That day, May 17th, began as a beautiful day set in the middle of a veritable paradise-my home. After a grueling 5 months on the urbanized, overpopulated crime hole of wasted time, filth and life known as mainland FL I was finally back in the Keys, far far removed from the death grips of human society and its nauseatingly wasteful economical paradigm. The past two weeks had been filled to the brim with only the most breathtaking trips through the realm of untamed natural beauty and God’s very grace. The looks of the forest, the songs of the birds, the static presence of the multicolored spiders suspended in a seemingly still state in the middle of their fractalline webs, the magnificent mangroves coating the island in a shade of green…. It all brings a tear to my eye as I attempt to envison mother nature in her full unbound grace from this four cornered room on the mainland... I’d rather take swarms of flesh devouring insects over neighborhoods and the hordes of human cattle which dilute the beauty of unrestrained biodiversity any day any time any place and any state of mind. At least I know what the insects are doing and can thus plan accordingly.

The day began with a nautical journey across the waters of my island home on a boat. The water looked like a sparkling blue sapphire before me as my vessel carved its way across its fluid surface. The mangroves, a sea of green 10 meter tall hedges on the shore took my breath away as I glimpsed at the fragile brilliance of life, of DNA, of the 4 billon year old struggle to survive, be fruitful and multiply undertaken by all and any physical manifestations of divine consciousness. Life, such a complex quandary, surely can only be explained as the physical manifestation of divine consciousness, for without some spark of divine inspiration and will power these proteins, Nucleic acids, nucleotides, lipids or just about any other biomolecule would have ever come into being. Conscious awareness and attention is the single most powerful force on the planet. It was conscious thinking that created the atomic bomb. It was conscious thinking that brought LSD into reality. IT was conscious thinking and awareness that took us to the stars and into the depths of the earth’s core. Consciousness created proteins, and through trial and error made DNA, us and all else. 4 billion years well spent.

Here, on this island of mine, alone with only family and neighbors who may as well be part of my family, I am surrounded with the beauty and brilliance of divine art-nature and all its various bioforms and like. IT took 4 billion years to make an island, a biome, and ecosystem this beautiful. I glimpsed down at the coral reefs below me, the mangrove swamps next to me and the open ocean and stellarly stunning cloudscape before me and thanked the universal life force which had blessed me with living here, right now, on this planet, with the privilege of having loving, giving and kind family and friends and the gift of being able to live on an island with a grand total of six people living on it.

The two or so hours spend riding that boat were a mystical experience and half, to say the least and no doubt formed the peak experience of my day. It was all destined to be doomed to go downhill from then on out.



High Noon



It was time. The boat was docked and done with and I left my home for what I expected to be a grand ol’ time of an LSD trip with my close friend and next door neighbor (who lived but a third of a mile from me), J. It had been over five months since we last met and this was, hopefully, going to be a good time for the both of us.

I met J with a hug and a secret handshake and strode on into his abode—an abandoned pot warehouse transformed into a spacious living space. Ever such the artist and hippy, J had taken it upon himself to transform the place into an artistic cave of creative bizzarities. Stained glass pictures, houseplants, Christmas lights crawling all over the walls, bizarre paintings and stolen street signs were but a mere amount of what he had on display. To some it would appear to be a conjumbled mess of bizarity and clutter strewn about the walls; to me it was art. Out back and out front there was a stunning variety of new and novel plants which bathed they eyes and the soul in a warm embrace. This day was to be like any other usual day of tom foolery on this island; it was time for a journey.

Approximately 180ug of LSD were consumed per person. A bowl was loaded and a NIN playlist was started as we began to relax ourselves into an open, peaceful state of conscious awareness. As the time ticked by all the usual symptoms of an LSD experience started to appear. Pupils became dilated, feelings of sticky speedy stimulation were starting to flicker across my mind as I felt the halo of Lysergamidic enlightenment begin to form a circle of light around my head. Love, bliss, light, energy were beginning to emerge at the one hour mark as I felt it climb higher and higher into my mind. Out of nowhere, we decided it would be a grand old idea to venture out into the mangroves and explore the forest.. We thought it was alright, at least….

We ventured forth into the thick of the mangroves and were enjoying the sights and pleasures. All was well and we explored further, and further still…. Oh my we went deep into that swamp...

