I mean I don't really think that most people need to be warned about doing this, well apart from me in 2013 apparently...
(Scroll down to "The Trip" if that's what your interested in)
A Rough Context
My time in university was pretty crazy, I got quite deeply involved and basically ideological in some sense with electronic dance music, both as a producer and a DJ which ultimately lead to me seeing the chaotic lifestyle of being a successful underground DJ as the ideal, as a result of this I developed quite a nihilistic way of thinking, especially as I was having my "honeymoon phase" as my housemate described it with MDMA; basically at the time I reasoned that life is the pursuit of happiness and pleasure in the moment and the best way to live is to maximise these experiences and to treat life as an adventure, things that the combination of drugs and music do extremely well.
Build Up
So that's the rough background of this particular experience, I'd recently been to my very first underground rave in London thanks to one of my housemates who grew up there and was a bit of a veteran raver, actually it was him and a couple of others who had been telling me how I need to try LSD as it could "change your perception of reality itself, permanently."
It was actually the descriptions I heard like this that made me pretty afraid of taking it, but I guess on this day there was enough of a “fuck it” sentiment to actually make me carry through.
It was during the spring break, I got the train to London and met my friend at Baker Street where we went for a couple of drinks at around midday before he then announced to me that he had a family issue to deal with and that we will meet later, I actually didn’t mind this too much as I had money to play with and a city to explore, I went to another bar and somehow ended up being taken in by a group of Manchester City football fans who I shared quite a few drinks with throughout the afternoon/early evening, in fact it was quite amusing seeing my friends reaction when he eventually met me in the pub, it was just funny because the social lubricant that alcohol is made it seem as if I’d known these people for years, we had a couple more drinks and then started to make our way to the rave.
The location of the rave had been moved at fairly short notice; it was originally meant to be outdoors in a never-disclosed location, as a result of typical British weather it was moved to a warehouse in a distant corner of London, I couldn’t even tell you roughly where it was, my friend lived in London and I basically just relied on him to get us there. We were expecting a group of our friends to go, but for various reasons they couldn’t and it ended up with only two of us. While we were on our way there on various buses I was already buzzing from the shots I did in the pub so decided to start eating MDMA crystals out of the bag as if they were candy, to be fair it put me in a pretty good mood!
Eventually arrived and were put through what are basically like security checkpoints at a legal concert, except instead of event staff these guys were Lithuanian gangsters. One thing that I thought was really cool about these events was what is essentially a totally open market for drugs, in fact at the last one I’d been to, I had two dealers pitching at me in a pretty civil way. I think being in a space that is pretty much lawless is a liberating sensation in general.
The Trip
So I bought the tab because my friend basically backed me into a corner with the dealer; he bought his and told the dealer I wanted one, when put on the spot I bought it, not even sure I wanted to take it at first, eventually he convinced me, I mean just put a bit of paper on your tongue and enjoy the ride right?
We both bought a couple of beers and went to sit down on what was like a chilled area with sofas and lots of people tripping and then gradually over about an hour and half I gradually started to disconnect from reality and I guess you could say I started to fit in with these people.
I started to enter this surreal state where even a small abstraction of a thought would become an intense journey into all the potential meaning associated with whatever I thought of, but I wasn’t perceiving them just in terms of thought but with all senses other than touch. Because every thought lead down an incredibly deep rabbit hole and I was still aware of my surroundings I remember saying completely random things with a random emotional expression to those around me, and they did the same, despite all being on completely different psychological journeys and speaking jibberish to each other we somehow understood each other. In fact seeing the random switches between laughing and crying with random sentences is what made me start to try and get a grasp on reality as I was starting to worry about being so divorced from reality. The thing that I remember being freaked out about the most (up to this point) was time dilation; I was stuck in a 5 minute loop of time moving forward and then backwards for what felt like an hour, all while being conscious enough to be terrified about it. The thing about this that was the most concerning for me at the time was the awareness that if time is this distorted from my perspective, what is actually happening in reality? It wasn’t long before a stranger told me to “just enjoy the ride”.
Things got even weirder following that; I was falling through a chaotic complex of imagery and sensations that seemed to convey sets of experiences moving backwards through my life, ending with a re-experiencing of when I was 5 and my mother was beaten half to death in front of me, I then moved further inwards and reached what I can only describe as the “deepest level”, based on how much of it was recognizable to me emotionally, I’m certain it was an encounter with my sub-conscious manifested as a being. Before I really got to make anything of this encounter I was pulled from whatever dimension I was in by my friend who wanted to go and dance. (I found that when trying to do things in the real world, then you’re mentally in the real world to some extent.
Dancing was amazing, the music had an extra dimension to it which massively enhanced the sensation of just hearing it, mixed with what was obviously a deliberately over the top and chaotic lighting setup made for an experience unlike any other, however it was pretty short lived as things were about to really scary, I was amused when I started seeing trollface meme people in the crowd but that was probably the last thing I enjoyed about the night; I instantly went from dancing to being outside with the security saying something like “lol, what are those guys doing?”. I was essentially lost in a chaotic mess of sensations, occasionally coming back to reality and realizing that I had no idea what I was actually doing during the gaps which caused me to become incredibly anxious, I became terrified of roads especially. It was morning at this point and it was scary because I knew I was in no fit state to be in public, especially in busy London, my friend was leading us back to his for what felt like a week, I got this idea in my head that he was tripping as hard as me and that he didn’t have a clue where we were actually going which just caused more anxiety and anxiety based rabbit-hole trips. My gaps from reality reached a peak as my friend was trying to get me onto the bus; I’d reached a point where I was so anxious and aware that I was struggling to understand basic reality, that the idea of trying to pull it together enough to interact with the bus driver to buy a ticket ended in my being terrified and getting off the bus, apparently we missed 3 buses in the end because of this, just asking for a bus ticked basically became this incredibly complicated psychological mountain to climb.
I was meant to be getting the train back to my hometown that morning but my friend agreed with me when I said I wasn’t in any fit state, so I stayed at his. Trying to sleep was probably one of the most intense parts of the trip; rather than being at least partially grounded by external stimuli it was all a trip within my own psyche with no distractions, it was intense…
I still felt a sort of residual effect the next day but was definitely back on planet earth, me and my friend had a couple of drinks and just laughed about the whole thing. I later tried it again at home without MDMA and only close friends, rather than just being an intense clusterfuck of confusion it was more like a state of child-look wonder and awe about everything, much better…
Wow this turned out longer than I expected, hope this is somehow useful to someone…