LSD Experience
11:10: Took 100 mcg. Lysergic acid diethyl amide.
11:45: First physical effects beginning.
12:00: Feeling of drunkenness. No euphoria as of yet. Slight visual
impairment. Colors beginning to be intense; stroboscopic light
effects. Rather rapid onset of symptoms. Very slight malaise.
12:05: Flashes of light in periphery of vision. Malaise passing.
12:10: Euphoria setting in. Erotic feelings. Perception altered.
Muscular tension, slight movement in field of vision. Withdrawn
state beginning. Depth and dimension altered.
12:20: Ate lunch. Colors very distracting on plate.
12:40: All colors very bright as in Kodachrome pictures. Very intense
feelings (of symptoms).
1:00: Ceiling patterns flowing like water, stretching back and forth.
Listening to Mozart music. Indescribable bliss and ecstasy. Colors
of walls exquisite. 1:30: Colors seem slightly less intense. Things
suddenly lose interest and novelty . . . but begin again when I lapse
into self.
1:45 *****
2:00: Physical action precipitated period of great sadness, emptiness.
No meaning to anything. Thought ability to dream gone. The warmth
and outgoing positive of previous experiences lacking now.
2:30: Can still dream vividly. External colors have lost some of their
splendor. Somehow, whole experience, though at times very pleasant,
dominated with utter meaninglessness of everything. Purposelessness
of existence personified in feelings. (Added note: This part of
experience evidently coincided with schizophrenic lack of affections,
although nearly perfect lucidity had replaced the hallucinatory phase
just preceding it.)
2:40: World seems cold, strange, empty. Can’t make inner self work
this time. No anxiety, just utter zero-ness, raised to almost mystical
intensity.
2:55: Had a period of warm feelings, which have again passed. Plain
simple fact is that rationality has prevailed too strongly. Effects are
wearing off. Too many lucid periods. Dynamic qualities of hour and
a half ago definitely gone. World is just what it is—a cold, winter
afternoon with glaring sunshine meaning nothing. Inability to keep
up illusions. Not LSD that’s wrong—it’s the damn world outside
and the horrid reality to which you have to keep returning. If I’ve
lost this means of some pleasure in life, what’s left? Still feel drunk,
but mind inside doesn't work anymore. Visions gone. Fire gone.
(Added note: This seems in retrospect to have been an expression
of general repugnance for cold reality, and the knowledge that the
beautiful illusions of past beauty are fled forever. Man cut adrift from
his erstwhile fountains of mystery and dreams.)
3:10: Effects seem definitely subsiding by themselves. Feeling of
general disappointment. Perhaps mood of morning (had slight
hangover from 50 mg. Phenobarbital taken late previous night)
predisposed me to experience without inner warmth. Worries
regarding university and beginning of quarter. Fag-end-of-holiday
spirit. All pleasures over, misery beginning soon. 3:30: More blissful
experiences again. Beautiful kaleidoscopic visions, electric—fire
feelings. All splendid in inner mind.
3:50: Splendid dreams—all beautiful and exciting again. Sound
outside burst into million round bubbles of color—gold against green.
Field of vision with eyes closed is lovely purple velvet, pulsating with
brocade patterns. World outside seems illuminated with gigantic
sunlight-force, which goes through everything like crystal, making it
radiant as if molten glass, resplendent with rainbow-sparkle tongues
of fire. Euphoria returned, along with renewed ability to withdraw.
4:00: Thank God ability to experience has returned! Life has recaptured
meaning. Feelings of happiness. Period of inactivity seems to have
brought back inner fulfillment in imagination, 1:45-3:15 period of
physical activity, moving around, etc. This against background of
enforced reality emptied all of its potential ego-fulfillment. Definite
proof that in order to enjoy LSD or mescaline, one must have
opportunity to withdraw from outer distraction. Outer world is
enemy of self—not the ego. On closing eyes, all immediately flames
up into visionary fire and splendor. Objective sight has, however,
lost the hallucinatory quality it had at 1:00 PM. Ability to re-establish
contact with reality complete. Has perhaps been more so throughout
whole experience.