It hits the fan


I have no clue how to begin with this part. This is when the face went from happy to frowning. This was when my summer vacation hit a brick wall of disappointment and dashed dreams of exploration. An old injury, my shoulder, decided to dislocate yet again as I nonchalantly reached backward for a branch. With no rhyme or reason it snapped out of place and I was plunged headfirst into the throes of the eigth circle of hell. A shockwave of intense, soul shattering pain rippled from the spot of dislocation and I bellowed out in agony and shock. Here I was, balancing on a prop root as thick as my ankle in the middle of a mangrove swamp half a mile away from home...
And My shoulder has just popped out of socket and the pain is beyond the description of words. The white hot searing agonizing burning jab of satan's pitchfork broke the boundaries between language and the indescribable; words were of no use by then-all there is is experience. Pure, unfettered pained primal survivalism going overdrive as my adrenoglands slouch to attention and fill me with flight and fight.

I scream and scream for help as J calms me down and feels the area, "yup it’s out", he said.

"Hahahah of course I knew it was out yea lug nut! My humorous is rearing its ugly head through my skin and it hurts like hell -- how could it not be out of alignment!?!!?!?"

"GYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAHHHHAYYAIEFERRRRRRRRIIIIRIRIRIRORIRORIIOROIREOUEOIIOROIRIORIRIRIOOOOOO"

I screamed more for mercy, only to be told by J, “Yo, we gotta get back home no one will come here. Come on dude, I know it hurts but we gotta get out. Can you make it?”

“OF COURSE,” I grunted, slowly but surely, step by step, painful body movement by painful body movement I trekked on through the mangrove menace before me, a ring of fire emulated and pulsating tsunamis of agony rippling across my psyche. I was huddled over, walking, if not waddling like a babe, ever so carefully to keep my shoulder somewhat supported as, with every step and bound my feet made against the hard earth, the agony spiked in intensity. All I could do was scream in the face of such horror pulsating across my soul.

Right left. Right left right left right… onward and onward I go

Ma ta sa ra Ma ta sa ra Ma ta sa ra Ma ta Sa RAAAAAAA

So went on my mantra out loud as I realized that the pain will be there until I get home, to safety, to help which is a third of a mile down the road. All I can do now it struggle and take it as well as I can. The only way out of this hell on earth is through and there’s no way around that. If one wishes to reach paradise, to reach salvation, one must fight on against the creul painful and wicked ways of the outside world if one seeks salvation. There is no way around this gut-wrenching actuality. The Only Way Out is Through.

And Underneath it all
We feel So Small
The heavens fall
And still weeeee craaaawwllll

These lines began popping up in my muddled mind as I trudged onward through the thicket, engulfed in agony emulating from the bone jumping and jangling around my inner bicep making mincemeat of my labrum. This pain I felt, I came to realize, exists only in my mind, nowhere else. If it weren’t for my nerves going haywire and overloading my brain with all these pain signals then I wouldn’t be in such agony, all I must do is simply be that source of attention. Pay all my attention to the mantra I say over and over and over again. I am the mantra, I am not the mind…. But oh oh oh that messed up mind of mine still drags my attention, kicking and bitching in protest, to that single spot hurts like all hell and then a lot more good god OUCH! Still.. must… carry on I kept telling myself:ll It’ll all be over before you know it, man. Enjoy it and don’t give into it! YOU CAN DO IT MAN

And do it I did. Soon, I realized that my soul, my source of eternal conscious attention didn’t have to pay attention to the pain. Yes, the pain was there but that didn’t mean that I had to succumb to the pangs and stains of my malfunctioning body. For to give into the terror, the pain, the suffering of the moment would mean a descent into a state of shock far far away from anyone to hear my dying pangs for help, further away than I was now or ever was in my short life. With all my willpower I averted my attention the best I could from the sharp searing radiating bursts of agony stemming from the damaged area.

I stepped forward, another flare up, another step, another flare up. It kept on going and going and going and the fire never showed the slightest hint of dying down. My soul merely dislocated itself from the nerves to which it hardwires itself and gave the body one single mission: Survival at all costs. Survival, in this case, meant getting the hell out of here and not giving a damn about where it hurts until something could be done about it.

