LSD Experience
11:25: Took 75 mcg. Lysergic acid diethyl amide
11:45: Slight withdrawal beginning, rather definite euphoria
noticeable.
12:00: Very intense euphoria.
12:05: Rapid onset of symptoms. Slightly intoxicated feeling.
Narrowed vision.
12:20: Waves of elation and pure bliss. Euphoria has grown steadily
since taking drug. Little change in perception.
12:30: Euphoria almost overwhelming. Great tension and elation.
Physical sensation one of ecstasy.
12:40: Hyperreflexia, even greater pleasure. First notice that lights
are slightly brighter. Ate dinner.
1:00: Took additional 25 mcg. LSD. Feel peak of elation, euphoria.
Colors beginning to play their fantastic illusory images around
periphery of vision when I quickly cast eyes across field. Stroboscopic
patterns on occasion. Listening to music, note that contrapuntal lines
are more acute. Intricacies of music in clearer detail than ever able
to notice before, as if “hi-fi” were in even greater fidelity. Warm,
rich bliss. I have needed reassurance of this sort, for some time,
that pleasure and happiness is indeed possible. Pencil begins to act
by itself. As yet, little alteration of consciousness, only heightened
enjoyment of present mode of reality.
1:35: Withdrawal tendencies alternate with perfect normality. Colors
are now rich, deep, and lovely. The textures of surfaces seem richer
than ever before. A face on a magazine seemed real, changing,
variously smiling.
1:40: First signs of hallucinated dreams and visions with eyes closed.
Daylight seems splendid and pulsating. First physical euphoria going
over into psychic effects. All colors in room are vivid, deep, and full
of subjective richness, especially wood-grains, carpets, and furniture.
Mood would be pensive, were it not for elation and nervous
stimulation.
2:00: Confusion and bustle in house keeps me constantly in touch
with reality, dispels tendency to savor experience. Could be seeing
visions now, if were allowed. Note perspiration for first time. Waiting
for caller to arrive and leave—due in half-hour. Intolerable urge to
have visit done with so as to enjoy experience.
2:20: According to previous accounts, I should now be at the peak
of experience, which would be so, were it not for waiting out this
damned interruption! Mood to now intensely euphoric, all bright,
pleasant; here I sit, waiting for opportunity to enjoy it! Have been
up and about throughout.
2:30: Sat down in retirement for a while—ability to dream is
pronounced. Kaleidoscopic fancies very subdued, due to anxiety of
expected visit.
2:50: Can now have a while to myself!
3:00: Too late! Height of syndrome passed while unable to enjoy it.
No color heightening, synesthesia, visions, etc. Euphoria mild now,
pleasant, but has no particular novelty.
to 3:45: Thank God! There is something left in nervous system! I
lay alone on couch; I had splendid dreams and scintillation s (though
not as striking as they would have been earlier). Felt I was solid rock
lying on bed, bursting with atomic energy. Matter-and-energy-image
all splendid and luminescent. Saw self hurled by atomic explosions
out into cosmos, past uncountable galaxies of light and beauty.
Geometric patterns of color fluttered past in unbelievable profusion
and delicacy. Feel very withdrawn, intoxicated.
4:00: Light! Pure light! Just to sit and stare into translucent Being!
New interruption on phone.
4:10: Sitting in kitchen, gathering my thoughts. Colors are vivid
and fresh. Feel equilibrium between self and reality, with general
acceptance of objective world on its own terms. Have again felt
childhood lurking beyond the horizon, enticing me back, but with
lessened persuasiveness. Beauty in life has indeed for me been equated
with childhood; reality on this spring day is self-sufficient, must be
accepted in order to go on. Disenchantment has no terrors. Somehow,
whole of day’s experience has been subconsciously pervaded with
Kerouac’s novel, which I just read (On the Road). It seemed in
visions I was reliving the frantic, masculine search for adventure and
meaning; that meaning was to have been soft, feminine, a realization
of all life’s longings, but it was hard, bony and masculine, therefore
restless, tortured, unfulfilled! That is essence of male’s being! We
long to be hermaphroditic ally united with feminine, mother, woman,
sweetheart, for softness to complete our masculine torment, to be
caught up in some higher uniting, which I see in vision as life, childhood, adulthood,
matter, energy, womanness and maleness, on cosmic scale
4:25: The enemy of life is the intellect, the cold, analytical intellect!
I can feel it gnawing away at beauty and turning it to stone, like an
acid spot eating out through a peacock and mother-of-pearl fabric.
We have no ability to believe; we only know, and in this life, that is
not enough. All around me in the warm, moist air are recollections of
the past, which my monster-brain repels. Oh, this is all a farce, trying
to pretend that anything extraordinary is happening. I can’t see how
other persons could get undone by LSD. I can’t go far enough!
4:30: Pleasant, harmonious feeling of being suspended in time,
space and meaning. Neutrality is essence of the reunified halves of
existence! But living, pulsing neutrality, fire from within, divine force
in perfect harmony.
