Tag Archive for: psychedelic

lsd acid psychedelic trippy meaning

This is a guest post by Tom Philipslsd lysergic acid psychedelic trippy meaning

Nihilism & Loss of Meaning

LSD is clearly not a drug for everyone, it is unwieldy and requires a certain mental attitude at the outset of ingestion to enjoy its properties fully. However, when I first took it, I didn’t really have any idea what it would do (!). My research prior to taking acid was zero. Of course I had a cultural history of it in my head, knowing major figures in the drug’s subculture; The Beatles, Aldous Huxley, 1960s groups etc. I was also aware of the stereotypical stories about its effects and all the ‘hippy’ and ‘spiritual’ connections applied to it. Having said this, it’s only now that I’m beginning to understand the drug properly, which is exciting but also worrying.

So, why isn’t everyone taking or discussing LSD if people like myself feel the need to document the experience, am I wildly different to others? No, I believe this is partly down to ingrained social attitudes and drugs laws, as well as a lack of education about the drug and research in to it. Being such a limitless and bizarre place, the human mind is not always an attractive area of study for scientists or governments, not as appealing as something physical, easy, like strength for example. What I’m saying is, even if society were to test and investigate the many positive applications LSD has and could have, it would require labyrinthine research and time and investment because its effect on the human mind is so sprawling and subjective. Sure, governments invest in mind-control (which they’ve unsuccessfully tried with LSD), but that is subtly different, and means treating the drug and the test subject like a means to an end, rather than a being of potential. Regardless of the status-quo’s stance against the drug and laws against it, I genuinely believe that more research is not done on LSD because ultimately it is a mystery. Even the great thinkers who have taken it and written on it draw conclusions that although insightful always seem to shine the torch on one element, thus leaving others in the dark. Put simply, depending on who you ask, an LSD conversation could really end up on any topic.

My friend John who created this blog was telling me about John Lennon’s comment that at the height of his LSD use, he began to feel a complete death of ego. Further to this, Lennon said that after a few years of not taking the drug so extensively he began to feel like himself again, replete with all the idiosyncrasies and cantankerous qualities that had made him an individual in the first place. Moreover, my friend mentioned some veteran trippers he had spoken to, who seemed to have suffered a sort of ego-death also. He said they seemed fairly aloof and vague when answering questions on their LSD experiences, nowhere near the level of philosophical debate the experience had sparked in my friend and I. Obviously this is just speculation, but this could suggest that the liberation acid provides from self-consciousness could boil over into losing a sense of one’s self, which I have already alluded to in this memoir previously. If these vets have nothing to say, why are they doing acid so often? Why do they like it? What do they think about? This really intrigues me because acid is not like beer, you don’t take it merely to get inebriated – when tripping you can’t help but think, although perhaps a trip can become more pedestrian and beer like after taking many tabs. For me personally, at times my relationships have been skewed by acid thinking. I have felt very distant and lonely in my outlook, distant from my parents and old friends. Something has changed – become less real and simultaneously more real – e.g. the everyday conversations about the weather take on new disturbing meanings because I’m analysing the human interaction taking place rather than just going with the flow. Obviously, I have talked to some people about the experience explicitly in a relaxed way, but at the end of the conversation (although they’ve been attentive) the listener seems to switch back to auto-pilot while I’m left still reeling with concepts in my head. Again though, perhaps this existential gulf in human empathy has always been in our communication, regardless of drugs, and it’s just perception. This time though, it feels more lonely, like what I’m dealing with will forever be a source of personal madness and not alleviated by love or understanding. However, we must remember that this is all perception and acid is not a mind in itself but a reflection of our own. Basically, I feel there is a level of mundane social interaction I barely tolerated before, but now I’ll only meet with grunts.