Life’s ongoing 4 billion year old struggle to survive and adapt was happening to me. I realized, as I shuffled and screamed my way out of that mangrove marsh, that survival is the most primal, most basic element of human psyche. It is the cornerstone of consciousness, the little hardworking can-do spirit within me that keeps me going on and drives all other conscious functions. This was it, right here, right now. My will was in the battle now and nothing could stop me now because I didn’t care anymore.

This, right here, right now. This is my battle, my struggle for survival. With every step I take, I experience not only the furious flares of flippant fury emanating from my shoulder but also the sheer raw infinite power of my will over riding the pain and keeping me on track. Nothing can stop me now ‘cause I don’t care anymore.

I eventually could not take the pain of contorting my body in any which way to traverse mangrove roots as thick as my wrist and decided to trek the rest of the distance through the 2 foot deep mangrove muck. I trudged on through the thicket head on with the determination of a man hell bent on saving his life against impossible odds, limped out of the swamp and into the open expanse of the road before me; I was almost home.

By some grace or other such favor of God my step-father came riding down the road. Turns out my flippant cries for help were louder than I had anticipated… loud enough to catch the attention of any and all persons within a half mile radius (having a loud mouth has its benefits).

Whelp, wasn’t I in a bad shape of sorts now-mangled, bruised, maimed, staggering around in the grips of soul-shattering pain resonating from my humorous screaming like a banshee let loose from hell’s very own 7th circle when, from down the road approaches the green truck of safety. I clambor on in, biting my upper lip and huddled over under the weight of the burden on my shoulders. Out of desperation and pure pain I reach for the stale 5 month old coffee he keeps around just “for looks” and take a sip of the disgusting wrench. He laughs and tells me to relax, we’ll get me help soon enough.

I hobble up the stairs and promptly demand help from my wide-eyed mother as I crash onto a kitchen chair, huddled over, trying with all my might to keep this screwed up shoulder as stable as possible, lest the pain gets kicked up a notch from excruciating to “KILL ME PLEASE!!!!”.

Some way, somehow, my mother with her white shiny doctor’s cap on and step-dad with his nurse’s scowl screwed on tight, several attempts were made to reduce the shoulder. Heheheeh. No luck with that-doing a posterior reduction on an anterior dislocation only makes things worse, if such a word could have even applied to me right then and now. With every urch and lurch, turn and bend they made to try to get it in my mind was stabbed with nine inch nails of pure pain straight through the frontal cortex, as my entire being reveled in agony. With a conceited sigh my mother gave up the ghost, grabbed her keys, hustled me down into the car, and we sped off to the clinic.

All I can remember of those 35 minutes spent in the car doubled over trying with all my might not to submit to the pain and release the pent up rage and pain within was the radio. Some dreamy lah-tee-dah boy band or other such pop phenomenon from yesteryear was jamming out on 101.7 about this girl the lead singer had some kind of thing with. Albeit boring, the music was perhaps the only distraction in the vicinity of my presence which I could latch my attention onto, away from the billions of neurons ferociously firing off across my body the signals of urgent distress and agony coming from within. Bent over, I absorb myself in the singers song of how some woman or other caused him to feel bad inside-haha oh well buckyroosef. That happens to any and all people who mess with the power of the phallus without the slightest idea as to who how or why it should be controlled. So what buddy, she broke your “heart” BIG FUCKING DEAL. IT doesn’t quite matter how your “heart” feels when your humerus is poking out of your tricep and you absolutely must kill yourself as the pain can’t be taken anymore.

My mother unbuckles my seat belt for me and carefully retracts it across my body back to its resting position. Ever so carefully maneuvering my body to avoid the great painful downfall below I hobble onwards toward the glass door of the clinic. Upon approaching the door a kindly nurse stepped forward with wheelchair in tow. Ever so gratefully I stoop down into the chair before me and am wheeled off away from the other people into a private room for the magical reductions to happen. I was doped up with 12 miligrams of intravenous morphine and some copious quantity of cyclobenzaprine, wheeled in for an x ray, waited around for some 10 or so minutes for the doctor to prep herself and then… BAM with a simple circular movement of my limp limb a snap echoed from my joint as I felt the pain of the world bearing down on my shoulder lift like the fog of twilight as morning approaches. The doctor feels and pokes around my arm, sending me back for one more xray just to confirm it’s back in and, like that, there I am back in the car with mom strapped to a sling nearly nodding on all the dope they gave me but not giving in to the morphinian daze due to the 180ug of LSD still lingering and limping around my muddled mind. Surprisingly, my pain had been so great, so all-consuming that no one person I interacted with upon getting out of the mangroves had the slightest Idea that I had ingested LSD at all.

