward during the peak, perhaps this is because I'm used to mushrooms more or less "forcing" the introspection, and I was too fascinated by the open eye visuals. This trip seemed very euphoric, visual and exterior-focused. I will definitely experiment more with this wonderful substance (closed eyelids next time!), and hopefully get to explore the headspace and associative thinking a bit more. All in all, I had an absolute blast of a time!
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." - Albert Camus