4:20: On looking out front window, world looks indescribably fresh
and vivid. Feel as if I have returned by painful effort from Hell of
absolute meaninglessness into reassertion of divine beauty in all.
Worked up from zero-feelings, through feelings of last fifty minutes,
and now see world outside resplendent and meaningful.
4:40: Took 25 mg. Thorazine orally to complete easy transition to
reality.
5:00: Lay on couch for last fifteen minutes, looking at scene
in front room. All unearthly-beautiful. Indescribable peace and
harmony, lovely richness of textures. Light and color serene, deep,
Haiku-tangible. Mere flat wall surfaces so meaningful and beautiful
that no words can express it—only to look at it and know! Tranquil
feelings; peace, oneness, mystic bliss descended into earth and stone
to reveal its transcendent Dharma-body. (Added note: An obvious
reference to Aldous Huxley’s description.) The mere ordinariness
of it is the ultimate revelation—because the ordinary becomes (or
reveals itself as) the Real, the Beautiful. Had cup of tea.
5:20: Feel renewed flood of enthusiasm, euphoria, bliss, joy!
Caffeine seems (?) to act like Dexedrine under tail-end lagging
effects of LSD. No hallucination, but indescribable inner warmth
and desire to communicate. Very strange after the middle period of
depression (rather, lack of feeling!). This perhaps a new dimension of
experience; almost the best of it! Pencil now seems to have life of its
own, move almost automatically. Also, certain tendency to withdraw
again, almost as if whole experience were beginning again, with new
beauty and inner radiance, except minus visual hallucinations. Oh!
The beauty of it! The joy of it! The meaning of real harmony (here
seen and felt, tangibly, not as an abstract idea, but as reality!). Peace,
contentment, serenity. Hesse’s Heiterkeit revealed to me in waves of
bliss.
(Immediately afterward, went for walk; felt like youth again in old
childhood neighborhood on a long-forgotten winter afternoon.
Mountains reminded me of those seen hovering like pale blue mist
in a Chinese painting. Symptoms of syndrome appear to have been
actually subsiding at 6:00 and to have been completely past by
7:00.)
11:45: First physical effects beginning.
12:00: Feeling of drunkenness. No euphoria as of yet. Slight visual
impairment. Colors beginning to be intense; stroboscopic light
effects. Rather rapid onset of symptoms. Very slight malaise.
12:05: Flashes of light in periphery of vision. Malaise passing.
12:10: Euphoria setting in. Erotic feelings. Perception altered.
Muscular tension, slight movement in field of vision. Withdrawn
state beginning. Depth and dimension altered.
12:20: Ate lunch. Colors very distracting on plate.
12:40: All colors very bright as in Kodachrome pictures. Very intense
feelings (of symptoms).
1:00: Ceiling patterns flowing like water, stretching back and forth.
Listening to Mozart music. Indescribable bliss and ecstasy. Colors
of walls exquisite. 1:30: Colors seem slightly less intense. Things
suddenly lose interest and novelty . . . but begin again when I lapse
into self.
1:45 *****
2:00: Physical action precipitated period of great sadness, emptiness.
No meaning to anything. Thought ability to dream gone. The warmth
and outgoing positive of previous experiences lacking now.
2:30: Can still dream vividly. External colors have lost some of their
splendor. Somehow, whole experience, though at times very pleasant,
dominated with utter meaninglessness of everything. Purposelessness
of existence personified in feelings. (Added note: This part of
experience evidently coincided with schizophrenic lack of affections,
although nearly perfect lucidity had replaced the hallucinatory phase
just preceding it.)
2:40: World seems cold, strange, empty. Can’t make inner self work
this time. No anxiety, just utter zero-ness, raised to almost mystical
intensity.
2:55: Had a period of warm feelings, which have again passed. Plain
simple fact is that rationality has prevailed too strongly. Effects are
wearing off. Too many lucid periods. Dynamic qualities of hour and
a half ago definitely gone. World is just what it is—a cold, winter
afternoon with glaring sunshine meaning nothing. Inability to keep
up illusions. Not LSD that’s wrong—it’s the damn world outside
and the horrid reality to which you have to keep returning. If I’ve
lost this means of some pleasure in life, what’s left? Still feel drunk,
but mind inside doesn't work anymore. Visions gone. Fire gone.
