One of the best parts of a trip is reflecting on the experience. Sometimes it’s enlightening, sometimes it’s terrifying and other times it’s just straight-up hilarious. But one thing that is certain — it’s almost always an entertaining story afterward.
Here are some personal trip stories from fellow psychonauts that are worth a read:
u/40footstretch wrote on Reddit:
This was 20 years ago. There were 3 of us. We were hanging out at my friend’s apartment and planning to go to a show in around 2 hours. We all drop at the same time. Blotter, if memory serves correct. My buddy, whose apartment it was, immediately went to take a shower. My other friend and I were hanging out in the living room watching TV. After 5 minutes, I start to feel it but don’t say anything. Within 10 minutes, I am full-on tripping, the walls and ceiling are angling in, everything is melting and booming. As someone who is somewhat experienced with LSD, this is disconcerting. It usually takes around an hour to start to kick.
10 Minutes!!! Fuck Me! Where the hell is my mind gonna be in 3-4 hours?!?” I think to myself. I turn to buddy watching TV. “You tripping yet?” I manage to squeak.”Nope. It’s only been like 5 minutes,” he says as he stares at me with clearly sober eyes. We are not on the same wavelength. He will be no help to me.
“What the fuck?!? We dropped the same shit at the same time, How is he not losing his shit right now,” I think to myself. This is when my mind goes dark. “This is it, asshole, one hit too many, the straw that broke the camel’s back, you have finally lost your fucking mind. You took the same exact drugs, but he is sober. Something is wrong with you!”
I had worked at a state mental hospital the summer before and worked with patients who seemed to be on an extended trip that they couldn’t get out. I was convinced this was my future. My buddy is actually pissed that he is not getting off, while I am clearly losing it. I am trying to explain to him that we took the same drug, so it cant be the drug, I have just snapped and have a life of Thorazine and drooling into padded rooms to look forward to. I have never felt more alone in my life.
About 12-15 minutes after we dropped, I hear screaming from the bathroom. My buddy who was taking a shower comes running into the living room, butt ass naked, screaming, “My legs have turned black!” I have never been happier to see a fellow human being in a psychotic state. All was well, it wasn’t just me. It was the fucking drug. From there on it was a great trip.
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u/spambop wrote on Reddit:
I’ve done acid a fair few times and it’s always been really fun, apart from this one time a few years ago:
I went out on a stag to do with an old childhood friend, got really drunk, and ended up back at his flat with some of his friends. I knew that one of the guys there dealt acid, I’d taken it with him before, so I asked if there was any around. He only does it in liquid form from a pipette and, IIRC, his particular composition is really strong.
I decided to take a pipette full of this stuff; I was informed shortly afterward that I’d just taken the equivalent of ten hits in one go. Being drunk, I found this funny and passed out not long after I’d taken the hit.
I woke up feeling like I’d completely taken leave of my senses. The ceiling was swimming, making bizarre swirls and patterns and for what felt like the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why. When the penny finally dropped, things didn’t get much better. I left my friend’s house and tottered down the road in search of the train station. What should have been about a twenty-minute journey ended up taking me over an hour and a half (I lost quite a bit of time in Tesco staring at cereal packets; I also nearly got into a fight with a man because I was leering at him through his car window, to which he didn’t take too kindly), and I had some serious jitters when I finally got home.
Luckily, my family was away on holiday and didn’t witness the state I was in: my bloodshot eyes, unkempt hair, and contorted facial expression probably would not have gone down well. My memory of the hours that followed is hazy at best but what I do know is that I ended up in my parent’s bedroom, naked apart from one of their duvet covers wrapped around me, staring at myself in the mirror (for what I’ve worked out must have been nearly 12 hours straight), absolutely convinced that Jesus was going to step through the wall behind me and take me up to Heaven. The whole trip lasted over 24 hours.
TL;DR Don’t fuck around with too much acid: you could end up a paranoid, religious, naked lunatic.
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[deleted user] wrote on Reddit:
After reading a few other posts it seems pretty common for people to become convinced they’ve gone crazy. This happened to me once, not on LSD but on a large dose of mushrooms. I’d never had a bad trip before, but this completely put me in my place.
It’s 11:15 pm, I’ve been studying for my exams all week and I’m exhausted, so apologies in advance if this isn’t entirely readable.
Basically, I was in a foul mood before taking them due to being in a bit of a dark place in my life. I was with a few friends and everyone else was really keen to take them. In hindsight, I should have left, but I just said FUCK IT, reached into the bag, and ate the biggest ones I could find.
The trip hit me like a truck and I was uncomfortable from the moment to go. At first, this was just a vague feeling of discomfort, but soon enough things started getting wacky; I became convinced I was dying and nobody was able to get me to calm down. My heart was absolutely racing. There was a period of about thirty minutes which I can’t remember at all, but from what I was told afterward I became convinced that I needed medical help to survive. My friend called an ambulance for me after I apparently begged for him to do so. Coming to my senses in a hospital in the middle of a stage 4 trip was not a pleasant experience.
For a short while, I thought I was waiting in purgatory for my final judgment. This wasn’t in a nice, reflective, look over my good and bad deeds kind of way. It was truly terrifying. I thought the nurse helping me out was my guardian angel, trying to secure me safe passage into Paradise. I remember being asked if I wanted to go home or stay there – in my state of mind, I thought ‘go home’ meant to leave Earth and to be with God, so I said I wanted to stay. Really, my friends just wanted to get me the fuck outta there, but I thought I was being given a life or death ultimatum.
After long enough things mellowed out, but I was still completely elsewhere. I felt like I’d pushed a switch in my brain and gone completely crazy. I felt like crying, wishing I could go back in time and reverse what I’d done.
I thought I’d thrown myself into a different reality and that I could never go back to the way life was before. This freaked me out big time at first, but after thinking about it I came to this cold, begrudging acceptance of this new reality, and became determined to not let it destroy me. I tried to tell myself that I needed to survive, and the only way to do this was by learning the rules of this weird new place I’d cast myself into, because life, as I had known it until then, was gone. Eventually, things mellowed out and I realized I was never in any physical danger, and that the whole thing was in my mind.
For anyone reading this who doesn’t take trips – if you’re ever around someone that’s freaking out on psychedelics, don’t write it off as simply this. That person isn’t just saying they think they’re dying, they’re 100% CONVINCED that it’s happening. Read any of the stories posted here as if you are experiencing them, believing them to be completely true. Try to imagine what it’s like to be absolutely certain that you’re dying quickly due to your decision to take a drug. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.
These substances are powerful. Older cultures have based entire rituals around their use, and by doing so they enriched their understanding of life, consciousness, and the nature of man. Our culture, with its present values and priorities, is ill-equipped to use them properly. The only way we can change this is by educating people. Taking two hits of acid and going to the beach might be fun for some people, but in my experience, you’re really playing with fire by being so careless with something that has the power to make you question your own existence.