Personally I’ve had to talk about it because I’ve been ready to explode at times. I myself have definitely felt I have partly forgotten older ways of being and have seen myself in a more pluralistic manner, but I have also tried to remember the things I enjoy, specific things I like. Put simply, if you look at everything in an objective unbiased manner, it can create a feeling of meaninglessness; nothing is above anything else in importance or differentiation. For me personally, this has turned into nihilism at times. Again, this could be blamed on a number of other factors in my life specifically, not just acid philosophy, but this kind of thinking has felt tripish. For example, I have increasingly started to have moments in conversation when interest seems to leave my mind immediately, and the context I’m existing in seems hollow or ridiculous – without gravity or importance. Of course, if this slips into ones’ perception of everything it can become debilitating, for example; reading any book or watching any film or doing anything and thinking there’s no point because it represents a mere fragment of existence and will in time be forgotten absolutely like myself. Now, this isn’t necessarily untrue, but that doesn’t mean thinking that way will make you happy either.

Recently, my friends and I played golf, I hadn’t played for years and neither had they. As we ambled around the pitch-and-putt course it really felt good to be focused on something so human, so eccentric – the clubs, the little balls and scorecards, the terms -bogey, over-par, birdie etc. something that represented the micro, not the macro – staring down at the tee, not up at the clouds for once. This reminded me that to get through life I couldn’t just expand my mind indefinitely, we can only comprehend so much and we must still live in the physical world. Sure, I could have questioned the meaning of the golf, putting the ball in the hole will change nothing for example, but I never even thought about it – I just enjoyed it. Acid reminds us to enjoy the simple pleasures also and this is the balance we must strike. My enjoyment of golf does not mean I advocate submitting to every micro-element of conventional society to be happy either, indeed, I still smoked a couple of joints before I picked up a club. I see the two extremes of this area manifested at the one end with a Big Brother contestant (ultra-reality) and at the other with an acid veteran (dead-reality) similar to the ones John talked to. The BB contestant reacts with OTT, caricatured, predictable emotional reactions to the slightest social or atmospheric happenings, whereas the LSD vet reacts to nothing because nothing is meaningful, no emotions are conjured, as if the top has been blown off the marquee and nothing is big enough to fill the hole. I think common LSD fuelled themes like circularity and seeing two sides to everything certainly seem to support the idea of balance, which is difficult to achieve.

Considering how much more there is left to learn about LSD, I feel the need to do a lot more of it, discover, learn to control it and try and apply it in different ways to expanding my mind further as a method of self-development. However, I do not want to turn into a soulless veteran, not even knowing or being able to articulate what they experience anymore as the drug has become so all-encompassing.

lsd acid identity psychedelic

lsd acid identity psychedelic

Identity

Reality has seemed so petty at times afterwards. The feeling I had transcends the heights and limits of beauty and truth, at once amplifying them and making them seem ridiculous at the same time, or so normal they seem ridiculous. For example, the classical music seemed so beautiful and made so much sense as existing. It was as if every note had existed in that order before anyone ever composed it and, ironically, this also made it seem more everyday/pedestrian, whilst also being beautiful. When someone looks at the ceiling of the Cistine chapel, they may well feel in awe of the craftsmanship and even intimidated by the scale of the talent required to produce it. It may make one feel insignificant. However, if looking at Michaelangelo’s creation on acid, one might feel as if it had always had to look that way, a feeling of natural inevitability, like one could enjoy it’s simple beauty, the colours and shapes and meaning, and not the words of the tour guide. Acid can provide an appreciation of things that is free from the influence of cultural/historical factors long ingrained on the minds of most western industrialised psyches.

The stripping of cultural identity from contemplation, that acid provides, left me feeling that I was not the self that I knew and not even the self I thought I had become, but an empty vessel, a being of energy stretched into a strange shape, as we all are. All the qualities or details that I use to describe myself to people or how I classify myself in my own mind (white, middle-class etc.) appeared to become meaningless, just semantics. I felt sad at first thinking of myself as just space matter; it’s like the film we are the star of in our own heads (and the character we play) never getting to the production phase, forgotten. However, this was also liberating (again, circularity of thought –both sides); the feeling of cosmic insignificance relieves anxiety over status, self-consciousness, social expectations and materialism. The more sombre thinking on mortal insignificance has also, at times, boiled over into a numbing nihilism, but that might just be there naturally(!). I’ll explore this further in the concluding parts…