(Added note: This seems in retrospect to have been an expression
of general repugnance for cold reality, and the knowledge that the
beautiful illusions of past beauty are fled forever. Man cut adrift from
his erstwhile fountains of mystery and dreams.)
3:10: Effects seem definitely subsiding by themselves. Feeling of
general disappointment. Perhaps mood of morning (had slight
hangover from 50 mg. Phenobarbital taken late previous night)
predisposed me to experience without inner warmth. Worries
regarding university and beginning of quarter. Fag-end-of-holiday
spirit. All pleasures over, misery beginning soon. 3:30: More blissful
experiences again. Beautiful kaleidoscopic visions, electric—fire
feelings. All splendid in inner mind.
3:50: Splendid dreams—all beautiful and exciting again. Sound
outside burst into million round bubbles of color—gold against green.
Field of vision with eyes closed is lovely purple velvet, pulsating with
brocade patterns. World outside seems illuminated with gigantic
sunlight-force, which goes through everything like crystal, making it
radiant as if molten glass, resplendent with rainbow-sparkle tongues
of fire. Euphoria returned, along with renewed ability to withdraw.
4:00: Thank God ability to experience has returned! Life has recaptured
meaning. Feelings of happiness. Period of inactivity seems to have
brought back inner fulfillment in imagination, 1:45-3:15 period of
physical activity, moving around, etc. This against background of
enforced reality emptied all of its potential ego-fulfillment. Definite
proof that in order to enjoy LSD or mescaline, one must have
opportunity to withdraw from outer distraction. Outer world is
enemy of self—not the ego. On closing eyes, all immediately flames
up into visionary fire and splendor. Objective sight has, however,
lost the hallucinatory quality it had at 1:00 PM. Ability to re-establish
contact with reality complete. Has perhaps been more so throughout
whole experience.
4:20: On looking out front window, world looks indescribably fresh
and vivid. Feel as if I have returned by painful effort from Hell of
absolute meaninglessness into reassertion of divine beauty in all.
Worked up from zero-feelings, through feelings of last fifty minutes,
and now see world outside resplendent and meaningful.
4:40: Took 25 mg. Thorazine orally to complete easy transition to
reality.
5:00: Lay on couch for last fifteen minutes, looking at scene
in front room. All unearthly-beautiful. Indescribable peace and
harmony, lovely richness of textures. Light and color serene, deep,
Haiku-tangible. Mere flat wall surfaces so meaningful and beautiful
that no words can express it—only to look at it and know! Tranquil
feelings; peace, oneness, mystic bliss descended into earth and stone
to reveal its transcendent Dharma-body. (Added note: An obvious
reference to Aldous Huxley’s description.) The mere ordinariness
of it is the ultimate revelation—because the ordinary becomes (or
reveals itself as) the Real, the Beautiful. Had cup of tea.
5:20: Feel renewed flood of enthusiasm, euphoria, bliss, joy!
Caffeine seems (?) to act like Dexedrine under tail-end lagging
effects of LSD. No hallucination, but indescribable inner warmth
and desire to communicate. Very strange after the middle period of
depression (rather, lack of feeling!). This perhaps a new dimension of
experience; almost the best of it! Pencil now seems to have life of its
own, move almost automatically. Also, certain tendency to withdraw
again, almost as if whole experience were beginning again, with new
beauty and inner radiance, except minus visual hallucinations. Oh!
The beauty of it! The joy of it! The meaning of real harmony (here
seen and felt, tangibly, not as an abstract idea, but as reality!). Peace,
contentment, serenity. Hesse’s Heiterkeit revealed to me in waves of
bliss.
(Immediately afterward, went for walk; felt like youth again in old
childhood neighborhood on a long-forgotten winter afternoon.
Mountains reminded me of those seen hovering like pale blue mist
in a Chinese painting. Symptoms of syndrome appear to have been
actually subsiding at 6:00 and to have been completely past by
7:00.)
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