Upon coming back home still bound in a sling I set off in a trance toward my neighbor, the one whom I had originally taken the LSD with before the weight of the world dislocated my shoulder, mind, soul and day. Man, oh man was he paranoid; I had ditched the poor soul and left him all alone in his home with a head full of acid and a bucket full of psychotic paranoia. He was spooked to bejeezus land. The stereo was whispering NPR talk radio behind him, giving some illuminating noise to his dark and dingey lair. Sitting there, paranoid out of his mind, I felt bad for him. Offering him some weed to smoke he shook off the offer-he was simply in no means ready to ingest any other drugs he was TRYPPIN’ –I sorrowfully gave him a good by hug, set off out to the bridge and park across the water from that spot where all hell had gone loose…

The scene of Sammy’s creek was a gentle one; the bridge, the park, the magnificent mangrove forests bordering that thin and slim expanse of humanity’s touch upon the pristine natural environment. I shuffled on to the shaded benches and absorbed the surroundings into me as I took in the day. The sun was shining down across the treetops and rippled off the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Magnificent tall palms, gumbo limbos and various other tropical plants native to the region were arife with life eternal as a cool sea breeze licked the land with its cozy embrace. I stared on in a state of apathetic awareness upon the scene. I was the only human being there and it felt amazing. The colors. The blue of the ocean. The green of the trees. The multicolored variations of the leaves and flowers of all God’s gifts to the temporal realm we call reality. Magnificent. That is all I would and can still say when I come back to that hallowed ground and take a moment to take it all in. Paradise I had once again found thee on the shores of self-destruction.

Across the Creek resided the spot in the mangroves where it had all began. The spot where that one little slip up had caused this entire fiasco to happen. I laughed and simultaneously shuddered thinking about the pain, the turmoil, the sheer horror of what had become of my day, all which began in that one fateful spot in the mangroves. Now I was back to the scene of the accident, staring at the stage from the point of view of the observer looking at an actor perform a role he himself had once played. Subconsciously my right hand wandered over to and established a firm grasp upon my left shoulder, gently rubbing the numb-feeling sides of it just to make sure that everything was in place as it should be-I certainly was in no mood to stage an encore performance.

Awesome read, thanks for sharing!

Man, this is how a trip report should be written!

Great story-telling, that was truly entertaining. The whole thing has great structure, I'm jealous of your skill.

Brilliant trip report. I bruised my tail bone once while on LSD; that sucked. This would be an absolute nightmare...you kept it together better than I would've most likely

Such a pleasure to read, you are a talented writer

Yet another brilliant, kick-ass trip report from Godsmacker!!

All I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Your writing style combined with your content really is awesome & I really appreciate it.

Reading this one had me laughing, crying, shaking my head & nodding my head all in rotation.

I could so relate. I just wish I had the writing ability to relate even a small fraction of my LSD trips with such panache; if I did, I'd have a best-selling book, that's for sure.

Much peace & love to you Godsmacker & thanks again.

Awesome tale.
Definitely worth the long read

I appreciate all of your compliments That was indeed a day at the races and will forever be etched into my memory banks for as long as I live. It's been almost three months since it happened and the memory of that fateful day still rings strong in my ears.

Due to the abstract and obtuse and rather abusive positions I had to maneuver my body in order to get out of the mangroves and back home, my humeral head tore a gigantic gash through my labrum and I needed to have surgery to repair it and the rest of the capsule in order to insure against any future dislocations. This was the second time it dislocated on me; the first happened seven months prior while doing a botched handstand. I had absolutely no friggin idea that it would happen again after that as it had felt fine and healthy those past months... apparently though I learned from the doctor who reduced it this time around that after the first dislocation there's about a 95% chance of it popping out of place again unless surgery is undertaken and that day above mentioned was when the 95% chance was drawn against my favor. As of now i'm about 2 months post-op and am regaining Range of Motion in physical therapy.