lsd acid tabs psychedelic

lsd acid tabs psychedelic

Flashbacks & After-Shocks

On a slightly lighter topic, I’d like to talk about some physical/mental after effects I’ve felt from acid. These could best be described as flash-backs, very brief, almost instantaneous thought. Also bear in mind that this has only happened a few times and most of those seem to have been helped along by smoking weed, it seems to be a catalyst for me. I’ll start with the coolest…

One dark night I was walking home, I’d smoked a few joints with some friends and was quite high. In the distance, tall lights lined the park and heavy dark grey clouds hung overhead. Just for a second the clouds seemed to flash purple, not bright, but perceptible and physically it felt like a little shiver and I just thought of the trip. Now it wasn’t the colour purple that took me back to the acid trip, I just felt it.

Thought is a very subtle process so I may sound crazy, but it felt like I was taken back just for a second to the trip, like the trip had punctured my reality briefly. It wasn’t a mystical vision or anything like that, if anything it felt mechanical, like a little twitch; I perceived it all at once. I didn’t see anything specific like the room we were in at the time, but that split second flash of purple just felt tripish. I’m no scientist, clearly, but I would be interested to know more about the relationship between weed and acid. For me, it seems like weed is a less potent stepping stone (once you’ve taken acid) for reminding your mind where it was when it was on acid, like it opens the door ajar again for a second. This could also be something physical like muscle memory, the acid just bubbles up in your system every now and then.

Other noticeable effects weed has had is perceptible morphing and contortion of vision. Looking at colourful geometric patterns- on curtains flowing in a breeze in my case- have seemed to provide some visuals and again memories of the trip. Another time I was watching someone fill a balloon with air on the television and I felt once more, a slight spasm as I was reminded of the laughing gas balloons we did on our trip and therefore the trip itself. More clearly, that particular flash was triggered by seeing something connected to the general trip, rather than randomly like the first I described. Also, that time the feeling was like a slight shiver through my face and a bleeding feeling at the back of the head, like the feeling you get when your heads congested and you swallow. It wasn’t a horrible feeling, I didn’t feel crazy or like I wasn’t in control, just slightly strange. Further to this, a similar flashback happened when someone said something specific that reminded of the trip, I can’t remember what now, but again implying it is akin to a physical response; it is so instantaneous.

I see things from different angles and have a wider range of perceptions more now also, I’ve seen a tree in the dark that made me think of a piece of black barrier reef; like the way we muse on what clouds look like, because they are less solid in form, more open to perception, that is how I now see other, sometimes solid objects, but more often nature. ‘But you know a tree still looks like a tree?!’ I hear you ask in consternation; yes, but it depends what I’m thinking about when I look at it is all I’m saying. Again, I was high when I felt this, but it felt tripish. I’ve also had slight feelings of paranoia whilst high on weed that have taken me back to when I felt scared on acid on the hard come-up. A still from a TV show we were watching when my trip hit a peak has briefly flashed back into my head whilst feeling paranoid on weed. The still is not properly perceptible; it’s a man sitting on a game-show style chair, it could be nothing like what we were actually watching at the time, but I know it references when I felt bad so that’s why it flashed into my brain. I find analysing this kind of thing fascinating because it may turn out I’m just remembering the acid trip now and again like you would remember any random happening and I’m making myself believe it is something more. I can only go on my perception however, and the examples I have given, did feel different to say, remembering the time you ate a McDonalds any time you see a Big Mac, or just thinking of a Big Mac randomly. There was a jolt, like the feeling was transient, physical and mental. I would be interested to know what others have felt on this matter; indeed some people, often musicians, have been driven mad by more vivid flashbacks!