4:45: Oh bliss and ecstasy of sheer reality, family, possession! Colors
of cloth (children’s new coats; dazzling and jewel-like. A mood of
elevated, calm tranquility. Experience this time has been throughout
on level of sheer ordinariness, therefore real and divine, not one of
fantasy and otherworld haunting s. Merely sit and survey all with
rejoicing, noting ordinary shapes and sounds and colors, all good and
tangible and rich. This has been an uplifting testament of reality; the
LSD intoxication, by being tangled with dross, eventually elevates
the ordinary and affirms it.
4:50: Took 50 mg. Thorazine.
5:15: Oh warm joy and tranquil happiness! Having cup of tea, listening
to Parsifal Good Friday Music. The sheer, outpouring affirmation of
my mood and the music indescribable! Colors all bright, serene, the
music peaceful; body warm, relaxing and euphoric.
5:45 Lying here in my mother-of-pearl chamber, listening to Strauss’s
Vier letzte Lieder. The beauty of this experience makes these stupid
words useless and superfluous. How beautiful music can be, and
how wonderfully the emotions can be molded by it; this fact beyond
description. Every note drips honey-sweet and rich-like nectar, so
palpable, so tangible!
6:15: Listening to Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Saw world as
an immense Hietzschean mass of life, solemnly affirming existence.
Ceiling dissolved in mass of grey clouds, angrily swirling in birth
and death-struggles of Being, majestically yea-saying; I am life! I am
“the force of eternity, o God! What divine revelation of that which is!
The entire cosmic drama unfolds before ray eyes in waves of Eternal
Recurrence! During that drunken “Dance-Song,” my soul followed
every line of the music with frenetic urgency, writing, contorting,
intoxicated to an almost unbearable degree. Brilliant mental images
formed and passed in mad, Dionysian motion, subjectively vivid,
yet without sensuous impression. As the music tolled that awful
twelve-count of eternity at its climax, I experienced a sort of cosmic,
spiritual orgasm, quite devoid of erotic content, yet in a very real,
spiritual sense. The whole of the universe was exploding in dynamic
frenzy, and ray emotions discharged madly along with the sounds.
As the “Night-Song” descended, an image of Rilke-like immensity of
space and distance remained, with some distant light shed over the
luminous darkness. My soul hath contorted in agony, and reached a
climax with Eternity!
6:45: Calmed nerves, effects definitely subsided. Still pensive and
withdrawn.
11:45: Slight withdrawal beginning, rather definite euphoria
noticeable.
12:00: Very intense euphoria.
12:05: Rapid onset of symptoms. Slightly intoxicated feeling.
Narrowed vision.
12:20: Waves of elation and pure bliss. Euphoria has grown steadily
since taking drug. Little change in perception.
12:30: Euphoria almost overwhelming. Great tension and elation.
Physical sensation one of ecstasy.
12:40: Hyperreflexia, even greater pleasure. First notice that lights
are slightly brighter. Ate dinner.
1:00: Took additional 25 mcg. LSD. Feel peak of elation, euphoria.
Colors beginning to play their fantastic illusory images around
periphery of vision when I quickly cast eyes across field. Stroboscopic
patterns on occasion. Listening to music, note that contrapuntal lines
are more acute. Intricacies of music in clearer detail than ever able
to notice before, as if “hi-fi” were in even greater fidelity. Warm,
rich bliss. I have needed reassurance of this sort, for some time,
that pleasure and happiness is indeed possible. Pencil begins to act
by itself. As yet, little alteration of consciousness, only heightened
enjoyment of present mode of reality.
1:35: Withdrawal tendencies alternate with perfect normality. Colors
are now rich, deep, and lovely. The textures of surfaces seem richer
than ever before. A face on a magazine seemed real, changing,
variously smiling.
1:40: First signs of hallucinated dreams and visions with eyes closed.
Daylight seems splendid and pulsating. First physical euphoria going
over into psychic effects. All colors in room are vivid, deep, and full
of subjective richness, especially wood-grains, carpets, and furniture.
Mood would be pensive, were it not for elation and nervous
stimulation.
2:00: Confusion and bustle in house keeps me constantly in touch
with reality, dispels tendency to savor experience. Could be seeing
visions now, if were allowed. Note perspiration for first time. Waiting
for caller to arrive and leave—due in half-hour. Intolerable urge to
have visit done with so as to enjoy experience.
2:20: According to previous accounts, I should now be at the peak
of experience, which would be so, were it not for waiting out this
damned interruption! Mood to now intensely euphoric, all bright,
pleasant; here I sit, waiting for opportunity to enjoy it! Have been
up and about throughout.
2:30: Sat down in retirement for a while—ability to dream is
pronounced. Kaleidoscopic fancies very subdued, due to anxiety of
expected visit.
2:50: Can now have a while to myself!