After that day of trial and tribulations and until I had surgery, my shoulder constantly felt like it was always wobbling loosely around in its socket, always feeling like it would drop out of place at any second; needless to say this scared the bejeebus out of me on a daily basis. The surgeon who operated on me (and provided some beautiful photographs of the procedure as souvenirs) was impressed at how loosely anchored it was to the socket. Most of the fibers which were supposed to hold it in place were torn to shreds and it was floating around in the capsule, wobbling around up and down with each breath I took in my sleep.

I wrote this story a few days after the event took place but was hesitant to broadcast it to the rest of the interwebs due in part to laziness and sensitive details. While reviewing my journal this week I chanced upon it, edited it to my liking, and posted it for all the world to see. I hope that the experience you had reading it was at least a glimmer as profoundly life and earth shattering for you as it was for me the day it all hit the fan and splattered all over my mind and memory.

This is so perfect, exactly how that junk sounds when you're tripping!!

Amazing report!

If one had flashbacks to such a traumatizing experience incurred under the influence of a hallucinogen, would it be labelled as HPPD, PTSD, or both? JW because I tend to still have regular slaughterhouse-5-esque flashbacks to The Mangroves when this happened each and every day of my life, at random instances and for random periods of time at a time. Whenever a flashback strikes, I become unstuck in time and teleport back to The Horror. Reality flickers off for anywhere from a split second to a few minutes, my body freezes stiff as Kirk Johnson's corpse, eyelids stuck wide open, dilated pupils staring blankly into the distance. Then I return, exhausted in a similar manner as to how one may feel after a 7 mile long jog, breathing heavily, trails of tears trickling to my chapped lips, sucking up the pain and silently praying that I didn't accidentally shart my drawers, or that anyone noticed that I froze-up and briefly flashed out of, and back into The Present.

Yes, I meditate. Yes, I take vitamins, fish oil & probiotic supplements daiy. Yes, I regularly exercise. Yes, I take a grocery list of psych meds (Interestingly enough, I haven't gotten any calls, nor picked up the phone to make any, for nearly a year by now). Yes, I am thinking of finding & talking this issue over with someone whom I can trust not to commit me to a psychiatric institution, nor spread gossip of personal matters. Yes, I have faith in no one, no concept, no justice, nor any philosophical field of study. Yes, I talk to myself via regular journal entries about this and other tics and tacks of daily life. Yes, these means and methods have done nothing to prevent these episodes.

Why do I make this post, then, describing this glitch of personality, then denying any need for it? I do not know. I cannot know.

From Ashes to Ashes. From Dust to Dust? The shadow of the past haunts every waking step of the present human condition. What else can be said from and about yet another brick in the wall?

Unto this very day, I am still haunted by the horror of spending those three--or 5?-- hours in ceaseless agony--never-ending hell which I still flash back to at random. Every now and then, anywhere from a few times a day to one time a week, I become unstuck in time. There I am. All over again. Mangroves. J. Hopelessness. Nothing to keep me going but the sheer will to survive. Survivalism gets down to my blood. I become a beast. Feral. Scared. PNS overdrive ad maximum. I’m running. Running. Running. Humeral head bouncing around like a super-ball in socket. Fear flying faster than I can think. If I am lucky, I remember my clonazepam, and frantically gobble 1 or 2 milligrams of that godly medicine until it stops and I return to the here and now, only to fear PAWS when my psychiatrist realizes that I've been "abusing" it. Is this abuse? Is this therapeutic use? I don’t know. All I know is that these attacks happen at random and get down in my blood and overwhelm my senses. Flight-or-Fight mode kicks in. Panic gropes my poor palpitating heart as I flash back into The Mangroves and dive into hell.


That very spot. That branch. Colonies of Snappers breed and feed in the shelter of barnacle-riddled prop roots beneath my quivering feet. Schools of tarpon jump in an out of the aquamarine water, the sun casting a brilliant silver sheen upon their majestic frames. Two dolphins, their child in hot pursuit, gracefully skimp the surface of the water in the shape of a crescent moon. The cool salty sea breeze of The Florida Straits caressing my sun-burnt face. A screen of elliptical red mangrove leaves and oblong pods camouflage me from the Pavilion and Benches on the opposite bank of Sammy’s Creek . I spy a family of Cervesa-sporting Cubans earning their dinner.