Part of me feels acid has left an imprint on me that will possibly prove troublesome, but I see any after-effects just as delineations of one particular path, and every path has its pitfalls.

lsd acid paranoia trippy

lsd acid paranoia trippyParanoias

Before this trip I had done acid once before on my own, I had an enjoyable experience – albeit with some insecurities and guilt coming to the fore in the hairier moments. Being in a group for my second and much more profoundly affecting trip made me think more about how acid changed the nature of reality.

My first trip gave me shimmery visual effects and a lot of personal psychological analysis but not much musing on the wider universe and my place in it. This may be down to the acid being stronger in my second trip and opening my mind more, or perhaps the group dynamic; it could also have been all the MDMA we boshed before and after we’d dropped those paper tabs onto our tongues!

My experience of a group trip had pros and cons. Pros included the reassurance that if anything went wrong I’d have some sort of help, and there were new ideas being brought to the table e.g. Jack brought sensory stimuli like pens, crayons, furry books etc. – sounds silly but, simple pleasures and experiencing the highs and wonder together.

However, the cons for me did include a degree of paranoia, which I didn’t feel tripping alone because there was no perceived threat from anyone else. Some examples from, you guessed it- the height of my trip, include:

1. On being presented with genuine ‘smelly’ pens by my friend to draw with, I believed at the time they were actually normal pens and everyone was in on this except me. So, when asked to smell a ‘strawberry scented’ picture by the lads I believed they were experimenting with a mind trick trying to see if the suggestive power of LSD would make me think I was smelling strawberry and not ordinary red pen. I believed the ultimate aim of their experiment was to prove that group suggestion could outweigh an individuals’ reason and logic. This was a weird experience, but I got over it.

2. Once some paranoia creeps in it can then become a theme. At another stage of the evening we ambitiously went about moving the living room table and replacing it with a mattress. This was tricky whilst bombed already, and the paranoia came back again. Jack said ‘moving men’ because myself and two others were repositioning the table and this made me believe that Jack, camera in hand, was filming footage for a punk’d style show called ‘moving in men’ and that I again, was the dummy being duped. I believed the fantasy show ‘moving in men’ consisted of getting people boshed on acid and then convincing them that they were moving furniture that was actually stationary- to the hilarity of the studio audience – Bizarre. I had a partial hallucination at this point as Jack holding the camera, the table and my peripheral vision all blurred into one and when I sat down I also half-believed we had never moved the table and a feng-shui trick had been played on my eyes.

3. Over the course of the trip the nitrous oxide balloons we were caning were extremely enjoyable and at times blissful. However, the paranoia crept in again and I started to think that my friends were filling the balloons with air and again seeing if I would make myself think that I was doing gas when it was actually plain air or seeing if at the least I was pretending to go along with the group. This didn’t stop me smashing double balloons everytime they were going of course.

The paranoias I experienced seemed to tap into personal insecurities and display me at my most raw individual state balanced with my role in the group. This was unpleasant at the time but never crippling, because I knew there was no real threat from any of the perceived deceit. In the end it may not even be anything to do with my character, it just may be the way LSD made me feel at the time, who knows, it made me feel like I was just a vessel influenced by its surroundings rather than inherently a certain way. Don’t get me wrong either, these paranoias did pass after the height of the trip and I had a lot of great experiences. I feel I know myself and my place in the world better now.

realisa.jpg

Epic Realisations

It seemed to me different personalities within my friendship group displayed different reactions to LSD. I would consider myself a classic mix of loner and extrovert which meant at times whilst tripping I was very boisterous and silly and at other times I was withdrawn and a bit out there. My perception was that Chris seemed quite controlled (as he admitted after, very often he was fighting the drug) and went about his trip in a fairly orderly manner, Alex seemed quiet and thoughtful but earnest in trying to go along with the experience, and John was loud, crazy, excitable and highly suggestive and malleable – to me these all correspond with their personalities, almost as if the acid caricatured us. Because of this, the personal nature of the trip seemed to be more so for Chris and Alex as it was harder for me to gauge ostensibly what they were feeling, whereas with John, it was hard to ignore.