3:00: Too late! Height of syndrome passed while unable to enjoy it.
No color heightening, synesthesia, visions, etc. Euphoria mild now,
pleasant, but has no particular novelty.
to 3:45: Thank God! There is something left in nervous system! I
lay alone on couch; I had splendid dreams and scintillation s (though
not as striking as they would have been earlier). Felt I was solid rock
lying on bed, bursting with atomic energy. Matter-and-energy-image
all splendid and luminescent. Saw self hurled by atomic explosions
out into cosmos, past uncountable galaxies of light and beauty.
Geometric patterns of color fluttered past in unbelievable profusion
and delicacy. Feel very withdrawn, intoxicated.
4:00: Light! Pure light! Just to sit and stare into translucent Being!
New interruption on phone.
4:10: Sitting in kitchen, gathering my thoughts. Colors are vivid
and fresh. Feel equilibrium between self and reality, with general
acceptance of objective world on its own terms. Have again felt
childhood lurking beyond the horizon, enticing me back, but with
lessened persuasiveness. Beauty in life has indeed for me been equated
with childhood; reality on this spring day is self-sufficient, must be
accepted in order to go on. Disenchantment has no terrors. Somehow,
whole of day’s experience has been subconsciously pervaded with
Kerouac’s novel, which I just read (On the Road). It seemed in
visions I was reliving the frantic, masculine search for adventure and
meaning; that meaning was to have been soft, feminine, a realization
of all life’s longings, but it was hard, bony and masculine, therefore
restless, tortured, unfulfilled! That is essence of male’s being! We
long to be hermaphroditic ally united with feminine, mother, woman,
sweetheart, for softness to complete our masculine torment, to be
caught up in some higher uniting, which I see in vision as life, childhood, adulthood,
matter, energy, womanness and maleness, on cosmic scale
4:25: The enemy of life is the intellect, the cold, analytical intellect!
I can feel it gnawing away at beauty and turning it to stone, like an
acid spot eating out through a peacock and mother-of-pearl fabric.
We have no ability to believe; we only know, and in this life, that is
not enough. All around me in the warm, moist air are recollections of
the past, which my monster-brain repels. Oh, this is all a farce, trying
to pretend that anything extraordinary is happening. I can’t see how
other persons could get undone by LSD. I can’t go far enough!
4:30: Pleasant, harmonious feeling of being suspended in time,
space and meaning. Neutrality is essence of the reunified halves of
existence! But living, pulsing neutrality, fire from within, divine force
in perfect harmony.
4:45: Oh bliss and ecstasy of sheer reality, family, possession! Colors
of cloth (children’s new coats; dazzling and jewel-like. A mood of
elevated, calm tranquility. Experience this time has been throughout
on level of sheer ordinariness, therefore real and divine, not one of
fantasy and otherworld haunting s. Merely sit and survey all with
rejoicing, noting ordinary shapes and sounds and colors, all good and
tangible and rich. This has been an uplifting testament of reality; the
LSD intoxication, by being tangled with dross, eventually elevates
the ordinary and affirms it.
4:50: Took 50 mg. Thorazine.
5:15: Oh warm joy and tranquil happiness! Having cup of tea, listening
to Parsifal Good Friday Music. The sheer, outpouring affirmation of
my mood and the music indescribable! Colors all bright, serene, the
music peaceful; body warm, relaxing and euphoric.
5:45 Lying here in my mother-of-pearl chamber, listening to Strauss’s
Vier letzte Lieder. The beauty of this experience makes these stupid
words useless and superfluous. How beautiful music can be, and
how wonderfully the emotions can be molded by it; this fact beyond
description. Every note drips honey-sweet and rich-like nectar, so
palpable, so tangible!
6:15: Listening to Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Saw world as
an immense Hietzschean mass of life, solemnly affirming existence.
Ceiling dissolved in mass of grey clouds, angrily swirling in birth
and death-struggles of Being, majestically yea-saying; I am life! I am
“the force of eternity, o God! What divine revelation of that which is!
The entire cosmic drama unfolds before ray eyes in waves of Eternal
Recurrence! During that drunken “Dance-Song,” my soul followed
every line of the music with frenetic urgency, writing, contorting,
intoxicated to an almost unbearable degree. Brilliant mental images
formed and passed in mad, Dionysian motion, subjectively vivid,
yet without sensuous impression. As the music tolled that awful
twelve-count of eternity at its climax, I experienced a sort of cosmic,
spiritual orgasm, quite devoid of erotic content, yet in a very real,
spiritual sense. The whole of the universe was exploding in dynamic
frenzy, and ray emotions discharged madly along with the sounds.
As the “Night-Song” descended, an image of Rilke-like immensity of
space and distance remained, with some distant light shed over the
luminous darkness. My soul hath contorted in agony, and reached a
climax with Eternity!
6:45: Calmed nerves, effects definitely subsided. Still pensive and
withdrawn.
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