Time cools to 0 degrees kelvin. It pops. I'm back again, unwillingly siphoned into yet another psychosomatic encore. Why? Why? Why? Why Now? I'm in class. I can't take it. I'm slipping down a slope greased with Vaseline. I need to get out. I need help. I need air. I need salvation. I need freedom. I need peace from this three year long never-ending slaughterhouse V-esque series of randomly becoming unstuck in time at the worst times in the worst places in the worst scenarios. I gotta go somewhere. I gotta find my way... I need to find that door which doesn't lead me back again...

And I’m hovering like a fly, waiting for the windshield on the freeway...


3 years later, these uncontrollable flashbacks still plague my conscience on an almost-daily basis.




P.S. PLEASE Do not suggest I use entheogens to "process" this trauma. Integration, mindfulness practices (e.g. meditiation, eating a raisin over the course of 10 minutes, never taking your attention away from it as you slowly eat it), and benzodiazepines are my current coping methods. Albeit less than an ideal treatment plan, at least I haven't gone mad and succeeded in killing myself amidst these flashbacks.

Rather than psychs to help, have you heard of Rolfing? It's a type of bodywork that releases psychoemotional traumas that have been written into the musculature. Also some kind of breathwork likely would be of benefit but you would certainly need to be supported by a competent therapist when doing this.

My very best wishes to you in receiving the necessary help to move you beyond this difficult time.

Hoo boy, panic attacks I've had a couple and they ate terrifying. Anxiety I have and it sucks. Clonopin habit, I had, and after going through the hell of withdrawal will never take one of those "godly" pills ever again.

I was going through some stuff and my doctor wanted to prescribe ativan. I told her that I'd kicked opiates over a hundred times and most likely would again, but I will never,ever get strung on benzos again.

They work so well at getting rid of anxiety, but in the end makes things so much worse. It sounds like you may have a legit need for them, but take it from an addict,please be careful with the benzos, they are the absolutely worst drug to kick, insanity, seizures, it's not fun at all and can kill you.

I personally practice this very same therapy on a nearly daily basis.

Occasionally, I will recommend it to a client if I feel that they're ready for such an undertaking.

It is amazing what simple techniques such as this can do for us humans.

Unfortunately, what null is stating here is very true. I've seen it first hand WAY too many times and not just with clients, but with immediately family.

Talk about soul-crushing.

I am familiar with gaba-ergic withdrawals and the Ashton Manual, have witnessed the horrors of ethanol and benzo withdrawal second hand (i.e. witnessing others go through it). At this point in this rotten life of mine, I'd rather spend the remainder of my days in a sedate and tranquil haze, blind to the world around me, lounging around The Sad Cafe, leisurely sipping away at my gin and kool-aid, loving Big Brother and sporting the demeanor of Randall Patrick McMurphy after his lobotomy, than undergo yet another encore in the midst of my local library.

Fair enough.

To each his own.

I hold no judgements against anyone who responsibly and fully owns their own shit.



Peace be with you brother.

Hey,

Did you think about seeing a shaman or an healer ?

Sometimes (should i say often ?) occidental medicine can't cure the pain that is inside us. It can relieve the bad, but can't cure it.

This flashback can / could be associated with something related to you, or anyone of your family. Some shaman / healer can practice soul recovery or treat problems in your past family that can affect your present life.

Few years ago, there was 2 brother. On had serious wishes to kill his brother, during many years, he had flashback of killing his brother.
One day, after trying many medicine (psycho / psycha etc), eating pills gived by theses doctors, the problem wasn't solved.
The "potentiel killer" went see a shaman. This shaman workde without enteogens, no brw for the patient, nor the shaman. Just a transcendental state.
The shamn cured the problem of his patient and stated that in his familly, his old uncle had killed his brother during their young age and this thing was never told to any in the familly.

Then the patient is peaceull today.

I was cured by a healer, 1 year post birth. I birth deranged as i can't sleep the night, but only the day, this during 1 year... My parent were very tired of this and life wasn't great.
Theygrab me to a healer and he magnetized me, during above 1h.
The same day, at night, i sleeped (and today i sleep allways good). My parents have tried many things befoe this, but this was the only thing that work.

It's worth a try

Peace.