At one stage of the trip, I’d just had a freak out, mainly physical. I was coming up hard and had lost all sense of physical being which was scary; “Chris” I appealed, “I feel weird mate”. “It’s OK” he said, “you’ve taken drugs”.

I immediately calmed down and went back to drawing with my crayons. Just then, as if he’d been invisible for centuries I noticed John was lying flat out on a sofa, headphones in, staring up at the ceiling, clutching our acid diary notebook as if he was hanging onto the edge of a cliff. As the psychedelic band Tame Impala whirred through his head he seemed to writhe and convulse rigidly, wriggling feverishly in the sofa as if each contortion brought with it a sublime mixture of agony and ecstasy, revelation and destruction.

Suddenly, my freak out seemed minor. I wanted to be where John was, seeing the truths he was seeing. This feeling was reinforced by his constant cries of; “Epic realisations! Oh my word! Epic realisations!”. What insane mysteries were being unfolded to him? Part of me thought he was hamming it up as he would do sober, but that didn’t seem to matter when perception is all and reality is nowhere. “It all makes sense” and phrases like it kept coming out of John’s mouth. At one point, the craziest his face looked throughout, John sat up, his hair askew on the side that had been continually nuzzled into the sofa during the course of Tame Impala’s back catalogue; “It’s all just a game” he laughed insanely, “It’s all just a game and it goes round and round and round and round.”

It seemed that the real truth lay within each of us. I wanted to experience what John was because of my desire to feel real truth, cosmic truth, whatever that is. After all, trippers are all explorers, cosmonauts, we do it because our minds are hungry, but I knew I couldn’t because any time we tried to impart information to each other it was distorted by perception like cosmic Chinese whispers.

The real world is the same except we have constructed semantics as a short cut to understanding; if someone says they want to eat lunch you assume they want to eat lunch because that is the prescribed thing to say – but this is not necessarily so in acid land. John’s epic realisation was about himself fundamentally, the realisation was his own reaction. More broadly I think the trip showed me how alone we all are as human beings. Understanding that someone wants lunch is one thing, but when the tricky matter of expressing feelings romantically or passionately or seriously in deeper contexts emerges it is far more worrying. How do we ever really know if someone has understood us or whether we really understand what we are trying to impart to others? We think we know, but then we sometimes see something from a different angle. With less change and experiences that offer new perspectives in one’s life, the more hardened, dogmatic, stale and self-affirming/deluding we become, and this role giving/labelling allows society to function, everyone playing the role they believe is theirs, a self-ascribed role.

However, more positively, John and I did have a moment that did seem wonderfully pure and symbiotic. After John’s revelations were subsiding, Chris and Alex de-camped to Alex’s room to do some drawing and chill out. John and I racked the balloons up with nitrous oxide and got into giggling fits, John was now writhing all over the mattress in the centre of the room and laughing his tits off. I joined him on the mattress and noticed we hadn’t tucked into one of the many delights of confectionary that John had brought along for the trip; Head Squirters – it sounds like an 80’s horror B-movie, I know. Head Squirters, or Mr. Head Squirters, more accurately, is a small plastic figure (Sponge Bob-esque) with a removable head (lid), and legs that when twisted proceed to make a greyish blue goo ooze out of a plastic mesh on the figures head, presumably representing his brains; a concept quite representative of an acid trip in itself.

Anyway, after a lengthy investigation into how to actually get some fucking goo out of the thing, John and I marvelled in the product’s novelty, fingering the indeterminate goo into our mouths like creatures lapping it up out of the primordial swamp, laughing hysterically like children. Neither of us seemed to know why this was so funny, possibly because of the silly nature of the product, but it was joyous; I felt free and alive and we both laughed in the moment as if that goo was organic matter itself, ready to evolve in our stomachs. There was something so liberating and vital and plain hilarious about that moment, which genuinely did feel shared as opposed to the moments of solitude I’d experienced. After this, I ventured into Chris and Alex’s den and told them Mr. Head Squirters wished to pay them a visit – they declined to interact.